How Can I Avoid Getting Screwed When Selling on Craigslist?
"There are definitely concerns when it comes to selling an item on Craigslist, but you don't want to be too paranoid about what could go wrong. Although bad things have happened on the site, it's hard to name a place on the internet where someone hasn't taken advantage of another person. With a little savvy and caution, you can easily sell on Craigslist without getting yourself into trouble."
video: Stupidity Captured At 2500 Frames Per Second
"Super slow motion highlights from Danish TV show 'Dumt & Farligt'"'
This one is worth watching full-screen.
This one is worth watching full-screen.
Stuart Jeffries on the revival of the exclamation mark
"Exclamation marks used to be frowned upon. Now look what's happened! We use them all the time! Hurrah!!! But what is it about the age of email that gets people so over-excited?"
The comments are very good as well.
The comments are very good as well.
Food Poisoning's Hidden Legacy
"Most people think of foodborne illness as an unpleasant few days of fever and diarrhea, but for some there may be lifelong consequence"
The Power of Introverts – TED 2012 Talk by Susan Cain
"Susan Cain gave a great talk at TED 2012 about her experiences with others (along with her own choices) regarding her introverted nature while growing up and into adulthood. This is a talk well worth watching for those of us who are introverted and those who seek to understand others who are introverted."
What Do I Need to Do After Losing My Wallet?
A couple of times a year I scan everything in my wallet (front and back) to a PDF and keep it in my documents folder.
New report reveals how corporations undermine science with fake bloggers and bribes
"...learn about how Monsanto hired a public relations team to invent fake people who harassed a scientific journal online, how Coca Cola offers bribes to suppress evidence that soft drinks harm kids' teeth, and more. Here are some of the most egregious recent examples of corruption from this must-read report."
What everyone should know about Painting Perfect Lines
For painting walls/sections a different color (or for painting stripes).
Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice
"Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience."
The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor
Caution: filled with needless swear words (but still a great article).
What You Should Know About 2012: Answers to 13 Questions
To wrap up: anything to do with the Mayan calendar and the end of the world is not true.
And now…The Airing of Grievances
"When did it become so damn hard to wish someone a Happy Whatever-You-Celebrate?"
The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty And The American Warehouse
"The difficulty of a lumper's day often went according to chance. A lucky lumper might be assigned a container filled with boxes of Kleenex or stuffed animals, while an unlucky lumper might pull a container filled with kiddie swimming pools or 200-pound trampolines. For the heaviest lifts, Dickerson would be assigned a partner, and the two would split the pay for the trailer, moving the massive boxes onto pallets by hand."
Against Gift Giving
"I would like to make a proposal: Let’s all stop giving presents to anyone over the age of 12."
The single best thing you can do for your health [Video]
A Doctor-Professor answers the old question “What is the single best thing we can do for our health” in a completely new way.
Correlation or Causation?
" Need to prove something you already believe? Statistics are easy: All you need are two graphs and a leading question."
My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan
"As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park."
10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong
"Our brains are terrible at assessing modern risks. Here's how to think straight about dangers in your midst."
Continuous Chest Compression CPR
A new type of CPR without mouth-to-mouth breathing, that is supposedly more effective than traditional CPR.
Quote of the Day
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
- Isaac Asimov
- Isaac Asimov
Quote of the Day
"The truest memorial America could offer those who died on 9/11 is to refuse to fall into the moral orbit of the death-cults we claim to abhor. No reflecting pools, no spires at 1776 feet, none of it. We shouldn’t have become the photo-negative of jihadis seeking martyrdom, cowering in the skirts of craven politicians promising to shield us from harm and make our streets safe for commerce.
We should have rebuilt the towers exactly as they were, within a year. We should have marked the ground with a small, tasteful plaque, and held annual parades celebrating the season we brushed off the worst Osama bin Laden and his pals could dish, then turned on the demagogues screeching from the most shameful perspectives present in our national dialogue when they asked us to pay for the victims’ deaths with civil liberties."
from Prepositional Phrases
We should have rebuilt the towers exactly as they were, within a year. We should have marked the ground with a small, tasteful plaque, and held annual parades celebrating the season we brushed off the worst Osama bin Laden and his pals could dish, then turned on the demagogues screeching from the most shameful perspectives present in our national dialogue when they asked us to pay for the victims’ deaths with civil liberties."
from Prepositional Phrases
Quote of the Day
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything in your factory….
Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Properly Paint a Brick Fireplace
I've done this before on Z-Brick, it worked well. I'd use a brush for the whole thing, or a sprayer.
Parenthood Got You Down? You're Not Alone
"A baby is like the worst houseguest ever: endlessly demanding, keeping you up at all hours, needing to be fed and making a mess of the whole place.
And the little darling never leaves.
People don't talk about this enough. It's really hard, being a parent. At times, it's crushing. But you're never allowed to say this."
And the little darling never leaves.
People don't talk about this enough. It's really hard, being a parent. At times, it's crushing. But you're never allowed to say this."
Don't mock the weatherguy -- or else - CNN.com
"People ask: How can the weathermen be wrong so often? Here is the simple answer: They are trying to predict the future! It's a forecast, meaning a prediction about an event yet to happen."
Cool Tools: Zenni Optical
"Zenni offers the same fabulous advantages of decent glasses for super cheap, but they are much faster to deliver, and have a much better selection, and their website is much easier to use and order."
A Trick of the Mind
"Looking for patterns in life and then infusing them with meaning, from alien intervention to federal conspiracy."
Dear Musicians: The RIAA Is About To Totally Screw You Over (Again!)
"Once you have a bunch of big name musicians going very public about how the RIAA is screwing them over, it's going to be increasingly difficult for the RIAA to keep up the facade about how it's representing the interests of musicians while it's actively and vocally trying to totally screw them over."
Quit Trying to be So Safe!
"I really think the bottom line problem is that our society today is “too safe.” When we begin to defeat all the things that used to be dangerous, we lose quite a bit of perspective. We start to gauge safety/danger against absolute safety."
How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education
"The idea is to invert the normal rhythms of school, so that lectures are viewed on the kids’ own time and homework is done at school. It sounds weird, Thordarson admits, but this flipping makes sense when you think about it. It’s when they’re doing homework that students are really grappling with a subject and are most likely to need someone to talk to."
Isn't That A ...? Clouded By Imagination
"So our brains got used to jumping quickly to conclusions, even if they weren't the right conclusions."
What does it mean if you don't want to have sex?
"Asexuality began to emerge in the public sphere as a sexual orientation in the mid-1990s, after a massive study in the UK revealed that 1.05% of people described themselves as having "never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all."
The truth behind tax cuts: You might not be better off
"Receiving a tax cut is like standing up at a concert in order to get a better view. It’s easy enough to see why an individual might be tempted. But if everyone does it, the gains become much less clear-cut."
Logical punctuation: Should we start placing commas outside quotation marks?
I say: "I think we should".
Changing Education Paradigms
Video, about 12 minutes. An interesting talk on how education can be better.
How a differential gear works
"This great old video is a remarkably clear explanation of how a differential gear works -- the kind of thing that you could show to a young child or an adult and make the lightbulb go on for both of them. "
Physical Clutter Crowds Out Other Thoughts and Steals Focus
"A scientific study, however, explains what clutter does to your brain: it competes for attention, and crowds out the actual thoughts you want to move through."
Make Sure You're Prepared for Disaster with a 72-Hour Kit [Emergency]
"After Japan's earthquake and tsunami earlier this morning, most of the West coast and Hawaii are both under a Tsunami warning. If you don't have an adequate emergency kit in your home, here's how to put one together so you're prepared in the event of an emergency."
Deindividuation
"You are are prone to losing your individuality and becoming absorbed into a hivemind under the right conditions."
The Presurfer: In B Flat 2.0
"Very tasty little idea from Darren Solomon where 20 YouTube videos can be played in harmony and mixed by adjusting the volume sliders. " [link]
Illness-inducing video of the day
[Video from helmet-mounted cam of guy climbing a very, very tall transmission tower, click above]
I’ve never felt ill from watching a video before. If you are afraid of heights (or sane) this might be disturbing. Note: goofy little animation at the beginning is *not* the real video, give it a bit.
I’ve never felt ill from watching a video before. If you are afraid of heights (or sane) this might be disturbing. Note: goofy little animation at the beginning is *not* the real video, give it a bit.
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