May 25, 2010
Exploitative Outsourcing?
Outsourcing has been a mainstay of internet marketers and lifestyle designers ever since Tim Ferriss made it popular. But at least one of its biggest proponents is now wondering: is outsourcing exploitative by taking advantage of international economic inequality?
Butterfield On Lines
I don't think that living through an artificial self is all that uncommon.
Professional oboe player, senior economist in the UK Treasury, fellow of King's College, Cambridge, son-in-law of Jacob Epstein (and model for his statue of St Michael). Wynne Godley, who also wrote about his 'disastrous encounter' with the psychoanalyst Masud Khan in the 1960s, died last week. [more inside]
Mandolin and Unicycle
The Mandolin & Unicycle Project is a thesis project from Matt Manos.
"I have always wanted to learn how to ride a unicycle, and I have always wanted to learn how to play the mandolin, so the most logical conclusion I came to was to learn how to play the mandolin while riding the unicycle. In one month." The project blog starts here.
Six Degrees--Kinda. Sorta.
Six Degrees of Musical Separation. Billie Holiday linked to Jello Biafra? Check. Clyde McPhatter to Moby? They're connected. (Well, the site allows more than six degrees, and it cheats a little by connecting songs, but it's still a neat way to associate one musician or group to a completely different one.)
The art of advertising
AdViews is the newest of Duke University's digitized advertising archives (see previously). Unlike the earlier sites, devoted to print advertising, AdViews is all about American TV commercials--several thousand of them, to be exact, from the agency Benton & Bowles (later D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles). Viewing the commercials requires ITunes. [more inside]
Mutts for the Win!
Hey Spot! Good News! Finally, after 125 years of its existence, the American Kennel Club is letting mutts, or "All Americans," compete in AKC shows in their own category.
Digg for Conservatives?
Lately, the organizations that make up the American Republican Party/GOP have been experimenting with going online. The House Republicans have created America Speaking Out, a website for the people to give their ideas to "an arrogant congress." There, visitors can upload ideas they would like the government to carry out.
Magic numbers: A meeting of mathemagical tricksters
"Gary Foshee, a collector and designer of puzzles from Issaquah near Seattle walked to the lectern to present his talk. It consisted of the following three sentences: "I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys?"" [more inside]
The Other Smoke Monster
Tom Waits and Kool Keith collaborated on a song called "Spacious Thoughts" in 2009.
Here's the video. [more inside]
Good Luck Nailing This One To A Tree
Who needs 12 Monkeys or 26 Monkeys? MeFite A.G. Pasquella's new book is all about one monkey, with a question: Why Not A Spider Monkey Jesus? The independently-published book has a nifty cross-platform approach and features a killer cover by Michael Kupperman (Kupperman, previously). [via mefi projects]
Bryant Gets Away With Killing Bicyclist
Charges dropped against the former Attorney General of Ontario despite video evidence showing Bryant first striking the bicyclist with his car and then attempting to get away. Previously [more inside]
Before the earthquake
Great groove. The first track from Airs' Moon Safari
album, accompanied by scenes from a video
shot from a streetcar traveling down Market Street in San Francisco in 1905. (SLYT)
The Teen Werewolves of San Antonio
Nerds. Punks. Jocks. Emos. Preppies. Goths. The high school cliques have to make room for a new subculture: teen werewolves. (SLYT)
Wear Sunscreen.
Ann Curry dispenses graduation advice to the wrong student body. Close but no cigar.
Putting the "Dic" in Valedictorian
Jump
Squircles
Mag3737 (Tom Magliery) is a prolific flickr user with over 19,444 items uploaded. He
categorized his photographs into sets (right now there are about 350 of them), and into larger collections. See for example, the Squircles (squared circle), the Monochromatic squircles, the Backsides and underthings page, numbers, letters, colors, many more. Since he once heard that there were 37 holes in the mouthpiece of the old-fashion telephone, he used to collect fascinating factoids about the number 37. Numerous other detours inside, Flower genitelia, Paul Bunyan's balls, etc. His old-fashioned website is here.
Which ones are the female intersections?
The Process will make you want to slap your marketing department. (SLYT)
A Facial Kegel
Fish Schtick, a video tribute to the Fishstick, the official dance of You Look Nice Today, announced two years ago this week. With due credit to Archie Bell and the Drells' Tighten Up. Previously, previously.
'The younger Kim is only 27 years old and is apparently fond of shooting things, having majored artillery in Kim Il-Sung University.'
On March 26, 2010, the ROKS Cheonan, a South Korean navy ship, exploded and sunk, killing at least forty sailors. On May 19, an international investigation team concluded that a North Korean torpedo sunk the Cheonan.
What does this mean for the Koreas and the world? It's not clear, but Ask a Korean provides a brief, yet historically contextualized dossier on this issue. [more inside]
The Best Webcomic No One Reads
After a long and terrifying absence, the webcomic NOBODY SCORES! Returns! Reacquaint yourself with BBolt's style with home decor, internets!, origin stories, police states, Kittn 2.0, SPACESHIPS, Scott McCloud, Art, Wishes, Alternate Universes, Government Slash Fic, Time Travel , Class Struggle, True Love, Cartoonists!, Social Media, MEN, cuddle-ness, Augmented Reality , snorgling, Rule 34 ,and more
DONT PANIC
All over the world today fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are heeding Douglas Adams's words that a towel is "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have" - more from the towel day website.
Existing right here and right now. You're actually not!
The Israeli Threat
"Immediately after an attack by Israel, and even with no Iranian response, the United States is likely to begin significant defensive deployments to the region. Its attempts over a period of a year to negotiate with the Iranians make the Obama Administration more vulnerable to domestic pressures to be strong in its reaction to an Israeli strike.The Israeli Threat: An Analysis of the Consequences of an Israeli Strike on Iranian Nuclear Facilities [PDF]. [more inside]
At an early stage after an Israeli attack, the United States would be faced with deciding whether to passively await casualties or to attack Iranian military capabilities on its own. The United States would probably decide to finish the job on Iranian nuclear facilities and destroy as much as possible of Iran’s capability to project combat power."
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