progressoid
progressoid's JournalHey, the internet is a series of tubes after all!
These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of the Oregon data center.
The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled.
Each server rack has four switches, connected by a different colored cable. These colors are kept the same
throughout the data center to know which one to replace in case of failure.
Hovering above the floor in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the scale of google's data center there begins to take shape.
Huge steel beams both support the structure and help distribute power.
Water storage tanks below the cooling towers ensure they have water available whenever needed.
Insulated pipes like these have a U-bend so they can expand and contract as the fluid temperature inside the pipe changes.
The system of pipes composes a water filtration unit underneath a cooling tower outside the data center in Lenoir, North Carolina.
Lots more cool photos at http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/tech
via http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/24303/where-the-internet-lives-behind-the-scenes-at-googles-data-centers.html
Nya nya nya nya nya. Look what we have.
So a local OFA guy was driving by our house and noticed that we have lots of Dem signs but we didn't have an Obama sign (ours hadn't arrived in the mail yet). He rang the doorbell and asked if we want one or two.
SURE!
He said he'd be back the next day with two of them. We live on a corner and get a lot of traffic - so one for each side of our property.
Sounds good to me. 
This is what I saw when I came home:
They are frickin' HUGE! 
Yeah, I know, I need to do some yard work. Gimme a break. I've been on the road for most of the last three weeks.
And yeah, I've been a critic of the President and a thorn in the side of a few DUers (I got banned from the BO group after just two posts 
). But that doesn't mean I'm going to let him lose. I'll be at the local office this weekend working the phone bank and/or doing some door knocking again.
So, suck it RW neighbors! Our signs are bigger than yours and our guy is gonna kick your guy's ass!
Edited to add. Our normal sized sign showed up in the mail a day later. We gave it to my parents.
The Watermelon Miracle
Apologies if this has been posted previously.
I just saw it for the first time tonight.
Enjoy:
Uber-Wealthy Capitalist Gave a TED Talk -"Rich People Don't Create Jobs"- And TED Refuses to Post It
This Uber-Wealthy Venture Capitalist Gave A TED Talk Saying Rich People Don't Create Jobs — And TED Is Refusing To Post It
As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs. The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject.
...
In an email obtained by the National Journal, TED curator Chris Anderson told his colleagues that Hanauer's speech “probably ranks as one of the most politically controversial talks we've ever run, and we need to be really careful when” to post it. He added: “Next week ain't right. Confidentially, we already have Melinda Gates on contraception going out. Sorry for the mixed messages on this.”
TED regularly posts speeches about sensitive political issues, including global warming and contraception, so it's not clear why Hanauer's talk would be singled out for censorship.
We've emailed Hanauer to see what he thinks, but in the meantime, here's an excerpt for you to judge for yourself:
I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a "circle of life" like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.
So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way around.
Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous.
That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-billionaire-venture-capitalist-gave-a-ted-talk-saying-rich-people-dont-create-jobs--and-ted-is-refusing-to-post-it-2012-5?utm_source=inpost&utm_medium=seealso&utm_term=&utm_content=1&utm_campaign=recirc#ixzz1v8r46Xx2
Edited to add link to the TED website: http://www.ted.com/
TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer -- TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.
Remarkable 5.7m-high recreation of Apollo 11.
...
Father-of-two Mr McNaught will display his sculpture, which took 250 hours to make, at the Brickvention event in Victoria this month.
The Melbourne-based artist has populated his wonderful construction with tiny Lego astronauts, fuelling up the rocket ship, travelling in Nasa's astrovan and even stopping for lunch. A few droid stowaways are also amusingly scattered around Mr McNaught's impressively accurate rocket.
...
The astonishingly realistic model even has cutaway sections so that people can look at its workings on the inside.
...
The artist, who calls himself The Brickman, believes he 'never grew up'. The married father of twin boys was previously an IT manager and is now one of only 13 certified Lego professionals in the world.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2086640/Plastic-fantastic-Lego-fan-builds-5-7m-high-recreation-Apollo-11-launch-rocket-using-120-000-bricks.html#ixzz1loOeNsU2
Heartbreakingly Beautiful Portraits of Shelter Dogs (get out your hankies)
TRAER SCOTT is a fine art photographer with a background in portraiture and animal photography.
Her work has been featured in O, Life and People magazines and in the Boston Globe newspaper.
She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and two rescue dogs.
http://www.aspcaonlinestore.com/products/98071-shelter-dogs
More pictures and interview:
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/traer-scott-shelter-dogs-2
"Every dog reacts differently to a camera. Some immediately perceive it as the voyeuristic device that it is and refuse to look at you. They will literally duck, hide or turn in circles to avoid ever having the camera meet their eyes. Other dogs interpret the camera as a direct threat. Watching through the lens as a dog lunges straight at your face is a very humbling yet cinematic experience. After a few years of this, I have now trained myself to click the shutter when this happens. So far no real damage has been done to me or my cameras. Other dogs are not patient enough to wait for the treat I am offering in exchange for a few still moments. While trying to stay in a sit, they start squealing and wriggling their little bodies, barely able to stay attached to the ground. If I take too long, I get a big, sloppy tongue planted on my lens. Then there are the Oracles. As soon as a camera is pointed at these dogs, they just fix their gaze on you and pour out volumes. They seem to be telling a story much longer and more epic than the one their short lives can accurately narrate. The Oracles (very often Pit Bulls) seem to transform from spastic and slobbering to prophetic and back again all in the time it takes to snap a few photos."
This is What Happens When You Give Thousands of Stickers to Thousands of Kids
This December, in a surprisingly simple yet ridiculously amazing installation for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Ar, artist Yayoi Kusama constructed a large domestic environment, painting every wall, chair, table, piano, and household decoration a brilliant white, effectively serving as a giant white canvas. Over the course of two weeks, the museum’s smallest visitors were given thousands upon thousands of colored dot stickers and were invited to collaborate in the transformation of the space, turning the house into a vibrantly mottled explosion of color. How great is this? Given the opportunity my son could probably cover the entire piano alone in about fifteen minutes. The installation, entitled The Obliteration Room, is part of Kusama’s Look Now, See Forever exhibition that runs through March 12.
http://blog.qag.qld.gov.au/before-the-first-dot-yayoi-kusama%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98the-obliteration-room%E2%80%99-2011/
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/01/yayoi-kusama-obiliteration-room/?src=footer
More pics at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_addelsee/6643534481/in/photostream/
And: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_addelsee/6643532207/in/photostream/
I saw my neighbor mowing his lawn today.
In Iowa.
In January.
I, like many, have been pretty good at pretending that we (humanity) would be able to take action against global warming. But I'm not so sure anymore.
Peter Frampton's Dream Guitar (of Frampton Comes Alive fame) , Recovered 32 Years Later
The story begins in 1970, when Frampton and his old band Humble Pie scored a gig playing two sets a night at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Frampton says the first night was a rough go: The guitar he was using fed back at loud volumes and made soloing a chore. After the show, an audience member approached him and offered to help.
"He said, 'Well, look, I have a Les Paul that I've sort of modified myself a little. Would you like to try it tomorrow?'" Frampton tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "I said, 'Well, I've never really had much luck with Les Pauls, but you know what? At this point, I'll try anything.'"
...
That guitar — a shiny black number with an added pickup — became Frampton's signature instrument. He continued to use it with Humble Pie, and in his solo material, played it almost exclusively for years. It even made the cover of his classic 1976 live album, Frampton Comes Alive!
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In 1980, while Frampton was on tour in South America, the guitar was put on a cargo plane in Venezuela, en route to Panama. The plane crashed right after takeoff.
"Basically I'm thinking, 'It's gone,'" Frampton recalls. "But the thing is, I'm also sitting in a restaurant where I can see the pilot's wife. She's waiting in the hotel for her husband, who, unfortunately, didn't make it. So we were all overcome, because people lost their lives as well as our complete stage of gear."
What Frampton didn't know is that the guitar had survived....
Read more: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/07/144799712/framptons-dream-guitar-recovered-decades-later
Or Listen: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=144799712&m=144840341
?t=1325968295&s=51
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