Blog – page 9 of 16

LIFE Magazine’s Best Pictures

That’s Not Your Mommy Anymore: A Zombie Tale

Trading clothes with your loved ones

What is the Future of Books?

Kyle Lambert’s mashup of Toy Story and The Shining.

[

](http://kylelambert.co.uk/gallery/toyshining/)

Romance authors get a free pass

What happened to newspapers?

The Ciphers of Social Media

Famous explosions, rendered with cauliflowers

How parents harm their kid’s education

The modern Japan

Epic Action Photos of Porcelain Figurines Shattering Against the Ground

10 Commandments for Con Men

Why read books above your ‘level’

One Way To Distract An Athlete On The Court

The psychology of priorities

Dogs as Fonts

You may also like Cats as Fonts.

We are information scavengers. - Indexed

When “UP” Meets Star Wars

Shower Design WIN

There’s something different about smart people

Something Definitely Gets Lost in Transit

Free markets tend towards the complex

via JasonTheodor.com

Gather up the good brains

This might be slightly less funny if it were slightly less true.

(via DOGHOUSE)

Rules are no substitute for judgement

The Changing face of plastic surgery infographic on Flowingdata.com shows changes in popularity of various procedures.

Everything was made. Each invention shows that the world is malleable, from the simplest stone tool to the screen you’re using to read this. We make what we want, break things in the process, collect what we like, and connect what we discover to get us closer to where we want to be.

—

Frank Chimero

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation is a project by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, where he imagines the Gettysburg Address’ PowerPoint slides.

_[

](http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm)_

I finished reading Victory by Joseph Conrad a few weeks ago. Here’s a few passages (presented without comment or context) that jumped out at me:

Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.

I prayed like a child, of course. I believe in children praying–well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don’t hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles. It seems such cheek.

Google+ is in trouble. You can have all the “registered users” you want, but if no one is using your service, it’s going to tank. (via The Mounting Minuses at Google - WSJ.com)

Commercial sites should just buy the blogs that help them. There are brands selling things that bloggers love talking about and bloggers who would love to make a living without Adsense. So why don’t they just get together?[

](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/buying-links-is-shallow-buying-blogs-now-thats-a-strategy)

The phases of life are depressing.

(via EscaWorks - Phases Of Life)

BoraBora Sunshine Tablets: A sunny day in pill form.

(via Vaulot&Dyèvre)

Templates for modern movie posters via Dr. Monster

This is from an old but interesting story from Wired.com about the New Diamond Age.

Put pure carbon under enough heat and pressure - say, 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and 50,000 atmospheres - and it will crystallize into the hardest material known. Those were the conditions that first forged diamonds deep in Earth’s mantle 3.3 billion years ago. Replicating that environment in a lab isn’t easy, but that hasn’t kept dreamers from trying.

World Press Photo of the Year - 2011.

Check out all the 2011 winners from Worldpressphoto.org or view them at The Big Picture.

Reginald Braithwaite shares my sentiment about a tragedy in technology.

What makes me sad is that the pinnacle of our computing power, the massive behavioural engine that is Google Adwords/Adsense, has decided that when someone is reading about dinosaurs, the most profitable thing to do is show them ads for games. Not books about dinosaurs, or even dinosaur games, but games.

We take a generation of incredibly smart people who have been rigorously trained to deliver amazing code, running on a massive computing engine, and when confronted with a human being trying to learn something, they try to distract him with games. Can you imagine Google in charge of textbooks? In my children’s time, textbooks will be immersive experiences, complete with Google’s avatars whispering “Psst! Math is hard, let’s play games instead of studying.” Can you imagine Google making eyeglasses? They would obscure anything educational with virtual billboards for dating sites.

That would be messy. Check out more Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses To Completely Well-Meaning Signs on Happy Place

Solve for X: Neal Stephenson on getting big stuff done (by wesolveforx).

I’m not a sy-fi geek, but this video has something for everyone. It has a few things to agree with and a few things to disagree with.

There’s more of these incredible sculptures on Takanori Aiba’s Flickr Photostream.

A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.

— Ayn Rand via Letters of Note, where you can read the full letter with this quote in context.

Jacob Sutton’s L.E.D.Snowboarder(by tb303meets606).

Fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton swaps the studio for the slopes of Tignes in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France, with a luminous after hours short starring Artec pro snowboarder William Hughes. The electrifying film sees Hughes light up the snow-covered French hills in a bespoke L.E.D.-enveloped suit courtesy of designer and electronics whizz John Spatcher.

I’m not paranoid on the web (yet), but if I were I’m happy to know there’s a place to go. DuckDuckGo, the anonymous web browser, has an illustrated guide called Google tracks you. We don’t that explains their philosophy of the web.

DuckDuckGo has also published a guide to Escape your search engine Filter Bubble! which is helpful to understanding how your search history eventually filters web results to fit your world view.

Awesome. Flavorwire’s compilations of The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World makes me wonder at what I’m missing having switched most of my reading to a kindle and computer screen.

Jeff Stier of Reason Magazine, in his essay Modern-Day Prohibition, shared the story of psychopharmacologist David Nutt, who didn’t think Ecstasy and LSD should be categorized among the most dangerous drugs. Instead of backing down to critics and detractors, he wrote a satirical article, analyzing another addiction.

He analyzed “an addiction called ‘Equasy’ that kills ten people a year, causes brain damage and has been linked to the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.” Nut added that Equasy “releases endorphins, can create dependence and is responsible for over 100 road traffic accidents every year.” Had Nutt not revealed that Equasy was simply the time-honored sport of horseback riding, activists certainly would have rushed to introduce a ban. Nutt pointed out that since Equasy causes acute harm to one out of 350 riders, it is far riskier than Ecstasy, for which the fraction is one out of 10,000.

School Kills Creativity - Ken Robinson (by koekskesberg).

There’s also his TED Talk version.

via xkcd: Kerning

THE COMPOSITES

Obviously, I’m not condoning piracy, but it’s clear from this image that it’s not just about saving money. People are willing to pay if you offer them what they want, but if there is a large burden or inconvenience in going through legitimate avenues, they will look elsewhere.

“Cigarettes are like squirrels. They’re not dangerous until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire.” [via celluloidblonde]

This is what life was like before Google fixed it.

(via Shoebox » Chuck & Beans)

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

—

Mark Twain in Following the Equator

The value of goals is not in the future they describe, but the change in perception of reality they foster. What we focus on changes what we notice. Our brain filters information, seeing one thing in a situation instead of something else, based on what we identify with, what we have our attention on, what we’re looking for—more or less consciously.

— David Allen, Productive Living

Pleatedjeans put together this video chain of TV shows referencing other TV shows.

The clips are from come from Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, Community, South Park, Hannah Montana, Law and Order, Beavis and Butthead, Full House, The Simpsons, Scrubs, Gilmore Girls, The Office, Entourage, Arrested Development, Family Guy, The Fresh Prince, Saved by the Bell, Married With Children, Friends, …and back to Saturday Night Live

Marry a happy person.

(via Dilbert comic strip for 02/10/2012 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.)

Art History Through Sci Fi-Colored Glasses

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group.

—

- African proverb

Wordpharmacy is a concrete poetical work, which playfully equates the structure of language with pharmaceutical products. It consists of ten medicine boxes, each representing one of the ten word-groups. Each box contains a leaflet that functions as an instructional poem, guiding the reader’s ingestion of the given word group.

(via Wordpharmacy Family)

I don’t know if anyone I know will get this.

(via ThinkGeek :: ~/ Sweet ~/ Welcome Mat)

Under the Microscope #6 by CambridgeUniversity

Cancer cells get attacked by a killer T cell in this video by University of Cambridge researchers.

Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or cancerous cells, without destroying healthy cells surrounding them.

Countries & Colour by Jerod Gibson

This is an ongoing series of geographic prints. I’ve been wanting to do a series with a digi-watercolor style for awhile as well as doing something that involved countries. The two parts seemed to go hand in hand very good, and melded into a nice minimalistic abstract designs.

Scott Adams shares the one goal he focuses on that serves the multiple priorities in his life.

The way I approach the problem of multiple priorities is by focusing on just one main goal: energy. I make choices that maximize my personal energy because that makes it easier to manage all of the other priorities. Maximizing my personal energy means eating right, exercising, avoiding unnecessary stress, getting enough sleep, and all of the obvious steps. But it also means having something in my life that makes me excited to wake up. When I get my personal energy right, the quality of my work is better, and I can complete it faster. That keeps my career on track. And when all of that is working, and I feel relaxed and energetic, my personal life is better too.

I am… via Flickr Blog. Iamaustin published the photos from this lovely project in his photostream.

The Scale of the Universe 2

Bobby Neel Adams spliced together photos of six individuals from when they were children and adults to make these interesting Age-Maps.

Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, spoke to Stephen Hackett of 512pixles about why he chooses text as his medium of choice.

Text is an amazingly versatile medium. Relative to other media, text has very low production costs, both in authorship and distribution. One person can produce a great essay or even a complete book. It’s much harder to be a one-person filmmaker. And since text as a medium does not have a fixed timescale like audio and video, it can be easily skimmed or read at any desired speed. In the digital world, text becomes even more useful. It takes up almost no space by today’s standards, it can be easily indexed and analyzed, and tools like mine can edit, restructure, and reflow it to do all sorts of different things. The ease of producing, distributing, and messing around with text has resulted in an effectively infinite supply of great expression, information, and entertainment being written and read in this wonderful medium. Whatever you want to read, there’s already more of it than you could read in a lifetime, and there’s probably more being produced right now.

This Venn Diagram from New York Magazine shows an incredible amount of overlap in the titles and themes of various reality show.

[

](http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2012/01/31/realitydiagram.o.png/a_980x1230.png)

Afghanistan – touch down in flight by Augustin Pictures

As each of us has his own impression of Afghanistan that is predominantly marked with pictures of foreign forces, explosions and terror, we were privileged to have access to capture daily life and portrait some people of Afghanistan.

Be sure to watch it in full screen.

If there’s no good reason to use the feature, why have the feature?

(by Jason Robb)

Rand Fishkin from Moz and Dharmesh Shah from HubSpot launched a Hacker News like site for marketers, Inbound.org.

I hope the community and content quality of this site is up to the standards of it muse.

I’ve never paid for cable, but this chart alone should make cutting the cord easier.

(via Why I want to quit cable)

There a lot more of these prints by Niege Borges to enjoy, including ones from Little Miss Sunshine, Flight of the Concords, the chicken dance from Arrested Development, and Elaine’s dance in Seinfeld.

The method of creating this Anatomical Cross-Sections in Paper is quite fascinating:

These pieces are made of Japanese mulberry paper and the gilded edges of old books. They are constructed by a technique of rolling and shaping narrow strips of paper called quilling or paper filigree. Quilling was first practiced by Renaissance nuns and monks who made artistic use of the gilded edges of worn out bibles, and later by 18th century ladies who made artistic use of lots of free time. I find quilling exquisitely satisfying for rendering the densely squished and lovely internal landscape of the human body in cross section.

A Brief History of Computing Platforms (by AsymcoInteractive)

Read more about the background of the analysis.

Pop Chart Lab has this detailed diagram of many classic cocktails.

This definitive guide to classic cocktails breaks down 68 drinks into their constituent parts. Follow the lines to see where spirits, mixers, and garnishes intersect to form delightful concoctions. This massive movie poster-sized print contains over 40 types of alcohol (from distilled spirits to bitters), mixers from raspberry syrup to egg white, and garnishes from the classic olive to a salted rim. This obsessively detailed chart also includes the ratios for each drink, as well as the proper serving glass, making it as functional as it is beautiful. Over a year in the making, this is Pop Chart Lab’s most elaborate chart ever.

grantimatter:

Rules of engagement. I think I may need to make these a wallpaper or transcribe them onto a Post-It or something.

Superbowl Twitter mentions visualized on Hotspots.io

Dress Pant Sweatpants from Betabrand

I doubt I could get away with these at the office, but I am so glad they exist.

To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data

According to Eric Felten, in his WSJ.com review of the book New by Winifred Gallagher,

Creativity flourishes best when part of a tradition. The new ideas that succeed are those that stick around long enough to become old.

He sees what’s new as part of a long line of creative works, one springing forth from another. For all the interest our society shows for the new and improved gizmo, we still have a strong nostalgia for the old, for the traditional, for the new thing that reminds us of the old.

Gathering opinions from everyone in the room is still in vogue, but creative work is still best done in solitude. Susan Cain of The New York times explores the role of Groupthink in the workplace and how best to combat its negative effects.

Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

Dilbert Creator Scott Adams talks about what works for his success in an essay on his blog called The Yoke of Credibility.

I see life as a process, not a goal. If my goal had been to create world-changing ideas that worked right away, I would be a complete failure. But I don’t have that goal. Instead, I have a process that involves seeding the universe with ideas and waiting for the strongest to evolve and make a difference. The worst case scenario is that my ideas cause the eventual best ideas to compete harder and evolve to even better forms. When you use a process that makes sense, even the unanticipated outcomes are good.

This Princess Bride themed wine from the Alamo Draft House will be available for Valentine’s Day.

Nothing says “I Love You” like a possibly poisoned wine.

If you don’t like growing older, don’t worry about it. You may not be growing older much longer.

— Thomas Sowell

Consummate politeness is not the right tonic for an emotional collapse.

— Joseph Conrad, Victory

oliphillips:

It takes considerable energy to plan your own future, but if you don’t figure out what you want to become, someone else will define it for you.

— Jason Theodor, M.A.P.S.: The Four Pillars of Creative Job Fulfillment

driving on mountain top ORIGINAL! (by 87mcmahan87)

Movies reimagined for another time & place via Behance.

I love e-books, especially on my Kindle, but Nicholas Carr or the Wall Street Journal has some interesting ideas on the danger of e-books.

[A]s is often the case with digitization, the boon carries a bane. The ability to alter the contents of a book will be easy to abuse. School boards may come to exert even greater influence over what students read. They’ll be able to edit textbooks that don’t fit with local biases. Authoritarian governments will be able to tweak books to suit their political interests. And the edits can ripple backward. Because e-readers connect to the Internet, the works they contain can be revised remotely, just as software programs are updated today. Movable text makes a lousy preservative.

I don’t have any clear preferences in chess. I do what I think circumstances require of me – I attack, defend or go into the endgame. Having preferences means having weaknesses.

— Magnus Carlsen, chess master (via Chess News)

The real egalitarians are not the people who want to redistribute wealth to the poor, but those who want to extend to the poor the ability to create their own wealth, to lift themselves up, instead of trying to tear others down. Earning respect, including self-respect, is better than being a parasite.

— Thomas Sowell

“A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. “

See the full 64 Megapixel version.

Tom Standage argues that writing is the greatest invention.

The greatest invention of all must surely be writing. It is not just one of the foundations of civilisation: it underpins the steady accumulation of intellectual achievement. By capturing ideas in physical form, it allows them to travel across space and time without distortion, and thus slip the bonds of human memory and oral transmission, not to mention the whims of tyrants and the vicissitudes of history.

Wired has a collection of portraits by Tim Mantoani of photographers holding prints of their most famous works.

Photographer Jeff Widener with his iconic photo of the man in Tienanmen Square from 1989. Photo by: Tim Mantoani

Kevin Kelley points out the value of the public domain.

It is in the interest of culture to have a large and dynamic public domain. The greatest classics of Disney were all based on stories in the public domain, and Walt Disney showed how public domain ideas and characters could be leveraged by others to bring enjoyment and money. But ironically, after Walt died, the Disney corporation became the major backer of the extended copyright laws, in order to keep the very few original ideas they had — like Mickey Mouse — from going into the public domain. Also ironically, just as Disney was smothering the public domain, their own great fortunes waned because they were strangling the main source of their own creativity, which was public domain material. They were unable to generate their own new material, so they had to buy Pixar.

imgfave:

★ discovered on imgfave.com (social image bookmarking)