November 9, 2011
Canopy Roads
Canopy roads are awesome, iconic features of rural Florida, beautiful, red, bright, green, yellow, normal.
Pete Standing Alone
Pete Standing Alone has come full-circle in his dedication to preserving the traditional ways of his people on the Blood reserve in Southern Alberta. His 50 year journey from cultural alienation to pride and belonging has been uniquely captured by the NFB in the Pete Standing Alone Trilogy. [more inside]
To The Moon
To The Moon is a stunningly good game about death, love and memories. If you love games and you enjoy love stories, I highly urge you to download it and play it immediately. Here's a review, but you shouldn't read it. You should just play it. Warning: Have kleenex handy.
Chinese heavy metals
About one tenth of China's farmland is polluted with heavy metals, with whole villages being poisoned. All too frequently, local governments have reacted by ignoring the problems and
even denying treatment (HRW report).
GPS Artwork in Southeast Baltimore
GPX riding is a general term for using a GPS device to track and record location while riding a bicycle [previously on MetaFilter]. Combining this technology with a planned effort to create art is the premise behind Wallygpx. Think of the images as being akin to a giant etch-a-sketch.
I said I'd never post a SLYT...
Right in Two - Tool ft. Carl Sagan (SLYT/NSFW) Warning: there is some footage of dead bodies. [more inside]
"...That we are the Hitlers of comedy/and everyone else is the Jew."
For safety's sake, please consider all links herein either nsfw or potentially offensive*
Let's Have a Shambles! with the Country Teasers!
Formed somewhere in Scotland in 1993 around one Ben Wallers, the Country Teasers forged an unusual contrast between acerbic lyrics, trash punk twang, and honest affect(at)ion of country-western tropes and sounds. They were also equal opportunity offenders, their songs frequently featuring seemingly misanthropic, misogynistic, and even racist lyrics. But despite their affrontive controversy, perhaps they aren't quite so easy to dismiss.
Though rarely does he give in-person interviews, Mr. Wallers will, when confronted, defend his "schlock tease," though not without characteristic aplomb.
Although the Country Teasers are pretty much dead, their extensive discography has plenty of noteworthy diversions.
Some albums to start with are 1996's Satan Is Real Again or Feeling Good About Bad Thoughts, 1999's Destroy All Human Life, and 2006's Back to the Future.
Mr. Wallers continues to release new records under the moniker The Rebel. A number of Teaser records were released on In The Red records.
*Although if you do find it offensive, I'd simply request considering if that is perhaps the point.
This Moment in Movember History Brought to you by the Letter J
In 1941, the Special Operations Executive forged documents, including passports, in order to help the resistance. Here's the one they made for Adolf Hitler, with a better view of the photos available on this site.
Taking peer review to the Internet
Something that allows you to easily slice through misinformation online online could make misleading the public a lot tougher. The concept isn't new (previously & many others) but unlike those efforts, Hypothes.is is open, standards-based, and backed by some web heavy-weights.
3. Respond Immediately and Escape
All your Music Memes Are Belong To These Guyz
Le Internet Medley, a shockingly well-produced (audio AND video) LinkBait YouTube featuring The GAG Quartet (yes, there are only 3 of them, THAT'S THE GAG).
Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia's "End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones"
The most vivid figure in Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields's End of the Century was the least articulate and most archetypal of the Ramones: Johnny, the right-wing prole whose hard-ass sense of style the others nutballed and softened and accelerated and above all imitated. ... Exciting and absolutely right though their '70s sets always were, the film establishes that they kept the faith live till the end, lifted by Joey's goofy dedication and powered by the chords Johnny thrashed out like they were why he was alive. As unyielding in his aesthetic principles as he was in everything else, this reactionary was an avant-gardist in spite of himself. - Robert Christgau
Pictures Under Glass
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design - "The next time you make a sandwich, pay attention to your hands. Seriously! Notice the myriad little tricks your fingers have for manipulating the ingredients and the utensils and all the other objects involved in this enterprise. Then compare your experience to sliding around Pictures Under Glass. Are we really going to accept an Interface Of The Future that is less expressive than a sandwich?"
Space fail?
Yesterday, Russia's first interplanetary mission in 15 years launched sucessfully from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It ran into serious problems almost immediately. In jeopardy are a sample return mission from the Martian satellite Phobos, The Planetary Society's Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), and China's Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter.
Light-Activated Yeast creates Proteins on Demand
You could call it "computer-controlled cyborg yeast," but in reality, scientists have figured out an aspect of cell signaling in the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, allowing computer-controlled lights to initiate protein creation feedback loops (abstract).
Making A Cat Cry: The Adventure
With Skyrim coming out soon, why not re-enter the world of the Elder Scrolls through the interactive webcomic Prequel? [more inside]
Bucket list.
Elderly men accused of US ricin plot. 'Four elderly men from the US state of Georgia have appeared in court charged with plotting to murder officials using explosives and the lethal toxin ricin. Court documents say the group scoped out federal buildings and asked a contact to produce ricin. The FBI used a confidential informant to record the group's meetings. The men were arrested on Tuesday days after a laboratory test found trace amounts of ricin in their possession, the authorities said.' [more inside]
Massive rare blizzicane strikes Alaska
A massive rare 'superstorm' is currently bearing down on Alaska, with hurricane force winds (100+mph gusts), blizzard, sea-surge flooding. "This is going to be one of the worst storms on record over the Bering Sea". The storm passed through an area of unusually high sea surface temperatures. "This may help explain why the storm is turning from an ordinary Bering Sea disturbance into a ‘superstorm’." [more inside]
Not Me implicated.
"It’s going to end up like Memorial Day or the Fourth of July or Labor Day, where it’s all about the sales"
“I feel terrible,” [Best Buy chief executive Brian] Dunn told attendees at a conference in San Francisco. “It will change some Thanksgiving plans for our employees. It certainly changes mine...We were going to be open at much more civilized hour, like 3 or 4 [AM].”Feeling pressure from a weak economy and escalating competition from rival retailers, stores like Best Buy are somewhat reluctantly planning to open stores at midnight on Thanksgiving evening. Traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday has become Black Midnight. [more inside]
Rise and Fall of a Condom Empire
Julius Fromm, a “quintessential ‘entrepreneurial proletariat’”, and a modest man with minimal education, sought a career alternative to making cigarettes and began taking evening classes in rubber chemistry around 1912. Julius Fromm then hit upon the idea of making condoms. The early condoms from the eighteenth century were generally made of animal intestines, and were used primarily by wealthy men – like Giacomo Casanova, who referred to them as “English riding coats” . . .The Great Rubber Robbery: How Julius Fromm’s Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis. via 3 quarks daily
Meow Meow Meow
Presidential Candidates Explained Through Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheets
MOUSTAIR
Occupy Samsara
"As teachers and leaders of communities that promote the development of compassion and mindfulness, we are writing to express our solidarity with the Occupy movement now active in over 1,900 cities worldwide....Occupy Samsara. [more inside]
"The structural greed, anger and delusion that characterize our current system are incompatible with our obligations to future generations and our most cherished values of interdependence, creativity, and compassion. We call on teachers and practitioners from all traditions of mind/body awakening to join in actively transforming these structures."
On the Expression of Emotion
One of Charles Darwin's lesser-known experiments, on the expression of emotion, is being re-run as an exercise in online crowdsourcing - and anyone can take part. The BBC reports.
...the product being sold.
The social graph is neither. Maciej Cegłowski, owner/founder/operator/sole employee of Pinboard (recently), blogger of idle words, lays down some science and thoughts about the charting of your personal connections, and why it's doomed.
Yes Dad.
“I remember so much of your childhood," he says. "I remember running you around the leaves in the wheelbarrow. Or the time you were so sick we took you to the hospital. I remember walking in the fields.”
I nod, because the moment’s not about me. “Yes Dad,” I say. “There were a lot of good times.”
No, there weren't. Which is why we both escaped: He into the bottle; I into the nerd.
Science, Skin & Ink
Science, Skin & Ink A slideshow of science tattoos from Carl Zimmer's new book Science Ink at the New York Times. See more at Zimmer's tattoo emporium. Carl Zimmer’s tattoo emporium previously.
Everybody's Got The Shining
Humans make for lame Rube Goldberg machines
Like a children's book for adults. Blok [slyt] a 1982 short by Polish Director Hieronim Neumann.
Adobe kills mobile Flash
18 months after Steve Jobs wrote Thoughts on Flash, and despite their protests that "Flash Player performs as well as, if not better than, comparable multimedia technologies", Adobe today announced they are stopping development on Flash for mobile. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »