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 Massive cargo ships that can transport battleships, oil rigs, and power stations. The Bush administration has again slashed cancer research funding to enable corporations to control the speed of research and make more money. "We're at jeopardy of losing a whole generation of scientists, of cancer researchers, and that's undoubtedly going to have an effect 10 years down the line." Reports continue that the Bush administration is provoking Iran to have an excuse to retaliate.  Don't feel bad. [via reddit] Netflix upgraded my account over the weekend to add their streaming video service. While the selection of flicks available to stream is somewhat limited compared to their immense library, movies loaded pretty quickly and looked very good. The feature will be enabled on all Netflix accounts by June 2007. 1 in 8 drug prisoners in the U.S. are in for marijuana-related offenses, costing taxpayers over $1 billion annually. Nearly 800,000 pot-related arrests were made in 2005 bleeding taxpayers of over $8 billion in criminal justice costs. What. The. Fuck. Anna Nicole Kidman's bedside fridge contained methadone, Slim-Fast, and spray butter. Classy gal.  A dude gave a homeless kid a camera and film on the condition that copies of photos be sent after a while. Many of the images are stunning. If you want to make copies of your tunes, DVDs, or whatever, and they're crippled by DRM, here's a fairly comprehensive guide to disabling all of it. See also: BoingBoing's guide to defeating censorware. Top 10 gay animals. Everyone's thought of doing Thriller at a wedding, but these people actually did it. [YouTube] Technology is in the works for a full-scale house printer that squirts liquid construction materials into place to form floors and walls. It could complete a house 200 times faster than traditional methods. Imagine using soy- and grass-based filling. Researchers at MIT have trained a computer to recognize objects as a human brain does. Jodi Applegate at Fort Hamilton Parkway. [Flickr] [referenced YouTube clip]  A lost Leonardo painting could be hiding in Florence, painted on a wall about 1 inch behind another fresco. The technology to find out whether it's there does not yet exist. YouTube and their venture capitalist friends are selling every Google share they got in the buyout. The deal now positively reeks of fraud. New York club BED closed this week after last week's murderous bouncer incident. BED, Avalon, and Crobar have all closed in the last few months. The Morning News put together an extraordinarily comprehensive guide to etiquette in NYC. "A smart guest will consult the host on what type of wine to bring; a smarter guest will bring two bottles." Eddie Murphy pwned at 7th Avenue. [Flickr]  10 myths about Windows Vista that should be summarily dismissed. "All of the media that imported from my XP Windows Media Center computer, including recorded TV programs, played without a problem." Xeni Jardin posted a fantastic screenshot of how Wal-Mart's new digital download service renders in Firefox. To call it a mess would be compassionately inaccurate. The Pentagon has decided to send 20,000 homicidal astronauts to Iraq. "Gen. Petraeus said that the bloodthirsty astronauts would arrive in Baghdad armed with pepper spray, mallets, and rubber tubing, 'and they're not afraid to use them.'" These honeybees blinded a hornet with science. Then killed it. [YouTube] Visualizations On A Plane using faces from the SkyMall catalog. The demographics of the models are somewhat disturbing. [via kottke] The one and only Guitar Hero will be making its way to the Wii. [via Waxy] A list of the winners of the 2007 Plug Awards. Among the honored, Spank Rock for Hip Hop album of the year, Thom Yorke for electronic album of the year, Hot Chip for best album art, and Band of Horses got album of the year, whom I have never heard. Check out Alonso Rodrigo's wearable sleeping bag. Sloths!!! [YouTube] The national news networks react to the death of a bimbo celebrity. "Is Anna Nicole still dead, Wolf?" The Doomsday Vault that will contain samples of the world's crops should something, er, expected happen. The design has been unveiled by the Norwegian government. Characters from The Office rendered as Miis. The Chinese military has been harvesting organs from live prison inmates for decades, if not centuries. Maldroid - Heck No (I'll Never Listen to Techno) [YouTube] Labels: Sunday Reader  Disney has wrangled Annie Leibovitz to shoot celebrities in Disney character roles. At least the images are beautiful. It's time to start flying AirTran whenever possible. Their flight attendants are smart enough to kick a family off a plane that won't quiet their screaming child. Iraq has fallen apart so rapidly, most of the residents who supported democracy at one time have moved to other, safer countries. Now Iraq is just a throbbing civil war with no end in sight. "The moderates are mostly gone. My phone includes at least a dozen entries for middle-class families who have given up and moved away. They were supposed to build democracy here. Instead they work odd jobs in Syria and Jordan. Even the moderate political leaders have left. I have three numbers for Adnan Pachachi, the distinguished Iraqi statesman; none have Iraqi country codes." Aries Spears freestyles as LL Cool J, Snoop Dogg, DMX, and Jay-Z. [thanks Ryan] [YouTube] Without the Limbic system in the brain, we would have no consciousness. Wired Magazine's redesign uses four new typefaces created by the indispensable type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones. After reading the first new look issue, it seems that many people may have trouble reading some of the articles in small type. Wider Angle co-conspirator Kaci and her parents took me to see David Copperfield in Cincinnati many years ago and his final trick was "flying." It's pretty impressive, but the system's limitations were pretty obvious. Here's how the rig works. Scuba diving cat has custom scuba suit. [YouTube] Still baffled by the Baby Einstein commercial in the middle of the State of the Union. There's a point at which a parent's encouragement of a child's interest in business might want to be redirected to slightly more healthy hobbies that won't disappoint the kids so severely. "With the news full of 20-somethings who are making millions of dollars with ideas hatched on their laptops and in their dorm rooms (as the founders of YouTube, MySpace and Facebook have done), more and more teenagers are hoping to become the C.E.O.’s of their own companies, without ever leaving their bedrooms." Public signs in Vienna will now include women as well as men. [via Cut N Paste] This bride is seriously freaking out about her hair. [thanks Jared] [YouTube] I prefer Blimpy sub sandwiches to the Blimpy Big Brother all-seeing military airship in space. A list of the 100 best fonts in the world, as listed German something German. [via kottke] Help Flavorpill build wells in Africa to help thousands of people get and stay healthy. Buy a $20 bottle of water and they'll match your gift, getting them 1/100th closer to a new $4000 well. The more bottles purchased, the more wells they can build. charity: water How to make beats. [thanks Kirk] [YouTube] Genetically modified plants could extract harmful metals from the earth in a process known as phytomining. [via We Make Money Not Art] The digital music forecast predicts major labels moving to a non-DRM mp3 format as standard in one to two years to reduce consumer frustration that has come bundled with everything restricted. Designing for the New York of 2106, partially flooded from rising sea levels. [via kottke] The iRec is a $180 dock for the iPod that records at 640x480 at 2.5Mbps and includes a timer.  An impossibly large floating crane lifts submarines out of the water and puts bridges into place. "Boom length: 132m. Lifting capacity: 3700 tons! It's Yoshida - [Japan's] biggest floating crane, built by Mitsubishi heavy Industries Division." Leggings for men? No. Absolutely not. Never. I'll be getting a computer with Vista Ultimate on it soon, but I'm concerned that the DRM concessions Microsoft has made for the OS have crippled it too much. Helvetica, the documentary, appears to be real. There was a screening of about 10 minutes of clips at Pentagram in New York. A model walking on a runway slipped and fell twice in roughly ten seconds. Newscasters from NBC4 in D.C. could not contain themselves, and rightfully so. As a Digg commenter noted, it looked as if she was walking on a marshmallow. Video in Windows Media. Bill O'Reilly floundering on The Colbert Report. [YouTube] The concern about organic foods being flown to other countries (healthier for the soil, worse for the air) is beginning to become mainstream. "Apparently the Soil Association, the UK’s leading organic certification body, has just launched a year long consultation into whether air freighted food should be banned from carrying the organic label." "Lord Mackay of Clashfern has protested against UK legislation that would make it illegal to refuse to give gay people equal treatment... He states, "What they are saying is if you are offering services you must be prepared to allow people to practise actions that you believe are wrong." Yes! Yes that's exactly what it means, you bloody idiot. It means precisely that you have to allow people to practice actions that you believe are wrong. Not in general. Not every action, but actions that cause you no damage! Get a job!" - Tom Coates at Plasticbag Lots and lots of products at the grocery store with fruit in the name or on the packaging have no fruit in them. I almost got some Minute Maid lemonade last week until I saw "0% Juice" in tiny type. Stephen Colbert destroying Bill O'Reilly on The Labels: Sunday Reader  Boeing recently showcased a full-scale model of their new 747-8 passenger jet featuring rounded, well, everything to make the cabin seem more inviting. Unfortunately the coach passengers still get about 3" of leg room. We give and give, but the oceans just don't seem to appreciate our tremendous generosity. "Some 200 tonnes of oil have leaked from a fuel tank on the stricken cargo ship MSC Napoli, beached off the Devon coast, coastguards have confirmed. The ship has also lost some 200 containers overboard, including two holding 'dangerous but low-risk' goods." When a photo or act is potentially tantalizing and arousing but not explicitly sexual, who determines what, exactly, porn is? "Sam's example, a 12-year-old Japanese actress named Saaya Irie, publishes pictures of herself in bathing suits and cute little outfits. Are we reading suggestiveness into them? Or are they making suggestions that we can't help but notice?"  Darren Firth has some astoundingly beautiful work up at his site Keeps Me Sane. This is his submission to the second edition of Grafuck, posted [via Design Is Kinky] Google wants to control the Internet when bandwidth use becomes so heavy the regular Internet is crushed. By building local data centers and connecting them with their incredible amounts of leased dark fiber, the most of any company, Google could take over our data. "By renting instead of buying, Google was able to acquire its fiber assets primarily in secret. The game was over before most of us even knew there WAS a game." Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit suggests that since Windows Vista's DRM could make commercial HD video look sorta crappy, that could be a great benefit to homemade productions. [via BB]  I had not seen this excellent photo/shop of the Pirate Keyboard. As mentioned previously on Wider Angle, Google had a little talk with publishers at the New York Public Library last week called Unbound. "The event was largely a response to Google's controversial Library Project and corresponding Book Search tool, which have met strong opposition from the publishing industry. At 'Unbound,' the tech-savvy authors, publishers and analysts more or less agreed that to grow and profit in an increasingly digital world, the publishing industry will have to expand its boundaries." iJigg is a cool place to listen to new music, but where to buy and download? You mean I have to Google it myself?  OMG! A DIY Wii laptop. It's so beautiful. Advertising/Design Goodness posted a very funny cartoon illustrating 8 types of creative critics/clients that we all deal with. I've had clients that were many of these types combined. What makes a product or design have an IT factor is closely related to tapping the dominant emerging cultural aesthetic right before its peak. "The Polaroid SX-70 camera, for instance, hasn't stood the test of time, and in most people's minds Frederick's of Hollywood Lingerie has been superceded by Victoria's Secret. But it says a lot that the single object in the book that looks truly dated is the one that was discontinued and then revived: the VW Beetle." Really?!? with Seth & Amy from SNL this week. [YouTube] The Jeep DLD (Digital Liquid Display) waterfall they licensed for trade shows. [YouTube] Labels: Sunday Reader  Pink tank over Amsterdam from Love, Peace, and Terror. [via BB] "FEMA has lost and/or failed to account for a sum of money that is almost half of Department of Homeland Security's entire budget and 130 times great than the amount of money that the Department of Homeland Security is willing to spend to secure the homeland." The government has become a corporation designed to exploit its employees and extort its citizen consumers. Beautiful robot routine from some breakers in Japan in a spot for Uniqlo. [YouTube] A lion hugs and kisses the person who saved it, freaking everyone else out fearing a mauling. Super cute video included. Homeland security won't let people ship products from the stores that support Dave Eggers's writing programs [like the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.] because they're too sinister looking, though they mostly contain normal air. Cingular officially changes back to AT&T branding this week, undoing their years-long campaigns reminding us that AT&T Wireless is Cingular. If I hold down the 5 button, it calls the Death Star. Outstanding musical college prank. [via OOMSA] Engadget, now the number one blog on Technorati, was slammed with 10 million pageviews on iPhone Tuesday. The porn industry has decided to go with HD-DVD and not Blu-Ray for high def DVDs. Important to keep in mind that porn standardized VHS and not Beta. Breathtaking Guinness ad showing evolution in reverse. [YouTube] McSweeny's List: Comments on My Short Story I've Received From My Creative-Writing Classmates. "The fact that this story exists is the ultimate argument against Creationism." [thanks Allyson] Stonehenge is not alone. "[N]ew discoveries suggest that many similar monuments may have been erected in the shadow of Stonehenge, possibly forming part of a much larger complex, experts say." The disposal of surplus sodium in a lake from 1947. [Google Video] It appears that Timbaland stole music from the Finnish demoscene. The iPhone will not run OS X, despite what Apple insists. The BSD based operating system on which OS X is built, Darwin, does not run on the Samsung ARM processors that are going in the iPhone. Google will be making a deal with the NYSE and the SEC to offer real-time stock quotes for free on Google Finance and the personal homepages. Pirate Bay is planning on buying the independent nation of Sealand. Donate to the cause and secure a citizenship for yourself.  Nicholas Feltron's personal annual report from 2006 is beautifully designed and surprisingly interesting for being so narrowly focused. [thanks Allyson] Cory Doctorow will be speaking at two events in NYC this week, Google Unbound (January 18, New York Public Library, 8AM-5PM) and Freeculture NYU (January 19, 5PM). In keeping with its excellent theater in New York's West Village, the Independent Film Channel is slowly undergoing a makeover as a groundbreaking, controversial organization that can push boundaries in television content and media distribution. Balls hitting people in the face. [YouTube] Stephen Colbert's "black friend" Allen (Jordan Carlos) writes that there aren't any non-white writers at either The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. [thanks Maria] Fascinating and unsettling satellite photos of active and abandoned military planes, submarines, and ships in a very small area of Russia. Wow. Ten excellent foods to help fight high cholesterol. "Rich in both pectin and fiber, along with powerful antioxidants, including quercetin, catechin, phloridzin and chlorogenic acid, apples help lower bad cholesterol while raising the good kind." New Scientist posted a list of five impressive materials that act in unique ways and included video. "Dilatants - fluids that get more solid when stressed. The classic example is a mixture of cornflour and water - it's runny until you hit it when it becomes solid." [via kottke] Labels: Sunday Reader  The Simpsons and Futurama reimagined as Anime by spacecoyote at DeviantArt. The number 6174 is relatively interesting. Mathematically. Popgadget has some previews of products to be featured at CES this week. Engadget has dependably complete coverage of the massive expo in Vegas. Macworld is in San Francisco this week. Will there be an iPod Phone? Will it be called iChat Mobile? Will it look like a wider nano with a slideout keypad or have a full-screen touch interface? CDMA or 3G or both? I want it for Cingular, so I hope CDMA is an option. Will it have built-in wifi and bluetooth and come in 4GB and 8GB models? Will carriers subsidize the price or will it be affordable on its own? Will it have email capabilities and separate batteries for the computing/music and phone functions? Steve Jobs's keynote is on Tuesday. Disney lawyers forced a blog's ISP to shut down the blog after it posted audio clips of hosts on a Disney-owned station broadcasting hate. So the blogger sent letters to the station's advertisers so they know what's going on.  Cute overload. OMG! How can you conserve energy and keep your computer cool and quiet? Use a swimming pool for water-cooling your PC. The 50 greatest cartoons of all time with video links included. [thanks Mike] Nauru is an independent nation island in the Pacific Ocean that sustained vibrant life and forests atop phosphate reserves for millions of years. Over the past few decades, human residents have destroyed the entire island, leaving only talc-like windy grainy fog behind a thin and creepy layer of vegetation. They have an airport and require everything, including fresh water, to be imported. In order to pay for the stuff, since their resources are all but gone, they receive large sums for facilitating terrorists and organized crime. Lifehacker has some decent iTunes tips that you may not already use. I rely on smart playlists to fill my iPod with new stuff automatically. [via Plasticbag.org]  I would absolutely love a robotic pet. Introducing Pleo. Have you been to Amazon's new site Endless.com for shoes and bags? It has the same free shipping that Zappos does but doesn't carries Etnies, so that's a deal breaker for me. Your experiences? What makes great design better than really good is attention to every detail. Check out these reports on different types of the same thing at rbird. Coming in May to the garden of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC: Design for the Other 90%. "This exhibition highlights the growing trend among designers to create affordable and socially responsible objects for the vast majority of the world's population (90 percent) not traditionally serviced by professional designers." [via Eyeteeth]  Ami Sioux has a new book out that is thoughtlessly unavailable in the U.S. called REYKJAVIK 64°08N 21°54W, the first in a five-part series. She asked people to hand-draw maps to their favorite places in the city and she followed them to photograph these special places. I am gasping with joy. Taschen is making their store in SoHo NYC permanent! The interior is designed by Philippe Starck, but it's still great. Their biannual warehouse sale is January 19-21. See you there. Element Labs has developed some beautiful LED designs. [via Core77] Feliz 2007 from Doubleyou. [YouTube via information aesthetics] Top 25 food hacks at Slashfood, including how to make bad vodka into great vodka using a Brita filter. (Vodka should not have a taste. Spending money on expensive vodka is a waste of your precious money.) [via Fark] Dark matter has been mapped in 3D across half a million galaxies. Manhattan buildings are really, really dirty. Most buildings around lower Manhattan and the village look this way. I can't imagine how the city would look if everything were cleaner. More like How to dance like white people. [YouTube via Allyson] Labels: Sunday Reader  Happy New Year to all! [Amazon's UK warehouse 3 days before Xmas] Please download my Happy 2007 mix over at Royal Sapien and my remixes of Imogen Heap's "Have You Got It In You" and "The Walk" right here. You can also find a tasty new streaming player at my record label's site, Olaris Records. The 50 best hacks for your life of 2006 at Lifehack. Citypages in Minn/St. Paul has a great roundup of the best DJ compilations of the year. In order for me to buy a DJ mix rather than simply download one, it has to be very carefully put together and incredibly produced. Do you know Peekvid?  What intern is responsible for this reprehensible piece of "advertising" for MSNBC? In one sentence, what would you tell the future? "1. You can't win. 2. You can't even break even, either. 3. You can't get out of the game." Some good thoughts in this top 10 mistakes in web design. "[I]t is best to avoid any designs that look like advertisements." At SAME (So All May Eat) in Salt Lake City, you pay what you can afford for a delicious, healthy, organically grown meal. If you can't pay, you can weed the garden or wash dishes. A parrot has been shown to known over 950 English words, understands tense and conjucation, and can use prefixes and suffixes. "This was despite the researchers discounting responses like 'What ya doing on the phone?' when N'kisi saw a card of a man with a telephone, and 'Can I give you a hug?' with one of a couple embracing."  18th century bordello party in Paris. [via Waxy] Nowhere on the web are comments dumber than YouTube. Love xkcd. Prince Harry will be going to Iraq to serve in the Army. Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais at the BBC Radio 1 Christmas Party. Must have RealPlayer or Real Alternative. Ancient pyramids that dwarf their slightly more famous counterparts in Egypt have been discovered in Bosnia. "At 267 metres tall, the Pyramid of the Sun blows the Egyptian opposition into the weeds. If that wasn't enough, it is simply one of a number of pyramids located in the same region - there are also the Pyramids of the Sun, the Dragon and, most recently discovered, Love." The Daily Show on Time Magazine's Person of the Year. [YouTube] It turns out that it's really hard for black families to get nannies in cities all over the country. If you use short, wide glasses to drink from, you'll drink a whole lot more than if you use tall, slender glasses, and feel more thirsty. You Don't Know Jack is back online! They're now producing a daily game show free on their site, and it's just as good as ever. A year after producing her own curriculum to teach math at an elementary school, a 23-year-old teacher increased her students' test average from the 16th percentile to the 77th percentile. The PS3 is dead, and Sony may go with it. "As soon as people realized that you couldn’t make a profit with PS3s on eBay, they started returning them to the retail stores. It wasn’t rare to walk into a Circuit City or Best Buy the week before Christmas and find 3 or 4 returned Playstation 3s."  Install Orb 2.0 on your computer and stream all your media (videos, music, photos, documents) to your Wii in the Opera browser... free! "If you had a circle the size of the observable universe, and you wanted to compute its circumference with an accuracy equal to the size of a proton, the number of digits of pi that you'd need is only 50." Photoshop CS3 will not be 64-bit. The climate catastrophe of global warming has caused a fashion catasrophe of no winter season, which has caused a retail catastrophe for clothing stores with stacks of coats still lingering. "The NPD Group, a retail research firm, predicts that sales of outerwear will plunge at least 20 percent this holiday season, compared with last year..."  WiiKitty has dozens of cute kitties with Wiis. If you have a webcam, a corner, and a lazer pointer, you can use DAVID software to make a 3-d scanner. Gothamist has a beautiful photo spread of the Revere Sugar Refinery in Red Book, Brooklyn. Giant squid photographed alive! Studio360 asked Pentagram to redesign Christmas, and so they did. HOWTO: Fight. "Nothing will rattle your opponent faster than you screaming a steady stream of shit at him while you’re engaged in combat. The crazier you sound the better." Best of indie pop for 2006 from PopMatters. Tickle Me Elmo TMX on Fire. [Google Video] Labels: Sunday Reader  The equally terrifying and majestic Grand Canyon glass walkway will officially open in March. Hatriotism: Proving your patriotism by hating the people the government tells you to hate. [via A.Whole] Nintendo is replacing 1st generation Wiimote straps by mail since they have a point of failure. If you have one of the early ones and plan to throw your controller with the force of a thousand robots, ask Nintendo to send you new ones for free. The Wiimotion Flickr pool has photos of people playing with their Wiis. [via Wonderland] One of the best moments from Fresh Prince. [YouTube via Digg] Animation-inspired lessons from Walt Stanchfield, drawing instructor for Walt Disney Studios. "we should learn to get that first impression down right away – while it’s fresh, while it’s still in that first impression stage – before it starts to fade…" A new poll reveals that only 25% of Americans know they eat genetically modified foods in their diet. Male circumcision has a 50-60% preventative rate from acquiring HIV/AIDS. Richard Dawkins is the guest on The Late Late Show, RTÉ 1, Ireland. [YouTube] "[P]ressure is building for Texas Gov. Rick Perry to commute the sentence of Tyrone Brown, who was sentenced to life in prison for smoking pot. In 1990, when he was 17, Brown took part in a $2 robbery in which the victim was not physically injured, a crime for which he received 10 years of probation. A few weeks later, he tested positive for marijuana, and the judge not only revoked his probation but inexplicably resentenced him to a life term." "ALBANY, N.Y. — The son of Miami Police Chief John Timoney was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months [instead of 40 years] in federal prison for trying to buy 400 pounds of marijuana from an undercover agent." xRez has gigapixel zoomable images that are simply astonishing. Fish have been discovered that thrive on 350 degree water near underwater volcanoes with a ph balance equivalent to sulfuric acid.  You Thought We Wouldn't Notice keeps track of graphic design ripoffs. The Shower Project is one gay man's quest to shower with 100 women and document it to make his straight friends jealous. The new Al-Jazeera English network hosted Samantha Bee from The Daily Show to get some advice on being TV journalists. Video at HuffPo. Wiimote GlovePIE script for using the Wiimote to control Google Earth. Mr. Show: The Pre-Taped Call-In Show. [YouTube] Gawker posted a really well-rounded collection of overused phrases relied upon by bloggers and media types to seem hip. I cannot deny that I am guilty of some of these myself. Effective January 1, all outdoor advertising in São Paulo will be prohibited. A new type of nano-cable converts light into electricity. "The cables are 16 nanometres in diameter and several micrometres long. They resemble the light-harvesting antennae used by some bacteria and transform light into electricity in a similar way to the semiconductors in solar panels, albeit on a much smaller scale." Jason Kottke points to Regret The Error's top corrections of 2006, including, "She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that." Matt Damon as a shirtless Matthew McConaughey. [YouTube] The Apple iPhone will most likely be released in January and is rumored to be much like an iPod mini with a slide-out phone keypad. "Boeing's stolen laptop nudges the total number of lost or exposed personal records since February, 2005, past the 100 million mark, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse's excellent data breach chronology website." [via 27B Stroke 6] The new beta of Photoshop CS3 is now available on Adobe's website. Use a valid Photoshop serial number to unlock and use it or find a hack that's already been posted to lots of sites. This is the first time Adobe has released a public beta of Photoshop. A beta of the interesting-looking Adobe Soundbooth is also available. Bill Clinton responds to a heckler. [YouTube] The rooftop 3-story penthouse atop the Pierre Hotel in midtown Manhattan is on sale for $70 million. xkcd drew a map of the Internet, all 256 /8 subnets in the ipv4 space. Old VCRs can be hollowed out to make all sorts of fun things, like a media center PC. Labels: Sunday Reader  Mini living room with working TV via Gizmodo. Avatars in Second Life consume as much electricity as Brazilians. "[L]ooking at CO2 production, 1,752 kWH/year per avatar is about 1.17 tons of CO2. That's the equivalent of driving an SUV around 2,300 miles." The RIAA would like to reduce royalty payments to artists. "Record industry executives said there was nothing strange about seeking a rate change that would pay less to the people who write the music." Dividing by zero? Well, I never. BBC News seems to be taking this idea of nullity pretty seriously, overlooking that the concept has been around for years and still yields no real results. [via waxy] The Ultimate Rejection Letter. "After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department." [via reddit]  The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs random Family Circus cartoons with random Nietzsche quotes. Do not attempt to teach the customer a lesson. "Either you're going to make someone happy or you're not. Doing the 'right' thing is irrelevant." New Spank Rock mp3 - Lindsay Lohan. Hot. "It's like the theme song to our deepest wishes! Someone had to say it." Joe Rogan ably demonstrates how to shut down a heckler. [YouTube] [NSFW] In case you haven't yet read it, Lindsay Lohan's awesome email. "Our people. Also because I have such an impact on our younger generations, as well as generations older than me. Which we all know and can obviously see. People are just mean." Somewhat related to Lindsay Lohan but more related to Paris Hilton, the Chinese government's recent attempted public shaming of prostitutes and their clients backfired with a display many citizens found unnecessary and distasteful. How often do you read design magazines, and how thoroughly? Vote in the survey at BaDG. Personally, I flip through them sometimes but find more inspiration walking in NYC. A fire at a Moscow drug clinic killed at least 45 people because "the building has metal grilles on all the windows and staircases, and the ward doors are always locked for the night."  Beautifully functional yacht tables that rotate to serve twice the number of diners easily and comfortably. The engineering of the mechanism is art itself. [via BB] Here's a rotary reading desk from 1588. Diet Coke Plus will be launching in 2007 featuring vitamins and minerals added to the aspartame and caramel color. A moment with the Upright Citizens Brigade. [YouTube] Writers Dreamtools has remarkably thorough details about every decade from 1650 to 1990, from clothing to money to entertainment. So how's that novel you've been workin' on? [via kottke] The logo of the Max Planck Institute is continuously evolving based on a few factors, "employees = density, funding = speed, number of publications = activity. Different logos are being "bred" and then picked by fitness in relation to the parameters or voted for by the employees. Thus, everytime the logo is displayed on a website as an animated icon or printed out on a letter, it reflects the current state of the lab as a living organism." Even an obsession with life-sized dolls can get out of hand.  The Divine Fart is on display now in the lobby of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. [via BB] µTorrent and BitTorrent have become one. I'm not sure how I feel about that at all since BitTorrent is now in a relationship with the MPAA. Make a Wiimote into a drum set! Amazing. A Charlie Brown Christmas with the cast of Scrubs. [YouTube] [via Waxy] In French-speaking Canada, curse words are generally having to do more with the church than any sort of taboo act. "In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms." "Peace Oil is olive oil produced in Northern Israel by a staff of Arabs, Jews, Bedouins and Druze working together." [via JS] If you've ever been curious how Google's PageRank system works, this is how. If you combine electricity, wine, and the strangest voiceover in promo history, you can make wine taste like it's older and, like, better. [YouTube] [via Gizmodo] Labels: Sunday Reader  A big gallery of Chris Ware stuff, plus his excellent cover for the Writers On Writers issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. [via MeFi] Spresent lets users create very decent Flash-based presentations to share or send for free. HOWTO: Make a 3d paper snowflake. Game demos will soon come to the Wii Shop to download free onto the console or an SD card.  Eboy's new digital poster for web2.0! [via waxy] Giving gifts that aren't really gifts is an art I'd never considered taking up but seems quite fun. "Traditionally, if you hated parents you gave their daughter a Barbie doll. Just one set of clothes, however. And no accessories, and no dreamhouse, and..." [via kottke] Wonderful random data generator to use for graphs, charts, application testing... Some fun codes for finding extra stuff in Wii Sports. Watch The Ben Stiller Show for free on AOL TV.  One Ms. Beth Garrison stitched this excellent salute to The IT Crowd. It looks like NBC just picked the show up and is "redeveloping" it for the US. Fingers crossed. [via BB, BB] People are stirring in the wings of The Daily Show. "Ben Karlin, Executive Producer of both The Daily Show and co-creator/EP of The Colbert Report alolng with Jon Stewart has allegedly just announced his resignation from The Daily Show. The Apiary also reports that Karlin will likely be replaced by Daily Show head writer David Javerbaum." Lee Hungkoo's Animatus is skeletons of cartoon characters. (See Slimmer Angle) 22 ways to overclock your brain. Beautiful Wii spot that's both a parody of and an homage to the PS3 ads. [YouTube] Labels: Sunday Reader  Book was completed over 36 weeks by four artists: two in Brooklyn and two in Belfast. [thanks Nancy!] Some communities just don't see the universality of the peace sign. [via reddit] Is Apple coming out with a tablet notebook or just a touch-screen iPod? Popular opinion in England and Scotland seems to lean toward dissolving the union. Eternal Hope at Daily Kos posted a fully referenced list of articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney and George Bush. Leet Speak. [YouTube] Mitch Hedberg quote generator. "I bought myself a parrot. The parrot talked. But it did not say, 'I'm hungry'... so it died." [via digg] Daily Dilbert without extra crap or ads. The Carlyle Group plans to make a $5.5 billion bid for ASE, the world's biggest microchip manufacturer. A map of active hate groups across the U.S. from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Poor families in the U.K. will get vouchers for milk and vegetables, but is £2.80 a week enough? Lasse Gjertsen [YouTube [thanks Phil!]] An open letter to Nintendo encouraging them to develop options for the Wii to make games more accessible to disabled gamers. The EPA will begin to regulate cleaning products that use nanotech. The Copyright Office created 6 exceptions to the DMCA (it's a start), including the right to copy video games that are on obsolete media. Penguin has launched a new book series that encourages readers to create their own covers. [via BB] Richard Dawkins speaks in Lynchburg, VA. [YouTube] ESA apologized to Kotaku over the embarrassing t-shirt incident. Many employers are becoming more strict about cubicle decor in modern sterile workplaces. "In July 2004 [Calvin Klein] executives decreed there could be no desktop displays of photographs, mementos, toys, awards, plants or flowers, other than white ones." Humans see 60 frames a second, so are we really equipped to drive safely? [via kottke] Google's Master Plan was erased from the famous white board, but photos were taken and the information was saved. [via waxy] The Daily Show: 10 Fucking Years - Funny Inventions [YouTube] Labels: Sunday Reader  There was no Sunday Reader yesterday because Allyson and I were in line for 12 hours at Nintendo World to score one of the first Wiis sold. Check out pics from the Times Square party that we attended initially before we walked over to Nintendo World. It's the funnest console ever. It would be a better idea to get your child a Wii than a children's tattoo gun. Michael Richards (of Seinfeld fame) was performing at The Laugh Factory in L.A. on Friday when a black man interrupted his act. Richards yelled for the man to be removed because "He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger!" "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass." He continued to unhinge himself as people from the crowd yelled "That's uncalled-for!" The more he yelled, the more people arose from their seats and left. Must be seen to be believed. I don't know if Richards thought this was funny, but it's so far from funny that you'd need a spaceship to get to funny from here. [via Digg] CNN published an awesome uber 1337 guide to new tech that's making the rounds. The Gizmodo headline says it all: CNN's Guide To Innovative Tech: DVRs, Cellphones, the Wheel and Movable Type. Four Thanksgiving-themed New Yorker covers this week by Chris Ware. [via kottke] Smoking pot impairs your memory for the short term, which tends to be why people smoke it to forget the world, but now we may know why. Synapses in the hippocampus (in the brain, not at Zoo College) fire in sync normally, but when covered in THC (the fun part in marijuana) they fire asynchronously, meaning that memory is retained with a lower level of success. While this could explain why high doodz forget what they're saying in mid-sentence, it could also help to explain why it's easier to develop new ideas and discover new connections. Rather than let K-Fed make millions from the infamous sex tape, Britney Spears may release it on her own for free to spite him. "Yep, nothing like sticking it to your ex-husband by giving away what diginity you have left for free." [via digg]  Check out the beautiful and brilliant Executive Coloring Book. LG has a spiffy new fridge that has an outside flip-out door for bottles of stuff like milk, OJ, or gin and vermouth and a jar of olives and a couple chilled glasses. Allyson made some delicious vegan crab cakes a few days ago that use tofu and wheat bread instead of crab. They taste fantastic and are super healthy. For their 50th anniversary, New Scientist asked dozens of great thinkers to predict the future. Grab a brandy, this will take a while. YTMND posted a hilarious video of Darth Vader on Wheel of Fortune. Explosions in the Sky will be performing in New York as part of the Wordless Music Series at the Society for Ethical Culture Concert Hall on February 20, 2007. Opening for them will be Ayano Kataoka and tickets are a very reasonable $15. Will It Blend? Major props to Blendtec, a blender manufacturer, for putting together a series in which they totally abuse their products to blend stuff that was never meant to be put in a blender. Making online gambling illegal in the United States will not make the gambling industry more legitimate. (Duh?) It's only driving the industry further underground, and when gambling in a browser can be totally rigged with no regulation, that's a disaster. "The Act has its teeth in the wrong ass." As totally awesome and limitlessly promising as nanotechnology is, the particles are so small that if they're accidentally inhaled or even looked at too closely, you sorta die. "There is some evidence that nanoparticles can move into the brain along the olfactory nerve, so this is completely circumventing the blood-brain barrier." A new drug may make you younger, more fit, and more resistant to disease, and it doesn't seem to be a hoax.  The massive wire sculptures that make up telecommunications in Thailand slums are beautiful, sad, and scary. I won't be seeing any Weinstein films for the next four years because their rentals will be distributed exclusively through Blockbuster. No independents; no Netflix. Fuck 'em. [via kottke] The Dutch government would like to see burkas banned outside private spaces since it's, like, really hard to tell who's wearing them and that could be a, like, gigantic security risk. Would I be allowed to walk into government buildings and stores in a Spaghetti Monster costume that conceals everything but my eyes? Asteroid impacts could be responsible for gigantic tsunamis in our very recent past and may explain all those religious flood myths. "A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago." Eek! Larry King has never used the Internets. This could explain why I never listen to Larry King. Roseanne offered to give him a lesson, which he declined. Everyone knows that Gawker fired Valleywag editor Nick Douglas, but the NYT has the scoop on why. "We don’t report stories to 'finally get sued.' We report stories because we think they deserve to be out there. Whatever follows from them is whatever follows from them. Sarcasm or not, it’s quotes like these that could make us look really foolish — or worse — down the road." The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to decriminalize adult marijuana use with the blessing of the Police. "The marijuana legislation, which passed on an initial vote 8-3, would set nearly all crimes involving marijuana as the lowest law enforcement priority for city police and urges the district attorney to adopt the same policy when prosecuting criminal defendants." K-Fed tries to get George Bush to use MySpace in this great cartoon from Current. Arte Luise in Berlin has a different art theme for each room by different artists. I'll be staying here when I travel to Berlin. It's official: U.S. detainees have no rights. The United States is truly the global bastion of liberty. Labels: Sunday Reader  Santorpwned image from AP via Flickr. Goodbye Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum. Outpost Daria has listings of songs played in every episode of Daria. The music directors for Daria did a great job and the tunes still stand out. One Bank, a painful performance at a Bank of America company outing. [via waxy] Kiwi! A very cute thesis animation. Major League Soccer is lifting rules to allow star players onto teams. "The 'Beckham Rule' will give MLS teams the authority to acquire players outside the $2 million-per-team salary cap, which will be 'significantly' increased to accommodate the new policy." Brain scans may help explain what happens when people speak in tongues during religious ceremonies. “You’re not really out of control. But you have no control over what’s happening. You’re just flowing. You’re in a realm of peace and comfort, and it’s a fantastic feeling.” Sounds very similar to how one feels after eating crushed unshelled Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds, which contain LSA, a cousin of LSD. Kamibashi has beautiful hand-made string dolls from Thailand.  Medium makes creative stuff for creative people, and I covet many of their shoes. If you enjoy progressive talk radio, you'll love The White Rose Society, which archives lots of great programs for your free enjoyment. Their vast collection includes Mike Malloy, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, and Peter Werbe. A remarkably broad patent filed by the Yahoo! and del.icio.us people would limit the tagging of metadata to objects and ranking that data to patent licensees. Unlikely to be approved. [via kottke] The NYT has a lengthy piece about the Holy Caves of India. Rush Limbaugh was only following the ruling party's direction? "But there have been a bunch of things going on in Congress, some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at, and it has been difficult coming in here, trying to make the case for it when the people who are supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves -- and to have to come in here and try to do their jobs." No, no he didn't have to, but he did anyway. [thanks Steven] The Found Footage Festival was recently in NYC at Caroline's. Volume One DVD is back in stock. Some performers pull out their best performances on Saturday Night Live. The Entertainment Software Association (the game ratings people) have threatened to sue Kotaku over a post they refuse to take down featuring a clearly satirical t-shirt that's quite funny. Beautiful gigantic panorama of Earth in Winter from NASA. Play Commander Keen for free online. Verizon launched a new company, Idearc Media, and asked Landor to work the same magic for its logo as they did for Verizon's. This is what happened. Grand Theft Mario. Labels: Sunday Reader  Colbert-O-Lantern via College Humor. MTVu Uber and YouTube launched within a month of each other with almost the same goal: get communities to build channels of their own video content. Obviously, MTVu Uber has done much better because they crippled their site and content with DRM. Look what happens when someone posts an MTVu video to Fark. "MTV's reign is Über. Über = over, in English. [...] No Firefox? No OS X Access? fark you, MTVU." If your vision seems a bit worse at the end of the day, it could be from looking down a lot. Your eyelid puts pressure on the cornea which changes its shape. Claire's artwork from Six Feet Under. [via kottke]  Dasparkhotel reuses sewer pipes as hotel rooms. Visitors get keycodes with their reservation and sign themselves in. [thanks Allyson] It seems a little strange that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has so little work from the last century. "Nothing by Beuys, Andre, Ruscha, Richter, Marden, Hesse, Serra." 1.6 million Iraqis have fled their country since the start of the war, with more than 1.5 million displaced and over 600,000 killed. Time's cover story this week is on electronic voting machines and their shoddy record of upholding democracy. Foxtrot's great Halloween voting machine costume comic. [via BB]  Diario de Sao Paulo has put together and beautiful new ad campaign. "The newspaper that goes deeper." Some logo revisions turn out a little better than others, and the new Clearly Canadian bottle design is mind-bendingly backwards and wrong. 30 percent of American teenagers drink energy drinks contributing to the industry growing by 80 percent last year. Saturday Night Live and Robert Smigel take on this season's Republican campaign ads.  A selection of banned advertisements in Italy. What makes funny? with the very funny Jimmy Carr. "A professional comic's routine may be based on true personal experience, but real experience doesn't tend to come conveniently complete with a punchline. That's why most comics are outrageous liars." Netflix has opened their dataset to developers and is offering a $1 million prize to a team who makes their recommendation system more useful and accurate. Much like its venture into music sales, Starbucks makes a good bookstore. Or at least a profitable one. "Starbucks has sold 45,000 copies of Mitch Albom's novel For One More Day (Hyperion) since it went on sale at the chain October 3, a week after the book reached bookstores. The figure accounts for roughly 12% of a total of 391,000 copies sold, as tabulated by Nielsen BookScan." [via ArtsJournal] New poll from Be A Design Group: of your font collection, what percentage do you actually own? (It's anonymous.) The New York Review of Books forces us to reexamine our definition of theocracy. "Bush told various evangelical groups that he felt God had called him to run for president in 2000: 'I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.'" [via A&L Daily] Stripping your flat of wallpaper is more fun in time lapse. [via plasticbag] Labels: Sunday Reader  Jesus via College Humor. Wired's Monkey Bites blog has extensive coverage of Yahoo! Hack Day and a rather fetching photo of Tom Coates, social web tech visionary. Studios have pulled financing for Peter Jackson's Halo movie after production costs exceeded expectations by over 30%. The fantastic Richard Dawkins on BBC News. "Religion means faith, and faith means believing something without evidence." [via reddit] I've been wanting to get new wrist cuffs to replace my pseudo-athletic wristbands. I may go with black velcro strips, but these customizable dot-matrix cuffs are pretty nifty as well. Simple has some beautiful all-green (not in color) shoes.  iBar is a beautiful interactive surface design/installation that is commercially available which uses projectors to illuminate objects or make patterns. I expect to see this at Ministry of Sound in the next two years. RiffTrax is Mike Nelson's new project that provides MST3K-esque commentary on other movies like Point Break, Top Gun, and XXX. Publishers rely on bestsellers to make a ton of cash, but spend most of their time on "okaysellers." Drug dealers are starting to trade in Euros instead of US dollars, an unprecedented shift from decades of depending on the stability of the currency of the United States economy. Michel Gondry directed Beck's new video for Cell Phone's Dead. Check out seasons 1 and 2 of Wonder Showzen for free on the new ifilm beta site. [via waxy] I accepted it a long t | |||||
