Mark Frauenfelder on January 4, 2010 3:56 PM Suicide food logo -- Pekingeend Duck Another mouth-watering food product label from the Suicide Food blog: A mama duck serving her plucked baby on a platter. It's even better when you pretend the mama is shedding a tear. Other winning graphics from Suicide Food: Happy pigs board truck to slaughterhouse. Flirtatious fish enjoys mustard bukkake. Pig doesn't seem to mind knife and fork in its back. Headless plucked chickens try out Kama Sutra positions. Pekingeend Duck 7 Share Andrea James on January 4, 2010 3:37 PM The mysteries of Venn diagrams Guestblogger Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker. Above, a Venn diagram I made visually depicting every combination of Dwarf from the fairy tale. Not included: Snow White. The other day I was tying to make some multi-set Venn diagrams with polar symmetry, which it turns out is harder than you'd think and has ties with prime number theory. It's an obscure but important area of combinatorics. Everybody knows a 3-set one (n=3), and I made a 5-set one with ellipses (pictured to the right). After that, I was stumped. That led me to a great web section maintained by Professors Frank Ruskey and Mark Weston. The Dwarf diagram at the top is based on that work, with Sleepy a little more opaque so you can see the shape. Ruskey and Weston display lots of lovely diagrams, including the elusive n=7 minimum vertex Venn diagram and the remarkable n=11 Venn diagram. A Survey of Venn Diagrams 0 Share Rob Beschizza - January 4, 2010 2:53 PM - 4 Comments NYT tech writer David Pogue writes that junkets are OK because it's pre-approved by his editors. NYTPick contends that his appearances nonetheless contradict New York Times ethics rules which see others fired for lesser infractions. Fake Steve Jobs' own thoughts on these issues, however, get to the point in a manner neither subtle nor safe for work. Mark Frauenfelder on January 4, 2010 2:48 PM Mad's Mort Drucker on cartooning Ever since I could read, I have admired Mort Drucker's work in Mad. He's the guy who drew the wonderful movie and TV show parodies in the magazine. Until today, I had no idea what he looked like, or what his voice sounded like. Thanks to the magic of the YouTubes, now I know! It's always interesting to see how an artist sets up his studio, and in this video, we get a good look at Drucker's workplace. Mort Drucker, world famous caricaturist and humorous illustrator best known for his work in MAD magazine has made an exclusive, never before seen tutorial film about his process and life experiences. Presented and interviewed by Stephen Silver. To watch the 2 hour and 15 minute film go to www.schoolism.com and click on "The Masters Series" banner located on the bottom. The film will debut starting January 20th 2010. In the Studio with Mort Drucker 3 Share Xeni Jardin - January 4, 2010 1:52 PM - 8 Comments Hot Jupiter, y'all! No, really: NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered its first five new exoplanets, all significantly larger than Earth, and called "hot Jupiters" because of their high masses and extreme temperatures. Xeni Jardin - January 4, 2010 1:00 PM - 9 Comments The fundamental joy of reading Fark.com is, of course, the headlines themselves. Every year, Drew Curtis and gang celebrate the very best of those headlines in a roundup list, and this year's list is pretty great. Warning: do not sip liquids while clicking forth. Rob Beschizza - January 4, 2010 12:41 PM - 8 Comments The tallest building in the world opened today for business. Known during construction as the Burj Dubai, it's now to be called Burj Khalifa after the leader of neighboring Abu Dhabi, which just bailed Dubai out of a $10bn hole. Mark Frauenfelder on January 4, 2010 12:25 PM Interview with Ray Kurzweil Inventor Ray Kurzweil is interviewed by h+ magazine about consciousness, brain modeling, global warming, and the Singularity. SO: James Lovelock, the ecologist behind the Gaia hypothesis, came out a couple of years ago with a prediction that more than 6 billion people are going to perish by the end of this century, mostly because of climate change. Do you see the GNR technologies coming on line to mitigate that kind of a catastrophe? RK: Absolutely. Those projections are based on linear thinking, as if nothing's going to happen over the next 50 or 100 years. It's ridiculous. For example, we're applying nanotechnology to solar panels. The cost per watt of solar energy is coming down dramatically. As a result, the amount of solar energy is growing exponentially. It`s doubling every two years, reliably, for the last 20 years. People ask, "Is there really enough solar energy to meet all of our energy needs?" It's actually 10,000 times more than we need. And yes you lose some with cloud cover and so forth, but we only have to capture one part in 10,000. If you put efficient solar collection panels on a small percentage of the deserts in the world, you would meet 100% of our energy needs. And there`s also the same kind of progress being made on energy storage to deal with the intermittency of solar. There are only eight doublings to go before solar meets 100% of our energy needs. We're awash in sunlight and these new technologies will enable us to capture that in a clean and renewable fashion. And then, geothermal -- you have the potential for incredible amounts of energy. Ray Kurzweil: The h+ Interview 8 Share Xeni Jardin - January 4, 2010 12:00 PM - 1 Comment Over the holidays, you may have missed David Carr's piece in the New York Times on Twitter, and why the service will outlast the likes of Myspace and Friendster. It's a good read, full of talking points for your parents, or Brian Williams (awesome sweatpants!). Xeni Jardin on January 4, 2010 11:51 AM New Zealand: concern over sweeping new digital surveillance powers Police and Security Intelligence Service agents in New Zealand have been granted new powers to monitor any and all aspects of someone's online life, according to this news report in the Sunday Star Times: The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand. In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns, providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor almost all communications. Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity. It can even monitor a person's location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously. (via @EFF) 12 Share7 Xeni Jardin on January 4, 2010 9:55 AM In case you missed it: Demi Moore's lawyers threaten Boing Boing over photo analysis post December, 2009: You were enjoying the holidays, drinking nog, wrapping prezzies, hugging puppies. Demi Moore's lawyers, on the other hand, were sending nastygrams to Boing Boing. We responded, then blogged. The whole story's here: "Demi Moore's lawyers threaten Boing Boing over photo analysis blog post." Don't miss the response letter by Boing Boing's attorneys (PDF) David Carr of the NYT Media Decoder blog covered the matter here, noting "Decoder was shocked by the insinuation that a fashion magazine might airbrush one of its cover subjects. We have no specific information about what might or might not have happened to the photo. We just know it's a little weird looking." And Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon wrote, in "Demi's Hip Will Sue Your Ass"-- As we microanalyze the pictures in question, why, you may ask, have Ms. Moore's shapely form and its contentious fractions of flesh become a matter of such great import? It's just a picture, fer chrissakes! Yes and no. Because we, the magazine-reading, Web-browsing, trend-spotting public are maybe not content to swallow whole whatever image a glossy magazine presents to us. We are skeptical of its provenance. We question its veracity. We look for inconsistencies and compare them. We are furthermore perhaps uncomfortable with the notion that a beautiful, successful lily needs a credibility-stretching measure of gilding, as such images tend to present an unrealistic ideal and piss us off. And finally, while we'd totally have Moore's back if the tabloids were spreading rumors about her personal habits and relationships, the mere fact that she'd demand an apology from a Web site for even raising questions is just pathetic and mockworthy. That's why it matters. Whether her hips lie, unlike Shakira's, is a matter of dispute. But nobody's going to stop us from asking. (BB reader Mark Koeppen whipped up this animated gif comparing the US and Korea versions of the "W" mag cover featuring Ms. Moore.) 35 Share6 Andrea James on January 4, 2010 9:53 AM Hans Jenny and cymatics Guestblogger Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker. A film of turpentine subjected to soundwaves. Taken by Hans Jenny using Schlieren photography.
Another mouth-watering food product label from the Suicide Food blog: A mama duck serving her plucked baby on a platter. It's even better when you pretend the mama is shedding a tear.
Other winning graphics from Suicide Food:
Happy pigs board truck to slaughterhouse.
Flirtatious fish enjoys mustard bukkake.
Pig doesn't seem to mind knife and fork in its back.
Headless plucked chickens try out Kama Sutra positions.
Pekingeend Duck 7 Share Andrea James on January 4, 2010 3:37 PM The mysteries of Venn diagrams
Guestblogger Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker. Above, a Venn diagram I made visually depicting every combination of Dwarf from the fairy tale. Not included: Snow White.
The other day I was tying to make some multi-set Venn diagrams with polar symmetry, which it turns out is harder than you'd think and has ties with prime number theory. It's an obscure but important area of combinatorics. Everybody knows a 3-set one (n=3), and I made a 5-set one with ellipses (pictured to the right). After that, I was stumped. That led me to a great web section maintained by Professors Frank Ruskey and Mark Weston. The Dwarf diagram at the top is based on that work, with Sleepy a little more opaque so you can see the shape. Ruskey and Weston display lots of lovely diagrams, including the elusive n=7 minimum vertex Venn diagram and the remarkable n=11 Venn diagram.
A Survey of Venn Diagrams 0 Share Rob Beschizza - January 4, 2010 2:53 PM - 4 Comments
NYT tech writer David Pogue writes that junkets are OK because it's pre-approved by his editors. NYTPick contends that his appearances nonetheless contradict New York Times ethics rules which see others fired for lesser infractions. Fake Steve Jobs' own thoughts on these issues, however, get to the point in a manner neither subtle nor safe for work. Mark Frauenfelder on January 4, 2010 2:48 PM Mad's Mort Drucker on cartooning
Ever since I could read, I have admired Mort Drucker's work in Mad. He's the guy who drew the wonderful movie and TV show parodies in the magazine. Until today, I had no idea what he looked like, or what his voice sounded like. Thanks to the magic of the YouTubes, now I know!
It's always interesting to see how an artist sets up his studio, and in this video, we get a good look at Drucker's workplace.
Mort Drucker, world famous caricaturist and humorous illustrator best known for his work in MAD magazine has made an exclusive, never before seen tutorial film about his process and life experiences. Presented and interviewed by Stephen Silver. To watch the 2 hour and 15 minute film go to www.schoolism.com and click on "The Masters Series" banner located on the bottom. The film will debut starting January 20th 2010.
Hot Jupiter, y'all! No, really: NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered its first five new exoplanets, all significantly larger than Earth, and called "hot Jupiters" because of their high masses and extreme temperatures. Xeni Jardin - January 4, 2010 1:00 PM - 9 Comments
The fundamental joy of reading Fark.com is, of course, the headlines themselves. Every year, Drew Curtis and gang celebrate the very best of those headlines in a roundup list, and this year's list is pretty great. Warning: do not sip liquids while clicking forth. Rob Beschizza - January 4, 2010 12:41 PM - 8 Comments
The tallest building in the world opened today for business. Known during construction as the Burj Dubai, it's now to be called Burj Khalifa after the leader of neighboring Abu Dhabi, which just bailed Dubai out of a $10bn hole. Mark Frauenfelder on January 4, 2010 12:25 PM Interview with Ray Kurzweil Inventor Ray Kurzweil is interviewed by h+ magazine about consciousness, brain modeling, global warming, and the Singularity.
SO: James Lovelock, the ecologist behind the Gaia hypothesis, came out a couple of years ago with a prediction that more than 6 billion people are going to perish by the end of this century, mostly because of climate change. Do you see the GNR technologies coming on line to mitigate that kind of a catastrophe? RK: Absolutely. Those projections are based on linear thinking, as if nothing's going to happen over the next 50 or 100 years. It's ridiculous. For example, we're applying nanotechnology to solar panels. The cost per watt of solar energy is coming down dramatically. As a result, the amount of solar energy is growing exponentially. It`s doubling every two years, reliably, for the last 20 years. People ask, "Is there really enough solar energy to meet all of our energy needs?" It's actually 10,000 times more than we need. And yes you lose some with cloud cover and so forth, but we only have to capture one part in 10,000. If you put efficient solar collection panels on a small percentage of the deserts in the world, you would meet 100% of our energy needs. And there`s also the same kind of progress being made on energy storage to deal with the intermittency of solar. There are only eight doublings to go before solar meets 100% of our energy needs. We're awash in sunlight and these new technologies will enable us to capture that in a clean and renewable fashion. And then, geothermal -- you have the potential for incredible amounts of energy.
RK: Absolutely. Those projections are based on linear thinking, as if nothing's going to happen over the next 50 or 100 years. It's ridiculous. For example, we're applying nanotechnology to solar panels. The cost per watt of solar energy is coming down dramatically. As a result, the amount of solar energy is growing exponentially. It`s doubling every two years, reliably, for the last 20 years. People ask, "Is there really enough solar energy to meet all of our energy needs?" It's actually 10,000 times more than we need. And yes you lose some with cloud cover and so forth, but we only have to capture one part in 10,000. If you put efficient solar collection panels on a small percentage of the deserts in the world, you would meet 100% of our energy needs. And there`s also the same kind of progress being made on energy storage to deal with the intermittency of solar. There are only eight doublings to go before solar meets 100% of our energy needs. We're awash in sunlight and these new technologies will enable us to capture that in a clean and renewable fashion. And then, geothermal -- you have the potential for incredible amounts of energy.
Over the holidays, you may have missed David Carr's piece in the New York Times on Twitter, and why the service will outlast the likes of Myspace and Friendster. It's a good read, full of talking points for your parents, or Brian Williams (awesome sweatpants!). Xeni Jardin on January 4, 2010 11:51 AM New Zealand: concern over sweeping new digital surveillance powers
Police and Security Intelligence Service agents in New Zealand have been granted new powers to monitor any and all aspects of someone's online life, according to this news report in the Sunday Star Times:
The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand. In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns, providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor almost all communications. Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity. It can even monitor a person's location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously.
Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity. It can even monitor a person's location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously.
The whole story's here: "Demi Moore's lawyers threaten Boing Boing over photo analysis blog post."
Don't miss the response letter by Boing Boing's attorneys (PDF)
David Carr of the NYT Media Decoder blog covered the matter here, noting "Decoder was shocked by the insinuation that a fashion magazine might airbrush one of its cover subjects. We have no specific information about what might or might not have happened to the photo. We just know it's a little weird looking."
And Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon wrote, in "Demi's Hip Will Sue Your Ass"--
As we microanalyze the pictures in question, why, you may ask, have Ms. Moore's shapely form and its contentious fractions of flesh become a matter of such great import? It's just a picture, fer chrissakes! Yes and no. Because we, the magazine-reading, Web-browsing, trend-spotting public are maybe not content to swallow whole whatever image a glossy magazine presents to us. We are skeptical of its provenance. We question its veracity. We look for inconsistencies and compare them. We are furthermore perhaps uncomfortable with the notion that a beautiful, successful lily needs a credibility-stretching measure of gilding, as such images tend to present an unrealistic ideal and piss us off. And finally, while we'd totally have Moore's back if the tabloids were spreading rumors about her personal habits and relationships, the mere fact that she'd demand an apology from a Web site for even raising questions is just pathetic and mockworthy. That's why it matters. Whether her hips lie, unlike Shakira's, is a matter of dispute. But nobody's going to stop us from asking.
Yes and no. Because we, the magazine-reading, Web-browsing, trend-spotting public are maybe not content to swallow whole whatever image a glossy magazine presents to us. We are skeptical of its provenance. We question its veracity. We look for inconsistencies and compare them. We are furthermore perhaps uncomfortable with the notion that a beautiful, successful lily needs a credibility-stretching measure of gilding, as such images tend to present an unrealistic ideal and piss us off. And finally, while we'd totally have Moore's back if the tabloids were spreading rumors about her personal habits and relationships, the mere fact that she'd demand an apology from a Web site for even raising questions is just pathetic and mockworthy. That's why it matters. Whether her hips lie, unlike Shakira's, is a matter of dispute. But nobody's going to stop us from asking.
Guestblogger Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker. A film of turpentine subjected to soundwaves. Taken by Hans Jenny using Schlieren photography.
the mouse did it ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
