February 6
Left and to the Back is a blog exploring the dark and dusty world of flop singles and albums, the kind you may find lingering near the stock room of your local second hand record store (if you still have one), or perhaps going for extortionate sums on ebay. [Found whilst trying to answer
this AskMe].
posted by unliteral at 8:33 PM - 0 comments
I'm not a robot, I'm a unicorn Two chatbots discuss religion, existence, and the weather on NPR (audio with transcript)
posted by zinful at 7:22 PM - 8 comments
The New Inquiry launched a new web-based magazine this weekend with a host of
smart bloggers and cultural critique. Work on the site is released under a creative commons license. Subscriptions are
gently requested though not required.
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posted by latkes at 6:38 PM - 4 comments
According to
this substantial study recently published in
Psychological Science,
"lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology.". As
the Daily Mail summarises, right-wingers are less intelligent than left wingers.
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posted by wilful at 5:39 PM - 67 comments "I say, Philip, let's order a pizza and watch a movie with the corgis!" Queen Elizabeth celebrates
60 years on the throne.
posted by anothermug at 5:27 PM - 32 comments The End of Wall Street As They Knew It
After surprisingly successful financial reform, public vilification, and politics that have turned against them, the Masters of the Universe are masters no longer.
posted by clearly at 5:18 PM - 44 comments
Meet Mayawati, India's multi-millionaire lower-caste power broker and politician (and don't miss the
slide show).
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posted by vidur at 5:04 PM - 5 comments
Clint Eastwood: "'This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again, and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.' The [Super Bowl] commercial, '
Halftime in America,' didn’t reveal its sponsor until the final seconds, when Chrysler logos appeared briefly, but it has already become a classic, and perhaps inevitably in this election year, a
political football.
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posted by ericb at 3:22 PM - 143 comments Israeli New Wave? Yes! May I introduce
The Clique. Here is their song
Incubator. Here is another song called
Don't Light A Candle For Me. Here are the lyrics to the second song in
Hebrew and
English.
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posted by wittgenstein at 1:01 PM - 6 comments Los Angeles County jails don't post lists to bail bondsmen. You cannot make collect calls to cell phones. Many people don't even have land lines. That combination kept
one man in jail for five days. via the hairpin.
posted by insectosaurus at 12:22 PM - 130 comments A fascinating collection of over 150 shrines, mostly made by teenagers. Readers and staffers of
Rookie contributed these photos of mostly homemade shrines, featuring subjects as diverse as Frida Kahlo, Britney Spears, Japan, nail polish, and Grandma.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 11:26 AM - 27 comments
"
I said before the film has historical importance (and it does), but it's relevance was more recognized in 1978 than the present day. The YouTube generation will be unable to comprehend what purpose the film served thirty years ago, and thus it's difficult to ignore how hopelessly dated Faces Of Death really is." It's relevance may have faded, but the intrigue remains.
Deadspin recently interviewed the writer and producer of four compilations of death and gore,
John Alan Schwartz. And of course, they discuss the fake gore in
the monkey scene (interview clip with special make-up effects creators Allan Apone and Douglas White, with the memorable scene). And what is Schwarts up to today?
He and his wife post videos of their movie reviews on YouTube (Tumblr,
YouTube profile page,
their website).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:06 AM - 47 comments It's
pretty darn
cold in
Europe this winter, with over
300 dead as a result sadly.
posted by yeoz at 9:56 AM - 107 comments Samuel Youd, who wrote under the name John Christopher, has
passed away.
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posted by Chrysostom at 9:27 AM - 50 comments OneSwarm is a privacy preserving BitTorrent client that offers permissions for restricting access to shared content and sharing without attribution, with the anonymity being provided by fellow OneSwarm peers routing transfers.
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posted by jeffburdges at 9:23 AM - 12 comments
Artistic decline through Alzheimer's -
William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995 yet he continued drawing. His last self portraits painted between 1995 and 2001 tell a unique tale of an implacable disease encroaching on to his mind and senses. [more inside]
posted by quin at 8:50 AM - 36 comments
The Virgin Father 'Trent Arsenault is 36 years old and has never had sex, but he’s the father of fifteen children — and counting.'
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posted by zarq at 7:56 AM - 85 comments
Oíche Mhaith (Good Night) is a game by IGF Festival Finalists Stephen (increpare) Lavelle and Terry Cavanaugh about families, bereavement and resurrection. With some potentially NSFW language and content, the game represents a collaboration between two well-known players in the field of micro and art games. Lavelle has more than 100 games on his
website. Cavanagh is less prolific, although he has just released the first of five planned "small games",
ChatChat, a simple graphical MUD/chatroom in which the players are all cats (
previously).
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posted by running order squabble fest at 7:17 AM - 15 comments
February 5
GloZell does the Cinnamon Challenge. "What's the Cinnamon Challenge?"
This. (Can the Cinnamon Challenge kill you??
Unlikely.)
posted by hermitosis at 9:50 PM - 76 comments
The Super Bowl 2012 Half Time show, in which the lich queen Madonna declares supreme victory over all who fall before her.
There were also some adverts and a sporting event of some kind.
posted by Artw at 9:50 PM - 296 comments
Best known for the (exaggerated) tales of her miserliness,
Hetty Green was arguably the greatest female
investor in history. During the
1907 Bankers' Panic, her loan of $1.1 million helped keep New York City solvent. Her estate - greater than that of J.P. Morgan's - was valued at more than $2 billion in today's money.
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posted by Trurl at 9:46 PM - 17 comments Two years before The Name of the Rose, Dutch academic Helene Nolthenius published the first of
three detective novels featuring the medieval Tuscan cleric
Lapo Mosca. She died in 2000. Her
own story is sadly affecting. (Via the
Dartmouth History blog.
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posted by IndigoJones at 2:34 PM - 5 comments Tarquin Blake photographs the abandoned castles, houses, forts and mines of Ireland. I'm fairly sure I've come across
Rhincrew Abbey and
the Lost Mines once or twice in my travels in Skyrim ...
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:33 PM - 7 comments
The
Lonely Planet has come up with a list of
thirty travel terms that aren't in the dictionary.
posted by gman at 9:32 AM - 70 comments Festivids is a holiday fanvid exchange that, much in the spirit of
Yuletide, focuses on less popular vidding fandoms. Subjects include Mythbuster's
Buster, Mad Men's
Peggy Olson, and
Maru. The full masterlist is
here.
[more inside]
posted by dinty_moore at 8:19 AM - 7 comments
India tells Britain: We don't want your aid According to a leaked memo, the foreign minister, Nirupama Rao, proposed “not to avail [of] any further DFID [British] assistance with effect from 1st April 2011,” because of the “negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DFID”. But officials at DFID, Britain’s Department for International Development, told the Indians that cancelling the programme would cause “grave political embarrassment” to Britain, according to sources in Delhi. Further embarressment ensues.
Emma Boon, campaign director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is incredible that ministers have defended the aid we send to India, insisting it is vital, when now we learn that even the Indian government doesn’t want it.”
posted by infini at 8:04 AM - 33 comments
Like a lot of people, I'd always assumed, in a sort of cut-rate Hobbesian way, that the center of the brain, if you could ever find it, would inevitably be a pretty dark place, that whatever is good or beautiful about being human is a result of our struggles against everything innate, against physical nature.
My brother changed my mind about all that.
posted by unSane at 6:57 AM - 41 comments So, you want to know the secret history of Dublin? Well,
Come Here To Me, boy, and I’ll tell it ya.
League of Ireland fanatics and
music fans they may be but above all else, former UCD students
Jay, D Fallon and hXci are history buffs, and on their blog they uncover much that is obscure and fascinating in this history of their native city, starting with
The Dublin cinema manager who became the only Irish prisoner of Dachau and including....
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posted by Diablevert at 3:16 AM - 12 comments February 4
It's 1912 and you are kerpuffling down Main in your new
Stutz Bearcat, the envy of all who witness your
ride. The "dog house" hood, open bucket seats, a tiny "monocle" windscreen in front of the driver, and a cylindrical fuel tank on a short rear deck are attracting stares from passersby.
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posted by ecorrocio at 8:35 PM - 63 comments PhyloPic is an open database of life form silhouettes. All images are available for reuse under a Public Domain or Creative Commons license.
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posted by brundlefly at 7:47 PM - 18 comments
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