December 1, 2009
Neutra Face
Neutra Face A SLYT for the font-geeks out there (and I suppose there are some Gaga geeks around as well).
Please believe me, Santa, please. Please and thank you. I've practically been an angel.
Pee-wee Herman is back. On Twitter. On stage. And for a limited time, you can watch the full Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special on his website.
The game of Continuity
Pink Lady of Malibu
The Pink Lady of Malibu "One Saturday morning, on October 29, 1966, a massive 60-foot-tall painting of a nude pink lady holding flowers suddenly appeared as you headed into the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road."
Yep, that could be a bit distracting.. [more inside]
This conversation we're having? $10. I accept Amex and Visa.
It's more of a "how are you paying?" than "what are you doing?" kind of business. Square Inc. is a new startup cofounded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Jim McKelvey which will allow businesses and individuals to take credit card payments from customers anywhere. Receipts and confirmations are paperless and get sent to buyers via text message or email. While the media believes it is set to shake up the credit card processing industry, it has also committed to donate a penny on every transaction a merchant takes to a cause of their choice. Square is starting business with $10 million in venture capital funding and is of course tweeting the process; you can see it in action here or try it at Sightglass Coffee in San Francisco.
Sea Stars
Gonna need a bigger boat
Lets All Go to Afghanistan
Advance reports indicate 30,000 are headed to Afghanistan. In addition, President Obama is seeking a commitment of more troops from allies. The apparent broad plan is to make a short and intense deployment of some 40,000 troops against the Taliban, with pullout beginning in 2011. The most intense troop engagements are expected next year.
Animated Advent Calendar
Animated Advent Calendar [via mefi projects]
Want a way to count down the days till the Santa (with or without companion(s)) comes to town, but you don't want to go out and spend money on a disposable bit of proto-landfill with daily entries that don't dance?
The Online Advent Calendar is your answer. The '08 version is also available for viewing.
Do you have any cognitive dissonance in your vegetarian dishes?
Bad Menu: providing 100% of your recommended daily allowance for restaurant-themed printed goofs. [more inside]
Wolfgang Pauli was a Gargoyle?
Winner of the Jay T. Rikosh award for excellence
No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of The Eye of Argon. It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an elite manual typewriter. Many letters were so faint as to be barely readable, others were overstruck, and some that were to be removed never got painted out with correction fluid. Usually, only one space separated sentences, while paragraphs were separated by a blank line and were indented ten spaces. Many words were grotesquely hyphenated. And there were illustrations - I cannot do them justice in mere words, but they were a match for the text.The Eye of Argon (prev.), long hailed as the worst sci-fi story ever written, is at last available online in all its original glory.
The Ghost of Dickens' Christmas Past
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has been reprinted, abridged, disected, redrawn and re-told on film numerous times, but the original 66 page manuscript has rarely been seen by the public. The manuscript was obtained by The Morgan Library & Museum during the 1890s, where it is currently on display. If you can't make it to New York this time of year, you can take a close look at 4 heavily edited pages and attempt to decipher Dickens' original writing, thanks to The New York Times.
Harvard Study: Computers don't save hospitals money.
Harvard Study: Computers don't save hospitals money. An article from Computerworld cites a clinical research study in the American Journal of Medicine. Four years of research finds that "the immense cost of installing and running hospital IT systems is greater than any expected cost savings." (Also on Wired and Slashdot.) [more inside]
The Rehabilitation of Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson, post-9/11 reactionary firebrand, debunker of the Killian documents and spearhead of the American "anti-jihadist" movement via his Little Green Footballs blog, officially parts ways with the right. [more inside]
A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity
Big Brother 2.0: now easier than ever before!
Alt-Printscreen, load photo software, paste, crop, navigate browser to image host, browse for file, upload. Yeesh, so much work. Want free and "seriously instant" screen-grabbing or screen-casting? Then you'll be glad to know two pieces of software have recently cropped up to streamline the whole process: (open-sourced) Gyazo for instantly hosted screen-grabs, or (free) Jing, likewise, for screen-grabs and screen-casts. [more inside]
I WILL NOT MAKE NEW METAFILTER TAGLINES
Who sampled
Who sings the "Since I left you" bit on the Avalanches song? Where does the piano on that Alicia Keys record come from? And how did that Boney M song get stuck in my head? All is revealed at Who Sampled.
Pilgrim route redux
The Via Francigena (fran-chee-jena) (also here) was the pilgrim road leading from Canterbury to Rome and one of the most important routes of communication in the Middle Ages. The Italian government has this week launched a project to recover the Italian leg of it. [more inside]
December 1, 2009 — World AIDS Day
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 is the 21st annual World AIDS Day An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS. Take a moment today to think about those you've lost, those who are still living with the disease, and how you can prevent yourself or others from becoming infected. [more inside]
Et quand au paradis il arriva...
Eskimo Grasshoppers - French Children's books of the 1930's and 1940's.
Also, Cornebuse et Cie (1945). Also, Animaux domestiques articulés (1941). Also, Histoire de Perlette (1936) Also, gymnastique scolaire (1933).
And finally Baba Yaga (1932)
Also, Cornebuse et Cie (1945). Also, Animaux domestiques articulés (1941). Also, Histoire de Perlette (1936) Also, gymnastique scolaire (1933).
And finally Baba Yaga (1932)
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