May 14, 2012
A Tale of Two Carlos
Los Tocayos Carlos - a comprehensive investigation by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and a team of students which uncovers evidence that Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence who was executed in Texas in 1989, was innocent. The issue of The Columbia Human Rights Law Review, entirely dedicated to this investigation, is available at this website.
This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike’ by Augusten Burroughs
This is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. is Augusten Burroughs' new self-help book (reviews here, here, and here), one which scorns the genre cliches of goal-setting and affirmations in favor of a hard-nosed philosophy of self-honesty based on lessons learned from his own background of abuse, neglect, and rape. In an interview with CNN, he gives snippets of his views on subjects like the harm of people "clinging to a dream which maybe they don't actually have the talent to do", suicide ("it doesn't release you, it adds a new layer of horror") and the quest for thinness ("the brain is magnificent and to focus on your gastrointestinal track is a complete waste"). (previously)
Please party, test me.
♫ As young as 18, I'd already written the application to join the party, but I was too embarrassed to turn it in to the party branch. I've studiously read the party constitution countless times - always felt I wasn't worthy of the party's requirements. ♫ Applying to Join the Chinese Communist Party : a music video (w/ English subtitles)
Time-lapse map of Europe
In Canada, Alternate Currency Keeps Traction With Fans
Canadian Tire Company coupons, thought of by some as an alternative Canadian currency, may be on the way out. [more inside]
Alive?
She connected the discarded organ replacement machines together and had them 'breathe' in closed circuits. The machines of The Immortal keep each other alive through circulation of electrical impulses, oxygen and artificial blood.
Bort's Sploopers by Arv Malbert
Always backed by the 12th Street Rag, Marv Albert has brought us "wild and wacky moments in the world of sports (compiled by his crack staff and producer Dave Katz)" for just under thirty years. [Caveats: Some dates are approximate. Some of the more famous clips appear multiple times. Hockey violence, boxing referees getting hit, borked slides into third, etc.] And we start with the early 80's — 1984: a b — 1985 — 1985-86: a b c — 1986 (in review) — 1987: a b c d — 1988 (in review) — 1989: a b — Review of the 80's — Early 1990's — 1997 — 1999's Wild and Wacky Millenium — 2008 — 2009 — 2010 — 2011 — first half of the 2011 NFL season — a 30-minute compilation — another compilation — baseball compilation
Camels
Galleries of old photographs of camels in America, Australia, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, China, Mongolia and India, in war | camel breeds | How the Camel Got His Hump from Camel Tales, Folklore & Legends| baby camels and lots more at this one stop site all about Camels. Previously.
Evil is Back
You may have heard that evil is returning to Sanctuary
tonight.
Your Diablo 3
launch day preparation guide
includes opening cinematics,
a cartoon,
the story so far,
a primer on the new Auction House
(now with real money),
and build guides for the
Demon Hunter,
Barbarian,
Monk,
and Witch Doctor.
Since no one at Blizzard beat Diablo 3's Inferno difficulty,
death is guaranteed.
The Great Wine Caper
Rare-wine collectors are savvy, competitive guys with a taste for impossible finds. The biggest hoax in history took place right under their noses. [more inside]
They built an ankle joint out of a car engine.
10 years ago it was considered impossible to build a prosthetic for an elephant.
What do you do when an endangered elephant steps on a land mine? If you’re the Friends of the Asian Elephant Hospital, you make a prosthetic leg that can support 2000 pounds of moving pachyderm. [more inside]
What do you do when an endangered elephant steps on a land mine? If you’re the Friends of the Asian Elephant Hospital, you make a prosthetic leg that can support 2000 pounds of moving pachyderm. [more inside]
Don't you know what table tennis is? Come on. I'll teach you.
Taiyo Matsumoto's original five volume manga Ping Pong was one of the most surprising and gripping experiences I've had this year. But a huge reason for that is the artwork: he packs more kinetic energy into a single drawing of a shoe skidding across a floor than any real shoe has ever had. So it was with some trepidation that I saw posters for this adaptation going up in stores around Japan. Fumihiko Masuri is a first time director (not that you'd know it), with a background in computer effects. He seems to have directed this mainly because he's a really big fan of the manga too. On the film's website, they've placed images from the manga next to photographs of the actors in the film, so you can see how obsessive compulsive they were in matching faces. Not only faces, but movements, playing styles, and shot composition is all straight from the book, as if they'd used the manga in lieu of storyboards. Even the occasional surreal touch; a boy growing butterfly wings, a dragonfly landing on the net, is right out of the page onto the screen. -- Midnight Eye review; subtitled movie in 12 parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
If you've got them by the bits, their hearts and minds will follow.
The Dictator's practical internet guide to power retention. The Internet can be a real pain for a comfortable dictator. Here's how to turn it to your nefarious advantage.
Your best friend is suing you for $600 million, and will soon go into tax exile in Singapore.
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship ahead of the company's IPO so as to avoid paying capital gains taxes on his shares, which could be worth as much as $3.84 billion. [more inside]
Thank you for joining us.
Mike Birbiglia's Fresh Air interview gets awkward. From last week's This American Life live episode.
Spray that again....
I first came across Miss.Tic in Arles,
Since the 1980's Miss.Tic has located her art mainly in the streets of Paris. You can follow her work since 1985 through to 2011.(NSFW)
Not much is available in English but here is an Interview with subtitles, and a video Ethics of Love.
One of my favorites: - Poetry is an Extreme Sport which is part of a Flickr set.
Since the 1980's Miss.Tic has located her art mainly in the streets of Paris. You can follow her work since 1985 through to 2011.(NSFW)
Not much is available in English but here is an Interview with subtitles, and a video Ethics of Love.
One of my favorites: - Poetry is an Extreme Sport which is part of a Flickr set.
I cant promise you that I won’t be a dick.
Patrice O’Neal (RIP previously) didn’t just want to be famous, he wanted to be as good as Richard Pryor. To hear his fellow comics tell it, he was—a brutal truth-teller who spared no one, starting with those closest to him.
(Print friendly version)
Big (and small) Numbers
FatFonts creates numerical fonts where the amount of ink/pixels for each number is in direct proportion to its value.
I'm king of the world!
The Triumph of the Passenger Ship is an online exhibition of highlights from the Norman H. Morse Ocean Liner Collection at the University of Southern Maine. (The cutaway illustrations are fascinating.)
George Lucas' Jedi Land Tricks
"It is with great sadness that Skywalker Properties has decided to pull its application to build a studio facility on the old Grady Ranch." (PDF) George Lucas' neighbors don't want him building a movie studio on his Marin property; after fighting for years, he's working with the Marin Community Foundation to develop low-income housing.
Cool Math Conundrums
In Russian roulette, is it best to go first? | The Mathematics of Tetris | What is the result of infinity minus infinity? [more inside]
The M in MTV Should Stand for Mulcahy
Russell Mulcahy is best known for directing Highlander (as well as its...less-popular...sequel) and is currently doing a Teen Wolf series for MTV. But speaking of MTV, he got his start doing music videos. A lot of music videos. In fact, if you remember a video from the early days of MTV, it's probably one of Mulcahy's. [more inside]
Meditation At Gunpoint
Cartoonist and Essayist Tim Kreider on the soothing effect of dangerous situations. (NYT)
"To get quality you need to give photographers time to explore their craft."
"Rouleur is to bike magazines what National Geographic is to nature photography." Wired takes a look at a British cycling publication that puts an emphasis on quality photojournalism.
There is more than one of everything
Finland has always looked both west and east, notably the Loviisa nuclear power plant used Westinghouse instrumentation married to a Soviet design, earning the nickname 'Eastinghouse'.
They hedged their bets on rather less safety-critical issues as well. Having little success in the Eurovision Song Contest (until they changed tack relatively recently), they also entered (and won) its Soviet counterpart: Intervision. [more inside]
Build the Enterprise
One week ago, anonymous engineer "BTE Dan" put up a website called Build the Enterprise. He envisions a $1 trillion spaceship modeled on the USS Enterprise. There are highly detailed plans for constructing and funding it. It quickly spread all over the news to GizMag, DailyMail and other places. The BTE website is slow to load, while waiting why not Build the Starship Enterprise from useless office supplies.
Shake & Fold
Here's a 4-minute TEDx talk that demonstrates the correct method for drying your hands with a single paper towel.
How many ways to get what you want
What Grandma Did In The War
During WWII, nearly 6 million women joined the workforce. Metafilter's talked about "Rosie the Riveters" previously, but we've never heard from these women in their own words.
I THRU SUM MONEY ON DA GROUND AND GREW CASH TOMATOES
A wonderful, highly NSFW song about being Charls Barkly. From the incoherent, offensive, and brilliant gmcfosho, whose works include the classic Rifle Burs, Snacks, and IMDABES (previously), which is probably the best reason for the Internet's existing.
The Irish in Latin America
The website of the Society for Irish Latin American Studies is full of information about Irish migration to Latin America. It's divided into four sections: The Homeland, about the origins of the settlers; The Journey, about how the Irish settlers traveled to Latin America, including the infamous Dresden affair; The Settlement, about the lives of the Irish in Latin America;
Faces and Places, which has biographies of a wide variety of people, Mateo Banks, family murderer, Camila O'Gorman, executed lover of a priest, William Lamport, 17th Century revolutionary and Bernardo O'Higgins, Chilean independence leader, who gets a whole subsection to himself. There is also a list of Irish placenames and much else of interest to history nerds.
The Second Android Coming of Philip K. Dick
To understand the reasoning behind the android and why this particular science fiction author, above others, was chosen... [more inside]
The Singularity, ruined by lawyers
Human Nature
These Things Happened
"In the space of My Darkest Year, in no particular order, these things happened. My younger son died. My marriage ended. A rabbi and renowned jazz musician whom I’d only met once performed my son’s funeral. People applauded. I fell in love with a blond poet suffering from PTSD. It didn’t work out. My divorce was granted. The only Jewish funeral director in town admitted to me, unbidden, that her life’s passion is improv comedy. My ex-husband threatened my boyfriend’s balls via Facebook. I fled—and sold—my dream house. My older son lost his first tooth and entered kindergarten. I performed stand-up comedy. People applauded. I fell in love again. I realized I’m not afraid of anything." Michelle Mirsky's column No Fear of Flying: Kamikaze Missions in Sex, Death, and Comedy won the 2011 McSweeney's Column Contest. It's funny, aching, gutsy, and heartwrenching.
Day of the Locust
A grasshopper weathervane has sat atop Boston's Faneuil Hall since 1742. The grasshopper through its glass doorknob eyes (scroll down), witnessed the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and the siege of Boston. On January 4th, 1974, the grasshopper was stolen but returned and repaired.
The Angel of The Gap
The Angel of The Gap. For almost half a century, Don Ritchie would approach people contemplating suicide at the edge of The Gap, just 50 metres from his home in Watsons Bay, his palms facing up [...] he would smile and say: "Is there something I could do to help you?".
RIP Don Ritchie, Australian Local Hero of the Year for 2011, and saviour of at least 160 would-be suicides at Sydney scenic cliff & suicide spot, The Gap.
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