(via Instapaper)

Slippery slope arguments are great. Like as far as arguments go, because no one is correct, it is just a matter of personal preference.

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“That’s the crux of the entire problem,” Shanks said. “The scientific community does not agree on what ‘analogue’ essentially means.”

THAT’S BECAUSE YOU SPELLED ANALOGUE WRONG…But seriously, they are taking the wrong approach, legislating substances is silly, it is the behavior and desire to seek out these highs that are the issue.

Q: Have you ever met a lock you couldn’t pick? A: There are several types of locks that are designed to be extremely pick-resistant, as there are combination safe locks that can slow down my efforts at manipulation.

I’ve never met a safe or lock that kept me out for very long. Not saying I can’t be stumped. Unknown mechanical malfunctions inside a safe or vault are the most challenging things I have to contend with and I will probably see one of those tomorrow since you just jinxed me with that question.

My storefront is your phone, the web. That’s my connection to you. People ask, “When will you open a store?” I say I will when I’m ready. You can’t be a mom-and-pop if you’re divorced and see your kids on the weekend. It’s a quality-of-life issue. I met a guy who said, “I can’t think about spending time with my family until I reach a million in sales.” I said, “You can do that right now—you don’t have to save for years for the luxury of spending time with people who are important to you.” Robicelli’s has managed to be in the Huffington Post three or four times, the New York Times about five times, we’ve been on the “Today Show,” and I have a deal with a major publisher—and you can manage to do all this stuff without a store. It’s a brand-new economy, and you can’t do business as usual.

— Let Them Tweet Cake | Fast Company

As our sole source of non-microscopic space material, meteorites have much to teach us. “We’re still building a catalogue of everything that’s out there,” says Dr. Ralph P. Harvey, a Case Western Reserve University geologist and principal investigator for the Antarctic Search for Meteorites program. “Meteorite science is where biology was 200 years ago with people saying, ‘Oh, here’s a strange, long-necked beast, I wonder if it’s related to the turtle.’”

Yet scientists don’t necessarily get first dibs on meteorites that plummet to earth. “There is a market out there that treats these [meteorites] as collectibles and curios, almost as though they were fine art or ancient artifacts,” Dr. Harvey explains.

The flurry of excitement surrounding Tissint’s fall set off a “feeding frenzy,” according to Dr. Harvey. Everyone wanted a piece of the meteorite — and with good reason. Martian meteorites are known to sell for around $1,000 per gram3. As a result, Harvey added, “The prices go up and up.”

(via Instapaper)

Escalators and stairs are, it turns out, problem points in walking, and not just for the commuters at Penn Station. As John Templar notes in his oddly fascinating book The Staircase, an estimate for one U.S. year found that more than 6,000 people died as a result of a fall on stairs or a ramp. Studies have noted that most stair accidents involve either the first three or last three stairs on a flight. “On these high risk-steps,” Templar writes, “many orientation factor changes occur—route direction change, changes of view, and very large changes of illumination.” As we come to the top or bottom of a stair, we are preparing to change our gait, and we may be looking ahead to where we’re going next. We are distracted pedestrians. What’s more, when we fall, Templar notes, “our natural defense reaction systems will not help much until after we have already fallen about one step of 7 inches (18 cm).” The design of the stair and the tread plays a largely hidden, but crucial role; in one problematic staircase, the stairs were marked with lines parallel to the edge of the tread. In six weeks, 1,400 people fell on the stair: They were confusing the marked line with the actual edge of the tread.

Stairs are scary.

(via Instapaper)

Contemplating these dreary statistics, one might well conclude that the United States is– to a distressing extent– a nation of violent, intolerant, ignorant, superstitious, passive, shallow, boorish, selfish, unhealthy, unhappy people, addicted to flickering screens, incurious about other societies and cultures, unwilling or unable to assert or even comprehend their nominal political sovereignty. Or, more simply, that America is a failure.

Pretty depressing article…

(via Instapaper)

I was observing at Palomar Observatory with an amazing instrumentation guru named Keith who taught me much. Keith’s night lunch—prepared in the evening by the observatory kitchen and placed in a brown bag—was a tuna-fish sandwich in two parts: bread slices in a plastic baggie, and the tuna salad in a small plastic container (so the tuna would not make the bread soggy after hours in the bag). Keith plopped the tuna onto the bread in an inverted container-shaped lump, then put the other piece of bread on top without first spreading the tuna. It looked like a snake had just eaten a rat. Perplexed, I asked if he intended to spread the tuna before eating it. He looked at me quizzically (like Morpheus in the Matrix: “You think that’s air you’re breathing? Hmm.”), and said—memorably, “It all goes in the same place.”

My point is that the stunning presentation of desserts will not have universal value to society. It all goes in the same place, after all. [I’ll share a little-known secret. It’s hard to beat a Hostess Ding Dong for dessert. At 5% the cost of fancy desserts, it’s not clear how much value the fancy things add.]

I always wondered the same thing about growth, but I never thought to frame the argument in terms of energy development/costs.