Link Banana

It’s been a while since I’ve paid attention to Tales of Mere Existence. This one, via Andrew Simone, makes me wonder why I stopped.

I really like Mike Dresser’s idea.

Clay Shirky wrote this paper in 1997. His point is still sinking in:

The price of information has not only gone into free fall in the last few years, it is still in free fall now, it will continue to fall long before it hits bottom, and when it does whole categories of currently lucrative businesses will be either transfigured unrecognizably or completely wiped out, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Andrew Simone)

As Deron summarizes: Seeing attractive women in magazines makes men more self-conscious and less inclined to ask a woman out.

This is my new favorite graph. I feel it should be categorized as something like data naturalism — though that sounds less cool than it should.

(via Clusterflock)

One of the more interesting presentations of history I’ve seen. If I had one complaint, it would be that some of the references are too obscure for me to make sense of less than a year after they happened.

(via Clusterflock)

Via Clusterflock, Edward Merritt’s (presumably self-authored) obituary in the Dallas Morning News:

Merritt, Edward “Bruce” Born April 3, 1951 in North Carolina. He was one of eight children. His older sisters regularly beat him up, put him in dresses, and then forced him to walk to the drugstore to buy their Kotex and cigarettes. After graduation from high school he went on to lead a life of luxury in the United States Air Force. After excaping from the government he spent most of his life as a mechanic, husband, and father. Bruce Merritt never met a stranger, and in many ways was stranger than most. He is survived by one daughter, two grand- children, two ex-wives, unpaid taxes, and many loyal loving friends.

You’d have good reason to condemn this analysis as simplistic, silly, or absurd, but I think it’s just enough of all of those things to share. The real contrast: Obama’s site is written in PHP, McCain’s in ASP.

(via clusterflock)

The psychologists said [taekwandoe] competitors wearing red were awarded an average of 13 percent more points and the points seemed to increase after the blue athlete was digitally transformed into a red athlete and decrease when the red competitor turned blue.

I remember something similar going around about red cars getting more traffic tickets, but Snopes claims that that was false.

(via clusterflock)

Andrew Simone points to a piece of internet history.

Though not all the photos in the “Swing Jumping” Flickr pool show people jumping off swings, they’re all undeniable awesome.

(via clusterflock)

I’m not sure whether this news — if true — merits a “duh!”, a “huh?!”, or a “yay!”

Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups.

The reason, researchers suspect, is that men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband.

(via clusterflock)

This isn’t actually surprising, but now there’s scientific evidence that it’s true.

it appears that even brief exposure to “outed” gays and lesbians can have a significant impact on bias — both implicit and explicit. It’s no small wonder, then, that anti-gay activists would prefer for famous gays and lesbians not to publicly out themselves, and for news organizations to sweep this information under the rug.

(via clusterflock)

It’s best not to call them all facts, because a lot are just playful space wasters. Still it’s interesting:

6 Barbary macaques have a distinctive way to get their mates to make a sperm donation: yelling. If the female does not shout, the male almost never climaxes.

7 How do we know this? German primatologist Dana Pfefferle watched a group of macaques, counting the females’ yells and the males’ pelvic thrusts. She says this work is “quite weird, but it’s science.”

8 Here in the US of A, that kind of stuff ends up on YouTube.

(via clusterflock)

…himself. This is one of those annoying videos that I can’t seem to ignore even as I find it, well, annoying. It’s surreal, it’s silly, and it’s surprisingly entertaining.

(via clusterflock)

I’m actually a day late, but still interesting. Bonus points to those who knew that is was based on the letters N and D (for nuclear disarmament) in semaphore. More bonus points to those that knew semaphore is flag signaling.

(via clusterflock)

Click the link. I dare you not to laugh.

Also, click on the picture there for information about it.

There was definitely a time when I would have scoffed at a service like this, which provides an RSS feed to tell you when your favorite bands are releasing new albums. Given how many near-misses I’ve had recently, I believe the service may well be worth signing up for.

(via clusterflock)