y o u j u s t d o n t g e t . u s

links for 2009-04-29

• Crush the Castle | Armor Games
  PG: Too much fun. (Hat-tip: Loyd Case)
  (tags: games)
• Why can't we concentrate?
  " Here's a fail-safe topic when making conversation with everyone from cab drivers to grad students to cousins in the construction trade: Mention the fact that you're finding it harder and harder to concentrate lately. The complaint appears to be universal, yet everyone blames it on some personal factor: having a baby, starting a new job, turning 50, having to use a Blackberry for work, getting on Facebook, and so on."
  (tags: books attention technology)

links for 2009-04-28

• Howard Kurtz - The Media Elite's Secret Dinners
  "Among those in regular attendance are David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC's David Gregory, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley's Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch."
  (tags: media journalism)

links for 2009-04-27

• TomatoCam.net
  Yes. This is, in fact, a webcam looking at a tomato garden. Enjoy.
  (tags: internet gardening videos tomatoes)
• California’s proposed “Amazon tax” – a destructive solution
  "If you have a web-based business in CA. and collect revenue by showing out-of-state companies’ ads on your site, Bill AB178 will claim that both you and the businesses you advertise on your site have residence in CA, and are therefore required to pay CA sales tax. For example, say your Santa Monica-based web site shows banner ads for Amazon.com. With Bill AB178 in place, Amazon.com would be classified as a California-based business based on the fact that your business draws affiliate advertising sales revenue. Amazon would then be required to collect sales tax on all sales into CA. The idea behind the bill is that CA could force out-of-state retailers to collect and pay CA sales taxes. Sounds pretty reasonable on paper, but the reality is that a large number of those advertisers will simply refuse to work with CA's small online businesses, resulting in lost business income, lost business tax and a large number of lost jobs — which will add to CA's rising unemployment."
  (tags: california taxes internet ecommerce)
• Parsing the President - The First 100 Days
  PG: This is a "word cloud" of the president's most-used words in speeches. Not surprisingly, he refers to himself a lot.
  (tags: barack+obama visualization)

links for 2009-04-26

• The Gentleman from Lickskillet
  PG: I was laughing this morning at some of these cartoons.
  (tags: politics comics conservative)
• The Scourge of University Socialism
  "The university teaches emerging adults important lessons in statism: Early assumption of debt, overconsumption of inferior services at artificially inflated prices, the moral superiority of leisure over work, and most importantly, how to get others to subsidize your specialization in subjects with little or no value on the free market. In short, college teaches young adults to think like politicians."
  (tags: economics education university)
• Thousand-Hand Guan Yin | Mil mãos Guan Yin
  "There is an awesome dance, called the Thousand-Hand Guanyin, which is making the rounds across the net. Considering the tight coordination required,their accomplishment is nothing short of amazing, even if they were not all deaf. Yes, you read correctly. All 21 of the dancers are complete deaf-mutes. Relying only on signals from trainers at the four corners of the stage, these extraordinary dancers deliver a visual spectacle that is at once intricate and stirring."
  (tags: video art arte music cool youtube deaf dance dança surda)

links for 2009-04-25

• Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee: Mau-mauing controversial speech at Umass-Amherst
  "Most of us probably regard some speech and some speakers as so far beyond the pale of civilized discourse that there is no point in debating them, only in branding them unacceptable. But, however satisfying such a stance may be, it could be only a matter of time before the speech beyond the pale is your own."
  (tags: opinion freedom academia speech)

links for 2009-04-24

• Centraal Station Antwerpen gaat uit zijn dak!
  LET: Eu amo essa campanha! || I LOVE those!!!!
  (tags: video art culture advertising marketing cultura dance dancing musical ad comercial dança)

links for 2009-04-23

• Illinois Policy Institute and DePaul U. Debate Tea Party Protests in Chicago, Pt. 1
  PG: An interesting debate. Pt. 1 of 2. (Hat-tip: Michael Carr)
  (tags: economics taxes politics television opinion chicago)
• Illinois Policy Institute and DePaul U. Debate Tea Party Protests in Chicago, Pt. 2
  PG: Aired on Chicago Tonight, Pt 2 of 2. (Hat-tip: Michael Carr)
  (tags: economics chicago television politics taxes opinion)
• Apollo 14 Astronaut: Space Aliens Are Real
  "An Apollo 14 astronaut told a group of UFOlogists Monday that aliens are not a myth and called on the government to disclose its findings, The Washington Times reported." (Hat-tip: Patrick Hinojosa)
  (tags: ufos conspiracies)
• Autistic boy, 4, left on bus, driver arrested
  PG: Pretty unbelievable, especially when you consider that, when parked, the bus sounds an alarm that can only be turned off by walking to the back of the bus. The driver ignored it and, thus, didn't see the kid.
  (tags: school chicago chicago+sun+times)

links for 2009-04-22

• The New, Interactive Singles Map. Or, Looking for Love in All the Statistically Wrong Places.
  PG: For the single folks on this list. I think that's, like, one or two of you. (Hat-tip: Allan Jenkins)
  (tags: visualization design sex maps dating usa demographics statistics)
• Andy Borowitz: Talented Ugly Person Baffles World
  "The success of singer Susan Boyle on the reality show Britain's Got Talent has caused both television networks and their viewers to reconsider the intrinsic value of ugly people, media experts say."
  (tags: humor people susan+boyle britain's+got+talent)
• Condoms 'too big' for Indian men
  PG: Incredible that this actually ran on BBC.
  (tags: science research culture asia india sex health condoms bbc contraception)

links for 2009-04-21

• Pew Research Center: Public Knows Basic Facts About Financial Crisis
  PG: A ton of interesting findings in the Pew study that I simply don't have enough room to go into here.
  (tags: economics statistics)
• Google Helps Track Down SF Purse Snatchers
  PG: This is an awesome story.
  (tags: mobile google latitude crime san+francisco)

links for 2009-04-20

• Bacon: the Other White Heat
  "Bacon is fattening because it contains a lot of chemical energy tied up in its proteins, and especially in its fat. You can release that energy either by digesting it or by burning it with a healthy supply of oxygen. The challenge isn't creating the heat; it's engineering a bacon structure strong enough to withstand the stress of a 5,000°F bacon plasma flame."
  (tags: humor technology food science physics bacon chemistry)
• Learning Guitar to Get Laid
  PG: This reminds me of any number of lame, self-important, would-be troubadours that used to hog open mic night.
  (tags: humor guitar videos)
• The Truth About the Tea Parties: It's the government spending, stupid
  "The country has gotten into a painful fiscal predicament because both parties have let us believe we can have more and more goodies from Washington at no additional cost. The recent explosion of federal spending has succeeded in one way: It has exposed that assumption for the fiction it was. Like Bernie Madoff's investors, we now face the bleak truth that the comfortable future we expected is gone. Everything the federal government is doing will be forcibly extracted from our future earnings. The tea party protesters see that and are angry. Can the rest of the country be far behind?"
  (tags: economics bailout opinion libertarian)
• 20 Outstanding & Outrageous Concept Cars from Car-dom's Golden Age
  PG: Some of these remind me of the cars they drove in "Minority Report". (Hat-tip: Kevin Dugan)
  (tags: design history cars)