June 2, 2011
Schema
"Schema ...provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo! rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages. " [more inside]
From toons to tunes! Animator makes great music.
Meaghan Smith took an unusual route to the music business. She can't read music, for one thing. She went to school to study animation for another. Yet, along the way, she took her hobby of playing the guitar to work with her, giving impromptu performances of her songs in the stairwell of the animation building for her friends. One thing lead to another, and she just won the Pop Album of the Year at the East Coast Music Awards in Canada for her recording called "The Cricket's Orchestra."
Her sound is a mixture of the music of the 20s 30s and 40s with the pop songs of today.
Her videos often feature animation. A good place to start is "A Little Love" and also "I Know." Her song "Here Comes Your Man" was featured in the film 500 Days of Summer.
She is also a pretty good artist!
What It's Worth
The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce released a study comparing the economic value of different college majors.
Salamander!
The Axolotl Song explains how an axolotl turns into a salamander. In song.
Mindrelic Manhattan
A Super Great Friend, indeed.
A "Let's Play" is a narrated walk-through of a game. A master of the genre is Super Great Friend, and as he wraps up his rendition of the cult classic Deadly Premonition, he has announced a new website that collects his work in a single location. [more inside]
Although cute, obeasts are wild animals
The Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies was founded in 2010 as an organization for the historical and scientific study of the endangered North American Obeast. Given their reclusive natures and dwindling numbers, little is known about this genus of bipedal mammals, which was hunted to near extinction during the 19th century. An art installation by Rachel Herrick. Reactions tend to be mixed .
#H37GT756F (12% floral, 3% minty, 22% musky, 33% pungent, 2% camphorous, 73% ethereal, 0% putrid)
"The date of depletion of fossil fuels has been pushed back into the future by centuries -- or millennia."
"Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong: The future of energy is not what you think it is"
Previously: fracking
Previously: fracking
Rule 34 is Unsupported
Mind Reading: The Researchers Who Analyzed All the Porn on the Internet. "Searching all the porn on the Internet might not seem like the most scientifically productive activity, but computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam did it anyway. For their new book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire, Ogas and Gaddam analyzed the results of 400 million online searches for porn and uncovered some startling insights into what men and women may really want from each other — at least sexually." [more inside]
A pray 6'03'' long that would make Orson Welles jealous
The City's Most Beautiful Band is a brazilian music band which popularity is growing over Internet. Why? Because of its music videoclip, recently uploaded to Youtube and seen over 4.4 million times in just 17 days. The music's called "Oração" (Pray, in portuguese), the clip is 6'03'' long, shot in one take. It would make Orson Welles get jealous with such a good travelling shot. Wonder why? Compare the clip with the opening scene of Touch of Evil.
Yaw, Flap, Double Flap, Beak Grab
George Plimpton's Video Falconry Now you too can play the legendary game. [Gawk in splendor at the television ad.]
A fashion trend we won't be following
The FHM 100 Sexiest list is an annual feature in the lad's mag that 'ranks' women on their percieved pulchritudinousness. However, this year, the 91st sexiest woman in the world isn't a woman at all. [more inside]
Bats! Not actually in her belfry
Fantasy writer Robin McKinley has a bat colony in her attic! (If you don't already love her try Sunshine or The Blue Sword.) It's the largest Pipistrelle nursery in Hampshire, and it's illegal to disturb them. Here's one on her chandelier! (Despite her claims to the contrary, the bats are not actually in her belfry: McKinley is, in fact, a bellringer, but pursues this activity offsite.) McKinley's bat-ventures have an antipodean analogue: the Botanic Garden in Sydney is still agonizing over what to do with its own adorable hell-fiend horde. (Previously on the blue.) Bats!
Elegance Is The Reward Of Age
Experience Style: The 100 year old Ruth talks about style, fashion, and keeping yourself flexible ( via )
Who would have ever thought that Gila monster saliva would be a good place to look for a type 2 diabetes drug?
Improving Peptides:
Small firms develop better peptide drug candidates to expand this pharmaceutical class and attract big pharma partners
Beatlecracker Suite
The Beatles' music has been a source of several high-profile mashup albums, but Arthur Wilkinson's Beatlecracker Suite is probably the first. It arranges Beatles hits with famous themes and motifs from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Part one, part two.
Historical timber finishes - no really.
A lot of people don't know where to go to source interesting info on historical wood finishes. You are not one of them. [more inside]
cinephilic rock and roll
"Theme from Confusion Range" is the first of several music videos, each shot by a different independent director, for LA desert rock band Spindrift's next album "Classic Soundtracks Vol. 1." Songwriter Kirpatrick Thomas, who takes many of his sonic cues from Ennio Morricone said, "the album is an homage to our love of film scoring and the medium which surrounds it." [more inside]
"I don't think there's ever closure. I think whoever came up with that concept is an imbecile."
The Survivor. "When your family is murdered, and the home you had made together is destroyed, and you yourself are beaten and left for dead — as happened to Bill Petit on the morning of July 23, 2007 — it may as well be the end of the world. It is hard to see how a man survives the end of the world. The basics of life — waking up, walking, talking — become alien tasks, and almost impossibly heavy, as you are more dead than alive. Just how does a man go about surviving such a thing? How does a man go on? ... Why does one man come undone while the next finds a way to make it through?" [more inside]
"And there is still a lot of denial."
Special report: If Monterrey falls, Mexico falls. 'In just four years, Monterrey, a manufacturing city of 4 million people 140 miles from the Texan border, has gone from being a model for developing economies to a symbol of Mexico's drug war chaos, sucked down into a dark spiral of gangland killings, violent crime and growing lawlessness.' [more inside]
Teenagers in Love
Prince's "The Black Album"
The Black Album is a Prince record that was originally planned for release in December 1987, as the follow-up to Sign o' the Times. ... The 1987 promo-only release had no printed title, artist name, production credits or photography printed; a simple black sleeve accompanied the disc. ... The album was canceled mere days before its scheduled release, after hundreds of thousands of copies were pressed. A few escaped destruction, and rank among the most coveted Prince collectibles. In addition, the Black Album became the most bootlegged record of all time. [more inside]
Music like shattered glass
Kashiwa Daisuke is a japanese post-rock musician, (formerly in Yodaka) who specializes in gorgeous, epic, glitchy piano pieces that constantly seem on the verge of falling apart...
Stella, April 02, Write Once, Run Melos are my favorites.
A real stopping gun
I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady's gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25. - The letter that changed James Bond's gun, and gave his armourer a name.
So is the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man correlated to a crimefighter?
Can marshmallows be the link that helps explain falling crime rates and increased environmental cleanliness? It seems that falling environmental lead levels may lead kids to have have more activity in their brains' frontal cortices. After following the kids from the marshmallow experiment for over 40 years, Walter Mischel found that those that could resist immediately eating the marshmallow were more likely to have increased activity in that area of their brains. These kids were also more likely to later exhibit such things as increased SAT scores and fewer anger management issues. [more inside]
George short first
George Lucas Strikes Back the truth behind the prequels at last (SLYT)
electro-swinging.
4,000 Newly-free PDF Titles from National Academies Press!
As of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press (NAP) will be downloadable free of charge to anyone. This includes the current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports published by NAP. [more inside]
The Oatmeal vs. FunnyJunk
Soon after Inman's blog post went up, the FunnyJunk administrator sent a message to his users in which he said that “the Oatmeal wants to sue funnyjunk and shut it down! He thinks we're nothing more than dirty content thieves." The message linked to Inman's contact page and The Oatmeal Facebook account. The Facebook page was soon "completely trolled," said Inman, and he was not impressed by the quality of the commenters. “Their favorite noun was ‘fag’,” he said.
The Oatmeal vs. FunnyJunk: a webcomic copyright fight gets personal. (FunnyJunk site may contain NSFW thumbnails.)
The Oatmeal vs. FunnyJunk: a webcomic copyright fight gets personal. (FunnyJunk site may contain NSFW thumbnails.)
I will not Tweet indiscriminately. I will not Tweet indiscriminately. I will not Tweet indiscriminately. I will not...
Malaysian performer and social activist Fahmi Fadzil was sued for defamation by media company Blu Inc after a Tweet in January alleging that the company maltreated a pregnant friend who was an employee. His punishment? To tweet 100 times over 3 days:
I've DEFAMED Blu Inc Media & Female Magazine. My tweets on their HR Policies are untrue. I retract those words & hereby apologize.Responses from other Malaysian Twitter users, mostly on Fahmi's side, have been interesting.
Thumbs Up for Rock + Roll!
Child rides bike for first time, gives motivational speech. (SLAdorableYT)
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