May 2013
The Suburbanization of Poverty - Emily Badger -... →
“The researchers think it’s essentially because by trying to be too...”
– How to Pick a Winner: A Psychological Trick to Improve the Odds — PsyBlog
“A friend of mine, Glen Chiacchieri, has created a Chrome extension to help solve...”
– Dictionary of Numbers | xkcd
“Full-contact armored fighting events grew out of participation in historical...”
– Battle of the Nations, a Holy Grail of Battle Re-enactments - NYTimes.com
kottke.org: How to prevent protests in China →
jkottke:
Taking a page from Orwell, officials in Chengdu, China endeavored to prevent recent protests by moving the weekend and scheduling security exercises at the same time and place as the scheduled protest. As text messages circulated calling for another protest, authorities decided to fiddle with…
“In Afghanistan, everything is divided according to population size of the...”
– Afghans Confront Sensitive Issue Of Ethnicity : NPR
kottke.org: Peregrine Falcon killing a duck in... →
jkottke:
The Peregrine Falcon is the world’s fastest animal1; it can reach speeds of more than 240 mph during dives. It uses that speed to kill other birds in mid-air. Here’s a video of a Peregrine diving and killing a duck, shot with a camera mounted on the falcon’s back. It’s cool watching…
The Greatest Grid: How Manhattan's Famous Street... →
rhm2k:
The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan 1811-2011, based on the current exhibition of the same name at the Museum of the City of New York, tells the story of the city’s right angles. The Commissioner’s Plan of 1811, the map and surveying scheme that set the blocks at 200 by 800 feet all the way up the length of the island, was an audacious gamble on growth. From 1790 to 1810, the...
Hummus Is Conquering America - WSJ.com →
kottke.org: New York elsewhere →
jkottke:
The Morning News has a collection of maps showing the neighborhoods that New Yorkers might want to move to in a variety of cities around the world. Probably lots of generalizations to argue about here…have fun! Prenzlauer Berg = Park Slope. Among the first neighborhoods to be…
April 2013
Posters of Angry Eyes Actually Scare Off Bike... →
Why the Rent Is So High in New York - NYTimes.com →
Work and the young: Generation jobless - The... →
“You want the sophistication of the snob without the pretension of the...”
– http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/04/26/179049781/so-jerry-seinfeld-called-us-to-talk-about-coffee
“When you go into Three Guys Coffeeshop on Columbus, don’t complain that...”
– So Jerry Seinfeld Called Us To Talk About Coffee : The Salt : NPR
Watch
kottke.org: GIF of Yu Darvish's consistent... →
jkottke:
One of the most formidable tools in a pro baseball pitcher’s arsenal is the consistency of pitching motion when throwing different kinds of pitches. If your delivery looks the same to an opposing batter when throwing a 95-mph fastball, a 80-mph curve, and a 85-mph change-up, well, you’ve really…
What Happened To Opera - When you weren't... →
Watch(via Journey Of A Specialty Coffee Bean, From Cherry To Cup : The Salt : NPR)
“Lindsey Bolger, director of coffee for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, says if...”
– How Coffee Brings The World Together : The Salt : NPR
Which of these two displays of athletic quickness...
jkottke:
The first features TAKASKE, a Dance Dance Revolution player with ballerina-quick feet. Here he plays all eight footpads at ludicrous speed.
Then there’s Kara Black, a higly-ranked women’s doubles tennis player with a killer net game. Here she’s practicing volleys off the wall at close range.
She reels off 115 volleys in 43 seconds, beating the performance of her 16-year-old...
Separating out the water from Coca-Cola
jkottke:
Burn this guy at the stake because he’s a witch! You can’t separate out the water from Coca-Cola with a simple water filter. Coke is elemental, inviolable. It’s The Real Thing. Coke Is It. A Coke is a Coke.
(via digg)
“Once the energy is added, it has to go somewhere. Often, the person you’re...”
– Seth’s Blog: Conservation of energy in conversation
kottke.org: Documentary about actor and magician... →
jkottke:
Deceptive Practice is a documentary about Ricky Jay which features, among other things, a shaggy-haired Jay playing Three-card Monte with Steve Martin on an 80s chat show. Jay is a fascinating guy, as this 1993 New Yorker profile of him by Mark Singer demonstrates.
Ricky Jay, who is…
“I had the best childhood. I loved life. I thought life was the most wonderful...”
– Childhood in New York - Mel Brooks — New York Magazine
“The nose is a fleshly gas chromatograph. As you chew food or hold wine in the...”
– Author Mary Roach on the nose. Read an excerpt from her new book “Gulp” and hear here conversation with Brian Lehrer this morning here.
(via wnyc)
Tenement Museum Food Program
nycgov:
The Tenement Museum is now offering a new program, called “Foods of the Lower East Side” which will occur on Thursday evenings 6:30-8:30pm.
The tour will include exploring the immigrant experience and some of the ways immigrant foods have shaped American food. You will virtually meet some of the shopkeepers and store owners who tell their stories of living and working on the Lower...
“We grow up getting used to all of our asymmetries as reflected in the...”
– Why you hate the sound of your own voice - The Body Odd
14 Words That Are Their Own Opposites | Mental... →
“…the only way to deal with the leaks competently is to learn about how the...”
– The Law of Leaky Abstractions - Joel on Software 