January 31, 2014
American Cities: Before and After
a leap between kingdoms is not an everyday event
Suspicious Virus Makes Rare Cross-Kingdom Leap From Plants to Honeybees
When HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early 1900′s, it crossed a gulf spanning several million years of evolution. But tobacco ringspot virus, scientists announced last week, has made a jump that defies credulity. It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide.
When HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early 1900′s, it crossed a gulf spanning several million years of evolution. But tobacco ringspot virus, scientists announced last week, has made a jump that defies credulity. It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide.
Dream I Am
NYC events this weekend inc.: Lunar New Year, concerts, football game.
NFL holds Super Bowl in NYC; NYC unimpressed. While the stadium is technically in New Jersey, it is considered equally if not primarily a New York stadium, and the NFL turned Times Square and Broadway into Super Bowl Boulevard Engineered By GMC. Visitors can kick a football, watch television, ride a toboggan, shop, enjoy a free slice of Papa John's pizza, play XBox, take a photo with the oversized Roman numerals 'XLVIII', use relevant Twitter hashtags, and more. It is not decadent and depraved, though Vice and Gothamist would tend to disagree. The Times discusses less vehement disapproval and disappointment, while Business Insider wishes ill upon the city. Ticket sales are faltering relative to recent years, with the new mayor among those skipping out.
Girls Fighting (or Helping) Evil
Laura is super passionate about girls fighting evil, creating collages with short stories about various groups of girls fighting off demons - from radio DJs and the interns at Night Vale, to Dorothy Gale, travelers, and of course Beyonce. Sometimes the girls are helping the demons: evil counterparts to Cinderella, Belle, and Snow White, the underwater orchestra, even the underlord's admin assistant. Sometimes they fight each other; sometimes they fight themselves. Some of these fighters are real. Sometimes they'll let you borrow their style.
Their arms crawl away in opposite directions and their insides spill out
Mysterious epidemic devastates starfish population off the Pacific Coast. Although the die-off was first noticed in Washington state, the epidemic now ranges from southern California all the way north to Alaska. Scientists call it Sea Star Wasting Syndrome and efforts are underway to monitor the spread of this disease. Although this alarming trend seems to correlate with warmer-than-normal temperatures, scientists are not sure what is causing it.
Understanding Ourselves: Personal Identity is Mostly Performance
Kuu the Screech Owl having a bath and then being dried.
"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science..."
Climatologist Michael E. Mann, known for introducing the famous "hockey stick" graph, has filed a defamation suit against the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. [more inside]
"The ship had begun to fill with smoke. I did not know what to do."
The artists speak.
"Goodfellas was amazing to us,” Friedberg said. “I remember one day we said it could be funny if there was a spoof movie where, ‘Funny how? Like I’m a clown? I’m here to amuse you?’ — and then you cut to the guy and he’s wearing full clown makeup."Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the masterminds behind Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, The Starving Games, and Vampires Suck, "do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline under the weight of too many pop culture references." They are also notoriously reclusive, and little has been publicly known about them, their background, and why-oh-god-why they continue to do whatever exactly it is that they do -- until now.
The labrys of the gods will drive our ships to new lands
To celebrate what is turning out to be Greek Week on the blue and the recent excavation of a Philistine city in Jordan, please enjoy a field guide to the Sea Peoples of the late Bronze Age, full of information about their possible origins, their invasions of Egypt and the Near East, their armaments, their ships, and their diverse and impressive headwear.
The ethics of Prison Architect
Is it possible to create a prison management game without trivializing or misrepresenting the issue of mass incarceration? So begins a critique by Paolo Pedercini, developer of "games addressing issues of social and environmental justice," of Introversion Software's upcoming game Prison Architect, currently in still in development but available as an early access beta. Prison Architect's producer, Mark Morris, and its designer, Chris Delay, respond in a lengthy youtube video. [more inside]
Inside "Billionaires' Row": London's rotting derelict mansions.
"I became a hell child."
Growing up in a Romanian orphanage, Izidor Ruckel just wanted to get out. Now, he makes it his mission to raise awareness of the suffering of other orphans who remain institutionalized. [more inside]
You liked Asakai? Wait'll you hear about B-R5RB.
“Supposedly, it was set up for auto-pay, just like any other bill in real life, but either that didn’t happen or the money wasn’t in the wallet, and then everything just escalated..." EVE Online battles can be epic. Let's see how accidentally not paying the rent led to what is coming to be known as the largest battle in New Eden, and some would say gaming as a whole, to date. [more inside]
The Cozy Coupe goes street legal.
The classic yellow-and-red children's pedal car now has a grown-up version: a UK auto specialist has modified a Daewoo Matiz to look like a Cozy Coupe. It is fully functioning and legal for UK roads, though the lack of windshield means it's rather breezy to drive. From the BBC News video: "John Bitmead constructed an adult-sized copy of a Little Tikes toy car, which takes petrol, has a tax disc, and can reach speeds of up to 70mph (110km/h). Costing £4,000 to build, it also includes an airbag, headlights and mirrors." The car will be used to raise money for children's charities.
Every set, spacecraft and prop had a detailed blueprint.
"After posting my little memoir about working on Dune, a lot of people asked to see more of the pre-production art. I have a couple of hundred images, far more than I could post here, so I decided on a selection that showed how the look of the movie evolved from conception to completion."
Dear America, I Saw You Naked
The TSA saw the near-miss as proof that aviation security could not be ensured without the installation of full-body scanners in every U.S. airport. But the agency’s many critics called its decision just another knee-jerk response to an attempted terrorist attack. I agreed, and wrote to the Times saying as much. My boss wasn’t happy about it.
“The problem we have here is that you identified yourself as a TSA employee,” she said.
Jason Harrington, author of the formerly anonymous Taking Sense Away blog, on his experiences as a dissenter inside of the Transportation Security Administration.
“The problem we have here is that you identified yourself as a TSA employee,” she said.
Jason Harrington, author of the formerly anonymous Taking Sense Away blog, on his experiences as a dissenter inside of the Transportation Security Administration.
Manzanilla de la muerte, little apple of death
The world is full of poisonous plants, but they often provide some form of warning. For example, Datura stramonium (Jimson weed) seed pods are covered in spikes and the plant has been described as having a “noxious” odor, especially the blossoms, but others aren't so considerate. For instance, don't eat the little "beach apples", even if they smell and taste sweet. Better yet, stay away from the entire tree, as all portions of the manchineel tree are poisonous. [more inside]
Competing Constructions of Masculinity in Ancient Greece
Scholars often speak of ancient Greek masculinity and manhood as if there was a single, monolithic, simple conception. I will show that the ancient Greeks, like us today, had competing models or constructions of gender and that what it meant to be a man was different in different contexts. I will focus on three constructions of the masculine gender in ancient (classical and post-classical) Greece: the Athenian civic model, the Spartan martial model, and the Stoic philosophical model. I will focus on how these share certain commonalities, how they differ in significant ways, how each makes sense in terms of larger ideological contexts and needs, and, finally how constructions of masculinities today draw from all three. (10 page PDF) [more inside]
Except for in a couple of instances, feet do not touch the ball.
Dirty, Dull and Dangerous
What Jobs Will The Robots Take? Eight Ways Robots Stole Our Jobs In 2013. Who is next?
Soldiers?
Rescue teams?
Managers?
Astronauts? [more inside]
A Map of Hip America
What is the Williamsburg of your city? [SLGawker]
Russia without Ukraine is a country; Russia with Ukraine is an empire.
On Sale: Nine Pound Hammers
Founded in 1900, Beck & Benedict Hardware Store in Waynesboro, PA, has been hosting Friday night bluegrass jams since 1989. Now in their 25th year, the sessions are open to listeners and pickers alike.
Red Light, Green Light, and Belly Rubs
Women And Their Machine
A Think-piece About Female Pioneerism in Electronic Music, Post-post Feminism and Some Sassy Statements On Sexism
’Woman’ is not a genre. Stop acting like we’re a passing fad. Delia Derbyshire (previously), Daphne Oram (previously), Wendy Carlos, Doris Norton, Suzanne Ciani, Cynthia Webster… even Goldfrapp and Add N To (X)’s Ann Shenton. These women weren’t on the periphery of electronic music…they pioneered it”, says Mollie Wells of dark pop band Funerals in an Electronic Beats feature on women in electronic music. And she is right. Females have, since the post-war inception of electronically produced music, played a crucial role in its development and presentation. [more inside]
Straight Menace
"I talked to a lawyer about suing, but there wasn't nothing we could do.... Because [The First 48] shows 'All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty' at the beginning of the program, they're covered."
A&E shirks responsibility for episodes that broadcast incorrect information, and spokespeople confess the channel doesn't re-edit or correct flawed programs beyond stating at a show's end that murder charges were dropped. "We simply film the investigations as they unfold," a spokesperson said. "Every episode states clearly that all individuals are innocent until proven guilty."
A&E shirks responsibility for episodes that broadcast incorrect information, and spokespeople confess the channel doesn't re-edit or correct flawed programs beyond stating at a show's end that murder charges were dropped. "We simply film the investigations as they unfold," a spokesperson said. "Every episode states clearly that all individuals are innocent until proven guilty."
Cru[uuu]ise ship
Cruise ship not long enough? Want that "limousine" feel to your ocean-going craft? Why not cut it in half and stick an extra 99 feet of ship in the middle? (Skip to 1:16 for a great cross-section shot) [more inside]
A Guide to Flu Varieties in 2014
Judy Stone writes two thousand words helping to make sense of contemporary influenza varieties for Scientific American. David McCandless's Influ-Venn-za draws a picture for us. via Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing
PSA
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