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August 2011 Archives
August 31
Wikileaks has
alleged that Guardian editor David Leigh negligently leaked the encryption passphrase to the unredacted 'Cablegate' archive in an upcoming book.
The Guardian denies the charges, but states that
"[a] Twitter user has now published a link to the full, unredacted database of embassy cables", potentially putting informants at risk.
posted by p3on at 5:21 PM PST - 203 comments
Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown (warning: spoilers in all links)
reviews the first four books of
A Song of Ice and Fire and declares that "George R. R. Martin is creepy. He is creepy because he writes racist shit. He is creepy because he writes sexist shit."
Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress
responds, as does Delphine on
GeekMom.posted by never used baby shoes at 2:03 PM PST - 435 comments
Modest Mouse play a 25 minute set in September 2001 in front of Criminal Records in Atlanta. The songs they play are Paper Thin Walls, Third Planet, Trailer Trash, Lives, Diggin' Holes (later released as an Ugly Casanova track) and I Came as a Rat.
posted by Kattullus at 8:38 AM PST - 14 comments
Weight-gain. "LOL!" "Teens love text messages--and those texts may help them lose weight, if they're done right. A study tested out various types of weight management-themed text messages on overweight teens to see what they liked, finding that they favored positive messages but disliked thoughtful questions."
[more inside]posted by Fizz at 7:27 AM PST - 31 comments
Statistical analysis of OKCupid profiles exposes some sexually fascinating revelations:
-
Herbivores like giving oral more than omnivores
- Twitter users are more likely to masturbate today
- Christians and Atheists are just as likely to claim they have
never masturbated
- The correlation between men who prefer gentle sex & use of the word 'boating'
I f**king love statistics
[more inside]posted by 0bvious at 5:05 AM PST - 75 comments
Deadly detention: Deaths in custody amid popular protest in Syria “These deaths behind bars are reaching massive proportions, and appear to be an extension of the same brutal disdain for life that we are seeing daily on the streets of Syria,” said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s researcher on Syria.
“The accounts of torture we have received are horrific. We believe the Syrian government to be systematically persecuting its own people on a vast scale.”
posted by joannemullen at 3:48 AM PST - 67 comments
August 30
Massive Biometric Project Gives Crores of Indians an ID: Aadhaar faces titanic physical and technical challenges: reaching millions of illiterate Indians who have never seen a computer, persuading them to have their irises scanned, ensuring that their information is accurate, and safeguarding the resulting ocean of data. This is India, after all—a country notorious for corruption and for failing to complete major public projects. And the whole idea horrifies civil libertarians. But if Aadhaar’s organizers pull it off, the initiative could boost the fortunes of India’s poorest citizens and turbocharge the already booming national economy. [more inside]posted by infini at 9:52 PM PST - 30 comments
Hidden away in vaults and out of distribution for over forty years, Herostratus was in its own time largely misunderstood. After only a handful of initial screenings it virtually disappeared from public view altogether, remaining all but forgotten to this day. Yet while admittedly flawed, the film does offer a compelling critique of the failure of 1960s postwar idealism in Britain, an ideal portrayed as having degenerated into neurotic self-gratification. It is also of note as
Dame Commander Helen Mirren's first credited screen role.
(not safe for those sexually aroused by Helen Mirren) [more inside]posted by Trurl at 8:27 PM PST - 18 comments
Compressed "I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism. " (
via)
posted by dhruva at 6:07 PM PST - 21 comments
Who was the worst defender in the history of baseball? A commenter in a baseball-fever thread compiles
a list of the bottom 100 career dWAR figures of all time -- in other words, the 100 players who cost their teams the most wins with the glove. (
Joe Posnanski on the WAR metric, for those unfamiliar with it.) The list is an interesting mix of players whose bats allowed them to stay in the game for years despite terrible glovework (Bernie Williams, Manny Ramirez, Dave Winfield) and players who were so bad in the field that they managed to rack up a lot of negative dWAR in shorter careers (Chris Gomez, Dean Palmer.) Toby "Stone Fingers" Harrah is #14 with a -10.9 dWAR. Dick "Dr. Strangeglove" Stuart just misses at -6.1. Some active players have a chance to finish high on the list:
Ty Wigginton is only 33 and has already bumbled away enough balls in 2011 to "improve" his ranking from 24th to 15th.
Worst of all time? No, it's not the Captain -- Derek Jeter is #2 on the all time list with -13.4 dWAR. Can you guess the "winner"?
posted by escabeche at 5:53 PM PST - 85 comments
His vows:
"We come here today in defiance of biological reality. We know that mammals are not monogamous (except for a few species of meadow vole with abnormally high levels of endogenous oxytocin) ..."
Her vows:
"Your vows make it clear why I love you: your intellectual rigour, and your honesty, and your eloquence, and the way you leaven these with profanity – they’re the very things that I fell for, even before you made an x-rated cephalopod reference on a rooftop patio ..." [more inside]posted by memebake at 4:57 PM PST - 14 comments
Enclyclopedia Brown is a children's fiction series written by Donald J. Sobol since 1963 and still very popular today. These are the
10 most ridiculously difficult mysteries in the series and baffling as to how a child is supposed to be able to solve them.
posted by rozomon at 3:44 PM PST - 137 comments
These Americans is a diverse collection of public archive photographs:
1980s Wrestling,
Warhol Polaroids,
1970s NYC gangs,
Jayne Mansfield,
polygamists,
Al Capone,
the KKK, FSA photographer
Russell Lee, civil rights photographer
Jim Peppler, early 20th century Mexican border town photographer,
Gertrude Fitzgerald,
&tc. It is a project from
American Suburb X. Many links are NSFW.
posted by xod at 3:36 PM PST - 5 comments
William Brown was a man who recorded a handful of blues on Sadie Beck's Plantation on July 16, 1942 for
Alan Lomax. Once thought to be the same man as the Willie Brown who played with Son House and Charley Patton--and was immortalized in Robert Johnson's
Crossroad Blues--the consensus now is that William Brown was a different man, about
whom we know next to nothing. Certainly, the handful of recordings we have that feature him supports this. The Willie Brown who recorded
Future Blues and
M & O Blues was an archetypal Delta bluesman, with both songs being stripped down versions of Charley Patton's
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, among others, and
Pony Blues, respectively. The
William Brown who recorded
Mississippi Blues,
Ragged and Dirty and
Make Me a Pallet on the Floor plays and sings nothing like that Willie Brown. That we know nothing about him and never heard any more of his music is one of the many tragedies of recorded blues.
[more inside]posted by y2karl at 12:56 PM PST - 15 comments
I'm so sorry, Metafilter, really I am. I don't know what's come over me, but I am posting one of the dopiest, most embarrassing celebrity novelty tunes ever recorded. It's by the fellow who played Batman in the 60s TV series, Adam West, in a breathtakingly stupid recording of an utterly ridiculous song called
Miranda. I pray that you'll forgive me for my indiscretion, and I promise I will post some inspiring and worthwhile music next time around.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:50 AM PST - 41 comments
Pretty Colors This is a tumblr to which people can submit colors they find pretty. Why do they find them pretty? Who picks them? Is there some deeper sociological/anthropological message behind which colors get picked and which don't? I can't say. I don't even know if my computer screen is properly calibrated, maybe I'm not even seeing the same colors. Still, the presentation is good and it does do what it says on the tin. Which is commendable.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:36 AM PST - 41 comments
August 29
It was a beautiful day in Ponyville. The sun was shining; the birds were singing. Ponies big and small cantered throughout the town, whickering and neighing merrily as they went about their business.
Suddenly, there was a huge explosion!
“Oh my god, that was a huge explosion!” yelled Twilight Sparkle, staring in shock and horror at the massive fireball rising from the center of town. Hundreds of ponies ran screaming from the burning wreckage of the Town Hall. Some were covered in soot, and limped as they streamed past her, desperate to escape the burning hell behind them.
“Yo Twi’, you see dat shiz?” said Spike, her jive-talking baby dragon sidekick. He stood on her back, one claw wrapped in her mane while the other casually removed a set of shutter-style plastic sunglasses. You know, like the ones Kanye West is always wearing.
Michael Bay presents My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
(It's fanfiction, but readable without knowledge of the show or fondness for pastel-colored horses.) [more inside]posted by JHarris at 5:05 PM PST - 38 comments
Biomedical Ephemera, or, a Frog for your Boils is "A blog for all biological and medical ephemera, from the age of Abraham through the era of medical quackery and cure-all nostrums. Sometimes featuring illustrations of diseases and conditions of the times, sometimes fascinating ephemeral medical equipment, and sometimes clippings and information about the theories themselves." The
archive page is also a useful starting point.
via Things Magazine.posted by Rumple at 2:14 PM PST - 8 comments
Tennis player and coach Bob Hewitt is a member of the
International Tennis Hall of Fame who has held all the men's doubles and mixed doubles Grand Slam titles. Hewitt, who was
born in Australia but became a South African citizen by marriage, also captained the 1974 South African Davis Cup champion team.
The Boston Globe reports that Hewitt's lengthy coaching career in the US and South Africa has long been accompanied by allegations that Hewitt sexually abused
his female students, mostly adolescents but one as young as 10. Hewitt denies the charges.
posted by catlet at 5:51 AM PST - 13 comments
"The most varied and fervorous literature of spanish speaking America is the Argentinian. The most sui generis (like the country itself) is the Chilean." Carlos Fuentes lists the novels of the 20th and, probably a little bit prematurely, 21st centuries which constitute the
Latin American Canon (
google translation).
[more inside]posted by lucia__is__dada at 2:55 AM PST - 28 comments
August 28
After decades of breeding, the complexity of
cat color genetics is quite well understood. Genes which control
pigmentation,
hair length,
color dilution,
banding (agouti),
white fur (dominant, spotting, or albino, sometimes linked with
deafness),
tabby patterns, and more combine to create a
wide spectrum of possibilities. Specific traits such as
white gloving among Birman cats and the amber color found only in Norwegian Forest Cats (which comes from a single female born in 1981!) have also been isolated and studied, and can be affordably
tested for.
On top of all that, fur color is
epigenetic as well as genetic, and sometimes responds to the cat's environment. If you clone a calico cat, you get a kitten which
doesn't have a similar coat due to
X-inactivation, and pointed cats (such as Burmese, Siamese, and Tonkinese) have
temperature-sensitive coloration.
[more inside]posted by vorfeed at 12:45 PM PST - 90 comments
Ana Lee's fashion blog is in Russian but with its insane number of HQ photographs
[don't forget to click the "далее"], you won't care. For example, her two posts about
Carol Alt almost certainly comprise the greatest documentation of that model's career to be found anywhere in the world.
posted by Trurl at 11:51 AM PST - 6 comments
August 27
Before it was a website, Ask A Mathematician / Ask A Physicist was two guys sitting in the desert at Burning Man, presuming to answer (almost) any question that happened to occur to whomever happened to appear at our stand. [more inside]posted by Obscure Reference at 6:10 PM PST - 42 comments
In 2005, Manuel Bravo, 35, walked to a stairwell of the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Center carrying a bedsheet. He hung himself.
The note he left indicated that he had done it so that his son, Antonio Bravo, 13, could remain in the United Kingdom to be educated. The pair were to be deported back to war-torn Angola the next day, where they alleged that they had been victims of abuse by the ruling party.
Now, Antonio is 19, training to be an electrician, speaking in Yorkshire dialect, no longer speaks his native Porteguese, and will be deported back to Angola if his humanitarian visa is not extended. "My family, they're English," he said, referring to the Beaumonts (his adoptive family). "Britain, that's my culture." [more inside]posted by guster4lovers at 2:06 PM PST - 32 comments
For those kept off the links -- particularly those with windmills -- by Irene,
a flash alternative (via Kottke). Needs ice cream, but otherwise oojah-cum-spiff (via Wodehouse).
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 10:01 AM PST - 16 comments
August 26
Vance Gilbert is, in his own words, "big in the music business like a barnacle is big in shipping". Performing solo with acoustic guitar, his
original music (including songs about
Old White Men,
Gilligan and
the planet Pluto) and some
well-chosen covers, as well as his
on-stage banter, have
charmed audiences all over* for umpteen years. He has
made a reply to CeeLo's infamous song,
performed alongside Arlo Guthrie while having an attack of gout and in his spare time, he makes
free-flying models of
antique airplanes. But sadly, he has just gotten the most publicity of his career... as an
unwilling participant in one airline's Security Theater. (Story picked up by
The Consumerist,
the Economist, and
James Fallows at the Atlantic.)
[more inside]posted by oneswellfoop at 6:52 PM PST - 55 comments
A short history of New York City's sirens. In the first years of the twenty-first century, New York City police officers had six different siren noises at their fingertips to alternate and overdub as they attempted to bore through stagnant traffic. The “Yelp” is a high-pitched, rapidly oscillating, jumpy sound that suggests a small dog with large teeth has hold of your thigh and is not about to let go ..... . From
Cabinet Magazine.
posted by Rumple at 4:23 PM PST - 28 comments
The Third Wheel. Australian photographer Jackson Eaton offers a series of photographs about the awkwardness of being the third person that alternate between hilarious and creepy. (
Via)
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:59 AM PST - 37 comments
This is how it will happen. Let’s pick a day: June 22, 2012. It’s a gorgeous Friday afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, 75 degrees and sunny. It’s been raining for weeks, and in Seattle the freeways are jammed with people fleeing the city to enjoy the rare sunshine. Same story in Portland. Out on the coast, the beach towns are thrumming with tourists.
How a monster earthquake and resulting tsunami would affect the coast and cities of the Pacific NW.
posted by jontyjago at 9:27 AM PST - 152 comments
'It was an instant success,' Stan says. 'It's not surprising, because it meets all the criteria of a good gag. It's very cheap to make, so you could make a decent profit on it. It sells for a very cheap price, so it's easy to sell. And people just went after it. The numbers we hear tend to vary, but the story is it initially sold about 100,000 units a year, which, at the time, was a lot. Fishlove did very well with it.' The Inside Scoop on the Fake Barf Industry.posted by shakespeherian at 6:55 AM PST - 29 comments
Tim Hardin : underrated singer-songwriter of the '60s and '70s, or
the most underrated singer-songwriter of the '60s and '70s? Known mostly for more famous singers covering his work, his songs were sung by a plethora of people, from Bobby Darin, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Rod Stewart to Astrud Gilberto, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Echo & the Bunnymen, while he remained a very little-known but widely loved figure in folk music. He music could be painfully honest (
Reason to Believe,
Don't Make Promises), or slow and hypnotizing (
Misty Roses). Sadly, 6 days after his 39th birthday, he died from a heroin overdose in 1980.
[more inside]posted by Drainage! at 6:31 AM PST - 18 comments
The Crimes of Col. Qaddafi An original essay by Christopher Hitchens, that starts:
In George Orwell's 1939 novel, Coming Up for Air, his narrator, George Bowling, broods on the special horrors of the new totalitarianism and notices "the colored shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons," but also, less obviously perhaps, "the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke."posted by growabrain at 3:11 AM PST - 57 comments
Color Scheme Designer 3 allows a user to create harmonious color schemes using their choice of one of six customizable combinations from the color wheel. There is an option to show what a given scheme would look like to users with various types of colorblindness. The resulting scheme can be exported in several formats including HTML+CSS and Photoshop ACO, and a given scheme can even be
shared as a link.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:13 AM PST - 18 comments
August 25
Is this the answer? We've had our share of photo montages of Detroit... What to do with those empty houses? Mitch might have a viable idea here.
posted by tomswift at 8:01 PM PST - 51 comments
John Hammond Jr. has been keeping classic blues alive through nearly 5 decades of expressive performing and recording. He was named to the Blues Hall of Fame this year - here's a sampling why:
Walking Blues performed in Paris, 2004;
Come Into My Kitchen performed at at Fur Peace Ranch, 2009.
[more inside]posted by madamjujujive at 7:29 PM PST - 11 comments
The Atlantic's Ta-nehisi Coates sparks months of debate with his contention that
The Civil War Isn't Tragic. "The Civil War is our revolution. It ended slavery, and birthed both modern America, and modern black America.
That can never be tragic to me."
[more inside]posted by Danila at 4:07 PM PST - 116 comments
Nearly seventy years ago, 10,000 Japanse Americans were forcibly relocated to
Heart Mountain, just outside Cody, Wyoming; they were part of a larger group of more than 120,000 men, women, and children
incarcerated in War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps due solely to their ancestry. This past weekend, about 100 survivors of the camp -- led by the delightfully named
Bacon Sakatini -- returned to this remote corner of Wyoming to celebrate the grand opening of the
Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center.
Of the ten WRA camps, Heart Mountain had the only
organized resisters movement, which was started in 1944 by seven men who formed the
Fair Play Committee to protest the drafting of Japanse American men while their families remained imprisoned -- leading to the largest draft resistance trial in U.S. history.
posted by scody at 3:53 PM PST - 43 comments
Nerds Triumphant? The one-liner judged as the Funniest Joke of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is about computer passwords (also SPOILER a classic Disney cartoon). Runners-up and the joke judged WORST also listed. Warning: jokes contain drugs, sex, food (including broccoli and McDonald's), voicemail, crime, time, The Cure and a British chain store you Americans may never have heard of.
[more inside]posted by oneswellfoop at 3:19 PM PST - 146 comments
Birthweight link to lifespan and lifelong health. 'Why does one person die younger and another survive to old age? Lifestyle and genetic factors play a role, but' 'a better predictor of future health is our birthweight and what it tells us about our development in the womb.' 'The birthweight of a baby reflects how well it was nourished in the womb and the risk of chronic disease in later life. It is better to be 7lb (3.2kg) at birth than 6lb - better to be 8lb than 7lb. This implies that variations in the supply of food from normal healthy mothers to normal healthy babies have huge implications for the long-term health of the baby.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 1:05 PM PST - 55 comments
Categories as fundamental as fact and fiction, news and entertainment, gender and sexuality, have eroded away. In literature and architecture, in cuisine, in music, in fashion and furnishings, everywhere, everything—it’s fusion and mix.
Barack Obama emerged as a literal embodiment of this age. To educated people, especially younger people with generally progressive views, other candidates suddenly looked parochial by comparison—or simply outdated. In his ethnicity and biography and in his personality and politics, Obama, the conciliator, was above all a combiner. Because he was from virtually everywhere—Kenya, Indonesia, Honolulu, Harvard, Chicago’s South Side—he was also from nowhere. The pastiche of his persona made him “his own man” in a new sense of the term.
On the Politics of Pastiche and Depthless Intensities: The Case of Barack Obamaposted by Rumple at 11:52 AM PST - 22 comments
Their universe-wide reboot only weeks away, DC Comics has released
52 new logos for their books; they've been met with some praise and
much griping.
But what makes a good superhero logo? Maybe the design history of
Daredevil (parts
2,
3,
4),
The Hulk (parts
2,
3,
4),
The Atom, (parts
2,
3),
World's Finest (parts
2,
3,
4,
5,
), The Legion of Superheroes (parts
2,
3,
4,
5,
Batman (
previously) or
Superman can shed a clue.
[more inside]posted by Toby Dammit X at 9:58 AM PST - 30 comments
The
influential American fiction magazine,
Weird Tales has a new editor, and a new direction. It's hard to overstate the importance the magazine has played as a platform for genre fiction. Founded in 1923, it has featured authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, C. M. Eddy, Jr., Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn.
[more inside]posted by Stagger Lee at 8:08 AM PST - 40 comments
"There's just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them... But we don't underestimate kids around
here." [
Via.]
posted by chavenet at 4:43 AM PST - 10 comments
August 24
As Wikipedia expanded to lesser known languages it ran into a problem: What is knowledge for Wikipedia purposes? Traditionally knowledge has been defined by citations, but many languages don't have a lot of written material, greatly limiting what could be created on Wikipedia. The
solution (NYT) may be that
People are Knowledge (45min), a
project funded by a Wikimedia Foundation grant.
posted by stbalbach at 9:32 PM PST - 9 comments
“Before me as I write lies an inch-square bit of brown leather --- not, you would think, an inspiring subject for a tale. But perpend. This fragment of human skin, for such it is, has been since 1829 in the possession of three persons only: The original owner, my grandfather, and myself. Inconsiderable in size and unimpressive of aspect, it was nevertheless potent to influence the direction of my future studies…
While yet a small boy, my grandfather would often show me by request this singular relic and I never wearied of hearing how he came by it. As a matter of history, its first proprietor, the late Mr. William Burke of Edinburgh, in the circumstances hereafter to be related, was publicly anatomized, his carcass thereafter flayed, his hide tanned, and his skeleton by order of Court preserved in the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh University, where it remains as a memorial of his infamy even unto this day. Mr. Burke’s integument being cut up into sortable parcels to suit buyer’s tastes and exposed for sale by private bargain, my grandfather, who was then but a young man, invested a modest shilling’s worth. Wealthier purchasers bought larger lots --- I have heard that the late Professor Chiene had a tobacco pouch made of this unique material. Personally, despite my predilection for crime, I prefer India-rubber.” ---
"The Wolves of the West Port" [more inside]posted by Diablevert at 9:14 PM PST - 12 comments
The Daily Dot delivers news about social media communities such as Reddit, Facebook and Youtube the way a local newspaper might deliver news about a city.
posted by reenum at 6:25 PM PST - 10 comments
The hidden meaning of pronouns. I particularly liked the counterintuitive bit about men's and women's use of pronouns. Also fascinating about the declining use of the 1st person as status increased: "When undergraduates wrote me, their emails were littered with I, me, and my. My response, although quite friendly, was remarkably detached -- hardly an I-word graced the page. And then I analyzed my emails to the dean of my college. My emails looked like an I-word salad; his emails back to me were practically I-word free."
posted by anothermug at 4:58 PM PST - 66 comments
Jerry's Map: a short film about the fictional world of Jerry Gretzinger, which he has been building for decades through a process of procedural cartography.
His website.
posted by avocet at 2:16 PM PST - 20 comments
In a widely discussed tweet last week, Jon Huntsman broke with the stated opinion of every other major Republican presidential candidate†:
@JonHuntsman
"To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."
Is Huntsman's announcement a shrewd move to establish his campaign as "
the only moderate" candidacy in the crowded G.O.P. field, or is it evidence of a man sticking by his principles and "
having a little fun" in a primary he knows he cannot win?
[more inside]posted by 2bucksplus at 10:31 AM PST - 130 comments
"Call me nuts, but I find extraordinarily endearing the improbable blend of country music traditionalism and tastefully restrained space-age guitar pyrotechnics that can be heard in these tunes." Yes, friends, the fine folks at WFMU are back with the long-awaited 2nd installment of the tasty and wonderful
Country Fuzz Spectacular!
[more inside]posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:20 AM PST - 8 comments
Tabletop: Analog Game Design - A commons licenced book containing a series of essays about digital and non-digital games from some esteemed boardgame veterans:
"Much has been written about the videogame revolution, [...] In a scant thirty some-odd years,
we’ve grown from nothing to one of the world’s largest entertainment
forms, grossing tens of billions annually [...] Works that discuss the evolution of the game industry from an historical perspective generally talk about the connection between the pre-digital
arcade and the earliest digital games; I’ve even heard some claim
that “without the arcade, videogames would not exist.” This is, of course, bosh..." [more inside]posted by Cogentesque at 7:16 AM PST - 36 comments
August 23
Case History Of A Wikipedia Page: Nabokov’s 'Lolita' Since 2001, the Wikipedia entry on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita has been edited 2,303 times. It's a popular entry, too: of approximately 750,000 Wiki articles out there, it ranks at 2,075 in traffic.
In the past ten years, the entry has grown to the detailed, 6,000-plus-word monolith of today. The two Lolita films now have their own pages, while the entry on the novel has expanded to include sections on such subjects as Lolita's Russian translation and its literary allusions. An edit is made, on average, about every other day.
posted by sweetkid at 6:50 PM PST - 36 comments
Lewin was Parrish's constant companion for 55 years. "He and Lewin must have had a magical life together out in the country. When Parrish was 90 years old and Lewin was 71, Parrish's wife finally died, leaving him free to marry Lewin. However, he declined so she packed her bags, left the estate and went back to her village where she married someone else."
Part one in an occasional series on artists and their love life.
[some NSFW] [more inside]posted by unliteral at 6:39 PM PST - 21 comments
In 1985, just a few months before its lamentedly-unsuccessful-yet-enduringly-wonderful big screen cousin was released, the
Clue VCR Mystery Game was released on an unsuspecting (and largely unwilling [some might say clueless]) public. The hugely-quotable and charmingly goofy VHS film included as part of the game is viewable in its entirety online in seven parts:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7. (If you must see the butler, Didit, explaining the rules, please use
these links in place of 1 and 2 above.) [Total video time: under one hour] Before you view [more inside] play a round of personal facts, followed by a round of cards.
[more inside]posted by hippybear at 3:58 PM PST - 22 comments
Tom Waits' Private Listening Party
The whole thing's gonna to have to be
rethought. [SLYT]
posted by misterG at 9:06 AM PST - 37 comments
August 22
This was a triumph. A very special, very custom Portal 2 mod serves as Gary Hudston's proposal to his girlfriend Stephanie. He commissioned Douglas “TopHATTwaffle” Hoogland and Rachel “Miss Stabby” van der Meer and a the talents of a special guest as the icing on the cake. Via
RPS.
posted by Verdant at 6:52 PM PST - 85 comments
Four days ago Smithsonian Magazine published an in-depth examination of the Finnish education system (and what the U.S. can learn from the Finns). Here's a quote: "Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Student health care is free... Besides Finnish, math and science, the first graders take music, art, sports, religion and textile handcrafts. English begins in third grade, Swedish in fourth. By fifth grade the children have added biology, geography, history, physics and chemistry."
[more inside]posted by bguest at 5:23 PM PST - 126 comments
The Doggie Diner was the name of a Bay Area chain of burger joints that had its heyday in the '60s and '70s. The last remaining restaurant in the Chain was located at the corner of 46th and Sloat in San Francisco, CA. Even after the place became a restaurant with a new name ("Carousel") the giant Fiberglass dachshund head remained as a piece of nostalgia until a storm toppled it on April 1st, 2001. The head
was relocated in January 2005 to the median of Sloat Boulevard and became San Francisco city landmark #254. Now the restaurant itself
is slated for demolition.
[more inside]posted by MattMangels at 4:37 PM PST - 32 comments
Jerry Leiber, one of the greatest rock and roll songwriters to ever ply the trade,
has died aged 78. Along with songwriting partner Mike Stoller, he was responsible for so many hits, including but not limited to:
Love Potion No. 9 by The Coasters,
Stand By Me by Ben E. King,
Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton, later
popularised by Elvis Presley, and, solo, in conjunction with Phil Spector,
Spanish Harlem, as sung by Aretha Franklin.
posted by Len at 3:45 PM PST - 63 comments
The Washington Mall welcomes another hero. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is unveiled. Sitting directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, "the composition of the [King] memorial utilizes landscape elements to powerfully convey four fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King's message: justice, democracy, hope and love."
[more inside]posted by darkstar at 11:50 AM PST - 72 comments
Panic inside a Mexican soccer stadium. In live footage that could be seen all over Mexico and some other parts of the world, audiences who were peacefully enjoying a soccer match between Torreón's "Santos" and Morelia's "Monarcas" watched as the sound of gunshots made players run out of the field and into the cover of their locker rooms, while spectators crouched in their seats and later, panicked, ran toward the exits.
(SLYT, comments in spanish, but images are self explanatory.) [more inside]posted by CrazyLemonade at 9:54 AM PST - 71 comments
From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with
March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often
tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing —
foreign affairs,
social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.”
(Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and
may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues,
including (
eventually) America’s
entry to WWII. Video samples are available at
Time.com, the
March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online,
(free registration required) at
HBO Archives. [more inside]posted by zarq at 8:33 AM PST - 8 comments
Happy birthday John Lee Hooker! Let's celebrate by listening to some of your older tunes! "Gonna take you down by the riverside, gonna tie your hands, gonna tie your feet, got the
mad man blues" ... "Now the
war is over, and I'm broke and I ain't got a dime" ... "You know I'm a
crawling king snake, baby, and I rule my nest" ... "Gonna get up in the mornin',
goin' down highway 51" ... "Well I
rolled and I tumbled, babe, I cried the whole night long" ... "
I feel so good, let me do the boogaloo"
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:06 AM PST - 19 comments
Post A Letter Social Activity Club: "Imagine a day when every personal e-mail you receive is in the form of a piece of mail, in envelopes of different sizes, papers of different colours and textures, handwriting of varying degrees of legibility. Wouldn’t that be pretty nice for a change?"
[more inside]posted by Fizz at 5:17 AM PST - 18 comments
August 21
Congressional Republicans
favor letting the payroll tax
increase at year's end.
Jeb Hensarling claims this is because "not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." However, his logic
may be backward[s].
posted by Wyatt at 9:20 PM PST - 94 comments
The Cold War resulted in a rather large number of interesting military research programs. One of these with which I'm familiar is the
Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program, which ran from 1946 to 1961. The basic idea? Modify a bomber (such as a
B-36 bomber), creating an aircraft that could theoretically remain aloft for weeks at a time without refueling, much like ballistic submarines? The challenge? Shielding. Shielding the reactor alone would make the aircraft prohibitively heavy, so the idea was to primarily shield the crew compartment instead of the reactor. However, to study the concept, and evaluate various lightweight shielding concepts, two very novel and unique nuclear reactors were built at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory: the
Bulk Shielding Reactor, a novel "swimming pool reactor", and the
Tower Shielding Reactor, an unshielded reactor that was hung 200' in the air dangling between 310' steel towers. While the program successfully demonstrated several of the concepts (including a
nuclear-powered gas turbine engine running in Idaho, and a modified B-36 that carried a nuclear reactor but wasn't propelled by it (mentioned above), the program was canceled in 1961 due to feasibility and budget concerns.
posted by kaszeta at 12:44 PM PST - 26 comments
Army vet with PTSD sought the treatment he needed by taking hostages – but got jail instead. "Fifteen months of carnage in Iraq had left the 29-year-old debilitated by post-traumatic stress disorder. But despite his doctor’s urgent recommendation, the Army failed to send him to a Warrior Transition Unit for help. The best the Department of Veterans Affairs could offer was 10-minute therapy sessions — via videoconference. So, early on Labor Day morning last year, after topping off a night of drinking with a handful of sleeping pills, Quinones barged into Fort Stewart’s hospital, forced his way to the third-floor psychiatric ward and held three soldiers hostage, demanding better mental health treatment."
[Via] [more inside]posted by homunculus at 11:15 AM PST - 38 comments
Researchers at the
New England Complex Systems Institute say they've uncovered a pattern that triggers riots wherever it's found. What is that pattern?
The price of food. When it rises to a certain level, social unrest & violence are soon to follow. According to their calculations the food price index is due to peak in August of 2013, assuming no corrective action is taken. The original paper is
here.
posted by scalefree at 11:06 AM PST - 49 comments
Why Africa is leaving Europe behind: Africans are relishing something of a reversal in roles. The former colonial powers in Europe are wrestling with debt crises, austerity budgets, rising unemployment and social turmoil. By contrast much of sub-Saharan Africa can point to robust growth, better balanced books and rising capital inflows. There is an opportunity in this novel scenario: for Africa to assert itself on the global stage, and for European countries to take advantage of their historic footprint in Africa by stimulating commercial expansion to their south. But it is far from clear either side will grasp it. Recently.posted by infini at 2:45 AM PST - 27 comments
August 20
DINOSOAP archaeological soap lets you easily experience the fun of archaeological work! Body itself as a special soap made of double-modulation soap: scrub in the process each time, easier to dissolve the outer layer of the "loess" will gradually erode, slowly revealing more difficult to dissolve the inner layer buried in the "dinosaur fossil." Just few weeks, a mini ancient dinosaur fossils can be excavated Hello! [more inside]posted by Gator at 8:58 PM PST - 18 comments
Orbán's concept of moral renewal and economic rehabilitation for Hungary has several tenets: Those without work are to be given work; those who are already working should work more in the future, but without being paid more; in the interest of the country's "stability," those who hold political power today should be allowed to remain in office for as long as possible; and those who once had power and did not use it for the benefit of the people should now be punished.
"Supporters of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán say he has a strict leadership style, while critics warn of the threat of forced political conformity, Jew-baiting and labor camps. Meanwhile, the European Union is saying nothing, apparently accepting the fact that a member state is
getting out of control." [
previously]
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 8:33 PM PST - 17 comments
In the late Sixties and early Seventies several experiments were begun to test whether or not a non-human primate could construct a sentence. Several species were involved in these various experiments including the chimpanzees
Washoe and
Nim, a gorilla named
Koko, and later in the Eighties work began with a bonobo named
Kanzi. While great progress was made in teaching these primates a vocabulary, it would be difficult to see any of these experiments as a success. And all of these projects raised important questions about the
ethics of such experiments.
[more inside]posted by Toekneesan at 2:30 PM PST - 39 comments
"I am fascinated with the science of optical illusions. What happens in our brain when we view an optical illusion? The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to create an idea or image that does not match with a physical measurement of the stimulus source.
On this channel you will find a variety of videos that will spark that scientific corner of your brain."
[more inside]posted by SpacemanStix at 8:53 AM PST - 2 comments
The Berglas Effect aka The Holy Grail of Card Magic or Any Card at Any Number (ACAAN) and named after its inventor David Berglas is a very simple magic card trick that Berglas claims only two people know.
[more inside]posted by Mitheral at 8:07 AM PST - 107 comments
August 19
China debate over US envoy's coffee run. 'The low-key actions of two top US officials have sparked heated debate among China's netizens about the nature of public servants. A photograph of new US Ambassador to China Gary Locke ordering coffee and carrying his own backpack generated thousands of online comments. A visit by Vice-President Joe Biden to a small Beijing eatery fuelled debate. Many praised the informality of the two men's actions, contrasting them with status-conscious Chinese officials.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 4:35 PM PST - 99 comments
Tacit is a wearable sonar system for the vision-impaired that communicates the distance of nearby objects using variable pressure on the wrist of the user. Part list, circuit diagram, and detailed instructions for building the ~$100 device included.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:24 PM PST - 9 comments
AM: Do you have a favorite kanji character?
HD: I like this one: 峠
because it reminds me of a poem by Christina Rossetti:
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men
(what I mean is, it’s terribly nice to have the radicals for mountain, up and down form the character).
I’m very fond of 競 because it makes me think of two men skating with their arms behind their backs in a Dutch painting, wearing black frock coats and breeches.
明 is not very exotic, of course, but it’s nice to have the word for ‘bright’ represented by the sun and moon – this is a bit like certain German words, where the elements of a phenomenon are put together for the word: there’s Morgengrauen (morning grey) for the sky lightening to grey just before dawn, and Morgenröte (morning red) for the sky when it first turns red, similar sort of thing.
An
interview with
Helen DeWitt, author of
The Last Samurai,
Your Name Here, a novel written with
Ilya Gridneff, and the forthcoming
Lightning Rods. DeWitt will be in New York
September 8 - 11.posted by xod at 4:20 PM PST - 48 comments
The Memorial. "People talk a lot about the "healing process." Well, this is New York. In the aftermath of a tragedy of monumental proportions, the healing process has been noisy and rude, with elbows out, redolent of greed, power, and the darker forces that drive human existence. And most of the shouting has been about how to make a fitting monument to what happened here. But in a hundred years, all the shouting and all the politics will be forgotten. What will be remembered is what is built here, now, on these sixteen acres." [more inside]posted by zarq at 1:41 PM PST - 37 comments
Boeing's new Dreamliner plant in South Carolina was found to be retaliation for union strikes by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency (
On Point radio show).
That's prompted Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to launch an all-out
war on the NRLB according to Dahlia Lithwick.
(
Previously.)
posted by klangklangston at 10:25 AM PST - 78 comments
August 18
Corey Adams and Alex Craig are a tag-team of independent filmmakers probably best known for their feature film,
Machotaildrop, the fruit of having won a million dollars in a filmmaking contest held by Fuel TV. That win was on the strength of their very cool short,
Harvey Spannos. Their most recent
project features the dread "Manwolf" gang from Machotaildrop and appears to be an ad for an eponymous skate shoe model that is being released by éS. Mammas don't let your babies grow up to be Manwolfs (sic, so sic, dude.)
posted by Roachbeard at 6:06 PM PST - 4 comments
Scandybars is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their Snickers wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by quiet coyote at 5:32 PM PST - 68 comments
The Aeronautical Pentathlon Has Six Events—and Flying Doesn't Count. Aeronautical pentathlon—which inexplicably has six events—is a riff on the modern pentathlon at the Olympics. Created 63 years ago, the military pilots' version has pretty much flown under the radar.
And though the sport is based on flying, the nonflying parts of the competition determine the winner. While it is exclusively practiced by air forces, it was always excluded from the military Olympics—called the World Military Games—until last month's event in Rio de Janeiro. ... and the
home team wins.
[more inside]posted by caddis at 12:59 PM PST - 8 comments
In 1972, Washington, DC
opened the doors to the HD Woodson Senior High School. It was the city's first new school in twelve years, and the first to be constructed after riots
devastated the city in 1968. Like its sister school across town, it had been
built to withstand another riot, and protect its students within its fortress-like walls. For a time, it stood as the pride and joy of the city's school system, featuring a diverse range of academic and vocational programs in a state of the art 8-story building complete with escalators, science labs, and a six-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community.
By 2008, however, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. The building was literally crumbling, many of its original facilities had closed due to neglect, only 13% of sophomores were proficient in reading or mathematics, and violence was a daily concern. Facing no other choice, the city closed the school in 2008, and
demolished the brutalist structure shortly thereafter.
After a three year
series of delays, next week,
students will begin classes in the
newly reconstructed HD Woodson High School; a 3-story state of the art building complete with elevators, science labs, and an eight-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community -- leading many to question: Will it work this time? The correlation between architecture and academic performance is not well-studied, and
previous efforts have been inconclusive at best.
posted by schmod at 9:56 AM PST - 49 comments
How do you build a mouse Utopia? In 1972,
John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. . . . To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction.
posted by saladin at 8:39 AM PST - 27 comments
Watched by Vladimir Putin, the
Sukhoi T-50, Russia's answer to the Raptor stealth fighter, has made its maiden public appearance at the MAKS 2011 air show near Moscow, after
first flying in January 2010. Bearing a
striking resemblance to the
F-22, the Sukhoi T-50 has been developed in co-operation with India and is slated to become the backbone of Russia's airforce. While the F-22 first flew in 7 September 1997 and
ceased production with just 187 aircraft ordered, Sukhoi director Mikhail Pogosyan
hopes to build 1,000 T-50s for Russia's airforce and export. Despite its ageing engines, it is rumoured to have a range of a range of almost 3,500 miles, twice that of the F-22. What is believed to be China's 5th generation fighter,
the J-20, is also under development.
posted by joannemullen at 1:18 AM PST - 69 comments
August 17
Richard Fischer's
floral sculptures are photos of extraordinary detail and beauty.
Experts believe many of the flowers he has photographed will become extinct within our lifetime.
(
warning: opens with sound)
[more inside]posted by adamvasco at 11:48 PM PST - 12 comments
Although the
sculptor Hiram Powers (1805-73) enjoyed considerable success with his
portraits and more
allegorical works, he is now almost entirely remembered for one of nineteenth-century America's most hotly-debated sculptures:
The Greek Slave. Powers was a
little vague about the inspiration for the statue--longstanding dream, or response to the Greek War of Independence (see
previously)? Understood
at the time as a major leap forward in establishing America as a serious force in the art world, the statue was an international hit (appearing at the
Great Exhibition of 1851), and was
endlessly copied and
daguerrotyped. (Some of the copies turn the statue into a much more ambiguous
bust, or
hark back to one of its major influences, the
Venus de Milo.) However, some observers, including
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and,
much more pointedly, the illustrator and caricaturist
John Tenniel, suggested that an American sculptor might wish to think about
other slaves.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:33 PM PST - 9 comments
"
Certainly, Uncle Sam, disowned by Pakistanis, has found innumerable devoted nephews in India. Indian and Pakistani perceptions of America now wildly diverge: A 2005 Pew poll conducted in 16 countries found the United States in the highest regard among Indians (71 percent having a favorable opinion) and nearly the lowest among Pakistanis (23 percent)."
Why do India and Pakistan see America in such opposite ways?posted by vidur at 6:28 PM PST - 45 comments
Yahoo! sports strikes again. Charles Robinson (@charlesrobinson on twitter) , just revealed a nuclear bombshell of a scandal in the football program at the University of Miami, featuring drinks, cash, gambling, yachts, bounties on players, prostitutes, and an abortion.
[more inside]posted by norm at 1:24 PM PST - 83 comments
Split Family Faces. "How much do you and members of your family really look alike? Quebec, Canada-based graphic designer and photographer Ulric Collette has created a shockingly cool project where he's exploring the genetic similarities between different members of the same family. By splitting their faces in half and then melding them together, he creates interesting new people that are sometimes quite normal looking and other times far from it. He calls this series Genetic Portraits."
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 12:05 PM PST - 43 comments
A week ago, Markus "Notch" Persson (creator of
Minecraft) received a letter from Bethesda (makers of the Elder Scrolls games) warning him that
Scrolls (
prev) was infringing on their trademark. Today, in a new twist on an
old idea, Notch has challenged Bethesda to settle matters without lawyers:
Quake 3 Team Deathmatch.
posted by kmz at 9:36 AM PST - 70 comments
Diner for Schmucks. GQ's restaurant reviewer
Alan Richman had heard "nothing but great things about M. Wells, one of New York City's hottest restaurants—the food was amazing, the setting sublime, the ambience charming. And, in fact, everything was going quite well. Until..." More at
Eater.
(Via) [more inside]posted by zarq at 6:36 AM PST - 238 comments
August 16
'"People say 'It's all about the story,'"' Walt Disney Animation Studios chief technical officer Andy Hendrickson, said
in a talk at the recent Siggraph conference. '"When you're making tentpole films, bullshit." Hendrickson showed a chart of the top 12 all-time domestic grossers, and noted every one is a spectacle film. Of his own studio's "Alice in Wonderland," which is on the list, he said: "The story isn't very good, but visual spectacle brought people in droves. And Johnny Depp didn't hurt."'
posted by joannemullen at 10:30 PM PST - 107 comments
Singer, knob twiddler and bass player MNDR has had a great year, especially considering that she hasn’t even finished her first full-length solo recording yet. MNDR is best known in the pop world so far for her collaboration with Mark Ronson and Q-tip on
Bang Bang Bang, a song that plays with the french children’s song alouette with a double entendre squeezed out of the consonants in “plucking feathers.”
[more inside]posted by umbú at 9:09 PM PST - 12 comments
Meet Karl Welzien. He lives in Grand Blanc, Michigan. He is recently divorced from Ann, and lives with his buddy Dave. He loves drinking cold ones, driving his Sebring, maxing out some karaoke, and knocking back some Chili's hot wings because they have big bold flavor. He's a big fan of Guy Fieri, and loves the occasional "toilet nap" during his workday. Karl is a fictional character that exists only on Twitter,
@DadBoner.
[more inside]posted by jbickers at 1:41 PM PST - 44 comments
The Elusive Big Idea "It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief."
posted by bitmage at 1:23 PM PST - 92 comments
Poverty may be miserable. But being able to feel a bit better-off than someone else makes it a bit more bearable. Economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggest that people near the bottom end of financial inequity are less likely to be in favour of programs that will help increase their income if those programs will also help those lower on the scale than they are.
...the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and informed about the “income distribution” that resulted. They were then given another $2, which they could give either to the person directly above or below them in the distribution. The people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them..
This may also explain why Warren Buffet's cry to stop coddling the rich (
previously) will continue to fall on deaf ears.
posted by asnider at 10:03 AM PST - 137 comments
Roger Ebert has posted the intro of his memoirs,
Life Itself, to
his blog, which particularly talks about how therapeutic his blog has been, giving him a voice when he can no longer speak. Originally dismissive of online media, he's gone on to embrace it (for example, with his
twitter feed), in a manner matched by few other celebrities.
posted by kaszeta at 8:32 AM PST - 22 comments
Did you inherit your parents stress? Your grandparents stress? What about their environmental enrichment?
Current research in rats is exploring possible mechanisms through which stressful and positive environments could affect our future children and grandchildren. Also something to consider in tandem: many of the genes associated with addiction and mental illness are also associated with resiliency.
[more inside]posted by xarnop at 7:43 AM PST - 38 comments
"Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.
In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday,
Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named." (Most recent
previously.)
posted by Len at 4:58 AM PST - 77 comments
August 15
Seven boxes marked "WW3" hold works ready for immediate evacuation if the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC faced catastrophic destruction. An essay published in the Washington Post discusses how Curator Andrew Robinson decides which seventy-four items in his area of responsibility hold top priority out of
more than 100,000 watercolors, drawings, prints and rare books.
posted by woodway at 5:59 PM PST - 127 comments
Over the centuries, the high seas have served as a blank canvas for cartographers’ worst nightmares. They have dotted the oceans with a whole crypto-zoo of island-sized whales, deathly seductive mermaids, giant sea serpents, and many more - a whole panoply of heraldic horrors. As varied as this marine bestiary is, mapmakers have settled on a single, favourite species for land-based beastliness: the octopus. Bonus:
Satire Maps and Fred W. Rose (YT, 3:32);
Fred Rose's Serio-Comic War Map (YT, 1:52).
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 1:54 PM PST - 10 comments
"Flight into Danger" invented the cliches of the disaster film genre, invigorated the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and changed the life of its author, tractor-trailer company advertising executive Arthur Hailey.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 11:17 AM PST - 16 comments
জয় হে : So you have seven
swara's, or musical notes, each associated with elements, animals,
chakra's and Hindu gods. Linearly arranged swara's, or
sur's in Hindi, form a
swaramalika, a chain of swara's. Mixing yours and my swara's, for instance, produces
our sur(YT) (
text).
Once again,
(YT) on a
Continuum Fingerboard. The seven swara's together are also called a '
sargam', a Devnaagri acronym formed by taking the first letter of each note. Sargam mix with each other and form
raaga's, melodic modes that depict the colours, hues and moods in Indian classical music. Assembling known maestros from every corner of the nation, and asking them to play their sargam's, you get
desh raag(YT): the Sound of a Nation.
[more inside]posted by the cydonian at 10:25 AM PST - 10 comments
National Characters is a long, multi-part essay about how computer games deal with the concept of nations and turns it into a game mechanic. The author, Troy Goodfellow of strategy gaming blog Flash of Steel, focuses on how the fourteen indistinguishable national factions of the original Sid Meier's Civilization have been treated by different games through the years.
[more inside]posted by Kattullus at 4:48 AM PST - 50 comments
August 14
8 Hours in Brooklyn - Fantastic little compilation of slo-mo footage taken over the course of eight hours in BKLN. Extra good watched in fullscreen.
posted by dobbs at 9:56 PM PST - 12 comments
Before there were yuppies, there were uppies—the term Up With People members use to refer to themselves. Most Americans over the age of 35 are vaguely familiar with Up With People, as its cast members have sung to more than 20 million people worldwide, and at the height of the ensemble’s fame it provided the halftime entertainment at four Super Bowls (1976, 1980, ’82, ’86). But many are unaware of the group’s cultish utopian ideology, its political connectedness, and how it was funded by corporate America, part of a deliberate propaganda effort to discredit liberal counterculture in the 1960s and ’70s. In the documentary Smile ’Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story (Storey Vision), writer-director-producer Lee Storey provides a thorough, balanced look at the organization’s history, demonstrating “what can happen when ideology, money and groupthink converge to co-opt youthful idealism.” [more inside]posted by Trurl at 6:24 PM PST - 93 comments
The
Super Friendship Club is an effort by
Stephen
“Increpare” Lavelle
(
previously),
Terry
Cavvvvvvanagh (
previously,
with
Stephen Lavelle),
Jonas Kyratzes (
previously, with
Terry Cavanagh),
Jasper Byrne (
previously),
Ian Snyder (
previously), and
several others, to provide another place
for game developers to
make
games. It aims to be a
focussed alternative to
TIGSource
Forums,
Indiegamer, and others by
avoiding more general discussion boards and topics.
Every other month, thematic
pageants
are held where entrants are encouraged to make a game and share
their progress. The first pageant,
“
Justice,”
was held in July and yielded
these (including
[previously]).
posted by stance at 3:12 PM PST - 11 comments
Generation Vexed: Young Americans rein in their dreams. 'Amid so much economic uncertainty, many are rethinking career plans, putting off marriage and avoiding the stock market like the plague.' 'Fewer than half of Americans believe that the current generation will have a better life than the last, according to a Gallup poll this spring. It was the most pessimistic showing for that barometer in nearly three decades. Another poll, of Americans ages 18 to 29, found that three-quarters of them expect to delay a major life change or purchase because of economic factors.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 10:51 AM PST - 219 comments
Tanooky Tracks is a cute game wherein you use riddles to help you find all the Tanookies (whatever those are) hidden around your house. It's a neat little take on the standard escape-the-room fare.
posted by phunniemee at 8:24 AM PST - 35 comments
Double or Nothing: 9/11 Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke Speculates That the CIA Tried and Failed to Recruit the Hijackers, and Then Engaged in a Cover-Up. Admitting that he has no proof, he nonetheless
alleges that CIA Director George Tenet and others concealed their knowledge that the suspected Al-Qaeda members were inside the country, which in turn prevented the FBI and other agencies from thwarting the 9/11 attack. Tenet et al. have
responded to this charge via a prepared statement.
posted by darth_tedious at 1:13 AM PST - 91 comments
August 13
An Era in Ideas. "To mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks,
The Chronicle Review asked a group of influential thinkers to reflect on some of the themes that were raised by those events and to meditate on their meaning, then and now. The result is a portrait of the culture and ideas of a decade born in trauma, but also the beginning of a new century, with all its possibilities and problems."
[Via]posted by homunculus at 9:35 PM PST - 11 comments
The End is a charming flash platformer geared towards young adults which integrates strategy, puzzles and philosophical questions into a world that explores a range of views about mortality.
posted by carsonb at 12:07 PM PST - 12 comments
Starting last month, the French daily
Le Monde has been publishing an economic thriller in series, called
Terminus pour L' Euro (in French) (The End of the Line for the Euro). The series is behind a subscription wall, but Presseurope has started republishing the series in ten languages,
including English...
The story narrates the events of summer 2012, as Germany decides to leave the Euro and what follows. It has caused a stir in France, as rumors about the true identity of the author (who signs the series as
Philae, after an island in Egypt apparently) continue to circulate, and some think he is the French agriculture minister
Bruno Le Maire.
Some say that the rumors that led to the
precipitous fall in French banks' stock a few days ago, were due to misunderstanding the fictional character of the story...
Real
rumors that Germany threatened to leave the Euro last year,
were dismissed by its Chancellor, yet as the eurozone crisis develops, no one is certain any more that the series is simply fiction and not a possible, real scenario,
advocated by
many...
posted by talos at 8:09 AM PST - 24 comments
August 12
Prof. Michael Coe, an expert on the Maya
, discusses the challenges facing Mormon archaeologists investigating the historical truth of the Book of Mormon.
[more inside]posted by Ideefixe at 6:51 PM PST - 192 comments
Shooting Stars was a celebrity panel game that ran on the BBC from 1993-1997, and was revived again last year. It features two comedians asking guest panellists questions, and the leader has to do a final challenge. And it's probably nothing like you're imagining it is...
[more inside]posted by mippy at 2:59 PM PST - 47 comments
one, two, three, FOUR, five, six, seven, eight, NINE, ten, eleven, twelve!
The
Sesame Street's Pinball Number Count by the
Pointer Sisters reimagined with stop motion.
posted by P.o.B. at 2:10 PM PST - 27 comments
Fifty years after British colonialism, ten years after military rule, Nigerians are free. Not economically free, not yet, and we see the effect of that lack of economic freedom in the kinds of crimes that are committed. But they are free in important ways. You can live where you want, associate with whom you want. You can sue people in court, gather to practice your religion, under the leadership of whichever holy man or charlatan you prefer, and you can marry and divorce as you please. This is a major thing. This is modernity, and to tell these stories, to give the protagonists of these losses even that little bit of attention, is to honor the fact that they are there, that their life goes on.
On his
twitter feed, novelist Teju Cole has been taking the French literary tradition of
faits divers and adapting it to
"bring news of a Nigerian modernity."posted by villanelles at dawn at 1:38 PM PST - 11 comments
The US military's secret military. 'Last year,
Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year,' 'that number will likely reach 120.' 'Unknown to most Americans', 'in 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces'. US Special Operations forces are 'approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where the US' elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 10:38 AM PST - 133 comments
FastKat, for Friday fun HTML5/CSS/canvas game. Dodge the round dots in you modern browser. (Has no cats that I've found.)
posted by skynxnex at 9:00 AM PST - 17 comments
"
IBM is proud to announce a product
you may have a personal interest in. It's a tool that could soon be on your desk, in your home or in your child's schoolroom. It can make a surprising difference in the way you work, learn or otherwise approach the complexities (and some of the the simple pleasures) of living."
[more inside]posted by Ahab at 7:53 AM PST - 83 comments
August 11
A little while back, Ars Technica did a
review of the $99 Maylong Android tablet and suggested that it was not good for much of anything, questioning if it was one of the worst gadgets ever.
[more inside]posted by SpacemanStix at 9:46 PM PST - 86 comments
Is human history every bit as important and worth saving as natural history? William Cronon explained that the 1964 Wilderness Act and National Park Service policy separates "nature" and "culture" as two very distinct things. This attitude means that, in lots of places, the Park Service has actually torn down historic buildings and removed traces of past human habitation in order to make National Parks more "natural."
The Apostle Islands, the northernmost part of Wisconsin, appears to be totally wild. But less than 100 years ago, it was thriving stone quarry that supplied building materials to NY, Chicago and other major metropolitan cities.
posted by Kokopuff at 8:25 AM PST - 91 comments
More apocalyptic doom and gloom, but today's flavor is
whiskey.
Aging bourbon is expensive—and distilleries are cutting corners to speed up the process. Will the entire industry decline?
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:05 AM PST - 73 comments
"Three days after the September 11 attacks, reporters at The New York Times, armed with stacks of homemade missing-persons fliers, began interviewing friends and relatives of the missing and writing brief portraits of their lives to create “
Portraits of Grief.” Not meant to be obituaries in any traditional sense, they were informal and impressionistic, often centered on a single story or idiosyncratic detail." As we near the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the Times has revisited some of the people they interviewed back then, for
Profiles Redrawn.
[more inside]posted by zarq at 7:40 AM PST - 8 comments
"Running Alphabet is a project by the designer and runner Joan Pons Moll. The purpose of it is to run every character from the alphabet, captured by GPS and create a complete typeface from it. This is a collaborative initiative so if you are interested in running a letter go to participate and follow the instructions. Ready, Type, Go!"
[more inside]posted by OmieWise at 6:41 AM PST - 17 comments
MIT scientist Dr. Todd Rider has
developed a viral infection treatment that works by triggering host cell suicide when it finds the cell has been producing double-stranded RNA. Since dsRNA is the mechanism by which all viral infections proceed, but is not part of normal cellular function, the treatment seems both universal and safe.
[more inside]posted by seanmpuckett at 6:08 AM PST - 49 comments
August 10
A Mexican anti-technology terrorist organization called Individuals Tending to Savagery/Wildness (ITS) has
claimed responsibility for
two bombing
attacks on researchers in Mexico.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:47 PM PST - 42 comments
Everything went silent, Judi told me, as if she'd been pulled underwater. She read the sentences over and over, trying to comprehend them.
The boy Sulaiman Suma had been looking for all these years was her 16-year-old son, Samuel.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
[more inside]posted by Joe in Australia at 8:52 PM PST - 12 comments
Pinball machines, when you can find one, have gotten pretty complex over the years (for a notable example of pinball complexity, check out the
Twilight Zone pinball machine). The average person likely plays one for a bit, figures it's about keeping the ball alive as long as possible, and hopes for the best. Why did I just rack up a million points on that go-around?
Who knows.
[more inside]posted by SpacemanStix at 7:47 PM PST - 63 comments
There are excellent recipes on this website. I've been forced to get healthy and stumbled upon this website. I know there are those that are annoyed by vegans. What I like about this site is it is vegan/vegetarian focused without being preachy. The recipes are delicious. I've gone from a diet of gas station food, corn nuts and fast food to eating (and cooking) things I've never imagined. I thought maybe some of you might find it interesting. Let me know if you do. Can you be a carnivore and co-exist with vegan eating in your diet?
posted by zenhues at 4:31 PM PST - 55 comments
The Secret History of Guns. "The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight."
[Via]posted by homunculus at 12:28 PM PST - 36 comments
On July 23, 1920,
Charles Ponzi hired former Boston Post journalist William H. McMasters as his publicist, who quickly realized that his new client was defrauding the public. Just ten days later, McMasters wrote an exposé published in the Post that led to Ponzi's ultimate downfall. The newspaper won a Pulitzer. McMasters was
The Man Who Time (Almost) Forgot (Via) [more inside]posted by zarq at 7:24 AM PST - 11 comments
August 9
It's Census time in Australia. Watch Australians age, lose religion and get divorced with these
interactive infographics based on historical data. Then play with the Australian Bureau of Statistics'
neat tool that puts a personal touch on the data.
[more inside]posted by puffl at 3:48 PM PST - 48 comments
"For us, it's devastating ... I'm sure there are labels which aren't insured. I'm sure there will be labels that will go bust." A fire set as part of the
ongoing London riots has
destroyed the Sony-owned PIAS distribution warehouse, decimating
the physical stock of most of the UK's independent music and film labels.
Over 150 companies have been affected, including
Domino,
4AD,
Warp,
XL,
Rough Trade,
Ninja Tune,
Soul Jazz,
Fat Cat,
Chemikal Underground,
Rekids, and the DVD labels
Arrow Films (whose entire stock has been destroyed) and
Masters of Cinema. The warehouse also housed stock for American labels
Sub Pop,
Drag City,
Thrill Jockey and
Secretly Canadian and
Vice.
Everything stored in the 20,000 square meter warehouse has been destroyed.
posted by alexoscar at 2:29 PM PST - 159 comments
Stephen Strange was an arrogant doctor, until a car accident damaged his hands, leading him try every cure possible. Eventually he made his way to the East, where the story progressed, and now he's
Doctor Strange, master of magic! His thrilling tale is
set to be the first Marvel superhero movie since
Marvel was purchased by Disney. But there has been much history behind the latest movie, including a period when
Guillermo del Toro was involved and wanted to include Neil Gaiman,
a draft script by Alex Cox (1990, 5.1 mb PDF;
review), and
a draft script by Bob Gale (January 21, 1986, 3.5 mb PDF;
review). Along with these incomplete attempts, there was
the 1978 Dr. Strange TV movie, which you can watch online (
full movie with Portuguese subtitles, or
YT playlist). If you'd like another take, head to 1992 for the direct-to-video movie
Doctor Mordrid. Depending on who you ask,
it's a more or
less entertaining/accurate take (warning: spoilers) on Dr Strange. Modrid is
also online.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:54 AM PST - 34 comments
Samosapedia "The definitive guide to South Asian lingo". Eg.,
Enthu Cutlet: An enthu cutlet is an earnest eager beaver who is able to muster up inordinate amounts of energy, inspiration and enthusiasm towards a variety of things. (
via)
posted by dhruva at 8:47 AM PST - 14 comments
Simply pairings of amazingly interesting individuals prompted by a question, generating a conversation. For 10 minutes to 50 minutes. And so it will go – conversations interlaced with threads of improvised music. An astrophysicist & a microbiologist. An actor & a playwright. A jazz musician & a classical one. An energetic exploration of the lost art of conversing.
Thirty years after launching the original TED conference, Richard Saul Wurman seeks to
reinvent the typical conference format with
The WWW Conference.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:42 AM PST - 15 comments
"I have foresworn desire...I neither lick nor moan...I neither swallow..."
Kim Addonizio's poem,
"The End of It," is on
Poetry Daily. Reminiscent of Yeats' line,
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity" and Stephen Dunn's line,
"Precision...is more radical than passion," it demonstrates the fecund nature of
poetic iconoclasm. Or, if you prefer the more hackneyed characterization, the value of questioning everything. In the end, Addonizio may be sitting quietly, like Nanao Sakaki's
"happy, lucky idiot." [NSF asexuals, hedonists, or the majority of non-eccentrics...but I doubt your boss at work will bat an eyelash at a poem--if so, sit quietly you happy, lucky...]
[more inside]posted by ottimo at 7:35 AM PST - 41 comments
Little-known
cities of Yemen have beautiful features, such as the cliffside buildings of Al Hajjara and exquisite centuries-old architecture of Old Sana’a.
posted by exogenous at 6:41 AM PST - 21 comments
Donald in Mathmagic Land is a 27-minute Donald Duck featurette released on June 26, 1959. As Walt Disney said, "We have recently explained mathematics in a film and in that way excited public interest in this very important subject."
(Wiki)posted by twoleftfeet at 3:26 AM PST - 49 comments
Wherever you go, H
u-
g
o-
hip
po-
potamus
The
nightmarish and psychedelic 1976 children's movie
Hugo the Hippo features a score of hippos who save the port of Zanzibar from
"cap-wearing sharks decked out with biker jewelry", only to be massacred by the Sultan's greenish advisor (voiced by
Paul Lynde), leaving poor Hugo an orphan.
The soundtrack [flash player] includes songs by Burl Ives (as the titular
hungry hippo),
Jimmy and
Marie Osmond, and the Ken Williams Quartet. There is no official DVD release, but the
Hugo fansite has some options for obtaining the movie, and it's available on Youtube
[links above].
The story is based on a real Hugo the Hippo, who terrorized farmers near
Dar es Salaam:
"Game workers dug a 7-ft. pit along Hugo's dinner trail, lowered a big wooden crate into it, covered the top with branches, and baited it with three succulent pumpkins, Hugo's favorite dessert."
Gyorgi Peluce, the color designer responsible for
The Simpson's unique hues, is a Hugo alumnus from the Hungarian
animation company PannóniaFilm.
Previously on AskMe: 1, 2posted by benzenedream at 2:31 AM PST - 19 comments
August 8
In August-September 1965, India and Pakistan
went to war for the second time since their independence in 1947. On September 19, a civilian aircraft (Beechcraft Model 18) carrying the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat (bordering Pakistan) was
shot down by a Pakistani Air Force pilot (flying an F-86F). Now, 46 years later, the Pakistani pilot has written
a condolence letter to the daughter of the pilot of the Indian civilian aircraft.
posted by vidur at 10:21 PM PST - 8 comments
"On Tuesday 21 June 2011 six photographers were assigned different areas of the City to photograph. Some used tripods, some went hand held, one set up a 5 x 4. All were instructed to keep to public land and photograph the area as they would on a normal day. The event aimed to test the policing of public and private space by private security firms and their reaction to photographers. All six photographers were stopped on at least one occasion. Three encounters led to police action.
This is what happened."
(The actual video starts at 1:14.)posted by John Cohen at 9:57 PM PST - 57 comments
Entrants in the Philips-sponsored constrained cinema competition
Tell It Your Way were restricted to three minutes and just six lines of dialogue: “What is that?,” “It’s a unicorn,” “Never seen one up close before,” “Beautiful,” “Get away, get away,” and “I’m sorry.” In spite of these limitations, the
winner was surprisingly profound.
posted by ambulocetus at 2:54 PM PST - 43 comments
Rosie is an adorable golden retriever, trained as a therapy dog to help calm the stressed. She recently made an appearance in a courtroom to help a 15-year-old girl testify against her father in an incest case. The father was convicted, and his lawyers are now
appealing the conviction on the grounds that Rosie was just too darn cute.
[more inside]posted by Etrigan at 1:14 PM PST - 206 comments
Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world - There is no Supernatural God. 'The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill.' 'His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out. A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the PKN and six other smaller denominations was either agnostic or atheist.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 12:27 PM PST - 254 comments
[The principal] strode in front of the astonished student body in December with the $6,000 VGo robot ... "Meet the new electronic Lyndon," the principal announced. "Don't touch him when you pass him in the hall. Give him space. Don't sneak up on him—he doesn't have rear-view mirrors. Let him be like the other kids. Don't ruin it for him. This is Lyndon's only way to be a part of you."
Lyndon Baty's compromised immune system means he can't go to school.
So his robot goes for him. [more inside]posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:26 AM PST - 58 comments
With hundreds of millions of variations,
Robohash is among the leading robot-based hashing tools on the web.
posted by Laminda at 10:11 AM PST - 14 comments
Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness is a global organisation that matches people in need of distant genealogical research with remote volunteer researchers. Volunteer services range from help with searching physical records and obtaining documents to the discovery and photography of graves.
[more inside]posted by Ahab at 8:59 AM PST - 13 comments
Black and White and Hebrew All Over. The Village Voice profiles the
Hebrew Language Academy, a dual-language charter school in Brooklyn. Is it a rare success story for the big-city ideal of educational innovation simultaneously serving rich and poor communities? A clever way for Jewish New Yorkers to get their kids Hebrew instruction on the states's dime? A little of both?
posted by escabeche at 7:29 AM PST - 54 comments
“The irony is [that Greg’s parents] were saving this for him,” she says. “Every little baby bottle, every little scrap, every rock that you see. In their minds they were doing it for him. And it’s just turned into this beast."
Inheriting the Hoard is the story of Greg M., a man whose parents were hoarders, and his year+ struggle to clean out the house they left behind.
[more inside]posted by Georgina at 6:28 AM PST - 209 comments
August 7
Diana Nyad is in the water! One of the world's greatest long-distance swimmers from age 20 - 30,
Nyad set records and was a media sensation. And then, after famously failing in a swim from Cuba to Florida (rough water sent her far off course), she quit -- and didn't swim a stroke for 30 years. As age 60 approached, however, she got remotivated to tackle the
one challenge that got away. No shark cage, no wetsuit, and an estimated 60 hours of swimming to go. CNN's
tracking map.
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:24 PM PST - 41 comments
"Taylor always said that scientific management would usher in a "mental revolution," and it has. Modern life is Taylorized life, the Taylor biographer Robert Kanigel observed, a dozen years back. Above your desk, the clock is ticking; on the shop floor, the camera is rolling. Manage your time, waste no motion, multitask: your iPhone comes with a calendar, your car with a memo pad. "Who is Schmidt?" journalists wanted to know, a century ago. Vell, ve are." [
The history of management consulting]
posted by vidur at 6:42 PM PST - 30 comments
"It was clear to me then that Bill Stowe was a 'dumb jock,' which does not mean stupid; it means ignorant, narrow, misguided by the values of Jock Culture, an important and often overlooked strand of American life. These days, I'm not so sure he wasn't right; the world may well be divided into Jocks and Pukes."
What Jock Culture Does To Pukes Like Youposted by wittgenstein at 4:33 PM PST - 94 comments
"I'm trying to get to a point where I accept that marriage may never happen for me."
Audrey belongs to the most unmarried group of people in the U.S.: black women. Nearly 70% of black women are unmarried, and the racial gap in marriage spans the socioeconomic spectrum, from the urban poor to well-off suburban professionals.
African-American Professor of Law Ralph Richard Banks has an intriguing solution:
Interracial marriage.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:33 AM PST - 183 comments
Is your cup of fair trade coffee tasting a little funky this morning?
This might be why. "Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in consumer familiarity and sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers. By failing to address these problems, industry confidence
in Fair Trade coffee is slipping."
posted by Xurando at 5:00 AM PST - 42 comments
August 6
Nothing to do this coming week? Head over to
Galax, Virginia to catch the
Old Fiddler's Convention, a mountain music festival & competition that has been ongoing since 1935.
Galax, located on Virigina's
Crooked Road is in the heart of Virginia's musical heritage trail, a
well mapped excursion that takes you way off the interstate's beaten path to experience old time Appalachian music in some of the most beautiful settings in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
If you take the trail outside Galax, make sure you stop at the
Floyd Country Store for daily (and nightly) jams inside the store, much like the Fiddler's convention's campgrounds' awesome
impromptu jams posted by priested at 2:13 PM PST - 14 comments
Where Federal taxes are raised and spent. "Some American states receive more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes; others receive less. Over twenty years these fiscal transfers can add up to a sizeable sum."
A graph of the United States, color-coded to indicate surplus or deficit.
posted by dubold at 1:10 PM PST - 52 comments
Bookfessions: [tumblr] "These are confessions and/or thoughts of a book lover, bibliophile, book addict, reader, lover of literature, nerd..."
posted by Fizz at 7:38 AM PST - 20 comments
Premiering on IFC last night (and rebroadcast regularly throughout the week) is
Whisker Wars, a "docu-comedy" about competitive bearding. The series runs 7 episodes, new each week on Friday night.
[more inside]posted by hippybear at 7:06 AM PST - 26 comments
August 5
In 1977, Rolling Stone magazine turned 10 years old. To celebrate, they put together a TV special, which included
"A Day in the Decade" -- a star-studded, 15-minutes-long tribute to the Beatles.
[more inside]posted by chowflap at 9:26 PM PST - 68 comments
A Holocaust survivor raised a fist to death. 'Leon Weinstein survived the Warsaw Ghetto. But it is the story of the little girl that he wants to tell.' 'He lay Natalie on their front step. Tears ran down his cheeks. You will make it, he thought. She had blond locks and blue eyes. They will think you are a Gentile, not one of us. Walking away, he could hear her whimper, but forced himself not to look back until he crossed the street. Then he turned and saw a man step out of the apartment. The man read Weinstein's note. He puzzled over the baby. Cradling Natalie in his arms, the man walked half a block to a police station and disappeared inside.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 2:40 PM PST - 29 comments
"According to a
study by Scott Wiltermuth, assistant professor of management organization at the USC Marshall School of Business, and Vanessa K. Bohns, postdoctoral fellow at the J.L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, adopting dominant versus submissive postures actually decreases your sensitivity to pain. "
[more inside]posted by uniq at 12:12 PM PST - 9 comments
Shivering Trunks is Natalia Brożyńska's debut film. The four-minute animation has quickly become a cult favourite in Poland.
posted by beshtya at 11:48 AM PST - 19 comments
Asciiflow will let you draw ASCII art with a mouse and skip a lot of painstaking space-bar-hitting.
posted by ignignokt at 10:22 AM PST - 51 comments
August and September 2011 mark 34 years in
the journeys of
Voyager 1 and 2. The two scientific probes, progeny of the
Mariner program, were sent out to survey this solar system and beyond.
Voyager 2 completed the
Grand Tour in 2009 (excluding Pluto), and
Voyager 1 is getting closer to interstellar space (
previously). Both scientific probes were sent out in with
a time capsule from 1977,
golden records secured in plain view on the outside of the Voyager Spacecraft. These
greetings from earth (alt links: Coral Cache, Archive.org) were recorded in the form of 116 images,
a collection of sounds of this planet,
greetings in
55 languages (
YT),
27 songs from around the world, and
brain waves of Ann Druyan, then recently
engaged to Carl Sagan. For all that work, the
"Mix Tape of the Gods" almost didn't get sent into space because of some last-minute writing in the run-outs.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 10:20 AM PST - 26 comments
With the conclusion of the debt ceiling debate ending in another defeat for liberals, the emerging narrative is that Obama is weak, a poor negotiator who was out-maneuvered by Republicans and forced into the agreement because of strategic errors. But
Glenn Greenwald tells a different story:
[more inside]posted by AlsoMike at 9:48 AM PST - 241 comments
Old Theories As Limits of New Ones -- Theoretical physicist, Lubos Motl, takes a brief tour through the history of physics, and explains the simple mathematical relationship of old theories to the theories that replace them.
posted by empath at 9:20 AM PST - 16 comments
Comiques is a comic about "life's little trivialities" by
Anne Emond. Her main subjects are her
family,
cat,
friends,
New York City and
random musings. It is mostly
drawn from life though her work sometimes
tends towards the fantastic.
Here is a short video interview with her which also features some candid shots of her cat and
here's a longer interview on more technical matters. Finally, here are some random favorites:
Pug,
Celebrity Look-alike Generator,
Irrational Rage Comic,
Umbrella,
Writing a Detective Story?,
The Best Karamazov,
Ode to the Avocado,
Top of the Morning to You and
The Day I Realized I've Never Tried to Dress My Cat in People Clothes.
posted by Kattullus at 7:17 AM PST - 15 comments
August 4
TheCatScan.tumblr.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by beukeboom at 10:53 PM PST - 96 comments
Love "Saved by the Bell," but thought the original had too little gore? Have I got the
video for you! (SLYT; NSFW and certainly not safe if you're squeamish)
posted by Betelgeuse at 3:50 PM PST - 32 comments
In
an investment manager's view on the top 1% - referring to the richest Americans by wealth and income - we learn that one needs $1.2 million in net worth to barely slip in the door of the top 1%. But that's just a start: the real power and influence in the U.S., the author argues, resides in the top 0.1%. You can guess who you'll find there: bankers and large-cap CEOs. Relevant quotes include...
[more inside]posted by mark7570 at 11:35 AM PST - 115 comments
NASA May Have Discovered Flowing Water on Mars Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars' southern hemisphere.posted by modernnomad at 11:16 AM PST - 65 comments
Last week Johnson & Johnson
announced that it is lowering the maximum daily dose for single-ingredient Extra Strength Tylenol from 8 to 6 pills per day (from 4,000 to 3,000 mg).
[more inside]posted by hat_eater at 11:15 AM PST - 54 comments
Dr. Justin O. Schmidt likes insects of the persuasive sort, the ones that bite, sting or
squirt venom in your eyes. In the course of his entomological studies all over the world,
he has met the defenses of about 150 different insects, and he has rated them, creating the
Schmidt Sting Pain Index. On the low end: sweat bees, whose sting is "light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm." On the high end: Bullet ants, whose venomous bites cause "pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel." And it can last for hours, leaving you "quivering and still screaming from these peristaltic waves" [of pain].
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 8:52 AM PST - 49 comments
How to build a newsroom time machine. Some pessimists predicted ALL ON PAPER would be an exercise in futility. It’s proven to be a lesson in humility – for both the student journalists struggling with the old tech for the first time, and for the veteran journalists trying to recall how it all worked a few decades ago. A college paper makes an issue the old-fashioned way.
[more inside]posted by shakespeherian at 7:55 AM PST - 52 comments
Earlier this week, the
Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission released an
advisory (PDF) on the status of the farmer-brewer's license when they
denied small craft
brewer Idle Hands' application. The
farmer-brewer's license has long been used by small (under 5,000 barrels/year) brewers as a cheaper alternative to the state's otherwise manufacturer's license. Even larger breweries, like Boston Beer Co., brewer of
Samuel Adams, use it as it allows for on-site tastings. With the new advisory requiring that 50% of hops and grains be locally grown in Massachusetts, small brewers are
worried about the fate of their businesses - without the ability to sell on premises, offer tastings, or self-distribute, many of the state's microbrews and brew pubs will no longer be
able to operate. A meeting with the state treasurer, who oversees the ABCC,
is planned.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:54 AM PST - 37 comments
"Little slices of glamour beamed directly into your home in half-hour chunks; a perky theme, flashy titles, charismatic host, inventive format, gags, quiz, games, raucous outro – the works! Incredibly plain people given a quick glimpse of the good life, to which the tanned, funny man in the nice suit held the door."
The joys of the 1980s game show.
[more inside]posted by mippy at 2:45 AM PST - 4 comments
August 3
"Looking at the world through via Google Earth offers striking images of the diversity of our planet and the impact that humans have had on it. Today's entry is a puzzle. We're challenging you to figure out where in the world each of the images below is taken. (You'll find answers and links at the bottom of the entry.) North is not always up in these pictures, and, apart from a bit of contrast, they are unaltered images provided by Google and its mapping partners. So I invite you to open up Google Earth (or Google Maps),
have a look at the images below, and dive in. Good luck!"
posted by vidur at 6:41 PM PST - 22 comments
In 1979, the producers of "Taxi" were hot, and got carte blanche to make another sitcom for ABC. So they adapted John Jay Osborn's novel "The Associates"*, his follow-up to "The Paper Chase" (which, as a TV series, had just been cancelled by CBS) about young lawyers at a prestigious New York firm. It starred a very young Martin Short as a very young (and surprisingly normal) Junior Associate, Wilfred Hyde-White as a very old Senior Partner and some other folks you may or may not recognize. It bombed. But the next-to-last episode to be aired before the plug was pulled was something you would never expect any broadcast network in 1980 (or maybe even now) to show, in which young lawyer Short represented a network against a rebellious producer, titled
"The Censors". And yes, that is John Ritter as a Hollywood actor in character.
Bonus content: "The Associates" pilot episode in
two parts.
via the world-class blog by Ken Levine of M*A*S*H, Cheers and the Seattle Mariners
* TOTALLY not related to John Grisham's "The Associate"posted by oneswellfoop at 6:24 PM PST - 15 comments
Boeing are currently testing the latest version of their venerable Jumbo Jet, the 747-8. Yesterday, in one of the last test flights prior to certification the new 747 flew for 17 hours, a distance of over 11,000 miles. The flight path can be seen
here.
[more inside]posted by jontyjago at 5:45 PM PST - 27 comments
"Hiroshi Teshigahara's
Antonio Gaudi is a spare, astonishing, and haunting documentary on the designs of famed turn of the century Spanish architect, Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926). A profound influence on the Spanish art nouveau movement, Gaudi's sensual adaptation of Gothic, Middle Eastern, and traditional architecture is a truly a unique artistic vision.
Teshigahara immerses the viewer into Gaudi's unorthodox vision using lingering takes and mesmerizing panning sequences, accompanied by an equally eclectic soundtrack that vacillates from lyrical symphony to disquieting near silence. The
film, largely structured without verbal narrative, unfolds as a figurative mosaic of Gaudi's early influences and nascent vision in the mid 1800's - from an overview of the Catalonian culture, to the contemporary works of other prominent architects, to the medieval art and architecture pervasive in the region." (Janus/Criterion, 1:12, color)
posted by puny human at 9:35 AM PST - 15 comments
Since 2005, it has been nearly impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.
HR 2028 and
S.1102 aim to make private student loans again dischargeable in bankruptcy.
[more inside]posted by gauche at 6:41 AM PST - 64 comments
MIT students created
water bottle light bulbs that diffract natural sunlight and provide the equivalent of a 55 watt light bulb out of an empty plastic bottle, water, and a few drops of bleach. They are being installed and used in shanty towns where no natural light gets into the makeshift tin roof homes.
posted by COD at 6:03 AM PST - 74 comments
Hobo Wedding : "On Memorial Day weekend 2011, my groom and I joined hands, entwined bootlaces and shared a single bean in matrimony at what very well may be the first hobo-themed wedding. We invited our friends and family to share in our happiest of days, wear their shabbiest, drink moonshine, eat their fill of BBQ and pie, dance to a live jug band and howl at the moon."
posted by Ardiril at 12:17 AM PST - 175 comments
August 2
Eleven minutes of the most mindblowing personal collection of Nike shoes, themed rooms, backwards walking and decorations you'll ever see. Jordan Michael Geller's
Shoezeum.
posted by cashman at 4:34 PM PST - 22 comments
The city of
Pleasanton, California is the
first in the nation to use a microwave motion and presence sensor system to protect bicyclists in intersections. The
Intersector can tell when a bike is in the intersection and will tell the light to stay green longer to let the cyclist cross safely.
posted by agatha_magatha at 1:33 PM PST - 58 comments
"When legal teams need to prove or disprove the authorship of key texts, they call in the forensic linguists. Scholars in the field have tackled the disputed origins of some prestigious works, from Shakespearean sonnets to the Federalist Papers."
Decoding Your E-Mail Personality
Ben Zimmer, of Language Log discusses the Facebook case and
forensic linguistics in the NY Times.
[more inside]posted by iamkimiam at 11:38 AM PST - 13 comments
A Missouri school board
has voted to remove Slaughter House Five and another book from the library for "teaching principles contrary to the Bible."
[more inside]posted by Leezie at 11:09 AM PST - 187 comments
Somewhere along the line, you might've heard one of the biggest hits to ever come out of the world of jazz: it was a song originally made famous by Les McCann and Eddie Harris back in 1969, called
Compared To What. If you were in the right place at the right time, you might've even caught them doing it
live. Or, if you were born a little too late for all that, you might've heard the song performed by
John Legend and the Roots. Well, the man who wrote the song,
Gene McDaniels, has just
left us at age 76. RIP Gene McDaniels.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:39 AM PST - 25 comments
Jack Kirby's family has lost what may the key round of its legal battle to win ownership of all Marvel Comics' most important characters. A judge has ruled Kirby always drew on a work-for-hire basis, and therefore never owned characters like Iron Man, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Thor and The Avengers in the first place. Fans of Marvel's most important founding artist are
angry, and one big name comics artist proposes a
boycott of Marvel comics and movies alike.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:34 AM PST - 81 comments
In the mid 1990s, comedian/actress
Margaret Cho starred in
All-American Girl, a short-lived sitcom based on her standup act. One episode, entitled "Pulp Sitcom", lampooned the film
Pulp Fiction and revolved around a bootleg video seller named Desmond. Naturally, Desmond was played by Quentin Tarantino himself. You can
watch the episode and read a detailed breakdown at
Chronological Snobbery.
posted by griphus at 6:23 AM PST - 11 comments
August 1
"... if children could go to the polls then perhaps Fred Nile, the leader of the Christian Democratic Party in NSW [
New South Wales, Australia], wouldn't have the power that he has today." An 11-year old
Charlie Fine writes about an issue that affects children across the Australian state of New South Wales.
[more inside]posted by vidur at 11:47 PM PST - 58 comments
Dead Cyborg has the heart of a text adventure within the body of a 3d engine (
youtube trailer).
Caveats: donationware - future episodes dependent on donations. burster plug-in required for browser playposted by Sparx at 8:53 PM PST - 6 comments
NES Maps - for when you have to see exactly how that level of Zelda looks in an overworld view. Complete with full maps, background only maps, or sprites for your perusal. Complete with character names and title cards for most maps. You can even
get one to hang on your wall to map out your conquests in Hyrule.
Even more maps from VG Maps from a
previous posting.
posted by deezil at 8:44 PM PST - 8 comments
The
Saddest Movie in the World (starring Ricky Schroeder) has been used to make people cry in scientific studies, as
we recently discussed, and the
runner-up sad movie starred a famous animated deer. The scientific list of saddest (and most
amusing, and
scariest, and most
disgusting) is now 16 years old, so
Slate wants to update it. Their current suggestions to make people cry are these scenes from
Finding Nemo,
Dancer in the Dark, and
Mystic River, but they are looking for others. Perhaps from the AV Club's
films too disturbing to watch twice?
[Warning: sad scenes are sad, gross scenes gross, scary scenes scary, and the funny one amusingish]posted by blahblahblah at 2:04 PM PST - 363 comments
William Lawrence Cassidy has been
indicted for a series of threatening tweets directed towards Alyce Zeoli, aka Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, the leader of a Buddhist organization known as Kunzang Palyul Choling (KPC) to which Cassidy had belonged. There is however a small problem that federal prosecutors are employing a
vague anti-stalking law that makes 'intentional infliction of emotional distress' through the use of 'any interactive computer service' a felony, rather than focussing more narrowly upon the outright threats.
[more inside]posted by jeffburdges at 1:40 PM PST - 34 comments
Philaphilia, a blog about Philadelphia buildings past and present, in which the little known architectural terms "badassivity," "concrete testicles" and "shitfucktastic garbitechture" are presented for your edification.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:15 AM PST - 36 comments
It's not too late to start your observance of
Ramendan, "[a] month of sacrifice in which followers eschew all other foodstuffs after sundown, to test their devotion to the almighty noodle."
Sad to say, I'm familiar only with
this version of the dish which seems to be more sacrilege than sacrament.
posted by idiolect at 10:58 AM PST - 53 comments
"Stews are, by nature, epic. So you need to be listening to something truly epic whilst you stew the fuck up. Hawkwind's 'Space Ritual' should cover it. On its original release 'Space Ritual' was advertised as '90 minutes of Brain Damage.' Luckily, you've got the re-release double CD which should have about '2 and a half hours of Brain Damage' on it. The perfect amount of time - measured in 'brain damage' - to stew a fucking rabbit. Christ's chopper! Let's cook."
Luke Haines has a
cookery blog.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 8:58 AM PST - 33 comments
Effective January 1, 2013, United States insurers will now be required to make
a variety of medical procedures and medications available without copay as part of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. Although the availability of prescribed birth control without copay is likely to have the widest effect, the plan also includes breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual well-woman examination, and testing for gestational diabetes and the virus that causes cervical cancer, as well as other services related to women's health.
[more inside]posted by catlet at 8:37 AM PST - 110 comments
My new favourite internet celebrity Dmitri panders to every gun-nut's fantasy and demonstrates various firearms with humour, spectacle and cool Russian accent :)
I give you:
FPS Russia.
posted by 00dimitri00 at 6:50 AM PST - 36 comments
Over three nights at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood in December 1983, Jonathan Demme filmed Talking Heads'
Stop Making Sense. The band performed
"Psycho Killer," "Heaven," "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel," "Found a Job,"
"Slippery People," "Cities,",
"Burning Down the House," "Life During Wartime," "Making Flippy Floppy,"
"Swamp," "What a Day That Was," "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)," "Once in a Lifetime," "Big Business/I Zimbra," "Genius of Love" (as Tom Tom Club while David Byrne changed into the Big Suit),
"Girlfriend is Better," "Take Me to the River," and "Crosseyed and Painless."
"Thank you. Does anybody have any questions?"
[more inside]posted by kirkaracha at 6:34 AM PST - 65 comments
"History Changes". LG Telecom is Korea's perennial also-ran in the mobile telephone market. Their latest attempt at coming from behind includes another revision to their brand identity: "U+", replacing
2009's "Oz" rebranding effort. With operating profit
down by half since last year, they are anxious to prove that they are as good as, if not better than, their competitors Korea Telecom (KT) and SK Telecom. Now that they are offering 4G service almost as soon as KT, LG sees itself as making history in the same way Barack Obama did when he demonstrated the equality of everyone in the
Korean telecom market United States.
Text overlay on images of Jim Crow-era American South: "It was utterly impossible for a black person to become the President of the United States."
Voiceover: "History Changes! Beginning with 4G service".
posted by holterbarbour at 6:12 AM PST - 20 comments
