June 7, 2013
Banger Racing Mini Tow Race
What if you were to combine stock car racing with demolition derby and add a towed blocking car? Why Banger Racing Mini Tow Racing.
Family Portraits
Portraits of My Family by Camilla Catrambone. "These portraits aim to represent my family members through the objects they've owned." [Via]
"What's O-bama-da-nation."
Cupcakes, lying, stealing, some pretty trippy animation, and one weirdly prescient line for 1965, courtesy your friends at the Southern Baptist Convention [previously]
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
There's still nobody who can make "dee da deedadet" sound as sexy as Freddie Mercury did. Under Pressure, vocals only.
The Dark, Creepy side of ABBA
Starting from their very first album, ABBA was recording songs which opened a door onto a darker side than one might be familiar with from their hits. The first of these is Ring, Ring's track Another Town, Another Train, wherein a lover is left while still asleep with only a note to explain the departure of their now-long-gone beau. But that's nothing compared to what was to come across their career... [more inside]
The Greatest Event in Television History!
This is the Greatest Event in Television History (SLYT). Amy Poheler, Adam Scott, and Horatio Sanz re-create the opening credits to "Hart to Hart." Jeff Probst gives it a proper dramatic (and hilarious) introduction. (previously)
Being the nerd that I am, I was itching to crunch some badass numbers
Debarghya Das, an Indian student at Cornell, wanted to impress his friends by obtaining their examination marks for the Indian Certificate of Secondary Examination and the Indian School Certificate and, thanks to some poorly written javascript, discovers the entire database containing the grades for 200,000 Indian students, as well as potential evidence of widespread tampering.
Mechanical Paper Robots
Do they have Krusty partially gelatinated non-dairy gum-based beverages?
From heel to H-E-A-L
Free Female Masturbation From Shame!
HappyPlayTime seeks to rebrand the entire concept of female masturbation through education and light-hearted games (...) At the heart of all this is HPT’s mascot: the pink, fleshy, and gleeful personification of a vagina.
This Wedding Season, Say Yes to Strangers
This past month we learned about a pair of viral Craigslist ads that some nice young men had (successfully) used to find wedding dates. This was old news to me. In 2008, I was named a bridesmaid against my will, and I prepared to suffer through all the standard requirements that come with the duty. Usually, you simply grin and bear these life necessities, but when the bride vehemently insisted that we all have dates despite the fact that several of us were single, I decided to respond to her myopia with outright insolence, with the support of and in the shared name of my bridal party cohorts. On July 8, 2008, I posted the following ad to Craigslist:
“seeking awful date for awful wedding (w4m)”
i’m a bridesmaid in a terrible wedding. i need a date to ruin it with, preferably one that is either ridiculously unkempt or too hot to be able to enjoy with a straight face. i’ll buy you however many shots you might need to make it through this endeavor. you send me 25 words or less on why it should be you and a picture.
The Mouse from Uncl^h^hcanny valley
In 1966, with America in the grip of spy fever, some bright spark at Dell/Gold Keythought it would be a good idea to have the long running Mickey Mouse comic join the bandwagon. This didn't mean just getting Mickey to dress up as James Bond. It was much more bizarre than that. For three issues Mickey was running around in a human world, thwarting the plans of assorted evil villains, rescuing beautiful female agents, do all the things any other self respecting super spy would do, just as a cartoon mouse. The way they went about it was to have regular Mickey Mouse cartoonist Paul Murry draw Mickey and Goofy in his normal funny animal style, while Dan Spiegle, a much more realistic artist, drew the rest of the strip. The results were striking.
I Hate Karl Marx
There was applause, but it wasn't for the airline.
Several members of the Philadelphia Orchestra were on a flight from Bejing to Macao that got stuck on the tarmac for three hours. With nothing better to do, the musicians resorted to doing what they do best...
See you tomorrow, robot
Lexie Kinder is a nine year old South Carolinian who used to be homeschooled, due to heart and immune system problems. But this spring, her family began experimenting with an alternative — a camera-and-Internet-enabled robot called VGo that swivels around the classroom and streams two-way video between her school and house. [more inside]
Jonah Lehrer's new book on love
Jonah Lehrer has reportedly sold a book proposal to Simon and Schuster. In Slate, Daniel Engber examines the book proposal for possible plagiarism and comments: Having read through this proposal, I’ll propose a different lesson: If your underwear is full of grit, it might be time to change.
Every library and museum in America, mapped
“There’s always that joke that there’s a Starbucks on every corner," says Justin Grimes, a statistician with the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington. "But when you really think about it, there’s a public library wherever you go, whether it’s in New York City or some place in rural Montana. Very few communities are not touched by a public library.”
Feel the bass
Fishjn is a rhythm game that's sort of visually reminiscent of Rez. And also fishing.
The Fishing Game Jam has plenty more fish. [more inside]
The Fishing Game Jam has plenty more fish. [more inside]
Bears. And etymology!
I type therefore I am
This sheer quantity is in itself something new. All future histories of modern language will be written from a position of explicit and overwhelming information — a story not of darkness and silence but of data, and of the verbal outpourings of billions of lives. Where once words were written by the literate few on behalf of the many, now every phone and computer user is an author of some kind. And — separated from human voices — the tasks to which typed language, or visual language, is being put are steadily multiplying. [more inside]
Jadu Ghar: The house of magic in the heart of Calcutta
Established in 1814 by founding curator, the Danish botanist Nathanial Wallich at the premises of The Asiatic Society, the Indian Museum of Calcutta* is the oldest museum in Asia and the 9th oldest in the world. Referred to as a "museum of museums", considered outdated and obsolete, its Victorian Era majesty dimmed by modernization, the grande dame of Indian history still manages evoke paeans to its otherworldly wonders:
With collections to rival the Smithsonian and the British Museums, it isn't just a storehouse of countless artifacts from the world over. The building seems to be a tiny world, an island in the midst of a busy street. The tall gates with their spikes are the doorways to different recorded ages. All those entering through the high steps are travelers in a time machine. But this is not all that Kolkata's Jadughar or "House of Magic" has to offer. Its jadu lies in the magic with which it houses portions of man's past. The high ceilings seem to stretch to infinity. Amid the silence there is vibrant life. Showcasing essential elements of different cultures, the dark, often dank, interiors show up the objects more sharply. Gradually the eyes grow used to the absence of light; the smell seems natural. It is this ambience that gently draws you in and makes the textbook history we are used to, a tangible living reality.It remains a wonderful time-warp with plenty of mangy-looking stuffed animals, fish and birds, together with fossils so beloved of Victorian collectors, as well as fascinating Indian friezes, bas-reliefs and stone carvings and art.
France's symbolic fight over same-sex marriage
The French Right Marches against Gay Marriage. Last month, France became the thirteenth nation to recognize same-sex marriage. A large religious and political movement continues to protest loudly against the Socialist government's "Mariage Pour Tous" (Marriage For All) law. [more inside]
Train surfing, it's a global fad
Post Modem Art
Jillian Mayer is a performance and visual artist concerned with new technology and the internet who frequently operates in the medium of viral video. In fact, you may already know her piece I Am Your Grandma (previously), which has been viewed several million times. Since "Grandma", she has tackled the digitization of human consciousness and remade (NSFW, brief nudity) La Jetee starring Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew, a film which screened at Sundance and resulted in Mayer and frequent collaborator Lucas Leyva being collectively named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 new faces of independent film for 2012. Her latest piece is a YouTube makeup tutorial on how to use Dazzle camouflage to defeat facial recognition software.
Steve Martin would approve
A style guide for Tutankhamun
Created by artist Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik, who also cuts up comics to make art. Full disclosure: His sister is Blossom.
... not a circus act
A Month Without a Fork
The amenities of the modern world sometimes blind us to truths about our humanity. The internet connects us more than ever with our fellow humans, while simultaneously fomenting a sense of disconnection stronger than ever before ... Emblematic of this modern world run amok is one piece of technology that the Western world seemingly cannot do without. I am, of course, talking about the fork. [more inside]
It's a good time to know Ruby on Rails
Are coders worth it? We call ourselves web developers, software engineers, builders, entrepreneurs, innovators. We’re celebrated, we capture a lot of wealth and attention and talent. We’ve become a vortex on a par with Wall Street for precocious college grads. But we’re not making the self-driving car. We’re not making a smarter pill bottle. Most of what we’re doing, in fact, is putting boxes on a page. Users put words and pictures into one box; we store that stuff in a database; and then out it comes into another box.
One of the best fifty punk albums of all-time
Johnny Moped was a 1970s English punk rock group from south London that once had Chrissie Hynde, Kirsty McColl and Captain Sensible within its ranks.
The band had a mere three singles and one album between 1974 and 1978, but in 2013 one Fred Burns is making a film to restore this punk footnote to prominence. There is also a Myspace
Under the Sun with Mitch Mustain
"We may be regarded as villains, as traitors, as anything under the sun, but the proof for those titles is yet to be given with any reasonable argument. What also has not been given is reason for pity or applause, neither of which I deserve or desire in this matter." - An Interview with former Arkansas and USC quarterback Mitch Mustain, following the airing of the Identity Theft of Mitch Mustain documentary at the Little Rock Film Festival. A review of the film. Previously.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Illustrious Katie Sandwina
Strongwoman ("Almost nightly she bent iron bars, broke chains, supported enormous weights, including a 1,200-pound cannon on her shoulders..."), suffragette ("...she became vice-president of the suffrage group that formed within the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1912"), wife ("But by his own account he recalled only entering the ring, a blue sky and being carried away from the ring by Kate like a prize"), mother ("... Sandwina had to crawl under barbed wire to get herself to a hospital. When she arrived, the hospital was full and she gave birth on the floor"), businesswoman ("After her retirement, Kate, Max and Ted opened a bar and grill in Queens, where the entire family performed on Saturday nights. Though advanced in age, Kate was still able to bend iron bars, lift heavy barbells and support her husband with an ease that showed she still possessed great strength"), and devastatingly charming interview subject ("And, besides, a man who is embracing a woman wants to hold a supple and warm body in his hands - not a lobster!"). Also: one of the subjects of the cutest marital photo of all time.
Not a cheery indicator
A recent TV ad for Cheerios depits a heartwarming family vignette: An adorable tyke asks her mother if the cereal is good for the heart, her mother says yes, and the dad wakes up from his nap to find a pile of Cheerios on his chest.
But the fact that the mother is white, the dad is black and the child mixed-race has touched off a firestorm of criticism that one media critic described as "a progressive-looking commercial collides with the ugliness of the Internet."
Parent company General Mills says it is has no plans to stop airing the spot or to take it down from its YouTube channel. [more inside]
Where Looks Don’t Matter and Only the Best Writers Get Laid
How the feminist internet utopia failed, and we ended up with speculative realism. Contemporary mass culture equates anonymity with secrecy or downright negative intent, not harmless experimentation. Who lies about who they are online? Pedophiles, scammers, hackers, bullies, Wikileaks. Anonymity has turned from thrilling to terrifying. 1:1 self-to-body ratio is a moral mandate. It’s no wonder that nailing down objective reality seems so attractive.
"Things are meant to be for a reason"
'It could have been us, but things happen. Sometimes it's better to be patient than right."
Mindy Cradell has little regret about letting an older woman in front of her, while standing in line for the lottery. That woman, Gloria Mackenzie, became the sole winner of the $590 million Powerball jackpot, the largest in the history of American lotteries.
Pacific Heights is just a movie, right?
Маша и Медведь
Bear has retired from the circus to the Russian woods and now just wants to be left alone to sleep, or pursue his hobbies, or chase after Lady Bear. Unfortunately he has been targeted by Masha, the six-year-old terror of the forest, as her Very Best Friend. Their adventures are chronicled in the computer-animated Russian cartoon series Masha And The Bear. (Make sure to watch past the 2D opening. Although dialogue is in Russian, you don't have to speak it to enjoy these. Click through for episode titles and notes.)
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32 [more inside]
Photographs of the Great Kanto Earthquake
On Saturday, September 1, 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Kantō region of Japan. The resulting fires destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes in Tokyō and Yokohama, resulting in 142,800 deaths. A new resource site hosted by the University of Hawai'i, The Great Kantō Earthquake Japan of 1923, provides images of 199 scanned photographs documenting the destruction and aftermath of what, at the time, was the most powerful earthquake to strike the region. [more inside]
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