September 13, 2013
The Bible as fanwank and flamewars
Confused about who wrote the Bible we have, and why? Jim MacDonald has the answers. How was the Canon of the Christian Bible selected? There really isn't a better, or funnier, short account than this. After all, if fandom is a religion, then religions must work like fandom, right? And the epistolatory disputes of late antiquity were just Usenet to the Greeks. So if you want to know how the Doctrine of the Trinity became important, this will explain it: [more inside]
Making school better for boys.
Sarah Silverman post-roast
Burning Man Explains Rembert
As part of his summerlong Explaining America roadtrip series, Grantland's Rembert Browne visited Black Rock City for the first time. He does his best to relate the experience in a two-part piece. Part 1:Getting There / Part 2:Burning There.
"The work of yakkers and tweeters and braggers..."
Speed Kills Your Pocketbook
Why is Zambia so poor?
Why is Zambia so poor?
"I’m not going to tell Zambia how to run itself, what it needs to fix and in what order. The explanations I heard, they aren’t the whole puzzle, they aren’t even the biggest pieces. The only thing I’m able to conclude after my trip here is that it’s incredibly difficult for a poor country to go about getting un-poor. Just when you think you’ve got the right narrative, another one comes bursting out of the footnotes. It’s the informality. No, it’s the taxes. No, it’s the mining companies. No, it’s the regulators.
And that’s what makes fixing it so difficult."
This landlocked country in Sub-Saharan Africa isn’t a failed state in the traditional sense: There’s no dictator, no child soldiers. But most of its 14 million people live on less than $1 per day. How did things get this way, and can they ever get better?
"I’m not going to tell Zambia how to run itself, what it needs to fix and in what order. The explanations I heard, they aren’t the whole puzzle, they aren’t even the biggest pieces. The only thing I’m able to conclude after my trip here is that it’s incredibly difficult for a poor country to go about getting un-poor. Just when you think you’ve got the right narrative, another one comes bursting out of the footnotes. It’s the informality. No, it’s the taxes. No, it’s the mining companies. No, it’s the regulators.
And that’s what makes fixing it so difficult."
This landlocked country in Sub-Saharan Africa isn’t a failed state in the traditional sense: There’s no dictator, no child soldiers. But most of its 14 million people live on less than $1 per day. How did things get this way, and can they ever get better?
20 years, black cat, black cat
It's been twenty years since Dante Ferrando opened the Black Cat Club on 14th St in DC. The neighborhood has changed immeasurably, but the music is still going.
The Kessler Syndrome
After nearly 5000 launches, we've put a lot of objects in space. Amongst them are around half a million pieces of debris, generated by explosions, breakups and collisions (previously). With speeds of up to 15 km/s, even tiny fragments can cause major damage and the creation of further debris. The Kessler Syndrome describes a situation where the cascade of collisions creates an exponential increase in the amount of debris, leading to a potentially impassable artificial belt in LEO lasting for generations. [more inside]
I'm not wearing anyone, I'm not Buffalo Bill
The Epicenter of Crime
The Hunt's Donuts Story Hunt’s Donuts was a thorn in the side of the police at the heart of a neighborhood that has always been a thorn in the side of the police. . [more inside]
Explain DNA to me like I’m a twelve-year-old
"Read this carefully so that you understand it. When you come home we will show you the model. Lots of love, Daddy." In 1953 Francis Crick, sat down to write his twelve-year-old son Michael a letter explaining his brand-new discovery: the double-helix structure of DNA. Now you can read the original, seven-page hand-written letter, complete with an interactive feature that lets you click for details, context and explanations. Courtesy of the Smithsonian. [more inside]
“Hi, welcome to Gloom City Cupcakes, how can we help you?”
Root beer rag time (SLYT)
Somewhere, Beyond The Sea...
Ahoy, ye landlubbers! Set sail to swash yer buckles with Brawlin' Sailor [Flash], the latest effort from game developer Major Bueno. [Previously]
A splendid, minimal jukebox
Hoot.ch is a cool, beautifully curated music gizmo with new songs almost every day. Dazed electronica, sunny pop, arty rock, stained-glass hip-hop - from John Hopkins to Belle & Sebastian to Pusha T, and lots of unknown gems. Sometimes you just want to sit back and let good songs play. [more inside]
Masters of Global Music at the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries have quietly been posting full-length, downloadable concerts by some of the world's master musicians since 2005. [more inside]
"the greatest unlauded daily strip of the post war age"
Fawkes always noted that “the cartoonists know me as the one who plays the clarinet. The jazz people say I’m the one who does the cartoons.” -- TCJ's Adam Smith interviews British cartoonist & jazz musician Wally Fawkes, who played with the likes of Sidney Bechet and Humphrey "ISIHAC" Lyttelton. He gave up jazz for cartoons and for forty years was the artist on the classic UK newspaper comic Flook, which featured writing by a host of well known names like George Melly, Barry Took, Compton Mackenzie, Barry Norman and Humphrey Lyttelton again.
Every single possible colour
Learning about (your) camera(s) in text and video
If you wanted to understand how cameras work, you could spend some time with your camera manual. If it's not handy (or not helpful), you might opt to read through Wikipedia pages about film speed, ISO and digital equivalents, F-numbers (f-stop* or relative aperture), and depth of field (DOF). If you prefer, you could read "tedious explanations" of f-stop and depth of field and other photographic topics from Matthew Coles. Or you can spend 45 minutes watching 3 videos from YouTube user Dylan Bennett, as he explains ISO, F-stop and depth of field. Then you can join Joe Brady for a few hour-long sessions on setting up your camera for Portrait Photography with Ambient Light and Landscape Photography, and mastering exposure for landscape photography [more inside]
PPP vs 538
Internet darlings Nate Silver and Public Policy Polling are feuding publicly this week, over PPP's decision not to release a polling result that they felt was probably inaccurate. Nate Silver tweeted "VERY bad and unscientific practice for @ppppolls to suppress a polling result they didn't believe/didn't like." And then the Twitter-based snipefest began, with PPP calling Silver's allegations 'absurd' and accusing him of 'jealosy,' while Silver called PPP's actions 'totally indefensible' and accused them of having their 'finger on the scale.' [more inside]
FADE OUT
The Last Thing You See: A Final Shot Montage [contains flashing images]
“!#@$%” = This could be filthy, NSFW language if it weren’t for Grawlix
"Are we really not going to talk about the black girl?"
"Not a lot of rushees get awesome scores," the Tri Delta member said. "Sometimes sisters [of active members] don’t get that. [She] got excellent scores. The only thing that kept her back was the color of her skin in Tri Delt. She would have been a dog fight between all the sororities if she were white."
The University of Alabama's student newspaper reports on all-white sorority chapters' rejection of black applicants, including members' claims that the decisions came not from them but were handed down by alumnae.
[Further coverage in the New York Times.]
Ah, the roaring 12's...
Composer Wesley Johnson (aka jimlapbap) barbershops the heck out of 2012's biggest hits. If you can get past the autotune (as he says, he's a composer, not a vocalist), there's some lovely moments, and apparently his Korean is not too shabby, either. (slyt)
Untitled Ancient Miniature Rules
Playing at the World is a blog about the early days of tabletop RPGs. Select articles include "How Gaming Got Its Dice" (and the followup "The Origins of Dice Notation,") "The Early Works of Gary Gygax, " "A Playtesting Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (1973)" (and the followup "The Dalluhn Manuscript: In Detail and On Display") and "Character Sheets in 1975."
"I will not even go to the strip clubs anymore"
Jeff Wagner would like you to know that he is running for mayor of Minneapolis. (slyt, mostly sfw)
Another take on slide guitar
Hey, the Indian sitar is a great instrument and all, but it's really refreshing to hear Indian music played on Hawaiian slide guitar, and in that department, you can't do better than Debashish Bhattacharya. Here's an hour and fifteen minutes of his sublime sound for your listening pleasure: Calcutta Slide Guitar vol.3.
Geared for jumping
Intermeshing, rotating mechanical gears have been found in an insect. The gears act to ensure that the legs of the hopping insect move at the same rate when jumping, and are lost during molting to an adult stage. Via reddit, where the journalist is participating. Science magazine report (paywalled).
"...Japan does not have a vigorous tradition of satire."
France has made Japan angry again, this time with insensitive political cartoons about Fukushima.
With radiation levels still spiking, and the government only reticently admitting to constant leaks, some are questioning the legitimacy of PM Abe's insistence that Tokyo is safe. With decisions not to prosecute anyone involved in the disaster, it seems that amakudari is, in Japan as in most other countries, still alive and well.
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