The answers to Edge Foundation’s 2008 question, “What have you changed your mind about?” are out. 2007’s What are you optimistic about?, 2006’s What is your dangerous idea?, and 2005’s What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? were all fascinating reading. Their annual questions go back to 1998.
Category Archives: blurb
Word of the day: Goricle
Goricle, N (def). Former Vice President and the 42nd elected president of the United States of America Al Gore. As in:
In recent weeks there have been encouraging signs that the Goricle’s message is getting through.
This just in: Waterboarding is torture
It’s torture. No question. Terrible terrible torture. To experience it and understand it and then do it to another human being is to leave the realm of sanity and humanity forever. No question in my mind.
The other side of the race to the moon
After watching From the Earth to the Moon and In the Shadow of the Moon, I wondered whatever happened to the threat of a “red moon” that so motivated the US to land on the moon before 1970. Turns out the Soviet lunar program was very real. It never achieved real success largely due to interpersonal rivalries and bureaucratic territoriality, and was canceled as the Soviets lost interest in the program after Khrushchev (Хрущев) was ousted in 1964.
Update 2008-01-03: Red Moon Rising by Matthew Brzezinski is about the Soviet space program. Read the first chapter here.
Update 2008-01-18: Air & Space has some more lunar landers that never were.
Loathsome
The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007: Hillary Clinton comes in at #17, Darth Vader (#2) and W (#3) beat out a mass murderer at #4, and #9 bears consideration. Funny, they included Alberto Gonzalez, but left out Emperor Palpatine David Addington.
Geography quiz
The Traveler IQ Challenge is a fun little game that tests your geographic knowledge. I can get to level 10, and sometimes level 11.
What’s the opposite of a soft gradient?
Alex Faaborg‘s post about the new Firefox icons includes this curious typology of modern icon styles. I wasn’t aware that “saturated colors” was the opposite of “soft gradients:”
I’d love to see Windows 3.1, Mac Classic, and all the other icon styles from OS-es past, on this chart.
RSS feed URLs changed
This blog now lives at http://glyphobet.net/blog. If you’re subscribed to my RSS feed, you will need to re-subscribe. The new URL is here.
It’s never boring in Russia
They have wooden computers, faked UFO photos, and dangerous staged photo contests.
Cool but unfortunately incomplete San Francisco neighborhood map
StrangeMaps linked to a site with a very cool map of San Francisco neighborhoods. Unfortunately, it’s missing Dogpatch, Lower Haight, Japantown, The Tenderloin, Cole Valley, Russian Hill, Alamo Square, NOPA, Panhandle, and Duboce Triangle, and, if you want to get specific, Polk Gulch, South Park, and Pierre Valley too. I know because I’m keeping track. I wonder if the other maps for sale at Orkposters are similarly lacking.