October 29, 2012
Just taking a video.
Surveillance Camera Man (SL Vimeo) is a man who acts like a surveillance camera. However, he is not ceiling-mounted like most surveillance cameras. He takes video of people in public and private places. Most people have a problem with him, creating conflict. One person actually likes him.
The "50-50" Proposition
What part of "low clearance" do you NOT understand?
11FOOT8.com is a site dedicated to documenting a single 11'8" railroad trestle over a street in Durham, North Carolina and the trucks (and sometimes RVs) taller than 11'8" that fail to pass through underneath (or sometimes do pass through, just with pieces lost). Now over 30 crashes have been compiled into a three-minute video of (dare I? I dare.) The Bridge's Greatest Hits.
"First freedom and then Glory - when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption - barbarism at last"
Savagery - Arcadia - Consummation - Destruction - Desolation. The five stages of The Course of Empire, a fascinating quintet of paintings by 19th century artist and Hudson River School pioneer Thomas Cole. In it, an imaginary settlement by the sea becomes the stage for all the dreams and nightmares of civilized life, a rural woodland grown in time into a glorious metropolis... only to be ransacked by corruption, war, and a terrible storm, at last reduced to a forgotten ruin. At times deceptively simple, each landscape teems with references to cultural and philosophical markers that dominated the era's debate about the future of America. Interactive analysis of the series on a zoomable canvas is available via the excellent Explore Thomas Cole project, which also offers a guided tour and complete gallery of the dozens of other richly detailed and beautifully luminous works by this master of American landscape art.
Documentary
The Promise
Johnny works in a factory. Billy works downtown. Terry works in a rock and roll band looking for that million dollar sound. Got a job down in Darlington. Some nights I don't go. Some nights I go to the drive in. Some nights I stay home. -- Bruce Springsteen, "The Promise""I listened to the version of The Promise on 18 Tracks. It's not the version Springsteen recorded more than 30 years ago. This version is stripped down to almost nothing, just Springsteen and a piano. And the weirdest thing happened, something I can never remember happening before or since when I listened to a song. I felt myself crying." Joe Posnanski writes about fathers and sons, factory work, and the magic of the Boss and one of his most beautiful and haunting songs. [more inside]
"I'll be your pararescue jumper today"
HMS Bounty has foundered off the coast of North Carolina in Hurricane Sandy. Fourteen crew members have been rescued by the US Coast Guard, while two others, including Captain Robin Walridge remain missing at sea. [more inside]
Alexey-O-Lantern?
Playable Pumpkin Tetris. (SLICHC)
Fixing Windows 8
Classic Shell is an open-source program that fixes two of the biggest problems users perceive with the newly-released Windows 8: it brings back the Start Menu, and it allows users to log-in directly to the Desktop instead of the Start Screen. (8.4 MB WINDOWS DOWNLOAD)
The luxury repo men
When you fall behind on payments on your private jet or your yacht, Ken Cage is the man who comes and takes it away.
Dah Dah da da da Dah da da Dah Dah
candid photos of famous people
"Extremely silly" photos of: "extremely serious" artists - "extremely serious" writers - "extremely serious" historical figures. Also 14 photos that shatter your image of famous people. A few images might be considered slightly NSFW. [more inside]
Who writes this crap?
The 4th Estate corrects its numbers - "That journalism struggles with racial diversity is old news, but a study released on Thursday by The 4th Estate tried to quantify the magnitude of the problem. The organization released an infographic showing that, among the 38 most influential newspapers in the country, 93 percent of front-page articles about the 2012 election were written by white reporters. The infographic received a host of coverage." [more inside]
The 225th anniversary of Mozart's "Don Giovanni"
225 years ago today, in the Teatro di Praga, there premiered a new opera - conducted by the 31 year old composer, who was in demand after his success in Vienna the year before. Although he had completed the overture less than 24 hours earlier, the opera was an instant smash - with the composer being "welcomed joyously and jubilantly by the numerous gathering". In the years to come, Kierkegaard would agree with the French composer Charles Gounod that the opera was "a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection". Flaubert would call it one of "the three finest things God made". Today, it is the 10th most performed opera in the world. It is Mozart's Don Giovanni (spoiler). [more inside]
Not quite sweaters for goalposts
Football's (soccer, that is) ultimate conquest of North America comes a step closer with the
sale of English Premier League broadcasting rights to NBC for 250 million dollars. Unlike the Olympics, NBC has indicated that they'll broadcast the games live, to complement their NHL broadcasts. [more inside]
Random Harper Penguin
The book publishing world is merging into behemoths in order to better negotiate with Amazon. Rupert Murdoch (HarperCollins) has made an offer to buy Penguin for $1.6 billion. This just hours after Penguin said it was in talks to merge with Random House to create a 'Random Penguin' with nearly 25% of all English-language book sales. Either way the reputation of Penguin could soon be in tatters. As one agent said, "Authors have told me they are frightened by a Random House takeover, but terrified by a HarperCollins one."
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