April 9, 2012
Boingo (Not BOI-NGO)
In 1994, after breaking up his group and going off to write a few modest film scores, Danny Elfman returned to working in the context of a rock band. Together with his longtime band and score collaborator Steve Bartek and other former (now renewed) band mates John Avila, Johnny "Vatos" Hernandez, and newcomer Warren Fitzgerald, they recorded what is considered the final studio record in the Oingo Boingo catalog, the eponymous album of the now newly-named group, Boingo.
Insanity, Hey!, Mary*, Can't See (Useless)*, Pedestrian Wolves**, Lost Like This**, Spider***, War Again, I Am The Walrus, Tender Lumplings, Change* [some tracks carry Tipper Gore's Parental Advisory sticker]
*live version from the Farewell concert, album version unavailable online; **unofficial video; ***live from Halloween 1993 [more inside]
Insanity, Hey!, Mary*, Can't See (Useless)*, Pedestrian Wolves**, Lost Like This**, Spider***, War Again, I Am The Walrus, Tender Lumplings, Change* [some tracks carry Tipper Gore's Parental Advisory sticker]
*live version from the Farewell concert, album version unavailable online; **unofficial video; ***live from Halloween 1993 [more inside]
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale...
In 1984, The Voyage of the Mimi set sail on PBS, exploring the ocean off the coast of Massachusetts to study humpback whales. The educational series was made up of thirteen episodes intended to teach middle schoolers about science and math. The first fifteen minutes of each episode were a fictional adventure starring a young Ben Affleck. The second 15 minutes were an "expedition documentary" that would explore the scientific concepts behind the show's plot points. A sequel with the same format, The Second Voyage of the Mimi aired in 1988, and featured the crew of the Mimi exploring Mayan ruins in Mexico. [more inside]
Four turns for a dollar. 500 turns for two dollars.
Filmmaker Nirvan Mullick (previously) makes the day of the nine-year-old proprietor of Caine's Arcade.
Was last seen approaching the power plant!
The Ultimate Warrior
The clash between The Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan that began with WrestleMania VI and continued with Hogan's unflattering comments in The Self Destruction of The Ultimate Warrior climaxed with this epic shoot in which there are - so to speak - no holds barred. [more inside]
Hydra buys zombie
Microsoft has agreed to purchase a big chunk of AOL's intellectual property for a big chunk of cash. Left unremarked in most business news coverage is a little matter of history: A closure of sorts for the fiercest -- and possibly the most expensive -- tech rivalry of the dotcom era. Microsoft will own Netscape. [more inside]
That's my Cheese Monster talking
Five years after Ze Frank's much-loved if uncategorizable The Show closed down (previously), the vlogger/humorist/online performance artist has returned with A Show. via
listlessness, tedium, lassitude, languor
Long Live Ligers
"It fits with what we would expect as a result of the rapid change in Arctic habitat." The stuff of science fiction is becoming increasingly the stuff of science fact. And now, it seems, you can crack open a white Coke (if you can stomach the campaign) and watch it all from the comfort of your couch. [more inside]
At the Tunnels of Madness
Back in the 50s, the US planned to create a network of tunnels underneath the Greenland ice sheet to fire nuclear missiles from. (via Slashdot)
"Refusing to allow such threats to paralyze the entire university community in its pursuit of learning and teaching,"
Starting on February 13th The University of Pittsburgh has received a steady stream of bomb threats. The Chancellor of the University has stated that the school has no intention of ending its semester early even though the threats show no sign of stopping and the authorities have been unable to find any leads after finding that some of the threats were routed through systems in Austria. The school's Vice Chancellor wrote this letter to students and faculty in response to the ongoing situation.
This is a strange thing. This is a look, a style, a pattern that didn’t previously exist in the real world. It’s something that’s come out of digital.
"Above all, the New Aesthetic is telling the truth. There truly are many forms of imagery nowadays that are modern, and unique to this period. We’re surrounded by systems, devices and machineries generating heaps of raw graphic novelty. We built them, we programmed them, we set them loose for a variety of motives, but they do some unexpected and provocative things." Bruce Sterling (Previously) writes about the New Aesthetic movement in Wired magazine. [more inside]
Demoscene - The Art of the Algorithms
Wired called them, digital graffiti and John Carmack spoke of them at QuakeCon 2011 but they remain little known. A recently released full-length documentary (download) gives a portrait of the creative digital subculture from 80s to the present day. [more inside]
It Gets Better at BYU
RIP Jack Tramiel
"Perhaps in American cinema, women have typically been reduced to types like mom, girlfriend, or victim. But in the Y.A. books of our youth, they are far more complex, and more thoroughly drawn."
'The Atlantic Wire' kicks off its new YA For Grownups series with The Greatest Girl Characters of Young Adult Literature.
We've said all the way through the campaign to expect the unexpected, but we didn't expect this
The 158th Boat Race between Oxford University Boat Club & Cambridge University Boat Club last Saturday was perhaps the most eventful in the event's 183 year history. The race was stopped after a protestor, Trenton Oldfield, swam out out the course and was narrowly missed by Oxford's blades. After a 20 minute delay, the race was restarted. Thirty-five seconds in, the Oxford cox was warned for steering into Cambridge's line, and then initiated a blade-clash that broke one of Oxford's blades. Cambridge rowed on to win by four and a quarter lengths (Official race report). After finishing the race, Oxford's bowman collapsed, and was taken to hospital; the traditional presentation ceremony was abandoned. The OUBC medical officer stated: "The sudden and premature stopping of the Race when concentration and exertion were at their peak was bad enough, but when the Race had lost its equal footing for having lost an oar, the psychological response was to try even harder. Oxford drove themselves to the limit to try to contain the damage. Alex Woods rowing at Bow reached the finishing line and found he had expended all reserves of energy; in my view he had rendered himself hypoxic, and this was the cause of his collapse". He has returned home to recover. [more inside]
"[T]here is no winning here as women . . ."
"The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others—and in my case, to the actual public." Actresses and female entertainers are frequently the subject of much ridicule and scrutiny vis-a-vis their appearance. Rarely do they publicly return similar scrutiny those doing the scrutinizing. Ashley Judd writes a searing condemnation of "the assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification" of women's (and men's) bodies.
You got Facebooks in my Instagrams
A picture is worth a thousand words and a billion dollars. Facebook has bought Instagram for $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. This is striking for since Instagram was valued at $500 million last week, though, right before the purchase they raised $50 million in venture capitol showing they have the ability to raise lots of money quickly. Instagram is notable for having 30 million users despite having been iOS-only until recently creating an Android app. Facebook had been rumored to be working on a photo sharing app, however, like Microsoft buying Skype, the user base was may have been real value, not the easily replicable technology. For those that rue this news, there are alternatives to host your sepia toned cell phone pictures.
"Poetic excess takes the devil’s side, in the Anglo-American mind, of the Artificiality/Authenticity binary, and thus is highly suspect."
Cultural critic Mark Dery discusses his new essay collection. Interview by R. U. Sirius. Dery has previously written on the cultural influence of Edward Gorey, the effects of social networking, the popularity of cephalopods, dead malls, and Surrealism and the Visual Unconscious.
Boundless Learning
A free university textbook project Boundless Learning is being sued jointly by Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education for attempting to simulate the textbooks required by courses by patching together an array of open texts that cover the material similarly.
Tommy Tucker was the most famous squirrel ever to come from Washington
Perhaps in some forgotten corner of a museum there sits — nay, there stands — Tommy Tucker, a little dusty, a little moth-eaten, but still the best-dressed squirrel in the world
An Absence Present
The Titanic Guide to New York City. An exploration of traces of the disaster, revealing history still written on the landscape.
2012 Hugo Award Nominees announced
The nominees for the 2012 Hugo Award were announced over the weekend. Nominees include Metafilter's own jscalzi (who will also be the host for this year's Hugo Awards ceremony) for the beginning of his epic fantasy trilogy April Fool's joke The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City (Prologue). One record being set this year is Mira Grant's - aka Seanan McGuire's - nominations: she is the first woman to have four Hugo nominations in a single year. [more inside]
Paul Feig Walks Us Through Freaks and Geeks
In the first of a five-part series, Paul Feig walks through the origins of and provides an episode-by-episode analysis of Freaks and Geeks
"Why do I only speak out now / Aged and with my last drop of ink: / Israel's nuclear power is endangering / Our already fragile world peace?"
Günter Grass barred from Israel over poem. [Guardian.co.uk] Nobel laureate, who says he had not meant to criticise Israel but Netanyahu government, declared persona non grata. The celebrated German author Gunter Grass has been declared persona non grata in Israel following the publication of his poem [Guardian.co.uk] warning that the Jewish state's nuclear programme was a threat to an "already fragile world peace". [more inside]
On Wisconsin?
As the recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker draws near, the governor has quietly signed "dozens" of bills into Wisconsin law, including anti-abortion, pro abstinence education only laws, the repeal of the Equal Pay law,, a bill prohibiting insurance plans from covering some abortions, and a bill banning damages in employment discrimination suits.
Creativity is not a talent, it is a way of operating.
Lit Videos on YouTube
YouTube does not have a "Literature" category. Yet. "Perhaps it can be argued that literature is "entertainment." But aligning literature with "entertainment" is disingenous. Literature is never merely "entertainment." [more inside]
"la plus belle tout simplement"
Photographer Luc Perrot’s Paysages Nocturnes galleries reveal the spectacular beauty of the night-time world. [more inside]
The pipes, the pipes, aren't calling.
bing has a map? *iphoto* has/is a map?
The Barkley Marathons
In June of 1977, James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee. 54.5 hours later, he was captured, "driven and exhausted, covered with mud and sand," (Large PDF) just five miles away. In 1986, accomplished ultrarunner Gary Cantrell (AKA Lazarus Lake) decided to hold an ultramarathon in neighboring Frozen Head State Park. The world's toughest 100 miler, the Barkley Marathon and Fun Run, was born. There have been 13 100-mile finishers since that time.
In 2012, three people finished the 100 miler, and a new course record was set. Here are some before and after shots of runners. Here are some shots of the course and the fun.
In 2012, three people finished the 100 miler, and a new course record was set. Here are some before and after shots of runners. Here are some shots of the course and the fun.
The best you can do is learn to survive.
IKEA is already widening their domain, but for some of us, it's still a challenge to deal with the staid institution of the IKEA store. Never fear! [more inside]
DA DA DA DA DA DAAA DA DA - Roundball Rock, The Theme of the NBA in the 1990s
One song was synonymous with NBA Basketball throughout the 1990s: Roundball Rock by John Tesh [more inside]
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