Wind Map is a super neat visualization of wind speed and direction across the United States by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg of HINT.FM.
I took the above screenshot of the archived data of Hurricane Sandy from October 30.
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Please advise
An excellent CBS memo about Miles Davis’s album Bitches Brew was posted on Letters of Note. I don’t want to spoil it with a quote or repost the image, so just check it out. The text of the memo is shorter than Shaun Usher’s writeup.
Sim-plicity: I am a human being
Sim-plicity: I am a human being
For his latest Sim-plicity column for PC Gamer, Christopher Livingston played Real Lives, an educational life simulator by Educational Simulations. During the game, his character is kicked out of school at age 7, works as a child laborer, contracts syphilis, illegally emigrates to Denmark, and is married for four years before her husband dies:
I don’t really have a conclusion. I feel like I did poorly — I didn’t amass riches, conquer a profession, or live happily ever after — but the game isn’t saying I did poorly. It’s not saying anything. There are no points, there’s no score, no achievements or badges. But I can’t help feeling that, as a human being, I failed.
Livingston cracks wise throughout the whole piece, which makes his serious, almost somber conclusion after his character dies all the more jarring. Billions upon billions have been born into poverty, and by the end you can see him realizing this, however briefly.
I find the way this game provides perspective on the lives of others to be exciting and depressing in equal parts.
Fishing Using Game Boy Pocket Sonar
Fishing Using Game Boy Pocket Sonar
Drop 1410 writing on his Game Boy Carts blog:
Bandai developed the sonar device with Honda Electronics. A fish-finding sonar device designed to be used in conjunction with Nintendo Co.’s Game Boy hand-held video-game machine has been introduced by Bandai Co.
The device can detect fish up to 20 meters deep when placed on the surface of the water. It provides a readout on the Game Boy screen.
This is amazing.
Puerto Rico takes big step towards US statehood
Puerto Rico takes big step towards US statehood
The two-part referendum first asked voters if they wanted to change Puerto Rico’s 114-year relationship with the United States. A second question gave voters three alternatives if they wanted a change: become a U.S. state, gain independence, or have a “sovereign free association,” a designation that would give more autonomy for the territory of 4 million people.
With 243 of 1,643 precincts reporting late Tuesday, 75,188 voters, or 53 percent, said they did not want to continue under the current political status. Forty-seven percent, or 67,304 voters, supported the status quo.
On the second question, 65 percent favored statehood, followed by 31 percent for sovereign free association and 4 percent for independence.
This isn’t a done deal yet. The next steps are approval by the US Congress and then Puerto Rico would need to adopt a state constitution. But this is a big, big step forward for Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state in the union.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUUqtR1czAM
A while ago I was having a bit of angrytime, so friendpal and generally Swedish individual Mattias sent me some Spyro Gyra to help chill me out. This worked quite well, actually, as Spyro Gyra is rather high on my “I NEED TO BE HAPPY RIGHT THIS SECOND” music list.
The song he sent me was “Bob Goes to the Store” from their 1986 album Breakout, and I’m sharing it with you all now.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Middle-Earth in Statistics
The Lord of the Rings Family Tree Project is a somewhat absurd undertaking by Emil Johannsen to catalog the characters of Tolkien’s Middle-earth and their relationships.
One of the things that’s possible with this database is crunching numbers!
Only 19 percent of the total number of characters are female with the highest percentage among Valar, Maiar and Hobbits.
Oh. :(
Monk in an MRI
Resist your gag reflex — this is not yet more gauche east-meets-west self-help nonsense. As far as I can tell this appears to be a summary of several highly serious neuroscience research efforts. Great read.
Wikipedia: Alfred Chicken
Alfred Chicken is an old platformer for a few systems: Game Boy, NES, etc. It apparently had an unusual advertising campaign in the United Kingdom, according to Wikipedia:
Karl Fitzhugh, the Product Manager of the Amiga version of the Alfred Chicken video game, ran as the Alfred Chicken Party candidate in the 1993 by-election in the Christchurch, Dorset constituency. The exercise was done to promote the original game’s release. Fitzhugh finished second last with 18 votes, two votes ahead of the Rainbow Party candidate.
He also finished five votes behind the “Ian is King” party candidate.
Did you know that Dennis Hopper was a photographer? I had no idea. According to Wikipedia, he painted, sculpted, and wrote poetry too, which is pretty cool.
But back to his photography. After he died in 2010, a collection of photos that were exhibited from 1969–1970 were found in his house. They’ve been collected and printed in the volume Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album and are also being exhibited in Berlin. Le Journal de la Photographie has more info and a selection of the photos.
The photo I’ve chosen for this post, “Double Standard,” was taken in Los Angeles in 1961.