National Geographic, 1,000 Days in the Ice. 1893, Fridtjof Nansen sets out to to reach the north pole. The plan? Build a reinforced boat, intentionally get trapped in the ice, and then sit back and enjoy the three-year ride. Didn’t quite work out, but man, bold plan. If you liked the Shackleton craze of a few years ago, you’ll dig this.

Sounds like the guy was a total stud:

Nansen was a strapping blond man, fair complected, with a frosty stare and a truculent face that seemed slightly at odds with the refinements of his intellect. Nansen stood apart from the quixotic glory hounds who characterized much of polar exploration’s golden age. Call him a Renaissance Viking: He was a gifted writer, a sought-after lecturer, a first-rate zoologist, and a prominent statesman. Fluent in at least five languages, adroit with a camera, he made beautiful maps and illustrations, kept up a voluminous scientific correspondence, and brought an element of cerebral precision to all his explo­rations. A contemporary German scientist said of Nansen that he “knew how to handle the microscope as well as the ice axe and skis,” and his scientific achievements were notable, including a groundbreaking paper on the nature of the central nervous system.

Pursued humanitarian work after his exploring days were over, eventually winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922.

Smashing Magazine: 30 Unforgettable Movie Opening Sequences. Having Lord of War, Thank You For Smoking, and Delicatessen on there makes me happy.

The Big Picture, The Year 2008 in Photographs (part 1 of 3). Use the “j” and “k” keys to navigate through these. Really nice UI touch, so much better than using Page Up/Down or the scrollbar. Can’t believe I didn’t notice that before. The “graphic content” filter is nicely done too.

Some heartbreaking shots in there.

P.S. Part 2 is up. Ouch. Plus some Usain Bolt action.

P.P.S. Part 3. That can’t really be what the moon looks like from Tibet, can it? Long exposure?

National Geographic, The Real Price of Gold …

… on being a Peruvian miner:

For 30 days he faces the dangers that have killed many of his fellow miners—explosives, toxic gases, tunnel collapses—to extract the gold that the world demands. Apaza does all this, without pay, so that he can make it to today, the 31st day, when he and his fellow miners are given a single shift, four hours or maybe a little more, to haul out and keep as much rock as their weary shoulders can bear. Under the ancient lottery system that still prevails in the high Andes, known as the cachorreo, this is what passes for a paycheck: a sack of rocks that may contain a small fortune in gold or, far more often, very little at all.

… on how much there is:

Part of the challenge, as well as the fascination, is that there is so little of it. In all of history, only 161,000 tons of gold have been mined, barely enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools. More than half of that has been extracted in the past 50 years.

… on payday:

Together, father and daughter watch the miller perform his ancient art. Using his bare hands, the man swirls several pounds of liquid mercury into a wooden pan to separate the gold from the rock, dumping the mercury-tainted waste into a stream beneath the shed. Thirty feet downstream a young girl is filling up a plastic bottle in the rancid water. But inside the miller’s shed all eyes are focused on the marble-size silvery nugget the miller produces: its mercury-coated exterior hides an unknown quantity of gold.

Ended up being worth about $20.

FlowingData’s 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year.

Hertzberg on Blagojevich. Wow. I don’t even know what to excerpt. Blagojevich’s musing about what a fair price for Obama’s senate seat would be? His reaction when told Obama wouldn’t be coughing up? The contrast with NY? Oh what the heck, when in doubt, go with the profanity:

Blagojevich—who had remarked of the Senate seat, “I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fuckin' nothing”—was not happy when told that no offers were forthcoming from anyone around “this motherfucker,” as he referred to the President-elect: “Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.”

Makes my brain ache: merge.

I pulled my 2008 mix together in time for the holidays. The “case” is a quick and dirty paper bag job cobbled together with Inkscape (Sketch Rockwell is the “2008” font):

The music is pretty much culled from a year of listening to EQX, plus the Where the Hell is Matt? track, all bought from Amazon (the first year I didn’t rip my mix from CDs). Despite the very thin alternative veneer, I fear I have betrayed my underlying 80s sensibilities:

1. I Want Candy by Bow Wow Wow
2. That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings
3. Generator by The Holloways
4. Boots of Chinese Plastic by The Pretenders
5. The Golden Path by The Chemical Brothers w/ The Flaming Lips
6. Pepper by Butthole Surfers
7. Into Action by Tim Armstrong
8. Early To Bed by Morphine
9. Handlebars by Flobots
10. Weapon Of Choice by Fatboy Slim
11. Two Shoes by The Cat Empire
12. Coin-Operated Boy by The Dresden Dolls
13. Mercy by Duffy
14. Paper Planes by M.I.A.
15. Hurt by Johnny Cash
16. Praan by Garry Schyman

Seed Magazine’s 2008 science & nature picks (also pages 2 and 3). I’ll have to dig into some of these, maybe Bonk first:

There are many humorous science books. There are not many hilarious science books. With Bonk, a review of science’s study of sexual behavior, Mary Roach has written a volume so viscerally funny, it’s easy to overlook how obsessively she researched her subject. But Roach’s tales of a day with pig inseminators, a hands-on experience with penile implants, and a romp under an ultrasound machine serve as not-so-subtle reminders of her commitment to writing the first-ever comprehensive book on sex research.

Amelia already draws better than I can:

Anita Lillie has a demo video up of her masters thesis, MusicBox, a very impressive project for mapping and visualizing music collections by a combination of their metadata and acoustic fingerprints (also on YouTube, in HD). Further proof that all the cool kids are using Processing these days. Slick, I love the idea of drawing a line through the music map and getting a playlist that smoothly transitions through musical styles and genres. Doesn’t sound like it will be available for download anytime soon, though. (via hackszine)

And here I thought the one-arm chin was a difficult skill… How about one finger Also, Jim at Beast Skills turns in some great work on the pegboard, including a muscle-up. That guy is a machine. (both via SttB)