February 2, 2011
The cause of your favourite show's impending cancellation
Space Stasis
Space Stasis - What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation. By Neal Stephenson.
Robo Rainbow
...like [the] Department of Homeland Security, but with Benny Hill music.
I imagine she put two and two together after her immigration-officer husband stopped answering his phone. "An immigration officer who worked for the UK Border Agency managed to get his wife out of his hair for three years by putting her name on the no-fly list while she was visiting the in-laws overseas [...] Airline and immigration authorities refused to explain to her why she was not being allowed to travel"
McBain: The Movie
McBain: The Movie. McBain, an fictional action hero played by fictional movie star Ranier Wolfcastle (probably a parody of somebody famous), has had his movie played in snippets throughout the course of the Simpsons television show since the second season. Somebody took the time to paste these all together into a single 4 minute movie, which ends up having a plot about as good as any action movie you may have watched in the 80's.
If you were my kid, I'd be proud.
19-year-old's testimony goes viral. 19-year-old Zach Wahls talks about his family at the Iowa gay marriage hearing. He's well-spoken, polite and compelling.
Iowa passed a resolution that will let voters decide.
I have something in my eye.
I can't breathe! If only there weren't so many smokers within three feet of me!
City of New York extends full smoking ban to public parks, beaches, and public concourses like Times Square. (slnyt). A surprisingly metafilteresque flamewar can be observed in the comments of the huffington post re-reportage.
It's groundhog day... again!
A question for the ages... Just how many days does Bill Murray really spend stuck reliving Groundhog Day?
"If you tell me you care about something, I'm gonna smash it."
Marc Maron — comedian, former Air America host, and now podcaster of WTF fame — attempts and fails(?) to interview prop-comedy bête noire Gallagher. Total batshit insanity ensues. (Interview starts just after the 20-minute mark; WTF podcast is of course NSFW.) [more inside]
Tortilla cars and refried sick with cheese
Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond call the Mexican sportscar Mastretta the "tortilla car" and say that since cars reflect national characteristics, a mexican car will probably be "a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat". The Mexican ambassador in London complained to the BBC about the comments and demanded a public apology from the presenters.
Meanwhile, [person who is pretty clearly not] James May continues to attack Mexicans over on his Twitter page.
Mickey Mantle's Grilled Cheese
Mickey Mantle's outstanding event at Yankee Stadium. [NSFW text] Fact-checked by Snopes.
And this from a man who did a lot of outstanding things in Yankee Stadium.
Letters Of Note previously.
"Code Rush", a PBS documentary about the fall of Netscape
Experimental Error: Lies, Damned Lies, and Seminars
Astrology... Your future looks............. Gloomy.
I was worried there for a second.
Today a California appeals court ruled that free online porn is not unfair competition to pay sites.
Is this the future of newspapers?
With newspapers going broke everywhere, what replaces them? How about an electronic newspaper? Introducing The Daily, a 100-page non-paper newspaper delivered fresh daily to your iPad for just $40 per year. [more inside]
Meg and her younger brother, Jack!
ultramarines: EPIC chutzpah
Ultramarines, in the grim future there is only b-graded adaptions with plotholes you can drive several trucks through.
In light of Dan Abnetts salient work on the Horus Heresy books, and other canon, what went wrong here?
the first wednesday in february
Today is National Signing Day, the first day a high school senior can sign a letter of intent and commit to a collegiate football program. Sports Illustrated is liveblogging announcements throughout the day. Get some background with a list of Players to Watch, or just enjoy the adorable friend accompanying Isaiah Crowell. But some say it has become too much of a circus to be good for the young players. And others want to recognize the real unsung heroes of the day.
Best Show Jems
The Church of Scientology's International Dissemination and Distribution Center
The anchor of the printing plant is a custom-built 121-ton web press. ... It prints at a rate of 55,000 pages per hour. ... The mailing system is fully automated and is capable of addressing 150,000 pieces every eight hours. The entire shipping line is capable of shipping better than 500,000 boxes and individual items each week. [more inside]
magic
Purchase thy enemy.
This morning, Match.Com and OKCupid tied the knot, after Match paid OKCupid $50 million in cash. OKCupid have been longstanding and outspoken critics of Match and eHarmony's business models, going as far as to call both sites deceptive scams on their corporate blog. Naturally, those criticisms silently disappeared from OKCupid's blog within minutes of the acquisition being announced.
Photos of the Chicagoland Snowpocalypse
Fans of weatherman Tom Skilling's Facebook Page are posting some terrific personal photos of the blizzard's aftermath. This one is my favorite so far.
Animal Farm
"...I feel Norwegian and my friends call me Norwegian. I feel this is where I belong"
Reduce reuse recycle
Everything is a Remix Part 2: Movies Mind-blowing cuts of how previous films influenced pretty much all of Hollywood's output today. Previously this series examined music in much the same way.
Phalluses, Wolves, and the Wheaton
August 2010: Popular gamer web comic makes ill-considered joke. People are offended. October 2010: Joke becomes shirt. More people are offended. January 2011: Shirts are pulled. Apology, at best, goes badly. Debacle results. Moral: always respect Wheaton's Law.
Why Mubarak is Out
Why Mubarak is Out by Jadaliyya, an independent Ezine produced by ASI (Arab Studies Institute) — Many international media commentators are having a hard time understanding the complexity of forces driving and responding to these momentous events. This confusion is driven by the binary “good guys versus bad guys” lenses most use to view this uprising. Such perspectives obscure more than they illuminate. There are three prominent binary models out there and each one carries its own baggage: (1) People versus Dictatorship: This perspective leads to liberal naïveté and confusion about the active role of military and elites in this uprising. (2) Seculars versus Islamists: This model leads to a 1980s-style call for “stability” and Islamophobic fears about the containment of the supposedly extremist “Arab street.” (3) Old Guard versus Frustrated Youth: This lens imposes a 1960s-style romance on the protests but cannot begin to explain the structural and institutional dynamics driving the uprising, nor account for the key roles played by many 70-year-old Nasser-era figures. [more inside]
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