Global businesses have placed bets on China as a stable source of growth for the foreseeable future. Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng serve as unwelcome reminders: Don’t assume anything.
From Gizmodo: Very Little Jogging Can Make Your Life Much, Much Longer
You probably go jogging because it makes you less fat and it is less humiliating than being yelled at through a 60-minute spinning class. But according to a new examination of the Copenhagen City Heart study, jogging less than two hours per week can add years to your life. More »
from Gizmodo
From Lifehacker: Make Japanese Iced Coffee Instead of Cold-Brewing for the Best Flavor
This is already done by the Vietnamese as well… Cafe suda…
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This Japanese Iced Coffee method, an alternative to cold-brewing iced coffee, promises bright and clear iced coffee with the most coffee flavor purity. Peter Giuliano of Counter Coffee Culture demonstrates how to do it and details why this is a superior method of making iced coffee. More »
from Lifehacker
From MAKE: Math Monday: Paper Polyhedra
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics
If you’ve never made a set of the Platonic solids from paper, perhaps it’s time to try it. These shapes are the foundation for many aspects of three-dimensional design. Here is a set made with open faces, but the openings are strictly optional. You can just cut out regular polygons and tape them together so every vertex is identical, e.g., putting five triangles at each vertex leads to the icosahedron.
After mastering the five Platonic solids, there is a world of more complex models to explore. The polyhedron below consists of twelve regular pentagons and twenty (very slightly irregular) hexagons. It is made by cutting out paper polygons and taping them together on the inside. This design is often confused with the truncated icosahedron shape that is well known because of its use as a soccer ball. But this shape is the truncated rhombic triacontahedron. To see the difference, notice that there are some vertices here with three hexagons and no pentagon, but in a soccer ball there is one pentagon and two hexagons at each vertex.
And if you become engaged in discovering the world of polyhedra, you will encounter the many additional families, including the stellated icosahedron below. Their intricacies can be quite a challenge to make from paper, especially when some components meet just at points. I made the model below over thirty years ago, starting from a template in the book Polyhedron Models by Magnus Wenninger. If you want your models to last this long, be sure to use acid-free paper.
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See all of George Hart’s Math Monday columns
from MAKE
From Business and financial news – CNNMoney.com: Your insurance company may owe you $127
Thanks to a provision in the health care reform law, millions of consumers will be receiving rebates from their insurers this summer.
From Lifehacker: Escape Zip Tie Restraints with Paracord Shoelaces
Many home invaders and kidnappers use heavy-duty zip ties to keep victims restrained. If you replace your existing shoelaces with paracord you can use the paracord to form a friction saw that will cut through the zip ties. More »
from Lifehacker
From Lifehacker: DIY Gravity Water Filter
If you’re a backpacker you need a reliable yet lightweight method for purifying and filtering water in the wild. Most commercial methods are either bulky and heavy or need supplies such as salt and/or batteries. Instead you can make a gravity water filtration system using two water bladders, a $17 Aquamira Frontier Pro filter or likewise, and a pack of chlorine dioxide purification tablets. More »
from Lifehacker