Favorites from Kattullus
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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.
Picnicface
All About Halifax. A short video from Canadian sketch comedy group Picnicface. See also: Beard No Beard, Panda PSA, Mother's Day, I'm Your Brother. Some violence, NSFW language.
A Year of Evenings
3191
: A year of evenings spent with Stephanie and Mav who live 3191 miles apart. Previously, a Year of Mornings.
When child workers grow up
In the early twentieth century, photographer Lewis Hine took now-famous photographs of American child laborers. In the nearly hundred years since Hine took those photos, surely many viewers have wondered what became of the children he documented. Freelance historian Joe Manning has taken it upon himself to find out.
Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
A developing online resource for the collection and interpretation of photos, stories, maps, audio files, and other information related to the hurricanes of 2005. The project was created as a partnership between the University of New Orleans, the Smithsonian/American History and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the same people who created the September 11 Digital Archive.
Nothing to Say
This is an alt-country-shanty by The Mulligrubs--the band I play bass in. They let me play piano, too, sometimes. We're playing a show tonight in Boston, MA. There's more examples of our smoothness on our MySpace page.
No, not THAT kind of baloon organ...
Surely this must be a double, right? I mean, you've got this great and strange program, Addi's Inflatable Minute, and this incredibly strange but somewhat haunting instrument and its all in one You Tube Link? People don't actually make this sort of content in real life, do they?
Hugh Massingberd joins the majority.
"Hugh Massingberd,
a celebrated former obituaries editor of The Telegraph of London who made a once-dreary page required reading by speaking frankly, wittily and often gleefully ill of the dead, became the recipient of his own services after dying in West London on Christmas Day." The linked NY Times obit (by Margalit Fox; print version) contains many good quotes, like "The Telegraph’s send-off of one Lt. Col. Geoffrey Knowles, 'who as a subaltern was bitten in the buttocks by a bear — he survived but the bear expired'"; The Telegraph's own obit is much longer (and, of course, unsigned) and contains, along with more good zingers, a well-written account of his life ("The inevitable consequence of his bingeing proved another triumph of style, as Massingberd, a tall, slim and notably handsome youth with hollowed-out cheeks, transmogrified into an impressively corpulent presence whose moon face lit up with Pickwickian benevolence").
Do They Know It's Advent?
Word Magazine's Advent Calendar.
The Man in Black in a field of white. Diana + (Flo and Mary) in Santa hats. "Weird Al"'s post-apocalyptic Xmas. Thin Pistols/Sex Lizzy serenade Kenny Everett. Grace Jones uncrated for Pee Wee.
And that's just the first five days.
20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic music
The Avant Garde Project is a bunch of experimental outofprint music digitized from LPs.
Free. Available in Flac and 192 kbps MP3.
Start off at the Archive.
Kadath in the Cold Waste
Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica
UK and US researchers peice together the most detailed map of Antarctica yet, searching through years of data to find cloud free images.
Man wins physics (maybe)
An exceptionally simple theory of everything
has been released by a snow and surfboarding physicist. String theorists are grumpy feeling it doesn't have enough dimensions to be a proper theory. Others question and discuss. In it's favour - it's pretty! 10 Mb Quicktime
I had to tell some one.
Artistic renditions of spam subject lines
— A Flickr photoset (of sorts)
Flyball's Lament (the better one)
This is a much better version of a song I submitted a while back. Many of the chorus-related mistakes mentioned in the comments have been fixed, and I have added a few vocal layers, along with some horns. It's really quite probably the best song I've ever put together.
Theoretical Geography
The Map of Humanity
[large .jpg] created by illustrator James Turner is an effort to describe the human condition in an incredibly detailed map containing thousands of names from history and fiction arranged in a theoretical geography that encompasses islands of Abandonment and Wisdom and regions of Abomination and Courage.
Astronomers need your help
A team of astronomers needs your help.
It's not terribly easy to get computers to distinguish between galaxy shapes, but fortunately humans are not only very good at it, but seem to actually enjoy gazing out in to space. So, go to galaxyzoo.org, look at a few pretty pictures from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey , and help classify millions of galaxies and aid research in to how they form and evolve while you're at it.