December 2008
37 posts
2 tags
“The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily...”
– The Anthropic Principle, explained. (p145, The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett)
A new bus for London? →
Re*Move describe the winners of a competition to re-design the classic London Routemaster bus.
Aston Martin and Foster Partners entry has a semi-timeless-yet-futuristic Thunderbirds quality to it, which I enjoy. Capoco’s design seems to reference late 1960s British cars in the grille and wheels, particularly the Austin 1100/1800.
Increase Your Meme Power!: Iro →
Jeffre Jackson’s wonderful Increase Your Meme Power!: Iro (#1 of, sadly, 2), examines Iro.
Iro (n, adj.) half-irony; sincere belief expressed in a self-mocking way in order to avoid charges of hypocrisy, self-importance, naïveté, melodrama, ignorance, sentimentality general uncoolness or other crimes against post-modernism
1 tag
The Problem with BMW
BMW build really nice cars, especially so if you like driving. The steering is amazing, the balance is superb.
Unfortunately, owning a BMW is also a status symbol. People who don’t care about great steering and wonderful balance buy a BMW to have the blue propellor on their car.
Some time ago, owning a BMW became, for most people, an indication of being a try-hard tosser rather than a...
2 tags
Suckered
In the chapter titled “Bad Capitalism” in PJ O’Rourke’s Eat the Rich he writes about how Albania was devestated by a large portion of the population “investing” in a variety of pyramid schemes in the early 90s.
Albania has the distinction of ceing the only country ever destroyed by a chain letter — a nation devestated by a Ponzi racket, a land ruined...
2 tags
“Quite a bit of government effort is required to create a system that leaves...”
– Government effort, an incomplete list:
courts
contract enforcement
laws that applied to everyone equally
some measure of national defence
an effective police force
and “a bureaucracy that was efficient and uncorrupt but no so hideously uncorrupt that it wouldn’t turn an eye on an...
2 tags
T minus 12 hours and 45 minutes
michelle658:
Results:
7am tomorrow. The culmination of thirteen years of schooling arrives.
Good luck seems such a frivolous thing to say, but I’ll say it anyway. Good luck!
I remember when my results came through. It was pre-SMS, so it came in a big yellow envelope. I was working at a newsagent at the time and I was on a shift. My mum brought it in and I opened it at work. It was the...
“From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind that I...”
– Sherlock Holmes explaining intuition to Watson, ch1 of A Study in Scarlet.
The brainstorm - a trojan horse of mediocrity →
Death the the brainstorm. Long live great ideas
(via the very wonderful adliterate)
“On the one hand, perhaps the future just there, ready to be taken up. And on the...”
– New Now Know How · You can’t research the future — or can you?
The Minute Glass alarm clock →
An alarm clock with a better snooze button is treating the symptom, not the cause. What I’d like to see is an alarm clock that teaches you to get a better night’s sleep.
Quote by me over at New Now Know How. Minute Glass alarm clock via Young and Brilliant.
Get yourself some Caffè Freddo
Ideally, Caffè Freddo is espresso, black and sweet, over ice. If you have a stove-top espresso machine, go crazy, however it works pretty well with a plunger/French press if you make a strong brew.
Serve it sweet, far sweeter than you’d take normal espresso, and strong and don’t skimp on the ice.
(Of course, if you’re in the Northern, or as I like to think of it, the wrong,...
Bart Simpson, Lisa cartoon is ruled kid porn →
In the NSW Supreme Court yesterday, judge Michael Adams upheld a decision to convict Alan John McEwan for possessing child pornography after determining that a fictional cartoon character could be considered to “depict a person” under state and commonwealth law.
McEwan appealed the decision, arguing that fictional cartoon characters could not be considered people as they...
Neil Gaiman's Journal: the word 'person' included... →
inky:
I suspect the Judge might have just inadvertantly granted human rights to cartoon characters. […]
The ability to distinguish between fiction and reality is, I think, an important indicator of sanity, perhaps the most important. And it looks like the Australian legal system has failed on that score.
(via lfo)
“an angry overpowered racing tractor”
– You’ll have to click through to find out what it was. Ad Hoc
The United States of Toyota →
A book by Peter De Lorenzo, of Autoextremist.
The core issues facing Detroit – global competitiveness, U.S. trade imbalances, healthcare costs and pension funding – are issues we as a nation must deal with – right now. This is not some isolated bad tiding that will only affect the Rust Belt in the forlorn “flyover” states, as the mid-section of the country is often derisively...
“What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely...”
– Attributed to Margaret Mead
“If you trust in yourself and believe in your dreams and follow your star...”
– Miss Tick’s “free advice” to Tiffany Aching, p51 of Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men.
Elements of an EmotionML 1.0 →
nnkh:
cartographer:
<emotion> <category set="basicEmotions" name="Disgust"/> <intensity value="0.82"/> </emotion>
An XML scheme for marking up emotions? Seriously?
Until recently I would have had the same reaction.
Then I installed this software in our research lab at work. The system can attemtps to classify people’s faces, cross-culturally, on...
Free Public WiFi →
marco:
Have you seen this wireless network? […] Turns out it’s not a virus (at least not in the usual sense) but rather an interesting fuckup on Microsoft’s part, with viral consequences.
Thanks, Microsoft! (I also see hpsetup everywhere, which is apparently from the same problem.)
Yep. hpsetup on the train, at the station, walking through town…
shakes fist at Microsoft
“So often I think the pull-down menu of life should have an undo option.”
– Dirk Gently, of the Holistic Detective Agency.
