Interesting results when you take photos of
Interesting results when you take photos of moving objects with cameras that scan the scene one line at a time. See more examples in the Scanner Photography Project galleries.
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Entries for July 2006
Study: the half-life of an online news item is 36 hours.
Study: the half-life of an online news item is 36 hours.
Allez les Bleus!
I’m rooting for France today, but I feel that Italy has the best chance of winning. But we shall see. Allez!
Update: I’m stunned. Not so much about the loss, but Zidane…what was that? That headbutt is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in sports.
Update: Video of the headbutt. There’s some speculation that Materazzi twisted Zidane’s nipple…or if not, I wonder what he said that could have riled the Frenchman so?
Update: Ok, here’s a video of the whole exchange. No twisting that I can see…Materazzi obviously said something. With all his experience, hasn’t Zidane heard it all before?
Update: Video of some of Materazzi’s dirty plays.
Update: From a 2004 profile of Zidane in the Guardian:
One of the theories about Zidane as a player is that he is driven by an inner rage. His football is elegant and masterful, charged with technique and vision. But he can still erupt into shocking violence that is as sudden as it is inexplicable. The most famous examples of this include head butting Jochen Kientz of Hamburg during a Champions League match, when he was at Juventus in 2000 (an action that cost him a five match suspension) and his stomping on the hapless Faoud Amin of Saudi Arabia during the 1998 World Cup finals (this latter action was, strangely enough, widely applauded in the Berber community as Zidane’s revenge on hated Arab ‘extremists’).
Update: More detail on some of Zidane’s past misdeeds. (thx, daniel)
Update: Zidane’s agent says Zidane “told me Materazzi said something very serious to him but he wouldn’t tell me what”. “Zinedine didn’t want to talk about it but it will all come out in the next week. He was very disappointed and sad. He didn’t want it to end this way.”
Update: Zidane’s headbutt, now in video game format.
Update: With the help of lip readers, two UK newspapers have deciphered what Materazzi alledgedly said to Zidane to set him off.
Adidas did a Michaelangelo-style fresco of 10 soccer
Adidas did a Michaelangelo-style fresco of 10 soccer players at the Central Train Station in Cologne. More photos of Adidas’ World Cup advertising.
The one red paperclip guy has completed
The one red paperclip guy has completed his quest to trade a single red paperclip for a house. Listen all y’all, it’s arbitrage.
Trailer for The Science of Sleep, directed
Trailer for The Science of Sleep, directed by Michel Gondry. Michel Gondry? Michel Gondry. Michel Gondry. Michel Gondry.
An enormous amount of statistics about the
An enormous amount of statistics about the book industry. “58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.”
Allen Iverson, greatest soccer player ever?
Buried in this extensive listing of the most valuable players in the NBA by Bill Simmons, is a little muse about NBA stars playing soccer, which I will reproduce here in its entirety so you don’t have to go searching for it:
By the way, I’ve been watching the World Cup for four weeks trying to decide which NBA players could have been dominant soccer players, eventually coming to three conclusions. First, Allen Iverson would have been the greatest soccer player ever — better than Pele, better than Ronaldo, better than everyone. I think this is indisputable, actually. Second, it’s a shame that someone like Chris Andersen couldn’t have been pushed toward soccer, because he would have been absolutely unstoppable soaring above the middle of the pack on corner kicks. And third, can you imagine anyone being a better goalie than Shawn Marion? It would be like having a 6-foot-9 human octopus in the net. How could anyone score on him? He’d have every inch of the goal covered. Just as a sports experiment, couldn’t we have someone teach Marion the rudimentary aspects of playing goal, then throw him in a couple of MLS games? Like you would turn the channel if this happened?
Link via David, with whom I was chatting last week about Mr. Iverson’s excellent chances, soccer-wise.
Crazy detailed illustrations done with an Etch-A-Sketch. (via bb)
Crazy detailed illustrations done with an Etch-A-Sketch. (via bb)
List of the top 5 most popular blogs
List of the top 5 most popular blogs written by scientists. Here’s the top 50 and a list of popular science blogs written by non-scientists. What’s clear is that the blog reading public doesn’t care that much for science…more people probably read Engadget than all of the top 50 science blogs combined.
An animated gif version of Ghostbusters…yes, the entire movie.
An animated gif version of Ghostbusters…yes, the entire movie.
Kim Dingle’s painting, Maps of the U.
Kim Dingle’s painting, Maps of the U.S. Drawn from Memory by Las Vegas Teenagers. (via mr)
A copy of the Declaration of Independence
A copy of the Declaration of Independence handwritten by Thomas Jefferson is on display until Aug 5 at the NYPL. (via z)
Great detailed post about how the inside
Great detailed post about how the inside of a book is designed. Page counts are determined for business reasons so the designer has little choice but to find the proper font to make the given text fit in the given space…readability is a secondary consideration. (thx, susan)
The Garden State Effect: leave indie rock
The Garden State Effect: leave indie rock to indie rock fans. “When I say that I want as many people as possible to like my favorite bands, what I actually mean is that I want as many people as possible to like my favorite bands for the right reasons”. (via waxy)
Robert Birnbaum interviews writer Gay Talese. “Look,
Robert Birnbaum interviews writer Gay Talese. “Look, if you want to make your living chopping people up, you will find an audience. You will, but it’s not me.”
Kathleen Connally’s A Walk Through Durham Township,
Kathleen Connally’s A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania is a fine-looking photoblog. (via hal)
Great rant from Michael Ruhlman about the
Great rant from Michael Ruhlman about the ethics of eating. “Beyond the fact that our current hand-wringing foreshadows an America that increasingly regulates how we live our lives, which is scary enough, the more insidious danger to me is that we think clams and ducks and lobsters are people too.”
Update: Anthony Bourdain responds to Ruhlman’s rant.
Photos of the IKEA Everyday Fabulous! Exhibit,
Photos of the IKEA Everyday Fabulous! Exhibit, featuring IKEA products improving daily life on the streets of Manhattan, including comfy couches at bus stops, picture frames for lost cat photos, stools near payphones, and blankets for every seat at the movies.
Advice for cleaning the CCD image sensor
Advice for cleaning the CCD image sensor on Nikon digital SLR cameras. Doesn’t look that scary….does anyone have any experience doing this? My D70 needs a little TLC in this area.
A weblog about finding a decent lunch
A weblog about finding a decent lunch meal in midtown Manhattan. My suggestions: Mendy’s deli in Grand Central (great chicken salad on rye), any Hale & Hearty for soup, and Little Italy on (I think 43rd) for pizza by the slice. Oh, and isn’t there a Daisy May’s cart on Park Avenue? (via tmn)
List of the 10 most beautiful OS X
List of the 10 most beautiful OS X apps. Newsfire is a well-deserved second.
US college students won’t download music provided
US college students won’t download music provided by their schools even though its free because they can’t take it with them after graduation, won’t work with Apples, and can’t play on iPods. That’s not really actually “free” then, is it?
Simplified spelling seems like one of the
Simplified spelling seems like one of the world’s dumbest ideas, if only because you can’t even read every other paragraph of this article. (thx, hal)
Illustrated portraits of the entire Hamline University
Illustrated portraits of the entire Hamline University senior class from 1925. (thx, paul)
A couple of great quotes from the 2006
A couple of great quotes from the 2006 Fortune Brainstorm conference in Aspen. “It just so happens that there’s an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it’s wireless!”
Awesome Polish movie posters, “some of the
Awesome Polish movie posters, “some of the most brilliantly surreal and amazing pieces of movie artwork ever created”. (via avc)
Reviews of some recent logo redesigns. That
Reviews of some recent logo redesigns. That new MasterCard logo is…yikes.
More on the Apple Ubuntu switch
Now that the Mac/Ubuntu switch story has made it around the horn and back again (thanks for the non-link, Slashdot!), I want to clarify slightly what I meant by my assertion that Apple should be worried about “two lifelong Mac fans switching away from Macs to PCs running Ubuntu Linux” and that “nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this”.
Mark and Cory’s switching is not going to send large numbers of Mac users scurrying for Ubuntu, no matter how well respected they are in a small community. Two is not a trend. But it may cause people to briefly consider that 1) the Apple experience isn’t all that it could be, and 2) if you want a potentially similar experience, there’s a non-Microsoft option available to you. And once that seed is planted, well, you know where that metaphor is going. (I’m also aware of a few other people who are pondering the same shift independently of Mark and Cory.)
In the late 90s/early 00s, Apple got their act in gear with OS X and their iMacs, Powerbooks, G5s, and iBooks. People who cared deeply about their computing experience (you know, computer nerds) took notice of Apple’s rededication to producing great products, switched to Macs, and thereafter the Macintosh gradually became a genuinely credible option for programmers, web builders, graphic designers, journalists, students, and grandmothers. Not cause and effect, but the so-called alpha geeks noticed something happening and reacted before everyone else did. So when you have two people who care deeply about their computer experience and who were dedicated Apple users for non-superficial reasons switch entirely away from Apple for equally non-superficial reasons, it may be wise for Apple and the rest of us to take notice that they did so and, more importantly, why.
The web site/communty Plastic has been
The web site/communty Plastic has been down for weeks now, and its status is unclear. The chat room is still operational and there’s a message about some hardware testing going on, but who knows. Do you know?
Accidental Tech Entrepreneurs Turn Their Hobbies Into
Accidental Tech Entrepreneurs Turn Their Hobbies Into Livelihoods, including Dooce, the Trotts, Josh Schachter, and the Digg folks.
People are trying to figure out why
People are trying to figure out why the Alexa statistics for a bunch of sites (including kottke.org) jumped sharply in mid-April. I don’t buy the Digg explanation (for one thing, the timeline is off by a month)…it’s gotta be some partnership or something that kicked in. Or how about Alexa’s “facelift” on April 11?
New Yorker review of Chris Anderson’s new
New Yorker review of Chris Anderson’s new book, The Long Tail. Oddly, there’s no disclaimer that Anderson works for the same company that publishes The New Yorker. Not that the review is all synergistic sunshine; the last half pokes a couple of holes in Anderson’s arguments.
Howard Zinn on the 4th of July: “
Howard Zinn on the 4th of July: “Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?” (via eyeteeth)
Author Haruki Murakami has spoken out against
Author Haruki Murakami has spoken out against a rise in Japanese nationalism and is planning to address the issue in his next book. “We don’t have to be tied by the past, but we have to remember it.”
Great Russian illustrations of movies. I like
Great Russian illustrations of movies. I like the Star Wars one and The Terminator.
Fifty people showed their asses, so the
Fifty people showed their asses, so the infamous “lost episode” of Ze Frank’s The Show has been reposted to the site. Clean towels all around.
Takeru Kobayashi wins his 6th straight Nathan’s
Takeru Kobayashi wins his 6th straight Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest and sets a new world record (53 3/4 dogs in 12 minutes) in the process. Newcomer Joey Chestnut finished 2nd with 52 franks.
My Beating Heart is a blog matching
My Beating Heart is a blog matching personal experiences with data from a GPS-enabled heart-rate monitor. Meg hooked herself up to a heart-rate monitor for the 2004 AFC Championship.
Autoantonyms are words that are the opposite
Autoantonyms are words that are the opposite of themselves. Buckle means a) to fasten or b) to come undone; give way; collapse. More examples here.
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