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May 2012 Archives
May 31
A very special South Korean version of "The Miracle Worker" (
Part 1,
Part 2), featuring music purloined from the shows
Bat Boy and
Legally Blonde.
posted by hermitosis at 2:51 PM PST - 12 comments
You're watching your favorite tv show. There's a song in the background that catches your ear, and suddenly you're desperate for a recording. Unfortunately, you don't recognize the voice of the singer. Or the sound of the band. And dammit, you can't make out enough of the lyrics to google them!
Waiting for DVDs is usually no help, since they often can't use (read: afford the rights to) the original music, so you're stuck with
illegal, fan-made DVDs at ridiculous prices,
awful, meaningless replacement music, or a single missing song that destroys the essence of the episode (c.f.
Quantum Leap episode "M.I.A." and "Georgia on my Mind;"
Wiseguy episode "No One Gets out of Here Alive" and "Nights in White Satin").
What's a fan to do?
[more inside]posted by tzikeh at 2:51 PM PST - 72 comments
David Hoyle (born 1963) is an English performance artist, avant-garde cabaret artist, singer, actor, comedian and film director.
In the 1990s he developed an extremely strange, extremely gay "anti-drag queen" character called The Divine David and produced two series for Channel 4, back when that channel was still unafraid of pushing the boundaries. These were:
The Divine David Presents (SLYT)
The Divine David Heals (SLYT)
He also appeared in the video for the last single released to date by Faith No More -
I Started A Joke of course being a Bee Gees cover - which is unaccountably set in a northern English working men's club.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:26 PM PST - 10 comments
Of the 17,808 players (and counting) who’ve run up the dugout steps and onto a Major League field, only 974 have had one-game careers. [...] The Cup of Coffee club is filled
exclusively with people who do not want to be members.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:03 PM PST - 26 comments
Edward Sharpe's new video for
MAN ON FIRE goes to cheer gyms, double dutch practice spaces, and dance studios, focusing on both performers and observers, then takes the glorious action to the streets.
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:56 AM PST - 30 comments
Watch as some REALLY REALLY BIG PEOPLE crawl around and dance on the Sydney Opera House. Then it kinda changes colors, and then it, um...
collapses.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:22 AM PST - 22 comments
Tove Jansson's short stories about artistic creation are often chillingly cold. The artists she portrays have become lost in their isolated solitude, their creativity, which shuts other people out. Portraits of such loneliness are drawn in three short stories in the collection Lyssnerskan ('The listener', 1971), 'Ekorren' ('The squirrel'), 'Svart & vitt' ('Black & white') and 'Vargen' ('The wolf’), which probably frightened many readers - particularly those who knew and loved her Moomin books - away from Jansson's work. In their cosmos, warmth is unknown; their landscapes are frozen, just like the people who seek expression for their artistic dreams. [more inside]posted by smcg at 7:25 AM PST - 19 comments
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg
has proposed a ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts.
Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal requires the approval of the Board of Health, a step that is considered likely because the members are all appointed by him, and the board’s chairman is the city’s health commissioner, who joined the mayor in supporting the measure on Wednesday.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:47 AM PST - 349 comments
Kevin Roose's
The Unlikely Disciple, in which Brown attends Jerry Falwell's evangelical Liberty University for a semester (
excerpt), has been featured on MetaFilter
previously, but it deserves to be looked at in more detail. What distinguishes the book is Roose's determination to look at the people behind the belief rather than just lampooning the belief itself; he writes about
interviewing Falwell (and he was in fact the last person to interview Falwell before his death), and about his uneasiness about finding the likable, human elements that went alongside the fanaticism. After publication, Liberty University allowed the book in its bookstore, but inserted a
three-paragraph disclaimer warning readers of inaccuracies and telling them to be skeptical; Roose rebuts the disclaimer. An English professor at Liberty University offers an interesting perspective. Meanwhile, Roose runs a blog series called Meet Jerry's Kids, in which he interviews LU students, and The Jonah Project, where he encourages people who disagree politically or religiously to have reasoned, yelling-free discussions about the novel.posted by Rory Marinich at 5:49 AM PST - 43 comments
Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution catalogs 230 tree-like branching diagrams, culled from 450 years of mankind’s visual curiosity about the living world and our quest to understand the complex ecosystem we share with other organisms, from bacteria to birds, microbes to mammals. (More trees are visible at the
Google Books site.)
posted by OmieWise at 5:48 AM PST - 4 comments
"First of all, we almost had no battle at all. For budgetary reasons we came very, very close to having all the action take place off-screen, the way plays have handled battle scenes for a few thousand years." - How the epic battle at the heart of the latest episode of Game of Thrones,
Blackwater, written by George R. R. Martin and
directed by Neil Marshall, came to be.
Mentor relationships in Game of Thrones (and Mad Men).
The National's Lannister song. And, perhaps sriking closest of all to the central themes of the show, Jezebel plays
Game of Thrones: Marry, Fuck, Kill.
posted by Artw at 12:03 AM PST - 241 comments
May 30
"It took years to lock them up. Hundreds of enemy fighters captured during some of the fiercest combat of the war. But then, one night last spring, as American troops surged into Taliban territory, all of those prisoners, all of that progress, disappeared. Prof. Luke Mogelson ventures
down the rabbit hole to find them."
posted by vidur at 9:26 PM PST - 30 comments
Tourette does not shorten life, limit mobility, or impair cognitive or emotional function ... While the genesis of TS is neurological, its most important symptom is semantic, the ongoing need to attach meaning to what are quite literally empty gestures.
Greg Downey talks about Tourette's Syndrome and Robert Lemelson’s documentary
The Bird Dancer.
[more inside]posted by nangar at 8:29 PM PST - 4 comments
Lawrence Lessig, erstwhile Free Culture advocate now given to fighting corruption on a larger scale, delivers a
commencement address.
"There is no one in the criminal justice system who believes that system works well. There is no one in housing law who believes this is what law was meant to be. In contracts, you read about disputes involving tens, maybe a hundred dollars. The disputes of ordinary people. These disputes are not for the courts any more. Or if they are, they are for courts that are an embarrassment to the ideals of justice from our tradition. The law of real people doesn’t work, even if the law of corporations does."posted by the mad poster! at 4:48 PM PST - 24 comments
Snow White's Scary Adventures - A Retrospective [via
mefi projects]
The author can't post it here for obvious reasons, but I can. I think. Now to wipe these tears from my eyes...
Tomorrow, May 31st, will be the last day of operation for the ride Snow White's Scary Adventures at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. The ride has played a significant role in my family's life for the past decade (my son is autistic, and has ridden the ride more than 3,400 times), and I wrote a retrospective about the history of the ride. This is a subject that is too close for me to post on the Blue, but Matthowie and Jessamyn both suggested that I post about it here. The linked blog post itself contains links to a four part series about my son, and also a link in the footnotes to the single best reference site on the web for the ride in all its permutations. I know it's just a silly old fairy tale dark ride, and not on many people's "must-see" list when they come to Disney World, but I hope my article can help at least a few people understand why it really is an important piece of history.
posted by COD at 4:37 PM PST - 32 comments
Gymnast: In Motion — The elegant movements and athletic prowess of five twirling trampolinists are captured in photographer
Steve Harries’ new short film. Performing up to 7.5 meters in the air—shot from a tall camera tower beneath a rig suspending the set, mirrors and lights from the ceiling—bodies were broken up into fragmented forms and motions by a bank of six mirrors. Contrast that with
No Church in the Wild, the Jay Z & Kanye West collaboration filmed by
Romain Gavras. A message of hope to anyone who feels society needs to change direction, or a furious extended urban battle scene?
posted by netbros at 3:40 PM PST - 9 comments
Sometimes politicians say something stupid on Twitter, and then delete the tweet.
Politwoops re-publishes those tweets.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:00 PM PST - 37 comments
Eric Wynalda, US Soccer Hall of Fame striker, and Fox Soccer Commentator, has been an outspoken opponent of many of the current practices of Major League Soccer (MLS) - all the while coveting an MLS coaching position. He has been described as one of the most polarizing figures in US soccer and and a
" frickin twitter train wreck” by the owner of the Portland Timbers. Tonight the train wreck pays a visit to Portland.
[more inside]posted by incandissonance at 7:43 AM PST - 44 comments
The Royal Observatory, Greenwich has put together the fantastic short video
Measuring the Universe which briefly describes the different techniques used to allow us to calculate the vast distances to stellar objects in space.
[via]posted by quin at 7:05 AM PST - 11 comments
May 29
Book illustrator Leo Dillon, who in partnership with his wife Diane Dillon, illustrated and did the covers for many of your favourite childrens' books,
has passed away on May 26th.
[more inside]posted by MartinWisse at 11:10 PM PST - 18 comments
It's unusual for a woman to be a leader in Afghanistan but Zarifa Qazizadah has become the country's only female village chief through force of personality and determination to get things done - even if that means cross-dressing, wearing a false moustache and driving around on a motorbike at night. "I tell the men of the village, all I want is your prayers," she says. "When you have a problem, I'll speak to the government on your behalf and whenever there is any disturbance at night-time, I'll pick up my gun and come to your house to see what's going on."posted by barnacles at 8:14 PM PST - 6 comments
What kind of an Eeget are ya? Not sure what MeFi will make of this wry little monologue, or indeed what the World-Wide World will make of the chap's accent, but it has humour, and truth, and I know plenty of people who 'spake' just like that...
posted by ironjelly at 3:30 PM PST - 26 comments
Guidelines [
pdf] recently published by a coalition of religious liberty and free speech organizations caution educators against violating student rights when trying to enforce anti-bullying policies. Other groups, however, worry that concern for free speech rights may keep educators from effectively addressing bullying.
[more inside]posted by audi alteram partem at 2:18 PM PST - 66 comments
Hack The Cover "This is an essay for book lovers and designers curious about where the cover has been, where it's going, and what the ethos of covers means for digital book design."
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 12:08 PM PST - 11 comments
You may have seen
Replacements, Ltd.'s print ads in the back of PARADE magazine (of
Howard Huge fame). Replacements, both a seller and a
resource for china and glassware owners, was one of the few North Carolina businesses to
publicly take a stand [NYT] against the state's vote to ban gay marriage.
As an employer, Replacements is one of only nine companies in the country to receive a
perfect score for ten years straight in the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. But the company is also known for another surprisingly liberal policy: encouraging its 450 employees to bring their pets to work amidst millions of pieces of china and glassware. How many?
A whole lot. [more inside]posted by Madamina at 11:29 AM PST - 31 comments
David Letterman, Indianapolis native, racing fan and Indy Car team
co-owner, sat down for an interview about the history of the Indianapolis 500, and its effect on him since childhood. No jokes, no snark, just a knowledgeable and passionate discussion about something he cares for tremendously. Parts
one, two, three, and
four.posted by MarvinTheCat at 11:22 AM PST - 18 comments
The Opposite of Loneliness Graduating Yale senior Marina Keegan wrote a column for the commencement edition of the paper celebrating "tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake." She
died in a car crash on Saturday. The column she wrote is a poignant eulogy.
posted by fedward at 8:52 AM PST - 53 comments
May 28
Unglue.It (v. t.) 4. For an author or publisher to accept a one-time fixed amount of money, raised by the public, for the perpetual release of an ebook under a Creative Commons license. A crowd-funded project created by
Eric Hellman and friends at
Gluejar.
[more inside]posted by stbalbach at 7:43 PM PST - 11 comments
"The fertile Wadi Hanifah valley running through part of Riyadh was for years a rubbish dump and a public health hazard, but now
it's been transformed into a vast park, with lakes that attract cool breezes. It's an oasis so large it's hard to police - making it a place for Saudi citizens to relax, in more senses than one."
[more inside]posted by vidur at 7:14 PM PST - 12 comments
Living The Dream ... at AOL . For two months last fall, Eric Simons secretly took up residence inside the Internet giant's Palo Alto, Calif., campus, eating free food, enjoying gym access, and building a startup in the process.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 6:36 PM PST - 66 comments
Free online graph paper generators: variations of
squares,
triangle, rhombus, and hexagonal,
circular and polar, for drawing, gaming,
writing, note-taking and
much more.
Blank Sheet Music (Flash) for all
arrangements (PDF). Create and edit your own
grids,
probability and
logarithmic graphs,
petri-dish inserts and
storyboards. Also, multilingual
monthly and
yearly calendars. Plus, more than you ever wanted to know about
ISO paper dimensions and
printable paper models of polyhedra.
Prev-
ious-
ly.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:50 PM PST - 36 comments
Slo’ugh froze suddenly, gazing at his three new sets of gloves with an unblinking intensity. All that moved, for three long, silent minutes, was his eyes. They stared at first one pair of gloves, then the other pair, then the third, and then back to the first and then to second and then to the third and then to the first again and then to the second again and then to the third, and so it repeated. After a time, Slo’ugh shook himself out of his mysterious reverie and pulled the first pair of gloves onto his huge, meaty hands. He scowled, and immediately removed then. The second pair saw the honour of being donned by his heroic hands, but were similarly dispatched. On went the third, and then Slo’ugh froze again. Stared again. He grunted, and decided ultimately on the first pair.
--
The Saga of Slo'ugh - An Unofficial Diablo III novelization.posted by empath at 3:21 PM PST - 56 comments
"The
Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President in the name of Congress, and is conferred only upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through 'conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States.'"
The U.S. Army Center of Military History lists every citation for a Medal of Honor award since they were first issued. Most are awarded posthumously, to those who "gave the last full measure of devotion", as Lincoln called it. It's Memorial Day in the U.S., and reflecting upon these is perhaps a reasonable way to spend a bit of it.
[more inside]posted by disillusioned at 2:15 PM PST - 59 comments
The Hemingway Papers: The legendary writer’s reporting from the Toronto Star archives, featuring historical annotations by William McGeary, a former editor who researched Hemingway’s columns extensively for the newspaper, along with new insight and analysis from the Star’s team of Hemingway experts.
posted by Fizz at 1:33 PM PST - 13 comments
KLF and K-Foundation Bill Drummond has stopped doing interviews and will only now answer 100 questions.
Here are four of them.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:50 PM PST - 91 comments
Anno NTK: Every Edition of NTK, 15 Years Late.
Were you subscribed to
NTK, but always felt that they were a bit too cutting-edge, too advanced, too futuristic for you? Never got their references? If you sign up for Anno NTK, you'll be able to relive those days, with each newsletter from #1 appearing smartly in your inbox 15 years late. Maybe
this time around you'll get it!
posted by subbes at 12:31 PM PST - 56 comments
Take a holiday in Somaliland: journey to the state that isn’t. "
Positioned on the upper haunch of the Somali dog-leg the Republic of Somaliland looks initially unpromising. It is mainly dry and rocky, there are few paved roads, and the population is small and generally dispersed. ... Whilst the economy may be on the up, Somaliland still feels extremely isolated. An employee of a big international NGO who I met in the lobby of my hotel, The Mansoor, looked at me with astonishment when I said I’d come to Hargeisa for fun. 'The biggest danger here,' he said 'is dying of boredom.'"
posted by mykescipark at 10:19 AM PST - 10 comments
"Usavich" (Season One video) is a series of 90-second CGI cartoons made for MTV Japan about two Russian rabbits. It begins in a Soviet-era prison where Kirenenko*, a mob boss sentenced to death is sharing a cell with Putin (yes, that's his name), a common worker imprisoned on a trumped-up charge and counting the days until his release. And then it gets weird.
(contains extreme cartoon violence, scatological gags, Russian stereotypes, transvestite chickens and shoe fetishes) [more inside]posted by oneswellfoop at 10:08 AM PST - 10 comments
This weekend, TAL
ran an episode on the massacre at
Dos Erres. What they didn't mention was that this happened as part of the "
Silent Holocaust" -- a "systematic campaign of genocide against the Mayan people."
An estimated 83% of the massacred people were indigenous Maya. Throughout the period of the genocide, the USA continued to
provide military support to the Guatemalan government, mainly in the form of arms and equipment, despite knowing that the
Guatemala military was responsible for the killings.
Horatio Castellanos Moya, an exiled Honduran writer, wrote
Senselessness, his first book to be published in English, based on the testimonies taken by the Catholic Church's Recuperation of History project, which led to
Bishop José Gerardi Conedera releasing the
Guatemala: Never Again! report. Two days later, he was bludgeoned to death.
posted by Felicity Rilke at 8:53 AM PST - 21 comments
May 27
Stan's Report (a short story). Stan waited for me to ask him a question, hoping to tease some curiosity out of me, I suppose, though I don’t want to make assumptions about Stan’s intentions. Whatever his intent, I chose not to ask anything about it, not wanting to start my thinking down that road. It wouldn’t have been fair to B. to talk about him and what he said or meant since he wasn’t there to defend himself or to amend the tone or the full context. I preferred to turn my attention to my e-mail, but I didn’t want to ignore Stan or imply that I disapproved of his interest in sharing his news with me. He had a right to say whatever he wanted and it was up to me to choose how I’d deal with it.posted by shivohum at 10:01 PM PST - 24 comments
Revolutionary hardware backdoor discovered in China-made military-grade FPGA chips. Claims were made by the intelligence agencies around the world, from MI5, NSA and IARPA, that silicon chips could be infected. We developed breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology to investigate these claims. We chose an American military chip that is highly secure with sophisticated encryption standard, manufactured in China. Our aim was to perform advanced code breaking and to see if there were any unexpected features on the chip. We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.
posted by scalefree at 7:38 PM PST - 152 comments
Spoiler. The zombie apocalypse happened -- and we won.
But though society has recovered, the threat of infection is always there -- and Los Angeles coroner Tommy Rossman is the man they call when things go wrong.
posted by Drexen at 10:36 AM PST - 44 comments
"You want to be a pitchman for warlords? You want to carry the Devil's water in Washington? Go for it. But just don't tell me how to fucking talk" -
Jon Lovett responds to
Lanny Davis, in the aftermath of the Corey Booker's comments defending
private equityposted by crayz at 7:06 AM PST - 51 comments
May 26
Confessions of a Genius Art Forger — In one of Germany's greatest art scandals, former hippie and talented artist Wolfgang Beltracchi forged dozens of paintings over a period of 35 years, earning millions and fooling top collectors and museums. In a SPIEGEL interview, he reveals how he did it and why he eventually got caught.
Photo Gallery. Background...
[more inside]posted by netbros at 4:42 PM PST - 20 comments
At Clifton's Cafeteria, someone left a light on. For 77 years. A downtown Los Angeles landmark, the
Clifton's Cafeteria, has a storied past. Recently sold, it was established during the Great Depression, with a mission to provide affordable coffee and food - a pledge that was honored for decades. While remodeling, the new owners made an astonishing discovery: hidden behind a partition, a neon lamp that was switched on during the Great Depression and it's been on, continuously for 77 years. The owner estimates it's generated more than $17,000 in electric bills. [LATimes - if asked to log in, turn on private browsing and you're good to go - on Safari at least].
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 2:29 PM PST - 27 comments
"Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's. The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash."
Louisiana Incarcerated is a
tour de force eight-part series on the Louisiana prison system.
[more inside]posted by painquale at 1:26 PM PST - 48 comments
While there were a few attempts at right-wing folk music during the
1960's, most notably
The
Goldwaters,
Janet
"anti-Baez" Greene was the darling of the conservative anti-communist
right. Her songs include
Fascist Threat,
Commie Lies, and
her most (in)famous,
Poor Left
Winger"I'm just a poor left-winger, befuddled, bewildered,
forlorn, duped by a bearded singer, peddling his communist corn. In the
cafe, espresso, sounds of guitars could be heard, twanging a plaintive
folksong, spreading the communist word..."
[more inside]posted by stbalbach at 12:27 PM PST - 48 comments
The E-Book Wars: Amazon Versus the Rest. Publishers, distributors, booksellers, and authors weigh in on Amazon's ever-increasing presence and influence in the electronic publishing world. The author also takes a stab at forecasting the future for the major players in the e-book industry.
posted by Rykey at 10:55 AM PST - 32 comments
Every child comes equipped with
(Whether it's a boy or girl)
A big serving of explosives
Might be up to half a pound
They must be in constant motion
Push, and kick, and flail, and shout
If they can't, they just explode
Bang! Kaboom!
Your luck's run out. [includes Soviet animation and baby monkeys] [more inside]posted by Nomyte at 10:26 AM PST - 9 comments
...The cult of and luster for country blues among these record collectors came about because not only were recordings by Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James and Robert Johnson not successfully sold to African Americans, but other record collectors were not interested in them either. There were so many collectors of New Orleans jazz that not only did the recordings became too expensive to collect, they also didn't want them -- they wanted to find something that required more energy to uncover, and more energy to actually appreciate. Anyone who has ever listened to Charley Patton knows that you have to learn how to listen to him, you have to really struggle -- it is a work of archeology, really, to make out what he is saying. It is powerful, and I don't want to deny its power, but you have to learn how to hear that power, and African Americans, when these records came out, didn't necessarily hear that.
From
an interview with Marybeth Hamilton, author of
In Search of the Blues [more inside]posted by y2karl at 9:31 AM PST - 13 comments
The myth of English as a global language One would have to say that English, far from being a pure maiden, looks like a woman who has appeared out of some distant fen, had more partners than Moll Flanders, learned a lot in the process, and is now running a house of negotiable affection near an international airportposted by infini at 12:15 AM PST - 76 comments
May 25
Those of you who go in for gardening, specifically those with strawberry patches, may find this idea to be of benefit:
strawberry rocks. Might just keep those birds away!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:50 PM PST - 37 comments
Roy Buchanan -
♪ Hey Joe ♪, a grandmaster of the Telecaster lays bare the instrument's unique spectrum of tone.
posted by Ardiril at 11:59 AM PST - 62 comments
American cities going dark. Detroit is the poster child, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are already broken, but under a new plan half the city is going permanently dark in an effort to get citizens to move. “You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas". Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Bonus:
360-degree photo tour of abandoned rail station in Detroit.posted by stbalbach at 11:54 AM PST - 115 comments
Republican-sponsored New York State Assembly bill would ban anonymous online speech. "AN ACT to amend the civil rights law, in relation to protecting a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting..." S6779, introduced by Rep. O'Meara, is brief: it establishes "a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting" as a civil right, and requires that NY-based "Web site administrator[s]" remove any anonymous postings. The
summary of the Assembly bill, A8688, whose text is identical, describes the bill as "a means for the victim of an anonymous
posting on a website to request that such post be removed, unless the anonymous poster is willing to attach his or her name to it."
[more inside]posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:10 AM PST - 90 comments
Are you curious how the brand of a large suite of complementary products is developed? It's more interesting than you might think.
Adobe describes the decisions that went into the new icons, splash screens, and other brand elements of Creative Suite 6.
posted by gilrain at 8:47 AM PST - 23 comments
SSS is a 1988 experimental film featuring rapid-fire clips of dancers on the streets and junkyards of New York's East Village, "painstaking synched" to improvised music by Tom Cora (cello), Christian Marclay (turntables), and Zeena Parkins (harp). It's by filmmaker Henry Hills, whose official site is
here. More collage films
here, including
Radio Adios, the quick cut-up
KINO DA!,
Money ("
a manic collage film from the mid-80s when it still seemed that Reaganism of the soul could be defeated," with appearances by John Zorn, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Ron Silliman among others), and
Gotham, one of three films Hills made for Zorn's Naked City project.
posted by mediareport at 5:55 AM PST - 11 comments
In 2002,
Brian Banks was a sought-after high school football
phenom until he was accused of kidnapping and raping a female student. On the advice of his lawyers, he pleaded no contest and served 6 years in prison. Then his accuser
recanted. That's when the Innocence Project
stepped in to
help exonerate Brian Banks.
CA Innocence Project filing here; informative if you skip right to the "Statement of Facts" part. posted by lalex at 12:18 AM PST - 146 comments
May 24
Star Wars: The Radio Play -
Seven top voice actors table read Star Wars (YouTube) at
Emerald City Comicon. "Join voice actors Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell, and Rob Paulsen as they re-create the magic of the Star Wars films, albeit in their own special way!" Characters include: Fry, Bender, Batman, Yakko, Wakko, Pinky, The Brain, Morbo, Bubbles, IronHide, Dr. Zoidberg, Jake the Dog, and many impressive celebrity impressions: Shatner as C3PO, Walken as R2D2, Tony Soprano as Greedo, Twilight Sparkle as Han Solo...
(via reddit)posted by flex at 9:00 PM PST - 44 comments
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are a new service from U.S. weather service and FEMA. Starting in June, they will send a text message with a strange tone to your mobile device if you are in range of a Tornado Warning, Tsunami Warning or other major event (in the U.S. only). Major events include "Presidential Alerts." You do not need to sign up.
Washington Post Capital Weather Gang has a few more details.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:33 PM PST - 62 comments
"The World's most popular game is also its most corrupt, with investigations into match fixing ongoing in more than 25 countries. Here's a mere sampling of events since the beginning of last year: Operation Last Bet rocked the Italian Football Federation, with 22 clubs and 52 players awaiting trial for fixing matches; the Zimbabwe Football Association banned 80 players from its national-team selection due to similar accusations; Lu Jun, the first Chinese referee of a World Cup match, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for taking more than $128,000 in bribes to fix outcomes in the Chinese Super League; prosecutors charged 57 people with match fixing in the South Korean K-League, four of whom later died in suspected suicides; the team director of second-division Hungarian club REAC Budapest jumped off a building after six of his players were arrested for fixing games; and in an under-21 friendly, Turkmenistan reportedly beat Maldives 3-2 in a "ghost match" -- neither country knew about the contest because it never actually happened, yet bookmakers still took action and fixers still profited." [
All the world is staged: Bribed players, fake games. Criminal syndicates can fix any match, anywhere.]
posted by vidur at 8:15 PM PST - 34 comments
"A day after the 44th nuclear test explosion in the U.S. rent the still Nevada air, observers cautiously inspected
department store mannequins which were poised disheveled but still haughty on the sand in the homes of Yucca Flat."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:05 PM PST - 29 comments
"Patient research work involving more than 5 thousand photographs resulted in a
1 minute film that AlmapBBDO created to advertise Getty Images, the world leading image database for creating and distributing visual contents. " [SLYT]
posted by ephemerista at 7:37 PM PST - 11 comments
A relatively small group of people from Appalachian, the dark-skinned
Melungeons (previously) have been a source for speculation and conjecture for many years. Exactly who where their ancestors? Portuguese? Turks? Roma? Cherokee? A recent
DNA study (108 page pdf) posted in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy (
site link)
says otherwise (WaPo article).
posted by edgeways at 3:12 PM PST - 95 comments
Robert Snow, now retired, was Captain of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, who in his career was in charge of the department of the Homicide and Robbery and the department of Organized Crime. He has written numerous articles and books on police work, and considered himself
a skeptic of supposedly supernatural occurrences. But on a dare, he visited a past life regression therapist, and what he experiences made him doubt his beliefs. In an hour-long session, he seemed to recall memories of a cave dweller, an altar girl in Greece, but it was his views of the life of a 19th century painter were the most vivid. In that experience,
Snow recalled a number of specific memories or events, but was certain they were fabricated memories from things he had seen or heard in his life in the 20th century. In an attempt to debunk his experiences, he ended up
validating his past life memories of being
James Carroll Beckwith, a painter most commonly remembered not for
his art, but his friendship to more renown painters like
John Singer Sargent.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 2:47 PM PST - 186 comments
"The national debate over private equity so far has hinged on the question of whether experience in the field qualifies Mitt Romney, the former Bain Capital executive, for the presidency. But a more vexing, and largely unanswered, question lies just beneath the surface: How is it, exactly, that an investment company can make millions even as the company it's ostensibly trying to turn around goes bust? For that answer, we turned to what may seem like a less-than-reliable source:
Tony Soprano [NSFW: language]."
posted by ericb at 2:29 PM PST - 54 comments
"Here’s a paper we’re working on, which argues that we should (for some purposes at least), think of markets, hierarchy and democracy in terms of their capacity to solve complex collective problems [and] makes the case that democracy will on average do the job
a lot better than the other two ways..." Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi on a
cognitive approach to democracy (
pdf).
[via]posted by daniel_charms at 1:39 PM PST - 12 comments
Marvel Comics created a
hearing-impaired superhero in honor of a hearing-impaired boy. Anthony Smith, a 4-year-old boy, told his mother he did not want to wear his hearing aid anymore because superheroes don't wear hearing aids. His mother e-mailed Marvel Comics and described her son's situation and hoped for
help.
posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 11:54 AM PST - 48 comments
Dear Jay Leno ... "First off, my intention is not to fight you on this. You have more cars than I have dollars, and so I know I don’t stand a chance legally ..." - "An Open Letter to Jay Leno About Stealing My Video and Then Getting It Removed From YouTube"
[more inside]posted by mrgrimm at 11:00 AM PST - 104 comments
For us children, our mother's nagging can be a frustrating, constant annoyance. However, when her presence is no longer felt, these words become our strongest source of comfort and affection. It is then that we learn to hold on tightly to these warm, faint traces of memories. From Singapore, a
"tribute to all the mothers of the world". [SLYT]
posted by undue influence at 8:00 AM PST - 5 comments
Magic Meerkat Moments: In this clip from BBC's Planet Earth Live, we get to see meerkats, which have become so acclimated to film crews that they now view them as part of the landscape and use them for shade and as vantage points.
[via]posted by quin at 7:12 AM PST - 35 comments
May 23
Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return? Four decades ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer model called World3 warned of such a possible course for human civilization in the 21st century. In Limits to Growth, a bitterly disputed 1972 book that explicated these findings, researchers argued that the global industrial system has so much inertia that it cannot readily correct course in response to signals of planetary stress. But unless economic growth skidded to a halt before reaching the edge, they warned, society was headed for overshoot—and a splat that could kill billions.
posted by j03 at 11:38 PM PST - 130 comments
"I'm just looking for a second chance. Other people get second chances. Alcoholics. Drug addicts. Spousal beaters. Not gamblers, though. But, if you want to put something on my tombstone that was very important to me, it’s 1,972. That’s how many winning games I’ve played in. So that makes me the biggest winner in the history of sports. No one else can say that." Here, Now is a short documentary that looks at baseball legend Pete Rose, as he lives his life today.
[more inside]posted by zarq at 10:09 PM PST - 45 comments
Ektoplazm is now the world’s largest distributor of free (and legal) psytrance music specializing in high-quality Creative Commons-licensed content from netlabels and independent artists, all released in MP3 and lossless CD-quality FLAC and WAV formats.posted by Trurl at 7:30 PM PST - 47 comments
What’s a Readlist? A group of web pages—articles, recipes, course materials, anything—bundled into an e-book you can send to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone.
posted by netbros at 5:57 PM PST - 43 comments
Frenchman Xavier Chevrin is driving an electric car 3,000 miles through Africa, from Nairobi to Johannesburg. Finding outlets is a challenge, about 65 percent of Africans do not have access to electricity. The
daily video logs are a joy not only for the beautiful scenery along a contemporary African road trip, but the excitement of many Africans who have never seen an electric vehicle.
The vehicle is a souped-up version of cars used by the French postal service, a
Citroen Berlingo powered by
Venturi. This is Xavier's 2nd long distance electric car expedition, previously he did
Shanghai to Paris, it set the record for the longest distance traveled in an electric vehicle.
posted by stbalbach at 4:03 PM PST - 9 comments
I used to be a lifehacking addict [...] But sometime over the last couple years (around the time I turned 30, not coincidentally), it has begun to dawn on me: Maybe all the time I spend looking for better ways to do things is keeping me from, well, doing things.
Confessions of a recovering lifehackerposted by Foci for Analysis at 1:18 PM PST - 64 comments
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into
the past.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:33 PM PST - 185 comments
Chromeography is a tumblr devoted to images of chrome: the lettering, logos, and ornaments adorning old automobiles (and bicycles and cameras and appliances).
posted by gamera at 11:52 AM PST - 8 comments
Prince v. Cariou, Round 2: Money Talks Prince v. Cariou oral arguments were heard today by a three Judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
In many ways, the future of appropriation art (and Google’s image search, possibly) rests on the outcome of this case. And if today’s arguments are any indication, neither side is going to go down without a fight. [more inside]posted by snaparapans at 10:43 AM PST - 95 comments
The Books were a two-piece band consisting of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong. Their albums (
Thought For Food (2002),
The Lemon of Pink (2003),
Lost and Safe (2005), and
The Way Out (2010)) consisted of a mixture of found audio, constructed sounds, languid vocals, and traditional instruments, but with a warm, solid feel to the proceedings despite the amount of audio manipulation.
The band broke up earlier this year, but Nick Zammuto has released a new album from his new band, the self-titled
Zammuto. (The music here definitely shares DNA with The Books, but there's a more electronic feel to them.)
When The Books' final album,
The Way Out, debuted, the band discussed the genesis of each track on their blog (
discussed on MeFi), which was a fascinating look into the creative process.
This look continues as, over on a new Tumblr blog, Nick Zammuto has begun telling the story of The Books
from the beginning (
part two,
part three). If you're a fan of The Books, of music creation, or of just how art is inspired, the three parts to date are great reading, and promise more to come.
posted by Legomancer at 10:00 AM PST - 14 comments
Gestus is a moving image processing framework that uses computer vision techniques to explore the artistic possibilities of the vector as a symbolic form.
posted by Dr. Fetish at 8:34 AM PST - 15 comments
May 22
Has there ever been any advance in retailing that didn't in turn create a new opportunity for fraud? Take barcodes, for example: You can go to the store, buy a cheap box of Legos, and take it home. Then you use your computer to create peel-and-stick stickers with that same barcode on it. Now you go back to the store, pick up expensive boxes of Legos, and put your own stickers over their barcodes. Voila! You can now buy them for low price, and resell for a profit. That is what
Thomas Langenbach is accused of having done, and it seems that he made over $30,000 reselling them on eBay.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:16 PM PST - 127 comments
Isaac Butler’s excellent blog
Parabasis (previously noted in MeFi conversations about
Mike Daisey and
Spidermusicals) usually centers on issues in the US nonprofit theater. Occasionally, he takes on a different topic in depth with a series of guests. This past week, he hosted the
Fandom Issue:
I am less interested personally in whether the Rise of the Fan is good or bad for our culture, and much more interested in what it means. This week, we assay the Fan from a number of different angles. Who are these fans? And what does it mean to be one? What happens to love when it becomes a communal activity? And what happens to it when the beloved cannot or will not respond?
[more inside]posted by HeroZero at 10:03 PM PST - 13 comments
On Why Soup Is So Bad for Diurnal Rhythms:
“Certainly. Carrot soup mimetically resembles a carrot only in color.” John was worried by the mainstream diet of soup. Not only is frantic chewing part of the joy of feeding, but widespread and protracted ingestion with minimal effort could derail diurnal cycles. Originally food was partly invented for sustenance, and partly to pass time and to mark it, and so John, in any given day, would scrupulously observe all nine meals: an early breakfast on rising; a second breakfast, in the German tradition, as rumbling recurred around nine; brunch, closely followed by elevensies, or vice versa if you favor Bohr’s algorithm; lunch; tiffin at four, with the focus on small savory sandwiches rather than cake, to avoid a mid-afternoon sugar coma; dinner; supper, and, of course, a final midnight feast to salute the day as it retires. Each meal consists of one, two, or three courses, plus intercourses where appropriate, and the main cycle might be accessorized with any number of subcycles of casual snacking.posted by shivohum at 9:34 PM PST - 33 comments
Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary television series by Robert Hughes produced by the BBC in association with Time-Life Films and RM Productions. ... It addressed the development of modern art since the Impressionists and was accompanied by a book of the same name; its combination of insight, wit and accessibility are still widely praised. -
Wikipedia [more inside]posted by Trurl at 7:28 PM PST - 18 comments
Strong Female Protagonist is a (currently 16-page, but ongoing) webcomic that "follows the adventures of a young middle-class American with super-strength, invincibility and a crippling sense of social injustice."
posted by davidjmcgee at 1:41 PM PST - 30 comments
In 1929, John Galsworthy won a Guardian poll as the novelist most likely to still be read in 2029. Three years later, he won the Nobel Prize, and the prices of his first editions skyrocketed. His reputation has since been on a 80-year wane that shows no signs of abating. The New Yorker asks
Why is Literary Fame So Unpredictable? And who will they be teaching in literature class a century from now?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:30 AM PST - 65 comments
RCMP eyed philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre during tense Quebec political upheaval. [theglobeandmail.com] Canadian spies closely eyed existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, tracking his planned trip to Quebec in support of people arrested during a crackdown on separatist threats, newly released documents show.
The declassified Royal Canadian Mounted Police dossier on Mr. Sartre also reveals that Mountie intelligence officers pored over translations of the French writer’s pronouncements, monitored his links to the peace movement and noted the academic rebel’s brushes with the law.
posted by Fizz at 6:14 AM PST - 55 comments
Just imagine: a few musicologists know that there are 320 18th century sonatas lying somewhere in a Dutch archive. Half of them are by great masters such as Vivaldi and Telemann. The other half consists of works written by lesser-known but nonetheless interesting composers. Yet no one performs them or even shows any interest in them. Three hundred and twenty sonatas! Unthinkable, improbable. [more inside]posted by mahershalal at 4:07 AM PST - 23 comments
May 21
Wendy Carlos is best known for
Switched-On Bach, the best-selling album that popularized the Moog synthesizer, and the soundtracks for
A Clockwork Orange and
Tron. But what she calls her "most important album" is the 1986 recording
Beauty in the Beast, whose experiments with instrumentation, tonality, and scaling are described in
these two PDF reproductions of contemporary articles from
Keyboard magazine.
[more inside]posted by Trurl at 7:25 PM PST - 30 comments
Scandanavia And The World: A web comic of outrageous national stereotypes bluntly portrayed by cute little cartoon bobbleheads, that will nonetheless help outsiders learn to differentiate among the Nordic countries. With explanatory text.
posted by Diablevert at 6:18 PM PST - 48 comments
Putting a law degree to good use: a Deputy Attorney General of the State of Hawaii responds to a request for Barak Obama's birth certificate from the Secretary State of Arizona.
(Scroll down for the actual correspondence.)posted by alms at 4:25 PM PST - 149 comments
Zamrock is a largely forgotten musical movement, born from a newly independence still trying to find stability. The sound is a mix of local sounds with heavy, bluesy and psychedelic rock, usually sung in English, the constitutional language for Zambia. Unfortunately, little of the history is written, and those who were there are fewer each year. Last year, Emmanuel Kangwa “Jagari” Chanda, the co-founder and lead singer for WITCH (We Intend To Cause Havoc), was
interviewed for two hours (Vimeo;
transcript;
source) and
recorded a radio show with 14 Zamrock tracks. The South African newspaper
Mail & Guardian have an article with more history and interview snippets with Jagari, whose stage name is an Africanisation of Mick Jagger's name. (
via)
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 12:04 PM PST - 16 comments
Following the announcement of
plans to replace the Disability Living Allowance, eliminating benefits to 500,000 people via new criteria and the already-controversial
Work Capability Assessments, and
concerns that the change will undermine the legacy of the Paralypmic Games, public transit access to the Olympics for wheelchair users is
put to the test (autostart video). For reference, the TfL suggests form Trafalgar Square to Stratford takes 35-40 minutes without accessibility considerations and approximately 50 minutes using wheelchair accessible routes.
[more inside]posted by hoyland at 9:47 AM PST - 29 comments
The fish pendant , on Philip K. Dick’s account, began to emit a golden ray of light, and Dick suddenly experienced what he called anamnesis: the direct perception by the mind of a metaphysical reality.
posted by xammerboy at 8:10 AM PST - 109 comments
The Eurovision Song Contest 2012's first semi-final begins tomorrow at 3 PM EST (12 PM PST).
Watch it online, and listen to the songs (below the jump).
[more inside]posted by LSK at 7:31 AM PST - 204 comments
Joyce Banda, who was
recently sworn in as Malawi's first ever female president has
announced plans to repeal her country's laws against homosexuality in her first state of nation address. She said:
"Some laws which were duly passed by the august house... will be repealed as a matter of urgency... these include the provisions regarding indecent practices and unnatural acts."
More than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalising homosexual acts with imprisionment, abuse and even murder being served as punishment to generally widespread public support. This, coupled with Malawi hosting the African summit in July makes Banda's move all the more laudable.
posted by jamiemch at 6:08 AM PST - 25 comments
May 20
"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders."
This is them eating lunch. Single link tumblr.
posted by sweetkid at 8:17 PM PST - 45 comments
And so I descend once more into the mysterious depths of 3 Women, a film that was imagined in a dream. Robert Altman's 1977 masterpiece tells the story of three women whose identities blur, shift and merge until finally, in an enigmatic last scene, they have formed a family, or perhaps have become one person. I have seen it many times, been through it twice in shot-by-shot analysis, and yet it always seems to be happening as I watch it. -
Roger Ebert [more inside]posted by Trurl at 7:04 PM PST - 21 comments
Can using different types of models benefit brands? Ben Barry discusses his Ph.D. research in
Elle Canada, making a business case for diversity in fashion: women increased their purchase intentions when they saw models who reflected their size, age, and race.
Jezebel summarizes, "Barry's research... casts doubt on the age-old theory that people buy things because advertising stokes their insecurities, creating a need that can only be filled by the advertised product. It suggests that advertising can work by inducing in the consumer feelings of affinity for and identification with the people shown in the ad."
posted by flex at 3:59 PM PST - 44 comments
OpenLeaks has
come into focus as a platform where leakers submit material specifying participating media organizations to receive early access as well as a later date for a full non-exclusive release. In principle, OpenLeaks cannot access the leaked documents themselves until this later release date.
[more inside]posted by jeffburdges at 3:13 PM PST - 48 comments
“I say God bless ‘em, man, go make another ‘RoboCop.’ … I don’t know, you can throw a lot of CGI at it and so forth. The morality that’s endemic to the movie that you just watched is hard to replicate. It makes you laugh and cry and moves you, and it’s hysterical and horrible and all those unbelievable things at once.” - Former cyborg and
Italian Italian Renaissance Scholar Peter Weller talks to the
Hero Complex Film Festival about
the Robocop Remake and other things in the run-up to the films 25th anniversary.
posted by Artw at 12:01 PM PST - 93 comments
Yaoi, man-on-man relationship comics aimed at female readers and typically produced by female authors. And now the phenomenon is moving West.
An
article from Comics Alliance discusses three webcomics that have gained considerable popularity despite what some would call their niche appeal.
[more inside]posted by The ____ of Justice at 3:24 AM PST - 75 comments
May 19
"Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day. Civility, respect, kindness, character. You're too good for schadenfreude, you're too good for gossip and snark, you're too good for intolerance—and since you're walking into the middle of a presidential election, it's worth mentioning that you're too good to think people who disagree with you are your enemy.... Don't ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world. It's the only thing that ever has."
On May 13th, Aaron Sorkin
gave the commencement address to the graduating class at Syracuse University, a speech that
has been mildly criticized for recycling some lines from his shows
West Wing and
Sports Night.
Video. (
Via.)
posted by zarq at 8:20 PM PST - 50 comments
"The NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution." Today, the
NAACP passed a resolution endorsing same sex
marriage.
posted by cashman at 5:42 PM PST - 98 comments
Webwandern. Hike the Swiss Alps but don't bother getting out of your chair. Site is in German, but easy to navigate.
posted by zardoz at 2:27 PM PST - 13 comments
WFNX is D-E-D, dead. The last remaining Boston indie major market radio station,
WFNX, has been sold to Clear Channel Communications. 17 full- and part-time staffers, including almost all the current radio personalities, have been laid off. The station will continue to operate for a few months with a skeleton crew until the FCC approval and changeover.
[more inside]posted by clone boulevard at 9:54 AM PST - 72 comments
So-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs)
The story of
Nazi jazz. [
Previously.]
[more inside]posted by Sonny Jim at 2:28 AM PST - 42 comments
May 18
simply read
Finnegans Wake. Since it is said to make more sense when recited aloud, you could start with
this recording of James Joyce performing a passage from the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" section - which has been described as "one of the most beautiful prose-poems in English".
[more inside]posted by Trurl at 6:58 PM PST - 40 comments
“I believe I owe the gay community an apology.” -- Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, recants a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.
posted by slater at 5:22 PM PST - 29 comments
Why Teaching Equality Hurts Men: "It hurts them by making them unconsciously perpetrate biases they’ve been actively taught to despise. It hurts them by making them complicit in the distress of others. It hurts them by shoehorning them into a restrictive definition masculinity from which any and all deviation is harshly punished... It hurts them through a process of indoctrination so subtle and pervasive that they never even knew it was happening, and when you’ve been raised to hate inequality, discovering that you’ve actually been its primary beneficiary is horrifying – like learning that the family fortune comes from blood money."
(via nooneyouknow)posted by flex at 3:28 PM PST - 134 comments
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon cargo capsule is scheduled to launch at 8:55 am UTC on Saturday, May 19, 2012 - a little less than 12 hours from now.
[more inside]posted by egor83 at 2:38 PM PST - 52 comments
Why I Wrote Solidarity Forever. "In the pantheon of American labor history there is a very special place for Ralph Chaplin, the man and his work. As the poet laureate of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), he is probably remembered best for giving organized labor its fighting them song, Solidarity Forever."
[more inside]posted by Stagger Lee at 9:00 AM PST - 27 comments
Scientists investigate the use of psychedelic drugs in end of life therapy "Grob and his colleagues are part of a resurgence of scientific interest in the healing power of psychedelics. Michael Mithoefer, for instance, has shown that MDMA is an effective treatment for severe P.T.S.D. Halpern has examined case studies of people with cluster headaches who took LSD and reported their symptoms greatly diminished. And psychedelics have been recently examined as treatment for alcoholism and other addictions. "
posted by bookman117 at 12:11 AM PST - 57 comments
May 17
Each morning at 9am for the next two weeks, (Mefi's Own) scifi and fantasy author
John Scalzi will be chatting with musician
Jonathan Coulton about one of his science fiction songs -- a different song each morning, -- in a daily podcast over at Tor.com called
Journey to Planet JoCo. Series
index. On May 29th, they'll be premiering a brand new, previously unheard Coulton song.
posted by zarq at 11:29 PM PST - 3 comments
Previously,
WSJ asked if YA novels today are too dark- with abuse, violence and depravity. A YA writer took it literally and
researched the color distribution and demographic of young adult novels.
posted by ichomp at 8:21 PM PST - 34 comments
When
Captain America throws his mighty shield, all those who chose to oppose his shield must yield. Doc Bruce Banner, pelted by gamma rays, turns into
The Hulk; ain't he unglamorous?
Tony Stark makes you feel; he's a cool exec with a heart of steel. Cross the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard, where the booming heavens roar, you'll behold in breathless wonder the god of Thunder, mighty
Thor. Stronger than a whale,
he can swim anywhere; he can breathe underwater and go flying through the air.
[more inside]posted by Trurl at 6:04 PM PST - 61 comments
Where will you be on May 20th/21st? There will be an
annular solar eclipse late afternoon that will be visible in the Western US:
"On May 21, 2012, an annular solar eclipse begins over southeast China and passes over Japan. When the eclipse crosses the International Date Line, the local date becomes May 20. The eclipse then enters the California/Oregon border, passes in the late afternoon over Nevada, Utah, Arizona, a corner of Colorado, New Mexico, and ends at sunset in Texas."
As a warning, please don't scorch your eyeballs! There are
guidelines on safe viewing.
posted by dfm500 at 4:50 PM PST - 37 comments
Doug Dillard was a pioneer of country rock with his band The Dillards, with his brother Rodney, who were perhaps the first to plug bluegrass instruments into amplifiers back in the early sixties. He died today at the age of 75.
[more inside]posted by Fnarf at 12:27 PM PST - 18 comments
It's Nicholl Fellowship season again! This year, with a May 1st deadline, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences accepted a record 7,197 entries -- an estimated 647,730 to 863,640 pages that Academy Judges will have to read and evaluate by October. This is a record reflecting not only a high number of aspirant screenwriters, but over 1,000 submissions from outside the territorial United States.
Previously,
here and
here. Does anybody here have any Nicholl Fellowship tales? Any wins? Any multi-decade efforts to get their story out there?
posted by vhsiv at 11:58 AM PST - 33 comments
ReachOut Healthcare America, a dental management services company, “built its business model on the premise that low-income parents often don’t have time or transportation to take children to the dentist. So mobile teams pack equipment in large cases, load up a minivan, head to schools and set up in gyms, libraries or classrooms.” Services are billed to Medicaid. ReachOut and other dental management services companies are increasingly backed by private equity firms.
What could possibly go wrong?
[more inside]posted by evilmomlady at 6:31 AM PST - 42 comments
May 16
Rethinking "Mother died today": Translating a work requires a surprising amount of thought to avoid leading readers into contextual pitfalls, and
The Stranger is no exception.
"Within the novel’s first sentence, two subtle and seemingly minor translation decisions have the power to change the way we read everything that follows."posted by estlin at 9:19 PM PST - 47 comments
Consequences,
Choices,
Children in Crisis,
Challenges. HBO’s multi-part research documentary The Weight of the Nation examines obesity in America in four parts, marshaling leading doctors, epidemiologists, economists, researchers, and community leaders to understand and explain the individual costs and public solutions to a multi-faceted social and individual problem. The documentary both explores large picture statistics, while giving voice “to those that often too seek to be invisible: members of the nearly 70 percent of Americans currently diagnosed as overweight or obese. (
AV Club Review)”
[more inside]posted by stratastar at 12:49 PM PST - 42 comments
"A Harvard MBA Pays Down $101K Of Debt." Two years after he graduated from Harvard with an MBA, Joe Mihalic, now manager of strategic alliances and business development at Dell, vowed to do “everything in my power–short of lying, cheating, and stealing–to pay down" his student loan debt, (then totaling 90K,) "in the next ten months.” After applying for a weekend delivery job, he also decided to chronicle the steps he was taking on a blog: "
No More Harvard Debt." First page of posts is
here. Penultimate post explains his process:
"Mission Accomplished." [more inside]posted by zarq at 11:53 AM PST - 194 comments
Irene Shubik started as a television script-writer, first writing for
Encyclopædia Britannica Films (
some videos on Archive.org) in the United States before moving back England, where she was hired on at Associated British Corporation. There, she worked as a story editor for the
prolific TV producer Sydney Newman on the anthology series '
Armchair Theatre.' A long-time fan of science fiction, Shubik approached Newman about creating a science fiction version of 'Armchair Theatre,' and Newman agreed. The result was '
Out of This World,' which ran for a single season in 1962. Shubik followed Newman to BBC, where they continued the theme of 'Out of This World' with a new program, '
Out of the Unknown.' Between the two series, 63 episodes were made, though
only 21 episodes survive in full, and
audio and video clips survive from another 18 episodes. The videos and original short stories are linked below the break.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 9:43 AM PST - 4 comments
8-bitscapes : Artist Jamie Sneddon and photographer Kevin Rozario-Johnson take cityscapes and add in elements from classic videogames with delightful results.
[more inside]posted by quin at 8:50 AM PST - 21 comments
The eight fingered Polish-Norwegian artist
Andrej Nebb with his band, performing
Bo jo cie kochom in Oslo in 1980. How he lost two fingers? Cutting his guitar with a chainsaw. That’s why he had to play bass instead. Basically he fled communism to live a rock ‘n’ roll life.
Here he is back in Poland in 2002, at
Przystanek Woodstock.
posted by nordlys at 6:42 AM PST - 9 comments
May 15
A woman opens an old steamer trunk and discovers tantalizing clues that a long-dead relative may actually have been a serial killer, stalking the streets of New York in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A beer enthusiast is presented by his neighbor with the original recipe for Brown's Ale, salvaged decades before from the wreckage of the old brewery--the very building where the Star-Spangled Banner was sewn in 1813.
These stories have two things in common. They are tailor-made for viral success on the internet.
And they are all lies.posted by Sebmojo at 5:36 PM PST - 203 comments
“To all unmarried ones who would like to spend their life by my side and within all the beauties of my home. Please look below at all the magic of my home that I have decorated with taste, perhaps just for YOU. Don Milisav Juan Gonzales Brzi, Contact: +33-#########″posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:12 AM PST - 59 comments
Jimmyjane (NSFW) makes luxury, design-oriented vibrators and other sex toys and accessories. ("Design inspired by Apple, not Hustler.") They'd like to change the way Americans think about them: instead of as 'dirty little secrets,' they're hoping for mainstream acceptance and to usher in an "
Age of Great American Sex."
(Via) [more inside]posted by zarq at 11:08 AM PST - 42 comments
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is...
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.
MeFi's own
John Scalzi provides an excellent, relatable metaphor for explaining the realities of race and gender without invoking the dreaded word "privilege".
[more inside]posted by Jon_Evil at 11:04 AM PST - 368 comments
Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X, is currently on the run from the U.S. government.
In this interview with the National Post he talks about his work with Anonymous and what it means for the future of information:
"Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the U.S. State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the U.S. Department of Defence in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody.
Now people are leaking to Anonymous and they’re not coming to us with this document or that document or a CD, they’re coming to us with keys to the kingdom, they’re giving us the passwords and usernames to whole secure databases that we now have free reign over. … The world needs to be concerned."(via)posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 9:48 AM PST - 49 comments
"She lets go of the handle and goes into free fall. At the same time, she jerks the manual release on her cervical collar and goes into full Michelin Man mode as tiny gas cartridges detonate in several strategic locations around her bod. The biggest one goes off like an M-80 at the nape of her neck, unfurling the coverall's collar into a cylindrical gas bag that shoots straight up and encases her entire head. Other airbags go off around her torso and pelvis, paying lots of attention to that spinal column."
In his 1992 book
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson described a protective airbag technology for bikers and skateboarders.
It's become a reality.
[more inside]posted by quin at 8:47 AM PST - 59 comments
The emergence of a citation cartel. "Cell Transplantation is a medical journal published by the Cognizant Communication Corporation of Putnam Valley, New York. In recent years, its impact factor has been growing rapidly. In 2006, it was 3.482. In 2010, it had almost doubled to 6.204.
When you look at which journals cite Cell Transplantation, two journals stand out noticeably: the Medical Science Monitor, and The Scientific World Journal. According to the JCR, neither of these journals cited Cell Transplantation until 2010.
Then, in 2010, a review article was published in the Medical Science Monitor citing 490 articles, 445 of which were to papers published in Cell Transplantation. All 445 citations pointed to papers published in 2008 or 2009 — the citation window from which the journal’s 2010 impact factor was derived. Of the remaining 45 citations, 44 cited the Medical Science Monitor, again, to papers published in 2008 and 2009.
Three of the four authors of this paper sit on the editorial board of Cell Transplantation. Two are associate editors, one is the founding editor. The fourth is the CEO of a medical communications company."
(from
Scholarly Kitchen, via
Andrew Gelman.)
posted by escabeche at 7:17 AM PST - 26 comments
May 14
Los Tocayos Carlos - a comprehensive investigation by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and a team of students which uncovers evidence that Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence who was executed in Texas in 1989, was innocent. The issue of The Columbia Human Rights Law Review, entirely dedicated to this investigation, is available at
this website.
posted by Gyan at 10:58 PM PST - 42 comments
This is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. is
Augusten Burroughs' new self-help book (reviews
here,
here, and
here), one which scorns the genre cliches of goal-setting and affirmations in favor of a hard-nosed philosophy of self-honesty based on lessons learned from his own background of abuse, neglect, and rape. In an
interview with CNN, he gives snippets of his views on subjects like the harm of people "clinging to a dream which maybe they don't actually have the talent to do", suicide ("it doesn't release you, it adds a new layer of horror") and the quest for thinness ("the brain is magnificent and to focus on your gastrointestinal track is a complete waste"). (
previously)
posted by shivohum at 10:57 PM PST - 42 comments
She connected the discarded organ replacement machines together and had them 'breathe' in closed circuits. The machines of
The Immortal keep each other alive through circulation of electrical impulses, oxygen and artificial blood.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:22 PM PST - 28 comments
Taiyo Matsumoto's original five volume manga Ping Pong was one of the most surprising and gripping experiences I've had this year. But a huge reason for that is the artwork: he packs more kinetic energy into a single drawing of a shoe skidding across a floor than any real shoe has ever had. So it was with some trepidation that I saw posters for this adaptation going up in stores around Japan. Fumihiko Masuri is a first time director (not that you'd know it), with a background in computer effects. He seems to have directed this mainly because he's a really big fan of the manga too. On the film's website, they've placed images from the manga next to photographs of the actors in the film, so you can see how obsessive compulsive they were in matching faces. Not only faces, but movements, playing styles, and shot composition is all straight from the book, as if they'd used the manga in lieu of storyboards. Even the occasional surreal touch; a boy growing butterfly wings, a dragonfly landing on the net, is right out of the page onto the screen. --
Midnight Eye review; subtitled movie in 12 parts:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12posted by filthy light thief at 12:36 PM PST - 22 comments
Russell Mulcahy is best known for directing
Highlander (as well as its...
less-popular...sequel) and is currently doing a
Teen Wolf series for MTV. But speaking of MTV, he got his start doing music videos. A
lot of music videos. In fact, if you remember a video from the early days of MTV, it's probably one of Mulcahy's.
[more inside]posted by Legomancer at 9:02 AM PST - 33 comments
The website of the Society for Irish Latin American Studies is full of information about Irish migration to Latin America. It's divided into four sections:
The Homeland, about the
origins of the settlers;
The Journey, about how the Irish settlers traveled to Latin America, including the infamous
Dresden affair;
The Settlement, about the lives of the Irish in Latin America;
Faces and Places, which has biographies of a wide variety of people,
Mateo Banks, family murderer,
Camila O'Gorman, executed lover of a priest,
William Lamport, 17th Century revolutionary and
Bernardo O'Higgins, Chilean independence leader, who gets a whole subsection to himself. There is also a
list of Irish placenames and much else of interest to history nerds.
posted by Kattullus at 6:42 AM PST - 13 comments
"In the space of My Darkest Year, in no particular order, these things happened. My younger son died. My marriage ended. A rabbi and renowned jazz musician whom I’d only met once performed my son’s funeral. People applauded. I fell in love with a blond poet suffering from PTSD. It didn’t work out. My divorce was granted. The only Jewish funeral director in town admitted to me, unbidden, that her life’s passion is improv comedy. My ex-husband threatened my boyfriend’s balls via Facebook. I fled—and sold—my dream house. My older son lost his first tooth and entered kindergarten. I performed stand-up comedy. People applauded. I fell in love again. I realized I’m not afraid of anything." Michelle Mirsky's column
No Fear of Flying: Kamikaze Missions in Sex, Death, and Comedy won the 2011 McSweeney's Column Contest. It's funny, aching, gutsy, and heartwrenching.
posted by sixswitch at 6:02 AM PST - 10 comments
The Angel of The Gap. For almost half a century, Don Ritchie would approach people contemplating suicide at the edge of The Gap, just 50 metres from his home in Watsons Bay, his palms facing up [...] he would smile and say: "Is there something I could do to help you?".
RIP
Don Ritchie, Australian
Local Hero of the Year for 2011, and saviour of at least 160 would-be suicides at Sydney scenic cliff & suicide spot,
The Gap.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:14 AM PST - 45 comments
May 13
I'd always been fascinated by the trope of the doppelgänger and its long literary life, from Dostoyevsky to Nabokov to Spider-Man. Often, in books, these physical doubles represent the worst a character is capable of. Lately, though, perhaps because at age 41 I'd begun feeling less like the captain of my life and more like its deckhand, I'd started wondering if there was someone out there who embodies not your worst self, but your freest one—a person who encapsulates everything you've ever dreamed of becoming. Let's call him your Cooler Self. All those dreams that got lost along the way, the ones that were casualties of chance or duty or cowardice: There's a "you" out there—a mountain climber or war photographer or race-car driver—who brought them to fruition.
So I vowed to hunt down my Cooler Self.
posted by AceRock at 8:54 PM PST - 64 comments
On June 7th, the Disney XD channel will premiere a new, 10-part miniseries:
Tron Uprising. The series, which will feature the voices of Elijah Wood, Lance Henriksen, Bruce Boxleitner (reprising his role as 'Tron',) Mandy Moore and Paul Reubens, will combine 2D and CGI animation styles, and is set between the events of the first and second Tron movies. Trailers:
1,
2. 2011 ComicCon
Preview. Disney released a full-length "prelude episode" yesterday evening (US Only):
Beck's Beginning. (
Via)
[more inside]posted by zarq at 7:08 PM PST - 38 comments
"Like his legendary Hogg, The Mad Man, and the million-seller Dhalgren,
Samuel R. Delany’s major new novel
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders—explicit, poetic, philosophical, and, yes, shocking—propels readers into a gay sexual culture unknown to most urban gay men and women, a network of rural gay relations—with the twist that this one is supported by the homophile Kyle Foundation, started in the early 1980s by a black multi-millionaire, Robert Kyle III, to improve the lives of black gay men."
[more inside]posted by kittensofthenight at 6:07 PM PST - 38 comments
Our planet is inhabited by two distinct kinds
of intelligent beings — individual humans and corporate
entities — whose natures and interests are intimately
linked. To co-exist well, we need to find ways to define
the rights and responsibilities of both individual humans
and corporate entities, and to find ways to ensure that
corporate entities behave as responsible members of society. (SLAX)(pdf warning)
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 3:33 PM PST - 88 comments
Tchaikovsky Timelapse manually snapped frames in-between the frames the animator intended to use, in order to capture the animation process in action. Not sure if the actual time-lapse has been released, but more on the elaborate production of it is available
here.
posted by gman at 6:03 AM PST - 14 comments
May 12
Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart recently captured these scenes from a fading culture, as he followed Montana ranchers on their final horse drive, moving more than 300 horses down from their winter range. Every spring the Mantle family, along with with a group of wranglers, drives the herd north over 35 miles and three days, through the small town of Three Forks to their ranch. After decades of supplying and tending to horses, the Mantles, citing financial challenges, now plan to sell off their herd and shift to raising beef cattle. Take a moment to travel with the Mantle family through big sky country, on a journey once so familiar and iconic, now fading into memory with the rest of cowboy culture.
posted by Blasdelb at 7:38 PM PST - 31 comments
As The Polyphonic Spree embarks on Phase 3 of their You + Me tour,
a fan made video features backstage and rehearsal footage and in-concert filming along with an interview with group founder Tim Delaughter about the creation of the band.
posted by hippybear at 6:24 PM PST - 20 comments
Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath? Charming but volatile, L. quickly found ways to play different boys off one another. “Some manipulation by girls is typical,” Waschbusch said as the kids trooped inside. “The amount she does it, and the precision with which she does it — that’s unprecedented.” She had, for example, smuggled a number of small toys into camp, Waschbusch told me, then doled them out as prizes to kids who misbehaved at her command.posted by Rory Marinich at 3:13 PM PST - 194 comments
Before Leon Schlessinger produced the classic animation series
Merrie Melodies, there was another series of shorts created to feature contemporary pop hits. Combining live-action musical performances with an art deco-influenced set design, only 6 episodes of
Spooney Melodies were ever produced. Today, only one short remains –
Crying for the Carolines, considered by many to be the first ever music video.
[more inside]posted by Think_Long at 1:55 PM PST - 8 comments
Andrew Sullivan's Daily Beast reports that Jan van Lohuizen, "highly respected Republican pollster", has advised his fellow conservatives to embrace GLBT civil rights. The text of the memo is reproduced in full at the link.
posted by Ipsifendus at 12:55 PM PST - 65 comments
May 11
Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents. Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity.
For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.posted by Blasdelb at 6:13 PM PST - 57 comments
Creamsicle is tumblr's newest
OTP. In this little internet corner of endless fannish possibility, "where large fandoms become generational phenomenon, and unlikely smaller ones explode into supernovas of animated gifs, a full-fledged internet meme-turned-actual fandom [has been spawned] in less than 24 hours."
[more inside]posted by dustyasymptotes at 6:03 PM PST - 71 comments
"Nicolas Sarkozy did very little about fostering innovation — he didn’t have a clue. As for François Hollande, the strongest part of its electorate (largely composed of teachers and other public servants) opposes any rapprochement between private sector and public higher education. And let’s not mention the underlying “ideology” of venture capital, carried interest, IPO’s, flexible employment rules, etc. Hollande’s supporters will also oppose any removal of cobwebs from the 102-year-old labor code that greatly complicates the management of companies employing 50 or more people. As a result, France has 2.4 times more companies with 49 employees than with 50..." -
Francois Hollande’s Start-down Nationposted by beisny at 3:45 PM PST - 79 comments
Thermal, CA: home to the #1 song of the '80s. During the '70s and early'80s, the small, arid
farming town of
Thermal was home to
Freedman Co., run by Mr. Steinberg and his son, Billy, who ran vineyard operations. Billy also
made music, time permitting. After
his demo was secretly given to a star, he went to L.A., and met his musical collaborator, but the farm pulled him back. He kept writing in Thermal, though.
"I remember writing the lyrics. . . while driving around in a red pickup truck that I owned and I was driving around my father’s dusty desert vineyards. I had been involved in a very emotionally difficult relationship that had finally ended I had met somebody new... I came up with the line,
‘I made it through the wilderness...I was beat, incomplete, I’d been had.’ All of the lyrics just poured out".
That was
Steinberg & Kelly's first
#1 hit...
followed by four more, along with
other hits you
might not suspect.posted by markkraft at 2:09 PM PST - 33 comments
Empire of the Bun: Today, burgers. Tomorrow, the world. The casual-dining revolution of Adam Fleischman and his Umami Group. 'In 2009, with $40,000 in his pocket from selling his stake in BottleRock, Fleischman decided to open a restaurant centered on the umami flavor. He knew that an umami-focused menu would attract a burgeoning breed of foodies who had been weaned on the Food Network and had developed a sort of teenybopper crush on the heady flavors of pork, organ meats, West Coast IPAs, and superripe cheeses.'
[more inside]posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:34 PM PST - 55 comments
"Instead of poking the fish with a screwdriver to find out whether they are ready to spawn, farms now can use a biopsy or ultrasound. Mr. Han said that after years of trial and error, his team has found a way to make that determination by feeling various parts of a fish." An entrepreneur in South Korea gets closer to
perfecting sturgeon aquaculture. (SLNYT)
posted by Nomyte at 12:45 PM PST - 31 comments
Fungible: A treatise on fungibility, or, a framework for understanding the mess the news industry is in and the opportunities that lie ahead.
The younger the person you ask, the less likely it is you’ll find that link between wanting to know what’s going on and grabbing a paper or opening up a news website. They use Pinterest to figure out what’s fashionable and Facebook to see if there’s anything fun going on next weekend. They use Facebook just the same to figure out whether there’s anything they need to be upset about and need to protest against.posted by shakespeherian at 10:59 AM PST - 25 comments
Consumer Reports May 2012: What to reject when you're expecting (
10 procedures to think twice about during your pregnancy; 10 things you should do during your pregnancy; 5 things you should do before you become pregnant). Mentioned in particular is the conclusion found in a federal study:
Babies Take Longer To Come Out Than They Did In Grandma's Day."One big implication: Today's obstetricians may be rushing to do cesarean sections too soon because they're using an out-of-date yardstick for how long a 'normal; labor should take... The definition of a 'normal' labor — the range of times when a woman in labor reaches certain milestones — was laid down in the 1950s. Contemporary obstetricians still use that 'labor curve.'"
posted by flex at 8:30 AM PST - 66 comments
The Smiling Madame Beudet made in 1922 is generally regarded by scholars and theorists as history's premier "
feminist film".
Germaine Dulac (
wiki) was a central figure in 1920's French avant-garde cinema, and its only woman director. A filmmaker with her own production company who worked in narrative, avant-garde, and documentary genres, Dulac was also an active feminist, critic, and a prolific writer who wrote some of the earliest treatises on avant-garde film.
Later she made what was considerered one of the first surrealist films:
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) from an original scenario by Antonin Artaud who later denounced it.
This resulted in a letter to La Nouvelle Revue Française, because the journal had omitted to mention her as the “author”
stating that the intellectuals and the filmmakers should develop a closer kinship to one another, for it is only nuances between words that irremediably keep them apart.
posted by adamvasco at 1:43 AM PST - 4 comments
May 10
In a
recent episode of
Mad Men titled "
Lady Lazarus," Pete Campbell has an existential crisis when he sees a picture of the Earth from space, but were there color pictures of the whole Earth in October 1966? First some background...
[more inside]posted by quartzcity at 11:03 PM PST - 87 comments
New Scientist - Every issue from its launch in November 1956 through to December 1989. Well, confusingly, one issue with a cover date of November 1952 but with contents from 1959.
[more inside]posted by unliteral at 10:24 PM PST - 31 comments
Scamworld: in which the Verge investigates "a network of pitchmen who have used the internet and fear of a failing economy to play the ultimate long con."
posted by doublesix at 7:58 PM PST - 61 comments
In 1919, everyone wanted a copy of the deluxe edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, but not because it was bound in vellum with real gold lettering.
It was because of these grim and gorgeous illustrations by Harry Clarke, which added an extra dose of horror to Poe's already terrifying tales.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which collects many of Poe's most enduring horror stories, including
"The Masque Of The Red Death," "The Pit And The Pendulum," "The Telltale Heart," and
"The Fall Of The House Of Usher," was actually first collected and published in 1908, nearly 60 years after Poe's death. This edition was published by George Harrap & Co., and included 24-full page illustrations by
Clarke. Even though the volume cost five guineas (somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 US), it was much in demand and made Clarke's reputation as an illustrator. It's easy to see why, with these gorgeous renditions of often gruesome subjects.
See all 24 illustrations
here.
posted by Lou Stuells at 4:31 PM PST - 36 comments
In March, a young, male driver crashed a Ferrari in snowy conditions, killing himself and wounding the two female passengers.
The Beijing Evening News posted a short story, complete with a picture of the wrecked car, but deleted it a short time later. A new story was put up a short time later, apparently without the picture of the wrecked car, but
terms related to the crash were blocked from the micro-blogging site Sina Weibo (
blocking on Weibo, previously). The news of the crash, and the subsequent (partial) cover-up were
further marks against the Rich2G, the second generation of China’s moneyed class. More recently, Ferrari held an event to celebrate twenty years of the luxury car maker in China,
spending $12,670 to rent a section (and drive a special edition "Marco Polo Red" 458 Italia) on top of
the City Wall of Nanjing. The driver was
caught on film driving tight circles on the ancient wall, leaving tire marks and
further souring the public against Ferrari in specific, and the wealthy at large.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 1:20 PM PST - 52 comments
“We are responsible for this. We never got organised or converted to another religion. Had we done it, we could have mentally discarded caste and made others understand we are humans.” A review of 'Jai Bhim Comdrade', a documentary about the Dalit ('untouchable') struggle for life and dignity that weaves through Indian politics, identity and modern history:
The Revolution Will Be Sung.
posted by the mad poster! at 12:55 PM PST - 5 comments
"
Lexcavator is an arcade/word game for Mac, PC, and Linux. The goal: guide your guy (@) deeper into an infinite of letters by clearing words from the board! Multiple game modes, detailed record-keeping, online global leaderboards—there's something here for everybody! Pay what you want (even $0, if you are so inclined)." [via
mefi projects]
[more inside]posted by davidjmcgee at 12:18 PM PST - 13 comments
On The Road, On The Screen: 'A large part of On The Road’s powerful and ongoing appeal undoubtedly stems from the lyricism of its language -- as opposed to its linearity, or even narrative coherence. Translating this to the screen could quite simply be impossible. Indeed, one suspects it is the reason that, up till now, so many screenwriters have failed in turning Kerouac’s text into visual form.'
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:15 AM PST - 20 comments
When the Supreme Court decision
Loving v. Virginia in 1967 declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional, the last affected state in which a legal interracial marriage occurred was South Carolina in January, 1969, in the city where the Civil War started. What most people don't know is the
bride was a transsexual.
[more inside]posted by 23 at 7:44 AM PST - 29 comments
May 9
Dick Tracy is a 1990 Walt Disney film directed by and starring Warren Beatty based on Chester Gould's 1930s comic strip about a detective fighting crime in a city inhabited by oddly deformed gangsters.
[more inside]posted by hippybear at 9:08 PM PST - 98 comments
Around 4.30pm on April 26, 1937, a joint squadron of 23 German and Italian planes appeared in the skies over the historic, and undefended, Basque town of Gernika. Over the next five hours they would drop a total of 22 tons of high explosives and incendiary devices that would burn for days, destroying 70 percent of the town, and killing and wounding 1,600 people - around a third of the population. Following the attack,
thousands of children were evacuated from the Basque country.
[more inside]posted by hoyland at 6:42 PM PST - 40 comments
On the evening of May 8th, exactly thirty-five years ago tonight, two remarkable things happened at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. A beautiful spring afternoon suddenly turned to dropping temperatures, and by nightfall a light snow was falling on the campus; meanwhile, in a campus auditorium, Barton Hall, one of the greatest improvisational rock bands in history was
performing what would later come to be known as
their greatest concert. [more inside]posted by koeselitz at 6:20 PM PST - 96 comments
A remarkably diverse group of legendary
musicians have graced the stage of Tulsa's
Cain's Ballroom over the years: Jerry Lee Lewis,
Little Richard, the
Sex Pistols (one of seven stops on their one and only 1978 U.S. tour…the
hole in the drywall left by Sid Vicious’ fist is still backstage), the Ramones, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Blondie, The Talking Heads, U2, Ani DiFranco, Elvis Costello, Snoop Dogg, Morrissey, Beck,
Wilco, to name a few.
A
documentary featuring Costello and several other artists who’ve played there is in the works, with proceeds supporting music education in Oklahoma and the upcoming Cain’s Ballroom Museum. Cain’s was recently named one of the
top 10 live music venues in the U.S.
From 1935 to 1942, Cain’s was home to
Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, who popularized
western swing music with weekly dances and a
national radio show.
posted by Kelly Tulsa at 12:39 PM PST - 12 comments
"
From photography’s earliest days, enterprising practitioners realized they could take their services directly to the people. This lead to the horse-drawn wagons called “Daguerreotype Salons” and then to portable, darkroom tents that allowed wet-plate photographers to make pictures outside. As technology advanced, the tents morphed into a single apparatus that combined both camera and darkroom, which allowed photographers to work anywhere. Afghanistan is one of the last places where street vendor photographers still use such a hand-made, wooden camera called kamra-e-faoree or “instant camera.” Observing this practice lead photographer Lukas Birk & anthropologist Sean Foley to undertake the Afghan Box Camera Project." -
Photo Technique Magazine introduction to an interview with Lukas Birk
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 10:51 AM PST - 4 comments
US Senate probes painkiller makers and their advocates. Improper relationships between pharmaceutical companies and organizations that promote their drugs helped usher in an epidemic that's killed 100,000 people through misuse of opioids. Sales of the powerful drugs have risen 300 percent since 1999 and opioids were involved in 14,800 overdose deaths in 2008, more than cocaine and heroin combined.
posted by binturong at 10:35 AM PST - 75 comments
Karel Teige was a major figure in the Czech avant-garde; a writer, designer, typographer and collagist.
He was a member of
Devětsil and later joined the Prague Surrealist group with
Toyen and
Jindrich Styrsky.
Here are some of his
Book Covers of the 1920- and 1930's and 1926 he made
ABECEDA with each letter posed by the dancer Milca Mayerová.
Here is a
video reconstruction of the dance moves.
Teige died in 1951 of a heart attack, said to be a result of a ferocious Soviet press campaign against him as a 'Trotskyite degenerate,' his papers were destroyed by the secret police, and his published work was suppressed for decades.
The
Central European Review has some articles on his work.
posted by adamvasco at 8:33 AM PST - 5 comments
In 2007, Google project manager Dan Siroker took a leave of absence from Google, moved to Chicago, and joined up with Obama’s campaign as a digital adviser.
"At first he wasn’t sure how he could help. But he recalled something else Obama had said to the Googlers: “I am a big believer in reason and facts and evidence and science and feedback—everything that allows you to do what you do. That’s what we should be doing in our government.” And so Siroker decided he would introduce Obama’s campaign to a crucial technique—almost a governing ethos—that Google relies on in developing and refining its products. He showed them how to A/B test."
[more inside]posted by Petrot at 8:28 AM PST - 82 comments
He's responsible for the deliciously relaxed and understated guitar work you remember from
Rainy Night in Georgia and the driving chukka chukka whipsnap that propelled Aretha Franklin's
Rock Steady, as well as her version of
Spanish Harlem. And he's lent his masterful musical sense to many, many other tunes from artists as diverse as Ringo Starr, Archie Shepp, Joe Cocker, Miles Davis and Paul Simon. Guitarist
Cornell Dupree has died at
age 68. Primarily a studio musician, Dupree was more often heard than seen, but you can catch some glimpses of his Southern-fried six-string artistry on this live version of King Curtis'
Memphis Soul Stew.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:16 AM PST - 23 comments
May 8
In the early 80’s, personal computers were a new innovation. Films like
WarGames made it seem as if a kid with a keyboard could hack into anything: a school or corporate mainframe, NORAD, the US nuclear arsenal or your neighborhood bank. Hoping to capitalize on this, in 1983 CBS premiered a show which could have been considered
WarGames’ intellectual successor. It featured a group of resourceful kids who solved crimes by hacking and cracking, led by Matthew Laborteaux, child star of
Little House on the Prairie, and advised by a
Gavilan SC-toting, mustachioed reporter played by Max Gail, formerly of the show
Barney Miller.
Whiz Kids lasted only a single season: 18 episodes, but all of them live on in cyberspace, on YouTube.
Complete episode links contained within. [more inside]posted by zarq at 7:25 PM PST - 41 comments
The Eagleman Stag is the 2011 BAFTA award winning Royal College of Art thesis film of director/writer
Mikey Please. It's mostly made out of some strange white stuff, found in the back of a stress cushion.
posted by netbros at 5:08 PM PST - 9 comments
"...Charles Marohn and his colleagues at the Minnesota-based nonprofit Strong Towns have made a very compelling case that suburban sprawl is basically a Ponzi scheme, in which municipalities expand infrastructure hoping to attract new taxpayers that can pay off the mounting costs associated with the last infrastructure expansion, over and over."
Building resilient cities and towns with fiscal conservatism.
[more inside]posted by invitapriore at 5:03 PM PST - 46 comments
The power of the
Reddit AMA: Forbes on the "interview revolution that has everyone talking." "Comedian
Louis CK took a chance on a Reddit AMA by offering Redditors the chance to purchase his Live at Beacon Theater performance for $5 through his website. The result: over $1 million in sales in the first 10 days and a new distribution method. (
previously) ... One New York Times bestselling author I spoke to saw their Amazon rank jump from 800 to 400 and stick, meaning a spike in hundreds and possibly thousands of books a day for more than a week." Just today,
Kevin Smith and
Steve Albini stopped by to chat with Redditors; other celebs who have done AMAs include
Bob Odenkirk,
Ken Jennings and
Molly Ringwald. But it's not all about celebrities -- ordinary people with interesting stories do AMAs as well, including a
former "Daily Show" intern and a
couple who met through a Craig's List missed connections ad.
posted by Clustercuss at 3:52 PM PST - 74 comments
In 2008 the
late Robert Fitch, author of "
The Assassination of New York", was asked to
foretell an Obama presidency before the Harlem Tenants Association:
If we examine more carefully the interests that Obama represents; if we look at
his core financial supporters; as well as his inmost circle of advisors, we’ll see that they represent the primary activists in the demolition movement and the primary real estate beneficiaries of this transformation of public housing projects into condos and townhouses: the profitable creep of the Central Business District and elite residential neighborhoods southward; and the shifting of the pile of human misery about three miles further into the South Side and the south suburbs... Obama’s political base comes primarily from Chicago FIRE—the finance, insurance and real estate industry. And the wealthiest families—the Pritzkers, the Crowns and the Levins.
posted by ennui.bz at 2:36 PM PST - 41 comments
In the Warhol episode, Marion Ross (TV mom of Ron Howard in Happy Days) is a former Warhol superstar, married to stodgy Tom Bosley (TV dad of Ron Howard). Bosley doesn’t know about Ross’ past in underground film, and she’s afraid that they’ll run into Warhol, playing himself, aboard ship. Andy Warhol takes a pleasant cruise on
The Love Boat.
posted by scody at 11:26 AM PST - 41 comments
The Up Series
[previously] continues. This documentary series, begun in 1964, has revisited the lives of a select group of British citizens once every seven years of their life. 56 Up, which shows the group at age 56, will air sometime in
mid-May on the BBC, but until then, have
this great Guardian article about the impact of the films on the lives of the people featured in them.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:19 AM PST - 34 comments
The Center for Cartoon Studies (
previously), in association with the National Cartoonists Society, has assembled
The Cartoon Crier (pdf), a 36-page collection of comics being intentionally NOT comical, including newspaper strips old-school and new, alt-comics, webcomics and even a few editorial and magazine cartoons. Plus Shaenon K. Garrity writing about the saddest comics ever. Some will make you cry, others will make you go 'eh', some will make you chuckle
very guiltily, but altogether an impressive collection. (Originally in dead-tree form handed out at MOCCA)
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:52 AM PST - 32 comments
May 7
Noam Chomsky has released a new book --
Occupy -- through
Zuccotti Park Press. In
Occupy, Chomsky discusses how a real democracy would work, how we can separate money from politics, and why everyday Americans are deciding to protest.
AlterNet recently posted an
extensive interview with Chomsky, who claims America and Europe are committing economic suicide. Chomsky's focus on the OWS movement comes at the same time as coverage on the alleged Cleveland bridge bombing conspirators'
close association with Occupy Cleveland.
posted by GnomeChompsky at 12:45 PM PST - 245 comments
"
Historical dramas have a lot in common with science fiction when you consider how alien/exotic the settings might seem to a contemporary audience. As a kind of squeakquel to the Arthur C. Clarke maxim; “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” I’d like to assert that any sufficiently different set of social mores in a historical context is indistinguishable from an alternate universe. Consider the following bizzaro dimension: limited electricity, paranoia related to class struggles, shifting loyalties, and rigid caste system. Could it be Battlestar Galactica? Yes, But it’s also Downton Abbey!"
[more inside]posted by Blasdelb at 11:57 AM PST - 50 comments
On Tiger Moms: "What the controversy surrounding Chua demonstrates, however inadvertently, is that parenting techniques are always grounded in basic assumptions about the way things are and what matters to us. And they are always guided by some answer to the most fundamental of ethical questions—how to live?"
[more inside]posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:50 AM PST - 52 comments
"As the Nazis approached Paris, the American Colony broke camp & abandoned the city like rats from a sinking ship. Behind them they left a frail, elderly, impoverished, homeless Irish-American who, as a young man, had been an heir to wealth, a close friend to Beardsley & Wilde, & the only important American in the 1890s Aesthetic movement of England & France. He was
Vincent O'Sullivan, one of the world's great authors of horror fiction..."
[more inside]posted by Iridic at 11:29 AM PST - 9 comments
Hear how popular music has changed from 1940 to today with the
Radio Time Machine. Choose a year and hear samples of songs from the top of the Billboard 100 (or full songs if you're logged in to
Rdio).
posted by jocelmeow at 10:42 AM PST - 19 comments
Undoubtedly, at some point in your life, a recipe has told you to brown or caramelize some onions for 5-10 minutes. As many frustrated cooks have found through experience,
this step of the recipe is a damned lie. In fact, the now-ubiquitous suggestion of 5-10 minutes isn't even a remote approximation of the amount of time it takes to brown an onion;
Alton Brown and
Julia Child weigh in on the matter, suggesting that the task can take anywhere from 45 minute to an hour.
[more inside]posted by schmod at 7:51 AM PST - 202 comments
We Who Are About to Bug Out Salute YouRutherford B. Hayes.... brought the troops home and ended Reconstruction, with the almost unanimous support of the nation’s liberal establishment. They too fought politically against slavery before the Civil War, risked their lives to emancipate its victims, and, too soon, couldn’t wait to bug out of the South.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:53 AM PST - 73 comments
May 6
Blowdry hairstyles! Sequins! Self-effacing humor without irony! Amazing melodies and lyrics! It's
The Barry Manilow Special [52m] shown on ABC in 1977, winner of the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Special. Featuring Penny Marshall! Guaranteed Copacabana-free! But this wouldn't be the only time Barry Manilow appeared in a television special...
[more inside]posted by hippybear at 10:31 PM PST - 42 comments
"Hi. Russia may well be associated with hard liquor like Водка, but in this video I will be talking about our traditional soft drinks and non-alcoholic beverages."
Part 1 [mostly juices] and
Part 2 [fizzy drinks].
[more inside]posted by Deathalicious at 7:25 PM PST - 32 comments
Today marks the
75th anniversary of the German zeppelin
Hindenburg bursting into flames as it attempted to dock at a US Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, NJ. The Hindenburg was inflated with hydrogen, due to the United States' practical monopoly on helium, and its fabric skin was coated with a mixture of iron oxide and aluminium--both elements have been linked to the rapid fire, but the ratio of responsibility
continues to be debated to this day.
The explosion of the zeppelin was documented by a film crew, and more famously, by
WLS radio reporter Herb Morrison. Such documentation has allowed for the
Hindenburg disaster to be a well-known event that has been referenced in popular culture over the years, from such disparate means as the famous
"Turkeys Away" episode of
WKRP In Cincinnati...to MeFi's own
Spatch having a fever dream approximately 15 years ago that led to, well,
just watch it for yourself.
posted by stannate at 5:54 PM PST - 64 comments
Wanna go for a run? "The Trans-Zion is a 48-mile route across Zion National Park that wanders from the East Entrance to Lee Pass in the Kolob Canyons section of the park. The route links together many of Zion's most scenic trails and amasses more than 10,000 feet of total climbing."
posted by Xurando at 1:15 PM PST - 15 comments
"A maverick theater and industrial designer,
Norman Bel Geddes is best remembered for creating the undisputed hit of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Mounted in the midst of the Great Depression, the Fair focused on America’s promise of a utopian tomorrow. Geddes’s
Futurama, a piece of “immersion theater,” took six hundred visitors at a time on a swooping, simulated airplane ride across America circa 1960."
"The City of Tomorrow, a model of Manhattan that Geddes created, in 1937, to promote Shell Oil Company’s new “motor-digestible” gasoline, is often cited as [
Futurama's inspiration.]
But Futurama’s beginnings actually harken back much further, to the meticulous, insanely detailed private games he created in the 1920s and early ’30s for the amusement of his friends."
[more inside]posted by zamboni at 12:52 PM PST - 15 comments
There’s no nice way to say this, but it needs to be said: video games, with very few exceptions, are dumb. And they’re not just dumb in the gleeful, winking way that a big Hollywood movie is dumb; they’re dumb in the puerile, excruciatingly serious way that a grown man in latex elf ears reciting an epic poem about Gandalf is dumb. Aside from a handful of truly smart games, tentpole titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Black Ops tend to be so silly and so poorly written that they make Michael Bay movies look like the Godfather series. Taylor Clark's Atlantic profile of Braid creator Jonathan Blow has prompted some strong reactions.
Are videogames dumb? Is hard to make them not dumb? Are most things dumb anyway?posted by Artw at 8:23 AM PST - 179 comments
May 5
The exacting, cerebral sounds of Massachusetts natives Math the Band invite intense attention and abstract appreciation. A live set from 2009 presents what is perhaps the best opportunity to sample their dense soundscapes:
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7 [more inside]posted by Nomyte at 9:00 PM PST - 13 comments
I still call him Ratzinger. That fits him better. But that is just a personal bias ... The nuns that I talk to aren't really afraid, because they can't see or they can't imagine what he would do to change us. I mean, like, excommunication? That is a thing of the past. You can't excommunicate hundreds of nuns. Wouldn't that be kind of funny? Excommunicate the whole order! It is irrational. Sr. Brigid McDonald, of the Sisters of St. Joseph,
speaks the truth to power (single link interview, but delightful).
posted by TheShadowKnows at 9:26 AM PST - 86 comments
Inspired by one of the English language's seminal works, 24 modern-day pilgrims undertake a full-scale
re-enactment Chaucer's masterpiece, acting out the tales as they travelled on foot to Canterbury.
For those who prefer to play along at home the ELF Edition of the
Canterbury Tales where you can read in Middle English; Modern English or both side by side.
Spark notes gives helpful introducions and analysis.
Digital Scriptorium now has some images of the
Ellesmere Chaucer which can be viewed in glorious high resolution.
But to keep us thoroughly up to date Geoffrey Chaucer
has a blog.
(previously but all links dead)posted by adamvasco at 9:19 AM PST - 9 comments
May 4
The
Sea Shadow is a prototype stealth ship built thirty years ago for the US Navy, and the only ship ever designed by the Lockheed Skunk Works. Like its airborne cousin, the
F-117 Nighthawk, it is nearly invisible to radar. It is extremely stable in high seas, has no conventional rudder, and requires a minimum crew of only four to operate.
Despite the successful field trials and futuristic technology, the Navy passed on the program and the boat sat largely unused. At 5PM central time, the auction ends that will
send the Sea Shadow to the scrapyard. Pictures will soon be all that is left, but check out this extensive
virtual tour.
[more inside]posted by startled at 2:23 PM PST - 54 comments
Peasant culture and Russian folklore in Soviet animation (~400 minutes whereof): Soviet animation abounds in
fantasies about the natural,
wholesome lives of
honorable, strong-willed
Russian peasants and folk
heroes and their
struggles against villainy and
adversity.
Decorated with splendid folk art motifs that verge on
horror vacui, these cel-animated cartoons are excellent aids for learning about (popular conceptions of) Russian folk material culture: decoration, architecture,
dress, weaponry,
textiles, domestic culture, manners, and so on.
[more inside]posted by Nomyte at 2:15 PM PST - 13 comments
On April 20, Daniel Chong went to get high at his friend's place. Next morning the DEA raided the house. Chong was detained and placed in a 5x10' holding cell. He was left there with his hands cuffed behind his back for four days without food, water or human contact. He hallucinated, drank his own urine, and eventually, convinced he was going to die, he broke his eyeglasses and carved 'Sorry Mom' on his arm as a final message. When he was final released he was taken to hospital where he was treated for kidney failure, dehydration and a perforated esophagus. The DEA says it was an accident.
NYT,
AP,
interview,
interview.
posted by unSane at 2:01 PM PST - 140 comments
Star Maidens was an obscure and pretty much forgotten British/German low budget (they borrowed sets from
Space 1999 ) science fiction televsion series from 1975... On the planet Medusa where the women (naturally all hot) rule over the men, two of the later inferior species escape (including Gareth '
Blake' Thomas!) to the 'paradise' of Earth
[more inside]posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:12 AM PST - 13 comments
"The world now has a very clear choice. We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption... Or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward vortex of economic, socio-political and environmental ills, leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future." Sir John Sulston, Royal Society Fellow on the Society's recent report "
People and the planet".
[more inside]posted by nowhere man at 7:48 AM PST - 63 comments
WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing covered a range of cultural issues and was widely known for its innovative use of graphic art. Started as a simple one-man operation that included artwork and text solicited from friends and acquaintances, the production, team, and circulation of the magazine would grow over the years. Its content also evolved to cover a wider expanse of stories that captured a smart and artsy Los Angeles attitude that was emerging at the same time as punk, but with its own distinct aesthetic. The magazine’s energetic creativity and flair for the absurd would remain a constant. As design problems arose, solutions were often improvised on the spot, creating a quirky and prescient editorial sensibility that remains one of WET's most enduring legacies. Its layout and design helped to catalyze the graphic styles (NSFW) later known as New Wave and Postmodern.posted by Trurl at 7:40 AM PST - 9 comments
May 3
George Wright, America's most elusive fugitive, ran for forty years. He ran from the cops after escaping from prison. He ran from the feds after the most brazen hijacking in history. He ran from the authorities on three continents, hiding out and blending in wherever he went. It was a historic run—and now that it's over, he might just pull off
the greatest escape of all.
posted by vidur at 11:03 PM PST - 75 comments
Why Noah Went to the Woods: He was a proud Marine who survived three brutal tours in Iraq and had plans to redeploy with the national guard. But when 30-year-old Noah Pippin vanished inside Montana’s remote Bob Marshall Wilderness, he left behind a trail of haunting secrets—and a mystery that may never be solved.
"The Pippins were alarmed. Given their son’s strict adherence to his moral code, a scenario in which Noah had intentionally shirked his military duty was nearly inconceivable. After several calls to his phone went straight to voice mail, they began to investigate, discovering that they knew far less about their son than they had imagined."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:13 PM PST - 46 comments
"There are growing number of people who have decided to live light on the earth to not be a part of problem anymore.
I spent the last few years with four of them striving for harmony with nature in the most pristine corners of United States." Photos by Eric Valli, but they don't have captions. Check out his other photo sets on the site.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:31 PM PST - 82 comments
In 2273, after having been thought lost in a black hole, Voyager 6 returned to Federation space as
V'Ger, the massive and menacing spaceship at the heart of
Star Trek: The Motion Picture...
Designing the Living Machine - concept art for V'Ger,
Redesigning the Walk to V’Ger,
The Lighting and Photography of Star Trek's "V'ger",
working on the interior of V'ger,
V'ger External View,
V'Ger - Spock Mindmeld Model Piece (scroll way down) (may contain
Darth Vader and Miss Piggy),
animating the "V'ger Probe",
V'ger rear view.
posted by Artw at 4:09 PM PST - 41 comments
James William Buel was a journalist, author, and editor, who was born in 1849 in Golconda, Illinois, and died in 1920 in San Diego, California. In his life, he traveled the world, writing and illustrating adventure tales about the wilds of Africa and the American West, and other exciting parts of the world.
Many of his books are on Archive.org, ranging from
America's Wonderlands, as delineated by pen and camera and
Mysteries and Miseries of America's Great Cities, embracing New York, Washington City, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and New Orleans; to
Russian Nihilism and Exile Life in Siberia, with over 200 splendid engravings, and
Sea and Land [microform] :
an illustrated history of the wonderful and curious things of nature existing before and since the deluge (including
a great number of creatures who apparently found joy in terrorizing and devouring people).
posted by filthy light thief at 3:27 PM PST - 1 comments
Remember Kentucky v. King
from last year? The mis-reported conclusion was that police could enter a home without a warrant to prevent destruction of evidence based on hearing movement after knocking. A week ago the supreme court of Kentucky
published (pdf) its revisiting of the case given instructions from the US supreme court, and found in favor of King (
via):
[more inside]posted by a robot made out of meat at 3:00 PM PST - 13 comments
In the wee morning hours of September 20th, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill drove down New Hampshire's Route 3, through the Franconia Notch, and into the
UFO history books. Five years later, John G. Fuller's account of their story,
The Interrupted Journey, became the most well known alien abduction case of all time. Fuller's book was adapted into a made-for-TV
movie in 1975.
The book and movie brought the
"Greys" into the public consciousness as the quintessential UFO occupants, although it has been
alleged by skeptics that the Greys themselves were inspired by an episode of the TV show
The Outer Limits.
Last year, the state of New Hampshire erected a
historical marker at the site of the alleged abduction.
Skeptics and believers have been debating the case for decades now. Interestingly, a UFO enthusiast named John Oswald published an
account in 1980 that claimed "Mrs. Hill was unable to 'distinguish between a landed UFO and a streetlight'", which even included a photo of said streetlight. It was not until 2007 that a science fiction writer who lives in the area where the "abduction" took place published an article which reveals the real
"UFO" and puts forward a
plausible explanation.
[more inside]posted by smoothvirus at 2:48 PM PST - 32 comments
Boston telegraph operator, (to Portland telegraph operator): "Please cut off your battery entirely from the line for fifteen minutes."
Portland operator: "Will do so. It is now disconnected."
Boston: "Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?"
Portland: "Better than with our batteries on. Current comes and goes gradually."
Boston: "My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the Aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble."
Portland: "Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?"
Boston: "Yes. Go ahead." —
Ars Technica covers the story of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859, and the awe it inspired.posted by Toekneesan at 1:46 PM PST - 23 comments
Tomorrow is remembrance day in the Netherlands, as the dead and victims of World War II and beyond are honoured. Each year at the national memorial service at the Dam square in Amsterdam a poem is read by the winner of the school competition organised by the remembrance committee. This year there was controversy
as the winning poem was about a Dutch volunteer for the Waffen SS, which was not appreciated by the Auschwitz survivors organisation, which threated to boycott the procedings. In the end therefore the poem was scrapped, but it had already laid bare a sore spot in Dutch history.
[more inside]posted by MartinWisse at 12:22 PM PST - 38 comments
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has
released its analysis of 17 de-classified documents captured during the Abbottabad raid where Osama Bin Laden was killed. They also released the documents themselves, available in the original Arabic as well as in English translation. A
Pastebin version of the English translations has been posted for easy searching.
posted by gemmy at 6:58 AM PST - 12 comments
May 2
"That's Cheezies with a Z." The inventor of the beloved snack product has
died.
posted by anothermug at 4:14 PM PST - 25 comments
McDonald's, a
sponsor of the Olympics since 1968, will open a two-story cathedral-like
restaurant that seats 1,500 customers, at London's Olympic Park. A group of British doctors say that the mega-McDonald’s sends the wrong message about obesity.
posted by ichomp at 3:20 PM PST - 45 comments
Roy Choi, co-founder and head chef of
Kogi Korean BBQ, the Los Angeles food truck that became famous (and much imitated) for its innovative Korean-Mexican fusion tacos and its use of social networking (
previously), has
announced on his weblog that he's no longer eating meat. Choi is considering leaving cooking altogether.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 10:48 AM PST - 69 comments
Ikuo Yokoyama lost his home and three family members in the Japanese tsunami last year. Among the losses was a Harley-Davidson motorcycle he had bought five years ago and keeping in the back of a cube van... which floated across the Pacific Ocean and
was found by Peter Mark, a resident of British Columbia, on an beach on Graham Island (it's the big one up the B.C. coast, near Alaska). Aside from some rust, the motorcycle seems to be in decent condition, and Harley-Davidson plans to restore it and ship it back to Yokoyama.
posted by Etrigan at 10:41 AM PST - 21 comments
It's animation student film season, and once again, Cal Arts does not disappoint. Eusong Lee's "
Will" is not only a gorgeous piece of art, it will also touch your heart.
posted by sprezzy at 10:11 AM PST - 12 comments
"“It saves a fraction of a penny on every can,” he said. “There are a lot of soda cans in the world. That means the economy can produce more cans with the same amount of resources. It makes every American who buys a soda can a little bit richer because their paycheck buys more.”"
The New York Times interviews Edward Conard (of
Bain Capital fame) about his new book, "Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy is Wrong".
posted by spitefulcrow at 9:05 AM PST - 102 comments
The Boundaries of Life and Death is a lovely short animation inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe quotation;
"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"
[more inside]posted by quin at 7:05 AM PST - 3 comments
Chilling amateur home video of the Challenger disaster "Obviously a major malfunction." Those words have always haunted me, but to hear them here, echoing across a PA system as shocked onlookers come to terms with what they have just seen, they carry even more power than they did when they were just an anonymous voiceover on a TV shot.
posted by LondonYank at 2:41 AM PST - 107 comments
May 1
"It's a Good Life" is a 1953 story by Jerome Bixby, who also wrote
It! The Terror From Beyond Space, said to be the inspiration for
Alien, and the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror" (the one with evil bearded Spock.) It was made into a famous Twilight Zone episode, and is generally considered among the greatest SF stories ever written. Is "It's a Good Life" about God? Communism? 1950s suburban conformity? Or just about the horror of the self-contained world it creates in its few pages and the terrible realization that it would be possible to survive inside it, for a while?
posted by escabeche at 8:46 PM PST - 106 comments
They have carefully chosen their clothes and they have spent time in front of mirrors trimming hair from nostrils and tonight is about sex and status and supply and demand and have and have not. . . . The celebrities and the athletes and the tycoons are the ones for whom this world is zealously designed. A rung below . . . are the money guys . . . guys like that one over there in a Boss suit and John Lobb shoes, standing beside the table that cost him $3,000. Standing very close to it, like a Little Leaguer who wants to steal second but has never done it before. This gentleman’s not dancing, but he’s thinking about it. Soon Beyoncé will call all the single ladies to action and they will channel toward him in a centripetal swoosh.
Bottle girls, half-hookers, Tiger Woods, Rachel Uchitel, and the 21st-century courtesan economy. New York magazine takes a look at how America's elite nightclubs operate.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 8:21 PM PST - 168 comments
On the basis of the facts and evidence before the committee, we conclude that if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International. We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company. [more inside]posted by Trurl at 6:40 PM PST - 27 comments
You're walking through the woods. There's no one around and your phone is dead. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot him:
Shia LeBoeufposted by sarastro at 3:46 PM PST - 35 comments
So, would a search engine be more useful if it just didn't include the Most Popular websites? How about the
ONE MILLION most popular websites?
Fortunately, it lets you adjust the filter to exclude the top 100,000, 10,000, thousand, hundred or ten. MetaFilter reappears under the 'thousand' setting.
Via WaxyLinks and HackerNewsposted by oneswellfoop at 3:30 PM PST - 12 comments
A chronic public health disaster. Complex trauma and toxic stress puts children into a state of reflexive fight, flight, or freeze responses to a perpetually threatening world. The traditional authoritative response only serves to reinforce those behaviours and, perhaps worse, has long-term health consequences:
With an ACE score of 4 or more, things start getting serious. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression 460 percent; suicide, 1,220 percent.
One doctor describes it as “a chronic public health disaster”. Remediating this problem is going to require listening, kindness, and parachutes.
posted by davidpriest.ca at 11:39 AM PST - 53 comments
The game that you fell in love with as a child will seem lost; a thump on the floorboard of your new Mercedes, swerved at high speeds to avoid a shadow in the night. The sights and sounds and smells of football, sensual memories that stir the passions in the soul, will be reconceived and recategorized, buried behind newer, odorless versions.
Former Bronco Nate Jackson
offers wisdom on the trappings of stardom to two young draftees.
posted by swift at 10:35 AM PST - 18 comments
"I started
this blog so that anyone wanting to build their own 8-bit computer could learn from my own experience and mistakes."
posted by griphus at 9:56 AM PST - 22 comments
OkayAfrica keeps up to date with pop culture and news from across the continent. Africa In Your Earbuds gives DJs and musicians from across the diaspora the chance to curate a playlist or mixtape of their favorite African and African diaspora music. Chief Boima of
Dutty Artz starts off
Africa In Your Earbuds.
[more inside]posted by ChuraChura at 9:05 AM PST - 8 comments
Welcome to the Anthropocene: A 3-minute journey through the last 250 years of our history, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the Rio+20 Summit. The film charts the growth of humanity into a global force on an equivalent scale to major geological processes.
[more inside]posted by quin at 7:03 AM PST - 12 comments
John Peel's Record Collection "Online interactive digital museum"
The Space has begun the mammoth task of digitising DJ John Peel's record collection. Now, nearly 8 years after his death, the first 100 albums under the letter A are ready, with a new letter to be released every week. With bonus content such as photos, Peel Sessions and
samples of radio shows (Spotify may be required for some audio), it's a fascinating look inside the great man's never-ending enthusiasm for music.
posted by jontyjago at 6:43 AM PST - 31 comments
200,000 Clay Figures: British sculptor Antony Gormley is well-known for his
life-size sculptures that creatively mimic the human body, but the figurative clay mounds from his series titled Field, though not as accurate in depicting mankind's form, holds deeper value for the artist. Gormley says of this project, "I wanted to work with people and to make a work about our collective future and our responsibility for it. I wanted the art to look back at us, its makers (and later viewers), as if we were responsible - responsible for the world that it [FIELD] and we were in."
[Previously] [Previously]posted by Fizz at 6:15 AM PST - 14 comments
The
learning paradox is at the heart of “productive failure." While the model adopted by many teachers and employers when introducing others to new knowledge — providing lots of structure and guidance early on, until the students or workers show that they can do it on their own — makes intuitive sense, it may not be the best way to promote learning.
[more inside]posted by unSane at 5:10 AM PST - 29 comments
Carl Sagan wrote, “We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” But how will humans or our machine representatives
fly to the stars? [more inside]posted by audi alteram partem at 4:14 AM PST - 42 comments
"I'd like my work to be found in a skip, in Southgate or somewhere, in forty years' time". Nick Papadimitriou
walks and
looks and
writes and
thinks, as he ventures around London and its fringes. He eschews the term 'psychogeography', preferring the notion of 'deep topography' to describe what he does.
The London Perambulator, a short documentary about his work, was
released in 2009 and features Will Self, Iain Sinclair, and Russell Brand talking about his impact on their work. His first book,
Scarp, will be released by Sceptre this summer.
posted by hydatius at 12:13 AM PST - 7 comments
