Skyway to Tomorrowland

"By 2050, upward of 15 million of us will have lost our minds."

Wed, 23 May 2012 07:46:26 -0700

“By 2050, upward of 15 million of us will have lost our minds.”

- Parent Health Care and Modern Medicine’s Obsession With Longevity

Twitter Defends User In Court Over Occupy Tweets

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:58:53 -0700

Twitter Defends User In Court Over Occupy Tweets:

Wow, I mean, wow. I didn’t think I would ever see the day when an Internet company would lay the legal smackdown on the courts. This is a sound argument and one that the court can’t ignore. Twitter has essentially proven, at least in the case of their service and their state, that the Fourth Amendment does apply online. I’m sure that the court is going to try to use some kind of trick to get access to the Tweets, but it’s going to be even harder for them from now on. Twitter has set an example here. I was worried when they announced their plans to selectively censor Tweets based on country, and I’m still worried about that. I’m immensely relieved, however, that they are taking a person’s privacy and rights into account with this case. If the court wants to get ahold of those Tweets, they will have to supply a search warrant.

This otter is disappointed that you never finished Infinite...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:03:02 -0700

This otter is disappointed that you never finished Infinite Jest. (via 33 Animals Who Are Extremely Disappointed In You)

Letters of Note: The Skills of Da Vinci

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:12:53 -0700

Letters of Note: The Skills of Da Vinci:

It seems my cover letters have been lacking something…”I know how, in the course of the siege of a terrain, to remove water from the moats and how to make an infinite number of bridges, mantlets and scaling ladders and other instruments necessary to such an enterprise. ”

Killer Tech: Minority Report Style Vending Machines

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:57:25 -0700

Killer Tech: Minority Report Style Vending Machines:

when a customer walks up to it, it analyzes his or her face for gender and approximate age. Once that registers, it can show ads tailored to that demographic. This technology is called Audience Impression Metric (AIM). The machine displays a clock, and when no customers seem to be in dire need of a snack or drink, it shows beautiful virtual designs in an attempt to attract business.

slow loris with a tiny umbrella

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:34:19 -0700

slow loris with a tiny umbrella

After 100 Years, Muni Runs Slower

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:14:50 -0700

After 100 Years, Muni Runs Slower:

“Plans are in the works to restore the high speeds of a century ago”

What's Really Making Us Fat?

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:52:22 -0800

What's Really Making Us Fat?:

According to Blumberg, the food industry would like to discredit emerging research on obesogens. “What industry typically does is fund studies that produce the opposite conclusions, thereby shedding doubt on the science,” he says. “If you take BPA as an example, the vast majority of studies performed by independent government and academic scientists show that it has numerous deleterious effects on health. In contrast, not a single industry-funded or -conducted study has found any hazard associated with BPA.” Can we afford to continue to frame the discussion simply in terms of calories in and calories out? Or by looking only at conventional categories like fat, protein, and carbohydrates and diary, meat, grains, and vegetables? Given the proliferation of industrial pollutants and the ultra-processing of foods in our current food systems, it seems that we can’t.

aleyma: Ernst Haeckel, “Anthomedusae”, from Kunstformen der...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:24:15 -0800

aleyma:

Ernst Haeckel, “Anthomedusae”, from Kunstformen der Natur, 1904 (source).

Gender Mixer Lego Ads - The HTML5 Gendered LEGO Advertising...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:38:59 -0800

Gender Mixer Lego Ads - The HTML5 Gendered LEGO Advertising Remixer

Photo

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:24:05 -0800

How to change your blood type without even trying

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:16:18 -0800

How to change your blood type without even trying:

After years of searching, the best candidate for an agglutination-snipper came from a special mushroom. (No, not that one.) An enzyme isolated from fungi was found to turn any blood, any blood at all, to type O, and it did it while the blood was in the bag, not in the patient. This can change blood into a fluid that can be given to anyone, and given the shortages at blood banks, anything that made blood more available to all patients is a good thing. The method is still being tested, but hopefully blood will become a lot more common soon.

Tongue Drive uses dental retainer and tongue piercing to control wheelchair

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:39:57 -0800

Tongue Drive uses dental retainer and tongue piercing to control wheelchair:

The latest prototype of the Tongue Drive System lets users wear a dental retainer embedded with sensors that track the location of a tiny magnet attached to the tongues of users. This is achieved by giving participants a “clinical” tongue piercing and tongue stud containing a tiny magnet embedded in the upper ball.

The United States spends more on medical care per person than...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:33:21 -0800

The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year. Why the high cost? The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.” —Michelle Andrews

The myth of the eight-hour sleep

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:31:35 -0800

The myth of the eight-hour sleep:

His book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria. Much like the experience of Wehr’s subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:38:27 -0800

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago. (New Life, From an Arctic Flower That Died 32,000 Years Ago)

"Only a fool would think that someone should be able to bear boredom and frustration for long hours..."

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:19:31 -0800

“Only a fool would think that someone should be able to bear boredom and frustration for long hours at a time and that this would be an achievement. What I might have said to my son’s friend is that it is incontrovertible that sometimes things get done better when you’re doing something else.”

- The Art of Distraction

(via Print Out Vulture’s Downton Abbey Paper Dolls —...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:42:39 -0800

(via Print Out Vulture’s Downton Abbey Paper Dolls — Vulture)

Moochers Against Welfare - NYTimes.com

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:35:02 -0800

Moochers Against Welfare - NYTimes.com:

Finally, Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program.” Presumably, then, voters imagine that pledges to slash government spending mean cutting programs for the idle poor, not things they themselves count on. And this is a confusion politicians deliberately encourage. For example, when Mr. Romney responded to the new Obama budget, he condemned Mr. Obama for not taking on entitlement spending — and, in the very next breath, attacked him for cutting Medicare. The truth, of course, is that the vast bulk of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the disabled, and working families, so any significant cuts would have to fall largely on people who believe that they don’t use any government program.

"How was your Valentine’s Day, friends? It doesn’t matter. Everything sucks in the world..."

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:04:14 -0800

“How was your Valentine’s Day, friends? It doesn’t matter. Everything sucks in the world of sex: we’re having a national conversation about contraception, a man named after anal leakage is the GOP frontrunner, and the blond barista at my coffee shop with the soccer legs and the pretty mouth introduced me to his stupid girlfriend.”

- Ridiculous Tips for a Miserable Sex Life: February 2012 | Nerve.com