Links for August 12th through August 13th

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on August 13, 2008). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Sometime between August 12th and August 13th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • His own Olympic trial: 24 hours of viewing: Starting at midnight Tuesday morning, and going until midnight this morning, I plopped down in front of the TV with my laptop for a marathon session of sports. Just me and the Games, with no regard for sleep, fresh air or proper hygiene. One would think that such a masochistic task ultimately must lead to a decent into madness. But there's really only one way to find out.
  • Unsubstantiated but interesting info on what Return of the Jedi might have been: Ah, obviously you haven't heard the back story of Return of the Jedi. No, I don't mean the bit where it was called Revenge of the Jedi. There's more. I'll cite nothing because I have no idea where this information leaked from, and you can take it with a grain of salt because I heard it years ago. But apparently the original story for Jedi worked like this…
  • Young Guns: A new brand of gangster grows up in a killing culture: "Seattle's gang problem is small, compared to other cities, but it definitely holds its own," he said. "It's a bunch of teenagers – I would call them delinquents – that have adopted a gang name or identity, and that identity automatically falls into a structure of rivalries that those members must participate in. To these young people, their identity as a Sureño or a Crip or a Blood is as serious as someone else's identity conflict over religion. Like the Shiites and the Sunnis – that's an identity conflict. The irony is, they're all the same. They're all Muslims. You're all young people from Seattle."
  • Maperture: Combining the power of Aperture and Google Maps (the mapping engine you know and love), Maperture is a powerful, new edit plug-in that makes geotagging your photos a snap.
  • The Anchorpoint Essays: Welcome to the largest and most comprehensive look into the biology and behavior
    of Internecivus Raptus: the deadliest Xenomorph that human-kind has ever encountered. (This is, by far, my favorite site relating to the Alien franchise. Lots of incredibly detailed and well thought out essays about the aliens' biology and physiology. I was afraid it had been abandoned a couple years back, but it's still up and under active development. Awesome!)
  • Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products”: Kontra’s law: A commercial company’s ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products.