July 18, 2013
A Fieldguide for Female Interrogators
"10. Mild Non-Injurous Physical Contact: (i.e.,“a little bit of smacky face“) Unlike other forms of contact that lead to physical injury, sexual contact is unlikely to leave scars and is more likely to induce guilt that can be taken advantage of by a good interrogator." (NSFW) [more inside]
So much blood!
Viscera Cleanup Detail is a free PC game that casts as a space station janitor mopping up after a hero who left the station encrusted with gore. Via Gamers With Jobs' podcast on 'mundane games'. It's actually the third game about a space janitor, after Space Quest and Space Station 13.
‘the poor man’s atomic bomb’?
Book designs by Ellen Raskin
Ellen Raskin (1928-1984) is best known as a writer, author of The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel) and the Newbery Award-winning The Westing Game. But she always considered herself an artist first. Raskin designed over 1,000 book covers, including the iconic original cover of A Wrinkle In Time, the edition of Dubliners you probably read in college, and the New Directions edition of a Child's Christmas in Wales (Raskin did the woodcuts on the inside, too; further appreciation here.) More Raskin covers are collected in this flickr set from Bennington College. [more inside]
Meet the Saugets
"We were basically incorporated to be a sewer." The small village of Monsanto, Illinois was incorporated in 1926 to be a low-regulated tax haven for Monsanto Company's chemical plants. These days it's named Sauget, after the family which runs virtually every aspect of it—its real estate, its minor league baseball team (which plays on Sauget Field), and several of its nightclubs, of which there are so many that they are collectively known as the Sauget Ballet. The town's pollution has led to numerous lawsuits, and inspired the song Sauget Wind by alt-country group Uncle Tupelo. [more inside]
Acid and Architecture
What Three Words
What Three Words has changed the complex numbers of zip codes and post codes, longitude and latitude, into three English words. [more inside]
Welcome to Pismodise
A healthy, inexpensive, environmentally friendly solution for housing millions of retiring baby boomers is staring us in the face. We just know it by a dirty name. How The Trailer Park Could Save Us All.
depending how far beyond zebra you go
Why would a liberal education, the deeper acquaintance with a number of diverse modes of symbolic production, enhance our freedom? University of Chicago sociology professor Andreas Glaeser, in his 2005 Aims of Education Address to incoming students, muses: How About Becoming a Poet?
Detroit Files for Bankruptcy
Detroit, the cradle of America’s automobile industry and once the nation’s fourth-most-populous city, has filed for bankruptcy. (NYT) The decision to file for bankruptcy makes this "the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in American history in terms of debt." (Previously) [more inside]
So much cute
Having a rough day? Have a live look in on these future labrador service puppies. With a webcam hosted by Explore.org (previously, with bears), Warrior Canine Connection is a non-profit that specializes in training service dogs for wounded veterans. [more inside]
20 Minutes Into The Future
"20 Minutes Into The Future" (full length film on YouTube) was a sci-fi telefilm with a dinstinctly dystopian/cyberpunk flair produced by Channel 4 in 1985 primarily known introducing the character Max Headroom. The character portrayed by Matt Frewer though popularly believed to be a fully computer generated personality, became something of a pop culture phenomenon. In the UK, hosting a music video block with no wraparound intro, which eventually evolved into more proper chat program The Original Talking Max Headroom Show. In the US, the characters popularity led to Max Headroom (full episode 1x01 "Blipverts") a sci-fi television series with a distinctly dystopian/cyberpunk flair that aired on ABC for two seasons 1987-1988.
People will move mountains to earn a gold star by their name.
Reflecting upon 14 years of blogging and observing internet communities, Anil Dash proposes 10 Rules of the Internet, based upon the lessons that he learned during that time. (via ★interesting; anildash previously on Metafilter)
We took a blood oath to do that back in the oddest year of all.
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have given an interview to Rolling Stone to promote Steely Dan's upcoming tour. Becker and Fagen developed a reputation for messing with the media in the '70s, and Becker keeps the practice alive in this interview. [more inside]
"A very primitive form that quickly becomes predictable."
Can Photojournalism Survive in the Instagram Era? (single link Mother Jones via) "It is no accident that so much of the most important work by photographers [on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan] has been on veterans as they return to the United States—one has more freedom in how one photographs."
How a Wife Should Undress for Her Husband
A photo essay on the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing, as featured in the 15 Feb 1937 issue of LIFE Magazine (now LIFE.com). Burlesque empresario Allen Gilbert wanted to help save American marriages from the evils of ... sloppy undressing on the part of the wife. His answer? A specialized school to teach women to improve their "disrobing methodology."
At least, that's what Gilbert claimed; in reality, the school -- and the LIFE spread (you should pardon the phrasing) -- were elaborate promotions for his new burlesque revue, "Sex Rears Its Ugly Head."
"Joke or no joke, however, one thing is as true today as it was three-quarters of a century ago: whether one wants to make a buck publishing magazines, staging burlesque shows or fostering adult education, sex sells."
The pitch just dropped
The three most exciting words in science concern one of the longest running experiments of all time that finally produced a recordable result.
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes!
Download The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com Nearly 4000 pages of some of your favorite authors for free. [Past offers not valid in all countries. Sorry if yours is one of these.]
Quinologie
Quinologie: the cinchona and issues in the present state of science and commerce (1865). The book has 23 hand-colored and extremely detailed plates of the many different barks of the cinchona tree, the world's original source of quinine. Don't get too excited - it's literally just some pictures of bark. Pictures begin on page 51.
A Song of Our Warming Planet
"University of Minnesota undergrad Daniel Crawford did something very clever: He took surface air temperature data and converted them into musical notes, one for each year from 1880 to 2012, and played them on his cello." Direct Vimeo link.
Millions of Egyptian Demonstrators Vanish in a Puff of Logic
How far in advance was the coup in Egypt planned? After the army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood president, gas shortages that had crippled Morsi's popularity magically disappeared, and a local billionaire bragged about secretly financing the opposition. The coup was predicated on enormous street protests that seemed to represent another revolution, but one analysis suggests that the army and opposition massively exaggerated the scale of the protests in order to justify the seizure of power. Egyptian liberals however, defend the overthrow, saying that 'democracy is not reducible to the ballot box.'
Showdown of the Original Songs
The term EGOT, popularized by 30 Rock, refers to winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony award. Only eleven people have done it. Composer Alan Menken, just nominated for an Emmy, could become the 12th. 30 Rock, oddly enough, happens to be nominated in the same category. [more inside]
To the Collapse
To imagine the scale, picture this: almost every city in Western Europe and North America destroyed. Not reduced, not scaled down. People-don't-live-here-anymore-just-ruins destroyed.Between about 1200 and 1150 BC, civilization in the northeastern quadrant of the Mediterranean collapsed. Mycenae and the other Iliad-era Greek city-kingdoms; the Hittite Empire; the Levantine possessions of New Kingdom Egypt—cultures which had flourished for five hundred years fell and dispersed within a single lifetime, their palaces razed, their every city toppled, burned, and abandoned. [more inside]
It's Better Up There
District 9 director Neil Blomkamp talks to WIRED about Elysium, District 10, Halo, his desire to buy a skyscraper and almost casting Eminem or Ninja from Die Antwood in Elysium's Matt Damon role.
From Pong to Pizza Entertainment: Nolan Bushnell and Chuck E. Cheese
Nolan Bushnell was a co-creator of Pong and Atari, and he also sold Atari arcade machines. When he noticed that he sold the arcade machines for $1,500 to $2,000 but the new owners would earn twice that much in the life of the machines, he started thinking of how to make an arcade destination that wouldn't compete with his arcade machine clients. His solution: a pizza parlor, with an arcade for the kids and an pneumatic-powered animatronic coyote mascot to fool the parents it was restaurant with free entertainment. The coyote became a rat named Chuck, and what was code-named Coyote Pizza was briefly renamed Rick Rat's Pizza, but the marketing department thought the name wasn't such a great idea, and instead we got Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater. [more inside]
So Much Blood
It felt like you were inside a Bruce Springsteen song
"Armed demonstrators had attempted to break into the building...."
"I was right. HE KNEW WHERE MATT DAMON WAS."
Erin Faulk (@erinscafe on Twitter) tells the surprisingly compelling tale of going on a quest to find Matt Damon in Morocco, just cuz. (SLStorify)
Somali-American Success Stories
Minneapolis photographer highlights Somali-American success stories
For years, any time photographer Mohamud Mumin turned to local television channels or to newspapers for news about the Minneapolis Somali community, what he found left him disappointed.
Mumin said the media highlights the dark side of the community and abandons the many success stories and positive contributions Somali immigrants are making in their new home -- a remark many in the community agree.
“There are many great things the community is doing,” he said. “Why can’t I see those stories in the media? Why only the negative ones?”
Mumin, 36, recently took matters into his own hands. In 2010, he began capturing the images of 13 Twin Cities Somali-American men, documenting their stories in “The Youth/Dhallinyarada,” a multimedia project that focuses on the effort these men are making to improve the lives of those around them. (“Dhallinyarada” means “the youth” in Somalia.)[more inside]
Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model!
Catherine Bennett is a Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. Taking time out from her work as a palaeontologist, Bennett has released two songs to date: debut single Apathy and a follow-up, Animal Kingdom. [more inside]
Who are you? I really wanna know.
Between 1959 to 1970, late English film director Ken Russell (The Who's Tommy and Women in Love) created art documentaries for the BBC, many of them unusual adaptations of artists' lives. The documentaries included The Debussy Film, Dante's Inferno, Isadora, Song of Summer, and Always on Sunday. Bonus: Ken Russell in Conversation and Ken Russell at Work. Previously.
...never believing the people who think they have you figured out.
"It's his charm. It's his gift. It's his political liability, and it's part of an American conundrum. We beg for authenticity, and then when we get it, oh man, it's hilarious. [Vice President Joe] Biden can be fantastic when he's on his game. At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, his speech got higher Nielsen ratings than either Bill Clinton's or Obama's. He killed the debate against Ryan, pumped air back into a campaign deflated after Obama's miserable first performance against Romney. Watching those performances, it's almost impossible to see him as a person once crippled by speech."
What’s worse there, the sex or the pretending to be dead?
The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure [PDF, there is a Word file direct from the DoD] is 167 pages of stories of elaborate frauds, scams, and abuses of power in the US government. Interestingly, the sarcasm-filled document is also published by the US government, to help illustrate how government workers get in trouble. Freakonomics radio has a amusing and interesting discussion with the Encyclopedia's editor and founding editor [link goes to transcript]. [more inside]
Starcher Trek!
Simply Irresistible?
The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal to fire someone for being too attractive. An Iowa dentist fired his assistant because his (unreciprocated) feelings of attraction to her might have tempted him to try to start an extramarital affair. The Iowa Supreme Court, an all-male body, determined that it was not a case of sex discrimination because it was based on feelings rather than gender. Many disagree, seeing it as a clear case of cultural, institutional, and even religious sexism (the firing was advised and encouraged by the dentist's pastor.)
The Life of an Admin in the IT World
Pee into Power
Scientists working at England’s Bristol Robotics Laboratory have developed a technique for converting urine into electrons, enough to power a cell phone.
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