Inception Script Sketch

from an interview with Christopher Nolan by his brother

via In Contention

Galileo's Moon Drawings

Not clear whether he sketched them, or whether they were just illustrations he included in a folio of his other astronomical work.

"In either case, it is rather beautiful. But it didn’t seem that way to many people at the time. It was a shock and an affront to suggest that God’s heavenly objects were not perfect but pocked and roughened with craters and protuberances like some ordinary rock of the earthly realm. This would all come to a head when Galileo visited the pope in 1616 …"

via Tom Christensen

Winter Solstice Eclipse tonight

The full moon will pass through Earth's shadow, changing from gray to a rusty, red color.

Why red? NASA describes it this way:

A quick trip to the Moon provides the answer: Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.

If you're not much for staring at the sky, at least glance up once: early Tuesday morning at 12:17 a.m. That's when the eclipse will be most striking, according to astronomers.

Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais

Why I'm an athiest.

via WSJ

Space Program in One Tufte-Friendly Chart

Click on the image to see the whole thing.

via National Geographic

Facebook Connections

From the Facebook Blog

Prevention may not be a good way to reduce overall health care costs

Paper's conclusion: Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.

Machine with Roller Chain - Arthur Ganson

No comment necessary -- this is just great all by itself.

Machine with Concrete - Arthur Ganson

A machine waiting to be used as a metaphor for something.

15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.

I like this because it reminds me how articulate young people can be, and resets the bar where it should be.

Quote of the day -- Anias Nin

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

via The Positivity Blog

How to give bad news after a job interview

Good advice on giving appropriate information in a kind way after an interview.

via Nathan Marz.

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - ...

Letter from Gandhi to Hitler

While the letter itself is very moving, I'm more interested in the comment that "this particular letter never reaches Hitler due to an intervention by the British government."

via Letters of Note

Paul Graham on Hackers

"Give hackers an inch and they'll take you a mile."

From Paul Graham's column on tablets.

Rewrite

Another thing we learned was that…
Another thing we learned was…
We also learned that…
We also learned…
We learned…

From 37Signals

Friedman Op-Ed

Interesting column from Thomas Friedman about the loss of American leverage due to our reliance on foreign oil and the ownership of our debt by China.

New York City

Remote control plane flies over Brooklyn and Statue of Liberty.