The winners of the polictics prize will be announced on December 21, 2009. Here’s the schedule:
Today:
The nominating process is hereby declared open. Please nominate your favorite blog entry in the field of politics by placing the URL for the blog post (the permalink) in the comments section of this post. You may also add a brief comment describing the entry and saying why you think it should win.
Each person can only nominate one blog post.
Entries must be in English.
The editors of 3QD reserve the right to reject entries that we feel are not appropriate.
The blog entry may not be more than a year old from today. In other words, it must have been written after November 23, 2008.
You may also nominate your own entry from your own or a group blog (and we encourage you to).
Guest columnists at 3 Quarks Daily are also eligible to be nominated, and may also nominate themselves if they wish.
Nominations are limited to the first 100 entries.
You may also comment here on our prizes themselves, of course!
December 2, 2009
The nominating process will end at 11:59 PM (NYC time) of this date.
The public voting will be opened immediately afterwards.
The beautiful six-fold symmetry of snowflakes is the result of the hydrogen bonds that water molecules form when they freeze.
But snowflakes can form other shapes too when the growth of the crystal is perturbed on one side. In theory, diamonds, trapezoids and other irregular shapes can all occur. And yet the one most commonly observed (after hexagons) is the triangle. The puzzle for is why? What process causes deformed snowflakes to become triangles rather than say squares or rectangles?
The NFL Network accidentally aired a vulgarity yelled by Denver Broncos coach Josh McDaniels as he chastised his players on the sideline of their Thanksgiving night game against the New York Giants.
Coming out of a commercial break following a series of false starts near the goal line that resulted in Denver settling for a field goal, the NFL Network showed a clip of McDaniels, who yelled at his players: “All we’re trying to do is win a (expletive) game!”
This image of the central parts of Centaurus A reveals the parallelogram-shaped remains of a smaller galaxy that was gulped down about 200 to 700 million years ago. The image is based on data collected with the SOFI instrument on ESO’s New Technology Telescope at La Silla. The original image, obtained by observing in the near-infrared through three different filters (J, H and K) was specially processed to look through the dust, providing a clear view of the centre. The field of view is about 4 x 4 arcminutes.
Regular readers of this blog know I’ve done quite a bit of blogging on the outdoor living trend lately, covering grills, fire pits, outdoor furniture and decor, and more. What happens to all that outdoor living fun when the weather turns cold? Easy answer — patio heater. The trick to effective outdoor heating, especially in an open area like a deck or patio — is to use radiant heating rather than convection heating.
Convection heating works by blowing air over a heated surface like many small indoor space heaters work. Radiant heating used electromagnetic infrared radiation that warms close by objects rather than the surrounding air. This means radiant outdoor heaters will warm you, your patio furniture and even your cold beverage if you don’t drink it fast enough instead of the surrounding air that is constantly blowing around and being replaced with cooler air. Radiant outdoor heating is much more efficient and effective for keeping you warm while enjoying your outdoor living space.
Hit any link in this post to head to Outdora for a patio heater selection that will meet any outdoor heating need you might have. Outdora has both residential and commercial ceiling and wall mounted quartz outdoor heaters, standing patio heaters with push button ignitions and even decorative table-top heaters
The quartz outdoor heaters are all weather and are both efficient and economical. These electric heaters don’t require any warm-up to start heating your outdoor living space and eliminate the need for replacing and storing propane fuel tanks.
You’ve invested in your outdoor living area, make sure cooler weather isn’t keeping you from enjoying that investment during the fall and winter by adding a few outdoor heating units. And if you want portable outdoor heating, Outdora even has a wheel kit you can install on a standing heater to easily move your outdoor heating unit.
When it’s a 1795 reeded-edge U.S. penny, one of only seven known to exist. It recently sold for nearly $1.3 million at auction—the first time a one-cent coin has cracked the million-dollar price barrier.
It follows the sale earlier this year of a high-end collection of rare half-dollars that fetched $1.1 million at auction. At the same time, popular $20 U.S. Saint-Gaudens gold pieces from the early 20th century are commanding $1,700 apiece, sight unseen, in decent, though not perfect condition, topping a record high last seen more than two decades ago.
You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of the Mighty Boosh and you’re not from the U.K. On this side of the pond you can find it on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim nightly block of cartoons, anime and other entertainment for a target a bit older than its usual audience.
The Boosh is a huge hit in England is is slowly catching on here in the U.S. It’s quirky, fun and very funny and is one of my favorite shows on television right now.
Here’s a sample (this clip is from the BBC so there is a short commercial):
And if you really want to get caught up fast, the Boosh just released the “special edition” DVD in the U.S. The set includes all three season and a lot of extra features. I got my hands on this last week and love it. I’d already seen all the episodes, but the extras — a short documentary, outtakes, deleted scenes, commentary, etc. — are worth the price of the set for Boosh fans and newcomers alike.
Not only is this the thinnest material possible, but it also is 10 times stronger than steel and it conducts electricity better than any other known material at room temperature. These and graphene’s other exotic properties have attracted the interest of physicists, who want to study them, and nanotechnologists, who want to exploit them to make novel electrical and mechanical devices.
“There are two features that make graphene exceptional,” says Kirill Bolotin, who has just joined the Vanderbilt Department of Physics and Astronomy as an assistant professor. “First, its molecular structure is so resistant to defects that researchers have had to hand-make them to study what effects they have. Second, the electrons that carry electrical charge travel much faster and generally behave as if they have far less mass than they do in ordinary metals or superconductors.”
I’ve done some recent blogging on the outdoor living trend and how it’s led to some people creating entire outdoor living spaces including fully outfitted outdoor kitchens, but things can be much more simple and I bet the first thing that comes to mind when most people hear outdoor living is the humble BBQ grill. Or maybe not so humble, depending on what type of grill you have.
You want to go down-to-earth (literally) basic? Dig a small depression, surround it with some rocks, build a big wood fire and let that burn down, then add a metal grating over the top of the smoldering coals and you have a perfectly serviceable barbecue grill. Of course you can also buy a brushed stainless steel freestanding unit with separate grills for propane and charcoal alongside a rotisserie grill, side burner and a built-in mini-fridge to keep cold ones close at hand.
I enjoy food cooked on a barbecue grill and would be hard pressed to name a favorite. Hot dogs are better grilled, well really better boiled and then grilled, brats are certainly best grilled, hamburgers are great grilled, but one food almost demands open flame — a good steak. Sure you can fan fry steaks or use some other method, but barbecue grilling is the only way to truly prepare a choice cut of beef. For me I like a thick cowboy cut ribeye — that’s bone-in for anyone not familiar with the cut — done blue rare. Lightly seared on the outside, bloody and cold in the middle. Try that on a stove-top. Or better yet, don’t because it can’t be done and you’ll trash an awesome cut of beef.
If you’re looking for barbecue grills hit any link in this post to head to Outdora for a huge selection of grills and grill accessories to meet any budget and need.
The latest in immersive media, 3D domes, neurofeedback art, virtual worlds and other cutting-edge media formats and their potential as tools for transformation will be explored at IMMERSE IN THE FUTURE: A VISIONARY EVENING OF ARTS, MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY, Monday, November 16th in Los Angeles and in Second Life.
The event will include presentations by the LA Opera; Kathy Eldon, Founder of Creative Visions Foundation; John Raatz, Founder of GATE; Ed Lantz, Founder of IMERSA and Vortex Immersion Media and the c3: Center for Conscious Creativity, followed by an inspiring keynote by noted author and futurist, Jerome Glenn, the Director of the Millennium Project offering insights on the future of arts,media and entertainment and their effects on global culture.
Glenn will also announce a partnership with c3 to create an international group of futuristic artists and mediavisionaries, and institutions, to become the Global Arts and MediaNode for the Millennium Project’s “State of the Future” report.
Looking for an Eastern touch touch for your garden decor, something to help focus your thoughts while musing or meditating, or maybe just searching for an interesting accent piece for your home or garden? A meditation gong from Outdora might well be the answer. Gongs are East and Southeast Asian musical instruments, with origins in China, consisting of a flat metal disc struck by a mallet to produce its tones. Gongs can be traced to at least 2000 B.C., but it’s believed to have been use much further back in history. Chinese history records gongs beginning around 500 A.D.
Traditionally gongs have been used for many purposes including communication and to make announcements, to make music, as an accompaniment for ceremonies, and for healing. Adding a gong to your home or garden allows you to join centuries of tradition using this instrument for celebrations, mourning, theater and making music.
Outdora offers a variety of meditation gongs to meet different needs and size requirements. You will find freestanding gongs with a built-in frame, hanging or suspended gongs, wind gongs and garden bells. There are gongs sized for desk- or table-top and gongs large enough to really make a statement in your garden, both visually and aurally. Outdora’s Woodstock Chau Gong meets big size/big sound requirement with an ash wood and steel stand complementing the bronze disc. The Woodstock Chau Gong stands 65 inches high for a dramatic and elegant look.
Outdora’s gong collection is all handmade and designed to stand up to the outdoor elements. Purely as a decorative element, a gong will add appeal to your indoor or outdoor living space. And every Outdora gong is a musical instrument as well, ready to provide a sense of peace, tranquility or drama to your day.
Hit any link in this post for the full selection of meditation gongs from Outdora.
I’ve done a fair amount of blogging on outdoor living lately, and one aspect of outdoor living I covered on the outdoor lifestyle for a no-longer-publishing home improvement magazine was outdoor kitchens. Just simple grilling is a major part of outdoor living and building an entire outdoor kitchen takes the concept to an even higher level. When you want to really maximize your outdoor kitchen, it’s time to take a look at a Viking grill. It’s an ultra premium grill experience with a matching price tag, but also a host of features including 29,000 BTU burners, the most powerful standard in the industry, rotisserie rods, stainless steel construction and cast iron porcelain coated grill grates.
Hit any of the links in this post to head to Outdora for a huge selection of Viking grills and grilling accessories. You will find built-in & freestanding grills, side burners & rotisserie kits, warming & utility drawers, access doors, components & accessories, service carts & stations, grill bases and other grilling accessories such as covers, pans, vents and more.
Here are a few more features you will find on a Viking grill:
commercial features enjoyed by professional chefs tailored for your outdoor kitchen
the Viking TruSear infrared burner for flash searing
easy-to-clean and maintain Power Porcelain grill gates
A big advantage for checking out Outdora for your Viking grill needs is all items are available below the list price. It doesn’t matter if you want a fully tricked-out E-series with TruSear, side burners and an oven base, or if you’re just looking for replacement rotisserie forks, you’ll find the lowest possible price at Outdora.
Viking grills aren’t for everyone, but when you want to outfit the ultra premium outdoor kitchen Viking is a great choice.
A new method for assembling carbon nanotubes has been used to create fibers hundreds of meters long. Individual carbon nanotubes are strong, lightweight, and electrically conductive, and could be valuable as, among other things, electrical transmission wires. But aligning masses of the nanotubes into well-ordered materials such as fibers has proven challenging at a scale suitable for manufacturing. By processing carbon nanotubes in a solution called a superacid, researchers at Rice University have made long fibers that might be used as lightweight, efficient wires for the electrical grid or as the basis of structural materials and conductive textiles.
Others have made carbon-nanotube fibers by pulling the tubes from solid hair-like arrays or by spinning them like wool as they emerge from a chemical reactor. The problem with starting from a solid, says Rice chemical engineering professor Matteo Pasquali, is that “the alignment is not spectacular, and these methods are difficult to scale up.” The better aligned and ordered the individual nanotubes in a larger structure, the better the collective structure’s electrical and mechanical properties. Using the Rice methods, well-aligned nanotube fibers can be made on a large scale, shot out from a nozzle similar to a showerhead.
The late Nobel laureateRichard Smalley started the Rice project in 2001. Smalley knew solution-processing would be a good way to assemble nanotube fibers and films because of nanotubes’ shape. Carbon nanotubes are much longer than they are wide, so when they’re in a flowing solution, they line up like logs floating down a river. But carbon nanotubes aren’t soluble in conventional solvents. The Rice group laid the foundations for liquid processing of the nanotubes five years ago, when they discovered that sulfuric acid brings the nanotubes into solution by coating their surfaces with positively charged ions.
Nanotube fiber: This fiber, which is about 40 micrometers in diameter, is made up of carbon nanotubes.
Credit: Rice University
Sad story out in the New York Times describing growing concerns about texting while driving. In Britain, a woman was sentenced to a 21-month sentence after it was found that she had been texting while driving, which resulted in the death of a 24-year old design student. In many ways, texting while driving illustrates a case in which tiny, individual irrational decisions can accumulate and cause widespread suffering, not only for the individuals who are texting, but their unsuspecting victims. Unlike cases of drunk driving, in which the driver’s decision making abilities are impaired, drivers who text are at their full wits to wait until they’ve pulled over to check their texts, and yet in the process they routinely underestimate the risk they impose to themselves and others.
The professor was quite wrong, however, on one aspect of the issue:
… we can hope that cell phone companies are continuing to explore voice activation technologies that can read text messages aloud and also transcribe them from voice — thereby by-passing the problem altogether.
In researching web content I created for an insurance website, I came across this research that finds hands-free listening to mobile devices is not much safer than hands-on cell phone use because the issue is the distraction of the usage, not merely taking eyes off the road ahead (all bold text my emphasis):
Five states currently ban the use of hand-held cell phones in favor of hands-free devices while driving. However, several studies have shown that there is little difference between the two when it comes to minding the road ahead. Both hand-held and hands-free devices involve listening. The act of listening is what distracts drivers from paying attention to the road. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University placed participants in a functional MRI scanner that allowed researchers to observe brain activity while the subjects “drove” on a computerized roadway. Without distractions, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involved in spatial perception (knowing where you are and what’s around you). When the same subjects were tasked with listening to and correctly answering a series of questions as they drove, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involving language comprehension, while activity in the spatial perception area of the brain decreased by as much as 37 percent. Multitasking places high demands on the brain.
… autumn is in full swing and winter isn’t far behind. If you haven’t winterized your home, now is the time. Depending on where you live this could be a quick afternoon of mild chores, or an entire operation to get your house ready for worst Jack Frost can bring. The first step should be checking out the heating portion of your HVAC system to make sure everything is working order, clean and ready for operation. Next is the roof and chimney, particularly gutters and downspouts. Take a look at your gutters or gutter protection to make sure things aren’t clogged up preventing proper drainage. Also inspect the “envelope” of your home for drafts, air leaks and missing insulation. And don’t forget your pipes — especially outdoor pipes. You don’t want a surprise water leak after a hard freeze and thaw.
One good way to minimize your winterizing chores is to cover your chimney and gutters to minimize debris accumulation. A good gutter protection system will protect your gutters, downspouts and drains year-round and end that pesky winterizing chore of making sure every spot is clear of leaves, bird and rodent nests, and areas of standing water that can lead to corrosion and mosquito problems during warm weather.
Hit any link in this post to head to Outdora.com and the GutterPiller gutter protection system. The system has been featured on “This Old House” and has won the “Retailers’ Choice Award” multiple times. Outdora offers two GutterPiller gutter protection systems — the GutterPiller Twisted Wire Gutter Protection System and the Black Magic Filter Gutter Screen Protection System. You can even find gutter brushes to help you clear out clogged — and probably unprotected — gutters, and splash guards to help disperse water under your drainspouts.
If winterizing isn’t your favorite seasonal chore, and I’m betting it isn’t, a gutter protection system takes one item right off of your list.
Via KurzweilAI.net – I’d say the X Prize has moved private space travel a good ways down the path to commercial viability.
Peter Diamandis: the joy of taking risks
New Scienist Space, Nov. 4, 2009
Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place–his latest: a heath care prize.
Google is offering a new privacy control that will make it easier for people to see some of the information being collected about them.
The “Dashboard” feature unveiled Thursday pulls together all the data that pour into Google’s computers whenever Web surfers log in to one of the company’ services.
That includes summaries of an individual’s e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google’s video site, YouTube. Before, a user would have to check multiple places for all that.
From the time we launched the New Majority site, we have had to cope with a problem with our name. Simply put, there are a lot of “New Majorities” out there. There’s one down the road in Virginia, another at the New World Foundation, a conservative 501c4 here, a liberal one there. All this generated serious confusion, but the worst was with the best known New Majority of them all, TheNewMajority in California, because their mission and ours so closely overlapped. That overlap was leading to very unnecessary conflict with people who wanted many of the same reforms that we did.
The best solution seemed to be: a change of name. But to what?
In 1974, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the world’s first omni-font OCR, and in 1984, he created the world’s first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition technology.
“His vision and sense for how fast technology wasprogressing led to products that were usually not only first to market, but were commercially successful, and have assisted the handicapped, advanced the arts, and stimulated the imagination of countless other technologists and entrepreneurs. His work is a stellar example of the achievements that The Economist’s Innovation Awards are intended to recognize and encourage.”
“I am deeply honored to receive this recognition,” said Kurzweil, Founder, Kurzweil Computer Products (now Nuance), currently CEO, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. “In my work in optical character recognition and speech recognition, my goal was to provide new modalities for the transmission of humanknowledge. As an inventor, I quickly realized that timing was critical to success, so I sought to develop models of how informationtechnologyevolves. With these projections, we can use ourimaginations to envision inventions of the future, and I have tried to do that in my books and web sites such as KurzweilAI.net.”
My Dad’s parents lived on a large rural spread with multiple sheds filled with old farming equipment, kitchen utensils and all sorts of rusting bric-a-brac. One thing that ended up in our suburban backyard was a large dinner bell forged in the late 1800s. It was heavy enough to seriously list to one side without a substantial weighted pull cord and totally unnecessary for the size of the yard. It was incredibly cool — a big old chunk of iron that passed through multiple generations of my family. Some day I’ll be proud to ring that bell in my own backyard.
If you don’t have a treasure trove of heirloom ranch material to go through, you can still enjoy the look and sound of a dinner or farm bell. Hit the link and head to Outdora for a large selection of outdoor bells, wind chimes and sources of pleasant natural music provided by a little metal and the wind. And if your kids regularly don’t hear the call to get in the house to eat, a dinner bell might be just what the cook ordered.
Of course the need for a dinner bell or farm bell isn’t required to add one to your outdoor decor. Outdora has a variety of outdoor bells to meet whatever decorating scheme you have. If you want to rustic that’s not a problem; if you prefer more of a wind chime look and sound, you can find that, too; and Outdora even offers a combination water fountain with bells.
The bell currently resting in my Dad’s backyard dates back to a couple of centuries ago and is one of the lucky amongst farm bells to still have a place of honor in someone’s yard. You can start your own tradition by adding a dinner bell to your backyard.
Nothing says good cooking better than a pealing farm bell.
Outdora offers a full line of Fire Magic grills, grill accessories and other Fire Magic products, all offered at a sale price marked below list. Do you need a built-in Fire Magic grill? Outdora has models with rotisseries, countertop grills and basic built-in grills. Freestanding grills? You can find freestanding grills on pedestals, table top models, grills with rotisseries, grills with built-in LCD thermometers and more. You can even find side burners and rotisserie kits to add to a Fire Magic grill.
Cookouts, barbecues and even preparing full meals outside is a big part of outdoor living. Everything from knocking out a few hot dogs to slow-smoking racks of ribs to cooking multiple dishes over an open outdoor flame makes for a fun and relaxing meal and atmosphere. To make your outdoor kitchen or barbecuing experience smooth and easy you want to have the right equipment on hand and that equipment begins with your outdoor grill.
Fire Magic grills are on the high-end of outdoor grill options out there, but the product line offers a wide variety of grilling options including how the grill is installed (built-in, freestanding, countertop, table top), accessories and features (rotisserie, side burner, and more) and type of heat (electric, propane, charcoal and wood burning). Speaking of heat — some models cooking temperatures up to over 700 degrees for intense and instant searing of your favorite cut of steak. My personal favorite is a blue rare cowboy cut — that is, a very thick ribeye cut with the bone left in.
Fire Magic grills have been around since 1937 providing barbecue and outdoor living fun. Fire Magic’s current line of outdoor grills feature stainless steel styling to complement modern decors. So if all that makes you interested in a Fire Magic grill, hit the link and head to Outdora to check out the entire line of outdoor grills and grilling accessories.
This is almost beyond belief, but the lawyer in question here — Samir Chowhan — has owned up to posting the original ad and follow-up email. I see a dim future for this particular esquire.
To paraphrase from “This is Spinal Tap,” it’s not “sexy,” it’s “sexist.”
From the WSJ Law Blog link:
The Legal Profession Blog reported on Wednesday about a strange disciplinary complaint filed against an Illinois attorney over an ad the lawyer reportedly posted on Craigslist. The attorney at issue, according to the complaint, Samir Chowhan, worked as a solo practitioner in an office with a handful of other solo practitioners.
The post, listed in the “Adult Gigs” section of the site, was entitled: “Loop lawyers hiring secretary/legal assistant.” It read as follows:
Loop law firm looking to hire am [sic] energetic woman for their open secretary/legal assistant position. Duties will include general secretarial work, some paralegal work and additional duties for two lawyers in the firm. No experience required, training will be provided. Generous annual salary and benefits will be provided, including medical, dental, life, disability, 401(k) etc. If interested, please send current resume and a few pictures along with a description of your physical features, including measurements. We look forward to meeting you.
According to the Illinois disciplinary complaint, an applicant shortly thereafter responded to the ad. The next day, the attorney reportedly responded with this email:
As this is posted in the “adult gigs” section, in addition to the legal work, you would be required to have sexual interaction with me and my partner, sometimes together sometimes separate. This part of the job would require sexy dressing and flirtatious interaction with me and my partner, as well as sexual interaction. You will have to be comfortable doing this with us.
If you think you’re comfortable so far, please let me know and we can proceed with the process.
The next step is to set up an interview. When are you available to interview? I am free to interview today. Please let me know what your availability is.
Lastly, we’ve actually hired a couple of girls in the past for this position. But they have not been able to handle the sexual aspect of the job later. We have to be sure you’re comfortable with that aspect, because I don’t want you to do anything that you’re not comfortable with. So since that time, we’ve decided that as part of the interview process you’ll be required to perform for us sexually (i didn’t do this before with the other girls i hired, now i think i have to because they couldn’t handle it). Because that aspect is an integral part of the job, I think it’s necessary to see if you can do that, because it’ll predict future behavior of you being able to handle it when you have the job.
If you’re still okay with everything, let me know what you’re availability is and we can figure out a time for you to come in and interview. Let me know. Thanks for your interest.
According to the complaint, the applicant complained to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, which then opened an investigation.
Want a reason to wean the US from OPEC? How about bringers of democracy being "cursed" by a Saudi prince this week. - http://bit.ly/7uFyMb59 minutes ago
![[COINS]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AS514A_COINS_DV_20091118231634.jpg)
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