Basics of paleontology Case study in false balance in journalism Cure for hiccups Dick Cheney empathy test Donald Rumsfeld: poet Dying language and identity Ethics of drug development Exhibition as social dominance Experience Is the Product Feynman on k-12 textbook acquisition Inside 48-hours magazine James Frey: sweatshop proprietor Justin Long: good guy Nabokov: insightful lepidopterist The appeal of Mad Men The end of men Verifying info online What movie titles are most often adapted in scientific titles? What's happening to my body: a book for cortez wrasses Wonderful review of the plight of isolated South American tribesStraight from the uncanny valley to you!
Like the full-sized Telenoid robot, the Elfoid handset is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of a remote user.
At some point in my adolescence, I was brought along to some kind of poetry group and someone read a poem with on the theme of ergot poisoning from grain. I have no other memories of the group at all, but I was reminded of it by this photo:
So, there it is. That’s what it looks like.
That, and, maybe, the Salem witch trials.
MRI machines have to be tested and calibrated, and Andy Ellison puts produce into the machine he works with to use in those tests. The results are amazing and wonderful, especially when they make you realize how little you’ve thought about familiar foods. It’s a no-brainer that onion and artichoke will be lovely and smooth and somewhat predictable, but what about watermelon [3MB image]?
Many more at Inside insides.
Alan Taylor created The Big Picture at Boston.com when he was working at the site. He’d been monitoring the wire services for photos for years, finding them a rich source for telling stories of the day in a dense and moving way. The site agreed, and he built the feature, assembling wire (and some other) photos into essays that are beautiful but also thoughtful and honest.
The Atlantic, a old media publication that has been embracing the Web with stunning effect, has been assembling an incredible team of voices for its site, and it wisely snapped Taylor up this year.
Now Taylor’s new home is live. I think you’re going to want to follow it.
In Focus with Alan Taylor [web]
In Focus with Alan Taylor [Twitter]
And what’s not to love? There’s something intrinsically happy about a chicken. The name: a little hiccup in the mouth. The shape: a jaunty upswing of feathers, a grin. The ceaseless bobbing, scratching, pecking. It’s nearly impossible to feel melancholy in the company of chickens. They are a balm for the weary urban soul….
Imagine our dismay last June, then, when Gertrude, a Rhode Island Red and our prize layer, was stolen.
My Staircase is a shelving unit that combines a bookshelf with a pullout stair system in the bottom three shelves. The shelving unit is 2.6 meters high and the top shelves are accessible by using the bottom shelves as steps for accessing the higher shelves. —Danny Kuo
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.
Dutch photographer Gerco de Ruijter has taken a series of photographs of tree nurseries and grid forests in the Netherlands using a camera mounted on a fishing rod. They are both hard to recognize and unlike aerial photographs. I like this one, but most of them have a very different sense, exploiting the wide angle of the lens and shadows thrown by the trees.
“On top of this rod is a 2.5″ x 2.5″ camera with a wide-angle lens. A self-timer is adjusted to give me enough time to telescope the rod and manoeuver the camera above the subject. The frame of the image begins in front of my own shoes and measures roughly 30′ x 30′.”