February 21, 2009
The Song Doesn't Remain the Same
Jimmy Page's lost soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising is worth checking out on a Saturday night (scroll down to the middle of the page to hear it). Droning and dark, it might have fit the completed film (NSFW) quite well if Anger hadn't fired Page before he finished the tracks. Anger, the legendary avant garde filmmaker and gossip, replaced Page with former Charles Manson associate and convicted killer Bobby Beausolei, who recorded the official soundtrack with a group of fellow prisoners called The Freedom Orchestra.
Are We About to Eliminate AIDS?
New Scientist:
What if we could rid the world of AIDS? The notion might sound like fantasy: HIV infection has no cure and no vaccine, after all. Yet there is a way to completely wipe it out - at least in theory. What's more, it would take only existing medical technology to do the job.[more inside]
The Axis of Upheaval
The Axis of Upheaval: A special report on the coming age of instability.
Jimmy Smith Park
Jimmy Smith Park. Breadcrumbs so you can find your way back:
Jimmy Smith Park -> About -> Rivers Park -> Dreams about Drunks -> The evolution of previously.
Selling in the seventies
From the 70s version of a bad hair day to disco chart-toppers leaping out of cassette tape boxes to three-legged celebrities who are currently in jail to... well, you just gotta see this one, the Advertising Sillyness from the Seventies flickr group has the groovy images you'll recall (or may want to forget) if you were around in those halcyon days. [more inside]
Unknown Family
Unknown Family. 15 years ago, he found a box of 44 negatives at a garage sale in Aiken, SC, and after wondering about them for a long time, posted them to Flickr in October 2008 in hopes of learning who the family is. There are a few clues, but the search seems to have gone cold. [more inside]
Steel yourself, folks
I don't know if you like reading stories about construction workers bringing smiles to the faces of kids with cancer. If you like that kind of stuff, here's a story like that. You might tear up.
We might've done this before, but better.
Mapping with Isotype: A collection of examples of Otto Neurath, Gerd Arntz, and Marie Reidemeister’s cartographic language, isotype. (Still influential today).
Yes Means Yes
Moving beyond no means no. The anthology Yes Means Yes brings together writers, male and female, to explore the power of enthusiastic consent and to promote female desire free of coercion.
The book has spawned a series of readings, live chats, and some interesting blog responses. [more inside]
Reform School Boys and Girls
Nancy Luce
A "singular creature, whose secluded life and remarkable eccentricities have long made her an object of peculiar interest” is described in the 1876 A guide to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. This woman, Nancy Luce (c 1814 to 1890), published books of poems and information about her chickens. Her first book was Poor Little Hearts and her second was A complete edition of the works of Nancy Luce ... containing God's words--Sickness--Poor little hearts--Milk--No comfort--Prayers--Our Savior's golden rule--Hen's names, etc. Here’s part of Poor Little Hearts and here’s Lines composed by Nancy Luce about poor little Ada Queetie and poor little Beauty Linna, both deceased ... . A sad poem – “I hope I never shall have a hen, to set so much by again ... “ is quoted in this account of a visit to her grave. She put up a gravestone (NYT, 1873) to one of her hens, Tweedle Dedel Bebbee Pinky. [more inside]
15 Minutes of Infamy
After appearing last month on the ABC reality television show 'Wife Swap,' "San Francisco resident Stephen Fowler was forced to resign from the boards of two nonprofits, allegedly received e-mailed death threats and stood on the sidelines as his wife, Renee Stephens, issued a public statement condemning his behavior and asking him to get 'professional help.'...Thanks to online TV and easy access to private information, Fowler's 15 minutes of fame have snowballed beyond his control." "What has generated such wrath is Fowler's condescending treatment of Gayla Long, a mother of four from rural Missouri....In wince-producing remarks, Fowler, who is British, wrote off middle America with such pronouncements as 'Your two languages seem to be bad English and redneck.'" Video highlights - 1, 2. [more inside]
March Madness 2009
March Madness is less than a month away, and sports fans are snapping up tickets to watch men’s and women’s NCAA basketball teams battle their way to the Final Four. Projected brackets are going online, with speculation about likely picks and the prospects of finding a Cinderella team in the field this year. Cheerleaders get their moment on screen before commercial breaks, but should these student athletes be considered members of a sports team, too? On court fashion generates debate, and mascots range from the obvious to the really odd. PETA continues its crusade against the use of live animals, but one overriding question remains: “What the hell is a Saluki?”
Words Are Made of Letter People
The Letter People started as a collection of vaguely trippy drawings by illustrator Elizabeth Callen in the early 70s, but viewers of Midwestern PBS in the 70s and 80s might have learned to read from the Letter People puppet show produced by PBS station KETC in St. Louis. Set in the black void of "Letter People Land", the show allowed each character to introduce him or herself with a song, from the laid back, Carole King vibe in Miss A's song, to the bizarre sound collage of Mr. X (audio with fan-made video). And of course cashing in on the nostalgia craze, the new and improved letter people without references to junk food or the pesky marital status of the vowels. [more inside]
Ancient Greece
Explore the History of the Ancient Greek World from the Neolithic to the Classical Period. Covering important topics, such as Art and Architecture, Mythology, Wars, Culture and Society, Poetry, Olympics, History Periods, Philosophy, Playwrights, Kings and Rulers of Ancient Greece.
The Transition Handbook
The Transition Handbook should be helpful to you if you are a proponent of planned energy descent and independence from fossil fuels and would like to start a Transition Town of your own. [more inside]
atrocity archives
BABIES’ skulls dashed against rocks; attempts to twist off the heads of toddlers. Girls, their mothers and grandmothers (and sometimes male relatives too) raped at knife- or gunpoint, the weapons then used to inflict mutilation. Women hauled off to camps or just tied to trees and gang-raped. Thousands of children, some as young as nine, snatched or recruited by armed gangs (or regular forces) and made into drug-crazed killers, the girls among them often serially abused or taken by commanders as “wives”. Such are the horrors reported from some recent conflict zones... [more inside]
The Innocence Mission
The Innocence Mission [web | wiki] performs I Remember Me [US TV debut]. Also: Black Sheep Wall | Bright As Yellow | Brotherhood of Man | My Sisters Return from Ireland.
Objects in Space
50 of the World's Best Food Blogs
From sugary-sweet Cannelle et Vanille to Southern comfort-style Homesick Texan, the Times Online highlights 50 of the world's best food blogs. (Link goes to print version -- multi-page regular version here. See also the Food Blog Search.)
Special-snowflake Bots: A List
60+ One-Of-A-Kind Robots From Science Fiction. "You'd think a major advantage of robots is you can mass-produce them. They're just metal-and-circuit bodies. But science fiction is full of one-of-a-kind bots. Here are all the bots for whom they broke the mold."
"In all the annals of dogdom there has never been anything his equal."
Jim, The Wonder Dog. During the height of the Great Depression, a "plain black and white setter" entertained and mystified the citizens of Missouri with his "extraordinary cleverness" and his seemingly inexplicable ability to foretell the future. [more inside]
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