Flour Power

Among all the information coming from Japan concerning the huge earthquake and tsunami, the gallery created by The New York Times presents the tragedy in a very simple way. With superimposed satellite pictures of the before and after that can be interchanged using a slider, one can have a quick look at how badly changed the affected areas were.

For example, this is how Ishinomaki looked on April 4 2010:

And on March 12 2010:

Make sure you check out the whole gallery. Some impressive/shocking images there.

UPDATE: And here’s some more photos, from the ABC News site.

I’ve wanted to write my own contribution to the exposure of homeopathy as complete nonsense for a while now, so here goes. Let me start with a short introduction on this type of “medicine”.

Homeopathy is governed by two main principles:

• The “law of similars”, or ”let like be cured by like”, which states that by taking a preparation that induces the symptoms of a disease, it will cure the disease itself;
• The more diluted the preparation is, the more effective it gets. In some preparations the dilution is done to a point where not a single molecule of the active ingredient is left.

I’ve seen doctors calling it witchcraft, TV shows debunking the whole thing, and campaigns like 10:23 trying to raise awareness to what must be one of the biggest myths of modern times. But people are still spending billions of dollars per year in homeopathic treatments. Yes, billions!

Steve DeGroof at MadArtLab found a very interesting (and fun) way of explaining it. He looks more closely at that second principle, and uses Felicia Day to put it all into perspective:

He puts Felicia into various categories (like women named Felicia, redheads, people on Earth) and compares that number to how much homeopathy dilutes various solutions. The conclusion is that for typical homeopathic solutions, the concentration of the active ingredient is comparable to having one Felicia Day dissolved 100 million universes. If that doesn’t help you grasp the nonsense of homeopathy, I don’t know what will…

It’s here! It’s here! The iPad 2 is finally here! And it’s… yeah…

In a typical Apple gimmick, Steve Jobs took a break from his medical leave to get on stage yesterday and announce the new version of the iPad (aka Jesus tablet), the “revolutionary” product that sold 15 million units in just over one year. And what I have to say is “meh…” (and I’m not the only one). Apart from some nice little additions, there’s nothing too exciting about this iPad 2.

They did address some of the reasons I mentioned as to why the iPad is a useless device, though. The iPad 2 now supports multitasking (due to a newer version of iOS) and has a front facing camera to make it possible to make video calls using FaceTime. It allows for HDMI output, which is a no-brainer if you intend to do presentations on it, although it will cost you to get the adapter needed for it (in good Apple fashion). There’s some other stuff like a faster processor, and a reduction in thickness and weight.

And that’s about it. A few small tweaks here and there, a fancy video touting it as a magic device, and off you go, there’s nothing else to see. Wait, there’s also this, the magnetic cover:

Yes, that’s right, in what was supposed to be a major technology announcement, the thing that stands out is a fancy screen cover…

So what was left out? Well, there’s still no practical way to get stuff in and out of the device (except for using iTunes). No SD card slot, so forget about taking it on a trip and dropping the pictures you take with the camera into the iPad (unless you shell out some money for the adapter, of course). Yes, you can use the rear-facing camera to take photos, but besides being only 5MP, it’s just silly. I can’t believe that Apple, being always so minimalist in all they do, decided to add this completely superfluous feature. Also no USB, and any hopes of Apple introducing the new Thunderbolt in this version of the iPad (like it did in the new line of Macbooks) are gone.

But if you think I’m at all surprised with all this, let me tell you I’m not. This is what Apple has been doing for a long time (first the iPod, then the iPhone, and now the iPad). Start with something that looks impressive enough to sell a lot but with a lot of obvious things missing (and let me add that some of those things could have been included from the start, but were probably left on hold just to have more to show in the next version), and then keep releasing new versions with small improvements and more features, thus keeping the money machine working. And it has proven a great model, so why change? While people keep throwing money at Apple for every shiny new device they launch, they’ll keep doing it this way.

And that’s that. When’t the iPad 3 coming out?

If you think that what Charlie Sheen has been saying to the media is edgy, just watch out for what’s to come now that he has a Twitter account – @CharlieSheen. The first image he posted? Himself and Bree Olsen, a porn actress:

The account was verified by Twitter on March 1st, and got 1 million followers in just over 25 hours. Which is a Guinness World Record, if you care about that sort of thing.

This is going to be so much fun.

Los Angeles’ indie-pop group Robotanists did what seems to me like the quickest turnaround on an album cover ever. They basically released their own version of Radiohead’s The King of Limbs a mere 24 hours after the album was released. Their version can be streamed online here. Read more about the process in their blog.

This Radiohead album is gathering more attention than I’ve seen any album get. In a little more than a week the album already has been fully covered and some remixes and mash-ups have also been released. And speaking of mash-ups, I just discovered Jaydiohead, and even though I’m not a fan of Jay-Z (or any rap, for that matter), it sounds great.