Michael Hanscom

Sometime between May 29th and June 6th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• After 10 Years, Experience Music Project Is Still Perplexing: "After 10 years on the Seattle cityscape, billionaire Paul Allen's Experience Music Project still generates controversy. Everyone agrees that the rock museum's design is unique and its construction was a technical marvel, but there's little agreement about whether it's beautiful or ugly. World-famous architect Frank Gehry said the building was meant to celebrate the sometimes chaotic process of creating the kind of music it's devoted to, but critics still say it's just too odd."
• How You Can Live Like a Vulcan Without Bleeding Green: "…let's face it – Vulcans are way cooler than Jedi or Na'vi anyway. (At least if you ignore Star Trek: Enterprise, which you really, really should.) Vulcans are quite possibly the most fully realized alien race television or movies have ever created, and not just because they have a complex culture and history. Vulcans have something most made-up races can only dream of: a central contradiction that's ultra-compelling. They're overflowing cauldrons of passion, who have mastered their emotions to such a high degree they appear almost robotic. No matter how pissed off or freaked out you might ever get, you can't be as hot-blooded as a Vulcan. And you'll have to work pretty hard to be half as cool."
• Google Ditches Windows on Security Concerns: "'We're not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,' said one Google employee. 'Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,' said another. New hires are now given the option of using Apple's Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system."
• Facebook: Privacy Problems and PR Nightmare: "One gets the impression that Facebook doesn't take any of this stuff very seriously. It just views the complaints as little fires that need to be put out. The statements Facebook issues aren't meant to convey any real information – they're just blasts from a verbal fire extinguisher, a cloud of words intended not to inform, but to smother. Just keep talking, the idea seems to be, and it doesn't matter what you say. In fact the more vapid and insincere you can be, the better. Eventually the world will get sick of the sound of your voice, and the whiners will give up and go away."
• Presidential Proclamation–Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month: "NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2010 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month by fighting prejudice and discrimination in their own lives and everywhere it exists."

Sometime between May 25th and May 28th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Today’s College Students Lack Empathy: "College students today are less likely to 'get' the emotions of others than their counterparts 20 and 30 years ago, a new review study suggests. Specifically, today's students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than their elders did. The findings are based on a review of 72 studies of 14,000 American college students overall conducted between 1979 and 2009. 'We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,' said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research."
• Is Queen’s "Invisible Man" the Best Scifi Music Video of All Time? Yes.: "How awesome is the music video for 'The Invisible Man'? Let's just say that if there was a machine that could quantify awesomeness, this machine would be built of dinosaur bones and powered by the inchoate yalps of happy babies. Here's the music video – we'll dissect its scenes and themes below."
• Republicans’ New Web Site Not Exactly What They Hoped It Would Be: "The Web site filters out obscenity and the like, but it hasn't kept out hundreds of ideas: some serious, some offensive and some so wacky they surely must be Democratic sabotage. 'Let kids vote!' recommended one. 'Let's make a 'Social Security Lotto,' ' proposed another. 'What dope came up with the idea of criminalizing a parent's right to administer corporal punishment?' a third demanded. Some contributors demanded action to uncover conspiracies involving the 9/11 attacks and the 'NEW WORLD ORDER.' One forward thinker recommended that we 'build the city of the future somewhere in a non-inhabit part of the United States, preferably the desert.'"
• Ten of the Greatest Maps That Changed the World: "From the USSR's Be On Guard! map in 1921 to Google Earth, a new exhibition at the British Library charts the extraordinary documents that transformed the way we view the globe forever"
• Is Texting [or using a cellphone] Legal if I’m at a Stoplight?: No, and after June 10th, you can get cited: "'Even though you are stopped, you're still in physical control of the automobile, which would require you at a moment's notice to take off,' State Patrol Sgt. Freddy Williams said. 'Are you going to stop texting immediately when the light turns green?'"

Sometime between May 21st and May 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• After Keeping Us Waiting for a Century, Mark Twain Will Finally Reveal All: "The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century. That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist."
• Cripple Crab Crutch: "A two-disc album of spoken word mash-ups. Source materials ranging from the paranormal, the historical, the literary, the scholarly, the philosophical and religious, film excerpts, strange old recordings, radio shows, comedy, and an old Disneyland attraction."
• The Swinger: "The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect."
• 10 Days in a Carry-on: "Heather Poole, a flight attendant from Los Angeles, demonstrated how to pack enough for a 10-day trip into a single standard carry-on."
• The Pirate Bay | Cracked.com: "The Pirate Bay is the largest torrent website in the world. According to the RIAA, it rates somewhere between Nazi Dinosaurs and The League of Extraordinary Evil on the Global Threat Scale." I'm not a huge fan of Cracked — their humor tends to rely a bit much on foul language for my tastes — but this infographic is great.

Sometime between May 18th and May 20th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• New Social Networking Site Changing the Way Oh, Christ, Forget It: "According to sources we feel really, really sorry for, Foursquare works by allowing users to 'check in' from their present location, whether it be a bar, restaurant, nearby magazine stand, or man, this piece would be perfect to hand over to that schmuck Dan Fletcher at Time magazine right about now. By 'checking in,' users can earn tangible, real-world rewards. For instance, the Foursquare user with the most points at any given venue earns the designation of 'mayor' and can receive discounts, free food, or other prizes that, quite honestly, we're thoroughly disgusted with ourselves for having actually researched. In addition, please, kill us already."
• The Ragbag – F(x) = ½X + 7: "it was only yesterday that i realised that the rule of thumb for dating people of different ages (the 'half your age plus 7' rule) determines not only the lower bounds for dating but the upper bounds as well–that for each ½x + 7, there is a corresponding 2(x-7)."
• Who You Gonna Call?: "For our latest mission, we brought the movie Ghostbusters to life in the reading room of The New York Public Library at 42 Street. The 1984 movie begins with a scene in the very same room, so we figured it was time for the Ghostbusters to make an encore appearance. Enjoy the video first and then go behind-the-scenes with the photos and report below."
• Article Asking for More Comprehensive Sex Education Cut From Catholic-School Newspaper: "Ryan Dunn, a senior at Bishop Blanchet High School, just spent four months researching and writing an editorial for his school newspaper arguing that more comprehensive sex education should be available on campus. In a move that seems a little psychologically sadistic, Dunn was pressured to cut the article himself after his principal said it might cost some of his favorite teachers their jobs. Dunn was encouraged not to run the story by his principal (Tom Lord) and his journalism teacher (Chris Grasseschi) because Blanchet is already under scrutiny from the archdiocese for being too liberal."
• The Big Caption: "For your viewing pleasure: THE BIG CAPTION. A compliment to THE BIG PICTURE wherein JOKES and STATEMENTS are made using TYPOGRAPHY."

Sometime between May 14th and May 18th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Mount St. Helens, 30 Years Ago – The Big Picture: "On May 18th, 1980, thirty years ago today, at 8:32 a.m., the ground shook beneath Mount St. Helens in Washington state as a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck, setting off one of the largest landslides in recorded history – the entire north slope of the volcano slid away. As the land moved, it exposed the superheated core of the volcano setting off gigantic explosions and eruptions of steam, ash and rock debris. The blast was heard hundreds of miles away, the pressure wave flattened entire forests, the heat melted glaciers and set off destructive mudflows, and 57 people lost their lives. The erupting ash column shot up 80,000 feet into the atmosphere for over 10 hours, depositing ash across Eastern Washington and 10 other states. Collected here are photos of the volcano and its fateful 1980 eruption."
• Lost Has Already Given Us More Answers Than Battlestar: "Is Lost another answers-averse show like Battlestar Galactica? No. In fact, Lost has already provided more answers than BSG. I've seen lots of people fretting about a lack of answers on Lost, and comparing it to BSG lately. But you know what? It's not really a fair comparison, because Lost has been showing us stuff pretty explicitly all along."
• The Geek Alphabet: "As a geek, you definitely know your ABCs, but do you know these? From A to Z, 'away team' to 'zork,' here is [GAS]'s take on the Geek Alphabet."
• Adobe, You Brought An Advertisement To A Gun Fight: "Adobe, no one seems to want to say this to you, but I will. Stop it, you’re embarrassing yourself."
• State Patrol Warns: Tickets on Cell Phones Begin June 10, No Exceptions: "The Washington State Patrol warned Friday that drivers who text or talk on a hand-held cell phone should expect a ticket on June 10. No excuses accepted. Tickets will be handed out. And if you are convicted, expect a $124 fine. The State Patrol often has a grace period when a new law takes effect, but not with this one. 'Drivers have already had nearly two years to adjust their driving habits,' State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste said in a news release. 'We will fully enforce this law from day one.'"

Sometime between May 9th and May 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• The 7 Most Soul-Crushing Series Finales in TV History: "There are two ways to wrap up a canceled or ending TV show. There's the oft employed looking back at an empty room and closing the door option. Then there's the 'WTF! Let's stab their eyeballs with crazy!' approach.<br />
  <br />
  Guess which ones these guys chose?"
• The Blackboard Versus the Keyboard: "It turns out that one child's educational tool is another child's distraction–particularly when bored. There are Facebook and Twitter for the social-media enthusiasts, there's ESPN for sports fans, there's a Web site for any store you can think of for savvy shoppers, along with countless other avenues: eBay, YouTube, blogs of every flavor. No Internet? No problem. Solitaire, FreeCell, and Minesweeper are calling your name. Those distractions have led to a mini-war on laptops in the classroom."
• 50th Anniversary of the Pill: Love, Sex, Freedom and Paradox: "There's no such thing as the Car or the Shoe or the Laundry Soap. But everyone knows the Pill, whose FDA approval 50 years ago rearranged the furniture of human relations in ways that we've argued about ever since."
• Why Roger Ebert Hates 3-D (And You Should Too): "3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets. Its image is noticeably darker than standard 2-D. It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose. For moviegoers in the PG-13 and R ranges, it only rarely provides an experience worth paying a premium for."
• The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook: "Facebook is a great service. I have a profile, and so does nearly everyone I know under the age of 60. However, Facebook hasn't always managed its users' data well. In the beginning, it restricted the visibility of a user's personal information to just their friends and their 'network' (college or school). Over the past couple of years, the default privacy settings for a Facebook user's personal information have become more and more permissive."

Sometime between April 29th and May 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• DJ Spooky remixes Public Enemy’s "By the Time I Get to Arizona" for 2010:: "In the wake of Republican Governor Jan Brewer's appalling anti-immigrant law, me and Chuck D were rappin' and we decided to put together an update of his classic track By The Time I get To Arizona. Anyone who knows about hip hop from the early 90's remembers John McCain's unwillingness to endorse creating a local version of Martin Luther King's birthday. The update here is a 21st century look in the rear view mirror. The cliché that 'those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it' still holds sway in our hyper amnesiac culture."
• Local Boy With Cancer Turns Into a Superhero for a Day: "Erik Martin, who is living with liver cancer, has always wanted to be a superhero. On Thursday, the regional chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted him that wish with an elaborate event that involved hundreds of volunteers in Bellevue and Seattle."
• On Telephones:: "The telephone was an aberation in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else's life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone's living room and start shouting. it was never okay. It's less okay now. Telephone calls are rude. They are interruptive."
• Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline: "Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it's slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users' information, while limiting the users' options to control their own information."
• From Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash: "I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe's Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven — they say we want to protect our App Store — but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain."