Trader handsignals

The New York Times has a graphical article that shows what the hand signals used by commodity pit traders mean.

via kottke.org

UN Data Now Available

The United Nations has an interesting new website that presents a lot of their statistical data.

This page for example shows CO2 production by country over time. Using the controls on the left you can add other countries (Canada for example) to the chart. Aside: This raises the question of why the Canadian numbers are so different from the US ones.

via slashdot

Factoid: private jets at Davos

According to this not particularly worth reading article in Newsweek, Gulfstream says that the Davos conference usually attracts more of its planes than any other gathering, drawing up to 10 percent of the 1,500 planes in service to Zurich airport.

The Growth of Walmart

The page has a video showing an animation of Walmart's expansion across the US.

Generating Character Names

Just the thing for the aspiring novelist, this site creates character names based on data from the US census.

via kottke.org

Traffic shockwave observed in lab

Have you ever been driving on the highway when you suddenly get stuck in traffic which when you get to the front has no apparent cause? Well, the New Scientist has an article about Japanese scientists who have managed to reproduce this in the lab.

The scientists had 22 cars going around a track all of which were told to drive at a steady 30 kilometers / hour. Eventually a wave caused by one driver briefly putting on his brakes travelled back through the stream of cars and caused several to come to a complete stop.

via slashdot

Follow up: Stu kindly sent a link to this little Java applet that simulates traffic flow. If you try the ring road simulation you will see how the traffic bunches up and eventually stops.

Quizzes

Can you name all the elements in 15 minutes? Try this quiz and find out.

The way the quiz works is interesting, there is a display of the periodic table and an entry box at the top. You type the name of an element into the box and if it is correct the answer is placed into the table.

There are a number of the quizzes on the site all with similar interfaces. Try naming all the countries of Asia for example or all the US states. The only down side is there aren't any stats so you can't tell how you compare with other people who've taken the same quiz.

Rotherforth - the name

For those of you who have wondered how rare these Rotherforths really are, check out this page that is part of a surname analysis of the British census. Apparently there were 208 (of voting age) in the UK in 1998.

Feeling Secure

Bruce Schneier has a blog post about the difference between being secure and feeling secure.

A New User Interface for Magazines

This site has an interesting new user interface for a magazine. Basically it uses the Google Maps scroll and zoom style interface over the pages of a print magazine. I'm not sure that it will catch on but it is an interesting idea.

via kottke.org

Dextre stands up

Astronomy Picture of the Day has a nice shot of the new Dextre robot standing up from the space station.

The first explored area of the moon

Kottke.com has a post which links to two maps that show how much of the moon was explored by the first Apollo landing. The first shows Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's explorations superimposed on a soccer field. The second shows it on a baseball diamond.

Why don't people do what economists think they should?

The LA Times has an article explaining why evolution has lead people to make strange economic choices.

50 Best Works of Art

Kottke.org has a very short post that links to a list of the 50 best works of art in the world (including where they are and how to see them) and a link to a site that links to photos of them all.

Space shuttle pictures

Two nice pictures of the recent Space Shuttle launch from the Astronomy Picture of the Day. The first of the launch and the second a few minutes later.

A Rotherforth in the news

I can't say I've ever encountered this before but here we have an actual news article about someone named Rotherforth. According to this article in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus a Police Constable named Simone Rotherforth was inured in a scuffle with a drunk.

New space station photo

Astronomy Picture of the Day has a photo of the International Space Station with the new lab installed.

Origami with your Tea

Another practical use of origami. This company has replaced the little tag on the end of the string on your teabag with a little origami boat. The boat floats in your tea so that you don't have to scald your fingers to take the bag out.

Stick to your Resolutions

The New York Times has a column by Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, about a method to ensure that you will carry through with a resolution.

to write a check for a substantial amount of money to the American Nazi Party, seal it up in a stamped envelope, and vow to drop it in the mail if you break your diet.

He then describes a new website called StickK.com that does a similar thing by essentially holding a cheque from you until you either complete or fail at a resolution. If you fail they send the cheque to a charity of your choice.

New Lab on Space Station

Astronomy Picture of the day has a nice picture of the new Columbus Laboratory on the International Space Station.