May 28, 2011

"Guys, just stop." "Stop what?" "Dancing."

Adam Kokesh served in Fallujah as a Marine, then got in hot water for appearing at an anti-war protest in uniform. This weekend, he was brutalized by US Park police for silently dancing at the Jefferson Memorial as part of a small flash mob. The event was captured on video, which is fascinating and surreal.
posted by eugenen at 11:17 PM PST - 244 comments

Dinosaur Battle Town

Dinosaur Battle Town: a short film by Eddie West
posted by brundlefly at 10:51 PM PST - 12 comments

My Little Brony

The best word to describe it is probably “relentless,” in that it’s relentlessly cute, relentlessly happy, and relentlessly entertaining. In its own way, it reminds me of a movie like Singin’ In The Rain, in that both properties aim to overwhelm any cynicism directed at them via sheer and utter joyfulness. It seems like it should be easy to watch either property with an ironic sneer of detachment, but both utterly wear down all defenses. - The A.V. Club. My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (previously) is the curiously addictive cartoon accompaniment to the famous girl's toy line. It just finished it's first season, and all of the episodes can be seen on YouTube (start here) and this all encompassing torrent. While intended for girls 6 through 8, the show has spawned a surprising additional fan base of young-adult men. Calling themselves bronies, they have created a staggering amount of fan material (check the blog Equestra Daily, chan Ponychan, and image dump Ponibooru) and turned the ponies into a widely pervasive meme, all with the apparent blessing of Hasbro. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 10:18 PM PST - 132 comments

Your Commute Is Killing You

One of the best things you can do to increase your happiness is to move closer to where you work. [Previously]
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 8:29 PM PST - 161 comments

"The songs were virtually the last things to go on there."

How Roxy Music built Avalon, the album. Producer Rhett Davies: “Bryan would lay down four or five scat vocals. We would spend quite a lot of time doing that, and we would actually comp the scat vocals as if they were final vocals with lyrics,” says Davies. “It might seem stupid that we were comping mumblings, but that is basically what we were doing. I think it gave Bryan a clue to the actual shape of the sound of the lyrics, be it an ‘e’ or an ‘o’ sound or whatever, so that they sounded right with the mood of the music. If you put the scat vocal tracks up and really listen to them next to the finished vocal, it wouldn't sound that much different than the finished vocal. He was using identical shapes! Over the months, he would work on the verses and choruses and slowly get ideas on what the song was about,” Davies continues. “He would come in and say, ‘I think I've got a first verse’ and he would try it. Then he might come in later and say, ‘I think I have a second verse,’ or ‘I think I've got a chorus.’ It was pieced together, along with the rest of the music, over the period.”
posted by Dragonness at 8:27 PM PST - 44 comments

The Global Food Outlook

The New Geopolitics of Food. [more inside]
posted by StrikeTheViol at 8:19 PM PST - 32 comments

Psychological Costs of War

New working paper by three economists estimates the psychological costs of war at between $1.5 and $2.7 billion. [more inside]
posted by scunning at 7:04 PM PST - 10 comments

WWJQD, or What Would John Quiñones Do?

At Norma's cafe in Farmers Branch Texas the results of the Primetime show "What would you do?" brings tears to the eyes of its actors [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 6:26 PM PST - 59 comments

Research Blogging

Research Blogging is an aggregator for blog posts on peer-reviewed research. The posts are on various subjects, such as culinary trends in an extinct hominid , the distance and mass of Saggitarius A* and when chemists go to war
posted by Cloud King at 6:24 PM PST - 5 comments

What the Eye Doesn't See, the Heart Doesn't Mind.

Step Across the Border (previously, link now broken) "as long as I was playing in a band I didn't have to actually go out there and talk to girls and dance, I could just be on stage and watch everybody else doing it". The critically acclaimed music documentary on Fred Frith, written and directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel (amazon link). It is also available in 8 parts, on youtube. [more inside]
posted by idiopath at 5:46 PM PST - 11 comments

My God, it's full of galaxies

"The 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) has catalogued more than 43,000 galaxies within 380 million light-years from Earth. In this projection, the plane of the Milky Way runs horizontally across the center of the image. 2MRS is notable for extending closer to the Galactic plane than previous surveys - a region that's generally obscured by dust." Hires image.
posted by bwg at 5:38 PM PST - 10 comments

Relax, it's Saturday

El Internet (sNSFW). [more inside]
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 3:48 PM PST - 34 comments

Noxolo's name means peace.

'In South Africa's black townships, being gay can be fatal.' 'South Africa has a liberal constitution promising equal rights for all.' 'In a society that is deeply religious, traditional and highly patriarchal, lesbians and gay men contradict the dominant view of African manhood.' 'Across Africa, gay people are threatened, humiliated, raped, beaten, killed, jailed, outed in front-page newspaper stories, condemned by preachers as un-Christian and by politicians and traditional leaders as un-African.' 'In South African townships there's a crime dubbed "corrective rape," rape to "cure" lesbians, and sometimes gay men and transsexuals. They are told they are being taught a lesson: how to be a real woman or man, survivors say.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 1:46 PM PST - 30 comments

Triple Back Flip - I score it 10.0 10.0 10.0

World First BMX Triple Backflip [SLYT] World First BMX Triple Backflip - Jed Mildon May 28, 2011. Cojones? Just looking down that slope gives me vertigo.
posted by marienbad at 12:57 PM PST - 53 comments

That's a Paddlin'

Marc Ornstein - Freestyle Canoe. American Freestyle canoeing is the art of paddling a canoe on flat water with perfect control of its movements.
posted by exogenous at 12:29 PM PST - 38 comments

Jazz funk, soul, disco, bollocks.

SLEBP: My ex Brother-in-Law's shit record collection. "You are bidding on a collection of 50 (approx) 12" singles and LPs of crap music. My sister found these in her attic last weekend, where they has been sat gathering dust for the last couple of decades. They used to belong to her ex-husband, who is one of the biggest arseholes ever to draw breath." A Saturday afternoon amusement.
posted by jokeefe at 12:12 PM PST - 83 comments

Snickt!

A trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 featuring The Hand and Silver Samurai. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 11:17 AM PST - 58 comments

Simulated Language

In the recent MIT symposium "Brains, Minds and Machines," Chomsky criticized the use of purely statistical methods to understand linguistic behavior. Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig responds. (via) [more inside]
posted by nangar at 10:57 AM PST - 95 comments

Risking it all in Pakistan

Risking it all in Pakistan – Pakistani truck drivers face death at every turn.
posted by atomicmedia at 10:02 AM PST - 17 comments

RIP Blythe Spirit

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has announced: NASA has ended operational planning activities for the Mars rover Spirit and transitioned the Mars Exploration Rover Project to a single-rover operation focused on Spirit's still-active twin, Opportunity. New Scientist has a quality obituary for the little Mars Rover that could.
posted by hippybear at 9:31 AM PST - 44 comments

"so you can imagine, here I was, an analyst at a hedge fund; it was very strange for me do to something of social value"

Salman Khan: The Messiah of Math - "His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT's OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:06 AM PST - 150 comments

Eh, someone had to do it... [Champions League]

The 2010-11 Champions League Finals. In two and a half hours, the biggest game in club football will commence (bbc text stream). The Champions League final is likely to be watched by 300 million viewers and features Manchester United (England's best team this year) against FC Barcelona, now sometimes claimed to be the best team of all time (although the Barca coach plays that down). Lineker thinks that Barca just have to 'turn up to win'. [more inside]
posted by jaduncan at 8:49 AM PST - 147 comments

100 Bottles of Beer

Street interviews with Buffalo's freelance bottle collectors – the people who wander through the city to recycle our empties. [more inside]
posted by skoosh at 8:39 AM PST - 5 comments

The Daily Rind

"The Daily Rind” scheduling system: I have an inkling that it will work best for those with a particular creative disposition, while those whose thought-patterns are more regimented and linear may prefer more conventional scheduling methods. But if you’ve got a more fluid workstyle and struggle with finding rhythm and balance with the scheduling of your days, give the system a try
posted by Trurl at 8:02 AM PST - 10 comments

The World Record is awarded for Cleanest Floor, not Longest Bird Ball Balance

Here is a video of a budgie attempting to stand on a tennis ball.
posted by BeerFilter at 7:43 AM PST - 56 comments

I'd be like 'swag!'

The etymology of “swag”: from the Norwegian “svagga” to P. Diddy, a.k.a., Swag.
posted by Fizz at 7:26 AM PST - 30 comments

The dude abides, Captain

Spock in retirement, aka Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:23 AM PST - 13 comments

Lady Gaga takes tea with Mr Fry

Lady Gaga takes tea with Mr Fry (full audio interview here). [via]
posted by nam3d at 7:14 AM PST - 66 comments

A ghost in a real setting

Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded consciousness in which I can envision what I'm writing as a film or a dream. I rarely invent at the typewriter but recall what I've experienced. --Celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates on the connection between writing and running.
posted by crackingdes at 6:50 AM PST - 11 comments

You must be a robot too.

Psalty and COLBY, two singin' dancin' spiritual guides for kids. Presented by Everything is Terrible.
posted by Taft at 1:27 AM PST - 43 comments

I swear it happened

Quentin Tarantino, Tilda Swinton and Marilyn Manson? Carl Sagan and the Dalai Lama? Awesome People Hanging out Together does what it says on the tin.
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 12:49 AM PST - 69 comments

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