Different things that caught by eye today.

The worst foods to eat in America (via Boing-boing):

http://www.menshealth.com/20worst

The worst being fries with cheese and ranch dressing from a nation chain with 2,900 calories! That’s 900 more than is recommended for an average adult male should eat in a whole day! (Read the article to see more).

An Irish chef, living in Amerika, goes home to his family homestead in Donegal and shows some good places to eat:

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/a-donegal-son-returns

So which pic looks better? I was trying to enhance some pics I took while home in Ireland in January, if you look here you can see the lastest enhancement, using a contrast-mask, the original, and a version using an equalisation filter:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timony/2259172449/

The original:

Using a contrast mask:

And using the equalisation filter, which brings out more detail in the clouds and sky, but the landscape looks artifical:

Some NYC artists are moving to Berlin, for lower prices and a vibrant arts scene:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,505553,00.html

And, Der Spiegel’s look at Europe’s “coolest” city:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,502297,00.html

And Dublin’s second coming:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,503245,00.html

Apple wants to lock you in to their technology:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Sep-20.html

And, Stephen Fry has a blog:

http://www.stephenfry.com/blog

Via, http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/fry-2007-09-20-13-10

Interesting article about a modern, but hidden, house in Leitrim:

http://www.nytimes.com

Fun with Linux:

http://frankmash.blogspot.com/2006/03/linux-commands-funny-linux-commands.html

Amazing pics of sea birds near Tory Island, off the North Donegal Coast:

http://www.birdsireland.com/pages/site_pages/features/pelagic2.html

Today’s interesting links, via Reddit:

About the guy who makes “2 buck chuck” a cheap wine sold by Trader Joe’s:

http://money.cnn.com

Franzia, who rose to fame several years ago when he started selling a $2 bottle called Charles Shaw, calls winemakers “bozos in a glass.” He really goes off on wine critic Robert Parker, who, he says, likes tannic wines that make people gag. He mocks my college (“We buy wineries from guys from Stanford who go bankrupt. Some real dumb-asses from there”) …

Riding shotgun on a Apache attack helicoper:

http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/20079811857.aspx

RFID implants cause cancer in rodents, good overview from Arstechnica about possible conflict of interests in approving these for use in humans:

http://arstechnica.com

Is the problem from the radio waves or from the material that the implants are made from?

The Guardian talks about should the Greens be talking (or pushing) for population control:

http://www.guardian.co.uk

They do have a point, afterall there are 6 Billion+ and growing and England is growing:

But England is now the second most densely populated country in Europe, after Belgium, and at current rates of increase it could be second only to Bangladesh in the world by 2074. There are those who argue that there’s no need for alarm, and that we can concentrate development in brownfield sites to accommodate all the millions of extra homes needed. But how many more people can you squeeze into cities that already seem to be choking under the weight of their population density – the buses and trains packed, the streets clogged and the parks on a Sunday afternoon teeming with people.

And, Urban blight in England:

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/flash/page/0,,2166176,00.html

“Do They Have Homeless People Where You Come From?”
http://urbanparamedic.blogspot.com

Some of the more interesting pages I’ve been looking at today:

Melting ice caps in Greenland triggering earthquakes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/08/climatechange/print

And Polar bears numbers may be vastly reduced in the wild:
http://www.nytimes.com/

RFID chips cause cancer in rodents:
http://www.washingtonpost.com

Reverse anthropology?
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2932252.ece

Brian’s 40th!
http://donegalfriends.blogspot.com/2007/09/happy-40th-brian.html

Stupid burglar near the lake!
http://www.leaderherald.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=12497