May 13, 2012
See and saw, bounce me back to you
Between their inscrutable lyrics and lead singer Liz Fraser's quicksilver voice (here she is singing with Massive Attack live in 2006), the Cocteau Twins are not an easy band to cover. A male "bedroom musician" might seem like a particularly unlikely choice. Nevertheless, Youtube artist Matt Gurley (aka fooberdoobs) has posted some understated but worthy takes on Know Who You Are At Every Age, Heaven or Las Vegas, and Serpentskirt. [more inside]
The Cooler Me
I'd always been fascinated by the trope of the doppelgänger and its long literary life, from Dostoyevsky to Nabokov to Spider-Man. Often, in books, these physical doubles represent the worst a character is capable of. Lately, though, perhaps because at age 41 I'd begun feeling less like the captain of my life and more like its deckhand, I'd started wondering if there was someone out there who embodies not your worst self, but your freest one—a person who encapsulates everything you've ever dreamed of becoming. Let's call him your Cooler Self. All those dreams that got lost along the way, the ones that were casualties of chance or duty or cowardice: There's a "you" out there—a mountain climber or war photographer or race-car driver—who brought them to fruition.
So I vowed to hunt down my Cooler Self.
So I vowed to hunt down my Cooler Self.
Matt Andersen
Greetings, programs!
On June 7th, the Disney XD channel will premiere a new, 10-part miniseries: Tron Uprising. The series, which will feature the voices of Elijah Wood, Lance Henriksen, Bruce Boxleitner (reprising his role as 'Tron',) Mandy Moore and Paul Reubens, will combine 2D and CGI animation styles, and is set between the events of the first and second Tron movies. Trailers: 1, 2. 2011 ComicCon Preview. Disney released a full-length "prelude episode" yesterday evening (US Only): Beck's Beginning. (Via) [more inside]
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
"Like his legendary Hogg, The Mad Man, and the million-seller Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany’s major new novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders—explicit, poetic, philosophical, and, yes, shocking—propels readers into a gay sexual culture unknown to most urban gay men and women, a network of rural gay relations—with the twist that this one is supported by the homophile Kyle Foundation, started in the early 1980s by a black multi-millionaire, Robert Kyle III, to improve the lives of black gay men." [more inside]
An Existing, Ecologically-Successful Genus of Collectively Intelligent Artificial Creatures
Our planet is inhabited by two distinct kinds
of intelligent beings — individual humans and corporate
entities — whose natures and interests are intimately
linked. To co-exist well, we need to find ways to define
the rights and responsibilities of both individual humans
and corporate entities, and to find ways to ensure that
corporate entities behave as responsible members of society. (SLAX)(pdf warning)
"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person." G.K. Chesterton
Want a bestseller? Write about Henry or Hitler… [Guardian.co.uk] From Tudor England to the Third Reich, history's megalomaniacs continue to make great literary fodder.
The Dry Earth
He's lacking business acumen
"Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle yeah, yeah"
Some spiders work and hunt in groups.
The deadly social web: Anelosimus eximius, also known as the South American Social Spider, are spiders that work together to repair webs and capture and kill prey much larger than any single spider.
Italians have a lot of hells...
Publish or Perish
Are bias and fraud damaging the existing public trust in scientific and medical research? (previously) [more inside]
Tchaikovsky Timelapse
Tchaikovsky Timelapse manually snapped frames in-between the frames the animator intended to use, in order to capture the animation process in action. Not sure if the actual time-lapse has been released, but more on the elaborate production of it is available here.
RIP mister bassman, Donald "Duck" Dunn
Millions may know him best from one of the only lines he delivered in the Blues Brothers movie: "We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline". Others who notice these things will remember him as the guy who also played the bass in the Blues Brothers band. And those for whom Stax records and the Memphis sound are important will know him as the four-string foundation of the great Booker T and the MGs, and the man who lent his solid, no-frills bass lines to many a tune by soul luminaries Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and lots of other greats. Memphis-born bassman Donald "Duck" Dunn has died while on tour (along with fellow legend and bandmate Steve Cropper) in Tokyo. RIP, Duck Dunn, and if there's any goat piss in heaven, I know you're gonna turn it into gasoline up there, too.
Nobody else had Denny Fitch, who beat those one-in-a-billion odds.
Denny Fitch, one of 4 pilots who guided United 232 to a controlled crash landing in Sioux City, Iowa after a complete hydraulic fluid loss following an engine failure, has died of cancer. He was interviewed about the landing for Errol Morris' First Person series (YouTube) (previously). Denny's family also documented his journey with his incurable brain tumor on his website and blog.
« Previous day | Next day »