February 5, 2013
Sock Monkey Oscar Contest 2013
Oscar Contest 2013 [via mefi projects]
web-goddess has posted her eleventh Oscar Contest.
This year's prize is an unprecendented FOUR Avenger Monkeys: Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and Incredible Hulk.
Last year's prize: The Monkey with the Dragon Tattoo. More handmade sock monkeys in the project link.
Fortress UK
Indigoism
Indigoism is a free mixtape from The Underachievers following their videos Gold Soul Theory and The Mahdi.
Not phpBB
Jeff Atwood (previously), co-founder of Stack Overflow, yesterday announced Discourse, which he and partner Robin Ward (previously) intend as "the WordPress of forums." [more inside]
The human paperweight
Robert Lenkiewicz was a prolific and prodigiously talented (if unfashionable) painter, a self-styled outsider, and a philanderer rumoured to have slept with more than 3000 women. When he died, the embalmed body of a homeless man named Diogenes was found in a cupboard drawer in his studio. [more inside]
An Architect Gone Mad
Birds of Paradise
The Birds of Paradise Project "It took 8 years and 18 expeditions to New Guinea, Australia, and nearby islands, but Cornell Lab scientist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photographer Tim Laman succeeded in capturing images of all 39 species in the bird-of-paradise family for the first time ever. This video gives a sense of their monumental undertaking and the spectacular footage that resulted.". See, for example, the Ballerina Bird's novel shape shifting view.
Collections of sci-fi online
Sometimes you might find yourself sitting at a computer, wanting to read something. But you don't want something long. You're thinking, what about a short story, and possibly something in the fantasy or sci-fi realms? You're in luck! Here are four collections, for your reading pleasure: Apex Magazine short fiction | Baen Ebooks Free Library, which includes some short story collections | Eclipse Online, from Nightshade Books | Strange Horizons fiction archive, including podcasts of many stories. If this is overwhelming, io9 has a pick of 5 short stories from January, with synopses. [Previously: Plane of the Ecliptic, on the Eclipse series | This isn't your grandfather's science fiction, where "Exhalation" is from the Eclipse series]
Kendall Hailey
Whatever Happened to Kendall Hailey? At age 16, Kendall Hailey decided she'd had enough of formal schooling, and became an autodidact. She wrote about her experience in her charming memoir entitled The Day I Became an Autodidact and the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies that Befell Me Thereafter. After that, she pretty much fell out of the public eye. In December 2012, Jennifer Paull of BookRiot tracked her down and asked her about her past, present, and future, and whether she'd recommend her own child follow her path (and whatever became of Matthew). Part 1. Part 2. [more inside]
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
World’s Oldest Known Wild Bird Hatches Another Chick. Laysan albatross known as “Wisdom” – believed to be at least 62 years old – has hatched a chick on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. [PDF] [more inside]
All Your Dreams and Diamond Rings
The Capital Children's Choir cover Spiritualized's So Long you Pretty Thing, and Florence and the Machine, Lady Gaga, Bjork, Guns N' Roses, among others. [more inside]
First Toy Multiverse Created in a Laboratory, Say Physicists
foundational notions of classic science fiction seem to be moving closer to reality there's way more here than I am capable of comprehending, but anything that talks about Minkowski spacetime has my attention.
Delicatessen with Love
Our mission is to end loneliness
We set up drinks between two groups of friends: three guys and three girls (or three guys and three guys, etc.). The first step is applying for membership. Once you're accepted, you'll get your first invite to set up a Grouper and can finalize the two friends you'll bring along with you. We handle the rest: we match you with the other group, we pick the spot and set you up with a free drink. All you need to do is show up and have a good time.
Out There Radio
You’ve reached the home of Out There Radio, a weekly audio journey into the world of the occult, conspiracy, counterculture, and the bizarre undercurrents of the human psyche. [more inside]
Great Big Ideas: One-hour lectures by experts summarizing entire fields
In the Fall of 2011, The Floating University assembled a video course entitled Great Big Ideas. Each of its dozen lectures is the product of a challenge given to an eminent authority and expert teacher to take "everything a non-professional needs to know about your subject in less than 60 minutes" and to bake the result into "a multi-media presentation, produced with the highest quality video and graphics." The lectures cover topics as varied as psychology, demography, physics, political philosophy, and more. During its initial offering at Harvard, Yale, and Bard during the Fall 2011 term, GBI quickly became the most popular course at all three universities.
Routh told them “he traded his soul for a new truck”
There and Back Again Kitty
Lauren Rojas, a 12 year old from California, sent Hello Kitty on a return trip to the stratosphere (over 28 kilometres above the Earth) and recorded the results.
On a path to liberation....
Over a thousand monks and laymen are revered in Tibetan Buddhism as the incarnations of past teachers who convey enlightenment to their followers from one lifetime to the next. Some of the most respected are known by the honorific "rinpoche." For eight centuries, rinpoches were traditionally identified by other monks and then locked inside monasteries ringed by mountains, far from worldly distractions. Their reincarnation lineages were easily tracked across successive lives. Then the Chinese Red Army invaded Tibet in 1950 and drove the religion's adherents into exile. Now, the younger rinpoches of the Tibetan diaspora are being exposed to all of the twenty-first century’s dazzling temptations. So, even as Tibetan Buddhism is gaining more followers around the world, an increasing number of rinpoches are abandoning their monastic vows. Reincarnation in Exile. [more inside]
They do furnish a room
Bookish is a nifty new book recommendation engine.
you do whatever it takes to get the marbles to watch "Star Trek"
Doctor Of Celebrity Gossip and frequent chronicler of the Scandals Of Classic Hollywood (previously) Anne Helen Petersen (more previously) muses on growing up with Star Trek: The Next Generation. [more inside]
Not Talking About Pakistan
Part I
Questions about Pakistan are now a fact of living here, no different from damp weather or calls from salespeople. Some I deflect, and others I frame around my own terms.[more inside]
The shocking news that Goldman Sachs is greedy
"Twenty five years ago I quit a job on Wall Street to write a book about Wall Street. Since then, every year or so, UPS has delivered to me a book more or less like my own, written by some Wall Street insider and promising to blow the lid off the place, and reveal its inner workings, and so on. By now, you might think, this game should be over. The reading public would know all it needed to know about Wall Street, and the publishing industry would be forced to look to some other industry for shocking confessions from insiders. Somehow this isn't the case."
The First Lady of Hip Hop
There was no way to anticipate that the reliably malfunction-free Beyoncé arriving in New Orleans for her turn at immortality would be a vulnerable one. At the presidential inauguration ceremony last month, she sang the national anthem over a prerecorded vocal track, leading to a minor scandal, putting her on the defensive. Beyoncé, bionic, isn’t used to having her reputation impugned. Vulnerability is not her bag.
She is, though, up to the challenge — in this case, the conundrum of how to make her Super Bowl XLVII halftime show, which she had been planning for months, not only a spectacle in its own right, but also a conclusion to the messy affair. [more inside]
Underground Overground, Wombling Free
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first television appearance of The Wombles, the beloved children's programme based on the books by Elisabeth Beresford, animated by Ivor Wood, and narrated/voiced by Bernard Cribbins. [more inside]
Does any of this seem familiar to anyone else?
Michael Dell, with the help of a $2 billion dollar investment from Microsoft, is taking Dell private. Dell was once a $100 billion company, but has fallen behind HP and Lenovo in marketshare in the post-PC era. This is the largest leveraged buyout since 2007. [more inside]
One man's Free Speech is another man's fraud?
US Justice Department suing Standard and Poor's over a "scheme to defraud investors" before the financial crisis. More details on these recent developments from The Tech online edition here, which notes: "For many years, the ratings agencies have defended themselves successfully in civil litigation by saying their ratings were independent opinions, protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech. Developments in the wake of the financial crisis have raised questions about the agencies’ independence, however." Reuters opts to let S&P break the news for themselves here.
Reg Presley 12 June 1941 – 4 February 2013
Yesterday morning Reg Presley, the lead singer of the Troggs, died in his sleep from cancer. [more inside]
The Squeaking!
[Adorable Warning]: Children Playing with a Wild Fennec Fox. [slyt]
An unlikely reviewer
"Girls" is a bit of a hit. Although it lost out to "Modern Family" at the Emmy Awards, it continues to receive significant attention as the 2nd season gets underway. [more inside]
All aboard!
By the creator of the California Rail Map, and inspired by ideas from various agencies and advocacy groups: A Map of the US High Speed Rail System
The bLogicarian
"The name "bLogicarian" may be one of the the most pretentious conglomerations of philhellenic puns I could concoct." A blog on language, poetry and translation. [more inside]
"I did it all in one take!"
For Your Consideration - Anne Hathaway (Emma Fitzpatrick) reminds the Academy to think of her on Oscar night via the magic of song.
Shhhhhhh …..
Silent Circle, a security start-up led by PGP creator Phil Zimmermann and two ex-Navy SEALs, has been teasing technology that purports to make mobile communications "virtually invulnerable to surveillance efforts" for a few months (previously). Now, they're pushing a "groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button." The company has pledged not to comply with law enforcement surveillance requests, nor to provide backdoor access for the FBI.
Interview with Eleanor Kolchin
An affected, narcissistic creep, but he’s also a genius.
Before Penn and Teller
Send them your heart so they'll know that someone cares
To the tinkly piano tune of "We are the world", a video released last weekend from Uriminzokkiri, North Korea's official website, shows a dream sequence involving various rockets, Korean unification, a sparkle-powered North Korean Space Shuttle, and the apparent missile-based destruction of Manhattan. [more inside]
No princesses, no ghosts.
You don't want to be dressed as something white in the darkness when there's a bunch of guys with guns looking for polar bears. All Things Considered has an interview with Zac Unger about his book, Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye, and an excerpt from the book.
"Teens don’t always know about their rights."
The British Parliament are debating same-sex marriage
A story about a library on fire.
Saving the ancient manuscripts of Mali from Islamic extremists.
More and more people are (paper) rich. Another internet bubble?
More and more companies residing (typically) in Silicon Valley are getting $1 billion+ valuations. Are we in the midst of another bubble?
Link to the NYT graphic describing some of these companies.
According to the article, a bubble doesn't exist, as the previous internet bubble is still fresh in people's minds.
Many places are trying to copy this Silicon Valley phenomenon, but is it worth it / sustainable?
That's All Folks
folkinfo.org is a database of English-language folk songs. Each song is listed with its respective lyrics, sheet music, Roud Index number, midi file, and historical information. The database also provides song information in abc notation. Placed into an abc converter, one can generate sheet music in a variety of forms and scales.
Pride of the Yankees (seeknaY?)
In the classic baseball movie The Pride of the Yankees, Gary Cooper played lefty icon Lou Gehrig--but Cooper was a righty. To cover this up, legend has it the filmmakers made a Yankees uniform for him with the print reversed, had him run to third base rather than first, etc, then flipped the shots after filming. But is it true? [more inside]
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