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May 2011 Archives
May 31
Doom was a classic game, revolutionary in its time. And it took a high-end machine to run it, like a 486 running 25 MHz (ooh! aah!).
Times have changed: it's been ported to Javascript, and it will run in your browser.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:45 PM PST - 47 comments
Magic Headphones
"DJ Fresh - Louder (Doctor P & Flux Pavilion Remix)" DUBSTEP, The dancers are ( in order) Marquese "nonstop" Scott/ Julius "iglide" Chisolm / Cyrus "glitch" Spencer . Videography by Jason Locklear
posted by MechEng at 6:32 PM PST - 34 comments
The Most Dangerous Place In The World On May 29,
fearless Pakistani journalist and
author Syed Saleem Shazad disappeared on the way to a TV interview concerning his
story about
al Qaeda infiltration into the Pakistani military. On May 30, his badly beaten body was found in a canal 150 km from his home in Islamabad. Shazad, Pakistan Bureau Chief for
Asia Times Online, had written many
provocative stories that brought him
threats from Pakistan's
ISI. Shazad's murder shows again why Pakistan is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists.
posted by rdone at 5:59 PM PST - 29 comments
A robber is cornered in a dead-end alley: He turns to face the police officer pursuing him, ready to fight. He pauses. The officer’s left forearm is encased in ballistic nylon, and half a million volts arc menacingly between electrodes on his wrist. A green laser target lands on the robber’s chest. He puts his hands up; it’s a fight he can’t win.
[more inside]posted by dirtylittlecity at 3:18 PM PST - 132 comments
Depixelating Pixel Art: "Naïve upsampling of pixel art images leads to unsatisfactory results. Our algorithm extracts a smooth, resolution-independent vector representation from the image which is suitable for high-resolution display devices."
[more inside]posted by Diskeater at 2:52 PM PST - 45 comments
Say, you wanna hear a sad song? Eddie Hinton was a guitar player, vocalist, and songwriter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Co-writer of one of the tenderest, sexiest hits of the late 60s, Dusty Springfield's
Breakfast in Bed, Hinton was a key member of the world-famous
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section from 1967 to 1971 (turning down an invitation from Duane Allman to be a member of the Allman Brothers Band) who worked as a studio musician on albums by Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, the Staples Singers, and Toots Hibbert, but his early success was
sidetracked by mental problems, booze, and drugs.
[more inside]posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:40 PM PST - 22 comments
Iran has a conflicting relationship with the internet. On one side,
a large portion of the population are online, and even
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a well-publicized blog in 2006 (though it now seems to be offline). Then there was
Iran's internet revolution in 2009, when there were country-wide internet censorship that was countered
by use of web proxies. Later that same year, a company affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
purchased a majority share in the nation's telecommunications monopoly. The fact that IRGC was involved with a for-profit company was not news, as
IRGC has long been involved in Iran's economy, but their role in communications was more troubling. The latest news causing a stir is
a "halal" internet for Iran, "
an internet that conforms to Islamic principles, to improve its communication and trade links with the world," according to a quote from head of economic affairs with the Iranian presidency, Ali Aqamohammadi.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 1:57 PM PST - 32 comments
The Witness to War project is not about the set piece movements of armies, the military strategies of generals, nor the geopolitical nuances that led to war. Instead, it is about the 'foxhole' view of combat as seen by the soldiers who experienced it.posted by Horselover Phattie at 12:44 PM PST - 4 comments
Ben Hecht, arguably one of the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood history, started his career in the (sometimes literally) cutthroat world of Jazz Age journalism at the Chicago Daily News. Throughout 1921 he wrote a series of remarkable vignettes collectively titled the
Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago: stories of drifters, fops, and artists from Michigan Avenue to Chinatown, but most of all a fond portrait of the city itself. Collected in book form and gorgeously illustrated, the
Thousand and One Afternoons are in the public domain and readily
available online. Each story is four or five short pages in length, and goes great with coffee.
posted by theodolite at 12:29 PM PST - 10 comments
Medicine in the Americas is a digital library project that makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century. [more inside]posted by Trurl at 11:51 AM PST - 9 comments
Here is an article from the Asia Times. that discusses the fact that "a rumor is spreading virally throughout the Middle Kingdom that asserts that Austrian-born Hitler was raised by a family of Chinese expats living in Vienna."
Apparently "as the rumor spreads throughout the Chinese social web, admiration for Hitler is growing stronger and stronger. Blog posts with titles like 'Why I like Hitler' are popping up every day, and an increasingly greater share of young Chinese are choosing to express their nationalism by voicing support for Hitler."
posted by rudhraigh at 8:29 AM PST - 138 comments
'The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.'
posted by stbalbach at 7:43 AM PST - 88 comments
With a coalition government and the recent turmoil over the voting system, sometimes British democracy feels like it's in a bit of a crisis. Thank goodness you can now
vote on issues that
really matter.
posted by Acheman at 6:08 AM PST - 25 comments
May 30
Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history,
according to the latest estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA). After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 Gigatonnes (Gt), a 5% jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt. The
likelihood of exceeeding
450 ppm CO2 and associated two degrees of warming has now
receded greatly.
posted by wilful at 11:28 PM PST - 33 comments
Welcome to Vegas Punk House. Don’t break shit! Frontman, Fat Mike, of the punk band NoFX recently opened a "Punk House" available for renting while staying in Vegas. Complete with a mini golf course, 3 bedrooms (one with six bunk beds), punk flyers all over the walls, beer vending machine, and a "paltry" museum, for $400 dollars per 3 day stay, you can maintain you're punk lifestyle, albeit in luxury.
(VIDEO)posted by Leisure_Muffin at 10:44 PM PST - 72 comments
I have seen the future of rock n roll + cinema and it is 4-minute mashups that span eras and genres and continents and cultures. Although it's hard to imagine any others can reach this level of awesome: Akira Kurosawa vs. Lucinda Williams.
Drunken Angel vs. Drunken Angel. SLYT
posted by ecourbanist at 9:20 PM PST - 7 comments
Start with the over-sized armor and bodybuilder physiques of the marines. When you aim a gun in Space Marine, the target reticle is huge, just like the target reticle in Gears of War. The guns are huge and they feature a chainsaw blade that can be used to slice enemies in half, execution style, similar to the “chainsaw bayonet” of the Gears soldiers... The blood spatters are also quite similar. The guns shoot in a similar fashion and the Space Marines wield a big giant hammer that resembles the blasting hammers not from Gears of War but from Microsoft’s other sci-fi franchise, Halo... The bad guys are the green Ork enemies from the Warhammer world, and they bear no resemblance to the enemies in Gears of War, except that they make loud grunts. Of course, their very name does bear resemblance to the “orcs” in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but we’ll ignore that for now. Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat,
on how Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is a big rip off of Gears of War. That would be
Warhammer 40k, the first rulebook for which was released in 1987, and Gears of War, the relentlessly brown X-Box game released in 2006 to an
emo-tastic advertising campaign. Oops. Dean has since backed down and said that he was only talking about gameplay aspects (he wasn't) that are similar (
not particularly). Previously he was
forced to retract a bad review of Mass Effect when it emerged that he had no idea how to play it. Should videogame journalists be expected to vaguely know what they are talking about, or are we just
petty and vindictive for expecting that? (
via)
posted by Artw at 2:06 PM PST - 129 comments
Early 1940: British police listening for radio transmissions from German spies within the UK pick up weird signals, and pass them to
Bletchley Park, the United Kingdom's main decryption establishment in WWII. The source of these German messages is an unknown machine, which the Brits dub
Tunny (10 minute video with
Tony Sale describing the Tunny). August 30, 1941: German operators send two very similar messages with the same key, providing insight into the encryption scheme. By January 1942, British cryptographers deduced the workings of the German code machines, sight unseen. The British were able to create their own Tunny emulators to decrypt messages sent by German High Command. After the war, these and other British code-breaking and emulating machines were demolished and/or recycled for parts and their blueprints destroyed, leaving a hole in the history of the British WWII code breaking. Efforts to rebuild the British Tunny emulator started in the 1990s, and quite recently
a Tunny emulator replica was completed.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 1:55 PM PST - 12 comments
Artist
Shawn Smith uses hand-cut wooden blocks and acrylic paint to transform images of nature into three-dimensional pixelated sculptures.
[more inside]posted by bayani at 12:07 PM PST - 9 comments
The life and times of Harvey Updyke: [espn.com] Harvey Updyke talks about life, death and the trees at Toomer's Corner. "Harvey Updyke walks into the famous catfish place down in the swamp, takes off his crimson houndstooth baseball cap and asks, right off the bat, if I know where he could get some cheap tickets to next year's Alabama-Ole Miss game. Provided, he makes sure to point out later, he's not in prison."
posted by Fizz at 9:17 AM PST - 13 comments
Leslie Slape has been a professional storyteller for more than 20 years. This column will feature some of her favorite short folktales from around the world. Come on, snuggle up in the rocking chair, and get ready for a story. [more inside]posted by infini at 8:53 AM PST - 8 comments
May 29
IS TROPICAL - THE GREEKS: Official music video (Vimeo, 3.25); live action combined with animation for real comic-book violence. NSFW owing to boys being shot, blown up, shot, electrocuted, shot, slashed and then shot some more.
posted by bwg at 6:12 PM PST - 45 comments
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, we're all tired, things have been hard here in the States, hard for years and years and years. Perhaps we could use a new (but not really)
anthem to bring some spirit back.
posted by tomswift at 6:08 PM PST - 24 comments
"When you're partners in an unconsummated marriage, there's a lot of anger. You find yourself saying things you would never say under normal circumstances. You see yourself becoming bitter and horrible to your husband. You tell him this is all his fault and that any normal man would be able to have penetrated you. You compare him to your ex-boyfriend and laugh at him." [more inside]posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 2:29 PM PST - 141 comments
After over seven years, Stephen R. Donaldson, has stopped taking questions for his monumental and amazing
Gradual Interview.
"After May 21, 2011, the Gradual Interview will no longer accept new questions or messages. I will continue to work my way through the questions which have already been accepted, but I can't do more. I'm too far behind on too many things, and the strain is affecting my concentration. Discontinuing the Gradual Interview is one of several things that I'm doing to simplify my life."
The Gradual Interview is a fully-searchable question and answer session with his readers that currently contains over 2600 exchanges on topics including minutiae about his novels, his writing process, and many other interesting subjects.
[more inside]posted by hippybear at 2:27 PM PST - 12 comments
The most curious was on a chariot that carried the most singular music that can be imagined. It held a bear that played the organ; instead of pipes, there were sixteen cat heads each with its body confined; the tails were sticking out and were held to be played as the strings on a piano, if a key was pressed on the keyboard, the corresponding tail would be pulled hard, and it would produce each time a lamentable meow... the cats were arranged properly to produce a succession of notes from the octave… Sixteenth-century Europe, Jingle Cats, and the 2008 Housing Bubble:
The Birth of Sampling [more inside]posted by waterunderground at 11:53 AM PST - 20 comments
Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert - "McLuhan prefigured the Internet era in a number of surprising ways. As he said in
a March 1969 Playboy interview: 'The computer thus holds out the promise of a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, a state of absorption in the Logos that could knit mankind into one family and create a perpetuity of harmony and peace' ... Wikipedia, along with other crowd-sourced resources, is wreaking a certain amount of McLuhanesque havoc on conventional notions of 'authority', 'authorship', and even 'knowledge' ... Knowledge is growing more broadly and immediately participatory and collaborative by the moment."
posted by kliuless at 9:09 AM PST - 90 comments
May 28
Adam Kokesh served in Fallujah as a Marine, then got in
hot water for appearing at an anti-war protest in uniform. This weekend, he was brutalized by US Park police for silently dancing at the Jefferson Memorial as part of a small flash mob. The event was captured on
video, which is fascinating and surreal.
posted by eugenen at 11:17 PM PST - 241 comments
The best word to describe it is probably “relentless,” in that it’s relentlessly cute, relentlessly happy, and relentlessly entertaining. In its own way, it reminds me of a movie like Singin’ In The Rain, in that both properties aim to overwhelm any cynicism directed at them via sheer and utter joyfulness. It seems like it should be easy to watch either property with an ironic sneer of detachment, but both utterly wear down all defenses. -
The A.V. Club. My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (
previously) is the curiously addictive cartoon accompaniment to the famous girl's toy line. It just finished it's first season, and all of the episodes can be seen on YouTube (
start here) and
this all encompassing torrent. While
intended for girls 6 through 8, the show has spawned a surprising additional fan base of young-adult men. Calling themselves bronies, they have created a staggering amount of fan material (check the blog
Equestra Daily, chan
Ponychan, and image dump
Ponibooru) and turned the ponies into a widely pervasive
meme, all with the
apparent blessing of Hasbro.
[more inside]posted by The Devil Tesla at 10:18 PM PST - 131 comments
How Roxy Music built Avalon, the album. Producer Rhett Davies: “Bryan would lay down four or five scat vocals. We would spend quite a lot of time doing that, and we would actually comp the scat vocals as if they were final vocals with lyrics,” says Davies. “It might seem stupid that we were comping mumblings, but that is basically what we were doing. I think it gave Bryan a clue to the actual shape of the sound of the lyrics, be it an ‘e’ or an ‘o’ sound or whatever, so that they sounded right with the mood of the music. If you put the scat vocal tracks up and really listen to them next to the finished vocal, it wouldn't sound that much different than the finished vocal. He was using identical shapes! Over the months, he would work on the verses and choruses and slowly get ideas on what the song was about,” Davies continues. “He would come in and say, ‘I think I've got a first verse’ and he would try it. Then he might come in later and say, ‘I think I have a second verse,’ or ‘I think I've got a chorus.’ It was pieced together, along with the rest of the music, over the period.”
posted by Dragonness at 8:27 PM PST - 44 comments
'In South Africa's black townships, being gay can be fatal.' 'South Africa has a
liberal constitution promising
equal rights for all.' 'In a society that is deeply religious, traditional and highly patriarchal, lesbians and gay men contradict the dominant view of African manhood.' 'Across Africa, gay people are threatened, humiliated, raped, beaten, killed, jailed, outed in front-page newspaper stories, condemned by preachers as un-Christian and by
politicians and traditional leaders as un-African.' 'In South African townships there's a
crime dubbed "corrective rape," rape to "cure" lesbians, and sometimes gay men and transsexuals. They are told they are being taught a lesson: how to be a real woman or man, survivors say.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 1:46 PM PST - 29 comments
SLEBP: My ex Brother-in-Law's shit record collection. "You are bidding on a collection of 50 (approx) 12" singles and LPs of crap music. My sister found these in her attic last weekend, where they has been sat gathering dust for the last couple of decades. They used to belong to her ex-husband, who is one of the biggest arseholes ever to draw breath." A Saturday afternoon amusement.
posted by jokeefe at 12:12 PM PST - 83 comments
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
has announced:
NASA has ended operational planning activities for the Mars rover Spirit and transitioned the Mars Exploration Rover Project to a single-rover operation focused on Spirit's still-active twin, Opportunity. New Scientist has
a quality obituary for the little Mars Rover that could.
posted by hippybear at 9:31 AM PST - 44 comments
"The Daily Rind” scheduling system:
I have an inkling that it will work best for those with a particular creative disposition, while those whose thought-patterns are more regimented and linear may prefer more conventional scheduling methods. But if you’ve got a more fluid workstyle and struggle with finding rhythm and balance with the scheduling of your days, give the system a tryposted by Trurl at 8:02 AM PST - 10 comments
May 27
A long time ago (1987) in a slightly parallel galaxy not so far away, an aspiring filmmaker named George Lucas teamed up with thespian Richard E. Grant to create the epic tale of a frustrated thespidroid trying to find fame on the desolate planet of Tatooine.
Withnail and O is the result.
posted by Shepherd at 3:15 PM PST - 14 comments
Inside the Detainee Abuse Task Force On 28 Jul 2004, the Detainee Abuse Task Force, was formed by USACIDC to investigate all allegations of Iraqi Detainee abuse involving Coalition Forces.
One of the special agents in charge describes the task force as under-resourced and
hampered by a bureaucracy unable or unwilling to facilitate its investigations.
PBS and The Nation investigating journalist
states “One thing that shocked me was that the ID/DATF agents that I interviewed said there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of allegations of detainee abuse and torture that likely didn’t reach them.”
In 2009 President Obama stated “Individuals who violated standards of behavior in these photos have been investigated and held accountable.” and concluded
"I ran for President because I believe that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together."
posted by adamvasco at 2:30 PM PST - 9 comments
"The woman, 29, testified, she woke up naked except for a bra, in a puddle of vomit, and believing that she had been raped the night before by a police officer." An East Village video system "recorded two police officers as they arrived at the apartment building above the bar four times in four hours — once on official business, then sneaking back three more times in secret..."
What Proof Does a Woman Have to Have? (NYT)
[more inside]posted by DarlingBri at 12:53 PM PST - 131 comments
On May 23, 1861, Spotsylvania County, Virginia voted 1323 - 0 in favor of succession from the Union. Historian John Hennessy
provides an explanation of how that vote came to be a perfect 100% in favor of succession. So people rebelling against "Northern tyranny" themselves used tyranny to rig a vote that was undoubtedly going to go overwhelmingly in their favor anyway?
posted by COD at 12:19 PM PST - 22 comments
Elizabeth Eckford. Paul Cole. Lt. Colonel Robert L. Stirm. Juan Romero. The unfamiliar names have one thing in common: because of a split second in time with a camera pointing towards them, they will always be remembered as
“the person in that photograph.” This list includes 10 such individuals, and how a single picture can change some people’s lives. [NSFW for one photo]
posted by bayani at 11:29 AM PST - 24 comments
Paper Cuts. Paper-cut silhouettes of famous characters. Can you name them all? (Warning: Single page with a
lot of inline images. One slightly NSFW.)
posted by kmz at 10:43 AM PST - 38 comments
Web artifact made of solid gold CELEBRITY LECTURES SERIES from Michigan State University. Ten years worth of lectures were posted in 1998. They are all still there-- awaiting your return.
Edward Albee ,Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Pat Conroy, Jacques d'Amboise, E.L. Doctorow, Richard Ford, Carlos Fuentes, David Halberstam,
Joseph Heller,
John Irving, Judith Jamison, William Kennedy, Norman Mailer, David McCullough, Terry McMillan, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Jane Smiley, Susan Sontag, Amy Tan,
Paul Theroux, John Updike,
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Derek Walcott, Garry Wills, August Wilson and
Tom Wolfe.
I listened to the Vonnegut lecture. Imagine-- a whole hour and a half (Well, I skipped the first 9 minutes of introductions.) with my favorite author wheezing and sputtering. How refreshing to hear him declaim in his own voice and reveal the happiest day of his life and his own favorite from among his works -"The Sirens of Titan".
posted by notmtwain at 7:51 AM PST - 8 comments
FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate has what he describes as a "Waffle House" theory of emergency management to assess how bad a situation is after a disaster. "If the Waffle House is open and serving food and has got a full menu, then it's green," he said during an interview inside a FEMA mobile home parked outside a fire station in Joplin. "If the Waffle House is open but has a limited menu, it's yellow, and if the Waffle House isn't open, that's red." -
FEMA Gets its Groove Backposted by Slap*Happy at 7:23 AM PST - 93 comments
The Greatest LEGO Diorama in the Galaxy! Imperial Employee of the Month
Jay Hoff has been hard at work building the greatest LEGO Diorama in this or any other Galaxy. An impressive, most impressive 37,000 pieces of LEGO (as well as, presumably, a scary amount of time and money), including 388 mini-figurines, went into this custom commemoration of the Emperor's arrival on the second Death Star. This great moment in Imperial history was made in 2011 for Science Discovery Day at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa. It uses an Imperial Shuttle Kit with custom designed Death Star hangar.
[Via Death Star PR]posted by Fizz at 4:29 AM PST - 41 comments
The EU has just rolled out
a new law requiring websites to request permission before installing any cookies in a user's web browser. In the UK, businesses have been given
a one year deferral on implementation by the Information Commissioner's Office. The ICO have brought their own website into compliance with the law though, showing other websites the way forward. There's a notice
at the top of the page requesting permission to set a cookie, as legally required. Click "continue" without agreeing
posted by crayz at 1:56 AM PST - 57 comments
Kaydara is a French-made Matrix fan film, released on the 21st of May 2011, which has been noted for the high quality of its special effects. The entire 55-minute film is now available to stream for free from its site.
[more inside]posted by chmmr at 1:35 AM PST - 10 comments
May 26
Leonora Carrington, one of the few living links to the movement that counted Dali, Ernst, Tanguy, and Man Ray as its members, passed away Wednesday at the age of 94. Born in Britain, she earned her
surrealist credentials primarily as a painter, but also as a novelist.
Forced to flee Europe during WWII, she ended up in Mexico, where she championed another expat European female artist,
Remedios Varo. Though both were overshadowed by the more flamboyant
Frida Kahlo, all three were strongly influenced by the culture of Mexico, and took surrealism in a new, and decidedly feminine direction.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:48 PM PST - 15 comments
For Roger Ebert,
it's a prayer that made him "more alert to the awe of existence." For Rober Koehler,
it's a kitschy New Age con. For Richard Brody, it perfectly captures the essence of a generation by depicting a character thinking
"back to the musings and fantasies of childhood, which are the product of a wondrous and fantastic view of science formed by popular-science books for children and by the commercial artists whose illustrations adorned them." For Stephanie Zacharek, it's
"a gargantuan work of pretension." For Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, it's
"a creation myth in the guise of a crypto-autobiography" that invents a universe of its own only to destroy it. For J. Hoberman, it's lifeless and dull,
"essentially a religious work and, as such, may please the director's devotees, cultists, and apologists." It spent thirty years in development,
three in editing and, yes,
it contains dinosaurs.
The Tree of Life, written and directed by
famously reclusive Zoolander fan and
"JD Salinger of American movies" Terrence Malick , won the
Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Tomorrow,
it comes out in the United States.
[more inside]posted by alexoscar at 10:50 PM PST - 64 comments
Japan World Cup. It's in Japanese, but if you don't understand a word of what's going on here, but just click on random stuff until the race starts.
posted by empath at 9:39 PM PST - 30 comments
French scientists have just published a paper entitled "Gliese 581d is the 1st discovered terrestrial-mass exoplanet in the habitable zone", claiming that their computer model suggests the
exoplanet "will have a stable atmosphere and surface liquid water for a wide range of plausible cases."
We've discovered a
lot of exoplanets. And there are a
lot of
sites to help you keep track.
Previously.posted by Ipsifendus at 6:12 PM PST - 47 comments
I was the first girl I knew to get breasts. I remember being in sixth grade and this horrible girl named Erica coming up to me before social studies and saying, “You don't have to stick out your chest like that,” and I almost cried. (I cried very easily as a child, and by “as a child” I mean “up until this morning.”) Because I wasn't actually sticking my chest out at all, it was just
like that.posted by roger ackroyd at 5:10 PM PST - 83 comments
Back in 2005, the market for retail storage space in Hawaii was evaluated as "underserved
[pdf]" and what the market wants, the market gets. The roll out of self storage facilities exploded; storage space in Hawaii doubled from 1.56 million square feet to 3.16 million square feet in 2010. The blocky, often featureless facilities sprang up quickly and would dominate entire city blocks, replacing dozens of retail locations at a time, to the extent that one might wonder: "Do people really have that much junk to store?" Apparently, not anymore
[1]. But as the economy struggled and demand fell, the price for storage space hit a point that made sense to some unlikely clients. Instead of just outsourcing the junk drawer, why not use a storage locker for band practice, or a toy store, or even a legal practice?
The Secret Life of Storage Units.
[more inside]posted by krippledkonscious at 2:04 PM PST - 37 comments
Last night, my brother, the real football fan, regailed me with stories of a bizarre double life that an English player seemed to be leading. Looks like someone beat me to collecting them
all.
posted by LD Feral at 11:21 AM PST - 19 comments
She's an animator who loves poetry.
He's a poet who loves animation.
Their collaboration, along with the help of many other animators and poets,
has resulted in a storm of
Motionpoems.
(More on vimeo & youtube.)posted by carsonb at 10:47 AM PST - 3 comments
Bob Ferry used Google Books to find old magazines that described mechanics, showed pictures and gave descriptions of a 1906 Oldsmobile Model B Runabout so he could build it 100 years later.
Lots of pics and "how to" info at the
article.posted by dbooker at 6:22 AM PST - 10 comments
The McKinsey Global Institute has published "
Internet Matters: The Net's sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity" [70 Page PDF or just the
Summary]. "On average, the Internet contributes 3.4 percent to GDP in the 13 countries covered by the research an amount the size of Spain or Canada in terms of GDP, and growing at a faster rate than that of Brazil... For governments, investments in infrastructure, human capital, financial capital and business environment conditions will help strengthen their Internet supply domestic ecosystems." Found on Marginal Revolution where
Tyler Cowen has a few interesting comments.
posted by Blake at 5:25 AM PST - 8 comments
On May 16, 2011, after one scrubbed attempt, the space shuttle Endeavour set off on her final mission, STS-134. Shuttle commander
Mark Kelly had this to say after receiving a "go" from the launch poll:
On this final flight of space shuttle Endeavour, we want to thank all the tens of thousands of dedicated employees that have put their hands on this incredible ship and dedicated their lives to the space shuttle program. As Americans, we Endeavour to build a better life than the generation before, and we Endeavour to be a united nation. In these efforts, we are often tested. This mission represents the power of teamwork, commitment, and exploration. It is in the DNA of our great country to reach for the stars and explore; we must not stop. To all the millions watching today, including our spouses, children, family, and friends, we thank you for your support.
You've seen launches before, but NASA has uploaded a whole slew of angles that will truly amaze:
Witness 4.4 million pounds of shuttle, fuel, and rocket boosters "twang" a full 18 inches as the main engines ignite. 1.2 million pounds of thrust push against a locked down stack, waiting for the solid rocket boosters to ignite. (The SRBs bring the total to 7 million lbs of thrust, enough to break all that binds her to the pad.)
OTV Camera 71, a fantastic, short close-up.
UCS-15 (TV-21A) provides a dead-on, close up shot of the launch. The
South Beach Tracker shot offers a fantastic view as well. From 3.1 miles away at the
Press Site, note the ~11 second delay before the piercing sound of the SRBs hits. And just released today,
fantastic footage from the solid rocket boosters, including their trip to splashdown in the Atlantic ocean from 30 miles up. And finally,
the classic NASA view, with some great data overlays by
Spacevidcast.
[more inside]posted by disillusioned at 2:23 AM PST - 40 comments
Supernova Sonata by Alex Parker From April, 2003 until August, 2006, the
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope watched four parts of the sky as often as possible. Armed with the largest digital camera in the known universe, CFHT monitored these four fields for a special type of
supernova (called Type Ia) which are created by the thermonuclear detonation of one or more
white-dwarf stars. Each supernova is assigned a note to be played:
The volume of the note is determined by the distance to the supernova, with more distant supernova being quieter and fainter.
The pitch of the note was determined by the supernova’s “stretch,” a property of how the supernova brightens and fades. Higher stretch values played higher notes. The pitches were drawn from a
Phrygian dominant scale.
The instrument the note was played on was determined by the properties of the galaxy which hosted each supernova. Supernovae hosted by massive galaxies are played with a stand-up bass, while supernovae hosted by less massive galaxies are played with a grand piano.
posted by ThenCameNow at 12:09 AM PST - 10 comments
May 25
The
unearthly counter
tenor of
Alfred Deller,
and the Deller Consort. "The most visible icon of the
countertenor revival in the twentieth century was
Alfred Deller, an English singer and champion of authentic early music performance. Deller initially called himself an "alto", but his collaborator Michael Tippett recommended the archaic term "countertenor" to describe his voice. In the 1950s and 60s, his group, the
Deller Consort, was important in increasing audiences' awareness (and appreciation) of Renaissance and Baroque music. Deller was the first modern countertenor to achieve fame, and has had many prominent successors." And here in a 4 part interview "on the countertenor voice!"
1 ::
2 ::
3 ::
4posted by puny human at 9:43 PM PST - 12 comments
This is not an attempt to tweet mindlessly the entire contents of Ulysses
, word-for-word, 140 characters at a time. That would be dull and impossible. What is proposed here is a recasting or a reimagining of the reading experience of this novel, start to finish, within the confines of a day-long series of tweets from a global volunteer army of Joyce-sodden tweeps. (previously!)posted by Trurl at 8:03 PM PST - 17 comments
Prison administrators in China have found a new use for forced prison labour:
gold-farming operations, in which prisoners play multiplayer games for hours on end, handing over the gold they acquire to the guards, who sell it online for real money.
posted by acb at 2:00 PM PST - 93 comments
Theta Music Trainer — Train your ear with fun music games. Sharpen your sense of pitch and tone. Unlock the hidden patterns in music. Strengthen your music theory skills.
posted by netbros at 12:48 PM PST - 13 comments
What follows is a D.I.Y. cooking starter kit: small kitchen projects that any cook can tackle. What they all have in common is that they are simple, season-less and a clear improvement on the store-bought version. Includes: Chinese Chili-Scallion Oil, Chocolate-Hazelnut Paste, Corn Muffin Mix, Crème Fraîche, Cultured Butter, Fresh Cheese, Horseradish Beer, Mustard, Kimchi ,Maple Vinegar, Preserved Lemons, Tesa (Cold-Cured Pork Belly), Tomato Chili Jam, Vin d'Orange
posted by AceRock at 12:31 PM PST - 43 comments
Atari Teenage Riot is the
sound of punk, breakbeat and glitchy electronics, with a message behind the noise, something of the modern version of
a riot set to music. The German group was
briefly associated with the Phonogram record label back in 1993, but only long enough
get a record deal with an unrecoupable advance, piss off the label, cut those ties and form their own new label:
Digital Hardcore Recordings. From there, the group made three albums and about a dozen singles and EPs, toured the world, then went quiet in 2000. That is, until last year when
the group reformed to tour, and the revised cast of characters recorded a new album, which is
streaming online. Step inside for more history and noise.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 11:59 AM PST - 45 comments
Have you always longed for a comprehensive list of the shit Kiwis are really into? No, neither have we. Here it is anyway. Kiwianaramaposted by midnightbarber at 7:59 AM PST - 25 comments
On April 12th, prior to the Alabama outbreak and about 6 weeks before a tornado tore through the middle of mostly basement-less Joplin, MO, Colleen Bogener wrote a
short editorial on the need for public storm shelters in Joplin. There was a short bit of discussion in response.
posted by spock at 7:49 AM PST - 71 comments
Milton Glaser on fear of failure "This is the way to professional accomplishment: You have to demonstrate that you know something unique that you can repeat over and over and over, until ultimately you lose interest in it. The consequence of specialization and success is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it doesn't aid in your development. The truth of the matter is that understanding development comes from failure."
[more inside]posted by heatherann at 5:49 AM PST - 30 comments
Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes. Laura Milkins is walking home. Home is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Laura lives in Tucson, Arizona. That's 2,000 miles (3,219 km), or about 4,473,976 steps. Right now she's in the shoulder of the road somewhere around Holbrook, Arizona. She has a pack on her back, a
webcam streaming 24 hours strapped to a sun visor on her head, and hopefully, a place to stay tonight. You can follow her every step of the way, by watching live video broadcast from her hat.
Or
walk with her.
[more inside]posted by Tufa at 12:41 AM PST - 26 comments
May 24
Safe Ground is an organization of Sacramento's homeless population to claim a secure location in order to live decently. While resistance to tent cities (
previously,
2,
3) has largely been due to political expediency (criminalizing homelessness is easier than ending it),
a spot on Oprah brought media attention to the plight of the homeless and made it more difficult for police to bully them from place to place with the threat of jail. In response to this,
Costa Mantis(of
He Knows You're Alone fame [uncredited on the wiki]) started filming the personal stories of the homeless along the American River in Sacramento. This led to
Searching for Safe Ground, a miniseries concerning the struggle of Sacramento's homeless for a place to exist.
Incidentally, a federal jury ruled tonight that the city of Sacramento has been violating homeless people's constitutional rights by moving them from public property and confiscating their property.
Stay tuned.
posted by Wyatt at 9:37 PM PST - 15 comments
Long before the Web, The Boston Globe had a “homepage” of sorts – its old storefront downtown. Taking advantage of its location in a heavily trafficked block of Newspaper Row, the young daily brought the news to Bostonians in a whole new way: handwritten signs.posted by Trurl at 7:10 PM PST - 8 comments
Camp Cranky is a virtual sleepaway camp intended by its creators, actors Liane Balaban and Vanessa Matsui, to be a safe space for young girls to
hear personal
stories about first periods, learn about the biology of menstruation, read
poems about periods (musician Leslie Feist and actress Emma Thompson each contribute), and learn about various menstrual products. Readers can also donate to
Huru International, which sends menstrual supplies to girls in need in Kenya. Camp Cranky is the first phase in what will eventually be
Crankytown [the name comes from a Feist poem], a site where women of all ages can discuss menstruation and menopause. The project is a part of the National Film Board and Studio XX's
First Person Digital Program.
[more inside]posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:44 PM PST - 40 comments
It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he is not a “suspect” but the “decider” who gave the orders to invade Iraq -- that is, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country and the national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.
There is Much More to Say by Noam Chomsky.
posted by klue at 10:22 AM PST - 463 comments
For the past year, director Stephen Soderbergh
has been recording and sharing a list of the books that he has read, and films that he has watched. The writers at Flavorwire noted Soderbergh's decision to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark in black & white three times, and have
compiled a list of color films that work better in monochrome.
[more inside]posted by schmod at 10:00 AM PST - 59 comments
Cities as Software is an article by Marcus Westbury about Renew Newcastle's low-budget, DIY model for renewing urban spaces. "...You need to start by rewriting – or hacking – the software to change not what the city is but how it behaves."
[more inside]posted by oulipian at 9:09 AM PST - 38 comments
I’d always dismissed the idea of human trafficking in the United States. I’m Indian, and when I went to Mumbai and saw children sold openly, I wondered, Why isn’t anything being done about it? But now I know—it’s no different here. I never would have believed it, but I’ve seen it.posted by AceRock at 8:55 AM PST - 97 comments
I Feel Better: A brief rotoscoped video for the song by the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit, in which a real-life HUD and an infinite number of parallel universes conspire to help our hero get motivated. [SLYT]
posted by jbickers at 7:39 AM PST - 19 comments
In 2009,
Ctrl.Alt.Shift, the "youth
initiative of Christian Aid," held a national competition in the UK for aspiring filmmakers aged 18 to 25. Their mission: create a short film treatment based around three key issues: "War + Peace," "Gender + Power" and "HIV + Stigma." The results were then screened to an audience at the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. The films:
1000 Voices,
HIV: The Musical,
Man Made,
No Way Through and
War School.
(All YouTube links. Vimeo links and descriptions of each film are inside this post.) These films deal with adult subject matter and may be disturbing for some viewers. Some may also be nsfw. [more inside]posted by zarq at 7:17 AM PST - 3 comments
May 23
“According to Leanne Payne’s 1985 classic
Crisis in Masculinity, the main reason men become gay is because they’ve lost touch with their masculinity. This causes a void in their souls, which they then attempt to fill with other men’s dicks. To rectify this situation, I gave my life
a full heterosexual makeover . . .”
posted by Houyhnhnm at 1:22 PM PST - 92 comments
Microsoft Mathematics is a free
Computer Algebra System (CAS) available from Microsoft. A
CAS is a program that can solve purely symbolic mathematical equations. For example, the program can tell you that the derivative of 6x^2 + 12x is 12x + 12. The program has functions for calculus, statistics, linear algebra, and graphing. One interesting feature of the program is that in some cases it can show and describe the intermediate steps involved in solving an equation. Here’s a
16 page tutorial (in MS Word docx format) showing how to use the program. The program can be downloaded from the
Microsoft download page. Thirty-two and sixty-four bit versions are available. The program only works on XP/Vista/Windows 7.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 11:35 AM PST - 56 comments
Grand Prix - the Killer Years A BBC documentary on how rapidly evolving technology and an indifference to driver safety on the part of car designers and track owners caused ever-escalating casualties among the top-tier drivers of the '60s and '70s, and the efforts of the drivers to introduce modern safety standards and rules. The footage is in places exhilarating, capturing the beauty and the excitement of the sport at its best, and in others horrifying and tragic, the sport at its worst.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:29 AM PST - 76 comments
"
Challenge: Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a 'new classic,' like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years.
Prize: $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012."
Daniel Solis'
Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge.
[more inside]posted by bayani at 10:45 AM PST - 61 comments
Joseph Brooks was a writer of commercial jingles in the 60's. He went on to write and direct the film
You Light Up My Life in 1977; the film was a critical flop but a commercial success, and the title song went on to win an Oscar and become an adult contemporary standard. He later wrote the book and music for, and direct the stage musical
In My Life (nyt), which flopped famously in 2005 amidst
reactions of bewilderment. In 2009, he was
indicted on charges(nyt) of luring at least 11 actresses across the country to his Manhattan apartment and raping them. He was
found dead yesterday of a suicide while awaiting trial.
posted by mkultra at 10:32 AM PST - 30 comments
While not being an outright example of a clash of civilizations in the Huntingtonian sense, elements of cultural misunderstanding and fears about the system-challenging tendencies of Iran do affect Western perceptions and influence Western behavior toward Iran. Furthermore, these kinds of reciprocal identity-based fears and projections of the other side’s presumed malevolent intentions tend to be mutually reinforcing. The risk is that they eventually become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Iran and the West - Regional Interests and Global Controversies [PDF].
[more inside]posted by klue at 10:05 AM PST - 4 comments
The details are hazy, but somewhere outside of Toronto in the winter of 2004, on a stretch of highway near the U.S. border, a computer onboard a large bus spontaneously combusted. Some point the finger at the driver, others blame a faulty battery. Whatever the cause, Themselves and the Notwist were stranded. Gigs were cancelled. Meals were skipped. Shady motels were booked in below-freezing weather. It was the fifth breakdown of the tour, and despite those frustrations, a minor language barrier and the unfamiliar terrain, a cross-continental brotherhood was forged. Seven years later, the megagroup
13 & God have two albums, a live CD and and an EP as proof of that fateful tour. Join
Doseone for
a track-by-track commentary of their new album, and listen to the album,
streaming on Soundcloud.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:29 AM PST - 12 comments
In 2009, Jon Gosselin was offered $365,000 for interviews: how reality stars, celebrity parents and rehab workers
make money selling gossip to celebrity websites and TV shows.
posted by Georgina at 3:45 AM PST - 38 comments
May 22
Parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker welcomed their third baby into the world this year, but t
hey won't tell anyone whether Storm is a boy or a girl. “We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share,” says Witterick Storm's brothers, Jazz and Kio are also encouraged to wear their hair however they wish, and pick out clothing they like.
[more inside]posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:55 PM PST - 334 comments
"Beat the Devil" went straight from box office flop to cult classic and has been called the first camp movie, although Bogart, who sank his own money into it, said, "Only phonies like it." It's a movie that was made up on the spot; Huston tore up the original screenplay on the first day of filming, flew the young Truman Capote to Ravallo, Italy, to crank out new scenes against a daily deadline and allowed his supporting stars, especially Robert Morley and Peter Lorre, to create dialogue for their own characters. (Capote spoke daily by telephone with his pet raven, and one day when the raven refused to answer he flew to Rome to console it, further delaying the production.) -
Roger Ebert's Great Moviesposted by Trurl at 1:51 PM PST - 21 comments
Work Sharing - "Work-sharing schemes, in many different forms, are becoming the norm in Holland and Denmark, and have made inroads in France and Germany. The key element in any such approach is to separate work from income.
[more inside]posted by kliuless at 1:49 PM PST - 25 comments
wow, high level play from both players here, really close. the cookie chains were knit tight, like yarn in a yoshi sweater. on the sweater, yoshi is eating a cookie. absent-mindedness or perhaps careful alteration of the "Yoshi Eats Cookie Sweater" pattern makes yoshi take on a more pensive expression, looking at the viewer with a pensiveness that reflects the lives of the men lost in gycl06, like a puddle of water in a battlefield, opaque with blood and mud, its glory hours long passed. A video, with commentary, of the Yoshi Cookie Eastern Conference Finals. SLYT.
posted by codacorolla at 11:08 AM PST - 41 comments
May 21
Overlooked '90s Indie Pop:
The Cat's Miaow, whose single sentence wiki describes them as... "an indie pop band formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1992." And
Madison Electric, a band from Ann Arbor that played one show in a church basement before going their separate ways.
posted by puny human at 7:15 PM PST - 26 comments
Hambuster: when your lunch goes berserk. Vimeo; Warning, funny, violent, and gory as Hell, so maybe NSFW. Also available in 3D.
[more inside]posted by bwg at 5:54 PM PST - 18 comments
Earlier this week, the Republicans in the Minnesota House of Representatives
asked Bradlee Dean to give the morning prayer.
[more inside]posted by jiawen at 1:47 PM PST - 80 comments
Through purchasing Viagra, herbal remedies, and replica watches, computer scientists explain how modern spam works. The spam business model consists of three components: advertising, click support (i.e., delivering the customer to an actual website), and realization (i.e., receiving payment and delivering the product to the customer). Different firms located across the globe carry out the various tasks. For example, the website domains are registered in Russia, the credit card payments are handled by banks in Azerbaijan, and the pills are sent from manufacturers in India. The spam business infrastructure appears to be organized around a small number of affiliate programs that coordinate the activities among the different firms.
Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain (A 16 page PDF). [
via]
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:42 AM PST - 31 comments
School official squirms as he attempts to define transparency. The best part is when he informs the reporter that the process of handing over a public school to a for-profit company will become transparent after all of the decisions have been made and the contracts signed.
posted by Seymour Zamboni at 5:37 AM PST - 35 comments
May 20
A bridge builder, a student of how societies hold together; an advocate of dialogue. Standing against polarized and simplistic styles of thought. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor is Canada's best known and most widely read contemporary thinker. In books like Sources of the Self and A Secular Age, he has attempted to define the unique character of the modern age. He maps the fault-lines in our modern identity, and points to both the pitfalls and the promise of our condition. Learn about his life, history, upbringing, and... ideas.
Now available, CBC
IDEAS in five one-hour parts: the malaise of modernity (this special program has the same title as the 1991 Massey Lecture of the same name, but is not the same [MP3's, get them now, they will go away, and then you can only stream them]).
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Five.
[more inside]posted by infinite intimation at 11:15 PM PST - 4 comments
Mari-Kari Fun and somewhat gorey 8 (short) part animated tale of twins, one living, the other.... not so much. Starring the voice of Shannen Doherty
[more inside]posted by Redhush at 5:26 PM PST - 1 comments
Infinity Blade is an
iOS game available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It is typically seen as a send-up of the classic game
Punch-Out!! mashed up with
roleplaying game conventions such as experience points and character-modifying equipment. Its defining trait is that it relies upon
new game+ to advance your character (actually your character's family/bloodline) and the story.
J. Nicholas Geist over at
Kill Screen has written
a review to match the game.
posted by curious nu at 1:45 PM PST - 43 comments
A-month-behind-the-times-filter:
Tubecrush is a website that lets people upload pictures of attractive men they've seen on the Tube (i.e., the
London Underground, for the benefit of nonUKians), along with varying degrees of lechery. It came to wider attention the middle of last month when the Evening Standard ran a
fairly lighthearted fluff piece on it, but there are
some who
believe that this is at least slightly unkosher not only for its instrusiveness, but also because they suggest its reception has been somewhat smoother than would be the case if it encouraged taking similar pictures of women on the tube. Others
offer the thought that ogling different genders is given different contexts by societal attitudes to gender, and that, therefore, its all a bit more OK than it seems. Others still prefer to
examine it through the lens of art history.
posted by Dim Siawns at 9:30 AM PST - 104 comments
On one level
America reCycled is simply the journal of two brothers riding recycled bicycles across the United States and meeting people. Lots of them. On another level it is a Homeric tale of an American adventure. It has been a long time since I have seen web content of this quality. The writing is superb, the videos so compelling you can't look away and the perspective gained is invaluable. I am positive this has been posted here before, but it certainly deserves a bump.
posted by dbooker at 7:22 AM PST - 10 comments
According to recent studies, arguing on the internet is now the second most popular leisure activity in the world, just below shopping and just above sex. But how many of those who spend half their lives debating God versus Atheism or Climate Change on a message board or blog really know how to win
those arguments? Now, for the first time, anonymous internet guru Noseybonk reveals the ploys, tactics and strategems of Blogmanship: the art of winning arguments on the internet without really knowing what you are talking about. Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:57 AM PST - 67 comments
The Unexplained (subtitled Mysteries of Mind, Space, & Time) was a popular
partwork magazine that came out in the UK in the early 80s. It explored various Fortean phenomenal like UFOs, ghosts and spontaneous human combustion but also scientific 'mysteries' such as black holes.
[more inside]posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:28 AM PST - 6 comments
Croatian software developer and amateur image processor
Gordan Ugarković takes images from NASA's unmanned space probes released to the
Planetary Data System, splices them together and tweaks the colors, sometimes combining higher resolution black and white images with color images, sometimes recreating what the object would look like in natural color (ie, in visible wavelengths, from images taken in multiple wavelengths), sometimes heightening the contrast to bring out detail. (
via)
[more inside]posted by nangar at 1:07 AM PST - 7 comments
May 19
Halló humans on the Inter-net. My name is Iceland. I am an island, full of mountains and glaciers and hot water and sheep and many nice Icelandic people, who like to make music, and who are sometimes cold. (Maybe you have seen me on your tele-visions, or your Inter-net.) I have heard that many humans use the Inter-net to make friends, and to talk about themselves. I decided to do this, too.
Iceland wants to be your friend. [more inside]posted by carsonb at 5:17 PM PST - 57 comments
He told me his gorilla suit had been taken by his landlady in Pensacola, Florida because he could not pay his back rent. She kept his trunk with all his possessions as well. So his movie days were over...
A brief, thoughtful recollection of the last days of the elusive
Emil Van Horn, who, with pioneers like
Charles Gemora,
Ray "Crash" Corrigan,
Steve Calvert,
George Barrows,
Janos Prohaska, and
Bob Burns, established the
golden age of
Hollywood gorilla men.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 4:36 PM PST - 7 comments
"
Harold Camping, 89-year-old leader of the ministry
Family Radio Worldwide,
has predicted that a five-month destruction of humanity will commence Saturday with a Rapture, in which believers will ascend to heaven. 'Whereas this five-month period will be an enormous horror story for those who have not been raptured, it will be a time of great joy and wonder for those who are raptured,' according to the Family Radio website. Camping
uses a mathematical formula linked to prophecies in the Bible. He once predicted Sept. 6, 1994 as Judgment Day, but that math didn't quite work out. This time around, Camping's organization took out an ad in Reader's Digest, stating: 'The Bible guarantees the end of the world will begin with Judgment Day May 21, 2011.'"
* [more inside]posted by ericb at 1:43 PM PST - 437 comments
From
1967 to 1976, the
American Basketball Association delivered
wild, raw, above-the-rim hoops that few ever saw (lacking TV broadcasts). They introduced the 3-point shot and
slam-dunk contests (along with a red, white and blue ball, short shorts and
big afros), brought pro ball to the American South, and launched the careers of
Connie (the
Hawk)
Hawkins,
Bob Costas,
George Gervin,
Fly Williams,
David Thompson and
a guy named
Julius Erving. You know,
Doctor J.
[more inside]posted by msalt at 11:55 AM PST - 16 comments
Unusually for a spring season, gasoline prices
have been steadily climbing in the US since the beginning of 2011, and have surpassed $4/gallon in many US states, largely due to
political instability in many oil-producing African and Middle-Eastern nations.
"Not so fast," says the Department of Energy. Although the price of crude oil has climbed steadily throughout the year, the price of gasoline has climbed much faster -- a disparity known as the
crack spread, which
has remained at its highest level in 32 months, even in light of a sharp decline in the price of crude oil at the beginning of the month. The DoE speculates that although crude oil is cheap and plentiful enough, the
2011 Misssissippi River Floods are currently more to blame for $4 gas than the uprisings in the Middle East.
posted by schmod at 11:41 AM PST - 125 comments
Slate magazine has posted an excerpt from Brooke Gladstone's "
The Influencing Machine." It's a reflection on the media done in quasi-comic book form and illustrated by Josh Neufeld. The fairly beefy excerpt is an interesting discussion on the concept, and the history of the concept, of Objectivity.
posted by Trochanter at 10:46 AM PST - 7 comments
Born into War. In 1863, a 3 yr old John J. Pershing was
pinned to the floor by his mother to protect him from confederate raiders. In 1886, he left West Point for the western frontier, having been elected class president four years in a row. In 1890 he was
present at the Wounded Knee Massacre. In 1898 he
fought with Buffalo Soldiers in Cuba, commanding a black cavalry regiment at San Juan Hill. From 1898 to 1901 he was
fighting Philippine insurgents. In 1905 he served as an
observer in the Russo-Japanese War, arguably the first "modern" war. In 1906 Teddy Roosevelt
promoted him to Brigadier General, skipping over
862 senior officers. In 1916 he was
hunting Poncho Villa in Mexico. In 1917, Pershing was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Entire
American Expeditionary Force of WW1, in which he built an army almost from scratch, organizing, training, and supplying an inexperienced force that eventually numbered two million. 1919 saw Pershing promoted to the highest U.S. Army rank in history, "
General of the Armies", a position held previously by George Washington. Pershing lived to see Allied Victory before
his death in 1948.
posted by thisisdrew at 8:54 AM PST - 41 comments
"Sometimes less," he says cheerfully. "Sometimes I get two hours. Someone comes over at three, we have a cup of tea, chew the cud for a bit, go: 'All right, shall we write a song?' And by six, they've gone home and we've done it. Chasing Pavements, that took two or three hours." The life of today's pro songwriter.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:46 AM PST - 55 comments
May 18
"Reading a novel of punishing difficulty and length is a version of climbing Everest for people who prefer not to leave the house. And people who climb Everest don’t howl with exhilaration at the summit because the mountain was a good or a well made or an interesting mountain per se, but because they’re overawed at themselves for having done such a fantastically difficult thing." Mark O'Connell writes about
how he overcame his fear of reading very long novels.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:05 PM PST - 83 comments
Like most game companies, Square Enix records every significant activity that occurs in their online environments. Jim Blackhurst took a database of "terminal impact events" in
Just Cause 2 and mapped each of the 11 million player deaths to to the geography of the game to create
a haunting visualization.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:48 PM PST - 27 comments
Charles Barkley on homophobia in sports It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say: ‘Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.’ First of all, quit telling me what I think. I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.”posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:57 AM PST - 85 comments
Anger, Politics and the Wisdom of Uncertainty - "If there's somebody or even some institution to blame, it turns out people are much more likely to get angry... anger tends to inspire individuals to engage in more political activities than they would otherwise... Without someone to blame, respondents mostly just grow fearful and anxious... A particular danger of anger seems to be closed-mindedness. Research finds that when citizens get angry, they close themselves off to alternative views and redouble their sense of conviction in their existing views. Fear and anxiety, on the other hand, seem to promote openness to alternative viewpoints and a willingness to compromise." (
via)
[more inside]posted by kliuless at 9:06 AM PST - 18 comments
Christophe Huet and other talented artists at the
Asile studio in Paris produce amazingly lifelike and realistic CGI and photomanipulated creations. (Flash and audio, but the music, also created by Huet, is lovely.) Some images NSFW.
posted by Gator at 8:21 AM PST - 6 comments
May 17
David Mamet, playwright and screenwriter has completed his migration to the right of the political spectrum. The Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson writes about it in "
Converting Mamet."
posted by Trochanter at 11:09 PM PST - 145 comments
How “secure” do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?
Supreme Court OKs More
Warrantless Searches [more inside]posted by AceRock at 12:37 PM PST - 305 comments
I Knew It Was You: Before his tragically early death from lung cancer at the age of 42, John Cazale acted in only five films -- The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part Two, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter -- and each was nominated for Best Picture. Yet today most people don't even know his name. I KNEW IT WAS YOU is a fresh tour through his movies which helped define a generation. With Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Francis Ford Coppola, Sydney Lumet and Steve Buscemi. (documentary, 39mins)
posted by puny human at 12:13 PM PST - 25 comments
The entirety of
Brad Neely's unauthorized redubbing of the first
Harry Potter movie,
Wizard People, Dear Reader, is available in its entirety on Youtube (
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 & 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35). Surreal, excessive, goofy, and at times oddly poetic, it tells the story of "Harry, the near-perfect new god", and his sidekicks Ronny the Bear and the Wretched Harmony (who has "complex on top of complex"), as they explore the world of wizardry while avoiding the cruel she-professor Snake and the dreaded vampire tattoo-maker Valmart. If you'd like to read along,
a full script is available here. "Well, bless my nippers! Bless them all day long."
(Previously, but the last post required you to burn WPDR to CD and play it along with the movie; now the entire thing is streaming online)posted by Rory Marinich at 9:15 AM PST - 106 comments
The Higher Education (Debt) Bubble - "[H]igh and increasing college costs mean students need to take out more loans, more loans mean more securities lenders can package and sell, more selling means lenders can offer more loans with the capital they raise, which means colleges can continue to raise costs. The result is over $800 billion in outstanding student debt, over 30 percent of it securitized, and the federal government directly or indirectly on the hook for almost all of it. If this sounds familiar, it probably should...
[more inside]posted by kliuless at 9:00 AM PST - 185 comments
This week, Rockstar Games released
L. A. Noire, a video game that's--perhaps not unusual for a Rockstar game--getting
stellar reviews. One review, and one reviewer in particular, though stands out. Carolyn Petit, a new member of the staff at
GameSpot, made her video game review
debut yesterday. Carolyn is
transgender.
Note: if you're not a GameSpot member, you'll have to do an age check on the video [more inside]posted by PapaLobo at 8:13 AM PST - 117 comments
Fresh on the heels of Lockheed Martin's
delivery of the first production F-35 to the USAF, you might be wondering how much it actually costs. It depends on who you ask.
Blackfive takes a
crack at it, prompting a rather
snippy response from Bill Sweetman over at Ares. Throw in
additional commentary and a
rebuttal, and head down the rabbit hole into the wonderful world of defense acquisition.
posted by kjars at 6:58 AM PST - 94 comments
May 16
As a part of their new open access policy, Yale is releasing their vast digital images collection for
free. Although it will take years to upload everything, the online collection is starting with 250,000 images.
A sampling includes original Mozart manuscripts, maps from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and John Trumbull's iconic Declaration of Independence.
[more inside]posted by thebestsophist at 7:08 PM PST - 15 comments
A Call for Change. In an eloquent and thoughtful letter on the Tegan and Sara website, Sara Quin asks "When will misogynistic and homophobic ranting and raving result in meaningful repercussions in the entertainment industry?" Tyler the Creator, the object of her ire, responds on his twitter feed in
characteristic fashion.
posted by joannemullen at 4:31 PM PST - 150 comments
"The handover to a new president and premier has generated plenty of speculation in the press, about who the leaders are and what is will all mean, but sometimes it’s useful to go back and fill in the very basics, since China has a unique and in some ways quite confusing political system." A Primer on China's Leadership Transition. [via]posted by spiderskull at 3:51 PM PST - 5 comments
Famous physicist
Stephen Hawking calls the notion of heaven a "fairy story" in an
interview with
The Guardian newspaper published today. He made the comment in response to a question about his fears of death.
"'I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,' he told the newspaper. 'I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people who are afraid of the dark.'"*
[more inside]posted by ericb at 2:27 PM PST - 496 comments
In such a world maximalism and encyclopedism, erudite puzzle solving, simply feel like more of the same, and the last thing we need is more of the same. We need less, much less: we don't need fiction that cultivates the general noise in a slightly more erudite way but still plays by the same rules; we need fiction that strips its way down to our nerves and fibers, simulations that are willing to cut enough of our context away to let us step outside of our own increasingly simulated experience and to see it afresh, from without.—
Brian Evenson, "Doing Without," an essay in The Collagist
(could also be titled "How a mistake in the digital conversion of a Cory Doctorow novel [see difference between print and electronic version] made me think about the meaning of innovative literature") [more inside]posted by jng at 2:20 PM PST - 10 comments
"I felt comforted by the fact that like everyone I've reconnected with on Facebook, he'd gotten fat, and by the banality of his listed interests like "Bob Marley" and "Scrubs." He was a monster in my memory, but on Facebook, he was just a man.
I called him."
posted by black rainbows at 2:14 PM PST - 141 comments
Stealth social marketing: CBC’s
Spark radio show and podcast interviews a social marketer who describes the lengths to which advertisers will go to make you believe the “friends” who mention a product really are your friends. Includes everything from use of regional slang to hiring a stripper. (Bonus points for the segment’s Deep Throat–style concealment of the identity of the source.)
Spark blog with Flash audio player;
direct MP3 download.
[more inside]posted by joeclark at 1:13 PM PST - 17 comments
Universal Horror: history of the early horror films made by Universal Studios such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, King Kong, The Mummy and many more. Directed by
Kevin Brownlow. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh.
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7posted by puny human at 10:14 AM PST - 13 comments
Chester Brown's autobiographical works such as
I Never Liked You (1.3 MB PDF) placed #38 on
The Comics Journal's
list of the 100 Best Comics of the 20th Century. In his new graphic novel,
Paying For It, he "calmly lays out the facts of how he became not only a willing participant in but also a vocal proponent of one of the world's most hot-button topics--
prostitution".
posted by Trurl at 9:00 AM PST - 46 comments
Flottille by Etienne Cliquet. Exquisite moving origami powered by the capillary action of the paper.
posted by Plutor at 8:12 AM PST - 17 comments
24 year old Olympic marathon champion Sammy Wanjiru
died yesterday in Nyahururu, Kenya after "falling" from a balcony.
Sammy set a world record for the half marathon of 58:53 in the United Arab Emirates in 2007, only to best it again two months later in the Netherlands, with a 58:35. He won five marathons, setting an Olympic record of 2:06:32 in 2008, and a personal best of 2:05:10 in London in 2009. He might be best remembered for his
dramatic win in Chicago in 2010.
[more inside]posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:49 AM PST - 28 comments
May 15
Kids know that the best toys are the ones you make from stuff that's lying around. Arvind Gupta's been doing this for three decades. Take a look at his
Turbine bottle cap,
Helicopter foam cup,
Drinking straw flute,
The CD hovercraft,
Magic Paper Fan,
Funny Fountain,
Drinking Straw Centrifuge Pump,
Climbing Butterfly.
Or check out the rest of his
1000 videos(!). Go to
his website and discover an armload of books and pamphlets describing more toys (some of them classic) along with science experiments, math activities and stories. A sample:
The amazing
Touching Slate, a drawing toy for blind children.
Hands On - Science Sense,
Hands On - Ideas and activities,
Toy Joy,
Little Science,
The Toy Bag,
Toy Treasures.
Little Toys
,
Finally you can hear
Arvind in person at TED.com giving career advice, showing off a dozen toy examples, demonstrating the structure of methane; telling a Large Hadron Collider joke and finishing with the wonderful "Captain's hat" story.
[more inside]posted by storybored at 10:09 PM PST - 30 comments
“Watching the video I thought that it was wise of Major League Baseball to combine this sort of sentimental moment with mass speculative litigation. It kept brand values strong. I felt strangely
grateful that I could have a moment to remember that afternoon. Surprised by the evidence of both copyright violation and father-daughter affection.” —Paul Ford,
“Nanolaw with Daughter” [more inside]posted by kipmanley at 9:43 PM PST - 26 comments
On Story is a new series which takes a look at the creative process of filmmaking through the eyes of some of the entertainment industry's most prolific writers, directors and producers. Each episode will also showcase short films from the region's most promising filmmakers.
posted by dobbs at 6:39 PM PST - 1 comments
Produced by
a pair of Vaudeville comedians just as the Vaudville era was era was coming to a close, the musical revue
Hellzapoppin' became a runaway smash hit, and for a time, was the longest running show on Broadway.
It was a crazy quilt of frequently updated comedy and musical bits stitched together, featuring risque humor, fourth-wall breaking audience participation, skits abandoned halfway through, dwarfs, pigeons, clowns and Adolph Hitler with a Yiddish accent.
[more inside]posted by empath at 4:37 PM PST - 20 comments
DetroitTechno.org presents a documentary (
1 2 3) about the history and politics of techno with a focus on the
Detroit Electronic Music Festival, now called
Movement, from its inception in 2000 until the most recent one in 2010.
[more inside]posted by gman at 8:04 AM PST - 26 comments
May 14
The opening of the Morganza spillway on May 14 by the U.S. Corps of Engineers is not only a tacit admission of the severity of the river control problems the spring 2011 flood of the Mississippi River is creating, but also one of the last remaining measures the Corps has for protecting the
Old River Control Structure, which has prevented the Mississippi from naturally diverting its main channel through the shorter, steeper Atchafalaya River channel, since construction of the control structure in the late 1960's. If the Old River Control Structure fails (as it nearly did in the 1973 floods), or the river overwhelms other nearby levees north or south of the Morganza spillway/ORCS, the main channel of the Mississippi could suddenly shift westward by about 100 miles, bypassing New Orleans and the current lower delta, with
severe long term effects for the U.S. economy.
[more inside]posted by paulsc at 11:35 PM PST - 148 comments
Who is
Reflex Responses Management Consultancy LLC? Only "the Premier Security Consultant and Training supplier for the United Arab Emirates," of course. Frequently referred to as R2, the company specializes in nuclear facility security, special-forces operations, revolt quelling, cybersecurity, and (somehow) protecting the U.A.E from Iran with one battalion of foreign mercenaries. Oh, and it's
led by Erik Prince, formerly of Blackwater (now Xe).
[more inside]posted by postel's law at 8:54 PM PST - 19 comments
The Surprisingly Undetestable Birth of TGI Friday's In 1965, a young Manhattanite just “looking to meet girls” added some sawdust, fake Tiffany lamps and a coat of blue blue paint to the $5000 bar that became, nearly immediately, NY's first and most popular singles bar, and eventually, the progenitor of one of the US's most popular restaurants.
posted by Plemer at 1:57 PM PST - 59 comments
The Lazarus File. "In 1986, a young nurse named Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in Los Angeles. Police pinned down no suspects, and the case gradually went cold. It took 23 years—and revolutionary breakthroughs in forensic science—before LAPD detectives could finally assemble the pieces of the puzzle. When they did, they found themselves facing one of the unlikeliest murder suspects in the city’s history." [more inside]posted by zarq at 12:03 PM PST - 60 comments
Reconsidering Fukuyama - "In 2004 he became the first of the card-carrying neocons to break ranks and oppose the Iraq War; in 2006 he published a comprehensive history and critique of the neoconservative movement; in 2009 he skewered the economics profession at length in his journal The American Interest; earlier this year, he dedicated an issue to a series of essays exploring the emerging American plutocracy... that through their greed they somehow benefit society... He was not being glib: Much of
his new book,
The Origins of Political Order, is devoted to documenting
the struggles of premodern states to draw up sustainable tax codes.
Long before modernity and the spread of democracy, societies that failed to effectively tax their citizenry were the first to shrivel...
[more inside]posted by kliuless at 8:32 AM PST - 33 comments
As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska. Had she stayed true to her record, she might have pointed her party in a very different direction.posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 1:27 AM PST - 79 comments
May 13
PBS's excellent weekly news magazine,
Need to Know,
explains why European broadband speeds are racing ahead of the USA. Britain now has 400 broadband suppliers with service available for as little as $6/month. Bonus: Harvard's Berkman Center
reports on broadband supply trends around the world.
posted by anigbrowl at 11:08 PM PST - 53 comments
The most famous Steinberger design is the L-series instrument... made entirely of the Steinberger Blend, a proprietary graphite and carbon fiber mix in two pieces: the main body and a faceplate. It had no headstock for tuning, tuning instead at a redesigned tailpiece using micrometer-style tuners and special strings with a ball at both ends.posted by Trurl at 7:29 PM PST - 43 comments
If you have had sex in Florida in the last week, technically, you broke the law. Due to some unfortunate wording, Florida's new bestiality law technically outlawed sex between two animals.
"An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices; providing an effective date."
posted by Leisure_Muffin at 6:00 PM PST - 88 comments
It is 2007, and R.P. Salazar is living in Waco, Texas. His email username is rpsalazar. One day an email arrives addressed to another rpsalazar, meant for someone with the same initials and surname but a slightly different email address. He sends it along to the right person, an R.P. Salazar living in Bangkok. Before clicking Send he adds a p.s.: "How's the weather in Bangkok?"
Before the end of 2007, Ruben Salazar and Rachel Salazar are married.
Storycorps and NPR report the whole story. (The text is good, but the audio is even better. Click "Listen to the Story.")
posted by mark7570 at 5:55 PM PST - 21 comments
Reality 86'd. A documentary by David Markey of the last Black Flag tour in 1986. Besides the Flag (Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, Cel Revulta, and Anthony Martinez), the tour lineup also included Painted Willie and Gone, which featured two future members of the Rollins Band. Rollins mentioned the documentary on
Twitter--actually, his
second-ever tweet.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:49 PM PST - 5 comments
“Happy” was the theme we were given by the organizers for this year's F5 Re:Play Fest, held in April in NYC, to create this edition's pieces, probably the hardest thing to convey in any artistic expression. After a good deal of introspection, and teaming up with awesome motion graphics artist Gerardo del Hierro, we decided that happy wasn't happy for Physalia unless pliers, microchips and a bit of soldering were involved, and with this idea we resolved to create the happiest machine Physalia has built to date. [more inside]posted by nickyskye at 4:38 PM PST - 7 comments
10 short, experimental, animated films by Osamu Tezuka, godfather of anime:
Jumping,
Memory,
Push,
Broken Down Film,
Mermaid,
Drop,
Story of a Street Corner,
Genesis,
Muramasa,
Self Portrait. Tezuka is best known in the West for creating Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and the mangas Buddha, Phoenix and Black Jack.
Here is an interview where Tezuka talks about his shorter, experimental films.
posted by Kattullus at 3:32 PM PST - 11 comments
Is Sappho's so called
"Ode to Anactoria" the first literary reference to
limerence? Coined in a
book by psychology professor Dorothy Tennov in 1979 and
soon covered by Time Magazine, limerence involves "intrusive thinking about the object of your passionate desire". Is it just a fancy term for callow infatuation or the unrequited love behind many
great novels and
young suicides? Whatever its reality, or corrosive effect, Tennov believed that central to limerence is "the desire for limerence itself".
posted by joannemullen at 6:07 AM PST - 34 comments
May 12
How to define digital humanities? "
the humanities done digitallys"?
Should we expand the definition of the field to include, as I've heard it said several times, "every medievalist with a Web site"? Undoubtedly not. Yeah, not. Rather,
The particular contribution of the digital humanities, however, lies in its exploration of the difference that the digital can make to the kinds of work that we do, as well as to the ways that we communicate with one another. [more inside]posted by Mngo at 9:22 PM PST - 39 comments
Frederik and Gerrit Braun, energetic twin brothers with no shortage of dreams, have just finished construction of the world’s largest model airport. With 40,000 lights, 15,000 figurines, 500 cars, 10,000 trees, 50 trains, 1000 wagons, 100 signals, 200 switches, 300 buildings and 40 planes, Knuffingen Airport is both a wonder to behold as well as a technological tour de force. The best part of Knuffingen is that it’s alive. Forty planes and 90 vehicles move about autonomously.posted by Trurl at 7:01 PM PST - 26 comments
"If you have basically heard no music, and then you're told to create music, what will it sound like?"
Jon Ronson talks to The Shaggs - the girl group from the 1960s who were home schooled and practised for hours every day in their basement.
posted by ameliaaah at 12:56 PM PST - 220 comments
An NIH clinical trial
has shown that early treatment of HIV with antiretroviral drugs reduces the odds of the virus being transmitted to an uninfected sexual partner by 96%, with only one new HIV case recorded out of the 1,763 couples participating in the trial.
posted by schmod at 12:34 PM PST - 31 comments
Doomsday reloaded. In 1986 the BBC launched an ambitious project to record a snapshot of everyday life across the UK for future generations. A million volunteers took part, and now you can search and view the million photos and written entries.
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar at 12:12 PM PST - 21 comments
Ants are one of the most abundant groups on earth, but, curiously, not a lot of things eat them. Yes, there are anteaters (who also eat a lot of termites), and some lizards specialize on ants, but the little critters are full of noxious chemicals and pheromones that put them way down on the list of predators’ preferred foodstuffs.
Because of this, many other insects and arthropods have evolved to mimic ants, taking advantage of the aversion of predators to anything antlike.
These mimics are called myrmecomorphs, and they’re the subject of a really nice eponymous feature in this week’s Current Biology.
[via]posted by AceRock at 9:25 AM PST - 22 comments
Magnetic core memory reborn is a project by Ben North and Oliver Nash implementing 32 bits of core memory using literal tiny core magnets on the
Arduino board. The history and operation of core memory is explained and diagrammed. The Arduino has over 4,250 times this amount of memory standard.
posted by odinsdream at 7:37 AM PST - 29 comments
May 11
Instant Cinema is a comprehensive platform for experimental film, video and computer art, making the best audio-visual work of artists of all generations available to a worldwide audience. Not a tonne in the
archive just yet--it's still in rough beta--but still some nice viewing. For instance:
Balance Study, or
Trying.
posted by dobbs at 10:52 PM PST - 5 comments
Ghar Aaya Mera Pardesi + Tere Bina Aag Yeh Chandni: Dream sequence from the 1951
Hindi film,
Awara. "The film, generally considered one of
Kapoor's finest, is notable for its darkly surreal sets... and for its remarkable dream sequence, which echoes this architecture in an evocation of heaven and hell. Despite its ultimate vindication of patriarchy and capitalism, the film became an enormous hit in the U.S.S.R. and, thanks to Chairman Mao’s reputed fondness for it, in China (to this day, millions of middle-aged Chinese can hum its title song)." You can view the other musical numbers from the film
here.
posted by puny human at 8:07 PM PST - 9 comments
Coal cares! "Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself."
[more inside]posted by cmoj at 5:43 PM PST - 23 comments
Over the past 30 years, designer, writer and Principal Researcher for Microsoft Research
Bill Buxton has collected input and interactive devices whose designs he found "interesting, useful or important. In the process, he has assembled a good collection of the history of pen computing, pointing devices, touch technologies, as well as an illustration of the nature of how new technologies emerge." This week, he
unveiled his collection at the Computer-Human Interaction conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. An extensive gallery has been posted online with images and notes at
The Buxton Collection.
[more inside]posted by zarq at 9:43 AM PST - 6 comments
Age of the Algorithm. In the age of the algorithm, you can get just about anything you think you want, learn everything you think you need to know, by clicking on a link or typing a few words into a search bar. On SEO, content farms, old media, and 'online sweatshops.' (
From Maisonneuve.)
posted by shakespeherian at 7:23 AM PST - 20 comments
Glamor magazine is encouraging women to talk about relationship violence—both to ask for help and to offer it without judgment. The most important step -
Tell Somebody. [more inside]posted by cashman at 7:10 AM PST - 32 comments
How I invented games, and why not - an essay by game designer Christian Freeling.
Between 1979 and 1986 I invented some fourty abstract games, most of which can be found in the ArenA and the Pit. Dameo, HanniBall, YvY and Symple(x) are exceptions. Dameo's invention in 2000, after an incubation period of fifteen years, took two minutes. The invention of HanniBall and YvY in 2009 and Symple and Lhexus in 2010 were 'live' occurences decribed in a late arrival and a final whisper respectively.
Looking back now, from a safe distance, and with the benefit of hindsight, I'd like to clarify how and why I invented these games, and more specifically why not...posted by Wolfdog at 6:48 AM PST - 5 comments
In the 1940s, he fought Nazis. In the 1950s, he fought the U.S. Civil Service. He's battled the Pentagon, the FBI, the medical establishment, the police, and so on. Generally, he wins. And when he's won, so has the entire gay community.... He coined the phrase ''Gay is Good'' in 1968, when the distance between homosexuality and shame was a very short trip.
He co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1961, one of the nation’s earliest gay rights groups, picketed the White House, and became the first openly gay Congressional candidate when he ran for DC’s House seat in 1971.
Kameny finally got an apology from the government that fired him for being gay. But he didn't get his pension back. And now,
"while his mind is sharp, he has difficulty managing his finances. To be brief, one of our greatest heroes needs help."
So maybe you'd like to
Buy Frank A Drink. (
previously,
previously)
posted by orthogonality at 1:18 AM PST - 13 comments
May 10
Fractals may have become a cliche in modern computer graphics,
but they have a long and rich history in art.
Before anybody even knew Mandelbrot, artists were seeing fractals in nature and transferred the patterns in painting, design and sculpture. Fractals, as you may know, are geometric patterns that are repeated on smaller and smaller scales to produce intricate designs, through self-similarity, described by the Mandelbrot Equation.
posted by Leisure_Muffin at 10:53 PM PST - 22 comments
Cantankerous curmudgeony robber baron Wellington R. Burt was among the 8 wealthiest Americans, worth around $90 million when he died in 1919. He feuded with his 7 children, and left them very little. In an act of supreme cruelty, or foxy genius, his will stipulated that 21 years after the death of his last grandchild, any remaining heirs would receive the fortune. 92 years later and the
money is being distributed, to three great-grandchildren; seven great-great grandchildren; and two great-great-great grandchildren.
posted by stbalbach at 6:10 PM PST - 54 comments
Kill Osama First-Person Shooter programmers at
Kuma Games have been working long hours to crank out this timely, yet controversial game. "The virtual bin Laden, created over a rush of all-nighters by a team of game developers who specialize in turning current world events and military battles into playable video games, had somehow disappeared from the faithful recreation of his Pakistan compound." But the Kansas City Star asks, is this "
cathartic, educational or just ghoulish?"
posted by shawnwasson at 3:32 PM PST - 62 comments
Off The Charts: "In his wildest satirical dreams, not even Christopher Guest could top Off the Charts for sheer folk-art eccentricity. And yet, the creator of A Mighty Wind would find comedic inspiration in Jamie Meltzer's hilarious and sincerely affectionate tribute to the subcultural phenomenon known as the song poem. For over 50 years, a small, strictly amateur music industry has thrived on the fine-print ads that appear in alternative newspapers and music-industry magazines, inviting would-be songsmiths to send in their lyrics (and perhaps even "earn royalties") when their songs--and we use that term loosely--are set to music, recorded by seasoned musicians, and returned to their creators as a kind of one-shot fantasy fulfillment of dreams that will never come true. What drives Meltzer's film is a uniquely American combination of pathos, fringe-dwelling ambition, and free expression by assorted misfits and "regular folk" who seek elusive immortality by turning their lyrical musings into trash-art that's simultaneously fascinating and pathetic. But despite the end-credit claim that not a single hit has resulted from the estimated 200,000 song poems that have been recorded over the decades, Meltzer's not out to ridicule these wonderfully ungifted artists. Instead, Off the Charts gives a memorable spin to the flipside of the American dream. --Jeff Shannon" (PBS, 54mins.)
posted by puny human at 2:56 PM PST - 15 comments
The inmost circle is a geographically accurate map of Middle Earth according to Tolkien's design, and the journey of the Fellowship is plotted according to major destinations and places of action. -
JT Fridsma [more inside]posted by Trurl at 2:11 PM PST - 26 comments
Seventeen years ago, Queensbridge prodigy Nas put out
arguably the greatest hip hop album of all time. Today, Detroit lyricist Elzhi releases a loving and skillful tribute to the album with re-recorded live beats:
Elmatic.
[more inside]posted by the mad poster! at 1:14 PM PST - 41 comments
Hearts raced briefly today as reports circulated of a Ralf+Florian
sighting. Despite what
was reported, it wasn't Ralf going into the (original) King Klang studio with Florian. It was
Uwe Schmidt aka
Señor Coconut. Should we be waiting for a Schneider/Schmidt record?
posted by smcdow at 12:54 PM PST - 34 comments
New from the Library of Congress,
National Jukebox, where you can listen to 10,000 rare historic sound recordings. (Streaming only, requires flash and javascript.)
posted by fings at 12:31 PM PST - 22 comments
"
Howe snapped more than 400
photographs in Moscow and St. Petersburg with his hand held
Graflex camera, a state-of-the-art device that allowed its user to shoot without a tripod. His photographs of pedestrians, street vendors and aristocrats are rare glimpses of everyday life before the upheavals of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution — and sparked huge interest in Russia among history buffs and local museums."
posted by gman at 6:33 AM PST - 20 comments
Here Be Monsters. "Three friends, on a drunken dare, set out in a dinghy for a nearby island. But when the gas ran out and they drifted into barren waters, their biggest threat wasn't the water or the ocean—it was each other."
[more inside]posted by joannemullen at 3:39 AM PST - 49 comments
May 9
"Day by day we pass by vacant lots downtown ... Neighbourhoods that, although having a huge potential, have more and more unused spaces ... Sometimes, the tourists are the ones who open our eyes by mentioning or questioning whether this situation is normal. On other occasions, we pay attention to it for a moment only because the secondary problems that those spaces imply affect us directly. But in most of the cases, they are only a part of our way."
Habit Makes Us Blind is a series of colorful images by Spanish studio
Espai MGR that seeks to draw attention to the problem of wasted space in urban environments (specifically, in the city of Valencia) -- by building conceptual LEGO structures in them. [
via]
posted by bayani at 6:25 PM PST - 8 comments
NationStates is a free political simulation game founded by author
Max Barry back in 2002 (
previously). Loosely based on his dystopian corporate thriller
Jennifer Government, the game
starts by asking players to provide some national trappings and answer a few civics questions, then generates a virtual country with a matching political outlook.
Periodic policy decisions like mining rights and compulsory voting allow players to further modify their country along
axes of social, political, and economic freedom, arriving at one of
twenty-seven colorful government types like Tyranny By Majority or Scandinavian Liberal Paradise. There's also a healthy roleplaying community -- players can discuss current events in the
General forum, practice wargaming in
International Incidents, form cooperative Regions to debate internal affairs (many of which form
their own communities), and elect Delegates to send to the
World Assembly (so renamed after
an amusing cease-and-desist from the real-world U.N.). Their collective history is thoroughly recorded in
the 35,000-article NSWiki, which provides a
detailed legislative record,
gameplay guide, and profiles on many of the
90,000 active nations,
8,000 player regions, and
countless characters that currently make up the game world.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:03 PM PST - 62 comments
Once upon a time, Van Morrison had a record contract with Bing Records which he
wanted to escape. Since the contract required him to produce thirty-six original songs, Van Morrison sat in the studio for a single session and recorded a series of nonsensical non-tunes that are still in his distinctive style.
Three of them are available here.
posted by dzkalman at 9:58 AM PST - 53 comments
From Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of
South Park, and Robert Lopez, of
Avenue Q, comes the new Broadway show
"The Book of Mormon." The
show "tells the story of two young Mormon missionaries sent off to spread the word in a dangerous part of Uganda" while gently (and no so gently) lampooning organized religion and traditional musical theatre.
The entire show is now streaming on NPR. Songs are extremely Not Safe For Work.
posted by ColdChef at 6:35 AM PST - 84 comments
May 8
It started two months ago to the day, when
a stuttering/strobing video of angry man obscenely rapping over a spasmodic drumbeat was posted on YouTube from an unknown group who called themselves Death Grips, with the promise of an album and a mixtape within the year. The next day,
a new track went up, not furious like the day before, but the rapper sounded a bit hoarse now. More tracks were uploaded every few days, and on April 26th
the mixtape was on YouTube,
soundcloud, and available to download
from their website and other places. Still, little is known about the group, beyond that it's probably a trio and
Zach Hill is involved.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 6:54 PM PST - 16 comments
How the news spread via twitter Interesting visualisation of tweets of Bin Ladens demise.
"...the Tweet by Rumsfeld chief of staff Keith Urbahn that got the ball rolling was retweeted more than 80 times within one minute after it was sent, and that by the 3-minute mark, it had led to more than 300 reactions"
posted by marienbad at 1:14 PM PST - 22 comments
What we have in academia, in other words, is a microcosm of the American economy as a whole: a self-enriching aristocracy, a swelling and increasingly immiserated proletariat, and a shrinking middle class. The same devil’s bargain stabilizes the system: the middle, or at least the upper middle, the tenured professoriate, is allowed to retain its prerogatives—its comfortable compensation packages, its workplace autonomy and its job security—in return for acquiescing to the exploitation of the bottom by the top, and indirectly, the betrayal of the future of the entire enterprise. Graduate school as suicide mission, in the
Nation.posted by gerryblog at 8:44 AM PST - 232 comments
May 7
EXT. STREET -- TWILIGHT. A dreary day in 1971. Wearing a trilby hat and a hideous overcoat, a LONE CROCODILE stands on the rain-slicked sidewalk.
Singing in tune with the plangent sounds of the concertina he clutches in his claws, he tells the viewers that today, of all days, is his birthday. This scene presages the appearance of
one of the most emblematic characters in Soviet animation.
[more inside]posted by Nomyte at 5:48 PM PST - 24 comments
Filter Bubbles: As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy
posted by MechEng at 2:47 PM PST - 77 comments
Free Comic Book Day is a single day - the first Saturday in May each year - when participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely free to anyone who comes into their stores. Here's the
store locator.
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:33 AM PST - 36 comments
May 6
The First Zombie-Proof House: "The Safe House" was designed by KWK Promes, and completely folds in on itself to become an impenetrable concrete bunker, keeping you safe from the undead.
posted by bwg at 6:29 PM PST - 82 comments
Kiev's topless prostestors (NSFW) Facebook used to
block their pages and Ukraine's secret service has threatened them with violence:
"With a mix of political protest and eye-catching eroticism, the women's rights group Femen (
wiki) has inspired fear in Ukrainian authorities with its fight against prostitution and sex tourism."
Non-Violent Civic Resistance in Ukraine has a history with
Maidan.
The nude radicals:
feminism Ukrainian style.
posted by adamvasco at 1:32 PM PST - 97 comments
The Honeymoon From Hell. Stefan and Erika Svanstrom had planned a long trip that would start in Singapore in early December and end in China four months later.
But things didn't go exactly as planned. They encountered floods, fires, tsunamis and earthquakes along the way.
posted by mannequito at 12:52 PM PST - 14 comments
The current issue of the Village Voice
profiled Fat Admirers, or Dudes who like fat chicks. One of the main guys interviewed was Dan Weiss who runs a blog called
ask a guy who likes fat chicks. He has also written a couple of articles for The Hairpin: I Like Fat Chicks, Questions?
1 &
2.
posted by Uncle at 12:36 PM PST - 122 comments
I always loved the Quincy Jones-composed theme song to 70s sitcom Sanford and Son, but up until a few minutes ago I'd never heard the entire piece: three minutes and six seconds of delightfully infectious, playfully bright instrumental pop-funk. It's called
The Streetbeater, and its creative and ever-changing arrangement includes snippets of the rarely heard bass harmonica. The piece is just a hella lotta fun.
[more inside]posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:04 AM PST - 70 comments
How to disappear completely: Almost everyone has a digital footprint these days. Think you could remove your tracks?
Frank Ahearn worked as a
skip tracer for years, but now he helps folks drop off the face of the Earth, those who want to disappear and erase evidence of their existence. "So, what we do in a nutshell, is make you a virtual entity where you work for this corporation. You lease your apartment through this corporation, your electricity, your phone. Everything about you exists under the corporation. The address doesn't have to be in the same city you're in. The goal is to make you virtual and have you communicate virtually through this corporation. "
posted by Blake at 3:40 AM PST - 40 comments
"Legendary" Russian movie studio
Mosfilm is posting some it's most famous films on its
youtube channel. They will be posting 5 new legendary Soviet films per week. They expect to have 200 uploaded by end of year. Most have English subtitles.
[more inside]posted by spicynuts at 2:11 AM PST - 16 comments
May 5
Dublin-raised photojournalist
Seamus Murphy has received six World Press Photo awards and won widespread acclaim for his work in Afghanistan and the Middle East, including a World Understanding Award in 2005. Recently, he created short films for all twelve of the songs on PJ Harvey’s new album,
Let England Shake, after a road trip across England during what he called “one of the worst winters in living memory.” The films have been released gradually since January (
previously) and now you may watch all of them:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12.
posted by Houyhnhnm at 6:16 PM PST - 11 comments
The House Next Door has kicked off this year's installment of the "Summer of..." series, where they look back at the summer movies from 25 years ago. For the next few months they'll be revisiting the
summer movies from 1986, and you can check out the previous installments to relive the glories of
1985 (
Weird Science,
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,
St. Elmo's Fire),
and 1984 (including the magical day
Gremlins,
Ghostbusters, and
Top Secret! opened simultaneously).
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:09 PM PST - 10 comments
The Stolen Scream. In 2006, photographer
Noam Galai posted a handful of dramatic self-portraits to
Flickr. Unbeknownst to him, his screaming face slowly took on a life of its own (often as a symbol of unrest or protest), appearing in
countless permutations the world over. In this mini-documentary, Noam is surprisingly pragmatic about his accidental fame, and the fact that he only got paid once for the legal use of the picture.
posted by O9scar at 3:16 PM PST - 26 comments
Following recent events;
Frontline has rushed out a special report (53 mins). which takes the viewer inside two fronts of the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They also find new evidence of covert support for elements of the Taliban by the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the ISI
[more inside]posted by adamvasco at 1:19 PM PST - 55 comments
Do you like integer sequences? Do you like poking around in the
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences? Do you think, whoa, wait, okay, actually I like integer sequences but the OEIS is a goddam intractable maze of numbers? Do you think, man, what I wish is that someone would make an accessible blog that discusses some of the interesting entries in the OEIS for the casual fan of integer sequences? Well, that's an amazing coincidence; you should take a look at
The On-Line Blog of Integer Sequences, by our very own
Plutor.
posted by cortex at 10:18 AM PST - 26 comments
Montblanc Watches Chinese Ad is the everyday story a son of a billionaire that splits with his arty girlfriend and wins her back with ride to Switzerland in a private jet. I won't spoil the rest other than to say don't give up on the boring factory visit, the finale is worth waiting for.
posted by priorpark17 at 5:09 AM PST - 102 comments
Crime Magazine features
a rather matter-of-fact account of one of Leslie Ibsen Rogge's (
wiki) bank robberies. The article is an excerpt from a new book by Dane Batty, Rogge's nephew, called
Wanted: Gentleman bank robber: The True Story of Leslie Ibsen Rogge, One of the FBI’s Most Elusive Criminals. Rogge was once on the
FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and is apparently the first from that list brought in due to the Internet. He is due to be released in 2047.
posted by Harald74 at 4:03 AM PST - 9 comments
May 4
Troy Tate and The Smiths: The Not Poor Recordings . The Smiths were first produced by Troy Tate and the bootlegs have been rather bootleggy as it were. These are one step removed from the master recordings and don't sound quite so hollow... Includes an apparently unheard version of Accept Yourself as a bonus.
posted by juiceCake at 6:24 PM PST - 19 comments
Alphaland: your friend has sent you a game in the alpha stage of development, but it soon becomes clear that there is more there than just the test level.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 3:50 PM PST - 44 comments
After twenty years, the James Joyce estate finally grants Kate Bush permission to use Molly Bloom's soliloquy. Now called Flower of the Mountain, the original lyrics have been replaced by a passage from James Joyce's 1922 novel.
"Originally when I wrote the song The Sensual World I had used text from the end of Ulysses," Bush said. "When I asked for permission to use the text I was refused, which was disappointing ... When I came to work on this project I thought I would ask for permission again and this time they said yes ... I am delighted that I have had the chance to fulfill the original concept." Emma Forrest, of the Paris Review, on the
destructive influence of Kate Bush, "Bush emerged at the same time as Debbie Harry, but your punk-rock Grace Kelly was nothing like our prog-rock Ophelia. Never had one felt so worried for a pop star." A clip from the new song,
Flower of the Mountain and her new single,
Deeper Understanding. Wolfmother's cover of
Wuthering Heights, The Sweptaway's cover of
Wuthering Heights, Noel Fielding's cover of
Wuthering Heights.
posted by geoff. at 1:20 PM PST - 95 comments
"A ballet dancer needs a mirror to perfect her style, her technique. A singer needs the same -- an aural mirror."
In 1950 and '51, Japan’s first reel-to-reel tape recorders, the "
G-Type"
(for gov't use) and the "
H-1"
(for home use) were released by a company named Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. Music student Norio Ohga was unimpressed by the wobbly sound of "
Talking Paper," so he wrote a note complaining to the firm's founders, who hired him. Mr. Ohga never achieved his original dream of becoming a baritone opera singer, but the future President of TTK, (later renamed Sony,) would still make an indelible, global impact on the world of music -- including the development and introduction of the compact disc. Mr. Ohga
died on April 24, 2011.
[more inside]posted by zarq at 11:49 AM PST - 3 comments
‘Everyone is a worker.’ That is a powerful statement, if you think about it. Richard Scarry wasn’t afraid to paint contemporary American society in such bold strokes. Nor was he afraid to explain commerce and capitalism to children. -
What Do People Do All Day.
posted by Artw at 11:46 AM PST - 34 comments
Barcelona may or may not be the greatest soccer team of all time, as some now claim, but watching them is one of the prime viewing pleasures of our sports era. Can it get any
better?. SLYT.
posted by ecourbanist at 11:18 AM PST - 36 comments
Americhrome: The color that has come to signify America in today’s combat theaters isn’t the red, the white, or the blue picked by Betsy Ross, but an ignoble sandy hue commonly referred to as desert tan and officially identified as Federal Standard 595 Color No. 33446. The official swatch of desert tan is housed in Franconia, Va., just outside Washington’s beltway, in a warehouse filled with the rest of the federal government’s certified color chips. From there, for $625, you can purchase a complete set of the 650 three-by-five-inch cards that define the colors covering the vast majority of items purchased by the Federal Acquisition Service, a $50 billion subsection of the General Services Administration, which acts as a kind of equipment manager for federal agencies around the country...posted by jim in austin at 9:02 AM PST - 34 comments
Mining the Mother of all Data Dumps We now have a relatively massive haul of digital data from the OBL strike. There are several forensic toolkits in use by the private
(commercially available) and
public sector as well as
open-source.
Best practices include inventorying all the sources, cloning the sources so as to not damage pristine data, recovering any partial or damaged content, making the cloned sources read-only, adhering to legally-admissible tools standards, and documenting everything. There is an excellent source titled Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content from the Council on Library and Information Resources [
pdf,
Resource Shelf]. But what to do next*?
[more inside]posted by rzklkng at 6:54 AM PST - 40 comments
May 3
From Vice Magazine (NSFW photos in sidebar):
The New Libyans: Knee-deep in the Shit with Benghazi's New Rebels, by Trevor Snapp. (warning: gory photo)
More photos of the New Libyans from
Trevor Snapp. Also from Vice, on Libya:
Big Muammar's House. Also on Vice, on Libya:
Notes from a Libyan Lurker,
part 2,
part 3,
part 4,
part 5,
part 6,
part 7,
part 8,
part 9,
part 10,
part 11.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:46 PM PST - 4 comments
On the 29th January 1942 the first ever
Desert Island Discs was broadcast. Surpassed only by the
Grand Ole Opry it is the second longest running radio show in history. Beautiful in its simplicity - each castaway is asked to choose eight pieces of music, a book and a luxury item for their imaginary stay on the desert island. For those who have not come across it before aquaint yourself with its iconic theme tune 'By the Sleepy Lagoon'
here. Then for newcomers and old hands aquaint yourself with the wonderful new
BBC website with searchable archives of 2852 episodes detailing castaways choices, and
now with more than 500 episodes available for free download.
posted by numberstation at 1:11 PM PST - 23 comments
If This, Then That [beta] allows you to designate trigger actions in one corner of the cloud based on events in another. In addition to popular websites like Facebook, Craiglist, and Twitter, IfTTT links email, SMS, and telephone (full list of current services
here) in any configuration.
posted by Rykey at 1:01 PM PST - 77 comments
"
In the course of researching my book The Emotional Life of Nations, I discovered that just before and during wars the nation was regularly depicted as a Dangerous Woman. I collected thousands of magazine covers and political cartoons before wars to see if there were any visual patterns that could predict the moods that led to war, and routinely found images of dangerous, bloodthirsty women."
Sociologist, political psychologist, and founder of The Institute for Psychohistory
(no not that one) Lloyd deMause has written eight books and 90 articles on the link between warfare and parenting practices. With thousands of references to psychological and anthropological studies, deMause makes the case that outbursts of nationalist violence are reenactments of childhood experiences common to large groups.
His book
The Origins of War In Child Abuse is available as
a ten-part, free audiobook; read by
Stefan Molyneux.
[more inside]posted by clarknova at 5:08 AM PST - 151 comments
All Things Emily celebrates the life and work of American jazz guitarist Emily Remler. Influenced by Herb Ellis and Wes Montgomery in her early albums, her music was taking new directions before her untimely death, at just 32, while on tour in Australia in May 1990.
[more inside]posted by joannemullen at 3:55 AM PST - 9 comments
May 2
Alone In The Wilderness "Documentary tells the story of Dick Proenneke who, in the late 1960s, built his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park. Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself. The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness." (Color, 57mins)
posted by puny human at 5:15 PM PST - 62 comments
"While going through my archives, I found this piece and emailed it to my friends -- most of whom didn't get it at all. There's usually only one way that change ever comes to the eternal childhood immortality of a comic strip, and that's by the strip being cancelled -- and sometimes not even then."
How it turned out.
posted by bayani at 2:58 PM PST - 59 comments
Sometimes this shoulder is a bit sore. Sometimes age starts to creep up on me. Sometimes I make excuses like "Naw, I'm not going walking, it's too cold/hot/steep/wet/dry/tiring." Sometimes I want people to feel sorry for me.
But then, I'm not a
dog.
posted by tomswift at 9:53 AM PST - 12 comments
May 1
Wallaby Beat is a blog dedicated to punk, DIY, powerpop, grillfat (pre-punk Australian hard rock) and NWOAHM from Australia 1975-1984. It follows projects like
Do The Pop,
Lethal Weapons, and
Inner City Sound in documenting Australia's fertile underground rock and roll scene. While those blogs and books are focused on the past,
I-94 Bar is documenting the scene as it stands today and interviewing the various survivors.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 10:20 PM PST - 17 comments
Daughter of Horror (original title: Dementia) was a 1955 avant garde film featuring a
noir style, a surrealist sensibility, and virtually no dialogue. A later version of the film even included an over-the-top voice over by none other than Tonight Show sidekick
Ed McMahon, but like Blade Runner the flick is better off without the narration.
Daughter of Horror is probably most famous for being the film playing in the theater overrun by
The Blob. And with a few more surrealistic elements and peculiar dialogue added, this could have been done by David Lynch in a later decade. The film, recently featured on Turner Classic Movies, is
available for free on archive.org.
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:56 PM PST - 7 comments
Father and son, bunking in G block. "Scott Peters and his father, Bernard, eat dinner together at night, then watch bowling or classic boxing matches on television together into the evening. They have an extremely close relationship: They have seen each other for at least part of nearly every one of the last 5,455 days. Every night, they sleep together in an 8-by-12-foot room, where the alarm bell rings in the morning but also at 10:30 p.m., when the guards turn off the lights in G Block, at the Elmira Correctional Facility." via
NYTposted by Xurando at 5:42 PM PST - 55 comments
Before Qaddafi, the closest thing to a national icon that Libya had was
Omar Mukhtar, the Lion of the Desert. Mussolini thought of Libya as the
Fourth Shore of Italy; the natives were not pleased with this idea, and under the leadership of Mukhtar, a school teacher, successfully resisted the Italians for twenty years with almost no resources. Italian rule in Libya was harsh: Libyans were rounded up into
concentration camps, tanks and
aerial bombardment were used against civilians, and half of the population of Cyrenaica - the eastern part of Libya - died. To stop Mukhtar from receiving supplies from Egypt, the Italians built a
168-mile long barbed-wire fence essentially dividing the country in two. Mukhtar was finally captured and hung on September of 1931; he remains a
symbol of Libyan independence.
[more inside]posted by with hidden noise at 1:41 PM PST - 15 comments
The Edgewise Guide To Filmmaking. Screenwriter Lisa Morton kept a diary while making the very, very strange 1989 movie
Meet The Hollowheads (
trailer). The low-budget sci-fi/horror/social comment/sitcom takes place in a dystopian underground suburb whose entire infrastructure, operated by monopolist corporation United Umblicial, consists of flexible tubes which carry waste, energy, and slimy and sometimes still living comestibles. The movie, the one and only directorial effort of
horror FX and make-up man Tom Burman, inspires
confusion and
dismay in most viewers.
Hollowheads stars
John Glover and features a 14-year-old Juliette Lewis, her big brother Lightfield,
a musical instrument made out of a live chicken, an eyeball attached to a large intestine that lives in a glass tank, and an uncredited Bobcat Goldthwait as a lascivious cop, whose few lines include "When will children learn to just say no to butt polish?"
posted by escabeche at 11:45 AM PST - 52 comments
Art. 6(2)(c) of
Directive 98/44/EC, passed by the EU Parliament and Council back in 1998, ruled that, among other things, "uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial
purposes" were to be considered unpatentable because of their being contrary to "ordre public" or morality. After German researcher
Prof. Dr. Oliver Bruestle was granted a
patent concerning a method for creating nerve precursor cells on the basis of embryonic stem cells,
Greenpeace Germany (in German) filed a lawsuit for annulment of the patent. The German Federal Court of Justice then referred to the European Court of Justice the question of whether embryonic stem cell therapy constitutes such a use of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes, under Directive 98/44/EC.
[more inside]posted by Skeptic at 8:50 AM PST - 45 comments
