This is great, Adam Savage (Mythbusters) on his passion for objects, and his making of two replicas, a dodo skeleton and the Maltese Falcon.

Absolutely hang in there for the whole thing, because the bit about the Chinese newspaper at the end really hammers home his dedication (not that you wouldn’t be convinced of that earlier). I love watching people who love what they do.

Harmony is a fun sketching toy. No Flash, so it will work on your iPhone.

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer is deservedly making the rounds, but just in case you haven’t seen it yet:

I hate burpees. Even at my fastest clip I do them pretty slowly (10 in about 25 seconds), and in no time at all I feel like quitting from exhaustion and misery. About two-and-a-half years ago I managed 100 in just under 10 minutes, and the experience so scarred me that I’ve only worked them half-heartedly and sporadically since.

So, in the spirit of working on your weaknesses, I resolved to make them a staple of my regime, and just managed to get my time back under 10:00. My approach was pretty simple: do 100 burpees every Tuesday and Thursday. For the first workout, set the Gymboss (cool, new 2009 version of an already-great timer!) to 2 minute intervals and do 10 burpees at the top of each interval, resting during the leftover time (yes, that’s a lot of rest!). Every workout, subtract 5 seconds from the intervals. So 1:55 intervals the next workout, then 1:50, etc. Once you get down to 1:00 intervals, and you do 10 at the top of each, you will get your 100 in under 10 minutes.

Here’s how it went for me (date, interval time, total time):

1/14   2:00   18:40
1/19   1:55   17:11
1/21   1:50   16:21
1/26   1:45   15:12
1/28   1:40   14:44
2/02   1:35   14:10
2/04   1:30   13:55
2/09   1:25   13:06
2/11   1:20   12:25
2/16   1:15   QUIT (pulled shoulder at 17, bailed at 50)
2/23   1:15   12:06
2/25   1:10   11:02
3/04   1:05   QUIT (chickened out at 67)
3/05   1:05   10:15 (needed revenge)
3/09   1:00   09:51

This feels pretty close to my wall. The final 30 burpees of that set were ugly, ugly, ugly. Practically staggering to my feet to manage a 1-inch jump. Ugh. But I’ll take it. Not sure what I’ll do at my next workout. Shaving off another 5 seconds each round doesn’t sound like much, but it’d actually represent improving my time by more than 8 percent!

P.S. I know 10:00 isn’t an earth-shaking time. Remember this guy, who cranks out 100 in 5:00 and change? Unreal.

Maciej Cegłowski delves deeply into a fascinating question: if scurvy was solved in 1747, why did it plague Robert Falcon Scott’s 1911 expedition to the South Pole?

… in the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost. The story of how this happened is a striking demonstration of the problem of induction, and how progress in one field of study can lead to unintended steps backward in another.

An unfortunate series of accidents conspired with advances in technology to discredit the cure for scurvy. What had been a simple dietary deficiency became a subtle and unpredictable disease that could strike without warning. Over the course of fifty years, scurvy would return to torment not just Polar explorers, but thousands of infants born into wealthy European and American homes. And it would only be through blind luck that the actual cause of scurvy would be rediscovered, and vitamin C finally isolated, in 1932.

Steven Strogatz’s series on math started off great and keeps getting better and better. His is the first explanation of imaginary numbers that I can fully relate to and understand. And not just on an abstract level; this is also the first time the real-world application has been apparent to me.

I would have been in bed by now, if not for Shaun the Sheep.

Watching a master at work is never boring. Even if said master is ironing a shirt:

Harrison Krix built an amazing replica of a laser rifle from a video game (Fallout 3):

So the guy goes down to his basement with some wood, sintra, styrene and paint and comes back up with that? May as well be magic. So impressive.

Al Gore is unconvinced by the “global warming can’t be true because it snowed” argument.

Just a small housekeeping note: I decided not to renew the domain name for a little Twitter experiment of mine, so Plovr now lives here (it scans Twitter for people looking for help, and lets you respond if you want).

Darkly, darkly awesome: The Skull of Regret. The description of the drive-thru window. The deep-fat fryer as potential suicide implement. The pause before “ex-girlfriend.” All genius.

My wife read an article recently that suggested, probably semi-tongue-in-cheek, that figure skating is not a sport because it is subjectively judged, and the participants wear costumes and perform to music. While I’m not a big fan of subjective judging, I think this unfairly short-changes these athletes. So, out of a great breakfast conversation with some friends, this chart was born (made with gliffy):

Notes:

• While it seems to me that there are some fat professional baseball players, none of those guys can spend all their time on the couch, and most are in great shape, so baseball is a sport.
• Perhaps golf was a game before Tiger came along and raised the bar, and now it’s a sport?
• Not sure about NASCAR or bowling. I know there are physical demands, but can you compete on the elite level without athletic training? If so, game. If not, sport. I’m not making any judgments, I just have no idea personally.

Updated, Alternate: My breakfastmates had proposed a risk clause, which I had taken out for simplicity’s sake, so if you prefer, this version puts it back in. Also, thanks to Alec for the Hemingway clause that also made it in:

Updated, Personal Version: Personally, I like the Hemingway clause but not the risk clause, so this is the version I use:

Information is Beautiful just put out a great tool, Snake Oil? The Scientific Evidence for Health Supplements. Here’s a little more about it.

Great stuff from Roger Ebert that’s not a movie review: The Gathering Storm.

I think Steven Strogatz’s article on division is the best of his excellent “introduction to math” series so far. His series has quickly become one of my favorite reads on the web.

I haven’t posted anything about ChatRoulette yet. Sometimes it pays to wait, as the two best things so far came across my desk today: this movie by Casey Neistat, and this commentary by Danah Boyd.

Howard Friel checked every single citation in influential global warming denier Bjørn Lomborg’s Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, coming in March. Sounds damning.

ToneMatrix is just what I need, a musical instrument that sounds cool no matter what you do. I’m going to file this under “casualgames” even though it’s not really a game, because it feels like playing.

The Mariana Trench To Scale. Wow, I hadn’t appreciated just how deep that was until now. (via kottke)