Quote of the Day: Isaac Asimov

in ,

This quote was first pointed out by John Gruber over on Daring Fireball. Isaac Asimov:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”. This is the fundamental problem with our country/culture at the moment. I don't know how to fix it, other than to quote a Rob Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn said: "Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. . . . Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense." I just don't see us ever getting to the place where Education gets as much attention as the Pentagon...

Nest: Initial Impressions

in ,

Brett Terpstra, writing on his blog:

Once the Nest is wired up, you just tap it and setup begins. The longest part of the installation was entering my wifi password using the dial, and even that was under a minute. It asks you a few questions about your system (gas or electric, forced air or non, etc.) and boom, it’s ready to go. I so want one of these.

Time Lapse View from Space, ISS Fly Over

in , ,

By Michael König:

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken by the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km. All credit goes to them. I intend to upload a FullHD-version presently. HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, de-noised, de-flickered, cut, etc. All in all I tried to keep the looks of the material as original as possible, avoided adjusting the colors and the like, since in my opinion the original footage itself already has an almost surreal and aesthetically visual nature. Visit the video's Vimeo page for a music, image, and location colophon.

Study Shows Fox News Viewers Less Informed on Major Stories

in ,

From John Gruber, on Daring Fireball:

[Not a joke](http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/21/fairleigh_dickinson_publicmind_poll_shows_fox_news_viewers_less_informed_on_major_news_stories.html)

Study shows that Fox News viewers are less informed on major stories than people who neither watch news shows nor read newspapers regularly. From the article, written by Josh Voorhees on Slate: According to a new poll (PDF) from Fairleigh Dickinson University, if you watch Fox News you are significantly less likely to know the correct answer to that question than if you mostly avoid news shows and newspapers all together. After controlling for factors like partisanship, education, and other demographic factors, the pollsters found that Fox New viewers were 18 points less likely to know that the revolt was successful than their non-active news consuming counterparts. Fox News viewers were also 6 points less likely to know that the Syrian uprising has yet to succeed.

District Nights

in

I'm a sucker for time lapse video of any sort, especially when it is beautifully done, such as this. Drew Geraci says this about his video:

This piece is all about DC at dusk and night -- concentrating on the monuments and historial buildings on the mall. During the making of this time-lapse, I was hassled/stopped 27 times by DC police and received 5 parking tickets. That's pretty much how it goes in DC. With help from my buddy Drew Breese, Russ Scalf, and a few unnamed sources we were able to complete this production... even if it was slightly behind schedule. It took nearly 3 months to film the sunsets -- since DC weather isn't always the best. For the production, I used a combination of standard frames, tone-mapping, and traditional HDR (on a few shots). It's quite the mixture. I hope you enjoy this piece and DC just as much as I do. The Vimeo video page lists his colophon of hardware, software and music.. Drew's website is TheVoder.com.