The day in posts: 11/16/2010

Mapping the Republic of Letters is a cartographic tool designed by students and professors at Stanford that seeks to represent the Enlightenment era Republic of Letters, the network of correspondence between the finest thinkers of the day, such as Voltaire, Leibniz, Rousseau, Newton, Diderot, Linnaeus, Franklin and countless others. Patricia Cohen wrote an article about Mapping the Republic of Letters as well as other datamining digital humanities projects in The New York Times. The mapping tool is fun to play with but I recommend you read the blogpost where Cohen explains how to use Mapping the Republic of Letters.
posted by Kattullus at 5:22 PM PST - 15 comments

Chemical Party (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by hanoixan at 4:57 PM PST - 28 comments

Regarding Luis Buñuel (Criterion, 1:37, subtitled) "All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence." -- Luis Bunuel, "In Curiosity" Bunuel wanted to rebel against the dogmatic structures of the Church that said, There is no salvation or grace outside the Church. He wanted a kind of Protestant surrealism in which grace was directly attainable like in Nazarin or Viridiana -- Carlos Fuentes "He is a deeply Christian man who hates God as only a Christian can and, of course, he's very Spanish. I see him as the most supremely religious director in the history of the movies." -- Orson Welles "I'd like to be able to rise from the dead every ten years, walk to a newsstand, and buy a few newspapers. I wouldn't ask for anything more. With my papers under my arm, pale, brushing against the walls, I'd return to the cemetery and read about the world's disasters before going back to sleep satisfied, in the calming refuge of the grave." -- Luis Bunuel
posted by puny human at 4:03 PM PST - 23 comments

On The Bro'd Every sentence of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, retold for bros.
posted by bhamrick at 3:20 PM PST - 60 comments

This guy is really into Harry Potter
posted by jpdoane at 2:09 PM PST - 125 comments

9eyes is a blog by Jon Rafman, featuring a collection of interesting images found on Google StreetView.
posted by flatluigi at 2:06 PM PST - 57 comments

Some pictures from the world's largest ship graveyard at Nouadhibou in Mauritania (click 'here', then 'nouadhibou' in the Jan Smith link), or investigate it in Google Maps. Geographical Magazine has an explanation of how the graveyard came about.
posted by Dim Siawns at 1:47 PM PST - 22 comments

Dan Ekstrom is a guy who is in the right place at the right time. His profession? He performs securitization audits (Reverse Engineering and Failure Analysis) for a company called DTC-Systems. The typical audit includes numerous diagrams... The following flow chart reverse engineers the mortgage on the Ekstrom family residence. It took Dan over one year to take it this far and it clearly demonstrates what happens when there are too many lawyers being manufactured.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 1:21 PM PST - 46 comments

Shortly before his 1924 death in penniless obscurity, architect Louis Sullivan was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago to produce his final work: A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man's Powers, a series of intricate illustrations, unfolding diagrams, and accompanying descriptions outlining Sullivan's somewhat opaque aesthetic theories. In 2006, Giles Phillips interpreted these plates into a shape grammar of 23 rules with which Sullivan's elaborate forms may be distilled into a series of basic transformations. Moreover, he helpfully put the entire book online for your viewing pleasure. [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 12:44 PM PST - 18 comments

A rare video excerpt from 1994's Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 10:54 AM PST - 200 comments

"He was capable of composing entire paragraphs in his head." Mark Twain's dictated autobiography available now, 100 years after his death, per his request.
posted by AugieAugustus at 10:12 AM PST - 33 comments

Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen published this piece in the November/December 2010 issue of Foreign Affairs. It was a notable step up from the “Cyberspace and Democracy” article in the same issue. In any case, Eric and Jared address the same core questions I am writing my dissertation on so here’s my take on what they had to say.
posted by The Lady is a designer at 10:12 AM PST - 23 comments

How Low Can Your Logo? "We are testing your capacity to willingly create that which you spend your entire life trying not to create: the worst logo ever." Read the brief or jump straight to the gallery.
posted by spiderskull at 9:51 AM PST - 47 comments

Abandoned Hobbiton from “Lord Of The Rings” taken over by sheep.
posted by stbalbach at 9:41 AM PST - 57 comments

Here is an 80-gigapixel panoramic photo of London made from 7886 individual images. This panorama was shot from the top of the Centre Point building in central London, in the summer of 2010. [more inside]
posted by gman at 8:23 AM PST - 48 comments

In 2007, City officials convened a group of stakeholders, including representatives of taxi drivers, owner and passengers, to create a set of goals for the next New York City taxi cab, a project called the Taxi of Tomorrow.
posted by Joe Beese at 6:50 AM PST - 40 comments

The Geometry of the Snail Ball [pdf] - an interesting article (with some DIY advice at the end) about a toy shop curiosity you may have encountered.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:00 AM PST - 25 comments

Going Dutch Considerations of gender (in)equality in the Dutch workplace. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 5:43 AM PST - 43 comments

Well whadda ya know, the largest music retailer in the United States is about to start selling the Beatles. Bet you still won't be able to buy Lady Madonna without the piano, though, even though it kicks all kindsa ass without the 88 keys.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:23 AM PST - 262 comments

Another kind of cookbook. For a couple years now, as evidenced by this old English cookbook, or this old French cookbook, or this even older Italian cookbook, recipes have been conveyed with language. Fitting with our age of copious visual information, Katie Shelly has made a cookbook using just illustrations. Eat your heart out.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:21 AM PST - 24 comments