July 26, 2011
Surreal J-pop video
"Somewhere in there there are the lost texts from all sorts of authors."
Ancient Lives is a project by the University of Oxford which asks your help in transcribing fragments from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection using the Zooniverse model. Leader of the project, Chris Lintott, explains the project here in a short interview. Can you help him find his one-eyed astrologer? [Oxyrhynchus previously]
Empire of Evolution
Evolution Right Under Our Noses. "A small but growing number of field biologists study urban evolution — the biological changes that cities bring to the wildlife that inhabits them." [Via]
To help thousands of people in over 200 countries diagnose, treat and prevent common illnesses
Hesperian is a non-profit publisher of books and newsletters for community-based health care, mostly aimed at the third world. Their first book, Where There Is No Doctor, A Village Health Handbook, has been translated into 88 languages and is one of the most widely used training and work manuals for community health care in the world. They have now made 20 of their publications available for free download, many of which can now also be browsed online through their website using an "Ebrary" in-browser interface. [more inside]
Somebody get His Majesty a lager
Did a case of 15th C. royal adultery mean that every King and Queen of England since Henry VI to sit on the throne was not the legitimate heir according to the rules of royal succession? And if the Tudors, Stuarts, Hanoverians, and Saxe-Coburg von Gothas Windsor-Mountbattens are not properly the ones to be occupying the positions they have/are, who is Britain's Real Monarch? [more inside]
"getting attention is easy, being a feminist is hard"
SlutWalk Toronto (featured on the Blue) has come and gone and spawned imitators. Already though, some feminists are questioning it's efficacy and impact on both men and women.
Massimals, like massing models, animal massing models.
Jason Scroggin and Akari Takebeyashi teach in the Architecture faculty at the University of Kentucky College of Design. Together they also form Design Office Takebayashi Scroggin [D.O.T.S.] Recently they took the idea of an architectural massing model* to the world of animals. Here is a petting zoo of "Massimals" made with ziplock ties, polystyrene foam, chipboard and foam core. [more inside]
Diseased Cottonwoods live on as sculpture
bringing some beauty to the sad loss of trees with a chainsaw competition Some pretty cool detail and creativity to be had from such a crude tool. I wouldn't be suprised to find the prize money to be a savings from the cost of having the trees cut down and hauled off, too.... [more inside]
Bidder #70
Lauded as a civil disobedience symbol agitating for urgent reaction to climate change, Timothy DeChristopher was sentenced Tuesday to two years in federal prison. [more inside]
"The fingers you have used to TYPE are too fat. To obtain a special TYPING wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."
IBM is working on a keyboard design that will adapt to a user’s finger anatomy. Touchscreen keyboard morphs to fit your typing style. [Fig. 2] Via: [Wired] Morphing Touchscreen Keyboard Interface (PDF) [Pat2PDF/IBM]
No First Amendment Right to Bark at a Police Dog
An Ohio trial court judge last Friday in State v. Stephens [.pdf] held that there is no First Amendment right to bark at a police dog. [more inside]
Pathé News
The British Pathé Archive: The British Pathé archive is a collection of over 90,000 clips from Pathé newsreels and cinemagazines, which were shown in British cinemas from 1910 until 1970. They were also shown in the US, under licence to Fox. Typically accompanied by jaunty music, and narrated by a man with an oft-parodied conservative RP accent, the archive covers many of the momentous events of the 20th Century. It also contains the trivial.
Farmer Arepo Turns His Wheel
High-speed Collaboration.
Long Shot Magazine is putting together another issue in 48 hours. After the composition and release of their first two issues, Long Shot—a collection of fiction, non-fiction, photography, poetry, and other art—is preparing for a third issue following a resolved conflict with NBC over their former name: 48 Hours. [more inside]
The village that re-emerged
AFP photographer Juan Mabromata recently visited the ruins of Villa Epecuén in Argentina, a small touristic village that started slowly re-surfacing after the rising waters of the nearby lake left it completely underwater nearly 26 years ago. [more inside]
I Feel Old
Stereogum's Stroked is a ten-year anniversary celebration of The Strokes debut album Is This It, featuring Owen Pallet, Peter Bjion and John, and more. [more inside]
Binary Agreement Model
Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities: We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc ≈ 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time, Tc, taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. [.pdf] [more inside]
Voting in Wisconsin Just Became A Lot More Difficult
After creating legislation that requires voter ID in order to vote, Wisconsin Governer proposes closing 10 DMV Offices. Requiring voter ID puts a disproportionate burden on elderly, low income and disabled voters who may not be able to wait in long DMV lines. The new Wisconsin laws are expected to potentially disenfranchise millions of voters across the state. [more inside]
Worldwide respect. Awe. A healthy fear.
A Simple Plan to Fix the American Political System Using Common Sense and a Little Dinosaur DNA by Tim Siedell.
Nirvana's Nevermind: 20 year later, covered by friends and fans
Nirvana's second studio album, Nevermind, turns 20 this September and Spin Magazine has put together a collection of covers. The covers span a lot of ground, from Meat Puppets (of who Nirvana were big fans) to Amanda Palmer, and newer acts including Jesica Lea Mayfield and Telekinesis, plus Charles Bradely & The Menahn Street Band, a surprise funk track by 62-year-old "soul shouter." Read more and download the album from Spin (link sent to an email address), or listen to them on YouTube. [more inside]
Headless Corpses, Stolen Laptops, and Lawyer-shaped Guns.
Apple Battery Hack
How a Security Researcher Discovered the Apple Battery ‘Hack’ - How to destroy Hardware with Software.
Is this unidentified man Ray Gricar?
On April 15, 2005, Centre County Pennsylvania District Attorney Ray Gricar disappeared under mysterious circumstances. A little over six years later, he was declared legally dead. In early July, 2011, a mysterious man was arrested in Provo City, Utah and refused to give his name, baffling police. One day after he was declared dead, people are asking could Utah's John Doe prisoner be Ray Gricar?
The Atlantic: Fiction 2011
Listen. The last man who said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat.
His Girl Friday - Between the Lines Edit is all of Howard Hawks's 1940 screwball comedy His Girl Friday that remains if you remove the dialogue. Created by Valentin Spirik.
God's Own Warden
Burl Cain, the warden of Angola, Louisiana's largest prison, uses religion to control and subdue the prison population.
The Fallacy of Sprites
Learning from Doom: Latvian artist Viktor Timofeev explores the "digital ruin" of the classic 1993 shooter DOOM, taking dozens of annotated snapshots along the way. It might be the only time you'll see 16th-century Mannerism, El Lissitzky, and Arachnotrons mentioned in the same place.
Elizabeth Parker's Confession
Stitches From the Soul: Elizabeth Parker's Confession. Elizabeth Parker's cross-stitch sampler reveals the story of a young woman, who when employed as a housemaid for a cruel employer, was thrown down the stairs when she spurned his sexual advances. She later attempted suicide: "I acknowledge being guilty of that great sin of self-destruction." Her story is meticulously recorded in the circa 1830 sampler, part of the sampler collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
But Beowulf fought on
Each of us must face the monster down: Children's author Michael Morpurgo reads his essay for the Norwegian people.
Movable Type is kerning to a town near you!
These days, the term Movable Type is more likely to make people think of a blogging platform than anything involving paper, but it used to refer to the letters, words, and graphics typically cast in an alloy of lead, tin and antimony or carved from wood, that could be rearranged by a letterpress printer for each individual job. In an environment where toner serves most of our current printing needs, the endangered art of letterpress printing now has a roving champion. Her name is Kyle Durrie, and she is the proprietor of Power and Light Press in Portland, Oregon. Back in March she bought herself a 1982 Chevy step van, gutted it, and then installed a work area and a couple of printing presses in the back. She stocked it with a variety of type and ornaments and she is now driving it all over the U.S. teaching folks about the joys of printing with pressure. Maybe if you ask nicely, she'll stop by your neighborhood and show you how to print, just like Bi Sheng first did over a thousand years ago.
Riffing on riffing
"I was unaware, in my awe of adults playing folk songs, that they would push me into a different world altogether, a world in which only some would ultimately be deemed worthy to publicly perform music: those who were ‘musically talented’. And that talent was determined by one’s ability to imitate, precisely, music written by others." How I Learned To Play Guitar
I pee-peed in your glove and soon it start to smell
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