Gulfstream

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_%28heraldry%29#Attitude_of_
animals The names given to the various positions animals can take on shields and crests and such. 10:09 …

http://www.oyemodern.com/designers/re-vision/ Bracelets made from the focus and zoom rings of old SLR lenses. 22:49 …

http://www.davidhorvitz.com/2008_sky.html If you send him your email address, David Horvitz will send you a photograph of the sky for every day of 2008. He also has unusual things to sell. e.g. “If you give me $10 I will take a photograph of a mailbox in New York, print it as an 8.5" x 11" full color laser jet print, fold it into an envelope, write where it is on the back of the envelope, and mail it from the same mailbox.” 20:52 …

http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/04/if-microsoft-go.html Long post on what Microsoft is doing to try to acquire Yahoo, and how hostile takeovers happen in general. 20:39 …

http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html Clay Shirky’s tantalising suggestion that perhaps TV is a temporary spare-time-filling measure, and that sometime soon we’re going to come up with something better, or realise that content creation is it. (There have always been a lot of alternatives to TV though…) 20:38 …

http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/warranty.php The XO Laptop comes with a 30 day warranty only?? 22:23 …

http://www.peta.org/feat_in_vitro_contest.asp The near-militant animal rights organisation PETA have announced a $1 million prize for the first to create in vitro chicken that is: (a) indistinguishable in taste from real chicken; and (b) sold at a competitive price in at least 10 states. This has to happen before 2012. According to the NY Times, this was a very difficult decision for PETA to make, with some within the organisation very opposed to fake meat in principle. (I don’t understand this even slightly.) 22:22 …

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/messenger/default.mspx Perhaps the worst download experience ever, surpassing MySQL’s Query Browser, and the problems with Mono and OS X. Hint: scroll to the bottom of the “Details” frame. 22:04 …

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hu_RVio1rMtFSA7PaHVUjvzqcnawD902GG981 “Some gay couples are having trouble obtaining divorces”: the laws concerning getting married and unmarried are not at all symmetric; getting a divorce while living in the wrong state can be very difficult. (Some states that are very against same-sex unions are also very against their anulment—I can’t decide if this is consistent or not.) 06:24 …

http://www.motherjones.com/photos/aryan-outfitters/ Aryan Outfitters: photo essay (+ some audio snippets) on the maker of high quality KKK outfits. I both like and don’t like the extremely detached way this is presented. “Ms. Ruth personally sews one robe a day. She works 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. She has 1 to 3 helpers at times. … Here she puts the final touches on a red Klan hood.” 05:35 …

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-
as-mp4-files.html Download YouTube videos in MP4 format via a bookmarklet. 15:21 …

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/athletics/story/0,,2273114,00.html Six Masai warriors, in London to run the London Marathon for charity, give a difficult-to-believe interview with the Guardian: “I miss meat and blood very much. Not vegetables because they are food for a woman. There is milk here but blood is better because it gives energy. English tea with sugar is good and we tried Coco Pops, but the nicest food is croissants.” 15:10 …

http://ptj2008.pen-spinning.org/contents/?p4=average_point_sort_
desc Mesmerising champion pen-spinning videos, from the Pen Spinning Association Japan. (I think I’ve sorted these by rating.) 02:45 …

http://www.royalmint.com/newdesigns/designsRevealed.aspx Impressive new UK coins. (One problem with the unified design is that it doesn’t deal very well with coins being added or removed from circulation, and in fact as of now the £2 coin is missing from the set. According to the FAQ, this is because the original design (and brief) excluded the £1 coin; it’s only getting the redesign because 7 coins fit neatly into the design concept.) 06:33 …

http://www.flickr.com/photos/balakov/sets/72157602602191858 Famous photographs (e.g. Capa’s “Death of a Loyalist Soldier”), rendered in Lego. (Interesting details on how they were made as well.) 05:14 …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnZr0wiG1Hg Surprisingly charming, inventive, A-Z alphabet pop-up book. 22:54 …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Communist_Party I don’t understand: the French Communist Party is still somewhat viable (seats in the National Assembly and Senate), and until the most recent elections governed Calais (pop. >100,000). 18:57 …

http://www.cabel.name/2008/03/japan-urls-are-totally-out.html Search terms are replacing URLs as the suggested way to find out more about a product in Japanese advertising. (Requires that the site get indexed before the campaign, and somewhat susceptible to hijacking?) 17:58 …

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-03/msg02254.html Eclipse features that Richard Stallman would like to have in emacs. The astonishing thing here is that someone so intimately involved with one prominant editor has never before even looked at another prominent editor. 13:31 …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFDq95zHJIg Odd hand-drawn stop-motion ad for the Russian Gmail apparently created by Saatchi Moscow demonstrating the various features. 12:15 …

http://www.methodizaz.com/ Portraits taken as you go about your daily routine: “Using information provided earlier about their weekly routine, the photographer will arrive on the scene, and unseen, take shots of the subject. The subject will be photographed walking through the streets, going about their daily business. Without posing and artifice, the camera captures only the natural beauty of the person.” Susan Sontag: “There is something on people’s faces when they don’t know they are being observed that never appears when they do. … their expressions are private ones, not those they would offer to the camera.” 15:11 …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Easter_Distribution.png Distribution of the date of Easter (can occur between 22 March and the 25th April), associated article. 13:49 …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww Video of Boston Dynamics’ Big Dog robot, moving like something made out of flesh and blood over rubble and snow. The slow-motion recovery from a slip on ice (around 1:40) is astonishing. Does it move like that because it’s programmed to mimic a four-legged animal, or because that’s the way you have to move if you have four legs? 22:14 …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resignation_from_the_British_House_
of_Commons Since MPs are technically forbidden to resign (since they theoretically serve at the pleasure of their constituents), they need to “resign” via the legal manoeuvre of being given one of two fancifully-named jobs that are considered to be “an office of profit under the Crown,” which then disqulify them from being MPs. 20:22 …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_Road_Runner#Laws_
and_rules “2. No outside force can harm the coyote—only his own ineptitude or the running failure of the Acme products.” 20:11 …

http://brickarms.com/Toys/Weapons.aspx There are no guns in the Lego world, but this is a problem that can be fixed. (Or, you could get a fully-equipped Lego terrorist.) 21:11 …

http://piclens.com/ Fantastic extension for Firefox and Safari that shows Flickr, Facebook photo galleries in a fun, zooming full-screen interface. 19:10 …

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article02210801.aspx “Frida Kahlo of the paintings has The Look. Frida Kahlo of the photos does not. Why?” (includes small photograph) 19:08 …

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131 “The Charms of Wikipedia,” by Nicholson Baker. The first section neatly captures the charms of Wikipedia, and the last is a nice account of Baker’s attempts to save various articles from deletion (his chosen Wikipedia niche). (Baker’s user page) 22:18 …

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/
article3352573.ece The lives of circus performers: a newly divorced husband is contractually obliged to allow his ex-wife to shoot an apple off his head for the next year. (Clever PR stunt?) 23:13 …

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2260941,00.html In 2001 the Swiss ambassador to London invited graffiti artists to decorate the underground carpark of the Swiss Embassy, one of whom turned out to be Banksy. 13:44 …

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/29/magazine/0302-STYLE_
index.html Run-down auto repair shop converted into architects’ offices (pictures; associated story). 19:57 …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_world%27s_most_northern The world’s most northern things. (Splendidly idiosyncratic.) There’s a lot less stuff in the south. 13:29 …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist_beer One Trappist beer, Westvleteren, is regarded as one of best beers in the world, despite (or because of?) being available in very limited quantities (one case per car, no reselling allowed). 17:51 …

http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/060622-F-5040D-
162.JPG “An F-18 Hornet (left), B-2 Spirit (center), and two F-16 Fighting Falcons (right) sit on the flightline [tarmac?] at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.” (via Wikipedia) 15:31 …

http://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-Trimmer/dp/0870334336 How to Avoid Huge Ships (2nd ed), by Captain John W. Trimmer. 18:32 …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw Head tracking via the Wii Remote to simulate 3D—relatively straightforward, and seems to work pretty well (skip to 2:40 for the demo). 08:40 …

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/ Stuff white people like: recycling, expensive sandwiches, knowing what’s best for poor people. 14:03 …

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/nyregion/18semicolon.html Story on a well-placed semi-colon on some MTA signage is currently the most frequently emailed story at the Times! 21:03 …

http://www.google.com/search?q=homosexualsex Why do I have the third result for homosexualsex? Google you suck. (Not even remotely NSFW.) 00:45 …

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10cox.html Differences in consumption per person are much less dramatic than differences in income (in the US): “If we look at consumption per person, the difference between the richest and poorest households falls to just 2.1 to 1. The average person in the middle fifth consumes just 29 percent more than someone living in a bottom-fifth household.” (nice graphic) 17:10 …

http://www.oskaarchitects.com/Projects/38/Delta-Shelter Nice building: small weekend cabin in Mazama, WA. 09:39 …

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/case-study-faulknerbrowns-
identity/ Creative Review Blog on the new identity for the architects FaulknerBrowns. 09:38 …

http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama Barack Obama’s official LinkedIn profile. I hope he keeps this updated if he becomes President. That would be amusing. 10:12 …

http://www.old-town.co.uk/index2.htm Strange little shop making and selling 1930s-style clothes. 22:24 …

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/soehartos-unsung-legacy/
2008/02/01/1201801032980.html?page=fullpage Paul Keating, a former Australian Prime Minister, on Soeharto’s legacy. Keating was well-known for being friendly to Indonesia, and it’s interesting to read his account of its recent history (especially Timor), and his own personal involvement in it. (In 1998, two years after he left office, he went to Indonesia (evidently at the urging of Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong), to try to convince Soeharto to give up power gracefully. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen.) 14:50 …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo Improv Everywhere’s “Frozen Grand Central.” (report) 12:23 …

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/
article3261523.ece The British Library is hosting a futurist dinner, with recipes from Marinetti’s 1932 cookbook, La Cucina Futurista. “Typical Futurist dishes included meat broth sprinkled with champagne and liquor and decorated with rose petals, or the deliberately obscene-looking porco eccittato, a whole cooked salami upended on a plate with coffee sauce mixed with eau de cologne.” 00:47 …

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/01/24/carma-sutra-learn-to-love-
in-your-lamborghini/ Carma Sutra, a “manual of sex positions for in-car entertainment.” 19:39 …

http://www.mensvogue.com/arts/music/articles/2008/02/facingthemusic?
printable=true&currentPage=all Dean Wareham of Luna’s personal, thoughtful, account of the end of his marriage. 12:54 …