Crickets Chirping

The other day I set my gchat status message to a quote from a 30 Rock episode:

I don’t believe in hypothetical situations. That’s like lying to your brain.

Josh IM’d me in response:

what if it’s only a “hypothetical situation” because you aren’t aware that it is an actual situation?

Me: I see what you did there. nice try.

(via (via)):

I recommend watching Ensuring Food Security in hi-def. I’m impressed by the level of detail they present, given the complexity of the issues. It’s in Japanese but it is subtitled in English. I think it’s wonderful, aside from the background music which is distracting (to me at least).

I wonder what this movie would look like if it were redone for the U.S. audience. A lot of issues would be the same- especially the reliance on corn, fat and oils. On the other hand, I feel like the presentation and level of detail would be too much for the average consumer here in the states to pay attention long enough to grok it. Or maybe I’ve just been conditioned to believe that based on the quality of PSAs we’ve enjoyed for so many years.

I love this isometric aesthetic. This particular frame:

reminded me of Josh Keyes:

The album cover, jacket and disc for Brad Laner’s Neighbors Singing feature Keyes’ work, and I just so happened to get it in the mail the other day.

I don’t even own a record player. I actually bought this LP just because I wanted the artwork.

But after listening to the album (it came with a card printed with a link to download the mp3s) I really kinda dig it. Reminds me of Caribou. Reading more about Laner, I found out he was in a band called Medicine from the early 90’s, and I rather liked them already.

Shawn sent me this as a wake-up message this morning. Perfect.

Japan, Right Now is an interesting data visualization of Japanese census data written in Processing.

I’m a fan of the stacked charts technique and I really like what Soma has done to project the data set in multiple sections interactively.

I think the navigation up and down the hierarchy could be improved (by, say, underlining the clickable titles in the upper left of each stacked chart, and including breadcrumbs) but overall I really like this piece.

Some examples of single stacked charts are the famous Baby Name Voyager and NYT Movie Revenues. While these are also interactive, Soma’s visualization is a little more ambitious because it links multiple stacked charts together.

Thanks for the link, Adam!

Eric sent me this (warning?) today:

Sometimes I wander around a store for hours before I realize they don’t sell bacon. Or groceries of any kind.

via SFist

I found another use for my JavaScript Markov Chain thingie: train it on transcripts of Sarah Palin’s interviews and speeches. Viola.

[Yes, I've seen interviewpalin.com.]

If you want a souvenir from your local bar, why not wander into the women’s restroom and steal a decorative vase? Quick, while the bar owner is shooing everyone out the door at closing time.

From stolen vase from the women's bathroom at a bar on divisadero

Protip: empty the water out before you put the vase in your pants.

The people you see later in the evening are unlikely to believe your explanation, however true it may be. And you really can’t count on your friends who were there to back it up either, because the entertainment value of not doing so is so great.

[Sorry to go on about this for two posts in a row. I'll post something lighthearted next.]

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

From NYT: Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million

This is funny because McCain was one of the Keating Five - part of what should now be the Eerily Familiar Savings and Loan Scandal (quick summary: criminally managed financial institutions going kerplooey because deregulation left them unchecked, leading to a taxpayer bailout).

The major differences between then and now appears to be that back then, hypercolor was in fashion, and now McCain is running for president rather than avoiding questions about his wife’s business dealings with Charles Keating.