April 13, 2013
The Labrador Duck, the Great Auk, the Carolina Parakeet...
The Lost Bird Project documents the stories of five North American birds driven to extinction in modern times and sculptor Todd McGrain's road-trip to memorialize them. (via)
Happy National Scrabble Day!
Psy is a Gentleman
Psy follows up Gangnam Style's horse dance with Gentleman's hip-swaying dance, aka "arrogant dance" from the Brown Eyed Girls' Abracadabra. Psy is helped along by Gain from Brown Eyed Girls and the cast from Korean variety show Infinite Challenge.
The Japanese Version
In the late '80s, documentarians Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker spent six months in Tokyo looking at how symbols and imagery familiar to Americans had been appropriated and given new significance in Japan. Though more than 20 years old, the resulting video remains popular in undergraduate courses across the social sciences and humanities in part because it's so entertaining. [more inside]
Fitter, Happier, More Ska
Easy Star All-Stars released (previously) their reggae and ska infused cover version of Radiohead's OK Computer, "Radiodread" way back in 2006.
Matchmaking in China
"For Ms. Yang, Joy City is not so much a consumer mecca as an urban Serengeti that she prowls for potential wives for some of China’s richest bachelors." [more inside]
Frozen seared steak
OK, this is a single-recipe post, but if you would like to host a steak dinner for more than like two people and get sous-vide-like results with less hassle and equipment, here's what you do: Freeze the steaks, sear them hot, then stick them in a low oven for an hour. Nathan Myhrvold (Modernist Cuisine) explains.
The Unanswered Question
Here's a link to (YT) videos of all six 1973 Leonard Bernstein Norton lectures on one handy page. [more inside]
Aurora Borealis/Australis this evening?
The sun has been active, with a Coronal Mass Ejection on the 11th, which will reach Earth this evening. There's a possibility of the Aurora Borealis further south than is typical, potentially as far south as Boston, for those of us on the East Coast. Check visibility on wunderground or weather.com.
via fantabulous timewaster and xetere, thanks. [more inside]
"Tell them what really happened, Sting."
A joint interview with the Police from April 2000. A career-spanning reminiscence rich with bickering, musical insights, and curse words. [more inside]
plez donnut stel
Superb merbio bros. gr8 game 4 nintendy entertainment cycstem. u buy now! all copyroughts to nintendy corp. [more inside]
a great collection of medieval illustration
Weird, funny, surreal, fun, silly, bawdy, macabre, cool and strangely beautiful. The Discarded Image is a Tumblr collection of Medieval illustrations gleaned from various illuminated manuscripts, bestiaries, books describing the cosmology of the Middle Ages, ordered and maintained by a celestial hierarchy. The Discarded Image is also the name of CS Lewis' last book, about the fascinating Medieval mindset and world picture. [more inside]
Incoming Demon Train
Christian music's angry young men
Contemporary Christian Music in the ‘70s was almost nothing but trite SoCal Jesus People pablum praise music and lame lite rock. And right there was Daniel Amos, which started as a folk group, then switched to Eagles-like country rock. That all changed in 1978 when they recorded Horrendous Disc, but thanks to issues with Larry Norman's Solid Rock label it was in limbo till 1981. It came out a week before one of their best albums, Alarma, which was challenging listening back then. Trouser Press said of them, “The ground zero of Christian alternative rock is Orange County's Daniel Amos (band name courtesy of the Bible's table of contents page). Nearly every underground Christian band was inspired by or in some way connected with them. [more inside]
Want transparency? First step: travel to DC
Even before it was enacted, the United States House and Senate voted unanimously to repeal a provision within the STOCK Act, a bill aimed at curbing insider trading among senior government officials. The repealed provision required that financial disclosure forms were accessible online. [more inside]
The Lost Tribes of the Amazon
Franco believes that governments must increase efforts to preserve indigenous cultures. “The Indians represent a special culture, and resistance to the world,” argues the historian, who has spent three decades researching isolated tribes in Colombia. Martínez says that the Indians have a unique view of the cosmos, stressing “the unity of human beings with nature, the interconnectedness of all things.” It is a philosophy that makes them natural environmentalists, since damage to the forest or to members of one tribe, the Indians believe, can reverberate across society and history with lasting consequences. “They are protecting the jungle by chasing off gold miners and whoever else goes in there,” Franco says. He adds: “We must respect their decision not to be our friends—even to hate us.”
It's 11 o'clock, do you know where you cat is?
Map My Cat: "So we have a cat, well we have three cats actually. One of them is a ‘little’ overweight, so we put her on a diet. She didn’t seem to loose any weight. We assume she is probably finding other food sources, like friendly neighbours. So what did we do next? Well, normal people would do things like keep their cats inside (ours are kept inside at night but allowed out during the day), or maybe they would buy a tag that says do not feed. But we are geeks and needed a more sophisticated solution." Note: This blog contains cat photos. And maps. So that should pretty much get the internet excited.
Sick from it all
"At night, [Nicols Fox] wears a shirt woven with silver fibers to reduce her radio frequency exposure, and though her house has electricity, she shuts it off and uses gas lamps whenever possible. During our conversation, her voice would occasionally get cracked and raspy if I got too close with my audio recorder. In the five years since she’s moved to the Radio Quiet Zone, she hasn't left once."
Despite consternation from locals, sufferers from electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) have begun moving to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia, to live in the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone, an area established to minimize interference with radio astronomy. [more inside]
Despite consternation from locals, sufferers from electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) have begun moving to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia, to live in the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone, an area established to minimize interference with radio astronomy. [more inside]
The thirst for urine can be traced to the military’s 1971 Operation Gold
"Settling into an upholstered chair across from his mom, 50-year-old Marc Taulé laughs nervously, recalling the last time his mom made him hand over his urine—last year. To everyone’s surprise, he tested positive for cocaine. He’s not a cocaine user; he had been prescribed a painkiller called Lidocaine after minor surgery. “I love them, and just don’t want to see them in trouble,” Elaine Taulé explains." -- For The Nation, Isabel MacDonald looks at the history of drug testing and some of the characters who want every school child in America to pee in a cup.
Talking Cat
"What would you do if you were a rock star?"
It's Saturday morning. Grab a bowl of cereal and let's watch cartoons!
Stuff You Should Know: The Animated Series is an animated version of bits from the very popular Stuff You Should Know podcast, with Josh and Chuck. Thus far, topics include:
Duels
The Digestive System
How to Start a Country
Lilith and Vampire Myths
Self-Experimenters
How Fear Works
[more inside]
Duels
The Digestive System
How to Start a Country
Lilith and Vampire Myths
Self-Experimenters
How Fear Works
[more inside]
Where have all the Wildlings gone?
Game of Thrones: A graphic representation of the Game of Thrones. If you're not sure about the major houses of Westeros, the history, timeline, alliances, religions and incestuous relationships this will help and/or further confuse you.
mwoe
Cat meows underwater [SLYT; important]
"a spontaneous ballet"
James Nares' new exhibition 'Street' is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in NYC. It is an HD video of pedestrians in Manhattan, slowed way, way down. Watch 2:17 of the 61 minute piece here, and another 2:01 clip here. Villlage Voice, New York Times, Vogue, and an interview with Nares in Interview. [more inside]
Tallchieva? Never!
"If anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away." American ballerina Maria Tallchief died Thursday. [more inside]
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