Summer is almost unofficially over but its still hot enough to enjoy iced coffee. Over at The Kitchn, they’ve rounded up their best tips & recipes for America’s favorite oxymoron of a drink including how to cold brew your coffee.

Iced Coffee: Recipes, Tips, and Tricks – The Kitchn

Now THIS is the kind of magazine I want to see!

The New York Times Magazine produced a series of videos and still pictures of the top ranked female tennis stars playing on the court. Slow motion video is great for catching details our eyes miss like the facial expressions when they return a volley or serve. The music the NY Times added gives the videos as very poetic feel to them and if you look at Elena Dementieva’s video, you can see her hair floating in the wind she creates with her return.

I think the video of Kim Clijsters is my favorite. You can see her legs take on what appears to be an intense amount of force as she reaches for the ball and returns. But the best part is how her body stretches to meet the ball and then goes into a crouching position and springs up to react to her opponent’s return.

Its a fascinating look at their athletic performances.

The Beauty of the Power Game – New York Times Magazine via Boing Boing

MotorTrend must be smoking something really strong because they decided to race a 2011 BMW M3 against that year’s Mustang GT from Ford. And I agree with The BMW Blog that if you asked me who would have won against the two a few months ago, I would have looked at you in shock and answered confidently: the BMW M3.

But the Mustang GT is a worth contender. In many respects, it bests the Bavarian beast in horsepower, torque, and and the all important 1/4 mile. But in their tests, the M3 beat the GT by nine-hundredths (0.09) of a second. The human eye can’t even tell the difference.

The Mustang did well for a car thats about $25,000 less than the German import.

MotorTrend Comparison: 2011 Ford Mustang GT vs. 2011 BMW M3 Coupe – BMW Blog

Last year, as I watched the Yankees play in the World Series, I was tweeting about Derek Jeter and my iPhone was convinced he was heterosexual. Of course, I could care less what his sexual orientation is. I just want the Yankees win titles. I hope my iPhone isn’t a bigot… Or a Red Sox fan.

:/

I don’t know why it took me so long to upload this picture – which I took before I figured out how to take screenshots using the iPhone’s built in method.

What if the Rebel Alliance used PowerPoint to review the Death Star schematics? Now you know.

A long time ago, before death by PowerPoint – Presentation Zen via Clusterflock

Not sure how old this on the net this is (but it a looks as if it was uploaded late last year) but my wife’s cousin posted this to her Facebook wall the other day and I thought it was funny, interesting, and well, catchy.

Apparently, there is no creativity in popular music today. The comedy band, The Axis of Awesome, demonstrated at the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival that four musical chords repeated in different ways (tempo, etc) make up just about every pop song ever created. I’m not musically inclined but its pretty, um, awesome that its so simple. In fact, I’ve already started writing my new double platinum hit song since the music is basically done.

Watch the video and pay attention to the subtitles where every song they sing is listed. I especially like their rendition of Waltzing Matilda.

Axis of Awesome – Four Chord Song (with song titles) via YouTube

Interesting research coming from Manchester University where they were able to predict crush conditions in chaotic crowd situations like the fire in a Rhode Island nightclub that killed 96. Scientists are very convinced the fire did not kill the majority of patrons that night and used the data from that night to help determine how one might survive a similar event else where. From the article:

Think of a crowd of people like a wave pool, where choppy waters represent crush conditions. When individuals are facing in similar directions to their neighbors, the crowd moves together—much like a single wave moving through the pool. But if people move in different directions they start pushing against each other, and that’s when things get choppy. So by detecting when movements in the crowd start to fall out of sync, the researchers can predict the development of dangerous conditions.

The one drawback thus far is that the formula was derived from the data collected meaning they know the outcome and its possible to generate false positives in other applications. But they can still apply their findings to calculate the forces possible in other disasters. And until then, its your collective obligation to stay as calm as possible in uncertain situations otherwise more deadly stampedes like the one that took place in Germany will continue to happen.

How to Avoid Being Crushed to Death at a Concert – Mother Jones via The Awl

God & Family – Bizarro via The Daily What

Less people are dying on the job. The only problem is they’re dying at home because they’re out of work.

Good News From a Bad Economy, Sort Of – Newsweek

Höffner contends (according to the review) that the near absence of copy­right law in eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany laid the ground­work for the “Gründerzeit”—the enormous wave of economic growth that Deutsch land experienced in the middle and later nineteenth century.

Moreover, the author believes copyright laws had a negative impact on the United Kingdom:

Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development — in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.

No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion? – Spiegel via Snarkmarket