firehose

The Pitch Drop is the world’s longest running lab experiment. For 86 years, no one has seen a drop fall from this solid that behaves like a liquid. Now you can.

Mention Starbucks in the UK, and many people think of lattes, Macchiatos — and tax dodging.

The Game Boy Legacy: A 25th Anniversary Celebration ⊟

Ahead of the Game Boy’s 25th birthday (it debuted in Japan on April 21, 1989), USgamers Jeremy Parish published a magnificent retrospective on the handheld. It’s a great tribute to the underpowered portable and its father Gunpei Yokoi, and I’m not just saying that because JC and I contributed a handful of words to the piece! Go read it here.

BUY Game Boy games, upcoming releases

People often say that there's no such thing as an original story these days, but how right are they? Is it possible, maybe, that a good majority of western blockbusters are actually just homages or near re-tellings of anime? This post from The Daily Beast seems to think so.

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Portland news organizations are already telling you how to vote in the high-stakes May ballot measure deciding who controls Portland's water, sewer and stormwater systems (the Oregonian had its say on Saturday). But one local media company is voicing its opinion outside of the editorial pages.

RB Pamplin Corporation—which owns a variety of local and national companies, including the Portland Tribune and its affiliated publications—has kicked in $1,000 to support a new water district, according to recent filings.

That apparent support from the company's honchos—Chairman Robert B Pamplin Jr. founded the Tribune—wasn't enough to sway the paper's editorial board, though. The Trib says a new water district isn't the answer.

Measure 26-156 would strip oversight of the Portland Water Bureau and Bureau of Environmental Services from city council, and put it in the hands of a new, seven-member board. Supporters say the effort would eliminate cronyism and corruption from the rate-setting process. But hte measure's opponents—including the vast majority of Portland's environmental advocates—paint the measure as a takeover bid by industrial interests which have provided most of its backing.

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Historical Map: Comprehensive Rapid Transit Plan for the City and County of Los Angeles, 1925

This is one of the earliest plans commissioned by the City and County of Los Angeles. The consultants – Kelker, De Leuw and Co. of Chicago – were asked to create a plan to accommodate a future city population of three million.

Metro’s own history archive has this to say about the project:

The plan shows a number of proposed immediate and future subways: one across Hollywood to La Brea Boulevard, another from downtown to 7th Street, up Vermont Avenue, and across Third Street. It initially would have run to Larchmont Boulevard as subway with a future extension on elevated rail to Third Street and down Wilshire Boulevard to Beverly Hills and the ocean in Santa Monica.  It also shows a subway from downtown across Pico Boulevard, initially to Rimpau Boulevard with a future extension to Venice Beach. 

Solid lines on both the regional map and the urban map represent mass rapid transit routes recommended for immediate construction to relieve downtown congestion. Dotted lines predict future extensions that will be necessary to serve population increases. The plan recommended for immediate construction of 153 miles of subway, elevated rail, and street railways at a projected cost of $133,385,000. Strong opposition by the business community to planned sections of elevated rail, as well as voter reluctance to tax themselves to benefit the privately held Pacific Electric Railway and Los Angeles Railway effectively shelved the plan.

The map itself is a superb example of cartography, complete with some lovely contour work on the mountains around the city and simply lovely hand-drawn typography – check out the loveliness of that “PACIFIC OCEAN” label.

The map does a lot with a limited colour palette, but it’s effective: existing rapid transit in black, proposed lines in red, and everything else in a pleasant (and visually recessive) gold. It’s worth noting that there aren’t any roads shown on this map, just the tracks of the two main streetcar companies, the Los Angeles Railway and the Pacific Electric Railway (see this contemporaneous map of that system).

Our rating: Gorgeous, and fun to compare against the actual existing Metrorail system. Four stars!

Source: LA Metro archive library (lots of other fun planning maps there!)

Gawker Three Hospitalized After Pet Cat Named Khat Attacks Family | Jezebel Dad's Passionate Poem: 'To the Boys Who May One Day Date My Daughter'| Jalopnik Victory! Porsche Says They'll Buy "Lemon 911" Guy's Car Back | Lifehacker The Biggest Tech Industry Buzzwords, Defined for Normal People | Kinja Popular Posts

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Few (highly manageable) frustrations are more vexing than having an episode of your favorite TV show spoiled before you can watch it. You learn a pivotal plot point before you're ready and suddenly you're experiencing all the Kübler-Ross stages of grief. It's an ugly situation. Unfortunately, it's also an inevitable one.

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Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, recently celebrated its 14th birthday. The diminutive android has experienced some minor upgrades over the years, but nothing quite like it's latest batch of enhancements. Just watch what ASIMO can do now.

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Her West Coast doctors tested her for "everything under the sun" -- except for Lyme disease, which typically is an East Coast-specific illness. Despite going on meds, her condition continued to worsen. "During the next several months, I would continue to cycle in and out of this flu like state," she shared. "I lacked vital energy… a shell of myself."

Airbnb, the fast-growing site that lets people become hoteliers by renting out sofas, rooms or entire private homes, has now closed its latest round of funding: $500 million, led by private equity firm TPG, at a $10 billion valuation.

Nerval's Lobster writes: "Forbes offers up a comforting little story about how Nest and FitBit are planning on turning user data in a multi-billion-dollar business. 'Smart-thermostat maker Nest Labs (which is being acquired by Google for $3.2 billion) has quietly built a side business managing the energy consumption of a slice of its customers on behalf of electric companies,' reads the article. 'In wearables, health tracker Fitbit is selling companies the tracking bracelets and analytics services to better manage their health care budgets, and its rival Jawbone may be preparing to do the same.' As many a wit has said over the years: If you're not paying, you're the product. But if Forbes is right, wearable-electronics companies may have discovered a sweeter deal: paying customers on one side, and companies paying for those customers' data on the other. Will most consumers actually care, though?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steam's Greenlight community gave 75 more games the thumbs-up for distribution on the PC platform this week, adding a few familiar titles to the mix. Among the games that can begin start selling on Steam is Get Even, a first-person shooter from...

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WIKIMEDIA, ANDREW WALESGovernments have spent billions of dollars stockpiling the antiviral medication Tamiflu. Earlier reviews of the drug called into question just how effective it was, and the latest analysis, published today (April 10) in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), concludes that the money has been going “down the drain.”

An international team found that while Tamiflu might reduce the duration of flu symptoms by half a day, there’s no evidence that it reduces hospital admissions or complications of an infection. On top of that, the antiviral’s side effects include nausea and vomiting. “There is no credible way these drugs could prevent a pandemic,” Carl Heneghan, one of authors of the review and a professor at Oxford University, told reporters.

The data for this most recent review came from full study reports—data generated by clinical trials that are usually not open for scrutiny by independent researchers. Efforts by the BMJ and the research team convinced drugmaker Roche, which markets Tamiflu, to release the reports.

Fiona Godlee, an editor at BMJ, said that the picture of Tamiflu was previously much more positive than after the full study reports were disclosed. “Why did no one else demand this level of scrutiny before spending such huge sums on one drug?” she said at a press briefing. “The whole story gives an extraordinary picture of the entrenched flaws in the current system of drug regulation and drug evaluation.”

Roche stands by the utility of Tamiflu. “We fundamentally disagree with the overall conclusions” of the review, the company told MedPage Today. And others have said that the results don’t necessitate an end to stockpiling the drug. Sabrina Spinosa of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which approved the use of Tamiflu in 2002, told Nature that the agency had reviewed the same clinical trial reports. “The review does not raise any new concerns,” she said, adding that the EMA maintains its position on the risks and benefits of Tamiflu.

Original Source

At the end of a panel discussion at the Center for Inquiry back in 2009, an audience member asked a loaded question about whether genetics have anything to do with the disparity between men and women in the sciences.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was brave enough to broach the topic and answered it with a comparison. Instead of discussing women in science specifically, he addressed the topic African Americans in science, sharing his own story of having become an astrophysicist and why so few others follow a similar path…

(The video is an hour long, but only the relevant few minutes will play.)

(via Upworthy)

Craig thinks Helvetica Neue will be the next Mac system font, and suggests you start testing your apps with it now.

justingingerlake:

This is so important.

britishstarr:

Motivational quotes from Vietnamese Crystal

Not my problem

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

BioWare's classic PC role-playing game, Baldur's Gate, is now available for Android devices in an enhanced port developed by Beamdog studio division Overhaul Games. Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition adopted a variety of enhancements and new features...

triangles - iS: Internal Section (Square - PSX - 1999)

US arrests more than 200 immigrants in Texas Chron.com Immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally are escorted to a transportation bus after U.S. Border Patrol agents detained about 75 immigrants who'd been living in hut for several days in a brushy area Thursday April 17, 2014 near North 10 St. and ... and more »

Where nobody lives

Australian designer Cameron Booth has created a simplified map of every interstate and U.S. highway in the United States. The map is a follow up to his earlier project, subway-style maps of the interstate and U.S. Highway systems. It is available as a poster.

images via Cameron Booth

via Coudal Partners

Everyone in a bustling Chinese parade is attempting to elude pursuers, newly discovered cave paintings suggest early man was battling a lot of inner demons, and a xylophonist is shredding it.

popular shared this story from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (updated daily).

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Yip.