What Aspects of Pop Culture Will Age Badly? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What Aspects of Pop Culture Will Age Badly?

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I've probably mentioned this before, but of my favorite new-ish podcasts is the official Cracked.com podcast, which is hosted by the might Earwolf media empire (home to the great Comedy Bang!Bang! and Indoor Kids 'casts). I enjoy Cracked for the most part and find it an amiable time-waster, though it suffers heavy from the Buzzfeed listicle model, and the format often leads the writers to often make flip, pat assertions. The podcast, on the other hand, is much looser and more organic, and has the quality of a great late-night bull session. It's hosted by the website's editors, Jason Pargin (aka David Wong, author of John Dies At The End), and Jack O'Brien, who discuss a variety of issues, often with a rotating cast of guest co-hosts.

Anyway, in the most recent episode, they discuss how some aspects of movies and popular music endure over time, and others don't. The big example is hair metal versus gangsta rap; both come from roughly the same period, but while Ice Cube still sounds fresh and powerful in spite of a subsequent "family friendly" movie career, the former comes off sounding supremely silly, with little sense of menace or glamour. Towards the end, they turn to the current crop of movies, specifically the recent "dark, intense" superhero movies. They really hate Man of Steel, but suggest that Dark Knight will age very badly over the next few decades, pointing to the interrogation scene as something that future audiences will find just as silly as Leslie Nielsen's "straight" dramatic roles from the '50s and '60s do to us in a post-Airplane! world. It's a scene that's shot like a '70s cop drama, but it involves two grown men in Halloween costumes talking in silly voices about matters of life and death. In their minds, it's already pretty campy.

So with that in mind: Are they wrong about Dark Knight and Poison? And what aspects of modern entertainment will age better over time?

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What Aspects of Pop Culture Will Age Badly?

No Cat Is Complete Without A Set Of Leather Battle Armor onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com No Cat Is Complete Without A Set Of Leather Battle Armor

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Of course your cat just lays about the house sleeping, eating and pooping all day — it doesn't have proper protection. Unlock your cat's full potential with a suit of hand-crafted leather body armor.

Dogs are the fearless warriors of the pet scene, charging into battle, heedless of danger. Cats are rogues, slinking silently through the shadows, stepping into the light only long enough to strike a fatal blow to any home intruders foolish enough to enter their domain. Or they would be, if you'd outfit them properly.

Etsy shop Schnabuble, maker of many fine human costume pieces, decided our feline friends had gone unarmored long enough. This is their answer to that problem, modeled by the lovely Selani.

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Completely hand-made from durable veg-tan leather, this is no mere costume piece. Your cat will become an unstoppable force for slaughter in this fully articulated suit, shielding him/her from foes while allowing unimpeded movement across the battlefield or living room floor. The imposing torso section features several riveted, articulated plates and a terrifying rack of dorsal spines. Your cat's hindquarters are sheathed beneath exquisitely arrayed overlapping scales stitched to a soft leather backing, adorned with nickel silver dome rivets. Midnight black scales and plates are finished with a glossy protective coat and seamlessly join together like the petals of a deadly flower. Adjustable at the collar with elastic and two nickel silver buckles, and at the belly with grommeted corset-style lacing for a secure, comfortable fit.

The armor covers all the bases. It's black, so it helps even the brightest of cats meld with the shadows. It's durable, without being cruel. And, most importantly, it does not cover your cat's anus, which they have to show to you at least five or six times a day, lest they lose their magic powers.

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Sadly, only one magnificent suit of Cat Battle Armor is available, and it costs $500 — more than your cat is worth. Expensive, but no price is too high when it comes to making your cat look as lost and confused as this one.

Cat Battle Armor [Etsy]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com No Cat Is Complete Without A Set Of Leather Battle Armor

Disney appoints a group to determine a new, official Star Wars canon onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Disney appoints a group to determine a new, official Star Wars canon

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The Expanded Universe as we knew it will soon be no more. Disney has created a special committee whose job it will be to figure out what is and isn't part of a complete Star Wars canon — meaning all the EU material created over the years will be judged, and either become official or deemed invalid.

Furthermore, this means at some point all new Star Wars spin-offs will matter, because they will all be official. I don't know how I feel about that.

The Story Group, as its called, includes Leland Chee, who has been Lucasfilm's "Keeper of the Holocron," the in-house database of everything Star Wars. According to The Hollywood Reporter:

We obviously don't know what will be kept and what will be lost, but now we know that instead of separating the official Star Wars universe from the Expanded Universe, we're going to get one consistent (hopefully) universe, where every story told is official, whether it be a movie, a comic, a book, or a videogame. I would guess that Disney would cherry pick a few things from the material that's come before — probably big stuff like the Clone Wars cartoon, maybe some of the Knights of the Old Republic material — but I can't imagine them burdening themselves down with too much old material, as most of it would merely inhibit the new stories they want to tell (and products they want to sell). I also can't imagine they'd really want any of the Star Wars books set after the movies, as those will almost certainly get in their way of their sequels.

But who knows? Do you guys have any votes for what should stay and what should go? What would you most hate to lose?

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Disney appoints a group to determine a new, official Star Wars canon

Here's what the computer code on TV really means. (Hint: Not much.) onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's what the computer code on TV really means. (Hint: Not much.)

When our favorite TV and movie heroes find themselves in a technological jam, they'll often pull up some source code to spot an incredible, unlikely solution. But what exactly does the code they're looking at mean? Turns out, not so much.

The Moviecode tumblr grabs instances of on-screen computer code and translates what we're actually looking at, and just where it might have come from. In the above, for instance, you can see The Doctor looking closely at what turned out be the source code pulled from a Wikipedia page on light waves.

Image: @popey via Moviecode.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's what the computer code on TV really means. (Hint: Not much.)

The long-running mystery of the Feynman Sprinkler onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The long-running mystery of the Feynman Sprinkler

Richard Feynman left the world many legacies, including multiple books on physics, the atomic bomb, and some stellar bongo solos. He also left the world the mystery of the Feynman Sprinkler — proving that science doesn't have to be impressive to be frustrating.

To be fair, Feynman didn't want it to be called the Feynman Sprinkler. The idea for the sprinkler, and its first working model, were made by Ernst Mach, an earlier physicist. Mach had seen the typical water sprinkler, a pinwheel affair that moved because it squirted out water. He wondered what would happen if, instead of squirting water out, the sprinkler was put in a aquarium full of water and made to suck water in.

Feynman wondered the same, and even wrote, in one of his books, that he'd made a working model of the reverse sprinkler. After a point, Feynman claimed, the entire thing exploded. He declined to explain either the physics behind the sprinkler or what happened in the lab before his experiment blew up. Instead, he left the behavior of a reverse sprinkler to tease future generations. People decided, en masse, that if he was going to vex them, they were going to vex him right back, and so the problem bears his name despite his wishes.

Standing Still

Mach made a working model of the sprinkler himself, and found that the sprinkler stayed still in the water. For many years, other physicists agreed. That may seem counter-intuitive — most people believe that the sprinkler will just go "backwards" — but consider the arguments made for the standstill. Mach himself made a good one; think about blowing air out through a straw. The air moves out in one directed stream. It goes one way and you (or the sprinkler) goes another. When you're sucking air into a straw, however, you aren't pulling in a column of air, but air from everywhere around the end of the straw. The pulling isn't as directed as the pushing.

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Other physicists have put it another way. Yes, pulling inwards on the water should move the sprinkler —the water goes one way, and the sprinkler goes another, and momentum is conserved. But what happens when that water hits that first bend inside the sprinkler? When the water hits that bend it's pushing against the sprinkler. That should knock the sprinkler back as much as it was being pulled forward. So the reverse sprinkler shouldn't be going in reverse, it should be standing still.

Moving Backwards

That's not quite how it worked out. Scientists kept tinkering with the sprinkler, possibly encouraged by Feynman's compatriots. Various people who worked with Feynman at Princeton spilled the beans that, before the explosion, there was the slightest tremor of the sprinkler "backwards" — into the water it was sucking. People worked on the friction of the various sprinkler components, and the sucking speed and when they got it just right. When the sprinkler blows out water it moves in one direction, and when it sucks it in, it moves in the opposite direction.

How does this happen? It's true that the liquid being pulled into the sprinkler will hit the bend in the sprinkler tubing. That should stop the sprinkler once again, but only if the water has the same momentum it had when it was first being pulled into the tube. If the water loses momentum between the mouth of the tube and the bend, the sprinkler will get an overall kick from the water. Water doesn't flow perfectly. It undergoes turbulence, even inside the sprinkler tube. The turbulence of the water itself will dissipate some of the energy the water had when it got sucked into the tube, and when it hits the bend, it will push the sprinkler back with just a little less force than it imparted to the sprinkler when it got sucked in. Because there is less force knocking the sprinkler back than there is pulling the sprinkler forward, the reverse sprinkler will slowly pick up speed.

Top Image: Alegri.

[Via An Elementary Treatment of the Reverse Sprinkler, The Feynman Inverse Sprinkler Problem]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The long-running mystery of the Feynman Sprinkler

Zoe Saldana will star in the Rosemary's Baby miniseries reboot onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Zoe Saldana will star in the Rosemary's Baby miniseries reboot

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The more we hear about the Rosemary's Baby miniseries remake, the more excited we get. And now that Zoe Saldana has been cast in the lead, we're hooked. Just look at that talent behind this 4-hour feature.

Deadline is reporting that Saldana will join director Agnieszka Holland (The Wire, Treme) in Paris for the newly relocated and updated Rosemary's Baby miniseries on NBC. Scott Abbott and James Wong, of the The X-Files and Final Destination have penned the screenplay (so we're expecting it to be a bit more gruesome than the original 1968 feature).

Only one question remains — will Saldana recreate Mia Farrow's fantastic pixie cut as well?

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Zoe Saldana will star in the Rosemary's Baby miniseries reboot

What are you working on? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What are you working on?

It's a show-and-tell thread today, people! What have you made (or are working on now) that you'd like to show us?

Whether you've been designing a videogame, writing a short story, building a robot in your garage, cross-stitching nebulae on throw pillows, or something else entirely, tell us about it now in the comments. Pictures too, please!

Image: Goddard Space Flight Center.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What are you working on?

Watch people walk, run and dance on a liquid that thinks it's a solid onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch people walk, run and dance on a liquid that thinks it's a solid

Non-Newtonian fluids are seriously strange — a mixture that takes on properties of both a fluid and a solid. Watch as people perform a number of physics-defying tricks on a 2,100 galloon pool of "oobleck."

The viscosity of non-Newtonian fluids change according to the amount of force applied to it and include everyday items like ketchup, toothpaste, shampoo, paint — even blood.

Oobleck is basically a mixture of corn starch and water. You can even make a batch yourself; check out this video in which the HardScience team tries to bike across a trough filled with home-made oobleck:

[h/t Laughing Squid]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch people walk, run and dance on a liquid that thinks it's a solid

ILM creates and destroys future San Francisco in Star Trek 2 VFX reels onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ILM creates and destroys future San Francisco in Star Trek 2 VFX reels

We may have possibly had a few issues with Star Trek Into Darkness, but I think we can all agree it looked pretty. Industrial Light and Magic just released two behind-the-VFX videos, including how they transformed a shot of pretty much nothing into the Enterprise crashing through a massive metropolis.

And here's the making of the movie's opening scene. Thank god Abrams gave those aliens that extra eyelid, am I right? Totally made the scene.

[Via First Showing]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ILM creates and destroys future San Francisco in Star Trek 2 VFX reels

Which character will be a new regular in Game of Thrones season 5? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Which character will be a new regular in Game of Thrones season 5?

The Twelfth Doctor's not making the best impression on Clara! Will Bryan Singer direct X-Men: Apocalypse? See the first photos of Guillermo del Toro's TV series The Strain, and watch a new RoboCop viral video set at CES 2027. Plus Robert Kirkman is teasing a hopeful end to season four of The Walking Dead. Spoilers now!

X-Men: Apocalypse

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Bryan Singer revealed what his involvement with the next X-Men film is looking like:

I'm co-writing the story and I'm producing it. I'm negotiating to direct. We're in the process. We're trying to figure it out, schedules. My desire would be to direct it.

He also talked about whether the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past will have a post-credit teaser for Apocalypse:

I'm still deciding [if there will be a tease]. Something that happens in this movie causes what's going to happen in that movie.

Singer also seemed to hint that the movie would be using the comics history of Apocalypse to delve into the in-universe past of mutants, saying:

It will also address historical mutant-cy, meaning the deep past, mutant origins and things like that. It's something that's always intrigued me when we think about our Gods and our history and miracles and powers.

[Slashfilm]

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Selling Time

Fox's supernatural thriller has a director signed up: D.J. Caruso (Disturbia, I Am Number Four). He's overseeing a new draft of the script by Dan McDermott, which is apparently being rewritten in order to get Will Smith to sign up to star in it at last. He's apparently interested in playing the lead, who

relives parts of his past trying to avert a future tragedy. [Deadline]

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The film's official fan community, the Amazing Spider-Fans, has put out a new photo, showing Gwen Stacy at her desk at Oscorp. [Coming Soon]

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The LEGO Movie

Here's a new poster, featuring the Charlie Day-voiced Benny, a "1980-something space guy." The poster shows a close-up of his slightly-worn face. [Cinema Blend]

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Stan Lee's Mighty 7

Here's a clip from Stan Lee's Mighty 7, the first of three planned animated films. This one features Stan Lee being hired to create a new group of superheroes and then meeting seven crash-landed aliens that he then decides to make his superheroes. They are, of course, also being hunted by the military and the forces of their own planet. [Coming Soon]

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RoboCop

Here's a viral teaser, showing OmniCorp's 2027 CES presentation. [First Showing]

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The Walking Dead

Speaking to TV Guide, Robert Kirkman teased both a bleaker and a lighter second half to this season:

We started the season pretty hopeful and pretty optimistic. We'll open our last half of the season pretty bleak and we'll move them to something a little more hopeful by the end.

[Coming Soon]

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Doctor Who

A few details are emerging about the 12th Doctor's relationship to Clara. According to The Mirror, the new Doctor will have to win over Clara, who is still attached to 11. Apparently, Peter Capaldi's Doctor will have a "spiky" start, which he'll have to overcome. [Blogtor Who]

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Game of Thrones

Michiel Huisman, who will replace Ed Skrein as Daario in multiple season 4 episodes, has already signed a contract to make him a series regular for the currently-hypothetical season 5. So prepare to see a lot more of the charming sellsword, then. [TV Line]

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Gotham

Danny Cannon will direct the pilot for this Batman prequel series, in which Bruce Wayne is 10 years old. He also directed the pilots for The Tomorrow People and Nikita. Oh, and the 1995 Judge Dredd movie. Make of that what you will. [Coming Soon]

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The Strain

Here are the first photos from the FX/Guillermo del Toro series about a CDC team tackling a disease that has vampire-like synptoms. [Yahoo!]

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Agents of SHIELD

Here's the promo for episode 1.12, "Seeds." [SpoilerTV]

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Arrow

Here's the description for episode 2.11, "Blind Spot":

Oliver is conflicted after Laurel reaches out to the Arrow asking him to investigate Sebastian Blood (guest star Kevin Alejandro). Oliver is unsure whether to believe her accusations against the man he has publically supported for mayor, but decides to trust Laurel. However, when the pair gets too close to the truth, Sebastian exposes Laurel's drug addiction and has her arrested. Meanwhile, Roy reveals his new super-strength to Sin (guest star Bex Taylor-Klaus) who wants to test out his abilities. Unfortunately, Roy isn't able to contain his rage once unleashed and almost kills a man. Back on the island, Oliver is surprised when Sarah (guest star Caity Lotz) reveals a secret about Laurel.

[Coming Soon]

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Ravenswood

Here's the promo for episode 1.07, "Home Is Where the Heart Is." [via SpoilerTV]

And go here for a bunch more photos from the next episode, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." [SpoilerTV]

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Person of Interest

Here's the promo for episode 3.13, "4C." [via SpoilerTV]

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Supernatural

Go here for a complete set of photos from episode 9.10, "Road Trip." [SpoilerTV]

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The Originals

Here's a sneak peek at episode 1.10, "The Casket Girls." [via SpoilerTV]

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Intelligence

Below's the preview for the second episode, "Red X." [via SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Charlie Jane Anders and Jason Krell

Related

Why would you take this deal? In Selling Time, a man gets to relive the worst day of his life... exchange for shortening his lifespan by seven years. … Read…

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onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Which character will be a new regular in Game of Thrones season 5?

7-Year-Old Girl Writes To Scientists Asking Them To Make Her A Dragon onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com 7-Year-Old Girl Writes To Scientists Asking Them To Make Her A Dragon

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Australia's got its very own pint-sized Khaleesi in 7-year-old Sophie Lester of Queensland, who over Christmas wrote a letter to the national science agency CSIRO asking for a dragon of her own. Both the letter and the agency's response are so cute you're going to feel like passing out.

Here's Sophie's letter. For added adorability, read it to yourself in the voice of a little girl with an Australian accent, but, you know, not in public because people will think you're weird.

Hello Lovely Scientist

My name is Sophie and I am 7 years old. My dad told me about the scientists at the CSIRO. Would it be possible if you can make a dragon for me. I would like it if you could but if you can't thats fine.

I would call it toothless if it was a girl and if it is a boy I would name it Stuart.

I would keep it in my special green grass area where there are lots of space. I would feed it raw fish and I would put a collar on it. If it got hurt I would bandage it if it hurt himself. I would play with it every weekend when there is no school.

Love from Sophie

Those dark marks bleeding through the paper that contains her letter are actually from the drawing she made on the back, which. Gah. So cute.

CSIRO responded to Sophie's letter and drawing on their website, writing, in part,

We've been doing science since 1926 and we're quite proud of what we have achieved. We've put polymer banknotes in your wallet, insect repellent on your limbs and Wi-Fi in your devices. But we've missed something.

There are no dragons.

Over the past 87 odd years we have not been able to create a dragon or dragon eggs. We have sighted an eastern bearded dragon at one of our telescopes, observed dragonflies and even measured body temperatures of the mallee dragon. But our work has never ventured into dragons of the mythical, fire breathing variety.

And for this Australia, we are sorry.

The organization's letter also recommended Sophie get into Game of Thrones because there are totally IRL dragons on that show, which is a sort of cute suggestion until you realize that show is like 90% boobs and stabbing. Not till you're older, Sophie.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com 7-Year-Old Girl Writes To Scientists Asking Them To Make Her A Dragon

Fine Art Mosaics from Insects, Plants and Stuff onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Fine Art Mosaics from Insects, Plants and Stuff

Michael Mappes rekonstruiert Fotografien alter Gemälde mit Pixeln aus Nadeln, auf denen er jeden erdenklichen Kram befestigt. Das Bild oben ist ein holländisches Gemälde von 1627 und zusammengesetzt aus unter anderem Fotos, Insekten, Kontaktlinsen, Pflanzen, Lupen, Baumwolle und Tüten. Awesome!

deconstructing photos of actual paintings by such masters as rembrandt and nicolaes eliasz pickenoy, mapes recreates the original picture piece by piece, using countless collage materials and even biological findings like eyelashes and hair. the painstaking detail is almost unimaginable; tiny fragments carefully positioned on the tops of pins are complied closely next to each other. from close range, the dissected pixels can be discerned for their type and texture, while at a distance, the entire human likeness becomes clear.

Hundreds of Specimens make dutch Portraits by Michael Mapes

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Fine Art Mosaics from Insects, Plants and Stuff

Giant Map of Zombies onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Giant Map of Zombies

Eine riesige Karte, auf der so ziemlich alle erdenklichen Formen von Zombies verzeichnet sind von Jason B. Thompson, Prints davon kann man auf Kickstarter kaufen. Hier das Teil nochmal in einer höheren Auflösung, in der man auch die Filmtitel entziffern kann. Ich hab’ da jetzt eine Weile drübergeschaut und keinen einzigen Fehler gefunden, auch wenn die Karte inhaltlich extrem weit gefasst ist, und ich liebe es, dass es eine Kategorie für Konformisten auf einer Zombie-Karte gibt (die Pflanzen-Aliens aus Body Snatchers).

The Map of Zombies will be a 24″x36″ poster […] that takes you on a tour of every imaginable type of zombie in a visual format. Drawn in the style of a vintage medical chart, it identifies over 350 different types of zombies from horror movies, books, video games, comics, manga and TV shows. This map includes EVERY important (and almost every unimportant) zombie genre work, from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” to the movies of George Romero and Lucio Fulci, to Kengo Hanazawa’s “I Am a Hero.”

The Map of Zombies by Jason B. Thompson (via io9)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Giant Map of Zombies

WiFi-enabled Smart Grill with Voice Recognition onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com WiFi-enabled Smart Grill with Voice Recognition

Frisch von der CES, wo es ansonsten nur große Langeweile zu sehen gab (vom neuen Oculus Rift und Sonys Game Streaming vielleicht mal abgesehen: Ein Smart Grill mit WiFi, Spracherkennung und Schnickschnack. Das Teil schickt einem Mails, wenn man die Bratwurst wenden muss. Wer’s braucht…

The Lynx Concept Grill is a voice-activated smart grill that automatically cooks foods based on user commands. […] The grilling process begins with a couple of simple questions from the grill about what’s to be cooked. The grill connects to an online database to determine the optimal grilling time and technique for the food, and tells the chef where on the grill to place each item to ensure the best result and have everything ready to go all at the same time.

The Lynx Smart Grill can send notifications via audio, visual alerts, and mobile platforms. The result is an end to the chaos that too often accompanies a cookout. For additional security and peace of mind, the Smart Grill shuts off if it does not hear instructions for 30 minutes.

Link (via Boing Boing)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com WiFi-enabled Smart Grill with Voice Recognition

Mestre Fungos weird GIFs onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Mestre Fungos weird GIFs

Großartige, weirde GIFs von Henrique Lima aka Mestre Fungo. (via High Fructose)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Mestre Fungos weird GIFs

Meme-Mutation on Facebook onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Meme-Mutation on Facebook

Facebook hat eine kleine, aber sehr schöne Studie über Meme-Mutation online gestellt. Anhand eines Spruchs zum amerikanischen Gesundheitssystem haben sie untersucht, in welcher Weise dieser im Verlauf des Sharings remixt wird und von wem welche Remixe kommen. Solche Studien mit ziemlich genauen Details zu Memetik würde ich mir viel öfter wünschen, die Psychologie hinter Sharing und Memes und Virals ist schließlich das einzige, was an diesem Kram im Jahr 2014 noch wirklich interessant ist – für mich zumindest.

Nettes Detail übrigens: amerikanische Demokraten neigten zu Remixen mit Star Wars und Zombies, während Republikaner Alk und Staat/Steuern bevorzugten.

Take for example, the meme: “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, post this as your status for the rest of the day”.

In September of 2009, over 470,000 Facebook users posted this exact statement as their status update. At some point someone created a variant by prepending “thinks that” (which would follow the individual’s name, e.g., “Sam thinks that no one…”), which was copied 60,000 times. The third most popular variant inserted “We are only as strong as the weakest among us” in the middle. “The rest of the day” at one point (probably in the late evening hours) became “the next 24 hours”. Others abbreviated it to “24 hrs”, or extended it to “the rest of the week”. […]

The original variant in support of Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) was propagated primarily by liberals, while those mentioning government and taxes slanted conservative. Sci-fi variants were slightly liberal, alcohol-related ones slightly conservative, while opposition to cancer was uniform. Just as certain genetic mutations can be advantageous in specific environments, meme mutations can be propagated differentially if the variant matches the subpopulation’s beliefs or culture.

The evolution of memes on Facebook (via Quartz)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Meme-Mutation on Facebook

NSA hunted Osama Bin Laden-Avatars in World of Warcraft onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com NSA hunted Osama Bin Laden-Avatars in World of Warcraft

Vor einem Monat kam raus, dass die NSA in World of Warcraft und Second Life unterwegs war und jetzt wissen wir auch, wieso: Die haben dort nach „Jihadists“ gesucht, die in Osama Bin Laden-Avataren frischen Terroristennachwuchs anheuern und „preach and issue new fatwas for hundreds of years to come“. Oh, the humanity.

“Imagine that jihadist supporters create a detailed avatar of Usama bin Ladin and use his many voice recordings to animate the avatar for up-close virtual reality experiences that could be used to preach, convert, recruit, and propagate dogma to the media,” the study states, using the spelling “Usama” widely used within the intelligence community. […]

“The Bin Ladin avatar could preach and issue new fatwas for hundreds of years to come, as the fidelity of his likeness would be entirely believable and animated in new ways to keep him current and fresh,” the study added.

U.S. Intel: Osama Bin Laden Avatar Could Recruit Terrorists Online for Centuries

Vorher auf Nerdcore:

World of Spycraft: NSA hunts Terrorists in MMORPGs

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com NSA hunted Osama Bin Laden-Avatars in World of Warcraft

Mobile Face-Recognition-App to identify Strangers onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Mobile Face-Recognition-App to identify Strangers

Kiss your Meatspace-Anonymity goodbye: Eine kommende Mobile App gleicht Fotos per Gesichtserkennung mit Social Media-Profilen ab und schickt den Namen von Fremden inklusive Links zu Facebook und Twitter und Dating-Sites. Auf ihrer Website drohen sie schon mit: „this is just the beginning“. Bring out the Creeps!

An upcoming app for Android, iOS, and Google Glass called NameTag will allow you to photograph strangers and find out who they are — complete with social networking and online dating profiles.

Spot someone out and about that you want to identify, and you can capture their face using your device’s camera. The app will send the photo wirelessly to NameTag’s server, where it will compare the photo to millions of online records and return with a name, more photos, and social-media profiles, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where the person (or their friends) might have publicly posted photos of themselves.

Facial recognition app matches strangers to online profiles (via Algopop)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Mobile Face-Recognition-App to identify Strangers

Uncovering the Dirty Secrets Behind the Latest Dead Bigfoot Story onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Uncovering the Dirty Secrets Behind the Latest Dead Bigfoot Story

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The net's been buzzing this week after a hunter based out of Texas (a weird enough state already) announced he'd accomplished the seemingly impossible task of killing a Sasquatch. Unlike others who've claimed the same, this guy says he has a body! But there's something the media isn't telling you about the kill...

Rick Dyer calls himself a professional Bigfoot hunter, and it's true that in the last few years he's made a career out of searching for the legendary beast. But while the "professionals" from Finding Bigfoot can't seem to track down the hairy dude over four seasons with hundreds of leads and thousands of dollars in equipment, Dyer claims he's managed to kill one with some pork and a gun.

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Images of Dyer's kill began circling the internet this week, and it wasn't long before mainstream outlets like TIME magazine were giving valuable press to the "man who shot Sasquatch", running stories about how Dyer baited the beast with Wal-Mart ribs nailed to a tree outside San Antonio. He claims that after the big guy was studied (we're never told by whom), his body was stuffed and preserved. Now Dyer is touring the country with the dead body in the back of his trailer, charging curious onlookers a few bucks a pop for a peek behind the curtain.

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If this all sounds a little, well, fake.. that's because it is. What the media isn't mentioning is that this isn't the first time that Rick Dyer has "killed Bigfoot".

Back in 2008, mainstream news outlets like CNN went crazy after two hunters held a press conference to announce that they had shot and killed Sasquatch in Georgia, providing photos of the creature with its guts hanging out, the body frozen safely in an icebox. But when the beast was sold for some $50,000, the ice was thawed only to reveal a rubber suit with some cow parts tossed in. One of the hoaxers, a police officer, lost his job over the matter. The other was Rick Dyer.

Of course, Dyer claims that the Men in Black stole the real body.

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The fun doesn't stop there, because just last year Dyer was part of a British documentary on the elusive beast, Shooting Bigfoot, a film that caused quite a bit of controversy thanks to its final moments.. If you plan on seeing the film, and can't parse out the ending from the title, consider this your SPOILER ALERT.

During the climax of Shooting Bigfoot, Dyer and filmmaker Matthew Morgan are camped out in a "research area" that Dyer has a gut feeling about. The "skeptical documentarian", of course, doesn't exactly believe him but goes along with it. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Sure enough, like most of these cliches tend to shake out, something attacks the camp that night and we're left with a lot of shaky, inconclusive footage a la Blair Witch Project. There's a scuffle, a clip of a tense Dyer clutching his gun, some argumentative yelling, and a shot is fired. Finally, we're given a glimpse of a big hairy face that bears a striking resemblance to a rubber mask.

We're led to believe that Rick downed a Bigfoot in those final moments, but Morgan doesn't quite have the gumption to end his film conclusively and has refused to really elaborate on what happened.

Morgan remaining mum on the subject is probably a good thing, since one of the people involved in the film came out and said the entire final sequence was written and rehearsed several times. So much for categorizing the film as a documentary.

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Add these events to Dyer's complete distain for serious researchers, his past run-ins with the law, and his constant failure to actually provide any actual data to real scientists, and it's a wonder that any mainstream news outlets are even bothering to pay any attention to the latest hoax.. especially without mentioning all of Dyer's past transgressions.

Turns out good reporting is harder to track down than Bigfoot.

If you're serious about tackling your own hunt for the elusive Sasquatch (or starting your own traveling sideshow attraction), these are much better places to bag a Bigfoot than the supposedly "wooded area" where Dyer shot his. Good luck!

[Huge thanks to Brett McGinnis for tracking down a photo of the "Bigfoot"]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Uncovering the Dirty Secrets Behind the Latest Dead Bigfoot Story

Are we running out of water? Absolutely not. onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Are we running out of water? Absolutely not.

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We hear a lot about how drinking water is drying up around the world. But the fact is that we have a "theoretically limitless" supply of drinking water, according to hydraulics engineers. The real problem is economic.

Over on Quora, subsea hydraulics engineer Ryan Carlyle answers whether scientists have determined how much water is left for us to drink on the planet:

Global water supplies are theoretically limitless, because it's not destroyed when we use it — it just gets dirty. Water can be reused... if you live on a river, some of your drinking water probably comes from an upstream town's sewage treatment plant!

Waste water recycling and salt water desalination can produce any imaginable quantity of potable water. Moisture can be slowly pulled from the air even in the driest deserts. A sufficiently deep well drilled almost anywhere on the planet will eventually hit a large salt-water aquifer.

The real problem is that fresh water requires energy and money to produce. Nations and citizens don't want to spend vast quantities of resources on producing fresh water. Access to clean water is seen by most as a basic human right, meaning it must be cheap for consumers, meaning it must be cheap to produce.

Cheap water has to be accessible, low-salt, and relatively clean to start with. That's a very rare sort of water — basically just rivers, lakes, shallow aquifers, and a bit of precipitation and ice. Such fresh water is being diverted in enormous quantities for agriculture. When you consider the rapid depletion of major aquifers and various lakes for irrigation projects around the world, we're probably already using more fresh water than can be sustained. There is extra fresh water in inconvenient places like glaciers and rainforests but it isn't cheap enough to transport to population centers.

So water is limited by the amount of wealth and economic activity we're willing to invest. But if money is no object, global water supplies are limitless.

We could easily be assuring the entire world an endless supply of potable water, if only the money were available.

Read more about this question on Quora.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Are we running out of water? Absolutely not.