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    A list of medieval occupations. Like this gem:

    stewsman - probably a brothel keeper - “since the words stew and stewholder both mean a bawd, I’m guessing that a stewsman would be a brothel-keeper as well. Whether bawdry counts as a criminal activity varies at different times and places.”

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    Shit Programmers Say.

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    Nano quadrotors flying in formation. Watch the figure 8 formation at the end. Sick.

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    An upcoming book by explores the French way of raising children. WSJ spoke to the author. Amen to this:

    One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don’t pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat. (French kids consistently have three meals a day and one snack around 4 p.m.)

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    This Apple has the best product packaging? Think again. Some seriously cool ideas by Samsung.

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    This is despicable. US forces attack once from the sky and then attack again once mourners and rescuers arrive.

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    Turns out, there were two copies of the Mona Lisa painted on the very same day.

    Museum experts are in the process of stripping away a cover of black over-paint which, when fully removed, will reveal the youthfulness of the subject they say. The final area of over-paint will come off in the next few days.

    The original “Mona Lisa” hangs in the Louvre but the sitter looks older than her years as the varnish is cracked. The painting is so fragile that restoration or cleaning is deemed too risky. The Prado version, however, will show the sitter as she was: a young woman in her early 20s.

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    Whats the future of touchscreen navigation and UI? This video shows us whats possible.

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    In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of this letter.

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    Happy wednesday: Here’s some Office outtakes.

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    Pronunciation Book on Youtube will help you pronounce seemingly difficult words in the english language.

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    Brian Lam on happiness and the age of the internet.

    “…clicking the like button 1 billion times will never give you an orgasm or a hug or a high five”.

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    Sean Parker, talking about #nerdspring, Facebook IPO and music space.

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    A couple of dissenting views on my opinion of the megaupload shutdown:

    Jonathan Coulton:

    Along with all the illegal stuff happening on MegaUpload was some amount of completely legal stuff. People used MegaUpload to send large files around. Some number of those files were personal files owned by the people sending them. I have no idea what the ratio was, and probably it would be impossible to figure that out with any certainty, but let’s stipulate that it was a very large percentage of illegal activity, and only a very tiny percentage of the users were there for anything other than downloading content that they didn’t buy. Still, today that tiny percentage had something taken away from them, without warning, maybe just a service they liked using, but maybe a piece of digital media that belonged to them - if they uploaded something and didn’t keep a copy, that thing is now gone.

    Julian Sanchez also has a good post about the larger SOPA / PIPA debate.

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    Excellent screenshot comparison of current war games vs the real thing. Closer into the Uncanny Valley.

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    Thomas Friedman, whom I have had issues with in the past, is spot on in his latest column: The End of Average. In which he argues that workers and companies simply can not survive in this economy by merely being average.

    In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

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    Here are the Oscar 2012 nominees. Really surprised Tintin isnt even nominated! Also surprised about Hugo getting the most nods, which I still havent seen.

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