How to Speak Wookiee: A Manual for Intergalactic Communication

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossoms

Who’s Next? [Pic]

Happy Christmas folks! Don’t forget the Christmas...

Happy Christmas folks! Don’t forget the Christmas...:

Happy Christmas folks! Don’t forget the Christmas appeal :)

Umberto Eco on Lists and Making Infinity Comprehensible

Umberto Eco on Lists and Making Infinity Comprehensible:

What Don Giovanni’s lovers have to do with the poetics of catalogues.

As a lover and maker of lists, this made my heart sing: In 2009, the great Umberto Eco became a resident at the Louvre, where he chose to focus his studies on “the vertigo of lists,” bringing his poetic observational style to the phenomenon of cataloguing, culling, and collecting. He captured his experience and insights in The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay, where he charts the Western mind’s obsessive impulse for list-making across music, literature and art, an impulse he calls a “giddiness of lists” but demonstrates that, in the right hands, it can be a “poetics of catalogues.”

Der Spiegel interviewed Eco about his project at the Louvre, yielding the following perl:

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right.” ~ Umberto Eco

The interview is fantastic in its entirety, as is The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay.

HT @rubenrp

Olive Garden won't serve capers because they're too 'unexpected,' or pesto because it's too 'green' [Stupid]

Olive Garden won't serve capers because they're too 'unexpected,' or pesto because it's too 'green' [Stupid]:

[link] [168 comments]

Another African Bull Frog Playing ant crusher

Another African Bull Frog Playing ant crusher:

FAIL! !!!!!! lol...(Read...)

Challenge: Earthquake Weather in San Francisco [Search Research]

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Googler Daniel Russell knows how to find the answers to questions you can't get to with a simple Google query. In his weekly Search Research column, Russell issues a search challenge, then follows up later in the week with his solution—using whatever search technology and methodology fits the bill. This week's challenge: Earthquake Weather in San Francisco More »

The saddest thing I've ever heard on an airplane

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The sad, useless, terrifying, and awesome things I've heard while flying.

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Why didn't I think of this... pillowcase = sheet storage = always matches

Power Outage at Candlestick Park [gif]

Power Outage at Candlestick Park [gif]:

submitted by carsonbiz [link] [45 comments]

There there

There there:

submitted by ItWillBeMine [link] [25 comments]

Mama Gorilla Disapproves

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submitted by wantitbringit [link] [18 comments]

Google Outlines AI-Based Number Reading For Street View Photos

Google Outlines AI-Based Number Reading For Street View Photos:

mikejuk writes "A recent Google research paper outlines how it might use AI to read digits in natural images — specifically Street View photos. The idea is to automatically extract the number of each house as captured by Street View and then use this to improve the geocoding data returned by Google. When you next ask for directions to a particular address the new data could be used to show you a street view looking directly at the house you specified."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.