SNL's TV Funhouse take on GE not being so nice
Shown only once. GE is the parent corp of NBC, SNL's network.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
White supremacists pwned by clowns
A rally in Knoxville, TN falls for some choreographed ridicule. I always thought Anti Racist Action was a militant, violent group that eventually disbanded.
List of conversion resources
Not only video and document formats, but also drafting docs, scripts, clothing sizes, and Gregorian to Julian calendar.
Fusion with lasers
The extremely high temperatures at which the reaction takes place cost large amounts of energy to generate, and require magnetic containment facilities, as terrestrial materials would melt in contact with the reaction. Lasers can be used to create these temperatures efficiently, at the point of fusion, so that containment of the reaction becomes less of a problem.
Third generation Atlas Devices Rope Ascender
Motorized climbing. Can handle much more load than the first generation. Very simple trigger operation.
Ways your resume irk the hiring manager
I thought hobbies and interests were supposed to communicate something!
What causes flatulence?
Goes over the sugars that are the input for the microbes which create the gas.
Dangerous Knowledge -- suicidal mathematicians
Have not watched myself. It's a 90-min video doc from BBC.
Learn more, study less
It is true that how you absorb information is important to its persistence. The author sketches out steps to improve holistic learning.
World's wackiest holidays and festivals
A photo gallery of craziness from around the world. This one is of the mascot for the Redneck Games in front of the mud pit.
Scan viruses before your download with Dr. Web
It's a Firefox extension that applies for any directly linked file.
How to never get in trouble for recording calls with customer service
You state what you are going to do, but make it seem like a joke.
World's smallest 1080p camcorder from Sanyo -- the Xacti DMX-HD1000
Onto SDHC cards, the max of which is 8 GB which is about 1 hour and 25 minutes at full rez. There's enough charge for that.
Mothers' reading style affect children's later understanding of other's minds
A more detailed breakdown of the mothers' reading style showed that it was particularly references to story characters' mental states and explaining their thoughts and actions using 'think' terms (e.g. Mother says: “...this boy sees so many people and thinks, 'I'll pretend I don't know what's going on and I'll push to the front of the queue'”) that was predictive of their children having a more advanced understanding of mental states a year later.
Monty Python Day
It appears that the third Monty Python has just passed at that castle in The Holy Grail. People get to act the scene out.
Third generation schizophrenia drugs look promising
Fewer side effects. Manages the glutamate-NMDA receptor mediation path.
Economics and culture of Google
Best is the inside dope on the disparity from the hype of the utopian culture as dished by Xooglers (ex-Google employees).
People sensitive to disgust are more likely to hold right-wing views
Yet more evidence that political stance is derived less from truth of principle and more from a general cognitive effect.
Interpersonal disgust sensitivity – not wanting to wear clean second hand clothes is another example - continued to predict racist attitudes even after fear of disease was taken into account.Also, self-declared liberals' EEGs of the anterior cingulate cortex where self-regulation is highly associated exhibited "'significantly greater conflict-related neural activity' when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in the routine". Conservatives, less so. Article here.
Bluetooth headset roundup
From Australian company BlueAnt, the Z9 uses an audio algorithm to distinguish voice signals from everything else to cancel out external noise.
Jawbone's solution to noise cancellation is to increase mic volume when you're speaking, and lower it when you're not.
The Plantronics Voyager 855 does not have noise cancellation, but two connected earpieces for stereo listening. So it handles both phone and Bluetooth-enabled media player.
Energy infrastructure map in the U.S.
Covers not just oil, but nuclear, natural gas and even renewables. Has interesting factoids as well as links to price histories.
Schlitzie, the Pinhead
This story made me pause when I learned that this guy with microcephalus and the intelligence of a four-year-old lived mostly as a carnival freak until the age of 71. All my struggles against deep financial suffering -- being on the street, let's say, which may lead to an early death -- seem overwrought when a simple, decent guy like this can go on for that many decades.
Implanting the brain with cells containing genes that will produce amyloid plaque-busting enzymes
In mice for the moment, but another treatment possibility for Alzheimer's. They injected skin fibroblasts containing the gene that produces the amyloid-busting neprilysin enzyme.
Do parents really love adopted children differently than their own offspring?
Not always idyllic, but from the believers of the nurture side of the equation:
... much of growing up is about choosing a story, one that explains what made us who we are. This is a culture that increasingly fetishizes one shard of that story, the blood connection ...
Refrigerate with no electricity, just magnets
It's silent and a prototype should be out in 2010. Air conditioning overtaxing the grid can be a thing of the past.
The underbelly of some great men in history
One example is not extreme enough: Gandhi's misjudgement was due to a lack of data. It's not a stable prejudice like the one he had against the untouchable caste, however much he talked the talk in that case.
FDR, too, had worse aspects than just being in a wheelchair -- mostly to do with racism, but that one's pretty easy for any figure going into the past.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
The Biontague folding electric bike
Forty-three pounds and can go 60 miles on a charge. There's also some conversion kit available to make your present bike electrically-assisted.
Really bizarre experiments
Including that isolated live dog head. Although, this is at the Museum of Hoaxes site, the author makes clear that he just didn't want to start up an entirely new site for just this list.
Cooline vest to prevent heat stress
I think it's just fleece that's supposed to wick away hot moisture from your body.
PC Mag's undiscovered websites of 2007
I'm not going to name it, but the annoying cat one shouldn't be there -- you hear of it everywhere.
Pano Logic's all-hardware virtualization device
Any network geeks out there? Trying to replace the PC:
The Pano Logic devices contain no CPU, no memory and no OS; they include audio-in and audio-out ports, as well as three USB connections, a VGA video connection, 10/100 Ethernet, and a power connector. Inside each device is a custom Pano Logic chip that manages the virtualization.
Bullet Proof Baby -- you care about your kid, don't you?
You know: riot gear, personal armor, bulletproof stroller for your baby.
World's smallest camera
Like that commando item in that terrorist movie with Judy Davis. However, also useful for pipe inspection and medical procedures.
Facebook's app economy
Coders are making real money riding the Facebook phenomenon. It's been the simple apps that have gone wildly viral.
Movie cliches
Does anybody know how to do accents from different languages in Blogger? Anyways, cliches one finds in the movies, like #11: Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them.
60 second test could help early diagnosis of common brain diseases
Differences in magnetic charge patterns between healthy and unhealthy brains show in magnetoencephalography. Right now, it's a lot of asking questions and reading behavior -- very time-consuming and not necessarily that accurate.
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