Have you ever wondered why cheap airlines are so much cheaper than the others? They must cut corners right? Of course they do. Some of the corners are more obvious than others. But they make cuts just about everywhere. Check out this infographic on Flickr for proof…
Found via Gizmodo.
One of the big issues I have with the “Christian” input into the abortion debate is that it’s pretty heartless when it comes to understanding the mother to be. I understand the need to fight for the rights of the unborn. I think we’re called to speak for the voiceless. I think we should uphold the value of human life. But most abortion protestors (as a horrible generalisation) are big on “it’s wrong don’t do it” and not so big on what to do if you don’t do it.
It’s a complex issue and worthy of much more than a simple dismissal. Abortion protestors are often (another horrible generalisation) jumping on a moral soapbox that is irrelevant to a non-believer, while offering no solutions whatsoever to the causal issue. Some mothers just don’t feel equipped to have a child, to raise a child and to love a child. I know that not having a child would be a much better option. I know because Bristol Palin says so.
The voice of the “pro-life” movement would be much more compelling if they were “pro-life” not just “anti-death” – which is why I think this Presbyterian Church in America that has come out and offered to take in any unwanted baby and care for them – is taking a great approach to raising the quality of the discourse on the matter. And getting some positive press for doing so… Here’s an excerpt from the sermon.
"I make a promise to you now and I don’t want you to keep this a secret," the pastor pronounced, "the Peachtree Presbyterian Church will care for any newborn baby you bring to this church.
"We will be the family to find a home for that child, and there’s no limit on this. You can tell your friends, you can tell your family, you can tell the whole world …"
The Premier League kicked off over the weekend. Which is awesome. It is by far my favourite sporting competition in the world. This year’s competition has the added complexity of another team bankrolled by people who place no real value on money.
When Roman Abramovich took over Chelsea a couple of years ago they were tipped to take over the world thanks to a seemingly bottomless pit of money. That experiment hasn’t proved to be particularly successful – they’ve won more than they used to. But Manchester United, thanks to some astute signings of young players who were then groomed into superstars, are world beaters. They’ve won the Premier League three years in a row, along with a bunch of other trophies.
This year it’s Manchester City making a big splash in the transfer market thanks to money from an Arabian oil conglomerate/Abu Dhabi royalty.
Man U enjoyed a win over the weekend. But they lost the earlier Charity Shield on penalties. Patrice Evra, one of United’s backs, was injured in the match by a terrible tackle.
My Premier League prediction for the year is for more of the same. The top five will no doubt be Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.
Sadly, and this is the point of my rather long winded preamble – the Fox Sports reporters were unable to distinguish two of Manchester United’s players. Despite Nani having his name clearly emblazoned on his back.
It seems everybody is talking about Usain Bolt. He’s pretty awesome. Groundbreakingly awesome because he’s so tall. Tall people are the superior species. We all know that.
From the SMH – reporting on a study by a Duke University Research team.
“While the average person has gained about five centimetres since 1900, the height of champion runners has increased 16.2 centimetres, say Duke University researchers, Jordan Charles and Adrian Bejan, who studied the heights and weights of 100-metre world record holders.”
“Speed races might eventually need to be divided into weight categories, like boxing, and weightlifting, if smaller athletes are ever to have a chance of making it onto the podium again.”
This seems much more credible than some older research by Oxford’s Department of Zoology. Everybody knows tall men will inherit the earth.
“In 2004, a research team led by Dr Andrew Tatem, of the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology, predicted that if the record-breaking trends continued men would sprint 100 metres in 8.098 seconds at the 2156 Olympics. Women would run even faster, taking just 8.079 seconds.”
If only the original (and terrible) Mario movie had production values like this. It’s not really a director’s cut – but I imagine the director of the original would have cut the whole lot with the benefit of hindsight.
I made a graph. I used GraphJam. It sums up an extraordinary blogging phenomena.
Update: I made a second graph.
Helvetica is a beautiful font. But if you’re going to use it in a heading it looks much nicer in bold.
Izaac works for AFES at Cumberland College. They have been putting up posters. The atheists have responded with some wit. Izaac is preparing for a tit-for-tat battle of the poster. So he’s looking for some witty responses in order to start discussions.
Here are the slogans;
1. INFINITE BEING IS AN OXYMORON
2. WE’RE A NON-PROPHET ORGANISATION
3. BLASPHEMY IS A VICTIMLESS CRIME
4. IF GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE THEN WHO CREATED GOD?
5. WE JUST BELIEVE IN ONE LESS GOD THAN YOU
Zombies are going to get you. One day. Possibly. So it pays to be prepared. Luckily hard earned government research dollars are funding important studies at universities to help us cope with our impending, zombie fueled, doom.
The conclusion of the study (available in PDF form here, complete with mathematical modelling) is that:
An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the
available resources can be mustered in time.
Scary stuff. I’d suggest buying the “In Case of Zombies” shirt from Threadless for instructional purposes.
And then perhaps checking out this instructional video (starring Robyn’s little sister) for further tips for dealing with the zombie apocalypse.
ZOMBODY TO LOVE from Speedy Badger Films on Vimeo.
Have you ever wondered where all the elements of a successful game come from? Well. They’re painstakingly put together in factories. Truly. Here’s proof. From Tetris, Mario, and Sonic.
Transform your walk in freezer with one of these bad boys… an Optimus Prime ice sculpture. Everybody needs one of those… from Flickr.
Artist Chrissy Conant put together this bare skin rug – based on herself. No doubt it’s a talking point at dinner parties.
Some brilliant coffee drinker (I suspect Grendel from Cafe Grendel) has created a little calculator to determine if you’ve consumed your body weight in coffee yet. Me? No. I’ve got another six months to go at my current rate of consumption. Unless I lose weight.
So far I’ve, according to the calculator, consumed 98.6 Kg of coffee. I have 638 cups to go to achieve my ambition.
Update: It’s finally fixed – and I’ve updated the numbers within the post to reflect the latest version of the spreadsheet.
Orwell v Huxley – one of the great philosophical literary battles of our time – a tale of two writers, both with grand visions of a terrible future. This battle, this age old dispute, has been recreated in comic book form featuring arguments from a book called”Amusing Ourselves To Death” so that you can better understand it…
More graphically speaking
Graphjam is fun. More fun on PCs than Macs – for some reason I couldn’t save the ones I made yesterday to graphjam’s servers. Today, on the other hand, I’ve managed to put one there for the world to see.
This is what it looks like.
If the awesomely persuasive power of graphs isn’t enough to get you people commenting, I don’t know what is…
August 18, 2009