Links

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."

Sometime between April 20th and April 28th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Elements of Twitter Style: "Twitter has become hugely popular and is only getting bigger. Some users don't understand that the formatting and content of their tweets has a huge impact on how well or poorly they are received as individuals, and by extension, how likely they are to be followed. I have strong opinions about what works well on Twitter, and what doesn't. I decided I would start writing down these opinions so that I can easily reference them in the future."
• Blag Hag: And the Boobquake Results Are In!: "Not only did all of the earthquakes on boobquake fall within the normal range of magnitudes, but the mean magnitude actually decreased slightly! Now, this change isn't statistically significant, but it certainly doesn't support the cleric's claim. In fact, I think it develops an even more interesting alternative hypothesis: Maybe immodest women actually decrease the amount of earthquakes! Man, that would certainly be a fun way to provide disaster relief. Of course, before we can make any claims about that, we'd have to greatly increase our sample size. You know, I have this gut feeling that a lot of people would like to do our boobquake experiment again…"
• Daring Fireball: Gizmodo and the Prototype iPhone: "Imagine, say, that someone offered to sell you a unique and notable piece of stolen artwork. You pay them and take the item. You are subsequently arrested and charged with buying stolen property. What do you think your chances are of being acquitted on the grounds that you didn't know for certain whether the item was a forgery at the time you paid for it?"
• You Ever Think About How In, Like, a Tom Hanks Movie…?: "You ever think about how in, like, a Tom Hanks movie, everyone lives in a reality in which there's no such person as Tom Hanks? Because otherwise, people would be mistaking the main character for Tom Hanks all the time? So either Tom Hanks doesn't exist in the world the movie takes place in, or he does exist but he looks like someone else?" Be sure to scroll down to the comments, there are some fun mentions of shows or movies that break this pattern.
• Henge Docks: "Henge Docks has created the first truly comprehensive docking station solution for Apple's line of notebook computers. This means you can quickly, easily and cleanly incorporate your MacBook computer into a desktop setup or your home theater system, so you get the best features of a laptop, desktop and media center PC all from one computer. Henge Docks patent-pending design doesn't require any hardware, software or settings changes to your computer. In fact, every current MacBook is compatible with our system, right from the factory."

Sometime between April 14th and April 19th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• The Alot Is Better Than You at Everything: "The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people's grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I'd normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world."
• The 120 Minutes Archive – Playlists, Videos, and Interviews From MTV’S Classic Alternative Music Series: "Since 2003, we've been traveling back through time to rediscover and preserve the history of the legendary MTV U.S. series, 120 Minutes, which played alternative music videos with VJs, guests, and live performances, as well as its official successor, Subterranean on MTV2. Music videos still exist, of course, but it's just not the same. We want to remember some of MTV's better moments, so we've assembled an incredible archive of playlists, videos, and interviews."
• Christ, It Works for Everything: "It was recently theorized that all New Yorker cartoons could be captioned with 'Christ, what an asshole' without compromising their comedic value. I discovered this is true of virtually all comics, old and new."
• How Apple Designed the iPad Out in the Open: "Like military research that eventually ends up in consumer tech, Apple's drive to invent the iPad trickled into its old computers. The big difference is that military research is top-secret. In this rare case, the famously tight-lipped Apple put every part of the iPad out in the open, years before it was ever announced."
• NOVA | The Pluto Files | Hate Mail From Third Graders: "'It's not easy being a public enemy,' writes Neil deGrasse Tyson in his book The Pluto Files. When Neil's museum grouped Pluto not among the planets but rather with icy comets in an obscure region called the Kuiper Belt, he heard from thousands of outraged Pluto defenders. It's tough being called a heartless Pluto-hater, particularly by a dismayed eight-year-old. Below, peruse a few of the letters elementary schoolkids sent Neil, and see how their tone shifted over the years, as the public slowly came to accept Pluto's fall from planethood."

Sometime between March 18th and April 6th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Flickr: Teabonics: "Teabonics- the bizarre, mutant variant of English used by self proclaimed members of the Tea Party when making their protest signs. The TEABAG Movement sweeping across America has forged a new English language vernacular. A phenomenon that linguists are calling TEABONICS."
• FINALLY: The Difference Between Nerd, Dork, and Geek Explained by a Venn Diagram: "To all of you nerds and geeks who–like me–have been unfairly and inaccurately labeled 'dorks,' only to then exhaustively explain the differences among the three to a more-than-skeptical offender, I say: You're welcome. This nerd/dork/geek/dweeb Venn diagram should save you a lot of time and frustration in the future."
• An Open Letter to Conservatives: "You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task. Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples — by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred."
• Waterloo: "No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the 'doughnut hole' and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents' insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there — would President Obama sign such a repeal?"
• How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course–related research: "Findings are reported from student focus groups and a large–scale survey about how and why students (enrolled at six different U.S. colleges) use Wikipedia during the course–related research process. A majority of respondents frequently used Wikipedia for background information, but less often than they used other common resources, such as course readings and Google. Architecture, engineering, and science majors were more likely to use Wikipedia for course–related research than respondents in other majors. The findings suggest Wikipedia is used in combination with other information resources. Wikipedia meets the needs of college students because it offers a mixture of coverage, currency, convenience, and comprehensibility in a world where credibility is less of a given or an expectation from today’s students."

Sometime between March 12th and March 17th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Get Mac-Like Scrolling and Gestures on a Windows Laptop: "Once you've used the hand-helping, time-saving, two-finger scrolling and three-finger gestures on a MacBook, a standard Windows trackpad can feel kind of, well, dead. Here's how to get total finger control with a tiny app, or go further with a driver swap."
• It’s not a bargain if you don’t need it: "Let's just say there is one of these bundles — lets just call it MacTheft — and the price for eleven apps is $19.95. And, let's just say they promise to give $5.00 of your purchase to starving children in cataclysmicly devastated regions of the world. Therefore, the price of the software — all eleven apps — is theoretically $14.95. But, let's just say there is only two apps out of the eleven that you really think you need. Here is a crazy idea to try… Buy the apps outright, full-price, directly from the developer."
• Norrie First Registered Sexless Person: "THIS Mardi Gras, Norrie received a gift that no other androgynous person in NSW has had before. The night before the parade, the postman brought a certificate from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages that contained neither the dreaded ''M'' nor its equally despised cousin, ''F''. Instead, it said ''sex not specified'', making the 48-year-old Sydneysider, who identifies as neuter and uses only a first name, the first in the state to be neither man nor woman in the eyes of the NSW government."
• Frommer’s Now F’Ing Both Freelancers and Photo Enthusiasts!: "I just heard from another colleague about a photo contest Frommer's is running….probably because of the problems they're running into screwing the photographers they signed to work with. You can win $5000 and get your photo on the cover of one of their guidebooks. Sounds like a cool contest, until you read the fine print: Participant retains ownership of the copyright in any submitted photographs. However, **by entering photograph(s) in this Contest, participant grants Sponsor the irrevocable, perpetual right to edit, adapt, use and publish in any media now known or hereafter discovered any or all of the photographs without compensation to the participant, his or her successors or assigns, or any other entity."
• WA Legislature Toughens Cell Phone Driving Law: "The Washington state Legislature has approved a measure that makes it easier for police to ticket people who are driving while either texting or talking on a cell phone without a headset. On a 60-37 vote Thursday, the House passed a bill that makes it a primary offense to be caught holding a cell phone to your ear while driving, or to be reading, writing or sending text messages. That strengthens the state's current secondary offense law for both, which only slaps drivers with an extra fine if they are pulled over for another infraction, such as speeding."