CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-22 18:19:54 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

2013-05-21 23:49:07 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Must read: A look at events in Boston from a different perspective

But the match to light the fear — that what we were facing was a dark-skinned Muslim man lurking within mainstream society awaiting orders to inflict deadly violence upon an innocent civilian population — had been struck.
.....
Evil will never be conquered by fear; it will only be fueled by it. In order to defeat such evil, we have to understand it. Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the renowned psychologist who devised the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) and authored the insightful The Lucifer Effect — which used the lessons learned from SPE and Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiment to astutely describe the dynamics that caused the horrific actions of the American men and women on watch at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — makes it clear: To understand what makes people do evil things, you have to focus onthe inter... more »

2013-05-19 20:19:08 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

This hits me right in the feels.

Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/maurice-sendak-and-childhood--we-ate-it-up-we-loved-it/2012/05/08/gIQAhfcwAU_blog.html

2013-05-17 19:43:22 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

These photos are amazing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/05/2013-national-geographic-traveler-photo-contest/100516/

2013-05-17 12:09:28 (1 comments, 5 reshares, 3 +1s)

First - and arguably foremost - there is virtually no difference among upper, middle and lower classes in Iceland. And with that, tension between economic classes is non-existent, a rare occurrence for any country.

2013-05-14 15:25:27 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

It would appear the auto industry in North Carolina is feeling threatened with less than a hundred Teslas sold in NC. And the fuck does little league have to do with anything?

The bill is being pushed by the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group representing the state’s franchised dealerships. Its sponsor is state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican from Henderson, who has said the goal is to prevent unfair competition between manufacturers and dealers.

Robert Glaser, president of the dealers association, told the News & Observer that the law prohibiting Tesla sales isn’t just about his industry’s self-interest. Pointing to the Tesla representatives at a recent hearing, he said, “You tell me they’re gonna support the little leagues and the YMCA?”

2013-05-13 12:44:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Not my favourite Bowie song but pretty amusing nonetheless.

2013-05-12 23:32:58 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

A one-note chirp from the Wren's chicks lets the mother know they're her chicks and not a cuckoo replacement.

Moreover, these memes — what are essentially passwords — are taught to the chicks while they're still in their eggs (what's called prenatal learning) during late incubation. So, by the time they hatch, the fairy-wren chicks already know what to ‘say' in order to prove that they're the real deal (and not a cuckoo chick). If the mother doesn't hear the proper "solicitation song," she will simply refuse to feed the chick.

http://io9.com/5959170/fairy+wren-chicks-taught-secret-passwords-to-thwart-dickish-cuckoo-birds

2013-05-10 18:48:39 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

The Blue Ridge Mountains.

2013-05-10 18:43:12 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

These uppity women. Today prayer rituals and tomorrow they may want to wear pants!

The large group of demonstrators was at the wall when the women turned up to pray in the hours before Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. They threw rubbish, water and chairs at the women, and stoned their buses.

2013-05-08 14:48:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Barbara Lee's lone vote against the 2001 AUMF - three days after the 9/11 attack - was an act of incredible and rare courage that is worth commemorating in its own right. But it was also prescient and wise, using America's past bad acts to warn of the dangers likely to be unleashed by enacting it. If Dick Durbin wants to acknowledge his gross error in voting in favor of such a blank check for presidential war-making - one that led to 12 years of war in numerous nations with no end in sight - he should do so honestly. Instead of pretending that nobody could possibly have known this would happen as a deceitful means of excusing his bad acts, he should instead acknowledge that there were people who did know and tried to warn the nation about it, but those weren't the types of voices to which he paid any attention because they weren't emanating from the Pentagon, the Brookings Institution and... more »

2013-05-07 12:41:53 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Much of my concentration recently has been spent knee deep in hashing and salting passwords and the best practices that go along with all of that fun stuff. The technique discussed in this paper is to add an extra server to enable real time password-cracking detection for an added layer of security in case all of your hashed/salted passwords are stolen.

Our suggested approach can be viewed as extending this basic idea to all users (i.e., including the legitimate accounts), by having multiple possible passwords for each account, only one of which is genuine. The others we call honeywords. The attempted use of a honeyword to login sets off an alarm, as an adversarial attack has been reliably detected.

This approach is not terribly deep, but it should be quite effective, as it puts the adversary at risk of being detected with every attempted login using a password obtained by... more »

2013-05-01 16:58:59 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Our camera uses 36 fixed-focus 2 megapixel mobile phone camera modules. The camera modules are mounted in a robust, 3D-printed, ball-shaped enclosure that is padded with foam and handles just like a ball. Our camera contains an accelerometer which we use to measure launch acceleration. Integration lets us predict rise time to the highest point, where we trigger the exposure. After catching the ball camera, pictures are downloaded in seconds using USB and automatically shown in our spherical panoramic viewer. This lets users interactively explore a full representation of the captured environment.

2013-05-01 13:11:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Goodnight, sweet prince.

The Herschel space observatory has exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant, essential to cool the observatory’s instruments to near absolute zero, allowing Herschel to observe the cold universe … until today. Confirmation that the helium is finally exhausted came this afternoon (April 29, 2013) at the beginning of the spacecraft’s daily communication session with its ground station in Western Australia, with a clear rise in temperatures measured in all of Herschel’s instruments.

http://earthsky.org/space/herschel-telescope-goes-blind-ends-mission

2013-04-30 21:39:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Solving math problems in Python.

sum(set(range(0, 1000, 3) + range(0, 1000, 5)))

Time to go outside.

2013-04-28 16:16:02 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 14 +1s)

2013-04-27 13:22:54 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

2013-04-26 14:14:59 (7 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Once Upon a Time in Baghdad

In 1932, Iraq had just gained independence after more than ten years as a British mandate and centuries under Ottoman rule. Baghdad, famed at the time for its quaint blend of Turkish architecture and ancient markets, suddenly found itself the capital of a fledgling Iraqi nation. The ethnic and religious tensions that would ignite in the coming decades of war and sanctions were already present but not yet explosive, and the vast oil reserves that would transform the capital into a booming metropolis had only just been discovered. These 1932 photographs, drawn from the Matson Collection at the Library of Congress, show a Baghdad on the brink of a new era, struggling to discover its identity in a time before it was defined by devastation.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/18/once_upon_a_time_in_baghdad_iraq

2013-04-26 11:50:48 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Saxton, a junior studying classics and religious studies, said his sermon was meant to convey that “if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped.”

“I think that girls that dress and act like it,” Saxton said, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”

And he followed up with, "Because I'm a privileged white male and can't be bothered to control myself when women show skin." At least that's how it ends in my mind.

2013-04-25 12:28:34 (11 comments, 5 reshares, 6 +1s)

"Just six days ago, my village was struck by a drone, in an attack that terrified thousands of simple, poor farmers. The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine."

"What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America."
---
Being targeted with violence is a major cost of war and aggression. It's a reason not do it. If one consciously decides to incur that cost, then that's one thing. But pretending that this is all due to some primitive and irrational religious response and not our own actions is dangerously self-flattering and self-delusional. Just listen to what the people who are doing these attacks are saying about why they are doing them. Or listen to the people... more »

2013-04-20 20:04:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

You may find this an interesting read, +Paul Pennell 

Recall, in fact, that the Democratic-led Senate enacted the 2011 NDAA, which was then signed into law by President Obama, that codified the power of indefinite detention even of US citizens on US soil accused of terrorism (that's what led a federal court to enjoin the law on the grounds of unconstitutionality). It is true that Obama said that, as a matter of policy, he would not exercise these powers against US citizens on US soil, but that's simply a pragmatic choice that can be changed at any time. The theory of the NDAA is the same theory as Graham yesterday invoked, which in turn is the same theory animating the Obama "war on terror": the US is "at war" with The Terrorists, and anyone who takes up arms against the US and tries to kill Americans are "combatants" who can be denied basic rights. Watching... more »

2013-04-20 16:19:28 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

A $9k domesticated fox. Enjoy.
http://www.domesticfox.com

2013-04-19 20:22:19 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

Guess whose life is more important? The older one with countless life experiences, of course.

The 22-year-old woman is four-and-a-half months pregnant and has been diagnosed with a number of severe illnesses, including lupus and kidney disease.

Doctors have also confirmed that the foetus she is carrying is missing a large part of its brain and skull, which means it is expected to die before it is born, or within a few hours or days after birth.

2013-04-19 15:38:33 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

A message from the gods.

2013-04-17 13:19:45 (12 comments, 3 reshares, 11 +1s)

Today thus far.

2013-04-16 21:21:10 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

Every time.

2013-04-15 16:23:48 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Frank Luke Jr., WWI Ace, and Medal of Honor recipient. Also, crazy like a fox. 

Denied his request, Luke once again chose to fly solo, an unauthorized decision which resulted in his arrest. Escaping from detention in his tent on 29 September he took up his SPAD 13 aircraft en route for enemy lines.  Landing near Verdun Luke chanced to bump into his commanding officer Hartney.

Before Hartney was able to take action; however, Luke took off once again, dropping a note to the ground to the affect that Hartney should watch out for three German observation balloons along the Meuse.

Luke fired upon each balloon and brought all three down, an action which brought no fewer than eight German Fokker aircraft upon his heels. Having in turn shot down two of these aircraft Luke was forced to land behind enemy lines near Murvaux. Refusing to be taken prisoner he shot and killed severalGer... more »

2013-04-15 16:09:20 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 6 +1s)

The Egyptians built the Great Pyramid at Giza with the intent that it would never be opened. Nonetheless, archaeologists have ignored the wishes of the Egyptians, and have mapped out the interior, walked inside, and sent in robots to learn more about the giant tomb. All of this is even after we decoded the Egyptian hieroglyphics, due to the fortuitous discovery of the Rosetta Stone, and understood the purpose of the pyramids. The Great Pyramid at Giza is an amazing 4,500 years old, and yet already the changes to mankind during that time, or even just in the last millennia, completely compromised its impenetrability. How do we possibly prevent future generations of humans from breaching underground nuclear waste repositories for over twice the age of the Great Pyramid at Giza?

2013-04-15 14:26:01 (0 comments, 5 reshares, 8 +1s)

Want to see a magic trick?

2013-04-15 12:33:17 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

The question before the court is whether isolated human genes are products of nature, and therefore ineligible for patents, or are sufficiently different from the genes found inside the body’s cells.

Are you shitting me? You're taking a piece out of a whole and trying to patent it? I can understand patenting the process of identification and isolation, but something built by nature itself, something that has basically compartmentalized itself? As Stephen Fry so eloquently said, "Complete loose-stool-water. Arse-gravy of the very worst kind."

2013-04-12 13:44:29 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

The flag has become more burden than trophy for Tim McLaughlin, the Marine who trucked the now-famous flag in his duffel across ocean and desert and back again. It’s become a symbol of the sanitized idea of war, of the lies and myths that nations spin to burnish their aggression. And that’s why he’s hidden the conflicted banner away in a safety deposit box in a small-town bank in New Hampshire... “Because for me it was a period of death and killing people. I don’t like that it facilitated the media’s narrative of wars as neat and tidy things, so that’s why when I got back home I just put it away.”

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/09/marine_to_marine_corps_museum_you_cant_have_saddams_flag_for_propaganda/

2013-04-09 22:34:29 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 11 +1s)

Now that's just cool.

Fort Bourtange is a star fort located in the village of Bourtange, Groningen, Netherlands. It was built in 1593 under the orders of William the I of Orange. Its original purpose was to control the only road between Germany and the city of Groningen, which was controlled by the Spaniards during the time of the Eighty Years' War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourtange_(fort)

2013-04-09 12:01:14 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Superhero Noir
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Noir-Series/6837553

2013-04-08 20:11:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-04-08 17:51:13 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 5 +1s)

The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge.

Thanks to the Internet and a pervasive if imperfect system of education, we now can realize the dream of Jefferson and Franklin. We have the technological and economic resources to make all the collections of all our libraries accessible to all our fellow citizens—and to everyone everywhere with access to the World Wide Web. That is the mission of the DPLA.

http://dp.la/

2013-04-08 15:59:25 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

From Equalityandthecity on Tumblr

#waronwomen  

2013-04-08 02:51:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Marijuana will kill your family and empty your bank account. The more you know.

2013-04-07 20:17:33 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

A worthwhile read.

STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.

2013-04-07 13:39:20 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Donating my Xbox

Today I donated my Xbox 360 Elite to Goodwill. It represented a time in my life as a developer that I'm not overly proud about living.

I worked for a couple years designing games at Microsoft. It is honestly difficult to say the exact group I was in since the organization was hit regularly by massive reorgs and general management failure.

This was the era right before Kinect and there was an effort underway to broaden the audience to extend beyond the 'big black boy box' brand that so defined the original Xbox. Ultimately, the anemic outcome of this great leap forward was a handful of resource starved trivia games and gameshows. But the dream of bringing socially positive games to more people really appealed to me.

I was an outsider. When I used a console, it was likely to be one built by Nintendo. My design direction tended... more »

2013-04-06 20:08:06 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

It's amazing we could pull this shit off in the 60s.

The website gives the footage of the landing along with breaking up all the communications so you can tell what's what.
http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/

2013-04-06 18:10:11 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

stahp

2013-04-06 16:41:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

A nice and simple visualization.

2013-05-16 09:39:42 (5 comments, 5 reshares, 12 +1s)

You'll put your eye out with that thing, kid.

South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities have obtained indications the North has moved an object that appears to be a mid-range missile to the east coast.

2013-04-04 17:41:17 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Hey +Giovanni Olvera, checkmate.

Contrary to the assumptions under which some Harris defenders are laboring, the fact that someone is a scientist, an intellectual, and a convincing and valuable exponent of atheism by no means precludes irrational bigotry as a driving force in their worldview. In this case, Harris' own words, as demonstrated below, are his indictment.

2013-04-04 01:54:07 (4 comments, 4 reshares, 6 +1s)

Makes sense.

2013-04-03 20:15:38 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Imperialist aggression in 1... 2... 3...

Empty maching gun belt at 1:22
Some talking salad at 1:28
Hopeless trigger pulling at 1:48

2013-04-03 12:54:22 (10 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

I expect we'll be embracing the Tao when this legislation gets through.

2013-04-02 12:09:12 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

And one up the spout.

2013-04-02 02:54:18 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

I fucking love this show.

2013-03-31 16:31:39 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

Happy Hipster Easter, Plus.