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July 03, 2009
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!
I just found out I'm related to the Bush's, Sarah Palin, and the Romney's. My mother's maiden name was Arnold, and we're direct descendants of Benedict Arnold. The shame of that name is nothing compared to being kinfolk with the former.
Apparently there's some 80,000 of us in the US alone. You may be in our growing number...
July 01, 2009
There, I Fixed It - Welcome to TowtruckJohnny's world
June 23, 2009
Wordnik may be my new default online dictionary. It seems to be a good combination of reputable sources, multimedia, and crowdsourcing. [more inside]
June 22, 2009
Iran's Voice Here's where I'd usually put some snippet from the article, and maybe a link as well. Instead, I'll just say: go read Roger Cohen's lastest article on Iran.
June 20, 2009
Sometimes the best solutions to social problems aren't fair. A great oldish article from the New Yorker.
If you still have access to the UT library and can download this PDF, this article on Harper's is about the best thing I've read on the financial crisis.
And a graph (of a spurious correlation) that I stumbled upon that seems to be total mrflip bait
Journalist escapes over a wall after 7-mo imprisonment by Taliban - David Rohde, local journalist Tahir Ludin, and their driver were captured 7 months ago. The driver joined the Taliban; "Mr. Ludin joined him in climbing over the wall of a compound where they were being held in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. They found a Pakistani Army scout, who led them to a nearby army base, and on Saturday they were flown to the American military base in Bagram, Afghanistan."
Related: Clay Shirky's entry in the death of newspapers essay competition ("Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism") (also also)
June 16, 2009
It's been a while since we've had a post on fixed gear bicycles (or "fixies") and normally I'd just let it go. However, this video of some sick fixie tricks from 1899 was too much to resist. Not only did I enjoy the hilarious pratfalls, but I admired the ingenuity of the ramp that converts while the rider is up in the loop. Furthermore, I also enjoyed the rider face planting into the ramp. It's a 19th century Jackass/Nitro Circus!
June 14, 2009
Disputed Iran election leads to protests and crackdown
- As we await Valatan's backgrounder on the Iran elections, some help to understand what's going down:
* Things to Keep an Eye on in Iran
* Wikipedia, of course
* Hopefully the servers at BigSoccer.com can withstand being linked to by the NYTimes.
June 09, 2009
Toys! We did another video contest, Toybox Physics and the finalists are posted on our site. You can vote for your favorite. I like the 14 sec skateboarding one personally! They are all super fun to watch.
June 05, 2009
Wes Anderson and the Substance of Style - five video essays exploring the artistic influences on Wes Anderson's style, from Charles Schultz to Martin Scorsese. Beside the content I was fascinated to hear an expert describe how the approach and grammar combine to generate an overall feel -- I feel like I understand film much better after viewing the series. It's like hearing Ron Jaworski break down football film -- he's not only telling you what he sees, but how to see it yourself.
[It wasn't initially obvious to me, but ignore the essays and watch the videos: click on the thumbnail video to the far right of each essay, right above "Related Articles".]
June 02, 2009
LaserMonks! - the economics of running a modern monastery are very different than I'd have thought.
June 01, 2009
May 31, 2009
Math+Psych = NoFail? Do y'all play poker? Brainpower plus idle time should lead to interesting poker games... When I return to TX Imma try and get some games going. Longhorns in the world championships of power?
May 26, 2009
Mmmmm... Purple Drank! [more inside]
May 19, 2009
A Field Guide to Highway Interchanges - which one is your favorite? I think Austin and Houston have a lot of the "stacked" varieties. Of course I had never seen this "frontage road" concept outside of Texas (except very limitedly)...I wonder if we could use more Lofthouses or Spooeys.
May 12, 2009
What Makes Us Happy? from The Atlantic is an article discussing a longitudinal study of the lives of a group of Harvard men starting in the 1930's and continuing even today. The underlying and fascinating question is "What does it take to live a happy and fulfilling life?" The equally interesting B-story discusses how the field of psychology and its methods has changed since the days of measuring head size. (I suspect there is enough tired methodology from the early days and simplification of explanation to drive TheWestIsTheBest up the wall).
May 08, 2009
Baseball card collecting is a hobby that is on the wrong side of their demand peak these days. Most collectors are adults who have collected since they were kids (not least because packs cost $5-20 and up to hundreds of dollars!). The iNTERNETS CELEBRITIES checked in on how a local card shop is doing and the result is quite nostalgic if you ever collected cards or comic books. Or, just experience the excitement vicariously on youtube.
[more inside]
Seattle's alt-weekly The Stranger has posted the results of the 2009 Sex Survey. Lots of pretty graphs and some NSFW language and concepts from a self-selecting group of (online?) survey respondents but at least you can guesstimate how (un-)common your favorite sex acts are.
May 07, 2009
A friend from college makes some pretty cool robot art. Also, check out the link to Arthur Ganson's artwork.
May 04, 2009
So cute. Lolbots anyone?
April 28, 2009
April 22, 2009
Anatomy Of A Bank Takeover by Chana Joffe-Walt
April 21, 2009
Donkey Ball is basketball on a donkey, it's a real thing and it's been around for decades. I don't really have anything I can add.