May 20, 2013

The emptiness went on and on. Both feet left the ground.

I know how much can be at stake when a man takes a four-hour walk: Everything. The incomparable Gary Smith relates the tragic tale of 2004 Olympic hopeful Albert Heppner. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Watch Modern Artists Use Ancient Techniques

For the past three months, the Art Institute of Chicago has been putting their Launchpad videos, designed to provide more context of museum-goers at the Institutes, on YouTube. The short videos include modern artists recreating art using ancient, medieval, and newer techniques in mosaics, glassblowing, pottery, painting, silversmithing, marquetry, and coin production plus conservation of art. There are also a few videos focusing on individual pieces in the collection.
posted by julen at 10:05 PM PST - 7 comments

Art. Weird art. Funny art. Just check it out.

The (odd and funny) drawings of Will Laren.
posted by zardoz at 9:51 PM PST - 14 comments

It won't be long now.

"Every teenager out there feels invincible. And they'll never admit it. It's not the kind of invincible like Superman. It's the kind of invincible like - I'll see you in five months." [20-minute YouTube documentary by SoulPancake.]

At age 14, Zach Sobiech (previously) was diagnosed with bone cancer. Given months to live, he turned to music to say goodbye. Zach's song "Clouds" received 3 million hits, and inspired a celebrity cover video featuring dozens of actors and musicians. Zach died today at his home in Minnesota. He was 18.
posted by Sfving at 9:18 PM PST - 13 comments

'workers who are "flexible"—that is, dispensable'

"Everyone Only Wants Temps" - My stint doing "on demand" grunt work for one of America's hottest growth industries
It's not a pretty formula, but it works. With 600 offices and a workforce of 400,000—more employees than Target or Home Depot—Labor Ready is the undisputed king of the blue-collar temp industry. Specializing in "tough-to-fill, high-turnover positions," the company dispatches people to dig ditches, demolish buildings, remove debris, stock giant fulfillment warehouses—jobs that take their toll on a body.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:47 PM PST - 121 comments

Back To The Mountain

Dance Of Reality is the first film in twenty-three years by Alejandro Jodorosky, visionary director of surreal masterpieces El Topo and The Holy Mountain, writer of the never-directed Dune film that is the subject of a new new documentary, and comics like Metabarons. Both Dance of Reality and Jodrowosky's Dune have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. If that's too much, check out Everything Is Terrible's Holy Mountain remake made with dogs.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:44 PM PST - 19 comments

...a better strategy than Tit for Tat emerges: Tit for Two Tats (IYKWIM)

Polyamory as noisy iterated prisoner's dilemma. [more inside]
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 5:59 PM PST - 54 comments

Not in Kansas Anymore

Several Hours ago a massive tornado hit the town of Moore Oklahoma. The tornado is now being estimated by some sources to be to be an EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. This means winds at or over 200 mph as well as a damage area of close to 30 square miles. [more inside]
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 4:52 PM PST - 373 comments

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor

How Far Did PBS Go To Avoid Offending David H. Koch?
posted by indubitable at 4:23 PM PST - 55 comments

Yahoo Overhauls Flickr

Flickr announces 1TB free for all users.
posted by blue_beetle at 4:00 PM PST - 232 comments

Break on through to the other side.

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for The Doors, has died at the age of 74. Not a lot of links. Just a place to share your thoughts, your faves... and to remember.
posted by markkraft at 3:58 PM PST - 101 comments

The weight is off his shoulders

Anthony Moore, known as Romanthony, has died at age 46. [more inside]
posted by Taft at 2:53 PM PST - 21 comments

Old photographs of Greece, taken between 1903 and 1920

59 marvelous photographs taken between 1903 and 1920 by Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946), a franco-Swiss photographer who loved Greece. This is him being hauled up to the Meteora monastery in a net. Boissonnas was also a mountaineer and was the first to scale Mt. Olympus successfully in 1913. During the first 30 years of the 20th century he became the most influential photographer in Greece, between the two World Wars. Traveling extensively, landscapes, everyday people and life in Greece were photographed in detail for the first time. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 2:21 PM PST - 19 comments

Do white people have a future in South Africa?

"In the past inequality in South Africa was largely defined along race lines. It has become increasingly defined by inequality within population groups as the gap between rich and poor within each group has increased substantially." Is this what's led the BBC to report a growing sense of insecurity among poor (chiefly Afrikaans-speaking) whites? Or are they just blatantly misreading the statistics? [more inside]
posted by theweasel at 2:02 PM PST - 23 comments

Can I eat this?

How to ensure food and drink water safety during a flood or other natural disaster, courtesy of the FDA and the USDA.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:12 PM PST - 12 comments

"Screw cardinals."

A judgmental survey of America's state birds, with suggestions for improvements.
posted by Iridic at 11:59 AM PST - 172 comments

Tom Scharpling's Lost Weekend

"YOU SOLD ME OUT AND SHATTERED MY DREAMS TONIGHT; ALL I WAS LOOKING FOR WAS 75 MINUTES OF ONE OF YOUR PEERS' TIME" It started when Tim Heidecker (previously) tried to set up a creative meeting between an old friend—Tom Scharpling (previously)—and an unnamed "high profile player" at the Adult Swim TV upfronts. But then the meeting fell through. [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:33 AM PST - 86 comments

I'm not out for justice, if that's what you're thinking.

George RR Martin created the series, then let it hang around for decades without resolution. In the last couple of years however, there's been renewed interest, new novels and a screen adaption in the works. No, not Game of Thrones: Wild Cards! [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:22 AM PST - 27 comments

The Big News of the Week

The Royal Horticultural Society has temporarily lifted a ban on garden gnomes - normally deemed too "tacky" - at the Chelsea Flower Show. Garden historian Twigs Way charts the public's long love-hate relationship with these figurines.
posted by marienbad at 11:01 AM PST - 26 comments

always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom

Rebound. A simple physics game with 2 controls. How far to the right can you go? [more inside]
posted by garlic at 10:06 AM PST - 32 comments

What's cooler than [1965 avg. CEO pay]? The [box office sales of Jaws].

Tumblr's $1.1 Billion price-tag instinctively seems very high to most of us, but without context, numbers this huge are often literally unfathomable to the masses. To help readers gain perspective on the huge numbers commonly tossed around by the media, researcher Glen Chiacchieri has created Dictionary of Numbers, a Google Chrome extension that automatically adds context to huge numbers printed in the web pages that you read. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 7:57 AM PST - 51 comments

Scott Pilgrim never used a Ukulele for a reason

Guitar Warfare. Because sometimes a guitar bandit needs to be flattened. [slyt | via]
posted by quin at 7:27 AM PST - 19 comments

“There is no question about that.”

Late Friday night, a young man named Mark Carson was killed, shot point blank, in Greenwich Village. Carson's death was the 22nd anti-gay hate crime in New York so far this year, and the fifth this month. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:59 AM PST - 106 comments

from "proteaform" mass of modern learning to "faustian fustian" of words

Finnegans Wake, Joyce's famously unreadable masterpiece (read it online here), was considerably more readable in one of its earlier drafts. Watch Joyce cross out decipherable words and replace them with less decipherable ones! Watch him end, not with a whimper, but with a slightly less impressive whimper! Sadly, Shem's schoolbook, which in the finished version is a House of Leaves-esque compendium of side columns and footnotes, was not written until much later (according to the footnotes of that section). The introduction to this draft by David Hayman, who assembled it, is worth a read.
posted by Rory Marinich at 6:39 AM PST - 54 comments

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