September 20, 2015
Now they hoped that JJ could handle it
It took until the early '30s for a hood to be added
It Gets Better, Doritos, and the troll who countered homophobic comments
Recently, It Gets Better teamed up with Doritos to support the LGBT community with rainbow colored chips, which could be purchased from It Gets Better's website, until they ran out. There was the usual outcry and backlash, but this time it looked like Doritos took time to respond to individual criticisms on Facebook. Except it was the return of the beneficial troll, Mike Melgaard, who previously posed as a Target representative in support of its move towards more gender-neutral of children's products in its stores. [more inside]
“You leave when you get ready, and not with nobody telling you."
Mamie Lang was 7 years old when her father gathered her mother and her four siblings in the middle of the night to catch a train. The Langs left Ellisville, Mississippi, just ahead of a lynch mob. Mamie Lang Kirkland returned to the town of her birth this year, a century later. SLNYT
Bae of Pigs
Sources can be tricky things. The Daily Mail doesn't have the greatest reputation. Lord Ashcroft is a Tory billionaire with a grudge against David Cameron. And so far they are the only sources for this one. That said, judge for yourself:
Prime Minister David Cameron ‘put a private part of his anatomy’ into a dead pig’s mouth .
(Over on Twitter, as you might have guessed, it's Christmas.)
Prime Minister David Cameron ‘put a private part of his anatomy’ into a dead pig’s mouth .
(Over on Twitter, as you might have guessed, it's Christmas.)
Thigh Anxiety
Put a cork in it.
Patent Data Visualization
PatentsView is a new patent data visualization platform from the US Patent and Trademark Office. The PatentsView beta search tool allows members of the public to interact with nearly 40 years of data on patenting activity in the United States. Users can explore technological, regional, and individual-level patent trends via search filters with multiple viewing options. The database links inventors, their organizations, locations, and overall patenting activity using enhanced 1976-2014 data from public USPTO bulk data files.
"Occasionally, we find that an invited guest is insane . . . "
Cormac McCarthy just did a short video on behalf of the Santa Fe Institute explaining why you should join their enterprise.
Indian Philosophy Without Any Gaps
The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is filling in gaps by starting a new podcast feed [iTunes link] dedicated to the history of philosophic traditions other than the one that started with the Ancient Greeks. The first tradition covered will be Indian philosophy, but the series will move on to Africa and China, and perhaps elsewhere as well. The primary author of the India episodes is Prof. Jonardon Ganeri but Prof. Peter Adamson will co-write, present each episode, and probably come up with illustrative examples involving giraffes, Buster Keaton, and his non-existent trapeze-artist sister. [Adamson's main History of Philosophy podcast previously and subsequently]
Architecture Daily Sketches
Guevedoces
The extraordinary case of the Guevedoces. "Johnny lives in a small town in the Dominican Republic where he, and others like him, are known as 'Guevedoces', which effectively translates as 'penis at twelve' ... Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended." [more inside]
Till It Happens To You
Lady Gaga has just released a new video (Major trigger warnings for graphic depictions of assaults) called The Hunting Ground as a PSA for It's On Us (they also have a tumblr), an organization dedicated to ending campus rape. Take the pledge. [more inside]
Grab the smelling salts
Pre-Code.com is an incredibly detailed exploration of the Hollywood cinema that fell between the advent of sound motion pictures in 1927 and the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Which wasn't enforced until 1934. Huh? Here's a timeline). This includes a number of familiar titles such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Dracula, Duck Soup, It Happened One Night and The Public Enemy. But we also get a peek at the more obscure and daring titles such as Baby Face, I’m no Angel, Smarty, Safe in Hell and Night Nurse.
8/10?
The New Games Criticism - a response to Kieron Gillen's The New Games Journalism 10 years after the fact.
Fun math for kids
Unsolved problems with the common core. Computational biologist (and occasional curmudgeon) Lior Pachter pairs unsolved problems in mathematics to common core math standards.
Mmm, regional flavors for carbonic acid
Here's The Daily Meal's list of 10 favorite regional soft drinks (SLIDESHOW). And here's Mental Floss's stories behind 11 regional soft drinks. More info follows.... [more inside]
“First lust, then love.”
Jackie Collins, Novelist Who Wrote of Hollywood’s Glamorous Side, Dies at 77 [New York Times]
Jackie Collins, the best-selling British-born author known for her vibrant novels about the extravagance and glamour of life in Hollywood, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 77. The cause was breast cancer, her family said in a statement.
Tri-Cornered State
In search of trifinia Even for geographical completists, visiting all of the United States' trifinia, or places where three states meet, is an often overlooked pleasure. [more inside]
Steve Martin and Robin Williams Riffing on Mathematics
In 2002, Steve Martin sat down for a Q&A about his writing and his interest in mathematics. His friend Robin Williams was on hand to help out. Please pardon the video quality. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
"There's never anything good in these nooks and crannies"
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