July 28, 2011
Super Gandhi-o Bros.
These days, any old fool can beat Super Mario Bros with a record-breaking number of points, or in the shortest amount of time. This guy managed beat the game with the lowest number of points possible. He ran the clock down to zero on each level, always landed at the bottom of the flagpole, collected no coins, killed just one goomba, and somehow managed not to die once during the entire process.
Faster, Pussycat! Shred! Shred!
John Taylor playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" on electric guitar at 600 beats per minute
Her nose is sensitive and she has a tail.
This is an art called “Life is melodies.” Everybody plays their own life, and the lives are unique and fantastic. Nobody can be another person who has something which you don’t have. However, this thing applies to all of us, whoever we are.
A Japanese ESL student writes odd, sometimes lovely, four sentence stories about the pictures her tutor sends her.
She wants to be "Internet famous," even though she is anonymous. Don't we all?
When Patents Attack
When Patents Attack. The team at PRI's This American Life and NPR's Planet Money bring you an hour long look into the growing "Mafia War" around software patents. Diving into the corporate filings, patent acquisitions, and office locations of Nathan Myrhvold's Intellectual Ventures and it's shell companies, Laura Sydell and Alex Blumburg uncover a disturbing protection scheme which threatens to undermine the competitiveness of the US tech industry[pdf]. [more inside]
We will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons.
Industrial Scars: The Art of Environmental Pollution is a serious of gorgeous, abstract photographs by J Henry Fair of polluted industrial landscapes.
Rei Harakami, 1970-2011
Rei Harakami, the Kyoto-based Japanese electronic musician from Hiroshima, passed away suddenly on July 27. He was 40 years old. [more inside]
It is 50/50: Either they do or they dont
Are We Alone In the Universe? New Analysis Says Maybe.
In a new paper published on arXiv.org, astrophysicist David Spiegel at Princeton University and physicist Edwin Turner at the University of Tokyo argue...using a statistical method called Bayesian reasoning...that the life here on Earth could be common, or it could be extremely rare — there's no reason to prefer one conclusion over the other. [more inside]
... and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has supposedly started holding closed door meetings on extending the FISA Amendment Act to again extend the NSA's domestic warrantless wiretapping program. [more inside]
The Last Meals Project
The Last Meals Project Every prisoner waiting to be executed is granted a last meal. Prisoners waiting to die choose their last meal for different reasons. Here's a list of exonerated death-row prisoners.
The 108 year-old mystery of 3,000 missing Steiff bears
It started with a little girl who had polio, who later became a seamstress and made clothing and little things, like little pin cushion elephants. They were popular, not as sewing accessories, but as children's toys. The elephants would be joined by a menagerie of stuffed animals, including tigers and pigs. Some animals were set on iron wheels, including bears. But it wasn't until US political cartoon featuring President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a small black bear in November 1902 that "teddy" bears became popular, first in 1902 in the United States, made and sold by Jewish Russian immigrants, Rose and Morris Michtom (who would ride the success of Teddy's Bear to form the Ideal Toy Company). Back in Germany, Margarete Steiff's array of toy animals expanded to include a jointed, plush bear, 55 cm tall: 55 PB (German Wikipedia page). Margarete's nephew, who came up with the design, took some samples to a German toy fair in the Spring of 1903, where there was no interest in the bears until a representative from a New York toy company saw the mobile bears and ordered 3,000. A new factory had to be built, and bears were made, most likely shipped across the ocean, but their fate is a mystery.
FOCUS
Evolution 2011, the largest fighting game tournament in the world, starts tomorrow. On its eve, a documentary chronicling one player's run last year, FOCUS, was released. [more inside]
Recent innovation and optimism from Goldman Sachs
Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs is storing aluminum in several warehouses outside Detroit. Apparently not much aluminum is actually leaving the warehouses. This may help explain the recent spike in the price of - any guesses? - aluminum. [more inside]
Balls!!!
Chronology of ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’
Straightening out nonlinear literature. C.B. James offers a chronology of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (previously), rendered in org-chart-like family trees and tables. (Via)
Bay Area photo archives
Let's Go to the Morgue! features images dug up from the San Francisco Chronicle's basement photo archives. Peter Hartlaub got distracted from his parenting blog to find and caption vintage photos of Golden Gate BART and Other Failed Rapid Transit Dreams, Sexy time! Five decades of Bay Area bathing suits, Tourist season in San Francisco, Six decades of roller derby in the Bay Area, When arcades ruled the Bay Area and A journey back to your high school prom. [more inside]
A Billionaire Worth Rooting For?
As a teenager, Zhang Xin was a factory worker in the sweatshops of Hong Kong. She saved enough to fly to England and at 27, graduated with a Master’s Degree in Development Economics from Cambridge University. At 30, she and her husband started what is now Beijing's largest real estate developer. She is quite candid about China's challenges.
Here Charlie Rose interviews the billionaire CEO of Soho China.
UT Tower Shootings
Don Clinchy, with the Texas Archive of the Moving Image videos collection, goes back to August 1, 1966. [more inside]
Dr Fad... Dr Fad... Dr Fad...
In 1983, Ken Hakuta's mother in Japan sent him some toys in the mail for his kids. They were octopus shaped, and when you threw them against the wall they "walked" down the wall. Seeing some marketing potential, he bought the rights to the toys for $100,000, and the Wacky Wall Walker was born. It became a HUGE success after a slow start, being offered as a prize in Kellogg's cereals and even inspiring a Christmas special on NBC. Eventually they ended up (according to Hakuta) selling a over 240 million units!
Sometime during this wildly successful period, Dr. Fad was born. Ken wanted to everybody to invent and create. From 1988 to 1994, the Dr Fad Show featured a Wall Walker-covered-sweater wearing Hakuta as "Dr Fad" in a kids' gameshow format, with contestants coming on and showing off their inventions, the winner being judged by an applause meter. The show also had a "Golden Gizmo" segment, honouring the great fads of the past - a young Rodney Mullen accepted the Golden Gizmo for skateboarding, while other "famous" folks responsible (or in some other way related to) the fads appeared to receive the award in other segments.
[more inside]
"A Mock. A Mock. A Lie."
This Man was Hired to Depress Art This is the opinion of
Will Blake my Proofs of this Opinion are given in the following
Notes [more inside]
Europe on fifteen hundred yuan a day.
Evan Osnos joins a tour group from China as they traverse Europe. In the front row of the bus, Li stood facing the group with a microphone in hand, a posture he would retain for most of our waking hours in the days ahead. In the life of a Chinese tourist, guides play an especially prominent role—translator, raconteur, and field marshal—and Li projected a calm, seasoned air. He often referred to himself in the third person—Guide Li—and he prided himself on efficiency. “Everyone, our watches should be synchronized,” he said. “It is now 7:16 P.M.” He implored us to be five minutes early for every departure. “We flew all the way here,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.” [more inside]
The Curious Case of the "Livre des Sauvages"
Circa 1850. A curious document that had been filed away in a box for over a century. Hundreds of pages of strange, crudely drawn figures, resembling stick figures, many of them appearing to be urinating, copulating, whipping each other, and displaying enormously swollen genitals. An extremely important document that revealed much that was previously unknown about Native American history and culture?? The scribbling book of a German child, "the leisure pencillings of a nasty-minded little boy"?? We may never know. [more inside]
Barack Hoover Obama or Barack Nixon Obama?
"The City Is Not A Concrete Jungle. It's A Human Zoo"
The Corners Project. For three years, photographer Friko Starc took candid, spontaneous portraits of people who passed by one of five Manhattan street corners. Video [more inside]
Rescuing Books From Obscurity
Sifting through The Staxx you'll find excerpts from ancient books about British chimneysweeps, ferns and mosses, Japanese art motifs, ornamental alphabets, and much more.
Location, location, location.
All the website you could ever need on one page.
The World's Worst Website Every web 1.0 mistake you can make when designing a website, including loud autolaunched bugles. Also the template for the Gruaniad's recent revamp of Comment is Free. Tweet this!
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