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[rubbd] Stranger Than Fiction

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:00:34 GMT

Even Hollywood would pause before trying to sell this scenario. Imagine:

Over twenty years ago someone invented a cheap car gadget that would cut the 30,000 annual US car crash deaths by 75%, and with government help proved it in a randomized experiment fifteen years ago. The car industry was a tight cartel, however, explicitly encouraged by the government and exempted from anti-trust laws, and ...

[rubbd] Visual Science

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:23:35 GMT

Design You Trust

Very attractive molecular visualisations and infographic experiences from Visual Science, a professional design service company for medicine, pharmaceutics, nanotechnologies, biotechnology, biology and chemistry areas.

Advertise with Design You Trust! - DYT on Twitter - Facebook

[rubbd] Next Nature intro by Bruce Sterling

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:16:47 GMT

NextNature.net - Exploring the Nature caused by People.

This project is about Nature’s brand image. One might surmise that “Nature,” being 100 percent all-natural, can’t have any brand image. The facts suggest otherwise. Try it for yourself: tell a friend that something seemingly 100 percent natural is actually “96 percent natural.” Not a great difference, apparently, yet a profound unease arises. That unease is the subject of the many...

[rubbd] Google Doodle for Today's Launch

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:11:47 GMT

Google Operating System

Even if Google said that the particles animation didn't celebrate a special event, it's probably the first time when Google uses doodles to build anticipation before launching a new feature. The doodle was fast, fun and interactive, just like the new search interface that shows results as you type a query.

Today, Google's homepage has a new doodle that shows a monochrome Google logo. When you...

[rubbd] iRack.

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:49:20 GMT

copyranter

(click image) Ladies, here's the iPhone app men looking over your shoulder have been waiting for. iAugment was developed by a New Orleans plastic surgeon. Just upload a photo of yourself, preferably in a "bra, bathing suit, or light colored top," highlight the target area, and move that slider left and right to watch your rib balloons inflate and deflate. "Results of actual surgery will vary." ...

[rubbd] French newspaper latest to badly exploit 9/11.

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:42:54 GMT

copyranter

(click ad, via) "Learn to anticipate." Courrier International, a Paris-based weekly (tagline: Anticipate Daily), solves 9/11 after the fact: the World Trade Center architects should have stopped at about 50 floors. Look! The hijacked planes missed the shorter targets. Yay! Viva la Photoshop! Viva la Idiocy! Remember the Maginot Line! Ad by Saatchi & Saatchi France. Previous stops on the 9/11...

[rubbd] Stanford's Authoritative Alternative To Wikipedia

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:35:00 GMT

Slashdot

eldavojohn writes "For decades, Stanford has been working on a different kind of Wikipedia. It might even be considered closer to a peer-reviewed journal, since you have get submissions past a 120 person group of leading philosophers around the world, not to mention Stanford's administration. It has several layers of approval, but the authoritative model produces high quality content — even if ...

[rubbd] You Are What You Touch: How Tool Use Changes the Brain's Representations of the Body: Scientific American

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:33:32 GMT

www.scientificamerican.com

Shared by Мирослав Биц
All our experience of the world, and ability to act on it, are channelled through our body. The pioneering computer scientist, Alan Turing, correctly realised the human mind is special not particularly because of its computing power, but because the body provides it with a unique interface to the world. Current research in psychology and neuroscience is probing how the b...

[rubbd] White House Correspondent Tweets His Heart Attack

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:11:00 GMT

Slashdot

Tommy Christopher, who writes for mediate.com, has reporting in his blood, so much so that he livetweeted every part of his recent heart attack. "I gotta be me. Livetweeting my heart attack. Beat that!" and "This is not like the movies. Most deadpan heart attack evar. Still hurts even after the morphine," were among his updates as he was rushed to the hospital. Christopher is now in stable...

[rubbd] A "Failure to Evaluate Return-on-Time" Fallacy

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:01:42 GMT

lesswrong: What's new

Submitted by lionhearted 62 comments

I don't have a good name for this fallacy, but I hope to work it out with everyone here through thinking and discussion.

It goes like this: a large majority of otherwise smart people spend time doing semi-productive things, when there are massively productive opportunities untapped.

A somewhat silly example: Let's say someone aspires to be a comedian, the...

[rubbd] Researchers Say Happiness Costs $75k

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:45:00 GMT

Slashdot

SpuriousLogic writes "Does happiness rise with income? In one of the more scientific attempts to answer that question, researchers from Princeton have put a price on happiness. It's about $75,000 in income a year. They found that not having enough money definitely causes emotional pain and unhappiness. But, after reaching an income of about $75,000 per year, money can't buy happiness. More...

[rubbd] Essays from 2008 DeLillo Conference in Germany (06-Sep-2010)

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:29:16 GMT

Don DeLillo's America

Noting the 2010 publication of 'Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction' edited by Peter Schneck and Philipp Schweighauser.

[rubbd] Glitches (2010) - Robert Overweg

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Digest

[The Facade, Half-Life 2]

[Lights in Mid-Air Glitch, Grand Theft Auto 4]

[The Facade 2, Left 4 Dead 2]

via creativeapplications.net

[rubbd] Self-Assembling Photovoltaic Tech From MIT

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:17:00 GMT

Slashdot

telomerewhythere writes "Michael Strano and his team at MIT have made a self-assembling and indefinitely repairable photovoltaic cell based on the principle found in chloroplasts inside plant cells. 'The system Strano's team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the...

[rubbd] A Step-by-Step Approach to Conveying Ideas with Music – Audio Premium

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:00:50 GMT

Audiotuts+

In this week’s Audio Premium content, Ryan Leach explores how you can use music to express feelings and ideas in a completely intangible way. He takes a detailed step-by-step approach, with full examples including notation and audio examples.

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

One of the greatest things about...

[rubbd] Profiling Fails

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:15:39 GMT

Overcoming Bias

As anyone who watches television detective programmes will know, criminal profiling claims to predict the characteristics of an offender from an analysis of a crime’s circumstances. Most police forces in the developed world use profiling, … Several studies … comparing the predictions of profilers and non-profilers in mock crime situations where the characteristics of the “real” perpetrator...

[rubbd] Obama GML Playa [Processing]

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:10:36 GMT

CreativeApplications.Net

Let Obama redraw the greatest hits and your favorite selections from the #000000book library of GML tags. To view the Obama GML Playa in action go to http://graffitimarkuplanguage.com/obama-gml-playa.

Here is a tag we created earlier with DustTag on the iPhone. To load in the Obama playa, go here, click inside the applet and type 20610.

Created by Golan Levin & Jérôme Saint-Clair for

[rubbd] Report: Park 51 Developers Got Building For A Steal

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:16:09 GMT

Gothamist

How long has the Post been waiting to use this headline?

According to the Post, the family that sold the summer's most controversial piece of real estate—45-47 Park Place, the former Burlington Coat Factory store—to the developer who wants to turn it into a community center with a mosque (just two blocks from the World Trade Center) apparently got a much higher offer but still decided to...

[rubbd] Kanye West Loves Twitter, And We Love Twitter For Kanye West’s Tweets

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:27:37 GMT

TechCrunch

You’ll forgive me for sneaking in some pop culture in the mix because it’s Saturday and all, right? Rapper Kanye West is having a bit of a moment on Twitter the past few hours, apologizing for the Taylor Swift incident from last year when he stormed the stage during the artist’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain that Beyonce should have won the Best Female Video award ...

[rubbd] Fast Trains to Connect US Cities, Alleviate Highway Congestion

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:30:43 GMT

TechCrunch

The Obama administration back in January promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects.

This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH.

Bi-level rail c...

[rubbd] Motorola Pulls Out Another Full Page NYT Ad Aimed At Apple’s Head

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:30:27 GMT

TechCrunch

Oh my, how I love some good ol’ fashion mudslinging.

“Flash Websites? There’s A Phone For That.”

To any ne’er-do-blog-read layman, the full page ad that Motorola just put in the New York Times might just seem oddly worded. To anyone who has even considered considering themselves a gadget geek — or has, at least, turned on their TV anytime in the past year and a half and seen Apple’s “There’s An ...

[rubbd] Concréte Sound System – autechre.bÆts

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:13:05 GMT

Resonance FM - Everything

We start September in fine style with an exclusive guest mix from one of our presenters, Primus Luta under the new guise of his Concréte Sound System (CSS) live setup. The mix is a retrospective/homage to Autechre and the 90′s IDM scene (regardless of what you make of the name). It’s quite a superb mix that deserves your full attention especially if, like me, your knowledge of Autechre’s back c...

[rubbd] Earth's Magnetic Field Flipped Superfast

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:30:00 GMT

Wired Top Stories

Magnetic minerals in 15-million-year-old rocks appear to preserve a moment when the magnetic north pole was rapidly on its way to becoming the south pole, and vice versa.

[rubbd] Mass Extinctions Change the Rules of Evolution

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:00:00 GMT

Wired Top Stories

A reinterpretation of the fossil record suggests a new answer to one of evolution's existential questions: whether global mass extinctions are just short-term diversions in life's preordained course, or send life careening down wholly new paths.

[rubbd] String Theory Finally Does Something Useful

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:00:00 GMT

Wired Top Stories

String theory has finally made a prediction that can be tested with experiments — but in a completely unexpected realm of physics: quantum entanglement.

[rubbd] Alcohol Is Healthy

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:00:27 GMT

Overcoming Bias

My health econ students love to hear that our best data suggests moderate drinking is good for health. New better data continues that trend:

[We study] the association between alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality over 20 years among 1,824 older adults…. Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy ...

[rubbd] Love Vs. Conversion

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:56:02 GMT

Overcoming Bias

A key pillar of modern morality is the sanctity of romantic love. We reel in horror at the thought that “backward” societies, and our ancestors, arranged marriages without intense emotional romantic love. While it was nice if arranged partners had such romantic feelings, if that did not happen they were not to look for it elsewhere; a life without romantic love could be a fine life.

An...

[rubbd] 21 Ridiculously Impressive HTML5 Canvas Experiments

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:30:05 GMT

Nettuts+

HTML5 is the thing to talk about these day. Today, we have a collection of some ridiculously impressive HTML5 canvas-based experiments that will make you say, “Wow!” Let’s take a peek at some of the latest, cutting edge examples out there.

1. 8 Bit Color Cycle

2. Particle Letter Animation

3. Cloth Experiment

This is one of the best canvas-based experiments.

4. Particle System

This is one of my...

[rubbd] Resort Attracts Men With Virtual Girlfriends

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:48:00 GMT

Slashdot

disco_tracy writes "Long a favorite of lovers and honeymooners, a Japanese beach town with fading sparkle has found a new tourism niche in the wired age. A resort based on a game called 'Love Plus,' encourages players to develop long-term relationships with virtual women.From the article: 'Local souvenir shops in the resort town have caught on and capitalized on the love-struck new clientele...

[rubbd] Why Technology Is So Addictive, and How You Can Avoid Tech Burnout [Technology]

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Lifehacker

We're surrounded by gadgets that demand our attention, constantly fragmenting our ability to properly focus on the task at hand. Living with technology doesn't mean we have to live with an addiction, however. Here's how to beat tech burnout. More »

[rubbd] Get Past Your Childhood Doubts by Simply Starting [Motivation]

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Lifehacker

You've got a web site idea, a mobile app concept, or just a loose video concept. You could let your mind shout you down and convince you how complicated those endeavors are, or you could take some take inspiration from Van Gogh. More »

[rubbd] Microsoft's Bing Awkwardly Gatecrashes Android's Party [Android Apps]

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:20:41 GMT

Gizmodo: android

[rubbd] We are the World – Not in Death [Scripts]

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:16:45 GMT

CreativeApplications.Net

Daniel Franke and Andreas Fischer recently finished the post & effects on a video for the band “We are the world” from LA. Using custom scripts for After Effects which generate a mapping of the fft-analysis of the audio data of the song, the distortion of the dancer were controlled using the slitscan technique. The higher the audio values are, the greater is the range of frames sampled for one ...

[rubbd] Apertus, the Open Source HD Movie Camera

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:18:00 GMT

Slashdot

osliving writes "This article takes a tour of the hardware and software behind the innovative Apertus, a real world open source project. Led by Oscar Spierenburg and a team of international developers, the project aims to produce 'an affordable community driven free software and open hardware cinematic HD camera for a professional production environment'."

[rubbd] MySpace Tries To Pollute Facebook’s Stream

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:53:16 GMT

TechCrunch

MySpace is launching Facebook sync today, allowing MySpace users to sync their status updates with their Facebook profile or Page. The social network launched a similar functionality for Twitter last year.

Once you’ve synced your Facebook account, you can update status on MySpace and it will automatically be shared with friends on Facebook. MySpace is touting this feature as a big win for the...

[rubbd] Lemongrass Beef and Asian Green Noodle salad

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:17:49 GMT

The Fussy Duck

Quick and simple meal, cook on the BBQ and great for summer… Lemongrass Beef 1 Lemongrass stalk 1-2 Shallots 1 lb Sirloin tip 1 tspn Shrimp sauce Fish sauce 1 tspn Brown Sugar Salt Pepper Sesame seeds (Optional Chillies) Finely chop up the shallot and lemongrass, then pound with pestle or otherwise to soften. Add [...]

[rubbd] … up to $250. Minimum.

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:36:13 GMT

… up to $250. Minimum.

[rubbd] Trace the Dollars Behind the Story with Poligraft

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:43:29 GMT

ProgrammableWeb

It seems that news pieces are rarely written from a neutral point of view these days, and political news can be especially prone to bias. But how can the average reader, who probably has no idea of the political ties between those mentioned in a news piece, see the larger picture? Sunlight labs, who are dedicated to creating tools that make government data more accessible, have a new service...

[rubbd] Just favorited “FACT Mix 156: Kode9 ” by FACT Mix Archive on Mixcloud.com

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:03:59 GMT

Fact Mix 156: Kode9 by Fact Mix Archive on Mixcloud

Just favorited “FACT Mix 156: Kode9 ” by FACT Mix Archive on Mixcloud.com

[rubbd] Smart Phones Helping to Move Business from the Boardroom to the Bathroom

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:15:12 GMT

Google Android News Android Forums

Smart phones have drastically changed the world, putting the power of the internet in the palm of our hand. They’ve expanded our horizons, fostering relationships through social networking, keeping us informed up to the minute, and accelerating the pace at which we do business. A recent survey conducted by Kelton Research for Samsung Mobile proves that final point. The survey...