February 28, 2012

it was not a thought, it was like the punch of a fist inside his skull

Adam Roberts reviews Atlas Shrugged. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 11:20 PM PST - 77 comments

Unseen64

Unseen 64: Beta, Unreleased, and Unseen Videogames.
posted by kmz at 10:50 PM PST - 9 comments

Anubis was taking a day off.

Big Bird overpowers the will of gods and demons in a quest for celestial justice.
posted by mightygodking at 10:31 PM PST - 42 comments

Unusual Food Combinations

Top 10 Unusual (yet tasty) Food Combinations. And after trying those, savor 10 Desserts with Unexpected Ingredients. Or check out the ask.
posted by storybored at 9:34 PM PST - 141 comments

"...whatever job you take, you're going to spend a lot of time there. You should try to make it fun."

In 2007, the Madison (WI) Police Department hired their first civilian Public Information Officer: former reporter Joel DeSpain. Over the last five years, Mr. DeSpain has reportedly combined "humor, a flair for the dramatic and sense of the absurd", and turned the mundane Madison Police Blotter into an "art form and a thing of joy." So Why Has Madison Wisconsin Has Become the Weird News Capitol of the Midwest? Meet the United States’ most whimsical police reporter. (Last one's a gawker link. If you dislike their site / interface, have no fear: all reports in that article (plus four extras) can be found after the jump.) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:57 PM PST - 19 comments

More free trade IP bullshit.

Australia hosts secret trade agreement negotiations this week in Melbourne This Thursday, behind closed doors in Melbourne, representatives from nine countries will take up discussions once again on an ambitious, comprehensive trade agreement for the Asia-Pacific region. Negotiators from Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore will pore over draft treaty text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, an agreement to cover all aspects of commercial relations between the countries, from competition and customs to e-commerce, rules of origin and labor, from textiles and apparel to telecommunications and intellectual property. The intellectual property chapter for the TPP will lay out lengthy, highly detailed, coverage of all aspects of IP enforcement and protection between the nine countries.
posted by wilful at 8:42 PM PST - 12 comments

The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

Welcome, artists and aficionados alike, to the brand new home of The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies, where tools of the trade that have died or have just about died a slow death are cheerfully exhibited...
posted by Confess, Fletch at 7:59 PM PST - 33 comments

22-hour time lapse of Vancouver's Burrard Inlet on a glorious summer day

Rail cars, gantry cranes, and cruise ships hooray! Time-lapse awesomeness. (SLV) Watch for the rail cars, freighters and cruise ships, and check out the giant cranes at Port Metro Vancouver. Shot from the 33rd floor of the Woodward's building in the DTES. These were photos taken at 5-second intervals over 22 hours. [more inside]
posted by moneyjane at 7:41 PM PST - 13 comments

The Electromagnetic Railgun

The Navy has spent seven years testing out the components of a way-futuristic weapon: a shipboard cannon that blasts bullets over vast distances at hypersonic speeds using bursts of electricity. ... The Navy released video of the first tests, viewable above, on Tuesday. The dramatic mini-inferno in the wake of the slug fired from the railgun is the result of “1 million amps flowing through” the gun, said test chief Tom Boucher, the hypersonic speed of the shot, and the actual aluminum of the bullet — “reactive in the atmosphere” — burning off.
posted by Trurl at 6:22 PM PST - 143 comments

Dutch Kids Pedal Their Own Bus To School

In the Netherlands, bikes abound. And now, they even take kids to school. Behold, the bicycle school bus.
posted by Blasdelb at 6:13 PM PST - 54 comments

Sand By Me

New Zealand artist Peter Donnelly's art hangs in no galleries. His medium is sand, and each work lasts only as long as the incoming tide.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 5:37 PM PST - 8 comments

Back to the Future

In 1976, American students put their Tricentennial imaginings to paper. Some larger versions of the drawings are available over at Buzzfeed.
posted by gman at 4:18 PM PST - 6 comments

The last word on warfare

A short conversation on the cultural and biological origins of war.
posted by latkes at 2:42 PM PST - 20 comments

STACHE act

On April 1, the American Mustache Institute hopes to organize a Million Mustache March on Washington DC, in support of the proposed STACHE act (Stimulus to Allow for Critical Hair Expenses). “The Stache Act (Stimulus to Allow for Critical Hair Expenses) aims to earn a well-deserved $250 annual tax deduction for every Mustached American for expenditures on mustache grooming supplies." [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:40 PM PST - 43 comments

Exercising the Power of Market Share

Last week, small press distributor Independent Publishers Group (IPG) announced that Amazon has decided to stop selling Kindle editions for the publishers IPG represents. The decision impacts over 500 small publishers and almost 5,000 Kindle titles. Neither party has offered much in the way of specifics, but other publishers have been reporting that Amazon has been pressuring them to offer higher discounts and/or pay a “co-op” fee of an additional 3%-4% on all sales to cover the cost of offering “automation and personalization” services (i.e. Customers who bought x also bought y). Authors and publishers have been reacting to the development.
posted by Toekneesan at 1:43 PM PST - 51 comments

There are no enemies in science, only phenomena to be studied

Peter Weyland's 2023 TED talk on how expanding the boundaries of science will change the world
posted by Artw at 1:38 PM PST - 66 comments

SHEATH CONTAINING FULLY EQUIPPED OCEAN LINER

"Historians have long debated what could have been done differently to prevent that tragedy, and what still could be done to keep such a tragedy from repeating on future expeditions. In 1913, a Swiss inventor proposed a solution to the problem. Naturally, it involved giant mechanical mosquitoes." [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 1:13 PM PST - 19 comments

Character Study

Graphemica. For people who letters, numbers, punctuation, &c.
posted by Scoop at 1:07 PM PST - 12 comments

You rush forward as an ass under the pelt of a lion.

The Martin Luther Insult Generator. That is all.
posted by LarryC at 1:06 PM PST - 75 comments

"Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me."

Adm. Grace Hopper, inventor of the first compiler, explains how big a nanosecond is
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:58 PM PST - 40 comments

Huh huh huh huh huh huh huh.

Beavis and Butthead in Real Life. [SLBuzzFeed]
posted by unSane at 12:38 PM PST - 26 comments

No fate; no fate but what we make. My Father told her this.

The Bible & Terminator 2: Heteroglossic discourse and poetic authority.
posted by cortex at 12:26 PM PST - 21 comments

Can you spare 3 minutes a week to become fit?

Just three minutes a week of exercise can help make you fit. That's 180 seconds out of 604,800. 'This apparently outrageous claim is supported by many years of research'. 'A few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise, according to new research.''But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:24 PM PST - 53 comments

cross your eyes and wait

Nearly four years into a global economic crisis that has withstood many attempted solutions, MMT theorists are trying to edge themselves into mainstream discourse. After an extended Dylan Matthews article in the Washington Post and a large Italian MMT Summit this weekend, some are claiming victory. But what is MMT? [more inside]
posted by crayz at 11:56 AM PST - 13 comments

NPR decides to be "fair to the truth".

The beginning of the end of "he said, she said" journalism? NPR decides to be "Fair to the Truth" instead of simply reporting both sides of an issue.
posted by asavage at 11:50 AM PST - 68 comments

Too much moxie breeds mayhem in the streets: skateboarding in NYC, 1965

A two-foot piece of wood or plastic mounted on wheels, it yields to the skillful user the excitements of skiing or surfing. To the unskilled it gives the effect of having stepped on a banana peel while dashing down the back stairs. It is also a menace to live and even limb. Life magazine article on skateboarding in New York City, from the May 14, 1965 issue. Pictures from that article are now online in larger form (one-page view on another site). See also: The New York Skate Movie trailer on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:43 AM PST - 15 comments

11 days across Mongolia in 4 minutes

"Experience the roadlessness, the bandits, the breakdowns, the yaks, and the camels, without ever having to figure out how to steer and shift a right-driving mini-car through some of the remotest land on the planet. And see it out the windshield just like we did." Drive across Mongolia in four minutes. [via]
posted by quin at 11:15 AM PST - 6 comments

PBS Online Film Festival

Between February 27th and March 30th, PBS will be running the PBS Online Film Festival. The first four short films, in the Real Stories category, are now online. [more inside]
posted by fings at 10:57 AM PST - 2 comments

"My God, what a fucking mess."

...Many Republicans are already looking past 2012. If either Romney or Santorum gains the nomination and then falls before Obama, flubbing an election that just months ago seemed eminently winnable, it will unleash a GOP apocalypse on November 7—followed by an epic struggle between the regulars and red-hots to refashion the party. And make no mistake: A loss is what the GOP’s political class now expects. “Six months before this thing got going, every Republican I know was saying, ‘We’re gonna win, we’re gonna beat Obama,’ ” says former Reagan strategist Ed Rollins. “Now even those who’ve endorsed Romney say, ‘My God, what a fucking mess.’ ”
John Heilemann in New York Magazine on "The Lost Party", part one of a series on the modern Republican party in light of the 2012 presidential election. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:11 AM PST - 246 comments

With him, it will be safe

"You’ll be happy with him. He’ll protect you like a stone wall." First time, only for <3. [more inside]
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:36 AM PST - 31 comments

Hunting in the USSR

Vintage Posters from the Golden Age of Travel 1910-1959 BrainPickings' page of vintage poster art pertaining to travel.
posted by ifjuly at 9:01 AM PST - 31 comments

The Big Egg Hunt

The Big Egg Hunt around the streets of London 209 big fibreglass eggs distributed around different areas of London, in an attempt to break the world record for the largest Easter Egg hunt. The eggs appeared overnight on Tuesday 21st February (Shrove Tuesday) and will be on the streets until Easter Sunday. [more inside]
posted by MykReeve at 8:57 AM PST - 7 comments

"The only answer I received from Paypal was silence."

Paypal is coming down hard on online erotica retailers. The service has sent demands to such ebook self-publishing sites as Smashwords, AllRomanceEbooks and Bookstrand, demanding that they remove all titles containing bestiality, rape-for-titillation, and incest- including the popular 'pseudo-incest' category of stepparent or stepsibling sex. [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:36 AM PST - 56 comments

"I'd like to file a complaint."

"I'd like to file a complaint." [more inside]
posted by Meatbomb at 8:22 AM PST - 83 comments

Gurgling Gungans

A whole new batch of rejected Star Wars toys (Previously)
posted by griphus at 6:52 AM PST - 47 comments

Bach's Mass in B Minor

Bach's Mass in B Minor: Four lectures and an interactive manuscript (which starts playing automatically) tied to the lectures.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:07 AM PST - 13 comments

Don't cook Sudafed in yo baby momma's house

In [the USA], buying a good over-the-counter nasal decongestant requires picking a card from an empty spot on the shelf, taking it to the pharmacist, handing over your driver's license, and getting it from behind the counter. Only the larger drug stores bother. Meth, on the other hand, is apparently easier to come by. So here (PDF), from the the wonderfully named Journal of Apocryphal Chemistry, is a paper on how to make Sudafed® from Meth.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 4:37 AM PST - 58 comments

John Kennedy Speaks the relationship of Religion, the Presidency, and American Politics

John Kennedy's powerful speech on the relationship among religion, politics and and the American Presidentcy A speech for the ages; no one has said it better.
posted by Vibrissae at 2:57 AM PST - 61 comments

Not money, but it could be.

Machinery Scans a showcase for some of the most detailed advertisement engravings produced. During the later part of the 19th century most machinery and equipment makers spent large sums of money to have their tool or piece of machinery converted into an engraving for advertising. The scans are of engravings produced from the 1850s-1890s.
posted by Mitheral at 2:17 AM PST - 27 comments

Tit Thinks it's People

Tit Thinks it's People [NSFW]
posted by finite at 1:49 AM PST - 44 comments

I caught the darkness baby, and I’ve got it worse than you.

...this particular technicolour trench coat is stitched together from black leather, and fastened with a lot of safety pins and zippers: its sinister sounds are both haunted by the past, and haunting us toward the something-to-be-done. Like the saying goes: the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Our traumatized collective unconscious - the victim of social, political, cultural, and environmental shocks - is not a blank slate, but rather a pile of rubble that requires considerable rebuilding. There is much work yet to carry out. And really, why be blank when you can be bleak?

The New Bleak: Trauma, Haunting And The Cultural Obsession With Darkness
posted by timshel at 12:58 AM PST - 21 comments

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