January 14, 2011
Growing Up Gay
Growing Up Gay (Part 1, Part 2) is a two-part documentary series exploring the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people growing up in Ireland.
As recently as 1993, homosexuality was illegal in Ireland. As the first generation born after decriminalization comes of age, this series seeks to establish how much has changed in Irish society in the intervening years. For young people, whose lives revolve around school and the family, is it any easier to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender today than it was 17 years ago?
Musical notes from the underground
Where can you see jazz1 shows,2 doo-wop performances,3 a vaudevillian dance act,4 found object5 percussion duos,6 opera concerts,7 international and intergalactic folk music gigs,8 and a pink gorilla playing the bass9? All for $2.25? [more inside]
Mapping the intersection of education and money
Does a better education really lead to a higher income? Take a map of the USA, overlay census data for high school graduation rates (red), college graduate rates (yellow) and median household income (blue). What do you get? A patchwork map of purples, blues, pinks and greens, that shows the relationship between education and income by county. [more inside]
Truth No Defense against Danish Hate Speech Law
A Danish court rules that truth is not a defense to its hate speech law and fines Member of Parliament Jesper Langballe $1,000 for commenting that "Of course Lars Hedegaard [President of the Danish Free Press Society] should not have said that there are Muslim fathers who rape their daughters when the truth appears to be that they make do with killing their daughters (the so-called honour killings) and leave it to their uncles to rape them." Hedegaard had tried to explain that he was speaking in the context of an epidemic of honor violence within Muslim families when he said "They rape their own children"; he faces his own set of charges. (via Volokh Conspiracy) [more inside]
Vicenta
Vicenta (NSFW - Contains explicit Spanish Plasticine sex)
What was that number again?
Where do you think Apple’s iPhone is the most popular? Where do Nokia’s Symbian phones dominate? How is it going for Android in different parts of the world? What about Blackberry?
We’re going to answer all of those questions and more in this article, which will closely examine mobile OS usage across the world.
Michael, Mikey, Mike
Michael, Michael, Michael!; SLVimeo (1.38); every line of dialogue in The Lost Boys is "Michael". [more inside]
Get Your Shades On, This is Cool
In 1967, Ken Nordine (previ-ously) did a themed album of his "Word Jazz" titled "Colors" that consisted of over 30 short poems/riffs about specific colors. Recently, cuts from that album have become popular soundtracks for exercises in animation...
A lot of them use the currently-trendy "kinetic typography" -
Black
Beige
Blue
Brown (with a Brown Owl)
Brown
Green
Mauve
Magenta
while others use paper cut-outs -
Amber
Azure
Cerise
Coral (starts at 1:00)
Crimson
Fuschia
Green (again)
Lavender
Magenta (again)
Maroon (a rhyming Cartoon)
Mauve (again)
Orange
Russet.
Plus three versions of Yellow, with J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs, with a character resembling PacMan and
with blobby cut-outs and a cut-off ending.
Finally Flesh, but without animation.
Pirate Latitudes
William Langewiesche writes an enthralling account of the hijacking of a French cruise ship in the Gulf of Aden by Somali pirates.
Whaley not Whalley!
The Smiths Project. 71 Smiths songs recorded in 1300 hours, in 1 year, in billions of layers of 1 voice, by 1 woman. [more inside]
"You killed my president, you rat!"
Hey, you got meter in my panel frame!
There's poetry about comics, comics about poetry, (Stone Cold Poetry Bitches!), and even poetry and comics sharing the stage. If you like 'em mashed together, you might enjoy the poetry cartoon collaborations of Nick Flynn and Josh Neufeld.
Maixembourg
Let the word go forth
To mark the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inauguration, the JFK Library has unveiled a new digital archive containing 200,000 pages; 300 reels of audio tape, containing more than 1,245 individual recordings of telephone calls, speeches and meetings; 300 museum artifacts; 72 reels of film; and 1,500 photos.
A portfolio of space imagery and videos
"The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular places in space that a person might theoretically be able to one day visit. So for the most part, nebula, galaxies and the like are not a part of this forum. I tend to focus on “terrestrial” places or places that host such places. I suppose I would like to find out more about these places that we may one day inhabit or simply visit."
wanderingspace.net
Hat tip to Nice Guy Mike!
wanderingspace.net
Hat tip to Nice Guy Mike!
Grammar+Style Police Goes Vampire
Edward and Bella disemboweld. Style purists are pretty tedious, but so can be Bella's conversation. [more inside]
The Heart of Darkness
Nefarious Notoriety: a Study of the Thoughts Behind Assasination Attempts on Public Figures
In 1999, psychologist Robert A. Fein and Executive Director of the US Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, Bryan Vossekuil, published a study of 83 persons who had attempted or succeeded to assassinate a public figure (Google HTML view of pdf). Those 83 were all the people who were known to have attacked, or approached to attack, a prominent public official or public figure in the United States since 1949. The goal was to better understand the motives behind such actions, and included interviews with some of the subjects. NPR covered the report today, interviewing Fein and discussing the findings. The summary was that the attacks were not political in motive, but attempts at gaining fame. "They experienced failure after failure after failure, and decided that rather than being a 'nobody,' they wanted to be a 'somebody,' " Fein said. [more inside]
Revolution
'The fall of Mr. Ben Ali marks the first time that widespread street demonstrations have overthrown an Arab leader.' Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the president of Tunisia for 23 years, has fled the country amid protests that have been ongoing for weeks. [more inside]
The Value of Optical Delusions
William Taylor Adams, a progressive Massachusetts educator and one term legislator, was once a household name in populist fiction under his nom de plume Oliver Optic. [more inside]
Criminals Are Stupid
'Conservative justices appear to agree police should be allowed to enter a suspect's residence without a warrant if they suspect evidence is being destroyed.' 'Police officers who smell marijuana coming from an apartment can break down the door and enter if they have reason to believe the evidence might be destroyed, several Supreme Court's justices suggested Wednesday.''Scalia said the police couldn't go wrong by knocking loudly on the door.
"Criminals are stupid," he said, and they often cooperate with police when they are not required to do so. They might open the door and let officers inside, or if not, the police can break in.''In the past, the high court usually has said police cannot enter a home or apartment without a search warrant because of the 4th Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures."
But during arguments in a drug case, the court's conservatives said they favored relaxing that rule when police say they have a need to act fast.' [more inside]
So...got some time to kill?
Courtesy of the indiegames.com weblog, the top 10 indie games of 2010 in a variety of categories:
- Freeware Experimental Games (previously)
- Freeware Shoot 'em Ups
- Freeware Role-Playing Games
- Freeware Puzzle Games
- Freeware Adventure Games
- Browser Arcade Games
- Freeware Arcade Games
- Browser Platformers
- Top 10 Indie Games (overall, including ones that *gasp* actually cost money)
- Indie Games To Watch Out For In 2011
Still temporary. Still PATRIOTic.
USA PATRIOT is up for renewal again. Tim Nichols of the Independent Examiner reports that "nobody notices" as Mike Rogers (R-MI) floats the renewal. As we noted last year during another quiet renewal, this is not the first time the Obama administration has been confronted with the idea. While groups as disparate as the Cato Institute and the Randolph Bourne Institute's antiwar.com speak out against the possibility, mainstream media sources seem uninterested.
Mensch
"A desperate Arizona man faced with a horrible family tragedy is praising a Southwest Airlines pilot today for displaying an act of human kindness some say is rare in the airline industry: he delayed a takeoff so the man could reach the bedside of his dying 2-year old grandson." Via. [more inside]
WAR! Huh! Good god, y'all!
Wins-above-replacement, or WAR, is a Sabermetric term of art for baseball player comparison. Fangraphs, one of the go-to sites for baseball nerdlingers, now offers a way to make WAR grids, an amazingly easily comprehended visual display comparing players based on WAR, sortable by team, position and season, with a default topline of player age. [more inside]
There is excessive lead in the nuclear sludge
The Decentralized Dance Party
The Decentralized Dance Party : The DDP is a portable, battery-powered Party System. It consists of hundreds of Party People, carrying boomboxes, and a DJ who wears a backpack, containing a powerful FM transmitter.
NFL Pregame Show Laughing
The absurd amount of over-laughing that occurs during NFL Pregame Shows has long been a cliche. The Wall Street Journal recently calculated that one show spent 2 minutes and 22 seconds, or 11.6% of its length, laughing. But this recent video may be the defining moment of the trend, raising over-laughing to an art form.
I just need some space (between sentences)
Slate says putting more than one space between sentences is "totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong." Microsoft's Bill Hall agrees. LaTex does not. The American Psychological Association used to agree but has changed its mind. The exhaustive Wikipedia article on sentence spacing has a predictably prickly discussion page.
For Whom The Toll Bells
Tolls and toll roads are a fact of modern life. If you run past the booth without paying for any reason, you must pay a fine. A Chinese man has been sentenced to life in prison for not paying tolls.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION!!!
Anxiety and test-taking
A study just published in Science finds that students who briefly write about their testing anxieties do better on the subsequent test. The abstract at Science, and a podcast interview with Sian Beilock, one of the study authors.
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film by Banksy (copious previously) about himself, street art, celebrity, and Mister Brainwash. [more inside]
The Giant Triplets of Racism, Materialism, and Militarism
At a Pentagon commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Defense Department general council Jeh C. Johnson argued King, a strident opponent of the Vietnam War and of militarism generally, would acknowledge a justification for US military actions around the world. Justin Elliot of Salon responds.
RIP Trish Keenan
Trish Keenan, vocalist for the group Broadcast, has passed away after contracting H1N1 and pneumonia. [more inside]
"Death Wears Bunny Slippers"
Who says philosophers don't have fun?
Basically, Kant was right by Carrie Jenkins, aka Conceptual Truth. Philosophy should always be this much fun! Also check out her philosophy band, The 21st Century Monads.
What's the problem?
Interview with Gary Gorton (pdf) - Fascinating look at private institutional bank money creation (really) and subsequent run on the shadow banking system that hearkens back to the late-19th century banking crises with securitization playing the role of checking before the advent of deposit insurance. "Gorton is a lucid narrator of a complex tale." (via via)
Pride and smokeless fire
The Word made another helper from fire to be its hands as it toiled on its creations. The Word gave them free will. Although they did not know their name, they were called the Jinn... Iblis, a webcomic take on the Islamic tempter figure by Kelli Nelson. [more inside]
Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks
Clang Jingle Clang
While the self-appointed task of one creative act per day continues to exist, I present the sonic explorations of Clang Jingle Clang . Highlights of Kerrith Livengood's early morning posts include a Goomba attack, political musings, and a fable from Aesop.
The Guy Who Collected the Hornet's Nest
Wasps' nests: nuisance, a source of tasty treats, or just a tongue twister? If you are a Social Wasp Enthusiast check out the Collection of Monster Nests (video tour). [via]
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