Via Jeffrey Goldberg, this is quite odd, but very entertaining:
Ridiculous Indian “Talent Show”
Category: Current Events
Expanding Manhattan & Boston’s Landfill History
There was an interesting piece in yesterday’s NYT outlining a proposed expansion of lower Manhattan: LoLo, which stands for Lower Lower Manhattan, is one of the first proposals from the Center for Urban Real Estate, a new research group at Columbia University. The neighborhood would be created by connecting Lower Manhattan and Governors Island with millions of cubic yards of landfill, similar to how Battery Park City was born in the 1970s. Over 20 to 30 years, the center estimates, LoLo would create 88 million square feet of development and generate $16.7 billion in revenue for the city. Here’s what the proposed project would look like: On a somewhat related note, this reminded me that a while back I picked up
Eric-Schmidt Backed “Slice”
Via Techcrunch, Eric Schmidt is backing a new start-up, Slice, that aims to organize and track your online purchases by querying purchase data from your inbox. I gave it a shot earlier this week, and found it to be surprisingly accurate and useful. I generally don’t use online life organization tools (e.g., Mint), but I found this to be a bit different. Instead of simply helping you to analyze your own purchasing behavior, it helps you anticipate and track outstanding items that are either en route or have been held up for some reason. So rather than log onto various sites to track your orders, you can just log into Slice, which has already identified the tracking numbers for shipped
Creepy Things From Japan
The Japanese have designed a robotic polar bear to “gently smack snorers in the face.” I’m not sure how this is supposed to work in practice, but the video makes it look even creepier than it sounds:
S&P Goofs Up Again
Via Kid Dynamite: Just in case you missed the most ridiculous story of the day – the BBC has the details: “Standard & Poor’s accidentally released a message to some of its subscribers on Thursday saying that it had downgraded French debt from its top AAA rating. S&P said it was investigating what had gone wrong and stressed that France still had an AAA rating.” So, Europe is a veritable powder keg right now waiting to blow, and S&P accidentally releases an erroneous message that they downgraded France. Then they said sorry. I’m half surprised that markets weren’t down even more this morning. Beyond absurd. Agreed.
Homemade Spacecraft
This is just cool:
The Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Congressman
Via Ezra Klein, this is not entirely surprising, but still fairly disturbing: Disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff is out of jail. He was released in June. He now works as an accountant at a kosher pizza parlor. And he needs a literary agent. “I was actually thinking of writing a book,” he told “60 Minutes.” “The Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Congressman.” In the interview, Abramoff gives away some of the tricks of his former trade. The big one? Dangle a job, he told Lesley Stahl. “When we would become friendly with an office and they were important to us, and the chief of staff was a competent person, I would say or my staff would say to him or her
Four Interesting Videos on Flying
I came across some interesting videos over the past couple days. They’re all related to flying in some way, but that’s just a coincidence. A Paraglider collides with a vulture: Birds “murmuring”: Whoa! Japan!: A strange new flying machine (a “multicopter”):
It’s going to be a big week…
Vanessa Kafka at the Cantab Lounge
From the open mic on Monday night: Matches & Heat: Till August: More of Vanessa’s music here.