Nothing But Streets

Street View

Data visualization guru Ben Fry has created a unique map of the United States by displaying all of the nation’s 26 million roads—and nothing else

The iPhone Of Cars

TDI killed the ethanol star.

See the NYT: A High-Mileage Masterpiece

After my long 48-m.p.g. run, I started over and switched personalities, transforming into a late-for-school Autobahn instructor. Never dipping below 75 m.p.h., flogging every curve, the Jetta still returned a reasonable 36 m.p.g. When I flowed with traffic at 65 to 70 m.p.h., and made no effort to goose the mileage, the VW posted 42 m.p.g. And in city driving, the Jetta hit 32 m.p.g, again topping its official rating.

Yet my thrift was no match for Helen and John Taylor. In September, the Taylors, from Australia, drove a production Jetta TDI to a Guinness world record, averaging an incredible 58.8 m.p.g. for a 9,400-mile run through the 48 contiguous American states. The Taylors used just 11 tanks of fuel over 20 days, averaging 850 miles for each tank.

Real American Hero

Via SeriousEats: Grilled Doughnuts, Better Than Regular Doughnuts

Jawbreaker + Crimpshrine = Are You F'ing Kidding Me!?

God bless you Blake.

See Exclaim.ca: Ex-Jawbreaker/Jets to Brazil Front-man Blake Schwarzenbach Reveals Thorns of Life

Suburbs Are Not Intrinsically Evil

It is how they're usually built that is so bad.

See:

MJ: How to Build Smarter Suburbs

Greener Prospects - "a unique consulting firm that bridges the gap between land-use planning and land conservation"

Recent Links About Neuroscience

Alternet: Are Human Beings Hard-Wired to Ignore the Threat of Catastrophic Climate Change?

The researchers also found that when proposed solutions to global warming clash with people's worldviews, those people are more likely to reject evidence of the problem altogether. For example, in one experiment, Kahan and his colleagues gave two groups of people two contrasting newspaper articles about global warming. Both reported the problem in similar terms: temperatures were rising, human behavior was the cause of climate change, and global warming could lead to disastrous environmental and economic consequences if left unaddressed. But the articles then went on to offer different solutions: one called for increased regulation of pollution emissions, while the other called for revitalization of nuclear power.

When people with a hierarchical worldview received the article that called for increased regulation-policies currently associated with a more egalitarian and liberal worldview-they were more likely to reject that global warming was a problem than when they received the article that called for a revitalization of nuclear power.

FT: Entrepreneurship is all in the mind

Scientists have shown what many have always suspected – that entrepreneurs’ brains are different to those of managers.

A study at Cambridge university, published on Thursday in the journal Nature, found that entrepreneurs’ brains were more active in the region responsible for taking “risky or hot” decisions.

WSJ: Journey to the Center of Warren Buffett's Mind

This detachment, I think, is one of Mr. Buffett’s greatest strengths. He has the ability to hover over his own actions and judgments, as if he were having an out-of-body experience, looking down and evaluating the man who made them as if he were someone else entirely.

In person, Mr. Buffett is as warm and empathetic a person as anyone I have ever met — but he also seems, in Ms. Schroeder’s telling, to be forever observing himself from a distance as well. There is, in her portrait of him, a streak of something at least mildly reminiscent of autism: a photographic memory, an effortless command of complex mental computations, an enduring obsession with collecting and measuring everything imaginable

Peanut Allergy News

This makes sense to me.

Early exposure to peanuts may prevent allergy

The researchers analyzed the prevalence of peanut allergy and diet histories for 5,171 Jewish children from the UK and 5,615 Jewish children from Israel.

They found that children from the UK had a prevalence of peanut allergy that was 10-fold higher than that of children from Israel...

"The most obvious difference in the diet of infants in both populations occurs in the introduction of peanut," they note. Approximately 69 percent of infants in Israel consume peanuts by 9 months of age, compared with just 10 percent of those in the UK.

Likewise, when compared with the UK mothers, the Israeli mothers consumed significantly more peanuts during pregnancy, Du Toit and colleagues point out.

The researchers suggest that recommendations to avoid peanut in early infancy could be behind the increase in peanut allergy in the UK, Australia and the US.

Won't Someone Please Think About The Children?

There are reports of wealthy New Yorkers pulling their children from private schools. Is there no God?

See: Pricey Schools Prepare for Problems

New Study Shows Health Benefits Of Urban Parks

Interesting British study showing that access to green spaces and parks improves people's health and also "counteracts the effects of poverty on deprivation".

See TH: Urban Parks Help Defeat Inequality

IEA Says Oil Production Will Peak By 2030

See: Energy agency sees oil price rising to $200 a barrel

The era of cheap oil is over, the International Energy Agency warned yesterday as it predicted crude values would soon rebound to above $100 a barrel and double again by 2030 as fields in the North Sea and elsewhere in the world declined faster than expected.

Watching Nader Become Irrelevant

I never cared for Ralph Nader politics. Now as his influence wanes he's become shrill and revealed as a one-trick pony.

See:
Nader: Obama might not protect consumers

Nader Defends Obama Slur

Revisiting McVeigh

Vanity Fair re-posted an article by Gore Vidal : The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh

Red, Blue, And Purple

Professor Newman has his 2008 Presidential Election Results Maps up.

2004


2008


CSMonitor has maps at Patchwork Nation.

WashingtonPost.com has 2008 Presidential Election results by county too.

Autism = Genes + Environmental Trigger

Scientist are now looking to identify the environmental triggers.

See:
Study showing evidence of a major environmental trigger for autism

Emasculation

I think this is a story we'll be hearing more about soon.

See: The disappearing male

More and more boys are being born with genital defects and are suffering from learning disabilities, autism and Tourette's syndrome, among other disorders.

Male infertility rates are on the rise and the quality of an average man's sperm is declining, according to some studies.

But perhaps the most disconcerting of all trends is the growing gender imbalance in many parts of heavily industrialized nations, where the births of baby boys have been declining for many years.

Vanity Fair's Latest Kate Winslet Interview

Isn’t She Deneuvely?

For someone whose résumé includes five Oscar nominations—at 31, she became the youngest actress to have achieved that milestone—Winslet exhibits a refreshing lack of pretension.

"It's Blowing Peace And Freedom"

Great Lakes states are getting ready for windfarm proposals.

See: Great Lakes eyed for offshore wind farms: 100,000 turbines could provide third of electricity needs for entire U.S.

The New Presidential Vehicle

See NYT: Presidential Power on the Road

Rolling Stone's 2005 Profile Of Rahm Emanuel

Ballet dancer and the basis for the West Wing's Josh Lyman.

See: The Enforcer

Serious Eats Second Alton Brown Interview

See: Chewing the Fat: Alton Brown on Race, Class, and Food

Also available as a video podcast.