March 5, 2013
The trolleybus era
More than just pictures of electric Brill, Flyer and Pullman buses, trolleybuses.net has some great old street-level shots of many cities in North America.
I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
Mike Ryan was asked to re-watch The Wizard Of Oz in advance of the upcoming James Franco feature, Oz the Great and Powerful. So he went to iTunes, scrolled through six seasons of the other Oz, and bought the film. One problem: he actually bought the 1985 sequel, Disney's Return To Oz, featuring a young Fairuza Balk. Liveblogging ensued. [more inside]
ne plus ultra precision
Top Secret Drum Corps performing at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2012. The 25 Swiss drummers and colorguard members were one of the first non-military, non-British Commonwealth acts to perform on the Esplanade at Edinburgh Castle in 2003 and have made several reappearances. Drummers World features more videos, photos and information. (via Miss Cellania)
"I am not Steve Irwin, I am not Bear Gryllis, I am not Michael Jackson"
NYC Past
NYC Past Large-format historical photos of New York City.
Breaking A Legacy of Silence
"An April 17, 1981, a CIA cable[pdf] described an army massacre at Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory, because the population was believed to support leftist guerrillas. A CIA source reported that “the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas” and “the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved.” The CIA cable added that “the Guatemalan authorities admitted that ‘many civilians’ were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants.” In May 1981, despite these ongoing atrocities, Reagan dispatched Walters to tell the Guatemalan leaders that the new U.S. administration wanted to lift the human rights embargoes on military equipment that former President Jimmy Carter and Congress had imposed."The Guatemala Documentation Project, part of the National Security Archive, collects information about the decades long civil war in Guatemala, including State Department documents that point to Washington's complicity in massacres, assassinations and human rights violations.
Making an omelette without breaking any eggs
After a century of neglect, plans are in place to rebuild the historic Longfellow Bridge, running between Boston and Cambridge. The reconstruction will take place in 6 stages, allowing two-way automobile and train traffic to continue throughout the three-year process. [more inside]
"Exposure Doesn’t Feed My Fucking Children!"
Anansi Poems
I live in a world of cat piss and poker,
$35 bottles of wine and cheap beer,
and where spiders crawl into my ear
to tell secrets of the cosmos.
“The world is a screwed up place,” they say,
“And just when you think you’ve got it,
we change the rules.”
– from Anansi Poems by MetaFilter's own Christopher Jorgensen [via mefi projects]
$35 bottles of wine and cheap beer,
and where spiders crawl into my ear
to tell secrets of the cosmos.
“The world is a screwed up place,” they say,
“And just when you think you’ve got it,
we change the rules.”
– from Anansi Poems by MetaFilter's own Christopher Jorgensen [via mefi projects]
The Reagans Speak Out on Drugs, 25 years later
25 years ago, the Reagans spoke out on drugs, and they were, rather surprisingly, in support of a variety of substances. This wasn't a new video showing a sudden change of heart, but the work of two years, editing a longer speech to the nation that was originally broadcast in 1986. The new video couldn't be seen on TV, but was shared, traded, and bootlegged on VHS tapes. The case was originally labeled "A uniquely edited version of a real televised address to the American people," noting that it was made by Cliff Roth, an audio/visual geek and teacher who had access to a high quality film reel and audio source, plus the time and resources to make a piece of "editing art".
bartsimpsonbartsimpson@gmail.com
Everybody Puts Baby In The Corner
" Initially it was thought to be something to house firewood, though it didn’t seem capable of holding much, and the slat that sits perpendicular to the box on the inside wall made little sense. It took observers a while to realize that this contraption was a device for holding children—a “baby tender.”" (via)
Why you should refrigerate American Eggs, but not British ones
Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa A look into why each policy makes sense due to each country's laws and regulations.
Never to be sold
"All the Years of Trying" by Patrik Fitzgerald, taken from the documentary of the same name, is a modernized version of one of his old songs. The original Folk Punk (and Backstreet Boy) is still making music. [more inside]
Jon Stewart Gets Serious
Funnyman Jon Stewart is taking a 12 week hiatus to direct a film adaptation of Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari's book Then They Came For Me. John Oliver will take over hosting duties in his absence.
Daily Show clip of Jason Jones interview before Bahari's arrest. Post - arrest Daily Show interviews. Previously
Hugo Chavez: the revolutionary's final battle
Hugo Chavez dies. Al-Jazeera reported it first on their live stream, while internal media are still holding back. The Vice President, Nicolas Maduro, made the announcement.
What happened to The Knights Of Badassdom?
"The short of it is, Bradley bankrupted IndieVest, hijacked the film against his contractual rights, has hacked the film up and is now trying to sell on this castrated, lobotomised version." http://www.badassdom.com/ goes into great detail as to what happened to this movie.
We derive our own identities from the act of hating
Absolutely No Busts, Though
The Sporting Statues Project maintains a list of statues of sportspeople in the UK and has just added one of baseball statues in the US. Everything from 18th century strongmen and still active players to fans and little leaguers can be found in their directory. They also have some links to abstracts of papers they've presented on their research into sports statuary.
War of the tissues
Your fat has a brain, and it's trying to kill you. And the best line of defense is muscle. Muscle is now known to be one of the most dynamic systems in the body; when it contracts, it undergoes huge changes at the cellular level. And its mortal enemy is fat. (Also, why liposuction may not be so good for you health wise).
The Bay Lights
In honor of the San Francisco Bay Bridge's 75th Anniversary, artist Leo Villareal's new work The Bay Lights will be officially lit this evening. It is installed on the West Span and consists of 25,000 custom-mounted LEDs, making it the largest light sculpture in the world. [more inside]
Reticulating Splines
SimCity, arguably the best known simulation game ever, is back after a decade with a new iteration of the franchise. Is it any good? We may have to wait for an answer until someone can actually log on to the game. [more inside]
Kinetic art
The Singaporean Fairytale: You can have it all, if you choose to.
The Singaporean Fairytale is another contribution to the efforts to get Singaporeans to procreate (previously), made by undergraduate students, using reworked fairytales as a vehicle for sex and fertility ed. A lot of the content, however, is suspect: from claiming that sex will always make you feel better (especially if you're a woman) to a woman's worth being only based by their reproductive capacity.
But they do give us something, Mr Spock. They give us love.
I Knew You Were Tribbles (When You Dropped In). Metafilter's own tribbladour Cortex serenades you with his ST:TOS-inspired version of Taylor Swift's tribblesome pop song.
"I never doubted that it was all going to work out."
A life well lived. On October 4, 1973, Josh Miele (4) was permanently blinded in an acid attack by his neighbor (pdf). 40 years later, Dr. Miele has worked for NASA on the Mars Rover project, he's helped develop "WearaBraille", a virtual Braille keyboard interface, and has a new project launching this month: the Descriptive Video Exchange (DVX), which will allow "sighted video viewers to seamlessly add audio description to DVDs as they watch." [more inside]
Our last, best hope for peace
The strange, secret evolution of Babylon 5 documents the development of the television show Babylon 5, which premiered just over 20 years ago on February 22, 1993 with "The Gathering." [more inside]
You did test this thing, didn't you?
Extreme rope swinging (SLYT). The question is, would you do it?
What's cooler than cool?
One man, a revolutionary, stood on the firing lines, awaiting death. Staring down the line of guns, nobody could be cooler. [more inside]
Was Wittgenstein Right?
"I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive.'" --Wittgenstein. Apart from a small and ignored clique of hard-core supporters the usual view these days is that his writing is self-indulgently obscure and that behind the catchy slogans there is little of intellectual value. But this dismissal disguises what is pretty clearly the real cause of Wittgenstein’s unpopularity within departments of philosophy: namely, his thoroughgoing rejection of the subject as traditionally and currently practiced; his insistence that it can’t give us the kind of knowledge generally regarded as its raison d’être. [more inside]
The Lake
Photographer Geoff Tompkinson has just released this hypnotically gorgeous time lapse of Lake Hallstatt in Upper Austria. [via]
It's a secret to everyb-- well, to some people without google.
Old Spam better than new Spam?
Age your canned goods - Why I now think of best-by dates as maybe-getting-interesting-by dates. [more inside]
Farewell to the "schoolmarm who drinks and smokes."
Dawn Clark Netsch dies at 86. Dawn Clark Netsch was a woman of many firsts: she integrated the dorms of Northwestern University in 1949, graduated first in her class from Northwestern's School of Law (as the only female graduate), joined the Law School faculty in 1965 as the first woman law professor in the United States, elected Comptroller as the first woman to a state-wide office in Illinois in 1972, and was the first woman to run for governor in Illinois. [more inside]
"Here We'll Stay Wonderfully"
The Poet-King Of Fiume
There is no decent way of containing the excesses of Gabriele d'Annunzio's lives. It would astonish his contemporaries to discover that he is now only faintly remembered outside Italy. Even within Italy, though firmly entrenched in the literary canon, he is most commonly recalled with a sort of collective cringe. For once upon a time, in the fervid fin de siècle - for reasons variously literary, political, military and, not least, sexual - he was one of the towering figures of European culture. Think Wilde crossed with Casanova and Savonarola; Byron meets Barnum meets Mussolini - and you would have some of the flavours, but still not quite the essence, of this extraordinary, unstoppable and in many ways quite ridiculous figure. The Pike - A Review [more inside]
But perhaps not as far as Marion Zimmer Bradley did
Ten ways to rethink Arthur's Britain, by Guy Halsall.
Michael Peterson and The Staircase, redux
Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s documentary gets new installments. Previously. Eight years later, Michael Peterson went back to court and Lestrade filmed it again.
Building a Better Land/Water/Mud Artmobile
How to Build a Kinetic Sculpture: "The original idea was actually to call these next few paragraphs “How to build.” How silly! That would be like declaring “Everything A Man Should Know About Women.” It would be impossible, and still wrong half the time. One of the attractions of this sport is precisely that there are infinite ways of doing most everything. So what we have here are hints and notes, thoughts and ideas—to be revised and added to as experience dictates." [more inside]
Like a bell...
On this day in 1963, in a tragic plane crash, America lost one of its finest singers: Patsy Cline. While many are familiar with her acclaimed rendition of the Willie Nelson-penned Crazy, let's pay a visit to some lesser-known but nonetheless masterfully impressive vocal performances from that sublime, transcendent voice, shall we? Here's two live TV spots: Patsy in full cowgirl regalia with a delightful performance of the Hank Williams classic Lovesick Blues and the snazzy Walking After Midnight, one of the tunes that reminds us that Patsy could've just as easily been marketed as a pop/jazzy chanteuse as the *country* artist she was presented to the world as. And here's the gorgeously smooth studio renditions of She's Got You and I Fall To Pieces, and... [more inside]
Don't call it the Harlem Shake
Flashmob boogeydowns are most definitely not the Harlem Shake. This is about more than proper designation of a popular dance. It's about cultural appropriation. When communities create original art, they have a right to some creative control over its definition. (via IP Finance.)
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