August 28, 2009
Smacked by the Lightning
How to Make (Primordial) Soup. Narrated for the Air & Space Museum 30+ years ago, in her own kitchen, by the one, the only, Julia Child. Bon appetit. (JC previously.) [10-minute SLYT]
I'm crazy. Crazy for feeling so blue.
Some guy named Spence Peppard takes a flying shot at Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline's Crazy.
DJ Adam Goldstein Found Dead
Adam Goldstein, AKA DJ AM, found dead in Manhattan. Celebrity DJ survived a plane crash last year and may have died of a drug overdose.
(Not) Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick.
"Some consider 20-year-old Fred Grzybowski the best pogo-stick rider in the world, able to leap over a minivan, among other feats. But his days on top may be numbered."
Pogopalooza: The 6th Annual Extreme Pogo Competition.
Avenging World by Ditko
Steve Ditko is, of course, best known for being the co-creator and original artist of Spider-Man. What most people don’t know... is that in the early 1970s he went on a tear and produced a series of insane Objectivist independent comics/rants (13MB PDF) that are unlike any comics produced then or now. - Dinosaur Gardens [more inside]
Gothic Musical Adverts from LynchLand
Is there a hunger in your sinister soul? Let Wilkinson's Family Restaurant feed your need. Oh sorry, they're out of business now. Rather, are you in the market for tools of depravity? Then Donald & Sons Hardware can supply your dark needs. Intrigued by the creative process behind these advertisements? Step inside the studio to see the magic behind the first and second video advert from Witchitel Music and LynchLand. [more inside]
Angel background theme.
"Party in the Fire Island Pines!"
Seven gay friends who summer on Fire Island Pines [note: autoload music] decided on a whim to make a lip-sync video (in Speedos) of tween favorite Miley Cyrus' song "Party in the USA". She loves it. And it turns out that the family-oriented, intellectual property "überprotective" company that represents Miley also loves and endorses the fan video. [more inside]
Glass-bottled, cane-sugared, bubbly little gulps of happiness.
A short documentary on John Nese: Soda pop obsessive. His store Galco's in Los Angeles sells more than two-hundred kinds of soda pop, particularly favoring small-label, glass-bottled and cane-sweetened fare. Yay. [more inside]
Your TV would never lie to you, especially about gold
How to value and sell your gold. Probably a waste of time though, those real people who sold their gold on TV seem happy enough.
Walking Through History
A Walk to Remember. For three hours Wednesday evening, the Zion – Mount Carmel Highway was closed to car traffic inside Zion National Park to let 300 people walk through the tunnel. It may have been the last time for people to do so legally for the foreseeable future. [more inside]
Ornate Letter Directory
Extreme Poodle Grooming Craze
People are dying and grooming their poodles to look like panda bears, camels, and bison. Seriously. I apologize for the SL, but this is too weird not to share. Here's another link or two.
August Wind
August Wind is a top-down 'free-roaming shooter' about mining valuable metals off the backs of cloudeels. It's the Bachelor Thesis project for Jeremy Spillmann at the Zürich School of the Arts. It features charming 2D graphics and a gypsy soundtrack. [more inside]
Bang Barstal
The now-defunct Bang Barstal tells the story of a man and his baseball bat after everything went wrong at once.
Augmented Reality Comes to iPhone
Subways were the first application. Using the iPhone 3GS' camera, GPS, and compass, several new apps overlay information on a live view of the world around you. This week, Yelp joins them. William Gibson, eat your heart out.
(A brief introduction to augmented reality for those who need one.)
Ephemera Assemblyman - a weblog
Ephemera Assemblyman a weblog. Personal favorites: Film Poster Paintings from Ghana :: Magician Souvenir Programs :: Abraham Lincoln Political Cartoons :: (The Art of) Spanish Rolling Papers :: Tickets from Political Conventions. Much more to be explored.
To Cape Town..
The Big Africa Cycle. Peter Gostelow is cycling from Dorset, England to Cape Town to raise funds for The Against Malaria Foundation. And it's not his first big adventure. [more inside]
cosmic spiral visuals
The Anatomy of Spiral Arms, shows how galaxies naturally evolve to form grand-design two-arm spirals. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D. [more inside]
The Scoop on Sewage
Crap Happens. "Three hundred million Americans head to the restroom multiple times a day. The amount of sludge produced staggers the mind—7 million dry tons per year and counting. And it’s not even just crap—it contains residues from everything else we put down the drain, from the detergent in your dishwasher to the chemicals used at the industrial plant down the street."
MS Paint Comics are the Best
Moon turns out to be giant tree
A rock given to the Netherlands as a gift by the American Ambassador to commemorate the Apollo-11 moon landing is tested and found to be nothing but petrified wood. Expect a "I told you so" from your neighbourhood conspiracy theorist at any moment. [more inside]
Pepsi Big Blue
Scientists image single molecule with atomic force microscopy. See the original abstract in Science. CNET reproduces a representation of the experiment.
When this you see, think of me.
A Geek Itinerary
Technology innovation will be a large part of late 20th century American history. Now the gearheads can explore the roots of all that geekdom. The Geek's Guide to Seattle is a virtual tour of some of the region’s most interesting and notable technology locations. A Geek's Tour of Silicon Valley hits hotspots there. Don't forget The Tech Museum and the Computer History Museum. Back east, there's Research Triangle Park (pdf) in North Carolina, and The Computing Revolution at the Museum of Science in Boston.
Hand-built bullet trains, made-to-order
Yamashita Kogyosho (jp) is a small manufacturer of about 30 people based in Kudamatsu, a city in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan. Like many small urban factories (so-called "machikoba"), they specialize in precision metalwork under contract to major corporations. But Yamashita Kogyosho is special: they create the noses for bullet trains. By hand. [more inside]
But you don't have to take my word for it.
Whether you grew up checking out books like Louis the Fish and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie from the library every week, or you just know Steve Horlick's iconic theme song, you're probably familiar with Reading Rainbow, which ends its 26-year run today. [more inside]
Ozmapolitan
Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high,
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.
The MGM musical version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz turned 70 this week.
It wasn't the first time it was a movie, nor the last time it was a movie or a movie musical. [more inside]
Dark Stores
The recession has seen the closure of many stores - from small local outfits to famous longstanding chains. Brian Ulrich's Dark Stores chronicles the ghostboxes of America, and the Guardian's Recession Monitor Flickr pool shows the view from the other side of the Atlantic. [more inside]
It's not too early in history to be exterminated by a Dalek
The ring wing or annular airfoil is an aircraft design which has been experimented with throughout the history of aviation with some interesting variations. It has served as the inspiration for several paper airplane designs, model airplanes of course, and a variety of children's toys. The capabilities imagined by the French coléoptère engineers of the 1950's and 1960's and the U.S. "flying tank" designers are available today at least in the form of unmanned vehicles (large PDF brochure, 6 minute video download, 1½ minute YT news clip). The technology has also been adapted to become the surfboard tunnel fin and there are underwater UAVs as well.
Oracles in the community
Painting +puzzle +compulsory 'Da Vinci' ref. Glasgow artist Frank McNab Previously has an interesting series of paintings on display in an exhibition at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.
Running until the end of October the paintings have the common theme of 'Libraries in the Community" and are a celebration of both the buildings themselves and their patrons.
Check out the link not just for the obvious quality of the works on display but also to see if YOU can be the one to solve the riddle hidden within the paintings themselves.
First, do no harm
Was it triage or murder? A disturbing NY Times story about the choices made by certain medical staff at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina. Long and not easy reading.
Oh. Em. Gee.
OMGpop is potentially all your Flash Fun Fridays come at once. Clones of addictive classic multiplayer games like Bomberman, Pictionary, Tetris, even Mario Kart and Guitar Hero - plus a whole lot more, all wrapped up in an extremely slick interface with an added dash of chat and social networking features. Not yet out of beta, the hype is certainly extensive, but is the business model sound? [more inside]
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