* The best adventures are usually the result of intrepid ignorance
* I really want RJD2 and Aesop Rock to collaborate on a full length album
A web flier for a record shop in Bordeaux
-TitaniumDreads
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Monthly Archives: March 2007
Today's Fun Fackt: Online Dating
“1 of every 8 couples married last year met online.”
{WHOA! via Email thanks Ben <– this is a link to bens myspace music page, scope it}
So that’s a link to a video that rocks a lot of statistics, most of them aren’t adjusted for useful per capita analysis. For instance it compares the R&D budget of nintendo to the governments r&d budget for education as a way to show that the US needs to spend more money on education. Correct conclusion, incorrect reasoning. A comparison between the money spent developing new video games isn’t germane to research on new ways to educate a populace for at least 4 different reasons.
Another zinger is
“If myspace were a country it would be the 11th largest on earth.”
But myspace isn’t a country and it probably never will be. So what’s the point? And then there is some stuff about exabytes of information and how knowledge is becoming obsolete by the year. NOT TRUE! don’t buy it!
still it may be worth watching.
–Posted by TitaniumDreads
Victory for Animal Rights
In what animal welfare advocates are describing as a “historic advance,” Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, said yesterday that it would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that did not confine their animals in cages and crates.
The company said that it would also favor suppliers of chickens that use gas, or “controlled-atmospheric stunning,” rather than electric shocks to knock birds unconscious before slaughter. It is considered a more humane method, though only a handful of slaughterhouses use it.
The goal for the next few months, Burger King said is for 2 percent of its eggs to be “cage free,” and for 10 percent of its pork to come from farms that allow sows to move around inside pens, rather than being confined to crates. The company said those percentages would rise as more farmers shift to these methods and more competitively priced supplies become available.
The cage-free eggs and crate-free pork will cost more, although it is not clear how much because Burger King is still negotiating prices, Steven Grover, vice president for food safety, quality assurance and regulatory compliance, said. Prices of food at the chain’s restaurants will not be increased as a result.
Not that I would eat at Burger King but I applaud the decision.
:: Good Nytimes Article via Email {thanks Amanda!} ::
Bible History
{thanks Ian!}
Freedom Isn't Free – Don't They Know That?
Song of the Day – Wax Tailor >> Que Sera
I’ve been playing this out discreetly for the last week or so. Everyone loves it and no, it’s not dj shadow 
Also, I got hardcore deja vu while posting this. I had a really intense recurring dream about one of the images about a month ago.
BillBoard Hack – Calcium
Information Design – Bike Coop Sticker
UC Santa Cruz has a very cool bike coop that teaches students to build and maintain their own bicycles. It’s also a good place to hang out and meet people. Here’s a sticker that they gave me (I love stickers, please hook me up if you have any)
from my flickr photostream
The sticker serves ultimately as way to inform the student populace, especially incoming first years, about the bike coop. An important task considering that so many people never ride bikes simply because they don’t know where or how to get one that optimizes price and quality. The sticker scores high on the graphic design front with a sweet logo and good visibility of the name. However, it fails to mention the location of the bike coop which is tucked discretely yet conveniently into a little corner near the student center. It doesn’t mention a website either. Any information that gets put out into the world should necessarily provide the viewer with a way to get more information about the subject. Word of mouth is particularly crucial in this case. Even if the the primary viewer doesn’t want or need a bike they may be able to inform a friend who is in the market.
The Takehome Message:
I think it’s helpful to consider stickers, flyers, posters etc as a pointer to something bigger. Not putting a physical and web location on the sticker is like a pointer without an arrow.
the sticker lies on top of my biology of aids final study guide. Pictured are various proteins that are critical to the successful reproduction of HIV.
Voodoo Knickers – Now with More Computing Power!
This is the first official blog post with my new MacbookPro, which is the sweetest computer EVER! Here’s a photo I took with the built in camera.
This may be a good time to juxtapose in a trenchant comment about vista from Robert Peston of the BBC
I’m left with the uneasy feeling that I’ve been ever-so-elegantly mugged.
I, on the other hand, feel great!
On the Cool Pile:
Three wind turbine blades have been successfully installed on the Bahrain World Trade Center, a twin skyscraper complex. This is the first time that a commercial development has integrated large-scale wind turbines within its design to harness the power of the wind. The three massive turbines, measuring 29 meters in diameter, are supported by bridges spanning between the complex’s two towers. Through its positioning and the unique aerodynamic design of the towers, the prevailing on-shore Gulf breeze is funneled into the path of the turbines, helping to create power generation efficiency.
::: Global Warming Will Still Get Us via Treehugger :::
And this is a hilarious letter and response from a prospective MIT Student, nubs up.
Overheard on the Bus
Girl 1 to Girl 2: It’s probably not a good foundation for your relationship if your boyfriend is gay.
No, no it’s not….
Quote of the Day – H.G. Wells
“Bicycle tracks will abound in utopia.”
-H.G. Wells
Graffiti Angel
For the Kids that Love that Glitchy Shit
Me: Dun da dun duh duh… With a blanket with novely sized
Nick: what did you just say?!?
Me: ummm nothing….
yeah, and this video is fucking brilliant
My Life is So Fucking Sweet
From: *******@stanford.edu
To: *********@law.harvard.edu
Subject:
would you be interested in acting as the leader of a fictional underground revolutionary group at stanford? it will involve kidnapping several stanford daily editors. i am entirely serious.
From: *********@law.harvard.edu
To: *******@stanford.edu
Subject: re:
only if we can use ether.
i’ll be at theta chi this weekend for special dinner, lets meet up
Seriously!!!!!
You may be familiar with the widely advanced theory that Democracies do not go to war with eachother, which therefore justifies starting wars to spread democracy…. This notion is frequently expressed by the mustachio’d little twatburger Thomas Friedman in his gushingly pedantic artices in the NYTimes. Here Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope delivers a trenchant repudiation!
The more basic objection to excluding all but liberal democracies is that throughout most of history the number of such democracies has been small. According to political scientist Michael Doyle, there were only 13 liberal democracies prior to 1900, and just 29 between 1900 and 1945–and many of those did not endure. Doyle counts 49 liberal democracies as of 1983; setting aside the confusing instance of Israel vs. Lebanon, none has fought another since 1945. But it may be argued that this merely reflected the postwar Pax Americana.
One would like to believe democracy = peace, but if we look at the big picture we find little to persuade us that it’s a sure thing. Nazi Germany was not a democracy after 1933, but Hitler had been freely elected and the Nazis dominated the democratically chosen Reichstag. The United States and France conducted wars of great savagery in Vietnam and Algeria. The U.S. helped topple the elected Allende regime in Chile, with murderous consequences for the Chilean people.
One can easily make the case that what prevents war between democracies is not their liberal scruples but their wealth, coupled with the recognition that war would mean economic ruin. If we look down the list of wars over the last 50 years we see that in almost all cases one or both of the belligerents was poor. We now have a proliferation of poor democracies in the wake of communism’s collapse. Will they refrain from attacking one another, as their authoritarian or totalitarian predecessors did not? One considers India vs. Pakistan, Russia vs. Ukraine. Clearly the notion that democracies will not make war on one another now faces its great test.
The rest of the article is quite good too.