Thursday, November 11, 2010
Nov. 11, 1856: Bessemer Becomes the Man of Steel
Nov. 11, 1856: Bessemer Becomes the Man of Steel: Englishman Henry Bessemer receives a U.S. patent for a new steelmaking process that revolutionizes the industry.
YouTube: 35 hours of video uploaded every minute
YouTube: 35 hours of video uploaded every minute: YouTube is enjoying strong growth, the company announces. Currently, people are uploading 35 hours of video every minute. That's a big jump from just last spring.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Liefeld Resurrects "Zombie Jesus"
Liefeld Resurrects "Zombie Jesus": The "Deadpool" co-creator's latest original series takes the zombie genre to truly biblical proportions. Rob Liefeld spoke with CBR about "Zombie Jesus" and other webcomics he's planning to publish in the near future.
Jonathan Rée - Antichrist | New Humanist
Jonathan Rée - Antichrist | New Humanist: To anyone who met him in his prime, Friedrich Nietzsche looked like a genial old-style man of letters: a quiet, dapper, unworldly bachelor, kind to children and exceedingly polite. But those who kept up with his prodigious output of books – he wrote more than one a year once he hit his stride in the 1880s – knew that the mild manner concealed incandescent ambition. The gentle professor liked to think of himself as a wild beast on the rampage, an intellectual terrorist who was going to “divide history into two halves”. His mission: to destroy the last vestiges of Christianity by means of a free-spirited “philosophy of the future” – a brave new pagan philosophy heralding a brave new pagan world. “I am no man,” he said. “I am dynamite.”
All Life on Earth Could Have Come From Alien Zombies
All Life on Earth Could Have Come From Alien Zombies: Life on Earth could have grown from the broken remains of alien viruses that, although dead, still contained enough information to give rise to new life.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Galactic Core Spews Weird Radiation Bubbles
Galactic Core Spews Weird Radiation Bubbles: The Fermi gamma-ray telescope has detected a weird, dumbbell-shaped bubble of radiation pouring out of the Milky Way's center.
Nov. 9, 1888: Jack the Ripper Strikes for the Last Time ... Or Does He?
Nov. 9, 1888: Jack the Ripper Strikes for the Last Time ... Or Does He?: Mary Jane Kelly is carved to bits by the most famous serial killer in history, who then vanishes. His identity has never been discovered, and despite the best efforts of modern forensic science, there's a good chance it never will be.
As of Jan. 1, smoking in Roseburg parks could cost you $1,500
As of Jan. 1, smoking in Roseburg parks could cost you $1,500:
Although some Roseburg city council members want to revisit the fine, one thing is certain: as of the first of the year, smoking and the use of chewing tobacco is banned in all Roseburg parks.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Will Netflix destroy the Internet? - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine
Will Netflix destroy the Internet? - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine: According to Sandvine, Netflix accounts for 20 percent of downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America. That's an amazing share—it beats that of YouTube, iTunes, Hulu, and, perhaps most tellingly, the peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol BitTorrent, which accounts for a mere 8 percent of bandwidth during peak hours.
That stat has huge implications for how ISPs manage their lines. If 2 percent of Netflix customers account for one-fifth of the traffic on North American broadband lines, what will happen when more and more Netflixers begin to watch movies during peak times?
Saturday, November 6, 2010
"They Live": Jonathan Lethem explains a cult classic
"They Live": Jonathan Lethem explains a cult classic: "They Live," John Carpenter's 1988 cult classic, is a fairly subversive piece of work. The film, which combines sci-fi, horror and satire -- and includes one of the iconic fight scenes in movie history -- is an allegorical treatise on the evils of capitalism, set in a Los Angeles populated by evil, conspiratorial and wealthy aliens. The film, despite a mixed original reception, has developed a rabid fan-boy following over the last few decades, and now Jonathan Lethem, the author of "Motherless Brooklyn," "The Fortress of Solitude" and, more recently, "Chronic City" has written "They Live," a meticulous, scene-by-scene analysis of its many, many layers. (If you haven't seen "They Live," the film has apparently also made its way online here.)
Friday, November 5, 2010
Take your iPad on stage with the iKlip
Take your iPad on stage with the iKlip: IK Multimedia's iKlip is a universal microphone stand adapter for the iPad that secures your iPad to virtually any microphone stand for optimal on-stage viewing.
What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker
What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker: He was always about to send the box, but the moment to act never arrived. Akerlof, who became one of the central figures in behavioral economics, came to the realization that procrastination might be more than just a bad habit. He argued that it revealed something important about the limits of rational thinking and that it could teach useful lessons about phenomena as diverse as substance abuse and savings habits.
Since open-ended tasks with distant deadlines are much easier to postpone than focussed, short-term projects, dividing projects into smaller, more defined sections helps. That’s why David Allen, the author of the best-selling time-management book “Getting Things Done,” lays great emphasis on classification and definition: the vaguer the task, or the more abstract the thinking it requires, the less likely you are to finish it.
(Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.)
The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: “Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.”
Arts & Letters Daily (05 Nov 2010)
Arts & Letters Daily (05 Nov 2010): Procrastination: under its antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all... more
"I too am tempted to eff the ineffable," writes Roger Scruton. "I want to describe that world beyond the window, even though I know that it cannot be described but only revealed"... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate 11/4/10 9:00 PM
Review: Roku Players
Review: Roku Players: If you're a fan of a content stream not supported by Apple -- Major League Baseball and Hulu Plus come to mind -- you'll find that Roku’s broader selection of third-party content is a major advantage.
Mushroom season: 'The boost to the economy is fantastic'
Mushroom season: 'The boost to the economy is fantastic':
Each fall, from September to November or until the first snowfall, the population of Chemult, Ore., temporarily swells from 120 people to as many as a few thousand with an influx of mushroom pickers.
Apple iPad 3G Is Wired's Mobile Product of the Year
Apple iPad 3G Is Wired's Mobile Product of the Year: From its addictive, gesture-based interface to its steadily flowing 3G, the iPad has Wired editors smitten.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
'Invisible' Material Can Now Fool Your Eyes
'Invisible' Material Can Now Fool Your Eyes: Tech journalists and military dreamers have talked about real-life invisibility cloaks for a while. They may finally be ready to happen.