Scientists have released a 3D map of the universe. 43,000 galaxies!

For once, I side with the big bad federal government (and Britain!) over local communities: Down with the apostrophe! Okay, maybe not entirely. I’d still support it in contexts where Matt Malady is ready to let it go.

An anthropological look at garbage men.

Birds evolving to avoid cars.

Lousy sleep sucks.

Albania has a lot of war bunkers and no idea what to do with them.

The practical considerations of de-extinction. De-extinction could lead to a new era of hybrids.

When I read about China’s copycat architecture, it makes me think of Las Vegas. I actually think the concept is neat. I mean, it has to look like something, right? Why not something cool? Speaking of China, rapid construction, and cool, this looks kinda cool.

Did we really need scientists to tell us that we can decipher dog emotions? That part about dog people being less adept at it than not-dog-people is pretty interesting, though.

For entrepreneurship to rise, the big boys must fall.

Next time I fail to win the family bowl challenge (where we bet on all the bowl games) and I lose, I’m just going to point out that gambling success has nothing to do with actual knowledge.

By some metrics, Alaska is one of the happiest states in the country. It’s interesting that Greenland would be so miserable.

Rapid urbanization is making us more vulnerable to natural disasters.

Cell phones in prison are a persistent problem. But they’ve got dogs on the trail.

Phillip Levind and Melissa Kearney argue that our focus on contraception and abstinence don’t work. Instead, we need to focus on economic opportunity.

The case for canned beer.

It should come as no surprise that I agree with this piece on how we should make fixing things cool.

On the one hand, I am sympathetic to this piece from Linkedin, which says that we should move away from “work hours” as a metric of work and towards being paid for actual work done.. On the other hand, I tend to view unfavorably what I see as an abuse of overtime-exempt (salary) employment.

Ellis Hamburger thinks that the proliferation of messaging platforms will leave us disconnected. I am somewhat skeptical because at some point people will successfully Trillian it, and we may have more in-points and out-points, but the latter will all be in a singular place.

io9 explores why in the world aliens would want to invade us, anyway? And why are we inviting them?

Sabotage Times looks at driverless cars. Greg Beato looks at the potential for driverless cars, but doesn’t like what he sees.

National Journal looks at New Orleans’s rebound.

I don’t understand why Samsung’s latest phone has a better resolution than its latest tablet.

Seventeen really stupid office rules, that companies allegedly actually enforce.

An interesting look at learning differences between the sexes. Among the findings, the sex differences in math are insignificant at the bottom but wider at the top. The differences in reading, though, are insignificant at the top but significant at the bottom.

Jim Edwards has a piece on the cartel-like behavior of broadcast TV. I think it’s overlooking some things, but more importantly I am not sure why I should care. I kind of want the networks to have money so that they can make things with big budgets.

Before the Internet was supposed to be the next big thing, virtual reality was supposed to be the next big thing. George Dvorsky looks at why that didn’t pan out.

Confessions of serial job hoppers. My own job history is pretty long and winding, though not for the reasons discussed. I have actually been burned more than once for not job hopping. Loyalty, as they say, is not always a two-way street.

So, a weird story out of Texas:

The verdict came after almost 11 hours of deliberations that stretched over two days. The trial began May 17 but had a long hiatus after a juror unexpectedly had to leave town for a funeral.
During closing arguments Tuesday, Gilbert’s defense team conceded the shooting did occur but said the intent wasn’t to kill. Gilbert’s actions were justified, they argued, because he was trying to retrieve stolen property: the $150 he paid Frago. It became theft when she refused to have sex with him or give the money back, they said.

Gilbert testified earlier Tuesday that he had found Frago’s escort ad on Craigslist and believed sex was included in her $150 fee. But instead, Frago walked around his apartment and after about 20 minutes left, saying she had to give the money to her driver, he said.

Apparently, the law in question did not specify that the defense does not apply to transactions that were illegal in the first place?

Web took down hitcoffee.net somewhat unexpectedly (possibly my fault), so there is presently no forwarding. I have tried to get it to forward through the settings at GoDaddy, but it’s not happening yet. I’m not sure if this is because it takes time for the changes to implement, or whether I did something wrong.

The New York Times had an interesting article on the LDS Church’s relationship with Hollywood, and how they’re making inroads:

The typical B.Y.U. student doesn’t seem like a natural fit for Hollywood. Mormon culture tends to see the entertainment industry as both a reflection of and contributor to our “morally bereft society,” as one alumnus put it. Many of the students I met rarely, if ever, watch R-rated films and could name the handful of exceptions they had made. One 27-year-old junior remembered seeing the Civil War drama “Glory” in high school. Another was working part time at a company in Salt Lake City that cleaned up Hollywood films and released family-friendly versions on DVD. Recently, the student told me, he digitally replaced a cigarette in a character’s hand with a pretzel.

The B.Y.U. program is designed to be a similar kind of ethical counterweight: it’s trying to unleash values-oriented filmmakers into the industry who can inflect its sensibility. “Without being preachy about it,” Adams told me, “if we can add something to the culture that makes people think about being better human beings — more productive, more kind, more forgiving — that’s what we want to do.”

That’s really a smart thing on the part of BYU (and, by extension, The Church). It’s part of a larger thing, which I’ll get to in a minute, but entertainment is a great example of using institutions to further not just the religion, but the culture the religion stands behind. The same extends to any cultural movement, really.

It’s noteworthy that this project isn’t about making movies by Mormons for Mormons. It’s Mormons influencing films for mass consumption.

There is actually a cottage industry for Mormon-to-Mormon entertainment. I was introduced to it when I lived in Deseret. I was, by and large, unimpressed. But then, why would I be? I’m not the target audience. I am not particularly religious. Though I share concern about sex in entertainment, I like a lot of the dark and morally complex stuff that is anathema to a lot of Mormon entertainment. But… I do like a fair number of “family” movies. I can imagine a lot of movies from the Book of Mormon that would interest me[1].

Richard Dutcher’s Brigham City walked the line pretty nicely. On the face of it, it’s a movie about a Utah town[2] that is faced with a serial killer. Mormonism plays a role in the film, but it manages to place it in a context that is engaging for gentiles. The movie did not have all that much success because it was tagged “an LDS film” and was an indy film to boot, but as a blueprint for introducing the faith and worldview[3] without overwhelming people who are not particularly interested in seeing “a Mormon movie.”

Aside from the LDS Church itself, this is something that conservatives in general should take to heart. The LDS Church, of course, has BYU and conservatism is not top-down enough to have much in the way of formal institutional support. But interested parties can invest in Liberty University’s film school. Those Catholic colleges that are still actually Catholic colleges can improve. This should be more of a priority than it has been[4], and shifting in this effort could easily pay dividends.

If you want to reach minds, create art. The best way to do that is to create artists and cultivate their works.

I found this by way of Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, who wonders why the Catholics don’t have their own BYU.

[1] Though, for non-Mormon audiences, it might be better to put a bit of a veil over it to allow for more creativity and be a little less off-putting to those people uninterested in attending a 90-minute sermon. (Note: it won’t work if it’s a 90-minute sermon, veiled or not.) Not as thick a veil as Battlestar Galactica, necessarily, but I’d guess there would be some reluctance within the church to get too fictional while purporting to be a reflection of a work from God.

[2] The City of Brigham, not Brigham City which you can find on a map. I know this because not a single person in the movie complains or comments about the terrible, terrible odor from that town. Oh, plus the county name is different.

[3] Not all of which was flattering. There is a scene where hero sheriff goes house-to-house. The words “search warrant” are not mentioned. And yet that was not entirely incredible, as I am not sure who, in a town full of Mormons, would actually demand the sheriff (who is also the local bishop) produce a search warrant. And non-Mormons would be outnumbered.

[4] Bitching and moaning about popular culture doesn’t actually constitute making it a priority.

It’s not just the pencilnecks. Jocks, too, are subject to stereotype and discrimination.

The world is becoming a more addictive place.

When robots and humans work together, we often think of it in terms of humans directing the robots to complete repetitive tasks. What if the future is the other way around. Maybe we’ll even become friends.

A whole lot of our atmospheric water vapor comes from plant transpiration, which could be important as we look for other worlds to someday inhabit.

Australia is one of those places I really want to learn more about the history of. Here’s a start. Also, Mayans!

The top five regrets of dying. Shockingly, none of them involve spending more time at the office.

Winnie Cooper was pretty amazing. It says something odd about myself that I sympathized more with Becky Slater.

A slideshow of million dollar houses across the country.

A lot of politicians are advocating longer school days. The Economist presents a contrary view. I’m less concerned about the hours in a day than the huge gap in between school getting out and school starting back up again.

Can, or should, police assist in urban design?

I’m coming around to the idea that advertising may be bad for youngsters.