June 9, 2014
iTunes, Assad, and Right Said Fred
John Oliver examines the music download purchasing habits of Syria's president, and engineers the momentary catharsis of mildly irritating one of the worst people on the planet. Right Said Fred performs their tribute to Assad.
A month without sitting
"If you sit down more than 11 hours a day, one study suggests, you’re 40 percent more likely to die in the next three years than I am. I’m standing up. I’ve been standing up all day. I’ll be standing up all month, in fact, without a break. I expect at the end of that month I’ll be sore but triumphant, glowing with smug enlightenment..."
What does God need with a starship?
Today marks the 25th anniversary of a dark day for Star Trek fandom: the release of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier......or to give it its proper name, “The Worst Star Trek Movie That Isn’t Star Trek Into Darkness.” [more inside]
"Already stoked and nothing is happnSHIP LASERS"
19 year old blogger Some Wonderful Kind of Noise watches the original Star Wars movies for the first time and writes about it. Star Wars. Empire Strikes Back. Return of the Jedi. [more inside]
Will it go round in Circles...
Den of Geek provides a brief survey of rotating sets in film as far back as Royal Wedding in 1951 all the way up to Inception in 2010. In the world of music video, Metallica did their own interesting... ahem, spin on it for "The Memory Remains". The television show "Glee" paid tribute to Royal Wedding with their own rotating room song and dance number. Finally, the Den of Geek article states that such effects require, "intense planning, expensive materials and an army of builders". Nonsense.
Knowledge as Politics by Other Means: An Interview with Wael Hallaq
Throughout the last three decades, Wael Hallaq has emerged as one of the leading scholars of Islamic law in Western academia. He has made major contributions not only to the study of the theory and practice of Islamic law, but to the development of a methodology through which Islamic scholars have been able to confront challenges facing the Islamic legal tradition. Hallaq is thus uniquely placed to address broader questions concerning the moral and intellectual foundations of competing modern projects. With his most recent work, The Impossible State, Hallaq lays bare the power dynamics and political processes at the root of phenomena that are otherwise often examined purely through the lens of the legal. In this interview, the first of a two-part series with him, Hallaq expands upon some of the implications of those arguments and the challenges they pose for the future of intellectual engagements across various traditions. In particular, he addresses the failure of Western intellectuals to engage with scholars in Islamic societies as well as the intellectual and structural challenges facing Muslim scholars. Hallaq also critiques the underlying hegemonic project of Western liberalism and the uncritical adoption of it by some Muslim thinkers. [more inside]
More creative than a dead mouse, anyway.
Draped in a glittering techni-colour dreamcoat and hiding somewhere behind an animatronic dick-face, it's Anklepants - lord of mutant bass and distorted pop electro.
Use Photography as a Weapon
The Extraordinary Anti-Nazi Photomontages of John Heartfield, a dadist who collaborated with George Grosz and had a lifelong friend in Brecht.
This is a tribute website from his grandson.
Heartfield pioneered photomontage and inspired Siouxsie and the Banshees Metal Postcard.
Essay from the Getty and a little more.
(Previously ''The Man who Pissed off Hitler.'' but fpp links are dead.)
This is a tribute website from his grandson.
Heartfield pioneered photomontage and inspired Siouxsie and the Banshees Metal Postcard.
Essay from the Getty and a little more.
(Previously ''The Man who Pissed off Hitler.'' but fpp links are dead.)
Next week: the One Ring
Endless Hobbit Anna Repp's illustration of The Hobbit as one continuous scroll, with new artwork added almost every week.
War Gear Flows to Police Departments
In the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans returning from war. A look at the redistribution of surplus tools of combat to state and local law enforcement. (SL NYT)
Tropes
With Paul Rubens as Gozer.
Belushi as Venckman, Bill Murray handing out cash to homeless folks, and a bus full of schoolkids yelling "Dickless!" at William Atherton: on the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters, here's an informative infographic full of movie trivia.
Hospitality, Jerks, and What I Learned
Sumana Harihareswara (Senior Technical Writer for Wikimedia Foundation, member of the Board of Director's of the Ada Initiative, blogger at Geek Feminism, and Metafilter's own brainwane) gave the keynote address at this year's WikiConference in NYC on May 30. She used her experience at Hacker School to talk about, among other things, how to create a community that does not celebrate liberty at the expense of hospitality: If we exclude no one explicitly, we are just excluding a lot of people implicitly. Including people like me. [more inside]
"Our theory of change is simple: I want them to desire to live."
Formerly one of the most dangerous cities in America, Richmond CA reports its lowest homicide rate in 33 years, thanks in part to a program which provides counseling and stipends to the young men most likely to commit violent crimes.
Doooooorrrrroooooothyyyyy Gaaaaaaaallllllle!
The Sad, Century-Long History of Terrible Wizard of Oz Movies. Would you like an exhaustive list? Sure you would... [more inside]
It was at 5 million views this morning
PSY's new music video HANGOVER (ft. Snoop) knows that success is measured in reaction gifs. (slyt)
Jerk Theory
We need a theory of jerks. We need such a theory because, first, it can help us achieve a calm, clinical understanding when confronting such a creature in the wild. Imagine the nature-documentary voice-over: ‘Here we see the jerk in his natural environment. Notice how he subtly adjusts his dominance display to the Italian restaurant situation…’ And second – well, I don’t want to say what the second reason is quite yet.[more inside]
Canonical Comical Cartography; or, The Batcave is in New Jersey
The Cartographer Who Mapped Out Gotham City from Smithsonian Magazine. A look at a real-life map of a fictional city. Illustrator Eliot Brown "didn’t just design the city; he designed an implicit history that writers are still exploring."
RIP, People's Poet
Mile 943: Day 44: Toulumne Meadows Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart
Writer Carrot Quinn is walking from Mexico to Canada for the second time. In 2013, she hiked the Pacific Coast Trail (2,663 miles) from Mexico to Canada. [more inside]
Your stick family is delicious
Stick Family Feud: "Whether you love them or hate them— and many do despise them—few trends reveal shifting family values in a mobile, personal-branding-obsessed society as do family stick figures."
"That's not sharing, that's selling."
The Case Against Sharing: "The sharing economy’s success is inextricably tied to the economic recession, making new American poverty palatable. It’s disaster capitalism. 'Sharing' companies are not embarrassed by this — it appears to be a point of pride." [more inside]
Envisioning the American Dream
Envisioning the American Dream is "a visual remix of the American Dream as pictured in Mid-Century media" that discusses topics such as Man and Machines, Vintage Advice for Cheaters, and Suburbia for Sale, amongst many others.
“Hometown Memories I: Walking to Church on a Rain Sunday Evening.”
In the weeks following Kinkade’s death
, his estate tried to protect his brand: the gag order on his mistress and a statement attributing his death to natural causes were among the efforts they made to prevent the public from learning about the seedier side of Kinkade’s life. They didn’t work—but it didn’t matter. The Thomas Kinkade Release Calendar
Shipwrecked sailors wandering around in a state of semi-delirium.
Fractal art has been with us for some time, but to my knowledge there are only two people attempting any serious art criticism of the genre. Both of them live at Orbit Trap, a blog about fractal art, where the authors trace the line that separates "the art folks from the science fair enthusiasts" and occasionally rail against the ubiquity of pretty spirals. Fuh-fuh-fuh ... fractals is Tim Hodkinson's latest round-up of things that caught his eye. Includes a pleasantly seasick video journey through a 3D fractal world plus some magnificent still works and a few of Tim's opinions.
Hugo Voters packet: threat or menace?
But from a method of creating a more informed electorate, the voter packet has come to be seen as a goody bag. Does anyone think that the thousand new Worldcon members who joined after the nominations were announced did so because of a genuine interest in the award? A sizable percentage of them, at least, probably did so in order to get free ebook copies of the entire Wheel of Time series for a mere $50.Science fiction critic Abigail Nussbaum talks about the expectations the Hugo Awards Voters packet sets for the awards themselves (And also why calling people entitled for being disappointed Orbit didn't include its nominations is wrong).
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