Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

Clumsy Headlines

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Seattle Police Reportedly Kill Man With Knife

Oh, the joys of clumsy headline writing. Here’s two versions of the same story. The first seemed really odd when I saw it come up in Google Reader. “Seattle Police Reportedly Kill Man With Knife” — as written, grammatically, that tells me that the police stabbed a man to death. But that can’t be right, can it? The article summary clears it up (mostly: one could make an argument that the summary states that the police killed a man by shooting a knife at him, but while that fits the grammar, it’s a bit of a stretch to think that someone would derive that meaning), as does the second article with a more well-written headline and summary, but it gave me a bit of a laugh.

Links for January 12th through January 14th

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Sometime between January 12th and January 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown: The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all. A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem. […] The panel, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children. But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults. […] “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”
  • Found Footage: Good grief, NCIS, do you take us for fools?: Apparently the "Mac SE" that McGee pulled out of a box on NCIS last night (which I "squee'd" about here) wasn't an SE, but a Classic, and geekier MacGeeks than me are up in arms about the flub. Meh. Perhaps I should have noticed, as my first Mac was a Classic, but…I just can't get too upset about the goof. It's a TV show. Actors get lines and props…it's not their fault if they don't go together.
  • Runnin’ With The Songsmith: The leaked David Lee Roth vocals for "Runnin' With the Devil" run through Microsoft's new Songsmith software. Hilariously awful.
  • “The Recently Deflowered Girl” (1965) – Illustrated by Edward Gorey: I knew that Shel Silverstein published different works aimed for “kid” and “adult” audiences, but I had no idea that Edward Gorey did the same – at least not until I saw The Recently Deflowered Girl. It’s a 1965 parody of etiquette books that seems quaint now, but must’ve seemed racy back in those days when Playboy was where you got not just the pictures of nude women, but good advice on stereos and cocktails.
  • Hardware that supports iPhoto ’09’s geotagging – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): If shot with the right hardware, iPhoto recognizes where a given photo was taken, and places it on a Google map. If the photos in an event span several locations, it notices that, also. The built-in maps are very attractive and handy, as you can search your entire library by geographic location. As I watched all of this, one thought was echoing in my mind. I don't have single piece of hardware that can do this.
  • Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard: Scissors cuts Paper covers Rock crushes Lizard poisons Spock smashes Scissors decapitates Lizard eats Paper disproves Spock vaporizes Rock crushes Scissors.

Links for January 12th from 10:14 to 15:44

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Sometime between 10:14 and 15:44, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The Elements of Spam.: Form the possessive of nouns by adding 's, just an apostrophe, just an s, a semicolon, a w, an ampersand, a 9, or anything. "My wifesd*porcupine hot pix for u."
  • Stephen King fan publishes Shining’s Jack Torrance’s novel: A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.
  • W. and the damage done: After a couple of presidential terms, mismanagement in every area of policy — foreign, domestic, even extraterrestrial — starts to add up. When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he inherited peace and prosperity. The military, the Constitution and New Orleans were intact and the country had a budget surplus of $128 billion. Now he's about to dash out the door, leaving a large, unpaid bill for his successors to pay. To get a sense of what kind of balance is due, Salon spoke to experts in seven different fields. Wherever possible, we have tried to express the damage done in concrete terms — sometimes in lives lost, but most often just in money spent and dollars owed. What follows is an incomplete inventory of eight years of mis- and malfeasance, but then a fuller accounting would run, um, somewhat longer than three pages.
  • Milky Way Transit Authority: I was re-reading Carl Sagan's novel Contact recently, essentially a series of arguments about SETI wrapped into a story, and he alludes to some sort of cosmic Grand Central Station. That, coupled with my longtime interest in transit maps, got me thinking about all of this.
  • How big Jurassic flying reptiles got off ground: Habib used CT scans of the bones of 155 bird specimens and a dozen species of pterosaurs and found that they were greatly different in strength, size and proportion. In birds, the hind legs were stronger than the front and in some pterosaurs the front legs were several times stronger than the hind ones. "It's a lot like a leapfrog," Habib said, describing how he figures the pterosaurs got off the ground. "They kind of pitch forward at first, the legs kick off first, then the arms take off." That allowed some of the ancient giants to get into the air in less than a second. Habib calculated that the 550-pound pterosaur called Hatzegopteryx thambema launched at a speed of 42 miles per hour.

Links for January 9th through January 11th

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Sometime between January 9th and January 11th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Anchorage Wedding – Stephanie & Royce: On Saturday I photographed another cool couple in freezing temperatures! about 10 to 20 below was the norm across Anchorage. Stephanie & Royce were married at Central Lutheran Church followed by a reception at the Bayshore Clubhouse.
  • Seattle P-I put up for sale: The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication with a greatly reduced staff or discontinued entirely. "One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print," said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.'s newspaper division.
  • Knitting for Psychos: I think the title pretty much sums it up.
  • Computer geeks learn to flirt: Even the most quirky of computer nerds can learn to flirt with finesse thanks to a new "flirting course" being offered to budding IT engineers at Potsdam University south of Berlin. The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection. Philip von Senftleben, an author and radio presenter who will teach the course, summed up his job as teaching how to "get someone else's heart beating fast while yours stays calm."
  • UPDATE: MACWORLD THREATENED BY DEATH RAY: Steve Jobs took time from constructing an android body that will let his consciousness live forever to issue a statement: “Apple does not approve of this application.  Death ray technology and open source software are dangerous when released to the general public and are not in keeping with our corporate policy.”

Links for December 28th through January 8th

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Sometime between December 28th and January 8th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • freezebubbles: It's very cold tonight, so we played with bubbles. If you blow them upwards enough they have time to freeze on the way down.
  • xkcd: Converting to Metric: The key to converting to metric is establishing new reference points. When you hear "26° C," instead of thinking "that's 70° F," you should think, "that's warmer than a house but cool for swimming." Here are some helpful tables of reference points…
  • Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service: Seattle: Green River near Auburn: Hydrologic info for the Green River. Currently in the 'caution' zone at its single checkpoint, but seems to have crested already and is expected to drop from here on out.
  • UiRemote: The Universal Infrared Remote for iPhone: With the help of this small accessory, you will be able to use your iPhone to control your TV, DVD, Cable box, Projectors, Digital Photo Frames, AC, Fans, & Backyard evil robots, whereever you go. Not only does it send out the remote control signals, you can easily teach it to learn any button on any standard Remote, or even a sequence of button clicks as a macro. (This looks nice — hopefully they make it compatible with the iPod Touch as well!)
  • 25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek: Here's what's amazing about the Mac as it turns 25, a number that in computer years is just about a googolplex: It can look forward. The Mac's original competition—the green-phosphorus-screened stuff made by RadioShack, DEC, and then-big kahuna IBM—now inhabit landfills, both physically and psychically. Yet the Macintosh is not only thriving, it's doing better than at any time in its history. Mac market share has quietly crept into double digits. That's up from barely 3 percent in 1997, just before the prodigal CEO returned to the fold after a 12-year exile. Any way you cut it, the Mac is on the rise while Windows is waning. Roll over, Methusela—the Macintosh is still peaking.
  • 6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now: Every year, we see scores of innovations trickle onto the web — everything from new browser features to cool web apps to entire programming languages. Some of these concepts just make us smile, then we move on. Some completely blow our minds with their utility and ingenuity — and become must-haves. For this list, we've compiled the most truly life-altering nuggets of brilliance to hit center stage in 2008: the ideas, products and enhancements to the web experience so huge that they make us wonder how we got along without them.
  • NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrack: Okay, maybe it's a little cheezy as a TV show tie-in, but NCIS is my personal favorite of the current crop of crime dramas…and the entire second disc of the soundtrack set is music from Abby's Lab: Collide, Ministry, Seether, Skold vs. KMFDM, Nitzer Ebb, Android Lust, and more. Sweet!
  • Weak cellphone law puts drivers off the hook: When lawmakers addressed the issue, they amassed sufficient votes only for a law that made talking on a handheld cellphone a secondary offense. If it were a primary offense, an officer could stop a violator on the spot for using a cellphone. But in our state, officers can stop an offender only for another reason, such as a busted taillight, weaving or following too close. During the stop, they can write an additional ticket for cellphone misbehavior. Of several states with cellphone bans, including California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, only Washington opted to make it secondary offense.
  • Whose Streets?: In both instances the the streets have been immediately appropriated for the purpose of joy—not commerce or commuting—and the Seattle police, who normally exist to protect commerce and commuting, have gotten it exactly right. They've ceded the streets to the celebrants and made it their duty to protect them and their temporary takeover of space that isn't theirs. On election night, I saw police keeping cars away from the street party in the above video. On Saturday night—or, really, at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning—I saw a lone police car parked so that it blocked traffic from descending the hill favored by the East Denny Way sledders, some of whom are pictured above.
  • Chart Porn: The Unofficial Theory Of Sci-Fi Connectivity: We've concentrated on three types of crossovers between series: Direct Crossover, where characters from one series or another have actually met in a story; Easter Egg, where elements of one series have appeared in another (often as geeky in-jokes), and Brand Crossover, where market forces have brought two disparate things together for no good reason (See Transformers/Star Wars).

Links for December 23rd through December 24th

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Sometime between December 23rd and December 24th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Recall: Snow globe poses fire hazard: Talk about going from cold to hot. Approximately 7,000 snowman snow globes were recalled today for posing a fire hazard. The transparent globes at the center of Hallmark's Jumbo Snowman Snow Globe can magnify the intensity of sunlight passing through the glass, causing nearby objects to catch on fire.
  • eBay: Rare Seattle/NW States Seasonal White Christmas Snow – eBay (item 170288410743 end time Dec-25-08 13:53:34 PST): Rare Seattle Area or Northwest Washington Snow, .24 acre by 15" deep  of premium white stuff to enhance your home and gardens and create a White Christmas atmosphere. Great snowman building material, wet enough for good compacting. Lot includes preshoveled piles or groomed snow for easy hauling and also special underlit with Christmas lights bush snow, very lovely!  All can go, sorry no delivery, you haul. Bidding starts low to make this affordable for all even in these economic times.  So buy it all and wrap some up for gifts!  Make it into snowballs and put in your freezer for later, like those Christmas in July parties at your place, your guests will be impressed!
  • VHS era is winding down: Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past. After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run by Ryan J. Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes. "It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt," said Kugler, 34, a Burbank businessman. "I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I'm done. Anything left in warehouse we'll just give away or throw away."
  • Forer effect: The Forer effect (also called personal validation fallacy or the Barnum Effect) is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.
  • Roger Ebert chooses some of his favorite quotes from bad movie reviews:: Keanu Reeves is often low-key in his roles, but in this movie, his piano has no keys at all. He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time. — "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

Links for December 18th through December 23rd

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Sometime between December 18th and December 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Tagalus: Ever find yourself looking at Twitter and wondering what all this talk about #motrinmoms means? Searching Flickr and not understanding why someone would tag their photo #ip4?
    Tagalus lets users define tags so that others can understand what they're talking about. Other users can vote on definitions and decide which best describes the given tag.
  • More snow, ice, wind on the way this weekend: Don't look forward to the weekend. It's not over. Not even close. Saturday night, forecasters say, the sequel will arrive. The region — expected to stay below freezing in the meantime — will again be hit not only by snow and ice pellets Saturday night into Sunday morning, but by winds that could reach 50 to 70 mph, with peak gusts of 90, in the foothills. "This next system could actually be worse than what we just had," said Jeff Michalski, meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
  • In a First, Gay Rights Are Pressed at the U.N. (But not by the United States): "An unprecedented declaration seeking to decriminalize homosexuality won the support of 66 countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, but opponents criticized it as an attempt to legitimize pedophilia and other 'deplorable acts.' The United States refused to support the nonbinding measure, as did Russia, China, the Roman Catholic Church and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference." More info from ECCO: "Alone among major Western nations, the U.S. has refused to sign a declaration at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality. Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign…."
  • Majel Barrett-Roddenberry Passes Away: Today is another sad day for Trek fans, TrekMovie was just informed by the Roddenberry family that Majel Barrett Roddenberry passed away this morning at the age of 76. The first lady of Star Trek’ died of leukemia at her home in Bel Air. At her side were her son Eugene ‘Rod’ Roddenberry along with family and friends.
  • 2008 Mug Shots Of The Year: What makes a good photograph? A compelling subject, proper lighting, and exquisite composition would certainly be components. But what makes a good mug shot? A compelling subject, of course. And a cow costume never hurts.

Links for December 16th through December 17th

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Sometime between December 16th and December 17th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • TIME’s Person of the Year 2008: Barack Obama: "…two years from now, I want the American people to be able to say, 'Government's not perfect; there are some things Obama does that get on my nerves. But you know what? I feel like the government's working for me. I feel like it's accountable. I feel like it's transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information, that believes in making decisions based on facts and on science as opposed to what is politically expedient.' Those are some of the intangibles that I hope people two years from now can claim."
  • PHOTOS: Cyanide Millipede, Huge Spider Among New Species: They're not kidding about the "huge" spider — we're talking a 12" (one foot) legspan here. EEEP!!!!!
  • Aegisub: If programming languages were religions…: Perl would be Voodoo – An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.
  • Save Handmade Toys From the CPSIA: Place your vote here to help keep handmade toys from being banned, thanks to poor quality control in Chinese toys necessitating stricter controls on imported toys.
  • Apple Announces Last Year of Christmas: CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this is the last year for Christmas. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, spoke at a joint press conference held with Santa Claus at the North Pole this morning. He announced: "Apple has been honored to work with the North Pole the last several years to make Christmas possible, however, we have decided together that this is the last year for Christmas."
  • The Periodic Table of Awesoments: In 300 B.C., years before the birth of black Jesus, Aristole postulated that all good things were made of "win." That was a pretty good guess, but he was drunk and probably also having an orgy. Modern day awesominers know there are actually 118 fundamental "awesoments" that compose all good things. The Periodic table of Awesoments can be a very useful tool. It's designed to show the relationships between awesoments, and often one can even predict how awesoments interact simply by their positions on the table.
  • Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” Barbie® Doll: In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, gave us a tale of terror not soon forgotten in his film “The Birds.” Dressed in a re-creation of the stylish green skirt-suit worn by the film’s ill-fated heroine in an iconic scene, Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” Barbie® Doll celebrates the 45th anniversary of the acclaimed film. From the doll’s classic ensemble to the perfectly painted expression to the accompanying black birds, every aspect captures the film’s infamous appeal.
  • World’s First Computer Rebuilt, Rebooted After 2,000 Years: A dictionary-size assemblage of 37 interlocking dials crafted with the precision and complexity of a 19th-century Swiss clock, the Antikythera mechanism was used for modeling and predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies as well as the dates and locations of upcoming Olympic games.

Links for December 15th through December 16th

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Sometime between December 15th and December 16th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld: Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. (Wow…if this came from anywhere other than Apple's own PR site, I'd think it was a hoax.)
  • Drillers Accidentally Create First Live Magma Observatory: Drillers accidentally hit a pocket of molten rock underneath a working geothermal energy field in Hawaii, a lucky break for geologists that could allow them to map the geological plumbing that created everything we know as land. The unprecedented discovery could act as a "magma observatory," allowing scientists to test their theories about how processes transformed the molten rock below Earth's surface into the rocky crust that humans live on today.
  • The Crow Reboot: Crow Reboot Will End In Eyelinery Tears: Oh, this is just bad: the guy who directed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wants to "reboot" The Crow, and, "whereas Proyas' original was gloriously gothic and stylized, the new movie will be realistic, hard-edged and mysterious, almost documentary-style." (sigh) Why are there so few good remakes of bad movies out there, and so many bad remakes of good movies? Why are there even so many damn remakes? What happened to originality?
  • BURGER KING® FLAME™: "Body spray of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat." Oh, my lord. Amusingly, and really frighteningly, this doesn't seem to be a joke. A special scent from Burger King…because nothing says, "Take me now, you big, strapping hunk of man meat!" like the smell of the Whopper. Or maybe they're just b(r)oiling the message down to, "Eat me!"
  • The WSDOT Blog: The Washington State Department of Transportation has a weblog. I've been following their Flickr account for a while, but just found the blog and their Twitter account today.

Links for December 11th through December 15th

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Sometime between December 11th and December 15th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • 6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can’t Explain: We like to feel superior to the people who lived centuries ago, what with their shitty mud huts and curing colds by drilling a hole in their skulls. But we have to give them credit: They left behind some artifacts that have left the smartest of modern scientists scratching their heads. For instance, you have the following enigmas that we believe were created for no other purpose than to fuck with future generations.
  • Moratorium declared on Capitol displays: The moratorium applies to Westboro's application, along with pending requests for a Buddhist display, a Jewish banner, a mannequin of Satan holding a statement against atheists and wishing them a merry Christmas, an aluminum pole in celebration of the invented holiday of Festivus, and a "Flying Spaghetti Monster Holiday Display."
  • Google Zeitgeist 2008: As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. We've compiled some of the highlights from Google searches around the globe and hope you enjoy looking back as much as we do.
  • Hold onto that e-waste just a little bit longer: If you've been waiting forever to unload that old TV or computer, Jan. 1 is your lucky day. A new state law requires electronics manufacturers to start safely recycling four of the most-discarded items, with no charge to consumers. Washington's law is the first in the nation to require electronics producers to pay for the whole process.
  • 10 useful iPhone tips & tricks: I’m sure that many of you are “power users” and probably know most of these tips and tricks. But I suspect that a lot of you are more casual iPhone users and will find this list useful. Even our team members that I showed the draft of this post to (people I consider iPhone experts), all picked up at least a tip or two that they weren’t already aware of. So I’ll bet there’s something for everyone here…