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September 2011 Archives
September 30
Humanities and the Liberal Arts is the personal website of former Middlebury classics professor
William Harris who passed away in 2009.
In his retirement he crafted a wonderful site full of essays,
music,
sculpture,
poetry and his thoughts on anything from
education to
technology. But the heart of the website for me is, unsurprisingly,
his essays on ancient Latin and Greek literature some of whom are book-length works. Here are a few examples:
Purple color in Homer,
complete fragments of Heraclitus,
how to read Homer and Vergil,
a discussion of a recently unearthed poem by Sappho,
Plato and mathematics,
Propertius' war poems, and finally, especially close to my heart, his commentaries on the poetry of Catullus, for example on
Ipsithilla,
Odi et amo,
Attis poem as dramatic dance performance and
a couple of very dirty poems (even by Catullus' standard). That's just a taste of the riches found on Harris' site, which has been around nearly as long as the world wide web has existed.
posted by Kattullus at 3:12 PM PST - 18 comments
The Mississippi River has the third largest drainage basin in the world, exceeded in size only by the watersheds of the Amazon and Congo Rivers. It drains 41 percent of the 48 contiguous states of the United States.
The basin covers more than 1,245,000 square miles, includes all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provinces. The US Government has tried to improve navigability of the Mississippi River and its major tributaries for more than a hundred years, focused in part by
Mississippi River Commission, created in 1879. The river is ever-changing, and in an attempt to understand their domain, and
in 1941, MCR hired Harold Norman Fisk to conduct a geological investigation of the Lower Mississippi Valley. The result was
a colorful map that displayed the historical course of the riverway from southern Illinois to southern Louisana. His vivid maps are
available online in full, but beware:
the files are very large.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:10 PM PST - 24 comments
“We’re a free speech
site and the cost of that is that there’s stuff that’s offensive on there.” This was the response of Erik Martin aka hueypriest, General Manager of Reddit, to the accusation on
last night’s Anderson Cooper 360 that the “jailbait” subreddit is “borderline kiddie porn.”
[more inside]posted by waraw at 11:58 AM PST - 237 comments
David Malki!, of the "illustrated jocularity"
Wondermark, has released
Wondermark Kinetic. It's a series of ad-libbed, paper-puppeteered videos in an approximation of his usual, surreal style. (If you're unfamiliar with what that style is, he conveniently keeps a list of
his own favorite strips.) I particularly like how a story slowly emerges from the rough start of
this one.
[more inside]posted by gilrain at 11:36 AM PST - 2 comments
Wednesday night, my friend Todd showed me the key he had made. On the fob was engraved the following text. "1983 TeV 2011". Today, at 2PM CDT, Helen Edwards, the lead scientist of the machine in 1983, will turn that key, and the
Tevatron will shut down forever.
[more inside]posted by eriko at 10:35 AM PST - 44 comments
When a
family of beavers moved in to a creek in the bayside town of Martinez, CA, in 2006, they gained both fans and detractors. Concerned about flood control in the struggling downtown area, the city council formed a
Beaver Subcommittee to explore the options, including extermination, relocation, and engineering fixes.
[more inside]posted by mudpuppie at 9:35 AM PST - 28 comments
If you want to read about the history, construction, sounds and playing techniques of, say,
the tympani, or any other instruments of the classical symphonic orchestra, Vienna Symphonic Library's
Instruments Online pages are good reading and a handy resource for orchestrators.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:18 AM PST - 4 comments
September 29
"In the last few years, the rise of free online porn — content-rich sites that tease viewers to subscribe for more — and pay-site juggernauts like Brazzers have put the L.A.-based adult-video industry against the ropes. Its answer, in part, has been the high-dollar parody, designed to attract ComicCon nerds, science fiction fans and other pop culture aficionados who must collect everything within their target oeuvre." -- The troubled US economy affects pornstars too, so
"Porn Defends The Money Shot" (NSFW)
[more inside]posted by bardic at 11:28 PM PST - 80 comments
Glengarry Glen Ross endures mainly as a spectacular display of verbal warfare and alpha-male gamesmanship. There’s a musical quality to it, with a great composer and a great chorus hitting the complicated runs of broken dialogue and solos that weave into profane poetry and nuggets of philosophical wisdom. Perhaps the greatest sign of the movie’s success, owed equally to Mamet’s script and this cast, is that it does a great sales job in itself, convincing us that there’s nobility to men who lie for a living — a bill of goods we’re all too happy to buy. [more inside]posted by Trurl at 8:56 PM PST - 67 comments
“Now, Bill,” Jody tells me, “you got to remember something when you go to grab that frog tonight.” He greets the lady inside the squawk box and places Bryce’s order. “You’re not petting that frog,” he says. “You’re not slapping that frog. You got to…” He presses his lips together, searching for something that will illustrate his point. His eye comes to rest on an empty coffee cup in the truck’s holder. “You got to grab that frog.” As he speaks, a large right fist shoots out, seizing and crushing the Styrofoam cup so quickly and completely that it basically explodes inside the cab. The noise alone is extraordinary. [
via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:56 AM PST - 39 comments
September 28
The paintings of Sergey Tyukanov are rich in colors, in characters, in details, delightful the eyes from the first sight. Each work is like a little world, where people live according to different rules. Normal proportions not respected in his works; surrealism characterizes his art the best, and traces of the Russian customs and traditional costumes may be spotted without much difficulty. It all seems to happen in a Russian fairytale or in the nightmare of an artist-because only in the head of an artist’s genius, such a nightmare could be born.*posted by Trurl at 8:42 PM PST - 9 comments
For centuries, Renaissance composer Alessandro Striggio's
"Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno", an enormous setting of the Mass for 40 and 60 voices, was thought to be lost to the ages. A few years ago, UC Berkeley musicologist Davitt Moroney discovered that a copy of the work, attributed to a non-existent composer, was hiding right under our noses, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In an hour-long lecture titled
"The Pope, the Emperor and the Grand Duke", Professor Moroney recounts the story of the Mass's disappearance and rediscovery, describes the historical significance of the music, and unravels the intriguing geopolitical landscape of 16th century Italy.
posted by archagon at 7:55 PM PST - 7 comments
"
'Postcards to Alphaville' is a project dedicated to film characters featured in guest-made illustrations. Everyone participating in this adventure has to watch a film and make postcard portraying specific character from it. It is love-letter to films and those characters that brings us, the viewers, moments of joy, sorrow and revelation and sometimes seems more real than the neighbor next-door."
viaposted by Sticherbeast at 6:49 PM PST - 7 comments
"'
Being Elmo,' the crowd-pleasing [
documentary film] profile of the man behind Elmo, arguably the most-loved Muppet on 'Sesame Street,' has been melting hearts on the festival circuit since premiering at Sundance this year, where it won the Special Jury Prize. ... [It's the] story of how puppeteer
Kevin Clash came up through the ranks on sheer ambition and ingenuity to become one of the best in the business is an underdog tale of the best variety."
* However, could it be that there is
an Elmo backlash brewing?
[more inside]posted by ericb at 4:37 PM PST - 107 comments
Movie trivia: If someone were to ask you the name of a 1966 mystery/thriller that was shot in London, included a Redgrave sister in the cast, and had a soundtrack composed by a jazz giant, you would have
two choices for an answer.
[more inside]posted by perhapses at 1:56 PM PST - 16 comments
The latest issue of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's
Inspire magazine is finally here, with a special edition for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. This issue has gotten some traction
in the media for its feature story, "Iran and the Conspiracy Theories"
You can view
excerpts at Public Intelligence, download the entire magazine as a
PDF, or simply read the Iran article after the jump.
Please note that this magazine contains images of 9/11 and other conflicts that may be triggers for some people. [more inside]posted by 2bucksplus at 1:16 PM PST - 49 comments
"Pretty much all haikyo that contain items related to the building’s past are interesting. On the odd occasion even empty structures are too. But while memory-filled houses and sorry-looking snake centres are fascinating in their own very different ways, there’s arguably something that little bit special about a long-abandoned school."
An abandoned but perfectly preserved Japanese school.
[more inside]posted by jbickers at 7:42 AM PST - 10 comments
Martian Life's Last Stand in the Trenches? "Scientists have found water-bearing deposits on Mars that are out of step with what was happening elsewhere on the planet, raising the prospect that the sites could have hosted Martian life's last stand."
posted by Fizz at 7:14 AM PST - 27 comments
September 27
Don Draper invents Facebook. The video pulls from Mad Men‘s “The Wheel” episode — in which Draper conceives an ad campaign for the Kodak Carousel — and applies its dialogue to the Facebook Timeline. It was created by Eric Leist, a technology strategist with Allen & Gerritsen.
posted by sweetkid at 5:55 PM PST - 51 comments
American Juggalo is a look at the often mocked and misunderstood subculture of Juggalos, hardcore Insane Clown Posse fans who meet once a year for four days at The Gathering of the Juggalos.
posted by bryanzera at 5:42 PM PST - 139 comments
Over the summer, NPR solicited the input of its listeners to rank the top science fiction and fantasy books of all time. Over 60,000 people voted for the top picks which were then compiled into a list by their panel of experts. The result? This list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it. SF Signal comes to the rescue with this handy flowchart.posted by Artw at 4:20 PM PST - 166 comments
Who's Afraid of the Seven Times Table? Ernst Kummer, one of the great mathematicians of the late 1800s, was hopeless at arithmetic. He was giving an advanced maths lecture and in the middle of a complicated calculation he needed to know what six times seven was. “Um ... six times seven is ... six times seven . . .” A student put up his hand: “41, Professor.” Kummer chalked 41 on the blackboard. “No, no, Professor!” shouted another. “It’s 44!” Kummer gave the students a quizzical look. “Come, come, gentlemen. It can’t be both. It must be either one or the other!” [more inside]posted by storybored at 9:17 AM PST - 168 comments
A couple of Jehovah’s Witness' knocked on the door of secular parenting advocate Dale McGowan. What happened next is both funny and instructive, without being disrespectful or confrontational.
Part 1
Part 2posted by COD at 9:00 AM PST - 209 comments
What came next was 8 minutes of comic brilliance. On Kevin Pollack's Chat Show guests are invited to do a bad impression of Larry King reveling something embarrassing about himself. Many are very funny, but Gould's amazing comic riff should go down in comedy history. Keep an eye on Kevin as he nearly faints from hilarity.
posted by judson at 7:44 AM PST - 50 comments
September 26
The Ropes at Disney's - 1943 Employee Handbook. The good old days when women got twice as much sick leave, the Penthouse club was accessible by "men only! - sorry gals...", and a violation of the U.S. Espionage Act could get you fired.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:44 PM PST - 52 comments
An Evening With American Dad! The cast and writing staff of
American Dad! sits down at the Paley Center for an hour to discuss the creative process behind the show, the casting process, why
Critters sucks, if we'll ever see Roger's home planet, how the recent
"Hot Water" episode about a killer hot tub was originally intended to be the series finale, and so much more.
[more inside]posted by Servo5678 at 3:25 PM PST - 64 comments
After months of struggle to get his family out of Cuba,
Orestes Lorenzo got his response. Raúl Castro, then Minister of the Armed Forces, declared "
If he had the balls to steal one my MiGs, then he can come back and get his family himself!" In hindsight, that was probably the wrong thing to say.
[more inside]posted by Cobalt at 2:15 PM PST - 68 comments
BBC News asks independent trader Alessio Rastani "
what would keep investors happy, make them feel more confident?" and gets a surprisingly honest answer:
"Personally, it doesn't matter. See, I'm a trader. I don't really care about that kind of stuff. If I see an opportunity to make money, I go with that. So, for most traders, we don't really care that much about how they're going to fix the economy, about how they're going to fix the whole situation; our job is to make money from it. And, personally, I've been dreaming of this moment for three years. I have a confession which is I go to bed every night and dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this." [SLYT]posted by finite at 12:06 PM PST - 235 comments
Salve! Do you have trouble finding your way from Brindisium to Antium or planning a vacation at your villa in the Appenines because no one produces an online map with directions in good Latin these days? Well, be of good cheer, friend,
OmnesViae has what you need.
[more inside]posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:56 AM PST - 23 comments
For much of the time since their discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were the jealously guarded treasure of a select group of scholars. Now, thanks to a partnership between Google and the Israel Museum,
five scrolls have been digitized and made available online.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:24 AM PST - 25 comments
Chris Phillips used to be a journalist and photographer, a public school teacher, and a college instructor with three master’s degrees. Today, at forty, he’s underemployed, deeply in debt, and completely ecstatic about how his life has turned out. While studying for a master of arts in teaching at Montclair State University in 1996, Phillips chanced to pick up Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
, the seminal collection of existentialist and proto-existentialist texts that Walter Kaufmann compiled in 1956 as a means of preparing humankind for a genuinely philosophical form of life. Something Phillips read in Kaufmann’s introduction to the book soon sent him rocketing across America, visiting jails, hospices, nursing homes, and other public venues — all on his own dime. “I didn’t have any master plan when I started doing this,” he told me recently. (I’d tracked him down in Baltimore, though he lives now in Scottsdale, Arizona.) “I just had this little idea: Let’s give philosophy back to the people.” [more inside]posted by cgc373 at 6:30 AM PST - 23 comments
Over the last two decades, Harold Hackett has sent out over 4,800 messages in a bottle from Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province along the Atlantic coastline. Every message asks for the finder to send a response back to Hackett, and since 1996 he has received over 3,100 responses
from all over the world.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:29 AM PST - 46 comments
September 25
In 2008 a letter was excavated during an archaeological dig of a Peruvian colonial town abandoned for unknown reasons around the turn of the 18th Century. On the back of that letter were recorded several numbers and their names in a dead tongue, lost in the upheaval following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Even though this may be the only remnant of an entire language, there is quite a bit that linguists can glean from these fragments. For a brief overview of the findings of research by a joint American-Peruvian research group,
read here. And
here is the full journal article, which places these numbers in their historical and linguistic context.
posted by Kattullus at 8:50 PM PST - 11 comments
To paraphrase a character in the film, The Black Hole walks "a tightrope;" if not between "genius" and "insanity," then certainly between "genius" and "banality". If you're looking at this movie as a Manichean exercise between darkness and light, then you can -- for at least a few hours -- entertain the "genius" part of that equation.posted by Trurl at 3:18 PM PST - 106 comments
Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) was a social sciences educational curriculum designed in the late 1960s. The course examined the commonalities between human behavior and that of several animal species, and culminated with a series of short films documenting the lives of the Netsilik Eskimo people. Although many school systems
initially adopted MACOS, it was
largely abandoned after a campaign of opposition from conservative Christians, who saw it as a Trojan horse for the indoctrination of secular humanism and cultural relativism in the public schools. The 2004 documentary
Though These Eyes looks at creation of MACOS and the controversy surrounding it.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:18 AM PST - 17 comments
September 24
How did
hookworm infections slow the economy of the postbellum South? Do
body mites play a role in diseases such as rosacea? Did
fermenting seal flippers in Tupperware instead of traditional containers increase Native Alaskan botulism rates?
Body Horrors is the blog of microbiologist Rebecca Kreston, who aims to explore the intersection of infectious diseases, the human body, public health and anthropology.
posted by emjaybee at 8:30 PM PST - 36 comments
The Smallest Hotel in the World [autoplay of 'La Traviata']. So here's the story: it's 1728 and you live in Amberg, a little Bavarian town somewhere north of Munich. You and your lady friend really, really want to get married, but there is a little snag; the council laws permit only
homeowners to marry, and you're still stuck renting a place. But all is not lost! You pick up a little strip of empty land between two other buildings - just 2.5 meters wide. You run up a quick wall on the front, another on the back, slap a roof on top, and presto - you're a homeowner. The council falls for it, and allows you to get married.
[more inside]posted by woodblock100 at 8:25 PM PST - 28 comments
Greek Crisis Exacts the Cruelest Toll. 'Two years into Greece's debt crisis, its citizens are reeling from austerity measures imposed to prevent a government debt default that could cause havoc throughout Europe.' 'The most dramatic sign of Greece's pain, however, is a surge in suicides.' 'Recorded suicides have roughly doubled since before the crisis to about six per 100,000 residents annually, according to the Greek health ministry and a charitable organization called Klimaka. About 40% more Greeks killed themselves in the first five months of this year than in the same period last year, the health ministry says.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 5:59 PM PST - 101 comments
Oh hello, I'm Las Vegas high school student Manuja Gunaratne and I built this aircraft using trashbags and helium. Btw, I put a GPS tracker on this thing and had a digital camera takes pictures during the entire flight. Check out
Project T.B.A.C.
[more inside]posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:06 PM PST - 19 comments
In northern Afghanistan, here are goats, horses, men and dusty plains, and they have been there ever since Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde swept into the neighborhood in the 13th century. Their game, then, is simple. Men on horseback grab a goat from a chalk circle, carry it around a pole and drop it into another circle. No downs or innings. Sometimes there are teams, and sometimes there aren't. Sometimes the field is 200 meters by 200 meters, and sometimes it isn't. And the goat might be a calf, but it's always dead, with its head and hooves cut off.
Grab the goat, bring it around the pole and put it in the circle.
That's buzkashi.posted by nevercalm at 4:58 PM PST - 29 comments
The band Thulebasen succeeds in matching a rambling audio side with just as rambling visuals. I have never seen anything like this before. Seriously! It's a
monster!
posted by Sexy Motherfucker at 3:30 PM PST - 29 comments
So you are a hired assasassin, but what happens when it turns out the victim you are supposed to kill is a childhood friend and / or someone you fall in love with? Well obviouisly you fake-up evidence of your killing with the help of a machette under the armpit and lots
and lots of tomato ketchup...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:11 AM PST - 38 comments
September 23
Video footage of the legendary Doctor Fox lecture. "The lecture that Myron L. Fox delivered to the assembled experts had an impressive enough title: 'Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education'. Those responsible for running the University of Southern California School of Medicine's psychiatry department's continuing education programme had taken themselves off to Lake Tahoe in northern California for their annual conference and a continuing education program. There, Fox - who was billed as an 'authority on the application of mathematics to human behaviour' - presented the first paper.
His polished performance so impressed the audience of psychiatrists, family doctors and general internists that nobody noticed that the man standing at the lectern wasn't really Myron L. Fox from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine but Michael Fox a movie actor who though having considerable experience in playing doctors in TV shows didn't know the first thing about game theory."
[Via]posted by homunculus at 11:31 PM PST - 37 comments
Climate Wizard enables you to access leading climate change information and visualize the impacts anywhere on Earth. This web-based program allows you to choose a state or country and both assess how climate has changed over time and project what future changes are predicted to occur in a given area.
posted by netbros at 8:18 PM PST - 7 comments
61-year-old Diana Nyad is back in the water. Again.
(previously)
American endurance swimmer Diana Nyad
is making her third attempt (and second in as many months) to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, a distance of 103 miles. Her previous attempt failed after a crippling asthma attack. At the time, she swore she wouldn't try again, but a week later she was already
having second thoughts. You can track her progress
here.posted by BlahLaLa at 5:49 PM PST - 26 comments
Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong. "In 1959, Dr Milton Rokeach, a social psychologist, received a research grant to bring together three psychotic, institutionalised patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan." All three believed that they were Jesus, and the doctor believed he should play god.
posted by bitmage at 2:00 PM PST - 84 comments
Birdy Nam Nam is four f*cking guys, named for a reference from the 1968 movie
The Party. They are a quartet of French turntablists, consisting of
Crazy B,
DJ Pone,
DJ Need, and
Little Mike. They've spun
solo and
together at the 2002
DMC competitions, where they took the team championship title. In 2005, they released
an album made from turntable-manipulated samples, but they weren't studio-only tracks. They were
also performed live, though
some tracks featured additional live musicians. A
2007 live album followed, keeping the same over-all turntablism sound as their first album.
Their second album was largely produced by
French produceder/DJ Yunksek, and
the sound changed accordingly into an album of
delightful French dance music, but
they kept (generally) to the turntables to create their songs. The band
has released their third album, now working with
Para One, another French producer/DJ.
Their sound has gone on a slightly new path, with another
bizzare music video to accompany their sound.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 1:04 PM PST - 28 comments
In 1977-1978, a public access TV show called
Public Access Poetry featured leading poets from across the country (Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Eileen Myles, John Yau, Brad Gooch, just to name a few).
[more inside]posted by mattbucher at 11:42 AM PST - 5 comments
Like a "modern-day pirate," 75-year-old Ray Ives has been diving for sunken treasure for decades. Wearing an ancient, bronze-helmeted diving suit, he searches the ocean floor and keeps a huge collection of marine salvage (including antique cannon balls, 'bottles, bells, swords, portholes and diving gear') in a shipping container "museum" at a British marina.
Ray: A Life Underwater:
Vimeo /
YouTube. (A short film documentary.)
[more inside]posted by zarq at 11:05 AM PST - 5 comments
Mr. Destructo (
previously) discusses the
inscrutable twitter bot named
horse_ebooks, a Russian spam account that communicates entirely through snippets of ebooks and is more hilarious (
1,
2,
3,
4), confusing (
1,
2,
3,
4) and philosophically poetic (
1,
2,
3,
4) than any non-spambot on the internet.
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 10:19 AM PST - 34 comments
The Guardian
recently reported that, according to the 2011 edition of the Times Atlas, a new island called Uunartoq Qeqertaq has emerged off the coast of Greenland due to a 15% loss in glacial cover since 1999. However,
glaciologists were quick to point out that this was deeply improbable. Ejo Schrama, a professor at TU Delft whose research interests include satellite mapping of Greenland, has posted a
copy of a letter subscribed by several scientists at the Scott Polar Research Insititute expressing displeasure/disgruntlement with the publishers of the atlas (the linked post has been continually updated as events have warranted, so keep an eye out). The publishers have issued a
semi-apologetic statement, but why was the mistake made in the first place? ScienceInsider
thinks they might have worked out the answer (see the update in the second half of the article).
posted by Dim Siawns at 9:35 AM PST - 31 comments
H'ween parent filter Halloween is for little kids, but it's also for scares. I found this to be helpful in determining when it's appropriate for the twixt to meet.
posted by Straw Cab at 6:37 AM PST - 34 comments
September 22
"Menagerie" is a series of 10 polygonal animal paintings by Laura Bifano, inspired by her love of nature and classic 8-bit video games.
[Via]posted by homunculus at 11:01 PM PST - 21 comments
This week has seen a lot of discussion of the American criminal justice system and its failings, and a lot of concern about what can be done to fix it.
In 1947, a working class black man looked like he was about to have the full weight of the system brought down on him for taking justice into his own hands. But after Chicago leftists - including labor unions, religious leaders, artists, civil rights activists & others - launched a movement,
James Hickman was set free after an all-white jury, in a trial presided over by a white judge, failed to convict, and the DA chose not to re-try because of the magnitude of public support for Hickman.
According to a
review in The Nation,
a new book tells the story in a way that turns the typical right-wing biases of the true crime genre on their head.
[more inside]posted by univac at 2:44 PM PST - 11 comments
Starting Tuesday, AT&T and T-mobile subscribers will be taking their calls on the subway platforms, and possibly, on the train itself. Subscribers riding along the 14th Street corridor should be able to use their phones on the A, C, E, F, L, M, No. 1, 2 and 3 platforms. There is also expected to be service on the C and E platforms at 23rd Street. It it not clear yet if service will also work between stations, but we're sure we'll all find out soon enough.
All stations are expected to be outfitted with cell service by 2016.posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:35 PM PST - 59 comments
One of the most radically original TV shows in recent memory is
Louie. It's written, directed, edited, and produced by comedian
Louis C.K., who stars as a (thinly) fictionalized version of himself.
The A.V. Club recently sat down with Louis C.K. to talk through the show's second season, episode by episode. He sheds light on many aspects of the show, including the much-discussed
Dane Cook episode.
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4. (Louis C.K. previously:
1 2 3 4)
posted by naju at 12:26 PM PST - 85 comments
Mansoor 'Tiger' Ali Khan, erstwhile Indian cricket captain,
has died. His legacy evokes a previous era in Indian history: a last-generation Royal blinded in one eye as a young man, he captained the Oxford then the Indian teams (
his father had played for Oxford and England before captaining India), and married movie actress
Sharmila Tagore with whom he had children who went on to become movie stars themselves.
Some memories of a man known for his cricketing skill, style and charisma.
posted by the mad poster! at 12:17 PM PST - 20 comments
It's long been
thought that there is a high incidence of autism (and autism-related disorders like Asperger's) in IT fields. Now one company is
looking to turn that into sales.
[more inside]posted by Chrysostom at 11:43 AM PST - 33 comments
Neutrinos discovered to be faster than light at CERN. If confirmed, these results will overturn a century of one of the most basic assumptions in modern physics. 'Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure' the speed of light 'ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit. But Antonio Ereditato of the Orion collaboration and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 11:01 AM PST - 265 comments
Tomorrow, Friday the 23rd of September 2011, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas will go before the UN and set out his request for formal recognition of the state of
Palestine. There are many problems with this, and not just for the Palestinians...
[more inside]posted by dougrayrankin at 10:52 AM PST - 99 comments
[...]There was still talk of snipers, of a counterattack by Qaddafi’s men, of a fifth column of “sleeper cells” lurking inside the capital. Victory had come too easily. Only weeks earlier, the rebels seemed in disarray, and Qaddafi’s forces, having withstood more than four months of NATO air strikes, seemed poised to hold out for many more. Then, on Aug. 20, a planned uprising broke out in Tripoli, as the ragged rebel army converged on the city from various directions. The final battle, expected to last weeks, was over in two days. Qaddafi and his top lieutenants fled almost immediately. Now it was hard to know who was a killer and who a mere dupe.
[...]
The Surreal Ruins of Quaddafi's Never-Never Land, Robert F. Worth
(Note: nytimes. Via longform.com)posted by JHarris at 9:08 AM PST - 13 comments
TV Fact Checkers "Behind every smart TV show, there is a tireless script coordinator, technical adviser, researcher or producer who makes sure the jargon is right, the science is accurate and the pop culture references are on-point." This week, Wired "is speaking with fact-checkers behind the fall TV season’s geekiest shows."
[more inside]posted by zarq at 7:30 AM PST - 72 comments
Guinea pigs are sociable animals and Swiss law prohibits owners from keeping the furry rodents on their own. But what happens when one dies? Don't fret, just call Priska Küng, who runs
a 'rent-a-guinea pig' service.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 4:44 AM PST - 60 comments
"The prominent literary critic Marjorie Perloff has recently begun using the term 'unoriginal genius' to describe this tendency emerging in literature. Her idea is that, because of changes brought on by technology and the Internet, our notion of the genius—a romantic, isolated figure—is outdated. An updated notion of genius would have to center around one's mastery of information and its dissemination. Perloff has coined another term, 'moving information,' to signify both the act of pushing language around as well as the act of being emotionally moved by that process. She posits that today's writer resembles more a programmer than a tortured genius, brilliantly conceptualizing, constructing, executing, and maintaining a writing machine." --
Kenneth Goldsmith on why "genius" is an archaic concept, and how literature in English has fallen half-a-century behind advances in visual arts and musicposted by bardic at 3:57 AM PST - 44 comments
September 21
Imagine a remote, forested island in the largest body of freshwater in the world. Now imagine living on that island and being a part of one of the most unique and challenging artist residencies in the world. Rabbit Island is that island, and with your help, Rabbit Island will become that residency.
The 90 acre Rabbit Island, initially a
Kickstarter project, has become a
reality. Follow the
blog or
Flickr feed from this uninhabited island-turned-artist-collective.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:13 PM PST - 45 comments
A giant equation is taking form over the course of a few days, on a 46-ft tall "chalkboard" at the corner of Crosby and Broome in NYC. Sponsored by Dow Chemical, it's a mathematical brain teaser with the significance of each term left for the solver to discern.
In the first term, for example, the '755' is the length in feet of each side of the great pyramid.
Solutions to pieces of the puzzle can be submitted via twitter to @GiantChalkboard.
I'm not clear about the commercial aspect of this, or even what exactly "solutionism" is. But if you're a math/puzzle nerd, you'll likely
waste lots of time on enjoy it.
posted by ancillary at 4:07 PM PST - 48 comments
"
This system could produce hydrogen anyplace that there is wastewater near sea water," said Bruce E. Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering. "It uses no grid electricity and is completely carbon neutral. It is an inexhaustible source of energy."
[more inside]posted by Chrysostom at 9:11 AM PST - 83 comments
How many of these classic video game characters do you remember? A list of the
50 Greatest Video Game Characters of All Time.
Obviously, it's a difficult task to create a definitive list of all our beloved favorites, but this seems to cover all the really significant characters. A little surprised (in a good way!) that Gestalt actually came in at number 10, TBH. [more inside]posted by Greg Nog at 7:39 AM PST - 225 comments
What's that you say?
Kpop? Don't you have to be on a permanent sugar buzz to listen to that stuff?
Correct connaisseur. But if you don't have pigtails and think you might enjoy some crisp beats along with the happy happy sounds, check out
Areia Creations and its remixes of Korean hits. Reliably better than the originals, and a nice introduction into what is and has been hot on the Korean charts. Very addictive.
[more inside]posted by litleozy at 5:50 AM PST - 3 comments
Due to being sanctioned for unruly fan behaviour, the football match between Turkish teams Fenerbahce and Manisaspor was due to be played in an empty stadium. Until someone in the Turkish Football Federation had
the idea to only allow
women and children under 12 to attend.
[more inside]posted by PenDevil at 3:35 AM PST - 106 comments
September 20
From the start of Bill Lancaster writing the original script to the final edited cut of the film, The Thing underwent some serious changes. A lot of footage ended up littering the cutting room floor. The Collector's Edition DVD gives us a look at some of the Outtakes and Deleted Scenes, but it falls shy of showing us what really was cut. -
Deleted Scenes from
The Thing and other assorted goodies at
Outpost 31.
There is also a prequel of some kind.posted by Artw at 5:21 PM PST - 38 comments
Occupy Wall Street is an event comprised of anti-corporate non-violent protests that are being promoted by a range of groups including the AdbustersMedia Foundation and a New York City group called General Assembly. Months ago
a plea was put out to diverse political and activist groups urging them to descend on Wall Street on September 17th and take part in long-term occupation of the area in the spirit of the
Arab Spring rebellions.
[more inside]posted by stagewhisper at 5:17 PM PST - 251 comments
Found via
this comment by Concordia on
this AskMe, I want to give a wider welcome to
Emotional Bag Check - a site that pairs up those having a tough time, with those who are inclined to lend an ear - with the additional feature that with each piece of advice comes a song chosen by the advice-giver.
posted by greenish at 4:31 PM PST - 16 comments
This interview with Maurice Sendak on NPR is worth a listen. Sendak has just published his first book in 30 years.
Bumble-ardy was written while his partner was dying in order, he says, "to save myself".
be sure to hang in until the end of the interview, have some tissue handy.posted by tomswift at 2:47 PM PST - 30 comments
Hank Williams III has had a rocky relationship with his label, Curb Records, from the beginning, when his first album with them was
an album with his grandfather and father, "
thanks to the wonders of 21st century digital overdubbing." A decade and a half later,
Hank 3 was free from Curb Records, though the label snuck out one last album, even though the contract was over. It was actually
an old album from a decidedly non-country style, but that didn't stop Curb from
offering it as a Hank III album at a fire-sale discount, ensuring
Billboard Country charting. That was in June of this year. Jump ahead to September:
Hank 3 released three albums over four CDs, spanning his broad musical styles and beyond.
CD1:
country (of sorts);
CD2:
haunted ambient soundtrack and
Cajun-tinted country, with guests (
like Tom Waits);
CD3:
cattle-core;
CD4:
doom rock.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:34 AM PST - 91 comments
In 1991,
Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of policeman Mark MacPhail in a Savannah, Georgia parking lot. Since then, seven of the nine prosecution eyewitnesses have
recanted all or part of their testimony, with some citing pressure from the police to make false statements. An exception is Sylvester "Redd" Coles, who made the initial report of Davis’s guilt, and is regarded by the defense as the chief suspect. New witnesses have sworn affidavits that Coles confessed the crime to them. An
array of figures have called for a stay of execution, including death-penalty supporters Senator Bob Barr and former FBI director William S. Sessions.
Today, the Georgia
Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency; barring
action from the District Attorney, Davis is
set to be executed by lethal injection tomorrow at 7pm. [
Previously]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:27 AM PST - 432 comments
There is no right answer.
Damned if we do impose sanctions on Syria. And damned if we don't.
Foreign companies are enriching Assad's brutal regime – but even the Syrian people are divided on the issue of sanctions.
This piece was written by George Monbiot after he had publicly asked for feedback
What do you think – should we impose sanctions on Syria?
The moral line is unclear, but I'm writing a column next week about this issue and would appreciate some of your input.
Useful background :
Geopolitics of the 2011 Syrian Uprising.
Some voices from the street.
(
Previous 1; 2; 3; 4 ).
posted by adamvasco at 6:19 AM PST - 32 comments
Teaching Kids News Timely, relevant news articles for kids, educators in the classroom and parents at home.
How to Use This Site: On TKN you’ll find original news articles on topics that are timely, relevant and intriguing. They are written for an elementary and intermediate school audience (grades 2-8) and can be used easily by kids, parents, and teachers.posted by Fizz at 5:09 AM PST - 6 comments
September 19
It's a bit old, but there's nothing on the Blue about the
Eight Track Museum in Dallas, TX which opened this Valentine's Day. Such an oversight must be redressed. The museum's curator, Bucks Bennett, didn't start collecting 8-track tapes until 1988, long after the format has ceased being viable. As of this year, Bennett has about 3000 tapes in his collection, one of which
you really, truly need to see (though whether or not you actually want to
hear this tape is a decision best left to you, Gentle Reader).
[more inside]posted by stannate at 9:34 PM PST - 29 comments
“
Light painting (also known as
light drawing or light graffiti) is a photographic technique in which exposures are made usually at night or in a darkened room by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera. In many cases the light source itself does not have to appear in the image. The term light painting also encompasses images lit from outside the frame with hand-held light sources. The first known photographer to use this technique was
Man Ray in his series "Space Writing" created in 1935. The photographer Ellen Carey discovered Man Ray's signature signed by penlight nearly 74 years after the pictures had been taken” (wiki)
[more inside]posted by growabrain at 8:39 PM PST - 9 comments
The Other Mad Men. It's been accepted more or less as a truism that black people didn't work on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. But facts are stubborn things. There were black people in advertising even then, some (a few) in high places. Contrary to the popular assumption, blacks in that era met with success and challenges on Madison Avenue, like everywhere else.
posted by sweetkid at 7:55 PM PST - 28 comments
Chext is a site that enables the user to enter transactions and track their bank balance via SMS. People sharing a bank account can also get updates when money is spent from the account by the other person.
[more inside]posted by reenum at 3:34 PM PST - 30 comments
A summer day, a dirt road, heat thick as steam from a boiling pot. Along the shoulder are verdant trees, shadows, the hum and croak and whistle and buzz of the woods. This is Clarksville, Texas, 1910. And here is Frank Jones, who will one day, decades from now, years after his death, be among the most recognized African-American self-taught artists.
[more inside]posted by zamboni at 1:46 PM PST - 4 comments
YA authors asked to 'straighten' gay characters. Two YA authors posted about their
unhappy experience with trying to find an agent for their book that includes gay characters. Soon, a representative of the previously unnamed agency (though also not the actual agent in question) posts a
rebuttal. Debate flies back and forth in the comments, on
Twitter, and on various blogs, with writers coming forward with their own experiences. (
1 2 3, among many others.) Cleolinda has a detailed and informative
summary of the whole situation. (
Previously.)
posted by kmz at 10:19 AM PST - 55 comments
After nearly 200 years of rest, Mount Tambora is rumbling again and spewing ash. The last eruption of Mount Tambora was in 1815 and at the time was the largest eruption in the world since 180 AD. The massive amount of volcanic ash kicked into the stratosphere (around 160 cubic kilometers of ejecta were released) cooled Earth's temperature by over a degree Fahrenheit and caused "
The year without a summer". In comparison, the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens released around 1 cubic kilometer of ejecta.
posted by chakalakasp at 10:09 AM PST - 48 comments
St. Peter's was a seminary built near Cardross, on the outskirts of Glasgow. It is remarkable for its modernist design, the
architects having drawn significant inspiration from Le Corbusier's brutalist
monastery at La Tourette, and has been
A-listed by Historic Scotland. During its construction, the Second Vatican Council recommended that priests should be trained and educated in the communities they were to serve; the quasi-monastic setting of St. Peter's thus meant it was obsolescent before its completion. Although it was briefly adapted to serve as a rehabilitation centre for drug abusers, it was abandoned in the 80s and, by 2008, found itself on the World Monument Foundation's
list of most endangered sites (PDF, see p.58). There has been recent talk of the Scottish Government funding a £10m
restoration project, but it is not entirely clear if the restoration is intended to turn the building into an arts centre, a museum or an 'intentional modernist ruin'.
[more inside]posted by Dim Siawns at 9:50 AM PST - 19 comments
Did you know that two guys once flew a Cessna for 64 days, without landing? They
apparently refuelled from a moving pickup truck
with a hose. Did you also know of the monks from Mt. Hiei, Japan who run 900 marathons in 6 years? To qualify, they do 30 km. a day for 100 consecutive
days. I did not know these things when I woke up on Friday, but
Now I Know.
[more inside]posted by Cobalt at 8:59 AM PST - 27 comments
September 18
Autistic and Seeking a Place in the World. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Amy Harmon spent a year observing a young man with autism named Justin Canha, who took part in a new kind of “transition to adulthood” program for special education students at Montclair High School in NJ. The experimental program was intended to ready him for an independent life as an adult and integrate him into the community.
[more inside]posted by zarq at 7:55 PM PST - 26 comments
Capitalism is an unparalleled vehicle for meeting human needs, improving efficiency, creating jobs, and building wealth. But a narrow conception of capitalism has prevented business from harnessing its full potential to meet society's broader challenges. The opportunities have been there all along but have been overlooked. Businesses acting as businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for addressing the pressing issues we face. The moment for a new conception of capitalism is now; society's needs are large and growing, while customers, employees, and a new generation of young people are asking business to step up. The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society. Perhaps most important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance to legitimize business again. ~
Creating Shared Value by Michael Porter & Mark R. Kramer (PDF)
[more inside]posted by infini at 11:29 AM PST - 27 comments
A new book says women have been marginalized in Obama's White House, according to an article in the Washington Post. Former communications director Anita Dunn is quoted as saying the White House "fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women." The book also quotes an unnamed official saying that "the boys' club" was not "just Larry [Summers] and Rahm [Emanuel]," but that Obama himself was responsible: "The president has a real woman problem."
[more inside]posted by John Cohen at 7:02 AM PST - 117 comments
Seattle mourns the passing of
Electron Boy, otherwise known as Erik Martin. Erik died at home on Friday, from a rare form of cancer called paraganglioma. He was 14.
Previously on Metafilter.
posted by Sublimity at 5:18 AM PST - 34 comments
September 17
The [Online]
Museum of Obsolete Objects is a cute little YouTube page with an ever-increasing selection of objects to choose from, that then brings up a pithy video narrated by a computerized voice.
posted by cashman at 3:40 PM PST - 29 comments
Mike Daisey, monologuist, author and gadfly, will be streaming the live performance of his 24 hour monologue, All Hours of the Day, from 6 PM PST today until 6 PM PST tomorrow. He remains cagey about what precisely the show is about, but early reports indicate that
bacon will be involved.
[more inside]posted by Phlogiston at 2:15 PM PST - 21 comments
Oh, my. These
cows are ready to do the Charleston (with some practice, perhaps). These
curious cows are only mildly skittish and love to exercise.
Some light fun for a Saturday afternoon.
posted by glaucon at 10:49 AM PST - 15 comments
September 16
Mime is an art. Mime is a craft. Mime is movement as complex as moonwalking, or as simple as nodding one's head to say yes. Often I've heard mime defined as non-verbal communication. (a negative term) I prefer to define it simply: Mime is visual communication.
The basic techniques of Mime are explained by YouTube videos....
[more inside]posted by twoleftfeet at 9:06 PM PST - 35 comments
The French romantic thriller “Diva” dashes along with a pellmell gracefulness, and it doesn’t take long to see that the images and visual gags and homages all fit together and reverberate back and forth. It’s a glittering toy of a movie... This one is by a new director, Jean-Jacques Beineix... who understands the pleasures to be had from a picture that doesn’t take itself very seriously. Every shot seems designed to delight the audience. - Pauline Kael, 1982
[more inside]posted by Trurl at 7:31 PM PST - 33 comments
The Observer ran a series of columns by Richard Geefe, a writer whose work was interrupted by his promise to himself and his editors that he would kill himself before the end of November 1999.
First,
second,
third,
fourth,
fifth,
sixth,
seventh,
eighth,
ninth,
tenth,
eleventh, and the posthumous
twelfth.
Reaction in The Independent. [more inside]posted by Sticherbeast at 3:57 PM PST - 14 comments
Haven't been addicted to a flash game in a while? Take on
Swords and Potions, where you tackle the under-appreciated other side of the RPG universe: being a shopkeeper! There's a lot to this game, so here's the
wiki if you need help, and don't worry about your productivity- turns take time to regenerate so you can't get stuck playing all day.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 11:50 AM PST - 28 comments
September 15
A new lecturer has joined the faculty of Trinity College: Dr. Conan T. Barbarian. Among the courses he will teach are "Vengeance for Beginners" and "Deciphering the Riddle of Steel."
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:51 PM PST - 46 comments
Florence Nightingale's Statistical Diagrams. Famous as the mother of modern nursing, she was also an immensely talented applied statistician and visual information artist. These skills were instrumental in persuading 19th century British health authorities to improve hospital hygiene. She originated a graph type now known as “Nightingale's Coxcomb” and used it to dramatic effect. Examples of these graphs were presented in her monograph, “Notes on matters affecting the health, efficiency and hospital administration of the British army” published in 1858. That same year she became the first female fellow of the Statistical Society of London (now Royal Statistical Society). An animation of the coxcombs
here. The Nightingale Crimean War coxcombs are considered by some to be
one of the three best graphics in history.
[more inside]posted by storybored at 9:46 PM PST - 30 comments
Butch Sightings is a social interaction art project that was inspired by my interest and appreciation for butches & studs (females and/or women who appear masculine, queer, old school, dyke, bulldagger, aggressive [AG] and other terms to be added as I come across them). [more inside]posted by serazin at 7:00 PM PST - 55 comments
Section 1. In the event of the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, the surviving members of the CUSFS shall be formed into a clan, henceforth referred to as 'the Clan.' The surviving members of the Board will reconvene under the new name of The Elders Who Remember The Time Before It Changed, henceforth referred to as 'the Elders.'
The Columbia University Science Fiction Society's
Constitution and Bylaws.
[more inside]posted by pts at 3:11 PM PST - 26 comments
This week
Pat Robertson (controversial as always) addressed an uncomfortable question. What are we obligated to do when our spouse becomes completely incapacitated? This is a relatively common situation for the elderly, one person declining faster than the other, but the same questions remain as with a couple in their thirties. Do you live with celibacy, divorce or commit infidelity?
Dan Savage’s rules on cheating include a pass for caregiver/spouses in this situation to preserve the marriage. Things can become more difficult when the
sexual relationship does not end after a partner becomes infirm.
posted by Blisterlips at 3:05 PM PST - 96 comments
Drew Gardner is an English photographer with a wide range of interests (
Eccentrics,
Guinness records) though perhaps his most beguiling collection is of
Descendants, portraits of, well, descendents of the rich and powerful in some of their most iconic poses.
Bonus video of Helen Pankhurst being set up as her great grandmother Emmeline, with audio of the great suffragette herself
posted by IndigoJones at 2:57 PM PST - 13 comments
Male, Female, X - you know what you are Australian passport holders will now get to choose what gender they want to be listed as, with the choices including 'X' for intersex.
(Apologies for the single link. An amazing topic, but I am not the most knowledgeable on this and hope those who are can come and comment on it).
posted by Megami at 1:18 PM PST - 76 comments
Red is a simple Flash game. Shoot the descending circles. Some are big and slow, some are small and quick. Shoot the power-ups to collect them. Soon you'll have a shield and some auto-turrets to help you clear the screen. But beware: it gets harder and more frantic as the wind increases. How long can you survive? A fun Missile Command/Asteroids hybrid. (Via
reddit)
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:45 AM PST - 27 comments
A team of astronomers monitoring data from the
Kepler, a craft designed to identify potenially habitable stars, have just announced today that they have located one orbiting
a double star system (NYT Link). Early data suggests it's a gaseous planet, but it is also within the range considered "sustainable for life". Still, if there's no life there, Kepler's got
over a thousand other exoplanets to check out.
Officially, the newly-discovered planet is named "Kepler 16b," but astronomers have already nicknamed it
"Tatooine".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:34 AM PST - 59 comments
In February 2011, every teacher in Providence, Rhode Island was pink slipped. Not all 1,926 of them got fired, of course, but with the district facing a $40 million deficit, anything is possible. The district says it needs flexibility, just in case. Every school district in the United States faces its own version of what’s happening in Providence. However, “
IMAGINATION: Creating the Future of Education and Work” is focused not on how we got here but rather how we can move forward from here immediately even as the education system continues to struggle.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 11:03 AM PST - 49 comments
A new US-oriented front page for the Guardian online, reflecting a 'new digital operation based in New York'. US visitors to the .co.uk front page will be redirected to .com, but you can choose which version to see at top left.
[more inside]posted by Segundus at 5:58 AM PST - 36 comments
Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., M.D., M.D.S.* is a fictional character in a series of detective short stories and two novels by Jacques Futrelle. Van Dusen was also known as "The Thinking Machine" for his application of logic to any and all situations. Most of
Futrelle's stories are online. Futrelle himself
went down with the Titanic.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:50 AM PST - 20 comments
September 14
Metropolitan stencilsmith Banksy certainly doesn't lack
predecessors,
possible auxiliary identities, or rival "street artists." (or MeFi posts:
1,
2,
3,
etc.) His biggest rival, a shoe repairman from the East End called
ROBBO, has gained an extensive support network, calling itself
Team Robbo (music upon loading).
"Graffiti Wars [47:00]," part of (UK)Channel 4's
"Street Summer" series, documents the rattle-can battle between Banksy and Robbo, as well as the
debates among Councils and residents over what to do with it all. Robbo's art career was taking off; he was commissioned to promote, and
attended the Berlin Film Festival (in disguise), displayed and sold his work at the revered
Pure Evil Gallery, all the while sparring with Banksy...
[more inside]posted by obscurator at 7:33 PM PST - 20 comments
'Few Americans today can name more than one or two
current boxers, but boxing once stood at the center of American life. It has become a ghost sport, long discredited but still hovering in the nation’s consciousness, refusing to go away and be silent entirely. But there was a time when things were very different. Boxing's history
winds a thread through the broader history of the nation.'
posted by zarq at 6:44 PM PST - 95 comments
"The Ship Song Project - Sydney Opera House reinterprets Nick Cave's iconic song." (SLYT) Performed by
Neil Finn,
Kev Carmody and
The Australian Ballet,
Sarah Blasko,
John Bell,
Angus and Julia Stone,
Paul Kelly and
Bangarra Dance Theatre,
Teddy Tahu Rhodes and
Opera Australia,
Martha Wainwright,
Katie Noonan and
The Sydney Symphony,
The Temper Trap,
Daniel Johns and the
Australian Chamber Orchestra.
[more inside]posted by malibustacey9999 at 4:22 PM PST - 43 comments
If cats ran the telecom company (in a world of cats), it would
sort of look like look exactly like this. (via the boing)
One of you will spend the evening either transcribing this into English, or putting subtitles on it, I just know you will. Please let me know when you're done.posted by tomswift at 2:41 PM PST - 32 comments
"As a black woman, I don’t identify with and relate to most of the non-black characters I see on TV, much less characters of my own race. When I flip through the channels, it's disheartening. I don’t see myself or women like me being represented. I’m not a smooth, sexy, long-haired vixen; I’m not a large, sassy black woman; an angry Post Office employee. I’m an
awkward black girl."
[more inside]posted by lesli212 at 11:31 AM PST - 186 comments
At first, nothing happened. But after 10 days, hell broke loose in his hospital room. He began shaking with chills. His temperature shot up. His blood pressure shot down. He became so ill that doctors moved him into intensive care and warned that he might die. His family gathered at the hospital, fearing the worst.
A few weeks later, the fevers were gone. And so was the leukemia. - (NYT Link)
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:22 AM PST - 63 comments
September 13
It's been exactly
five years since Charlie Fink and his musical band of friends - his brother Doug on drums, Tom "Fiddle" Hobden on violin, Matt "Urby Whale" Owens on harmonium and bass and
Laura Marling on backing vocals - first appeared on the London nu-folk circuit, their moniker a conflation of a famous indie
film and its director:
Noah and the Whale.
[more inside]posted by progosk at 11:46 PM PST - 7 comments
Doodle Or Die! A massively multiplayer Pictionary-style game. Your drawings are used as fuel for the next player's guesses, which are then used as suggestions for the next player's drawings, which are then used for the next player's guesses, and so on.
[more inside]posted by Magnakai at 9:07 PM PST - 73 comments
Massive Evangelical movement spearheaded by right wing activist pastors to affect the 2012 election. There's 'a growing movement of evangelical pastors who are jumping into the electoral fray as never before, preaching political engagement from the pulpit as they mobilize for the 2012 election. This new activism has substantial muscle behind it: a cadre of experienced Christian organizers and some of the conservative movement's most generous donors, who are setting up technologically sophisticated operations to reach pastors and their congregations in battleground states.''"The Christian activist right is the largest, best-organized and, I believe, the most powerful force in American politics today," said Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist who recently provided briefings on the constituency to wealthy donors on the left. "No other political group comes even close."'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 2:09 PM PST - 75 comments
Datamachine slow? To get back the original speed on Your hard drive it's necessary to Defragment it. There are several of different species of software to make this happen, but the most excellent way to do it is a hardware defragmentation. You'll only need some basic data-mechanical-skills to be able to
defraggle your motherdisc!posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 12:30 PM PST - 53 comments
"
24 Hours of Reality will focus the world’s attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis. To remove the doubt. Reveal the deniers. And catalyze urgency around an issue that affects every one of us.” — Al Gore on the worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. The Climate Reality Project will live stream starting at 7pm CT on September 14.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 12:26 PM PST - 47 comments
Nerdy Day Trips aims to bring you the best in disused power stations, abandoned nuclear bunkers, lighthouse museums and solar observatories from around the world.
posted by Hartster at 11:21 AM PST - 14 comments
Quincy Jones sat in the Tenafly, New Jersey den of 16-year-old vocal student Lesley Gore,
playing demo after demo, looking for the right song to cut for her first record. Out of over 200 tapes, Jones and Gore had moved only one to the "maybe" pile, and so that song,
It's My Party, was recorded on March 30, 1963 in a Manhattan studio. After the session Mercury president Irving Green warned Gore not to get her hopes up, but Gore gratefully told him that it had been a great experience anyway, and it was okay if he didn't want to release it. However, later that evening Jones learned that
Phil Spector had just recorded "It's My Party" for
The Crystals, so Jones rushed back to the studio to press 100 test copies of the single and immediately mailed them to key radio stations across the country.
[more inside]posted by swift at 10:22 AM PST - 69 comments
Ludum Dare is an annual video game development contest where the contestants have 48 hours to complete a game. This year's theme was Escape and 599 games were submitted. The winning
solo and
team created games have been announced. You can download all games and even view their source code. If you want to experience the awesomeness of real-time game development, check out the
time-lapse videos.
[more inside]posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:10 AM PST - 10 comments
Flash Fun Friuesday! In
The Painter, you have to shoot paint around an empty world in order to find your exit.
Note: there is a slight loading problem. If it doesn't load the first time, refresh the page and it should be just fine.posted by phunniemee at 7:42 AM PST - 9 comments
Yields of 2-year Greek government bonds have been skyrocketing today, and are
currently at 76%. Credit default swaps show Greece with a
98% chance of default. Confidence in the Eurozone as a whole has been
tanking recently after a series of setbacks that leave a political solution looking increasingly unlikely. There was a
timely, gloomy discussion on RT yesterday on European and worldwide political/economic prospects
posted by crayz at 6:12 AM PST - 173 comments
September 12
When a cowboy says 'women,' he means two different kinds: There's the real kind and then there's the
kind in his mind.
A song by Dan Reeder, for your edumatainment.posted by kaibutsu at 8:37 PM PST - 15 comments
Have trouble figuring out who your third cousin twice removed is versus your second cousin thrice removed? Imagine if your family was
Chinese. The rules for Chinese family relation names are complex and incredibly specific, though there are patterns that can help out (e.g. tang2 vs biao3). A
research paper provides some cultural context.
[more inside]posted by kmz at 3:16 PM PST - 21 comments
"Perhaps twenty or thirty people in England may be expected to read this book." G.H. Hardy's review of Whitehead and Russell's
Principia Mathematica, published in the Times Literary Supplement 100 years ago last week. "The time has passed when a philosopher can afford to be ignorant of mathematics, and a little perseverance will be well rewarded. It will be something to learn how many of the spectres that have haunted philosophers modern mathematics has finally laid to rest."
posted by escabeche at 2:37 PM PST - 29 comments
"
A wonderful brain interprets something differently from what it actually is, but it doesn't mean it's made a mistake. It took the information it had and did it's best job." Those are but two tricks from
Jerry Andrus (1918-2007), self-taught magician and illusionist, and
one of great renown amongst
other magicians. But he was more than a slight-of-hand man: he was also
a poet, philosopher, inventor, humanist, agnostic, and skeptic. There are an impressive number of videos of him online, these are but a few to get you started down the rabbit hole:
Jerry Andrus is visual poetry (Google video /
YT, 28 minutes) ::
Jerry Andrus at the Magic Castle (G.vid, 49 min),
Jerry Andrus at 83 his Optical Illusions (G.vid, 41 min) ::
Jerry Andrus and Ray Hyman on Uri Geller (YT, 26 min) ::
James Randi on Jerry Andrus (YT, 5 min) ::
James Randi - who was Jerry Andrus? ::
James Randi describes Jerry Andrus. The last two clips are from
Rex Young, a young illusionist who has recreated many of Andrus' illusions on his
YouTube channel, and
made some of his own.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:55 PM PST - 25 comments
The
artists of
Draw2D2 are given two "geeky things" based on a monthly theme, and then have two weeks to create mash-up illustrations. Art is posted every other Thursday at 12:00pm EST, with a poll for the public to vote for their favorites. Artists with the most votes can show their process in a
spotlight post.
[more inside]posted by zarq at 12:36 PM PST - 14 comments
Clarke Quay Singapore,
The Cement Factory,
Takasugi-an,
Nobis House,
Kew House,
Rolex Learning Centre,
Central Park,
Walt Disney Concert Hall,
Containers of Hope,
Museum of Liverpool,
Busan Opera House,
The Meera House,
Nakahouse
OpenBuildings is an collaboration community dedicated to architecture where you can
browse buildings by
collections,
people/firms,
city guides or their
vicinity to you.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:29 AM PST - 2 comments
"Driving Jersey represents and reflects the most misunderstood and misrepresented place and people in all of America." In this series of calmly paced, short documentaries featuring profiles, atmosphere, landscape, and interviews, filmmakers
Steve Rogers and
Ryan Bott travel 21 counties to capture some of the true character and cultural nuance of the Garden State.
[more inside]posted by Miko at 6:55 AM PST - 54 comments
In the year 2040, America's economic collapse is complete, the cloud has been repossessed, and Westerners are forced to take jobs that no one in the East will do. Chinese documentary program Window on the World
investigates the sad state of affairs.
[more inside]posted by CharlesV42 at 4:13 AM PST - 68 comments
September 11
The Digital Antiquarian discusses
ludic narrative
and has been filling in by bits and pieces an amazing history of
recreational computing and adventure gaming.
The Rise of Experiential Games traces the development of Wargames from H.G. Wells' (!) wargame for toy soldiers,
Little Wars, to Avalon Hill's Squad Leader; he discusses the development of
Dungeons and Dragons (part
2,
3) led to
the first CRPGs on
PLATO. He'll tell you things you didn't know about
Oregon Trail (part
2,
3,
4,
5,
postscript, the
1975 source code!),
Hunt the Wumpus (
part 2),
Colossal Cave Adventure (part
2,
3,
4,
5),
Eliza (part
2,
3),
Scott Adams' games (part
2,
3,
4,
5), the
TRS-80 (part
2,
3), the
2 adventuring cultures of university minicomputers and home PCs, and their
unlikely bridging. [more inside]posted by Zed at 11:14 PM PST - 18 comments
"[H]ow interesting... to bring to life the clothes in children’s artwork, designs by children too young to be influenced by commercial fashion... I asked three girls to draw the outfits they imagined, and then
I turned them into clothes."
posted by ocherdraco at 9:16 PM PST - 59 comments
Code Hero is a game designed to teach programming. It uses the first-person shooter idiom, where you are armed with a Code Gun that shoots JavaScript. It reminded me a little of
hacking the Gibson.
posted by sigma7 at 4:39 PM PST - 118 comments
The maqam al-'iraqi is considered the most noble and perfect form of the maqam. As the name implies, it is native to Iraq; it has been known for approximately four hundred years in Baghdad, Mosul, and Kirkuk. The maqam al-'iraqi has been passed on orally through the Iraqi masters of the maqam, who cultivate the form especially in Baghdad. The maqam is performed by a singer (qari') and three instrumentalists playing santur (box zither), juzah (spike fiddle), and tablah or dunbak (goblet drum).posted by Trurl at 4:08 PM PST - 5 comments
Tania Blanco is a modern artist who shares her time in France and Spain. She says of her collection
Sleepdrunk Vademecum, "The body is made up of a large set of rounded painting formats. Medical instruments, high precision technology, scientific devices, anatomical models, clandestine laboratories and human representation become the object of study and thought. The bizarre represented objects reflect a mixture of past and future, and an ambiguous
clinical atmosphere flows in them. On many of these painted surfaces, a soft cool-cold gradient isolates the represented elements and gives a
non-gravitational character to the compositions." [
via]
posted by netbros at 3:00 PM PST - 3 comments
Original Pronunciation (OP) "...performance brings us as close as possible to how old texts would have sounded. It enables us to hear effects lost when old texts are read in a modern way. It avoids the modern social connotations that arise when we hear old texts read in a present-day accent." The site includes
transcripts of Shakespeare plays and other writings with
IPA notations, indicating how to pronounce them in OP. It also includes some audio
recordings.
[more inside]posted by grumblebee at 2:28 PM PST - 38 comments
Patti Smith: "
I always enjoyed doing transgender songs. That's something I learnt from Joan Baez..." From a little bio-girl's plea "
I'm A Boy", through "
Lola" and a "
Walk On The Wild Side", to Smith's transstraight take on "
Gloria", songwriters dig trans people. Much earlier still, The Charmer took his shot at Christine Jorgensen, who "
went abroad, and came back a broad", with "
Is She Is Or Is She Ain't". The Charmer, no "
Sweet Transvestite" himself, also plays
a mean fiddle (Mendelssohn actually). ♫ "And if you want some fun, take
Oh Bloody Blotter." ♫
[more inside]posted by Ardiril at 4:07 AM PST - 53 comments
September 10
If you are an East Coast baseball fan, there are two reasons to stay up past your bed time:
1) Your local nine are on a West Coast road swing
2) To indulge in one of the true joys of baseball: Listening to Vin Scully call a baseball game.
In the October edition of GQ, Scully looks back on
some of his most memorable calls, in a career that started in 1950 when the Dodgers called Brooklyn home. If reading Scully's recollections isn't enough for you, The website includes audio of the calls in question.
[more inside]posted by dry white toast at 8:06 PM PST - 27 comments
What then happens is an unbelievable series of Kafkaesque email threads, out-of-office messages, invented holidays, bizarre threats, secret handshakes. If you’re lucky, and very very persistent, you might end up with a CD of it, along with a note saying that “this never happened” and “don’t tell anybody you have this.” Nico Muhly on the difficulty of
listening to one's own work.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 7:02 PM PST - 11 comments
Slightly Darkened Streets of Tokyo [SLYT] By fading back and forth between scenes of pre- and post-quake Tokyo, this time-lapse video by YouTube user darwinfish105 shows how the metropolitan night-scape has been affected by Japan's ongoing power shortages and conservation efforts.
posted by Fizz at 9:05 AM PST - 10 comments
September 9
Want to run for president in
Kyrgyzstan? Better bone up on your
Kyrgyz language skills. The 83 declared candidates
are being tested, on live television on how well they can use the country's official language. Five grammar mistakes, and you're out. (Clearly, the election commissioners are
prescriptivists.) The intent, it appears, is to weed out politicians with Russian educations.
posted by beagle at 3:34 PM PST - 30 comments
High Arctic Relocation. In the 1950s several Inuit families were relocated from the relatively balmy
Inukjuak, in northern Quebec, to settlements in what are now called Grise Fiord and Resolute in the far north of Canada with few resources to survive the extremely harsh climate.
[more inside]posted by dabug at 9:27 AM PST - 24 comments
The Challenge of Teaching 9/11 "The events of September 11th are being discussed, taught, and commemorated in high school classrooms throughout the nation this week. And in many of those classrooms, the students are increasingly too young to have many actual memories of their own of that day’s events. I visited two high school classes in the San Francisco Bay Area to see how teachers are approaching the topic, what the students know and don’t know, and how they feel about the events surrounding that day."
‘Who’s Osama bin Laden?’: Teaching 9/11 to Muslim youth
"In the ten years since Sept. 11, many Muslim Americans feel they’ve had to deal with rising discrimination. Those who remember 9/11 at least understand how this started. But there’s a new generation of Muslim Americans who don’t. They were too young in 2001, or they weren’t yet born. But these children aren’t too young to perceive discrimination. At least one local Islamic school is still working through how, exactly, to teach its young students about 9/11."
posted by nooneyouknow at 9:09 AM PST - 84 comments
Dance dance:
Iceland,
Switzerland,
Finland,
Spain,
Greece,
Lithuania,
Canada,
England,
France,
Austria,
Prussia,
Russian Revolution,
Italian Revolution,
German Revolution,
Japanese Revolution,
Chinese Revolution,
American Revolution.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:20 AM PST - 12 comments
September 8
Internet and telecom infrastructure in northern Canada is so bad it threatens the whole region. That’s the conclusion from a new
report cited in a
Globe and Mail article, which notes: “The government of Nunavut bought new digital cameras to produce photos for driver’s licences. But the photo files were too large for local E-mail systems and so must be loaded onto memory sticks and flown to Iqaluit for processing.”
[more inside]posted by joeclark at 1:23 PM PST - 78 comments
Hundreds of angry longshoremen stormed through a grain shipping terminal in Longview, Wash., early Thursday and held security guards at bay while descending on a disputed train full of grain, cutting brake lines and dumping cargo. - Serious and sometimes violent direct action aimed at a new west coast shipping facility by a local union, supported by members from the Seattle area.
posted by Slap*Happy at 1:12 PM PST - 405 comments
Dog vs. Rattlesnake. Dog loses. But there is
hope for other dogs. "At home, I lit candles in prayer, pleading to the universe that she would make it. I slept fitfully, realizing that this was her battle. I couldn’t will her to survive. Even so, I offered a psychic bargaining chip, promising her a trip to the ocean, which she had never seen, if she pulled through this." And, she did.
posted by Xurando at 11:54 AM PST - 12 comments
Shanghai singles are using IKEA to find love. Yes, IKEA has become a semi-public social space in Beijing and elsewhere in China (
previously), but now one Shanghai IKEA is twice-weekly "taken over by a swarm of locals between the ages of 45 and 65 who come to seek out new love over free cups of coffee — a perk offered to holders of the Ikea Family membership card — and boxed lunches brought from home."
posted by liketitanic at 11:18 AM PST - 38 comments
Better This World is a documentary about two activists from Austin who joined a group heading to protest the 2008 Republican convention. Their problem was that they prepared molotov cocktails at the last minute, and one of their ring-leaders was an FBI informant. Legal nightmare ensues. Aired on PBS September 6, it can be viewed online until October 6.
posted by Brian B. at 7:29 AM PST - 115 comments
September 7
A lady, back in 1957, addressing the camera in an elegant evening gown, fit for some grand society ball, had this message for the oldsters: "Now, whatever you think of rock and roll, I think you have to keep a nice, open mind about what the young people go for." She then proceeded to announce Buddy Holly and the Crickets, who obligingly performed their hit
Peggy Sue for the ballroom dancers' pleasure and edification. That same Buddy Holly would've been quite the oldster himself, had he lived to see today, his 75th birthday. So, if you have a little time on your hands today, you might like to learn more about Buddy by viewing
The Real Buddy Holly Story 1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9 and
10. Cause, hey, Buddy was not only one of the most unique and vital voices of the early days of rock'n'roll, but he wore the same glasses that every other hipster in Berlin is wearing
right now.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:02 PM PST - 60 comments
There are few boardgames that the connoisseurs over at BoardGameGeek hate with as much passion as Monopoly. But many of them are drooling over a custom Monopoly set Elisabeth Redel made for her boyfriend. It's a gorgeous version themed to Bethesda's Fallout 3. Behold,
Fallout Monopoly.
posted by Legomancer at 5:56 PM PST - 130 comments
"STANDING THERE on the dais, consider the world as a series of concentric rings of loyalty. The people in the nearest ring, those in the front row, are owed the most. You should speak first to them. And then, in the next measure, to the room itself, which is the next ring, and only then to the physical world outside, the neighborhood, the town, the place, and then, just maybe, to the machinations of life-muffling institutions." from
How to Give a Eulogy. [more inside]posted by storybored at 5:14 PM PST - 19 comments
From the Salon review: "There [is] all kinds of pop culture iconography floating around in Walter Hill's "Streets of Fire": rock stars; outlaw biker gangs; neon marquees; Dick Tracy-style police cars; diners that serve up coffee in Syracuse china; silent, tough-guy heroes; bars that are rowdy dives and bars meant for quiet, solitary drinking; leather; a battered wallet photo of someone's sweetheart; lovers' reunions; lovers' breakups; dusters; convertibles; pompadours; guns. "Streets of Fire" is nothing but iconography, an attempt to boil down 30 years of pop to its familiar essence and then contain the whole thing in a comic-strip B movie... If chrome could bleed, it would look like the colors that run together in the streets of this movie." [more inside]posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:13 PM PST - 62 comments
In 1989, The Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society (later called the '
Fred Friendly Seminars') produced a ten-part series entitled
Ethics in America, hosted by
Fred W. Friendly [obit]. The show, which aired on PBS, featured prominent American thinkers of the time -- including psychologists, philosophers, doctors, lawyers, theologians, professors, business leaders, district attorneys, politicians, journalists, and a supreme court justice -- engaged in round-table debate concerning hypothetical ethical dilemmas. It was reprised in 2007 as Ethics in America II. Both incarnations [
I;
II] are viewable for free at
Lerner.org, which describes the original version thus:
This series uses the Socratic method to build analytical skills and examine ethical questions. The programs aim to sharpen moral reasoning without favoring a particular position by exploring ethical dilemmas in legal, political, medical, corporate, and military arenas. Panelists include Antonin Scalia, Faye Wattleton, and Peter Jennings. [more inside]posted by troll at 4:52 PM PST - 15 comments
Someone claiming to be an attorney is attempting to scrub the Internet of
"private, obscene, lewd and pornographic photographs" of Colton Haynes, the star of MTV's new series
Teen Wolf. Turns out, however, that the photos are neither private, nor obscene, nor porographic: they were part of a playful photo-spread published by
XY Magazine in March of 2006. Or as Queerty so elegantly puts it, "
XY Boytoy All Grown Up & Having Legal Regrets Now That He's On MTV." Markedly different, they point out, than when
Real World star Dustin Zito tried to
scrub out his gay porn past.
posted by hermitosis at 3:52 PM PST - 35 comments
Comic blogger Chris Sims, of the
Invincible Super-Blog fame, has been making a convincing
case over the last year or so at Comics Alliance for Funky Winkerbean being the most depressing long form comic ever written.
posted by rtimmel at 2:47 PM PST - 84 comments
We are making journal content on JSTOR published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere,
freely available to the public for reading and downloading. This includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals, representing approximately 6% of the total content on JSTOR.posted by Trurl at 12:02 PM PST - 84 comments
Are jobs obsolete? - op-ed by Douglas Rushkoff. "The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with 'career' be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?"
[more inside]posted by pupstocks at 10:28 AM PST - 204 comments
A year ago this August, 72 migrant workers -- 58 men and 14 women -- 'were on their way to the US border when they were
murdered by a drug gang at a ranch in northern Mexico, in circumstances that remain unexplained. Since then, a group of Mexican journalists and writers have created' a "Day of the Dead-style Virtual Altar" Spanish-language website,
72migrantes.com, to commemorate each of the victims, some of whom have never been identified. The New York Review of Books has
English translations of five of their profiles. [more inside]posted by zarq at 9:18 AM PST - 7 comments
Culturomics, an emerging field of study that applies climate-modeling levels of supercomputing power towards predicting human behavior, using "computerized analysis of vast digital book archives, offering novel insights into the functioning of human society", has been tried with digital news archives.
[more inside]posted by nomisxid at 9:17 AM PST - 12 comments
Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race. 'Once I realized I was racist, it was, well, what am I going to do about it?' says Winn, a mild-mannered white guy in his 30s. 'That shifts the defensiveness.' [...] 'The test of how racist you are is not how many people of color you can count as friends,' I recall someone telling me—I can't remember who now. 'It's how many white people you're willing to talk to about racism.'posted by shakespeherian at 8:34 AM PST - 256 comments
One act of kindness that befell British writer Bernard Hare in 1982 changed him profoundly. Then a student living just north of London, he tells the story to inspire troubled young people to help deal with their disrupted lives.
posted by joannemullen at 3:14 AM PST - 38 comments
September 6
Collective violence, extending from riots to warfare, presents a challenge to our ordinary understanding of free will. Actions that would rarely be taken by an individual on their own seem to be embraced when supported by a larger group. This can occur in societies ranging from the communist regime of Soviet Russia to the capitalist free market of modern day England. Given this commonality, perhaps the collective violence of a riot can be best understood as a biological event in which evolved cognitive responses encounter a unique environmental threat. And if that is the case, do individuals caught up in such incidents have any choice in the matter?
Freedom to Riot: an evolutionary perspective on collective violence.
posted by Rumple at 9:53 AM PST - 49 comments
Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the prequel to
the legendary PC classic developed by a freshman team at Eidos Montreal, received universal acclaim, but one point that many people seemed to dislike were the boss battles.
While they have their defenders, Rock Paper Shotgun
described them as "Feeling as though they were programmed by another team, from another planet, they absolutely, unequivocally do not fit in this game." As it turns out, they actually were designed by a contractor, the AI specialists
GRIP. Here's a promotional video with GRIP's president,
explaining their sins. (via Sesquiculus on MeFightClub)
[more inside]posted by The Devil Tesla at 9:13 AM PST - 140 comments
Intruded is an atmospheric 3D flash game where you play a mysterious character caught in a labyrinth of traps under the surveillance of an unknown observer.
posted by codacorolla at 6:58 AM PST - 18 comments
blind is a short film (5:17 - in Japanese w/ English subtitles) set in post-nuclear Tokyo. The film may be viewed at the
blind website, at
Vimeo or at
YouTube.
Parents please be advised: although the film features a young child, viewing by young children is not especially recommended, as they may be frightened.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:32 AM PST - 29 comments
September 5
The PC industry is built around an idea of almost infinite variation: different Wi-Fi adaptors, different Ethernet chipsets, different GPUs, different USB3 controllers. This variety is then reflected in the systems available from manufacturers—and more importantly, it's reflected in the way the systems are actually built. … The big reason that HP wants to get out of the PC business is that it's simply not very profitable for HP—and that's true for all the major PC OEMs, Cupertino excepted. Cheap PCs are certainly important for making computing accessible, but they also mean that PC vendors have made themselves vulnerable: endless price cuts and a failure to emphasize the value of a quality product have cut revenues and slashed profitability. Desperate to compete on pricing and pricing alone, the mass-market PC OEMs have ended up cutting their own throats.
Ars technica explains
why the PC industry is having such a difficult time trying to build a competitor to the MacBook Air.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:04 PM PST - 316 comments
Leonard Michaels' "The Zipper":
Rita Hayworth is never seen disrobed in the movie, though it is threatened more than once. The atmosphere of dark repression and mysterious forces – the mood or feeling of the movie – might be destroyed by the revelation of her body. It scared me as she began her striptease dance in the nightclub. I didn’t want everybody to see her body, or even to see that Rita Hayworth had a body. [more inside]posted by Trurl at 8:19 PM PST - 14 comments
An unbelievable collection of Roddy McDowall’s never-before-seen silent home movies from the summer of 1965 were uploaded onto YouTube yesterday, featuring impossibly young, impossibly gorgeous stars like Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Hope Lange, and Rock Hudson frolicking on the beach. You simply MUST go to the website and watch them all. The takeaway for me, though, is Sal Mineo slinking out the back door with a guilty-looking blond who may or may not be Bobby Sherman. What were THEY up to? Also mesmerizing: The closeup of Natalie Wood’s freckles, Jane Fonda sticking out her tongue, and Paul Newman’s hunky son.posted by BoringPostcards at 2:25 PM PST - 46 comments
September 4
Sons of Anarchy is a show that you either love or hate, but they do know how to choose music. One of the best covers during the past three years of the series is a haunting version of Dylan's
Forever Young, done a cappella by
Audra Mae,.
[more inside]posted by HuronBob at 8:42 PM PST - 83 comments
The Judo Chops series at MMA website
Bloody Elbow will help you discover the "art" in mixed martial arts. Each entry uses photos, GIFs and expert explanation to break down just what goes on in a high level mixed martial arts fight.
[more inside]posted by Bookhouse at 7:01 PM PST - 47 comments
"The web today is a growing universe of interlinked web pages and web apps, teeming with videos, photos, and interactive content. What the average user doesn't see is the interplay of web technologies and browsers that makes all this possible.
The color bands in this visualization represent the interaction between web technologies and browsers, which brings to life the many powerful web apps that we use daily." By
Hyperakt for
Chrome's 3rd birthday.
posted by chavenet at 3:00 PM PST - 29 comments
We've
previously visited
Cake Wrecks, but only for the "professional cakes gone
horribly,
hilariously wrong." But on Sundays, Cake Wrecks presents Sunday Sweets — cakes done incredibly well. Including:
Castles,
Peacocks,
Steampunk,
More Steampunk,
Dr. Seuss,
Sports,
Crafty cakes,
Harry Potter,
Undead Wedding cakes [more inside]posted by beagle at 9:19 AM PST - 33 comments
Embarrassment alert: some would say Channel 4 hired the
wrong man (Youtube) to host live coverage of the Athletics World Championships. The
consensus seems to be that Channel 4 are to blame.
posted by nthdegx at 5:11 AM PST - 50 comments
September 3
Transient Man. "Transient is a
black comedy about a homeless man who's visions lead him to believe he is an inter-dimensional savior of humanity, on a mission to save the universe. Is he indeed the 'one', chosen by mystical divine forces to embark on a crusade against ultimate evil, or a hopeless lunatic, aimlessly wandering the streets of San Francisco? Transient is a spoof on the hero's journey that's part Men in Black, part Raising Arizona, flavored with liberal portions of Ghostbusters and John Steinbeck. It is a ballad to the city by the bay, and a heartfelt tale of the sacrifices one man will take for his love for his family, his friends, and all of humankind."
[Via]posted by homunculus at 12:57 PM PST - 20 comments
in 1976, surrealist icon Salvador Dali starred and directed in the fake documentary/travelogue Impressions de la haute Mongolie - Impressions of Upper Mongolia - about his quest to find a rare hallucinogenic mushroom. It was intended as a tribute to the late
Raymond Roussel. It is available on Youtube in 5 parts.
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 (70 min)
posted by The Whelk at 9:22 AM PST - 25 comments
Poses , an art performance in which regular women replicate the poses struck by glamour models in fashion magazines, by Spanish artist Yolanda Dominguez (
interview).
posted by elgilito at 7:35 AM PST - 57 comments
September 2
Emma Donoghue discusses her novel, Room, in depth. [Warning: This is a single, hour-long video, but well worth it if you like this author or this book.
Room is told entirely from the perspective of a 5-year-old boy and deals with the subjects of sexual and physical abuse. If you haven't read the book and wish to read it, but you don't like spoilers, don't watch the video.]
posted by ottimo at 6:42 PM PST - 16 comments
Back in May of this year,
Mayer Hawthorne put together
a free collection of covers and descriptions of the tracks. The collection includes covers of The Isley Brothers (
Work To Do,
1972), Chromeo (
Don't Turn The Lights On,
2010), The Festivals (
You’ve Got The Makings Of A Lover,
late 1960s), Shorty's Portion (Fantasy Girl or Child,
1975?),
Jon Brion (
Little Person,
2008), and Electric Light Orchestra (
Mr. Blue Sky,
1977). Chances are that you've heard of (or at least heard from) most of these artists, except
Shorty's Portion, a one-off band with a small-run album. The group was centered around Steve Salazar, who was born with a hole in his heart, and died just short of his 27th birthday.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 1:30 PM PST - 7 comments
First published in 1691 in London, The Athenian Mercury was the original supplier of answers to readers' questions, a format much imitated since. Queries on love, science, religion, literature and anything else people thought to ask about, were answered by The Athenian Society, members being publisher John Dunton and three of his friends.
Athenian Mercury Project is a blog where Dr. Laura Miller publishes questions and answers from the The Athenian Mercury and The Awl has an occasional series where they trawl through the archive (
1,
2,
3,
4). Both of these places are good places to start, but if they aren't enough, The Athenian Oracle: Being an Entire Collection of All the Valuable Questions and Answers in the Old Athenian Mercuries, is available on Google Books for free perusal, searching and download. Well, almost all, sadly enough volume one is nowhere to be found, but it does contain volumes
two,
three,
four and a
supplement (which includes a lengthy history of The Athenian Society). In addition to that, there is
Athenian Sport, a collection of paradoxes debated by The Athenian Society. The questions asked by 17th Century Londoners should be familiar to those of us who read Ask MetaFilter.
posted by Kattullus at 11:30 AM PST - 23 comments
Hope and despair at a job fair. 'The hopefuls began lining up along Vermont Avenue hours before the church doors opened for the job fair at 9 a.m. Men in pressed slacks and sports jackets, women with high heels peeking from their purses and flip-flops on their feet for standing. A few folks were pushing babies in strollers; one guy was holding the front wheel of the bicycle he had ridden there from Inglewood. Almost everyone in line was black; all of them clutching briefcases, clipboards or binders, with resumes they hoped to exchange for business cards from would-be employers.'
[more inside]posted by VikingSword at 11:21 AM PST - 77 comments
He's a leather-clad ninja librarian moving from town to town, helping folk in trouble. She's a beautiful communist femme fatale with someone else's memories.
They fight crime!posted by The Whelk at 9:03 AM PST - 46 comments
September 1
Sue Coe, one of the most committed activist artists in America, has during her thirty-five-year career charted an idiosyncratic course through an environment that is at best ambivalent toward art with overt socio-political content.posted by Trurl at 9:05 PM PST - 27 comments
Myxozoa are microscopic parasites that infect fish, amphibians, and now, birds and at least one terrestrial mammal. For over a hundred years they were classified at protozoa. More recent research reveals that classification to be wide of the mark:
They’re jellyfish.
[more inside]posted by Herodios at 4:39 PM PST - 34 comments
"[Punk] in itself is comedy. The whole thing is ludicrous. They were taking themselves so seriously—" he laughs—"and the great message you want to tell people forty years later is 'Put
butter on your crumpets'? What they were saying they stood for, which was sort of anti-greed, anti-establishment... At the end, they all want the check. That's the truth." Pop biographer Chris Heath - who's written some rather fascinating books on
Robbie Williams and the
Pet Shop Boys -
meets Simon Cowell.
posted by mippy at 10:06 AM PST - 80 comments
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that a rubbish dump being created would, in the space of a century, become a protected area. Yet that is exactly what happened to what has come to be known as
Glass Beach, just outside Fort Bragg in California."
[more inside]posted by codacorolla at 9:40 AM PST - 20 comments
The Animal Architecture Awards have just announced the winners of their 2011 contest. Taking first place is Simone Ferracina’s Theriomorphous Cyborg, a (speculative) augmented reality game inspired by Jacob von Uexküll’s notion of the animal umwelt. Not truly architectural, Theriomorphous Cyborg instead shifts how a human participant relates to space and the landscape. Each level in the free-form game takes the player through different modes that relate to the sensory capacities of various animals. (
via)
[more inside]posted by infini at 8:25 AM PST - 3 comments
Genea Advertisement An Australian IVF clinic is rebranding itself from Sydney IVF to Genea. It's ad campaign for the name change includes a vaginal delivery-a first for Australian commercial television. Although ironically, featuring New Zealand parents. Disclaimer: these are the folk that brought LittleTaff and ToddlerTaff in to the world.
[more inside]posted by taff at 1:59 AM PST - 40 comments
Corporations don't dodge taxes. People do. "The report found that the CEOs of 25 major companies paid themselves more than their companies paid in Federal income taxes. Exhibit 1 on page 31 names and shames them (well, assuming they are capable of shame), and they include John J. Donahoe of eBay, Robert Coury of Mylan Labs, Jeff Immelt of GE, and Robert Kelly of Bank of New York. The New York Times article on the report elicited some not-convincing rebuttals."
NYT version
[via]posted by marienbad at 1:47 AM PST - 72 comments
"
The modern and contemporary philosophical tradition, which has emphasized the specialness and security of self-knowledge, especially self-knowledge of the stream of conscious experience, and in comparison the relative insecurity or derivativeness of our knowledge of the physical world around us, has the epistemic situation
upside-down" - Eric
Schwitzgebel (Previously)posted by Gyan at 12:40 AM PST - 32 comments
