February 2011
0 posts
January 2011
27 posts
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Woman Speaks First Words in 10 Years After... →
Remember: we live in the future. A future where we can transplant larynxes and lungs and livers and hearts from person to person. That’s not too shabby, really.
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Medical Engineering →
Most people, when diagnosed with a heart valve malformation, take whatever implant the doctor wants to give them. Tal Golesworthy, on the other hand, decided that he could do better, and designed his own. He received his implant in 2004, and since then, 23 others have benefited from his design.
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Guo Gangtang →
Guo Gangtag’s child was kidnapped in 1997. Since then, he’s been hunting through China, trying to find his missing son. He hasn’t succeeded- but his quest has returned 7 other missing children to their families.
One tragedy has prevented seven others.
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Roasted Brussels Sprouts
You probably don’t like brussel sprouts very much. Most people don’t. I don’t. They’re sulfurous and bitter, they’re usually served boiled or steamed, or worse, fresh out of the microwave. They represent everything that our inner child hates about being forced to eat vegetables.
Right up until you roast them. My wife and I fight over roasted brussels sprouts. We...
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Anecdotes that probably aren't true, but should be
I heard online from a person who claimed to know the actor Ruben Blades who used to go drinking with Raul Julia in NYC in the 60s. Yes, I realize exactly how tenuous that sort of provenance is, but the anecdote joins the many that I’ve gathered over the years- stories that have no real evidence, but are plausible, and most important- awesome.
In any case, the anecdote:
Raul and Ruben were...
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Hearing "The Latest Exo-Planet"
When I was young, the idea that we could identify planets orbiting distant stars was a “someday” sort of thing. “Someday, our telescopes will be good enough, our techniques will be refined enough, that we’ll be able to find other planets.” Back then, we only knew of the other planets and planet-like objects that orbited our Sun. We all assumed that there were other...
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News Like This →
Dubai police have confirmed they uncovered a gang of dealers who were selling electric stun gun kits, for up to £5,000, across the region. These were then being fitted inside the robot jockeys, which cost between £130-£200, that in recent years have largely replaced child jockeys, traditionally used in camel racing, due to humanitarian concerns. The electric shocks could be administered by remote...
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Hearing "The Latest Exo-Planet"
When I was young, the idea that we could identify planets orbiting distant stars was a “someday” sort of thing. “Someday, our telescopes will be good enough, our techniques will be refined enough, that we’ll be able to find other planets.” Back then, we only knew of the other planets and planet-like objects that orbited our Sun. We all assumed that there were other...
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Being Lazy
I didn’t write an awesome thing yesterday. I was feeling lazy. Sometimes, you just need to slack off. Which, BTW- I’m writing this at work. Ahhhhhhh…
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Confirmation Bias →
People do, and believe, incredibly stupid things. This is true of everyone, at various points. There are no exceptions. The question then becomes: why? The beautiful thing is that we can explain why, within certain limits, anyway. And because we can explain why, we can start to take steps to route around these flaws in our thinking.
Confirmation bias in one of many hard-wired features of our...
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Genetic Hammers →
“When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.”
Evolution can be viewed as a search algorithm; it attempts to explore the space of “all possible organisms” without wasting time on organisms that aren’t very successful. But it can’t just start anywhere- for a new species to evolve, it must descend from an existing species.
The result...
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Sourdough
A got some sourdough starter from a friend at work. For those who have never worked with sourdough before, your starter is basically a culture of yeast you keep in your fridge and feed from time to time. When you want bread, you take it out of the fridge, feed it a bunch, and let it ferment for a few days.
So why is it awesome?
Well, when you are letting it ferment, it produces goo....
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The Past Decade was Pretty Good →
When we look back at the past decade, it’s easy to spot all the things that were wrong. From the War on Terror to problems in the banking sector, it does raise the question: did anything good happen in the past decade?
Charlie Stross tackles that question, and provides a quick summary of a handful of the improvements in the world- from controlling diseases to changes in the global economy,...
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You Aren't In Control →
Who decides whether or not you sign up to be an organ donor? You? Or the person who designs the form? Who decides which option you purchase when choosing between a set? You? Or the person who slipped the ringer in to weight the options?
We are not the masters of our own souls; our brains have biologically wired biases that we can counter only when we know we’re looking at them.
I’m...
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Motocross Dinosaurs →
“Uh-huh,” the owner said. “Or maybe you figure humans shoot each other all the time, but if someone turns up ripped in half the cops are gonna start lookin’ for dinosaurs.”
Tark carefully pounded the counter. “There used to be a time,” he said, “when gun dealers would actually sell people guns! A time … called America. I miss that...
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When Murder Moves In
I don’t mean that literally, obviously. When I say “murder”, I mean “a murder of crows”. Not only is that one of the best names for a group of animals (followed closely by “an unkindness of ravens”), but it’s one of those sights that can be incredibly dramatic in the right conditions.
For a time, I lived in Troy, NY. A cute little victorian...
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When win and fail can't be distinguished →
This young lady is having so much damn fun, I can’t help but think that this is awesome. Step one to success: enjoy whatever it is you’re doing, and you’ll be better than 90% of the folks that are already doing it.
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When it snows up
Perhaps I’m easily amused, but I love looking out the window and watching snow “fall” up. Something about the way the wind hits my office building lifts the snow and creates an illusion of warped reality.
Garbage Day
When you have something you need to get rid of- things that rot, things that are broken, things that should simply go away, you most likely cart that stuff out to the curb once a week, or perhaps drop it off in a nearby dumpster when it’s convenient. And then, someone comes around and takes it away. And it’s gone.
We rarely consider the value of this service, but for most of human...
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The Undercity →
Cities are living, breathing things. The city surface- streets and buildings- is the skin of the city. And beneath that skin pulses a massive circulatory system that conducts people, power, and waste around the city.
As cities grow and age, that infrastructure changes. Old tunnels are sealed up and forgotten. New tunnels are built, and eventually forgotten in turn. Cities like New York keep...
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The Holiday Week at Work
I always seem like a little bit of a hero at work when I volunteer to work the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It gives others the opportunity to get their last days of vacation in before it all expires, and everybody likes to take off during the holidays.
Well, everyone except me. Because the holiday week is the greatest- nobody is there, nothing specific needs to be done....
A New Year
Everyone loves the new year. For no real reason at all, we think of it as a new beginning. I like it so much, I celebrate it twice- once in January, and once on April 1st.
Sleep in and sleep it off today, kids.