Jumat, 22 April 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Models and the scientific method

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 10:39 PM PDT

Saul Griffith's Make column, Model It, or Make It Modelable, is a really smart look at the way that models fit into the scientific method, and how computer models allow for rigorous peer-review of theories about how the world and the machines we build might work:
But here's the beautiful thing about modeling. Computational models are digital, and that makes them inherently shareable, independently verifiable, and easy to collaborate on and improve.

Whereas my inclination was to immediately start to build something physical, Geoff's approach -- the approach of a new generation of engineers and scientists -- was to begin with a model. Start with bits. Make them perfect, beautiful, defendable, sharable bits, then render them physical once you've reached an optimum. Sure, someone might figure out a better optimum one day, but because they can start with working, executable code, they'll get to it faster.

There's an even more important reason to encourage this culture of shared models. The more people who have experience simulating the world with success, and making things from those models, the more people will trust in the models of our physical world that will guide how we shape our future.

Model It, or Make It Modelable

(Image: Printable Clock, Parametric Proof of Concept by syvwlch, Syvwich/Thingiverse

Zombie comic tutorial for using the college library

Posted: 22 Apr 2011 02:57 AM PDT


Lisov sez, "I love this! The McPherson College Library has made a tutorial comic using zombies! It certainly got my attention. They should do the same for drivers ed with maybe some live roleplaying. I'd be a brilliant driver if I learned while being chased by zombies. In short - I think this really works! Miller Library FTW!"

Our Zombie Guide is FINISHED!

Library of the Living Dead (PDF)

(Thanks, Lisov, via Submitterator!)

XKCD's Tetris Heaven for real

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 10:31 PM PDT

The XKCD strip Heaven depicted a Tetris version that would drop irregularly shaped pieces that were perfectly structured to fill all the voids in the tetrisbed. Gud magazine responded by implementing this in Flash: a Tetris version that drops these eminently satisfying tetroids from time to time. They feel goooooood.

Heaven (via Super Punch)

Texas governor proclaims three days of "Prayer for Rain"

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:39 PM PDT

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) today issued a proclamation calling upon Texans to pray for rain from Friday to Sunday, April 24, in order to combat the state's "exceptional drought."
WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought, with some parts of the state receiving no significant rainfall for almost three months, matching rainfall deficit records dating back to the 1930s ... NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.


All Your Base are Belong to Us: how 50 years of videogames conquered pop culture

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 03:59 PM PDT

In All Your Base Are Belong to Us, Harold Goldberg's comprehensive, new history of videogames, the author details the humble origins of what would become a multibillion dollar company, Blizzard Studios. Just after graduating college, Allen Adham, Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce got together to make games their way. They eventually hired Chris Metzen, who brought some tight, savvy storytelling to the company. But their early success was complicated by the ups and downs of making what would become the uber popular MMO, World of Warcraft. Here's an excerpt.
all-your-base.jpg Shortly after Blizzard was sold once again -- this time to the French- based Vivendi/Universal -- EverQuest began demanding hours upon hours from the lives of hard-core gamers everywhere. The staff at Blizzard in Irvine was not immune to its many enticements, and Adham, now back in the fold, was completely fascinated. So was one of his newer hires, Rob Pardo. Pardo originally had dreams of becoming a movie director, but he ended up managing a local Software Etc. store. After becoming a game tester, he worked his way up to producer at Interplay and was slowly moving into game design. Pardo looked at the smart but soft-spoken Adham as a game design mentor. They began to have intense, constructive discussions; but the two really began to bond when playing EverQuest together. Pardo was so fascinated by EverQuest that he became the Guild Master of Legacy of Steel, one of the gangs of guys who became über-experts at the vagaries of the game.

Meanwhile, Blizzard was bogged down in creating a role playing game called Nomad, which had a post-apocalyptic theme and dinosaurlike monsters that were outfitted with tanklike weapons. The wow element would be that you controlled not just one person, but a complete squad of characters. Yet few were satisfied with the direction of Nomad, because none of the Nomad team was able to explain satisfactorily to the top dogs why people would want to play the game and what was special about it. It also had a new game engine, the software that made the game work, which wasn't quite perfected.

In mid-1999 Adham began to consider making an MMO at Blizzard. With the team, he tossed around the idea of using one of their established series as a springboard into the worlds of massively multiplayer games instead of creating a new universe from scratch. Adham and Pardo began retreating to the food court of the Fashion Island Mall in Irvine to have intense discussions.

"Should we do StarCraft, Warcraft, or Diablo?" wondered Adham. The latter, a game based on epic throw-downs between the forces of heaven and hell, was being made at a separate office entirely, in northern California. Whatever the game would be, it would be centered in the Irvine headquarters, where it could be easily overseen. Diablo, while alluring and popular, didn't seem to have the great depth of a StarCraft or Warcraft. And as they looked at EverQuest, which they admired to the point of drooling, they saw that that world could be improved upon.

"There are a lot of questions to answer," said Pardo. "What would the classes be comprised of? What about the healers; how powerful should they be? When a player dies, what is the penalty; how much of his experience does he lose? Or shouldn't he lose any?"

The challenges Blizzard needed to deal with seemed endless. In addition, Metzen thought the non-playable fantasy characters could be fashioned to have short but appealing tales to tell when a player engaged them. For story, he gravitated toward the mythology of Warcraft, which was not completely unlike that of his favorite comic books, like Simonson's Thor.

In meetings, Metzen noted that while EverQuest was really cool, its pantheon of gods wasn't in the foreground. He felt that Blizzard could better weave the fabric of story in this world of sword and sorcery. Tales would be the lure that would lead the gamer through this endless world full of social engagement. It was story that would constantly intrigue the gamer during the otherwise often banal game process of leveling up to make your avatar stronger.

Pearce, gruff on the outside but a sweet guy on the inside, didn't object to a rich story by any means. But he wondered aloud if building such a massive world was the right path on which to tread. "I know everyone here likes EverQuest. But the gaming experience I'm accustomed to and have enjoyed is playing something that has a beginning and an end. I like to play something and have a goal to finish the game. An MMO doesn't have an end. Why do I want to play this game in perpetuity?"

But the passion for EverQuest won out quickly, and even Pearce came on board after getting sucked into playing SOE's game. Within a month, Morhaime was on the first of a muckle of trips to Havas Interactive, the videogames arm of Vivendi, at the Universal lot. During lunch, he tried to convince members of the board to sign on to an expensive MMO based on the Warcraft franchise. While Vivendi had questions about the high budget, Morhaime came armed with projections showing that a million players would subscribe in the United States within the first year. During the presentation, he also made a good case for four million players around the world, including Europe, South Korea, and China. The Frenchmen were supportive, but dubious of those numbers. There were logical questions: Why would a company that was so successful with its strategy games move into a completely new genre? Morhaime said that MMOs were the way of the future, and the future was now. It didn't hurt Morhaime's cause that EverQuest had been a runaway success. And other megacorporations wanted to get on the bandwagon. Warner Bros. was spending a small fortune to publish The Matrix Online, an MMO version of the Wachowski brothers' cryptic films. So was Sony with its LucasArts collaboration for Star Wars Galaxies. No one wanted to get left behind, including Vivendi.

Blizzard's goal with World of Warcraft had been the grail of game makers since the beginning of the videogame revolution. They wanted to make a game that was a challenge to master but also easy to play. Pulling that off was like the ultimate leveling up for a videogame executive. The task they faced, if they looked at it in the long run, was terrifying.

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

Excerpted from All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture Copyright @ 2011 by Harold Goldberg. Reprinted by Permission of Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.



Dan Clowes' Mister Wonderful graphic novel

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 03:43 PM PDT

mister-wonderful.jpg

Daniel Clowes' comic books are often about misfits. Ghost World was about a couple of teenage girl outcasts. Pussey was about an arrogant, self-deceiving cartoonist. The more recent Wilson (reviewed here) was about a lonely, unemployed, self-loathing, passive-aggressive sad-sack who goes through life making himself and the people around him miserable.

There's not a lot of action in a Clowes comic. His characters spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the poor decisions they've made that have caused them to have such miserable lives. You'd think these comics would be depressing to read. And truth be told, you'd be right. But it would be a mistake to pass them up, because they're also funny, poignant, and powerfully evocative.

Mister Wonderful, Clowes' latest graphic novel doesn't veer from familiar territory. It's about an out-of-work, out-of-money, divorced middle aged man named Marshall. The story starts in a café. Marshall sits at a table by himself, waiting for a blind date to meet him. He reflects on his failed romantic and social life, becoming increasingly agitated that his date isn't showing up. He starts drinking beer. By the time she shows up (her name is Natalie; she was late because she went to the wrong cafe; he thinks she's beautiful) Marshall is plastered. He has to urinate but is afraid to leave her because he "Musn't give her the chance to escape."

During the date, Marshall mentally torments himself about what to say, what he should and shouldn't disclose to Natalie, and how much he should stick to the truth. He immediately regrets almost everything he blurts out. His anxiety boils over when a homeless man enters the restaurant and walks up to their table and asks for a dollar. Mister Wonderful explodes at the homeless man, which alarms his date.

Soon after this incident, Clowes interrupts the main story with a two-page scene of the conversation taking place between the married couple who set Marshall and Natalie up on the date. We learn that they think that Marshall and Natalie are psychologically damaged, loose cannons.

The date ends with Marshall realizing the date was a flop, and he begins walking home filled with regret. But the story takes an unexpected turn, and the rest of the evening feels like a slightly less surreal version of the movie After Hours.

As a storyteller and artist Clowes is at his masterful best here. He makes judicious and creative use of comic book devices: three dimensional words to symbolize emotional distress; a little floating man to represent Marshall's superego; text in word balloons running off the side of a panel or obscured by inner-thought boxes; vignettes drawn in cartoony style to depict imagined consequences; flashbacks tinted a rusty orange. It's a pleasure to closely study Clowes technical chops. He's been at this game for a long time, and keeps getting better at what he does. There may be a few living graphic novelists as talented as Clowes, but in my opinion no one tops him.

Mister Wonderful



Finum Goldton Filters

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 02:36 PM PDT

Finum Goldton1.jpegI make at least five cups of tea daily. Some at home and some at work. Over the years I've learned to appreciate nice loose-leaf teas that brew best in a basket that gives them room to "breath." While I'd love to use a beautiful teapot, it's not always practical. The usual solution is these tiny mesh tea balls, but they don't allow the leaves to really expand. There are also tea tumblers with baskets, but I found most of their baskets tiny and hard to clean. Luckily, I stumbled upon these Finum Goldton Filters. They are perfect for making a single cup of wonderfully brewed tea in whatever mug or cup is around. They have ample room and the tea infuses really well through the fine gold chamber. It's really easy to just spoon the tea in, no wrangling with stray leaves like with a tea ball.

Unlike traditional mesh, the gold walls are very easy to clean and I hardly ever have to pick stray leaves out. They also come with a cap that can allow a stronger brew as it keeps the temperature more constant. I recommend this simple Adobe Air app Tea-Timer to prevent over-steeping. After brewing the cap doubles as a stand for the filter, which keeps it from dripping all over the place. Another advantage of brewing a single cup at once is that I can serve guests any type of tea they want instead of sharing one single pot of tea. I originally got these for work, but I bought some for home and use mainly these instead of a tea pot.

--Melissa McEwen

Finum Goldton Filters
$15

Don't forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool!

Government wants answers from Apple on location tracking

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 02:13 PM PDT

Sen. Al Franken, (D-Minn) wrote a two-page open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, asking nine questions about the news that iPhones and iPads running iOS 4 record and store users locations in unencrypted files.

Amazon server outage disables portions of Reddit, NYT, ProPublica sites

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:59 PM PDT

A problem with Amazon's cloud services today caused outages affecting portions of sites including Reddit, the New York Times, ProPublica, and others.

Reactors, residents and risk: analysis of populations near nuke plants around the world

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 02:26 PM PDT

"An analysis carried out by Nature and Columbia University, New York, shows that two-thirds of the world's 211 nuclear power plants have more people living within a 30-kilometre radius than the 172,000 people living within 30 kilometres of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, who have been forced or advised to leave. Some 21 plants have populations larger than 1 million within that radius, and six have populations larger than 3 million." (nature.com, map requires Google Maps plugin)

Susannah Breslin: How your journalism sausage is made

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:49 PM PDT

Former Boing Boing guestblogger Susannah Breslin is doing a series over at Forbes.com titled "How Your Journalism Sausage Gets Made," on how she does what she does as a journalist.
I didn't go to journalism school, my comma usage is sometimes flawed, and I don't believe I've ever been a member of a journalism-related organization. I have been a journalist for over a decade, and, as I go about creating a piece of original reporting over the next few days, I'll be recording that process here.

Protestors interrupt Obama fundraiser to sing for Bradley Manning

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:22 PM PDT

Manning-Protesters-660x495.jpg

Supporters of WikiLeaks source suspect Bradley Manning crashed an elite private fundraiser for President Obama Thursday morning in San Francisco, and interrupted his remarks with a song. From Wired:

As Obama was speaking at the $5,000-a-plate breakfast fundraiser, an unidentified woman at one of the tables (above) reportedly began humming and singing a modified version of the song "Where's Our Change?," before she removed her blazer and shirt to reveal a t-shirt with a picture of the young Army intelligence officer who is suspected of leaking a massive cache of classified and sensitive documents to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks. As the rest of the group at the woman's table joined in with her song, they held up signs that read "Free Bradley Manning," according to MSNBC.

"Each of us brought you $5,000 -- we'll vote for you in 2012, yes that's true. Look at the Republicans, what else can we do," the group reportedly sang (see video below). As White House aides escorted the woman from the room, she said, "Free Bradley Manning. I'm leaving. I hope I don't get tortured in jail."

An Oakland, California activist named Naomi Pitcairn told The San Francisco Chronicle that she paid $76,000 to get the protesters tickets to the event, which was held at the swanky St. Regis hotel downtown.

A viral marketing/activism group calling itself the Fresh Juice Party organized the action, and promises to pay protesters various amounts of money if they video themselves singing the song in public forums and handing out "Fresh Juice Party Bucks."

More at Wired.com, here's an item at the SF Chronicle, and see related item at MSNBC.com.

Video below.

Subscription plan rumored for Chrome notebooks

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:25 PM PDT

chrome_gizmodo.jpg Google's Chrome netbooks are in the wild, but they're not yet widely available. That might change soon, according to a report at Neowin. Instead of simply being sold at retail, however, it's rumored that Google will also offer them as part of an internet subscription service, priced at $10-$20 a month. (Photo: Gizmodo)

Glasses in Japan

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:14 PM PDT

Brian Ashcraft takes a look at the fetish for glasses in Japanese popular culture. [Kotaku]

SPECIAL FEATURE: The Pale King

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 06:55 PM PDT

For the sake of convenience, let's call this a book review of David Foster Wallace's posthumous unfinished novel, The Pale King. Wallace didn't die a nice, easy-to-get death like cancer or plowed over by someone asleep at the wheel of a defunct school bus. He hanged himself after a protracted battle with depression. People go to books to learn things, and the thing they go to novels to learn is how to be in the world. So the natural question is what should or can we learn from a guy that ended up hanging himself? This is the existential question suicide lends to the work of a person's life. It's the first question, and no others can come before it.

Read the rest



FBI: pipe bomb in Colorado was "domestic terrorism"

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:09 PM PDT

A pipe bomb discovered in a Colorado shopping mall may have been the work of a "domestic terrorist," and may have been connected to the 12th anniversary of the shooting rampage at nearby Columbine High School, according to FBI investigators. Firefighters found the homemade bomb and two propane tanks near a food court in the shopping mall, after a small fire broke out Wednesday. CNN, Littleton Colorado Channel 9.

Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) dies

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 12:59 PM PDT

Boing Boing reader Angus Dunican says,
elisabeth-sladen.jpg Noticing a fair amount of Doctor Who love on Boing Boing in recent times, I thought I'd take a moment to carry the sad news that Elisabeth Sladen - the actress who portrayed the indomitable Sarah Jane Smith - has passed away at the age of 63 due to complications arising from her cancer treatment. She was one of the most influential figures in my childhood as well as being the first companion in the show to espouse feminist view points and be given not one but two spin off series. Goodbye, Sarah-Jane.
(BBC News via BB Submitterator)

Frank Frazetta was a paperback book cover model

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:01 PM PDT

DOG vs. BUBBLES

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 01:28 PM PDT

Vintage American diner in a Welsh shed

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 11:44 AM PDT


Unclewilco sez, "Sheddie Paul Siudowski has created a shed in his garden in Neath, South Wales, UK - where the interior is themed on a 1950's American Diner. Paul is one of the many unique entrants to the Shed of the Year 2011 competition which closes 16th May 2011 and is open to the best sheds in the UK. Previous winners of Shed of the year - have been a shed turned into a Roman Temple, a Hexagional Pub shed, A cabin on stilts and last year a Pirate Shed."

POP'S DINER, GARDEN (Thanks, Unclewilco!)

EFF: Google must explain why they nuked the Grooveshark app

Posted: 20 Apr 2011 10:35 PM PDT

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Julie Samuels, a good dressing-down for Google over its mysterious, lily-livered removal of the Grooveshark music app from the Android store. I agree entirely -- and this epitomises the reason I chose to use Android devices, not because I trust Google to do no wrong, but because the OS lets me install software that Google doesn't approve of. In other words, I'm more interested in how well it fails than how well it works.
It's hard to not speculate about what happened. We can only assume that a complaint from the RIAA would be based in copyright. That Google would perform a copyright takedown without requiring a valid notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is surprising to say the least -- especially given that Google just last week filed its reply brief in the Viacom v. YouTube appeal vigorously defending its policy of responding only to valid DMCA notices where copyright complaints are concerned. (Separately, we question whether there's a theory of copyright law under which Google would be liable in the first place, given that Google merely stores the code for another service provider's app -- code that we seriously doubt is itself infringing or otherwise illegal and which isn't even executable on the Android Market platform.)

And if the RIAA's complaint was not one under the DMCA, we - and others - are left to wonder: Did Google take down the Grooveshark app because it will compete with Google's rumored soon-to-be-released cloud music service? Did Google's takedown intentionally coincide with its appearance before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on IP in an effort to make itself more sympathetic to Congress? Is Google simply letting itself be controlled by the whims of the RIAA and the larger content industry as a whole?

Google's Lack of Transparency and Openness in the Android Market Will Hurt More Than Just Grooveshark

MPAA: "democratizing culture is not in our interest"

Posted: 20 Apr 2011 10:45 PM PDT

The MPAA has been doing a full-court press in Brazil, a country where copyright infringement, Creative Commons, and poverty are all widespread. In a telling interview, he described the MPAA's differences with the Creative Commons movement:
"They [Creative Commons supporters] don't always agree with what we advocate," Frazier responded. "And you are talking about democratizing culture, this is not in our interests. It really isn't my interest."

Although this answer may not really come as a surprise, combined with his previous answers it shows how subjective the MPAA's view on creativity and culture is. According to the MPAA piracy is ruining culture, but at the same time they are not allowing others to use even tiny snippets of their works.

The MPAA is apparently only interested in creativity and culture when it applies to the works their studios produce. Needless to say, this isn't necessarily what's most beneficial to society. The MPAA is merely protecting their corporate interests.

MPAA: "Democratizing Culture Is Not In Our Interest"

New Worlds magazine returns

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 10:38 AM PDT

new_worlds_193903_v1_n1.jpgNew Worlds, the seminal science fiction magazine edited for many years by Michael Moorcock, is back. SF Signal reports:
The magazine will appear in both electronic and traditional print on paper formats and be backed up by an extensive website that will feature exclusive editorial features free to all interested readers. It is anticipated that the new incarnation of the magazine will debut in September/October 2011, initially on a quarterly publishing schedule.
Warren Ellis writes that it is "the most groundbreaking sf magazine of the last half of the 20th Century, if not one of the most groundbreaking magazines of any kind in the way it reshaped fiction and captured invention in the culture at large." Pictured above is a sketch for the cover of issue 1, hosted by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

Infrared digital camera

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 10:19 AM PDT

e5b5_midnight_shot_nv-1_night_vision_camera-1.jpg

ThinkGeek has an infrared point-and-shoot digital camera in stock for $130: "You'll notice that during the daytime in night vision mode you can see through some types of clothing, paper and other various thin materials. ... Important Note: Respect the privacy of your fellow humans and don't use the Midnight Shot NV-1 Night Vision Camera for evil."

Firms battle over "Wines for Mommy" trademark

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:35 AM PDT

From Reuters: "Rival wine sellers targeting overworked mothers are fighting over use of the word "Mommy" on their wine labels, according to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court.

Dropbox's new security policy implies that they lied about privacy from the start

Posted: 20 Apr 2011 10:24 PM PDT

Miguel de Icaza noticed that Dropbox's new security terms of service allows it to decrypt your stored files for law enforcement; but Dropbox has always claimed that it did not store the keys necessary to do this. This has been used as both a selling point ("we keep your files so safe, we can't access them") and an excuse ("don't ask us for help if you lose your crypto keys, we don't store them"), but it was, apparently, a lie. De Icaza worries that a company that lies about its crypto and security policy may not be trustworthy when it comes to files containing sensitive information:
If companies with a very strict set of security policies and procedures like Google have had problems with employees that abused their privileges, one has to wonder what can happen at a startup like Dropbox where the security perimeter and the policies are likely going to be orders of magnitude laxer.

Dropbox needs to come clear about what privacy do they actually offer in their product. Not only from the government, but from their own employees that could be bribed, blackmailed, making some money on the side or are just plain horny.

Dropbox needs to recruit a neutral third-party to vouch for their security procedures and their security stack that surrounds users' files and privacy. If they are not up to their own marketed statements, they need to clearly specify where their service falls short and what are the potential security breaches that

Unless Dropbox can prove that algorithmically they can protect your keys and only you can get access to your files, they need to revisit their public statements and explicitly state that Dropbox storage should be considered semi-public and not try to sell us snake oil.

Dropbox Lack of Security (via JWZ)

Why the weather is wacky

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:47 AM PDT

stormimage.jpg

Last week, I wore shorts. Yesterday, it snowed. Meanwhile, down in Texas, there are heat-induced wildfires. This morning, I really enjoyed the catharsis provided by this interesting look at the science of volatile Spring weather, written by my fellow Minneapolitan Emily Sohn.

Sohn's take is refreshingly non-sensational. First, she points out, Spring is just a volatile season. The change from winter to summer, cold to warm, will do that. But this Spring has been different in some important ways—some natural, some man-made, and some that are just confusing.

The current weather map fits pretty well with a typical La Niña year, in which cooler than normal waters gather beneath the surface of the eastern equatorial Pacific off the west coast of South America. The phenomenon influences the positioning of the jet stream. And that, in turn, affects weather patterns around the globe.

But La Niña, which is natural and cyclical, is not the only driver behind weird weather reports lately. For the last two years, for reasons climatologists do not yet understand, a strange pocket of warm air has lingered over the Arctic, Douglas said, making the dead of winter a full 10 to 20 degrees warmer than normal in Greenland and northern Canada. The bubble has displaced cold air southward.

"If you leave the refrigerator door open, you warm up the refrigerator, and all that cool air kind of spills on to the floor," Douglas said. "That's what's happened."

On top of all that, a general rise in global temperatures has boosted levels of water vapor in the atmosphere by four percent, Douglas said. That basically loads the dice for more storms to form. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook can accentuate and accelerate the sense that severe weather is worse than it is.

I also really liked this quote from meteorologist Paul Douglas, "The weather is inherently wacky. Personally, I'm seeing an increase over time in the wackiness."

Image: Some rights reserved by powazny

Nerds in the kitchen, making macarons

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:11 AM PDT

I'm not sure how I missed it last fall when it was originally published, but Not So Humble Pie's recipe and troubleshooting guide to French macaron-making is the perfect follow-up to her exhaustive Macarons 101 article. If you're in the mood for a cooking challenge this Easter, I must recommend reading them both. Hell, even if you have no intention of ever making macarons, these posts are a happy place of cooking experimentation and science geekery.

Plant medicine is bunk, says medicinal plant expert

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:01 AM PDT

The Irish Times has an interview with the delightful crotchety doctor who is the garden fellow at London's Royal College of Physicians. Basically, he manages the College's collection of plants that have been historically used for medicinal purposes. Ironically, the job has convinced him that most herbal medicine is complete bunk. And he is not shy about saying so.

PLANTS HAVE been trying to kill us, not cure us," says Dr Henry Oakeley, the garden fellow at London's Royal College of Physicians.

But if plants are, for the most part, as medicinally useless as he believes, how does he explain their centrality to the beliefs and practices of medical practitioners for centuries?

"Because they believed in the tooth fairy," he says matter of factly. "They had no concept of illness or of chemistry or biochemistry. They believed all plants had been put on the earth by the creator for mankind's use. So if the plant had a particular shape, it indicated that the creator had put it on the planet for a particular use."

Citing as an example the use of blue liverwort, Hepatica nobilis , once cultivated as a liver tonic because its three-lobed leaf form mirrored the shape of the liver, he says, "It was absolute rubbish. They had no idea how the body worked." In the 1880s, at the height of its popularity, those taking it to cure feelings of "liverishness" were stuck down by jaundice because the plant was in fact toxic to the liver.

"The basic concept that most people have missed is that [many] plants are poisonous," he says. "We just have to find a way of using the poisons in plants to our advantage."

Oakeley doesn't deny that some plants have been useful, with plant-based chemicals leading to the development of important medicines. And, sometimes, ancient people guessed right, using those plants to treat the very things the plant-derived prescriptions treat today. His argument is simply that you can't just trust the ancients' opinion on a plant's medicinal value without first proving that it is effective and safe. In most cases, he says, the traditionally-used plants don't turn out to be effective. And the ones that are effective aren't as 100% safe as they're made out to be.

Via Tim Lloyd

A year's worth of coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster

Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:48 AM PDT

One year ago, yesterday, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, triggering the worst oil spill in US history. Treehugger has a round-up of great journalism and blogging about the explosion and its aftermath. The list includes stories written 10 days after the initial explosion, to follow-up articles from this week. Great stuff!
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