A documentary to watch over the holiday period
December 21st, 2009
The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses.
It’s called The Century Of The Self and was done by Adam Curtis.
It’s over four parts on Google video. Watch the firt part here.
George Carlin’s last wish
February 24th, 2009
Respect to this great comedian.
Some great links of 2008
January 10th, 2009
A list of best sites of 2008 from kottke.org.
I haven’t gone through all of these yet. So far my favourites are the scary ‘Big Dog’ robot and the skateboarding video directed by Spike Jonze.
Check these out here.
A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis
November 20th, 2008
A visual guide (from blog.mint.com) to help you understand the events leading up to the bailout.
Marjane Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran. She now lives in Paris, where she is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers throughout the world, including The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is the author of Embroideries, Chicken with Plums, and several children’s books. She cowrote and codirected the animated feature film version of Persepolis.
Check out her books published by Random House
Link to Persepolis the movie released by Sony Pictures
The NeoCube
April 29th, 2008
The NeoCube is composed of 216 individual high-energy rare-earth magnets.
This allows you to create and recreate an outrageous number of shapes and patterns.
Link (this link was broken at the time of writing this)
How to save money running a startup
March 7th, 2008
#1 Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department
#2 Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year… which is at least $2,000 a year…. which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you’re getting 10-20x return on your investment… and you’ve got a happy team member.
The Smell of Space
February 3rd, 2008
Few people have experienced traveling into space. Even fewer have experienced the smell of space. Now this sounds strange, that a vacuum could have a smell and that a human being could live to smell that smell.
By: ISS Science Officer Don Pettit
Historical Costs of U.S. Wars (In 2007 Dollars)
February 2nd, 2008
World War II $3.2 trillion
Iraq and Afghanistan To Date $695.7 billion
Vietnam War $670 billion
World War I $364 billion
Korean War $295 billion
Persian Gulf War $94 billion
Civil War (both Union and Confederate costs) $81 billion
Spanish-American War $7 billion
American Revolution $4 billion
Mexican War $2 billion
War of 1812 $1 billion
From cryptogon.com who got this data from here on armscontrolcenter.org.
Both of the above sites are good sources of news and info.
Modelling time travel in fiction
January 29th, 2008
Pretty a fascinating blog on time travel – hard to believe so much research went into this.
Time travel is a subject of great interest to me – not the actual, you know, nuts and bolts physics of it, but the various possible models that can be imagined. I’ve written a variety of fiction based around these. The most important thing, I find, when coming up with a new theory, is to try to trip it up in every way imaginable and make sure it still works.