Brooklyn zoo.

With any luck, Republicans won’t destroy the country the economy won’t implode while I’m in New York with Emily, Scott, Eamonn and other college friends this weekend:

Unrelatedly, I retooled the blog, and it’s quite handsome! If you’ve been reading the RSS feed, check it out.

Linkwad.

1. Definitely a dick move, Facebook.
2. Reddit co-founder accused of stealing over a million JSTOR articles with plans to distribute them.
3. Baltimore cop charged with dealing heroin. The officer, Daniel G. Redd, “was fired in 2002 after being found asleep on the job at the reservoir at Druid Hill Park, where he was supposed to be on anti-terrorist duty… Redd sued and was rehired under a court order, and the city had to pay him $75,000 in back pay.” So. That worked out well.
4. An interesting article about Google+’s potential to become a “social backbone.”
5. If you rent a car with your Visa card, they provide collision and theft coverage, although it doesn’t cover personal belongings or liability. Good catch by @StevenMBone.

Automation.

Via /., Volkswagen just tested out a semi-self-driving car:

The system maintains a safe distance to the vehicle ahead, drives at a speed selected by the driver, reduces this speed as necessary before a bend, and maintains the vehicle’s central position with respect to lane markers. The system also observes overtaking rules and speed limits. Additionally, stop and start driving maneuvers in traffic jams are also automated.

The good news–or bad, depending on how you look at it–is that compared to the more advanced autonomous driving technologies, Volkswagen’s latest Temporary Auto Pilot is based on a relatively production-like sensor platform, consisting of production-level radar-, camera-, and ultrasonic-based sensors supplemented by a laser scanner and an electronic horizon.

This means that we could see a production version within the next couple of years.

VW is careful to say that owners would need to oversee the system, of course, but this is a big step towards  having personal cabs. On the one hand, this could be great. DUIs could become nonexistent¹, and having a computer in charge of acceleration should produce better fuel economy and better traffic flow. On the other hand, being able to do do things while in the car would give people another reason to forgo mass transit, which is a much more effective way to achieve both those things.

Blame it on the alcohol.

The story of “whiskey fungus,” an unpleasant side effect of distillation:

In the neighborhood surrounding [the Hiram Walker Distillery] Lakeshore warehouses, homeowners were complaining about a mysterious black mold coating their houses. And the residents, following their noses, blamed the whiskey. Doyle wanted to know what the mold was and whether it was the company’s fault. Scott headed up to Lakeshore to take a look. When he arrived at the warehouse, the first thing he noticed (after “the beautiful, sweet, mellow smell of aging Canadian whiskey,” he says) was the black stuff. It was everywhere—on the walls of buildings, on chain-link fences, on metal street signs, as if a battalion of Dickensian chimney sweeps had careened through town.

Bonus quote! “[scientist James Scott] couldn’t name [the mystery whiskey mold] after himself; that’s unspeakably crass in the fungal world.”

When my fiancée and I did the Kentucky bourbon trail last year, the stuff was everywhere. At the Jim Beam distillery, in particular, to keep the original Beam house looking pristine, they power wash it frequently, and still have to repaint it every year¹.

Here’s a closeup of one of the warehouse walls.

Linkwad.

1. Religious theme park next to the airport features a “59-foot-tall mechanical Jesus who every hour resurrects above a fake mountaintop to the blaring sounds of the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus from Handel’s Messiah.”
2. The implications of quitting a job to freelance in 2011.
3. Banning junk food doesn’t work, either. Via Steve Bone, who has yet to pick a new Twitter username.
4. Why we hate Comic Sans, via @Rands.