“Surprisingly, their chromatophores contain only red, orange, yellow, black, or brown pigments, yet cephalopods exhibit a full rainbow of colors. The mystery of how they do this was solved when scientists discovered that they also have reflecting cells in their skin that act like mirrors or prisms. These iridophores and protein-based leucophores are used in combination with their chromatophores to create a wide variety of striking colors that include vibrant blues, purples, greens, and silver.”
—Exclusive Excerpt: Sex, Drugs and Sea Slime | Wired Science | Wired.com
May 2011
3 posts
October 2010
4 posts
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“A reformed Weezer fan has launched a fundraiser online to raise $10 million to pay the indie band to call it quits.”
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Weezer to break up for $10 million? James Burns starts online fundraiser to make group disband
ouch.
September 2010
1 post
July 2010
4 posts
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“So Wyclef Jean is apparently considering a presidential run in Haiti…. But how to connect the two and turn a musician into a president? We asked the editor of Rap Genius for a (somewhat) serious investigation by way of the ex-Fugee’s lyrics.”
—Wyclef Jean Running for President of Haiti - Political Beliefs of Wyclef Jean - Esquire
“Today, iPhone and Android are once again two very different beasts. Declaring one to be the winner over the other is like betting on a fight between a hippo and a giant octopus. Each will have its fans and its supporters, but these are clearly two beasts with two very different ideas about how to stay on Darwin’s good side.”
—
Andy Ihnatko is a genius.
iPhone 4 review: It’s a brand new, better smartphone :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko
June 2010
4 posts
“By 10am it emerged that Mr Perkins had single-handedly moved the global price of oil to an eight-month high during a “drunken blackout”. Prices leapt by more than $1.50 a barrel in under half an hour at around 2am – the kind of sharp swing caused by events of geo-political significance. Ten times the usual volume of futures contracts changed hands in just one hour.”
—How a broker spent $520m in a drunken stupor and moved the global oil price - Telegraph
“She does not drink enough water herself, she allowed; orange juice, milk and Scotch are higher on her list. For those who do sip water all day, she has some characteristically blunt advice. “Get yourself a nice Thermos,” she said. “I’ll give you one if you want.”
—Where Thoreau Lived, Crusade Over Bottles - NYTimes.com
Umbrella program may spawn bumper crop of good deeds →
post-gazette.com
Pittsburgh people being awesome!
May 2010
3 posts
“The Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights”
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Attorney General Backs Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects - NYTimes.com
There’s a Who song about this…
“
To the Editor:
• PowerPoint criticism
• Used instead of full-text documents
• Substance often lacking
• Subtleties not easily conveyed
• Other uses
• Substitute for letter to editor
Sharon Aucoin
North Andover, Mass., April 27, 2010
April 2010
11 posts
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat. “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
—Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War - PowerPoint - NYTimes.com
“It was a silent call to arms: an easy-to-overlook message urging New Jersey students to take a stand against the budget cuts that threaten class sizes and choices as well as after-school activities. But some 18,000 students accepted the invitation posted last month on Facebook, the social media site better known for publicizing parties and sporting events. And on Tuesday many of them — and many others — walked out of class in one of the largest grass-roots demonstrations to hit New Jersey in years.”
—Students Protest School Budget Cuts in New Jersey - NYTimes.com
SubTropolis, U.S.A. - Magazine - The Atlantic →
theatlantic.com
A large chunk of Kansas City’s real estate lies 100 feet below ground, and offers a creative solution to global warming.
Fresh or Canned →
nytimes.com
Nations’ eating habits graphed.
“In one of Dr. Griffiths’s first studies, involving 36 people with no serious physical or emotional problems, he and colleagues found that psilocybin could induce what the experimental subjects described as a profound spiritual experience with lasting positive effects for most of them. None had had any previous experience with hallucinogens, and none were even sure what drug was being administered. To make the experiment double-blind, neither the subjects nor the two experts monitoring them knew whether the subjects were receiving a placebo, psilocybin or another drug like Ritalin, nicotine, caffeine or an amphetamine. Although veterans of the ’60s psychedelic culture may have a hard time believing it, Dr. Griffiths said that even the monitors sometimes could not tell from the reactions whether the person had taken psilocybin or Ritalin. The monitors sometimes had to console people through periods of anxiety, Dr. Griffiths said, but these were generally short-lived, and none of the people reported any serious negative effects. In a survey conducted two months later, the people who received psilocybin reported significantly more improvements in their general feelings and behavior than did the members of the control group.”
—Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again - NYTimes.com
“When the monkeys thought of numbers, Nieder saw that certain neurons became very active. On closer analysis, he made a fascinating discovery: the number-sensitive neurons reacted with varying charges depending on the number that the monkey was thinking of at the time. Furthermore, when a monkey was thinking “four”, the neurons that preferred four were the most active, of course – but the neurons that preferred three and the neurons that preferred five were also active, though less so, because its brain was also thinking of the numbers surrounding four. “It is a noisy sense of number,” explained Nieder. “The monkeys can only represent cardinalities in an approximate way.” It is almost certain that the same thing happens in human brains. Which raises an interesting question: if our brains can represent numbers only approximately, then how were we able to “invent” numbers in the first place?”
— The Amazonian tribe that can only count up to five | Science | The Guardian
The Smart Set: American Bling - March 30, 2010 →
thesmartset.com
How Louis Comfort Tiffany pioneered America’s kitch and bling aesthetics.
March 2010
19 posts
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“The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,” Ms. Scheibel said. The conduct of those charged, she said, “far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels.” It was particularly alarming, the district attorney said, that some teachers, administrators and other staff members at the school were aware of the harassment but did not stop it. “The actions or inactions of some adults at the school were troublesome,” Ms. Scheibel said, but did not violate any laws.”
—9 Teenagers Are Charged After Classmate’s Suicide - NYTimes.com
“Patel’s background and work coincidentally matched a series of prophecies made by an 87-year-old Scottish mystic called Benjamin Creme, the leader of a little-known religious group known as Share International. Because he matched the profile, hundreds of people around the world believed that Patel was the living embodiment of a figure they called Maitreya, the Christ or “the world teacher”. His job? To save the world, and everyone on it.”
— I’m not the messiah, says food activist – but his many worshippers do not believe him | World news | The Guardian
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100 Million Club (February 02, 2010 - March 23, 2010) | Visible Measures →
visiblemeasures.com
Viral videos that have over 100 million views
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“The Cornell University team studied 52 of the most famous paintings of the Biblical scene over the millennium and scrutinised the size of the feast. They found the main courses, bread and plates put before Jesus and his disciples have progressively grown by up to two-thirds.”
—BBC News - Last supper ‘has been super-sized’, say obesity experts
A curious history of the C.I.A. : The New Yorker →
newyorker.com
A point by point demolition of Marc Thiessen.
“Perhaps the most outlandish falsehood in “Courting Disaster” is Thiessen’s portrayal of Obama and the Democrats as the sole opponents of brutal interrogation tactics. Thiessen presents the termination of the C.I.A. program as a renegade action by President Obama, who has “eliminated our nation’s most important tool to prevent terrorists from striking America.” Yet Thiessen knows that waterboarding and other human-rights abuses, such as dispatching prisoners into secret indefinite detention, were abandoned by the Bush Administration: he wrote the very speech announcing, in 2006, that the Administration was suspending their use.”
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“There’s no such thing as fact anymore, only opinion. The closest thing we have to fact is “common opinion”. Everything is an opinion. The way you dress is an expression of your opinion. Your religious beliefs are your opinion. The music you turn up loud is your opinion. For most people it’s easier to just agree. For me the hardest thing is to ‘just’ agree and that is what sparks creativity, the feeling that something can be better, the feeling that something’s missing. The feeling that something’s needed. -Kanye”
—Maximum Fun Forum :: View topic - Kanye nails it re: creativity
“I won’t be doing any more big gallery shows for a while, it’s all a bit dodgy. I’ve come into contact with a lot more villains since I moved from vandalism into selling paintings. The art world is full of shady people peddling bright colours. Anti-graffiti groups like to say tagging intimidates people, but not as much as modern art. That stuff is deliberately designed to make normal people feel stupid. I could try and get more legitimate mural work, but scaling a drainpipe is still probably a lot easier than getting an original idea past a committee.” - Banksy”
—Banksy in “the world’s first street-art disaster movie” - Times Online
“FRANKS: In this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say “How brave were they? What was the matter with them? You know, I can’t believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible.” And we’re right, we’re right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery. And I think, What does it take to get us to wake up?”
—Rep. Trent Franks: Blacks Better Off Under Slavery | Media Matters Action Network
February 2010
8 posts
“And wtf. When did Citibank start reviewing blogs to decide who can bank with them?”
—citibank is so not fabulis - fabulis
