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How to become a DIY strongman
Handy, but out of shape? Make your own exercise equipment—mostly out of PVC tubes, steel pipes, webbing, and the occasional mouse pad. Instructions (with lots of pictures) for making chinup/dip/pushup bars, various grips, isokentic devices, isometric devices, isotonic devices, and martial arts equipment from Grunt and Shen's workshop. (Warning: Angelfire hosted site)
First Bangalore, now Ahmedabad
Two cities in two days. Multiple injuries and several fatalities. The BJP has of course come out strong against the [ruling] Congress party for not trying to do enough to stop the menace of "terrorism" in the country, after having lost its fight to overthrow the government. Now, it is up to the Prime Minister to pick up the pieces and move on.
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
This week in mathematical physics, John Baez looks at the amazing tile patterns in the Alhambra in Granada, dividing the patterns into their characteristic Wallpaper Groups based on their symmetries. And if these patterns aren't good enough for you, try drawing your own with the Escher Web Sketch tool.
Demolition
Kajima's floor-by-floor slow demolition is one of those rare things in life that leaves you truly speechless....After all, seeing the video of a 20-floor building submerging into the asphalt as if it was liquid is something that belongs to a sci-fi movie.
Rumplo' and behold!
Rumplo
will help you waste even more of your hard-earned cash on artist and designer created T-Shirts. You can submit shirts you've found anywhere online, as well as comment on and favorite other people's findings. Thanks to user-submitted tags, you can browse by color, type ('boys', 'girls', 'kids'), and many other attributes. If you get bored of browsing aimlessly, you can always check out what's popular.
42 days and a resignation
42 days and a resignation. The day after the British Labour government narrowly won a parliamentary vote to extend the time that the police can hold people for questioning without charge from 28 days to 42 days, Tory frontbench MP David Davis has resigned his seat. David Davis is a senior member of the main parliamentary opposition party - who strongly opposed the 42 day bill - and has stepped down to fight a by-election for his own constituency to start a debate over "the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government".
Buzz reloaded
Oskari Tammelin picks up where he left off.
Jeskola Buzz, a flexible and formidable (and free) piece of music composition software created in the late 90's by Oskari, had its growth unexpectedly stunted by a hard drive crash. Oskari indicated no immediate desire to continue the project at the time, but users of the software were so enamored with it they continued to create plug-ins, enhancements and hacks to pick up where the program left off. Oskari made the replay code available to those who wanted to develop software around the Buzz engine (for a price) and soon a number of Buzz clones followed, including variations for Mac and Linux. And so the Buzz community ran...until last week...
What Is A Species?
What Is A Species?
"To this day, scientists struggle with that question. A better definition can influence which animals make the endangered list."
Wrath of the Grapevine: The Roots of John Fahey
So, about 9 months ago I started working on this compilation... Until yesterday, however, I hadn't seen a tracklist from the mysterious 10-cd set called the VrootzBox, so this is not a derivative work, however similar it may be...I should mention that not all of these songs are songs that he covered or copped licks from. Most of the music he has made mention to, though a few of the songs were recorded after his formative years and one or two he never would have heard. But they are presented to give an illustration of the styles he drew from (such as gamelan, which he grew up playing in his neighbor's back yard).Wrath of the Grapevine: The Roots of John Fahey
via FaheyGuitarPlayers
3.14159265... and 99,992 digits to go!
Exercising your brain makes you smarter, and there is no better gym for it than the MentatWiki.
You are getting sleepy. . .
Contrary to what you probably think you know about hypnosis, it can be done very quickly and can be used to convince someone to do something they normally wouldn't--like, say, giving away their wallet, phone, and keys to a stranger (English mentalist Derren Brown). What's happening here is known as a handshake induction, a technique pioneered by American psychiatrist Milton Erickson. There are other methods of rapid induction hypnosis. These methods, along with techniques of verbal suggestion, are used by practitioners of Neuro-linguistic programming, a field which some have associated with Mr. Brown's performances, though he denies it. I wonder, though, how he manages to get a cashier at a dog track to pay out on a losing ticket?
By Executive Order
All right, candyasses: Chicago meetup on May 21st, 6pm, Billy Goat on (under) Michigan.
CeaseFire
Blocking the Transmission of Violence.
"If gang violence was an infectious disease, how would you stop it? A Chicago epidemiologist thinks he has the answer."
Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'Bouncing Baby'
The real secret to producing superheroes (bollywood or otherwise) is to start them young, really YOUNG. (Link to single video)
Staff Benda Bilili
The other day I happened to come upon a music video that is just so grooving, so human and so real, that, well, it moved me, darling. Just check it out. After watching the clip, I learned that these guys are mostly disabled by polio (that's why several of them are in those rather unusual wheelchairs) and that they were living on the grounds of the Kinshasa zoo, which is where the clip was filmed. Then I learned that last year they were seeking to bring a lawsuit against the UN. Then I found some other clips. And now I am a major fan of Staff Benda Bilili.
'World Peace' Hitcher Murdered.
Performance Artist Killed on Peace Trip.
Pippa Bacca, performance artist, and friend wearing white wedding dresses, planned to hitchhike from Italy to the Balkans to the Middle East to send a message of peace and “marriage between different peoples and nations.” After three weeks on the road, Pippa Bacca was killed by a driver who offered her a ride. Her naked body was found and local authorities said Ms. Bacca had been raped and strangled.
To Nudge or Not to Nudge
Richard Posner, Gary Becker and Cass Sunstein debate "Libertarian Paternalism", a fancy and ugly term used to describe how some behavior economists think recent findings about human fallibility might bear on law and public policy. (previously)
Crop price anomalies baffle economists
Odd Crop Prices Defy Economics.
For finance and economics geeks:
Could a drugstore sell two identical tubes of toothpaste, and charge 50 cents more for one of them? Of course not. But, in effect, exactly that has been happening, repeatedly and mysteriously, in trading that sets prices for corn, soybeans and wheat — three of America’s biggest crops and, lately, popular targets for investors pouring into the volatile commodities market.
The curious thing is that these price anomalies should be ripe for arbitrage. There should be no gap between the price of say, wheat in the cash market and the wheat futures contract on the day the contract expires.
Pretty much everywhere, it's gonna be hot.
Then I don't need a jacket! (Videosift link)
From start to finish, the most inexplicably joy-inducing 9 seconds the internet has to offer.
The myth of food miles?
The locavore movement arose in recognition of the high environmental costs associated with imported food, particularly with respect to global warming (previously). This article from The Guardian (London) suggests that the carbon cost-benefit equation may be very hard to calculate, and that local (at least, without organic) may not always be better. As a planet we seem to be boxing ourselves into a very tight little environmental corner.
how many words in METAMORPHOSIS
How many words can be made from the letters in the word "Metamorphosis"?
A-one and a-two and a-chicka booma chick!
Bert and Ernie perform "A Divine Proclamation for Finishing the Present Existence" by Last Days of Humanity. Turn your speakers down if you're at the office. [Single link, YouTube.]
Jonathan Richman - Now Is Better Than Before
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - I'm A Little Dinosaur
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - New England
Jonathan Richman - Now Is Better Than Before
Spring is in the air today and here are a few slices of vintage Jonathan just because...
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - New England
Jonathan Richman - Now Is Better Than Before
Spring is in the air today and here are a few slices of vintage Jonathan just because...
The art of Lilly McElroy
The art of Lilly McElroy: "The gestures that Lilly performs for the camera are simultaneously loving and cruel; they are an attempt to discuss the desire and difficulty involved in making a connection...These photographs, videos, and installations that she produces, while trying to interact, acknowledge the possibility of failure - that someone might not catch her, that a connection might not be made."
What Am I Craving?
What Am I Craving? That's the question we always ask ourselves when thinking about what to eat. So we got to thinking: wouldn't it be cool to have a tool that could listen to what we were craving and then suggest something good to cook?
Hold Please
Joel Johnson of Boing Boing shows up to The Hugh Thompson Show to discuss gadgets but chooses a different topic
Yesterday, I was invited to talk about gadgets onThe Hugh Thompson Show, a television-style talk show sponsored exclusively by AT&T for distribution on the online AT&T Tech Channel. I eventually did talk about gadgets, but in light of AT&T's shocking and baffling announcement of their plans to filter the internet, I thought that a much more interesting and important topic.
Low cal, low fat, low carb, high fiber, high protein foods?
One serving of lentils has only ~120 calories, 0 grams of fat, 10g of protein (20% of daily recommended amount), and 11g of fiber (44% of daily recommended amount).
What are other superfoods with similarly high levels of protein and fiber, and low levels of carbs, fat, and calories?
who'se your daddy?
Scientists for better PCR
Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers, Nucleotides and polymerases, too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending. Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.
Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers, Nucleotides and polymerases, too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending. Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.
I'll Remember Mingus
Even if he was a world-class weirdo (or, if you take his words literally, three world-class weirdoes) who spent time in Bellevue, enlisted his psychotherapist to write his liner notes, and allegedly taught his cat to use the toilet (h/t to MeFi's urbanwhaleshark), I'll best remember Charles Mingus for giving me his 1960 take on "I'll Remember April", featuring the most exciting four minutes of music in my entire collection (starting at the 9:25 mark of the video).
Viktor Tsoi and KINO
Soviet rock hero Viktor Tsoy kept his job in the boiler room of an apartment complex even as his band KINO grew wildly popular in the last years of the Soviet Union. At the height of the band's fame, he even made a few film appearances. He died in a car accident in 1990, but a tape of recordings survived the crash and became the "black album." Fans still leave messages for him on the "wall of Tsoy" on Arbat street.
YTFilter Jumping Rope
Jumping Rope: A (not so) simple how-to from suburbia, kids doing it to Madonna, double dutch, an Xbox ad, then after a long introduction, jumping for Jesus and, of course, dogs on Japanese tv.
The kid can sing.
Five year old boy sings the Koran. So beautiful.
MST3K: The Shorts
During its run, Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed on over 50 short films. Almost all of them are now on YouTube or Google Video. See the list (shamelessly cribbed from here) inside for links.
Exotic Names for Exotic Shapes.
The Johnson Solids are a set of 92 semi-regular polyhedra, all of which are uniquely named and numbered. Except for the familiar square pyramid they all have exotic names like the Hebesphenomegacorona. A Hebesphenomegacorona in space. Number 26, the Gyrobifastigium, is unique in that if copies of itself are properly stacked together they will leave no gaps, thus making it the only space filling Johnson Solid.
Mathematics vs. Democracy: A Clear Winner or a Tie Game?
The Marquis de Condorcet and Admiral Jean-Charles de Borda were two men of the French Enlightenment who struggled with how to design voting systems that accurately reflected voters' preferences. Condorcet favored a method that required the winner in a multiparty election to win a series of head-to-head contests, but he also discovered that his method easily led to a paradoxes that produced no clear winners. The Borda method avoids the Condorcet paradox by requiring voters to rank choices numerically in order of preference, but this method is flawed because the withdrawal of a last-place candidate can reverse the election results. Mathematicians in the 19th century attempted to design better voting systems, including Lewis Carroll, who favored an early form of proportional representation. Economist Kenneth Arrow argued that designing a perfect voting system was futile, because his "impossibility theorem" proved that it's impossible to design a non-dictatorial voting system that fulfills five basic criteria of fairness. (more inside)
Indian Cooking 101
Hooked On Heat
is the two year old foodblog of Meena, daughter of a Malaysian mom & Indian father, with tons of recipes & food stories for those who love spice in their food; her recent series of posts, Indian Cooking 101 is a must read for those who love to eat Indian food and want to try it out at home.
Deleuze's ABCs
Deleuze's ABCs
A year before his sensational suicide by defenestration, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, known for his refusal to appear on television, offered to set the record straight with close student and friend, Claire Parnet, on the condition that it not be released until after his death. The interview, spanning eight hours, was conceived as an abécédaire, like a child's ABC book, with headings of "A comme animal," "B comme boisson," C comme culture". L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3]. Overview.
another beautiful brazilian guitarist
He wasn't the greatest technician on earth (he only studied a short time with a teacher, as states his biography), he wasn't really famous outside Brazil, in spite of the many recordings available under his name, of his various talents (drawing, designing a new string instrument), but his playing is really endearing, and whatever the material, originals, bach or chico buarque, he made his point across easily.
Your hobbies are not nearly obscure enough
Traffic signals!
Yes, an entire page devoted to the myriad varieties of Japanese LED traffic signal. They even have a mapping feature and a traffic signal lingo dictionary. I hereby dare ANYBODY to find a cooler hobby than this.
Chip, seconds before Dale kills him ...
The best five-second video on the Internet.
Safe for work; watch speaker volume.
Chess tactics explained in plain English
A Field Guide to Chess Tactics. Chess tactics explained in plain English, with hundreds of examples. A great site for beginning to mid-level players. Includes a large library of positional problems, organized thematically, with the solutions explained and discussed. For example, learn about knight forks, then quiz yourself on the same topic.