BBC News – Empty F-16 jet tested by Boeing and US Air Force
Boeing has revealed that it has retrofitted retired fighter jets to turn them into drones.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24231077
Murder by Craigslist – Hanna Rosin – The Atlantic
A serial killer finds a newly vulnerable class of victims: white, working-class men.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/advertisement-for-murder/309435/?single_page=true
Unclean at Any Speed – IEEE Spectrum
A lot of references to support what I’ve long believed true about hybrid vehicles. "Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars begins to look more and more like shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another. We wouldn’t expect doctors to endorse such a thing. Should environmentally minded people really revere electric cars? Perhaps we should look beyond the shiny gadgets now being offered and revisit some less sexy but potent options—smog reduction, bike lanes, energy taxes, and land-use changes to start. Let’s not be seduced by high-tech illusions."
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/unclean-at-any-speed
Balky carriers and slow OEMs step aside: Google is defragging Android | Ars Technica
Google has solved Android’s fragmentation problem.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-slow-oems-step-aside-google-is-defragging-android/
horse races
from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/duNqgtElhG/
Hollywood and Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book, Save the Cat! – Slate Magazine
"In practice, Snyder’s beat sheet has taken over Hollywood screenwriting. Movies big and small stick closely to his beats and page counts. Intentionally or not, it’s become a formula—a formula that threatens the world of original screenwriting as we know it." I haven’t read the book but the beat sheet is true of almost every major blockbuster I’ve seen in the last five years.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.single.html
The Killing Machines – Mark Bowden – The Atlantic
A really great read about drones and their use in oversees combat. “How should we feel about drones? Like any wartime innovation, going back to the slingshot, drones can be used badly or well. They are remarkable tools, an exceedingly clever combination of existing technologies that has vastly improved our ability to observe and to fight. They represent how America has responded to the challenge of organized, high-level, stateless terrorism—not timidly, as bin Laden famously predicted, but with courage, tenacity, and ruthless ingenuity. Improving technologies are making drones capable not just of broader and more persistent surveillance, but of greater strike precision.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/?single_page=true
Sports, Complexity, and the Ten-Thousand-Hour Rule : The New Yorker
"This is the scholarly tradition I was referring to in my book “Outliers,” when I wrote about the “ten-thousand-hour rule.” No one succeeds at a high level without innate talent, I wrote: “achievement is talent plus preparation.” But the ten-thousand-hour research reminds us that "the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play." In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/psychology-ten-thousand-hour-rule-complexity.html
Best $600 ever spent: Sub Pop shares Nirvana’s original contract – Local – MyNorthwest.com
Incredible. Sub-Pop Records signed Nirvana for $600 in 1989.
http://mynorthwest.com/11/2338247/Money-Well-Spent
The Strange Sexual Quirk of Filipino Seafarers – Ryan Jacobs – The Atlantic
"The most fascinating part of the Filipino seafaring identity, the little-known and barely studied sexual practice of "bolitas," or little balls. Many Filipino sailors make small incisions in their penises and slide tiny plastic or stone balls — the size of M&M’s — underneath the skin in order to enhance sexual pleasure for prostitutes and other women they encounter in port cities, especially in Rio de Janeiro. "This ‘secret weapon of the Filipinos,’ as a second mate phrased it, has therefore obviously something to do," Lamvik wrote in his thesis, "’with the fact that ‘the Filipinos are so small, and the Brazilian women are so big’ as another second mate put it.""
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-strange-sexual-quirk-of-filipino-seafarers/278285/