December 22, 2008
"10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor piercing round, why? "
UnNerfed - the Nerf dart blaster overclocked to 500 rounds per minute.
Fridtjof Nansen
Fridtjof Nansen's Polar Saga. Part One: 1,000 Days in the Ice "It was an outlandish idea: freeze a ship in the Arctic Ocean and ride the drifting ice across the North Pole." Part Two: Chasing Nansen's Ghost. "Two adventurers set out across the Arctic in the footsteps of Norway's pioneering polar explorer."
More Than Photo Op or Foil
"The last eight years, in terms of engagement, [Washington] D.C. has just been a photo op for the president, or a foil," says Tommy Wells, a social worker turned D.C. Council member. [more inside]
The digital collection of the Tokyo National Museum
The digital collection of the Tokyo National Museum is full of wonder. TNM is the oldest museum in Japan and collects archaeological objects and art from Japan as well as other parts of Asia. The collection can be browsed by type or region. Here are some of my favorites: Buddha's life, The name "Korin" given to pupil, Tale of Matsuranomiya, Coquettish type, Tea caddy in shape of bucket with handle, Mirror, design of sea and island, Traditionary identified as Minamoto no Yoritomo, Seated Monju Bosatsu (Manjusri) and attendants, Sword mounting of kazari-tachi type and (my current desktop background) Figures under a tree. This is but a small sampling of all that can be found in the digital collection
These aren't jellyfish...
Similar to coral, and much like the individual cells in our body, the individual zooids of Siphonophorae are so specialized that they lack the ability to survive on their own. Siphonophorae thus exist at the boundary between colonial and complex multicellular organisms. The Portuguese Man of War is probably the best known example of a Siphonophore, but there are others out there, some of which may well blow your mind.
Mac Vs PC
Mac Vs. PC. Inspired by Transformers, this short visual effects piece shows us what would happen if our home computers could turn into robots and started beating each other up.
Bailey the Unknown Reindeer
Winter showed up with a vengeance over most of the country. This video is helping me love the season.
In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
Performance artists Corpus do Sheep.
They also do Le Grand Peep Show.
(links safe for peeps, safe for sheep and safe for work.
Via Nutritional Plastic)
The veiled sound of a secretive world
Muslimgauze was the sound of an angry Middle East, a prolific source of music dark, spacious and smothering. Tension was a constant theme not only in the music but in the packaging. (For example, Betrayal shows the hands of Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin, and guns, knives, and news photos of an Arab world at war were a common motif in titles and sleeve art.) However, the music wasn't the usual agitprop fare: Music meant to rile a public to a cause isn't normally pigeonholed as ambient, electronica or musique concrete. But the band, hidden from public view, was rumored to donate proceeds to Palestinian terrorists, and that they were eventually silenced by Mossad.
Despite the prodigious output -- issuing almost a hundred EPs and albums between 1983 and 1998, over a hundred more since -- limited distribution and perpetual obscurity ensured the rumors were easier to find than the music. While the facts about Muslimgauze have little in common with the fictions, they are, if anything, stranger... [more inside]
Give It The Ol' Goat Gland Job.
"Goat Gland" referred to a completed silent film in which one or more talking sequences/musical numbers were added in an attempt to make the film more marketable to talkie-crazed filmgoers. [more inside]
The Coraline Boxes
The makers of the soon to be released movie Coraline put together 50 unique boxes that were mailed to 50 different bloggers. Each box contained items that were used in the making of the movie along with letters and photographs. [more inside]
What? No Gravy?
"Chow Hound" - IMDB - Directed by Chuck Jones, written by Michael Maltese, voices by Mel Blanc
Classic-era Warner Bros. Generally absent (with exceptions, sometimes butchered) from the airwaves due to its connotations of cruelty, the troublesome get-up they put the mouse in at the zoo, and the ending. Quite a devious and funny cartoon. (SLYT)
Classic-era Warner Bros. Generally absent (with exceptions, sometimes butchered) from the airwaves due to its connotations of cruelty, the troublesome get-up they put the mouse in at the zoo, and the ending. Quite a devious and funny cartoon. (SLYT)
Paper. Rock. Scissors.
In 1986, most gamers who were lucky enough to own a new video game system at home were playing the original Nintendo. It's launch in 1985, a year before the Sega Master System was launched in the states, allowed it plenty of time become the most popular console in the market, and the game Super Mario Bros. quickly became the best-selling video game of all time (a title it continues to hold, having sold over 40 million copies to date). However, even though Nintendo commanded 95% of the North American video game market at the time and the CEO of Sega made little effort to promote and market it, some people still bought and gave the Sega Master System a chance. Perhaps it was the 3-D glasses or it's unique ability to read multiple media inputs... or perhaps that the original version of the system had a secret game built right into it (and it was unbeatable!). [more inside]
Iraq finds peace and unity...
"...relatives and fans of the shoe-throwing journalist, who has become a national hero, have staged a sit-in in a park adjacent to the Green Zone, and their numbers are growing. Army tanks and helicopters surrounded the 400 protesters and demanded they disband, but authorities were apparently persuaded that Iraq didn't need its own Tiananmen Square massacre, so the protest continues. Indeed, al-Zeidi has become a unifying figure for an Iraq split along a deep sectarian divide, with Sunnis from Samarra reportedly joining the predominantly Shi'ite supporters of the shoe-thrower. At last report, the two groups were sitting side by side eating lamb and vegetables, with the soldiers guarding them joining in." Via [more inside]
diagnose your blog.
What type is that blog? Apply the classic psychological assessment Myers-Briggs Test and its sixteen personality types to your blog. [more inside]
People's Past, In Pictures, Pamphlets, and Prose
Drawing from 175 digital collections and growing, American Social History Online pulls together primary sources documenting our past as a people. A project of the Digital Library Federation. [more inside]
Ausgezeichnet!
Now's the time in the 1974 Bundesliga new uniform unveiling presentation where we dance. Happy Monday! :)
The Triumph of Roberto Bolaño
"Well beyond his sometimes nomadic life, Roberto Bolaño was an exemplary literary rebel. To drag fiction toward the unknown he had to go there himself, and then invent a method with which to represent it. Since the unknown place was reality, the results of his work are multi-dimensional, in a way that runs ahead of a critic's one-at-a-time powers of description. Highlight Bolaño's conceptual play and you risk missing the sex and viscera in his work. Stress his ambition and his many references and you conjure up threats of exclusive high-modernist obscurity, or literature as a sterile game, when the truth is it's hard to think of a writer who is less of a snob, or—in the double sense of exposing us to unsavory things and carrying seeds for the future—less sterile," Sarah Kerr on The Triumph of Roberto Bolaño, New York Review of Books.
Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with Drum and Bass
Baptazia! And more... and more! The Holy Spirit descends, accompanied by Drum & Bass. See also, the first runner-up in MTV Latin America's "Make Your Radiohead Video" contest.
45 Mbps sounds pretty good to me, anyone else?
Looks like Telecoms cashed out hard, and we lost out. At this point I'm not sure if I should blame deregulation, closed door deals or endemic corporate greed. Maybe it's a little of all three. All I know is we've fallen behind and it wasn't supposed to work like this. Plus, don't mess with our internets.
Peter Funch's Babel Tales.
I know you miss the Wainwrights, Bobby, but they were weak and stupid people - and that's why we have wolves and other large predators.
It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick
snow days
The Digital Snow Museum has all kinds of photographs and images of snow around the world. With an assortment of forecasting tools, weather maps, travel reports, info for skiers and snowboarders, a library and art gallery. Let It Snow. For those in the northern hemisphere, December 21st is the Winter Solstice, also known as Yule, the darkest day of the year. From this day until that of Midsummer, the days grow longer. Previously. [more inside]
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