Small Sample-Size Theater

Luhn algorithm (Wikipedia)

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:00:01 -0800

Nifty trivial algorithm for detecting typos in credit card numbers. Patented in 1954, public domain today.

Going After Food Packaging

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:24:57 -0800

Monica Potts in Tapped:

A report from Silvergrade’s group, for example, shows a cake label that separates all the sources of sugar — like refined sugar, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup — so that it looks like flour is the most prominent ingredient, not sugar.

I’ve wondered about that tactic, and whether there was anything to it beyond brazen hucksterism. Apparently not.

It takes almost exactly four minutes to freefall from cruising altitude to sea level

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:49:00 -0800

And other unsettling pieces of information gleaned from the crash of Air France 447.

Portal 2

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:08:27 -0800

Portal 2:

Nuts to Mario. Valve doesn’t write for the PS3, and I don’t have an Xbox or a Windows machine, but if the rumors of Mac support for Steam are accurate, this will probably be the first videogame that I’ll buy while it’s still new since the NES. The original Portal remains one of the most absorbing games I’ve ever played.

"I actually think the way they should do the [Oscars], I really think this, is they should give them..."

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:51:00 -0800

“I actually think the way they should do the [Oscars], I really think this, is they should give them out 10 years later. Like the way they do the Hall of Fame in baseball. They do it in five years, but if you did 10 years later, if this year, we were voting on what was the best picture of 2000, I think it would be much more honest. It’s like, when you pick up great old movies and you go, why the hell didn’t Brando win the Oscar for this one? Who won that year? Whatever the sizzle was about that year. 50 years later you’re looking at a movie and going, this is a historic cinematic performance.”

- Matt Damon

Super

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:40:11 -0800

Super:

I haven’t played a Mario game since Super Mario Bros 3, but this kind of makes me want to buy a Wii and spend six months catching up.

Stieg Larsson's estate makes a movie

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:53:00 -0800

Oy. I liked these books, but it occurred to me at no time while reading them that they would ever be adapted. The eponymous girl exists almost entirely in her own head, and in one of the books, a main character practically doesn’t get out of bed.

With astonishingly lucky casting, I could see how this might work as long-form television on HBO or Showtime, but not as a movie. And in this case it turns out to have been made as a Swedish miniseries, then edited down into a 140 minute film, which doesn’t fill me with anything resembling hope.

On the other hand, the rumored American remake is pretty much inevitably going to be worse, unless Scorsese gets ahold of it, in which case it’ll only suffer for being transplanted to Queens.

Yeti: Bought this yesterday. Part of a “monsters and...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:36:00 -0800

Yeti:

Bought this yesterday. Part of a “monsters and robots” exhibition at my barbershop.

Update: why is this sideways? That’s an interesting wrinkle.

Mmm, Sexy Cookie Monster

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:32:06 -0800

Mmm, Sexy Cookie Monster

The sign on the window of this tinpot Texas sheriff says,...

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:10:21 -0800

The sign on the window of this tinpot Texas sheriff says, “I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day & tomorrow doesn’t look good either.”

NYT: So when Mr. Scorsese talks about “Shutter Island,” he also...

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:00:36 -0800

NYT:

So when Mr. Scorsese talks about “Shutter Island,” he also inevitably needs to speak of remembered films like those of Jacques Tourneur, who made the doomy, complex noir “Out of the Past” (1947). “I like watching ‘Out of the Past’ repeatedly,” he said, “because I never know quite where I am in it, I don’t know what’s the beginning, the middle or the end. I screened it for Leo and the other actors just to show that sense of a character not knowing where he is at a given point in time and trying to figure it out from scene to scene.” (He confided, “I didn’t think it was going over at all, but at the end Leo applauded and said to me, ‘That’s the coolest movie I ever saw.’”)

The Buckfast Belt

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:34:20 -0800

Great story about Scotland’s favorite caffeinated alcohol beverage.

“It goes straight to your head,” he said, “but it’s not my cup of tea.” (Mr. Rooney noted that his cup of tea is half a bottle of vodka a night).

Tesla’s Roadster To Exit In 2011 (Wired)

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:38:00 -0800

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)

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:07:58 -0800

From "Watching The English" (Matt Davis):

This book sounds terrifying.

The Physics of Space Battles (Gizmodo)

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:06:14 -0800

The Physics of Space Battles (Gizmodo):

More interesting than iPad analysis.

Sports, sex, and the runner Caster Semenya (New Yorker)

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:26:09 -0800

Sports, sex, and the runner Caster Semenya (New Yorker):

In which I learned, among other things, that the etymology of “hermaphrodite” is based on the omnigendered offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite.

Perhaps my favorite samurai movie (slash talky-ethical-drama),...

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:32:00 -0800

Perhaps my favorite samurai movie (slash talky-ethical-drama), newly available on Netflix’s streaming service. Watch for some of the finest yelling of Toshiro Mifune’s brilliant career. Damn, this is a good one.

the genuine shame of Ross Douthat’s New York Times column (The League of Ordinary Gentlemen)

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:44:03 -0800

the genuine shame of Ross Douthat’s New York Times column (The League of Ordinary Gentlemen):

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)

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:37:20 -0800

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

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:54:51 -0800

Andy Ihnatko on the Leno/Conan scrap:

I learned some things.