March 28, 2012
Rabble-rousing
More like "Equal XXXchange"
But shouldn't consumers have some context to evaluate what they are viewing? Shampoo bottles and Tuna cans assure us that animals were unharmed. Shouldn't we know if porn actors are subject to out-of-control STD rates, or are forced to do things against their will? At a minimum, a Porn housekeeping seal of approval would tell us by, and for whom, the porn was made. It might make you think twice before downloading that random YouPorn video or chatting with a "horny Russian slut" at LiveJasmin.
Erika Christakis proposes a Fair Trade label for pornography.
Erika Christakis proposes a Fair Trade label for pornography.
Here Come the Brides and Brides and Grooms and Grooms
On Wednesday 29 March 2012, the first mass same-sex TV wedding in Australia was broadcast. [more inside]
Things that seem normal when you live alone.
Since apparently it is Map Day.
Who Will Sing for Me? Earl Scruggs
Earlier this year, Steve Martin penned a loving tribute to Earl Scruggs, published in New Yorker. "Some nights he had the stars of North Carolina shooting from his fingertips. Before him, no one had ever played the banjo like he did. After him, everyone played the banjo like he did, or at least tried." A few minutes ago, Steve Martin offered a rare somber tweet: "Earl Scruggs, the most important banjo player who ever lived, has passed on." One could do worse than spend some time watching and listening to Earl Scruggs perform.
[Enter totally relevant Simpsons quotation here]
Catch up on The Simpsons. Quickly [slyt]
Gas Leak at North Sea Platform
A potentially dangerous situation is developing off the coast of Scotland. An off-shore drilling platform is leaking substantial quantities of gas contaminated with hydrogen sulphide. Much as here, the comments thread is as interesting as the post at The Oil Drum itself.
My immediate thought: Messy.
The West Virginia Surf Report is picking up where they left off [McDonald's McSkillet burrito] (previously), Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality has recently been updated with picture comparison and comedic review of:
Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco Supreme [more inside]
A woman in the shape of a monster / a monster in the shape of a woman / the skies are full of them
Poet Adrienne Rich, celebrated over her 60-plus-year career with the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the National Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and many other awards, and known for both her vivid and original poetry and her advocacy of feminist and civil rights causes, has died at the age of 82. Read, watch, listen.
The answer, my friend
KUOW, KCMU and KEXP: a brief history of college(type) radio from University of Washington
KEXP 90.3 FM is a Seattle, WA-based radio station, officially "a service of University of Washington," but it's more complex than that. The first University of Washington radio station started broadcasting in 1952. Five decades, a few station organizational shifts, plus three call letter and frequency changes later, KEXP was (re)born in 2001. Along the way, the station spread the sound of 1990s Seattle indie rock, started streaming "CD quality" MP3 audio of their broadcast in 2000, and they have an ever-growing collection of recordings of live in-station performances, including over 2,000 videos on YouTube. [more inside]
Open Source Tricorder
3DEverywhere
WebGL, the 3D technology that's associated with HTML5, continues to make giant strides in diverse areas:
Exploration of human anatomy: Zygote Body, released yesterday, and BioDigital Human, the successors to Google Body (previously)
World Visualisation: WebGL Earth, Nokia's 3D Map of the entire earth (previously). WorldWeather and The WebGL Globe, a Google project that displays all kinds of data. Also: Where Does My Tweet Go?
Games: browser ports of Team Fortess 2, Quake 3 and Rage (a developer’s diary). SkidRacer, an entire game in WebGL. Mini Mass Effect (not yet playable, sadly).
Musicals: Lights.
Tools: 3Notes.js, a visual scene editor. Developer documentation. More resources.
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Debunk-tainment
The Lomax Collection -- a 'renewal of the forgotten springs of human creativity.'
NPR: "Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world." Now, nearly ten years after his death, thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. "It's part of what Lomax envisioned for [his] collection — long before the age of the Internet." (Mr. Lomax, Previously on MeFi) [more inside]
Pop! ... Pop!
Boston Dynamics is getting close to mastering quadrupedal motion with Big Dog and Cheetah (previously). And are working on bipedal motion with Petman (previously), but how about a robot that is able to leap (up to the top of) tall buildings in a single bound? Sand Flea! [more inside]
Batman Drives a Lamborghini?
You may have seen the news footage about a guy in a Batman suit being pulled over in suburban DC. It turns out that there is a lot more to the story.
Summer, Buddy Holly, the working folly / Good Golly Miss Molly and boats / Hammersmith Palais, the Bolshoi Ballet / Jump back in the alley, and nanny goats.
Born in 1942, Colin Fulcher was better known – though not by much – as Barney Bubbles, who worked prolifically from the 1960s until his suicide in 1983. A graphic artist, designer, art and video director who preferred to remain behind the scenes (he only rarely signed his work, and when he did, often used obscure pseudonyms), Bubbles' revolutionary and innovative practice encompassed record sleeves, band posters and videos for Hawkwind (and their friend/collaborator Michael Moorcock), Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and the Blockheads (including their iconic logo), Billy Bragg, The Specials and Depeche Mode. A retrosective of his work, Reasons To Be Cheerful, and its associated blog has a comprehensive overview of Bubbles' diverse body of work. Designer and artist John Coulthart offers up his perspective; Creative Review get behind his creative processes; a new Radio 4 documentary, In Search of Barney Bubbles , covers his work and often troubled life.
Guy comes out of closet on Facebook to friends who are entirely too geeky to care.
A cure for special snowflake syndrome.
The Who's 5:15 gets an official video
They write the songs.
Sodajerker is a songwriting team from Liverpool. But Simon Barber and Brian O'Connor are also the co-hosts of the iTunes podcast Sodajerker on Songwriting, a programme featuring hour-long interviews with some of the world’s most successful songwriters including Jimmy Webb, Andy Partridge, Todd Rundgren and many others. [more inside]
We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.
HEAD MAN
No line of unlicensed Star Wars figures is as sought after as the Turkish line known as Uzay. STARS WAR UZAY set includes: Stormtroper, Imperial Stormtoper, Head Man, Chewbacca (Monkey Man), Artoo-Detoo, Imperial T E Fighter Pilot and See-Threep.
The News Corporation scandals
Murdoch's Scandal - Lowell Bergman (the journalist portrayed by Al Pacino in The Insider) has investigated News Corporation for PBS Frontline [transcript]. He depicts Rupert Murdoch's British operation as a criminal enterprise, routinely hacking the voicemail and computers of innocent people, and using bribery and coercion to infiltrate police and government over decades. Enemies are ruthlessly "monstered" by the tabloids. Bergman also spoke to NPR's Fresh Air [transcript].
But the hits keep coming: in recent days News Corp has been accused of hacking rival pay TV services and promoting pirated receiver cards in both the UK and Australia. With the looming possibility of prosecution under America's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, how long will shareholders consider Rupert Murdoch irreplaceable? [Previous 1 2 3 4]
"The stories of these cases are very painful."
This is an animated documentary about Mohammad Mostafaei who is an Iranian lawyer in exile in Norway. Mostafaei specialized in advocating for defendants who faced the death penalty and the animation focuses on one of these cases, that of Behnoud Shojaee. The animation features Paul Bettany reading Mostafaei's words, is a part of Amnesty International's campaign against the death penalty.
Rumble in the Toy Chest
The Duel - An amazing-stop motion Lego skirmish relying almost exclusively on practical effects.
If you like the way your bike rides, it’s an awesome bike.
Got questions about your bike or bicycling in general? Surly bikes' Skip Bernet has answers to just about any bike forum post ever written.
Pasty Gate
Following an amendment in the recent Conservative Party budget, VAT on 'Baked Goods' will be re-instated. In response, the question of whether or not David Cameron once ate a Greggs pasty infects the British press. The Telegraph have a live blog covering what has been termed by some Pasty Gate
Noisy Jelly
It's like a synthesizer control interface made out of molded jello. "Noisy jelly is a game where the player has to cook and shape his own musical material, based on coloured jelly."
Phablet Blue
An elephant uses a Galaxy Note, proving that not everybody looks ridiculous while using a phablet.
Getting wood
Romeyn Hough's American Woods is one of the most astonishing books of the late 19th century, a 14-volume set containing a thorough survey of the trees of the U.S., complete with thinly sliced samples of the wood of each tree. Complete sets of this mammoth undertaking are today rare and highly prized.
Well, I never hated you.
Jake Cole of the film blog Not Just Movies discusses the semi-legendary hour-long debate about Monty Python's Life of Brian on the BBC Four program Friday Night, Saturday Morning. The debate features Pythons John Cleese and Michael Palin on one side and opposite them broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark.
“What you see is what we sim”
Twenty-four years after the original, Maxis (sans Wil Wright) is rebooting SimCity. RPS' preview states that, thanks to the bottom-up approach of the Glassbox engine, each entity "...will be its own discrete software agent, running its own little simulation of its own little life." In their own preview, IGN state that having animations reflect behind-the-scenes processes will "[give] the players tangible signals that they need to step in..." However, is there trouble in (simulated) paradise already?
Poo-Powered Rickshaw Unveiled At The Denver Zoo
Poo-Powered Rickshaw Unveiled At The Denver Zoo Poop. Is there anything it can't do? On Wednesday, The Denver Zoo introduced what is believed to be the world's first poo-powered motorized tuk tuk showcasing The Denver Zoo's very own patent-pending gasification technology.
The Treniers
Do you know The Treniers? Back in the 40s and 50s, they straddled the lines between jump blues, swing, early rock'n'roll, jazz dance, hep jive and comedy. They were a whole hella fun, and they happened to be the backing band for what must be the best dance performance Jerry Lewis ever gave the world. That particular clip, BTW, from a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis "Colgate Comedy Hour" in 1954, is purported to be the first rock'n'roll performance on national television, and it may well have been.
Boing Booiinng Boooiiinnng Booooiiiinnnng
Snowflake Cultivation
Linden Gledhill is trying to grow snowflakes in his garage by passing 2000 volts through a cold moist chamber, as previously achieved by a team at Caltech [more inside]
ScHmITt hits the fan
An expert committee has found that the President of Hungary, Dr. Pál Schmitt, is not guilty of plagiarism, despite extensive parts of his doctoral thesis being copied from multiple sources. The fault, the committee claims, was not his, but that of his supervisors. The Contrarian Hungarian and The Hungarian Spectrum have detailed analysis of the allegations and the committee’s report, while the Urban Dictionary has coined a new term in honor of the scandal.
Other European politicians have faced with similar claims recently with differing results.
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