OMG! OMG! OMG!

Mountains out of molehills.

The video-game line is nicely periodic.

Bizarro bizaar

The curious case of craigslist.

Lots of people give lots of advice about how to do lots of things. Rules, strategies. Stategery.

Vanity and dust.

Schadenfruede

Apple meets its BSOD match. Gizmodo's one-liner is killer.

Science marches on...

Funny cause it's true*: How to publish a scientific comment.

As Prof. Trebino points out therein, the scientific review system is broken on several intersecting levels. Not to say that the whole, messy, squalorous pile doesn't still slowly slide down an entropy gradient towards the inevitable Better and Brighter; Nor does this imply that there are still things which are well-known established "facts" and other things which are widelt known not to be such - that we're trapped in some post-modernist goo of mushy personal "truths." Mostly**. But, all that caveat in place, Moms - don't let your kids grow up to be research professors.

I'd like to note that Prof. Trebino is well-respected in the field of ultrafast pulse measurement, and that if this can happen to one of the big dogs, so to speak, imagine what it's like if you're a graduate student or a post-doc? Fun! Fun fun fun! That's what.

It's also worth noting that, as far as I infer, he's talking about ultrafast pulse measurement, which even the non-expert may surmise isn't exactly the most contentious or politicized topic ever. A couple of such topics spring to mind, but they're neither here nor there. What is here is that you should keep Trebino's tragicomic transcript in mind when someone talks about scientific consensus and points to published papers. This is how those bits of sausage get made.

*Also, I laughed till I cried! You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps! Etc., etc.

** I liked bubblegum pop music - is that wrong?

Smart or dumb

A presumed quote from S. Freud
"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.”

A quote from Bruce Schneier, whose website Mike recently linked to

"... This struck me as I listened to yet another conference presenter complaining about security awareness training. He was talking about the difficulty of getting employees at his company to actually follow his security policies: encrypting data on memory sticks, not sharing passwords, not logging in from untrusted wireless networks. "We have to make people understand the risks," he said.

It seems to me that his co-workers understand the risks better than he does." (link).

Suggesting that people are actually smart.

Both at the same time ring true to me, and yet they contradict each other; and I am bothered by this.

nice-ography

I don't just sit around and think about sports cars all of the time. Sometimes it's houses. In a giant tree with rope bridges and a moat down below, Swiss family Robinson style. Or some 35th floor bachelor pad, carved out of granite with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park. But unless you live in some such Blofield lair, they're not really "cool" (or hot, if you're in volcano) as "nice." Or maybe "sweet." So here you go.

My Hobby Horse

Here's a nifty chart showing how much the American age-distribution has, and will, shift from 1950 through today and onto 2050 projection. The obvious upshot is that we're going to have to shift retirement to 80+years.

Coolography 15

Brock Samson is real

But does he have a posse?

one man band

More, lots more.

nifty tins

Vintage type-writer tins

Self-enforcing protocols

A neat discussion on I-cut-the-cake-you-pick protocols.

Summer doldrums

I'm drifting through a hazy August. Fortunately, the intarnet can help with that. File under lint gathering: There, I fixed it.

Sunrise, Sunset

A six-month pin-hole camera exposure, showing the sun's track from summer to winter solstice.

Somewhat more... insanely, the same guy has a book of photos taken from inside his mouth. Can't imagine that one is flying off the shelves.

Coolography

Thank the Lord for the big block Ford-edition.

Starters vs Finishers...

Ask a burgler

Where should you hide your money?

In the bank? Well, actually, that's what he says right off the bat.

Things I would never do

Go on vacation at the exact time as everyone else in the entire country. As the French do, and did, leading to massive traffic jams in the summer heat. And you can imagine the awesomeness when they all appear at some point sufficiently Sud en mass and break out the banana hammocks and ask how much the local children cost. Sometimes it's good to understand and appreciate cultural differences, but synchronized vacations is one of the things that is completely WRONG in Europe. (FWIW, Spring Break in Cabo is equally repellent)

Inside the machine

How Netflix gets your movies to your mailbox so fast - in secret underground warehouses! Well, okay, they're not underground.

Fascinating

Ultra-well designed infographic showing how we spend each day's moments away.

Granted, this averages over weekends, so you'd expect the maximum to be something like 70%, but there are way less people working at a business at any given time than I would have guessed, and somehow this feels wrong. Or maybe it's very impressive, depending on how you think about it.

Vent your spleen

Turns out, your spleen is good for something after all...