April 30, 2013
I took my power in my hand, and went against the world
In a couple hours, at midnight on May 1, 2013, civil unions will become available to Colorado couples. [more inside]
Free Speech on the Internet
Mayday...
Without fear or favor, kids say the darnedest things
First, Art Linkletter chatted with the honest little scamps, then Bill Cosby talked with kids these days. They probably won't get a TV or radio show, but parents on Reddit shared the creepy things their kids have said or done.
The map of music
Every Noise At Once. A map of musical genres, built by Glenn McDonald of The War Against Silence and the Echo Nest. Click on a genre name to hear a sound sample, or pop it open to see a map of bands within that genre.
If she weighs the same as a duck... she's made of wood!
Trials by Ordeal were a method of determining guilt or innocence by putting the accused through various torturous experiences. Today these approaches are frequently-mocked and banned almost everywhere, though Sassywood remains common in Liberia. However, economist Peter Leeson argues that trial by ordeal may have been a very effective way of dispensing justice, especially when courts and juries were expensive or broken. According to the paper [PDF], a superstitious belief in iudicium Dei, or the justice of God, may have discouraged the guilty from ordeals, while tilting the scales in favor of the innocent - echoes of the practice persist today in swearing on a Bible. Even Sassywood [pdf] may be better than Liberia's broken justice system.
Fire Writing
Etsuko Ichikawa is a Seattle-based artist who specializes in glass pyrography. 2100°/451° is a short film of her at work. [more inside]
That's the second biggest pile of $#!+ I've ever seen.
INFLATION! is the self-described "(con)temporary installation" curated by M+, a not-yet-built museum for visual culture at the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong and located in a future park next to the future museum. As you can guess, all the works on display are large-scale inflatables, and the contribution of American artist Paul McCarthy is "Complex Pile", a 51-foot-tall representation of ... poop. Designboom has a gallery of all the pieces, which also include a giant roast pig and a full-sized replica of Stonehenge.
NEWSFLASH: Bad weather and an unseen flaw combined to flatten "Complex Pile" into a representation of a big brown stain. Repairs are underway.
This is a really great place to have sex
A few words on why Shane Black, writer of Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, record holder for the largest spec script sale ever, and now writer-director of Iron Man 3, is the most badass action screenwriter around. (via Vulture)
Dystopian Future (and present)
Panopticon is a documentary which details how our concept of privacy is altered by the modern surveillance state.
FOOD FLASH - There's spud in your eye!
The Ministry Of Food was a British government ministerial posts separated from that of the Minister of Agriculture. A major task of the latter office was to oversee rationing in the United Kingdom arising out of World War II. They made many newsreels and PSAs to inform the citizenry how to use the food rationing system: Rationing is introduced in 1939 The new ration books are coming! Cod Liver Oil Here's spud in your eye Don't cut that bread! DON'T WASTE FOOD! Dig For Victory! Milk is here! In addition, some short films instructed people in how to best use the new rationing system : Two Cooks And A Cabbage How To Make Tea Rabbit Pie Buying black market meat: a Partner in CRIME A US view explaining UK rationing to the States.
Perpetual Motion, maybe for real
Now, a technological advance has made it possible for physicists to test the idea. They plan to build a time crystal, not in the hope that this perpetuum mobile will generate an endless supply of energy (as inventors have striven in vain to do for more than a thousand years) but that it will yield a better theory of time itself.Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek's "somewhat embarassing" idea will be put to the test as scientists try to build time crystals.
A C*nt and His iPhone
Continuously exasperated Tumblr Jesus Christ, Silicon Valley really lets loose [NSFW] at a Vanity Fair profile of Dave Morin, creator of the hip alternative social media app Path.
The Greatest Web Comic Based On A Classic Namco Video Game
Galaga: Invasion is a webcomic from Ryan North, Christopher Hastings and Anthony Clark. Drop whatever it is you're doing and get reading!
Featuring the suggested voice talent of Burt Reynolds, Rip Torn, & A Cow
God Hates Astronauts is a webcomic that includes: John L. Sullivan and his mustache, a bear army, head trauma, infidelity, a demonic cow head, criminal owls, and agrarian astronauts. [more inside]
Do you spit or swallow?
Bostonians Tyler Balliet and Morgan First love wine. Drinking it, talking about it, introducing other people to it. But wine, unfortunately, is often perceived to have an attitude, a culture of snottiness and pretension that puts people off before they even get close to a wine glass. Why swirl it? What's with that obnoxious sucking sound? What the hell is the deal with spitting it out? What about the confusing vocabulary and snooty descriptors? When did wine become "sassy" or "understated", instead of "delicious"? [more inside]
Sesame Street outreach
Over the past month, the Sesame Street workshop has focused on illuminating the experience of military families, and providing resources to help them cope with their extraordinary lives.
Cookie Monster Broke Luce
“It destroyed two vintage T-shirt stores and a banjo”
The Hipster – a lexicon from the NYT.
Posthumous Papers
The Pickwick Papers, one of the most honored first novels of all time, was conceived as a showcase for the comic etchings of the celebrated illustrator Robert Seymour. His publishers tapped a 24 year old journalist named Charles Dickens (their third choice) to provide the humorous "commentary" linking the pictures, which were to depict the hunting mishaps of a club of cockney sportsmen. Dickens, who knew nothing about hunting, ignored the prospectus and wrote his own way forward. As it became clear that Seymour was ill-equipped to depict the darker turns of Dickens' imagination, illustrator and writer fell into a conflict which ended in horror. [more inside]
COIN 101
A short photo essay documenting a marine's experience of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Iraq. via.
"Bin Laden cowered & hid. Mughniyeh spent his life giving us the finger"
It's been five years since the death of Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus. No one ever claimed responsibility for killing him. Hezbollah publicly blames Israel's Mossad, a charge they unsurprisingly deny. So, who killed The Driver? [more inside]
And he would make a great Magneto.
Country legend Willie Nelson turned 80 yesterday and in celebration, he has released his audition tape for The Hobbit 2.
Right, Zach?
The cult 2010 video game Deadly Premonition gets a Director's Cut this week. The brainchild of a guy who calls himself SWERY, one could make a strong case for Deadly Premonition being the most entertainingly bizarre game ever made. It's undeniably influenced by Twin Peaks and more than a touch of Japanese horror, yet that doesn't begin to explain how unique, disturbing and hilarious the game is. The humor is intentionally unintentional. Everyone agrees there are significant gameplay problems, but the phrase "so bad it's good" does the game a terrible disservice. "Capable of swinging from zany to nasty, inspired to absurd within the course of a single sequence," and boasting an eccentric, often inappropriate soundtrack, Deadly Premonition is either a joke, a masterpiece or both. (Previously: It's like watching two clowns eat each other.)
Those Were the Days
Classical Gas was written and publicized by Mason Williams in 1968 - still nimble and able, Mason Williams still performs it (as do many other players), but in addition to being an all-around good player, Williams was a driving force behind the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (and hiring 22 year-old Steve Martin) and he als...well, let him tell you.
How do you even set a fucking bike on fire?
Irish comedian David O'Doherty recorded his song 'Life' while drunk in a hotel room in Australia for the You Made It Weird podcast. It is hilarious.
She could put her lips together for the first time. “It was beautiful."
Groundbreaking Surgery for Girl Born Without Windpipe: [New York Times] — Using plastic fibers and human cells, doctors have built and implanted a windpipe in a 2 ½-year-old girl — the youngest person ever to receive a bioengineered organ.
Back by popular demand
The world first web page has been put back online by the folks at CERN, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web. Originally posted on April 30, 1993. Cern's announcement blog post yesterday. [more inside]
The Net Before The Net
Music has the right to robots
"Designed in collaboration with interactive designer Jonathan Chomko, the COLORS News Machine turns your tweets into headlines, but only after they’ve been passed through all the media filters and technological platforms that disseminate and distort the news today."
"A megaphone will read your tweet out loud. Its tape recorder listens, converting what it hears into text so that the television can show it onscreen. A camera watching the television converts what it sees into a signal to the radio antenna, which broadcasts the tweet. And the waiting microphone interprets this radio address as text again for printing."
Tweet to here: @ColorsMachine. Live stream here.
"A megaphone will read your tweet out loud. Its tape recorder listens, converting what it hears into text so that the television can show it onscreen. A camera watching the television converts what it sees into a signal to the radio antenna, which broadcasts the tweet. And the waiting microphone interprets this radio address as text again for printing."
Tweet to here: @ColorsMachine. Live stream here.
Created equal; photographed separately.
Created Equal is a photo project created by photographer Mark Laita in which he focuses on the contrasts between people, the lives and cultures through black and white portraits of different people. Some images possibly NSFW.
Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out
"There is consternation at Wikipedia over the discovery that hundreds of novelists who happen to be female were being systematically removed from the category American novelists and assigned to the category American women novelists." [more inside]
Woods-Burner
On this day in 1844, Henry David Thoreau burned down a forest.
"I cried the first time I held a Nintendo 3DS."
Spy versus spy versus spy versus spy versus spy ver ... [load more]
Fade Away: music by Vitalic (previously), directed by Romain Chassaing. Multiple assassins try to get their hands on an attaché case, and (briefly) they all succeed. NWS for action-movie gore.
BBC: How to Eat Healthily on £1 a day
"Starting on Monday 29 April, 5,000 Britons will be challenging themselves to live on just £1 a day for five days, as part of a campaign by the Global Poverty Project.
But is it possible not just to survive, but also to eat a balanced and healthy diet on that sort of budget?" [more inside]
The Great Oil Fallac(ies)
Does the US have a national interest in securing Middle Eastern oil? Economist John Quiggin thinks not, and argues that oil is a commodity like any other. Other scholars have questioned the conventional wisdom surrounding oil.
Timothy Mitchell says that the problem with oil is not its scarcity, but its abundance, and we simply have too much oil.
Eugene Gholz & Daryl Press argue that "American national security policy is based on a misunderstanding about U.S. oil interests. Although oil is a vital commodity, potential
supply disruptions are less worrisome than scholars, politicians, and pundits presume."
App Art
Invisible Hieroglyphics: iPad screen smudges as art.
Is too much news bad for you?
Rolf Dobelli describes the negative effects of the overconsumption of news. An edited extract of his essay is in the Guardian here and the full text of his argument is here.
The text in the Guardian was linked to in a metafilter thread here.
According to Dobelli, news misleads, is irrelevant, has no explanatory power, is toxic, increases cognitive errors, inhibits thinking, works like a drug, wastes time, makes us passive and kills creativity.
Dobelli has a new book on clear thinking.
(^･o･^)ﾉ”
Pathological Physics: Tales from "The Box"
This is a talk I gave on June 1, 2012, about the numerous crank physics letters and books that had been sent to, and saved by, the Physics Department at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA.
Don't believe the apparent video length, the talk is 41 minutes long and the camera sticks around for about 20 minutes of the awesome Q&A afterwards.[more inside]
"[T]the only programs for men were for anger management."
The Men's Alternative Safe House in Calgary was the only shelter in Canada dedicated to helping battered men and their children. Lacking any other source of facilities or funding, Earl Silverman -- himself a survivor of an abusive marriage -- ran the shelter out of his own pocket and his own home, until mounting bills forced him to give up. The Men's Alternative Safe House closed last month, and Silverman announced he would have to sell his home. [more inside]
Color Me Impressed
The goal of Color Me Impressed is to share every known Replacements (and related) live recording available.
World's highest fight
Last weekend, almost 60 years after the first ascent by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, fights broke out between three Western climbers and a group of sherpas, at around 7200m on Mount Everest. [more inside]
Keep up your sensawunda
The entire history of the exploration of the Solar System in one handy picture, as created by Olaf Frohn. (Requires HTML5.)
Abalone submarine detectors
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