WNSTN

I am very sad that this movie doesn’t actually exist....

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:35:56 -0600

I am very sad that this movie doesn’t actually exist. Taken from this “What If” gallery on Behance.

Stereogranimator

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:51:00 -0600

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

Make an animated GIF from any of the NYPL’s 40K+ stereograms. What a fun idea. I’m a little addicted.

An Illustrated Review of “War Horse.” Prepare to...

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:04:02 -0600

An Illustrated Review of “War Horse.”

Prepare to laugh.

"What Real Marriage has going for it, in the end, is the only thing it doesn’t share with scores of..."

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:03:19 -0600

“

What Real Marriage has going for it, in the end, is the only thing it doesn’t share with scores of other marriage books: Mark Driscoll. Driscoll has preached the book’s content, he tells us, in “England, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, Australia, India, and Turkey” and has talked personally to “hundreds of thousands of couples.” The author’s bio reminds us that he is “one of the world’s most downloaded and quoted pastors.” He pastors the “2nd most-innovative church in America.” The hype in the press release isn’t, ultimately, about Real Marriage; it’s about Mark Driscoll. […]

If you buy Real Marriage, you can get it signed at one of the stops on the ten-city publicity tour. Or you can join a small group using the Real Marriage video curriculum; or invest in the Real Marriage Study Kit or the Real Marriage Participants Guide.

Or you could just ask for counsel from a couple of ordinary folks who have managed to stay married. They’ll probably suggest that you talk to each other about your emotions, do nice things for each other, cultivate friendship, plan date nights. They’ll likely tell you that sex within marriage is a good thing. They’ll recommend forgiveness, kindness, patience. They’ll give you pretty decent advice.

”

- Susan Wise Bauer, “Talking About REAL Marriage”, Books & Culture (January/February 2012)

My friend Phillip finds the best pull-quotes from the most-interesting articles.

On Google Plus

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:48:33 -0600

Recently I posted an article entitled “Don’t Give Your Users Shit Work” about the tediousness of organizing relationships in the context of a social network. Google+ as based on the idea that it would be really easy to manage your friends using their “circles” page to drop people into various circles that you could then target or exclude with the information you shared on the site. The above article put it best:

What happens if I get really hammered with a Business Acquaintance and he becomes a Close Drinking Partner? Do I move his circles around? What happens if we hire him? Is he a Coworker and a Close Drinking Partner? The last thing I want to have to worry about is continually micromanaging another facet of life.

Unfortunately, there’s no hope on the horizon for reducing the complexity of relationships to make it easier to shift them into the online realm. Human beings have very complex abilities to manage relationships, and these just don’t translate well to the internet.

Up until G+, social networks like Facebook and Twitter required you to create lists, add your friends to the various lists, then (in Facebook) define the privileges that each list has. G+ one-upped these networks by recognizing that human relationships aren’t list based but are more like circles. Only, they completely misunderstood why circles are a great metaphor for human relationships.

Google, with G+, treats their circles as an easier-to-understand way of creating lists. I am still doing the same thing I was doing on Facebook and Twitter, it’s just an improved UI. That’s great, but it doesn’t solve the problem that I’d like to solve: there are things I want to share with my close friends, there are things I’ll share publicly, but I don’t feel like having to remember which circles that includes. The circles are still lists with no obvious relation to me.

Human relationships, in terms of privacy and trust, are not circles that sit next to each other: over here are my Competitive Gift Wrapping friends, over there are my Russian Cinematographer friends. They are more like slightly blurry concentric circles: I am friends with a lot of Competitive Gift-Wrappers but only one of them is my best friend and she also is an amateur Russian Cinematographer.

So how do we best represent these relationships from the privacy and trust perspective? I’ve mocked up what I think would be more helpful than G+’s current circle metaphor. Here’s the current UI (with generic icons):

(Click for Larger)

And this is a rough mockup of how I could see the circles metaphor be employed to better help me understand how I’m organizing people; through the use of concentric circles:

(Click for larger)

With this design, it is very clear to me what level of trust I’m giving a friend; they are very close to me or not. It also makes it very simple for me to rank the level of privacy I want each thing I share to have - I can decide to make it public or only visible to my close friends, or anything in between.

My version of the G+ circles does not make it easy to divide up friends according to their interests, but I would argue that is a secondary problem in social networks. For whatever reason, that is the problem that Facebook, Twitter, and G+ have all “solved” first, but most people therefore don’t understand how easily limit the visibility of their sharing, and are forced into either not sharing things because of people who might see them, or making the decision not to keep anything private. This is a real shame, because the sooner social networks mirror the complexities of human relationships, the sooner we can find out their real power. Until that day, social networking will remain rather primitive.

"Some of the candidates seem to believe that public evangelicalism is identical to uncompromising..."

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:01:31 -0600

“Some of the candidates seem to believe that public evangelicalism is identical to uncompromising conservatism or libertarianism at every point. This is always a warning sign – as when people believe that Christian engagement is identical to liberalism. This approach reduces Christianity to a pawn in someone else’s power game. It limits the appeal of the Gospel, reducing the church to a partisan club. And it ignores the fact that the Christian views of justice and human dignity challenge every party and ideology at some point.”

- The Troubling Decline of Evangelical Social Engagement

Via my favorite source for thoughtful links from a Christian perspective, Andy Crouch. From earlier in the same commentary:

You’ll find plenty of hostile parodies of Perry’s ad on YouTube. But the problem is that Perry’s ad is itself a parody. It is the summary of a political agenda – and an example of apocalyptic political language – that would have been more at home in the 1980s. It sounds like the Moral Majority on its worst days.

"I do love to learn. It’s all I feel like I’m ever doing. It’s really the best you..."

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:22:05 -0600

“I do love to learn. It’s all I feel like I’m ever doing. It’s really the best you can do in life, is learn. You can’t really do anything right. You can just learn. Right now, I am learning to be a dad. I am learning how to take better care of myself and my kids. I”m learning how to communicate with people in my life. Professionally, I’m learning right this minute, a HUGE amount with this web experiment. this live at the beacon thing (available at http://www.louisck.com for 5 bucks) is like that thing in the movie “Twister” where they send a bunch of little data collecting balls up into a tornado and just download the lovely results.”

- Louis C.K.

"Have you ever looked at a bizarre building design and wondered, “What were the architects thinking?”..."

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:40:06 -0600

“Have you ever looked at a bizarre building design and wondered, “What were the architects thinking?” Have you looked at a supposedly “ecological” industrial-looking building, and questioned how it could be truly ecological? Or have you simply felt frustrated by a building that made you uncomfortable, or felt anger when a beautiful old building was razed and replaced with a contemporary eyesore? You might be forgiven for thinking “these architects must be blind!” New research shows that in a real sense, you might actually be right.”

- The Architect Has No Clothes

➚ Why Porn Turns Men Off the Real Thing

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:20:05 -0600

➚ Why Porn Turns Men Off the Real Thing:

A wonderful essay. Worth considering.

"By the time the costs of gas, insurance, tolls, parking, and car payments are added up, the average..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:40:06 -0600

“By the time the costs of gas, insurance, tolls, parking, and car payments are added up, the average American family spends more on driving than on health insurance or taxes. And for the bulk of society—those who use cars every day to commute, drop the kids off at school, and run errands—it seems impossible to trim the high costs of transportation in any substantial way.”

- We Pay More to Drive Than We Spend on Taxes

➚ Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:20:05 -0600

➚ Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey:

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News. The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.”The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies. The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen

Buy local! Buy local! Buy local!

Bryant, who is director of the Palynology Research Laboratory, found that among the containers of honey provided by Food Safety News:
76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed.

Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and “natural” stores like PCC and Trader Joe’s had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen.
And if you have to buy at major grocery chains, the analysis found that your odds are somewhat better of getting honey that wasn’t ultra-filtered if you buy brands labeled as organic. Out of seven samples tested, five (71 percent) were heavy with pollen. All of the organic honey was produced in Brazil, according to the labels.

"Unlike most men, I find it very easy to chat and socialize with women. I don’t feel uncomfortable..."

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:40:05 -0600

“Unlike most men, I find it very easy to chat and socialize with women. I don’t feel uncomfortable when I’m the only male in a room full of females. It’s happened to me so much that I’m used to it. The vast majority of my closest friends are female. They always have been. I just get along better with girls.”

- The Man Who Loved to Have Coffee With Women - The Morning News

This is me.

"So to help you out, I’ve worked really hard to narrow down this list to five items that no kid..."

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:20:05 -0600

“So to help you out, I’ve worked really hard to narrow down this list to five items that no kid should be without. All five should fit easily within any budget, and are appropriate for a wide age range so you get the most play out of each one. These are time-tested and kid-approved! And as a bonus, these five can be combined for extra-super-happy-fun-time.”

- The 5 Best Toys of All Time, including Stick, Box, and more!

"The rebellion referred to generally in verse 2 is now specified: worship had been divorced from..."

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 08:16:14 -0600

“The rebellion referred to generally in verse 2 is now specified: worship had been divorced from justice, and the fatherless and the widow had become the chief victims (17). Such disregard for justice was a fundamental violation of the Sinai covenant for which no amount of cultic observance could compensate. The exodus itself had flowed out of God’s concern for the oppressed, and from the very beginning he had demanded that his people should have a special concern for the poor and defenceless among them. Furthermore, it is a requirement which has been intensified rather than diminished under the new covenant within which we ourselves now stand. If proof is required we need look no further than Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, or Jame’s description of ‘religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless’. The cross places us under a far greater obligation to love than the exodus ever could.”

- Barry G. Webb, in “The Message of Isaiah”

Dan Harmon Poops: Crucial Update on my Bodily Functions

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:44:08 -0600

Dan Harmon Poops: Crucial Update on my Bodily Functions:

danharmon:

The truth is, people that make you want to laugh are on your side, and people that want to make money off you laughing kind of aren’t, but they own everything and they get us connected to you.

➚ The forger’s story

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:33:05 -0600

➚ The forger’s story:

Mark Landis is an art forger who cannot be stopped, because he does not attempt to sell his work, instead choosing to “donate” it to art museums around the country. John Gapper was curious why, and tracked him down. Excellent story.

For nearly three decades, Landis has visited museums across the US in various guises and tried to donate paintings he has forged. As well as Father Scott, he has posed as “Steven Gardiner” among other aliases. He never asks for money, although museums have often hosted meals for him and made small gifts. His only stipulation is that he is donating in his parents’ names – often his actual father, Lieutenant Commander Arthur Landis Jr, a former US Navy officer.

Landis has been prolific and amazingly persistent. A few weeks before he came to Lafayette, “Father Scott” arrived at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, with a forgery of Head of a Sioux by Alfred Jacob Miller that he said he was giving in memory of his mother, “Helen Mitchell Scott”. Landis has so far offered copies of that work to five other museums. Yet in all this time, although curators speculate about his motives, no one has found out why he is doing it.

"Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to..."

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:01:06 -0600

“Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook.”

- → The Social Graph is Neither

Top Notch tech-rant. More:

The social graph wants to turn us back into third graders, laboriously spelling out just who is our fifth-best-friend. But there’s a reason we stopped doing that kind of thing in third grade!

"I think universal harmony is a pipedream and it may be more productive to focus on more modest..."

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:41:05 -0600

“I think universal harmony is a pipedream and it may be more productive to focus on more modest goals, like a ban on yodeling.”

- Elaine May Interviews Ethan Coen and Woody Allen

"This is why I was never fascinated by Google+ and its concept of Circles. You have to go through..."

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:07:05 -0600

“This is why I was never fascinated by Google+ and its concept of Circles. You have to go through entire sub-communities of your friends and drop them into arbitrary groupings. That sounds like shit work to me. What happens if I get really hammered with a Business Acquaintance and he becomes a Close Drinking Partner? Do I move his circles around? What happens if we hire him? Is he a Coworker and a Close Drinking Partner? The last thing I want to have to worry about is continually micromanaging another facet of life. This is important, since Google+ Circles is allegedly about privacy, and if you don’t continually cultivate your circles, you could inadvertently send out the wrong update to the wrong subset of contacts.”

- Don’t Give Your Users Shit Work

"The college-bubble argument makes the solution to rising costs seem simple: if people just wake up,..."

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:47:05 -0600

“The college-bubble argument makes the solution to rising costs seem simple: if people just wake up, the bubble will pop, and reasonable prices will return. It’s much tougher to admit that there is no easy way out.”

- College Tuition, Student Loans, and Unemployment