firehose

“I don’t think this is a particularly good time for objective information.”

So says a scientist midway through Gasland Part II, Josh Fox’s new documentary premiering tonight at 9PM on HBO and it’s hard to disagree with him. As simultaneously disheartening and infuriating as is the film’s examination of the environmental impact and the governmental policies involved in the controversial natural gas mining procedure known as fracking, the concurrent assault by the gas industry and those politicians in their employ on the truth is even more painful to watch. And if Fox’s presentation of the film’s argument that fracking policy is corrupt, unfair, and environmentally unsound is occasionally less than subtle, it’s also almost entirely, depressingly convincing.

For those who haven’t seen the original Gasland (like me), or Gas Van Sant’s Promised Land (like me), or who haven’t had their ...

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Good news today for proponents of more bike and pedestrian trails throughout the region: more than $40 million in funding is about to become available.

That's because the Oregon House of Representatives this afternoon passed Senate Bill 260. The culmination of a years-long effort to win more money for bike trails, the bill expands the type of projects eligible for money from the Multimodal Transportation Fund, also called ConnectOregon.

Since its 2005 inception the lottery-backed fund has poured millions of dollars [PDF] into things like a Tigard railroad switching yard and a new runway at the Bend Airport. So long as it had the potential to bring economic gains and didn't have to do with roadway improvement, a transportation project could qualify for the funds.

But pedestrian and bicycle improvements have been conspicuously absent from qualifying projects. Passing the house 44-14, SB 260 changes that. The bill's passage is a win for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, the state's chief bike advocacy organization, which has been working since at least 2008 to win money for new trails.

For an idea of what this shift might mean for Portland, check out the BTA's recently released "Blueprint for World-Class Bicycling" [PDF] which details a list of five trails the organization want to win funding for in years to come.

The furthest along is the long-discussed North Portland Greenway, which would stretch from Kelly Point Park to the Steel Bridge. Also on the BTA's list: a trail connecting Portland to Lake Oswego, and an extension of the Gresham-Fairview trail.

"I won't pick a favorite today," said BTA Advocacy Director Gerik Kransky, when I asked which project the group would focus on first. But he was quick to point out that the North Portland Greenway has existing support, and that it would offer convenient access to the manufacturing jobs on Swan Island (remember, projects need to aid the economy).

The measure, as you've no doubt surmised from the split vote, had its share of opposition. As reported by Bikeportland.org, State Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, called the measure "an absolutely bad and wrong direction" in a floor speech this morning. Kruse contended the ConnectOregon money was intended "for business interests and not for bicycle projects."

Kransky, meanwhile, points to a study released earlier this year that suggested bicycling tourism alone injects hundreds of millions into the Oregon economy.

Of course, the fact that bike/pedestrian trails are technically eligible for ConnectOregon funds doesn't guarantee they'll win them. The fund has $42 million to spend in the next two years—a far cry from the $100 million allocations its seen in past bienniums—and everybody's looking for money.

And it's not a BTA show to begin with. The organization now will work with the public agencies who'd actually be constructing its longed-for paths.

"It’s not so much a fight at this point," Kransky says. "It’s a matter of us making the case (for money) in the context of that program."

Applications for ConnectOregon money are typically released in October and due in November, says Chris Cummings, a senior transportation planner at the Oregon Department of Transportation. Monetary awards are announced in August of the following year.

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OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

(All props to my friend Clay.)

In the course of the deliberations of the Wikipedia Data Preservation Taskforce, it was realized that although many catastrophes would be survivable, the possibility had to be faced that an extinction level event was possible, albeit unlikely, and plans should be initiated to preserve the encyclopedia in a non-terrestrial environment. To this end, Wikimedia has come to arrangements with many of the world's scientific institutions for the provision of access to the vast majority of the world's radio telescopes.

It is already the practice of the encyclopedia to create a database dump, a record of the data from the Wikipedia database, on a regular basis. This data is compressed using the highly efficient Honda-Beech data compression method, which compresses the data by a ratio of up to 1,000,000:1. If it is deemed to be probable that an extinction level event will occur shortly, this data shall be transmitted from the world's radio telescopes to the 300 nearest stars and to the centre of the galaxy for as long as possible.

The datastream will include a specially designed primer, or set of simple scientific principles and data that would be common to all extraterrestrial intelligences, providing a common base of reference to enable those receiving the signal to commence the mammoth task of decoding the encyclopedia. The message will be accompanied by a short video message by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and images required for the re-creation of fundraiser banners.

While this is indeed a last-ditch attempt to save the knowledge of humanity, it can be hoped that someday, many years in the future and many light-years from Earth, minds immeasurably different from ours might look upon the works of humanity and understand. To quote Jimmy Wales' message to the stars:

“	While the light of humanity may flicker and die, we go gently into this dark night, comforted in the knowledge that someday Wikipedia shall take its rightful place as part of a consensus-built Galactic Encyclopedia, editable by all sentient beings.

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In this trailer for the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Dame Helen Mirren gets suspicious when her award starts showing up in places that it shouldn't. I would get weirded-out, too, if my inanimate objects started moving around. Every kid wanted to have live toys like Woody and Buzz, right? Dame Helen has live awards! Based on her reaction, though, it looks like Toy Story's charm isn't quite as applicable to real life. That poor housekeeper. (via Jezebel)

Google recently released statistics on all the legal requests it gets to censor the Web via its many services, from Search to YouTube. Now Sebastian Sadowski has created some handy visualizations of all the ways information is being censored — perhaps without you even realizing it.

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Over the holiday weekend, I headed to Pleasanton, California to spend the afternoon at one of my favorite places to visit in the world, the Alameda County Fair. As is my tradition, I immediately hit up the various food vendors to see what’s new in fair fare. This year, I came across a lot of “deep fried on-a-stick” food items.

Here’s fried Donut Dogs, Bacon, Doritos, and “Choogs” (We’re not sure what a “choog” is exactly):

And then there were fried peanut butter sandwiches, cheeseburgers, and pickles:

Another vendor had fried strawberry Pop-Tarts (on a stick, naturally), along with fried Twinkies, cookie dough, cheesecake, brownies and Nutella:

But wait, there’s more…

Fried Snickers, fried Oreos:

Fried Fruity Pebbles cereal, fried Moonpies:

A sign advertising the fried menu offerings also shows they have fried Captain Crunch (sic) and fried peanut butter cups:

And finally, and what “wins” for originality in my book, is the “Chicken Fried Steak on a Stick:”

photos by Rusty Blazenhoff

firehose shared this story from Google Developers Blog.

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By Peter Dickman, Engineering Manager

Google has supported the PubSubHubbbub (PuSH) protocol since its introduction in 2009. Earlier this year we completely rewrote our PuSH hub implementation, both to make it more resilient and to considerably enhance its capacity and throughput. Our improved PuSH hub means we can expose feeds more efficiently, coherently and consistently, from a robust secure access point. Using the PuSH protocol, servers can subscribe to an almost arbitrarily large number of feeds and receive updates as they occur.

In contrast, the Feed API allows you to download any specific public Atom or RSS feed using only JavaScript, enabling easy mashups of feeds with your own content and other APIs. We are planning some improvements to the Feed API, as part of our ongoing infrastructure work.

We encourage you to consider PuSH as a means of accessing feeds in bulk. To support that, we’re clarifying our practices around bots interacting with Google’s PuSH system: we encourage providers of feed systems and related tools to connect their automated systems for feed acquisition to our PuSH hub (or other hubs in the PuSH ecosystem). The PuSH hub is designed to be accessed by bots and it’s tuned for large-scale reading from the PuSH endpoints. We have safeguards against abuse, but legitimate users of the access points should see generous limits, with few restrictions, speed bumps or barriers. Similarly, we encourage publishers to submit their feeds to a public PuSH hub, if they don’t want to implement their own.

Google directly hosts many feed producers (e.g. Blogger is one of the largest feed sources on the web) and is a feed consumer too (e.g. many webmasters use feeds to tell our Search system about changes on their sites). Our PuSH hub offers easy access to hundreds of millions of Google-hosted feeds, as well as hundreds of millions of other feeds available via the PuSH ecosystem and through active polling.

The announcement of v0.4 of the PuSH specification advances our goal of strengthening infrastructure support for feed handling. We’ve worked with Superfeedr and others on the new specification and look forward to it being widely adopted.


Peter Dickman spends his days herding cats for the Search Infrastructure group in Zurich. He divides his spare time between helping government bodies understand cloud computing and systematically evaluating the products of Switzerland’s chocolatiers.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

BON TEMPS, LA—During Sunday night’s installment of HBO’s supernatural drama True Blood, several characters on the show overtly mentioned that the episode was really dragging and that they couldn’t wait for it to finally end.

“The Lonely Dodo” is a short animation created by Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in which narrator Stephen Fry tells the story of the last lonely dodo bird on the island of Mauritius.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Just as we predicted, Apple’s deal with T-Mobile has turned things around for the iPhone maker. The deal, in which T-Mobile became the first major US carrier to offer unlocked iPhones at full price rather than subsidized through a two-year contract, has been a big hit with consumers, who made the iPhone the number one smartphone on T-Mobile in the three month period ending in May. That’s given Apple a rare reprieve from the steady takeover of the market by Google’s Android operating system. Android-based phones held steady at 52% of the US market during those three months, while the iPhone is now at 41.9%, a 3.5% gain, say new data from surveys by Kantar.

Of those buying a smartphone on T-Mobile, 53% were upgrading from a simple “feature phone,” versus the typical industry average of 45%. That means the iPhone isn’t taking market share from Android: It’s sucking up more first-time smartphone buyers, exactly the customers who are key to Apple’s future health.

Outside the US, though, Apple still faces an uphill battle and continues to lose market share. Worldwide, Android has greater than 70% market share.

Aaron Hernandez, the New England Patriots tight end charged with murder on June 26, has been removed from Madden 25 and NCAA 14. Players that happen to unlock Hernandez's Ultimate Team card in NCAA 14 by getting a gold medal in the game's Shovel Option drill in the Skills Trainer mode will see the card turn into that of current Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith. A future title update will remove Hernandez from the game entirely. EA Sports' statement reads:

"We have made a decision to remove Aaron Hernandez from Madden NFL 25 and NCAA Football 14. Because NCAA Football 14 was finalized prior to our decision, Hernandez' image still appears in the Nike Skills Trainer. However, he is not in the game, and anyone who unlocks that particular Nike Skills Trainer reward will receive an Alex Smith Ultimate Team player item instead. The image of Hernandez will be removed via a Title Update in the near future."

NCAA 14's Ultimate Team mode, the college football series' version of EA Sports' card-collecting mode seen in many of its games, features thousands of unlockable, real-life athletes. The athletes, many being current NFL players, represent the colleges they attended. In Hernandez's case, his likeness in NCAA 14 was tied to the Florida Gators. He was released by the Patriots on the day he was arraigned, so were he in Madden 25, he would have been a free agent.

Accused murderer Aaron Hernandez removed from NCAA 14 and Madden 25 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Jul 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LOS ANGELES—In a development that stunned studio executives, the new Disney motion picture The Lone Ranger somehow flopped at the box office over its opening weekend despite a recent profile of star Armie Hammer in Good Housekeeping magazine.

Rick Perry has announced that he's not seeking reelection as governor of Texas. He says he's not made up his mind about future plans, which probably means he's going to run for president again. His speech is poorly delivered but decently written, without, at the time of this writing, a single "oops." Go watch it if you must.

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Financially strapped conglomerate Vivendi wasn't able to sell off its controlling interest in Activision Blizzard, but it's looking to get money out of the $4.4 billion cash and asset-flush publisher through other means. The Financial Times (via Reuters) reports Vivendi will try some boardroom maneuvers to obtain a massive payout.

Coincidentally, the play Vivendi is reportedly trying to pull off is nearly identical to a theory published by Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter in May. And it goes a little something like this: July 9 (tomorrow) is the five-year closing date of the $18 billion Activision and Vivendi merger, which means Vivendi will have the ability to nominate a majority of Activision's board of directors. After that, the board could take out a mega loan, and initiate a dividend (a standard payment given to shareholders).

"Borrowing of $5 billion would permit a dividend of $8.5 billion. As the holder of 61 percent of Activision's common stock at March 31, 2013, we estimate Vivendi would receive approximately $5.2 billion in cash, easing its mounting debt concerns," wrote Pachter.

Pachter told Joystiq in follow-up, "Vivendi needs money and as of tomorrow, controls Activision. Activision has money. It's pretty easy to reach an appropriate conclusion from those two facts."

If you're wondering why Vivendi doesn't just find a buyer for its Activision shares instead of all this intrigue, Vivendi currently owns 702 million of Activision's 1.15 billion outstanding shares. At face value, that's worth $10.15 billion. Vivendi can make half that and keep its ownership of Activision through this other maneuver.

Strapped-for-cash Vivendi goes looking in Activision Blizzard's till originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Jul 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crime Broadsides Project, Harvard Law School Library:

Harvard Law School Library Broadsides Project

The Bald Cypress forest was buried under ocean sediments, protected in an oxygen-free environment for more than 50,000 years, but was likely uncovered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Ben Raines, one of the first divers to explore the underwater forest and the executive director of the nonprofit Weeks Bay Foundation, which researches estuaries. The forest contains trees so well-preserved that when they are cut, they still smell like fresh Cypress sap, Raines said.

(Click to embiggen)

Feòrag NicBhrìde has provided us with a vital cartographic reference: a map of Europe showing the word for "beer" in each country.

The Essential Map of Europe and Environs. (Thanks, Charlie!)

Hurry up with my damn croissants

Seattle-based Jeremy Veach has been taking fun and unique photos with his pug Norm since shortly after he got the dog at just eight weeks old. Now Norm is about a year and a half old, and was featured in the June 2013 issue of mobile photography magazine Ludique. More adorable pug-shots can be found on Norm’s Instagram.

images via Jeremy Veach

via My Modern Metropolis

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing. This week: songs about food.

Though Cibo Matto’s Viva! La Woman came out in 1996, it’s still a pretty weird record nearly 20 years later. Viva! is a celebration of the Japanese duo’s Italian namesake phrase, which actually means “crazy food.” Single “Sugar Water” was the record’s relatively modest hit, but the totally weird, totally ’90s clip for “Know Your Chicken” is what captured the general public’s attention. Part arty soap opera, part shitty rap video, “Know Your Chicken” is a visual homage to wind-up toys, anarchy, and personally slaughtering the food you eat. It’s a message that’s actually pretty prevalent now in the locavore movement, but at the time, the notion of killing ...

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Carpe diem, it means “grab the Frisbee.”

Creative agency VCCP created the hilarious “Be more dog” ad campaign about a cat who decides to act more like a dog for UK telecom provider O2.

via Tastefully Offensive

C-Thru is a helmet that is designed to help firefighter walk through dense smoke during smoke diving search and rescue missions. Time constrains of six minutes per mission, makes it imperative that the gear is optimal. C-thru gives them the edge thanks to the wire-frame vision of the interior geometry, surrounding the smoke diver. Using technological enhancements, the helmet provides a visual map of the interiors so that it becomes easy for the firefighter to locate the victims.

This is how it works:

• C-Thru’s vision system integrates many technologies to aid firefighters, such as a head-mounted projection display, optical thermal camera, cloud computing, selective active noise cancellation and target acquisition.
• The optical thermal camera captures the imaging of the surrounding area and sends the data to the smoke diver leader’s handheld device.
• The data is calculated there and sent back to the helmet.
• Newly generated 3D wire-frame data is projected by the head-mounted projectors through the retro-reflective front visor of the helmet.
• This wire-frame outline of their surroundings helps firefighters find a path through the building and locate victims.

Designer: Omer Haciomeroglu

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(Holy Smoke! was originally posted on Yanko Design)

Related posts:

1. Holy Driver
2. UPDATE: Holy Cup of Doubleness
3. A Holy Lamp for Lovers of Illusion

The human rights group Reprieve arranged for Yasiin Bey, better known as hip hop artist Mos Def, to be force-fed using the standard operating procedure at Guantanamo Bay, a session they videotaped.

I'm not convinced that The Wolverine is going to be terrible, but boy, have all the shots of that fight scene on-top of the Japanese bullet train looked goofy in the previews. Well, as the first official The Wolverine clip has revealed, this fight scene doesn't just look goofy, it is goofy. Immensely.

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