February 2009
32 posts
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WatchI’m so proud.
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NYC making parts of Broadway pedestrian-only →
The plan calls for Broadway to be closed to vehicles from 47th Street to 42nd Street. Traffic would continue to flow through on crossing streets, but the areas between the streets would become pedestrian malls, with chairs, benches and cafe tables with umbrellas.
Seventh Avenue would be widened slightly within Times Square to accommodate the extra traffic diverted from Broadway.
Below...
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WatchHow Benjamin Button got his face. (thx Craig)
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New Yorker: Inside a movie marketer’s playbook. →
Modern [film marketing] campaigns have three acts: a year or more before the film débuts, you introduce it with ninety-second teaser trailers and viral Internet “leaks” of gossip or early footage, in preparation for the main trailer, which appears four months before the release; five weeks before the film opens, you start saturating with a “flight” of thirty-second TV spots; and, at the end,...
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Richard Florida: How the Crash Will Reshape... →
Because America’s tendency to overconsume and under-save has been intimately intertwined with our postwar spatial fix—that is, with housing and suburbanization—the shape of the economy has been badly distorted, from where people live, to where investment flows, to what’s produced. Unless we make fundamental policy changes to eliminate these distortions, the economy is likely to face worsening...
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WatchTime lapse flight across the US. (via kottke)
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WatchTed Talk: The real crisis? We stopped being wise (Barry Schwartz)
[Rules] prevent disaster, but what they assure in it’s place is mediocrity
I’ve always imagined that someday civilization will collapse because someone was blindly following the rules.
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Evidence on declining fruit and vegetable nutrient... →
[In 1981] Jarrell and Beverly found that fertilized plants contained larger absolute amounts of minerals than the unfertilized plants, but these amounts were sufficiently diluted by the increased dry matter that all mineral concentrations declined, except for phosphorus, which is the common fertilizer.
… plantings of low- and high-yield cultivars of broccoli and grains found...
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Amish Hackers →
he Amish, particular the Old Order Amish — the stereotypical Amish depicted on calendars – really are slow to adopt new things. In contemporary society our default is set to say “yes” to new things, and in Old Order Amish societies the default is set to “no.” When new things come around, the Amish automatically start by refusing them. Thus many Old Order Amish...
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Watch
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The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises →
More than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter …we rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.
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The Lonely Island’s debut is surprisingly...
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Michael Lewis: The No-Stats All-Star →
Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient...
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Watch(via adamgotterer)
Somehow I don’t think the promotion is going to cover their losses …
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How your looks betray your personality →
If this pans out, it would mean that men with high testosterone levels, who are known to be bigger, stronger and more dominant, are more likely to have rounder faces - and that we evolved to judge such faces as aggressive because their owners are more likely to attack us…
This obviously holds for Dwight Schrute.
… Just as an eyespot is not an eye, so a person with a baby face...
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FiveThirtyEight: Why We're Probably in For a Long... →
Lost jobs appear to be taking longer and longer to recover with each subsequent recession. In fact, if we look at all recessions since World War II, the three most recent recessions (prior to this one) are associated with the three longest time frames for employment to return to its pre-recession peaks. The 1991 and 2001 recessions in particular were associated with so-called jobless...
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This is why you're fat →
(thx julie)
Homeless By Choice →
At the time I’m writing this, I’ve yet to learn to drive. I never had a real girlfriend until I was 24 years old (that’s a whole other story on its own, and you can read it in my article, My Time In The Seduction Community). I was eccentric as an undergrad, and still have some eccentricities today. And, for several years off and on, I’ve chosen to be homeless.
(via...
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Whitney Calls Pay Wall Street’s ‘Motivating... →
“No one goes into Wall Street to save the world,” Whitney said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Compensation is the motivating factor.” … The failure to pay employees well may drive away “the best and the brightest,” Whitney said.
Well, if the “best and the brightest” got us where we are today, imagine what the mediocre could do.
Regardless, where are these...
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Drugged 7-year old after dentist →
(via: everyone in the world)
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It’s the Economy, Girlfriend →
Some women in the group said the men in their lives had gone from being aloof and unattainable to unattractively needy and clinging. Others complained of being ignored — one, who called herself A.P., wrote on the blog that three weeks had passed without her boyfriend “asking a single question” about her life. Another wrote, fearfully, that her beau had told her to make a list of their favorite...
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What do women want? →
All was different with the women. No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, they showed, on the whole, strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men. They responded objectively much more to the exercising woman than to the strolling man, and their blood flow rose quickly — and markedly, though to a lesser degree than...
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Damian Katz: Couch DB and me →
A nerdy talk about following your dreams. (via HN)
