September 22, 2011
Killing My Lobster (?)
Twilight Zone San Francisco - "Why Is Everybody Here? Doesn't anybody works in this town?" (From a show Killing My Lobster Conquers the Galaxy)(SLYT)
8-Bit Animal Paintings
"Menagerie" is a series of 10 polygonal animal paintings by Laura Bifano, inspired by her love of nature and classic 8-bit video games. [Via]
Word Gets Around
The Hummingbirds were one of Sydney's greatest indie pop bands. They debuted with the single Alimony and in 1989 released LoveBuzz, featuring 14 tracks of sparkling jangle pop. It spawned the single Blush, which was a minor success, but the failed and the band broke up in 1993. They were vindicated by history when LoveBUZZ made #65 on the 100 Best Australian Albums Of All Time. This year the band reunited for a set at the iconic Big Day Out Festival and a show in Sydney. They were also immortalized in the Modern Giant song The Band's Broken Up (members of the Hummingbirds later joined members of Modern Giant to form The Aerial Maps). [more inside]
It’s like the Velvet Underground meets Super Mario Brothers.
"I Found This Star On The Ground." The Flaming Lips' newest song is six hours long and available online. [more inside]
I know what you're thinking...
UC Berkeley researchers have successfully used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to decode and reconstruct people’s dynamic visual experiences - in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.
A mercurial chap
To mark the 40th anniversary of his famous band, Roger Taylor is organizing The Queen Extravaganza, a tribute tour intended to "bring the glorious music and live experience of Queen to a new generation of fans in cities across North America in 2012." Two days after video auditions began, fans are saying the perfect vocalist has already been found. [more inside]
What Is Middlebrow?
Dorothy Gambrell of Cat And Girl fame spends an awful lot of time talking about education, class, debt, money, and the hollow promise of aspirational media to discuss how much she hates Good Will Hunting
"We get a very clear and detailed shot of her butt in black latex before we ever see what her face looks like."
"this man has paid enough"
This week has seen a lot of discussion of the American criminal justice system and its failings, and a lot of concern about what can be done to fix it.
In 1947, a working class black man looked like he was about to have the full weight of the system brought down on him for taking justice into his own hands. But after Chicago leftists - including labor unions, religious leaders, artists, civil rights activists & others - launched a movement, James Hickman was set free after an all-white jury, in a trial presided over by a white judge, failed to convict, and the DA chose not to re-try because of the magnitude of public support for Hickman.
According to a review in The Nation, a new book tells the story in a way that turns the typical right-wing biases of the true crime genre on their head. [more inside]
Dark Young
Out of Africa
Let me call you when I swipe my Metrocard
Starting Tuesday, AT&T and T-mobile subscribers will be taking their calls on the subway platforms, and possibly, on the train itself. Subscribers riding along the 14th Street corridor should be able to use their phones on the A, C, E, F, L, M, No. 1, 2 and 3 platforms. There is also expected to be service on the C and E platforms at 23rd Street. It it not clear yet if service will also work between stations, but we're sure we'll all find out soon enough. All stations are expected to be outfitted with cell service by 2016.
Louie Season 2
One of the most radically original TV shows in recent memory is Louie. It's written, directed, edited, and produced by comedian Louis C.K., who stars as a (thinly) fictionalized version of himself. The A.V. Club recently sat down with Louis C.K. to talk through the show's second season, episode by episode. He sheds light on many aspects of the show, including the much-discussed Dane Cook episode.
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4. (Louis C.K. previously: 1 2 3 4)
Tiger Pataudi
Mansoor 'Tiger' Ali Khan, erstwhile Indian cricket captain, has died. His legacy evokes a previous era in Indian history: a last-generation Royal blinded in one eye as a young man, he captained the Oxford then the Indian teams (his father had played for Oxford and England before captaining India), and married movie actress Sharmila Tagore with whom he had children who went on to become movie stars themselves. Some memories of a man known for his cricketing skill, style and charisma.
Texas Parks & Wildlife Suffer From Drought
The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department maintains a Flickr account with a wide range of pictures from the state. Two of the more recently posted sets show the extent of the drought Texas is currently suffering: Bastrop Fire and 2011 Texas Drought.
The Last Druggist in Nucla, CO
Located 100 miles south of Grand Junction, Colorado, at the end of Highway 97 is a small community of Nucla. There is one remaining pharmacy, the Apothecary Shoppe, where you can find Don Colcord, the town druggist, the closest this town has to a doctor. He's also the bowling league president (and he certifies the lanes annually), announcer for Nucla High football games, and he has his pyrotechnics-display license for the local fireworks on the Fourth of July. [more inside]
Autism as a job requirement
It's long been thought that there is a high incidence of autism (and autism-related disorders like Asperger's) in IT fields. Now one company is looking to turn that into sales. [more inside]
How Radiolab is made
Not so smart as everyone and their cat?
"It is this failure of political will both in the EU and US which is starting to make the contemporary economic scene resemble that of the 1930s. " The Eurozone and the US are heading into a bad economic decade, argues John Lanchester (wiki). [more inside]
Einstein Wept.
Neutrinos discovered to be faster than light at CERN. If confirmed, these results will overturn a century of one of the most basic assumptions in modern physics. 'Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure' the speed of light 'ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit. But Antonio Ereditato of the Orion collaboration and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.' [more inside]
Palestinians ask for a state of their own.
Tomorrow, Friday the 23rd of September 2011, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas will go before the UN and set out his request for formal recognition of the state of Palestine. There are many problems with this, and not just for the Palestinians... [more inside]
The Museum of Insurance
There's some fascinating engraving and illustration to be seen at the Museum of Insurance. (Better than watching paint dry. Seriously)
Going Native in the World of Finance
The Guardian has launched what they term "Bankers: An Anthropological Study." One of their first discoveries? People really hate bankers.
Daniel Davies - Left of Center Finance Guy, Twitterer, and Crooked Timber Blogger attempts a defense. "But who's the real criminal? Its me, isn't it?"
A PAX Primer - and, of course, Wil Wheaton
PAX Primer in The Morning News. MeFi's own Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti fame offers up a thoughtful review of the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in The Morning News.
The Surreal Ruins of Quaddafi's Never-Never Land
[...]There was still talk of snipers, of a counterattack by Qaddafi’s men, of a fifth column of “sleeper cells” lurking inside the capital. Victory had come too easily. Only weeks earlier, the rebels seemed in disarray, and Qaddafi’s forces, having withstood more than four months of NATO air strikes, seemed poised to hold out for many more. Then, on Aug. 20, a planned uprising broke out in Tripoli, as the ragged rebel army converged on the city from various directions. The final battle, expected to last weeks, was over in two days. Qaddafi and his top lieutenants fled almost immediately. Now it was hard to know who was a killer and who a mere dupe.[...]
The Surreal Ruins of Quaddafi's Never-Never Land, Robert F. Worth (Note: nytimes. Via longform.com)
The Surreal Ruins of Quaddafi's Never-Never Land, Robert F. Worth (Note: nytimes. Via longform.com)
If one guy starts playing it, you ALL have to play it.
Do you miss the game, Lemmings? Would you like to play Lemmings again? How many lemmings can you handle? How many more lemmings? [more inside]
The latest (and greatest?) New World Trade Center visualization video
The latest (and greatest?) New World Trade Center visualization video. Silverstein Properties recently released footage of the construction and a visualization of the finished New World Trade Center. WTC Tower 1(Freedom Tower) is slated to be finished in early 2013 and it will mark another chapter in the ever evolving Manhattan skyline.
Team Clonc: BMXers on Bromptons
"Apparently you can't hack into a government supercomputer and then try to buy uranium without the Department of Homeland Security tattling to your mother."
TV Fact Checkers "Behind every smart TV show, there is a tireless script coordinator, technical adviser, researcher or producer who makes sure the jargon is right, the science is accurate and the pop culture references are on-point." This week, Wired "is speaking with fact-checkers behind the fall TV season’s geekiest shows." [more inside]
"An epidural is a proper Christian woman's only chance to get wrecked."
"I think Christians have gotten a bad name because of Christians. Like, I don’t blame other people for the rap that Christians have." Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays Shirley on Community, talks faith, fandom, and show business with the A.V. Club.
There's a space!
While former mayor Richard M. Daley's 2008 selloff of all 36,000 of Chicago's parking meters to LAZ Parking has resulted in some pain for drivers, such as steep rate hikes and the end of free Sundays and holidays, none is weirder than the installation of over a thousand parking meters in the middle of a deserted urban prairie. They were recently replaced by the latest electronic payboxes, many of which are still awaiting their first customer.
No more lonesome rodents
Guinea pigs are sociable animals and Swiss law prohibits owners from keeping the furry rodents on their own. But what happens when one dies? Don't fret, just call Priska Küng, who runs a 'rent-a-guinea pig' service.
"Uncreative Genius"
"The prominent literary critic Marjorie Perloff has recently begun using the term 'unoriginal genius' to describe this tendency emerging in literature. Her idea is that, because of changes brought on by technology and the Internet, our notion of the genius—a romantic, isolated figure—is outdated. An updated notion of genius would have to center around one's mastery of information and its dissemination. Perloff has coined another term, 'moving information,' to signify both the act of pushing language around as well as the act of being emotionally moved by that process. She posits that today's writer resembles more a programmer than a tortured genius, brilliantly conceptualizing, constructing, executing, and maintaining a writing machine." --Kenneth Goldsmith on why "genius" is an archaic concept, and how literature in English has fallen half-a-century behind advances in visual arts and music
A hui hou.
In a video (possibly triggering) posted a month before his death, he recalls what his wife said after they watched Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet : "I wonder if she would have still done it, if she had waited for a thousand days." 1000 days after his wife's death, Mark Rife took his own life. [more inside]
Dubya and Me, profile of George H. W. Bush
Walt Harrington's profile of the 43rd POTUS, Dubya and Me.
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