Hornets, Mechanical Turks, and swords, oh my
If you absolutely can't wait to see Tom Yum Goong in American theaters, you can pre-order the VCD. The quality will be terrible, though, so I recommend making the soup instead and waiting for the movie to arrive on the big screen.
How to defend against Teen Wolf.
Once a year, Popular Science publishes a list of the Worst Jobs in Science. This year's list included a link to this bizarre video clip (MPEG) of a ballerina dancing around a NASA robot which resembles a giant, umm, unmanned vehicle. Yeah.
Red square: keep away, if you can. [This and the next two links via Me-Fi]
A condensed jpeg of Ground Zero from straight overhead, a short while after 9/11. The not condensed version of the photo. Meanwhile, with scant media buzz, construction on the new World Trade Center began two days ago.
Sword swallowers actually do swallow swords, though the swords rarely reach the stomach. I saw a sword swallower in China put a long fluorescent light down his throat, and then they turned off the house lights and he turned on the lamp, and we could see the light through the skin of his throat. Now there's a great opener the next time you want to start a conversation with an attractive stranger at a bar.
One of the last projects I heard about when I left Amazon.com and its Web Services team looks to have launched, sort of: The Mechanical Turk. It allows software developers to add human intelligence to their programs, because there are still many things humans do better than computers. A devious use might be to have humans interpret captchas for your automated ticket hoarding program. A less nefarious use might be to help an AIBO interpret human facial expressions or tone of voice. What incentive do you have to help out a computer program with tasks like these? Cash. Reminds me a bit of that marketplace for human talents in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
Curbed's Eater publishes the complete list of 507 restaurants in the New York Michelin Guide.
Thrilling if gruesome video (Windows Media File) of a couple dozen giant hornets massacring a colony of some 30,000 honey bees in order to plunder the honey and larvae. By massacre I mean they just use their jaws to bite the bees in half, one after the other. Sheesh. I tried to trace the movie back to its original poster, but gave up after about ten or so hops, so I'll credit J-Walk, who published some great references on Microsoft Excel and who maintains a prolific weblog.
This week's Out of 5 is a good one: They Got It Right the First Time - Great Songs Better Known Via Inferior Covers
How to defend against Teen Wolf.
Once a year, Popular Science publishes a list of the Worst Jobs in Science. This year's list included a link to this bizarre video clip (MPEG) of a ballerina dancing around a NASA robot which resembles a giant, umm, unmanned vehicle. Yeah.
Red square: keep away, if you can. [This and the next two links via Me-Fi]
A condensed jpeg of Ground Zero from straight overhead, a short while after 9/11. The not condensed version of the photo. Meanwhile, with scant media buzz, construction on the new World Trade Center began two days ago.
Sword swallowers actually do swallow swords, though the swords rarely reach the stomach. I saw a sword swallower in China put a long fluorescent light down his throat, and then they turned off the house lights and he turned on the lamp, and we could see the light through the skin of his throat. Now there's a great opener the next time you want to start a conversation with an attractive stranger at a bar.
One of the last projects I heard about when I left Amazon.com and its Web Services team looks to have launched, sort of: The Mechanical Turk. It allows software developers to add human intelligence to their programs, because there are still many things humans do better than computers. A devious use might be to have humans interpret captchas for your automated ticket hoarding program. A less nefarious use might be to help an AIBO interpret human facial expressions or tone of voice. What incentive do you have to help out a computer program with tasks like these? Cash. Reminds me a bit of that marketplace for human talents in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
Curbed's Eater publishes the complete list of 507 restaurants in the New York Michelin Guide.
Thrilling if gruesome video (Windows Media File) of a couple dozen giant hornets massacring a colony of some 30,000 honey bees in order to plunder the honey and larvae. By massacre I mean they just use their jaws to bite the bees in half, one after the other. Sheesh. I tried to trace the movie back to its original poster, but gave up after about ten or so hops, so I'll credit J-Walk, who published some great references on Microsoft Excel and who maintains a prolific weblog.
This week's Out of 5 is a good one: They Got It Right the First Time - Great Songs Better Known Via Inferior Covers