Category: Daily Links

A fascinating article in Wired about the play-testing of Halo 3.

‘September 2 is International Rock-Flipping Day. Mark your calendars.’

via Subtraction. This is cool but oddly creepy: ‘”Seam carving” allows an image to be resized non-uniformly, so you can change the height to width ratio in the image without cropping, but also without distorting important features in the image.’

‘Computer freaking may be the wave of the future.’ At Bad Science, a fascinating old article about phone phreaking.

a graphic representation of the change in CEO pay relative to the average worker in the US since 1970.

Words which people have an inexplicable hatred of.

via bookofjoe, the obit of Joybubbles, ‘a blind genius with perfect pitch who found he could make free phone calls by whistling tones and went on to play a pivotal role in the 1970s subculture of phone phreaks’

via Design Observer, an argument against Intelligent Design

illustrations: “Stedman, a member of the Scots Brigade in the Netherlands, went to Surinam to help repress a revolt of former slaves. His book, translated into six languages, describes, among other things, the cruel treatment of slaves in that colony.”

via Subtopia. The PDF of lecture given by Rushdie in 2002 about crossing borders, literally and metaphorically, which takes in Partition, translation, 9/11 & other divers topicks. 33 pages, but well worth setting aside a few minutes to read.