Links

Sometime between November 1st and November 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• A Piece of Their Mind: "Adding to the conundrum, of course, are their linked brains, and the mysterious hints of what passes between them. The family regularly sees evidence of it. The way their heads are joined, they have markedly different fields of view. One child will look at a toy or a cup. The other can reach across and grab it, even though her own eyes couldn't possibly see its location. 'They share thoughts, too,' says Louise. 'Nobody will be saying anything,' adds Simms, 'and Tati will just pipe up and say, 'Stop that!' And she'll smack her sister.' While their verbal development is delayed, it continues to get better. Their sentences are two or three words at most so far, and their enunciation is at first difficult to understand. Both the family, and researchers, anxiously await the children's explanation for what they are experiencing."
• ★ Going Flash-Free on Mac OS X, and How to Cheat When You Need It: "Last week I mentioned that, following Steven Frank’s lead, I’d completely disbled Flash Player on my Mac. But I have a cheat, for web pages with Flash content with no non-Flash workaround. I’m really happy with this setup, so I thought I’d document it here."
• And We Shall Call This “Moff’s Law”: "When you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one's capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated — you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too many people are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what's going on in their own heads, you're not helping anything; on the contrary, you're acting as an advocate for entropy."
• 500 Internal Server Error: 500 Internal Server Error
• To NSFW or Not to NSFW? (NSFW) – Roger Ebert’s Journal: "America has a historical Puritan streak, and is currently in the midst of another upheaval of zeal from radical religionists. They know what is bad for us. They would prefer to burn us at a metaphorical stake, but make do with bizarre imprecations about the dire consequences of our sin. Let me be clear: I am not speaking of sexual behavior that is obviously evil and deserves legal attention. But definitions differ. Much of their wrath is aimed at gays. I consider homosexuality an ancient, universal and irrefutable fact of human nature. Some radicals actually blamed it for 9/11. For them the ideal society must be Saudi Arabia's, which I consider pathologically sick."

Sometime between October 21st and October 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Who Lives There – A Home in the Pyramid Atop Seattle’s Smith Tower: "TO get to the top of the world, Petra Franklin Lahaie ushers her two young daughters and their girly bikes through a set of heavy bronze doors, greets the 24-hour elevator operator in the Prussian blue uniform, rides up 35 stories past mostly vacant office suites, debarks next to an observation deck and Chinese-themed banquet room, passes through a portal marked 'private residence,' climbs two stories into a neo-gothic pyramid and enters a penthouse apartment."

Sometime between October 8th and October 17th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Lens Culture: In Almost Every Picture # 7: "The chronological series begins in 1936, when a 16-year-old girl from Tilburg in Holland picks up a gun and shoots at the target in a shooting gallery. Every time she hits the target, it triggers the shutter of a camera and a portrait of the girl in firing pose is taken and given as a prize. And so a lifelong love affair with the shooting gallery begins. This series documents almost every year of the woman's life (there is a conspicuous pause from 1939 to 1945) up until present times. At the age of 88 Ria van Dijk still makes her pilgrimage to the Shooting Gallery."
• Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back: "A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday."

Sometime between September 28th and October 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Google Lateris Nescis (Using Google Translate’s Latin-to-English on the standard "Lorem Ipsum" text): "Hello world! Is here to cancel meals. Fresh troops the avenging can take the price of the gate elit. That beating you soften large and less trouble. In the fireball there is no element of time will not be avenging Moors, always. Product Sample no, the volutpat But to drink in that, at times as before. Show your little was Nisl undertakes to please a quiver. Maecenas from the fear of eros, which does not fear feugiat. Phasellus to leaven good lion Felis arrows beating. Smartphone EU nibh dignissim or to drink in your family is. "
• STEAL THIS PRESENTATION!: An excellent presentation on how to create excellent (PowerPoint/Keynote) presentations.
• Relative Sizes of STAR TREK and STAR WARS Ships: "It's interesting to see that a Next Generation-era Klingon Bird of Prey looks like it could probably take out an AT-AT with one shot, while the USS Defiant looks outmatched by the rebel ship from the opening scenes of the first Star Wars film."
• This Is a News Website Article About a Scientific Finding: "In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of 'scare quotes' to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research 'challenges'."

Sometime between September 20th and September 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Billboard Error Creates Embarrassment: "If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and Indiana 23 between Thursday and Monday morning. The ad urged people to go to the 'southbendon.com' website for a look at the '15 best things about our pubic schools.' That's right, the billboard said 'pubic' instead of 'public' schools. The letter 'L' had been left out of the word public."
• My Relentless Pursuit of the Guy Who Robbed Me: "See, aspiring thief, you just never know what you're stepping into when you hit up a random car on a random street. However badass you think you may be, there is someone on the other side of the robbery. And in this particular case it was someone who escaped the Iranian Revolution as a child; who roamed the world alone for five years because her parents couldn't get out; who watched from a dozen blocks away as the twin towers crumbled; who had just barely clawed her way out of that concentration camp known as late-stage cancer, if only because she was intent on raising her babies, come hell or high water. And all of this before she even turned 40. Can you see how that someone might be way more twisted than you?"
• My First Week With the iPhone: "The other night, however, a very amazing thing happened. I downloaded an app called Color ID. It uses the iPhone's camera, and speaks names of colors. It must use a table, because each color has an identifier made up of 6 hexadecimal digits. This puts the total at 16777216 colors, and I believe it. Some of them have very surreal names, such as Atomic Orange, Cosmic, Hippie Green, Opium, and Black-White. These names in combination with what feels like a rise in serotonin levels makes for a very psychedelic experience. […] I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as 'Horizon,' 'Outer Space,' and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown."

Sometime between September 15th and September 20th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• CLASH of the GEEKS | a Fantastical Chapbook to Benefit the Lupus Alliance of America: "Wil Wheaton, John Scalzi and Subterranean Press are proud to announce the publication of Clash of the Geeks, a special and fantastical electronic chapbook featuring stories by Wheaton, Scalzi, New York Times bestseller Patrick Rothfuss, Norton Award winner and Hugo Best Novel nominee Catherynne M. Valente, Hugo and Nebula Award nominee Rachel Swirsky and others, for the benefit of the Michigan/Indiana affiliate of the Lupus Alliance of America. The chapbook is free to download, but voluntary payment is strongly encouraged, via Paypal or by tax-deductible donation forms, both linked to later in this entry. All proceeds from this chapbook will go to the Michigan/Indiana affiliate of the Lupus Alliance of America."
• The Nervous Breakdown: "Only the folks at Madacy Entertainment know exactly what Ocean Surf is, and their lips are sealed. I made several phone calls to Madacy's corporate headquarters in Quebec, and each representative I was lucky enough to reach declined to comment on the origins of the Ocean Surf audio. It's become patently obvious that the mystery of the Ocean Surf recording is one cornerstone of its appeal. Mysteriousness, in fact, is what makes Ocean Surf arguably the most important relaxation sounds release of all time."
• Observations on Film Art : Bond vs. Chan: Jackie Shows How It’S Done: "The Michael Bay approach has become the principal way in which action scenes are shot. It isn't absence of craft that leads to these aimless bouts. The filmmakers actively want the action to be hard, even impossible, to follow. Sometimes I think that this blurred bustle is there to secure a PG-13 rating; if you could really see the mayhem, we might be moving toward an R. But filmmakers don't say that they're self-censoring. They seem to think that making the action illegible is creative because it promotes realism."

Sometime between September 9th and September 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Consequences of U.S. and Dutch Approaches to Teen Sex: "American parents approach their children's sexual initiation with fear and loathing; while Dutch parents treat sexuality like any other realm of life that a child must learn to manage. Accordingly, most American teenagers hide their virginity loss from their parents, furtively popping the cherry in risky situations, often without protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In contrast, most Dutch teenagers lose their virginity in their own bedrooms with their parents approval… and condoms. This different approach to teen sexuality helps explain the dramatic differences between the U.S. and the Netherlands in rates of contraceptive use, teen pregnancy, abortion, and STI transmission."
• Facebook Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg Opens Up: "Zuckerberg, or at least Hollywood's unauthorized version of him, will soon be starring in a film titled 'The Social Network,' directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. The movie, which opens the New York Film Festival and will be released on October 1st, will be the introduction that much of the world gets to Zuckerberg. Facebook profiles are always something of a performance: you choose the details you want to share and you choose whom you want to share with. Now Zuckerberg, who met with me for several in-person interviews this summer, is confronting something of the opposite: a public exposition of details that he didn't choose. He does not plan to see the film."
• Tax the Filthy Rich!: "Washington State has the most regressive taxes of any state in the country. In Washington, poor people pay 17.3 percent of their income in taxes, while the filthy rich pay only 2.6 percent of their income in taxes. This is the result of our state's heavy reliance on the sales tax, which accounts for over 50 percent of all state revenue. Imagine two families, one rich and one poor, going to the same store and buying the same basket of goods and subjected to the same sales tax. For the poor family, it's a much heavier burden than for the rich family. The sensible way to even out the tax burden is to tax income, like most other states. But Washington doesn't have an income tax. Never has. Hence our status as a national embarrassment–more regressive on taxes than even Texas or Georgia."
• 5 Worries Parents Should Drop, and 5 They Shouldn’t: "Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order: Kidnapping, School snipers, Terrorists, Dangerous strangers, and Drugs. But how do children really get hurt or killed? Car accidents, Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger), Abuse, Suicide, and Drowning."