stray bullets

Life in Somalia's pirate town This is a more elaborate and lucrative operation than you might imagine. Quite the cottage industry they have going on there, complete with a support system and an economy of its own.

Thanks for the advice on Josh I wanted to thank all of you who took the time to email me with your comments on how best to deal with Josh. They were so good, I thought I would share a few of them with everyone. Including the email addresses of those who were bold enough to use real email addresses. Josh realizes his comments were wrong, he understands why people are upset. He knows he has made a mistake, has apologized and will work with us. Beyond that, its a private issue. What about the people who gave me the following advice? Mark Cuban posts some of the emails he received in reference to the Josh Howard situation, complete with addies.

The future of online video The Official Google Blog weighs in. In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. Even more people will have the opportunity to record and share even more video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world. (via)

Journalist retraces the steps of the original 'Zen' author in an engrossing tale Re-enacting the journey from Minneapolis to San Francisco chronicled by Pirsig in his cult classic, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," Mark Richardson digs deep to unearth the motives behind his tormented mentor's search for quality while embarking on a search of his own. (via)

Deletionpedia is an archive of about 63,555 pages which have been deleted from the English-language Wikipedia. Deletionpedia is not a wiki: you cannot edit the pages uploaded here. An automated bot uploads pages as they are deleted from Wikipedia.

Frank Deford: Blemish, Anyone? Bets Show Dark Side Of Tennis (audio and text) In the many years I covered tennis, I heard it all: who was pulling the strings, who was double-dealing, who was taking drugs, who was sleeping with whom. But for all the genial corruption, never did I hear — or know anyone else who heard — that some player fixed a match for money, until Internet betting arrived a few years ago. And, I'll bet you didn't know that Humphrey Bogart was the first person to say "Tennis anyone?"

also:
Britain's luckiest man cheated death 14 times
What's new at the Internet Archive
Personality variation by region (USA) (maps) (via)

stray bullets

A New Addiction: Internet Junkies While compulsive gambling is only beginning to be addressed by mental health professionals, they must now face a new affliction: Internet addiction. This is news?

Judge: Copyright owners must consider 'fair use' A federal judge on Wednesday gave more weight to the concept of "fair use" when he threw a lifeline to a Pennsylvania mother's lawsuit against Universal Music. The judge refused to dismiss Stephanie Lenz's suit claiming that Universal abused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act when it issued a takedown notice to YouTube over a 30-second video of Lenz's baby dancing to a Prince song. Right on. (via)

Brightest gamma-ray burst was aimed at Earth Astronomers think they know what caused the brightest ever gamma-ray burst, which was observed in March: a tightly beamed jet of matter that happened to be aimed almost directly at Earth. Kinda strange.

Benjamin Franklin: City Slicker So when Franklin, at 17, ran out on his printing indentures (a serious felony) and fled from Boston to Philadelphia, he was hardly the “poor ignorant boy” he purported to be. (via)

also:
The Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs
The uncanny valley: why almost-human-looking robots scare people more than mechanical-looking robots
H.P. Lovecraft Vintage Fonts (via)
World Names Profiler (enter your surname) (via)

viddy:
Secret Military Technology On 60 Minutes, in an interview with Scott Pelley, reporter Bob Woodward claimed that the U.S. military has a new secret technique that's so revolutionary, it's on par with the tank and the airplane. Schneier takes a stab and the commenters take the piss.
Large Hadron Collider: Peter Higgs interview
William S. Burroughs demonstrates his famous literary "cut-ups"
Early demonstration of the Mellotron
Chinese Popeye (via Nick's Brown Bag)

Algorithm determines 'ideal' VP candidates for Obama, McCain

Surprisingly, it's the same person for both.

stray bullets

Green pools and upscale decay in California (via); Ralph Steadman answers your questions; Frank Deford suggests that Water-Thirsty Golf Courses Need to Go Green; and Dutch statisticians have established that Friday the 13th is actually safer than an average Friday.

Lagniappe: SecretTweet: anonymous Twitter posting; The Speed Trap Exchange (via); William S. Burroughs - The Cut Ups (ht); Watch a 500,000 volt electrical arc

The safest seat on a plane is...

Popular Mechanics:

Myth: It doesn't matter where you sit...

For several weeks, we pored over reports filed by NTSB crash investigators, and studied seating charts that showed where each passenger sat and whether they lived or died. We then calculated the average fore-and-aft seating position of both survivors and fatalities for each crash.

Nervous about flying? (and I mean the actual flying part, not the gate-rape part) You might want to read this before your next trip. Or maybe not.

via Flowing Data
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Visualizing Povertyville and Slumtown

Puts it all into plain perspective, doesn't it?

We live in rarefied elevations here in America... and Europe... and Japan... etc. etc...

YouTube
via FlowingData

Sunday Excursions: Monday Morning Edition

It's not really Monday until the sun comes up...
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Disgruntled? Maybe you should move to place where the grass is green and the girls are gruntled. Careerbuilder.com's National Gruntledness Index might be of help. Click on the states and cities to see ratings for various career fields.

It looks like Savannah workers are fairly gruntled. They nailed the low rating for the restaurant field, which is painfully obvious if you're familiar with the food culture here.

via FlowingData
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Are you an infovore? Chances are, if you're reading this, you are.

Some hard science on Why We're Powerless to Resist Grazing on Endless Web Data.

via Lunch over IP
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When I tire of prowling the internet for primal opioid satisfaction, I like to curl up with some brain-warping specualtion about life, the universe and seven-dimensional branes.

A good source of this can found by Imagining the Tenth Dimension. Rob Bryanton guides us through the realms of time and space and those elusive extra-dimensional realities. Rob is a really cool guy and he's really into this stuff. His enthusiasm is contagious.
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Things For Sale That I Will Mail To You

Normally, I might find this kind of thing to be a bit hokey, but I found this site oddly touching.

via Lined & Unlined
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And last, but not least, UT friendly Alan Evil posted an excellent linkdump of his morning coffee funnies. I'm glad to see that the internet has helped to keep this medium alive and relevant. We might be able to do without newspapers, but what would we do without the comics?
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Be seeing you...