February 1, 2014
Signpainters, short cut from a documentary
"This is the only thing I could do, and I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to do, and make a living." From a special edit of the feature length documentary Sign Painters.
“This world is a veil, and the face you wear is not your own.”
Last week's episode of True Detective featured a stirring tent-revival sermon from a wildly charismatic preacher. It was heavily edited with dialogue between the stars of the show. Nic Pizzolatto (the writer/creator of the series) thought it so good, he released the full 6-minute sermon for you to enjoy. [more inside]
Miklós Jancsó has died.
Famed Hungarian film director, Miklós Jancsó, has died at age 92. Winner of Cannes in 1972 for Red Psalm/Még kér a nép[SLYT, NSFW], which deals with a doomed uprising of farm workers, he also directed The Round-Up/Szegénylegények [SLYT, entire film], widely regarded as the greatest Hungarian film of all time. Hughly influential, he made great use of the long take with Elektreia/Szerelmem, Elektra having just 12 shots in its 70 minutes. Béla Tarr, another exponent of the long-shot, called Jancsó the greatest Hungarian film director of all time. [more inside]
J.K. Trolling
In a an interview conducted by Emma Watson appearing on the front page of today's Sunday Times (embiggen), Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling admits she regrets Ron and Hermione's relationship and that Hermione should have wed Harry. Maybe she should have killed Ron after all. [more inside]
R.I.P. Arthur Rankin, Jr.
Arthur Rankin Jr., the animator behind holiday classics such as Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town passed away on Thursday, January 30. [more inside]
Push the Envelope, Watch it Bend
RADIO1HEAD
Do you want to listen to a 2-hour DJ mix by Thom Yorke and Nigel Goodrich (of Radiohead and Atoms for Peace)? Of course you do. [more inside]
Dubbel Dutch: "I think we need more [musical] schizophrenics"
Marc Glasser started making electronic music when he was a teenager, and now produces music under the name Dubbel Dutch and releasing it most often on the eclectic Mixpak label, whose general sound often leans towards weird takes on reggae riddims. But as Glasser mentioned in a 2010 interview, he has been "opening up to music from everywhere. Cumbia, dancehall, kuduro, South African house, Dutch bubbling, Bmore club, Chicago juke and footwork*, old skool jungle and hardcore, garage, UK Funky and all that mingles with, or shares influences with, these sounds." What does this "schizophrenic" collage of musical styles sound like? Start with Self Help Riddims and the title track video, Self Help Riddim, then go from there. [more inside]
New HD Footage of the most awesome skydive ever.
you have seen the rest, here is the best Felix Baumgartner jumped from really (24-miles) high up . This new footage will make your skin crawl.
Hotdish!
Starting in 2011, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has hosted a Minnesota delegation Hotdish competition - a friendly bipartisan and bicameral competition for all of the Minnesota congressional delegates. [more inside]
An Ad You Won't See During the Super Bowl.
Native Americans call themselves many things. (YouTube). An ad you won't see during the big game, "Proud to Be." From changethemascot.org.
Brandon from Beijing.
Based in Beijing, Zhang Bin aka Benjamin(his blog in Chinese), works with brilliant colors in a sequential style to create eye catching graphics which include the covers of Marvel Comics and his own, manhua graphic novels. His subjects are generally young and urban, produced in splashes of color (A video slideshow of his art - watch out for the music). An interview with Benjamin about his art from his first visit to a comic convention in New York. [more inside]
suing to abolish tenure for teachers in California
"nine public school students are challenging California’s ironclad tenure system, arguing that their right to a good education is violated by job protections that make it too difficult to fire bad instructors." (SLNYT) [more inside]
Disk Around a Star
An Alderson Disk is a science fiction megastructure imagined first by scientist Dan Alderson. It's a solid disk that is thousands of kilometers thick, with a circumference equal to the orbit of Mars or Jupiter. The habitable zone would be on both sides of the disk and would be millions of times the surface area of the Earth. Not much theoretical work has been done on its feasibility, but some have tried. Missile Gap, by MeFi's own Charles Stross, which won the Locus readers' award for best novella of 2006, features a 1960s Earth transposed to an Alderson disk and is available for free on the publisher's website.
Cursing Cursive
No longer swearing by cursive writing
Cursive handwriting: Seven states fight for cursive writing in school
Learning Cursive Is a Basic Right
Cursive writing could become part of Common Core
Superbowl Commercials
Some of you will be watching football, some of you will be watching the commercials (I suppose some of you will be watching both, and, let me acknowledge that some of you will not watch a damn thing and get that out of the way..)..
For you commercial fans...here's a preview of many of the 2014 Superbowl Commercials...
And, going back, here's HuffPo's list of the 50 best all time Superbowl Commercials.
Warning PepsiEverythingBlue
"The Mind of the South"
Earlier in the week, Slate posted an article on the massive Atlanta traffic jam. The article quoted a book about the Southern character that stated it was "Proud, brave, honorable by its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal." Yet the same book also stated the South had the less admirable qualities of "suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too-narrow sense of social responsibility." The book was 1941's "The Mind of the South" and its author was W. J. Cash. [more inside]
Le Skate Moderne
13:52:05 GMT First Clear Indication of Off-Nominal Aero Increments
Eleven years ago, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over the skies of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana. It was the result of an incident that had taken place at take-off fifteen days earlier that saw a large piece of foam being hit by the leading edge of the orbiter wing at roughly 970 feet per second (630 MPH or 1013 km/hr). It took some time to convince engineers that a foam impact could have had such monumental effect. For that reason, Scott Hubbard and the rest of the CAIB ordered a test at the Southwest Research Institute to recreate the conditions of the strike. The first test on June 16th did not yield much interesting insight. The results of the second impact test on July 7th did. A loud gasp could be heard from the crowd attending the test. Here is the leading edge of tested orbiter wing before and after the July 7th impact.
Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria
The Hausa people of the north of Nigeria like Bollywood films so much that around 20 years ago they started making their own local productions. The films of Kannywood (for Kano, the capital city) feature song and dance - and the incredible music that defines Northern Nigeria: autotuned robotic vocals combined with frenetic drum machine rhythms and intricate, interwoven synths in a hybrid of local styles and Indian influence. Hear a generous sampling of it here.
The radical consequences of public conveniences
It drips on her head most days, says Champaben, but in the monsoon season it’s worse. In rain, worms multiply. Every day, nonetheless, she gets up and walks to her owners’ house, and there she picks up their excrement with her bare hands or a piece of tin, scrapes it into a basket, puts the basket on her head or shoulders, and carries it to the nearest waste dump.A chapter from The Big Necessity, a book exploring the world of human waste: A Brief History of Class and Waste in India [more inside]
Computer History According to Law & Order
Artist Jeff Thompson received a Rhizome commission in 2012 for his project Computers on Law & Order, for which he watched every episode of the long-running television series and took screenshots of all the computers. Thompson will present an illustrated lecture based on the project this Saturday, Feb 1 at 4pm at the Museum of the Moving Image, followed by a discussion with Law & Order graphic designer Kevin Raper. In this article, he shares some of his findings.
Please let me hold your hand
On February 1, 1964 the Beatles conquered the top of the Billboard Top 100 for the first time with I Want to Hold Your Hand. A week later they made their first American tour stop on the Ed Sullivan television show. The music business and the entire country were rocked. It's fifty years of Beatlemania. [more inside]
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