January 4, 2013
What polar bears seek out when they're tired of Coke
"Cameraman Captures What It’s Like to Be Targeted as Food by a Polar Bear." Does what it says on the tiny, flimsy, Plexiglas shelter with some promising gaps.
"It's a damn Ferrari, brother. Son of a bitch."
Since about 2006 "Mike Terrorista" has been posting videos on YouTube from his Honda motorcycle as MIKE9MMM, keeping up a running commentary and ogling girls while racing though Sao Paulo traffic at high speed. (Note: some swearing in Portuguese) [more inside]
The Old Corner Bookstore is Now a Chipotle
"'Personally, I think it’s slightly sad how easy it was to get,' Jessica says, referring to the building. She brightens. 'But everyone at Chipotle was really excited to get this spot because of the history, the chance to be a part of Boston’s history. This is the oldest retail location in Boston.'" (via)
Batman: the Animated Series
Coin of the Realm
An idea to mint a trillion dollar coin is seriously proposed as a desperate legal maneuver against allowing the US government to go into default. [more inside]
little techie.
Could I BE having any less sex?
(Possibly too subversive?)
I found Banksy's notebook. These ideas and sketches may one day grace the walls of your local bank, or the book section of your local Urban Outfitters, but until then, here’s a sneak preview:
Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks
See how much money people make in every neighborhood in every city in America with Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks, a map that displays wealth distributions across US cities (and states).
Frosty the Snow Flea
I went skiing today and looked down and the snow was covered with snow fleas. Research at Queen's University (Canada) have sequenced and synthesised the anti-freeze-like protein that allows snow fleas to operate in sub-zero environments.
"We Just Witnessed a War Crime"
The first thing we learned about war re-enactment is that it's fucking terrifying having guns fired at you, even ones loaded with blanks. The second thing we learned is a common re-enactor's dilemma called "The G.I. Effect", which is basically that people playing Americans don't like to die. So sometimes they just don't.It's Like Vietnam All Over Again, pt 1. Part 2
How Blind People Use Instagram
The Dowager Countess Will Never Walk Alone
Downton Abbey returns to American TV screens this Sunday. Since many Americans have become fascinated with the intricate social dances featured in the English drama/soap, Grantland feels there's an opportunity to provide them a lesson about the equally intricate plot machinations associated with the English Premier League. I give you the "English Premier League to Downton Abbey plot converter." [more inside]
A declining number of U.S. adults in prison or on probation
After decades of increases, the number of adults in the U.S. who are in prison, jail, on parole, or on probation has declined over the last few years. The pdf of the report from the U.S. Department of Justice is here. Comments from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, Reason Magazine's Hit & Run blog, and Keith Humphreys.
Somewhere on the internet, someone thinks that not only can your team trade for Stanton, but it won’t be that hard.
Giancarlo (a.k.a. "Mike") Stanton is one of the most exciting young baseball players in the game today. Known primarily as a power hitter with potential Hall of Fame talent, he has hit some legendary home runs, including one he hit as a minor leaguer that reportedly traveled 500+ ft on its way out of Montgomery Riverwalk Stadium and another that broke the scoreboard at Marlins Park and, at an off-bat speed 122.4 mph, was the hardest hit home run ever recorded by the ESPN Hit Tracker. Tampa Bay Rays pitcher David Price likened Stanton to a video game "create a player." But recently, when the Miami Marlins dumped five of his teammates in a blockbuster, cost-cutting trade with the Blue Jays (effectively removing them from contention for the near future), Stanton expressed his dissatisfaction publicly, opening up rumors that he might be next to be traded. Internet baseball fans responded by proposing their own hypothetical (and often wildly optimistic) trade ideas, which Ben Lindbergh of Baseball Prospectus kindly compiled into one list: Stanton trade packages proposed by fans of every team on the internet this offseason.
Can a band be any more Metal than this?
Gerda Lerner: "In my courses, the teachers told me about a world in which ostensibly one-half the human race is doing everything significant and the other half doesn’t exist. I asked myself how this checked against my own life experience. ‘This is garbage; this is not the world in which I have lived,’ I said."
Feminist historian Gerda Lerner has passed away at 92.
An original member of the National Organization for Women, Lerner was a pioneer in the field of women's history, teaching what is thought to be the first women’s history course in the world and later establishing the first women's history graduate program in the United States. She led a fascinating life. [more inside]
TIRED OF BRAND X?
An insert house provides labels and covers for products in TV and film production to avoid legal problems and Earl Hays Press is the big granddaddy of them all so why not enter an alternate off-brand universe of Butt Beer, Captain Sugarr, and Sports Page today?
Old Greek Blasphemy Laws Stir Up Modern Drama
"It seems like every time there's a crisis in Greece, there's a search for saviors," Philippos Loizos, a 27-year-old scientist, tells NPR. Loizos set up a Facebook page that criticized a Greek monk as xenophobic and close-minded. Last September, Greek police arrested Loizos and charged him with blasphemy, which carries up to six months in prison.
When Wolverine met Freddy Mercury
In 2010, Marvel Comics artist Steve Bunch posted an anonymous page to his blog that featured X-Men frontman Wolverine inexplicably encountering Queen frontman Freddy Mercury, an art submission originally sent to Darren Auck, then head of Marvel's art-correction team, in the 1990s. Portland-based comics artist Colleen Coover read Bunch's post, and in 2012 she decided to do something about it: she decided to recreate the page, adding color (both literal and metaphorical) to the meeting of these two (actual and arguable) mutants. Since then, other comic artists have decided to recreate the historic meeting depicted on that original, baffling/brilliant page: Some are magical; some are professional grade (pages one and two); some are prosaic; some are, frankly, adorable. Not all of them are on Coover's page. Do you hold the secret to this story? Coover would like to see your take: "I invite other artists to do the same, by which exercise we may one day come close to the fictional Truth of the matter."
Carving Eggshells
Beth Ann Magnuson hand-carves intricate, lace-like patterns on eggshells. Videos: Samples / Carving and Etching techniques. [more inside]
Beate Sirota Gordon, 1923-2012; "The Only Woman In The Room"
Beate Sirota Gordon, Long-Unsung Heroine of Japanese Women’s Rights, Dies at 89: a NYT obituary relates the fascinating story of a young woman who was just the right person in just the right place at just the right time and managed to strike a blow for gender equality. [more inside]
Media and the Internet
Andrew Sullivan to have subscribers, causing speculation as to what this could portend for the Internet, new media, and journalism.
"Come On Down"
The story of a guy who went to LA with one goal in mind, get somebody from his party into Contestants Row on The Price is Right.
The Bowdlerization of bande dessinée
Europe has a long-standing comic tradition, at least equal to that of America. Beyond Tintin and Asterix, there are hundreds of fantastic titles with astonishing art, most of which never see the shores of the USA. However, when a lucky title does get the nod, something bizarre happens when European sensibilities face American censors. [more inside]
Christopher Robin is a Sadist
Flash Friday!!! It's Winnie The Pooh Home Run Derby! In Japanese! And insanely difficult!
Not so absolute now, are you?
Quantum gas goes below absolute zero. "It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery."
Dead Eyes, Hinged Mouth, Never Sleep Again, Dead Eyes, Hinged Mouth, Never Sleep Again...
Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits is a new book by Matthew Rolston which explores the history and style of ventriloquist dummies. Buzzfeed has collected some of the most interesting (and creepy) of the portraits contained within.
"it's quite clear that there's tons of cultural transmission that's just strictly by observational learning."
BIFF WINS AGAIN
Jonathan Chait questions the editorial judgment of the Hill Valley Telegraph in Back to the Future Part II. [more inside]
"Victory as recorded on those screens made them feel like Masters of the Universe."
Eunuchs of the Universe: Tom Wolfe on Wall Street Today: [Daily Beast]
"As America teeters on a cliff, Tom Wolfe draws up a sterling indictment of our unscrupulous financial culture. Twenty-five years after Bonfire of the Vanities, the author returns to Wall Street to see what happened to the Masters of the Universe."
Knitting Behind Bars
Two retired women, Lyn Zwerling and Sheila Rovelstad, have initiated and implemented a program called Knitting Behind Bars at a prison in Maryland. They approached every prison in the area with their idea for a knitting class, and all the prisons refused except the last one, where the prison authorities skeptically agreed to let them try it. And the program has been a success. As the Baltimore Sun reported, "Men literally beg to get in. There's a waiting list.... They want it so much, in fact, that they're willing to be good in order to do it. [Prison warden Margaret] Chippendale has noticed lower rates of violence among the men who knit. "It's a privilege to be in that program," Chippendale says. "It's something that matters and they don't want to do anything to be removed from it." One prisoner, who was serving time for stabbing someone and who was busily knitting a hat, told the reporter, "My mind is on something soft and gentle," he said. "My mind is nowhere near inside these walls." [more inside]
Ex Post Facto
Keiji Nakazawa, 1939-2012
Keiji Nakazawa, the manga artist and creator of Barefoot Gen (previously),his autobiographical account of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, died on the 19th of December, still living in Hiroshima. His obituary is up on The Comics Journal website, while comics blogger David Brothers adds a more personal note about discovering Barefoot Gen as a preteen.
Shake your YouTube hit maker
THE FOOD WORLD IS ON SOME ILLUMINATI SHIT
20 Things Everyone Thinks About the Food World (But Nobody Will Say) "Needless to say, these are complicated topics, and we can’t do them justice in the space of one list. But they are opinions and issues that we find ourselves circling with friends who work in the industry or follow it closely, and we think they’re worthy of discussion."
Lamo on Lamo
Adrian Lamo talks to a Guardian journalist about Adrian Lamo's feelings about himself, Bradley Manning, and the collapse of linear time. [more inside]
Grow More GM, says former anti-GMO activist
Mark Lynas, author of several books on climate change and once a leading figurehead of the anti-GMO movement, has made an about turn on his opinions regarding GM crops. In an address to the Oxford Farming Conference, he stated:
"For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely. So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist." [more inside]
WAY too much coffee...! (or perhaps some other more interesting drug?)
Jake Fried creates animation. In this particular case he utilizes only coffee, whiteout, and ink, layering the drawing in successive images to create a retro/psychedelic trip. I give you "The Deep End"
More here.
(I would suggest that the use of carefully chosen recreational drugs might be appropriate just prior to viewing, but that would be irresponsible of me.)
More here.
(I would suggest that the use of carefully chosen recreational drugs might be appropriate just prior to viewing, but that would be irresponsible of me.)
Scenes from a Curriculum Vitae: Ike Turner & Associates
On piano at 71: Ike Turner & The Kings of Rhythm - Mercy, Mercy, Mercy
On piano at 20: Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years
On guitar at 34 and on fire at 26: Ike and Tina Turner - Shake·A Fool in Love·It's Gonna Work Out Fine·Please, Please, Please·Goodbye, So Long [more inside]
On piano at 20: Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years
On guitar at 34 and on fire at 26: Ike and Tina Turner - Shake·A Fool in Love·It's Gonna Work Out Fine·Please, Please, Please·Goodbye, So Long [more inside]
Begin the begena
Ever heard the other-worldly sound of the Ethiopian lyre known as the begena? It's sometimes referred to as the "Harp of David", since legend has it that it's the same instrument that soothed the Biblical king. Whether that's true or not, there is little doubt that the low pitched, buzzing sound the instrument produces is one of the most unusual to be found just about anywhere. Used to accompany meditation and prayer, Biblical passages and so forth, check out the amazing sound (along with accompanying male or female vocal) here, here, here and here.
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