voluntaryXchange

This Really Works: Trick for Cooling Off a Hot Car Interior

I picked this up at Lifehacker: open a window on one side, go to the other side and swing a door open and (just about) closed 5 times.

It really does cool your car off quite a lot — great for my black leather in the high desert summer.

Technorati Tags: cool,your,car,interior

Dialects of American English (Canadian Too!)

Here’s an extremely detailed hobby site, complete with links to sound samples, and awesome maps of dialects or spoken English in North America.

Do click through, as the author clearly isn’t making their maps friendly to deep linking.

Via Kottke.

Technorati Tags: dialect,regional,american,english

The Internet Is Changing Everything

Some people still don’t get it. Here’s another example: a real time, Google Maps crowdsource mash-up of local marijuana prices and quality.

Salt Lake City is apparently loaded with high-quality stuff, but the prices for it are good.

So, let me get this right. We’re fighting a 20th century style police action in an incompletely developed country, and more people are dying there in drug murders than they are of overdoses here. And, most people in favor of that probably can’t conceive of a website like this. And they vote.

Via Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed.

Technorati Tags: marijuana,price

Like Mom, Like Dad

Really creative: a site where you can post yourself mimicking your parents in an old photo.

Via Bookofjoe.

Technorati Tags: old,photos,mom,dad

Search Flickr

Flickr Hive Mind allows you to do a keyword search of photos from Flickr.

I put in Southern Utah University, and came up with this page.

What’s cool is that you get photos that non-professionals posted and others viewed and found interesting. In this case, the SUU page is dominated by photos of our gymnastics team.

Via Bookofjoe.

Technorati Tags: flickr,hive,mind,photo,search

10 Cities of the Noughties

Five years ago voluntaryXchange posted about how there wasn’t a yet an American city representative of the decade (and here too) that some are calling the noughties.

Think about it:

• 20’s = Chicago (organized crime)
• 30’s = Los Angeles (movies)
• 40’s = Washington (war)
• 50’s = New York (live TV)
• 60’s = San Francisco (counterculture)
• 70’s = Houston (oil money)
• 80’s = Miami (style)
• 90’s = Seattle (coffee, grunge and Frasier)
• 00’s = ???

I gave 3 initial candidates, and noted that if anything it is the decade of the southwest. Commenters added a few more, and later on a piece in The Wall Street Journal added a few more. I have two more additions for the last half of the decade.

It isn’t a positive thing, but many of us will identify the noughties with New Orleans because of Katrina, and New York because of 9/11, for many years to come.

And, it isn’t really a city at all, but we’re also going to remember the overpriced, overhyped, exurban subdivisions characteristic of the inland empire.

So, here’s the list of 10 cities we’ll associate in our minds with the noughties:

• Phoenix
• Las Vegas
• Salt Lake City
• Denver
• Austin
• Charlotte
• Riverside and the Inland Empire
• Dallas
• New Orleans
• New York

Technorati Tags: city,decade,noughties,oughts

For Idle Time

Make a virtual sand sculpture (click the little box at the top left).

Or go to the gallery and check out everyone else's (yes, there is one from voluntaryXchange on October 15).

Via Gawker and MJ.

Technorati Tags: virtual,sand,sculpture

The O.J. Sentence

18 years, with a minimum of 8 9. No fines.

From my notes, what I get is two 15 year concurrent terms, with a minimum of 6 on each one, plus a bunch of smaller concurrent terms.

Add to that the last two sentences which were consecutive instead of concurrent, at 18-72 months each.

So, possibly as much as 27 years.

Technorati Tags: o.j.,simpson,sentence

Morbid Fascination

O.J. is being sentenced today, and I hope he gets the recommended 18 years.

I have students in my office right now, so I can't go out and watch it live.

But ... of all things it is being broadcast live on wivb.com, one of the local stations I used to watch growing up in Buffalo. So, it's on right here next to us going over weighted average cost of capital problems.

Technorati Tags: o.j.,simpson,sentencing,robbery

Make a Radiohead Remix

Radiohead has released one of their songs in stem format (digital stems, of course)

FTNItK: stems are the individual pieces that go into a mixer - usually one instrument, one voice, or one bit of musique concrete.

The idea is that any one can create a remix of the song, with the stems you like, modified in the way that you like.

Then you can upload your mix to Reckoner Re/Mix for others to listen to - they can even vote for their favorites a la Digg.

Yet one more creative idea that the cristal-dazed geniuses at the music companies just couldn't come up with on their own.

Technorati Tags: radiohead,reckoner,remix