August 31, 2012
Mixest
Discover new indie music with Mixest.
John Barnes hates snark
Snark is the universal solvent of cultural conversation. Someone mentions Hemingway; you mention cross-dressing, drinking, and short choppy sentences. Not only did you not have to read Hemingway, you have one-upped the other person by not having read it; you know more about it than they do because you know the important thing, that Hemingway doesn't need to be read. Star Wars has a plot straight out of a comic book, the indescribable beauty of an athlete's best moment is just ritualized combat, any given religion is a collection of three or fewer especially silly-sounding superstitions, all academic subjects are useless hazing intended to keep the wrong people from being hired, all peace protestors are just trying to get on television and soldiers are all unemployed hillbillies whose masculinity feels threatened so they've enlisted for a chance to commit war crimes. Occupy Wall Street is rebels without a clue (itself a plagiarized phrase), the Tea Party is scared old people, and nothing in the wide world matters compared to the general wonderfulness of the observer. [Some 3700 words from a science fiction writer deriding and analyzing the emptiness of snark as a rhetorical mode. Might need to click through Blogger's NSFW warning, though it's just text.]
"Iwerks is Screwy spelled backwards" -- Chuck Jones
"Over the years in animation, there have been a lot of great animators. Ub Iwerks was one of those people. We know his work, but we don't necessarily know the man." The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story (in 5 parts on DailyMotion: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) tells of the life of Ubbe Eert Iwerks, from the formation of the friendship with Walt Disney when they met at advertisement studio in Kansas City, their artistic collaborations and Ub's 20 years of animation, to Iwerk's technical creations that kept Disney animated pictures ahead of other studios. [more inside]
Following Vavilov's footsteps in the ice of the Pamir mountains-- and other Saudi Aramco-iana.
Seed collectors themselves are a bit like foraging animals, wandering far and wide in search of the same plants, and [Sergey] Shuvalov, the expedition's chief logistics planner, translator and route finder, often has to whistle them back to the vehicles. He is aware of the honor of following Vavilov's footsteps, but doubts that he will have time this trip to collect anything near the 200 species and varieties that his compatriot did here 100 years ago. [more inside]
Developing Community
DEVELOP Photo provides resources for the enrichment of the photojournalism, fine art and documentary photography community.SLYT.
And if you prefer, Vimeo
Also in Time Magazine
Privately Owned Public Spaces
When is a private space a public space? When it's a Privately Owned Public Space (POPS). In accordance with the planning codes of some cities, owners or builders of buildings are mandated to provide members of the general public access to spaces which include rooftop gardens, courtyards, and plazas. [more inside]
...Mitchells do fly I.M.C.
B-25 "...Mitchells do fly I.M.C." a Channel 4 UK documentary by Anthony Howarth and Carolyn Hicks detailing the effort of John “Jeff” Hawke to transport five WW II North American B-25 Mitchell bombers from the United States to England for use in the filming of “Hanover Street” in 1978. [more inside]
Music and remixing by me
Breaking Bad Remix (Seasons 1 and 2) from the indefatigable placeboing. [potential spoilers if you haven't seen it, but then if you haven't seen it, you probably won't get it anyway]
Lucy got some 'splaining to do
Ever had one of those nights that made you think about giving up drinking? Lucy Spraggan says it leads her to Beer Fear. (DLYT) [more inside]
Build your own Gossamer Condor
The first human-powered aircraft to achieve sustained and controlled flight, the Gossamer Condor (6.3 MB PDF), now belongs to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (2.2 MB JPG). So you'll need to build your own. (previously)
Shulamith Firestone, sprung from her own head
Shulamith Firestone, RIP. The founding radical feminist was found dead in her apartment, a quiet end to a revolutionary life. [more inside]
Incandescent lightbulbs banned
Incandescent lightbulbs are now banned across the entire European Union as of September 1. "Concerns about poor performance of replacement bulbs have been proved wrong." It is predicted to save 39 terawatt-hours of electricity across the EU annually by 2020. "The phase-out has been very smooth." BanTheBulb said "..the vast majority of the public have adjusted to using the next generation of lighting technologies with the absolute minimum of fuss and drama." [more inside]
Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?
Full-contact pioneer dead at 68.
Karateka Joe Lewis passed away this morning. In the '60s, he broke with convention at a time when martial arts tradition was rarely questioned, getting outside perspectives and training from the likes of Sugar Ray Robinson and Bruce Lee. In 1969, Lewis pushed for and fought in the United States Karate Championships' first ever full-contact karate match. Full-contact martial arts have exploded in the years since then.
Vanishing point
Commentary and thoughts on Honey Boo Boo
Don't judge Honey Boo Boo, because the tv show doesn't care what it's saying about American culture.
I'm Going To Hate This One, Frequently And Loudly
Diamanda Hagan is an obsessive Dr. Who fan in scary makeup. She posts extensive, entertaining, and exhaustively nerdy rants on some of the worst episodes of Nu Who. Behold! The Beast Below, Voyage Of The Damned, Victory Of The Daleks, Fear Her, The Next Doctor, Planet Of The Dead, The Doctor's Daughter, and The End Of Time (The Whole Damn Thing) (NSFW language)
Troma Entertainment
Will Gaymercon Help or Hurt Gaming's Gay Community?
Will next year's convention create a safe atmosphere for gay gamers, or will it simply push them further outside the medium's mainstream? Announced earlier this year, "Gaymercon is the first gaming and tech convention with a focus on LGBT geek culture." [more inside]
Von Daniken of the Puranas
Master Builder Uncovers Striking Similarities In Indian and Incan / Mayan Sacred Structures:- It is Sthapati's theory that Mayan, the creator of Indian architecture, originated from the Mayan people of Central America. In Indian history, Mayan appears several times, most significantly as the author of Mayamatam, "Concept of Mayan" which is a Vastu Shastra, a text on art, architecture and town planning. The traditional date for this work is 8,000bce. Mayan appears in the Ramayana (2000bce) and again in the Mahabharata (1400bce) - in the latter he designs a magnificent palace for the Pandava brothers. Mayan is also mentioned in Silappathikaram, an ancient Tamil scripture, and is author of Surya Siddhanta, one of the most ancient Hindu treatises on astronomy.
(Original ca. 1995) [more inside]
Le Radeau de la Méduse (The Raft of the Medusa)
On July 5, 1816, the passengers and crew of the shipwrecked French frigate Méduse abandoned 147 people on a makeshift raft in a gale off the coast of Africa. When the raft was found 13 days later only 15 people were still alive. The incident inspired Théodore Géricault's painting Le Radeau de la Méduse (The Raft of the Medusa). [more inside]
Marimba...
Guys who do not watch porn do not exist
The Great Porn Experiment. A Tedx Talk (in response to Phil Zimbrado's The Demise of Guys), in which Gary Wilson, creator of YourBrainOnPorn.com and founder of The Good Men project, asks whether our brains evolved to handle the hyperstimulation of today's Internet enticements, or whether it is priming human males for addiction and dysfunction.
Sproing!
A kangaroo and a lemur playing tag (or at the very least, chasing each other adorably). [slyt]
Phone phreaking audio archive
Phone Trips - an audio archive of the Phone Phreaking community. Phone phreaking was the practice of hacking into phone systems and networks in order to explore these networks and their connections [1 2]. Many people first heard about the phenomenon in a 1971 Esquire article, Secrets of the Little Blue Box, which included input from Captain Crunch. Crunch discovered that you could access telephone networks by blowing a 2600 Hz tone, from a whistle given away free in cereal boxes, into telephone handsets. "Have you ever heard eight tandems stacked up?" asked Crunch in the interview. Well, now we can, thanks to a large audio archive of phone phreaking. [more inside]
"We asked for nothing. They offered us less" - Ontario's teachers
Years of labour peace between the government of Ontario and teachers came to an end this year. Like their colleagues in British Columbia, Ontario teachers and support staff are complaining of unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional legislation -- the Putting Students First Act, 2012 -- that gives the Education Minister, Laura Broten, unchallenged power to ban strikes, job actions, set compensation and benefits, and to take over local school boards who are non-compliant. Ontario school boards are unanimously opposed to the Act, which reduces their power, and so are teachers and support staff, who feel the government is manufacturing a crisis. Most see this as a cynical ploy to capture public support for two by-elections this week that could nudge the Liberal government into majority status. ETFO and OSSTF, two of the teacher unions involved, have repeatedly pointed out that "the school year is not in jeopardy", that they had already accepted a wage freeze, and that local bargaining is proceeding well.
As legislation looms aheads, teachers, support staff, and labour activists are wondering: is this the end of collective bargaining for the public sector? [more inside]
You too can be a professional princess
"Little girls are AWED by a princess. A woman in a big, sparkly, puffy dress is a thing of power and glory to them. They will stand and stare, or scream themselves hoarse in excitement, or become paralyzed in wonder by A Princess. Some little girls start hyperventilating. Some just sit down on the floor, their knees giving out from under them. They run up to touch your dress with the same crazed look of a Twilight fan trying to touch that Edward Cullen guy at a movie premiere. It's so different from seeing a face character at Disney World because to them, Disney World is a far-off fantasy place full of strangeness and unreal scenes. But this is A Princess, in the real world, in their own home." [more inside]
“I paint pictures which do not exist and which I would like to see.”
Argentine born sometime Surrealist artist Leonor Fini was a Cat lover, extraordinaire.
She depicted women exploring their own identity at a time when female identity both physically and mentally was being defined by men, once declaring:
A woman should live with two men; one more a lover and the other more a friend.
Photographed by many; showing her dressed in Cat costume or sitting with one of her numerous cats; and her art frequently figured them somewhere or other.
More photographs of her and a video. Like the rest of her work some are NSFW and some feature cats. A brief biography.
She depicted women exploring their own identity at a time when female identity both physically and mentally was being defined by men, once declaring:
A woman should live with two men; one more a lover and the other more a friend.
Photographed by many; showing her dressed in Cat costume or sitting with one of her numerous cats; and her art frequently figured them somewhere or other.
More photographs of her and a video. Like the rest of her work some are NSFW and some feature cats. A brief biography.
Pepsi Buh?
Pier 1 hasn't come to my country yet, but with fine and funky service like this, let's hope it does soon!
Excess heat without light
Martin Fleischmann, who with Stanley Pons claimed in a press conference to have observed sustained nuclear fusion in a room-temperature experiment, died on August third at age 85. [more inside]
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