September 2, 2011
wait I just
"Pro tip for comic book artists: No human being alive sits like that as a way of relaxing. This is beyond ridiculous.". [more inside]
We call this "dislocated polygamy".
The Tribes of Darkest Austria - or: if Africans ruled Anthropology. (slyt)
Winter Words with Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue discusses her novel, Room, in depth. [Warning: This is a single, hour-long video, but well worth it if you like this author or this book. Room is told entirely from the perspective of a 5-year-old boy and deals with the subjects of sexual and physical abuse. If you haven't read the book and wish to read it, but you don't like spoilers, don't watch the video.]
As many games as grains of sand.
Dune has been the subject of quite a few games, all with varying interpretations of the setting material. [more inside]
Pixar, 1972
40 Year Old 3D Computer Graphics, created by Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke (with some help from Bob Ingebretsen) in... wait for it... 1972!
Mayer Hawthorne, and tributes to his inspirations
Back in May of this year, Mayer Hawthorne put together a free collection of covers and descriptions of the tracks. The collection includes covers of The Isley Brothers (Work To Do, 1972), Chromeo (Don't Turn The Lights On, 2010), The Festivals (You’ve Got The Makings Of A Lover, late 1960s), Shorty's Portion (Fantasy Girl or Child, 1975?), Jon Brion (Little Person, 2008), and Electric Light Orchestra (Mr. Blue Sky, 1977). Chances are that you've heard of (or at least heard from) most of these artists, except Shorty's Portion, a one-off band with a small-run album. The group was centered around Steve Salazar, who was born with a hole in his heart, and died just short of his 27th birthday. [more inside]
Beards from Below
Draw a penis and Google will correlate that to "fabulous myspace"
Google has a fabulous new(-ish) tool called Correlate where you can draw lines on an empty graph and Google will try to find search trends that match. You can find some really interesting curves by dicking around this way. For example, searches for "how to write a resume for a job" go through the roof from 2008 to today. Also, it turns out that people tend to google "work out equipment" around the holiday season. [more inside]
El Pintor Con Las Letras
Throughout the world, El Mac's grand spraypaint portraits combine with RETNA's cryptic, hieroglyphic language to create stunning murals.
AthMe
First published in 1691 in London, The Athenian Mercury was the original supplier of answers to readers' questions, a format much imitated since. Queries on love, science, religion, literature and anything else people thought to ask about, were answered by The Athenian Society, members being publisher John Dunton and three of his friends. Athenian Mercury Project is a blog where Dr. Laura Miller publishes questions and answers from the The Athenian Mercury and The Awl has an occasional series where they trawl through the archive (1, 2, 3, 4). Both of these places are good places to start, but if they aren't enough, The Athenian Oracle: Being an Entire Collection of All the Valuable Questions and Answers in the Old Athenian Mercuries, is available on Google Books for free perusal, searching and download. Well, almost all, sadly enough volume one is nowhere to be found, but it does contain volumes two, three, four and a supplement (which includes a lengthy history of The Athenian Society). In addition to that, there is Athenian Sport, a collection of paradoxes debated by The Athenian Society. The questions asked by 17th Century Londoners should be familiar to those of us who read Ask MetaFilter.
Job Fair In The Faith Dome
Hope and despair at a job fair. 'The hopefuls began lining up along Vermont Avenue hours before the church doors opened for the job fair at 9 a.m. Men in pressed slacks and sports jackets, women with high heels peeking from their purses and flip-flops on their feet for standing. A few folks were pushing babies in strollers; one guy was holding the front wheel of the bicycle he had ridden there from Inglewood. Almost everyone in line was black; all of them clutching briefcases, clipboards or binders, with resumes they hoped to exchange for business cards from would-be employers.' [more inside]
Epic in its ambition, but rich in humanity...
Going to the store. [Vimeo]
“I’m a master palindromist, and I can teach you how to neutralize the letter h.”
I gave myself the title "master palindromist," but I’m the one inventing the terminology, and making the rules, so I might as well be giving out titles as well. [more inside]
You know, for Jewish kids!
Sounds like something Hitler would say!
'Overall, though, I'm content that the law has as much popcult traction as it does. My feeling is that "Never Again" loses its meaning if we don't regularly remind ourselves of the terrible inflection point marked in human culture by the Holocaust… Key to that obligation is remembering, which is what Godwin's Law is all about.' --Mike Godwin, quoted in ArsTechnica, on Godwin's Law.
Huxtable Hotness
Huxtable Hotness [via mefi projects] In which the author reviews the sartorial choices of the characters on "The Cosby Show" one episode at a time. [more inside]
Instant Fall TV Lineup Generator
He's a leather-clad ninja librarian moving from town to town, helping folk in trouble. She's a beautiful communist femme fatale with someone else's memories. They fight crime!
Crisis on Infinite Blogs
One response to all the hubbub about DC Comics' unfolding "New 52" re-launch of the DC Universe comics: a pile of independent cartoonists creating cover art for the book launches/relaunches they'd like to see, at DC Fifty-Two. Some of it is straight-faced, some of it is...less so. BIFF! The Justice League as a western! POW! The Geek vs. Hell's Nixons! BLAM! Classical art references!
helluva cephalopod
Insurance for Insurers
"Reinsurance" is what you do when you want to invest several billion dollars all at once. The top 25 reinsurers in the US together wrote about $27 billion in premium in 2010. Reinsurers are constantly looking for ways to manage their exposure to risk, particularly after Sept. 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina. [more inside]
Karambolage - The Photography and Art of Arnold Odermatt
Arnold Odermatt is a Swiss policeman who worked in Niwalden between 1948 and 1990 and who took curiously fascinating photographs of police work and car crashes. His prints are now sold in art galleries. [more inside]
Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits
Replica Batmobile powered by an actual turbine
Atomic Batteries to power, turbines to speed as Casey Putsch builds a replica burton-batmobile... with a jet turbine... that's street legal... and is now on ebay.
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