June 3, 2013
You Got Punky'd
It's been twenty-five years since the Punky Brewster series finale. Wonder what Soleil Moon Frye's been up to in the meantime? She's now an author, does voice acting, and a mom. Catch up with her here, read about the real life girl on which Punky was based, or head below the jump to catch up on four years' worth of viewing pleasure. [more inside]
literary murder
"Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry." The Nobel Prize-winning poet, Pablo Neruda, died 40 years ago of prostate cancer/heart disease, coincidently just 12 days after the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet (Neruda did not support Pinochet). A few months ago, a Chilean judge ordered his body exhumed, and two days ago [more inside]
'Ball of the Century', twenty years on.
Twenty years ago today, as England faced Australia in the first Test at Old Trafford, a young spin bowler prepared to deliver his first ball in Ashes cricket. What came out of his hand that afternoon in Manchester has since become the stuff of legend, baffling commentators, generating encomia, and creating iconic images: Barney Ronay reflects on Gatting b Warne 4, Shane Warne's Ball of the Century.
The Wheel House
Are celebrity interviews a farce?
Certain corners of Twitter are abuzz today over a video of actor Jesse Eisenberg's vicious dismantling of an unprepared and annoying young junket interviewer. (Her attempts to defend herself did not go over well with the internet, either.) [more inside]
random walk through Christie's
Art, so difficult to value, is an ideal currency if you want to frustrate the banking regulations of the Patriot Act. So much easier than shipping honey. But who keeps this market orderly? And why would such an important person branch into other illegal activities such as gambling operations? Did he bore of backgammon?
Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi
"North Korea is a mythically strange land, an Absurdistan, where almost nothing is known about the people or, more important, their missile-launching leaders. There is, however, one man—a humble sushi chef from Japan—who infiltrated the inner sanctum, becoming the Dear Leader's cook, confidant, and court jester. What is life like serving Kim Jong-il and his heir? A strange and dangerous gig where the food and drink never stop, the girls are all virgins, and you're never really safe." (via @stevesilberman)
"Look Sir, Droids!" - Build your own droid in glorious 3D
You too, can build your own Gatling Droid ... these are instructions for creating a 3D CGI robot, and comping it into an office. Pretty comprehensive examination of a 3D pipeline.
I'm sure all the CO2 isn't exactly HELPING, but...
Sea Hunt is Not on the List
The Writers Guild of America has posted a list of the top 100 best written TV shows of all time. "Mendelsohn admits he's disappointed that there aren't more shows created by women or people of color on the list. "That speaks to a broader problem in the industry than to the list itself," he says. But as barriers continue to be broken in the industry, future lists will hopefully begin to rectify that."
In Plain Sight
A pattern seems to have emerged in which the ostensibly-independent Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (NIS) has been ordered to investigate journalists at the behest of Canadian Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay. In at least two instances, the NIS, the Canadian Armed Forces special investigative unit, conducted detailed investigations into the source of media reports, despite the reported information already being publicly available. [more inside]
Caffeine and food maps
The Boston Globe's map of Starbucks versus Dunkin Donuts locations is surprisingly beautiful. Other useful mapping views into dining and drinking: grocery stores versus bars (On, Wisconsin!), BBQ styles (more information on Serious Eats), and beautiful worldwide food maps from Food: An Atlas.
Landays: Poetry of Afghan Women
But the story was never that simple.
‘People Think It’s Over’
Spared Death, Aging People With H.I.V. Struggle to Live
The Court has announced its opinion in Maryland v. King
Full opinion (dissent at page 33): In what is arguably the most important criminal procedure case the Supreme Court has decided in decades, the Court today announced its 5-4 holding in Maryland v. King. The majority opinion, authored by Justice Kennedy, held that the 4th Amendment allows states to collect and analyze DNA from people arrested (but not convicted) of serious crimes.
What It's Really Like To Be A Google Intern
Rohan Shah, a student at the University of Illinois, wrote about the interview process and culture for interns at Google.
Spritetris
By rotating, positioning and dropping a predetermined sequence of pieces, the Tetris Printer Algorithm (video) exploits the mechanics of Tetris to generate arbitrary bitmap images.
All Powerful Bike Lobby
NY magazine compares two different "old people"s (Dorothy Rabinowitz and Bill Cunningham) opinion on the new Citi Bike bike share program. [more inside]
Next step: uploaded lobsters in space
"OpenWorm is an attempt to build a complete cellular-level simulation of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Of the 959 cells in the hermaphrodite, 302 are neurons and 95 are muscle cells. The simulation will model electrical activity in all the muscles and neurons. An integrated soft-body physics simulation will also model body movement and physical forces within the worm and from its environment." -- Bonus: explore the worm's cellular anatomy in 3D (WebGL required.)
The Incredibly True Adventures of Gerda Wegener and Lili Elbe.
The true story (NSFW) of turn-of-the-century lesbian romance, erotic Deco illustrations rife with harlequins and crinolines, the world’s first male-to-female sex reassignment surgery, and the 1950s pulp novel that brought it all to light.
A Decree by the King of Denmark was required to Free Danish Artist from the wife he had married before his sex was reversed.
How the divorce was reported in 1933.
Some more of Gerda's work.
Some more of Gerda's work.
It's okay to be a cheese.
HEY YOU! Andrew Horowitz, a musician who goes by the name edu, writes music that sounds like Muppets-influenced psychedelia. At the End is a soft, melancholy song; Miss Melody blooms and blooms and blooms. Horowitz is also the mind behind The Baker Boys, which remixes Jay-Z with 20th century classical musicians like Philip Glass, Igor Stravinsky, Steve Reich, and Conlon Nancarrow.
This Man Is Not a Cyborg. Yet.
His project, called the 2045 Initiative, for the year he hopes it is completed, envisions the mass production of lifelike, low-cost avatars that can be uploaded with the contents of a human brain, complete with all the particulars of consciousness and personality. [more inside]
The Last Ice Merchant
"The natural ice from Chimborazo is the best ice. The tastiest and sweetest. Full of vitamins for your bones. But nobody wants natural ice from Chimborazo anymore. They have factory ice. My father taught me and my brothers how to work in the ice mines. My name is Baltazar Ushca Tenesaca. Now I'm the only ice merchant of Chimborazo." El Último Hielero (The Last Ice Merchant), is a short documentary. [more inside]
"Even the origin of the word 'Tulip' lies in the word 'Turban'."
The History of the Tulip: an educational animated short video for the Tulip Museum in Amsterdam. [via]
The Suicide Epidemic
Self-harm now takes more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined. Why are we killing ourselves, and how can we stop it?
Over the last five decades, millions of lives have been remade for the better. Yet within this brighter tomorrow, we suffer unprecedented despair. In a time defined by ever more social progress and astounding innovations, we have never been more burdened by sadness or more consumed by self-harm. And this may be only the beginning. If Joiner and others are right—and a landmark collection of studies suggests they are—we’ve reached the end of one order of human history and are at the beginning of a new order entirely, one beset by a whole lot of self-inflicted bloodshed, and a whole lot more to come.
Comics, Everybody!
On June 3rd, a week after AOL's announcement of the closure of Comics Alliance [previously], Townsquare Media Group opted to acquire the IP, in addition to three music sites focused on country, hip-hop and metal.
In response to the turnaround, Comics Alliance opted to recount their change of fortune in sequential format.
The First Rule of Clone Club Is...
On Saturday, the premiere season of BBC America's Orphan Black finished up its first ten-episode run. The show has garnered praise and buzz for lead actress and relative unknown Tatiana Maslany: "There's no better special effect on television right now than Tatiana Maslany playing a variety of clones." [more inside]
But can you find it on a souvenir bicycle license plate?
“Amory” was too F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Enzo” too Europhilic. “Selby” was too Brooklyn, “Roman” too Polanski. And those are just the boy names. [more inside]
DOS attack shuts down EVE Online for a day
A DOS attack on Sunday, 3 June caused the moderators of the MMORPGs EVE Online and Dust 514 to shut down the server cluster that hosted both games. The games were offline for most of the day and into the following morning, having just recently been restored. The COO of EVE's parent company, CCP, described the situation this way:
What we can now confirm is that a person was able to utilize a vulnerability in one of the back-end services that support the operation of the Tranquility server. This vulnerability has now been secured and thoroughly tested. We would like to stress that at no time was customer data compromised or accessible in any way. The effort of returning the complex server structure of the EVE Universe and associated websites to service in a methodical and highly-scrutinized fashion began hours ago and Tranquility has now been brought online (at 10:13 UTC). Our teams will monitor the situation carefully in the coming hours to ensure that our services are accessible and that all customer data remains secure.CCP also took the precaution of shutting down the games' websites, and so communicated with players via Twitter ("Your patience has been legendary and appreciated.") and its Facebook page. [more inside]
The sky doesn't matter, it's the issues
This year's Bilderberg Conference, an annual gathering of influential people from politics, industry, finance, the intelligence community and the old and new aristocracies, will be taking place in Watford, an outer suburb of London not typically associated with global elites. While tight secrecy is being kept, the organisers have, for the first time, conceded to open a press office. Meanwhile, a loose collective of “activists, artists, journalists and human beings” are organising the Bilderberg Fringe Festival to coincide with it, with conspiracy theorists David Icke and Alex Jones as keynote speakers.
Once in a century? Try once a decade.
So, as we in Prague brace for what is expected to be a river breach later today, our minds wander back to the last time this happened. We've learned a lot since the disaster of 2002, so no one is being caught off guard. In fact, some are even taking advantage of this once a decade opportunity. For those looking for up-to-the-minute updates in english, there is a facebook group you might want to follow, or google+ coverage for those so inclined.
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