March 2013 Archives
March 31
It Is Accomplished: Peter Gabriel's 'Passion', live
The Francesco Albano Open Ensemble performs selections from Peter Gabriel's Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ [All Music/Discogs] at Castel dell'Ovo, a 6th-century seaside castle in Naples Italy. Track list and instrumentation inside. [more inside]
the squidgy 1.5kg lump of pink stuff in our heads
NeuroBollocks: Debunking pseudo-neuroscience so you don't have to.
New Fire
The Great Vigil of Easter is traditionally regarded as the most important celebration of the Christian liturgical year. However, it is a bit obscure due to the fact that it takes place at five o’clock in the morning. Traditions for celebrating the occasion vary wildly; many Christians in Egypt prayed in two dead languages: Koine Greek and Coptic. The Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican Church in Canada borrows from a wide range of traditions, and so the way they celebrate the day gives a good sample of what tradition-junkie Christians were doing this morning. [more inside]
The Darwin-Hooker Letters
The Cambridge University Library houses the world's largest collection of Charles Darwin's letters: more than 9,000 of the 15,000 letters he is known to have written and received in his lifetime. They've been posting them online since 2007 (previously on MeFi), in the Darwin Correspondence Project, where we can now read and search the full texts of more than 7,500 letters, and find information on 7,500 more -- all for free. This weekend, they added nearly all of the Darwin-Hooker letters: Over 1400 pieces of correspondence between Darwin and his closest friend, botanist Joseph Hooker. [more inside]
Dueling saxophones underground
Sax battle on the NYC subway [slyt].
Blocky
Low-poly art is an aesthetic in 3D modeling that works with intentionally limited resources to emulate the look of first generation three dimensional gaming, and also a response to the increasing role of mobile and web platforms as 3D game spaces (some more examples can be found in this thread). A great example of this technique is game designer and 3D artist Invader Ace. Their Tumblr has character designs, game mock-ups, and small vignette scenes. A full portfolio can be found at their website, here. [more inside]
up close & personal
Polaroid Portrait Mosaics by Italian photographer Maurizio Galimberti offer intimate and compelling views of his subjects. How it's done: a portrait of Chuck Close, another portrait artist.
"it seems unnatural to look at a color and think of it in terms ... RGB"
Color Spaces:
It has been known for some time that colors can be described by three numbers. If I show you light of a certain color and ask you to match it by combining lights of three other colors and varying their intensities, you'll typically be able to find a combination that looks indistinguishable. But the wavelengths you combine might be very different from the wavelengths I showed you. Light of the wavelength corresponding to yellow and light of the right combination of red and green wavelengths will look the same, even though they are physically quite different.[more inside]
First, the tried to make moons
Early in the 19th century, gas lamps first illuminated city streets, not long after the potential for gas lighting was publicly demonstrated. Less than a century later, electricity was seen as the future of lighting public spaces, thanks in part to technology that was demonstrated around the time of gas lighting. Arc lamps, the predecessor to filament bulbs, were much too bright for lighting homes and businesses, but a single arc lamp could light a whole town. [more inside]
Bitcoin The Concert
Listen To Bitcoin in realtime (Chrome and Firefox 19+).
MAYBE I'LL GO EAT THESE LEAVES
SNAIL! A snail-based parody of the ubiquitous AWOLNATION song "Sail".
Benny Andersson and the organ with 9000 pipes
Benny Andersson & orgeln med 9000 pipor (58m, in Swedish, English, German, no subtitles that aren't from the Swedish TV source) presents the newly-built Organ Acusticum in the Studio Acusticum concert hall to Swedish television audiences. Performances include ABBA's Dancing Queen (with Benny on piano accompanied by the organ) and the premier of Benny's new composition specifically for this event En skrift i snön performed with Orsa Spelmän and choir. Lyrics can be found here (scroll down, Google Translate of lyrics).
Shake Shake Shake
Fixing E.T. / Rehabilitating E.T.
We all know that E.T. for the Atari 2600 was a terrible no-good awful game (previously, previously-er). But could it be that our received wisdom about the cartridge is just wrong?
Yeah, probably not ... But to be fair, follow this in-depth guide to hacking the ET ROM and you, too, can transform the game into something far more play-worthy (and don't worry, you can still turn ET into its ninja form).
Some People Live in Treehouses
...others live in terraced houses. A very Radio 4 imagining of the diamond age. Part of the open air series (iteself part of the Artangel 'Open' initiative). The other episodes.
this is ourselves: under pressure
It's the terror of knowing /
What the world is about /
Watching some good friends /
Screaming 'Let me out' /
Pray tomorrow gets me higher /
Pressure on people / People on streets / Day day de mm hm...
Thanks, Obama.
A series of GIFs captures the difficult lives of people in infomercials.
When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men
How to write about scientists who happen to be women
The New York Times has faced criticism after an obituary of Yvonne Brill, rocket scientist, opened with "She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said." [more inside]
Connect to ┓┏ 凵 =╱⊿┌┬┐
How to make a Doctor Who "Bells of St. John"-style wifi name, from the BBC America Doctor Who Tumblr. (No spoilers in the article, inevitably spoilers in the comments.)
Her work was complete
In 1933 political activist and champion for sexual freedom Aurora Rodriguez killed her Utopian 'project' and brilliant young daughter Hildegart. The Red Virgin is a short film about Hildegart by Sheila Pye. (all films somewhat NSFW) [more inside]
So much talk of the god-shaped hole
"Most of us are introduced to God at about the same time as we hear about Santa Claus, but over the years our views of Santa mature and change, while our notion of God often gets stuck at an infantile level."
The NewStatesman asks "After God: What can atheists learn from believers?"
The NewStatesman asks "After God: What can atheists learn from believers?"
Bunny Bounced
The true secret of Easter - but are toys replacing candy (or, more awfully, live animals) as the traditional Easter gift? And is that a bad thing?
Street Hijab Fashion
"Just want to share the muslim fashionistas in the world. Who says women with hijab are not fashionable?" [SLTumblr]
“seeing is inescapably tied to scarring,"
STREET OF THE IRON PO(E)T, A Paris Diary by Henri Cole: "Today I visited the cenotaph to Baudelaire..." Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Dangerous Work
As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester: “The federal budget for protecting workers is less than half of that set aside for protecting fish and wildlife.″ [more inside]
March 30
DEA Trap
Let's big dance!
Addio a Enzo Jannacci
Enzo Jannacci, a father of Italian rock and roll, jazz musician, actor, writer, comedian, and doctor had a 50+ year career in Italy. He died yesterday of cancer at the age of 77. His biggest hit song, 1968's Ho Vista un Re (I Saw a King), written by the 1997 Nobel Prize winner for Literature Dario Fo and Eugenio Esposito, was banned on RAI TV and radio, due to its subversive lyrics. Jannacci performed and worked until illness forced his retirement in 2011, though still beloved by Italians of all ages.
There is some conundrum in there which no amount of science can answer
But as whisky scientists point out, it’s not really like that. Water has no influence on malt whisky flavour; barley can come from anywhere, provided that it delivers satisfactory spirit yield; and, in many cases, the newly made spirit is taken by tanker from its beautiful, peaceful, lonely distillery surroundings within a couple of weeks of distillation. It’s then aged in uglier, less peaceful but more logistically sensible locations in central Scotland.Flavour in malt whisky is attributable to the malt specification, to brewing and distilling practices and to wood-ageing regimes [more inside]
“Thinking about science leads to [endorsing] more stringent moral norms”
Christine Ma-Kellams and Jim Blascovich. Does “Science” Make You Moral? The Effects of Priming Science on Moral Judgments and Behavior. PLOS One, 6 March 2013. (Salon) [more inside]
"I thought I was the only gay person in the world for a long time."
The county where no one's gay. The 2010 Census of Franklin County Mississippi shows no same sex couples. (pdf). CNN videographer Brandon Ancil and human rights columnist John D. Sutter tried to determine if the census was wrong, and see if they could find gay men and women willing to speak about "what keeps them hidden." Video
A town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes
The fabled Dr. Hans Sachs Poster Collection
...is universally described as being the most significant collection of its type in existence (scroll down). About 4500 posters from a collection of around 12500 were recovered from Germany recently and auctioned (view here) during three sessions in NYC. Day 2 and Day 3 of the auctions for more Plakatstil.
Nas' Illmatic, redone by Funky DL as Jazzmatic
British hip-hop producer/rapper Funky DL has a freebie for you: Jazzmatic, Nas' Illmatic redone as a jazz album from the late 1930s.
I ate one roach and made a lot of money
"Avengers Assimilate"
"All of which is admirable, but that's not actually the speech Havok gave. Havok's speech makes a huge leap from, "my minority identity doesn't define me" to a rejection of minority identity. Havok is a mutant, but he says the word is divisive and that it represents everything he hates. He asks people not to use it. He is, definitively and explicitly, self-loathing about his identity." -- Comics Alliance's Andrew Wheeler talks about the identity politics in the new Marvel comic Uncanny Avengers.
[more inside]
There was a dead cockroach in my gin and tonic.
Trip Avisaargh - a tumblr collection of links the best (worst?) and most memorable reviews on the travel site Trip Advisor. Sales Pitches! Statues! Manager responses! (more!) It can't get worse! Mr. Toilet House! Bonny Old London! Palaces!
They say if you look into its eyes, you can see hell itself
Harriet the Spy, Queer Hero
"Reading Harriet the Spy today as an adult, I find a queer subtext throughout. Not only is Harriet the quintessential baby butch, but her best friends, Sport and Janie, run exactly contrary to gender stereotypes. Sport acts as the homemaker and nurturing caretaker of his novelist father, while Janie the scientist plans to blow up the world one day. It was as if Fitzhugh was telling us kids back in the sixties that you didn’t have to play by society’s rules, the first lesson a queer kid has to learn in order to be happy."
What does it mean to create a new work of art in the digital age?
Judge Rules William Eggleston Can Clone His Own Work, Rebuffing Angry Collector. The U.S. District Court has dismissed collector Jonathan Sobel’s lawsuit (PDF) against photographer William Eggleston. The collector objected to Eggleston's selling new, larger-format editions of the famous dye-transfer images that the artist first produced in the 1970s and early 1980s.
CrimERRR!
VOISEOVER: In a Citey wher thers Somuchcrimes , theDetetcive is onthe Case... DETETCIVE: Stop crimeing! VOISEOVER: But Oneproblam... Crimer! (Single link Twitter feed.)
Human astrocytes injected into mice improve learning.
As reported at SingularityHUB human astrocytes were engrafted into neonatal mice. The study found that the human glial cells which were once thought of as filler cells for the brain "differentially enhance both activity-dependent plasticity and learning in mice."
The One Woman Screwing Up North Dakota’s Plan to End Abortion
As the only abortion-performing clinic in North Dakota, Red River is the main target [of North Dakota anti-choice legislative efforts]. An average of 25 abortions take place here each Wednesday. That’s why [Tammi] Kromenaker has found herself the focal point of the national debate this week, the latest target amongst a host of state-by-state attempts to do away with a woman’s right to choose.
March 29
Keep shouting at the devil, kid.
Eagle-Hawk Death Match in New Jersey
Stanford Team creates biological "transistor" inside a living cell.
Have created "logic gates" they call “Boolean Integrase Logic,” or “BIL gates” for short. Original article in Science.
This is same team that created DNA storage and what they are calling a "biological Internet" before.
Pay phone time machine
Recalling 1993 lets you "Step back twenty years into New York City's past. Call from any NYC pay phone to hear what was happening on that block in 1993." Other notable public history projects include the History Pin app and Shimon Attie's installations in Berlin and Rome.
Aesthetics and Neuroscience
Rational reductionist approaches to the neural basis for beauty run a similar risk of pushing the round block of beauty into the square hole of science and may well distill out the very thing one wants to understand.An essay by Bevil Conway and Alexander Rehding in PLoS Biology. (via)
Scenes from Renaldo and Somebody or Other
Nearly one hundred and ten out of at least two hundred and ninety two minutes of Renaldo and Somebody or Other... [more inside]
This is about Reflection
Walmart news of the week
Wal-Mart doesn’t have enough bodies to restock the shelves, and in not-unrelated news, is considering a radical plan to have store customers deliver packages to online buyers.
I Took That Punch as a Man
23-year-old Garrett Holeve is an aspiring MMA fighter from Cooper City, Florida, just north of Miami. He trains six days a week, and has fought in amateur exhibition matches. He also has Down syndrome. This is his story [more inside]
Meiecundimeesükskorsakovläkseilelätti
The most insane Eurovision contest performance you'll ever see, courtesy of Winny Puhh with their song Meiecundimees üks Korsakov läks eile Lätti. [more inside]
NAPALM DEATH THREATEN DESTRUCTION OF FAMED BRITISH MUSEUM; GIG CANCELED
Seminal UK grind outfit Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum in collaboration with an experimental ceramics resident. This performance was to "...be amplified 'through an experimental sculptural sound system' made by ceramic artist Keith Harrison. In a lingering, two-fingered salute to safety concerns, the press release explains that ceramic tile sculpture 'will potentially disintegrate as the performance progresses'." [more inside]
GM accidentally leaks cat powered SUV prototype
Operation Kitty Rescue. That is all.
Why Austin?
So this is what it's like to be eaten by a plant
How would you like to go on a mindbending 3D journey into the devouring maws of four different carnivorous plants? [more inside]
Central Station
The Smell of Orange Groves. This short story by Lavie Tidhar (author of Osama: A Novel) is part of his Central Station story cycle, taking place in or around Tel Aviv’s Central Station neighborhood sometime in the future. [more inside]
Dodgson, Dodgson, we've got Dodgson here!
In anticipation of next week's 20th anniversary release of Jurassic Park 3D, Vulture rates the Jurassic Park dinosaurs, from worst to first.
Swiper no swiping?
The Story of Christoph Niemann's Petting Zoo App, an illustrated article from The New Yorker. "I had this idea of making a simple line drawing that one could naturally manipulate by touching and swiping. How hard could that be?"
This is some chill and low-key music that you might enjoy!
Circlesquare is a band that I like. They have kind of a post-punk meets dance music feel to them, and if you like those things you might like them too. I like their songs Hey You Guys, Dancers, and Timely. The man behind the music, Jeremy Shaw, does some interesting art projects, like "DMT", "7 Minutes", and "Representative Measurements", which his site won't let me link. He did an interview with Interview Magazine.
A Fantasy Fantasy Baseball Draft
A collection of baseball writers have gotten together for a different kind of fantasy draft. All the players are fictional, although some players are more fictional than others. [more inside]
More bad news from the Government.
You know, Stingrays killed the Crocodile Hunter... During the case of United States v. Rigmaiden it was revealed that the DOJ had been using Stingray cell phone trackers concealed in other warrants/without explicit warrants. [more inside]
"Kiss me, my fool!"
The Most Wicked Face Of Theda Bara
Bara’s extravagant image was the source of her fame, but it likewise shackled her to a very specific set of behaviors — and ways of appearing in public and on the screen. And like all star images, its potency, and its particular social resonance, faded with time. By 1920, Bara’s career was effectively over, and today, only one of her major films remains intact. But for a brief moment in cinematic history, her image functioned as a volatile conduit for displaced female desire. Bara’s image was the immaculate conflation of sex and evil, and in an era still governed by rigid codes of moral, spiritual, and social behavior, it was absolutely irresistible.[more inside]
Shake it off
It’s Good Friday, so you know what that means: Better take to the Food Lion parking lot to practice your sweet nunchuck skills so you can whoop the devil on Easter Sunday when the Lord Jesus rises again.
Socrates (In the Form of a Nine Year Old)
When he rang the doorbell, Zia hadn't planned to step inside. He was there to pick up his fiancee who was babysitting, but she couldn't leave (the parents were running late) so Zia agreed to hang out for a bit. His fiancee said, "Let me introduce you to the kids" — the 2-year-old girl, the 7-year-old boy and, most important, squatting, with no shoes on, surrounded by ants on the back patio, the oldest — the 9-year-old — the one he would make world-famous on YouTube.
This is the boy he now calls "The Philosopher."
This is the boy he now calls "The Philosopher."
“He’s just like a noble lion that does not bite.”
The last King of Rwanda, Kigeli V Ndahindurwa, lives on public assistance in low-income housing, at a dead end between US Route 66 and State Route 655 in Oakton, Virginia. 'He ruled Rwanda for just nine months in the 1960's before fleeing a revolt and has spent the last half century in exile, powerless to stop the violence that ripped through his country. He is 76 years old now, his tottering seven-foot-two-inch frame stooped by age and the vagaries of fate.'
Obviously, Your Lord is the Fire Breathing Kraken.
Aspiring Evil Overlord? Looking for a throne that suitably demonstrates your particular brand of madness? Or how about some weapons for your minions that instantly evoke fear and can't possibly go terribly wrong? I'm here to help. [via]
Eye candy, if you insist on calling it that
=^..^=
Inky paw prints have been discovered in a 15th century manuscript. [National Geographic] [Picture#1] [Picture #2] [Interactive] [more inside]
Joe versus the wilderness
“I never attacked anyone weak."
Cult writer Renata Adler, whose novel Speedboat has been reissued by NYRB Classics, sits down for an interview with The Believer. [more inside]
"I'm 31 and I can't go to haunted houses."
"'It Sucked': Legends of the Hidden Temple, as remembered by a former contestant." A follow-up to an article we talked about previously.
The card that proves frogs and bees are total bullies
Coming Back from a 1-5-3 Put Out
On April 3rd, MLB pitcher Brandon McCarthy (wikipedia, twitter) will take the mound for his first regular season start as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks. It will also be the first regular season game he plays in since taking a line drive off the head last September. Buzzfeed contributor Michael J. Mooney profiles McCarthy.
Blade Runner - The Film Noir cut
Blade Runner redone as a sixty seconds long 1940ties film noir, created by Philip Askins. Winner of the "Done in sixty seconds" 2013 Empire Film Awards.
A possible souce for the "fairy circles" in Africa
In temperate climates, "fairy rings" appear in grassy meadows and lawns, and these are caused by fungi, with some rings expanding for hundreds of years. But in the western part of Southern Africa, there are a different sort of "fairy circles," barren circles that are surrounded by long-lived perennial grasses. The Himba people, an ethnic group in northern Namibia, attribute them to original ancestor, Mukuru, or consider them "footprints of the gods," and scientists have been stumped for decades. Professor Norbert Jürgens, from the University of Hamburg, might have finally solved the riddle: a species of termites that are most active at night and don't build big, noticeable nests, have engineered the ecosystem by eating the roots of grasses that grow within the circle, keeping the soil moist for long periods of time. The discussion continues, as some scientists who have studied the phenomena aren't so sure about the theory.
The Guardian's global page.
The Guardian's global page. Everything published on the newspaper's website each day in one long unfiltered list. Also useful, The New York Times Wire.
From NPR News, it was the talk of the nation.
Talk of the Nation, NPR's beloved afternoon call-in show, is going off the air at the end of July, replaced by Here and Now, which is jointly produced by NPR and WBUR. NPR is running a $7 million deficit, but the organization says it is responding to demand for "a stronger news presence in the middle of the day". Host Neal Conan will leave the organization after 30 years. Science Friday will continue.
Vernon Dursley, RIP
Richard Griffiths, star of stage and screen, perhaps globally best known for his role as Harry Potter's ill-willed uncle, has died at the age of 65 due to complications from heart surgery. [more inside]
Reflecting on coming out
Last month, Robbie Rogers came out and announced he'd left football. In an interview with the Guardian, he reflects on coming out in professional football. [more inside]
The best of the web - that'll be $30, please
It was a very exciting time when the Chalk River plant melted down.
They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. On December 12, 1952 some 200 km upstream from Ottawa, Canada the NRX research reactor at Chalk River Laboratories suffered a partial meltdown. The reactor underwent a violent power excursion that destroyed the core of the reactor, causing some fuel melting. Unaccountably, the shut-off rods failed to fully descend into the core. A series of hydrogen gas explosions (or steam explosions) hurled the four-ton gasholder dome four feet through the air where it jammed in the superstructure. Millions of liters of highly radioactive water flooded the building.
A young U.S. Navy lieutenant by the name of James Earle Carter, Jr. was sent to assist in the damage control. As chief engineering office for the nuclear propulsion system being designed for the USS Seawolf (SSN 575) Carter, located in Schenectady, New York was the most qualified and closest member of the U.S. military at the time. "And one of the few people in the world with clearance to go into a nuclear power plant," as he remarked later. [more inside]
Paul Williams, RIP
You bring me ukeleles
For early Man, life itself was a gamble
March 28
Sound Of The Underground.
Jungle Fever, a 1994 Documentary from Canal+ on the origins of Drum & Bass with some live footage, and interviews with MC's, DJs and producers. It's en Français, but most of the interviews are in English.
Military test(e)s
Because we all need to dream a little
one surrealist a day.
Old and New Surrealist Art with occasional photography and poetry. Complete with search function.
As an extra a sampling of French surrealist poetry in translation. There are also some short films on Vimeo.
Old and New Surrealist Art with occasional photography and poetry. Complete with search function.
As an extra a sampling of French surrealist poetry in translation. There are also some short films on Vimeo.
Amazon buys Goodreads
The social book site Goodreads has been acquired by Amazon. Many members are upset and uncertain what this means for site which has relied on members to do the work of building and maintaining their database. Amazon already owns Shelfari and has a 40% stake in LibraryThing, two competing sites.
How a Live Nation Deal Cornered Justin Timberlake
Can ya dig? I know you can.
What can you do when the tanker's on fire?
Footage taken by Channel Nine cameraman Richard Moran during a ride through the fires with A.C.T. Fire Brigade District Officer Darrell Thornthwaite and the crew of Bravo 3. A 45 minute video that shows the careful preparation and the heroic, futile response of one fire brigade to an Australian brushfire of immense magnitude bearing down on a suburban community. Literally hell on earth.
"generations of killer ink"
Bristol Tattoo Club & the Skuse Family - Awesome vintage photos from the studio of legendary Champion Tattoo Artist of all England, Les Skuse, who opened shop in 1928 and founded the Bristol Tattoo Club. After his death in 1973, son Danny ran the business and son Bill had his own shop. See Bill and his celebrated wife Rusty in Famous Couples in Tattoo History. Grandson Jimmie Skuse runs the Les Skuse Tattoo Studio today.
Tied to the 90s
What can we really tell about these tracks’ place in a world where the common consensus has airbrushed the Outhere Brothers and Robson & Jerome into a parallel world?
Track one: Parklife by Blur. Track two: Cigarettes and Alcohol by Oasis. So began Polygram's series of Shine compilations, ten double CDs issued between April 1995 and August 1998 - an imperfect document of a timeframe that includes a battle for number one making the news bulletins, and Jarvis Cocker invading Michael Jackson's Brit performance.
The Shine Years, by Simon Sweeping The Nation, is recapping the Shine compilation albums chronologically, track by track.
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
Men and Cats
The real story of the “Harlem Shake”
How memes are orchestrated by companies for profit (Harlem Shake made it to mefi on Feb 7, eight days after its origin. Another related post.)
"450,000 handwritten words recounting his innermost thoughts and fears"
Actor Richard Burton's diaries were published last fall, and are reviewed: Richard Burton Was A Great Writer, Richard Burton's Notes To A Modern Journaler, The Great Actor Who Hated Acting, For Love Of Lit And Liz [more inside]
Is RealTouch the future of male masturbation?
"It strikes me, as I look down at the Realtouch device nuzzling my crotch like a baby goat sucking on a bottle, that I'm now effectively masturbating professionally."
Loz Blain "road-tests" the male sex aid of the future, today.
Leonardo da Vinci. Vincent Van Gogh. Pablo Picasso. Oliver, Age 24.
Oliver is 24 and he wants to teach you how to draw really good. Draw Voltorb! Draw Shrek! Draw Harry Potter! Draw the Mona Lisa (it's harder than you think!)! He will also teach you how to music really good if you like music, like dubstep! His friend Neef keeps trying to draw and music too, but no way is Neef as good at drawing and music as Oliver is!
AMBUSH!
Cat Assassin [slyt | cute]
He's been everywhere, man.
Gunnar Garfors is on a mission to travel to all 198* countries in the world. As of today, he's at 196. [more inside]
(ಠ益ಠ)
"somebody took the time to make a doll in your likeness"
Black Is Beautiful: Why Black Dolls Matter discusses the history and importance of black dolls. Resources referenced in the article include the Black Doll Collecting blog, The National Black Doll Museum of History and Culture, The Philadelphia Doll Museum, and the trailer for the documentary film "Why Do You Have Black Dolls?"
Recolouring the Dark Knight
Batman: Year One recoloured, from original art to colour guide and final artwork as compared to the original comic.
Just Switch the Pronouns
Evolution: Maybe It's Not Just for the Fittest Anymore
Is it time to put natural selection in its place? Jello Biafra once famously wrote that "If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve." But while it likely comes as no surprise to specialists working in the field or to those who've been following developments in evolutionary biology closely, there's an emerging view among experts that Darwin's view of natural selection as the primary driver of speciation and evolutionary change may be incorrect or at least drastically overstated. It's long been understood that non-adaptive evolutionary mechanisms like "genetic drift" and random mutation also play non-trivial roles in evolutionary processes, but a recent study (link to abstract with full-text PDF available) casts new doubts on the primary role of natural selection, finding that "Neutral models, in which genetic change arises through random variation without fitness differences have proven remarkably successful in describing observed patterns of biodiversity." [more inside]
Are you a giver, a matcher or a taker?
Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead? [Adam] Grant, 31, is the youngest-tenured and highest-rated professor at Wharton....
Grant might not seem so different from any number of accessible and devoted professors on any number of campuses, and yet when you witness over time the sheer volume of Grant’s commitments, and the way in which he is able to follow through on all of them, you start to sense that something profoundly different is at work. Helpfulness is Grant’s credo.... For Grant, helping is not the enemy of productivity, a time-sapping diversion from the actual work at hand; it is the mother lode, the motivator that spurs increased productivity and creativity. In some sense, he has built a career in professional motivation by trying to unpack the puzzle of his own success. He has always helped; he has always been productive. How, he has wondered for most of his professional life, does the interplay of those two factors work for everyone else?
[more inside]
"Most of the big chains are trying video analytics"
How stores spy on you: Many retailers are snooping more than ever Gaze trackers are hidden in tiny holes in the shelving and detect which brands you’re looking at and how long for each. There are even mannequins whose eyes are cameras...Cisco is testing a system [that] automatically detects your mobile device and connects you to the retailer’s free Wi-Fi network. "Once the customer gets on the network, he has opted in, and the privacy concerns are allayed..." [via] [more inside]
The moment has been prepared for.
Something is coming. Not Winter (well, yes, that), but the new half-series of Doctor Who. Here's the prequel to this weekend's episode: The Bells of St Johns.
And here's what you really want: Madame Vastra, Jenny 'n' Strax The Sontaran in: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To London, Boy. [more inside]
Death of an Inspector
What Ali Wore (SLT)
What Ali Wore A delightful single subject tumblr.
Robert Lustig girds for war.
Everyone's favourite shit-disturbing pediatric endocrinologist recently became a published author of popular science. He's not doing it for money, and given the upturned noses of some of his brethren, probably not for love, either. The parade of overweight kids passing through his clinic at UCSF's Benioff Children's keeps getting longer, and the man is angry. So angry, he's going to law school to help quarterback the fight against the processed food industry himself. Previously.
Slender: The Arrival
Last year, a free indie horror game called Slender, previously, based on the Slender Man meme (previously), became moderately famous for being terrifying despite its simplicity. Now, its creator has teamed up with the writers behind Marble Hornets video series (previously, previouslier) to create the sequel. Slender: The Arrival is available for PC and Mac for $10, and promises a much bigger and more varied environment with better and scarier graphics, and an actual storyline that will take an average player "a few hours" to complete. There's a teaser trailer showing off the moody new environments.
More Brown Than A Modern Shooter
March 27
Kamehameha!
Kotaku has an article about the latest Japanese schoolgirl trend: fake martial arts attacks à la Dragon Ball. The spoofed Kamehameha attacks aren't new, but the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras makes for some hilarious shots. Previously on Kotaku.
2yo boy picks lock to sister's room in the night, steals her toys
Her parents were skeptical that her two year old sibling could really be doing this, so they set up a webcam to see what really happened in the night. Here's the proof. More details at the local news site - the girl locked her own door to try and keep her brother out, and he's using a pair of nail clippers to pick the lock.
CS in VN
Kids In Vietnam Are Crazy Good At Programming - '11th graders in Vietnam are so good at programming that they could easily pass an interview at Google' (via)
hitRECordTV
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (previously) and his collaborative production company, hitRECord (previously), are making a television show and they want your help.
A fascinating craft. The story of the last glass eye maker in Britain.
The last of the glass eye makers | Losing an eye through illness or accident can devastate a person's life. A "glass" eye can help some people come to terms with it | Audio: Jost Haas is the last glass eye maker left in Britain, and he is close to retirement. He comes from Germany, where glass eye technology was perfected nearly 200 years ago. [more inside]
"I read the fucking books!"
Season three of HBO's acclaimed Game of Thrones series is about to begin, and these nerd-bros aren't happy about it (YT). [more inside]
This Is Working
"Twelve years ago, Portugal eliminated criminal penalties for drug users. Since then, those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine or heroin go unindicted and possession is a misdemeanor on par with illegal parking. Experts are pleased with the results." [more inside]
"Our city is under siege right now."
The Chicago Public School system has announced it will close 54 elementary and middle schools before next year. [more inside]
Death is always a mistake
In my experience, news like this is best served with pie.
Queer Wars: Return to Prop 8
"The largest DDoS attack that we have witnessed"
A hosting company's attack on the premier anti-spam watchdog has grown so huge that it threatens to slow down the Internet at large. [more inside]
If ever a thread needed an [IMG] tag...
The Battle We Didn't Choose
The Battle We Didn't Choose. Some photographs. It's a little bit heart breaking.
O v. ⱭD
Lose cash now! Ask me how!
Income At Home, Herbalife, and the $8 billion pyramid. Exposing the iconic brand behind Scamworld’s most visible ‘biz opp’. [Previously 1, 2]
Ayn Contra Tau
We're Going To Have To Find Out How To Deal With Lots Of Idle Hands
The Forces Of The Next 30 Years - SF author and Mefi's Own Charles Stross talks to students at Olin College about sci-fi, fiction, speculation, the limits of computation, thermodynamics, Moore's Law, the history of travel, employment, automation, free trade, demographics, the developing world, privacy, and climate change in trying to answer the question What Does The World Of 2043 Look Like? (Youtube 56:43)
Marx's Revenge
Sightseer Americanus in its natural habitat
You've probably seen Woman with Scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park. But you may not have realized it's just the most famous image of the entire Sightseer Series, created by photographer Roger Minick over more than 30 years.
Mass Hysteria
Backlash against Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In"
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's new book Lean In aims at women to address what is holding them back from leadership positions. But it has been the subject of a feminist backlash calling it "Facebook's attempt to hi-jack feminism", distracting from more important issues of institutional change, part of the "war on moms" and irrelevant to all but the 1%. Is the backlash an unfair reaction to unapologetic feminism and an unfair dismissal of an inspiring woman?
On Romance and Psychosomatic Sneezing
"It’s pretty safe to say that a decent chunk of the population experiences sex-related sneezes." [more inside]
Falling through gaps
BBC Radio 4's audio adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is now up in it's entirety on the 4Extra site for streaming. [more inside]
A short film featuring sticks, control and practice
Crouch Behind Cover: Modern Warfare
Are modern first person shooters a bit too serious for your taste? Be happy they weren't always made that way. [Pre vious ly.]
A Circular Diversion
The Circle Drawing Experiment. You've seen competitive circle drawing (previously). Now try your own hand (mouse?) at drawing a freehand circle. Bonus: cats.
"For what is manly mockery to me?"
Marcel Proust’s First Poem, ‘Pederasty,’ [Daily Beast] "Here is the first known poem by Proust, written when he was 17, that shows him struggling with his homosexual urges. The poem is dedicated to his friend Daniel Halévy, and he wrote to him in a letter: “Don’t treat me as a pederast, that wounds me. Morally I’m trying, if only out of a sense of elegance, to remain pure.” The poem is titled “Pederasty.”" [more inside]
????????, alias Kate Stewart, alias "kswizzle"
A long long time ago, a web site called YTMND had a meme involving people whose facial expressions seemingly never change. But this meme has an unusual origin. Back in 2005, a SomethingAwful user received a series of flirtatious IMs from a person he'd never talked to before. The photos "she" sent him were used for the original meme – but there was no proof that they belonged to the IMer. Over the course of two weeks and 63 pages, forum users collaborated to figure out just what the hell was going on – and the story, as it unfolds in real time, is twistier and more unexpected than real life usually ends up being. [use the MAJOR UPDATE PAGES at the top of the thread to navigate; search for "The Pitbull" to jump to updates from the OP]
You've Seen the Pattycaking Catz, But Maybe Not the French Ones (SLYT)
Dansons la cupucine...those Pattycake-playing kittehs with a French soundtrack. Poom! Dear God, although I swore I'd never SLYT, I cannot.stop.laughing.
POOM!
Time Traveling The Net
Check out what the Internet looked like in 1995 in an episode of Computer Chronicles. Topics include: filtering electronic mail in Eudora, using an FTP site, and video streaming a live rock and roll band.
Part time Earthling
According to Lindner, his patient first began experiencing a strange feeling while reading fanciful adventure novels during his youth. "In some weird and inexplicable way I knew that what I was reading was my biography. Nothing in these books was unfamiliar to me: I recognized everything... My everyday life began to recede at this point. In fact, it became fiction—and, as it did, the books became my reality." At the further stage of this "psychosis," the patient "filled in the spaces" between the written stories with "fantasy 'recollections.'" -- So you thought otherkin and people believing they're the reincarnation of a fictional character were a modern thing? Well, it turns out science fiction author Cordwainer Smith might've been otherkin half a century before the term was first coined, if The Atlantic is to be believed. [more inside]
Rise of the Earths
Itching to snitch
The latest Dwayne Johnson vehicle, Snitch, has used an activist approach for its marketing campaign in a bid to expose the human damage caused by police activity in the War on Drugs. Meanwhile, the BBC notes that some law enforcement agencies in the US use informants in as many as 90% of their drug cases, with little oversight or consistency. Snitching is now an end in itself: at least 48,895 federal convicts — one of every eight — had their prison sentences reduced in exchange for informing, with much higher rates in certain states. Since the murder of informant Rachel Hoffman in 2008, there has been a growing focus on reforming the business of snitching, what the ACLU calls the "unnecessary evil." [more inside]
The biggest baddest beasts have easily been beat with one lucky shot.
Ghost Mice are a 'FIRST-WAVE folk-punk band' who sing about playing Dungeons & Dragons as a metaphor for overcoming depression, wanting to be loved like John Hickley loved Jodie Foster and recycling so Cthulhu doesn't invade. They've recorded splits with other folk-punk bands like Andrew Jackson Jihad and Defiance Ohio. Ghost Mice's song Monsters Get Slain is a heartbreaking anthem about healing from a lifetime of depression.
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!
Lego Star Wars
March 26
Ellen DeGeneres and the shifting US attitude towards homosexuality
How Ellen DeGeneres Helped Change The Conversation About Gays
"Ellen DeGeneres is ... almost a litmus test of where we have been as a society," [Dietram Scheufele, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin] says. "When she first came out and really put the issue of same-sex partnerships on people's agendas, and I mean people who really wouldn't have thought about it, I think the country was still in a very different state."From her first stand-up performance on national TV in the US in 1986, the same year that the Supreme Court ruled that states have right to enforce code of sexual behavior, to 2008, when Ellen married Portia de Rossi, after California's Supreme Court ruled a previous ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional, Ellen's public life has mirrored the broader shift towards accepting homosexuality. [more inside]
Infinitely Gentle Blows
West Coast Rave Pioneer Scott Hardkiss has passed away. He put together one of the earliest must-have Essential Mixes in 1997, and produced some of the all-time classic rave anthems.
Work, leisure, and AI.
Rule No. 1 is tomorrow we die; and Rule No. 2 is nobody, not even the most helpful robot, can change Rule No. 1. The Barbed Gift of Leisure in The Chronicle Review looks at how robots, by replacing our need to work, can change our relationship with leisure. The problem with robots is that (1) they are scary and (2) if you don't have to do any work, your ability to enjoy your time-off dissipates. It's nothing that Veblen, Marx, and Debord didn't anticipate.
uh... I ... I dunno... uh...
It's just a one-time fee that you pay annually
As the tax deadline approaches in the United States, ProPublica investigates why the promise of free and simple tax filing has yet to be fulfilled.
Frank Zappa and his Naked Lunch
Frank Zappa Reads NSFW Passage From William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1978) The occasion was the Nova Convention in 1978. Recordings of it were released as a double album.
Stay Dry and See the Future
Forecast.io is a new global weather data service announced yesterday. It boasts smoothly animating radar maps that predict up to a week in advance, a "time machine" to let you explore past and future weather, and intelligent text summaries. [more inside]
empathy used to abuse others and empathy used to help others
The two aspects of empathy, cognitive and affective, as described succinctly and clearly by neuroscientist Simon Baron Cohen. Ever wondered how chronically abusive people seem to have X-ray vision knowing just what cruel thing to say to hurt most? It's because they have greater cognitive empathy and less - or very little - affective empathy. Psychologist, Daniel Goleman adds another aspect of empathy into the picture, compassionate empathy.
It's the capital of the world, but is it still the capital of the UK?
Good photos of cool rich midcentury Americans on yachts in New England.
It is a roleplaying game made in excel.
Arena.Xlsm is the fever dream of a Canadian Chartered Accountant with a love of roleplaying games (Hat tip to Special K over at mefightclub!)
"Legal advocate for the injured, disabled, and urinated upon"
Barry Glazer is a legend in the world of local Baltimore commercials. He is the "Legal advocate for the injured, disabled, and urinated upon"
All of his commercials can be found here. (WARNING EMBEDDED WMV)
More Barry. And More.
Visualization of Drone Strikes
Gandalf does tlhogh
"China Is Not Amused By Your Sovereignty Claims"
Tripod versus the Dragon
Tripod are an Australian comedy trio primarily known for the parodic humor, amusing lyrics, and musical talent displayed in their many performances on TV and at festivals. In 2010, Scod, Yon, and Gatesy teamed up with jazz singer Elana Stone to perform their greatest work yet: a two hour musical set in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
Our Incredible Journey
A catalogue of startups announcing their sale to bigger fish, and their eventual and/or immediate dissolution. Site creator Phil Gyford explains its purpose: But I’m also trying to raise bigger questions. Is this the best way to structure and grow new businesses? Is this the best long-term model for keeping people interested in making and doing amazing things on the internet? Why do almost no websites or online services (my own included) have plans for what happens to their users’ content over the long term? If we should accept that no website or online service, particularly “free” ones, will last a lifetime or longer, what can we do about managing peoples’ expectations better?
Nothing is ungoogleable in Sweden
The Language Council of Sweden has been the semi-official arbiter of the Swedish language since World War II. It monitors "the development of spoken and written Swedish" and publishes a list of new words each year to ensure consistency of spelling and make sure that Swedish is a "complete language, i.e. [is] possible to use in all areas of society." This year, for the first time, the Council has taken a word off the list: ogooglebar, which literally meant "ungoogleable" but was defined as "a thing or person that does not produce relevant results when typed into a search engine." [more inside]
"...What sweet music they make."
Visitors to Indiana’s Wolf Creek Habitat were fortunate to capture some eerie and wonderful footage when a chain reaction started all 30 wolves howling at the same time. [via]
SCOTUS Hears Oral Arguments in Prop 8 Case
Earlier today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the California Prop 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry. SCOTUSblog has a round-up of their analysis of today's arguments here. NYT article. LA Times article. [more inside]
AMNH Podcasts Selected Lectures
Science & the City is the public gateway to the New York Academy of Sciences. We publish a comprehensive calendar of public science events in New York City, host events featuring top scientists in their fields, and produce a weekly podcast covering cutting-edge science. Meanwhile, the American Museum of Natural History presents over 200 public programs each year including workshops, seminars, lectures, cultural events, and performances. Museum lectures are presented by scientists, authors, and researchers at the forefront of their fields. These engaging sessions often reveal the findings of the Museum's own cutting-edge research in genomics, paleontology, astrophysics, biodiversity, and evolutionary biology and complement the science behind the Museum's world-famous cultural and scientific halls and special exhibitions. Now many are available in podcast form. [more inside]
Walk Out to Winter
In January, braving -40C weather, 18-year old David Kawapit and half a dozen other young Cree supporters set out wearing snowshoes and pulling sleds laden with supplies from the isolated community of Whapmagoostui in northern Quebec, to trudge the 1,500 kilometres from the edge of Hudson Bay to Ottawa in support of better conditions for aboriginal people. Yesterday, their numbers swelled to about 270 they arrived in Ottawa, where they were met with cheering and wild applause. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt agreed to speak with some of the young people who completed the trek, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper had more important matters to attend to.
We demand rigid boundaries between science fiction and fantasy!
"There use to be just sci-fi [sic]; then along came New Wave, New Weird, Cyberpunk and countless other genres; now new writing is stepping beyond even these" -- The Irish Times discovers it can be hard to tell what's science fiction and what's fantasy these days.
The Barry Bonds of butt dialers
Lightink ze vay.
They had to be fully autonomous, because they were situated hundreds and hundreds miles aways from any populated areas. After reviewing different ideas on how to make them work for a years without service and any external power supply, Soviet engineers decided to implement atomic energy to power up those structures. So, special lightweight small atomic reactors were produced in limited series to be delivered to the Polar Circle lands and to be installed on the lighthouses.
"Til you reach that..."
Stevie Wonder, in his prime. Jesus.
“Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”
T.S. Eliot’s cultural clusterfuck and middle finger to the stripped-down simplicity of the Imagists. Let the folks over at rapgenius breakdown The Waste Land for you. [via]
"My Gucci Addiction"
"My name is Buzz Bissinger. I am 58 years old, the best-selling author of 'Friday Night Lights,' father of three, husband. And I am a shopaholic." Link to single page printer format.
I began to buy, as silly an understatement as somebody drinking a quart of vodka a day and insisting that he or she is not an alcoholic. Clothing became my shot glass, another round, Net-a-Porter. But too often hits wear off, and the laws of supply and demand for an addict are pretty simple: You replenish. And replenish. And replenish. You fool yourself at certain times into thinking that's it and you have quenched the beast. But the beast is never conquered, and you don't really want to conquer the beast anyway, until there is disaster.
Pilotez notre fabuleuse machine à remonter le temps
Paris 1900-2013 by photos: Color photographs of Paris from the 1910s side-by-side with photographs of today. Now with swipey magic.
Can we please stop drawing trees on top of skyscrapers?
Want to make a skyscraper look trendy and sustainable? Put a tree on it. Or better yet, dozens. However, "There are plenty of scientific reasons why skyscrapers don’t—and probably won’t—have trees, at least not to the heights which many architects propose. Life sucks up there. For you, for me, for trees, and just about everything else except peregrine falcons." [more inside]
March 25
Consider The Lobster Claw
Two Short Films About the Fragrant Harbor
"Madame *** établit un piano dans les Alpes."
"Note that Scriabin did not, for his theory, recognize a difference between a major and a minor tonality of the same name (for example: c-minor and C-Major). Indeed, influenced also by the doctrines of theosophy, he developed his system of synesthesia toward what would have been a pioneering multimedia performance: his unrealized magnum opus Mysterium was to have been a grand week-long performance including music, scent, dance, and light in the foothills of the Himalayas Mountains that was somehow to bring about the dissolution of the world in bliss." - From Russian composer Alexander Scriabin's Wikipedia page [more inside]
Incommensurable values
Economists and the theory of politics - "why unions were often well worth any deadweight cost" [more inside]
There are floaty foamies in the gymnasium, Roscoe!
Radio controlled electric flying has been around for a while now, but a relatively new type of indoor pattern flying is becoming popular. Using very light electric airplanes called "foamies", F3P can be both mesmerizing and artistically beautiful simultaneously.
Don't Go Alone Smoke This
Water Wars
Georgia Senate passes resolution to move state line, claim Tennessee River water. A TPM reader provides interesting background.
Streaming jazzy, downtempo hip-hop from Cult Classic Records
If you like your hip-hop moody, jazzy, or downtempo, Cult Classic Records might scratch your itch, with more than 20 releases streaming on Bandcamp, plus 17 clips on YouTube, though most are still images with music.
Its totally 'shopped.
Watch Deviant Art's Elemental79 remaster classic game screen caps of Metroid, Contra and Doom into stunning HD works of art.
[via Gizmodo]
The Vietnam War like you've never seen it
In 1967, Charlie Haughey was drafted into the United States Army and was assigned to work as a photographer, tasked with taking morale-boosting pictures of service members. He shot over 2,000 images, the vast majority of which were never published and languished in boxes and envelopes. Until now. [more inside]
Midnight Rider - A short film
Midnight Rider [SLYT] (or if you prefer Vimeo: Midnight Rider) features Ryan Hurst (Opie from Sons of Anarchy) in a filmed monologue from the opening short story in the collection American Death Songs: Stories by Jordan Harper (mefi's own Bookhouse). Directed by Nina Corrado, music by Blake Neely.
[via mefi projects]
[via mefi projects]
Yesterday and Today
If Matt Lauer doesn’t want to be seen with sharp knives, it’s because last summer his co-host Ann Curry was discovered with one in her back. Five million viewers, the majority of them women, would not soon forget how Curry, the intrepid female correspondent and emotionally vivid anchor, spent her last appearance on the Today show couch openly weeping, devastated at having to leave after only a year. The image of Matt Lauer trying to comfort her—and of Curry turning away from his attempted kiss—has become a kind of monument to the real Matt Lauer, forensic evidence of his guilt. What followed was the implosion of the most profitable franchise in network television.
You Are What You See
Google Glasses are being tested by tech writers as we speak. But are they a good thing?
The long awaited Project Glass is nearly here.
There are articles about them here, here, and here among many others.
But is it a good thing? Questions are being asked both about safety and about privacy.
Everything good, bad and ugly about the online world is about to get more intense. Are you ready?
Meet me at Hoyt & Schermerhorn at 3 on the dot
Street signs at NYC intersections featuring rap lyrics about them.
Menus as art
A digitized collection of 9000+ menus from the Dijon library, dating back to the 1800s. (Linked material is in French, but fairly easy to navigate). Menus scanned include weddings, baptisms, and wedding anniversaries among other events. Found via Chocolate and Zucchini.
Nothing is the most important part of the Universe.
The concept of nothing is as old as zero itself. How do we grapple with the concept of nothing? From the best laboratory vacuums on Earth to the vacuum of space to what lies beyond, the idea of nothing continues to intrigue professionals and the public alike.
Join moderator and Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson as he leads a spirited discussion with a group of physicists, philosophers and journalists about the existence of nothing. The event, which was streamed live to the web, took place at the American Museum of Natural History on March 20, 2013. [more inside]
Not pony tails or cotton tails or...
NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette
Kubrick's condensed NYC
Follow Tom Cruise as he navigates his way around Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut Greenwich Village set [more inside]
I deserve to be naked if I want to.
In a Room Full of Naked Koreans, Margaret Cho’s Body Is an Unwelcome Sight. Margaret Cho discusses the disapproval of her fellow Korean spa visitors upon seeing her naked, heavily tattooed body as she enjoys the facilities. Single link Jezebel.
We Have a Barbecue Editor
We Have a Barbecue Editor. Texas Monthly has hired Daniel Vaughn (Full Custom Gospel BBQ) to be its first Barbecue Editor, a unique position in the U.S.
First images from the LDCM
This week, the first images of Earth from the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) were released by NASA. The images show the meeting of the Great Plains with the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado. [more inside]
Old People Wearing Vegetation
Old People Wearing Vegetation. Seniors from Norway and Finland (NSFW) model wearable art made of plants, in Eyes as Big as Plates. [more inside]
Libraries: Not Just For Books
A seed library is a long-term lending institution, for plants. Seed Libraries Preserve Heirloom Varities [more inside]
Reports of genital theft have spread like an epidemic
"Elaborate greetings are the norm, I’ve found, when one enters a Central African village. So it was a surprise when I noticed that many people weren’t shaking hands the morning I arrived in Tiringoulou, a town of about 2,000 people in one of the remotest corners of the Central African Republic, in March 2010. I soon found out the reason: the day before, a traveler passing through town on a Sudanese merchant truck had, with a simple handshake, removed two men’s penises." [more inside]
A long time ago, A long time ago, A long time ago, A long time ago...
For the love of God and all that is holy
Michael Schiavello covers Resurrection Fighting Alliance 7 - Chavez v Mainus
What part of "mine" are you not understanding?
They get around
Yes, they play the song from the Fruitopia commercial.
Here's about an hour of The Muffs (v1.0) rehearsing somewhere in California on January 13, 1991. [more inside]
Glass detonations
Smarter Every Day examines the physics of Prince Rupert's drop. Deceptively simple to create, these teardrop-shaped glass structures demonstrate the physics of tempered glass in spectacular fashion. Previously
"That's kooky Kid. We're going in."
A nerd's eye view of history
One insider's view of the mobile phone & internet revolution in the UK, 1992-2002. Featuring awkwardly stages pictures of the author, Simon Robinson, with Atomic Kitten.
Bye bye Boris
London mayor (and oft talked-up potential future PM) Boris Johnson is demolished in a slow motion bicycle crash of an interview. (The whole thing)
Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!
When the US Department of Energy halted Plutonium 238 production as far back as 1988, things looked grim for the future of space exploration. On Monday, March 18th, NASA's planetary science division head Jim Green announced that production has been restarted, and is currently in the test phases leading up to a restart at full scale.
The economics of time travel
Memories of BBC Television Centre.
Memories of BBC Television Centre. The British Broadcasting Corporation's central production hub for the past fifty years closes this week (though parts of it will reopen soon as a post-production facility). There have been many hagiographies, but this is perhaps the most poignant. It's a building full of the memories of millions, good and bad (SLYT).
March 24
Luna Lee rocks on a gayageum
Awesome rendition of Jimi Hendrix' Voodoo Chile played on a gayageum, a Korean stringed instrument | Scuttle Buttin on the gayageum rocks as well | Joe Satriani's Starry Night, the gayageum version | Luna Lee's YouTube channel. A little about the gayageum.
Her Name was Lucy Meadows
Popular transgender Lancashire teacher Lucy Meadows was found dead last Tuesday. Blame has quickly fallen on an inflammatory Daily Mail article by Richard Littlejohn, which has lead to a petition to sack the writer. Is this fair? Jane Fae at the New Statesman says it doesn't matter, while the New Scostsman calls it 'monstering'. The f word blog and the Guardian have longer articles on the case and the issues surrounding it.
Using the F-word in PG-13/12A movies
Den of Geek looks at the MPAA rule that a PG-13 movie can contain only one utterance of the word "fuck".
Quentin Tarantino Screenplays
"Magna est veritas et praevalet"
Last June, the New York Times published an exposé of New York's exclusive Horace Mann School, detailing decades of sexual abuse of students by their teachers. The revelations prompted additional accusations and lawsuits from former students, an all-but-useless investigation, an admission by one of the school's former teachers, and a response by the school to parents (pdf). But one person who escaped the Times' notice was former English teacher Robert Berman.
Not-so dumb animals
Frans de Waal argues that animals are smarter than we might think. "Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species." [more inside]
Surrealism; the birth of the word adopted by a movement.
In 1917 Guillaume Apollinare first coined the word Surrealism in the program notes for the ballet Parade; partly
reproduced here.
It was an extraordinary gathering of enormous talents with the set, curtain and costumes by Pablo Picasso (these pictures seldom seen and never published)
The scenario was by Jean Cocteau; and the score by Erik Satie.
It was first performed on 18 May by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
The audience booed and hissed, and some in the crowd even started throwing oranges at the orchestra.
It was an extraordinary gathering of enormous talents with the set, curtain and costumes by Pablo Picasso (these pictures seldom seen and never published)
The scenario was by Jean Cocteau; and the score by Erik Satie.
It was first performed on 18 May by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
The audience booed and hissed, and some in the crowd even started throwing oranges at the orchestra.
Brah
When you look up the term Gaybro on Urban Dictionary, two extremely telling definitions appear. The first—“a gay man who acts masculine and is interested in guy stuff like sports, video games, military issues, grilling, knives, gear, working out, gadgets, tech, etc ...”—seems to have been lifted from the Gaybros mission statement. The second is less neutral: “Young masculine homosexual males who exhibit no effeminate characteristics or interests and make a point of going on about how 'normal' they are. Previously they would have referred to themselves as straight-acting but that's so 2005. Gaybros have no gay friends because they can't relate to other gay people. This is something else they insist on telling everyone.”Slate has posted "Meet the Gaybros", their profile of the r/gaybros subreddit, the increasingly popular subreddit that's "[a] place for guys to get together and talk about, well, guy stuff." The community has had some ink spilt about them recently about their relationship with the gay community at large, their growing meet-ups across the country, as well as the charitible work the group has put together for the Trevor Project.
Adventures in Gay.
25 YEAR OLD RECENTLY OUT ARTIST CHRONICLING HIS ADVENTURES INTO THE WORLD OF GAY. Just a regular guy who happens to like other guys. Currently living in NYC. Work in animation, write and draw for a living. Hopeless romantic. Things I like: cartoons, writing, drawing, uke, piano, basketball, pokemon.He's dorky, awkward, and struggling with a bit of the ol' internalized homophobia, but I think he's going to be OK.
Mesmerizing visualizations of genetic algorithms
Genetic algorithms are useful for solving all kinds of problems and their implementations can be quite mesmerizing to watch. Re-producing Mona Lisa, a human face or bull cave painting. Playing Super Mario, Tetris and more Tetris. Simulating a soccer team, fishes, ant colony or Santa's flight path. A documentary about using genetic algorithms in design, e.g. deciding the optimal antenna placement on a Humvee, creating search and destroy behavior for UAVs and designing more efficient wind turbine blades. Should probably learn how to stand and jump and stand again before driving.
Admit That Byron Was No Good
The Free Information movement as seen through Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Byron the Bulb’ story.
In one sense, Byron is a tangent—a rogue sketch that found its way into [Gravity's Rainbow] perhaps because Pynchon liked it. In another sense, Byron is GR condensed to a general thesis. On what? Hell, any number of interpretations could be derived from Byron, but I like to think that it reads as revelation. And the revelation is this: from the moment homo sapiens fashioned the first tool to the moment we are finally and completely extinguished, we are fated to be governed by those who control technology. An essay from Death And Taxes mag.
Secret Universe
The Hidden Life Of the Cell (57:24) There is a battle playing out inside your body right now. It started billions of years ago and it is still being fought in every one of us every minute of every day. It is the story of a viral infection - the battle for the cell. This film reveals the exquisite machinery of the human cell system from within the inner world of the cell itself - from the frenetic membrane surface that acts as a security system for everything passing in and out of the cell, the dynamic highways that transport cargo across the cell and the remarkable turbines that power the whole cellular world to the amazing nucleus housing DNA and the construction of thousands of different proteins all with unique tasks. The virus intends to commandeer this system to one selfish end: to make more viruses. And they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. Exploring the very latest ideas about the evolution of life on earth and the bio-chemical processes at the heart of every one of us, and revealing a world smaller than it is possible to comprehend, in a story large enough to fill the biggest imaginations.
You may be familiar with molecular movies from my two previous megaposts collecting them, but this extended documentary uses original animation that is collected into a coherent educational narrative and is just so fucking gorgeous. Enjoy.[more inside]
Oy Vey, Christian Soldiers
Maud Newton, who grew up as a Charismatic Christian in a heavily Jewish community, asks: What could be wrong with Bible-believing evangelicals giving their son a bar mitzvah? [slnyt, mostly] [more inside]
A Union for Freelancers?
Ms. Horowitz’s new mutualism is based on a simple premise: freelancers should band together to set up social-purpose institutions to serve their mutual needs. That, she says, would be far better than relying on corporations and private investors who might have different priorities, not to mention a desire for substantial profits. This idea, she acknowledges, is not new. But with the changing economy, the decline of organized labor, the end of paternalism among employers and the shrinking role of government, she says, the conditions are ripe for embracing mutual aid societies anew. “The social unionism of the 1920s had it right,” she says. “They said: ‘We serve workers 360 degrees. It’s not just about their work. It’s about their whole life.’ We view things the same way.”
"It takes a village, people!"
Ash Beckham at Ignite Boulder: why you shouldn't say "that's so gay."
"Phreaking Out Ma Bell"
The Bacon-Wrapped Economy
The Bacon-Wrapped Economy , or how the rise of a new elite of wealthy, predominantly twentysomething, software engineers and startup founders is changing the San Francisco Bay Area's economy and culture. [more inside]
Lake Erie is sick.
Spring Rain, Then Foul Algae in Ailing Lake Erie: [New York Times]
"A thick and growing coat of toxic algae appears each summer, so vast that in 2011 it covered a sixth of its waters, contributing to an expanding dead zone on its bottom, reducing fish populations, fouling beaches and crippling a tourism industry that generates more than $10 billion in revenue annually."
Solar Scorcher
Backyard Solar Death Ray. Melt pennies in seconds with a fresnel lens repurposed from an old large screen television. Grant Thompson has other fun and liability lawyer unapproved projects such as melting metal, making solid rocket fuel and making a compressed air rocket launcher. (via homunculus and his post on Monkeyfilter)
So... I Bought A Firetruck
"When I was a little guy I was infatuated with firetrucks. That's probably not unusual. Boys like trucks. But kids usually grow out of this kind of thing. I didn't. I'm 32 and a half years old and never stopped thinking firetrucks are awesome. So I bought one."
For squares only
Mundane simulation
German Truck Simulator. Bus Driver. U-Boat Simulator. Ski Region Simulator. London Underground Simulator. Street Cleaning Simulator. Who's buying all these niche simulation games, anyway? We found out
A priest, a dominatrix and a brain surgeon walk into a bar
The game that puts you on a first-name basis with third-world dictators
"Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle [...]"
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
TWILIGHT STRUGGLE is a card-driven board game simulation of the Cold War. It has been called a game of crisis management; dealing with them yourself, creating them for your opponent, and their proper timing. There is a extensive blog about the game, Twilight Strategy. This is that site's article on starting out play. This page could help you decide if it's for you. ("Do you enjoy games that are extremely tense and nerve-wracking?") Here's a YouTube video on how to play it. And, although I suggest learning to play with a physical set, the online multiplayer wargaming client Warroom has a Java Twilight Struggle client/server program available. There is also a VASSAL module, but it currently doesn't work with VASSAL 3.2 or later. There's a lot more on the game after the break.... [more inside]
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
TWILIGHT STRUGGLE is a card-driven board game simulation of the Cold War. It has been called a game of crisis management; dealing with them yourself, creating them for your opponent, and their proper timing. There is a extensive blog about the game, Twilight Strategy. This is that site's article on starting out play. This page could help you decide if it's for you. ("Do you enjoy games that are extremely tense and nerve-wracking?") Here's a YouTube video on how to play it. And, although I suggest learning to play with a physical set, the online multiplayer wargaming client Warroom has a Java Twilight Struggle client/server program available. There is also a VASSAL module, but it currently doesn't work with VASSAL 3.2 or later. There's a lot more on the game after the break.... [more inside]
In defence of Page 3
"The snobbishness has struck me as irrational. They want the end of Page 3, but claim to be "sex positive" and pro porn. It's as if pornography for the upper classes - tasteful monochrome Testino images of nudes, Mapplethorpe coffee table books or vintage Tom of Finland* prints are acceptable, yet accessible muck for the working classes is simply de trop. A catwalk show for a milliner featuring chilly looking models completely nude apart from the hat is applauded as high art: Sandra from Dagenham, in a pair of lacy pants, is not."
March 23
Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?
Maybe hamsters & hippos are better suited for your weight class-- don't worry, Super Duck Punch will allow to test your pugilistic skills against these combinations and more! Watch out for the giraffe-headed Hydra, though. Almost as tough as the Hydra-headed giraffe.
.
If Cabbage Patch Kids can be born, they can also die
Dendy Chronicles
After the huge success of the NES, a whole host of bootleg consoles came out around the world. The Dendy console brought a new age of video gaming to the newly born Russian Federation. Kinaman presents a retrospective of the numerous pirate Mario games on the Dendy system in three parts: 1, 2, 3. (Russian with English subtitles)
Not Everything Is Economics, Not Even At The Shareholders' Meeting
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Issues A Smackdown The CEO of the hugely successful, not universally beloved coffee chain gives a brief statement on the intersection, or lack thereof, between economics and respect for diversity.
Watch Me Maybe
Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art were surprised to see Tilda Swinton sleeping in a box today. The Maybe is a collaboration of Swinton and Cornelia Parker originally shown in 1995. Her appearance at MoMa is seven years in the making and will be repeated throughout the year with no announced schedule.
Putting the "I" in IPO
Mike Merrill decided to sell shares in his life. He now has 160 shareholders who can tell him what to do.
Lynneguist's Separated By a Common Language
Wondering about your British colleagues wearing tank tops in chilly weather and complaining about bumf? Trying to figure out what your American colleagues mean by poster child or hump day, or just where exactly kitty-corner is? Lynneguist's Separated By a Common Language will get you sorted. [more inside]
how to smooth a mouse path
Twisted Oak Studios talk about how they smoothed the mouse path for the desktop port of the game Jack Lumber, with code examples.
The dwarves of Auschwitz
Make it so.
Ricky Gervais In His Bath
Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been found dead
The Thames is a Filthy Beast
Down to a Sunless Sea - a new short story by Neil Gaiman published by The Guardian as part of their series of Water stories.
20 minutes of hand-drawn and CGI teasers and trailers from Headless Prod
Strange Oaks is the latest teaser trailer from the Barcelona-based Headless Productions (and friends), this time about a retirement community for witches. The Headless Productions Vimeo account has 13 more teasers and trailers, mostly featuring hand-drawn animation, some of which has since made its way into full movies. [more inside]
Mechanical Wankelry
Animated Engines has been mentioned a couple times before, but I wanted to highlight the site entire, along with its sister site, 507 Mechanical Movements. Both sites have animated diagrams of a huge variety of engines and (relatively) simple machines, the latter based on an 1868 book by Henry T. Brown of the same name. While all of the engines are animated, the animated machines start on page 3, and go on from there. And every diagram leads to a page that explains the machine's function — step-by-step in the case of the engines.
Living In Science Fiction: 2013 Edition
Science Fiction Comes Alive as Researchers Grow Organs in Lab
1997 -- Charles Vacanti of University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Robert Langer of Massachusetts Institute of Technology report the growing of a cartilage structure – in the shape of a human ear – on a mouse’s back. 2008 -- Doris Taylor at the University of Minnesota and colleagues grow a beating rat heart in the lab. 2008 --Surgeons in Spain transplant a new windpipe into a patient. The organ is made from a cadaver windpipe stripped of its original cells and reseeded with the patient’s own cells. 2010 -- Researchers at Mass General Hospital grow a rat liver. 2010 -- Yale University scientists grow a functioning rat lung. 2010 -- Alex Seifalian in London transplants a lab-made tear duct into patient 2011 -- Dr. Seifalian makes a windpipe from nanocomposite materials plus a patient’s own stem cells; the new windpipe replaces the patient’s cancerous one, saving his life. In a separate procedure, an artery made at Dr. Seifalian’s lab is transplanted into a patient. 2012 -- Surgeons in Sweden transplant a major blood vessel into a 10-year-old girl. The vein was taken from a dead man, stripped of its tissue, then reseeded with the girl’s own cells. 2013 -- Scientists from Cornell University report the making of a human ear using living cartilage cells.
Life Imitates Rap Perhaps
First they did the crimes. Then they made a rap video of the crime. Then they went down for the crimes with the video used as evidence to convict them. [more inside]
Snow!!!
The United States Men's National Soccer team played a very, very, snowy game last night against Costa Rica.
Costa Rica is not happy.
A live blog of the events.
Mind is moving
Ron Garret, formerly of JPL and Google and "the most referenced computer science researcher in all of NASA", has an interesting take on quantum mechanics he dubs "zero-worlds", which he presents in an hour-long Google Tech Talk (meat starts around 42 minutes) as well as slightly older paper. He also got into a bit of further debate here. [more inside]
"it was even thicker than planned, for a brief exciting interlude"
How Not To Do It: Chromium Trioxide
Back in grad school, I had an undergraduate assistant one summer, a guy who was pretty green. I'll refer to him by an altered form of his nickname, henceforth as Toxic Jim. I shouldn't be too hard on him, I guess: I was a summer undergrad in my time, too, and I wasn't a lot of help to anyone, either. But TJ did manage to furnish me with some of my more vivid lab stories in his brief time in my fume hood. One morning I showed him how to make PCC. That's pyridinium chlorochromate for the non-organic chemists out there, an oxidizing agent that doesn't seem to be used as much as it was 15 or 20 years ago. Even in '85, you could buy it, but the freshly-made stuff was often better. It certainly looked nicer. Like all the Cr(VI) salts, it has a vivid color, in this case a flaming orange. I shouldn't say "flaming;" that's getting ahead of the story. . .
"The Bible says it's gross"
What's in your mouth?
The Sydney Symphony held a contest for its Facebook fans to find the best lyrics for the Carmina Burana. The winner - Ode to Sleep Deprived Parents
“The important thing,” he said, “is moving.”
Becoming the All-Terrain Human: [New York Times]
"Kilian Jornet Burgada is the most dominating endurance athlete of his generation. In just eight years, Jornet has won more than 80 races, claimed some 16 titles and set at least a dozen speed records, many of them in distances that would require the rest of us to purchase an airplane ticket. He has run across entire landmasses (Corsica) and mountain ranges (the Pyrenees), nearly without pause. He regularly runs all day eating only wild berries and drinking only from streams."
Feminists aging together.
French Feminist Babayaga Thérèse Clerc, is captured by photographer Elisabeth Schneider in a short French documentary. Thérèse Clerc is the founder of Maison des Femmes de Montreuil, a women-only feminist retirement community, in Paris. [more inside]
Musical Genius and Sex Symbol
Earl Okin performs My Room for an audience of appreciative ladies (SLYT).
Spring Break forever. Spring Break forever. Spring Break forever. Spring
Harmony Korine's new film Spring Breakers [trailer] is "an outrage and an abomination. It’s also some kind of masterpiece." Or maybe it's swill, or just plain old racist. In any event, the movie looks gorgeous, courtesy of cinematographer Benoît Debie, best known for his work on his work on Gaspar Noe's Irreversible and Enter the Void. Actress Ashley Benson thinks the sex scenes were beautiful: "It wasn't raunchy. It was telling a story." Actor Gucci Mane, meanwhile, fell asleep during his sex scene. Korine showed up on Reddit to answer questions, but his responses were somewhat incoherent.
The Apotheosis of the Internet
“I gave all my money to head waiters and tarts”
“The people I burgled got rich by greed and skulduggery. They indulged in the mechanics of ostentation — they deserved me and I deserved them." Peter Scott, known as the "King of the Cat Burglars", has died at the age of 82.
March 22
Sweet Home Chicago
While this has been mentioned recently, it is quite worth remembering it was just 20 years ago, that LeAlan Jones, and Lloyd Newman taught the world an important lesson;
Ghetto Life 101.
But please don't forget their equally stunning followup, Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse.
But please don't forget their equally stunning followup, Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse.
A Little Bit of Home Has Been Lost
Scott Kennedy - Texan, comedian, founder of Comics Ready to Entertain (USO alternative for incredibly dangerous deployment locations), and co-founder of Gay Comedy Jam passed away on March 14th. The silence was deafening for one writer, who went on to intersperse pithy fury with honest admiration in an unforgettable mix of eulogy, obituary, and media rant. [more inside]
Want to go out for a fart?
Goodnight, Bebo
Bebo Valdes has passed away. A giant of Cuban music, he was a "big man whose music revealed a huge heart." He famously worked with Nat King Cole, and also handed down his musical chops to son Chucho, who would become one of the founding members of the band Irakere. There are some videos inside the fold to allow us to celebrate Bebo and his music. [more inside]
My Little Pony Wife
The Internet finally reaches its apex as man marrying My Little Pony character writes angry email to erotic pony artist.
Not the beedrills!
Skywalker
Mustang Wanted likes to climb tall things, walk on them and occasionally hang off them. (Also trains)
friends sisters dance mean sick muddy yes? no! write read walk marry*
Cozy Classics are board book versions of classic novels, each story represented by 12 child-friendly words and 12 needle-felted illustrations, with the idea of developing "early literacy"—everything children know about reading and writing before they can actually do either. Current titles include Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, Les Miserables, and War and Peace, with Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist forthcoming. [more inside]
Don't Hate Her Because She's Successful
Better, stronger, faster kidneys.
What do 3D printing, jelly, liver transplants, chainmail, dental fillings, ferrofluids, and the Six Million Dollar man have to tell us about our future? Materials scientist and engineer Mark Miodownik lets us know in this Royal Institution lecture.
Howard Zinn's Influential Mutilations of American History
Some nifty special effects models
Steve Howarth has made a lot of practical special effects miniatures, including work on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, Moon, Crystal Maze and many more projects. Perhaps the most interesting is his work on Red Dwarf. [more inside]
Feeling guilty never helps
I really wanna lose three pounds.
Mad Men + Mean Girls = Mean Mad Men.
Raiders of a Lost Art?
25 (of the) Top Movie Posters of All Time with commentaries from non-movie-poster designers. Ignore or critique the ranking, note any obvious omissions, or just chuckle at the unstated similarity between #13 and #14. Still, a fine showcase of movie - and movie marketing - history.
My Father's Horniness
"He could barely muster a “hello” when I came in, and here he was waxing poetically to this 20-something stranger. As she walked away, he was smiling like a teenager behind the wheel of his first car. My normal reaction would have been to defend the poor nurse’s right to work in a harassment-free environment, but on this day, I was just too shocked by the eleventh hour show of virility. Here was a man, a bona-fide food addict, who had lost his will to eat. He couldn’t walk, and up until then, had stopped talking. He was wearing a diaper for Pete’s sake. But here he was, horny as hell and ready to party. It was his only vital sign still thriving. It was indomitable; impervious to the suite of diseases ravaging his body."
Actor Dax Shepard recounts his father's last days before dying from cancer.
Looking for happiness in the everyday
NASA or MOMA? Play the Game!
The Austerity Kitchen
The Great Hog-Eating Confederacy
Early Southerners ate a rather limited and unvarying diet. At table the famished guest seldom found more than bacon, corn pone, and coffee sweetened with molasses. Pioneering sociologist Harriet Martineau complained that “little else than pork, under all manner of disguises” sustained her during her visit to the American SouthFor the most part, slaves observed the same diet as poor white farmers. Though many kept gardens, and thus supplemented their rations of pork and corn with a wide variety of vegetables, they had otherwise little opportunity to augment their diet.. Another traveler griped that that he had “never fallen in with any cooking so villainous.” A steady assault of “rusty salt pork, boiled or fried … and musty corn meal dodgers” brought his stomach to surrender. Rarely did “a vegetable of any description” make it on his plate, and “no milk, butter, eggs, or the semblance of a condiment” did he once see.Christine Baumgarthuber is a writer for The New Inquiry and runs the blog The Austerity Kitchen. [more inside]
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has died at age 82.
"Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, acclaimed in part for his groundbreaking 1958 novel "Things Fall Apart," has died, his British publisher, Penguin Books, said Friday." Set in precolonial Nigeria, Things Fall Apart portrays the story of a farmer, Okonkwo, who struggles to preserve his customs despite pressure from British colonizers. The story resonated in post-independent Africa, and the character became a household name in the continent. [more inside]
Thinking or Feeling?
The Myers-Briggs personality test with its 16 character types is used by companies the world over but is it as valuable as its popularity suggests?
Sky Crystals
Photographer Don Komarechka uses a complicated process of focus stacking to extend the depth of field of his unbelievably beautiful extreme macro photographs of snowflakes. [via] [more inside]
HTBYERRF
A few years ago Charles Guan was a teacher's assistant in MIT's 2.007 introductory design and manufacturing class. To help out his fellow students he made a guide to building robots quickly and efficiently. Now he has expanded the original guide, retitled it How to Build your Everything Really Really Fast (HTBYERRF) and published it on Instructables, available for anyone wishing to progress from the "zip ties and duct tape" stage of building things.
This looks like a job for...
SUPERHERO.JS - Creating, testing and maintaining a large JavaScript code base is not easy — especially since great resources on how to do this are hard to find. This page is a collection of the best articles, videos and presentations we've found on the topic.
What happens when the Amish start reading Amish romance novels?
Is it possible for a genre of fiction to re-dress a people? "Bonnet rippers" are overwhelmingly written by evangelical Christians whose worldview is very different from the Amish culture their books ostensibly depict. Their Amish readers respond to this cultural gap in various ways.
March 21
Try Not To Think Of Christopher Cross
While best remembered for his starring role in a horrible movie, once upon a time, the man had some chops. A surprising mix of world-tinged fusion and straight ahead jazz from 1969, I give you:
"The Dudley Moore Trio"
"The Dudley Moore Trio"
Harvey Weinstein. The most thanked person through the years.
I'd like to thank the Academy — "More than 200 Oscar speeches were pulled from the Margaret Herrick Library database and surveyed." Find out who has done the two-hand clutch, who thanked their male partner - all with linked YouTube goodness. You can even roll-your-own and find out who it most matches.
Panoramas on Four of the Seven Summits
Google Maps surmounts four of the Seven Summits: Aconcagua (South America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Everest Base Camp (Asia), and Mount Elbrus (Europe). It's not quite a "street" view of the Grand Canyon, but 360 degree panoramas.
Gone in 70 seconds
Let's build a ship - Timelapse builds the world's largest ship in 70 seconds Building the world's largest ship - the Maersk Tripple E
More than just his little wife
People have something to say about Mrs. Carter's new song. "Women do not have to be humble, nice, and modest all the damn time," says Sesali Bowen of Feministing. "Beyonce's new single marks a change in direction for the independent woman the US president handpicks to play at his parties," says Rush Limbaugh. The song "dangerously [straddles] the line between female empowerment and subjugation," says Rahiel Tesfamariam of the Washington Post. "We should view Beyonce's feminism as complex," says Akoto Ofori-Atta of The Root.
Can a woman who sings "girls run the world" and "bow down, bitches" be a feminist?
Read the lyrics here.
"It’s like Kate Bush if she knew how to write a good song."
What makes the music critics at Collapse Board more interesting than the ones at Pitchfork or Rolling Stone or the AV Club? Well, for one thing, they have more fun: witness The Audacity of Barry Manilow, or their take on Kimbra's "Vows", written as a response to the outrage they received after a negative Gotye review. When they love something, they love it with relish – they think Micachu understands 2012 like no other musician, argue that Nirvana was the biggest thing since the Beatles, and think Lana Del Rey is more interesting than her lips. And when they dislike something, they make no qualms about disliking it – they rip into Titus Andronicus something good, describe a Matt & Kim album as "an excellent litmus test for weeding out fluff-eating imbeciles", and express more ambivalent opinions about My Bloody Valentine and The Mountain Goats. They also, predictably write frequent critiques of music criticism.
Ewald von Kleist, last of the July 20th conspirators, dead at 90
Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, plotter against Hitler and founder of the Munich Conferences, died on March 8th, aged 90. [more inside]
shell games
Closure pare one: Self Destruct
Nine Inch Nails has posted tape 1 of the 1997 VHS-only release Closure on Vimeo. It's a 75-min long documentary of the Self Destruct Tour, both on and off stage, includes (not necessarily musical) appearances by Marilyn Manson and David Bowie, amongst others.
Sing
The Raven That Refused To Sing, a melancholy animated music video for Steven Wilson's (Porcupine Tree) solo song. [slyt]
Just In Time For The Equinox
About a week ago a series of tweets began to appear promoting a new TEDx conference taking place with all the normal social media bluster and back-patting - but was it? The event's isolated location should've set off warning bells (previously) when the tweets from "TedxSummerisle" because increasingly worrisome as the conference tumblr began posting videos with titles like "Our Friends the Bees, and Nanotech" and "The Secret Science of the Ancients". (via)
Who are you?
Keep an eye on your mates when you're out – You look after them, they look after you. It's all about having fun and making it home safely. It's not about being a hero – it's about doing something small. (7:58) A New Zealand PSA about sexual assault prevention focusing on bystanders [WARNING sexual assault triggers abound] [more inside]
one great sentence can equal one great post
Stop Making Fun of Leaked Washington Post Blogger Job and Start Applying for It, Says Slate's Dan Kois
World Wide Maze, a Chrome Experiment
World Wide Maze is a "Chrome Experiment" that turns any website or search into a playable three-dimensional "Monkey Ball"-style maze game. You can control via the keyboard or link to your phone to turn it into a tilt-sensitive remote control. (Chrome browser only, obviously.)
"I like these calm little moments before the storm."
For those of us who would like to celebrate the 55th birthday of one of the greatest actors of his generation, enjoy this majestic collection of clips: Gary Oldman Loses His Shit. [more inside]
CS Lewis' The Inner Ring
There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. CS Lewis on The Inner Ring.
From Ruins to Birth
A couple of years ago developers of Johnathan Blow's upcoming video game "The Witness" tapped landscape architect David Fletcher (Fletcher Studio) and architect Deanna VanBuren (FORUM Design Studio) "to help synthesize what was, at the time, a remote, anonymous island setting without much context . . . Witness required the landscape architects to reverse engineer a site from ruins to birth." (Previously)
Highest Ranked Charity in America Celebrates 27th Anniversary
As a young boy Henri Landwirth survived the death camp of Auschwitz. He lost his childhood to the war and was determined that this should not happen again in the future. Later, as a successful hotelier in Florida, he helped arrange free vacations for children with life-threatening diseases to Walt Disney World and SeaWorld. Sadly, the time it took to set up a vacation was long and when one child, Amy, died from leukemia before her wish could be fulfilled, Landwirth founded "Give Kids The World." [more inside]
Nvidia's new face-rendering tech
Nvidia showed their new face-rendering tech, FaceWorks, at the annual GPU Technology Conference this week. It runs on a Titan ($1000) graphics card. More info here. Compare. [more inside]
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!
Richmond City Jail hosts a father-daughter dance, bringing fathers and daughters together beyond the visitors booth (photos).
“I just gotta break this cycle I’m in. I’m just tired of it,” Andre Morman says, adding that he can’t wait to see his youngest daughter. “I haven’t been able to pick her up in nine months.” [more inside]
The Dreams Of Big Data
Does Big Data Mean The Demise Of The Expert - And Intuition? - "Data-driven decisions are poised to augment or overrule human judgment."
What Is Big Data? [more inside]
What Fresh El is This?
As part of a public-private partnership intended to defray badly-needed capital improvements, the Chicago Transit Authority will peddle predatory debit cards to its riders.
"It was on stun... now it's on kill."
Prop Wars is a fantastically entertaining short film about three friends fighting to the death using iconic props from movies. [via]
Lower the ever living fuck out of your cholesterol
So You Want To Be A Pixel Artist?
Ah yes, the grass tile...Generally the first tile anyone does, because hey, if you're making an RPG, and you plan to have it take place on a world, you're probably going to need grass. [...] Grass, when you think about it, is millions of tiny blades randomly growing at different upward angles, and unless it's been stamped down flat or mowed to perfection, doesn't look smooth. So why make a tile that does? [more inside]
"There was no return from apostasy."
Leaving the Witness. "In one of the most restrictive, totalitarian countries in the world, for the first time in my life, I had the freedom to think." [more inside]
Women, they're just like us!
Women enjoy video games, to the astonishment of local TV newsreaders. Women enjoy science, to the astonishment of Facebook users.
Probiotics...better than valium?
Why the bacteria in food like yogurt may be the answer to anxiety and depression. Probiotic-rich food is good for your gut, but it may also be good for your brain, say researchers.
Take a load off
"I've found myself wondering lately, out of all of these songs - and many others - why has "The Weight" emerged as the iconic American standard? Why is this the mood-setting song in Easy Rider? Why is this the song that 22 year-olds still put on when they start their first road trips across the country? Why, since Levon Helm's passing nearly a year ago, do Americana musicians overwhelmingly close their shows with "The Weight"? Why did the GRAMMY Awards choose "The Weight" as its group sing-along for the musicians we lost this year - and why was it the only performance of the night that had everyone in the audience singing and dancing?"
Beetlejuice... Beetlejuice....
Pretty much the best Minecraft rollercoaster ever made. (Warning: Dubstep)
Also from the same people. [more inside]
Jim Hall / Blue Comma
The second most tattooed man in the world. Jim Hall, a retired Baltimore city planner, very articulately discusses in this article and associated video how he has tattooed and modified himself into a work of art and personal sexual fantasy he calls Blue Comma.
Hands down the illest ventriloquist this side of the Mississippi River
To celebrate the release soulful Southern fried stoner rock band Clutch's new album, Earth Rocker, LA Weekly have put together a list of the Top Ten Awesomely Absurd and Absurdly Awesome Clutch Lyrics. It doubles as an introduction to Clutch, though you can just jump into the title track and Crucial Velocity from Earth Rocker.
Mood Of The Times
The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books. March 20, 2013. Fear Factor Increases, Emotions Decrease in Books Written in Last 50 Years. 'We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more “emotional” than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.' [more inside]
"Sailing to Sicily"
Jeff Sullivan, newly reunited with the Seattle mariner's blog "USS Mariner", offers his thoughts on the Marlins releasing former (and hugely disappointing) Mariner Chone Figgins--odds on, the end of Figgins major league career. [more inside]
March 20
The Long and Storied Career of Sole, The Sweaty Volcano
Rapper Sole, originally from the Northeast, but now more associated with the West Coast, has had an interesting career in hip hop. [more inside]
"All of your favorite shows are ratings dogs."
The Nielsen Family Is Dead. Nielsen Now Tracks (Almost) Everything You Buy: Credit, Debit and Bank Data Now Combined With TV, Online Viewing. Nielsen Offers Focus on ‘Zero-TV’ Homes. Nielsen Agrees to Expand Definition of TV Viewing. The 23,000 U.S. homes Nielsen currently samples are going to see some changes this year. [more inside]
Khaaaaaaaan!!!
Inside Secrets of the Making of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan and "Space Seed" - of course Benedict Cumberbatch is totally not playing Khan, a genetic superman from 1993, in the new Star Trek movie. Maybe he'll sing a song.
Dashboard Camera + Timelapse = Drivelapse
Drivelapse: dashboard-camera footage of stretches of roadway, sped up via timelapse, often with annotations. For example, you can zoom through Zion Canyon or zig-zag down the Swiss Alps. Travel 250 miles from Beverly Hills to Las Vegas in 28 minutes. Or, Norwalk OH to Williamsburg VA: 550 miles in 17.5 minutes, approximately 1885 mph. Take a tour of Minneapolis surface roads or winding New England state highways. Or, tilt at windmills along the coast of the Strait of Gibraltar. ⚠MOTORIST WARNING: ANNOYING SOUNDTRACKS NEXT 10 MILES — PREPARE TO MUTE SOUND. ⚠ [more inside]
These kids are as old as the gap between albums
WNYC has a feature called Tough Critics, getting 5th-graders to review new music releases. Today they reviewed Godspeed You! Black Emperor's We Drift Like Worried Fire.
They decided it was missing something... [more inside]
I don't really like to be in Poland and that's frankly the truth...
Jodie: Life in Warsaw. A short film about an American woman trying to grow happiness, living in the socialist-era housing estate where her husband grew up.
Mommy, why is that spider coming out of the stargate?
Braiding machines can be used to create automobile parts, wiring harnesses, and art, among other things. It turns out watching them is pretty hypnotic.
Sounds like Sgt Pepper walking through a forest one foggy spring morning
Some know them for their astonishing pop sensibility, their tight rock performances, their theatricality, or of course for the fact that they sound like a fucking madhouse. But perhaps even better than the Cardiacs is their quiet little side project The Sea Nymphs, whose songs are calm and elegant, sometimes otherworldly or ethereal, sometimes jaunty and very grounded. The madness is more subdued, and the pop is lovelier (and more British) than ever; Appealing to Venus in particular sounds almost like it could have come from the Beach Boys. It's some of the most haunting and original music I know.
Laura Marling
Singer-songwriter Laura Marling will release her latest album, Once I Was an Eagle, this May. She's shared a first song off of it, "Where Can I Go?" [more inside]
Ping, Ping, You're Dead
"The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare...is the result of a three-year effort to examine how extant international law norms apply to this ‘new’ form of warfare."
If You Rebuild It, They Might Not Come
Brad Pitt's Make It Right foundation has committed millions to try and revitalize New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward by building 150 affordable, green, storm-resistant homes from designs by the likes of Gehry Partners, Morphosis, Kieran Timberlake, and McDonough + Partners. Thing is, the ward doesn't have enough residents to attract stores and services, so no one wants to live there. Meanwhile, the city continues to follow through on millions in commitments to rebuild roads on streets where no one now lives, and to erect police stations and schools for a lonely, "barren moonscape" of a neighborhood. About 90 households, primarily elderly people, are living in futuristic homes that most Americans would covet, and yet there’s not a supermarket--or even a fast food restaurant--for miles.
Furore over sexism being called out at PyCon
Developer evangelist Adria Richards snaps a photo of two men at the recent PyCon whom she overheard making quips about "big dongles". PyCon responds, following which one of the men is fired. Adria justifies the callout as a step towards securing the future of programming for women. Full discussion at Hacker News.
First Openly Trans MMA fighter.
37-year-old Transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox recently came out as transgender during an interview with Sports Illustrated.
She also doesn't believe she and other transgender MMA fighters should have to disclose their medical history to would-be opponents.
Fox, 2-0 in MMA, was born a man but underwent gender reassignment surgery and began supplemental hormonal therapy in 2006. [more inside]
A Life Well Wasted Returns
After a two-year dormancy, host Robert Ashley posted a new episode of the video game podcast A Life Well Wasted.
Ain't nobody got time for that
I don’t like the feeling of disappointing my kids. But I refuse to give into this holiday overkill. I’m overwhelmed enough as it is. Today I gave all of my kids a bath. We read with each of them for the recommended 20 minutes. We reviewed our Math Facts. We practiced guitar. We sat together at the table and ate a meal that was NOT procured at a drive-thru. We played outside. Most days, I’m struggling to achieve all these things. I can’t have these haphazard, once-monthly overblown holidays take over my life.One mom talks about "bringing the holidays down a notch," 'cause ain't nobody got time for that.
Star gazing girls of Georgian England
An intriguing essay on how young women in Georgian England were able to do science by hiding in the pursuits of the domestic arts.
"Women didn’t find it easy to participate in late eighteenth century science. Experimentation and discovery were not easily compatible with the ideals of domestic femininity – but there were women who rejected these social expectations and became active and renowned."
"We found so much."
As promised, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his team have recovered several Apollo F-1 rocket engines from the bottom of the ocean. [more inside]
The Artist is Present
Marina Abramović is a performance artist, who in 2010 performed The Artist is Present - sharing a minute of silence with each spectator that wished to. Over the 736 hour performance, hundreds of people sat across from her quietly. Marina had shared a passionate and tempestuous relationship with Uwe Laysiepen, with the relationship ending when they each starting walking from from one end of the Great Wall of China, met in the middle, shared a hug and left - never expecting to speak again. 20 years after that hug, Ulay attended the opening night of her performance without her knowing. This is their moment.
It scoresbetter on the Turing test than most of my actual IM contacts...
Can't get enough of the thrill of talking to an inattentive friend via instant message? Awkward Chatbot will have a halfhearted conversation with you at any time of the day!
I do believe in ghosts: life after death is too important to trivialise.
RIP British horror writer James Herbert, author of the modern classic of the genre The Rats among many others. [more inside]
"Internet in a Suitcase"
The Commotion Wireless Project is a free, open-source (but still early beta) software platform for creating decentralized wireless mesh networks. [more inside]
How To Have The Best Pregnancy Ever
We used to have these things called books, and some told you where to go
Does BBC Worldwide's sale of Lonely Planet at an £80 million loss (after writing down its value by £67 million over 6 years), on top of Google's purchase of Frommer's last year, herald the end of travel guidebooks? [more inside]
Tiny eagles eating fish
British family Robinson: the short stories of three illustrators
Thomas Robinson and Eliza Heath had three sons, Thomas (1869-1950), Charles (1870-1937), and William (1872-1944), who followed in their father's (and grandfather's) footsteps as illustrators of various sorts. The most widely know was the youngest, W. Heath Robinson, whose contraptions earned him the reputation as the UK counterpart to the US artist Rube Goldberg. But the other two brothers are not to be overlooked. [more inside]
Send to: TSR Hobbies Inc.
"Use the method of the grandmother"
Sugata Mitra's 2013 TED Prize talk argues that learning should be viewed as self-organizing and that our educational system is a relic of the victorians. His first TED talk has slightly more detail, while his blog has considerably more.
"If you're reading this, it's a safe bet you read magazines."
The Art Of Making Magazines "By making what they call "not a how-to book, but… a how-to-think-about-it-book," they help us look at something we've probably been taking for granted: What is a magazine?"
Eddie guested on Frasier with Moose who was in My Dog Skip w/Kevin Bacon
How I Know Eddie Van Halen (an exercise in the history of Rock & Roll collaboration, in 182 steps.)
"Ouga Chaka Ouga!"
OMGif! [Wired] "On Tuesday, Google announced via Google+ that Image Search now has an “Animated” filter. That means that if you’re only searching for animated magic, you need never be bothered with a still image again. Finally that search for Jennifer Lawrence GIFs from the Academy Awards just got a whole lot easier."
drawroF
How American wrestling is more honest than American politics
"Professional wrestling fans, we who are "smart marks" especially, are in many ways more sophisticated than the political junkies who populate political blogs and web sites (what are really fan boy and fan girl mark hangouts) like the Free Republic or The Daily Kos.
They know that professional wrestling is a work and a game.
Do the Obamabots, Tea Party zealots, and true believers on either the Right or the Left realize that politics is much the same thing?"
They know that professional wrestling is a work and a game.
Do the Obamabots, Tea Party zealots, and true believers on either the Right or the Left realize that politics is much the same thing?"
Slip the surly bonds of Earth, vicariously
Come along when Lainey, six years old, goes for her first ever airplane ride in her family's open-cockpit 1946 Champ (SLYT).
March 19
I used to be psychic, but I drank my way out of it
The Savage Wit Of Mark E Smith, frontman and only consistent member of English post-punk band The Fall.
Skydog
"The Allman Brothers Band produced the sound at the heart of Southern rock. At Fillmore East, the live double album that launched Duane and Gregg Allman into the rock stratosphere, was recorded 42 years ago this month. But on Oct. 29, 1971, just days after the record was certified gold, 24-year-old Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident. He left behind a wife and a 2-year-old daughter, Galadrielle.
Now, Galadrielle Allman has helped produce a compendium of her father's work. Skydog, titled after his nickname, is a seven-CD box set tracing his slide guitar virtuosity from his earliest days to his last.
Here, Galadrielle Allman speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about the role that music played in her father's life — and her own."
rrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnn
No One is Born Gay (or Straight): Here Are 5 Reasons Why
10 Fan letters from famous authors, to famous authors
Ask Nicola
Reel 2 Real: Sound at the Pitt Rivers Museum
Reel 2 Real: Sound at the Pitt Rivers Museum is a digitization project that is taking the archival field recordings of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford University's museum of ethnography and anthropology), digitizing them, and placing them online with Soundcloud. [more inside]
Imagine how fabulous that housewarming party will be.
The house across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church is now a Gay Pride centre... and rainbow flag. I never knew I could type and tag a post while simultaneously laughing this hard.
ba boom
Operation Overlord
PhotosNormandie is a collaborative collection of more than 3,000 royalty-free photos from World War II's Battle of Normandy and its aftermath. (Photos date from June 6 to late August 1944). The main link goes to the photostream. You can also peruse sets, which include 2700+ images from the US and Canadian National Archives.
Please Pass the Snotwinkles
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Santa Fe officials are encouraging same-sex couples to apply for marriage licenses, pointing out that the state doesn't need to pass a marriage equality law because New Mexico law already allows same-sex marriage.
"There will be plenty of time to edit and stylize it later."
Victorian England and the American lockpicker
Given the failure of all previous picking attempts, the arrival on July 21 of a letter, headed “American Department, Crystal Palace,” at the firm’s offices likely brooked small concern. “An attempt will be made to open a lock of your manufacture on the door of a Strong-room at 34, Great George Street, Westminster, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 11 o'clock A.M. You are respectfully invited to be present, to witness the operation.”
Windfarm sickness spreads by word of mouth, Australian study finds
Sickness being attributed to wind turbines is more likely to have been caused by people getting alarmed at the health warnings circulated by activists, an Australian study has found. Complaints of illness were far more prevalent in communities targeted by anti-windfarm groups, said the report's author, Simon Chapman, professor of public health at Sydney University. His report concludes that illnesses being blamed on windfarms are more than likely caused by the psychological effect of suggestions that the turbines make people ill, rather than by the turbines themselves. [more inside]
Hmmmm, Only $50,000....
With the current hard times a lot of organizations are looking for alternative funding sources. This is almost exactly not like that.
Iraq: 10 Years After Invasion
Iraq: 10 Years After Invasion. "The United States invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003 on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The mass destruction of the invasion, occupation, and civil war followed, and amplified the societal and health disintegration caused by the previous decade of sanctions. Iraqi lives and communities remain war-devastated ten years on. American military and contractor families struggle with the loss of loved ones as well as the emotional and economic burdens of living with long-term injuries and illnesses. Total US federal spending associated with the Iraq war has been $1.7 trillion through FY2013. In addition, future health and disability payments for veterans will total $590 billion and interest accrued to pay for the war will add up to $3.9 trillion." [more inside]
In Russia, Office Escapes You
Monarch in the Middle
Amid the social and political transformations reshaping the Middle East, can King Abdullah II, the region's most pro-American Arab leader, liberalize Jordan, modernize its economy, and save his kingdom from capture by Islamist radicals? - Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic
In Kansas City, they wouldn't let him back on the bus.
The trip was fine. I've never seen that part of the country from the highway before. There just were a few incidents on my way home that chipped away at my resistance. I really do try to remember how incredibly fortunate I am. I really do. I just can get worn down.Freddie DeBoer messed up his airline reservation for a conference in Vegas, so ended up taking a bus home to Indiana. He meditates on the people he encountered on his trip in his blog.
The Parade of Horrors is Delayed
The Supreme Court has held that the First Sale Doctrine applies to copyrighted material manufactured and sold abroad. (Previously) [more inside]
Bill Stout Bootleg Record Cover Art
If anyone has heard of artist Bill Stout, it is probably because of his paintings of prehistoric life, or perhaps you recognize some of his movie poster art. Early in his career, Stout produced cover art for bootleg records issued by the Trademark of Quality label. The artist recently published a three-part interview about his work for that label. It has lots of wonderful anecdotes, but most importantly, lots of great art. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
The Canon Drone
We've all seen it. The off-white UAV is seen side on, nose tilted slightly down, a stubby missile caught at the moment of launch beneath it, a blue and grey landscape of treeless mountains behind it. There's no motion blur and none of the markings on the aircraft have been obfuscated. It's a perfect shot. Except for one or two details. [more inside]
Mouth music
Canntaireachd (Scottish Gaelic: literally, "chanting"; Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [kʰãũn̪ˠt̪ɛɾʲəxk]) is the ancient Scottish Highland method of noting classical pipe music or Ceòl Mòr by a combination of definite syllables, by which means the various tunes could be more easily recollected by the learner, and could be more easily transmitted orally. [more inside]
So much more sense this way
"Our brackets have culled out all of the superfluous information and reduced the [NCAA] tournament to what matters most: colors and logos."
1,000 troops, 27 cannon, 3,000 cannonballs ... that's what it takes.
"A Scottish version of Storm’s End, impregnable, unbreakable." Freelance travel blogger Mike Sowden is waxing quite eloquent about Scotland in a series of on-going posts. His most recent entry takes on not only Edinburgh Castle (even comparing it to a certain magically-defended castle in Westeros), but the long-long-ago violent geology that birthed its base, as well as that of Arthur's Seat nearby.
"God hates fags." - Michelle Shocked, 3/17/13
Folksinger and self-described "sophisticated hillbilly" (and born-again Christian) Michelle Shocked went onstage at Yoshi's in San Francisco Sunday night for what audience members assumed would be a traditional folk concert. Into her second set, she began an anti-gay rant that included her saying, "When they stop Prop 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back." She also reportedly told fans, "You can go on Twitter and say ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates fags.'" Most of the audience walked out, and the staffers at Yoshi's kicked her offstage and banned her for life.
Grappling for survival
Wrestling Out Of The Olympics - The Gods Must Be Crazy Mad
The whole lucrative sham of it all was exposed once again this week when the executive board of the IOC — Informal Motto: "Me Some Too, Yes?" — recommended that wrestling be dropped as an Olympic sport in the 2020 Summer Games, which are supposed to be held in Istanbul, Tokyo, or Madrid, depending on whose checks clear first, I believe. According to the board, wrestling is no longer a "core sport" in the Olympics and it will have to petition for inclusion in 2020 along with, and I am not making this up, sport climbing and wakeboarding. This is terrific. Why don't we just hold the Olympics in an REI outlet store somewhere?[more inside]
Nagel on the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature
Andrew Ferguson explains and defends eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has been stirring up outraged refutations (e.g. here or here) with his new book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Also in the defense column is philosopher Edward Feser's extensive series on Nagel's book.
Compare and contrast, bits vs dead trees
As lexicographers revel in the capabilities of online dictionaries, one person notes the death of print encyclopedias.
E1M1: City 17
"Urgent… Have possibility of taking photos… Send film" -Auschwitz 1944
Is looking at photographs like those of the bloody birth of Bangladesh (possibly NSFW? one photo is of corpses) "an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence?" In The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence, Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to voyeuristic tendencies. An excerpt.
flashing fish brains
Predicting is hard, especially the future
"During a summer in the late 1960s I discovered an easy and certain method of predicting the future. Not my own future, the next turn of the card, or market conditions next month or next year, but the future of the world lying far ahead. It was quite simple. All that was needed was to take the reigning assumptions about what the future was likely to hold, and reverse them. Not modify, negate, or question, but reverse." -- science fiction critic and writer John Clute discusses the secret of predicting the future for Lapham's Quarterly's Future theme issue.
Bill Walton on Boris Diaw
March 18
where the wild things are
Wilder Mann - photos of traditional animal costumes of Europe, by Charles Freger. Also in National Geographic, and in the New York Times' Lens Blog:
“These traditions come from Neolithic times — from shamanism — and they have never stopped,” said Mr. Fréger, 38. “For a few nights you can behave like a goat, drink a lot and forget about being civilized. You can be a wild animal for three days and then you go back to controlling your wildness.”
Today would be an important day.
Come on down to Noise Park and meet some friends of mine.
sea & sky
seaQuest: what if we could learn to live on/underneath the oceans (or in orbit)? [previously(er)] [more inside]
Rusty Fire Hydrant Planets
The only poll that matters...
Antony Green's Election Calculator Compare your own predictions with Antony Green’s. Handy list of recent past polls to see just what sort of caning the Gillard government might be in for. Probably more fun for coalition voters than Labor voters.
Give us this day our daily inflammation
The Dietary Intake of Wheat and other Cereal Grains and Their Role in Inflammation (full text PDF at site) [more inside]
Dr Crusher And The Curious Case of the Pen
Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, has a Tumblr where she posts pictures of a Dr. Crusher action figure in darkly comic situations.
Doing What We Could Because We Can.
Wayside Creations: the studio that produced the surprisingly high-budget fallout Fan series: Nuka Break (with Dougie Jones!) (previously, previously) have turned their attention to the office politics of our favorite hive of mad science: Aperture R&D.
Bright Futures
China is engineering genius babies
I just attended a debate in New York a few weeks ago about whether or not we should outlaw genetic engineering in babies and the audience was pretty split. In China, 95 percent of an audience would say, “Obviously you should make babies genetically healthier, happier, and brighter!”
For that boss-level werewolf, you don't want any old silver bullet...
Long before the Blue Man Group, there was the Blue Man. Captain Fred Walters of the British Army contracted argyria after taking silver nitrate to treat locomotor ataxia. He took more deliberately to deepen the blue tone, and became a sideshow performer with Barnum and Bailey. In 1924, suffering from shortness of breath, he checked into Bellevue in New York City, where he died. His autopsy revealed that the cause of death was pneumonia, and that his muscles, internal organs, and brain were all tinted blue. By extracting the silver from different parts of his body, city toxicologist Alexander Gettler extrapolated that Walters had 3.5 oz. of silver in his body.
His co-workers had a bullet cast from the extracted silver, presenting it to Gettler "just in case he ever had to analyze a vampire." [more inside]
Thieves Identified In Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist
"In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990 – as the city was preoccupied with Saint Patrick's Day celebrations – a pair of thieves disguised themselves as Boston police officers, gained entry to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and stole thirteen works of art."* "The stolen works have a total estimated worth of around $500 million, making the robbery the largest property theft ever"* and "considered the greatest art theft in history."* Today the FBI announced that they have identified the people who stole the masterworks. They also said they had determined where the artworks had traveled in the years after the robbery. The FBI said they did not know where they were now and were appealing to the public for their help in finding them. The Gardner Museum is offering a reward of $5 million for information leading to the recovery of these works.
The Feminist Housewife
Kelly calls herself “a flaming liberal” and a feminist, too. “I want my daughter to be able to do anything she wants,” she says. “But I also want to say, ‘Have a career that you can walk away from at the drop of a hat.’ ” And she is not alone. Via.
All this energy calling me, back where it comes from....
The Cleveland Memory Project is an archive of photos, postcards, videos, recordings, clippings, ebooks, personal papers, maps and other historical "goodies" about the city. "It's a collaborative endeavor of many local historical societies, public libraries and government agencies who have mounted their own local history." On Flickr. [more inside]
Was the destruction of the Death Star an inside job?
Watch Luke's Change and join the realm of real truthers. (SLYT)
"If there is a third intifada, we want to be the ones who started it."
"Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?"
"One village in the West Bank tests the limits of unarmed resistance."
"One village in the West Bank tests the limits of unarmed resistance."
Oswald & Margaret
Mama here comes midnight...
“People never expect a youth to challenge the government".
The Manitoba government's Bill C-18 compels all publicly-funded schools to accommodate students who want to form gay-straigt alliances. This bill has been met with resistance by religious schools, federal ministers and local clergy. Despite the furor, Education Minister Nancy Allan is not backing down, nor is sixteen-year old activist Evan Wiens.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Be Encouraging
Real tough guys don't need guns,
they just need a positive, can-do attitude.
Thirty Years Later: The last self-help book.
Percy and Sagan in the Cosmos: On the 30th anniversary of "The Last Self-Help Book." "Lost in the Cosmos is the most peculiar book of Percy's career, and in my judgment his finest achievement. I read it when it first appeared, and if you had asked me at the time whether I expected the book to be relevant in 30 years, I probably would have said no. It seemed so topical, so of its moment; and how long could that moment last? But re-reading it in preparation for this essay I saw how little it matters that many people today will know nothing or nearly nothing about Phil Donahue or Carl Sagan. Their immediate heirs are with us every day when we turn on the TV." [more inside]
Inventions of the Monsters
"It was John Polidori's misfortune to be comic without having a sense of humor, to wish to be a great writer but to be a terrible one, to be unusually bright but surrounded for one summer by people who were titanically brighter, and to have just enough of an awareness of all of this to make him perpetually uneasy. Also, he couldn't jump."
Knock, knock. Who's there? Banana. Banana who?
"While playing around with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) we discovered an amazing number of open embedded devices on the Internet. " After completing the scan of roughly one hundred thousand IP addresses, we realized the number of insecure devices must be at least one hundred thousand. Starting with one device and assuming a scan speed of ten IP addresses per second, it should find the next open device within one hour. The scan rate would be doubled if we deployed a scanner to the newly found device. After doubling the scan rate in this way about 16.5 times, all unprotected devices would be found; this would take only 16.5 hours. Additionally, with one hundred thousand devices scanning at ten probes per second we would have a distributed port scanner to port scan the entire IPv4 Internet within one hour. [more inside]
A Long Walk
John Cline writes book reviews for The Los Angeles Review of Books, and has co-edited two anthologies on grindhouse cinema. Last May he was awarded his PhD in American Studies and like so many others in the humanities was unable to find a job in his field. So he decided to go for a walk. Inspired by his hometown poet and drawing on his longtime interest in American music and history, John decided to follow the path of The Great Migration up the Mississippi, recording and blogging his experience. This would not be a test of endurance, but an sociological/anthropological immersion, a document about the land, history and people of the Mississippi River valley.
With some help from Kickstarter John arranged to walk from New Orleans to Memphis, to work river boats from Memphis to St Louis and finally to travel by train the last leg to Chicago. Having started on Ash Wednesday, he has already visited Angola Prison, encountered a down on his luck former Rodeo Star and discovered the joys of walking fifteen plus miles with a fifty pound pack on his back. Most importantly he is sharing what he has learned of our modern lifestyle and the nature of human kindness.
Letters From A Private
Letters From A Private: "...[19 year-old Pvt. D. Bruce Hirshorn] was in the Army in 1944 and 1945. He wrote home almost every single day.... Today, Uncle Bruce is the same upbeat, funny guy. He’s 87 and he loves syrup and ships!" [more inside]
The American Mind
Some People Say, “Republicans Don’t Care"
The Republican National Committee released its "autopsy" report [PDF] today, analyzing what's wrong with the Grand Old Party after two presidential defeats, with recommendations.
Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales
In this paper we analyze how one such anti-piracy intervention, the shutdown of the popular Megaupload site, affected the digital sales of movies for two major studios.
Our analysis across 12 countries suggests that, in the 18 weeks following the shutdown, digital revenues for these two studio’s movies were 6-10% higher than they would have been if not for the shutdown. Thus our findings show that the closing of a major online piracy site can increase digital media sales, and by extension we provide evidence that Internet movie piracy displaces digital film sales. (via IP Finance.)
How African Feminism Changed the World
Foster parents: not freaking saints
"We hate being told we must be saints or angels, because we’re doing something really ordinary and normal – that is, taking care of kids in need. If some children showed up dirty and hungry and needing a safe place on your doorstep, you’d care for them too – we just signed up to be the doorstep they arrive at. The idea of sainthood makes it impossible for ordinary people to do this – and the truth is the world needs more ordinary, human foster parents. This also stinks because if we’re saints and angels, we can’t ever be jerks or human or need help, and that’s bad, because sometimes this is hard." -- What foster parents wish other people knew.
March 17
something something "face off"
The Legend of Cage: Beneath the Mask is a texture pack modification for Majora's Mask based primarily on the face of actor Nicolas Cage. Via.
Murica
My fellow Mefites, I implore you. Don't even think about clicking the more inside if you have anything pressing to do. [previously] [more inside]
Too much blood
Ennio Morricone, the film composer behind the iconic scores to The Good The Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars, The Thing, and many other films, has said he wouldn't like to work with Quentin Tarantino because he "places music in his films without coherence". He also said Django Unchained had 'too much blood'.
The Problem with Video Game Reviews
All The Pretty Doritos:How Video Game Journalism Went Off The Rails Article from forbes.com detailing the pressures video game reviewers and publications come under from gaming companies. These range from the relatively subtle (gifts, gratuities, entertainments put on for visiting journos), to overtly pressuring/punishing publications for not playing ball (cancelling interviews and exclusives in response to less-than-flattering editorial, threatening to pull advertising in response to bad reviews). At the extreme end, the article mentions one journalist who was fired two weeks after publishing a 'bad' (6/10) review for Kane & Lynch.
Dina Kelberman is google
Les érections de Stephen Harper
Les érections de Stephen Harper. (SL video) (SFW). Speaking in French, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asks the hard questions about Canadian "érections". (Via MontrealMemes)
Somewhere between Elvis and the Lone Ranger
Like a weird game of Rock Paper Sissors Lizard Spock
Inventions that Changed the World is a 2004 BBC Miniseries in the vein of Connections (previously) hosted by Jeremy Clarkson (yes the Top Gear guy).
The Gun.
The Computer.
The Jet.
The Telephone.
The Television
hifalutin talk about photoshop
"An examination that begins from the classical dichotomy shape-substance and that questions itself about the nature of purity and the unavoidability of the corruption, without taking itself too seriously, because in the end, you know, children like to play."
Faster Than Light
Davis and Ma wrote up a long list of one-paragraph game pitches to prototype. They would be small, manageable games that two people could complete on their own. The game they chose to go with would have to be finished within a year, because that was all they had budgeted for. Among the pitches inspired by board games, roguelikes and all the genres that excited them was a 2D, top-down management game called FTL. The Opposite of Fail
- The making of FTL (Previously)
I'm A Princess
French group Golden Mustache contemplates the sex lives of various video game characters (video, English subtitles, surprisingly SFW, wait for Tetris)
Dreams of the Sonora Aero Club
Sometime in the mid-1960s, a junk dealer in Houston, Texas acquired 12 large notebooks that had been thrown out to the curb after a house fire. [more inside]
The Mazel of the Irish
"[The Loyal Yiddish Sons of Erin]'s biggest event was the annual Erev St. Patrick's Day Banquet. It was a formal gala at the Americana Hotel, complete with a big band, kosher corned beef and green bagels." American-Irish-Jews still celebrate St. Patrick's Day: “It’s an American-Irish holiday, surely not Jewish. It has nothing to do with Jewish people. But I’m Irish, and I have a feeling for it.” [more inside]
Plip plop plip plop
Jumping never felt so deliberate
Take the twitch out of platforming with Bump, a delightful new little turn-based randomly-generated roguelikelike by clever game dev and creative fellow Aaron Steed. Jump at or on or over things! Collect diamonds with head-bumping! Avoid and/or destroy spikes and bad guys! Try not to die! Die anyway! It's a good time. [more inside]
Is Pope Francis a Fraud?
After a right-wing coup crushed the reforms of Vatican II, one scholar says the last two popes are illegitimate. It comes near the end of a thousand-year history of the Vatican’s global rise to power, ambiguous flourishing and rapid decline. It also comes after 40 years of internal counterrevolution under the previous two popes, during which a group of hardcore right-wing cardinals have consolidated power in the Curia and stamped out nearly all traces of the 1960s liberal reform agenda of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II. A handful of intellectuals, both inside and outside the church, quietly believe that means Pope Francis isn’t a legitimate pope at all.
Yes! We'll be your neighbor!
To commemorate the anniversary of his birthday on March 20th, cracked.com's Brendan McGinley has put together a remarkably touching collection of facts about the influence and importance of Mister Fred Rogers. [previously] [more inside]
Untied & weightless
Debugging
Every programmer knows that debugging is hard. Great debuggers, though, can make the job look simple. " That attitude is illustrated in an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. A programmer had recently installed a new workstation. All was fine when he was sitting down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That behavior was one hundred percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and never when standing." [more inside]
“Happy shopping! Enjoy the 1st.”
The food stamp economy of Woonsocket, RI, profiled in The Washington Post.
Not there yet, but cause for hope...
Fourteen adults have also been "functionally cured" after they were given combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) for their HIV infection. [Warning: autoplay] They have been able to stop taking the treatment while still keeping their infection under control, according to a new study in the journal PLOS Pathogens.There is an important distinction between 'functionally cured' and 'HIV negative'. [more inside]
Haircut in Cyprus
On Saturday the EU mandated that all bank deposits in Cyprus pay a 6.75% "stability levy" on the first €100,000 and 9.9% on the excess to help pay for €6 billion of the €10 billion bank bailout.
This is despite opposition from the Cyprus finance minister, who stated earlier this month that "there really couldn't be a more stupid idea" and more recently that "I wish I was not the minister to do this". The scale of the bailout is nearly 50% of Cyprus' entire GPD, and many officials are concerned that the money will go to Russian gangsters and oligarchs.
The Saturday announcement lead to a run on the ATMs, which caused banks to restrict electronic transfers and set a €400 withdrawal limit. Most ATMs were out of money by the end of the day and a frustrated man threatened one bank with a bulldozer.
The plan was scheduled to be voted on by parliament on Sunday, but it has been delayed to Monday and might not be passed by politicians who have heard complaints from their Cypriot constituents all weekend. The Cyprus President warned of total financial collapse and euro exit if it is not approved.
Can a porn map be map porn?
Global Internet Porn Habits: An interactive map that lets you see the most commonly searched porn terms by state or country. No porn images, but obviously porn-related language and the word porn in the URL, so whether it is SFW is up to you.
The art of marquetry
Marquetry is the art of making pictures composed of cut pieces of wood veneer which are then attached to a piece of furniture. Silas Kopf is perhaps the best known American doing marquetry. He works in Easthampton, MA on cabinets, desks, and at one time, pianos for Steinway. He also decorated a piano for Walden Woods using indigenous wood. [more inside]
“What you cannot do, a Cossack can.”
The Cossacks Are Back. May the Hills Tremble. [New York Times]
"In his third term, President Vladimir V. Putin has offered one clear new direction for the country: the development of a conservative, nationalist ideology. Cossacks have emerged as a kind of mascot, with growing financial and political support."
"Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" Jeremiah 8:22
Hepatitis C has possibly been cured, but... In April, 2012 a human study with a combination of Gillead Sciences' Sofosbuvir, and Bristol-Myers' Daclatasvir led to a 100 percent cure rate for hepatitis-C, the world's leading cause of liver disease. Unfortunately, Gillead, which paid billions for Pharmasset, the company that developed Sofosbuvir, refused to allow additional studies with Bristol-Myers, choosing instead to try developing a proprietary cure, possibly using highly toxic Ribavirin. They are also backing away from a similarly successful study completed this year, previously approved by Pharmasset. Since Gilliad's delay of additional human studies, approximately 300,000 people worldwide have died from liver disease related to Hepatitis-C and 40% of all available liver transplants have been diverted to a treatable disease, while up to 200 million additional infected people worldwide -- many of whom do not know they are infected until the end stages of the disease -- are still waiting for a cure. Meanwhile, Hepatitis-C activists are trying to petition the White House to find a way to resolve the impasse. [more inside]
Abercrombie & Fitch & Zizek
In 2003, Abercrombie and Fitch approached Slovene philosopher and culture critic Slavoj Žižek to write ad copy. The results were odd. (And NSFW.)
Go, Gibson guitar gals!
As American men went off to war during World War II, women stepped in to fill the jobs they left behind, keeping the factories and shipyards running, and the economy humming.
While most were praised for their patriotism, one unheralded group of women worked in the shadows building Gibson guitars. The maker of the famous instrument never confirmed that women crafted its guitars during the war, and in an official company history, even reported it stopped producing instruments for those years. But now the time has come to shed some new historical light on the Kalamazoo Gals. [more inside]
March 16
I can’t see and I have a goiter with a goiter of its own.
Taco Bell is to food what the propeller beanie hat is to transportation: wildly insufficient, but not altogether un-enjoyable if approached with the right attitude: Will Dorito-Sheathed Tacos Be The End Of Us All? (SLGawker)
The longest sentence ever served in an American prison: 64 years.
William Blake has been held in solitary confinement at Elmira Correctional Facility in New York State for nearly 26 years, after he murdered a Sheriff's Deputy and wounded another in a failed escape attempt back in 1987. Sentenced to 77 years to life, he will be eligible for parole in 2064. But Blake has no chance of ever leaving prison alive, and almost no chance of ever leaving solitary — a fate he considers "a sentence worse than death." (Via) [more inside]
Ayn Rand's Private Access Show
25 years is never as far away as it seems.
On April 3, 1988, the Los Angeles Times Magazine published a 25-year look ahead to 2013.
The Internet is a surveillance state
Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does.
Bunny Sled!
Radagast's racing rhosgobel rabbits: A recreational musher looks at the realities of bunny sledding.
Peter Parker is underpaid
Guilt, gratitude, music photography. Freelance Australian music photographer Leah Robertson writes about being underpaid, and how pervasive it is in the industry. Check out rates from around the world at Who Pays Photographers?
"The tattoo changed my mastectomy scar into my shield."
Moyer and Campbell's "Power of Myth" documentary now online for free
Joseph Campbell was well-known for his exploration of the monomyth, or the hero's journey, which posits that worldwide myths that have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure. Campbell's work inspired George Lucas to create the first Star Wars trilogy.
In the mid-1980s, Bill Moyers spent many hours interviewing Campbell at Skywalker Ranch. The result was a now famous documentary called "The Power of Myth." The series has been available on DVD since 2001, but Moyers has just made the full series available for streaming and download on his site.
"I give my right hand to the Occidentals and my left to the Orientals."
Edith Maude Eaton (1865-1914), better known by her nom de plume Sui Sin Far ("lotus blossom" in Cantonese), was a North American journalist, author, essayist and travel writer who has been dubbed the "'mother' of Asian North American literature." Born of an English businessman father and a Chinese mother adopted by British missionaries, Eaton lived and worked in New York, Montreal, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston. Her short stories, known principally through her only published collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912), offer sympathetic depictions of Chinese and Eurasian immigrants while prejudice against Asian peoples in North America was rampant. [more inside]
Canoeing down the Mississippi
Between July 28 and November 10, 2003, Ron Haines canoed down the entire length of the Mississippi. Eight years later, he wrote it up as a series of blog posts with lots of interesting photos and observations: Lake Itasca to Minneapolis-St. Paul. Minneapolis-St. Paul to St. Louis. St. Louis to New Orleans. He also wrote up his logistics and some of the press coverage he got along the way. [more inside]
Computerized Math, Formal Proofs and Alternative Logic
Using computer systems for doing mathematical proofs - "With the proliferation of computer-assisted proofs that are all but impossible to check by hand, Hales thinks computers must become the judge." [more inside]
On Chicago Public Schools Censoring Persepolis's Images of Torture
Suffice it to say, Persepolis is quite a work. It’s a testament to the power of the graphic novel. The art’s simple linework helps the story feel unpretentious and direct. Persepolis was adapted as a 2007 French animated film, written and directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Among other honors, it was nominated for an Academy Award. Why would someone want to ban such a book?
Czeched Out
Caturday Crackup
Sunshine on my shoulder gets me sunburned.
Did you know that this is the last day of Sunshine Week? What is Sunshine Week? An attempt to get a nationwide discussion going about the importance of access to public information and what it means for you and your community. (from 2005 a Blue note was sung with This little light of mine here on the Blue) [more inside]
Some people just can't let sleeping frogs lie...
Extinction got you down? Try de-extinction! Our species has played a role in the extinction of ... many other species. But now some scientists are proposing a radical turn of the tables: Bringing lost species back from the dead. How to Resurrect Lost Species. [more inside]
"In the world of science, they are rock stars..."
The Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) is a unique research facility in northern Ontario comprised of 58 lakes set aside by the Government of Canada in which entire lakes are used for experimental manipulation.
ELA has effectively solved the problems of nutrient loading and acid rain in freshwater ecosystems. As well, it has produced top research on the effects of estrogen, climate change and methylmercury in freshwater. Current research includes the impacts of nanosilver, climate change, transgenic fish and flame retardants on aquatic ecosystems aquatic ecosystems.
On March 31, 2013, The Harper Government will close the Experimental Lakes Area. [more inside]
The reporter, his foreign-minister father and the war that consumed them
The reporter, his foreign-minister father and the war that consumed them Ten years ago, Canada made a bold decision to stay out of the Iraq War. Many of us may forget how agonizing the process was. Patrick Graham was a reporter in Baghdad in 2003. His father Bill Graham was Canada’s foreign minister. Today, in an intimate conversation, they remember the months that changed the world, the nation and their own lives
The World Has No Room for Cowards
It’s not often that one has the opportunity to be the target of a cyber and kinetic attack at the same time. But that is exactly what’s happened to me and my Web site over the past 24 hours. On Thursday afternoon, my site was the target of a fairly massive denial of service attack. That attack was punctuated by a visit from a heavily armed local police unit that was tricked into responding to a 911 call spoofed to look like it came from my home.
Well, as one gamer enthusiast who follows me on Twitter remarked, I guess I’ve now “unlocked that level.” ~ KrebsonSecurity
De Moivre’s equation
The Most Dangerous Equation If you have never taken the time to read any statistics, then take the time to read this short chapter excerpt. In order to understand the world a bit more accurately and be able to interpret data for public policy, understanding De Moivre’s equation and sample variability is very significant.
The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'
How science fiction/fantasy blogs cover female writers
"When looking at a sample of bloggers reviewing SF/F, a majority of men will skew toward reviewing more men. A majority of women will skew toward a more equal gender parity, or the opposite in which they review a majority of women. There will be a handful of outliers." -- An analysis of the visibility of women in (online) science fiction and fantasy reviews and whether the gender of the reviewer impacts that visibility.
The Economics of Spam
A paper from Justin M. Rao and David H. Reiley in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (full-text pdf) about spam economics. [more inside]
Clever Carving Gives Viewers Pause
Nice article on the limitations of the new field of Synthetic Biology
March 15
Cybermania 94: The Ultimate Shame Awards
Ever wanted to watch a video games award show from 1994 hosted by Leslie Neilson and Jonathan Taylor Thomas? Well, your extremely questionable prayers have been answered (single two hour youtube link, stick around for all the commercials and a very early appearance by Will Arnett)
Vincent Browne v the ECB
The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
The lack of female road narratives and why it matters Whereas a man on the road might be seen as potentially dangerous, potentially adventurous, or potentially hapless, in all cases the discourse is one of potential. When a man steps onto the road, his journey begins. When a woman steps onto that same road, hers ends.
In Phoenix, you don’t ask: What could go wrong? You ask: What couldn’t?
Phoenix pulls back the curtain on the future of inland empires. If you want a taste of the brutal new climate to come, the place to look is where that climate is already harsh, and growing more so — the aptly named Valley of the Sun.
William deBuys on climate change and Phoenix concluding one or several decades from now, people will bet on a surer thing: they’ll take the road out of town.
William deBuys on climate change and Phoenix concluding one or several decades from now, people will bet on a surer thing: they’ll take the road out of town.
Go home, Fyodor, you're drunk.
Michigan's first legal same-sex marriage
Odawa Indian tribe hosts Michigan's first legal same-sex marriage (and the third among all US Native nations). It was a historic day. Not just for them and not just for the tribe that [Tim] LaCroix belongs to, but for Michigan too. News story from UpNorthLive.
Google Jabber Servers No Longer Federated; No Non-Google Servers
First, there was the closing of Google Reader. There was also the announcement that Google would only leave CalDAV open to whitelisted developers (no MeFi link, though it is briefly mentioned in the Google Illiterate discussion), forcing anyone else who wrote a calendaring application to migrate from the open CalDAV standard to Google's own Calendar API. Then there was the removal of advertisement blocking applications from Google Play.
Now, Google is blocking invite requests to their Jabber service from non-Google Jabber servers. A Google customer user must send the request to the non-Google Jabber user. [more inside]
Last Post before I ***DELETE MY ACCOUNT***
Tony Stark, eat your heart out.
Defense contractor takes break from F-35 JSF, finds a way to eliminate 99% of the energy cost of desalination. Lockheed-Martin has developed a way to craft sheets of carbon a single atom thick, which can filter the salt (and just about anything else) from water with a tiny fraction of the energy required by current processes. "Lockheed officials see other applications for Perforene as well, from dialysis in healthcare to cleaning chemicals from the water used in hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," of oil and gas wells." Previously.
MOOO!
Key to slowing/stalling/reversal of desertification and climate change? More cows (sort of). Holistic Management advocate and biologist Allan Savory, co-founder of the Savory Institute, discusses the counterintuitive tactic of allowing large herds of animals to free-roam marginal lands. [more inside]
800+ days of Minecraft in 8 minutes
A visualization of 826 days of Minecraft development, from alpha 1.2 to release 1.5, shown in 8~ minutes. [more inside]
Not a threat but rather a tribute to marriage
Conservative Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) came out in favor of marriage equality today, in an interview on CNN and an Op-Ed in the Columbus Dispatch. This reversal comes via Portman's son, who came out as a gay man to his parents two years ago. Reaction has been mixed.
Mustang Mach 40
So a Ford Mustang Mach 1 shacked up with a Ford GT40 and, under the watchful eyes of engineer Terry Lipscomb and designer Mike Miernik, a child was born. Its name is Mach 40, and it is beautiful and healthy.
Being White in (West) Philly
Amidst the outrage generated by the Being White in Philly article, a 22 year old West Philly native gives her own account of what it's like. She is perhaps looking through rose-colored glasses, considering she grew up just blocks from one of the top 10 drug corners in the city.
My Name Is Not Michael Keaton
Slavery in the new world from Africa to the Americas.
The blog US Slave collects long-form articles on every aspect of the history of slavery, primarily focussing on African slaves in the USA and their descendents. Among the content there is this biography of Ota Benga, the Congolese Pygmy man who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo, and several posts about Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus. [more inside]
Stolen Years
Using potential life expectancy numbers from the World Health Organization, Periscopic has created a beautiful, if depressing, visualization of the lost years resulting from gun deaths in the United States in 2010, and 2013 so far.
The Atlantic - Benj Edwards
Usà puyew usu wapiw!
It seems that the utopian imagination is trapped, like capitalism and industrialism and the human population, in a one-way future consisting only of growth. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to put a pig on the tracks. — Ursula K. Le Guin, "A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be"
In memory of Wan Joon Kim, the unlikely Korean godfather of gangsta rap
1985 marked a few beginnings for gangsta rap, with Schooly D releasing the influential P.S.K. What Does It Mean? (YT), and a few Korean swap-meet vendors opening the Compton Fashion Center, the first indoor swap meet. It was there and then that Wan Joon Kim got his start as an unlikely godfather of gangsta rap.
[more inside]
+
"I'm confident that it's a Higgs particle. I don't need to call it Higgs-like any more...I may need to eat my words one day, but I think that's very unlikely.""Cern scientists believe newly discovered particle is the real Higgs boson. Results of analysis at Cern in Switzerland show particle behaves precisely as expected." Previously
1,000 strands, 1 knitter
Ever wanted to try knitting with 1,000 strands of yarn? Neither did I, but it's a lot of fun to watch someone else do it. Extreme knitter Rachel John, a textile artist and the inventor and creator of Extreme Textiles, is a proponent of using multi-strand knitting to make décor items such as rugs and throws. And when John talks about multi-strand, she really means a multitude. She says, "Up to 300 [strands] is possible, but we think up to 100 should be about right". Knitting with 1,000 strands turns a relaxing past time you can do in a rocking chair into a contact sport, but I have to admit the process is fascinating to watch and the result is a painterly blending of colours. Pro tip: do not try this project with a cat around.
Greetings from the Red Planet
NASA recently announced that the latest results from NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars provide clear physical evidence that Mars once had all the conditions necessary to support life. Despite the skeptical reception given to recent news that the rover may also have found indirect evidence of organic compounds and active microbiological activity, other recent scientific results have gone even further. One Australian study from 2011 concluded, given what we know about Mars now, 3% of its total volume (as compared to 1% of Earth's) is likely habitable to known terrestrial lifeforms. And more recently, further analysis of the results of experiments performed by the 1976 Viking Lander mission suggests that we have likely detected active microbiological activity on Mars already, with one researcher going so far as to claim a 99% certainty that those earlier results detected life. (Previously).
"As the hymn says, you can lay your burden down."
The Things They Leave Behind. "When the Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened 30 years ago, something unexpected happened: People started leaving things at the wall. One veteran has spent decades cataloging the letters, mementos, and other artifacts of loss — all 400,000 of them." (Via.) [more inside]
Noise Kills: When Everyday Sound Becomes Torture
Hyperacusis is a condition where the slightest noise causes unbearable pain. It can result in phonophobia (fear of noise) and sometimes lead to suicide. Tinnitus is a far more common sound processing disorder, but severe cases can also lead to depression [autoplaying video] and suicide. The most serious threat to hearing comes from prolonged exposures to amplified live music (concerts). [more inside]
Do you want an orange?
Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody? A short film directed by Miguel Arteta, written by Miranda July, starring John C. Reilly, July, Mike White, and cinematographer Chuy Chávez.
Comics Quest IV: the quest for rent money
Attention budding cartoonists, want to become rich and famous? You have two choices. You can either become a newspaper cartoonist and let a syndicate help you get in the papers, as explained in this 1950ties public information film styled video. Or you can choose to cut out the middlemen and put your cartoons on the web, which if the video is to be believed, is not unlike an eight bit video adventure game. Either way, uncounted riches await you.
March 14
el molé de caderas
The Goat Slaughter
When the first goat was killed, it took me by surprise. My husband Jorge and I had been invited by one of Jorge’s photojournalist friends to this nondescript compound in La Mixteca, the most impoverished region of Oaxaca, Mexico’s most impoverished state, to watch the annual slaughter of thousands of goats.[more inside]
The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson
Famous writer Anne Carson on ice bats: "I made up ice bats, there is no such thing." (SLNYT) [more inside]
It's. My. Beak.
Have you ever wanted to see cartoon ducks raving in a 3D psychedelic wonderland? You're in luck. It's My Beak, by Libythth. Via.
Love and Fear in the Lab
Uri Alon, professor of molecular cell biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, gives a lecture on the subjective and emotional sides of doing science at CalTech, complete with guitar.
Got a Match? No, but I've got 2 arms, 2 necks, 2 sticks and 88 keys
Not so happily-ever-after?
I can't let you do that, Dave.
Web standards body W3C is considering a proposal to add Digital Rights Management to the next version of the HTML5 standard. Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee is fine with this. Others, like Cory Doctorow, have a different point of view, claiming it will have far-reaching effects that are "incompatible with the W3C's most important policies". Others have called it "impractical and unethical".
There's something about paper
Fashion Illustrator, Furniture Designer and Political Satirist
Paul Iribe who d.in 1935 is best known as a fashion illustrator.
However he was also a furniture designer and a prolific political satirist. (wiki)
However he was also a furniture designer and a prolific political satirist. (wiki)
“Don't be …”
Google has removed Ad Blocking apps from their Play Store. AdAway is available on the open source Android repository F-Droid. AdBlock+ remains available from their own site.
He has come, our Ultraman!
Ultraman Hit Song History Legend Hero Hen and Ultraman Hit Song History New Hero Hen are two 45 minute commemoration compilations of theme songs and clips of the Japanese tokusatsu hero Ultraman that were put together for the show's 45th anniversary. If you're pressed for time, you can just watch the original theme song with English subtitles.
He said he would welcome a million American soldiers to come in
On July 17, 1945, the OSS Deer Team, led by Major A. K. Thomas, was parachuted in the jungle 200 km north of Hanoi, to make contact with a mysterious group of resistance fighters willing to help the US against the Japanese. They were greeted cordially by the group leader, "Mr C. M. Hoo", a sick-looking older man, and his acolyte "Mr Van", a dapper man wearing a white linen suit and a black fedora (and he did like his fedora). From mid-July to the Japanese capitulation, the Deer Team trained Hoo's ragtag band, provided them with explosives and small arms and followed them during skirmishes. They also allegedly saved Ho(o)'s life. Major Thomas' full report on the Deer Mission (including the FPP title and the line Forget the Communist Bogy) is buried in the 1972 Hearings on the causes of the Vietnam war (see also the same events according to Henri Prunier, last surviving member of the Deer Team). [more inside]
He loves you yeah yeah yeah
Cox Models and Drag Queens
That Makes It Invertible! (by The Three Directions)
Three professors at Harvey Mudd College wanted to do something special to mark the final lecture of Math 40: Linear Algebra that their students could relate to. The result: they transformed themselves into The Three Directions and performed "That Makes It Invertible!" for their class, complete with choreography and bad math puns. (SLYT)
Made-for-TV moment
On Wednesday, dozens of armed Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) agents raided several construction sites in Vancouver, Canada looking for undocumented workers. The raids struck many foreman as excessive, especially when, in one case, they were looking for two specific workers who were quickly located. And then they discovered the CBSA was accompanied by reality-television filming crews.
Biketown, USA
LACMA Collection
The Collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Of the 80,000 or so pieces of art on display online, around 20,000 will now have high resolution versions available for download. [more inside]
RIP: Boston Phoenix and WFNX Radio
The Boston Phoenix will be closing immediately, only six months after reinventing itself as a glossy weekly. The Portland and Providence versions will remain open. [Previously]
Tasty Pastry or Edible Obscenity?
Virtual idol Hatsune Miku has collaborated with Family Mart to produce these NSFW snacks. Whaddya think? Feel like heading down to Family Mart for some Sakura no Ame? [more inside]
Not safe for those under the influence of hallucinogenic substances
The NEDC is supposed to represent the typical usage of a car in Europe.
Mind the Gap! Why official car fuel economy figures don’t match up to reality. This report provides new evidence and understanding on why there is a growing gap between the official fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of new passenger cars and vans and that which is achieved by the same vehicles on the road. It demonstrates that the current (NEDC) test is outdated and unrepresentative of real-world driving and current vehicles, and that lax testing procedures are allowing car-makers to manipulate the official tests to produce unrealistically low results [more inside]
Mages didn't do enough research on climate change
Tropical Skyrim is an overhaul mod that transforms the icy province of Skyrim into a tropical area. Here's a short showcase video and a longer video.
The Files Will Get Out
"The most important artefact relating to the Titanic to ever emerge"
Experts have declared that a violin found in an attic in 2006 is indeed the one on which Wallace Hartley played "Nearer My God to Thee" as the Titanic sank.
Veronica Mars Movie gets green light, with a little help from fans
Fans of Veronica Mars, the gone-too-soon TV show that's had a cult following since it's cancellation in 2007, are finally getting a movie. [more inside]
The duty of the satirist is to go one worse than reality
Five classic book reviews from the New Statesmen archive: Including V S Pritchett on Orwell's 1984, V S Naipaul on Memento Mori by Muriel Spark and Martin Amis on J G Ballard's High Rise.
"He breaks off, cackling."
Christopher Doyle, cinematographer for Wong Kar-Wai's most acclaimed works (and dozens of other movies), calls Life of Pi's Academy Award an "insult to cinematography" in a recent interview. He elaborated: "What a total fucking piece of shit." (Part 1 of the same interview, more informative but less entertaining) [NSFW film posters and language]
New York's Hidden Subway Station
Deep in the belly of New York’s subway system, a beautiful untouched station resides that has been forgotten for years with only a limited few knowing of its existence. But if you know what to do, you can see it for yourself.
Bonus: The Underbelly Project, a secret underground art exhibition. [more inside]
The Overbite, Evolution, Utensils, and The Kitchen
Jane Kramer has a fascinating review, an all-encompassing review, of Bee Wilson's, “CONSIDER THE FORK: A HISTORY OF HOW WE COOK AND EAT.” [more inside]
Mailboxes - The Fife Collection of Western U.S. Vernacular Architecture
A collection of pictures of mailboxes in the western US - part of the Fife Collection of Western U.S. Vernacular Architecture, which also includes quilts, murals, tree bark graffiti, fences, gravestones, and festivals, and other examples of folklife and material culture visually recorded by folklorists Austin and Alta Fife. [more inside]
In my belly, fools, not the landfill!
13,000+ boxes of Girl Scout cookies trashed on video. Sources at the Girl Scouts of the USA office in New York say there's no organization-wide policy for disposing of unsold cookies. Many boxes are donated, thanks in part to the 1996 Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act that shields businesses from liability for food donations. Still, an estimated 40% of food is thrown out (pdf) in the U.S.
a global trade in expensive white powder
The Netherlands has of course long been a hub in the international illegal drugs trade, but the white powder currently being exported to China on such a scale that it leads to local shortages is not quite the powder you're thinking of: infant milk formula. [more inside]
Tim Wallach: An attempt to collect them all (literally, all of them)
One man documents his neverending quest to collect all the Tim Wallach baseball cards. Not one of each card, but every single copy of every single Tim Wallach card ever made in the history of baseball cards. If you have any in your possession, he asks that you mail them to his law office's PO box. Maybe you can work out a deal. [more inside]
The Perfect Day
March 13
An award-winning composer and her middle school student
Hilary Hahn performs Jennifer Higdon's remarkable Violin Concerto, for which Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize: 1726, the first movement, is challenging and prickly; Chacconi, the second, is calmer, slow and colorful; Fly Forward, the brief and exciting finale, is worth listening to even if you're not a fan of contemporary classical music. Here, Hahn talks about having Higdon as a teacher at the age of thirteen, and Higdon talks about writing for Hahn's individual style; after the concerto's world premiere, they recorded themselves talking to each other on what looks like a computer cam, which is both fun as heck and a fascinating look at the relationship between composer and performer.
Yo La Tengo Live on WFMU -- 2013 All-Request Marathon Thurs 3/14 at 9am
Yo La Tengo are once again playing requests for pledges on WFMU, beginning at 9am(!) US EDT on Thursday morning March 14. Every year, Yo La Tengo perform requests live on-air in exchange for pledges, to help keep freeform noncommercial radio station WFMU (91.1 FM in Jersey City, NJ) on the air. This year is no exception, even though this year's broadcast will be aired live from Berlin, Germany, where the band is currently on tour. This year's set will begin at about 9am US EDT on Thursday morning March 14. Yo La Tengo will play listener requests for several hours.
You can't get there from here
It's nearly impossible to make consumer navigation technology work well in India. Western-style routing based on directions ("Turn left onto Woodrow Street") is impossible when streets often don't have names, not to mention the problems of using the local language. The solution? Landmark based navigation.
Richard the Wurm
Hahaha, that worm looks like a penis! Oh, wait, that's the headline.
Well, for the most part: 'Missing link' connects two weird, wormy sea creatures [more inside]
For The Love Of Wisdom
The History of Philosophy podcast has the ambitious goal of covering the entire history of (Western) philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to the modern day, without skipping any major philosophers or schools. At 110 episodes, it's just reached the end of the Roman Empire and Boethius and has very far still to go.
Saving "You Bet Your Life"
It's a one-atom thick layer of graphite with remarkable properties.
"Berkeley creates the first graphene earphones, and (unsurprisingly) they’re awesome." Since it was isolated by Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov at the University of Manchester in 2003, graphene has become something of a scientific darling. So, what to do with the "wonder stuff"? Why not make headphones? Turns out, graphene is great for the job: "Graphene has extremely low mass density and high mechanical strength, key qualities for efficient wide-frequency-response electrostatic audio speaker design."
She Who Tells a Story
I feel creatively emboldened to personally say something on the subjects that I am documenting. In terms of how it is produced, intellectually I am more excited than I have been in years. I am envisioning so many more possibilities for the work ... I feel for first time empowered on my own terms. We are calling our own shots and have created somewhat of our own institution.An interview with the six-woman Middle Eastern documentary photography collective Rawiya, whose name means "female narrator" in Arabic. [more inside]
The roads I drive are haunted by memories
Google Illiterate
So what is it smart guy?
The facebook question that has everyone stirred up... I got 9. I am a fifty-one year old white guy. Did new math f-ck me up? [more inside]
Ghost Signs
Ghost signs are old hand painted signs that have been faded by time. Dr Stefan Schutt at Victoria University studies ghost signs in Melbourne, and he's been interviewed by ABC Local Radio and written up in the Sydney Morning Herald (photo gallery). You can see more ghost signs at the Ghost Sign Project or the the ghost sign Flickr group, which has more than 21,000 photos. Previously.
"Conspiracy theorists and technocrat pundits"
The New Inquiry: Just The Facts
With its emphasis on the empirical, conspiracism is uncomfortably similar to the technocratic mindset of mainstream political discourse. Technocratic pundits — typified by the likes of Ezra Klein, a journalist and blogger who runs the Washington Post's Wonkblog — are likewise driven almost exclusively by data sets and empirical studies. As Bhaskar Sunkara suggested in this piece for In These Times, such pundits operate under the assumption that the facts are so powerful that they might lead people of all ideologies to embrace a particular array of ideology-free policies.[more inside]
Godwin on Godwin
"Relatives don’t really show me any examples, but there was a point where my daughter, who is about to turn 20, when she was in her early teens, she thought it was a hoot when she was mad at me to compare me to Hitler. She’d look at me with a very mischievous look and say, 'You know, you’re acting just like Hilter.'"
Turnament!
Conquer this very small dungeon. It's harder than it looks.
Using pies to calculate pi
Ahead of Pi Day (March 14), Matt Parker tries to accurately calculate pi using pies. [SLYT] An extended version of the video will be uploaded on Pi Day, but here's your chance to go out and buy pies before that.
(Video runs 3 minutes, 14 seconds.)
But I Can't Reach the Ballot Box
"Ours are aging, consumption-based societies, focused on today. We need to find a way to build for the future. Maybe enfranchising our children is the answer."
Israel’s Bold New Queen
Albania's unwanted bunkers
Paranoid Dictator’s Communist-Era Bunkers Now a National Nuisance "In Albania, 750,000 Communist-era bunkers populate the landscape, relics of the paranoia and skewed priorities of former dictator Enver Hoxha. Now they exist as quirky homes, animal shelters, ad hoc storage and make-out spots. "
When NASCAR takes over the Olympics
Tire jumping in japan The olympic sport where the auto enthusiast can comment endlessly about the tire he used to have, that would have won.
Vlambeer: Bringing back arcade since 1741
GUN GODZ is a fast-paced, lo-fi FPS that serves as a reminder of the difference between modern duck-and-cover and DOOM-era FPSs. Its quality is unexpected for a game that was created as an extra treat for supporters of a Kickstarter, and a testament to its iterative design. It is the brainchild of Vlambeer, a 2-person studio that releases games with old-school sensibilities. [more inside]
Not imminent, but likely
When the DFL retook the Senate and House in MN last November, amidst the defeat of a referendum to enshrine marriage as one man/one woman in the Minnesota Constitution, there was a lot of speculation what would happen next.
Last night bills passed out of committees on both the MN House and Senate (party line votes of 10-7 and 5-3) that would ensure marriage equality for same sex couples. It is now expected to reach the floor after budget bills and votes are presented and voted on.
Final passage, while probable, is not guaranteed as some rural DFLers (in the Senate especially) are likely to oppose the bill. There is conversely, at least on Republican Senator, Branden Petersen, co-sponsoring the marriage equality measures). The DFL Gov (Mark Dayton) has indicated he would sign the measure if it reached his desk. Marriage equality could well come to Minnesota by August of 2013
Watching the watchmen
Weibo, China's most popular microblogging website, is manually censored for "impropriety" and political content. By observing the time taken for censored posts to disappear, researchers have exposed some of the the working patterns and methods of the censors. [more inside]
The Dark Side of the Miss USA Pageant
Donald Trump trumpets the integrity of the Miss USA pageant. The truth is a bit different.
The Minecraft Hue Project
The Minecraft Hue Project;
It’s hard to find a compelling use case for the Philips Hue. But Jim Rutherford and his son hacked the wireless LED lightbulbs to be in sync with the day/night cycle in Minecraft. It creates an immersive setup and is actually useful as creepers start appearing at nighttime. (Via TechCrunch)
Your home is your castle.
The Castle Doctrine is the new "home invasion MMO" from cult game designer Jason Rohrer (previously: Sleep is Death, Passage, Chain World). It portrays a rather bleak world in which you must place traps to defend your home, family and life savings from an onslaught of burglars. At the same time, you must invade other players' homes to steal their life savings, in order to buy more expensive traps and tools. The more money you gain, the more attractive target your home is, so you better be clever in rigging up those traps. It's fiendish, brilliant, and currently open for public alpha at 50% of the full price. Rock Paper Shotgun has some early impressions: Part 1, Part 2.
Suburbia was our manufactured manifest destiny
iTunes in my Butt
cloud-to-butt is an open-source extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari that replaces all instances of "the cloud" with "my butt." Hilarity ensues. (via stellar.io) [more inside]
Come Over Here And Say That
Cinema Verite
How Americans live today. A video report describing the living conditions of modern Americans.
Hell of a handcart
"For being such a seemingly ordinary vehicle, the wheelbarrow has a surprisingly exciting history." Low-tech magazine gives an illustrated overview of the history of the Chinese wheelbarrow. [Via]
The Work Magazine Reprint Project
Brooklyn-based Tools for Working Wood are in the process of weekly reprinting every single issue of Work: An Illustrated Magazine of Practice and Theory on their blog, having just finished the first year. The original magazine's first issue was published March 23rd, 1889, and the blog is republishing 123 years after the original. [more inside]
You can make a leopard chase its spots
Almost three years after the question was asked do big cats like catnip, science is finally ready to answer the followup question do big cats like chasing laser pointers? The answer may surprise you. Bonus question: can you fit a leopard in a cardboard box?
March 12
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
Respected polling firm Gallup had a disastrous 2012, with a final presidential poll showing Romney 49-48 over Obama, some five points off of the final result. So what exactly went wrong?
The Art of Brian Sanders
Seventy-five year old Brian Sanders, classic illustrator, was tapped by Matt Weiner for the Mad Men Season Six Poster. Sanders and Weiner evidently used an illustration Sanders created in 1964 for inspiration.
Chris Keegan's mirrorgram drones, and celestial (monster) imagery
Artist Chris Keegan has tons of his work up on Flickr, but here's some highlights: drones, a montage project created using mirrorgram app then redoing them hi-res, and celestial images, in which interstellar monsters are found in (or created from) Hubble space imagery.
The Pinky Show: Our Goal is to always be learning new information...
Pinky & Bunny are cute little kitties who live in the Mojave Desert. Their friends are Mimi & Kim (and sometimes grumpy old Daisy). They like to make videos about contemporary issues with a progressive view. Bunny died on Jan 25, 2013. [more inside]
Not that Toy Story
"Galimberti explores the universality of being a kid amidst the diversity of the countless corners of the world; saying, “at their age, they are pretty all much the same; they just want to play.” Photos of Children From Around the World With Their Most Prized Possessions. (previously)
Amazing Water and Sound Experiment #2
Amazing Water & Sound Experiment #2 - brusspup synchronizes his video camera to a water stream run in front of a speaker outputting a 24 Hz sine wave
A Song of Ice on Fire
Methane hydrates, also known as clathrates, are crystalline ice structures which trap molecules of natural gas. They are fairly ubiquitous in near-shore seafloor sediments, where methane from decaying organic matter is trapped in an ice structure at low temperature and high pressure. Though methane hydrates are believed to contain substantially more natural gas than conventional deposits, extraction of the natural gas was thought to be impractical. Until now. [more inside]
you're an idiot, ken
Ken M is that magical blend between idiot and artist that really pushes all the buttons. Here are his contributions to College Humor. [more inside]
antgifs
James Holmes and the Insanity Defense
Today, Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester ordered psychiatric analysis of Dark Knight Rises mass-shooting suspect James Holmes. Holmes will enter a plea tomorrow and is expected to plea Not Guilty by reason of Insanity. Judge Sylvester's court order could involve use of both narco analysis (read: truth serum) and a polygraph test. [more inside]
"She’s not some new age healer, she’s disruptive."
A Nation Of Sex Workers: An Interview With Tracy Quan
We had some incredible meetings at the Harmony Theatre in Tribeca. When we met at GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis), it was like a civics class. If we met at the Harmony, which was a lap-dancing club, there was a charismatic feeling. We often met at Annie Sprinkle’s apartment, and we actually sat around stuffing envelopes once a month, to announce our meetings. This might sound like a nuisance, but it was an opportunity to meet in someone’s home and create a community by doing something practical. I’m really grateful for the internet, don’t get me wrong – but the paper-era movement had its high points. I remember seeing these charming handwritten notes addressed to PONY with an Olympia, WA postmark… something to do with the Riot Grrls..[more inside]
And those are just the drugs that start with the letter “M”
In which a Slate writer decides to fact-check Bob Woodward and discovers how he manages to be wrong without being wrong: The troubling things I learned when I re-reported Bob Woodward’s book on John Belushi.
Give or take
The origins of plus and minus signs - "There be other 2 signes in often use of which the first is made thus + and betokeneth more: the other is thus made – and betokeneth lesse."
But why is the girl in the ravishing red Lego dress so sad?
In Pieces, on display at the OpenHouse gallery in SOHO through March 17th. New York based LEGO sculptor Nathan Sawaya and Australian photographer Dean West (Warning: annoying Flash interface) create magic together. [more inside]
Yo is a Pronoun, yo.
Check out yo down in Baltimore enriching American English.
Born which way?
Natalie Reed, who often writes about gender politics and social justice, calls out "born this way" (especially in a gender/trans* context) as its own form of gender essentialism:
“Gender identity” is still gender-essentialism. It’s just a gender-essentialism where we get to continue thinking men are men, and women are women, and these are inherent parts of who you are, but we also get to ignore the uncomfortable demand of DEFINING “man” and “woman” and what we mean by that, and thereby dodge the uncomfortable fact that any such definition within any essentialist framework necessarily invalidates, undermines, insults or excludes at least some trans or intersex people. It’s a way to go right on believing that our womanhood, or our manhood, or whatever “gender identity” we have, is an immutable and intrinsic quality of ourselves, and thereby maintain the comforting belief that it’s concrete and stable and unassailable, but without having to deal with any of the difficult implications of that, without having to interrogate our definitions, without having to worry about what we mean, and without having to really think about gender beyond the generally received notions. It’s a way to be transgender but still think of our genders the way cis people do.
Recording of Bradley Manning's Speech Leaked
Despite a court prohibition on such recordings, an audio recording of Bradley Manning's speech to the military court in Fort Meade has been leaked in full. In his own words, Bradley Manning explains his reaction to the Collateral Murder video and the process that led him to leak it to the world. [more inside]
"BioShock Infinite is not a formula game"
"Propaganda shields ideas from danger, and I think I'd rather expose ideas to danger. I think that's what I like to make in these games, is to take ideas and say, well, let's see what happens when these aren't protected."
With the much anticipated release of BioShock Infinite just two weeks away, EuroGamer sits down for a lengthy chat with creative Director Ken Levine about philosophy, politics and God. [more inside]
We Are Inseparable!
"This volume stands alone as the only Sendak picture book—that is, a book he both wrote and illustrated—that isn’t designed for children. Not coincidentally, the Blake-inflected illustrations for a 1996 edition of Melville’s “Pierre,” which is certainly not kiddie stuff, bear a similarity to the look of “My Brother’s Book.” It seems that Sendak had an even more specific audience in mind for this one: Kushner told me that Sendak made this book for those adults who had grown up with his stories."
Avi Steinberg on Maurice Sendak's My Brother's Book, in The New Yorker. [more inside]
The Conclave to elect the 266th Pope of the Catholic church has begun
The 115 cardinals under 80 years old, who can vote and can be voted for are now in Conclave. You can watch a Live Stream, mostly a shot of the Sistine Chapel chimney, who apparently is now on Twitter. You can get acquainted with the 2013 Papabili using Wikipedia's List of Papabili.
Higgins Armory Museum to close
Worc. Telegram: "Higgins Armory Museum to close after 82 years; Collection to find home at WAM; END OF AN ERA" The Higgins Armory in Worcester, Mass., will close on Dec. 31, 2013. Uncounted children will be saddened, as will modern swordsmen, when most of the museum's programs -- from educational "OverKnight" sleep-overs to the Academy of the Sword -- will come to a halt. Until then, though, the planned events will run full-tilt through 12/31/2013. [more inside]
Fuck The Matrix. I invented that shit.
"Can anyone turn streaming music into a real business?"
The Verge has a nice article looking at streaming as a business model (or not, of course...) "Do you think it's good or bad for the value of music if the only people who sell it don't care if they're making money on it?" David Pakman asks. "What you really want is an ecosystem with lots of financially healthy companies selling your product." [more inside]
Come on little guy, you can make it, no no, too far, try again!
Newly weaned harbor seal pups attempting to climb onto a surfboard with a camera attached:
Seal Pup Slip n' Slide [slyt | adorable ]
"Please don't use any less than a 16px base font-size for body content"
Stop Using Small Font Sizes "I'm calling you out. All of you. The hackers, the designers, the code monkeys, the word-smiths, the editors, the CSS gurus, and everyone else who works on content management systems and style sheets for news sites. Stop using small font sizes." [more inside]
Your Happy Ending
Allegations of flawed research techniques at an NIH-funded medical lab at Johns Hopkins get notice in a Washington Post article. Interesting piece on a scientific dispute, the accuser's loss of his job at Hopkins, and the suicide of one researcher from the lab whose analysis, published in Nature, came into question.
Annihilated Angel
His artistic obscurity - relative to the stars of the New York School - had nothing to do with his personality, which was gregarious, funny and stimulating, and everything to do with his music, which was concerned with values of reticence, quietness, faintness, stillness; hardly the sort of thing to make headlines in a world where the avant garde was supposed to épater and outrage. As Michael Finnissy, one of his most stalwart British advocates, put it, "I don't think Morton Feldman's music is ever going to be that popular." There are lots of reasons for this, and they are all good reasons for listening to the music. [1995] [more inside]
An obituary to fit the man
Harry Weathersby Stamps, ladies' man, foodie, natty dresser, and accomplished traveler, died on Saturday, March 9, 2013. Harry Stamps' obituary, penned by his daughter Amanda Lewis.
LOL Cat!?!
The Final Frontier
The Daily Viz
Matt Stiles is a data journalist for NPR. He tries each day to create a data visualization, or post those he finds online. [more inside]
"Why don't you do what you dream?"
A brief Tumblr rant about Fantasy: The great temptation, the fatal temptation, of adult fans of fantastic fiction is the temptation of Law. We want the contents of our imagination taxonomied and classified, ordered and indexed, subject to rules and regulations. Gaps exist to be filled. Mysteries exist to be solved. Legends are just timelines that haven’t been formalized yet. Fantastic fiction becomes a code to crack. [...] It’s like people really want to write a wiki, and have to come up with the pesky “moving, powerful, imaginative literature” stuff out of obligation. via
Ideas for software that will change the world for better/worse.
Remember that name.
Billy Joel was recently doing a Q&A at Vanderbilt University when a student named Michael Pollack asked if he could play “New York State of Mind” with him. Something really cool then happened. [more inside]
"I feel like I am Lara"
"So after the last blowup, have you been instructed not to use the word “rape” in interviews?" -- Ben Kuchera talks to Tomb Raider lead writer Rhianna Pratchett about the just released reboot and the controversy surrounding it after executive producer Ron Rosenberg explained how Lara Croft's vulnerability after a near rape would "make gamers want to protect her". [more inside]
March 11
Up All Night
The science of sleeplessness. "Wolf-Meyer refers to the practice of going to bed at around eleven o’clock at night and staying there until about seven in the morning as sleeping 'in a consolidated fashion.' Nowadays, adults are expected to sleep in this manner; anything else—sleeping during the day, sleeping in bursts, waking up in the middle of the night—is taken to be unsound, even deviant. This didn’t use to be the case." [more inside]
"Sarcastic Fringehead?" Really?
Amazing territorial behavior by a fish bearing the rather odd name of "Sarcastic Fringehead," from the David Attenborough's BBC Life series via WTF, Evolution?
Trolls that live in skyscrapers, not under a bridge
"Copyright Trolling" is a term used (by opponents of the practice) to describe copyright holders filing subpoenas to residential ISPs for the identities matched to IP addresses linked to content piracy. In this case, the piracy is often via BitTorrent networks, where peers can see each other's public IP addresses. Rather than filing suit after obtaining these identities, the content copyright holders attempt to extract settlements on the order of $2,000-3,000 from named ISP subscribers to avoid going to court. That's their plan anyway. The recent (and ongoing) story of Prenda Law demonstrates how turning the threat of copyright infringement lawsuits into a moneymaking venture (allegedly with a lawyer as both plaintiff -- through a shell company -- and counsel) can go very wrong for the "trolls"... [more inside]
Famous Last Words (in 140 characters or less)
The Tweet Hereafter compiles the final posts of well-known people (for some value of well-known). Mundane or monumental, it displays the fleeting tweets of the deceased. [more inside]
Jazz that nobody asked for, an animated short film
Sometimes you want to be somber, or serious, or just enjoy some peace and quiet. And in some of those instances, you get jazz that nobody asked for. Jazz that just won't die. [more inside]
Um, Dad? Can you give me a ride?
Of all the things to livetweet, a trip to the hospital with a dildo stuck in your rear would have to be the pinnacle of TMI. "What did you do last night" "I shoved a dildo up my ass and needed the hospital to extract it" "oh man me too"
Urbex
Excuse Us While We Kiss The Sky. [Single page view] "By day they work as computer programmers and stock boys and academics. But at night they are known as urban explorers. The Brooklyn Bridge, London's Shard, Notre Dame—each structure is an expedition waiting to happen. Each sewer, each scaffold, each off-limits site is a puzzle to solve. No wonder the cops are after them. Matthew Power embeds with the space invaders and sees a world—above- and belowground—that the rest of us never knew existed." [Via]
instaGrok
instaGrok is a website that presents information in a mindmap-style visual interface, which allows users to learn about topics by exploring the connections between concepts and facts.
The track to nowhere
Travellers passing through the Beauce region in France may have noticed this strange, lonely concrete structure raised on pillars over the fields. This is the 18-km long elevated track built in the 1960s for testing the Aérotrain (WP, video compilation turn off your speakers unless you love Queen), a propeller or jet-and-rocket driven high-speed (400 km/h) monorail that was supposed to revolutionize train travel (a visit by Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell). However, the French government preferred the less expensive and less futuristic TGV and the project was mothballed in 1975. The Aérotrain's inventor, Jean Bertin, died a few months later. All Aérotrain prototypes were destroyed except one.
You're still here? It's over. Go home.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: A Movie Supercut
Needs more Bob Hope & Bing Crosby: this entire musical number is addressed to the audience.
Needs more Bob Hope & Bing Crosby: this entire musical number is addressed to the audience.
"The American Revolution is not a story just for white people."
"We’ve coined a term," said Katrinah Lewis, the actress who typically interprets Lydia. "Post-traumautic slave syndrome." The Washington Post reports on African American actors who interpret the lives of slaves at Colonial Williamsburg.
No, not Pepsi Blue, I promise.
What's Good at Trader Joe's A blog of amateur reviews of Trader Joe's products. For example:
Cookie Butter.
"That lawsuit, believe it or not, is still going on."
Where Banks really Make Money On IPOs
All of these numbers are hypothetical, of course, but the bigger point is simple: if Goldman manages to get kickbacks, in terms of extra commissions, of more than 7% of its clients’ profits, then it has a financial incentive to underprice the IPO. And Goldman’s clients were desperate to give it kickbacks: they didn’t just route their standard trading through Goldman, since that wouldn’t generate enough commissions. Instead, they bought and sold stocks on the same day, at the same price. Capstar Holding, for instance, bought 57,000 shares in Seagram Ltd at $50.13 per share on June 21, 1999 — and then sold them, on the same day, at the same price. Capstar made nothing on the trade, but Goldman made a commission of $5,700. Capstar’s Christopher Rule says that in May 1999, fully 70% of all of his trading activity “was done solely for the purpose of generating commissions”, so that he could continue to keep on getting IPO allocations.Rigging The IPO Game [more inside]
I think I once touched the rim when I was in high school...
Last week, Robert Mays of Grantland put together a Best Alley-Oops of All Time mini-post (1/4 down the page), as a response to THIS.
Today he had to redo his list because of THIS.
Priceless Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has many "educator resources" on Korean art, Islamic geometric design, African art, and more (i.e. books filled with beautifully reproduced images of art and artifacts, along with extensive background history). They are available for download as PDF files. [more inside]
A very Pyrrhic victory
9 years and 364 days ago, the then MEP (and later cabinet minister), Chris Huhne caught a flight back from Brussels to London Stansted, landing at 10.27pm. He picked up his car, with the distinctive number plate H11HNE, and sped back to his home in Clapham, South London, setting in motion a chain of events that would ultimately see him and his wife, economist Vicky Pryce, each sentenced to 8 months in jail. [more inside]
Prom night is coming.
Prom night is coming at Westeros Valley High, the School of Thrones. (SLYT. Possible spoilers if you aren't current through season 2 of Games of Thrones)
Civilizations and E-Mail
A team of computer researchers analyzed ten million Yahoo! e-mails and noticed a phenomenon: "E-mails tend to flow much more frequently between countries with certain economic and cultural similarities". [more inside]
Do Not Hit Snooze
Inspired by the sound of an alarm clock going off, Hiromi, Anthony Jackson and Simon Phillips perform Hiromi's composition Move.
FOUND
"FOUND is a curated collection of photography from the National Geographic archives. In honor of our 125th anniversary, we are showcasing photographs that reveal cultures and moments of the past. Many of these photos have never been published and are rarely seen by the public."
If you really love the mall, now you can live there!
He'll get used to it.
Don't panic.
Today would have been Douglas Adams' 61st birthday. Google is celebrating with an elaborate doodle. Neil Gaiman, who once wrote a companion book to the Hitchhiker's Guide, reminisces a little bit about the man here. Worth reading, if you haven't read it before, is the old lament by Richard Dawkins, a long-time friend of Adams. (Second thing on the page, not first; scroll down.)
"Politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth."
Breitbarted! [BUSINESSINSIDER.COM] "Conservative news site Breitbart.com duped by fake story that Paul Krugman declared dankruptcy. A satirical item published last week purporting that economist Paul Krugman had filed for bankruptcy has spread to Boston.com and the conservative website Breitbart this morning.
The item originated in The Daily Currant, a satirical news site. Austria's Format online magazine picked it up, and their report was subsequently cited by Boston.com [It has since been taken down 404 error.]. Then it spread to Breitbart.
It has since been taken down this morning, but here's a screenshot:" [more inside]
E.U. to Ban Cosmetics With Animal-Tested Ingredients
E.U. regulators are expected to announce Monday a ban on the import and sale of cosmetics containing ingredients tested on animals and to pledge more efforts to push other parts of the world, like China, to accept alternatives. [more inside]
I understand that you have to take some sponge baths; however...
The year is 1959. A local radio station, in conjunction with Bomb Shelters, Inc. is seeking a newlywed couple to partake of a sheltered honeymoon. [more inside]
The plot to liberate Napoleon
In 1820–or so he claimed–he was offered the sum of £40,000 [equivalent to $3 million now] to rescue the emperor Napoleon from bleak exile on the island of St. Helena. This escape was to be effected in an incredible way–down a sheer cliff, using a bosun’s chair, to a pair of primitive submarines waiting off shore.
Getting high
Grow Maze
Essential advice for David Cameron
"Britain’s modern party leaders are not ousted by stalking horses; they are dragged from their beds in the dead of night, and shot in the courtyard with a Sky News helicopter overhead." -- Former New Labour heavyweight and Gordon Brown acolyte Damian McBride explains how to survive a coup attempt when you're prime minister.
March 10
Projectors de cinema infantil
Here is a little collection of crude but oddly charming Spanish and French animation, originally created for children's hand-cranked film projectors, from 1932 to 1952. [more inside]
the ultimate in spyware
Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams - "If you are unlucky enough to have your computer infected with a RAT, prepare to be sold or traded to the kind of person who enters forums to ask, "Can I get some slaves for my rat please? I got 2 bucks lol I will give it to you :b" At that point, the indignities you will suffer—and the horrific website images you may see—will be limited only by the imagination of that most terrifying person: a 14-year-old boy with an unsupervised Internet connection."
Muppet Musicians of Bremen
"You may have noticed that the heroes in this story are all animals, and the villains are all people. I hope none of you take that personally."
The Muppet Musicians of Bremen (1972) (Part 1 2 3 4 5 6). [more inside]
You don't have to leave Justin alone.
Short Song For Justin Bieber and His Paparazzi by John Darnielle. [slv]
Path of Exile
Path of Exile is an independent game developed by Grinding Gear Games that was recently released into open beta, and it is getting quite good reviews so far.
Its heritage is obvious, and many observe its spiritual relationship not only to Diablo 2 and Dungeon Siege, but perhaps more directly Diablo 1, in terms of tone and feel. It has a number of things that keep it in obvious continuity with other recent games in the genre, but arguably improve on it in a number of ways. Why should you consider this game? Let me count (just a handful) of reasons. [more inside]
no one could have predicted
With sincere regret we must inform you that due to circumstances recently discovered we must immediately cease trading activity on www.intrade.com. InTrade is apparently shutting down completely, at least for a while. Previously.
Come! We must find the pin head!
A Mind Reader, A Pin Head, and a Fool; The Story of "Professor" Johnstone's Visit to Wind Cave [previously].
When they [the search party] arrived in that portion of the cave two members of the party were insensible. I was raving and Moore was the only man in his right mind. He had me down on the floor of the cave, my throat clutched with his hand while in the other hand he held a Colt revolver. We had had nothing to eat for five (sic) days and four nights. McDonald dies soon after that, one of the party was adjudged insane and taken to the asylum. I was almost blind and it was necessary to have an operation performed on my eyes.
New York State Capitol Restoration Picture
The New York State Capitol Building was original completed in 1899. A recent renovation was just completed and there are stunning photographs of the results.
Teaching Viewers to Hear the TV With Eyes Only
"This week ABC Family did something that no commercial television channel in the United States had ever done: It broadcast an entire episode of a show, “Switched at Birth,” in American Sign Language, with next to no oral dialogue."
The Book I am Working On Has Much Of The Punctuation Rinsed Out Of It.
DIY sous-vide
Serious Eat's The Food Lab cooks The Perfect Rack Of Lamb. "You don't have a $450 low-temperature water oven"? Good thing it isn't necessary...
Brass in the blood: UK coal miner brass bands, and bands world-wide
In the United Kingdom, many brass bands were started by colliery owners, and funded in part by the coal miners themselves. Some of those bands live on, after the coal pits have been closed for years. These bands are facing hard times, with limited funding and waning interest in the music, but some youth join bands to continue family traditions, and the government provides some funding to numerous bands. If you'd like to know more about brass bands in the UK and around the world, Internet Bandsman's Everything Within (IBEW) has tons of material, links to bands in the UK and elsewhere as well as a list of extinct bands and vintage brass band pictures, local events and radio shows, recordings, and plenty more.
Better and Better, Worse and Worse
"My unprovable hypothesis is that obsessive upgrading and chronic stagnation are intimately related, in the same way that erotic fantasies are related to sexual repression. The fetish that surrounds Google Glass or the Dow average grows ever more hysterical as the economic status of the majority of Americans remains flat. When things don’t work in the realm of stuff, people turn to the realm of bits. If the physical world becomes intransigent, you can take refuge in the virtual world..." - George Packer, Upgrade or Die
Hidden Photographs of a Hidden People
A box of magic lantern slides, owned by a doctor who died in 1940, turned out to hold many images of the Romany Travellers who came to Sussex each year to take part in the hop harvest. The pictures have been published, with commentary by the Romany historian Janet Keet-Black, in the pamphlet Hidden Photographs of a Hidden People (PDF of full pamphlet). You can also watch a slideshow which includes more images and interviews with Keet-Black, magic lantern expert Peter Gillies and the Romany Traveller Penfold sisters. [more inside]
Masters of making you cry
The Chopsticks Brothers (筷子兄弟)
[Google translated bio] are Xiao Yang and Wang Taili,
Chinese indie musician/filmmakers making internet short films which generally function as extended music videos for their original songs.
Old Boys (42 min, english sub) October 2010
[Youku copy] - over 52 million views
Short video on YouTube, english subtitles [more inside]
Heros to many
Zine-publishing 13-year old girls from 1996, outcast as "Dirty Girls", talk about their experience. [more inside]
A small group of thoughtful, committed citizens changing the world
"From the metropolis of Miami to the small town of Sapulpa, Okla., communities are building pocket parks, sometimes so small that they have barely enough room for a swing set, to drive out sex offenders. One playground installation company in Houston has even advertised its services to homeowners associations as an option for keeping sex offenders away." [more inside]
I believe I can fly
R/C cameraman Robert Mcintosh takes you soaring high above Santa Monica, Venice, and San Francisco.
Float through the air as you glide along the beach and up through the spokes of the Ferris wheel over the Santa Monica Pier. Then head a mile or two south and get a bird's eye view of Venice's Muscle Beach. When your head has stopped spinning you can take in San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge or get away from it all (including the ground) out at at Vasquez Rocks. [more inside]
Donkey Kong: Pauline Edition
"My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together. Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario... So what else am I supposed to do? Now I'm up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline." (SLYT)
A Roguelike Primer
"It wouldn't hurt you to seek out a little.....companionship".
Men in Saris: Mumbai's new lavani dancers
Men in Saris: Mumbai's new lavani dancers Lavani is a folk dance, traditionally performed by women for men. The popularity of Bin Baykancha Tamasha (or Performance Without Women) and other female-impersonation groups in Mumbai suggests that the city may slowly be getting comfortable with flamboyant expressions of male sexuality.
March 9
I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies
The Aleph is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges in which a man is suddenly able to see all things at once. I wanted to present a version of what The Aleph might look like now, designed as an endless stream of descriptive passages pulled from the web. For source texts, I took the complete Project Gutenberg as well as current tweets. I searched for the phrase "I saw."The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinity Pity by David Hirmes
Ebook Index of Free Ebooks for the Kindle
How I Got 10,000 Twitter Followers In A Week
Alastair Duncan, the creator of the popular Twitter account Star Trek & The City (previously), discusses his viral fame and interviews the creators of other popular Twitter parodies: Modern Day Seinfeld, Not Tilda Swinton and The Average Shark. The article also discusses Big Ben, Kim Kierkegaard and the hilarious fake Michael Haneke.
Pleased to meet you!
Cypherpunk Rising
Cypherpunk rising: WikiLeaks, encryption, and the coming surveillance dystopia by R. U. Sirius. [Via]
"Hoot! Hoot!"
Givens occasionally wonders why his unique fitness regimen creates such inexplicable antipathy. But he doesn’t let it bother him too much. “I just keep on going,” Givens says. “Look here. A man my age ain’t supposed to be doing this. Once they see the shape I’m in, they think, ‘Well, he can’t be too crazy.’ ”Cedric Givens, DC's backwards jogger. Direct link to Video
This post entirely SFW
Female porn stars, with and without their makeup It's a large bandwidth-intensive imgur gallery. (Via)
"I don't think we've heard the last of him."
"I hope you guys will forgive me but after I am done talking to you guys you guys will probably trespass me like 98% of schools and school districts did in Washington, Oregon, and Montana."
Previously.
A year later, he's still at it, and, as is usually the case, his backstory is sadder and more complicated than just a News Of The Weird guffaw.
“who’s managing our fisheries?”
Comet PANSTARRS flyby
Lonely Planet photographer shares his work.
Iran as the West rarely sees it. reddit user mossikan shares lovely photos of modern-day Iran, with thoughtful captions revealing a vibrant culture generally at odds with its current "mainstream" portrayals in Western media. [more inside]
It was happy at the start...
Jon Brion gets around. As a composer, he scored some of the best movies of last decade and change – Punch-Drunk Love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche, New York, and I ♥ Huckabees. As a producer, he's worked with Fiona Apple, Kanye West, Aimee Mann, and the excellent bluegrass outfit Punch Brothers. He writes pop music like the best of them – witness Meaningless, Knock Yourself Out, Here We Go, or Didn't Think It Would Turn Out Bad for a nice sampler of his style and range. His live shows are notoriously whimsical and eccentric – he's apt to perform Radiohead's "Creep" in the style of Tom Waits, or cover Stairway to Heaven as a one-man band, recreating all the parts to its climax on the fly.
TSA troubles
Delta Airlines and other airline workers' unions have asked the TSA to reconsider their recent announcement to loosen security restrictions on airlines, effective April 25, that would allow passengers to carry small pocket knives, among other items. [more inside]
"The new creativity is pointing, not making."
Proudly Fraudulent: [The Awl] An Interview With MoMA's First Poet Laureate, Kenneth Goldsmith. [Previously] [Previously]
Maha Kumbh Yatra
Bangalore based blogger ecophilo shares his experiences of attending this year's vast gathering of pilgrims at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad this year. Previous thread on the Kumbh Mela, what it is and why the Maha Kumbh only takes place every 144 years. Here's a snippet:
It all began with Twitter. There were a few on my timeline who were tweeting about the Maha Kumbh Mela, 2013 and a thought took root in my mind. Can I make it to the Kumbh Mela this year? After all, it was tempting to be part of the worlds oldest and largest human gathering - and it seemed within reach too. And The Kumbh Mela was not a place that had ever figured in my list of 'things to experience'.
"I would like to hold Meeno one last time, please"
Photographer Hiroyuki Ito remembers his cat.
Art in the Tumblr age
"Artists often cling to control of their work and the context of its display, but to interact with Tumblr, they must give up that control. Art on Tumblr might get seen by many people, but 1,000 reblogs doesn’t mean anyone will be looking at your art next week, know that you made it, or be having a critical discussion. Given these reasons, it would make sense for artists to be wary of putting their work on Tumblr. But this isn’t always the case; a younger, more internet-savvy generation has embraced the web 2.0, feeling that the costs outweigh the benefits." -- Ben Valentine looks at Tumblr as art, in the opening essay of the world's first Tumblr art symposium, which can be followed on livestream. [more inside]
Now this is where it gets really sticky
Nation's Biggest Honey Packer Admits 'Laundering' Chinese Honey
Two big honey packers, including one of the largest in the country — Groeb Farms of Onsted, Mich. — admitted buying millions of dollars worth of honey that was falsely labeled. [more inside]
Two big honey packers, including one of the largest in the country — Groeb Farms of Onsted, Mich. — admitted buying millions of dollars worth of honey that was falsely labeled. [more inside]
The Personal Finance Scam
I'm absolutely shocked, just shocked I tell you. Olen got her start in the personal finance world when she ran a series for the Los Angeles Times called Money Makeover, which involved helping regular folks connect with financial gurus sort out their personal finances.
“My question was, did we mislead people?” Olen said. “That was really the genesis of the book.” As she found out, the personal finance industry is a swamp of conflicts of interest, shoddy advice, and prognosticators who profit off of the economic anxiety of everyday Americans. [more inside]
March 8
This Here is Rich Terfry: Forty One Odd Years (and a few days more)
Happy belated birthday to Jesus Murphy, Haslam, DJ Critical, Uncle Climax (NSFW audio), Stinkin' Rich (NSFW audio), Dirk Thornton, Buck 65, or as his mom called him, Richard Terfry. Born in the year of the rat, and he's a Pisces, which makes him a rat fish, but by trade, he's a turntablist/ MC/ producer/ broadcaster. Generally he makes some form of hip-hop (some NSFW lyrics), though as of late, he's been broadening his style, as heard in his cover of Leonard Cohen's Who By Fire (previously) and Paper Airplane (official "lyric" video). In tribute to his 41st birthday, there's a lot more music inside. [more inside]
9th Circuit adopts "reasonable suspicion" for electronics at border
In an en banc decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled in United States v. Cotterman that the 4th Amendment standard of reasonable suspicion applies to forensic searches of electronic devices at an international border. [more inside]
Those Atoms are Mighty Fuzzy
16 Golden Retrievers teach all about atoms. SYTL I for one would have probably done much better in chemistry if had been explained this way.
TO PURSUE THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE JAPANESE CUISINE
TOKYO GASTRONOMY is the YouTube account of Seiji Yamamoto, chef and owner of the Nihonryori RyuGin restaurant. His videos demonstrate traditional Japanese cuisine preparation in a serene and focused way.
The ones that really hooked me was this 9 minute video of Ichiban Dashi creation and spring vegetable soup.
Who's been cutting all these onions in the chimpanzee enclosure again?!
Our Man in Samarra
James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq -- A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centres in Iraq.
Prequels! Hunh! Yeah! What are they good for? Absolutely...something
Having mixed feelings about the new movie prequel to The Wizard of Oz? [previously]
Well how about new prequels to other film classics such as Gone with the Wind and Dr. Strangelove? Or, try to imagine Casablanca: The College Years. [more inside]
Atheists going to church
Sunday Assembly: an atheist service run by two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans. [more inside]
Before and After the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami
Japan Earthquake, 2 Years Later
Collected below are a series of before-and-after interactive images. Click on each one to see the image fade from before (2011) to after (2013).
Collected below are a series of before-and-after interactive images. Click on each one to see the image fade from before (2011) to after (2013).
Aspiring Animators & Game Designers, Study Your Calculus & Combinatorics
Every film Pixar has produced has landed in the top fifty highest-grossing animated films of all time. What's their secret? Mathematics. Oh, and 22 Rules of Storytelling. [more inside]
"Will take photos for $10, $25, or $100."
Pork sticky rolls are a REAL THING.
Here's the recipe for chef Hadley Schmitt's famous Pork Sticky Rolls with Dijon-Maple Glaze and Parsnip Icing served at Northern Spy Food Company, East Village, NYC.
Flash Friday: Second Empire Artistic Demimonde Edition
In the new game Avant-Garde, you play an up-and-coming artist in 19th century Paris, a contemporary of Manet and Bouguereau. Carve and sell allegorical statue groups! Get snubbed by Napoleon III! Subsidize Gustave Courbet's drinking! Compose and promulgate your own aesthetic manifesto!
Hard numbers
Rare event of a chimpanzee gang murder of their alpha male
Godwin Orwelled
Passage Through Baltimore
"Baltimore had always been seen as an explosive city, hypersensitive to the shifting currents of politics. The present crisis was no exception. While most Baltimoreans felt that Lincoln should keep his hands off the South, there was also a smaller contingent of Confederate zealots there who were more than willing to go to war over it. Sending Northern troops through their hometown was like putting a lit match to a powder keg."The Baltimore Riot of 1861, also known as the Pratt Street Riots, underline Maryland's complex and often tragic part in the US Civil War. [more inside]
Before the dark times... before the Empire.
How Disney Bought Lucasfilm—and Its Plans for 'Star Wars' is an interesting BusinessWeek article on how one media conglomerate went about buying another, and how it plans on improving the value of both. [more inside]
Happiness is Moms and a Mud Puddle.
Baby elephant Navann plays in the mud pit and takes a dip in the river with his mother and nanny at Elephant Nature Park in Mae Tang, Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. [slyt]
Not just right, but necessary
"Not so long ago, the idea that women might rule the world seemed slightly ridiculous - like something out of science fiction. But in an essay to mark International Women's Day, political analyst and former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers argues it's now a topic that can be seriously discussed."
♪ Is it even real? ♪
Beach House, Ray Wise, fireworks, and horses: [SLYT] "Beach House have shared a very surreal video for their Bloom single "Wishes", directed by Eric Wareheim (of "Tim and Eric") and starring Ray Wise ("Twin Peaks", "Mad Men"). Wise peforms at what looks like a very, very strange half-time event during a football game." [via: pitchfork]
"Why did we even bother to crawl out of the swamps, is this it?"
In between posting rare videos to his YouTube channel and promoting his latest album Love from London, Robyn Hitchcock discusses a baker's dozen of influences for the Quietus and eviscerates his least favorite song for the Onion AVClub's HateSong. Archive.org features 64 of his concerts spanning 25 years.
"Red is the new Black"
Is Tia Norfleet NASCARS's first African American Female driver?
According to her website and several news stories, Tia Norfleet has an impressive racing resume, and is said to be the first African American women to compete in Nascar. However, it appears those claims may be exaggerated. The result has caused an uproar on her Facebook page between her supporters and detractors. Further clouding matters, Tia’s father Bobby, has in the past accused NASCAR of Racism for denying him the chance to race. For a sport hailing the achievements of Danica Patrick and desperately trying to promote diversity, could this incident hurt the progress NASCAR has slowly started to make on that front?
"I'd like to thank God, who was super supportive during all this."
Thank You to the Author's Many, Many Important Friends - How the acknowledgments page became the place to drop names.
The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble
"When I say this, it should mean laughter, not poison."
"Naming restricts. Once restricted, it’s easy to be judged and punished. Identity is more subtle, more liquid, I hope." An interview with Richard Siken, a poet whose work is easy, entertaining even, yet ferocious as all hell. If you're new to Siken, Scheherazade is a short introduction to the man and his style. You Are Jeff is a prose poem in twenty-six short, brutal chapters. Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out is one of his best: "You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights! / What more do you want? / I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you're / really there." He also paints.
KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!
In 1987, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu hit the British music scene with a collage of unauthorised samples, beatboxing, and cryptic, political Scottish-accented raps titled "All You Need Is Love". [more inside]
March 7
Can Bruce Dern save mankind from Adam Ant?
World Gone Wild is a 1988 post-apocalyptic film with English pop singer Adam Ant as the villain. The entire film can be watched on YouTube. Via Armagideon Time.
Click here to find local cats in your area now
Are you having a hard time finding local cats in your area? Do you wish there was a way to connect instantly with one online, at any time? Now you can!
With Adult Cat Finder, you're never more than one click away from chatting with a hot, local cat in your area!
The Good, Racist People
Scott Kelby on composition
VP8 Redux?
Google and MPEG LA come to an Agreement , putting to rest (for the most part in the current patent atmosphere) fears that VP8 isn't really royalty free.
New Parasites for 2013/ The Cat That Screamed Like A Man/ Coffin Bro
Liar Town Usa: An alternate USA where our products, signage, headlines, and fads are all slightly more surreal, sinister, and threatening.
Poor Mum
The English songwriter Nick Drake's reputation - and enigma - have grown since his death in 1974, at the age of 26. A new album (recorded at the family piano in the 1950's) collects the songs of his mother Molly, and sheds new light on Nick's beginnings.
Arsenioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Hall returns to talk
Whether no one was paying attention because they don't care or just didn't expect it, Arsenio Hall announced a return to late night talk last year. Now, with 95% of all markets signed up to broadcast his syndicated show, debuting in September, he could be due for a full blown resurgence. Or a dramatic crash and burn, either way Dave Koz is staring at his phone expectantly.
Baby, that's what an echo is.
Tropes vs Women in Video Games
Feminist Frequency has released the first video in the "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" series: Damsel in Distress (part 1), hosted by Anita Sarkeesian (previously). It was funded by a kickstarter campaign that was notable for the level of backlash (previously).
Cat-scan.edu
Although the VetMouseTrap™ was originally designed for small animals such as cats (YT), rabbits and tiny dogs, O’Brien recently developed a larger version for use with medium-sized dogs such as Labradors and golden retrievers. And he is developing a model with a perch inside so birds can be immobilized and passed through the scanner. (via)
And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint.
What does a nine-year-old girl in Menlo Park, California have in common with a Russian Mystic, an Indian Emperor, a mythic legion of girl assassins, and an enemy of the Roman Republic? Mithridatism: Immunity through the measured ingestion of poison.
123D Catch = My mind blown
This is the story of an artist who was able to take numerous photos of a sculpture of a horse's head, "Head of a horse of Selene" now found in the British Museum - but originally from near the Acropolis in ancient Greece (circa 438-432 BC) - and who then fed the said photographs (taken from many different perspectives) to a revolutionary (free) software/app called 123D Catch (by AutoDesk, makers of AutoCAD), which then created the wireframes needed to print out exact replicas (in pieces that must then be assembled) on a 3D printer. The artist makes it available on Thingiverse, if you'd like to make one on your own on your 3D printer. If the demo video for 123D Catch doesn't blow your mind, your mind has probably already been blown. With apologies to Dr. Hook
This Is My Body
First Much Ado About Nothing Trailer
First trailer for Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing. (Direct MP4 link based on the official site.) The film (shot in 12 days at Joss's house while taking a break from making The Avengers) will be getting its U.S. premiere this weekend at SXSW, with limited general release starting in June. Previously shown at TIFF, the Dublin Film Festival and the Glasgow Film Festival. [more inside]
The pursuit of album art...
The Balinghou
Generation Gap: "The parents of China’s post-1980 generation [the bā líng hòu (八零後)] (themselves born between 1950 and 1965) grew up in a rural, Maoist world utterly different from that of their children. In their adolescence, there was one phone per village, the universities were closed and jobs were assigned from above. If you imagine the disorientation and confusion of many parents in the West when it comes to the internet and its role in their children’s lives, and then add to that dating, university life and career choices, you come close to the generational dilemma. Parents who spent their own early twenties labouring on remote farms have to deal with children who measure their world in malls, iPhones and casual dates." [more inside]
A Triumph of the Turtle Spirit
In 2008, a 227-pound loggerhead turtle named Yu was found by some fishermen off the coast of Japan after a shark attack. Both of her front flippers had been torn off and her prognosis was grim. Now, Yu can swim thanks to a new set of prosthetic flippers made by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo. Naoki Kamezaki, curator of the Suma Aqualife Park where Yu currently lives, says, "Ours may be the only case in which a turtle with artificial limbs is still swimming without a problem."
Seeing at the Speed of Sound
Rachel Kolb, deaf Rhodes scholar, on lipreading: "Even the most skilled lipreaders in English, I have read, can discern an average of 30 percent of what is being said. I believe this figure to be true. There are people with whom I catch almost every word—people I know well, or who take care to speak at a reasonable rate, or whose faces are just easier on the eyes (for lack of a better phrase). But there are also people whom I cannot understand at all. On average, 30 percent is a reasonable number. But 30 percent is also rather unreasonable. How does one have a meaningful conversation at 30 percent? It is like functioning at 30 percent of normal oxygen, or eating 30 percent of recommended calories—possible to subsist, but difficult to feel at your best and all but impossible to excel." [more inside]
Ayurveda in the Modern age
Ayurveda: Hoax or Science? "'Western science identifies these systems as folklore. They don’t see it as an organised system of knowledge—this is an alien epistemology to them because their medical traditions only go as far back as the medieval times and renaissance.' There is also the very real problem of complexity in natural-product research. It is harder to develop a drug from Ayurveda than it is to build a synthetic molecule, because of the large number of compounds in each Ayurvedic herb. All these factors are responsible for the state of Ayurvedic medicine today."
In Memory of Paul Bearer
Bill Moody, best known as professional wrestling manager Paul Bearer, passed away Tuesday at the age of 58. [more inside]
Oh hey, 1995 called and it wants its retro intro to Breaking Bad back.
Air Pollution in Asia: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map
Photos of Istanbul from 1920s-1940s, by Nicholas Artamonoff
Nicholas Victor Artamonoff was a talented Russian amateur photographer who lived, studied and worked in Istanbul from the 1920s to the 1940s. He took many photos, mainly black-and-white, of architecture, archaeology, and street scenes, in Istanbul and also elsewhere in Turkey. A collection of images has now been made available by the Dumbarton Oaks Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives. [more inside]
#followmeto one paradise after another
To document the beautiful and often exotic locals that he and his girlfriend travel to, photographer Murad-Osmann started posting pictures of her leading him by the hand around the world with the tag #followmeto. The Daily Mail has collected the remarkable series so far. [via]
Domino's crews get together and create Vocaloid (VOKARO) songs!
[{-_-}]
"there were echoes ... of a Gilded Age critique of plutocracy"
Before Greed: Americans Didn't Aways Yearn For Riches. A response: An Embarassement Of Riches: Literature And The Ethics Of Wealth In The Gilded Age. Both from Boston Review. [more inside]
"Len Bias would become the Archduke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs"
Len Bias has been dead for longer than he has been alive. For ESPN Michael Weinreb examines how the tragic death due to a cocaine overdose of this young, up and coming basketball star affected both the sport and American drug policy. Meanwhile at Deadspin, Tommy Craigs explains how twentytwo years after his death Len Bias still makes everyone crazy.
Hotkey ',' to Corner the Global Energy Market.
Columbia students stuff Nutella in their pants to the tune of $1,000s a week. (SLNYT) Last month one of Columbia’s undergraduate dining halls began serving Nutella every day, not just in crepes on weekends. The problem was that the Columbia students went through jars and jars of Nutella — at least 100 pounds a day. Apparently they were not just eating it in the dining hall. They were spiriting it away in soup containers and other receptacles, to be eaten later.
Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly, and Unfair
In the Internet era, a very few companies control our information destiny. In this talk, and in her new book "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age," Susan Crawford—a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy—demonstrates how deregulatory changes in policy have created a communications crisis in America. The consequences: Tens of millions of Americans are being left behind, people pay too much for too little Internet access, and speeds are slow. But everyday people can change this story - and what happens in the year ahead could change the game for good.
A ~40 minute lecture with questions afterward.[more inside]
Jammy Gits
GitHub was intended to be an open software collaboration platform, but it’s become a platform for much, much more than code. It’s now being used by artists, builders, home owners, everyone in between, entire companies … and cities. - The GitHub revolution.
"I am a prime example of American unacceptablility."
Civil Rights is a slam poem performed at last year's Brave New Voices festival. There's a transcript here, though it's worth noting that the page gets the poem's title wrong.
Written and performed by Shanita Jackson and Dakota Oder, it becomes even more impressive when you realize that both women are still teenagers...and from the looks of it, Jackson was only fourteen at the time.
Written and performed by Shanita Jackson and Dakota Oder, it becomes even more impressive when you realize that both women are still teenagers...and from the looks of it, Jackson was only fourteen at the time.
Bluegrass Punkass Dept.
Old Man Markley - "Do Me Like You Do" , Old Man Markley vs House Of Blues. Better 'n coffee; better w/ tequila.
The Minerva Controversy
The Department of Defense recently announced the creation of the Minerva Research Initiative (PDF), also known as Project Minerva, providing as much as $75 million over five years to support social science research on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy. The initiative indicates a renewal of interest in social science findings after a prolonged period of neglect, but it also prompts concerns about the appropriate relationship between university-based research programs and the state, especially when research might become a tool of not only governance but also military violence. The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) has invited prominent scholars to speak to the questions raised by Project Minerva and to address the controversy it has sparked in academic quarters.
Israeli-Palestinian School Book Project
Portrayal of the “Other” in Israeli and Palestinian School Books. Led by a team of scientists who are prominent experts in the field of textbook analysis, a new and definitive study disproves the widely-held belief – and concern to the worldwide public – that Israeli and Palestinian school books present dehumanizing characterizations of the other. These characterizations are very rare in both Israeli and Palestinian school books. Full report here (pdf). [more inside]
March 6
Beauty is only plugin deep
When a soap company washes off the glow filter For 10 years a certain manufacturer of soaps has been on a campaign to normalize realistic images of beauty. Rather subversively, they took their message to the graphic artists themselves by masquerading a Photoshop glamour enhancing plugin as a "beauty augmenter;" a trick revert action to the original model, wrinkles, puffiness, true body and all. This begs the question: can we now accept that some corporations may act in the best interest of body image, or is this just good PR? [via Petapixel]
"Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right."
Folk Neuroscience
Ah, she likes to travel around...
Dancin' Nana (slyt) (nsfw - one wee little curse) Eighty eight years old and she could dance all (bleeping) day.
Electrolysis and Elbow Grease
This playlist documents the restoration to operable status of an early US Army 1911 (1918 pattern) pistol. The 1911 was recovered buried in 3 feet of mud in Tennessee alongside an old bootlegging road. Wanna see the 1911 in action? The incomparable hickok45 gives a run-down of its history and fires a few mags.
Badass cello > badass other instruments
Giovanni Sollima is a contemporary composer and cellist whose music is at once fiercely modern and lushly romantic. Witness Daydream: the first half is a rich, warm trio, and the second half is a virtuosic cello solo that is, for lack of better words, punk as fuck. His longer composition Violoncelles, Vibrez! is a lush, pulsating piece that builds to an incredible climax. My favorite work of his, L. B. Files, is a four-part work that rapidly shifts styles and colors and textures – simply glorious all around.
No Diggity/Thrift Shop acoustic (sorta)mashup.
The best game you can name
"Are you blind? I'm on the field right now!"
Pantai Remis Landslide
On 21 October 1993, the working face separating the ocean from an open-pit tin mine collapsed dramatically, leaving a cove where the mine had once been.
From Maine to San Diego
Shunned by New York's bachelorette population after handing out one too many gift baskets, Derek Jeter loses his confidence with the fairer sex and retreats to Springfield a broken man. There he finds a kindred spirit in Moe, the only man on Earth lonelier than the heartbroken Captain...The two leave Springfield to start a holistic living clinic in North Haverbrook and are never heard from again. The New Springfield Nine: If Mr. Burns had to re-staff the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team with a lineup full of present-day players, who should he choose?
‘Mr. Drake? We’ve been expecting you’
United Airlines holds plane so passenger can say goodbye to his dying mother. Kerry Drake broke down when it seemed he would miss the last flight to Lubbock, Texas, where his mother lay dying. Then something that an airline watchdog says "almost never happens," happened. Also on CNN.
The Wheels On The Page Go Round And Round
Cat responds to rotational optical illusion. The illusion in question. But why does it work? Link to the actual paper.
You ain't a poet, just a drunk with a pen
Hayes Carll is a Texan alt-country singer who's known, if he's known at all, for the soundtrack to Country Strong and the novelty song She Left Me For Jesus. Slate ranked his latest album, KMAG YOYO (and other American stories), as one of the best albums of 2011, partly on the strength of its poetic title-track about an Afghan war vet and partly due to the Red State/Blue State love song duet Another Like You. Other Hayes Carll hits include Drunken Poet's Dream, his duet with Ray Wylie Hubbard, and the melancholy Wish I Hadn't Stayed So Long .
Contempt for every institution, except Fugazi
Punk rocker John Roderick thinks Punk Rock is Bullshit.
The Count: 1 Billion YouTube Views!
"How do you get to be the first nonprofit to top 1 billion YouTube views? One view at a time. The Count from 'Sesame Street' tallies them up."*
RIP rock guitarist, Alvin Lee, 68 years old
Alvin Lee Is Going Home: 'Ten Years After' Guitarist Dies | I'd love to change to world | TEN YEARS AFTER - A Space in Time - Full album.
Ugh, Jonathan Livingston Seagull twice
For this blog I plan, among other things, to read and review every novel to reach the number one spot on Publishers Weekly annual bestsellers list, starting in 1913. Beyond just a book review, I'm going to provide some information on the authors and the time at which these books were written in an attempt to figure out just what made these particular books popular at that particular time.
Right to privacy
The Arkansas House voted today to override Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe’s veto of the earliest abortion ban in the nation, 12 weeks of pregnancy, just weeks after voting to override a similar veto on a law banning abortions after 20 weeks. [more inside]
An Elegant Weapon For A Less Civilized Age
They were the finest European swords the day, superior to almost any other on the battlefields of the Viking Age. Made from steel no one in Europe would know how to make until the Industrial Revolution. Stronger, more flexible, almost magical in combat, engraved with the mysterious name "+ULFBERH+T" by unknown makers, these swords were the both fearsome weapons and incredibly expensive prestige possessions. Only 171 have every been identified. And no one had made one from start to finish, using only hand tools, for over 900 years. [more inside]
A Disturbing Sound.
Would you say no to having David Bowie on your Coffee Table?
Along with a career retrospective, the V&A Museum in London will publish an extensive photo book covering Bowie's career to date. Graphic design studio Barnbrook has designed the 'David Bowie is' book which accompanies the V&A's exhibition of the same name. [more inside]
two girls, two cups
They deny being neo-Nazis.
A Golden Dawn candidate for parliament threatens the extermination of immigrants on camera (alt) (NSFW). There is also an interview with the filmmaker. [more inside]
\m/ ?
Mr. Paul Goes To Washington
Rand Paul Has Started What Could Be an Epic Mr. Smith-Style Filibuster on the Senate Floor. Rand Paul is filibustering John Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA (USA Today). He started at 11:45 AM on Wednesday morning and is still going strong.
""I'm going to speak as long as I can to draw attention to something I find very disturbing," said Paul, who started speaking at 11:45 a.m."
Here is a link to the live feed from C-SPAN. [more inside]
"The Fiery Cross guards you at nights."
In the 1920's, the Ku Klux Klan operated a resort for Christian white supremacists called Kool Koast Kamp near Rockport, TX. For just a dollar a day per family, they offered swimming and "big game fishing" in "deep blue surf," educational activities and "watermelon parties." All under the protection of a "fiery cross" and "an officer of the law, the same Christian sentiment." (Brochure pages 1, 2, 3, 4) [more inside]
"Do not try this at home on your own typewriter"
NBC presents Real People: Ron "Typewriter" Mingo - The World's Fastest Typist (SYTL)
Wonderful.
Here's an amazing multitrack a capella cover of Stevie Wonder's I Wish by Yeo Inhyeok. [slyt | previously | via]
The Mix: The Austin 100
NPR is offering online streaming and a download of 100 songs by artists to discover at SXSW 2013.
Move over, Jedi!
Introducing the Tazer sword.
“DOJ Admits Aaron [Swartz] Prosecution Was Political”
Steven Reich told the House that Aaron Swartz’s Guerilla Open Access Manifesto played an important role in the DOJ's decision to prosecute him. (previously) [more inside]
"The barbaric buffoonery of online discourse"
The Trials Of Nadia Naffe
Young, attractive, ambitious, conservative, and black, Nadia Naffe should have been a right-wing operative’s dream. For a time, she was. Naffe served as a campaign coordinator in Florida for George W. Bush’s re-election effort, hobnobbed with conservative superstars like Andrew Breitbart, and joined the production team of James O’Keefe, the shock-videographer whose pranks humiliated NPR and made ACORN a dirty word. ...And then, in a single night nearly two years after they first met, Naffe’s life became a nightmare.[more inside]
“Miss me? Well, I’m not dead yet.”
Nora Ephron’s Final Act by Jacob Bernstein (her son). [NYTimes.com]
"At 10 p.m. on a Friday night in a private room on the 14th Floor of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on 68th and York Avenue, my mother was lying in her bed hallucinating, in that dream space people go on their way to being gone."
Fodder for your Amazon wishlist
Windsor McCay was one of the first superstars of the American comics strip, a pioneer in both cartooning and animation, massively prolific. All of his work is in the public domain, but where to start? Over at Robot 6, Chris Mautner provides the lowdown in the first installment of a new series of Comics College, "a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work". [more inside]
Color in the cracks of the city
Lego Bombing and the Art of Infrastructure: "Oftentimes the displays are little more than attempts at drawing the eye or conveying a message. Sometimes, though, the two combine to great effect, pointing out glaring, gaping holes in the world around us. In the case of Lego Bombing, as it has become known, those holes -- and therefore, that art -- crop up in our crumbling infrastructure. The colorful plastic blocks are being snapped into walls, streets, and buildings all over the world courtesy of Dispatchwork."
Student Data to Be Legally Given (and then Sold) to Capitalist Ventures
via Reuters A joint venture sponsored in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a vast student database including personal information on students grades K through 12 will be shared with corporations selling "personalized" educational software. Information can include social security numbers, presence of learning disabliities, or anything else school officials choose to share with any companies involved in this venture.
What we talk about when we talk about the Tube
The first District line train out of Upminster in the morning is the first train anywhere on the underground network. It leaves the depot at 4.53, the only train anywhere in the system to set out from its base before 5am ... if you catch that train, you might be tempted to say ta-dah!—except you probably wouldn't, because nobody is thinking ta-dah! at seven minutes to five in the morning; certainly nobody on this train. People look barely awake, barely even alive. They feel the same way they look; I know because, this morning, I'm one of them.John Lanchester on the experience, at once aversive and hypnotic, of catching the London Underground. Lanchester's article is an extract from his forthcoming entry in the new Penguin Lines series of tube-reading-friendly books released to commemorate the Underground's 150th anniversary. Meanwhile, the Guardian have compiled a collaborative Spotify playlist of songs that mention Tube stations, for those so inclined.
2012 Rise In CO2 Levels Second-Highest In 54 Years
The prospects of keeping climate change below that (2-degree goal) are fading away. Scientists track carbon pollution both by monitoring what comes out of factories and what winds up in the atmosphere. Both are rising at rates faster than worst-case scenarios that climate scientists used in their most recent international projections.
Children In Eastern Congo Meet A Giant White Male For The First Time!
The Priority of Democracy
Dissent Is the Health of the Democratic State - "We live in big, complex societies, which means we are thoroughly interdependent on each other, and that we will naturally have different ideas about how our life in common should go, and will have divergent interests. This means that politics we shall always have with us. It also means that political problems are largely ones about designing and reforming the institutions which shape how we interact with each other..." (via) [more inside]
March 5
The trolleybus era
More than just pictures of electric Brill, Flyer and Pullman buses, trolleybuses.net has some great old street-level shots of many cities in North America.
I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
Mike Ryan was asked to re-watch The Wizard Of Oz in advance of the upcoming James Franco feature, Oz the Great and Powerful. So he went to iTunes, scrolled through six seasons of the other Oz, and bought the film. One problem: he actually bought the 1985 sequel, Disney's Return To Oz, featuring a young Fairuza Balk. Liveblogging ensued. [more inside]
ne plus ultra precision
Top Secret Drum Corps performing at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2012. The 25 Swiss drummers and colorguard members were one of the first non-military, non-British Commonwealth acts to perform on the Esplanade at Edinburgh Castle in 2003 and have made several reappearances. Drummers World features more videos, photos and information. (via Miss Cellania)
"I am not Steve Irwin, I am not Bear Gryllis, I am not Michael Jackson"
NYC Past
NYC Past Large-format historical photos of New York City.
Breaking A Legacy of Silence
"An April 17, 1981, a CIA cable[pdf] described an army massacre at Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory, because the population was believed to support leftist guerrillas. A CIA source reported that “the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas” and “the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved.” The CIA cable added that “the Guatemalan authorities admitted that ‘many civilians’ were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants.” In May 1981, despite these ongoing atrocities, Reagan dispatched Walters to tell the Guatemalan leaders that the new U.S. administration wanted to lift the human rights embargoes on military equipment that former President Jimmy Carter and Congress had imposed."The Guatemala Documentation Project, part of the National Security Archive, collects information about the decades long civil war in Guatemala, including State Department documents that point to Washington's complicity in massacres, assassinations and human rights violations.
Making an omelette without breaking any eggs
After a century of neglect, plans are in place to rebuild the historic Longfellow Bridge, running between Boston and Cambridge. The reconstruction will take place in 6 stages, allowing two-way automobile and train traffic to continue throughout the three-year process. [more inside]
"Exposure Doesn’t Feed My Fucking Children!"
Anansi Poems
I live in a world of cat piss and poker,
$35 bottles of wine and cheap beer,
and where spiders crawl into my ear
to tell secrets of the cosmos.
“The world is a screwed up place,” they say,
“And just when you think you’ve got it,
we change the rules.”
– from Anansi Poems by MetaFilter's own Christopher Jorgensen [via mefi projects]
$35 bottles of wine and cheap beer,
and where spiders crawl into my ear
to tell secrets of the cosmos.
“The world is a screwed up place,” they say,
“And just when you think you’ve got it,
we change the rules.”
– from Anansi Poems by MetaFilter's own Christopher Jorgensen [via mefi projects]
The Reagans Speak Out on Drugs, 25 years later
25 years ago, the Reagans spoke out on drugs, and they were, rather surprisingly, in support of a variety of substances. This wasn't a new video showing a sudden change of heart, but the work of two years, editing a longer speech to the nation that was originally broadcast in 1986. The new video couldn't be seen on TV, but was shared, traded, and bootlegged on VHS tapes. The case was originally labeled "A uniquely edited version of a real televised address to the American people," noting that it was made by Cliff Roth, an audio/visual geek and teacher who had access to a high quality film reel and audio source, plus the time and resources to make a piece of "editing art".
bartsimpsonbartsimpson@gmail.com
Everybody Puts Baby In The Corner
" Initially it was thought to be something to house firewood, though it didn’t seem capable of holding much, and the slat that sits perpendicular to the box on the inside wall made little sense. It took observers a while to realize that this contraption was a device for holding children—a “baby tender.”" (via)
Why you should refrigerate American Eggs, but not British ones
Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa A look into why each policy makes sense due to each country's laws and regulations.
Never to be sold
"All the Years of Trying" by Patrik Fitzgerald, taken from the documentary of the same name, is a modernized version of one of his old songs. The original Folk Punk (and Backstreet Boy) is still making music. [more inside]
Jon Stewart Gets Serious
Funnyman Jon Stewart is taking a 12 week hiatus to direct a film adaptation of Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari's book Then They Came For Me. John Oliver will take over hosting duties in his absence.
Daily Show clip of Jason Jones interview before Bahari's arrest. Post - arrest Daily Show interviews. Previously
Hugo Chavez: the revolutionary's final battle
Hugo Chavez dies. Al-Jazeera reported it first on their live stream, while internal media are still holding back. The Vice President, Nicolas Maduro, made the announcement.
What happened to The Knights Of Badassdom?
"The short of it is, Bradley bankrupted IndieVest, hijacked the film against his contractual rights, has hacked the film up and is now trying to sell on this castrated, lobotomised version." http://www.badassdom.com/ goes into great detail as to what happened to this movie.
We derive our own identities from the act of hating
Absolutely No Busts, Though
The Sporting Statues Project maintains a list of statues of sportspeople in the UK and has just added one of baseball statues in the US. Everything from 18th century strongmen and still active players to fans and little leaguers can be found in their directory. They also have some links to abstracts of papers they've presented on their research into sports statuary.
War of the tissues
Your fat has a brain, and it's trying to kill you. And the best line of defense is muscle. Muscle is now known to be one of the most dynamic systems in the body; when it contracts, it undergoes huge changes at the cellular level. And its mortal enemy is fat. (Also, why liposuction may not be so good for you health wise).
The Bay Lights
In honor of the San Francisco Bay Bridge's 75th Anniversary, artist Leo Villareal's new work The Bay Lights will be officially lit this evening. It is installed on the West Span and consists of 25,000 custom-mounted LEDs, making it the largest light sculpture in the world. [more inside]
Reticulating Splines
SimCity, arguably the best known simulation game ever, is back after a decade with a new iteration of the franchise. Is it any good? We may have to wait for an answer until someone can actually log on to the game. [more inside]
Kinetic art
The Singaporean Fairytale: You can have it all, if you choose to.
The Singaporean Fairytale is another contribution to the efforts to get Singaporeans to procreate (previously), made by undergraduate students, using reworked fairytales as a vehicle for sex and fertility ed. A lot of the content, however, is suspect: from claiming that sex will always make you feel better (especially if you're a woman) to a woman's worth being only based by their reproductive capacity.
But they do give us something, Mr Spock. They give us love.
I Knew You Were Tribbles (When You Dropped In). Metafilter's own tribbladour Cortex serenades you with his ST:TOS-inspired version of Taylor Swift's tribblesome pop song.
"I never doubted that it was all going to work out."
A life well lived. On October 4, 1973, Josh Miele (4) was permanently blinded in an acid attack by his neighbor (pdf). 40 years later, Dr. Miele has worked for NASA on the Mars Rover project, he's helped develop "WearaBraille", a virtual Braille keyboard interface, and has a new project launching this month: the Descriptive Video Exchange (DVX), which will allow "sighted video viewers to seamlessly add audio description to DVDs as they watch." [more inside]
Our last, best hope for peace
The strange, secret evolution of Babylon 5 documents the development of the television show Babylon 5, which premiered just over 20 years ago on February 22, 1993 with "The Gathering." [more inside]
You did test this thing, didn't you?
Extreme rope swinging (SLYT). The question is, would you do it?
What's cooler than cool?
One man, a revolutionary, stood on the firing lines, awaiting death. Staring down the line of guns, nobody could be cooler. [more inside]
Was Wittgenstein Right?
"I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive.'" --Wittgenstein . Apart from a small and ignored clique of hard-core supporters the usual view these days is that his writing is self-indulgently obscure and that behind the catchy slogans there is little of intellectual value. But this dismissal disguises what is pretty clearly the real cause of Wittgenstein’s unpopularity within departments of philosophy: namely, his thoroughgoing rejection of the subject as traditionally and currently practiced; his insistence that it can’t give us the kind of knowledge generally regarded as its raison d’être. [more inside]
The Lake
Photographer Geoff Tompkinson has just released this hypnotically gorgeous time lapse of Lake Hallstatt in Upper Austria. [via]
It's a secret to everyb-- well, to some people without google.
Old Spam better than new Spam?
Age your canned goods - Why I now think of best-by dates as maybe-getting-interesting-by dates. [more inside]
Farewell to the "schoolmarm who drinks and smokes."
Dawn Clark Netsch dies at 86. Dawn Clark Netsch was a woman of many firsts: she integrated the dorms of Northwestern University in 1949, graduated first in her class from Northwestern's School of Law (as the only female graduate), joined the Law School faculty in 1965 as the first woman law professor in the United States, elected Comptroller as the first woman to a state-wide office in Illinois in 1972, and was the first woman to run for governor in Illinois. [more inside]
"Here We'll Stay Wonderfully"
The Poet-King Of Fiume
There is no decent way of containing the excesses of Gabriele d'Annunzio's lives. It would astonish his contemporaries to discover that he is now only faintly remembered outside Italy. Even within Italy, though firmly entrenched in the literary canon, he is most commonly recalled with a sort of collective cringe. For once upon a time, in the fervid fin de siècle - for reasons variously literary, political, military and, not least, sexual - he was one of the towering figures of European culture. Think Wilde crossed with Casanova and Savonarola; Byron meets Barnum meets Mussolini - and you would have some of the flavours, but still not quite the essence, of this extraordinary, unstoppable and in many ways quite ridiculous figure. The Pike - A Review [more inside]
But perhaps not as far as Marion Zimmer Bradley did
Ten ways to rethink Arthur's Britain, by Guy Halsall.
Michael Peterson and The Staircase, redux
Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s documentary gets new installments. Previously. Eight years later, Michael Peterson went back to court and Lestrade filmed it again.
Building a Better Land/Water/Mud Artmobile
How to Build a Kinetic Sculpture: "The original idea was actually to call these next few paragraphs “How to build.” How silly! That would be like declaring “Everything A Man Should Know About Women.” It would be impossible, and still wrong half the time. One of the attractions of this sport is precisely that there are infinite ways of doing most everything. So what we have here are hints and notes, thoughts and ideas—to be revised and added to as experience dictates." [more inside]
Like a bell...
On this day in 1963, in a tragic plane crash, America lost one of its finest singers: Patsy Cline. While many are familiar with her acclaimed rendition of the Willie Nelson-penned Crazy, let's pay a visit to some lesser-known but nonetheless masterfully impressive vocal performances from that sublime, transcendent voice, shall we? Here's two live TV spots: Patsy in full cowgirl regalia with a delightful performance of the Hank Williams classic Lovesick Blues and the snazzy Walking After Midnight, one of the tunes that reminds us that Patsy could've just as easily been marketed as a pop/jazzy chanteuse as the *country* artist she was presented to the world as. And here's the gorgeously smooth studio renditions of She's Got You and I Fall To Pieces, and... [more inside]
Don't call it the Harlem Shake
Flashmob boogeydowns are most definitely not the Harlem Shake. This is about more than proper designation of a popular dance. It's about cultural appropriation. When communities create original art, they have a right to some creative control over its definition. (via IP Finance.)
March 4
What a marvelous day in the market
It's a country opening up
The Pirate Bay has announced via a blog post that they will be using North Korea as a haven to serve pages without facing prosecution from copyright authorities. [more inside]
Down but not out.
After Forbes magazine declared Dayton, OH, one of America's " fastest dying cities," a group of local media makers created Reinvention Stories. The interactive film/multimedia experience rolls out this month in three acts.
"This is sometimes harder than it looks." —David Daniels
Journey Through A Melting Brain (The Stratacut of David Daniels) David Daniels is the master of strata-cut animation, "a form of clay animation in which a long bread-like "loaf" of clay, internally packed with varying imagery, is sliced into thin sheets, with the animation camera taking a frame of the end of the loaf for each cut, eventually revealing the movement of the internal images within.... [I]n strata-cut, you build your imagery not just in X, Y, and Z space, but also considering time as a dimension, and the most important one." Daniels' films are mesmerizing explosions of color. In an interview with Art of the Title, he discusses the history of the process, his own trajectory, and how to make your own strata-cut animation (in a video demo at the bottom of the page).
I have this song in my head, and it cannot be exorcised until I hear it
"the rare moments of child-like joy to the shadows of pain"
Beyond the Swanson. Paste interviews Nick Offerman.
The meanest PSA ever?
New York City has announced a new teen pregnancy prevention campaign. Some are calling them the meanest PSAs ever. [more inside]
BUTT banned, BUTTS somehow okay
One man made this game. A single person. Think about that and cry.
A short French documentary (Part 1). (Part 2). on the making of the classic platformer, Another World (released in the US as Out Of This World).
The Adventure of the Moshing Men
You read the paper Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts, watched mesmerizing moshing gifs and finally decided to simulate the pit yourself.
He Was A Dandy Before It Was Cool
This year's winner of the Eustace Tilley contest features a Brooklyn hipster. The New Yorker Magazine received hundreds of entries for the contest. A little bit more about Eustace.
(Previously.) [more inside]
Save-On-Meats
For over 50 years Save-On-Meats was a fixture in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. When original owner Al DesLauriers retired in 2009, the building was renovated & reopened as a modern diner and butchershop under the same name. It was the first Canadian eatery to be visited by that Guy. New owner Mark Brand gave a passionate TED talk last year about the ups and downs he experienced integrating with the low income community. Their latest initiative is a controversial breakfast sandwich token that patrons can purchase and distribute to hungry neighbourhood residents.
Faces of Human Ancestors
To put a human face on our ancestors, scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute used sophisticated methods to form 27 model heads based on tiny bone fragments, teeth and skulls collected from across the globe.
Here is a video showing those different models morphing into one another. Original article here. [via] [more inside]
Some call it whining. I call it facts.
Today, VIDA (Women in Literary Arts) published their annual VIDA count, breaking down the treatment of women in literature in 2012 and the past three years of trends.
I need a name that's cutting-edge, like CutCo, EdgeCom, InterSlice...
"At the time, Groening was best known as the artist of the comic Life in Hell, as The Simpsons has not yet premiered. The brochure was titled, 'Who Needs a Computer Anyway' and interspersed Groening’s Life in Hell style illustrations with standard information on Apple’s Mac computers."
Apple once hired Matt Groening to do some illustrations for them.
Swimming with Spacemen
"i made visions on garageband"
"u should prob buy a mic/ interface and u might appreciate some instruments" A brief tutorial on music production by Claire Boucher, aka Grimes. [more inside]
1. one specimen α of the species coolcaticus with maximal length of neck
At this point I usually feel it would be a good idea to say something about this , Exercices de Style, But as it's rather difficult to know where to begin, if I'm not careful I find that my would-be explanation goes rather like this:
"Oh yes, you know, it's the story of a chap who gets into a bus and starts a row with another chap who he thinks keeps treading on his toes on purpose, and Queneau repeats the story 99 times in different ways - it's terribly good . . . [more inside]
An urban vertical garden built from hundreds of recycled soda bottles
This beautiful vertical garden made out of hundreds of recycled soda bottles was built for the Rodriguez family by the Brazilian design firm Rosenbaum. The bottles are suspended on the wall of a walkway outside the home and contain edible plants like lettuce and herbs so the family can grow their own organic vegetables. The garden was created as part of the TV show Lar Doce Lar (Home Sweet Home), in which producer Luciano Huck and the designers at Rosenbaum collaborated to transform the homes of several dozen poor Brazilian families. The response to the Rodriguez family's wall garden was so overwhelming that Rosenbaum eventually released the garden design plans (in Portuguese) so people could build their own. [Rosenbaum's page on the complete Rodriguez family home makeover (in Portuguese).]
What Coke Contains
Are You Experienced?
For the past two Februarys, Serious Eats Chief Creative Officer J. Kenji Alt-Lopez has gone vegan for the entire month. Here he shares the 60 vegan recipes he created during his Vegan Experience.
Crowd funding is a lot like crowd surfing
"And I fell into those thousands of connections that I'd made. And I asked the crowd to catch me." "When you connect with them people want to help you" - The art of asking by Amanda Palmer [more inside]
Mantas Last Dance
In an effort to raise awareness of the hunting of manta-rays to near extinction, Shawn Heinrichs made this beautiful underwater video of a model swimming with the mantas in their natural habitat. [more info at the via]
You're it - for another year.
The men who have played one game of tag for over 20 years (previously) got more intense after recent nationwide coverage. Then one player's father died unexpectedly... [more inside]
Fame! We're gonna sell more Kotex!
Sometime in 1981-1982, ad agency Ogilvy and Mather made a video. Harlem Shake, eat your heart out.
High voltage wood erosion.
How beautiful it is when you allow high voltage electricity to burn it's way through wood? Very beautiful.
The Wonders Of Life: Is Brian Cox on Acid?
Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas from Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe show take a look at Brian Cox's programme about how science did all the life. Plus more 2013 commentary from Shitpeas and Cunk on Die Hard and the Harlem Shake.
"occurs mostly on online comments for blogs and articles"
If a shibboleth is a way to determine an "insider", by saying something that only an "insider" could say, what is something that an "insider" would never say? How about a 'Frisco'? [more inside]
"(5) Pure evil from the 8th dimension (Man U)."
A NFL fan discovers the joys of proper football and explains why the English Premier League is so much more exciting.
Pithy title goes here
35000 BC: Earliest three holed flutes appear. And we go from there...
I'm gonna bash that...
Mining Boom are a Perth band whose videos for the fuzzed out pop songs Telecom and Craigie (NSFW language) use found footage to invoke and skewer a sense of nostalgic Australiana.
"A law should serve the people, but it didn't protect me."
In Korea, Changes in Society and Family Dynamics Drive Rise in Elderly Suicides - "The epidemic is the counterpoint to the nation's runaway economic success, which has worn away at the Confucian social contract that formed the bedrock of Korean culture for centuries." [more inside]
March 3
The gun of the fearful
The AR-15 is more than a gun. It's a gadget. It's an addiction and the future of firearms manufactures. It's the most wanted gun in America and more than anything it is a symbol of the cycle of fear that drives assault weapon sales.
“The tea was really bitter”
He picked up mad rhymes at the Penington School
If you're a fan of Star Trek, you likely already know of The AV Club's reviews, currently focusing on Deep Space Nine. But perhaps you have missed, throughout the comment threads for each review, the poetic stylings of Rappin_Jake_Sisko. (Last link is an anthology, with annotations.) [more inside]
Hanging Ourselves By Our Bootstraps
A well-executed and terrifying visual representation of exactly how stratified wealth is in America. It's far worse than you could have imagined. [SLYT]
Detailed Floor Plan Drawings of Popular TV and Film Homes
For your enjoyment: detailed floor plan drawings of popular TV and film homes.
Pepto Bismuth
We'll put in on the tin in post
Nothing but Microsoft Paint (no tablets, no touch ups).
Want to see the Stay Puft marshmallow man losing a game of mousetrap with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (who happens to be on fire) while Face from The A Team arrives on a pigeon dressed in leopard print Y-fronts and wedding veil, all this is taking place on the moon? Jim'll Paint It.
Kitchen Junkets and Contra Dance
Kitchen Junkets in New England homes were a wintertime venue for live music and contra dance - a social dance form that's never really faded from the region's popular culture. Often credited with keeping the form alive, scholar/musician Ralph Page celebrated the kitchen junket and other contra traditions from 1949-1984 in his hand-printed magazine Northern Junket, available indexed and fully digitized via the University of New Hampshire. [more inside]
Make someone's day with your own pony mashup
Easily the best pony related music video making site this year!
More dancing ponies! This one is my favorite[more inside]
Please don't panic...OK, panic.
Nothing to see here, but could you _all_ change your passwords? Yup, if you're using Evernote you should really reset your password. Says who? Why, Evernote itself. It looks like they've had a tiny security issue...They say that there is "no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost and [...] no evidence that any payment information [..] was accessed". But just to be on the safe side...50 millions users should reset their passwords.
Gay Mormon Records Reactions To His Coming Out
This Gay Mormon Spent 1 Year Recording His Friends Reacting To Him Coming Out. (SLYT). He's rather chipper, considering his church says he can't get married or have sex...
What if Skynet just wanted to piss us off?
Keep Calm and Understand the Process. The advent of algorithm-driven sales and product-on-demand delivery systems (think Cafepress, for one) can have some unexpected results when the output is not checked carefully enough. [more inside]
Gold plating the cuckoo clock
BBC: Some 70% of Swiss voters appear to have supported plans to give shareholders a veto on compensation and ban big payouts for new and departing managers, projected referendum results suggest. One of the organisers of the referendum, Brigitte Moser Harder, told the BBC she thought the Swiss people agreed with the proposals because the gap between rich and poor had become wider. "From the beginning, 2006, we had the support of the people of Switzerland because you know not everybody in Switzerland is rich." [more inside]
Email transparency at Stripe
The credit card processor Stripe has an interesting policy of email transparency within the company (previously).
The new normal in Baghdad
"What is more worrying is that politicians themselves are adapting to the situation rather than trying to change it. The new regime seems to have slipped in to the shoes of the former. Officials squat in the opulent residences of their predecessors, whose era they claimed they were ending. Almost no infrastructure has been built in Baghdad over the past 10 years, except the local government headquarters, the road to the airport and a few flyovers. Traffic police shelters at crossroads are stamped “gift from the town hall”, recalling the “donations” (makarim) of Saddam: a personalised substitute for what should be provided anonymously by the state. Public service salaries remain insufficient, driving employees to find supplementary sources of income, legal or not. High-level corruption is tolerated, documented and used as leverage when necessary. Pervasive social climbing, nepotism and incompetence are poisoning institutions." -- Almost ten years after the start of the War on Iraq, Le Monde Diplomatique looks at what has really changed.
We are stardust...lightly toasted in a heavy bottomed pan
You got your cuisine in my astrophysics; no, you got your astrophysics in my cuisine: Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Anthony Bourdain. (SYTL)
No one will feed you as well as somebody who loves you
Alton Brown talks to Google about bow ties, trying to find recipes on Google vs. on the Food Network website, and trying to impress his daughter by blowing things up. (SLYT)
Rise of the Afropolitan
The stereotypes about Africa/Africans are too many to list here. They’re mostly negative, myopic depictions that focus on war, famine, abject poverty, disease, and corruption. In other oversimplifications, Africans are written up as model immigrants, overachieving geniuses, or displaced chiefs moonlighting as gas station attendants.
Outside of these caricatures, many Africans are going to work and school, voting in their local elections, and spending way too much time on Facebook. And they’re over the ignorance that has collectively miscast them. In response, a swelling movement of young Africans are launching concerted efforts to wrest the image of Africa from entities and interests that don’t promote a balanced understanding of the continent.
March 2
I believe, I believe my time ain’t long...
Six six six is no longer alone.
Genesis, fronted by Peter Gabriel, live in 1973, presented in full 1080p high definition. [more inside]
Heinrich Berann, the father of the modern cartographic panorama
Heinrich Caesar Berann is known as the father of the modern cartographic panorama and is also credited as the most prolific panorama artist ever. His style and work could be credited with the lasting appeal of stylized panoramic maps that often feature exaggerated or distorted features as the preferred map type for ski resorts and trails (PDF) but Berann's true passion was art, as seen in these collections of his paintings and drawings found on the tribute site maintained by his grandson, Matthias Troyer. [more inside]
Valibation
Valibation: It isn't in you, it is you. NSFW short film in which a man's addiction to his smartphone gets a bit out of hand. [Via]
Hollywood's Bug Man
Bug Art - Steven Kutcher creates paintings using bugs as living brushes. He's probably more noted as the working entomologist on a number of Hollywood films, including Arachnophobia. Bonus: Steven's E-Z Bug Collector Method (via FLUXO)
Backa the throat!
Neil from thehippyseedcompany.com loves to taste the really hot peppers they grow with friends and family, film the results and review. (MLYT)
thehippyseedcompany's YT channel [more inside]
Textverarbeitung
Repo Chick
Repo Man is one of the most beloved cult movies of all time. But did you know that director Alex Cox made a couple of sequels? Well, he didn't. Except he sort of did... [more inside]
The King Under The Rock
Hey guys, remember that old show "Fraggle Rock?"
And, and you know that recently-released movie The Hobbit?
Well, why not combine the two?
The karst
This past Friday, the ground opened up and swallowed Jeff Bush of Seffner, Florida. He may never be found.
Sinkholes are common in the state of Florida, due to the gradual creation of caverns in the limestone that underlies the entire state. How much of a role can human development play in their formation?
Sinkholes are common in the state of Florida, due to the gradual creation of caverns in the limestone that underlies the entire state. How much of a role can human development play in their formation?
Pokémon From Memory
Laura Bifano (previously) has not seen a Pokémon since she was 12, but she's going to draw them anyway. Sometimes she has help from her followers, who describe the characters they want her to draw. Noelle Stevenson (previously) did a similar project last year.
I know I won't be leaving here with you
But he was also attracted to the dark side of life: the filth of the prisons, the opium dens, the slaughterhouses and the execution sites. In June, he headed for a particularly gruesome destination: New Caledonia, an enormous prison at the time.Spiegel covers a newly published diary of Franz Ferdinand, the man later killed by the "shot heard 'round the world".
Some 8,000 prisoners lived on the island, crammed into 50-man barracks. Already when he arrived in the port, the future heir to the throne gazed into the grim faces of criminals building quay walls and breaking rocks. Others toiled in the nickel mines. If an inmate managed to escape into the forest, he was usually killed by the natives. Every fugitive brought a 25-franc reward.
22-22-22: A 22-yr old willing to work 22-hr days for 22-thou a year.
Are interns the slave economy of the US? Internships are increasingly becoming industry standards; the time college graduates work for little or nothing and get the valuable experience they need to get a "real" job. In the meantime, they are saddled with student loans they can't pay and living with mom and dad.
Empathy video from the Cleveland Clinic
A few minutes of empathy "CEO Toby Cosgrove, MD, shared this video, titled "Empathy," with the Cleveland Clinic staff during his 2013 State of the Clinic address on Feb. 27, 2013." SLYT
echoes
A brief history of the Chinese growth model [note: not so brief] - "the Chinese development model is an old one, and can trace its roots at least as far back as the 'American System' of the 1820s and 1830s. This 'system' was itself based primarily on the works of the brilliant first US Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton..." [more inside]
Wind-Up Sheep Chase At The End Of The World
A new book by author Haruki Murakami will be released this April, his publishers have announced. This will be his first in three years since 1Q84 (in the running for, but then passed up, for the Nobel Prize). Although not even the title of the novel is yet known, this hasn't stopped fans from speculating on what it will be about - with or without the aid of bingo.
Finding info on your state lawmakers has never been easier
Open States , the latest project of the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, is an easy to navigate comprehensive database of activities from all state capitols that makes it easy to find your state lawmaker, review their votes, search for legislation, track bills and much more.
May The Please Don't Screw This Up Be With You.
Here is what a bunch of folks seem to think are the 74 Things Every Great Star Wars Movie Needs.
“...but the numbers are unbelievable.”
"The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking" [NYTimes.com]
"The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945."
Unions, Migrations and the Spread of Hockey to the American South
Monster Clams
Razor clam digging with Captain Milt Gudgell. Follow Milt as he takes you clam digging on the Long Beach Peninsula. [more inside]
Transgender soccer player makes history
In November of 2011, Jaiyah Saelua, a center back for American Samoa, became the first transgendered individual to participate in a World Cup qualifier. [more inside]
Domestic Labor
Cacao!
BDSM is so mainstream, it's ridiculous. James Franco's just made two films (arguably NSFW) about it. It's on Portlandia (same). We all know why.
The Psychology of Human Misjudgement, 1995 talk by Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger (prev) gave an oft referenced talk at Harvard in 1995. Here's the full audio. [more inside]
Sherlock Holmes and Parsnip Soup
USTR still pushing ACTA on Canada
Canada's Harper government has introduced an ACTA compliance bill at the behest of the USTR, despite the treaty being dead elsewhere. [more inside]
It is not a true story
"If nothing else, "Argo" is an exercise in American exceptionalism - perhaps the most dangerous fiction that permeates our entire society and sense of identity. It reinvents history in order to mine a tale of triumph from an unmitigated defeat. The hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days and destroyed an American presidency, was a failure and an embarrassment for Americans. The United States government and media has spent the last three decades tirelessly exacting revenge on Iran for what happened." -- Nima Shirazi explains what's wrong with Argo's depiction of the Iranian hostage crisis.
Abnormal Desire
In Malaysia's continuing efforts to persecute and combat the "deviant wave" of homosexuality, after banning a LGBT rights event claiming a threat to "public order" and training parents and educators to spot "LGBT behaviors" in school children for possible entry into a gay rehabilitation centre, they are now producing and presenting Asmara Songsang, a musical where LGBT people live lives fuelled by sex, drugs, and rock and roll...only to be struck by lightning and go straight or die. [more inside]
March 1
Replacement Key
Hey Jude in Minor Scale. Smells Like Teen Spirit in Major Scale. The Final Countdown in Major. Beat It in Major. Losing My Religion in Major.
The "50 Shades" of 1969. Except this one was intentionally bad.
Naked Came The Stranger was a collaborative work of terrible erotica released as a satire of the all too American love for stories of bored suburban women getting their freak on. Perhaps surprising no one, it became a huge hit anyways. Released as the work of a single female author, the ruse of it being written by a large pool mostly male journalists coming out some time later spurred further sales and cemented its place in the annals of literary hoaxes.
Two concert films from Tom Waits
Burma Shave and Big Time, all there in their entirety, for your Waitsian viewing and listening pleasure.
Classic Albums, covering 3 decades of popular music
Classic Albums is a rock and pop documentary series, broadcast and on DVD, starting with The Making of Sgt. Pepper. There were 38 more albums covered, plus five more in the Netherlands... [more inside]
The Green Mafia
“Uncle Vincenzo,” implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily’s Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued: “For the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . It’s a business we can live on.” [more inside]
A Curious and rather difficult experiment
On the November 11, 1954 edition of the US educational program Omnibus, Leonard Bernstein presented what amounted to a 30-minute master class on one of the most familiar of all classical works, the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, to include reinserting some unused sketches. The results are, to put it mildly, interesting.
Woodworking with a twist
Frank Howarth's woodworking videos are a joy to watch. Even if you know nothing about woodworking, the stop-motion animation he incorporates into them is a treat.
A Sign of Hope for Dogs and Mankind
Dachshund UN. Shock, delight, cacophony! A meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is staged with the help of specially recruited dachshunds in this wild performance installation. Joyful and chaotic, spectacular and fascinating, Dachshund UN questions our capacity to imagine and achieve a universal system of justice. [more inside]
Pensive Mechanical Bodhisattvas
Pretty Little Demons
The youngest band to perform at SXSW this year is made up by two friends who love music. Lydia Night and Marlhy Murphy will play songs from their recently released CD Flowers [more inside]
HTML5 Exploit
FillDisk -- HTML5 permits websites to store considerable data on your local disk. It was originally expected that the browsers would impose a ceiling on this, but IE, Opera, Safari, and Chrome do not. A properly coded HTML5 site can completely fill your hard drive. [more inside]
How Pegging Can Save the World
If You Want a More Thoughtful Boyfriend, Try Pegging Him. Want to make straight men better in bed — and better feminist allies? The path may be simple: fuck them up the ass. According to one brand new book, the path to making men more compassionate, appreciative and playful may be straight through their butts.
Pizzuzzles in the hizzouse!
Puzzle World is a repository of puzzle awesomeness. In includes types of puzzles (including a great selection of burr puzzles), puzzle designers, a staggering index of puzzles, and a plethora of puzzling resources. For the most committed puzzle pursuer, Puzzle World also hosts a digital reprint of Stewart Coffin's seminal work The Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections (previously). Bonus: sliding block puzzles!
Baseball players and their dogs
Both Ripken and Champagne have that same look of determination, of steely grit and fiery passion, in their eyes. For Ripken, it was to play in 2,632 straight games, for Champagne, it was for the bag of Beggin’ Bits the photographer had hidden in his camera bag: the 1993 Milk Bone Super Stars Trading Cards.
"Can we really expect that such a government is interested"
A Contagion Of Violence
In exploring the occurrence of violence, researchers have recognized the tendency for violent acts to cluster, to spread from place to place, and to mutate from one type to another – similar to the infectious disease model, in which an agent or vector initiates a specific biological pathway leading to symptoms of disease and infectivity.Is It Time To Treat Violence Like A Contagious Disease? [more inside]
"Pushing a Wall", "Mock Baptismal" and "Stirring Excrements with a Stick"
In 1560, the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder created Children's Games, a painting featuring about 80 contemporary games. Included among the games are "Pushing a Wall", "Mock Baptismal" and "Stirring Excrements with a Stick".
Abbot to Zimmerman
How can she slap?
Area man asks his wife to wake him up with a slap. The arrangement lasts for at least 15 days. [slyt]
Auti-Sim
Auti-Sim is a Unity Web Player game that simulates the experience of childhood autism (warning: loud sound). [more inside]
Castrating The Whelk
Motor City Sadness
Asteroid Discovery - 1980-2012
Using data provided by the Lowell Observatory and Minor Planet Center, this fascinating video provides a view of our knowledge of nearby asteroids and how closely their paths intersect with Earth's. The voiceover explains the count of objects, and what the colorations mean. [slyt]
Mars: Cosmic Bullseye?
Will Mars be rocked by a massive comet in 2014? Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. A comet will definitely pass close to the Red Planet on October 19, 2014. [more inside]
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
Pablo Neruda (bio, pics, recordings) was a Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner. His work comprises 48 books* (excluding posthumous publications), the most famous of which remain Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (scribd, alt) (Spanish, alt) and Canto General (Spanish).
Documentary. [more inside]
The Grateful New Riders of The Crosby Airplane
The Perro Tapes, are a series of studio jams featuring David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, (and the usual subjects) that led to Crosby's acclaimed solo debut, If Only I Could Remember My Name. [previously]
Lando, Lando, Lando get your adverbs here
Happy this makes me (hurray!). Excited I am! (woo-hoo!)
Women Hosted Podcasts
Mexico City gets the hero we all deserve
You know how it feels when you're trying to cross the street and a driver comes through the intersection as if you’re not even there? Like he’s muscling through with that big box of metal as if to say, “Hey, get out of my way, you little flesh-and-blood weakling!”
Wouldn’t you just love to have a superhero sweep down, stand up to the jerk behind the wheel, and block the car so you could cross safely?
Enter Peatónito, the masked Mexican defender of pedestrians!
As below, so above.
"Forget the old heliocentric model – our solar system is a vortex!" Part 1, Part 2. [via] [more inside]
Wokka wokka wokka
Determine never to be idle
We got lost in the process of brick making and firing. The sounds and the rhythm of the work, the patterns, the processes. An amazing day! [more inside]
Beware of Dog.
Remember BigDog, the robot 'mule' that Boston Dynamic is developing? Well, now it throws cinderblocks. [more inside]
30 PRINT "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.."
"That got me thinking: Could the Romans have built a digital computer using only the technology and manufacturing processes available to them?"
In a sea of whisky, we‘re castaways and who can find us
Eurovision, the annual offering of musical culture from the continent to a sometimes bewildered world, approaches. Greece have decided that they can now afford to send an entry to the finals in Sweden this May, using private sponsorship. Their entry, winning the national selection contest, is the Rebetiko-infused "Alcohol is free", an anti-austerity song performed by Koza Mostra and Agathonas Iakovidis. [more inside]
It's Not in Your Brain, It's in Your Genes
The psychiatric illnesses seem very different — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A study funded by the NIMH and published in The Lancet, as reported by the New York Times indicates that five seemingly-different psychiatric diseases share several genetic glitches. [more inside]
"Designed in Japan, brewed in Belgium, drunk in Hong Kong"
"Yamada had already become interested in beer after going drinking with fellow students around Cambridge, and taken trips to Belgium and Munich to widen his beery knowledge. Listening to Bilimoria talk about his desire to brew a beer that would match up with Indian food, Yamada had a revelation. What about a beer specifically brewed to match up with Japanese food?"
Russia Attacks Sweden
"Mamma Mia! They will tear us apart! 7-3! Just like in hockey last year." Sverker Göransson, commander-in-chief of the Swedish armed forces, recently said that Sweden’s scaled backed military leaves the country vulnerable. Sweden, he claimed, could only defend itself for one week if it came under attack. The Russians have taken notice and issued a satirical response. [more inside]