The Six Weirdest Cities People Actually Live In
Look, we’re idiots: None of us knows what, exactly, goes into city planning, but we assume it’s probably a lot of distinguished gentlemen emailing each other about math, statistics and blueprints. But somewhere along the line, somebody accidentally CC’ed the insane asylum, and we wound up with the following civilizations that simply should not be.
(via @tylercowen)
“The world is becoming a zoo,” says Linden — speaking from the human point of view
Stray dogs figure out how to use Moscow’s subway system to get downtown to neighborhoods where the food is better.
For years, a house cat in England takes the public bus to get around town, unbeknownst to its owner.
A jungle leopard in India, needing to cross a swollen river with its cub, gets a man to ferry her and her cub across in his canoe.
Dolphins at a dolphin show in Hawaii instantly figure out a mistake their trainers have made and cover for them pretty well, preventing embarrassment all around.
The wild ocean cousins of those “tame” show dolphins have a long-standing partnership with fishermen along the coasts of both Brazil and Bengal that means more fish for all.
In Western Australia’s Shark Bay, wild dolphins being studied by scientists from Harvard, appear themselves to be studying the humans — including this reporter.
And other examples of animal intelligence.
(via marginal revolution)
Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design
I’ve become slightly obsessed with Frank Chimero’s talk on the purpose and philosophy of design:
To really think about design, you need to learn and think about everything other than it. Design is a vessel: the most important part is what it holds.
The first comment on the Vimeo landing is a single word: Nourishing. Such a perfect way to sum it all up.
Via: Swiss-Miss
12 Indicted On Hate Crimes Charges For Hair Cutting Assaults Led By Break-Off Amish Group
I think this is my favorite story of 2011.
Damar, Mon Amour (out of context)
In context: Starlingo ii.
Damar torn from the flock.
What is Damar? Who is Damar? What is Damar?
This makes me very very happy
Da Vinci’s To-Do List
Admittedly, it’s more impressive than my own to-do lists. (via)
Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011
I’m holding out for the iPhone Final
they can’t write Shakespeare but they ain’t as dumb as they seem
So says the WSJ:
Monkeys can reason by using analogy, it seems. In an experiment recently reported in the journal Psychological Science, baboons in a lab proved capable of realizing that a pair of oval shapes is “like” a pair of square shapes and “unlike” a pair made of two different shapes.
quote out of context
One of my favourites is pavements. He is not discussing what the stuff is that pavements are made up of. Instead he is looking at what the movement of pavement tells us about who has driven on that road. For instance he describes “shoving”, which is when warm pavements, over time, create a little crevice and then a hill after it — the pavement has been moved by the starting and stopping of a large force. If you begin to look for this shoved part of the pavement as you cross the street you will see it here and there. What it represents is where a lot of cars, or in New York a very large bus, might have stopped and started repeatedly. At bus stops you will see shoving. I love the idea that you can look at something so familiar that you have never really examined, and see this additional dimension — in this case, of who has passed by before.
Richard Dawkins’ thoughts on Rick Perry, and by extension on a frighteningly large American political class
A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.
I think I found a Dawkins article Andrew can get behind?
Steve Jobs Resigns: an End of an Era
It’s a sad day, at least metaphorically. I’ll point to John Gruber to give the announcement context:
The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Directness. Truth. Zoom out enough and you can see that the same things that define Apple’s products apply to Apple as a whole. The company itself is Apple-like. The same thought, care, and painstaking attention to detail that Steve Jobs brought to questions like “How should a computer work?”, “How should a phone work?”, “How should we buy music and apps in the digital age?” he also brought to the most important question: “How should a company that creates such things function?”
Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.
from the comments
Daryl’s quote brings to mind Jon Huntsman’s recent newsworthy antics, mainly that he’s distancing himself from his opponents by saying that he trusts scientists’ expertise from everything ranging from global warming to evolution. Strange to see how this has become controversial, but again, I think the bottom line is that A) conservatives also tend to be very religious and science often makes claims that contradict religion and B) conservatives don’t like to be told what to do. Palin et al. often frame the debate around environmental regulations by saying “they want to restrict how you do a, b, and c” – it’s a rhetorical fallacy that never accounts for the actual science or reasoning behind regulations, but it’s been pretty successful so far.
I recently saw that a reporter was questioning Rick Perry on how, if he selectively believed what the scientific community claims, how he could be trusted to responsibly support the scientific community in keeping America on the forefront of technological advancement. Not surprisingly, he didn’t really have an answer.
the birth of a nation, part two
We have this horrible contemporary phenomenon in the Tea Party – a real menace not only to America but to the world. Because if it goes on like this, they will destroy our economy and they will destroy America. They have no democratic vision, and I don’t mean with a capital “D”, I mean with a small “d”. They frighten me. They’re like the early followers of Adolf Hitler, and I’m willing to be quoted on that. They are a sickening phenomenon. That is because they have not read deeply and widely enough. But then maybe they’re not to blame, because American education – even in elite universities – has become a scandal in my opinion. It has committed suicide.
Harold Bloom on the state of American democracy.
Previously, on clusterflock.
the birth of a nation
The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain.
I don’t see how this isn’t a fundamental problem for the future of American democracy.
(via @fivethirtyeight)
quote out of context
But also, more educated people spend more on alcohol, and praying reduces alcohol consumption.
Danny Macaskill, Industrial Revolutions
The latest industrial light and magic from bike riding wizard Danny Macaskill.
(thanks, Amy)
tweet of the day
Of Fox & Facebook
Fox News invited the spokesman for an Atheist group onto one of their programs to discuss a recent lawsuit opposing a cross-shaped memorial at Ground Zero. Almost immediately afterwards, the Fox News Facebook page was flooded with thousands of comments:
Following the appearance of Blair Scott, the Communications Director for the American Atheists, Inc., on Fox News’ America Live show, the network’s Facebook page was overrun with death threats and other violent commentary—more than 8,000 messages advocating rape, murder and crucifixion of any and all atheists, in fact.
(Italics mine) I don’t think it’s any secret that the comments on Facebook posts tend to resemble the graffiti on bathroom stalls, but even I was shocked by the comments. In fairness (and balance, I suppose), Fox News did make a point to delete the post (before it got too out of hand, I guess) and made the following statement:
We make every attempt to keep our Facebook page as safe as possible and we take immediate steps to remove all hateful and dangerous language.
Irony noted.
Never fear, Pamela. God is with you too in this coming time.
I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness.
Yes, devastating.
(via @mattyglesias)
I see you
Researchers at MIT and The University of Cambridge are developing glasses that monitor facial expressions and allow the wearer to recognize subtle shifts in the emotional response of the person they are talking to.
By sensing emotions that we would otherwise miss, these technologies can thwart disastrous social gaffes and help us understand each other better. Some companies are already wiring up their employees with the technology, to help them improve how they communicate with customers. Our emotional intelligence is about to be boosted, but are we ready to broadcast feelings we might rather keep private?
Paging Dr. Lightman.
(via marginal revolution)
Remembering Scott, 6
From Mark:
Remember those “basic skills” tests we took as TX school children (they were probably administered everywhere) where you’d bubble in the answers? Scott told me that he read the first question, then bubbled in the rest of the test booklet in a design that resembled an eyelet dress fabric that he liked.
Lucian Freud died last night
From the late 1950s, when he began using a stiffer brush and moving paint in great swaths around the canvas, Mr. Freud’s nudes took on a new fleshiness and mass. His subjects, pushed to the limit in exhausting extended sessions, day after day, dropped their defenses and opened up. The faces showed fatigue, distress, torpor.
The flesh was mottled, lumpy and, in the case of his 1990s portraits of the performance artist Leigh Bowery and the phenomenally obese civil servant Sue Tilley, shockingly abundant.
Previously on clusterflock…. This is more indicative of his characteristic style.
Tim Carmody’s back at Wired
Greetings, People of Wired! I’ve been asked to write a short post (re)introducing myself to Wired News readers as the newest staff writer covering the technology and media beat here at Epicenter.
Some keen-eyed Wired.com readers might recognize my byline from last fall, when I wrote for our hardware vertical, Gadget Lab. There among the wall-to-wall smartphone and tablet coverage, I regularly drove Wired’s editors slightly batty by writing early and often about e-readers and the publishing industry, game consoles and television programming, materials science and R&D, the DIY hardware hacking community, or long thinkpieces about the future of media.
I wrapped a big rubber band around all this stuff, calling it “the tweed beat” — but really, it was just everything that bubbled up from (but wouldn’t stay in) the gadget news box. It was great fun and good work, but I knew I would regularly hear from our east coast editor, John Abell: “Good story, Tim — but you know, it should probably really be in Epicenter.”
This summer, when he was looking for another writer, John paid me an enormous compliment, saying he was looking for “a Tim Carmody type” who could cover a broad swath of tech news and offer smart angles and idea-driven commentary. “Wait,” I thought when I heard this: “I’m a Tim Carmody type!”
Congratulations, Tim!
