Stream of Marknessness

foomandoonian: Planes or Volcano? #ashtag I was curious about...

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 14:11:31 +0100

foomandoonian:

Planes or Volcano? #ashtag

I was curious about this actually, good to see someone else has done the work so I don’t have to!

Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Company The perfect...

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:58:06 +0100

Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Company

The perfect antidote to the screaming, stamping oafs who live next door.

foomandoonian: Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions....

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:09:42 +0100

foomandoonian:

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions. Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can — and should — be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.

foomandoonian: howies BBC tshirt I ordered this shirt last...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:26:48 +0000

foomandoonian:

howies BBC tshirt

I ordered this shirt last week.

Slightly frivolous, I admit.

"I like the notion of this blunt technological camouflage, where it looks as if you’re doing..."

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:35:20 +0000

“I like the notion of this blunt technological camouflage, where it looks as if you’re doing one thing while you’re doing the exact opposite. Here’s another idea. Modern 3D cinema technology works by ensuring your left eye sees one image while your right sees another. But they could, presumably, issue one pair of specs comprising two left-eye lenses (for children to wear), and another with two right-eye lenses (for adults). This would make it possible for parents to take their offspring to the cinema and watch two entirely different films at the same time. So while the kiddywinks are being placated by an animated CGI doodle about rabbits entering the Winter Olympics or something, their parents will be bearing witness to some apocalyptically degrading pornography. The tricky thing would be making the soundtracks match. Those cartoon rabbits would have to spend a lot of time slapping their bellies and moaning.”

- Charlie Brooker | Why I’m an ebook convert | Comment is free | The Guardian

Apparently my Tumblr blog is now 3 years old. I imagine the...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:56:58 +0000

Apparently my Tumblr blog is now 3 years old. I imagine the first two years were probably more interesting (the 2nd year was almost certainly the highlight) but it’s (sort of) still going, so thanks for all the cards and presents.

Oh, no cards and presents? Well then, your penalty for not sending anything is reading this disgustingly and totally undeservedly self-congratulatory post.

I hope you’ve learnt your lesson.

Massive Attack’s new single Paradise Circus is awesome,...

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:04:00 +0000

Massive Attack’s new single Paradise Circus is awesome, and is (sadly) much better than anything else on Heligoland. Although the stuff after it is good too. It’s one of the most back-heavy albums I think I’ve ever heard.

Chopsticks for salad

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:36:49 +0000

saltandfat:

Yesterday I made spaghetti with tomato/parmesan sauce for lunch, and I added a simple salad to the mix.

But wait - what are chopsticks, of all things, doing in my bowl? Prepare to have your mind blown.

You see, whatever you think of chopsticks’ utility as carriers of dumplings, stir fry, rice, noodles, or sushi (I find them decent only at handling the first one), allow me to suggest that they are in fact the perfect utensil for eating salad. And as far as I’ve traveled and dined, I have not seen anyone capitalize on this.

Think about it - salad usually consists of mostly flat, folded-in leaves arranged in a heap. The top of that heap is somewhat forkable, though it’s hard to apply pressure without lifting up either no leaves or all of them. Poking flat objects just isn’t optimal.

Enter the chopsticks, with their power to compress leaves and use the friction of the resulting random shape to their advantage. No more awkward pulling of forked-through leaves. No more chasing the last few bits of lettuce around the bowl. Point and pinch, and enjoy.

This seems like a pretty good idea!

flidby: Help get “The Peter Serafinowicz Show” DVD to No.1! All...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:31:36 +0000

flidby:

Help get “The Peter Serafinowicz Show” DVD to No.1!

All you have to do is go in to your local HMV and put our DVD in the No. 1 spot on their chart shelf.

You don’t even have to buy it!

A cunning new approach to self-promotion!

jonnyathan: Torn apart by Lisa, not noticing it stopped...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:34:21 +0000

jonnyathan:

Torn apart by Lisa, not noticing it stopped raining, putting baby in the corner and having you at ‘hello’

Sadly not leaving your stupid comments in your pocket

The 100 Cheesiest Movie Quotes of All Time (via hh1edits)

“Let off some steam, Bennett” is probably my favourite line of all time.

"Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual..."

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:26:09 +0000

“Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.”

- BBC News - Why do people often vote against their own interests?

This rings true for me, and the UK is in danger of following the bad example set by the US.

foomandoonian: Ice age Rhondda I want so much to believe this...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:30:19 +0000

foomandoonian:

Ice age Rhondda

I want so much to believe this is real. So I will.

juliaheffernan: Wes Anderson’s stop motion acceptance speech...

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:56:25 +0000

juliaheffernan:

Wes Anderson’s stop motion acceptance speech for his NBR award.

He should probably get another award for the best acceptance speech ever.

"You're pricing the poor out of the skies!"

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:28:00 +0000

I often hear this in response to arguments that the financial cost of flying should be more aligned to the environmental cost. It doesn’t really make any sense.

It’s a shame that poor people wouldn’t be able to fly to Spain for their holidays, but it’s also a shame that I can’t add an indulgence in lobsters and champagne to my daily routine. The sad fact of the matter is that we are all, to varying degrees, limited in what we can do by financial constraints.

Expensive things are generally expensive for a reason!

"I tell people that if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it. The very definition of ‘news’ is..."

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:15:08 +0000

“I tell people that if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it. The very definition of ‘news’ is ‘something that hardly ever happens.’ It’s when something isn’t in the news, when it’s so common that it’s no longer news — car crashes, domestic violence — that you should start worrying.”

- Bruce Schneier (via charliepark) (via marco)

"The cumulative devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar was such that a stack of..."

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:24:06 +0000

“The cumulative devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar was such that a stack of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (26 zeros) two dollar bills (if they were printed) in the peak hyperinflation would have be needed to equal in value what a single original Zimbabwe two-dollar bill of 1978 had been worth. Such a pile of bills literally would be light years high, stretching from the Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy.”

- The enormity of Zimbabwe’s inflation

Amazing. I find it hard to believe anyone is still counting.

rocketboom: gleuch: A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:08:28 +0000

rocketboom:

gleuch:

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis. So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production.

from The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs

I just found this. Note that the oil curve doesn’t quite fit with the music quality one, in fact it implies that rock music quality causes oil production, not the other way round. Work that one out…

Fox News Makes the Best Pie Chart. Ever. It’s a sad...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Fox News Makes the Best Pie Chart. Ever.

It’s a sad indictment of the kind of garbage that Fox News and its ilk peddle that I’m not sure whether or not this is a genuine mistake, or an attempt to push the gullibility of its audience to new levels and convince them that ‘per cent’ actually means ‘out of 193’.

I don’t want to be perceived as unfairly criticising ‘the right’ or anything, and posting this picture looks like a cheap shot, but it raises an ugly point: that people on that side of the political spectrum seem to be living on another planet. Most of this kind of thing happens on the other side of the Atlantic as in this example, but this kind of sensationalist bullshit ‘journalism’ is becoming increasingly apparent in the UK too.

I don’t imagine for a minute that they are stupid enough to believe the things they say, sadly though, a lot of people are.

Unfortunately these are people who have cast aside the shackles of reason, which is a) why they believe the most outlandish arguments, and b) why you cannot change their minds.

"A technique that is also being used here is known as the Hegelian Dialectic, otherwise know in this..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:15:07 +0000

“A technique that is also being used here is known as the Hegelian Dialectic, otherwise know in this case as Crisis-Reaction-Solution. It’s a technique by which an agenda can be forced through at a rapid pace. Create a crisis, then after our reaction, offer the solution. The solution this time is near dictatorial financial powers to be given to the IMF. The ultimate aim is to create a new Bank Of The World that we will pay our Carbon taxes directly to, that’s where the whole ‘man made’ Global warming scam comes in. The Bank of the world will form the basis of the One World Government.”

- An excerpt from Jim Corr (of ‘the Corrs’ fame) on the Financial Crisis on his completely batty website.

He’s totally nuts!

Apple killing Atom support, dreams of netbook hackintoshers in next Snow Leopard release? I’m...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:06:11 +0000

Apple killing Atom support, dreams of netbook hackintoshers in next Snow Leopard release?

I’m not sure what they have to gain from doing this, so I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that they probably won’t.

Think about it, allowing geeks to use a somewhat crippled version of Mac OS X is a great way of selling Macs.