Sunday Reading

How the iPad made tablets mainstream. (Wired)

How Chris McCandless (of Into the Wild fame) actually died. (The New Yorker)

The total diet replacement Soylent continues its interesting climb to prominence. (Wired)

A National Geographic photographer's experience with leopard seals. (Imgur)

A large percentage of young people in Japan aren't interested in sex. (The Guardian) An interesting take on why this is happening. (reddit/r/bestof)

Sleep flushes away proteins that cause Alzheimer's. (Washington Post)

Target stops asking potential hires if they're ever been convicted of a felony. (New York Times)

New home sizes in square feet from around the world. There are certainly confounding variables such as percentage of the population that lives in apartments, number of people inhabiting home, etc., but it's none the less interesting to see the great variance in something that we typically see as a norm. (Source)

Werner Herzog on the Colbert Report:

I want the audience with me in wild fantasies. In something that illuminates them. You see, if I were only fact based, you see the book of books in literature then would be the Manhattan phone directory. 4 million entries, everything correct, but it dusts out of my ears and I do not know; do they dream at night? Does Mr. Jonathan Smith cry in his pillow at night? We do not know anything when we check all the correct entries in the phone directory. I am not this kind of a film maker.

To which Colbert says "Sir, if I may? I want to party with you, cowboy."

Links

Turns out no one died because of the Fukushima Power Plant Disaster. In fact, no one even got radiation poisoning. A nearly perfect example of neglect of probability when compared to other sources of energy.

Finland gives all new mothers a box full of essential supplies. "It's a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it's designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life."

The Obama Administration now judges the negative externality associated with carbon emissions as 60% higher than last year. Climate change is starting to grow some teeth.

Humans of New York - the Chess Hustler.

A different perspective on the Obama administration "scandals" of the last few weeks.

Cornell West is classy as hell.

I've been ranting for a while now about how full adoption of solar will change our world. Well, the utility companies think so too.

Sunday Reading

On having ideas, being creative, productive, and following through. New York Times

Real talk on investment advice. Reddit

An explanation of why Afghanistan is always at war. Reddit

The chief economist at the IMF, the guy who wrote my undergrad. econ. text book, admits that austerity in Europe has been more harsh than he expected. Washington Post

A succinct and useful explanation of what Obamacare does, when it happens, and all with sources. Reddit

The images that were placed on the Voyager spacecraft that was launched in 1977 that are currently at the edge of our solar system and the furthest objects ever sent from earth. Imgur

Analog bird call music box. Colossal

Links for August 12th

A wood worker I'm digging at the moment, John Houshmand.

The Japanese 5S method of organizing tools or really anything.

If you aren't familiar with Shwood they make wooden sunglasses. They're made of very high quality materials like Zeiss lenses and rosewood. Reading the article was a bit of a kick in the ass for me. Because of architecture school I'm adept at using a laser cutter and any other wood shop or design software they're using. Plus I should be better at design, but that's not what matters. They did it. Guess I have to do that at some point instead of making continual one-offs.

I'm not weird! From the NYT: “Cyclists have strange shapes: big quads, small waists and big butts. It’s hard to find pants.” Check out the Tumblr pic. Yikes.

Wiel Arets is the new dean at the College of Architecture at IIT. He's kind of a big deal so it should be interesting to see what he does to the program at IIT.

A teacher trips on LSD that a student gave him while on a field trip - wow.  (hat tip Ben)

I have this idea that I want to open up a multi-use store front that combines a few of the following: a coffee shop, venue, gallery, woodworking space, bar, sandwich/taco restaurant, etc. Obviously not all of those but say a place that's a coffee shop in the morning and a bar and live music venue at night, or a woodworking shop that has a glass partition so you can see the workers in the back and in the front they sell coffee and maybe sandwiches around noon (since we'd be making them for ourselves anyways, that's how potbelly started). Basically just any way to achieve efficiencies from things you already have or need. So much of that which we own sits idle a large amount of the time. I've always liked the idea of an architecture firm that has a storefront where they sell coffee and have a small cafe. The typical problem being that coffee shops don't make much money but if you already have the storefront and we're making coffee why not take advantage of the situation and drive foot traffic to your firm? Plus architects could use the exposure - I feel like they don't have enough interaction with the general public. That is, most people never get to just wander around and see what they do. Anyways, barista classes from Intelligentsia. One day, three hours, $200.