November 12, 2014

One of these things is not like the others

US News and World Report (USNWR) ranking of the top ten universities in mathematics are: 1. Berkeley ; 2. Stanford ; 3. Princeton ; 4. UCLA ; 5. University of Oxford ; 6. Harvard ; 7. King Abdulaziz University ; 8. Pierre and Marie Curie – Paris 6 ; 9. University of Hong Kong ; 10. University of Cambridge [more inside]
posted by benzenedream at 11:49 PM PST - 29 comments

Enough flags, Betsy. I want a tank.

The captioned adventures of George Washington, episode 1: In which General Washington becomes increasingly done with Betsy Ross showing him flags. Further episodes below the fold. [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 8:43 PM PST - 17 comments

An Atlas Of Hyperreal Cities And Where To Find Them

On Umberto Eco's latest book of imaginary maps to legendary lands.
posted by The Whelk at 5:59 PM PST - 11 comments

I wanted him back—not his poems

Liam Hoare writes about warrior poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, their brief acquaintance and their influence on each other. "I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze." [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 5:45 PM PST - 30 comments

"Ecstatic burning harmedness"

The nominess for the Bad Sex in Fiction award have been announced.
posted by anothermug at 5:42 PM PST - 59 comments

Foodie presents the story of Allen and Alinea

Allen & Alinea: One Man’s Odyssey Through an Iconic Cookbook
posted by boo_radley at 5:37 PM PST - 9 comments

sometime rapper, always artist

Before there was Chappie, there was Die Antwoord. Along with Die Antwoord came Ninja. But before there was Ninja, there was... [more inside]
posted by divined by radio at 5:34 PM PST - 13 comments

As clusterfucks go....

The US has Spent $7.6 Billion to Crush the Afghan Opium Trade—and It's Doing Better Than Ever. In fact an area about the size of Rhode island is under cultivation and the US armed forces seem to have openly protected the Opium fields.
Opium is Keeping the US in Afghanistan.
Then there is also the unkown number of contractors, in excess of 108,000 last year.
A recent UNODC report estimated that about $220 billion of drug money is laundered annually through the financial system.
posted by adamvasco at 4:11 PM PST - 43 comments

The Dreadful Inconvenience of Salad

An article from The Atlantic's Olga Khazan discusses the invention of a $1 fresh salad vending machine in order to make healthier food options available in lower socioeconomic communities like East Garfield Park in Chicago's West side. [more inside]
posted by ourt at 4:08 PM PST - 81 comments

"You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear..."

When Adam Mansbach's best selling book Go The Fuck to Sleep was narrated into an audiobook by Samuel L. Jackson, most people probably didn't expect it to become a catchy song.
posted by quin at 4:01 PM PST - 6 comments

below the belt (with Susan Schorn)

Susan Schorn - How to Kick a Guy in the Balls: An Illustrated Guide [more inside]
posted by flex at 3:20 PM PST - 117 comments

"By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight"

The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014) is an article about a 24-year old Chinese assembly line worker and poet who committed suicide last month. He worked for the electronics manufacturer which makes products for a range of companies, including Sony, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Nintendo. The post includes Chinese originals and English translations of Xu Lizhi's poems. His death and poetry have garnered much attention, such as these blogposts from The Wall Street Journal and The London Review of Books.
posted by Kattullus at 2:25 PM PST - 19 comments

Go Fly a … or maybe read a little about it first

37 years worth of back issues. I suspect this might be the greatest kite site out there.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:29 PM PST - 10 comments

Kindness / Otherness / Pop

Kindness teaches young Ramon his song, House. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 12:39 PM PST - 5 comments

The Time of the LEGO Doctor

You've seen the Eleventh Doctor regenerate into the Twelfth. But you haven't seen it done in LEGO, until now. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 12:29 PM PST - 33 comments

"I just did you a solid, homie"

A super-chill mule deer engages an amateur videographer regarding a powdered donut on his (the mule deer's) antler.
posted by elmer benson at 11:35 AM PST - 70 comments

He was not originally a rapper by trade

Big Bank Hank, one-third of the Sugarhill Gang, the unlikely ambassadors who took hip-hop out of Bronx parks and onto the pop charts, died on Tuesday in Englewood, N.J. He was 58. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:32 AM PST - 37 comments

Tagged medieval art databases

Manuscript Miniatures, Effigies & Brasses, Armour in Art, and Aquamanilia are four online databases of medieval art. Together they comprise some 19,506 images. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 10:46 AM PST - 8 comments

Are Democrats elitist?

The Affordable Care Act was "put together by a bunch of elitists who don't really fundamentally understand the American people," said former DNC chair Howard Dean. A few years ago, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland voiced concerns about Democrats' "intellectual elitism" and hesitancy to "talk using populist language." Republicans have long used accusations of elitism against Democrats as an electoral tactic. Did elitism lose the Democrats the 2014 midterms?
posted by shivohum at 10:30 AM PST - 311 comments

The piano is playing itself

Father John Misty performs "Bored In the USA" on Letterman with laugh track accompaniment. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:44 AM PST - 52 comments

"We all want to help one another - human beings are like that."

Charlie Chaplin – Let Us All Unite! [Youtube] by melodysheep (previously). [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:36 AM PST - 11 comments

Mining the Brains of Today's Most Dynamic Composers

Meet the Composer is a new podcast that dives into the minds of some of today's top composers. Produced by WQXR and Q2 Music, and hosted by New York area violist Nadia Sirota, Meet the Composer "takes listeners into the minds and creative processes of the composers making some of the most innovative, compelling and breathtakingly beautiful music today." [more inside]
posted by fremen at 8:01 AM PST - 6 comments

aka Your Favorite Dog Sucks

A graph showing the popularity of dog breeds versus their overall cost-benefit score (courtesy of Information is Beautiful). Here's the raw data.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:08 AM PST - 163 comments

"the freedom to make and remake our cities"

Today, we’ve been so inculcated with fear and distracted by obligations and consumer junk, we can’t even be bothered to ask why numerous miles of warm, fluorescently lit tunnels under Chancery Lane are laying mothballed while people with no homes freeze to death on the streets above them – forced to sleep in hypothermic conditions by anti-homeless spikes installed on ledges outside shops, luxury flats and offices.
Urban explorer Bradley Garrett goes spelunking below the streets of London to show the importance of urban explorers in discovering the true shape of the city.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:05 AM PST - 12 comments

Real Human Tetrachromacy

Human tetrachromacy is the purely theoretical notion that a woman might, through a rare mutation on one of her two X chromosomes, end up having four different types of cones in her retina instead of the usual three, and therefore be uncannily sensitive to differences in color. But nobody's ever proven that this phenomenon exists in the real world-- Wait. They found one? (And nobody told me?!) Meet Concetta Antico, the tetrachromat painter. Her personal website is a bit self-congratulatory, but the science appears to be sound. It turns out Antico is not the first, either. A doctor known only as cDa29 was confirmed to have four-dimensional color vision back in 2010. [more inside]
posted by otherthings_ at 12:56 AM PST - 50 comments

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