July 27
Implied Contrapuntals
2001: A Space Odyssey - Discerning Themes through Score and Imagery: As Ligeti's music ends, the first image we see is a celestial alignment of the sun the earth and the moon as Richard Strauss' exhilarating Also Sprach Zarathustra begins. It's critical to note that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also a novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. This musical choice thus signals that the film deals with the same central issues in this book. [via][more inside]
That belongs in a museum!
One of the last remaining copies of Schindler's List has been posted for sale on Ebay, with a starting bid of $3,000,000 USD. [more inside]
Another bomb "dowser" found guilty
Gary Bolton has been found guilty of selling fake bomb detectors to countries including Iraq. In May James McCormick was sentenced for 10 years for committing a similar fraud (previously, previously, previously). The original fraud is now 20 years old.
Ski-Boys
Look at those escargots
Being Dumb
Poet Kenneth Goldsmith writes in praise of dumb art.
No double entendre left behind
Boris Johnson unveils a giant blue cock in Trafalgar Square, causing an outbreak of terrible puns. Hahn/Cock is the work of Katharina Fritsch, better known for her Rat-King sculpture. The colour is (probably) an homage to (NSFW) Yves Klein's favourite colour.
Paddling 1,500 Miles for Science and Adventure
Starting on September 22 last year, Professor Robert Fuller of the University of North Georgia spent four months paddling down the Chattahoochee River system, from the Chattahoochee's headwaters in northern Georgia down through the Apalachicola into the Gulf of Mexico, studying water quality along the way. Then he paddled 200 miles through the Gulf, turned at the mouth of the Mobile River, and paddled another 750 miles upstream on the Mobile, Alabama, Coosa, and Etowah Rivers all the way back to northern Georgia—a total of just over 1,500 miles of solo paddling in his Kruger Sea Wind. Along the way, he kept a blog, "ate a lot of Beanie Weenies", and faced difficulties including cold, hunger, injuries, and river obstructions. Incidentally, he did all this while living with leukemia. [more inside]
Plowing at the Speed of Sound
Swedish farmer drops a turbo into his tractor.
Boom And Bust
Bankrupt By Beanies - A short documentary about what happened to people after the "Beanie Babies as investments" fad wore down. (YouTube, 8:30)
Final Encore Blues For Mister JJ Cale
Sadly true, at 74. (JJ Cale previously, and Wikipedia.)
Otherwise best to just let the man and his guitar speak for themselves via classic albums such as Troubadour, Grasshopper, Naturally, Okie and Shades.
"Eversmile, New Jersey"?
A Secret Folk Music Holds Firm In China's Badlands
"Beijing-based music critic Wang Xiaofeng says that when he heard Lao Qiang for the first time about 18 years ago, it reminded him of heavy metal: very physical and somewhat operatic."
In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity
The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea.
Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.
July 26
there's like - a bunch of mermaids here - and they definitely hate me
D - O - N - K - E - Y - K - O - N - G
Locals and Tourists
Some people interpreted the Geotaggers' World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in places that tourists don't visit. Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more). Map of photosets (scroll through photo thumbnails to discover new cities in the photoset [more inside]
Why Don't You Google It?
Maria Bamford* has a new Web series called Ask My Mom!, wherein questions asked by the viewers are answered by Maria, playing her mother.
Episodes thus far:
#1 - SAD SACK
#2 - SEX
#3 - RAISING KIDS
#4 - ABSTRACT
#5 - RELIGION
#6 - SHOW BUSINESS
#7 - FAVORITE
#8 - CHEERFUL
#9 - A PRIVATE MOMENT
[more inside]
I'm not ready for this!
Has anyone else put forth this theory before?
What’s Killing Minnesota’s Moose?
The iconic monarch of the North Woods is dying at an alarming rate. Is it climate change, a brain-piercing parasite, or is something else to blame?
Pico Horror: terror in two sentences
From Reddit: What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences. When /r/shortscarystories are too long, and you've already read through MicroHorror (previously) and Flashes in the Dark.
Walter De Maria, R.I.P.
Walter De Maria, R.I.P. (LAT) The famed but reclusive sculptor and composer was 77. In a loving tribute, Jerry Saltz writes of De Maria's Earth Room (previously), and of the effect it had on him personally.
Darryl Kelly was hired to clean out Harry Shunk's NYC apartment.
Darryl Kelly was hired to clean out Harry Shunk's New York City apartment. Things worked out well for Kelly.
'让我介绍一个哥们儿'
Xiaoou is a Norwegian artist who raps in Mandarin Chinese about income inequality in China, his love for Beijing, and going through a breakup.
"We have 10 different babies from which you can select."
Would you like to choose your baby? We definitely want to be able to avoid genetic mutations that could cause diseases or problems later on. But what if you could make your babies more intelligent? Or more Athletic? or More beautiful? Or affect their political orientation? (A 2011 study looked at differences between conservative and liberal leanings—and found, surprisingly, three areas that might be linked to political predisposition.)
Should you be able to choose what characteristics you want your babies to have?
[more inside]
Dream of the '90s
Full course meal
It goes back to honoring Thomas Harris and imagery we have in the books, in the Hannibal Lecter books. So we knew that we had to have fantastic imagery that you wouldn’t see on another crime-procedural show. Being competitive and wanting to be completely different from what you see on other shows, which is usually, on a crime procedural you see a body in a room splayed out and blood, but you rarely get to see people covered with mushrooms or impaled on severed stag heads or blood eagled and the totem pole. We would sit in the room and say, “What is the image? What is the death tableau? What are we going to see that’s going to be so striking and cinematic and beautiful at the same time, but will actually be a horrible crime scene?” So every crime scene that we have has to have this element of beauty and art to it.Bryan Fuller, showrunner for NBC's Hannibal (previously), discusses each episode of the first season with the AV Club. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.
"We All Lament the Difficulty We Have Persuading Americans"
"Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner — has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by [David Corn and] Mother Jones." Photo Gallery: Meet Groundswell's Major Players. Also: Groundswell's Secret Crusade to Crush Karl Rove // (Via) [more inside]
Boomtown
Wildcatting: A Stripper’s Guide to the Modern American Boomtown. Susan Shepard details her time stripping in Williston, North Dakota (previously).
They are called RANDOM patrols for a reason!
That's not a plot hole. Allow me to explain. Scott Nye discusses a movie trend that, once seen, cannot be unseen.
There's treasure in there
Books with borax crystals growing on them. Artist Alexis Arnold grows crystals on the pages of books.
"We are British. We are Liverpudlians. "
""He just went out to the shop, and my mum was waiting for him to come home, and he never came," Linda Davis said of her father." -- During World War II tens of thousands of Chinese seamen served in the UK's merchant navy, many of whom had settled in Liverpool and some of which developed relationships with local women. Yet in 1945, as soon as the war was won, Liverpool police forces, on orders of the Home Office mounted razzias and deported the majority of the 20,000 Chinese men living in the city, leaving behind their wifes and children. [more inside]
"By nature, I'm an optimistic person. No one believes it, but I am."
Tony Award winner Larry Kramer, author of The Normal Heart, Reports from the Holocaust, screenwriter of Women in Love, and founder of ACT UP and Gay Men's Health Crisis, has gotten married. [more inside]
Experiment Twelve
Experiment Twelve is an ambitious game (Windows download, 218 MB), a chapter by chapter collaboration between (in order of appearance) Terry Cavanagh, Ian Snyder, Jack King-Spooner, Zaratustra, Richard Perrin, Michael Brough, Robert Yang, Alan Hazelden, Benn Powell, Jake Clover, TheBlackMask, and Jasper Byrne.
July 25
A man of flesh and bone, who cannot be stopped!
Legie is a depressing Czech adventure game/dungeon crawler. The only record of it left is this Let's Play.
"I have no reason to expect compensation"
How DC Contracts Work. Mark Waid, author of Superman: Birthright (drawn on heavily for the recent film Man of Steel), "explains how professionals are generally compensated for working on company-owned characters".
Pyongyang Express
The Defector: Escape From North Korea, an interactive documentary. The Trailer. via. Flash required. [more inside]
Class Dublin Taxi Driver
One sunny summer day in Dublin, pub drinkers spill out onto the streets. Blocking traffic. And dancing. With taxi drivers. The taxi driver is part-time DJ Wayne Karney. His dance partner is Andrea Pappin, spokesperson for the Irish Presidency of the EU 2013.
"I hope no one's been killed because they'll be on my conscience"
Spain has declared three days of mourning following a deadly train crash that killed at least 80 people and injured many more. [more inside]
Mouseunculus
What I want, what I really really want.
Joe Engel (1893 - 1969): the Barnum of Baseball
At the age of 19, Joe Engel started pitching for the Washington Senators in 1912 (Google books preview), but he only played one game per year in 1917, '19, and '20, due to arm injuries. Unimpressed with his performance, Manager Clark Griffith shooed Engel off to swap himself for someone from the minors who could play ball. Engel sent back the catcher Edward Patrick ("Ed" or "Patsy") Gharrity. Gharrity turned out to be so good that Engel was hired to scout for Washington, and later manage the Chattanooga Lookouts, then the farm team for Washington. It was there in Chattanooga that Engel's true career in baseball took off, where he was given the title "Barnum of Baseball." [more inside]
If we can't protect the school, you can be well sure we'll avenge it
Burka Avenger is a new cartoon series (in urdu) scheduled to start running in Pakistan in early August. Created by the British-Pakistani pop singer Haroon, the series features a ninjaburqa-clad, pen-and-book-wielding superheroine / mild-mannered non-burqa-wearing schoolteacher who fights for her school against Taliban-like baddies (short interviews with Haroon and a slightly worried media analyst).
the maps, the rain, the pills, the place
Night Stroll by Tao Tajima. A visually stunning nighttime display of lights and shapes across the streets of Tokyo. [via / epilepsy warning] [more inside]
Life is like a hurricane, here in Duckburg
Scientifically accurate DuckTales. (SLYT, NSFW)
cloud rap is sort of the chillest of raps
Depending on who you ask, Cloud Rap either is "the best shit happening right now" or it doesn't exist. If you ask Killscreen, the genre owes a lot to Japanese Role Playing Games. But according to Philly cloud-rapper Lushlife, "All Rap Is Cloud Rap." [more inside]
Should summer vacation be abolished?
There are few more cherished nostrums in American life than the importance of equal opportunities. Unfortunately, one of them is the importance of summer vacation... A 2011 RAND literature review concluded that the average student “loses” about one month’s worth of schooling during a typical summer vacation, with the impact disproportionately concentrated among low-income students. “While all students lose some ground in mathematics over the summer,” RAND concluded, “low-income students lose more ground in reading while their higher-income peers may even gain.” Most distressingly, the impact is cumulative. Poor kids tend to start school behind their middle-class peers, and then they fall further behind each and every summer, giving teachers and principals essentially no chance of closing the gap during the school year. [more inside]
Rape Joke
Our illmatic stripy hero and his glucose-heavy sidekick
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