February 4, 2012
Bookstore cats
The Stutz Bearcat
It's 1912 and you are kerpuffling down Main in your new Stutz Bearcat, the envy of all who witness your ride. The "dog house" hood, open bucket seats, a tiny "monocle" windscreen in front of the driver, and a cylindrical fuel tank on a short rear deck are attracting stares from passersby. [more inside]
PhyloPic: an open database of life form silhouettes
PhyloPic is an open database of life form silhouettes. All images are available for reuse under a Public Domain or Creative Commons license. [more inside]
Internalise This Deep Wisdom
I Can't Decide
A rather good anime video for the song I can't Decide by The Scissor Sisters. SLYT. Mildly NSFW for Yaoi theme.
Firepower!
Carla Bley Live!
Carla Bley Big Band, Jazzfest Berlin, 1995: On Stage In Cages [13m52s], Setting Calvin's Waltz: Parts (a, b, & c) [27m45s], Who Will Rescue You? [8m] [more inside]
Seems like I've heard that tune before...
There’s Nothing Like a Good Old Country Song, whether it's The Great Speckled Bird, I Am Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes, The Wild Side of Life, or It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. All I know is, There's a Grand Old Opry Show Playing Somewhere. [more inside]
In Distrust Of Movements
World Book Night USA
Hey! Do you like books? (Yeah...) Do you like free books? (Yeah!) Do you like giving books to friends and strangers and whomever? (Hell yeah!) Are you American? (I just said "hell yeah" didn't I?) Then sign up here! (Then what happens?) You can select from one of thirty books. (And?) They'll send you a box with twenty copies of one book which you can give to friends, strangers or enemies. (What's the catch?) There's no catch, it's World Book Night. [British edition previously on MeFi]
Battle hymn of the frog mother
Last year it was Amy Chua, Tiger Mother (previously on mefi). This year, Paula Druckerman has written Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, inspired by a trip to a coastal town when her daughter had temper tantrums and French parents didn't. French kids eat the same food as their parents, and aren't constantly snacking. And "when French friends visited [...] the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves." It's about patience -- let the kids cry it out a bit, let them learn how to play alone instead of hovering. And perhaps obsess a little less -- the French don't even obsessively buy books about how to parent. Wall Street Journal article, and video interview by WSJ's Gary Rosen.
Responsibility to protect?
"I saw bodies of women and children lying on roads, beheaded." At least 260 people were killed last night in a government assault on Homs, the epicenter of the Syrian uprising. This came right before a key UN vote to support the Arab League's plan to have President Bashar al-Assad hand over power to the vice president and hold early elections for a national unity government, which failed this morning with 13 in favor and a double veto by China and Russia. [more inside]
Through a Glass, Smartly
Through a Glass, Smartly Larry Sherk is one of the world's foremost brewerianists, a collector of beer stuff who over 40 years has amassed the country's second-largest private collection of beer labels (about 3,000), many of which date to the late 1800s. [more inside]
"...far too low an estimate."
10 Misconceptions Rundown is an entertaining, fast-paced debunking of a number of commonly held beliefs. [SLYT]
NERD RAGE GOES TO 11
Hey remember when DC killed off Superman in '92? Max Landis does and spends 15 minutes trying to explain just what the hell happened during that storyline with the help of costumes, props, re-creations and Elijah Wood. (NSFW audio)
Did he just rhyme Samuel Pepys?
Fun fact: They went to high school together.
In Girl on Guy #30, Aisha Tyler talks to Margaret Cho about polymaths, San Francisco, and being a woman of color in comedy.
Lego Captain America kills a bunch of Nazis
If they've got you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.
Don't try this at home
"I'm banned," he says. "By whom?" I ask. "My landlord," he says. "And the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority." Jon Ronson on DIY science.
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