July 2010
56 posts
North Korea: now even worse →
His daughter tried to comfort him. “Father, I will keep this pair of pants until I die!” she pledged. He told her the cutting board would be her wedding gift.
“At that moment, I really wanted to kill myself,” he said. He gestured toward the safe-house window and beyond toward nighttime Yanji, brightly lighted and humming with traffic. “It is not like here,” he...
June 2010
43 posts
The Vicious Backlog Circle →
I like to play games. I want to play a lot of games. But playing games takes a lot of time. And I don’t have much time. Thus begins a vicious circle of money-spending and frustration some of you might be familiar with.
First I have no time to play games and when I do, I often end up being drawn to hardcore titles (Monster Hunter Tri) that take a lot of time. To make matters worse, I like to...
Music for Spaceflights →
For Apollo 17’s first wake-up call on the Moon, they played Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries….
I would wake up looking for which door to bash in. But then again, I’m a Techer.
2000 iMac compared to the 2010 iPhone →
2000 iMac Operating System - Mac OS 9.0.4 Processor - 500 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU, 128MB Memory Graphics - ATI Rage 128 Pro, 8MB of memory (8 million triangles) Screen - 786K pixels Data Transfer Speeds - 1.3-12.5 MB/s (DVD-ROM-1/100 Ethernet) Storage - 30GB Hard Drive Dimensions - 15.0 x 15.0 x 17.1 inches Weight - 34.7 pounds 2010 iPhone 4 Operating System - iOS 4.0 Processor - 1 Ghz ARM A4...
Tiff: I brought that back from Illinoise.
Marco: It's "Illinoi". You don't pronounce the S.
Tiff: Then why have it? Jackasses.
[silence]
Tiff: We don't say "New Yor".
BP's Dismal Safety Record →
BP’s safety violations far outstrip its fellow oil companies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, in the last three years, BP refineries in Ohio andTexas have accounted for 97 percent of the “egregious, willful” violations handed out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
via DF.
Neutrinos →
The American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting had an entire session on neutrinos, and Fermilab’s Kurt Riesselmann introduced it by asking everyone to hold out their hand for three seconds. During that time, a trillion neutrinos would pass through the space occupied by your hand. Despite these massive quantities, Riesselmann said, a typical human would have a grand total of...
Why We Travel →
jingc:
The reason travels are mentally useful involves a quirk of cognition, in which problems that feel “close” – and the closeness can be physical, temporal or even emotional – get contemplated in a more concrete manner. As a result, when we think about things that are nearby, our thoughts are constricted, bound by a more limited set of associations.
I wonder if the same effect can be...
“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.”
– New York Times, 1936
Watchjingc:
The first episode of BBC’s five-part series, The Genius of Design, now on Vimeo. Fascinating stuff, with the usual quality level of BBC documentaries.
Watched the first episode, can’t wait to see the rest.
Reeder for iPad →
If you use Google Reader and have an iPad, this is a no-brainer.
嘉峪关 (Jiayuguan) →
According to legend, when Jiayuguan was being planned, the official in charge asked the designer to estimate the exact number of bricks required and the designer gave him a number. The official questioned his judgment, asking him if that would be enough, so the designer added one brick. When Jiayuguan was finished, there was one brick left over, which was placed loose on one of the gates where it...
“Maybe the most elusive possession is contentment with what we have”
– Nicholas Kristof, New York Times (via jingc)
WatchAmazing Jellies - KQED
