April 30, 2010
Yes it's true, the golden age did start with moi
In the wake of their Webby nominations for their Bohemian Rhapsody video (previously), Nerdist Podcast interviews The Muppets. [46m, actual interview starts at 10m40s] Listen on the website, or find download links on the page to take it with you.
Let the Music Play
In 1980s New York, two songs - Planet Rock and Let The Music Play - hit the Latino club scene like an earthquake and the aftershocks created a new genre of dance music - Freestyle.
Characterized by funky electro-style breaks made on a Roland 808, with Latin rhythms and uplifting vocals about love and loss, often sung by unknown and untrained singers, the sound has remained a force in pop music and has influenced house and breaks music to this day. [more inside]
Candy Packers of the World, Unite!
Celebrate the eight-hour work day, dance around a pole, affirm your patriotism to beat the reds, build your community through candy and flower filled baskets, and get caught in flagrante delicto: it's a very special day. Previously, previously
The Quantified Self
The Data-Driven Life. "Ubiquitous self-tracking is a dream of engineers. For all their expertise at figuring out how things work, technical people are often painfully aware how much of human behavior is a mystery. People do things for unfathomable reasons. They are opaque even to themselves. A hundred years ago, a bold researcher fascinated by the riddle of human personality might have grabbed onto new psychoanalytic concepts like repression and the unconscious. These ideas were invented by people who loved language. Even as therapeutic concepts of the self spread widely in simplified, easily accessible form, they retained something of the prolix, literary humanism of their inventors. From the languor of the analyst’s couch to the chatty inquisitiveness of a self-help questionnaire, the dominant forms of self-exploration assume that the road to knowledge lies through words. Trackers are exploring an alternate route. Instead of interrogating their inner worlds through talking and writing, they are using numbers. They are constructing a quantified self."
Pan Am’s Helvetica Dreamtime
What is this post's title?
This is a zip file, the contents of which is the zip file you started with. An explanation of how one would create such a thing appears here.
A special kind of person with special weird things they go to...
China Miéville has won his third Arthur C Clarke award for his crime/weird fiction novel The City and The City - making him the first person to win the prize three times. Somewhat emotional video of him accepting the prize, where he thanks one special crime reader in particular, his mum, who passed away before it's publication. 10 Questions about China Miéville. An A-Z of China Miéville - 1, 2. An extract from his next novel, Kraken. A Bas Lag Wiki. A discussion of the best genre crossovers. An out of season Christmas tale.
Love is a stranger in an open car...
A mixtape a week for a year... Detroit Techno,
Giorgio Moroder,
Quebecois Disco,
Kraftwerk,
Bobby Orlando,
Synth Pop and loads more.
Stop overthinking that pan of beans
The Adventist-Style Vegan Dinner Loaf calculator. For all your Adventist-style vegan dinner loaf calculating needs.
I see.
I'd rather measure the diameter of a dove than go barter-shopping with a frilly lion. (Lots of Previously.)
Still Only Five Cents!
Frankenstein Defeats Evil Computer. Mysterious Grass-Roots Gal-Revolt Rocks Gotham! Are Hippies Slowing Down Space Progam in Protest? Headlines ripped from the pages of such great newspapers as the Daily Bugle and the Gotham Gazette await you at Dateline: Silver Age.
Abortion Not OK in OK
Provoking pro-choice advocates, Oklahoma passed two highly restrictive abortion laws on Tuesday. One (rtf file) requires doctors to show women an ultrasound of their fetus and point out its physical characteristics — even if the patient was impregnated through rape or incest. The second (rtf file) stipulates that doctors cannot be sued if they decide to lie to an expectant mother regarding her baby's birth defects. A third requires clinics to post signs telling patients they cannot be forced to have an abortion. The first law prompted an immediate lawsuit from Tulsa's only abortion clinic. [more inside]
First Person Shooter
Dutch Marines capture Somali pirates with all the action caught by the team leader's helmet videocamera.
It's Love, Man!
In the Black
In the black. Maggie Anderson, and her family spent a year trying to patronize only black-owned businesses.
Featured in the local papers, you can read about the project and their own views on their website.
Demolition of Texas Stadium
The demolition of the Dallas Cowboys' Texas Stadium [previously], in panoramic 360-degree video, from the 50-yard line. That is all.
I'm a great believer in the force of will.
The Liberal Moment has Come
Since 1945 the proprietor-free Guardian has supported all 3 major parties, and after an editorial meeting last week, they have declared for the Liberal Democrats. The Economist yesterday published their support for the conservatives: Who Should Govern Britain?, which only really leaves The Independent with any question over who they'll back. [more inside]
Joshua Slocum
On June 27, 1898, all but unnoticed, a Canadian seaman named Joshua Slocum sailed his rebuilt oyster boat Spray into Newport, Rhode Island, completing a 3-year, 46,000 mile voyage conducted solely by dead reckoning that made him the first man to ever achieve a solo circumnavigation of the world. His account of the feat, Sailing Alone Around The World (HTML with illustrations, plain text, EPUB, audio), was described by Arthur Ransome as "one of the immortal books". In 1909, Slocum set out in the Spray for the West Indies. Neither he nor the craft were ever seen again.
Here we are!!!!!
That’s so weird! is a Canadian sketch comedy series on YTV. Pitched at the young teen audience, anyone who likes their humour broad and zany will enjoy this. Some favourite sketches are Daniel Book (a 17-but-still-7 Daniel Cook), Logan and Wilf (teen boys parodied) and the Cafeteria Ladies. The show was recently picked up by Boomerang Latin America and Nickelodeon Australia. A whole new generation of Canuck sketch comedy takes off, eh?
Zachary Schomburg
On the Monster Hour, there was this monster that used to come out and try to kill everyone in the audience. No one would expect it, not even the producers who were told by the monster he would play a few blues tunes on the piano.Surrealism done right, by Zachary Schomburg. [more inside]
A PROSPECTUS for a NEW MAGAZINE
Henry Luce's original prospectus for LIFE magazine, written with the help of poet Archibald MacLeish:
To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things—machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man's work—his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed;
Thus to see, and to be shown, is now the will and new expectancy of half mankind.
To see, and to show, is the mission now undertaken by a new kind of publication, THE SHOW-BOOK OF THE WORLD, hereinafter described.
"If you eat italian food in your mind you might go to Italy. So when cats eat cat food, where do they go in their minds?"
Making of Friskies "Adventureland": The creative types behind the insane commercial explain themselves and the six month odyssey that led to the commercial's creation (kitty green screen! turkey dance choreography!). If you haven't seen it yet, The Awl liveblogs the ad. Slate chimes in too, with some quotes from execs explaining what the hell is going on.
Where music no longer plays
Lusty Lady Closing
A Seattle Landmark is closing. The Lusty Lady and its marquee has been a mainstay in downtown Seattle since the 80’s. It may be the only peep show to feature monthly art shows. The San Francisco location was unionized in the 90’s and remains open. It was was sold to the employees in the early 21st century and is now cooperatively owned. The Lusty has also inspired a book and a movie.
We ain't no hooligans, this ain't no football song
New Order's 1990 official World Cup song, World In Motion, promised a new, actually listenable era in football songs. So what has England seen since then? The endearing Three Lions for the hopes of Euro '96. Fat Les' Vindaloo celebrated the marriage of matches and curries. Meat Pie Sausage Roll celebrated the meal options of your average footie ground. On The Ball celebrated the meteoric rise of Ant and Dec. In 2006, we had a novelty cover of a novelty song, the unspeakable, the unelectable, and the so bad it loops round to genius. [more inside]
G-G-Get Down!
The remix artist Pogo (Previously Previously) goes a little darker and danicer in his latest offering, Skynet Symphonic, entirely built from Terminator 2 clips.
hand drawn maps
Hand Drawn Maps "These humble maps can be beautiful. They can also be messy, indecipherable, inaccurate, and unattractive ... The crucial advantage of the handmade map is that it is designed for a particular person confronting a particular task. " [via]
Rock That Font
Where music geekery and typographical geekery intersect: Rock That Font looks knowledgeably at the typography of notable album covers.
Futurama
The New York World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940 promised visitors they would be looking at the “World of Tomorrow”. (second link is similar to the second one here)
Whizz! Pop! Flash! It's Electron Boy!
Who fights the powers of evil with the incandescent glory of light? Who rescues helpless athletes and utility workers across the Seattle metropolitan area? Who gets a 20-cop motorcade escort for his bad-ass customized Delorean? Why, it's America's newest super hero, Electron Boy! [more inside]
WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU
Father of the Anthora, dead at 87. Known to people outside of New York mostly from Law and Order episodes, the Anthora is one of the most recognizable symbols of the city, the blue and white paper coffee cup with a Greek design and "We are happy to serve you" written on the side. "The Anthora seems to have been here forever, as if bestowed by the gods at the city’s creation. But in fact, it was created by man — one man in particular, a refugee from Nazi Europe named Leslie Buck. " For use outside of NYC, you can order the paper version in bulk or get a ceramic replica from MOMA.
“I found God in 1992. I found Satan in 1998.”
Get Kony. Sam Childers, former outlaw biker, current evangelical preacher, has set up an orphanage in war-torn Southern Sudan. More controversially, he's on a vigilante crusade* against Joseph Kony and his "outmatched but unstopped" Lord's Resistance Army.
[* sound loads immediately on site]
Magnificent Maps
The Klencke Atlas of 1660 (video), the world's largest book.
Grayson Perry's Map of Nowhere (video)
Many more maps and videos at the BBC's The Beauty of Maps site.
Would you like to see these maps in person? The British Library has just opened their exhibition Magnificent Maps where you can see these among 80 treasures from their map collection, many never seen before.
Grayson Perry's Map of Nowhere (video)
Many more maps and videos at the BBC's The Beauty of Maps site.
Would you like to see these maps in person? The British Library has just opened their exhibition Magnificent Maps where you can see these among 80 treasures from their map collection, many never seen before.
Ze Frank's Social Network for Two
Hey, let's join Ze Frank's social network for two.
Henry VIII's opulent wine fountain returns to Hampton Court Palace
More sweary than South Park
Tim Minchin is not keen on the Pope. Quite rude. No, actually very rude. And yes, it's a single link to a YouTube video. NSFW.
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