October 20, 2010
NPR Fires Juan Williams
NPR fires senior news analyst Juan Williams after he makes comments on The O'Reilly Factor about his nervousness when boarding a plane with Muslims. [more inside]
Silly Twisted Cartoons
RIP Bob Guccione
Porn mogul and entrepreneur Bob Guccione is dead at 79. I'll never forget sneaking peeks at my mom's copy of Viva, submitting my first post-Clarion story to Omni, and leaving the room when my college housemates were watching Caligula. Rest in peace, sir.
Do you want to be a writer?
Do you want to be a writer? This is your tradition. In 1978, Michael Ventura co-founded the 'LA Weekly,' serving as film critic and feature writer until 1983, when (while continuing to write features) he began his biweekly column Letters at 3AM. The column appeared in that publication until 1993; since then, it has been published by the Austin Chronicle. [more inside]
Not a Typical Girl: Ari Up 1962-2010
Ari Up became a music legend at the tender age of 14, as a founding member of legendary punk band The Slits. Their first album, Cut, blended the nascent punk genre with reggae beats and feminist politics, but was overshadowed by the nude photo on the sleeve [NSFW: boobies]. After the trio disbanded in the early 1980s, Up collaborated with Lee "Scratch" Perry, recorded with the New Age Steppers, released solo work, and raised a family. Her former stepfather John Lydon announced that Ari Up died today following a lengthly illness.
What Cannot Be Seen
What Cannot Be Seen. "This is an ongoing postal photography project. I mail matchbox pinhole cameras loaded with photographic paper to participants, inviting them to photograph 'what cannot be seen'. The cameras are then returned to me to be processed, accompanied by an explanation of what the participant has photographed." [on flickr]
How do we educate the children of the future?
RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award
UK Spending Review
The Chancellor of the UK coalition government has announced the details of the Comprehensive Spending Review, setting budgets for government departments to 2014/15. Total savings will be £18 billion. Local government funding will be cut 7% each year for the next four years. The Arts Council budget will be cut by 30%. 490,000 jobs are forecast to be lost over the period in the public sector. The average cuts for each government department will be 19%.
The speech. HM Treasury Spending Review pages. Guardian summary. Independent article. Nick Robinson's blog for the BBC. Make your own cuts with the Guardian's interactive tool. Graphic showing 09/10 government spending (that is, before the cuts).
Swords into art
A throne of weapons. An armchair built from a Russian seamine. A dress made of bullets. [more inside]
Blowing | gniwolB
The Future of Fundamental Physics
Renowned theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed gave a series of five Messenger lectures on "The Future of Fundamental Physics" at Cornell University two weeks ago. 1 3 4 5 [more inside]
"I love you Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
I ended up not taking my meds on the weekend to conserve them for workdays in case something went wrong when it came time to renew, as it always seemed to, and so the character of "Mike on the weekends" became much more sweary and unpredictable -- but even I had to admit, weirdly entertaining. I was known to unload a series of f-bombs on people wearing shorts (why shorts?) and the behavior was weird enough that I never got beat up.
When Tourette's took over my life
Physics with a twist
Cocktail Party Physics-- Serving up science and culture with a splash of wit. "Cocktail Party Physics is a group science blog that aims to create a salon-like virtual space where contributors and readers alike can chat about the latest news and ideas in science -- with a twist. If we can make it fun, funky, unconventional, and blur the lines between traditional disciplines -- both within the sciences themselves, and science and the arts, literature, pop culture, history, and every other aspect of our culture -- so much the better."
Spaced out
"I measure my life in terms of my relationship with Star Wars" - The Guardian interviews Simon Pegg, star of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the forthcoming Paul (trailer).
Does it start now?
"Better people than I have sacrificed more than their careers, their livelihood, for the cause of freedom. Americans need to wake up and stand up." Michael Roberts, a pilot for ExpressJet, refused to enter the millimeter wave machine. TSA called the police and sent him home. [more inside]
October Surprise?
Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of The Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope and Focus of its National Factions is a new study that released today, just two weeks before the US midterm elections, by The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR). Sponsored by the NAACP, it reports that the Tea Party movement is “permeated with concerns about race” and has “given platform to anti-Semites, racists and bigots.” [more inside]
Make Your Own Lego Fabricator (and Lego Skill Crane)
There was the home-built Lego + Mac + felt tip pen printer and a 3D chocolate printer made out of LEGO bricks (and some other bits), and now: the MakerLegoBot, a 'bot that can build models out of 1×2, 2×2, 3×2, 4×2 and 8×2 Lego bricks. Want to give it a go yourself? Here are the instructions, in 447 easy steps. Or you can skip the tricky stuff, and watch a small Lego house be built in under 3 minutes* [more inside]
"They told me their God was 'Aqua Buddha'"
Jack Conway, a candidate for United States Senate, is catching flak from Democrats and Tea-Partiers alike, for airing an attack ad against his opponent, Rand Paul that brings up some bizarre dirt published in GQ a few months back. At a debate between the two candidates Sunday, Paul refused to shake Conway's hand at the end. Today, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a response to the Aqua Buddha ad. [more inside]
Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps!
OMNI Magazine
OMNI was launched (PDF) by Kathy Keeton, long-time companion and later wife of Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, who described the magazine in its first issue as "an original if not controversial mixture of science fact, fiction, fantasy and the paranormal". [more inside]
In3structotank!
In3structotank! (a.k.a. Indestructotank 3)
Now with nukes! And blimps! Blimps that go "boing"! And an adventure mode!
(original Indestructotank on MeFi)
Reality is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so
Fermilab particle astrophysicist Craig Hogan is building a holometer to directly measure if our reality is an illusion - that is, nothing more than a hologram. [more inside]
World Statistics Day!
20.10.2010 is World Statistics Day, so help yourself to a metric (haha sorry) ton of publicly available data at UNdata, ICSPR (registration required to download data sets), and data.gov (previously). You can also explore, visualize and animate a variety of publicly available data sets with Google Labs' Public Data Explorer.
"It's only ugly because it's new and you don't like it."
When asked to join in a "let's persuade this supermarket chain to get rid of their 'five items or less' sign" I never join in. [more inside]
Pull the brake! Pull the brake Emily!
oops, by Chris Beckman, is a fascinating video collage of people dropping their cameras. It won the experimental category of the 2010 Vimeo Awards (previously).
I thought it was certainly inappropriate
"I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day." [more inside]
Have you ever spent a Thanksgiving reviewing 1.2 million pages of billing records in a warehouse in Topica?
"I'll go out there and cut the chain for you and put on a new padlock, but I won't go in there, not for anything."
"Then the powers that had built the site abandoned it. But the glass endured — a splotchy green circle 200 feet in diameter, dull by night, bright by day, a monument to man's inhumanity to man. This monument was surrounded by a high fence, tight strands of barbed wire, and multilingual warning signs. The gate in the fence was chained with three padlocks — two put there by government agencies — serving as links in the chain. If you got through any of the three, you could gain admission to Trinity Site. And that's what I did. In July, 1951, I entered the site, and I took the glass. Let me explain.
Tokyo drifts ...
Tokyo drifts ... cat2525jp has a neat YouTube channel of voyages through Tokyo transit systems, set to electronica. They include timelapse (e.g. Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line), and the lovely mirror effect "Tokyo Sky Drive" series (e.g. 1 2), and povs of high-tech automated parking systems with bowing attendants.
Go north
What I've always wanted- an atlas of the world's vulnerability to climate change (downloadable pdf on page).
Even toys need culture
Gnome kidnapping has been a widespread crime for years, but now Furry Toys offers to send your stuffed loved one on a Grand Tour of Paris.
Guess the pixelated favorites
Minimal pixel versions of well-known groups of individuals has become a trend at Something Awful, where it was originally inspired by this post of Street Fighter characters. Guessing who has been pixelated is surprisingly easy and entertaining. If you are properly geeky, you'll probably find #1, #4, and #16 to be easiest. I happen to like #10. [more inside]
Picture That
Tseventy offers a curated collection of art-photograph wallpapers for mobile devices (it's affiliated with Poolga (previously)).
All Tomorrow's Tea Parties
Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground talks about her Tea Party activism. (Previously on MetaFilter: Johnny Ramone, conservative punk.)
[insert humorous Klingon title here]
The Most Popular Phone in the World
This is it. It's not the phone that would win a popularity contest in the U.S., but there are great reasons for it being the most popular phone in the world.
Canada's First Muslim Mayor
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the American Civil War
Ta-Nehisi Coates has written about his evolving view of the American Civil War (among many other things) on his Atlantic blog for over two years. A reader has now compiled links for all of them for our reading pleasure. There is also a page of recommendations that will help a reader find the most often mentioned civil war resources in the discussions. [more inside]
Yantra Tattoos
Yantra tattooing is a traditional Thai, Khmer, Lao and Burmese practice using beautiful and intricately designed yantras for good luck, fortune, strength and protection. [more inside]
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