December 5, 2009
Cannibal holocaust
"Heads were skinned and muscles removed from the brain case in order to remove the skullcap. Incisions and scrapes on jaws indicate that tongues were cut out." "Scrape marks inside the broken ends of limb bones indicate that marrow was removed." "Whatever actually happened at Herxheim, facial bones were smashed beyond recognition." - Neolithic mass canibalism in southern Germany.
Trolling the front page.
"Publishing anonymous, unvetted, and unreviewed commentary online is hugely divergent from the policies of [mainstream media] publications' print editions. It's a different kettle of fish, one that can stink for the publishers. Indeed, those publishers and their new-media managers are being reckless." [more inside]
They're just like the rest of us
Hurley has a blog. Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley on Lost, has a personal blog that's just like yours. He doesn't talk about his day job, and instead posts regular updates on what he did for thanksgiving, adventures in gardening, his dog Nunu, and everyday rat problems. He also sings. Surprisingly honest, funny, and approachable.
The Super-Kamiokande
Hi-res pictures of the Super-Kamiokande, a neutrino detector in Japan. The Super-Kamiokande, also known as the Super-K, is used to detect neutrinos, electrically neutral particles that are able to pass through matter. Effectively, it's a giant pool with walls made of phototubes used to detect Cherenkov radiation emitted by the interaction between neutrinos and electrons in the water. But even if you didn't understand any of that, it's still shiny and neat to look at.
Jack Rose, giuitarist extraordinaire and warm soul has passed on.
Jack Rose, guitarist extraordinaire and warm soul has passed on.
From the Arthur Magazine site : I spoke with Jay this morning and the sad news is circulating that guitarist Jack Rose has passed on to the next realm. It’s with a heavy heart that I say this, but thoughts and prayers are with family and loved ones. He had fans around the world and everyone should know about Jack and his music. His style is like no other.J
Unforgivable
Hip-hop mogul and "fascinating man" Sean Combs sells bubble bath and shares details about the Diddy lifestyle during a narcotizing appearance on the Home Shopping Network. (SLYT)
Window Farmers
Window Farms is a DIY urban agriculture project started in New York. It's not just about changing the way we think about plants in urban contexts — it's also about creating a kind of "open-source" approach to solving eco-urban challenges. (Treehugger has some more context.)
The folks behind Window Farms are now trying to take it to the next level using everyone's favorite new funding platform, Kickstarter. (Including a cute intro video which is worth checking out.)
And if window farming ain't your thing, maybe one of their other DIY projects is more up your alley...
The folks behind Window Farms are now trying to take it to the next level using everyone's favorite new funding platform, Kickstarter. (Including a cute intro video which is worth checking out.)
And if window farming ain't your thing, maybe one of their other DIY projects is more up your alley...
As it turns out, Metafilter didn't invent snarky chat OR thread drift
The Great Scrapple Correspondence of 1872 In which a plate of pork gets bean-plated.
m(n,m)
Eminem's "Lose Yourself" re-envisioned as a high school math course. The math and film departments of Madison East High School collaborate on a video, starring math teacher Philip Galarowicz. Not to be confused with The Rappin' Mathematician (hear "The Number Line Dance" here), or these high school math rappers, or the rap battle of TI-83 and Fitty Slope. The quadratic formula, rapped. The quadratic formula, rapped again. The quadratic formula, rapped, strangely compellingly, by a teacher in a tie.
Need ammo?
How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic: "...a handy one-stop shop for all the material you should need to rebut the more common anti-global warming science arguments constantly echoed across the internet."
Tattooing Since 1928 by a Teacher of the Art
Stoney Knows How is a half-hour film by Alan Govenar and Bruce “Pacho” Lane that portrays Leonard "Stoney" St. Clair, tattoo artist and former sideshow performer. Affected with rheumatoid arthritis when he was four, and with stunted growth, Stoney left Appalachia at fifteen to join the circus as a sword swallower and learned to tattoo soon after. The film is about as safe for work as a 1970s tattoo parlor, which is to say, not very.
Sketchy Santas
Sketchy Santas - This is mostly pictures of terrified kids being held by Santa. Occasionally there will be a photo that you wish you could unsee.
Their balmy slumbers waked with strife
The Soldier in later Medieval England is a historical research project that seeks to 'challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453'. They've compiled impressive databases of tens of thousands of service records. These are perhaps of interest only to specialists; but the general reader may enjoy the profiles of individual military men: these run the gamut from regional non-entities like John Fort esquire of Llanstephan ("in many ways a humdrum figure" though once accused of harbouring a hostile Spaniard!) to more familiar figures such as rebel Welsh prince Owain Glyndŵr, who began his soldiering, as did many compatriots, in the service of the English king. Between such extremes of high and low we find, for example, Reginald Cobham, who made 6,500 florins ransoming a prisoner taken at Poitiers and rests eternal in a splendid tomb; and various men loyal and rebel who fought at the bloody Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.
Who's got the ball?
(American) Football trick play video roundup: the Statue of Liberty, Fumblerooski (2), the Puntarooski, the Hook and Lateral (2), the Flea Flicker (2), the End Around (2), the Double Pass, the Fake Punt (2) (3), the Fake Field Goal (2) (3), Fake Field Goal/Fake Punt, the Swinging Gate, and the Bouquet Toss. [more inside]
The Black Tulip of American Literature
In 1827, a first-time author paid to have a small number of copies of his book Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian printed. When Edgar Allan Poe later reprinted the book under his own name, he apologized for its poor quality, but the first edition has become one of the most sought after rarities in book collecting. This week, one of the two copies in private hands sold for $662,500, but you can flip through this one for free.
Ebook search engine
Inkmesh ebook search engine will search across these sites finding free books and comparing prices. Video.
Has he lost his O-mentum?
New York Magazine thinks the thrill is gone. True? Or just the latest meme? If true, what are the implications outside the Beltway? The 3-D chess references do seem thin on the ground these days.
If you’re going to poke around the bushes, you’d best be prepared to scare out some snakes.
The Chinook
Forecast calls for cold and warm.
On January 22, 1943 in Spearfish, SD: The temperature rose 49 degrees in two minutes, from – 4 to 45; later the same morning, it dropped 60 degrees in 27 minutes, from 56° to - 4°. Plate glass windows cracked as a result of the wild fluctuation in temperatures caused by Chinook winds. The greatest 24- hour U.S. temperature difference in one place was set January 23- 24, 1916, in Browning, MT, at 100 degrees when it went from a low of -56° to a high of 44°.*Snow eating is one way it's been described, old tales too.. It's a seasonal wind, like the Mistral. There is some overlap in the definitions but the Chinook can safely be labeled a Foehn wind. A Foehn wind is "a generic term for warm strong and often very dry downslope wind(s) that descend in the lee of a mountain barrier". That is the one illustrated above. My favorite wind though, is the katabatic. A downhill wind. Cold and dense it blows here on Earth especially in the Antarctic, and there on Mars too. (page 9 of 14.) [more inside]
December 5, 1933: The Good Old Days are Back Again
He was elected at the nadir of the worst depression in history; 25% of the workforce was unemployed, two million were homeless. Yet in the face of this, he made us an optimistic and far-reaching New Deal, creating among other programs a federal minimum wage, social security, and the FDIC. He pulled us out of dire financial straits and, when our country was called upon to fight in World War II, he brought us to the cusp of victory. In his unprecedented thirteen years in office, he cemented his undisputed legacy as one of the greatest presidents in American history. But before he could achieve any of this, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a promise to keep — a promise to the "wet vote," whose indispensable support he had called upon in 1932 during his first presidential campaign when he promised to repeal the 18th Amendment and end Prohibition. And thus, as legend has it, immediately after his first fireside chat from the White House in March 1933, Roosevelt turned to his two top aides and said, "I think it's time for a beer." And yes, indeed, it was. [more inside]
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