Build a Better Cardboard Box....

If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

If you build a better cardboard box, the world will watch it on YouTube.

Happiness Optimist, Revenue Pessimist

We Can Do This, But It Makes Warming Worse

Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship Over the 20th Century

Alan Barreca et al.
MIT Working Paper, December 2012

Abstract:
Adaptation is the only strategy that is guaranteed to be part of the world's climate strategy. Using the most comprehensive set of data files ever compiled on mortality and its determinants over the course of the 20th century, this paper makes two primary discoveries. First, we find that the mortality effect of an extremely hot day declined by about 80% between 1900-1959 and 1960-2004. As a consequence, days with temperatures exceeding 90°F were responsible for about 600 premature fatalities annually in the 1960-2004 period, compared to the approximately 3,600 premature fatalities that would have occurred if the temperature-mortality relationship from before 1960 still prevailed. Second, the adoption of residential air conditioning (AC) explains essentially the entire decline in the temperature-mortality relationship. In contrast, increased access to electricity and health care seem not to affect mortality on extremely hot days. Residential AC appears to be both the most promising technology to help poor countries mitigate the temperature related mortality impacts of climate change and, because fossil fuels are the least expensive source of energy, a technology whose proliferation will speed up the rate of climate change.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Markets in everything: walk like the animals edition

This shoe:

Produces these prints:

More here.

one picture is worth a thousand notes?

The Media Preservation Initiative at Indiana University is taking old pictures of since lost analog records and creating digital sound files from them.

Very smart and very cool.

Hat tip to BinaryBits.

Kraft hates America

Did you know there were green tea Oreos? Mango & orange Oreos? Hollow, straw shaped Oreos you can use to drink milk?

Well there are, but they are not sold in the USA. They were developed in China (by Kraft) and have spread throughout Asia, even into Canada.

Look here dammit. I want a mango & orange Oreo and I want it now!

ps. better make it gluten-free though

What do you get the jaguar who has everything?

Indoor plumbing, of course!!

Hat tip to Karl de la O

extra skin pups

This photo is amazing:




Many more great pics here.

On Angus' Pond

My wonderful Aunt Joyce is pre-disbursing her estate and gave us some frogskins this winter. We decided to use them to put a small stream and pond in the back yard.

Here are some wee foties of the semi-finished product (clic the pics for a more glorious image):

Come On!!!!

Wooden Shjips on the iPod, very free (and easy)

Wow! I am a dope. Wooden Shjips (and spinoff Moon Duo) are *awesome*. This is my music; droning, repetitive, edgy, and I've been missing out.

Here is a link to an incredible Shjips cover of LCD Soundsystem's "Drunk Girls", and here is a link to a Moon Duo track.

Here is a link to the Shjips' MySpace page; check out "Shrinking Moon for You"!

Markets in everything / there is no stagnation

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you the The Breed'n Betsy bovine rectal simulator!

Oh you know it's real!

And, for an extra fee you can get the optional "water rectum" for a more realistic feel!

Hey Tyler: How many of these babies were in the kitchens of the 1950s?

Music update

Two things, people.

First Air Waves' album is out (or more accurately, I finally realized it was out) and it's terrific! Available from Underwater Peoples.

Here's the video for their song "Knockout".

Second, Kurt Vile's new album is out and it's amazing. It's called "Smoke Rings for my Halo".

Here's a video of Kurt playing "Jeus Fever" out in the freezing cold:

Let the camera do its dirty work