An unusual but insightful answer to a question usually asked in insult.
If your car can’t go faster than 55, you’re not angry and impatient with the people you want to pass (all none of them). I tested this theory by driving on 101 with the cruise set to 65 and, even in traffic, I didn’t have to do anything. Other than being boring (because our car *can* go faster), it was very relaxing.
A tone composed of multiple sine waves at the right frequencies and alignments which, depending on the disposition of the base pitch, creates the auditory illusion of a tone whose pitch is constantly ascending or descending.
“It has been described as a ‘sonic barber’s pole’.”
Click the link, have a listen. Reminds me of Deep Note (mp3), but with no resolution.
(via Hoefler+Frere-Jones)
And how sometimes it can make your performance *worse*.
Knowing more about how it works, it’s still a net win.
(via boredzo)
Movies about prison life invariably show the use of the cigarette as currency, their value presumably being derived from their cost, portability, and physical addiction. Betting, buying, and bribing, it’s all done with cigarettes.
But something more interesting is going on in real prisons, the use of honey buns. At $1.08 each, packed with flavour not found in the mess halls, and 680 calories, 51 grams of sugar and 30 grams of fat, they sell better than anything else at the commissary.
According to the article, they’ve been used “as currency for trades, as bribes for favors, as relievers for stress and substitutes for addiction. They’ve become birthday cakes, hooch wines, last meals even ingredients in a massive tax fraud.”
Neat!
(via One Foot Tsunami)
| — | Washington Monthly, via hagus |
Reading This Time Is Different has taught me a lot about economic history, but it’s taken a while because it’s written very much like a dry academic paper than most nonfiction.
This graph struck me as very telling of our age—while the 10-year average inflation rate is always positive, only in the last generation has it stopped dipping below 0 every so often, and all of the most recent local maxima are higher than any age before.
From the book (page 179):
Perhaps it may seem excessive to devote so much attention here to currency debasement when financial crises have long since moved on to grander and more extravagant schemes. Yet the experience of debasement illustrates many important points. Of course, it shows that inflation and default are nothing new; only the tools have changed. More important, the shift from metallic to paper currency provides an important example of the fact that technological innovation does not necessarily create entirely new kinds of financial crises but can exacerbate their effects, much as technology has constantly made warfare more deadly over the course of history.
That’s one hell of an analogy. The book goes on to explain that inflation is a tool used by sovereigns to reduce the value of debt owed, but the occurrence of sovereign default hasn’t changed commensurately over the course of the graph.
And in case you don’t follow Three Panel Soul:
Last night I made two catnip toys out of an old pair of jeans, hoping the denim would prolong their life more than other fabrics. This morning the catnip had the desired effect on one of our cats, and we checked the internet to see if she could overdose.
It’s pretty common knowledge that catnip is a “recreational substance” for cats—dilated eyes, euphoria, rubbing, rolling, drooling, and sleepiness are all common. Catnip actually refers to all species in the Nepeta genus, but especially N. cataria.
All of the species in Nepeta share some less-commonly-known properties as well:
And according to one source:
According to The Herb Garden, “The root when chewed is said to make the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome”. In fact, there is a story about an executioner who would have to chew on the root of catnip so he could bring himself to do kill.
And in case you’re still wondering, our cat will probably not overdose—they’re pretty good at self-regulating their drug intake, unlike a lot of humans.
Today I learned about the existence and workings of the weight-distributing hitch. Take a moment to note that both of the Toronados pictured are missing their rear wheels.
This photo lives on the desk of Cecil Eyers (of Eyers Hitch Center, highly recommended), who saw them in person. They were demonstration vehicles for EAZ-LIFT and they drove all around the country as pictured. Under emergency braking the rear quarter panel of one car creased, but after replacing the rear wheels and removing the trailer, the crease smoothed itself out all on its own. This is a strong hitch.
There are two main variables to be aware of in towing: tongue weight and gross weight. Gross weight is what you would expect: the total weight of the trailer with load. Tongue weight is the weight borne vertically by the hitch itself. Most trailers do a pretty good job of keeping the weight mostly centered over their axles (actually slightly forward, for stability when towing. physics!), but with multi-ton trailers it’s harder to strike a balance to within a few hundred pounds at the tongue. The tongue is usually strong enough to support the load, but the added weight on the rear axle of the tow vehicle causes problems on the road.
The weight-distributing hitch solves the problem of an unbalanced (or just plain heavy) trailer exerting too much load on the tow vehicle’s rear axle. Adding rigidity to the vertical axis of the hitch via spring bars links the frames of the tow vehicle and trailer, causing them to act more as one articulated frame.
(want more? here’s more information about towing)
By changing the geometry of the turbine inlet, a turbo’s effective range can be extended to the lower and upper ends of the engine’s range, while eliminating the need for a wastegate.
Taking the adjustment capability a step further, the geometry can also be changed to purposefully increase exhaust backpressure to promote exhaust gas recirculation, reduce emissions, provide additional engine braking, and increase exhaust temperature for the purpose of regenerating a diesel particulate filter. While increased exhaust backpressure does not increase the efficiency or power of the engine, it can still be used beneficially during short periods (like when shifting).
The diesel particulate filter is also interesting: it captures microparticles and soot and regenerates (or cleans) itself via the application of high heat for a short period to burn away the particles. It can be functionally compared to the catalytic converter of a petrol-powered car (they can share the same structural materials) but instead of requiring oxygen to recharge the catalyst, it uses heat to clear the filter.
Verizon on today’s FCC vote:
There is no doubt that the policies put in place by the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration to jumpstart innovation and the spread of broadband worked. As a result, America’s broadband and Internet marketplace is intensely competitive and an engine of economic growth, job creation and multibillion-dollar investment. Today’s decision, however, unnecessarily departs from these successful policies.
I’m sure on Verizon’s planet there’s no lack of healthy competition, but back at nulamihaus we have no competitive alternative to Comcast. My brother-in-law’s complex is served exclusively by AT&T. And then there’s the Woz:
I have owned four homes in my life. None of these had cable TV, even though one was a new development where the law required cable. None of these had DSL, including my current home, which is only .8 miles up a hill from the populous town I live in. I pay for a T1 line, which costs many times what DSL runs for about 1/10 the bandwidth. That’s as close as I can come to broadband where I live. The local phone providers don’t have any obligation to serve all of their phone customers with DSL. They also have no requirement to service everyone living in the geographic area for which they have a monopoly. This is what has happened without regulatory control, despite every politician and president and CEO and PR person since the beginning of the Internet boon saying how important it was to ensure that everyone be provided broadband access.
Wired ISPs are local monopolies. An alternative that comes at twice the cost and half the speed is not “intensely competitive”. Consider a car analogy: residents of California can only buy Chevrolet vehicles—if you want Ford you’ll have to move to Montana. Don’t like it? You can buy a bicycle for twice the price. People accept their choice of one decent broadband option because they liken it to their one choice of power or sewer company, and the market accepts the existence of multiple ISPs as proof of a competitive marketplace.
If the marketplace were as fierce as Verizon describes I’d be willing to yield to market forces—and today’s FCC ruling gives more leeway to wireless providers, who are heavily competitive—but wired ISPs today aren’t competing, they’re sharing the spoils of what amounts to industrial gerrymandering.
In any publicly-accessible forum, spam and trolling are a huge issue, consuming most administrator-hours and requiring a larger staff than would otherwise be required to run a large site. In comparison, sites that charge for admission, and sites that cannot be joined without an invitation have close to no administration overhead beyond maintaining the code, servers, and resetting forgotten passwords.
Some sites have implemented reputation—so users can take responses with the appropriate amount of skepticism. I suggest another, less transparent reputation value.
Pair the “report” function of a site with another reputation, one that is a ratio of posts reported to problem users identified. For users that have a ratio of 1 (100% of posts reported were by problem users that have been banned/warned/whatever your protocol) and a minimum number of reports, allow their reports to take effect without approval, with random spot-checking as the administrators have bandwidth. This would be implemented as a review queue (rather than the report queue), and could be browsed with less urgency than live issues, and would maintain high quality results.
This sort of merit-based promotion of volunteer moderators could be automated and invisible to non-administrators, the blessed moderators not knowing their own abilities, just that the site is a better place for their effort.
