Topic: logisch - on August 11, 2016 at 3:48:00 PM CEST
How do you cut one of the worlds largest diamonds
Swiss jeweler De Grisogono SA bought the rights to market a 404-carat rough diamond from Dubai trader Nemesis International DMCC. The stone was discovered at Lucapa Diamond Co.’s Lulo mine in Angola, Nickolas Polak, a director of Nemesis International, said in Dubai at a news conference to announce the sale. He declined to disclose a price, but in February Lucapa said it sold a 404-carat diamond for $22.5 million. The stone is the world’s 27th-biggest and should take six months to cut, said Omar Chaoui, managing director of the Middle East & India region for Geneva-based De Grisogono.
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Topic: logisch - on July 28, 2016 at 11:33:00 AM CEST
Choose the best urinal in the men’s room — with math!
Men, we’ve all been there. A row of glistening white urinals appear before you. They’re all empty, thank goodness. You choose the cleanest one. That’s when you hear the door. Another person is walking into the bathroom. Don’t choose the stall next to me, is your first thought. He starts walking toward the urinals. Don’t do it. And closer. Don’t do it. Don't... Most men experience some level of social anxiety in the bathroom. We have an innate sense of personal space that we like to keep clear from strangers. When someone enters that personal space, we stiffen up.
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Topic: logisch - on June 23, 2016 at 11:26:00 PM CEST
Life as a Verb: Applying Buckminster Fuller to the 21st Century
IF ONE BELIEVES the story, at the peak of his fame, Buckminster Fuller wore three wristwatches — one set for his current location, one for his previous one, and one for his next one. Jonathon Keats’s new book You Belong to the Universe appropriately situates the designer and autodidact in the present, past, and future — not just Fuller’s, but ours too. In fact, Keats’s central argument is that today’s would-be “world changers” can extract inspiration and even concrete examples from Fuller’s 20th-century life and apply them to 21st-century design futures.
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Topic: logisch - on June 22, 2016 at 11:43:00 AM CEST
Refugees in Greece need internet so badly that they’ll stop a riot to let the wifi guys work
Kevin MacRitchie surveyed the inferno spreading across Diavata refugee camp. From his vantage point on the roof, where he had been fixing a satellite dish, he could see a column of thick black smoke twisting toward the sky above two rows of incinerated tents. While Greek army and police helped battle the fire, a protest had erupted at the front gate, by Syrian refugees frustrated with conditions in the camp and the asylum backlog that was keeping them there. That meant MacRitchie was now alone. His teammate, David Tagliani, had run out to drive their equipment van into the camp, and in the meantime, the angry mass had blocked the entrance. Yet when they recognized Tagliani behind the wheel, the protestors stopped. “Wifi,” they called to each other, “wifi.” And they cleared a path to let the van pass.
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Topic: logisch - on June 14, 2016 at 10:53:00 AM CEST
What Happens If GPS Fails?
Despite massive reliance on the system’s clocks, there’s still no longterm backup. In only took thirteen millionths of a second to cause a whole lot of problems. Last January, as the U.S. Air Force was taking one satellite in the country’s constellation of GPS satellites offline, an incorrect time was accidentally uploaded to several others, making them out of sync by less time than it takes for the sound of a gunshot to leave the chamber.
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Topic: logisch - on June 11, 2016 at 9:44:00 PM CEST
Burning Man We Bought Fly Ranch
Wait, what? Burning Man Project has purchased the Fly Ranch property, 3,800 acres of land located twenty-one miles north of Gerlach in Washoe County, Nevada.
Why? Here’s the gist of it: Those who have been deeply affected by a Burning Man event or experience have often asked, “How can we bring this beyond the event?” “How can we make this really matter?” And we too have wondered, “What would it mean to have a year-round location beyond the playa? What if we had a place to experiment with and apply the Ten Principles 365 days a year, in addition to the one-week event?”
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Topic: logisch - on June 9, 2016 at 10:12:00 AM CEST
Wittgenstein’s Handles
What was it about handles—door-handles, axe-handles, the handles of pitchers and vases—that transfixed thinkers in Vienna and Berlin during the early decades of the twentieth century, echoing earlier considerations of handles in America and ancient Greece? Ludwig Wittgenstein, as everyone knows, abandoned philosophy after publishing his celebrated Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921. He took up gardening instead, in a monastic community on the outskirts of Vienna, where he camped out for a few months in a toolshed. It was in part to draw him back into “the world” that his sister Margarete (Gretl) invited him to join the architect Paul Engelmann in designing her new house, a rigorous Modernist structure that, much changed, now houses the Bulgarian Embassy.
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Topic: logisch - on June 3, 2016 at 2:38:00 PM CEST
How a good night's sleep became the ultimate status symbol
Arianna Huffington espouses the virtues of eight hours and luxury products promise rejuvenating rest, but who can really afford to sleep safe and sound?
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Topic: logisch - on May 25, 2016 at 2:17:00 PM CEST
The Open Data Delusion
I first met Gail Ramster in 2010 at an event about the release of London-wide Open Data by the Greater London Authority. A researcher on “toilet usability,” she was trying to gather public data to compile a list of toilets accessible to elderly people. Six years later I met Gail again, this time at her office at the Royal College of Art, to discuss her experience. The past 5 years have been for me a whirlwind of Open Data advocacy; first working to increase awareness of Open Data in academia, then as a ministerial adviser in the now defunct Open Data User Group – or ODUG, an advisory panel at the UK Government Cabinet Office. ODUG operated in 2012-2015 to help the Government prioritize data releases, assign funding, and produce policy recommendations. In those three years, one of the most curious things I learned was that toilets are among the most requested datasets. A project to allow Local Authorities to release toilet locations was one of the recipients of the Release of Data Fund (see: Local Government Data Incentive Scheme), which we administered. When I tell Gail that I believe toilet data is representative of the whole Open Data parable, she laughs: “It’s all very fragmented.” In fact, despite a lot of work by and with the Government, in 2016, we still have little assurance about data quality, frequency of the releases, reliability of schemas, conflicting standards, and teething issues with licensing.
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Topic: logisch - on May 25, 2016 at 2:15:00 PM CEST
Towel Day
Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe carry a towel in his honour.
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Topic: logisch - on May 20, 2016 at 1:00:00 PM CEST
ps aux | grep food
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Topic: logisch - on May 10, 2016 at 9:59:00 AM CEST
Satoshi - wikileaks
We'd like to thank #Satoshi hoaxer Dr Craig Wright for showing how bankrupt the fact-checking standards are at the BBC, LRB & Economist.
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