Link Banana

Makes me think Lex Luther. And get a little jealous.

(via kottke)

Because Earth Day’s a better day than many for Earth porn, Wired Science has some breathtaking shots of geological features captured by satellite.

It’s interesting to see that the whole eastern half of the country, which looks like the worst culprit on the unadjusted version, looks pretty average on the per-capita version.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Twitter — that 140 character “microblogging” engine — officially became the least romantic way to propose when it was recently used for that purpose by Greg Rewis.

Or so says Susan Blackmore. That title, by the way, means that humans serve no purpose than to propagate trends and ideas, or “memes“ — which, by the way, is a word I’ve never liked much.

What culture is doing, what the memesphere is doing, is taking a human being and infecting it with masses of new information and exploiting its tendencies. We are being turned from ordinary old-fashioned meme machines into what I call “teme” machines — machines for copying technological information, spreading photos and printed words and digital files.

(via kottke.org)

Unlike Wired’s Chris Anderson who counter-intuitively argues that it’s greener to read that magazine in print, Slate’s Green Lantern says — as do I — that’s unlikely.

The greener choice would be to read the paper online, correct?

The Lantern believes so, but the environmental difference between dead-tree newspapers and their online editions is a lot smaller than you might imagine. In fact, there are learned experts who contend that traditional newsprint ultimately comes out ahead, at least in terms of net carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the Lantern disagrees with some of the assumptions these contrarians make, it’s worth exploring their arguments in order to better understand how hard it is to calculate a product’s cradle-to-grave impact.

I’ve always thought the promise of sonic weapons was oversold. Maybe not:

First, I dispatched Nathan, my husband, out of the room, using the logic that if it really did make us sick, one of us should be spared. Then I realized I needed pictures, so I called him back in, and without warning, Goldman turned the Inferno on. I’m not sure words can do justice to what can only be described as the most unbearable, gut-wrenching noise I’ve ever heard in my life. I screamed a few expletives, Nathan almost dropped the camera, and Dr. Goldman turned it off. […]

How did I feel after the impromptu test? Nauseous, dizzy, or in pain? Hard to say, but Nathan looked pretty unhappy with me for the next hour or so. In fact, he still grumbles a bit when I mention his unwitting recruitment as a camera man/guinea pig. Love hurts.

(via Boing Boing)

This isn’t the first time this has been done — Wired did it about a year ago — but the LA Times has some selections of six words stories from this book. If you weren’t aware, all such efforts are derived from Ernest Hemingway’s “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” Jancee Dunn’s is the best, if only for the novel use of acronyms.

ABCs MTV SATs THC IRA NPR.

(via Brijit)

If they’re right — and we can only hope they are — this is great.

A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn’t interfere with food supplies, company officials said.

Coskata, which is backed by General Motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol.

“It’s not five years away, it’s not 10 years away. It’s affordable, and it’s now,” said Wes Bolsen, the company’s vice president of business development.

Unfortunately, the idea’s at least a year away from producing meaningful quantities.