September 9, 2016
@smubgobs
The Burke-Gaffney Observatory at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia will take your astronomical observation requests via Twitter. [more inside]
When darkness falls and pain is all around.
Sail on, Silver Girl: Playa Elvis delivers Bridge Over Troubled Waters. (SLYT)
What if Star Trek never existed?
Star Trek first aired on NBC on September 8, 1966. But what if Star Trek never existed?
"What if NBC hadn’t wanted another pilot? Or if Roddenberry had been too busy producing the first season of Police Story to make one? In that mirror universe, the next 50 years of sci-fi TV and movies look much different. So does the cultural breadth of television casts. So does your yearly pilgrimage to Comic-Con International. Our lives would be very different without Trek—and we almost didn’t get it."
And now that it does exist, over six (almost seven) different TV shows and thirteen movies, here's The Hollywood Reporter's list of 100 Best Star Trek episodes.
"What if NBC hadn’t wanted another pilot? Or if Roddenberry had been too busy producing the first season of Police Story to make one? In that mirror universe, the next 50 years of sci-fi TV and movies look much different. So does the cultural breadth of television casts. So does your yearly pilgrimage to Comic-Con International. Our lives would be very different without Trek—and we almost didn’t get it."
And now that it does exist, over six (almost seven) different TV shows and thirteen movies, here's The Hollywood Reporter's list of 100 Best Star Trek episodes.
See, cats DO get stuck in things besides scanners!
Adorable kitties getting caught in pretty much everything but scanners. (SL BuzzFeed)
“Mrs. Simpson, the express line is the fastest line not always.” ~ Apu
How to Pick the Fastest Line at the Supermarket [The New York Times] “You dash into the supermarket for a few necessities. You figure it will be 10 minutes — tops — before you are done and on your way home. Then you get to the checkout lanes and they are brimming with shoppers. Your plan for a quick exit begins to evaporate. But all is not lost. For anyone who has ever had to stand in line (or if you are a New Yorker, you stand on line) at a supermarket, retailer, bank or anywhere else, here are some tips from experts for picking the line that will move the fastest.” [more inside]
The King of Ska
Most Tricks By A Cat In One Minute
Didga the Australian skateboarding cat and her owner Robert performed a total of 20 tricks in one minute to earn themselves a place in the Guinness World Records 2017 book.
"We are not the country we thought we were."
Secret Path, a project by Gord Downie, includes a new album and a graphic novel illustrated by Jeff Lemire. It tells the story of Chanie (Charlie) Wenjack, a 12 year old Ojibwe boy who died in 1966 while trying to make his way home from the residential school he had been sent to, located 400 miles away. [more inside]
• author totally misunderstands Internet in way that sounds profound
Here is a list of things that I am including in this book. Please send me my seven-figure advance.
- affluent family lives in suburb. The husband (who is a professor but also a novelist) is cheating on his wife, but he thinks it falls into a moral gray area because he is a Great Man
A trip to the mythical Isle of Tiki, Polynesian Pop and A/C Eden
The bizarre rise and fall and resurgence of tiki bars and cocktails is an interesting history that starts with two men, Donn Beach and Victor Bergeron, who traveled to the South Pacific and brought back some "island culture" to the United States with them in the 1930s, continuing on with the craze really booming after WWII vets returned from tours overseas. With the ebbs and flows of popularity, the cultural appropriation in "Tiki culture" has often been overlooked, as to the Māori mythology and meaning behind Tiki carvings and imagery and Hawiian culture of leis and luaus. Let's talk Tiki bars: harmless fun or exploitation. [Soundtrack: Les Baxter's Ritual Of The Savage ( 1951) and Martin Denny's Exotica (1957)] [more inside]
Seriously, they do a lot of cleaning
Goats + yoga
Thus explaining Mitch McConnell's unceasing opposition
Barack Obama is officially now a parasite (again). It's an honor. A new genus of blood fluke was discovered in 2015 in Malaysian freshwater turtles (PDF). After discovering that he shared a common ancestor with President Obama, lead researcher Thomas R. Platt bestowed the name Baracktrema obamai on the new species. [more inside]
Dogs are the doggiest
Keep your pikachus out of our parks!
Milwaukee's beautiful Lake Park is "one of the most popular and concentrated Pokemon Go destinations in the country." There have been concerns about increased litter, parking, vandalism and bathroom availability due to the numbers of people using the park. This led to the county parks department asking Niantic, the game's creator, to obtain a permit. The area's Neighborhood Association allotted some time during its regularly scheduled meeting to discuss the matter. It did not go well.
i love my butt and i won't shut up
Doctor Who Fan Orchestra
New energy transitions: Tipping point for self-organized criticality?
Electric vehicles – It's not just about the car - "One of the key characteristics of complex systems, such as the world's energy and transport sectors, is that when they change it tends not to be a linear process. They flip from one state to another in a way strongly analogous to a phase change in material science... A second important characteristic of this type of economic phase change is that when one major sector flips, the results rip through the whole economy and can have impacts on the societal scale." (via) [more inside]
"We’re the Only Plane in the Sky"
"We’re the Only Plane in the Sky"
Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks? The strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people who were on board.
Wolfshäger Hexenbrut says, shake your fat!
Colors and Scrapes
The Apocalypse Now of television gameshows
Let’s have another round tonight
Video games, of course, are lousy with taverns, and in taverns you will invariably encounter bards. Some are kind of lousy, some are really quite good, some won't stop singing about you, and a few might even be trying to kill you.
If there's no bard around, you can make some music yourself! Grab a guitar (or a lute I guess) and a few of your friends. Sure, a few murder ballads might be nice while you drain a pint, but don't forget you can also sing while you work!
taking DDR to the next level
taro4012 makes Stepmania/DDR games that really push the limits of the rhythm-game genre. The UK Sight Reading Tournament series (the latest being Version 8) incorporates mini games and an overarching plot, while HBT experiments with the step-game hardware, such as pressure-sensitive game pads. A major highlight of taro4012's work is adapting Undertale to the Stepmania format - which for spoiler reasons and due to the lack of an established playlist will be placed [more inside]
Let's Go Shopping!
The Intercept have just published an expose on the 2014 catalog of British spy tech maker Cobham, who sell their gear to “clients and partners in over 100 countries” including US police forces. Among the equipment is an array of cellphone-intercepting IMSI catchers, better known as Stingrays (previously); handheld or car-mounted direction finding devices to pinpoint a cellphone's location; and surveillance cameras hidden inside everything from street lights to bug zappers and trashcans along with receivers, recorders and viewing devices. A full copy of the 120 page catalog itself is available as well.
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