Saturday, January 19, 2013

Honesty is for the most part...

Today's soundtrack is Celer's new album, Without Retrospect, the Morning as streamed via Soundcloud through the album's review on wajobu.com.

"The big mistake is to wait for inspiration." This and other thoughts from Brian Eno.

How many guests can attend a party before it gets too loud for conversation? Science has known the answer since 1958. Having just experienced such a scenario first-hand, I thought I'd give the equation a try. (I'm getting old enough where my hearing in a crowded restaurant ain't what it used to be.) But the problem with publishing science in non-scientific media is the lack of crucial bits of information such as a typical value for a room's sound absorption. (I was able to find the actual journal article online but didn't want to buy it.) So I guessed for a lot of the values leading to the result that in a 20x20x8 room the number of conversing people after which everyone raises their voice to be heard is 9. That seems kind of low.

You've seen this already but it's worth seeing again cuz it's so damn funny - a bad lip reading of the NFL.
Mark Rothko's Orange, Red, Yellow (1961) was Christie's top art sale of 2012 when it sold for $86.9 million. How much do you think Franz Kline's Untitled (1957) shown above sold for?
Kelly and Visual.ly have teamed up to turn your resume into a infographic. (Requires access to your LinkedIn account.)

This guide to tech internships is interesting, but contains some advice I consider harmful. For example, interviewing at companies you're not interested in as practice for the companies you are interested in. That's extremely unprofessional and would piss me off. Besides, ain't nobody got time fo dat.

Beyond tech internships, here's a good guide to what every computer science major should know.
  • Portfolio vs. resume (hint, hint)
  • Technical communication
  • An engineering core
  • The Unix philosophy
  • Systems administration
  • Programming languages
  • Discrete mathematics
  • Data structures and algorithms
  • it goes on and on with many good specific recommendations
New Jersey's Flying Fish Brewing introduced a new brew, FU Sandy, with proceeds to benefit superstorm Sandy relief. (Available on tap only.)

Would my beer friends actually make a mixed drink using beer? There's the nasty michelada - beer mixed with tomato or clamato juice. But what about a beer buster - draft beer, vodka, and Tabasco? 

In a play on the Pantone color system, here comes Beertone, as set of swatches for identifying your brew by its color.

This is why lawyering is good work: a lawyer billed his client for the time he spent having sex with her. That's what we call innovation in accounts receivable.

Great photo of Chicago
Take 3 minutes and watch Ji Lee's video Word as Image, a nice typographical animation. Equally amusing is RGB about additive color.

Prior to its planned crash on the moon, the GRAIL spacecraft shot some video from lunar orbit.

The Security Project. Have you heard of this? Peter Gabriel's touring band is joined by a few other folks to perform Gabriel's early music. (I've always liked Jerry Marotta's drumming.)

In this rare, recently discovered photo the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima appears as two distinct clouds. The photo is said to have been taken 30 minutes after the detonation and about 10 miles to its east.
Old news, but worth revisiting. The Dunbar Number is the number of simultaneous meaningful relationships a person can have. That number is 150.

Jack Lew's signature has been compared to the squiggles on top of a Hostess Cupcake which is unfortunate since it may start appearing on U.S. currency. So what what would your signature look like if Jack Lew signed it?
My John Hancock done Jack Lew style.
Laurence Olivier as Don Corleone? See what may be Francis Ford Coppola's hand written casting ideas for The Godfather.

A video history of Nintendo.

Flyers: learn how to fly the B-26 with this video. For more vintage B-26 goodness, here's a newsreel about manufacturing the B-26.

There's a sewer snake joke in here somewhere. A cobra sculpted from 800 pounds of cow dung.
This is what science calls the law of unintended consequences. The trend toward shaving and waxing pubic hair has almost eradicated crab lice in some parts of the world. I can't wait to hear PETA's position on this. (PETA wanted people to start calling fish "sea kittens" in a misguided attempt to reduce people's desire to eat fish. What euphemism could you apply to crab lice? Crotch companions?)

From the Things I Didn't Think You Could Hear department, here's Debussy playing Debussy from 1913.

Orchestrated Text is like music with subtitles. Give it a shot with Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

And now, the singing penis. Frankly I stopped reading after the title but some bug rubs its weiner to the tune of 90+ decibels.

Innovation may not be dead, but sometimes you can try to hard. Like these new jeans with lotion. Yes - moisturizing pants. Jokes are too easy. Moving on.

Mmmm. Calamari. No, wait. It's hog rectum.
Enjoy this virtual collection of poison bottles.

Recognize this bit of prose?
Now is the wisecrack of our discoverer
Made glorious sunbather by this sundry of York; 
Of course you don't, although you might think it's similar to Richard III. In fact, it is Richard III run through what's called an N+7 transformation - replacing every noun with the seventh one following it in the dictionary.

Lemme know if you can figure this out: vdr4.

...less profitable than dishonesty. ~Plato

(I think we've seen Plato's wisdom verified twice this week including Lance Armstrong, the Bernie Madoff of sports.)

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