Besha Rodell, LA Weekly:

Over the weekend, word came out that Maker’s Mark has decided to reduce the amount of alcohol in its whisky. In other words, they’ll be adding more water to the cask strength bourbon than they had previously done. They claim the alcohol will be reduced by 3%, although this story in the Atlantic indicates that it’s more like 6.7%. Maker’s Mark blames increased demand, from the explosion of booze enthusiasm in the past couple of years worldwide. In other words, this is all our fault.

It’s disappointing that they chose same-price/lower-quality over higher-price/same-quality.

Mark Memmott, NPR:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Pete Leary is proud to announce that Wisdom the Laysan albatross, who at age 62 (or so) is the “oldest known wild bird” in the world, has hatched another chick.

If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Konstantin Kakaes, Slate:

Late last month, Curtis Cooper of the University of Central Missouri moved one small step closer to Euclid’s infinity, when he announced that 2^57,885,161-1 is prime. This is now the largest known prime number, eclipsing the previous record-holder, which had been discovered at UCLA in 2008. The new number has 17,425,170 digits—just writing them down makes for a 22.45-megabyte text file.

Cliff Kuang, Co.Design:

But the Aeron’s origin story isn’t so simple. The apotheosis of the office chair—and perhaps the only one ever to become a recognizable and coveted brand name among cubicle-dwellers—was actually the unexpected fruit of a ten-year effort to create better furniture for the elderly.

I love these chairs. It’s always cool to learn the origins of great design.

John D. Cook, writing about a potential limit on human concentration of about four hours:

Apparently this is a common pattern. Cal Newport mentions this in his interview with Todd Henry.

Now we also know that if you study absolute world class, best virtuoso violin players, none of them put in more than about four or so hours of practice in a day, because that’s the cognitive limit. And this limit actually shows up in a lot of different fields where people do intense training, that you really can’t do about more than four or so hours of this type of really mental strain. And they often break this into two sessions, of two hours and then two hours. So there’s huge limits here. I think if you’re able to do three, maybe four hours of this sort of deep work in a typical day, you’re hitting basically the mental speed limit, the amount of concentration your brain is actually able to give.

This doesn’t mean a person only works for these few hours. No doubt, I can do “stuff” for eight hours or more in a day. Throughout my educational career, I have been able to maximize my efficiency by optimizing the tools I use. However, I find the time in which I can get lost in complex problems is on the order of four hours. Beyond that, my mind feels taxed and I lose interest. Unlike many mentioned by Cook, I prefer those hours in the evening or late at night.

Seth Godin:

Live interaction still matters. Teachers, meetings, presentations, one on one brainstorms–they can lead to real change. The listener has nearly as big a responsibility as the speaker does, though. And yet, Google reports four times as many matches for “how to speak” as “how to listen.” It’s not a passive act, not if you want to do it right.

I’ve learned more and progressed most as a person when actively listening to others. Listening allows us to consider viewpoints that our limited, self-centered minds might otherwise prevent.

Last February, I posted about an absurd anti-science bill filed by Oklahoma State GOP Senator, Josh Brecheen.

According to the National Center for Science Education, he’s at it again:

Two antiscience bills, Senate Bill 758 and House Bill 1674, have been prefiled in the Oklahoma legislature.

First, Senate Bill 758 (document), styled the Oklahoma Science Education Act, would, if enacted, require state and local educational authorities to “assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies” and permit teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.” Unusually but not uniquely, no scientific topics are specifically identified as controversial, but the fact that the sole sponsor of SB 758 is Josh Brecheen (R-District 6), who introduced specifically antievolution legislation in the two previous legislative sessions, is telling.

He’s certainly getting more crafty with wording. The objectives mentioned above seem harmless. The problem, as Dr. Broughton (Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education) notes:

Teachers have been encouraging, “students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues” for decades. Nothing in the bill explains why we need a state law specifying what teachers already (are required to) do.

In essence, Brecheen is attempting to make a law that forces equal coverage of one-sided topics. As I said last year, his goal would make as much sense as forcing educators to teach opposing views on smoking cessation, AIDS, and racism. This pervasive drive for false-equivalence will confuse students and teachers and will only serve to harm our children’s quality of education.

Sadly, the bill has been referred to The Oklahoma Senate Education committee. You might find it useful to contact them and express that our state has more pressing issues than trying to backdoor religious legislation. Especially when Oklahoma routinely ranks in the bottom ten for science education.

The BBC reports on England’s previously missing King Richard III:

Experts from the University of Leicester said DNA from the bones matched that of descendants of the monarch’s family.

Lead archaeologist Richard Buckley, from the University of Leicester, told a press conference to applause: “Beyond reasonable doubt it’s Richard.”

Richard, killed in battle in 1485, will be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral.

Bone samples indicated that his death was pretty violent - perhaps fitting given his reputation. Even more interesting is that his bones were found under a parking lot.

Maybe there’s hope for Jimmy Hoffa.

Data visualization firm Periscopic analyzed the FBI’s Unified Crime Report from 2010, which includes data about gun murder victims - age, gender, race, relationship to killer, and weapon used:

This is the challenge with visualizing data that relates to humans. The very act of collecting data often removes its human connection and inoculates against any semblance of emotion.

What the Unified Crime Report did not contain was an assessment of the potential life that was stolen from these individuals as a result of their murder.

To calculate that, we used the World Health Organization’s UNSD Demographic Statistics, and first performed an age prediction, weighted according to the age distribution of US deaths. Using this age, we then predicted a likely cause of death at that age.

Be sure and check out their striking tool used to visualize this data.

Resist the urge for the data to act as self-confirming toward your particular political leanings or views toward gun safety and control. Instead, help accomplish Periscopic’s goal by connecting to the data in a humanistic manner. Their Stolen Years metric should not be divisive, rather it should be as it is, horrific and deeply saddening.

In case you needed help to understand today’s Super Bowl, the guys at Deadspin detail the classic book about football from 1964:

Will This Book Help Me Watch Football on Television? Yes, although to be fair, this book could have been titled, How to Watch Football with Your Eyes and not specified the location or medium. While you will learn nothing of zone blitzes, quarterback reads, and complex scheming—for that, look to Collinsworth, Mayock, or Jaworski—the book is still helpful and accurate in terms of football’s rudiments. Plus, the $0.15 price point is still a total bargain.