Fuego Valiente

$8000 Black and White Only Digital Camera

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:29:01 -0400

$8000 Black and White Only Digital Camera:

I will admit to experiencing a lot of camera lust, and the name Leica is enough to get me salivating, but I really just can’t believe this announcement. Surely there is a market, albeit niche, for digital camera that can’t perceive colour, or they wouldn’t make it. That said, when I next look to grow my camera collection, this will be the last one on my list.

How common is your birthday? Very interesting, I thought mine...

Thu, 17 May 2012 05:13:00 -0400

How common is your birthday?

Very interesting, I thought mine would be more popular give the amount of people I know that share it, but I guess it makes sense to see how popular september is when you do the math.

(via explore-blog)

brain-food: Motleyby Olga Noes

Sat, 12 May 2012 05:10:20 -0400

brain-food:

Motley
by Olga Noes

"[The] average daydream is about fourteen seconds long and [we] have about two thousand of them per..."

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:01:27 -0400

“[The] average daydream is about fourteen seconds long and [we] have about two thousand of them per day. In other words, we spend about half of our waking hours — one-third of our lives on earth — spinning fantasies.”

- The Storytelling Animal – the science of how we came to live and breathe stories. (via explore-blog)

Who measures this? How can you measure this? What constitutes a daydream? These numbers are astounding. I know that some of my best ideas come while daydreaming, but executing them becomes some much harder with daydreams in my way.

explore-blog: Graphic evidence for the dire need to change...

Thu, 03 May 2012 05:41:12 -0400

explore-blog:

Graphic evidence for the dire need to change educational paradigms – a week of a student’s electrodermal activity, showing flatlines during class. As MIT Media Lab’s Joi Ito points out, it’s just a single student’s activity and thus generalization would be frivolous, but it still gives one pause.

(ᔥ It’s Okay To Be Smart)

I have never been a class learner, labs are where it’s at.

"Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called..."

Wed, 02 May 2012 04:53:18 -0400

“Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration… shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects… All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.”

- Nietzsche (via explore-blog)

"I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:21:17 -0400

“I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly.”

- Einstein, in conversation with Indian philosopher Tagore in 1940, discussing truth and beauty in the context of science and spirituality – one of recorded history’s most intellectually remarkable conversations.

Announcing the Windows 8 Editions

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 04:58:39 -0400

Announcing the Windows 8 Editions:

Wow, a very sane set of editions for windows? The ability to switch interface languages in the basic edition? I’m almost convinced.

via Daring Fireball

Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:46:47 -0400

Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal:

there is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for “drug tourists” — has occurred. —cato.org

The semantics and details are important here, decriminalized is not the same as legalized. Possession of drugs is still prohibited, just not criminal, you won’t go to jail for it in the same way I won’t go to jail for being caught speeding yesterday. The second fundamental aspect to the equation is rehabilitation programs. Portugal is investing in treatment for hardcore drug users rather than investing in their incarceration.

But honestly, half?! There is half the drug use with more relaxed drug laws than previously? I feel it should be obvious that the only way to effectively stop drug trafficking is to cut the supply of end-users, sponsoring rehabilitation programs rather than crack teams of narcs seems a far more logical step to that goal. I would love to see other countries like my own, or the one I live in adopt a similar policy.

Photo

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:31:00 -0400

Instagram: Instagram + Facebook

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:39:55 -0400

Instagram: Instagram + Facebook:

instagram:

Today, we couldn’t be happier to announce that Instagram has agreed to be acquired by Facebook.

…

The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. You’ll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you.You’ll still be able to share to other social networks. And you’ll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique.

In point form:

Bye-bye Instagram. It was nice while it lasted, but I expected this from you, if you can’t make money with 30 million users, it’s not going to happen with a number bigger than that, and for better or worse websites like yours run on money.

Link Between Fast Food and Depression

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 04:57:27 -0400

Link Between Fast Food and Depression:

EurekAlert article.

According to a recent study headed by scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada, eating commercial baked goods (fairy cakes, croissants, doughnuts, etc.) and fast food (hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza) is linked to depression.

Published in the Public Health Nutrition journal, the results reveal that consumers of fast food, compared to those who eat little or none, are 51% more likely to develop depression.

Furthermore, a dose-response relationship was observed. In other words this means that “the more fast food you consume, the greater the risk of depression,” explains Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, lead author of the study, to SINC.

The study demonstrates that those participants who eat the most fast food and commercial baked goods are more likely to be single, less active and have poor dietary habits, which include eating less fruit, nuts, fish, vegetables and olive oil. Smoking and working more than 45 hours per week are other prevalent characteristics of this group.”

My first job was working at McDonald’s when I was 16. Then I read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Those two combined essentially ruined fast food for me forever. After reading this, I’m not too bummed out about it.

The best result of my dabbling in veganism was getting a lot more active in my kitchen.

(aspiringdoctors via cranquis)

Exclusive: a behind-the-scenes look at Facebook release engineering

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 06:47:29 -0400

Exclusive: a behind-the-scenes look at Facebook release engineering:

Did you know that the Facebook app is a 1.5GB binary and that They push updates to their servers through BitTorrent? I love Facebooks openness about the technology they use to power the worlds second largest website.

"1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your..."

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:00:14 -0400

“

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

”

- C. S. Lewis on writing, joining other sage writing advice from Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Wilder, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, Henry Miller, and David Ogilvy.

More on the power of simple words.

(via explore-blog)

Such great advice.

Imagine yourself on a mountain, with both your feet sustained by...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 10:12:43 -0400

Imagine yourself on a mountain, with both your feet sustained by a narrow protrusion from a rock face as smooth as glass. You have the index and middle fingers of your right hand stuffed into a pocket about hip height, scrambling for a place to grab with your left. You feel your climbing rope hanging down limp from your waist, you look up, it’s just a few meters until the reunion, the summit. You look down, well it’s a long ways down, a dizzying ways down. You can feel your hands start to sweat, wait, that’s to isolated to to be sweat, your finger has started bleeding a little. A certain sort of cold terror carried by a harsh wind on the exposed face starts to grip you. Options are, fall, or attempt a wild upwards manoeuvre, and likely fall regardless.

I recently started rock climbing, and while I don’t claim much proficiency at it, I know my gear, I know my knots, and I know my climbing partners. The first lesson after ropes and knots was that being strong doesn’t make you a better climber (though, I know, it’s hard to find a proficient climber without rippling muscles). The second lesson was that even good balance won’t directly make you a better climber, it’s faith, or the lack thereof that separates the men from the boys.

Strength and balance are poor friends when you’re tired after after a long, challenging ascent. Your legs might start shaking, your finger might start bleeding, the wind might cause shivers, or worse, it could start to rain. It’s faith in your gear and your partner that make it possible to leave behind safety over and over again on your way up an arduous and unknown route.

Which is where we come to the crux of the issue, the gear I climb with could hold my small car over a cliffs edge without it falling off, but that factual information is generally of little comfort to me if I don’t really believe it. An experienced and proficient climber has deep experiential knowledge of his equipments performance under normal conditions such as falling. He trusts it completely, he’s fallen often. So while an unexpected slip of the foot leading to a great slide will likely get his heart racing, before the rope catches him, he’s probably already mentally moved on to how to try again.

So there you have it, life lesson: falling or failing is a necessary component to achieving success and to date I’ve found no successful people who would state other wise.

14-year-old girl drinks 2 "Monster's", dies from cardiac arryhthmia superimposed on mitral valve prolapse.

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:37:58 -0400

14-year-old girl drinks 2 "Monster's", dies from cardiac arryhthmia superimposed on mitral valve prolapse.:

cranquis:

…The amount of caffeine [the girl] drank in the two Monster energy drinks is about the same as that found in 14 cans of Coca Cola — and is almost five times the recommended caffeine limit from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Apparently, if you happen to have Mitral Valve Prolapse (a usually-harmless condition, found in approximately 10% of the population), as this unlucky teenager did, it may only take 2 cans of Monster (consumed within 24 hour period) to kill you — as opposed to the “normal” prediction of 55+ cans, according to the Death by Caffeine calculator.

There is nothing healthy about energy drinks. Please people, just don’t drink ‘em.

Yes, that’s exactly how I feel about them.

Rocket engines. Deep sea exploration. Jeff Bezos is a certain...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 06:05:05 -0400

Rocket engines.
Deep sea exploration.
Jeff Bezos is a certain level of hero of mine.
I love the layout of page.

(via Daring Fireball)

Base Jump Inside a Church, Brussels Belgium

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:48:19 -0400

Base Jump Inside a Church, Brussels Belgium:

The video isn’t very clear, but that is one of the wildest stunts I’ve seen in a while.

Facebook warns employers not to solicit passwords, calls it an 'alarming' practice

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:04:00 -0400

Facebook warns employers not to solicit passwords, calls it an 'alarming' practice:

“If an employer sees on Facebook that someone is a member of a protected group (e.g. over a certain age, etc.) that employer may open themselves up to claims of discrimination if they don’t hire that person.”

“We’ll take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges.”

I couldn’t believe it when I read this AP article a few days ago, I guess facebook couldn’t either.

(via It is easier for me to see everything as one thing than to...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:23:00 -0400

(via It is easier for me to see everything as one thing than to see one… - but does it float)

I would like to take a moment to shamelessly self-promote the blog where I post artwork by others that I find inspiring favrit.es.