January 5, 2013
"Monsters Have Problems Too": Meet Adam Rex
"Just because you might be a monster, that doesn’t mean life is going to be all terrified villagers and biting. There’s a down side—monsters have problems, too." You may not know illustrator and author Adam Rex, but if you enjoy the idea of The Creature from the Black Lagoon ignoring perfectly sensible advice on eating and swimming, of Hulk at the Tropicana, 1965, or of Frankenstein sitting down with a Dagwood sandwich, you might want to get to know his work. [more inside]
AWESOME & PROOF GOD EXISTS
Miami Connection: Full of ninjas, rock and roll, and tae kwon do action, this 1987 megablockbuster-in-waiting finally hit theaters outside Orlando last year after a serendipitous eBay auction and a proper release by Drafthouse Films.
Pew, Pew Pew Pew
My father didn't fight in the Clone Wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.
The Best Of Star Wars: Clone Wars - The CGI Star Wars spin off that made the franchise fun again for young and old reached it's 100th episode today.
Water Conservation and Usage Systems
"We need the rain." So I was looking for information on water conservation and usage systems, and I found some useful resources. Here's a forum. [more inside]
"You might not have the talent you need. Success may no longer be available to you. Time will bury everything you care about."
Movie critic Matthew Dessem (previously) considers Edward Ford to be the greatest unproduced screenplay in Hollywood.
A Mosque Among The Stars...
Islam & Science Fiction is exactly what it sounds like: interviews with authors, art, and more on Muslims and the future. They've also released a book that you can grab for free, A Mosque Among The Stars
Convoy Conquest!
Tireless eaters Jenne and Miko set out to try every restaurant along San Diego's Convoy Street. (via Projects) [more inside]
Are you awake?
What does it mean to be conscious? The point of view of anesthesiology.
There are thousands of kids like me out there. Eventually, it gets better.
"In May 2013, "Asperger's Syndrome" will be removed as a diagnosis from the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), leaving "high functioning autism" in its place. I agree with this change. Given the importance of the manual, however, it's caused a lot of consternation and caused me to reflect upon my experiences."—Anonymous
Pedagogy of the Depressed: my experiences as a special ed student in the 1990s, an anonymous Boing Boing article
Pedagogy of the Depressed: my experiences as a special ed student in the 1990s, an anonymous Boing Boing article
Grab yourself a snack and a glass of orange juice
The Top Ten Hottest Female Sonic [the Hedgehog] Characters: You might not have realized this but the Sonic universe might also be classified as "Hot Chick Heaven". Hotties include Cream the Rabbit, who is "attractive and the size of an average human mother"; Princess Sally Acorn, who not only didn't wear clothes in the comic but also "grew very long hair and married Sonic in the future"; and not one, but two echidnas: "What's better than having a female with cascading quills? How about a female with cascading quills and hair?" Curiously, the list ignores the beautiful Fiona Fox, who readers will remember was Tails' first (robotic) love, and whose rusting prompted the legendary 1995 Tails Miniseries.
When is a unicorn like a garden?
Alison Ann Woodward, aka Alison Wonderland, put together a little art box she called Heirloom that contains an easily disassembled little unicorn, which can then be re-assembled as a little Lewis Carrol-style garden.
Review Raja
Review Raja Review Raja doesn’t share his real name with anyone, but he is happy to share the unlikely story of how a white guy who was born in Tweed and grew up in Belleville became Review Raja, a connoisseur of Tamil films, or Kollywood, and a celebrity in the Tamil community in Canada and abroad.
Fastnet, Force 10
The Fastnet Race is a biennial sailing race from Cowes to Fastnet Rock to Plymouth, in England. In 1979, it was the venue for one of the most famous storms and greatest disasters in yacht-racing history. [more inside]
There are things it doesn't say on the tin.
The customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk's Veet For Men Hair Removal Gel Creme are not for the fainthearted. "Being a loose cannon who does not play by the rules the first thing I did..."
The man on the ledge is named Dylan Yount.
From the street 100 feet below the ledge, the man barely seems real. He is nondescript, nothing more than white skin with a mild tan, a fit build, and shaggy blond hair. He is a faceless blur. He is anonymous, but will be defined by his final act. SF Weekly chronicles the life of a man whose suicide was cheered on by onlookers and captured by social media.
Steam Powered Giraffe
"Dark glasses are like being behind a waterfall - daring and safe at the same time"
The 1992 BBC investigative documentary series The Look, aiming to examine the 'serious side of fashion', is available to watch online. The episodes cover the power of licensing luxury names, who benefits from catwalk shows, how the industry commodifies identity, the story of Yves Saint Laurent, the power of the press, and how fabric itself makes a difference. [more inside]
"If you account for my access to academic journal subscriptions, my salary is really like half a million dollars."
This past Thursday, Forbes Magazine published a pair of articles: The Most Stressful Jobs of 2013 and The Least Stressful Jobs of 2013, the latter of which began with the sentence: "University professors have a lot less stress than most of us." 300+ outraged comments (and thousands of sarcastic #RealForbesProfessor tweets,) later they've added a retraction, and linked to a blog post that takes A Real Look at Being a Professor in the US. [more inside]
Can you find your dot?
Census Dotmap is the visual representation of all persons counted in the 2010 US and 2011 Canadian censuses (via).
Gravity is the only glue
"Rock balancing is an art, discipline, or hobby (depending upon the intent of the practitioner) in which rocks are balanced on top of one another in various positions".
Here are a few practitioners:
Phillip A. Long
Renato Brancaleoni
Lila Higgins
Adrian Gray
Michael Grab
Terry Robison uses sticks beside stones
Dave Gorman
Peter Juhl shares basic principles
Team Sandtastic stacks rocks when they don’t build elaborate sand castles
Bill Dan has links to other balancers.
Extra: Balanced sand castles [more inside]
Phillip A. Long
Renato Brancaleoni
Lila Higgins
Adrian Gray
Michael Grab
Terry Robison uses sticks beside stones
Dave Gorman
Peter Juhl shares basic principles
Team Sandtastic stacks rocks when they don’t build elaborate sand castles
Bill Dan has links to other balancers.
Extra: Balanced sand castles [more inside]
I would respect you like CRAZY
For Vanity Fair's Comedy issue, the groundbreaking improvisational comedy duo of Mike Nichols and Elaine May sit down (but don't quite sit still) for their first joint interview in decades.
Nobel Prize Library
We introduced UNZ.org before but it's probably worth revisiting for a vein of gold, the Nobel Prize Library (1971), which contains full modern translations of significant works of 20th century literature. For example [more inside]
Back where he otter be
For the first time in more than half a century, there is a river otter living in San Francisco. Photos. Photos and video. [more inside]
"the arts are just a part of the weapons of life"
The poet Jayne Cortez passed away this past December 28th in New York City (New York Times obituary). She started publishing her poems in the late 1960s and in the 70s began performing her poetry backed by music, first in collaboration with bassist Richard Davis, and then backed by her own band The Firespitters. Some of their tracks have found their way to YouTube: I See Chano Pozo, If the Drum Is a Woman, There It Is, Maintain Control & Economic Love Song I, Everybody Wants to Be Somebody, Takin' the Blues Back Home, Talk to Me (for Don Cherry), I've Been Searching, You Can Be and Endangered Species List Blues. Just two years ago she performed solo with her son by Ornette Coleman, drummer Denardo Coleman: Find Your Own Voice, I'm Gonna Shake and She Got He Got. In 1997 she was featured on University of California television network in the series Artists on the Cutting Edge where she read poems and discussed her work. Finally, here's a brief clip from the 1982 documentary Poetry in Motion, where she was interviewed.
Those silly Dutch errr Germans, losing things...
The Lost Dutchman Mine remains lost, though the body of a man obsessed by it was finally found. Jesse Capen was obsessed by the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine, and planned a trip to the Superstition Mountains in 2009 to find it and earn his riches. Unfortunately he died in an apparent fall on what was probably his first day there. His remains were finally found.
The more I look the more I see things that make me want to look away BUT I CAN’T.
--o---<<|
Happy Thomas Pynchon rumor day! [LAtimes.com] "What's that, you say? America's most reclusive author, Thomas Pynchon, appeared in the news Friday -- not once but twice? Why, yes, yes, he has, surfacing in two unconnected rumours. Conspiracy? Pynchonian? Maybe we should henceforth designate Jan. 4 as Thomas Pynchon Rumor Day." [more inside]
I love nature. I hate pollution
Seeing yellow
THE PROBLEM OF THE AMBER SIGNAL LIGHT IN TRAFFIC FLOW (PDF), published in 1959, is the origin of the yellow interval duration equation for traffic lights.
But in China, as of Tuesday, yellow lights are now considered functionally the same as red lights, prompting outcries in the local media that it is not only unfair, but actually violates Newton's First Law of Motion. It also violates the history of traffic lights... [more inside]
Persistence prays
Chagos Islanders Lose the European Court Battle but the Struggle Continues Former residents of the Chagos Islands have lost their latest legal bid for the right to return following a European ruling. What next for the islanders? James Wan recaps the decades long struggle and the implications of the latest ruling on the fate of the former residents of Diego Garcia. Previously in 2002, 2003 2006 and some archives.
NSF/smashthestate
de Dodo doo, de da da da
More dodos than you can shake a stick at! The Dodo Blog: "The influence of dodos in the modern culture, in other words, a blog about dodos." Continued at The Dodo Tumblr. • Dodos previously & previously
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