No One Likes M. Night Shyamalan

No One Likes M. Night Shyamalan: "

This is mean, but it sure is funny. No One Likes M. Night Shyamalan (Via James Gunn)

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What Kevin Kelly learned about technology when he homeschooled his son

What Kevin Kelly learned about technology when he homeschooled his son: "My friend Kevin Kelly always has interesting observations. Last year he homeschooled his 8th grade son for a year. He wrote about it for the New York Times Magazine. Here's a list of the things he learned about technology from the experience:

Technology will change faster than we can teach it. My son studied the popular programming language C++ in his home-school year; that knowledge could be economically useless soon. The accelerating pace of technology means his eventual adult career does not exist yet. Of course it won’t be taught in school. But technological smartness can be. Here is the kind of literacy that we tried to impart:

• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.

• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.

• Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.

• Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign.

• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.

• Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume?

• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?

• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.

• Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.

Achieving Techno-Literacy

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Free climbing a tower higher than the Empire State Building

Free climbing a tower higher than the Empire State Building: "

This video has been making the rounds, but in case you missed it, it's a real thrill. I watched it in full-screen mode, like my friend Jim Leftwich suggested. My palms got sweaty and the soles of my feet ached, like they do whenever I'm on the edge of a cliff or other high place without a barrier between me and a plunge to death.

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Broken crockery couture

Broken crockery couture: "

Li Xiaofeng is a Chinese artist who makes sculptural clothing from broken crockery. The results are lovely and apparently wearable. I don't know if they're dry-clean only or dishwasher-safe.

Li Xiaofeng

(via Craft)

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Rogue high-speed traderbots chaffing the market with thousands of nonsensical transactions every second

Rogue high-speed traderbots chaffing the market with thousands of nonsensical transactions every second: "Nanex, a data-services firm, has discovered mysterious high-speed trading bots operating on the major stock exchanges, executing thousands of nonsensical transactions per second (for example, they may offer to buy a stock at a price much lower than the current quote, or to sell it at a much higher price). No one knows what these bots are trying to do: is just just a DoS attack on the exchange? Radar-chaff to prevent other bots from detecting another strategy? Bad code? Some call it 'algorithmic terrorism' though Nanex is calling them 'crop circles.' Perhaps they're merely 'quote stuffing' or 'market spoofing' -- the jargon is delicious.

Here we see a 'flag repeater' being executed on the BATS Exchange, the third-largest equity market after the NYSE and NASDAQ. 15,000 quote requests were made in 11 seconds in a repeating pattern. Each iteration upped the quote a penny until $9.36, and then the algorithm went down the same way, a penny at a time.

Market Data Firm Spots the Tracks of Bizarre Robot Traders

(via O'Reilly Radar)

• Primer on "high frequency trading" -- AKA stockbots

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World's largest, strongest spider webs

World's largest, strongest spider webs: "
This massive spider web in Madagascar was woven by Darwin's bark spider, a recently-discovered arachnid that uses its incredibly-strong silk, ten times tougter than Kevlar, to make the world's largest webs. These spiders are known to make orb webs in Andasibe-Mantadia National Park up to 2.8 meters square anchored by 25-meter threads. More photos at National Geographic, and the scientists' reports in PLoS ONE.

• Massive packing-tape spider-web


• Massive spider web


• Giant web woven by a variety of spider families

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How to record the cops

How to record the cops: "Radley Balko says, 'My Reason.com column this week looks at the range of cameras, software, and other technology available for citizens interested in recording on-duty police officers.'

Qik and UStream, two services available for both the iPhone and Android phones, allow instant online video streaming and archiving. Once you stop recording, the video is instantly saved online. Both services also allow you to send out a mass email or notice to your Twitter followers when you have posted a new video from your phone. Not only will your video of police misconduct be preserved, but so will the video of the police officer illegally confiscating your phone (assuming you continue recording until that point).

Neither Qik nor UStream market themselves for this purpose, and it probably would not make good business sense for them to do so, given the risk of angering law enforcement agencies and attracting attention from regulators. But it's hard to overstate the power of streaming and off-site archiving. Prior to this technology, prosecutors and the courts nearly always deferred to the police narrative; now that narrative has to be consistent with independently recorded evidence. And as examples of police reports contradicted by video become increasingly common, a couple of things are likely to happen: Prosecutors and courts will be less inclined to uncritically accept police testimony, even in cases where there is no video, and bad cops will be deterred by the knowledge that their misconduct is apt to be recorded.

How to Record the Cops: A guide to the technology for keeping government accountable

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A Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names

A Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names: "Pop Chart Lab has produced a visually graceful and historically authoritative Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names poster, available for $20. You can view it large here. '266 sobriquets from the world of rap music, arranged according to semantics.' (thanks, JG)


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Never say "No" to Panda

Never say "No" to Panda: "

Video Link. A series of supremely hilarious—and dark!— ads for Panda Cheese, a product from Arab Dairy which I understand is popular in Egypt and the Middle East. I am disappointed to learn that this cheese does not contain actual Panda milk, as suggested by the name.

(via @helloflux).

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Four reasons why high-fructose corn syrup is probably not the Devil

Four reasons why high-fructose corn syrup is probably not the Devil: "

I've been curious for a while now about the proven differences—or lack thereof—between current boogeything high-fructose corn syrup and sugars, in general. I haven't had a chance to do any heavy reporting on the subject, but, the more of other people's reporting I read, the less worried I am about the stuff. Here's a few of the key things I'm learning:

1) Diets high in sugars—all and any kinds of sugars—are bad for you. If high-fructose corn syrup is a bigger problem than other sweeteners, it's because the stuff is so cheap that it enabled food companies to add delicious, delicious sweetener to all kinds of things that might not otherwise have contained it. But that's a function of economics, not chemistry. In fact, high-fructose corn syrup isn't the only "added sugar" in use. It makes up about half the added sugars in processed foods. The others—beet sugar, cane sugar, etc.—still rack up calories and are still no good.

2) Sugary beverages are a key factor in rising obesity rates. They happen to be sweetened, usually, with high-fructose corn syrup. But, again, that's because it's the cheapest sweetener. It's probably not the specific sweetener that's the problem here, but the fact that Americans drink a lot of sugary beverages. We'd be seeing a problem from over-consumption even if the sweetener was sugar.

3) The few studies that have turned up evidence for corn-syrup specific weight gain have had inconsistent results. Other studies have demonstrated potential health problems linked to consumption of fructose compared to other forms of sugar—but fructose isn't something that's specific to high-fructose corn syrup. In fact, high-fructose corn syrup has less fructose than a lot of other sweeteners. We only call it "high-fructose" because it's got a higher fructose-to-glucose ratio than straight-up corn syrup.

4) One of the sweeteners that has way more fructose than high-fructose corn syrup: Agave nectar. It's somewhere between 70% and 87% fructose, while most of the high-fructose corn syrup you'll run into is only 55% fructose. Other natural sweeteners, like honey and apple sugar, are also in the range of around 50% fructose. There's no solid evidence that shows this fructose to be any different than the fructose in high-fructose corn syrup. If you're really concerned about fructose (And I'm not sure you should be yet. Most of those studies are dealing with pure fructose in test tube or animal research, not real-life mixtures of sugar in human bodies.) your best bet may be maple syrup, which is only 1% fructose.

My take: Keep an eye out for added sugars—of all kinds—in products. If you're worried about empty calories and weight gain, that's your real concern. But don't stress too much about this. Cutting down on the added sugars in your life is good. But a little added sugar isn't going to kill you. And high-fructose corn syrup isn't more of a worry than any other sweetener.

Where am I getting this from?

Science Based Medicine: Corn Syrup: Tasty Toxin or Slandered Sweetener?

New York Times 'Well' Blog: In Worries About Sweeteners, Think of All Sugars

Slate: Dark Sugar

The Journal of Nutrition: The State of Science on Dietary Sweeteners Containing Fructose: Summary and Issues to Be Resolved

American Medical Association: REPORT 3 OF THE COUNCIL ON SCIENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH—The Health Effects of High Fructose Syrup, Executive Summary (PDF)

Junkfood Science: The Science of Sweets

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Augmented Sound Data Sculpture

Augmented Sound Data Sculpture