March 7, 2013

Can Bruce Dern save mankind from Adam Ant?

World Gone Wild is a 1988 post-apocalyptic film with English pop singer Adam Ant as the villain. The entire film can be watched on YouTube. Via Armagideon Time.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 10:41 PM PST - 30 comments

Click here to find local cats in your area now

Are you having a hard time finding local cats in your area? Do you wish there was a way to connect instantly with one online, at any time? Now you can! With Adult Cat Finder, you're never more than one click away from chatting with a hot, local cat in your area!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:38 PM PST - 54 comments

The Good, Racist People

Ta-Nehisi Coates addresses the good, racist people. [more inside]
posted by chrchr at 8:20 PM PST - 160 comments

Scott Kelby on composition

Photoshop guru/author Scott Kelby speaks about composition and editing (65 mins). [more inside]
posted by starman at 6:40 PM PST - 12 comments

VP8 Redux?

Google and MPEG LA come to an Agreement, putting to rest (for the most part in the current patent atmosphere) fears that VP8 isn't really royalty free.
posted by juiceCake at 5:54 PM PST - 23 comments

New Parasites for 2013/ The Cat That Screamed Like A Man/ Coffin Bro

Liar Town Usa: An alternate USA where our products, signage, headlines, and fads are all slightly more surreal, sinister, and threatening.
posted by The Whelk at 5:13 PM PST - 93 comments

Poor Mum

The English songwriter Nick Drake's reputation - and enigma - have grown since his death in 1974, at the age of 26. A new album (recorded at the family piano in the 1950's) collects the songs of his mother Molly, and sheds new light on Nick's beginnings.
posted by misterbee at 5:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Arsenio​oooooooooo​oooooooooo​oooooooooo​ooo Hall returns to talk

Whether no one was paying attention because they don't care or just didn't expect it, Arsenio Hall announced a return to late night talk last year. Now, with 95% of all markets signed up to broadcast his syndicated show, debuting in September, he could be due for a full blown resurgence. Or a dramatic crash and burn, either way Dave Koz is staring at his phone expectantly.
posted by mediocre at 3:46 PM PST - 51 comments

Baby, that's what an echo is.

R. Kelly explains Echo.
posted by hot soup girl at 3:02 PM PST - 19 comments

Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Feminist Frequency has released the first video in the "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" series: Damsel in Distress (part 1), hosted by Anita Sarkeesian (previously). It was funded by a kickstarter campaign that was notable for the level of backlash (previously).
posted by rmd1023 at 2:12 PM PST - 179 comments

Cat-scan.edu

Although the VetMouseTrap™ was originally designed for small animals such as cats (YT), rabbits and tiny dogs, O’Brien recently developed a larger version for use with medium-sized dogs such as Labradors and golden retrievers. And he is developing a model with a perch inside so birds can be immobilized and passed through the scanner. (via)
posted by obscurator at 1:49 PM PST - 23 comments

And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint.

What does a nine-year-old girl in Menlo Park, California have in common with a Russian Mystic, an Indian Emperor, a mythic legion of girl assassins, and an enemy of the Roman Republic? Mithridatism: Immunity through the measured ingestion of poison.
posted by Toekneesan at 1:42 PM PST - 35 comments

123D Catch = My mind blown

This is the story of an artist who was able to take numerous photos of a sculpture of a horse's head, "Head of a horse of Selene" now found in the British Museum - but originally from near the Acropolis in ancient Greece (circa 438-432 BC) - and who then fed the said photographs (taken from many different perspectives) to a revolutionary (free) software/app called 123D Catch (by AutoDesk, makers of AutoCAD), which then created the wireframes needed to print out exact replicas (in pieces that must then be assembled) on a 3D printer. The artist makes it available on Thingiverse, if you'd like to make one on your own on your 3D printer. If the demo video for 123D Catch doesn't blow your mind, your mind has probably already been blown. With apologies to Dr. Hook
posted by spock at 1:07 PM PST - 40 comments

This Is My Body

"This is My Body, not yours." [slyt] [more inside]
posted by Leucistic Cuttlefish at 1:06 PM PST - 85 comments

First Much Ado About Nothing Trailer

First trailer for Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing. (Direct MP4 link based on the official site.) The film (shot in 12 days at Joss's house while taking a break from making The Avengers) will be getting its U.S. premiere this weekend at SXSW, with limited general release starting in June. Previously shown at TIFF, the Dublin Film Festival and the Glasgow Film Festival. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 12:57 PM PST - 114 comments

The pursuit of album art...

Mick Jagger asked about using the art of MC Escher on "Through The Past Darkly"
posted by dfm500 at 12:55 PM PST - 6 comments

The Balinghou

Generation Gap: "The parents of China’s post-1980 generation [the bā líng hòu (八零後)] (themselves born between 1950 and 1965) grew up in a rural, Maoist world utterly different from that of their children. In their adolescence, there was one phone per village, the universities were closed and jobs were assigned from above. If you imagine the disorientation and confusion of many parents in the West when it comes to the internet and its role in their children’s lives, and then add to that dating, university life and career choices, you come close to the generational dilemma. Parents who spent their own early twenties labouring on remote farms have to deal with children who measure their world in malls, iPhones and casual dates." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:50 PM PST - 16 comments

A Triumph of the Turtle Spirit

In 2008, a 227-pound loggerhead turtle named Yu was found by some fishermen off the coast of Japan after a shark attack. Both of her front flippers had been torn off and her prognosis was grim. Now, Yu can swim thanks to a new set of prosthetic flippers made by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo. Naoki Kamezaki, curator of the Suma Aqualife Park where Yu currently lives, says, "Ours may be the only case in which a turtle with artificial limbs is still swimming without a problem."
posted by Copronymus at 10:21 AM PST - 19 comments

Seeing at the Speed of Sound

Rachel Kolb, deaf Rhodes scholar, on lipreading: "Even the most skilled lipreaders in English, I have read, can discern an average of 30 percent of what is being said. I believe this figure to be true. There are people with whom I catch almost every word—people I know well, or who take care to speak at a reasonable rate, or whose faces are just easier on the eyes (for lack of a better phrase). But there are also people whom I cannot understand at all. On average, 30 percent is a reasonable number. But 30 percent is also rather unreasonable. How does one have a meaningful conversation at 30 percent? It is like functioning at 30 percent of normal oxygen, or eating 30 percent of recommended calories—possible to subsist, but difficult to feel at your best and all but impossible to excel." [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:17 AM PST - 29 comments

Ayurveda in the Modern age

Ayurveda: Hoax or Science? "'Western science identifies these systems as folklore. They don’t see it as an organised system of knowledge—this is an alien epistemology to them because their medical traditions only go as far back as the medieval times and renaissance.' There is also the very real problem of complexity in natural-product research. It is harder to develop a drug from Ayurveda than it is to build a synthetic molecule, because of the large number of compounds in each Ayurvedic herb. All these factors are responsible for the state of Ayurvedic medicine today."
posted by dhruva at 10:03 AM PST - 90 comments

In Memory of Paul Bearer

Bill Moody, best known as professional wrestling manager Paul Bearer, passed away Tuesday at the age of 58. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 9:59 AM PST - 27 comments

Oh hey, 1995 called and it wants its retro intro to Breaking Bad back.

Oh hey, 1995 called and it wants its retro intro to Breaking Bad back. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by fuse theorem at 9:11 AM PST - 48 comments

Air Pollution in Asia: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map

Air Pollution in Asia: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 9:02 AM PST - 14 comments

Photos of Istanbul from 1920s-1940s, by Nicholas Artamonoff

Nicholas Victor Artamonoff was a talented Russian amateur photographer who lived, studied and worked in Istanbul from the 1920s to the 1940s. He took many photos, mainly black-and-white, of architecture, archaeology, and street scenes, in Istanbul and also elsewhere in Turkey. A collection of images has now been made available by the Dumbarton Oaks Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives. [more inside]
posted by carter at 8:50 AM PST - 3 comments

#followmeto one paradise after another

To document the beautiful and often exotic locals that he and his girlfriend travel to, photographer Murad-Osmann started posting pictures of her leading him by the hand around the world with the tag #followmeto. The Daily Mail has collected the remarkable series so far. [via]
posted by quin at 8:31 AM PST - 75 comments

Domino's crews get together and create Vocaloid (VOKARO) songs!

Domino's App feat. HATSUNE MIKU
posted by The Devil Tesla at 8:19 AM PST - 29 comments

[{-_-}]

Crutchnap by Harmony Korine [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 7:36 AM PST - 29 comments

"there were echoes ... of a Gilded Age critique of plutocracy"

Before Greed: Americans Didn't Aways Yearn For Riches. A response: An Embarassement Of Riches: Literature And The Ethics Of Wealth In The Gilded Age. Both from Boston Review. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:18 AM PST - 19 comments

"Len Bias would become the Archduke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs"

Len Bias has been dead for longer than he has been alive. For ESPN Michael Weinreb examines how the tragic death due to a cocaine overdose of this young, up and coming basketball star affected both the sport and American drug policy. Meanwhile at Deadspin, Tommy Craigs explains how twentytwo years after his death Len Bias still makes everyone crazy.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:15 AM PST - 17 comments

Hotkey ',' to Corner the Global Energy Market.

Columbia students stuff Nutella in their pants to the tune of $1,000s a week. (SLNYT) Last month one of Columbia’s undergraduate dining halls began serving Nutella every day, not just in crepes on weekends. The problem was that the Columbia students went through jars and jars of Nutella — at least 100 pounds a day. Apparently they were not just eating it in the dining hall. They were spiriting it away in soup containers and other receptacles, to be eaten later.
posted by grobstein at 7:07 AM PST - 100 comments

Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly, and Unfair

In the Internet era, a very few companies control our information destiny. In this talk, and in her new book "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age," Susan Crawford—a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy—demonstrates how deregulatory changes in policy have created a communications crisis in America. The consequences: Tens of millions of Americans are being left behind, people pay too much for too little Internet access, and speeds are slow. But everyday people can change this story - and what happens in the year ahead could change the game for good.
A ~40 minute lecture with questions afterward.
[more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 6:50 AM PST - 47 comments

Jammy Gits

GitHub was intended to be an open software collaboration platform, but it’s become a platform for much, much more than code. It’s now being used by artists, builders, home owners, everyone in between, entire companies … and cities. - The GitHub revolution.
posted by Artw at 6:15 AM PST - 58 comments

"I am a prime example of American unacceptablility."

Civil Rights is a slam poem performed at last year's Brave New Voices festival. There's a transcript here, though it's worth noting that the page gets the poem's title wrong.

Written and performed by Shanita Jackson and Dakota Oder, it becomes even more impressive when you realize that both women are still teenagers...and from the looks of it, Jackson was only fourteen at the time.
posted by MeghanC at 6:14 AM PST - 5 comments

Bluegrass Punkass Dept.

Old Man Markley - "Do Me Like You Do", Old Man Markley vs House Of Blues. Better 'n coffee; better w/ tequila.
posted by Ardiril at 6:01 AM PST - 1 comments

The Minerva Controversy

The Department of Defense recently announced the creation of the Minerva Research Initiative (PDF), also known as Project Minerva, providing as much as $75 million over five years to support social science research on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy. The initiative indicates a renewal of interest in social science findings after a prolonged period of neglect, but it also prompts concerns about the appropriate relationship between university-based research programs and the state, especially when research might become a tool of not only governance but also military violence. The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) has invited prominent scholars to speak to the questions raised by Project Minerva and to address the controversy it has sparked in academic quarters.
posted by infini at 5:03 AM PST - 17 comments

Israeli-Palestinian School Book Project

Portrayal of the “Other” in Israeli and Palestinian School Books. Led by a team of scientists who are prominent experts in the field of textbook analysis, a new and definitive study disproves the widely-held belief – and concern to the worldwide public – that Israeli and Palestinian school books present dehumanizing characterizations of the other. These characterizations are very rare in both Israeli and Palestinian school books. Full report here (pdf). [more inside]
posted by three blind mice at 3:12 AM PST - 29 comments

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