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26
Dec 09

Daily Links for December 21st through December 26th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • why local first | Local First – This question is best answered by Michael H. Shuman, author of the book Going Local. "Going local does not mean walling off the outside world. It Means nurturing locally owned businesses which use local resources sustainably, employ local workers at decent wages and serve primarily local consumers. It means becoming more self-sufficient and less dependant on imports. Control moves from the boardrooms of distant corporations and back into the community where it belongs."
  • LA Times details Toyota history of concealing safety issues — Autoblog – For instance, there was an issue with a plastic panel that could be dislodged, potentially leading to unintended acceleration issues in some 2003 model Toyota Sienna minivans. Engineers reportedly discovered the problem and fixed the issue after 26,000 units were made. Toyota didn't announce a recall until six years later. Then there was a steering issue with 2004 Toyota 4Runner models. Toyota recalled the vehicles in Japan but insisted that no recall was necessary in the U.S. even after there were dozens of complaints that showed the problem was real. The Japanese automaker finally recalled the SUVs in 2005. More recent was a suit filed by Dimitrios Biller; the ex-Toyota lawyer who alleges that his former employer hid safety data and evidence in rollover cases.
  • Who Is IOZ?: The War on Christmas, Gameday Diagrams – You may be unaware, but I am something of an amateur military historian. I have taken the liberty of sketching out the decisive battle in the War on Christmas, showing how the vast numerical superiority of The Christians was overcome by poor battlefield selection and the inferior manueverability of their heavy troops compared to the combined cavalry and light, swift infantry of Secular Islamofascism and the Liberal Jews.
  • The Luxury Spot » Books ENTERTAINMENT » Was College Really Worth it? –
  • FT.com / Comment / Opinion – Call this a recession? At least it isn’t the Dark Ages – As we face an uncertain and worrying New Year, we can at least console ourselves with the fact that we are not living 1,600 years ago, and about to begin the year 410. In this year Rome was sacked, and the empire gave up trying to defend Britain. While this marks the glorious beginnings of “English history”, as Anglo-Saxon barbarians began their inexorable conquest of lowland Britain, it was also the start of a recession that puts all recent crises in the shade.
  • The Decade in Culture – GOOD Blog – GOOD – It's been a colorful decade in culture. Green became the new black, black became the new white, and the global economy slipped into red. The emergence of i-everything brought on an evolved understanding of "we" as collaboration, crowdsourcing and the social web unleashed a new era of relating to the world.
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16
Oct 09

Daily Links for October 14th through October 16th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Edible Geometry – In the world of cooking there are around 350 different types of pasta, and probably approximately four times as many names for them. They can be divided into few groups: long shape, flat pasta strands, short shaped and tubular pasta, small pasta for soup, stuffed shape, Asian type. Certain shapes of pasta and sizes are used for specific purposes, while others can be used in several different manners. New shapes are also being designed and named every day. Only with the mouth is it possible to distinguish between all the types of pasta, without seeing them. And only with the mouth do they develop their various characteristics that on sight can often seem to be similar.
  • Science of Scams: Derren Brown and Kat the Scientist debunk the paranormal industry – Boing Boing – The Science of Scams is a new project from Channel 4 and mentalist/magician Derren Brown that aims to debunk the paranormal industry's lucrative claims about ghosts, fortune-telling, telekinesis and other assorted woo woo. Brown and C4 produced seven videos purporting to show the kind of "paranormal" activity held up as evidence of the supernatural and released them on YouTube for several weeks, allowing people to make what they will of them. Now, they're revealing the hoax videos once per week, with accompanying videos that explain how the scam works. The show is presented by Kat the Scientist, who did postgrad research in Biological Anthropology and Pharmacology at Oxford.
  • Gary’s Social Media Count | PERSONALIZE MEDIA – Many of us who have been following social media since the early 90s are very sensitive to today’s exponential growth in usage of the sharing web. Inspired by other cool real time counters, The Goddess of Social Media Laurel Papworth, my own Rise & Rise of Social Media presentations and various ‘cool’ videos (you know the ones) I decided to put together this little Flash app (which is in constant development) showing how active & dynamic the Social Web is. More after the embed.
  • The Most Influential Management Gurus – Forbes.com – Leadership consulting firm CrainerDearlove surveyed 3,500 people and a panel of experts to determine the 2009 edition of the Thinkers 50, a biennial list of the most influential living management thinkers.
  • The Referendum – Happy Days Blog – NYTimes.com – The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control. In his novel about marriage, “Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.” Watching our peers’ lives is the closest we can come to a glimpse of the parallel universes in which we didn’t ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or got on that plane after all. It’s tempting to read other people’s lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own.
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04
Sep 09

Daily Links for September 4th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Labor Day by the numbers – Note that all numbers are current as of September 4, 2009.
  • American Vice: Mapping the 7 Deadly Sins – We're gluttons for infographics, and a team at Kansas State just served up a feast: maps of sin created by plotting per-capita stats on things like theft (envy) and STDs (lust). Christian clergy, likely noting the Bible Belt's status as Wrath Central, question the "science." Valid point—or maybe it's just the pride talking.
  • Telegraphs Ran on Electric Air in Crazy 1859 Magnetic Storm | Wired Science | Wired.com – On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.
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15
Jul 09

Daily Links for July 13th through July 15th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • I Heart My City: Albert’s Philadelphia – Intelligent Travel Blog | National Geographics Blog – We've been loving your submissions for our I Heart My City project – and today's city comes to us via Albert Lee, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were few people who showed as much enthusiasm for their cities as Albert, and we'll let him explain why in his own words
  • Popular Mechanics: How to Make Your Own Beer – When it comes to beer, there's no lack of selection—despite Bud and Coors—for most beer-selling stores in the U.S. About 8.6 million barrels of craft beer were sold in 2008, and the number of artisanal beer suppliers in the U.S. is growing. With all this choice, you'd think fewer people would be brewing at home, right? Not exactly. Instead, the opposite seems to be true—estimates show that home brewing is on the rise in the U.S. And with good reason. DIY home brewing (after you get the equipment) is cheap. More than that, brewing your own is more satisfying than paying for another round. Next time you crack open a cold one—strained, heated and brewed by your own hand— you'll understand. In this story, we walk through the steps to make a Belgian white ale. Ingredients and steps vary for different kinds of beer, but the basics are all here. Cheers.
  • Politicosphere – A navigable map of the political blogosphere.
  • The US Atlas Of Texting-While-Driving Laws – When the first set of cell phone driving laws were passed, many of them did not include text messaging provisions. While the concept of texting-while-driving falls under most driver distraction laws, those are often not enforced until after an accident or incident occurs. Click on the maps below to discover whether your state has a full statewide ban, has pending legislation, teen-driving laws or nothing at all.
  • Comments Dead, Twitter Holds Smoking Gun – [Chris Loux] took the opportunity to introduce Echo – his new product that allows publishers to embed a simple JavaScript widget and aggregate social media and blog dialogue from across the web. This means that all of the related posts from Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Digg, WordPress and Blogger end up below your post for the world to see.
Daily Links — Comments Off
06
Jul 09

Daily Links for July 4th through July 6th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • The Meanings Behind the Symbols: Family Crests, Blazons, Coat of Arms, Personalized Crests – Please note that the following descriptions and meanings are gleaned from a variety of sources, some of which disagree on those meanings. The most commonly accepted meanings are given, but scholars vary in the their opinions concerning the reliability of any "commonly held" historic meanings for coats of arms and crests.
  • Is Transformers 2 Racist? – UGO – If you snoop around movie sites today, you’ll find references to Mudflap and Skids, twin Autobots from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen who bear more than a passing resemblance to minstrel show depictions of African Americans. CHUD.com aptly dubbed them Little Black Sambots. The wider story is that Mudflap and Skids are just the tip of the insensitive iceberg in Bay’s newest film. Here is a list of what you can expect when you go to see the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
  • Sociomapping – Sociomap.com – We are introducing a new revolutionary tool for visualization and analysis of data. Sociomaps (a result of Sociomapping analysis) are complex graphs that resemble a landscape. Your abilities to move in space, for which you are trained from early childhood, will help you to interpret the complex relationships encoded in Sociomap. Sociomap enables to visualize, explore and analyze the structure and dynamics of a system and to present it in a way, which is easy to understand, especially for the public and non-scientific audience.
  • Ryan Sager – Neuroworld – Founding Thinkers – True/Slant – Metacognition is the act of thinking about thinking — understanding one’s own mind, so as to be its master instead of its slave. Madison, along with the other founders, didn’t have the luxury of designing a government that others would operate. He and his contemporaries would be wielding this government’s power (Madison himself would go on to be the nation’s fourth president), and in writing its founding documents, he and the others were designing constraints on their own future power. They had to admit basic facts about their own human nature — that they were no angels, that they were subject to “passions” as much as any other mortal — and they had to act wisely in accordance with those facts. They had to engage in metacognition in the most consequential circumstance imaginable; and they succeeded.
  • The Fourth of July: Throughout the Decades | The Saturday Evening Post –
  • wirthusflag2009site.jpg (JPEG Image, 2000×1294 pixels) – Scaled (44%) –
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