MetaFilter posts by stbalbach.
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Tom Stoppard's new play Darkside (free next 6 days) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. A fantastical story about fear, philosophy and madness interwoven with the lyrics and music of the album. Interview.
posted on Aug-27-13 at 12:40 PM
"The perception of Shakespeare's matchless linguistic inventiveness is closely bound up with his role as an icon of English nationalism." New computerized research indicates he didn't make up so many words.
posted on Aug-22-13 at 11:37 PM
Build a new internet from scratch. Hyperboria is a global decentralized network running cjdns software. The goal of Hyperboria is to provide an alternative to the internet with the principles of security, scalability and decentralization at the core. Anyone can participate. Project Meshnet uses Hyperboria, here is a list of local meshnets, or start your own with a MeshBox or linux router.
posted on Aug-17-13 at 11:55 AM
So much rain fell on Australia during 2010-11 that global sea levels dropped, rather than normally rising. Australia has large basins from which rainwater doesn't drain (well). Australia is giving it back as evaporation and sea levels are on the rise again thanks. The record breaking rainfall was attributed to global warming.
posted on Aug-15-13 at 2:03 PM
The Washington Post will be sold to Jeff Bezos for $250 million, ending four decades of the Graham family. Amazon will have no role in the purchase.
posted on Aug-5-13 at 2:08 PM
A truck carrying 119 gas cylinders caught fire after colliding with a bus carrying 28 people on Moscow's Ring Road. The truck driver had minor injuries and everyone else escaped unharmed. Then the cylinders began exploding.
posted on Jul-15-13 at 9:51 PM
"By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin (1Page)
posted on Jun-24-13 at 11:07 PM
Was Marina Chapman really brought up by monkeys? (The Guardian), Kidnapped, dumped in the jungle and raised by monkeys (Daily Mail), The Girl with No Name: Author claims she was raised by monkeys (The Star), Strange life of the housewife who grew up with monkeys (Telegraph), Marina Chapman tells her incredible story of survival (Today), Girl who lived with monkeys spins incredible tale (CBC). National Geographic is producing a documentary. [Feral children previously on MeFi - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
posted on Jun-20-13 at 12:26 PM
Internet anonymity is the height of chic.
posted on Jun-13-13 at 7:59 PM
"Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry." The Nobel Prize-winning poet, Pablo Neruda, died 40 years ago of prostate cancer/heart disease, coincidently just 12 days after the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet (Neruda did not support Pinochet). A few months ago, a Chilean judge ordered his body exhumed, and two days ago
posted on Jun-3-13 at 11:11 PM
Daily Happiness Averages for Twitter, September 2008 to present. Description.
posted on May-10-13 at 10:56 AM
[V]Robo Raven[V] is a robot bird. So uncanny a hawk attacked it during testing. Other robot birds include the SmartBird, a flying robotic seagull, and AirPenguins. Robobee is a robot bee.
posted on May-2-13 at 7:11 PM
"It is the trend that robots will replace men in factories, it is certainly going to happen in sliced-noodle restaurants."
posted on Apr-25-13 at 9:34 AM
Wikipedia Live Monitor is an experimental site that scans Wikipedia edits real-time searching for frenzied editing sessions. Matches are compared with "plausibility checks" on Facebook, Google etc.. to see if there is something in the news, thus quickly pinpointing unexpected events.
posted on Apr-17-13 at 12:52 PM
The Internet is cat; books are dog. "We're reading dogs and clicking cats."
posted on Apr-12-13 at 8:24 AM
"..it is refreshing to see Jason Merkoski, a leader of the team that built Amazon's first Kindle, dispense with the usual techo-utopianism and say, “I think we’ve made a proverbial pact with the devil in digitizing our words.”
posted on Apr-9-13 at 10:29 AM
A consensus is emerging that in the past decade or so global surface temperatures have plateaued at a recorded-breaking level, not increasing. In fact the world's oceans can absorb up to 90% of all extra heat so global warming has not stalled, it is heating the pool. Predicting ocean heat is tricky, but one scientist's model got the past decade right (in retrospect). Her model shows that by 2020 or so, the ocean may begin to circulate heat back into the atmosphere and things will pick up for us on land. Maybe. Fred Pearce explains.
posted on Apr-8-13 at 8:22 AM
The zombie apocalypse. Threads. Pandemic. Doomsday Preppers. Post-apocalyptic pop-culture fiction of doom. What's it about? A Stanford scholar explains.
posted on Feb-21-13 at 11:05 AM
"Hi, my name is Paul Rosolie. I'm a naturalist based out of southern Peru and today I'm headed into the jungle to show you a place that very few people have gotten to see. I'm in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, this is the far western Amazon and some of the deepest jungle on earth."
posted on Feb-20-13 at 10:59 AM
"The best way to reach the highest levels of Wikipedia popularity are to be a celebrity who (a) dies, or (b) plays the Super Bowl halftime show". Examining the popularity of Wikipedia articles: catalysts, trends, and applications. See also the annotated Top 25 Report. Previously: Wikipedia in 2012.
posted on Feb-6-13 at 12:11 AM
Engineering question: say you only had one generator with multiple places that needed power in real time. How to get power to them? Caveat: do it mechanically with no electricity. Low Tech Magazine brings you the Jerker Line System and the Stangenkunst, for all your post-apocalyptic / steam punk power distribution needs. Some are still in operation: Jerkerline Field wheel near Oil Springs Ontario (video), and Oklahoma (video).
posted on Feb-2-13 at 10:54 AM
This 2.5 gigapixel panoramic image (zoom) was taken from the top of Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building. It was taken to promote the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award, the world's richest photography award, sponsored and created by His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai.
posted on Jan-30-13 at 8:12 AM
The Statues Walked — What Really Happened on Easter Island
posted on Jan-28-13 at 12:21 AM
Melting Point Greenland has some sublime hi-def video of, well, Greenland melting. The summer 2012 melt was unprecedented, it alone rose global sea-levels by 1mm. The scientist-run blog Greenland Melting is following. Why Greenland's melting could be the biggest climate disaster of all.
posted on Jan-25-13 at 9:55 AM
Shotgun wedding (video) in Bir el Ater, Algeria. I don't know anything about this video, but discovered that Bir el Ater was cradle of the stoneage Aterian civilization between about 80,000 and 40,000 years ago.
posted on Jan-18-13 at 1:02 AM
The sport of zorbing (previously) originated in the 1990s in New Zealand and is now done around the world. In Russia, zorbs have been adopted as a symbol of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which is being held in Sochi, Caucasus Mountains. However this video of a recent zorb run in Sochi shows it's not always fun and games. [Caution: Shows events leading to a fatality but not actual fatality.] For background and the rest of the story.
posted on Jan-9-13 at 10:34 PM
It's so hot in Australia they've added a new color to the weather map, a Tasmania-sized deep purple blob 50 degrees or more (123 F). In the USA 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded, smashing through previous records by a healthy margin. 2012 was also the second-worst on a measure called the Climate Extremes Index, surpassed only by 1998. Globally, 2012 is expected to be ranked as the eighth-warmest year on record, with that announcement coming later in the month. "Climate change has had a role in this,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA.
posted on Jan-8-13 at 12:04 PM
We introduced UNZ.org before but it's probably worth revisiting for a vein of gold, the Nobel Prize Library (1971), which contains full modern translations of significant works of 20th century literature. For example
posted on Jan-5-13 at 10:39 AM
The D-Wave OneTM is the world's first commercially available quantum computer. "Our superconducting 128-qubit processor chip is housed inside a cryogenics system within a 10 square meter shielded room." (images) In other words, it's a programmable superconducting integrated circuit with up to 128 pair-wise coupled superconducting flux qubits (video). The first D-Wave was sold in 2011 for a rumored $10 million. At first there was a lot of skepticism about it, but an August Nature study proved it worked by successfully solving "13 times out of 10,000 for four-amino-acid and six-amino-acid sequences under the Miyazawa-Jernigan model of lattice protein folding." Investors Jeff Bezos and The CIA are happy. A 2048 qubit system is in the works about 1 million times faster.
posted on Dec-28-12 at 1:04 AM
Syrian music of revolution and war. The first song is by Ibrahim Qashoush, a fireman and amateur poet from Hama, he was called the "nightingale of the revolution".
posted on Dec-10-12 at 12:08 AM
Franz Kafka's hallucinatory A Country Doctor anime by Kōji Yamamura. The original text is very short.
posted on Dec-6-12 at 11:47 PM
Surface-to-air missile proliferation in Syria has become something to watch.
posted on Nov-29-12 at 12:42 AM
History's most influential people, ranked by Wikipedia reach (jpg version).
posted on Nov-27-12 at 1:50 PM
In 1978, Micheal Moorcock wrote an essay Starship Stormtroopers published in Anarchist Review which said that most popular science-fiction and fantasy is deeply Reactionary (authoritarian conservative right-wing themes), he mocked the notion of sci-fi being a "literature of ideas". But there is some "socialist" science fiction, China Miéville put together a list of Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read.
posted on Nov-18-12 at 10:44 AM
October 2012 is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. State of the Climate: Global Analysis October 2012 (NOAA). While $50 billion Sandy has had the spotlight, the biggest natural disaster of 2012 (in the US) has been the Great Drought still ongoing which is expected to cut America's GDP by 0.5 to 1% for the year. The death toll from the heat waves that accompanied this year's drought will exceed that of Sandy. This Sunday and Monday, Ken Burns premiers his new documentary "The Dust Bowl", on PBS. (via)
posted on Nov-16-12 at 10:55 AM
A new study in which researchers have compared the last 10 years of actual climate data with the world's most sophisticated climate simulations and found the models predicting the most extreme global warming have been the most accurate in predicting the actual climate over the last 10 years. That means if those models continue to hold true, the world could be in for a devastating worst case of 4 to 6 degrees C by 2100. There are scientists who lay out the logic why human civilization could not survive. "If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4 degrees, 5 degrees or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving." (Previously; via)
posted on Nov-9-12 at 1:05 PM
The book publishing world is merging into behemoths in order to better negotiate with Amazon. Rupert Murdoch (HarperCollins) has made an offer to buy Penguin for $1.6 billion. This just hours after Penguin said it was in talks to merge with Random House to create a 'Random Penguin' with nearly 25% of all English-language book sales. Either way the reputation of Penguin could soon be in tatters. As one agent said, "Authors have told me they are frightened by a Random House takeover, but terrified by a HarperCollins one."
posted on Oct-29-12 at 2:05 AM
A few nights ago MIT scientist Donald Sadoway (Time 100) was on Colbert Report to discuss a new cheap high-capacity liquid-metal battery that could be the holy grail for solar and wind power to store electricity for on-demand use. The Colbert show is an intro but sort of dumb (by design), the TED talk gives some more detail, or the company page Ambri has more info.
posted on Oct-24-12 at 8:35 PM
Bipedal robot walks a tightrope.
posted on Oct-22-12 at 12:10 AM
Have you ever been in a room with lots of people and not great ventilation. Or even a room with normal ventilation. You may be cognitively impaired due to elevated levels of CO2 once considered safe now thought enough to make you a little dumb. 600ppm is now thought too much, but “there are plenty of buildings where you could easily see 2,500 ppm of CO2 — or close to it — even with ventilation designs that are fully compliant with current standards.. classrooms frequently exceed 1,000ppm."
posted on Oct-18-12 at 11:25 AM
Has anyone seen a blue-arsed fly? Someone must have cooties. This is no FAQ, can you make a make a defining contribution to the OED?
posted on Oct-8-12 at 11:01 AM
"For the first time in their lives two dozen recently rescued ducks get their first taste of life in a pond."
posted on Oct-5-12 at 9:26 AM
Solar art. V3Solar has a spinning blue crystal prototype that has many advantages over flat-panels. Some details on costs. Via GizMag.
posted on Sep-30-12 at 9:07 PM
Curiosity has been on Mars for 51 sol-days and today NASA announced it has found what looks like a concrete slab made up of rounded stones which is probably an ancient stream bed formed by hip-deep fast-moving water over thousands or millions of years. Observers have long hypothesized the canyons and river-like beds photographed from space were carved by water, but only now do researchers have on-the-ground confirmation for the first time.
posted on Sep-29-12 at 12:31 AM
The 35 Greatest Animal Photobombers Of All Time 25 Hilarious Animal Photobombs 85 Amazing Animal Photobombs 21 Hysterical Animal Photobombs Best Photobomb Ever etc.etc.
posted on Sep-27-12 at 9:48 AM
In honor of the opening of Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in Oregon this week, the largest wind farm in the United States, let's take look at 'high-altitude wind power', HAWP:
posted on Sep-24-12 at 11:08 PM
Elektrobiblioteka / Electric Book (video). Inspired by El Lissitzky's manifesto published in 1923. Background. Full-text (Polish).
posted on Sep-20-12 at 10:52 PM
You know how Jon Stewart shows politicians contradicting themselves on news clips? Do it yourself by searching a giant database of TV transcripts and video on Internet Archive. The collection now contains 350,000 news programs collected since 2009 from national U.S. networks and stations. The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired. Older materials are being added.
posted on Sep-17-12 at 7:19 PM
Moby-Dick Big Read: 135 chapters over 135 days, as read by David Cameron, John Waters, Stephen Fry, David Attenborough, Simon Callow and many others. Today the first of sailing a bit around the world.
posted on Sep-14-12 at 5:52 PM
NYT Op/Ed on 9/11: 'The Deafness Before the Storm' "goes into teeth-grinding detail about how the Bush administration had even more advance notice about Osama Bin Laden's attack than we previously realized." Summary: significantly more negligence than has been disclosed.
posted on Sep-11-12 at 5:33 PM
posted on Aug-27-13 at 12:40 PM
"The perception of Shakespeare's matchless linguistic inventiveness is closely bound up with his role as an icon of English nationalism." New computerized research indicates he didn't make up so many words.
posted on Aug-22-13 at 11:37 PM
Build a new internet from scratch. Hyperboria is a global decentralized network running cjdns software. The goal of Hyperboria is to provide an alternative to the internet with the principles of security, scalability and decentralization at the core. Anyone can participate. Project Meshnet uses Hyperboria, here is a list of local meshnets, or start your own with a MeshBox or linux router.
posted on Aug-17-13 at 11:55 AM
So much rain fell on Australia during 2010-11 that global sea levels dropped, rather than normally rising. Australia has large basins from which rainwater doesn't drain (well). Australia is giving it back as evaporation and sea levels are on the rise again thanks. The record breaking rainfall was attributed to global warming.
posted on Aug-15-13 at 2:03 PM
The Washington Post will be sold to Jeff Bezos for $250 million, ending four decades of the Graham family. Amazon will have no role in the purchase.
posted on Aug-5-13 at 2:08 PM
A truck carrying 119 gas cylinders caught fire after colliding with a bus carrying 28 people on Moscow's Ring Road. The truck driver had minor injuries and everyone else escaped unharmed. Then the cylinders began exploding.
posted on Jul-15-13 at 9:51 PM
"By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin (1Page)
posted on Jun-24-13 at 11:07 PM
Was Marina Chapman really brought up by monkeys? (The Guardian), Kidnapped, dumped in the jungle and raised by monkeys (Daily Mail), The Girl with No Name: Author claims she was raised by monkeys (The Star), Strange life of the housewife who grew up with monkeys (Telegraph), Marina Chapman tells her incredible story of survival (Today), Girl who lived with monkeys spins incredible tale (CBC). National Geographic is producing a documentary. [Feral children previously on MeFi - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
posted on Jun-20-13 at 12:26 PM
Internet anonymity is the height of chic.
posted on Jun-13-13 at 7:59 PM
"Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry." The Nobel Prize-winning poet, Pablo Neruda, died 40 years ago of prostate cancer/heart disease, coincidently just 12 days after the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet (Neruda did not support Pinochet). A few months ago, a Chilean judge ordered his body exhumed, and two days ago
posted on Jun-3-13 at 11:11 PM
Daily Happiness Averages for Twitter, September 2008 to present. Description.
posted on May-10-13 at 10:56 AM
[V]Robo Raven[V] is a robot bird. So uncanny a hawk attacked it during testing. Other robot birds include the SmartBird, a flying robotic seagull, and AirPenguins. Robobee is a robot bee.
posted on May-2-13 at 7:11 PM
"It is the trend that robots will replace men in factories, it is certainly going to happen in sliced-noodle restaurants."
posted on Apr-25-13 at 9:34 AM
Wikipedia Live Monitor is an experimental site that scans Wikipedia edits real-time searching for frenzied editing sessions. Matches are compared with "plausibility checks" on Facebook, Google etc.. to see if there is something in the news, thus quickly pinpointing unexpected events.
posted on Apr-17-13 at 12:52 PM
The Internet is cat; books are dog. "We're reading dogs and clicking cats."
posted on Apr-12-13 at 8:24 AM
"..it is refreshing to see Jason Merkoski, a leader of the team that built Amazon's first Kindle, dispense with the usual techo-utopianism and say, “I think we’ve made a proverbial pact with the devil in digitizing our words.”
posted on Apr-9-13 at 10:29 AM
A consensus is emerging that in the past decade or so global surface temperatures have plateaued at a recorded-breaking level, not increasing. In fact the world's oceans can absorb up to 90% of all extra heat so global warming has not stalled, it is heating the pool. Predicting ocean heat is tricky, but one scientist's model got the past decade right (in retrospect). Her model shows that by 2020 or so, the ocean may begin to circulate heat back into the atmosphere and things will pick up for us on land. Maybe. Fred Pearce explains.
posted on Apr-8-13 at 8:22 AM
The zombie apocalypse. Threads. Pandemic. Doomsday Preppers. Post-apocalyptic pop-culture fiction of doom. What's it about? A Stanford scholar explains.
posted on Feb-21-13 at 11:05 AM
"Hi, my name is Paul Rosolie. I'm a naturalist based out of southern Peru and today I'm headed into the jungle to show you a place that very few people have gotten to see. I'm in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, this is the far western Amazon and some of the deepest jungle on earth."
posted on Feb-20-13 at 10:59 AM
"The best way to reach the highest levels of Wikipedia popularity are to be a celebrity who (a) dies, or (b) plays the Super Bowl halftime show". Examining the popularity of Wikipedia articles: catalysts, trends, and applications. See also the annotated Top 25 Report. Previously: Wikipedia in 2012.
posted on Feb-6-13 at 12:11 AM
Engineering question: say you only had one generator with multiple places that needed power in real time. How to get power to them? Caveat: do it mechanically with no electricity. Low Tech Magazine brings you the Jerker Line System and the Stangenkunst, for all your post-apocalyptic / steam punk power distribution needs. Some are still in operation: Jerkerline Field wheel near Oil Springs Ontario (video), and Oklahoma (video).
posted on Feb-2-13 at 10:54 AM
This 2.5 gigapixel panoramic image (zoom) was taken from the top of Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building. It was taken to promote the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award, the world's richest photography award, sponsored and created by His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai.
posted on Jan-30-13 at 8:12 AM
The Statues Walked — What Really Happened on Easter Island
posted on Jan-28-13 at 12:21 AM
Melting Point Greenland has some sublime hi-def video of, well, Greenland melting. The summer 2012 melt was unprecedented, it alone rose global sea-levels by 1mm. The scientist-run blog Greenland Melting is following. Why Greenland's melting could be the biggest climate disaster of all.
posted on Jan-25-13 at 9:55 AM
Shotgun wedding (video) in Bir el Ater, Algeria. I don't know anything about this video, but discovered that Bir el Ater was cradle of the stoneage Aterian civilization between about 80,000 and 40,000 years ago.
posted on Jan-18-13 at 1:02 AM
The sport of zorbing (previously) originated in the 1990s in New Zealand and is now done around the world. In Russia, zorbs have been adopted as a symbol of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which is being held in Sochi, Caucasus Mountains. However this video of a recent zorb run in Sochi shows it's not always fun and games. [Caution: Shows events leading to a fatality but not actual fatality.] For background and the rest of the story.
posted on Jan-9-13 at 10:34 PM
It's so hot in Australia they've added a new color to the weather map, a Tasmania-sized deep purple blob 50 degrees or more (123 F). In the USA 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded, smashing through previous records by a healthy margin. 2012 was also the second-worst on a measure called the Climate Extremes Index, surpassed only by 1998. Globally, 2012 is expected to be ranked as the eighth-warmest year on record, with that announcement coming later in the month. "Climate change has had a role in this,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA.
posted on Jan-8-13 at 12:04 PM
We introduced UNZ.org before but it's probably worth revisiting for a vein of gold, the Nobel Prize Library (1971), which contains full modern translations of significant works of 20th century literature. For example
posted on Jan-5-13 at 10:39 AM
The D-Wave OneTM is the world's first commercially available quantum computer. "Our superconducting 128-qubit processor chip is housed inside a cryogenics system within a 10 square meter shielded room." (images) In other words, it's a programmable superconducting integrated circuit with up to 128 pair-wise coupled superconducting flux qubits (video). The first D-Wave was sold in 2011 for a rumored $10 million. At first there was a lot of skepticism about it, but an August Nature study proved it worked by successfully solving "13 times out of 10,000 for four-amino-acid and six-amino-acid sequences under the Miyazawa-Jernigan model of lattice protein folding." Investors Jeff Bezos and The CIA are happy. A 2048 qubit system is in the works about 1 million times faster.
posted on Dec-28-12 at 1:04 AM
Syrian music of revolution and war. The first song is by Ibrahim Qashoush, a fireman and amateur poet from Hama, he was called the "nightingale of the revolution".
posted on Dec-10-12 at 12:08 AM
Franz Kafka's hallucinatory A Country Doctor anime by Kōji Yamamura. The original text is very short.
posted on Dec-6-12 at 11:47 PM
Surface-to-air missile proliferation in Syria has become something to watch.
posted on Nov-29-12 at 12:42 AM
History's most influential people, ranked by Wikipedia reach (jpg version).
posted on Nov-27-12 at 1:50 PM
In 1978, Micheal Moorcock wrote an essay Starship Stormtroopers published in Anarchist Review which said that most popular science-fiction and fantasy is deeply Reactionary (authoritarian conservative right-wing themes), he mocked the notion of sci-fi being a "literature of ideas". But there is some "socialist" science fiction, China Miéville put together a list of Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read.
posted on Nov-18-12 at 10:44 AM
October 2012 is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. State of the Climate: Global Analysis October 2012 (NOAA). While $50 billion Sandy has had the spotlight, the biggest natural disaster of 2012 (in the US) has been the Great Drought still ongoing which is expected to cut America's GDP by 0.5 to 1% for the year. The death toll from the heat waves that accompanied this year's drought will exceed that of Sandy. This Sunday and Monday, Ken Burns premiers his new documentary "The Dust Bowl", on PBS. (via)
posted on Nov-16-12 at 10:55 AM
A new study in which researchers have compared the last 10 years of actual climate data with the world's most sophisticated climate simulations and found the models predicting the most extreme global warming have been the most accurate in predicting the actual climate over the last 10 years. That means if those models continue to hold true, the world could be in for a devastating worst case of 4 to 6 degrees C by 2100. There are scientists who lay out the logic why human civilization could not survive. "If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4 degrees, 5 degrees or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving." (Previously; via)
posted on Nov-9-12 at 1:05 PM
The book publishing world is merging into behemoths in order to better negotiate with Amazon. Rupert Murdoch (HarperCollins) has made an offer to buy Penguin for $1.6 billion. This just hours after Penguin said it was in talks to merge with Random House to create a 'Random Penguin' with nearly 25% of all English-language book sales. Either way the reputation of Penguin could soon be in tatters. As one agent said, "Authors have told me they are frightened by a Random House takeover, but terrified by a HarperCollins one."
posted on Oct-29-12 at 2:05 AM
A few nights ago MIT scientist Donald Sadoway (Time 100) was on Colbert Report to discuss a new cheap high-capacity liquid-metal battery that could be the holy grail for solar and wind power to store electricity for on-demand use. The Colbert show is an intro but sort of dumb (by design), the TED talk gives some more detail, or the company page Ambri has more info.
posted on Oct-24-12 at 8:35 PM
Bipedal robot walks a tightrope.
posted on Oct-22-12 at 12:10 AM
Have you ever been in a room with lots of people and not great ventilation. Or even a room with normal ventilation. You may be cognitively impaired due to elevated levels of CO2 once considered safe now thought enough to make you a little dumb. 600ppm is now thought too much, but “there are plenty of buildings where you could easily see 2,500 ppm of CO2 — or close to it — even with ventilation designs that are fully compliant with current standards.. classrooms frequently exceed 1,000ppm."
posted on Oct-18-12 at 11:25 AM
Has anyone seen a blue-arsed fly? Someone must have cooties. This is no FAQ, can you make a make a defining contribution to the OED?
posted on Oct-8-12 at 11:01 AM
"For the first time in their lives two dozen recently rescued ducks get their first taste of life in a pond."
posted on Oct-5-12 at 9:26 AM
Solar art. V3Solar has a spinning blue crystal prototype that has many advantages over flat-panels. Some details on costs. Via GizMag.
posted on Sep-30-12 at 9:07 PM
Curiosity has been on Mars for 51 sol-days and today NASA announced it has found what looks like a concrete slab made up of rounded stones which is probably an ancient stream bed formed by hip-deep fast-moving water over thousands or millions of years. Observers have long hypothesized the canyons and river-like beds photographed from space were carved by water, but only now do researchers have on-the-ground confirmation for the first time.
posted on Sep-29-12 at 12:31 AM
The 35 Greatest Animal Photobombers Of All Time 25 Hilarious Animal Photobombs 85 Amazing Animal Photobombs 21 Hysterical Animal Photobombs Best Photobomb Ever etc.etc.
posted on Sep-27-12 at 9:48 AM
In honor of the opening of Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in Oregon this week, the largest wind farm in the United States, let's take look at 'high-altitude wind power', HAWP:
posted on Sep-24-12 at 11:08 PM
Elektrobiblioteka / Electric Book (video). Inspired by El Lissitzky's manifesto published in 1923. Background. Full-text (Polish).
posted on Sep-20-12 at 10:52 PM
You know how Jon Stewart shows politicians contradicting themselves on news clips? Do it yourself by searching a giant database of TV transcripts and video on Internet Archive. The collection now contains 350,000 news programs collected since 2009 from national U.S. networks and stations. The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired. Older materials are being added.
posted on Sep-17-12 at 7:19 PM
Moby-Dick Big Read: 135 chapters over 135 days, as read by David Cameron, John Waters, Stephen Fry, David Attenborough, Simon Callow and many others. Today the first of sailing a bit around the world.
posted on Sep-14-12 at 5:52 PM
NYT Op/Ed on 9/11: 'The Deafness Before the Storm' "goes into teeth-grinding detail about how the Bush administration had even more advance notice about Osama Bin Laden's attack than we previously realized." Summary: significantly more negligence than has been disclosed.
posted on Sep-11-12 at 5:33 PM
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