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- Hardware, software and services I use
- Remarkably frank Lysol douche ad
- Drug-smuggling sub
- Can "hair of the dog" really alieviate a hangover?
- Nuke the oil spill?
- Analysts say criminal charges against BP are "inevitable"
- Otters help their elderly (sometimes)
- Better living through green chemistry
- Draft of Declaration of Independence named subjects, not citizens
- Yackety Sax + Global Thermonuclear War
- Singapore "Fail Whale Bus" public transit posters
- MixMixGangBang: Parisian mashup artists recreate great album covers with luchador masks
- Is calling torture 'torture' political correctness?
| Hardware, software and services I use Posted: 03 Jul 2010 10:38 PM PDT My latest Locus column, "What I Do," is a pretty thorough inventory of the apps, OSes, hardware and services I use on a day to day basis: From time to time, people ask me for an inventory of the tools and systems I use to get my work done. As a hard-traveling, working writer, I spend a lot of time tinkering with my tools and systems. At the risk of descending into self-indulgence (every columnist's occasional privilege), I'm going to try to create a brief inventory, along with a wish/to-do list for the next round.What I Do |
| Remarkably frank Lysol douche ad Posted: 03 Jul 2010 10:36 PM PDT  The message in this Lysol douche ad: use it or you will be so utterly repulsive down there that your husband will lose all sexual interest in you and your marriage will fall apart and it will all be your disgusting fault. |
| Posted: 03 Jul 2010 11:57 PM PDT This 30-meter long submarine, used to smuggle huge amount of cocaine, was was seized in Ecuador yesterday. Apparently, a drug trafficking outfit built it in the middle of the jungle. From CNN: "Ecuador authorities seize drug-smuggling sub"
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| Can "hair of the dog" really alieviate a hangover? Posted: 03 Jul 2010 03:20 PM PDT I saw that headline in my RSS feed and was immediately intrigued. Sadly, the answer is, "Nobody knows." But it's a sad answer with an interesting reason behind it. Turns out, hangover cures are one of those things that have never gotten much attention from science, according to the Good, Bad and Bogus blog. And, apparently, that's because doctors view hangovers as a complication of excessive drinking, rather than a medical problem in, and of, itself. Treating hangover is controversial because there's already a cure, according to an editorial in Current Drug Abuse Reviews: Don't drink so much. |
| Posted: 03 Jul 2010 03:08 PM PDT  Why don't we just detonate a nuclear bomb on the Macondo oil well, and seal the Deepwater Horizon spill that way? I keep hearing this suggestion in comments here and in conversations out in the real world. Frankly, whether it's plausible or not, that tactic isn't ever likely to get an OK. But a few good stories have been written about the nuclear option recently and, for the sake of armchair speculation, there's a couple of facts we should keep in mind: Nuclear bombs have been used to seal leaking wells before, but the situations aren't analogous. Those successful detonations were used on leaking gas wells, located on dry land. If tactics that can stop a surface gas leak could naturally be applied to deepwater oil leaks with a high chance of success ... well, we'd probably have this thing stopped already. The explosion would happen deep under the seabed. Nobody's talking about just detonating a bomb underwater. Instead, the idea is to drill a hole near the broken well and drop a bomb down that. The goal of an explosion isn't to cap the top of the well, but to pinch it off further down.This fact matters, because underground detonations are much less of a threat—from a radioactive fallout perspective.
Consider the source. Who are the most public proponents of nuking the oil spill? Mostly aging engineers from the U.S. and Russia who were part of 1960s efforts to use nuclear bombs in peaceful ways—like blasting through mountains to make highways, and quickly "digging" huge canals. The U.S. scrapped its plans for nuclear-assisted infrastructure development because of concerns over the rather obvious ecological impacts of surface explosions. (I like to imagine scientists waking up in the morning with a horrible hangover, looking at their notes from the night before, and making a bunch of frantically apologetic phone calls.) The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had no such qualms. They nuked their own country peacefully at least 124 times between 1958 and 1989. Almost every instance is described as a success, but, as you might expect, outside sources say that the full truth hasn't really been reported. Reuters: Should BP Nuke Its Leaking Well? Image courtesy Flickr user Coso Blues, via CC |
| Analysts say criminal charges against BP are "inevitable" Posted: 03 Jul 2010 02:33 PM PDT Whether that leads to actual convictions, who knows. But this Bloomberg article has some interesting analysis on one legal avenue for prosecution that could actually lead to punishment for BP, as a company, and top executives, including Tony Hayward, rather than simply focusing on the employees directly in charge of operations at the Deepwater Horizon site.
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| Otters help their elderly (sometimes) Posted: 03 Jul 2010 03:06 PM PDT  The Human. Nature. blog had a neat story about Giant Peruvian Otters offering help to elderly members of the otter community.
Why does this matter, besides, of course, the obvious cuteness factor? Writer Hannah Holmes says it's an example of animals doing something that was once thought to be a behavior exclusive to humans—namely, caring for individuals who are no longer productive members of the group. Otters take care of their grandmas. At least, you know, 1/4th of the time. Image courtesy Flickr user pierre pouliquin,via CC. |
| Better living through green chemistry Posted: 03 Jul 2010 01:01 PM PDT Petrochemical production makes up as much as a 1/4 of the oil use in some parts of the United States. And, it's fair to say, we're every bit as addicted to plastic as we are to gasoline. But alternatives are on the way. And, if pilot programs are any indication, sustainable versions of these chemicals might be easier and cheaper to make than their petrol-based cousins. Great example: 1,4‐butanediol, or BDO. According to an article on Grist, this compound is used to make everything from skateboard wheels to sneakers. Now, a company in California has successfully pilot-tested a method of making it using engineered microorganisms that consume sugar and water and expire BDO. Finally, poop you do want on your shoes. |
| Draft of Declaration of Independence named subjects, not citizens Posted: 03 Jul 2010 11:17 AM PDT  Hyperspectral images of a draft of the Declaration of Independence reveal that it originally used the word 'subjects' instead of 'citizens' at a critical juncture. After writing "our fellow subjects," author Thomas Jefferson scrubbed it out and replaced it with the familiar alternative. To the Library of Congress, whose Preservation Research and Testing Division analyzed the document with the latest high-resolution camera equipment, it illustrates an important moment: "when [Jefferson] reconsidered his choice of words and articulated the recognition that the people of the fledgling United States of America were no longer subjects of any nation, but citizens of an emerging democracy."
The Library of Congress often discovers unusual things while examining ancient artifacts. Especially maps and documents, where modern tech sees what the naked eye can't: corrections, changes, and severely faded or damaged elements.  The correction is in the part of the declaration concerning grievances against King George III. "It had been a spine-tingling moment when I was processing data late at night and realized there was a word underneath citizens," said scientist Fenella France, who revealed the correction at the LoC's labs, in a press release. "Then I began the tough process of extracting the differences between spectrally similar materials to elucidate the lost text." According to the Library, the correction was suspected in the past--similar language exists in state constitutions--but not demonstrable until now.  Photos: Library of Congress. |
| Yackety Sax + Global Thermonuclear War Posted: 03 Jul 2010 11:42 AM PDT I'm back in my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas this weekend. At lunch today, a friend pointed me toward this mashup of the Yackety Sax and "The Day After", a cautionary tale about nuclear war with the Soviet Union, filmed in Lawrence and Kansas City in the early 1980s. I'd like to dedicate this post to Leah Shaffer and the Sunflower House Alumni Association. |
| Singapore "Fail Whale Bus" public transit posters Posted: 03 Jul 2010 10:40 AM PDT  Looks like whoever designed these Singapore Mass Rapid Transit posters either thought the Twitter Fail Whale was a cute, edgy icon, free for the co-opting -- or they're trying to impart a cautionary message about the bus service. A bad month for SMRT: All aboard the Fail Train! (everythingelsehere.com, thanks, Sean Bonner!) |
| MixMixGangBang: Parisian mashup artists recreate great album covers with luchador masks Posted: 03 Jul 2010 09:02 AM PDT  djBC sez, "My friends ComaR, Yold Bibba, Gatt and Gandpamini have been running a mashup/cover/remix night in Paris called "Mix Mix Gang Bang." It's at a really cool Mexican Wrestling Bar called La Lucha Libre, they wear the iconic wrestling masks, and they set up the decks in a ring. The flyers are not to be missed. And each month they recreate an album cover, seemingly from scratch. Check out the gallery." MIX MIX GANG BANG (Thanks, djBC!)
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| Is calling torture 'torture' political correctness? Posted: 03 Jul 2010 10:55 AM PDT The New York Times is one of the many newspapers which, after calling torture "torture" for generations, switched to euphemisms ("enhanced interrogation techniques") during the previous administration. The prevalence of such language is summed up in a paper by Harvard University students, who found that its use became ubiquitous after prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib was exposed. Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, is unhappy with the report. To him, it is direct language such as 'torture' — not the elaborate, vague euphemisms the government prefers — which amounts to politically correct terminology. "I think this Kennedy School study -- by focusing on whether we have embraced the politically correct term of art in our news stories -- is somewhat misleading and tendentious."His defense, summed up, is that the word 'torture' takes sides. But this is nonsense: using the word to describe waterboarding, sleep deprivation and similar techniques was accepted long ago. To now claim that doing so is 'controversial' is the side he's sided with. Moreover, according to the NYTpicker, Keller wrote more than a dozen stories describing such techniques as 'torture' before his administration-approved change of heart. Glenn Greenwald's criticism of Keller's position is not afraid of using direct language. Keller's saying, in effect, that serving the government's desire for it to stop calling torture 'torture' just happened to coincide with the Times' switch to the impartial language it should have used all along. What luck! If nothing else, it illustrates how ingenious we can be at rationalizing competitive self-interest as journalistic propriety. But what the last few years should have taught the mainstream media is that maintaining the approval of one's subjects isn't what you should be competing for. Every time an establishment hack serves their subjects to preserve their access, God gives a photoshopped kitten 1000 page views. Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media [Harvard University] |
The vessel utilized twin screws and was diesel electric-powered, the agency said. It was about 30 meters (98 feet) long and nearly 3 meters (nine feet) high from the deck plates to the ceiling. It has a periscope and an air-conditioning system.| You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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