November 27, 2013

Klezmer for Hosers

Dave Clark, the former drummer of the Rheostatics, one of Canada truly great alternative bands, offers up The Woodshed Orchestra and their joyfully infectious homage to Geddy Lee.
posted by salishsea at 11:16 PM PST - 5 comments

some rockin' little records

All you Americans know what day it is today, right? Of course you do! It's Hendrix's birthday! Duh. And I'd like to suggest you celebrate by listening to this excellent compilation of various soul and R&B singles that featured Jimi's guitar artistry before the man became the most celebrated guitarist in American music history. JIMI HENDRIX : THE SOUL SESSIONS
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:03 PM PST - 10 comments

As Suzuki is my witness, no seals will explode this day

After today's troubling incident with the whale (see below) you might wonder what the hell is going on with the mysterious wiring in this batch of sea creatures, but fear not: the Vancouver Aquarium is just releasing these rehabilitated harbour seals back into the wild with some helpful satellite-linked transmitters on their heads.
posted by maudlin at 6:41 PM PST - 27 comments

Exploding Sperm Whale

A sperm whale, which died of natural causes off the Faroe Islands, explodes .
posted by R. Mutt at 5:44 PM PST - 78 comments

Body Class Pimp

"The Dutch social network Hyves didn't chase its users in white clean profiles (like Facebook), and it also didn't allow them to build their own web sites (like Geocities, Tumblr). Instead, for almost 10 years, it was going with the Pimp My Profile model (Myspace): users were allowed to change the avatar, colors of texts and other elements, background image and its position. Not a lot, but the users of Hyves developed the mastery of talking to the world through the choice and combination of userpic and wallpaper." (From Contemporary Home Computing, Olia Lialina. Via @cory_archangel)
posted by grobstein at 3:40 PM PST - 12 comments

Berlusconi Oustered

Silvio Berlusconi ousted from Italian parliament after tax fraud conviction.
Slideshow of his ups and downs. Wiki. Previously on mefi. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 1:02 PM PST - 59 comments

Touch my updo, I'll skype you

12. Wearable computing device as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a laser pointer that is arranged in or on the wig.

Sony has filed a patent application for the world's first (?) Smart Wig. [more inside]
posted by emmtee at 11:55 AM PST - 41 comments

Godless Dinosaur Sodomites

"Now, I don't write many short stories these days, but I'm a sucker for the right kind of charity approach. And besides, I had a hypothesis I wanted to test: that every short story can be improved by adding dinosaurs and sodomy." SF author Charles Stross (metafilter's own) shares a short shaggy dog story he wrote back in 2011 containing sex, waterfowl, and reverse-engineering evolution: "A Bird In Hand."
posted by The Whelk at 11:41 AM PST - 36 comments

MOOCs after Udacity's refocus

Udacity, who, along with Coursera and edX, has been one of the "big three" MOOC providers is stepping back from its initial vision, to refocus on corporate training. Now that we've had a bit of time to think through the potential offered by MOOCs, and to assess how well they live up to them in practice, what conclusions are people drawing? Is it possible that MOOCs have value, but just aren't the same sort of animal as a traditional "bricks and mortar" course? Jonathan Freedman, from the University of Michigan, thinks so, and calls them "usefully Middlebrow." John Covach of the University of Rochester talks in depth about his own experiences, and frames MOOC courses as more akin to a public lecture series than a college course.
posted by tyllwin at 11:36 AM PST - 39 comments

The Transfiguration of Arthur C. Danto

Last month, we lost one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. Arthur C. Danto was perhaps the most eminent voice in contemporary aesthetics. Always on the cutting edge, Danto shined a light on aesthetics in the post-art world. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:30 AM PST - 9 comments

From the Beginning to about 500 BC in (Roughly) 18 Hours

Scott Chesworth has recently finished his epic-scope but bite-sized The Ancient World podcast. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:26 AM PST - 17 comments

Cats: the original honey badgers

Cats recognise their owners' voices, but never evolved to care
posted by exogenous at 10:38 AM PST - 111 comments

Saul Leiter

"I've been described as being a pioneer. Am I a pioneer? ... Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I don't mind one way or the other." Saul Leiter was born in 1923 in Pittsburgh; at 23 he left theology school and headed to New York to become an artist. He worked in both painting and photography, finding early support for his black-and-white photos in an 1953 MoMA show. He settled into an East Village apartment and did fashion photography to support himself. But on his own time, on the sidewalks of NYC, he developed a lyrical and painterly personal style of color street photography that's now seen as both masterly and very ahead of its time. In his twilight years he saw a new appreciation for his work, with books and a new documentary film, which had its New York debut on Nov. 16. Saul Leiter passed away last night in New York City at age 89. (Previously on Mefi.)
posted by lisa g at 10:36 AM PST - 13 comments

"It's called intimate, fuck-face!"

NPR and Vulture talk to Sarah Silverman about her HBO special 'We Are Miracles', and why women run comedy. Though according to Variety she shouldn't be so dirty... or maybe Variety should shut up.
posted by Artw at 10:07 AM PST - 42 comments

Mormon women reclaim their bodies

Mormon Women Bare is an art project spearheaded by Katrina Barker Anderson, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's designed to challenge the LDS Church's strict views on modesty and the value of "virtue" by having Church members pose naked in an attempt to reclaim their bodies while protesting the belief that they need to be careful of inflaming the passions of men.
posted by inturnaround at 7:51 AM PST - 70 comments

I could listen to this song all day! I watched that movie for a week!

24 hours of Happy is a full day of people dancing to Pharrell Williams' 4 minute song Happy, with a clock interface overlaid the video to allow you to jump around throughout the day. If you don't have the patience/ endurance/ care to watch a full day of lip-synching dancers, Molly Beauchemin watched it all, in two hour blocks, on mute, for you (and Pitchfork) and made note of the 5 best things. But if you are into that sort of endurance test, here's the Wikipedia list of films with the longest run times, including a total of 75 films that run over 5 hours. If you're looking for something a little shorter, an AMC blogger listed the top 50 longest (American) movies of all time, but missed The Ten Commandments (1956).
posted by filthy light thief at 7:17 AM PST - 23 comments

The government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of re

Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear two challenges to the Affordable Care Act's mandate that women's contraception must be covered. The cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, ask the Court to focus on whether the pregnancy-related care coverage can be enforced against profit-making companies — or their individual owners — when the coverage contradicts privately held religious beliefs. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:15 AM PST - 214 comments

Many Labs Replication Project

Nature reports that a large international group set up to test the reliability of psychology experiments has successfully reproduced the results of 10 out of 13 past experiments. The consortium also found that two effects could not be reproduced. [more inside]
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 6:48 AM PST - 22 comments

You can't get there from here

I did not know that there were no roads connecting Central and South America. Previously, but it was over 10 years ago...
posted by COD at 5:48 AM PST - 68 comments

UNfair Use

LogoThief is a new blog that "exists to name and shame logo thieves and all others who plagiarize the work of logo designers." Some are more subtle copies of form and/or color, some are minimally altered, and some are pure photocopy jobs. Some mix parts of two other logos into a rip-off hybrid. And then there are the multiple offenders, where logos are so good that they get stolen by many copycats or coffee copiers or just hand/eye appropriators.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:17 AM PST - 66 comments

A nation underwater

If scientists are correct, the ocean will swallow most of Kiribati before the end of the century, and perhaps much sooner than that. … Before the rising Pacific drowns these atolls, though, it will infiltrate, and irreversibly poison, their already inadequate supply of fresh water. The apocalypse could come even sooner for Kiribati if violent storms, of the sort that recently destroyed parts of the Philippines, strike its islands. For all of these reasons, the 103,000 citizens of Kiribati may soon become refugees, perhaps the first mass movement of people fleeing the consequences of global warming rather than war or famine. This is why [Kiribati's president Anote] Tong visits Fiji so frequently. He is searching for a place to move his people. The government of Kiribati recently bought 6,000 acres of land in Fiji for a reported $9.6 million, to the apparent consternation of Fiji’s military rulers. Fiji has expressed no interest in absorbing the I-Kiribati, as the country’s people are known. A former president of Zambia, in south-central Africa, once offered Kiribati’s people land in his country, but then he died. No one else so far has volunteered to organize a rescue.
[more inside]
posted by bookman117 at 2:28 AM PST - 36 comments

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