May 2011
7 posts
Gap Minder World →
Gap Minder World tracks various world statistics over time. Fascinating.
WatchWhere Does your Drinking Water Come From?
The data is composed of two parts: The government’s data on rainfall, overlaid with data about drinking water consumption.
via Fastco Design
W3C Working on Decentralized Web Standard
Imagine a web where our browsers connected directly to each other to do voice, video, media sharing and run applications, using P2P and real-time APIs, rather than going through centralized servers that controlled traffic and permissions
via Read Write Web
“As of February 2010, al-Qa’ida was allegedly contemplating conducting an...”
– via Zero Hedge
Facebook Serves One in Three US Ads
http://prn.to/jHzMJS via Tech Crunch
There is no other web property that can come close to this. Perhaps Facebook’s $50 billion valuation is too low.
July 2008
1 post
“The United States has really been living in a fool’s paradise, or a phony...”
– Peter Schiff, June 2008
June 2008
22 posts
“The housing bubble was an entirely preventable disaster. If the economists and...”
– Dean Baker, CEPR, June 2008
“Like a boxer, the investor’s first step toward winning is knowing what to expect...”
– Dick Davis
WatchGreg Ip discusses George Soros’ new book on his 25 year super bubble theory. In this video, Greg Ip discusses Soros’ underlying belief in reflexivity, which in a nut shell states that markets don’t achieve equilibrium, but rather trend to extremes due to momentum that ultimately changes peoples’ viewpoints on how fundamentals should be calculated.
Mr. Ip also refers to...
WatchOne of my favorite artists, Chris Jordan is featured on TED. Chris Jordan is a Seattle based photographer who specializes in large format photography. His most recent project, Running the Numers, puts statistics into visually digestible morsels. Reading that 2.3 million people were incarcerated in 2005 is shocking. Seeing what 2.3 million prison uniforms look like stacked on top of each other...
“There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a...”
– Irving Fisher, Economist
New York Times, 9/5/1929
The Safest Seat on a Plane
Flowing Data has a great post on the safest seat of an airplane. In the 70’s, popular expert opinion was that every seat in the airplane was equally safe. Studies of the empirical data showed that the back of the airplanes were generally safer.
link
“There’s nothing different between this mania, the dot-com mania, the real...”
– Stephen Schork, Oil Analyst
Commenting on oil’s 697% climb from 11/2001-6/2008.
via Bloomberg
Living Spaces by Zack Bent
I went to the Henry Art Gallery today. One of my favorite exhibits was Living Spaces by Zack Bent. The series features archival inkjet prints of constructed scenes of him and his family. The images are striking and conjure familiar childhood memories; building a fort, hiding in the kitchen cupboards, wrestling with dad in the yard, etc.
Forces of Nature
Bloodline
The full living spaces...
WatchDuck and Cover, 1951
via Prelinger Archives
The Sky, From Above →
The Sky, From Above is a beautiful 15 photo set containing arial views of dust storms in the Sahara Desert and Central China as well as thunderheads in the Midwestern US.
Visualizing Global Oil Markets: 1965-2007 →
Paul Kedrosky put together an animated Google Charts widget showing oil consumption of the US, Europe and Asia for a 42 year period.
via the big picture.
“Tools, large and small, make it possible for chefs to do their jobs well; in...”
– The Professional Chef, 8th Edition
Sleep less, live longer? When it comes to a good... →
Recipe for living longer: 1) Eat less, 2) Sleep less, 3) Drink more red wine.
Paper: The Clustered Storage Revolution →
This paper offers a good introduction to clustered storage and the three basic types of clustered storage.
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us show up at the studio every morning...”
– Chuck Close, Artist
US Agriculture Secy: Food Inflation to Hit 43% →
43% food inflation. All things remaining equal, this could mean a +6% bump in CPI. Housing, the largest component of CPI reflects approximately a 42% weighting component of CPI. This however, reflects equivalent rent only, so there is unlikely to be a change in this component since due to increased inventory, rents will likely stay flat nationwide. Transportation reflects 17% of CPI, but...
New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging -... →
Glass tip Lifehacker (link)
“Pixar films are never finished — they are just released!”
– John Lasseter, Pixar Director (link)
Product: Condor - Compute Intensive Workload... →
Using ZooKeeper to configure External Monitoring... →
IDEAS IN FOOD: Smoked French Fries...a few results... →
These sound amazing. It would be interesting to experiment with variations on different starchy vegetables such as taro and plantains. Smoked potato chips would be good too.