Sticky light

By far the coolest thing I've seen since Saturn's rings and moons:

Sticky light

Trendspotting

An interesting hypothesis that sooner or later, Kindles will be free. Stupendously clever on their part, if it's true. As an Amazon Prime member, I'm obviously a major fan.

Late, but interesting

I wonder where all the naysayers are who thought Apple could never achieve 3m ipad unit sales. I'd love to know how much salt is needed to eat one's words.

Apple's 3rd-quarter results.

Avast, there be pirates in these here waters!

This is by far one of the coolest (if not necessarily all that useful) things I have ever, ever seen. I wonder how one might pirate a vinyl inclusive of both sides (without having to make two separate vinyls), and whether it would be possible to repair scratches on the pirated copy.

They can't take that away from me

Noooo! Yet another thing scientists have taken away from me. First the Brontosaurus, then Pluto as a planet, and now the Triceratops?!

I don't know if I can handle this. My childhood is slowly crumbling around me, like so many stale cookies. Maybe I'll just refuse to believe it.

The long-term effects of sleep deprivation

This explains quite a bit about my undergraduate years.

"Uncanny" is perhaps an understatement

A Canadian filmmaker has replaced his eye with a video camera. I'm kind of creeped out that I think it's awesome. So, so awesome. And yet, a shining example of what exactly roboticists mean when they discuss the "Uncanny Valley."

*shudder*

Carbon Management as an issue of competitive advantage

Wow... just, wow. I had the privilege of listening to an excellent webinar hosted by GreenBiz.com focusing on what they call The Resource Optimization Imperative. Representatives from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Hara discussed how effective environmental management is becoming a make or break issue for businesses' competitive advantage.

Honestly, there wasn't necessarily anything truly revolutionary in the webinar, but it was full of practical examples, and reinforcement of my passion: sustainability along the supply chain.

I'll post the link to the recap if the email includes permission to do so.

Gazing into the crystal ball

I've become slightly obsessed with this little map from Forbes.com visualizing where, in 2008, people were moving to and from.

Most telling are the Los Angeles, Detroit, and (I'm sure somehow) Seattle areas.

.......

So. nerdy.

Han Solo in carbonite. Envisioned as soap.

WANT.

It's driving me out of my mind; that's why it's hard for me to find

(apologies to Bel Biv Devoe)

Have been in a bit of a whirlwind couple of weeks, what with homework, strategy games, case competition things, and planning a hugely major event, but I give you this thoughtful video from Durham-based Cree, Inc. Makers of quite impressive LED lighting.



I wonder how it affects the payback period when you factor in the effects of incandescent on heating and cooling. Also, I wonder how you'd quantify the additional carbon emissions and footprint reduction.

US jobs and investments

The ever-geeky FiveThirtyEight gives us a wonderful rundown of what's happening with manufacturing in the US. It seems US manufacturing is actually increasing, but jobs are disappearing due to advances in productivity. I can definitely buy this, given the insane level of automation and technology integration many industries are working with.

Also, he concludes with some suggestions about what should be done to ensure competitiveness (including things like floating the yuan), but one of the more interesting ideas is this:

Secondly, there have been calls for a US industrial policy -- that is, for Washington to essentially "pick winners and losers" by promoting some industries that they feel have a high probability of success. Asian countries have been doing this for years with remarkable success and it is a policy which we clearly need to copy. I'm a big promoter of nano-technology, alternative energy and stem cell research, but those are just my choices. There are plenty others out there that would also make sense.

Maybe Washington is listening?

one last amalgam of links

1.

(future poli sci majors, many illustrious housing options await you!)
Stop Asking Me My Major
Stanford Poli Sci grad complains that people asking what practical use a degree has only causes stress, isn't productive. As a poli sci undergrad myself, I can't help but say that yes, there's value to all degrees, but it would be nice if there were more guidance on career trajectory in high school and college. I *loved* my poli sci courses, but I didn't realize poli sci majors were expected to a) go to law school, b) get PhD'd in poli sci and teach, c) work as an unpaid lackey for some sleazy politician's campaign, or d) bag groceries. English majors may get into med school, but not without med school in mind, or there's no way they'd have all the prerequisite courses and grades. Also, someone from the comments (a liberal arts career counselor) posted this juicy nugget as evidence that liberal arts degrees are useful. My takeaway: further evidence that liberal arts degrees without PhDs land you a job serving tables. Another eyebrow-raiser: the author's friend ditched 'high-paying' medicine for a more populist engineering degree. Wait, what?

2.

Free is Not a Marketing Tool
A thought-provoking article that I think is ultimately a bit foolishly idealistic. While it's true that giving things away for free doesn't always--or even generally--create loyal customers, it can be an invaluable marketing tool in some instances. And it definitely shouldn't be discounted as a tool for startups and creative-class workers to generate interest in what they're selling. Suggesting that "free" as a marketing tool is somehow wrong is also pretty offensive to small businesses and self-employed workers relying on buzz and word of mouth. There's an aphorism in economics: you can't make money off something that's public knowledge. Which is to say, you can't create long-term competitive advantage when everyone's doing the same thing. To argue with this is to argue with the foundation of a capitalist system of exchange, which I won't do in this forum.

3.

The mole was a fake?*
30 Awesome Rare Celeb Photos
I'm particularly struck by #9.
*(I may be the last person on earth to know it, but it was news to me.)

4.

1930s Atlas Lust!
*drool* ...except, page 95 disturbs me. A lot.

Can't you see I'm white and nerdy?

Thought I'd share a few design-centric things that made me happy over the past couple of days in my cruisings of the internet (not necessarily in any particular order). It's nice to see such quant-based representation. Yay, numbers nerds!

1.


The State of the Internet - lovely visuals to demonstrate what's up with the internet, who's using it, how often, and how. Things learned from this:
(a) It's important to think about where data come from, since this visual repeatedly switches from a US to global data set
(b) The arrow for Netherlands should point to Netherlands, not Denmark. It really erodes your credibility
(c) Pick your visual carefully. People see pie charts and assume all things should go on one pie chart, forgetting that not all things are mutually exclusive

2.


We feel fine. - nice set of visuals from a several years' worth of phrase-mining on blogs. The project has sought any mention in blogs of "I feel" or "I'm feeling" phrases, aggregated them (at a rate of 15-20k per diem), and apparently--as a whole--the blogosphere feels fine.

3.


Annual Reports are Awesome. - a collection of stunning print items combining two of my favorite things to nerd out about--design and finance. I'm so glad OKgreat understands the lustful appreciation some of us have for both design and numbers.

4.


Design--nature trumps humanity. - Brainless slime molds manage to replicate the work of hundreds of engineers, nearly replicating the layout of the Tokyo rail system in a matter of hours.

5.

(apologies to Avatar Pocahontas for using an image from the movie)
Colors of the Wind? - An LED array attached to mini wind turbines helps visualize wind patterns. Seems like it could be tremendously useful for plotting out wind farms or alternative wind capture devices.

6.


Physical Color Picker - the coolest concepts will never see the light of day. *sigh*

thoughts for when I ought to be studying for my finance exam

Sea change beginning? I hope so. (link courtesy of Awesome Ian)

Hideously disturbing. Sometimes wish there were some way to control who reproduced and/or raised kids that was more effective than DSS/CPS.

Really rather hilarious (and, I suppose, also practical) patent issuance. Please check out the images. You'll be so happy you did.

Via Make, a really awesome mini-documentary about how vinyl records are made.

Now, I go to sleep. Two hours too late. Stupid mid-evening nap.

Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky.

I thought this concept was pretty cool, and sort of sexy in a bizarre, house-is-only-slightly-bigger-than-you sort of way. I heard it suggested as useful for disaster relief efforts. I gotta say, I'm sure people with no homes would kill for one of these right now.

Worm food.

So tonight my housemate and I assembled a pretty quick & dirty vermicompost bin. I'm pretty excited about this, especially since they took away the compost bin from the apartments next door as they began the renovations. I'm looking forward to a healthy, bountiful garden this year (dangit!), and I'm hoping the little red wigglers can help me out in that respect. All that remains is to buy the actual worms (though our garden may turn some up over the next day or so).

The nice thing about vermicompost bins is that, in addition to requiring less maintenance and processing time, worm bins are less smelly, despite the fact that you're basically turning the contents into worm poop. In fact, the only time it smells is if you're doing something wrong, so it makes a great built-in alarm bell. In the end, the worm "castings" are one of the richest, safest forms of fertilizer, and they're pH neutral (like water!).

Anyway, there are any number of ways to build a vermicompost bin, but the simplest worm composter involves taking an opaque 18-gallon rubber tub with lid, drilling holes along the top and bottom of the bin, and throwing in some damp newspaper, a couple handfuls of soil, some leaf litter, and cardboard, then placing it over a drain tray and covering it. This is what we did, and it took all of 5 minutes from start to finish. I know it's rather nerdy, but I'm eagerly awaiting a vibrant worm bin.

On that note, I leave you with what is by now a classic youtube viral: the disgusting sewer worms under Cameron Village in Raleigh, NC.

R-E-C-Y-C-L-E, find out what it means to me

Sometimes I worry myself. I often find it difficult to motivate myself to crack a textbook (even in classes I enjoy), but I spent hours on end reading articles about how paper is recycled and issues faced in the recovered paper pulp industry for a case competition. Literal hours. Can we call it Applied Supply Chain and get academic credit for it? No? Damn.

(p.s., I'm still reading them, even though our application was turned in yesterday.)

Sociopolitical Networking, or Congress 2.0

This is a ridiculously nerdy and fascinating look at the evolution of the two major parties in Congress over time. It's interesting to visualize the phenomena, and how rare the real moderates can be. It also makes it that much more clear how impressive President Obama's meeting with the Republican members of Congress really was, and why something like that will probably get him demonized by both sides in the end.

It's a shame, the polarized state of politics, with its blind-deaf-dumb sloganeering party-lines-only existence. Alas, in a democracy, this is vox populi in its purest, most unfortunate form.

all the young dudes

Recent news stories on two makers in the news.

Texting Underground can save lives and caves
I love the idea that digital messaging is something that can advance us; it's been getting a lot of flak lately, along with social networking and web 2.0. [side rant: Resistance is futile, my friends; take advantage of the benefits of social media before they become completely commoditized.]

The boy who paints like an old master
While I have my own views on old masters, this kid is an interesting study. It's sort of amusing/nauseating, though, how often his parents refute that he's being pushed into painting. Like, a) either he really is being pushed into it, and/or b) our news media try too hard to imply it such that it needs to be something repeated endlessly.

Now, on old masters, Kieron is quoted as not wanting to end up like Picasso, but rather more like Monet or Seago. Which is fine, really. The problem is how so many people mock modern art, mock abstract expressionism, mock cubism or surrealism or dadaism. I used to be among these, but I've come to hold these things dear to me.

For one thing, most of the folks who mock these forms of art haven't the slightest clue what Picasso was even trying to do (trying to revolutionize the concept of perspective in a completely different artistic language than what had been established). Second, many of these same folks couldn't distinguish a Monet from a Manet from a van Gogh... in fact, I'd lay wager that if you step into a room and asked people to identify a Monet from a lineup of paintings, fewer people could than if you asked people to identify a Picasso (unless you were a bastard and threw in one of 16-year-old Picasso's hyperrealistic paintings). Even fewer, a Seago.

The truth is, representing reality isn't all that unique. Sure, you can be a standout like Velazquez or Titian or El Greco, or you can be one of the lump of semi-indistinguishable impressionists, but creating your own interpretation of reality is so different from artist to artist. You can almost always tell a Miro from a Picasso from a Kandinsky from, well, you get the picture. This isn't to imply that there's no merit to strict representations of reality, but rather that one should take care before suggesting that a 3rd-grader could create better art than some of these abstract artists. It's all personal preference--folks who like classic paintings want beauty they can see; folks who prefer modern or abstract art want beauty they can feel.

Then there are the tightrope walkers. The Munchs, or the de Goyas (one of my personal favorites), or the Kahlos, or the Riveras. Then there's even the Warhols, who take ubiquitous imagery and feed it back to you to the nth degree, in hyperbolically popularized form.

Anyway, I won't talk about paying 1000GBP for a chalk drawing by a kid, and you don't talk about how Kandinsky is just a bunch of color and shapes on canvas. And we definitely won't start on classical ballet vs. contemporary.

Anyway, next time you try to write off someone's art because it doesn't look like anything, stop looking with your eyes. I leave you with a favorite quote from Picasso on language. Turns out, Picasso did a lot of really incredible things playing around with language (I'll be eternally grateful to the Nasher and their exhibit "Picasso and the Allure of Language" for opening my eyes to this):

If I begin correcting the mistakes you speak of according to rules with no relation to me, I will lose my identity to grammar I have not incorporated. I prefer to create myself as I see fit than to bend my words to rules that don't belong to me.
--Pablo Picasso, 1946