Extreme slow motion photography at 1 trillion frames per secondAUG 17

At one trillion frames per second, you can see light move:

Bernard JamesAUG 17

Bernard James was this year's second round draft pick of the Cleveland Cavaliers (immediately traded to Dallas). He's also 27, and an Air Force veteran. This is a great story, I hope he has a long career.

Fans attend the NBA draft to boo. They boo Commissioner David Stern. They boo their draft picks. They boo other teams' draft picks. They boo to boo.

They didn't boo Bernard James. They chanted "U-S-A" over and over again.

How tall is the tallest possible building?AUG 17

This morning I was in an elevator with a woman who was listening to her messages on speakerphone. Lucky for me, the ride was only a couple floors. I'm not sure I could've lasted if the elevator ride were, say, a mile long. Atlantic Cities Nate Berg asks the experts: Is there a limit to how tall buildings can get? (We already know there's no limit to poor elevator etiquette.)

Crazy dancingAUG 16

Excuse the dubstep if you must, but Marquese Scott is amazing. Previously.

(via the high definite)

French artists imagine the world in 2000AUG 16

Heading into 1900, French artists were asked to create images of what the world would look like in the year 2000 for a series of commemorative postcards. Many thought we'd have personal flying devices, many thought manual work would be automated, and, um, one thought we'd be living underwater riding giant domesticated seahorses.

Traditional-style woodblock prints of video game charactersAUG 16

Illustrator Jed Henry takes video game characters and draws them in the style of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Here, for example, is Mario Kart:

If that tickles your fancy, Henry is collaborating with woodblock printmaker David Bull to make actual woodblock prints that are available via Kickstarter.

How to read a Victorian novelAUG 16

The Victorian novel can present a daunting challenge to today's Twitter-addled brains, so Rohan Maitzen has some advice on how to read them.

Now that you're properly equipped, your next challenge is time! You're going to want to read, and read, and read-but modern life sometimes makes that difficult. What's to be done?

Take the book with you everywhere, that's what. Bank line-ups, buses, bathrooms, those precious 8 minutes while the pasta boils - you know what to do! A few pages here, a few pages there, and next thing you know, you're 500 pages in, with only another 200 to go.

Then there's all the time you'll save by not watching television. Remember: the most highly-praised shows in recent years are always compared to ... Victorian novels! Some of them are straight-up based on them! Just read the originals. They are always better.

Downton Abbey season three trailerAUG 15

This is apparently taped off of someone's television so the picture is blurry and the sound is not so good, but you get the gist.

Season three of Downton is set to start airing in the UK in September and in the US in January (for those who don't know what BitTorrent is).

Raiders of the Lost Ark on IMAX!AUG 15

Steven Spielberg is re-releasing Raiders of the Lost Ark in IMAX theaters for a one week engagement in early September.

Mr. Spielberg, who with the sound designer Ben Burtt supervised the conversion of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to Imax, said that no special effects or other visual elements of the film were changed. The audio, he said, had been enhanced for surround sound: "When the boulder is rolling, chasing Indy through the cave, you really feel the boulder in your stomach, the way you do when a marching band passes by, and you're standing right next to it."

All four Jones movies will be out on Blu-ray in mid-September. (via df)

Dr. Seuss, ad man, Mad ManAUG 15

Before Dr. Seuss became famous for his children's books, he made advertisements for the likes of GE, Ford, and Standard Oil.

Long before Sam went to extraordinary lengths to peddle discolored breakfast foods to obstinate citizens, Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss, if you please) made his living as an advertising illustrator--and in retrospect, his work is unmistakable.

Seuss became the father of the modern day children's stories not solely through his inventive lexicon molded into clever syntax and anapestic meter, but also through vivid imaginary worlds and the charming characters within them. Take one look at his early creations for brands including GE, Ford, and NBC, and there's no denying the framework of his style that would later turn into the denizens of Whoville, Cat in the Hat and Fox in Socks. And, according to the keepers of the Seuss collection at the UC San Diego Library, the enduring brilliance that is Seuss' legacy can be traced back to a very unlikely source: bug spray.

(via co.create)

The life and death of sports fansAUG 15

Team Spirit is a wonderful short film for ESPN by Errol Morris about the funerals of die-hard sports fans.

I love the Steelers fan laid out in a recliner under a Steelers blanket in front of a television with a Steelers game on as if "he just fell asleep watching the game".

Com TruiseAUG 15

New musical obsession: Com Truise. It's basically all I've listened to over the past two weeks.

While subliminally informed by both parental record collections and hints of faded electronics product design, Haley's Com Truise project isn't just nostalgia capitalization. There are fragments (read: DNA strands) of Joy Division, New Order, and the Cocteau Twins, but it's like you're hearing them through the motherboard of a waterlogged Xbox-demented and modern. He's got a way of making familiar things sound beautifully hand-smeared.

He's on SoundCloud and if you like that, check out a couple of his albums: In Decay and Galactic Melt. Got the rec from Dan Cederholm, who tweeted intriguingly, "Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack was brilliant, yes. I'm voting Com Truise for Tron 3."

Beautiful view of the Perseids meteor showerAUG 15

There's nothing like a composite photo of the Perseids meteor shower to hammer home the realization that the Earth is hurtling through space like the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run. Photo by David Kingham.

Real life Brewster's MillionsAUG 14

In 1985's Brewster's Millions, Richard Pryor played a man who stood to inherit $300 million if he could spend $30 million in a month without telling anyone why. Great movie. They should remake it. It's not a perfect analogy, but billionaire Charles F. Feeney is trying to spend all of his money just the same. In 1982, he used $6 billion of his fortune to fund Atlantic Philanthropies. Feeney was able to run the foundation anonymously for 15 years by utilizing Bermuda's flexible disclosure laws. This also meant he wasn't able to deduct these donations from his taxes.

He's raised his profile lately with the hope of inspiring other rich people to spend their money the same way, and Warren Buffett refers to him as the "spiritual leader" of the effort to encourage billionaires to pledge half their fortune to philanthropy.

When the last of its money has been spent and it closes its doors sometime around 2020, Atlantic Philanthropies will be by far the largest such organization to have voluntarily shut itself down, according to Steven Lawrence, director of research for the Foundation Center. (The much bigger Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans to shut down 50 years after its founders die.)

By its end, Atlantic will have invested about $7.5 billion in direct medical care, immigration reform, education, criminal justice advocacy and peace-building initiatives. It was an invisible hand at the end of armed conflicts in South Africa and in Northern Ireland, providing funds to buttress constitutional politics over paramilitary action. It has supported marriage-equality campaigns, death penalty opponents and contributed $25 million to push health care reform.

More like this please. (via @randomantonym)

Companies behaving badlyAUG 14

1. United recently lost a 10-year-old girl (flying as an unaccompanied minor) and didn't care and didn't do much of anything to remedy the situation.

Annie and Perry only discovered that something was wrong a few hours later when the camp called to say that Phoebe was not on the expected plane in Grand Rapids. At the point, both Annie and Perry got on the phone. Annie got someone in India who wouldn't help beyond telling her:

'When I asked how she could have missed it given everything was 100% on time she said, "it does not matter" she is still in Chicago and "I am sure she is fine".'

Annie was then put on hold for 40 minutes when she asked to speak to the supervisor.

2. Matt Fisher's sister was killed in a car accident and not only did her insurance company, Progressive, refuse to pay the value of her insurance policy, their legal team defended the guy who killed his sister in court.

In Maryland, you may not sue an insurance company when they refuse to fork over your money. Instead, what they had to do was sue the guy who killed my sister, establish his negligence in court, and then leverage that decision to force Progressive to pay the policy.

Now my parents don't harbor much venom for the guy who killed my sister. It was an accident, and kicking that guy around won't bring Katie back. But kicking that guy around was the only way to get Progressive to pay. So they filed a civil suit against the other driver in hopes that, rather than going to court, Progressive would settle. Progressive did not. Progressive made a series of offers (never higher than 1/3 the amount they owe) and then let it go to a trial.

At the trial, the guy who killed my sister was defended by Progressive's legal team.

If you are insured by Progressive, and they owe you money, they will defend your killer in court in order to not pay you your policy.

(via @cshirky & @hchamp)

Little Printer now available for pre-orderAUG 14

BERG is now taking pre-orders for Little Printer, their cloud-enabled desktop newspaper press.

Little Printer lives in your home, bringing you news, puzzles and gossip from friends. Use your smartphone to set up subscriptions and Little Printer will gather them together to create a timely, beautiful miniature newspaper.

£199.00+shipping in the UK/EU, $259.00+shipping in the US/Canada. They begin shipping in mid-October.

Updates on previous entries for Aug 13, 2012*AUG 14

An appreciation of 10 years of Daring Fireball orig. from Aug 13, 2012
Did Caster Semenya deliberately throw the 800 meters? orig. from Aug 13, 2012
Women at the Olympics orig. from Jul 19, 2012

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

Hitting the sweet spot between overparenting and underparentingAUG 13

Madeline Levine on what many feel is the optimal style of parenting.

Parental involvement has a long and rich history of being studied. Decades of studies, many of them by Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the optimal parent is one who is involved and responsive, who sets high expectations but respects her child's autonomy. These "authoritative parents" appear to hit the sweet spot of parental involvement and generally raise children who do better academically, psychologically and socially than children whose parents are either permissive and less involved, or controlling and more involved. Why is this particular parenting style so successful, and what does it tell us about overparenting?

Watch a plane crash from inside the cockpitAUG 13

This is a view of a small plane crashing into some trees from inside the cockpit (two of the passengers were filming with GoPro cameras). Although everyone survived, the pilot got pretty banged and bloodied so viewer beware.

After flying up into the mountains for a morning hike in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness we were planning on flying to a small mountain town for dinner. Due to warming temperatures there was an increase in density altitude and we had a hard time getting adequate lift. After taking off we hit an air pocket that made us rapidly loose altitude, pushing us down into the trees.

The plane just takes an amazingly long time to get off the ground...shouldn't that have been a clue to the pilot that something wasn't right? But the most fascinating part of the video is after the crash and they find the camera again and start filming themselves and each other...it's just surreal, especially the part where one of them checks the pilot. (via ★mouser)

An appreciation of 10 years of Daring FireballAUG 13

Daring Fireball turns 10 years old today and Robinson Meyer has an appreciation at The Atlantic.

Gruber's best when he's writing about perfection, excellence and what it takes to achieve either. He can describe eight iPhone Twitter clients, or the software limitations of the iPad, and evince a common sense of aesthetic. His voice can be muscular and rigorous. The man's clearly animated by a hatred of everything he knows to be BS.

I share Meyer's assertion that Apple's "engorge[ment] as a company" has slightly flattened the site's tires, but Daring Fireball remains my favorite blog, a spot it has held for several years now.

Now here's a look at how DF's design has changed over the years, presented in animated GIF form:

Update: I love this analysis of DF's content over the years, especially the visualization of the shift in interest from desktop to mobile.