November 13, 2008

Vincent Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night

Explore painter Vincent Van Gogh's "nocturnal interiors and landscapes, which often combine with other longstanding themes of his art -- peasant life, sowers, wheatfields, and the encroachment of modernity on the rural scene." View "paintings, drawings, and letters from all periods of his career, as well as examples of the rich literary sources that influenced his work." Also includes audio commentary.flash. via [more inside]
posted by hortense at 10:33 PM PST - 7 comments

Angry clown thing awaits on the Gayway

Rejoice! There are Seattle World's Fair 1962 images, advertisements for the Gayway (which became Fun Forest) section of the attraction, racy construction shots and postcards. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 10:03 PM PST - 15 comments

BURN-E

BURN-E is a short film by Pixar Animation Studios based on a character who was briefly seen in the movie WALL-E. It takes place concurrently with the movie during the sequence when WALL-E and EVE fly around the Axiom starliner, and enter through a door, locking a welder robot outside of the ship.
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:33 PM PST - 99 comments

The Internet in Canada’s far north

Using the Web to buy a carton of milk in Nunavut. Satellite Internet in Nunavut (Canada’s newest territory – the White Stripes played there) is slow and has such draconian bandwidth caps (2GB a month) that nobody downloads audio or video. But they use it for every kind of online banking and E-commerce in a territory with barely any retail stores. [more inside]
posted by joeclark at 7:46 PM PST - 15 comments

Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, A Maverick?

Want one of the roughly 7,000 jobs in Obama's administration? Hope you've got a pencil and some time to spare. Obama wants any internet "handles" you've used, too, presumably for vetting past snark. But lengthly questionnaires aren't anything new... [more inside]
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 7:19 PM PST - 78 comments

Trans in the Red States

"In Loveland, Colorado -- population 61,000, 92 percent white and heavily evangelical Christian -- Michelle didn't know what to expect when she began to work with the school to facilitate her daughter's transition from a boy to a girl. At first, it was difficult. The school 'freaked out when I told them,' Michelle says. 'When we started with M.J.'s transition, I was envisioning riots.' And so Michelle became an advocate for transgender people -- those who identify as a gender different from the one assigned at birth. Michelle organized trainings for the faculty and staff and prepared 'cheat sheets' in case any of their students asked prying questions. But on the first day of school, nothing happened." - Trans in the Red States by Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Daniel Redman. [via Obsidian Wings]
posted by Kattullus at 7:11 PM PST - 21 comments

In the mood for trying new things at TJs? Look no further...

Trader Joe's Fan: Recipes, product reviews and more.
posted by invisible ink at 7:08 PM PST - 27 comments

For Schytts & Grins

Swedish Dance Bands of the 70's.
posted by mattholomew at 6:45 PM PST - 36 comments

We gotta love you, leave you miles behind / But if you wanna talk a walk then come into the garden with me / Jimmie Jones...

From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre.
posted by scody at 6:40 PM PST - 12 comments

Stealing Your Library

OCLC, owners of WorldCat, are getting greedy. It's now demanding that every library that uses WorldCat give control over all its catalog records to OCLC. It literally is asking libraries to put an OCLC policy notice on every book record in their catalog. It wants to own every library. It's not just Open Library that's at risk here -- LibraryThing, Zotero, even some new Wikipedia features being developed are threatened. Basically anything that uses information about books is going to be a victim of this unprecedented power[ ]grab. It's a scary thought. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 6:32 PM PST - 40 comments

Coming to a town near you... Prop 8 Protests

Proposition 8. Saddened? Curious? Outraged? Happy? Dont Care? On Saturday, November 15 in every state across America and even in cities worldwide there will be a day of action. The response has been so overwhelming the website organizers needed to open up a sister website to handle to traffic overload. In many cases, police are being updated repeatedly by event coordinators with exponential expectations for attendees. [more inside]
posted by Glibpaxman at 6:14 PM PST - 114 comments

Don't Worry, Be Happy.

Hi there, it’s Gail Westerfield, the writer's super heroine, and I'm feeling groovy thanks to Dr. Michael Mithoefer. Previously.
posted by gman at 4:02 PM PST - 20 comments

Novels 'better at explaining world's problems than reports'

Novels are 'better at explaining world's problems than reports'. According to the study "The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge" (HTML or PDF), people should read best-selling novels like The Kite Runner and The White Tiger rather than academic reports if they really want to understand global issues, such as poverty, migration and other issues. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 3:21 PM PST - 60 comments

Fin-Fish Airship

Fin-Fish blimp will alter your perception of flying. Airship Regatta in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
posted by Surfin' Bird at 2:45 PM PST - 37 comments

Pictures of the Day

The WSJ Photo Journal - The Boston Globe's Big Picture has company. [previously]
posted by kliuless at 2:05 PM PST - 9 comments

First Pictures Taken Of Extrasolar Planets

First Pictures Taken Of Extrasolar Planets
posted by jason's_planet at 2:02 PM PST - 32 comments

The right to live well leads to the right to die well.

Hannah Jones is a terminally ill 13 year old who has won a court battle in Britain allowing her to die peacefully instead of undergoing the major surgery that could prolong her life.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:16 PM PST - 112 comments

Operation Arizona Bay

This morning millions of Southern Californians dropped, covered, and held on as part of The Great ShakeOut. The largest earthquake preparedness exercise in U.S. history simulates a 7.8 quake rocking the southland. [more inside]
posted by Curry at 1:06 PM PST - 15 comments

Pleasant Grove City v. Summum

The previously-mentioned Summums want to place their own monument in a park which contains the Ten Commandments, making the Supreme Court's heads explode in a a hilariously weird oral argument[pdf]: "Scalia: I don't know what that means. You keep saying it, and I don't know what it means. [...] Breyer: Suppose that there certain messages that private people had like "eat vitamins"—and then somebody comes along with a totally different content, "ride the roller coaster," and they say this part of the park is designed to get healthy children, not put children at risk." [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur at 12:16 PM PST - 116 comments

The Typewriter Tape

On June 25, 1964, Janis Joplin visited Jorma Kaukonen at his home in San Francisco. Accompanied by Jorma's wife on typewriter, they recorded six songs. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
posted by Knappster at 11:53 AM PST - 24 comments

More fun with Scientology!

Recently, everyone who pre-ordered a certain book on Amazon.co.uk received a letter notifying them "This item has been removed from sale for legal reasons." Amazon.com claims the book is temporarily out of stock. The book? The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology by John Duignan. Interestingly, on November 5th, Tom Cruise attended an "all hands" meeting of Amazon.com bigwigs. Photos. A random coincidence? What about all those one and two-star reviews that kept disappearing from books like Dianetics and Science of Survival?
posted by changeling at 11:52 AM PST - 77 comments

WAIT 6502,1

The story of an easter egg in Commodore PET BASIC V2, and other bits of computer archeology from fantastic pagetable.com.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:32 AM PST - 26 comments

99 Tetris bricks on the wall, 99 Tetris bricks, take one down, toss it around...

99 Bricks is what you get when you cross Tetris with Jenga. Instead of keeping your tower's height to a minimum, the goal is to get it as high as possible with 99 bricks. And the bricks don't stick to each other anymore. One wrong placement and they'll fall all over the place.
posted by grouse at 7:30 AM PST - 29 comments

Down South frumpin'!

Jocelyn Testes-Harder is a no-nonsense woman
posted by iffley at 7:17 AM PST - 94 comments

How usable is your world?

Happy World Usability Day. Download the poster. Take the global transport challenge. Get involved in a local event. Not sure what usability is? These guys can tell you. Usability principals are being applied not only to websites, but to increase the level of accessibility in all facets of life including voting, product development, and how we talk to one another. You're on your own to improve your own usability, though.
posted by angry jonny at 7:07 AM PST - 21 comments

Analysis: People all over the world love counting!

Video blog of people's reactions around the world to the 2008 CNN presidential countdown.
posted by aftermarketradio at 5:48 AM PST - 53 comments

Incredibeta

Incredibots. Make crazy machines! Solve puzzles! Share with your friends! And that's just the beta. Similarly [more inside]
posted by DU at 5:11 AM PST - 36 comments

The perfect Yorkshire pudding

The Royal Society of Chemistry has published their specifications and recipe for the perfect Yorkshire pudding. Unusually for this type of thing, it might not have anything to do with selling anything.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 3:11 AM PST - 56 comments

On Growth and Form and Constructal Theory

On Growth and Form (1917) was D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's pioneering effort to explore the mathematical principles that underlie biological form. He studied the similarity between the shapes of a jellyfish and a drop of ink, a splash and a hydroid, between dragonfly wings and bubble froth, the growth of radiolaria and snowflakes, the spirals of nautilus and mollusk shells and sheep horns. More recently, Adrian Bejan's Constructal Theory aims to explain all biological shape from one thermodynamic principle. This month there is an interview with Bejan for the layman. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:17 AM PST - 16 comments

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