Unfortunately the recent profile of V. S. Ramachandran in The New Yorker is subscriber-only, but you can still find out what’s going in this picture here:
Related, don’t miss this Atul Gawande piece (I think I’ve linked this one up before).
Imagine how screwed you’d feel—on at least two levels—if Chemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29 was one of your college textbooks. $8,539! The reviews are very funny. Here’s an example:
My bank just received a major TARP bailout package, so me and my buds in top-level management got our quarterly bonuses after all. Vegas junkets are too conspicuous these days and black caviar from the Caspian Sea is getting a little old hat, so I bought a copy of Landolt-Bornstein’s “Chemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29” for another V.P. as a gag gift. Last week when I flew to Bora-Bora for a weekend management retreat there he was, reading it on the beach! He had some reservations about how a couple of the formulas were expressed, but apart from that he thought it was well-researched and compellingly written. On his recommendation I’m going to pick up a copy for myself to read at the next management retreat in Dubai. This book has some legs.
P.S. “scamsandhoaxes” is the closest tag I have for something like this. It’s no hoax, as near as I can tell, but wow, what a scam.
Jason Kottke has a good post up on free running, including an impressive demo reel of practitioner Levi Meeuwenberg. Getting up that wall at 1:51?! Unreal.
The Kindle DX looks terrific, exactly what I want in an eBook reader: big screen and PDF support. Unfortunately, like every other eBook reader out there, it is priced around $150 more than I want to pay. I would have paid $200 for a Kindle 2, so of course they want $360. I would have paid $300 for a DX, so naturally they want $489. I assume DX stands for “Deluxe”, but I think EX for “Expensive” is more on the mark. Alas.
Phojojojo teaches how to do black and white photo conversion right, rather than the uninspiring “convert to greyscale” technique.
Here’s how Google’s book scanning machine manages to return page scans with no trace of binder distortion, while leaving the book completely intact.
If you are like me and hadn’t heard of District 9 before, you might find that the trailer holds some surprises.
The winners of caption contest #187, plus my losing entry:
This one stings because my entry is basically a shameless pander to what I knew they were looking for. Dreadfully conventional, and I still lost!
Jeffrey Veen’s talk, Designing for Big Data. Lots of stuff you’ll be familiar with if if you know Edward Tufte’s work, and I would have liked a nod to Hans Rosling rather than calling his software a “Google product” (even if they do own it now), but it’s a really good aggregation and distillation of some excellent data visualization thoughts and examples.
I’m a bit behind, but finally read Burkhard Bilger’s fascinating article on escaped exotic pets making a home in Florida (abstract only, unfortunately). It’s ostensibly about invasive species, but for me the real entertainment was in learning how awesome Burmese pythons are, and how committed they are to swallowing once they start:
One python in the Everglades was found with a great blue heron stuck in its throat. The bird’s bill had poked it way through the back of the snake’s head, and was widening the hole every time the snake tried to swallow it. When the python was on the verge of getting caught, it disgorged the bird and slithered off—presumably to hunt another day.
Then there’s the gruesome story of the 13-foot python that swallowed the 6-foot alligator. But what topped it off for me was the final page of the article where we learn that Nile monitors are running amok in Cape Coral:
Like pythons, they are spectacular animals that make terrible pets. Up to seven feet long, with stout legs, tapered jaws, and skin that seems to be encrusted with semiprecious stones, Nile monitors are notoriously aggressive and ill-tempered. When cornered, a monitor will stand on its hind legs and hiss, inflating its body and lashing its tail like a bullwhip. In the words of one biologist, “no one realizes the ability this animal has to tear off your cat’s head with one twist.”
Also, they are totally non-discriminating carnivores; if it’s made of meat, they’ll eat it. They are fearless, and, get this, they hunt in packs.
Note to self: no camping in Florida.
I didn’t realize Neil Gaiman had been picked by DC Comics to handle Batman’s final appearance in the Detective Comics monthly. I’ll have to check those out.
Ocean’s Eleven with Kermit in the Clooney role. Had the Muppets made Ocean’s Twelve it might have been watchable.