The day in posts: 04/29/2011

New Jersey indie punks Titus Andronicus have released the video for No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future, the third song off their acclaimed Civil War themed concept album The Monitor. Its the second video from The Monitor, after last year's A More Perfect Union. The album, released last year, uses the Civil War as a loose metaphor for the New Jersey band living in Boston and dealing with growing up. It includes spoken quotes from Abe Lincoln and Walt Whitman (read by Craig Finn). The clip, directed by Tom Scharpling, is more traditional than his well-loved videos for Ted Leo and The New Pornographers and shows the band touring their beloved New Jersey. [more inside]
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:27 PM PST - 104 comments

A wave of powerful storm cells swept the southeastern United States this week, spawning hundreds of tornadoes that wreaked havoc from Texas to Virginia. While damage was widespread throughout the region, the most terrible toll was seen in Alabama, which has accounted for two-thirds of the more than 300 reported deaths -- the deadliest since the Great Depression -- and where many small towns were simply wiped from the map. Especially hard-hit was the university town of Tuscaloosa, the state's fifth-largest, where a monstrous F5 tornado (seen in this terrifying firsthand video) tore a vicious track through entire neighborhoods and business districts -- narrowly missing the region's primary hospital -- and continuing a path that rained debris as far as Birmingham, over sixty miles away. The disaster prompted a visit from President Obama today, who declared "I've never seen devastation like this" after surveying the area with Governor Robert Bentley, Senator Richard Shelby, and Mayor Walter Maddox. More: photos from In Focus and The Big Picture, aerial footage of the aftermath, "before and after" sliders, the path of the Tuscaloosa twister on Google Maps, People Locator, local aid information, MetaTalk check-in thread
posted by Rhaomi at 6:18 PM PST - 104 comments

The Internet's most comprehensive examination of the watches worn by Fox Mulder on TV's 'The X-Files'. [more inside]
posted by burnmp3s at 5:07 PM PST - 46 comments

Genius of Live from the Tom Tom Club. Disc two features 12 remixes of their original megahit, Genius of Love.
posted by puny human at 4:20 PM PST - 34 comments

Berkeley rapper Lil' B announced at Coachella he is doing "the most controversial thing in hip-hop". He's releasing an album titled I'm Gay. Only he's not gay. Well, not gay in the gay way. He's gay in the really happy way. Lil' B informed MTV News that he's "taking the initial steps to break barriers" between the hip-hop community and homosexuals. He has received death threats as a result of his message. GLAAD remains skeptical about the rapper's motives.
posted by quadog at 4:16 PM PST - 68 comments

What’s Left of the Left - Paul Krugman's Lonely Crusade for Liberalism. After President Obama met with a group of prominent economists in December of 2010, among them Alan Blinder, the latter remarked, somewhat bleakly and apologetically: "In the United States, there is no left left". Paul Krugman is a lonely man. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 3:46 PM PST - 106 comments

I am a 91-year-old bodybuilder (SLgrauniad)
posted by Tom-B at 2:28 PM PST - 43 comments

A map of every street tree in Washington, DC.
posted by schmod at 1:29 PM PST - 33 comments

From Draculin to Spermadine, Fucitol to Arsole, here is your guide to molecules with silly names. (via kottke)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:00 PM PST - 15 comments

Alan Wolfson's Canal Street Cross Section, the latest of his urban miniatures, will be exhibited, along with many other works of a similar vein, at New York's Museum of Art and Design June 7 through September 18 (previously).
posted by nj_subgenius at 12:04 PM PST - 12 comments

After suffering a series of strokes earlier this week, feminist science fiction author and essayist Joanna Russ has died. Russ's best known work is probably her novel The Female Man; this and her other works were often misunderstood and dismissed by the male-dominated science fiction field of the 70s. Despite this, her short story "When It Changed" (which was included in Harlan Ellison's Again Dangerous Visions) won a Hugo award in 1973, and her novella, "Souls," won a Nebula award in 1983. In retrospect, of course, hers is one of the names that will be remembered from that era of imaginative writing.
posted by aught at 11:44 AM PST - 87 comments

Grandmothers are agitated to the point of singing K’naan songs. This basically concerns the frustration over the Canadian Senate killing Bill C-393 (a law to facilitate production of cheaper life saving HIV/AIDS drugs for developing countries). With the new election looming, the “Grannies” would like to see folks use aidsaction.ca to email their candidates and ask them about their Access to Medicines stance.
posted by davidng at 11:39 AM PST - 6 comments

Furthermore, let’s remember that Alderaan isn’t gone. It’s just blown up. Suddenly all the metallic elements that were languishing away in the planetary core are floating around in the void, ripe for the plucking. And anyone who can plausibly claim to have owned them is dead. You can build a lot of Death Stars with that much tungsten. Well, not even a lot—but maybe one.

The Overthinking It Think Tank takes a look at “the economic calculus behind the Empire’s tactic of A) building a Death Star, B) intimidating planets into submission with the threat of destruction, and C) actually carrying through with said destruction if the planet doesn’t comply.” [more inside]
posted by kipmanley at 11:30 AM PST - 78 comments

The Washington Post has invited Donald Trump as its guest for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. WaPo writers Ezra Klein and Dana Milbank are not amused, with the latter pointing out that his paper had recently taken Trump to task for his rampant birtherism. No word yet on how the POTUS might react.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:20 AM PST - 62 comments

Great Moments in Werner Herzog Voiceovers [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:09 AM PST - 29 comments

Good answers at a quora.com post about bad designs that might have best been not created.....
posted by skepticallypleased at 10:20 AM PST - 73 comments

Since the late '70s, Gordon Monahan has been making a career of extracting the unheard from pretty much anything he can get his hands on. Monahan's works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. Such pieces include long string installations activated by wind (Long Aeolian Piano, 1984-88), by water vortices (Aquaeolian Whirlpool, 1990) and by indoor air draughts (Spontaneously Harmonious in Certain Kinds of Weather, 1996). His work for electronic tone generators and human speaker swingers (Speaker Swinging, 1982), is a hybrid of science, music, and performance art, where minimalistic trance music based on the Doppler Effect contrasts with issues central to performance art such as physical struggle and 'implied threat'. John Cage once said, "At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven't heard before." [more inside]
posted by wcfields at 10:17 AM PST - 4 comments

The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys) is an invasive insect introduced from China and first spotted in the United States in 1998 in Allentown, PA. [more inside]
posted by electroboy at 9:47 AM PST - 66 comments

After Daily Beast columnist Andrew Sullivan lambasted The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence's Hunky Jesus Contest in San Francisco's Dolores Park with a short post flamingly titled "The Tired, Lame Bigotry Of Some Homosexuals," the Sisters responded. Sullivan reacted to the responses with an escalation, calling the Sisters "smug liberal bigots." Is the Hunky Jesus Contest "everyone's favorite blasphemous hoot" or a "profane and shockingly insensitive spectacle" that "illustrates the secular, pro-'gay' Left's hypocrisy in demanding 'respect' for homosexuals and transsexuals"? (previously)
posted by mrgrimm at 9:34 AM PST - 149 comments

The United States of Environmental Superlatives
posted by PepperMax at 9:32 AM PST - 26 comments

Yes, we turned Office into a game! "Is this Microsoft tone genuinely corny-earnest, reflecting the kind of middle-school pep-rally sensibility that you can only imagine Apple hipsters sneering and snickering at (making you want to punch the hipsters) and Google engineers looking at in amazement? Or is it triple-backflip hipsterism itself, an Onionesque by-golly mockery of corniness? I suppose this is one of the enduring mysteries of life." [Previously] [Previously-er]
posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 9:06 AM PST - 67 comments

"You've seen ants. Thousands of them. And most of the time, you've seen them in colonies, living as a group. But have you seen them float as a group? Apparently a single fire ant will struggle in water, but a cluster of them can bob happily for months. A new study has used time lapse photography to figure out why — and how — that is."
posted by ocherdraco at 9:01 AM PST - 40 comments

There's a world of music offered online, and some of it is legitimately free. But if you're looking for more than single tracks as offered by RCRD LBL, but you're daunted by the sheer volume of netlabel releases on Archive.org, MeFite sleeping bear offers an alternative: Melodic Expectation, reviews of music released for free by artists and labels. There are 36 posts to date, with new additions every weekday. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:30 AM PST - 12 comments

A German tourist films a trip to New York City in 1983 and 86: Times Square, The Subway
posted by The Whelk at 7:32 AM PST - 53 comments

The Monkees' Head: 'Our fans couldn't even see it' At the height of their fame, the Monkees teamed up with Jack Nicholson to film the psychedelic classic Head – and destroy their careers in the process. So how do they feel about it now? [more inside]
posted by jack_mo at 7:22 AM PST - 74 comments

Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution is a CBS News special, broadcast in April 1967. The show was hosted by Leonard Bernstein and is probably one of the first examples of pop music being examined as a 'serious' art form. The film features many scenes shot in Los Angeles in late 1966, including interviews with Frank Zappa and Graham Nash, as well as the now legendary Brian Wilson solo performance of "Surf's Up." (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 6:30 AM PST - 15 comments

Ev'ry truly cultured music student knows: you must learn your scales and your arpeggios. Even if you're the lead singer of a death metal band (SLYT).
posted by SomeTrickPony at 6:00 AM PST - 46 comments

Friday Flash Fun in the (temporary) form of Soul Brother, a retro style 2d flash game from adult swim. You character can jump into a fresh body when killed, which soon proves useful as all the inhabitants of this world have different talents, and thanks to you, very short life spans. [more inside]
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 5:57 AM PST - 10 comments

I drive past the Meadowlands every day now for the past 2 years on the NJ Turnpike. I kept seeing construction equipment and this area of dead dumping land slowly transform into one with actual streams like out of some plan. Turns out, there was. [more inside]
posted by rich at 4:14 AM PST - 19 comments

KTRU Departs FM Airwaves Defiant, Unique As Ever: 2 weeks ago The FCC Approved controversial sale of Rice University's radio station, KTRU, to the University of Houston and after 40 years of student-run broadcasting, KTRU's FM signal was cut off promptly at 6 a.m. yesterday, leaving a sizable hole in Houston's FM band. The triumphant speech of Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic convention faded into the wall of sound of The Flying Luttenbachers "The Pointed Stick Variations," reaching an almost unbearable harshness before everything ceased. [Previously]
posted by Blake at 3:46 AM PST - 50 comments