November 1, 2012
London Bus Stops 2001-2005
Every few minutes of the day, all over the capital, people gather into small groups to share the same space and fleeting moment in time... simply to wait for something routine and forgettable as a London bus. In transient, with time to kill, and often among strangers, each collection of these individuals proves completely unique from the next. Each collection provides a little insight into London's incredible diversity, how they relate to their surroundings, and each other. The very deliberate intention with By the Bus Stop, was to capture those little moments which happen spontaneously, when the meeting of individuals is completely left to chance. [more inside]
OMNI Magazine Downloadable from Internet Archive
OMNI Magazine delighted, informed, and even confused geeks of many flavours, and is now available to be downloaded from the Internet Archive. [previously]
Lebbeus Woods, Architect
“I’m not interested in living in a fantasy world. All my work is still meant to evoke real architectural spaces. But what interests me is what the world would be like if we were free of conventional limits. Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.”
Lebbeus Woods, a brilliant, visionary architect, has passed away. [more inside]
Three Drops of Water, One Grain of Sand
His amazing music, ranging from haunting to groovy to velvety smooth, went barely noticed for most of his life. So it's oddly fitting that his death would pass barely noticed, too.
Terry Callier died in Chicago last Saturday at age 67. [more inside]
Existential cat
A theorem concerning corporate headquarters
If you are Rackspace, then your corporate headquarters are located inside a dead shopping mall in a suburb of San Antonio. (SLNYT)
So it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut went to Biafra shortly before its fall in 1970 (Biafra previously). This is what he had to say about it.
Still nothing nearly as awful as eyeball leeches.
11 Legendary Monsters of Asia. 10 Legendary Monsters of Europe. 7 Legendary Monsters of South America. 10 Legendary Monsters of Australasia and Antarctica. 11 Legendary Monsters of Africa. 10 Legendary Monsters of North America Part 1, Part 2.
If-
Michael Caine plays If- straight. Robert Morley hams If- up. Dennis Hopper misses a line or two, Harvey Keitel misses a whole stanza, and Grampa Simpson misses the point entirely. Joni Mitchell sings sublime. KeyKrusher raps ridiculous. Federer and Nadal go head to head, with commentary. International cricket pundits celebrate the Indian Premier League, Des Lynam toasts World Cup 98, and a failing football manager addresses a press conference. A teenager learns from an angel, and seven year old Humza learns If- for himself. [more inside]
Back of the pan
Some people have made an interesting and clever 'goalkeeping machine', which prevents football (soccer) strikers from scoring goals, using high speed cameras and projectiles sent out to intercept the ball. And - obviously! - they've deployed it there, in the goalmouth, in a toilet.
monsters are people too!
12-year-old uses Dungeons & Dragons to help scientist dad with his research: Cognitive scientist Alan Kingstone wanted to test whether people look at each others' eyes or simply to the center of faces. Some had suggested an answer would be impossible to discern because humans' eyes are in the center of their faces. But Alan’s son, Julian, a fan of D&D, told his father about D&D monster characters that have eyes in unusual places, such as on their hands or tail. “[Julian suggested] if you just showed them these images, you could find out whether they are looking for the eyes or not. I thought, actually, that’s a very good idea,” Kingstone said (summarized from Cosmos). The paper describing the results - "Monsters are people too" - was published in the British Royal Society journal Biology Letters this month, with 14-year-old Julian named as the lead author.
Become a Citizen Election Monitor
My Fair Election crowd-sources pollwatching: "We hope that this information will be used by citizens, journalists, and election officials to identify the worst polling places and work to fix them. We hope that officials in charge of polling places with long lines or otherwise operate poorly will be embarrassed, held to account, and so motivated to do a better job." (via Hollie Russon-Gilman and Archon Fung)
No dikes yet? No dikes yet.
In 2009, the Dutch television network RTL reported on a proposal to build a Dutch-style floodwall across the Narrows at the mouth of New York harbor (SLYT), complete with an animation of what it was designed to protect against: flooding of 4 meters into Manhattan & the surrounding areas. This uncannily resembles what transpired this Monday.
Coronet Instructional Films
From the mid 40s to the mid 50s Coronet Instructional Films were always ready to provide social guidance for teenagers on subjects as diverse as dating, popularity, preparing for being drafted, and shyness, as well as to children on following the law, the value of quietness in school, and appreciating our parents. They also provided education on topics such as the connection between attitudes and health, what kind of people live in America, how to keep a job, supervising women workers, the nature of capitalism, and the plantation System in Southern life. Inside is an annotated collection of all 86 of the complete Coronet films in the Prelinger Archives as well as a few more. Its not like you had work to do or anything right? [more inside]
So f*>%ing future
"Yelp Reviews As Poetry". "A guide to the queer teen stars of YouTube." "Can a video game company save capitalism?" "In Defense of Ke$ha." "Playing golf inside Louisiana's largest prison." "What getting an abortion is like in a Red State." "We may have reached peak infographic."
Here ye Here ye!
The first (& only?) issue of Tomorrow Magazine [founded by fired Good Magazine editors] is out! [more inside]
In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, There is Only Billy
October 31st gave us possibly the most unexpected Family Circus of all time. Not a photoshop, this is what appears in newspapers. And in case you're wondering, Jeff Keane did his homework.
What About Asstrology?
Asstrology is a number from Eric Idle's new musical, What About Dick?, which will be available for download on the 13th.
Revisiting Baseball's Perez Brothers after Pasqual's Death
"My best start I win one-nothing," he recalls. "I have single, double, two RBI."
A quote from Chi Cho Perez, father of the Perez brothers, chronicled in this classic 1990 Sports Illustrated article.
Soberingly, Pasqual Perez, famous for among other things missing a start because he was circling Atlanta repeatedly, was found murdered in the Dominican Republic today.
Wax Tailor/Dusty Rainbow from the Dark
Trip-hop/downtempo DJ and producer Wax Tailor (autoplay media) just released Dusty Rainbow from the Dark (album trailer), a narrated concept album about childhood, melancholia, and escapism. Two videos Time to Go (featuring Aloe Blacc) and Heart Stop (featuring Jennifer Charles) have been released. The album combines vocal collaborations with movie-line heavy compositions constructed through the turntable and sampler. (An earlier example is I Don't Know from Tales of Forgotten Memories.) [more inside]
A Very Still Life
The paintings are the work of none other than Jack Kevorkian, the late Armenian-American pathologist, philosopher, assisted suicide advocate, and convicted felon otherwise known as Dr. Death. They are strikingly well executed. Unlike the works of other improbable painters — Adolf Hitler’s multicolored bouquets and elegant nudes or Winston Churchill’s pastoral sceneries — Kevorkian’s canvases are markedly obvious and gruesomely, almost risibly, literal. And the man in the coma, the man on fire, and the man with the brains by his side look a lot like the auteur himself.
Factor Conga
Animation of prime factorization of the integers based on Brent Yorgey's factorization diagrams, described here. [via Data Pointed, previously.]
New chapter of "Answered Prayers" published
A small piece of Truman Capote’s famously unfinished novel Answered Prayers has come to light. The six-page story, “Yachts and Things,” found among Capote’s papers in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, is published in the December issue of Vanity Fair, out now in New York and nationally next week. The story will be available online in mid-November. [more inside]
Magic: The Gathering: Armageddon
Magic: The Gathering: Armageddon was a 1997 prototype arcade game by Acclaim, of which there are between 4 and 5 known extant copies (
Ctrl/⌘+F "arcade"). It is not currently emulated, and no footage of the gameplay existed until Halalah on the ASSEMblergames forums obtained a copy of the board and posted a video. Growing Up With Nell
Last year, folks speculated that the One Laptop Per Child's plan to 'drop laptops from helicopters to isolated villages' in Ethiopia might mean that someone had been reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age a bit too closely. (previously) They had been, and they did it, and it worked really well.
Librarians are doing it for themselves
What really concerns librarians; what do they discuss when they self-organise and decide for themselves? After the inaugural UK event, the second UK Librarycamp, with around 200 attendees, was recently held; reflections by Frank Norman, Carolin Schneider [1] [2], Sarah Wolfenden, Amy Faye Finnegan, Shambrarian Knights, Michelle, Jennifer Yellin, Jenni Hughes, Bookshelf Guardian, Amy Cross-Menzies and Simon Barron, and by one of the organisers. [more inside]
You travel all around the globe looking for the world’s most beautiful cave. . . and the best one is in Sheffield.
"During that trip I even had a leech stuck to my eyeball for a couple of days. We tried coaxing it off with some raw meat and salt." Robbie Shone takes eye-popping cave photos.
“I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting.”
The Case of the Mormon Historian: What happened when Michael Quinn challenged the history of the church he loved.
Ghosts in Court
Perhaps not as well known as Ackley's Ghost, whose legal, if not factual, existence is known to every American law student, the Greenbrier Ghost is still known as the only ghost whose testimony helped convict a murderer.
Although commonly used to convict witches, spectral evidence largely fell out of favor after the Salem Witch Trials, until one West Virginia women's ghost accused her husband of murdering her.
'R is for Rhonda consumed by a fire'
Edward Gorey's gothic tales from the vault: '
Edward Gorey's arch eccentrics are on display in two reissues and a never-before-published story.' [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »