Mrs. So It’s Come To This knows I don’t have much of a desire to see movies in the movie theaters. The experience doesn’t have the magic I remember from my youth; perhaps I’ll write about that more, later. I’ll just wait until it comes on iTunes or Netflix and stream it.

But I’ve throughly enjoyed the “reboot” of the James Bond movies and I’m looking forward to seeing the next one. So much so, that I might actually visit a movie theater this year. The next James Bond movie is coming out in it’s usual release month, November, and I just might have to go see it.

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via swissmiss

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They also announced Coda 2 for the Mac. It, too, sounds pretty impressive. Better inline autocompletion, live previews, and MySQL support.

Both are 50% off for the first 24 hours of their launch on March 24 and seem completely worth it if you need that type of editor.

Sold!

via The Loop

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“In case you’re unfamiliar with how IPOs work, basically what happens is the underwriters ”buy“ all the equity that’s going on the market from the company, and then put it on the open market. So, that IPO price shows exactly how much Facebook gets. All of the trading after that is between other entities. So, for example, with Facebook, it got $38 per share last night from the underwriters. If, today, the stock had been trading at (just for example’s sake) $80, it would have meant that Facebook effectively sold its shares for half price on what the market would bear. That would be more of a disaster, because it would suggest that Facebook missed out on a lot of money.”

All those dot com companies who’s stock skyrocketed on the first day got screwed. Of course, most of them tanked a few years later so I guess it all worked out.

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Turns out, unless someone gets generous, nobody.

via John Moltz

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Someone wrote a book on the history of tacos… the food.

Seriously, though, I don’t know if I could read 336 pages on it but I’m a sucker for history so the article was a good read. Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt at The Smithsonian:

“The origins of the taco are really unknown. My theory is that it dates from the 18th century and the silver mines in Mexico, because in those mines the word “taco” referred to the little charges they would use to excavate the ore. These were pieces of paper that they would wrap around gunpowder and insert into the holes they carved in the rock face. When you think about it, a chicken taquito with a good hot sauce is really a lot like a stick of dynamite. The first references [to the taco] in any sort of archive or dictionary come from the end of the 19th century. And one of the first types of tacos described is called tacos de minero—miner’s tacos. So the taco is not necessarily this age-old cultural expression; it’s not a food that goes back to time immemorial.”

I do love reading about the influence of other cultures – Lebanese, specifically – on the taco and how after 60 or so years, their influence finally became a mainstream mexican variation.

via Kottke

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Twitter will “track” you… just like Facebook, Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and pretty much every site on the internet… unless you opt out.

This is the most non-news, news I’ve heard in a long time.

Links via DF and The Loop, respectively.

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In 2010, I posted a video of the comedy music band, Axis of Awesome, playing their famous 4 Chords song. The video came out in 2009 but in August of 2011, they released an album with a studio recorded version. They also posted an official version of the medley and updated slightly for some more recent songs.

No Waltzing Matilda, though. But, interestingly enough, I went looking for a video with the song in it (the link I included in the post was taken down by EMI… not sure how they own an old Australian folk song). But instead, I found this version which explains some of the terms that are sung. It also seems as if it’s been covered by a lot of famous artists. I’m going to check them out when I have more time.

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As Kyle notes in his comments on the article, prosthetics have come a long way. Carbon fibers, microchips, silicone flesh, and motor relays are just what’s out there, now. Just this morning, I read a paralyzed woman was given a microchip in her brain to control a robotic arm; there’s no reason that can’t be applied to artificial limbs.

But it has to be a very surreal decision. Electing to amputate to save one’s life from cancer might not be such an easy choice as one might think; I imagine there are emotions surrounding the success rate, the change in lifestyle, etc. that really make you wonder what’s the better option. Once you go through the initial amputation, it might not be as hard to make the second choice to go further. But it goes against every natural instinct to survive and it can’t be easy to turn it off for elective surgery which speaks nothing of the costs to consider.

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With equations used to study two-dimensional spatial networks, the class of network to which subways belong, the researchers turned stations and lines to a mathematics of nodes and branches. They repeated their analyses with data from each decade of a subway system’s history, and looked for underlying trends.

Patterns emerged: The core-and-branch topology, of course, and patterns more fine-grained. Roughly half the stations in any subway will be found on its outer branches rather than the core. The distance from a city’s center to its farthest terminus station is twice the diameter of the subway system’s core. This happens again and again.

Looking at a graph they produced, you can see the ration of branch stations to core stations have moved towards a common range. It’s fascinating for a few reasons. It shows that humans think and organize in similar ways because many of these systems were designed independently. But it’s also an interesting study in how city planners react to population changes or how populations react to planning. I’d also argue it’s a fascinating study in how cities limited resources with the needs of the many over the needs of the few.

This is so interesting to me. I’m looking forward to followup observations.

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