Where lazy dinner comes from
Inside a frozen pizza factory shows the process which produces two million Goodfella’s pizzas every week. Strangely glorious.
Sine wave speech
Try listening to this sound clip. It’ll probably just sound like random beeping and squeaking. Now, listen to this voice clip. Then, listen to the first sound clip for a second time. It should now sound very different. Good, huh?
There’s more on this sine wave speech effect (including further examples) here.
Darwin on marriage
Charles Darwin ponders the positives and negatives of getting married:
This is the Question
Marry
Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — —better than a dog anyhow. — Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. — Forced to visit & receive relations but terrible loss of time. —
W My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St.
Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D.
Not Marry
No children, (no second life), no one to care for one in old age.— What is the use of working ‘in‘ without sympathy from near & dear friends—who are near & dear friends to the old, except relatives
Freedom to go where one liked — choice of Society & little of it. — Conversation of clever men at clubs — Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. — to have the expense & anxiety of children — perhaps quarelling — Loss of time. — cannot read in the Evenings — fatness & idleness — Anxiety & responsibility — less money for books &c — if many children forced to gain one’s bread. — (But then it is very bad for ones health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife wont like London; then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool —
Following this scientific analysis, he went for marry.
A ‘good’ blog post
From the Onion (who else?): YouTube contest challenges users to make a ‘good’ video.
Because the idea of making a good video is new to so many of its users, YouTube offered a list of suggestions including:
- Have some reason for making a video other than ‘I own a camera’.
- Make sure the subject of the video can be seen, and
- Shoot the video while sober.
Google flu
Google are using search trends relating to flu to predict the spread of the virus.
We’ve discovered that there is a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening, and are therefore good indicators of flu activity. Our estimates, based on up-to-date aggregated Google search data, may indicate flu activity up to two weeks ahead of traditional flu surveillance systems.
It’s kind of reminiscent of Kevin Kelly’s ideas of the future of science, based on finding patterns in the huge amounts of data generated every day (rather than the traditional experiment):
In large bodies of information with many variables, algorithmic discovery of patterns will become necessary and common. These exist in specialized niches of knowledge (such particle smashing) but more general rules and general-purpose pattern engines will enable pattern-seeking tools to become part of all data treatment.
richardholden.info by Richard Holden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Powered by WordPress and a modified DePo Skinny theme. Hosted by A Small Orange. Domains from Namecheap.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS Level 2.1.