Latest Stories

• Trouble with Airline Codes
• Natural Gas: The Future.
• BMW Apps Demo
• Fact-Checking the Apocalypse
• Skier Outjumps Avalanche

 

Get Your Cheap Badminton Tickets Here

Cheapest tickets at London Olympics? Badminton. Hey, I love badminton.

 

Declaration of Cyber War

Good VF piece on the disturbing Stuxnet cyber virus:

Last summer, the world’s top software-security experts were panicked by the discovery of a drone-like computer virus, radically different from and far more sophisticated than any they’d seen. The race was on to figure out its payload, its purpose, and who was behind it. As the world now knows, the Stuxnet worm appears to have attacked Iran’s nuclear program. And, as Michael Joseph Gross reports, while its source remains something of a mystery, Stuxnet is the new face of 21st-century warfare: invisible, anonymous, and devastating.

Read it here.

 

Dating, Mating and Race

From a fascinating new OKCupid study, the relationship between dating, mating and race. Nuanced and sophisticated treatment of difficult subject. Here is a pop-normalized graph of messages received by race on the dating service -- Asians rule.

 

Mark Bezos on Making a Difference

One of my favorite short talks from this year's TED University: NYC volunteer firefighter Mark Bezos on making a difference.

 

Michael Lewis (1989): How a Tokyo Earthquake Could Devastate Wall Street & World Economy

michael lewis japan quake 1989

 

Field Notes: Humans, Catastrophe, Vancouver, Power, Drought, Machu Picchu, etc.

• Fire and early humans (Source)
• Jumping On The Bandwagon Brings Rewards (Source)
• Vancouver's luxury home sales surge, largely due to influx of offshore money (Source)
• Catastrophic Drought in the Afro-Asian Monsoon Region During Heinrich Event 1 (Source)
• Nuclear power usage stats around the world (Source)
• The Big Idea: Perennial Grains (Source)
• Rediscovering Machu Picchu (Source)
• Catastrophe and the power of panic (Source)
• Beijing Airport Eclipses Heathrow to become second-busiest in world (Source)
• Shell begins first natgas shipments to Japan (Source)
• The almost-electric-grid of the U.S. (Source)

 

Field Notes: Gates, Bonds, Nukes, Pension Funds, etc.

• Inside The Deal That Made Bill Gates $350,000,000 (Source)
• States Test Mortgage Principal Write-Downs (Source)
• The Makings of a Bond Debacle (Source)
• Why Pension Fund Managers Generate Negative Alphas (Source)
• Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors (Source)
• Search shakes to its roots (Source)
• Google to launch major new social service shortly (Source)

 

Barron's: The Money Whirl

Barron's cover this week, The Money Whirl, is a keeper.

 

Field Notes: Climate, Dubai, Demographics, Green, Libya, Japan, etc.

• Mapping Human Vulnerability to Climate Change « GIS and Science (Source)
• Demographics: what variable best predicts a financial crisis? (Source)
• Dubai on Empty (Source)
• Brain scan: Betting on green (Source)
• In the Thick of Libya's Brutal Fighting: Tyler Hicks Describes One of the Toughest Battles He's Ever Photographed (Source)
• Astonishing post-quake footage of Japanese city of Minamisanriku (Source)

 

Honshu Tsunami Propagation Visualization

Fantastic visualization, from NOAA:

 

Geologist Roundup on Japan Quake

• Japan M8.9 quake + tsunami (Source)
• First reports of the M = 8.9 earthquake in Japan (Source)
• Geotripper: 8.9 Earthquake in Japan (Source)
• Japan Earthquake 11/03/2011 Recorded at Keele » Hypo-theses (Source)

 

Oil Matters More, or Less, Or Something

Apropos a writing project I'm working on, this figure from JPMorgan with dueling figures on the energy intensity of the U.S. economy.

 

Field Notes: Civilization, Search, Startups, Earthquakes, etc.

• Western civilisation: A success that looks like failure (Source)
• Largest Cities Through History (Source)
• Hide sites to find more of what you want (Source)
• Have Startups Become a Fetish? (Source)
• 1906 San Francisco Quake in Living Color (Source)
• How Gas Prices Are Eroding the American Dream (Source)
• Natural gas gets a caution flag (Source)
• Big Mac crowdsourcing: The burger bill(Source)

 

Play Econo "What If" on the 2012 Elections

Interesting economy-driven visualization on Obama's prospects in the 2012 election. What is the likelihood of being reelected given job gains/losses and/or a recession? Click to play along. [-]

 

When Washing Machines Attack

I liked the cover image for this week's cover story at the San Diego Reader. When washing machines attack!