Homeopathy
28
Jun
A 19 page strip about homeopathy. My follow up story-strip to the one I did on the MMR vaccine scare, and another chapter of my ongoing book about science. This is, in effect, the beta version of the strip. There will, I'm sure, be mistakes dotted throughout that I haven't spotted. So do feel free to point out any errors. The references will be in the next entry.
Panera Planning To Add More Pay-What-You-Want Restaurants
27
Jun
A month ago, Panera Bread Co. opened its first non-profit, pay-what-you-can-afford eatery, called the Saint Louis Bread Company Cares Café, in Clayton, MO. And the restaurant chain's chairman is so happy with the results, the company plans to launch two more in the coming months.
"I guess I would say it's performing better than we even might have hoped in our cynical moments, and it's living up to our best sense of humanity," Panera chairman Ron Shaich said of the experiment.
The restaurant's cashiers tell customers the suggested price of their orders and then the customers decide how much to pay. According to Shaich, between 60-70% pay the menu price. Around 15% dig into their pockets to pay a little more, while the other 15% or so pay less or even walk out paying nothing.
The restaurant, which features the same menu as Panera but is technically run by a non-profit organization called Panera Cares, took in $100,000 in revenue its first month. Panera supports the non-profit but is not on the hook financially if the pay-what-you-want restaurants fail.
Shaich didn't say where the non-profit's new locations would be. But a rep for Panera said they are looking for areas that will continue to attract an upscale diner, but is accessible to lower-income communities.
How Much Would You Pay At Panera If You Could Pay What You Want?survey software
Panera Co. to open more pay-what-you-wish eateries [AP]
Pile Isle Bamboo Bench by Elena Goray
25
Jun
Dutch designer Elena Goray, in cooperation with CONBAM, a bamboo distributor in Germany, has created the Pile Isle bamboo bench.
A bundle of brown bamboo poles is strapped together in smart and simple way. Just 4 belts of stainless steel are keeping the shape – no screw and no glue is necessary.
.
.
Write-only articles
23
Jun
I saw this on Twitter yesterday:
About 200,000 academic journals are published in English. The average number of readers per article is 5.
I don’t know where those numbers came from, but five readers per article sounds about right.
When I was a grad student, I felt like a fraud for writing papers that I wouldn’t want to read. Only later did I realize this is the norm.You’re forced to publish frequently. You can’t wait until you think you have something worthwhile to say.
If the average academic article has five readers, most would have fewer. Since some articles have hundreds of readers, there would have to be even more with practically no readers to balance out the average.
Readership may follow something like a power law distribution. It could be that the vast majority of articles have one or two readers even though some papers have thousands of readers.
Related posts:
Wendell Berry on publish-or-perish
Nearly everyone is above average
Networks and power laws
‘Lucy’s Grandfather’ Fossil Makes Humanity’s Ancestor Seem More Like Us
22
Jun
A 3.6 million-year-old fossil from one of humanity’s earliest ancestors is more human-like than expected — and much taller.
The discovery makes Lucy, the best-known fossil of all, appear to be exceptionally short by comparison. Lucy and the new skeleton are both Australopithecus afarensis, the first fully bipedal primate and a direct ancestor of humanity. Unlike Lucy and every other A. afarensis fossil, the new skeleton has complete forelimb and hindlimb bones, allowing researchers to estimate its size more accurately.
The new A. afarensis specimen stood between 5 and 5 1/2 feet tall, towering over Lucy’s 3-foot height. Other fossil fragments suggested that Lucy was an unreliable measuring stick for A. afarensis, but the new fossil is the most conclusive evidence yet. Dubbed “Kadanuumuu,†or Big Man, it is described June 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Big Man’s limbs also appear well-suited for running, in contrast to the shortened gait implied by Lucy’s skeleton. The proportions compare to those found two million years later in Homo erectus, and would not be out of place in a modern human, said study co-author Owen Lovejoy, a Kent State University paleoanthropologist.
“The difference between Australopithecus and humans is much less than everyone expected,†said Lovejoy. “Upright walking and running were pretty advanced at 3.6 million years ago, and they didn’t change much over the next two million years. Most of the changes in that period of time took place elsewhere.â€
Lovejoy was also part of the team that discovered Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million-year-old possible human ancestor that was officially described last October. Ardipithecus was far less chimp-like than expected.
That raises the possibility that it’s the other Great Apes, rather than humans, whose bodies have evolved the most over the last few million years.
Big Man, with a rib cage shaped more like our own than that of a chimpanzee or gorilla, reinforces that notion.
“Chimps and gorillas are again the unusual form. Hominids and ourselves bear many primitive traits that haven’t been specialized like they have in gorillas,†said Lovejoy.
“The classic cartoon of the ape turning into the human doesn’t work at all.â€
Image: Yohannes Haile-Selassie/PNAS.
See Also:
- Lucy 2.0: Famous Fossil Hominid Goes Digital
- Humanity Has New 4.4 Million-Year-Old Baby Mama
- Possible New Human Ancestor Discovered
- African Footprint Fossils Are Oldest Evidence of Upright Walking
Citation: “An early Australopithecus afarensis postcranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia.†By
Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Bruce M. Latimer, Mulugeta Alene, Alan L. Deino, Luis Gibert, Stephanie M. Melillo, Beverly Z. Saylor, Gary R. Scott, C. Owen Lovejoy.
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.
He’s back: 60-foot Gundam is (almost) ready again
22
Jun
We spent quite a few posts on the uber-cool, gigantic Gundam statue that was erected in Tokyo Bay last year. The 60-foot robot statue was deconstructed in September, with Bandai quickly announcing plans to re-erect the big guy in Shizuoka soon. And now he’s almost ready.
Shizuoka is too far away from me to go and have a look at the big guy myself (it’s (125 miles west of Tokyo – where I live), but there are enough geeks living there, too. And thanks to two of them, we can show you the first photos of Gundam getting constructed.
As you can see (and as we reported earlier), Gundam already holds his “beam saber†in his right hand. According to Bandai, the weapon will start glowing when it gets dark.
If you have the chance to go to Shizuoka: Gundam will be on display from July 24, 2010 till January 10, 2011, right on East Shizuoka Square.
Via Buloblog [JP] and Troian [JP]
He’s back: 60-foot Gundam is (almost) ready again
22
Jun
We spent quite a few posts on the uber-cool, gigantic Gundam statue that was erected in Tokyo Bay last year. The 60-foot robot statue was deconstructed in September, with Bandai quickly announcing plans to re-erect the big guy in Shizuoka soon. And now he’s almost ready.
Shizuoka is too far away from me to go and have a look at the big guy myself (it’s (125 miles west of Tokyo – where I live), but there are enough geeks living there, too. And thanks to two of them, we can show you the first photos of Gundam getting constructed.
As you can see (and as we reported earlier), Gundam already holds his “beam saber†in his right hand. According to Bandai, the weapon will start glowing when it gets dark.
If you have the chance to go to Shizuoka: Gundam will be on display from July 24, 2010 till January 10, 2011, right on East Shizuoka Square.
Via Buloblog [JP] and Troian [JP]
Jesse Owens
21
Jun
Hitler used the 1936 Olympics as a propaganda tool, inadvertently creating the modern Games, complete with torch relays, grand stadiums, publicity films and screens set up outside to transmit the Games. What the Nazis couldn’t stage-manage were the outcomes, and wonderful story of Jesse Owens smashing Hitler’s theories of racial superiority on the 100m sprint is an oft repeated story. (Enthusiastic crowd reaction on this clip suggests that the German people are less Aryan-obsessed than Hitler.Although his coach warned Owens about a potentially hostile crowd, there were German cheers of “Yesseh Oh-vens†or just “Oh-vens†from the crowd. Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, mobbed by autograph seekers.)
It is oft mentioned that the Nazi leader refused to present Jesse Owens with his medal, shake his hand and subsequently stormed out of the stadium. However, Hitler was not even in the stadium when Jesse Owens was securing his medals, and his absence was more to do with his row with the Olympic organizers than with Owens . Hitler had congratulated German athletes on the first day, only to be informed by the IOC officials that he should congratulate all athletes or none, in order to show neutrality as the presiding head of state. In a characteristic fit of petulance, Hitler refused congratulate anyone after the first day of the competition, not even the German athletes. (Hitler did snub a black American athlete on the first day; just before Cornelius Johnson was to be decorated, Hitler left the stadium.)
Jesse Owens tried his best to correct the myth-making that went on around him: he admitted that he received the greatest ovations of his career at Berlin. he recalled: “When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing [Hitler] …. Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegramâ€. Such was an atmosphere of segregation back in the U.S. that Owens was never invited to the White House to be congratulated. When there was a ticker-tape parade in New York in his honour, he had to attend the reception at the Waldorf-Astoria using the back elevator set aside for blacks. (Even in Berlin, he was allowed to travel and stay together with whites).
Filed under: Politics, Society Tagged: Hitler, Jesse Owens, Nazi, Olympics
Quick Tip: Multiple Borders with Simple CSS
21
Jun
Did you know that we can achieve multiple borders with simple CSS, by using the :after amd :before psuedo-classes? This is something I recently learned myself! I’ll show you how to add more depth to your designs, without images, in just a few minutes.
Prefer to watch this video on Screenr?
Final Code
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Multi-Borders</title>
<style>
body { background: #d2d1d0; }
#box {
background: #f4f4f4;
border: 1px solid #bbbbbb;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
margin: 60px auto;
position: relative;
}
#box:before {
border: 1px solid white;
content: '';
width: 198px;
height: 198px;
position: absolute;
}
#box:after {
content: '';
position: absolute;
width: 196px;
height: 196px;
border: 1px solid #bbbbbb;
left: 1px; top: 1px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="box"></div>
</body>
</html>
In short, any browser that supports the :before and :after psuedo-elements (all major browsers) can take advantage of this effect. Of course, there are alternatives, including the use of box-shadow, as well as adding additional mark-up to the page; however, this is clean solution that you should definitely consider. Thanks for watching!