Monthly Archives: February 2011

You have to see it. It is almost an anti-web site. As if to say: most web sites are accessible and understandable and easy to navigate, but we do not want to be like most web sites, therefore we will be none of those things. They even messed up the blog. Dreadful.

Great shoes. Awful site. See Christian Louboutin official web site. Luxury french shoe and bag designer. and you will see why.

According to this, Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries, as of November 2010, the top source of crude oil for the US is…Canada. Followed by Mexico. Indeed, of the top 15 countries that import oil to the US, 51.33% of them are in North America. If we add the rest of the Americas, 60.04% comes from there. If you combined the imports of the “West” (i.e. Canada and European nations), you have 34.28%. All in all, the United States got over 75% of its crude oil from non Arab states in November of 2010.

Often when you hear talk about oil, you would get the impression that the US got all of its oil from the Middle East. If anything, most of it comes from elsewhere. And the biggest importer exporter of oil to the US is Canada.

Something to keep in mind.

P.S. Fixed a number of typos in this post (“it’s” now “its” and “importer” now “exporter”)

Comes from Moritz Resl. It’s this:

It is simple. It is not easy.

Via Swissmiss.

No, I don’t think so, although if you were to just skim the top of this article, you might think so, Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter – NYTimes.com. Instead, read the entire article: it’s a great overview of what is happening in social media in 2011.

I would like to add that regardless of the platform, what is happening is that it getting easier to share information with others, and people are capitalizing on this. Furthermore, more and more people are using these tools. Alot of what people are doing now could be done with minicomputers in the 80s and PCs and BBSs in the 90s. Now, however, the tools are easier, better, and more pervasive, and many many more people have access to them. I expect by 2020, there will be even more platforms and a wider and richer way to share information. It’s exciting. Whethere blogs wax or wane is besides the point in the longer term.

With lots of possible choices, how did IBM and team come up with it? Fast Company Design has a good article on how Joshua Davis Created the Face of Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy Supercomputer.

Fascinating.

And it is coming out soon! I have been a fan of The great Bill Cunningham (as I wrote previously here) and I hope alot of people go out to see this film.

Here’s the trailer:

There is alot going on here, but one thing that struck me immediately was the contrast between his home and the home of the many people who comment on him. There’s a simple description of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby: I was within and without. Bill seems like that too.

Like the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken, the recipe for Coca-Cola was, I thought, some great mystery. Well according to This American Life, it is not, and you are seeing a copy in that photograph. Because that is hard to read, the good folks of This American Life have not only given the details on the recipe, but they tell you where you can get the more obscure ingredients and how you should mix them.

It is something that is fascinating yet not worth the effort, to me. I’d prefer to get my Coke from a bottle, premade. Still, the article is worthwhile.