Nat'l Geo on the Old Man's Tool

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Saletan on Genes, Race, and Athletics

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Stealer's Wheel?

I noticed this attractive new winning design for NYC's streetside bicycle lock-up points. I'm going to predict: NO. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. Don't they have bike thieves in Denmark? Haven't they seen Cool Hand Luke?

A simple circle, resting on the ground with a bar bisecting it. That concept, called “Hoop” — the brainchild of Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve, designers based in Copenhagen — is the winner of the CityRacks Design Competition and will be used as the new standard bicycle rack installed on New York City’s sidewalks, officials announced on Friday. Nearly 5,000 such racks are to be installed over the next three years.

Mon Dieu! Un huile tres stupide. Écouter?

FJM, RIP

With dignity, class, and a little wet farting, the FJM boys called it a day. Thanks for the edification, fellas.

Hello, everyone.

After 21 years, and almost 40 million posts (we'll have to check those numbers, but it's something like that), we have decided to bring FJM to an end.

Although we have not lost our borderline-sociopathic joy for meticulously criticizing bad sports journalism, the realities of our professional and personal lives make FJM a time/work luxury we can no longer afford.

We started this site with two purposes: to make each other laugh, and to aid and abet the Presidential campaign of Bob Barr. Although we failed in the latter goal, we gleefully succeeded in the first, and thanks to a grassroots internetty word-of-mouth kind of a deal, we appear to have positively affected the lives of actual citizens as well, which astonishes and delights us to this day. We really never thought FJM would be for anyone but us. We are thrilled and kind of humbled to have been proven wrong.

We thank all of you for the kind emails, and the tips, and the support. To each and every person who ever contacted us: hat tip to you.

Perhaps the future holds another project for us on which to waste massive amounts of time. For now, we will leave the site and the archives up as a testament to the fact that if you work hard enough, and blow off enough social occasions, and stare at the internet enough, and get nerdy enough, and repeatedly ignore entreaties from your friends and loved ones to please God stop blogging about Bill Plaschke and get out of the house it's a beautiful day!, then you, too, can...have a blog.

Again, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. And as Joe Morgan himself might say:

"I really haven't seen them play...slidepiece...Dave Concepcion."

Love,

dak, Junior, and Ken

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A Place For Da Kine Veggies

If you walked down any street in the US asking about "Pot-in-pot" you'd get arrested long before anybody knew what you were talking about.

The Pot-in-Pot system consists of two pots, a smaller earthenware pot nestled within another pot, with the space in between filled with sand and water. When that water evaporates, it pulls heat from the interior of the smaller pot, in which vegetables and fruits can be kept. In rural Nigeria, many farmers lack transportation, water, and electricity, but one of their biggest problems is the inability to preserve their crops. With the Pot-in-Pot, tomatoes last for twenty-one days, rather than two or three days without this technology. Fresher produce can be sold at the market, generating more income for the farmers.

Quelle thermodynamique! Écouter?

Hawaii Gets a Wave-Motion Gun

...Or maybe just some energy generating buoys.

Ocean Power Technologies announced Thursday that it will be installing a water-power buoy system to tie into Hawaii's Oahu Island power grid.

The New Jersey-based company makes ocean buoys that harness the energy of ocean waves to generate electricity that is then sent back to shore via underwater cable.

Through a partnership with the U.S. Navy, Ocean Power has been developing technology that could supplement electricity needs for the military in Hawaii .

"We are pleased to be a part of the Navy's effort to develop and commercialize new technologies to reduce the Navy's dependence on fuel shipments for power generation facilities, and to meet its strategic goals and other sustainability initiatives," George W. Taylor, Ocean Power's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Le Nouvelle Vague des Gigawatts. Écouter?

Oregon Man Castigates Republicans

Why is this letter to the editor great? Read the ones that follow it, or don't and take my word for it.

Rejected ideas won’t help GOP

Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, in a Nov. 6 election postmortem advisory, wrote: “I suggest that we (Republicans) return to first principles.”

For starters, Flake wants to reverse “borrow and spend” Republicanism and limit spending. So much for universal health care. But Americans, ranging from the poorest to the middle of the middle class, need and want real health care.

Next, Flake advocates an unregulated free-market economy. If he means an economy based on sub-prime mortgages, mortgage-backed securities for the stock market and credit-default swaps for the gamblers, then he is opposed by most Americans.

Flake urges a “strong national defense,” which, since 1965, has been a code for perpetrating bloody wars abroad — wars devoid of any American national interest. Most Americans have clearly demonstrated, albeit belatedly, their disapproval of wars such as those in Vietnam and Iraq.

Finally, Flake promotes “traditional values,” which include, of course, a ban on abortion. Most Americans are pro-choice.

In one after another of Flake’s Republican “pillars,” he advocates the current policies of President Bush or a modification motivated by ephemeral convenience. Sounding like Sen. John McCain, Flake says: “We’ve got ’em just where we want ’em.”

The American people have already passed judgment on Flake’s “pillars” and on Senator McCain. If the only new idea Republicans have is Gov. Sarah Palin, they are not only “deep in the political wilderness” — they are beyond rescue there as well.

Leo Quirk

Corvallis

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Why the Korean Kid Did My Homework

Malcolm Gladwell explains.

And then there are the math geniuses who, as anyone can’t help noticing, are disproportionately Asian. Citing the work of an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Gladwell attributes this phenomenon not to some innate mathematical ability that Asians possess but to the fact that children in Asian countries are willing to work longer and harder than their Western counterparts. That willingness, Gladwell continues, is due to a cultural legacy of hard work that stems from the cultivation of rice. Turning to a historian who studies ancient Chinese peasant proverbs, Gladwell marvels at what Chinese rice farmers used to tell one another: “No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” Contrast that legacy with the one derived from Western agriculture—which holds that some fields be left fallow rather than be cultivated 360 days a year and which, by extension, led to the creation of an education system that allowed students to be left fallow for periods, like summer vacation. For American students from wealthy homes, summer vacation isn’t a problem; but, citing the research of a Johns Hopkins sociologist, Gladwell shows that it’s a profound handicap for students from poor homes, who actually outlearn their rich counterparts during the school year but then fall behind them when school lets out. “For its poorest students, America doesn’t have a school problem,” Gladwell concludes. “It has a summer-vacation problem.” So how to close the gap between rich and poor students? Get rid of summer vacation in inner-city schools.

Tres bien aux Indochine, pour les nombres! Écouter?