September 5, 2012
Wikitravails
Wikitravel.org is sort of like a Wikipedia for travel information. It's a for-profit service supported by banner ads. In a recent RfC over at Wikimedia - the non-profit that runs Wikipedia and other projects - it was decided to start a new Wiki-based travel project. Meanwhile at least 38 of 48 the volunteer admins at Wikitravel.org said they would jump ship and join a new Wikimedia travel site (travel.wikimedia.org). The owners of Wikitravel, Internet Brands, have responded by issuing law suits against two of its admins in a possible bid to intimidate the creation of a Wikimedia travel site. Wikimedia is counter-suing and supporting the legal defense against the two admins.
Greta Garbo: "arguably the quintessential embodiment of Hollywood's Golden Age"
The Flick Chick - 11 Days of Garbo: "I recently bought the Greta Garbo Signature Collection...I've been enjoying the collection so much that I've decided to dedicate the next 11 days to looking at the 11 films included in the collection: three silents, the pre-code films which helped establish her as a star who could continue into the sound age, the films made towards the end of her film career for which she is perhaps best known, and a documentary feature produced by Turner Classic Movies." [more inside]
Making a case for making your own laptop case
If you’re looking for a way to carry your laptop about, want to protect it from scratches, or just hope to make the fact that you’re carrying a brand-new laptop slightly less obvious to shifty-eyed individuals who seem to be overtaking you on a deserted, dark street, and you have been disheartened by the cost and ugliness of the laptop cases and sleeves on the market, take heart. You can make a laptop case or sleeve that will not only protect your computer but will proclaim your individuality and style. Like yoga? Make a case out of your yoga mat. Love to travel? Use a vintage suitcase. If you’re a Jim Henson fan, make a Furry Monster case (but just don’t keep your computer under your bed at night because your aging parents are already terribly tired of running down to your basement lair every time you have a nightmare). [more inside]
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity."
The UNIX™ System: Making Computers More Productive. A video from 1982 featuring Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Alfred Aho, and Lorinda Cherry discussing key features of UNIX. One of many videos available from the AT&T Archives. Warning: contains beards. Lots of beards.
You Stutterin Prick!
Waiting For A Cure
Kim Suozzi, 23, turned to Reddit to seek advice on what to do in her final months of life after being diagnosed with brain cancer. The Society for Venturism set up a fund on her behalf so that she can be cryonically preserved.
Cloud Consitency
Netflix has open sourced tools it uses for load balancing and failure management with Amazon Web Services . They plan to release more tools in the future. They are on Github.
you're going to reap just what you sow
Just a perfect day1
drink sangria in the park2
and then later when it gets dark,3
we go home.4
Just a perfect day5
Feed animals in the zoo6 Then later a movie too,7
and then home.8 [more inside]
Putin and the Cranes
When did David Lynch start directing nhl games?
The NHL is facing the possibility of a lockout and Mexican fire hockey is still in the early stages of a comeback, so what's a hockey fan to do? Humor and/or Humour blog Down Goes Brown has your back with extensive archives and a new book. If you get desperate, you could even try their long-running series analyzing Obscure Moments in Toronto Maple Leaf History. [more inside]
FEAR THE ARTICHOKE KING
You must always keep an open mind, in this business.
"How, I wonder, can a young woman who has grown up in this harsh environment, waking up early to fetch water, cook, clean, farm till late in the day, be suffering from depression? ... People don't get depressed in Nigeria."
"I want to encourage mainstream journalists to speak up when they discover their companies are misleading the people, doing PR for corporations and governments and disguising it as journalism."
Former CNN journalist Amber Lyon is speaking out against the network after it decided for "editorial reasons" not to air its documentary iRevolution on CNN International. Lyon worked on a 13-minute segment interviewing democratic activists in Bahrain, who risked their own safety to be heard. Glenn Greenwald reveals that at the same time, CNN was being paid by the Bahrain Economic Development Board to produce pro-state coverage as part of its "Eye On" series. A senior producer complained to Lyon about the nature of her coverage: "We are dealing with blowback from Bahrain govt on how we violated our mission, etc."
"Show me how you make a painting.”
"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it." John Cage, 9/5/1912 - 8/12/1992
In honor of the 100th birthday of iconoclastic composer John Cage (previously), NPR asked 33 musicians about the effect Cage has had on their art. The Los Angeles Times has a tour of Cage's travels and experiences in his native city. MeFi's own speicus has a long and excellent essay up at newmusicbox.org about the performer-composer relationship Cage shared with pianist David Tudor (who premiered, among other Cage works, 4'33"). And if you've always wanted to play prepared piano and lack an instrument you want to fill with nuts and bolts, there's an app for that.
John Wilcock: New York Years, 1954-1971
Co-Founding the Village Voice, Editing Norman Mailer, and An Interview with Jean Shepherd. From the impressive online comic John Wilcock: New York Years, 1954-1971. (Chapters one, two, and three)
Time for Teletubbies: Resistance is Futile
Time for Teletubbies: Radical Utopian Fiction - how the BBC children's show reveals our posthuman future.
Father and Son
He was doubled-over, crying. He looked up at my mom and simply said, "Play this at my funeral."
Which we did, on Memorial Day, in our backyard beside his trout pond. .."I made this video with and for my father, Larry Zander, who died a few weeks ago, on May 27, 2011. He was 78. For those of you who knew my Dad, you will instantly recognize him in his natural habitat."
Blended Photos of 1906 Earthquake
Shawn Clover has created blended photos of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake/fire aftermath. His first set was posted in 2010 (Beware: dead horses in one photo) and he's just released his second set.
From Vera to Amy
Next year, BBC Radio Two's series The People's Songs, will tell the history of modern Britain in 50 songs. They have just announced what ten of them will be. [more inside]
It's over. Time to move on.
Building Pharoah's Fury. Yesterday I watched the New York State Fairgrounds shutting down for the year. A few midway rides remained, and the sight of them reduced to compact size for rail transport got me wondering how they are set up and disassembled, especially things like a giant Ferris wheel. [more inside]
The Mites That Eat, Crawl and Have Sex on Your Face
Demodex mites are tiny arachnids that live in hair follicles on your face. Recent research in Ireland indicates that they may also be a major contributing factor to rosacea. [more inside]
Next week: Watch Hulu on your toaster.
Until last week, the Nook Simple Touch e-reader lacked an indispensable feature: a functional PlayStation emulator.
"What's inexplicable to him is the ferocity of their conviction."
Dr. David Morrison is the senior scientist at NASA's Astrobiology Institute in the Ames Research Center in California. For the past eight years he's also run the Ask an Astrobiologist feature on the institute's website. "Started by a civic-minded intern, the column has become the go-to place for concerned citizens to write to NASA and ask if, as they'd heard on the internet, the world will truly end on December 21, 2012. Before he took the helm on Ask an Astrobiologist, Dr. Morrison hadn't heard anything about such theories. Now he can't escape them." Meet NASA's unofficial answerer of apocalypse emails -- at least until December 23rd. [more inside]
Possible second photograph of Emily Dickinson
The only authenticated photgraph of Emily Dickinson is of a 16 year old girl. Amherst College now believes that a privately owned daguerrotype shows the poet as a 28 year old woman - about the time she wrote the "Master" letters.
Thoughts about women and homemaking in the 21st century
"This blog is a look at the social movement I call ‘New Domesticity’ – the fascination with reviving “lost” domestic arts like canning, bread-baking, knitting, chicken-raising, etc. Why are women of my generation, the daughters of post-Betty Friedan feminists, embracing the domestic tasks that our mothers and grandmothers so eagerly shrugged off? Why has the image of the blissfully domestic supermom overtaken the Sex and the City-style single urban careerist as the media’s feminine ideal? Where does this movement come from? What does it mean for women? For families? For society?"
Round Britain Quiz
The world's hardest radio quiz is back.
Winstanley's Eddystone lighthouse
On 25 November 1703, despite a severe gale warning, Winstanley insisted on going out to the lighthouse again along with five men to carry out some necessary repairs. On the 26th, England was hit by an event still known as “The Great Storm”, even today the benchmark by which all storms in England are measured.
"Furthermore, Africans want to work and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day.”
One week after telling Australian workers that they too can be millionaires if they spend more time working and less time smoking, drinking and socialising and for a lowering of the minimum wage, Australian iron ore billionaire Gina Rinehart (Previously) has released a video repeating her calls for a special economic zone for Northern Australia with fewer regulations and lower taxes. Some have noticed that she also seems okay with paying African workers $2 a day. She makes $2 million an hour.
Her video has been derided by the Government, but the Liberal Party believe her idea for a Special Economic Zone is worth exploring.
My name is GRiZ
GRiZ - Mad Liberation. Take a 21 year old bedroom producer from Michigan, raise them on the the internet with a near complete access to the history of modern music with a focus on electronic/dance and apparently you get this incredibly humanistic and cross-cultural album that's both homage, monument and appropriation of hundreds of influences in modern music in an incredibly dubby dubstep framework. (Free album download here.)
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