"talks of small things it sets up all things/this'll master money, though money masters all things"

[larryhammer]

Best Flash timesinks toys of the week: create music either deterministically or chaotically. Click about to play, and see you in an hour or two. (via 1/2)

Best video evidence of timesinkage of the week: Building a LEGO ship in a bottle: "This project took a week of planning, three days of building, a large number of expletives, and some interesting use of long tools." That third especially, I suspect. (via)

Best video of the week: Time-lapse video of Tokyo at night, contrasting the same shots before and after last month's quake to showing how the skyline has been darkened by power conservation. (via)

Best quiz of the week: Pierley/Redford Dissociative Affect Diagnostic, with questions like "Which shape wants to hurt you?" It's ... an interesting experience. Don't click through if flickering screens cause you problems. (via)

Best snark of the week: Six socially conscious actions that only look like that they help, and why/how they end up half-assed in execution. (via)

Best advice of the week: How to steal like an artist. (via)

Best: "I Am Not a Camera" by W.H. Auden, with Isherwoodian context. (via)

---L.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The Tokyo video makes me wonder if the blackouts will have any kind of long-term social effect, in terms of encouraging the Japanese reduce their power consumption.

(And, erm, well. From a demographic standpoint, this might be a useful thing for the country; there's a well-documented effect about nine months after every big power outage in the U.S., and I doubt it's different in Japan.)

[larryhammer]

Given Japan is on two different power grids, any effect on consumption will be limited to Tokyo+North, I suspect any conservation effect will not effect lands to the south. I also suspect that as soon as there's enough power to, commercial districts will light up as dazzlingly in-your-face as before.

The demographic effect will be interesting to watch.

---L.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, obviously it would be a regional effect. But the longer the reduction measures are kept in place, the more I wonder if it might influence people's thinking more permanently. And the commercial districts will almost certainly light up again, but that doesn't mean people won't be more conscious of using electricity elsewhere.

It's probably wishful thinking regardless, brought on by the Cracked article and me wondering what could get Americans to cut down on their power consumption. But it's an interesting thought.

[kate_nepveu]

Is it really well-documented?

Snopes has an article ( http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/blackout.asp ) debunking it regarding the 1965 NYC blackout, which suggests that similar analyses hold true for other big events, though it only cites research regarding 1965.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Gah. Okay, point; I had never actually looked up the basis for that claim.

(I do know -- on the basis of actual research, though I've misplaced the article in question -- that bringing electricity to rural areas can have a strong lowering influence on the birth rate, as people acquire more options for how to entertain themselves at night. And now that makes me wonder about the sleep-cycle thing I've seen mentioned in several places lately, the "first sleep" and "second sleep" division, and the notion that the gap between them is a dandy time for nookie. Artificial light disrupts that pattern, so that might be another aspect of the effect on birth rates.)