November 16, 2012

A Chat With Jon Ronson

But I couldn't do it. I spent three months and I just couldn't do it. And the reason was because I kept on meeting people who worked in the credit industry and they were really boring. I couldn't make them light up the page. And, as I said in The Psychopath Test, if you want to get away with wielding true malevolent power, be boring. Journalists hate writing about boring people, because we want to look good, you know?
A Chat With Writer Jon Ronson [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:06 PM PST - 26 comments

This one's called "Bodies," y'awl.

The first Sex Pistols show in the USA. (audio only) Atlanta, GA, January 5, 1978.
posted by BoringPostcards at 9:38 PM PST - 17 comments

Two Fans and A Night They Can't Remember

An Alabama fan, an LSU fan, and one night on Bourbon Street they can't remember--and the video they can't forget. In January, an Alabama fan was videotaped placing his genitals on an LSU fan's face. The video quickly went viral on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 6:16 PM PST - 108 comments

Harry Reid Endorses New Filibuster Reform Proposal

As the least-productive Congress in a generation draws to a close, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has spoken in support of a new proposal to reform the filibuster. The proposed changes would not eliminate the filibuster, but would restore the talking filibuster, which requires that the opposition explain their objections and keep talking in order to delay a vote on the bill under consideration. [more inside]
posted by wintermind at 5:53 PM PST - 55 comments

Norman Lear's "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman appeared in 1976... and it exists as a sort of island of experimentation, its ripples of influence not fully engaged with until several decades later... . Predictably rejected by the networks, this Norman Lear production ran in first-run syndication, five nights a week, usually after the late-night news. ... Louise Lasser (once Woody Allen’s muse) stars as a put-upon pre-feminist housewife who repeats the secular liturgy of American consumerism in an attempt to stave off a nervous breakdown.*
posted by Egg Shen at 5:46 PM PST - 61 comments

I declare war on the moon!

It's November, and that means Children In Need, and that means new Doctor Who. Which this year sees the return of everyone's favourite Victorian great detective Madame Vastra, her beautiful companion Jenny, and their ugly manservant Strax. And, of course, that serves as a lead in to The Snowmen.
posted by Mezentian at 5:26 PM PST - 27 comments

TV show recaps, recappers, and TWoP

Taking the seen-it route: Sara Morrison talks about the rise and influence of television show recapping; recapping's advantages for writers; and the origins and evolution of Television Without Pity (<--- time suck warning: TVTropes link!) Includes lots of links and a handy chart of recappers. [more inside]
posted by flex at 4:52 PM PST - 41 comments

The age of the password has come to an end...

Mat Honan of Wired has a covetableTwitter username (@mat). Recently hackers tore his digital world apart in an attempt to commandeer it. Now he reflects: The age of the password has come to an end; we just haven’t realized it yet. And no one has figured out what will take its place. What we can say for sure is this: Access to our data can no longer hinge on secrets—a string of characters, 10 strings of characters, the answers to 50 questions—that only we’re supposed to know. The Internet doesn’t do secrets. Everyone is a few clicks away from knowing everything.
posted by rongorongo at 4:20 PM PST - 75 comments

“Anything you are shows up in your music …”

“Her early records are collectors’ items. Her writing and playing have become part of the pattern of jazz history. She has transcended the difficulties experienced by women in the music field and through several decades has held a position of eminence as one of jazz’s most original and creative pianists. She speaks softly: ‘Anything you are shows up in your music—jazz is whatever you are playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.’” Mary Lou Williams: Into The Sun, a conversational profile by fellow pianist Marian McPartland, 1964. [more inside]
posted by koeselitz at 4:18 PM PST - 6 comments

Used Book Vending Machine

A Random Used-Book Vending Machine
posted by nadawi at 3:33 PM PST - 26 comments

Russell Simmons: Occupy Democracy

Russell Simmons presents thirteen proposed Constitutional amendments aimed at getting money out of American politics.
posted by Rykey at 3:07 PM PST - 26 comments

You've got mail! And a drone strike!

Taliban accidentally CCs everyone on its mailing list.
posted by unSane at 1:54 PM PST - 62 comments

The Undesirables

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. ~Nikola Tesla, Liberty Magazine, February 9, 1935
posted by IvoShandor at 12:56 PM PST - 74 comments

Formula One comes (back) to the US

After a 5 year absence, construction delays, and rumors of cancellation, Formula 1 is back to a permanent home in Austin, Texas this weekend. [more inside]
posted by ninjew at 12:35 PM PST - 68 comments

"Cock wire Mike Sui!" yelled one of the young men in the crowd. "Cock wire Sui is awesome!"

Mike Sui and the new laowai: "...speaking Chinese is still just rare enough that Sui's instant fame has scratched a blister of resentment than never really heals in China's Chinese language-learner community, and his success has highlighted how Chinese demands on laowai [foreign] entertainers have drastically changed in just a decade."
posted by ocherdraco at 12:27 PM PST - 14 comments

Tensions Rising

Hamas militants have launched a rocket on Jerusalem - the first time the holy city has been targeted in decades - and the first such attack from Gaza. [more inside]
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:20 AM PST - 618 comments

Measure 4 times, cut once.

"We worked through every possible disaster situation," Reed said. "We did three actual all-day sessions of destroying everything we had built."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:19 AM PST - 30 comments

"It felt like a book that shouldn't have been published."

Nobody Hates Twlight As Much As Robert Pattinson Hates Twilight related Robert Pattinson Hates His Life
posted by The Whelk at 11:16 AM PST - 164 comments

The greatest sandy disaster of our time

October 2012 is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. State of the Climate: Global Analysis October 2012 (NOAA). While $50 billion Sandy has had the spotlight, the biggest natural disaster of 2012 (in the US) has been the Great Drought still ongoing which is expected to cut America's GDP by 0.5 to 1% for the year. The death toll from the heat waves that accompanied this year's drought will exceed that of Sandy. This Sunday and Monday, Ken Burns premiers his new documentary "The Dust Bowl", on PBS. (via)
posted by stbalbach at 10:55 AM PST - 43 comments

Melkor just SOUNDS evil

More than most literary phenomena, names in fiction seem very straightforward until you start to think about them. The simple question, ‘why does a name sound right?’ leads to a whole range of questions. Are there rules about how names are given to characters? Do naming practices differ in different periods? Are they specific to particular genres? Do different authors use names in entirely different ways? There are also anxieties to address: is discussion of names in fiction snagged in a feedback loop, in which we think James Bond is such a good name for a spy because that’s what we know it to be?
posted by Chrysostom at 10:21 AM PST - 118 comments

Colder than.......

Sonny Eliot celebrated 50 years in television back in 1997. Sonny, a B52 bomber pilot who was shot down and spent months in a POW camp in Germany, returned to Detroit after the war and began accepting any position/role he could in local TV. [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 10:04 AM PST - 16 comments

I've started telling my daughters I'm beautiful

"I don't want my girls to be children who are perfect and then, when they start to feel like women, they remember how I thought of myself as ugly and so they will be ugly too. They will get older and their breasts will lose their shape and they will hate their bodies, because that's what women do. That's what mommy did." Some lovely Friday-morning encouragement for all the moms.
posted by jbickers at 8:54 AM PST - 65 comments

Got Wood?

The Wood Database has specifications and photos of many types of wood to help guide their identification (but beware the pitfalls). The site also features articles on safety and other matters.
posted by exogenous at 7:49 AM PST - 18 comments

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.

"I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down and bought a barrel of Pond's Extract and a bicycle." "Taming The Bicycle" by Mark Twain.
posted by nowhere man at 7:45 AM PST - 12 comments

And whereas the original model took about 8 seconds to save a photo to a disk, this version averaged a more tolerable 4 seconds.

"Sony has added some nifty new features. These include the ability to make copies of floppies using just the camera--very handy if you want to hand out extra disks on the spot. A new quarter-resolution (320 by 240) option also makes it faster to e-mail photographs. (The camera's full resolution is 640 by 480.) A built-in menu on the MVC-FD71's LCD screen permits you to easily take advantage of useful new options such as these."

Unsurprisingly, the camera which arguably first popularized consumer digital photography still has a following.
posted by 256 at 7:27 AM PST - 40 comments

An American Soccer Fan in Kettering Town

I could imagine a younger version of myself sitting down to a Non-League game, watching ten minutes, then leaning over to my friend and whispering “Hey, you know, like, these guys suck. And your country suffers from a serious deficiency of nachos.” -- An American learns to appreciate Non-League Football Day. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 6:45 AM PST - 18 comments

Killing Me Softly

Dumb Ways To Die. What it says on the tin. Courtesy of Metro Australia.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 6:00 AM PST - 71 comments

It's Linguistastic! Or Linguistalicious!

Arika Okrent (previously here on sign language interpreters and her 352-page book about 'Invented Languages') is currently kicking ass and taking etymologies at the Mental Floss site with a flurry of listicles* on the 'invention' of today's English/American language:
The solidly informational "11 Weirdly Spelled Words—And How They Got That Way"**
The entertainingly snarky "11 Creative Suffixes That Inspire New Words"
The just plain fun "From Y’all To Youse, 8 English Ways to Make “You” Plural"
plus one non-linguistic piece of pure pedantry: "11 Movie Chess Scenes Where The Board Is Set Up Wrong"*** [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:45 AM PST - 52 comments

The origins and history of brown sauce

The origins and history of brown sauce. The origins and history of brown sauce. The origins and history of brown sauce.
posted by Deathalicious at 4:27 AM PST - 69 comments

In his own voice

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N-----, n-----, n-----.” By 1968 you can’t say “n-----”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N-----, n-----.”
The full audio of Republican operative and Karl Rove mentor Lee Atwater's infamous 1981 interview has been obtained and published by The Nation. [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:58 AM PST - 151 comments

Cambodian Trees

Cambodian Trees by Clément Briend. "La culture cambodgienne est habitée par une spiritualité qui crée une conscience du monde peuplée de génies et d’esprits. Dans le paysage d'une ville endormie, la nuit fait apparaître ces figures divines sur les arbres, permettant ainsi leur incarnation. Par ces projections nocturnes, nous pouvons alors toucher la magie qui illumine leur regard sur le monde." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:42 AM PST - 6 comments

It's just not cricket

As accreditation to many photographic news agencies is declined by the BCCI (Board of Cricket Control for India), The Telegraph publishes its own images of action from the India vs England first test match, while the Guardian goes retro. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 12:01 AM PST - 11 comments

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