Malady579

Benjamin Lee of The Guardian disliked the movie Legend, a biopic about 1950s and 1960s British thugs the Kray Twins, and gave it two stars. That didn't stop the movie studio from using it on the poster. Read the rest

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

Tapping into the natural expansion of a squeezable ball under pressure, this urban micro-globe provides both big-picture views and detailed streetscapes on one continuous surface.

Hungarian designer Dénes Sátor created the rubber EggMap ball in response to both traditional paper maps and newer digital equivalents, wanting a to pack more information into less space without relying on external energy or connectivity.

The spherical solution addresses classic issues with other geographical guides. Folding maps wear out over time, are susceptible to weather and conspicuous to examine publicly in unfamiliar places. Online maps may fail for lack of battery or internet.

Color-coded city sections let you easily spin and locate places on the map; a quick squeeze then reveals street names, specific locations and transit details (illustrated in the legend above).

Made to be robust and portable, the air-filled ball easily resists rain, wind, mud or snow and can be tossed in a pocket or backpack when not in use. And if you still manage to get lost, you can always throw it against the wall in anger – it will rebound.

---

---

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]

For a single day next month, locals and visitors will be able to experience Paris without motorized traffic, giving the city over to pedestrians and bikers. Free of traffic congestion, noise pollution and vehicle emissions, the Day Without Cars will transform the physical and auditory landscape, enabling views and revealing ambient sounds ordinarily drowned out by the urban cacophony on September 27th.

Timed to coincide with a United Nations climate conference and European Mobility Week, the move is partially a display of possibilities for car-free cities as well as a statement about the environment. The 1st through 7th, 10th and 11th arrondissements (city sections) will all participate; monuments and gathering spaces such as the Champs Élysées, the Bastille, and the Eiffel Tower are included as well.

Other metropolitan areas around the world including Montreal, Bogota, Mexico City and Ho Chi Minh City are following France’s lead and instituting similar vehicular restrictions to various degrees. In such cities, photographers will be able to stand in the streets, capturing unique shots of urban architecture and infrastructure without the risk of being run over. Facing increased traffic, cities like London and Los Angeles are already considering ways in which to permanently reduce congestion and give over areas to mass transit, cyclists and pedestrians.

Some cities have longer-term visions for a car-free future as well. In China, plans and budgets have been established for a car-free city built from scratch. In Abu Dhabi, a car-free, self-sufficient city is also in the works, though some question its feasibility. Meanwhile, Hamburg has firmly committed to a 20-year plan to eliminate cars, keeping routes for public transportation and emergency vehicles but otherwise handing city streets over to paths and trails for walkers and bikers.

---

---

[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

Better, cheaper and easier than solar windows, this newly-patented flexible coating can be applied to existing glass and plastic surfaces, turning any aperture into a source of electricity. With this technology on all of its surfaces, buildings can generate up to 50 times more solar energy per structure.

Developed by SolarWindow Technologies, this inexpensive approach has a payback time of as little as one year (far less than the 5 to 10 years of traditional solar approaches. As the technology evolves and expands, it is only a matter of time until every window draws energy from light.

By adding it to the inside surface of a window, the process protects the tech from exterior sources of damage and simplifies application. The solution is also lightweight and adaptable, making it easier to retrofit existing architecture without cost-intensive shipping or labor-intensive installation processes.

These sensitive photovoltaics can draw power from lunar energy and artificial lights in addition to the sun’s rays. Their relatively low price per unit reinforces the sensibility of simply putting them on all sides of a structure, including those with less natural light.

Effectively invisible wires draw electricity from the exposed surfaces while a uniform and architecturally-neutral color tinting process allows for a variety of of looks and degrees of transparency.

This new substance can be deployed as a sticky film on a surface or potentially even painted on as a liquid. The organic (but secretive) constituent source materials of the core polymer include common elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.

---

---

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

Residents and visitors to the Spanish capital can avail themselves of this useful map visualizing complaints about stops. No map is necessary for New York or London. [via]

For better or worse, the United States remains one of only three countries that have not officially adopted the metric system. America’s refusal to adopt the metric system has not been for lack of trying, however.

In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, which declared metric as the preferred system of the United States. The U.S. Metric Board was created to implement this conversion. In keeping with this conversion, road signs on Interstate 19, connecting Tucson, Arizona to Mexico, were changed so that distances were posted only in kilometers. It remains to this day the only highway in America with distances posted solely in kilometers.

As might be expected, a number of motorists have been confused by the unique distances on the signs, and measures have been taken to replace the metric signs with ones with distances displayed in standard American units of measurement. Luckily, the road has been able to maintain it's unique identity thanks to the efforts of locals who didn't want to have to change the signage and directions for their businesses. Presumably they were also chagrin at the thought of losing their singular speedway.

America’s metric experiment proved to be short lived. The Metric Conversion Act and U.S. Metric Board were dismantled only seven years after they were created. Nearly 35 years later, America remains committed to its customary system of measurement. However, if you are willing to give an inch and forget about miles, head to Interstate 19 and see what it is like to drive a few kilometers.

Like something out of a J.R.R. Tolkien fever dream, Spain's Castillo de Zafra sits atop a regal promontory straight out of a fantasy novel, and this fact is not lost on the producers of Game of Thrones.

Built back around the 12th and 13th century, when dragons were still alive (not really), the stunning castle has been passed around amongst the Spanish nobility for centuries. The tall towers of the castle sit atop a massive rock located on the what was once the border between Christian and Muslim territories. The flat surface atop the rock is crowned with a high defensive wall that makes accessing the castle inconvenient even for those who live lived there.

By the 15th century, the castle had come under siege by a Castillian king who was fighting with the then owner of the castle. But unsurprisingly the imposing defense held.

After having been owned by a long list of noblemen, some of whom repaired or expanded the castle grounds, thee are even rumors of secret rooms that were carved into the rock beneath the structures. While these have never been found, this absolutely looks like the type of castle that would have them.

By the modern day, the towers and buildings had been badly damaged and had badly crumbled. But thanks to restoration efforts by the castle's 20th century owner, Don Antonio Sanz Polo, it once again looks like something out of fantasy. Today the Castillo de Zafra is privately owned and anyone wishing to tour the castle grounds must get permission to enter the premises, and it is said that the only way in is by climbing a ladder. up the rock. Awesome.

The Castillo de Zafra is also slated to be the stand in for the "Tower of Joy" in season 6 of Game of Thrones.    

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

Solving a series of long-standing issues associated with taking out the typical fast food trifecta, this clever carrying case is a useful alternative to Happy Meal boxes, bags and cupholders that work better for cars than people traveling on foot or by bike.

The solution is more subtle than it might first appear – yes, it solves the timeless question of how to hold a drink as well as a meal, but it also separates out the warm foods (french fries and hamburger above) from the cool drink (soda or shake suspended below), then unfolds into a ready-to-eat spread. Thin cardboard makes the entire container easy to collapse as well.

Customers can hold the package in their hand or slip it over the handlebars and continue cycling unencumbered. Targeted initially toward markets in two bicycle-friendly cities (Copenhagen, Denmark and Medellin, Colombia), the company is also looking to give these a go in Amsterdam, Holland and Tokyo, Japan.

For now, it is a trial redesign that is as much about marketing toward young urban bikers, but if the packaging is sound there seems to be no obvious reason for McDonalds not to ultimately deploy these around the world (and for other fast food chains to follow suit).

---

---

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

It might not look like much as a GIF—a couple of black pixels and a puff of pixelated smoke—but Wired's Nick Stockton explains the powerful weather satellites that make it possible to see disasters from afar—and impossible to hide them from the world.

The GIF doesn't quite convey this one. (It's called a capirote, apparently!)

Three months ago, Dan Price, C.E.O. of Gravity Payments, a credit card processing company in Seattle, announced that he would no longer pay an employee less than $70,000 a year. Price hoped to ensure that all of his employees would have a minimum standard of living, and figured the publicity wouldn’t hurt along the way. Yesterday the New York Times published a piece on Price’s struggles since making that fateful decision, as two of his best employees quit, upset that newer and less qualified employees were earning nearly as much as they were, and as the company lost customers who saw him as an ideologue or feared the business’s demise.

As chatter about the story spread to other news outlets, HSLDA and Christian Right leader Michael Farris posted this status update:

As a young woman with a good Christian upbringing rich in Bible reading and memorization, Farris’s comment leaves me confused. More than that, it leaves me wondering if Farris reads the Bible he claims to adhere to so closely. Surely I am not the only product of a devout evangelical upbringing to note the close resemblance between Price’s situation and a certain parable told by Jesus in the Bible.

Matthew 20:1-16 (NIV)

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

In sum, a landowner hired people to work in his vineyard, and at the end of the day paid each worker a denarius whether they’d worked since dawn or only arrived in the afternoon. When some of the workers who had been there since dawn complained, the landowner reminded them that they’d been promised a denarius from the beginning. “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?” He asked. “Or are you envious because I am generous?” It is the landowner who is presented positively, and the grumbling workers who are presenting negatively.

You want to know what’s going on here? Farris and others like him claim that their beliefs are based in the Bible, their economic positions flow not from the Bible but rather from conservative politics. After all, it is conservative politics, and not the Bible, that derides Price’s decision as socialism. When they side with conservative business interests, they forget that at his core, Jesus was subversive against the reigning order. Can you see Jesus defending the level of social inequality in our capitalist society?

But you want to know the best part of it? Dan Price is a homeschool alumni raised in a large conservative Christian family. Farris may not have realized it when posting his status update, but he was deriding a product of his own movement. Somehow I don’t think we’ll see Price on Farris’s next list of successful homeschool alumni, his CEO status be damned.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Calculated correctors, this team of vigilante street art fixers patrols for grammatical mistakes then regroups to decide on edits before hitting the streets of Quito, Ecuador, to deploy them.

Known as Acción Ortográfica Quito, the group consists of a trio who share a strange set of common interests including street art copy editing. Like rogue professors, they use red to highlight their changes or suggestions, but their good intentions do not render their actions legal, hence their strictly maintained anonymity.

“There’s a big difference in saying: ‘No quiero verte’ (I don’t want to see you) and ‘No, quiero verte’ (No, I want to see you),” notes one of the members in an interview with COLORS, “Many times, someone does not realize how a comma or an oversight can completely change the meaning of a sentence. It can change your life.”

The task can be daunting – their first fix had thirteen errors in two lines of text. Whether serious or silly, they suggest “it’s a public service and a moral obligation. We’re against spelling vandalism and we won’t break nor give up until we see a society free of spelling mistakes.”

Above, the phrase: “If in your kisses I met the essence of life, then not kissing you would be the worst sin I could commit,” for which these graffiti activists turned the verb into conditional, added and deleted commas, turned ellipsis into full stop and capital letter into lower case.

The group is also broadening its scope and mandate over time; they are aiming to add a hotline where people can phone in mistakes they spot and have begun correcting grammar on Twitter posts as well. When time permits, they also leave their name stenciled at the scene in red, like a grader signing their work for students.

Meanwhile, a similarly unconventional yet equally geeky German street artist is out to fix tags, turning them into tag clouds – it would seem this group is not alone in its quest to clean up yet preserve the essential meaning of everyday graffiti.

---

---

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

The largest Medieval manuscript in the world, believed to have been the work of a single monk in Bohemia (in the modern Czech Republic), it's not its 620 pages at three-feet in size that makes it remarkable; it's the Devil contained therein. 

Literally meaning “giant book,” the Codex Gigas was created in the 13th century and originally stored in the Benedictine monastery at Podlažice. The manuscript contains not only the New and Old Testaments but an assortment of other shorter texts addressing matters of extreme practicality for the time: exorcism, grammar, a calendar, and medical works, to name a few.

Everything within the book was handwritten by a single, anonymous monk. The National Library of Sweden puts this massive undertaking into perspective:

"If the scribe worked for six hours a day and wrote six days a week this means that the manuscript could have taken about five years to complete. If the scribe was a monk he may only have been able to work for about three hours a day, and this means that the manuscript could have taken ten years to write. As the scribe may also have ruled the lines to guide the writing before he began to write (it probably took several hours to rule one leaf), this extends the period it took to complete the manuscript. The scribe also decorated the manuscript, so this all means that the manuscript probably took at least 20 years to finish, and could even have taken 30."

These elements alone are enough to qualify the stunning manuscript as a wonder of the world. Yet the most bewitching element of the Codex Gigas is a single page of illumination that defies explanation, tucked away within the tome. Spanning nearly the entire face of a page is a full-color rendering of the Dark Lord himself.

Speculation, plausible and otherwise, abounds as to how the unholiest feature possible made its way into this most sacred text, but answers remain elusive. Precisely because of this tension, everyone loves the Codex Gigas – or, the Devil’s Bible, if you prefer.

For even more on the Codex Gigas, continue reading its feature as Atlas Obscura’s Object of Intrigue here.

Sometimes you just wish you get the hell away from everyone and everything, and there may be no more effective spot to do so on the entire planet than Point Nemo, the spot that is further from a landmass than any other spot in the seas.

Technically the spot, which is located far out into the Pacific Ocean, is known as the "Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility." Its nickname is taken from the Jules Verne character, Captain Nemo, a Latin name which itself translates to "no one." The far flung oceanic spot can be found over 1,450 nautical miles from the nearest landfall, which is one of three spots.

Since the Earth is spherical, deciding on the most remote oceanic location required three, equidistant points of measurement. They are Ducie Island, which is itself a barren and incredibly remote atoll belonging the the Pitcairn Island chain; the rocky Easter Island of Mota Nui; and Antarctica's Maher Island which is so small and remote it wasn't even discovered until the 1940s.

Point Nemo was first discovered in 1992 thanks to the use of geotargeting software. There are no commercial ways to access the most remote point in the ocean, and with good reason. There is nothing there. No beacon, or anchored marker. Just vast expanses of open ocean. The only thing a visitor will find at Point Nemo is the honor of being harder to reach than just about anyone else on the planet.

Who can resist babies that bOING! bOING!?

Note: This article was originally published in 2009 but since the internet is like a roller coaster it's going back around again with its hands in the air, screaming. Elisabeth Beucher's Green Warrior Shower Curtain was designed to help control your water consumption by slowly inflating its spikes over the course of four minutes using an air-pump. Stay in the shower too long and you get stabbed. Drop the soap and have a prison experience. While I do find this design admirable, I have an even better way to prevent wasting water: don't pay your gas or electric bill. You'll still have cold water, and cold water is the key to taking shorter showers. I only have cold water in my apartment and I haven't showered in weeks. "Seriously?" Fine, months. I care about the earth. "Don't you drive a monster truck?" No, I only WISH I drove a monster truck. Thanks to Travis, who only bathes the way God intended: in a creek with bears watching.

Located alongside an orphan's cemetery, the former site of Brook Farm commemorates the most famous utopian commune to ever have operated in the United States.

Established in West Roxbury in April 1841 by the transcendentalists George and Sophia Ripley, Brook Farm (also known as the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education) sought to equally distribute the tasks of daily life while providing education for all participants; the end goal was a balance of work and leisure that would, above all, benefit the greater good. As with most idealistic pursuits, turning a profit from the farm's agricultural surplus was unrealistic, and Brook Farm was forced to shutter in 1847.

Nonetheless, the experiment at Brook Farm played a key role in the development of American religious and cultural philosophy. During its heyday, the commune was home to some of America's most renowned thinkers of the period, including Charles Anderson Dana, Greeley, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne would ultimately set his novel The Blithedale Romance in a utopian community modeled after Brook Farm. 

After its closure, the land would take a turn as a poor farm before becoming training grounds during the Civil War. Brook Farm's most enduring reincarnation was that of an orphanage from 1872 to 1943 and the associated Gethsemane Cemetery, the latter of which still stands today.

While the majority of the original buildings are now gone save for the print shop, Brook Farm remains a fascinating roam through land fraught with layers of intellectual and emotional history that is distinctly American in nature. 

If this year feels hotter than normal, it’s not just you. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just released a report saying that the first half of 2015 was the warmest January to June on record. Most of the world — particularly the western United States — experienced above-average or even record-setting high temperatures this year.

In fact, the 12-month period from July 2014 through June 2015 was the warmest ever recorded. I was curious to see what these record-setting temperatures looked like in more detail, so I updated a famous New York Times weather chart to show the past 12 months of temperatures for a handful of large cities across the U.S.⁵⁶

These charts show the record, average high and low (“normal range”), and actual temperatures over the past year for each day in each city. Dots indicate days when there was a new record low (blue) or high (red), even if it was only a tie with a previous year.

Each city has a unique story to tell.⁵⁷ (Click each chart to expand.)

Los Angeles — famous for its year-round just-right temperatures — experienced several heat waves this year. March, in particular, had four days with record highs when the temperature soared into the 90s.

Charlotte, North Carolina, had a particularly uncomfortable June this year, with five days setting record highs in the upper 90s.

Seattle experienced a strangely warm winter, with 12 days since the beginning of December setting a record high.

At the other end of the spectrum, Chicago had an unexpectedly cold February, when temperatures returned to single digits and two days reached a record-setting low.

Houston’s temperatures sat around the average for the most part, except for an odd cold spike in November. However, few of the other cities I examined had temperatures that were as consistent as Houston’s:

In aggregate, these charts make clear: These last 12 months (or last six), the hottest on record, didn’t necessarily feel that way in every city in the U.S. Many cities experienced heat waves and even cold snaps that set records, but others, such as Houston, did not. In general, climate change is expected to affect different parts of the country differently and ultimately has consequences lasting beyond a single abnormally hot or cold day. That’s why, when studying climate, it’s usually best to take the broad view.

Stephen Colbert's new Late Show gig doesn't start till September, so what's he doing in the meantime? According to this game released by his official website, the answer is "stumbling into a closet." Read the rest

Authorities are asking people in Florida to refrain from shooting and eating armadillos, and to resist the urge to handle them or keep them for pets, because they are responsible for a leprosy outbreak in the state.

Read the rest

Forever (hopefully) perched on a steep rock slope in the historic town of Mahabalipuram, India, the massive round boulder known as Krishna's Butter Ball refuses to give in to gravity or the shoves of tourists.

The giant boulder appears to be simply frozen in its roll down the hill it sits on, and no one is quite sure why. The huge boulder is likely simply a glacial erratic that got stranded in a serendipitous position on the hill, but local legend has another version of the story. According to Hindu mythology, when the great god Krishna was just a baby, he was fond of stealing butter. Following this tradition, the big orange stone has been likened to a giant dollop of purloined butter that the god dropped.

The actual name of the stone is "Vaan Irai Kal," which translates to "Sky God's Stone," and according to one source, the more playful name was given to the rock by a local tour guide. However it got its sort of silly name, it stuck.

Reinforcing the stone's strangely balanced position, the slippery stone slope is actually used by local children as a slide. Today Krishna's Butter Ball is a popular tourist attraction, and visitors to the site love to try and get behind the stone and try to push it down the hill. So far no power of man has been able to budge the buttery boulder.

Best of all, sometimes the local goats climb on top of it. It's adorable. 

It reads like a dream résumé for a Republican presidential candidate: nine-term congressman, six-year Fox News host and now twice-elected governor of a crucial swing state. His record puts him snugly in the mainstream of the Republican Party. Oh, and he won re-election as governor in 2014 by 31 percentage points.

And yet, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who officially kicks off his campaign today, is currently in 12th place in national primary polls with a net favorability rating of just +3 percentage points, according to the latest Monmouth University survey. Kasich’s problem: Voters who have an opinion about him — Kasich isn’t well-known — don’t view him as a mainstream conservative. So far, they consider him 2016’s version of Jon Huntsman.

Kasich, like Huntsman, is adored by the media, is seen as too moderate by GOP voters and appears to enjoy telling Republicans they’re wrong. As Kyle Kondik first pointed out in Politico, Huntsman entered the 2012 race with great press but went on to kill his campaign, in part by tweeting stuff like: “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” Huntsman won no primaries and dropped out of the race after the New Hampshire primary, where the only party affiliation he won was self-identified Democrats.

Kasich’s record is actually considerably more conservative than Huntsman’s. For one thing, he isn’t in favor of same-sex marriage. When we look at our aggregate ideological ratings, which combine Kasich’s congressional voting record, the ideology of his donors and the left-right lean of his public statements, Kasich is about as moderate as Jeb Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Huntsman, on the other hand, looks a lot more like Chris Christie.

Kasich’s problem is that he sounds a lot like Huntsman. That is, he defends moderate positions — often in a manner that comes off as condescending. Most prominently, he has embraced Medicaid expansion in Ohio. Once challenged on expansion, Kasich yelled, “I don’t know about you, lady, but when I get to the pearly gates, I’m going to have an answer for what I’ve done for the poor.” It isn’t just what Kasich said, but how he said it. As Politico detailed, this type of reaction is fairly typical for Kasich. He likes to yell and to tell people, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The press, of course, loves it. In April, The Atlantic said Kasich “could be 2016’s most interesting candidate.” Vox called Kasich “the most interesting GOP presidential contender.”

But it’s not a good way to win over Republican voters. When all Republican voters hear are moderate answers, they begin to think you’re, well, moderate. In June, YouGov asked voters four times to put candidates on a 0 (liberal) to 100 (conservative) scale. Kasich was rated as more moderate than all the other candidates except for George Pataki. Heck, even Christie was rated as slightly more conservative than Kasich.

CANDIDATE	VOTER-ASSIGNED IDEOLOGICAL SCORE	PERCENTAGE ABLE TO RATE
George Pataki	50	46%
John Kasich	54	45
Chris Christie	55	78
Jeb Bush	60	89
Lindsey Graham	61	59
Carly Fiorina	62	55
Donald Trump	63	89
Rand Paul	63	76
Marco Rubio	64	73
Ben Carson	65	64
Bobby Jindal	67	64
Rick Perry	69	71
Scott Walker	70	65
Rick Santorum	70	72
Mike Huckabee	71	75
Ted Cruz	72	73

With a score of 54, Kasich was 17 points to the left of the average Republican respondent. Kasich is rated as considerably more moderate than Bush, even though their records are similar. Kasich is also scored as more moderate than McCain or Romney were rated when they sought the Republican nomination, and the GOP base has become more conservative since then. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone seen as this liberal could win the Republican nomination.

The good news for Kasich is that most voters don’t know who he is yet. In the most recent YouGov poll taken in June, fewer people could rate Kasich’s ideology than any other candidate’s (including Pataki’s). About twice as many people could place Bush on the ideological scale. That means Kasich has more room to change voters’ perceptions. Kasich could really benefit from being on the debate stage.

But while Huntsman had the opportunity to debate (and say stuff in Chinese), Kasich may have more trouble. Because so many candidates are running for the GOP nomination, the debate sponsors are using polling to determine who gets an invite and who doesn’t. Right now, Kasich would be on the outside looking in for the first debate, hosted by Fox News, which is taking place in Kasich’s home state, Ohio.

Even if Kasich gets into the debates, it will be difficult to break through in such a crowded field. Moderate Republicans already can choose from Bush, Christie and Pataki, and moderates are, as mentioned, a shrinking part of the Republican Party. There’s no reason for moderates to back Kasich when he’s seen as a much longer shot to win than Bush, despite a similar ideology.

More than that, it’s not entirely clear that Kasich would change his message if given the chance. Key members of Team Huntsman have joined Team Kasich. These include media strategist Fred Davis and consultant John Weaver. As Kondik wrote in Politico, “Weaver is so far from the GOP mainstream that he consulted for a time with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.”

Still, it’s too early to dismiss Kasich. He’s a serious candidate (unlike Donald Trump) whose actual record isn’t too liberal to win a primary and who can make a real case that he’s among the most electable Republican candidates. As my colleague Nate Silver pointed out, Kasich could be the “moderate backstop” if Bush falters. But there are no signs of that happening yet, and Kasich’s campaign so far seems more determined to give voters a moderate Republican who talks down to other Republicans.

Check out how Kasich is doing in the 2016 Endorsement Primary.

This is a video of the Yuppiechef demonstrating an induction stovetop, using a pan cut in half. For those of you who aren't familiar with induction cooking, it uses electromagnets to heat things with sorcery. It only works with iron-magnetic materials though, so you can put your hand on it and not feel any heat. Hold on, let me copy/paste something from Wikipedia like this is a high school science report:

In an induction cooker, a coil of copper wire is placed under the cooking pot and an alternating electric current is passed through it. The resulting oscillating magnetic field induces a magnetic flux which repeatedly magnetises the pot, treating it like a lossy magnetic core of a transformer. This produces large eddy currents in the pot, which because of the resistance of the pot, heats it. For nearly all models of induction cooktops, a cooking vessel must be made of, or contain, a ferromagnetic metal such as cast iron or some stainless steels. However, copper, glass, non magnetic stainless steels, and aluminum vessels can be placed on a ferromagnetic interface disk which functions as a conventional hotplate.

That really didn't make any sense to me and I'm fairly certain that was just a way for "scientists" to try to explain things away with big words when, in reality, the answer is wizards and always has been wizards. Wouldn't it be crazy to find out that all the major inventions in history didn't actually happen through of science, but through wizards who cast spells to make things work? I feel like that's a movie idea. Not a very GOOD movie idea, but throwing money at turds is one thing Hollywood does best. Keep going for the demonstration AND PREPARE TO BE AMAZED.

Reddit's Bethany Blount is out, saying she has lost confidence in the company's new direction.

Her departure follows the resignation of CEO Ellen Pao, who apparently took the heat for a decision made by co-founder Alexis Ohanian to fire popular employee Victoria Taylor.

Read the rest

"This map shows the total number of Internet users in a country (size of the country) as well as the percentage of the population that has Internet access (shade of the country)."

Looks similar to a 2014 visualization by other researchers.

Ha ha, “Furman” used to be a popular name for boys. FUR MAN. But all names are dumb. Why do we have names? Unfortunately, nobody names their babies “Elf” or “Gay” or “Neo” even after all those Matrix movies.

Nobody names their baby Dumb Baby. Too scared of the Baby Industrial Name Complex, probably.

My baby’s name will be pronounced {{..~..}}. Or maybe it will be just a long series of inhalations and sibilants, like one of those names that gay elves have in books (I’m looking at you, Goblin Emperor), and so everyone will be too afraid to call it anything.

This is Brendan M and his 1:65 scale 75,000 LEGO Tower Of Orthanc (previously: this six foot version and LEGO's official Orthanc playset). Brendan looks sweaty but I'm pretty sure that's just a print on his shirt. He spent over a year building the 8-foot 9-inch tower, the rear of which reveals a bunch of detailed rooms. It is most impressive, although it's only a matter of time until somebody builds an even bigger LEGO Tower Of Orthanc. Then somebody else builds an even bigger one. Eventually, somebody will build a full-scale version and I will live there happily ever after with my Gollum bride. "My precious." Awww, you know I love it when you call me that! Keep going for more pictures, a video tour, and an interview with the creator. More high-res pics of the build available on Flickr right HERE.

The Association of Illustrators and Directory of Illustration announced the shortlisted entries for this year's World Illustration Awards, including Grahame Baker Smith's Alice in Wonderland commemorative stamp for Royal Mail, above. Others include: Read the rest

(Video Link)

Japanese household bathrooms are very different from what you might find in a typical American home. They are far more multi-functional and high-tech. For example, the bathroom is divided into three sections: there's a shower/bath area and a toilet area, which are separately accessible from a sink and vanity area. Consequently, three people can use the same bathroom at the same time!

The shower and bath area is a thing of wonder. There's a deep bathtub that is heated continuously with controls that can be activated from different parts of the house. I want one of those!

In this video, a young girl shows how the different parts of the bathroom function. It's part of a series of videos in which she introduces Westerners to Japanese bedrooms, toilets, and kids' homework, among other aspects of modern Japanese life.

-via Core77

Megyn Kelly was prepared to argue with a moron when she invited the Satanic Temple’s Lucien Greaves on her Fox News program, The Kelly File.

Read the rest