March 24, 2006
If you're evil, Google will know
Sex sells???
Sex sells NSFW NSFW NSFW!!! Not even safe for home use. This is porn. Pure and simple. 'Cept, it's also a clothing catalogue. Yes, this is an XXX "tab A in slot B" porno movie but with imbedded links to the clothes they've just removed. Get it? It's a clothing ad, but a porno movie. No, a porno movie that's also a clothing ad.
It's also WAY slow to load, but when it's loaded, it's...well, it's porn that's also a clothing catalogue. (sort of SoaP, but Sex selling Clothes.)
As someone else said, Abercrombie might want to look at this, and maybe Fredericks and VS. You too, if that sort of thing interests you, which it probably does.
I'm sure I could load this with all sorts of cultural memes regarding the sexualization of advertising, but I'll let their fingers do the talking.
Flood Maps
Sea levels are on the rise. Flood Maps mashes up NASA elevation data and Google Maps, and offers a zoomable localized visualization of the effects.
hillbillies
The Madness of King George
George Bush is exempt from the parts of the much reviled Patriot Act that he doesn't like -- by decree of George Bush. He signed the bill with pomp and circumstance. But after the reporters and guests went home, he issued a "signing statement" that he can withhold information from Congress in violation of the law.
GO WEST EAT DOT GO WEST EAT DOT
DotQuest Can you survive the deadly ghosts in this text adventure?
via languagehat's blog in an oblique fashion.
3 Years 3 Minutes
3 Years 3 Minutes. Every photograph this MeFi member has taken for the past three years, artfully set to music — over 11,000 images, each one there and gone in a flicker-flash. May provoke seizures in the susceptible. [via mefi projects]
Your New Favorite Open-Source HTML, XHTML, CSS Compliant Browser Sucks
Camino goes 1.0 As if us Mac users weren't smug enough, now we have a Mac OS only stable release browser built on Mozilla. Don't forget to install camitools. [via laughingsquid]
NYTimes makes OB recommendations
NYTimes makes OB recommendations - I'm not sure what this is doing on the Times op-ed page. It purports to criticize obstetricians for recommending bed rest. It is more enlightening as a window into the doctor patient relationship. The doctor shared his doubts with the patient and she's still angry.
I've read all his stuff; who else would I like?
The Literature Map. Type in an author, and it tells you who wrote similar stuff. Includes a nifty floaty effect. And you know, I never knew that Jane Austen and Socrates had so much in common.
I Want to Be Your Dog
International Crisis Group
The International Crisis Group is a private agency which attempts to improve the response to international disasters by working out a strategy and providing detailed recommendations to policymakers. Their website is full of reports on crises around the world; here's what they have to say about Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Islamism. For the rationale behind the ICG, see William Shawcross's tribute to humanitarian aid worker Fred Cuny, who disappeared in Chechnya.
Apparently there is an uncanny valley in Japan, too.
The tradition of making Japanese dolls, called ningyo—meaning human figure—goes back as far as 10,000 years to clay figures made during the Jomon period. The more recent rise in popularity, though, is most often traced to Hina Matsuri--Girls' Day, or the Doll Festival, celebrated on March 3--originating during the Edo period. These antique ningyo are highly sought after by collectors, such as the American expert Alan Pate, who has written a number of articles on the subject. The modern Japanese doll culture, however, is anything but traditional. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ningyo tradition was exported to make toys for the West (previously featured on MeFi), and has culminated in popular Barbie-type dolls such as Superdollfie and others. Contemporary artists have transformed the Japanese doll tradition into something else entirely: Simon Yotsuya, Ryo Yoshida, Koitsukihime, Yoko Ueno, Mario A., Etsuko Miura, and Kai Akemi. A number of these artists were featured in the Dolls of Innocence exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Of course, notable artists outside Japan have worked with dolls before, including Hans Bellmer, who inspired much of the artwork in Innocence, the follow-up to Ghost in the Shell. Explore more: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. [Several links are nsfw.]
Noel Mewton-Wood (1922-53)
After a Noel Mewton-Wood performance of Hindemith's (.pdf) Ludus Tonalis, Dame Myra Hess exclaimed: ‘The boy is truly remarkable, and what shall he be like at 40-odd?’.
Glowing testimonials to his ‘genius’ (Sir Malcolm Sargent) from Beecham, Schnabel, Bliss, Hindemith and Britten were countered by indifference from the major record labels and concert managements. In 1953, at the age of 31, the pianist, a shy young man susceptible to depression, committed suicide. Now, the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive of Middlesex University offers a scan of the The London Evening News page with the report of Mewton-Wood's death. And here is a mp3 page with some of his out-of-print work.
Density-equalising maps
The Birth of Sean Preston
"First Pro-Life Monument to Birth" (NSFW) featuring a nude Britney Spears giving birth on a bear-skin rug.
In your cups
A vessel to fill with mirth. Drinking vessels from days of yore, including Lord Byron's skull cup, a fuddling cup, a black jack (leather cup), a pot crown ( a precursor to the beer helmet?), and a whistle cup. The site contains lots of other wine history as well. Ah, but they didn't have lover's cups back then. (via Cynical-C)
hmm...
Artifical gravity via spinning superconducting disks? It sounds like an experiment very similar to the work of Yevgeny Podkletnov, who read about in wired in 1998. Most people thought he was a crackpot at the time. But now it's being reported on a .int site, so it must be true.
Pot, boobies and panties in the Alabama Govenors Race
Pot, boobies and panties in the Alabama Govenors Race Loretta Nall is running for govenor of Alabama on the Marijuana Party ticket and also trying to the the nomination from the Libertarian Party.
Her cleavage recently became an issue when a columnist for an Alabama newspaper got huffy because his newspaper ran a picture of her showing cleavage.
But that's not all. Ms. Nall was also denied permission to see her brother in jail because she wasn't wearing panties.
She tells all about it in her blog.
Google result Limits
Google must know exactly what you're you're looking for, right? Unfortunately, they limit the results of your query to 1000. If you're doing research on crack whores, you'll get 2,800,000 results. If the page you want is at 14,673, you're out of luck. But there's still hope for finding what you need in this vast, uncharted web.
Kirk Cameron is GAY
Growing Pains... In my PANTS! Kirk and Ray go to San Francisco and West Hollywood to witness to homosexuals, showing how to share the way of salvation without causing undue offense.
Jo Spence and the Half Moon Photography workshop
Community photography projects abounded during the 1970's, but the most influential was the Half Moon Community Workshop. Besides the workshop, this group also ran a gallery and a journal, Camerawork that introduced many British photographers to a theoretical and politically engaged aesthetic practice.
Much of the theory espoused in Camerawork might seem naive or overly polemical for today's jaded post-Marxist intellect, but one thing that came out of the collective that does stand the test of time is the work of Jo Spence.
Moonlight, Baghdad.
A Dweller in Mesopotamia. Donald Maxwell was Official Artist to the Admiralty during World War I, and the end of the war found him in what was then called Mesopotamia (now Iraq); he compiled the sketches and paintings he did there into a book which Project Gutenberg has put online. I'm posting it for the frequently beautiful images, but the text is interesting too. He says Baghdad and Basra don't live up to the Westerner's romantic preconceptions ("The first general impression of Basra is that of an unending series of quays along a river not unlike the Thames at Tilbury"), but he also describes age-old scenes that are now gone for good. (Via wood s lot, one of the few sites I visit every day.)
Aces High
In 1938 the British Balloon Command was established to protect cities and key targets such as industrial areas, ports, landmarks and harbours.Barrage balloons or "Bulging Berthas" were inflatable shiny silver-painted balloons, made of rubber-coated fabric, and filled with hydrogen gas used prevent low level attacks by enemy aircraft. The balloons flew anywhere from 500 feet to 10,000 feet. The 15 gauge flying wire that tethered them could clip the wings off a plane. They were also used at sea and to cover invasions.
They were also effective against the V-1 flying bomb and back in the late 80s, at least one general thought they could still be used to protect airfields.
The Kingdom of Redonda
The Kingdom of Redonda. In 1865, a Caribbean trader laid claim to a small island near Antigua, and declared himself king. His son, M.P. Shiel, was an author of fantasy fiction. When Shiel died in 1947, he left the island to a young poet, John Gawsworth, King Juan I of Redonda.
Pulp Fiction
Penny dreadfuls, six cent weeklies, and dime novels were aimed at youthful, working-class audiences and distributed in massive editions at newsstands and dry goods stores. Though the phrase conjures up stereotyped yarns of Wild West adventure, complete with lurid cover illustration, many other genres were represented: tales of urban outlaws, detective stories, working-girl narratives of virtue defended, and costume romances.
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