March 24, 2015

The Gravekeeper’s Paradox

The Gravekeeper’s Paradox The impermanency of stone is visible everywhere at Mount Auburn. One headstone Gallagher and I stop at has been sandwiched between two wooden braces a few feet away from its rectangular base. Both pieces were struck by a snowplow during the winter, and a few chips in the base form a scar that shines bright white against the old greenish-grey rock. Gallagher’s assistant, Steve Brown, is trying to glue the monument back together. “The whole stone used to be white like that. That’s an algae growing on it,” Gallagher says, pointing to the damage.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:25 PM PST - 29 comments

Senses of Cinema on two Jean-Pierre Melville classics

Senses of Cinema on two Jean-Pierre Melville classics: Temenuga Trifonova on Le Samouraï and Brian L. Frye on Bob le flambeur
posted by juv3nal at 11:22 PM PST - 4 comments

No malice is intended.

Presenting the 2015 Name of The Year Bracket
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:59 PM PST - 61 comments

submitted 2 months late, one letter grade off.

This State of the Union address will address the union about the state of the economy, foreign policy, and the general state of this country.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 10:31 PM PST - 13 comments

Celebrating 50 magic tapes with The Magician

The Magician was initially a mysterious mixer who released Magic Tapes, mixes of disco, house and pop without tracklists, challenging listeners to compile tracklists themselves, and they did. But he stepped out from behind the curtain, remixing Lykke Li's "I Follow Rivers" and later his debut single, "I Don't Know What To Do" feat. Jeppe. In 2013, he signed with Parlophone, but has continued making his Magic Tapes. Last month, he celebrated his 50th mix with Mixmag TV and Arches. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:47 PM PST - 3 comments

Quies Custodiet Ipsos Custards?

Via a freedom of information act request, Ars Technica acquired 4.6 million license plate scans from the Oakland Police Department. The scans cover 1.1 million unique license plates, and only 0.2% of them were associated with any criminal activity. [more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 7:40 PM PST - 51 comments

This moonbase condo had a much better view in the brochure!

Always dreamed of living in a moon base, with a view of Earth and the stars out your bedroom window? Well, you may end up living in underground lava tube instead. The moon's lower gravity means that lava tubes wider than a kilometer could remain structurally stable there.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:50 PM PST - 42 comments

“I tend to think it happened. In fact, I’m damn sure it happened.”

What Lies Beneath
In the 1960s, hundreds of pounds of uranium went missing in Pennsylvania. Is it buried in the ground, poisoning locals—or did Israel steal it to build the bomb?
posted by andoatnp at 3:21 PM PST - 30 comments

Chuckles

Kitties in Chains’ “Cat in the Box”
posted by josher71 at 3:00 PM PST - 6 comments

But you do not have to shoot to be morally responsible.

"This week I may be jailed for writing a book on human rights abuses." by Rafael Marques de Morais [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:56 PM PST - 15 comments

This is an environment of welcoming and you should just get the hell out

Adapted and developed by Greg Daniels for NBC, the American version of The Office debuted on March 24, 2005, and viewers and critics were intrigued from the start. More than 11 million people tuned in to watch the remake of the British series’ pilot, and it was met with negative reviews from critics who were disappointed that it seemed like a cheap carbon copy. The following week, though, Daniels’ series proved that it could and ultimately would shine on its own, as the episode “Diversity Day” introduced us to the real Michael Scott, and how this horribly awkward goon of a Dunder Mifflin boss would affect the lives of his poor office drones.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:44 PM PST - 40 comments

The end of NFL blackouts

Last fall, the FCC voted unanimously to eliminate its own sports blackout rule. At this week's NFL annual meeting, the league approved a suspension of the rule. The blackout rule, which came into effect if a game was not sold out 72 hours prior to kickoff, was enacted in the '70s in order to prevent cable companies from airing events broadcast on local stations. [more inside]
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:28 PM PST - 34 comments

We sure as shellac knew what the polar bear was doing on the island

Javier Grillo-Marxuach [prev: 1 2 3], a writer on the first two seasons of Lost [prev: 1 2 3 4], attempts to answer the question “Did we know what we were doing, or were we just making it up as we went along?” Much like the TV series itself, the answer turns out to be much more complicated than it seems. [A 17,000-word memoir].
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:15 PM PST - 95 comments

DOMAIN OF PRIME FROG

"This blog is dedicated to discussing games where you play as a frog, but it might also talk about games which just have heavy frog presence in them. The borders are unclear and the road ahead is hazy. Come with me on the journey to be a frog."
♥FROG WORLD♥
posted by JHarris at 12:09 PM PST - 45 comments

My First Life as a Nurse

I am in my first month of nursing school. It is the early 70s and this is a three-year program, hospital-based, all practical training. It is my first day in my first ward...
A remembrance, by English professor and disability studies scholar, Janet Lyon.
posted by Toekneesan at 11:05 AM PST - 15 comments

Star Wars space battles the way they should have been, 1980s style

This really amazing 7-minute Star Wars animated short, in the style of 1980s anime like Macross, shows a space battle where the Empire are the good guys taking on a squadron of dasterdly rebels. Enjoy missile trails, awesome sudden close-ups, totally radical explosions, split screens of attractive TIE fighter pilots, and a vaguely annoying anime-inspired soundtrack. This PDF shows how it was all made and introduces you to the characters, along with some neat concept sketches.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:59 AM PST - 69 comments

Is genetic reductionism shaping our identity?

"What would it mean to live in a society where people seek only the significant same." Reductionist discourses tend to infiltrate both genetic and big data enterprises. Could these discourses imperceptibly close rather than open the prospect for us to decide what we want to become—what we want our futures to be? Could such discourses also “hide rather than reveal the deepest sources of social ills,” which shape the evolution of our genes and identities?
posted by pmfail at 10:27 AM PST - 9 comments

They can't take away the X-Files, Scully. They tried.

In more "the 90s really are back" news, Fox has just officially announced it has placed a order for a new, six-episode limited series of The X-Files. Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny will be reprising their roles.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:25 AM PST - 174 comments

Life as a Modern Shepherd

James Rebanks has written a memoir , The Shepherd's Life, about running his family farm in England's Lake District, "[T]hat teacher’s idea of the Lake District was created by an urbanised and increasingly industrialised society, over the past 200 years. It was a dream of a place for a wider society that was full of people disconnected from the land. That dream was never for us, the people who work this land. We were already here doing what we do. I wanted to tell her that she had it all wrong – she didn’t really know this place or its people at all. These thoughts took years to become clear, but in a rough childish form I think they were there from the start. But in that assembly in 1987 I was dumb and 13, so I just made a farting noise on my hand, and everyone laughed. [more inside]
posted by gladly at 10:19 AM PST - 7 comments

"...clinical-sounding terms like adipose, overweight, and obese."

How Obesity Became a Disease [The Atlantic] And, as a consequence, how weight loss became an industry.
posted by Fizz at 10:02 AM PST - 66 comments

Huggability seems to be a plus

What the "perfect" man looks like, according to men and women
So, according to almost every movie ever, we’re supposed to be most attracted to beefy men with glistening muscles, smoky (and kinda dangerous) eyes that make us feel like they suspect our very darkest, deepest secrets, and thighs that look like they’ve been subjected to Olympic training. Examples of these “idealized” men include (but are totally not limited to, obvs) Brad Pitt, Chris Hemsworth, Will Smith, and Jason Mamoa. In the end, it turns out the ideal dude isn’t Brad, Chris, Will, OR Jason. It’s the “Boy Next Door.”
[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 9:47 AM PST - 129 comments

Life as a 16 Seed in the NCAA Tourney

16 Things You Learn About the NCAA Tournament While on the Road with a 16 Seed
posted by COD at 9:30 AM PST - 6 comments

The homeless blogger who became a millionaire overnight

"I simply can’t afford to fuck this up, and if I’m drinking, I certainly would. Either I would waste all the money or kill myself". Mike Wille was the homeless loner who enraptured legions with his funny and touching stories on The Ground Score blog. After his mother’s death, he inherited $1.8m and a house near New Orleans.
posted by Sijeka at 9:04 AM PST - 40 comments

Internet Underground

Online For Issue 1
December 1995
Features:
"Arbiters Of Cool"
The Siskels and Eberts of the bandwidth. Who are these guys, and are they cool?
"The Bug Heard Round the World":
Netscape hackers discover security breaches in the world's most popular browser.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:00 AM PST - 8 comments

an adorible ESL class project

Wassabi Woman
posted by rebent at 8:53 AM PST - 12 comments

The Heart of the Matter

Patients should be allowed to access data generated by implanted devices. After losing his health insurance, Hugo Campos has written an article detailing his frustrations with self-care: "I can’t access the data generated by my implanted defibrillator. That’s absurd."
posted by domo at 8:18 AM PST - 48 comments

I Might Have Some Sensitive Files

The government says Matt DeHart is an online child predator. He says that’s a ruse created because he discovered shocking CIA secrets and claims he was tortured by federal agents. The only thing that’s clear is that he’s in deep trouble.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:13 AM PST - 66 comments

Stop, Drop the Beat, and Roll

For their senior project, George Mason University students Seth Robertson and Viet Tran decided to ignore all of their professors and classmates who told them their idea was terrible. They proceeded to invent a fire extinguisher that uses sound waves instead of chemicals to put out fires. The project was partially inspired by the fact that traditional fire extinguishers do not work in space. [more inside]
posted by a fiendish thingy at 7:13 AM PST - 48 comments

But where were the "fallen women"?

The researchers focused their attention on allegations of wrongdoing at the prison, looking at previously discredited testimonies of prisoners who claimed to have been physically abused and at the activities of a prison doctor who had some very Victorian ideas about women and sex. They began to unravel a long-standing mystery: Why didn’t the prison incarcerate any prostitutes in its early years? They presented their findings at academic conferences and published papers in journals. And they did all of it without access to the Internet.
They had to do it without access to the internet, as the researchers investigating the hidden history of the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, America's oldest women only prison are themselves prisoners at the same prison and what they found shines a new light on its origins.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:58 AM PST - 12 comments

The Man who gave us “Mesmerize”

Franz Anton Mesmer (1735-1815) was a Viennese doctor who incorporated hypnosis (which he called “Animal Magnetism”, meaning that planets had a “tidal” influence on the human body) into his medical practice. His peers considered him a charlatan, but he grabbed the attention of the rich, royal, and famous. And then he volunteered to cure the blind composer and pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis. [more inside]
posted by julen at 6:56 AM PST - 10 comments

The Mystery of Lê From Hop Sing Laundromat

Behind an unmarked door in Chinatown sits what may be America’s greatest cocktail bar, Hop Sing Laundromat. But the truth about the man who created it? That’s where things get trickier. By Jason Sheehan for Philadelphia Magazine.
posted by valkane at 6:52 AM PST - 5 comments

Glühbirne, glowing pear

Radu Zaciu photographs fruits and vegetables in a different lightone emanating from their core. [more inside]
posted by cellar door at 5:32 AM PST - 12 comments

“Hedgehogs, Russian thing, don’t ask": Yozhik v tumane (1975)

Yozhik v tumane - Soyuzmultfilm Yuri Norstein (YT, 1975) (Hedgehog in the Fog, Wikipedia) is ten delightful minutes of one of the most beloved animated movies in the world. That hedgehog, that owl: just look at them. Just a small good thing for your day. Discovered via Thomas Pynchon's "Bleeding Edge," source of the post title.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:21 AM PST - 7 comments

Diary of a Surgery

Angelina Jolie Pitt writes about her decision to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes at the age of 39 -- 10 years younger than her mother was when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This comes two years after her decision to have a double mastectomy.
posted by Ragini at 12:12 AM PST - 60 comments

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