February 13, 2013

The testicles story, any sex stuff, and literary back stabbings

I realized that if something had happened to Henry James' testicles, that my friends didn't know about it, because if they did, it'd just be weird that they didn't mention it - given what we were talking about. And I thought this was sort of neat because one of my friends had done his Ph.D. on James, and even he didn't know about the guy's self-castration! I instantly resolved to solve the mystery.
            "Look," I said, exited now, "I'm pretty sure something happened down there, so I'm going to check it out. And when I do find out - "
            "You'll let us know.
            "We'll look forward to it."
posted by carsonb at 11:10 PM PST - 23 comments

One Billion Rising

What does ONE BILLION look like? On 14 February 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION. Watch live, from around the globe, as women and men demand an end to violence against women. [more inside]
posted by what's her name at 10:09 PM PST - 54 comments

"He tends to exaggerate"

Thor Holm Hansen, (the Outlaw biker chief, Haitian insurgency catalyst, country singer, CIA patsy, inventor and porn star promoter who married a coffee heiress,) is disheveled and cantankerous inside his orange prison tunic, and really wants you to know there hadn't been much cocaine. Grenades and women, yes. A briefcase stuffed with $54,000: definitely that. But under no circumstances had there been more than two ounces of cocaine. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:08 PM PST - 6 comments

I'm in love with Massachusetts! And the neon when it's cold outside

A bill to declare "Roadrunner" the official rock song of Massachusetts will be filed on February 14.
posted by anelsewhere at 7:18 PM PST - 142 comments

Zombie-free since 1867

Canada will never be a safe haven for zombies. [more inside]
posted by asnider at 6:46 PM PST - 45 comments

"Veegan, not Veejan"

In November 1944, as Hitler's V-2 rockets rained down on England, Donald Watson's mind was elsewhere. Together with Elsie Shrigley and 23 others, he was starting a new society of ethical vegetarians who avoided dairy and eggs as well as meat -- an unheard-of innovation. The earliest issues of the group's magazine are now available online and provide a glimpse into the humble beginnings of what became a global movement. In its pages, members discuss animal ethics, health, wartime rationing, recipes and the thorny issue of what adherents should call themselves. (Donald Watson coined "vegan" in issue 1, but some members were unimpressed and wrote in with their own suggestions including Vitan, Dairyban, Benevore, Sanivore and Beaumangeur).
posted by dontjumplarry at 5:22 PM PST - 56 comments

Fans often form circles and then run together with physical abandon

Moshers, Heavy Metal and Emergent Behaviour: The collective behaviour of moshers at heavy metal concerts is mathematically similar to a disordered 2D gas, say physicists. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 4:16 PM PST - 36 comments

A Scientist at War With His Tribe

How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist. "Jaguars and anacondas are impressive adversaries — 'Indiana Jones had nothing on me,' Napoleon Chagnon says — but his staunchest foes are other anthropologists."
posted by homunculus at 3:57 PM PST - 30 comments

The archaeology of Photoshop

But like anything, the original Photoshop was a product of its time. Knoll’s foundations grew to support functionality he’d never imagined; as the features piled on, more staff was added. What started as mostly a photography tool turned quickly into a graphic design powerhouse. And when a port to Windows became inevitable, things started to really get messy.

Photoshop is a city for everyone: how Adobe endlessly rebuilds its classic app.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:48 PM PST - 118 comments

Idem Paris

IDEM PARIS is a new short documentary film by David Lynch on the art of lithography. Read Lynch's intro to the piece.
posted by mykescipark at 3:40 PM PST - 4 comments

The Continuation of Clausewitz by Other Means

Carl von Clausewitz's On War is remembered today as a classic of Prussian thinking on war and politics in the post-Napoleonic era. Wouldn't it be better if it were a Socratic dialogue between Hare Clausewitz and his class of other woodland creatures, though? Thankfully, The Children's Illustrated Clausewitz has arrived to fill just that need.
posted by Copronymus at 3:34 PM PST - 11 comments

Jonathan Rendall, 1964-2013

Late last month, the writer Jonathan Rendall was found dead at his home in Ipswich. He was 48. He was the greatest gonzo writer you've never heard of. [more inside]
posted by hydatius at 3:02 PM PST - 9 comments

Origa(s)mic Architecture

On the one hand we have kirigami, the slightly more dangerous variation of origami that involves razor-sharp instruments (think snowflakes). On the other hand we have architecture. Now put your hands together... [more inside]
posted by heyho at 2:50 PM PST - 12 comments

“An entire ‘vault,’ like a Money Bin, filled with 40,000 comics.”

The DON ROSA COLLECTION is a deluxe 9-volume set of books published by Egmont that tells the story of my life with comics, particularly the $crooge McDuck and Donald Duck comics for which I have become best known... As part of the special texts in the series, I wrote an autobiography of my life, at least as it pertains to comic books. As a conclusion to those texts it was always planned that I would write a sort of ‘epilogue’ to my career, the subject of which would obviously be the reasons for why I quit... At the last moment the Disney Corporation refused to allow my text to appear in a book series that was published under their license... So I agreed to allow set #3 to go forward as long as I would be allowed in volume 9 to direct interested readers to the ‘epilogue’ as it is appearing on this private website.” Don Rosa: “WHY I QUIT [more inside]
posted by koeselitz at 1:54 PM PST - 12 comments

How The Left Has Won

Or, why is there still socialism in the United States?
Why, then, would we look for evidence of socialism only where a state seized by radicals of the Left inaugurates a dictatorship of the proletariat? Or, to lower the rhetorical volume and evidentiary stakes, why would we expect to find socialism only where avowed socialists or labor parties contend for state power? We should instead assume that socialism, like capitalism, is a cross-class cultural construction, to which even the bourgeoisie has already made significant contributions – just as the proletariat has long made significant contributions to the cross-class construction we know as capitalism. What follows?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:35 PM PST - 46 comments

What they really coveted was Arutam’s golden throne

The most-storied warrior tribe in Ecuador prepares to fight as the government sells gold-laden land to China.
posted by tykky at 1:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Dear Valentine, I Hate It When You...

Save your marriage... with a writing workshop. Link to paper: (PDF)
posted by AceRock at 1:06 PM PST - 3 comments

Picture of Tarzan Every Day

Your Daily Tarzan. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 1:01 PM PST - 7 comments

The last I heard, the Sheikh was under house arrest

Former New York Times reporter Michael Janofsky was contacted for an unusual freelance assignment: blogging as a United Arab Emirates royal. [more inside]
posted by Chrysostom at 12:06 PM PST - 11 comments

The nitty gritty of how to keep the roads rolling

"Hans explains there is a policy to keep certain routes clear. Since all streets in Dutch cities are categorised (also because of the ‘sustainable safety’ policy) it is very clear which streets are main routes that must be cleared. In the past, the cycle paths were not really thought important. But there were many complaints about it and the policies shifted slowly towards clearing the cycle paths more as well. Hans: “Especially when the city was elected Cycling City of the Netherlands in 2011, the department of public works felt it was our moral obligation to give the main cycle routes the highest priority. Now the cycle paths are cleared at the same time as the 8 main routes for motorised traffic.” -- Cycling blogger Mark Wagenbuur explains how one Dutch city, 'S-Hertogenbosch, deals with keeping the cycle paths clear during winter.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:58 AM PST - 24 comments

What *is* the deal with lampshades?

Benjamin Apple hosts the web series "Questions & Answers" where he answers viewers' questions. Link to Youtube playlist [more inside]
posted by Jofus at 11:42 AM PST - 7 comments

112 lb newborn photos

The face is angelic, the lighting soft and the subject is napping peacefully – just the way a newborn photo shoot should look. It took 13 years, but Latrell Higgins finally has his baby photos.
posted by waving at 11:13 AM PST - 47 comments

Vinegar Valentines

Hating Valentine's Day may be popular these days, but back in back when, Valentine's Day was a chance to hate on other people.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:49 AM PST - 39 comments

Look at you, hacker.

After many years of uncertain licensing rights, System Shock 2 -- considered by many to be one of the best games of all time -- will be re-released tomorrow on Good Old Games at 11:00am. It raises many interesting questions, of course, that seem to have many interesting answers.
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:47 AM PST - 110 comments

DETACHABLE PENIS

Sea slug sheds its penis after sex, scientists find. This happens all the time. It's detachable.
posted by ninjew at 9:41 AM PST - 59 comments

You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.

The Okeh Laughing Record, a novelty recording, was first released in 1923 and rose to #8 on the Billboard charts, becoming the highest ranking anonymous* recording ever. It's history and provenance is completely unknown**. It has since appeared as the soundtrack to cartoons, on Dr. Demento and on Jean Shepard's radio show. [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:31 AM PST - 24 comments

Students all over the world are demanding a new curriculum.

A Renaissance in Economics The American President Ronald Reagan once quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” I get the same shivers when someone introduces themselves as an economist.
posted by infini at 9:25 AM PST - 39 comments

The Ben Franklin Effect; both not, and totally Rule 34 applicable.

The entertaining youtube channel Vsauce takes an interesting look at The Science of the Friend Zone. [via]
posted by quin at 9:18 AM PST - 31 comments

Fuck You Cholly Mac!

Pig Roast. Fish Fry. Camping with the Bluesmobile. T-Model Ford’s Shade Tree. The undying Southern charm that is, Junior’s Juke Joint.
posted by timsteil at 8:22 AM PST - 6 comments

Where the nation's highest earners live

The Washington Post has posted a clickable county map of the United States, illustrating the percentage of households in the top 5% of national income (based on data from the US Census Bureau).
posted by msbubbaclees at 8:13 AM PST - 79 comments

Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.

The Boredom Proneness Scale† is the best-known of the various metrics for quantifying one’s propensity to ennui. High-scorers who are ‘understretched, unmotivated and bored in the world of work in the 21st century’ may in danger of ‘boreout[PDF]. While boredom needn’t be perceived in an exclusively negative light (one might imagine a perfect boredom akin to the notion of dolce far niente), ‘boredom [PDF] and boredom proneness […] have been linked to a long list of negative outcomes in adults, including, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and loneliness […], impulsiveness […], elevated rates of alcohol dependence […], negative affect […], pathological gambling […] and higher rates of psychopathology in general.’ Historians of boredom have noted the relatively recent advent [NY TIMES] of the term, coinciding with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but our more distant ancestors were not free of the related afflictions [PDF] of horror loci, tædium vitæ, acedia, mal du siècle, etc. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 8:02 AM PST - 40 comments

Over 25% of consumers are screwed by Credit Reporting Agencies

As reported in the Washington Post and NYTimes, the FTC recently reported to congress in a 370 page report (pdf link) that the consumer reporting agencies do a poor job of accurately reporting consumer's credit. Millions of people pay higher rates than they need to, mostly because correcting a credit report is so excruciatingly difficult. [more inside]
posted by readery at 8:00 AM PST - 41 comments

People full of shit, both liberal and conservative, most of the time.

False memories of fabricated political events [ABSTRACT]. In the largest false memory study to date, 5,269 participants were asked about their memories for three true and one of five fabricated political events. Each fabricated event was accompanied by a photographic image purportedly depicting that event. Approximately half the participants falsely remembered that the false event happened, with 27% remembering that they saw the events happen on the news. Political orientation appeared to influence the formation of false memories, with conservatives more likely to falsely remember seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran, and liberals more likely to remember George W. Bush vacationing with a baseball celebrity during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. A follow-up study supported the explanation that events are more easily implanted in memory when they are congruent with a person's preexisting attitudes and evaluations, in part because attitude-congruent false events promote feelings of recognition and familiarity, which in turn interfere with source attributions. [FULL TEXT PDF AVAILABLE HERE] [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 7:17 AM PST - 79 comments

Bill Cosby Schools Us About Those Crazy Sweaters.

Bill Cosby Schools Us About Those Crazy Sweaters.
posted by chunking express at 7:09 AM PST - 33 comments

Prisoner X didn't exist until two years after his death.

In June 2010 a news story briefly appeared on the Yediot website about Prisoner X in solitary confinement in an Israeli jail. His jailers did not know who he was, did not share a word with him, no one came to visit him. No one seemed to know he was there. They didn’t even know what crime he had committed or how he came to be in the prison. His prison cell was completely isolated from other prisoners and he couldn’t communicate in any way with them. ABC News Australia has broken the News that Prisoner X was an Australian citizen suspected of Mossad links and who commited suicide two years ago in an Israeli jail. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 6:19 AM PST - 109 comments

I want to be let alone to listen to my damn records.

Noted filmmaker Allison Anders (recent L.A. Weekly profile) won 50 rock and pop records once owned by Greta Garbo at auction. She's listening to them, one by one, and writing about them at Greta's Records.
posted by Mothlight at 5:16 AM PST - 5 comments

You know you make me wanna tweet

A new app has been invented that allows women ('girls only!') to rate and hashtag the men they've met, befriended or dated. The reviews are not positive. [more inside]
posted by mippy at 4:53 AM PST - 123 comments

How to shake a black guys hand

A short, humourous instructional video, made as part of Black History Month
posted by marienbad at 4:52 AM PST - 27 comments

Sweet Truths with Kristine Holmgren

I told them to take a hike. I can't work where feminism is not celebrated. I'm proud to call myself a feminist. - Pastor and playwright Kristine Holmgren responds to being asked not use the word feminism in the title of her blog on a faith based site.
posted by Artw at 3:15 AM PST - 50 comments

"On a moonless night, we watched the stars..."

This week's Essential Mix features the 23 year old musical prodigy Mat Zo who takes you on a 70-track tour through almost every genre of uptempo dance music over the course of two hours, beautifully tied together with poetic quotes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
posted by empath at 2:34 AM PST - 24 comments

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