Cooper Griggs

If you were one of those 110 million who tuned into this year's Super Bowl, you probably have some thoughts on those ads -- ads that cost a whole load of cash. This year, we had the predictable heart-tug from a soda brand, a shirtless Brooklyn ...

About That Coke Ad:

@notentirely

Circuits were a "major milestone" in peer-reviewed research, allowed better multitasking

Drones delivering your latest George R.R Martin instalment? Cute. But the real work of autonomous vehicles is being pioneered in the military. Lockheed Martin has recently completed testing of full autonomous convoys in Fort Hood, Texas. The test is ...

how to park

[poorlydrawnlines]

Jason Edward Harrington, the former TSA officer who revealed the uselessness of the Rapiscan body scanners the federal government squandered $40 million on, has written an article for Politico about his time working at the TSA and his run-ins with the apparatchiks and nomenklatura in charge. Included in the article is a list of code words used by TSA officers he's compiled. Here are a few:

Alfalfa: TSA malespeak for an attractive female passenger.

BBC: Bogus Bag Check, or Bullshit Bag Check. What happens when a not-too-bright x-ray operator decides to call a bag search.

Code Red: Officer malespeak. Denotes an attractive female passenger wearing red.

Fanny Pack, Lane 2: Code for an attractive female passenger.

Retaliatory wait time: What happens when a TSA officer doesn’t like your attitude. There are all sorts of ways a TSA officer can subtly make you wait longer to get through security, citing imaginary alarms, going “above the SOP” for “a more thorough screening,” pretending that something in your bag or on your full body image needs to be resolved—the punitive possibilities are endless, and there are many tricks in the screener’s bag.

Xray Xray Xray!: Code for an attractive female passenger, general.

Yellow Alert: Code for an attractive female passenger, yellow clothing.

Ziptop baggie: A magical thing that renders liquids safe for airplanes.

(Cory posted about this article as well, highlighting some other aspects.) Dear America, I Saw You Naked - And yes, we were laughing. Confessions of an ex-TSA agent.

Since 2006 artist Joe Mangrum has taken to the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere armed with sacks of colored sand that he sprinkles by the handful to create sprawling temporary paintings. Each work is spontaneous in its design and evolves as Mangrum works, spending upwards of 6-8 hours hunched over the ground to complete each piece. The artist estimates he’s completed nearly 550 paintings over the last few years. A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, his paintings have appeared at The Corcoran Gallery, the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, as well as The Asia Society. He also made a recent appearance on Sesame Street. You can see works in progress over on Facebook, and limited edition prints are available through King Art Collective.

 

by spoonman

This is a good follow up to the video Sugar: The Bitter Truth by the same guy. Take the time to watch this.

Credit Matthew Freeman.

Daniel Gutierrez

Original title and link: Data science: Introducing the (para)normal distribution (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

little-cyes-2:

North America’s current predicament.

When a magnet is dropped down a conducting copper pipe, it feels a resistive force (assuming that magnets have feelings). The falling magnet induces a current in the copper pipe and, by Lenz’s Law, the current creates a magnetic field that opposes the changing field of the falling magnet. Thus, the magnet is “repelled” and falls more slowly. Knowledge = Power.

Original Source

Oh no she didn't! (Oh yes she did!)

It’s so much more fun to watch FOX when it’s someone else being blitzed & sacked! #SuperBowl

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2014

Please stop being so viral, madame (former) Secretary of State.

Mrmcd sez, "Contained within the borders of Canada are: the world's largest island in a lake on an island; the world's largest island in a lake on an island in a lake; and the world's largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.

Here's this week's unidentified bit of net.clever seeking reidentification: a photoshopped Gilligan's Island image with Justin Beiber as Gilligan and Toronto's crack-smoking, Bieber-defending mayor Rob Ford as the Skipper -- found in Steve Silberman's Twitter stream. Do you know who made it? Weigh in in the comments and I'll add attribution to the post.

Meanwhile, there’s me:

Dear every conservative getting his underwear in a twist about that Coca Cola Super Bowl commerical in which not only was the “deeply Christian patriotic anthem” sung in something other than the English that Jesus spoke, but also featured a gay couple being happy with their kid:

Dudes, you’re aware that Katharine Lee Bates, the writer of the song, was almost certainly a lesbian, right? And while undoubtedly Christian, Bates used her faith as a foundation for progressive social activism that would have given the conservatives of her time, and possibly some conservatives now, the shudders and shakes (she also nearly resigned her professorship at Wellesley when the school thought to force its faculty to profess their fealty to the Christian faith).

Bates was a pacifist with the dream of uniting people “from the Pacific to the Atlantic, around the other way… and that will include all the nations and all the people, from sea to shining sea.” Which is to say that it’s an excellent bet that Bates would be delighted to hear her song sung in as many different languages by as many different sorts of people as possible.

And as for the idea that “unity” requires all people to be the same and adhere to the same top-down political and social orthodoxy, there’s this useful quote:

In 1910, when a colleague described “free-flying spinsters” as “fringe on the garment of life”, Bates answered: “I always thought the fringe had the best of it. I don’t think I mind not being woven in.”

In their outrage about “America the Beautiful” being hijacked to represent something it does not, conservatives are perhaps missing the irony that the song has been hijacked at least once before, by them. Perhaps they’re just mad that someone had the temerity to hijack it back. I don’t think it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility that Ms. Bates would be amused by that.

[notstainer]

M Plummer Fernandez is a South East London artist who uses computers to push the boundaries of industrial design. I came across these pieces he made titled Digital Natives where 3D scanned a series of traditional objects and then abstracted and distorted them, turning them into new objects.

Everyday items such as toys and a watering can are 3D scanned using a digital camera and subjected to algorithms that distort, abstract and taint them into new primordial vessel forms. In some cases only close inspection reveals traces inherited from their physical predecessors. These are then 3D printed on a z-corp printer.

Vessels are arguably the lowest common denominator for man-made objects across all cultures, these objects however have no storage function other than to embody the stored digital data that describes them.

What I love about these objects is that they’re not only abstracted physically, but with a unique blend of colors. The faceted gradation really is a beautiful effect which gives each piece a sense of movement. I’m really looking forward to the day where I can buy a “recipe” for one of these vases and then print it out in a matter of hours. DIY will take on a brand new meaning for us all soon enough.