November 16, 2007
Honey, I swear--it's tuna fish!
Attention most ladies and certain gentlemen: Do you think your man has been cheating on you? Well, there are several ways to check up on him. But budding rap star Riskay has her own special method (warning: pretty much NSFW, and autoplay of a really wonderful song in the last link).
Fire Art!
The Flaming Lotus Girls are a San Francisco-based fire art collective. Their recent works have included The Serpent Mother (pics | video); the Angel of the Apocalypse (pics ); and the Hand of God (pics | video). Another bay area fire arts group is Interpretive Arson, creators of Dance Dance Immolation (previously featured), and the interactive 2pir (video).
Did Female Derring-Do Contribute To The Neanderthals' Demise?
Stone Age Feminism? Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women's work as well as men's, so it's a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women - the vital "reproductive core" of a tiny population - could well have meant demographic disaster for a species already struggling to survive among monster bears, yellow-fanged hyenas, and cunning Homo sapien newcomers. Via.
belafonte momus
"The record that no home should be without"
Willis Alan Ramsey is to music as Harper Lee is to literature: he only made one album, and that's sad in it's own way, but it's such an overwhelmingly perfect album, you're okay with it. "Probably the most imitated singer/songwriter you’ve never heard," his legion of followers includes Lyle Lovett, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Waylon Jennings, and he is rightfully considered one of the fathers of progressive country. He will make his second record in his own good time, whenever the hell that is. Oh, and one of his songs was made famous by the Captain and Tennille, but please don't let that dissuade you from exploring further.
An arborist in a helicopter
An arborist in a helicopter Arborist Todd Irvine gets a ride in a news chopper, photographing and annotating Toronto’s tree canopy – still largely in place and vibrantly colourful due to winter’s late arrival. [more inside]
Only Shatner can make Satanists melt
All hail 70s-era Shatner! He began his career with some rather prestigious projects, appearing in The Brothers Karamazov and Judgment at Nuremberg, as well as some rather high profile appearance in Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But even then, there were hints of exploitation, such as 1961's The Explosive Generation, in which Shatner played a teacher whose job is endangered when she speaks candidly to kids about sex. And there was 1962's The Intruder, a Roger Corman film from 1963 in which Shatner played a carpetbagging racist inciting violence in a southern town. (Clip.) And, of course, there was Incubus from 1965, a horror film in Esperanto. (Clip.) But, after Star Trek, at the start of the 70s, something went haywire. [more inside]
Game Center CX
"[Game Center CX] is comedic, dramatic, even a bit mental, but altogether it’s an unforgettable show about what sounds like a forgettable concept: a guy trying to beat old Nintendo games." [more inside]
We finally really did it.
First cloning of monkey embryo raises hope of a great leap in medical science. A team at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (itself no stranger to controversy) cloned embryos from Semos — a nine-year-old rhesus macaque named after the ape overlord in Planet of the Apes — then extracted stem cells from the embryos. We've heard similar claims before and they turned out to be a hoax. But this time it looks like the real deal. [more inside]
Freethought and other High-Fallutin' Multimedia Lectures
Freethought Multimedia contains dozens of interviews, conversations and lectures on a variety of topics with/by several contemporary skeptics and freethinkers, including Michael Shermer, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins. (There's a great links section at the bottom of the page, as well. Particularly good are the University Lectures section and the Lectures Archive.)
Oooo...Nice Gadgets.
Oobject.com is a website that is "...like the Billboard Charts for Gadgets." Oobjects picks topics for lists of gadgets. People suggest items and others vote on which qualify for a given category: Giant Screens | Best Concept Cellphones | Crazy Bicycles. "The site also takes on other aspects of life, like politics and culture...:" Macy's Parade Ideas | Best Halloweenerd Costumes | Geek Hall of Fame Apple Users. [via]
Worst Cartoons Ever AND The Birth of Pixar, in a Single Post!
Sometimes called "The Ed Wood of Animation", director Sam Singer had an interesting career. He was responsible for some of the most godawful cartoons ever produced, and through his work on 1975's Tubby the Tuba, was present at the birth of Pixar. [more inside]
trippy interactive flash
Interactive, flashy, freaky flash Friday: Ice Flow Farm l Catamount Inn l Red Hawk Barn l Goosela Meadow l School House Grow l Octo October. Larry Carlson’s surreal North Vale Interactive Pictures. [mildly nsfw, embedded sound. Not for epileptics.] [more inside]
ZOMBIE BOOB TUBE TELEVISION
They claimed they would destroy all television with their business. $100 million and one cast member of First Kid later, all they had were massive amounts of failure, tremendous parties with Bryan Singer, and many, many, many allegations of sexual molestation. Now they hide in the Spanish Riviera and hire Chinese sweatshop workers to mine for World of Warcraft items. Check as well the original 2000 LA Times expose on the company, to say nothing of the "gay pedophile version of Silver Spoons" which remains their finest artistic achievement. via boingboing [more inside]
the shaft
In classrooms nationwide, girls are pulling ahead of boys academically. Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school. In 12th grade, 44% of girls rate as proficient readers on federal tests, compared with 28% of boys. And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.
Preparing a turkey the MANLY way
Preparing a turkey the MANLY way. Naturally, one of them involves a lot of bacon.
Dreams float. Sometimes.
Miss Rockaway Armada. A photonarrative.
Rounding third and headed for home
The Old Left-Hander's headed home. Joe Nuxhall was the youngest player in Major League Baseball when he stepped up to the plate at age 15, but his real contribution came later, in the Cincinnati Reds broadcast booth, alongside Marty Brennaman. "...the personification of everything that is good about baseball and, of course, the Redlegs," the Old Left-Hander is dead at age 79.
See For Yourself - Optical Illusions
See For Yourself - Purves Lab's optical illusions web page with empirical explanations of familiar and unfamiliar illusions.
The span of a thinking being is the span of a single thought.
A case against "starring*" and "looking-glassingLG" in philosophy: G. Strawson on intentionality and experience. In a very engaging and stimulating paper, Galen Strawson takes contemporary philosophy of mind to task on certain supposed terminological subreptions and conceptual reductions (pdf). You, like others, may of course not find G. Strawson's views fully convincing. (G. Strawson previously on Metafilter here and here.) [more inside]
DIY Illusions
Pete Seeger condemns Stalin...
The pleasant but hagiographical Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (production company website w/ trailer) is playing in New York and Los Angeles. The movie is entirely uncritical... prompting this response by Ron Radosh who is interviewed in the film, but whose critical comments were left out. But most interesting is this followup article by Radosh describing Seeger's response and a new song against Stalin. The filmmaker comes out worst in Radosh's account... [more inside]
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