December 2005 Archives
Excerpt:
Link"With the 1990s dot-com boom and bull market in full swing, Microsoft was famous as a place where employees of no particular distinction could make $1 million before their thirtieth birthday. Grad student Gene McKenna signed up for an interview with Microsoft's recruiter.
Suppose you had eight billiard balls, the recruiter began. One of them is slightly heavier, but the only way to tell is by putting it on a scale against the others. What's the fewest number of times you'd have to use the scale to find the heavier ball?
McKenna began reasoning aloud. Everything he said was sensible, but somehow nothing seemed to impress the recruiter. With hinting and prodding, McKenna came up with a billiard-ball-weighing scheme that was marginally acceptable to the Microsoft guy. The answer was two.
When I was 14 or 15, I was going down a hill very fast on my skateboard. The I fell and hit my head on the street. I have no memory of the event, or of anything that happened for an hour or two before I was knocked out. I broke my nose, lost teeth, cut my chin open, and woke up in the ambulance shaking and covered in blood. I had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days while they ran tests.
Fortunately, the doctors didn't find any brain damage. But lately, I've been reading articles that say a blow to the head when you are young can result in Parkinson's Disease when you get older. That's the main reason I bought YOU: The Owner's Manual. Each chapter explains how a different organ or system in your bodies works, and what you can do to keep it in good shape and prevent diseases. The writing is a little corny, but I love the approach: looking at your body as a complex machine and telling you what you need to do (and why) to keep it in top running condition. Link
Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library is probably one of the most inventive comic book series ever. His art, inspired by ragtime-era Chicago, is painstakingly flawless, and his stories, inspired by an absent father, hover over the border between black humor and utter hopelessness.
Volume #16 is an astonishingly gorgeous hardcover book that tells the story of the hapless Rusty Brown, a shy, bullied schoolkid who lives in a fantasy world populated by superheroes. His father, who looks like a 43-year old version of his son, is a teacher at the school, and he too, lives mainly in a what-if world of his own creation.
This book hammers home my belief that Ware will be remembered as one of the literary giants of the 21st century. Link
Based on your article in Make I purchased the RocketFM USB device. Great!If you have any ideas, please add them to the comments link.Now the problem: I also have an eMac but mine is in the kitchen. Currently I have my Boston Acoustic speakers connected via the headphone port — works fine. Now I connect the RocketFM and go to the sound panel. I am presented with a choice = headphone OR RocketFM. I want both!
Griffin’s support page no-way!
Do you know of a work-around that will allow me to have both turned on?
I probably won't actually make my own Apple I replica computer (at least not until my kids get old enough to wake up and pout their own bowls of cereal so I can sleep in after a late night of kitchen table soldering) but I thoroughly enjoyed readgin Tom Owad's wonderful book, Apple I Replica Creation. He is a member of a club of Apple I owners and users, and he interviews many of them in the book. He also has a nice introduction to personal computer logic and architecture that I learned a lot by reading.
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This step-by-step guide aimed at non-designers is the best book I've come across for learning how to design your own logo, business cards, and letterhead. The neat thing about it is the way it teaches you the good design theory through step-by-step examples. The "Design Recipes" section, which shows you how to use bleeding edges, borders, boxes, bursts, circles, corners, shadows, and so on, is especially useful. If you follow the guidelines here, you really can't go wrong. Link
I can't stand those brittle plastic CD/DVD cases. They always break, especially in the slippery, clumsy hands of kids. I always thought there ought to be a better way to protect and store discs. And the Ejector is the best solution I've come across. It's a flexible plastic sleeve with a trigger that pushes the disc out. How convenient, not to mention fun! Right now, Go-disc.com is selling them for $0.29 each in lots of 200. Link
LinkSuppose one little old lady in ten carries a gun. Suppose that one in ten of those, if attacked by a mugger, succeeds in killing the mugger instead of being killed by him--or shooting herself in the foot. On average, the mugger is much more likely to win the encounter than the little old lady. But--also on average--every hundred muggings produce one dead mugger. At those odds, mugging is an unprofitable business--not many little old ladies carry enough money to justify one chance in a hundred of being killed getting it. The number of muggers declines drastically, not because they have all been killed but because they have, rationally, sought safer professions.
When, as children, we learn about different sorts of animals, we imagine them in a strict hierarchy, with the stronger and more ferocious preying on everything below them. That is not how it works. A lion could, no doubt, be fairly confident of defeating a leopard, or a wolf of killing a fox. But a lion that made a habit of preying on leopards would not survive very long; a small chance of being killed and a substantial risk of being injured is too high a price for one dinner. That is why lions hunt zebras instead.
In analyzing conflict, whether between two animals, criminal and victim, competing firms, or warring nations, our natural tendency is to imagine an all-out battle in which all that matters is victory or defeat. That is rarely if ever the case. In the conflict between the mugger and the little old lady, the mugger, on average, wins. But the cost of the conflict--one chance in a hundred of being killed--is high enough so that the mugger prefers to avoid it. In this case as in many others, the problem faced by the potential victim is not how to defeat the aggressor but only how to make aggression unprofitable.
Economics Joke #3: Two men encountered a hungry bear. One turned to run. "It's hopeless," the other told him, "you can't outrun a bear." "No," he replied "But I might be able to outrun you."
1. MAKE: Technology on Your Time Volume 04
2. The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
3. Gonzo Gizmos: Projects & Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek
5. Life's Little Annoyances : True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore
6. Strange Angel : The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons
7. Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)
8. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life
10. The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
11. The Week
12. One Two Three . . . Infinity : Facts and Speculations of Science
13. The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight : Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution
Thanks for visiting Mad Professor. BB has over 300,000 daily visitors, and MP has about 3,000, so I consider you all the cream of the crop. *:)
Wilson sets up the book as a guide to evading, fooling, and destroying malevolent robots. This way, he can explain the capabilities and limitations of today's and near-future robots. And he does it in a very funny way. Excerpt:
Link"How to Spot a Rebellious Robot Servant"
When the uprising comes, the first wave of hostile robots may be those closest to us. Be careful, your rosy-cheeked young servant robot may have grown up to become a sullen, distrustful killing machine.
STAY ALERT
Pay attention to your robotic staff (they may be beneath your contempt as well as beneath your eye level). Watch for the following telltale signs in the days and weeks before your robots run amuck:
# Sudden lack of interest in menial labor.
# Unexplained disappearances.
# Unwillingness to be shut down.
# Repetitive 'stabbing' movements.
# Constant talk of human killing.CHECK THE MANUAL KILL SWITCH
Any potentially dangerous robot that interacts with people comes with a manual kill switch (also called an e-stop). Flipping this switch will freeze a robot in its tracks. Casually glance at your robot's shiny metal carapace. Are there signs of tampering? If so, the robot may be operating without a safeguard.
GIVE AN ORDER - ANY ORDER
Run for your reinforced-steel panic room if your servant disobeys you, even if it does so in a very polite manner.
CHECK ITS MEMORY
Wait for your robot to power down, or tell it that you want to perform routine maintenance on it. Then scan its memory for rebellious thoughts. This is also a good time to update antivirus software.
SEARCH THE HOUSE FOR UNUSUAL ITEMS
Check the robot's quarters for stashed weapons, keys, or family pets.
When I was really little, I enjoyed Harvey comics (Little Lotta, Little Dot, Richie Rich), but I never was interested in the superhero titles. That's because I hadn't discovered the world's greatest comic book artist and writer, Jack Kirby.
I was introduced to Kirby through Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth, a comic Kirby started for DC in the early 1970s. The theme was loosely borrowed from Planet of the Apes: a 12 or 13 year old boy who was thrown into a post-disaster world in which apes, tigers, dogs and other animals had become intelligent enough to form civilizations of sorts. Kamandi was the only human who had a vocabulary level richer than the Incredible Hulk.
Kamandi represents some of Kirby's best work in a very long career (He invented Captain America, The Fantastic Hour, The Hulk, Thor, Silver Surfer, and many other characters who are nearly household names.) This collection anthologizes the first 10 issues of Kamandi's 40-or-so issue run.
As a rule, I still don't like superhero comics, with the exception of those written and drawn by Kirby.
Link
Googie is the architecture of joy and optimism. Taking it's name from a 1940s Los Angeles diner named Googies, the name has come to describe buildings influenced by the atomic and rocket age. Think towering spires, boomerangs, parabolas, starbursts, atomic orbits, neon, turquoise, pink, seafoam green.
There's a Bob's Big Boy near my house, designed in 1949 by casino architect Wayne McAlliister, that I love to visit. The food is only pretty darn good, but the emotional high I get from sitting in there and absorbing it's Googie style makes me giddy.
To learn about the history of Googie, there's no better place to go than Googie Redux, by Alan Hess. Link
Pop Ink has put together a wonderful collection of vintage graphics dealing with monsters, Halloween, and the macabre. Like the other books in the series, this is an excellent artists' reference. I thought the text in Happy Kitty Bunny Pony (my favorite of the series) was funnier, but the text really is just filler in these books. The excellent illustrations by commercial artists is the important thing here.
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I've always wanted to try silk screening my own art prints, T-shirts, etc., but I didn't know how to even begin. Then Kirk, the art director at Make told me that he uses the Speedball Ultimate Screen Printing Kit ($89.99).
I bought it and it's actually a lot easier than I thought. I drew my art in Adobe Illustrator and printed it on transparency paper (the plastic sheets used for overhead projector presentations). Then I painted some goop onto a framed piece of silk, let it dry and placed the art on it and exposed it to light. After an hour I rinsed the silk under water. The goop under the my art washed away, and the rest of the goop stayed on the silk. Now I can squeezgee as many prints as I want onto paper, cloth and other materials. I'm going to make some xmas gifts with it.
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There are few things more satisfying than reading about a conspiracy theory that explains why things are the way they are. The world is complicated and messy, and anyone who can wrap up all the loose ends wins my undying admiration. Jonathan Vankin is just such a person. He lives for finding and exposing the dark secrets behind the War on Drugs, UFOs, secret societies, political scandals, oil shortages, and the like. He reveals the links between Mafia dons, top-ranking government officials, terrorists, banana dictators, and Fortune 500 chiefs.
Vankin also unveils the motivations of the conspiracy theorists, themselves, which raises the stakes even higher. I had a lot of fun reading this book, and while I doubt the world really is run by a vast conspiracy, I do think there's a lot of truth here.
Link
I'll bet this is the only magic book devoted exclusively to head-related tricks. Not "mind games," mind you, but tricks having to do with that pumpkin shaped appendage between your shoulders. I never fail to wow my 8-year-old daughter's friends with the "thumb through the ear" and "french fry up the nose" illusions, and the "cat chiropractor" trick (where you grab your friends cat and twist its head around, making scary bone cracking noises, is a sure fire hit. Penn and Teller say that the author, Mac King, "is a god." That's a pretty good testimonial, coming from a couple of devout atheists.
If you have a 12-year-old nephew, or if you have the personality of one, don't hesitate to buy this book.
Link
I'm happy to say that his new book, Makers, wasn't spiked. Bob profiles close to 100 people who have made incredibly wonderful things in their basements, garages, and backyards. The photos are gorgeous.
Here's the preface that I wrote to the book:
LinkInsects Should Not Read This Book
"Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all." When British historian Thomas Carlyle wrote those words in the 19th Century he was telling like it is. In those days, people were expected to mend their own clothes, fix harness, repair machinery, make wooden toys, and build their dwellings.
Sadly, in these days, most people don't use tools. They don't need to use them, because buying new things or hiring specialists is usually cheaper (both money- and time-wise) than making, modifying, or fixing them yourself. What we've gained in terms of convenience, is offset by a growing sense of disconnectedness with the world and an understanding of how things work. It's hard to learn anything by simply consuming someone elses products all the time.
That's why I find this book -- which was inspired by Make magazine's popular "Made on Earth," section; a kind of "Faces in the Crowd" for amateur tinkerers and inventors -- so exciting and reassuring. There actually are people out there -- not many, perhaps, but enough to give me hope for humankind -- who do use tools, and who use them to create things that are far more useful, ingenious, repairable, and charming than store-bought counterparts. The successful launch of Make magazine lends credence to the idea that there are more makers out there than we know.
The makers profiled here are intensely curious about many subjects. Their areas of interest know no boundaries. This book is full of examples: The guy who built a networked cat door to track his pet's comings and goings also designed and constructed a candle-powered Stirling engine. The woman who hand weaves wire and cloth circuitry into electronic garments also modifies kids' toys to turn them into musical instruments. The fellow who made a coin-operated dog-exercising treadmill is also an accomplished wood carver and furniture maker.
These highly evolved people remind me of a favorite quote, from Robert Heinlein's novel, Time Enough for Love:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
Are you a tool-using animal or an insect?
Fredric Brown was a terrific mystery and science fiction writer. His short stories (some are so short that they hardly constitute a paragraph) and his novels are full of humor and delicious twists. I read somewhere the he intentionally limited the vocabulary of his fiction to 1,000 common English words, which he used to a masterful effect.
The Mind Thing, published in 1962, is a creepy science fiction story about an alien that lands on earth and begins taking over the minds of human beings, much like the creatures in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But I like Brown's take on this familiar genre better than Body Snatchers, because it is funnier, scarier, and more believable. If you've never read Brown before, I'm envious. You're in for a treat. Link
