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Building Worlds
Fantasy cartography
collects scans of maps and charts from video games, comics, and novels. Take a look at the doll-house like maps of the Fantastic Four's Baxter Building from various comics (a Trophy Room and a "TV Sending Room"!), the Legend of Zelda's Hyrule, Asimov's Foundation galaxy, lots of Lovecraft locations, the lands of the Princess Bride, the Discworld, and lots of Star Trek maps and ship schematics. Also, some thoughts on how "serious fiction" writers often start with maps, from Joyce's use of the ordinance maps of Dublin to Pychon's use of aerial photographs. More fantasy maps (many in German) are available from the Fantasy Atlas. Also, from my previous post on the subject of maps of fantasy worlds, see the extensive listings in the Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
Don't Cry for Me, I'm Already Dead
Don't Cry for Me, I'm Already Dead. A comic about brotherly love, loss and quoting the Simpsons.
A brilliant short comic by Rebecca Sugar, creator of the excellent Pug Davis. Stupid sexy Flanders.
Flesh and Blood
"'I am not a defendant,' Mitchell declared. 'I do not have attorneys.' The court 'lacks territorial jurisdiction over me,' he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the Federal Reserve ... Judge Davis ordered the three defendants to be removed from the court, and turned to Gardner, who had, until then, remained quiet. But Gardner, too, intoned the same strange speech. 'I am Shawn Earl Gardner, live man, flesh and blood,' he proclaimed." Too Weird for the Wire: How black Baltimore drug dealers are using white supremacist legal theories to confound the Feds. [via]
Penguins and more penguins.
Like penguins? Hey, who doesn't, right? So, head over to PenguinScience for all your penguin needs. Recommended: their "Webisode" documentary on Blondie, the rare "blonde" penguin, which also features footage of another thoroughly adorable genetic mutation: an all black penguin.
Urban farming, Architecture, and Art
P.F.1 (Public Farm One)
is a project designed by WORK Architecture Company for MoMA and P.S.1's Young Architects Program. P.F.1’s intent is to "educate thousands of visitors on sustainable urban farming through the unique medium of contemporary architecture." An artist in Providence, RI developed a similar installation called Green Zone, "an organic vegetable, herb, and flower garden planted in the detritus of wartime consumption: used tires, shopping bags, shoes, and other repurposed containers" at local venue Firehouse 13.
You may fiddle, I may dance
Some lesser-known superheroes
and their stories.
I don't want to make this about me, but. . .
Goodbye everyone, Since there has been discussion regarding whether or not my posts to this community are relevant, I have decided to no longer post here. I've enjoyed my time here...meeting a lot of you, but I simply find this community's rules too restrictive, and since I write what I feel, without regard to content (Is it sexist? Is it parental? Is it political? Is it, God forbid, all three??), this community will only end up stifling my originality, and I have no intentions of letting myself be censored in this way. i hope you fall off your soap box someday and bust your ass. i'm out of here. i am not sad about it either.
This is how we roll
This is how we roll in India
This is how we slide in Saudi
This is how we fly in Sweden
Some people are a little bit casual about road safety.
This is how we slide in Saudi
This is how we fly in Sweden
Some people are a little bit casual about road safety.
Best Books
The Worlds Best Books (1909), One Hundred Best Books (1916), One Thousand Books for a Village Library (1895), The Book Lover, a Guide to the Best Reading (1889), The Choice of Books (1905), A Thousand of the Best Novels (1919), Comfort Found in Good Old Books (1911), A Guide to the Best Historical Novels (1911), A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914), and lots more..
"A valley frozen in time."
In November 1943, the village of Tyneham in Dorset, England, received an unexpected letter from the War Department, informing residents that the area would soon be "cleared of all civilians" to make way for Army weapons training. A month later, the displaced villagers left a note on their church door: Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly. Residents were told they would be allowed to reclaim their homes after the war, but that didn't happen, and Tyneham became a ghost village. Though most of the cottages have been damaged or fallen into disrepair, the church and school have been preserved and restored. Photo galleries 1, 2, 3, 4. Panoramic tour [Java required]. Video: Death of a Village [YouTube, 9 mins.]
A sonnet is a moment's monument (Rossetti)
Sonnet Central
Wordsworth once said of the sonnet that he hoped that those "[w]ho have felt the weight of too much liberty,/Should find such brief solace there, as I have found." Sonnet Central offers a copious library of sonnets, mainly in the Anglo-American tradition but with examples from around the world. Those who wish to explore further in the sonnet's paradoxically expansive "scanty plot of ground" (Wordsworth again) may also wish to try Petrarch's Canzoniere (complete set, Italian with English translations); Shakespeare's Sonnets (self-described as "amazing"; the full cycle with glosses and paraphrases, plus illustrations and links to other poems); Golden Age Spanish Sonnets (translations); Christina Rossetti's Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets (a reflection on the traditional sonnet sequence); George Meredith's Modern Love (a bleaker revision of the sonnet sequence tradition, featuring sixteen-line "sonnets"); and an excerpt from John Hollander's Powers of Thirteen (do the math and you'll see the experiment--it's an interesting modern sequence).
What is the Latin name of this rhetorical device?
What is the formal Latin name of this rhetorical device?
Colonel Roger (is a Soldier from the Future)
I met a guy who claimed he was a soldier from the future, here to save humanity. I wrote a song about him. It has been described as "derivative and campy" which may well be true. It's also up on YouTube. with pictures.
Weird rock found in Western Desert of Egypt
An Egyptian friend of mine found this rock in the West Desert of Egpyt. Can anyone tell us what it is? It's really abnormal-looking.
(All of my theories involve Sun Ra and pharaonic collusion with Saturn.)
Life before ProTools
Al Green sits in with Chicago (SLYT with a massive side order of awesome).
Recording history by whatever is handy
The white man brought disease, war and...accounting ledgers. The Plains Indian warrior switched from previous art materials and used the ledgers to create Ledger Art to record the glory of the hunt and battles between tribes and against whites. But as the Native American life deteriorated, Ledger Art recorded a vanishing way of life and the dramatic change in their culture. Some of that art has been lost or fallen apart, but The Plains Indians Ledger Art Website exists to preserve the images for the future.
The Light The Dead See
30 years ago today, Frank Stanford, a young Arkansaw poet shot himself three times in the heart with a 22-caliber pistol. He was 29. By then he had become a powerful and unique voice in the American poetry landscape, dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright. He left behind a strong (though often hard to find and/or unrecognized) body of work, most notably his immense epic The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, a 15,280 line poem with no punctuation or stanzas.
The Big Picture
The Big Picture
The Boston Globe launches a new blog focusing on a large single image from the day's news. It's kind of surprising how rare it is to see a really big photo on newspaper sites these days and this blog makes the simple concept work. [via mefi projects]
Ghost
Um, here's a song I wrote in my bedroom/basement.
Glimpses of South Asia before 1947
Glimpses of South Asia before 1947
1,150 illustrated pages by the world's leading Ancient Indus Civilization scholars
774 photographs, postcards, lithographs, engravings, and archival film of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka before 1947
Take my arm, my love
Take my arm, my love. Don't write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being "friends." A thoughtful post on "self-editing," homophobia, and the day-to-day experience of many LGBT folks, at Shakesville (aka Shakespeare's Sister), by Teh Portly Dyke.
Visual Harmony
Whitney Music Box
[flash] from KrazyDad. You can read about and see examples of John Whitney's work on this extremely ugly website.
Obsessed
Comedian Julie Klausner (of "Hot Jewish Girls want to talk to you!!") has obsessions. So do her friends. As you do, she hosts a comedy night in New York where people can confess and explain (sometimes via powerpoint) the things that drive their compulsions.
The Modernist Journals Project
The Modernist Journals Project
collects literary arts journals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including both issues of Wyndham Lewis' Vorticist manifesto Blast, the first ten years of Poetry magazine (with Amy Lowell, T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesterton and foreign correspondent Ezra Pound), topical essays, the Virginia Woolf-inspired December 1910 Project, the amazing proto-dada zine Le Petit Journal des Réfusées and a searchable biographical database of famous and not so famous artists and writers.
City of Memory
The Brooklyn Elite Checkers Club
[flash] is just one of the stories on the recently released site, City of Memory - 'a public map that generates social interaction, personal expression, and collaborative storytelling'.
I’m Loving Aliens Instead
“He'd speak wistfully about some future day when he'd have less work on and could investigate the paranormal for real. And now that day has come.”
Jon Ronson attends a UFO conspiracy conference with Robbie Williams. Compare and contrast, Dan Aykroyd.
Do you want to see a photo of Tony Danza in the nude?
Do you want to see a photo of Tony Danza in the nude?
It's from when he was younger... and he's uncut. Ok, talk to you later.
gastronomic convergence
The Mexican kitchen's Islamic connection
:"When Mexico’s leading writer, Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz, arrived in New Delhi in 1962 to take up his post as ambassador to India, he quickly ran across a culinary puzzle. Although Mexico and India were on opposite sides of the globe, the brown, spicy, aromatic curries that he was offered in India sparked memories of Mexico’s national dish, mole (pronounced MO-lay). Is mole, he wondered, “an ingenious Mexican version of curry, or is curry a Hindu adaptation of a Mexican sauce ?” How could this seeming coincidence of “gastronomic geography” be explained ?"
Behind Door Number One...
The Monty Hall Problem has struck again, and this time it’s not merely embarrassing mathematicians. If the calculations of a Yale economist are correct, there’s a sneaky logical fallacy in some of the most famous experiments in psychology." The NY Times' John Tierney reports on new research into cognitive dissonance as examined through the famous Monty Hall Problem. [A previous MetaFilter thread about the Monty Hall Problem: Let's Make A Deal!]
I want my P-tv
So, um, Pitchfork.tv launches today.
But what about the flying cars?
Why science fiction is hard. Inspired by reports of a creative new, Rube-Goldberg spamming technique in World of Warcraft, MetaFilter's own Charlie Stross imagines trying to explain gold farming to someone from 1977. (Previously: 1, 2, 3)
I miss underoos
Secret Skin - an essay in unitard theory
A joyful essay on superhero fashion via Project Rooftop. Hi Edna!
Debord's Board Game
Playing Kreigspiel on a LAN.
Guy Debord created a board game in 1977 called Kriegspiel, a war game ostensibly based on the principles of Clausewitz as articulated in On War. An online version of this game was recently created by the Radical Software Group, and released online. The rules seem slightly more complicated than chess.
Joe Brainard, New York School cartoonist
Did the New York School invent alternative comics?
Joe Brainard, more often recognized as an artist and poet in the second-generation New York School, produced several comics in the 1960s, collaborating with Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Ron Padgett, Robert Creeley, and many others. This series of blog posts by Gary Sulllivan (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8) examines Brainard's comics in the context of American poetry and underground comics.
On Victor Borge
A world-class comedian, Victor Borge could please a crowd with his Phonetic Punctuation or Inflationary Language bits. But he was also a brilliant pianist, as showcased when he improvised an impressive encore to a piece he had only heard and never played before, much to his apparent delight. Still better was when he'd merge the two passions, like in Page-Turner or The Minute Waltz. He entertained for more than 75 years, performing up to 60 shows even at 90 years old. He died peacefully in 2000, just two days after performing a concert in Denmark, on the blue here, before dots were all the rage.
Lofi cold fusion error
Lofi is showing a cold fusion error if you are not logged in.
Cheika Rimitti, Mother of Raï
Head over to Cheikha Rimitti's MySpace page and listen to the first tune up on her player (starts when you open the page), called Saida. Whoa! Is that badass or what? Well, there's 5 other tunes of hers there for your listening pleasure, covering a wide swath of stylistic territory within the Algerian music tradition she was such an important part of. Yet another MySpace page pays tribute (with 4 more songs!) to this powerful singer, and you can also learn more about her at the Cheikha Rimitti website, which is in French, but with links like "Musique" and "Vidéos", you shouldn't have too much trouble with it. There's an informative English-language video biography of this "Mother of Raï", not to mention this performance footage (with those fantastic flutes!) of Saida.
What's with the lampshade on the head?
What is the origin of the lampshade on the head gag? Is there any reason beyond absurdity that it's supposed to be funny?
Are we there yet?
The Gough, or Bodleian map is surprisingly accurate considering it dates from the 14th century. The Map is considered the first true map of Britain. Some say the red lines cris-crossing the map are roads, however, some disagree. You be the judge, because the map is available for interractive viewing at Queens University Belfast.
I Have In Me The Last Unanswered Question
Why Do You Stay Up So Late? An interactive, illustrated poem. [note: sound and flash animation]... From the wonderful Born Magazine, "an experimental venue marrying literary arts and interactive media." A previous project from Born Magazine was featured on Metafilter in 2004.
"I prophesy a mighty burning soon"
O Hammers, Head
: discussion of a freakish reference in Philodemus's On Methods of Inference, found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.
Now if they'd just move back to Boston
Atlantic Magazine opens its archives.
Atlantic Magazine announced today that they will drop subscriber-only access to the site, giving full access to every issue of the last 12 years.
Where to start? Well, I particularly recommend David Foster Wallace's fascinating examination of right-wing talk radio (DFW trademark footnotes intact),
Hitler's Forgotten Library, and Eric Schlosser's The Prison-Industrial Complex. (via)
Bettye Swann, reconsidered.
When the discussion turns to 60s-era soul divas, the name of Bettye Swann isn't likely to be first on anyone's tongue. But she was possessed of a tender, supple and seductive voice, and she deserves to be heard and reconsidered.
You can never please/any-boh-oh-dy/in, this, world!
In 1968, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire -- Dot, Helen, and Betty Wiggin -- started a band, under the encouragement, support, and management of their father, Austin. Dot recalls that the girls would rise late, practice for two hours, then work on their home-schooling. Then they did their calisthenics, rigidly prescribed by their father, and rehearsed two more hours in the evenings when Austin was home. Over the next 8 years, Austin would rent out the Fremont Town Hall many Saturday nights for a dance; the sisters, known collectively as "The Shaggs," would play their music, while their mother, Annie, would collect tickets and sell sodas (with help from more of the Wiggin siblings). In 1975, Austin Wiggins died; the sisters, without their father to spur them on, laid down their instruments and got on with the rest of their lives.