a whole mess o' unrelated links

A history of lighting in Raleigh (fire -> LED)

Ant fiction! Exciting!

Staring at the sun.

Hope those in the eastern US managed to enjoy the snowy weather. I got snowed in and pretty much loved it, since it forced me to take some time and pause.

last post of the day

...unless something rather groundbreaking is announced. Saw this a while back, but now NPR's picked it up:

Crayon nerdery. (I'm especially fond of the term "crayon sluts.")

rustic hotels

They look cool, but I'm reminded of the book That was Then, This is Now:

Besides, it was hard to tell a Soc from a greaser. Now the greasers wore their hair down on their foreheads instead of combed back-this went for Mark and Me too-and the Socs were trying to look poor. They wore old jeans and shirts with the shirt tails out, just like greasers always had cause they couldn’t afford anything else. I’ll tell you one thing though: what with fringed leather vests and Levi’s with classy store labels in them, those kids were spending as much money to look poor as they used to to look rich. It was crazy.
- credits to S.E. Hinton

judicial neutrality (or, how I learned to stop faking it and openly accuse the president of lying)

Well, for all the awful things that one can say about the state of judicial neutrality these days (especially among the SCOTUS), at least one of the completely neutral, wholly impartial, non-activist judges just up and outed himself. And, of course, was lionized by GOP pundits and lambasted by Dems.

I'm not sure which I find more disturbing: the downward spiral of the judicial branch over the past couple of decades, or the fact that Fox News is the most trusted news source in the US (link via the always amazing Ian). I suppose there's some comfort in the following:

Continuing the trend in our polling over the last few months that independents hate everything, a plurality of them distrust all five outlets we looked at.

I suppose it makes sense that people trust a news source that agrees with them more than a one which falsely purports neutrality (though there is that issue of "fair and balanced"), but it still gives me the shivers.

Maybe if we can get Prop 8 overturned I'll keep the faith.*




*(I'm not holding my breath.)

[UPDATE: Mere moments after posting this, I received this relatively auspicious link on DADT from Amazing Ian. Maybe there's hope for Prop 8 as well?]

man vs. wild

NPR has an interesting article on a study that suggests we're better off running barefoot.

I've heard this debate before, and it seems possibly a bit wrongheaded. I mean, yes: we should learn to run in ways that are less harmful to our bodies and better absorb shock naturally. Heel-first landing is unequivocally more stressful to our bones and joints. If you look at professional athletes, however, you'll see that they don't actually land heel-first, but rather closer to the balls of their feet, which the article states is less stressful. That point is obvious. But what I find a bit chancy is the assumption that this means we're better off running barefoot.

This nature vs. technology theme recurs in studies every so often (are eggs/margarine/artificial sweeteners good or bad for me this week? I can never remember.), but why does it cast doubt on the role of the shoe? Sure, cheap shoes are designed for heel-first footfall; that ought to be rectified through better design. But really, nobody ever explains to folks growing up the proper way to run (unless you're on a track team), and besides, you shouldn't be running in cheap shoes anyway. They're not supportive or well designed. I won't argue with that.

This shouldn't automatically mean we ought to have at it podiatrically au naturel, though. To put it bluntly, ancient humans used to live to be 30, and they ran barefoot. Modern humans--despite excess creature comforts and far less exercise--live double that. I'm going to go on a limb and say that (tens of?) thousands of scientists research the proper design for shoes. Are you really suggesting that all these scientists are so incredibly wrong?

on taxes and wasted money

Two from my bank today that I wanted to share:

Why your taxes just got more complicated -- basic rules of thumb for whether recession relief porgrams should prompt you to consult a professional for filing taxes this year

Don't waste your gift cards -- fees and expirations are shady, but they exist. Make sure you get the most out of your gift cards, even if it means giving them away.

Useful things I've learned from these two articles:
1. You can donate gift cards to charity.
2. I'm broke, but not broke enough to be helped (or else too broke), apparently.

on screwing things up

MAKE Magazine's blog pointed me to the somewhat amazing Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results.

I'm particularly fond of this idea because, along with danger (see my previous post and the Gever Tulley TED talk), we tend to discourage our younger generation from creative screw-ups in favor of encouraging flawless mediocrity.

My friend TJ and I were discussing just today this snippet from the Duke University "What we look for" page:

We like students who make intelligent and interesting mistakes, students who understand that only in risking failure do we become stronger, better, and smarter.

Assuming this is actually what they're looking for, I'm strongly in favor of this attitude. I wonder, however, whether this attitude is sincere or an appeal for students who may not have had four-ohs or better to apply, since private school applications have been trending downward. (cha-ching!)

This book sounds awesome

(from the perspective of a grown-up kid, anyway.)

50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)

The book is from Gever Tulley, founder of the semi-famous Tinkering School, "a place where kids can pick up sticks and hammer and other dangerous objects and be trusted." For more info on the school and the original five dangerous things covered, see Mr. Tulley's TED talk from December 2007 and February 2009, respectively.

WANT.

Take note, Stephen Covey

The Seven Habits of Highly (In)Effective Managers

Kohl's cash

Kohl's is now funding (through offset vouchers and other means) 100% of their energy footprint with renewable energy.

(link via AWEA on facebook)

2010 best places to work

The HRC has posted the 2010 best of the best--the Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies on their policies re: LGBT inclusiveness and parity. We Q's feel left out, but hey... if a company gets 100+, we're probably doin' ok, right?

how to raise a happier kid

by inspiring in them a love of thrifted/recycled/upcycled things.

Added bonus if you can get them to value individualism earlier on.

(via The Scrap Exchange twitter feed)

say it ain't so!

R.I.P., Green Leaf.

While not the absolute best Indian (or even South Indian) food in the Triangle--that spot is reserved for Udupi over in Stepford Cary--Green Leaf brought consistently decent South Indian fare much closer to home. 20 minutes closer, for me. Not to mention, it was hands-down the most interesting restaurant name in Durham. Its full name? The Almighty Wisdom of the Green Leaf God.

One of the things that always disturbed me (well, obviously it made me happy, too) was that I never once set foot in that restaurant without them giving me at least one appetizer, side, or dessert for free. It's often a bad sign when companies start offering things on deep discount or total discount, but when that happens consistently? It was bad portents from the get-go. The most ominous of it all was that they'd thank us every time we'd bring a new person in (and we didn't do that more than monthly at best).

I'll definitely mourn this loss. At the very least, who will take its place as strangest restaurant name?

step aside, passive-aggressive notes

make room for passive-aggressive wifi SSIDs!

72 Hours Later

Do you have an emergency plan with your friends and family? Recommended disaster plans for different scenarios.

Full Frame time!

For Durham folks, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is coming soon. They're still seeking volunteers. Consider signing up and hanging out with awesome fellow Durhamites (plus, you get to see free shows, which is a pretty significant discount).

wind energy controversial? still?

Thanks to AWEA for posting this article about a "controversial" wind farm in Wisconsin. As a fan of modern minimalist design, I suppose I'll never be on the same page about wind turbines being "ugly" (to me they're kind of a benchmark of beautiful design), and I've never heard a "jet engine" sound come from any so much as a heavy whooshing one. [ I am willing to stand corrected on that, since NC is wonky and I've never spent an extended amount of time near one. ]

One of the consistently frustrating things for me, as one interested in renewable energy technology, is the lack of quantification behind the claim of increased bird deaths. This article illuminates the data:

Since the turbines started spinning, the state Department of Natural Resources says it has recorded bird and other wildlife deaths attributed to the wind farm at a higher-than-average rate.

Dave Siebert, director of the DNR's energy office, said the national average for wind farms is slightly more than two bird deaths annually per wind turbine. As many as 10 deaths per turbine have been recorded at Forward.

Certainly, at a wildlife refuge (10/year/turbine) that's a significant amount, but the 2/year national average seems a bit... miniscule compared to other ways birds die, no? Is there no way to modify wind turbines to emit some sound or signal that would be heard by flying creatures within a certain range? The person who figures this out will make loads of money, I suspect.

glad to have gone undocumented

as a routine sleep walker/talker, I'm really glad no one has ever set up a blog to document my nighttime escapades for the world to see.

Give a man a fish...

A new area restaurant I'd definitely love to give a try. If you ever have doubts about market segmentation and how business models gear themselves to serve different populations, take a look at places like Watts Grocery (or even one of my personal favorites, Toast) and compare them to places like Joe's, or like Chloe's on East Pettigrew St.

An interesting bit from the article:

In this way, Bushfan said, he believes a business can do as much as or more than a church or nonprofit to give life back to the community.

“There are so many nonprofits, but they’re not bringing any economic value. They’re not creating any jobs,” he said. “This area is so centrally located. It’s like Vegas. If you build it, they will come.”

For all the anti-capitalist naysayers, the man's got a point. While a definite advocate of non-profits myself, I'm no ostrich about the need for good business models to bring sustained economic benefit to an area. One can decry "gentrification" and things you consider "bourgie" (pronounced 'BOO zhee'; short for something that's decidedly "bourgeois," which is defined as "being of the property-owning class and exploitive of the working class") until one is blue in the face, but resisting economic development only further harms those you're trying to keep from being "exploited."

twenty twenty hindsight

It's a great blog from a local (linked as a Durham blog, but actually the author lives in Carrboro). Typically, it's kind of an amusing recounting of the author's life. It's very gay, and can be quite raunchy.

I really wanted to share this post in particular; it's kind of a beautiful musing on queer love and heartbreak.

mind = blown

This website is an incredible exploration of sound as it occurs in nature.

It's interesting how violent nature sounds when isolated. Take, for instance this ray gun battle cracking ice.

I have a sleep-induced hallucination

This is great. What Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech would have looked like if he were a businessperson armed with PowerPoint.

On charitable giving

(gleaned from Steve Allen's blog)

This article suggests you DON'T give to Haiti.

An interesting (though not entirely beautifully written) piece. He makes a good point. For one thing, there are the points in his article [sketchy organizations, limited ability to use the funds currently, permanent earmarking of funds unnecessarily], but then there's also the 9/11 effect: people give more than is needed--usually to the Red Cross--and other charitable organizations suffer as a result. If you're thinking of texting to donate, consider just giving a $10 bill to your local charity or donating to a general fund, not a Haiti-specific one.

Thoughts?

[ author's note: if you would like to give to Haiti anyway, Google has put together a nice list of ways to do so, along with a--slightly voyeuristic--Google Earth satellite view of devastated areas. ]

an interesting analysis

Obama's campaign promises at the 1-year mark.

...though I wish it contained a list (spreadsheet? pretty graph?) of the actual promises measured, as well as benchmarking standards from previous presidencies.

for my fellow foodies

the Saveur Foodie Giveaway (which is actually a whole mess of giveaways through the end of February, culminating in a grand prize drawing for a commercial-style wall oven and range cooktop)

oh dear...

the tragedies that look preventable in retrospect always feel worse. ugh.

Both Haiti’s endemic misery and the obstacles for rescue workers are in the spotlight. Earthquakes of similar magnitude have struck bigger cities in richer countries and claimed just a few dozen lives. But the absence of building codes in Haiti, as well as a severe wood shortage because of mass deforestation, mean that many structures in urban areas are made of thin, low-quality concrete. Such concrete is both prone to collapse and dangerous for those who are hit by it or buried beneath it. Ironically, some of the country’s poorest benefited from living in tin-roofed shacks, which were much easier to escape from.

Yet the majority of victims did not perish during the 35-second tremor. Ted Constan of Partners in Health, an American NGO, says that some 200,000 people were probably injured or trapped but not killed by the quake. He estimates that an additional 25,000 of them have died on each day that has passed since the tremor, as a result of treatable ailments such as bleeding, dehydration, suffocation and infection.

what black hole does our development aid fall into that Haiti's capital (and mark my words, countless other cities and capitals throughout the developing world) was in the sort of conditions that led to the deaths of tens of thousands? what exactly does our development aid go toward?

TARP worth the trouble?

I give you an article on TARP and whether it looks successful from my bank, who are not only awesome to do business with but also an excellent news source.

it's interesting how something expected to produce significant losses in government seems that it may turn an actual profit. not that it's guaranteed to, as the interview points out. it also illuminates explicitly why some banks have repaid so quickly. I think it was pretty commonly accepted that banks didn't like the limits on executive pay, but I haven't heard it much discussed that all big banks were pressured to accept the money even if they were financially healthy.

anyone have thoughts on TARP-in-retrospect and whether it will turn out to have been a good investment?

[ author's note: can someone please tell my investments that they're well positioned to continue growing? the past few days have seen my (significant) QTD growth almost completely devoured. ]

for my fellow word nerds

The 32 most commonly misused words/phrases.

(also, in case you don't get the reference, the picture in the article is Ric Flair.)

sustainable supply chain?

as a lover of Counter Culture's delicious coffees and a general nerd, I thought this business model for a "sustainable supply chain" was interesting (last blurb, page 2 of 2).

one thing that keeps popping into my head, though, is redundancy. Basically, if this is a fully transparent idea of the actual model, Peregrine is voluntarily eating into their own margins by donating beyond what was deemed fair trade value for their coffee. I hope it gets them enough business to make up for it in volume.

Hello, World!

So this blog started as some other concept, and then I realized I was never going to do anything with it because I didn't have enough time or energy to maintain it on top of my course work and obsessive news reading.

Behold, the bastard child of my obsessive news reading and love of web 2.0!

This is mostly a forum for me to discuss things in a format that may require more than 140 characters or more discussion than facebook is well suited for. Pardon me while I indulge my nerdy side and get all verbose about things that interest me. I'll try to keep my commentary as brief as possible.