January 11, 2016
Clichés (music video)
Hiérophante - Clichés. Pattern recognition software used to collate myriad random, themed still images (selfies &c) for a music video. Surprising fluidity is achieved. [more inside]
A life unraveling
Over the past year, the [Boston] Globe spent time with an East Boston heroin addict as she struggled through recovery and the prospect of losing her children to the state. Nearly every key moment was witnessed by a Globe reporter or photographer. Brave, broken, loving, at a loss, this is Raquel and her story.Warning: Does not end terribly, but does not end well.
Big dinosaur leaves faint tracks
A few months ago, I went searching for the truth about that missing bone. I was not the first — plenty of others have sought the largest dinosaur that has ever lived. What I found was a quest that has driven some people toward maniacal competition, some to conspiracy theories and others to disregard scientific consensus. It drove me to a little rocky outcropping on a hill in rural Colorado known as Cope’s Nipple.—The Biggest Dinosaur In History May Never Have Existed by David Goldenberg is about Amphicoelias fragillimus, a species of sauropod dinosaurs described by famed paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope from a single, enormous bone, which later went missing. It may have been the biggest of the big, as explained by Prof. Ken Carpenter [pdf] or a fiction created by a typo [pdf], as argued by Cary Woodruff and John R. Foster.
Even then, when we do reach our perceived glories, they fade in a moment
Writing for Thump, at Vice, Angus Harrison beanplates deconstructs, lengthily, Four Tet's remix of Opus by Eric Prydz. Four Tet previously; Eric Prydz previously, 2.
Fresh roses dropped into her lap every day
Cheese robbery in the Netherlands
DutchNews reports on how Dutch cheese farms have recently been plagued by cheese theft. It may sound a little bit like the plot for a children's book, but it's quite serious: thousands of euros worth of cheese are being stolen from the dairy farms. [more inside]
UBI in NYT
It's Payback Time for Women - "Society is getting a free ride on our unrewarded contributions to the perpetuation of the human race." (via) [more inside]
Ashima Shiraishi, Rock-Climbing Wonder
The menu, the venue, the seating
In the Room Where It Happens, Eight Shows a Week and 8 Places to Celebrate Alexander Hamilton's birthday in New York and Beyond
And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight. [SLYT/CNN]
Campus Sexual Assault Under Investigation
Grandmaster Caz to Drake
Punishing your body is not taking care of it.
I don’t mean that you shouldn’t strive for health in 2016, if health is what’s important to you. But a number on a scale is not health. A dress size is not health. Work with your body, not against it. This isn’t some radical tenet of fat-acceptance either – any life coach, self-help guru, or even personal trainer will tell you the same: set reachable goals. Don’t set yourself up for failure. [more inside]
"There is only one road, one bridge across the country"
The Trans-Canada Highway spans the length of Canada with a route over 8000 kilometers long. This weekend, a new bridge crosssing the Nipigon buckled, severing the only road link between Eastern and Western Canada.
First X, Then Y, Now Z : Landmark Thematic Maps and Their Makers
This section reads as would a biblical genealogy of sorts: Alexander von Humboldt (wiki) taught Heinrich Berghaus (short wiki bio)and influenced Alexander Keith Johnston; Berghaus taught August Petermann (wiki); and Petermann collaborated with Berghaus and Johnston. More accurately, it reflects the passing on of the thematic torch lit by Humboldt. There were isolated “ignitions” throughout Europe before him—he, of course, was not the first to construct a thematic map or even to think of how one might do it—but every science needs a founding figure. More than anyone who preceded him, Humboldt provided that role.Landmark Thematic Atlases, from Princeton University Library's Historic Maps Collection website of Landmark Thematic Maps.
More evidence that student evaluations of teaching evaluate gender bias
Inside Higher Ed: There’s mounting evidence suggesting that student evaluations of teaching are unreliable. But are these evaluations, commonly referred to as SET, so bad that they’re actually better at gauging students’ gender bias and grade expectations than they are at measuring teaching effectiveness? A new paper argues that’s the case, and that evaluations are biased against female instructors in particular in so many ways that adjusting them for that bias is impossible. [more inside]
La-Z Rider
« Previous day | Next day »