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blech + article   69

Explaining Londoners | NYTimes.com
"If you had to make a snap judgment about a Londoner, how would you do it? Start with the newspaper he or she is reading." More handy hints are within this New York Times magazine article, such as "Frequent apology is one of an arsenal of clever tricks Londoners employ to obscure their true feelings and remain opaque to outsiders and possibly even to themselves."
london  nytimes  magazine  article  culture  newspapers 
12 weeks ago by blech
Between the Lines | Los Angeles magazine
"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.
us  cities  parking  infrastructure  traffic  cars  article  from instapaper
january 2012 by blech
Jo Glanville · ‘Auntie Mabel doesn’t give a toss about Serbia’: The World Service · LRB 25 August 2011
On the World Service and the deal to transfer it from the Foreign Office to the BBC. "This was an unprecedented way of doing business: the future of one of the country’s greatest institutions decided in a matter of days, without public consultation and with its new mechanisms of governance left undecided."
bbc  worldservice  lrb  article  government  foreignoffice  from instapaper
august 2011 by blech
Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson | Edge
"By breaking the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things, von Neumann unleashed the power of the stored-program computer, and our universe would never be the same." George Dyson's short article for Edge may act as a sketch for his forthcoming book of the same name.
article  google  vonnuemann  alanturing  computing  history  culture  2005  from delicious
february 2011 by blech
Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth | Project Orion
"Project Orion was a space vehicle propulsion system that depended on exploding atomic bombs roughly two hundred feet behind the vehicle. The seeming absurdity of this idea is one of the reasons why Orion failed; yet, many prominent physicists worked on the concept and were convinced that it could be made practical." Speaking of Freeman Dyson, this Michael Flora article is well worth a read.
science  space  nuclear  technology  article  history  from delicious
february 2011 by blech
The Danger of Cosmic Genius - Magazine - The Atlantic
"“The main point is religious rather than scientific,” [Dyson] writes, yet never acknowledges that this proposition cuts both ways, never seems to recognize the extent to which his own arguments proceed from faith. Environmentalism worships the wisdom of Nature. Dysonism worships the indomitable ingenuity of Man." This is a good read.
science  politics  environment  history  space  physics  climatechange  freemandyson  article  from instapaper
february 2011 by blech
The joy of train travel: From New Zealand to London | BBC News
"International train travel has always had a romantic appeal." On travelling halfway around the world by train.
trains  travel  bbc  article  china  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
The worst way to complain about net neutrality | Ars Technica
"All the episode really shows is that bloggers often get a bad rap for good reasons." Why the mention of Android in the FCC's net neutrality submission isn't as stupid as it looks at first glance.
fcc  netneutrality  arstechnica  article  android  computing  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
Not such wicked leaks | Presseurop – English
For the celebrated novelist and intellectual Umberto Eco, the Wikileaks affair or "Cablegate" not only shows up the hypocrisy that governs relations between states, citizens and the press, but also presages a return to more archaic forms of communication.
wikileaks  umbertoeco  article  comment  surveillance  diplomacy  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
Design Research Unit: the firm that branded Britain | guardian.co.uk
"You may not have heard of Britain's most successful design group, but signs of its work can still be seen on streets, pubs, railways and tube stations – quite literally" Make sure to check out the gallery, especially the crazy South Bank architecture plan.
guardian  britishrail  design  history  branding  uk  article  alsopostedon:ffffound  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
Correspondent's diary: Ascension Island | The Economist
Speaking of Ascension, this Economist correspondent's diary (annoyingly, reverse-chronological) is well worth a read. "Ascension Island turns on its head the old sailors’ folklore about islands that move from place to place. It sits still, but the world shifts around it in a way that sometimes, unexpectedly, put Ascension Island between an A and a B that people want to get to."
economist  article  islands  uk  culture  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
iPhone Polaroids: A Semiotics Primer | Hyperallergic
"Where does the split happen between the aesthetic quality of a Polaroid and the way we fetishize that aesthetic?"
polaroid  iphone  photography  semiotics  article  aesthetics  via:hchamp  from delicious
june 2010 by blech
International Space Station | Building Design
"A few weeks ago, the final building block was delivered to the International Space Station, thus completing the first building beyond Earth. Here, one of the architects involved in its construction, charts the saga of the most technically advanced environment ever built"
space  iss  architecture  buildingdesign  article  from delicious
june 2010 by blech
The Impossible Project: Bringing back Polaroid | Wired UK
Wired's interesting article on Polaroid, although a bit more technical detail would have been nice (I should read up on the process; why were negatives so tricky?)
wired  camera  photography  polaroid  article  interview 
november 2009 by blech
The Transparent Society | Wired
"Both futures may seem undesirable. But can there be any doubt which city we'd rather live in, if these two make up our only choice? Alas, they may be our only options. For the cameras are on their way, along with data networks that will send myriad images flashing back and forth, faster than thought." David Brin, 13 years ago.
politics  cctv  surveillance  transparency  technology  wired  article 
october 2009 by blech
Space: Flying high | The Economist
"America’s government has no money for its human-spaceflight plans. The private sector has plenty". Coverage of SpaceX and others getting contracts to service the ISS, while NASA's spam-in-a-can seems to be flailing.
economist  space  nasa  comment  article  spacex  virgingalactic 
september 2009 by blech
Critiquing the Monetary Economy | NYTimes.com
"Mr. Fresco ... has spent the last six decades working on the Venus Project, a futuristic society where machines would control government and industry and safeguard the planet’s fragile resources by means of an artificially intelligent “earthwide autonomic sensor system” — a super-brain of sorts connected to, yes, all human knowledge." Ah, standard Get Humans Out Of Jail Card #3.
zeitgeist  politics  article  nytimes  ai  collapsitarians? 
march 2009 by blech
Autism test would deprive world of geniuses | The Guardian
"Dirac was prone to very long silences and was famous for his apparently emotionless responses to events. He also often took a very literal interpretation of statements by other people. All are characteristics of autism."
science  physics  quantumphysics  article  pauldirac  autism  genetics  guardian 
january 2009 by blech
Let's hear it for the scientists | More Intelligent Life
"Living, intelligent biography should connect, somehow, to the central concerns of civilisation. Ours is a science-based one." Andrew Marr makes a plea for biographies of scientists.
science  biography  article  comment 
january 2009 by blech
By any other name | from a working library
On the history of storing writing.
technology  history  writing  article  books  via:daringfireball 
january 2009 by blech
No New Language In 2009 | Giles Bowkett
"You can't learn a language in a year. It can't be done. I've been writing Ruby for three years and I don't really know it." I agree I need short-term goals, but I'm still keen not to knock up new things all the time, so my new year's resolution is slightly different. We'll see how that goes.
development  programming  newyear  article 
january 2009 by blech
Light Pollution | National Geographic Magazine
It's not as good as the New Yorker article on light pollution from a year or so ago, but it'll probably reach a wider audience, and that's a good thing. Nice photos too.
astronomy  science  photography  article  environment  lightpollution 
january 2009 by blech
Collect life lessons as you pass go | BBC News
"WOPR - fictional 20th Century military computer, disliked noughts and crosses" That's a bit reductive, but I suppose it counts as a win for the pop reference fans. The article's really about board games.
bbc  magazine  article  games  boardgames 
december 2008 by blech
John Lanchester: Is it Art? | LRB
One of my favourite London Review of Books contributors (check the Cityphilia and Cityphobia articles, if you haven't already) tackles the old chestnut of video games and art. "If I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable. It’s a bit of an irony that difficulty thrives in the newest medium of all – and it’s not by accident, either."
games  culture  art  article  londonreviewofbooks  johnlanchester  via:infovore 
december 2008 by blech
YQL - converting the web to JSON with mock SQL | Ajaxian
A writeup of Yahoo's YQL, with special attention paid to the fact it outputs in JSON (yay JSON!). It certainly does a good job of making what I've been calling "API joins" for a while explicit, both in terms of the fact they're like database joins, and also the fact that they're really slow.
ajaxian  ajax  article  yql  yahoo  api  development  javascript  web  json 
december 2008 by blech
Philip Oltermann asks about guilty pleasures | guardian.co.uk
Richard Dawkins: "Isn't programming useful? In the right hands, yes. But my projects ... could all be done better (and were) by professionals. It was a classic addiction: prolonged frustration, occasionally rewarded by a briefly glowing fix of achievement."
guardian  article  comment  interview  computing  development  programming  culture  dawkins 
october 2008 by blech
German recreation: An affinity for rules? | Economist.com
Subtitled "Germany has a grip on the business of inventing brainy new board-games", this is a good (introductory?) piece on German board games, and the fact they're still being invented (and sound quite good, too). Mentions Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan and Keltis.
economist  article  games  germany 
august 2008 by blech
Last flight of the honeybee? | The Guardian
While we're in nature mode, here's a good analysis of the threat to the honeybee, which did the rounds last year (and now seems to be a Doctor Who running joke).
guardian  nature  article  book  comment  farming  agriculture  bees  via:preoccupations 
june 2008 by blech
A special issue on procrastination | Slate Magazine
Maybe I'll read this later.
slate  society  time  magazine  article  books 
may 2008 by blech
Up and Then Down | The New Yorker
A fantastic piece about lifts, including phrases like "arrival immediate prediction lantern", "body ellipse" and "Improved Hoisting Apparatus", hung around the tale of Nicholas White, stuck in one for 41 hours. Lifts sound a lot like tube trains.
newyorker  article  essay  engineering  usability  psychology  cities  technology  culture  transport  via:waxy.org 
april 2008 by blech
Diggbrow: How The Internet Redefined Art | Gawker
The catchy-image-as-art is part of the culture of ffffound as much as it is of digg (and it seems to be getting worse over time). The utter lack of text and context don't exactly help either.
art  criticism  culture  ffffound  media  web  article  comment  via:ldanderson 
february 2008 by blech
Twilight of the Books | The New Yorker
An interesting piece on the retreat of reading. There's some good stuff about literate vs graphical thinking in the middle (I'm kind of obsessed since reading The Alphabet vs The Goddess).
books  reading  newyorker  article  via:preoccupations 
december 2007 by blech
Who Speaks for Earth? | Seed Magazine
On "active" SETI, namely sending radio transmissions to the stars in hopes someone else will be listening. Should we be doing it?
science  culture  seti  article  radio 
december 2007 by blech
On Art and Advertising | meish.org
Meg Pickard on the (unhappy?) interface between art and advertising. I wish I'd thought a bit harder about my comment, because it's not just looking at one example of the genre, it's all about
advertising  art  article  images  blogcomment 
december 2007 by blech
Design Notes - Shapely contours and mid-century playboys
Modernist designers featured in Playboy resurface on Design Without Reach.
design  history  magazine  article  comment 
november 2007 by blech
The Zeugma: Interviews: Brian Griffin
An even older interview, from 1992, when Griffin stopped work with still images. I wonder what drew him back?
photography  interview  article 
november 2007 by blech
The Dark Side | The New Yorker
Subtitled "The war on light pollution", this is a glorious overview of the problems it causes and what we're all missing due to the human-generated glow in our skies. Well worth a read.
astronomy  environment  history  space  newyorker  magazine  article  lightpollution 
september 2007 by blech
ONLamp.com - Introducing TrimPath Junction
Could be a nice self-hosted alternative to Zimki. Or maybe not. Something to chase up, anyway.
javascript  helma  development  article  tutorial  web  toread 
september 2007 by blech
ChadFowler.com: Writing APIs to Wrap APIs
RFacebook uses Ruby's equivalent of Perl's autoload mechanism. Chad Fowler explains why his Facebooker library uses explicit code instead. The same problems come up with other languages and APIs, too.
api  design  facebook  hacking  article  ruby 
september 2007 by blech
symmetry - Talk and Chalk
Whiteboards are taking over everywhere else, but blackboards cling on in academia. Here's a US particle physics magazine on the subject.
physics  magazine  article  blackboard  whiteboard  writing  chalk  culture  via:candacep 
july 2007 by blech
A List Apart: Articles: Conflicting Absolute Positions
Interesting discoveries on how div postitions are intepreted, and a nice use of them, complete with IE workarounds.
html  css  design  howto  article  ui 
july 2007 by blech
Anti-Grain Geometry - Texts Rasterization Exposures
"An attempt to improve text rasterization algorithms using only publicly available information" Follows on from the Safari 3 for Windows rendering debate, apparently.
font  rendering  graphics  linux  typography  article  toread  via:jerakeen 
july 2007 by blech
Jello Molds & Width Control
Min-width and max-width hacks for IE, using negative margins and JavaScript. Not sure I need this, but I think it's worth storing for reference.
css  design  html  article  hack 
july 2007 by blech
Macworld: Aperture vs. Lightroom- the new digital darkroom
Despite the move to the MacBook Pro and the fact that I've got enough memory and diskspace to do so, I still haven't tried either of the heavyweight photo management apps. Maybe this will help me choose the right one.
aperture  lightroom  review  article  photography  toread  comparison  via:daringfireball 
june 2007 by blech
What our daily rituals really say about our social history
The Guardian carries extracts from a book about everyday life, on breakfast, office work, and weather.
guardian  food  history  work  weather  article  books  extract 
may 2007 by blech
You Are What You Grow | New York Times
"How can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?" Micahel Pollan goes in search of the farm funding that provides an answer. Wonder how the CAP compares?
food  economics  subsidy  health  nutrition  nytimes  agriculture  article  via:kottke 
april 2007 by blech
Unhappy Meals - Michael Pollan | New York Times
I orignally read this back when it first published, but keep needing to find a paywall-busting URL. It's a good, long piece on food, nutrition, science and diet. If you've not read it, please do.
nytimes  food  nutrition  science  research  article  comment 
april 2007 by blech
A List Apart: Articles: Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid
The new husk.org front page (which I still haven't got around to writing about, sigh, but it predates the article) uses a vertical rhythm of 16px. I wish this title didn't used the word "grid" for the concept, though.
design  typography  web  html  howto  article 
april 2007 by blech
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots
Worth it for the comments as much as the bile. "Stupid person takes up stupid offer and then writes stupid article about it."
guardian  article  comment  technology 
march 2007 by blech
The View From 659 Feet: Operator of construction crane...
Article in SFGate about the tower crane operator at the Rincon Hill site. Now, if any SF dotcommies fancy posting photos to the Flickr Craneporn group...
crane  construction  sfgate  sanfrancisco  article  via:candacep 
march 2007 by blech
Atom API implementation [dive into mark]
How to do the Atom API with a single CGI. Looks kind of handy.
atom  api  article 
november 2006 by blech
Out of Sight II: Twenty More Films You Haven't Seen, But Should - Article - Stylus Magazine
Unsurprisingly, no sequels.
film  review  magazine  article  toread 
november 2006 by blech
Out of Sight: Fifteen Films You Haven't Seen, But Should - Article - Stylus Magazine
What it says on the tin
film  review  magazine  article  toread 
november 2006 by blech
Can This Fruit Be Saved? - Popular Science
For some reason I keep needing to find this article about disease threatening the banana monoculture.
science  biology  economics  food  article  banana 
november 2006 by blech
Daring Fireball: Stikkit
Not for the main review (it's not an app I'd use anyway and the one-thing-per-note limitation is dumb) but the bit on tagging. He's right; space delimited tagging is horribly Unix-y, and wrong to boot.
article  daringfireball  review  tags  calendar 
november 2006 by blech
Ignoring resource fork files files with subversion - jerakeen.org
Could be handy
mac  development  svn  howto  article 
october 2006 by blech
Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts features | Steve Rose on the renaissance of the Brunswick Centre
"If Hodgkinson was influenced by anybody, he says, it was Finnish architect Alvar Aalto" On the sprucing up of the Brunswick Centre.
london  architecture  article  guardian 
october 2006 by blech
Jon Johansen hacks FairPlay, the Apple iTunes closed system - October 30, 2006
Once upon a time both his cracker and wrapper code would have been released under the GPL already. Maybe Johansen decided he wanted to make money, not just get respect.
itunes  drm  article  music  economics 
october 2006 by blech
DJ software for Windows and Mac OS X
Ars Technica covers, er, DJ software. For Mac OS X. And Windows. Like it says up there.
article  osx  windows  music  software  mp3  review 
october 2006 by blech
Wide-Angle Lenses for Digital SLR Cameras
To digest, although it doesn't have any fixed-length wide-angle lenses (do they exist, or are they fisheye?)
photography  canon  lens  article 
september 2006 by blech
Economics focus | On the hiking trail | Economist.com
"In America, the euro area and Japan, total wages have fallen to their lowest share of national income in decades, whereas the share of profits has surged." No wonder globalisation has its discontents.
politics  economics  article  economist 
september 2006 by blech
Guardian Unlimited Arts | This Film Is Not Yet Rated
Half a review, half a look at the MPAA, Peter Bradshaw on the documentary about US film censorship.
film  guardian  review  article  comment  mpaa  censorship 
september 2006 by blech
Manifold Destiny | The New Yorker
On the Poincaré conjecture, Grigory Perelman, and Shing-Tung Yau. Long, but worth it.
mathematics  news  article  china  russia  culture  politics  newyorker 
august 2006 by blech
Good Math, Bad Math : Roman Numerals and Arithmetic
I never realised there was a shortcut for multiplying with Roman numerals
mathematics  reference  article 
august 2006 by blech
: clayton james cubitt :: Metropop Denim, With Tom Carden
Interesting photographs referred to at Ask Later; it looks like the art is overlaid on the photo but actually it was the other way around.
photography  software  design  art  article  interview 
july 2006 by blech
Our creepiest genetic invention: the dog. By William Saletan
If nothing else, this proves that selective breeding can do (crudely and slowly) what genetic modification promises to do (precisely and quickly).
article  biology  dna  health  science  dogs 
june 2006 by blech
A List Apart: Articles: To Hell with WCAG 2
"WCAG 2 is not too broken to fix, but we have no reason to think the WCAG Working Group will actually fix it."
web  design  development  article  accessibility  work 
may 2006 by blech
Burning Questions - The Official FeedBurner Weblog: Feed for Thought
Feeds, commercial publishing, podcasts and more
design  rss  feedburner  article  podcasting 
november 2005 by blech
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Will the Channel Tunnel Rail Link restore our faith Britain railways?
"Tunnel Vision"- a long piece on the near-invisible CTRL London development
ctrl  london  railway  guardian  engineering  article 
may 2005 by blech

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