Richard Westenra

The eighth group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• Ragdoll Cannon (game)
• My Four-Year-Old Son Plays Grand Theft Auto
• ALT/1977: WE ARE NOT TIME TRAVELERS – 2010 gadgets redesigned for 1977
• Making a tiny star on Earth? – Scientists at the LIFE project in California expect to develop controlled fusion (and thus an almost limitless supply of safe clean energy) within the next 2-3 years. !
• 8 Month Old Deaf Baby’s Reaction To Cochlear Implant Being Activated (video)
• Stuff no one told me (but I learned anyways) – Sharing cheap yet deep knowledge since a couple weeks ago
• Norton Cries Wolf – Insight into Symantec’s alarmist and disingenous report on child internet usage, which has been credulously reported by NZ media such as Stuff.co.nz
• Black on Beck – Does Glenn Beck have Nazi Tourettes? (video)
• Your Videogame Driving Skills Don’t Apply in Real Life (video)
• Cognitive Biases – A Visual Study Guide
• Economic growth cannot buy the planet more time
• Great Literature Retitled To Boost Website Traffic
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
• Is Bill Gates delivering a new Einstein letter?
• In Sweden, the Men Can Have It All – The NY Times investigates Sweden’s radical parental leave laws, and their effects on traditional gender roles.
• Is Meth a ‘Smart Drug’?
• My once-in-a-generation cut? The armed forces. All of them.
• Gimme back my son (video) – ffs give him back his son, jeez
• Warner Brothers Sued for Pirating Anti-Pirating Software
• Best Cry Ever (Wookie Song) – Fearfarts Remix (video)
• The Empathic Civilisation (video)
• World’s most and least touristy places – Google map color-coded by level of touristiness, based on distribution of photos on Panoramio.
• Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (video)
• Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative – This catalyzing article by Wired Mag has tapped into a growing wave of anti-facebook sentiment and spawned the race for a replacement
• Can you build your way out of traffic congestion? – *spoiler alert* The answer appears to be ‘No’.

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The seventh group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook
• Ground Zero – Google Maps + Javascript = Nuclear damage simulation.
• Street Accountants (video)
• Cleanternet.org | campaign for a cleaner and safer Internet (video)
• Antipodes Map – Apparently my flat is on the exact opposite side of the world from Vilaude in Northern Spain.
• Meet the ‘sabre-toothed sausage’ – A guided tour of a naked mole rat, one of the world’s strangest mammals
• How Dr. Seuss would prove the halting problem undecidable
• Why women are starting to pay for sex
• Potato gun, lightning, and sonic magic: Unconventional speed tests for the browser (video) – Google Chrome team up with a few creative minds to bring Chrome’s speed to life.
• Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? – Since abandoning drug prohibition in 2001, Portugal has seen an astonishing decline in drug abuse.
• Pot, meet kettle: a response to Steve Jobs’ letter on Flash
• Clever Crows, Complex Cognition? (video)
• Only Christians should be exposed to ethics? – Australian religious leaders object to non-christian students being taught secular ethics while their christian counterparts are taught scripture.
• jCharacterfall (game) – A small, addictive jQuery game that may improve your typing skills.
• I hate computers: confessions of a sysadmin
• Logorama – The Logo Design Movie That Won an Oscar (video) – This 16-minute movie took 6 years to produce, and has some sweet animation.
• Time for an Intervention – ‘Dear Christchurch, you really just can’t go on picking mayors because you’ve heard of them before.’
• Cows on Treadmills Produce Electricity for Farms
• Betting on Climate Change: Corporations Stand to Make or Lose Billions – While politicians and pundits distort climate science any way they want, serious industrialists cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion.
• The trustworthiness of beards
• A handy guide of what to do if you make first contact with aliens
• Engineered Virus Harnesses Light To Split Water – A possible efficient method of generating hydrogen?
• Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
• How Wikileaks shone light on world’s darkest secrets – Wikileaks has had more scoops in 3 years than The Washington Post has had in 30.
• Digital Economy Bill: The Now Show gets it spot on. (audio) – An hilarious, accurate and important dissection of the UK’s version of Section 92A.

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The sixth group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• 70km-wide scale map of the solar system
• Climate Catastrophe: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research
• Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
• Radiohead – 2+2=5 (video)
• The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon (video)
• I think my argument is so powerful that it’s not necessary to talk about it (video)
• Five browsers and the modes of transportation they resemble
• The Last Advertising Agency On Earth (video)
• HTML5 & CSS3 Browser Support Checklist
• How A $500 Craigslist Car Beat $400K Rally Racers
• A Template For Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever (video)
• Lessons of a $618,616 Death – Two years after her husband’s death from cancer, Amanda Bennett examines the costs of keeping one man alive.
• Here’s a bargain: five dollars to overthrow the US government – Are you a political subversive? If so, please fill out this form and send us $5.
• Destiny Church pastors replaced after walk-out – More than half the Brisbane congregation walked out of last Sunday’s service over concerns the church was becoming a money-making cult. Win!
• Snatch Wars (video) – Darth Vader + Bricktop = comedy gold
• When using open source makes you an enemy of the state
• Algae to solve the Pentagon’s jet fuel problem – US scientists believe they will soon be able to use algae to produce biofuel for the same cost as fossil fuels!
• This is the Title of the Story Which is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself
• The annotated Rodney Hide: treating parliament with contempt – Rodney Hide lied to the House yesterday. Relentlessly and repeatedly.
• Google Offers Cash For Bugs – Google is offering hackers up to $1337 if they find a new security flaw in Chromium.
• Born Poor? – “Prior to about 20 years ago, most economists thought that inequality just greased the wheels of progress. Overwhelmingly now, people who study it empirically think that it’s sand in the wheels.”
• Selleck Waterfall Sandwich – I am lost for words
• 20 Years of Adobe Photoshop
• Why do people often vote against their own interests?
• Study shows Kiwis want to see cigarettes banned by 2020 – Hey you know what works really really well? Prohibition! People used to do lots of drugs, but then they made it illegal and nobody does drugs anymore and there has been no downside whatsoever!

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The fifth group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution – Important developments in biology herald a possible paradigm shift
• Beatles infographics
• The future of UX design has arrived
• The most useless machine ever!
• Colonel Sanders Botches KFC Ad Voiceover (video)
• Offline Book “Lending” Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
• The universe is a REALLY big place – The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
• Boots hit by mass homeopathy ‘overdose’
• Animator vs. Animation (video) – Yeah, making flash videos kinda feels like this sometimes
• The Killer Elite – If you enjoy good war journalism, I highly recommend this article from an embedded Rolling Stone journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• US Blockading Costa Rican Sugar Unless It Agrees To Draconian IP Laws Citizens Don’t Want
• We don’t give a damn about the monarchy – Prince William’s entourage of British gossip columnists has been shocked to discover that Kiwis no longer care about royal visits
• A Risky Proposal: Gay marriage, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and the Supreme Court
• Goodnight Keith Moon
• Two Gentlemen of Lebowski What if William Shakespeare wrote The Big Lebowski?
• The Ballad of Colton Harris-Moore – The story of a modern outlaw folk hero
• Small Talk With A Web Designer
• When skyscrapers signal a downturn – The ‘irrational exuberance’ in the markets that accompany the construction of super-tall buildings is often a sign that a recession is on the way.
• Kant Attack Ad (video)
• NZ’s cyber spies win new powers
• The True Odds of Airborne Terror Chart
• Global healthcare spending Vs. Life expectancy – The US is off the chart (and not in a good way)
• Uranium Is So Last Century: Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke – Nuclear scientists are rediscovering Thorium, a cleaner, safer, more abundant, more efficient, less weapon-proliferating alternative to Uranium
• Star Wars Weather
• Browser Pong (game)

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The fourth group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• Style versus design: Why understanding the difference is what it’s all about. – “Not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and usability where most of the web must be built.”
• Kiwiright (video) – A 12 minute documentary about how NZ’s copyright laws have been contorted to benefit the financial needs of corporate rights holders and no longer benefits the public nor the artists who create the work itself.
• The Physics of Space Battles
• Inside Afghanistan – Fighting Alongside Stoned Afghan Soldiers (video)
• Best Man Rigs Newlyweds’ Bed To Tweet During Sex. Not Kidding.
• How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
• Atheist bus ad campaign hits a nerve
• The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it’s working.
• Google Chrome – Features (video)
• Everything is OK Montage (video)
• Canadian record industry faces massive liability over copyright infringement – Ah, sweet sweet irony.
• Photos Taken From Unusual Angles
• Dutch scientists grow artificial meat in lab, see end to the need for factory farming within a decade.
• ikea lamp (video) – Hilarious ad directed by Spike Jonze
• Macho Trap Shooting (video)
• Link This Bookmarklet – Hooray! Quick linking ahoy!
• Is Global Warming Unstoppable? – Scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world’s economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.
• The Zoomquilt II – A trippy flash animated collaborative art project
• IEBlog: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers – Check out all the hilarious vitriolic comments from pissed-off developers.
• 38 Ways To Win An Argument — Arthur Schopenhauer – Advice for budding Sophists (or forum trolls) from one of the philosophical greats.
• Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again – Optogeneticists are figuring out how to control brain neurons with viruses that carry genes taken from pond scum, activated by beams of light.
• The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”
• I’m Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment
• Most. Realistic. War Game. Ever. – A sneak peak at Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, currently in development.
• New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it’s no friend of the earth – The Guardian blows the whistle on NZ’s ‘100% pure’ reputation.

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The third group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• Pirate Bay closure sparked file-sharing boom – Web-policing fail
• The Gay Animal Kingdom
• Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter
• Aristotle’s law petition confounds blase Berkeley – Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats wants Berkeley to legally acknowledge Aristotle’s law, commonly expressed as A=A.
• Fullsize: a new IMG attribute – A campaign to get a new attribute called fullsize into the next version of HTML
• 2010 California Marriage Protection Act: Safeguarding marriage from the evils of divorce – excellent satire of the Californian Anti-Gay Marriage law change
• What the F**K is Social Media?
• Designers Who Are Technical: The More You Know, The Better Your Work – …Counter-Point.
• Designers are not Programmers – Point…
• 2012: It’s a Disaster!!! (video) – The trailer for the new disaster flick ‘2012′, recut as a comedy.
• Skiing Robot Not Very Useful But Totally Fun To Watch (video) – Damn robots, stealing our freshies
• In Deep (video) – Teaser for the new Matchstick Productions ski flick. Music by Ennio Morricone.
• “Last, Loneliest, Ugliest” – NZ Last in Aid Ranking – Action Aid ranks New Zealand last among 22 donor countries in sustainability, social protection and hunger alleviation.
• DJ Steve Porter featuring Vince Offer – “Slap Chop Rap” (video)
• Police Ten 7 – Safer Communities Together (video) – NZ’s latest internet meme
• Heavy Footing (video) – If you liked the cross-country snowboarding video, check this one out. It’s the next, next big thing,
• Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers – *spoiler alert!* Chrome wins. *spoilers end*
• Cross Country Snowboarding – next big thing in snowboarding (video)
• ‘Putting on a show of resistance’ – My mate Graham was featured in a Stuff.co.nz article today
• Afghans: Question Of More US Troops Beside The Point – Afghans want more US troops! Kinda sorta! In a way!
• BBC Survey: Kiwi accent most attractive and prestigious form of English outside the UK – Screw it, I’m moving to Europe.
• Dove – Evolution (video) – No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.
• Air NZ chief blasts climate change ‘circus’
• Crazy Animation Starts Normal, Goes Full Retard (video)
• NZ’s murder rate halved in past 20 years – The national crime rate appears to be radically dropping despite an overwhelming public belief that crime has got worse.

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