The secret is in the tag.
Bonus link. Look for some familiar ideas and entities strewn throughout.
It seems that Google is facing an unavoidable decision this week regarding an IPO. Either they will stay private and be faced with a much larger headache than they have been used to, having to file public records as if a traded company, or will go public and actually be beholden to shareholders looking for quarterly investment returns. With an exodus of wealthy employees — a lot of core intellectual capital — and perhaps the loss of further benefits such as the four days of work and one of pet project pursuit, I'm afraid the environment that has been part of the creation of their world-class technology will come to an end. They don't conform, after all, and Wall Street-types are not known for tolerating unorthodox approaches to business management.
And if management changes, whaddaya bet that the home page becomes as littered as all the others?
I apologize for being the pessimist today.
I was a big fan of the cold fusion idea when it first surfaced, because there's nothing quite as cool as a little bubbling generator providing gobs of energy. Of course, everyone knows it didn't work out, right? As it turns out, there may have been something to cold fusion after all. Now it looks like there's an effect there, but the combination of finicky equipment and incomplete theory is making it difficult to figure out exactly what's happening and how to make it happen reliably.
I'm glad that someone had the guts to continue with the research even after it became taboo; it really would be nice to know that *something* really happened there.
...and adding function to art can make it more compelling. For example, Swarovski brought a group of designers to Milan to show off artistic uses of their crystal in high-tech chandeliers.
Some of the results are pretty impressive, even if a few of them look like K-Mart X-mas light train wrecks. One design uses an addressible array of lights within the chandelier to display text messages from party-goers' phones.
Be sure to check out the high-res versions of the chandelier images on the Swarovski site; the real artistry is in the details.
Would the corner Blockbuster send me this email? I think not.
(Letter attached in the extended entry.)
This isn't the first time Netflix has updated my queue to reflect new (or re-released) versions of movies I looked for in the past. Very cool stuff.
Dear Chris,
Recently, we mistakenly alerted you in your queue that Chariots
of Fire will no longer be carried by Netflix. While it is true that we
no longer have enough copies to fill demand, we anticipate a new
version will be released later year, and we will be buying
additional copies at that time.
The movie has been returned to your queue, and will move to the
DVDs Awaiting Release section.
We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you find many other
movies to enjoy in the meantime.
Thank you,
Your Friends at Netflix
Don't just send 'em flowers, send 'em organic flowers!.
Oh, it's just so AWESOME! :)
I have no response to this.
If British train bathrooms are anything like California ones, I really really can't see the attraction. That must be one boring commute.
Most of that hype is just hot air. Here's more political ammo for you, Jaime.
It's very 1960s, I know, but seeing a jet pack in action must be very cool indeed. Imagine having this guy as your dad on show-and-tell day.
I find I'm having a very positive response to Connecticut's plan to take junk food out of schools. I wish my schools had been like this (though I wouldn't have wished that at the time). I must be a real grown-up now. Hmph.
An author called Joan Roughgarden, in her new book Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexualilty in Nature and People, argues that Darwin's theory of sexual selection doesn't fit the available data based on her research on homosexuality and same-sex relationships in humans and other animals.
This interview with Roughgarden is interesting, although a bit shallow, and actually left me wanting to yell through my computer screen at her. At one point she says, "A typical couple has sex once a week for 50 years, but has only two offspring," which is so wrong if you're looking at the human population as a whole right now and at humans in the millions of years that we've existed. At other times, though, she makes intelligent reference to things like polygamy.
I hope this is a useful, interesting and well-researched book, but this interview raises a few doubts. I wondered what you all would think.
Folks have been trying to figure out the shape of the universe for a long time. Early answers included "a big tree" and "flat, supported by elephants on the back of a turtle". One of the latest ideas is a Picard topology, sort of a horn shape with a really long end.
I notice that the term "pringle" has replaced "saddle" when describing areas of negative curvature...
This probably won't make sense to anyone else, but I need to make a note reminding myself about something I thought about over lunch. (I always lose them otherwise, so maybe this will help me remember.) Read on if that kind of thing interests you.
Given: an ideal pseudoablative mass driver which uses pattern conversion to translate the trailing surface into a high-velocity sheet, imparting an acceleration to the remaining mass and exposing a self-similar surface. The mass driver is completely consumed by the process.
This is a cute satire put out by Planned Parenthood to promote their March for Women's Lives on April 25th.
It's not quite a virus, but it will do the trick -- if you can actually manage to get it to infect your machine.
I'm not particularly interested in Condoleeza Rice's testimony today, but I love Slate's analysis of the careful wording she used to make the same action damn Clinton and let Bush off the hook.
No, that's not a typo. MoveOn is coordinating a country-wide bake sale to raise money (and awareness) for the upcoming election. I hope someone has one nearby!
I also love the subtle parody of the Bush campaign. Folks who sell lots of baked goods will be "Pioneers" and "Rangers", the Bushie name for super-rich donors. Hopefully that will get lots of news coverage.
Bush is such a diplomat. Yikes.
[There's a non-subscription version of the same AP story as well. --Ed.]
I don't know why this pleases me - probably because so many traditionalists complain about the evils of videogames. But a new study shows video game playing is good for surgeons.
I love human adaptability.
Now that's what I'm talkin' about! NEC is currently working on a battery that charges in seconds, not hours. They hope to make it available for laptops, cameras, and hybrid cars in the near future.
I'm not really shutting down the blog, but spam has become a minor nuisance. Luckily, the folks at Movable Type have been working on a solution, which will be rolled out with the next major release of the software.
The solution is a registration service called TypeKey that lets you register a username for use when posting comments to any Movable Type blog. The first time you post a comment at Global Spin I'll approve you, and after that your comments will appear on the site as soon as you post them. Unapproved comments will never show up on the site, so hopefully that will discourage blog spammers by taking away the benefit of spam.
The next version of Movable Type is still in alpha testing, so it may be a while before TypeKey is set up here. In the interim, keep notifying me of spam as it occurs. Thanks!
[Oh, well. It's hard to play a joke on people who don't read the blog regularly. :) I'll keep the post up in case you're curious. ~c]
Due to the recent (incessant) spate of blog spam, I've decided to call it quits. I'm going to remove Movable Type from the Global Spin site and go back to a static front page, updated whenever I get a chance. The change should take effect by the end of the day, as soon as I get the kinks worked out of the new home page.
It's been a great experiment, and I thank you all for contributing. It's too bad that a few bad apples can spoil all our fun.
Sorry,
~chris
Looks like someone forgot to update their domain name registration...
Those tireless gnomes at Google have done it again. Gmail is a new Google service that provides spam-free e-mail with 1000 megabytes of storage. Compare that to the usual 5-15 megabytes, and that's quite a deal. Especially for free.
Stunned space scientists were reeling last night after stumbling across a startling new formation on the surface of Mars. I sure hope it's not advertising...
Apparently, engineers came up with a novel way of heating nuclear land-mines to survive cold German winters in the early days of the cold war.