Classic quote from Shaq comparing the three guards he's played with to Vito Corleone's sons in The Godfather. Penny = Fredo, Kobe = Sonny, and Dwyane Wade = Michael.
Simply Google, a one-pager for navigating and searching all of Google's offerings.
Captain Picard's blog. With guestbloggers Seven of Nine, Will Riker, Worf, and Data.
Listen to three tracks from Thom Yorke's new solo project, the eraser. Radiohead it ain't, and I'm not sure I like it.
Names of books + band names. Charlie Daniels and the Chocolate Factory, Motley Crusoe, The Natalie Merchant of Venice, and J-Lolita...you get the idea.
In the beta version of Office 2007, a font called Calibri is the default font instead of Times New Roman. The end of a typographic era.
Peterme has a realization: "I am without a professional tribe". I've been feeling the same way for quite awhile now and like Peter, I'm not quite sure what to do about it.
Satellite imagery used to spot human rights abuses
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is exploring the use of satellite imagery to detect and prove human rights abuses. It's difficult to deny the communication potential of these images:
Larger versions of the images are available (before and after).
The images, analyzed by the AAAS staff, show two views of the settlement of Porta Farm, located just west of the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The first, an archived image from June 2002, shows an intact settlement with more than 850 homes and other buildings; an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people lived in Porta Farm at the time. The second photo, taken by satellite on 6 April this year, shows that the settlement has been leveled.
International rights groups allege that the forced relocations in Zimbabwe -- which affected over 700,000 people over the course of six weeks in 2005 -- are an attempt by the Mugabe government to supress opposition to the current regime.
The AAAS and other organizations hope to use satellite imagery in the future as a tool in addressing the human rights abuses in Darfur, Burma, and other areas. (via rw)
Videos of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons from the Simpsons. Get 'em before Fox's lawyers see them.
Update: If you'd like to automatically grab all the videos, here's a curl command that'll do it. (thx, matt)
Maciej takes George Will to task on bilingual ballots. Will thinks bilingual ballots are "a mockery of the rule of law" because you need to speak English to become a citizen. Maciej says, "the insinuation that voters might want ballots in Spanish because they are cheating, lazy, bad people is malicious and wrong. You choose Spanish on your ballot for the same reason you might choose it in an ATM transaction - not because you have contempt for American civil society, but because you don't want to make a mistake."
Unsurprisingly, the WSJ doesn't much care for An Inconvenient Truth. Is there any way of uncoupling political alignment and one's position on this issue?
Columbia House launches subscription meds program. "Qualified seniors may choose either 12 generic drugs for one cent, or five brand-name medications for 49 cents each, plus shipping and handling."
Minty Boost is a portable USB charger (for your iPod, digital camera, etc.) that fits inside an Altoids gum tin and uses 2 AA batteries as a power source. You can buy a kit, make one from scratch, or even use the instructions to make kits to sell yourself.
Lots of interesting questions about couples who spend a lot of time online "together". "A couple watching TV, curled up on a sofa together, may have felt 'together', a couple surfing on two wifi laptops are visiting different sites, having different experiences. They seem more apart than together. The internet age feels less communal than the TV age did."
Eyebeam's Graffiti Research Lab has won an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica 2006. Congrats, guys!
A quick study shows that stocks of simply named companies do better than those of more complexly named companies. Even companies with pronounceable ticker symbols did better than those with unpronounceable symbols.
Inspired by the hypertextish sidenotes in David Foster Wallace's Host, a piece from the Atlantic Monthly about radio host John Ziegler (screenshot of the article), arc90 whipped up a way to add sidenotes to any web page. Here they are in action.
Short list of hot dog places in NYC. What, no Crif Dogs? That's unpossible.
The top ten stock photography cliches. "The Handshake of Synergy: You've made the sale and closed the deal. They can't back out now--you shook on it!" Also, have you met Alicia or this girl?
Update: The same pigtailed girl uses Vagisil and helps teach people about Java Design Patterns for O'Reilly. (via joe, thx michael)
The Photography Channel has more than a dozen videos of photographers dicussing their craft, techniques, and experiences. A fine resource for photographers.
Dictionary words
I've been keeping track of words which return a link to a dictionary definition of the word in Google. Dictionary words are those that are written but not written about, haven't been subject to the corporate/band/blog word grab, or aren't otherwise popular words.
germane
paucity
reticent
cantankerous
suppositious
abstruse
whinge
assiduous
surreptitious
proclivity
disparaging
sporadically
hypertrophied
pallor
acerbic
surfeit
Many of the Dictionary.com Words of the Day are probably dictionary words as well.
World Cup fever, who has it? World Cup Blog has it; they've got a blogger covering each team in the Cup and even one covering just the referees.
Greg Allen rips into the Smithsonian for selling their archive (actually *our* archive) to Showtime for $6 million. "So not only did Smithsonian executives sell out America's patrimony to a single, giant media corporation, they sold it for practically nothing." Wank. Ers.
More on baby name popularity. Over the last few decades, the most popular baby names have been used less and less as the number of uniques names has risen. 2005 #1 name Jacob was given to only 1.2% of boys while 1945 #1 name James was given to 5.4%. In other words, the long tail of baby names is flattening.
Moleskine's City Notebook lets you create your own personal city guidebook. Photos of a prototype here; available for Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam now, Chicago, NYC, SF, Boston in 2007. Love the idea of a writable guidebook.
The tragedy of Kevin Garnett. According to the Wins Produced statistic, Garnett is far and away the best player in the NBA, but his teammates have always been bad. Hopefully Garnett can find "a few co-workers who can help him achieve the recognition his performance indicates he clearly deserves".
Oh, just go watch this remote controlled airplane video. Go! Now! (via cyn-c)
Global warming skeptic Gregg Easterbrook finally caves: "based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert". (via scott rosenberg, who says too little, too late, Gregg)
Coney Island to get a $1 billion makeover? I have a feeling that Shoot the Freak may not have a place in the new Coney Island.
Kevin Smith's report from the Cannes Film Festival, where Clerks II got an 8-minute standing ovation. Harvey Weinstein: "In my thirty years of coming here, I've never seen a standing ovation last that long at a midnight show in Cannes. Ever."
Feature request: per-domain JavaScript disabling. God yes, any more than one NY Times story up in Safari throws beach balls like crazy.
US TV schedule for World Cup 2006. Goaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllll!
Social, political, economic, cultural, historical, and technological timelines of the world from 1750 to 2100. Having all the timelines in one view is nice, but the zoomable interface is clunky.
From worst to first
Lest we forget, Steven Frank reminds us that for quite a few years (which period roughly coincides with Steve Jobs' absence from Apple), the Macintosh experience wasn't all it could have been. In the midst of those dark times, I made a post about how frustrated I was with the Macintosh.
I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
At my first web design job -- at a company that used to sell and service Macintosh computers -- they had Macs on all the desks. When I left a year and a half later, everyone had Dells running NT 4.0 instead; the difference in speed, stability, and price was not even close at that time. I didn't use another Mac until I bought an iBook after the second coming of Jobs and the advent of OS X.
BTW, that Mac sucks post has become something of a meme on Slashdot. It's been used to call out Java 1.4.2 fanatics, TI fanatics, SGI lava lamp fanatics, Apple laywers, Mac Mini hard drive performance, cat fanatics, Google fanatics, Amiga fanatics, Pittsburgh professors, Apple I fanatics, trolling losers, and so on.
Follow-up to Apple Store proposal (she said yes!)
Last week, I reported on a man using the video camera that Apple had set up to record the opening of their new store on 5th Ave in NYC to propose marriage to his girlfriend, one Uschi Lang.
I got an email from Uschi and she couldn't be happier to announce that she said yes to the proposal and that her fiancé James has made her "the happiest woman in the world". Congratulations, you two!
Update: I emailed Uschi and James for some more details and just got a response back. James had been meaning to propose for a few months -- he'd had "the talk" with her father over the holidays -- and was looking for a good opportunity. They were both in line for the 6pm opening of the Apple Store on Friday when James noticed the camera and a proposal idea that was "unique, timeless, and surprising" popped into his head.
At 4:30 am, he snuck out of bed without Uschi noticing it and headed back to the Apple Store. Based on the timing of the time-lapse video already posted on Apple's site, James stood with the signs for about 15 minutes (5 minutes per sign) to ensure that they were visible in the video.
A few days later, James set up a "romantic trail of candles" leading up to his G5, showed Uschi the video -- which she had not seen despite some coverage on the web -- and she of course said "yes".
There's not enough information in this National Geographic story to figure out if the recent finds in Peru has anything to do with the Norte Chico civilization or not. "We found some old stuff somewhere in Peru"...thanks guys, let us know when you starting writing science news for the post-kindergarten crowd. Here's a bit more info on the discovery (still no connection to Norte Chico).
Fine nerd humor: comparing Girlfriend 6.0 to Wife 1.0. "If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources." Would like to see Boyfriend 6.0 vs. Husband 1.0 as well.
Update: Husband 1.0 is already there. (thx, jason)
Writer Roger Angell on a leisurely approach to reporting. "Shawn didn't have a sense of deadline. [David] Remnick now wants it next week, which is fine. It's that sort of a magazine, and I try to oblige. Shawn thought, Everybody knows what the news is; now tell us something else about it." More on William Shawn.
Colorfully intricate maps of language distributions. The Asian and African maps are quite complex. (via moon river)
Al Gore, movie star
An Inconvenient Truth, a movie about Al Gore's global warming crusade, opens today in NYC and LA. John Heilemann has a lengthy piece on Gore for New York magazine, the NY Times has a piece about Gore and the movie, the climate science blog RealClimate has a positive review of the film, and here again is my review. Larry Lessig, who knows a thing or two about bringing tha PowerPoint noize, loves the movie, calling the slideshow "the most extraordinary lecture I have ever seen anyone give about anything".
An Inconvenient Truth will open in the rest of the US in mid-June; check this theater listing for details. For more news, check out the movie's blog.
10,000 sheep drawn by workers hired through Amazon's Mechanical Turk service. Average wage for the artists? $0.69 per hour. (via waxy)
Infinitely zoomable photographic mosaic. Very cool.
"Dude, it's time. Girls, you too. Time to pack up the whole in-your-face, raw, hyper-sexualized, porno, skater, white trash, open wounds, self-effacing, Jackass, loose ethics, 80's bar mitzvah disco, and party-till-you vomit movement, aesthetic and attitude. Go on, scram. Beat it. We don't want you hanging around anymore."
Job opening for a web designer
I'm the Design Advisor for a new small company in NYC, and we're looking for a full-time web designer. I can't tell you a whole lot about the company here, but I can say it involves the web, contagious media, & weblogs and the people responsible are creative, reasonable, smart, level-headed and not at all "dot com".
What we're looking for is a generalist sort of web designer, someone who can develop the information architecture for an information-oriented web application, do visual mockups in Photoshop/Illustrator based on the IA, code the site up with valid XHTML/CSS, doesn't flee at the sight of a little Perl or PHP code, is familiar with weblogs, and knows some JavaScript. You don't need to be completely solid on all of that, but if you're not, you should be a quick on-the-job learner and just generally curious about the world and interested in learning how it all fits together.
I will provide ad hoc feedback and you'll be working closely with Jonah Peretti and a small team of smart folks onsite in NYC (most likely in Soho or Chinatown). This is a full-time salaried position, benefits are included, and you'll get equity in the company. The position is open immediately so if you're interested, send your resume/portfolio to jobs@buzzfeed.com with a subject line of "Web Designer position" (plain text resumes and links to online resumes/portfolios are greatly preferred to email attachments). We look forward to hearing from you.
Fine interview with Pixar/Disney's John Lasseter, who is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. "I believe in the nobility of entertaining people, and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours out of their busy lives."
Lottery idea: instead of earmarking revenues for education, why not use the money for individual retirement accounts? The piece includes this startling fact: "Some 20 million Americans spend at least $1,000 a year on lottery tickets". !!!!
Nevaeh (heaven spelled backwards) is suddenly one of the most popular name for baby girls. Its popuarity can be traced to the appearance of a baby of the same name on MTV in 2000. Check on baby name popularity with NameVoyager.
Ben Saunders and Tony Haile are in Greenland training for an Antarctic expedition later this year. Here's how they'll be sending photos and blog posts back to their server along the way.
Morning subway demographics in NYC. Early morning blue collar workers give way to late morning white collar workers. (via capn)
Matt used MacSaber and his new MacBook to recreate the Star Wars kid video. In related news, the Portland, Oregon area reported a huge nerdquake this afternoon.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced two TV ads critical of the global scientific and political consensus on global warming. "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life." CEI is funded in part by energy companies, but I guess they're not that well funded because that's some of the most laughable propaganda I've ever seen. (thx, kyle)
What's the most offensive show on television? MTV's My Super Sweet 16. "Marissa created an exclusive guest list and announced it at school. If you weren't on the list, well, sorry. When a few kids begged to get an invitation, she made them have a 'dance-off' in front of her. Watching her get off on that was like watching the Emperor zap Luke Skywalker with those fingertip lightning bolts in Return Of The Jedi."
Even though avian flu is under control in some areas of Southeast Asia, Indonesia "has witnessed more bird flu deaths than any other country in 2006".
Media kit for the New Yorker, including an issue calendar, circulation stats, and advertising rates & specifications. Only 4% of their circulation is via the newsstand...that's a lot lower than I would have expected. Vogue's newsstand rate is ~36% and Wired's is ~13%.
Several Flickr members are displaying their drawings from and charting their progress on Brain Age. I love David's paramecium.
Rob Gonsalves
The work of Canadian artist Rob Gonsalves is part Salvador Dali, part Rene Magritte, and part M.C. Escher. This is one of my favorite images of his, called Tributaries:
I also quite like Community Portrait. Here's some of his other stuff and a book of his images.
The Wages of Wins sounds like Moneyball, but for all sports, not just baseball. Gladwell has a review in this week's New Yorker ("We become dance critics, blind to Iverson's dismal shooting percentage and his excessive turnovers, blind to the reality that the Philadelphia 76ers would be better off without him."), Tyler Cowen has a quick summary, and here's the blog for the book ("Most stars play worse in the playoffs."). Also, the formula for the Win Score statistic they refer to in the book.
Flickr photos tagged with "last day of high school". You've never seen so many smiles.
Pixar: where are all the women? "To date, there's not a single Pixar film that has a female main character: The Incredibles comes the closest, but even there, both Helen Parr/Elastigirl and Violet are supporting characters, and it's Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible that's the hero." Helen Parr and Dory are my favorite Pixar characters.
Update on the Apple Store marriage proposal: she said yes!
Update: Not so fast....that acceptance is probably a fake. I got suckered!
From hobby to business
In an article for the BBC, Alan Krueger describes how the entertainment industry in the US has become more business-like over the years:
"Early on in the entertainment industry, it's in the interest of the business to think of themselves as throwing a party, not selling a product. I think they attract more of a following that way," he said.
"But over time, the industry takes more the form of a market and is driven by market forces. The Superbowl initially felt like it was rewarding its fans. But then it becomes established and the League finds it in its interest to push up prices."
As my involvement in kottke.org resembles something more like a business and less like a hobby, I've noticed the trajectory described by Krueger, both in my approach to the site and in how kottke.org's readers perceive it. I'm sure other people have experienced this when their small projects have become businesses -- like Blogger, Movable Type, del.icio.us, Upcoming, etc. -- and have struggled to maintain a "rewarding its fans" type of relationship with their customers under increasing pressure from the market to focus on other things. Craigslist has done a good job in sticking close to their initial values and not allowing their business to be driven primarily by market forces. A company like Friendster? Not so successful.
Anyway, an interesting pattern to be aware of.
Barry Bonds finally ties Babe Ruth with 714 home runs. And with relatively little fanfare, largely because the homers will be eventually invalidated by his drug use and because Bonds is a dink.
Update: The kid who caught the home run ball doesn't care for Bonds much: "When asked if he would consider giving [the ball] to Bonds, Snyder declined with a mild expletive." Bonds was also booed at stadiums around the league when the homer was announced.
Amazon updates their online book reading interface...here's David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Matt has a screenshot and a bit about it. Coolest new feature: you can read some books online immediately after purchase (before the paper copy arrives) and use the reader interface to add notes and bookmarks to your online copy.
If you've got a Powerbook or MacBook with the built-in motion sensor, you can turn it into a lightsaber with MacSaber. Didn't work too well with my Powerbook, but what a cool idea. (thx, jon)
Marriage proposal at the new 5th Avenue Apple Store
Apple opened a new retail store last night on 5th Avenue here in New York City. Since 5pm yesterday evening, they've had a camera trained on the store to capture the first 24 hours of the festivities and are displaying the results in a time-lapse movie on the store's site. During the 5am segment of the movie, an enterprising Apple acolyte showed up and proposed to his girlfriend by holding up signs in front of the camera:
Does anyone know who this person is? Please email me if you do...I want to know how this turned out!
As it happens, this was the second marriage proposal at the opening...the eighth person in line proposed to his girlfriend right before the store opened and she said yes. Geek love!
Update: Uschi apparently said yes! (I say apparently because this blogspot site has the story and I'm assuming it was copied without attribution from a news site or newspaper but I can't find the actual source.) (thx, robert)
Update: My pal David thinks the acceptance is a hoax...that blogspot site is filled with other fake news stories. I was fished in!!
At the current exchange rate, over 50% of the transactions in Lindens (the unit of currency in the game Second Life) are for US$0.07 or less. Micropayments, anyone?
Uncanny Valley, CA
S-s-s-omething from the inbox. Paul writes regarding the uncanny valley:
Given your recent link re: the uncanny valley, I thought this article about Sun-Maid's redesigned icon would be worth your time. Photo.
Clearly, she's selling grapes from a certain valley. Creeeepy.
I love the idea of Uncanny Valley being an actual geographical location (situated in California, I would assume) inhabited by creepy video game characters, digitized actors, and retooled advertising icons.
Imagine the views from neighboring hillsides! (Image courtesy of Google Earth.)
Nicholas Carr weighs in on the serendipity of the web: "Once you create an engine - a machine - to produce serendipity, you destroy the essence of serendipity. It becomes something expected rather than something unexpected. Looking for serendipity? Just follow these easy links!" Previously on serendipity and the web: William McKeen and Steven Johnson.
Update: Steven Johnson responds to Nicholas Carr's post. The circle of feedback continues.
Clever headline watch: Mayor tapped water customers for sex.
Megnut redesigns and refocuses full-time on food. I helped with the design and I can't wait to see how the site evolves over the next few months as Meg finds her stride.
For the "beloved modeling compund's" 50th birthday, they're making a perfume that smells like Play-Doh. They missed a golden opportunity to call it "Play-D'eau". (thx, leah)
MP3 audio of notable moments in history, including Apollo 13's "Houston, we have a problem", Albert Einstein explaining e-mc^2, and, uh, Al Pacino from Scarface. (via cyn-c)
NBA playoffs
Many basketball fans don't care for the pro game, but you'd have to be made of stone if you're not appreciating the NBA playoffs this year. Have you been watching? What a bunch of great games and series.
Round one featured an old-fashioned duel between LeBron James and Gilbert Arenas, Phoenix battling back from a 3-1 series deficit against a perplexing Lakers team (with Kobe playing team basketball!) to win, and an aging Shaquille O'Neal -- after the refs demonstrated that he was no longer good enough to bull his way through defenders in the post and not get called for offensive fouls -- going for 30 points and 20 rebounds in game six, playing a finesse game unseen from him since his college days at LSU.
And in the second round, the Clippers and Suns are going at it like cats and dogs (2 overtimes in game five, 253 total points in game 1), the defending champion Spurs are trying to come back from a 3-1 deficit to the Mavericks (3 of the games have been decided by 2 points or less and another went to overtime), and the Pistons, who by all accounts should have swept the Cavs in four, find themselves down 3-2 to a team with the best 21-year-old basketball player ever.
Despite the NBA's dogged insistence on promoting individual players as the primary reason to watch games, watching the team play has been the most compelling part of the playoffs. Detroit, Phoenix, San Antonio, the Clippers, and Dallas are great to watch on either end of the court: how a team's offense changes in response to their opponent's defense, how the defense changes to compensate for the tweaks made by the offense, and so on. I don't have a favorite team in the playoffs this year, but this is the most fun I've had watching the NBA since rooting for the Bulls in 1998. (I know, I know.)
These nutballs are making a 1 second film financed by anyone who wants to cough up a buck or two for a producer credit. The film will be followed by an estimated 90 minutes of credits (in order to list all the producers). Awesome. (thx, blythe)
Re: Jim Emerson's list of films you should see to consider yourself movie literate, what are the essential gay/queer movies?
Artist Jeremiah Palecek has recently been painting pieces inspired by video games, including Super Mario Bros.
Playboy lists the 25 sexiest novels ever written. I've read only 2 of the 25: Lolita and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Probably a little NSFW.
Some neat tech-inspired jewelry and accessories from Zelle. I don't what's coolest, the transistor earrings, microcontroller cufflinks, the belt made from an IDE cable, or the capacitor necklace.
Networks on a plane
Q. Is it possible to use a wireless Internet connection on a plane?
A. Yes, if you happen to be flying on an airline that offers the service. International carriers like Korean Air, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines already have wireless broadband service on many routes; fees for using it vary. Check with your airline to see if it offers in-flight Internet.
So says the NY Times. While it may not be possible to use wireless Internet connections on the plane, it is possible to use wireless connections. Apple laptops can create networks which other computers with wireless capability can join. Bluetooth capable devices like laptops and cellphones can communicate with each other over smaller distances.
Since 9/11, I've often thought that this would be an effective way for a group of people to coordinate some nefarious action on a plane without attracting any attention. Five or six people scattered about the plane on laptops, iChatting plans to one another, wouldn't be unusual at all. Of course, a properly trained group wouldn't need to communicate with each other at all after boarding the plane. Nor, says Bruce Schneier, should we ban things like cellphones and Internet access on airplanes for security reasons.
Yale's MFA Graphic Design show is this weekend in New Haven from May 17 to May 24, opening on May 20th. (thx, rebecca)
What's the best way of handling blog comment threads? I *hate* threaded comment interfaces, but with flat displays, multiple conversations are hard to track and 100+ comment threads become difficult to read.
Ahhhhh!! Freaky Gatorade commerical with big-headed children. Like nails on a chalkboard, this is. Reminds me a bit of Loretta Lux's photographs though.
When asked whether or not the Da Vinci Code movie should have a "this is fiction" disclaimer on it, Ian McKellen (who stars in the movie) replied, "I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction". Zing! (via cyn-c)
Cork'd is a community for wine lovers that lets you catalog what's in your wine collection, what your friends are drinking, and discover what you should be drinking. (It's a little like Flickr or del.icio.us for wine.)
Absurd luxury markets..."some khaki pants are now selling for AS MUCH AS $1055" (emphasis mine). Holy shit.
Lee Siegel has a Malcolm Gladwell problem and, he argues, so do the rest of us. From a commenter (who gets his Dubner mixed up with his Levitt): "Gladwell is destroying literature as we know it". (via 3qd)
Internet-only trailer for Clerks 2 by Kevin Smith. Going boldly where Harold and Kumar have gone before.
Top science book prize goes to David Bodanis's Electric Universe, a book about electricity. An odd choice...I read the book and it was good but not great.
"Kiva lets you loan as little as $25 to a qualified low income entrepreneur in the developing world." Basically no-interest loans to developing countries as charity, but you get the original donation amount back. Pretty cool idea. (thx, jonah)
Dammit, today is Skip Lunch, Fight Hunger day and I unknowingly made lunch plans several days ago. I'm skipping lunch tomorrow instead. I've had problems with this in the past as well.
Laundry bus
Spotted this on my walk to the office this morning:
If you can't tell, it's a bus covered with laundry. This had to be an advertisement for something (MTA employees aren't that eccentric) and after a little poking around online, I found out it's part of All's "Spot the Bus" sweepstakes:
From May 15th to 26th, two all small & mighty buses covered in clothes will cruise the streets of New York City. When you see one, send a text message of the time and location to 96787. You'll be entered in the Spot the Bus Sweepstakes.
If you'd like to take part without actually spotting the bus or even living in NYC (and have a chance at winning $5000), I took the above photo at 10:41am near 14th Street and 10th Ave in Manhattan. Good luck!
"If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?" Nuclear weapons? Land mines? Internal combustion engine?
A list of the 100 most influential persons in the world and what religion each practiced. The list should more properly be called the 100 most influential men in the world + Queens Elizabeth I and Isabella I. (via rb)
A history of the lowrider. "But the ultimate discovery was the realization that a heavy hydro system could launch the entire front end off the ground."
Plan is a photographic project by Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga consisting of overhead views of apartments. "Such an unusual effect was achieved through the use of a special technique: the overall picture of a room is an aggregate of dozens fragmentary photographs taken from above, and then merged using a computer." More here. A bit NSFW.
List of sounds that different animals make in different languages.
Update: Bzzzpeek and Sounds of the World's Animals both let you listen to how these different animal sounds are pronounced. (thx finn, lizette, and justine)
Free wifi in Central Park? Hopefully by June.
Update: The free wifi in Central Park thing was supposed have been in place last September. (thx, amy)
How do scientist attribute climate-change data? In other words, how can they tell from the available data that climate change can be attributed to human causes?
Small site matter
Sorry to bug you about this, but I moved the RSS feeds for kottke.org and the remaindered links. I'm using redirects so you shouldn't even notice anything. That is, your feedreader should be directed to the new files automagically and if you're reading this message in a newsreader, it has worked. But if you are having problems with the new files, send me an email and I'll get the technical team (ahem) on it right away.
New files: kottke.org RSS, kottke.org remaindered links RSS.
Flickr redesigns slightly; they've moved out of "beta" and into "gamma". More on the redesign from Flickr HQ. (thx, joshua)
Two graphic design teams recently went head-to-head on The Apprentice. The winning team had flat-panel monitors, OS X, and Adobe Creative Suite while the losers were still using an old version of Quark on Mac OS 9 displayed on a gigantic CRT monitor. "Graphic Design Lesson A: Get the latest hardware and software, and you will win. Always."
Apple announces new MacBooks (iBook successor with Intel chips) saying, "Meet the family. Now Complete." Does that mean no 12" MacBook Pro?
Interview with photographer Jay Parkinson about his aspiring model project. "I feel that it's a photographic cop-out to take photos of strictly beautiful people because it's hard to take a bad photo of a beautiful person, especially a very scripted portrait."
Video of a Dutch store celebrating its 10,000 shoplifter. Transcript & translation in the comments.
My new favorite song ever for the next 20 minutes is Smiley Faces by Gnarls Barkley (album @ Amazon). Can't get enough. Thanks to Greg for turning me on to the GB.
Google Maps + Fast Food shows all the the McDonald's, Burger Kings, Wendy's, and Jack in the Boxes in the US on a scrollable, zoomable map. Here's lower Manhattan + parts of Brooklyn and New Jersey. (Alternate plurals of Jack in the Box: Jacks in the Box or Jack in the Boxen?)