Psuke Bariah

http://drkaos.livejournal.com/176021.html

http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/74e80e9/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cdn18180A0Echarles0Edarwin0Ewriting0Eorigin0Elike0Econfessing0Ea0Emurder0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18180

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/XoeRXmCE3Lo/shackletons-antarcti.html

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch. Workers from New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.

http://xkcd.com/666/

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/EQWwxB26-rQ/murdoch-microsoft-de.html

"One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan 'puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them",' wrote the FT's Matthew Garrahan. "... Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content."

This he calls a "ray of light to the newspaper industry."

Now, every site in Google is currently there by choice. As it could conceivably change its mind and shank Balldock and Murmer with fair use, let's assume that they're planning on exclusivity. End-user license agreements, paywalls, spider-blocking, that sort of thing. Maybe even encryption and plugins and other delights. Sayonara, RSS!

In any case, participating publishers have to become invisible to search engines who don't pay up. Think of all the gambles encoded in that decision: that the U.S. ad market won't rebound enough to go it alone. That subsidized foreign competitors like the BBC aren't a domestic threat. That people will change their surfing habits to find them. And so on.

But there's one gamble which does make some twisted sense: that Microsoft is an irrational consumer. It's easy to believe that it may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google. In this case, Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either: he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/22/spectacular-slow-car.html

PeaceLove sez, "My buddy Chris 'Orbit' Brown just hipped me to this lovely video of one Dimitri Arleri doing some amazing card flourishes, set to an unidentified piece of ambient opera. Most flourish videos are rapid-fire montages of jaw-dropping excellence (ie. the brilliant

http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/74db549/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cdn181830Eicy0Emoons0Elakes0Ebrim0Ewith0Ehearty0Esoup0Efor0Elife0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18183

http://choronzon333.livejournal.com/213445.html

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7997

• Help “Escape From Dullsville” Escape Obscurity!
  "About a week ago, he finally finished the 288 page book collecting all 7 issues of L.O.A.F. The collection, titled ?Escape from Dullsville? also contains over 80 pages of new material, including the previously unpublished L.O.A.F. #8. Unfortunately, pre-orders have not been high enough for SLG to justify printing the book. (That can?t have been an easy decision for a publisher so dedicated to supporting industry underdogs.) Unless Andy can raise enough pre-order sales quickly it may never be printed…"
  (tags:comics )
• ‘Frankenstein’ fix lets asteroid mission cheat death - space - 20 November 2009 - New Scientist
  "the mission team has now cobbled together another working engine using parts from two sick ones" - this mission, as I recall, was an absolute lemon
  (tags:space )
• Acoustic Weaponry In Nature

  (tags:video )

• polis: a blog about cities: Underground Below Ulaanbaatar: Homelessness in Mongolia’s Capital City
  "The manhole covers are often only partly closed because they serve as the doorway to the underground sewers where the homeless of Ulaanbaatar live. The homeless sleep underground on the hot water pipes as a way to keep warm during the bitter winters…"
  (tags:city pol architecture )
• polis: a blog about cities: Paramodernism
  "…not the repackaged neomodernism that seems to be cropping up everywhere, a literally redesigned utopia that ignores the social, the political and the very notion of a just city or the right to the city - but one which is capable of taking on the profound and intertwined crises of poverty, injustice and the environment. This requires not a new modernism but a paramodernism, something altered, contrary beyond and alongside what has come before…"
  (tags:architecture culture )

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/22/associated-press-lov.html

"The AP was determined to get the first copy," Oreskes [a senior managing editor] wrote, detailing how the writers learned a store had "inadvertently placed the book on sale five days before its official Nov. 17 release date." "They bought a copy, ripped it from its spine and scanned it into the system so it could be read and electronically searched," he wrote.

Actually, the AP likes fair use after all (via @CathyGellis)

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/22/short-papercraft-fil.html

Going West is a beautiful short film illustrating the worlds in a book, incorporating papercraft to make something dreamlike and wonderful. It was animated by Andersen M Studio.

NZ Book Council - Going West (via @GreatDismal)

http://drkaos.livejournal.com/175624.html

http://pure-doxyk.livejournal.com/680599.html

Okay, now THIS is exciting:

I’ve been looking for a way to manage my time during the next few months — my daily schedule is about to change and I’ll need it to be as productive and results-focused as possible; but let’s face it, I’m so scattered and multitasky most of the time that even with 20 hours a day to mess around with, I usually end my days by working until it’s nearly bedtime, and still not getting enough done.

I think I might put this idea to the test! Would anybody like to try it with me?

This past summer, for example, I completed my PhD in computer science at MIT. Simultaneous with writing my dissertation I finished the manuscript for my third book, which was handed in a month after my PhD defense and will be published by Random House in the summer of 2010. During this past year, I also managed to maintain my blog, Study Hacks, which enjoys over 50,000 unique visitors a month, and publish over a half-dozen peer-reviewed academic papers.

Put another way: I’m no slacker. But with only a few exceptions, all of this work took place between 8:30 and 5:30, only on weekdays. (My exercise, which I do every day, is also included in this block, as is an hour of dog walking. I really like my post-5:30 free time to be completely free.)

I call this approach fixed-scheduled productivity, and it’s something I’ve been following and preaching since early 2008. The idea is simple:

* Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit — ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down, becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way.

The beneficial effects of this strategy on your sense of control, stress levels, and amount of important work accomplished, is profound.

via Time management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense, and 6+ peer-reviewed papers — and finishes by 5:30pm | I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/22/16-golden-retrievers.html

I've often found that, when I can't understand a concept in science or math, putting it into pictures will make everything make more sense. It's like magic. Now, none of the visualizations I used as a kid involved a cadre of trained golden retrievers, but maybe that's a flaw the Kansas school system needs to correct.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/22/brits-sign-petition-1.html

This petition has been set up in response to the Government's proposal to cut off internet access to those who are caught illegally downloading copyrighted files. We think this has one fundamental flaw, as illegal filesharers will simply hack into other peoples WiFi networks to do their dirty work. This will result in innocent people being disconnected from the internet. What's more, such a punishment should be dealt with in the proper way, in a court of law. This guilty until proven innocent approach violates basic human rights.

Tell your friends.

Petition to: abolish the proposed law that will see alleged illegal filesharers disconnected from their broadband connections, without a fair trial

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/22/augmented-reality-ri.html

Marc Owens's augmented reality project "Avatar Machine" puts its users in VR helmets that display the world around them as though they were playing a third-person game, so that their own body is seen from behind. Owens theorizes that "The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment."

Avatar Machine (via Beyond the Beyond)

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/22/sex-advice-from-dd-p.html

What's the best way to pick up a D&D player?
If you're a geek and you see a girl geek browsing the comic books and players' manuals, don't make assumptions. Nothing irritates me more than having someone tell me what I'm holding. I know what I'm holding. Aside from the fact that I came in here specifically looking for it, I CAN READ. Instead, try a trivia tidbit or a commentary on the quality/author/whatever. Your goal is to sound interested, not condescending. For the non-geek, we're really not that strange and different, but we tend to be a little defensive. Be willing to listen, stumble through some conversation you don't have the lingo for. Don't mock. Unless your romantic candidate starts talking about their characters in detail. No one finds that interesting. Really. Get out while you still can.

http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/74b9262/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cmg20A4273540B20A0A0Edark0Egalaxy0Ecrashing0Einto0Ethe0Emilky0Eway0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427354.200

http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/74b38c9/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cmg20A4273530B20A0A0Elowcarbon0Eroad0Emap0Efor0Echina0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427353.200

http://pure-doxyk.livejournal.com/680298.html

• 19:12 @postsecret @SergiosFirefly Just b/c you love someone doesn't mean being & staying 100% sexually compatible w/ them for 30+ years w/b easy! #