October 29, 2010
Zombie activity: High
"Organ Trail was an edutainment game developed in 1971. Schools across America used this game as a teaching tool to prepare children for the impending zombie apocolypse and dysentery."
Blonde Swedish Identical Twins, but not what you were hoping for.
Madness in the Fast Lane. Part 1, 2, 3, 4 (YT -- videos include footage of human-car collisions and some NSFW language). On May 17, 2008, the identical twins Ursula and Sabina Eriksson ran into traffic on the UK's M6 motorway, apparently for no reason whatsoever (original article & footage). Despite the first being run over by a lorry and the second hit head on by a car, both sisters survived, even cursing and struggling against the police who tried to help them. That's when things got weird. [more inside]
Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit (SLVimeo) is a wonderful 8-minute animated video about human connection.
Scary Sketches to Glimpse in the Dark
Nearly three decades ago, folklorist Alvin Schwartz published Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the first of three horror anthologies that would go on to become the single most challenged book series of the 1990s. But most of the backlash was against not the stories themselves (which were fairly tame), but rather the illustrations of artist Stephen Gammell. His bizarre, grotesque, nightmarish black-and-white inkscapes suffused every page with an eerie, unsettling menace. Sadly, the series has since been re-issued with new illustrations by Brett Helquist, of A Series of Unfortunate Events fame. Luckily for fans of Gammell's dark vision, copies of the old artwork abound online, including in these three image galleries: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Interested in revisiting the stories themselves? Then don't miss the virtual re-enactments of YouTube user MoonRaven09, or the dramatic readings of fellow YouTuber daMeatHook.
"Onwy connect."
"You know, for a second there I thought maybe this would turn out different than every other time a woman has said anything on the internet about sexism." A comic about the seemingly inevitable trajectory of internet discussions of sexism by Gabby Shulz. [more inside]
If someone had been thinking, they would have been holding up rabbit ear fingers behind his head!
The first photographic image of a person was probably an accident. Taken by Louis Daguerre in Paris, the individual made history by not moving for 10 minutes. An interesting little article on the NPR science blog.
Time to go for a WebP
Google wants to speed up the Web by killing the JPEG.... and replace it with a spiffier graphics format that might be pronounced "Web-pee". The new format promises to be a whiz, cutting image sizes up to forty percent. WebP is part of a broader web video initiative WebM.
The following candidates are the ones we believe will help our business move forward
Ohio McDonald's Restaurant Tells Employees to Vote Republican As the election season is here, we wanted you to know which candidates will help our business grow in the future. As you know, the better our business does it enables us to invest in our people and our restaurants. If the right people are elected we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels. If others are elected we will not. [more inside]
'The Resistance' is the actual name I've given to my testicles
Free Miles Vorkosigan!
Cryoburn, the latest installment in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, is out in hardcover. Hard copies of the book also contain a CD with the text of the book... and most of the rest of the books in the series, along with a number of speeches, interviews, and essays. In keeping with Baen Books' approach to DRM and publishing (previously), the entire thing is available for free online.
It's a tight, tight fit.
Too late for this Halloween, but some of these super high quality masks are super realistic. So realistic, a robber supposedly used one to commit several robberies last spring in Tampa, Florida (USA) before he was caught. (They also have a bunch of scary masks, too.)
Writing and editing
[blink]
"[W]ebsites and hosting services should not be “fads” any more than forests and cities should be fads – they represent countless hours of writing, of editing, of thinking, of creating. They represent their time, and they represent the thoughts and dreams of people now much older, or gone completely. There’s history here. Real, honest, true history. So Archive Team did what it could, as well as other independent teams around the world, and some amount of Geocities was saved." Now, one year later, they have announced that nearly a terabyte of web history will soon be made available to the public as a 900GB torrent file. (Previously. / Previously.) [more inside]
I Like To Party, Very Much
There is a porn parody of The Human Centipede called The Human Sexipede. Here is the script. That is all.
[NSFW]
Schrödinger's Ratio
If you look around, you'll see that the ratio of 1.618:1 appears in architecture, nature, and artistic works (such as music, previously). Studied by the Greeks, the Golden Ratio is pretty much everywhere and is common accepted as aesthetically pleasing, and now it has been found to exist down into the nanoscale level, as a byproduct of investigating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. We may not be able to nail down both position and speed, but it appears the macro ratio is an echo of the micro one. [more inside]
Civil Civics
In the midst of so many bitter political campaigns this fall, the race for State Senate in Connecticut's 18th district is a bit different. [more inside]
Self torture
Fix The Economy, Health Care, Watch This Link
Potentially sinister
Security alerts have been declared at Airports in the US, UK and Middle East after the discovery of suspicious packages originating in Yemen. The packages, modified toner cartridges, have been described as "definitely not a complete bomb" but being "potentially sinister".
Paris versus New York.
Paris versus New York. A friendly visual match between those two cities, as seen by a Parisian-based-and-lover on New York : details, cliches and contradictions.
"We allow you to read one article for free - this one that you're on."
New York-based North Country Gazette has taken an interesting approach to monetizing its content: Threatening to sue people that read more than one article without buying a membership. [via]
“I found the action exciting writing skillful.”
I'm part indian princess form outer space ...on my mother's side.
Who is Joe Wall? Why he's an author and ambient electronic musician who works in a clock tower and loves to sing. But most Mefites know him as sonascope, author of many vast and beloved comments. His touching 2004 show, My Fairy Godmothers Smoke Too Much, is available free and complete online. [more inside]
Plaintiff Paul Hupp's Petition for Rehearing
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, 1966. With autumn already in full swing, the Peanuts gang prepare for Halloween. Previously.
The Largest Home In The World
The newest and most exclusive residential tower for this city’s superrich is a cantilevered sheath of steel and glass soaring 27 floors into the sky. The parking garage fills six levels. Three helipads are on the roof. There are terraces upon terraces, airborne swimming pools and hanging gardens in a Blade Runner-meets-Babylon edifice overlooking India’s most dynamic city. There are nine elevators, a spa, a 50-seat theater and a grand ballroom. Hundreds of servants and staff are expected to work inside. And now, finally, after several years of planning and construction, the residents are about to move in. All five of them. [more inside]
We movin like berney
The Culture of Death
Five years ago, the dinosaurs of Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics discussed writing a short story about a "Machine of Death" that would predict your fate. It sparked a forum discussion, which snowballed into a book project headed by North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki to create an anthology of short stories about the Machine of Death. Stories were submitted*, selected, and illustrated. Alas, no one was willing to publish an anthology that didn't feature Stephen King, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman or Nick Hornby. So they published it themselves and set out a challenge for their fans: "We want Machine of Death to become a Number One bestseller [on amazon.com] for exactly one day — October 26." And it happened! Meanwhile, unbeknownst to our heroes, October 26 was also the release date of a new book by a fellow called Glenn Beck (if you've not heard of him, a quick Google seems to indicate that he’s some sort of Ron Popeil-like infomercial huckster). And he's not happy about missing out on the #1 spot.
Facks and meems
(define this 'awesome)
Rated X
"...I heard animators critique the animation in my films as being 'too ruff'. Well, we didn't like it all either - but we LOVED what we were making..." [more inside]
What about poor Drosophilia?
The Diverging Diamond
Sue the bastards!
“A parent’s presence alone does not give a reasonable [four-year-old] carte blanche to engage in risky behavior." So said a NY State Supreme Court judge in his ruling that four-year-olds can be sued. Cue Dora The Litigator.
Don't worry, he's just a prototype
"The boy insisted for months that he wanted to be a robot for Halloween. His sister was a robot when she was his age. We looked at various robot images on the computer and he was most intrigued by Robocop. After I showed him the trailer, there was no convincing him otherwise. He was going to be Robocop."
Salesman Pete and the Amazing Stone From Outer Space
Salesman Pete and the Amazing Stone From Outer Space. You've never seen animation quite like this before. Bizarre, but supremely impressive. Looks great at low-res if you're on limited bandwidth. [more inside]
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