December 21, 2013

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume

Sometimes it's hard to remember that there are Holiday songs that aren't about being jolly, rocking around Christmas trees, and drugging your girlfriend's drink. From the dirgelike to the hopelessly obscure, here are some Christmas carols you probably won't hear on Black Friday. [more inside]
posted by Sara C. at 11:02 PM PST - 95 comments

Intuitive Guide to Principles of Communications

Charan Langton (blog) hosts Complex To Real: which "...offers tutorials I have written on various topics in analog and digital communications that will help you cut through this complexity." [more inside]
posted by Confess, Fletch at 9:23 PM PST - 8 comments

An Engineer's Guide to Cats, 2.0

An Engineer's Guide to Cats is a helpful video about cats, time travel, gravity, adorableness. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 8:38 PM PST - 14 comments

The hobbit — an unexpected deficiency

Vitamin D has been proposed to have beneficial effects in a wide range of contexts. We investigate the hypothesis that vitamin D deficiency, caused by both aversion to sunlight and unwholesome diet, could also be a significant contributor to the triumph of good over evil in fantasy literature.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:35 PM PST - 14 comments

Common Arabic female name; said by an amnesiac sun god? (5)

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Arthur Wynne's creation of the crossword puzzle, Google's homepage hosts a (not terribly difficult) example of the form today.
posted by JHarris at 8:20 PM PST - 26 comments

Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf" - Isolated Tracks

Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf" - Isolated Tracks

While not an immediate hit, "Hungry Like the Wolf" is considered a classic song today, due in no small part to the band's use of emerging technology.

“That track came from fiddling with the new technology that was starting to come in”, guitarist Andy Taylor said in an interview with Blender magazine. They joined a Roland TR-808 drum machine with a sequencer and a Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard.

The isolated tracks are a treat to listen to - sadly, Simon Le Bon's vocals are not featured as one of the tracks.
posted by dotgirl at 8:02 PM PST - 25 comments

Meanwhile, on the blue, the thread is flagged as newsfilter

How the media will report the (zombie) apocalypse.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:59 PM PST - 33 comments

A Novel Use

Stuck on that novel or just looking for some writing inspiration? Swing by the WritingPrompts subreddit for a wealth of clever prompts, each with a different set of constraints. Be sure to browse the stories submitted in the comments. [more inside]
posted by spiderskull at 5:49 PM PST - 3 comments

Christmas music that won't make you want smash the stereo.

Bill Adler's Xmas Jollies 2013, via LAtino USA this year. Christmas music. It is bad. There is no escaping it. This playlist might help. [more inside]
posted by vrakatar at 4:17 PM PST - 4 comments

Enoby, Evony, Egogy, and Tara

The worst thing ever written - The terrible, wonderful weirdness of fake fanfiction.
posted by Artw at 4:00 PM PST - 36 comments

That's when you started graphing everything.

The 15 Best Behavioural Science Graphs of 2010-13. [more inside]
posted by aka burlap at 2:59 PM PST - 4 comments

DO YOU WANT TO SING CHRISTMAS CAROLS WITH AMY POEHLER?!?!

Watch as Billy on the Street's Billy Eichner and his Parks and Recreation pal Amy Poehler terrorize people on the streets of Manhattan by forcibly conscripting them into an ad hoc caroling group.... (Begins at 1:25)
posted by The Whelk at 1:27 PM PST - 67 comments

snort snort grunt wheeze

CHRISTMAS PUGS! (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by elizardbits at 1:12 PM PST - 18 comments

Mr. Rick Wakeman on keyboards ... and various other concerns

Whether taking all mankind close to the edge with his keyboard contributions to every punk's favorite prog-rock band Yes, or going it solo (in fully sequined gown) with all Six Wives of Henry VIII all the way to the center of the earth, or perhaps with figure skating Knights of the Round Table, or composing the score for Ken Russell's Liztomania (and "acting" in it), or doing definitive session work for the likes of David Bowie, Black Sabbath, etc, or candidly singing the praises of Christianity and/or Freemasonry ... [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 12:10 PM PST - 34 comments

Once upon a time before photoshop.....

Phillipe Halsman is probably best known for his collaborations with Salvador Dali and for his Jump series.
A Latvian, he was exiled from Austria in 1931 after serving prison time for patricide and went to Paris where his photographic career really began; also this series of magnum galleries shows the full diversification of his work.
Previously.
posted by adamvasco at 9:11 AM PST - 3 comments

Without A Leg to Stand On

John Bell Hood’s Leg — "This marked Hood’s third major combat injury; he had suffered an arrow through the hand while fighting Comanche Indians in 1857, and had lost the function of his left arm after being struck by shell fragments at Gettysburg. Hood was a famous general, but he now faced an outlook shared by hundreds of thousands of other soldiers who were likewise injured during the war. He became dependent on the kindness of strangers, like the Little family, in order to start his long road to recovery in the midst of a realization that he would live the rest of his life as a disabled man." By Brian Craig Miller, New York Times, December 20, 2013.
posted by cenoxo at 9:08 AM PST - 12 comments

What scale did you say that was in?

You or someone you know, at one time or another, might have taken a blade of grass, positioned it between thumbs or fingers, and made some sound, a note or two, by blowing over it. You can actually do the same with certain other things, like, say, fish scales. But chances are that neither you nor anyone you know can make music like the music Marin Toma of Romania, back in the 1930s, made with a fish scale. I mean, hey, just listen to this.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:16 AM PST - 20 comments

BMJ Christmas Edition

Every year the British Medical Journal publishes a special Christmas edition. [more inside]
posted by alby at 5:29 AM PST - 12 comments

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough

Christmases around the world: Children Dancing to《铃儿响叮当》at 2008 Christmas Party, Xiangxiang North Gate Church, Hunan (China; 1:13); "Gloria in Excelsis Deo," Blind Musician on the Side of the Road (Benin; 1:28); Performance by Companhia de Dança de Aveiro at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology Francisco Gentil (Pediatric Section?), Lisbon (Portugal; 3:28); "Aldi's Surfing Santas" Advertisement (Australia; 1:35); Danza de Música Folclórica por la Navidad, Riobamba (Ecuador; 3:18); "A Very Vancouver Christmas," Dan Mangan (Canada; 3:17). [more inside]
posted by Monsieur Caution at 5:04 AM PST - 6 comments

Why is pop music so sad?

Why is pop music so sad? A study (PDF) published in the Journal of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts tracked the mood of pop songs over five decades of Billboard charts, and it confirms that pop has changed in substantial ways. Over the years, popular recordings became longer in duration and the proportion of female artists increased. There was also an increase in the use of minor mode and a decrease in average tempo, confirming that popular music became more sad-sounding over time. (MP3 podcast) [more inside]
posted by Lanark at 4:56 AM PST - 61 comments

King William's College General Knowledge Paper 2013-14

The 109th issue [pdf] has been released. [more inside]
posted by 7segment at 2:38 AM PST - 141 comments

OED birthday word generator: which words originated in your birth year?

Click on your birth year in the left-hand column to discover your OED birthday word. [more inside]
posted by JujuB at 1:09 AM PST - 109 comments

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