Britain looks very different from the skies. From a bird’s eye view of the nation, its workings, cities, landscapes and peoples are revealed and re-discovered in new and extraordinary ways.
Particular nuggets I have found so far include: The Great Migration in the Sky, Taxis in London and Ships Crossing the Channel.
Via 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year at Flowing Data via Beyond the Beyond.
Regret the Error does their annual round up of best corrections:
Best Recipe Error
A report from Reuters:Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson has apologized after accidentally recommending a potentially deadly plant in organic salads.
The chef and TV presenter said in a magazine article that the weed henbane, also known as stinking nightshade, made an excellent addition to summertime meals…
Henbane, or Hyoscyamus niger, is toxic and can cause hallucinations, convulsions, vomiting and in extreme cases death.
Worrall Thompson, who was discussing his passion for organic foods, had confused the plant with another of a similar name.
The magazine “Healthy & Organic Living” printed an urgent warning: “Henbane is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten. As always, check with an expert when foraging or collecting wild plants.”
Henbane, a close relative of deadly nightshade, was used by Dr Crippen to kill his wife in 1910, and is thought to have been the main ingredient in the poison Romeo took in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.”
The chef had intended to refer to fat hen, a weed rich in vitamin C, that is edible, media reports said…
Worrall Thompson was reported in the media as saying the confusion had been “a bit embarrassing.”
Via kottke.org.
“I remember when I was a kid,” Pelletier explains in the text within the brochure, “there was a rumour – I don’t know if it was true – that at McDonalds, the benches were made so that you wouldn’t spend too much time there.” It was from that thought the idea for the Slightly Uncomfortable Chair Collection (SUCC) came.
Via kottke.org.
Included in the NYPL’s recent addition to the Flickr Commons project is Changing New York, a selection of photos taken of NYC in the 1930s by Berenice Abbott as part of a government program for unemployed artists.
Via kottke.org.
Niels [Ferguson, of the Skein team] has started a page of SHA-3 engineering comparisons.
Yes, they are biased, but I still trust the results.
Via Schneier on Security.
ETFE is temperature-resistant, lightweight (1/100th the weight of glass), recyclable, non-toxic when exposed to flame (it actually shrinks away from heat, thus helping to vent smoke out of a burning building), highly insulative, non-porous, and non-stick. Even better, its high-tensile strength makes it easy to manipulate—it can be spun into thin sheets for ease of transport then inflated on-site to create the “pillow” effect of the Aquatics Center walls. It can also be finished in varying degrees of translucence—as transparent as glass or opaque as glass bricks.
Via at cityofsound.
Oh isn’t the internet wonderful?
Via Super Colossal.
Robert C. Wiles, 1947
On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. ‘He is much better off without me … I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody,’ … Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale’s death Wiles got this picture of death’s violence and its composure.
Via Super Colossal.
See also Crashing to Earth, Again and Again