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Thinking in a different language affects how you make decisions RIP, man with bullet lodged in head for 94 years Six-year-old Ethan W plays "Piano Man" Faithful reproduction of the IBM Wall Clock Odd corn-removal advertisement Douglas Rushkoff interviewed on Motherboard TV Steve Jobs wanted to be Willy Wonka for a day Photo grid of famous athiests The Driftless Area: Wisconsin's strange geology DIY cellphone kit Consent of the Networked: indispensable, levelheaded explanation of how technology can make us free, or take away our liberty "New" images from NASA's Project Gemini program Don't Miss PLANET EARTH World Premiere Specials EFF's hacker mailing list Putin on 3D specs Kindle Fire half of all Android tablets iBooks Author explained Nonuplets Nintendo posts huge loss Talking DRM on the CBC Canadian MP delivers exquisite tongue-lashing Polymer clay skull ring Publishing exec admission: "I break ebook DRM" Miami-Dade County bought 300 Toyota Prius hybrids over five years ago and then forgot about them Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" performed on traditional Chinese instruments Glass floor in bathroom has illuminated view of 15-level elevator shaft 10MM images from Guatemala's National Police go online: disappearances, STD experiments, more Bear tranquilized after climbing tree at University of Colorado dorm building Sneak attack: surprise amendment makes CISPA worse, then it is voted and passed a day ahead of schedule. Congress just deleted the Fourth Amendment May Day General Strike posters Thinking in a different language affects how you make decisions
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 27, 2012 12:53 pm Back in 2002, psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the economics Nobel Prize for showing that human beings don't have a really good intuitive grasp of risk. Basically, the decisions we make when faced with a risky proposition depend more on how the question is framed than on what the actual outcome might be. The classic example ...
Read in browser RIP, man with bullet lodged in head for 94 years
By David Pescovitz on Apr 27, 2012 12:49 pm William Lawlis Pace, 103, died on Monday. He held a Guinness World Record for living 94 years with a bullet lodged in his head, behind his ear. From the Modesto Bee: Born Feb. 27, 1909, in Wheeler, Texas, Mr. Pace was 8 years old when his brother, Marvin, accidentally shot him in October 1917. Doctors ...
Read in browser Six-year-old Ethan W plays "Piano Man"
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 27, 2012 12:31 pm [Video Link] See more videos of Ethan playing piano here. (Via Biotv)
Read in browser Faithful reproduction of the IBM Wall Clock
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 27, 2012 12:15 pm Kevin Kidney says: "Our brilliant friends at Schoolhouse Electric in Portland have partnered with IBM to reproduce their iconic 1960s standard issue wall clock. It takes me back to childhood, and late afternoons anticipating school to be let out as that thin red second hand ran circles behind the domed glass." The IBM Wall Clock
Read in browser Odd corn-removal advertisement
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 27, 2012 12:08 pm It looks like she is mounting jewels in her toes. (Via Phil Are Go)
Read in browser Douglas Rushkoff interviewed on Motherboard TV
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 27, 2012 11:52 am Vice's Motherboard has a good interview with our friend Douglas Rushkoff. Understanding how things work In order to make them work better is the basic hacker ethos, but Rushkoff has applied it to his broader discussion of the way the culture and politics of the many are driven by the interests of the few. Between ...
Read in browser Steve Jobs wanted to be Willy Wonka for a day
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 27, 2012 11:43 am From Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success, by Ken Segall Steve's idea was to do a Willy Wonka with it. Just as Wonka did in the movie, Steve wanted to put a golden certificate representing the millionth iMac inside the box of one iMac, and publicize that fact. Whoever opened the lucky iMac ...
Read in browser Photo grid of famous athiests
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 27, 2012 11:40 am From top left: Mark Twain, Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, Keira Knightley, Stephen Hawking, Bill Maher, John Lennon, Ricky Gervais, Julianne Moore, Keanu Reeves, Bill Shatner, Johnny Depp, Janeane Garofalo, James Cameron, Billy Joel, Jack Nicholson, John Malkovich, Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Ian McKellan, Albert Einstein, Brad Pitt, Daniel Radcliffe, Jodie Foster, Hugh ...
Read in browser The Driftless Area: Wisconsin's strange geology
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 27, 2012 11:33 am Image: The Baraboo Range, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from crisp_air's photostream On Wednesday, I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, to give a talk based on my book, Before the Lights Go Out. I took the train to get there, traveling south from Minneapolis along the Mississippi River before jumping the border into Wisconsin ...
Read in browser DIY cellphone kit
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2012 11:25 am From David Mellis at MIT's High-Low Tech, a $150 DIY Cellphone kit prototype. The idea is to let you bash together your own mobile phone and modify/customize it to your heart's content. An exploration into the possibilities for individual construction and customization of the most ubiquitous of electronic devices, the cellphone. By creating and sharing ...
Read in browser Consent of the Networked: indispensable, levelheaded explanation of how technology can make us free, or take away our liberty
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2012 10:46 am I've just finished Rebecca MacKinnon's Consent of the Networked, and now I'm kicking myself for letting it languish in my review pile for as long as I did. It is an absolutely indispensable account of the way that technology both serves freedom and removes it. MacKinnon is co-founder of the Global Voices project, and a ...
Read in browser "New" images from NASA's Project Gemini program
By David Pescovitz on Apr 27, 2012 10:02 am These photos look like lost stills from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but they are actually newly digitized images from NASA's Project Gemini program of 1965 and 1966. The Gemini mission was to develop and test technologies that would later be used by the Apollo program to bring humans to the moon. Smithsonian Air & Space ...
Read in browser Don't Miss PLANET EARTH World Premiere Specials
By Advertiser on Apr 27, 2012 10:00 am ADVERTISEMENT Be sure to watch as Planet Earth, the landmark natural history series, comes home to BBC America starting this Sunday at 8pm/7c. See the groundbreaking series the way it was meant to be seen – with the original narration by Sir David Attenborough and the original score by George Fenton. Plus, don't miss World ...
Read in browser EFF's hacker mailing list
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2012 08:51 am The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched its Coders' Rights List, a new mailing list for hackery subjects: Sign up today to get the latest news on computer security law, upcoming events with EFF lawyers, discounts on infosec conferences like BlackHat, SOURCE, HOPE, and open source software events, and even get a jump on EFF's third ...
Read in browser Putin on 3D specs
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 27, 2012 08:19 am Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin spaces out at a Moscow planetarium; April marks the 51st anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic first human space flight. Photo: Alexsey Druginyn
Read in browser Kindle Fire half of all Android tablets
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 27, 2012 07:59 am The Kindle Fire by far outsells tablets running more standard cuts of Android. Adds MG Siegler: "Google planned to take 33% of the total tablet market in 2011. Yet they barely have 33% of the Android tablet market." [Electronista via parislemon]
Read in browser iBooks Author explained
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 27, 2012 07:44 am Will iBooks become the iTunes of self-publishing? David Girard offers a howto on Apple's ebook authoring app. [Ars Technica]
Read in browser Nonuplets
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 27, 2012 07:37 am A woman in Coahuila, Mexico, is pregnant with nine babies, according to Televisa. Six girls and three boys!
Read in browser Nintendo posts huge loss
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 27, 2012 07:31 am Reuters: "with [the] Wii boom waning, the successor being prepared by the creator of Super Mario looks like a losing proposition, as makers of smartphones and computer tablets take digital games to the bathroom, the commuter bus and back to the bedroom."
Read in browser Talking DRM on the CBC
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2012 12:40 am Here's a quick clip of me talking to the CBC's As It Happens about my publisher's decision to drop DRM.
Read in browser Canadian MP delivers exquisite tongue-lashing
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2012 11:36 pm Here's a tasty audio clip of a Canadian Member of Parliament banging his fellow MPs' heads together (metaphorically) over their petty procedural squabbling. Thanks to the CBC's As It Happens for providing it. (Link fixed -- sorry!)
Read in browser Polymer clay skull ring
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 26, 2012 10:45 pm My daughters and I have been playing around with polymer clay lately. It's wonderful stuff. You can mold it like regular oil based clay, but when you bake it in the oven it gets hard. I've been looking around online for inspiration, and I came across this great skull ring that Rossana Meyer made with ...
Read in browser Publishing exec admission: "I break ebook DRM"
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2012 10:27 pm An anonymous publishing exec explains to PaidContent how he started to break DRM on the ebooks he bought (they wouldn't open on all his devices unless he did) and how, having broken DRM, he realized that DRM was total bullshit: I believe this is justified because I realize that when I buy an e-book from ...
Read in browser Miami-Dade County bought 300 Toyota Prius hybrids over five years ago and then forgot about them
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 26, 2012 09:45 pm The Miami-Dade County government purchased about 300 Toyota Prius hybrids in 2006 and 2007, but misplaced them without ever having used them. The taxpayers are out $4 million. The county "discovered" this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a Spanish-language newspaper there. Most of the misplaced motorcade is made up of Toyota ...
Read in browser Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" performed on traditional Chinese instruments
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2012 09:15 pm Fairmariner from the band Matteo writes, "Our band has been invited to go to China for 6 weeks as musicians-in-residence at Sichuan University! We still can't quite believe this is happening to us. We're going to record an EP while we're there, and we have a Kickstarter for that project. That's Matteo above, performing my ...
Read in browser Glass floor in bathroom has illuminated view of 15-level elevator shaft
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 26, 2012 08:45 pm The glass floor in the bathroom of this house in Mexico looks down an unused 15-floor elevator shaft. Pent-house PPDG by Hernandez Silva
Read in browser 10MM images from Guatemala's National Police go online: disappearances, STD experiments, more
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2012 08:09 pm Forensic human rights statistician Patrick Ball sez, "More than 10 million images from the Historical Archive of the Guatemalan National Police (AHPN in the Spanish acronym) are now online at the University of Texas. Documents from the Archive start in the late nineteenth century and continue until the Police were disbanded in 1996. Scholars using ...
Read in browser Bear tranquilized after climbing tree at University of Colorado dorm building
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 26, 2012 07:21 pm My parents have been seeing a lot of bears recently near their house in Boulder, Colorado. The detail shown here is from a larger photo of a doped-up bear falling from a tree onto a mattress. He was discovered in the Williams Village university housing complex, which is surrounded on all sides by residential areas. ...
Read in browser Sneak attack: surprise amendment makes CISPA worse, then it is voted and passed a day ahead of schedule. Congress just deleted the Fourth Amendment
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2012 07:20 pm In a sneak attack, the vote on CISPA (America's far-reaching, invasive Internet surveillance bill) was pushed up by a day. The bill was hastily amended, making it much worse, then passed on a rushed vote. Techdirt's Leigh Beadon does a very good job of explaining what just happened to America: Previously, CISPA allowed the government ...
Read in browser May Day General Strike posters
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 26, 2012 06:40 pm Hugh sez, "Check out Eric Drooker's latest May Day poster -- he has a bunch that can be downloaded here as well. I've got one as well on my Flickr page. (Thanks, Hugh!)
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