Rusting aluminum? PopSci explains the science.

True Porn Clerk Stories

As soon as I start sharing websites with friends, I ought to start putting them up here.

The prologue to this website says that the stories were collected starting in 2002. It seems to me that I learned about it before then, but even a usenet search doesn't pull up anything prior to 2002.

Anyway. Some good writing here, interesting insights, and a great read.

This is the one porn impulse that I honestly don't get. (Oh, all right. I don't get peeing on each other or hurting each other, but I think I understand intellectually how one might get there.) I don't understand the need to degrade someone. But that need is definitely, sadly out there. One of our best-renting titles of long standing is called Grudge Fuck.* It rents right back out as soon as we can replace the tag. Every time.

Much as I hate to say it, it seems to be a straight guy thing.

There's definitely a Captain Kirk-style exploration up and down the imaginary social ladder in both the straight and gay sections. In addition to the dozens of variations on (oddly - or sadly) still taboo interracial pairings, we have More Dirty Debutantes and White Trash Whore on the straight side, Straight off the Street and The Other Side of Aspen on the gay side. You can fuck rich or fuck poor on either side of the invisible barrier between the straight and gay sections. But you can only fuck lesser in straight.

I think it's because there's not enough otherness in gay porn. There's still bondage and S&M stuff, plenty of dominance and submission, but even the most submissive sub is still a man just like the dom, just like the viewer. How much separation can there be?

Link

Strangest Disaster of the 20th Centruy

Things like this story is what this blog was originally about.

I used to do a remaindered link section on my other blog on Sundays, where I'd round up the interesting links I wanted to share with people. I do a lot of surfing: more than any of my friends, and, some of them tell me, more than anyone they know. Because of this, I end up with a lot of interesting sites that I want to share with people. And because I don't do e-mail forwards, it all led to this.

Anyway.

This is a great story about a natural disaster that resulted in the death of nearly 1,800 humans and thousands of animals. I'm not going to say what it is here, because the story is very well-written; but it's not earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, viruses, or exploding tanks of molasses (which was my original guess on what the disaster was). It's even stranger than when Lake Peigneur got sucked into that salt mine (and if you're not going to read about it, at least watch the video)!

Link

Scott Adams's Blog

Scott Adams is well known for drawing Dilbert, but he also keeps a blog. Two posts in particular that are worth reading are how he's "In Over [his] Head" and "Good News Day", when he talks about losing his ability to speak. He's an interesting guy. You should also check out the comments on that speech one just to keep some perspective on what he went through.

Link to In Over My Head
Link to Good News Day

10 Ways

One of the most difficult things about this blog is finding things to say about some of the sites I come across. 10 Ways seems almost to defy description. At its heart it's about experimentation with a visual medium, but it definitely transcends the static pictures it plays with. The image above, from Information, uses the idea of photomosaics to suggest that images underlie other images. Philosophy aside, I could spend hours here.

Link to 10 Ways
Link to 10 Ways:Information

Hungry for a Month

This guy decided he was going to spend $1 a day on food for a whole month. Nothing super special to the writing, but it's a really interesting idea. Y'know, like lent or something, except you're giving up food instead of M&Ms. But I guess M&Ms are food, so you'd better hope they cost less than a dollar and can feed you for a day.

Link

12 Myths About Hunger

This excellent page from Food First debunks 12 common myths about hunger. There are some fascinating and startling statistics here, and it does a very effective job of driving home the point that the majority of starving people in the world are doing so not because of environmental or market forces, but because of someone's greed.

Myth 1:
Not Enough Food to Go Around

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods - ­vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs - ­enough to make most people fat!

link

The MIT Blackjack Team

Four years ago, Wired ran a great story on a bunch of math wonks from MIT who used an amazingly clever blackjack strategy to clean Vegas out of millions of dollars. It's a bit long, but definitely worth the read.

The Wired article was actually adapted from the novel Bringing Down the House, which is available for download as an ebook (or, I suppose, as a regular book; but like Cory Doctorow, I prefer being able to read things on my Palm).

"One mistake can cost a team a large amount of their expected advantage," Lewis says. "We had these charts calculated out that could tell you what a single error in play costs in terms of profit."

After passing the BP exam, Lewis moved to real world application. During Lewis' first weekend in Vegas, the team made $100,000. He was hooked and soon became one of the team's premier players. Personally, he didn't have problems with the ethics of the venture. "It isn't really even gambling. It's no different than the stock market. We use our brains to earn a profit. It isn't illegal. And it isn't cheating."

Link to Wired story
Link to Bringing Down the House ebook

Build Your Memory

I've been using mnemonic techniques like this for years -- ever since I saw Harry Lorraine on Amazing Discoveries, actually. And while they make for fun parlour tricks, like memorizing 20 (or more!) license plates on my walk to work, I haven't actually achieved much success with them. When you read about top memory experts, they all use these techniques or slight variations, so I'm probably just not practicing enough or using them consistently.

But for people unfamiliar with these memory techniques, this is a well-documented and easy to understand resource with lots of examples, allowing you to jump right in and start improving your memory immediately. And yes, these tips will allow you to perform dumb stunts like memorize the order of an entire deck of cards, as well as not-so-dumb stunts like remembering the names and phone numbers of the 15 people you met at last night's dinner party.

Link

Birthday Calculator

I'm not sure who this Paul Sadowski guy is, but he's got an interesting birthday calculator. It tell you all sorts of information about your birthday: ordinary stuff like your day of birth and zodiac sign, and not-so ordinary stuff like the phase of the moon and date of conception. Too bad it doesn't have place of conception: I'd love to see how many people have "Back seat of mom's car."

I also recommend the Name Calculator page for those people into numerology. Not that anyone is.

Link to Name Calculator
Link to Birthday Calculator (Thanks, Lee)

Judy Blume: Pervert

Could it be that the saccarine-sweet author of Superfudge, Double Fudge, and Fudge-a-Mania is a pervert?

Well, probably not. But let's face it, I primarily know Judy Blume as the author of such delightful childhood tales as Freckle Juice; Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; and the aforementioned Superfudge. In spite of the kind of homogenous uniformity of shmaltzy childhood literature, these books tend to stand out. Maybe not as focal points, but at least as memorable titles. Even if you yourself didn't read them, you sure as hell know someone who did.

Being a boy, I spent far more time talking about how Spider-Man could totally kick Batman's ass than seeking out new Judy Blume books. But in spite of my limited exposure, I honestly thought it was the same kind of watery tripe you'd find in, like, The Babysitter's Club, or Flowers in the Attic. So I was very surprised to find Blume's Forever listed in Playboy's top 25 sexiest novels, and I was even more surprised to read this:

Not surprisingly, since every post-Boomer generation can pinpoint its first sexual memory in the pages of Forever, it is also the title most frequently challenged by fundamentalists, prudes and puritans.

Sweet little Judy Blume is banned? And this book is a seminal, if you'll pardon the pun, sexual icon? Still, I don't think I'll read it. The text is a little juvenile, based on the except, and I think I'm more of a Tropic of Cancer or An American Dream kind of guy these days. The book may have inspired a generation in its day, but reading about "Ralph" tonight only made me chuckle.

Link to Playboy's Sexiest Novels
Link to Forever on Amazon

Edit: Thanks, hilariously to Judy Bloom who pointed out that I was misspelling Judy Blume's name. I'm likely to get fewer hits now, but at least I'll look more professional.

Gross-out Twofer

After having read a recent story about a man who cured his asthma through regular infestations of hookworms, I was reminded of the story I read about a man who trepanned himself that made me pass out. I had the same effect from reading The Hot Zone when I got to the part describing how ebola victims bleed out, but I wisely stopped before I lost consciousness. Apparently I don't deal well with these sorts of things.

At least the hookworm story is an interesting treatment of the procedure and apparently provides some positive benefits, like the elimination of asthma and hayfever. Trepanation only gives you a good story for family reunions and first dates.

Link to hookworm story (via K5)
Link to trepanation story (via BME)

They're Made Out of Meat!

The post about Terry Bisson's short story on Boing Boing really brough back memories. I first read it about ten years ago. I love this story: it's haunting, it's poingant, it's brilliant, and it's short. It reminds me a lot of myself, actually. Without the glasses.

What I didn't know is that ths story is in the book Bears Discover Fire, and that you can buy this book for your handheld in a number of different formats. All you luddites can buy it in paper form, too. (FWIW, I feel comfortable bugging you about this as the last five books I've read have all been on my handheld.)

Link to text of story (via Boing Boing)

Life After the Oil Crash

Dear Reader,

Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global "Peak Oil."

Scary stuff here. Off the charts scary. Especially when he starts trotting out the statisitics like bodies at a murder scene: 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce one calorie of food; construction of the average car requires twice the car's weight in fossil fuels; current US oil requirements are 83 million barrels a day; and on and on and on.

This site is well researched, well written, easy to understand, and rich with links to supplementary material. But it's probably not something you want to read before bed, especially if you're looking for a calm and restful night.

Link

Prof's "Super Laptop" Scares Kid

I was talking with Rob today about how cool it would be to install a GPS transmitter in one of our servers. If it were ever stolen, you could hilariously walk up to the guy's front door and be all, "Excuse me, but, like, you've got our server...?"

It reminded me of this post on boingboing, where a prof goes into painful detail on not only the super high-tech security he has on his now stolen laptop, but the consequences that will befall said laptop thief should he ever be caught. It's funny just to imagine this kid filling his pants as each sentence ups the stakes of the crime.

Link (via boingboing)

Playing The Game

The Game is difficult to describe, but here goes. Imagine yourself and five friends barreling around a major metropolitan city in a rented van for 32 straight hours while solving insanely difficult puzzles and engaging in an assortment of tasks designed to test your mental and physical stamina, an event combining elements of road rallies, scavenger hunts, and "Mind Olympics" competitions. That doesn'’t exactly describe the Game, but it'’s as good a description as any.

Matt Baldwin, the brilliant character who writes Defective Yeti, participated in The Game and wrote a wonderful three-part story about his experience. You remember The Game, don't you? It was based on a movie starring Michael J. Fox (Midnight Madness), and inspired a movie of the same name starring another Michael, Michael Douglas. Matt's stories are fun reading and really draw out the desire to jump in and start solving puzzles. If you're looking for more background to The Game, Wikipedia (big surprise) has a good article on it.

Link to The Game (via The Morning News)
Link to The Game at Wikipedia

How to Nap Properly

Men's Journal ran a piece on how to nap properly. Included in the article are tips on the lengths of time you should spend napping and some of the science behind sleep. Good stuff!

Link

Love and Hate Shirt Update

Further poking around on the love and hate shirt theme leads to The Accordian Guy's blog, which in turn points to Neatorama. But more important than either of these is the link to Scott Kim on Wikipedia, who's been described at the "Escher of the Alphabet". Whose brain works like this? The work on his website has to be seen to be believed!

Link (Thanks Accordian Guy and Neatorama!)

Hanzi Smatter

Hanzi Smatter is a blog dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in western society. In particular, it features a number of tattoos of Chinese characters and what the actual translation of those characters is. Most times the translation is hilariously different from what the person believed it was supposed to be.

The problems come from the popularity of Chinese characters as tattoos and the fact that few tattoo artists can read Chinese. The complexity of the written language and liberal artistic license, where lines are changed or added to suit a particular design, can completely change the meaning of a character. The lesson, of course, is that the books lie. Be sure to check and re-check your symbol with real Chinese readers before you have "small harvest" etched indelibly on your shoulder.

Some people suggest that this misuse of the language is a slight against Chinese culture. But while Chinese characters have been viewed as trendy and exotic in western society for about 15 years, it's interesting to note that the trend among Chinese and Japanese youth is to get tattoos with western writing, and I sincerely doubt that the same accusations would be leveled for the misuse of English. Still, I can't help but wonder if they're having problems with homonyms and idioms that don't translate well.

Link (Thanks photogfrog!)

Bushco comedy and tragedy

The links might get old, but at least the humour doesn't. As long as Bushco want to stay in Iraq, we may as well try to milk as many laughs as we can out of this sad situation.

The New Yorker recently wrote a piece about Bushco's current talks of war toward Iran in response to their uranium enrichment program:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Get your laughs in now, folks, 'cuz it ain't getting any funnier out there.

Link to Rumsfeld
Link to New Yorker Article