August 26, 2012
I'm certainly not going to work on the 500th floor
How tall can buildings get, anyway?
Plum trees that grow crooked over standing pools.
In the year 1612 John Webster began what would be his greatest work, The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy. A shocking work of madness, brutally corrupt power struggle and incest, it continues to challenge audiences.
YouTube has the 1972 BBC production in full. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
School of Hard Knocks
"... [T]he character hypothesis: the notion that noncognitive skills, like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence, are more crucial than sheer brainpower to achieving success .... Character is created by encountering and overcoming failure .... The offspring of affluent parents are insulated from adversity ... while poor children face no end of challenges ... there is often little support to help them turn these omnipresent obstacles into character-enhancing triumphs." A review of 'How Children Succeed,' by Paul Tough.
A Wanker Whipping Up Fear
In May of 2010, Michael D. Higgins (now President of Ireland) had an exchange on an Irish radio station with Tea Party supporter Michael Graham, about the state of politics in the United States. [more inside]
Straight outta Chapel Hill, N.C.!!!!11!!!
These kids from Chapel Hill, N.C. rap against bullying. They give and want RESPECT in return. They advise kids to BREATHE and take a break before resorting to violence.
Steve Jobs in St. Petersburg
It is proposed that a memorial to Steve Jobs be erected in St. Petersburg, Russia. The entries are in and you can vote for your favourite online. [more inside]
Helpa helpa helpa the kids!
Bret and Jemaine of Flight of the Conchords interview some New Zealand schoolchildren to find inspiration for their new charity single, Feel Inside.
What I have to offer
In 2011, in front of a sell-out theatre at the BFI in London, Charlie Kaufman delivered the final lecture in BAFTA's Screenwriters' Lecture Series. Eliot Rausch took snippets of the lecture and set them to apposite visual clips and produced this video: What I Have to Offer (single link vimeo). [via]
"Etta James Rocks The House"
On September 27, 1963, at the New Era Club in Nashville, Tennessee, Etta James rocked the house. The result was "simply one of the greatest live blues albums ever captured on tape". [more inside]
Exit wound in a foreign nation.
Ramamba Haru Mamburu! Inhabiting a world somewhere between the desperate raunchy excesses of early Devo (NSFW), the playfully morbid obsessions of TMBG, and the puerile falsettos of Sparks, the Russian novelty/comedy/geek rockers Nogu Svelo! (English site) have been contributing earworms to Russian pop culture for, oh, some twenty years now. [more inside]
Mercury is an experimental roguelike.
Mercury is an experimental roguelike. How is it experimental? Let's have the creator, Jason Lantz, explain :
" all the game’s content is winner-generated. That means that the game starts out barren. One class for players to play, one monster to fight, and one item to use. But every round, the top two scoring players use a tool built into the game to make a monster, item or class and then that object is automatically inserted into everyone’s game, and players fight for new high scores in an entirely different game every round."
Bird Brains
Staying_On-Topic in r/intelligentanimals posts a huge number of links explaining why Corvids (crows, ravens, magpies, etc) are amazing.
Flipping cat physics
The physics of how cats flip their bodies to land feet first also allows spacecraft to turn. Flipping cats [previously] is interesting. It's even more interesting if your dad works at NASA and you have access to people who use flipping-cat physics to make spacecraft turn in space.
My Heart Keeps Singing Sweet Songs To You And It Won't Shut Up
Inspired by The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, 14 year old Californian Gal Musette has decided she can do them one better with her 70 Love Songs project. [more inside]
This is just to say...
"Floss was OK with it?" An answer to the eternal question concerning the aftermath of the plums eaten that were being saved for breakfast. An entry in the Allen Ginsberg Project blog relates a conversation between Ginsberg and a student about William Carlos Williams' poem, Ginsberg's metaphysical critique and Floss's (the owner of the plums) feelings about the matter, at least as related from Williams to Ginsberg.
"So you have their sexual relationship, actually, set up in that little thing."
A Woman's Place
Flat lens gives perfect image
Flat lens gives perfect image by causing instantaneous phase shift at surface rather than relying on phase shift of regular lens happening by traveling through different thickness of material (like glass) causing different phase shifts to focus light.
Frankie Say But Have You Heard These?
Along with the endless myriad of remixes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood was known for their b-sides. Beginning with Ferry 'Cross The Mersey, a b-side to the single Relax (snippets of which are included on the Welcome To The Pleasuredome album), they consistently showed their humor and talent through non-album tracks. [more inside]
Brilliant A+++++ would read again
Parched is the Land, Thirsty is the Desire, Thirsty is the Sky
The Saawan So Far: In Hindi, as it is in other Indian languages, they are simply the Nairutya Marut, the Winds from the South West. "Bursting" every year at about June for the last sixty million years, the Monsoons are the pre-eminent weather formation for the lands south of the Himalayas; over a period of three months, they travel all over the sub-continent in a north-easterly direction. They are India's meteorological tryst with destiny; as a past Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor once said, "If it rains everything is well on earth and cordial in heaven[...] I am once again hostage to monsoon;[...i]f it rains, the monetary policy works. [...] I want you to realise that all of us are 'Chasing the Monsoon'": [more inside]
Comics writing craft extravaganza, true believers!
Decompressed is a podcast in which comics writer and former Rock Paper Shotgun journalist Kieron Gillen (X-Men, Thor, Phonogram) talks to artists and writers about the process involved in writing a single issue of a comic. Decompressed 6 broke format and is instead a discussion with Mark Waid and Matt Fraction about scripting comics using the "Marvel Method", or "plot first" - in which the artist draws the comic from a story outline and dialogue is added later, rather than the writer supplying a panel by panel script. For a while out of favour even at Marvel, the method is seeing a resurgance. The podcast page contains visual aids, and embedded version of the podcast, the script of DEFENDERS #9 complete with B&W art and additional links, including links to Warren Ellis’ 3-part tutorial on writing comics (1, 2, 3). Jamie McKelvie and a vultue put in guest appearances. Further example comicbook scripts are available at the Comic Book Script Archive (previously).
Some of the things you wanted to know about the historical shapes of continents but were afraid to ask...
Earth Birth between 13 billion years ago and 250 million years after the current year [aka The Future]. [more inside]
True Love's Kiss?
Sleeping Beauty performance art exhibit in Ukraine. Young women are taking turns "sleeping" at the National Art Museum in Kiev and will not "wake" until a (male) museum patron kisses one of them. There's a catch, though: If he kisses one of them, they have to get married. There's video. And here's the artist's page.
Mechanical Music Press, for all your large mechanical music machine information needs
Mechanical Music Press is a resource for those interested in large mechanical music machines, and they're not just player pianos. The really interesting machines are generically called orchestrions, contraptions that are automated to play multiple instruments from some format of audio script, disc, pinned-barrel or music rolls. The three primary makers of multi-instrument playing machines as profiled on MMP are Hupfeld, Welte, and Wurlitzer / Philipps. Where MMP has detailed histories of the makers and the models, there are numerous videos of mechanical music machines in action on YouTube: Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina Model B | Welte style 4 orchestrion at Disneyland | Wurlitzer Pianorchestra 33-A | Ramey Banjo Orchestra, a new orchestrion styled after the original Banjorchestra. Bonus YT link: "Ghost Parade" performed by Joe Rinaudo at the American Photoplayer (prev.)
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