tetw:
By Neal Stephenson
In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents. An account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth.
Probably the greatest Wired story ever.
Haven’t you always wondered what’s inside those other little blue pills that make Smilin’ Bob smile so much? Well, wonder no more: it’s all here.
- L-Arginine
- Horny Goat Weed (!!!!)
- Tribulus terrestris
- Korean red ginseng
- Avena Sativa
- and more!
Choosing What’s Insides for 2012!
Come gather around friends, and join the crowdsourcing: we’re looking for new household products you’d like to see us do for the 2012 What’s Insides. We’re looking for things with lots of ingredients, both edible and non edible, that can be reasonably found in anyone’s home or garage. We’re not looking for “How it Works” type requests like DVRs and iPads; we’re looking for the simple things in our lives (like Cool Whip, or mascara, or chewing gum) that turn out to be amazingly complex when we really look into them.
For those new to the concept, What’s Inside has been called “wikileaks for groceries”. We take an everyday product and dive headfirst into its ingredient list (or its patent description) and tell 
you everything we can about its ingredients; what each ingredient contributes to the product, how they interact with each other, how they interact with other products; really, everything we can find.
Please leave your comments below, and please, please, please share and reblog this post; What’s Inside gets so much better when we have more ideas than we know what to do with! So many of our greatest articles were inspired by you, our readers, and we want to keep doing that. Thank you all so very much!
You can see all the previous What’s Insides in one place right here: http://whats-inside.tumblr.com
Medical school media contact, listening to my questions for the next What’s Inside
“Oh God…… Oh my God…… Is this true?….. Oh, oh my GOD! …. Why did you have to tell me this? ….. Are you on the level? …. Oh God, why couldn’t you ask about shampoo or something…. OK, I’ll try to find a doctor who knows about this kind of thing. Might be two or three. Send me an email.”
Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops
The basic premise is simple. Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction.
“If I turn up dead and I committed suicide on Monday, I just want to tell you guys, I’m not suicidal.” – Liam O Murchu
CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY IN WIRED
The origin of this story was pretty straightforward: we got a kitten! We got her in the aftermath of the tainted pet food from China. We decided to be ruthlessly thorough when it came to checking what we fed our new little charge. I figured all the research we did would come in hand for a What’s inside article.
As you might have noticed, I frequently try to stick little pop culture references into these What’s Inside pieces. Most of the time they’re excised in the editing process, but thank goodness “Fish Heads” made it through.
Also, dig the highly US-centric quote from the FDA, about how animals don’t mind eating fish heads the way people do. One of my editors is of Philippine ancestry, and she says her mother can’t believe that Americans throw away the fish heads, which in her homeland is a great delicacy.
