February 18, 2013
Abolished at last
18 years before slavery was finally abolished in Mississippi, T.V. Nation went and got themselves some slaves. [more inside]
Myths are in our video games
The Death of Romance in the Shadow of the Colossus reads the acclaimed PS2 game as a myth about the rise and fall of the European Romantic movement.
Melissa Villasenor makes comedy jokes [MLYT]
Melissa Villasenor does stand-up comedy, but also likes to sing, both as a part of her act and just because she's good at it. She garnered some attention for her impressions on America's Got Talent (various videos abound) and does a mean Maria Bamford.
Romancing the Drone
The Bobcat in Winter
Michael Jordan Has Not Left The Building. Wright Thompson of ESPN: The Magazine profiles Michael Jordan as he turns 50 and finds himself in a world where his body may age, but his obsessive drive to compete never goes away.
Artistic Portraiture
Bill Gekas creates gorgeous homages to Old Masters with his 5-Year-Old daughter. On his blog he shares his set-ups e.g. The Letter… and the cookie!, Potatoes.
Get an A by exploiting a loophole in the grading curve
In several computer science courses at Johns Hopkins University, the grading curve was set by giving the highest score on the final an A, and then adjusting all lower scores accordingly. The students determined that if they collectively boycotted, then the highest score would be a zero, and so everyone would get an A.
Scarfolk: One visit is not enough
Scarfolk is a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979. Instead, the entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. Here in Scarfolk, pagan rituals blend seamlessly with science; hauntology is a compulsory subject at school, and everyone must be in bed by 8pm because they are perpetually running a slight fever. "Visit Scarfolk today. Our number one priority is keeping rabies at bay." Join their Learn To Swim program, and enjoy the song that won 2nd place in the 1974 Scarfolk Harvest Festival, Dormin Slowly Died With The Radio On.
"They have 50 pound bags of chicken nuggets"
Rewarding The Poison Pen
The Omnivore's Hatchet Job of the Year rewards "the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past 12 months," with the winning critic taking home a golden hatchet and a year's supply of potted shrimp. 2013's winner: Camilla Long, for her devastating review of Rachel Cusk's divorce memoir, Aftermath. Among other things, she described it as a nasty, bizarre memoir written by a "brittle little dominatrix and peerless narcissist." (Via) [more inside]
Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant
Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant recorded together during the first half of the 1950s. Listen to Speedy on the pedal steel and Jimmy on the Fender telecaster on the Hometown Jamboree playing Flying High. [more inside]
"5 Ways Psychology Needs to Evolve"
On the veldt psychologists often had to resort to just so stories to explain human behaviour, which is why we evolved five methods to make evolutionary psychology better.
Like eating ice cream after a lovely dinner.
AMOK [auto playing music], the debut album from "supergroup" Atoms for Peace (Thom Yorke and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich (who did an AMA earlier today), with Flea, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco), is streaming in its entirety ahead of its official release next week.
Bigfoot DNA as mysterious as the elusive cryptid
November 24, 2012: analysis of extensive DNA sequencing of 'a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch” ... suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species.' The press release claimed that the research was "currently under peer-review," except that no scientific journal would publish the research, until now: DeNovo, an open access scientific journal. But DeNovo isn't really open access, as it costs $30 to view the article, the paper itself is brand new, the domain was recently purchased, and the website features generic stock photos. Ars Technica digs deeper, summarizing some of the "open access" article, and providing a link to a particularly insightful clip on YouTube, with an odd water mark. [more inside]
Don't worry, there will still be a Shipping Forecast today/tonight.
“How many condoms it is legal to carry in New York City?”
Arrested for carrying condoms? Maybe not any more. Last week, California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced legislation that will prevent police from arresting or charging someone for sexual solicitation based solely on the possession of one or more condoms. [more inside]
The Disappearing Package isn't disappearing quickly enough
The Disappearing Package. Designer Aaron Mickelson wants to solve the problem of excess packaging, by creating products that have no packaging at all. [more inside]
Cats:
The Rebel and The Slave
One day on a battlefiled in South Carolina, an escaped slave found the unconscious body of a wounded redcoat. [more inside]
With apologies to Ludwig.
Once the home of the Weckquaesgeek tribe, and more recently, William Shatner, Hastings-on-Hudson might sound like the next village over from Downton Abbey, but according to the New York Times, it's "a village, in a Wittgensteinian sort of way" seeing an influx of ex-Brooklynites fleeing to the suburbs in the face of creeping real estate prices. Sure, these new hipsturbanites may miss the creative density of urban New York, but at least the river setting matches their Filson/woolrich heritage-brand aesthetic. Read on if you set your cultural compass to the Brooklyn Flea, or your NYT Style section appreciation to ironic twee.
Fire!
In Schenck v. United States, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously used the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" as an example of how the First Amendment does not cover speech that poses a clear and present danger.
But how did Holmes come to use that particular phrase? The backstory is surprisingly complex.
How the Bush administration sold the Iraq war
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney said. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.” Zinni, sitting right next to Cheney’s lectern, says he “literally bolted” when he heard the vice president’s comments. “In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD [weapons of mass destruction], through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.” Rachel Maddow hosts Hubris: The Selling of the Iraq War, a documentary special, based on the eponymous book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, that will air Monday, February 18 on MSNBC at 9 p.m.
"The basic problem is that no one gets fired."
Your Favorite Army General Actually Sucks. Tom Rick's new book The Generals focuses on professional shortcomings of high-ranking Army officers, and offers a new (old) solution: fire them. "But as far as I can tell, no general has been fired for incompetence in combat since Maj. Gen. James Baldwin was fired as commander of the Americal Division in 1971." [more inside]
Showtime is over.
A Cardiac Conundrum
“The gap between what patients and doctors expect from these procedures, and the benefit that they actually provide, shows the profound impact of a certain kind of mechanical logic in medicine,” he explains. “Even though doctors value randomized clinical trials and evidence-based medicine, they are powerfully influenced by ideas about how diseases and treatments work. If doctors think a treatment should work, they come to believe that it does work, even when the clinical evidence isn’t there.” [more inside]
MEAT
Pixelated Blood is a 2-hour, totally NSFW compilation of finishing moves from 23 fighting games (turn on annotations and click to select a particular game.) [more inside]
Parasite of the Day
Does just what it says on the tin,
"So, naturalists observe, a flea has smaller fleas that on him prey; and these have smaller still to bite ’em; and so proceed ad infinitum." - Jonathan Swift
Richard Briers (1934-2013)
Richard Briers, TV, radio, movie and stage actor, died yesterday aged 79. Richard was most well-known for playing Tom, who gives up his 9 to 5 job to attempt a sustainable lifestyle, much to the horror of his posh neighbor Margo, in The Good Life (1975-78). [more inside]
Farewell to an old rock'n'roller...
English rocker Tony Sheridan, who took the Beatles under his wing in their early Hamburg days, using them as one of his backing bands, acting as their fashion guru (outfitting them in sleek, bad boy black leather) and introducing them to the music of Little Richard, has died at age 72. [more inside]
Mo’ honey, mo’ problems
The world of honey trading is a murky one, riddled with smuggling and fakery. But honey detectives are on the case! And they have a new, powerful weapon: a laser tool designed by the European Space Agency to measure carbon on Mars that has been re-purposed to detect fake honey. (Via) [more inside]
Masters at work
If you're interested in glassblowing, or if you simply like to watch craftsmen at work, then here's a special treat for you: the Corning Museum of Glass (previously) has posted hours upon hours of videos of their studio demonstrations on Youtube. And if that's not enough, you might want to bookmark their live streams page, for they will be streaming about a dozen studio demonstrations over the summer. [more inside]
Say it ain't so, Joe (although it's unsurprising that it is)
Joe Arpaio has followed the NRA's suggestion and tasked a 3,500 man volunteer armed posse with patrols of 59 elementary, middle and high schools in the Phoenix area. The journalist details his experience of posse training, and the article notes that the same force may previously have been involved in the shooting of a surrendering burglar. History bonus: there's already too much Arpaio previously on Mefi to individually detail.
There's No Place On Earth To Hide!
What happens when a comet collides with a major asteroid in our Solar System's main belt sending a 5-mile wide splinter on a direct path to Earth? Factually, we might never know. Till then, there's Meteor! [more inside]
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