August 2, 2011
Go-Karting with Bowser
Okay, you're good, kid. You've got skills. But do you know how to wheelie, drift, and draft? Do you know how to make the most of your environment? Do you know how to get the sickest air and make the most of your tricks? Huh? Do you know how to make sure you get the best gear? Huh? DO ya? Don't even tell me you know how to dodge blue shells! [more inside]
A selective sweep.
Yes .name exists!
Neil Fraser has an infrequently updated but interesting blog featuring such gems as the Lava Lamp Centrifuge, laptop storage advice, a Google vs. Multivac comparison, a synchronization algorithm improvement, a Godwin incident, and occasional holiday specials. He also bailed out Jeremy Marks, an LA kid arrested for video taping a police beating, who's now free btw, and helped death row inmates with their SEO optimization. (previously)
Birds! Bears! Bees! and all the Chimpanzees
You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.20
Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you
to be kept alive.21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them. (SYTL) [via] [more inside]
"The idea that a car runs free - those days are about to close"
Chris Burden's kinetic sculpture Metropolis II: 1100 custom die-cast cars, 18 lanes, 4 years in the making. [more inside]
Science Daily
Chemists transform acids to bases!, Invisible & Flexible Electronics!, Robots walk on water!, Light manipulated at will! New stories from BiMonSciFiCon ?(SYTL) Nope, just another day at Science Daily...
Minter's Ring
Smithsonian Magazine's new blog Past Imperfect has already told some interesting stories in its first weeks, but none more compelling than that of Lt. Commander Minter Dial's Annapolis class ring.
The Shoezeum
Eleven minutes of the most mindblowing personal collection of Nike shoes, themed rooms, backwards walking and decorations you'll ever see. Jordan Michael Geller's Shoezeum.
Humble Indie Bundle 3 (or is it 4?)
There's a new Humble Indie Bundle out. (Previously, Previously, also Previously.) The popular pay-what-you-want game distribution offers up Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVV, Hammerfight, and And Yet It Moves for all three major OS platforms, and works with Steam. You set the price; you decide what charity gets the money. [more inside]
Smart girls who love some bad things.
Hey, Don't Judge Me by "smart girls who love some bad things". Hey, Don't Judge Me exists for one reason only: to be a place where we don’t have to hide our love of schlock anymore. . . Media recaps and reviews. Television. Movies. Comics. Srsly Good Music. Redemption Corner.
Mefi's own elizardbits is a contributor. Twitter @hey_dontjudgeme
This is what you get / This is what you get / This is what you get / When you mess with jazz
Jazz group The Bad Plus play an appropriately discordant Karma Police, a slow-burn We Are The Champions, an tearfulfeariffic Everybody Wants To Rule The World, and also sort of smell like teen spirit.
This is the rhythm of the 90s
404: Page Not Found
SCIENCE!
At the beginning of last month, Scientific American unveiled a new network of 47 blogs with 55 bloggers. Their latest posts can be found here. [more inside]
Pleasanton Cooks Up A New Bicycle Safety Method
The city of Pleasanton, California is the first in the nation to use a microwave motion and presence sensor system to protect bicyclists in intersections. The Intersector can tell when a bike is in the intersection and will tell the light to stay green longer to let the cyclist cross safely.
Ooh, that smell. Can't you smell that smell?
Smell is our most primitive, least understood sense. Perfume manipulates that sense, reminding us of good times past, and speaking of glamour and sophistication to those who get close. --- "Perfume", Episode 1: Something Old, Something New [pt2/pt3/p4]. Guerlain are considered by many to be the essence of Frenchness in a scent. Ancienne école comme attendez! But the house whose founder/namesake wrote his first formulae in the 19th C. face the challenges of the 21st, including the first non-Family perfumer, updating a classic, and the fall of 4th generation family perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain after his openly racist comments on French TV. We also follow the corporate entity known as Tommy Hilfigger as it tries to bottle and market the scent of Rock & Roll to the Drum 'n Bass generation [more inside]
Does digital writing leave fingerprints?
"When legal teams need to prove or disprove the authorship of key texts, they call in the forensic linguists. Scholars in the field have tackled the disputed origins of some prestigious works, from Shakespearean sonnets to the Federalist Papers."Decoding Your E-Mail Personality Ben Zimmer, of Language Log discusses the Facebook case and forensic linguistics in the NY Times. [more inside]
How to Get Kids to Read in One Easy Step
A Missouri school board has voted to remove Slaughter House Five and another book from the library for "teaching principles contrary to the Bible." [more inside]
If you shave off your eyebrows, they will never, ever grow back.
Growing a hyperdodecahedron
This short computer graphics animation presents the regular 120-cell: a four dimensional polytope composed of 120 dodecahedra and also known as the hyperdodecahedron or hecatonicosachoron. [more inside]
Out there, in the stars / war passes like a sun / out there, iron runs wild
It's the late 1970s, you're in France, and you're not quite sure what this whole Star Wars hype is about. Let René Joly tell you about it. If your French isn't so good, someone was kind enough to overlay a translation in English, of course in the Star Wars Crawl style. If you can't find the original record from 1977, you can also hear the b-side: Enfant de l'univers (French lyrics). More French Star Wars? Behold: a dance spectacular on French TV (previously). If you like your cheese 100% American, check out the Donny and Marie Star Wars musical number, with very some special guests. For a little less cheese, and a bit more swing: Darth Vader and his jazz combo. [more inside]
Dreams Are What We Wake Up From.
This happened.
Zig Ziglar on Goals
“People just weren’t meant to be that far underground.”
Library of America free content
Every Monday The Library of America features a free Story of the Week. It could be anything -- a short work of fiction, a character sketch, an essay, a journalist’s dispatch, a poem -- taken from from one of the hundreds of classic books in the LoA collection. Archive of 83 weeks so far.
A song by a stupid cat
Eugene McDaniels, RIP
Somewhere along the line, you might've heard one of the biggest hits to ever come out of the world of jazz: it was a song originally made famous by Les McCann and Eddie Harris back in 1969, called Compared To What. If you were in the right place at the right time, you might've even caught them doing it live. Or, if you were born a little too late for all that, you might've heard the song performed by John Legend and the Roots. Well, the man who wrote the song, Gene McDaniels, has just left us at age 76. RIP Gene McDaniels.
Idle Hands Are The Devil's Playthings
Dimorio McDowell had a lot of time on his hands in prison. So, he decided to start up his own retail fraud and ID theft ring, defrauding his victims of almost $1 million before investigators caught up to him.
Kirby's family loses key round
Jack Kirby's family has lost what may the key round of its legal battle to win ownership of all Marvel Comics' most important characters. A judge has ruled Kirby always drew on a work-for-hire basis, and therefore never owned characters like Iron Man, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Thor and The Avengers in the first place. Fans of Marvel's most important founding artist are angry, and one big name comics artist proposes a boycott of Marvel comics and movies alike.
Can you spare an hour and a half?
Want to learn about Nietzsche? Kierkegaard? Wittgenstein? How about Kafka or Virginia Woolf? [more inside]
Imaginary friends
Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign is floundering despite his brag that "I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined." Maybe because 80% of them are fake. Or maybe they're not. [more inside]
The Newport. Harry's. Fluties. Indochine. Nell's. Cornell Club. The New York Yacht Club. The regular places.
Armed and Pregnant
"Americans who carry a firearm are often viewed as rough, gruff, middle-aged men with over-developed trigger fingers. [more inside]
Pam Grier Coffee
In the mid 1990s, comedian/actress Margaret Cho starred in All-American Girl, a short-lived sitcom based on her standup act. One episode, entitled "Pulp Sitcom", lampooned the film Pulp Fiction and revolved around a bootleg video seller named Desmond. Naturally, Desmond was played by Quentin Tarantino himself. You can watch the episode and read a detailed breakdown at Chronological Snobbery.
Please, for all that is holy... STOP IT.
How to Ruin Your PC Port in 5 Easy Steps by Ben Kuchera explains the lengths video game publishers will go to to ensure that the PC version of their game is worse than the console version. Blizzard demonstrates how to follow these guidelines for Diablo III even if you don't have a console version.
« Previous day | Next day »