Monday, January 31, 2011

NY Times Book Review: CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER

CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER
Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture
By Peggy Orenstein

 
Is Pink Necessary?
By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL  Published: January 21, 2011
 
The "princess phase." So inevitable is this period in the maturation of girls today that it should qualify as an official developmental stage, worthy of an entry in Leach or Brazelton: first crawling, then walking, then the urgent desire to wear something pink and spark­ly. Whether we smile indulgently or roll our eyes at the drifts of tulle and chiffon that begin accumulating in our daughters' rooms around age 4, participation in these royal rituals has come to seem necessary, even natural.
 
Yet the princess phase, at least in its current hyper-feminine and highly commercial form, is anything but natural, or so Peggy Orenstein argues in "Cinderella Ate My Daughter." As she tells the story, in 2000 a Disney executive named Andy Mooney went to check out a "Disney on Ice" show and found himself "surrounded by little girls in princess costumes. Princess costumes that were — horrors! — homemade. How had such a massive branding opportunity been overlooked? The very next day he called together his team and they began working on what would become known in-house as 'Princess.' " Mooney's revelation yielded a bonanza for the company. There are now more than 26,000 Disney Princess items on the market; in 2009, Princess products generated sales of $4 billion.
 
Disney didn't have the tiara market to itself for long. Orenstein takes us on a tour of the princess industrial complex, its practices as coolly calculating as its products are soft and fluffy. She describes a toy fair, held at the Javits Center in New York, at which the merchandise for girls seems to come in only one color: pink jewelry boxes, pink vanity mirrors, pink telephones, pink hair dryers, pink fur stoles. "Is all this pink really necessary?" Orenstein finally asks a sales rep.
 
"Only if you want to make money," he replies.
 
 
full @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books/review/Paul-t.html

Friday, January 28, 2011

FW: Computer locks up - turn off error reporting

OMG. 
Bob sent you something useful.
 

 from my friend Mitch:
 

I've been annoyed by the fact that Windows ties up system resources
with error reporting every time a program (or Windows itself) has a crash.
If you go to task manager after you kill a program with Task Manager
(open with alt-ctrl-del or right click on the task bar), you may see
"dumprep.exe" using 95% of the CPU.


Since Windows XP is no longer being developed by Microsoft, there is
not any point to sending error reports to MS, so you might as well
turn off error reporting.

In Windows XP, turn off error reporting by opening the SYSTEM icon in
the Control Panel, choose the ADVANCED tab, and then click on Error
Reporting. Then choose "Disable error reporting" - you can leave
"but notify me when critical errors occur" checked.

Net approaches address exhaustion

BBC News:
 

The last big blocks of the net's dwindling stock of addresses are about to be handed out.

 

The event that triggers their distribution is widely expected to take place in the next few days.

When that happens each of the five regional agencies that hand out net addresses will get one of the remaining blocks of 16 million addresses.

The addresses in those last five blocks are expected to be completely exhausted by September 2011.
 
 
full @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12306573
 
 

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

10 Guinness Gaming Records You Didn’t Know Existed

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/01/guinness-gaming-records/
 

a few samples:
 

First Game to Have an Officially Recognized Day

First Public Official Fired for Playing FarmVille

Most "F" Words in a Videogame

 

Hand-held heart attack.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burger  


 

 The Luther Burger

 

luther.jpg
 
Two original Krispy Kreme doughnuts, 4 slices of bacon and two 1/4 lb. beef patties  
 
 

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Book I'd like to see

 see attached

the last thing a Philadelphia sports fan needs is nine times more beer

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/01/25/super-fast-beer-tap-will-debut-at-flyers-game-2/

Techno Beatbox

Paste the following text into Google Translate:
 
pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpvpvzk kkkkk bsch
 
 

Then select Chinese to  Chinese Simplified/Traditional translation

Press the Listen button on the right side of the screen

 

 

 

Google Translate:  http://translate.google.com/#

 

 

 

Monday, January 24, 2011

British engineers are to send a mobile phone into space to control a satellite

The phone, which will run Google's Android operating system, will take pictures of the Earth later this year.
 
The project is being run by a British firm called Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, based in Guildford, which wants to test a modern phone in the most hostile environment possible, the BBC reported.
 
Although it will be a smartphone, the precise model has not been disclosed. It will be the first time a phone has gone into orbit.
 
Shaun Kenyon, the project manager, said: "Modern smartphones are pretty amazing.
 
"They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory. First of all, we want to see if the phone works up there, and if it does, we want to see if the phone can control a satellite.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8277849/Mobile-to-be-used-to-control-satellite.html

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne dies at 96


 CNN) -- American fitness guru Jack LaLanne died Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, California, according to his long-time agent, Rick Hersh. He was 96.
 
The cause, said Hersh, was respiratory failure due to pneumonia. LaLanne had been ill for the past week. His wife, Elaine, was at his side, along with his family and friends, Hersh said. No funeral arrangements were announced, but his agent said plans were being made.
 
LaLanne spent decades talking about the healthful benefits of exercise and fitness. He opened his own health spa in California in 1936, years before the fitness craze swept the United States. LaLanne even designed the world's first leg-extension machine, along with several other pieces of fitness equipment now standard in the fitness industry.
 
He was born in San Francisco on September 26, 1914. A self-confessed sugar- and junk-food addict as a child, he went on to study bodybuilding and weight-lifting by the time he was in his late teens.
 
From the 1950s through the 1980s, LaLanne performed multiple feats of strength and endurance. His first such stunt was an underwater swim the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, loaded with 140 pounds of equipment, in 1954. He went on to stage many attention-getting events, including completing over a thousand pushups in a little over 20 minutes, and towing 65 boats filled with thousands of pounds of wood pulp in Japan.
 
LaLanne had his own workout program, "The Jack LaLanne Show." First broadcast nationally in 1959, the show went on to run for three decades.

In his later years, he was easily recognized because of late-night infomercials on on the benefits of juicing.
 
He also made many appearances on CNN's "Larry King Live" and was a friend of the talk show host. "There was no one like Jack LaLanne," King said Sunday night. "He would go on forever ... a true guru. I guess Charles Atlas from the old comic books would be the predecessor for Jack LaLanne."
 
But it wasn't simply LaLanne's physical prowess that impressed King. "Elderly people were encouraged by him because he just kept on going," King said, adding that modern fitness celebrities owe a debt of gratitude to the original impresario of exercise.
 

LaLanne's wife of 51 years released a statement on her husband's passing: "I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for," Elaine said.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/01/23/obit.jack.lalanne/index.html

 

 

USPS stamps: Pioneers of Industrial Design

 see attached

Friday, January 21, 2011

Your PC Hardware: Inside and Out (Part 2)

Hey Guys and Gals!

Lots of you were waiting for the second part of the "Your PC: Inside and Out" guide.
Good news. It's ready!

In Part 2 you'll learn:
- What to look for in a hard drive
- The difference between Solid State Drives and conventional drives
- What RAM does, and why you might need more of it
- The role of the CPU
- Intel and AMD, compared
- What all those stats in graphics card marketing mean
- nVidia and ATI, compared

and more ...

DOWNLOAD Your PC Hardware: Inside and Out [Part 2]
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-pc-hardware-guide-part-2/

Those of you who didn't get to read the first part yet may still
download it
here.

Please, share the guide with friends on Facebook and Twitter. We need your help!

Enjoy!

MakeUseOf Limited
1007 Argyle Street
Glasgow, G3 8LZ / UK

Take two beers and call me in the morning

 Ancient Nubians Made Antibiotic Beer

Chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Sudanese Nubians who lived nearly 2000 years ago shows they were ingesting the antibiotic tetracycline on a regular basis, likely from a special brew of beer.
 
The find is the strongest yet that antibiotics were previously discovered by humans before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.
 
"I'm going to ask Alexander Fleming to hand back his Nobel Prize," joked chemist Mark Nelson, who works on developing new tetracyclines at Paratek Pharmaceuticals and is lead author of the paper published June in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Nelson found large amounts of tetracycline in the bones tested from the ancient population, which lived in the Nubian kingdom (present day Sudan) between 250 A.D. and 550 A.D. and left no written record.
 
"The bones of these ancient people were saturated with tetracycline, showing that they had been taking it for a long time," Nelson said in a press release August 30. "I'm convinced that they had the science of fermentation under control and were purposely producing the drug."
 
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/antibiotic-beer/#

2,550-Year-Old Celtic Beer Recipe Resurrected

 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/ancient-celtic-beer/
 
 

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Your PC Hardware: Inside and Out (Part 2)

Hey Guys and Gals!

Lots of you were waiting for the second part of the "Your PC: Inside and Out" guide.
Good news. It's ready!
DOWNLOAD Your PC Hardware: Inside and Out [Part 2]
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-pc-hardware-guide-part-2/

In Part 2 you'll learn:
- What to look for in a hard drive
- The difference between Solid State Drives and conventional drives
- What RAM does, and why you might need more of it
- The role of the CPU
- Intel and AMD, compared
- What all those stats in graphics card marketing mean
- nVidia and ATI, compared

and more ...

DOWNLOAD Your PC Hardware: Inside and Out [Part 2]
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-pc-hardware-guide-part-2/

Those of you who didn't get to read the first part yet may still
download it here.

DOWNLOAD Your PC Hardware: Inside and Out [Part 2]
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-pc-hardware-guide-part-2/

Please, share the guide with friends on Facebook and Twitter. We need your help!

Enjoy!

MakeUseOf Limited
1007 Argyle Street
Glasgow, G3 8LZ / UK

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?7CzszKxstKwM7OyMDByctEa0HBwsrKxsHA==

20 random tunes from my MP3 player

a recent Facebook meme tagged people to turn on their MP3 players, hit "shuffle" and write down, in order, without cheating, the first 20 songs it played.

 
Here's my list:
 
01  Porter Wagoner - "Satisfied Mind"
02  Rhonda Vincent - "Scorn of a Lover"
03  Charlie Rich - "Who Will The Next Fool Be?"
04  1940's swing song that a friend gave me on a mix tape and I still don't know the artist or song title
05  Parachute Club - "Middle Child"
06  Kate and Anna McGarrigle - "La Vache Qui Pleure"
07  Camera Obscure - "Let's Get Out Of This Country"
08  Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald - "I Got Plenty of Nothing"
09  Susanne Vega - "99.9 F"
10  Elis Regina - "Aguas De Marco [waters of march]"
11  Toussaint McCall - "Nothing Takes The Place Of You"
12  Jan Savitt & His Top Hatters - "Rose of the Rio Grande"
13  Veretta Dillard - "Promise Mr. Thomas"
14  Jan Savitt & His Top Hatters - "720 In The Books"

15  Roger Miller - "Chug-a-lug"
16  Glenn Miller & His Orchestra - "Jingle Bells (air check)"
17  Bangles - "If She Knew What She Wants"
18  Johnny Cash & June Carter (at Folsom Prison) - "Jackson"

19  Benny Goodman (Carnegie Hall concert 1938) - "Avalon"
20  Steam - "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)"
 
 

Your PC. What's inside?

CPU
RAM
PCI
IDE
USB
 
If these terms make you say WTF, you might want to check out this guide.
You can read it online, or download as a PDF.
 
 
 

FW: Where warfare is going

from my friend Paul 



Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Wikipedia Album Generator

There's a Facebook game where you create you own rock band album cover using random image and word searches in Wikipedia.

Here's a website that does it all for you.

Random image for album cover, random band name, random album title.
Also random track lists.
 
AND it generates it as a jewel box CD insert, so you can make your own CD.

Why?
I don't know.
But you CAN, and THAT'S what's important!

http://thesurrealist.co.uk/album

to get a new CD cover, just click "Get another Album"


Stuxnet Worm Still Out of Control at Iran's Nuclear Sites, Experts Say

Iran's nuclear program is still in chaos despite its leaders' adamant claim that they have contained the computer worm that attacked their facilities, cybersecurity experts in the United States and Europe say.
 

The American and European experts say their security websites, which deal with the computer worm known as Stuxnet, continue to be swamped with traffic from Tehran and other places in the Islamic Republic, an indication that the worm continues to infect the computers at Iran's two nuclear sites.

 
full @ http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/09/despite-iranian-claims-stuxnet-worm-causing-nuclear-havoc/
 
 
 
excerpts of particular interest:
 

"The Iranians don't have the depth of knowledge to handle the worm or understand its complexity," [Ralph Langner, the German expert who was among the first to study Stuxnet] said, raising the possibility that they may never succeed in eliminating it.

 

And Iran's anti-worm effort may have had another setback. In Tehran, men on motorcycles attacked two leading nuclear scientists on their way to work. Using magnetic bombs, the motorcyclists pulled alongside their cars and attached the devices

 

One scientist was wounded and the other killed. Confirmed reports say that the murdered scientist was in charge of dealing with the Stuxnet virus at the nuclear plants.

 
 

Friday, January 14, 2011

Jewish Apple Cake

Jewish Apple Cake  
 
Ingredients:
 
5 crisp apples (granny smith work well), peeled, cored and sliced.
4 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil 
          (notice: 5,4,3,2,1.)

1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
5 teaspoons white sugar
  

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour one 10 inch bunt pan. 
(bunt pans work in this recipe because the resulting cake is very moist, and if it's in a high square pan, the middle doesn't get cooked well)
 
2) Combine the ground cinnamon and 5 teaspoons of the sugar and set aside.

3) In a large mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking powder and the sugar. 
 
4) Stir in the wet ingredients: vegetable oil, beaten eggs, orange juice and vanilla. Mix well.

5) Pour 1/2 of the batter into the prepared pan. (bundt pans work best).  Top with 1/2 of the sliced apples and sprinkle with 1/2 of the cinnamon sugar mixture. Pour the remaining batter over the top and layer the remaining sliced apples, then top with cinnamon and sugar.

6) Bake at 350 degrees F for 70 to 90 minutes.

 



Thursday, January 13, 2011

Anagram your name

Robert Jay Bendesky's anagram name is BETRAYED JERKY SNOB

Now try your name: http://deanjackson.dj/nameanagram/index.php
 
 

xkcd dentist

WAKE up in the MORning and my BREATH ain't PREtty
and noBODY'S gonna KISS me if my MOUTH smells SHItty
so I ALways brush my TEETH before I START on the JACK
sure, my DRINKing's out of HAND, but I'm conTROLLing my PLAQUE

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

RE: NSA: No Such Agency or No Style Awareness

Wait... I just thought of something.
They're using Steganography.

The real message is buried in the simple graphics.
 
...yes, that's got to be it.

 

NSA: No Such Agency or No Style Awareness

NSA's Home Base May Have Crappiest Website Ever
 
The gates of Fort George Meade contain the most powerful technical minds that the government employs. Its website contains pixelized, faux-shaded green fonts and a two-column descending text template not seen since the days of GeoCities.

I call on Sarah Palin to refudiate her use of the term "Blood Libel."

NY Times: U.S.   | January 12, 2011

The Caucus: Palin Calls Criticism 'Blood Libel'
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Sarah Palin issues a forceful denunciation of her critics in a video statement that accused pundits and journalists of "blood libel."


The term blood libel is generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin's use of the phrase in her video, which helped make it rapidly go viral, is itself attracting criticism, not least because Ms. Giffords, who remains in critical condition in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish.

Reaction to Ms. Palin's video was swift.
 
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is a close friend of Ms. Giffords, issued a statement condemning her use of the phrase "blood libel."
 
"Palin's comments either show a complete ignorance of history, or blatant anti-Semitism," said Jonathan Beeton, Ms. Wasserman Shultz's spokesman. "Either way, it shows an appalling lack of sensitivity given Representative Giffords' faith and the events of the past week."
 
 
full @ http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/palin-calls-criticism-blood-libel
 

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

When I was your age, Pluto was a planet

NYTimes:
 
"If you looked at the two of them right next to each other sitting in space, they would look to be exactly the same size. You couldn't tell by eye until you took out your really, really big ruler."
   -  MICHAEL E. BROWN, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, on the continuing debate over the relative sizes of Pluto and the dwarf planet Eris.
 
 
Six years ago this month, Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, spotted an object in the night sky that was so bright and so far away that he was sure it was bigger than Pluto.
 
"Guaranteed," Dr. Brown said when he announced the discovery, half a year later, in July 2005.
 
Well...maybe not, after all.
 
In November, that object, now known as the dwarf planet Eris, passed in front of a dim, distant star. Astronomers led by Bruno Sicardy of the Paris Observatory measured how long the star disappeared behind Eris and, from that, calculated the width of Eris.
 
"It's clearly smaller," said Alain Maury, who observed the brief disappearance, or occultation, of the star at the San Pedro de Atacama Celestial Explorations Observatory in Chile.
 
 
full @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/science/space/11pluto.html
 
 
For now, Drs. Maury and Sicardy decline to say exactly how small Eris is, because they first want to publish the results in the journal Nature. But they say that even accounting for the uncertainties in the observations, the largest possible Eris is smaller than the smallest possible Pluto.
 
 
 

Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

Music Produces a Natural High Similar to Sex and Drugs

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/drugs+rock+roll+just+need+music+Study/4082727/story.html

Monday, January 10, 2011

Firesign Theatre - Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Film

from a music blog:

Few know that the Firesign Theatre's 1974 classic LP Everything You Know Is Wrong was made into a film.  I saw it the cinema a couple years after the LP came out.  I never forgot about seeing it that night, though I was more then a little stoned, and searched video places and catalogs for it.  I finally did find a VHS copy of it and this is the version that present now.  I ripped the VHS to a cheap DVD recorder and then converted it down to this 300 meg copy.  It is enjoyable, but I am not claiming great quality.

For those who have never seen it, the FS performs the LP, miming it in it's entirety.  This video is actually funnier then the album, and that is saying a lot. This is my third favorite album of theirs, after Don't Crush That Dwarf and How Can You Be In Two Places.  You can see that it was made on a shoestring, just look at the sample above, "The Golden Hind". The FS put out other videos in the 80's and 90's that, while funny, seem more like relics of the time they were made in.  Everything You Know Is Wrong, to my eyes, has dated really well.  If you are a fan of the Firesign Theatre, you really should see this.

 
 

Kodachrome - created by God and Man: keva and kavanah

Here's a little philosophy and spirituality for consideration about the history of Kodachrome.

Showing Their True Colors

How Two Jewish Musicians Developed Kodachrome

'God and Man': The last Kodachrome film, which was invented by Jewish musicians Leopold Godowsky Jr. (left) and Leopold Mannes (right), was processed December 30.
GETTY IMAGES
'God and Man': The last Kodachrome film, which was invented by Jewish musicians Leopold Godowsky Jr. (left) and Leopold Mannes (right), was processed December 30.

By Eric Schulmiller

Published December 30, 2010, issue of January 14, 2011.
  • PRINT 
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  • "Everything looks worse in black and white."
    – a lyric from "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon

The last picture ever to be developed with Kodachrome film was processed on December 30 at the lone lab still handling the film — Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kan. A year after Kodak announced that it was retiring Kodachrome film after nearly 75 years of production (making it the oldest and longest-running film in production of all time), the last shipment of processing chemicals had finally run out, and the last Kodachrome processing machine was due to be sold for scrap.

 

So what's so special about a roll of film that everyone from The New York Times to NPR ran its obituary? Besides the eponymous 1973 paean by singer Paul Simon, Kodachrome is best known for its durability, vibrancy and rich colors. It was the film used for many iconic color images, including the Afghan girl on the 1985 cover of National Geographic and the Abraham Zapruder film of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Kodak retired Kodachrome because of the widespread adoption of digital formats, and because it now represents only a fraction of 1% of its total film sales.

 

But what's remarkable to me is that this groundbreaking innovation, which forever changed the face of photography, was invented by two Jewish musicians. Kodachrome was created by Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes (known together within Kodak as "God and Man") in 1935.

 

Godowsky's father was Leopold Godowsky, one of the great pianists and composers of the early 1900s, and Leopold Jr. was himself a prominent musician, becoming a soloist and first violinist with the Los Angeles and the San Francisco Symphony orchestras. He later married Frances Gershwin, sister of George and Ira Gershwin. Mannes also hailed from a musical family: His parents founded what is now Mannes College The New School for Music, in New York City, where he later served as president. Mannes studied piano at Harvard and was, in addition, a noteworthy composer.

 

Godowsky, who had a background in chemistry, and Mannes were teenage friends who were always interested in seeing things in their truest colors.

 

Dissatisfied with the washed-out pictures of early color film, the two boys built their own color camera and projector while still in high school. They remained in contact as each pursued his respective musical career, and continued to perfect their color film technology. Their landmark work in this area soon attracted the attention of Lewis L. Strauss, an associate of the investment firm Kuhn, Loeb and Company, who financed the construction of Godowsky and Mannes's laboratory, where they patented their revolutionary color-film invention. Their work gained the attention of Eastman Kodak, and in 1935, Godowsky and Mannes made history with the introduction of their Kodachrome film.

 

But besides being invented, marketed and rhapsodized by Jewish musicians, there's another connection between Kodachrome, Judaism and music. Unlike any other color film, Kodachrome is purely black and white when exposed to light. The three primary colors that mix to form the full color spectrum have to be added in three separate stages.

 

This complex process of adding vibrant color to a black-and-white world is similar to the Jewish notion of keva and kavanah.

 

The sages divided ritual practice into two distinct categories. The elements that were unchanging and static, such as the words of prayer recited daily, were termed keva — Hebrew for "fixed in place." This was the black-and-white reality that formed the foundation for our world and our place in it. But then there is kavanah — the fluid, dynamic way in which we constantly color our practice with life's ever-changing perspective. As any good musician will tell you, written music will get you only so far. Until the notes are infused with the kavanah that each artist brings to every performance, they are simply monochromatic dots on a page.

 

So the next time you upload your images to Flickr or YouTube, say a word of thanks to Godowsky, Mannes and Simon — three Jewish musicians from New York whose work inspired countless millions to see the world in all its rich and vibrant complexity.

 

 

Eric Schulmiller has served as cantor of the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore, on Long Island, for the past 12 years and has a degree in jazz piano from the University of Miami.



Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/134366/#ixzz1AbGN8lrD




Thursday, January 06, 2011

Quote of the Day

We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
      - Dennis Miller
 
 

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

NYT: 3-D Without the Glasses

For those of you interested in watching 3-D video, but hate those wearing funny-looking glasses (and isn't that most of us?) Toshiba has something to show you at the International Consumer Electronics Show — televisions and a laptop that can display 3-D video without requiring the viewer to put on glasses.
The televisions have been available in Japan since late last year. Representatives from Toshiba demoed the laptop for The New York Times last month.
 
The laptop works by using a Webcam to find a viewer's eyes, then sends different versions of the image to each one, creating the illusion of depth. The image quality was indistinguishable from that you can see with glasses-required 3-D, although the screen was much smaller than the giant 3-D televisions that manufacturers have been marketing. The technique also worked fine even if the viewer was wearing regular prescription glasses.

full @

add this to your calculations

       

  "Figures of Merit," Martin Tompa, ACM SIGACT News, vol. 20, no. 1, Winter 1989.
      http://bit.ly/fz5Gcd
   
The paper is historic because the author, at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center,
introduces the term "coefficient of obliviousness."
 
 




be Master of Your Domain, and Master of Opposition Domains, too.

from WSJ:

Newport maker Lorillard is hoping to head off a possible FDA menthol cigarette ban by launching an all-out PR crusade, reports the Wall Street Journal.
 
The company has purchased anti-menthol domain names like MentholKillsMinorities.com and MentholAddictsYouth.com to keep them from critics and promote "dispassionate debate."
 
 
 
 

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

12 Coolest Steampunk Gadgets

http://www.oddee.com/item_96830.aspx

WTF? Seriously, WTF ?

Saddam Hussein Had Qur'an Written in His Blood

It took three years and 57 pints of his own blood for Saddam Hussein to have a special copy of the Qur'an printed, and today, no one in Iraq knows exactly what to do with it.
 
Saddam commissioned the work on his 60th birthday in April 1997 and took possession of the completed product in September 2000. "My life has been full of dangers in which I should have lost a lot of blood," he explained, "but since I have bled only a little, I asked somebody to write God's words with my blood in gratitude."
 
The blood-inscribed 605-page holy book now sits locked away in a Baghdad mosque.
 
 
 

Monday, January 03, 2011

“Hallelujah Chorus” Leads to Shopping Mall Evacuation

news item
 
 
Two months after the Westfield Galleria in Roseville closed from a devastating fire, shoppers were again forced to evacuate Monday.
 
This time, choral singers are to blame.
 
The Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra and several area congregations had prearranged a "flash mob" singing of the "Hallelujah Chorus" in the mall's food court.
 
But with thousands of people crowding the second-floor food court, the "random act of musical kindness" never got off the ground.
 
"It was so jammed with people that you could not even move," said Connie Santos, who hoped to enjoy the music, then shop.
 
There were no reports of injuries as the mall was peacefully evacuated starting about 6:45 p.m. The mall was scheduled to close at 11 p.m.

"Somebody reported hearing two pops that sounded like the floor was giving way and another said the floor was shifting," said Tom Dodaro, a Roseville Fire Department spokesman.


Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/21/3272408/choir-flash-mob-packs-mall-forces.html#ixzz1A0H3yi33
 
 

FW: Author of Enders Game on Facebook and the Interwebs

 from my friend Sam:

How 'Friend' Became a Verb

When the Internet was first opened to the general public in 1992, I was unimpressed. What I saw was exactly as interesting as the brochure rack in the grocery store. Hadn't people read my sci-fi novel "Ender's Game" (1985), where a couple of anonymous kids used something like the Internet to pass for experts and influence public opinion; or "The Worthing Saga" (1978), where millions of people watched superstars play computer games?
 

Well, probably not. But I was impatient for others to catch on to how much potential there was for public networks to change politics and entertainment.
 

We got there soon enough. Amazon.com became the department store of instant gratification. MP3s became the preferred way to buy music—for a buck a tune. Bloggers did an end-run around Big Media to break the ideological stranglehold of the left. Twitter turned stalking into a cooperative art form. Facebook turned "friend" into a verb.