Rotundus.com

The Mirrors of the Future Will Point Out All Your Flaws to Sell You Products

I can see this becoming more common: "The Japanese heavy-hitter’s smart mirror has digital displays, including a secondary projection of your own reflection. The projection can be virtually altered to display different makeup looks, hairdos, and even facial hair styles. But here’s where it gets really fun: it can also pinpoint all your flaws, from tiny wrinkles to barely-perceptible pores, and then “recommend” a series of beauty products and treatments in order to improve your look. "

Pearl River Necklace bridge: a twisted solution to an unusual traffic problem

Some photos of bridges (the main one conceptual but also two actual) connecting regions driving on opposing sides of the road

UNASUR Moves toward Continental Freedom of Movement, Venezuela Makes “Equality” Call

Seems that the South American countries is moving in an EU-esque direction. (UNASUR includes the vast majority of the continent).

How to Grow Stronger Without Lifting Weights

"A study finds improvement from pretending to move muscles"

In The National Post:

All over the Internet there are whole mobs holding up little signs: “I am Charlie Hebdo,” “We are Charlie Hebdo.” The idea, I presume, is to broadcast their commitment to the Western idea of freedom of speech and the press. Let’s put it plainly: The solidarity would have been a lot more impressive, more persuasive, some time before this week’s mass butchery.
Indeed, at our universities, newspapers and broadcasters, we have seen an ever-shrinking defence of free speech, a timid reluctance to take on those who claim special privilege to shut down those they simply don’t like. The great institutions of the West, the press and the universities, have been at best complicit and at worst cowardly when it comes up to defending freedom of speech — not from threats of Islamist fanatics with guns, but in much less demanding circumstances.

He talks in greater detail about some of the speakers disinvited from campuses for their lack of political correctness. This whole #JeSuisCharlie thing reminds me again of this cartoon on hashtag activism that sprang up after some of Boko Haram's activities in Nigeria (which is, unsurprisingly still going on - most recently with an estimated 2000 dead in a single attack).

Obama Conditioned Us to Expect Photo Ops. He Can’t Change Our Expectations When It Suits Him.

Ah ... politics "The issue is not his unwillingness to engage in this particular form of presidential art. He’s making a choice: when a photo-op isn’t to his advantage, he elevates avoiding it to a high-minded ideal. The problem for the president, like all presidents, is that he thinks he has a say in the argument over whether a photo op is meaningful or not. He doesn’t. Part of the fix he’s in is of his own making."

Another Reason The Hunger Games Is Awesome: Katniss Is Taller Than Peeta

"According to research and media accounts, it’s women who are more concerned about enforcing the 'male-taller norm.' A 2008 study of 382 ... found that 23 percent of straight men said they wouldn't mind being the shorter party in a relationship. Only 4 percent of women surveyed said they’d be OK as the taller one. ... In 2004, eHarmony creator Neil Clark Warren told the Los Angeles Times that early on, so many of his online matchmaking service’s female clients had complained about being matched with men shorter than them that the company created a rule: Only match women with taller men." I wonder if eHarmony still has such a rule. That same preference remains strong.

Stanford study finds walking improves creativity

"While the study showed that walking benefited creative brainstorming, it did not have a positive effect on the kind of focused thinking required for single, correct answers."

When 'Driver' Goes the Way of 'Computer'

"A driver could come to mean the machine that drives just as a computer is a machine that computes. If that seems implausible, consider that the meaning of “a computer” as a person (usually a woman) who computed was entirely established for a long time before ENIAC."

If you're looking to build a better agricultural system, in some ways improving the welfare of your animals over the "traditional" factory farm might be a good way to go. Here's a somewhat simple and seemingly-common-sense change that enabled one farm to grow chickens healthier chickens faster without the risks of antibiotic resistance in the current system. From Slate:

... Vencomatic’s innovation was to hatch the birds where they will be raised. The company’s first step was building a rack that positions ready-to-hatch eggs above the barn floor. When the chicks pop out, they tumble off the rack into their growing area and can eat and drink immediately. That might seem unremarkable, but it is actually rare. Broiler chicks aren’t fed at a hatchery; they don’t eat until they reach the farm where they will grow to chickenhood. The trip is supposed to happen soon after they emerge — but since chicks are hatched in large batches and don’t all emerge at the same moment, some can wait two days for their first meal.
“That’s 5 percent of a chick’s life,” Vingerling points out. “The industry has always said that chicks recover from that, but it turns out not to be true.”
Changing when the chicks eat strengthens the birds’ immune systems, so fewer die or fail to thrive.