rebecca's pocket

» Read about Nestle's brilliant strategies for building a deep following in Japan for Kit Kats: limited-edition and regionally specific flavors, sales points in the Post Office, and wacky, whimsical flavors like strawberry-cheesecake, wasabi-flavored white chocolate, and their best-seller, soy sauce. / 0 Comments / [ 03.10.10 ]

» Have you heard of Pandora? You select a song and it will program a stream of "more like this" music based on its musical "genome". Now the company is poised for success as it positions itself to be as ubiquitous as FM radio.

My problem with Pandora? My ideal radio station would be based on two or three favorite songs. / 2 Comments / [ 03.09.10 ]

» Are extreme couponers practicing a time-honored form of augmented reality gaming? That's not quite what it is, of course. But when you assemble a 6-foot tower of Jello and post it to a coupon forum, clearly it isn't about saving money. It's about the game itself. / 0 Comments / [ 03.09.10 ]

» Three Proven Steps to Advance the World's Women, on International Women's Day. Absolutely right, and absolutely critical. (via @BillGates) / 0 Comments / [ 03.08.10 ]

» Fascinating. A new study suggests that subsidizing healthy food at the supermarket results in the purchase of more junk food! Taxing junk food had the opposite effect. I would have predicted the opposite outcome. / 0 Comments / [ 03.08.10 ]

» Chart of the day: Payday lenders' lobbying expenditures.

The meat of the story, though, from Keith Epstein of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, is well worth reading: it shows an astonishingly effective lobbying organization which has persuaded lawmakers around the country that payday lenders are both popular in their local communities and not particularly profitable.

One of the biggest payday-lender lobbyists calls itself the Community Financial Services Association; it increased its spending by 74 percent over the past year, to $2.56 million. That helps pay for people like Steven Schlein, who goes around saying things like "Who's going to make that kind of credit available to working people besides us?". (Answer: banks, community development credit unions, non-profit lenders, etc. And if "that kind of credit" is being extended at 650% APRs, then maybe it shouldn't be made available at all.)

Are lawmakers really this stupid? Corrupt? It's shameful. / 0 Comments / [ 03.05.10 ]

» We live in wondrous times: A machine that prints organs is coming to market - for about $200,000. My dentist has an in-office machine that produces a crown in about half an hour from a scanned image of your tooth. When I saw that, I felt like I was in the future. But the prospect of creating on-demand custom organs is straight out of Star Trek. [ 03.04.10 ]

» New science shows that film directors have become more adept at structuring their films to produce pink noise - the natural rhythm of the brain. Bonus: the scientist studying film editing patterns is named "James Cutting". [ 03.03.10 ]

» Get your baby some earmuffs to protect their hearing!

Hearing loss from exposure to loud noises is cumulative and irreversible; if such exposure starts in infancy, children can live "half their lives with hearing loss," said Brian Fligor, director of diagnostic audiology at Children's Hospital Boston.

Because a young child's ear canal is much smaller than an older child's or an adult's...the sound pressure entering the ear is greater. An infant might perceive a sound as 20 decibels louder than an older child or an adult. The shorter length of the ear canal increases dangerous noise levels in the higher frequencies, which are crucial to language development.

[ 03.02.10 ]

» The next time I'm in Tokyo, I'm going to make a point to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum.

"The Ghibli Museum is a portal to a storybook world. As the main character in a story, we ask that you experience the Museum space with your own eyes and senses, instead of through a camera's viewfinder. We ask that you make what you experienced in the Museum the special memory that you take home with you."

Fair enough. Still, there are areas within the museum that seem to be crying out for a photo op, such as the fabulous, furry Cat Bus, over which little kids (age limit: 12) scramble over in pure glee.

Maki has posted a detailed review that includes instructions for non-Japanese speakers for purchasing tickets (at the Lawson's!). [ 03.02.10 ]

» How to make the best tea. Detailed instructions on choosing teas, brewing equipment, and a simple trick to ensure that your water is the proper temperature. [ 03.01.10 ]

» Harold McGee: Better Bread with Less Kneading. Trust Mr. McGee to cut through the no-knead hype to identify when that method is best and when to knead. Science bonus: flour/water proportions necessary for a good loaf of bread. [ 02.26.10 ]

» The joy and diversity of Belgian beers. [ 02.26.10 ]

» The Great Recession seems to be coming to an end, but based on the past 2 jobless recoveries, the millions thrown out of work may face unemployment for many years more. [ 02.25.10 ]

» Do expensive things taste better? Actually, they do. This explains all those ugly, expensive, designer handbags and shoes.

When tasting the wine out of the $10 bottle, the medial orbitofrontal cortex - an area of the brain that is strongly related to experiences of pleasure - showed only very little activity. When the exact same wine was poured out of a $90 bottle however, this brain area showed levels of activation which indicate that the participants were indeed drawing much more enjoyment from the same wine this time around. In other words, the price tag seemed to have a real physiological influence on the taster's taste experience.

[...] Interestingly enough, the primary taste areas show no significant differences in activation for the different experimental conditions.

[ 02.25.10 ]

» Absolutely: A sense of entitlement amplifies hypocrisy in individuals who feel they deserve their status. [ 02.24.10 ]

» Far from being an adjunct to the spoken word, research shows that touch is an expressive language of its own. [ 02.23.10 ]

» It's worse than I thought:

The report concludes that only 15 percent of [Bay] area housing stock is affordable to "workforce households," compared with 50 to 60 percent in "peer metropolitan regions." In the greater Boston area, 61 percent of the housing is affordable to workforce households; in the Washington, D.C., area the number is 65 percent.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing defines workforce households as those with incomes between 60 and 120 percent of area median income, which is between $56,000 and $112,000. Approximately 30 percent, or 820,000, of the Bay Area's 2.7 million households fell into this income range. The report used a 3.5 income-to-home price multiplier to determine the affordable home price for each income bracket and household size. So a family earning $100,000 could afford a $350,000 home.

Oh, and renters?

More than 30 percent of rental households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. That is a higher percentage than New York or Los Angeles. And rents are not only high in the neighborhoods of San Francisco closest to downtown; even Napa County, which has the lowest rents in the greater Bay Area, has higher median rents than greater metropolitan Boston, New York, or Los Angeles.

[ 02.22.10 ]

» Why is the food you buy so sugary? Blame the demonization of fat. I learned a lot from this refreshingly undogmatic interview with Brian Wansink, head of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, and author of the book Mindless Eating.

The thing is, there was a kind of witch-hunting phase where we demonized sugar back in the late '80s. But if you look at it, there's a really nice case to be made for sugar. Let's use chocolate milk as an example. If you're trying to get kids to drink milk, and you add just a little more chocolate and a little more sugar, and add 30 more calories to it, you know, I don't really think that's bad compared to them ordering Goofy Grape punch with the same number of calories and really nothing in it.

[ 02.16.10 ]

» For 60 years, a mysterious visitor dressed in black has left roses and a half-bottle of cognac on Edgar Allen Poe's grave on his birthday - until this year, when he didn't show up. [ 02.11.10 ]

» Compare and Contrast with yesterday's entry: Modern "Cavemen" in New York City who fast for days, eat mostly meat, and exercise by sprinting and jumping.

[72-year-old retired economics professor Arthur De Vany's] blog promotes what he calls Evolutionary Fitness. Like his disciples in New York, he believes that ancient humans could perform physical feats that would awe the gym rats of today.

His followers believe that he too is capable of fearsome feats. When Mr. Durant told a gathering of New York cavemen that he had seen Mr. De Vany at a seminar in Las Vegas, Matthew Sanocki, 34, asked if Mr. De Vany looked as muscular in the flesh as in pictures on his blog.

"He looks great," Mr. Durant said. "You feel like he could, at a moment's notice, charge at you and trample you."

[ 02.09.10 ]

» Starting From Scratch is a blog detailing 6 New York City families' preparations to survive between July 22nd-July 29th, 2010 exclusively on food they have hunted, fished, farmed, or foraged. Many of the challengers have started foraging and planning gardens already. (via fpf) [ 02.08.10 ]

» Don't miss the most entertaining bit of media literacy I've ever seen: Charlie Brooker - How to Report the News. (thanks, jjg!) [ 02.02.10 ]

» Five Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design. (via @jayrosen_nyu) [ 01.28.10 ]

» Wow. Stephen Fry is a convert.

There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: "Hold your judgment until you've spent five minutes with it". No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects. [...] The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it's not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop - it is a whole new kind of device. And it will change so much.

Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.

I've been mostly uninterested in this device, but this review has me curious. And Mr. Fry is the second person I've heard describe the device as "magical". I wonder if that's because they were primed by the keynote to use that term, or if it really is that? [ 01.28.10 ]

» Seven tips from a home baker. I think it may be time for me to start mastering sourdough and other naturally leavened breads. WildYeast and The Fresh Loaf as good starter (ha ha!) resources. [ 01.28.10 ]

» The roughly 20-year-old delivery man upon soliciting my signature: "You are 21 aren't you?" Me, grinning: "I know it's hard to tell sometimes." Young man, I salute you! [ 01.27.10 ]

» Exercise is anti-aging at a cellular level! Scientists are wondering how much exercise is necessary to see these effects; I'm wondering if the effects are as profound if you start exercising at a later age (or if the exercise will just stop you where you are when you start). [ 01.27.10 ]

» Plus this: Scheduling recess before lunch results in less food waste, higher consumption of milk, fruit, vegetables, and water, increased academic time, and fewer behavior problems. Not only are the kids not rushing lunch to get to recess, I'll bet they are hungrier when they sit down, and less likely to turn their noses up at foods they might have been skeptical about before. "Kids are calmer after they've had recess first. They feel like they have more time to eat and they don't have to rush." Janet Sinkewicz, principal of Sharon Elementary School in Robbinsville, N.J. / 2 Comments / [ 01.27.10 ]

» Robin Sloan on the ways in which people are using interface elements as storytelling devices. Watch this Google ad (my favorite) and tell me if it isn't a perfect short story. Yes, understanding the narrative depends on a great deal of context - they used to call that "allusion" back when stories were told on paper. (via waxy) [ 01.26.10 ]

» Two weeks ago, when Google announced that it would no longer censor search results in China, half of the Internet jumped for joy, and the other half sneered with cynicism that Google hadn't been doing that well in China anyway.

In its announcement, Google stated that Chinese attackers have accessed 2 Gmail accounts and stolen intellectual property - Google company secrets. Additionally, Google has found evidence that, independent of this attack, Gmail accounts belonging to advocates for Chinese human rights have been routinely accessed by third parties, probably as a result of poor security practices on the part of those individuals. As a result, Google has announced that they "have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn".

Wait - how did Google jump from "We have been the subject of an attack" to "We will no longer censor search results in China?". I think I know.

» String Theorist Erik Verlinde has proposed that gravity is an entropic force emerging from the fundamental properties of space and time.

To understand what Verlinde is proposing, consider the concept of fluidity in water. Individual molecules have no fluidity, but collectively they do. Similarly, the force of gravity is not something ingrained in matter itself. It is an extra physical effect, emerging from the interplay of mass, time and space, says Verlinde.

"It is not even a theory yet, but a proposal for a new paradigm or framework. All the hard work comes now." - Erik Verlinde [ 01.22.10 ]

» Smart pills are a "disruptive innovation about to happen".

When one of Proteus's pills is taken, stomach fluids activate the edible communications device it contains, which sends wireless signals through the body to another chip worn as a skin patch or embedded just under the skin. That, in turn, can upload data to a smart-phone or send it to a doctor via the internet. Thus it is easy to make sure a patient is taking his pills at the right time, to spot adverse reactions with other drugs and so on.

Don't miss the caption on the photo. (via MikeK) [ 01.22.10 ]

» Dahlia Lithwick: Why aren't we talking about the new accusations of murder at Gitmo?

Scott Horton's devastating new exposé of the possible murders of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006 is...simply too terrible to allow to be true. Which is why it has been mostly ignored this week in the mainstream American media.

Read it and judge for yourself. [ 01.21.10 ]

» Stop me if you've heard this one before: A man walks into not one, but two, cell phone stores eager to buy a phone. In both stores, the staff is so uninterested in responding to his needs that he ends up not buying anything.... The cell phone industry is surely on a par with cable providers in its avaricious and cavalier attitude toward its customers. [ 01.21.10 ]

» Robin Sloane applies the lessons of economics to writing and making other art.

Flow is the feed. It's the posts and the tweets. It's the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind peo­ple that you exist.

Stock is the durable stuff. It's the con­tent you pro­duce that's as inter­est­ing in two months (or two years) as it is today. It's what peo­ple dis­cover via search. It's what spreads slowly but surely, build­ing fans over time.

I feel like flow is ascen­dant these days, for obvi­ous reasons - but we neglect stock at our own peril.

It's all true. After this page, the most popular parts of this site are my Zoom Teeth Whitening Caution (it hurts!) and Eating Organic on a Food Stamp Budget which, people tell me, they "read like a novel".

Robin may overestimate the rate of flow which is necessary to keep you on the radar, but she is absolutely correct in understanding that it is a necessary mix. (via @jayrosen_nyu) [ 01.20.10 ]

» Tomorrow, January 20, 2010, profits from any app you buy from Indie+Relief will be donated to Haiti. [ 01.19.10 ]

» Genius! Garter stitch in the round, with no purling. (via tk) [ 01.19.10 ]

» What would Martin Luther King tweet? Phenomenal. (via @anildash) [ 01.18.10 ]

» A Little Weekend Reading: Is the US exporting its forms (and fashions) of mental illness to other cultures?

"We might think of the culture as possessing a 'symptom repertoire' -- a range of physical symptoms available to the unconscious mind for the physical expression of psychological conflict," Edward Shorter, a medical historian at the University of Toronto, wrote in his book "Paralysis: The Rise and Fall of a 'Hysterical' Symptom." "In some epochs, convulsions, the sudden inability to speak or terrible leg pain may loom prominently in the repertoire. In other epochs patients may draw chiefly upon such symptoms as abdominal pain, false estimates of body weight and enervating weakness as metaphors for conveying psychic stress."

[...] There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we've been exporting our Western "symptom repertoire" as well. That is, we've been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders - depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them - now appear to be spreading across cultures with the speed of contagious diseases. These symptom clusters are becoming the lingua franca of human suffering, replacing indigenous forms of mental illness.

[ 01.15.10 ]

» NYT: Jane Brody on the secrets to living long and well: Diet and exercise.

In a 2006 study of people aged 60 to 79, those who were assigned to walk briskly three days a week for 45 minutes a day experienced an increase in the brain's volume, especially in regions involved in memory, planning and multitasking.

Nuff said. [ 01.14.10 ]

» Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute. [ 01.13.10 ]

» Why Marlowe is still the chief of detectives. (via mamr) [ 01.13.10 ]

» The Great Joe Rollino has passed on at age 104. Never heard of him? Neither had I - but his story is too good to miss. [ 01.12.10 ]

» NYT: 10 Ways to Cut Your Travel Costs This Year. [ 01.12.10 ]

» In order to combat binge drinking, a top UK girl's school is organizing wine tastings for their 16-year-olds. (via se) [ 01.11.10 ]

» Michael Kinsley thinks he knows why readers are abandoning newspapers for the Internet. Hint: it has nothing to do with technology. (Although the inverted pyramid style does: sequencing facts in order from most important to least important allowed the typesetter to shorten any story to fit the available space without concern that important details might be lost.) [ 01.08.10 ]

» A Little Weekend Reading: Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. Prithee enjoy. [ 01.08.10 ]

» Everyone's linking to it for a reason: If you haven't yet read Roger Ebert's reflections on losing the ability to eat, drink, and talk, do it now. [ 01.07.10 ]

» NYT: A large study has found that women with partners tend to put on more weight than single women, whether or not they have children. Associate Professor of Epidemiology Maureen A. Murtaugh has suggested that women with partners may have more active social lives and therefore spend more time eating in restaurants. "They serve a 6-foot man the same amount as they serve me, even though I'm 5 feet 5 inches and 60 pounds lighter," she reasons. But I think she has this exactly wrong.

My guess would be that there are 2 factors at work:

1) Single women have a greater investment in maintaining their figures in order to maximize their attractiveness. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that women who have settled down stop caring about a few extra pounds as long as their partner still finds them attractive.

2) It's a drag to cook for one, but it can be very rewarding to cook for an appreciative audience. I spent many years cooking for myself, but eventually I began eating more meals in restaurants, and then all of them. Cooking for myself was just too much trouble. But when a new boyfriend entered the scene, my interest in cooking would rekindle.

And, while restaurant portions are big, most home recipes are portioned for 4 people. The cook may intend to save half the pot to freeze for another meal, but when 2 hungry people sit down to a delicious meal, and there's more right there on the table.... Well, that food in the middle of the table is already paid for, and it always seems that just a little bit more won't hurt.

Is there a similar study for men? Or is science only concerned about the size of women's bottoms? / 1 Comments / [ 01.07.10 ]

» Goodbye Brad. Thank you for showing us what it means to be a hero (from An Interview with Brad Graham).

» In his survey of the history of Modern English, Rutgers University English professor Jack Lynch argues that the English language is in great shape - Exhibit A: SMS shorthand. To break the rules, you have to know the rules! And this intriguing idea: "All the signs point to a fundamentally reconfigured world in which what we now think of as the English-speaking world will eventually lose its effective control of the English language." His book is The Lexicographer's Dilemma, and it sounds just fabulous to me. (via mamr) [ 01.04.10 ]

» The Economist: The Harry Potter Economy. The massive popularity of the boy wizard, happening as it did during the mainstreaming of the Web, provides an instructive look at modern media merchandising, a new approach to big-budget film making, and fan-produced transmedia. [ 12.30.09 ]

» Retired construction worker Wally Wallington believes he has uncovered the secret of building Stonehenge, and to prove it, he's building a demonstration model in his backyard. (via @ebertchigago) [ 12.29.09 ]

» This summer Dogfish Head Craft Brewery released Chateau Jiahu - perhaps the world's oldest beer. [ 12.28.09 ]

» I did think I might take some time to post some links this week, but it's clear to me that I'm going to be too busy between now and the New Year to even think of it. Instead, I encourage you to take some time to enjoy your friends and family, and to have a wonderful holiday season. See you in 2010! [ 12.23.09 ]

» NPR: The Best Debut Fiction of 2009. Fimoculous: A collection of Best Books of 2009 lists. (Part of his Best of 2009 list of lists.) Kottke: A collection of Best Books of the decade lists. (Part of his Best of the Noughties list of lists.) [ 12.18.09 ]

» Contrary to the stereotype of the harried worker spending hours each day travelling between the office and a home in the suburbs, a new survey shows that Americans have the second-shortest commute in the world - 16 minutes! - , after Canada. The chart neglects to indicate the average mode of transport in each country. It would be the car in the US, obviously. [ 12.16.09 ]

» The seven foods experts won't eat. The only surprise (and huge dismay) here is the tomatoes. (thanks, lizard!) / 1 Comments / [ 12.15.09 ]

» Since I was a child and first saw one, I've wanted my own bookplate, haven't you? These collections of Ex Libris Art have me thinking about it again. Pratt Libraries Flickr collection, Rachel (wildflower)'s Flickr collection, and Dark Roasted Blend's collection. Ignore the ads at the top of that last page, just scroll down to be inspired.

If you aspire to become a collector, educate yourself by reading Bookplate Junkie and the official blog of the American Society of Bookplate Collectors & Designers, Ex Libris Chronicle: The International Collector [ 12.14.09 ]

» Good Enough is the New Great is an interesting juxtaposition (and perhaps counterpoint) to Mr. Chapman's contention that eBooks represent a separate market from traditional publishing (linked below). (From the NYT 9th Annual Year in Ideas, via waxy) [ 12.11.09 ]

» A Brand, A Plan, A Channel: eBooks and Mass Market "We shouldn't make the mistake of assuming a growing new format will upend the entire industry (remember the fear concerning audiobooks?). The format will dictate the content and this makes for one of the most exciting shifts in the industry since the rise of mass-market paperbacks." - Ryan Chapman, Internet Marketing Manager, Macmillan. (via tra) [ 12.11.09 ]

» Reader's Advisor has compiled a Best of the "Best Books Lists" List.

And NPR has some suggestions for end-of-year reading and holiday giftgiving. A sampling: Best Young Adult Fiction for 2009, The 10 Best Cookbooks Of 2009, and Alan Cheuse's extremely varied Book Picks To Warm A Winter's Night. Bonus link: Urban fantasies for 2010. Update: Nancy Pearl's list of the best holiday books you've never heard of (and for all ages).

I would add The Help to any "Best Books of 2009" list. Please! If you have a must-read from this year (old or new) add it in comments. [ 12.10.09 ]

» Wow! From Lone Star College - Kingwood Library, American Cultural History: The 19th Century and American Cultural History: The Twentieth Century, with lots and lots of recommendations for books about each decade. Writers (and enthusisasts) start your engines! Here's a tiny sample:

1900-1910

FACTS about this decade.

• 76,000,000 Americans in 46 states (by the end of the decade.)
• Policeman arrests woman for smoking in public
• $46,000,000+ in the U.S. treasury
• 8,000 cars - 10 miles of paved roads
• 1900 - Auto deaths 96; lynchings 115
• San Francisco Earthquake took 700 lives and cost over $4,000,000 in damage
• Average worker made $12.98/week for 59 hours
• Life expectancy: 47.3 female, 46.3 male - 33.0 blacks

» I am testing to see if you can comment on this post. In the past, the system has been unable to recognize commenters once they logged in. Please comment if you can. If you can't, please email me at rebecca AT rebeccablood DOT net to let me know. / 15 Comments / [ 12.08.09 ]

» I know I've mentioned the time I spent with the Experimental Food Historians at Hampton Court Palace, and my temptation to become a home Experimental Food Historian in my spare time. Well, Sarah Lohman has made a hobby of doing just that - and it looks like big fun. Husband beware! (via se) [ 12.08.09 ]

» Cancer from the Kitchen? It may be the endocrine disruptors in plastics that are causing the rise in cancers.

Take breast cancer. One puzzle has been that most women living in Asia have low rates of breast cancer, but ethnic Asian women born and raised in the United States don't enjoy that benefit. At the symposium, Dr. Alisan Goldfarb, a surgeon specializing in breast cancer, pointed to a chart showing breast cancer rates by ethnicity.

"If an Asian woman moves to New York, her daughters will be in this column," she said, pointing to "whites." "It is something to do with the environment."

[ 12.07.09 ]

» Russell Davies on barely-games and the value (and ubiquity) of pretending. His piece make a nice counterpart, somehow, to the Aimee Mullins piece I linked Tuesday. (via waxy) [ 11.19.09 ]

» Jacques Pepin cooks a 5-course dinner for 6 - spending $24. No plan, he just buys what looks good and then improvises when he gets home to the kitchen. [ 11.18.09 ]

» Athlete Aimee Mullins on, among other things, reality, self-image, and imagination. Don't let the title put you off. This piece is mind-blowing, thought-provoking, and very, very interesting. (thanks, vinylrake!) [ 11.17.09 ]

» Can you imagine New York City and Tokyo after the ice caps have melted? Studio Lindfors has, and the images are among the most beautiful you will ever see. [ 11.16.09 ]

» Harriet Evans on the critics' reception and perception of male vs female writers. In short:

[B]ooks about young women are seen as frivolous and silly, while books about young men's lives that cover the same topics, are reviewed and debated, seen as valid and interesting contributions to the current social and media scene.

(via mamr) [ 11.13.09 ]

» Wisdom: the "work-to-glory ratio" and "product-plus-process" aspect of knitting. This applies equally to any of the hand crafts, including cooking. [ 11.12.09 ]

» Wow! Research Librarian Camille Cloutier has created a custom Google search for recipes, using her favorite recipe sources and aggregators. I've done a few searches, and the results are very promising. (via her recipe aggregators recommendations for Cool Tools) [ 11.11.09 ]

» The Empire State Building green initiative includes no solar panels and no green roof. Instead, building managers plan to reduce annual energy use by nearly 40 percent using low-tech methods such as improved insulation, and adding a coated film between the glass in window panes. [ 11.10.09 ]

» How does jello work? (via se) [ 11.06.09 ]

» If you haven't already seen them, don't miss this amazing series of pictures of the flooding in Venice last December. (via @ebertchigago) [ 11.05.09 ]

» From the American Bookseller's Association, 10 years of indie recommendations for November reading. (via ra) [ 11.04.09 ]

» So when is Twitter going to remove the 140 character limit from posts? At this point it's just vestigial, isn't it? [ 11.04.09 ]

» Jaw dropping.

As [Kaiser Permanente CEO George ] Halvorson explained, and academics and consultancies have repeatedly confirmed, if you leave everything else the same -- the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need -- but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.

Click through if only to see all the charts. (via rc3) [ 11.03.09 ]

» Rats fed unlimited amounts of junk food exhibit the same behaviors as herion addicts, a new study shows. After just five days on the junk food diet, rats ate twice as many calories as rats in the control group, showed a reduction in their pleasure centers, and were willing to undergo electric shocks while they ate. Returned to a healthy diet, the rats refused to eat for two weeks. [ 11.02.09 ]

» Jish is correct. [ 10.30.09 ]

» The Colbert Report, nominally a review of Jacob Soll's The Information Master, is a fascinating study on post-Gutenberg information overload, ancient information management, and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's chief minister, whose goal was to collect and hoard "all knowledge, formal and practical, [to] be used together in one archival system to understand and master the material world." (via mamr) [ 10.16.09 ]

» Reflections on FDR's public option: government-sponsored electrical service for rural America.

Investor-owned utilities, who rejected the farmers for years, wanted them dearly once the competition showed up. They fought in legislatures and courts and newspapers to keep the Rural Electric Coops from lighting the back roads.

And omigawd were [the coops] evil. Socialistic, un-American, undermining the very fabric of democracy. Legislators, businessmen, members of Congress, editorial page editors all over the country railed at the specter of Big Government shouldering into private enterprise, when everyone knew Government couldn't do it right.

Most infuriating of all, government did it right. The cooperatives became the pricing yardstick for electrical power. Investor-owned utilities had to lower their rates to compete.

[ 10.15.09 ]

» Oooh! The National Book Awards finalists. (via tra) [ 10.14.09 ]

» Your English teachers probably taught you about metaphor as an advanced technique used by writers to build depth into their work. But it turns out our very thinking is based on our physicality--and our physical enviroment colors our perceptions.

Our instinctive, literal-minded metaphorizing can make us vulnerable to what seem like simple tweaks to our physical environment, with ramifications for everything from how we build polling booths to how we sell cereal. And at a broader level it reveals just how much the human body, in all its particularity, shapes the mind, suggesting that much of what we think of as abstract reasoning is in fact a sometimes awkward piggybacking onto the mental tools we have developed to govern our body's interactions with its physical environment. Put another way, metaphors reveal the extent to which we think with our bodies.

[ 10.14.09 ]

» Why did the Large Hadron Collider fail? To save us from a terrible fate. It's not a crackpot theory unless you consider the man who founded string theory to be a lightweight. Seriously, this is my favorite science story of all time. [ 10.13.09 ]

» The Naked Chef's new crusade. I'm impressed with his lack of ideological absolutism. Krispy Kreme doughnuts? "They're a treat, there to be loved." A 15-pound burger? "It tasted good." And of course, I'm impressed with his decision to use his power for good. He's quite a guy, really. [ 10.13.09 ]

» NPR: Boy steals book; librarian changes life. [ 10.12.09 ]

» Kristof: If Congress fails to reform healthcare, let them go without insurance. The last time I was the Netherlands, a native told me the Dutch had enacted universal healthcare out of enlightened self-interest. They realized that the uninsured poor were more likely to be struck by virulent diseases, which they then might pass onto the well-to-do. [ 10.09.09 ]

» "I'm beginning to believe that the best way to achieve true and lasting healthcare reform is to just get out of the way and let Baby Boomer women revolutionize healthcare." - Intel's Eric Dishman on the profound disconnect between the issues that confront caregivers and the people who design technologies and policies intended to support them. [ 10.09.09 ]

» NASA is about to crash a rocket into the moon. No, really. If you live west of the Mississippi, you can watch from your backyard. (Twitter feed here.) [ 10.08.09 ]

» Alex Payne nails San Francisco, though I think he over-rates the food and the quirkiness. (To be fair, in both respects I'm sure I've been spoiled by having lived where - and how - I have.) But mostly he's right. It took me a little while to realized that while San Francisco is politically liberal, and while it prides itself on embracing a proscribed set of "fringe elements" (though heaven forfend if your eccentricity isn't included in the canon), it's actually socially conservative. But to echo Alex - if you've never lived in a major city before, you'll probably like it here. (thanks, jjg!) [ 10.07.09 ]

» A graphic novel about higher mathematics? Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. [ 10.05.09 ]

» Well, speaking as a Californian, we sure could use the money. Remember to pick either a state, or a city. (via bittman) [ 10.02.09 ]

» Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bindoff. (via TK) [ 10.02.09 ]

» Po Bronsen's new book Nurtureshock argues that praising children's innate ability (you're smart, atheletic, nice, etc) doesn't give them more confidence - it makes them less confident, and more afraid of failure.

Blackwell split her kids into two groups for an eight-session workshop.[...] It didn't take long. The teachers who hadn't known which students had been assigned to which workshop could pick out the students who had been taught that intelligence can be developed. They improved their study habits and grades. In a single semester, Blackwell reversed the students' longtime trend of decreasing math grades.

The only difference between the control group and the test group were two lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but a single idea: that the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workout makes you smarter. That alone improved their math scores.

[ 10.01.09 ]

» Neuroscience professor Lise Eliot confirms what I've suspected for years: gender-biased behavior is the result of physical differences shaped by environmental factors.

When it comes to toy preference, you see some of the biggest differences in the ways parents respond when their kid picks up the "wrong" toy -- especially when a boy picks up a girl toy. Children internalize that. They know darn well what mom and dad think about the toy they're playing with. There is an initial biological bias toward these different toys, but then it's very strongly reinforced socially. Studies show peers have a shaping influence. Certainly by age 3, children will pick the socially appropriate toy.

Instead of this ideal of raising a gender-neutral child, shouldn't parents be focused on raising children who have equally positive attitudes toward "maleness" and "femaleness"? [ 09.30.09 ]

» Award winning author Kim Stanley Robinson says the Booker Prize is discriminating against science fiction authors. He has a list of the authors who should have won, too.

"When it came to literature, [Virginia Woolf] had no prejudices. She read widely and her judgment was superb. And so I am confident that if she were reading today, she would be reading science fiction along with everything else. And she would still be 'greatly interested, and elated too' - because British science fiction is now in a golden age... [B]ut there are no Woolfs on [the Booker Prize] juries, and so they judge in ignorance and give their awards to what usually turn out to be historical novels." - Kim Stanley Robinson

[ 09.29.09 ]

» NYT: Raising Steaks

In 1950, the editor Judith Jones rescued Anne Frank's diary from the reject pile. Ten years later, she championed a cookbook no other publisher would touch and named it "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," the first of many seminal culinary titles that she shepherded. At 85, she still works as a senior editor and vice president of Knopf. But every girl needs a hobby. So three years ago, she started raising cattle.

[ 09.28.09 ]