On January 3, 1889, two policemen approached Nietzsche after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin, Italy. What actually happened remains unknown, but the often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around the horse’s neck to protect it, and collapsed to the ground.

In the following few days, Nietzsche sent short writings — known as the “Wahnbriefe” (”Madness Letters”).

To his former colleague Burckhardt, Nietzsche wrote: “I have had Caiaphas put in fetters. Also, last year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn-out manner. Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished.” Additionally, he commanded the German emperor to go to Rome in order to be shot and summoned the European powers to take military action against Germany.

On January 6, 1889, Burckhardt showed the letter he had received from Nietzsche to Overbeck. The following day, Overbeck received a similarly revealing letter, and decided that Nietzsche’s friends had to bring him back to Basel. Overbeck traveled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to a psychiatric clinic in Basel. By that time, Nietzsche appeared fully in the grip of insanity.

In 1898 and 1899, Nietzsche suffered from at least two strokes which partially paralysed him and left him unable to speak or walk. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900, he had another stroke during the night of August 24 / August 25, and then died about noon on August 25.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Photos: Nietzsche in 1899 }

Texas landowners ended up on the ‘Mexican’ side of the Homeland Security Department’s border barrier.

Man arrested for driving more than 3 miles in reverse.

Bank robber sues police after being arrested with his underpants on show.

Toddler spends 4 hours locked in bank vault.

Voodoo candles burning during sex caused a five-alarm fire that ripped through a Brooklyn apartment building.

Porn Machet Murder. Charley Chase recalls, “I only worked with him once. It was a boy-girl scene and it was terrible.”

Every year forensic scientist Brendan Nytes sees a few cases where a dead rat or mouse is found in box of cereal, a jug of vinegar or a loaf of marble rye. His job is to distinguish genuine contamination from the surprising number of cases involving the intentional introduction of a dead rodent to a perfectly wholesome food product.

Postal worker accused of spitting his feces on a police officer after being arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

The world’s biggest family: Ziona Chan has 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren.

Ancient Britons used scooped-out human skulls as drinking cups in a mysterious ritual that also involved eating some of the flesh inside, scientists said.

Why would someone fake a serious illness online? Jenny Kleeman on the strange world of Münchausen by internet.

Caravaggio’s crimes exposed in Rome’s police files.

Jurors Less Likely to Convict Defendants Wearing Glasses, Say Lawyers and 2008 Study.

How Urban Outfitters President Richard Hayne turned a few hippie beans into a hip $700 million retail empire.

Here’s Why France Isn’t An Economic Backwater.

The Myth of Japan’s “Lost Decades.”

Japan’s status as our (i.e. the West’s) economic and cultural horizon peaked in the 1980s. So much has changed. Whatever happened to Japan?

A new study explores how your last name influences how fast you buy stuff.

State by State Housing Market Infographic (US).

Panicky behaviour can trigger stock market collapses. Now researchers say there could be a way of spotting it in advance.

The study tested the difference between moral forecasting and moral action—and the reasons behind any mismatch. The findings look encouraging: People act more morally than they would have predicted.

Clinicians have often referred to ultrasound technology as the “stethoscope of the future,” predicting that as the equipment shrinks in size, it will one day be as common at the bedside as that trusty tool around every physician’s neck. According to a new report in the New England Journal of Medicine, that day has arrived.

A new medical device controlled via smartphone could help doctors detect cancer more quickly.

Researchers recently unveiled the first complete millimeter-scale computing system that is about the size of the letter “N” on the back of a penny. The computing system – the tiniest fabricated to date – is a prototype of an implantable eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients.

Genetic evidence now spotlights the United States as the source of recent fire ant invasions in the rest of the world. Red fire ants cause at least $6 billion a year in damage and control requirements in the United States alone.

Male capuchin monkeys urinate on their hands and then rub the urine into their fur to attract females.

Why does polygamy continue at all, if it’s so bad for a woman’s reproductive success?

About male pregnancy.

We may not be quite so delicate today, but euphemism — from the Greek for “auspicious speech” — is with us still.

Certainly in the world of the runway, the ability to walk like a gazelle in ridiculously high heels is all.

Publishers Weekly doesn’t like my work very much. Before you roll your eyes and/or get all excited at the prospect of a classic “I can’t believe I got a bad review!” hypersensitive-author meltdown, let me hasten to add that I have absolutely no interest in refuting anything they’ve ever written about my books.

Charlie Sheen: Coke, Hookers, Hospital, Repeat.

The Tippling Club, Singapore, where molecular mixology is married with chic design and cutting-edge gastronomy. More: tipplingclub.com And: Molecular mixology.

A volunteer project takes advantage of citizen mapping efforts and renewed scrutiny of “food deserts” in low-income neighborhoods, where residents lack places to buy fresh food and face a higher risk for obesity and chronic disease.

Do all cities have neighborhoods?

Designing a city for safe protests.

Why Backroom Deals Aren’t So Bad.

Who owns Kafka? An ongoing trial in Tel Aviv is set to determine who will have stewardship of several boxes of Kafka’s original writings, including primary drafts of his published works, currently stored in Zurich and Tel Aviv.

Representative Men, by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Perplexing Choice in Existence Predicament: An Existential Interpretation of Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. [PDF]

The Bobby Fischer Defense.

How to Make Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl) and Okonomiyaki (Japanese Assorted Pancake).

7 Reasons I Never Went Vegan.

6 Subtle Ways You’re Getting Screwed at the Grocery Store.

The methods for treating jellyfish stings vary, and many remedies can do more harm than good. One exception is the application of vinegar, which according to several studies can deactivate the venomous nematocysts that jellyfish release.

13 Ways of Looking at Pac-Man.

10 Realistically Awkward Movie Sex Scenes.

5 Amazing Things Invented by Donald Duck. (Scrooge McDuck Did Inception First)

Thoughts on design. A collection of articles written by Paul Rand.

“Smack My Bitch Up” performed by The Beatles. [Thanks Glenn]

Pizza.

Dominic McGill.

Sociological charts of black history, hand-made by students of famed African-American thinker and activist W.E.B. DuBois at Atlanta University in 1900.

When I saw the image, I immediately thought of Josephine Meckseper’s photograph Pyromaniac 2 and I tweeted that the T Magazine cover was clearly a “ripoff.”

Dead Island, Video game trailer. [Thanks James]

vag_costume.

The butterfly and the Gucci baby.

fuckyeahmarriedwithchildren.tumblr.com

Life presents all too many situations in which we’re forced to place our trust in people we’ve no particular reason to trust. The classic example is driving: you can buy the safest car available, and take all the advanced driving tests you like, but hitting the road is still ultimately a matter of entrusting your fate to hundreds of strangers – people who, by definition, you’d never leave your kids with, and who might, for all you know, be drunk, high, overtired, hallucinating, prone to uncontrollable violent outbursts, convinced they’re immortal deities from alien planets, or just massively stupid.

Except for giving up driving, there’s not much you can do about this. But it was only a few months back, heeding the urgings of several writers on productivity, that I came to realise that a somewhat analogous, if mercifully less lethal, situation pertained in many areas of my life – because I wasn’t keeping a “waiting-for list”.

The argument runs as follows: multiple times a day, at work or outside it, most of us make requests of people – underlings, superiors, friends, service providers – and simply assume they’ll follow through. (…)

Based on an unscientific survey of my acquaintances, what proportion of people have a systematic way to keep track of who they’re waiting to hear back from? Zero per cent, approximately.

It turns out that keeping a “waiting-for” list is like being handed a pair of x-ray spectacles for peering inside your colleagues’ lives. Based on what does or doesn’t get crossed off the list, as people do or don’t get back to me, I’m pretty sure I now know who’s on top of things, and who’s inefficient or just lazy, their email inboxes backed up like clogged drains.

{ Oliver Burkeman /The Guardian | Continue reading }

What happens after Yahoo acquires you.

Whether it’s Flickr, Delicious, MyBlogLog, or Upcoming, the post-purchase story is a similar one. Both sides talk about all the wonderful things they will do together. Then reality sets in. They get bogged down trying to overcome integration obstacles, endless meetings, and stifling bureaucracy. The products slow down or stop moving forward entirely. Once they hit the two-year mark and are free to leave, the founders take off.

{ 37signals | Continue reading }

Language reveals ancient definitions of happiness. It is a striking fact that in every Indo-European language, without exception, going all the way back to ancient Greek, the word for happiness is a cognate with the word for luck. Hap is the Old Norse and Old English root of happiness, and it just means luck or chance, as did the Old French heur, giving us bonheur, good fortune or happiness. German gives us the word Gluck, which to this day means both happiness and chance.

What does this linguistic pattern suggest? For a good many ancient peoples—and for many others long after that—happiness was not something you could control. It was in the hands of the gods, dictated by Fate or Fortune, controlled by the stars, not something that you or I could really count upon or make for ourselves. (…)

Enter the 17th and 18th centuries, when a revolution in human expectations overthrew these old ideas of happiness. It is in this time that the French Encyclopédie, the Bible of the European Enlightenment, declares in its article on happiness that everyone has a right to be happy. It is in this time that Thomas Jefferson declares the right to pursue happiness to be a self-evident truth, while his colleague George Mason, in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, speaks of pursuing and obtaining happiness as a natural endowment and right. And it is in this time that the French revolutionary leader St. Just can stand up during the height of the Jacobin revolution in France in 1794 and declare: “Happiness is a new idea in Europe.” In many ways it was.

This perspective lies behind our belief that suffering is inherently wrong, and that all people, in all places, should have the opportunity, the right, to be happy.

{ Arts & Opinions | Continue reading }

In October 2009 John Walkenbach noticed that the price of the Kindle was falling at a consistent rate, lowering almost on a schedule. By June 2010, the rate was so unwavering that he could easily forecast the date at which the Kindle would be free: November 2011.

In August, 2010 I had the chance to point it out to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. He merely smiled and said, “Oh, you noticed that!” And then smiled again. When I brought it to the attention of publishing veterans they would often laugh nervously. How outrageous! they would say. It must cost something to make? The trick was figuring out how Amazon could bundle the free Kindle and still make money. My thought was the cell phone model: a free Kindle if you buy X number of e-books.

But last week Michael Arrington at TechCruch reported on a rumor which hints at a more clever plan: a free Kindle for every Prime customer of Amazon. Prime customers pay $79 per year for free 2-day shipping, and as of last week, free unlimited streaming movies (a la Netflix). Arrington writes:

In January Amazon offered select customers a free Kindle of sorts – they had to pay for it, but if they didn’t like it they could get a full refund and keep the device. It turns out that was just a test run for a much more ambitious program. A reliable source tells us Amazon wants to give a free Kindle to every Amazon Prime subscriber.

{ The Technium | Continue reading }

artwork { Marc Newson, Voronoi Shelf, 2006 | white Carrara marble }

related { Netflix Adds Subtitles to More Streaming Content, Stirs Up Controversy. }

{ Breast Milk Ice Cream A Hit At London Store | NPR | full story }

There is no precise distinction between analog and digital computing, but, in general, digital computing deals with integers, binary sequences, and time that is idealized into discrete increments, while analog computing deals with real numbers and continuous variables, including time as it appears to exist in the real world. The past sixty years have brought such advances in digital computing that it may seem anachronistic to view analog computing as an important scientific concept, but, more than ever, it is.

{ George Dyson/Edge | Continue reading }

thing { Joseph Beuys, Gefängnis (Kabir + Daktyl), 1983 }

What gold does have is some rather remarkable physical properties that make it very likely that people will continue to value it highly: luster, corrosion resistance, divisibility, malleability, high thermal and electrical conductivity, and a high degree of scarcity. All the gold ever mined would only fill one large swimming pool, and most of that gold is still recoverable. (…)

The gold that was once locked up at Fort Knox is gone. It has been 40 years since the last indirect link between the dollar and gold was severed, and yet the government continues to hold some 8,000 metric tons of gold bullion—the world’s largest single stash. Oddly enough it is valued at $42 per ounce, the last official price before it was set free to be established in free trading. At today’s market price of around $1,300 per ounce, the hoard would be valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars, although that much gold could not be dumped precipitously without suppressing the price. (…)

But is the gold still there? Yes, almost certainly, though we hear occasional calls for an outside audit. A more plausible accusation is that some of it has been leased to short sellers. This is a common practice among central banks that offers distinct benefits to the government. First, it earns a bit of interest income. More important, it can covertly suppress the gold price. Rising gold prices annoy Treasury secretaries and central bankers because the rise implies falling confidence in their currency. Leased gold remains in the vault and on the balance sheet even though it (or rather a paper claim on it) has been sold to someone else. Although one can find rumors on the Internet, there is no way, short of a thorough audit, to know the extent of gold leasing by the U.S. government, if any.

{ Freeman | Continue reading }

Swedish scientists have explored how a brain identifies its own body and how body image can change by successfully creating the illusion of owning three arms or being the size of a Barbie doll in a laboratory setting.

The research not only addresses some of the oldest philosophical and psychological questions about the relationship between body and mind, but also has potential applications in prosthetics and robotics. (…)

Ongoing projects question whether the perceived body can be shrunk to the size of a Barbie doll or if the brain can accept a body of a different sex.

Other seemingly bizarre recent projects have included giving participants the illusion of shaking hands with themselves, having their stomachs slashed with a kitchen knife and seeing themselves from behind. All were designed to trick participants into a false perception of owning another body.

{ Cosmos | Continue reading }

photo { David Fenton, Nurses on the Sidewalk, Chicano Moratorium, Los Angelos, CA, February 28th, 1970 }

The 27-page shareholder letter Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren Buffett just released reads like a motivational speech or a pep talk trying to win over an audience that is increasingly pessimistic about America’s future: “In 2011, we will set a new record for capital spending – $8 billion – and spend all of the $2 billion increase in the United States,” he writes. “Now, as in 1776, 1861, 1932 and 1941, America’s best days lie ahead.”

(Of course, Buffett also disclosed that Berkshire failed to outperform the S&P 500 in 2010 for the second year running, the first time in the company’s history that has happened.)

In any case, the letter is also replete with anecdotes that illuminate activity across various sectors of the U.S. economy. The style is somewhat reminiscent of the Federal Reserve’s own story-like account of economic activity, called the “Beige Book” after the hue of its cover, which is released every six weeks. So, this perhaps could be dubbed the “Buffett Book.” (…)

A housing recovery will probably begin within a year or so. In any event, it is certain to occur at some point. […] These businesses entered the recession strong and will exit it stronger. At Berkshire, our time horizon is forever. (…)

…the third best investment I ever made was the [$31,500] purchase of my home, though I would have made far more money had I instead rented and used the purchase money to buy stocks. (The two best investments were wedding rings.) (…)

IIn a nine-hour period [last year], we sold 1,053 pairs of Justin boots, 12,416 pounds of See’s candy, 8,000 Dairy Queen blizzards, and 8,800 Quikut knives (that’s 16 knives per minute). But you can do better. Remember: Anyone who says money can’t buy happiness simply hasn’t learned to shop.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

photo { Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Pigeon Houses, Mit Gahmr Delta, Egypt | Thanks Daniel }

more { Critical Analysis of Buffett’s Annual Letter | Aleph blog }

We usually think of emotions as conveyed through facial expressions and body language. Science too has focused on these forms of emotional communication, finding that there’s a high degree of consistency across cultures. It’s only in the last few years that psychologists have looked at whether and how the emotions can be communicated purely through touch.

A 2006 study by Matthew Hertenstein demonstrated that strangers could accurately communicate the ‘universal’ emotions of anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, and sympathy, purely through touches to the forearm, but not the ‘prosocial’ emotions of surprise, happiness and sadness, nor the ’self-focused’ emotions of embarrassment, envy and pride.

Now Erin Thompson and James Hampton have added to this nascent literature by comparing the accuracy of touch-based emotional communication between strangers and between those who are romantically involved. (…)

The key finding is that although strangers performed well for most emotions, romantic couples tended to be superior, especially for the self-focused emotions of embarrassment, envy and pride.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

images { The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968, directed by Norman Jewison }

We know very well what sculpture is. And one of the things we know is that it is a historically bounded category and not a universal one. As is true of any other convention, sculpture has its own internal logic, its own set of rules, which, though they can be applied to a variety of situations, are not themselves open to very much change. The logic of sculpture, it would seem, is inseparable from the logic of the monument. By virtue of this logic a sculpture is a commemorative representation. It sits in a particular place and speaks in a symbolical tongue about the meaning or use of that place.

{ Rosalind Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, 1979 | Continue reading }

photo { Alvaro Sanchez-Montañes }

{ 1. Jurgen Teller | 2 }

…Known as mnemonists, they have unfathomable memories and data recall. (…)

Shereshesvkii was reporting on a talk given by Luria. At one point Luria looked around the room and noticed that, unlike all the rest of the journalists, there was an individual not taking any notes. Luria confronted Shereshesvkii asking why he was not taking notes, at this point Shereshesvkii recited his entire talk back to word for word. (…)

Luria’s studies revealed many interesting things about the workings of Shereshesvkii mind. His descriptions indicate that Sherevskii had “at least six different types of synaesthesia” triggered by at least four different sensations.

{ B Good Science | Continue reading }

image { Maybe the dumbest Photoshopped ad ever | copyranter | related: Rubik’s Brain Cube }

Shanghai is to extend the one-child policy to man’s best friend after tens of thousands of people complained of being bitten last year – and to prevent dog mess spoiling the country’s showcase business city.

The rule has already been imposed in several other Chinese cities, but Shanghai’s size – it has a population of more than 20 million – has made the presence of thousands of dogs more problematic. Dogs bigger than 3ft will be banned from the centre of the city and so-called “attack dogs”, including bulldogs, will be banned completely.

The ruling is the latest instance of uneasy relationships between man’s best friend and the Chinese authorities. During the Communist era of Mao Zedong, pets were frowned upon as a middle-class affectation and government opponents were condemned as capitalist running dogs. But China’s growing openness, combined with its rising affluence, means that pets are making a comeback, and there are around 100 million pet dogs in China. However, from May, a one-dog policy will be introduced in Shanghai and more than 600,000 unlicensed dogs will be declared illegal – and killed because of fears of rabies.

{ The Independent | Continue reading }

photo { Alvaro Sanchez-Montañes }

related { The special bond that often forms between people and both domesticated and wild animals may be, paradoxically, part of what makes us human. | Seed | full story }

{ 1. Koen Hauser | 2. Ray Caesar }

{ Armelle Caron, Le monde rangé, 2009 | Thanks Cole }

Google just changed its search algorithm and effectively declared war on Content Farms like Demand Media.

In a blog post, Google search engineers Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts write that the update, which will effect a whopping 11.8% of all search results, “is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”

{ Business Insider | Continue reading }

painting { Nouar }

The English language makes a distinction between blue and green, but some languages do not. Of these, quite a number, mostly in Africa, do not distinguish blue from black either, while there are a handful of languages that do not distinguish blue from black but have a separate term for green.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

painting { Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Green Red, 1962–63 }