Another STPhU Blog

Marching in Goose Step

2011-02-26T22:13:00.000+01:00

It looks so easy when they do it.

One Month Gone: World Starts to End

2011-01-16T03:13:00.001+01:00

It has been over a month since my last post. Apparently I will not be able to keep this up, unless I want the world to end in 2012.
Without my posts the world is going crazy. It will end within a year! The signs are obvious!

Half of Australia is drowning. Instead of dying of thirst, as they should.
Birds are falling from the sky. Instead of wrecking havoc on cornfields, as they should.
Dead fish are rotting on the shores. instead of... what should those even do? I suspect mass suicide. If I were a fish without a purpose, it would be mad not to consider it.

I see you, smart reader of this blog, object: "I'm sure there is a rational explaintion for all of these. One which has nothing to do with you pausing your blog. Just like the mass suicide of fish you proposed!"

First of all, I wouldn't be so sure about the fish. Today's fish are more connected than you might suspect!
Still, if you insist, I turn to the less rational things, just to satisfy you, imaginary reader of this blog:

In the US they are shooting democrats! Shooting the sane politicians in the country with the biggest atomic arsenal in the world seems like a guaranteed way for ending the world.
While it may not be rational, I have to admit crazy gunmen killing politicians is some kind of a tradition in the US. Such shootings have not heralded the apocalypse before. And even if the gunmen themselves heralded it very loudly, those were all wrong.
Or were they?
I leave that to the reader as an exercise.

Still, there's a whole revolution going on in Tunisia! That might be ending the world, might it not? Caution, burning man behind that link. No, not the festival. An actual burning man.
Still, nobody pulls off burning themselves alive quite like Buddhists. This brings me to an unfortunate conclusion. If Buddhists igniting themselves politically about 50 years ago brought the world only a mere 50 years closer to its ending, other people won't fare much better.
How can you dissapoint me so, Tunisia?

What remains? There are suicide bombings!
But that was an everyday thing, even while I was still blogging. Additionally we have already established Buddhists as "World Champions of Killing Themselves Impressively", so if that didn't end the world...
Suicide bombers, even you forsake me now?

But it seems that I might just find something in the US after all: The Pentagon is declaring another war.
The War on Rust.
I see it clearly: The rust eating self-replicating nanobot, which misinterprets its simple order.
Not: "Eat rust!", but "Eat dust!"
And soon there will be a swarm of nanobots, big enough to devour whole deserts! And a good part of my room, now that I think about it.
If that isn't the apocalypse, then what is it?
(Left as another exercise to the reader)

So what I have to do is clear. I leave you with this message:
Legalize Rust!
To save the world!

Spread the word!

Look at that Chick!

2010-12-05T07:09:00.001+01:00

If you didn't think that chickens were strange before, now you should.
This behavior comes from the fact that birds, just like us, can fix an object with their eyes. You can look at something and move your body without losing track of the object you are looking at. The chicken is doing just that.
But in contrast to us mammals, that bird doesn't have those nifty movable eyeballs. In order to keep its gaze fixed even though its body moves, the bird has to compensate with neck movement alone. This creates the unsettling impression of an unnaturally still head.
You can also observe similar effects with mammals, if you care to take a closer look.

You will first notice the still head of the cheetah when it is closing in at about 40 seconds into the video. But it's in the timelapse hunting scene that follows when it becomes apparent that, even at cheetah speeds, the neck muscles manage to hold the head upright, steady, and fixed on the prey at all times.

A cheetah can hold his own against this chicken any day.
But you probably suspected that.

Why You Should be Reading Cosmopolitan

2010-12-01T19:37:00.000+01:00

Because your breasts called.

And because they have a whole lot of advice on this:

"We rounded up a bunch of super-sexy tricks just for [your breasts]. If these don't skyrocket your pleasure (and have him drowning in drool), we don't know what will."

Seriously: Who would not want to make their lover drown in drool?

Look, Terrorists!

2010-12-01T19:27:00.000+01:00

They are putting a shroud over the sun with an airplane!

via grinding.be

Slightly Strange Photography

2010-12-01T19:26:00.000+01:00

Just to prove that the internet is a strange place.
In case you haven't noticed already.

I began to suspect that something was wrong when I stumbled upon the photography of Asger Carlsen.

Something just feels a little off about those.

Who Would Want a Car...

2010-11-30T13:35:00.000+01:00

... in a world where you can buy something like this?

That's right, for only $55 000 you can now own a street legal Tron: Legacy light cycle.
The era of the automobile is officially over.

via Wired

Paper Art

2010-11-26T10:25:00.000+01:00

Paper cutouts? My first thought was: "This is frilly. This is kitschy. This is boring."

Then I saw this and decided that at least Hunter Stabler's paper cutouts are awesome.

via beautiful decay

The Universe in Flash

2010-11-23T04:58:00.000+01:00

There you go: Does what the title says. Shows you the universe in flash. Have fun. Be awed.

via BoingBoing

Christmas Rocks

2010-11-23T04:05:00.000+01:00

Slayer Christmas lights. There's nothing more to be said.

via BoingBoing

Crochet Overdrive

2010-11-18T12:59:00.000+01:00

If you still need some incentive to vote for the incredibly hip fashion label Hø Køn over at the ispo brand new awards, just consider the great potential that lies in crocheting.

From Hø Køn's own hip handmade headpieces...

... over Agata Olek's skintight crochet art...

... to Shauna Richardson's eerily lifelike crochet animals ...

... or the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef...

... the potential is staggering.

So vote for Hø Køn to be hip and sexy, to save the animals, to save the seas and to cover the world in crochet.
Starting with your own head.

Coming of the Metal Bird

2010-11-18T12:08:00.000+01:00

I'm sure you are asking yourself now: What the heck does that title have to do with this photo by Pao Houa Her?

I am sure the people over at Boooom are glad to answer if you ask nicely.
I just don't dare. It might seem as if I didn't get it.

Dogs

2010-11-18T07:45:00.000+01:00

Do you like dogs?
Yes? Take some time and read that adorable dog-story and its follow up. It will confirm what you already know: That all dogs are adorable.

You don't like dogs? Take some time and still read that adorable dog story and its follow up. It will confirm what you already know: That dogs are more than a little bit strange and a little bit dumb.

Dream Job

2010-11-18T07:20:00.000+01:00

I might consider taking up that line of work... Writing papers for others about subjects you have no idea about sounds interesting, demanding, and fun.
Well, probably not so much fun...

As the deadline for the business-ethics paper approaches, I think about what's ahead of me. Whenever I take on an assignment this large, I get a certain physical sensation. My body says: Are you sure you want to do this again? You know how much it hurt the last time. You know this student will be with you for a long time. You know you will become her emergency contact, her guidance counselor and life raft. You know that for the 48 hours that you dedicate to writing this paper, you will cease all human functions but typing, you will Google until the term has lost all meaning, and you will drink enough coffee to fuel a revolution in a small Central American country.

But still,I'm intrigued.

So... does anyone need something written?

What I Will NOT be Showing my Dad

2010-11-16T05:35:00.000+01:00

Building a homemade nuclear reactor in NYC

My dad is a fanatical tinkerer. If I showed him, we would have one of those in our basement very soon.

On an unrelated note:
Some people build homemade fusion reactors in their spare time.
What have you been doing lately?

Psychology gets Crazy

2010-11-13T00:49:00.001+01:00

That is just too much for one day.
I can deal with the fact that Parkinson's seems to be caused by an excessive production of reactive oxygen species in the mitochondria of a certain class of substantia nigra neurons. That's good science after all (and a really nifty experimental setup by the way).

The next great headline of the day: "Insanity is Contagious!". No worries dear friends, if you are past the age of a toddler it's too late for you anyway.
Schizophrenia seems to be connected with viral infections occurring in utero, or in early childhood. Such infections can lead to the activation of a 60 Million year old Retrovirus that lies sleeping in our genome. And the misguided immune reaction to that might be responsible for the pathologies of schizophrenia, MS, and bipolar disorder.
If you have ever asked yourself, why science has not figured out a cure for those yet, now you know. Because the story of schizophrenia seems more contrived than a Dan Brown novel.
But it's probably true.

From the softer side of Psychology comes this one about novel ways to treat posttraumatic stress disorder.
Imagine you have just witnessed a traumatizing scene. You are in shock. What do you do not to be haunted by those pictures for the rest of your life?
You play Tetris.
Administered in the first six hours after trauma, a visual task, like Tetris, interferes with memory consolidation and seems to lessen the frequency and intensity of involuntary flashbacks.
How to deal with the following Tetris addiction is left unexplained.

Moving further toward the fringe, it's this last article which tops today's crazy list.
Apparently we can see the future. It wouldn't disturb my piece of mind, if that claim were made by some old crone with a crystal ball. It only gets outright disturbing when a respected psychologist is about to publish such findings in a peer reviewed journal.
The battery of tests performed in order to come to that astonishing conclusion includes setups like this:

1. The experimenters compile a big list of words.

2. From that list a random sample is chosen, the small list.

3. The experimenters show the big list to the subjects who try to memorize them.

4. The subjects are asked to recall words from the big list. Those words are noted.

5. The subjects are asked to write down the words on the small list from 2.

Result: The subject is significantly more likely to remember words from the small list. Even though he first encounters the small list for the first time after the recall task.

You are more likely to remember the words you will write in the future. Even though you don't know what words they will be.
If those findings turn out to be real (shoutout to science: replicate them!), that would be something I totally can't explain. And it has been some time since I encountered that situation.
I am still counting on an interesting experimental error.

Bagger 288

2010-11-08T22:57:00.000+01:00

Sorry folks. If I don't pass this on, it will never leave my head.
And I will probably be demeated.

via Coilhouse

Sissyphos Art

2010-11-08T20:02:00.000+01:00

Kim Rugg from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

Just watching that makes me queasy.

via TheDailyWhat

Visual Poem

2010-11-02T23:27:00.000+01:00

Now that's something new.

via theDailyWhat

Can You Find the Nile from Space?

2010-11-02T16:22:00.000+01:00

I think you might be able to.

via grinding.be

La Santa Muerte

2010-11-02T01:59:00.000+01:00

Since it's the time of the dead all around the world, by the way of Coilhouse comes something interesting from Mexico: The cult of "La Santa Muerte".
The clip shows footage from an upcoming documentary about this cult which worships a female version of the grim reaper.

"I ask her for a happy death. Because I don't think anyone wants to die in a bad way. And we're all on the list and the day she decides to come for me, I'm going to recieve her. I am going to welcome her."

Stunts

2010-10-27T00:56:00.000+02:00

What it says on the package.

via The Daily What

New Year's Eve...

2010-10-25T15:12:00.001+02:00

... and how to celebrate it. Right.

via The Daily What

Ants

2010-10-21T17:13:00.000+02:00

Filling up an ant colony: "For three days cement was poured until ten tons disappeared down the tubes."

Those are the moments, when I am really happy that insects are small.

via Pharyngula

What I'll Practice Tomorrow

2010-10-20T19:57:00.000+02:00

And if anyone asks who messed up the kitchen, it wasn't me.
The beautiful thing: The people I share a flat with will never know.
They don't read this blog.
And for that, revenge shall be mine.
Muhahahah.

The video comes from Thailand by the way. And from The Daily What.

Geography

2010-10-20T01:31:00.000+02:00

Texas will never be Luxembourg. But, then, Luxembourg will never be Texas.

Bruce Sterling in this interview.

Chain Mail

2010-10-18T20:22:00.000+02:00

Now that's something I want to go viral.

As always from The Daily What

Workspace Safety

2010-10-15T18:50:00.000+02:00

Don't you just feel much safer now?

The original was proudly presented to me by The Daily What

Bouncy Water

2010-10-14T18:28:00.001+02:00

Someone did science to it.

via The Daily What

Who needs a gym...

2010-10-13T07:11:00.001+02:00

... when you have "Movie Reshape"?

via The Daily What

Welcome!

2010-10-10T22:47:00.001+02:00

These are bunnies in cups.
Welcome back on the internet.

via TheDailyWhat

On Canonical Videogames

2010-10-07T08:20:00.000+02:00

Over there at Futurismic Jonathan McCalmont has put up a post dealing with various questions concerning a canon of video-games.
In our culture there are pieces of literature, which one has to know about as an educated person. Two kinds of books make up that literary canon: the milestones, which influence everything that comes after, and the jewels, timeless pieces of storytelling.

The linked article deals with the question if we need to introduce a videogame canon. After all there are also milestones in videogames. On the other hand the list of game-titles, which one can describe as timeless jewels without hyperbole is very short, if it exists at all. The article in turn provides some arguments for a canon, some against it, and wusses out on the conclusion.
Which is to be expected, since the author has a background in philosophy.

But being overly wussy is not the only fault I found. It also asks the wrong question right from the beginning: Do video games need a protected canon?
The answer is irrelevant. Even if we come to the conclusion that a protected list of "must play" video games is needed, it will not make the idea catch on. Canons are not decided upon (as much as all the list writers would like the idea), they evolve.
The better question to ask is: Can a videogame canon develop?

In order to answer that better question, it is a good idea to examine other media. No doubt, there is a well established literary canon. What about s film-canon? A twitter-canon?
In my opinion the ability of a medium to establish an authoritative list of works, which is considered essential, depends on two factors: Age and constancy of the medium.
Literature has some of the best cards in both categories. It has been around since the dawn of civilization and always consisted of signs on a flat surface, representing stories. Ample time to produce timeless jewels. Even its greatest revolution, the printing press, has about half a millennium of history. Because of this, even literature's milestones are more about quality, than novelty.
Film is on the brink of catching up with literature in terms of having a list of undisputed classics. Which shouldn't be too surprising, since the basic form of the medium has not changed since the era of silent films: It's still actors playing and speaking their roles in front of a camera. That's enough time to form at least some jewels. That it has been the most popular form of entertainment of the last century probably helped too. A constant stream of technical innovation gives the film canon its share of milestones.
Twitter on the other hand is just too young for a canon. Nobody has yet found out what can be done with that thing.

Video games are in an awkward place on this list. While, with maybe 40 years of histroy, it is old enough to have accumulated a healthy mix of jewels and milestones, technological progress has been rapid and shaped what is possible, more than in any other medium. What gaming is, has been everything but constant.
It began with text on a screen, through an increasing evolution of symbolic graphics, to graphics as a direct representation of reality. While the game-designer of a text-adventure was a novelist, who could draw upon an extra interactive touch, today's designer of an adventure, tells a story more through an environment, than anything else. Game design has gone from being a novelist to being an architect within four decades. That explains the strange shape of the video game canon: Lots of milestones, with no timeless jewels.

Which brings me to the answer to my questions. If you want to make video game canon, currently there are only half the ingredients for it. Many milestones, no jewels. It's not time yet.

Air Guitar

2010-10-05T20:56:00.000+02:00

Sometimes there are those videos that just leave me speechless.
From Coilhouse.

More Wingsuit Flying

2010-10-05T01:37:00.001+02:00

Some extreme sports are impressive.
And they make people like me wonder how far one can extend the wingsuit-cocnept by reinforcing some parts and putting a propulsion-system on your back...

Hey, only because it's crazy enough for now, doesn't mean it can't be made even more crazy.

via The Daily What

LSD Substitute

2010-10-05T01:02:00.001+02:00

via Boom

Nothing more needs to be said.

P.S: And while we are at trip inducing visuals...

The Japanese Popstars Feat. Green Velvet - Let Go from David Wilson Creative on Vimeo.

The Oatmeal on Email

2010-10-04T21:26:00.001+02:00

Seriously, if The Oatmeal's comics don't make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, there probably is something wrong with you. You should consider therapy. Or read all of the strips, just to confirm that you are merely the hollow husk of a human being.

Beautiful Math

2010-09-28T21:58:00.001+02:00

Math is a bitch, but I have to admit that it can be neat at times. Especially if someone works out how to compute elaborate 3-D renderings of fractal shapes, resembling a gothic dream cathedral.

Coilhouse is where I found it.

Scamming the Scammer

2010-09-28T18:21:00.001+02:00

We all know those mails: A lawyer from a faraway country tells us about an easily won fortune, if only we pay him a small processing fee in advance.

Some people reply to those mails and lose some money.
Others reply to those mails and make the scammer copy a Harry Potter book by hand.

I think that's impressive.

via dailywhat

Look, it's a castle!

2010-09-28T13:55:00.000+02:00

And it is made of human hair!
If you will excuse me for a moment, I feel a little sick now.
In the meantime you can entertain yourselves with two more pieces of Augustina Woodgate's hair art over there.

Light Magic

2010-09-25T16:34:00.000+02:00

Okay, the flying bubble letters were the neat trick you might want to show at your next community barbecue.
This is the kind of thing you want to show off at your mansion, celebrating something a little bigger.

This only proves that Bruce Sterling knows how to celebrate events, big and small.

Foam Printer

2010-09-25T16:17:00.000+02:00

Who needs balloons, if you can have flying letters made of bubbles?
Bruce Sterling agrees.

The Second Life Employment Bureau

2010-09-22T19:48:00.001+02:00

Over there at Futurismic, inspired by a translation project, Paul Raven has a great idea: Outsourcing intellectual work to the internet masses.

More seriously, though, I can see how starting some sort of employment bureau in SL for this sort of work could be a real moneyspinner; where there are savings margins of the scale that Klein is claiming, there’s plenty of space for middlemen. Things have been quiet on the metaverse front, at least as far as meatspace news is concerned, but a goldrush on those low low wages is sure to look very appealing to cash-strapped meatspace businesses…

Let's prod this idea a little.
Its limitations lie in the nature of what "this sort of work" can be.

It must be work that is mainly intellectual, else it's difficult to outsource over the web.
Your "work to be done" should not depend on a tight schedule. That the person you hire agrees to the job and never turns up, or agrees and never turns anything in, is entirely possible. Apart from losing a measly amount of "meta-money" by not sticking to his word there are no consequences for the virtual dealbreaker, while the employer's project has been stalled during that time.
You should not expect any quality standard either: It's difficult to verify qualifications, or to enforce the fixing of shoddy work, if the only thing you know for sure is the worker's SL-persona.

The SL Employment Bureau will attract people who want intellectual work done, and are not under pressure to deliver on time, and don't demand high quality output.
That's basically nobody.

To make this venture more attractive, two solutions are possible.
The first way to make this work, is to design a method which gets people to their prospective employers, who are guaranteed to deliver adequate work on time. But those who do high quality work on time have a name: They are called professionals. They are expensive and the main reason why someone would flee the real world in search of cheap intellectual labor on the net.

Which leaves the second version. In order to make the "Metaspace Employment Agency" (need a trademark on that) attract customers, you would have to design a crowdsourcing solution that can guarantee to deliver at least adequate work, on time, at a competitive price. A beefed up Wikipedia with deadlines, micropayments for participation, and mechanisms for quality control.
While that sounds more plausible than the first kind of solution, it still has the taste of a catherding enterprise. Even if you manage to herd your mass of (maybe) motivated users into delivering something useful, there's no guarantee that anyone is going to put his trust in such a shifty idea.

Still, there already exists something like that out there (only without the SL reference): Kluster, as far as I understand, aims to one day be a crowdsourced collaboration tool for specific projects.

I'm curious if they will manage to make money out of herding cats.

Wingsuit Proximity Flying

2010-09-22T18:13:00.001+02:00

Because all other extreme sports are for pussies.

via Wired

Wasn't It Ironic?

2010-09-21T23:33:00.001+02:00

And now to something totally different.
Wired has this post about how irony is going to diappear and die out within the next decade.

This, however, doesn’t mean irony is magically going to disappear from your radios, multiplexes or flat screens (sleep tight, Jon Stewart). It just means it’s increasingly becoming less and less popular for critiques to be framed in the smart-alecky tone of someone dead-set on proving they’re smarter than Dancing With the Stars.

Okay, maybe not all of my beloved irony will go down the drain, but the author claims that it will not be the defining force in popular culture it used to be and that it is being replaced by a new sort of sincerity.
I tend to disagree.

Irony thrives in situations of ambiguity and inherent contradictions ("Wow, that was so bad that it was good"), while sincerity demands a clear cut position ("Do you like that movie, or don't you?")
Irony offers a solution and justification for grey areas, for the "kind of like"-situations of our everyday lives, while sincerety is our mode of operation, when the boundary between black and white is well defined.
One has to look for something other than sincerity, if one wants to find what is taking irony's place.
Nostalgia is a good candidate for that. It replaces irony's: "I like it because it's kind of bad", with a: "I like it, because it reminds me of the good old times"
Combine that with the constant morph of former geek-subculture into what is today's mainstream popular culture, and you have the reason for the success of a series like Glee (which the orignal article was about... should I have mentioned that earlier?).

Seen in the larger context of conservative movements gaining ground all around the world, because a permanently futureshocked populace wants to go back to the good old times, nostalgia already is a defining theme of the present. No surprise, if it leeches into popular culture as well.
Postulating nostalgia as the new cultural driving force replacing irony, seems more reasonable than framing the current loss of ironic distance as "sincerity".

Looking at the kind of future, which prefers looking back... Could I have my irony back?
Please?

Ok Go

2010-09-20T17:02:00.002+02:00

You know them.
Treadmills.

Now it's dogs.
And it's great.

I saw it on the daily wh.at

Shortest Horror Story Ever Written

2010-09-17T09:43:00.005+02:00

I just had to nick this one from the Futility Closet:

The “shortest horror story ever written” is usually attributed to Frederic Brown:

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.

Ron Smith shortened this further by changing knock to lock.

Walls Healing Themselves

2010-09-17T09:23:00.004+02:00

The great futuremill of Futuristic delivers this article about self healing concrete.
I consider this one particularly impressive, because the solution has the elegance and simplicity of something that not only could work, but may even be practical.
The only difference to normal concretes seems to lie in the the addition of some exotic ingredients (bacteria pellets and calcium lactate). Adoption is easy, since all the processes stay the same.

Catchy Tune and Nimble Fingers

2010-09-15T14:26:00.004+02:00

Comes, as all the stuff that is good, strange, and has that spicy bit of acid, from coilhouse.

Dynamic Ants

2010-09-14T05:32:00.004+02:00

Bruce Sterling brought me to this strange thing, he aptly calls an ant vortex.

How does that work?
I can speculate: A constant speed of ants gives the ones on the "outer lanes" a lower angular momentum. Thus the center of the vortex seems to be moving faster than the fringe.
Every ant draws a scent line along its path, which attracts other ants towards it. As the scent density increases toward the middle, you get a higher ant density at the center of the maelstrom.
And last but not least, one will need to postulate a kind of inertia for every single ant, prompting it to move straight, unless the attractive scent alters its course. Without "ant-inertia" one would have every ant rushing for the center right away. With inertia you have the interplay of attractive and repulsive forces that is necessary for circular movement.

Is someone out there who wants to do agent based modelling of this? That is one interesting vortex after all...

Edit: Okay, it's not only an ant vortex, it's apparently called an Ant Death Spiral.

Sparkly

2010-09-12T12:33:00.003+02:00

The Daily What shows what it means to make electric music.

"Well, that was done in a jiffy!"

2010-09-12T12:21:00.004+02:00

And thus I again want to emphasize that every single military in the world is insane, for they repeat things to perfection, nobody else would bother with.

via The Daily What

Headline of the Day

2010-09-11T08:31:00.003+02:00

More than 230,000 Japanese centenarians 'missing'
No more comment necessary.

Legacy of Letters

2010-09-09T16:13:00.005+02:00

Via booooooom along comes this gentleman named Luca Barcellona, aka "the guy who needs to help me improve my handwriting".

Choose your Weapon!

2010-09-09T04:50:00.004+02:00

Haha, my trusty tea kettle and me shall go out and vanquish the undead hordes!

via dailywhat

Back to Science!

2010-09-08T01:37:00.004+02:00

Three snippets mind related science, straight from Warren Ellis:

Scientists just love to play with brains. Placing grids of electrodes on them and trying to decipher the words people say by the electrical patterns their brains display? Why not. It even works (sort of).

Bad news for all city dwellers: You are more likely to go crazy, than people living in the country.

The clearest geographic pattern within this distribution of rates is that urban areas have a higher incidence of schizophrenia than rural areas.

Another interesting discovery from the brink of sanity: A study in late stage cancer patients indicates that psilocybin, one of the more popular hallucinogens for recreational use, can provide some relief from anxiety. As Cannabis on prescription is becoming a reality in some places, magic mushrooms from your doctor may be the next step.

Dolphins, eh?

2010-09-08T00:51:00.002+02:00

I saw it first on coilhouse

Inspector Gadget

2010-09-07T00:02:00.003+02:00

I normally don't do music. But this one sparked my interest.
Probably the cowbells.

An Educational Book for the Aspiring Hobby Chemist

2010-09-06T18:39:00.008+02:00

Ahh, Chemistry. Can there be a better way to relax a tired mind after a long day, than to watch the desired product distill to perfection in a wide array of flasks and beakers?
A better way to earn a little money extra, by getting your friends and family to enjoy your mostly harmless product?

There probably can.
Especially if you take into account that you will have smoked your home and burned your trachea after chapter 5 of this book.
Oh, and you will have created some interesting things that will kill you in chapter 11:

BTW - Raney-Nickel is extremely *pyrophoric* and should never be allowed to dry out. If it does, it will catch on fire, all by it's little self, and burn a hole halfway to China.

A champagne bottle as a hydrogenation bomb? No thanks, I'd rather drive down the Pacific Coast Highway blindfolded.

I will probably find myself another hobby after all. But I still want that book. And be it only to have a great conversation starter about organometallic reactions.
Be honest, don't we all need one of those?

We changed the world

2010-09-05T03:44:00.004+02:00

Wired writes about extinction dynamics.

So what does that mean?
There are two possibilities scientists argue about.
After a massive extinction event (meteorite impact, humans) evolution will go on just like before: Whatever kind of critter was doing well at the time, will keep doing well after the big change and hog new niches. In this view extinction events are merely a hiccup. Things are shaken up for a while and then go back to business as usual.

Or the ecosystem will be so massively changed, that the rules themselves (the rates of species diversification) change. Killing off species suddenly isn't only a short term disturbance, and changes the big course of evolution forever.
Seems like this second scenario is turning out to be the more plausible one.
Which means that humanity is currently changing the longterm future of life on earth.
Have we already paved the way for our future insect overlords? Scientists still withhold comment.

That'll show those abstainers!

2010-08-31T16:28:00.003+02:00

But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.

From here.

Moderate drinking makes your life longer. That's old news.
That even heavy drinking lengthens your life is a new insight.
Drink for your life!

An Orange

2010-08-30T14:27:00.003+02:00

This proves again that Coilhouse will serve as the alternative of choice should, god forbid, your supply of hallucinogens ever run out.

Get Yourself a Porcupine

2010-08-30T00:17:00.003+02:00

I firmly believe that such cuteness can make up for any amount of vicious stinging.

100 Year Old Color Photography

2010-08-26T18:34:00.003+02:00

Via the ever fantastic coilhouse (original here) comes this collection of stunning color photography from czarist Russia.

Lessons from Viral Vids 001

2010-08-26T17:33:00.001+02:00

When unexpected things happen, change the game.

Madness?! This is...

2010-08-25T13:06:00.002+02:00

... okay, this really is madness.

Brought to you by the daily what

2010-08-23T12:43:00.001+02:00

Turning plastic into oil?
No problem!

Welcome Big Brother!

2010-08-19T17:30:00.004+02:00

You think Facebook is scary?
No, it isn't. Systems which can iris-scan you within half a second while you run by them, now that's scary!

"Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years," he says.

Especially if the developers, who are currently field testing them, say things like that.

via grinding.be

Putting the Oilspill in Perspective

2010-08-18T21:00:00.002+02:00

The BBC's Dimensions helps to get a feeling for the scale of things. A whole lot of things...

Earth and Moon

2010-08-18T20:29:00.004+02:00

"The Earth together with the Moon, as seen from the Messenger spacecraft to Mercury, May 2010."

Thank you Warren Ellis, thank you Bruce Sterling, you made my day.

2010-08-18T20:20:00.003+02:00

And this my friends, is called a meme...

Why does a smiling guy gain over 200 000 views on Youtube?