Only he is an emanicipated thinker...

So last night I learned that the 1956 scifi classic Forbidden Planet (you know, the one with Robby the Robot) is a reimagining of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Makes me wonder what else I've been missing.

Do you think frickin' laser beam weapons (aka directed energy) are strictly scifi? Think again.

Clyfford Still, Untitled, 1964, collection of the Dallas Museum of Art

User experience (aka UX). Many people use the term. Few understand what it means. So here's a Venn diagram illustrating the UX disciplines.

Using a byproduct called spent grain, Alaskan Brewing Co. has reduced their energy usage by 60% while continuing to produce award-winning beers.

Search for the best GIFs on the web using Giphy.

Back in the year 775 the earth was irradiated by a two-second gamma ray burst resulting from the collision of two black holes between 3,000 and 12,000 light years away. (When you read the article it's hard to miss the blatant, comical error.)

After I put Stiffy the Cat on my Facebook page (just do a Google image search for Stiffy the cat - it should be the first result) someone sent me procatinator.

A visual guide to espresso drinks.

When the components of a system interact, behaviors may result that aren't found in the individual components. This is called emergence.

There's a lot going on here - an interactive, 360 video of a helicopter flight over four erupting volcanoes.

Or this 360 photo from the top of the Burj Kahlifa.

Bacon. Cotton. Candy.

In this review of a book on Duke Ellington, he's quoted as saying "You can't write music right unless you know how the man that'll play it plays poker."

Unless you remember dialup forget about this incredibly detailed graphic that illustrates and explains a modem handshake.

Science shows us that some spiders have large enough brains and small enough bodies that their brains extend into their legs, giving a modicum of credence to the observation that men think with their third leg.

Science answers the unasked question: Why is the penis shaped like that? (Don't laugh - it's from Scientific American. Hint to answer: "semen displacement theory." Hmm, that's probably too strong of a hint.) 

What's old is new again. NASA is learning from, refurbishing, and firing the Saturn V's F-1 engines (i.e. Apollo moon rocket) and hoping lessons learned can be applied to the new SLS.

Are you really concerned about how many hours of daylight you'll have? Then fret no more: Daylight Hours Explorer.

Submarine Map 2013 - source

How well do you know vim? Like do you know these 100 vim commands every programmer should know? (For example, what does gggUG do?)

Tweetping - a map-based website for monitoring Twitter in real time. (Very cool to watch.)

Grilled cheese guacomole and bacon bruschetta. Am I kidding myself or would this be awful?

That prankster Ahmadinejad has been sniffin' too much airplane glue if he thinks we believe his oversized toy is actually Iran's Qaher-313 stealth fighter.

This nice periodic table of spices is one thing, but at the link you'll see how you can make and stock a real one to hang on your kitchen wall.

I knew it! And science has now proved it! All things being equal, the express checkout line isn't faster.

Tales and photos of clandestine visits to Vandenberg's ICBM sites.

In Egypt, diarrhea is cause by dirty breasts. Dirty, dirty breasts.

Teh interwebs was made for stuff like this: a collection of vintage bottle caps.

Endurance test: how long can you listen to this demonstration of DJ tricks called turntablism?

From the Things I Didn't Think You Could See deparment, this page purports to show photographs of Revolutionary War veterans.

How did I end up with two completely different maps of undersea cables this week?

Say it ain't so - scientific genius is extinct.

Stardust: a short bit of astronomy pr0n.

...who is not afraid to write foolish things. ~Anton Chekhov

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Finally, 29 CDs and a couple of months later, I reached the last page of Justin Cronin's The Passage, the first installment in his Passage trilogy. You may recall that I have already read the second installment, The Twelve. (Reading them out of order, while not necessarily recommended, was not an impediment to enjoyment.)

I'll get right to the point. The Passage is excellent, one of the best thrillers I've read in a long time. It grabbed my interest with a post-apocalyptic setting, pulled me forward plot full of action and twists, and kept me engaged with three-dimensional characters. And while I won't claim The Passage to be high literature, it is very well written.

If you look on Goodreads or other venues you might find The Passage classified in the horror genre. Calling it horror is laughable. Worse, some might be tempted to lump it in with zombie fiction. (The basic premise is the unintentional release of a biological agent from a government research lab that has cataclysmic effects on the populace). What's truly laughable is World War Z (previously and negatively reviewed as a nice set of notes for a book) is on the verge of big screen release starring Brad Pitt. Compared to The Passage, World War Z is like a 4th grader's creative writing project.

But I digress.

If you're looking for a good book, try Justin Cronin's The Passage and follow that with The Twelve. While you're doing that, I'll be waiting for his final installment, The City of Mirrors, due in 2014.

You can read more about Cronin's work at enterthepassage.com.

The more powerful and original a mind...

Michael Bernier, ex of Stick Men, has posted Edge of Death, a work in progress from his upcoming album. It's about the terror he experienced within a grand Mal seizure told from a King Crimson-esque point of view.

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules for great writing seem to be very relevant to writing on teh interwebs. For example, #5 Sound Like Yourself (not what your teacher probably required which is that you sound like a century-old English gentleman).

When is a nickel not worth five cents? When it's a rare (only five are known to exist) 1913 Liberty Head Nickel (1913 was the year the Buffalo Nickel began minting). At auction in April someone is probably going to pay in excess of $2.5 million for it.

Clyfford Still, 1956-PH 233. Read about this painting and more in an article about the Still Museum's current exhibit.

To keep the arty farty vibe going, check out MoMA's Tumblr for their current exhibition, Inventing Abstraction.

Know yer states. Of Matter. Gas, liquid, solid. Oh, don't forget plasma. But hark! What does science bring us? A spin-liquid, a solid with some characteristics of a liquid caused by electrons that can't orient themselves magnetically.

As I sit here sipping my green tea, I'm also reading this list of the advantages of drinking green tea. Reduces stress and depression?  Sure, why not.

Music history in animated GIFs is a misnomer. It's more like music the author likes in animated GIFs. Regardless, someone's spent a lot of time on this.

The amazing animated GIFs of Paolo Ceric. (My apologies for being too lazy to add the diatricals.)

Wanna be smarter? Stop multi-tasking. Imagine smoking a joint and then trying to get work done. Multi-tasking is three times worse. Other tips at the link.

All other reasons for despising the North Korean regime pale in comparison to this: they don't like big boobs.

How do you get everyone onboard for organizational change? Is that more complicated if everyone consists largely of engineers? Would they benefit from a formula? The formula for change says D x V x F > R which cryptically means that for any change to overcome resistance R, the product of the current dissatisfaction D, the vision V, and the first steps F toward the vision have to exceed the resistance to change. Frankly, this is all bullshit as the alphabet soup can't be quantified. But I suppose it provides a framework for thinking about and communicating change.

What has 300% of the Vitamin C of an orange, 50% more calcium than spinach, is chock full of anti-oxidants, and tastes good? The fruit of the African baobo tree. And you might start seeing it in your grocery store soon.

What happens when social media and chemistry get together? You end up with the periodic table of Twitter handles (i.e. Twitter users who use an element name as their handle as in @nitrogen).

Why so sad? Wait. WTF? Those buckets are hanging from his eyelids.

Hooray for us. Fort Worth is #9 in the nation for healthiest (job growth, low vacancy, low foreclosures) housing markets.

This might keep you busy for hours. Remix of the Century lets you visualize the top Billboard hits of the last century via various criteria (number of weeks on the charts, tempo, key, danceability) and then play a mashup of the resulting tunes.

Just a 360 degree photograph of London taken from 300 meters up.

Technology companies have business incubators so it's only fair that there be an incubator for breweries too.

Speaking of breweries, we're getting another one close to home: Grapevine Craft Brewery.

Science shows us the difference between and ale and a lager.

A pet tortoise survived for 30 years after being lost and forgotten in a storage room. (Sounds like being married.)

It's been in the news a lot so I went out and got me a fake girlfriend. Meet Toni VonNostrin, a theology major from Oklahoma Christian University whose favorite place to eat is Rax Restaurants. Courtesy of the Fake Girlfriend Generator.

Hey, Android phone people. Test your 3D skills with Rotal, a shape matching game.

Hey, astronomy geeks. Have you seen video of Nova GK Persei that exploded in 1901?

What do astronomy geeks have in common with dung beetles? They both like looking into the night sky. The dung beetle uses stellar navigation to roll his balls of dung in a straight line. No shit.

Yet again, science tackles the tough problems of our day. Up until now (to the best of my knowledge) no one has applied game theory to the issue of leaving the toilet seat up or down. (I will not spoil it for you and tell you who comes out ahead.)

There are places I've visited in Europe where I swear they don't know that we've invented ways to move air. This one airport, despite being crowded with moving people, was stuffy and close, the air like cotton. There have been hotel rooms where you can't turn the heat off. On the other hand, I bet our visitors think we're trying to freeze them out with air conditioning. Here's an article about the concept of comfort and how it's influenced by culture and how those influences are being eroded by internationalization. (One interesting tangent is the siesta and how it's going away. The siesta dovetails nicely with something I linked to a while ago that back in the day it was normal for people to wake up in the middle of the night for a couple of hours before going back for a second sleep.)

When Shakespeare wrote about shuffling off this mortal coil he wasn't referring to DNA. But DNA's thinking of him. Or more precisely, science has encoded all of Shakespeare's sonnets in DNA.

I know someone who likes Nintendo and pancakes. Draw your own conclusion.

Flying the B-52: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

How to get hit by a fish. First, the wrong way. Second, the right way. (Kids these days, ruining everything.)

Watch former Disney animator Glen Keane demonstrate how he'd animate a dancer.

These words when strung together seem to make no sense: GANGSTA RIDDIM music video by about:blank track by Roel Funcken. But just watch the video.

An opalized (not fossilized) dinosaur tooth. Astonishing.

People without children might think this is all a joke but trust me - it's real. 46 reasons my 3-year-old might be freaking out. (His brother is talking, I gave him the wrong blue crayon, the inside of his nose stinks.)

After all that, you deserve some time in the thoughts room.

...the more it will incline toward the religion of solitude. ~Aldous Huxley

Think like a man of action.

My Brian Eno fan bus rolls on. Here's Another Green World, a 2010 documentary about him.

"Quotation marks" are an essential tool in writing. But "unnecessary quotation marks" can be annoying. So annoying that someone created a blog to preserve instances of UQM in the wild.

The editors of New American Paintings blogged about 13 painters to watch in 2013. This work by Scott Olson was the one I was most drawn to.

I don't think it's too much of a surprise that the USA is the top destination for immigrants worldwide. But I was surprised that Russia was second. What countries are the most people leaving? Mexico, India, and Russia. (Hey Russia, what's with the churn?) You can see all this and more (including cool visualization of where emigrants from any particular country go) at peoplemov.in.

The 20 most influential beers of all time. Guinness? Certainly. Anchor Steam? OK. But generic lager?

Beer consumption by country. We're #6! We're #6!

Anyone using Snapchat yet? They say it's the next big mobile app.

Engineers will like this list of the top college majors sorted by average starting salary.

Enjoy a complete set of lecture notes for linear algebra.

When you need a placeholder image, look no further than lorempixel (formerly lorempixum). Above is a 400x300 randomly chosen abstract image.

Back when scientific visualization was an "emerging field" (1988), Pixar released this video of their capabilities.

The periodic table of shoes. (Hope you can read German.)

After cursing the blue screen, do you ever wonder why Windows crashes? Here's a list of 10 reasons why Windows crashes including incorrect drivers and overheating.

Artist Cheryl Sorg can create your cultural thumbprint.

DNA, double helix, high school science, blah, blah, blah. Not so fast. Science has found that sometimes DNA appears as a quadruple helix.

Like a child, once IBM's Watson computer learned to swear they couldn't make it stop.

If you can't tell the difference between an eye bolt and an eye lag, an oval and a truss head, or a cap and an acorn head, this visual guide to nuts and bolts will be an invaluable reference.

As my mother told me, if you're forcing it you're doing it wrong. source

Death Valley Dreamlapse is a cool time-lapse video of the night sky over Death Valley. The good stuff starts about half way in.

I've only read 22 of Radcliffe's 100 best novels of the 20th century. (I could've scored a little higher if I had counted watching the movie.) But that's better than the 4/100 I scored on the most influential albums quiz (on Facebook).

source

Just odd: walama.

Act like a man of thought. ~Henri Louis Bergson

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.)

Politics is not the art of the possible.

Today's soundtrack: The Pace of Which by Benjamin Dauer.

It's time for IBM's 5 in 5 - five innovations that will change our lives in the next five years. This time they present them in terms of the five senses. Computers will have a sense of smell? C'mon, man.

Milton Glaser (graphic designer) shares 10 things he's learned. In describing one of those things, doubt is better than certainty, Glaser includes this nugget: "Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

Astronomy/space geeks (you know who you are): the most awesome space images of 2012.

Animation of the week: Ornithophobia.

First try to guess what artist painted this. Then click the link. Don't worry - it's not one of those things painted by an elephant.

When Brian Eno's album Lux debuted last year he used four online events in which the album was streamed and listeners uploaded photos to capture light at four times of the day: sunrise, day, sunset, night. Day of Light is a video compilation of the results.

Anyone who's being treated for cholesterol issues needs to read this article about new studies that show that meds to increase HDL have no effect compared to drugs that reduce LDL. Discuss with your physician - I will be doing so with mine.

Science proves Billy Crystal was right - men and women can't just be friends.

Census Dotmap - one dot for every person in the 2010 U.S. and 2011 Canada census.

Where have you been all my life? The Museum of Clean. In Idaho of all places. (Not that Idaho's dirty or anything.)

I'm not even a fan of ping pong but this video of the best table tennis shots of 2012 is amazing.

Take 8 minutes and watch this video compilation of the view from a firefighter's helmet cam. (Sorry about the Eminem soundtrack.)

Use Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks to map household income by neighborhood for the entire U.S. DFW is shown above.

Disneyland everyday for a year?

lolz

From the "Now It's Just Silly to be Posting Christmas Stuff This Late" Department, you should bookmark Crapping Paper for next year. It's wrapping paper that spoils the surprise, and you can generate your own.

Alma Alloro, Further Abstracts 1

As the frequent reader (if any such person exists) knows, I have this thing for confluences of special interests. For example, I enjoy animation and military history. This leads to interesting things like animated propaganda films (many by Disney) during WWII. Here are just a few:

• Walt Disney Treasures - On the Front Lines
• The Golden Age of Cartoons: Cartoons for Victory!
• More Cartoons for Victory! (video preview here)

Cold War junkies: here's more nuclear apocalypse film fun: Panic in the Year Zero (1962).

See how the screwball does screw. source (Geez, what's with all the animated GIFs this week?)

Are you a visual thinker? Check out these mathematical proofs without words. Or videos about numbers from Numberphile.

What word or phrase annoys you the most? According to the annual Marist poll of annoying words, 19% of adults can't stand "you know" and 11% can't stand "just saying" making we wonder where my favorite "you know what I sayin'" ranks. Click thru to find the #1 most annoying word.

Best title of a science paper this week: An In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit (study of hookworms from the Neglected Tropical Diseases journal).

If you have time to fish you're doing it wrong. -OR- I wonder what he's using for bait? source

Remember a couple weeks ago the bit about ancient humans all being lactose intolerant while today only about two-thirds remain lactose intolerant? Well, science was asked to investigate and their answer was IDK.

Everything's bigger in Texas including screens in NFL stadiums. The one in Cowboys Stadium is 160 feet wide but the Houston Texans plan to exceed that by another 67 feet - 227 feet total.

Robert Irwin, NIAGARA, 2011 (Dan Flavin isn't the only one working with fluorescent lights.)

BookRX will suggest reading material based on your Twitter feed. It gave me some very interesting suggestions except for Freshwater Fishing Tips & Techniques. Freebook Sifter helps you find free e-books on Amazon.com.

Visual.ly provides a free tool for making an infographic of your Twitter persona. I'd show you mine but it was pretty damn depressing.

This is an amazing story - a German fighter pilot escorted a badly damaged B-17 out of enemy airspace during WWII.

Great photographs of a restored B-17G.

Where did the word supercalifragilisticexpealidocious come from? Would you believe my alma mater, Syracuse University?

OK, science. Enough already. Atoms can't cool below absolute zero.

Where do objects go to die? And what about all the European bunkers from WWII?

Lot's of art reading to catch up on and all of it free.

• 65 modern art books from The Guggenheim (one standout for me is Aspects of Postwar Painting in America from 1976)
• 370 titles from The Met

One last tune for you - the Guitar Circle of Europe covers King Crimson's Red.

I was looking at this while listening to Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Groovy.

Time to make music. The Wobbulator. (How can you not want to play with something called The Wobbulator? It's meant to recreate the sounds of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop.) Note: You may need to use Chrome.

Time to dance. Polydance.

It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. ~John Kenneth Galbraith 

I would rather entertain and hope people learned...

No gibberish today. Something involving a mouse is getting in the way.

...than teach and hope they were entertained. ~Walt Disney (paraphrased)