New Yorker iPhone site (6)
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Megachurches and corporations are alike (9)
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From Joseph Clarke in Triple Canopy, a comparison of the histories of the American megachurch and corporation. Lakewood and America's twelve hundred other megachurches -- congregations that draw between two thousand and fifty thousand people per weekend -- are not simply vast machines for passive spectatorship. Sunday services are convergences of worshipers who spend their weeknights at prayer groups, Bible studies, ministries, and missionary training sessions. Successful megachurches are like well-run companies, with intricate corporate ...
Netflix Prize won? (15)
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When it's your kid, it's not babysitting (15)
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New father Paul Drielsma thinks that the language around fatherhood needs to change. Scour the parenting forums on the Internet and you'll find the common lament that "DH" (darling husband) expects a medal whenever he "babysits" junior for a few hours. I have little sympathy for DH in these cases, but maybe a step in the right direction would be to stop using language that suggests hired help -- to stop referring to DH's job ...
The most remarkable airplane of the 20th century (10)
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A short appreciation of the SR-71 Blackbird, an airplane that was literally faster than a speeding bullet. "It wasn't like any other airplane," he told me. It was terrifying, exciting, intense and humbling every time you flew. Each mission was designed to fly at a certain speed; you always knew the airplane had more. It was like driving to work in a double-A fuel dragster." The skin of the plane's fuselage was a whopping 85% ...
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giginger said:
I'm getting one.
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georgeadams said:
συμφωνώ!
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danieltalsky said:
This was the coolest possible thing to me when I was a kid. I made a model of it.
Potter, Stars Trek and Wars, Matrix all the same movie (35)
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You've likely seen this comparison of Harry Potter and the first Star Wars movie but that comparison has recently been expanded to include not only Potter and Star Wars but also The Matrix and Abrams' Star Trek. Once upon a time, Luke | Kirk | Neo | Harry was living a miserable life. Feeling disconnected from his friends and family, he dreams about how his life could be different. One day, he is greeted by ...
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giginger said:
Amazing.
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joshjs said:
This is neither funny nor insightful. But the comment thread includes a comparison of Frost/Nixon and Rocky 3, which made me laugh.There are only a few stories, really. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_(narrative)
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Sara said:
The Monomyth! I love it!
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Heather said:
Once upon a time, Luke | Kirk | Neo | Harry was living a miserable life. Feeling disconnected from his friends and family, he dreams about how his life could be different. One day, he is greeted by Obi Wan | Captain Pike | Trinity | Hagrid and told that his life is not what it seems, and that due to some circumstances surrounding his birth | birth | birth | infancy he was meant for something greater.*sigh*
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Kluzter said:
Really... son las mismas... pero bueh... con reductio ad absurdum, llegamos a lo que nos enseñaron en secu:inicio, nudo, desarrollo y desenlance.
Great places to work (19)
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CNNMoney tells us about seven great companies to work for. For instance, a Colorado brewing company gives their employees free beer and company ownership. After one year of work, each employee receives an ownership stake in the company and a free custom bicycle. After five years every employee enjoys an all-expenses-paid trip to Belgium -- the country whose centuries-old beer tradition serves as a model for the Fort Collins, Colo., brewery. Oh yeah, and employees ...
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Joakim Jardenberg said:
Man jan väl säga att vissa företag vårdar sina anställda bättre än andra.
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zed said:
New Belgium remains my favorite beer ever: Sunshine is the best, followed by Fat Tire. Plus clearly the company is awesome.
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iBspoof said:
another reason to LOVE fat tire!
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DigDoug said:
Hey Schmoopy... The beer company is exactly who you think it is. If they need a Developer/DBA, I'll relocate.
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Luke said:
Holy crap! New Belium sounds awesome!
Ghostbusters III (8)
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Over on BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh shares his idea for a Ghostbusters III screenplay based on NYNEX, the telephone company that served New York and New England from 1984 through 1997. Pay phones ring for no reason, and they don't stop. Dead relatives call their families in the middle of the night. People, horrifically, even call themselves-- but it's the person they used to be, phoning out of the blue, warning them about future misdirection.Every once ...
Michael Jackson dead at 50 (10)
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From the NY Times: L.A. Times Reports Jackson Is Dead | 6:24 p.m. The newspaper cited "city and law enforcement sources." The networks and CNN are also broadcasting the news, citing the Times story. The LA Times story is here but isn't loading right now. Twitter is melting down a little. RIP, King of Pop. Update: The LA Times story is loading now. Here's what it says: Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by ...
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Jake Spurlock said:
I don't care what anyone says... This is the greatest performer of all time. RIP.
On political sex scandals (7)
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Sage advice from Alec Baldwin about the Mark Sanford affair: Don't Take the Bait. Now is a wonderful opportunity to show the country what Democrats/liberals/progressives/unaligned learned from the Clinton era. Whatever personal problems that public officials deal with privately, leave them alone. This could happen to anyone, in any state, regardless of party. Why make the voters of South Carolina suffer while Sanford is skewered? If he wants to resign, so be it. If not, ...
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Nick said:
that's not true. the issue is not the affair, but the hypocrisy.these are the people that are pushing for no gay marriages, in name of "family values". they dig this hole for themselves, and if they judge people based on "family values", it's more than fair that we judge them so in the same currency.
Previously on Lost (36)
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A Bolivian TV station was duped into airing screencaps showing a plane crash from Lost thinking that it was the crash of Air France Flight 447 somehow photographed in widescreen from inside the plane. In their rush to air exclusive photos of Flight 447's destruction, no one in this newsroom stopped to ask the logical questions, such as: 1) How did the camera survive? and 2) Why are the photos in wide-screen format?The answers, of ...
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Casey said:
I think the original story has been shared a lot before but the wording of the quotation is pretty great.
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philco said:
i bet everyone on that plane wished they were on lost too. oh. :(
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EchoWhiskey said:
Laura, you must be so proud.
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Zio Bonino said:
lol
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JMO said:
this is way too funny
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camilalpav said:
Eu SABIA! Era impossível isso não dar merda, somehow, somewhere.
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Benjamin Kabak said:
Wow. Just wow.
A different wavelength (18)
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From The Onion: 95 Percent Of Opinions Withheld On Visit To Family. "There was a time when my sister would mention how much she wants an SUV, and I'd be unable to resist launching into a whole thing about how irresponsible and wasteful they are. But after receiving my thousandth blank, confused stare from everybody at the table, I realized it was futile," Wilmot said. "Now, I don't even flinch when my dad mentions he's ...
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ack said:
The onion nails it, ha
Language shapes thought (19)
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Lera Boroditsky shares some recent studies which show that language shapes the way we think. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language. So, for example, German painters are more likely to ...
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mac said:
Play with Sapir-Whorf, you're gonna get burned.
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Sara said:
... more discourse on the whole "language makes us think the way we do" idea, mentioning the Boroditsky piece.
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ivana said:
"Lera Boroditsky shares some recent studies which show that language shapes the way we think."
Climatologist James Hansen: we're almost too late re: climate change (15)
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Climatologist James Hansen, who is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the creator of one of the first climate models that predicted global warming, is convinced that the problem of climate change caused by humans is much more dire than is generally thought (subscribers only link; abstract). Hansen has now concluded, partly on the basis of his latest modeling efforts and partly on the basis of observations made by other scientists, ...
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Boris Mann said:
I washed Sharkwater with Rachael the other day, and finished reading Bottomfeeder some time ago, about our approach to the oceans' biomass. This seems equally fucked.
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philco said:
WE'RE DEAD MEAT!
Ten Best Picture nominees for Oscars (9)
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Whoa, next year there will be ten nominated films up for the Best Picture Oscar instead of the customary five. I'd love to see a statistical analysis of how different the results are between long nominee lists and shorter subsets. (via crazymonk) Tags: movies Oscars
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Ae said:
Casablanca won out of a pool of 10, Titanic won a pool of 5. I'm liking the change.
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Dan N. said:
whoa indeed
Breatharians (24)
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Last night I found out about the most amazing load of crap I have ever heard of: breatharianism, a extreme diet whose most dedicated followers claim to subsist on air only. There are a number of variations on this basic theme but perhaps the most colorful breatharian is Wily Brooks. From Wikipedia: Wiley Brooks is a purported breatharian, and founder of the "Breatharian Institute of America". He was first introduced to the public in 1980, ...
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Dan N. said:
that's fantastic
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Ramón FSM said:
No se si catalogar esto como una obra maestra de… algo, o como una soplapollez más absurda que los paraguas para buzos.
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Rachel said:
Coke is Liquid Light, Man
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Gabriel said:
talk about full of sh*t
Twitter litter (23)
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The problem with all of the "we're tracking the most popular links on Twitter" sites is that link sharing on Twitter depends on (in order of decreasing relevance): 1. the time it takes to read/view the link (shorter is way better) 2. if the subject of the link is Twitter or Facebook 3. the sense of outrage aroused in the reader (the more the better) 4. if the link was published by fucking Mashable 5. ...
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Ryan Sholin said:
Right, so the links that everyone on Twitter is mashing on = useless, but break that down into popular links shared by journalists, or, say, by me (http://links.ryansholin.com) and it gets interesting...
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Serginho said:
If the link as published by fucking Mashable.
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Nick Bergus said:
Funny because it's true.
Stop masking passwords (22)
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Jakob Nielsen says: stop masking passwords in web input forms. Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures. Sing it, brother. It's even worse on the iPhone...even with the last letter thing that it gives you, I still mistype passwords all the time. Tags: jakobnielsen web development
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phrakture said:
WTF?
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Ran Yaniv said:
This is only going to get worse, considering the latest trend of scratching the password confirmation field in favor of a shorter sign up page
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kegz said:
What do others think? I'd be all for it, but I think people would freak.
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striatic said:
i <3 jacob nielsen. only masking passwords when the user toggles masking is smart.
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vasta said:
Masking passwords drives me insane.
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tayknight said:
i can't imagine my passwords appearing in cleartext (nevermind how their sent over the wire).
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Jarred said:
not so sure this is a good idea
The house that used to be there (9)
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Ponyo trailer (9)
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The trailer for Ponyo, the latest animated feature film from Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, etc.). The film opened in Japan last year and made more than $150 million at the box office. The American version is dubbed and I don't know if a subtitled version will made it to theaters in the US or not. There was a theatrical release of a subtitled Mononoke but that was a long time ago. Tags: hayaomiyazaki ...
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philco said:
miyazakiiiiii!
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mac said:
be there or be square
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striatic said:
i know rebecca wants to see this one.
