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February 2010 Archives
February 28
Bluegrass, it's said was invented by
Bill Monroe,
(yt) but where
would bluegrass have been without the banjo style of
Earl
Scruggs?
(yt) Together they
created a sound that has become known
as Bluegrass. In 1945 George Elam Scruggs joined up with
Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, two years later Scruggs left to form
a group with
Lester Flatt(yt), but not before gifting Monroe with
the amalgam that was and is Bluegrass. Other players like
Chubby Wise born 1915, Lake City, Florida(yt), and bassist Howard
Watts became known as the "Original Bluegrass Band".
[more inside]posted by nola at 8:21 PM PST - 19 comments
About a hundred years ago, public health took a visual turn. In an era of devastating epidemic and endemic infectious disease, health professionals began to organize coordinated campaigns that sought to mobilize public action through eye-catching wall posters, illustrated pamphlets, motion pictures, and glass slide projections.
An Iconography of Contagion.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 6:05 PM PST - 18 comments
Veteran Australian pop satirist
New Waver, best known for covers of pop songs rewritten from a pessimistically neo-Darwinian point of view, has a new album out. Titled
Bohemian Suburb Rhapsody, it looks at the subjects of gentrification, the explosion of revivalist styles in "hip" music, contemporary white-collar culture, the ideology of the "creative class" in the post-industrial age and the resulting oversupply of cultural products, through the medium of cover songs and musical montage. The album is free for dowloading from
New Waver's web site; there is a more detailed explanation
here, and a video for the song "Hey Dude" (which explains the dynamics of gentrification through the medium of a Beatles cover)
here.
posted by acb at 5:21 PM PST - 14 comments
February 27
Thanks to a lot of what I've read on Metafilter, I've found some amazing websites (many of these have been posted before), and I've built up kind of a Sunday routine that starts at
Post Secret, then continues to
TXComics, where I check the weeks updates on
Kukuburi and
The Abominable Charles Christopher, all the while hoping that
Sin Tutulo will be back soon (Feb 28th, they say). From there I check out
A Softer World, and every once in a while, go back to check on comics that seem to have stopped, like
We The Robots and
Simulated Comic Product (which seems to have undergone some changes.
The key? I usually finish with
Bob the Angry Flower, whose recommendations are always worth a shot. Therefore, I give you
Infectonator!
[more inside]posted by Ghidorah at 10:57 PM PST - 30 comments
Did you miss
SF Beer Week?
With 347 days until the next one,
Wet Your Whistles has got you covered with a list of 50+ beer-loving spots along the Caltrain line, no designated driver needed.
Not near Caltrain?
Beer By Bart covers the rest of the Bay.
posted by madajb at 10:01 PM PST - 8 comments
Atul Gawande
offers a way for health care to be improved through experimentation and pilot programs, much as agriculture was in 20th century
posted by reenum at 3:25 PM PST - 24 comments
According to legend, back in the bad old days of the 10th C,
Bishop Hatto (actually Archbishop of Mainz), decided to deal with excess mouths during a famine by burning said people alive. In retribution, he was eaten alive by a horde of angry mice, supposedly in the
Mausturm near Bingen. The story ended up in
Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (
print wiki) and has been widely celebrated in
poetry, much of it awful. It probably was an influence on Lovecraft's story "The Rats in the Walls."
[more inside]posted by GenjiandProust at 12:55 PM PST - 9 comments
The Pleasure of Flinching. "In the viral video realm, amateur Iraq war footage ranks just behind pornography, celebrities’ drunken exploits, and shark attacks. Do these videos represent what Sontag called our 'right to view,' or are they a porn medium made from leftovers of a world filming its self-destruction?"
[Via]posted by homunculus at 10:08 AM PST - 40 comments
February 26
A letter by Rene Descartes, stolen in 1840s, recovered in 2010 by online detective work. The letter was stolen by Guglielmo Libri, inspector general of the libraries of France, who stole thousands of valuable documents and fled to England in 1848. Since 1902 it's been in the collection of Haverford College, its contents unknown to scholars, and nobody there realized that it was an unknown letter. But because they had catalogued it and recently put their catalogue on line, Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos found it "
during a late-night session browsing the Internet". (A Haverford undergraduate thirty years ago had translated it and written a paper on it, in which he recognized that the letter was unknown -- but nobody followed up and the letter had sat in the library since then until it was listed online.) The letter includes some last-minute edits to the Meditations, and some thoughts on God as causa sui.
Haverford, whose president was a philosophy major, is returning the letter to the Institut de France.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:47 PM PST - 21 comments
What are your pop-culture rules? That is, the up-front guidelines that will prevent you from seeing/reading/listening to something, or that will guarantee that you’ll see/read/listen to it even if reviews or word of mouth or past experience with the creators have been negative?
'If it features superheroes, I’m generally there', “The Robins Williams Rule”, 'I just cannot bring myself to purchase new hardcover books', 'anything with a trailer that utilizes the record-scratching sound', 'I will see or read literally anything featuring dinosaurs'. The AV Club writers & readers hold forth. I'm sure nobody on Metafilter would live by such restrictions...
posted by i_cola at 4:38 AM PST - 317 comments
February 25
Looking for something to read? Check out the
best journalism Conor Friedersdorf encountered in 2009. And in
2008. He also updates a
twitter feed with pieces he comes across that he either missed or that might make onto a 2010 list.
posted by AceRock at 3:31 PM PST - 16 comments
Jim Corbett's
Man Eaters Of Kumaon (1944) is a collection of true stories about the hunt for man-eating tigers and leopards in India. One of Corbett's most notable kills, the Champawat Tiger, was alleged to have killed some 436 people in Nepal and India. Similarly, the Leopard of Panar possibly killed some 400 people in northern India before she was hunted down herself.
[more inside]posted by SpringAquifer at 2:00 PM PST - 26 comments
Due to a serious form of tuberculosis which he contracted on a trip to South America
Christiaan Van Vuuren (aka
Fully Sick Rapper) has been quarantined in a Australian hospital room since January 18th. "This is starting to take it's toll on my mental stability, and
this song is about the impact (or lack thereof) it has had so far."
[more inside]posted by ericb at 12:33 PM PST - 16 comments
John Mayer gets some really bitchin’ typography. House Industries (last MeFi mention:
1999!) designs a limited-edition tour poster for the crooner who constantly steals the show on
TMZ. “[U]ntil they come up with a JPEG format that makes metallics shimmer like a
Solid Gold dancer’s outfit, there just isn’t a substitute for physically walking around a serigraph and watching the light bouncing off metallic and fluorescent inks.”
[more inside]posted by joeclark at 10:11 AM PST - 35 comments
Kelly Kulick just won the
PBA Tournament (warning automatic video starts with this link). She is one of the first female professional athletes to ever win a prominent national sporting event against the best males in the sport.
Interesting article questioning why she isn't being given more national recognition.
posted by bove at 9:51 AM PST - 71 comments
Changes to Orphan Works copyright legislation in the US began to
crumble in 2008 when the NPPA and a grassroots initiative finally gained momentum. Still, the ASMP has a
FAQ outlining their position on the 2008 Orphan Works bill stating that it is inevitable legislation and they should take advantage of a favourable congress to retain as positive a position for photographers as possible.
It seems that new laws are close to coming into effect in the UK government seemingly
nationalising orphan works and in a separate action (same article) banning non-consentual photography making street photography essentially impossible.
[via]
Previouslyposted by michswiss at 7:18 AM PST - 18 comments
February 24
The Teenager Audio Test "Clicking the play button below will produce a tone that is generally only heard by people under the age of 25. It has been used as a deterrent device to keep teenagers from loitering in malls and shops, and sounds similar to a buzzing mosquito. The elderly and people with hearing damage often cannot hear the sound." SLTO (Single Link The Oatmeal post)
[more inside]posted by sid at 8:29 PM PST - 201 comments
Students at the University of Mississippi
voted yesterday to help select a new mascot. The previous mascot,
Colonel Reb, a white-bearded old man with a cane and wide-brimmed hat, was
removed from sporting events in 2003. There is now a student-led
effort to
select "Star Wars" character
Admiral Ackbar (video of Ackbar saying "It's a trap!"
here) as the new mascot. This effort includes a Facebook
group and twitter
account. The slogan is, "This time it's not a trap." Officials at the University say "
No chance." Meanwhile, the "
Save Colonel Reb Foundation" has sponsored a series of radio ads, including this
one.posted by bguest at 3:26 PM PST - 41 comments
I have been working on and off for about 2 years building our "D&D ROOM" to hold most of our collection and give us a cool place to play... posted by Joe Beese at 2:44 PM PST - 61 comments
Be forewarned that somewhere, sometime, someplace, some enterprising young man who seems to know ten times what you do about computers is going to try to convince you that his program will make a jug of cider jump off the table and turn ducks' eggs into solid gold. Look this man straight in the eye and ask him for names of people who are successfully using his program. DO NOT, under any circumstances, bet him that he can't do it. There's no telling what someone might be able to make a computer do. A journey through the whimsical computer manuals of the Franklin Ace.posted by shakespeherian at 1:17 PM PST - 8 comments
In 2006 some Italian teenagers filmed themselves assaulting a youth with Down Syndrome and uploaded the video to Google Video Italia. It was pulled from the site within hours, but that did not satisfy the Italian Down Syndrome support group named
Vivi Down, who filed a complaint that resulted in a two-year investigation. That lead to charges and indictment of four Google executives, who were never aware of the video until after it had been removed, for violating Italy’s privacy code.
Today the Italian court ruled that three of the four - chief legal officer David Drummond, global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and former CFO George Reyes - are guilty, and sentenced them to 6 months to a year of jail-time. The fourth, Arvind Desikan, former head of Google Video in London, was acquitted.
[more inside]posted by BeerFilter at 12:22 PM PST - 78 comments
“This is hard work and these are tough decisions, but students only have one chance for an education,”
Education Secretary Duncan said, “and when schools continue to struggle we have a collective obligation to take action.” In response to a new federal mandate to fix under-performing schools,
every teacher will be fired at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.
posted by lunit at 7:29 AM PST - 229 comments
"Generously sized, the Star Legacy's Regal Wide Body has extended dimensions width combined with an adjustable bed. Exceptional quality, sleek design and squared corners add to its contoured look. The hand-tailored white crepe interior and hand-painted, high gloss antique gunmetal finish is complemented with classically designed hardware and premium swing bars. it is the perfect match for the person who lived life to its fullest." Yep, Walmart now does
caskets.posted by unSane at 6:12 AM PST - 72 comments
February 23
About 8 years ago,
U.S. Representative James Traficant (D-Ohio) was sentenced to 8 years in jail for kickbacks, fraud, bribery, and racketeering. He was tightly connected with the Youngstown Ohio Mafia. At the time, he was only the second Congressman since the Civil War to be expelled by his peers from the institution in a vote of 420:1. The fascinating story of the Youngstown Mafia - and Traficant's rise and fall - is told by
David Grann (of
Lost City of Z and
The New Yorker) in a 2000 article called
"Crimetown, U.S.A.". Traficant was released from prison on September 2, 2009 to a hometown hero
welcome. On February 23, 2010, Traficant
announced he will running for Congress as an Independent.
posted by stbalbach at 7:20 PM PST - 44 comments
Though President Obama has signed no laws since taking office that prohibit gun purchases and ownership, that hasn't stopped permit applications and weapons sales in the United States from rising through the roof and worried state legislators from
passing laws they wouldn't otherwise pass, which greatly ease access and allow carrying weapons in, among other public areas, city, state and
national parks. Schools may have to
get their kids prepared.posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:14 PM PST - 102 comments
One spring afternoon more than 70 years ago, an East Texas teacher turned on an electric sander. The
subsequent explosion caused the New London School to lift into the air and then smash into the ground, ultimately leaving some 300 students and teachers dead in the
rubble. It remains the worst school disaster in American history.
[more inside]posted by SpringAquifer at 2:49 PM PST - 21 comments
Art by Riccardo Arena Ok so the site navigation is a bit of a pain, but this guy's stuff is IMHO worthy of any 'talent deserving of wider recognition' gong that might be going begging...
posted by peterkins at 1:55 PM PST - 2 comments
Auto-Tune the News #10. The Auto-Tune folks come out with their next tune, and, like most of their
ouevre so far, darn if they don't make Congress sound
catchy. Sing about that turtle fence, Hoekstra baby!
posted by WCityMike at 12:41 PM PST - 36 comments
"Forget everything you did today. Clear your schedule and spend the next half hour watching
this video. It’s a presentation by Jesse Schell, founder of
Schell Games and former creative director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio. A veteran game designer, he is also on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
In a talk at the DICE 2010 conference held last week in Las Vegas, he gave a presentation called Design Outside the Box. It is the most mind-blowing thing I’ve seen in a long, long time. And while this presentation was about the future of games, Schell could very well be talking about the future of technology."
posted by erikvan at 12:00 PM PST - 65 comments
Yummy avocados. So delicious...so contentious...and at times...so expensive. Why have prices in the U.S., particularly California, been so high? And why have they dropped? Weather and a bad crop? Or are the causes often more insidious? A
one act play sums up one perspective on the situation.
[more inside]posted by thisperon at 1:43 AM PST - 70 comments
February 22
Kevin O'Neil, classic 2000ad artist, co-creator of Marshall Law, frequent colaborator with Alan Moore and the only artist ever to be outright banned by the Comics code Authority ("there’s nothing you can change — the style is unsuitable!”) talks at length in an epic interview at the comics journal:
Part one,
part two,
part three,
part four,
part five.
posted by Artw at 9:37 PM PST - 23 comments
Soon there will be a sword for every man, woman, and child in the city. But come on, it's not like they're dangerous. OR ARE THEY? In six episodes of
Cautionary Tales of Swords, Trip Fisk makes the case for the danger of nature's hell sticks and while they'll fucking slice a baby in half.
posted by pokermonk at 5:40 PM PST - 38 comments
Each day, we are surrounded by seemingly insignificant objects, taking them from one place to the other, or leaving them on a table for weeks, without paying any attention to them. We ignore or forget them, using things only when we need to, making sure they don’t interfere or inhabit our space. But what if they were not so stable and subservient?
What if they could swivel, bounce or even fly? And what if they did so all at the same time? This experiment is about re-discovering our daily surroundings.
Each object is assigned to a letter on the keyboard, and can be activated or deactivated at any time.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 3:39 PM PST - 19 comments
Many are familiar with
Operation Paperclip - the secret U.S. program that brought Nazi scientists to our shores in order to develop the American space program. However, the details surrounding the Nazi V-2 program has always been a little murky in the eyes of the American people - it turns out that more people were killed building V-2 rockets than from actual V-2 rocket attacks. A new photography exhibit called
Dora and the V-2: Slave Labor in the Space Age aims to transform perceptions in one of the American communities most affected by the influx of Nazi scientists...
[more inside]posted by cinemafiend at 8:42 AM PST - 56 comments
In the 1880s at a time when most Europeans were denied access to the Japanese interior an Italian photographer managed to capture many images of Old Japan. These were then beautifully and realistically hand painted and serve as a remarkable record of a world long since disappeared. Victorian-era photos of Japan.posted by shakespeherian at 7:30 AM PST - 28 comments
February 21
One of the longest-running and most-revered Samurai series of Japan,
Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman, played by actor
Shintaro Katsu, produced 25 films and 112 episodes of a popular television series. It was a popular favorite, and concerned the titular character Zatoichi, a poor blind mendicant masseur who carried with him a deadly secret: a hidden cane sword and complete mastery of swordsmanship, despite his blindness. Zatoichi was by far the great antihero of classic samurai cinema. Often low-budget, sometimes schlocky, always thrilling,
the Zatoichi series has slowly become more well-known outside Japan in later years.
Criterion has just
debuted a Hulu channel offering six of the greatest feature-length Zatoichi classics – the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh – completely free of charge:
The Tale Of Zatoichi Continues [1962];
New Tale of Zatoichi [1963];
The Fugitive [1963];
On the Road [1963]; and
Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold [1964].
posted by koeselitz at 5:56 PM PST - 40 comments
In the US, for the past thirty years, new laws have been stripping judges of any discretion whatsoever in ensuring
sentencing and
other consequences of criminal activity are fair. Enter Qing Wong Hu, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in the US when he was 5, and
now faces deportation for a string of muggings he committed in New York City in 1996, when he was still a juvenile. This, despite his successfully turning his life around and becoming a hard working, productive member of society.
posted by wierdo at 5:08 PM PST - 19 comments
"Since their birth early in the century, comic books had been regarded as a kind of junior magazine and allowed to occupy space on the shelves or spinner racks of newsstands, grocery stores, drugstores, dime stores, and sometimes even bookstores. They caught on quickly and, initially, more than earned their place in those venues, but after the 1940s, the comics industry experienced more downs than ups. The Marvel-led resurgence of the 1960s had foundered by the 1970s to the point where extinction seemed like a real possibility. Comics retailer (and former distributor) Steve Schanes put it succinctly: 'Comics were on their last breath. They couldn’t have lasted another four years.'"
Part One:
Fine Young Cannibals: How Phil Seuling and a Generation of Teenage Entrepreneurs Created the Direct Market and Changed the Face of Comics [more inside]posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:03 AM PST - 51 comments
65_RedRoses is Eva Markvoort’s online handle—chosen because red is her favourite colour, and because when she was little, 65 Roses was how she said Cystic Fibrosis, the genetic disease she’s battled her whole life. Her wait for a double lung transplant, and her online friendship with two other young women battling CF are documented in the
award-winning film
65_RedRoses.
After receiving her lung transplant two years, Eva has since had to battle with
chronic rejection.
Eva made an video on Feb 11th,
announcing that things have taken a turn for the
worse. As friends and family wait with her, every
extra day becomes a gift and brings new
hope.
posted by stray at 9:56 AM PST - 14 comments
"
Modes and Motors was a publication produced by General Motors Styling Section in 1938. It is reproduced here in its entirety because its message of what automobile and product design is supposed to represent is lost on today’s world. Modes and Motors is a snapshot into the way designers used to think about their profession."
So then
Dean's Garage would be the fat album of classic automobile styling and design from which it came, documenting a long, beautifully chromed age of optimism.
posted by carsonb at 9:00 AM PST - 7 comments
When
Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93,
she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants.posted by R. Mutt at 6:52 AM PST - 130 comments
February 20
He was... "...the meanest, toughest, most ambitious S.O.B. I ever knew but he'll be a hell of a secretary of state." -- Richard Nixon
Alexander Meigs
Haig, Jr.,, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, who served US Presidents Nixon (as a military adviser, deputy assistant for national-security affairs, and chief of staff), Ford (chief of staff), and Reagan (secretary of state),
has died at the age of 85. Haig
commanded a batallion during the Vietnam War (where he was seriously wounded), managed the White House during the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, and was himself a former Presidential candidate.
[more inside]posted by zarq at 6:34 PM PST - 40 comments
When Alan Cooper was in the second grade, his teacher introduced him to "homonyms," those words, like "caret" and "carrot" that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently, and that have different meanings. The concept intrigued him, and over the years he has maintained an ever-growing list.
Alan Cooper's Homonyms.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 3:59 PM PST - 54 comments
The investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks (dubbed "Amerithrax" by the FBI) is now closed. Yesterday, the Department of Justice released a 92-page
summary [pdf] of their investigation. Their conclusion -- that
USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins was the culprit -- was backed by an impressive amount of evidence, including microbiological detective work (p. 23 ff). But some of the investigation was downright bizarre....
[more inside]posted by cgs06 at 1:00 PM PST - 46 comments
Sick of the
Tea Party? Then try
The Cocktail Party! (no, not
that Cocktail Party). With a platform that includes nationalizing the banks, abolishing marriage, establishing national healthcare, and opening national borders, the Cocktail Party is for "left wing urban homosexuals and the people who love us." Is America ready for this self-proclaimed "motley crew of miscegenated sex crazed lushes who read Marx and Fanon, seeking to support our lifestyles by taking resources from the rich and powerful and redistributing them with abandon"? Or perhaps a more important question: will they make a difference?
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:04 AM PST - 89 comments
February 19
At first, it seemed
the Azeris would win the Olympic Pants War handily, but then Norway, with its
argyle advantage (in crazy and
crazier varieties), seemed to have taken the lead. Now, US snowboard cross racer Nate Holland (competing, of course, in
this wonderful outfit) is stepping in to
set the pants rules for his own sport. But in the end, no matter what country they're competing for, it's the
figure skaters who have won. As history has shown us, they always have the
best pants of them all.
posted by ocherdraco at 1:20 PM PST - 73 comments
Scott Walker's BBC TV program, simply titled
Scott, ran for just six weeks in 1969. While footage has yet to surface (the 2006 Walker documentary
30 Century Man was unable to unearth anything), the audio portion of the two half-hour pilot episodes from 1968 has been made available
[ep1-Aug 6] [ep2-Dec. 30], along with a
thoughtful article. Scott performs some fine covers, including Jacques Brel's "Matilda" and "If You Go Away" in the August episode.
(guest star: Kiki Dee)posted by porn in the woods at 11:15 AM PST - 16 comments
“For me, augmented reality has to be the future for 2020, together with it's close cousin
the internet of things... It will become commonplace to be able to overlay reviews of a product simply by pointing a screen at it, or check the weather forecast by pointing your phone at the sky.” The Pew Research Center releases its
The Future of the Internet IV report, an online survey of 895 technology stakeholders’ and critics’ expectations of social, political and economic change by 2020.
[more inside]posted by cashman at 11:15 AM PST - 34 comments
See the trailer for
Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, a
documentary ten years in the making that's debuting at SXSW next month.
Watch Merritt write a song.
Listen to a one-hour concert of songs from
69 Love Songs. Read Merritt's thoughts on writing love songs.
posted by carrienation at 9:37 AM PST - 57 comments
Argentine folklore composer, pianist and director
Ariel Ramírez died last night after a long illness. Those who know of him abroad probably do so for his Misa Criolla. This is just the (deservedly famous) tip of a giant iceberg of Argentine music, as he was teacher to many, collaborator to a lot more, cataloguer and promoter of traditional folk music and dances, and defender of local composers rights since his early years of fame.
[more inside]posted by Iosephus at 9:16 AM PST - 6 comments
Friday Flash Fun: Did you enjoy
Cyclomaniacs? Enjoying the Winter Olympics? You might enjoy
Ski Maniacs! Ski Maniacs uses similar controls and physics. Do tricks and complete timetrials to complete the game and unlock additional characters.
posted by schyler523 at 7:38 AM PST - 8 comments
February 18
Gorgeous new covers for Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and From the Earth to the Moon by design student Jim Tierney.
posted by Omon Ra at 9:03 PM PST - 29 comments
The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on. From the Globe and Mail website:
"John Babcock, Canada’s last known First World War veteran, has died, the Prime Minister’s Office said Thursday.
Mr. Babcock was 109.
In a statement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he is deeply saddened to learn of Mr. Babcock’s death.
He said that because Mr. Babcock was Canada’s last living link to the First World War, it marks the end of an era.
Mr. Babcock joined the military at the age of 16, but because of his age he wasn’t allowed on the frontlines."
I could link to bazillions of relevancies but really, so can you. It's all over Canadian news websites.
But perhaps just this.
Gone west. Rest in Peace, sir.
Lest We Forget.
posted by Mike D at 5:45 PM PST - 42 comments
Sleep problems? There are a slew of new products out there that purport to help people improve the quality of their sleep by tracking things like brainwaves and movement. Thomas Goetz (who seems to have written the
book on these types of things), offers a
glimpse into a handful of the more well known offerings.
posted by erikvan at 12:16 PM PST - 19 comments
In 2008, Gabe Delahaye, senior editor of
Videogum (
previously), began the
Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time. From
A.I. to
Zardoz, over 70 films have so far been surveyed, including
Crash,
Caligula (nsfw),
Kangaroo Jack,
Gigli,
The Notebook, and
Closer.
[more inside]posted by rollick at 11:54 AM PST - 140 comments
So here's a
spray bottle that will replace every cleaner in your home. The
Ionator.
"You charge it, fill it with tap water (and only tap water), which takes on an electric charge, transforming it into negative and positive nano-bubbles that attract dirt. Then you spray and use a clean cloth to wipe away the dirt from your floors, windows, mirrors, cars, bird cages, dishes, coffee makers, refrigerators, tile and clothes..."
Really? Sounds like a crakpot scam. Well,
Bill Nye The Science Guy himself
explains the science. And
Bill's my man.
posted by cross_impact at 9:43 AM PST - 86 comments
'You could wind up with a page only about porn, executions, and Sarah Palin every day.' A
New Republic profile of no-longer-bowtied Tucker Carlson as he launches
The Daily Caller, a 'right-leaning Huffington Post.'
It may be hard to remember now, staring back through the thick haze of cable-news smackdowns, but, before Carlson embarked on a TV career--and, at various points, even during that TV career--he was a great writer and reporter. His 1999 profile* of George W. Bush for Tina Brown’s short-lived Talk painted a portrait of the then-Texas governor--stubborn, profane, callow--that should have told voters everything they needed to know about why he would be such a terrible president. The piece he wrote for Esquire about traveling to Africa with Sharpton, Cornel West, and other civil rights activists was at once viciously hilarious and bracingly humane, like David Foster Wallace’s or Michael Lewis’s best reportage. At The Weekly Standard, where he worked for much of the 1990s, he was one of the rare writers less consumed with scoring political points than producing quality journalism. [more inside]posted by shakespeherian at 8:31 AM PST - 72 comments
February 17
"
Half a million dirty Britons wash their bed sheets only three times a year, a survey discloses laying bare the disgusting bedroom habits of the nation. One in six people also admitted waiting at least a month before washing their bed sheets." "
Londoners have the dirtiest bed sheets in the country."
[more inside]posted by ericb at 3:29 PM PST - 238 comments
Since 1980,
Nikoli^ has been in the business of creating
many different variations of logic puzzles (such as the very popular Sudoku and Kakuro). Unfortunately, as they're stationed in Tokyo, their magazine is unavailable to most Americans.
Luckily, over the decades they've inspired quite a few people to make their own puzzles and variants, including:
posted by flatluigi at 2:37 PM PST - 12 comments
When we reach these, the bleakest and coldest days of winter, my mind inevitably turns towards the warm days of summer and one of America’s favorite pastimes:
Barbeque.
[more inside]posted by shiu mai baby at 8:23 AM PST - 74 comments
2008's "
Glory at Sea"
[.mov] [vimeo] [youtube] is an extaordinary 25-minute short film in which
a group of mourners and a man spat from the depths of Hades build a boat from the debris of New Orleans to rescue their lost loved ones trapped beneath the sea.
[more inside]posted by churl at 3:14 AM PST - 13 comments
February 16
Ghost shift ghost chips. A tale about a Chumby hardware developer with a keen investigative eye noticing some oddities about microSD FLASH cards from supposedly reputable suppliers.
posted by loquacious at 10:28 PM PST - 65 comments
Is There Life in Health Care Reform? Elizabeth Drew analyzes the current prospects for US health care reform, in the New York Review of Books.
Logically, there should still be a way to get a bill passed. But logic went out the window on January 19. The situation was as much psychodrama as legislative stalemate. The perfectly reasonable argument was made to Democrats in Congress, mainly by the administration, that, having voted for the bill already, it would be worse for them to fail to pass it than to pass it, but this seemed not to be heard.posted by russilwvong at 8:03 AM PST - 213 comments
TweetCatcha visualizes the tweets resulting from the latest news articles that appeared during the last 24 hours on the New York Times website. Pretty amazing for student work.
See TweetCatcha in action (warning: it takes a bit of time to load). While it's loading, here is the creator's
blog post describing it.
posted by like_neon at 5:43 AM PST - 10 comments
February 15
The Ward Warren Film. Gary Mack, Curator at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, is calling it "the best home movie I have seen of the Kennedy arrival in Dallas on November 22, 1963." For the first time, color film of President and Mrs. Kennedy arriving on Air Force One that fateful day is being released for public viewing. [more inside]posted by jjray at 11:02 PM PST - 13 comments
Paul Watson's
Sea Shepard Crew is at again. On the 6th Jan 2010, the Ady Gill, a $2M dollar high speed catameran
was sunk after a collision (video + story) with a Japanese whaling ship in the antartic.
Now, the former captain of the Ady Gill
is being detained (video+story) on the exact same whaling ship after using a jet ski and cover of darkness to climb aboard and present the Japanese with a civilian arrest warrant and $2M dollar demand for damages.
Diplomatic crisis builds as governments are unsure what will happen to Mr. Bethune. He may face piracy charges in Japan.
posted by Funmonkey1 at 10:25 PM PST - 131 comments
The Bolt Who Screwed Christmas is the last movie narrated by
Jonathan Harris (Lost in Space). A short animated parody of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Voices also include Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright and Bill Mumy, also from Lost in Space. Nominated for a number of awards at the
L.A. Reel Film Festival.
Posted here at Meta because this is the only movie trailer you'll ever watch with what seems to be a naked woman (at 24 secs in
this link) in a relationship with a bolt. A unique wtf moment in movie making!
posted by HuronBob at 6:54 PM PST - 8 comments
"I couldn't let these Klansmen get away with murder..." Investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell has started a
blog focusing on
cold case murders of civil rights workers. In this
Moth Podcast, Mitchell discusses some of his investigations, the death threats he received, and the stunning redemption and forgiveness he witnessed. For his work
Mitchell was recently
awarded a MacArthur "
Genius" grant.
[more inside]posted by bguest at 5:43 PM PST - 18 comments
In 1989, Hollywood heavy metal band Rock Sugar was stranded on a desert island. For the last twenty years, the only music they had to listen to was the 80's pop CD collection of a 13 year old girl. And now,
Rock Sugar has come home.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 4:05 PM PST - 46 comments
A favorite of
John Cage and Gyorgy Ligeti, the latter describing his music as "so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed but at the same time emotional...the best of any composer living today,"
Conlon Nancarrow's
musical ideas were nevertheless too complex and technically demanding for human performers, and his political ideas too radical and leftist for McCarthy-era America. Expatriated to Mexico, the Texarkana-born avant-gardeist
lived most of his life in isolation, in a cluttered, dusty
studio surrounded by records, piles of books, empty Vodka bottles, newspapers, cigarette cartons, and the tools of his trade: 2 old player pianos and a custom-built
piano roll press.
[more inside]posted by swift at 2:55 PM PST - 16 comments
The Birth Survey is a comprehensive survey of women who have given birth within the last three years. The first of its kind, it allows women to answer questions regarding their experiences with every aspect of their maternity care from the prenatal care to the birth to perinatal and post-partum care. Examples of questions include how long of wait there was between arranging the first prenatal appointment and having it, how long of wait there was for prenatal appointments after arriving at the office, what equipment was available during labor (birth ball, birthing stool, shower, tub, etc.), and if discussions regarding post-partum mood disorders took place during post-partum care.
[more inside]posted by zizzle at 1:51 PM PST - 53 comments
Frank O'Hara was a New York poet, even though he lived less than half of his 40 years in the city. He grew up in Grafton, MA, was a sonarman in WWII and roomed with Edward Gorey at Harvard before moving to the city he would forever be associated with. Naturally, there was am
article on him in The New Yorker a couple of years ago. We're lucky enough to have a number of
videos of O'Hara, including
a reading of the lovely "Having a Coke with You. There's also quite a bit of
audio of him, and I can't but recommend
this mp3 of John Ashbery, Alfred Leslie, Bill Berkson and Michelle Elligott reminiscing about O'Hara at the MOMA, where he worked. And there are quite a
few of his
poems available
online, as well as five of the
poem-paintings he did
with Norman Bluhm.
[more inside]posted by Kattullus at 12:26 PM PST - 16 comments
Giant anteater. Skiing Batmen. Knight stirring his his cappuccino. Red devils. Snow falling on the beards of face painted gourd toting evil spirit rebukers.
CARNIVAL!posted by cashman at 9:57 AM PST - 27 comments
Picture Book Report is an extended love-song to books. Fifteen illustrators will reach out to their favorite books and create wonderful pieces of art in response to the text that has moved them, shaped them, or excited them. From sci-fi to children’s books to fantasy to serious novels, we’ll cover them all. For three weeks out of every month there will be a new illustration every day from one of us along with our thoughts, process, anything we can come up with. Together we will try to excite readers both new and old and capture some of that magic of storytelling..
[more inside]posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 5:29 AM PST - 12 comments
B-Rhymes is a rhyming dictionary that compares words based on their sounds, making it ideal for finding near-rhymes.
posted by archagon at 2:19 AM PST - 28 comments
Due to the threat of legal action the British National Party has amended its membership policy to be
open to all races. It's first non-white member, a Sikh, will soon be handed his membership card personally by BNP leader Nick Griffin. Explains Griffin:
Anyone can be a member of this party. We are happy to accept anyone as a member providing they agree with us that this country should remain fundamentally British
posted by PenDevil at 2:10 AM PST - 45 comments
February 14
Despite my absolute fidelity to Sade's text, I have however introduced an absolutely new element: the action instead of taking place in eighteenth-century France, takes place practically in our own time, in Salò, around 1944, to be exact. (some links extremely NSFW)posted by Joe Beese at 8:23 PM PST - 95 comments
Anglophone Montrealers open and close lights, fall pregnant, get a coffee, go to vernissages, eat on the terrasse, and get cash at the guichet. Francophone Montreals, if they are lucky, have un chum or une blonde who is not only smooth but also le fun. Basically English (and its three main 'ethnolects' here, British, Jewish, and Italian) and French get all
interestingly mixed up.
[more inside]posted by Salamandrous at 2:23 PM PST - 55 comments
I've never really had a clear understanding of how mechanical computing worked, until today when I watched these US Navy training films from 1953.
Part 1 focuses on shafts, gears, cams and differentials.
Part 2 explains mechanical component solvers, integrators and multipliers. More information about ship gun fire-control systems
here.
posted by drmanhattan at 2:04 PM PST - 28 comments
No one is drunk or under any narcotic influence, and yet all three men are moments away from what Fitzpatrick will later describe as "a mindfuck". A year on, Gibson concurs. "It left me with the sense that one of my basic anchors on reality had been ripped loose," he recalls. Wales still talks about the all-nighter with reverent awe:"It was amazing. It was a work of art. It was a thing of beauty."
It was, more specifically, a parlour game.posted by empath at 10:44 AM PST - 85 comments
Valentines from E.B. White, Mark Twain, Katharine Hepburn, E. E. Cummings, Alexander Hamilton, and Zero Mostel. From libraries and archives around NYC, via the NYT (
more info here).
posted by Miko at 8:20 AM PST - 11 comments
'A site dedicated to songs about London. The only rules are that the songs must be brilliant and that the blindingly obvious numbers are excluded.'
The London Nobody Sings takes you on a musical tour of the capital, by
bus,
train and
tube, via
Camden Town,
Parliament Hill,
Portobello Road,
Shepherd's Bush,
Southall,
Tottenham and
Tooting Broadway. And if it's
too late to take the Underground? Don't worry, the
trams may have gone, but you can always catch the
Nightbus home.
posted by verstegan at 3:37 AM PST - 14 comments
February 13
Mid-Level Seats at your average NBA game: $40 ea.
Eight Watery Beers: $60.
Hot Dog: $4.
Cheerleader Snack?
Om Nom Nomposted by xorry at 6:45 PM PST - 129 comments
For quite some time, I’d wanted to make a screwball comedy. A fast-talking, wildly acclerating ensemble comedy that gets stupider and stupider. I never imagined it would be about a war, and inspired by a very recent war at that. But Simon, Jesse, Tony and I all felt that the more we found out about the dysfunction in Washington and the naivety in London leading up to the Iraq invasion, the more obvious it was that the only way to deal accurately and fairly with this topic was as a screwball comedy. - The Oscar nominated script for
In The Loop, with an introduction by writer Armando Iannucci.
posted by Artw at 3:51 PM PST - 33 comments
The huge tanker smashed into the
Princess Taiping at 20 knots, violently heaving the vessel out of the water, cleaving it in two. It did not stop to aid the 12 crew members it had thrown overboard and scattered across the night.
Most of the crew, injured and in shock, clung to the partially submerged stern, praying for rescue.
Masao Kinjo, a Japanese sailboat racer, found himself alone, far from his shipmates. The resolute mariner rigged the broken foremast on the front half of the ship and
set sail for home.
[more inside]posted by Cobalt at 7:35 AM PST - 51 comments
February 12
"..when a victorious chief minister openly
admits that he himself approached the leading newspaper of his state with money for “positive stories” after learning that the newspaper had signed a “package deal” with his rivals to print
negative stories, you had better sit up and take
urgent notice"
posted by Gyan at 9:54 PM PST - 4 comments
Producer/engineer
Iain Burgess played a vital role in defining the Chicago punk sound in the 80's with his work with Naked Raygun, Big Black, and the Effigies.
Burgess passed away on Thursday from a pulmonary embolism, a complication of the pancreatic and liver cancers he'd recently been diagnosed with. Although British, he is
best known for his years in Chicago, where he helped create a distinctive large sound with a live-centered recording style and served as a
mentor to Steve Albini. He also worked with Didjits, Ministry, Mega City Four, the Cows, Pegboy, Shellac, Jawbox and many others.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 3:54 PM PST - 36 comments
So what is an enterprising cocaine cartel to do when tight airport and border security threaten to cause one to miss out on a massive boom in
european cocaine use? Well, for starters one sets up shop on Africa's west coast where the police often aren't paid for months and the 4 cars of some country's police force can mostly sit idle due to a lack of
gas money. Oh, and in
Guinea Bissau - no coast guard! In addition to bringing even more
corruption and
violence to Africa, the status of being
the transhipment point of about 3/4 of all cocaine heading to Europe brings
a Miami-style economic stimulus. And as colombian cartels are generally more concerned with getting cocaine out of Colombia at a profit than getting it all the way to its destination, we're probably only a few years away from a senegalese
Scarface.
posted by jake1 at 2:28 PM PST - 26 comments
Style Guide for the Sorority Girl Cornell sorority members have been playing fashion police. A set of "style guidelines," roughly 6 pages long, was recently leaked onto the web. It insisted members consistently get manicured, pedicured, cut, colored and waxed and boasted austere fashion and beauty rules.
[more inside]posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:05 PM PST - 269 comments
Micropayment incarnates once more, this time through the offices of one of ThePirateBay's creators. In the
Flattr tip-jar system, rather than making individual credit card transactions, one makes a lump sum payment, and then all those sites whose "Flattr" buttons you have
chosen to press receive a fraction of your "Flattr" Tax for that month.
posted by darth_tedious at 11:48 AM PST - 38 comments
Jo Guldi writes
a fascinating entry about social engineering and geography in the 1970's. "The geographers located answers in American zones of isolation and hopelessness. Bill Bunge organized his fellow professors into the Detroit Geographical Expedition, leading frequent trips to document the slums of Detroit and later Toronto. Their findings were equally provocative. In 1968, the Society published a map entitled “
Where Commuters Run Over Black Children on the Pointes-Downtown Track.” Life and death, they argued, were not merely the commodities available to any hard-working American, but hung upon the thread of a special kind of privilege, the privilege of safe territory."
Guldi is a historian at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
[more inside]posted by cashman at 9:23 AM PST - 10 comments
February 11
Google has invented the Holodeck. Well, not really, but for the moment it's probably the next best thing. Google's Liquid Galaxy Project, a virtual glass elevator that lets you fly around the world, makes for a stunning presentation. Developed as part of Google’s “20 per cent time” initiative, which sees its engineers encouraged to pursue their own projects on company time, Liquid Galaxy allows users to fly through the Grand Canyon, leap into low-Earth orbit and back down into the oceans and even perch oneself on the Great Pyramid of Giza, all without even breaking a sweat.
Check out the amazing video here.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:01 PM PST - 61 comments
Well ladies, just when you thought you had all of your cosmetic needs taken care of, they come up with
something new. Although I'm not entirely sold on this being essential for your kit, it sure is novel. (And surprisingly not NSFW)
[more inside]posted by empatterson at 4:48 PM PST - 95 comments
You may have seen
Newt Gingrich this past Tuesday on
The Daily Show describing Obama's decision to try the Underpants Bomber in the courts as "radical." He pointed
out an incident in 1942 when Franklin Roosevelt suspended habeus corpus for Nazi saboteurs dropped off on Long Island by submarine to wreak havoc on Ameica. While "Nazi
Terrorists" might be almost comic book class villains, Newt probably would prefer people not to recall the true story and villains of
Operation Pastorius.posted by justkevin at 4:21 PM PST - 43 comments
Watch the
Oscar-nominated animated film Logorama in its (glorious 16 minute, corporate-logo assaulting,
nsfw maniacal Ronald McDonald flaming queen Mr. Clean) entirety on
Facebook.
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:54 AM PST - 22 comments
An American student learning Arabic was detained for hours by the
TSA and questioned because he carried basic Arabic flash cards. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Nick George a physics student at
Pomona College who was detained and aggressively interrogated by Transportation Security Administration authorities, by the FBI and by Pennsylvania police when he tried to board a plane carrying Arabic language flash cards.
posted by sierray at 10:36 AM PST - 145 comments
Augmented Reality, You, Your Kitchen, and the Excellent Products You Will Buy Today. An architecture student films a Gibsonesque, banal-yet-vivid-and-colorful vision of the AR future; his half-dozen videos extend into different realms.
posted by darth_tedious at 12:28 AM PST - 49 comments
February 10
"The Cheyenne River Reservation located in the State of South Dakota , homeland of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, is currently facing an emergency situation due to an ice storm that crippled the electrical and water infrastructure. Though the ice storm has passed, the water and power system remains challenged and several Reservation communities have been without power for over ten (10) days. Moreover, a bitterly cold weather system is expected to come in by Sunday evening."
[more inside]posted by FunkyHelix at 6:53 PM PST - 11 comments
Quantum processes involved in photosynthesis? "[A]lgae and bacteria may have been performing quantum calculations at life-friendly temperatures for billions of years. The evidence comes from a study of
how energy travels across the light-harvesting molecules involved in photosynthesis. The work has culminated this week in the extraordinary announcement that these molecules in a marine alga may exploit quantum processes at room temperature to transfer energy without loss. Physicists had
previously ruled out quantum processes, arguing that they could not persist for long enough at such temperatures to achieve anything useful." (
via mr)
posted by kliuless at 1:11 PM PST - 43 comments
A fourth music video clip has appeared on
iamamiwhoami, a YouTube channel set up in December, complete with cryptic title and enigmatic imagery. The quality of the music as well as the apparent high budget of the videos has
people guessing as to who's behind it. Is it Poe? The Knife? Goldfrapp? Is it Margaret Berger? Lady Gaga? It's not Christina Aguilera,
is it?
posted by creeky at 12:32 PM PST - 71 comments
Whisk Kid is the place to be if you like your cake porn with a beautiful twist of bruised melancholy.
posted by Jofus at 4:22 AM PST - 29 comments
February 9
Vintage dinosaur books. Those of a certain age likely discovered dinosaurs in the pages of one of these books in their grade-school library. I'm almost sure that
this one was my first (but I remember the cover being black instead of red), and that
this was my second. Does anybody remember
this one? Or
this?
posted by e-man at 10:00 PM PST - 41 comments
Comedian and activist,
Mark Thomas, has been touring the UK over the past year, compiling a set of policies that his audiences want to see implemented in Britain. As part of the publicity for the resulting book,
The People's Manifesto, his publishers are offering to pay one lucky applicant's £500 deposit and campaign expenses to stand for public office at the upcoming general election, on the condition that they will base their campaign on the policies gathered in
the book.
[more inside]posted by idiomatika at 1:48 AM PST - 35 comments
February 8
The Rhode Island School of Design has a set of beautiful designs for
dazzle ship camouflage.
Dazzle Camouflage was a way to confuse submarine operators as to the heading and speed of warships, so that they could not effectively fire torpedoes to sink them. Certainly a lot more colorful than today's camo! (
previously)
posted by that girl at 10:28 PM PST - 35 comments
Earlier today, the first Viet Nam veteran ever elected to congress, died.
John Murtha (as of this past Saturday, Pennsylvania’s longest serving congressman) was the 19 term representative of Pennsylvania’s 12th district, most notably the home of
Johnstown, and which for most of his service included
Shanksville. He was a hawkish, conservative Democrat, infamous for his involvement in the
Abscam controversy, and most recently
the FBI’s inquiry into the lobbying firm PMA. He could be said to have been very representative, and certainly
very supportive of his blue collar district—
Pro-gun,
anti-abortion, and at first
a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, but eventually
one of its greatest critics. But that criticism came at
a price.
John Murtha was 77.
[more inside]posted by Toekneesan at 8:20 PM PST - 35 comments
Health Care: Who Knows 'Best'? "...comparative research on effectiveness is only part of the strategy to improve care. A second science has captured the imagination of policymakers in the White House: behavioral economics. This field attempts to explain pitfalls in reasoning and judgment that cause people to make apparently wrong decisions; its adherents believe in policies that protect against unsound clinical choices. But there is a schism between presidential advisers in their thinking over whether legislation should be coercive, aggressively pushing doctors and patients to do what the government defines as best, or whether it should be respectful of their own autonomy in making decisions. The President and Congress appear to be of two minds. How this difference is resolved will profoundly shape the culture of health care in America." Interesting NY Review of Books article by
Jerome Groopman.
posted by cog_nate at 7:08 PM PST - 29 comments
He was an enigma, a man looking for a home, producing writing that was cryptic and full of longing.... the McSweeneys insisted that the use of the name was acceptable, even appropriate, given Timothy's background as an artist and search for connection and meaning through the written word.
The
real Timothy McSweeney, after whom
Dave Eggers'
website was named, has
died. (hattip:
Kottke)
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:29 PM PST - 12 comments
The singer Pink's recent
performance at the Grammy's evoked
this reaction from comedian Joe Rogan:
Her performance was like Jimi Hendrix doing the star spangled banner while Michael Jackson moon walked and Susan Boyle sang back up. The song, "Glitter in the Air," is from Pink's 2008 album "
Funhouse." Much of that album was Pink's reflections on the breakup of her marriage to
motocross star
Carey Hart. But the story between Pink and Hart doesn't end there...
[more inside]posted by bguest at 4:48 PM PST - 157 comments
The United States and Australia have long shared a peaceful alliance, but it was not always so. In 1942, U.S servicemen and Australian soldiers fought openly and violently in what is known today as
The Battle of Brisbane.
[more inside]posted by Effigy2000 at 3:56 PM PST - 51 comments
"
Imagine, amid the grey serge of wartime France, a tribe of youngsters with all the colourful decadence of punks or teddy boys. Wearing zoot suits cut off at the knee (the better to show off their brightly coloured socks), with hair sculpted into grand quiffs, and shoes with triple-height soles - looking like glam-rock footwear 30 years early - these were the kids who would lay the foundations of nightclubbing. Ladies and gentlemen,
les Zazous."
[more inside]posted by Paragon at 3:50 PM PST - 15 comments
Found Functions. An elegant demonstration of beauty in mathematics (and landscape).
Nikki Graziano is a math and photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology; some of her photographs were recently featured in
Wired. Graziano "overlays graphs and their corresponding equations onto her carefully composed photos. ... Graziano doesn’t go out looking for a specific function but lets one find her instead. Once she’s got an image she likes, Graziano whips up the numbers and tweaks the function until the graph it describes aligns perfectly with the photograph."
posted by jokeefe at 3:49 PM PST - 32 comments
Came across
this video today and thought I'd share.
The original track of Darth Vader's voice as performed by the British actor that played him,
David Prowse. Imagine how
different Star Wars would have been if they had left it like this.
From the 2004 documentary
Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy.
posted by WhoseVoice at 1:18 PM PST - 56 comments
Hi, I'm Vincent "Vinny" Van Gogh...artist, mad man, dead guy.
I live with James T Kirk and Jesus in the City of Industry--where we pretty much just watch TV all day.
This is my blog about it.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:32 AM PST - 28 comments
The Qanat; a water management system from C7th BC still in use today;is one of the wonders of the world, and keeps the desert
alive.
This fascinating
17 min video from UNESCO is a good introduction to the subject.
Cooling provided by Qanat’s is still in use in
Yazd, Iran.
Modern warfare scores a
gigantic fail in the battle for hearts and minds.
(
wiki)
posted by adamvasco at 7:11 AM PST - 21 comments
Slacker is a unique film written and directed by Richard Linklater that follows the life of various characters in a Austin, Texas. Mind-numbingly boring or oddly captivating, Slacker provided an inspiration to other independent movies of the era and helped established the image of slacker as we see it today. Quoting
Ebert, "We don't get a story, but we do get a feeling. "
A Salon retrospective.
posted by mikepaco at 5:45 AM PST - 86 comments
February 7
Prophetic Pictures from Menominie, Wisconsin. In 1905, high school senior Albert Hansen took photogaphs of his graduating classmates at Menominie HS. Not as they were -- but as they believed, or hoped, or feared they would be in the decades to come.
Dorothy M. Jesse was going to be a mathematician, and
Fred Quilling a pharmacist.
Alice M. Tilleson would be a prominent socialite, whose "eccentric ideas with reference to danger, force her to cling to that old fashioned vehicle, the automobile, instead of the new wheel-less aerial motor car." William C. Klatt, a future physician,
would operate on disembodied heads. And Hansen himself
was destined for the hobo's life. The Wisconsin Historical Society has
the whole collection available online, together with the text from the yearbook and the truth, as best the Society could learn, of how the graduates' actual future compared with prophecy. (Spoiler: Fred Quilling really did become a pharmacist.) Just one of the many remarkable collections at
Wisconsin Historical Images.
posted by escabeche at 11:44 PM PST - 25 comments
The Who Dat nation is composed of
long-suffering,
widespread,
well-dressed,
ballsy,
divinely inspired (?),
stubborn,
parading,
boundary-crossing,
musical, and - as of tonight -
very happy citizens.
What's the deal with "Who Dat," anyway?posted by honeydew at 10:39 PM PST - 87 comments
"Your responsibility is to defend Yertle. You may argue that Yertle is the king and, as protector of the realm, has a right to order his subjects to do whatever he thinks is necessary. He thought it was necessary to see what was beyond his pond and pressed other turtles into service so that he could see that far. They were hurt in the line of duty, so he wasn't personally liable for Sadie's injury. He did not realize how young she was, or he wouldn't have ordered her to join the stack of turtles."
Turtle on Trial, a lesson from the
ABA for
Law Day, May 1.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:34 PM PST - 17 comments
You may be active in social media on your own account. That’s good. But please remember that whether you are on your own time or company time, you’re still a member of our team. And the judgment you exercise on your own time reflects on the judgment you exercise at work.
There’s only one you – at play and at work.
posted by h0p3y at 5:40 PM PST - 75 comments
A Polish newspaper
ran a picture of what they thought were the cartoon mascots of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. One of the five is decidedly odd.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:57 PM PST - 66 comments
"If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away."
Audio recordings from interviews with former slaves, conducted by WPA folklorists and others, including the Lomaxes and Zora Neale Hurston. Only these
twenty-six audio recordings of people formerly enslaved in the antebellum American South have ever been found.
posted by Miko at 1:25 PM PST - 16 comments
In Texas, two nurses anonymously reported a doctor to the
Texas Medical Board for what they considered to be malpractice. The doctor complained of harrassment and local law enforcement found out who filed the complaint. Now
one nurse is being prosecuted for reporting. The charges against the other nurse were
dropped due to prosecutor's discretion.
The medical board has warned of a dangerous chilling effect if the charges are pursued. But, the sheriff and the DA are convinced that the case is valid. Regardless of the outcome, a civil suit has already been filed against the hospital, the doctor, the sheriff and the DA's office on behalf of at least one of the nurses alleging violations of her First Amendment rights, among other things.
Is it a case of prosecutorial misconduct or a vindictive nurse trying to get a doctor ousted? Trial begins Feb. 8.
posted by Leezie at 7:14 AM PST - 55 comments
February 6
"Wow, a talking fish!" is a cheerfully deranged bit of animation based on an Armenian fairy-tale, starring a poor old fisherman, a talking fish, and probably the most psychedelic wizard ever committed to film.
posted by wanderingmind at 2:19 PM PST - 32 comments
Once upon a time in the town of
Point,
everything - all the buildings,
trees, and even the
people were pointed.
Except for one little
round-headed kid named
Oblio.
"I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it.'" – Harry Nilsson" [more inside]posted by ExitPursuedByBear at 9:19 AM PST - 44 comments
For the past 21 years, across the limitless expanse of the North Pacific, a
lonely whale has been singing, calling for a response. There has been none, and there never will.
[more inside]posted by Cobalt at 9:11 AM PST - 88 comments
Phil Gyford (
mefi's own!) realized last year that after he and his friends spent much of their professional lives freelancing, they were missing out on a key part of business life:
Office Culture. So he invented his own, launching a synergizing solutioneering company site called
Pretend Office complete with stock art. The key component that made the ruse complete was the inter-office @everyone mailing list,
which is also online. Through the mailing list, they create the story of the most painful fictitious office on earth. A personal favorite of mine was
the Christmas Dinner thread, do step through the conversation.
posted by mathowie at 9:10 AM PST - 20 comments
February 5
What do you mean by the "trauma myth"?
The title refers to the fact that although sexual abuse is usually portrayed by professionals and the media as a traumatic experience for the victims when it happens — meaning frightening, overwhelming, painful — it rarely is. Most victims do not understand they are being victimized, because they are too young to understand sex, the perpetrators are almost always people they know and trust, and violence or penetration rarely occurs. "Confusion" is the most frequently reported word when victims are asked to describe what the experience was like. Confusion is a far cry from trauma.
NYTimes: "
Abusing Not Only Children, but Also Science"
posted by andoatnp at 1:56 PM PST - 140 comments
Coloring the Kingdom: the story of the all-female “finishing school” of hand-drawn animation that worked behind the scenes to create the first animated full-length Disney feature, Snow White. (
via.)
posted by 1f2frfbf at 11:08 AM PST - 8 comments
Amateur video footage of the Challenger explosion previously unknown,
has now been found and, of course, posted to YouTube. A retired man named Jack Moss was taping the launch from his front yard when the explosion occurred moments into the launch. The tape was relegated to his basement and forgotten, and Moss died late last year. His pastor remembered a conversation about the video and found it among other old Betamax videotapes from the same period. It is believed to be the only amateur footage of the event.
posted by briank at 10:25 AM PST - 121 comments
Anders Loves Maria, the funny, dramatic, romantic and quite NSFW webcomic, with its distinctive visuals, often frustrating characters and very Swedish attitude, has concluded after 3 years and 3 months (ending with a difficult delivery in more ways than one; the last 3 months were an excruciating wait for the last two extended chapters). A tale of semi-fidelity, baby birds, hitting the wrong hole and grown-up responsibility forced upon those who never grew up, A♥M was a favorite among other webcomic creators from day one, and, hey, they ought to know! If you never got into AndersMania, you can start at the beginning of the 250+ updates
here.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:09 AM PST - 30 comments
My Life With Death : is the personal blog of a funeral home "first responder."
It occurred to me this morning as I sat before my employer being lectured about my "availability" on my days off, that my life is singularly joyless. I have effectively traded in my own life for other people's deaths. posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:09 AM PST - 32 comments
Much has been made of the ethics of bloggers who receive compensation -- usually in the form of demo units and trial versions of products -- in exchange for reviewing those products, often with the implicit understanding that the review is a positive one. These questions prompted an FTC investigation, and last fall the agency revised their
formal guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials to include bloggers or other "word-of-mouth" marketers. The Interactive Agency Bureau maintains that the guidelines are unconstitutional, and is calling for the FTC to
rescind the rules as they apply to bloggers and other online outlets. The latest casualty? An intern at TechCrunch asked for a MacBook Air in exchange for a post. In the wake of this revelation, TechCrunch fired the intern and issued a
formal apology. To his credit, the intern has posted his own
mea culpa.
posted by shiu mai baby at 8:02 AM PST - 69 comments
In 2000, the Library of Congress celebrated its 200th birthday by inviting representatives and members of the public from each of the 50 American states to nominate folk traditions, local customs, and special places to a "century's-end time capsule" called the
Local Legacies Project. A nice little introductory catalog to points of local pride, like
Fountain Green, Utah's Lamb Day, Oakland, CA's Black Cowboy Parade,
Kentucky's Bourbon tradition, and
Binghamton, NY's Spiedie Fest, and plenty more.
[more inside]posted by Miko at 6:54 AM PST - 7 comments
February 4
Blood and Milk is the blog of international development worker and writer
Alanna Shaikh, who consults on global health development and writes for publications such as the
UN Dispatch. Her views, based both on her work in the field and her study & understanding of sociology, international relations, and other such subjects, tend to be contrary to most other opinions on international development:
voluntourism isn't helpful,
development work is mired in a culture of nice,
don't bother starting an NGO (or, if you will anyway,
here's how to succeed),
global health doesn't need innovation, and
microfinance is a disappointment. Also, here's
how to tell if your health project is doomed, and
Haiti doesn't need your shoes (some people
vehemently disagree). Educated well-researched iconoclast, or pessimistic Mary Contrary?
posted by divabat at 9:47 PM PST - 20 comments
You guys know about BBC Radio 4's
In Our Time, right? Each week, the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg hosts a 45-minute discussion on some aspect of culture, history, philosophy, religion or science. His guests are always three academics with expert knowledge of the chosen subject, and the tone is serious and detailed but never inaccessible. By respecting his audience's intelligence, Bragg delivers a programme of unrivaled interest, depth and educational value. The topics covered this year alone include
The Frankfurt School,
The Glencoe Massacre,
Silas Marner and
Ibn Khaldun. Eclectic, yes, but never less than fascinating. The good news is that the programme has just redesigned its
website, making all 440 episodes to date available for your listening pleasure in its eminently browsable
archive. In the dumbed-down 21st Century, it's a miracle that a programme like this still exists, so let's all make the most of it while we can.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:19 AM PST - 59 comments
"To really write for children, you have to think like a child. And to read a children’s book, you probably have to let go of grown-up reasoning. These thoughts occurred to me as I read two newly-translated books about Tintin and his creator, Georges Remi, better known to the world as Hergé. (The pen name is composed of Remi’s initials backwards, pronounced as in French.) There is much to be learned from these studies and others by “Tintinologists”—about Hergé, about the “world” of Tintin, even about twentieth-century politics. But as I read Pierre Assouline’s well-written biography of Hergé and Jean-Marie Apostolidès’s erudite study of the Tintin books, a version of the question we Jews love to ask kept coming to mind:
Are they good for Tintin?" A review of
The Metamorphoses of Tintin or Tintin for Adults by Jean-Marie Apostolides and
Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline at
The New Republic.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:45 AM PST - 17 comments
Announcing: The Art of Akira Exhibit Its stunningly fluid and detailed animation often required as many as nine separate cel layers. The 125 minute feature was comprised of over 160,000 cels and almost as many backgrounds, each one completely hand–drawn and hand-painted. Purists recognize Akira as the last completely hand-created animated feature.
Joe the Peacock, in collaboration with
Toonseum, presents a project to 'expose as many people as possible to the brilliance' of
Akira.
Akira previously: 1 2 3posted by shakespeherian at 6:15 AM PST - 76 comments
Patrick Sauriol's
Corona Coming Attractions, the comprehensive insider film news site of the late-'90s (resurrected in December 2008), presents the top unproduced screenplays for 2009 as selected by film professionals (
Part 1 |
Part 2). "Over 300 film professionals were asked to submit the titles of up to ten of their favorite screenplays. The only condition for the picks were that the projects would not be released in theaters this year." Some sound fascinating, others cringe-inducingly tired.
posted by AugieAugustus at 5:32 AM PST - 21 comments
February 3
Nuit Blanche. "Nuit Blanche explores a fleeting moment between two strangers, revealing their brief connection in a hyper real fantasy."
[Via]posted by homunculus at 8:00 PM PST - 21 comments
Carly Fiorina, perhaps best known as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is attempting to become the Republican candidate for Barbara Boxer's long-time Senate seat. But her nomination isn't sewed up yet; her potential GOP challenger is former Congressman and Stanford Law professor
Tom Campbell. So earlier today, Fiorina's campaign released
this political attack ad against Campbell. It features her newly-minted acronym
"FCINO", it's about six times longer than most political ads, it makes copious use of stock photography, and it stars demon sheep with red glowing eyes. Wait,
what?posted by Asparagirl at 6:11 PM PST - 155 comments
Double Full Full Full, annotated (NYT video, reg REq'd) U.S. Olympic Team aerial skier Ryan St. Onge and a science reporter describe via video the physics going on as he executes a triple backflip with four twists.
Also, the
snowboard halfpipe.
(Don't ask me why a triple backflip with four twists is called a "double full full full")posted by planetkyoto at 5:57 PM PST - 16 comments
Glasgow's
Mitchell Library, designed by
William B. Whitie, is the largest reference library in Western Europe. Over the past decade, it has been digitising its collection of photographs, which has resulted in the
Virtual Mitchell, an unrivalled collection of photographs of Glasgow which covers the last 150-odd years of the city's history.
The photographs can be searched by
area,
street or
subject, all of which provide a fascinating insight into life in Glasgow over the past century and a half.
Some examples:
Charing Cross, 1950s;
1975;
The Mitchell Library, 1910;
Meadowside Shipyard, circa 1930;
New Astoria Cinema, Possilpark;
Royal Exchange Square, 1868;
Alexander "Greek" Thompson's church on Caledonia Road;
East End children in class in 1916posted by Len at 4:13 PM PST - 14 comments
"Our
research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression,but what we don't know is which comes first - are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?"
posted by Elmore at 3:51 PM PST - 48 comments
Vegetated State conversations: To find out whether a simple conversation was possible, the researchers selected one of the four - a 29-year-old man who had been in a car crash. They asked him to imagine playing tennis if he wanted to answer yes to questions such as: Do you have any sisters? Is your father's name Thomas? Is your father's name Alexander? And if the answer to a question was no, he had to imagine moving round his home.posted by bigmusic at 3:27 PM PST - 22 comments
"
Back in 1993 I was tutoring my sister in algebra. Her quizzes and tests were always made of word problems with a running storyline involving many recurring places and characters. I tied the fate of the main characters to how well she did on the previous quiz, so a good performance brought them good fortune. Unfortunately, one test she completely bombed, and, well,
this is a transcription of the quiz she got next."
[more inside]posted by Iridic at 3:05 PM PST - 40 comments
Strangers is a very short (~5 minutes to complete) Windows platform game, "which has an interesting twist that you may or may not see coming." Download and forum
here, with an admonition to "play
this song while playing."
[more inside]posted by jbickers at 1:04 PM PST - 19 comments
He invented or popularized a startling array of the fundamental elements of film: the dissolve, the fade-in and fade-out, slow motion, fast motion, stop motion, double exposures and multiple exposures, miniatures, the in-camera matte, time-lapse photography, color film (albeit hand-painted), artificial film lighting, production sketches and storyboards, and the whole idea of narrative film.
By 1897, in a studio of his own design and construction – the first complete movie studio – his hand forged virtually everything on his screen. Norman McLaren writes, "He was not only his own producer, ideas man, script writer, but he was his own set-builder, scene painter, choreographer, deviser of mechanical contrivances, special effects man, costume designer, model maker, actor, multiple actor, editor and distributor." Also, his own cinematographer, and the inventor of cameras to suit his special conceptions. Not even auteur directors such as Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, John Cassavetes, and Stanley Kubrick would personally author so many aspects of their films."
Inside: 57 films by Georges Méliès, the
Grandfather of Visual Effects.
[more inside]posted by Paragon at 9:47 AM PST - 31 comments
Industrial Strength Fungus. At an organic farm just outside Monterey, Calif., a super-eco building material is growing in dozens of darkened shipping containers. The farm is named
Far West Fungi, and its rusting containers are full of all sorts of mushrooms--shiitake, reishi and pom-pom, to name a few. This new application of mushrooms is sometimes referred to as "mycotecture", but the idea of
mycorestoration [TED talk: "6 ways mushrooms can save the world"] is not new.
[more inside]posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:23 AM PST - 21 comments
Mass Affect will offer a plethora of engaging side-quests, including bike messenger assignments, competitive coffee-brand disparagement, horrible-dancing competitions, and an interactive café-posturing minigame that involves using motion controls to keep the cover of your barely-skimmed copy of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" within eyeshot of as many cute girls as possible.
posted by griphus at 6:34 AM PST - 70 comments
Where does my tax money go? From USA Today, a calculator and graph that lets you enter your salary and shows you how your tax dollars are spent. You can also change the year shown, so that you can compare now and then.
posted by OmieWise at 6:01 AM PST - 39 comments
Neil Blomkamp’s
TED Talk starts with the question of does he feel his aliens in his film
District 9 are a realistic depiction of what extraterrestrial life might actually be like... (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:37 AM PST - 27 comments
"Papers that are scientifically flawed or comprise only modest technical increments often attract undue profile. At the same time publication of truly original findings may be delayed or rejected."
In an
open letter addressed to Senior Editors of peer-review journals,
Professor Austin Smith (
publications) and another 13 stem cell researchers from around the world have
expressed their concerns over the current peer review process employed by the journals publishing in the field of stem cell biology.
[more inside]posted by kisch mokusch at 2:16 AM PST - 25 comments
February 2
Tango With Cows is an exhibition by the Getty Museum of the book art of the Russian avant-garde from 1910 to 1917, which included a performance of sound poetry,
all captured on video, both of Futurist poems, other historical sound poems, and contemporary works. Among performers are Christian Bök and Steve McCaffery. The exhibition takes its name from
the book of ferro-concrete poems, one of
21 books can be downloaded as PDFs, most are by Alexei Kruchenykh but there are also works by Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk, Andrei Kravtsov, Vasily Kamensky and Velimir Khlebnikov. These were all Futurists.
[more inside]posted by Kattullus at 11:02 PM PST - 12 comments
War and Peace is a simplified version of the Civilization games. How simple? One button switches your civilization's focus between war and peace. That's it. (PC only)
posted by CrunchyFrog at 9:23 PM PST - 36 comments
The Magisterial Goal. YouTube/Essay on the great British sports announcer Ray Hudson and his literary metaphoric style. “Look at him, so languid, look at him walking. He’s like a big, beautiful zombie, Riquelme. He just strolls around…like smoke off a cigarette.”
[more inside]posted by stbalbach at 6:25 PM PST - 15 comments
Henrietta Lacks "was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University, where a doctor named George Gey snipped cells from her cervix without telling her. Gey discovered that Lacks' cells could not only be kept alive, but would also grow indefinitely.
For the past 60 years Lacks' cells have been cultured and used in experiments ranging from determining the long-term effects of radiation to testing the live polio vaccine."
[more inside]posted by HuronBob at 5:08 PM PST - 69 comments
Much-missed acoustic guitarist Isaac Guillory thrilled audiences around the UK, accumulating die-hard fans wherever he went. For those who never had the chance to see him perform, this extremely
rare broadcast-
quality footage of a classic 1991 concert (made available on YouTube by one of the cameramen who filmed it), is the next best thing.
[more inside]posted by tomcooke at 11:58 AM PST - 6 comments
"The symbiotic relationship between the press and the power elite worked for nearly a century. It worked as long as our power elite, no matter how ruthless or insensitive, was competent. But once our power elite became incompetent and morally bankrupt, the press, along with the power elite, lost its final vestige of credibility."
"The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News" by Chris Hedges.
posted by AugieAugustus at 10:43 AM PST - 51 comments
Hitch reads up on North Korea: "I have recently donned the bifocals provided by
B.R. Myers in his electrifying new book
The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, and I understand now that I got the picture either upside down or inside out. The whole idea of communism is dead in North Korea, and its most recent "Constitution," "ratified" last April, has dropped all mention of the word. The analogies to Confucianism are glib, and such parallels with it as can be drawn are intended by the regime only for the consumption of outsiders. Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian "military first" mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia."
Read the first chapter here.posted by ocherdraco at 10:23 AM PST - 59 comments
Ice House Detroit is an architectural installation and social change project wherein photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune have spent weeks spraying water on an empty Detroit home.
[more inside]posted by nevercalm at 9:21 AM PST - 8 comments
Fans know him as Tonéx. His eccentric style and vertiginous high notes helped make him one of the most acclaimed praise singers of the past decade, and, for a time, one of the most successful. ... This past September, the television host known as Lexi broadcast an interview [Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3] with Tonéx on the Word Network, a gospel channel, in which he made his clearest public statements about his sexual orientation. He is, within the church world, the first high-profile gospel singer in history to come out of the closet. Within hours, he started to realize what he had done. His relationship with the mainstream gospel industry was effectively over.
From a fascinating
article in the most recent New Yorker [abstract only].
This podcast [freely accessible] with the author of the article, Kelefah Sanneh, delves into the
rarely discussed "secret" in the black church that many gospel musicians have been and are gay. Sanneh touches on the stories of both
James Cleveland, the creator of the modern gospel sound who died of AIDS in 1991, and one of his backup singers, Carl Bean, who became famous for the 70s disco hit
"I Was Born This Way." One contemporary preacher and gospel singer that Sanneh discusses in relation to Tonéx is
Donnie McClurkin, a man made infamous during the Obama campaign for railing against homosexuals in Southern Black churches. McClurkin has admitted to
engaging in homosexual acts for 20 years but does not identify as gay and believes a strong Christian faith can deliver a person from the "sin" of homosexuality. He recently delivered a sermon directed at young black homosexuals in the church, specifically calling out Tonéx. [McClurkin sermon
Part 1 /
Part 2 /
Part 3]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:17 AM PST - 44 comments
Insite, operated by Vancouver Coastal Health, operates North America’s first legal supervised injection site. Slate writer offers
harrowing illustrations of the people who go there and the neighborhood they live in.
posted by elder18 at 8:14 AM PST - 38 comments
Jon Ronson On "Each week in a series of interviews, short location reports, scripted monologues, phone calls etc, Jon Ronson delves into a world of personal stories surrounding the central theme which all shed light on the human condition." You can download all the episodes
here.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:49 AM PST - 15 comments
February 1
Button du Jour. A charming semi-daily imaginary vignette featuring food, fashion, music, and an exotic location -- all inspired by a beautiful button.
posted by ottereroticist at 9:51 PM PST - 6 comments
The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. So to help ensure your business can use the latest, most advanced web apps, we encourage you to update your browsers as soon as possible. There are many choices:
IE6 is not among them [more inside]posted by h0p3y at 7:23 PM PST - 78 comments
nonsenselit.org is dedicated to literary matters nonsensical. There's a lot of
Edward Lear,
limericks,
songs,
nonsense botany,
diaries,
picture stories and much, much more. Did I mention there was more? Because there's also a section on the lesser known but quite great early 20th Century cartoonist
Peter Newell, there's a lot of awesome but let me point you to
The Hole Book and
Topsys and Turvys.
Nonsense in Early Comics features the brilliant
Gustave Verbeek, the wonderful
John Benson and
Helen Stillwell. Don't forget to check out
the gallery of over 600 nonsense-related images. Finally, the site proprietor, Marco Graziosi has a
blog with various nonsense lit related posts.
posted by Kattullus at 7:00 PM PST - 5 comments
"
Trance music" is not a new phenomenon. The ability for music to drive dancers into ecstatic frenzies has been known at least since
Euripides.
The Shakers got their name from the ecstatic behavior they exhibited when dancing to their
simple, repetitive hymns.
Voodoo rituals are built around
complex, trance-inducing rhythms. It was well known that trance-dancing can produce ecstastic states, but until the later part of the 20th century, and the invention of the 'extended dance remix', it was rare for commercial music to reach for it.
[more inside]posted by empath at 5:22 PM PST - 86 comments
Pain Pack — Ze Frank posted a phone number and asked that anyone experiencing emotional pain leave him a message. He received a number of very distraught messages. From those, DJs and musicians created 138 samples for him—and those samples have since been made into songs—and the collaborative process continues.
posted by netbros at 3:31 PM PST - 26 comments
Ted Taylor, physicist, nuclear scientist, and designer of the deceptively tiny
Davy Crockett nuclear recoilless rifle, is not quite as famous as one of his other projects: nuclear spacecraft propulsion.
Project Orion was intended as an interplanetary (and eventually interstellar) vehicle which could achieve Earth orbit with a series of 800 nuclear explosions, each detonated about a second after the other below the spacecraft. It would propel itself through space in a similar fashion, carrying many orders of magnitude more mass than chemical rockets such as the Saturn which would ultimately take men to the moon.
Taylor and others intended a mission to Mars by 1965, but the
Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 destroyed all hope to see Orion take flight.
For the interested,
"The Curve of Binding Energy" goes into much more detail, including the U.S. Air Force's plan to turn Orion into a nuclear space battleship (!).
A youtube video of an Orion concept test using conventional explosives is
here (flight footage begins around 0:23).
posted by edguardo at 2:34 PM PST - 56 comments
Soft drinks have become ubiquitous around the world. Everywhere you go, you are more likely than not going to see them being sold at stores, food carts and roadside stands.
[more inside]posted by reenum at 11:32 AM PST - 109 comments
The truth about the gunshot that changed Germany. On June 2, 1967, a West Berlin police officer named Karl-Heinz Kurras killed a leftist protester named Benno Ohnesorg. This killing galvanized the West German student movement, and led to a decade of protesting and actual armed conflict (notably by the
Red Army Faction, aka the Baader-Meinhof gang [
previously]). It turns out that the police officer was a member of the Stasi, the infamous East German secret police.
[more inside]posted by norm at 7:46 AM PST - 22 comments
