Ah, so true, and kinda sad.

June 24, 2012:


COOLNESS COMING TOMORROW

Interesting thoughts about work, income, and leisure

Economics: Whatever happened to Keynes' 15-hour working week? asks Larry Elliott | Business | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/01/economics

(via Instapaper)

I've been thinking an awful lot about this issue this year

Gregory Clark -- As Economic Disparity Grows, Higher Taxes May Be Only Solution
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702043.html

(via Instapaper)

Bookmarks for 2012-06-21

OMBRE, "Cara Falsa" by asthmatickitty on SoundCloud – Create, record and share your sounds for free
OMBRE, "Cara Falsa" A beautiful thing happened when Asthmatic Kitty artists Helado Negro and Julianna Barwick first met: they got to know each other. The result, a collaborative band, OMBRE, and a brand-new full-length record, Believe You Me. Recorded as the newly acquainted pair were just becoming friends, OMBRE shows Barwick's clear, high harmonies and church choir sensibilities melding well with Helado Negro's rustic-Latin-psyche-folk meets big-city-summer-blockparty. Tracks simmer with the mellow chording of nylon string guitars, bubbling electronics, and the comely pluck of harps; they rise high and mountainous with Miles Davis-y trumpet and then disappear altogether. There's a very old school jazzy soundtrack air to these sessions. (An inspiration to the sessions was Clu Gulager's 1969 film A Day With the Boys and Egberto Gismonti's fantastic late-'60s compositional jazz.) It has the feel of a hot summer day in Brooklyn, 1971, the sun through the tenements and everyone sitting in the shade watching the world drift by. Believe You Me is set for release on Asthmatic Kitty Records on August 21, 2012. brooklyn, juliannabariwck, heladonegro
(tags:music ifttt soundcloud )

Article: The Fall of the Creative Class

[Did Richard Florida get it all wrong? -egg]

The Fall of the Creative Class
http://thirtytwomag.com/2012/06/the-fall-of-thecreative-class/

(via Instapaper)

Article: Disorganised but effective: how technology lowers transaction costs | Technology | guardian.co.uk

[Some very interesting thoughts about emerging possibilities of (dis)organization. -egg]

Disorganised but effective: how technology lowers transaction costs | Technology | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/21/how-technology-lowers-transaction-costs?cat=technology&type=article

(via Instapaper)

The Battle Over Climate Science

The Battle Over Climate Science: Tom Clynes |
Popular Science |
June 2012

Inside the increasingly hostile global warming debate.
[full story]

Lego Turing machine

Lego Turing machine:



Some more wonderments in honor of the Alan Turing centenary: Jeroen van den Bos and Davy Landman from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam have created a working Turing machine out of Lego. It is both inspired and an inspiration:

Our LEGO Turing machine uses a tape based on a classic interpretation of computer memory: switches. Additionally, it uses a light sensor to determine the value of a switch: if the switch is on, the sensor will see the black colour of the switch's surface. But if it is turned off, the sensor will see the white colour of the LEGO beam, making it possible to distinguish between the states. Finally, a rotating beam mounted above the tape can flip the switch in both directions.

Alan Turing's original model has an infinite tape, but LEGO had a slight problem supplying infinite bricks. So we chose to fix our tape size to 32 positions.

A Turing Machine built using LEGO
In honor of the Alan Turing year 2012

I have now no further use for a birthday

[omg the slightly racist cuteness. -egg]
I have now no further use for a birthday:



In 1891, 8 years after his classic novel, Treasure Island, was first published in book-form, author Robert Louis Stevenson learned that the 12-year-old daughter of Henry Clay Ide — then U. S. Commissioner to Samoa, where Stevenson lived — was unhappy that her birthday fell on Christmas Day. Stevenson immediately hatched a charming plan, and soon sent the following letter and accompanying "legal" document to the family — a document in which he transferred the rights to his own birthday to young Annie. 



(Source: Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson; Image: Robert Louis Stevenson, via The Guardian.)

19 June 1891



Dear Mr Ide,



Herewith please find the DOCUMENT which I trust will prove sufficient in law. It seems to me very attractive in its eclecticism; Scots, English and Roman law phrases are all indifferently introduced and a quotation from the works of Haynes Bayly can hardly fail to attract the indulgence of the Bench.



Yours very truly,



Robert Louis Stevenson



--------------------



[Enclosure]



I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar, author of The Master of Ballantrae and Moral Emblems, stuck civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the Palace and Plantation known as Vailima in the island of Upolu, Samoa, a British Subject, being in sound mind and pretty well I thank you in body:



In consideration that Miss A. H. Ide, daughter of H. C. Ide, in the town of St Johnsbury, in the County of Caledonia, in the State of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is therefore, out of all justice, denied the consolation and profit of a Proper Birthday;



And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained an age when O, we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any description;



And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of the said A. H. Ide, and found him about as white a Land Commissioner as I require;



Have transferred, and do hereby transfer to the said A. H. Ide, All and Whole of my rights and privileges in the 13th day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said A. H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats and receipt of gifts, compliments and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors;



And I direct the said A. H. Ide to add to her said name of A. H. Ide the name Louisa - at least in private; and I charge her to use my said birthday with moderation and humanity, et tamquam bona filia familiae, the said birthday not being so young as it once was and having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember;



And in case the said A. H. Ide shall neglect or contravene either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my rights in the said birthday to the President of the United States of America for the time being.



In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this 19th day of June in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one.



[Seal]



Robert Louis Stevenson

I.P.D.



Witness: Lloyd Osbourne

Witness: Harold Watts

---

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The Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment

[Here's a writer I really like doing a totally solid post on lossy audio compression and mp3 bitrates. -egg]

The Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment:
Lately I've been trying to rid my life of as many physical artifacts as possible. I'm with Merlin Mann on CDs:



Although I'd extend that line of thinking to DVDs as well. The death of physical media has some definite downsides, but after owning certain movies once on VHS, then on DVD, and finally on Blu-Ray, I think I'm now at peace with the idea of not owning any physical media ever again, if I can help it.

My current strategy of wishing my physical media collection into a cornfield involves shipping all our DVDs to Second Spin via media mail, and paying our nephew $1 per CD to rip our CD collection using Exact Audio Copy and LAME as a summer project. The point of this exercise is absolutely not piracy; I have no interest in keeping both digital and physical copies of the media I paid for the privilege of owningtemporarily licensing. Note that I didn't bother ripping any of the DVDs because I hardly ever watched them; mostly they just collected dust. But I continue to love music and listen to my music collection on a daily basis. I'll donate all the ripped CDs to some charity or library, and if I can't pull that off, I'll just destroy them outright. Stupid atoms!

CDs, unlike DVDs or even Blu-Rays, are considered reference quality. That is, the uncompressed digital audio data contained on a CD is a nearly perfect representation of the original studio master, for most reasonable people's interpretation of "perfect", at least back in 1980. So if you paid for a CD, you might be worried that ripping it to a compressed digital audio format would result in an inferior listening experience.

I'm not exactly an audiophile, but I like to think I have pretty good ears. I've recommended buying $200+ headphones and headphone amps for quite a while now. By the way: still a good investment! Go do it! Anyhow, previous research and my own experiments led me to write Getting the Best Bang for Your Byte seven years ago. I concluded that nobody could really hear the difference between a raw CD track and an MP3 using a decent encoder at a variable bit rate averaging around 160kbps. Any bit rate higher than that was just wasting space on your device and your bandwidth for no rational reason. So-called "high resolution audio" was recently thoroughly debunked for very similar reasons.

Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young's group several months ago.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement.

The authors of LAME must have agreed with me, because the typical, standard, recommended, default way of encoding any old audio input to MP3 …

lame --preset standard "cd-track-raw.wav" "cd-track-encoded.mp3"

… now produces variable bit rate MP3 tracks at a bitrate of around 192kbps on average.



(Going down one level to the "medium" preset produces nearly exactly 160kbps average, my 2005 recommendation on the nose.)

Encoders have only gotten better since the good old days of 2005. Given the many orders of magnitude improvement in performance and storage since then, I'm totally comfortable with throwing an additional 32kbps in there, going from 160kbps average to 192kbps average just to be totally safe. That's still a miniscule file size compared to the enormous amount of data required for mythical, aurally perfect raw audio. For a particular 4 minute and 56 second music track, that'd be:

Uncompressed raw CD format	51 mb
Lossless FLAC compression	36 mb
LAME insane encoded MP3 (320kbps)	11.6 mb
LAME standard encoded MP3 (192kbps avg)	7.1 mb

Ripping to uncompressed audio is a non-starter. I don't care how much of an ultra audio quality nerd you are, spending 7× or 5× the bandwidth and storage for completely inaudible "quality" improvements is a dagger directly in the heart of this efficiency-loving nerd, at least. Maybe if you're planning to do a lot of remixing and manipulation it might make sense to retain the raw source audio, but for typical listening, never.

The difference between the 320kbps track and the 192kbps track is more rational to argue about. But it's still 1.6 times the size. Yes, we have tons more bandwidth and storage and power today, but storage space on your mobile device will never be free, nor will bandwidth or storage in the cloud, where I think most of this stuff should ultimately reside. And all other things being equal, wouldn't you rather be able to fit 200 songs on your device instead of 100? Wouldn't you rather be able to download 10 tracks in the same time instead of 5? Efficiency, that's where it's at. Particularly when people with dog's ears wouldn't even be able to hear the difference.

But Wait, I Have Dog Ears

Of course you do. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Personally, I think you're a human being full of crap, but let's drop some science on this and see if you can prove it.



When someone tells me "Dudes, come on, let's steer clear of the worst song ever written!", I say challenge accepted. Behold The Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment!

As proposed on our very own Audio and Video Production Stack Exchange, we're going to do a blind test of the same 2 minute excerpt of a particular rock audio track at a few different bitrates, ranging from 128kbps CBR MP3 all the way up to raw uncompressed CD audio. Each sample was encoded (if necessary), then exported to WAV so they all have the same file size. Can you tell the difference between any of these audio samples using just your ears?

1. Listen to each two minute audio sample

Limburger

Cheddar

Gouda

Brie

Feta

2. Rate each sample for encoding quality

Once you've given each audio sample a listen – with only your ears please, not analysis software – fill out this brief form and rate each audio sample from 1 to 5 on encoding quality, where one represents worst and five represents flawless.

Yes, it would be better to use a variety of different audio samples, like SoundExpert does, but I don't have time to do that. Anyway, if the difference in encoding bitrate quality is as profound as certain vocal elements of the community would have you believe it is, that difference should be audible in any music track. To those who might argue that I am trolling audiophiles into listening to one of the worst-slash-best rock songs of all time … over and over and over … to prove a point … I say, how dare you impugn my honor in this manner, sir. How dare you!

I wasn't comfortable making my generous TypePad hosts suffer through the bandwidth demands of multiple 16 megabyte audio samples, so this was a fun opportunity to exercise my long dormant Amazon S3 account, and test out Amazon's on-demand CloudFront CDN. I hope I'm not rubbing any copyright holders the wrong way with this test; I just used a song excerpt for science, man! I'll pull the files entirely after a few weeks just to be sure.

You'll get no argument from me that the old standby of 128kbps constant bit rate encoding is not adequate for most music, even today, and you should be able to hear that in this test. But I also maintain that virtually nobody can reliably tell the difference between a 160kbps variable bit rate MP3 and the raw CD audio, much less 192kbps. If you'd like to prove me wrong, this is your big chance. Like the announcer in Smash TV, I say good luck – you're gonna need it.

So which is it – are you a dog or a man? Give the samples a listen, then rate them. I'll post the results of this experiment in a few days.

[advertisement] Hiring developers? Post your open positions with Stack Overflow Careers and reach over 20MM awesome devs already on Stack Overflow. Create your satisfaction-guaranteed job listing today!

Giant Fish Sculptures Made from Discarded Plastic Bottles in Rio

Giant Fish Sculptures Made from Discarded Plastic Bottles in Rio:





As part of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) an enormous outdoor installation of fish was constructed using discarded plastic bottles on Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sculptures are illuminated from the inside at night creating a pretty spectacular light show. Love this. See much more over on this Rio+20 Flicker set. (via hungeree and razor shapes)

ah teh lulz

June 21, 2012:


Whee!

Watercolor animation of Blade Runner

Watercolor animation of Blade Runner:


Swedish artist Anders Ramsell animated 3,285 watercolor paintings to recreate this sequence from Blade Runner. "Blade Runner Aquarelle Edition, Part 1 (Teaser)"

G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces

G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces:
G4S, the scandal-haunted private security firm, is one of the world's largest companies, with 657,000 staff. It's about to get bigger, according to G4S's UK/Africa chief David Taylor-Smith, who predicts that the UK's police forces will begin to privatize, turning duties over from public employees (who are, theoretically, accountable to the public) to private mercenaries and security staff, who will be accountable only to G4S's shareholders.
Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis report in The Guardian.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: "We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be."

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was "a frightening prospect". Peter Allenson, national officer, said: "This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces

G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces:
G4S, the scandal-haunted private security firm, is one of the world's largest companies, with 657,000 staff. It's about to get bigger, according to G4S's UK/Africa chief David Taylor-Smith, who predicts that the UK's police forces will begin to privatize, turning duties over from public employees (who are, theoretically, accountable to the public) to private mercenaries and security staff, who will be accountable only to G4S's shareholders.
Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis report in The Guardian.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: "We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be."

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was "a frightening prospect". Peter Allenson, national officer, said: "This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

Article: What Paper Means In Prison | The Awl

What Paper Means In Prison | The Awl
http://www.theawl.com/2012/06/paper-in-prison

(via Instapaper)

Digitally Assembled Paintings by Russ Mills

Digitally Assembled Paintings by Russ Mills:






Artist Russ Mills creates these astonishing images using a wide variety of traditional methods including painting and drawing with ink and pencil, but also utilizing scanned textures including splotches of paint (or “painting disasters” as he calls them) as well as photography. The resulting paintings are sparse in color but seem to contain explosive amounts of energy as displayed in the rough brushes of paint and the almost perfectly manic pencil strokes. Of his work Mills says:

My work dwells in a netherworld between urban fine art and contemporary graphics, a collision of real and digital media it is primarily illustration based with a firm foundation in drawing, I focus mainly on the human form particularly the face, interweaving elements from the animal kingdom often reflecting the absurdity of human nature.

You can see many more paintings on Behance and limited edition prints are available in his shop.

Article: Why Republicans Oppose the Individual Health-Care Mandate : The New Yorker

[A worrying perspective on the current state of the political process in the US. -egg]

Why Republicans Oppose the Individual Health-Care Mandate : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/25/120625fa_fact_klein

(via Instapaper)

If politics in Game of Thrones featured attack ads

If politics in Game of Thrones featured attack ads:


Mike Mechanic from Mother Jones sez, "So, basically, the folks in our DC office were sitting around shooting the shit, and someone asked: What would it be like if they had Super-PACs in Westeros? Well, it turns out somebody knew somebody who knew someone, which allowed us to professionally produce these 'Game of Thrones Super-PAC Attack Ads.'"


Game of Thrones Attack Ads

Article: Studies of Human Microbiome Yield New Insights - NYTimes.com

[YES!! So amazing and important. Big ups to Bruce Sterling, who was on the leading edge of foreseeing this stuff (in _Tomorrow Now_). -egg]

Studies of Human Microbiome Yield New Insights - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/science/studies-of-human-microbiome-yield-new-insights.html?_r=1&hp

(via Instapaper)

Switzerland is one gigantic booby-trap

Switzerland is one gigantic booby-trap:

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG has been exploring the bizarre world of Swiss self-destructing infrastructure, documented in La Place de la Concorde Suisse, John McPhee's "rich, journalistic study of the Swiss Army's role in Swiss society." It turns out that the Swiss Army specifies that bridges, hillsides, and tunnels need to be designed so that they can be remotely destroyed in the event of societal collapse, pan-European war, or invasion. Meanwhile, underground parking garages (and some tunnels) are designed to be sealed off as airtight nuclear bunkers.

To interrupt the utility of bridges, tunnels, highways, railroads, Switzerland has established three thousand points of demolition. That is the number officially printed. It has been suggested to me that to approximate a true figure a reader ought to multiply by two. Where a highway bridge crosses a railroad, a segment of the bridge is programmed to drop on the railroad. Primacord fuses are built into the bridge. Hidden artillery is in place on either side, set to prevent the enemy from clearing or repairing the damage...

There are also hollow mountains! Booby-trapped cliff-faces!

Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them. There are weapons and soldiers under barns. There are cannons inside pretty houses. Where Swiss highways happen to run on narrow ground between the edges of lakes and to the bottoms of cliffs, man-made rockslides are ready to slide...

The impending self-demolition of the country is "routinely practiced," McPhee writes. "Often, in such assignments, the civilian engineer who created the bridge will, in his capacity as a military officer, be given the task of planning its destruction."

Various forms of lithic disguise

(Thanks, @MagicPeaceLove!)

Article: Confessions of a Non–Serial Killer - Michael O’Hare

[He handles it more gracefully than I would...-egg]

Confessions of a Non–Serial Killer - Michael O'Hare
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0905.ohare.html

(via Instapaper)

Automated rubegoldbergian postcard-writing machine in a suitcase

[So. Hot. -egg]
Automated rubegoldbergian postcard-writing machine in a suitcase:
Melvin the Mini Machine from HEYHEYHEY on Vimeo.
Melvin the Machine's latest iteration is a rubegoldbergian automatic post-card-writing machine that is intended to travel the world, penning brief postcards and firing them out:

Conveniently built in two old suitcases, Melvin the Mini Machine is a Rube Goldberg machine specifically designed to travel the world. Each time Melvin fully completes a run, he ‘signs’ a postcard and sticks a stamp to it - making it ready to be sent...

As soon as Melvin is set up for a run, he starts gathering geographical data, which he uses to determine where he is in the world. He will then publish that info on this site and through his Twitter account and Facebook page.

MELVIN THE TRAVELING MINI MACHINE

(via Wil Wheaton)