Here’s the only known video of the world’s most famous memoir writer, and picture of her with friends in a sandbox in July 1937
Animation using PowerPoint [Article]
Before you start frothing at the mouth about the worst possible thing in a PowerPoint is animation (it is), take a moment to read through this instruction guide by Cole Nussbaumer using Excel, PowerPoint & QuickTime player. Not an easy task, but it can be done (especially for those of us not familiar with more advanced graphing tools) – and makes the story a lot more powerful.
Physics & perseverance come together – a robot does quadruple backflip [Video]
Robot gymnast Hinamitetu does a perfectly executed quadruple backflip after a long history of trials and errors.
a 747 billowing in the wind [Video]
An older video, I’m sure, but it isn’t everyday that you see a stationary aircraft flailing in the wind.
The new civil disobedience [Article]
Researcher Danah Boyd is articulate, & explains why in modern society whistleblowing is the new civil disobedience. Scathing in her critique, she shares a perspective:
Unchecked power is how dictatorships emerge. If the rule of law is undermined and secrecy becomes the status quo, it becomes necessary for new civil disobedience tactics to emerge. And, more than the content of the leaks, this is what I think that we’re watching unfold.
Colors, explained. – why choosing the right color is important for your charts [Article]
Robert Kosara had a very relevant article (for me, at least), about having the right colors to depict the information in a chart. Using a rainbow color map from a paper on water resources published in the Journal of American Water Resources Association, he explains in some detail why a beautiful looking map chart was totally misleading.
How Detroit got to its bankruptcy [Article]
You may (or may not) have read about Detroit, the once famed home of the US car industry, filed for bankruptcy. Brad Plumer tracks how it got to this point.
Living in an airport for 4 months [Article]
Ed Snowden’s spent four weeks in a Moscow airport, but Mohammed Al Bahish, a 26 year old Palestinian refugee has spent over 120 days in Kazakhstan’s Almaty International airport. He reckons he’s going slightly crazy.
He cannot enter Kazakhstan because he has no visa, but nor does he have a visa to enter any other country. Israel won’t allow him to travel to the Palestinian territories, and the UN accepts that with no living relatives in Iraq, it would be unsafe for him to return to the country of his birth.
Laughter is the wrench we use to loosen anxiety. [Article]
Bob Fulghum is moving, & writes about the experience. Read part 1 and part 2
Moving is like molting – your exoskeleton gets shed for a new skin. Moving is like migrating – new pastures – new opportunities. Moving numbs the mind and soul, and excites the imagination at the same time.
and then this
Yesterday, in a mind-numbing moving-and-storage funk, I went for a drive alone. In search of serenity, I visited my best Seattle real estate investment. I own it free and clear – no mortgage, no taxes, no obligations to it.
It’s a hole in the ground, actually – about the size of an old-fashioned telephone booth laid on its side – and covered, for now, in grass. This is my cemetery plot. In Lake View Cemetery on Capitol Hill.
Oprah Winfrey to Diana Ross [Letters of note]
Shaun Usher shares another wonderful letter of hope from one icon to another. A brief letter of appreciation from Jan 2000 from Oprah Winfrey to her hero Diana Ross.