March 3, 2008
Our 8-bit friends
Pants get in the way of disaster. Playing alone because then it ends when I say it ends. No one is there to pick you up. Don't be delicate; fuck me harder. Adam Mathes on video games "I want them to love me as much as I love them and they can't, so I have to fill in the blanks myself." Nestography [more inside]
Where's The Beef?
Where does recalled beef go? Last month, the largest beef recall in U.S. history (143 million pounds) occured after the Humane Society released footage of sick cows at a meat processing plant in California. Before it was recalled, most of the beef had already been sent to school lunch programs and other public nutrition programs.
Yes, a kiss is all of these . . . and more.
"Let us say that you have raveled in a sweet, long kiss. Suddenly, you see your loved one's eyes close as though in a moment of weariness. Gently detach your lips from hers and raise them up to her closed eyelids. Drop a kisslet first on one eyelid and then on the other. Feel the rolling orb quiver under your lips. Then, when you have done this, run your lips down along the line of her nose, stopping at odd times to purse them into a tiny kiss. When you reach the wrinkle of her nostrils, bury your lips deeply into the curve and kiss little niblets into first one and then the other. If her eyes still are closed, repeat the process. But return to the lips."
-- from "The Art of Kissing" by Hugh Morris (1936).
Revised and expanded in 1991 by William Cane. [more inside]
Iceland...
About 10% of Iceland is covered by glaciers. Thanks to the ongoing catastrophy of global warming, we Icelanders have noticed drastic changes in our poor glaciers. On of the more concerned individuals regarding this is the now retired physician Leifur Jonsson, who is seen in this report by National Geographic.
The report does not contain, however, the story about when Leifur almost died on a glacier. In his younger years he got lost in a blizzard, skiied off cliffs and fell 900 feet into the crater of Grímsvötn, an active volcano underneath Icelands largest glacier Vatnajökull.
Decades later, two people, also lost in a blizzard, accidentally drove off the same cliffs, as is reported here. The interesting part is that when they were brought to the Emergency Department of Landspitali-University Hospital in Reykjavik, the physician taking care of the was Leifur...
Greensburg GreenTown
Greensburg, Kansas was destroyed by an F5 tornado in May, 2007. The city council and Governor Sebelius decided to rebuild as a "green" town while Leonardo DiCaprio produces a 13-part series for Discovery channel affiliated (this flier is showing up around Greensburg now) Planet Green in June. [more inside]
Liquid Bounce
At the University of Texas, researchers have produced some amazing videos and photos of liquid bouncing on liquid. This was one of nature.com's Images of the Year for 2007 (picture number 6, in the upper-right corner). The project report, along with pictures and videos, is found on their bouncing jet page, and it's quite extraordinary both for the counter-intuitive nature of the phenomenon and the extremely low-tech production methods. You can even do it at home with little more than a lazy Susan and some silicone oil. [more inside]
titlepage
titlepage passionate conversations about books
Honky Tonkin' on Flickr
A fantastic photoset capturing the life and times of country western artists Carl Butler and Pearl. There are a few people you may recognize as well.
Minimalist Sky Diving
Please refrain from all activity while we re-calibrate the Cojones Scale. (single link youtube post)
Hypertexopia - a sort of new type of Wiki for publishing on the net
Hypertextopia is a hypertext authoring site with some new twists on interface and design concepts. Example stories include The Seven Voyages of Sinbad, The Butterfly Boy by William Vollmann, and others from The Grand Library.
Social networks are like the eye
Blue Brain
Out of the Blue: "Can a thinking, remembering, decision-making, biologically accurate brain be built from a supercomputer?"
Dating with an edge!
Animal magnetism, or testiment to the stupidity of the male species. Rachel Marsden, the right-wing pundit better known in Canada for a series of scandals in her personal life, has apparently had a messy breakup with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Marsden is currently selling off Wales' belongings on Ebay. [more inside]
RIP The King Of Soho
Paul Raymond, billionaire porn baron and property magnate, founder of Raymond's Review bar - the "World Centre of Erotic Entertainment", and publisher of such periodicals as Mayfair, Men Only and Razzle that added much to several generations of English gentlemen's education has gone to the great strip-club in the sky.
Snark Kills.
The Gaza Bombshell
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war.
So's your mother!
History's greatest replies. Any attempt to compile history's greatest replies—or history's greatest anything, for that matter—is fraught with difficulty, so it might be more accurate to refer to the replies that follow as simply my all-time favorites.
Lovelock to planet: Enjoy it, suckers!
Enjoy life while you can. Because we're doomed. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable. James Lovelock is still at it. (Previously.)
Amar Chitra Katha
A collection of comic books,
Amar Chitra Katha is like the American Illustrated Classics, except that the stories are from Indian sacred texts, mythology, history, folktales and legends. It was conceived by Anant Pai. The series has sold over 86 million copies of about 440 titles. [more inside]
"235 clean pairs of underwear to gate 35, please."
They don't come any closer than this. This Airbus 320 came as close to grief as you probably can, striking the wing and damaging it severely on the runway during a stormy, gusty crosswind landing at the Hamburg, Germany airport. Only luck and the skill of the pilots saved the day. Watch at about 45 seconds as the aircraft leaves the runway completely, and then recovers.
This Course Brought to You By....
Lost bag! Reward if found! Returned! But it's a fake! Finally someone took the advice to GYOFB. But it's a fake! Students at CUNY's Hunter College in a class sponsored by the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition produced the blog and related guerrilla marketing activities related to counterfeiting last spring. But "while a television viewer is aware that he or she is watching advertising, those viewing the blog or her posters at Hunter thought they were learning about the experiences of a real student — not a class project crafted by an industry association (that was sufficiently proud to boast about it)." Reports Inside Higher Ed.
They actually read Omnivores Dilemma
Checkout: Where all lanes are open. NYT article article on Walmart's new blog written by their buyers with uncensored commentary on Walmart products. "After heeding the lessons of Wal-Mart’s earlier blogs and consulting with several well-known bloggers from sites like the Huffington Post, the buyers decided the site would succeed only if they wrote in their own voice, free from censorship and corporate review." [more inside]
Watch those feet!
Mocha has his first broccoli (single-link youtube post)
Jeff Healey dies, age 41
Jeff Healey, the blues and rock 'n roll singer best known for his 80s hit Angel Eyes (YT) has died of cancer at the age of 41. [more inside]
James Hewitt Jr
The 'bullet magnet' is back. I can't believe that the British press kept a secret for so long (10 weeks is a miniature eternity in journalist time). It was supposed to last six months... I also can't believe that the odious Drudge has broken yet another big story. Was it all just a PR stunt? [more inside]
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