January 2010
19 posts
Tesla’s Roadster To Exit In 2011 (Wired) →
Yikes. I’m pulling for Tesla, but ceasing production on their only model line before the replacement is ready (and not, it sounds like, of their own volition) is unsettling. Meanwhile, I hope I don’t have to move to the suburbs to justify buying a Model S.
From "Watching The English" (Matt Davis) →
This book sounds terrifying.
The Physics of Space Battles (Gizmodo) →
More interesting than iPad analysis.
Sports, sex, and the runner Caster Semenya (New... →
In which I learned, among other things, that the etymology of “hermaphrodite” is based on the omnigendered offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite.
the genuine shame of Ross Douthat’s New York Times... →
It’s instapaper cleanup day. Hey, remember when Obama’s biggest problem was having won the Nobel Peace Prize? That was nice.
The Americanization of Mental Illness (NYT) →
The story goes off the rails a little bit toward the end, but the cultural communicability of mental illness, and the way people react differently when they perceive a biochemical basis for it, were both holy-shit moments of the first order.
Andy Ihnatko on the Leno/Conan scrap →
I learned some things.
Prawn, PDF generation in Ruby →
I don’t understand why a library designed to produce good-looking PDF output has such a bad-looking web site.
Neapolitan Dynamite
I am a man of firm and fixed Ben and Jerry’s preferences, but the new-to-me Neapolitan Dynamite — one half Chocolate Brownie Batter, one half Cherry Garcia — is a victory for the ages. A good portion of its manifest wisdom is the rejection of a strawberry component.
MockSMTP.app →
“MockSMTP is a native Mac application that embeds its own SMTP server. It also features an e-mail client browser, enabling instant viewing of both raw content and HTML rendering, so you can see how…
Handy sudo Settings - Dave Dribin's Blog →
I’d gone quite a long way with no idea the sudo command was so configurable. Saved my bacon yesterday.
We're from the government, and we're here to help...
The FDIC: impressive as hell. They close the 12th biggest bank in Washington after hours on Friday, and reopen parts of it under new management on Saturday:
Horizon’s three drive-up branches, which normally are open on Saturdays, will reopen today with normal business hours as Washington Federal branches. Horizon’s 15 other branches will reopen on Monday.
Over the weekend,...
The Anti-Terror Right’s Incentive Problem... →
“This is all phrased in a pretty insulting manner, but I think it contains more than a grain or two of analytic truth. Which leads to the conclusion that left-wing politicians have strong political incentives to succeed in reducing the incidence of terrorism. Right-wing politicians, by contrast, have no such incentives.”
The Secret Lives of Amazon's Elves (Gizmodo) →
An account of routines inside one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers, where they’re apparently recruiting RVers for short stints.
“Only one carry on? No electronics for the first hour of flight? I wish that,...”
– Bruce Schneier, 12/26/09
Pinboard
As long as I’m adopting new things, time to make a concerted effort to switch to Pinboard for bookmarks. After reading the man for donkey’s years I’ve also learned how to pronounce “Maciej”, and discovered his horrifying side project.
These things usually end badly
For the reverse-chronological, it ends badly at both ends.