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slowfoxThe Times, amongst others ran a story about how people could 'face wartime rations and a vegetarian diet' in the event of a world food shortage. A bit of a non-story, in the sense that if there's a shortage, you'd expect food to be, well, in short supply. However, both Climate Change and Peak Oil will have a direct impact upon our ability to grow crops at the current rate, and this, in turn, means that food consumption patterns will have to shift. I'm not vegetarian... but the last time I ate meat was 2 January of this year, and it was mainly for reasons of equity, rather than ethics, that I made that conscious decision.
It's not just food - food is itself an indicator of water stress, and as if the projected glacier loss isn't bad enough, just consider what's going to happen to India and Pakistan, dependent as they are on water supplied by glacier run off from the Himalayas. And that's without considering the news that a dramatic drop has been recorded in Indian groundwater. Fred Pearce's book, When the Rivers Run Dry was pretty eye-opening, for me, on the whole water stress issue, and this is something that I suspect will make its way to the fore in the near future.
But lest people have been taking their eye of the Peak Oil ball, the good ol' Grauniad had an article on the day oil hit $71/barrel. Petrol over here is now c£1.03/litre - and this is in the midst of a global recession - don't panic, people good, just keep half an eye on it every now and then.
This is all, lamentably, rather serious stuff, and I agree with John Prescott (not a phrase I thought I'd say too often) when he argues that the West need to make more sacrifices in attempting to combat Climate Change.
The very cool Ben Goldacre had a blog up about academic papers being ghostwritten, which, even if not widespread, is worrying.
In So Very Want news, $25m Brooklyn Apartment. It's the clocks that win me over. OTOH, I'm not sure that Geekologie's guide to hand-making one's own d20 handbag would have quite the same volume of people beating a path to one'sdoor URL. Possibly of sole interest to the committed (in both senses of the word), methinks.
El Reg ran a story on how two people were convicted for refusing to decrypt data between April '08 and April '09. TrueCrypt does offer a plausible deniability feature that may, or may not, prove helpful in such situations (I offer this merely for information, and do not condone wilfully concealing 'sensitive' data from entitled authorities. Oh no. Not ever. Of course not).
In further bad news for the paranoid: The Washington Post relates news that Palm's Pre reports your personal whereabouts back to Palm. Tin-foil phone hat rendered redundant at a stroke, although it looks like Palm could do without the bad publicity, given how sales are going (or not). To complete the paranoia subsection, encouraging news here that NASA is falling short of its asteroid detection goals.
And now segueing smoothly into iPhone news (light entertainment content linking!), the United Services Automobile Association bank, USAA us launching a service that will allow you to deposit cheques/checks by taking photos of them with your iPhone. Hmmm. That sounds safe...
Meanwhile, El Reg was telling us all about a DIY spy drone that some French engineering dudes have come up with. Naturally, they have a YouTube vid. These could be useful, I guess, to protect yourself from Ant Zombie Fungus Horror. Yes, I love El Reg - but they don't always cover stuff that is, uh, on the edge of mainstream - for example, they also had this article about how Twitter looks to be being transformed into a botnet command channel. Which compensates somewhat for Google News' disturbing revelation that the Royal Opera House is to perform a Twitter opera. If the Fail Whale gets an aria, then we're good.
Wired had this rather cool video of Robert Lang's Origami, and then over on YouTube there's this pretty spectacular demonstration of video projection onto a manor house facade. Very clever stuff.
In this week's Pet Supplement, USA Today reveal that the Border Collie remains the most intelligent breed of dog: I mentioned this to Mali, and he just looked at me with a like you need to read an article to know that look. Obviously, that photogenic squirrel is all over the web. Not a bad shot, though, all told: particularly like the shallow depth of field that helps emphasise the pic's star subject.
Nora the cat performs piano concerto. Awesomely kitsch.
Not really a pet, but my namesake Ralph the Bald Penguin has been given a swimsuit to protect him from sunburn, quoth the Telegraph. Definitely the best story about a bald penguin called Ralph wearing a wetsuit that I've read this week. Meanwhile, the Guardian relays the news that Italy has canine life guards patrolling its lakes and beaches.
I don't often mosey across to MSN, but they did have this article about 30 natural marvels you've probably never heard of, which contains a lot of pretty pictures, so I thought it was worth a link.
In these belt-tightening times, it's heartening to learn that of a mouse making a nest out of $20 bills inside an ATM. Given the drop in money circulation, and presumably acknowledging that not all of it can be due to mice using £20 notes for nesting material, Selfridges clearly reckon that if they widen the window of selling opportunity, then they'll venutally claw in the same revenue: at least, that's the only explanation I can venture for the news that Selfridges has put its Christmas range on sale. In August. *weepz*
Google have launched a spiffier, speedier beta for Chrome. Chrome is an awesome browser, and is starting, like Safari, to implement some HTML5, which means that things like this flash-free YouTube video demo work. Which is all kinds of not-immediately-apparent-but-trust-me cool.
Another Telegraph pic-gallery link: I've linked to Michael Bosanko's work before (over at the Grauniad, if memory serves), but here's some more light graffiti pics for your perusal. Really smart stuff. Still with photographs, it seems that I'm habitually linking to the Guardian's 24 hours in pictures galleries. But then, they normally do have some Pretty Good Stuff.
OK, infographics can be pretty cool. Apologies for the slightly disturbing subject matter in the first link, which is Suicides by Location on the Golden Gate Bridge, but the second one, which is interactive, is a New York Times article on how different groups spend their day - you can select by gender, age range, ethnic grouping and so on. It's pretty darned cool. I also stumbled across this link on the New York population by day and night... which is sorta pretty, but I couldn't actually find a root attribution for it, so it's presented here all kinda orphaned.
Not so good news for those of us who back up our legitimate DVDs to disk, as PC World and Wired both report that DVD-copying software is illegal. I use DVD-Shrink and Auto Gordian Knot to convery my DVDs to xVid, and feel somewhat slighted by the aspersions being cast here :-/
The Department of Vague Paranoia's Preparing for Emergencies spoof of the government's handbook of a while back still gives a nice buzz of retro-mirth.
In It Could Only Be Texas news, a group ofidiots gun geeks have worked out a way to play Half Life with real guns. Ask not why, just be thankful that you don't share a State with these guys (apologies to readers in Texas, you have my sympathies). What deeply, deeply amuses me is how the guy doing the shooting is wearing sunglasses at night, in a fantastically unironic way. I would mock him, but he does appear to be armed, so internet snark will have to do.
Interesting article at CNN suggesting that mobile internet devices could be the new delivery medium for comics and the like, obviously name-checking the iPhone, but also mentioning the Kindle as a possible publishing conduit. Continuing to push the Media For Everyone angle, CNN also had this article about how the Indian Government has postulated the theory that wiring the villages for that electrickery stuff could help reduce the population explosion by getting people to watch TV rather than have sex. I have a one word explanation for why that idea mught prove to be flawed: multitasking.
Engadget broke a story suggesting that Microsoft's Zune HD is coming on September 15th; I have to say that after the unappealing look to the earlier models, the HD's looking rather swish. I doubt we'll get it on this side of the pond quite so swiftly, and I seriously doubt that it's going to mesh with Linux nicely, somehow, so any interest of mine would obviously be academic. On the other hand, Engadget claim that nailing down a launch date for Apple's oft-rumoured tablet remains tricky: now it looks like 2010, say 'sources'.
The Telegraph has let me down on crop circles this week, failing to mention the beasties at all. Have to link you to this YouTube vid instead, then.
The Torygraph worries that one of Antarctica's glaciers appears to be thinning four times faster than a decade ago. Such relative comparisons can be dangerous, though - accusations of cherry picking on the time-scale (what about vs 9 or 11 years?) will be inevitable. But, FWIW, I think it warrants taking notice of.
NASA have released a stunning pic of Victoria Crater taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. And here's a fab YouTube video of The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D. Continuing the space(ish) theme, I'm interested in seeing District 9, but do wonder if Wired, in explaining that District 9 is a sci-fi spectacle with a giant spaceship, stranded extraterrestrials and plenty of alien technology, but it's also an allegory about segregation is not perhaps insulting its readers' intelligence, just a little?
TranslationParty is a lot of fun: here it is translating from English to Japanese to English to Japanese until 'equilibrium' is reached (the point where the back-translated translation is unchanged from the original): Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour's Wife (loses something in the translation, it would appear), and the magnificent Don't Panic. If the second hit doesn't work, because of weird browser cacheing or whatever, the starting phrase you need is Don't Panic! (the punctuation is important).
And finally, playauditorium.com: turn the sound up and investigate.
ETA: Special HBP parody section:hamsterwoman linked me to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda's 15 Minute Movie Script in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
m15m here. And then aome linked me to sarahtales' own parody of said film here. Both worth reading :-)
It's not just food - food is itself an indicator of water stress, and as if the projected glacier loss isn't bad enough, just consider what's going to happen to India and Pakistan, dependent as they are on water supplied by glacier run off from the Himalayas. And that's without considering the news that a dramatic drop has been recorded in Indian groundwater. Fred Pearce's book, When the Rivers Run Dry was pretty eye-opening, for me, on the whole water stress issue, and this is something that I suspect will make its way to the fore in the near future.
But lest people have been taking their eye of the Peak Oil ball, the good ol' Grauniad had an article on the day oil hit $71/barrel. Petrol over here is now c£1.03/litre - and this is in the midst of a global recession - don't panic, people good, just keep half an eye on it every now and then.
This is all, lamentably, rather serious stuff, and I agree with John Prescott (not a phrase I thought I'd say too often) when he argues that the West need to make more sacrifices in attempting to combat Climate Change.
The very cool Ben Goldacre had a blog up about academic papers being ghostwritten, which, even if not widespread, is worrying.
In So Very Want news, $25m Brooklyn Apartment. It's the clocks that win me over. OTOH, I'm not sure that Geekologie's guide to hand-making one's own d20 handbag would have quite the same volume of people beating a path to one's
El Reg ran a story on how two people were convicted for refusing to decrypt data between April '08 and April '09. TrueCrypt does offer a plausible deniability feature that may, or may not, prove helpful in such situations (I offer this merely for information, and do not condone wilfully concealing 'sensitive' data from entitled authorities. Oh no. Not ever. Of course not).
In further bad news for the paranoid: The Washington Post relates news that Palm's Pre reports your personal whereabouts back to Palm. Tin-foil phone hat rendered redundant at a stroke, although it looks like Palm could do without the bad publicity, given how sales are going (or not). To complete the paranoia subsection, encouraging news here that NASA is falling short of its asteroid detection goals.
And now segueing smoothly into iPhone news (light entertainment content linking!), the United Services Automobile Association bank, USAA us launching a service that will allow you to deposit cheques/checks by taking photos of them with your iPhone. Hmmm. That sounds safe...
Meanwhile, El Reg was telling us all about a DIY spy drone that some French engineering dudes have come up with. Naturally, they have a YouTube vid. These could be useful, I guess, to protect yourself from Ant Zombie Fungus Horror. Yes, I love El Reg - but they don't always cover stuff that is, uh, on the edge of mainstream - for example, they also had this article about how Twitter looks to be being transformed into a botnet command channel. Which compensates somewhat for Google News' disturbing revelation that the Royal Opera House is to perform a Twitter opera. If the Fail Whale gets an aria, then we're good.
Wired had this rather cool video of Robert Lang's Origami, and then over on YouTube there's this pretty spectacular demonstration of video projection onto a manor house facade. Very clever stuff.
In this week's Pet Supplement, USA Today reveal that the Border Collie remains the most intelligent breed of dog: I mentioned this to Mali, and he just looked at me with a like you need to read an article to know that look. Obviously, that photogenic squirrel is all over the web. Not a bad shot, though, all told: particularly like the shallow depth of field that helps emphasise the pic's star subject.
Nora the cat performs piano concerto. Awesomely kitsch.
Not really a pet, but my namesake Ralph the Bald Penguin has been given a swimsuit to protect him from sunburn, quoth the Telegraph. Definitely the best story about a bald penguin called Ralph wearing a wetsuit that I've read this week. Meanwhile, the Guardian relays the news that Italy has canine life guards patrolling its lakes and beaches.
I don't often mosey across to MSN, but they did have this article about 30 natural marvels you've probably never heard of, which contains a lot of pretty pictures, so I thought it was worth a link.
In these belt-tightening times, it's heartening to learn that of a mouse making a nest out of $20 bills inside an ATM. Given the drop in money circulation, and presumably acknowledging that not all of it can be due to mice using £20 notes for nesting material, Selfridges clearly reckon that if they widen the window of selling opportunity, then they'll venutally claw in the same revenue: at least, that's the only explanation I can venture for the news that Selfridges has put its Christmas range on sale. In August. *weepz*
Google have launched a spiffier, speedier beta for Chrome. Chrome is an awesome browser, and is starting, like Safari, to implement some HTML5, which means that things like this flash-free YouTube video demo work. Which is all kinds of not-immediately-apparent-but-trust-me cool.
Another Telegraph pic-gallery link: I've linked to Michael Bosanko's work before (over at the Grauniad, if memory serves), but here's some more light graffiti pics for your perusal. Really smart stuff. Still with photographs, it seems that I'm habitually linking to the Guardian's 24 hours in pictures galleries. But then, they normally do have some Pretty Good Stuff.
OK, infographics can be pretty cool. Apologies for the slightly disturbing subject matter in the first link, which is Suicides by Location on the Golden Gate Bridge, but the second one, which is interactive, is a New York Times article on how different groups spend their day - you can select by gender, age range, ethnic grouping and so on. It's pretty darned cool. I also stumbled across this link on the New York population by day and night... which is sorta pretty, but I couldn't actually find a root attribution for it, so it's presented here all kinda orphaned.
Not so good news for those of us who back up our legitimate DVDs to disk, as PC World and Wired both report that DVD-copying software is illegal. I use DVD-Shrink and Auto Gordian Knot to convery my DVDs to xVid, and feel somewhat slighted by the aspersions being cast here :-/
The Department of Vague Paranoia's Preparing for Emergencies spoof of the government's handbook of a while back still gives a nice buzz of retro-mirth.
In It Could Only Be Texas news, a group of
Interesting article at CNN suggesting that mobile internet devices could be the new delivery medium for comics and the like, obviously name-checking the iPhone, but also mentioning the Kindle as a possible publishing conduit. Continuing to push the Media For Everyone angle, CNN also had this article about how the Indian Government has postulated the theory that wiring the villages for that electrickery stuff could help reduce the population explosion by getting people to watch TV rather than have sex. I have a one word explanation for why that idea mught prove to be flawed: multitasking.
Engadget broke a story suggesting that Microsoft's Zune HD is coming on September 15th; I have to say that after the unappealing look to the earlier models, the HD's looking rather swish. I doubt we'll get it on this side of the pond quite so swiftly, and I seriously doubt that it's going to mesh with Linux nicely, somehow, so any interest of mine would obviously be academic. On the other hand, Engadget claim that nailing down a launch date for Apple's oft-rumoured tablet remains tricky: now it looks like 2010, say 'sources'.
The Telegraph has let me down on crop circles this week, failing to mention the beasties at all. Have to link you to this YouTube vid instead, then.
The Torygraph worries that one of Antarctica's glaciers appears to be thinning four times faster than a decade ago. Such relative comparisons can be dangerous, though - accusations of cherry picking on the time-scale (what about vs 9 or 11 years?) will be inevitable. But, FWIW, I think it warrants taking notice of.
NASA have released a stunning pic of Victoria Crater taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. And here's a fab YouTube video of The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D. Continuing the space(ish) theme, I'm interested in seeing District 9, but do wonder if Wired, in explaining that District 9 is a sci-fi spectacle with a giant spaceship, stranded extraterrestrials and plenty of alien technology, but it's also an allegory about segregation is not perhaps insulting its readers' intelligence, just a little?
TranslationParty is a lot of fun: here it is translating from English to Japanese to English to Japanese until 'equilibrium' is reached (the point where the back-translated translation is unchanged from the original): Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour's Wife (loses something in the translation, it would appear), and the magnificent Don't Panic. If the second hit doesn't work, because of weird browser cacheing or whatever, the starting phrase you need is Don't Panic! (the punctuation is important).
And finally, playauditorium.com: turn the sound up and investigate.
ETA: Special HBP parody section:
hamsterwoman linked me to cleolinda's 15 Minute Movie Script in m15m here. And then aome linked me to sarahtales' own parody of said film here. Both worth reading :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 06:40 am (UTC)I so love these posts. Thanks for collecting them. You do have a knack for finding the coolest stuff.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 09:03 am (UTC)And for the most part, with linkfests, it's not so much that I find cool stuff, but that I find people who, in turn, find cool stuff :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 08:19 pm (UTC)I pointed out the Palm Pre story to Will, and he responded by pointing out that pretty much ALL phones are at risk and that, in fact, for the Beijing Olympics, people were encouraged to take the batteries out of their phones because the Chinese had technology to spy on you through your phone even when it was turned off.
Your comments on the bald penguin had me in giggles. :D
The natural wonders were gorgeous! Wow. I've passed that link on to others.
I note that quite a few people jumped off the bridge before it begins spanning the water. Perhaps they feel it will have more of an immediate effect that way? :P Sad.
Very much cracking up with the translation thing. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 09:18 pm (UTC)You've got to remember, I don't really 'do' food, per se. Pasta/pesto/salad is a staple, as is quorn in various guises (although I deeply suspect that I'm not remotely doing the planet any favours with Quorn). Omlettes now and again - keep on meaning to do stuffed peppers and stuff, and be more interesting about it all, but since I can't taste, much of me thinks 'what's the point of expending the effort?'...
Yes, all phones are at risk in allowing your position to be triangulated, but Palm appear to have been actively telling the Pre to ping back your position to HQ, which is, I think, another level of intrusion again.
The translation thing is wicked - I love the Don't Panic! result: Please, Please please, Please please please, Please please please please... :D
no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 10:57 pm (UTC)Nutritional variation. :)
Why is quorn bad for the planet? I thought grains were ok.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 08:31 pm (UTC)Please don't forget that Mali's head is mostly spaniel-shaped, I suspect that his brain is also mostly spaniel-shaped. Also remember that only I am allowed to call my dog stupid.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-21 07:02 am (UTC)This seems only too probable.