January 3, 2008
The One, The Only, Groucho Marx
Festival of the Trees
future past
Haruo Suekichi invents extraordinary steampunk watches for men and women, each one unique, sometimes with a story attached, a work of art, given a name like Rabbit or Fly Me to the Moon. [more inside]
Do not dig or drill before 12,000 AD
The site must be marked: What is here is dangerous(?) and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger...This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. [more inside]
How to draw The Face
Sears Wants To Hack Your Computer
Online communities to become more 'all-encompassing.' If you join the SHC community on Sears.com, all web traffic to and from your computer thereafter will be copied and sent to a third party marketing research firm - including, for example, your secure sessions with your bank! The Sears.com proxy will send your logins and passwords along with a cleartext copy of all the supposedly secure data. But wait, it gets better: you can only view the true TOS once the proxy has already been installed. [more inside]
Lie, bitch, flirt your way to the top of the high school (Game)
Lie, bitch, flirt your way to the top of the high school ladder
"Coolest Girl In School has been touted as Grand Theft Auto for girls"
Interview with the Ladies who made it.
The ways of Mean Girls in a game.
"Coolest Girl In School has been touted as Grand Theft Auto for girls"
Interview with the Ladies who made it.
The ways of Mean Girls in a game.
Lifelike robot helps train doctors in delivering babies
Aren't all blogs science fiction?
io9 is a sci-fi blog that went live yesterday, edited by Annalee Newitz and friends. Newitz is an AlterNet Columnist and a founder of Bad Subjects, which is a major achievement considering she used to be afraid of blogs!
No more Flashman.
George MacDonald Fraser, R.I.P. I fear this means we'll never know just what Harry Flashman did at the Battle of Gettysburg and elsewhere during the American Civil War. His creator died on Wednesday at the age of 82. He leaves behind a large body of work, and dedicated bands of followers. Previously.
Simon Vostre
The late-fifteenth/early-sixteenth century French publisher Simon Vostre was renowned for his Books of Hours. [more inside]
Action painting
FLASH THURSDAY!!!
This may be the coolest flash game ever. Although it's graphics are nothing to write home about, the game play (which I will wisely follow kotaku's example in not spoiling for you) is quite simply incredible. It's a unique and quick little work break for you via kotaku. [more inside]
Meet the Nazi Cowboy
Billy Jenkins was "The Nazi Cowboy." One of the most popular German western stars of the 1930s, Jenkins (real name Erich Rudolf Otto Rosenthal) was a card-carrying member of the Nazi party. Pre-war Germany was crazy for cowboys, with Jenkins starring in pulp fiction books with titles like "Texasfieber" and "Aufruhr in Laredo" that were influenced by the works of Karl May. The only problem? Under Nazi Germany's racial laws, Jenkins was considered half-Jewish.
Now that they've stopped Picking, maybe it'll heal
It feels like the Death of My Internet Childhood. After attempting to identify "the best of the web" since August 1995, Yahoo! has stopped updating its Yahoo! Picks, preferring to showcase its airheaded-video-based The 9 (for those who can't count all the way to 10). [more inside]
Jimmy Gone M.I.A.
Rule 1 of Burrito Project: You do not talk about Burrito Project.
Burrito Project is an organization which helps feed the hungry and homeless in cities around the world. The organization encourages people "to get together with friends and build burritos to take to the streets". Anyone can start a Burrito Project and the organization encourages everyone to help feed the hungry in their local communities. Haven't heard of the Burrito Project? There's probably a good, albeit very strange, reason why. [via]
Search engine focused in Spanish blogs
Search into + 250,000 blogs in Spanish The Spanish blog portal Bitacoras.com released a widget to search into more than 250,000 blogs written in Spanish.
Texas, an American Leader
Texas definitely a leader among the states, now leading in exonerations in wrongful conviction cases and also a leader in executions. One hopes there isn't too much overlap.
playing with the tuning knobs when the back of the appliance is in flames
The Wire is dissent; it argues that our systems are no longer viable for the greater good of the most, that America is no longer operating as a utilitarian and democratic experiment. An already-quite-good discussion about The Wire, originating in Mark Bowden's Atlantic article ('The Angriest Man in Television') and continuing through Mark Bowden's post on the show's nihilistic bleakness gets even more interesting on Matt Yglesias's blog, where the creator of the show stops by to give his opinion on what it's all supposed to mean.
Sterling's World 2008
Bruce Sterling's State of the World: an interactive discussion on the Well with the noted sci-fi author and futurist. "The political and economic landscape in 2008 is full of spinning, tottering Chinese plates poised on tall pool-cues." [An MP3 of his State of the World 2006 from SXSW was previously linked here.]
AstroPorn
The images produced by today's ordinary amateur astrophotographer rival those produced by the big observatories only a decade or two ago. (This "Two Comets" image alone is worth a look. <-Rollover for close-ups of the comets.) You can get very good results with far simpler equipment, however - even with "old-fashioned FILM". Looking for the BEST skies for astrophotography? If you aren't a weenie, you might try Dome C, Antarctica. [more inside]
Tablature goes Web 2.0
a theory on why we really dream
Dreams: Night School Revonsuo puts it, "The primary function of negative dreams is rehearsal for similar real events, so that threat recognition and avoidance happens faster and more automatically in comparable real situations."
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