November 7, 2010
Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, an exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, "is the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture." [more inside]
Women Running From Houses
Kelly Slater Wins His 10th World Surfing Championship
It's official.
After 20 years on the ASP tour, humanoid Kelly Slater might be the greatest competitive athlete of all time.
Some would disagree. But Jordan and Woods never had to worry about not coming back alive.
Daddy...
Webcomic Wsaturday: Warbot, a short, depressing, hilarious comic. By the creator of the ancient, esteemed 8-Bit Theater.
Be all you can be!
Be all you can be in the Japanese Coast Guard! (YT)
I'll be there in 5 minstrels
A molecular link between the active component of marijuana and Alzheimer's disease pathology.
In The Cut
The book is as much a sculptural object as it is a work of masterful storytelling: here is an “enormous last day of life” that looks like it feels. [more inside]
Welcome To The Plutocracy
Bill Moyers delivers the first Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at Boston University, from Oct 29, 2010. (video runs 2 hours, transcript of speech) [more inside]
Burlesquoni
Maria Laura Rodotà an Italian journalist
bemoans Berlusconi´s philandering and the culture of machismo that celebrates his habitual womanising.
Rubygate - the latest of many scandals involving teenage girls is shrugged off by the 70 year old as
My Passion for women is better than being gay.
How much longer can he cling to power? (previously)
"This System Is Bankrupting Our State"
It's the beginning of a lot of things
Pony and Ball Show
Twinings of London are relocating to Poland.
Twinings of London are relocating to Poland. Twinings, the quintessential British tea maker have traded from London since 1706, are hugely profitable and hold a Royal Warrant. The company was the first to blend Earl Grey
in Britain during the premiership of Charles, 2nd Earl Grey. The relocation is being funded by a €10,000,000 grant from the European regional development fund (ERDF). Are UK taxpayers indirectly financing their own job losses? [more inside]
Most Horrible & Shocking Murders
The National Library of Medicine has put a selection of murder pamphlets from the late 1600s to the late 1800s online.
These pamphlets have been a rich source for historians of medicine, crime novelists, and cultural historians, who mine them for evidence to illuminate the history of class, gender, race, the law, the city, crime, religion and other topics. The murder pamphlets in the NLM's collection address cases connected to forensic medicine, especially cases in which doctors were accused of committing-or were the victims of-murder.[more inside]
Go, Rimbaud!
Arthur Rimbaud Documentary [via pb] is an impressionistic tour of Rimbaud's life, from a provincial upbringing, through his teenage poetic revolution, to his world travels and moderately successful business career in the Horn of Africa, featuring contemporary photographs, some taken by Rimbaud, and readings by Joan Baez. His poems (English translations, French, with some translated into English, earlier translations, with French originals) were fundamental in overthrowing the established traditions of writing and his personal story has long been an inspiration to those who chafe under the strictures of society. Ruth Franklin wrote about the whole arc of Rimbaud's life in The New Yorker, while Edmund White focuses on Rimbaud's bull-in-a-china-shop entrance into fellow poet Paul Verlaine's bourgeois existence in The Guardian. You can also read earlier biographical writings on Rimbaud, including his sister Isabelle's hagiographic account. Rimbaud's poetry has been set to music, perhaps most notably by electronic musician Hector Zazou and chansonnier Léo Ferré (links to music below the cut). [more inside]
The man with no face gets a face
The 411 on 420.
Nicaragua invades Costa Rica
Chasing Pirates: Inside Microsoft’s War Room
Chasing Pirates: Inside Microsoft’s War Room - From the special thread that Chinese factories counterfeit in mile-long spools that adorns software authenticity stickers, to near-perfect bootleg discs leaving microscopic evidence of their factory origins, to Mexican and Russian gangsters who are dealt with very carefully, the NYT covers Microsoft's multi-pronged, international war on piracy.
If Henry Rollins thinks you have too many tattoos, you might be a hipster
Henry Rollins and Iranian artist Shirin Nishat visit NYC's Cake Shop, where a young woman acknowledges Rollins's presence by shouting a "very famous" catch-phrase of his at him. Hilarity ensues (language NSFW).
Pianist's Hidden Identities
Classical pianists tend to be identified by their favorite repertoire. Thus, Murray Perahia got stamped as a Mozart and Schumann pianist in his early career, and people raised their eyebrows when he embarked on Liszt and other heavy repertoire. And Rudolf Serkin is today perhaps known best for his Beethoven, and not for the Chopin etudes he played in his earlier years.
Searching for something totally else, I stumbled upon a few private recordings by Clara Haskil [more inside]
Whereof we cannot speak
Playing with Food; Home Edition
Molecular gastronomy - the use of industrial and scientific processes in the culinary arts - has been discussed before, but in the last few years a number of tools and techniques have appeared that make some of the fancy pantsy schmanzy creations of molecular gastronomy possible for the home cook... [more inside]
Sunday Morning "I WANT that dog! video"
Yea Dogs! You will walk away from this video smiling and wondering why YOUR dog is so stupid!
As Seen On TV... NOT!
Prank Packs! Gift boxes that look like packaging for products that don't (and shouldn't) exist. Although there has been some real demand for the Beer Beard and iArm... Spun off from a feature at The Onion (where they love the fakes), Prank Packs are now sold at many Bed Bath and Beyond stores, according to Fast Company (which may, itself, be fake, I'm not sure). But who wouldn't love a "Wake & Bake Dream Griddle Alarm Clock"? Yum!
Listening and dancing to music is awesome!
Shaqueeta on tape, at last
Shaq in draq lip-synching to Beyonce. He calls himself "Shaqueeta." Yes, it's actually Shaq. That is all.
Fighting crime is surely not far behind
Once, there was a boy named Yves. He lived in the mountainous country of Switzerland, and he dreamed of flying. He loved the idea of being free to soar through the air so much that he became a pilot. Later, he went on to fly bigger planes. Perhaps he's even been your pilot.
But being a pilot was never quite enough. Yves still dreamed of soaring through the air, like a bird. And now, he does. Meet Jetman. Previously
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