April 2012 Archives
April 30
May Day in Chicago: then and now
As Chicago prepares to join other cities in marking May Day with a march and a general strike, it is interesting to think about these actions in the context of May Day's Chicago origins and Chicago's role in labor history. [more inside]
Sexy Tanja
Why fiction is good for you
Why fiction, even trashy TV, is good for you, by Jonathan Gottschall related to the book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (book trailers), more at Scientific American, and a video presentation (6-min).
Let's Go!
"A montage of unique dolly shots from the films of Spike Lee."
Spike Lee: The Dolly Shot (SLVimeo) Compiled by Richard Cruz, featuring "Bra" by Cymande.
With eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive
"Being in a cage for such an extended period of time, it has its downfalls."
Trees in Silos
Because they protect young trees from wind, animal browsers, and weather, abandoned and open silos can sometimes make an excellent tree habitat. Silo Trees: NYT, flickr pool, Missouri Department of Conservation, TGAW, Ken Wolf
Betsy, We're Not in Barneveld Any More
How does a natural disaster, a tragedy, change people? The Barneveld tornados of 1984 were considered some of the strongest tornados recorded. Survivors tell their stories 25 years later. Here is some video (news footage) of the aftermath. More survivor story video.
Ever upward
Today, the World Trade Center once again became the tallest building in New York City. (Previously.)
Go right, my child.
Free Comics. What's not to love?
Free Comic Book Day is back again! (Previously.) It's the one day a year when comic book stores in North America and around the world will be handing out free books -- mainly as an attempt to lure new readers to the genre.
Some shops do signings, too. See you at the comic book shops on May 5th!
The First 10,000 Hours...
Long before he became a staff writer for The New Yorker and the bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell began his career writing for a politically conservative monthly magazine. Some of his early work for The American Spectator is now available online.
Whenever my life gets me so down, I know I can go down
A brief history of Nickelodeon's Roundhouse , that glorious early 90's sketch show with the guys doing backflips and the Dad in the motorized armchair.
Never Bet on an Eggplant
The Monday Night Wars
Historians of the war consider it to have been lost in what became known as the Fingerpoke of Doom. [more inside]
Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!
Stephen King on taxing the ultra-rich... including himself. An engaging -and colorful- discussion on taxes for the ultra rich.
Who Was David Algonquin? The Works Of The Mystery Man Of American Letters
Cube³
Cube: navigate a rolling ball down streets towards a goal by tilting the entire world, like a cross between a balance-ball game and Katamari Damacy. (Browser with WebGL support required, Chrome recommended at this time). Part of the new Start Here guide to Google Maps.
don't explain the good things, but definitely explain the bad things
"Sarah Moore researches how word-of-mouth stories affect our feelings about our experiences, and she has found that our feelings change when we share them. She says that when the storyteller analyzes or thinks about an emotional experience like a family vacation, it reduces the emotions, positive or negative, about the event. However, she notes that for practical experiences, such as buying and using a USB stick, analyzing and thinking more about the experience will amplify our feelings about it, be they positive or negative." (via bakadesuyo) [more inside]
Data Journalism Handbook
The Data Journalism Handbook is intended to be a useful resource for anyone who thinks that they might be interested in becoming a data journalist, or dabbling in data journalism. [more inside]
Yosemite Range of Light
Shawn Reeder shoots timelapse video, and his latest project is almost 5 minutes of Yosemite timelapse landscapes. Previously: a different HD Yosemite timelapse video.
Bye Bay Baby Bye Bay
Pirate Bay to be blocked By UK ISPs. "File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled." [more inside]
PUNK NOT DEAD
UK/DK - A Film About Punks And Skinheads (SLYT) 1983 documentary about the tail end of the British punk scene including The Exploited, Vice Squad and The Damned and unfortunately Gary Bushell
Red Square
In March, 2012, students in Montreal, Canada took to the streets to protest the Quebec Liberal government's intention to raise tuition by 75% over five years. The red square, a symbol of the last student strike, quickly became the symbol of this one as well. [more inside]
What Could Go Wrong?
Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has commissioned a Chinese shipyard to build Titanic II, a modernized replica of the unsinkable Titanic.
“It might be easier to build a giant match...”
How to use printed books in the digital age
Ten gorgeous buildings made out of books. More views of some of them: Scanner — Book igloo — Tower of Babel — Cadiff/Miller — Argument (with other book structures). Want to build your own? Order books by the yard from various outlets, some quite pricy, others more affordable: BookDecor, Half Price Books Outlet.
Manga Mark Mobius
Not every fund manager has a comic book made about them. Mark Mobius, the legendary emerging markets investor, has.
April 29
The Red Flag in the Flowerpot
The Red Flag in the Flowerpot - "Four decades after Watergate, there’s something that still nags at Ben Bradlee about Deep Throat." [more inside]
"...I’ve met some amazing people along the way."
"What we're going to do is have a map of the city of New York, where you can click on any neighborhood and scroll through the faces of the people that live there."Photographer Brandon Stanton has now compiled more than 3700 street portraits and 50 stories for his project Humans of New York. Photos are also posted with captions to a public Facebook group. (Album.) The Map currently shows 1500+ portraits, arranged by the location in which they were taken. Previously on MeFi [more inside]
The coolest [expletive] on the planet
"He’s the ultimate pro. He’s on time, knows his lines, hits his mark with no drama. He makes the other actors want to rise to his professional level." He is "the coolest [expletive] on the planet". [SLNYT]
On the Campaign
Herman Cain: Rogue, Rick Santorum: Cleric, Ron Paul: Wizard, Mitt Romney: Bard and Newt Gingrich: HROTHGAR! The GOP and Obama finally sit down and discuss the important things in life, like THAC0 and encumbrance. [more inside]
nice guys finish first
Chade-Meng tan. The single link to the you tube. The single link to the New York Times. The single link to the Amazon dot com. The single link to Meng (this is what they call him in the video) at blogger. [more inside]
Game of American Thrones
Reflections On The Norwegian Massacre
Reflections On The Norwegian Massacre (60 min audio interview) On July 22, 2011, Norway suffered a catastrophe: its main government buildings were bombed, and scores of young people were killed and maimed at a summer youth congress. Nils Christie, a prominent Norwegian sociologist and criminologist, talks with CBC IDEAS about what happened and what it means for his country. [more inside]
Chemical restraints
The Boston Globe reports that nursing homes in the United States continue to administer antipsychotic medications to patients who do not fit criteria for these drugs, in many cases to manage behavior considered disruptive by staff. For example, "in 21 percent of US nursing homes in 2010, at least one-quarter of the residents without illnesses recommended for antipsychotic use received the medications." Overuse of antipsychotic medications appears to correlate with nursing homes that have higher staff:patient ratios and to homes that house more people covered by Medicaid/Medicare. [more inside]
Don't Blink
MamaHope
Take the word AFRICA… without thinking, what images immediately come to mind?
War? AIDS? Genocide? Or maybe the vision of a small child with a swollen belly, surrounded by flies? … Too many non-profits ask for your pity by depicting poor, helpless Africans. But like any stereotype, this portrayal has more exceptions than truth.
African Men and Hollywood Stereotypes. Call Me Hope Alex presents: Commando
Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura"
Many films are called “classic,” but few qualify as turning points in the evolution of cinematic language, films that opened the way to a more mature art form. Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura is such a work. It divided film history into that which came before and that which was possible after its epochal appearance. It expanded our knowledge of what a film could be and do. It is more than a classic, it’s an historical milestone. ... Antonioni’s great achievement was to put the burden of narration almost entirely on the image itself, that is, on the characters’ actions and on the visual surface of their environment. He uses natural or manmade settings to evoke his characters’ state of mind, their emotions, their life circumstances. We learn more about them by watching what they do than by hearing what they say. We follow the story more by reading images than we do by listening to dialogue. The settings are not symbolic or metaphoric—they are extensions, manifestations, of the characters’ psyches. Physical landscape and mental landscape become one. - Gene Youngblood
Never forget, never again
We Japanese Americans must not forget our wartime internment - George Takei on the the treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII and Allegiance, his new musical. Previously.
Hungarian Schnapsody
No. 05 Hungarian Schnapsody as performed by Zoltan Kiss at the Lätzsch Trombone Festival 2011 / Night of Brass with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. Kiss is also a member of the Mnozil Brass. A little light comedy for your Sunday.
Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show
Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show (demo reel) is a DIY webshow featuring 10-year-old Sylvia and her various science, tech, and craft projects. She will be on the cover of Make Magazine's Summer 2012 "School's Out! Best Summer Ever" issue. [more inside]
End Piece: the last artwork of great artists
My Prime Factorization Sweater
This is the sweater that proves that I am a Certified Math Nut.
Venice In A Day
One day in Venice Best watched in full screen/HD.
It's still real to me, dammit!
Secrets of Pro Wrestling (1987) What happens when these two wrestlers get a raw deal from their chosen profession? They don't get mad, the get even! (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, Trailer) [more inside]
The Artist who loved India's Soul
Svetoslav Roerich (work down the galleries on the left) was described in a tribute on his 100th birthday as The Artist who loved India's Soul.
Like his father Nicholas (previously); he was a painter and philosopher. The family foundation page has more on this extraordinary family. In 1954 Svetoslav married the widow Devika Rani who with her first husband Himansu Rai had made India's first English language talking movie which became a cause célèbre for India's first (and longest) onscreen kiss.
Like his father Nicholas (previously); he was a painter and philosopher. The family foundation page has more on this extraordinary family. In 1954 Svetoslav married the widow Devika Rani who with her first husband Himansu Rai had made India's first English language talking movie which became a cause célèbre for India's first (and longest) onscreen kiss.
My Faith-Based Retirement
My Faith-Based Retirement. NYT business journalist Joe Nocera discusses being financially unable to retire.
April 28
Obama at the WHCD
A little grayer, a little wiser, a little funnier. Here's the full remarks of the president, including some "open mic" moments, and a short video about freedom vs socialism.
Practice Makes Perfect
"[It's] all the more staggering when you realize that more people were killed in the rehearsal for the landing at Utah beach than were killed in the actual landing at Utah beach." Operation Tiger, the disastrous secret rehearsal for D-Day, marks its 68th anniversary today.
Ripped from the headlines, er, graphic novel covers.
The Art And Activism Of Jimmy Somerville
In June of 1984, the UK latched onto a single by three London mates which openly challenged Thatcherite-era attitudes toward homosexuals, and gave the ball of social change a huge push as the single climbed to #3 on the charts. The band was Bronski Beat, the song was Smalltown Boy, and as the song charted around the globe, the world was introduced to singer and gay rights activist Jimmy Somerville. [more inside]
Can I be the little spoon?
A Gull-Eating Octopus in Victoria, BC
Never Tell Me The Odds
Dr. Nick Bostrom puts the probability of an existential event wiping out humanity in this century at 10-20%.
Each time we make one of these new discoveries we are putting our hand into a big urn of balls and pulling up a new ball---so far we've pulled up white balls and grey balls, but maybe next time we will pull out a black ball, a discovery that spells disaster. At the moment we have no good way of putting the ball back into the urn if we don't like it. Once a discovery has been published there is no way of un-publishing it. (Dr Bostrom, previously on Metafilter.)
Each time we make one of these new discoveries we are putting our hand into a big urn of balls and pulling up a new ball---so far we've pulled up white balls and grey balls, but maybe next time we will pull out a black ball, a discovery that spells disaster. At the moment we have no good way of putting the ball back into the urn if we don't like it. Once a discovery has been published there is no way of un-publishing it. (Dr Bostrom, previously on Metafilter.)
"The safest place in Beijing."
The blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has fled home imprisonment and sought refuge, according to Chinese dissidents, at the US Embassy in Beijing. Chen gained fame for organizing opposition to forced abortions under China's one-child policy. [more inside]
personal computing challenging the recording business
"Dingus is dedicated to the search [for new music on Bandcamp]. It's here, on this humble blog that we shed light on bedroom artists in their most defining moments. If you want what's popular today, Dingus is not the blog for you. But, if you want what's fringe, pure and passionate then you've somehow landed on the right URL." [more inside]
“They pay me absurd amounts of money,” he observes, “For something that I would do for free.”.
A Stephen King interview: by Neil Gaiman "I interviewed Stephen King for the UK Sunday Times Magazine. The interview appeared a few weeks ago. The Times keeps its site paywalled, so I thought I'd post the original version of the interview here. (This is the raw copy, and it's somewhat longer than the interview as published.) I don't do much journalism any more, and this was mostly an excuse to drive across Florida back in February and spend a day with some very nice people I do not get to see enough. I hope you enjoy it."
"A strict academic caste system."
"Sixteen years ago, Patricia (P.J.) Johnston of Des Moines made the front page of this paper for collecting her diploma from Drake University at just 19. “I think I’m probably meant to be an academic,” Johnston was quoted as saying. And she has been, getting a master’s in one institution, going to seminary at another, doing field research in India in her area of interest — Indian Catholicism — and currently working toward a Ph.D in religious studies at the University of Iowa....As it is, she sleeps on her office floor on the days she has to be in Iowa City, riding the Greyhound bus in from Des Moines."[more inside]
"You also said the skunk wouldn’t spray me either!"
"Did you put any thought into this?" - Using their bare hands, two guys carefully move a swarming colony of placid honey bees. [more inside]
Off The Rails
grilled cheesus!
Did you know April is Grilled Cheese Month? You still have time to celebrate! (via Tastespotting) [more inside]
A real world distopian sports event
Not content with displacing the poor, menacing photographers and blocking ambulances the london olympics now wants ground-to-air missiles, presumably to shoot down rogue skywriters who might misuse it's brand.
Foxes at Play
Across America, people on golf courses have noticed the trend of foxes stealing golf balls. More, more, and more.
The phenomenon has now spread to France, where foxes have been caught snatching boules de pétanque.
The phenomenon has now spread to France, where foxes have been caught snatching boules de pétanque.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks
Is Some Homophobia Self-Phobia? Many have suspected but now the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has published empirical research on the subject. In the study, 20% of self-identified "highly-straight" participants demonstrated some level of same-sex attraction in reaction time tests. These individuals were significantly more likely than any other group of participants to favor anti-gay policies. Also in NYTimes.
Deus Ex Now
"Jolts to the brain boosts memory!" Via deep brain stimulation technique, patients in a UCLA study (Full PDF)were able to significantly improve their ability to remember and find their way through a virtual environment. Although the study was small, it offers tantalizing clues toward potential treatments of disease such as Alzheimer's and raises the specter of artificial neuro-enhancements in the future. [more inside]
Space Invader
In Bed With Invader One night in Paris with street artist Invader (SLYT)
The Strangest Man
The trend of mathematics and physics towards unification provides the physicist with a powerful new method of research into the foundations of his subject, a method which has not yet been applied successfully, but which I feel confident will prove its value in the future. The method is to begin by choosing that branch of mathematics which one thinks will form the basis of the new theory. One should be influenced very much in this choice by considerations of mathematical beauty. [1939] [more inside]
Hollywood doesn’t trust women
Name all the female movie directors you can in one minute, right now. No Google. I’ll wait. This movie gave me cooties why there are no female directors.
full-blast living
The Creative Personality: Ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (via)
April 27
Not the Wilhelm Scream
What Did The Rebel Yell Sound Like? (video): 'From the early 1900's through the 1940's, Civil War veterans were filmed, recorded and interviewed at reunions, parades, and other patriotic events where, as the century advanced, they came increasingly to seem like ambulatory trophies from some distant age of heroes.'
#HarperHistory
On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked in the House of Commons whether he intended to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Harper tried to deflect criticism from New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair by saying that "Unlike the NDP, we are not going to ideologically have a position regardless of circumstances. The leader of the NDP, in 1939, did not even want to support war against Hitler." Members of the NDP were quick to reply that the NDP did not oppose Hitler in 1939 because the NDP was formed in 1961. [more inside]
Holi Hi-Def
We have covered Holi, the Hindu festival of colours, on Metafilter before. But we have not yet done it in slow-mo HD [SLV]. [more inside]
Sudan and South Sudan on the brink of war
Gwynne Dyer article today on Sudan/South Sudan situation. South Sudan just got independence last July.
Yogi Bear
"It’s a polar bear doing a hand stand in the water." From the blog: The Kid Should See This, which was linked previously.
Weightless
National anthem on an electric violin made out of a bat
If you were watching the Orioles-A's game from Camden Yards tonight, you saw a guy playing the National Anthem on an electric violin made out of a baseball bat. This is how that looks and sounds. This is the guy talking about and showing off his Louisville Slugger violin. And this is the Washington Post profile of Glenn Donnellan, a violinist with the National Symphony Orchestra and the maker and player of the world's only electric baseball bat violin.
Hanging judged
"Nooses spotted at Cal State San Bernardino" An art project garners attention and sparks debate, as reported in the San Bernardino Sun today:
A trio of nooses spotted Friday at Cal State San Bernardino drew some attention on the serene campus, and it wasn't all positive.[more inside]
Carl Wilson - "God Only Knows" (intimate setting)
Hey, hey, make your move already!
A message from Flat Eric & William Fichtner: French electronic music maker Mr. Oizo has released his Stade 3 EP for free* on his website. [more inside]
One's man garbage (bin) is another man's art...
The Trashcam project - garbage bins converted to pinhole cameras.
Discobolus and The Thinker
Study shows those who think analytically are less likely to be religious: Why are some people more religious than others? It may come down to whether they rely more heavily on an analytical or intuitive thinking process, at least according to a new study [abstract; supplementary materials] performed at the University of British Columbia and published in the journal “Science.” [more inside]
Enterprise Lands at JFK
Restoring Stanley Kramer's "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"
What you see here is a prime example of what happens to film that is neglected and improperly stored.
This is an original reel from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World that is now untouchable. The film has turned acidic, sporting the strongest and most foul vinegar-like odor I have ever smelled. In fact,
Robert Harris told me a story of how his contact lenses were singed by the fumes the film produced, causing temporary retinal damage to his eye. [more inside]
The Big House
Hailed as a Billionaire by a compliant media, Craig Whyte then bought Glasgow Rangers, one of the world's oldest soccer teams, for a Pound.
A Blog started, doubting the media spin. The BBC started to raise doubts. Rangers fans protested outside the BBC. When Rangers then went bust, they were somewhat surprised. George Galloway Laughs, Fans Sing, and Officials are Threatened. The journo who claimed Whyte to be a Billionaire is made "Scottish Journalist of the Year" by a former chief judge.
Te vagy a Blade, Blade Driver
Not At Home
Hungarian mid-wife, Dr Ágnes Géreb, is headed for jail after nearly 18 months of house arrest, for 'neglient malpractice'. This follows her sentence being increased after an unsuccessful appeal. The Royal College of Midwives has called for her release and the BBC's Central European correspondant Nick Thorpe, whose five children were delivered by Dr Géreb, has written extensively on the case. More information is available at http://www.freeagnesgereb.com/.
Much Ado About Nothing
Physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote a book titled A Universe from Nothing. Philosopher David Albert wrote a rather scathing review. In a later interview with The Atlantic, Krauss suggested that philosophers feel threatened by science "because science progresses and philosophy doesn't." Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci weighed in on Krauss' comments, and Krauss non-apologized to philosophers who may have been offended. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne reflects on the controversy.
All-female tribute bands
Sure, they got a gimmick: they rock! The top all-female tribute bands.
President Obama cracks down on for-profit recruiting of veterans.
Today, President Obama signed an executive order which places stricter disclosure requirements on recruiters for for-profit schools looking to recruit veterans and soldiers. The move comes amid growing concern among state and federal legislators that for-profit educational institutions are doing more harm than good and are employing predatory recruiting practices especially on veterans who are exiting the military and looking to improve their education through the Post-9/11 GI Bill. [more inside]
The rich past of a dynamic sport
Dr. Jake's Bowling History Blog is packed with hundreds of images from bowling's past, including famous bowlers, bowling advertisements, old Chicago bowling centers, matchbook covers and other bowling arcana. More: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Secret Life in a Micro Empire
Like underwater microscopic creatures? The Secret Life of Plankton is a fascinating, fish-narrated (sort of) TED-talk video you might be interested in. Want something a little less educational with a lot more style? Then Micro Empire could be just your thing.
La Caita, as always, from the Heart
Sexy Baby
Sexy Baby is a documentary by Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus (AV Club interview) about "sexiness in the cyber age" that follows the stories of an ex-porn star, a 22-year-old teacher saving up for labiaplasty and a 12 year-old girl. Trailer (probably NSFW)
Network Awesome
Network Awesome mines the resources of YouTube to bring you treasures vast and plentiful, packaged and gift-wrapped in an easier-to-watch format. Since it launched in January 2011, it's expanded a bit with a corollary animated GIF site and an online magazine. (previously; 2) [more inside]
check one two, check one two
A trip through the microphone's early days — from invention to old-school broadcasting. Enjoy these historic photos of a time when recorded and amplified audio were a novelty, rather than a necessity of everyday life: Birth of the Microphone: How Sound Became Signal.
More Universities Should Shut Down Their Computer Science Programs
More Universities Should Shut Down Their Computer Science Programs
Zerg Rush
Paris is a huge home-sick peasant
This month marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Hope Mirrlees. She is best remembered for her fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist, but had earlier written a 600 line poem, published by her friend, Virginia Woolf, called Paris. [more inside]
No quarters needed - the graphics already have more than 8 bits!
Battle for Asciion [Flash] is an old school shoot 'em up in the vein of R-Type and Gradius, with an additional nod to ROFLcopter. Viewable in your choice of black-and-green, black-and-amber or black-and-white displays, along with a Textshot™ function for preserving those 1337 moments.
Feiro Reborn
Buying a car with babysitting money Kathryn, at age 12, decided that she wanted a Pontiac Fiero for her 16th birthday. After convincing her parents, she bought it and has been restoring it from the ground up, including upholstery, motor rebuilding, welding, and more.
Selection of Stories
A couple years ago, we had our Choice of Dragons and of Broadsides. Since then, the authors have released Choice of the Vampire, in which your newly made vampire (potentially a Lestat type, but just as likely a Creole watchmaker or an illiterate backwoodsman) navigates the 19th Century American South; the fantasy diptych Choice of Romances and Choice of Intrigues, in which your initial choices determine the gender normativity of the game world as well as the temperament of your hero; and, most recently, Choice of Zombies, a fleet game that concentrates on action, relationships, and high-stakes decisions.
Is Beauty Boring?
18-year-old, Florence Colgate, has been blessed with what has been deemed the most naturally beautiful face in England. Florence, @flo245 on twitter, is the winner of a contest, beating out 8,000 other contestants, for having a nearly perfectly symmetrical face, based on ratio figures that were collected by researchers. [more inside]
The kindly face of movie piracy
At 92, Bandit to Hollywood but Hero to Soldiers (SLNYT) - not the typical face you'd expect to see when you hear that somebody has distributed something like 300,000 bootleg DVDs.
"You are a feminist icon, sir."
"Some critics have said in response to this that if the Catholic church's insurance does not cover Sandra Fluke's birth control, it shouldn't cover Cardinal Dolan's Viagra. Oh, no, no, no, that's called celibacy plus. That's how the pros do it. Because chastity is one thing, but it shows true commitment to uphold your vows when you are sporting a crook you could hang a miter on. Oh, wow, see you at mass on Sunday, sir? I hope he doesn't become Pope. I'm a Catholic, it's okay. I go to confession, it will be fine. "
- Stephen Colbert, speaking at the TIME 100 Gala, in front of Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan [more inside]
Just on six days and six nights
April 26
Blown Covers
New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See
GAWK TAWK
Gawker: We want to elevate the discourse about frogs who sit like humans . No matter how you personally feel about the sites, you've got to admit that the Gawker network is big. So far in April 2012, the eight sites have attracted 1 million comments on 7,500 posts from 130,000 active commenters. But with comments described by Gawker's editor A.J. Daulerio as 'a tar pit of hell', they've decided to try to reinvent their commenting system again, including a system to allow commenters to sign in with temporary, anonymous, throwaway 'Burner' accounts. [more inside]
mistakes were not made
Passive Voice Day 2012: "It has again been decided that April 27th will be passive voice day. Fun will be had by everybody as the passive voice is used for tweets, blogs, and casual conversation." (2011) Language Log offers kudos to a well-crafted passive announcement and provides further reading on confusion over avoiding the passive (includes a list of links to Language Log posts on the passive).
Higgs Boson
Higgs Boson explained - via animation or, by click by click comic version.
A brief talk about the mysterious Higgs Boson and the LHC search for it, given by particle physicist Daniel Whiteson
debt - late 13c., dette, from O.Fr. dete
With (O.E.) the (O.E.) push (O.Fr.) of a button (Fr.), get (O.Norse) and (O.E.) visualize (L.) the etymology (O.Fr.) of a piece (O.Fr.) of text (O.Fr.).
Visualizing English Word Origins across genres of text.
An American Original
A heroic leader of a cavalry charge at Gettysburg, a legendary newspaperman, twice famed co-inventor of the Wagon Lit train compartment --- and a real bastard’s bastard, a con man, a swindler, a quite-nearly-convicted blackmailer: all of these are one man. William d'Alton Mann. The pseudononymous writer of "The Saunterer" (and editor-in-chef Town Topics, the New York paper in which it was published from the 1880s until the 1930s) William d’Alton Mann was a pioneer of gossip who invented the blind item and --- entirely inadvertently --- gave the world Emily Post. [more inside]
Costco has you figured out.
Ender's Game. Harrison Ford. Movie.
Bowerbirds: intentional architects, and accidental farmers
Bowerbirds, a family of 20 species in eight genera, are a fascinating bunch of birds who range from New Guinea and Australia. Some are flashy, others drab, but all are named for the "bowers" (avenues, huts, or towers of sticks; source) that the males craft and decorate to attract a mate. There are regional styles (PDF) in the design of the bowers, and the male Greater Bowerbirds even employ optical illusions. Some, like the Vogelkop Bowerbird, add mimicry vocal to their repertoire of courting methods. Add accidental cultivation to the list of fascinating features of the bowerbirds. [more inside]
The Sword Fights of Errol Flynn
A biologist never forgets what's inside an elephant
What's inside an elephant (Not safe for the squeamish)? A pictorial retrospective from Inside Nature's Giants.
Oh no!
Oh no! It's finals week and I need to finish my Civil War essay immediately.
With Love, Peace and Music ...
A working Star Wars arcade cabinet
A working Star Wars arcade cabinet that's the same height as a bottle of wine. (SLYT)
Mexico passes ambitious climate change law
Mexico passes ambitious climate change law to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The law also stipulates that 35 percent of Mexico's electricity should come from renewable sources by the year 2024. It joins the United Kingdom in having legally binding emissions goals aimed at stemming the effects of climate change.
We need a better way to poop
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced the second round of its Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, designed to prototype a means of dealing effectively and cost-efficiently with human waste for the 2 billion people on earth who currently lack access to safe and affordable sanitation.
Awesome! Now Do "Mappy".
Porting a 30 year-old vector arcade game to an obsolete 33 year-old home game platform: "Star Castle 2600". In 1981 a young Howard Scott Warshaw, left his first programming job at HP for a more interesting job at Atari. His first assignment was to create an Atari 2600 conversion of the vector coin op game Star Castle... After evaluating the arcade game and the console hardware he came to the conclusion "that a decent version couldn’t be done".
Thirty-one years later, former Atari employee D. Scott Williamson has finally ported Star Castle to the 2600. (via MAKE)
Research on happiness and profit
For my 250th post: There is a lot of interesting research going on in business schools, and some of it is even fun to watch. Wharton has been hosting 10 minute entertaining talks on cutting-edge research by faculty including: where inspiration comes from at work, how time relates to happiness, how to run an innovation tournament, socially responsible investing, learning from people who leave your company and what breakfast cereal and Steve Jobs have to tell us about the secret sources of innovation. If you want less academics in your business school mini-lectures, Stanford also has a collection of advice to entrepreneurs on many subjects that includes everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to Guy Kawasaki.
Pseudo Poop for Testing Toilets
Testing toilet flush performance naturally requires the replication of real-world loads. Striving for accuracy, a Texas A&M study (PDF) evaluated polypropylene balls and Play-Doh sheathed in condoms before settling on a test payload of two Water Wigglers per flush. In contrast, the Maximum Performance project (scroll down for photodocumentation of MaP testing procedures) recommends the use of 350-gram specimens of extruded soybean paste ("specimens that float shall not be used"). [more inside]
See you in Chicago
Chicago has a new tourism anthem. It's pretty incredible.
The zone that is filled with danger?
Archer (official genre: Global Espionage cartoon) creator Adam Reed talks through season 3 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) about Archer’s Atlanta based and stream-lined creative process, its guiding aesthetics, eschewing writer rooms (“It’s like being in a staff meeting—a funny staff meeting.”), and Jessica Walter’s general classiness. [more inside]
The Fauxtopias of Detroit's Suburbs
"These historic parks are perfect symbols of the romantic small-town fantasy most people first thought they would get when they moved out of the city." [more inside]
Twisting Around the Light
Bullet time light-painting takes two well known photography techniques and combines them in a completely new and interesting way. [more inside]
Oh no you did NOT post that picture to Facebook!!!
"Relationships are hard enough. But the rise of social media — where sharing private moments is encouraged, and provocative and confessional postings can help build a following — has created a new source of friction for couples: what is fair game for sharing with the world?" (NYT)
Paid, not played
Are you a freelancer held hostage by deadbeat clients? Add what you're owed to the world's longest invoice.
Wonder Woman means so much more to me than Hera or Aphrodite.
Comics author Grant Morrison talked to Playboy about the Super Psyches of some of his favorite superhero characters. (Clean interview, NSFW website)
"Very few drums or vocals"
musicForProgramming(); a series of mixes intended for listening to while programming to aid concentration and increase productivity (also compatible with other activities). [more inside]
The Geographic Flow of Music
In The Geographic Flow of Music (arxiv), researchers Conrad Lee and Pádraig Cunningham propose a method to use data from the last.fm API to track the world's listening habits by location and time, showing where shifts in musical tastes have originated and subsequently migrated. Results show music trends originating in smaller cities and flowing outward in unexpected ways, contradicting some assumptions in social science about larger cities being more efficient engines of (cultural) invention.
Why And How To Strike On May Day
Why are we striking? Why should you strike? And, what do we mean by General Strike?
You've probably heard of the General Strike called for May Day by Occupy Wall Street and affiliated groups. For those who want to know what the whole thing is about, or how to get involved, this link may answer some of your questions. [more inside]
You've probably heard of the General Strike called for May Day by Occupy Wall Street and affiliated groups. For those who want to know what the whole thing is about, or how to get involved, this link may answer some of your questions. [more inside]
Sugar porn (SFW)
Paris Patisseries is a luscious blog which chronicles Parisian pastry and the great chefs behind it. It is written by Adam Wayda, an American gourmand who spends half of each year in Paris & indulges his time there enjoying pastries.
Some mouth-watering posts:
Top 17 Best Pastries [more inside]
Care and Feeding of Yer Books
a tale of two cities
You know what our attitude was toward people who didn’t like avant-garde films? ‘Oh, you don’t like it? We’ll show it again.’
Amos Vogel, the founder of the Cinema 16 film society in New York City and later co-founder of the New York Film Festival, has died at the age of 91. [more inside]
Together, we will live, each sister and each brother, small children of the rainbow and a green earth
Tens of thousands of Norwegians rose up and sang a song to protest the thoughts and beliefs of Anders Behring Breivik. Anders Behring Breivik is currently on trial for having killed over 70 people during a day of infamy in Norway on July 23, 2011 (previously)
Breivik is on record as having derided a particular song for encouraging multiculturalism and tolerance. 40,000 or so Norwegians have decided to show him what they think of his opinions.
Aerial
Ethical Meat?
Is it Ethical to eat meat? (SLNYT) The NYT Ethicist asked reader to submit essays making an ethical case for eating meat. Here are the top six along with the results of the reader poll.
"how much has changed -- and how little"
April 25
On some alien planet, this is how they do wheels
new life from leftovers
Don't toss that celery base! Did you know you can use it to re-grow a new bunch of celery? The same thing works for romaine lettuce and bok choy. You can regrow scallions or leeks or any cooking onion. You can grow garlic. What about lemongrass or ginger? Try planting pepper seeds or key lime seeds; a leftover pineapple top or the classic avocado pit. You can eat the leaves from carrot tops or sweet potato vines or just keep them as houseplants. Seeds Straight From Your Fridge (NYT link)
"It All Turns On Affection"
Last night, author and farmer Wendell Berry delivered a powerful lecture [video; full text here includes portions not delivered verbally] to a full house on the occasion of his accepting the National Endowment of the Humanities' Jefferson Award. The famous PC holdout has appeared previously in the blue, but this lecture is not to be missed. Here is soul nourishment for the long-time Berry follower, and for the newcomer a superb introduction to one of our time's greatest intellects. [more inside]
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?
A group known as the Cincinnati Dry Dredgers have uncovered an unusual fossil (since dubbed "Godzillus") which is currently the subject of investigation and debate. Among the current questions? "Is it animal or vegetable?".
"The older I get, the more I feel a need to sterilize things. "
Adulting: How to become a grown-up in 387 easy(ish) steps. From "Step 177: Boring and/or bad mail doesn't evaporate if you ignore it" to "Step 169: Laying in bed is not a solution to feeling overwhelmed." [more inside]
On Calling Women 'Crazy'
Women are often referred to as crazy when remembered by exes. A magazine article propagating this view was forcefully rebutted. Have the times changed for women with a wide range of emotions?
Hadouken!
This was filmed to show the passion and art of glowstringing and sticking, to show peace, love, unity and respect. Glowstringing is my passion and it's been an amazing experience learning this art. This was also filmed to showcase my good friend Blake Johnson's music, and whether he knows it or not his amazing filming skills. We are both blessed with an amazing talent, and we are proud to present this work of art.
Glowstringing by Anna "Schlosser90".
You say worst, I say greatest.
Drew, creator of Toothpaste For Dinner (and KOMPRESSOR, CRUDBUMP and Married To The Sea with wife Natalie Dee), has a new blog: The Worst Things For Sale. Highlights include the riot police shower enclosure, tub of 9,000 live ladybugs, and $78k ancient fertility statue (which even the sole product reviewer admits is highly dangerous). All products handily available on Amazon.
Cow Boy Comic
Cow Boy - the tale of Boyd Linney, a ten-year-old bounty hunter determined to round up his outlaw family. Or as Chris Sims puts it: "True Grit: The Animated Series".
Solving mysteries of the Soviet lunar lander program
What the hell happened to the Luna 23 probe? As part of the Soviet Union's Luna program, it was designed to collect a small sample of lunar regolith and return it to Earth. But despite landing, it failed to leave the moon. Two years later, Luna 24 landed nearby and managed to attain and return a sample, but its geological properties conflicted wildly with what was expected. What the hell happened with Luna 24? [more inside]
What I’m trying to do at the moment is go back to our original intent, which is that the standard issue, the one that everybody gets and is available to everybody, is beautiful.
Jason Pierce goes through every Spiritualized album sleeve. The Spiritualized sleeves always have a great look to them -- and Jason Pierce sits down with MTV to go through and talk about each of them.
Also, the new video for "Hey Jane" is pretty keen too.
A website committed to promoting the use of the scythe
The folks behind the Scythe Connection no longer sell scythes, but the site remains a fantastic resource on an ancient tool still being used by some today. Maybe start browsing at the Navigation Guide. The site covers the tools, technique and sharpening, while weaving in a sort of mystical appreciation for the scythe. If you read nothing else, read their profile of Danish "creek worker" Niels Johansson, the "Mower of the Decade."
Ready for the Fight: Rolling Stone Interview with Barack Obama
Obscura Day, 2012
Atlas Obscura (seen 'round here before) has organized its third annual Obscura Day for April 28. It's "an international celebration of unusual places," from the Fairy Doors of Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Particle Accelerator at John E. Edwards Accelerator Laboratory in Athens, Ohio, to a tour of the Secrets & Oddities of the National Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland and an Expedition to the 1,553 Stone-Carved Monks of Nihon-ji in the city of Kyonan, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.
Photographic history
NYC's Department of Records has officially announced the debut of its photo database, releasing 870,000 photos of the city and its operations to the public. Here are some of the best ones. Here is the link to the gallery itself (though good luck getting in right now). [more inside]
CAPWMASNWSEH
Goalgasm: a brief history of over-excitable commentaries
An Artist Goes Undercover at a JC Penney Portrait Studio
"You can see it's not selling very well."
The US Supreme Court today heard arguments in the case of Arizona et al vs. United States, which concerns the role of states in enforcing federal immigration law. Two years ago this month, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law SB 1070, considered by many to be the toughest anti-immigration law in the country. In an ensuing outcry, the legislation was called racist and its backers nativists, with several groups organizing boycotts against the state of Arizona. [more inside]
Secret treehouse, public land: what now?
The HemLoft is an egg-shaped treehouse that Joel Allen built over three years on an imposing hemlock tree he found on crown (government owned) land near Whistler, British Columbia. Until recently, Allen kept the beautiful, illegally-built structure secret, but now that it's been shared with the world, what will happen to it?
Abraham Lincoln Gillespie
The long and short of it.
Whole wheat pancakes on an antique plate
"And may no man’s weight ever lay freight your soul"
All The Wild Horses is a portraiture series by Andrew McGibbon featuring spectacular equine photographs. [more inside]
The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars.
Have you ever wondered what non-euclidean geometry actually looks like? This video uses a custom ray tracer for the Minecraft engine to give some examples.
ENORMOUS SCALABILITY
The History of Bowie in 100 Objects
With fans struggling to come to terms with David Bowie's musical hiatus and likely retirement, any new Bowie-related material has been eagerly pursued. Last year, the leak of the unreleased album Toy (previously) slaked the thirst of those needing a Bowie fix. Last week, an unauthorized preview of another Bowie project emerged— Bowie: Object. First announced in 2010, the book features 100 objects from Bowie's archive, with text written by the man himself.
You can't have one...
#liberalmediabias
From SIN to HEL in 11 hours
How Creativity Connects with Immorality Are creative types more likely to cross moral boundaries?
(Retro) Avengers Assemble
Francis Galton
galton.org is an exhaustive website devoted to the life and works of the statistical pioneer and "father of eugenics" Francis Galton, inventor of the scatterplot, the correlation coefficient, fingerprint identification, and who knows what else. Almost all of Galton's books and papers are reproduced here, some in scanned form and some in searchable .pdf, from his major books to his letters to Pigeon Fancier's Journal. A short selection after the fold. [more inside]
The successful scientist thinks like a poet but works like a bookkeeper.
Crisis Contrived
Most of what we think about Mexican immigration is wrong. If Congress had done nothing to secure the border over the last two decades — if it had just left the border alone — there might be as many as 2 million fewer Mexicans living in the United States today, Massey believes....
“Not only was the militarization of the border not a success,” Massey argues, “it backfired in the sense that it transformed what had been a circular migration of male workers to three states [California, Texas, and Illinois] into a much larger, settled population of families living in 50 states.”
“Not only was the militarization of the border not a success,” Massey argues, “it backfired in the sense that it transformed what had been a circular migration of male workers to three states [California, Texas, and Illinois] into a much larger, settled population of families living in 50 states.”
"I want to marry a lighthouse keeper..."
VŶCHOD
Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police. Brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Prague.
Descriptive Camera
Descriptive Camera, 2012 "The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene." [more inside]
"Guuuuuuuuuh-roovy!"
Limbless amphibian species found. [bbc.co.uk] A UK-Indian team of scientists have announced the discovery of a new species of limbless amphibian. The creature - about 168mm in length and pink in colour [image] - belongs to an enigmatic, limbless group of amphibians known as the caecilians [wiki].
![The creature - about 168mm in length and pink in colour [image]](http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59831000/jpg/_59831441_gegeneophisprimus_photoramachandrankotharambath.jpg){kind=link}
Our “white people problems” problem
The AV Club: "Why it’s time to stop using “white” as a pejorative"
Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element"
Beanplating on The Fifth Element from architecture students at the University of Waterloo. [more inside]
Experimental delayed-choice entanglement swapping.
"Using four photons, we can actively delay the choice of measurement on two of the photons into the time-like future of the registration of the other two photons. This effectively projects the two already registered photons onto one of two mutually exclusive quantum states in which the photons are either entangled (quantum correlations) or separable (classical correlations). This can also be viewed as ‘quantum steering into the past’." (arXiv, Nature Physics, Ars Technica)
April 24
1. Who cleans up all the mess? A) Always me
HowToBasic is a YouTube channel that gives you basic instruction on how to do simple things. The most popular videos involve food preparation, such as How to Correctly Add Milk to Your Coffee, How To Make Delicious Soup, and How To Make an Egg Salad Sandwich. However, there are a variety of others, including How To Wash a Car, How To Apply Toothpaste to a Toothbrush Correctly, How To Fold a Sock, How To Perform a Coke Prank.
My breast has fallen off. Can you reattach it?
Since she is not truly an emergency patient, she is triaged to the back of the line, and other folks, those in immediate distress, get in for treatment ahead of her. She waits on a gurney in a cavernous green hallway.
The “chief complaint” on her chart at Grady Memorial Hospital, in Downtown Atlanta, might have set off a wave of nausea in a hospital at a white suburb or almost any place in the civilized world. It reads, “My breast has fallen off. Can you reattach it?” (via Boing Boing) [more inside]
You got to hoooooooooooooold on
..and my water and my book and my cousin and my food
No, You Can't Take Them (youtube)(mp3)by The Clouds a music and art project composed and curated by M12 member Stuart Hyatt in York, Alabama featuring performers from the Union Chapel Male Chorus.
Gulf return
Emirati history would be incomplete without acknowledging the contribution of the country’s imported labour. Without them, the Emirates would not exist the way it does, nor possess the opulence or infrastructure it flouts. [more inside]
...this symmetric aperture is called the "fenetre de breeze", roughly translated meaning the "zephyr window".
The Great Crepitation Contest of 1946 [mp3 at bottom] lingers on in the memories of record collectors, radio historians, and a generation of post-war vulgarians from Dr. Demento to Howard Stern. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's vivid recording of the contest (conceived at a company stag party) inspired legions of LP cover artists: an early public airing was encased in a sleeve designed by one of the earliest proponents of the illustrated album cover. Later editions were adorned with shockingly detailed renditions of the Great Contest, created by a variety of anonymous geniuses. (Speaking of art, it was also a rumored favorite of Salvador Dali). Though it has inspired various lurid myths, we've learned a little bit about the deepest roots of the contest right here on Metafilter. [more inside]
Welcome to the Storyverse
Small Demons is a website that tracks the connections between people, places, and things in books. [more inside]
We are the tiny house people
In many parts of the world, the dream of owning a large house is being turned on its head #occupythesmallestpossiblespace
"If you have your checkbook in your car I will be happy to wait for you."
Hospitals in Minnesota have hired a collections company that plants its employees in the ER, squeezing money out of patients before they can get further care.
Father tapes teachers berating autistic son
New Jersey father wires autistic son to capture teachers bullying him When his 10-year-old son, Akian, started getting into trouble at school, Stuart Chaifetz was stunned. The notes from Horace Mann Elementary School in Cherry Hill, N.J., said that Akian, who has autism, was having violent outbursts and hitting his teacher and his aide -- behavior that the boy had never exhibited before.
Jacqueline Rose on Marilyn Monroe
We write to communicate an untenable situation...
Harvard’s annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles.
Harvard's Faculty Advisory Council asks Harvard's faculty to change how they publish. [more inside]
This is Oregon
Dark things in the closet, literal and figurative
The Vulture ranks all of Stephen King's books from worst to best.
Victor Victoria...Victorious?
"[T]he Commission hereby clarifies that claims of discrimination based on transgender status, also referred to as claims of discrimination based on gender identity, are cognizable under Title VII's sex discrimination prohibition"On April 20, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a unanimous ruling for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought up by the Transgender Law Center on behalf of Mia Macy, who claimed she was denied a job as at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after she announced she was transitioning from male to female. The decision allows for people who have been fired or prohibited from applying for a job based on their gender identity to bring federal lawsuits against their employers under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [more inside]
The Return of the "A"
Brian de Palma!
At the end of your Bollywood comedy you have an item song that's supposed to be a tribal song with gibberish lyrics, so why not just list film directors' names? Cue, The Akira Kurosawa song
Free at Last
Tor/Forge, the Science Fiction and Fantasy subsidiary of Macmillan, has announced that it is going DRM free on all of its ebooks. Mefi's own Charles Stross shares a presentation he recently made to executives at Macmillan that may have partially influenced this decision. Stross had previously predicted that publishers would need to go DRM free to prevent Amazon from gaining too much power in the ebook market.
Before we go on, someone in this room is not who they say they are....
The Lap of Luxury was a Big Brother-style reality tv show filmed for Spike TV in 2003. The format is familiar: 9 contestants living in a house together, all trying to win immunity, prevent themselves from being voted out and vying to win a $100,000 prize while facing down a smarmy host. Except... only one of them, a guy named Matt Kennedy Gould, was really a contestant. The rest were actors, playing stereotypical reality show roles. The series was scripted, heavily improvised and entirely created around Matt -- his very own Truman Show. Welcome to Joe Schmo. [more inside]
Competitive Ecology
Because of President Obama's desire to remake the community college system into a vanguard of job retraining and the general willingness of community colleges to take up that mantle, there is currently some soul searching about the role of the community college system. The American Association of Community Colleges, in a report titled, "Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation's Future", lays out a plan for a future community college system much different than what exists today:
"Now, there's a focus on accountability," says Walter Bumphus, president of the AACC. "We were founded on the premise of being open-access institutions, but recently there's been a pivot to focus more on student success. There's a focus not just on having them transfer [to four-year schools, but on getting them into the workforce."(US News and World Report) [more inside]
"Characters with Unusual Pets and their Unusual Circumstances"
"The Secret Pet Society" is an fantastical series of paintings with descriptions by artist Travis Louie which features Victorian-era styled people posing alongside their mythical creatures. [more inside]
Watchmen, new comic books and Tony ****ing Stark
28 pages from DC's upcoming "New 52: 2nd Wave" Stretching the definition of "leaked" to the screaming limit, Buzzfeed shares photographs it was invited to take of 28 pages from DC's upcoming "New 52: 2nd Wave" - the six series being brought in to replace its six cancelled comic books. [more inside]
Marvel Fashionista
Looking MARVELous is a tumblr that provides comic book-inspired fashion based on Marvel comic book characters. You'll find not only popular characters, like Spider-man or Iron Man. Some of the inspired outfits come from lesser-known characters such as Squirrel Girl (who?) and Molly Hayes (umm?). Here is the full page version.
Wanna see some dirty books?
A researcher at St. Andrews University is using a tool called a densitometer to measure which pages in medieval manuscripts are the dirtiest, and therefore the most frequently read. The complete (and well-illustrated) study is available online from the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art. [more inside]
The world doesn't need another $150 Algebra One book
The University of Minnesota recently announced that its College of Education and Human Development has created a searchable online catalog of "open textbooks" that are reviewed by U of M faculty. The books must be Openly Licensed, complete (not a draft version of the text, or a collection of lecture notes), suitable for use outside of the author's institution, and available in print for a reasonable price, generally less than $40 USD. [more inside]
TBT
Trampled By Turtles , (TBT) a modern Bluegrass band fronted by Dave Simonett
from Duluth MN.
Starting as a side project for the original members,
"...But as time went on, all those bands split and this band was all that was left. I was dead broke and left with just my acoustic guitar, after someone stole my electric guitar and my amp while loading out gear after the last show with my previous band. And like I said, the other bands were gone, and all my gear was gone, so this just naturally happened.”[more inside]
These devices teach me humility
Engadget's Distro talks to UI guru, Xerox PARC alumni, gadget collector (previously) and Microsoft Research Principal Researcher Bill Buxton about the future of natural interfaces.
Mechanical evidence of the orbital angular momentum to energy ratio of vortex beams
"We measure, in a single experiment, both the radiation pressure and the torque due to a wide variety of propagating acoustic vortex beams. The results validate, for the first time directly, the theoretically predicted ratio of the orbital angular momentum to linear momentum in a propagating beam. We experimentally determine this ratio using simultaneous measurements of both the levitation force and the torque on an acoustic absorber exerted by a broad range of helical ultrasonic beams produced by a 1000-element matrix transducer array." In other words, science has created the sonic screwdriver, and it could mean new advances in non-invasive surgery. [more inside]
Tiny Games
A Super Mario Summary is Johan Peitz's entry to the 23rd installment of the Ludum Dare competition, in which contestants work by themselves to create a themed game in 48 hours. "I tried to recreate every level in the original Super Mario Brothers game, but on a single screen each. The result is a puzzle platformer where you need to combine reflexes, timing, and clever thinking to succeed."
All 1401 entries can be viewed here.
"the ability to breathe"
Between 40 and 50 percent of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands, boyfriends, and exes. And, for about half of these victims, police had been alerted to previous incidents of abuse. There is, however, one exception to this grim trend: Maryland. Since 2007, domestic violence homicides in the state have fallen by a stunning 40 percent. What is Maryland doing that other states are not? The answer appears to lie with a former high school nurse, an ex-Washington, D.C., police lieutenant, and their ground-breaking efforts to protect the most vulnerable victims of abuse.—Fighting Back is an article by Tim Stelloh about new method to identify and protect abused women, developed by a group of law enforcement officers and academics (Note: The article features graphic descriptions of domestic violence and murder). The article focuses especially on the work of Prof. Jacquelyn Campbell. You can watch an interview with her here.
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Again
Lessons in the Art of Pillow Fort Construction "Tether your sheets and blankets securely, but try not to get too attached yourself." [more inside]
Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave.
It is well known that the US military and their allies use unmanned aerial drones overseas in wars and other operations. But there are also hundreds in operation here in the U.S., according to records the Federal Aviation Administration has recently released. Local police departments already have used them in SWAT situations, and the Department of Homeland Security has given the green light for them to deploy a drone helicopter that can supposedly taze suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchersas well as providing surveillance. Congress has paved the way for as many as 30,000 drones in the skies over the US by 2020, which has privacy advocates alarmed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a map with all of the organizations that have permits to use drones within the confines of the US. [more inside]
irkafirka illustrates tweets.
@irkafirka illustrates tweets. Illustrator Nick Hilditch (@Pockless) makes cute little cartoons out of selected twitter posts. Also available on twitter, of course.
Evening the Odds
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.
Multiple analysts warned of vulnerabilities, but instead of being heeded they were severely punished
After a lengthy DDOS attack, some determined hacking, and repeated attempts to penetrate its hardened security layer, the host was finally rooted by a cunningly designed piece of social and mechanical engineering. When the malware released its payload, not only was the system completely wiped, but the culture that created it as well.
This day in tech: the original Trojan.
Time-filling links
Aldo Cortesi blogs about the interface between computer science and visualisation. He has found some interesting applications for space-filling curves: making colour maps of images and of executable binary files.
A bit more work and one can visualise entropy in binary files. The cryptographic material sticks out like a sore thumb. [more inside]
Red-Tailed Hawk and Great Blue Heron Webcams
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has set up web cams next to red-tailed hawk and great blue heron nests near campus, with around-the-clock live streaming video. Greatest hits so far include a newly-hatched hawk being fed, and an evening owl attack on the female heron. More exciting than Cornell's recent stinky corpse flower cam. (Note: the gristly thing in the hawk nest is a pigeon killed yesterday that they've been feeding to the hatchling, so trigger warning if dead things upset you.)
What's good for the goose...
Posing like a man: after doing his back in imitating the cover poses fantasy heroines find themselves in (previously), Jim Hines is now trying out the male equivalent. Will these be any more dignified? The answer might surprise you! [more inside]
Judit Polgár
Judit Polgár is the greatest female chess player in history. The product of an educational experiment by her father, she was the first to break Bobby Fischer's record as the youngest-ever grandmaster - by which time she had already stopped competing in women-only tournaments. In 2002, she avenged an earlier controversial loss to Garry Kasparov - the first time in any sport that the No. 1 ranked female player has beaten the No. 1 ranked male player. At her peak, ranked 8th in the world, she became the first woman to compete for the World Championship. After several years of reduced activity spent raising her two children, Polgár returned to full-time competition - making it to the quarter-finals of the 2011 FIDE World Cup. [more inside]
Rambo. John Rambo. Like you've never seen him before.
RAMBO: LAST BLOOD. Flash game. But not really a game. I think.
it rocks
If you want to hear the rock solidest, rock steadiest, rock of Gibralterist rock drumming that's ever been rocked in the history of rock, then you want to hear this.
Facts has died.
The Siege of Savile Row
Chap Magazine (manifesto here) has staged a protest outside the proposed location of an Abercrombie & Fitch store on Savile Row in London. [more inside]
The Great White Whale
The first sighting of an all-white male orca (YouTube 1, 2) is reported by Eric Hoyt, Senior Fellow with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, UK.
A Coordinated Assault on Women?
In the wake of so many recent controversies over women and their right to safe, affordable health care and the supposed desire of working women to be "put in their place" by aggressive men in the bedroom, Penny Red suggests that "Right now, we are in the middle of a sexual counter-revolution." [more inside]
Walt Disney unavailable for comment
Sciencefilter: Cerebral Vascular Blood Flow Changes During 'Brain Freeze.' Also known as Ice Cream Headache, brain freeze has affected many, even medical professionals. Baylor College of Medicine offers additional insight into the mechanism behind it.
The End of a Wave
"Net migration from Mexico to the United States has come to a statistical standstill, stalling one of the most significant demographic trends of the last four decades." The full report from Pew Research Center. This interactive map [NY Times] puts America's many historical immigration trends in perspective. (previously).
April 23
Computer Science: Still have Byte? Or Down to Bits?
While growth prospects in the field are incredibly high, recent trends, such as "tools grow[ing] more advanced" (see Adobe Flash Builder or MS Visual Studio) have had people wondering over the past few years if computer science has much room for growth left. Some question whether it is alive. Others, such as Carnegie Mellon, say not so fast. In any case, employment has been a bit iffy (/.). There is the possibility that Computer Science is simply growing up (PDF), then again the U of Florida decided to say good bye to it this past week. But hey, if you are not going to that University, and still are shooting for computer science, here are some tips.
Butt Paper
Nickstarter - Nick asks you to fund a project, his continued existence.
Before and after science.
Writing in the New York Review of Books, Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg discusses his reason for suspecting that advances in particle physics and astronomy will not just slow down in the coming years, but cease entirely.
Enormous amounts of material
It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.
Little Magazines
Beginning in the 1910s, a combination of new ideas and technologies generated a proliferation of little magazines. These magazines made possible the revolutionary movement known as modernism.
Little magazines promoted artistic and political movements ranging from Imagism, Futurism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Dada, to Anarchism, Socialism, Communism, and Feminism. Little magazines provided a stage for modernist innovations ranging from New Art and the New Music, to the New Negro and the New Woman. Little magazines championed individual liberties ranging from free verse, to free speech, and free love.
Today, we are using the World Wide Web to produce a database dedicated to these important periodicals.
Hand On The Shoulder
Hand On The Shoulder, a short story by Ian McEwan. My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with "plume"), and forty years ago, in my final year at Cambridge, I was recruited by the British security service.
Video Power Hour made easy
MyTube60 gives you an easy way to string together clips from videos on youtube. It allows you to pick your videos, put them in order, and choose start and end points within the video. Also gives you the ability to search power hours put together by others.
When it comes to prosecuting speech as support for terrorism, it’s the thought that counts.
On April 12, Tarek Mehanna was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison. The sentence has renewed worries about the extent to which political speech might be counted as material support for terrorism and possible effects on Al Qaeda recruitment efforts. One wonders just how far the law might go. [more inside]
We’re charging our own battery, and now we’re full of energy
things that we're sad to see go
At the Gameological Society, John Teti eulogizes Dick Clark the game show host by waxing rhapsodic about Pyramid, including his all-time favorite run in the Winner's Circle.
Joel Salatin responds to New York Times' "Myth of Sustainable Meat"
Your money is under the guillotine.
Near Death, explained
"...Pam agreed to die in order to save her life—and in the process had what is perhaps the most famous case of independent corroboration of out of body experience (OBE) perceptions on record...Pam later said, she felt herself “pop” out of her body and hover above it, watching as doctors worked on her body. Although she no longer had use of her eyes and ears, she described her observations in terms of her senses and perceptions...with considerable accuracy.Near Death, explained. [more inside]
NDE studies [such as these] suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness."
The Work Of Art
Fuck You Broccoli
Fuck You, Broccoli - A non-judgmental outpouring of spite for vile vegetables, by MeFi's own MChelly. [via mefi projects]
" the case may hinge on turning up some politically incorrect emails from the production process"
Is “The Bachelor” racist? [Salon.com] "A new lawsuit claims the show discriminates against African-Americans in its casting choices -- and, it's right. Yesterday, two African-Americans from Tennessee, Nathaniel Claybrooks and Christopher Johnson, announced that they are filing a class action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination against the most sentimental of reality TV shows, ABC’s long-running ‘The Bachelor.” (Just scroll through this photo gallery of about five seasons’ worth of participants to get a sense of just how white “The Bachelor” is.)"
Zelda Flipnote
Flipnote Studio lets you create animations with a stylus on Nintendo's DSi handheld console. Nintendo had a contest to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Zelda, and the quality of submissions was high (higher than this, anyway). Personal favorite: Michi from Japan's Duck Amuck homage. [more inside]
Midwifing Skynet
Quadcopters are very cool and a little creepy. It was probably only a matter of time before someone attached a machine gun to one and called it Charlene.
"A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness"
Why Do Old Books Smell? [SLYT]
"...information based in part on theory and conjecture."
In 1973 and 1975, two one-hour television documentaries aired in the US: In Search of Ancient Astronauts (Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and In Search of Ancient Mysteries (Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The same producers also put out The Outer Space Connection (Parts 1 and 2) in 1975. All were narrated by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling. In 1976 a series was developed. Since Serling had passed away in 1975, popular actor Leonard Nimoy was chosen as host. In Search of... ran for six seasons, from 1976 - 1982, and was devoted to discussing unusual mysteries and phenomena. All 144 episodes can be seen on YouTube. Playlists: Seasons 1 and 2. Seasons 3 and 4. Seasons 5 and 6.
Four Twenty plus Three
You ever get so high and dream there was a marijuana review site in the style of Yelp? Dream no more, because there's Leafly. Find the strain that best suits you (no surprise that they all seem to be highly rated for treating stress, but only six are good for PMS) or a nearby dispensary. Read reviews of new strains like Woody Kush, rumored to be specifically created for Woody Harrelson or the insightful reviews of Herojuana: 3RD DEGREE BLACK BELT BUD, Dankest weed I've ever smoked, and Found a little container of a gram of this great shit under the seat in my car on a shitty day. Like any Web 2.0 worth it's weight in salt kief they have an API, login via Facebook & Twitter, and an iPhone & Android App.
Dymaxion and relaxin'
Buckminster Fuller's prototype Dymaxion House now resides in the Henry Ford Museum. A checkup under the floorboards revealed extensive cracking in the aluminum support beams underneath. The repair process granted a sneak peek into Fuller's remarkable design.
Embrace the colour clash!
The ZX Spectrum's chief designers reunited 30 years on, discussing what became 80s Britain's most popular home computer and gaming platform, despite stiff competition from the technically superior Commodore 64.
Movie Mimic
Ever get that uncanny feeling of deja vu while walking down the street in some city that you've never been to before? Maybe you saw it in a movie some time ago. Maybe the combination of the scenery and the architecture and passersby being in the same places as the principal actors set it off. The Movie Mimic does this on purpose, and includes Google Maps of the sites in case you'd like to go there yourself and strike a pose.
What would you say?
the listserve is simple: one person a day wins a chance to write to the list of subscribers. The project is an "online social experiment" by a group of graduate students at NYU's ITP program.
Every Single Night
Remember Fiona Apple? Criminal? Sleep To Dream? Infamous MTV Music Awards speech? Well, she's back with a new song, the lead-off single from her first album in seven years: Every Single Night.
The 3 African Samurai
Heavily influenced by samurai films from film makers such as Akira Kurosawa, French/Burkinabe filmmaker Cédric Ido produced a short award winning film, Hasaki Ya Suda (The Three Black Samurai) set in the future. Its synopsis reads:
It is 2100. In the world engulfed in chaos and war whose residents are consumed by terrible hunger, the last fertile land became the subject of fierce battles. Three warriors: noble Wurubenba (Jacky Ido), Shandaru (Cedric Ido), who wants to avenge his father’s death, and Kapkaru (Min Man Ma) craving for power, will face one another in a fight for life and death.
Watch the full 25-minute Hasaki Ya Suda short film (available only with French subtitles at the moment) or the 1 minute teaser. Interview with Cedric in English.
Gathering the pieces of the tower of Babel
Tim Doner is a 16 year old polyglot from New York city who currently speaks 23 languages. (warning: video) He uses flash cards on his iPhone and posts youtube videos to get feedback from native speakers. [more inside]
CISPA
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a controversial surveillance bill that proposes broad legal exemptions for the U.S. government and private companies to share "cyber threat intelligence" that go well beyond the FISA Amendments Act which legalized the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. [more inside]
April 22
"...I want to make a kind of music that had the Long Now and the Big Here..."
Imaginary Landscapes (1989): a visually hypnotic and impressionistic portrait of musician Brian Eno, directed by Duncan Ward and Gabriella Cardazzo. (40 mins.)
"Those obnoxious intrusive ads that pay $42 a day are the only way a site like ours stays afloat."
A Transparent Attempt to Explain the Economics Behind Running a Pop-Culture Website and the Need to Run Intrusive Advertising The thing about display ads is that you are paid for about what they are worth, which is to say: $.30 per 1,000 impressions. Most people barely even notice them, so advertisers are not willing to pay you very much to run them...Instead, we have to use intrusive ads which are paid on a much larger scale, approximately $7.00 per 1,000 impressions. So, if a site like ours generates 100,000 impressions, that should be $700 a day. Awesome. We should be rich, right? Not so much. Pajiba previously. [via Slashfilm]
Aretha Franklin's "Amazing Grace"
On January 13 and 14, 1972, Aretha Franklin sang during services at the Reverend James Cleveland's New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The audio recordings released as Amazing Grace remain the largest-selling gospel album in history. However, of the 20 hours of 16mm film footage by Sydney Pollack - intended as a concert movie for tandem release - only a few snippets have ever been seen. (previously: 1, 2)
Woman quotes more Lenin.
Sorry
You must've heard of a few
Digital Aeronautical Charts
How to blow up a dead animal
Obliterating Animal Carcasses With Explosives -- An official publication of the United States Department of Agriculture.
Mega Load of Something
Three months after file sharing site Megaupload was shut down (previously), and charged with criminal copyright violations by the DOJ, the judge has expressed doubt that the case will go to trial because the company has not been served with criminal papers. US-based lawyer for Megaupload Ira Rothken: "We don't believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States." [more inside]
WHEN DID HE EAT MACARONI?
Jordan Speer's 3D modeling work is colorful and strange. Examples: CHUNDERMUSCLE, Abduction of the Arcade Fiend, Sob Museum, Kontrascope, Deep Hell Discovery Probe, and The Bullshit Dragon of Fake-ass Mountain.
Can you buy plausible deniability anywhere online now that Etsy's run completely out of it?
On April 20th, Etsy, which as many of you know is an online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods and craft materials only, featured seller Ecologica Malibu and posted an interview they’d conducted with its owner Mariana Schechter, who talked about the salvaged wood furniture she designs and builds, and about how she "always felt that there was magic in the trees and a mysterious energy in the ocean" and that "there is something personal and unique that occurs when you craft something with your hands". Oddly for a featured seller interview, there was no detail given about the process of how Schechter makes her furniture and no photos of her in her workshop making them. On April 21st, April Winchell posted to Regretsy about Schechter. She’d delved a little more deeply into the matter, and though she didn’t come up with any photos of Schechter making furniture in her workshop either, she had found Schechter’s "work" on Overstock.com and bills of lading for furniture shipped from factories in Bali to her office building in Malibu. [more inside]
I'm at my best in the flesh - in person
In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people — carefully kept at bay. We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right. The flight from conversation.
Red Snappers Are Red Rated
As of today, Whole Foods will no longer sell red rated fish, and will sell only sustainable species. Some fishermen are fuming.
“It’s totally maddening,” Mr. Sanfilippo said. “They’re just doing it to make all the green people happy.”
Sakamichi no Apollon from the Cowboy Bebop team
Cowboy Bebop director Shinichirō Watanabe and composer Yoko Kanno have reunited for an anime adaptation of Sakamichi no Apollon (Kids on the Slope), a Shogakukan Manga Award-winning manga by Yuki Kodama. Fuji TV started broadcasting the series on April 12, 2012 (trailer). The series is currently being streamed on Crunchyroll, and will later be streamed on Hulu and The Anime Network. [more inside]
"The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to."
Last month, select portions of New York society observed the passing of Alan Z. Feuer, for some four decades a fixture at numerous benefits and balls, an integral member of the Quadrille Committee and the Germanistic Society of America, and, as friends and admirers remembered him, "a classic gentleman" and "the role model extraordinaire to the true gentlemen and ladies of New York". At his memorial service, they recounted "stories of Alan as the life and soul of the party, Alan the ex-service man, Alan as a very dear family friend – who became part of that family" and of his "ability to make you feel like the most important person in the room".
Few even suspected, and none knew, of his secret double life... until the other Alan Feuer investigated.
Few even suspected, and none knew, of his secret double life... until the other Alan Feuer investigated.
The K-E Diet
Crystal cMoy Freeform Headphone Amp
He fell asleep, 31 years later.
History of USSR for Children. (SLYT)
Who Killed Nancy?
Who Killed Nancy is a documentary examining the lives and deaths of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. It features interviews with many of the people on the Punk scenes in both London and New York, including people who were in Sid and Nancy's Chelsea Hotel room on the night Nancy died.
Tourette's Hero
Jessica Thom's "Tourette's Hero" is a place to celebrate the humour & creativity of Tourette's. It’s not about mocking or commiserating — it’s about reclaiming the most frequently misunderstood syndrome on the planet and changing the world one tic at a time. [NSFW]
No real American cinnamon?
"Fake Cinnamon Joins Artificial Vanilla and Wins" So you think you know the difference between natural and artificial?
"Look horrified as the thread just keeps coming..."
10 Amazing Practical Jokes: a quick collection of funny and mostly good-natured pranks. [SLYT] [more inside]
Birth to 12 years in 2:45
Frans Hofmeester filmed his daughter every week from birth to age 12 and made a time lapse [SLVimeo]
Of course, really, EVERYONE loves Alec Guinness
Chuck Colson has died at age 80.
Chuck Colson has died at age 80. The former "hatchet man" for President Nixon, Colson once remarked that he would "walk over his grandmother to get the president elected to a second term." After serving eight months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Colson announced that he'd become a born again Christian. In 1976, he founded Prison Fellowship International to aid and evangelize prisoners and their families. He was quickly embraced by the Evangelical world, and eventually eventually became an influential figure in conservative Christian politics.
How to name your startup (and how not to)
Before naming your startup, read this. "This guide is divided into three, independent sections: Why Bad Names Hurt You, Coming Up With Names, and Examples of Strong and Weak Names." [more inside]
domestic violence in China
Li Yang, founder of the most popular English-language school in China, Crazy English, (previously on MeFi) is now found to have beaten his American wife multiple times. Domestic violence is found in some 25% of Chinese marriages (!) but the actions of Li's wife Kim Lee to publicize the abuse has raised the profile of spousal abuse in a country where this was not often publicly discussed previously.
Read all about it
The Long Good Read presents two articles daily from The Guardian website selected from those featured on Guardian Zeitgeist that users spent the most time reading.
Widespread corruption and bribery by Wal-Mart in Mexico
"Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. [...] The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation. Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down."
April 21
Eric Dolphy
Eric Dolphy [auto-music] was a true original with his own distinctive styles on alto, flute, and bass clarinet. His music fell into the "avant-garde" category yet he did not discard chordal improvisation altogether (although the relationship of his notes to the chords was often pretty abstract). While most of the other "free jazz" players sounded very serious in their playing, Dolphy's solos often came across as ecstatic and exuberant. His improvisations utilized very wide intervals, a variety of nonmusical speechlike sounds, and its own logic. Although the alto was his main axe, Dolphy was the first flutist to move beyond bop (influencing James Newton) and he largely introduced the bass clarinet to jazz as a solo instrument. He was also one of the first (after Coleman Hawkins) to record unaccompanied horn solos, preceding Anthony Braxton by five years. - AllMusic (previously: 1, 2)
Paper birds
Birds are gorgeous but you can't have pets and can't abide stuffed animals. What's a bird lover to do? Vegan Taxidermy to the rescue! [more inside]
Fifth Avenue Frogger
Tyler DeAngelo and some of his friends have hacked a classic 1980's Frogger arcade game - with real cars.
Split or steal?
Team Rwanda
Philip Gourevitch tells the story of Team Rwanda, the national cycling team that is helping the country and the team members to escape their tragic history. Tom Ritchey's bike org Project Rwanda created the team in 2007, hiring coach Jock Boyer and recruiting five athletes. The riders, children of the 1990s civil war and genocide, now earn a good salary from the sport they love, and are providing for their families, starting businesses, and bringing pride to their country and villages. [more inside]
Monopsonies and Monopolies
Why book publishers will give up on Digital Rights Management. Short answer: because they are more afraid of Amazon becoming a monopsony than they are of consumer piracy. I don't know if he's right, but it's an interesting discussion of the immediate future in book publishing, and the way the Kindle has changed everything.
Clearly, he was on fire at the gym
Fringe. Division.
The Future of Fringe. This week's episode of Fringe, 4x19, "Letters of Transit" shows us the future of the show - both in universe (recap, speculation) and for our world: Joshua Jackson says, "If you watch [Letters of Transit], you’ll have an understanding of where they want to take the series.”
There are three episodes left for season four (teaser for 4x20, "Worlds Apart") and if Fox doesn't give Fringe a possible thirteen-episode fifth-season renewal, they have shot two different endings for season four. (Spoilers and speculation for Fringe.)
Systems Thinking
"Systems thinking (PDF) is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole...Systems Thinking has been defined as an approach to problem solving, by viewing 'problems' as parts of an overall system, rather than reacting to specific part, outcomes or events and potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences." -Wikipedia [more inside]
Number 20
IBNIZ
IBNIZ (Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo) is a virtual machine and a programming language that generates video and audio from very short strings of code.
Making Games
The Valve Employee Handbook [PDF]. An oral history of computer gaming, with Sid Meier (Civillisation I - V, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon) and Ralph Baer (Pong, the Simon platform), from Vice TV's Motherboard. Also: interviews with classic computer game programmers: Eugene Jarvis (Robotron: 2084, Defender), Jeff Minter (Gridrunner, Revenge Of The Mutant Camels, Gridrunner, Llamatron) and many more, together with the Giant List of Classic Game Programmers. (Previously, a decade ago).
It's on the Internet; it must be true
The Previous And Current Lives Of A World-Class Joke "At first, it was limited only to the Chinese-language Internet. More recently, it has appeared among foreign media. I just watched a clip of director James Cameron being interviewed on a talk show during which he said: "They were afraid that the Chinese men will reach out to touch the screen." When Cameron emphasized that "This is true," I knew that this is one of the most successful fake stories in recent years." [more inside]
Larry Cohler-Esses interviews Abu Marzook
Larry Cohler-Esses from the Jewish Daily Forward interviews Abu Marzook, Hamas' deputy political director. The interview captures Hamas in a state of transition and includes a segment (with audio) of Cohler-Esses explaining to the confused Hamas leader that the 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' is a Russian hoax.
Sometimes cops don’t want you to have a well kept lawn
Do Anything Stoned with Marty Adams presents: How To Mow Your Yard on PCP. [SLYT]
Rich people are fat and wear waistcoats, poor people look sad
"If you study all of the recent Pulitzer winners in the cartooning category, you’ll see that single-panel editorial cartoons are an increasingly timeworn form. Even the best ones traffic in blunt, one-dimensional jokes, rarely exhibiting nuance, irony, or subtext."
Farhad Manjoo argues that the Pulitzer should honor "infographics and interactive visualizations... [which] derive their power from real, often surprising data that’s presented, ideally, in a simple, understandable way."
Trouble's Brewing
Everyone has a pet peeve. Angry Tea Rap (SLYT)
The Logical Extension Of Business Is Murder
The extended trailer for David Cronenberg's adaptation of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis has hit the internet.
Colonial sunset
The Foreign Office’s “guilty secret” revealed Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments. Those papers that survived were flown back to Britain and hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain. The Guardian details some of those papers released earlier this week. [more inside]
I Dated A Zombie
Many dating websites help increase their numbers by buying profiles from third party brokers.
Inside Africa. Internet, phones etc.
Inside Africa. What about the digital frontier? How is the broadband download performance? How many mobile phones are there in Africa? And mobile subscriptions? How is Twitter doing in South Africa? And how many internet users are there in South Africa anyway? Yes, the other stuff like GDP growth rates, nation brand values and Sino-African trade are there too. And female entrepreneurship..
Whicker's World. Party time! Excellent!
Whicker's World was a BBC documentary series that ran from 1959 to 1988, presented by Alan Whicker. In 1967, Whicker traveled to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco to examine the phenomenon of hippies. Part One introduces us to The Love Generation. Part Two reveals that The Grateful Dead smoked marijuana. Part Three features freak-out dance performances and a hippy not on LSD. In Part Four, a woman in a hammock leads to teeny boppers violating the fuzz and the natural antagonism between the hippies and police. Part Five is on LSD. Part Six has many self-indulgent hippies. [more inside]
Pareto's law on drugs
Rethinking the War on Drugs (WSJ video / not OpEd). A more nuanced view than typically found in the anti-drugs vs. legalize drugs ad nausea. Practical solutions being done today. [more inside]
April 20
Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular takes over the streets of Liverpool
In 1912, ten year old May McMurray wrote a letter to her father saying how much she missed him and ending in "Dada this is my first letter". Her father never saw it, perishing aboard the Titanic two days later. This weekend, French company Royal De Luxe tells her story with the Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular in the streets of Liverpool, England. [more inside]
Full Screen!
This video features a series of time lapse sequences photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station. Set to the song "Walking in the Air," by Howard Blake, the video takes viewers around the world, through auroras, and over dazzling lightning displays.
Prince's "Sign O The Times"
We shrugged when friends told us Prince's Sign "O" the Times was the greatest rock concert movie ever. There are limits to how great a rock concert movie can be, and we figured Jonathan Demme's--and Talking Heads'--Stop Making Sense had stretched them as far as they were liable to go. But even though Sign "O" the Times was directed by the artiste, whose previous cinematic exploits haven't exactly put him in Demme's class, Prince has come up with a contender. Where Demme goes for a sinuous, almost elegant clarity, Prince's movie is all murk, scuzz, steam, and, oh yeah, sex. With all due respect, which one sounds more like a real rock concert to you? - Robert Christgau [more inside]
Spoiler Warning: He did.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, great-grandson of African nobleman and military strategist Abram Petrovich Gannibal, is well known for the tremendous influence his writings have had on both Russian and American literature. What is somewhat less known is that Pushkin, a notorious firebrand, fought in a total of twenty-nine duels in his youth.
Imagine how different the world would be if he had died as a result of one of them.
Imagine how different the world would be if he had died as a result of one of them.
Wanna test a friendship...?
Have a seizure. The non-disabled can have a lot of trouble coming to grips with a friend's disability, especially if it's something that doesn't show up well from the outside. As the writer puts it, "... she knows I have MS, but she's never actually seen my disease, and there are miles between those two things." There are a whole host of bad ways for someone to react to seeing the disease. And then there are the good ones.
Gloomy Negative Automatic Thoughts PWND
"SPARX is an effective resource for adolescents with depressive symptoms. It is at least as good as treatment as usual, would be cheaper and easier to disseminate, and could be used to increase access to therapy. It could provide access to treatment for young people who may be reluctant to have more conventional therapy."
It's a video game that teaches cognitive behavior theraputic techniques.
It's a video game that teaches cognitive behavior theraputic techniques.
Only those in love would know what a town without pity can do
I prepared for my first-ever trip to Japan, this summer, almost entirely by immersing myself in the work of Haruki Murakami. This turned out to be a horrible idea.
For his cover article on the novelist Haruki Murakami, Sam Anderson visited some key places from Murakami’s life and work.
Murakami's Tokyo.
The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami. [more inside]
Bank for America
And when the day comes that you, the American taxpayer, own this Bank, you will be ready to make it a Bank for America—one that brings benefits not to the privileged only, but to all of our customers, and to all of our stakeholders too.
Another Night to Remember
Spherical Panoramas by Carel Struycken
As an actor, Carel Struycken is known as Mr. Homn on Star Trek: TNG, Lurch in The Addams Family movie, and The Giant in Twin Peaks, but that is largely his past. Currently, he makes spherical panoramas, and "Picture Bubbles" with Josh Korwin. Struycken also posts his panoramas on 360 Cities. [more inside]
What do you get when you cross ...
Even damp it looked sticky.
In the spring of 1977, a Lockheed Lodestar crashed into a lake in Yosemite National Park carrying six tons of Mexican marijuana. The US government recovered most of it. Camp Four got the rest. A true stoner fable by Kief Hillsbery. [more inside]
On the Box
Little footage exists of early Wire performing live. Here is a full concert on German TV, from 1979. [more inside]
"Fenway is the essence of baseball"
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities.
So wrote John Updike in his moving tribute to Red Sox legend Ted Williams -- an appropriately pedigreed account for this oldest and most fabled of ballfields that saw its first major league game played one century ago today.
As a team in flux hopes to recapture the magic with an old-school face-off against the New York Highlanders Yankees, it's hard to imagine the soul of the Sox faced the specter of demolition not too long ago. Now legally preserved, in a sport crowded with corporate-branded superdome behemoths, Fenway abides, bursting with history, idiosyncrasy, record crowds, and occasional song. [more inside]
Art will Out
Two Cubans are exhibiting their art in Britain – despite being imprisoned in the US.
The pair are members of the so-called Miami Five, who were jailed in the US in 2001 at the conclusion of a controversial trial.
They are Antonio Guerrero and Gerardo Hernández and their work will be exhibited alongside that of many other cuban artists.
There is a National Committee to Free the Cuban Five.
The pair are members of the so-called Miami Five, who were jailed in the US in 2001 at the conclusion of a controversial trial.
They are Antonio Guerrero and Gerardo Hernández and their work will be exhibited alongside that of many other cuban artists.
There is a National Committee to Free the Cuban Five.
Don't Be That Guy at the Gym!
1962 Seattle World's Fair Turns 50
This weekend Seattle kicks off six months of celebrations marking the 50th Anniversary of the Century 21 Exposition, more commonly known as the 1962 Seattle's World's Fair. Conceived in the shadow of Sputnik, the Fair promoted better living through modern science with futuristic rides and exhibits including the Bubbleator, the Gayway (previously on mefi) and of course the Space Needle, which this week returns to it's original color. [more inside]
Loose lips blink bits
I am widely credited as the inventor of the <blink> tag. ... I won't deny the invention, but there is a bit more to the story than is widely known. Previously.
Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3720 to 1.
A new Seattle-base company called Planetary Resources (twitter), created by several billionaires, apparently has a lofty goal in mind ... to bring a 500-ton asteroid to Earth by 2025, for the purposes of mining its resources. And according to a recently released report (pdf) by CalTech, it's not all that outlandish an idea.
The National Map (US)
"The U.S. Geological Survey has just released more than 161,000 digitally scanned historical maps spanning in excess of 130 years and covering the lower 48 states. This Historical Topographic Map Collection provides a comprehensive repository of the landscape of our Nation..."
FFFMMMMMMVVVVVV
FFF: MMMMMM is a flash game that takes the game mechanics of the indie hit VVVVVV and transforms them from a fast-twitch platform game to a puzzle platformer. [more inside]
Feistodon Cometh
Superbummed
"iZombie will be the last time I’ll ever write for DC... I decided quite some time ago, but waited until after the cancellation of my book was announced to discuss it. The short version is, I don’t agree with the way they treat other creators and their general business practices." writer Chris Roberson ends his relationship with DC Comics, pointing at a post by David Brothers as a summation of his ethical concerns. Roberson's work at DC has included turning around Superman after J. Michael Straczynski left mid-story, iZombie and a spin-offs from Vertigo's Fables featuring Cinderella as a super spy. He is currently working on the creator owned Memorial, published by IDW.
Would to God I had never opened your loathsome missive or any of the others!
Flash Friday
Snowball! Friday afternoon has arrived and what better way to celebrate that on a Spring day than with a snowy flash pinball game...
Dynamic Range
Former Broadway actress Carrie Manolakos performs a cover of Radiohead's 'Creep', and hits all the notes.
We're good. But we're not as good as David Apppenboroow
Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. I must be a creature. I must be a creature of the night.
The character of an urban area
LiveHoods: Using Social Media and Machine-Learning to Study Cities [via mefi projects] [more inside]
Parting is such sweet sorrow...
"The world's most important story" – A decade of environmental journalism in China, by Guardian environment reporter Jonathan Watts.
The British Les Paul is no more.
A Perspective on Death
Here's a thought-provoking interview with Philip Gould in which he describes his reaction to his impending death from oesophogeal cancer. [more inside]
A Sticky Situation
Jaguar's real ad agency punks Don Draper. It's a (spoiler alert) sticky situation that Carrot Creative takes advantage of. This harkens back to other displays of advertising infighting that Mad Men portrays.
Not After Eight
A new initiative recently proposed by the Royal Canadian Mint proposes to create the MintChip, a digital currency that’s similar (to BitCoin), but is backed by the Canadian government.
Aiming to become “the digital equivalent of the coins we use every day,” in the Canadian Mint’s own words, the MintChip will target micro- and nano-transactions conducted both online and offline, whether at the physical point of sale, on mobile devices, or among peers. Via
Willie 'n Kris 'n Jamey 'n Snoop got a message they'd like to share
Friends, why don'tcha take your boots off and jes' kick back for a coupla minutes while Willie Nelson, Jamey Johnson, Kris Kristofferson and Snoop Dogg lay down a little bit of up-tempo, feel-good country music? Go on, take a hit! It won't kill ya! Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.
"The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions."~ Sarah Bernhardt
Derelict Cinemas and Theatres by Adam Slater: Since 2008, Adam Slater has been on a quest to photograph Britain’s abandoned and derelict cinemas and theatres before they are gone for good. Below are some examples from his astonishing set of beautiful yet grotesque ruins, which you can see in full on his flickr page. His blog, Reality Trip, features more fantastic photographs of old power stations, quarries and more. Be sure to check it out. [kubrickontheguillotine.com]
Yoshi really grew into some serious anger management issues
They took his son. Destroyed everything he loved. Now... it's time for him to take his revenge. They'll pay. They'll pay dearly. It's time for the Roar Rampage!
Reading Markson Reading
Reading Markson Reading: ‘Exploring the mind, method and masterpieces of David Markson through the marginalia found on the pages of the books in his personal library.’ (previously: 1, 2)
Slanted and and and Enchanted
Stop-Motion Waveform
For his video "I Will Never Change", London-based musician Benga used 960 records to create a stop-motion waveform of the song. [more inside]
Everything is better with a bag of weed
Let's go smoke some pot! Started by a group of high school stoners looking for a pot field in the 70's, the 420 meme has propagated to cover the globe. 420 Tours, 420 communities, Senate Bill 420 which legalized medical marijuana in California, 420 is everywhere. Sure, there's plenty of 420 buzzkills; the 1775 Siege of Boston, the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, the day Americans learned about 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre, and of course Hitler's birthday. But don't let it get you down man, everything is better with a bag of weed.
Sorting seat
Somebody's been graffiting the Central Line. Along with the now-jailed Tox's tags, you can see some sticker fun on your commute. The artist Michael Landry has already been working, as part of the Art on the Underground project, to promote the Central Line's friendliness.
A beautiful way to say yes.
April 19
This piece would suggest that the door is opening, and people are walking through it
Copyright cage match ends
The High Court has handed down its decision in the case of Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd (summary [PDF]; full text of judgment; some analysis), finding 5-0 that ISP iiNet did not authorise its users to infringe the copyrights of members of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) by making films available over BitTorrent. [more inside]
Marcel Proust's "A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu"
"The Threat to Proust" by Roger Shattuck: When Proust’s novel fell into the public domain in 1987, three Paris publishing houses were ready with new editions that had been in preparation for several years. They all carry the same basic 3,000-page text with few variations. The differences lie in packaging and presentation. Laffont-Bouquins chose to publish three fat volumes prefaced by elaborate historical and biographical materials. Garnier-Flammarion produced ten pocket-sized volumes competently edited by Jean Milly. The new Pléiade edition, published by the original copyright holder, Gallimard, made the boldest, most ambitious, and most expensive bid to claim the market. In a combination of editorial, literary, and commercial decisions, Gallimard proposed to influence the way we read Proust and, to some degree, the way we approach all great literary works. [more inside]
Nine players leaving from the fourth hole at 11 o’clock
Collusion, vandalism and violence—all for something as banal as snowplowing. If you think it seems too extreme, you don’t understand how public contracting in Montreal works, said the former employee of the major company. The same tactics are used throughout the city, even in the tiniest industries; it’s a culture, a way of life. “I have seen a guy get threatened when he bid on a grass-mowing contract in Ville St. Laurent. They don’t care. It’s just about maintaining control over those areas,” he explained. “The people that talk about corruption in the construction industry don’t realize it’s not just construction. It’s everywhere in public works.” [Getting Plowed]
Tattoos, Piercings, and Alcohol Consumption
According to research recently published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research[DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-0277.2011.01711.x], tattooed people drink significantly more than their peers (as well as other risky behaviours).
You can vote once per day per category
2012 Vimeo Awards Nominations — There are 13 categories including four new ones. The Experimental category is lots of fun. [previously]
Global Internet population and knowledge
The world's Internet population has doubled in the last 5 years, reaching 2.27 billion.
A recently published ebook Geographies of the World's Knowledge shows that despite its growing availability knowledge is not necessarily "more accessible." "Many commentators speculated that [the Internet] would allow people outside of industrialised nations to gain access to all networked and codified knowledge, thus mitigating the traditionally concentrated nature of information production and consumption." "These early expectations remain largely unrealised." It was found that not only academic knowledge but also user generated content predominantly originates in "rich countries, especially the United States."
The New Passivity
The demand to participate can become coercive, exhausting the very collective faculties it officially celebrates. While interactivity can be imagined as the “like” or “retweet,” it also encompasses the “agree to terms” button. The supposedly democratic call to dialogue and participation can turn sour when people have good reasons and desires to retreat. [more inside]
Ain't no spoon or fork or knife.
“There are no images and no representations in our minds,” he insisted. “Our visual experience of the world is a continuum between see-er and seen united in a shared process of seeing.”
I was curious, if only because, as a novelist I’d always supposed I was dealing in images, imagery. This stuff might have implications. So we had a beer together.
I was curious, if only because, as a novelist I’d always supposed I was dealing in images, imagery. This stuff might have implications. So we had a beer together.
XNA - more fun than Sea Monkeys...
Greg Ham found Dead
Men at Work's Greg Ham has been found dead. He was an Australian songwriter, actor and saxophone player known for playing multiple instruments in the 1980s band Men at Work. In addition to the saxophone, he played flute, organ, piano and the synthesiser. [more inside]
Record Store Day 2012
Limited Editions: Record Store Day 2012 is almost upon us. Started in 2008, this internationally celebrated day is observed the third Saturday of April each year. Its purpose is to celebrate the art of music with hundreds of recording artists participating in the day by making special appearances, performances, meet and greets with their fans, the holding of art exhibits, and the issuing of special vinyl. [more inside]
Julie Taymor not involved
Holy Musical B@man! It's a musical about Batman!
Act 1, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Act 2, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. [more inside]
Coursera
Coursera - free, online, introductory- to upper-undergraduate level classes in a wide variety of subjects, led by instructors from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and the University of Pennsylvania
Better red than dead
Recently Starbuck's customers were upset to learn that their strawberry frappuchinos were being coloured red with insect extract - cochineal. What they probably don't know is that cochineal was once as valuable as gold and silver and is the colour of Catholic Cardinals' robes and the red in the British redcoats of the Revolutionary War.
Epithet
Tower of Babelfish - A Language Learning Method
I ate a hot dog. It tasted real good.
I ate a hamburger at Burger King. It has 1,050 strips of bacon.
It's like a furry forest and I want to LARP there.
P&P, without the boring sisters
Doel: Belgian ghost town turned city-wide street art gallery
Ghost town in Belgium will lose its street art when it ceases to exist. "For 700 years, Doel stood near Antwerp along the Scheldt River in Belgium. As Antwerp expanded in the 20th century, its port needed more space, and Doel quickly became a target for demolition. Trying to force residents out, the government scheduled demolitions multiple times, but were beaten by popular protests from the 1970s through the 1990s. But despite the will of the people, Doel could not be saved and in 1999, the town was officially scheduled for complete demolition. Since that time, residents have trickled out, but artists have made their way in. As more of the town became abandoned, street artists from across Europe came and began to debut their works around Doel." [more inside]
“It all changed after Etan"
The 33 year-old search for six-year old Etan Patz, who disappeared walking home from school for the first time, may finally be over. “
After his disappearance, Etan was the first child to appear on a milk carton. [more inside]
Anontune
Wait here, we need to move this tornado along
On April 14th, a series of tornados swept through Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma (as discussed here in the blue). The exceptionally long lead-time for the forecast combined with a weekend date to bring a huge number of storm chasers out to the plains. In the last few days, several spectacular videos have been released, showing dramatic views from outside the tornado. Then, there's this chase team who captured a different perspective from both their in-car cam (blurry video, but includes chaser commentary -- encounter starts just past the 29 minute mark) and an on-car GoPro (clear video, no commentary, encounter starts around 7 minutes in). [more inside]
Interactive Solar System Simulation
Watch an Interactive Simulation of the Solar System (SLYT) It's like watching God at work, and he's a software developer.
Did cruise ship ignore stranded fishermen?
Remember those Ecuadorian fishermen who died after a month adrift, leaving only one survivor... yeah, turns out cruise ship passengers saw them, alerted the captain, he did nothing and later appears to have lied in his report.
Go long on hot saurce
To read or not to read
How to read a paper is a series by Trisha Greenhalgh in BMJ, the British Medical Journal, that explains how to critically read and apply the biomedical literature. Deciding what the paper is about. Assessing methodological quality. Statistics for the non-statistician: parts I and II. Drug trials, diagnostic and screening tests, economic analyses, systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PDF), and qualitative research (PDF).
Pain cake
The National Association of Afro-Swedes calls for the resignation of Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Roth after photos and video surfaced of this "living" cake, which was part of a celebration of World Art Day. The cake's creator talks a bit about the cake.
How deep does design go?
Start Ups: This is how Design works.. A guide for non-designers by designer Wells Riley. [more inside]
All the cool kids know their logical fallacies!
"Best spring break ever, bro."
A circus parade passing through a cemetery
Described as a circus parade passing through a cemetery, One Ring Zero is a musical group known for its use of unusual instruments, and musical collaborations with typically non-musical people and concepts. As Smart As We Are is an album of music by ORZ, with lyrics supplied by well-known fiction writers (tracklist after the fold). More recently, One Ring Zero teamed with 'celebrity' chefs for the Recipe Project (previously), setting their favorite recipes (word for word) to music. Planets, their newest album, is "an album of new compositions to capture the splendor and complexity of our celestial neighbors." [more inside]
"the mobile social fin de siècle"
The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - After five years pursuing the social-local-mobile dream, we need a fresh paradigm for technology startups. "This isn't about startup incubators or policy positions. It's not about "innovation in America" or which tech blog loves startups the most. This is about how Internet technology used to feel like it was really going to change so many things about our lives. Now it has and we're all too stunned to figure out what's next. So we watch Lana Del Ray turn circles in a thousand animated gifs."
Whose Green? Our Green!
Having survived the winter, New England's longest surviving Occupy encampment, Occupy New Haven was finally evicted yesterday from the New Haven Green. The camp had held on where others had not because of the Green's unique history[pdf] and status as a privately held park overseen since the 17th century by a group known as "the Committee of the Proprietors of Common and Undivided Lands". The last few months have seen many twists and turns including numerous legal maneuvers, last minute reprieves, an attempt to enlist the support of the Quinnipiac tribe and finally, allegations of rape in one of the encampment's tents. In the end, only thirteen Occupiers remained for the final showdown. [more inside]
Drifting into a world of limitless dimensions
Mrs Dunbar called
A study of mobile phone records shows according to Professor Robin Dunbar (of Dunbar's Number), that women drive romance, that they phone their spouses most until their daughters are old enough to have children, and that we may be heading for a renewed matriarchy.
Outer Space, man.
The wonders of space. This is a stunning black and white video taken from actual Cassini and Huygens mission footage.
Your Efficient Markets at Work
How a fire in a small German town threatens to cause a worldwide car shortage. "When a fire in the small town of Marl in the west of Germany closed down an obscure chemical plant on 31 March, it barely made headlines." Now according to a recent IHS Automotive report, "shortages of the obscure component are 'likely to be serious.'"
There's even a how to for making a how to
Businessweek's 2nd annual How To issue is available online, with a bunch of great features including How to Take a Punch with Freddie Roach, How to Weaponize Office Supplies with Jörg Sprave, How to Work on No Sleep with Willie Geist, How to Win a Twitter Fight with MeFi's Own™ Anil Dash, How to Design a Logo with Sagi Haviv, How to Make Coffee at Home with Howard Schultz, and How to Give Money Away with MeFi's Own™ Holden Karnofsky.
Vatican reprimands US nuns.
The findings of a multiyear Vatican study on US nuns have been announced: the largest and most influential group of nuns are promoting "radical feminist themes incompatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church."
The King of Kings, part II
It's 1966. A young, chubby, pompadoured, shiny-suited, Freddie King (previously) steps out onto the soundstage at a Dallas PBS station for a knockoff of Shindig, evidently aimed at the local black audience, judging by the middle-aged white jive-talking host. But the backup band leader is Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown, and there are high-school girls in Go-Go boots ready to rumble. And then, in glorious, sweating, funky, color, Freddie blows the doors off. [more inside]
Lost Souls
"Take a dark journey into the forgotten, where time stands still. The paint has peeled off the walls and the only occupants are the souls of those left behind. This is the Asylum." An amazing time-lapse film exploring the ruins of an abandoned 1920s mental hospital. [more inside]
You Only DoubleOh One Hundred and Ninety Thrice
DoubleOh DoubleOh. (SLYT) 193 out of the 196 instances of someone saying "Double Oh" from all 23 James Bond films.
Old Bailey Productions did not create any of the audio or lyrics for this video. We produced the video as a favor.
"This masterpiece pushes the boundaries of music. We take the backseat of the car with these two ladies on their inner journey, and are shown a contemplative side of them through a series of deep and meaningful confessions." Via. Via. Via. Via. Via.
Best Essays of the year
Byliner (prev 1,2) has released its list of 101 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories from the last year from around the web.
I married adventure
Before Joy Adamson went to Africa, before Margaret Mead sailed to Samoa, before Dian Fossey was even born, a Kansas teenager named Osa Leighty married Martin Johnson. Whether dancing to jazz in Congorilla or meeting headhunters in Borneo, her life with Martin ultimately led to hours of pioneering documentary footage, books, movies and more. Her autobiography inspired a Kate Spade purse, a perfume and her marriage an entire line of clothing while her joie de vivre put her on the cover of a book on trailblazing women of history. Osa Johnson went on to become a character in a play, in a poem while her married life gave birth to a museum (or two). When Osa met Martin, she married adventure.
"Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert."
The food desert has been a regular topic here on MetaFilter, posts about which often highlight a particular narrative about the effects of meager food choices for poorer urban communities, negatively affecting health and choice among low income people. Though not always. Some new studies indicate the situation in the US might be more like the latter, not quite as dire as is usually asserted. [more inside]
April 18
"A Toast! To Doctors Without Borders!"
"Puddin'" is "a live action single panel comic. Updated M-F." It's done by comedian Eddie Pepitone, but he has plenty of cool friends from the LA comedy scene who drop by. It involves an office break room and a dude who is always eating chocolate pudding. It's as funny as it is incredibly offensive (NSFW). [more inside]
The Ventures teach guitar!
Fungible assets.
Roger McGuinn clearly gives a folk
Roger McGuinn was a member of the pioneering folk rock band The Byrds. He loves the traditional folk music he has been performing solo since the band's breakup in 1973. In this interview, he talks to NPR's Neal Conan about his career, his music and why he created The Folk Den Project (previously) - with over 200 readily downloadable songs, with lyrics and chords - to preserve traditional folk songs.
They ALL Listen to The Smiths.
iTextEditors
What makes you sad?
Discover, explore and Build Better Worlds with the new David 8 Amazing "viral" trailer for Ridley Scott's Prometheus Film.
Peepers, a canticle.
Peepers, a canticle is an unproduced screenplay for a rough adaptation of Being There, starring the SNL character Mr. Peepers. Credited to one "C. L. Kattan," it was allegedly finished on September 10, 2001, after which point it was "deemed too political by studio executives in the emotionally charged atmosphere of the early aughts." Thankfully, Durrod University Press is hosting a free copy of the masterwork, which comes bundled with an author's introduction and a transcript of the panel discussion "Peepers and Post-Modernity: Kattan in Conversation." [via] [more inside]
Look, up at the ceiling!
That blowed up real good
Six minutes of glorious stupidity captured in super slo-mo HD, courtesy of the Danish TV show Dumt & Farligt. (via Kottke)
Why Netflix Never Implemented The Algorithm That Won The Netflix $1 Million Challenge
It's rude to blurb in public
Knot for everybody
(NSFW) The contemporary meaning of Shibari describes an ancient Japanese artistic form of rope bondage.
Hikari Kesho aka Alberto Lisi is an Italian photographer, some of whose Shibari photography could be called sublime.
Fotofest 2012 Biennial – The Art of Contemporary Shibari Exhibit is currently running with these artists, all of whom have links to their websites, some of which are more extreme than others.
Hikari Kesho aka Alberto Lisi is an Italian photographer, some of whose Shibari photography could be called sublime.
Fotofest 2012 Biennial – The Art of Contemporary Shibari Exhibit is currently running with these artists, all of whom have links to their websites, some of which are more extreme than others.
Early-onset MDD* blood biomarker pilot study.
A pilot study testing for statistically significant blood biomarkers found in early-onset MDD: "Discovery of blood transcriptomic markers for depression in animal models and pilot validation in subjects with early-onset major depression" [PDF], published by the online, open source journal Translational Psychiatry**, April 2012, Volume 2. [more inside]
Obama flashing a Vulcan salute does not mean that you rule the world
"Geeks are not an oppressed minority. There are certainly many members of oppressed minorities who are geeks, but geeks are not an oppressed minority. The n in "N-word" does not stand for nerd, or neckbeard. You are not owed attention for the "real you", especially if you insist that a hard drive full of scanlated manga is the real you. Let us put an end to Geek Pride." [more inside]
Pusheen: if I were tiny, I would sleep on a marshmallow
If Everyday Cute (currently found on Tumblr) is too much not-cat for you, Pusheen the cat should satiate your need for simple animated cat GIFs. Most of the time you just watch Pusheen on a broom, wearing a hat, or on a teeter-totter, but you can also dress Pusheen up.
Megatouch
It’s the Megatouch M.O.: Provide customers with short bursts of pleasure. The company makes games for people to play at bars when they’re bored. The empty calories of the gaming world. Ever seen a crowd gathered around a glowing screen trying to spot the differences between two almost-identical photos—or one guy sipping a Yuengling and trying to spot the differences between two shots of the same bare-chested woman? Those are probably Megatouch staples Photo Hunt and Erotic Photo Hunt (and that lone guy is probably a rad dude).
""For now, Dick Clark...so long." *salute*
Dick Clark, America's's Oldest Teenager, has passed away after suffering a massive heart attack at St. John's Hospital in LA, TMZ reports (and other media outlets confirm). [more inside]
Creator of Incidental Comics by night - Mover of teeth by day
Grant Snider is studying orthodontics at the University of Colorado-Denver and hoping that readers of his Incidental Comics are easier to entertain than teenagers with braces.
Who Invented Chaplin's Tramp?
Shouldn't we credit the director, the one who decided to shoot 75 feet, for the success of the Tramp? Keystone didn't have writers in those days, but did the director of Mabel's Strange Predicament unleash the Tramp? Doesn't Sergio Leone deserve some credit for Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name? Doesn't the director dictate tempo and decide who gets the camera's attention? Isn't the director's job to seek out the hidden talents of his actors and make sure they end up on screen? Doesn't a good director jump on a happy accident like the Tramp and ride it with a prayer of gratitude? [more inside]
Let's just lose him at sea
The harrowing tale of Ensign Chuck Hord, lost at sea in 1908.
I woke up gay.
I Woke Up Gay (SLYT): In the small town of Ystrad Mynach, South Wales, seven years ago, a 19-stone rugby-playing ladies man and bank clerk Chris Birch snapped his neck while larking around doing somersaults and backflips with his friends. As the tabloids excitedly revealed a while ago, he suffered a massive stroke and woke up as a completely different person -- a person who happened to be gay. [more inside]
See you on the road, skag!
nonsense economics
"I call it the destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis. ... [A]round 1980 the U.S. adopted a fundamentally flawed economic paradigm ... that abandoned full employment and severed the link between wages and productivity growth. ... Financial deregulation, regulatory forbearance, financial innovation, financial mania, and plain vanilla financial fraud kept the economy going by making ever more credit available, However, as the economy cannibalized itself by undercutting income distribution and accumulating debt, it needed ever larger speculative bubbles to grow. The house price bubble was simply the last and biggest bubble and was effectively the only way around the stagnation that would otherwise have developed in 2001." - an interview with Thomas Palley on the origins and prognosis for the crisis
A shield, not a weapon
Twitter will not weaponize your work (without your permission). According to an agreement it now makes with its engineers and inventors, Twitter does not have the right to use the patents of its employees offensively without their consent, and this limitation will apply to future purchasers of the Twitter patent portfolio.
The patent wars previously and previouslier on the blue.
Understanding Mobile Spectrum
Understanding Mobile Spectrum (NY Times video) - A short video explaining mobile spectrum and the debate. A graphic that also explains. As the FCC plans to license spectrum previously used by TV broadcasters, FCC Chair Genachowski tries to convince the dubious. Mobile carriers say we are going to have a spectrum crunch. Technical details at the excellent FCC Spectrum Dashboard.
You're TV is Wrong
Anti-piracy measures have made life difficult for those who actually pay for content, games, music, etc. DirecTV has blocked HBO (apparently at their request) over HDMI by use of HDCP. Suddenly, subscribers with older HD sets are not able to watch HBO and soon other premium channels. The solution? Use component cables or get a new TV.
Eyeless Shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico
In the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Al Jazeera reports on large-scale deformities and mutations in the Gulf of Mexico seafood catch.
Population Control
The mood of the nation
By analysing millions of tweets, scientists from Bristol University claim to be able to predict the "mood of the nation" (the nation being the UK) - so much that they say they could have predicted last summer's riots in England. Right now, the angriest country in the UK is Wales, and the saddest is Northern Irleand. The Scots, obviously, are the most fearless. And there's not much joy in anyone's hearts. [more inside]
April 17
Mara Wilson Writes Stuff
Mara Wilson, child star of Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle on 34th Street, and Matilda, no longer acts. She does, however, write a blog about girls and video games, Mormon missionaries, and the time she met Ira Glass.
Smelling the... Zephyrs?
This last Monday millions of Egyptians, both Copt and Muslim, celebrated Sham el-Nessim (literally, "Smelling of the Zephyrs"), a holiday which falls on the Monday after Eastern Orthodox Easter. It supposedly dates back to Pharaonic times, when fish were offered to the Egyptian gods. Today, instead of offering it to the gods, Egyptians eat it, specifically a very specially fermented and salted concoction called feseekh ( فسيخ). [more inside]
Encyclopaedia Metallum
In the seven years since its last appearance in the blue, Encyclopaedia Metallum has more than quadrupled in size - now containing 84,000+ bands and 65,000+ reviews of 30,000+ albums.
remembering trudeau pirouetting behind the queen
Canada marks the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights. The charter is credited with advancing gay rights and reproductive freedom, reducing police powers and increasing judicial activism. And of course, trudeau's famous pirouette behind the Queen's back after she signed the charter.
The anniversary brings a flash mob of lawyers, a tepid celebration from the conservative government, and some reflection on rights and, of course, hockey!.
Me-ow
“You will know how to deal with everything from a tension pneumothorax to torsion of the testes.”
First, Do A Little Less Harm: "As Mark Jenkins knows, wilderness first aid can hurt. (Just ask his patients.) So he finally did what everyone should do: he took a class from real experts." [more inside]
GUTS, GUTS-GUTS
Sombody once said,
"There is a beast with such succulent meat, it melts all over your tongue. There is a bubbling spring flowing with tastes of countless fruit juices, such as sweet musk melons and ripened mangoes."It is the Gourmet Era. The era in which one will search for undiscovered tastes. [Hulu link for US-based viewers] [more inside]
Captain Ultraviolet tells all
Late in life, Claude Monet had surgery to remove the lens of his left eye as a remedy for cataracts, and found that as the lens was no longer blocking them, he could now see ultraviolet light.* When Alek Komarnitsky, engineer and self professed geek, had the natural lens replaced in one of his eyes due to cataracts, he found that he, too could see UV. Naturally, he decided to test the limits of his newfound ability, and to show others what it's like to have ultraviolet vision.(*via Kottke)
one of the greats will be leaving the stage
The Band singer and drummer Levon Helm is in the final stages of cancer, according to a note posted on his website Tuesday by his wife, Sandy, and daughter, Amy. [more inside]
My life IS war!
Space Shuttle Discovery arrives at its new home
The Space Shuttle Discovery, known for launching the Hubble telescope, as well as being the workhorse of the fleet, made a final flight today. [more inside]
I'm A Swinger Here, Myself
Standing in the wings and hoping someone on stage will get injured was never part of my big Broadway dreams. I had been working professionally long enough to know that many actors considered swings to be the second-class citizens of Broadway, the spares whose talent wasn’t distinctive enough to merit their being seen on stage every night. I knew those generalizations to be false, and though they stung, I had reasons beyond my pride for wanting my own track in Chicago. [more inside]
"Kobe" beef?
Think you've enjoyed the well-marbled splendor of Kobe beef? If you don't live in Japan, think again. And Wagyu doesn't count either. But that's okay. It's what the U.S. government wants you to think. A three part Forbes piece on "Kobe" beef.
Wake up wake up wake up
Cat Alarm Clock SLYT
Skinning: Computer Interface Customization
Many people are familiar with computer case modifications, thanks to the photogenic nature of mods. On the software side, most operating systems feature some potential for customization, though this is often limited to tweaking the colors and sounds. For some, this isn't enough. Enter "skinning," the casual term for interface customization. To a degree, the history of the media player Winamp (YT, 7:03; transcript with pictures) mirrors the history of skinning. From a version 0.2, a visually dull app in June 1997, to easy user customization in version 2 in September 1998, and the complexly customizable Winamp3 in August 2002. Wired captured something of the excitement at its peak in an article from 2000, before computing began shifting to more closed devices. Now approaching a post-WIMP (windows, icons, menus and a pointer) era, where skinning is done with alternative launchers. But for those still using traditional computers of one sort or another, it's not too late to modify your interface. [more inside]
THE ONE TRUE WANKER OF THE DECADE
Duncan Black, the blogger formerly known as "Atrios," coiner of the "friedman unit," popularizer of the "very serious person" as a term of derision, chronicler of wanking in the punditocracy, has been counting down: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, to the THE ONE TRUE WANKER OF THE DECADE.
Drew Curtis vs. A Patent Troll
TED Talk:"Drew Curtis: How I Beat A Patent Troll" "Patent trolls have done more damage to the United States economy than any domestic or foreign terrorist organization in history every year."
Bang, Bang, it's a free country
The New Yorker: Battleground America; One nation, under the gun. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more.
Gary Younge in the Guardian reports on the country's deadly attachment to firearms.
Leggete Nanni Balestrini
"An imprecation to read an avant-garde novelist is not something you often see written in spray-paint". And why should we pay attention? Because it "will fill your spine with gunpowder and light a match in your brain". Verso republishes Nanni Balestrini's The Unseen (with a brand new foreword by Antonio Negri), an epic monument to the struggle of the Italian Autonomia movement of the 1970s.
Welcome to the Jungle
On Saturday, iconoic rock band Guns N' Roses was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Missing from the event? Axl Rose. Matti Fagerholm. Wait... who? [more inside]
Yes, John Barleycorn is #1
AN ILLUSTRATED JOURNEY INTO MY THOUGHTS
"Everything we do is music."
John Cage Unbound, A Living Archive is a multimedia exhibition created by the New York Public Library documenting their collection of videos, original notes and manuscripts of contemporary American composer and music theorist John Cage (1912-1992). "Cage believed that, following his detailed directions, anyone could make music from any kind of instrument" so the NYPL is asking visitors how they would bring his music to life, by submitting videos of their own interpretations of Cage’s work for possible inclusion in the archive. For more extensive collections of John Cage resources, see: WNYC: A John Cage Web Reliquary and Josh Rosen's fan page. [more inside]
Messin with that next level organic cod. BOOM.
jmp TRIGSPIKES
Jordan Mechner has posted the source code for the original Apple ][ version of Prince of Persia to GitHub. (Previously.)
Gunplay
Blow Out Sale - An imaginative short film featuring Danny Pudi, which looks at the dangerous and competitive world of retail furniture sales. [more inside]
Season 1: Episode 1
Imagine life without Instagram...
The most Epic Photo Ever Taken? Quora users start adding their faourite pictures. History, awesome, pain, anger, death, it's al here. And at least one surfer.
April 16
You can't drown the Government in the bathtub without a tub
""Each bathtub was carved in Italy from a single block of Carrara Marble. Three bathtubs were shipped from Genoa, Italy in July, 1859 and reached Baltimore in November of that year. The other three were shipped from Leghorn, Italy in September of 1859, and arrived in New York in January of 1860. The precise dates of the bathtubs' arrival and installation at the Capitol are uncertain, but the Senate Bathing Room is known to have been in operation as of February 23rd, 1860."Roman Mars's 99% Invisible design podcast [previously] explores the once-luxurious Senate bathtubs hidden among the boiler rooms in the basement of the U.S. Capitol. [more inside]
Snowcats to the rescue
"Our goals are to train and maintain a network of highly efficient avalanche search and rescue cat teams across Canada." The Canadian Avalanche Rescue Cat Association seeks to add adorable kitties (CARCA) to the teams of animals that currently play a role in search-and-rescue missions for avalanche survivors. Only a few years old, they're the subject of a soon-to-be-available documentary (trailer), and offer training videos to demonstrate the serious business of training cats for search-and-rescue. And they are definitely not fake, please do not believe that canine propaganda.
Fool me once, shame on you ... fool me twice, ... won't get fooled again?
David Lowery, of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven has an interesting argument for why the new Internet-based music-publishing industry may actually not be great for the artists: Meet The New Boss [more inside]
Charlie Rose honors Christopher Hitchens
A Charlie Rose discussion about the life and work of author Christopher Hitchens with his friends and fellow authors: Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, James Fenton & Ian McEwan. Also featuring past Hitchens appearances on the show. (1 hr SLVideo)
Biden gets the Bad Lip-Reading treatment
Vice President Joe Biden get the all-time bad Lip-Reading treatment. Hiyukak!Hiyuka! Pigsfeet! Pigsfeet!
Oh, that old thing
Thanks to a record-breaking £9 million fundraising effort, the British Library has acquired (and fully digitized) the St. Cuthbert Gospel. The manuscript, buried with the eponymous saint in 698 AD, is the oldest European book to survive fully intact. [more inside]
Claude Lanzmann
Those Americans who are familiar with the name Claude Lanzmann most likely know him as the director of “Shoah,” his monumental 1985 documentary about the extermination of the European Jews in the Nazi gas chambers. As it turns out, though, the story of Lanzmann’s eventful life would have been well worth telling even if he had never come to direct “Shoah.” In addition to film director, Lanzmann’s roles have included those of journalist, editor, public intellectual, member of the French Resistance, long-term lover of Simone de Beauvoir and close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, world traveler, political activist, ghostwriter for Jacques Cousteau — I could go on, but it’s a good deal more entertaining to hear Lanzmann himself go on, and thanks to the publication in English of his memoir, “The Patagonian Hare,” we now have the opportunity to do so. (previously)
Have you ever seen Tilda and Bowie in the same room together?
A Raw Deal
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has signed legislation that would require thousands of people applying for welfare to pass a drug test before they could receive benefits. [more inside]
Hint: you need big balls
50 things to do before you are 11.75.
50 things to do before you are eleven and three quarters. Convinced that kids spend to much time on the couch, the UK's National Trust has launched a programme to encourage children to be given the opportunity to try fifty new experiences in the great outdoors. [more inside]
A Motion Comic
The Art of Pho by award-winning British illustrator and animator Julian Hanshaw is a moving and surreal story in interactive animation about a creature named Little Blue and his relationship with Ho Chi Minh City. In Vietnam's bustling capital Little Blue learns to master the art of making Pho - Vietnam's ubiquitous national noodle dish. [more inside]
the songs you've always wanted to play
The Shaggs' Things I Wonder - a guitar lesson for strummers of all levels. OK! Now that you've got the melody under your belt, here's the melody plus second guitar part. And though some might think nobody would really want (or be able) to faithfully recreate the Shaggs' music onstage, those people would be wrong.
Am I William Woods? Well...who's asking?
Solo
Baby Boomers facing bleak future - alone. 'Startling new statistics from Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) paint a bleak future for the largest generation in history, the baby boomers, as they cross into old age.' [more inside]
" ... in the tradition of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop ... "
"We're bringing you a new Time Lord, an amazing world where Tolkien meets Star Wars, and a universally acclaimed standard of audiophonic experience." So say the people behind The Minister of Chance, an audio drama set in the world of Doctor Who. Julian Wadham plays The Minister, who is, "like The Doctor, a Time Lord," a role originally played by Stephen Fry. The series also stars former Doctors Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann. It is two episodes in, and has accumulated some strong reviews.
Guess who won the 2012 Pulitzer for Fiction.
Guess who won the 2012 Pulitzer for Fiction. Nobody.
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in this category were: "Train Dreams," by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a novella about a day laborer in the old American West, bearing witness to terrors and glories with compassionate, heartbreaking calm; "Swamplandia!" by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf), an adventure tale about an eccentric family adrift in its failing alligator-wrestling theme park, told by a 13-year-old heroine wise beyond her years; and "The Pale King," by the late David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown and Company), a posthumously completed novel, animated by grand ambition, that explores boredom and bureaucracy in the American workplace.
A century of tracking icebergs
Three thousand years ago, snow fell on Greenland, creating what would become an iceberg in this century. Centuries pass and snow piles up, until it is 60 to 70 meters thick and forms glacial ice. As glaciers slowly flow into the ocean, the end of the glaciers calve, or break off. In Greenland, some 40,000 medium to large sized icebergs calve each year, making their way south. Of the 10,000 to 15,000 icebergs annually calved from glaciers in the Arctic, on the average only 375 pass Newfoundland into the North Atlantic Ocean. On April 14, 1912, an iceberg was some 5,000 miles south of the Arctic Circle when a boat ran into it, leaving a smear of red paint along the base of the berg. [more inside]
That's right, baby hummingbirds
An Anna's hummingbird on a tiny nest, smaller than an ivy leaf, with two hatchlings therein. Watch it live. [more inside]
"Imagine" for guitar strummers
John Lennon's "Imagine" - a guitar lesson for strummers of all levels. Includes an F chord grip (Fmaj7 actually) far easier than the dreaded barre.
True Adventures in Better Homes
True Adventures in Better Homes - Here is a collision of two worlds: men’s adventure magazines or “sweats” meets Better Homes and Gardens. These photocollages are set against the backdrop of the McCarthy era, advertising, sexual repression, WWII and the Korean War. The cool, insular world of mid-century modern living glossed over all danger and darkness, which the heroic male fought off in every corner.
The infernal semicolon
This February, Twitter released Bootstrap 2 a rewrite of their earlier Bootstrap code. It's basically a framework that offers barebones styles and functionality. What's of interest, though, is that it uses almost no semicolons (just 15 in over 1k lines of code), which are normally used to separate lines of code. Instead, the code relies on automatic semicolon insertion (ASI). Unfortunately this code breaks when minified using JSMin. This was reported as an issue on Bootstraps's github page which led to a heated discussion on the topic of ASI. [more inside]
Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys
All Eyez On Virtual Me
Illuminated sheet music
People Too, masters of three-dimensional paper art (previously) imbue Russian sheet music with illustrations of various everyday activities.
“Hello old friend,” I whispered.
Writer and Interactive Fiction author Adam Cadre (previously) runs the Lyttle Lytton contest. A variation on the Bulwer-Lytton contest, the current incarnation of Cadre's contest has a 200-character limit per entry. Here are this year's winners.
A butterfly flaps its wings...
Rage - An amusing little animated short showing a rage-fueled chain reaction and the impact it can have on the world.
April 15
100 years of ocean travel 1750 to 1850
For centuries, ships navigated by the stars. Thousands of ships' logs representing hundreds of thousands of position readings were diligently recorded by sailors for a future use they never could have imagined: 100 years of ocean travel 1750 to 1850.
Jazz on Bones
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. While the authorities of the Soviet Union decided they didn't want the people to hear Rock 'n' Roll, the people had other plans.
X-Ray Plans.
Human chess
Every other year since 1923, the town of Marostica in Italy has staged a recreation of a human chess game played in 1454 between two noblemen for the hand of the castle lord's daughter. [more inside]
A whole new meaning for the term "play money"
Just Keep Dancing!
PRACTICE YOUR LIGHTING SKILLS ON A PALE, FLESHY, HAIRLESS MAN
Virtual Lighting Studio. Works best in Chrome.
Ice
Car poolers - Alejandro Cartagena
Siri, how do you hide a body?
"Nostalgia is a seductive liar" ... Old Hollywood
I should like to help everyone, if possible.
The climactic speech from Charlie Chaplin's first talking motion picture, The Great Dictator, re-enacted by Team Fortress 2's own Herr Doktor
Photographic experiment shooting clouds everyday
Clouds 365 Project. The goal? To shoot an image or video of clouds every day. Sorted by month or time of day, or personal favorites of the photographer, Kelly DeLay.
How Abortion Used To Be
Honor your enemy
Who was the greatest foe the British Empire ever faced? George Washington, according to the UK's National Army Museum.
Ray Bradbury and Disneyland
Alien Maker
Film maker Dennis Lowe has worked in special effects on a number of films including Alien. His website features several documentaries of his interviewing the makers and fans of the film. [more inside]
Tiny Food
Following up after Pina
Wim Wenders at the Film Society Lincoln Center introducing Pina, and post-film talk and Q&A session [50m] during which he describes much about the groundwork for the film, how it was made, and the challenges of filming a 3D dance documentary. [more inside]
Needs more cowbell...for the world record (and charity).
Led by Phish drummer Jon Fishman, approximately 1,600 participants took part in the World’s Largest Cowbell Ensemble on Saturday on Church Street in Burlington, VT, beating the previous record of 640, set in Switzerland in 2009. Song used to set the new record: The Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today."
Loving You, as the Mouse Loves the Rice
Mouse Loves Rice isn't really a well-known song in the English-speaking west, but it's been huge throughout east Asia since it first hit the net in 2004. The music video (here in English) covers all the big timeless truths about life: beauty, the nature of love, sacrifice, and human-mouse transformation. [more inside]
Homeless Paintings of the Italian Renaissance
Homeless Paintings of the Italian Renaissance.
"A particularly important nucleus of the [Harvard] Photograph Archive's collection consists of a group of images of Renaissance Italian paintings that Berenson famously classified as “homeless,” that is, works that were documented by a photograph but whose current location was unknown to him....Berenson published some of his photographs of artworks “without homes” with the express invitation and hope that their owners, public or private, might come forward and claim them as their own...It is in this spirit.. that we have developed the project to catalog, digitize and make available online the Photograph Archive’s images of "homeless" paintings by Italian artists between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. By the project’s end--scheduled for the summer/fall of 2012--we will have published on the Internet records and images, often rare or unique, of around thirteen thousand pictures."
"A particularly important nucleus of the [Harvard] Photograph Archive's collection consists of a group of images of Renaissance Italian paintings that Berenson famously classified as “homeless,” that is, works that were documented by a photograph but whose current location was unknown to him....Berenson published some of his photographs of artworks “without homes” with the express invitation and hope that their owners, public or private, might come forward and claim them as their own...It is in this spirit.. that we have developed the project to catalog, digitize and make available online the Photograph Archive’s images of "homeless" paintings by Italian artists between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. By the project’s end--scheduled for the summer/fall of 2012--we will have published on the Internet records and images, often rare or unique, of around thirteen thousand pictures."
Stacks and stacks of wax
MeFi's own waxpancake celebrates the 10th anniversary of his blog Waxy.org with a retrospective of some of his favorite posts. [more inside]
Horses: Why We'll Always Love Them A Creepy Amount
Science + Cooking
Harvard's Science & Cooking class - a collaboration between eminent Harvard researchers and world-class chefs - featured a series of public lectures from scientifically-minded A-list chefs, including Ferran Adrià (of elBulli), Wylie Dufresne (from wd~50), Grant Achatz (of Alinea), White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses, and Nathan Myhrvold .
Youths big plans and vague longings, the binges, crashes, and marathon walks and talks
Joseph O'Neill on the Dutch literary hero Nescio No one has written more feelingly and more beautifully than Nescio about the madness and sadness, courage and vulnerability of youth: its big plans and vague longings, not to mention the binges, crashes, and marathon walks and talks. No one, for that matter, has written with such pristine clarity about the radiating canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands. [more inside]
I like the one on velvet.
Let's add some monsters to thrift store paintings! Artists Chris McMahon and Thryza Segal decided to inject a little fun into these discarded works and give them a second life by adding monsters to the scenic landscapes.
April 14
Until we fucking well die
Queen's finest moment may have been their 1986 concert at Wembley Arena, which you can now see (at very high quality) online.
Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success"
"A Movie Marked Danger" - a Vanity Fair article on Sweet Smell of Success (1957), directed by Alexander Mackendrick, screenplay by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, cinematography by James Wong Howe, soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein. (previously) [more inside]
Soothing, captivating, fascinating. Underwater live cams.
Fishbowl, live cam at the Blue Cavern, Aquarium of the Pacific. Live cams at explore.org: Moon jellyfish | tropical reef live cam. [more inside]
The U.S. Government’s Top-Secret Town
In 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government acquired 70,000 acres of land in Eastern Tennessee and established a secret town called Oak Ridge. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge office recently started to digitize its collection of archival photos and share them. [more inside]
MADMEN Bittorrent Edition
Give a fuck whatcha heard / Yeah fuck whatcha heard / Fore this real shit kicked your whole clique to the curb
Death Grips (previously) are back, with a major-label contract to boot. Following up on last year's highly-regarded Exmilitary mixtape, The Money Store is scheduled for official release on April 24th. In the meantime, enjoy these two new videos (probably NSFW): Get Got / The Fever (Aye Aye)
Alberta's Next Premier?
Is Danielle Smith Alberta's Sarah Palin or the Future of Canada? Ms. Smith is widely thought to be on the verge of unseating the Progressive Conservative regime that first took office only five months after she was born on April 1, 1971. [more inside]
Agent Zero Is Dead
Finally, Gilbert Arenas reveals the whole story behind the infamous Washington Wizards guns in the locker room incident.
"Hail, Hail, Azawad, land of the brave and free
Meet Azawad, Africa’s Newest Country Azawad is an area about the size of Texas located in the northern half of Mali. On April 6 2012 National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), after they were able to force Mali forces out of the territory they now claim as an independent state. Whether they can remain an independent country is a question that time will tell. Also whether they will be a secular Berber, pro-Western nation or an Islamist Emirate is another question that has many watching the area. [more inside]
Tribes: Ascend: free-to-play fps with a twist
Tribes: Ascend is a class-based sci-fi first-person shooter, and the successor to the much-loved Tribes series of games. What makes it unique is that there are no hitscan weapons, and players are able to jetpack, and frictionlessly glide (ski) over terrain. It is free to download for Windows as of April 12th, and so far the reception has been overwhelmingly positive.
Here I Set Up A Shame-Pole
The Vikings Of Bjornstad a "a living history and educational group, concentrating on the Viking age " reviews every viking movie ever made for its authenticity in depicting Vikings and Viking Culture. Every. single. one. [more inside]
Kicked
It is really hard for me to make this post. For a while I stayed silent because I did not want to put myself in the range of fire. Everybody loves Kickstarter. They have, after all, revolutionized the economy. Kickstarter is the number one crowdfunding site in the world and the talk of the startup scene across the globe. Unfortunately Kickstarter recently banned me for circumstances beyond my control. - Is Kickstarter banning users for being the victim of stalking?
GLLLLLITCH
Computer Jesus Refrigerator are a noise/glitch band who make amazing and nearly uncategorizable music. They also have a YouTube channel with some highly impressive glitch videos.
She can jump, she can twist, look it’s a dog doing this!
"That will be the end"
A month ago, the Japanese TV show "Morning Bird" discussed the current state of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and specifically Unit 4, which is in terrible condition. During an interview with Dr. Hiroaki Koide, Research Associate at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University, who explains the immense difficulty in moving the radioactive fuel rods - a process that will not even start until 2013 - the presenter asks what would happen if even a moderate earthquake struck near the plant before the fuel rods can be moved. Koide replies:
That will be the end.
Everything we know about basketball is a lot
"Ever wondered why there are only 5 positions in basketball or how a player’s position is determined?" Maybe not. But analytics are becoming more and more important in basketball, to the point where some are questioning some fundamental 'facts' about the game. After the MIT Sloan Sports conference this year specifically addressed the role of analytics in basketball, there has been a bit of a backlash against the practice among commentators, coaches and fans.
Yet the projects just keep coming, including this recently updated web project using some amazing mapping analysis: Courtvision [more inside]
Mining Mayhem
Mining is a dangerous industry, and Mining Mayhem is a blog that aims to be the definitive resource for photos of mine site incidents and accidents (mostly from Australian mine sites). [more inside]
Style is the bomb
My Valentine
My Valentine: Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp perform Paul McCartney's "My Valentine" in ASL.
Agora, a virtual parliament
Dream Pictures: hand-tinted glass travelogue slides by Branson DeCou
Moscow of 1931 is a collection of hand-tinted lantern slides by Branson DeCou, an American photographer and travelogue lecturer who traveled the world for 30 years before his death in 1941. You can view more of the DeCou corpus online at the Branson Decou Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz where they've been attempting to sort, preserve, identify and digitize 10,000 DeCou slides received in 1971, a gift referred to the university chancellor by photographer Ansel Adams. [more inside]
"If robots had a religion, I think this would be it,"
Vote Pirate! Notes from a Pirate Party conference. "I grew up on the Internet. … I sort of consider myself a citizen of the Internet. I'm very attached to it. I'm almost more from the Internet than I am from Massachusetts." [more inside]
April 13
"Say, old man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice".
One hundred years ago, a network of Marconi wireless operators documented history's most famous shipwreck. Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, the RMS Titanic's radio officers, were usually tasked with sending personal communications for first-class passengers. But on April 14, 1912, they turned their tapping fingers to the CQD distress signal (and, later in the evening, the relatively new SOS call), using the distinctive slang of their fellow operators to report the wreck, call for help, and indulge in a bit of gallows humor. [more inside]
A “high-end, life-threatening” tornado outbreak is likely on Saturday
The Storm Prediction Center (NOAA) has issued a rare “high risk” outlook for severe weather more than a day in advance. A “high-end, life-threatening” tornado outbreak is likely on Saturday from Texas northeastward to Iowa. Weather briefing. More info. This is only the second time a 2-day forecast of this type has ever been issued, the last time was for an outbreak on April 7, 2006, when more than 70 tornadoes touched down, killing 13 and causing more than $1 billion in damage. Running total of tornadoes to date compared with historical averages.
Sichuan hot pot
Each bite brought a delicate balance between pleasure and pain—deliciously peppery flavor, bought at the price of having your mouth feel like you’d swallowed fire. But the pain was a good pain, somehow. It forced you to slow down and experience each bite, and that’s a rare experience these days. No one mindlessly gobbles Sichuan hot pot, simply because it’s physically impossible to do so without powerful anesthetic.
Death by pimple
Get Rid of Employment and Education Directive
A modest proposal to get rid of income inequality in America: just give every household a $10 million dollar loan.
LEGO Science Fiction
LEGO Science Fiction - with bonus build plans for the 2001 Discovery and other scifi-inspired creations
The Great Chicago Flood of 1992
"I have found something very interesting in the Chicago River on the east side of the Kinzie Bridge. I see swirling water that looks like a giant drain... I would say it looks like the source of the water could be the river itself, and I am hearing reports that fish are swimming in the basement of the [Merchandise] Mart just feet from the swirl! I do not see any emergency crews near this spinning swirl, but I think they may want to take a look. In fact, I think someone should wake up the Mayor!"Twenty years ago today was the Great Chicago Flood. About 250,000,000 gallons of the Chicago River found its way--via a breach caused by construction near the all-but-forgotten tunnels of the Chicago Tunnel Company--into the basements of Chicago's Loop business district. It even sent fish up into the Pedway. [more inside]
Venus, Retouched
Ana Utopia Giordano photoshops portraits of Venus for today's standards of the feminine ideal.
Philosophical Expresso
A Timothy Leary for the Viral Video Age: Like Leary, Silva is an unabashed optimist; he sees humankind as a species on the brink of technology-enabled transcendence. Silva is an avid evangelist for the technological singularity---the idea that technology will soon bring about a greater-than-human intelligence. It's an idea that Ray Kurzweil has worked hard to popularize in tech circles, but Silva wants to push it out into the mainstream, and he wants to do it with the slickest, most efficient idea vehicle of our time: the viral video. He has spent the last three years making (really) short films that play like movie trailers for ideas; he compares them to shots of "philosophical espresso."
The Children Medieval Band
Tomb Raider Soundtracks Released on SoundCloud
The raw and untouched final mixes of the soundtrack for Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, recorded at Abbey Road studios has been posted by the composer, Peter Connelly. Also available is the soundtrack for Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation. Great mood music for work, heh heh. That is all.
CRASH AND BURN
The Onion's AV Club Asks: Just How Prescient Was Hackers Anyway?
Are you sure you want to do that?
You hate jews.
Joe Eszterhas (writer of The Music Box, Basic Instinct, and many other films) has written a letter to Mel Gibson after the actor neglected to contact him regarding his screenplay for "the Jewish Braveheart," which Gibson had hired him to write.
Slapstick comedy for your Friday the 13th!
Chat with the minds behind the Death Machines
Wasteland 2 has become a certainty due to the massive outpouring of fan support. At this moment on Reddit, two of the big names in the project - Brian Fargo and Chris Avellone - are having a live QA session about the upcoming project, as well as the state of the game publishing industry in the Kickstarter era and similar subjects.
Thumbs Up!
Thumbs Up! is a documentary web series about David Choe and Harry Kim hitchhiking across North America and China.
Season 1 - United States;
Season 2 - Tijuana, United States and Canada;
Season 3 - China;
[might be NSFW]
that poor beer keg!
Bowling Alone 2012
Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? The Atlantic discusses how social media blurs the line between solitude and connectedness, destroying both in the process.
My only country is six feet tall
A recent article in the Economist followed up on the British cover of this week's edition with a scathing attack on the economic case for Scottish independence. The Scottish National Party, currently in power and preparing for an independence referendum, are not amused but at least they have a powerful friend that can help out these days. [more inside]
So Many, Many Webs
America's Pedestrian Problem
Tom Vanderbilt on walking in America, in four parts: The Crisis in American Walking, Sidewalk Science, What's Your Walk Score?, and Learning to Walk. (Previously on jaywalking and on cities for people.)
¶ THANK YOU FOR YOUR NOTE.
David Foster Wallace Writes to Don DeLillo: Among the many curiosities of this correspondence: “No offense intended” by the card’s image (a book cover from Sheldon Lord’s A Woman Must Love), the mention of Jonathan Franzen’s New Yorker piece on William Gaddis, the brick shithouse of a palm tree, and a request to eyeball DeLillo’s “new novel” (Cosmopolis?). So many of the sentences create space for wondering what more there is to know. [Via: The Outlet] [more inside]
The grass is not greener when you have bigger boobs
For those who wonder what possible downsides there could be to having big boobs, there is now an illustrated guide, Busty Girl Problems which highlights some of the everyday problems having a big bust causes. It's not *all* bad though, there are a few perks.
The lantern slides of Frances Benjamin Johnston
The handcolored garden and architectural slides of Frances Benjamin Johnston. The Library of Congress has digitized their collection of lantern slides from Frances Benjamin Johnston, one of the first prominent female photographers in America, and a master of the landscape print.
The Legend of Grimrock
WTF Is the Legend of Grimrock? It's an old-school dungeon crawler that was released on Wednesday. It has been compared to Eye of the Beholder, Roguelike, or Dungeon Master in style. Create your party of four prisoners and try to find that gosh dang hidden button! [more inside]
It's not called a shout for nothing
If you can't talk you'll drink more, or, why the UK government would do better to lower the noise level in pubs rather than raise the price of alcohol. [more inside]
What is the meaning of malady?
"As a career patient, I’ve learned one thing at least: the importance of clinging to the rag-end of your sense of self, however you define it—intellect, sense of humor, generosity of spirit, a stoicism worthy of Seneca or Mr. Spock, or, in a writer’s case, the mind that makes sense of itself as a reflection in the mirror of language. In the M.A.S.H.-unit chaos of the E.R.; in the nowhere, notime of the hospital room; in the O.R., where the euphoria of oncoming anesthesia and the doting attentions of apparitions in scrubs make you understand, in an instant, the perverse seductions of Munchausen’s Syndrome as you ride into the stage-light radiance on your gurney like the Son of Heaven in his sedan chair, feeling for all the world like a pathological celebrity—in these moments of inescapable embodiment, I’ve learned to float free in my head, a thought balloon untethered from the body on the sickbed or the operating table."-A Season in Hell by (Mefite) Mark Dery [Previously]
Rubbery, processed, salty, smoky, filthy, and delicious.
"It’s really not fair", says the LA Times. "For the lucky Brits", says Fox. "The stuff of dreams", says the UK's tabloid Sun. Truly, today is a new chapter for humankind, as we welcome the Hot Dog Stuffed Pizza Crust.
April 12
You will say please and thank you just like yo mama taught you.
That is a strange story to say the least
Wrong-Way Corrigan
"I'm Douglas Corrigan," the man told a group of startled Irish airport workers who gathered around him when he landed his modified Curtiss Robin at Baldonnel Airport, in Dublin, on July 18, 1938. "Just got in from New York. Where am I? I intended to fly to California."
Kindergarten Tweets
As the school day draws to a close, the children in Ms. Aaron’s class sit down to compose a message about what they have been doing all day, and send it out on Twitter. A kindergarten teacher in TriBeCa who closes each day with a tweet she composes with the class.
“To me, Twitter is like the ideal thing for 5-year-olds because it is so short,” she said. “It makes them think about their day and kind of summarize what they’ve done during the day; whereas a lot of times kids will go home and Mom and Dad will say, ‘What did you do today?’ And they’re like, ‘I don’t know.’”
Explaining what Twitter is was a little tricky, she said. But there was a handy analogy. Every weekend, one student takes home a stuffed animal frog and a journal. They take pictures and write about what they’re doing to share with the rest of the class.
“So when I introduced Twitter, I said you guys are doing this with Froggie on the weekend, and so we’re going to let your parents know what we’re doing in class a few times a week,” she said.
[Via @jasonoke]
A Serious House on Serious Earth
Six Rules for Dining Out
How a frugal economist finds the perfect lunch. Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide: Some places you must try. How to find good deals when food shopping for home. How to find the best food in a foreign city.
The Cox Proportional Hazard Model on Fire
The Hunger Games Survival Analysis is kinda neat, but also an interesting use of statistics (a basic chi-square test and a more sophisticated survival analysis) in solving not-quite-real world problems. In this case, whether the Lottery in the Hunger Games was rigged and what factors predict the winner of the Games. This work joins a tradition of analyses of the world of Panem, such as whether the economy was realistic, the problems of teserrae inflation, and this (slightly problematic, as the first link points out) application of game theory. [more inside]
Why You Can’t Get a Taxi
Almost all the everyday complaints about cabs trace back to this regulatory cocktail. Drivers won’t take you to the outer reaches of your metropolitan area? The regulated fares won’t let them charge you more to recover the cost of dead-heading back without a return customer. Cabs are poorly maintained? Blame restricted competition, and the inability to charge for better quality. Cabbies drive like maniacs? With high fixed costs for cars and gas, and no way to increase their earnings except by finding another fare, is it any wonder that they try to get from place to place as fast as possible?
Uber makes its money at least in part by alleviating these inefficiencies. In most places, “black car” or livery services are regulated differently, and more lightly, than taxis are. Though Uber has good reason not to say so, it’s basically turning livery services into cabs. The company is one step further removed from regulation, because it doesn’t run cars itself; it funnels passengers to existing services. “We’re sort of like an efficient lead-generation system for limo companies,” says Kalanick, “but with math involved.”
- Megan McArdle analyses taxi regulation in the US and the taxi startup, Uber
North Korea's Failed Rocket Launch
Despite the White House's stern warning on Tuesday that a rocket launch would end U.S. food aid, North Korea launched its "Unha-3" rocket at 7:39am local time, only to watch it fail roughly a minute later.
Immortal Technique
Immortal Technique is an American rapper of Afro-Peruvian descent as well as an urban activist. Most of his lyrics focus on controversial issues in global politics. The views expressed in his lyrics are largely commentary on issues such as class struggle, poverty, religion, government and institutional racism.
Another shady operation
Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts
Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts was a literary magazine founded in 1962 by Ed Sanders, a poet later co-founded The Fugs. Its credo was "I'll print anything", and Sanders produced thirteen issues on a mimeograph machine from 1962 to 1965. Issues included works by Tuli Kupferberg, Charles Olson, Peter Orlovsky, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Julian Beck, Herbert Huncke, Norman Mailer, Gary Snyder, Diane DiPrima, William S. Burroughs, Leroi Jones, Gregory Corso, Robert Creeley, Michael McClure, Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, and Andy Warhol. - wikipedia. With a helpful index. [more inside]
"...for the next tour, I’ll either be calm and collected or nervous with a dangerously out-of-control boner."
BOOOF!
The Spudgun Technology Center, for all your spudgun needs. Many of us have probably built a spudgun (aka: potato cannon, spudchucker, potato launcher) before, most likely something along the lines of this basic model. Perhaps some of us have even built pneumatic cannons, or perhaps experimented with different fuels. The Spud Gun Technology center takes spudgun engineering to levels far beyond your wildest adolescent dreams. (Unless you went to this site as an adolescent. It's a true Web Classic.) Read on for a more about these tuber-launching funmakers and TSTC. [more inside]
The journalism of film is documentary
Style in The Wire (SLVimeo)
Make music that's fire, spit my soul through the wire
"He is a jackass... but he's talented." - Barack Obama.
The Atlantic profiles Kanye West.
Who Needs Feminism?
A group of students at Duke University started a poster campaign that has spread to Tumblr and Twitter to ask this question: Who Needs Feminism? Already, some of the posters on campus have been vandalized. [more inside]
The JOBS Act is for Wall Street, not jobs
The JOBS Act or "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" is not really about creating jobs but about loosening regulations on companies planning to IPO. SOX compliance and other financial regulations have made going public an expensive and time consuming process for young companies, and many are now staying private or getting acquired rather than going public. Fewer regulations encourages more IPOs, but what are the unintended consequences of "exempting [companies] from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market"?
Evie, be careful with those index fingers!
There are some former child celebrities who want to make it crystal clear that they don't side with Kirk Cameron. They're so serious about it, they even have an acronym and matching t-shirts.
Economics meet Thermodynamics
Foxconn and Apple.
Floating Water
Making water appear to levitate usually requires a strobe light to trick the eye. If you don't have a fancy system to control water flow, you can run water through a tube taped to a speaker playing very low frequency sound, and again use a strobe light to make the water appear to defy gravity. Or you can ditch the strobe, and sync the sound waves to the frame rate of a video camera to make water drops appear to hover.
The death of 35mm?
John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, drove the point home at the association's annual convention last year in Las Vegas. "Simply put," he said, "If you don't make the decision to get on the digital train soon, you will be making the decision to get out of the business."
As movie studios look to eliminate the expense of 35mm prints, what are the consequences of going digital? (printer-friendly link)
As movie studios look to eliminate the expense of 35mm prints, what are the consequences of going digital? (printer-friendly link)
The Electric Web Matrix
DIY Audio, DIY Electronics, DIY Guitar, DIY Synthesizers, DIY Recording. Fundamentals of audio. Optimize your Mac for audio. Build a music server. How vacuum tubes work. Tour a brass instrument factory. How to maintain your clarinet, trumpet, flute, saxophone, guitar. All this and much, much more at THE ELECTRIC WEB MATRIX.
"The biennial exposition, said to be the largest in Asia"
India's DEFEXPO 2012, is 'not a carnival in the truest sense', but rather ' the seventh in the series of biennial Land, Naval and Internal Security Systems Exhibition . . . clearly steering the path of steady growth . . . receiving overwhelming and unprecedented international response.'
As for arms dealers? 'On arms dealers, the minister [India’s Defence Minister AK Antony] insisted, “There are none I am aware of.”' [more inside]
Lil B @ NYU
"Every single person you meet, look at them like a golden million dollar baby." Last night, internet-famous oddball rapper and human meme Lil B gave a 90-minute lecture at NYU to a sold-out crowd. Speaking completely off the cuff, he touched upon radical positivity, empathy, how ant colonies are like human communities, and the dangers of hydraulic fracking, among many other things. Transcript and recording here. Pitchfork.tv will air the full video tomorrow. Nitsuh Abebe writes about what makes Lil B so great, and why it's hard to deal with some of his fans. [more inside]
hat tricks
Robert Reich explains Private Equity Partnerships (or, "How Mitt Romney Got Obscenely Rich") in 8 easy steps.
A Serious Business
Sure, the follies of art-speak are easy to laugh at, but often criticism of it begins and ends with a dismissive chuckle – which ignores profounder problems. Why should academic terminology be the default vehicle for discussing art? Why is there such an emphasis on newness, schism and radicality? Even when the art itself may be enjoyably throwaway, language pins it to deathlessly auratic registers of exchange. This suggests a subliminal fear that, if the subject in question is not talked up as Big and Culturally Significant, then the point of fussing over it in the first place might be called into question, bringing the whole house of cards tumbling down - Dan Fox, the associate editor of frieze magazine, discusses the contemporary art scene in detail.
Telnet Times Ten Thousand
If you've ever worked with the command prompt on a Unix-based computer, you're likely familiar with SSH (Secure SHell), which is a program and a protocol that allows you (yes, you!) to securely access a remote system. While SSH has certainly earned the "Secure" portion of its namesake over the years, it's functionality as a shell has ironically received very little attention, and has begun to show signs of age and obsolescence: SSH doesn't work very well on mobile connections, and its support for Unicode is buggy and incomplete. A group of MIT researchers think they've found solutions to these problems, and have created Mosh as a potential successor to SSH, which fixes many of the old protocol's annoyances and shortcomings, while retaining all of SSH's security features.
Apple-licious
Pie a la Apple - a recipe for completely edible, single serving apple pies made out of the apples themselves. [more inside]
Hunter and Bear are back
In 2010, the Hunter vs Bear feature let users edit the story. This year, they have done it again, but this time around you get to rewrite a whole lot more. There are more than 40 scenes to discover.
Fuzzy Flounder Fishing?
You are not poor when you have no money, you are poor when you have nothing to offer
"They're quite joyous occasions," she said. "It's very liberating, not using money." /
"I felt liberated, I felt free for the first time. I instinctively reached into my pocket, but there was no need to."
As a reaction to the economic crisis, the Greek port of Volos are using an alternative local unit, the TEM (link in greek), as an alternative to money. [more inside]
As a reaction to the economic crisis, the Greek port of Volos are using an alternative local unit, the TEM (link in greek), as an alternative to money. [more inside]
Terry Wogan's Secret Pirate Radio Show
Comedian Peter Serafinowicz re-imagines Terry Wogan as an Underground UK Pirate Radio DJ. Editorialising is bad but this is the best thing you will hear today.
1-4, 5, 6.
All 6 as an mp3.
April 11
The Sun on your desktop
Helioviewer.org "is an open-source project for the visualization of solar and heliospheric data. The project is funded by ESA and NASA."
See also the Wiki and the JHelioviewer application.
Go back in time to prominent events (June 7, 2011 for example), create layers from different observatories and even create your own movies.
See also the Wiki and the JHelioviewer application.
Go back in time to prominent events (June 7, 2011 for example), create layers from different observatories and even create your own movies.
A Dream Passing By In The Sky: the Small Faces and the Faces enter the R&R Hall of Fame
This weekend, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will induct the Small Faces and the Faces. Though being inducted as a unit, they were very much two distinct bands—both of them central to British rock of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, and whose influence on music, fashion, and pop culture is still felt today. [more inside]
The Atlantic Profiles Game Artiste Jon Blow
The Most Dangerous Gamer The Atlantic profiles game developer Jon Blow, most famous for creating the acclaimed and philosophical Braid, now working on "puzzle-exploration" game The Witness. Blow aims to make The Witness a groundbreaking piece of interactive art—a sort of Citizen Kane of video games...“Things are pared down to the basic acts of movement and observation until those senses become refined,” he told me. “The further you go into the game, the more it’s not even about the thinking mind anymore—it becomes about the intuitive mind.” (previously, previously)
Should you ask him what he does for a living, he'll answer that he's unemployed.
David Cohn, AKA Serengeti , has been described as "the quirkiest, deepest rapper", and "a writer who happens to rap". He has put out several albums but has encountered virtually no commercial success whatsoever, despite some raw works on the topics of absentee fathers, heroin, and a fictitious UFC fighter.
Chief among his creations is alter-ego Kenny Dennis, with origins in what has become his most famous track, "Dennehy". Kenny is a Chicago sports superfan with a mustache "the size of Mike Ditka's forehead" who loves actor Brian Dennehy, O'Douls, brats, and chops, 'sconsin, the Sears Tower, and his wife Jules, and who passionately defends Steve Bartman. [more inside]
Charlie Trotter
You have only 128 days left to eat at Charlie Trotter's eponymous restaurant in Chicago. [more inside]
Stipple lightly for light facial hair
How to look like Drake ?! A Make-up Transformation. A step by step guide to looking like Drake. [more inside]
"We did not come to this decision lightly" says Special Prosecutor Angela Corey
Floridian Special Prosecutor Angela Corey has charged George Zimmerman with second degree murder. In a story that has become the focus of national and worlwide attention, a major step has been taken. Where the main question here was not who committed the murder of Travyon Martin but why, and where racial factors in fact a motivation in the killing? From a rare expression of more personnal grief and concern from President Barack Obama, to millions of online signature assembled in the form of a petition, the case of two concerned parents determined to not let the loss of their son's life be forgotten without a closer look, will be debated in a US court of law.
Myra and Kenneth
File under: Romantic Wedding Videos (2:14, single link Vimeo)
The beginning of the end?
Jim Gaffigan is following in the footsteps of Louis CK and Aziz Ansari and has released his new special as a $5 stream, or DRM-free download.
Is it possible for this model to be economically viable to other comics? According to this article, Gaffigan had to invest about $240,000 to produce the special and make in available online.
Previously, previously.
The Manhattan Pizza War
A pizza price war in Manhattan is threatening to destroy two businesses, while providing consumers with the cheapest slice in ages.
Police and Pepper(spray)
The Reynoso Task Force has released its findings (pdf) on the UCDavis pepper spray incident: "There is little factual basis supporting Lt. Pike’s belief that he was trapped by the protesters or that his officers were prevented from leaving the Quad" ... "Further, there is little evidence that any protesters attempted to use violence against the police." [more inside]
A century on, she is home again.
As we know, RMS Titanic was on her ill-fated maiden voyage a century ago this week. Less well-known: the tender ship to Titanic and her sister Olympic was the SS Nomadic. The ship was built on Slipway No. 1 of Harland and Wolff Shipyards alongside the liners (Olympic and Titanic were built on slipways 2 and 3, respectively). The massive liners -- each nearly nine hundred feet long and measuring some 45,000 tons -- were too large to dock at Cherbourg, so Nomadic was used to ferry mail, passengers and cargo aboard at Cherbourg, the liners' last port of call before crossing the Atlantic.
She saw service in both world wars, as a troop carrier in WWI and again as a troop transport, minelayer and coastal patrol vessel in WWII. After the second war, she returned to service as a tender for Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.
Decommissioned in 1968, Nomadic was converted into a floating restaurant in Paris. When the business failed around the turn of the century, her superstructure was torn down so she could be towed out to Le Havre. After her owner's death in 2005, she seemed destined for the scrapyard until a group of maritime history enthusiasts began raising funds to buy and restore her. The Northern Ireland government's Department for Social Development purchased the ship and brought her home to Belfast on a barge for restoration at Harland and Wolff, a company now mostly devoted to offshore renewable energy.
And thus it is that century after Titanic and for almost certainly the last time ever, a White Star vessel is at the Harland and Wolff shipyards. [more inside]
Badass Of The Week: 21 Sikhs
Don’t forget: Superhero.
"I wish there was some way I could borrow Victor Von Doom’s Time Platform and take the kids back to visit the secret headquarters of my father’s imagination, that smoky, paneled bunker of ink, conversation, bookshelves, creativity and love." Neal Kirby remembers his father Jack "King" Kirby
What if movies made songs made movies.
The April fools
The editors of two college newspapers have stepped down after they released April Fool's Day editions that were not well-received by their respective campuses. Abby Spudich resigned as editor of the University of Missouri's Maneater (renamed the Carpeteater and filled with "highly offensive, sexist and crude" content for April Fool's) after writing an apology letter, and Chelsea Diana of the Boston University Daily Free Press was forced to resign after overseeing an ill-conceived April Fool's edition called the Disney Free Press, which included satirical articles about rape, prostitution and drug use. She also wrote an apology, as did the paper's board of directors.
Dark Souls PC
36 Pongs
Pongs (browser game, Flash) is Pippin Barr's exploration of a tiny corner of the game design universe: 36 variations of Pong.
So I don’t have to worry about it anymore
The two largest groups that provide ex-gay counseling are Exodus International, a nondenominational Christian organization, and NARTH, its secular counterpart. If Exodus is the spirit of the ex-gay movement, NARTH is the brain. The organizations share many members, and Exodus parrots the developmental theories about same-sex attractions espoused by NARTH. Together with the late Charles Socarides, a psychiatrist who led the opposition to declassifying homosexuality as a mental illness, Nicolosi formed NARTH in 1992 as a 'scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.' By 1998, the group was holding an annual conference, publishing its own journal, and training hundreds of psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors. Nicolosi remains NARTH’s most visible advocate.
[...] When I first reach Nicolosi on the phone, he says he remembers me well and that he is surprised that I 'went in the gay direction. You really seemed to get it.'
Gabriel Arana talks about his experiences with attempting to change his sexual orientation: My So-Called Ex-Gay Life.
[...] When I first reach Nicolosi on the phone, he says he remembers me well and that he is surprised that I 'went in the gay direction. You really seemed to get it.'
Gabriel Arana talks about his experiences with attempting to change his sexual orientation: My So-Called Ex-Gay Life.
I can has vintage lolcats?
Apple and the Big Five
The U.S. has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five of the largest publishers, alleging a conspiracy to rig the pricing of e-books. Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins have agreed to settle, though Macmillan, Penguin and Apple continue to contest the charges. Some background from WIRED: Bigger Than Agency, Bigger Than E-Books: The Case Against Apple and Publishers
"You should say Dad."
'My son got a very low mark': Writer Ian McEwan describes the odd experience of helping his son with an A-level essay about one of his novels, Enduring Love, and finding his son's teacher disagreed with his interpretation of the novel. This is an excerpt from Ian Katz's interview with McEwan at the Guardian's Open Weekend festival on 24 March 2012. [Full Interview]
Our uniforms are loose, they look flimsy. Night black shadows under the peaks of our caps.
To whet the appetite for the forthcoming collection of essays No Regrets: Writings on Scott Walker, longtime UK music magazine The Wire presents a 70-minute lecture on Scott [Engel] Walker from Electric Eden author, Wire contributor and No Regrets editor Rob Young.
Normally I'd say no to drama but my life could use more of this.
Juvenile Detention in America
Strike At The Strand
The workers at Manhattan's famous Strand Bookstore are currently in conflict with management over a severe new contract that radically reduces benefits. Bookstore employee and cartoonist Greg Farrell has decided to explain the conflicts and background of the problem via comic book.
Wooah, woah-woooh. Woahhhhhhhhh.
Incredibox v2.0 has been released. A free Flash-based looping animated beatbox of FUN! In French and English. Previously on MeFi, and a direct link to v1.0.
Re-examining the Lockerbie Evidence
Lockerbie: Case Closed is a badly-titled* documentary following former police detective George Thompson and legal investigator John Ashton as they investigate and uncover new evidence in the Lockerbie bombing. Thompson was hired by Abdelbasset al-Magrahi's legal team to investigate the case.
Another film "Pan Am: The Lockerbie bomber"covers similar ground, but uncovers some other issues. Both have been aired on Al-Jazeera.
This evidence is the same evidence re-examined by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Five years ago the SCCRC produced a still unreleased report saying there were 6 grounds for Magrahi to appeal his conviction, which he was planning to do before he was released on compassionate grounds. The report is so secret that even the Scottish Justice secretary has not been allowed to see the it. [more inside]
Confessions Of A Recovering Environmentalist
Confessions Of A Recovering Environmentalist. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.” What does this curious, plastic word mean? It does not mean defending the nonhuman world from the ever-expanding empire of Homo sapiens sapiens, though some of its adherents like to pretend it does, even to themselves. It means sustaining human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people—us—feel is their right, without destroying the “natural capital” or the “resource base” that is needed to do so. Paul Kingsnorth (most recently of the Dark Mountain Project) in Orion Magazine on environmentalism, sustainability, and hope. [more inside]
Taking the wedding reception slideshow to a new level
KIDS' DRAWINGS + AWESOME DUST
In his ongoing project, Imaginawesome, designer Garrett Miller takes children’s drawings and descriptions and turns them into wonderful illustrations. [more inside]
Magnitude 8.7 Earthquake off the west coast of Northern Sumatra
A magnitude 8.7 earthquake has been recorded off the west coast of Northern Sumatra in the Indian Ocean at 2012 April 11 08:38:38 UTC. A Tsunami Warning has been issued spanning the entire Indian Ocean.
April 10
Vangelis Speaks
Shortly after his concert in December 2011 inaugurating Katara amphitheater in Doha, Qatar [facebook photoset, available to the public], Vangelis sat down with Al Jazeera English anchor Tony Harris to spend a half hour talking about music, philosophy, the state of the world, and his career. It was his first television interview in about 20 years. [more inside]
Manning Trial and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
In 1984, Congress passed a law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in the wake of some high profile incidents of hacking. Designed to prosecute hackers, the law is written vaguely enough that it has, in recent years, been used (with varying degrees of success) to prosecute people violating terms of an employer's computer usage policies, or in the infamous case of Lori Drew, a Terms of Service agreement.
But today, the 9th circuit court of appeals ruled that employees can not be prosecuted under the CFAA for violating an employer's computer use policies, dealing a blow to the Obama administration’s Justice Department, which is trying to use the same theory to prosecute alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning.
Exit stage left
Gu Kailai, the wife of senior Chinese party leader Bo Xilai, has been arrested for the murder of an English businessman. Bo, until his sudden fall from power this year, one of the most popular politicians in China, the leading figure of the Chinese New Left and Party Committee Secretary of the megacity of Chongqing, has completed his downfall by being expelled from the politburo and stripped of all party positions. The collapse started in February, when his top lieutenant, Wang Lijun, was suddenly demoted and then fled to the US consulate for a day - supposedly, either attempting to defect or to give incriminating evidence on Bo and Gu to the Americans for safekeeping. [more inside]
"Don't turn it on - take it apahhht!"
The EEV Blog is an "off-the-cuff" video blog that deals with pretty much anything related to Electrical Engineering, known for its very knowledgeable and enthusiastic host.
The Electronic Coach
In the main link in griphus' post this morning, there was this little aside: "In 1957...a physics student named Don Knuth built a program for the IBM 650 to help the 1958 Case Institute of Technology basketball team win the league championship."
Yes, THAT Don Knuth. Here's a young Don with the team and the IBM 650 (capable of making 50,000 calculations a minute!), and here he is talking about it. [more inside]
Walter Hill's "The Warriors"
As brutally stylish as it is when the fists and baseball bats are flying, the underlying themes of family and perseverance are what make The Warriors stand out from the rest of the "grim future" epics of the period. - Celluloid Dreams
Row, row, row your boat / gently down the Saigon River in Ho Chi Ming city (slyt)
Die Oregon, Die
The Junkie Old Folks' Home
"Woodstock is their last refuge, the only old-age home in the world where hard drugs are not a taboo, a place intended for people who, in their early 50s, look as worn out as if they were in their 70s." A model project keeps aging drug users out of the streets of The Hague. [more inside]
Gawker announces newest hire: a current FOX News employee
Gawker has posted i inaugural column of "The Fox Mole"—a long-standing, current employee of Fox News Channel "I work at Fox News Channel.
The final straw for me came last year. Oddly, it wasn't anything on TV that turned me rogue, though plenty of things on our air had pushed me in that direction over the years. But what finally broke me was a story on The Fox Nation. If you're not a frequenter of Fox Nation (and if you're reading Gawker, it's a pretty safe bet you're not) I can describe it for you — it's like an unholy mashup of the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post and a Klan meeting. Word around the office is that the site was actually the brainchild of Bill O'Reilly's chief stalker (and Gawker pal) Jesse Watters."
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
Point, Counterpoint
International street artist ABOVE (Wikipedia; Flickr pool; interview from 2009) convinced diamond traders at Johannesburg's Jewel City to let him paint their exterior wall with the phrase "Diamonds Are A Woman's Best Friend" ... but he didn't mention that he would be adding "And A Man's Worst Enemy" to the adjacent wall.
7. Last but sort of least: write articles or a book on the side.
"I can no longer responsibly recommend that you drop everything to try to become a food writer. Except for a very small group of people (some of whom are clinging to jobs at magazines that pay more than the magazines' business models can actually afford), it’s nearly impossible to make a living as a food writer, and I think it’s only going to get worse." Amanda Hesser, NYT cookbook author and co-founder of Food52, has some advice for aspiring food writers.
Santorum drops out.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum abruptly suspended his campaign in a news conference this afternoon, marking the unofficial end to a lengthy, often-combative primary. By suspending his campaign rather than ending it, Santorum can continue to raise money to retire any remaining debt he might have. [more inside]
Next to the red crabs, this site is how most people became aware of Christmas Island.
It's time for a trip down the memory hole of the Internet. Investigative journalism still lives online, as Gawker penetrates the mystery behind the man who was Goatse.
(Surprisingly safe-for-work, though please heed the warnings in the actual article itself.)
"I do indeed in greed explore the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump."
Indie Games! For Free!
"Hi, my name’s Terry Cavanagh [previously], and I’m an indie game developer. I started this blog in March 2012 to talk about the sort of freeware games that I find interesting, and to share those games with more people. Thank you for reading!" [more inside]
It's the apocalypse, might as well get drunk.
How to quantify all aspects of society
"Samuel Arbesman is a senior scholar at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and author of the forthcoming book 'The Half-Life of Facts'. His research and essays explore how to quantify all aspects of society." [more inside]
Quit your day job
I'll be back faster than you can say furious...
James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has revealed its latest hit piece where an unknown man purports to be Eric Holder and all but procures his vote. [more inside]
Puppsy Blue
Dave makes leather bags. He's passionate about it. He wants to make the best bags possible. Or as he says it, "I wanted it to be made so well that my grandkids would fight over it while I was still warm in the grave." His bags are tough (QT). How confident is he in the quality of his bags? He has links to his rivals on his website. Bag owners are encouraged to send in their own photographs of them in action. His bags carry a 100 year warranty (damage caused by crocodiles and elephants not covered). But the real reason to visit his site is to read his moving tribute in Memory of his dog Blue.
Have we met before
Met Before. The new video from the band Chairlift (previously) doubles as a game of Choose Your Own Adventure and a meditation on the nature of choice.
Bill Ayers' dinner with Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson
"More fundamentally, the Camorra is simply a part of life."
The Camorra Never Sleeps: "The Camorra is not an organization like the Mafia that can be separated from society, disciplined in court, or even quite defined. It is an amorphous grouping in Naples and its hinterlands of more than 100 autonomous clans and perhaps 10,000 immediate associates, along with a much larger population of dependents, clients, and friends. It is an understanding, a way of justice, a means of creating wealth and spreading it around. It has been a part of life in Naples for centuries—far longer than the fragile construct called Italy has even existed. At its strongest it has grown in recent years into a complete parallel world and, in many people’s minds, an alternative to the Italian government, whatever that term may mean." [more inside]
It played ball
Bedridden, bored as all hell, and finally surrounded by a rare quiet, [John Burgeson] thought about the IBM 1620, and how its algorithmic alacrity bordered on self-learning, and realized, maybe deliriously, that the machine had the capability of making a little baseball simulator.The Lost Founder of Baseball Video Games
Tiny Transactions on Computer Science
Tiny Transactions on Computer Science ...the premier venue for computer science research of 140 characters or less.
BOY - a short film
Prasanna Puwanarajah's moving short about a Velodrome carpenter, BOY was the winner of the British Airways Great Britons 2012 competition. [more inside]
Made of awesome
Stanley Fish on religion and science
Stanley Fish takes on the similarities and differences between scientific and religious evidence and gets a barrage of responses, to which he replies. Michael K. declares that “the equivalence between the methodological premises of scientific inquiry and those of religious doctrine is simply false.” I agree, but I do not assert it. Neither do I assert that because there are no “impersonal standards and impartial procedures … all standards and procedures are equivalent” (E.). What I do assert is that with respect to a single demand — the demand that the methodological procedures of an enterprise be tethered to the world of fact in a manner unmediated by assumptions — science and religion are in the same condition of not being able to meet it (as are history, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology and all the rest).
A Grim Fairy Tale
Red is a dark retelling of Little Red Riding Hood done as a bloody, stylish animated short.
Under Pressure
belt sander+stack of paper=awesome
belt sander+stack of paper=awesome SLVimeoP
It’s probably not unrealistic to say that porn makes up 30% of the total data transferred across the internet.
Street style, 1906
Some of his photographs are odd. Others are just creepy. But thanks to his hobby of photographing young women with a hidden camera, Edward Linley Sambourne (1844-1910) has left us a fascinating series of images of street fashion in Edwardian London. [some photos NSFW]
April 9
Boingo (Not BOI-NGO)
In 1994, after breaking up his group and going off to write a few modest film scores, Danny Elfman returned to working in the context of a rock band. Together with his longtime band and score collaborator Steve Bartek and other former (now renewed) band mates John Avila, Johnny "Vatos" Hernandez, and newcomer Warren Fitzgerald, they recorded what is considered the final studio record in the Oingo Boingo catalog, the eponymous album of the now newly-named group, Boingo.
Insanity, Hey!, Mary*, Can't See (Useless)*, Pedestrian Wolves**, Lost Like This**, Spider***, War Again, I Am The Walrus, Tender Lumplings, Change* [some tracks carry Tipper Gore's Parental Advisory sticker]
*live version from the Farewell concert, album version unavailable online; **unofficial video; ***live from Halloween 1993 [more inside]
Insanity, Hey!, Mary*, Can't See (Useless)*, Pedestrian Wolves**, Lost Like This**, Spider***, War Again, I Am The Walrus, Tender Lumplings, Change* [some tracks carry Tipper Gore's Parental Advisory sticker]
*live version from the Farewell concert, album version unavailable online; **unofficial video; ***live from Halloween 1993 [more inside]
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale...
In 1984, The Voyage of the Mimi set sail on PBS, exploring the ocean off the coast of Massachusetts to study humpback whales. The educational series was made up of thirteen episodes intended to teach middle schoolers about science and math. The first fifteen minutes of each episode were a fictional adventure starring a young Ben Affleck. The second 15 minutes were an "expedition documentary" that would explore the scientific concepts behind the show's plot points. A sequel with the same format, The Second Voyage of the Mimi aired in 1988, and featured the crew of the Mimi exploring Mayan ruins in Mexico. [more inside]
Four turns for a dollar. 500 turns for two dollars.
Filmmaker Nirvan Mullick (previously) makes the day of the nine-year-old proprietor of Caine's Arcade.
Was last seen approaching the power plant!
The Ultimate Warrior
The clash between The Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan that began with WrestleMania VI and continued with Hogan's unflattering comments in The Self Destruction of The Ultimate Warrior climaxed with this epic shoot in which there are - so to speak - no holds barred. [more inside]
Hydra buys zombie
Microsoft has agreed to purchase a big chunk of AOL's intellectual property for a big chunk of cash. Left unremarked in most business news coverage is a little matter of history: A closure of sorts for the fiercest -- and possibly the most expensive -- tech rivalry of the dotcom era. Microsoft will own Netscape. [more inside]
That's my Cheese Monster talking
Five years after Ze Frank's much-loved if uncategorizable The Show closed down (previously), the vlogger/humorist/online performance artist has returned with A Show. via
listlessness, tedium, lassitude, languor
Long Live Ligers
"It fits with what we would expect as a result of the rapid change in Arctic habitat." The stuff of science fiction is becoming increasingly the stuff of science fact. And now, it seems, you can crack open a white Coke (if you can stomach the campaign) and watch it all from the comfort of your couch. [more inside]
At the Tunnels of Madness
Back in the 50s, the US planned to create a network of tunnels underneath the Greenland ice sheet to fire nuclear missiles from. (via Slashdot)
"Refusing to allow such threats to paralyze the entire university community in its pursuit of learning and teaching,"
Starting on February 13th The University of Pittsburgh has received a steady stream of bomb threats. The Chancellor of the University has stated that the school has no intention of ending its semester early even though the threats show no sign of stopping and the authorities have been unable to find any leads after finding that some of the threats were routed through systems in Austria. The school's Vice Chancellor wrote this letter to students and faculty in response to the ongoing situation.
This is a strange thing. This is a look, a style, a pattern that didn’t previously exist in the real world. It’s something that’s come out of digital.
"Above all, the New Aesthetic is telling the truth. There truly are many forms of imagery nowadays that are modern, and unique to this period. We’re surrounded by systems, devices and machineries generating heaps of raw graphic novelty. We built them, we programmed them, we set them loose for a variety of motives, but they do some unexpected and provocative things." Bruce Sterling (Previously) writes about the New Aesthetic movement in Wired magazine. [more inside]
Demoscene - The Art of the Algorithms
Wired called them, digital graffiti and John Carmack spoke of them at QuakeCon 2011 but they remain little known. A recently released full-length documentary (download) gives a portrait of the creative digital subculture from 80s to the present day. [more inside]
It Gets Better at BYU
RIP Jack Tramiel
"Perhaps in American cinema, women have typically been reduced to types like mom, girlfriend, or victim. But in the Y.A. books of our youth, they are far more complex, and more thoroughly drawn."
'The Atlantic Wire' kicks off its new YA For Grownups series with The Greatest Girl Characters of Young Adult Literature.
We've said all the way through the campaign to expect the unexpected, but we didn't expect this
The 158th Boat Race between Oxford University Boat Club & Cambridge University Boat Club last Saturday was perhaps the most eventful in the event's 183 year history. The race was stopped after a protestor, Trenton Oldfield, swam out out the course and was narrowly missed by Oxford's blades. After a 20 minute delay, the race was restarted. Thirty-five seconds in, the Oxford cox was warned for steering into Cambridge's line, and then initiated a blade-clash that broke one of Oxford's blades. Cambridge rowed on to win by four and a quarter lengths (Official race report). After finishing the race, Oxford's bowman collapsed, and was taken to hospital; the traditional presentation ceremony was abandoned. The OUBC medical officer stated: "The sudden and premature stopping of the Race when concentration and exertion were at their peak was bad enough, but when the Race had lost its equal footing for having lost an oar, the psychological response was to try even harder. Oxford drove themselves to the limit to try to contain the damage. Alex Woods rowing at Bow reached the finishing line and found he had expended all reserves of energy; in my view he had rendered himself hypoxic, and this was the cause of his collapse". He has returned home to recover. [more inside]
"[T]here is no winning here as women . . ."
"The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others—and in my case, to the actual public." Actresses and female entertainers are frequently the subject of much ridicule and scrutiny vis-a-vis their appearance. Rarely do they publicly return similar scrutiny those doing the scrutinizing. Ashley Judd writes a searing condemnation of "the assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification" of women's (and men's) bodies.
You got Facebooks in my Instagrams
A picture is worth a thousand words and a billion dollars. Facebook has bought Instagram for $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. This is striking for since Instagram was valued at $500 million last week, though, right before the purchase they raised $50 million in venture capitol showing they have the ability to raise lots of money quickly. Instagram is notable for having 30 million users despite having been iOS-only until recently creating an Android app. Facebook had been rumored to be working on a photo sharing app, however, like Microsoft buying Skype, the user base was may have been real value, not the easily replicable technology. For those that rue this news, there are alternatives to host your sepia toned cell phone pictures.
"Poetic excess takes the devil’s side, in the Anglo-American mind, of the Artificiality/Authenticity binary, and thus is highly suspect."
Cultural critic Mark Dery discusses his new essay collection. Interview by R. U. Sirius. Dery has previously written on the cultural influence of Edward Gorey, the effects of social networking, the popularity of cephalopods, dead malls, and Surrealism and the Visual Unconscious.
Boundless Learning
A free university textbook project Boundless Learning is being sued jointly by Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education for attempting to simulate the textbooks required by courses by patching together an array of open texts that cover the material similarly.
Tommy Tucker was the most famous squirrel ever to come from Washington
Perhaps in some forgotten corner of a museum there sits — nay, there stands — Tommy Tucker, a little dusty, a little moth-eaten, but still the best-dressed squirrel in the world
An Absence Present
The Titanic Guide to New York City. An exploration of traces of the disaster, revealing history still written on the landscape.
2012 Hugo Award Nominees announced
The nominees for the 2012 Hugo Award were announced over the weekend. Nominees include Metafilter's own jscalzi (who will also be the host for this year's Hugo Awards ceremony) for the beginning of his epic fantasy trilogy April Fool's joke The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City (Prologue). One record being set this year is Mira Grant's - aka Seanan McGuire's - nominations: she is the first woman to have four Hugo nominations in a single year. [more inside]
Paul Feig Walks Us Through Freaks and Geeks
In the first of a five-part series, Paul Feig walks through the origins of and provides an episode-by-episode analysis of Freaks and Geeks
"Why do I only speak out now / Aged and with my last drop of ink: / Israel's nuclear power is endangering / Our already fragile world peace?"
Günter Grass barred from Israel over poem. [Guardian.co.uk] Nobel laureate, who says he had not meant to criticise Israel but Netanyahu government, declared persona non grata. The celebrated German author Gunter Grass has been declared persona non grata in Israel following the publication of his poem [Guardian.co.uk] warning that the Jewish state's nuclear programme was a threat to an "already fragile world peace". [more inside]
On Wisconsin?
As the recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker draws near, the governor has quietly signed "dozens" of bills into Wisconsin law, including anti-abortion, pro abstinence education only laws, the repeal of the Equal Pay law,, a bill prohibiting insurance plans from covering some abortions, and a bill banning damages in employment discrimination suits.
Creativity is not a talent, it is a way of operating.
Lit Videos on YouTube
YouTube does not have a "Literature" category. Yet. "Perhaps it can be argued that literature is "entertainment." But aligning literature with "entertainment" is disingenous. Literature is never merely "entertainment." [more inside]
"la plus belle tout simplement"
Photographer Luc Perrot’s Paysages Nocturnes galleries reveal the spectacular beauty of the night-time world. [more inside]
The pipes, the pipes, aren't calling.
bing has a map? *iphoto* has/is a map?
The Barkley Marathons
In June of 1977, James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee. 54.5 hours later, he was captured, "driven and exhausted, covered with mud and sand," (Large PDF) just five miles away. In 1986, accomplished ultrarunner Gary Cantrell (AKA Lazarus Lake) decided to hold an ultramarathon in neighboring Frozen Head State Park. The world's toughest 100 miler, the Barkley Marathon and Fun Run, was born. There have been 13 100-mile finishers since that time.
In 2012, three people finished the 100 miler, and a new course record was set. Here are some before and after shots of runners. Here are some shots of the course and the fun.
In 2012, three people finished the 100 miler, and a new course record was set. Here are some before and after shots of runners. Here are some shots of the course and the fun.
The best you can do is learn to survive.
IKEA is already widening their domain, but for some of us, it's still a challenge to deal with the staid institution of the IKEA store. Never fear! [more inside]
DA DA DA DA DA DAAA DA DA - Roundball Rock, The Theme of the NBA in the 1990s
One song was synonymous with NBA Basketball throughout the 1990s: Roundball Rock by John Tesh [more inside]
April 8
+++INHALE - CALM!!!+++ +++EXHALE - RELAX!!!+++
How to ask a question
DOUBLE PACK OF CHEEZ DOODLES!! YAAA!! (Audio NSFW if your coworkers speak Norwegian)
"This is day 86 on my full return South Pole Expedition 2011/2012. I'm quite hungry and about to pick up my last cache by my second pulk which I left on the way in. As a part of my motivational plan I have on purpose not made notes on what goodies I have left behind in the cache, and on this last one, I didn't expect very much." --Aleksander Gamme [more inside]
Breaking: Portland’s not that cool, L.A. not that superficial.
Stereotypes? Fuhgeddaboutit!
"No one likes a stereotype, unless it’s about someone else — then it’s hilarious. Los Angeles? Celebrity-obsessed lipo-junkies. Portland? Hipster snobs. Boston? Sports fanatics who think that a win for the Sox somehow makes them winners, too. There’s nothing really wrong with these stereotypes — in fact, they give each city a unique cultural identity. How true they are is another matter."[more inside]
Alex B.
Observations, stories and photographs by and of art model, sometime dancer, Alex B. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) (NSFW)
The Enterprise Of Las Vegas
But THIS – this is different. If this doesn’t work – if this is not a success – it’s there, forever….” I remember thinking to myself “oh my god, this guy does NOT get it….” And he said “I don’t want to be the guy that approved this and then it’s a flop and sitting out there in Vegas forever.”
And with that, Mr. Jaffe in a single moment, destroyed about five months of work by a host of people, and killed one of the greatest ideas of all time.
And with that, Mr. Jaffe in a single moment, destroyed about five months of work by a host of people, and killed one of the greatest ideas of all time.
View From The Shard
An urban explorer of Silent UK breaks into London's The Shard (pictures inside), the 310 meter high vertical city designed to be the highest building in Western Europe.
blwap thought the haddock
And With Every Step Pain
Under Pressure
The Pressure Cooker Makes A Comeback. "Pressure cookers are exploding—in a good way—into home and restaurant kitchens. I discovered the joys of pressure cooking last year while reviewing Modernist Cuisine, the 2,348-page encyclopedia of avant-garde cuisine by former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. He argues that pressure cookers are the perfect vessel for making stock, and he's right. Pressure cooking extracts more flavors from the primary materials and keeps them in the pot, where they condense back into a rich, full-bodied liquid. I was blown away by the chicken stock I made the first time I used a pressure cooker. But I didn't stop there. I followed a few of Myhrvold's other suggestions and soon discovered that pressure cookers make superior, stir-free risotto—cooked through, but with a pleasant hint of resistance—after just five-and-a-half minutes at pressure. Braised short ribs are similarly sublime, fork tender without being mushy, and bathed in a broth with an intense, concentrated beef flavor. They went from being a Sunday afternoon project to a supper I could prepare after work on weeknights. Emboldened by success, I even went so far as to pressure cook a surprisingly moist lemon-mascarpone cheesecake." [more inside]
Let my people know.
While Passover is an ancient and rich tradition, the story it celebrates didn't actually ever happen. The people who eventually became the Jews were almost certainly never in Egypt in any significant numbers, were never slaves there, and never made a long journey out of Egypt across the Sinai.
Titanic: The Original Twilight
The 3D re-release of James Cameron's Titanic prompted Lindy West of Jezebel and Will Leitch of Deadspin to re-assess the movie.
"All of this is in the record, you know."
Mike Wallace, veteran journalist and one of the founding fathers of 60 Minutes, known for his tough interviews (such as those of William Westmoreland, Ayn Rand, Louis Farrakhan, and the Shah of Iran) died on Saturday. He was 93.
that's one mellow cat
Little parakeet just won't leave kitty alone. I mean, really. Doesn't matter if kitty is drinking, or trying to sleep. He just won't leave kitty alone. I mean, really. Kitty's cool with it, though, and they enjoy the same food. And neither of them are especially interested in the beetle.
The World's Most Unlikely Party Town
Welcome to Vang Vieng Vang Vieng, deep in the jungle of Laos, is a backpacker paradise where there are no rules. Last year at least 27 travellers died there, and countless more were injured. [more inside]
Megaman as Malware
Any critical analysis of MegaMan might just conclude that MegaMan was malware.
Survivors of a nightmare with no reckoning
11541 Red Chairs each representing a life lost during the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996 which started 20 years ago this weekend.
Bosnia's victims 20 years on: survivors of a nightmare with no reckoning, by Ed Vulliamy.
Emma Daly, then a journalist recalls “We were reporting, reporting, reporting. And it took so long for anyone to react,”. [more inside]
Bosnia's victims 20 years on: survivors of a nightmare with no reckoning, by Ed Vulliamy.
Emma Daly, then a journalist recalls “We were reporting, reporting, reporting. And it took so long for anyone to react,”. [more inside]
A-Tisket, A-Tasket, A... What?
Lawrence Welk: The Easter Edition (YouTube, 2:10) [via madamjujujive and Everlasting Blort] Lawrence Welk on drugs previously.
April 7
"It appears to be some sort of organic Easter egg"
Alien: The Easter Edition (YouTube, 2:55)
The mathematical modelling of popular games by Nick Berry
H _ _ _ m _ n, Y a _ _ _ e e, _ _ t t _ _ _ h i p, _ h u t _ s & L a _ _ e r _ , R _ _ k , _ _ n d y _ _ _ _ , and _ _ r t s.
I'll show you the life of the mind
Just a SLTumblr containing John Goodman's face on anime girls. Some images NSFW.
one of these guys has a convincing rap voice and the other has a convincing 'no mom i don't wanna take out the garbage' voice
Political Rap Videos, curated by SomethingAwful. (NSFW language)
Uncanny Transfiguration
Olivier DE SAGAZAN usually puts paint and clay on himself, and sometimes hardly seems human. Often monstrous, sometimes disturbing, you may find it beautiful.
"He has the Bunton strain."
Robert Caro has been working on his biographical series The Years of Lyndon Johnson for about 35 years. The long-awaited fourth volume, "The Passage of Power," is due out on May 1. It covers Johnson's vice presidency and his ascension to the presidency after John F. Kennedy's assassination. An excerpt from the book concerning the events of Nov. 22, 1963, was published in the April 2 issue of The New Yorker. This volume's predecessor, “Master of the Senate,” was published in 2002 and earned Caro a Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Caro writes in the introduction to the first book in the series, “The Path to Power”: [more inside]
Howard Hawks' "The Big Sleep"
The Big Sleep is a film I have found a very intense love for. The rotating cast of shadowy crooks and deceptive dames coupled with the roller-coaster plotting makes this classic movie endlessly entertaining. Bogart and Bacall are electrifying together and the supporting cast is equally captivating. Considering it’s over 60 years old, The Big Sleep still works in a big bad way and feels fantastically modern. It’s as if the film is simply too fast and too entertaining to age. It was crafted by the hands of some of Hollywood’s finest artists at the time and oozes quality as a result. Most of all though, this movie is just pulpy, fearless, fun and really, really cool. - Pictures and Noise [more inside]
Aha! The anatomy of insight, like a rolling stone.
How do we have insights, and where does inspiration come from? Jonah Lehrer goes inside Bob Dylan's brain to find out...the "neural correlate of insight": the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG). This small fold of tissue, located on the surface of the right hemisphere just above the ear, became unusually active in the seconds before the epiphany. [more inside]
"In years of scarcity the poor labour more, and really live better.”
One thing the historical record makes abundantly clear is that Adam Smith and his laissez-faire buddies were a bunch of closet-case statists who needed brutal government policies to whip the English peasantry into a good capitalistic workforce willing to accept wage slavery.Yasha Levine's detailed review of historian Michael Perelman's The Invention of Capitalism.
Reckless Cyclist May Face Charges for Fatal Accident
On March 29, San Francisco web entrepreneur Chris Bucchere was returning from a group cycling ride when he struck and killed a 71-year-old pedestrian while "bombing" his bicycle down Castro street and through a crowded crosswalk—at 35 MPH, according to his STRAVA app. "In a nutshell, blammo," is how Bucchere described the incident in a (since deleted) posting to the Mission Cycling Club website. While he noted a "RIVER of blood" from his victim, Bucchere ended his post with a jovial ode to his own "late helmet." As Bucchere tries to scrub his online identity, including posts about fixed-gear bikes, some cyclists are questioning whether riding a fixed-gear bike without brakes may have contributed to the accident.
"She finds her daughter burning cigarette holes in her arms...taking pills...listening to that violence-oriented punk rock music"
Kill From the Heart, taking its name from the Dicks song, is an incredibly extensive resource for international '80s hardcore punk. The site has collected a ton of information, like reviews from different zines, interviews (including the infamous Maximum Rocknroll and FU's spectacle), discographies from labels, band histories, articles about different scenes, and more. [more inside]
What Facebook sends the cops
When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here's what Facebook sends the cops.
The Toynbee Tiles
The film Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles just won the U.S. Documentary Competition Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and so we asked puzzlemaker Eric Harshbarger to give The film transcends the tabloid possibilities of this event. I'm struck by the pathos, somewhat discomfited by the personal resonance I felt for the creator of the tiles.
Crooked Timber on David Graeber
Crooked Timber's online seminar on David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years (previously, previously, previously and previously). [more inside]
Fax machines!
The world's first fax machine was patented in 1843 by Alexander Bain. He came from a remote croft in Caithness in Scotland and, for his early experiments, used cattle jaw bones for hinges and heather for springs. His fax machine was based on an electric clock, which he had also invented. (Illustrated companion) [more inside]
1st Person Mountain Biker
Ever wonder what it would be like to ride a bike down a bit of Peruvian mountain? Here’s your chance to see it for yourself. [SLYT]
Student Loans on Rise -- for Kindergarten
Student loan debt is now extending to K-12 private educations, fueled by parents who believe getting their children into the "right" primary school is essential to future success.
The DaVinci Decode
The History of a Mystery is a 1996 BBC Timewatch Documentary about Rennes-le-Château and its 19th-century priest, Bérenger Saunière. [more inside]
Gandalf would be jealous
The creation of a stunningly beautiful smoking pipe.
"Coffee comes in five descending stages: Coffee, Java, Jamoke, Joe, and Carbon Remover."
The Steampunk (Alpha Dominche): A Curious Coffee Contrapulation: "With just a few quick taps on the touch screen, the barista customizes the STEAMPUNK brewing process to optimize the flavor of each beverage. The anticipation then begins. The customer is treated to a dazzling theatrical presentation as the STEAMPUNK’s gleaming glass crucibles fill with swirling steam. The barista then places the ground coffee on the piston and plunges it into the crucible. The grinds whirl and dance as they’re agitated and aerated by the millions of tiny bubbles. At the barista’s command, the liquid coffee is pulled by vacuum through a specially designed ultrafine photo-milled metal filter, and the dark brown elixir streams gracefully into the awaiting cup." [Via] [Alpha Dominche]
SHSK'H
Yes, you read that right. A net label and audio gallery of diverse contemporary music.
There are four albums available currently, each with great merit and interest.
In particular, Jody Pou singing a selection of Anton Webern lieder is simply superb.
Download the albums free, then drop them a contribution, if, like I have, you fall in love.
Googles for you: more Jody Pou at the FMA; Composer Igor Ballereau; Solo violist Garth Knox; Composer Keneth Kirschner
The interesting story of Good African Coffee
"Trade, not aid:" the interesting story of Good African Coffee. [slnyt]
The Talk: Nonblack Version
National Review's John Derbyshire Goes Full-On Racist National Review is generally considered to be a haven for intellectual conservatives. John Derbyshire is a columnist for the magazine and a regular contributor to its much-read blog, The Corner. But even hard-core conservatives were shocked when Derbyshire penned The Talk: Nonblack Version, a set of rules white people should tell their kids about African Americans. Appearing on the website Taki's Magazine, the personal magazine of Greek "paleoconservative" Taki Theodoracopulos, the piece has garnered intense scrutiny and calls for National Review to fire it's author.
The rules are, needless to say, quite controversial: [more inside]
3-D graphs belong in Time magazine and 1st grade
Fantastic Maps
Jonathan Roberts does Fantastic Maps. Whether you're looking for tutorials for tabletop RPG mapmaking, or just want to check out the designs of a professional fantasy cartographer, the only place to go is Fantastic Maps. And if you're a GRR Martin fan, you'll soon be more familiar with Roberts' name, since he has been picked to do the cartography for the October 2012 atlas of the lands of A Song of Ice and Fire.
"No dame ever ran the Boston Marathon!"
"To cajole me through tough evening sessions like this, Arnie told and retold stories of famous Bostons. I loved listening to them--until this night when I snapped and said, "Oh, let's quit talking about the Boston Marathon and run the damn thing!"
"No woman can run the Boston Marathon," Arnie fired back.
"Why not? I'm running 10 miles a night!"
Arnie insisted the distance was too long for fragile women to run and exploded when I said that Roberta Gibb had jumped into the race and finished it the previous April." [more inside]
It's your birthday. Your Mom gives you some tube socks. What do you do?
Of course Fireman Sam votes Labour. He's an FBU brach officer
So it turns out the Doctor is not a LibDem anymore, at least if a Yougov survey of who British people think fictional characters would vote for (PDF) is to believed.
April 6
Better late than never...
Secret uses of Uranus
From one of Stanley Kubrick's notebooks comes a list of potential titles for the 1964 movie that was eventually named, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Interestingly, that particular title doesn't feature on this page.
Practical Tips from 4 Years of Traveling The World
The Dying of the Light
Thomas Kinkade, the "Painter of Light" and one of the most popular artists in America, died suddenly Friday at his Los Gatos home. He was 54. [more inside]
Packing wisdom from frequent jet setters.
Alone Together
Sherry Turkle believes that as we expect more from technology, we expect less from each other. (SLTedTalk)
A Tiny Slice of New York City
So that's what a seiche is.
The recent magnitude 7.4 Oaxaca, Mexico earthquake caused quite the ruckus 2,000 miles away in Devil's Hole, Death Valley. Video (The real good stuff starts around the 2:15 mark. Read about it here.). Another view of the seiche from Scientific America (Read about it here).
Kill Inveterate Gambler Ping: Macau and "The God of Gamblers"
The files of the God of Gamblers case can be read as a string of accidents, good and bad: Siu’s run at the baccarat table; Wong’s luck to be assigned an assassin with a conscience; Adelson’s misfortune that reporters noticed an obscure murder plot involving his casino. But the tale, viewed another way, depends as little on luck as a casino does. It is, rather, about the fierce collision of self-interests. If Las Vegas is a burlesque of America—the “ethos of our time run amok,” as Hal Rothman, the historian, put it—then Macau is a caricature of China’s boom, its opportunities and rackets, its erratic sorting of winners and losers.Evan Osnos on a real-life "God of Gamblers" and the rise of Macau, The New Yorker
Of Tartans and Kilts
Today is National Tartan Day, and in New York city it's Tartan Week! A celebration of Scottish heritage, Tartan Day is held on April 6 to commemorate the Declaration of Arbroath, a declaration of Scottish independence submitted to Pope John XXII in 1320. [more inside]
BBQ Sauce Reviews
"One of the most brazen moves in the chess world since the Najdorf Sicilian Defense"
Just hours after winning a second consecutive national championship, a legendary college coach decamps to a Division I program with a brighter future- and takes her entire team with her. A college chess coach makes a move that even the most cutthroat men's basketball coach would envy. [more inside]
One great step. The first gene linked to autism.
The etiology of Autism remains a mystery. However, three research teams have for the first time linked a gene to certain forms of autism. This is a great step in the search of what causes this disease.
The Real Deal.
Food Ingredients Most Prone to Fraudulent Economically Motivated Adulteration. The United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) highlights new research published in the April edition of Journal of Food Science. It examines 'the first known public database' - created by the USP - 'compiling reports on food fraud and economically motivated adulteration in food highlight the most fraud-prone ingredients in the food supply'. [more inside]
NEW ENGLAND BOILED DINNER
From the How To Be A Retronaut archives: U.S SENATE DINING MENU, Thursday August 27th, 1964
Polyphasic Sleep Rants
Whoever claims to be on a perpetual polyphasic schedule must be either suffering from a sleep disorder, or be a liar, a mutant, or a person with a mulishly stubborn iron-will that lets him plod through the daily torture of sleep deprivationPolyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths | Polyphasic Sleep: 5 Years Later!
(SLYT) A rap song in 15/8 time.
15/8. Some fun with a non-standard time signatures. 5/4. And Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows.
A dreamer of dreams that is no longer
Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, creator of the 911, head of Porsche Cars, has died. A sportscar most people can only ever dream of driving, yet even master it's full potential... Its cousin model the 935 won the LeMans in 1976. A marvel of engineering, built with a mid-rear engine, no other car debatably seems as gracious in elegance and as robust in power. Ferdinand Alexander Porsche creator of the 911, will certainly have touched many in awe, inspiration and confidence with his brilliant conception.
"If you want real police brutaity, wait until I tell you what they served me for lunch!"
It ran for 8 seasons, from 1975 to 1982. Took home three Emmys out of 32 nominations. The Captain's badge (#233451) is on display at the Smithsonian Museum. Dennis Farina, who worked as a Chicago policeman before turning to acting, reportedly once called it the most realistic cop show ever seen on television. But unlike other cop shows, there were no car chases or shootouts, and the show rarely left the precinct. Out of the 170 episodes of Barney Miller that were produced, 68 from the first four seasons can be seen in their entirety on Crackle's YouTube channel*. Take a seat, have a brownie and check out some classic television. [more inside]
John Kiriakou
An ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou has been indicted under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists. [more inside]
cccrrrrrraaaaaaaaasssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!
Slow Motion Car Crash: Jonathan Schipper’s art installation uses hydraulics to crash a VW Golf into a wall at 7mm per hour over the course of a four weeks. [more inside]
The Etymological Evolution of Dude, from Dandy Man to Anyone
"Dude" is a term with quite a history, possibly starting in the mid 19th century with Erastus Brooks, an editor of the New York Express (NYT excerpt, link to full PDF). In writing, "the "dude" craze began in New York City in 1883," apparently starting with the poem The True Origin and History of "The Dude", published on 14 January 1883, in the New York World. As the "vapid fops" traveled west, dude ranches sprang up, catering to city slickers. Some eight decades after the term proliferated in New York City, "dude" was applied to any male in African American vernacular. In 1969, dude was defined as nice guy, a regular sort of person [YT short clip] in Easy Rider, then claimed by surfers, as represented by Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982. Four years later, everyone loves Ferris Bueller, "he's a righteous dude." Baseketball turns the one word into a conversation in 1998, the same year El Duderino claims the term as a personal title. By 2011, the word, in some circles, has come around to the beginning, with Dude-itors, laid-back editors, the opposite of the "tightly wound, hyper-neurotic editor of yesteryear." [more inside]
The Easter Bunny Is Comin' To Town.
Monster's Den Chronicles
Monster's Den Chronicles is a turn-based Flash dungeon-crawler RPG with combat mechanics reminiscent of turn-based strategy game stalwart Disciples II. [more inside]
More pigs! More potions!
Just in time for Flash Fun Friday, they came out with a sequel to Pigs Can Fly (previously): Pigs Will Fly! Enjoy!
Attica On The Beach
There is a small jail on Santa Catalina Island. And apparently, it pays to be sent there, when you're a pro golfer....
A snack of classical mechanics
What is the Dzhanibekov effect? Known as the Tennis Racket theorem in English and documented by Vladimir Dzhanibekov in 1985 space, it is the result of unstable rotation about a principle axis.
Say It With Safty Pins
The SAFETY PIN REVIEW is a new, weekly literary magazine featuring fiction of less than 30 words, with a major D.I.Y. twist: in addition to being published online, each story is hand-painted onto a cloth back patch, which is attached (via safety pins) to one of our operatives—a collective network of authors, punks, thieves and anarchists—who wear it everywhere they go for a week. [more inside]
Share the road.
The driver of the LANTA bus, identified as Richard Gubish, Jr., saw the crash in his rear view mirror and also saw the driver attempting to get away. Mr. Gubish took immediate and decisive action... [YT] [more inside]
Mosh Pits
STOP GOING IN THE BEDROOM
Cityscape, Searchlights and Time lapse: Oh My! (SLYT)
Timelapse Intersection Articulée à Montréal In October, 2011, the Contemporary Museum of Monteral presented "Intersection Articulée", an interactive installation from Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. It was composed of 18 projectors of 10k watts each, visible from ~9 miles (15km) away. Here's some time lapse video results, with music.
April 5
This is not a (necessary) test
Choosing Wisely encourages physicians and patients to discuss whether certain medical tests and procedures are unnecessary, especially those that can cause harm. The site offers nine lists of Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question about the most appropriate care for a patient, including lists for cardiology and oncology. [more inside]
Courtyard Marriott in Times Square is spying on and manipulating your Internet
Web developer Justin Watt was staying at the Courtyard Marriott in Times Square, New York and using the hotel wifi to access the Internet. He noticed some strangeness on his website... and on every other website he visited (not to mention YouTube was broken.)
In short, Marriott is injecting JavaScript into the HTML of every webpage its hotel customers view for the purpose of injecting ads (and in the meantime, breaking YouTube). Marriott’s wireless internet service provider is a third-party company called Hotel Internet Services, so it is possible, though unlikely, that Marriott doesn’t know what’s going on. But it’s crazy to me that I’m paying $368 a night for a hotel room, and this is how I get treated.[more inside]
Weatherscan Music Station
Do you love Weatherscan? Sure, we all do. But what do you do when you want to listen to the soothing and comforting Weatherscan soundtrack but can't get to a television? A kindly internet user has provided a playlist for just such an occasion. If your usual go-to weather is Local on the 8s, The Weather Channel also thoughtfully provides their month-by-month playlist.
There Is Joy In Mudville Again!
Opening Day is upon us once again. As always, there are a ton of predictions being made for the season. [more inside]
"In Calabar they have over two hundred inches of rain a year. This night they proved it. Everybody got soaked. It's a wonder no one got electrocuted."
Seven intense minutes of Fela Kuti and The Africa '70 performing in a night club in Calabar, a small Nigerian port city, in 1971, filmed by Ginger Baker. Seven years later, in one of their last performances before The Africa '70 disbanded, they performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival: V.I.P. (Vagabonds In Power), Power Show, Pansa Pansa (part 2), Cross Examination of the African Colonial Soldier.
Want to find out more about that relative on the 1940 census? Good luck.
It's getting harder to do genealogical research using the SSDI, and this bill might make it impossible. [more inside]
Roger Spottiswoode's "Under Fire"
Roger Spottiswoode looks back on his 1983 film Under Fire.
Go into the light(bulb)...
Luminaris from imaginative independent Argentine animator Juan Pablo Zaramella (show reel), a short film using pixilation (stop motion using live actors) to tell a light humorous story. via Colossal [more inside]
Yes, I *Do* Feel Something Rising
Is that it?
It has been no secret that Hillary Clinton has been a ferociously dedicated Secretary of State, visiting 95 countries and keeping mum about both the 2012 elections and her prospects after 2013. But when a photo of her checking her BlackBerry (still popular in DC!) while wearing Chanel-style sunglasses suddenly went viral, a Tumblr was born.
Black turtleneck optional
In most racing games you control the car. In this one you are the road (Gameplay Video). [more inside]
Navassa Island
Navassa Island is a small uninhabited Caribbean island 74 km off the coast of Haiti. Both the US and Haiti claim sovereignty over the island, though Haiti claims it in it's constitution. Discovered in 1498 and explored in 1504 as part of Columbus's expedition when he became stranded on Jamaica and sent a canoe to Hispaniola; the canoes ran into the island on the way and two Spaniards and several Indians who arrived on the island drank contaminated water killing most of the group. The island was avoided until 1857 when it was claimed by the US as part of the Guano Islands Act despite an earlier Haitian claim. Working conditions were very harsh on the island, manually moving over a ton guano from mines via rail cars to the landing point at Lulu Bay which sacked the guano for transport on the S.S. Romance. In 1889 the workers started a rebellion that killed several supervisors and lead to a series of court cases that affirmed the constitutionality of the Guano Act. The island was abandoned in 1898 during the Spanish-American war forced the operator, Navassa Phosphate Company of Baltimore to file for bankruptcy. In 1917 a lighthouse was built since the island posed a hazard for ships entering the newly built Panama Canal. The island has remained uninhabited, save a few Haitian fishermen that camp now and again, though it is highly coveted by amateur radio operators seeking a DX call-sign of KP1. The island has been bounced around several federal agencies until 1999 when the United States Fish and Wildlife Service cataloged it as a National Wildlife Refuge. In 2009 NOAA's Southeast Fisheries Science launched an expedition to catalog the flora and fauna of the reefs of the island, including a few feral cats roaming on the island.
#Help, #sheep #missing.
Twitter is being used as a crime-fighting tool by a tech-savvy village chief in Kenya. Francis Kariuki, the administrative chief of Lanet Umoja, has used the micro-blogging site for everything from tracking down missing sheep to stopping home invasions.
VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO: Queen Latifah
Images from silver and cyanide
"The basic foundation of this camera was built on the American spirit. This country is amazing, the people in it are amazing, and I believe in one way or another we are all connected. This project was created to tell our story." Ian Ruhter decided to take his life savings to go back to wet plate collodion photography, using his van as a camera and making giant images on metal that cost him roughly $500 an exposure. [more inside]
The Makeover Fairy!
"I am very real"
"In October of 1973, Bruce Severy — a 26-year-old English teacher at Drake High School, North Dakota — decided to use Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, as a teaching aid in his classroom. The next month, on November 7th, the head of the school board, Charles McCarthy, demanded that all 32 copies be burned in the school's furnace as a result of its "obscene language." Other books soon met with the same fate.
On the 16th of November, Kurt Vonnegut sent McCarthy the following letter. He didn't receive a reply."
"This is not the atmosphere I grew up with."
A Message from a Republican on Climate Change: I'm going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I'm a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I'm a Penn State meteorologist, and the weather maps I'm staring at are making me very uncomfortable.
Life on the Edge of a Very High Place...
Life on the Edge is a series by Detroit based photographer Dennis Maitland, in which he documents himself hanging out in some vertigo-inducing locations. [more inside]
Personal Finance on a Napkin
Napkin finance. Each sketch links to a post about investing. From a financial planner best known for losing his house.
Polar Bear Threat on "Ice".. Giving "Chills" To Environmentalist. Puns also deemed healthy
We all know Polar Bears are at risk, right?
"Not so fast!" says a new study completed by the Government of Nunavut on the populations on the Western Coast of Hudson Bay. The populations are actually increasing in number.
This is something that has long been argued by Inuit who live in the area. (video) Inuit are chaulking this up as a win for Inuit Traditional Knowledge. The numbers are said to be confounding doomsayers. [more inside]
"Not so fast!" says a new study completed by the Government of Nunavut on the populations on the Western Coast of Hudson Bay. The populations are actually increasing in number.
This is something that has long been argued by Inuit who live in the area. (video) Inuit are chaulking this up as a win for Inuit Traditional Knowledge. The numbers are said to be confounding doomsayers. [more inside]
APPENDIX G: CONTENTS OF A PIT
RPG blog Hack & Slash's Courtney Campbell has written a pair of expansive guides on trap design (PDF) and treasure (PDF). New treasure and traps are also a mainstay of the blog itself. [more inside]
A hipster schoolhouse started by a pair of underemployed polymaths
On a recent Monday night, a gaggle of 20-somethings crammed into a former Curves fitness center along the industrial edge of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. The storefront gym had been carved into two classrooms... It was just another school night at [Metafilter's* own] Brooklyn Brainery, a hipster schoolhouse started by a pair of underemployed polymaths, where students can learn abstruse subjects like the secret lives of bacteria, taught by teachers with few teaching credentials. Tuition is $5 to $30, enrollment takes place online and PayPal is accepted. [more inside]
0x10c
Notch, the creator of Minecraft has announced his new game: 0x10c.
The unique thing about this space simulator is that each player will have a fully functioning emulated 16 bit CPU that can be used to control your entire ship, or just to play games on while waiting for a large mining operation to finish.
You can find all the latest information about the game at the Unofficial FAQ
BBBBBRRRRRRRMMMM... BBBRRRRRMMMMMM... BBBRRRRMMMMMM... BBBRRRRMMMM...
Jim Marshall, builder of guitar amplifiers, has gone silent at the age of 88.
Perhaps one day, the volume knob will surpass him.
A Serious Comic about Syria's History.
Soccer is boring
Soccer's Heavy Boredom: It's true. Mostly nothing happens. Why do we keep watching?
a brave man
When John Carlos raised his fist in a black power salute at the 1968 Olympics, it changed 20th-century history – and his own life – for ever. How does he feel about it now?
To Wear Charity
Scott Harrison, the founder of charitywater.org, was in many ways "uniquely qualified" [his words] to set a life goal for global clean water with 100% of the donations to this charity transparently and deliberately accounted for via GPS photos and the random live stream of a well-digging! Interview
[Warning: Kevin Rose inside] [more inside]
April 4
Watercolor, Toner, Terrain
Dirty Pictures
Dirty Pictures [1h30m] is a documentary (trailer [1m30s]) about Alexander Shulgin, his life, his family, the drugs he has developed, the people he has affected, the boundaries of experience he has explored, the effects he has had on society, and the understanding of the mind and the psychedelic experience which have resulted from his experiments and chemical creations.
`The Old Man and the Sea` stop motion
Ein Stop-Motion-Film, inspiriert von Ernest Hemingway's Kurzgeschichte “the old man and the sea“
A Teen’s Brave Response
A very touching letter. From the mother of a gay teen about his response to the post on the blog Single Dad Laughing titled I’m Christian, unless you’re gay.
"To find out more, take a voyage down to your public library. It's all in books!"
Before Quantum Leap, there was a another scifi tv show where two time traveling Voyagers tried to put right what once went wrong….. [more inside]
The art of Kevin J. Weir, who enjoys bears, space, and GIFs
Kevin J. Weir is an artist, making ads (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and more interestingly, not ads. In the latter category, he has made 3 stand-alone sites: the Flux Machine, a tumblr of public domain images turned into animated GIFs, ranging from amusing to surreal (with an extra dash of Lovecraft), which Cartoon Brew likened to Terry Gilliam and Stan VanDerBeek; Nyan Waits, another spin-off of the Nyan Cat meme/theme, now with more Tom Waits; and Loud Portraits, an interactive portrait gallery. [more inside]
Some ball.
Synapse Magazine
Late 70's electronic music magazine, Synapse - complete issues scanned and waiting for you.
Outta the way HAL, humans have work to do
Flashback MacOS botnet
Flashback is the first significant MacOS botnet, reportedly infecting and controlling over half a million Macs. Flashback has been around for since September 2011 but recently got a boost with a Trojan that exploits a security hole in Apple's Java distribution; a vulnerable Mac can be infected simply by visiting a web site, no user password required. Apple released a fix for the Java exploit yesterday, some six weeks after Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle released their fixes.
A different kind of Google goggles.
Google has revealed details of its research into augmented reality glasses: "We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t". There's a video to explore how it might work, too.
"The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world."
Literary Style: 15 Writers' Bedrooms: Truman Capote, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, Alexander Masters, William S. Burroughs, Slyvia Plath, Henry David Thoreau, Victor Hugo, Emily Dickinson, Miranda Seymour, Mary Roach, Marcel Proust, Michael Morpurgo, William Faulkner.
Just One More Game.
Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games.' Does what it says on the box: plus, cute space ship graphics and exploding comments. [more inside]
I Will Not Question Marbury v. Madison
Judge Jerry Smith (R) of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the Department of Justice to do an unusual homework assignment: present him with a three-page single spaced letter specifically addressing the position of the Attorney General and DOJ the authority of the federal courts to conduct judicial review.
The "tantrum" or "brave take on the left" depending upon your viewpoint, has legal scholars scratching their heads as to whether DOJ would have to comply. So far, Attorney General Holder has indicated that DOJ will "respond appropriately."
"their purposes are entirely opaque to me, as are the purposes of so many others"
"their purposes are entirely opaque to me, as are the purposes of so many others" was the first (eerily self-descriptive) 'card' I got in Strategies, a bot in the tradition of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies but with most content fed from horse_ebooks. Although, I think that is a quote from a terrifying Cronenberg student film, Crimes of the Future. The 'purpose' of this bot, according to the description is "for use when you're lacking inspiration, or make your own game of it."
"Bringing up the women’s question — I mean the women’s fiction question — is not unlike mentioning the national debt at a dinner party."
If “The Marriage Plot,” by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to “Women’s Fiction,” that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated? Certainly “The Marriage Plot,” Eugenides’s first novel since his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex,” was poised to receive tremendous literary interest regardless of subject matter, but the presence of a female protagonist, the gracefulness, the sometimes nostalgic tone and the relationship-heavy nature of the book only highlight the fact that many first-rate books by women and about women’s lives never find a way to escape “Women’s Fiction” and make the leap onto the upper shelf where certain books, most of them written by men (and, yes, some women — more about them later), are prominently displayed and admired.So begins The Second Shelf: On the Rules of Literary Fiction for Men and Women, an essay in the New York Times by novelist Meg Wolitzer. She was interviewed about her essay in the NYT Book Review podcast (mp3 link, interview starts at about 18:30). Wolitzer references the classic 1998 essay by Francine Prose, Scent of a woman's ink: Are women writers really inferior?, and further back in time you find Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, which, as literary critic Ruth Franklin notes, still sounds fresh today.
The truth is out there...on the internet.
Displays of movie-making techniques
A comic strip and a video clip that illustrate displays of movie-making techniques.
"We put the animate in the inanimate."
Worst Company in America 2012
Watching paint dry just got interesting
Phyllis Toburen combines painting and macro-photography to create lovely sculptural enamel pieces. [more inside]
Baloney Mass Index
A new study conducted by Dr. Eric Braverman, president of the nonprofit Path Foundation in New York City, and Dr. Nirav Shah, New York State’s Commissioner of Health suggests that the Body Mass Index significantly underestimates the rate of obesity in America, especially for women. Based on BMI, about one-third of Americans are considered obese, but when other methods of measuring obesity are used, that number may be closer to 60%. [more inside]
Who the hell is ‘Prof. Brian J. Ford’? And did he say this in 1900?
"My greatest regret is that I'm not a sociopath."
"The fantasy of the sociopath, then, represents an attempt to escape from the inescapably social nature of human experience." Adam Kotsko on Why We Love Sociopaths.
Rhyme for rhyme til the mic stops working
Kimbra performs Settle Down live at SXSW, looping her voice and singing, following in the live sampling footsteps of Imogen Heap and TuneYards.
They Shoot Pigs, Don't They?
Feral swine (aka feral hogs, wild pigs) incur an estimated $1 billion (US) in property damage and control costs, according to the USDA (.pdf). They rip up crops, root up native plans, injure and kill other wildlife and carry disease. As of April 1, 2012, Michigan's Department of Natural Resources has outlawed them, permitting "any licensed hunter [to] shoot feral swine on sight." The relevant Invasive Species Order (.pdf), and its convoluted implementation, has a number of hog farmers up in arms over the state's new ability to slaughter farm-raised pigs that meet the state DNR's description of "feral swine." [more inside]
Once upon a time, consumption meant you were thin and sick
How America Is Making the Whole World Fat and Unhealthy It is hardly news that the United States faces epidemic health problems linked to poor diets. Nearly two out of every five Americans are obese. But according to a press release from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, "The West is now exporting diabetes and heart disease to developing countries, along with the processed foods that line the shelves of global supermarkets. By 2030, more than 5 million people will die each year before the age of 60 from non-communicable diseases linked to diets."
[...]
De Schutter, whose work usually focuses on ending hunger, just published a new report saying, "The right to food cannot be reduced to a right not to starve. It is an inclusive right to an adequate diet providing all the nutritional elements an individual requires to live a healthy and active life, and the means to access them."
Rain delays bring out the best in all of us
What do in-state college baseball rivals do when there's a rain delay? Two words: dance off. [more inside]
Borg Cube vs Death Star
Borg Cube vs Death Star ...Let's hear for the geometric learning aids of the Cosmos, a big sphere and a big cube. Yay!
April 3
Amazon from A to Z
The Seattle Times has just published a largely unfavorable four-part series about Seattle-based Amazon.com. In Part 1, the newspaper questions how much Amazon is doing for the local community. Part 2 suggests that Amazon is damaging the publishing industry. Part 3 asks if Amazon's tax-free status gives it an unfair advantage. And Part 4 wonders whether Amazon is bad for its own workers.
Where cabs and omnibuses are ruthlessly driven against them
In the frantic pace of modern life, it is often easy to forget what life was once like for those who built the world we now live in.
More from Bishopsgate library here and the Institute itself is worth a poke around
Call Me Ehsaan
He has it memorized???!?!?!?
Rob Paulsen, voice actor extraordinaire, performs Yakko's World... live... from memory. [more inside]
full of ★☆★☆★
OMG SPACE aims to illustrate the scale and the grandeur of our solar system, as well as illustrate through the use of infographics our work in the exploration of our solar system with various spacecraft. [more inside]
Occupy May Day: Not Your Usual General Strike
The U.S. Occupy movement has called for a general strike - or something like it – on May 1. May Day.
Most Occupy May Day advocates understand that a conventional general strike is not in the cards. What they are advocating instead is a day in which members of the “99%” take whatever actions they can to withdraw from participation in the normal workings of the economic system -- by not working if that is an option, but also by not shopping, not banking, and not engaging in other “normal” everyday activities, and by joining demonstrations, marches, disruptions, occupations, and other mass actions.[more inside]
National Magazine Awards 2012
Stay away from my afterlife
Pikachunes.
Out-of-context-filter: the sometimes dorky, sometimes sweet (and sometimes quite competent) music and videos of New Zealand's Pikachunes. [more inside]
Wirele$$tap
These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps. After a flurry of public records requests to over 200 police departments, the ACLU has obtained a trove of documents detailing police tracking of cell phone location, call logs and more, including a price list for subscriber information from every major US carrier. [more inside]
Sounds familiar
There was more to the L.A. hit music sound than the Wrecking Crew (previously). The Ron Hicklin Singers (Facebook page) lent their distinctive sound to movie and TV theme songs, and as you'll hear in this demo, were the secret sound behind certain prefab bands.
Pot police target political dissidents
"Dozens of federal agents on Monday raided the Oakland businesses and apartment of Richard Lee, the state's most prominent advocate for the legalization and regulation of marijuana, carting away loads of pot and belongings but not revealing the purpose of their investigation." ... Today, "[f]our of the six medical marijuana providers who are suing the U.S. government over last year's raids of pot businesses across Montana have been arrested on federal drug charges."
National Poetry Month. Yay!
April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, the Academy of American Poets is having 30 different poets each curate their Tumblr blog for 24 hours, posting whatever they please. [more inside]
Austin Beer Fail
Over the weekend, Austin had a beer festival. It was a disaster. An apology was offered on facebook. But it looks like this wasn't the first time the organizers tried this game.
I am zucchini - and I am in space.
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (SLYT)
This film Was nominated (and won) the Oscar for best animated short feature. If you love books and words then this silent 15 minute piece is worth your time. Here is the backstory.
To-Go-Bots
MIT is leading an NSF-funded project with researchers from University of Pennsylvania and Harvard that aims to enable anyone to "design, customize and print a specialized robot in a matter of hours." Constructed from "cyber-physical primitives," the robots (some early examples here) would be able to be made in bulk on demand and could help change the entire workflow of device and robot creation, from engineering to warehousing to assembly.
Honey Hunters of Nepal
High in the Himalayan foothills, fearless Gurung men risk their lives to harvest the massive nests of the world's largest honeybee. [more inside]
2012 NBA Playoff bandwagon rankings
2, 12, 1, 9, 4: Big Money. No Whammies.
On May 19, 1984, an unemployed ice cream truck driver named Michael Larson went on Press Your Luck and over the course of two episodes, took home more money than had ever been won in the history of television: $110,237 -- to the shock of the show’s producers and host, the late Peter Tomarken. How did he do it? The show’s game board had only 5 patterns of 18 squares, and Mr. Larson had memorized them all. After the show, CBS tried to disqualify him but couldn’t, because Larson hadn’t done anything illegal. But they did refuse to allow those episodes to be aired in syndication. So, they didn’t re-air until 2003, when the Game Show Network produced a Tomarken-hosted documentary about Mr. Larson’s incredible win: Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal. [more inside]
Time To Corner The Market On Passenger Jet Wing Assemblies!
Economies of Scale is a free, web-based multiplayer business/commerce simulation game under development by Scott Rubyton (aka Ratan Joyce). Players use starting capital to build production/wholesale/retail businesses from the ground up in a basic economic model, competing for market share while collaborating through business-to-business trading of goods and materials. It's more fun than getting an MBA! Also much less expensive. [more inside]
Sacred text
Meg Hitchcock creates intricate collages out of individual letters from spiritual and philosophical texts (via).
Where are you on the global pay scale?
Where are you on the global pay scale? A nice calculator that shows how your monthly salary compares to the average for your country and for the world. But before drawing too many sweeping conclusions, check out the notes that explain how the numbers are calculated, and the difficulties with trying to calculate any such thing. [more inside]
'I'm not in favour of potchkying with it, but if something's bothering you...'
Is a ’director’s cut’ ever a good idea? The director's cut has been a feature of the home video landscape for years, getting a significant boost from multi-disk DVD and now Blu-Ray sets. There are some pretty bad ones around, but which are the best? Movie sites like Shortlist, IGN Movies, MoviesOnline.ca, FilmWad and Empire have all given us lists of the best (and worst), and online discussions have suggested others (Blade Runner tops most lists, but beyond that they diverge significantly). Where do you start when that two-hour epic isn't epic enough?
“If you can't find the creature, be the creature”
How Video Game Sounds Are Made: a brief but fascinating look inside the world of video game sound production.
How to be a fan of problematic things.
Rock 'n' Roll as the crystallized, mythologized Wild West
Closed Frontier: Is rock over? "Rock ’n’ roll is to 21st-century America what the Wild West was to 20th-century America: a closed frontier, ripe for mass mythology....Exciting new music still thrives in the subgenres, but modern musicians draw increasing amounts of inspiration from tradition, not originality. The sexagenarian Rolling Stones do serial victory laps around the world, just as an aging Buffalo Bill toured America and Europe in the 1880s and 90s, performing rope and horse tricks alongside Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull."
Timeless Message
The story behind the iconic poster Keep Calm and Carry On rediscovered in 1991 at Barter Books, has been covered here before, but not in this lovely short video. And not with the new iPhone app.
Finally, a flying car!
Video: the Terrafugia Transition flying car goes for a drive and a flight. Press release. Previously. This is the first demonstrated flight of the vehicle at significant altitude (above ground effect).
How Much BPA Exposure Is Dangerous?
US Feds Reject Petition To Ban BPA In Food -- "...recent studies done by government researchers at the request of regulatory agencies suggest it's very unlikely that BPA poses a health risk to people." (NPR Audio) [more inside]
Psychotropic medication efficacy and publication bias
Antipsychotics: "The magnitude of publication bias found for antipsychotics was less than that found previously for antidepressants, possibly because antipsychotics demonstrate superiority to placebo more consistently."
Antidepressants: "We found a bias toward the publication of positive results. Not only were positive results more likely to be published, but studies that were not positive, in our opinion, were often published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome. [...] Using both approaches, we found that the efficacy of this drug class is less than would be gleaned from an examination of the published literature alone. According to the published literature, the results of nearly all of the trials of antidepressants were positive. In contrast, FDA analysis of the trial data showed that roughly half of the trials had positive results." Previously [more inside]
Antidepressants: "We found a bias toward the publication of positive results. Not only were positive results more likely to be published, but studies that were not positive, in our opinion, were often published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome. [...] Using both approaches, we found that the efficacy of this drug class is less than would be gleaned from an examination of the published literature alone. According to the published literature, the results of nearly all of the trials of antidepressants were positive. In contrast, FDA analysis of the trial data showed that roughly half of the trials had positive results." Previously [more inside]
April Fools for Physicists
Some physicists celebrate April Fools Day by posting spurious papers to the arXiv preprint server.
Non-detection of the Tooth Fairy at Optical Wavelengths
Non-detection of the Tooth Fairy at Optical Wavelengths
We report a non-detection, to a limiting magnitude of V = 18.4, of the elusive entity commonly described as the Tooth Fairy. We review various physical models and conclude that follow-up observations must precede an interpretation of our result.[more inside]
“probably the best possible edit of the Star Wars prequels given the footage released and available”
Topher Grace Edited The ‘Star Wars’ Prequels Into One 85-Minute Movie and We Saw It Grace’s Star Wars III.5: The Editor Strikes Back still manages to tell a complete, surprisingly moving story of Anakin Skywalker’s rise and fall even while making some severe cuts [more inside]
Executive Compensation
The Incentive Bubble (ungated pdf) - "The fraying of the compact of American capitalism by rising income inequality and repeated governance crises is disturbing. But misallocations of financial, real, and human capital arising from the financial-incentive bubble are much more worrisome to those concerned with the competitiveness of the American economy." [more inside]
The Broderick-Terry Duel
On September 13, 1859, a former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court shot and killed a U.S. Senator in what has been called the last notable duel in American history. The duel itself can be interpreted as a sort of proxy battle between pro- and anti-slavery groups of the time, and a harbinger of the American Civil War (which would begin a year and half later).
"At least it's an ethos."
What do American "values voters" actually value? The American Values Project gathers answers.
When Corporations abandoned the 99%
In 2010, the top 500 U.S. corporations - the Fortune 500 – generated $10.7 trillion in sales, reaped a whopping $702 billion in profits, and employed 24.9 million people around the globe. Historically, when these corporations have invested in the productive capabilities of their American employees, we’ve had lots of well-paid and stable jobs.
That was the case a half century ago.
April 2
The Wrecking Crew
Bands often don't seem to be able to play on stage the way they did on their album; and we accept that for a lot of reasons having to do with the conditions, the production facilities and the sheer number of takes that were probably involved. But for a whole generation of hit music, there was often a more basic reason: it wasn't them playing on the album in the first place.
For nearly a decade, if you were an L.A. producer and you wanted to record a hit single, you'd call in The Wrecking Crew. Members of The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and The Mamas and the Papas would step aside as The Wrecking Crew laid down the instrumental tracks. Then, the members of the main band would come back to add the vocals on top.The above link goes to the OPB radio story I listened to this morning, with an embedded player. Official site for the book.
"By the way, it's not in the goddamed cat and it's not in Newt, either. I would never be that cruel."
Choosing the Road to Prosperity
One of the more conservative of the Fed's regional banks, the Dallas Federal Reserve, says "too-big-to-fail" banks must be broken up. Now. An interesting and important essay(pdf) from a most unlikely source.(via)
All The Time in the World
Eric Lowen, of Lowen and Navarro, passed away last week after battling ALS for 8 years. You've probably heard their songs, in one form or another, over the years. [more inside]
"Suffering is a key essential to great writing. But there’s probably enough suffering in your life already—or suffering will come on its own."
Supreme Court Gives Officers Unlimited Strip Search Power
In admitting that they have no expertise in running a corrections system, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that officers have unfettered authority to conduct full strip searches of any arrested individual, even for the most minor of offenses and in situations where officers lack any suspicion of contraband. The ruling comes days after the NY Times ran an analysis suggesting that the current supreme court is the most conservative court in modern history.
REAR WINDOW Time-lapse
a never ending rube goldberg
Watch the world's most extraordinary 'kinetic sculpture' "From a duck to a skeleton to a robot dinosaur: scientists created this fabulous kinetic sculpture, called On the Move, to demonstrate to children the concept of energy transfer. "
Do the Trash Compactor!
Dancing with Han Solo is a real thing that exists.
Keith Apicary's music video audition
I'm the One That's Cool
"These are wonderfully dorky and earnest people doing geeky things, and we love them for it." [more inside]
Eulogy for a pretty swell guy
Young Edd Gould always enjoyed drawing comics of himself and his friends. Growing up in the internet age, his doodles evolved into Flash animations of increasing complexity, and in time Edd and pals Tom Ridgewell and Matt Hargreaves teamed up to produce an "Eddsworld" series of online webtoons and comics.
At first crude and halting, the group's "eddisodes" progressed from surreal shorts and one-shots into full-fledged productions that pushed the boundaries of amateur web animation, with expressive characters, full soundtracks, complex effects, and a fast-paced, off-kilter sense of humor: MovieMakers - Spares - WTFuture - Rock Bottom - Hammer & Fail (2).
At its height, the college co-op was producing shorts for Mitchell & Webb and the UN Climate Change Conference, fielding offers from Paramount and Cartoon Network, and racking up millions of hits on YouTube.
Work slowed, however, when Gould was diagnosed with leukemia -- a relatively survivable form, though, and Gould carried on working gamely through his hospital stays. So it came as a shock last week when Matt and Tom announced that Edd had passed away, prompting an outpouring of grief and gratitude from all the fans he'd entertained and inspired in his short 23 years.
David Lynch's All-American Spring Break.
"Crazy Clown Time" is the new music video by filmmaker and musician David Lynch. It's kinda not safe for work, or life.
Panoramic Photographer
Will Pearson is a London-based professional panoramic photographer. His work comprises cityscapes, landscape panoramas and 360 virtual tours. There is an emphasis on capturing images at a massive resolution. This one of Sheikh Zayed Road Dubai is my favorite. Will takes time for fun too with The Rain Project.
Xkcd: Umwelt
The outrage was from the Germans
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of his first novel, Fatherland, writer Robert Harris spoke to John Mullan at The Guardian Book Club (Highlights, The interview in full (autoplay)) [more inside]
Law and Order: Yellowstone Style
A Death in Yellowstone: On the Trail of a Grizzly Bear. a gripping story and a well written article in Slate, by Jessica Grose.
Includes a similarly remarkable photo feature. [more inside]
Is Procreation Immoral?
Elizabeth Kolbert explores the case against kids. Drawing from the work of philosophy professors David Benatar, Christine Overall and economist Bryan Caplan, Kolbert examines the justifications for reproducing.
It’s not like it is in the movies, Sarah.
Absolute Beginners. Lena Dunham, Liz Phair, Bethany Cosentino, Sarah Silverman, Miranda July, Shannon Woodward, Krista, and Pamela Des Barres on the first time they had sex (with a couple of first-kiss stories for good measure).
The Mixtape Lost at Antikythera
25 Years of IBM’s OS/2!
25 years ago today, IBM released it's next-generation operating system OS/2. It never took the world by storm as planned, but it also never really went away.
A look at OS/2: Beginnings - OS/2 1.0 - OS/2 1.1 - OS/2 1.2-1.3 (screenshots) - OS/2 2.0 (screenshots) - OS/2 Warp - OS/2 Warp 4 (screenshots) - eComstation
A look at OS/2: Beginnings - OS/2 1.0 - OS/2 1.1 - OS/2 1.2-1.3 (screenshots) - OS/2 2.0 (screenshots) - OS/2 Warp - OS/2 Warp 4 (screenshots) - eComstation
The Best Political Snark Award Goes To . . .
A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney Does what it says on the package. With diagrams. (SLNYT)
"Science fiction is, after all, the art of extrapolation." ~ Michael Dirda
Daily Science Fiction: Original Science Fiction and Fantasy every weekday. Welcome to Daily Science Fiction, an online magazine of science fiction short stories. We publish "science fiction" in the broad sense of the word: This includes sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream—whatever you'd likely find in the science fiction section of your local bookstore. Our stories are mostly short short fiction each Monday through Thursday, hopefully the right length to read on a coffee break, over lunch, or as a bedtime tale. Friday's weekend stories are longer.
Russian to get back down
Guy climbs star of Kotelnicheskaya Embankment free-handed Because no good Monday shouldn't begin without a jolting dose of vertigo!
Origin Story
The Evolution of the Moon: a cool, short video made with information from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
From Days of Long Ago...
"From days of long ago... from uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend: the legend of Voltron, Defender of the Universe!" [more inside]
You might want to have your surprised face handy.
Curveball comes clean: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression." ... When it is put to him "we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie", he simply replies: "Yes."
A Live Oak Afterlife
On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall at Galveston, Texas - which had previously endured one of the most devastating natural disasters in US history: The 1900 Storm. The waters receded and life went on for most of the island's residents.
The same was not true for the approximately 40,000 live oak trees which were killed in the area by the saltwater stormsurge, many of which were planted just after the hurricane that devastated the island in 1900. One by one, the trees died and had to be removed. Some residents refused to accept this, and instead hired artists to carve the now-dead trees into works of art. Some became sea birds. Some became angels. The trees outside the fire department became a dalmatian staring longingly at an uncapped fire hydrant. Others became frogs and dogs and squirrels. Mermaids and dolphins suddenly jumped out of asphalt and cement. Someone even decided that the town really needed a Tin Woodsman. Another person decided to have a geisha carved on their front lawn. I can only imagine that a very small art critic demanded that Spongebob Squarepants be carved on the side of his or her house. They range in size from 2' tall hoptoads to 20' tall eruptions of seabirds. And they're all on display for you to enjoy!
See a list of sculptures here. And a suggested walking map to view the sculptures here. And a slideshow with many pictures of the sculptures here.
I can see my Grandma from here
The U.S. National Archives today released the returns from the 1940 national census, providing an invaluable resource to historians and genealogists. At the moment, you'll need to know the particular address you want to see--the records are not yet searchable by name. A companion project seeks to fix that by enlisting your help in a crowdsourced project to index the census data. However, if you're looking for a New York address, you can use this clever site from the New York Public Library to look someone up in the 1940 phone book. (FYI, the site seems to be running a bit sluggishly under first-day load, so you may need to be patient.)
The symbols of the periodic table, set to music.
Chris "Daddy" Dave
"Chris Dave (video/sound autoplay) is probably the most dangerous drummer alive. He is totally reinventing just what you can do with drums." – ?uestlove [more inside]
Tolstoy needs to get over himself
An Interview with Yanis Varoufakis
The New Priesthood - "The hapless economist uses the same tools as acclaimed physicists and astronomers. She has trained for years to speak precisely the same language as them, to understand the same advanced mathematics, to deploy most complex statistical methods which are an essential part of the scientific toolbox. It is, understandably, incredibly difficult to accept that her work is a form of higher order superstition; a religion couched in the language of mathematics and statistics. Tragically, this is precisely what it is." [more inside]
"...and then there was silence"
"It was at that point that I noticed a smell. It was faint at first, but soon got stronger. I thought it might be the residual smell of an airbag or of hot rubber from skidding tyres. It wasn’t." A short blog post by a UK policeman responding to a car accident.
April 1
You may hear from heaven almost any time
Arthur C. Clark- 1974, predicting the Internet
Back in 1974, Arthur C. Clark imagined that we would be talking to each other via computers, and even purchasing theater reservations. How absurd!
republicanism: nature or nurture?
The Republican Brain is Chris Mooney's second book investigating the reasons for the beliefs of conservative Americans, following 2005's The Republican War on Science. He asks why identified Republicans reject the scientific consensus on important issues, seemingly against their education achievement, finding an answer in brain structures.
See you at the party, Richter
The newly released trailer for Total Recall (2012) shows a Quaid quite conspicously not getting his ass to Mars. It could all have been different, as many versions of Total Recall 2 have been in the works over the years. Meanwhile is the Robocop remake anything but total recall? And has the American action movie gone kablooey?
Boo to Woo
Maintaining a culture where people feel scared to talk about how they feel or what they think about science (or, perhaps worse, are alienated from interacting with the scientific community so they talk amongst themselves) really isn’t going to do anyone any favours.
Via Not Exactly Rocket Science.
The War Against Youth
The recession didn't gut the prospects of American young people. The Baby Boomers took care of that.
“The time of giving short measure in weighing”
“Kipper und Wipper”: Rogue Traders, Rogue Princes, Rogue Bishops and the German Financial Meltdown of 1621-23
MapsTD = Tower Defense + Google Maps
Mix tower defense games and Google Maps and you get MapsTD.
All my own work
'I'd like 11 and a half tons of resin, please': the artisans behind the artists
Taxing Circuses.
The Dodgers tax. 'The group that paid an astronomical sum for the' The Dodgers baseball 'team will seek big money for broadcast rights. That cost will end up on your pay-TV bill, even if you don't watch sports. But how long can TV services expect the millions of' Americans 'who aren't sports aficionados to pay a premium for channels they don't watch? The demands from sports networks are outsize versions of the increases obtained by other channels; together, they've driven up the average monthly cable bill from $40 to nearly $80 over the last decade. That's far faster than the rate of inflation. This trend seems impossible to sustain.' [more inside]
Back to the electric future
DeLorean goes electric: Due to hit the market in early 2013, the company says the DMC-EV will cost $90,000 (£57,000) and is aiming for a first production run of 300 vehicles.
"The one institution that can never say no to anybody is jail."
"If you think health care in America is bad, you should look at mental health care," says Steve Leifman, who works as a special advisor on criminal justice and mental health for the Florida Supreme Co " Fifty years ago, the U.S. had nearly 600,000 state hospital beds for people suffering from mental illness. Today, because of federal and state funding cuts, that number has dwindled to 40,000. When the government began closing state-run hospitals in the 1980s, people suffering from mental illness had nowhere to go. Without proper treatment and care, many ended up in the last place anyone wants to be." Of course, it's not just a problem confined to the US.
“Digitize Her!”
Earth, 2147. The legacy of the Metal Wars, where man fought machines—and machines won. Bio-Dreads — monstrous creations that hunt down human survivors... and digitize them!In 1987, before he created Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski was a writer for Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, a live-action sci-fi show for kids. 24 episodes were produced. Straczynski wrote or co-wrote 14 of them, including multi-episode plot arcs. A line of interactive toys brought the battle into kids’ living rooms, and Captain Power was also one of the very first shows on television to feature computer animation in every episode. But in an attempt to appeal to both children and the adults who watched with them, the campy show included some concepts and scenes critics deemed too violent for children and lasted only a single season in syndication. The full run of the show has now been uploaded to Youtube. [more inside]
19th Century Maps Drawn By Children
The David Rumsey Map Collection presents 19th-century maps, drawn by children. Relics of an approach to the teaching of geography through the copying of existing maps and atlases, many of these maps are stunning in their detail and elegance--though not always in their accuracy. Also, I'll be damned if one of the teachers mentioned didn't create something that looks an awful lot like an infographic. [Via]
Five feet high and twisting.
Drawception
Draw Something meets the telephone game: Drawception.
Gullible. Dictionary. You know the rest.
April Fools' Day On The Web is a list of websites running April Fools' gags. The list is updated througout the day as more sites are submitted by anyone who comes across them. [more inside]
Google & NASCAR introduce autonomous race car
Google partners with NASCAR to introduce an autonomous racing car. # 10^100, of course.