July 27, 2013
Crazy like a texting fox
Fox steals cell phone. Fox sends texts with stolen cell phone. Cuteness ensues. [Cached version] [more inside]
Reading This Is Optional
Offenses attack; defenses react. This is a truism, but it's a truism on which almost all sports strategy is built. In the NFL today, no tactic more pressingly requires a swift, strong reaction than the so-called "read-option." Defending the Read-Option sends coaches back to college. If the read-option is dead, the next great offensive strategy may also be one of the oldest, it was good enough to beat Sean Payton and a bevy of NFL coaches.
The Annual World Bodypainting Festival
The annual World Bodypainting Festival is now over, but that means there are a ton of new images online, with galleries for each of the award categories, including brush/sponge bodypainting, airbrush bodypainting, special effects bodypainting, and facepainting. (Note: painted [mostly] naked bodies; previously, a decade ago)
Does a bear itch in the woods?
Guitar Stories
Mark Knopfler takes his former Dire Straits band mate John Illsley on a journey to discover the six guitars that defined his sound and music. [SLYT 44min]. An excellent documentary from SkyARTS.
Trouble with the Old Reader
The Old Reader is back up again (scroll down for updates), after several days of being down when the servers crashed. But many users are not happy and some are bailing.
Implied Contrapuntals
2001: A Space Odyssey - Discerning Themes through Score and Imagery: As Ligeti's music ends, the first image we see is a celestial alignment of the sun the earth and the moon as Richard Strauss' exhilarating Also Sprach Zarathustra begins. It's critical to note that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also a novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. This musical choice thus signals that the film deals with the same central issues in this book. [via][more inside]
That belongs in a museum!
One of the last remaining copies of Schindler's List has been posted for sale on Ebay, with a starting bid of $3,000,000 USD. [more inside]
Another bomb "dowser" found guilty
Gary Bolton has been found guilty of selling fake bomb detectors to countries including Iraq. In May James McCormick was sentenced for 10 years for committing a similar fraud (previously, previously, previously). The original fraud is now 20 years old.
Ski-Boys
Look at those escargots
Being Dumb
Poet Kenneth Goldsmith writes in praise of dumb art.
No double entendre left behind
Boris Johnson unveils a giant blue cock in Trafalgar Square, causing an outbreak of terrible puns. Hahn/Cock is the work of Katharina Fritsch, better known for her Rat-King sculpture. The colour is (probably) an homage to (NSFW) Yves Klein's favourite colour.
Paddling 1,500 Miles for Science and Adventure
Starting on September 22 last year, Professor Robert Fuller of the University of North Georgia spent four months paddling down the Chattahoochee River system, from the Chattahoochee's headwaters in northern Georgia down through the Apalachicola into the Gulf of Mexico, studying water quality along the way. Then he paddled 200 miles through the Gulf, turned at the mouth of the Mobile River, and paddled another 750 miles upstream on the Mobile, Alabama, Coosa, and Etowah Rivers all the way back to northern Georgia—a total of just over 1,500 miles of solo paddling in his Kruger Sea Wind. Along the way, he kept a blog, "ate a lot of Beanie Weenies", and faced difficulties including cold, hunger, injuries, and river obstructions. Incidentally, he did all this while living with leukemia. [more inside]
Plowing at the Speed of Sound
Swedish farmer drops a turbo into his tractor.
Boom And Bust
Bankrupt By Beanies - A short documentary about what happened to people after the "Beanie Babies as investments" fad wore down. (YouTube, 8:30)
Final Encore Blues For Mister JJ Cale
Sadly true, at 74. (JJ Cale previously, and Wikipedia.)
Otherwise best to just let the man and his guitar speak for themselves via classic albums such as Troubadour, Grasshopper, Naturally, Okie and Shades.
"Eversmile, New Jersey"?
A Secret Folk Music Holds Firm In China's Badlands
"Beijing-based music critic Wang Xiaofeng says that when he heard Lao Qiang for the first time about 18 years ago, it reminded him of heavy metal: very physical and somewhat operatic."
In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity
The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea.
Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.
« Previous day | Next day »