Spectrum of Online Friendship
Click the picture to enlarge (via Chris Bowler)
waterboarding 9/11 mastermind 183 times was a ‘success’
“Cheney is full of crap,” one intelligence source with decades of experience said Tuesday.
it’s easy being awesome
A brief history of narcissism.
There’s the groom who wouldn’t let his fiancée’s overweight friend be a bridesmaid because he didn’t want her near him in the wedding pictures. The entrepreneur who launched a meeting for new employees by explaining that nobody ever gets anywhere working for someone else. The woman who had such confidence in her great taste, she routinely redecorated her daughter’s home without asking. The guy who found himself so handsome, he took a self-portrait with a Polaroid every night before bed to preserve the moment.
As Ted Turner put it: “If I only had a little humility, I’d be perfect.”
Intensely narcissistic people often live tumultuous lives, as few people can tolerate them for long. But having a milder version of the personality type comes with many side benefits. Subclinical narcissists are happy. They are less likely to be depressed, sad or anxious, and rate their subjective well-being more highly. They’re less reactive to stress, and recover more rapidly from it.
Mild narcissism also seems to help people recover from accidents or other trauma—it gives them an unrealistic sense of their own invulnerability, and they believe that they will be able to handle whatever else life throws at them. As one researcher put it, being somewhat narcissistic is like driving a huge SUV: You’re having a great time, even while you hog the road, suck up extra resources and put other drivers at higher risk.
“Eighty percent of people think they’re better than average.”
this just in
The Great Wall of China is longer than once thought.
A two-year government mapping study has uncovered new sections of the ancient Chinese monument that total about 180 miles (290 kilometers), according to a report posted on the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping Web site.
The newly mapped parts of the wall were built during the Ming Dynasy (1368-1644) to protect against northern invaders and were submerged over time by sandstorms that moved across the arid region, the study said.
man skydives into a volcano
Rita Levi Montalcini turns 100
Nobel Prize winning scientist Rita Levi Montalcini turns 100 today.
“At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20,” she told the party, complete with a large cake for her.
The Turin-born Levi Montalcini recounted how the anti-Jewish laws of the 1930s under Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime forced her to quit university and do research in an improvised laboratory in her bedroom at home.
“Above all, don’t fear difficult moments,” she said. “The best comes from them.”
“I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom,” the scientist said.
I love the photograph of her, by the way.
test drive a zamboni
The Herbert Wells Ice Rink in College Park Maryland offers classes in Zamboni operation.
A couple of times each year, the rink offers civilians a chance to join in on a two-night Zamboni training class that they give to rink personnel. For $90 ($75 if you pay two weeks in advance), you can learn the basics of blade changing, tank filling, scraping patterns and vehicle storage.
The first 20 minutes of the class are devoted to mechanics. A short video describes the three things going on under a Zamboni as it trundles around the rink: first, the scraping of the ice by a 77-inch steel blade and the removal of the shavings by twin augers; second, the washing of the surface with cool water; and, finally, the controlled flood of hot water that freezes into a new smooth layer of ice.
The video is introduced by one Richard Zamboni, and Barrett stops the tape to pay homage to the family character of the company.
“When you call Zamboni, you usually talk to a Zamboni,” he said. “I talk to Don Zamboni four or five times a year.”
This’n's
for Sheiler, but you can all take a peek and listen.
Frogs, saved
FUCK THE FOUNDRIES
Mark Pilgrim’s current thoughts on embedded fonts (via Hacker News):
Seriously. Fuck them. They still think they’re in the business of shuffling little bits of metal around. You want to use a super-cool ultra-awesome totally-not-one-of-the-11-web-safe-fonts? Pick an open source font and get on with your life.
I know what you’re going to say. I can hear it in my head already. It sounds like the voice of the comic book guy from The Simpsons. You’re going to say, “Typography is by professionals, for professionals. Free fonts are worth less than you pay for them. They don’t have good hinting. They don’t come in different weights. They don’t have anything near complete Unicode coverage. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t…”
And you’re right. You’re absolutely, completely, totally, 100% right. “Your Fonts” are professionally designed, traditionally licensed, aggressively marketed, and bought by professional designers who know a professional typeface when they see it. “Our Fonts” are nothing more than toys, and I’m the guy showing up at the Philadelphia Orchestra auditions with a tin drum and a kazoo. “Ha ha, look at the freetard with his little toy fonts, that he wants to put on his little toy web page, where they can be seen by 2 billion people ha h… wait, what?”
Mark then proceeds to gives one of the most cogent arguments I have seen about why we should follow his advice.
Christ almighty!
Have you seen this site?
Danny MacAskill
is totally fucking nuts.
Via Dennis.
Don’t forget to say your prayers.
Chapel. American military base. Gournes, Crete. iPhone. Phil Bebbington. 2009.
Hello . . . I told you never to call me here; don’t you know where I am?
precedent
Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music
From the Guardian:
Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed. We are made to imagine legions of internet criminals, their fingers on track-pads, downloading songs via BitTorrent and never paying for anything. One of the only bits of good news amid this doom and gloom is the steady rise in digital music sales. Millions of internet do-gooders, their fingers on track-pads, who pay for songs they like – purchasing them from Amazon or iTunes Music Store. And yet according to Professor Anne-Britt Gran’s new research, these two groups may be the same.
He’s Definitely A Mac
I feel it’s my duty to show a side of this Flocker that many people do not get to see.
An Elephant Makes a Big Poop
I would imagine that we’re all pretty excited about the upcoming Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, but news has just broken that work has already begun on Jonze’s next big-screen version of a classic children’s book:
Y’all (The Gravedigger)
Way back in the wayback days, 1970, 1971, or so, the man was out there every night. At least, he was there every night we drove out, parked the car on the shoulder, and watched at a distance. Way off in the field, digging, digging, digging, in an unalterable rhythm. None of us had the courage to step out of the car and walk into that field, and we never ever went out there in daylight.
let them eat camera?
Arp 194
really
The airline is for pets only and they are called “Pawsengers.”
Alexis Rockman, After the Fall
an isolated culture understands the emotions conveyed by western music
The Mafa people, who live in the far north of Cameroon in the Mandara mountains, are one of the most culturally isolated groups in the world. Since many of their settlements lack electricity, there are some individuals who have never been exposed to western movies, art, or music.
Because of their isolation and very different musical tradition, they can help answer a question that has perplexed music scholars and psychologists for generations: are there musical “universals”? In other words, do the emotions conveyed by music depend on what we’ve learned through our culture, or can anyone perceive the emotion intended by a composer of a given musical work?
(via kottke)
Literary Conventions and the Human Body
An academic article on the correlation between facial expressions and body language and a character’s psychology.
Note, however, that not all facial expressions and bodily movements have been conventionalised in the sense that they reflect a given mental state. To pick one’s nose or to scratch one’s knee does not necessarily correspond to some predictable mood of the agent.
(via marginal revolution)
buildings and clouds
Another view of the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
