August 12, 2007

Stroke, stroke, stroke!

Snake boat racing in god’s own country.
posted by hadjiboy at 11:47 PM PST - 10 comments

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Interviews with 100-year-olds:
(Short): Quick NPR interview with a guy who works on Wall Street.
(Medium): A series of small segments with the oldest graduate of Gilbert High School.
(Long): Part of WFMU's 365 day project. Restored tape from 1978, on which it appears a young student is interviewing an old lady from Kansas.
posted by Alex404 at 10:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Oh my God, I just felt it ferment!

The Bender Brewer Project. Inspired by an episode of Futurama in which boozy robot Bender is used to brew beer, Star Wars ASCII animator Simon Janson decided to build his own Bender to use to brew his own beer. Among the many careful details that went into this project was to actually build the robot's brain out of a 6502 processor, as specified in the show, and to build a remote detonator to operate his brain.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:29 PM PST - 24 comments

Proceeds to benefit the Patrick O'Brien Foundation

3D design artist and Filmmaker, father-to-be and fan of long titles extraordinaire, Transfatty, aka Patrick O'Brien (dir. The Man With The Smallest Penis In Existence And The Electron Microscope Technician Who Loved Him, previously) will debut his new DVD, Everything Will Be Okay, or How I Learned to Trancend Form, Live in the Now and Make Love in my Electric Wheelchair, tomorrow in NYC. The DVD is clips from his forthcoming film, October 5, 1974, his ongoing personal documentary about his journey to the end with ALS.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:24 PM PST - 7 comments

Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray, a New York painter who reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form whose subjects included domestic life, relationships and the nature of painting itself, died yesterday at her home in upstate New York. (Images)
posted by R. Mutt at 8:19 PM PST - 7 comments

Mp3 Bloggers Celebrate Vinyl Record Day

Happy Vinyl Record Day, everyone. On this date in 1877, Edison invented the phonograph. To commemorate the date, a blogswarm of 22 of the best vinyl sharity blogs out there have come together to celebrate the legacy of the dominant recorded music format of the 20th century, led by jb of The Hits Just Keep On Comin' and featuring Flea Market Funk, Echoes in the Wind, Funky 16 Corners, Davewillieradio, Good Rockin' Tonight, Py Korry, It's Great Shakes, (bonus!), Ickmusic, Jefitoblog, FuFu (bonus!), Lost in the 80's, Three-Sixty-Five 45s, Underground Vault of Records, AM then FM, The "B" Side, In Dangerous Rythm (bonus 1, bonus 2), You Must Be From Away, Got The Fever, Retro Remixes, Bloggerythms and finally The Stepfather of Soul.
posted by jonson at 7:39 PM PST - 34 comments

Wallpaper eye candy

Social Wallpaper. A community effort to classify, rank, and distribute high resolution images for use as computer wallpaper.
posted by Mitheral at 7:08 PM PST - 24 comments

Christian Embassy at the Pentagon and on the hill. Scary.

Christian Embassy at the Pentagon and on the hill. Scary.
more here. "We're the aroma of Jesus Christ?"
posted by specialk420 at 7:02 PM PST - 55 comments

The Unpleasant World of Penn and Teller

You want to waste as much time as possible before going back to work Monday morning, right? So, stay up late and watch 6 episodes of The Unpleasant World of Penn and Teller, their mid-90s show on British TV. Don't have time for all that right now? Then jump right to a card trick with John Cleese, or their unique version of the Card Stab trick. At the very least, you owe it to yourself to prepare for tomorrow's coffee break.
posted by The Deej at 6:42 PM PST - 12 comments

The Visual Image of Chemistry

The Visual Image of Chemistry: Perspectives from the History of Art and Science. [Via homunculus (no relation)]
posted by homunculus at 2:31 PM PST - 10 comments

All go, no show

The menacingly complex roguelike (previously) world-building game Dwarf Fortress (previously) is busting into the mainstream with an article in a gamer mag. Scans: page 1, page 2, page 3. For the less ASCII-minded among us, Let's Play has a thorough (and absurd, and tragic) chronicle of the fortress of Koganusan, or Boatmurdered, so you won't have to wait 20 minutes for the world to generate and be populated with mandrills and kobolds. via tigsource, where you should also check out their latest recommended independent games list.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:18 PM PST - 64 comments

Spare the rod and how to love a child to death

A 15 year-old girl was dragged behind a van as punishment. Her crime was being unable to keep up on a forced run at an at-risk youths boot camp, Love Demonstrated Ministries. It's not the first time something like this has happened. These boot camps and reform schools are still in operation, so it will continue to happen.
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:10 PM PST - 144 comments

Zombies, Pirates, Buffalo, Ninjas

The Fuzzwich mini-vid widgit lets you build easy little animations.
posted by carsonb at 1:06 PM PST - 26 comments

Wain's World: How the Artist Went Insane When the Cat Got His Brain

Louis Wain became one of the most famous British illustrators of the late Victorian and Edwardian era after trying to cheer up his wife Emily by drawing portraits of their pet cat, Peter. In addition to publishing a popular children's book about kittens, he was a founder of the U.K's National Cat Club who was instrumental in promoting the Cat Fancy movement, which encouraged Britons of all classes to view cats as lovable pets instead of household pests. Unfortunately, after Wain's wife Emily died of breast cancer, Wain gradually went mad due to psychosis and late onset schizophrenia, ending up in London's notorious Bethlehem Hospital (the etymological origin for the word bedlam). While at Bedlam, Wain continued to draw, but his cat portraits transformed into pure geometric abstraction and psychedelic fractals, but some see harbingers of madness in cryptically titled works, such as Early Indian Irish and The Fire of the Mind Agitates the Atmosphere. For more insight on Wain, check out this 1896 interview and this short film dramatizing the progression of Wain's schizophrenia through his art.
posted by jonp72 at 12:37 PM PST - 25 comments

the truth about denial: just a dry river bed

The "Great Climate Change Debate" finally on the cover of Newsweek - what's new, you ask? This is the story of the denial that global warming exists and how exactly the science behind the undeniable facts of increasing hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts, heatwaves and monsoons was muddied for profit. Bonus links from the same issue: Timeline of global warming and its denial and a slideshow of images from around the world on the effects but its one of those fancy interactive thingamajigs that doesn't allow it to be linked by an URL so be sure to take a look at it. Extra bonus! Quiz your knowledge on global warming
posted by infini at 9:36 AM PST - 126 comments

Caturday on Sunday

Spider cat. Cats in a box. Cat playing with himself. Cat on LSD. Man murdered parents with axe for laughing at cat's death. Rudy gives Winston a vigorous tongue lashing (tender). Winston the cat, blog.
posted by nickyskye at 8:05 AM PST - 68 comments

Iraq milestone

A milestone in the Iraq conflict.
posted by bobbyelliott at 7:39 AM PST - 82 comments

Celebrate His Entire Catalog

Frank Zappa' was so many different things { Mother of Invention, orchestra conductor, garage freak, SNL musical guest, anti-censorship advocate, home movie maker, Congressional witness, Monkee, documentary film subject, whipping boy, drug trafficker, late-night TV talk show interviewee, death wisher, composer, Dance Fever judge, master of his domain, dental floss tycoon, cosmic force, breast man, Crossfire combatant and The Walrus, among others } that the one day he was recently given by Baltimore's Mayor hardly seems enoughs.
posted by Poolio at 4:52 AM PST - 79 comments

Grandmaster Gregory in da hizzouse

The Pardoner's Tale - adapted to rap by Baba Brinkman, who has been rapping Chaucer tales for a few years now. He's also released The Rap Canterbury Tales, a book that presents raps side by side with Chaucer's original Middle English. Both video and book are illustrated graffiti-style by his brother Erik. Discussed in a previous post by fatllama on hip hop classics.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:33 AM PST - 18 comments

Of Muppets and Men

Of Muppets and Men. [1 2 3 4 5 6] Excellent behind-the-scenes documentary showing the mental, verbal and physical athleticism of putting together The Muppet Show. Also, a TMBG video mashup with excerpts from the doc. [All YouTube, Previously]
posted by McLir at 12:02 AM PST - 55 comments

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