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John Robb wants us to stop landscaping our lawns, and start foodscaping them -- growing food for our families. And he thinks the way to jumpstart it is for farmers to make house-calls. I love this idea, but don't think I could participate in it: when we applied to Hackney Council in London for permission to add a greenhouse frame to our balcony they rejected it because it would "interrupt the vertical rhythm" of our building. As far as I can tell, "vertical rhythm" is an imaginary aesthetic quality that is more important than real food.

Of course, since most people in the developed world don’t know how to grow food anymore and many of the methods and tools used to grow high quality food are still being developed, we are going to need to some help.

One great way to do that is to join a local foodscaping program.

This type of program is like a food subscription at a CSA. However, in this program, the farmer comes to you. He/she converts your yard into a high performance garden and teaches you how to garden it successfully.

I think that if we are smart, we’ll be spending more money on foodscaping in ten years than landscaping. If so, good food will be available everywhere.

What if Farmers made House Calls?

Clam Lynch is a wildly-creative artist and actor...and therefore terminally broke. He’s also a dad who is trying to raise enough cash to move from San Francisco to Utah to help his daughter Eloise get set up for college. He’s selling custom-printed and numbered tote bags to help finance their journey. Bids start at $20 for these fine-looking bags.

 

Here's an improv rehearsal video from 2006, when Clam was working on the character of a very disorganized motivational speaker who travels the country with his daughter (played by Eloise).

I’ve been using this stylus like crazy and I am in love! It’s a touch sensitive stylus for drawing and painting on the iPad which works incredibly well. Because of its touch-sensitive capabilities, this is the first stylus that allows me to think of the iPad as tool for serious illustration. I love my Wacom tablet, but using this is a completely different and, in some ways, a much more direct way to connect to my work… especially once I’d found the right drawing app. I suggest Procreate, which is designed to take advantage of the Pogo Connect.

Having said this, the Pogo stylus has a couple drawbacks. For example, the setup of the pen is unclear. This confused me and a number of other Amazon reviewers who expressed their frustration at never getting it working. Stick with it! Follow the directions… it does work and it works well!

Secondly, the build of the stylus is sorta cheap. During the first usage of my Pogo Connect, I pressed the (flimsy) plastic button into the hollow body. Arg! How infuriating! And I am not the first to have had this problem. With no button, the stylus was unusable.

The Pogo Connect is an awesome tool. Now that I have it, I’m unable to live without it! But I’ll always press that button with a feather touch! -- Robyn Miller

Pogo Connect $62

One of the biggest charmers at TED2013 so far has been Romo the Robot, who rolled and whizzed around the stage with one of his creators, Keller Rinaudo. With large bubbly eyes, four fang-like teeth, and a happy alien voice, it's easy to forget that this animated robot is actually just an iPhone mounted on a rolling platform.

"We wanted to build a robot that anyone can use, whether you're eight or eighty," Rinaudo told the audience. So he and his two friends - Peter Sodd and Phu Nguyen - all from Phoenix, created Romo, who you can control from an iPad, computer, or another iPhone after downloading its free app. The three twenty-somethings then started their company, Romotive, where you can purchase Romo for $150. I spoke to them after the talk.

What's the purpose of Romo?

Rinaudo: He's just a robot that anyone can program and hack. He's also just fun to play with. You can invite anyone to control Romo from anywhere in the world. We think of him as a robot, but a lot of people buy him for kids, especially because when kids create behaviors for him and they try to train Robo how to do things, they are actually learning about computer science. It's a really cool way to get kids excited about technology and robotics and coding.

How did you create your first prototype?

Peter Sodd: He [pointing to Nguyen] called me on the phone and said, "What if we could build robots that used smart phones as their brain?" Two weeks later I built the first prototype, and it worked.

Rinaudo: We built 100 of them by hand - at first. Then we built 2,000 of them.

By hand?

RK: Yes. Now we're building 2000 of them per week. But not by hand.

What can you do besides hit the [touch-screen] joystick and make him move around?

Romo has a bunch of autonomous behaviors, which means he can interact with his environment, he can track you, and he can also use computer vision not only to track your face but also to recognize different glyphs. Something we're working on is the ability to hold different glyphs in front of Romo - we call it Romo glyphs - and what that allows people to do is program him. Romo knows that each card means something different and by holding cards in front of him you can create a program. And by changing the order of those cards and holding them in front of him again you can change the program. So that's our attempt to make programming accessible to kids who are even just six or seven years old - make it tangible, make it easy, and make it interactive with a robot that is actually going to show kids what they are creating in real time.

Is your primary audience kids?

We built Romo for 12-year-old versions of ourselves because we thought that advanced robotics shouldn't only be in research labs and factories - we wanted to figure out a way to get those robots into homes. It's in much the same way the first personal computers were called toys, and they appealed to kids and hackers who were sitting on the floors of their garages hacking on these things, getting them to do cool stuff. Same thing with Romo. But we don't think about whether the robots are for kids or adults. We build robots we think are awesome and that appeal to all ages of people.

See all TED2013 coverage

"Friends", by euclase. [via Deviant Art Blog via @Aurich]

According to Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady's new book Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, the secretive National Security Agency spying programs have become institutionalized, and have grown, since 9/11.

Shane Harris at the Washingtonian read through the book's account of these sweeping and controversial surveillance programs, conducted under the code name "Ragtime":

Ragtime, which appears in official reports by the abbreviation RT, consists of four parts.

Ragtime-A involves US-based interception of all foreign-to-foreign counterterrorism-related data; Ragtime-B deals with data from foreign governments that transits through the US; Ragtime-C deals with counterproliferation actvities; and then there's Ragtime-P, which will probably be of greatest interest to those who continue to demand more information from the NSA about what it does in the United States.

P stands for Patriot Act. Ragtime-P is the remnant of the original President’s Surveillance Program, the name given to so-called "warrantless wiretapping" activities after 9/11, in which one end of a phone call or an e-mail terminated inside the United States. That collection has since been brought under law, but civil liberties groups, journalists, and legal scholars continue to seek more information about what it entailed, who was targeted, and what authorities exist today for domestic intelligence-gathering.

Harris, who is an experienced national security reporter, analyzes some of those findings in his Washingtonian item. You can buy a copy of the book here (released Feb. 14, 2013).

(HT: Laura Poitras/Freedom of the Press Foundation)

Last night, around 10:00 p.m., an SUV somehow crashed through a barrier on the south side of the Memorial Bridge and landed in the Potomac River.

The driver, the SUV’s lone occupant, escaped the watery wreck and was transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Charges are now pending against the driver, according to U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Brooks.

If you’ve ever feared making a wrong turn and driving off the side of a bridge, AAA Mid-Atlantic has some potentially helpful tips for you. From a press release:

Although they are considered worst-case scenarios, such crashes rarely happen, safety officials and experts say.  But that’s of little consolation to local drivers when their vehicle suddenly goes deep six or becomes a leaking boat. What you do and how you react within moments of the crash into the abyss will determine whether you live or die in a watery grave, the auto club advises. “Add darkness and near freezing water, and your chances of escape have greatly diminished,” safety experts warns.

“Although less than one-half of one percent of all automobile crashes involves a vehicle being submerged under water, it is still a very frightening situation to motorists and their terrified passengers, especially young children and the elderly,” said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic’s Manager of Public and Government Affairs. “Previous research shows that between 400 to 600 persons lose their lives each year in the United States, as their vehicles plummet into a canal, river, or a ditch for that matter.”

Annually, almost ten percent of all drowning deaths in the United States can be attributed to being submerged in a car. If children are in the car, the driver or the adult should focus on getting the children out safely first and keeping them from panicking during the petrifying ordeal. In most crashes of this nature, the heaviest end of the deep-sixed vehicle – usually the end with the engine – will begin sinking first, pulling the car down at an angle, notes Popular Mechanic.  That is, unless the water is 15 feet or deeper. In that case, the vehicle may land on its roof, compounding the dangers and risks for the occupants.

Although most vehicles will float for three or four minutes before they start sinking due to the surprising buoyancy of the vehicle in deep water and depending upon on the airtightness of the vehicles, time is still of the essence, advises AAA Mid-Atlantic. The overarching concern is getting to dry land as quickly as possible. Your safety and the lives of your passengers depend upon that.

So, the first key to surviving such a mishap is remaining calm, according to safety experts. Underscoring this, the National Safety Commission puts it this way: “The first and most important thing to remember, if your vehicle is submerged, is to remain CALM – easier said than done-but it’s the most important thing you can do to stay alive.” However, the experts tend to vary on their tips. For example, the brothers Magliozzi, Tom and Ray, of NPR’s “Car Talk” say: “The correct way to get out of a sinking car is to float in the cabin until water is within about 2 inches of the roof. At that time pressure in and outside the car will be equal and it will be easy to open the door and swim out.”

For safety’s sake and to avoid confusion, first responders and the National Safety Commission offer the following tips when your vehicle plunges into the fathoms below:

• Don’t panic. Once your car hits the water it will not sink immediately (You will have at least one or two minutes before the car begins to sink, safety experts say).
• If possible, jump out while car is on surface.
• If your car is still floating, roll down the window and unbuckle your seat belt to escape.
• If your car is submerged, safety experts suggest remaining buckled up while you break the driver or passenger’s side window to escape.
• Allow the pressure of the water to equalize inside the sodden vehicle before attempting to open the doors or windows. Water weighs 62.4 lbs. per cubic foot.
• Move toward rear of vehicle where the air bubble is forming.
• Water pressure against the water-logged doors will make opening the doors very difficult until the pressure inside of the vehicle and outside of the vehicle are equal.
• Open your windows to allow yourself and your passengers to escape (Contrary to popular opinion, the “power windows won’t stop working within seconds after impact.” The power can stay on as along as 10 minutes).

The nightmarish crash from the Memorial Bridge is a reminder to motorists of the importance of carrying and keeping a sharp tool, such as a Philips screwdriver or a spring-loaded center punch, in their glove compartment or in the cabin of their vehicle. The tool is a life-saver. Here’s why: it allows you to break the tempered glass to extricate yourself and your passengers from the sinking vehicle. Other salient tips include:

• If the windows are blocked, try to push the windshield or rear window out with your feet or shoulder.
• Rescue the children or passengers who need assistance to help them to escape. If children are in the sinking or submerged car, unbuckle their seatbelts and or child passenger seat, starting with the oldest child first.
• Safeguard the kids. Push the children out of the vehicle ahead of you.
• Always keep a window-breaking tool in your vehicle in an easily accessible location, safety experts suggest.
• Remove heavy clothing before attempting to swim to safety.
• Swim to the surface as safely and quickly as possible (swim in the direction of the current if you’re in deep water).
• Push off for quick rise to the surface.
• If you can’t swim try to float. Use your body’s natural buoyancy to float. Make sure to raise your head to breathe.
• Call for medical attention as quickly as possible.

Ironically, just last week crews from the Federal Highway Administration reportedly began an “extensive inspection of the deck of the iconic 80-year-old Arlington Memorial Bridge, a process that is expected to continue through March 5. In September the 2,163 feet long bridge underwent a two month long renovation, costing $788,375, to repair and replace its entire driving surface.

Photos courtesy Mark P.

Sometimes you just need a fountain of cats set to rap music. HEY GRIFF, BRING IN THE CATS.

Jeffrey sez, "I spent the last 4 months stitching 48 THOUSAND images together into a single panorama which lets you see things up to about 15 miles away. This image is about 4 times larger than the previous world record image, a 114-gigapixel image of Shanghai (at the time incorrectly labeled as 271 gigapixels) The panorama was shot from the top of BT Tower, using 4 cameras, lenses, and robots for moving the cameras. Three photographers using about $100,000 of gear spent 5 days up there. Ultimately we used 1 set of images which was shot over 90 minutes. Stitching was done on two workstations with 192GB and 256GB of RAM, using Kolor Autopano Giga stitching software. Sadly, the software choked on the gigantic dataset, and the stitching work ended up taking about 3 months longer than planned. This took a serious toll on my mental health. I am extremely happy to be finally putting this image out to the public and letting it see the light of day. Of course there are errors in the image. In the end we had to deliver it to the client with a deadline which had already slipped by months. At any rate, there are FAR fewer errors in the image that I expected. I hope you enjoy it. Can anyone find the pig?"

BT Tower 360 Panorama of London (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

A US soldier with a unit in Eastern Afghanistan was shot in combat, and bled profusely, nearing death. Helicopters picked him up, medics inspected his injuries, cut off his clothes and looked through his pockets. They found his iPhone, with a bullet hole through it.

"They said that the iPhone probably changed the trajectory of the bullet, making the wound shallower in his flesh. The protective cover he had on his phone made it so the glass didn't shatter, making his wounds worse. He and his friends joked they should replace their body armor with iPads."

[KTVA Alaska via Jon Passantino]

By RSVLTS.com. (Thanks, Ben Bromage, via the BB Google+ Community)

I watched this full-screen and loved it -- the shades of gray, the falling snow, the playful crows. Thank you to the person who captured this on video!

(Via Arbroath)

Infographic by Curtis Whaley. (Via Mental Floss)

You've got my vote, Madam.

Submitted by: Billy Charlton

Tagged: pope of rome , jimi hendrix , pope benedict , failbook Share on Facebook

I don't want to give away the punchline here, but it's definitely worth 1:40 of your time to get to it. This Australian gentleman placed a classified ad announcing the sale of his house, with the stipulation "No Asians." A news-crew cornered him in front of the house and demanded an explanation, and, well...

No Asians (via Reddit)

For the past couple of weeks my kids and I have been on a weird-but-true books kick. They've been reading Stranger Than Science, a 1960 paperback that I discovered when I was about 11 or 12. The stories in Stranger Than Science are very entertaining, but a lot of them have been debunked, or at least detoothed, over the years.

I wondered if there might be a modern weird-but-true book that is entertaining as well as truthful. I looked around and I think I found it. It's National Geographic's Tales of the Weird: Unbelievable True Stories. This fat book (540 pages) is loaded with the same kinds of stories found in Stranger Than Science and Strangely Enough, but it isn't afraid to punch holes in popular urban legends. It explains the truth behind the Maya "doomsday" calendar, and the latest thinking behind Bigfoot, Area 51, and Chupacabra. And it does so without taking the fun or mystery out of them.

But Tales of the Weird isn't all about busting myths. Most of the book focuses on the wonderfully strange things in our universe: Women can sniff out men with odorless pheromones. Your brain can take cat naps while you are awake. Eating crocodiles may have resulted in the development of bigger brains in human beings. Ladybug incubators enslaved by wasps. New death ritual found in Himalaya. Cocaine addiction uses same brain paths as salt cravings. Astronauts' fingernails falling off. Five weirdest bugs. The Freemasons: eight myths decoded. Why do birds fall from the sky? UFO-like clouds linked to military maneuvers? Giant, mucuslike sea blobs on the rise, pose danger. And hundreds of others.

When Jane (9) read the chapter on synesthesia she became very excited and told me that she thought she was the only person in the world who connected specific colors with letters of the alphabet (Q is a dark purple for her, for instance).

This is possibly the best bathroom reading book ever written.

Tales of the Weird: Unbelievable True Stories

You are warned.

Thanks, Bill Rini!

Yesterday I mentioned a book I'd read as a child called Strangely Enough, by C.B. Colby. It got me thinking about a similar book that I enjoyed as an 11-year-old called Stranger Than Science, by Frank Edwards. It was first published in 1960. I remembered that I still had a copy and found it in my bookcase.

The cover copy says "Astounding stories of strange events! All authentic – all absolutely true!" Inside the book it says, "Best selling author Frank Edwards has sifted through the overwhelming evidence [and] has chosen only those amazing and dramatic stories that are incontestably true."

Stranger than Science has about 60 stories in it, and each of them are between one-and-a-half and three pages long. I read a few of the stories to my nine-year-old daughter Jane last night. We both loved the stories. The first story is called "The Mystery of David Lang." It's about a man who, in 1880, was standing in his front yard and suddenly vanished into thin air in front of his wife, two children, and a visiting judge.

The grown-ups searched the field around and around, and found nothing. Mrs. Lang became hysterical and had to be led screaming into the house. Meanwhile, neighbors had been alerted by the frantic ringing a huge bell that stood in the side yard, and they spread the alarm. By nightfall scores of people were on the scene, many of them with lanterns. They search every foot of the field in which Lang had last been seen a few hours before. They stamped their feet on the dry hard sod in hope of detecting some hole into which he might have fallen – but they found none.

Next there was a story about abominable snowmen, followed by stories about a man who was swallowed by a fish and lived to tell story, a grotesque monster carcass that washed up on the shore of a British island, and an abandoned Arctic village from which all of its inhabitants had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. The village was called Anjikuni and I looked it up. Some accounts claim that the story is true, and others dismiss it as an urban legend. I think it is probably an urban legend, but I'm not entirely convinced one way or the other. I'm looking forward to reading more of these stories with my daughter, and checking them out online.

You can buy used copies of Stranger Than Science for as little as $.61 on Amazon

What is a Scottie Pinwheel? Glad you asked. (HT: Joe Sabia)