"Venture deep inside the new skyway of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and it becomes clear that the bridge’s engineers have planned for the long term." A good read, and it's worth going to the interactive feature part too.

"I think US Code 36, Subtitle 1, Part A, Chapter 3, Section 301 B.1.C covers it" (http://twitter.com/arhayward/status/166556532199272448)

"the U.S. Flag Code says that the hand should go over the heart during the anthem."

"From a technical standpoint, the success of the lowly GIF is a mystery. Both as an image format and as a video/animation format, it’s vastly inferior to the alternatives." And yet, it succeeds. This is a good look at why (through the lens of a hex editor, no less).

"In Michele Bachmann's home district, evangelicals have created an extreme anti-gay climate. After a rash of suicides, the kids are fighting back." This is depressing.

"Transcending its original playful identity, it’s no longer a place for strolling — it’s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore." A thoughtful essay by Evgeny Morozov that captures some of my dislike for the modern web. (Having said that, on editing my pinboard bookmarks, I find a disturbing number recently are from the NYT. So much for me flaneuring.)

‘"Strike another two songs from the Republican playlist: “Eye of the Tiger,” by Survivor, and “Wavin’ Flag,” by the Somali-born musician K’naan. “When you think about every iconic song that has emotional resonance for millions and millions of Americans, in almost every instance, Republican candidates can’t use the song because the artist is not supportive,” said Steve Schmidt.’

"Mild bipolar disorder may be to this decade what depression was to the nineties, thanks to a new drug and an expanding definition. But when do ordinary peaks and valleys become pathological?"

Interesting, but the best bit is right at the end: ‘“People are watching TV,” he said. “Kids don’t go to theaters. They’re streaming it, downloading it. They don’t see any difference between television and movies. So if you want to get people to go out to the movies, to pay a premium price for some kind of premium experience, it better be damned premium. It better be extraordinary.”’

"Pictures are supposed to be worth a thousand words. But a picture unaccompanied by words may not mean anything at all. Do pictures provide evidence? And if so, evidence of what? And, of course, the underlying question: do they tell the truth?" Worth a read. From 2007.

"Sealand has never embraced tourism or outsiders, enhancing the mystique. So when I learnt they were accepting applications for tourist visas, I was amazed. As co-author of Lonely Planet’s recent guide to homemade nations, this, for me, was the grail: a chance to visit the world’s most notorious micronation."

"This is the dilemma of being a cyborg: It’s not just that everything we once committed to memory we now store externally on devices that crash or become obsolete or are rendered temporarily inaccessible due to lack of coverage. And it’s not that we spend a lot of time storing, organizing, pruning and maintaining our access to it all. It’s that we’re collectively engaged in a mass conversion of what we used to call, variously, records, accounts, entries, archives, registers, collections, keepsakes, catalogs, testimonies and memories into, simply, data." "Losing data is not the same as forgetting. It happens all at once, not gradually or imperceptibly, so it feels less like an unburdening than like a mugging."

"it was coined in Germany only in the second half of the 19th century and was first used in English several decades later with the classical sense of “hetero” (“other, different”), making it initially a term of opprobrium. Only in the first decades of the 20th century did it settle into its present niche, cushioned with overtones of romance, pleasure, health and normalcy."

David Runciman on politics, democracy, the EU, and various other topics. "Keynes readily accepted that democracies were far better at renewing themselves than the supposedly more efficient dictatorships. He just wished they wouldn’t try to do it when they were struggling to stop the world descending into chaos."

Maria Popova: "Affirmation sells a lot better than information. Who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they're right?" http://t.co/eD3ZOwQx

‘What little they had to eat, they ate—cans of mysterious tinned meat and fishballs that supposedly contained cream. Even Nansen, the ship’s cat, went a little crazy. Eventually, penguins began flocking to the ship and the birds were—Cook wrote—“of equal interest to the naturalist and the cook.” He began eating penguins.’

Alexis Madrigal has a nice way with metaphor.

On why the New York skyline isn't a product of bedrock depth, but is a result of various economic, societal and geographical pressures.

The captions on the photos are hilarious, and there are some good laughs in the first few paragraphs, but there's a good deeper point in this post about minimal and perfect homes.

"The web project [...] highlights the work of NYPL patron Joshua Heineman, who started creating his own moving images from Library stereograms as an art project for his blog. The Library's NYPL Labs team was so impressed it decided to build on his idea. Here's his story about how the idea took shape and grew into a Library project." A good project and a good read.

34-year-old Danah Boyd provides an electric Gen Y contrast to the staid gray lobby of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Mass., which she enters in a flurry of animated conversation, Elmo-decorated iPhone in hand.

When thieves stole his beloved ­commuter bike on a busy street in broad daylight, PATRICK SYMMES snapped—and set out on a cross-­country plunge into the heart of ­America’s bike-crime underbelly. What he saw will ­rattle your frame.

Make it pleasant? Or make it efficient?

detective stories are literature’s oldest profession. They do one thing, they do it once, then they go off to jumble sales and charity bookshops to do it for someone else – unless they feature Sherlock Holmes. He seldom turns up with Poirot and Miss Marple in trays of second-hand pulp, but haunts the libraries, loos and luggage of people like T.S. Eliot, Ronald Knox, Eric Newby, Vladimir Nabokov and Umberto Eco.

"The key issue, as hinted at in the (somewhat facetious) examples above, is that the Metropolitan Police is a huge organisation: it has more than 35,000 officers and PSCOs, plus more than 13,000 civilian staff. Even trivial amounts of spending per officer quickly adds up." On spending at scale.

"Dutch researchers Christiaan Behrens and Eric Pels analyze the passenger market between London and Paris from 2003 through 2009. The primary competitors in this corridor are conventional air carriers like Air France and British Airways, low-cost carriers like easyJet, and the Eurostar high-speed rail service. Over the course of the study — which looked at roughly 9,500 business and 18,000 leisure trips — the Eurostar has been far and away the dominant travel choice."

Serendipity and the Internet http://t.co/MgXUyTQu

"There will be light, and then there will be nothing. But how will the camera market fare? Read on, as I ponder out loud." Ashley Pomeroy on photography.

"Dr. Nielsen and other advocates for “open science” say science can accomplish much more, much faster, in an environment of friction-free collaboration over the Internet. And despite a host of obstacles, including the skepticism of many established scientists, their ideas are gaining traction." Interesting stuff on Arxiv et al.

"One topic. Two points of view." On the Shuttle, and something more personal.

"What we saw is something unique in the history of American social movements: a mass conversion to free-market theory as a response to hard times. Before this recession, people who had been cheated by bankers almost never took that occasion to demand that bankers be freed from "red tape" and the scrutiny of the law." An extract from Pity The Billionaire by Thomas Frank.

Ansel Adams: "The person of the one who is loved is a form composed of a myriad mirrors reflecting and illuminating the powers and thoughts and the emotions that are within you, and flashing another kind of light from within. No words or deeds may encompass it."

Matthew Engel: "This is the sixth in my irregular series on British Institutions. After I finished the fifth, I noticed that the themes were becoming familiar: [...] the glory days were over; it was a fight to maintain popularity and relevance; and money was getting ever tighter." "But London Underground is different. It is more expansive and confident now than at any time in memory. How on earth has this happened?" Nice photographs too.

"From the Empire State to the Burj Khalifa, skyscrapers predict recession. But not all towers are built by phallic capitalism." Owen Hatherley on skyscrapers.

"While Kodak suffers, its long-time rival Fujifilm is doing rather well. The two firms have much in common." "Both firms saw their traditional business rendered obsolete. But whereas Kodak has so far failed to adapt adequately, Fujifilm has transformed itself into a solidly profitable business, with a market capitalisation, even after a rough year, of some $12.6 billion to Kodak’s $220m. Why did these two firms fare so differently?" Interesting stuff on the death of film (and why seeing the end coming can't always save you from it).

"Seeing so many photographs of Woodman, mostly naked, often posing in empty rooms with peeling paint and fading wallpaper, is a slightly disconcerting experience, though. It's not just that she becomes more elusive the more photographs you see, it's more the tightrope walk she takes between an almost adolescent self-obsession and artistic self-exploration."

"Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place."

"I had to admit that I had no clue where I first saw it referenced, due to the way I consume links I find on the net. So, I thought I'd write a quick blog post to explain myself, and then pitch a product idea that could make my life (and maybe yours) much easier." I vary in the specifics but the product he outlines would be a great tool.

"It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again."

While the Jetsons family certainly did a great deal to plant the idea of the moving walkway into the public consciousness, the concept is much older than 1962.

"Tucker, who designs stone-faced architecture sets for Lego in his Arlington Heights studio and has created 11 kits so far -- from a 546-piece replica of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House in Plano to a relatively modest, 208-piece Guggenheim Museum -- had delivered, as promised, another retail-friendly Lego interpretation of iconic architecture. In fact, it was his biggest, most ambitious set yet.

"Doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently." A good read.

"For many ordinary citizens, dual passports still seem dodgy: a convenience for the cosmopolitan few or a sop to the menacing many, rather than a natural feature of a migratory world." The fact that this seems so weird probably means that I am part of some sort of "transnational elite", then.

Bobbie Johnson: "From the outside, the British and Irish market looks like a vast patchwork of services and providers: perfect territory for a big, swaggering giant to come in and clean up. In fact, the truth is just the opposite: For Netflix to get anything like the success it has had in America, it will need to find out a way to get around Rupert Murdoch and the BBC, two of the world’s most powerful media forces. They have no reason to work with Netflix and every reason to actively work against it."

"That prized garage space or curbside spot you’ve been yearning for may be costing you—and the city—in ways you never realized. A journey into the world of parking, where meter maids are under siege, everybody’s on the take, and the tickets keep on coming." A great article explaining some of the reasons why city planning there has led to Los Angeles being quite so car-centric.

a pretty brilliant round up of some strands of BERGthink - http://t.co/tqsFFS2X

I click through websites, vacantly aware that things are going on in the world, accustomed to the placid, oceanic motion of clicking, scanning, and window-resizing.

This peom was published in the Saturday Evening Post back around 1938. It is about apathy, about how we get so wrapped up in our own selfish interests that we don't care about other stuff.

"artist and designer George Maciunas conceived of Fluxus Editions—affordable and portable publications and multiples meant to introduce revolutionary art into everyday experience and to publicize the group’s ideas on an international scale." Closes 15 January 2012.

"The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011 celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, the foundational document that established Manhattan’s famous street grid." Closes 15 April, 2012.

"“Carsten Höller: Experience” is the most comprehensive US exhibition to date of the artist’s engaging work. The current show gathers together a number of the artist’s signature works in an arrangement that transforms the viewer’s experience of time and space. Originally trained as a scientist, Höller is frequently inspired by research and experiments from scientific history." Closes 22 January 2012.

http://t.co/hZwhWor *The idea of a private Chaos Computer Club satellite is so Fubar that I almost hope they get one

"In March a federal district court judge in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Prince — whose career was built on appropriating imagery created by others — broke the law by taking photographs from a book about Rastafarians and using them without permission"

Me & My Shadow: http://t.co/91Qrx91n

"Flickr is for the story I want to remember, Instagram is for the story I want to tell now." I <3 @revdancatt http://t.co/dvqDa46P

Anu Partanen in the Atlantic: "while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Puronen: "Real winners do not compete." It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland."

"The UK’s electricity market is far from perfect, but it is quite robust enough to handle a near hurricane, followed by unexpected falls in wind speed. What further demonstrations that wind turbines are effective providers of electricity could possibly be required?"

Clay Johnson: "When you click on that article about Kim Kardashian over on the right-hand sidebar of that other website, your boss may not see you reading it, but you've made it more probable that she will read it. Your click is a vote, and with that vote, you're not just saying to your media companies that you want to read it, but other people like you want to read it too. Clicks have a significant, and immediate social consequence. As our obesity epidemic challenges our healthcare system, our poor information diets are challenging the fabric of our democracy."

"The idea that people actually wear themselves on their faces seems to me to be less real than what life actually is, which is a series of concealments and containments. These surfaces and veils exist. We take off one for one person, and several for another. But there is always a difference between what you show to others and what you show to yourself in the mirror."

"In old analog cameras, many such filter “effects” were a chemical byproduct of the film, so photographers became expert at understanding the unique powers of each. Fujifilm’s Velvia film, with its high saturation and strong contrast, attracts photographers looking to capture the vibrancy of nature, Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom notes. But casual photographers rarely developed this type of eye, because they just wanted to point and shoot. What Instagram is doing—along with the myriad other photo apps that have recently emerged—is giving newbies a way to develop deeper visual literacy." The argument for filters.

Citing the three main reasons as "Quality, Audience, & Constraints", Nate Bolt's piece on Instagram is worth a look.

I knew about the A Dream Of A Life film (which I fear may not make it to the US, though I'd like to see it), but until Phil Gyford wrote this post about the @hidingseeking (and a cast of friends) side-project I had no idea it had a website. Something to look at later.

"The key to intimacy is just knowledge. Path pulls that off by allowing you to see who looks at your posts." There's some good thoughts in here about why and how Path is carving out a niche.

"The days before Christmas, friends were sharing photos of the build-up, putting up the tree, wrapping presents, sitting on trains getting to parents houses, cooking hams. To me there was a real sense of flow, connection, joining in of everyone’s experience, a bit like a pictorial version of twitter to some degree. Christmas morning was almost magical.
"The previous year on Flickr was almost as magical, once people had a chance to sort through the 100s of photos they’d taken with their dSLR, pick out the best ones, run them through lightroom and then get a chance to upload them. It was nice to look back on the Christmas mornings that people had, rather than having."

Pacific Standard Time: "The exhibition charts the abundant artistic innovation in post-World War II Los Angeles. During this period, Los Angeles artists looked for new approaches, subjects, and techniques for art making, including experimenting with the materials and processes of the pioneering industries in the region and the local surf and car cultures." Closes 5 February, 2012.

"So what makes this map different from the Rand McNally version you can buy at a bookstore? Or from the dusty National Geographic pull-down mounted in your child’s elementary school classroom? Can one paper wall map really outshine all others—so definitively that it becomes award-worthy? I’m here to tell you it can. This is a masterful map. And the secret is in its careful attention to design."

"Science is recognising humans as a geological force to be reckoned with." This is a good read on why the Anthropocene is a useful way of thinking about the why and hows people are changing the ("natural") world.

Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood.

Heewa: Doesn't it suck that these days America feels like Companies + Govt vs. the People? http://t.co/YNRjRGcf [wired]