The science of anger management

How to keep your body from hijacking your brain when you most need it.

The Free Sound Project

Just make a username and password and you can download any of their free, Creative Commons licensed audio samples. You can also upload yours. A community project that focuses on sounds, not music.

The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to

-browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a "sounds-like" type of browsing and more
-up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
-interact with fellow sound-artists!

We also aim to create an open database of sounds that can also be used for scientific research. Many audio research institutions have trouble finding correctly licensed audio to test their algorithms. Many have voiced this problem, but so far there hasn't been a solution.

Where to get good information about swine flu

There is reason to be concerned, but there are a lot of ignorant people talking online about the flu outbreak. Here are some primary sources for scientific information.

The main reason this flu is different is that it seems to be killing a higher percentage of those infected, and it seems to be killing strong people in the prime of life. If that turns out to be the case, these are pandemic signs and we cannot ignore them. The good news is that some of our antiviral meds are effective, so if you or your children become ill, seek medical attention immediately. Avoid contact with sick people.

Mexico has closed all of its schools until the danger passes.

The main thing we can do to make ourselves safer is to buy and store extra food (and pet food) so that we can avoid contact with other people if a wave of sickness comes to our cities.

http://twitter.com/CDCemergency

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/swine-flu/

http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/

http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/

Google maps of swine flu cases

Hubble telescope: wallpaper from our galaxy and beyond

I met someone the other day who had not seen pictures of the galaxies we can see (so far) with our telescopes. Go look, even if you have seen them. Where we live is actually very BIG and the piece of it we're most concerned with is so small. Some days it helps to have the perspective. I'm going to put a nebula on my desktop to remind me, because I can.

Verbo

Verbo's been doing some interesting high-tech projects.

Japanese experimental music - Sony Walkman CM

Taeji Sawai

Atsuhiro Ito

Both of them
via Cnet

The size of our world, by comparison

Happy new year! (for some parts of the third planet from this sun)

The Wholesale Sedation of America's Youth

Common population estimates include at least eight million children, ages two to eighteen, receiving prescriptions for ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, autism, simple depression, schizophrenia, and the dozens of other disorders now included in psychiatric classification manuals. Yet sixty years ago, it was virtually impossible for a child to be considered mentally ill.

[...]

In 1980, hyperactivity, which had been imprudently named “minimal brain dysfunction” in the 1960s, was renamed Attention Deficit Disorder in order to be more politic, but there was an unintended consequence of the move. Parents and teachers, familiar with the name but not always with the symptoms, frequently misidentified children who were shy, slow, or sad (introverted rather than inattentive) as suffering from ADD. Rather than correct the mistake, though, some enterprising physicians responded by prescribing the same drug for the opposite symptoms. This was justified on the grounds that stimulants, which were being offered because they slowed down hyperactive children, might very well have the predicted effect of speeding up under-active kids. In this way, a whole new population of children became eligible for medication. Later, the authors of DSM-III memorialized this practice by renaming ADD again, this time as ADHD, and redefining ADD as inattention. Psychiatry had reached a new level: they were now willing to invent an illness to justify a treatment. It would not be the last time this was done.

[...]

Once a medical illness has been identified, all unwanted behavior becomes fruit of the same tree. Even the children themselves are often at first relieved that their asocial or antisocial impulses reflect an underlying disease and not some flaw in their characters or personalities.

Light Art

People are calling it "light graffiti" (or "urban light art," LOL), but it needs a new name. An interesting collection of artists and works. Here are more examples.

10,000 hours = expertise

Malcolm Gladwell explains the relationship among effort, talent, and success. What looks like genius can be explained to some extent by practice. Early successes mean early parental support.

Whales and polar bears are bad for the economy: Palin

We can't drill our way out of any crisis.

Oh for some reality-based government.

Good news: Data driftnets rejected as both bad and wrong

In an astounding feat of intelligent analysis and courage, a privacy and terrorism commission composed of technical experts funded by Homeland Security (USA) has reported that sifting through everyone's information about everything will not be an effective way to detect terrorists. Plus it would cause a lot of innocent people's doors to be kicked in, which is "un-American." They recommend revamping privacy laws to make them more coherent and protective and using traditional methods to look for terrorists.

Truly a triumph of mathematics and civil rights over fear.

Next let's elect people who will prevent the government from collecting and purchasing and seizing data on everyone. Because that's un-American too. And un-British, and un-Australian.

Anyway, a little good news in our handbasket to hell this week. Check the comments on the article too. Some intelligent life is out there.

Some cave art may have been painted over millennia

"The results so far are in line with archaeologists' hypothesis that sudden flowerings of cave art came as rapid climate change was causing Palaeolithic cultures to move quickly about Europe, first as the coldest period of the ice age approached, and then as the ice age drew to a close and inhabitable areas expanded."

"There have been surprises, though - in several caves whose art had previously been assumed to date from the same period, the new dating technique has revealed that the paintings were done in several phases, possibly over 15,000 years (25,000 years ago to just 10,000.)"

Imagine living in English caves for tens of thousands of years waiting for the ice to go away again.

Physical Reality

Congratulations to all the particle physicists in the world! Some have been waiting 30 years to do their experiments on CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which was switched on for the first time September 10. The real party though, is for the many engineers who designed and built this incredibly large and complex machine in France and Switzerland over the last 10 years. It's the biggest, most ambitious and complex engineering project ever undertaken by humans.

"The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The LHC is already operational and is presently in the process of being prepared for collisions. The first beams were circulated through the collider on 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled on 21 October."

The first video, above, explains why this machine is interesting, but you have to watch the whole 15 minutes to get the story. The second video is just silly, but it has footage from the inside of the LHC and it's bound to make you feel great about your own MC skills.

Physicists aim to explain how the universe works, and in the process, they ask some very interesting questions. A good book on the topic is A brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, which lays it out in words and pictures for everyone to understand.

Good, cheap, software classes online

Here's a good place to get some training on lots of software and online topics. For $25 you can have a month of access to the entire 30,000+ library of online tutorials, or you can buy them one at a time on CD, and so on. For less money than one college course costs, you can have a full year of access to their courses. Become the Flash expert you want to be, learn 3d software, get some solid HTML training, and get yourself a better, more fun job. Education costs a little but pays back a lot more.

Sex Education online by Planned Parenthood

Good info by a trustworthy organization. Too bad that so many idiots will try to prevent you from seeing it. Sex education helps tremendously in preventing pregnancy and diseases. Fight for your right and your teen's right to know the truth. Support Planned Parenthood. Science over fear.

How posting online can get you busted UPDATE

UPDATE: Burning Black says that with a little work you can change your computer's MAC address as needed.

---

Recently, writers have been arrested for:

* showing throwups and tags on MySpace
* showing videos of their illegal actions on YouTube
* posting bombing photos to forums
* other people posting their trains on forums

The way this generally works is that everything you do online technically requires that the IP (internet protocol) address of your computer be recorded by the web servers at the sites you visit. Sometimes the IP address simply points at your ISP (internet service provider, for example: AOL, Comcast, BT etc.), but those companies can figure out who was doing what at a particular time, and web servers also record the time. So together, quite often, the webserver info and the ISP info lead straight to your bedroom. So if you have a local cop or reporter who hates you, s/he may do the work to track you down over the net.

Sites that care about your privacy, like Art Crimes, do not keep logs of user activity. Unfortunately most sites want to keep that information so they can count visitors and sell more advertising or simply have some way to ban some people temporarily from a forum. Some sites keep webserver logs forever and others dump them after some amount of time.

Google tracks everyone's search terms, for example, but now they say they will throw the IP addresses away after 18 months. But they have been forced to give massive amounts of YouTube logs to Viacom in a copyright dispute and this week won the right to anonymize them first. If those logs had been stored in an anonymized state they would not have posed the risk to millions of people that they did.

Posting copyrighted materials is illegal (expensively) and yet digging through everyone's records in order to find out who uploaded what is the wrong way to address it. Terrorism is terrible, but spying on everyone's phone calls in order to find the dirty dozen is not an acceptable solution either. Unfortunately the US Congress thinks this is fine and passed a law about that this month (FISA).)

My point here is that we all are being tracked by governments and media giants routinely, and that your favorite little forums can give you up by accident or through being forced to give up those logs they save. Your own equipment can leak information that's dangerous to you.

To get a bit more anonymity online, you need to use public computers or free wifi that you don't have to sign up for, but if you use your own computer or phone, it can still leave its own unique ID number behind (MAC address). Even your camera or camera phone can give up important info such as the exact location (GPS) and time and date you took the photo, camera type, etc., if you don't erase that info (EXIF) before you upload.

The best policy is not to incriminate yourself by posting your own illegal acts online, because technically, you may not be able to delete them, ever. Even then it's possible that someone else's posting of your illegal stuff will get you in trouble, so it's best to try to control what you've got out there and how it represents you, by restricting access to or usage of your photos. Same advice goes for those drunken orgy photos, of course.

Paint and sperm trouble

Some paint and solvent ingredients (some types of glycol ether) are reportedly responsible for low sperm quality (infertility) problems in men, according to a British study. Unfortunately the article doesn't seem to link to the study or name it, so it's hard to find out which glycol ethers are now known to be at fault. A quick search online for [MSDS spray paint glycol ether] seems to indicate that many spray paints also have forms of glycol ether in them, as apparently do the water-based paint (latex?) mentioned in the article. There's no indication whether the impairment is permanent or will wear off after exposure stops, so best to err on the side of safety. We've long known that spray paint is dangerous to the central nervous system over time, not to mention lungs of course, so the smart move is to wear good protection.

Definitely wear those respirators that can help protect you from paint. Dust masks are useless except for the largest droplets. They won't protect you from the solvents.

A British study suggests that men routinely exposed to chemicals found in paint may be more likely to experience fertility problems.

The research found that men, such as painters and decorators, who work with glycol solvents are two-and-a-half times more likely to produce lower levels of "normal" sperm.

The study, a joint research project between the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield, examined more than 2,000 men attending 14 fertility clinics. The research found identified a wide variety of other chemicals that did not impact fertility.

Estria's skinny cap (stencil tip) tutorial [updated]

Correct info, from the site: "In 1986 Crayone TWS and Razor KTD first introduced Estria to the Skinny Cap. Razor was the first to conceive of it." (San Francisco Bay Area)

This type of detail cap has spread to Europe and beyond over the decades.

Here's the first public tutorial on home made skinny caps.

Be forewarned: Using these can be incredibly messy. You will get paint all over yourself until you get the hang of it. Wear gloves and trashed shoes. On the upside, you'll have plenty of loose paint for those nice splatter effects.

Another article about graffiti innovations

Breakthroughs? You be the judge. Some cool stuff in there for sure, but plenty to get riled about as well. As a commenter put it, graffiti is usually associated with "a certain demographic" but apparently when people of other demographics do it, it's cool. Can you smell the racism there?

Parallel Strokes - New book by Ian Lynam

"Parallel Strokes is a collection of interviews with twenty-plus contemporary typeface designers, graffiti writers, and lettering artists around the world. The book is introduced with a comprehensive essay charting the history of graffiti, its relation to type design, and how the two practices relate in the wider context of lettering.

Interviews within include conversations with pan-European type design collective Underware, Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi, American graffiti writer and fine artist Barry McGee/Twist, German graffiti writers Daim and Seak, American lettering artist, graphic designer and design educator Ed Fella, among others. Parallel Strokes is an enquiry into the history, context, and development of lettering today, both culturally approved and illicit.

Softcover, 244 pages, printed in glorious Canada First 100 orders ship with a limited edition 17 in. x 20 in. two-color Parallel Strokes poster
us $25 + Free shipping worldwide.

[Check the link for sample pages and a full list of interviewees.]

How to create your own viral videos on YouTube

Wired how-to wiki has the nitty gritty.

The Story of Stuff

A quick and engaging overview about the state of the world, who profits from our destruction, and what we can do about it.

Online art sales - busiest sites

Monthly traffic in the online art market.

Why borrowing money for college makes sense

Especially if you will have to pay for it yourself, getting a college education is the smart thing to do. (See the link for a helpful illustration of why that's so.) Sure, some philosophy majors work in restaurants, but for most people, the difference in income and opportunity is almost immediate after they get a degree.

Education is your best chance to get out of poverty, both for you and your children. It was the best decision I ever made. Make a list of questions and an appointment to speak to someone at a university Admissions office to discuss your options and where to start.

In the USA and likely in other places too, if you're poor or smart or talented enough, the government or school will pay for some of your tuition. Every worthwhile school wants you to attend, so they are often helpful in making it possible.

If you are in the US and you think you might want to go to college this fall, you need to fill out the financial aid forms now, because they process the applications in the order they are received, starting January 1 each year. Don't wait.

USA: You can find out what your Pell Grant eligibility is at www.fafsa.ed.gov . They also have some other grant info there, but your school will have even more information about financial aid.

How to recognize and counter a bad argument

Learning to identify faulty reasoning will help you over and over in life as media and authority and politicians come at you with bogus arguments. This material was the most valuable stuff I learned in college. It looks boring on the surface but it's actually fascinating because it helps sort out the truth from the BS.

Did you know ... Shift happens

Mind blowing facts about the rapidly changing world we live in.

via Todd Warfel

Why pay attention to the threat of climate change?

There's no debate among climatologists about whether or not global climate change is happening. It is. The only debate is between those who hope humans didn't cause it and those who hope humans can change it. That debate is meaningless. If we might be able to change it, we have to try, because it's our survival as a species that's at stake. The only smart thing to to is to try to curb the changes before life on Earth becomes difficult or impossible for humans.

We're the last generation of people who have a chance to try before it becomes too late, because the changes are not going to be gradual or incremental. Climate changes happen when conditions tip into a new dynamic and then become inevitable.

Don't let the wishful thinking of the anti-science people lull you into a false sense of security. Climate change is not something in the far future, it's something that will make our own lives and the lives of our children very different and difficult indeed. The earlier we act to curb human pollution the less expense and disastrous results we'll have.

The first step is to get everyone on board. Spread the word.

Thanks to Roger for the heads up on this video.

Midwest Teen Sex Show

Sex ed by and for teens. Video podcasts. Also available on iTunes. Watch theirs, make your own. Scholarship prizes.

"Young people (15 to 30) are invited to submit new digital videos showing how they envision the sex ed experience. The grand prize winner will receive a $3500 scholarship or cash equivalent."

Mr Wiggles on the Art of Lettering

Tutorials, alphabets and more.

40 million have HIV-AIDS (SIDA) + 4 million more this year alone

Teenagers and young adults (and their babies) worldwide are being killed by this incurable disease even though it's preventable.

We must each save ourselves, our friends and our loved ones, because the world can't afford to save us. Even if someone makes a vaccine (and no one knows if this is even possible yet), it wouldn't help you if you're already infected.

Our governments, churches, families and schools are afraid to give us any information that involves sex and drugs. In many countries where the number of infected people is rising most rapidly, the governments won't even alert the public to the threat! They would rather let you die than admit you are having sex.

So it's up to us to bring the news to the kids who need it.

Here's the bottom line: Use condoms and don't share needles. That's what works best.

Condoms show you care about yourself and your partner. Condoms are about germs and sperm, not about morality. Let's be practical. They are not a perfect solution, but this is what we all must do if we're to stop this global pandemic and avoid killing ourselves, our lovers, and our children. We need to get creative about making them more available too, such as providing them at parties and clubs.

Spread the word, please, on your blogs and personal pages ... and on the walls.

Here's a good place to buy them online (in business since 1994) and they ship worldwide: Condom.com

I'd like to show more paintings on AIDS prevention too.
yo@graffiti.org

Maywa Denki

The link goes to more info and pictures about this interesting musical group, called "the first to use a true robotic vocalist." I like everything about this, but I'm especially fond of the guitar-replacement instruments.

via BoingBoing

Finally some good news about seed patents

Monsanto has had 4 patents rejected, finally.

This is excellent news, because their patents were putting honest traditional farmers out of business and creating new dependencies and weaknesses that threatened the world food supply.

Before Monsanto tried to own all the food we eat, all farmers saved and traded their seeds, but Monsanto tried to make them buy and plant sterile seeds, so they would have to buy seeds every year. Some farmers can't afford to buy seeds every year, and many didn't understand that free sample seed would lead to them going out of business before it was too late.

Other farmers were vigorously and cruelly sued out of business when Monsanto's genetically modified crops pollenated their fields accidentally via the wind.

GMO contaminated crops could not be exported to some other countries, ruining the farmers' ability to sell their crops.

Monsanto's farming practices also lead to dangerous mono-cultures, where only one genetic strain of corn or wheat, etc., is planted in most plots, paving the way for killer diseases to wipe out a whole year's crop at once.

Profit today, while the world starves tomorrow. Brilliant.

The article talks about US farmers, but Canadian farmers were also hurt, and the most damage was likely done in India, Africa and poorer countries. I sure hope this patent rejection has a positive effect on the worldwide Monsanto problem. What we need is some unbought politicians to make some better laws around patenting food crops and the GMO contamination of traditional foodstocks. Mexico's traditional maize crop's genetic heritage is now under serious threat from the GMO cross pollination.

Related food facts here:

Future of Food documentary (Bittorrent)
Harvest of Fear (PBS documentary)

More info: Google search for Monsano Terminator

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature

Fascinating article from Psychology Today on how reproductive strategies and mating habits cause more boys, more blonds, more suicide bombers, younger criminals and geniuses, and more red sports car buyers.

The good news is that most of these strategies are obsolete in the modern world, and once you understand what's going on, you might be more in control of your life choices.

GRL in BCN

Graffiti Research Lab takes Barcelona by storm. It's hard to know what to make of the laser-maddened crowd. Is it just that everyone wants to get away with drawing genitals and dirty words on buildings? While everyone watches? Really big ones?

GPS, Graffiti, and Self-Incrimination

The article above describes a system of graffiti surveillance involving police using Global Positioning System (GPS) tagging of photos, etc. We could worry about that, but consider this bigger picture:

GPS is a system that involves a satellite and a ground receiver. The satellite tells the receiver on the ground where the receiver is located, to within a few feet. This system is very handy indeed when, for example, you happen to be lost.

Problem is when your devices report your location without telling you. Your phone might already be GPS-enabled. If not, your next one likely will be. It's not something you can turn off in most cases, because it's used by the emergency services, for example when you dial 911 for an ambulance, in the USA. You have to be tracked for your own good, see?

Your car might already be GPS-enabled. Maybe it has a map or direction finder, very handy. Or maybe it has an antitheft system like OnStar that keeps track of where your car is without telling you. Or maybe your rental car, company car or truck tells the company where you are all the time and your route, again without your knowledge or permission.

Your camera is next, and of course your phone camera. They will have GPS and it will be a "feature." Your photos will automatically contain where and when you took them and with what device, and when you upload to Flickr or whatever, the websites could display that info on a map. Cute, right? Except when the buffers come to the wall hours later or your secret bridge turns into a tourist area, or when the cops need a quick list of every place you hit this year.

GPS is only one of these passive-surveillance technologies of concern. There is also RFID, unencrypted wireless (email, texting, web browsing, pagers, keyboards, cordless phones, most cell phones), surveillance cameras, outdoor listening devices, and cell-phone triangulation, just to hit the high spots.

Clearly, humans need to be more in control of the kind of info their devices are sharing without their permsission. Nothing else will do. Try to buy stuff that has controls that put you in charge and features that are not hidden or automatic. Be aware that your devices can create big security problems for you.

And let's not forget the most dangerous form of self-incrimination: running your mouth. What you say in chatrooms, on phones, on Myspace, in email, to reporters, and to the nice policeman who promised to let you off easy if you just showed him every piece of graffiti you ever painted -- are the most dangerous kinds of self-incrimination available.

The Great Filter

"No alien civilizations have substantially colonized our solar system or systems nearby. Thus among the billion trillion stars in our past universe, none has reached the level of technology and growth that we may soon reach. This one data point implies that a Great Filter stands between ordinary dead matter and advanced exploding lasting life. And the big question is: How far along this filter are we?"

Bluetooth Shoes

Forget LEDs, here come the shoes that authenticate you.

From Threat Level, which often warns about real threats that are worth fighting against. Bluetooth shoes may not be one of the worrisome things -- that is until they start broadcasting your identity or exhibiting other promiscuous or spoofable behavior.

On a similar note, some video cameras are being hooked up to software that attempts to identify people by their gait (how they walk). This type of mass surveillance may turn out to be more evil in the long run than shoes that let you into your workplace without a keycard.

Color Guide

Compilation of color knowledge, tools, and resources that every designer needs.

-via digg

This Week in Science - The Kickass Science Podcast

These people are really dropping science, and it's a joy to listen to.

Visuwords: online graphical dictionary

djdamico pointed out this very cool word tool. It's more like a thesaurus actually, because it shows the relationships between words and ideas. MCs and slammers will love this.

Give it a try with epitaph and epithet

Heroes, Guards, and Prisoners

Ordinary people become great, evil, and passive, depending on how they react to what's going on around them. This article explains how easy it is to fall into the prison mindset and how anyone can be a hero. This essential info will help you throughout life, so don't skip it.

Bystander's Dilemma - The Banality of Heroism, by Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo, Berkeley.edu

Flu pandemic + our governments, killers of millions?

The US government is doing nothing about the potential avian flu pandemic that may almost be upon us. Doing nothing is the same as condemning millions, if not billions to death. We need a worldwide coordinated response to Avian Flu and any pandemic. We're overdue for one and still the world leaders are not acting.

Wake some politicians up; your life may depend on it. Ask your representatives what they are doing to stave off economic collapse in the event of a flu pandemic that kills a substantial proportion of your area's citizens, since the national government isn't planning a credible national vaccination effort.

We need vaccine-making infrastructure and megabucks from the rich countries to fund it. Big pharma doesn't care because they can't make a killing on vaccines. So last year, there was not enough flu vaccine for those who wanted it. Imagine how many of us will want vaccine when a flu strain goes pandemic again. It takes a couple of years to make enough vaccine to make a difference, so the time to start demanding action is immediately.

Educate, activate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic
The most previous flu pandemic killed 50m people worldwide, in 1918-19. Usually they kill 25% of the population apparently. So far this candidate bird flu has killed 60% of the people who've caught it from birds.

Jesus gets up with projected graffiti

Personally, I think "Jesus Saves" graffiti's been done to death, but at least this version of the old standby xtian assertion is BIG

Etching your Powerbook

Forget gold fronts. Etch your favorite style into your aluminum Powerbook. In black.

Pixel Roller

I don't know how they do this, but dang it's cool. It's a printing technology that lets you print on walls using something that looks a lot like a paint roller. The video is worth a week of explanation, though so watch it and be amazed.

Gardening Graffiti

Non-destructive graffiti. This is something I've talked about doing for awhile with gardening friends. About time someone figured it out for me.

New hope for HIV vaccine

New discovery of a bacterium native to the human body that eats the coating of HIV viruses.

"Soon the majority of HIV-infected individuals will be women, according to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative."


Did you Know ...

* At least half of all new HIV infections in the U.S. are among people under 25.

* Most young people are not concerned about getting AIDS. 1

* HIV, for least one NY man, apparently has become resistant to three classes of anti-retroviral medication, and its transition to AIDS isvery short -- less than one year. This man may be the first of many. 2

* African Americans are more affected by HIV and AIDS than any other race.3

* More women are getting HIV and AIDS than ever before. 4

* Most men who get HIV have sex with other men.5

* Most people don?t know their HIV status. 6

* The hardest hit group of Americans is young African American men who have sex with men. One third are infected with HIV; most do not know.7

Notes:
1. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Survey of Americans on HIV/AIDS (2004), 58% of young Americans are ?not concerned? about becoming infected with HIV. Only 24% are "very concerned." Numbers for older Americans are much lower.

2. This man's case may not actually be quite so newsworthy. According to one study published last year in the journal AIDS, about 13 percent of 17,300 people with HIV have developed resistance to all three classes of drugs.

3. More than half of AIDS deaths are African Americans. The proportion of African Americans with AIDS is 10 times that of whites. 65% of teens who get HIV are African American. AIDS is the number one cause of death for African Americans between the ages of 25 and 44.

4. 27% of HIV cases in 2003 were women. In 1985, the proportion was only 8%.

5. 57% of HIV diagnoses among men in 2003 were "men who have sex with men."

6. Less than half of Americans say they have been tested for HIV. Only 20% say they have been tested in the past year.

7. 32% of African American men who have sex with men, ages 23-29, living in major cities, are HIV+.

* 200,000 New Yorkers are HIV+
* 40,000 don't know

Letter animation: ASCII movies

These are extremely cool. They take a minute or two to load but are well worth the wait. Thanks to ntk.net for the tip.

Best fractals ever

I know you like fractals, even if you don't know what they are yet. These are some of the best I've seen anywhere. Check them out.

Bicycle Bombing

See it in action (Quicktime movie)