clusterflockstock 3, 7
Why It’s a Bad Idea to Regulate Computers
The structure of a Kottke post is totally elemental
Tim Carmody on kottke.org and the spirit of blogging:
The vast majority of professional, corporate-owned blogs have rejected it, too, in favor of SEO-approved heds, totally predictable story lines, strict divorce between news and commentary, and pretending like their competitors — even their colleagues at the same organization — don’t exist.
Instead, we’ve got officially-approved categorial mantras like curation and community engagement — as if what mattered in great blogs was their arty taste, skill at embedding viral videos, or pushing out tweets to their followers. Rather than watching an agile mind at work, one attached to a living, breathing person, and feeling like you were tapped into a discussion that was bringing together the most vital parts of the web.
clusterflockstock 3, 6
just wood and glue
The cogs, wheels and frame are made from birch ply. Ironwood – an oily wood – is used where moving parts meet. The pedals and handlebars were made from an old broom handle.
There’s no chain. Instead there’s a 128-tooth cog that links the chainring and the gear on the rear wheel.
Maybe Deron can make me one.
a few, particular favorites
From my growing list about the OBL raid earlier this week.
quote out of context
Floridians are going to have to start pulling up their pants and stop having sex with animals soon. (via)
Texas State Highway 17, N. Dean Street, Marfa, TX 79843
To find Bin Laden, follow the birds
A class of undergraduates, using methods for tracking endangered species, predicted the whereabouts of Bin Laden to within 89.9%.
Gillespie’s class focuses on using remote sensing from satellites to study ecosystems, and one common challenge is finding where endangered species would be located within an ecosystem. As a class exercise, Gillespie introduced the Bin Laden search. The students used a geographical theory called “island biogeography” to home in on what turned out to be Bin Laden’s real hideout. Gillespie was so impressed by his students’ work, they published the findings in the MIT International Review.
(via @tcarmody or @mattyglesias)
tweet of the day
Olympus HD pocket video recorder
This little feller will fit in your pocket and record full HD video.
Olympus has announced the LS-20M pocket camcorder with built-in 24 bit/96 hHz Linear PCM stereo sound recording (or perhaps one of its sound recorders with built-in video). Capable of recording full 1080p HD videos, it features a 2″ color LCD, an additional 1.46″ data LCD, two microphones and HD output. It also includes the company’s ‘Magic filter’ processing effects. The camcorder will be available from June 2011 at a suggested retail price of $299.99.
from the comments
The factory bit struck a chord with me. We bemoan the lost heavy industries, coal and cars and such, yet those jobs were repetitive, too. If fast food jobs paid a living wage, with adequate sick time and a sense of employee pride, then couldn’t we recapture a bit of what was lost in the globalization of the past 30 years?
Of course, there’s an entirely different nutritional and social argument to be made against fast food. But until all of America returns to local markets, eating seasonal produce and reconnecting with the cycles of nature, perhaps incremental improvements to fast food are the best we can hope for. Nate Appleman, celebrated chef of San Francisco’s A16 restaurant and a noted nose-to-tail dining advocate, is now at the Chipotle corporate R&D kitchen, allegedly working on ways to make the finished product mesh better with the realities of sustainable farming.
On an unrelated note, Glen Bell apparently referred to his signature product as tay-cos.
clusterflockstock 3, 5
The Daily Show – Face/Off
Harmonic Genebank Deposit
More from Ark Codex 0 folio 2.
Clusterflockstock 3: Outside the Feed Sack
Post-clusterflockstock III
Huh.
Go into the kitchen of a Taco Bell today, and you’ll find a strong counterargument to any notion that the U.S. has lost its manufacturing edge. Every Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King is a little factory, with a manager who oversees three dozen workers, devises schedules and shifts, keeps track of inventory and the supply chain, supervises an assembly line churning out a quality-controlled, high-volume product, and takes in revenue of $1 million to $3 million a year, all with customers who show up at the front end of the factory at all hours of the day to buy the product. Taco Bell Chief Executive Officer Greg Creed, a veteran of the detergents and personal products division of Unilever, puts it this way: “I think at Unilever, we had five factories. Well, at Taco Bell today I’ve got 6,000 factories, many of them running 24 hours a day.”
It’s as if the great advances of human civilization, in everything from animal husbandry to mathematics to architecture to manufacturing to information technology, have all crescendoed with the Crunchwrap Supreme, delivered via the pick-up window.
tweet of the day, II
What I saw when I went to make coffee this morning
Gallant (Dark Nights of the Pre-Pubescent Soul)
Inspired by riffing with Tiger, Tommy, and Susan about Goofus and Gallant and their nocturnal habits.
Goofus may eat saltines in bed, but Gallant keeps his hands under the covers. One wonders.
Read more
Roll a D6
For Deron (thanks, Mike Lang)
“This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters gallant people of Afghanistan.”
It’s not clear from this trailer for Rambo III (1988), but when Rambo goes into Afghanistan to rescue his buddy Colonel Sam Trautman from sadistic Soviets . . .
he allies himself with the Mujahideen, the brave “freedom fighters” extolled by Ronald Reagan and saluted in the film’s original closing credits.
I can’t imagine what brought this to mind today.
tweet of the day
there is nothing not stupid about this
Italian bishop turns heads with Giorgio Armani vestments
I am half-tempted to make a ‘failure of modern media’ category.
