Mahmoud

knock knock.
who’s there?
a fis.
a fis who?
a fisherman.
go away! i already have hundreds of fish.

Google Earth Pro lets you fly around our planet and zoom in really close to areas of interest. I was able to see some junk in my backyard that I'd been meaning to clean up. A flyover tour of Tokyo is breathtaking. Read the rest

Women might have many more hairstyle options than men, but the same overall rules apply: It's best to pick the hairstyle that suits our faces the best . The images below should help you out.

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The Washington Post’s Wonkblog has published a pair of maps detailing the distribution of goats throughout the United States according to data collected by the USDA Agricultural Census in 2012, the last year such information was gathered. There were 2,621,514 at the time–which is a lot of goats.

If America’s goats were their own state, its population would be larger than that of Wyoming, Vermont, D.C. and North Dakota — combined.

images via The Washington Post Wonkblog

via Everlasting Blort, The Presurfer

Les Ateliers Flown ont imaginé ce superbe bureau au look épuré à partir d’une aile de Boeing 737-800. Avec ses touches argentées, l’aile blanche dessine une forme élancée dont l’extrémité forme un pied reposant sur la largeur. De l’autre côté, une dalle en granit épais soutient et stabilise la pièce. À découvrir dans la suite.

Pew Research Center released a report that compares the public and scientists' views on science and society.

On some things, such as the space station, fracking, and bioengineered fuel, U.S. adults and scientists a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science share similar sentiments. On other issues, such as genetically modified foods, animals in research, and climate change, there are big differences.

Tags: Pew Research, public opinion, science

David Spiegelhalter, professor of public understanding of risk, does some back-of-the-napkin math to describe why recent prostitution estimates for the UK are problematic.

As always, it's best to do a simple reality check. The ONS assumptions come to around 61,000,000 visits a year. Let's say 50,000,000 are from locals rather than foreign visitors. There are around 27,000,000 men between 18 and 50 in the UK (taking an arbitrary upper limit), so this would mean that on average each of them buys sex twice a year. In fact the latest Natsal survey found that 3.6% of men reported paying for sex in the last 5 years - let's say that means that considerably less than 1,000,000 men a year pay for sex, maybe 500,000. So the ONS assumptions mean that men who pay for sex do so on average twice a week. This seems high.

The assumptions also mean that the average person working in prostitution is turning over nearly £100,000 a year, which Jolyon from Tax Relief 4 Escorts says is completely implausible, and he should know.

Spiegelhalter makes a few of his own assumptions in there, but you can see why estimating illegal activity and then using those numbers to calculate gross domestic product can be a challenge.

If you recall, the gross domestic product for the United Kingdom rose by 5 percent, largely in part due to estimates trying to account for drug sales and prostitution. Given that illegal activity and careful, public record-keeping typically don't go together, the new numbers were rough at best. For prostitution in particular, the numbers from the Office of National Statistics estimated an extra £5.7 billion added to the GDP.

The problem now is that the United Kingdom, as a member of the European Union, apparently owes £1.7 billion. This is based on gross national income which uses gross domestic product in its equation. Ouch. Consequences.

Tags: prostitution, taxes, uncertainty

It's hard to predict the future, especially when humans are involved. Oftentimes, there are just too many variables to control for to estimate accurately. In the chart above from the Washington Post Wonkblog, Japan's fertility rate is plotted against various forecasts over the years, and you see forecasts headed upwards, but in reality it decreased consistently since the 1970s. This is based on work from Katagiri, et al (pdf).

See also a similar porcupine chart from Amanda Cox in 2010 that compared US deficit against forecasts.

Tags: birth, forecast, Japan, Washington Post

The process to purchase a MetroCard for the New York Subway is different from the process to purchase tickets for the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco. From the flowchart above by Aaron Reiss, it's clear that it takes a lot more screen touches to get a MetroCard, but that's only part of the story. The interesting part is why the two systems' machines are so different. Different timing means different goals.

Tags: MetroCard, subway

Ha ha! Oh wait. It’s a sad one.

Fun fact! Roy Stalin is now Google's VP of Housing and Urban Development!

San Francisco lets Silicon Valley push it around like the school bully in an '80s teen comedy. We're at each other's throats trying to cope with soaring housing costs, while Silicon Valley gets off scot-free for creating problems we get to solve.

Local governments dump housing problems onto the places that do build, mostly San Francisco and Oakland. For example, late last year, Mountain View approved plans to add 3.4 million square feet of office space around the Google and LinkedIn fortresses, adding 20,000 jobs. No new housing. Supposedly the newly elected City Council eventually will vote to allow 1,500 to 5,000 units in the area, but the other 15,000 are San Francisco's problem by default.

Sunnyvale, Milpitas, Palo Alto, Santa Clara and all these tedious South Bay hamlets debase themselves to offer tech titans expansion upon expansion to corporate campuses without any new housing. One UC Davis study suggested those cities have a combined below-market-rate housing deficit of 20,000 units. Mayor Ed Lee, I found locations for the 30,000 units you want to build. They're in the 408.

San Francisco should sue Mountain View and the rest of these fools. San Francisco could challenge all these cities to adopt a Jobs-Housing Linkage Program like we did years ago, to comply with their own housing elements. Even to the point of bringing dreaded California Environmental Quality Act lawsuits against big office projects that don't mitigate the housing problems they send us.

A relevant precedent is Urban Habitat v. the City of Pleasanton. State law requires local governments to adopt a housing element with land-use regulations to meet local housing needs. Pleasanton didn't comply with its own housing element and used a bunch of obscure zoning gimmicks to prevent new housing from being built, especially below-market-rate housing. Pleasanton lost in 2010 and had to rezone and allow more below-market-rate housing. San Francisco could adapt this approach to sue over the refusal to build in the deep south.

We progressives are accused of being NIMBYs, of reflexively opposing higher density new development. I support lots of it. In Silicon Valley. Build all the market-rate housing you want down there. I've been to Mountain View. There's nothing there worth preserving, except Taqueria La Bamba on Rengstorff Avenue. Their carnitas is the rapture. When I started stand-up, the bar Ron's Farmhouse in Mountain View had a weekly comedy night. That fetid hole of regret closed. Build a 50-story luxury condo tower there.

The reason these adorable towns resist more housing is basically racism. It's in the guise of alarms about "preserving neighborhood character," "school overcrowding" and "crime," but that's all code for poor brown people. They moved to a subdivision in 65 percent white Palo Alto to enjoy good schools and make little James Francos in peace. Fine!

South Bay: You left a lot of your rich white people here in San Francisco. Please come collect them. In San Francisco, we're upset about the displacement of working-class communities of color. You can preserve your historic landmark whiteness and we'll happily welcome "those people" here. Bring your people home. That's a win-win.

I know the techies in San Francisco feel embattled and beleaguered. They're blamed for things that are out of their control. I'm here for you, Google Bus riders. I'm concerned that all the hours you spend commuting are bad for your health. I want you to live close enough to bike to work. Santa Clara and Sunnyvale are both "All-America Cities." There's a sign on the freeway saying so. I don't know what that means, but I want you to have down time after work to find out. You deserve linguica from Neto's in Santa Clara. Help me help you.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

my rabbit friend and me

@petervidani

PREVIOUSLY, ON BIRDMANTHEFILM OFFICIAL FILM PAGE

Birdman The Film

From Thinkgeek:

Each Star Wars Toaster is molded in sturdy black plastic and meticulously detailed to look Darth Vader’s helmet (minus the very top bit). It makes an imposing addition to any kitchen counter. Pop in two pieces of bread, frozen pancakes, hamburger buns, Alderaan muffins, or whatever, and in moments Vader ejects them with “Star Wars” toasted onto one side. Like your toast on the darker side? A handy dial provides temperature adjustment. With the imposing presence of Darth Vader, the Star Wars Toaster will help eaters start their day feeling ready to take over the planet, and anything else that might get in their way.

[Darth Vader Toaster]

The post This Darth Vader Toaster Will Turn Your Bread to the Dark Side appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

Fox News is not exactly known as an ally of the Obama administration, especially when it comes to disputes between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, or disputes between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yet two prominent Fox News hosts, Chris Wallace and Shepherd Smith, harshly criticized Boehner and Netanyahu on Friday for secretly arranging a Netanyahu speech to Congress that is transparently aimed at undermining President Obama, and set up without the White House's knowledge.

The White House, State Department, and many foreign policy observers, including prominent former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, expressed outrage over the move. And, in a sign of just how many lines Boehner and Netanyahu crossed, so did the two Fox News hosts.

"I agree 100 percent," Wallace said when Smith read a quote from Indyk criticizing the Boehner-Netanyahu maneuver. Wallace went on:

And to make you get a sense of really how, forgive me, wicked, this whole thing is, the Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Israeli Ambassador to the United States for two hours on Tuesday, Ron Dermer. The ambassador, never mentioned the fact that Netanyahu was in negotiations and finally agreed to come to Washington, not to see the president, but to go to Capitol Hill, speak to a joint session of congress and criticize the president's policy. I have to say I'm shocked.

Smith said, "it seems like [Netanyahu's government] think[s] we don't pay attention and that we're just a bunch of complete morons, the United States citizens, as if we wouldn't pick up on what's happening here."

Wallace pointed out that Netanyahu might face political backlash in Israel over this "very risky political strategy," which could damage Israel's relationship with the United States.

Here is the backstory: On Wednesday, Boehner announced that he had invited Netanyahu to come speak to a joint session of Congress in late February (later pushed to early March) on Obama's nuclear negotiations with Iran, which both Boehner and Netanyahu oppose, and which Republicans are seeking to blow up by forcing new, deal-killing sanctions on Iran. What made this such a remarkable breach is that Boehner had reached over Obama to make the invitation, which he and Netanyahu kept secret from the White House. That is a major breach in US foreign policy, which is supposed to be unified; things like official visits by heads of state almost always go through the White House.

Perhaps worse, Republicans are letting a foreign leader use the floor of Congress to bash the American president, thus not just allowing but helping a foreign country meddle in American foreign policy. (This is not the first time either. Republicans invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress in 2011, an opportunity he also used to lambast Obama.)

For his part, Netanyahu is once again attempting to undermine the American president who is by far his most important ally, and is using Congress as a campaign stop on his own bid for reelection in Israel's March elections.

While backlash was anticipatable, Netanyahu likely did not imagine it extending to Fox News.

"After watching this I think Bibi [Netanyahu] and [Israeli ambassador to the US Ron] Dermer might have finally gone too far," Lisa Goldman, the director of the Israel-Palestine Initiative at the New America Foundation, wrote on Facebook of the Fox News segment. "They miscalculated the American Zeitgeist and didn't realize that when a foreign power, even a favorite ally, shows a lack of respect for US institutions, a red line has been crossed."

To Goldman's point, both Smith and Wallace, in expressing outrage at Netanyahu, pointed out that the Israeli leader had defied President George W. Bush's demand that Israel cease settlement growth in the West Bank, and had resisted Bush's efforts at an Israel-Palestine peace deal. The issue, for them, was not principally one of partisan politics, but of this ostensible ally repeatedly mistreating the United States and its president, regardless of political party.

If the Netanyahu government and Ron Dermer's embassy are watching this, and they certainly should be, they should be alarmed that even this crucially important element of their American support base is beginning to see the Netanyahu government as less of an ally.