March 1, 2011

Putting "black-out" in quotation marks doesn't make drowning sound any better.

Extreme Underwater Ice Hockey. [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 11:29 PM PST - 28 comments

My God, it's full of bars!

Thanks to long rainy days and a lot of funky global culture and cross-pollination, Seattle has long been known as an epicenter of music and related creativity where people riff off of each other and freely beg, borrow and steal ideas. But how incestuous is it, really? Who has collaborated with whom? Played gigs together? Worked on albums together? Exactly how complicated is the Seattle music scene? It's so complicated that it needs a map - the Seattle Band Map. Via Wired.
posted by loquacious at 11:27 PM PST - 17 comments

Date Night at the Creation Museum

Saddle up your dinosaur and head down to the Creation Museum for a lovely date night. Just be sure you don't ruin it for everyone else by being gay.
posted by mrfuga0 at 9:51 PM PST - 68 comments

All For Henry

Katie Granju 's 18-year old son Henry lost his battle with drug addiction in May 2010. Since his death, a scholarship fund to send teenagers to rehab has been started in his honor, a short documentary on his life has been posted online, and his mother is using her blog to seek justice for those involved in his death. The Introduction and Parts 1, 2, 3 of her quest have been posted, with more to come.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:19 PM PST - 51 comments

My God, it's full of life

Tropical Island Infinite Photo, at National Geographic. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 5:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Corporations, Don't Take It Personally

Today the Supreme Court in ruled 8-0 in FCC v. ATT that corporations have no "personal privacy" exemption under the Freedom of Information Act. The opinion ended the speculation that the Supreme Court would use this case to take yet another step towards equating corporations with actual people. For links to the various briefs, lower court decisions, and a summary of the underlying facts and opinion, visit the SCOTUSblog. [more inside]
posted by Muddler at 5:02 PM PST - 93 comments

Aquaman, king of the catwalk

To mark it's fifth anniversary superhero fashion blog Project Rooftop announced it's ultimate challenge: redesign Aquaman. With the winners in did they succeed in restoring some dignity to the King of the Sea after years of Superfreinds jokes?
posted by Artw at 4:41 PM PST - 88 comments

Goodnight Shai-Hulud, bursting out of the dune

A few months ago, a bunch of us thought that Goodnight Dune would make a great sci-fi children's book. So did Julia Yu.
posted by KGMoney at 3:28 PM PST - 66 comments

It's a death row pardon two minutes too late

The trailer for Radio Free Albemuth, an independent film based on the Philip K Dick novel, has been released. The film stars Shea Whigam as Philip K Dick and features Alanis Morissette as a mysterious singer. It premiered last year at the Fantastic Planet Film Festival.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 3:18 PM PST - 27 comments

"Don't remember. Don't care. Drug tests don't lie." - Billy

If Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and PJ lived like Charlie Sheen: Sheen Family Circus. [more inside]
posted by Mister Fabulous at 1:49 PM PST - 94 comments

Jury nullification advocate accused of jury tampering

Scott Horton at Harpers.org writes about Julian P. Heicklen, a 78-year-old retired chemistry professor from New Jersey, now faces federal criminal charges for informing people entering the federal courthouse about the doctrine of jury nullification. Scott Horton's post is a response to the New York Times column on Mr. Heicklen. [more inside]
posted by fartknocker at 1:11 PM PST - 102 comments

Real-time cheating

Cheating at exams is hardly new, but last week a user on Yahoo Chiebukuro in Japan (Yahoo Answers) audaciously posted questions online during university entrance exams and received answers before the exams were over. [more inside]
posted by adrianhon at 1:05 PM PST - 59 comments

Matryomin: a theremin squeezed into a Russian nesting doll

The Theremin is a fairly well known instrument, by it's sound if not appearance. Masami Takeuchi, the first professional thereminist of Japan, changed the typical look of the theremin by setting it inside a matryoshka doll, calling the product Matryomin. Where the typical theremin consists of two antenna (a horizontal loop antenna for volume and a vertical linear antenna for pitch), Matryomin are more basic and only allow pitch control. The function is straight-forward, but it's not so easy. To play well requires accuracy. That's one Matryomin, how about a group performance, or a large ensemble? [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Starring Herbert West as ship's doctor

The Love Craft... exciting and new... come aboard... we're expecting you... (SLYT)
posted by JHarris at 12:58 PM PST - 16 comments

Gaddafi does the Zenga-Zenga

Gaddafi does the Zenga-Zenga (youtube) Video featuring a Gadhafi speech paired with the rap music track 'Hey Baby'. Despite being created by a Jewish Israeli music journalist, reactions around the Arab world have been largely positive. [more inside]
posted by Lanark at 12:18 PM PST - 26 comments

Wisconistan

Wisconsin has had some record breaking protests in the past week, with hundreds occupying the capitol building full time, even setting up a small village, with support provided from around the world. Some even got married. [more inside]
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:14 PM PST - 709 comments

The walking cactus

Consider this animal, the newest fossil discovery from Jianni Liu in China. She calls it "the walking cactus." We have grasses and flowers and beetles in more varieties than you can imagine, and yet, in some deep architectural way, the developmental paths were set way back then, 500 million years ago. The Walking Cactus is just another souvenir of that crazy moment.
posted by jjray at 10:50 AM PST - 68 comments

"Sooner or later, nearly everyone on Haaretz gets called a Nazi."

The Dissenters. New Yorker profile by editor David Remnick: "Ha'aretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future?" (Via)
posted by zarq at 10:23 AM PST - 49 comments

"The proliferation and acceleration of commentary on the web"

After more than 30 years at the New York Times, Frank Rich is departing the newspaper to write a column for New York magazine and its website. Rich has had a Sunday column for 17 years, which followed 14 years as a theater reviewer. [...]

The changes come as the NYT prepares a major overhaul of the Week in Review section. Rich’s weekly 1,500-word column (previously most columns were around 800 words) was part of an expanded Op-Ed page that the Times introduced in the Week in Review section in 2005.

Since then, the proliferation and acceleration of commentary on the web has called into question the role of a weekly opinion section. It’s also called into question the state of most weekly magazines, but for a variety of reasons—including its web sensibilities, New York magazine has been able to withstand those pressures (even Gawker’s Nick Denton has praised the publication).

posted by not_the_water at 9:00 AM PST - 56 comments

Saudi Royal Wealth: Where do they get all that money?

Reuters Special Report: U.S. cables detail Saudi royal welfare program "The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Reuters, provide remarkable insight into how much the vast royal welfare program has cost the country -- not just financially but in terms of undermining social cohesion. Besides the huge monthly stipends that every Saudi royal receives, the cables detail various money-making schemes some royals have used to finance their lavish lifestyles over the years."
posted by Dragonness at 8:14 AM PST - 111 comments

This one particular boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body.

Backbone, by David Foster Wallace. (SLNYorker)
posted by HumanComplex at 7:33 AM PST - 36 comments

Screw Tops

Meet Andrew Myers, one of the most patient modern-day sculptors around. He starts with a base, plywood panel, and then places pages of a phone book on top. He then draws out a face and pre-drills 8,000 to 10,000 holes, by hand. As he drills in the screws, Myers doesn't rely on any computer software to guide him, he figures it out as he goes along. "For me, I consider this a traditional sculpture and all my screws are at different depths," he says. Other work by Andrew Myers.
posted by chavenet at 7:20 AM PST - 44 comments

The World's Largest Oligarchy?

Is India an oligarchy? Late last year, when India's income tax office tapped the phone of well-connected lobbyist, Niira Radia, they were looking for evidence of tax evasion and money laundering. But what they found instead was what many consider evidence of an even bigger problem: "[T]he tapes reveal that the country that prides itself on being the world's largest democracy is really ruled by a small coterie of powerful people." Some of the leaked tapes that sparked the scandal are available online, on the website of the weekly magazine that first broke the story, as well as a few transcripts. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 7:09 AM PST - 62 comments

Amanda Hocking, self-publisher

Amanda Hocking is 26 years old. She has 9 self-published books to her name, and sells 100,000+ copies of those ebooks per month. She has never been traditionally published. ... And it’s no stretch to say – at $3 per book/70% per sale for the Kindle store... there is no traditional publisher in the world right now that can offer Amanda Hocking terms that are better than what she’s currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all on her own. (related)
posted by Joe Beese at 7:07 AM PST - 244 comments

Death of a Mentor

Harvey Dorfman, author of The Mental ABCs of Pitching and The Mental Game of Baseball, died on February 28th. A sports psychologist, Dorfman counseled hundreds of baseball players, mentoring some of the best players in the modern era. Mike Pelfrey called Dorfman after nearly every start. Roy Halladay, before he was "Doc," went to see the Dorfman and continues to give his book on pitching to all young pitchers. A 2009 profile of "Dr. Baseball" explained how Dorfman worked, "One week I’m Hamlet, the next week I'm Bozo. You come to me with a certain disposition; I better know who to play…. I am neither an asshole nor a saint, in totality. I am whatever is required at the moment."
posted by gladly at 6:49 AM PST - 2 comments

Emacs Artist Mode

Emacs Artist Mode (screencast) allows you to use the mouse to draw squares, lines, and other shapes in plain text, or even paint. I'm not an emacs user, but I thought this was pretty cool. Even better, you can use an open source Java tool called ditaa to transform ascii text into a full-color graphic. Needless to say, users of other IDEs want this.
posted by Deathalicious at 6:33 AM PST - 39 comments

to pump, to prime, to caress

The kinetic sculptures of Anne Lilly.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:24 AM PST - 11 comments

The little Maharajah that could

Air India (in collaboration with Indian Airlines, the Indian Air Force and Aeroflot) is in the Guinness Book of World Records for their airlift in 1990 when they successfully evacuated 111,711 Indian citizens from Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan by operating 488 refugee flights over a period of 59 days. While they have never quite managed to break that record in the intervening years and subsequent strife, Air India in collaboration with any available merchant ships is at it again after Egypt to deal with the largest evacuation since then ongoing right now from Libya.
posted by infini at 6:00 AM PST - 15 comments

I got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda

Carlin Step is George Carlin, mashed, mixed, remixed, re-edited, autotuned and better than you'd expect, mostly from his classic "Modern Man" opening routine (which has been set to music before). via MissC.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:34 AM PST - 12 comments

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