July 21, 2008
Squeeeee!
"It doesn't really seem that long ago."
Home Movies. A 1975 documentary by a young academic folklorist, exploring what it was that people were doing when they made home movies: remembering selectively, creating a "golden age." [more inside]
Virtual Thinking
Correlative Analytics -- or as O'Reilly might term the Social Graph -- sort of mirrors the debate on 'brute force' algorithmic proofs (that are "true for no reason," cf.) in which "computers can extract patterns in this ocean of data that no human could ever possibly detect. These patterns are correlations. They may or may not be causative, but we can learn new things. Therefore they accomplish what science does, although not in the traditional manner... In this part of science, we may get answers that work, but which we don't understand. Is this partial understanding? Or a different kind of understanding?" Of course, say some in the scientific community: hogwash; it's just a fabrication of scientifically/statistically illiterate pundits, like whilst new techniques in data analysis are being developed to help keep ahead of the deluge...
Traction Park
Active in the years before padded jungle gyms (and class action lawsuits), Action Park was a sometimes bloody rite of passage for many New Jersey kids. Infamous for its gravity-and-friction-defying looping waterslide and beer gardens, it eventually produced so many injuries that the park bought the surrounding city extra ambulances to cope. It still is alive in many New Jersey hearts today.<-video. [more inside]
NFB beta...
The NFB beta is worth exploring... You'll find some lovely old chestnuts like Mindscape, or The Romance of Transportation in Canada...the quality is generally good enough to watch in full screen mode if you choose a higher streaming speed under "options".
Pushing the Limits of Sandbox Games: Rollercoaster Tycoonists
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 came out in 2004, and was received with mixed reviews. Four years later, hobbyists of the game continue to take it to a whole other level. You may have already seen links to the creative ways to devastate in RCT3. A whole other group of fans, however, have gone on to create highly detailed parks and ride recreations. They use customized textures and mods to create massive architectural works that require hundreds--sometimes over thousands--of hours of work. [more inside]
Justice postponed?
Newsfilter: Radovan Karadžić arrested today in Serbia. Trial to follow. Will Srebrenica and Vukovar finally see justice? Or will another suicide intervene?
Old dangerous playground equipment.
Slides used to be dangerous..... After climbing up those sandy, metal crosstrax steps you got to the top and stared down at that steep ride below. The slide was burning hot to the touch, a stovetop set to high all day under the summer sun, just waiting to greet the underside of your legs with first-degree burns as you enjoyed the ride
She is your Virgil on the descent into L.A.
Kristin's List. There are plenty of events guides in Los Angeles, but none has as personal a voice, as finely honed an aesthetic (the Neutra font is an inspired touch) or as discerning an eye as Kristin's. Her weekly emails and web listings are one woman's recommended sampling of the most interesting music, film, architecture, food, fashion, literary and unquantifiable events across the megalopolis. And so far, it's completely ad-free.
Virtucon alone makes over 9 billion dollars a year!
Emirates Palace, a seven-star Hotel in Abu-Dhabi, is offering up the world's most expensive vacation.
"The Greatest Traveler of His Time"
Burton Holmes, Extraordinary Traveler. Burton Holmes didn't invent travel stories, slide shows, moving pictures or cross-country lectures, but he put them all together and created the travelogue (a term coined by his manager) as performance art. The site is full of information, pictures and additional links (including companion pages about the Trans-Siberian Railroad) chronicling Holmes' life and legacy.
Tunnel boring machines
We are men. Men in tights!
Insta-Cake
A tasty chocolate cake you can make from scratch in five minutes. In the microwave. In a mug. Other 5-minute variations include peanut butter chocolate cake (picture), jello cake (picture), and spice cake
Extraordinary Renditions
Jay-Z wanted the guitar to look like a big, goofy prop (in Gallagher's formulation, after all, guitars aren't instruments so much as membership cards); he wanted to mistreat the melody, not coddle it; and he couldn't be bothered to remember lyrics that, when you think about it, sound sort of flubbed to begin with. By butchering the cover, Jay-Z weaponized it.
I sense you want to plead the 5th
For the first time in the Indian state of Maharashtra, life sentences were meted out based on the findings of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature(BEOS) profiling. [more inside]
It's time to play the music.
The Muppets have their own YouTube channels! Enjoy a little classical music with Beaker or Gonzo, opera with the Swedish Chef, get patriotic with Sam the Eagle, or just leave commentary with Statler and Waldorf.
Caricatures from the late 19th Century and early 20th
900 caricatures of noted Victorian and Edwardian personages from British society magazine Vanity Fair which ran from 1868 to 1914. Among those pictured are Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Disraeli, Herman Melville, Alfred Dreyfus, Teddy Roosevelt, Gustave Eiffel and Charles Boycott (from whose name comes the word). A couple are mildly not safe for work, a few quite racist, as was the prevalent attitude of the time, and at least one is both.
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