Driving through Time features roughly 2700 photographs and 76 interactive maps of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The website allows students, researchers, and digital tourists to uncover hidden stories, hear forgotten voices, and understand the often wrenching choices that the construction and preservation of a scenic parkway in a populated region have necessarily entailed.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jan 22, 2012 -
4 comments
Júzcar is a little Spanish village that voted to stay blue, but their buildings weren't always that hue. In fact, if you view the
Google maps, you'll see the traditional whitewashed walls, as you'd expect for one of the (former)
White Towns of Andalusia. It happened in advance of
Global Smurfs Day, to celebrate the birthday of
Peyo (25 June 1928 – 24 December 1992), the Belgian creator of the Smurfs comics. The town was chosen by Sony as
the site for the international debut of its new Smurfs movie, who offered to pay for the town to become temporarily blue.
The citizens unanimously voted to accept the offer. In September,
the 221 residents voted to keep the town blue, as the media coverage was huge, and tourism was boosted from 300 summer tourists to thousands.
More photos.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 12, 2012 -
21 comments
Nothing to do this coming week? Head over to
Galax, Virginia to catch the
Old Fiddler's Convention, a mountain music festival & competition that has been ongoing since 1935.
Galax, located on Virigina's
Crooked Road is in the heart of Virginia's musical heritage trail, a
well mapped excursion that takes you way off the interstate's beaten path to experience old time Appalachian music in some of the most beautiful settings in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
If you take the trail outside Galax, make sure you stop at the
Floyd Country Store for daily (and nightly) jams inside the store, much like the Fiddler's convention's campgrounds' awesome
impromptu jams
posted by priested
on Aug 6, 2011 -
14 comments
"Isarithmic maps are essentially topographic or contour maps, wherein a third variable is represented in two dimensions by color, or by contour lines, indicating gradations. I had never seen such a map depicting political data — certainly not election returns, and
thus sought to create them".
posted by nomadicink
on Nov 22, 2010 -
20 comments
The average human eye has three types of cone cells, each of which is sensitive to a different wavelength range of visible light. The difference in the relative signal from the three cones allows us to distinguish colors. Unfortunately, since these sensitivity ranges overlap, there are some combinations of signals from the cones that can't be created by light emitted from a real object. These are the so-called "
imaginary colors". However, by
selectively overstimulating one or more types of cone, we can still perceive these colors; this is the principle behind the
Eclipse of Titan, an optical illusion which produces both a green and a cyan that don't otherwise appear in nature. (Similar effects can be seen in the Eclipses of
Mars,
Neptune, and
Triton.)
[more inside]
posted by Upton O'Good
on May 10, 2010 -
64 comments
The story starts in 1992 or so, when the 14 year old Brit,
Dominic Stanton, bought turntables and started spinning early drum'n'bass. He transitioned from DJ to producer, made demo tracks, and got signed by age 17. He went on to produce broken beat
* and jazzy downtempo
*, even into the realm of disco edits. Then about two weeks ago, the 31 year old musician called it quits.
The point is that I am no longer Domu. He is a character, always has been, and as of Friday 13th November 2009, he no longer exists. Neither does Umod, Sonar Circle, Bakura, Yotoko, Rima, Zoltar, Blue Monkeys, Realside or any of the other names I put out music under. I am cancelling all my gigs and not taking any more. My hotmail is closed, my Twitter is closed and my Facebook is closed.
Furthermore, his website is closed and the original post of his farewell message is lost, though you can still
view the cached version or find it
copied elsewhere. Domu's website now simply states
This really is The End . . . Step inside for an abbreviated journey.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Nov 30, 2009 -
46 comments
Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have been testing the possibility that a blue food dye found in Gatorade and blue M&Ms could assist in healing spinal cord injuries, and oh who cares
OMG blue rats look!
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Jul 29, 2009 -
51 comments
As jazz fans know, fifty years ago on March 2, 1959,
Miles Davis, Bill Evans,
John Coltrane,
Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb met at the Columbia 30th Street Studios in NYC for the first session of Miles new album,
Kind of Blue. (Link goes to the 50th anniversary collector's box set edition page at amazon.) It was the touchstone for many other future recordings bearing its mighty influence and it fostered several high profile careers, and a new modal sound for jazz.
Kind of Blue went on to be
certified platinum, selling 4 million records, the most ever for a jazz album. Bill Evans had left the band in late 1958, but was called back by Miles for the sessions, which included his new pianist Wynton Kelly on one track only,
Freddie Freeloader. The tunes they did that day,
"So What",
"Blue in Green" (written by Evans, though credited to Miles) and "Freeloader" all became standards as did "All Blues" from the April session. Documentaries and entire books have been written on this one album alone. The phenomenon lives on. (
previously on AskMeFi, but just on Trane and Miles.)
posted by Seekerofsplendor
on Mar 3, 2009 -
71 comments
Pink is
still the colour where little girls are concerned, no matter where they grow up - some think propensity for pink is
hardwired into girls. For a stark depiction of how many pink things a five-year-old could possibly own, a Korean photographer
photographed boys and girls with their possessions arranged according to colour.
posted by mippy
on Jan 8, 2009 -
116 comments
"What is the sound of color? We asked that question of 5 musicians. We assigned each musician a different color. They wrote 5 tracks. We gave the colors and tracks that inspired them to 5 directors."
The Sound of Color contains the songs and videos that were created. The site and free downloads are only available through March 15.
(Via Carolina Vigna-Marú) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive
on Feb 18, 2008 -
23 comments
Shaq's Blue Ridge Thunder blunder just raided and attempted to ruin a Virginia farmer's life based on a "mistaken computer IP address". No mention has been made so far in the press beyond
a newspaper of the town closest to the mistaken raid.
Blue Ridge Blunder and SHAQ ATTACK.
"On Saturday morning, Sept. 23, 2006, many police vehicles appeared in our driveway. Men in black with flak jackets ran to and around our house. My wife was at home alone. I drove up and asked, “What's going on?”
Men ran at me, dropped into shooting position, double-handed semi-automatic pistols pointed at me, and made me put my hands against my truck.
I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted, and led into the house. I had no idea what this was about. I was scared beyond description. I feared there had been a murder and I was a suspect.
My wife and I were interrogated about Internet crime. We are not avid computer users; we do not even e-mail. We knew nothing of what they were speaking.
After seemingly convincing them of our computer “illiteracy,” we were questioned about our children and made to doubt their innocence.
Our home was searched by a para-military search-and-seizure team.
Our computers, digital camera, disposable cameras, DVD's, and VHS tapes were seized.
We were held in our home under guard for five hours.
Our children came home and were also interrogated.
It was awful. We were accused of horrible crimes, crimes that even the mention of would ruin our reputations.
posted by unpoppy
on Oct 20, 2006 -
104 comments
Martin and Elizabeth set up housekeeping on the banks of Troublesome and began a family. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue.
For those unfamiliar with the story of Martin Fugate & his descendents, the 1982 article from Science magazine entitled "
The Blue People of Troublesome Creek" is a fascinating read; a recessive gene & decades of inbreeding lead to a clan of Kentucky hill folk with deep blue skin from head to toe.
posted by jonson
on Jul 10, 2006 -
57 comments
Black , the final entry in Adidas'
Adicolor short film campaign., is seriously messed up, with a fish and a panda playing russian roulette. Also featuring Pink, Red, Blue, White, and Yellow. (
via)
posted by blue_beetle
on May 12, 2006 -
25 comments
He liked blue. In fact, he patented his own
blue. He like to claim that he could
fly unaided. There was a
movie. In it, he colored naked women blue and had them make a
painting. The film treated this comically, and he was crushed. Two weeks after the film opened, he died of a heart attack.
posted by Astro Zombie
on Feb 10, 2006 -
23 comments
"Israeli technology firm Blue Security has set up a scheme to
batter spam websites with thousands of complaints. The plan is to fill order forms...offering pills, porn and penile health tonics with complaints about the products advertised for sale in junk messages."
I signed up.
posted by JPowers
on Jul 23, 2005 -
27 comments
It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968,
Jane Elliott, a
elementary school teacher in
Riceville,
Iowa, conducted her
Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise with her students, dividing them by eye color to ilustrate prejudice and racism. Since retiring from teaching in the early 1980s she's repeated the exercise for adults in corporations, at colleges, and
on Oprah.
PBS's 1985 documentary
A Class Divided is
viewable online [Real and Windows Media], as are parts of the 2002 documentary
Australian Eye [QuickTime and Windows Media]; both feature
participants' reactions. (Related:
different reflections by a participants in similar exercises; and
a program evaluation and
transcript of the exercise.)
Ms. Elliott
recently said, "What is distressing is that I get the same results today with adults that I got using the exercise with children in 1968."
posted by kirkaracha
on Jun 13, 2005 -
64 comments
Blue man runs for Senate Stan Jones, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana suffers from
argyria, a condition in which the skin becomes stained a permanent shade of blue. How do you come down with it? You drink lots of
colloidal silver. Jones started mixing his own shortly before Y2K to help boost his immune system in the antibiotic-short apocolypse he was sure was coming. No word if he is now engaged in
weird behavior involving metal tubes.
posted by agaffin
on Oct 3, 2002 -
27 comments
