January 23, 2013
World's largest inadvertent cheese fondue
When a lorry transporting 27 tonnes of Norwegian cheese caught fire in the Brattli Tunnel at Tysfjord, it kept burning for five days, with the tunnel still closed down for traffic. The cheese in question, Brunost, is made by slowly boiling (goats) milk, cream and whey together until the water evaporates and the milk sugar caramalises, which gives the cheese its brown colour. As the Norwegian fire services found out the hard way, its high fat and sugar contents also means it burns well. Something that might have come in useful during the Dutch cheese wars between Edam and Woerden, as immortalised in this commercial; Edammer cheese just couldn't get hot enough.
Dem Bones
This is how we play Scrabble.
We are delighted to present Scrabble enthusiasts everywhere with The Scrabble Player's Handbook, a definitive and free ebook on how to play Scrabble, written by a dozen of the best tournament players in the world. All twelve authors have competed in past World Scrabble Championships and have spent over a year combining their knowledge into this one free Scrabble resource. Definitive. Accessible. Free. What more do you need to know? [Website links to a 6.6 Mb PDF.]
Now all they need is a replica of "The Wire"
"Almost a decade since the end of the hit American TV series Friends, the show — and, in particular, the fictitious Central Perk cafe, where much of the action took place — is enjoying an afterlife in China's capital, Beijing. Here, the show that chronicled the exploits of New York City pals Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey is almost seen as a lifestyle guide."
we love metal and we love unicorns lets party!!!!:)
Glammed out opulence: Rococo punk through the decades
If gears and brass aren't your thing, and you'd prefer your alternate history to take its influences from 18th century Paris, then Rococo punk might be your scene. But this is no new reaction to steampunk. Oh no, the Boston band The Upper Crust ("Let Them Eat Rock," "We're Finished with Finishing School," "Little Lord Fauntleroy;" previously) go back to 1995, and before them was Malice Mizer ("Illuminati," "Bel Air," "Au Revoir,"), though their visual style wasn't just Rococo glam (as seen here in "Beast of Blood" and "Garnet"). But the grandfathers to all these young punks was Adam and the Ants ("Ant Music," "Kings of the Wild Frontier," "The Prince Charming Revue" [YT playlist]).
What's the shape of a falling raindrop?
"When you run molten lead through a sieve and let it fall into a water tank far below, surface tension forms the lead drops into almost perfect spheres." The first purpose-built shot tower was built by William Watts of Bristol, UK, in 1782. America built its first shot tower in Philadelphia in 1808. The tallest shot tower ever built (but not the first in Australia) still stands in the center of Melbourne though now underneath a glass roof. As less costly methods of making shot were discovered these towers closed up shop, some not until the late sixties. Many of these towers have found new purposes as historical sites, art galleries or simply mysterious links to the past. [more inside]
The fare is a veritable smorgasbord
We Must Build An Enormous McWorld In Times Square, A Xanadu Representing A McDonald's From Every Nation
"The central attraction of the ground floor level is a huge mega-menu that lists every item from every McDonald's in the world, because this McDonald's serves ALL of them." Previously.
"The central attraction of the ground floor level is a huge mega-menu that lists every item from every McDonald's in the world, because this McDonald's serves ALL of them." Previously.
We're not scientists, we just love dinos.
Gears to replace flannel on the teenagers of America
Don't call it a Station, It's a Terminal
On February 2nd, Grand Central Terminal turns 100. It's full of history, secrets, the location for many movies, and the site of a major squash tournament.
Octopus Maps
Need quick visual shorthand for an aggressively encroaching political entity? You want an Cartographic Land Octopus! It's a subcategory of satirical maps. More octopus maps here, here, here.
The Rise Of Food Fraud
'A new study on food fraud was released Wednesday morning by U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention'. As part of the study, nearly 800 new records - a 60% increase from last year - were added to their searchable online database of food fraud reports at foodfraud.org. 'The new records show that the most commonly fraudulent products are olive oil, milk, saffron, honey and coffee. Tea, fish, clouding agents (used in fruit juices, like lemon, to make products look freshly squeezed), maple syrup and spices (turmeric, black pepper and chili pepper) were also top imposters.' 'Clouding agents were found in 877 food products from 315 different companies.' [more inside]
Merely by the power of his interactive environment
Stephen Lavelle AKA Increpare (mentioned previously, previously, and previously) has recently released some new games recently, as mentioned by Liz Ryerson (also previously).
Many of them create vibrant, emotional, affecting environments. The club like dream/nightmare that is Slave of God is written about by Cara Ellison of Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
Armstrong...and the rest all chose to be supermen rather than sportsmen.
In light of Lance Armstrong's recent admissions and the failure of the Baseball Writers' Association of America to elect a single member to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, the New Atlantis examines the era that created people like Armstrong and Barry Bonds and what this subsequent rejection says about us, them, and the sports themselves.
ConflictResolution
Supercomputing in 1983
"The late Dr. John Fletcher describes, in 1983, the history of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's Octopus network." This video describes the history of the laboratory's large computers, from the Univac 1 to the Cray XMP, the evolution of mass storage, high speed printers, the Octopus networking facilities, and the emergence of minicomputers.
Canine InterWebs.
It's a Samoan Thing. You Wouldn't Understand.
Ilana Gershon is a professor currently researching how people use the Internet to break up with their romantic partners, but before that she wrote an anthropological study about "strategic ignorance" in Samoan immigrant communities, all of which is just a complicated way of showing that she's the most unusually qualified person on the Internet to comment on the Manti Te'o hoax. (previously)
Exporting from Lightroom
Hey, you've got your black people in my American TV show!
'I'm a White Girl': Why 'Girls' Won't Ever Overcome Its Racial Problem-an article from The Atlantic with several interesting links on the larger issue of including (or not) black characters into American television.
Papercraft animation
Papercraft animation "The latest stop motion music video from animation duo Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski for Japanese singer-songwriter Shugo Tokumaru." [via]
Axe Cop: The Movie cannot be far behind
Axe Cop (previously) will be airing as an animated series on Fox, scheduled to start airing on July 27. [more inside]
Hell Froze Over
It's cold in Chicago right now. How cold? Water will freeze to the sides of a burning building.
Gospel of Intolerance
Gospel of Intolerance - Excerpts of "God Loves Uganda", a feature documentary directed and produced by filmmaker Roger Ross Williams is having its premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film explains how money donated by American evangelicals directly finances the violent antigay movement in Uganda.
Instrumental lying by parents in the US and China
The practice of lying to one's children to encourage behavioral compliance was investigated among parents in the US (N = 114) and China (N = 85). The vast majority of parents (84% in the US and 98% in China) reported having lied to their children for this purpose. Within each country, the practice most frequently took the form of falsely threatening to leave a child alone in public if he or she refused to follow the parent. Crosscultural differences were seen: A larger proportion of the parents in China reported that they employed instrumental lie-telling to promote behavioral compliance, and a larger proportion approved of this practice, as compared to the parents in the US. This difference was not seen on measures relating to the practice of lying to promote positive feelings, or on measures relating to statements about fantasy characters such as the tooth fairy. Findings are discussed with reference to sociocultural values and certain parenting-related challenges that extend across cultures. [HTML] -- [PDF] [more inside]
We can all relax...the zombie horde will be eliminated..
"When we need taquitos, we run to Quick Trip" (slyt) Zombie defenders come to an Ace Hardware near you.. [more inside]
The untouchables
Wall Street's leaders have utterly escaped jail. "There have been no arrests of senior Wall Street executives." Frontline examines why the United States federal government didn't go after the financial titans.
(via)
"It's like, the explosion blew the hair off of his head, and onto his fa
Most of the characters on FX's Archer have appearances that roughly correspond to the actors that voice them, with the notable exception of the main character H. Jon Benjamin's Sterling Archer. The unaired short L'Espion Mal Faît from the DVD extras resolves that.
Select pictures to color and candy to eat
This year, cartoonist Lynda Barry is Artist in Residence at the Arts Institute of the University of Wisconsin, and her class "The Unthinkable Mind" starts today. This is the poster. This is the introduction to the class. This is the first handout.
Nature Has A Formula That Tells Us When It's Time To Die
Here's the surprise: There is a mathematical formula which says if you tell me how big something is, I can tell you — with some variation, but not a lot — how long it will live.Yunfun Tan illustrates the heartbeat of mother nature in this post on NPR
Gayest Cities in America, 2013
Advocate.com has compiled a list of the gayest cities in America. Their eclectic criteria and point system is explained in the article. [more inside]
I got monsters. How 'bout you?
Mina Caputo began her career as Keith Caputo, founder of the heavy metal band Life of Agony. In the early 1990s the band became huge in Europe, and the teenage Caputo found herself trapped in the life of a macho metal superstar when what she really wanted was to be a nice young lady attending Julliard. She performed as Keith for over 20 years, then in 2010 Niko Bikialo's quietly devastating music video for Caputo's song Got Monsters [brief nudity] put the viewer inside the mind of a transwoman as she struggles to find her place in the world and make a friend of the stranger she sees in the mirror. A year later, Caputo shocked metal fans when she officially announced she was transitioning. [more inside]
Why We Abandoned the Public Realm, and Why We Need It Again
p.s. ppprrrrrr <--best regards
10 years ago marked the debut of Chappelle's Show. Grantland's Rembert Browne pits the 64 most watched sketches on Comedy Central in a tournament to decide the funniest sketch of the 2.something seasons the show produced. (SPOILER warning - the final 8 are linked inside!) [more inside]
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