January 11, 2008
The Decapitator
1. Photograph billboard.
2. Replace head with bloody stump.
3. Affix stump to original billboard.
4. Repeat as necessary.
2. Replace head with bloody stump.
3. Affix stump to original billboard.
4. Repeat as necessary.
Management cannot guarantee the sanity of the listener.
You desire to listen to "The Shadow Out of Time". You may also desire to listen to adaptations of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour Out of Space. Possibly you desire to listen to Neil Gaiman's Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes pastiche A Study in Emerald, the text of which is available in a fetchingly formatted PDF. Or maybe it's all academic, and you'd rather just listen to some lectures about Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
What is humanity's capacity to feed itself?
In 1798, English economist Thomas Malthus promised "Famine ... the last, the most dreadful resource of nature." It took another 125 years for world population to double, but only 50 more for it to redouble. By the 1940s, Mexico, China, India, Russia, and Europe were hungry.
Which Solid Gold Dancer are you?
Solid Gold was a television show that ran from 1980 to 1988, on Saturdays, in the early evening, hosted by (among others) Dionne Warwick, Rick Dees, and Marilyn McCoo. It showcased snippets of the Top Ten popular songs of the week, accompanied and sometimes interpreted by the Solid Gold Dancers. This post is about them. [more inside]
No, not THAT kind of baloon organ...
Surely this must be a double, right? I mean, you've got this great and strange program, Addi's Inflatable Minute, and this incredibly strange but somewhat haunting instrument and its all in one You Tube Link? People don't actually make this sort of content in real life, do they?
Parody is _some_ form of flattery, I guess.
The FuMP is a collaborative music parody project licensed under Creative Commons. Highlights, with many more in the archives.
It is even more of a shock when Death, the Proud Brother, comes suddenly without warning.
Vampira, RIP. Maila Nurmi, movie star and horror movie host, friend to James Dean, and documentary subject, has passed away.
White Dwarf game
Bergman und Engel
You probably thought all those wooden toys and Nutcrackers from your local version of the KrisKindlMarkt were made in Bavaria. But wooden toys from Germany were an economic engine that supported a large percentage of the population of the Deutsche Democratische Repulic. In fact, people in the DDR were not allowed to own these toys, they were all made for export to the west. You can still find "Unter dem Tisch" (secret, illegal) collections in towns like Dippoldiswalde in the Erzgebirge mountains on the Czech border.
NBA to replay the final 51.9 seconds of game
For the first time since 1982, the NBA will require two teams to replay a portion of a previous game. The Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat will replay the final 51.9 seconds of their December 19th game because the official scorer ruled incorrectly that Shaquille O'Neal fouled out.
who'se your daddy?
Scientists for better PCR
Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers, Nucleotides and polymerases, too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending. Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do. [more inside]
Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers, Nucleotides and polymerases, too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending. Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do. [more inside]
People in Order
Bike boxes in Portland Intersections
Following up on some recent cyclist deaths in Portland where cyclists waiting in bike lanes at red lights were crushed by right-turning trucks (discussed here), the city is introducting 'bike boxes' to encourage bikes to wait out in front of stopped traffic. The city also plans to promote lower-traffic streets as 'bike boulevards' as an alternative to bike lines on high-traffic streets.
"To ensure the continuity of the blog and guarantee its integrity ..."
In what might be every blogger's dream come true, a brand has acquired an established blog devoted to that brand: in this case, cult notebook/journal manufacturer Moleskine has purchased the four-year-old fan blog Moleskinerie. But what will it mean for content - will critical posts become a thing of the past?
Improve your Rock Band drumming technique
Improve your Rock Band drumming technique. Rock Band as in the videogame, that is.
237 reasons
237 reasons why humans have sex (PDF). The research paper referenced in David Buss' contribution to The Edge. NYT comment and analysis.
IM IN UR VOTING MCHINS STEALIN UR PRIMARIES
Kucinich Asks for New Hampshire Recount in the Interest of Election Integrity. A little earlier in the election cycle this time around, many people are worried about serious discrepancies between pre-election opinion polling and exit polls, which both had Obama winning by a substantial percentage, and the official results. Obama also appears to have won in hand-counted precincts while Clinton seems to have dominated in precincts which counted the votes with the Diebold Accuvote TSx optical-scan machines, which have been shown to be susceptible to a memory card hack. [more inside]
Who Makes the Nazis?
Thou shalt always suck
Does Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip have the X-Factor?
I Want To Blow YOU Up!
A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. MTV made a show out of her because, amongst other reasons, she has over 2.5 million friends on myspace and she claims not to discriminate. The cast bios are interesting fucking ridiculous. The latest has her and some dude named Bobby breaking up. Fan sites are abuzz.
Gaelic Psalm Singing
THE church elder’s reaction was one of utter disbelief. Shaking his head emphatically, he couldn’t take in what the distinguished professor from Yale University was telling him.
"No," insisted Jim McRae, an elder of the small congregation of Clearwater in Florida. "This way of worshipping comes from our slave past. It grew out of the slave experience, when we came from Africa."
But Willie Ruff, an Afro-American professor of music at Yale, was adamant - he had traced the origins of gospel music to Scotland. [more inside]
Think before you act
Allegro Non Troppo is an animated film written and directed by Bruno Bozzetto [previously]. Now the wonder of the youtubes enjoy Ravel's Bolero [Part 2] [Part 3], Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Dvorak's Slavonic Dance # 7, Sibelius' Valse Triste, Vivaldi's Concerto in C major, and Stravinsky's Firebird. [more inside]
“I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me.”
64-year-old Frank Pringle has figured out a way to extract oil and natural gas out of nearly anything.
How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
"But, it's a post on film noir!" I told her. She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me. I knew that caving into my desires meant I might lose her. But I didn't care. I went out to the kitchen to make coffee -- yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. I knew she'd be back. [more inside]
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