1888 photo of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
Recently discovered.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Selling to children
"Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their product, you’re a loser," explained Nancy Shalek, president of the Shalek Agency. "Kids are very sensitive to that. If you tell them to buy something, they are resistant. But if you tell them that they’ll be a dork if they don’t, you’ve got their attention."
Pickle Sickles -- frozen pickle juice
A freezie from Texas, where they also have deep fried pickles, from what I've read. I'm presuming not real brine; that would be probably be bad for you over time.
Hollywood's favorite offensive stereotypes
I had heard the argument that the magic or high status Negro is certainly one way Hollywood tries to alleviate its guilt without having to develop a complex, multidimensional, human character -- tokenism.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
2.5" and 3.5" SATA stage rack
No need for the hard drive to go into the case. Just plug it into this.
Be smart about your medical Web surfing
3. Invest 30 minutes in the pubmed.gov tutorial
Pubmed.gov searches the medical literature, but it isn't completely intuitive. It's worth the time to learn how to use it by doing the tutorial.
Nervous you won't understand the technical jargon in medical articles? Don't be, says Guthrie. She advises reading the very beginning of a study and the very end. "The conclusion will tell you whether the treatment they studied was effective, moderately effective, or not at all effective."
In addition, the Medical Library Association, has brochures called Deciphering Medspeak to help translate some of the more common medical jargon.
Get higher resolution YouTube with a URL hack
Also points to a Firefox extension with the functions.
Climate science maverick James Lovelock says we're too late
Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable. "It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing.
One Wilshire -- where 260 ISPs meet
"In the bowels of the world's most densely populated Meet-Me room -- a room where over 260 ISPs connect their networks to each other -- a phalanx of cabling spills out of its containers and silently pumps the world's information to your computer screen."
Why winter is the flu season
Influenza viruses coat themselves in fatty material that hardens and protects them in colder temperatures -- a finding that could explain why winter is the flu season, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.This butter-like coating melts in the respiratory tract, allowing the virus to infect cells, the team at the National Institutes of Health found.
The Dyatlov Pass Accident
In 1959, nine experienced cross country skiers, led by Igor Dyatlov, were trapped in a snowstorm and decided to set camp and sleep it out.
Later that night, something made all nine people leave their tents in such a hurry that they ripped them open from within. These people stumbled down the slope, in subzero weather, only in their underwear with no socks or shoes. All nine were discovered dead and frozen by a search party about a month later.
Here’s where it gets really creepy: three of the nine suffered massive chest and head injuries that could only be caused by forces akin to that of a car crash, but without any external wounds. There were high doses of radioactivity. And if those weren’t weird enough: one victim was missing her tongue.
Read more about the Dyatlov Pass Accident, including how mysterious "bright flying spheres" were seen nearby and why the findings of the investigation were classified as secret.
Prevent websites from opening naked windows in Firefox
Irritating when you can't at least resize those pop-up windows, no?
Ionizing radiation enhance growth of black fungus
"Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets," Dadachova said.
Check if your e-mail account has been hacked
Baiting the guy with an enticingly labelled e-mail attachment that will alert you when it's been opened.
Drinking gets you more depressed
Helps to solidify bad memories:
The researchers, led by pharmacology professor Norio Matsuki, gave mild shocks to lab rats to condition them to fear. As a result, the rats would freeze in terror and curl up the moment they were put in their cages.
Researchers then immediately injected the rats with ethanol or saline.
The researchers found that rats with alcohol in their veins froze up for longer, with the fear on average lasting two weeks, compared with rats that did not receive injections.
Bird boy can only communicate with chirps
Pravda reported: "(His mother) had her own domestic birds and fed wild ones. (She) neither beat him nor left him without food. She just never talked to him. It was all the birds that communicated with the boy and taught him birds' language.
"He just chirps and when realising that he is not understood, starts to wave hands in the way birds winnow wings."
WorldFlashReader -- double your reading speed
Just by flashing text?
Some general tips for reading stuff on the Web here.
InfoHub -- more thematic travel
Not total trip planning, but more just a comprehensive tour catalog.
Fish can count
Adult humans use a third counting mechanism, in which they verbally count much larger numbers. Yet as Agrillo points out: 'The most interesting thing is that fish performance is very similar to what is observed in adult humans who possess a very limited vocabulary for numbers.' For example, speakers of the Amazonian language Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond five. 'Their limits in quantity tasks closely resemble what we found in pre-verbal organisms such as fish!' says Agrillo.
800notes.com -- phone reverse lookup with comments
Did you receive a call but the caller did not leave a message and the Caller ID says "Unavailable"?Looks like the veracity of the details is user-dependent.
Table2Clipboard -- Firefox add-on to copy tables and retain formatting
Or so it seems from the description.
Casting call for banned Xbox 360 commercial
The first video is the original, put up for contrast. Right-click and select Zoom Out for a smaller screen and subsequent better quality.
The hilarity properly begins with the second video, a casting call for the commercial.
Paper vs. styrofoam cups
A study by Canadian scientist Martin Hocking shows that making a paper cup uses as much petroleum or natural gas as a polystyrene cup. Plus, the paper cup uses wood pulp. The Canadian study said, ‘The paper cup consumes 12 times as much steam, 36 times as much electricity, and twice as much cooling water as the plastic cup.’ And because the paper cup uses more raw materials and energy, it also costs 2.5 times more than the plastic cup.
MoFuse -- create a mobile phone version of your website/blog
Don't get left out. $3 per month for own domain and other features.
There is also the free Wirenode.
Drugs, body modification may create second enlightenment
Based on this premise:
Coffee debuted in the late 17th century in Oxford, England -- leading to rowdy coffee houses, jittery arguments and even an attempt by King Charles II to ban the substance for inspiring seditious behavior.
The other consequence: the Enlightenment.
Zicasso -- full trip designing
Fairly complete list of components to choose from to flesh out a trip.
Cookthink -- search for recipes based your craving tags
You keeping layering on up to eight tags and it spits out a recipe. Fine for and improvisational mood.
I fell in love with a female assassin
... Jason P Howe discovered that his girlfriend Marylin was leading a secret double life – as an assassin for right-wing death squads in Colombia's brutal civil war.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
PageOnce -- all your online accounts in one place
Not just social networks, but banking, airlines, etc.
Patients do okay if told they're told they're taking helpful placebo
They gave a pink placebo pill three times a day to patients they termed “neurotic”, and the explanation given to the patients was startlingly clear about what was going on.Here is the standardised script which was prepared, and carefully read out to each patient:
“Mr Doe … we have a week between now and your next appointment, and we would like to do something to give you some relief from your symptoms. Many different kinds of tranquillisers and similar pills have been used for conditions such as yours, and many of them have helped. Many people with your kind of condition have also been helped by what are sometimes called ’sugar pills’, and we feel that a so-called sugar pill may help you, too. Do you know what a sugar pill is? A sugar pill is a pill with no medicine in it at all. I think this pill will help you as it has helped so many others. Are you willing to try this pill?”
They got good results.
Lingtastic -- translation through SMS, e-mail, VoIP, or phone (for extra)
Price scaled according to skill level required and where the interpreter is based.
Spottt -- ad exchange network
The basic idea is that you place the Spottt 125×125 ad unit on your site, above the fold (no adult content). They provide a simple embed code, or you can use your own ad serving software (we use OpenAds). For every two ad impressions that you serve, you’ll get one free ad somewhere on the network...
Roomapes -- post profile and find a place
A Google mashup that also has roomie rating.
This is like the Google-Craigslist mashup MapsKrieg.
Babies see pure color, but adults peer through prism of language
More evidence that we create a good part of our reality.
InsideTrip -- tailor your flight beyond just cheap fares
Quality is measured by factors spanning 3 categories (speed, comfort, and ease) and addressing 12 so-called “pain points” (such as number of stops, security wait time, legroom, aircraft type, connection time, and gate location).
Half of all clicks on display ads are worthless
Six percent generate half the clicks.
The average heavy clicker is 25 to 44 years old, earns less than $40,000 a year, spends a lot of time online but not a lot of money online, and likes to frequent auctions, gambling sites and job boards. Sounds like a lot of these heavy clickers are out of work and have nothing to do.
Solar-collecting roads heat buildings
... RES [Road Energy System] lays the collection system within concrete -- think the black asphalt of a road or runway. The piping connects to undeground storage areas. Remember the last time you walked on black asphalt on a sunny August day and you understand the heat being transferred into the water in the pipes. This water is then transferred into the storage area. On demand, in cold weather, the hot water is used to heat buildings and to keep the road above freezing. After cooling, the water is moved into cold storage to provide air conditioning for summer months.Doesn't this mean an awful lot of water? How do you keep the water hot for months?
FUH2 -- flipping off the Hummer
That's all it is. Photo after user-submitted photo of people giving the finger to Hummers all over the world.
Healthy and safe hotel stays
10. Check the bed for bedbugs before you unpack. Have you ever woken up in a hotel room, felt itchy, and assumed you'd been bitten by mosquitoes in your sleep? It might have been bedbugs. Growing pesticide resistance has resulted in outbreaks of bedbugs in even some of the best hotels. These brown bugs, which are the size of an apple seed, can leave itchy welts on the skin. One veteran traveler suggests pulling back the comforter quickly and watching closely to see if any bugs scamper. Also look for bloodstains on pillows or mattress liners and carefully check the seams of mattresses. If you see anything suspicious, ask for another room -- then repeat the process. Even if you don't find any bugs, move the bed away from the wall, tuck in the sheets, and keep the blanket from touching the floor. Just in case!
EveryBlock -- a data point on every block
A thorough interview for this neighborhood data aggregator.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Ben Olken on the economics of bribery and assassinations in developing countries
So Olken and Jones looked at 57 leaders who died in office from accidents or natural causes and “found big changes in growth when autocratic leaders die in office—both positive and negative,” but no substantial change when democratic leaders died in office. “The results suggest,” they write, “that individual leaders can play crucial roles in shaping the growth of nations,” provided they are ruling with minimal or nonexistent checks and balances to their power (think Augusto Pinochet or Robert Mugabe).
Lingtatstic -- interpreters compete for your business
... a customer with an account will be able to request a live interpreter from our website and they will receive a call from that person in seconds. They can specify language, specialty, max price and skill level and the interpreters compete for their business. That call can come on a normal phone, cell phone, skype, Yahoo, Google talk, or MSN. We can even conference in a third party on any of those applications too!Closed beta for the moment.
Lightway -- collect solar during the day, lighten up during the night
Lightway is first of its kind in the world which assimilates the necessary solar energy during the daytime and then using its inner devices it enlightens the area (for instance, house or streets) during the nights.
MicroRNA's non-cancer, protective role demonstrated
... a family of microRNAs--short strands of genetic material--protect mouse cells during development and allow them to grow normally. But that protective role could backfire: The researchers theorize that when these microRNAs become overactive, they can help keep alive cancer cells that should otherwise die--providing another reason to target microRNAs as a treatment for cancer.
Grammar myths
2. You shouldn't split infinitives. Wrong! Nearly all grammarians want to boldly tell you it's OK to split infinitives. An infinitive is a two-word form of a verb. An example is "to tell." In a split infinitive, another word separates the two parts of the verb. "To boldly tell" is a split infinitive because boldly separates to from tell.
Computer simulation model of rat neurocortical column successfully accomplished
Acts all biological-like.
3-day fog killed at least a couple of thousand in London (1880)
Happened a few times before and after. In 1952, one killed about 4000.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Born Rich's Jamie Johnson comes out with new film
A member of the Johnson & Johnson family, the article calls him the rich man's Michael Moore, and he's come out with a new doc called The One Percent, covering the same territory as his first film. He also got Milton Friedman to walk out on him.
Most interesting is that his own father, in the same vein, actually made a film about injustice in South Africa, for which he was put in his place.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
stickK -- agree to a contract and consequences online to help change your life
Users can set up a contract to include payments to charities if they fail to meet their contracts, and friends can be used to make the final call on the result as well, reducing the chance that users will lie about the result of a contract.
Scoring free airline vouchers
A free roundtrip ticket sounds like a good deal, but the travel voucher is totally the way to go. The roundtrip ticket is usually subject to blackout dates and all sorts of other restrictions which greatly limit when and where you can fly. Additionally, free roundtrip tickets are usually exempt from earning frequent flier miles. Travel vouchers, on the other hand, can be used just about any time, anywhere and the flights you purchase usually earn miles.
MIT's effcient nanowire ultracapacitors could replace batteries
People have been going at this forever apparently.
Neuroimaging supporting biodifferences in girls' superior language skills
The information in the tasks got through to girls' language areas of the brain -- areas associated with abstract thinking through language... In boys, accurate performance depended -- when reading words -- on how hard visual areas of the brain worked. In hearing words, boys' performance depended on how hard auditory areas of the brain worked.
Why Free is the future of business
Wired's take on giveaway economics. Nice history of Gillette at the beginning.
Humanity Lobotomy -- on net neutrality
Some fine history of communication costs and development arc.
Nanocrystal coating warms up LED lighting
The final LEDs were also better than commercially available LEDs at creating visible light, giving off more than 300 lumens of visible light for every watt of all light emitted. This figure, known as the "luminous efficacy", is high compared to typical white LEDs [~30-60 lumens].
Why are Finnish kids so smart?
Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers.
Neurological basis for degrees of cocaine addiction
Probably why some can use it casually while others can't.
Gene glitches may hold secret of long life.
Also, 25 genes regulating lifespan in yeast and worms (1.5 billion years evolutionary difference) identified.
Nuconomy -- beyond Google Analytics
For example, Nuconomy is designed to consider the impact of widgets, Ajax, Flash, mobile, etc., which don’t generally show up in page view metrics. And they are also measuring everything on both a contributor level (think analytics by author in a blog) and user level (people on the site).
Correlation is a big party of Nuconomy, which shows how things on the site affect other things. Do more posts/articles mean more page views? Does one author get more comments but less page views? How do photo uploads affect the number of comments?
Jungle frog's anti-infection agent may help diabetics
In laboratory tests, researchers found that the paradoxical frog’s peptide, known as pseudin-2, increased release of insulin in cultured cells by 50 per cent.
Proving you're a Jew getting harder
The rabbinate’s handling of the issue has placed it on one side of an ideological fissure within Orthodox Judaism itself, between those concerned with making sure no stranger enters the gates and those who fear leaving sisters and brothers outside.
Grocery items with nasty corporate histories
You like your Nestle Quik cocoa for milk?
To avoid having to abide by the new legislation, Nestle agreed to a voluntary protocol to end forced labor on cocoa farms by 2005. Being that the major chocolate companies would be overseeing this new program, it wasn't too surprising that nothing ever came of it.
Suburbs the next slum?
Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.
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