Monthly Archives: July 2012

Obama Is Descended From The First Slave, Through His White Mother

Posted by on July 31, 2012 Comments Off

Obama’s father was born in Kenya and his mother in Kansas, so no one ever thought that he had any genetic ties to American slavery. But the people at ancestry.com did some research over two years which revealed that not only did he have a slave ancestor, but the very first black slave in America may be that ancestor. First, they performed DNA tests and found that his mother’s lineage contains DNA that indicates African origin. Then they looked through property records and traced her ancestry to the mulatto Bunch family in Virginia in the 1600s.

President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, in her yearbook in 1960

 

The Bunches were not white at first, but were free because of an interracial relationship between a free white woman and John Punch, an African indentured servant who eventually became enslaved for life — the first person this happened to, in America. The Bunches of Virginia, from which Obama’s mother was descended, continued to marry white people, and eventually looked completely white. Her ancestors moved to Tennessee, then to Kansas in 1834, where she was eventually born some hundred years later. She died without knowing she had a black ancestor, and in fact, one of her other ancestors fought for the South in the Civil War.

The connection between John Punch and Barrack Obama is not iron-clad, because some records have been lost over the centuries. But there is enough evidence to make it very likely that the first black president comes from the first black slave, through his white ancestors.

See also:

From Ancestry.com, via The New York Times and NPR

Delicious Math Cryptogram

Posted by on July 31, 2012 Comments Off

 

via MissMathEd

All Signs Say Facebook Is In Big Trouble

Posted by on July 31, 2012 Comments Off

Just before Facebook’s IPO in the middle of May, GM decided to pull its advertising from the site, saying it’s not effective. The GM advertising chief who made the decision has since quit (for other reasons), and the company said it plans to return to Facebook — though it hasn’t yet. But that snowball was the beginning of an avalanche of trouble for the social network’s revenue stream. Around the same time, NPR did an experiment in which they gave a start-up pizza joint money to advertise on Facebook, to see if it helped sales; the result was a resounding no: after tweaking their ads, they got 250 likes, but only one customer from those likes. A couple of days later, the much-hyped IPO suffered from a NASDAQ glitch and, whether related or not, the stock flopped: it opened at 38$, and within two days, it fell to 31$. That grossly mishandled IPO lost a lot of people a lot of money — UBS lost 357 million dollars.

Facebook made it through June relatively unscathed, but the news in July went from bad, to worse, to even worse:

  • July 12: BBC announced that an investigation of Facebook’s “Likes” system showed that most of them came from spam bots, not actual people. Facebook denied the accusation.
  • July 17: A survey by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index showed people were much happier with Google+ than Facebook. In fact, every social network scored higher than it: LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Wikipedia.
  • July 17: 1.1% of Facebook’s American users left the site.
  • July 20: Google reports that for the third quarter in a row, its revenue per ad has gone down. And it’s not just Google: online ad revenue has been going down across the board, probably as people are getting used to ignoring all the ads. This is particularly bad for Facebook, which makes almost all of its money from advertising. Google, makes most of its money from ads, but has also diversified so that ad sales don’t impact it as much anymore.
  • July 26: Facebook reported its earnings for the first time as a public company. They just barely met expectations, and after the IPO and other bad news, investors decided to call it a day: their stock fell to 23$ — the lowest price yet.
  • July 30: A start-up called Limited Run reported that they’re leaving Facebook because they want to change their page’s name, but Facebook is holding it hostage, unless they buy 2,000$ in ads per month. So they did an experiment to see if it would be worth it, and found out that about 80% of the clicks to their website that came from Facebook, came from spam bots.

 

Facebook stock from its May 18 IPO to July 31st, 2012

 

From Forbes, NBC News, NPR, BBC, The Register, The Atlantic Wire, and The LA Times

Professional Actors Reading Yelp Reviews

Posted by on July 30, 2012 Comments Off

YouTube user Joe Plummer, aka Gotta Kid To Feel Productions, has made two videos of professional actors doing hilarious interpretations of Yelp reviews. (Hopefully, there are many more coming.) The first video is a very well done dramatic reading of a 1 star review of Stratford Diner in New Jersey, in which the reviewer loved the food, but was upset that when she called to commend them, the manager was in a hurry:

I ordered the broiled crab cakes and they were really good and i called and asked if i could speak to the supervisor and the girl that asnswerd the phone wanted to know what it was in reference to and I told her it was regarding the food i ordered and and she said what was wrong with it and i said nothing i just wanted to let him or her know that it was good and then she was like ok hold on. When the manager got on the phone and i thanked him and let him know it was good he said thank you and you welcome but seemed like he was in a rush. I don’t think i will be eating their anymore because if the manager is not nice then what does that say about the business they are running and the people in it.

 

For more pointlessly awful reviews, check out Fuck You Yelper. The second video is a reading of probably the most hilarious Yelp review ever, of Tamarind of London, which is confusingly in California, not London:

Surprising in many ways!

A dinner at Tamarind of London is an unforgettable experience, not to be missed.
It’s a beautiful restaurant, the food is fantastic, and you’ll be thinking about it long after the meal is over.

We started with the Date & Almond Naan, which was sweet and delicious.

The Butter Chicken, known in some places as Makhni, was tender, moist pieces of dark meat chicken, smothered in a delicious sauce with tomatoes, honey, cardamom, and what I’m assuming was a pound of laxatives.

The Three Greens Saag was wonderful, and not loaded with butter or cream – just fresh and delicious kale, spinach and mustard greens. Hearty, bold and certainly capable of demolishing even the stiffest constipation.

White dude working the tandoors: you go, sir. The Tandoori Prawns were cooked beautifully, seasoned to perfection, and tore through me with the awesome fury of the horsemen of the apocalypse. Bravo.

The Duck Biryani, a special not on the menu, I would say, is not worth it. It’s two cups of rice and a duck thigh, and we were surprised to discover later that it cost $28. My wife thought it was going to be around $8.
My sense of remorse doubled this morning as it ripped its way out of me in a raging fiery whirlwind of poopy terror.

This meal was delectable, exotic, and incinerated everything in my intestines. My morning was an unforgettable thrill ride.

The exotic flavors and aromas of India came flooding back to me as I literally peed out of my butt.

4 stars for the truly delicious food and unimpeachable service, minus one star for expensive biryani, and for turning me into a human flamethrower.

 

From Gotta Kid To Feel, via Laughing Squid

The iPhone 5 and iPad Mini Will Probably Be Announced September 12th

Posted by on July 30, 2012 Comments Off

Apple generally announces updates once a year and the iPhone 4S was announced in October of 2011. According to iMore, sources are saying that this year’s announcement will happen on September 12th, and that the new, smaller, 7″ iPad will be announced the same day. They’ll both be in stores 9 days later, on September 21st. The small iPad might be called “iPad mini”, but no one really knows.  And the new smartphone might be the iPhone 5, but then again, it might not: the iPad 3 was just called the “new iPad”, so the phone might just be the “new iPhone”. According to the available evidence — which, with Apple’s secrecy, is never much — the new iPhone will be a little bigger, will have a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, a smaller dock connector, iOS 6, and will support 4G LTE. Again, all rumors and speculation based on leaks.

iPad mini concept drawing

 

via iMore

The Best Useless Box Ever

Posted by on July 29, 2012 Comments Off

Think Geek sells one of the greatest inventions of our time, illustrated in this 30 second video:

From ThinkGeek, via FAIL Blog

3-D Printers Will Mean The End Of Gun Regulations

Posted by on July 27, 2012 Comments Off

Unlike regular printers, 3-D printers are tiny factories: the printing they do is more like sculpting and given a block of plastic, they can whittle it down to pretty much any shape you wish. The shapes can’t be too big or intricate, but if the creation can be split into parts, you can print each part individually and put them together to form a more complex gadget. These automated sculptors have been around for a few years and are becoming more mainstream — so much so, that several companies now exist that will print out your designs if you send them a 3-D model. Most people use the process to make replacement parts of plastic that break from their kids’ toys or a widget that’s no longer sold, or even tiny sculptures. But now one gun-enthusiast made a rifle almost entirely from 3-D printed material.

 

The complete AR-15 rifle, with 3-D printed and metallic parts

 

Almost, because you can’t make a gun out of plastic — the bullet needs to be fired inside a metallic structure. But everything else was made by him, and he fired off 200 rounds with no sign of wear and tear on the printed material. What this means is that he has a fairly untraceable gun. It hasn’t been registered anywhere, it has no serial number and if he wanted it that way, no one would ever know it existed but him. He still needed the metal parts from an actual gun, but at some point in the future, 3-D printers will be able to carve out metal, too. And at that point, anyone will be able to make all the guns and bullets they could ever want, without any background checks.

 

The 3-D printed part of the rifle, the lower receiver

 

It’s hard to imagine what the government will do about this, because short of banning 3-D printers, there don’t seem to be many options. And the banning of the printers will never happen because there are too many legitimate uses for them, and because it would be an infringement on free speech, akin to banning typewriters because someone might use them to write death threats. So maybe the future will just be a place in which more people have guns, or all clothing is made out of kevlar. In any case, it’s clear that this is yet another example of technology putting a lot of power into an individual’s hands.

From AR15, via ExtremeTech and Slashdot

What Your Drink Choice Says About You

Posted by on July 27, 2012 Comments Off

College Humor has a great series of comics which illustrate what the various alcoholic concoctions mean:

  • Tequila shots: “Please validate my coolness”
  • Jägermeister shots: “I also need validation but Tequila tastes grooooss”
  • Martini: “This doesn’t really work if I’m not wearing a tuxedo, does it?”
  • Vodka + Soda: “I’m just trying to get drunk”
  • Vodka + Red Bull: “I’m just trying to get DRUNKER THAN ANYONE HAS EVER BEEN”
  • Vodka + Cranberry: “I’m a girl”
  • Light beer: “I’m here to party”
  • Regular beer: “I’m here to have a good time”
  • Fancy beer: “Why am I even here?”
  • Scotch: “Look at how sophisticated and mysterious I am”
  • Whiskey: “Wait, is whiskey different from scotch?”
  • Bourbon: “Honestly, these all taste terrible and I can’t tell the difference between them”
  • Fancy cocktail: “I’m interesting”
  • Gin + Tonic: “I’m boring”
  • Bloody Mary: “I’m hung over”
  • Plain soda: “I’m taking one for the team by driving tonight!!”
  • Water: “I’m only here because I’m fucking driving tonight”

 

From College Humor, via FAIL Blog

Buckyball Magnets Are Now Banned Too

Posted by on July 26, 2012 Comments Off

Buckyballs are very strong rare-earth magnets in the shape of a ball. They’re incredibly fun, and can be used for all kinds of neat tricks, including making an electric motor using only Buckyballs, a battery, and a wire. Yesterday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) banned them, because a dozen kids had eaten some over the past three years and required surgery. One of these was a 4-year old boy who ate three of them because he thought they were chocolate candy. (How did he mistake not one, but three of them, for chocolate? Was he inhaling them? Does he think chocolate is made of metal?) A 3-year old ate 37 of them.

 

The problem is the magnets are so strong that once inside the body, they are attracted to each other and can pinch intestines if two of them are in different parts of the digestive system. And 37 of them can form a giant metal rock in someone’s stomach.  Surprisingly, none of the kids died, and the magnets are marketed for ages 14 and up, have ample federally-required warnings on them, and are obviously made of metal which is not edible. There are somewhere around 60 million kids under 14 in the US, making 0.0000002% of them the cause for this ban. This is why we can’t have nice things.

The American Academy of Pediatrics praised the ban, and presumably would like to ban other products they list on their website as choking hazards: latex balloons, coins, marbles, toys with small parts, pen or marker caps, small button-type batteries, and medicine syringes. They also have a separate list for foods like hot dogs, nuts, grapes and raisins. No word on ammonia, cherries or pebbles. However, the CPSC — which is headed by three commissioners that answer only to the president — can’t ban many of those things anyway, since they only have jurisdiction over a narrow subset of products, which includes toys and coffee makers, but not food (regulated by the Department of Agriculture and the FDA), guns (ATF), cars (NHTS), uranium (NRC), and a lot of other things. If other agencies get ban-happy though, GeekMom from Wired has a list of seven things the feds could ban next.

 

The sometimes eerily prescient Onion predicted this twelve years ago, in an article entitled “Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids,” which you need to read because it hits the nail on the head:

Each of the deaths was determined to be the result of gross misuse of the toy, an incredibly cool device that could shoot both plastic missiles and long jets of water, as well as maneuver over the ground on retractable wheels.

…

“I know the overwhelming majority of American kids who owned an Aqua Assault RoboFighter derived many hours of safe, responsible fun from it,” CPSC commissioner Mary Sheila Gall said. “But, statistically speaking, three deaths stemming from contact with a particular toy constitutes an ‘unreasonable risk.’ Look, I’m really sorry about this. Honestly. But our agency’s job is to protect the public from hazardous products, even if those who die are morons who deserved what they got.”

 

From The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Reuters, via NPR and Slashdot

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Proper Running Form

Posted by on July 25, 2012 Comments Off

The 30 second video below, made by Greatist, very quickly shows the elements to having great form while running.

In case you blinked:

  • The ball of the foot is the tough round part just under your big toe. Don’t land on that.
  • Don’t land on your heel either; it sends a lot of force up your leg.
  • Instead, the landing should strike just below the ball of the foot, at the mid-foot, under the arch.
  • Knees should be slightly bent as you land
  • Steps should be soft and springy, not heavy and hard
  • Land just in front of your center of mass, with your leg under your hip
  • Lean forward slightly to use gravity to propel your body, as if you’re always about to fall on your face but keep delaying it by stepping a foot in front of the fall
  • Drive your heel towards your butt after lifting it off the ground
  • Elbows should be bent at roughly right angles and drawn back

This advice agrees pretty well with what Runner’s World wrote on the subject last summer.

See also:

From Greatist, via Lifehacker