February 5, 2012
The Cinnamon Challenge
GloZell does the Cinnamon Challenge. "What's the Cinnamon Challenge?" This. (Can the Cinnamon Challenge kill you?? Unlikely.)
Madonna wins the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl 2012 Half Time show, in which the lich queen Madonna declares supreme victory over all who fall before her. There were also some adverts and a sporting event of some kind.
Hetty Green
Best known for the (exaggerated) tales of her miserliness, Hetty Green was arguably the greatest female investor in history. During the 1907 Bankers' Panic, her loan of $1.1 million helped keep New York City solvent. Her estate - greater than that of J.P. Morgan's - was valued at more than $2 billion in today's money. [more inside]
Total Annual Building Energy Consumption for New York City
An amazing piece of statistical analysis produced this zoomable (down to the block level) map of energy consumption for New York City, based on Spatial distribution of urban building energy consumption by end use. [via]
SoftPanorama, a vast resource with a Russian edge
SoftPanorama / SoftPanorama Switchboard, created by Nikolai Bezroukov, is one of those vast, practical resources with a fun side too. There is the excellent and very useful Classification of Corporate Psychopaths | Coping with the toxic stress in IT environment | Surviving a Bad Performance Review | Information Overload: How Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime | Science, PseudoScience and Society. But then there is the fun side of the site too: Russian Music Oldies on YouTube | economic crisis humor | Songs from Famous Russian Cartoons on Youtube. [more inside]
The male mystique of Henry Miller
The Male Mystique of Henry Miller by Jeanette Winterson.
Fun with accordion covers!
Polka face, Monkey Island, Bohemian rhapsody, When I'm 64, Tetris Theme, Nyan theme, We're not gonna take it, Take on me, Smells like teen spirit.
Slumber parties and sisterhood
Jezebel. The Hairpin. xoJane. Rookie. The ladyblog isn't quite the same as a feminist blog, but what is it? n+1 says, The notion that women might share some fundamental experience and interests, a notion on which women’s websites would seem to depend—'sisterhood,' let’s call it—has curdled into BFF-ship." Salon counters, "On the ladyblogs, adult womanhood is a given, and within our shared womanhood we carve out a comfortable space we can all inhabit."
Helene Nolthenius
Two years before The Name of the Rose, Dutch academic Helene Nolthenius published the first of three detective novels featuring the medieval Tuscan cleric Lapo Mosca. She died in 2000. Her own story is sadly affecting. (Via the Dartmouth History blog. [more inside]
I don't feel any guilt.................. because in this case...
Another honor killing that isn't about honor, and even less about Nietzsche. By MeFi's own resident psychiatrist.
Abandoned Ireland
Tarquin Blake photographs the abandoned castles, houses, forts and mines of Ireland. I'm fairly sure I've come across Rhincrew Abbey and the Lost Mines once or twice in my travels in Skyrim ...
If a woman has difficulty in giving birth, thae the plant we call pasticanna sivatica, simmer it in water, and give it so that she can bathe herself with it. She will be healed.
New masters
Need a word for it?
The Lonely Planet has come up with a list of thirty travel terms that aren't in the dictionary.
Why Thousands of Iranian Women Are Training to Be Ninjas
Festivids!
Festivids is a holiday fanvid exchange that, much in the spirit of Yuletide, focuses on less popular vidding fandoms. Subjects include Mythbuster's Buster, Mad Men's Peggy Olson, and Maru. The full masterlist is here. [more inside]
It is a peanut in our total
India tells Britain: We don't want your aid According to a leaked memo, the foreign minister, Nirupama Rao, proposed “not to avail [of] any further DFID [British] assistance with effect from 1st April 2011,” because of the “negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DFID”. But officials at DFID, Britain’s Department for International Development, told the Indians that cancelling the programme would cause “grave political embarrassment” to Britain, according to sources in Delhi. Further embarressment ensues. Emma Boon, campaign director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is incredible that ministers have defended the aid we send to India, insisting it is vital, when now we learn that even the Indian government doesn’t want it.”
Feet In Smoke: A Story About Electrified Near-Death
Like a lot of people, I'd always assumed, in a sort of cut-rate Hobbesian way, that the center of the brain, if you could ever find it, would inevitably be a pretty dark place, that whatever is good or beautiful about being human is a result of our struggles against everything innate, against physical nature. My brother changed my mind about all that.
Bunch of jackeens, really
So, you want to know the secret history of Dublin? Well, Come Here To Me, boy, and I’ll tell it ya. League of Ireland fanatics and music fans they may be but above all else, former UCD students Jay, D Fallon and hXci are history buffs, and on their blog they uncover much that is obscure and fascinating in this history of their native city, starting with The Dublin cinema manager who became the only Irish prisoner of Dachau and including.... [more inside]
Wargame reviews on YouTube
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