November 27, 2012

I get bored with baseball too, but Adderall isn't the answer.

What do NASCAR's AJ Allmendinger, Joe Haden of the Cleveland Browns, New York Giants safety Tyler Sash, Carlos "Chooch" Ruiz of the Philadelphia Phillies, and many other athletes have in common? They have all used a performance enhancing substance that is growing in popularity among athletes, one that is widely prescribed and which is taken by millions of children every day. The drug in question is Adderall: The combination of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine is used as part of a treatment program to control symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. [more inside]
posted by Drinky Die at 11:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.

“I am convinced [Dorothy Day] is a saint for our time,” Cardinal Dolan said at the bishops’ meeting. She exemplifies, he said, “what’s best in Catholic life, that ability we have to be ‘both-and’ not ‘either-or.’ ” [more inside]
posted by ActionPopulated at 10:19 PM PST - 30 comments

♫ ♪ It's the daddy of all lubricators / the best thing there is for the neck... ♫

Wait, your company doesn't have an official employee drinking song booklet?
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:45 PM PST - 21 comments

Alles andere ist Kaese

Pictures of Sausage, and things made from sausage.
posted by frimble at 9:37 PM PST - 27 comments

Apple Ads

Celebrity Apple TV Ads - One section of Every Apple TV Ads (ever made) [via iClarified]
posted by unliteral at 8:33 PM PST - 14 comments

"Look At Me Now"

American paratrooper Arthur Boorman suffered debilitating injuries during the first Gulf War. Doctors told him he'd never walk unassisted again. 15 years later.... [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:47 PM PST - 16 comments

Neil's Puppet Dreams

When Neil Patrick Harris dreams, he dreams in puppet: Episode One of Neil's Puppet Dreams "The Lullabye". Bonus: Episode Two "Behind The Scenes".
posted by hippybear at 7:46 PM PST - 18 comments

The International Tracing Service, more than 65 years on

The International Tracing Service was established following the Second World War to help repatriate forced laborers and survivors of the concentration camps as well as to trace the missing. 67 years after the end of the war, ITS receives about 1,080 requests for information a month, some of which still result in reuniting relatives. [more inside]
posted by hoyland at 7:45 PM PST - 5 comments

What time is it!?

An Adventure Time radio play in which the Ice King pretends to be a de-teca-ca-tive
posted by P.o.B. at 6:50 PM PST - 8 comments

Al-Qahira, Ares, Auqakuh, Bahram...

Do you have $500,000 lying around? If you do, Elon Musk might just send you to colonize Mars. This is not the first time that Musk has discussed his desire for a colony on Mars. Interesting as it sounds, not everyone is excited about the idea.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 6:36 PM PST - 70 comments

Obliged Subjects

Her Majesty the Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Mark Carney as Governor of the Bank of England from 1 July 2013. He will succeed Sir Mervyn King. [more inside]
posted by vozworth at 6:34 PM PST - 48 comments

Love of the Windy City

Take a tour of the Chicago Loop and discover its beautiful architecture.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:10 PM PST - 30 comments

Rubinstein teaches Chopin

Pianist Arthur Rubinstein teaches the Chopin Ballade #1: Part 1, Part 2. Here is a Rubinstein recording of the ballade in full. [more inside]
posted by beisny at 5:19 PM PST - 7 comments

My Mother, My Other: Alison Bechdel's Comic Drama

Named as one of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2012, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, "Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama," calls on memory, Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," Donald Winnicott's psychoanalytic work (.pdf), Alice Miller's "The Drama of the Gifted Child," and the shade of P.D. Eastman's classic short book about a baby bird in search of its mama to explore her fraught relationship with her mother, Helen. It's art. It's theory. It's self. It's meta-memoir in search of a mother. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:14 PM PST - 15 comments

Fresher than a popsicle.

Man raps to Chris Brown's Look At Me Now using only Family Guy voices.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 3:31 PM PST - 27 comments

Jeffrey Beebe's Refractoria

Over the last fifteen years, I have created the world of Refractoria, a comprehensive imagino-ordinary world that is equal parts autobiography and pure fantasy. - Jeffrey Beebe [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen at 3:15 PM PST - 11 comments

History's most influential people, ranked by Wikipedia reach

History's most influential people, ranked by Wikipedia reach (jpg version).
posted by stbalbach at 1:50 PM PST - 120 comments

Ethics++

Building machines with a conscience is a big job, and one that will require the coordinated efforts of philosophers, computer scientists, legislators, and lawyers.
posted by Obscure Reference at 1:16 PM PST - 75 comments

The Royal Society Winton Prize 2012

The Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Writing 2012 has been announced. James Gleick has won for his book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. The shortlist is also available with Chapter 1 of each book downloadable as a PDF.
posted by shimmerbug at 1:06 PM PST - 5 comments

Variations on a steem

Mia Gentile covers the Stanley Steemer jingle again (goth) and again (50s girl band) and again (a la Avril Lavigne) and...
posted by EJXD2 at 12:42 PM PST - 17 comments

The man who took out Victor Brauner´s eye

Oscar Dominguez is probably best known for the Electro Sexual Sewing Machine.
He was a surrealist (Fr) and a forger (pdf).
When a fight broke out between Oscar Dominguez and Esteban Frances, it was Victor Brauner who stepped in to separate them, Dominguez accidentally struck him in the face with a bottle. The injury cost Brauner his left eye, an event that Brauner had forseen.
Dominguez updated the technique known as Decalmania.
His last lover was the heiress Marie-Laure de Noailles and during this time he replaced some of her Picasso´s with forgeries painted by himself, selling the originals. He is also suspected of forging Klee, Ledger and Laurens.
He slit his wrists one New years Eve and Janet Flanner churlishly conjectured that he “lay down on the floor, being a dirty, untidy man…and bled all over everything”.
posted by adamvasco at 12:33 PM PST - 7 comments

"Which is another way of saying that Facebook is George Costanza's worst nightmare: It enforces, second by second, the collision of worlds."

Are Your Facebook Friends Stressing You Out? (Yes.) - "The finding, which is similar to one determined last year, is nice as a headline: It's both unexpected (friends! stressing you out! ha!) and ironic (the currency of the social web, taking value rather than adding it!). What's interesting, though, is the why of the matter: the idea that, the report theorizes, the wider your Facebook network, the more likely it is that something you say or do on the site will end up offending one of that network's members... Unsurprisingly, per the study's survey of more than 300 Facebook users, 'adding employers or parents resulted in the greatest increase in anxiety.'" [more inside]
posted by flex at 10:54 AM PST - 135 comments

Terminator: the Documentary

A report was recently released suggesting a pre-emptive ban on fully autonomous weapons - robots that can pick and choose whom to fire on. If this sounds vaguely alarming to you, don't worry - the Department of Defense issued a directive indicating that fully automous robots may only decide to tase you.
posted by wolfdreams01 at 10:39 AM PST - 94 comments

Eclipse/Blue

Los Angeles-based electronic artist Nosaj Thing has collaborated with with the artist/scientist, Daito Manabe (previously) and Creators Project (info) to produce a stunning and graceful audio/visual feast for his new single "Eclipse/Blue", which features Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead on vocals.
posted by raihan_ at 10:34 AM PST - 5 comments

My looks are often commented on long before the work I've done.

Women in the gaming industry have taken to twitter to talk about the sexism they've faced under the hashtag #1reasonwhy [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore at 10:07 AM PST - 146 comments

The Power of Boots Compels You.

Swiper no Swiping!: The Demonology of Dora the Explorer
posted by ursus_comiter at 9:39 AM PST - 58 comments

All is not lost

The video for Frightened Rabbit's new song "State Hospital" is a powerful meditation on rape, domestic violence, suicide and what it means to be strong in the face of all of them. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 9:23 AM PST - 16 comments

"I've got a really good feeling about today."

Spending the Day with Charles, Your Hangover [SLVimeo] [nsfw-ish]
posted by quin at 8:59 AM PST - 11 comments

Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird

The implication is, you’re making it for a group that you are not a member of—and there is something very insincere in that. If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing. Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird (PDF) or (HTML, registration required)
posted by shivohum at 8:49 AM PST - 24 comments

Young Child Risk Calculator

From The National Center For Children in Poverty: Young Child Risk Calculator: "The risk factors used in this tool are known to increase the chance of poor health, school, and developmental outcomes for young children. Economic hardship paired with any of the listed risk factors may indicate a greater chance of poor outcomes. Children with three or more risks are exceptionally vulnerable. Information about the prevalence of young children experiencing these risks can inform policies aimed at improving outcomes for vulnerable children and reducing the number of children experiencing early risks." [more inside]
posted by OmieWise at 8:07 AM PST - 6 comments

The Coldscape

More than three-quarters of the food consumed in the United States today is processed, packaged, shipped, stored, and sold under artificial refrigeration. The shiny, humming stainless steel box in your kitchen is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak—a tiny fragment of the vast global network of temperature-controlled storage and distribution warehouses cumulatively capable of hosting uncounted billions of cubic feet of chilled flesh, fish, or fruit.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:48 AM PST - 28 comments

Journalists vs. Bloggers

If you follow the usual crop of technology news sites, you will have read yesterday morning that Google had apparently acquired a little-known WiFi hotspot company for $400 million. This story spread with the help of the most popular (and most reputable) sites, like TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, The Next Web, and others. Only one small detail: the story wasn't actually true. [more inside]
posted by nickheer at 7:45 AM PST - 54 comments

Trading gold for politics

Popular “prediction market” Intrade is shutting its doors to US Customers, following a suit (filed post-election fortunately) by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Some see this as inevitable, given their history of dissembling to regulators. Other (predictably) see it as another restriction of internet freedom. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:17 AM PST - 29 comments

The End

Act Of Faith and Jimmy's End, short films by written Alan Moore and directed by Mitch Jenkins - dreamy, dark, disturbing and possibly NSFW (MLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:25 AM PST - 9 comments

anomie

[a few comments removed] [more inside]
posted by telstar at 2:51 AM PST - 65 comments

"Don't call it a comeback/I've been here for years."

Jay Walljasper covers Detroit: Not Your Father's Motor City, The Surprise Behind Detroit's Emerging Comeback, Young People’s Fascination With Motor City is Only Part of Detroit Revitalization, A Food Commons Grows In Detroit. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:31 AM PST - 31 comments

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