This preview of Heroes season 31 looks pretty good.
I trust that with a full season of episodes scheduled this time round we'll get a decent story arc. I liked season 2, but the way they had to fast-forward through some plot lines to get to the finale was immensely frustrating.
[Via Viral Video Chart]
The Bad usability calendar, or, Displaying a calendar isn't as complicated as some web designers think.
[Via Beyond the Beyond]
Excellent news: a second series of Phonogram is coming our way.
If you're familiar with comics and want a reference… well, while the first series was Hellblazer's protagonist-on-quest, the model here is Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan's Demo. In fact, I’m a little annoyed Wood got "Demo" as a title, as it'd have been a good title for this series. Most of the cast are much younger than Rue Britannia's. While Kohl's problem was identity related to the past, most of theirs are wrestling with the problems with identity and the future.
And trying to get off with each other, obv.
[Via Scans Daily]
James Fallows goes above and beyond the call of duty:
Recently I did what no sane person would: I watched the entire set of presidential primary debates, in sequence, like a boxed set of a TV show. In scale this was like three or four seasons' worth of The Sopranos.
[...]
I won't contend that Beijing, over a shaky Internet connection, is the ideal vantage point from which to follow every nuance of a primary campaign. But living at a remove from day-by-day coverage on TV and minute-by-minute chatter in Washington can highlight certain trends and details that are easily lost in the ongoing wash of news. For me, it had the effect of clarifying the strengths and occasional weaknesses created by Obama's rhetorical style; suggesting what he has to fear in the debates with John McCain; and indicating how rhetoric might affect his governing style if he wins. It also provided a surprisingly sharp reminder of the latest twist in the story of the press’s role in helping choose our president. [...]
One for the politics junkies among us, but well worth a read if that's your thing…
[Via MetaFilter]
Note to would-be adulterers: keep on top of your video rentals.
[Via John Scalzi]
We all know that music can alter your mood. Sad songs can make you cry. Upbeat songs may give you an energy boost. But can music create the same effects as illegal drugs?
This seems like a ridiculous question. But websites are targeting your children with so-called digital drugs. These are audio files designed to induce drug-like effects.
All your child needs is a music player and headphones. [...]
We should ban Flash movies with sound. And the iTunes Store. And MP3 files. Won't anyone think of the children!
[Via Qwghlm]
Edward Mike Davis, owner of the Tiger Oil Company of Houston, Texas ran a tight ship:
January 13, 1978
Do not speak to me when you see me. If I want to speak to you, I will do so. I want to save my throat. I don't want to ruin it by saying hello to all of you sons-of-bitches.
June 1, 1978
Executive personnel who are in my office and have to be excused to go to the bathroom may use the one located just outside my office so no time is wasted going all the way down the hall.No one else is to use this bathroom at any time other than guests.
[Via MetaFilter]
A Failure to Communicate, in icing sugar and cake.
[Via A Whole Lotta Nothing]
Jill Bolte Taylor's My stroke of insight was linked to all over the web when it was published a few months ago, but I only got round to listening to it today.
Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one.
Her account of how she felt as the two halves of her brain effectively took turns at the wheel is utterly fascinating: if you haven't heard or seen it, I strongly suggest that you rectify that omission right now.
Please, somebody reassure me that MyBlackBook is a spoof:
Today, everyone is sexually active or thinking about becoming sexually active. Teenagers and adults all over the world are in relationships and are sexually active; some are more active than others – and some put a greater emphasis on their sexual health than others do.
What happens if you find out that you have an STD? How do you know who should be notified? Well some people, both male and female, keep track of whom they have slept with in either a little diary or notebook. However, this has always posed a security flaw: "What if someone finds it??".
Well, MyBlackBook has solved that problem by creating The Internet's First Secure and Confidential Online Sexual History Tracker!
[Via Fimoculous]
I somehow missed Bruce Sterling’s take on The Clock of the Long Now when it was first published eight years ago:
One extremely effective method of cheap, lasting timelessness comes immediately to mind. We might call this the "Now He Belongs to the Ages" syndrome. In other words, some dead people. Live people are very unhappy and uneasy about disturbing graveyards. A newly established cathedral becomes accepted by the public when it begins burying the community. Cathedrals also make do with the relics of saints: holy shinbones and skulls, and so on.
[...]
[Let...] me offer another strikingly morbid alternative: the tontine.
What is a tontine? Well, the tontine was invented by an Italian banker named Lorenzo Tonti, as a kind of seventeenth-century New Economy investment scheme. A group of investors starts a mutual fund. They get dividends from the investments. Every time someone in the tontine dies, their share gets split up among the surviving members. Until finally, the last guy standing inherits everything. Interestingly, this tontine process was often used in France to fund public buildings.
In our case, of course, the Long Now Clock is always the last guy standing. Always. So a Long Now Clock tontine survives by measuring out people’s lifespans. When they perish, their chunk of the money is given to maintain the clock. I would strongly urge that the members of the tontine be buried on the site of the Clock. Or at least, they should memorialized on it on some very public, macabre, memento-mori way.
I guarantee that it would sober up trendy gawkers immediately, if they saw this sinister device prepared to reap its way through ten thousand years of future humanity, scythe first. I would suggest seeding the project with a few dead guys, already attached to the clock at its first unveiling. The sincerity of this gesture speaks for itself. Because after all, the future is where we go to die. Some of us in the Long Now tontine would be very public about our intention to be immolated with this clock. As a further spice, there would be *secret* members of the Long Now tontine.
A "sinister device prepared to reap its way through ten thousand years of future humanity, scythe first." Brrr….
[Via Beyond the Beyond]
Welcome to the SchmApple Store.
Me, I'd really like to buy the Mysteron. Just to find out what the green, blinking light1 signifies.
[Via Word Magazine]
Film director Roland Emmerich's London residence has to be seen to be believed.
MeFi user Halloween Jack put it best:
Anyone remember the nice old house in Beetlejuice and what the new owners did to it?
[Via MetaFilter]
I'm not a fan of the interminable opening ceremonies that are de rigeur at the Olympic games nowadays, but I've got to say that these pictures of the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony make me wish I'd tuned in.
I'm sure the organisers of the London games of 2012 are just thrilled at the prospect of following this, this and this.
