Monthly Archives: January 2007
Post Punk Kitchen Videos
Earlier I mentioned the Post Punk Kitchen, the public access punk rock vegan cooking show from Brooklyn. Now I can share the love, via Google video. Enjoy! Additionally, they run a vegan cupcake blog, a very funny commentary blog, and are generally funny and amusing and stuff. I will definitely be picking up a copy of their first cookbook: Vegan With A Vengeance as soon as I… Read more
Why You Need A Degree To Work For… Read more
A History of… Read more
Goebbels’ Love Nest For… Read more
Global Economic Activity Heatmap in… Read more
Turn off those stupid snap.com… Read more
‘Greenest Games Ever’ Glow In The Dark
It seems that there is some concern over building part of the Olympic Village on top of radioactive waste. Enough concern to try to stop the testing of the ground because it might disturb said waste. So let me get this straight: people are complaining because the government wants to clean up a radiation hazard that their housing estate is on top of? olympics, 2012, nuclear waste… Read more
The Beginnings of “Our University”
Tristram Hunt writes in The Guardian about how park life is the best cure for city blues, covering some of the new green space ideas floating around in council governments, such as giving schoolchildren pedometers to use in the park to battle early obesity. The interesting bit however, is the history of the parks in East London. The Select Committee for Public Walks in 1830 set out to provide green space to all of London’s residents, not just the upper crust to enjoy William Pitt’s “lungs of London”. For East London it began with Victoria Park, in Tower Hamlets, designed by James Pennethorne. It was an instant hit, comprising floral displays, sandpits, fern house, lido and a fair dose of radical politics. Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling lectured there in the 1880s, while many East Enders described it as ‘their university’ Victoria Park today is one of East London’s hidden gems. It contains countless varieties of trees: oaks, horse chestnuts, cherries, hawthorns and even Kentucky… Read more
…on embarassing drinking
One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your pint-to-toilet cycle gets synchronized with a complete… Read more
Not So Rational Actors After All
New York Times Science writer John Tierney writes about how there are interesting patterns of brain activity that can predict whether or not you will spend money on something or not, leading scientists to develop the Tightwad-Spendthrift scale. It seems that neither tightwads nor spendthrifts fit what economists have lazily described as “rational actors”. It seems that spendthrifts are more driven by their nucleus accumbens, providing dopamine jolts when they anticipate buying something cool; whereas tightwads are driven more by their insula, developing a propensity to experience direct pain when they spend money. Could we be very far from dopamine dampening drugs as a “shopping recovery therapy” for shopaholics, or even more frighteningly, dopamine spritzers attached to credit card machines at… Read more