March 12, 2013
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
Respected polling firm Gallup had a disastrous 2012, with a final presidential poll showing Romney 49-48 over Obama, some five points off of the final result. So what exactly went wrong?
The Art of Brian Sanders
Seventy-five year old Brian Sanders, classic illustrator, was tapped by Matt Weiner for the Mad Men Season Six Poster. Sanders and Weiner evidently used an illustration Sanders created in 1964 for inspiration.
Chris Keegan's mirrorgram drones, and celestial (monster) imagery
Artist Chris Keegan has tons of his work up on Flickr, but here's some highlights: drones, a montage project created using mirrorgram app then redoing them hi-res, and celestial images, in which interstellar monsters are found in (or created from) Hubble space imagery.
The Pinky Show: Our Goal is to always be learning new information...
Pinky & Bunny are cute little kitties who live in the Mojave Desert. Their friends are Mimi & Kim (and sometimes grumpy old Daisy). They like to make videos about contemporary issues with a progressive view. Bunny died on Jan 25, 2013. [more inside]
Not that Toy Story
"Galimberti explores the universality of being a kid amidst the diversity of the countless corners of the world; saying, “at their age, they are pretty all much the same; they just want to play.” Photos of Children From Around the World With Their Most Prized Possessions. (previously)
Amazing Water and Sound Experiment #2
Amazing Water & Sound Experiment #2 - brusspup synchronizes his video camera to a water stream run in front of a speaker outputting a 24 Hz sine wave
A Song of Ice on Fire
Methane hydrates, also known as clathrates, are crystalline ice structures which trap molecules of natural gas. They are fairly ubiquitous in near-shore seafloor sediments, where methane from decaying organic matter is trapped in an ice structure at low temperature and high pressure. Though methane hydrates are believed to contain substantially more natural gas than conventional deposits, extraction of the natural gas was thought to be impractical. Until now. [more inside]
you're an idiot, ken
Ken M is that magical blend between idiot and artist that really pushes all the buttons. Here are his contributions to College Humor. [more inside]
antgifs
James Holmes and the Insanity Defense
Today, Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester ordered psychiatric analysis of Dark Knight Rises mass-shooting suspect James Holmes. Holmes will enter a plea tomorrow and is expected to plea Not Guilty by reason of Insanity. Judge Sylvester's court order could involve use of both narco analysis (read: truth serum) and a polygraph test. [more inside]
"She’s not some new age healer, she’s disruptive."
A Nation Of Sex Workers: An Interview With Tracy Quan
We had some incredible meetings at the Harmony Theatre in Tribeca. When we met at GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis), it was like a civics class. If we met at the Harmony, which was a lap-dancing club, there was a charismatic feeling. We often met at Annie Sprinkle’s apartment, and we actually sat around stuffing envelopes once a month, to announce our meetings. This might sound like a nuisance, but it was an opportunity to meet in someone’s home and create a community by doing something practical. I’m really grateful for the internet, don’t get me wrong – but the paper-era movement had its high points. I remember seeing these charming handwritten notes addressed to PONY with an Olympia, WA postmark… something to do with the Riot Grrls..[more inside]
And those are just the drugs that start with the letter “M”
In which a Slate writer decides to fact-check Bob Woodward and discovers how he manages to be wrong without being wrong: The troubling things I learned when I re-reported Bob Woodward’s book on John Belushi.
Give or take
The origins of plus and minus signs - "There be other 2 signes in often use of which the first is made thus + and betokeneth more: the other is thus made – and betokeneth lesse."
But why is the girl in the ravishing red Lego dress so sad?
In Pieces, on display at the OpenHouse gallery in SOHO through March 17th. New York based LEGO sculptor Nathan Sawaya and Australian photographer Dean West (Warning: annoying Flash interface) create magic together. [more inside]
Yo is a Pronoun, yo.
Check out yo down in Baltimore enriching American English.
Born which way?
Natalie Reed, who often writes about gender politics and social justice, calls out "born this way" (especially in a gender/trans* context) as its own form of gender essentialism:
“Gender identity” is still gender-essentialism. It’s just a gender-essentialism where we get to continue thinking men are men, and women are women, and these are inherent parts of who you are, but we also get to ignore the uncomfortable demand of DEFINING “man” and “woman” and what we mean by that, and thereby dodge the uncomfortable fact that any such definition within any essentialist framework necessarily invalidates, undermines, insults or excludes at least some trans or intersex people. It’s a way to go right on believing that our womanhood, or our manhood, or whatever “gender identity” we have, is an immutable and intrinsic quality of ourselves, and thereby maintain the comforting belief that it’s concrete and stable and unassailable, but without having to deal with any of the difficult implications of that, without having to interrogate our definitions, without having to worry about what we mean, and without having to really think about gender beyond the generally received notions. It’s a way to be transgender but still think of our genders the way cis people do.
Recording of Bradley Manning's Speech Leaked
Despite a court prohibition on such recordings, an audio recording of Bradley Manning's speech to the military court in Fort Meade has been leaked in full. In his own words, Bradley Manning explains his reaction to the Collateral Murder video and the process that led him to leak it to the world. [more inside]
"BioShock Infinite is not a formula game"
"Propaganda shields ideas from danger, and I think I'd rather expose ideas to danger. I think that's what I like to make in these games, is to take ideas and say, well, let's see what happens when these aren't protected."
With the much anticipated release of BioShock Infinite just two weeks away, EuroGamer sits down for a lengthy chat with creative Director Ken Levine about philosophy, politics and God. [more inside]
We Are Inseparable!
"This volume stands alone as the only Sendak picture book—that is, a book he both wrote and illustrated—that isn’t designed for children. Not coincidentally, the Blake-inflected illustrations for a 1996 edition of Melville’s “Pierre,” which is certainly not kiddie stuff, bear a similarity to the look of “My Brother’s Book.” It seems that Sendak had an even more specific audience in mind for this one: Kushner told me that Sendak made this book for those adults who had grown up with his stories."
Avi Steinberg on Maurice Sendak's My Brother's Book, in The New Yorker. [more inside]
The Conclave to elect the 266th Pope of the Catholic church has begun
The 115 cardinals under 80 years old, who can vote and can be voted for are now in Conclave. You can watch a Live Stream, mostly a shot of the Sistine Chapel chimney, who apparently is now on Twitter. You can get acquainted with the 2013 Papabili using Wikipedia's List of Papabili.
Higgins Armory Museum to close
Worc. Telegram: "Higgins Armory Museum to close after 82 years; Collection to find home at WAM; END OF AN ERA" The Higgins Armory in Worcester, Mass., will close on Dec. 31, 2013. Uncounted children will be saddened, as will modern swordsmen, when most of the museum's programs -- from educational "OverKnight" sleep-overs to the Academy of the Sword -- will come to a halt. Until then, though, the planned events will run full-tilt through 12/31/2013. [more inside]
Fuck The Matrix. I invented that shit.
"Can anyone turn streaming music into a real business?"
The Verge has a nice article looking at streaming as a business model (or not, of course...) "Do you think it's good or bad for the value of music if the only people who sell it don't care if they're making money on it?" David Pakman asks. "What you really want is an ecosystem with lots of financially healthy companies selling your product." [more inside]
Come on little guy, you can make it, no no, too far, try again!
Newly weaned harbor seal pups attempting to climb onto a surfboard with a camera attached:
Seal Pup Slip n' Slide [slyt | adorable ]
"Please don't use any less than a 16px base font-size for body content"
Stop Using Small Font Sizes "I'm calling you out. All of you. The hackers, the designers, the code monkeys, the word-smiths, the editors, the CSS gurus, and everyone else who works on content management systems and style sheets for news sites. Stop using small font sizes." [more inside]
Your Happy Ending
Allegations of flawed research techniques at an NIH-funded medical lab at Johns Hopkins get notice in a Washington Post article. Interesting piece on a scientific dispute, the accuser's loss of his job at Hopkins, and the suicide of one researcher from the lab whose analysis, published in Nature, came into question.
Annihilated Angel
His artistic obscurity - relative to the stars of the New York School - had nothing to do with his personality, which was gregarious, funny and stimulating, and everything to do with his music, which was concerned with values of reticence, quietness, faintness, stillness; hardly the sort of thing to make headlines in a world where the avant garde was supposed to épater and outrage. As Michael Finnissy, one of his most stalwart British advocates, put it, "I don't think Morton Feldman's music is ever going to be that popular." There are lots of reasons for this, and they are all good reasons for listening to the music. [1995] [more inside]
An obituary to fit the man
Harry Weathersby Stamps, ladies' man, foodie, natty dresser, and accomplished traveler, died on Saturday, March 9, 2013. Harry Stamps' obituary, penned by his daughter Amanda Lewis.
LOL Cat!?!
The Final Frontier
The Daily Viz
Matt Stiles is a data journalist for NPR. He tries each day to create a data visualization, or post those he finds online. [more inside]
"Why don't you do what you dream?"
A brief Tumblr rant about Fantasy: The great temptation, the fatal temptation, of adult fans of fantastic fiction is the temptation of Law. We want the contents of our imagination taxonomied and classified, ordered and indexed, subject to rules and regulations. Gaps exist to be filled. Mysteries exist to be solved. Legends are just timelines that haven’t been formalized yet. Fantastic fiction becomes a code to crack. [...] It’s like people really want to write a wiki, and have to come up with the pesky “moving, powerful, imaginative literature” stuff out of obligation. via
Ideas for software that will change the world for better/worse.
Remember that name.
Billy Joel was recently doing a Q&A at Vanderbilt University when a student named Michael Pollack asked if he could play “New York State of Mind” with him. Something really cool then happened. [more inside]
"I feel like I am Lara"
"So after the last blowup, have you been instructed not to use the word “rape” in interviews?" -- Ben Kuchera talks to Tomb Raider lead writer Rhianna Pratchett about the just released reboot and the controversy surrounding it after executive producer Ron Rosenberg explained how Lara Croft's vulnerability after a near rape would "make gamers want to protect her". [more inside]
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