November 7, 2013
mefi's own Horace Rumpole ...
on "You're the Expert" [via mefi projects] a podcast featuring academics interviewed about their specialty areas by comedians in front of a live audience. [more inside]
Cheb i Sabbah Has Left the Planet
Cheb i Sabbah's family has announced his passing at the age of 66. His unique world music creations have been cherished by dancers, trancers, and thinkers alike for decades. [more inside]
Why AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fired An Employee In Front Of 1,000 Coworkers
“Why is art going in here? This is the ghetto”
The Best Of All Possible Worlds - "A public art contest in Evansville, Indiana becomes a debate over race, class, and good taste." [more inside]
The Delivery Plan Is Just As Interesting As The Content
Badass Digest reports on the next step in Marvel's ongoing cross-platform adaptation of their comic book properties to video media. Another example is that ABC's "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." will apparently crossover with both the new Captain America and Thor movies, the later of which has also garnered some positive coverage from Badass for reasons other than the crazy aggressive experimental delivery plan.
I am the one who clicks
The eleven nations of America
"There’s never been an America, but rather several Americas—each a distinct nation. There are eleven nations today. Each looks at violence, as well as everything else, in its own way."
" [more inside]
“It gives me such a sense of peace to draw..."
Before They Pass Away
Before They Pass Away: Powerful Portraits of Secluded Cultures on the Brink of Extinction. Q&A with Jimmy Nelson.
A Night at the Xclusiv
"Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up."
BBC Radio 4's 'The Film Programme' talks to George A Romero. 'Forty five years after the release of genre-defining Night of the Living Dead, Francine Stock talks to the director George A Romero about inventing the undead zombie and where he might unearth horror in contemporary society. Plus why he doesn't rate Stanley Kubrick as a horror director.' [SL BBC Radio 4 episode] [more inside]
"Where are our gay voices, and why are we suffocating them?"
"Resources that should be going to empower LGBT voices are instead going to enhance the visibility of straight people. We've created professional allies (or, as the history major in me would call them, mercenaries). We've created famous allies. Think of how absurd that concept is. I have a public presence because I treat gay people with respect." - Patrick Burke of You Can Play writes for OutSports about the role of LGBT allies and his decision to step aside to let former NFL player Wade Davis, who came out in 2012, become executive director
WOMBO COMBO
I'll only do so if it's fully inclusive.
By a vote of 64-32. the United States Senate has passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Full passage of ENDA would make it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. It is already illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, nationality, religion, age or disability. [more inside]
Background Music
The Seeburg 1000 was a phonograph designed and built by the Seeburg Corporation to play background music in offices, restaurants, retail businesses, factories and similar locations, cycling through a stack of non-standard 16-2/3 RPM vinyl records provided by Seeburg in one of three different libraries of music: Basic, Mood and Industrial*.
And now, it has its own Internet Radio Station!
*in the 1960s, that meant "medium-fast tempo music of a lively nature, to induce workers to be more productive."
And now, it has its own Internet Radio Station!
*in the 1960s, that meant "medium-fast tempo music of a lively nature, to induce workers to be more productive."
A Very Dangerous Boy
A son kills a father and the question is why. In the case of 10-year-old Joseph Hall, the answer seemed simple: The boy had been raised around hate."
Amy Wallace digs into a case of a young boy who killed his Neo-Nazi father: "A Very Dangerous Boy"
Amy Wallace digs into a case of a young boy who killed his Neo-Nazi father: "A Very Dangerous Boy"
[wild nature sounds go here]
Attenborrowed. SLVimeo. David Attenborough narrates the now-infamous Miley Cyrus/Robin Thicke "twerking" performance.
"There are no real consequences for having bad security.”
Should software makers be held financially liable for the insecurity of their products? "The joke goes that only two industries refer to their customers as “users.” But here's the real punch line: Drug users and software users are about equally likely to recover damages for whatever harms those wares cause them." [more inside]
"A physicist who never lost her humanity"
You might know that today is the birthday of Marie Curie. You might not know that it's also the birthday of the physicist Einstein called "Our Marie Curie." Although the birth register lists her birth date as November 17, 1878, Lise Meitner observed her birthday as November 7th. Her work with Otto Hahn in discovering nuclear fission led to him receiving the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The omission of Meitner's contribution, largely due to the political climate of World War II, is considered one of the most famous snubs in Nobel history. Their collaboration was portrayed in NOVA docudrama Einstein's Big Idea (video starts at her introduction). She also discovered the Auger effect a year before its namesake. Element 109, meitnerium, was named in her honor. The first chapter of Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, a biography written by Ruth Lewin Sime, is available here. As always, there is a relevant XKCD.
We are a nation of immigrants and Mr. Prime is one of them.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please feast your eyes on this year's Miss Universe National Costume Competition. Feathers, fans, drums, giraffes, a gecko, a bicycle, a windmill, a baby doll, Optimus Prime and—shockingly—at least one lovely dress were all on display. Previously. [more inside]
He would know
I contradict myself
EnCrypt Lock and Buy It
A recent strain of malware called Cryptolocker (technical description from BleepingComputer) has been infecting computers across the Internet. It's of the Ransomware (wiki) genre of attack, and searches a computer's drive for critical files by browsing their extensions (for example, focusing on word processing documents, images and music) and encrypts them with its own key that you can then buy back from the hacker for a fee of $100 to $300 dollars payable in Bitcoins. More information about the virus and how to avoid it is available at Krebs On Security, and the Malwarebytes Blog, with more recent developments on Naked Security.
Stuffed.
Occurring once before in 1888 and possibly not again for another 77,798 years (really), the two holidays of Chanukah and Thanksgiving will overlap. The result? Chefs, food blogs, and nearly everybody else scrambling to create distinct fusion menus that draw from the delicious traditions of each holiday (NYT). Buzzfeed's massive Thanksgivukkah menu. Gothamist: Four Easy Fusion Dishes. Food 52's recipe challenge (in comments). Serious Eats' response ( Latke-Crusted Turkey Stuffing Fritters With Liquid Cranberry Core and Turkey Schmaltz Gravy) . NY Daily News asks Chef Zach Kutsher for ideas.
Boys' Night
The Debate over H: the 'istory of aitch
Why H is the most contentious letter in the alphabet is a quick overview of the letter H. Though the visual form of the letter has been pretty stable in Medieval writing, it's the pronunciation of the letter that has caused issues, from Catullus' poem mocking Arrius's addition of H's to words, to the Irish clash of Protestants and Catholics including how each group pronounced H. Such regional and generational shifts in pronunciation were of interest to the British Library, as documented in their Evolving English exhibit, which includes an online "mapped" catalog of sound clips (previously).
"I didn't say I hate feminists; I said I hate feminist."
'I like the rhythm and intent of "pathetic prehistoric rage-filled inbred assclown," but that's a lot to ask of a hashtag.' Joss Whedon talks about the word feminist at an Equality Now dinner.
Unproven or rumored; unsufficient evidence to conclude
Dream Battle note count: 272789. What Does the Fox Say? note count 1.1 million. Bad Apple note count: 4.6 million. "Fujiwara no Mokou's theme" note count: 21100000+. It's The Impossible Music of Black MIDI where there is no such thing as Too Many Notes.
<-- HOODS
The original storyboard to the title sequence (previously) of Batman: The Animated Series (previously)
Zoomable integrated view of Wikipedia timelines
Stefan Haustein's Timeline pulls timelines from Wikipedia, parses them and puts them into a coherent zoomable view.
*raspberry*
Nanotubes are for wusses.
Theoretically sound model for metallic carbon found. Researchers from Peking University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics employed state-of-the-art theoretical methods to show that it is possible to manipulate carbon to form a three-dimensional metallic phase with interlocking hexagons.
“Unlike high-pressure techniques that require three terapascals of pressure to make carbon metallic, the studied structures are stable at ambient conditions and may be synthesized using benzene or polyacenes molecules." The new metallic carbon structures may have important applications in lightweight metals for space applications, catalysis and in devices showing negative differential resistance or superconductivity. The research is supported by grants from China and the US Department of Energy.
Dancehall days
"I might be the only person who’s experienced both Wigan and, say the Taksim Square occupation in Istanbul this year, so this is hard to verify: but I think these very different atmospheres shared something in common. There was something overtly rebellious and subconsciously political about Wigan. Like with a riot, or an occupation, you could tell immediately, through eye contact, who was feeling the buzz.
What we were doing, back then, was rewriting the rules of being white and working class. We knew exactly what it meant to dance to black music in the era of the National Front and the racist standup comedian. Ours was a rebellion against pub culture, shit music and leery sexist nightclubs. Our weapon was obscure vinyl, made by black kids nobody had ever heard of." -- Paul Mason describes the importance of Northern Soul. [more inside]
What we were doing, back then, was rewriting the rules of being white and working class. We knew exactly what it meant to dance to black music in the era of the National Front and the racist standup comedian. Ours was a rebellion against pub culture, shit music and leery sexist nightclubs. Our weapon was obscure vinyl, made by black kids nobody had ever heard of." -- Paul Mason describes the importance of Northern Soul. [more inside]
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