August 19, 2011

"This is not a high fidelity record"

In 1900, Lionel Mapleson - librarian at the Metropolitan Opera - acquired a Bettini cylinder recorder. Equipped with the machine and a giant recording horn, Mapleson began to make covert recordings of Met performances from the flies of the stage. Over the next few years, he made some of the earliest live recordings (and in some cases the only recordings) of many of the most popular voices of the late 19th and early 20th century. (Sometimes he also recorded his family). [more inside]
posted by bubukaba at 11:30 PM PST - 13 comments

Keepon dancing

Will a slightly pared down version of the My Keepon, a fuzzy yellow dancing robot, be this year's holiday hit? (For extra added schmoopy, a portion of the proceeds will go to autism research.) Pretty fly for an AI.
posted by Soliloquy at 10:42 PM PST - 20 comments

Anselm Kiefer

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer’s alchemical creative processes and renders as a film journey the personal universe he has built at his hill studio estate in the South of France. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:43 PM PST - 8 comments

Dogs can smell cancer

Recent research on whether dogs can smell lung cancer supports prior research on the subject, which concluded that dogs can smell both lung cancer and breast cancer. [more inside]
posted by johnofjack at 7:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Does Rather More Than a Spider Can: Genetically Engineered "Bulletproof" Skin

Dutch Artist Bio-Engineers Spider Silk into Skin, Making It "Bulletproof". Following on the work of Randy Lewis, a scientist studying how ultra-resilient artificial spider-silk can be used for body armor and other military products, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi has integrated this engineered silk into a patch of human skin. Experiments with a rifle necessarily followed. Video and her explanation here.
posted by darth_tedious at 6:52 PM PST - 30 comments

Cruise the D

The Woodward Dream Cruise is an annual event, bringing out nearly every classic and not-so-classic car in southeast Michigan. Bumper to bumper, a blessing or a curse, depending on who you are and how badly it screws up your trip to the grocery store or the emergency room. But, if nothing else, it is Pure Michigan.
posted by tomswift at 6:52 PM PST - 12 comments

DJ Bronco's Brasilian Soul Mix

Single-link-1-hour-Brazilian-music-mix-filter: DJ Bronco's Brasilian Soul Mix. No playlist, but does contain awesomely solid Brazilian tunage... enjoy!
posted by Tom-B at 4:43 PM PST - 22 comments

Mmmm...pressed peanut sweepings

64 slices of American Cheese and other foods from the Simpsons attempted in real life
Not included: Gummi Venus De Milo, Homer's Patented Space-Age Out of This World Moon Waffles, Skittlebrau, Floor Pie, the Flaming Moe [more inside]
posted by Alison at 4:40 PM PST - 104 comments

Green Listening

Muppets: The Green Album (previously) is now available to listen to in its entirety as an NPR "First Listen".
posted by hippybear at 4:40 PM PST - 23 comments

'Serve the people'

China debate over US envoy's coffee run. 'The low-key actions of two top US officials have sparked heated debate among China's netizens about the nature of public servants. A photograph of new US Ambassador to China Gary Locke ordering coffee and carrying his own backpack generated thousands of online comments. A visit by Vice-President Joe Biden to a small Beijing eatery fuelled debate. Many praised the informality of the two men's actions, contrasting them with status-conscious Chinese officials.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 4:35 PM PST - 99 comments

Seeing with sonar

Tacit is a wearable sonar system for the vision-impaired that communicates the distance of nearby objects using variable pressure on the wrist of the user. Part list, circuit diagram, and detailed instructions for building the ~$100 device included.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:24 PM PST - 9 comments

Helen DeWitt

AM: Do you have a favorite kanji character? HD: I like this one: 峠 because it reminds me of a poem by Christina Rossetti:

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men


(what I mean is, it’s terribly nice to have the radicals for mountain, up and down form the character). I’m very fond of 競 because it makes me think of two men skating with their arms behind their backs in a Dutch painting, wearing black frock coats and breeches. 明 is not very exotic, of course, but it’s nice to have the word for ‘bright’ represented by the sun and moon – this is a bit like certain German words, where the elements of a phenomenon are put together for the word: there’s Morgengrauen (morning grey) for the sky lightening to grey just before dawn, and Morgenröte (morning red) for the sky when it first turns red, similar sort of thing. An interview with Helen DeWitt, author of The Last Samurai, Your Name Here, a novel written with Ilya Gridneff, and the forthcoming Lightning Rods. DeWitt will be in New York September 8 - 11.
posted by xod at 4:20 PM PST - 48 comments

there's not very much to say about me

Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990 - 87 min)
Warhol's Cinema - A Mirror for the Sixties (1989 - 64 min)
From The Factory: 1963-1968
Excellent photo slide show
posted by madamjujujive at 4:02 PM PST - 7 comments

Yes, they consider us cockroaches. Cockroaches left in charge of increasingly advanced and destructive technology.

"Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis" A scholarly paper (33-page pdf) summarized by the Guarniad with its most attention-getting scenario semi-explained by DiscoveryNews: "[the aliens may] want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way." (for the record, it was NOT written for NASA though one of the authors is a "NASA dude")
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:50 PM PST - 72 comments

The Rebuilding

The Memorial. "People talk a lot about the "healing process." Well, this is New York. In the aftermath of a tragedy of monumental proportions, the healing process has been noisy and rude, with elbows out, redolent of greed, power, and the darker forces that drive human existence. And most of the shouting has been about how to make a fitting monument to what happened here. But in a hundred years, all the shouting and all the politics will be forgotten. What will be remembered is what is built here, now, on these sixteen acres." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:41 PM PST - 37 comments

When two readers love each other very much, they raise a smaller reader

"It’s a mistake to rarify reading and put books out of reach."
posted by burnfirewalls at 1:34 PM PST - 63 comments

Awesome times in East Germany

Secret Spy Photos from East Germany Revealed! All kinds of awesome from the time that the Berlin Wall fell. [coral cache]
posted by Eekacat at 11:34 AM PST - 14 comments

Back to Washington for Boeing

Boeing's new Dreamliner plant in South Carolina was found to be retaliation for union strikes by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency (On Point radio show). That's prompted Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to launch an all-out war on the NRLB according to Dahlia Lithwick. (Previously.)
posted by klangklangston at 10:25 AM PST - 78 comments

Shortage of STEM Workers

Is There a Shortage of Skilled Foreign Workers? What is never mentioned is that “the best and the brightest” are already here. This argument is an old one. [more inside]
posted by BuffaloChickenWing at 8:38 AM PST - 43 comments

What if law schools opened their own law firms?

The job market is saturated and graduates are unable to get hired anywhere to get proper training. Law professors Richard Rhee and Bradley Borden have a solution: law schools should open their own law firms.
posted by reenum at 8:29 AM PST - 93 comments

The pop culture art of Phil Noto

Phil Noto illustrates the hell out of comics, TV, pulp fiction, music, and being a six year old artist at his blog, Your Nice New Outfit. Oh shit it's the Master Blaster!
posted by cortex at 8:12 AM PST - 19 comments

1 1 2 3 5 Eureka!

13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence After studying how trees branch in a very specific way, Aidan Dwyer created a solar cell tree that produces 20-50% more power than a uniform array of photovoltaic panels. [more inside]
posted by jillithd at 8:02 AM PST - 106 comments

Guatamalan Mother Searches Five Years for Daughter

In a case that is rocking the international adoption world, a Guatemalan judge has ordered the return of a six year old girl to her biological family. [more inside]
posted by zizzle at 7:09 AM PST - 221 comments

Day of Honey, Day of Onions.

Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War [reviews, excerpt] discusses Iraqi intellectualism, war and food, ancient Iraqi cooking, the Middle East's dependence on imported wheat, and the link between bread and civilian uprisings. [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 5:39 AM PST - 7 comments

Robert Breer, 1926-2011

On August 12th, pioneering experimental animator Robert Breer passed away at the age of 84. [more inside]
posted by louche mustachio at 2:52 AM PST - 5 comments

Attack on British Council in Kabul

"Today is our independence day from Britain. They recognised our independence 92 years ago; today's attack was marking that day" - 12 dead confirmed thus far as a result of suicide attack on British Council building in Kabul.
posted by numberstation at 1:24 AM PST - 93 comments

« Previous day | Next day »