July 3, 2013
Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs
Because you are familiar with internet, you have already guessed what Laser Frasier might be like before clicking it. And if you consider it a moment, you'll probably (and correctly) agree that someone, somewhere, must maintain a collection of fiercely imagined plot synopses to 'unproduced' episodes of the long-running Cheers spin-off. But can you explain why these comic strips are so wonderful? (I can -- it is because KC Green made them.) [more inside]
Looks Great (Duh)
"You might remember artist Nickolay Lamm for his work removing doll's makeup to show that they looked just as lovely without that extra layer. Now, as promised, he's created a "normal"-sized Barbie, made to show us more realistic proportions of American women." (also via)
BRICKbricksmashSMASH
You know the old saying.
Grenades, Bayonets, and Tasers. Oh My!
The TSA has started an Instagram page showing confiscated items from TSA checkpoints in airports around the country.
Shelf Esteem
Shelf Esteem. Stories about people and their book collections.
Q. Why are ducks hard to understand? A. It's because they're on quack.
Sponsored by Math-Based Asset Services LLC
The Winklevoss twins have created and filed an SEC S1 for the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust for people who wish to invest in a fund that invests in Bitcoins. They also funded BitInstant, a site for brokering sales of bitcoins.
Look out, there are llamas!
People who keep llamas as pets will readily offer you any number of reasons: llamas are quiet, they’re gentle and affectionate, they don’t take a lot of work to maintain and, for outdoor animals, they don’t smell bad. Most people start with two or three, since llamas are sociable and don’t like to live alone. But as Katrina Capasso, a llama owner in Ballston Spa, N.Y., discovered, “They’re like potato chips.” It’s hard to stop at just a few. [more inside]
My Legoleg
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (mlyt)
Season 1 Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is an anime TV series from 2002. The series takes place in 2030 in Japan after World Wars 2 & 3. The story centers on the activities of Section 9, an anti-cyber cribe and anti-terrorist group. The continuing bad guy of the series is the cyber terrorist known as the Laughing Man. Here is Season 1 on YouTube: [more inside]
Kit Cameo is a special snowflake indeed
Kit Cameo is an artist whose themed paper snowflakes include everything from Doctor Who and famous Archie McPhee items to Cthulhu and Batman. She describes some of her commissioned snowflakes and her process on her Facebook page. [more inside]
Very few imaginations beat an awesome playset
Doug Engelbart has died
Reports abound that Douglas Engelbart most famous for creating the computer mouse and for demoing much of what we take for granted in desktop computing in 1968's Mother of All Demos (YT), died last night at age 88. [more inside]
The Banality of Evil: NSA Recruitment Edition
Madiha Tahir, a journalist and PhD candidate, presents a transcript of her interaction with NSA staff who came to recruit at the summer language program where she is studying. "I had intended to go simply to hear how the NSA is recruiting at a moment when it’s facing severe challenges," says Tahir. Recruiters apparently discussed their "fun" after work, doing karaoke, having costume parties, and getting drunk. One of their slides asked the language students at the event "Are you good at manipulating people?" In the Q&A, Tahir and other students held their feet to the fire over surveillance of Germany and other EU countries.
Mail Covers for everybody.
Concerned about privacy and government surveillance? Not even snail-mail is safe: With Mail Isolation Control and Tracking, the US Postal Service is now photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail in the United States, and storing the data indefinitely.
The Guédelon adventure
In the heart of Puisaye, in Yonne, Burgundy, a team of fifty people have taken on an extraordinary feat: to build a castle using the same techniques and materials used in the Middle Ages. [WARNING EMBEDDED YOUTUBE AUTOPLAYS] The wood, stone, earth, sand and clay needed for the castle's construction are all to be found here, in this abandoned quarry. Watched by thousands of visitors, all the trades associated with castle-building - quarrymen, stonemasons, woodcutters, carpenters, blacksmiths, tile makers, basket makers, rope makers, carters and their horses - are all working together to complete the castle.
May I introduce to you the act you've known for all these years?
A visualization of the four final "master" tracks - Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper (SLYT) (via OpenCulture.com (so not really single link anymore, is it?))
SHARKNADO
SHARKNADO [slWTFSYFY]
"Keystone is worse than Heineken and murder."
Just in time for your 4th of July party shopping: 36 Cheap American Beers, Ranked
Ancient Greek Geometry: The Game
The regular polygons have been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude/tte to construct the regular polygons with nothing but a virtual compass and straightedge? [more inside]
The Underpants Revolution and other stories from the past...
"Whereas yesterday's Cora Pearl was eccentric, charming and a little cold-hearted, today's Victorian courtesan, La Païva, is straight-up eerie. Like, so eerie that a lot of people thought she was a vampire. My hand to Baby Jesus, people actually believed she was a supernatural being. " Bizarre Victoria shares (what else) bizarre, scandalous, and noteworthy stories form the Victorian era (and more). What do you serve at a country club for fat men? Devil's footprints! Lola Montez: servant whipper, de facto ruler of Bavaria. Empress Sissi and her No Good Very Bad Life. Aristocratic marriage at gunpoint. Public pubic hair trimming. Specialties of the Victorian Brothel. Curing hiccups by setting your shirt on fire. Gilded Age Arranged Marriages.
"smoke can add an element of interest to the shot."
To get you ready for Independence Day, National Geographic has provided some useful tips for photographing fireworks, complete with a pretty gallery.
Warmer and wetter
The last decade (2001-2010) was the warmest on record. According to The UN World Metereological Organisation's report, the average land and ocean-surface temperature for 2001-2010 was estimated to be 14.47°C, or 0.47°C above the 1961-1990 global average and +0.21°C above the 1991-2000 global average (with a factor of uncertainty of ± 0.1°C).
"Should the poet be with the czar, or against him?"
Poets appeared in Russia in the eighteenth century. They wore officers’ uniforms and mostly wrote odes for the accession of German empresses onto the Russian throne. In a country where life was lived according to the wartime principle of unity of command, everyone including poets served the government, which was personified by the autocracy. But everything changed with Pushkin. Born in a country where serfdom was only the formal expression of a deep internal psychological slavery, he achieved the most important Russian coup, the greatest Russian revolution: in opposition to the pyramid of power, at the head of which the Czar administers the fates of individuals and nations, he created an alternative pyramid, at the head of which stood the poet. The juxtaposition of the czar and the holy fool—the old divided paradigm of authority—was exchanged for the juxtaposition of the czar and the poet.— Poets and Czars — From Pushkin to Putin: the sad tale of democracy in Russia by Russian novelist Mikhail Shishkin, who caused a stir earlier this year when he withdrew from participation in literary events sponsored by the Russian state with a strongly-worded letter. His action was equally strongly criticized by the state and several Russian writers. Shishkin spoke to The American Reader about recent events. He currently lives in Switzerland and recently wrote an essay about being separated from his native language community.
The Lazy, Free-Thinking, Leisure Loving Japanese
How development leads to cultural change, and not the other way around. Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang shatters stereotypes, showing how common descriptions of the Germans, Koreans and Japanese right before their nations' intensive economic development mirrors current slurs against workers from African and Latin American countries today.
Let's talk about bikini waxing!
It's not a Tour without some Heartbreak
Ted King, everyman cyclist from New Hampshire and Middlebury Alum, riding with a separated shoulder, was cut from the 100th Edition of the Tour de France after missing the time cut during the Team Time Trial by 7 seconds.
[more inside]
Science-themed radio plays available for free streaming
Some of the plays are about the lives of scientists, such as Richard Feynman (Moving Bodies), Alan Turing (Breaking the Code), Galileo (The Life of Galileo), and Rosalind Franklin (Photograph 51). [more inside]
Jujitsu Suffragettes
When the constables pulled out their truncheons, the Bodyguard responded in kind, drawing hardwood Indian clubs . . . from the bustles of their long dresses.
The fight for women's suffrage was not always a metaphorical one.
If another nation was doing this to our children, we'd be at war.
"The story of American families facing food insecurity is as frustrating as it is heartbreaking, because the truth is as avoidable as it is tragic. Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us — one in six Americans — go hungry. More than a third of them are children. And yet Congress can’t pass a Farm Bill because our representatives continue to fight over how many billions to slash from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The debate is filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers." Bill Moyers spends an hour with two of the creators of the documentary "A Place at the Table." [more inside]
Reporting Harassment at a Convention: A First-Person How To
"Although their behavior was professional and respectful, I was stunned when I found out that mine was the first formal report filed there as well. From various discussions in person and online, I knew for certain that I was not the only one to have reported inappropriate behavior by this person to his employer. It turned out that the previous reports had been made confidentially and not through HR and Legal. Therefore my report was the first one, because it was the first one that had ever been formally recorded.
" -- Well known science fiction fan Elise Matthesen was sexually harassed at Wiscon and decided to formally complain to both the convention and the harasser's employer. [more inside]
Seeing things without looking, since 2006
Discovering the strange beauty of the utterly everyday, Simon Sharville's Economy Custard is quotidian voyeurism at its gentlest. It certainly "...sits uncomfortably close to the boring", in a wonderful way. [more inside]
"an early 1960s self-portrait as a pitchman"
"Indiana Jones and the Book of Solomon!"
"A search that will save his love. A search that will save his life. A search that will save the world." Google Operating System uncovers an old Google/Airtel commercial from 2007 that references Indiana Jones (a bit) and is at least half as entertaining as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. These were the tie-in billboards, here are the storyboards and this is a contemporary news article about the production.
« Previous day | Next day »