January 3, 2010
Hail and victory and sink 'em all!
The San Francisco Maritime National Park operates the USS Pampanito (SS-383), a World War II Balao class Fleet submarine museum and memorial that is open for visitors daily at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. The Park website also hosts "The Fleet Type Submarine, Navpers 16160", the first in a series of submarine training manuals that was completed just after WW II. The series describes the peak of WW II US submarine technology. [more inside]
Are you happy to see me or is that just a dictionary in your pocket?
Seventeen,
Seventeen (Youtube), a music video by Matt Kresling, makes use of his yearbooks from high school, the music collaboration site Kompoz, a green screen, and a mean ukelele. [more inside]
The black forest game series
The Black Forest is a series of four minimalist flash games by Pixelate: Finding Friends, Unlearn, Harmony, and Companion. [more inside]
Great Dad? Or Greatest Dad?
In 1940s New York, Harry Dubin and his teenage son went out every weekend to take color pictures of people doing different jobs in the city. Well, not people...Harry Dubin, switching places with people and pretending to do their jobs. [more inside]
Nicolas Cage's Many Faces
A Rescue In Milwaukee And What Followed
On March 12, 1854 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a fugitive slave named Joshua Glover, apprehended by a federal marshal and held in the city jail pursuant to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, was freed by a mob roused by noted local abolitionist and newspaper editor by day Sherman Booth. The freed fugitive was quickly spirited to Canada and freedom, but Booth's road to absolution had several more twists and turns. [more inside]
eavesdropping on jazz giants
The Jazz Loft Project - From 1957 to 1965, celebrated photojournalist W. Eugene Smith made 4,000 hours of surreptitious recordings and took 40,000 photographs in a loft in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where Roland Kirk, Thelonius Monk, Hall Overton, Charles Mingus and other jazz greats jammed until dawn. Archived in the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the project is now accessible via a book, a traveling exhibit, a 10-part Jazz Loft series on WNYC, NPR's Jazz Loft Project Sights & Sounds, and an interview with JLP author Sam Stephenson, which includes some images from the book. Via a Grain Edit post, which also has some great images. [more inside]
Zoltar Segue
Zoltar breakdancing! Everybody rumba, rumba rumba. Zoltar, that fortune-telling guy you thought was stuck in his booth, went mobile and won the Motorized Float prize in the 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade last summer. [more inside]
The 'G' Word.
MTV's Jersey Shore, a Real World-style reality program centered around eight young Italian-Americans living together in a beach house, is garnering charges of racism following their use of the allegedly pejorative terms guido and the feminine counterpart guidette in advertisements. But what exactly is a guido? [more inside]
Out of the Past, Off of His VRML Lawn.
Jaron Lanier's new book, You Are Not a Gadget -- a cri de coeur on the commercialized, despoiled, fallen Eden of the modern Web-- is reviewed here . MetaFilter name-checked by reviewer, though with the aid of a shoehorn. The Mondo 2000-era dreadster explains himself here. Lanier, previously discussed on MeFi.
Chisenbop
Chisenbop - a tool for doing simple math on your fingers, invented by Sung Jin Pai in the '40s, it uses the same principles as the abacus. Tutorial 1 and 2, and a cute kid.
1942 maps of the invasion of the United States
Metafilter's own JF Ptak has an interesting post on the Life magazine issue of March 2nd, 1942, readers of which were confronted by some startling maps detailing possible Axis invasion strategies for North America. There was invasion down the St. Lawrence valley, there was invasion via Trinidad, via Bermuda, full frontal west coast, and down the west coast as well - note the mapping of the large "fifth columns". As Ptak notes, maps such as these with huge arrows pointed menancingly at the American homeland were very much not the norm of the day. [more inside]
B-Movie TV
"Bikinis! Monsters! Motorcycles! Welcome to BMC, your new go-to site for B-movies by the likes of John Carpenter (Dark Star) and Roger Corman (Saga of the Viking Women). Now online and in full screen, watch unsung classics like Asylum by Psycho screenwriter Robert Block or Corridors of Blood with the inimitable Christopher Lee. Want to see international icons before they made it big? How about The Ruthless Four, a spaghetti Western starring Klaus Kinski."
Robert Park
On Christmas day, Robert Park walked over the frozen Tumen river from China and into North Korea. He did an interview that was to be released when he had crossed over.
Losing the War
Losing the War "From the beginning, the actual circumstances of World War II were smothered in countless lies...People all along have preferred the movie version: the tense border crossing where the flint-eyed SS guards check the forged papers; the despondent high-level briefing where the junior staff officer pipes up with the crazy plan that just might work...The truth behind these cliches was never forgotten -- because nobody except the soldiers ever learned it in the first place."
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