April 26, 2012

Blown Covers

New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See
posted by TangerineGurl at 10:57 PM PST - 24 comments

GAWK TAWK

Gawker: We want to elevate the discourse about frogs who sit like humans. No matter how you personally feel about the sites, you've got to admit that the Gawker network is big. So far in April 2012, the eight sites have attracted 1 million comments on 7,500 posts from 130,000 active commenters. But with comments described by Gawker's editor A.J. Daulerio as 'a tar pit of hell', they've decided to try to reinvent their commenting system again, including a system to allow commenters to sign in with temporary, anonymous, throwaway 'Burner' accounts. [more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:36 PM PST - 26 comments

mistakes were not made

Passive Voice Day 2012: "It has again been decided that April 27th will be passive voice day. Fun will be had by everybody as the passive voice is used for tweets, blogs, and casual conversation." (2011) Language Log offers kudos to a well-crafted passive announcement and provides further reading on confusion over avoiding the passive (includes a list of links to Language Log posts on the passive).
posted by flex at 9:14 PM PST - 65 comments

Higgs Boson

Higgs Boson explained - via animation or, by click by click comic version. A brief talk about the mysterious Higgs Boson and the LHC search for it, given by particle physicist Daniel Whiteson
posted by edgeways at 9:03 PM PST - 11 comments

debt - late 13c., dette, from O.Fr. dete

With (O.E.) the (O.E.) push (O.Fr.) of a button (Fr.), get (O.Norse) and (O.E.) visualize (L.) the etymology (O.Fr.) of a piece (O.Fr.) of text (O.Fr.). Visualizing English Word Origins across genres of text.
posted by stroke_count at 8:55 PM PST - 13 comments

An American Original

A heroic leader of a cavalry charge at Gettysburg, a legendary newspaperman, twice famed co-inventor of the Wagon Lit train compartment --- and a real bastard’s bastard, a con man, a swindler, a quite-nearly-convicted blackmailer: all of these are one man. William d'Alton Mann. The pseudononymous writer of "The Saunterer" (and editor-in-chef Town Topics, the New York paper in which it was published from the 1880s until the 1930s) William d’Alton Mann was a pioneer of gossip who invented the blind item and --- entirely inadvertently --- gave the world Emily Post. [more inside]
posted by Diablevert at 8:46 PM PST - 3 comments

Costco has you figured out.

The Costco Craze is a documentary that will air April 26, 2012 on CNBC. [more inside]
posted by caryatid at 8:06 PM PST - 179 comments

Ender's Game. Harrison Ford. Movie.

Ender's Game is finally being made into a movie. [more inside]
posted by Night_owl at 6:35 PM PST - 165 comments

Bowerbirds: intentional architects, and accidental farmers

Bowerbirds, a family of 20 species in eight genera, are a fascinating bunch of birds who range from New Guinea and Australia. Some are flashy, others drab, but all are named for the "bowers" (avenues, huts, or towers of sticks; source) that the males craft and decorate to attract a mate. There are regional styles (PDF) in the design of the bowers, and the male Greater Bowerbirds even employ optical illusions. Some, like the Vogelkop Bowerbird, add mimicry vocal to their repertoire of courting methods. Add accidental cultivation to the list of fascinating features of the bowerbirds. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:44 PM PST - 44 comments

The Sword Fights of Errol Flynn

The Sword Fights of Errol Flynn (previously)
posted by Trurl at 3:07 PM PST - 18 comments

A biologist never forgets what's inside an elephant

What's inside an elephant (Not safe for the squeamish)? A pictorial retrospective from Inside Nature's Giants.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:54 PM PST - 31 comments

Oh no!

Oh no! It's finals week and I need to finish my Civil War essay immediately.
posted by elwoodwiles at 2:49 PM PST - 41 comments

With Love, Peace and Music ...

Legendary New York City radio DJ Pete Fornatale has died. [more inside]
posted by flyingsquirrel at 2:01 PM PST - 40 comments

A working Star Wars arcade cabinet

A working Star Wars arcade cabinet that's the same height as a bottle of wine. (SLYT)
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:19 PM PST - 32 comments

Mexico passes ambitious climate change law

Mexico passes ambitious climate change law to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The law also stipulates that 35 percent of Mexico's electricity should come from renewable sources by the year 2024. It joins the United Kingdom in having legally binding emissions goals aimed at stemming the effects of climate change.
posted by stbalbach at 12:18 PM PST - 25 comments

We need a better way to poop

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced the second round of its Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, designed to prototype a means of dealing effectively and cost-efficiently with human waste for the 2 billion people on earth who currently lack access to safe and affordable sanitation.
posted by slogger at 11:53 AM PST - 83 comments

Awesome! Now Do "Mappy".

Porting a 30 year-old vector arcade game to an obsolete 33 year-old home game platform: "Star Castle 2600". In 1981 a young Howard Scott Warshaw, left his first programming job at HP for a more interesting job at Atari. His first assignment was to create an Atari 2600 conversion of the vector coin op game Star Castle... After evaluating the arcade game and the console hardware he came to the conclusion "that a decent version couldn’t be done". Thirty-one years later, former Atari employee D. Scott Williamson has finally ported Star Castle to the 2600. (via MAKE)
posted by 40 Watt at 11:35 AM PST - 59 comments

Research on happiness and profit

For my 250th post: There is a lot of interesting research going on in business schools, and some of it is even fun to watch. Wharton has been hosting 10 minute entertaining talks on cutting-edge research by faculty including: where inspiration comes from at work, how time relates to happiness, how to run an innovation tournament, socially responsible investing, learning from people who leave your company and what breakfast cereal and Steve Jobs have to tell us about the secret sources of innovation. If you want less academics in your business school mini-lectures, Stanford also has a collection of advice to entrepreneurs on many subjects that includes everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to Guy Kawasaki.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:35 AM PST - 10 comments

Pseudo Poop for Testing Toilets

Testing toilet flush performance naturally requires the replication of real-world loads. Striving for accuracy, a Texas A&M study (PDF) evaluated polypropylene balls and Play-Doh sheathed in condoms before settling on a test payload of two Water Wigglers per flush. In contrast, the Maximum Performance project (scroll down for photodocumentation of MaP testing procedures) recommends the use of 350-gram specimens of extruded soybean paste ("specimens that float shall not be used"). [more inside]
posted by bassomatic at 11:23 AM PST - 32 comments

See you in Chicago

Chicago has a new tourism anthem. It's pretty incredible.
posted by naju at 11:19 AM PST - 80 comments

The zone that is filled with danger?

Archer (official genre: Global Espionage cartoon) creator Adam Reed talks through season 3 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) about Archer’s Atlanta based and stream-lined creative process, its guiding aesthetics, eschewing writer rooms (“It’s like being in a staff meeting—a funny staff meeting.”), and Jessica Walter’s general classiness. [more inside]
posted by stratastar at 11:14 AM PST - 22 comments

The Fauxtopias of Detroit's Suburbs

"These historic parks are perfect symbols of the romantic small-town fantasy most people first thought they would get when they moved out of the city." [more inside]
posted by enn at 10:59 AM PST - 13 comments

Twisting Around the Light

Bullet time light-painting takes two well known photography techniques and combines them in a completely new and interesting way. [more inside]
posted by quin at 10:59 AM PST - 8 comments

Oh no you did NOT post that picture to Facebook!!!

"Relationships are hard enough. But the rise of social media — where sharing private moments is encouraged, and provocative and confessional postings can help build a following — has created a new source of friction for couples: what is fair game for sharing with the world?" (NYT)
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:40 AM PST - 51 comments

Paid, not played

Are you a freelancer held hostage by deadbeat clients? Add what you're owed to the world's longest invoice.
posted by quiet coyote at 10:15 AM PST - 42 comments

Wonder Woman means so much more to me than Hera or Aphrodite.

Comics author Grant Morrison talked to Playboy about the Super Psyches of some of his favorite superhero characters. (Clean interview, NSFW website)
posted by The Whelk at 9:38 AM PST - 41 comments

"Very few drums or vocals"

musicForProgramming(); a series of mixes intended for listening to while programming to aid concentration and increase productivity (also compatible with other activities). [more inside]
posted by Doleful Creature at 9:03 AM PST - 35 comments

The Geographic Flow of Music

In The Geographic Flow of Music (arxiv), researchers Conrad Lee and Pádraig Cunningham propose a method to use data from the last.fm API to track the world's listening habits by location and time, showing where shifts in musical tastes have originated and subsequently migrated. Results show music trends originating in smaller cities and flowing outward in unexpected ways, contradicting some assumptions in social science about larger cities being more efficient engines of (cultural) invention.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:37 AM PST - 13 comments

Why And How To Strike On May Day

Why are we striking? Why should you strike? And, what do we mean by General Strike?

You've probably heard of the General Strike called for May Day by Occupy Wall Street and affiliated groups. For those who want to know what the whole thing is about, or how to get involved, this link may answer some of your questions. [more inside]
posted by eviemath at 8:22 AM PST - 231 comments

Sugar porn (SFW)

Paris Patisseries is a luscious blog which chronicles Parisian pastry and the great chefs behind it. It is written by Adam Wayda, an American gourmand who spends half of each year in Paris & indulges his time there enjoying pastries. Some mouth-watering posts: Top 17 Best Pastries [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 8:18 AM PST - 32 comments

Care and Feeding of Yer Books

Simple Techniques for the Repair and Maintenance of Books. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 7:47 AM PST - 12 comments

a tale of two cities

Officially Dull and Boring.
posted by LeLiLo at 7:35 AM PST - 19 comments

You know what our attitude was toward people who didn’t like avant-garde films? ‘Oh, you don’t like it? We’ll show it again.’

Amos Vogel, the founder of the Cinema 16 film society in New York City and later co-founder of the New York Film Festival, has died at the age of 91. [more inside]
posted by theartandsound at 7:05 AM PST - 4 comments

Together, we will live, each sister and each brother, small children of the rainbow and a green earth

Tens of thousands of Norwegians rose up and sang a song to protest the thoughts and beliefs of Anders Behring Breivik. Anders Behring Breivik is currently on trial for having killed over 70 people during a day of infamy in Norway on July 23, 2011 (previously) Breivik is on record as having derided a particular song for encouraging multiculturalism and tolerance. 40,000 or so Norwegians have decided to show him what they think of his opinions.
posted by h00py at 6:34 AM PST - 101 comments

Aerial

Aerial is a site-specific installation at the Abbey Brauweiler in Germany by Baptiste Debombourg.
posted by Cloud King at 6:07 AM PST - 7 comments

Ethical Meat?

Is it Ethical to eat meat? (SLNYT) The NYT Ethicist asked reader to submit essays making an ethical case for eating meat. Here are the top six along with the results of the reader poll.
posted by Michael_H at 5:10 AM PST - 165 comments

"how much has changed -- and how little"

The L.A. Weekly does a "then and now" photo feature on the 20th anniversary of the L.A. Riots.
posted by bardic at 3:08 AM PST - 55 comments

« Previous day | Next day »