Category Archives: Whatever

Tuesday Links (11/20/12)

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 Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves: “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village … Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and [thie children] figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”

Tardigrades (or “Water Bears”); First Animals to Survive in Space: This is so cool, I’m just going to embed the video below. Some surprising evidence in favour of panspermia? Who’da thunk it?

Tuesday Links (11/13/12)

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The Hobbit In-Flight Safety Video: I want to fly New Zealand.

Sharknado!: Enough said, indeed.

Commodity Fantasy: “It’s important that such a work leave the reader a little unhappy, a little dissatisfied, a little edgy — and anxious to snatch up the next volume in the hope that it will provide the experience that the last book failed to.  The more like a pack of cigarettes (if you’ve never smoked, trust me — cigarettes temporarily ease the craving but they never quite satisfy it) a commodity fantasy is, the more successful it will be.”

Tuesday Links (10/30/12)

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Email Is The New Pony Express–And It’s Time To Put It Down: “Email . . . may just be the biggest time killer in the modern workplace. Here’s where companies are headed next.”

The Saga of Epsilon and Zeta:The story of the seemingly never-ending 2005 hurricane season.

How to Eat a Triceratops: “Step two: tear the head off to expose the tasty neck muscles.”

Tuesday Links (10/23/12)

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Hobbit coins worth thousands to become legal tender in New Zealand: From the fictional land that brought you all manner of magic rings, only some of which are evil, this lovely new set of commemorative coins.

It is the Future, Here is Your Jetpack: The lack of jetpacks in the twenty-first century is officially something we can no longer complain about. People will probably still whine about the lack of flying cars, however.

My dog: the paradox (an Oatmeal comic): “My dog does not fear automobiles, garbage trucks, or airplanes . . . but he is terrified of hair dryers.”

Ada Lovelace, Throughout the Ages: Did you miss Ada Lovelace day?

How to Protect Yourself Against Supernatural Creatures (Dinosaur Comics): “Rather than punishing bad behaviour, reinforce your lycanthropes desirable behaviour at the moment it happens with a click and a treat.”

Tuesday Links (09/18/12)

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The Cheapest Generation: “Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy.”

The Batman: The Animated Series Rewatch: “1992 was also the year Batman Returns premiered and the influence of the Tim Burton Batman movies is present throughout the series, especially in the music, the setting, and the general atmosphere of the show. The creators of the show fused that sensibility with an animation style inspired by the Max Fleisher Superman cartoons of the 1940s (which, if you haven’t seen, I highly recommend) to create a style they referred to as ‘dark deco.'”

Tuesday Links (09/04/12)

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Benedict Cumberbatch in a spot of bother over CBS’ Elementary: “Despite the fact that the upcoming CBS show Elementary went to the trouble of making Watson an Asian-American woman and therefore is totally different, the cast and crew of the BBC’s Sherlock continue to express their suspicion that the network is attempting to copy their own modern Sherlock Holmes show, simply because CBS tried to copy their own modern Sherlock Holmes show.”

Farmers are dealing with corn shortages by feeding their cows candy instead: Yep.

What If Films Had Kept Their Working Titles?: Movie posters altered appropriately.