The Daily Mail's not-all-that-secret editorial formula, interpreted as a Tube map.

Be sure to view the full-size version.

[Via MetaFilter]

It's quite possible that one day Hollywood will give the world a film adaptation of the God of War video game franchise. I'm guessing that when it arrives it'll resemble this trailer not one bit.

[Via MetaFilter]

Charlie Brooker on last week's news scrum in Rothbury:

The hunt for Raoul Moat got the news so flustered, it shrieked its reports at a pitch several hundred octaves above satire. Beneath a photograph of Britain's Most Wanted Man as an infant, The Sun ran the caption "Cute baby … but two-month-old Moat clenches his fists". On the front page, his estranged mother apparently wished him dead.

Moat was so enraged by this kind of coverage, he threatened to kill a member of the public for each inaccurate report he came across, like an extremist wing of the Press Complaints Commission. The police requested a news blackout on stories relating to Moat's private life. Soon the rolling news networks were reduced to filling hours of airtime with speculation about what kind of campsite he might have built. To make this seem exciting, they'd yabber that "the net" was "closing", or read out exhaustive lists of how many the guns the police had.

I'd dearly love to know what this was supposed to say.

[Via LinkMachineGo!]

Martin Belam reports from a panel discussion on #UKelection2010:

[Google's Head of Communications and Public Affairs...] Peter Barron spoke about some of the things the search giant had noticed during the election. He argued that something that symbolised the failure of the Conservatives to make a decisive breakthrough was that searches for Nick Clegg peaked each time there was a TV debate, searches for Gordon Brown peaked when he insulted 'that woman', and searches for David Cameron didn't peak.

He also showed a chart illustrating that the day after the election, searches for the phrase 'hung parliament' dwarfed those for Britney Spears. Some of those in the audience were unimpressed by this, but having seen Professor Karen Spärk Jones bemoan that her entire life's work in information retrieval had been reduced to people typing 'Britney Spears' into web search engines, I'm aware that topping queries for her is a major achievement for an obscure phrase.

A nice rant on the sheer implausibility of that 'World War II' show¹ that The History Channel keeps showing:

Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he's not only Prime Minister, he's not only a brilliant military commander, he's not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he's also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he's supposed to be the hero, but it's not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.

[Via Making Light (Particles)]

1. As a UK-based viewer who only has access to Freeview, I can but assume that this is the same show that keeps popping up on Yesterday. Surely it beggars belief that two producers would have come up with the same bad idea simultaneously. ↩

Flow Chart for Project Decision Making.

[Via High Scalability, via rc3.org]

I feel a disturbance in the horse…

(Hang on: doesn't Vader usually hold his light sabre in that hand? No wonder the horse looks so surprised.)

[Via jwz]

Doctor Who, American-style?

[Via Bad Astronomy]

New ZZZ's Little Moment of Win:

My husband & I were in a mattress store looking for a new bed. Our son was playing with one of the Serta Sheep in the next aisle. As we were laying on one bed, our son tossed the sheep over the bed we were on. My husband watched it fly past us & counted, "One…"! I laughed so hard, and IMMD.

25 Questions You May Have About The Last Airbender:

Q: [...] What's the worst part?

A: That's like asking a parent to pick a favorite between his 137 children. But, If I have to pick one: Asif Mandvi wants to kill something called the Moon Spirit because it will help his people, the Firebenders, gain power. It turns out this mystic Moon Spirit is a fish. Not a large, CGI style fish. No, just your average-sized trout. So, the most dramatic scene in the film involves Asif Mandvi stabbing a fish. [...]

[Via persia2, posting to a Ta-Nehisi Coates article's comment thread]

Geoff Manaugh talked to sonic historian Sabine von Fischer about clairadient buildings, The Rumbler, nightingale floors and the tapping machine:

What was the tapping machine?

SVF: The tapping machine, as it was first published in 1930 and as it was standardized in the 1960s, has five steel rods that hammer against the floor. The speed has changed a bit over time – and its speed is now standardized – but it just tramples on the floor. It's a very basic machine.

The principle of the machine can be found in older apparatuses, such as those used in grinding food items, but this particular application was to simulate the sound of footsteps, furniture, and machines on the floors of multistorey buildings. In this form – with five hammers, which are electrically operated – it was first published in 1930, in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Everyone who has been working on building acoustics claims that, since 1923 or 1926, they've been doing similar tests on structure-borne sound, but almost all of those earlier tests were done with women in high-heeled shoes. High-heeled shoes make a very distinct sound. For impact-sound measurements, these women – and I have never seen a photo with a man or a documentation of a test done with a man – would wear high-heeled shoes, making a very standard noise.

[Via BLDGBLOG]

Shalom Auslander hears voices when he sits down to write:

The Writer's Digest How-To-Write-Books Voice: To do this, you should start with an ending. You should end with a beginning. You should start at the middle and write backwards. You should start backwards and write sideways. You need a hook. You need a good story. You need a stronger theme. Nope, nope – now the theme is too strong. You need to start over. You need a more dimensional villain. You need a more dimensional protagonist. You need to know more about your character. Is he tall? Is he short? Where did he go to school? Is he well-hung? What's his favorite ice cream? What makes him break out in hives? What gives him explosive diarrhea? What's that rash on his neck? Is he for or against a two-state solution? What kind of car does he drive and what's the bumper sticker and which scent air freshener does he hang in the car, or it not a hanging one at all but rather one of those little plastic bottles that sits on the dash? Until you know all of that, this is just never going to work.

The Voice of American Express: This better sell well, you're carrying a tremendous amount of debt.

My Publisher's Voice: This was done once, and it didn't sell very well.

[Via Lance Mannion]

The hazards of keeping a solar-powered aircraft aloft for 26 hours:

Just 17 hours after takeoff, a blog on the project's Web site reported, "André says he's feeling great up there."

It continued: "His only complaints involve little things like a slightly sore back as well as a 10-hour period during which it was minus 20 degrees Celsius in the cockpit."

"That made his drinking water system freeze up and worse of all his iPod batteries die."

[Via James Fallows]

How can you resist a news story that includes this comment from the German police?

"What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hell's Angels is currently unclear," a police spokesman said.

[Via The Law West of Ealing Broadway]

My favourite entry to the TEDxOilSpill Poster Competition was Doug Hucker's Oh, which somehow only rated an 'Honourable Mention' from the judges.

[Via jwz]

I know I've already posted one link from MetaFilter today, but gc's quip deserves a mention:

I didn't know until this post who Justin Bieber was.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:24 PM on July 6 [...]

I've said this before, but I feel like Justin Bieber is like a big bad from Doctor Who, which suddenly appeared one day, and which everyone knows as if it has been around forever, but I know none of it is true, and I just keep walking around saying, "Something's wrong. Something's very wrong."
posted by gc at 9:25 AM on July 6 [...]

Best. 'Under Construction'. Page. Ever!

[Via MetaFilter]

District 11: World Cup Aftermath.

[Via MetaFilter]

The Sci-Fi Airshow is exquisitely geeky.

The SCI-FI AIR SHOW's purpose is to preserve and promote the rich and varied history of Sci-Fi/fantasy vehicles. Through display and education we seek to celebrate the classic design and beauty of these ships and the rich imaginations that created them. When the cameras stopped rolling, many of these proud old ships were lost and forgotten. Please join us in working to keep these rare and beautiful birds soaring!

Be sure to take the guided tour.

[Via Bad Astronomy]