fil-ter

Michael Lewis: The Man Who Crashed the World (AIG)

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:03:20 -0400

Michael Lewis: The Man Who Crashed the World (AIG)

Tell Americans What They're Really Paying for Their Food

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:22:00 -0400

Tell Americans What They're Really Paying for Their Food:

Spread over tens of millions of consumers, [subsidy] costs seem small: the average American taxpayer, for example, pays only $322 each year to fund subsidies. But for some of the thousands of farmers who get such payments, the benefits are huge: from 1995 to 2005, roughly 75 percent of subsidy payments went to just 10 percent of the subsidy recipients, who took in an average of $91,000 a year; and 55 farmers received more than $1 million each.

Farm (and tobacco) subsidies, depressingly, are just one of those things that I don’t think will ever change in America.

I have finally made a time machine

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:14:24 -0400

I have finally made a time machine

Maddow on Obama’s Hypocrisy: I didn’t take long at...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:33:03 -0400

Maddow on Obama’s Hypocrisy: I didn’t take long at all for Obama to become Bush-like. Disappointing, albeit not unpredictable.

Cat catching bat

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:54:22 -0400

Cat catching bat

First Comes Love, The Comes Obesity?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:30:42 -0400

First Comes Love, The Comes Obesity?:

Not only are married people more likely to become obese than those who are just dating, but young people who move in with a boyfriend or girlfriend tend to pack on the pounds too.

Andy Milonakis - Let me Twitter That … (yeah, I’m a...

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:53:17 -0400

Andy Milonakis - Let me Twitter That … (yeah, I’m a little behind)

Major Lazer - Hold the Line. Been loving this album.

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:44:08 -0400

Major Lazer - Hold the Line. Been loving this album.

Triumph visits Bonnaroo. See Part 2

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:44:18 -0400

Triumph visits Bonnaroo. See Part 2

British accent? (see also: Irish Gypsies)

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:00:00 -0400

British accent?

(see also: Irish Gypsies)

Underfunded Scientists Force Lipstick-Covered Rat With Cancer To Run Through Maze

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:25:47 -0400

Underfunded Scientists Force Lipstick-Covered Rat With Cancer To Run Through Maze:

Scientists at the severely underfunded HLM Research Laboratories announced plans Monday to have the facility’s one remaining rat, Mendel, now cancer-ridden and covered in lipstick, run through a maze several hundred times.

Head researcher Dr. Linda Cho said that since the lab’s $5.6 million budget was slashed by 90 percent last winter, Mendel, a blind 1-year-old albino Norwegian rat with advanced non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, has served as the subject for every experiment the lab has performed.

Prototype Nokia phone recharges without wires

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:17:53 -0400

Prototype Nokia phone recharges without wires:

While “traditional” (if there is such a thing) wireless power systems are specifically designed with a transmitter and receiver in mind, Nokia’s system isn’t finicky about where it gets its wireless waves. TV, radio, other mobile phone systems — all of this stuff just bounces around the air and most of it is wasted, absorbed into the environment or scattered into the ether. Nokia picks up all the bits and pieces of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone’s battery. A huge range of frequencies can be utilized by the system (there’s no other way, really, as the energy in any given wave is infinitesimal). It’s the same idea that Tesla was exploring 100 years ago, just on a tiny scale.

Mind you, harvesting ambient electromagnetic energy is never going to offer enough electricity to power your whole house or office, but it just might be enough to keep a cell phone alive and kicking. Currently Nokia is able to harvest all of 5 milliwatts from the air; the goal is to increase that to 20 milliwatts in the short term and 50 milliwatts down the line. That wouldn’t be enough to keep the phone alive during an active call, but would be enough to slowly recharge the cell phone battery while it’s in standby mode, theoretically offering infinite power — provided you’re not stuck deep underground where radio waves can’t penetrate.

Robot Tatoo

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:04:00 -0400

Robot Tatoo

Christ’s Sake

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:02:29 -0400

Christ’s Sake

Your horse is great, but your path is incorrect

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:17:41 -0400

Your horse is great, but your path is incorrect:

Once upon a time, there was a man who was riding in a horse drawn carriage and traveling to go take care of some affairs; and in the carriage there was also a very big suitcase. He told the driver to of the carriage to drive non-stop and the horse ran extremely fast.

Along the road, there was an old man who saw them and asked, “Sir, you seem anxious, where do you need to go?”

The man in the carriage then replied in a loud voice, “I need to go to the state of Chu.” The old man heard and laughing he smiled and said, “You are going the wrong way. The state of Chu is in the south, how come you are going to to the north?”

“That’s alright,” The man in the carriage then said, “Can you not see? My horse runs very fast.”

“Your horse is great, but your path is incorrect.”

“It’s no problem, my carriage is new, it was made just last month.”

“Your carriage is brand new, but this is not the road one takes to get to Chu.”

“Old Uncle, you don’t know,” and the man in the carriage pointed to the suitcase in the back and said, “In that suitcase there’s alot of money. No matter how long the road is, I am not afraid.”

“You have lots of money, but do not forget, The direction which you are going is wrong. I can see, you should go back the direction which you came from.”

The man in the carriage heard this and irritated said, “I have already been traveling for ten days, how can you tell me to go back from where I came?” He then pointed at the carriage driver and said, “Take a look, he is very young, and the driver drives very well, you needn’t worry. Goodbye!”

After he said he told the driver to drive forward, he drove and the horse ran even faster.

Weird Al’s new video for “Craigslist”

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:42:16 -0400

Weird Al’s new video for “Craigslist”

Wedding Invite for Typography nerds

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:15:55 -0400

Wedding Invite for Typography nerds

Humans prefer cockiness to expertise

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:18:32 -0400

Humans prefer cockiness to expertise:

The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are.

Yahoo Answers: Girlfriend found weird vids I made?

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:56:51 -0400

Yahoo Answers: Girlfriend found weird vids I made?:

Before going out with my girlfriend I was kind of obsessed with her. I took pictures I had of her and scanned them into a japanese program that creates a 3d model of her which you can then ummmm… have your way with. Ahem.

I made about 50 different videos with this software, most of them were of her making love and performing oral sex on a 3d model of myself, and sometimes multiple versions of me. Others involved machines….you get the idea.

I eventually worked up the courage to talk to her and we ended up hitting it off and are now a couple, the problem is that she used my computer and ended up finding the vids even though they were buried inside multiple folders. Of course she was pretty freaked out, especially since the titles of the vids were needlessly crude on my part. She said she had to leave and needs some time alone.

Good to see technology enabling new levels of creepiness for lonely guys everywhere.

30 Rock is a rip-off of The Muppet Show?

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:27:49 -0400

30 Rock is a rip-off of The Muppet Show?:

Each week, our smart yet neurotic lead character has to manage a group of wacky misfits and put on a weekly sketch comedy show. Which show am I talking about? 30 ROCK plays like NBC went to JJ Abrams and told him to reboot THE MUPPET SHOW. “Do what you did with STAR TREK. Make it hipper, more adult. Maybe lose the puppets to allow more time for product placement.”

Liz Lemon = Kermit, Jenny Marone = Miss Piggy, Tracy = Gonzo, etc, etc. (via kottke)