July 13, 2014
a “Bill of Rights for G.I. Joe and Jane”
in-con-venient
DashCon and Las Pegasus Unicon imploded in front of a live international audience. Tentmoot never even happened. Running a con is difficult business.
The crossover is what monumental, generational change looks like.
Why Crossovers Conquered the American Highway
Last year, roughly speaking, two crossovers were purchased for every three cars. It's tough to compare apples to apples, but in April, IHS Automotive analyst Tom Libby noted that small crossovers were the single best selling segment of any type of vehicle, including midsize sedans, which are the staple crop of the automotive industry.
"If the trend we have witnessed in the first two months of 2014 continues for the remainder of 2014," Libby wrote, "it would mark the first time in recent memory—if not ever—that a car segment did not lead the industry."
"Staying alive became my full-time occupation."
I Am The Eggplant: This American Life tells the bizarre story of one man's unwitting stint on the Japanese reality show Susunu! Denpa Shōnen. [more inside]
Eloise: An Update
The Long Way Home
"Normal return route canceled. Proceed as follows: Strip all company marking, registration numbers and identifiable insignia from exterior surfaces. Proceed westbound soonest your discretion to avoid hostilities and deliver NC18602 to marine terminal La Guardia Field New York. Good luck." [more inside]
Seven roses later ... each rose opens like an ideogram, like a gate
In an essay reflecting on translation, Yoko Tawada reads the poems of Paul Celan as if he had written in Japanese. The essay's translator, Susan Bernofsky, offers context, and in an earlier piece, Rivka Galchen considers "Yoko Tawada's Magnificent Strangeness." More conventional introductions to Celan are available via the Poetry Foundation page on Celan, 14 poems from Breathturn, and a video of Celan reading "Allerseelen" (English sub.; alt. trans.). Tawada's own poetry includes "The Flight of the Moon" (video in Japanese). [more inside]
The Burning of the Ursuline Convent
In the late 1700's, when the US constitution was ratified and the first Catholic diocese was established in the US in Baltimore, the vast majority of Christians in the US were Protestants - only something like 30,000 Catholics called the new country home. This number rose dramatically within a few decades to over a million with the influx of Irish and German Catholic immigrants in the early 1800's. Simmering anti-Catholic feelings that dated back a hundred years or more occasionally boiled over - one of the most notable incidents, the burning of the Ursuline Convent, happened in sight of Bunker Hill in August 1834. [more inside]
Put a Bat on it
Batgirl of Burnside Cameron Stewart, Babs Tarr, and Jordie Bellaire are taking over Batgirl (October 2014, #35). More from Project Rooftop
“We want to make the rules, the theory”
In 1968, Agnès Varda was living in Los Angeles with her husband, director Jacques Demy, who was there to begin filming his first Hollywood film, Model Shop (1969). Although initially hesitant about living in the United States, the couple quickly became caught up in the wave of dissent sweeping the country in the late 1960s. Indeed, amid the finger pointing in France about the perceived failure of the events of May ’68 to bring about revolution, many members of the French intelligentsia looked across the Atlantic for alternative models for political change. Varda became part of a growing contingent of French artists and intellectuals, including sociologists Edgar Morin and Jean-François Revel, and writer Jean Genet, who were attracted to the ways in which cultural revolt, social criticism and political contestation were intertwined in the United States. These French thinkers were attracted to the expansiveness and creativity of the American counterculture as opposed to the political deadlock that many believed was the undoing of the events surrounding May ’68. A revolt against American hegemony was taking place within the United States itself, and many leftist French thinkers were enthralled. [more inside]
"Identity is always something to be cherished."
I Am Loveworthy: How a Transgender Woman Found Love. (Previously, by the same writer.) Useful resources for participating in the discussion: Ohio U's Trans 101* : Primer and Vocabulary guide;
GLAAD's Transgender Media and Education Program
You Can't Get There From Here Unless Your Plane Malfunctions
Midway Atoll is full of history and unique fauna. It has been completely closed to visitors since Fish and Wildlife Service budget cuts in 2013. A United Airlines flight made an emergency landing there last week. Fortunately, Pete has been on-island giving us an inside perspective on both history and nature. Pete has moved on, but you can still keep up with Midway at FOMA.
I'm Just Sittin' Here Watchin' the Wheels Go Round and Round
Watching Wind Turbines in the Snow turns out to be a clever solution to the practical reality that wind farms are simply too large to study in a wind tunnel. This holds promise for improving the efficiency of wind farms, which are steeply on the rise in the U.S. in recent years. Curiously, the rise in wind power is being facilitated by more flexible gas power plants that can pick up the slack on a moment's notice, helping to make up for one of wind power's biggest problems: It's lack of consistency. [more inside]
Hope you're happy, Sandy Allen / Hope your garden is blooming
I’m struck by how perfectly her grave reflects her life: at once dilapidated, lonely; and yet unique, inviting, nearby to children. What are all those other little graves with their knickknacks compared to this one off here on its own? I sit on the white bench. I look at the expanse of earth before me, trying to picture the enormous woman below. I say, "Hello." The Sad, Strange, True Story of Sandy Allen, the Tallest Woman in the World (previously) [more inside]
Reporting a Rape, and Wishing She Hadn't [SLNYT]
The New York Times examines the case of a student raped by football players at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The colleges are under investigation by the Department of Education [Not Alone, previously] [more inside]
Short Term Relationship that expires quick!!!
A friendship that lasts 24 hours unless you opt to extend. An app where you can find interesting people who will disappear in 24 hours unless you'd like to keep the connection going.
Metro System Ambiance
Algiers
Athens
Bangkok
Barcelona
Beijing
Berlin
Buenos Aires
Cairo
Caracas
Chicago
Copenhagen
Delhi
Dubai
Glasgow
Guangzhou
Istanbul
Lima
London
Kolkata
Kuala Lumpur
Madrid
Manila
Mecca
Mexico City
Milan
Montreal
Moscow
Munich
New York
Oslo
Paris
Philadelphia
Prague
Pyongyang
Recife
Rome
Saint Petersburg
Santiago
Seoul
Shanghai
Shenzhen
Singapore
Sofia
Sydney
Stockholm
Taipei
Tehran
Tokyo
Vienna
Law and Order is the old Orange
(nearly) Every actor from Orange is the New Black in their roles in Law and Order. From the bittiest of bit parts to some fairly substantial recurring characters. Contains very mild spoilers for S2 of OitNB.
Inviting the adorable nine-banded armadillo north
An armored invasion is underway across the midwestern and eastern United States: Armadillos are moving into new territories once thought unsuitable for the warm-weather creatures. Sure, they're adorable as babies, they can leap 3 to 4 feet in the air, inflate themselves to float through the water or sink down and walk underwater for up to 6 minutes (as seen to a limited degree in this video from a kid's alphabet song, sorry about the music), and these ZeFrank true facts might persuade you to love them even more (somewhat NSFW). But keep in mind, Europeans pretty much invited them northwards -- as settlers, ranchers, and farmers spread southwest through the United States, they facilitated the invasion of D. novemcinctus by transforming the landscape into one that it would find both more accessible and more hospitable.
Rebuilding Prodigy, one screen at a time
charming dancing duo morph
Pas a Deux - award-winning 1988 animated short of pop culture icons dancing. A collaboration between Gerrit van Dijk en Monique Renault. Via Your Daily Cartoon (via Mefi's own) [more inside]
The Health Benefits of Smelling Farts
Web culture's revolutionary celebration of powerful female leaders
"The ability to present women like [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg, [Hillary] Clinton and [Wendy] Davis as bone-crushingly robust yet simultaneously appealing, revered—practically adorable!—in their rugged severity, is a crucial expansion of the American imagination with regard to powerful women." (via librarina) [more inside]
"Transformers 4: I am drunk and I must rage pee"
If you’ve read anything about this movie, you’ve probably heard about the rightfully infamous “Romeo and Juliet law” scene. Nothing I have read as of yet does actual justice to how absolutely fucking creepy this scene is. Cade and Shane (Tessa’s boyfriend, played by Jack Reynor) have been pissing on each other’s legs since the moment they met about, frankly, just to whom Tessa belongs. Then Cade finds out that Shane is 20; well, Tessa is a minor. Without so much as blinking, Shane launches into a lecture about the Romeo and Juliet law of Texas, and has the text of the law on a laminated card in his wallet. He is carrying it the way one might expect a young man to carry a freaking condom.If you're going to read only one profanity laden review of Transformers 4, make sure it's this one. The profanity because not even the power of alcohol was enough to protect Rachael Acks from this movie, after her readers were so kind as to donate $400 to charity to force her to see it. Bonus: PDF of the notes taken during the movie and for those who like less swearing, the io9 FAQ hits many of the same notes.
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