I always hang in a buffalo stance. I do the dive every time I dance.

··· So it looks like Dr. Peter Watts, a well-known Canadian science fiction author and marine biologist, got roughed up and arrested at the US-Canada border (northbound) for asking why his car was being searched [Link]. Watts' account is that he asked about the search and was punched in the face, pepper sprayed, and generally assaulted. Border cops' account isn't elaborated upon much, but Watts has been charged with assaulting a federal officer. After bond was posted, he was released on the Canadian side of the border in his shirtsleeves (his vehicle and all of his belongings are still impounded) in winter storm weather. WOW AWESOME THANKS FOR MAKING ME AND MY NATION LOOK GOOD YOU ASSHOLES. Beyond that, a good number of Watts' readers are in the US, and if the charge sticks, he could be excluded from the country permanently. Legal defense is expensive, and both that cost and potential penalty are pretty fucked up results for a trumped-up charge.

Now, there exists the possibility that Mr. Watts actually did assault someone, but really, at this point, given character testimony, other border/customs events I've read about, and general circumstances, I'm inclined to believe that this is an unfortunate holdover of the Bush II corporate culture of fuck-all-nonamericans-first, ask-questions-later. Our military adjusts more quickly due to their rigid command structure: they were calming down as soon as brass told them to—years before Obama's election, when it first came to light that blind pressure was nonproductive. Civilian quasimilitary organizations, like police, border patrol, and TSA, have looser rules and require cultural pressure within the organization to really change habits, and that's slower to happen.

It could have also been just the actions of one screwed-up border agent, with no relation to overall border patrol culture. I guess. Maybe.

Regardless, the Boingboing link has info on a legal fund for Watts to which you can contribute if you'd like. I'll be sending him a little something.


··· Yootoob: Pink Glove Dance. Shot up at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center here in Portland to promote breast cancer awareness. Fun! I'm more aware of breast cancer!


··· Santa, NO! NSFW.


··· This foul fixed-gear velocipede!
Q: What's the best thing you can do for your fixie?
A: Put on a freewheel and a front brake, you self-involved fucktard!


··· Some unusual Star Wars photos.


··· Another great one from Overheard in New York. I had my own little moment not long ago when all someone overhearing my end of the cell conversation would have heard is, "I wanna legislate like a NINJA!"


··· Meat hand via Boingboing.


··· Squirrel recipes. Bacon wrapped squirrel sounds alsome!

··· Remember Steven Bierfeldt, the guy I blogged about a bit back? Well, his ACLU lawsuit hit gold. Before the defendant was even required to respond, i.e. because the lawsuit was ever brought, the TSA made an explicit policy change. From the article:

What a difference a lawsuit makes. Eight days before the government's response was due in our case, TSA issued a new policy directive making clear that its safety screening procedures would be strictly limited to passenger searches for the purpose of safeguarding flight safety. In combination with other directives issued in the wake of our lawsuit, TSA's policy now makes clear that passengers should not experience the kind of suspicionless detention and questioning I had been subjected to.

In light of this victory, yesterday the ACLU informed the court of our intention to voluntarily dismiss the suit. The Constitution draws a critical distinction, which these new directives reflect: when subjecting individuals to blanket, suspicionless searches, TSA agents must adhere to their limited mandate of protecting flights against weapons or explosives. The new policy is clear: passengers are no longer forced to check their constitutional rights at the airport counter, and that is a victory for all.

This happened pretty quietly, but it is much more important than might be immediately apparent. Previously, the TSA was treating itself as a de facto law enforcement body, with internal regulation and restraint that was not only loose, but largely nonexistent. People could be detained or prevented from flying for reasons completely unrelated to the security of airline travel, reasons that were never enumerated and had no specified boundaries. Basically, TSA agents were just making shit up as they went along, and a lot of them were far from genius level (and still are). Listen to the audio of Steven Bierfeldt's questioning in my initial linkdump referenced above if you haven't already. It's fairly uncomfortable, to say the least. This ACLU lawsuit forced the TSA's hand, and made it confine its operations to those for which we, as taxpayers, fund it, namely to keep transportation safe. Full stop. They aren't cops, they aren't FBI, they're transportation security officers—nothing more and nothing less.


··· This sculpture is creepy and I like it. Actually, most of this guy's work is pretty neat.


··· Funny! Bad Dog Pate. Ever since the phrase "bacon-wrapped turds" exited the mouth of my ex-housemate as he ran down a list of concepts challenging my claim that nothing grosses me out, and I proceeded to make a lovely meat loaf dish that looked exactly like a series of bacon-wrapped turds, I've wanted to have a What the Fuck Pot Luck. You know, kitty litter cake, the meat head, etc. Bad Dog Pate would be fabulous for that.


··· Great Cyanide and Happiness comic.


··· I'm thinking about maybe doing the 2010 Seattle to Portland bike ride (link goes to 2009 info). I kind of like the idea of being home when I finish. I've also never ridden 100 miles in a day, let alone 200 miles in 2 days. I'll be spending some time considering this.


··· If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Autotuned musical "A Glorious Dawn" lecture by Carl Sagan, featuring Stephen Hawking.
Also, T-Pain's autotuning iPhone app, as applied to the president on Jimmy Kimmel.


··· "Love Cake," a vaguely suggestive ukelele dessert anthem by Brit sensations Rocky and Balls. Via violet_tigress1.


··· Great one from passiveaggressivenotes.com. And another.

··· Chicago’s Loss: Is Passport Control to Blame?
Probably not. Brazil hadn't had the games before, so it made a great deal of sense to give it to them if they can at all handle it. But an IOC member pointing out that entering the United States can be "a rather harrowing experience" in the Q&A session following Chicago's official presentation does make the brows raise a bit. Most importantly, though, I hope that this sticks in the news for a while and that public perception is that the TSA scared away the Olympics. That might lead to less of this (and this past linkdump of mine has three more incidents that piss me off, but none so much as the JFK detention article). I know that a lot of conservatives are blaming Obama for chasing away the Olympics. I haven't heard that sentiment since he got the Nobel Peace Prize, but that might be only because said conservatives are mouthfoaming about that now.


··· Bob Hertzberg is kind of an impressive guy. After a career in politics culminating with his being the 64th Speaker of the California State Assembly (Democrat), he went into the solar technology business. His first venture was in L.A., and relied heavily on job-creation subsidies that were pulled out from under him at the last minute. The business failed. So he started a new one, based in Wales, U.K. He went outside the US to escape regulatory mazes, seeking and accepting no government subsidies there except a smallish one to help build a fence around his factory. It was an existing building, formerly owned by the Acer computer company, and he powers his production largely (entirely?) with a bigass wind turbine.

And his product? Thin-film solar cells, and products using them. They're much less efficient than silicon-wafer cells, but also much less fragile, and generate more reliable and consistent power across a much greater range of light conditions than more conventional solar cell technology. And they're far cheaper. (Fortune Small Business article, G24 Innovations company website).


··· Reeeally thinking about buying these bamboo fiber sheets from Bed, Bath & Beyond. The price—$35 for a full set—is VERY reasonable compared to Amazon.com prices on bamboo sheets. The thread count is lower than I'd normally want, but apparently the material is naturally smoother than cotton, so I don't know. I'd probably want to hit a hard BB&B location to cop a feel before I bought.


··· Your brain is defective (optical illusion).

Update:
.


··· Hilarious Overheard in New York entry. This one is also good.


··· This has probably made the rounds, but here: What stormtroopers do on their day off.


··· A longish while back I saw this post on Boingboing about some multibladed shredding scissors only available in Japan. Now they're being marketed in the US as herb chopping scissors and they got another BB post. Funny! Anyway, they're less than $10 on Amazon [link]. All I really need to shred is account numbers and maybe addresses, so it feels silly to shred a whole sheet of paper in a bigass shredder that makes an obnoxious noise just to kill three lines of text. With these scissors, I could just snip-snip and be done with it in comparative silence. I've also been on the lookout for a full-on hand-crank shredder. I haven't seen any on store shelves, but Amazon has this and also this much more popular (and apparently crappier) model. I'm not sold; the scissors look much more appealing. I do have a little electric mini-shredder that has spent five years not dying under infrequent use, but I hate the noise.

Update: I ordered the scissors.


··· Steel velcro.

··· Wow, if you dislike neoconservatism, or just like reading about sociology, please check out this LJ post and the two links right at the end. The post gives some details about a representative poll of 1,000 Americans, cross-referenced with other polls, that was used to determine what I'll call belief associations. I.e., people who believe a, b and c statistically often believe d, e and f. A finding:

RWA scale scores (higher == more authoritarian -- Ed.) correlated highest with attitudes against same-sex marriage, abortion, drugs, pornography, women’s equality, unconventional behavior and free speech, and with support for the Patriot Act and America’s "right" to spread democracy by military force. In contrast, the relationships with economic issues (taxation, minimum wage, the public versus private sector, free trade) proved much weaker. The data thus indicate, as do a lot of other findings, that high RWAs are "social conservatives" to a much greater extent that they are "economic conservatives."

So the Bush presidency and the people who supported him all the way suddenly make sense. And seriously, the first of the two links at the end is a fucking laff riot. Go read.

William F. Buckley is the kind of conservative we need more of in Congress--fiscally conservative, and socially libertarian-leaning. The kind of guy who'll speak up when the economics of a bill don't pencil out, and who will react against such things as warrantless wiretapping. He is considered to be the founder of modern conservatism, but was critical of the Bush administration. His attitude toward marijuana, as expressed in this 2004 essay is decidedly different from the current conservative political stance (again, libertarian-leaning). He even tried marijuana himself (Boingboing link, not the world's most reliable but generally good, and I've heard this story elsewhere many times), after sailing his yacht into international waters. He was not impressed with regard to the danger of the plant. He was at one time a reasonably profound racist, but rescinded those views in the sixties after observing the processes of the civil rights movement and after being confronted by a close colleague regarding the morality of his views (wikipedia paraphrase). In short, he was rational. We need more of that.


··· Fucking shit! Philadelphia To Close All Public Libraries October 2nd.


··· And completely by accident, here's a neat little arty bit on Benjamin Franklin. Really, Franklin is my favorite historical figure in the world, ever.


··· A Long Walk Across China. Dude did the hold-the-camera-at-arm's-length-and-photograph-yourself thing every day during a yikes-inducing multithousand kilometer walk across China, sometimes several snaps or some motion video (it looks like). THEN HE STITCHED THEM INTO A VIDEO. Omg.


··· This shirt radiates awesomeness. I'm straight and I might wear it. Of course, I live in Portland, so I could wear it and not be afraid of getting the shit kicked out of me.


··· Awesome coilgun. Self-contained with 4 AA batteries (14 shots, 90-second capacitor charge time) or wall-current plugin. I did some experimentation in railgun-building in college, but I abandoned it pretty quickly. I never really researched coilgun technology. This is pretty amazing. Dude built it in a week.


··· Awesome wedding proposal. Scroll down to #5. DO WATCH BOTH MOVIES THERE. The first is what aired on the TV, the second is the fiancee's reaction. She reacts just a little bit dramatically.


··· So that weekly poetry reading I occasionally go to? The one I frequent less and less because it starts later and later and my workday DOES NOT? Yeah, it got picked as Best Reading Series in Willamette Week's Best of Portland issue this year. "With $3 generous pours of bourbon, the scene is anything but gentle or pretentious and topics typically center on, Gaffney says, 'booze, fighting and fucking.'"

Booze and fucking, that I'll accept. Not much fighting, though. But oh, God, the fucking. I remember a few months ago there was a benefit week for a beloved regular, a 50ish guy who'd had foot surgery and been laid off while still under anesthesia. He was there, all becaned and limpy. Gifts and donations abounded and, naturally, all the ladies whipped out their sex poems. But so did one of the hosts (not Tommy Gaffney—the other guy whose name I can't remember because I'm an asshole). I forget the first few words, but after that it went, "...and you ask me if I want to sleep with anyone else. No, I don't want to sleep with anyone else, and I don't want to sleep with you. I don't want to sleep, and I don't want you to sleep." He went on to cover descriptions of the evening he envisioned. "There should be at least one piece of broken furniture and one hole in the wall," was the least graphic line. Among many, many other things, he described his jaw fusing to her pelvis and semen production voluminous enough to turn her irises white. He did this in the most creative and artful way you can imagine, really, and the delivery was almost completely deadpan. His superhot poet wife was right there, in the room, in the third row, wearing a big, shit-eating grin. The entire audience was looking between her and him and thinking OH MY FUCKING GOD! Several people went beyond that and said it out loud between fits of not-as-nervous-as-you'd-think laughter. And when he reached the crescendo of this truly raucous and intricate piece of writing, and stopped, there was a huge round of applause, and people picked themselves up off the floor, and it all died down, and then he leaned toward the mic and said, "Part Two."

THERE WERE THREE PARTS. I think we all lost a year off of our lives just sitting there retching our kidneys out laughing.

··· Debunking Canadian health care myths. One big myth:

Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.
While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.

There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.

Now, it's not perfect. Especially in populous areas, there are sometimes months-long waits for consulting with specialists and receiving specialist treatment. But if the condition is life-threatening or especially acute, the province will pay for treatment elsewhere (often in the US, because we're close by) so the patient can receive immediate care. The patient still does not pay out of pocket. And back when I was with Kaiser Permanente here in the US, I can testify that I experienced a wait of over a month to consult with a podiatrist. You don't have to be on single-payer health insurance to wait for health care, kids—we've got that technology now.


··· Every Saturday Morning. A blog written by a women's health clinic volunteer escort. After all the furor from the eighties kind of died down, and various bits of legislation and case law got established regarding how people can and can't protest at clinics, I thought the problem had been pretty much solved. I remember my dad used to volunteer as a clinic escort, but after a while he felt less of a need to do it, because things were getting better. But I grew up in the SF Bay Area, and this guy is in Louisville, Kentucky. Some fairly obscene stuff still goes down there on a daily basis. I expect it still does through a lot of the American south and midwest.

I know there are some folks who read this who feel differently from the way I do on the topic of abortion rights. I know most of them personally. The ones I know are all fine people, and the ones I don't may also be. That is all.


··· Neural Stem Cells Offer Potential Treatment For Alzheimer's Disease. Sweeeeet. According to the article, they mostly don't become neurons. But they do become other brain cell types and they secrete a protein that gets existing neurons to branch and form synapses more effectively. The result is dramatic congnitive improvement.


··· The Maker's Bill of Rights. This has nothing to do with sandworms. I approve of this list.


··· Wood-derived plastic substitute? This looks great, but it'll take a long while to really penetrate. The technology to make petroleum-based plastics behave in specified, predictable ways is established and cheap and easy. New tech will take a long time to really compete on all levels.


··· Sound-activated, dancing meat.


··· Turn out there was a really good reason for the Van-Halen-no-brown-M&Ms thing. Snopes article. Their show was huge and demanding and heavy. There were a lot of engineering considerations in the rider that had to be met for safety, electrical and structural reasons. The bowl-of-M&Ms requirement was right up front, but the the no brown ones requirement was buried in the middle. So if there were brown M&Ms in the bowl backstage, they knew that the venue hadn't reviewed the contract adequately, and that they should start line-checking the whole production for potential problems. The famous trashing-the-dressing-room-over-M&Ms thing was just dude getting pissed off at the venue not having checked the contract. That was $12k of the damage, which is quite a lot. Later, though, $80k worth of damage occurred to the venue's floor when the heavy stage sank into it because the venue staff didn't review the contract and make sure the structure could handle the staging. Interesting.

··· A recent TSA shenanigan: Comic artist Mark Sable was detained and questioned by the TSA because of the content of a script for the comic Unthinkable. Says he:

"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation. While Unthinkable blurs the line between fiction and reality, the story is based on a real-life government think tank where a writer was tasked to design worst-case terror scenarios. The fictional story of Unthinkable unfolds when the writer's scenarios come true, and he becomes a suspect in the terrorist attacks."

Really. Really. Via Boingboing.


··· Another TSA shenanigan, this one being taken to court by the ACLU: Steven Bierfeldt, Director of Development for the Campaign for Liberty (related to Senator Ron Paul's campaign) was detained when he passed a locked metal box containing cash and checks through the security scanner. There were lots of questions about why he had so much cash with him, what he did for a living, was the money his—the kind of questions that the TSA really has no business asking. And that's the point of the lawsuit, that the TSA is acting way outside of its mandate to protect transportation and is acting as an ad hoc national police force, one that is regulated dangerously loosely. Bierfeldt, in his twenties, took the extreme libertarian route, refusing to answer any probing questions unless he was required to do so by law. Not being a lawyer, he asked the TSA interviewers if he was required by law to answer the questions. NO ONE WOULD ANSWER HIS QUESTION (probably because they had no clue themselves), but they got poo-flingingly angry when he wouldn't answer questions.

The real kicker here is that the dude used his cellphone to record the audio of the whole thing. Here's a link to an audio source on the ACLU's website. It's a little over twenty minutes long, and it's quality entertainment. The most painful thing is that there was simply a basic misunderstanding on the part of several TSA guys as to what Bierfeldt was asking and why he was asking it, and why he wasn't answering their questions the way they wanted. Bierfeldt definitely could have made himself more clear. Also, though, the TSA guys could have rubbed two brain cells together and maybe FIGURED IT OUT. Instead of treating him like a criminal, they could have treated him like a human being and just asked a clarifying question or two about why he was responding the way he was. But no. They just asked the questions more loudly and berated him. Idiot fuckasses.


··· YET ANOTHER TSA (well sort of, more airline/airport) FAILURE: 47 people were trapped in a small jet (three seats across, two-and-one) for nine hours on the ground with no food, because it was diverted and by the time they got to the diversion airport, the TSA inspectors had gone home and no one could legally get back on the airplane if they went outside the security checkpoint. The airline didn't give the option of letting the passengers—including a couple of babies—sleep in the terminal inside the security line. The airport says that would've been fine, but the airline says the airport never offered it as an option. So the passengers were kept on the plane. By the time morning rolled around and they got airborne again, the cabin stunk and the plane's toilets had ceased to function. And, again, no food.

Okay, look, WE'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR EIGHT YEARS, PEOPLE. If the TSA/airports/airlines/Congress don't have their act together yet, when the fuck is it going to happen? We are YEARS beyond the "we're still working things out" excuse. It's official now: no one is driving this bus. If the TSA would keep even ONE GUY at post overnight at each airport, shit like this would never happen. Of course it would cost money, but only a pittance more than does the current security theater show we all pay for and endure. And more importantly, is it a sign of the current broken mindset that, even in witness to an extreme situation, no one is willing to put their neck on the line to make an exception to the rules where one is clearly necessary?

Update: A coworker of mine pointed out that keeping just one TSA checker on call, as opposed to on duty, would solve this problem while keeping costs down.


··· I heart Posh Nosh (Yootoob). You will, too. Via lord_whimsy.


··· Great Softer World comic.


··· Excellent project on haunting phenomena, wherein the researchers (apparently architects/designers) try to create a space that feels haunted by introducing conditions that have been observed in places where people have reported hauntings. Researchers introduced mechanisms to produce infrasound and EMFs, then had people stroll around the room, noting the whens, wheres, and whats if they had any odd feelings or perceptions. Researchers ran single-blind groups with infrasound, EMFs, both, or neither.

Man, this is great; this topic needs more and better research. The N here is pretty small, but I imagine the funding was, too.


··· Yootoob: Pee-Wee Herman tells kids not to try crack. Seriously.


··· I think I might have posted about this syringe chandelier before. Very cool.

··· Boingboing link citing Yorkshire Ranter pointing out that terrorism is an autoimmune war. The real damage happens when the target reacts so strongly as to impede itself. Good observation. 9/11/2001 was a lot of lives lost, but the economic damage in the form of security expenditures and lost time on the part of travelers, shippers, etc. is most assuredly staggering. Some of that is necessary: I think we were way behind the rest of the world with regard to antiterrorism measures. But I think we went way too far in way too ineffective directions as a response to the WTC crashes.


··· Trailer for Zombieland, a zombiepocalypse movie with... Woody Harrelson? It looks like a winner.


··· Word fun: Tom Swifties.


··· Graphical Overview of Same Sex Marriage Debate, v. 1.3. Clickable, enlargeable. Via Warren Ellis.


··· So there's Katie West's blog (NSFW). Warren Ellis linked to her Flickr stream a couple of times, and of course I checked it out, because hey, naked attractive woman. And she's a really decent photographer. But looking through the pictures felt like I was a stranger in someone else's scene. It even felt vaguely, distantly lecherous. In the context of her blog, though, the same photos feel more casual, and I feel more welcome. She narrates and gives commentary, and posts a lot of crap that isn't much related to her photography at all. I find 90% of it really engaging. Did I mention she's a Star Trek geek?


··· Yootoob: Jones' Bigass Truck Rental and Storage. Do not ask questions. Just go. SFW (well, "bigass") and goddamned funny.


··· The most concise and informative article on lockpicking and the current state of anti-pick, anti-bump technology I've ever read (pdf).


··· I just spent waaay too long paging through Atlas Obscura, a compendium of the world's wonders, curiosities and esoterica.

I'm not reposting the Neda Soltani video. If you haven't seen it, it's an amateur videorecording of a young woman in Iran dying in the street during a protest just days ago. At first we aren't sure what happened; a dazed woman with some blood around her feet is lowered to the ground by people around her. Her body is oddly passive, but her eyes are darting all around, at one point looking directly into the camera. People around her are crouching over her and shouting things. Then, blood begins pouring from her mouth and nose. It's just terrible. You can find it if you want to.


··· Okay, so Barack Obama gave a 4-star general a direct order to cut Stephen Colbert's hair. Note Obama's skill at deadpan humor. Regardless of party, this is now a key voting issue for me.


··· Totallylookslike.com will suck you in. Via wesa.


··· Great little short film, "Sebastian's Voodoo". It's a Boingboing repost; you might have already seen it.


··· Good online comic: Survive!!. Via Warren Ellis.


··· Great comic from a great webcomic series, Subnormality. This is one of those things where you should probably start at the beginning. There aren't too terribly many of them and it's well worth the time.


··· Seed Bombs to combat desertification. Oddly, I can see this being economically viable. Maybe. If the areas aren't easily accessible by land. I'm thinking two or three guys and a Land Rover, or two or three guys and half dozen camels.


··· Yootoob: Hitler loved Jews. Who knew?


··· Tactical corsets. They're kind of new and the website isn't done yet, but it's FUNNY. Look on the right and scroll down.

··· From Kung Fu Monkey by way of ianmcin, a notion:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

··· Meatcards.com, via my friend Matt, via Boingboing probably. I'd totally buy some of these if, you know, I could. No price or ordering information yet, as they're still kind of in beta.


··· Yootoob: Some neat guitar work with totally amusing facial narration.


··· Yootoob: The Axis of Awesome: 4 Chords. And don't forget that Pachelbel rant.


··· Artist Peter Funch took multiple photographs of the same streetcorners and edited together various passers-by into fun final works. Gallery.


··· Fear The Bacon Lance. With vegetarian version following! (When he says "beefsticks," he means "breadsticks." He corrects himself later on.).

ETA: archmage points out that the beefstick-breadstick thing was a film editing continuity error only. The guy did it with beefsticks in a cucumber first, then breadsticks. This is a cut-down video.


··· Yootoob: Worst Breakup Ever. Via worshipthesnake. Sound NSFW.


··· If you haven't seen GI Joe: Resolute, go do it now. It's a series of 11 four-or-five-minute animated episodes written by Warren Ellis. You know how a lot of the beloved cartoons from our youth, like Transformers and such, have been remade in such a way as to have raped our childhoods? Well, as one blogger put it, Warren Ellis made sweet, passionate love to my childhood, and he had a really big dick.

Kind of dumb to post this now, Friday before Memorial Day Weekend, but whatever—the queue needs clearing:


··· Yootoob: Neat little video on open-mindedness as it applies to the conflict between science and the paranormal. Now, I'm kind of the wrong guy to ask on this subject, because while I do believe in rigorous science, I think that the scientific community in general has been irresponsible for many years with regard to the study of the paranormal. I think that it has been written off to quickly, too often, before any study is even conducted. Worse, I think that legitimate findings have been ignored or minimized. I don't think we have adequate tools to really understand what causes paranormal phenomena, but I believe that some exist, that some of those can at least be detected, and that they will all eventually be explained and probably exploited for the benefit of humankind, like any other natural phenomenon. I'm pretty confident it won't happen in my lifetime. The only thing I know for sure, however, is that this video has made me reevaluate how I talk about these views of mine, and I'll certainly change some things for future conversations.


··· Stegosaur-esque animal in a 600yo+ Kmer temple carving? The head is wrong for a stegosaurus and looks more like a later evolution of the animal's line, if it did evolve into, say, a porcine something or other. Was there an animal back then in that part of the world with bony fanlike backplates like those of a stegosaur? I can easily imagine such an animal being hunted to extinction by humans of the Kmer era, so the fact that it's not around now proves nothing. I really want to see a plain old razorback-type pig in that carving, but it's tough.


··· Your brain is defective. Neat little optical illusion up on Boingboing.


··· Also on Boingboing, Lovecraft fans, rejoice, because, following a stroke, a woman has developed a "pale, milky-white and translucent third arm," visible only to her, that she can use to scratch itchy parts of her body. The arm cannot pass through solid objects, she says, and MRIs confirm that her brain behaves like it's actually moving a limb.


··· Decent and loooong page of jokes on author John Varley's website. See especially the entry for 1/21/09. I think I might have already posted this.


··· Well this is kind of neat. Yootoob: Music and Life, Alan Watts (visuals by Tre Parker and Matt Stone). Via herince_emyn.


··· Oneword.com does recognize line breaks, but doesn't display them in the main page. You have to click the little ellipsis "show all" link on your entry after you're done. I guess this actually could be a useful poetry tool. It's already a good prose tool.


··· Yootoob: Hot, hot mountain bike parkour, or at least that's the paraphrase of how Kottke put it, but I recall this sort of thing going on long before parkour hit it big. And this guy is eighteen different kinds of badass.

··· TED talk: Aimee Mullins: How My Legs Give Me Super-powers. Aimee Mullins is a below-the-knee double-amputee runner/fashion model/actress. Her talk's conclusion is sappy and cliche, but the talk in general is interesting and amusing. For example, she describes making a deal with some teachers when she gave a talk at a children's museum with all her prosthetic legs displayed, that they'd allow her to talk to the kids with no other adults in the room for two minutes, because kids don't have the "don't stare at her legs" social more naturally, and adults in the room would only hold them back from being curious and asking questions and having fun. And hey, if not for those things, why was she there? Fun stuff. I can't help but consider that her assertions apply a hell of a lot less for, say, double hand amputees, but that's just a technological issue. We're getting there pretty quickly.

Oh, funny thing: when I first started watching the clip, I had no idea who this person was. My first thought was, "WTF? Who wears heels like that while standing onstage for a talk?" LOL!


··· Another great post on wtf_nature.


··· Apocalypse Meow a.k.a. Cat Shit One. A Japanese manga was made a bit back featuring cutesy-wootsy animals fighting in Vietnam. Bunnies were Americans, cats were Vietcong, pigs French, Koalas Australian, etc. It was apparently very graphic. Now they've made a CG trailer for it. It's awesome. I don't know of any actual film plans—I think this is a one-off—but if I hear about it, I'll let you know. Scroll down for embedded Yootoob action.


··· A website entitled This is Why You're Fat. Artery-blowing food concoctions that have to be seen to be believed.


··· Ignite is a series of talks strictly timed to five minutes, with slides that advance every fifteen seconds. The first rule of Presentation Club is that you don't talk about Presentation Club. I want you to inform me as hard as you can. This one is on pneumatic tube communication and mail transport tech of the past and a little bit of the present. It's damned interesting. Again, if I were smart, I'd look at more of these.


··· Yootoob: more Thundercats outtakes. There are some repeats of what I posted a while ago, but whatever—it's funny stuff. And hey, here's that fake Thundercats live-action movie trailer again. I totally bought it when I first saw it; the whole idea of Vin Diesel and Gigi Edgley on the same screen makes my geek lobe go all squee.


··· How the phrase "steal my thunder" apparently came about. Via Kottke.


··· Gallery from Nikon's Small World Photomicrography Competition. I like how a couple of the mineral entries look like cityscapes. Via my brother-in-law, a pathologist.

··· Good essay by Bruce Schneier on the kindness of strangers. It focuses on the difference in risk between your (or your child's) approaching a stranger for help versus a stranger approaching you to offer help, and that you can generally trust the former much more than the latter. This rings true. It's something that might be useful to bear in mind if you're free-ranging your kids.


··· Caring for your Introvert. I don't agree with the entire essay, but it puts some things in good perspective. I'll add that a person's location on the introversion/extroversion continuum can change over time. I used to be a lot more introverted than I am now. I actually remember when that shift started happening; it was event-based, and I won't go into the details unless someone asks. At one point and often thereafter, I remember consciously thinking, "I am becoming the kind of person I've always hated." But each moment felt okay at the time, so I just rode the train and enjoyed the social benefits. There are downsides. One is that I don't feel the need to write anymore. Not sure what to do about that, but I'm making some inroads thanks to my friend Heather, who ended up returning from Portugal to live in Portland again.

Oh, and that introvert bit about "we're just better than you"? It's not necessarily true, obviously, but that's how it feels to be there. You can see why introverts have a hard time socially.

ETA: Some introverts feel the superiority thing. I'll bet that many are just shy and might even have the opposite self-perception.


··· "Electrolyzed water" sounds like snake oil. But apparently it's a freaking miracle liquid. It's a cleaner/degreaser. It treats athlete's foot. It's more effective than bleach at killing bacteria. And you can drink it.

It won't take over the industry right away, because it has a pretty short shelf life (going back to regular saltwater again over a few days or weeks) and the equipment setup to make it is pricey. Consumer use may be out entirely. But you'll surely hear more about it as time goes by. Actually, though, what keeps coming to mind is a little device from Braun or something that's the size of a coffeemaker and sits on your countertop. You fill it with tap water and a pinch of salt, hit a button, and a few hours later you have a pint or two of nontoxic, effective, nigh-odorless, versatile cleaner. Via Kottke.

ETA: Oh, not saltwater, just regular water.


··· Ho-ly fucking shit. Extreme sheep LED art. No, I'm serious. Via Grinding.be.

ETA: Got some votes for this being fake. Wouldn't surprise me, but I sure didn't catch it the first time around.


··· Oh hell yeah! Make an 8-foot giant squid pillow. I'm talkin' to you, skankykiwi!


··· Okay, this little two and a half minute podcast (in-window play) is actually really amusing. Via damnportlanders.


··· Reaonably interesting TED talk: Mike Rowe on Work. He rambles a bit, but the most interesting thing he says here is about the "safety first" idea. He notes that it's actually crap. He doesn't go so far as to state it directly, but the idea is that if safety really is the first consideration, we'd all be sitting in comfortable chairs in dim rooms with a beverage. We have to actually do work. And that's inherently unsafe in a lot of cases. So the first consideration is actually, "Get the Work Done." Safety is necessarily a secondary consideration to actually accomplishing things. Interesting. It's Randish when it's stated so directly, but it rings true. Via rightcoast, I believe.


··· Most entertaining entry on wtf_nature yet: The World's Most Terrifying Penises: The Leopard Slug. Hilarious narration FTW.

··· Great article: Maine Man Tries to Build Dirty Bomb, No One Cares. No one cares because he was a homegrown US white supremacist pissed off about Obama's election instead of a Muslim jihadist. His bomb was weak, apparently, but come on. Really. This should have made more news.


··· This story has been everywhere, written about by various sources, but here it is again just in case. How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18. Basically, there was an electronic run on the banks happening very, very quickly, over the course of hours. Half a day's delay in action (or much less) would have meant global financial catastrophe far beyond what we've already seen.

Now, I'll take this opportunity to comment on the AIG thing. I'm sick of hearing about it. Fuck all the outrage. When we entered into this TARP deal, under the Bush administration, we forewent oversight in the interest of expediency. Well, this is what we get. Maybe expediency was necessary, and if so, I'm perfectly willing to see less than one percent of some government bailout money go to bonuses for execs. Because it's in their contracts and the businesses involved didn't get a magical anti-contract cloak when they accepted TARP money. Blow up all you want about bank CEO salary inflation (you should), but not here, and not for these reasons.

That said, I think Congress' action in taxing 90% of bonuses for recipient companies of TARP funds is totally acceptable. I'm just sick of the moral outrage. THIS IS HOW SHIT WORKS WHEN NO ONE PLANS.


··· I didn't pay nearly enough attention to the TED that happened recently, mostly because I had no idea what it was. Boingboing was all over it, so I thought it was another technology conference. No, it's an everything conference. People get up and give short talks and presentations on whatever. I'm sure some are boring. Many are goddamned interesting. Following are a couple that struck me. Barry Schwartz: "The real crisis? We stopped being wise." And Paul Stamets: "Six ways fungus can save the world." Stamets waxes reeeeally grand and poetic about fungus. Try to muscle past the crazy and just listen to his facts.

If I were smart, I'd spend a lot of time looking through more TED talks.


··· So hard to stop watching this. Yootoob: Lobster vs. Cat, where "lobster" = "crayfish."


··· Fun products at Perpetual Kid. Via aequanoctis.


··· Awesome little casual music video. Featuring super-neat custom popup books! Via lord_whimsy.


··· The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist. Seriously. This happened. HoFuSh.


··· Excellent short film.

··· Wait, teens who send nude pics of themselves to each other can be brought up on kiddie porn charges? It's happened, multiple times. Link goes to Violet Blue column. Excerpt:

In March 2004, a 15-year-old Pittsburgh girl was arrested for taking nude photographs of herself and posting them on the Internet; she was charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography. Okay, so maybe in 2004 the people interpreting these laws were slightly more ignorant about how the Internet works and that the legal system just needed to "catch up." Or so you'd think.

In October 2008, a 15-year-old Newark, Ohio girl was charged with felony child pornography charges for sending nude photographs of herself to a classmate in a text message. Charged with "possessing criminal tools and the illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material," she'd taken a nekkid pic of herself and sent it to a 13-year-old classmate (male). She currently faces felony sex offense charges, and the likelihood of having to register as a "sex offender" for the rest of her life.

I can understand people being creeped out by the idea of their tribe's kids being sexual. It might be nice if humans were just hula-hooping, bubblegum-chewing balls of complete innocence until the age of 18, at which point they magically transformed into mature adults. Of course, such is not the case. Such has never been the case. The only difference between thirty years ago and now is better communication tools. But, apparently, enough adults in the right places get so painfully weirded out by the same types of things happening now as happened when they were in high school that they squeeze their eyes shut and scream and flail around for what they usually reach for when they feel that something is wrong: the law. And the only laws on the books addressing this sort of thing are child pornography laws. The police, the prosecutors, the judges, they ignore the fact that the supposed exploiter and supposed victim are the same person; to pay too much attention to that is to acknowledge that it's possible no one was harmed here, and that can't be true because it feels wrong.

This is a tough nut to crack, I'll definitely give it that. But it seems like some people are cracking it in the most wrong and harmful way that's humanly possible.


··· F*** My Life. Via typsie.


··· Proof that Bruce Lee kicked all the ass, all the time: Bruce Lee winning at ping-pong with nunchucks! No, really, I'm serious.

ETA: It's a well-done editing job for a Nokia ad. Never actually happened. Thanks to katlyn for the clue-in.


··· Star Trek inspired corset minidress. Wow. Possibly NSFW. The sidebar thumbs are only partials; click for fulls. CLICK FOR FULLS.


··· Awesome product/puzzle/entertainment thingy: The Neocube. Link goes to Cooltools, as it's more interesting than the product's website. Scroll down for Yootoob goodness.


··· If you have any questions about why you might not want to use a PS3 as your primary Blu-ray player, you should read the comments to this LJ post.


··· Shotgun-toting remote control helicopter by Neural Robotics, Inc. This company's remote-control helicopter products are designed as platforms for surveillance and such. They have intelligent self-stabilizing abilities not just for flight, but also for the device mounted onboard. It looks like they've focused on cameras up until recently but, well, now there's a shotgun up in there. Sauce: it looks like it's sporting an AA-12.


··· This is how I feel about Tillamook's medium cheddar cheese. I would be willing to do all sorts of embarrassing things to that cheese; it's treated me so well for so many years... Pic via typsie.

This one's really Boingboing-rich. No apologies; they have good stuff.


··· Yootoob channel: Depression Cooking. A 93 year old great-grandmother who was there relates some of the recipes her family used during the Great Depression. Bits of interview are included about what it was like to live back then.


··· Related: A neat graph comparing our current bear market with the 1973 oil crisis, the tech crash, and the Great Depression. We're actually not doing too badly yet.

ETA: Whoops, the entry's locked. Sorry. Here's the graph in question.


··· Related: Peter Schiff being absolutely right and a bunch of other prominent people (including Ben Stein!) being absolutely wrong about our economy's future in 2007 [Link to Boingboing post].


··· Sort of related: Best Obamanation yet. Hip-hop style video summarizing Obama's recent address to Congress. More fun at the creator's Youtube page, Alphacat.


··· Motion-filmed scenes from early 20th century London. I love this becaue it shows me that people from that era were not at all different from people you see on the street today. The woman rubbing her eye is just like the woman you see at the bus stop or in Starbucks. The only difference is the setting.


··· Gel electrophoresis in a drinking straw (link goes to Boingboing post). So for the non-biogeeks out there, gel electrophoresis is a super-useful method of analyzing sample molecules. You cast your gel (often agar-based, essentially kelp jello--there's polyacrylamide gel, too, but it's toxic and must be disposed of as hazardous waste), squirt some of your waterborne sample mixed with some dye into one end, bathe the thing in a buffer solution and apply a voltage across it. The sample molecules get shoved through the gel. But the trick is that the smaller molecules move faster. So now you've got a bunch of bands that are each composed of a different constituent of the original mixed sample, with the smaller ones farther down. You run your sample alongside a mix of known molecular weight molecules and you can then compare the bands and get an idea of just what you've got on your hands in that original mystery sample. You can even harvest the isolated bands and do stuff with the molecules you just separated out. It's really flexible and has a lot of applications. But the gel tray, power supply, even the agar have price tags that can add up to a big number pretty quickly. This bit of crowdsourced science-technology development, using a drinking straw to conserve gel and some 9-volt batteries to obviate the need for a costly power supply, went from an idea tossed out on a hobbyist biology message board to a working proof of concept in three days.


··· You know that new vibrating thingy that the Trojan condom company has out? Yeah. Here's what it looks like. No genitalia, but still probably NSFW. That last shot is just artful.


··· Good Flickr photostream here. Via Grinding.be.

··· Washington Post op-ed by Matthew Alexander, an Air Force Major who oversaw an interrogation unit in Iraq and kept a strict no-torture policy (the name is a pseudonym). His unit obtained a great deal of useful intelligence by way of these tactics, including the intelligence that enabled the military to find and kill Abu Musab al Zarqawi. He recently published the book How to Break a Terrorist. Sauce: here's a six-question interview by Harper's Magazine.


··· On a related note, here's an excerpt from a film entitled Outlawed, about the US's rendition and imprisonment policies and the people who've experienced them. Link is to Boingboing, and the blog post goes on with more interesting information. Boingboing has some more stuff on this series, too, but I'm too lazy to list all the links. The site has a search feature if you're up for it.


··· Here are a couple of links about some murders that occurred during the Katrina flooding, whites killing blacks, often as they just tried to travel on foot to safety and passed through the wrong places at the wrong times ([Link 1], [Link 2]). In one case, police are alleged to have burned a car with a body inside to destroy evidence, and they hadn't even been the ones who killed the guy.

The information is horrifying. I just don't have it in me to write a rant about this, mostly because all the rants have been written and read. The whole situation was a clusterfuck at all levels. Do read the articles.

This news just contributes further to my desire to never live in any part of the deep American South. The dominant culture down there is simply broken. I had my earlier general impressions, but working alongside a man who was brought up in Lafayette, Louisiana cemented things. I've mentioned to him a few times how fucked up his stories of law enforcement corruption and the things I hear in the news make his home region sound, and he just casts his eyes down and agrees, and says that that's probably why his dad moved his family to Oregon.


··· You should read this review of Chocolate, published in my local free alt weekly paper (no, not that European film. This is different.). It is funny. You should probably see the film, too. See Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, too, if you haven't. Damned fine movie. (sauce: dig the Ong Bak trailer at IMDB for HOT WU-TANG CLAN ENDORSEMENT!)


··· Wil Wheaton rocking, let me show you it. Unrelated Wheaton via bellybalt.

You may know that Wil Wheaton has a blog. You may not know that he is a really cool guy. Here's a post that has some good detail about the Phoenix Comicons he's been to, including an interaction with Walter Koenig, who also sounds like a really stellar guy. Here's the original post with the Walter Koenig bit, presented here because of the especially personal bit at the end of the post.


··· Holy effing rainbow cake, Batman. An even more stunning pic. Via wesa.


··· All hail chessboxing.


··· Yootoob: Neat stop-motion music video.

··· Seems Obama harshed a bit on the Senate's partisan mellow recently. Here's one guy's take on it, with video from the speech. Funny! I don't want to say that Obama loses his shit, but he really, really wants to.

Personally, I'm not so sure his economists are right about fixing the economy. What if it was just too big before, and some contraction is a natural adjustment? What if a trillion-dollar stimulus will just drain away in a year or two, leaving us in the same situation? At the same time, I can't argue with a lot of how the money will be specifically used. Infrastructure improvements? Yes please thanks. Housekeeping isn't sexy, but it needs to be done and in way too many cases it's been put off for decades. The bridges in my state are in absolute shit condition, for example. Sure it's our fault, but so many states are in the same boat that I don't feel too badly about it. I'm sure there are things in the bill that I'd hate with all of my heart, too, but like he says, it's a huge bill. There's something for everyone to hate.


··· In completely unrelated Obama news, Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit. In reading for the audio version of one of his books, Barack Obama spoke aloud some quotes from people he knew back in college, that he'd included in the book. This leads to HILARITY. Just go. Scroll down. Sound bits are playable in-window.

ETA: Obligatory funk-dance remix.


··· Here's a Metafilter thread about upgrading, via Kottke. What do you spend the extra money or effort on? Here's me:
- Sharp kitchen knives: I have pretty cheap knives from Chicago Cutlery (via Target many years ago in Cleveland), but I keep them very, very sharp. It's heavenly.
- Pens: I got a Fisher Space Pen a while back for Christmas. I never would have bought it for myself, but if I lost it, I'd replace it immediately. They come with a medium point. I like the fine point better. Refills are around $5.
- Dairy products: The Tillamook company (Oregon regional thing) makes fantastic cheese, butter, and yogurt. I pay the extra money gladly.
- Flashlights: I have a Princeton Tec LED headlamp and three AA mini-Maglites. If I had to replace the Maglites, I'd go LED from Coast or Innova, probably their single-AA models.


··· This guy's circuit build-fu is unstoppable.


··· Well this is kind of neat. A video book trailer for Warm Bodies, a book by Isaac Marion (here's his blog). Like the teaser text on the inside flaps of a hardbound book cover, but spoken and with a background video. Both the media concept and the book's POV/premise are interesting.


··· No. Bad. Wrong. (pic, sfw)


··· Yootoob: Evil Mr. Rogers. Via the_woodshed.


··· Great entry on wtf_nature.

··· You've probably heard about this by now, but here, a Reason article: Barry Cooper, a former narcotics officer who became disillusioned by corrupt and unfair police practices and who now gives lectures and sells DVDs instructing people on how to skirt drug enforcement methods (check Youtube), set up a sting for illegal police raids, and caught him some cops within 24 hours.

There was a certain case in Odessa, Texas wherein a lot of people strongly suspect police of having an informant plant drugs in an innocent woman's home, resulting in her currently serving an eight year sentence. According to Cooper, the informant actually testified in federal court to his planting the drugs. The woman was convicted anyway. So that explains why he chose Odessa. Now, indiscriminate thermal imaging, previously used as a tool to locate grow operations by finding the heat signatures from grow lights, has apparently been banned by the Supreme Court. Cooper believed that local cops used it anyway. He rented a house, set it up with cameras streaming wirelessly to a remote location, and then set up two grow lights in the basement, shining at a couple of young evergreen trees. With no marijuana in the house to be seen by any informants, and no marijuana odor (because there was no marijuana), police still managed to obtain a search warrant and raided the house within 24 hours of it being set up. And the raid is all on recorded video.

Legal wranglings are ongoing with regard to obtaining a copy of the affidavit used to obtain the warrant. According to Cooper, who again used to be a narcotics officer, an accepted procedure is to lie on the affidavit about smelling marijuana or about an informant providing information about a marijuana grow operation. When Cooper gets that affidavit, expect to hear about it, if only from me. As the blog post notes, it will also be completely fabulous if the local DA finds some crime with which to charge Cooper. Hopefully, the DA and the cops realize they're up shit creek and just back off. But this is Texas.

Speaking as a guy whose city's police force has had a mind-your-own-business attitude about corruption for decades, I can say that Cooper's stunt won't do much to change the overall culture of police down there. That takes sustained effort for over a generation, IMHO. But it at least shows them that they're not God, and that there just might be a repercussion for illegal police tactics lurking around every corner.


··· Best photo evar. Via Sorry I Missed Your Party. The photo kind of loses points because it's geek chic and not actual geek, but still.


··· Foodscapes via Turducken. The first one makes me want to eat hella sushi. Do you know how long it's been since I've had good sushi? I went to that moving-belt sushi place near PSU recently, and it was okay for the price, but gees, I've got to remember to go to places like that when they're crowded, not when they're empty and the stuff isn't being turned over quickly.


··· Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home. I've been a buyer for bio lab supplies and equipment, so I can tell you from experience that costs can add up fast if you aren't careful. But there are bargain vendors out there, and home biology, while esoteric, is a completely achievable hobby. Especially if you're not having to constantly worry about making your future peer-reviewed journal article bulletproof.


··· Great web comic from MXRK, Red Phone. Feels a little like Get Your War On.


··· The Periodic Table of Awesoments.


··· Via Kottke: Beaker sings Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". Beaker sings Coldplay's "Yellow".


··· Oh, man, this incredibly extensive underground city (scroll up a bit to start from the beginning of the entry) just must have been the inspiration behind the Mushroom Dwellers' realm depicted in City of Saints and Madmen. That book is awesome.

··· Boingboing sez: Man who set up alternate email for [Bush] White House dies in plane crash. Note the linked article at the end, in the update. He was piloting his own small aircraft, and apparently he's had to cancel planned flights twice in the past because of suspicious problems with his plane.

I'm no nutcase conspiracy theorist, but a whole lot of things that have happened during this administration have seemed mighty convenient. There's 9/11 and many surrounding events (I know, I know, so don't ask unless you're actually interested). There's the fact that oil prices spiked for a while near the end of the administration—an administration full of people with heavy financial interest in and knowledge of the oil market—then shot down super-low in time for the election. And now the man who set up an alternate email system for off-the-record communication—a very experienced pilot—dies in a plane crash. I'll put it this way: I don't have enough information to believe that any of these events were planned or intentional, but I have enough information that I won't discount the possibility.

Oh, hey look, turns out he was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio. Here's a great blog entry on the thing that actually got a statement from Ohio's Attorney General the plaintiff's lead attorney regarding the vote tampering case. I'm still working on finding a mainstream media source that says something, anything, about the man being set to testify about 2004 Ohio vote rigging, but I can't find one. Awesome job, ABC-CNN-Reuters. Here's another not-mainstream one. Oh, hell, here's the Wikipedia entry on Michael Connell.

Update: No Attorney General was quoted in the Bradblog link. My editor has been sacked. Also, best mainstream article yet, via steamingturd.

Update: Just got this Yootoob link from jakeodd. Very eyebrow-raising. Mine are floating a couple inches above my scalp right now.


··· The Wunder Boner! Via Wil Wheaton, who thinks it's Mike Rowe doing the voiceover and that all parties involved knew exactly what they were doing. I tend to agree. This does not make it less funny.


··· Great pic: Bunny = fail.


··· Yootoob: "Who Says Words with My Mouth." I have to admit that I was paying more attention to the film than the poem. I've seldom seen footage of mixed horse, automobile, foot, and streetcar traffic. Makes it seem more real slowed down like that.

Update: I was just told that this is Market Street in San Francisco. The cablecars should have clued me in, but they don't run down Market Street anymore—haven't for a long time.

Link and update via jakeodd.


··· Cool little alcohol stove from two soda cans. I've heard of this before, but this is the best tutorial I've seen. The wad of fiberglass insulation is a great touch.


··· One Sentence. True stories, told in one sentence. This feels a lot like Postsecret without the visual distraction. And there are a lot more of them.


··· MTBA hackers asked to partner with transit agency to secure system. I remember when this debacle first surfaced. If MTBA fuckers were smart, this would have been a first move rather than a last resort. Lots of money was wasted on this.


··· Awesomest. Beard. Evar.

Fire-based refrigeration method. A company made a product that's about the size and weight of a large, filled thermos that can be heated over a fire for 30 minutes, allowed to cool for an hour, then put into an insulated container the size of a large cooler chest, and it cools the contents to a few degrees above freezing for hours and hours. The linked site explains how.

I'm starting to get a little hesitant in my enthusiasm for technologies like this that are kind of advanced in their engineering but simple to use and intended for third-world societies. The societies often can't reproduce them for themselves, so while the items are not terribly expensive and they're incredibly durable, a serious dependency is introduced. I suppose it's no greater than US society's dependence on foreign oil, but that's only a relative mitigation, not an absolute one.


··· OMFG, Scientists Hack Cellphone to Analyze Blood, Detect Disease, Help Developing Nations (Wired article). This I can handle with full enthusiasm. Learning how the numbers get arrived at is trivial; you can train someone on that in an hour. The actual cell counting, though? I've done that. It's tedious, and certainly not rocket science. This is a great (and cheap!) option.


··· Yootoob: The rise and fall of Pete the Meat Puppet.


··· Baconize it!


··· Benedict Campbell does some excellent photography and digital art.


··· Great list of family board (and card, and whatever) games. Via Wil Wheaton.


··· Excellent tattoo.


··· Video: Monster truck rally filmed in tilt-shift, a technique that makes it look like the subject is miniature in scale. I think it's actually a long string of photographs with the frames strung together into a video file. Set to fun music. This is really neat. Scroll down for the actual video. [Link].