March 26, 2012
Wikipaintings
Wikipaintings is a fantastic resource, a well curated database of the world's great paintings that will blow your mind. Click the logo in the top left corner for a collection of a random artist's work in chronological order. Their popular artists and popular artworks. [more inside]
The Conservative Teen
Presenting for your perusal: "The Conservative Teen", a new magazine designed to instill the right values in today's youth.
Louise Fitzhugh's "Harriet the Spy"
In December 1974, there was a memorial service at St. James Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue for Louise Fitzhugh, author and illustrator of Harriet the Spy, the groundbreaking children's novel that has sold 2.5 million copies since its publication in 1964. [more inside]
Pope Hats
Pope Benedict XVI has revived many dormant style traditions and introduced a few fashion innovations of his own. Also, he often wears fanciful hats. Examples: A Sombrero, A camauro (camel skin hat of red wool or velvet with white ermine), a free baseball cap, a wide brim red cappello romano, (I.E. saturno), a Yarmulke (a little zucchetto), Mitra Pretiosa, Papal Tiara (there are many in existence) and so many more. A Time Magazine gallery.
Also: Papal shoes & slippers. [more inside]
The Newspaper That Rules Britain.
MAIL SUPREMACY - How the Daily Mail Conquered England. 'In January, its Web arm, Mail Online, surpassed that of the New York Times as the most visited newspaper site in the world, drawing fifty-two million unique visitors a month. The Mail is the most powerful newspaper in Great Britain. A middle-market tabloid, with a daily readership of four and a half million, it reaches four times as many people as the Guardian, while being taken more seriously than the one paper that outsells it, the Sun. The Mail’s closest analogue in the American media is perhaps Fox News.' [more inside]
The average [professor] owes over one hundred thousand dollars in [grad] school loans, and makes about as much as a waiter.
New York Dick
In the name of Defense.
In December 1974, New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh's front-page account (paywall) of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program documented their illegal domestic intelligence operations against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States. The article eventually prompted investigations by the Rockefeller Commission and the Church and Pike committees. "There have been other reports on the CIA's doping of civilians, but they have mostly dished about activities in New York City. Accounts of what actually occurred in San Francisco have been sparse and sporadic. But newly declassified CIA records, recent interviews, and a personal diary of [George H. White,] an operative at Stanford Special Collections shed more light on the breadth of the San Francisco operation." SF Weekly: "Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA doped San Francisco citizens with LSD." MK-ULTRA: Previously on Metafilter. (Via)
"Sound matters more than smell in terms of politeness"
"Stick to the book, dude"
In the book version of The Hunger Games, the tributes Rue and Thresh from District 11 are described as having "dark brown skin." In the film version of The Hunger Games, Rue and Thresh are played by Amandla Stenberg and Dayo Okeniyi, who are both black. However, a surprising number of fans (presumably the same ones who complained when Idris Elba played Heimdall in Thor - previously) are upset that black people were cast in these roles rather than the white people they imagined. Hunger Games Tweets provides continuing coverage of whatever the hell these people were thinking.
Coming Up Like A Flower
" Thus in today’s China one confronts the paradox of a communist regime that is at ideological loggerheads with left-leaning intellectuals, but which finds pro-Western, liberal intellectuals on the whole quite congenial." Richard Wolin is Dreaming In Chinese...
Remember, relax your eyes
“We don’t want everything for free. We just want everything.”
Animator & copyleft activist Nina Paley sat down with a group of teenagers and asked them how they would prefer to support the artists they liked.
Corridor running
Exploring Cardiff's Roath Lock studios, home of Doctor Who, Casualty, Upstairs Downstairs and the Welsh language Pobol y Cwm. Oh yeah, and there's a trailer for Doctor Who series 7, in which Farscape fans will catch a glimpse of Ben Browder.
Why Won't They Listen?
Why Won't They Listen? Haidt diverges from other psychologists who have analyzed the left’s electoral failures. The usual argument of these psycho-pundits is that conservative politicians manipulate voters’ neural roots — playing on our craving for authority, for example — to trick people into voting against their interests. But Haidt treats electoral success as a kind of evolutionary fitness test. He figures that if voters like Republican messages, there’s something in Republican messages worth liking. He chides psychologists who try to “explain away” conservatism, treating it as a pathology. Conservatism thrives because it fits how people think, and that’s what validates it. Workers who vote Republican aren’t fools. In Haidt’s words, they’re “voting for their moral interests.”
First it was a Goldfish. Now it's a Rabbit!
"Herman Cain's latest crazy ad has launched (so to speak), and features a bunny rabbit which represents 'small business' that is hurled into the air with a catapult and then blown to bits with a rifle.
It's a follow-up to his goldfish snuff film."*
See the hands of my offspring making windmills
In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of They Might Be Giants' album Apollo 18, a group of designers have made a collection of interactive fiction games based on each track of the album.
Dawn of an Old Age
Mad Men is back. And so is Vulture with another of their always-enjoyable recaps.
An industry running out of luck?
After three horses used in the production of Luck had to be euthanized due to injury, HBO decided to pull the plug on the horse racing drama. Perhaps for the first time since Eight Belles broke down following the running of the Kentucky Derby in 2008, the deaths and subsequent decision to cancel the show have again cast a national spotlight on the darker side of the US horse racing industry, a business “still mired in a culture of drugs and lax regulation and a fatal breakdown rate that remains far worse than in most of the world.”
The end of the Chongqing Model? Bo Xilai’s rapid fall from office examined.
Bo Xilai, former Party Secretary of Chongqing and current Politburo member, was recently sacked by Chinese leadership. He is well known for his economic success at growing Chongqing, and his flamboyant leadership style which included the revival of “Red Culture”[previously]. [more inside]
Kief
What is keif? More importantly, is it easier to produce it using techno, folksy guitar pop, violin rap, or with a chatty Canadian gabbing away?
Built to Last!
Kefirpedia
Kefirpedia aims to be the authority of all things kefir-related on the Internet, using evidence-based research (not just hype!) and community collaboration for know-how and recipes.
“You have to stand in the pocket and throw the football at some point.”
The New York Times isn't known for trenchant sports analysis, but in this article, Mike Tanier throws down stats to back up the problem behind the Jet's Tebow acquisition: Tim Tebow, though a "gifted athlete," lacks passing mechanics.
A patent on speech
Dana Nieder explains how an ACC patent fight may substantially delay her daughter learning to speak. [more inside]
Ike Harder!
Shoutmennonitenames.com generates Mennonite names (shouting not included, except for an exclamation mark). Does what it says on the well-worn tin passed down through the generations. [more inside]
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