November 19, 2007
Top 60 Japanese buzzwords of 2007
Child-bearing machines, net café refugees and bottom-biting bugs: Top 60 Japanese buzzwords of 2007.
Mickey from Natick Confronts The End of Martyrdom
Facing an unprecedented series of sports victories, the typical Boston fan is faced with the cold realization that success ain't all it's cracked up to be.
You were poked by Big Brother.
Over the past couple of years, Facebook has become increasingly popular, until it seemed like everyone and their grandma was joining up. A new feature, called Facebook Beacon, lets corporations join the fray. Might this be cause for concern? [more inside]
Let the holiday shopping begin.
Scientific esthetics- Made With Molecules. Some classy, some trashy, and some just plain cute. [more inside]
Obscenity and Politics
It was once common to bury dangerous political tracts within pornography and then to bind them in an innocuously titled volume. This served as a double protection: the cover protected the book, and the porn protected the author from the political fallout of her opinions. The Marquis de Sade's classic Philosophy in the Bedroom plays with this trope. According to some, the screed against religion in its fifth dialogue justifies the sexual excesses that come before and after. According to others, the buried manifesto serves to hide the pornography in plain sight. (pdf, zipped)
Euro-ricers in Romania
Much Ado About Shakespeare
BBC/HBO to film all 37 of Shakespeare's plays Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes will produce the entire canon over 12 years.
USA! USA!
"Jade Raymond Smells Nice"?!! WTF?!!
This is why we can't have nice things/people. Jade Raymond is a producer for Ubisoft's new video game Assassin's Creed. Being an attractive woman, Ubisoft decided to capitalize on this fact, leading to sad and pathetic video game coverage of said woman. Then the comic hit. [more inside]
The Model of a Psychopharmacologist
Laptops, by 8-year-olds.
Imaginary laptops, as designed by 8-year-olds. I'd suggest printing them out so you can try them at home. The designs lack dotted lines to fold across, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Scroll down for the interview, which is as charming as the pictures.
Access Denied
In the same spirit as the Open Net Initiative and Committee to Protect Bloggers that both track global internet filtering, Sami ben Gharbia's Access Denied Map tries to track the blocking of sites like Blogger, Flickr, YouTube and others by governments, as well as efforts by activists to keep them accessible or to challenge their blockage.
Strung out
Sandrine Pelletier. Coming from a background in illustrative line art, Pelletier also works extensively with thread.
Many of her pieces explore a tension between traditionally feminine materials and aggressive, masculine subjects.
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Trackulous - track anything
Trackulous - Track Anything. There have to be ten dozen ways to track your weight online. MeFi users track thteir social athletic accomplishments at WeEndure and Runner+. But what if we wanted to track (and graph) Javelinas Sighted, Cookies Tossed, Fights with Boyfriend, or any other user-defined numerical quantity over time? And what if we wanted to share our statistics with our friends? For that, Trackulous - a simple, elegant, mobile-friendly web tool.
Homeopathy
No more squeezin'
Chick Sexing
"Over and over he scoops up a chick with his left hand, expels its droppings with a squeeze of his thumb, opens its vent with his fingers, peers through the magnifying lenses attached to his spectacles and determines its sex." It's a dirty job (YT). Sexing chicks early is important so that the cockerels can be separated and culled^ or fed to be broilers^. The obvious differences take weeks to develop, so when the vent sexing method was developed in Japan in the 1920s, professional chicken sexers became sought after. [more inside]
Dancing "rave style": from beginner to geriatric, you're covered
How to dance at a rave. People dancing to house music. The Detroit Jit vs. Chicago Juke. The history of the Detroit Jit on popular dance show The Scene from the 80's. 80's legends the Funkateers doing their thing to Wordy Rappinghood. Compare them to the New York City Breakers. [more inside]
Love in the Time of Dementia
Love in the Time of Dementia Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, has a romance with another woman, and the former justice is thrilled — even visits with the new couple while they hold hands on the porch swing — because it is a relief to see her husband of 55 years so content. (More on their story from AFP.)
This is also the plot of the wonderful Alice Munro short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which became the recent movie Away from Her. [more inside]
Heckling... in song.
Walter Wolfgang, 82, was ejected from the Labour Party conference and stopped by police under the Anti-terrorism Act, for heckling Jack Straw.
But when he spoke in Oxford... a Barbershop Quintet struck a blow for freedom of speech.
Celebrity art
Pop Life Art and its associated blog focus on celebrity art, heavy on the rock stars. One of my happy discoveries is Martin Mull's collection of collages, but I bemoan the lack of any wildlife art from Radar O'Reilly. If you're a pop culture junkie, here's a little advice on celebrity art collecting from an expert.
Over the sea to Skye...
Straight outta NeiMeng
China is famed for its many inventions: gunpowder, paper, printing; some even claim golf and football. Who knew that the origins of hip-hop lie in the vast northern wastes of the Celestial Empire too?
:'-(
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