K.benton

Things the Grandchildren Should Know is the memoir of the lead singer of The Eels, Mark Oliver Everett, or more colloquially known as E. I've been a fan of the band for a long time so I was excited to read about his life and journey. The Eels are really less a band and more just a name for E and his collaborators, as those change frequently.

The tone of the book was really conversational. I felt like E was hanging out and telling me stories about his life, like we go way back and he was confiding in me all of these things that had happened to him. It's really surreal when a singer/songwriter you revere slowly becomes this real person as his personal life story unfolds via audiobook.

Speaking of the audiobook, his bandmate/guitarist The Chet was the narrator of the audiobook. E also incorporated song lyrics into various sections of the book, and The Chet played guitar and sang them as they occurred, which was a bonus from the paper version of the book. It was an extra insight into the music and soul of E that I wouldn't have gotten had I just read the book.

The book was interesting (and devastating) at times, learning about the life events that inspired so many of the songs that I love. Given what inspired more than a few of them, I was curious about my favorites that weren't mentioned in the book - "Manchild," "You'll Be the Scarecrow," etc. If such amazing and sad life events informed all the other songs that I also love, what informed these others? I can't even imagine.

The book is sad, poignant, funny, full of heart and hope, powerful, depressing, uplifting and above all - inspirational. I don't think E set out to write an inspirational tale and knowing him from this book, he would be shocked to be referred to as inspirational. But he was. All of it was. He's an introvert who figured out how to come into his own, how to both accept himself and express himself in ways that a fellow introvert can only admire. He not only learns how to function in this world but he also thrives and overcomes so much loss. He stayed true to who he really is, without ever sacrificing his own ideals. I envy that. And I respect him so much more than I already did. I can only aspire to be that comfortable in my own skin.

I continue to love E's music and I worship his lyrics. Now I know where his depth and talent actually come from and why he writes the way he does. I would love a sequel to this book, a next chapter in E's life, as this was written five years ago. I still haven't gotten to see E in concert but it is most definitely on my bucket list.

This review is part of the volunteer Cannonball Read V. Read all about it , and find more of fancypants42's reviews on the group blog.

(Note: Any revenue generated from purchases made through the amazon.com affiliate links in this review will be donated in entirety to the American Cancer Society.)

Honey bees have been suffering for a long time now, battered by disease, parasites, fungus, herbicides, pesticides, and just plain mysterious die-offs. This spring, the problem appears worse than ever, with some 50 percent of honey-bee populations succumbing over the winter. (In previous years, up to a third of bee populations had died.)

Honey bees are important, since they pollinate most of the crops we rely on for food. AlterNet recently ran an article calling for a ban on neonicotinoids, the pesticides believed to be especially dangerous to bees. Britain and the European Union are tussling over a possible ban, while the Environmental Protection Agency is conducting a five-year study on the pesticides. Meanwhile, bees are dying; as a result, grocery prices are likely to rise.

By the way, if you buy imported honey, double-check it; two of the nation’s largest honey packers recently admitted to importing cheap Chinese honey via southeast Asia and relabeling it to make a quick buck.

from Sift

I have checked the publication date on this story ten times and it's not April 1st, so I guess Daft Punk really is launching their new album at a farm show in the small town of Wee Waa, Australia.

Tags: Daft Punk   music

Dry quicksand was a mythical substance — normal-looking sand that could swallow you in a flash. That is, until 2004, when scientists made the stuff in a lab. (Mark told you about that development.)

In this video, geologist Matt Kuchta explains how dry quicksand is different from both wet quicksand and stable sand. Hint: Think "Jenga".

I like Brad Paisley so much (thanks, in part, to this song) that I really, really tried to give him the bestest benefit of the doubt for he and LL Cool J's new single, "Accidental Racist." Unfortunately, the more Paisley defends it, the more he continues to stick his foot in his mouth (LL Cool J, meanwhile, has stayed mum on Twitter, dropping Deepak Chopra quotes and leaving one of his "best friends" out on a limb).

There's not much I can add to the conversation that hasn't already been said, but I will say this: The song is being roundly mocked on the Internet, but there's a lot of people that are going to eat this song up. They're going to quote it back in tipsy conversations about race. They're going to use it as a justification. It's going to be their "GET OVER IT" rallying cry. I can totally see members of my extended Southern family dropping lyrics into their "I'm not a racist, I just like racist symbols" conversations.

Paisley, bless his well-intentioned, dim little heart, tries to defend the song in an interview with Ellen (which is met by Ellen with what I would describe as a respectful eyeroll), but the man doesn't help himself when he begins his defense with a line that sounds a lot like "But I have a black best friend."

Here's the song.

And here's a reminder of Paisley at his best.

Map: This is how far North Korean missiles can actually reach

A company called RT66 appears to be injecting code into secure Web-sessions, possibly with collusion from ISPs like CMA Communications. No one's sure how they're doing this, neither RT66 or CMA are answering questions, and it's bad news all around.

Over the years, I've probably had more hits on my "Sand Won't Save You This Time" post than on any other single one on the site. That details the fun you can have with chloride trifluoride, and believe me, it continues (along with its neighbor, bromine trifluoride) to be on the "Things I Won't Work With" list. The only time I see either of them in the synthetic chemistry literature is when a paper by Shlomo Rozen pops up (for example), but despite his efforts on its behalf, I still won't touch the stuff.

And if anyone needs any more proof as to why, I present this video, made at some point by some French lunatics. You may observe the mild reactivity of this gentle substance as it encounters various common laboratory materials, and draw your own conclusions. We have Plexiglas, a rubber glove, clean leather, not-so-clean leather, a gas mask, a piece of wood, and a wet glove. Some of this, under ordinary circumstances, might be considered protective equipment. But not here.

There’s a really great thread on Branch going on discussing ideas for updating the Save icon. If you’re any kind of designer you’ve probably had that discussion with your peers or friends of how outdated the floppy disk icon is, and how it certainly doesn’t make sense for a younger audience who are more familiar with clouds over floppy disks. The group of 13 designers go into a lot of detail like the semantics of the word, the history of how we got here and so on.

As chess increased in popularity across Europe in the 1800s, the proliferation in the variety of chess sets caused confusion amongst competitors, especially those hailing from different countries. The English typically used Barleycorn sets:

or St. George sets:

The Germans often used Selenus sets:

Regence sets were popular in France:

Chess set collector Ty Kroll explains the confusion:

English saw a different design for every chess club: St. George sets with their appearance of stacked disks, Dublin sets with more rounded middles, and Northern Uprights with columns instead, as well as elaborate, easily tipped Barleycorn sets. Germany had delicate Selenus sets, beautiful beyond belief, but fragile, tippable, and problematic for play. To tell which piece is which on some of these sets one must count the stacked crown. France saw elegant Regence style sets with some of the most confusing signatures in history. As in the English sets, queen's were represented by orbs. The king's floral crown closely resembles the modern Staunton signature for the queen. Knights were always taller than bishops the old French sets. Bishops were represented as fools, not clergymen, and therefore lacked the signature miter. What was worse, the knights in these sets were sometimes simple turned designs, not the recognizable horse's head. This lead to common confusion as to which minor piece was which. The confusion of antique French knights and bishops is still a common problem today.

Then in the 1849, Nathaniel Cook designed and John Jaques began to sell a set that eventually came to be called the Staunton chess set:

Howard Staunton was regarded as the top chess player of his era and organized the first international chess tournament in 1851. Staunton endorsed the set and it soon became the standard in chess competitions and, later, the official standard of the World Chess Federation. The most recent iteration of the official Staunton set is Daniel Weil's design for World Chess:

If you're interested in learning more, Jimmy Stamp has a nice piece about the design of the original Staunton set and Weil's update at Smithsonian magazine.

Tags: chess   Daniel Weil   design   games   Howard Staunton   Jimmy Stamp

/* by javikin */

The fastest growing industry in the US right now, even during this time of slow economic growth, is probably the patent troll protection racket industry. Lawsuits surrounding software patents have more than tripled since 1999.

It’s a great business model.

Step one: buy a software patent. There are millions of them, and they’re all quite vague and impossible to understand.

Step two: FedEx a carefully crafted letter to a few thousand small software companies, iPhone app developers, and Internet startups. This is where it gets a tiny bit tricky, because the recipients of the letter need to think that it’s a threat to sue if they don’t pay up, but in court, the letter has to look like an invitation to license some exciting new technology. In other words it has to be just on this side of extortion.

Step three: wait patiently while a few thousand small software companies call their lawyers, and learn that it’s probably better just to pay off the troll, because even beginning to fight the thing using the legal system is going to cost a million dollars.

Step four: Profit!

What does this sound like? Yes, it’s a textbook case of a protection racket. It is organized crime, plain and simple. It is an abuse of the legal system, an abuse of the patent system, and a moral affront.

In the face of organized crime, civilized people don’t pay up. When you pay up, you’re funding the criminals, which makes you complicit in their next attacks. I know, you’re just trying to write a little app for the iPhone with in-app purchases, and you didn’t ask for this fight to be yours, but if you pay the trolls, giving them money and comfort to go after the next round of indie developers, you’re not just being “pragmatic,” you have actually gone over to the dark side. Sorry. Life is a bit hard sometimes, and sometimes you have to step up and fight fights that you never signed up for.

Civilized people don’t pay up. They band together, and fight, and eliminate the problem. The EFF is launching a major initiative to reform the patent system. At Stack Exchange, we’re trying to help with Ask Patents, which will hopefully block a few bad patents before they get issued.

The Application Developers Alliance (of which I am currently serving as the chairman of the board) is also getting involved with a series of Developer Patent Summits, a nationwide tour of 15 cities, which will kick off a long term program to band together to fight patent trolls. Come to the summit in your city—I’ll be at the San Francisco event on April 9th—and find out what you can do to help.

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

A reader of Free Range Kids is in danger of having his six-year-old daughter taken into protective services custody because he let her walk a few blocks to the post office in their Ohio town. The kid, Emily, asked for a little independence, and was given permission to take some unsupervised, short walks. Neighbors and cops freaked out, detained her, detained her parents, sent CPS after them, and has made their life into a nightmare -- one that's just getting worse and worse.

Day 41: We are served with a complaint alleging neglect and dependency. The County wants to take Emily into “protective supervision” or “temporary custody.” The complaint contains many factual errors and inaccuracies.

There is also a motion for “pre-dispositional interim orders.” As I understand it, this is a mechanism by which CPS can intervene even before the merits of the case against us for neglect are even heard, but less decided. It is scheduled to take place more than a month before the hearing on the neglect charge. It asks the court to force my wife and I to “allow ______ County Children Services to complete an assessment with the family. This is including allowing the agency access in the home, allowing the agency to interview the children, and participate openly in the assessment process.” In other words, they want to search our house, interrogate the children, and force us to testify.

We are trying our best to raise Emily to be responsible, curious, and capable. We have chosen to include teaching her about using the library, navigating the neighborhood, and mailing letters as elements of her homeschooling. Needless to say, this entire ordeal has been quite distressing for the entire family, and we view it as a threat to our homeschooling her, our parental rights, and both my and Emily’s civil liberties. Since our family is being threatened by legal action, I have tried to confine my comments to a dispassionate statement of known facts.

As Lenore Skenazy notes, this shouldn't deter you from letting your own kids move independently about their towns: "I am posting this story NOT because it is common and we should all worry about being hounded by CPS if we let our kids go outside. I am posting it in utter outrage at the idea that a child on her own could be considered neglected or in danger when she is so obviously, clearly, and indisputably neither."

They're looking for pro bono legal assistance.

6-y.o. Who Walked Alone to Post Office May be Removed from Her Home

David Weinberger took great notes from what sounds like a barn-burner of a talk by Anil Dash at Harvard's Berkman Center on what has happened to the net, and where it's headed:

“We have a lot of software that forbids journalism.” He refers to the IoS [iphone operating system] Terms of Service for app developers that includes text that says, literally: “If you want to criticize a religion, write a book.” You can distribute that book through the Apple bookstore, but Apple doesn’t want you writing apps that criticize religion. Apple enforces an anti-journalism rule, banning an app that shows where drone strikes have been.

Less visibly, the laws is being bent “to make our controlling our data illegal.” All the social networks operate as common carriers — neutral substrates — except when it comes to monetizing. The boundaries are unclear: I can sing “Happy Birthday” to a child at home, and I can do it over FaceTime, but I can’t put it up at YouTube [because of copyright]. It’s very open-ended and difficult to figure. “Now we have the industry that creates the social network implicitly interested in getting involved in how IP laws evolve.” When the Google home page encourages visitors to call their senators against SOPA/PIPA, we have what those of us against Citizens United oppose: now we’re asking a big company to encourage people to act politically in a particular way. At the same time, we’re letting these companies capture our words and works and put them under IP law.

A decade ago, metadata was all the rage among the geeks. You could tag, geo-tag, or machine-tag Flickr photos. Flickr is from the old community. That’s why you can still do Creative Commons searches at Flickr. But you can’t on Instagram. They don’t care about metadata. From an end-user point of view, RSS is out of favor. The new companies are not investing in creating metadata to make their work discoverable and shareable.

[berkman] Anil Dash on “The Web We Lost” (via Beyond the Beyond)

Today marked the long-awaited courtroom showdown of notorious copyright porno trolls Prenda Law (previous posts) and United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II, the judge who figured out that Prenda was running something that looked a blackmail racket that involved systematic fraud against courts around the country. After stalling and fum-fuhing, Prenda's lawyers and principals were dragged before Judge Wright, where they sat for a hearing that ran for 12 whole minutes before Wright furiously banished them from his courtroom. Ken "Popehat" White was there, and sent tantalizing tweets about the total trainwreck he'd witnessed, which he has now had a chance to write up in full.

In a nutshell, the Prendateers showed up and took the Fifth, refusing to speak. Their lawyer tried to enter some argument into the record, but the judge didn't allow it. Prenda had filed no briefs, and had been called to answer basic, factual questions about lawsuits. Wright wasn't happy about it. Ken has written up a list of likely consequences Prenda will now face. It's not pretty. At very least, the firm and its activities are at an end. At most (though not likely), this could end in prison for the principals here.

Judge Wright grew steadily and visibly more outraged. "I want to know if some of my conjecture is accurate — and the only way to know is to have the principals here and ask them questions. This is an opportunity for them to protect themselves," he said. But Steele's lawyer confirmed his client would exercise his right to remain silent. Attorneys for Paul Hansmeier, Paul Duffy, and Angela Van Den Hemel confirmed their clients, too, would invoke their rights to remain silent. Judge Wright did not — unless I missed it — confirm whether Peter Hansmeier or Mark Lutz would answer questions.

An Opportunity To Be Heard

Heather Rosing, appearing for Paul Duffy, Angela Van Den Hemel, and Prenda Law, rose and asked Judge Wright for an opportunity to present "about a half hour" of argument on the points in his Order to Show Cause. Look: when you are a lawyer, representing a client, you have to stand up. You have to hold your ground even in the face of a furious federal judge. When a judge is yelling at you, however unsettling it is, you have to hold fast and remember you are there to represent the interests of your client against the terrible power of the court. Heather Rosing stood up, and has my admiration, whatever I think of her clients.

Judge Wright was uninterested in hearing legal argument, as opposed to testimony or evidence. "My clients have a right to a reasonable opportunity to be heard," Ms. Rosing protested. "Excuse me?" thundered Judge Wright, probably thinking — not unreasonably — that Ms. Rosing's clients could have filed briefs in advance to address any legal arguments they had, and that Ms. Rosing's clients have been evading questions for months. Judge Wright began to count off the questions he wanted answered. "I'm looking for facts," he said. He wanted to know who directs Prenda Law's litigation efforts, who makes its decisions, whether there is another Alan Cooper, and what happens with the money Prenda Law makes from settlements. Ms. Rosing answered (wisely, and properly) that she could not personally testify to those things. Why, Judge Wright demanded, did Prenda Law conceal its attorneys' financial interest in the cases? "There's no evidence that they have an interest," Ms. Rosing protested. "Excuse me?" Judge Wright boomed even louder. Were there windows, they would have rattled. "Have you read Paul Hansmeier's deposition?" he demanded, referring to the bizarre deposition in which Paul Hansmeier failed to explain Prenda Law's shadowy owners or flow of funds. "I have," Ms. Rosing said, but stood her ground.

Prenda Law's Attorneys Take The Fifth Rather Than Answer Judge Wright's Questions

In Tribes, this week's This American Life podcast, a woman with "Autonomous sensory meridian response" describes her curious neurological condition. When she hears boring, whispering voices, she experiences pleasurable, relaxing "brain shivers" that are so nice, she finds herself watching the Home Shopping Network for hours (and hours!) at a time. There's a whole YouTube subculture of ASMR videos in which (mostly) women whisper quietly as they narrate their jewelry condition, or role-play giving you a shave.

There's not much science on ASMR (yet), but a Sheffield university prof doesn't discount the possibility that it is real.

ASMR subculture feels like something out of a very good recent William Gibson novel, and it's apparently real.

In my younger years I drove an ambulance, and while I saw a broad range of nastiness, the most consistently horrific things were injuries sustained in automobile accidents. It was the era before airbags became ubiquitous, and there were still plenty of people who refused to wear a seatbelt. A subset of people subscribed to this ridiculous conventional "wisdom" of the time: "If I wear a seatbelt, I could be trapped in a burning or submerged car and die because the belt was locked shut." There are no statistics that support this as a likely occurrence, either then or now; but pass through any junkyard and you'll see your share of pre-airbag cars that bear the clear marks of a human head going into the windshield.

I bring this up because of the object pictured here. That's Gerber's GDC Hook Knife, a little two-inch device meant to be worn on a keychain, and the blade "can be used to quickly cut yourself out of a piece of clothing, seatbelt or other safety strap."

My first thought was that it's an unnecessary device, as that scenario is unlikely—but then I realized this $11 device could have saved a lot of lives. Not by allowing people to cut themselves free from seatbelts, but by assuring people that they could do so, and hopefully encouraging them to strap the goddamn things on in the first place. It's a strange kind of product design placebo.

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really-shit:

Introducing the Growing Cabinet! 

If you’re like me and constantly need more space to store the things I hoard need, this is perfect for you.

The duo Daniel Debiasi and Federico Sandri make up Something, a design partnership based in London and Verona, Italy, and their latest creation is a lamp called Naica for Ligne Roset.

Inspired by those old carbide lanterns that were used by miners, the lamp is a bit cave-like itself with a hollowed out space that softly reflects the light. The ceramic fixture diffuses the light that way creating a soft, surrounding glow.

The lamp is available in solid white or with a red-colored cavity, both with a textile-covered cable that doubles as the handle.

Boxy wooden rooms branch out from a crooked blue spine at this family house in Sayo, Japan, in our second story this week about the work of FujiwaraMuro Architects. (more...)

Hello Europe! is a plan to install large screens with webcams in different cities all over Europe. Every 30 minutes each screen will randomly switch and connect to another screen to maximize their reach.

• Hat Tip
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Ah, the Scott Kurtz challenge.  The Strippers have an hour to write a tweet about five topics that are given to them:

• You’ve got new merch for Comic-Con.
• Some asshole is trolling you.
• Someone is stalking you on twitters.
• Someone sees you in the wild and makes fun of the way you look.
• Someone doesn’t like how you portray a character on your strip.

Hmmm… how about the one where you start shit for no apparent reason?  Like this recent gem from the challenge judge:

So long as we’re all bitching: Two years running @fleenguy is on the committee to nominate and two years running his friends get nominated.

— Scott Kurtz (@pvponline) March 26, 2013

It’s interesting to hear Kurtz admit that he usually responds poorly to attacks and that he kind of uses his knee jerk reaction as a measure for what not to do.

I like that Lexxy stood up for her personal style and argues the point with Kurtz.  She doesn’t have to deal with tweets like this because she’s been successful in cultivating an online persona that doesn’t attract this kind of trolling.  Telling her she’s doing it wrong is clearly false.  But I guess that’s not the point of the game.

How the hell do you judge this one?  Maybe part of your personal brand is engaging trolls.  Maybe it’s ignoring them.  Maybe it’s starting giant flame wars.

Personal branding is about honesty.  Being yourself is the best way to cultivate a personal brand.  Because tweets are usually raw ideas fired out in 140 characters or less, Twitter turns out to be a decent reflection of a personal brand.  But focusing on tweeting kind of misses the point.  YOU are the brand.  How you choose to respond to a troll is part of your personal brand.

How do you want to be perceived? What are the steps you can take to ensure that when people read your tweets, blog posts, facebook updates, smoke signals that they’re getting you that you want to represent?  How do you make that version of you a reality?

Like so many others thus far in this show, I feel like this episode was a missed opportunity.  It’s entirely possible that this sort of personal branding discussion happened off camera between edits.  But we hear none of that.  The focus is on the game which I suppose is the way it’s supposed to be.  But there’s a lot about personal branding that we all could learn and it would have been interesting to hear Kurtz engage the Strippers in some of that discussion.

Lexxy and Tavis are headed to the arena of doom so we’ll see how they match up next time.

 

Photo by ElectroSpark

As we saw in Chevy's old-vs.-new crash test, older doesn't always mean safer, depending on the variables in a car crash; but looking at photos like the one above, it's hard to deny that we really used to overbuild things. The A- and B-pillars on that '69 Catalina don't look all that thick, but as you can see, they didn't crumple.

The photo is from ElectroSpark Studios, run by a Florida-based designer who's made it his mission to "[Bring] you photos and ephemera liberated from the attics, garages and closets of America's mid-century vacationers," as he writes. "Most photos are from original Kodachromes for which I have a particular fondness of." His Flickr photoset called Vintage Transportation is a pretty awesome browse—while it's got plenty of cars in it like Remarkably Retro, he's also got trains, planes and boats.

Photos by ElectroSpark

Speaking of planes, the Pontiac photo above reminded me of something else I'd seen:

That there is an astonishing reminder that America used to make ridiculously tough products: During combat in 1943, this B-17 Flying Fortress suffered a mid-air collision with a German Messerschmitt over Tunisia. The left horizontal stabilizer was completely ripped off, and as you can see, the fuselage itself was nearly torn in two. Take a closer look:

The mid-air photo was taken by a U.S. airman in a neighboring plane, who had seen the damaged plane start to go down... and then come back up, and fly level. He probably couldn't believe his eyes. Despite the damage, the pilot flew the plane 300-something miles back to base in Algeria and landed it safely.

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There's an absolutely startling new paper out from Makoto Fujita and co-workers at the University of Tokyo. I've written a number of times here about X-ray crystallography, which can be the most powerful tool available for solving the structures of both large and small molecules - if you can get a crystal, and if that crystal is good enough. Advances in X-ray source brightness, in detectors, and in sheer computational power have all advanced the field far beyond what Sir Lawrence Bragg could have imagined. But you still need a crystal.

Maybe not any more, you don't. This latest paper demonstrates that if you soak a solution of some small molecule in a bit of crystalline porous "molecular sponge", you can get the x-ray structure of the whole complex, small molecules and all. If you're not a chemist you might not feel the full effect of that statement, but so far, every chemist I've tried it out on has reacted with raised eyebrows, disbelief, and sometimes a four-letter exclamation for good measure. The idea that you can turn around and get a solid X-ray structure of a compound after having soaked it with a tiny piece of crystalline stuff is going to take some getting used to, but I think we'll manage.

The crystalline stuff in question turns out to be two complexes with tris(4-pyridyl)triazine and either cobalt isothiocyanate or zinc iodide. These form large cage-like structures in the solid state, with rather different forms, but each of them seems to be able to pick up small molecules and hold them in a repeating, defined orientation. Shown is a lattice of santonin molecules in the molecular cage, to give you the idea.

Just as impressive is the scale that this technique works on. They demonstrate that by solving the structure of a marine natural product, miyakosyne A, using a 5-microgram sample. I might add that its structure certainly does not look like something that is likely to crystallize easily on its own, and indeed, no crystal is known. By measuring the amount of absorbed material in other examples and extrapolating down to their X-ray sample size, the authors estimate that they can get a structure on as little as 80 nanograms of actual compound. Holy crap.

Not content with this, the paper goes on to show how this method can be applied to give a completely new form of analysis: LC/SCD. Yes, that means what it says - they show that you can run an HPLC separation on a mixture, dip bits of the molecular sponge in the fractions, and get (if you are so inclined) X-ray structures of everything that comes off your column. Now, this is not going to be a walk-up technique any time soon. You still need a fine source of X-rays, plenty of computational resources, and so on. But just the idea that this is possible makes me feel as if I'm reading science fiction. If this is as robust as it looks like, the entire field of natural product structure determination has just ended.

Here's a comment in the same issue of Nature from Pierre Stallforth and Jon Clardy, whose opinions on X-ray crystallography are taken seriously by anyone who knows anything about the field. This new work is described as "breathtakingly simple", and furthermore, that "One can even imagine that, in the near future, researchers will not bother trying to crystallize new molecules". Indeed one can.

I would guess that there are many more refinements to be made in what sorts of host frameworks are used - different ones are likely to be effective for different classes of compounds. A number of very interesting extensions to this idea are occurring to me right now, and I'm sure that'll be true for a lot of the people who will read it. But for now, what's in this paper is plenty. Nobel prizes have been given for less. Sir Lawrence Bragg, were he with us, would stand up and lead the applause himself.

Update: as those of you reading up on this have discovered by now, the literature on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is large and growing. But I wanted to highlight this recent report of one with pore large enough for actual proteins to enter. Will they?

And here's more on the story from Nature News.

Dear Jon Hamm's penis,

I 've heard you're upset about the amount of attention being lavished upon you, and I'm so sorry to hear that. On behalf of the internet, we're sorry. We all adore Jon Hamm, and would never want him to face the indignity of objectification.

I mean, how awful it must be for you both to feel as though the entire internet sees you as only a body part, ignoring the brain above and the soul within, diminishing you into a sexual object for our own giggles and lust. I can't imagine what that would be like. I'm sure very few people truly can.

So, to you, Jon Hamm and Jon Hamm's penis, I apologize for what you must have been going through. How dare we, the internet, focus only on these physical, private parts of your body. That must have been so embarrassing.

Godspeed.

So the Salt Being is back. Bwa-ha-ha! More microbiology.

As Charlie points out, there are lots of ifs and buts about the coming singularity, the day when machine intelligence finally overtakes the human mind. But what if the singularity is already underway? And if it is--what does it look like?

Suppose it looks like mitochondria. Suppose we're becoming the mitochondria of our machines.

How did mitochondria get to what they are today? The (now classic) theory of endosymbiosis began as a New-age feminist plot by Lynn Margulis, a microscopist known for setting paramecium videos to rock music. Around one or two billion years ago, a bacterium much like Escherichia coli took up residence within a larger host microbe. Either the larger tried to eat the smaller (like amebas do), or the smaller tried to parasitize the larger (like tuberculosis bacteria do). One way or another, their microbial descendants reached a balance, where the smaller bacterium was giving something useful to the host, and vice versa. In fact, this sort of thing happens all the time today. If you coculture E. coli with amebas, an occasional ameba will evolve with bacteria perpetually inside--and the evolved bacteria can no longer grow outside. They are slipping down the evolutionary slide through endosymbiosis, to eventual become an organelle.

But the price of endosymbiosis is evolutionary degeneration. Genetically, the mitochondrion has lost all but a handful of its 4,000-odd bacterial genes, down to 37 in humans. Most of these genes conduct respiration (obtaining energy to make ATP). From the standpoint of existence as an organism, that seems pathetic. The mitochondrion is a ghost of its former identity.

But is it so simple? Did mitochondria really stay around just for that one function? If that’s all the genes that are left, then how do mitochondria contribute to tissue-specific processes such as apoptosis (programmed cell death), production of oxygen radicals, and even making hormones?

Surprise--about 1,500 of those former mito genes are alive and well in the nuclear chromosomes. How did the genes get there? First, mitochondrial DNA replication is error-prone; errors accumulate there much faster than in the nuclear DNA. Second, DNA replication often duplicates genes--the leading way to evolve new functions. Suppose a duplicated gene ends up in the nucleus. It will stay there, while the mitochondrial original decays by mutation. Thus, over many generations, the mitochondria outsource their genes to the nucleus.

Is this starting to sound familiar? As Adam Gopnik writes, "We have been outsourcing our intelligence, and our humanity, to machines for centuries." Long ago, since Adam and Eve put on clothes (arguably the first technology) we have manipulated parts of our environment to do things our bodies now don't have to do (like grow thick fur). We invented writing, printing and computers to store our memories. Most of us can no longer recall a seven-digit number long enough to punch it into a phone. Now we invent computers to beat us at chess and Jeopardy, and baby-seal robots to treat hospital patients.

As we invent each new computer task, we define it away as not "really" human. Memory used to be the mark of intelligence--before computers were invented. Now it's just mechanical--but as Foer notes in Moonwalking with Einstein, memory is closely tied to imagination. Once we can no longer remember, how shall we imagine? And if all our empathy is outsourced to dementia-caring robots that look and sound like baby seals, what will be left for us to feel? Poetry and music--don't mention it, computers already compose works that you can’t distinguish from human.

Yet we humans still turn the machines on and off (well... sometimes). The machines aren't actually replacing us, so much as extending us. That's the world of my Frontera series. Humans still program the robots and shape the 4D virtual/real worlds we inhabit. But those worlds now shape us in turn. Small children exhibit new reflexes--instead of hugging their toys, they poke and expect a response.

The real question is, what will be the essential human thing left that we contribute to the machines we inhabit? Will we look like the "brainship" of Anne McCaffrey's The Ship who Sang--or more like the energy source of the Matrix? Mitochondria-hosting cells ushered in an extraordinary future of multicellular life forms, never possible before. Human-hosting machines may create an even more amazing future world. But if so, what essential contribution will remain human?

Up above is The Art of Japanese Joinery, a book I jealously guarded for years because it could only be found at Kinokuniya; nowadays you can get it on Amazon. Inside are photos of the fiendishly complicated joints that traditional Japanese carpenters used to cut using pull saws (like this one on Hand-Eye Supply) and the like, constructing both houses and enormous temples completely free of metal fasteners. And the joints were strong enough to withstand earthquakes.

It's hard to believe the book is from 1977, as everything in it looks like it was cut by a CNC machine rather than guys named Yoshi and Taka who drink Ki-Rin on the weekends. Nowadays, of course, the Japanese traditional carpenter is being supplanted by CNC machinery, but at least they're still used during the assembly and final finishing phases of house construction. Doobybrain dug up this video from '11 showing a Japanese CNC shop preparing lumber for house construction, followed by footage of the builders putting it up:

A buddy of mine who works in construction has disabused me of my builder envy; there is nothing fun, he has pointed out, about straddling a header and trying to wrestle a Glulam beam into place with guys named Bobby and Tommy who drink Miller on the weekends. But seeing the guys in this video snap each precisely-cut piece into place looks... satisfying, no?

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Like this My Bedroom Retreat contest entry? Favorite it below!

Name:

Cammie

Location:

Lawrence, KS

Division:

United States

What do you love about your bedroom?:

I love the green floor! Our bedroom is in the attic of a small bungalow-style home and one of our first projects when we moved in was ripping out the dark brown carpet. Underneath was a very low-quality wooden floor, so we had no reservations painting it. Most of the walls in our house are off-the-shelf “ultra pure white,” so the green is a refreshing sea of color.

More

Stamug is a minimalist design created by Osaka-based firm Metaphys. This stackable mug is the newest edition to Metaphys’ collection of porcelain wares. The project was conceived due to the impractical and space-consuming designs of traditional mugs. Having limited horizontal space within the cupboard, vertical stacking was the most viable solution for saving space.

Although stackable, the mug does not impair the functionality of an easy-to-grip handle. The designers decided to focus on three specific points for the mug – it can be stackable, it can be held firmly, and it is large enough so that it could be used for drinking soups. The mug comes in a variety of colors including Tianmu Gloss White, Matte White, Matte Black, Navy, and Brown.

Aside from the functionality, I am a huge fan of the flowing minimalist design. The mug has accentuating lines that delineate the soft curves and shape of its mold. The designers even considered the slight dimple on the upper portion of the handle that allows for easy movement of the mug without sacrificing its aesthetic.

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© 2013 Design Milk | Posted by Leo in Home Furnishings | Permalink | No comments

Forecast:

About a year ago, we released a little app for the iPhone and iPad called Dark Sky, attempting to do something new and interesting for weather forecasting, a field we think had become pretty stagnant. Approaching 100k sales, it’s been fairly successful; however, we’ve been continually asked for more: international support, longer-term forecasting, an Android app, and so on.

Rather than cram these things into Dark Sky, we decided to do something grander: create our own full-featured weather service from scratch, complete with 7-day forecasts that cover the whole world, beautiful weather visualizations, and a time machine for exploring the weather in the past and far future.

Bold move.

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