November 2012 Archives
November 30
An AIDS-Free Generation?
The Inside Story of Pong
The Inside Story Of Pong - On Nov. 29, 1972, a crude table-tennis arcade game in a garish orange cabinet was delivered to bars and pizza parlors around California, and a multi-billion-dollar industry was born. Here's how that happened, direct from the freaks and geeks who invented a culture and paved the way for today's tech moguls.
Awesome shark photos
He explained the key to safely diving with this notorious shark was to remain relaxed, keep eye contact with the shark and hold ones ground no matter how close the shark swims to the diver. [more inside]
Nicholas MinJay-Z
Do you know what Nicki Minaj slowed down is? Nicki Minaj slowed down is Jay-Z, that's what (SLYT, lyrics are NSFW). [more inside]
The tools of Mexico's drug cartels
Pick your plot, worry about the details later.
As Americans, we pick a place to live and then figure out how to get where we need to go. If no way exists, we build it. Roads, arterials, highways, Interstates, and so on. Flexible and distributed transportation networks are really the only solution compatible with that way of thinking. Trains, which rely on a strong central network, never had a chance. We were destined for the automobile all the way back in 1787, when we first decided to carve up the countryside into tidy squares.Town, Section, Range, and the Transportation Psychology of a Nation [more inside]
A Stadium Divided Against Itself
The retirement of Fireman Ed is more than just an index of the toll taken by the Jets quarterback controversy on fans. It’s also a glimpse into the agonizing heart of fandom. [more inside]
Scottish Literary Sculptural Mysteries Return!
This week in Scotland, it is Book Week. Many note authors are supporting it with free events. And so is the mysterious sculptor who seized the imagination of people worldwide with her books made sculpture. She (one of the few things known about the sculptor) has done a series of five mystery hidden sculptures to help celebrate Book Week. Each of them is related to a Scottish story or author. [more inside]
Chestnuts roasting in A Flat
The Music Theory Song presented in a festive melody. (SLYT)
ooh, expired milk er yoghurt
You are what you eat. A peek inside 50 people's refrigerators. navigate with left and right arrow keys
Vultures to Return to Mumbai, to Eat the Dead
The Mumbai Parsi community is hoping to return vultures to their traditional and religious role of eating the dead by building aviaries near the Towers of Silence where the Zoroastrian dead are laid out to be stripped clean by vultures. For the past fifteen years, there have been barely a dozen vultures in Mumbai, and members of the community have increasingly turned to cremation (especially during the rainy season), which the religion considers unclean. The community hopes to have vultures return to eating the dead by February 2014. [more inside]
Do you guys need me to call AAA?
In 1994, Tony Randall and Mandy Patinkin's car broke down outside David Letterman's studio and they needed a place to rehearse. Did Dave mind if they used the stage? Great take it away Mandy! [more inside]
Justice delayed
In a private conference this morning, the Supreme Court of the United Stated discussed ten petitions relating to the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8. [more inside]
Keshek
We Were Heroes, Its What We Did
After 8 years and over 23 Issues released, City Of Heroes, the first Super-Hero MMO, will be shutting down for good at midnight tonight. Heroes has seen a tremendous amount of support not only from it's fan base, but from the industry as well, it's unique position as the only major Non-Fantasy MMO in the market helping to keep it standing out among the Goblins and the Panda Kung-Fu Fighters. But if the game is so beloved by its customers, why is the game shutting down tonight, even with the newest issue all but released in the Beta Server? Well that's where things get interesting. [more inside]
axe-grinding
shibas gonna shibe
Wubwubwub + bullet hell = ??
Nutmeg: smells of holidays from a history of battles and massacres
This unassuming, feel-good spice "has been one of the saddest stories of history," from the gruesome, grisly tale of how the Dutch tortured and massacred the people of the Banda Islands in Indonesia in an attempt to monopolize the nutmeg trade. [more inside]
The New York Times - Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in 1980
Groovy comics
Belts, boots, collars, gauntlets and flared, flared shoulders, a treasure trove of Dave Cockrum art, the artist who made the X-Men popular, all from 1975 to 1985.
Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?
After thirty years of punk and rock and folk and techno and rebel songs and unexpected pop success and everything in between, the anarchic British band Chumbawamba has come to an end.
Armpit Cheese
"The milk curds were then strained and pressed, yielding unique smelling fresh cheeses" "These cheeses are scientific as well as artistic objects" [more inside]
Bloodshot and tired looks
"That effortless look that says 'hey, the baby's sucking the life out of me, but here's a cup of blood to drink.' Pregnant Bella Swan - the perfect make-up look for office parties, bridal showers, or even the first day of school. (NSFW language)
It's not a question of where it grips it.
The Times They Are a-Changin'
In 1962, fifty years ago this month, striking union printers shut down four New York City newspapers in resistance to computerized, automated technologies that were being introduced in newsrooms across the country. Five other area papers shut down voluntarily. The strike lasted 114 days and sounded the death knell for four newspapers. For a brief period, New York was a laboratory that demonstrated what can happen when newspapers vanish. Today, new technology is again shaking American newspapers as the Internet drains away more and more advertising revenue. Is this The Long Good Bye? [more inside]
ChronograMs: CLeVer Letter-seqVenCes enCoDIng Integers
A chronogram is a text (often an inscription), in which certain letters, construed as Roman numerals, express a date via the sum of their numerical values. For example, the sentence ‘LorD haVe MerCIe Vpon Vs,’ printed on a pamphlet might indicate its year of publication as (L + D + V + M + C + I + V + V =) 1666. [more inside]
this is the gayest of all the possible things: going to a meshell ndegeocello concert, with a goddamned lesbian, that is being held in a motherfucking FOLK MUSIC SCHOOL.
Land of crumble and lemon curd and opportunity
I'm British (SLYT)
Only the kitty is real
Anamorphic illusions of items on a desk is the latest of many interesting original visual illusions, tricks, and fun science experiments by Brusspup on Youtube (previously). For handy viewing: Anamorphic playlist; Illusions playlist; Science experiments playlist, plus more, including a playlist of how-to videos for various tricks and activities . [more inside]
DOWNTIME for the BRAIN
"Having felt what it’s like to have all the backlog of experiences cleared out of my head, I’m intolerant of letting it build up a backlog again. It feels too good when it’s all clean and clear. Another way of talking about this is to say that the frantic, amped up feeling of too much seeking clears away. When we are seeking all the time, we are intaking new material constantly without ever actually dealing with it."
Samuel Morey: an American inventor
If you've been along the Connecticut river in eastern Vermont, you may have crossed the Samuel Morey Memorial Bridge, relaxed at Lake Morey, or seen some road markers mentioning Samuel Morey. Besides being the second person in the world to be in a car accident, who was Samuel Morey? [more inside]
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work
The author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a popular MetaFilter topic, was born 177 years ago today (November 30th 1835) in Missouri. The printer, riverboat pilot, game designer, journalist, lecturer, technology investor, gold miner, publisher and patent holder wrote short stories, essays, novels and non-fiction under the pen name Mark Twain. This included The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (recently adapted into a musical), one of the top five challenged books of the 1990s, published in 1884-85 to a mixed reception and with an ending that still causes debate. [more inside]
November 29
Beer based puns are drunk puns, and drunk puns aren't good ones.
There are cooler ways to keep your beer cold than your average promotional koozie. There's the Beeracuda, a "liquid lunch box", the Shakoolie for all your shower beer needs, Growler Koozies and the Doozy, the 40oz koozie that comes with a pocket for your lighter. [more inside]
"But lapidary epithets are few./We do not deal in universal rubies."
The Plough and Potato have had a football team since Roman times, so they must be better at it than modern teams!
A primer in the rhetorical tactics of pseudoscience advocates in the form of an inane pub argument about football.
"a homeless consciousness"
Susannah Cahalan has a month-long gap in her memory from when she was struck by the little known disease anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. Cahalan, a New York Post journalist, wrote an account of her ordeal shortly after it happened, and went on the Today Show to talk about it. Now she has written a book on her experience called Brain on Fire and wants to make people aware of the disease, and that was the subject of a follow-up segment on the Today Show. She is not the only person to have been afflicted. There is more information about the disease and the book on Cahalan's website. She was interviewed at length on NPR's Fresh Air earlier this month. Novelist and essayist Leslie Jamison has a well-written review of Brain on Fire and puts it in its literary context.
The Ox and Lamb Could Not Be Reached For Comment
On November 21st, Image Books published Pope Benedict XVI's third and final volume in his Jesus of Nazareth series, The Infancy Narratives. In the book, along with discussions of the geneology of Jesus and the account of the annunciation of his birth, Benedict describes the nativity with as much historical accuracy as modern scholarship permits. The reaction in the world press was immediate: [more inside]
I listen to color
An artist who was born with achromatopsia, a condition that prevents the cones in the retina from functioning and as a result the world is perceived in black, white, and grey. was fitted with a machine that enabled him to detect color through sound (an "eyeborg").
This artist, Neil Harbisson, describes what it is like to now perceive color in a Ted Talk "I listen to color"(Ted Talk) and a first-person description.
Some of his art work includes a
sonochromatic Portrait and music. [more inside]
Jack Whittaker's Powerball tragedy.
The day would come when many West Virginians recalled the story of Jack's Powerball Christmas with a shudder at the magnitude of ruination: families asunder, precious lambs six feet under, folks undone by the lure of all that easy money.
On the yearly Pilgrimage to Reichenbach Falls
We are to be led by some kind of Victorian reverend, except not. In fact, the parson is Moriarty dressed in a new costume; though, of course, he’s not really Moriarty, or a parson, or Victorian. Via The Hairpin.
"And a very pleasant evening to you wherever you may be..."
Today is the 85th birthday of Hall of Fame baseball announcer Vin Scully. He will be returning next year for his unprecedented 64th season calling games for the Dodgers, in a career reaching back to the team's Brooklyn days and their move to Los Angeles in 1958. The New York Yankees tried to pry him away in the 1960s, but he remained with the team and has become an LA institution. In the 21st Century, he has inspired blog names and tattoos and even dabbled in the online world himself during a game last season -- as an experiment, he asked fans to get a topic trending on Twitter about Dodger catcher A.J. Ellis, "a nice boy." Later in the broadcast he announced sheepishly that Ellis was trending across the U.S. This coming Monday, he will be taking over the team's Twitter feed to answer questions -- tag your tweets #askvin. [more inside]
Saruman reads Burton
Christopher Lee reads the original poem The Nightmare Before Christmas [11m], Tim Burton's storybook which inspired the Henry Selick's stop-motion film. [more inside]
Ice on Mercury?
Eating normally is the new black.
"I’m bigger than most people, let alone most nutritionists — but I’m a pretty normal person. And a damn good nutritionist." The Fat Nutritionist wants to help you eat normally again. [more inside]
"The story of Lost makes no sense."
Nothing can come close ....
One of the more memorable things about Moloko are their music videos - or more specifically, music videos featuring Roisin Murphy dancing. [more inside]
"Your app's anti-piracy module, it's not working"
An iOS application developer has come up with an extreme way of fighting software piracy—by auto-posting "confessions" to its users' Twitter accounts. "...Enfour, the maker of a variety of dictionary apps, is auto-posting tweets to users' accounts to shame them for being pirates. But the auto-tweeting seems to be affecting a huge portion of its paid user base, not just those who actually stole the apps." Follow-up. A personal account: Can’t spell “pirate” without “-irate”: on DRM and punishing the customer [more inside]
Hey
"The bottom line: Obama’s e-mail fundraising team tested hundreds of grabby subject lines. The most successful—“Hey”— brought in millions of dollars."
Inside Obama's chatty e-mail fundraising campaign.
The Soundscapes of Ancient Cultures
Historically, archaeologists have largely ignored acoustical science as a tool for archaeological discovery. This is changing with the advent of acoustic archaeology. “Could the Maya have intentionally coded the sound of their sacred bird into the pyramid architecture? I think it is possible.” Hear it for yourself in this video.
While this is a pretty astounding feat of architectural engineering, it’s by no means the only example of archaeoacoustics that can be found at Chichen Itza, amongst the mayan people, or throughout the many other cultures who’ve built structures that integrate unique auditory phenomenon to stimulate the senses. [previously]/[previously] [more inside]
Trashman Forever
Spain Rodriguez Fought the Good Fight - underground comics artist Spain Rodriguez, most famous for his violent antihero Trashman, passed away yesterday.
Still humble?
The Humble Indie Bundle made its name by offering pay-what-you-want pricing for DRM-free, cross-platform collections of independent games, but the latest bundle merits a double-take: it's Windows-only, requires Steam activation, and features seven titles by major publisher THQ. The Bundle has already experimented with music and ebooks, and a past indie bundle included the EA-published Shank. But despite promises that indie games are still "a core of our business," is the latest foray into AAA gaming a step in the wrong direction?
A conversation with Suneet Tuli
Gamechanger: $25 tablets, $2 mobile data plans, and zero margins–how the internet is about to gain 3 billion new users and a look inside that world’s cheapest tablet computer, India’s Aakash 2 - includes video.
Not pictured: Bastion Booger.
In response to WWE.com posting a not-really-that-accurate list of the 50 Most Beautiful People In WWE History (warning: awful slideshow), Brandon Stroud of Withleather assembled an all-star cast of beauty/wrestling experts, including Grantland.com's David Shoemaker, Clark Duke of Hot Tub Time Machine and professional Batmanologist Chris Sims, and with science has composed a a more accurate response list.
LOLHEHHEHHELLLOOOOO, WORLD
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 (a collaborative book by Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost (previously, previously, previously), Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas (of Facade), Casey Reas, Mark Sample and Noah Vawter) uses a single line of code as a basis for pontificating on creative computing and the impact of software in popular culture. 10 PRINT's content is available as a PDF (50 MB). Pictures via Casey Reas' Flickr.
I: is all you can say is purple? p: yes.
"I moderate jokes on a Kids Jokes website. A lot of joke submissions can't be published because they're offensive, not suitable for children or don't make any sense... so I publish them here instead: Bad Kid's Jokes "
Broadsided
Broadsided Press publishes a new, printable PDF featuring an original poetry & visual art collaboration every month; they've beeing doing it since 2005. You can even become a vector for this distributed, "serendipitous" press.
Cory/Shawn 4eva!
It's been confirmed: Cory and Topanga will be returning to TV screens in a new show focused on their daughter and her friends, Girl Meets World. Sadly, Shawn is not yet officially involved.
Point of View, Depth of Focus
Scott Eric Kaufman examines the visual rhetoric of Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Mad Men, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and more.
Strange, Beautiful and Unexpected
Race matters
Manhattan District leader Mark Levine plans to run for a city council seat in 2013, for District 7. The problem? Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a Harlem activist who is also running for term-limited Councilman Robert Jackson’s seat, circulated an e-mail late on November 26th in an attempt to plan a “private meeting” to “discuss the potential damage to the political empowerment of the Black and Hispanic community if Mark Levine, a White/Jewish candidate was elected to the 7th Council District in 2013.”
The Last Resort?
According to multiple sources, as of a few hours ago, Syria has been disconnected from the internet as rebels converge on the capital in an attempt to shut down the airport. [more inside]
Hope is not a good strategy, in life or in disease research.
An influential US advocacy group has set a deadline to beat breast cancer by 2020. But it puts public trust at risk by promising an objective that science cannot yet deliver. [more inside]
PURGE: verb: to make free of something unwanted
An eminent former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and bizarrely blamed previous editors, according to claims in a book published this week.
Let's Spruce This Place Up A Bit!
The AP Bans Homophobia
Politico reports that the AP's online stylebook has recently banned the term "homophobia." AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn explained "it's just off the mark. It's ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don't have. It seems inaccurate. Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case." Slate's Nathaniel Frank disagrees with the decision stating that in an effort be appear neutral, the AP risks being part of the problem. James Rainey at the LA Times surveys the arguments for and against the decision and notes that homophobia may be the right term in some situations.
1-800-DIP-DIP-DIP-DIP
Hollywood Nailz - Episode One, according to the youtube description is "a nail-biting extravaganza of mostly useless products and pansexual hijinks!!!" Created by Seth Bogart (aka Hunx) and Brande Bytheway.
Mannerheim: General of the Czar, Marshal of Finland [1/9]
Mannerheim: General of the Czar, Marshal of Finland [1/9] (In Russian, with English subtitles) [more inside]
Gallicantus
The Geese Book is a lavishly illustrated manuscript of choral music, written for the church of St Lorenz, Nuremberg, between 1504 and 1510. It takes its name from a whimsical illustration showing a choir of geese with a wolf as their choirmaster. The manuscript has now been digitized, and many of the chants recorded, so that you can listen to the music (or even sing along) while following the text. Highlights include Christmas, with a fox and rooster, Ascension Day, with the famous choir of geese, All Saints' Day, with a dragon eating a baby, and the Mass for St Lawrence, with a musical bear.
Some of them are Dreadlock Rasta, Some of them are Baldhead Rasta.
The Harder They Come. It's mostly about music
"20 years holding back a collective tidal wave of jism"
Former college football powerhouse Notre Dame hasn't won a national title in a long time (1988, natch). They have a rabid fan-base (arguably the biggest in college sports) and the largest TV deal in the nation with NBC. This season they came from pretty much out of nowhere to land a spot in the national title game. The problem, however, is that the school and its fans are in fact horrible, no-good people. Presenting Drew Magary's A-Z Hater's Guide to Notre Dame! [more inside]
gentle observer
Why People Really Love Technology: An Interview with Genevieve Bell The thing I love about Intel researcher Genevieve Bell is that she finds surprising things by looking at what's left out of the dominant narratives about technology. She finds data that's ignored because it didn't fit into the paradigm of, say, how people adopt technology. The dominant narrative is that young men determine the popularity of phones, computers, websites, and the like. But when Bell looked at the data, the story we told ourselves about how the world worked was not reflected in the numbers.
That's why I wanted to talk to her about what gadgets people around the world might be using over the next decade. I figured she was someone who could look past the conventional wisdom and find the missing pieces of the future
MANPADS proliferation
BNP 2012
Arc’teryx, a high-end Vancouver outdoor clothing manufacturer, is working with the VPD's Homeless Outreach Program on the Birds Nest Project in an attempt to provide the city's homeless population with stylish waterproof capes.
November 28
We Expect Art To Suck
Artist Zak Smith addresses the problem of Big Art made by assistants for artists who don't claim to use assistants. good bit starts at 3:40
"Warning: May cause Pastrami On Rye cravings"
Deli Man Trailer on Vimeo. In 1931, there were 1,550 kosher delis in NYC. Today: 150 Jewish delis in all of North America [more inside]
Man, those Masons are good at making cartoons
Disney has a new cartoon series called "Gravity Falls," created by Alex Hirsch who also created The Marvelous Adventures of Flapjack. It features X-Files style paranormal activity in the titular town in Oregon from the perspective of 12 year old twins, Mabel (voiced by Kristen Schaal) and Dipper. While this alone could cultivate a fanbase, it also helps that the show has secret messages and cyphers for viewers to decode. [more inside]
Imagine a frozen ocean
"Entering into one of the fiercest competitions in existence, I found art."Sixteen mushers. 120 dogs. An adventure across one of the longest mushing trails in the world: the Beringia, a dog sled race stretching 683 miles across eastern Russia. Twilight on the Tundra [more inside]
Pulitzer Nominations Are Open
The Tax on Unlucky People
Tonight's Powerball lottery drawing was for more than half a billion dollars, the 2nd largest in U.S. history.
The Multi-state Lottery Association answers your frequently asked and not so frequently asked questions about the Powerball Lottery with a side of snark.
Find out if you won the Powerball Jackpot.
The flawed science surrounding Diederik Stapel
Press Release The Levelt, Noort and Drenth Committees have published their joint final report of the investigation into the massive academic fraud by Diederik Stapel, a social psychologist, who is known mainly for his work on social priming. English translation of the full report [pdf]. [more inside]
Bitchslaps of Hollywood
Now the drugs don't work, they just make you worse
Rapid Growth Seen in Addiction to Painkillers The escalating use and abuse of powerful painkillers can be found in rich societies from the UK, across Europe to the antipodes. But the country that really knows all about prescription pill excess, and the human toll it claims, is the US. Americans make up less than 5% of the global population but consume 80% of the world's supply of opioid prescription pills. [more inside]
Boston's Cocoanut Grove Fire
70 years ago today, 492 people perished in a fire at Boston's popular Cocoanut Grove nightclub. The Cocoanut Grove Coalition offers documents, images, videos, and artifacts of the fire and its aftermath. This fascinating 1995 WGBH clip interviews a variety of survivors, offering a window on the era as well as the fire. Other documents of note: The Boston Library's Flickr photo set and the Library's recently released witness statements and final report. Also noteworthy: Buck Jones and the Cocoanut Grove controversy. [more inside]
Rock gods at the Library of Congress
Joe Smith interviews Jagger, McCartney, Bacharach....apparently pretty much everyone. Retired American music mogul Joe Smith has donated recorded interviews with a who's who of 20th century popular music to the U.S. Library of Congress, which is posting the digitized audio online.
The first batch are up now -- more coming at some unspecified future time.
Green Dam Youth Escort
"During his civil lawsuit against the People's Republic of China, Brian Milburn says he never once saw one of the country's lawyers. He read no court documents from China's attorneys because they filed none. The voluminous case record at the U.S. District courthouse in Santa Ana contains a single communication from China: a curt letter to the U.S. State Department, urging that the suit be dismissed. That doesn't mean Milburn's adversary had no contact with him." [China Mafia-Style Hack Attack Drives California Firm to Brink]
“Lots of people think we’re crazy. But that’s what it takes to get ahead.”
Ron Johnson, who was responsible for Target and Apple's wildly successful retail chains, is now trying to reinvent the department store from the ground up as J. C. Penney's new CEO: divid[ing] stores into 100 shops that [...] will each be like its own small store. Surrounding the shops will be wide aisles that Johnson calls 'streets.' Along those pathways will be ice cream and coffee bars and wood tables with built-in iPad tablet computers that shoppers can use to surf online.
But after quarter after quarter of heavy loss, some analysts think Johnson is destroying J. C. Penney. But they've predicted his failure before. More on Johnson's work with the Apple Store. Johnson himself on what he learned building the Apple Store.
HTTP Status Rappers
The Golden Eye.
In Shahr-i Shōkhta, near the Iran/Afghanistan border, archaeologists found the remains of a six foot tall woman who they speculate might have travelled there from the Arabian peninsula. What they do feel sure about, though, is that her golden prosthetic eye was produced there in Shahr-i Shōkhta, also the home of the world's oldest backgammon set; early evidence of brain surgery; caraway seeds; evidence of metal work; an important body of textile artifacts, but apparently no weapons. It is thought to suggest the existence of a major, non Mesopotamian culture. [more inside]
A-MAZ-ing!
According to the Sacramento Bee, Huell Howser is retiring. Best known for his public television show, California's Gold and his boundless enthusiasm, Mr. Howser is "retiring from filming new shows or making appearances."
Press X to wubwubwub
Allan Arkush's "Rock'n'Roll High School"
Rock 'N' Roll High School, staring the Ramones, is one of the five greatest American films of all time. Well, five best movie musicals? At the very least, the scene of the band rolling down the high school halls and blaring "Do Ya Wanna Dance" with the teen archetypes (cheerleaders, jocks, geeks, etc.) following, clapping and dancing while brewing up the eventual explosion of the school, could be the most transcendent two minutes of any rock movie. - Eric Davidson, introducing his interview of director Allan Arkush
"i stole a car" "correction: black guy stole your car"
Do you like Cleverbot, but maybe wished that it was an androgynous jpop boy you could dress up and make your boyfriend? There's an app for tha-- oh no wait, nevermind. [more inside]
Fox in print
Nineteen year old Jade Phillips creates images of foxes by marking up pages from old text books and re-assembling them. More of her work is available on Flickr and her own blog.
How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?
The Myth of American Meritocracy. Ron Unz, former publisher of The American Conservative, has challenged many of the magazine's "paleocon" readers with several recent articles on ethnicity (including His-Panic, which questioned links between immigration and crime, and Race, IQ, and Wealth, with a skeptical eye toward that subject). But in his latest (long!) article, The Myth of American Meritocracy, Unz will challenge many kinds of readers, as he makes the case for persistent, extensive ethnic discrimination in Ivy League admissions, which for decades, he argues, has been extremely biased in favor of under-qualified Jewish whites at the expense of well-qualified Asians and non-Jewish whites. [more inside]
We taught it everything we know, we did everything we could for it. But now it has to find its own path.
Mars Curiosity Rover. A short film by Dan Winters, narrated by members of the team that sent Curiosity on its way. [more inside]
Nation shall speak unto nation using Objective-C
Jack Kirby Double-Page Spreads
Jack Kirby Double-Page Spreads. A flickr set of double-splash-page spreads by the King of Comics.
The rain in Spain smells mainly of dimethyl-9-decalol
The smell of earth after rain
is called Petrichor, and it is caused by Geosmin, a sesquiterpenoid metabolite with the chemical formula C12H22O. Human sensitivity to geosmin is about 10 parts per trillion. (via)
The coalition of tyrants will learn that they are loathed equally by men of all colors.
Remember that what has once been done may be done again. Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers were inspired by the life of his father, Alexandre. However, Alexandre Sr. was not just a handsome swashbuckler or a vengeful former prisoner. The boy who came from Haiti to France as “slave Alexandre” in 1776 had, by the age of 32, become commander-in-chief of the French revolutionary army in the Alps, eventually leading 53,000 troops to victory against formidably trained Austrian alpine forces. [more inside]
Some Of That Soul Searching That We Were Told Was Called For
Bruce Bartlett tells the story of how he lost faith in the Republican Party.
"If at any time during my tenure here you find there’s a pattern of owners and owners’ officials singing my praises, you’d better fire me. I’m not kidding."
"Bippity boppity, it time to get sloppy."
"Wine. The nectar of the gods. But what if your corkscrew mysteriously goes missing?"
Here are seven ways to remove a cork from a wine bottle without a proper corkscrew. [slyt] [via] [previously] [more inside]
Deepwater Horizon, 2 years later
Earlier this month, British Petroleum agreed to plead guilty to 14 violations of law, including negligence causing death and the Clean Water Act. [more inside]
106
The Violence
The Violence is a new album by Darren Hayman about the Essex Witch Trials conducted by Matthew Hopkins, where over 300 women were put to death between 1644 and 1646. [more inside]
Photographer Ken Regan Passes from The Scene
On Nov. 25th, Ken Regan, iconic photographer of rock icons such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones (among many others) died of cancer. A spokesperson for his studio declined to give Regan's age, calling him "ageless."
A GQ interview from late last year. A gallery of 16 of his images, and another gallery of 25 images. His (Flash required) web site's biography and portfolio. A one hour phone interview (warning: insufferable 3-1/2 minute pre-interview ad).
The computer /is/ your friend
Friendship is Optimal is not a "My Little Pony" fanfic, but a SF story that starts with a procedurally-generated MLP MMO, and crescendos to what could very well be the Best Possible Outcome if self-optimizing algorithms are given /almost/ the right goals.
Some readers are horrified by the implications; some want to move into "Equestria Online" anyway. Whichever camp you fall in, you'll never forget the phrase "satisfy human values through friendship and ponies".
The unexpected nature reserve
Twenty miles or so east of Amsterdam, set between the new towns of Almere and Lelystad, and lying five metres below sea-level, is the youngest wilderness I have ever seen. The Oostvaardersplassen is now a vast region of grassland, reed-bed, shallow lake and ragged forest, over 6,000 hectares in extent. Sea eagles and marsh harriers hunt its wide skies, spoonbills and avocets stalk its marshes, and vast herds of red deer, wild ponies and Heck cattle graze its savannah.
But 40 years ago, the Oostvaardersplassen was underwater.
1/10. Who doesn't love pirates?
Note: CRM-114 is a Kubrick trademark
A scene-by-scene breakdown of Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The Art of Invisibility
The Palestinian Bid for Statehood 2012
On the 15th November 1988, the Palestine National Council under Yasser Arafat made a Declaration of Independence. The declaration was supported by more than 100 countries, and recognised a two state solution. It led to a UN vote, which was supported by 104 states and voted against by two. Twenty four years later, on the 29th November, and 65 years to the day after the UN adopted the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas is making a renewed bid for Palestinian statehood. [more inside]
Hello, My Name is Mud.
"God, you owe me a life - a living baby."
Dr. Gisella Perl was a gynecologist living in what is now Sighet, Rumania, when in 1944 she and her family were transported by the Nazis to the death camp at Auschwitz. There, she was forced to work under Joseph Mengele in the camp hospital. After seeing the horrors and abuse leading up to the murder of pregant women, she "decided that never again would there be a pregnant woman in Auschwitz."
Gisella Perl: Angel and Abortionist in the Auschwitz Death Camp [more inside]
Well, we didn't find the droids we were looking for...
Stormtrooper Cops [slyt]
November 27
I get bored with baseball too, but Adderall isn't the answer.
What do NASCAR's AJ Allmendinger, Joe Haden of the Cleveland Browns, New York Giants safety Tyler Sash, Carlos "Chooch" Ruiz of the Philadelphia Phillies, and many other athletes have in common?
They have all used a performance enhancing substance that is growing in popularity among athletes, one that is widely prescribed and which is taken by millions of children every day. The drug in question is Adderall: The combination of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine is used as part of a treatment program to control symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. [more inside]
Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.
“I am convinced [Dorothy Day] is a saint for our time,” Cardinal Dolan said at the bishops’ meeting. She exemplifies, he said, “what’s best in Catholic life, that ability we have to be ‘both-and’ not ‘either-or.’ ” [more inside]
♫ ♪ It's the daddy of all lubricators / the best thing there is for the neck... ♫
Alles andere ist Kaese
Pictures of Sausage , and things made from sausage.
Apple Ads
"Look At Me Now"
American paratrooper Arthur Boorman suffered debilitating injuries during the first Gulf War. Doctors told him he'd never walk unassisted again. 15 years later.... [more inside]
Neil's Puppet Dreams
When Neil Patrick Harris dreams, he dreams in puppet: Episode One of Neil's Puppet Dreams "The Lullabye". Bonus: Episode Two "Behind The Scenes".
The International Tracing Service, more than 65 years on
The International Tracing Service was established following the Second World War to help repatriate forced laborers and survivors of the concentration camps as well as to trace the missing. 67 years after the end of the war, ITS receives about 1,080 requests for information a month, some of which still result in reuniting relatives. [more inside]
What time is it!?
Al-Qahira, Ares, Auqakuh, Bahram...
Do you have $500,000 lying around? If you do, Elon Musk might just send you to colonize Mars. This is not the first time that Musk has discussed his desire for a colony on Mars. Interesting as it sounds, not everyone is excited about the idea.
Obliged Subjects
Her Majesty the Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Mark Carney as Governor of the Bank of England from 1 July 2013. He will succeed Sir Mervyn King. [more inside]
Love of the Windy City
Rubinstein teaches Chopin
Pianist Arthur Rubinstein teaches the Chopin Ballade #1: Part 1, Part 2.
Here is a Rubinstein recording of the ballade in full. [more inside]
My Mother, My Other: Alison Bechdel's Comic Drama
Named as one of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2012, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, "Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama," calls on memory, Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," Donald Winnicott's psychoanalytic work (.pdf), Alice Miller's "The Drama of the Gifted Child," and the shade of P.D. Eastman's classic short book about a baby bird in search of its mama to explore her fraught relationship with her mother, Helen. It's art. It's theory. It's self. It's meta-memoir in search of a mother. [more inside]
Fresher than a popsicle.
Man raps to Chris Brown's Look At Me Now using only Family Guy voices.
Jeffrey Beebe's Refractoria
Over the last fifteen years, I have created the world of Refractoria, a comprehensive imagino-ordinary world that is equal parts autobiography and pure fantasy. - Jeffrey Beebe [more inside]
History's most influential people, ranked by Wikipedia reach
Ethics++
The Royal Society Winton Prize 2012
The Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Writing 2012 has been announced. James Gleick has won for his book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. The shortlist is also available with Chapter 1 of each book downloadable as a PDF.
Variations on a steem
The man who took out Victor Brauner´s eye
Oscar Dominguez is probably best known for the Electro Sexual Sewing Machine.
He was a surrealist (Fr) and a forger (pdf).
When a fight broke out between Oscar Dominguez and Esteban Frances, it was Victor Brauner who stepped in to separate them, Dominguez accidentally struck him in the face with a bottle. The injury cost Brauner his left eye, an event that Brauner had forseen.
Dominguez updated the technique known as Decalmania.
His last lover was the heiress Marie-Laure de Noailles and during this time he replaced some of her Picasso´s with forgeries painted by himself, selling the originals. He is also suspected of forging Klee, Ledger and Laurens.
He slit his wrists one New years Eve and Janet Flanner churlishly conjectured that he “lay down on the floor, being a dirty, untidy man…and bled all over everything”.
He was a surrealist (Fr) and a forger (pdf).
When a fight broke out between Oscar Dominguez and Esteban Frances, it was Victor Brauner who stepped in to separate them, Dominguez accidentally struck him in the face with a bottle. The injury cost Brauner his left eye, an event that Brauner had forseen.
Dominguez updated the technique known as Decalmania.
His last lover was the heiress Marie-Laure de Noailles and during this time he replaced some of her Picasso´s with forgeries painted by himself, selling the originals. He is also suspected of forging Klee, Ledger and Laurens.
He slit his wrists one New years Eve and Janet Flanner churlishly conjectured that he “lay down on the floor, being a dirty, untidy man…and bled all over everything”.
"Which is another way of saying that Facebook is George Costanza's worst nightmare: It enforces, second by second, the collision of worlds."
Are Your Facebook Friends Stressing You Out? (Yes.) - "The finding, which is similar to one determined last year, is nice as a headline: It's both unexpected (friends! stressing you out! ha!) and ironic (the currency of the social web, taking value rather than adding it!). What's interesting, though, is the why of the matter: the idea that, the report theorizes, the wider your Facebook network, the more likely it is that something you say or do on the site will end up offending one of that network's members... Unsurprisingly, per the study's survey of more than 300 Facebook users, 'adding employers or parents resulted in the greatest increase in anxiety.'" [more inside]
Terminator: the Documentary
A report was recently released suggesting a pre-emptive ban on fully autonomous weapons - robots that can pick and choose whom to fire on. If this sounds vaguely alarming to you, don't worry - the Department of Defense issued a directive indicating that fully automous robots may only decide to tase you.
Eclipse/Blue
Los Angeles-based electronic artist Nosaj Thing has collaborated with with the artist/scientist, Daito Manabe (previously) and Creators Project (info) to produce a stunning and graceful audio/visual feast for his new single "Eclipse/Blue", which features Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead on vocals.
My looks are often commented on long before the work I've done.
Women in the gaming industry have taken to twitter to talk about the sexism they've faced under the hashtag #1reasonwhy [more inside]
The Power of Boots Compels You.
All is not lost
The video for Frightened Rabbit's new song "State Hospital" is a powerful meditation on rape, domestic violence, suicide and what it means to be strong in the face of all of them. [more inside]
"I've got a really good feeling about today."
Spending the Day with Charles, Your Hangover [SLVimeo] [nsfw-ish]
Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird
The implication is, you’re making it for a group that you are not a member of—and there is something very insincere in that. If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing. Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird (PDF) or (HTML, registration required)
Young Child Risk Calculator
From The National Center For Children in Poverty: Young Child Risk Calculator: "The risk factors used in this tool are known to increase the chance of poor health, school, and developmental outcomes for young children. Economic hardship paired with any of the listed risk factors may indicate a greater chance of poor outcomes. Children with three or more risks are exceptionally vulnerable. Information about the prevalence of young children experiencing these risks can inform policies aimed at improving outcomes for vulnerable children and reducing the number of children experiencing early risks." [more inside]
The Coldscape
More than three-quarters of the food consumed in the United States today is processed, packaged, shipped, stored, and sold under artificial refrigeration. The shiny, humming stainless steel box in your kitchen is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak—a tiny fragment of the vast global network of temperature-controlled storage and distribution warehouses cumulatively capable of hosting uncounted billions of cubic feet of chilled flesh, fish, or fruit.
Journalists vs. Bloggers
If you follow the usual crop of technology news sites, you will have read yesterday morning that Google had apparently acquired a little-known WiFi hotspot company for $400 million. This story spread with the help of the most popular (and most reputable) sites, like TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, The Next Web, and others. Only one small detail: the story wasn't actually true. [more inside]
Trading gold for politics
Popular “prediction market” Intrade is shutting its doors to US Customers, following a suit (filed post-election fortunately) by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Some see this as inevitable, given their history of dissembling to regulators. Other (predictably) see it as another restriction of internet freedom. [more inside]
The End
Act Of Faith and Jimmy's End, short films by written Alan Moore and directed by Mitch Jenkins - dreamy, dark, disturbing and possibly NSFW (MLYT)
anomie
"Don't call it a comeback/I've been here for years."
Jay Walljasper covers Detroit: Not Your Father's Motor City, The Surprise Behind Detroit's Emerging Comeback, Young People’s Fascination With Motor City is Only Part of Detroit Revitalization, A Food Commons Grows In Detroit. [more inside]
November 26
You would download your car data
"You probably don't think of your car as a developer platform, but Mike Rosack did."
Just in time for Lazarus Long's birthday
People tend to divide noted libertarian Robert A. Heinlein's career into three different eras, with the "juveniles," the "slick" science fiction stories, and the bigger, more opinionated novels, but over in Locus Magazine, Gary Westfahl has a theory that's sure to be controversial: Heinlein's career actually divides into a slew of serious novels, followed by a swerve into satire. {Via I09} [more inside]
HI! KICK CLAP HI! HI! CLAP HI! KICK CLAP I AM YOUR MA- GIC WAND
Do You Rock? [Epilepsy Warning] [Monochromatic Booty-Shaking Warning] A simple video for a simple tune. A parody and/or a ripoff of DubstepLyrics. [more inside]
if you want some fun, sing
Close that door, you weren't born in a stable.
The Parent Rap. Two parents rap about their life. [slyt]
You can hear them in your head.
"Jake from Two and a Half Men means nothing. He is a non-existent character."
Angus Jones, better known as Jake on the show Two and a Half Men, has joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The young star has released a pair of videos urging people to stop watching the show.
Cheetahs on the Edge
They can't serve it premixed because it's against the law.
I am fairly sure of these: Ginger, orris, galengal, lovage, chiretta, angelica, elecampane, hyssop, pomerance, camomile, lavender, coriander, pepper, cloves, star anis, allspice, nutmeg, cardamon, fennel, bitter orange, rose hips, quinine, licorice, tumeric, mace, saffron.
These are possibles: marshmallow, yarrow, burdock, curcuma, grains of paradise, cubeb, wintergreen, cassia, betony, purslane, borage, sandalwood.
Deer blood is a myth. Caramel is used as a sweetener. Your real problem is getting the proportions right.
And don't mix it with Red Bull. Drink it straight and cold.
These are possibles: marshmallow, yarrow, burdock, curcuma, grains of paradise, cubeb, wintergreen, cassia, betony, purslane, borage, sandalwood.
Deer blood is a myth. Caramel is used as a sweetener. Your real problem is getting the proportions right.
And don't mix it with Red Bull. Drink it straight and cold.
Could I interest you in dessert?
Chef Grant Achatz plates the final dessert course at Alinea. Or perhaps you'd prefer the chocolate pumpkin pie or the edible balloon? Bon appetit!
Obviously, I’m not a victim here
In October, 18-year old high school senior Ryan Romo was arrested for the sexual assault of a child (someone 16 or under, by TX state law).
On October 31, CultureMap Dallas's managing editor, Claire St. Amant published an article asking, "Is this Highland Park baseball star a rapist?" St. Amant ended her article, stating: If it's a case of impulsive teenage decisions, remorse and guilt, then no one suffers more than 18-year-old Ryan Romo. [more inside]
Has politics gone peer-to-peer?
Has politics gone peer-to-peer? A rich 90-minute panel discussion with Steven Johnson, author of "Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked World", featuring Yochai Benkler, Susan Crawford and Lawrence Lessig.
“NO. STOP.”
"You will not find a group less in favor of automatically aggressive, invasive medical care than intensive care nurses, because we see the pointless suffering it often causes in patients and families. Intensive care is at best a temporary detour during which a patient’s instability is monitored, analyzed, and corrected, but it is at worst a high tech torture chamber, a taste of hell during a person’s last days on earth."
Repeating Oneself
Erdal Inci has been experimenting with "cloned motion" in video for years and has now converted some of his hypnotic videos into looped gifs. (long-loading page, but worth it)
Supreme-Leader-Style
Kim Jong-un named Sexiest Man Alive for 2012. Link goes to Korea times.
Put simply, the opening credits to Hostage have no business looking as good as they do.
The Marquis de Sade of the puzzle world
[Henry] Hook has come to be known as the Marquis de Sade of the puzzle world: a brilliant and oddly beloved misanthrope, administering exquisite torture through dozens of puzzle books and syndicated crosswords.
Philips CD-i
The Philips CD-i was a unique blend of CD player and gaming console, with "interactive" playback capabilities. The only completely interactive music CD for the platform was released by Todd Rundgren in 1993. A reference guide for everything CD-i can be found here.
Surprise, You're on Candid Camera!
Goodnight Zombies!
Dynamo ep1 It’s an experiment. It’s a story. It’s a series of shorts. It’s a sci-fi/fantasy/’cute cyberpunk’ webseries. It’s the result of four years of late night discussions between friends. It’s a convoluted puzzle about the nature of reality (and monsters! and horrible romance!) It’s a narrative with layers of interlocking pieces. It’s the best thing we know how to make- and it’s pretty wacky!
[more inside]
Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman collaborate on social writing site Wattpad
Wattpad, started in 2006, is a free social writing site where people can publish their own work, read others' writing, and provide feedback. It can be accessed on a computer, tablet, or smartphone, with an app for Android or iOS. Wattpad enthusiast Margaret Atwood is currently collaborating with British author Naomi Alderman on a serial comic/horror story; you can read the chapters of The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home as they are added. [more inside]
Phillip Marlow's throbbing core of misogyny
Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses male mythology, biology and Raymond Chandler's Private Dick
Stubborn music
The Canto Ostinato is a minimalist classical composition written in 1976-1979 consisting of "small, entirely tonal cells which are repeated - how many times is left to the performer". Usually performed by two or four pianos, it's also been adapted to other instruments like the harp. The Canto Ostinato ("stubborn song") was written by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt, who passed away yesterday. [more inside]
Downtown Vancouver's Mountain of Sulfer
Stanley Park is an urban forest, 1.5 square miles of fir and cedar abutting downtown Vancouver. It features stunning views of the Salish Sea, the North Shore Mountains, the Lion's Gate Suspension Bridge and a giant heap of neon-yellow 99.9% pure elemental sulfur. [more inside]
mmmmmmmm, forbidden donut
Entrepreneur Jia Jiang has decided to overcome his fear of rejection through a sort of exposure therapy desensitization: he's "seeking one rejection on purpose every day for 100 days" by making crazy requests of strangers, filming each encounter on his iPhone and posting them to his blog. Here's his attempt on Day 3 to order doughnuts shaped (and colored) like the Olympic rings at a Krispy Kreme in Austin, TX. [more inside]
Mary Shelley Writes for the Guardian
From their archives, Mary Shelley writes about the origins of Frankenstein.
interesting compromises
"my interest in a lot of old game music now has very little to do with "nostalgia" or any associations i had with the games, and much more to do with the way the different kinds of hardware used created interesting compromises for composers that led them [to] making some really interesting sounds," Liz Ryerson collects sounds from the abyss. In her blog post here she details the history and appeal of five (mostly forgotten) game soundtracks which push the limits of the both the genre and the hardware. [more inside]
Social Enclosures “R” Us
Who's the Shop Steward on Your Kickstarter? "The true product for sale on Kickstarter is not your art project, but your community and networks. ... Our projects that facilitate the funding are a side effect, a cost of doing business—the business of drilling our relationships for all they are worth."
The crew of the Enterprise take on their greatest challenge yet -- an out-of-service holodeck
Go for our eyes, Boo!
Rembrandt in White
The Art of Ironing is, primarily, a Russian advertisement for steam irons, however it is also a remarkable demonstration of recreating art from unusual materials; in this case, a simple white piece of cloth.
Loebolus
All the 245 pdf-format, public domain Loebs conveniently arranged in one place, ready to be downloaded for your classics reading pleasure. (via time's flow stemmed)
The gravy won
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (previously, also previously) has been kicked out of office for violating the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act after being found to have deliberately voted at city council on a measure related to his own pecuniary interests (previously). Full decision here. Ford may run for Mayor again in 2014. (Ford is widely expected to appeal the decision and request that the order be stayed in the meantime.)
An evil veterinarian?
Which James Bond villain has the most plausible schemes?
Pun Generator
This website makes puns. A single serving web app.
"Cats may not vote," Ms. Viviani observed, "but cat people do."
The Torre Argentina Roman Cat Sanctuary has been taking care of the multitude of felines that haunt the Largo Argentina archeological site in Rome since 1995. Their website has a page about its history, videos of their cats, and all the things you find on cat shelter websites. But they also have a blog dedicated to their fight with local authorities. Italian archeological administrators have demanded that the feline sanctuary be evicted [NYT] from the location of Julius Caesar's assassination, but the cat shelter is fighting back. In the blog of the New York Review of Books, the almost certainly pseudonymous Massimo Gatto points out that the archeological site is a hodgepodge of actual ruins and bad reconstructions dating back to the Fascist era.
The Truce on Drugs
Need a raise? Give away a few mints....
The Rule of Reciprocation: an interesting read for anyone who works for tips, or wonders why your physician is prescribing that particular medication. From NPR "Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us"
Exonerating the Friedmans
At the time of the release of the documentary "Capturing the Friedmans," filmmaker Andrew Jarecki was criticized by some for not clearly advocating for the release of Jesse Friedman. However, eight years later, Jarecki is still working on assembling interviews and footage of victims recanting their testimony in an effort to overturn Friedman’s 1989 Great Neck molestation conviction.
"I often read dozens of books simultaneously."
My 6,128 Favorite Books - "Joe Queenan on how a harmless juvenile pastime turned into a lifelong personality disorder."
Why's This So Good?
Conceived as sort of a companion to Longreads, Longform, Pocket, Byliner, etc., Nieman Storyboard's Why's This So Good? series looks at why some great long-form journalism and narrative nonfiction pieces are so great. There are over 60 installments of writers talking shop about writing. [more inside]
November 25
Thurman Lives
Back in March I posted about the forgotten Nickelodeon show Turkey Television. Recently a full episode of the show (later era) has shown up on YouTube: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3.
If that's too much video tryptophan (even at its best, Turkey Television was amazingly uneven), here's a few clips (WARNING: CONTAINS UNCLE HOGRAM, also some of Uncle Floyd's bizarre Day In The Life Of A Food) from YouTube user 2reelers. [more inside]
If that's too much video tryptophan (even at its best, Turkey Television was amazingly uneven), here's a few clips (WARNING: CONTAINS UNCLE HOGRAM, also some of Uncle Floyd's bizarre Day In The Life Of A Food) from YouTube user 2reelers. [more inside]
Dragon House - Illusion of Choice
Illusion of Choice. A dubstep routine by the quartet Dragon House. Mind. Blown. [SLYT] [via] [more inside]
Suspiciously familiar...
Blood Bricks
This series of experiments explores the use fresh animal blood as the basis for a building material.
The end of the world is nigh. We need to publish papers on it.
At Cambridge University, the Project for Existential Risk is considering threats to humankind caused by developing technologies. It will be developing a prospectus for the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, to be launched by the Astronomer Royal, a co-founder of Skype and the Bertrand Russell professor of philosophy. More detail from the university, while the news excites some journalists. [more inside]
...and I'll form THE HEAD!
The pinnacle of convention cosplay has finally been achieved: The five-person assembling Voltron costume. (sideways phonecam video)
in which Fatlip's ad-libbed Patrick Bateman speech basically invents Odd Future
Which isn't to say it's not a deep record — it's just a record that wears its depth lightly, couching it in gags and a multitude of weird voices and ball-busting autocritique. The almost-hit-single "Passin' Me By" stands out most clearly as a foundational text for modern nerd-rap of all stripes, but the whole record operates in previously uncharted territory, foregoing both tough-guy posturing and didacticism in favor of honesty. It's about hormonal mischief and formative heartbreak, the mistakes these guys have made and the mistakes they'll make again, and the fact that it's one of the funniest-on-purpose rap albums ever made never quite overshadows its precocious intelligence. 20 years later, it's time for another Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde. [more inside]
<3
End of holiday productivity tool
According to a study done at the university of Hiroshima, watching pictures of cute animals makes you more productive. Considering the state many Americans might be in on Monday following a long weekend of turkey and pumkin pie, perhaps watching a few cute videos might be a good idea to get America's productivity up to par. [more inside]
The Four Queens
Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Emily Saliers & Amy Ray (Indigo Girls) are featured in this 1991 Austin City Limits "Songwriters Special" episode. Filmed at the peak of the female singer-songwriter arc 20 years ago, this special also includes Julie "From A Distance" Gold. [~58m, download links also available at the link] [more inside]
DNA data storage
Just think about it for a moment: One gram of DNA can store 700 terabytes of data. That’s 14,000 50-gigabyte Blu-ray discs… in a droplet of DNA that would fit on the tip of your pinky. To store the same kind of data on hard drives — the densest storage medium in use today — you’d need 233 3TB drives, weighing a total of 151 kilos. In Church and Kosuri’s case, they have successfully stored around 700 kilobytes of data in DNA — Church’s latest book, in fact — and proceeded to make 70 billion copies (which they claim, jokingly, makes it the best-selling book of all time!) totaling 44 petabytes of data stored. [more inside]
Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
Via io9: "The first nine Superman cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios from 1941 to 1942 are a wonder of animated retrofuturism, giving us a peek into a world that not only had a flying superstrong protector, but also filled viewers' heads with dreams of autonomous robots, comet-controlling telescopes, and machines that could shake the Earth. These films are in the public domain and have been available on the Internet Archive," but now Warner Bros. is releasing them (remastered) on YouTube. The first short, "Superman" (also known as "The Mad Scientist,") was nominated for an Academy Award. Also see: The Super Guide to the Fleischer Superman Cartoons. Find links to all nine episodes and more inside. [more inside]
24/7 de_dust, AWP disabled
100th Grey Cup / 100e Coupe Grey
Today, in Toronto, the Grey Cup will be awarded for the 100th time, to the CFL champion. What is it? What is the history? Who is playing? Why was someone riding a horse in the best hotel in town? [more inside]
The Complicated Geography of Alice
“I stole this book from the library ages ago…”Behind the Curtain (AKA OMG Marvin K. Redpost is a girl!) is one of the funnier excerpts from The Complicated Geography of Alice, a memoir in progress.
“Fourth grade” I say, watching them huddled together in the mirror.
“…one of those Marvin K. Redpost books. He kisses his elbow one day and when he wakes up the next morning he's a girl.”
“I meant to make you take it back but I bet we still have it.”
“My mom's cataloging fifteen years of gender-bending in one week.” She says, rolling her eyes.... “Seriously Mom, how did you NOT know?”
She will ask me this a hundred times. I will ask myself a hundred more and still never I didn't have a good answer then and I don't now. Perhaps we simply see what we expect to see and write off anything that doesn't fit into the little boxes we put people into. Or perhaps she'd learned to mask and over-correct, to hide so well that by the time those distinctions matter, I could not see her until she tore down that wall. I wish I'd known sooner.
Tazreen factory fire
At least 112 workers died in Tazreen garments factory fire in Bangladesh. The reasons of the fire are the subject of investigation, but the firefighters put the blame for the tragedy on the lack of fire exits. Since 2006, over 500 garment factory workers died in Bangladesh fires caused often by poor safety standards and shoddy electrical installations. The garments made in the Tazreen factory were sold by C&A, among others. Clothing makes up 80 percent of the country's $24 billion in annual exports.
Last year saw the 100th anniversary of another such tragedy.
Last year saw the 100th anniversary of another such tragedy.
I got this
MDMA's Therapeutic Benefits
Ecstasy found to help veterans with PTSD "In a paper posted online Tuesday by the Journal of Psychopharmacology, Michael and Ann Mithoefer, the husband-and-wife team offering the treatment — which combines psychotherapy with a dose of MDMA — write that they found 15 of 21 people who recovered from severe post-traumatic stress in the therapy in the early 2000s reported minor to virtually no symptoms today. Many said they have received other kinds of therapy since then, but not with MDMA... And news that the Mithoefers are beginning to test the drug in veterans is out, in the military press and on veterans’ blogs. 'We’ve had more than 250 vets call us,' Dr. Mithoefer said. 'There’s a long waiting list, we wish we could enroll them all.'"
Thank You For The Music
"If Fantasma is a concept album, then what exactly is the concept? Simply-put, Fantasma is an album about music itself — a tribute to how the very process of hardcore music nerd fandom and collection reference lead to creation and production." Released in 1997, Fantasma by Cornelius was one of the finest albums of the 90's, and arguably the peak of the Shibuya-Kei music scene in Japan. Néojaponisme recently published a five-part, detailed retrospective on the album in honor of its fifteenth anniversary. While reading, you can listen to a playlist of the full album on YouTube. Enjoy! [more inside]
November 24
Bahrain's gonna party, dance everybody
With hits like Party Hard, It's Time to Party, and Long Live the Party classic records like Party Til You Puke and The "Party All Goddamn Night" EP, Andrew W.K. (previously) likes to party.
He's excited to be "promoting partying and world peace." for the US State Department, who just named Andrew to be a cultural ambassador to Bahrain.
Hybridize, or disappear
Hybridize, or disappear [SLQTM].
"Daimajin, please come punish our abusers with wrath! / OH NO, RUN, THERE'S WRATH EVERYWHERE!!!
He is the spirit of vengeance and the wrath of God given form. But when Daimajin's rage was unleashed, it could be directed at both the wicked and the innocent alike.[more inside]
no actor has any right to be this good at singing
All things Quast. Remember Inspector Javert in the 1987 Les Mis cast? Must have been some famous world class opera singer, right? No, he was just a minor Australian actor. Who just happens to have an unbelievable voice.
I've got it
Gus Wilson, master mechanic, pipe smoker, cap wearer, crime fighter, sage, is a part owner of the Model Garage. These are his stories. [more inside]
It gets even worse if you borrow the money
ABC News issues a "Made in America" Christmas challenge. The average American will spend $700 on holiday gifts and goodies this year, totaling more than $465 billion, the National Retail Federation estimates. If that money was spent entirely on US made products it would create 4.6 million jobs. But it doesn't even have to be that big. If each of us spent just $64 on American made goods during our holiday shopping, the result would be 200,000 new jobs. [more inside]
Conservative politics, German-style
Jens Spahn is a parliamentarian in Germany's centre-right party, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and a committed Catholic. He is also gay, and has been openly so throughout his 11-year political career. While he does not focus specifically on gay issues, he advocates equal civil rights for gays and lesbians (including gay marriage, tax parity and adoption rights) from a conservative position. He does not regard this to be a contradiction.
Rig Mover
Wayne Coyne's Human Head-Shaped Tumor
KCRW presents: Wayne Coyne's Human Head-Shaped Tumor. McSweeney's and KCRW present this radio drama in the style of Mercury Theatre's War of the Worlds, featuring the music from the Flaming Lips, Bill Callahan, Okkervil River, Eleanor Friedberger, Nico Muhly, and Oneida.
Galleries of beautiful bowie knives
Each year Bladeforums members vote for the best bowie knife. The result is a gallery of absolutely beautiful and innovative custom bowies by master craftsmen.
Destroyer Gods and Sons-of-Bitches
In the telling it has the contours of a creation myth: At a time of great evil and great terror, a small group of scientists, among the world’s greatest minds, secluded themselves in the desert. In secrecy and silence they toiled at their Promethean task. They sought the ultimate weapon, one of such great power as to end not just their war, but all war. They hoped their work would salvage the future. They feared it could end everything. - Prometheus in the desert: from atom bombs to radio astronomy, New Mexico's scientific legacy
Roger Federer in Shanghai
Roger Federer in Shanghai Federer is inescapably beautiful, but most of the time he does nothing extraordinary. Then there is a shot that makes people let out sounds and imitate, with imaginary rackets, what they just saw. In a way, Federer is like a good novel—it does not try to achieve genius in every line, that would be amateurish; it is unafraid of the lull, accepts the importance of the ordinary, and then there is a sudden moment of greatness.
Adios, Macho.
Boxer Héctor "Macho" Camacho has died, four days after being shot in the face while sitting in a parked car. Popular for his flamboyant and reckless style both in the ring and out, Camacho racked up an astounding career record of 79-6-3. In a famous 1997 bout, he knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard, scotching Leonard's final attempt at a comeback.
Annals of Obsession
Amateur Footage of NASCAR Wrecks
Sure the television broadcasts catch every angle of NASCAR wrecks. However, I think views from the grandstands offer a unique view of the thrill and danger of these events.
[more inside]
[more inside]
On adapting Cloud Atlas into a film
As you can see, we are both compulsive collectors.
The private collection of Jim & Gayle Halperin includes original EC comic book art, work by R. Crumb (such as the original Big Yum Yum book), Maxfield Parrish prints and a lot of other great stuff.
November 23
Munchausen by Internet
Why would someone want to fake a serious illness on the Internet? Valerie, a cancer survivor, decided to blog about her experience with cancer. While blogging, she interacted with three women who faked illnesses to get attention or had what is referred to as "Munchausen by Internet." As a result, Valerie lost money and friendships, gained a troll, and shut down her blog. Here is a list of clues for the detection of false Internet illness claims.
RIP, Larry Hagman
Most expensive books of 2012
Publishers Weekly lists the most expensive books of the season.
So dig this big crux
The Last Laughing Death
"You're no longer in the film business—you're in the Fabergé egg business."
get back here cat stop escaping
Circle The Cat (flash friday fun) It's not like anyone was going to be productive at work today anyway, right?
Spoiler alert: Northern Europe does well
The 2012 Legatum Prosperity Index ranks the wealth and well-being of the world's countries according to eight sub-indexes. Interestingly, you may individually re-weight those eight sub-indexes, in order to create country rankings closer to your own values and priorities. Foreign Policy has more on the Prosperity Index's unique approach to the ultimately very silly art of numerically ranking nation-states.
Beyond the Vault
Gaming made me - RPS writer Patricia Hernandez on how Fallout 2 shaped her world view, her politics and her sexuality.
Randomized Consumerism
"Every time I run [Amazon Random Shopper], I give it a set budget, say $50. It grabs a random word ... then runs an Amazon search based on that word. It then looks for every paperback book, CD, and DVD in the results list, and buys the first thing that’s under budget."
“First with the head, then with the heart.” ― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One
Bryce Courtenay, prolific Australian author, dies. "Courtenay, who has been suffering from stomach cancer, died in Canberra late on Thursday with his wife Christine, son Adam, and his family pets, Tim the dog and Cardamon the Burmese cat, by his side. He was 79."
do that conga
A familiar sight in many post-Thanksgiving households: Sloopy the dancing Chihuahua (SLYT).
CTRL+ALT+DEL+ - Deleted?
No more CTRL+ALT+DEL+. Tim Buckley is rebooting his Web-Comic. Interesting explanation of why in his blog post (scroll down to the Post titles Endings.
The New Recreation Frontier?
Lets Swim To Work! "Centuries of boat traffic, heavy industry, sewage runoff and toxic dumping have ingrained in us the idea that urban waterways are not places for people. Even as cities have rushed to the water’s edge over the past couple of decades, building elaborate waterfront parks and esplanades, few have taken the next logical step: encouraging residents to dive in." [more inside]
The Yodeling Astrologer
When Jim Holmberg fractured his skull after a motorcycle accident in the 1960s, it left him several things - deafness in the left ear, a belief in cosmic forces that had cured the resulting spinal meningitis, and an astonishing sopranino range in his voice. [more inside]
The Wrong Right
5-part series from Conservative Home about weaknesses in how the UK conservative movement thinks and operates. 1: Polling not punditry. 2: The working class has different concerns in 2012. 3: Conservatives need a new attitude to government. 4: Thatcher and Reagan didn't tame the state. 5: Why does the right treat spending cuts as light entertainment?
The threat won't be understood until a Cyberdisaster
missing link
Can’t get enough of these videos from AsapSCIENCE. Here’s an earlier one from the Your Brain On Drugs series entitled marijuana. I was pretty stoned when watching it and ended up cracking up at the funny cats – total highlight for me. Can’t remember the gist, but you should definitely check it out. (Text Via) (slyt)
November 22
Streets Ahead
People line up to legally make untraceable guns
SAN DIEGO - A long line of people snaked out of a North County machine shop on a recent Sunday. The customers were there to build a gun. (embedded video) [more inside]
The Confused Notes of a Twilight Newbie Forced to Watch Breaking Dawn – Part 2
Is his face always like that? It's like he washed it with a powdered doughnut. The Confused Notes of a Twilight Newbie Forced to Watch Breaking Dawn – Part 2
Meet the Cheatles
In February 1964, when the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show, record executives in America were faced with the question of how to get a piece of the Beatlemania action. The result was an explosion of knockoff Beatles records, promising things like “The Beetle Beat”, “Beat-A-Mania” and “The Original Liverpool Sound”, credited (often in type far smaller than the famous song titles) to bands with names like The Bearcuts, The Manchesters, The Moptops and the Liverpool Kids, and featuring cover models with varyingly plausible approximations of the Beatles' haircuts, as detailed by WFMU's Gaylord Fields (SLVimeo).
Ibrahim Maalouf, jazz trumpeter and composer
"Before playing he explained the story behind the song, which was a journey – it was in 1993 as a 12 year old that he was able to return to Beirut alone for the first time (his parents having fled to Paris during the war) and he wandered the streets with his walkman, earphones plugged but playing no music, instead composing music in his mind and looking at the bullet marks in the walls of homes which had been rebuilt so many times over during the war that not much of the devastation was actually visible.. but after walking for a while, he sat and rested for some time.. and then suddenly when he got up again he noticed a street in front of him completely devastated and abandoned – something that he had actually been looking to see – but in that moment he was listening to (having just discovered) Led Zepplin and the combination of seeing the devastation and the music actually scared him and he ran away. And so this song tells that journey." The song is Beirut, and he is Ibrahim Maalouf. [more inside]
Nothing much happens, until it does.
To Dunk or Not, that is the question.
Does bouncing your tea bag substantially improve your cup of tea? Finally, science is brought to bear on this important question.
Gay kids told to stop looking so gay in order to avoid being bullied
The Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) has rejected a policy proposal that called for the protection of gay students and staff from bullying and discrimination. The policy was proposed by the Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB), which adopted a similar policy in 2011. [more inside]
DJ Focus
DJ Focus couldn't wait to get back to Sierra Leone. AKA Kelvin Doe, this young man makes beautiful, functional and very useful electronic devices out of trash found in his native Sierra Leone. It's not clear whether he or M.I.T. was more impressed after his visit there.
Are MeFiites......?
Google and Bing autocomplete what they think they know what you're thinking. Sometimes they get it wrong. "People who study online behavior also say the autocomplete feature reveals broader patterns, including indications that the questions people ask of search engines often veer into the sensitive and politically incorrect." previously
Re-Awakenings
Anna Sumner’s craving for sleep began when she was an 18-year-old high school senior. She thought nothing of it.
When it followed her to college, she blamed it on stress. She was working so hard, she told herself, her body just needed the extra rest. But it was more than that. She would chose naps over eating lunch, working out, or being with friends. Every night after dinner, she came back to her dorm room to sleep. If her parents called on those evenings, her roommate would cover for her, telling them she had gone to the library.
RIP Austin Peralta
Jazz prodigy Austin Peralta has died. Announcement and links to his music at Brainfeeder. Peralta contributed to Flying Lotus' recent album Until the Quiet comes; on Twitter this morning Flying Lotus wrote "it kills me to type that we lost a member of our family, Austin Peralta. I don't really have the right words right now." From Fact: "In his tragically short life, the California native had proved himself to be a fearsome and precocious talent. At 15 years old, Peralta was already touring the world with his own trio, and performing alongside legends like Chick Corea and Omar Hakim. Whilst still at high school, Peralta headed up ensembles featuring luminaries like Ron Carter and Buster Williams. He also released two LPs (2006′s Maiden Voyage and Mantra) in Japan before the age of 16." His entry on Wikipedia. Tribute from Frank Ocean.
Potatoes and Math
Maximum gravy: Vi hart, daughter of George & mathemusician at The Khan Academy, cooks mathematical potatoes to go along with a symmetrical Turduckenen. Have a delicious Thanksgiving. [more inside]
The best kind of fall
Dashing and Daring
"I loved that the Rancor had a friend"
"Hello, my name is Allison, and I have never seen Star Wars. Nope, not any of them. " - confessions of a Star Wars virgin as she watches Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
Undiscovery
Sandy Island is in the Coral Sea, between New Calendonia and Australia, and is visible on Google maps. The only problem is it doesn't exist.
The Season That Isn't
With the NHL locked out for the foreseeable future, the Montreal Gazette has decided to cover Canadiens games simulated on EA Sports NHL '13 as if they were real games.
Jitney?
Heyride, an Austin startup that is revolutionizing the way you get around town, received a cease-and-desist from the City of Austin. This follows Uber's forced NYC shutdown last month, along with California sending cease-and-desists to Lyft, Sidecar, and Tickengo. Paul Carr links these disruptive technologies to Metafilter fave author Ayn Rand (previous thread); it's not the first time he's taken on the nerds. Wharton and Wired weigh in.
What ever happened to Alice?
During the Thanksgiving time of year, our thoughts often turn to Alice, after all, it was her meal that may have inspired a movement.
Sometimes our thoughts are 16 minutes long, sometimes we get all 22 minutes of wonderfulness. What happened after that? [more inside]
November 21
The Ten Least Powerful People In Comics
The ++ operator is now illegal
What does proper authorization to access a computer system mean? Robert Graham of Errata Security writes about the recent conviction of Andrew Auernheimer (aka weev) for “hacking” AT&T. Two years ago, weev discovered a bug in AT&T's website that exposed the email addresses of customers with iPads. According to weev, the flaw was reported as per responsible disclosure practices by first informing AT&T before bringing it public. However the FBI investigated and arrested him under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). On 20th November 2012, he was found guilty of identity fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization.
Go Team Parasite!
As if ticks weren't awful/awesome enough already, the Lone Star Tick (Amblyomma americanum) has been shown to transmit an allergy to meat in humans. [more inside]
I didn’t dream up the helicopter. My memory is Jerry said a helicopter.
It may be the most notorious Thanksgiving promotion of all time. It is the 40th best television episode of all time. It's available in (semi-)entirety on HULU. And the classic TV blog offers an oral history. Happy thanksgiving, and, as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
To ensure the effective protection of the right to life of all persons under their jurisdiction...
This world, alas, is far from perfect.
Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #65: "Collecting the fecal matter of your study subject is an art form, and not nearly as simple as one might think. In a perfect world, you would look through your binoculars into the canopy and see the prized excrement emerge freshly from the posterior of the exact animal you’re hoping to sample. This ample and cohesive bolus will fall magically, directly, to the ground at your feet, making for easy and immediate retrieval…"
just got an extremely troubling call from the manufacturer. not good
A Note From Our Founder.
"Friends—When I started this company, it was with one goal in mind: To market a high-quality, fun, innovative novelty T-shirt that combined the face of late night titan Jay Leno with the iconic imagery of similarly-first-named Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
We went live with a soft-launch of our product late last night (November 19th), a T-Shirt we dubbed the Che Leno.
The response was overwhelmingly one of negativity and confusion." [more inside]
"Friends—When I started this company, it was with one goal in mind: To market a high-quality, fun, innovative novelty T-shirt that combined the face of late night titan Jay Leno with the iconic imagery of similarly-first-named Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
We went live with a soft-launch of our product late last night (November 19th), a T-Shirt we dubbed the Che Leno.
The response was overwhelmingly one of negativity and confusion." [more inside]
As he whispers in my ear: "Tonight you will die as a Hitchcock starlet"
Before The Pleasure Garden (Alfred Hitchcock's directorial debut) was released in 1925, Hitchcock's worked on a numerous silent films as both an assistant director and an art director.
Now recently recovered and restored footage from one of his oldest, long-lost films, 1924's The White Shadow, has been released online, and you can watch it now at Film Preservation. (Via io9).
Running time: About 43 minutes.
Accept - Osaka, 1985
With their brutal, simple riffs and aggressive, fast tempos, Accept were one of the top metal bands of the early '80s, and a major influence on the development of thrash. Led by the unique vocal stylings of screeching banshee Udo Dirkschneider, the band forged an instantly recognizable sound and was notorious as one of the decade's fiercest live acts. - AllMusic
Snakes on the [Great] Plains
The state of Illinois is facing a $95 billion (and rising) unfunded pension liability. Governor Pat Quinn, in a bold attempt to get Illinoisians excited about pension reform, has unveiled a new mascot: Squeezy the Pension Python [YouTube]
I have tested Love Jet on 10,000 women
Juilliard Releases Banned Repertoire List
Juilliard Releases Banned Repertoire List. "The vocal repertoire ban extends to the entire Bel Canto literature, all 24 Italian Songs and Arias, half of Schubert’s vocal output, and any Mozart aria containing a trill."
Teleportation at the speed of download
Instant Google Street View . Type something (slowly) and teleport around the world.
The 78 Project
The 78 Project With just one microphone, one authentic 1930′s PRESTO direct-to-disc recorder, and one blank lacquer disk, musicians are given the opportunity to make a recording anywhere they choose.
Random example: Joe Henry and Lisa Hannigan - Red River Valley
Male Models: The Female of the Species
Casey Legler is 6'2" has a neck tattoo, dark partially shaved hair, and a successful career as a male model. Which makes her fairly unique.
Holiday Etiquette
Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are snub fighters going to be against that?
What would combat in space really be like?
Big generative jockey
Just when you thought it was safe to open a book... it's the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Award! (Previously) This year's nominees include works by Tom Wolfe, Ben Masters, Nicola Barker, Paul Mason, Nancy Huston, Craig Raine, Nicholas Coleridge, and Sam Mills. Not on the list? J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy--despite "a couple of queasy moments," in the words of TLR senior editor Jonathan Beckman--and E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, since the award "is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature." Snippets from the nominated books can be found at the Guardian link.
Music is a rebellious bird.
Zic Zazou (French homepage) is a group of nine musicians who often play music using objects and toy instruments. Here is a delightful video of them performing the Habanera from Carmen in a workshop, with the workshop. [more inside]
Goodbye, Yankees
Who to root for now? As a result of FOX/News Corp. going into business with the New York Yankees through by acquiring a 49% stake in the Yankees's regional sports network, Craig Robinson disavows his Yankees fandom, and goes in search of a new baseball team to which to swear his allegiance and passion.
Lookit them spoons rattle!
Old chap playing the spoons to Faithless. Pity there's no tipjar :-(
Early English Laws
Early English Laws is a project to publish online and in print new editions and translations of all English legal codes, edicts, and treatises produced up to the time of Magna Carta 1215. [more inside]
If a reader ends up confused, it’s not their failure as a reader but yours as a writer.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has named the 2012 winners of their science journalism award. The winning text, radio and TV segments -- which cover subjects ranging from bat ecology to nuclear power post-Fukushima -- are all free access. [more inside]
Project Right Side
During his tenure as George W. Bush's campaign manager and later as chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), Ken Mehlman helped push an anti-gay agenda which eventually led to legislation that banned same-sex marriage in 21 states. He came out of the closet in 2010. Since then, he's openly supported gay marriage. Now, his newest endeavor, Project Right Side, is trying to attract conservatives to the fight for marriage equality. He discusses the non-profit's goals in a WSJ editorial: Making the Same-Sex Case. [more inside]
Grinnell College's Jack Taylor scores All-NCAA record 138 points
Yes, he only shot 48% from the floor, but last night, Jack Taylor, a sophomore guard from Div. III Grinnell College in Iowa, set a new men's NCAA basketball scoring record (on any level) by dropping in 138 points in Grinnell's 179-104 win over Faith Baptist Bible. This is the "insane" boxscore. You know a player has a big game when an opposing player (Faith Baptist Bible's David Larson) scores 70 points and becomes a footnote. So how'd he do it? [more inside]
When you dream, do you fly?
Hungarian photographer David Nemcsik has created a series called the "Levitation Project" where he invites his friends to answer the question "where were you in your last dream?" and then attempts to recreate the surrealism of experience by having them float in midair at the location. [via] [more inside]
Two great tastes that taste great together
I think I mentioned we also saw an actual knife fight in this same alley! With big giant meat cleavers!
Davesecretary of TIME FOR SOME STORIES fame (previously) decided to spend a year in a smallish Chinese city to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He slowly realizes that he's not having a very good time.
World's Most Dangerous Ride (SLYT)
World's Most Dangerous Ride (SLYT) One mistake and it's a free fall to your death. Motology's Adam Riemann rides one of the scariest Himalayan trails you'll ever see.
Strunk & White & Pinker
Steven Pinker is apparently writing a science/academic writing style guide of sorts based on insights from psychology. Here is an hour-plus long video of Pinker discussing the book at MIT.
There is no higher education bubble
It's the splashing, not the popping. What if American student debt is just too profitable and secure to admit any systemic reform? An interesting and gloomy argument against the higher education bubble theory. [more inside]
Honorary Degree Rescission Scoreboard
News today is Lance Armstrong can no longer claim an honorary doctorate from Tufts University. Other recent notable rescissions: UMass rescinded Robert Mugabe's, and University of Bedfordshire rescinded Jimmy Savile's. Nortwestern U also rescinded an offer of an honorary degree to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In the win column, two universities were pressured to rescind offers of doctorates, but decided to proceed and award degrees: Duke University to Susan Komen's Nancy Brinker, and CUNY to playwright Tony Kushner.
I am the gravestone and the photograph
I am Hazara Close to 1,000 Hazaras have been killed in targeted attacks and shootings in [Quetta] the capital of Pakistan’s largest province [Baluchistan]. The indifference towards the atrocities has forced this shrinking community to take escape routes and gamble between life at the promised land and death at the ocean. Dawn, Pakistan's largest English-language daily, puts together an essay accompanied by short videos (subtitled in English).
Malfunction Guaranteed
Randobot [Flash] is a "reimagined" take on the Rockman/Mega Man Saga: the player must guide a defective automaton through a fortified compound, while collecting energy cores and dodging enemies. As the machine was rushed out of development, software patches will have to be transmitted wirelessly to the unit at critical points of the enemy base. In spite of any and all modifications performed, there will still be a chance of the drone failing to perform the most rudimentary tasks.
Basset hounds. Running.
Bassethoundsrunning tumblr is most definitely the most hilarious animal tumblr ever. So glad I found this again!
THR & The Blacklist
After 65 Years The Hollywood Reporter addresses its role in the hollywood blacklist, including an apology from W.R. Wilkerson III, son of THR founder Billy Wilkerson whose "A Vote For Joe Stalin" editorial named writers such as Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Howard Koch and John Howard Lawson as communist sympathisers.
November 20
Into the Future
Hey! The Bad Brains have a new album out! You can give it a spin here at ye olde You Tubes.
Fiona Apple Cancels Tour To Be With Her Dying Dog
It’s 6pm on Friday,and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.
I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here’s the thing.
I have a dog Janet, and she’s been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. Fiona Apple postpones her South American tour in order to stay with her companion dog during her final days. [more inside]
Nature's Eternal Flame
Just off the trail in
Chestnut Ridge Park, New York, there is a small waterfall called the
Eternal
Flame
Falls.
Natural gas wells up from the earth and escapes just underneath the waterfall. Once in a while, it goes out and is re-lit by
the next hiker
that comes along.
The Mad Bomber
100 years ago today, on November 20th 1912, a disgruntled rail worker named Carl Warr walked into the Los Angeles county jail carrying an infernal machine loaded with sixty sticks of the highest power dynamite made... Los Angeles Examiner photographer E. J. Spencer risked his life to capture the mad bomber with his plate camera, earning him a rare (for the time) newspaper photography credit, and what is perhaps the most iconic Mad Bomber photo ever.
Put That In Your Scorpion Bowl & Suck On It
I f*ckin love girly drinks! / Don't give a f*ck what what you think! / I f*ckin love girly drinks! / I f*ckin wanted that pink!! / I F*CKIN LOVE GIRLY DRINKS! (Generally NSFW-ish, unless you work in a bar)
I AM A DOG WE DO NOT WEAR SHOES
"HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!"
Dancing the Blanket Hornpipe
17 euphemisms for doing it taken from the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. And previously on the blue.
Last Call: Vertical Integration and England's Drinking Problem
England has a drinking problem. Since 1990, teenage alcohol consumption has doubled. Since World War II, alcohol intake for the population as a whole has doubled, with a third of that increase occurring since just 1995. [...] The United States, although no stranger to alcohol abuse problems, is in comparatively better shape. A third of the country does not drink, and teenage drinking is at a historic low.How a vertically integrated alcohol industry is to blame, and why the US could find itself in the same position soon.
social impact bonds
Are Social Impact Bonds a good way to invest in public services? "Imagine a contract where private investors are paid by the government if there's a decrease in homelessness or convicts re-offending. It's a an idea that's taking shape in the UK and some US states. And now the Canadian government is considering piloting social impact bonds. Critics say it's a way of governments shirking their responsibilities." CBC's "The Current" reports. [more inside]
a distraction that none of us want
Kevin Clash has resigned from Sesame Street as his first accuser retracts his retraction and a second accuser emerges. Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon says this can't kill Elmo. Previously, and previously, alas.
Our 4°C future
In a report released [Tuesday], the World Bank analyzed the consequences of allowing temperatures to reach 4°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. ... the report's authors admit that predications are a challenge. Still, they do their best to try to paint a picture, and boy, is it grim.
Art for commuters' sake
in 1977 Amsterdam got its first Underground/metro line. The trains that first ran on that line, the "zilvermeeuwen or seagulls" are still in service some thirtyodd years later and have gotten a midlife update a few years ago. Part of that update included a new anti-graffitti skin, but also the transformation of some fortyfour carriages into art shows, featuring artworks and photographs by fortyfour Dutch artists.
Prime Time for Socialism
The US does not have a spending problem, we have a distribution problem "Forty years from now, America will be twice as rich on average as we are today. But most of that wealth will go to the very richest households. We only have a budget crisis if they refuse to pay higher taxes... So the real point isn't that we can't afford Social Security and Medicare. It's that some people don't want to pay the higher taxes necessary to maintain Social Security and Medicare. This is a question of distribution, pure and simple."
RT @CoryBooker: "We have a shared responsibility that kids go to school nutritionally ready 2 learn"
Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ, will spend a week or longer living on food stamps, in response to a Twitter user who told him that, quote, "nutrition is not a responsibility of the government." [more inside]
The Innocent Man
'On April 12, 1987, Michael Morton sat down to write a letter. “Your Honor,” he began, “I’m sure you remember me. I was convicted of murder, in your court, in February of this year.” He wrote each word carefully, sitting cross-legged on the top bunk in his cell at the Wynne prison unit, in Huntsville. “I have been told that you are to decide if I am ever to see my son, Eric, again. I haven’t seen him since the morning that I was convicted. I miss him terribly and I know that he has been asking about me.” Referring to the declarations of innocence he had made during his trial, he continued, “I must reiterate my innocence. I did NOT kill my wife.' [more inside]
Arachnophobia
Markovian Parallax Denigrate
But back in 1996, users of the proto-Web community Usenet got spammed with messages that reached an almost transcendent level of bizarre—a weirdness so precise it implied the influence of a very human intelligence. “Markovian Parallax Denigrate,” read the title of each post, followed by a mountain of seemingly meaningless word spew:Unraveling the Internet’s oldest and weirdest mystery
Doggerland
Searching for Doggerland. "For decades North Sea boatmen have been dragging up traces of a vanished world in their nets. Now archaeologists are asking a timely question: What happens to people as their homeland disappears beneath a rising tide?"
I was living in 1993 for seventeen years
In 1993, 18-year-old Trevell Coleman shot a man in East Harlem and fled the scene. In the following years, he became part of the New York City rap community and eventually signed with Bad Boy Records, though he never stopped wondering what had happened to the man he'd shot. At the end of 2010, Coleman decided to find out. [more inside]
Oxbridge dominates list of leading UK people
A third of the UK's leading people went to Oxford or Cambridge universities and four out of every 10 of them attended private schools, a report suggests. [BBC] [more inside]
Math Publishing for Dummies!
Mathgen is a program to randomly generate professional-looking mathematics papers, including theorems, proofs, equations, discussion, and references. Try Mathgen for yourself! (PDF example) It’s a fork of SCIgen, a program which generates random papers in computer science. Surprisingly, Mathgen has already had it's first randomly-generated paper accepted by a "journal".
Skill-Luck Continuum
"We have little trouble recognizing that a chess grandmaster’s victory over a novice is skill, as well as assuming that Paul the octopus’s ability to predict World Cup games is due to chance. But what about everything else?" [Luck and Skill Untangled: The Science of Success]
If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear.
Facewatch is the National low level crime reporting and image sharing system for businesses. (Vimeo)
One UK-based firm has combined facial recognition and CCTV technology to give businesses the ability to identify and track "repeat offenders" on-site. With endorsements from Philadelphia's police commissioner, the Chief Crown Prosecutor of London and Crimestoppers among others, the technology gotten its fair share of press. (And yes, there's an app for that.)
One UK-based firm has combined facial recognition and CCTV technology to give businesses the ability to identify and track "repeat offenders" on-site. With endorsements from Philadelphia's police commissioner, the Chief Crown Prosecutor of London and Crimestoppers among others, the technology gotten its fair share of press. (And yes, there's an app for that.)
I kind of think it feels very narcissistic, to tweet.
I will tell you it cost $42 million just to print Newsweek. Before you’ve even engaged one writer, or one copy editor, or one picture editor. Forty-two million dollars.
Long, wide-ranging interview of Tina Brown by Michael Kinsley.
Long, wide-ranging interview of Tina Brown by Michael Kinsley.
How happy are we?
The UK Office of National Statistics is measuring and reporting on more than just money as a measure of national success The ONS has started a process of measuring and reporting on national wellbeing. They've also made some very pretty animations with the information
"With each detonation, [it] loses just one or two legs."
A simple, beautiful solution to clearing landmines in Afghanistan. From the public filmmaker competition section of Focus Forward, a series of documentaries about people who are changing the world.
It's a floor polisher. It's a dessert eater.
Baby Mop is one of the strangest products I've ever seen. I have no idea how parents got their infants wedged into cleaning supplies, or why.
The Carp and the Seagull
The Carp and the Seagull is an interactive short film by Evan Boehm and Nexus Interactive Arts featuring original score and sound design by Plaid.
Uses WebGL and apparently optimized for Chrome so not sure if it works in anything else.
The Carp and the Seagull on The Creators Project and via an article on creativeapplications.net
Uses WebGL and apparently optimized for Chrome so not sure if it works in anything else.
The Carp and the Seagull on The Creators Project and via an article on creativeapplications.net
"That's a catchy diagnosis, you could dance to that."
The Typewriter at the Gates of Dawn
The BBC reports that the last typewriter to be built in the UK (according to its manufacturers) has been donated to London's Science Museum. "Brother said it had stopped making typewriters because demand had fallen to 30 a day, with most of those being sold in the US." [more inside]
November 19
Up through Los Angeles came a bubblin' crude: Southern California was the Kuwait of the Jazz Age, turning a religious piano teacher into an oil baroness
"In 1925, California supplied [much] of the world’s oil (Google quickview, original PDF) and much of it came from pumps in the Southland (quickview, PDF). To date, around 9 billion barrels of oil have been produced in the Los Angeles area. There are still over 30,000 active wells here pumping around 230 million barrels of oil a year, making Los Angeles County the second most productive oil county in California (although the quality of the oil here is somewhat low by today’s standards). There are 55 known oil fields in the Los Angeles area and 11 of them are located in a very urban context. This setting makes the oil extraction process in Los Angeles unique." Things to do in LA: Urban Oil Wells In Los Angeles, Part I and Part II. [more inside]
Prison of Debt Paralyzes West
Be it the United States or the European Union, most Western countries are so highly indebted today that the markets have a greater say in their policies than the people. Why are democratic countries so pathetic when it comes to managing their money sustainably? This clear, well-written essay in Der Speigel lays out the current debt crisis - along with current, proposed solutions - in an understandable manner. Not included among the so-far-proposed solutions is one other that has opened up a veritable financial market and debt Pandora's Box - i.e. a central bank debt jubilee.
Twilight of the idolators?
And in today's fun IPR news we have Games Workshop VS. Chapterhouse Studios. In which the plaintiffs lawyers are claiming (p.44) copyright and design dress on common iconography such as crosses, skulls and riveted armor.
But to get at the gist of it, what makes third party miniature wargaming accessories different to bodykits? Where doth this madness lead. [more inside]
Thank a Breeder
In the wake of historic victories on marriage equality in Maryland, Maine, and Washington state, and the defeat of an anti-equality constitutional amendment in Minnesota, LGBTQ people are thanking their straight family and friends for their contributions to the cause. [more inside]
Nuclear Power Plant Simulation Game
Blatant ripoff? Or "close to the line"? You decide
Enforcing your visual copyright is easier if you register your work. Li Zheng taught fine art at Appalachian State 20 years ago, then began selling his paintings to galleries. After a hiatus in China, he returned to America to discover one of his paintings is being mass produced and sold at Kohl's, JC Penneys, and at least 2 dozen other retailers, including -- busted! -- artheist.com "it's a steal!" Main link has original, copy, and describes his uphill legal battle.
Bazinga!
Echidna Party Beach
Scientists on Tasmania's Maria Island caught footage of an echidna playing in the water. Stay spikey, stay cute!
This is a post that explains the sky flying thing that makes a lot of noise and fire
All day I hear the noise of waters
Some random, wet images:
A seahorse on a diver’s watch.
A diver hitting an Olympic pool
Mass stingray migration off Baja
Two streams of water colliding
A photographer in the rain
Waiting for the bubble to burst
Close up of a wave
Bathtime at a refugee camp Kutupalong, Bangladesh
Water being released from a dam to prevent flooding in Jiyuan, China
Transparent Montana lake, (and more) [more inside]
A diver hitting an Olympic pool
Mass stingray migration off Baja
Two streams of water colliding
A photographer in the rain
Waiting for the bubble to burst
Close up of a wave
Bathtime at a refugee camp Kutupalong, Bangladesh
Water being released from a dam to prevent flooding in Jiyuan, China
Transparent Montana lake, (and more) [more inside]
Spectacular Destruction
Fire whirls, aka fire tornadoes, aka fire devils, aka firenados, are frequently photographed but have only recently been scientifically validated based on data from the 2003 Canberra fires in Queensland, Australia. Although rare, the physics behind firenados is straightforward enough to create your own. The most devastating fire tornado was the "dragon twist" that devastated Tokyo immediately following the great Japan quake of 1923.
What the aftertaste of Scotch looks like...
A streaker comes across the stage. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now
Gravity's Rainbow won the National Book Award in 1974. Its author, the famously reclusive Thomas Pynchon, did not appear at the awards ceremony, but instead sent comedian Irwin Corey in his place who accepted the award on behalf of one "Richard Python." At the end of the speech, a streaker ran nude across the stage. [more inside]
It is time to tackle the beast. The True Cost of Healthcare
How to get less from more. A modest website by an ordinary M.D. who seems to have an extraordinary curiosity. The next time someone complains to you about socialized medicine vs. the efficiencies of the free market don't shoot them just point them here. An Alice in Wonderland view of the "Best healthcare in the world".
TLDR: You don't have to read the screed you can watch it. [more inside]
Selena Kyle? The girl who talks to her cats?
The fact that many of the actors in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy have previously portrayed high school characters has resulted in an extended trailer mashup resetting the Batman series as a teen comedy.
A small step for inclusivity
Two years ago, Rachel McCarthy James' (RMJ) Deeply Problematic, "a feminist blog that seeks to examine and analyze the treatment of problematized bodies in society and the media", ran a series of posts examining Jeph Jacques webcomic Questionable Content looking at the women in QC, their bodies, their sexuality and identity and finally, the way Jacques normalised disability in it. Largely positive, RMJ did put a caveat on the lack of out trans characters in the comic. Today that lack was addressed as relatively new character Claire came out as trans. [more inside]
LUNCH: The Terror Within
New breakthrough claimed to stop MS completely in mice and possibly other autoimmune diseases.
Nanoparticles covered in proteins trick immune system. A breakthrough new experimental treatment that uses nanoparticles covered with proteins to trick the immune system, managed to stop it attacking myelin and halt disease progression in mice with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). The researchers say the approach may also be applicable to other auto-immune diseases such as asthma and type 1 diabetes.
"There is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
Looking for a project for the winter? Have some spare room and hand tools? Why not build a boat? [more inside]
Eric Stonestreet can't believe what's happening.
PSY (with Special Guest MC Hammer) live at the 2012 American Music Awards. [slyt] No further explanation necessary. [more inside]
Steal My Book!
Steal My Book! Why I'm abetting a rogue translation of my novel. This is the story of how author Peter Mountford discovered that his novel A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism was being translated for an unauthorized e-book version, and why he decided to help the struggling Russian-language translator. Audio interview with Mountford on CBC Radio's Q.
An Intro To Rebel Hip-Hop Of The Arab Revolutions
When to Dull Tool Hits the Idler Wheel It Thinks Like a Driver of the Apatow
Dull Tool is the new track from Fiona Apple written for This is 40, the follow up to Judd Apatow's Knocked Up. The song is already being touted as a potential Oscar winner.
Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway
A Norwegian group called Radi-Aid has launched an appeal to ship radiators from Africa to Norway. They have also released a video to highlight the plight of freezing children during Norway's harsh winter. [more inside]
The future of file sharing
In an attempt to make itself less desirable to copyright infringers, starting November 27, RapidShare will begin capping non-paying users at 1 gigabyte of outbound downloads per day. (Paying users will have 30 gigabytes.) Meanwhile, controversial Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is planning a January debut for his new Mega service - which plans to insure itself against litigation by having all hosted material encrypted by the uploader's browser before transmission.
Romney's Technical Foul
You've heard from quite a few sources as to why and how Romney lost, including Romney himself. But technology played a role in the loss, too. According to Sean Gallagher in Ars Technica, Romney's campaign was badly outgunned when it came to its technology infrastructure, relying heavily on outsourced IT and consultants. The disastrous Project ORCA, an attempted streamlining of the age old "strike list" process for contacting those who haven't voted yet, likely did not help. [more inside]
Monty Python's "Go Hang a Salami, I'm a Lasagna Hog"
38 Fake Film Titles to the Tune of "Bob" by 'Weird Al' Yankovic made by Oliver Smith in which an aspiring animator has created a tour-de-force (and tour-de-farce) showreel of kinetic typography and film homages using the palindromic lyrics of The Weird One's Bob Dylan riff (with a few actor and director credits tossed in to remind you what he's referencing). If Oliver Smith doesn't get a ton of job offers from this, the animation biz is broken.
Is there such a thing as the female conscience?
Letter From America archives replenished by Newquay man.
BBC's Letter From America archives replenished by Newquay man. Most not kept by the BBC. Amazing piece of radio in and of itself. [previously].
"challenging Casanova"
Guys don't want casual sex: "This stereotype 'tells us that guys are primarily interested in sex, not relationships... This contributes to the notion that guys are emotional clods who are incapable of connecting with their partners because, hey, they’re just guys, and guys are only interested in sex.'... the Wake Forest University professor lays out the current data on young men’s sexual desires and behavior to make a case against this insidious stereotype." Salon interviews Andrew Smiler, author of Challenging Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Promiscuous Young Male. [more inside]
Visicalc on your iPhone
Dan Bricklin, father of the spreadsheet, discovers VisiCalc running in a JavaScript emulator of an IBM PC 5150. [more inside]
I'm not a scientist, man.
Tiny Beauty
Out of the Closet and Into a Uniform
For their club’s big debut this semester, the cadets at the United States Air Force Academy hammered out talking points, printed fliers and hung their logo, a rainbow-colored globe, in their booth in Arnold Hall. Then they held their breath.
On the day known as Blue Rush, when incoming freshmen learn about extracurricular activities, Lydia Hill and Brandon Reams were making history, introducing their fellow cadets to Spectrum, the academy’s first club for gay, lesbian and bisexual students and their straight friends and supporters. [SLNYT]
On the day known as Blue Rush, when incoming freshmen learn about extracurricular activities, Lydia Hill and Brandon Reams were making history, introducing their fellow cadets to Spectrum, the academy’s first club for gay, lesbian and bisexual students and their straight friends and supporters. [SLNYT]
Gingham Style
SLYT of a Portuguese performance of the Wizard of Oz with a missing dance number added to the show.
Laugh until you're horse
poonikins the magic warrior princess (SLequinegangstermachinma)
I don't want to set the world on fire/I just want to start a flame in your heart
Five years ago today Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com released the Amazon Kindle, a move that would revolutionize the publishing industry. While often controversial, most recently for its international tax avoidance schemes, Amazon has been very successful and has made millions for its founder. What has Bezos done with some of his tax-free millions? Well for one, he launched and landed a rocket vertically, and posted the video to YouTube, just yesterday. [more inside]
The New Sound of Music
Airing in 1979, The New Sound of Music was a BBC documentary which depicted and demonstrated the history of recorded and manipulated music, from the earliest paper rolls to electronic synthesizers and the cutting and manipulation of tape. [more inside]
The Genius of Nature
Bees and a species of bird can solve the traveling salesman problem "It’s Saturday; you’ve got errands to run. Your spouse wants bread from the bakery, you need to pick up the dry cleaning, your kids need new shoes, and you’ve got a dentist appointment. None of this is any fun, so you might as well do it as quickly as possible by calculating the fastest and most efficient route that takes you to each stop... Menger and Whitney both discovered that the number of possible routes between stops increases exponentially with each additional destination. In a typical model, for instance, three stops yield six routes, while eight stops yield 40,320... By setting up five artificial flowers in a pentagon shape and tracking each bee’s path, researchers discovered that every bee optimized its route, visiting the highest-reward flowers in the shortest possible amount of time." [more inside]
The Problem With Innovation
With the recent release of the new instalment of first-person shooter goliath Call of Duty, Activision is poised to make another cool gazillion dollars or so. In fact, the game is popular with many gamers except for one significant group -- the professional ones: "The new games can bring all kinds of changes. Guns fire differently. The physics of the world have been tweaked. This makes it challenging and fun for casual players, but it’s a nightmare scenario for pros. The most important thing for professionals is to be able to practice and play the same game, with the same rules, for years and years to hone their skills. (Imagine if they completely changed the rules of Major League Baseball every year, using different balls, spacing the bases further apart, adding a fourth outfielder.)"
November 18
High school ends at 9:30pm
Korean high school. What's life like for a Korean student? In one of the most competitive societies in the world, how does one find their place? What does it take to achieve your aspirations and goals? [more inside]
The Screensaver, The Axe, The Ice Climb, And The Bear
One dealt with her near-death experience by forcing herself to stare at a screensaver of the shark that ravaged her body. Another let the bear finish the job 22 years afterwards. People respond to life-threatening traumas in different ways, as documented by The Guardian in Life after near-death: why surviving is only the beginning.
Confronting Irony
As a function of fear and pre-emptive shame, ironic living bespeaks cultural numbness, resignation and defeat. If life has become merely a clutter of kitsch objects, an endless series of sarcastic jokes and pop references, a competition to see who can care the least (or, at minimum, a performance of such a competition), it seems we’ve made a collective misstep. Could this be the cause of our emptiness and existential malaise? Or a symptom? - How to Live Without Irony
Aaa! Aww! Aaa! Aww! Aaa! Aww!
The Quiet Ones
"In a 2006 interview David Foster Wallace said, “it seems significant that we don’t want things to be quiet, ever, anymore.” Stores and restaurants have their ubiquitous Muzak or satellite radio; bars have anywhere between 1 and 17 TVs blaring Fox and soccer; ... Even some libraries, ... now have music and special segregated areas designated for “quiet study,” which is what a library used to be. ... People are louder, too. They complain at length and in detail about their divorces ... a foot away from you in restaurants. ... People practice rap lyrics on the bus or the subway, barking doggerel along with their iPods .... Respecting shared public space is becoming ... quaintly archaic .... philosopher Aaron James posits that people with this personality type are so infuriating ... because they refuse to recognize the moral reality of those around them." [previously]
HELLO AVERAGE HUMAN DO YOU LIKE dwayne johnson the rock AND desktop wallpapers?
http://dwaynejohnson wallpaperstherock .blogspot.com/ is your source for Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) Wallpapers. Endless options. Desktop Wallpapers of Dwayne Johnson Smiling in Tulips Flowers Fields wallpaper. Desktop Wallpapers of Dwayne Johnson Faster Movie in Stonehenge Rock Monument wallpaper. Dwayne Johnson Free Wallpapers The Rock shows Biceps and Tattoo Bull in Crystal Landscape Background. Dwayne Johnson Wallpapers and posters, Movie actor smiling while you work at your computer in Autumn Trees background. A panoply of Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) desktop wallpaper image options. [more inside]
On the Web since 1996
Welcome to GONO.com (short for "Go to Nostalgiaville"), home to the Museum of Beverage Containers and Advertising. Curator Tom Bates welcomes you. [more inside]
Why are men so emotional?
"I wish to dispel the notion that women are “more emotional.” I don’t think we are. I think that the emotions women stereotypically express are what men call “emotions,” and the emotions that men typically express are somehow considered by men to be something else." Jen Dziura in The Gloss: "When men are too emotional to have a rational argument."
What's gonna happen outside the window next?
Alan Moore and Superfolks
In 1977 Dial Press of New York published Robert Mayer’s first novel, Superfolks. It was, amongst other things, a story of a middle-aged man coming to terms with his life, an enormous collection of 1970s pop-culture references, some now lost to the mists of time, and a satire on certain aspects of the comic superhero, but would probably be largely unheard of these days if it wasn’t for the fact that it is regularly mentioned for its supposed influence on a young Alan Moore and his work, particularly on Watchmen, Marvelman, and his Superman story, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? Alan Moore and Superfolks: Part 1: The Case for the Prosecution, Part 2: The Case for the Defence, Part 3: The Strange Case of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore.
When the novelty wore off we got back to basics
A Conversation with Michael Manoogian, whose hand-drawn logos helped define album covers from a time period before computers.
Harold Lash
Harold Lash is an abstract painter whose works are wild and startlingly vivid. There are repeated themes of flowers and cities and ships and are often obsessively patriotic. I particularly enjoy his painting of Rittenhouse in Philadelphia, where he lives and works, and the colors of Girls Night Out strikes me as well. [WARNING: HUGE IMAGES]
"a tool with serious applications including research and journalism"
23 Minutes in Heaven
Classic Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the literature of Reactionism
In 1978, Micheal Moorcock wrote an essay Starship Stormtroopers published in Anarchist Review which said that most popular science-fiction and fantasy is deeply Reactionary (authoritarian conservative right-wing themes), he mocked the notion of sci-fi being a "literature of ideas". But there is some "socialist" science fiction, China Miéville put together a list of Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read. [more inside]
The Trendiest Guy in New York City
We’re probably going to screw this up as badly as the music people did
In the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into the middle class. Now it’s a hostage situation, required to avoid falling out of it. And if some of the hostages having trouble coming up with the ransom conclude that our current system is a completely terrible idea, then learning will come unbundled from the pursuit of a degree just as as songs came unbundled from CDs.Napster, Udacity, and the Academy - about how online education startups are changing the notion and practice of higher education - by Clay Shirky (previously)
Jenn Frank: "I was one of the guys. I was always one of the guys."
I Was A Teenage Sexist - "Girls – the ones we think of as “cool” – don’t trust other women, women who play by gender “rules” that the rest of us cannot quite understand. The most important things those women can seemingly do are spend money on clothes and appeal to the opposite sex. Meanwhile, we ourselves don’t feel particularly female. We only feel like people. It’s a tough fall. People intuitively detect that attitude, go out of their way to remind you that you’re not fooling anybody. You are a woman, and you will only ever be a woman." [more inside]
Manhattan finally gets enough fiber
Verizon is finally rolling out a comprehensive fiber infrastructure for downtown Manhattan. Not that they have much choice.
Get Er Done
"I went to the root of things, and found nothing but Him alone."
"Perhaps the most remembered and quoted (pdf) woman in Indian history is a sixteenth century poet, singer and saint called Mirabai, or Meera. Versions of her songs are sung today all over India, and she appears as a subject in films, books, dances, plays and paintings. Even Gandhi promoted her, seeing Mira as a symbol of a woman who has the right to choose her own path, forsake a life of luxury, and in nonviolent resistance find liberation (pdf)." ~ Women in World History
Dead Bears - A Photographic Collection
"Dead Bears" is a photographic collection by artist Michael Fortune documenting the regional Irish habit of erecting stuff animals wearing local Gaelic sporting colours as territorial markers. [more inside]
November 17
Down with this sort of thing - Michael Calleri
"snow white and the huntsman is trash. moral garbage. a lot of fuzzy feminist thinking and pandering to creepy hollywood mores produced by metrosexual imbeciles." Michael Calleri, film reviewer for the Niagara Falls Reporter, receives an email from his publisher.
Backstory with the American History Guys
Hosted by three professors of US history (one a specialist in the 18th Century, one in the 19th, and one in the 20th), each episode of the radio show and podcast Backstory takes a subject from the news and looks at the American history behind it. [more inside]
SPEECHLESS
Congress Floor Charts (SLTumblr)
Sashay! Shantay!
72 year-old Liu Xianping becomes an internet sensation after modeling his granddaughter's teen clothing line on her Tmall website.
Hey Guys Ya Wanna Play? No, We Wanna Eat You.
Gentlemen with bowler hats on beaches
Score Rush MP, an HTML5 Multiplayer Shmup
Skouteris / PopLove
Robin Skouteris is a music and video producer, remixer and DJ based in Athens who creates mashup remixes, (like Deep and Sour and Looking for Sunshine) and a few parodies. His latest remix was released yesterday: "PopLove." [more inside]
Firestorm on Fifth Avenue
No one expected the force of the tempest that hit the New York Public Library in late 2011—not its new president, Anthony Marx, and maybe not even the literary lions up in arms over plans for an ambitious, $300 million renovation. Will the “palace of culture” on Fifth Avenue become a glorified Starbucks, as some fear? Interviewing all sides, Paul Goldberger walks the controversy back to its flash point: the nature of the library’s 21st-century mission and the values at the center of the Norman Foster–designed project. - Paul Goldberger, Firestorm on Fifth Avenue
LOOK AT THEIR LITTLE LEGS
Žižuku seems simple, but in fact it is supremely complicated.
Let’s play Žižuku! Vaguely similar in theory to the Postmodern Text Generator, but practiced individually, rather than Markov-chain-generated text. The creator, Julian Baggini, describes Žižuku thus: "The rules are simple: pick on any widely received idea and find the most clever-sounding way to invert it, so as to create a paradox, or at least the semblance of one." [more inside]
"Is Anybody Down?
"A website called 'Is Anybody Down' [front page SFW] has popped up to fill the niche that was left when the revenge porn site 'Is Anyone Up' shut down in April of this year. Like its predecessor, the site allows users to submit naked photos of other people and include links to the naked person's social networking page. But according to [First Amendment lawyer] Marc Randazza, this website's business model is slightly different from 'Is Anyone Up,' and is of questionable legality."* [more inside]
By securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Current copyright law does not merely distort some markets – rather it destroys entire markets. (PDF) [more inside]
Squirrel purrs like kitten!1!
Your Saturday dose of interspecies lovin: cat adopts squirrel, squirrel learns to purr (slytb). Warning: seeing this might lead to hours of watching related videos as you fall down a rabbit hole of interspecies fostering.
chau chau 챠우챠우
deli spice (1997) oldfish (2007) vodka rain (2008) oldfish live (2009) deli spice live (2011) [more inside]
Cat and kittens playing cam
A cat and kittens playing together on live streaming cam. Very watchable kitteh tv.
New candidate for the Fermi Paradox
David Brin points to
Asteroid belts at just the right place are friendly to life -November 6, 2012
, saying "This combination is calculated to be rare, in perhaps just 4% of solar systems. That rarity offers yet one more new, rather daunting candidate for the Fermi Paradox."
The historic sound of the future!
Looking for an hour of monkey-themed music? Maybe you want to remember Ceefax and the ZX Spectrum while enjoying an introduction to personal computing? Want something to listen to while styling your hair or trimming your facial hair? Or maybe you just want a good hour of celebrities singing, Rolling Stones covers, or John Williams tunes.
Welcome to the historic sound of the future at the Project Moonbase weekly podcast.
Welcome to the historic sound of the future at the Project Moonbase weekly podcast.
Flash Bang Wallop
Go ahead.
The Loss of One Classy Republican
Helen Wallbank Milliken, former Michigan First Lady and strong supporter of women's rights, passed away late yesterday. Married to William Milliken, Republican governor of Michigan from 1969 to 1983, Helen Milliken was both a strong proponent of both the ERA and of abortion rights. [more inside]
Dan Brown Must Love Germans
Wired tells the story of an old encoded manuscript, the effort to crack it, and the secret occult society that it revealed.
NGO in a box
A polemic against NGOs and the destruction of local innovation However, one issue that has received relatively scant attention is the way in which the notion of civil society has been reduced to being synonymous with non-governmental organisations (NGOs). This is one area that can have malign and far-reaching negative impacts, which I’d like to explore here. And here's another view, this time from India.
"Whatever you have in skill it does not matter if the team is not spiritually ready."
November 16
A Chat With Jon Ronson
But I couldn't do it. I spent three months and I just couldn't do it. And the reason was because I kept on meeting people who worked in the credit industry and they were really boring. I couldn't make them light up the page. And, as I said in The Psychopath Test, if you want to get away with wielding true malevolent power, be boring. Journalists hate writing about boring people, because we want to look good, you know?A Chat With Writer Jon Ronson [more inside]
This one's called "Bodies," y'awl.
The first Sex Pistols show in the USA. (audio only) Atlanta, GA, January 5, 1978.
Two Fans and A Night They Can't Remember
An Alabama fan, an LSU fan, and one night on Bourbon Street they can't remember--and the video they can't forget. In January, an Alabama fan was videotaped placing his genitals on an LSU fan's face. The video quickly went viral on YouTube. [more inside]
Harry Reid Endorses New Filibuster Reform Proposal
As the least-productive Congress in a generation draws to a close, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has spoken in support of a new proposal to reform the filibuster. The proposed changes would not eliminate the filibuster, but would restore the talking filibuster, which requires that the opposition explain their objections and keep talking in order to delay a vote on the bill under consideration. [more inside]
Norman Lear's "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman appeared in 1976... and it exists as a sort of island of experimentation, its ripples of influence not fully engaged with until several decades later... . Predictably rejected by the networks, this Norman Lear production ran in first-run syndication, five nights a week, usually after the late-night news. ... Louise Lasser (once Woody Allen’s muse) stars as a put-upon pre-feminist housewife who repeats the secular liturgy of American consumerism in an attempt to stave off a nervous breakdown.*
I declare war on the moon!
It's November, and that means Children In Need, and that means new Doctor Who. Which this year sees the return of everyone's favourite Victorian great detective Madame Vastra, her beautiful companion Jenny, and their ugly manservant Strax. And, of course, that serves as a lead in to The Snowmen.
TV show recaps, recappers, and TWoP
Taking the seen-it route: Sara Morrison talks about the rise and influence of television show recapping; recapping's advantages for writers; and the origins and evolution of Television Without Pity (<--- time suck warning: TVTropes link!) Includes lots of links and a handy chart of recappers. [more inside]
The age of the password has come to an end...
Mat Honan of Wired has a covetableTwitter username (@mat). Recently hackers tore his digital world apart in an attempt to commandeer it. Now he reflects: The age of the password has come to an end; we just haven’t realized it yet. And no one has figured out what will take its place. What we can say for sure is this: Access to our data can no longer hinge on secrets—a string of characters, 10 strings of characters, the answers to 50 questions—that only we’re supposed to know. The Internet doesn’t do secrets. Everyone is a few clicks away from knowing everything.
“Anything you are shows up in your music …”
“Her early records are collectors’ items. Her writing and playing have become part of the pattern of jazz history. She has transcended the difficulties experienced by women in the music field and through several decades has held a position of eminence as one of jazz’s most original and creative pianists. She speaks softly: ‘Anything you are shows up in your music—jazz is whatever you are playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.’” Mary Lou Williams: Into The Sun, a conversational profile by fellow pianist Marian McPartland, 1964. [more inside]
Used Book Vending Machine
Russell Simmons: Occupy Democracy
Russell Simmons presents thirteen proposed Constitutional amendments aimed at getting money out of American politics.
You've got mail! And a drone strike!
The Undesirables
The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. ~Nikola Tesla, Liberty Magazine, February 9, 1935
Formula One comes (back) to the US
After a 5 year absence, construction delays, and rumors of cancellation, Formula 1 is back to a permanent home in Austin, Texas this weekend. [more inside]
"Cock wire Mike Sui!" yelled one of the young men in the crowd. "Cock wire Sui is awesome!"
Mike Sui and the new laowai: "...speaking Chinese is still just rare enough that Sui's instant fame has scratched a blister of resentment than never really heals in China's Chinese language-learner community, and his success has highlighted how Chinese demands on laowai [foreign] entertainers have drastically changed in just a decade."
Tensions Rising
Hamas militants have launched a rocket on Jerusalem - the first time the holy city has been targeted in decades - and the first such attack from Gaza. [more inside]
Measure 4 times, cut once.
"We worked through every possible disaster situation," Reed said. "We did three actual all-day sessions of destroying everything we had built."
"It felt like a book that shouldn't have been published."
Nobody Hates Twlight As Much As Robert Pattinson Hates Twilight related Robert Pattinson Hates His Life
The greatest sandy disaster of our time
October 2012 is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. State of the Climate: Global Analysis October 2012 (NOAA). While $50 billion Sandy has had the spotlight, the biggest natural disaster of 2012 (in the US) has been the Great Drought still ongoing which is expected to cut America's GDP by 0.5 to 1% for the year. The death toll from the heat waves that accompanied this year's drought will exceed that of Sandy. This Sunday and Monday, Ken Burns premiers his new documentary "The Dust Bowl", on PBS. (via)
Melkor just SOUNDS evil
More than most literary phenomena, names in fiction seem very straightforward until you start to think about them. The simple question, ‘why does a name sound right?’ leads to a whole range of questions. Are there rules about how names are given to characters? Do naming practices differ in different periods? Are they specific to particular genres? Do different authors use names in entirely different ways? There are also anxieties to address: is discussion of names in fiction snagged in a feedback loop, in which we think James Bond is such a good name for a spy because that’s what we know it to be?
Colder than.......
Sonny Eliot celebrated 50 years in television back in 1997. Sonny, a B52 bomber pilot who was shot down and spent months in a POW camp in Germany, returned to Detroit after the war and began accepting any position/role he could in local TV. [more inside]
I've started telling my daughters I'm beautiful
"I don't want my girls to be children who are perfect and then, when they start to feel like women, they remember how I thought of myself as ugly and so they will be ugly too. They will get older and their breasts will lose their shape and they will hate their bodies, because that's what women do. That's what mommy did." Some lovely Friday-morning encouragement for all the moms.
Got Wood?
The Wood Database has specifications and photos of many types of wood to help guide their identification (but beware the pitfalls). The site also features articles on safety and other matters.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
"I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down and bought a barrel of Pond's Extract and a bicycle." "Taming The Bicycle" by Mark Twain.
And whereas the original model took about 8 seconds to save a photo to a disk, this version averaged a more tolerable 4 seconds.
"Sony has added some nifty new features. These include the ability to make copies of floppies using just the camera--very handy if you want to hand out extra disks on the spot. A new quarter-resolution (320 by 240) option also makes it faster to e-mail photographs. (The camera's full resolution is 640 by 480.) A built-in menu on the MVC-FD71's LCD screen permits you to easily take advantage of useful new options such as these."
Unsurprisingly, the camera which arguably first popularized consumer digital photography still has a following.
Unsurprisingly, the camera which arguably first popularized consumer digital photography still has a following.
An American Soccer Fan in Kettering Town
I could imagine a younger version of myself sitting down to a Non-League game, watching ten minutes, then leaning over to my friend and whispering “Hey, you know, like, these guys suck. And your country suffers from a serious deficiency of nachos.” -- An American learns to appreciate Non-League Football Day. [more inside]
Killing Me Softly
Dumb Ways To Die. What it says on the tin. Courtesy of Metro Australia.
It's Linguistastic! Or Linguistalicious!
Arika Okrent (previously here on sign language interpreters and her 352-page book about 'Invented Languages') is currently kicking ass and taking etymologies at the Mental Floss site with a flurry of listicles* on the 'invention' of today's English/American language:
The solidly informational "11 Weirdly Spelled Words—And How They Got That Way"**
The entertainingly snarky "11 Creative Suffixes That Inspire New Words"
The just plain fun "From Y’all To Youse, 8 English Ways to Make “You” Plural"
plus one non-linguistic piece of pure pedantry: "11 Movie Chess Scenes Where The Board Is Set Up Wrong"*** [more inside]
The solidly informational "11 Weirdly Spelled Words—And How They Got That Way"**
The entertainingly snarky "11 Creative Suffixes That Inspire New Words"
The just plain fun "From Y’all To Youse, 8 English Ways to Make “You” Plural"
plus one non-linguistic piece of pure pedantry: "11 Movie Chess Scenes Where The Board Is Set Up Wrong"*** [more inside]
The origins and history of brown sauce
The origins and history of brown sauce. The origins and history of brown sauce. The origins and history of brown sauce.
In his own voice
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N-----, n-----, n-----.” By 1968 you can’t say “n-----”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N-----, n-----.”The full audio of Republican operative and Karl Rove mentor Lee Atwater's infamous 1981 interview has been obtained and published by The Nation. [more inside]
Cambodian Trees
Cambodian Trees by Clément Briend. "La culture cambodgienne est habitée par une spiritualité qui crée une conscience du monde peuplée de génies et d’esprits. Dans le paysage d'une ville endormie, la nuit fait apparaître ces figures divines sur les arbres, permettant ainsi leur incarnation. Par ces projections nocturnes, nous pouvons alors toucher la magie qui illumine leur regard sur le monde." [Via]
It's just not cricket
As accreditation to many photographic news agencies is declined by the BCCI (Board of Cricket Control for India), The Telegraph publishes its own images of action from the India vs England first test match, while the Guardian goes retro. [more inside]
November 15
No pony simply trots into Maredor
Lord Of The Rings... Re-enacted by Ponies. The Bronies bring forth what may be their greatest creation.
The Mico / Тхе Мичо
Mihajlo Dimitrovski (The Mico / Тхе Мичо on deviantArt, Facebook, Blogspot) is an artist most famous for his fanart, and he's got some great A Song Of Ice And Fire illustrations (and others!). [more inside]
Impossible Youtube duet: Miles Davis improvising on LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem + Miles Davis: "No editing or other tricks, just 2 youtube videos played at the same time." (SLYT)
Adventure Chef, c'mon tell your friends, we'll cook in very distant lands.
Rutabaga, a webcomic about an adventuring chef.
"Here is the map. Where you go is up to you."
Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years
In case you didn't know how....
How to Be a Hipster In 22 steps.
Goldie Blox
Move over Barbie, Goldie Blox is coming to town. A kickstarter-funded construction toy + book series targeting at 5 to 9 year-old girls.
PickachEEEEEERRRRGHAAAARGHGRRRRRGSSSSH
Encourage adult reading!
World Book Night in the USA, UK, Germany Readers, give away free books you love! Encourage reading! [more inside]
Think twice before going for that hot Ding Dong
Hostess, the maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and Wonder Bread has filed for bankruptcy twice in the past two years. Hostess workers (members of the Teamsters' Union) staged a walkout on Sunday after the company cut wages by 8 percent and benefits by up to 32 percent. Since the workers went on strike, Hostess has closed three of its plants. Hostess said today that if enough workers do not return to work by this evening, it will liquidate the company and lay off its 18,000 workers. It will announce its decision tomorrow.
Niza Yanay - the ideology of hatred: the psychic power of discourse
"The Ideology of Hatred": An interview with Niza Yanay - "Once we understand how hatred operates as an apparatus of power relations, and particularly how the discourse of hatred is motivated and mobilised in national conflicts, serious questions about misrecognition, veiled desires and symptomatic expressions arise. These questions have, to a large extent, been left unaddressed in studies of hatred between groups in conflict." [more inside]
Marijwhatnow?
The Seattle Police Department (SPD) has provided Seattle-ites with a practical guide for marijuana use in the Emerald City. [more inside]
What's Dylan Grillin'?
RIP, Lucille Bliss: Voice of Smurfette and Crusader Rabbit
'TV historians will tell you that “Felix the Cat” was one of the first images ever broadcast on television (when RCA broadcast a Felix doll in 1928 on experimental station W2XBS) — but it wasn’t until the late ’40s that the first animated character was created expressly for TV. Crusader Rabbit appeared for the very first time on KNBH (Los Angeles) on August 1, 1950, and featured a Don Quixote-like title character aided by his friend Ragland T. “Rags” Tiger as they pursued adventures in serial (i.e. cliffhanger) installments.' On November 8th, the voice of Crusader Rabbit, Lucille Bliss, passed away at the age of 96. Ms. Bliss may be more familiar to younger fans as the voice of Smurfette, from The Smurfs, or as Ms. Bitters on Invader ZIM. [more inside]
Affordable private railcars!
We have previously discussed private railcars on Ask Metafilter, but there is a growing hobby of people owning and running their own railcar speeders. [more inside]
'Shuffle the pages like a game of cards'
Shuffle Literature and the Hand of Fate: an article about aleatory literature— including mention of Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1; B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates; Robert Grenier’s Sentences and Herta Müller’s Der Wächter nimmt seinen Kamm.
Thomas Ligotti
... [Thomas] Ligotti's stories tend to have a profound emotional impact. His vision is exceedingly dark, and it is possible for his stories to infect the reader with a mild-to-severe case of depression. It is even possible for them to effect a change in the reader's self-perception and view of the universe. This warning is not meant to be sensationalistic, nor is it meant to turn new readers away. It is simply a statement of fact based upon the experiences of actual readers. Ligotti writes about the darkest of themes with an amazing power, and he means what he says. Often his stories seem to communicate a message below their surface, a sort of subliminal statement that should not rightly be able to traverse the barrier of verbal language. - Matt Cardin (previously) [more inside]
"...the ways in which musicians are screwed have changed qualitatively, from individualized swindles to systemic ones."
"The "Tugboat" 7" single, Galaxie 500's very first release, cost us $980.22 for 1,000 copies-- including shipping! (Naomi kept the receipts)-- or 98 cents each. I no longer remember what we sold them for, but obviously it was easy to turn at least a couple bucks' profit on each. Which means we earned more from every one of those 7"s we sold than from the song's recent 13,760 plays on Pandora and Spotify. Here's yet another way to look at it: Pressing 1,000 singles in 1988 gave us the earning potential of more than 13 million streams in 2012."Making Cents: Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi breaks down the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business' headlong quest for capital means for artists today. [more inside]
With A Million Stars All Around
The Eagles had been together for barely a week at the time, but Frey immediately recognized a great song when he heard it.
Clever pretty Starbucks drawings
Tomoko Shintani just draws at Starbucks without any special reason.
Why did Prop 37 Fail?
Why did Prop 37, the GMO labeling bill, fail? Ernest Miller of KCET argues that it wasn't money, but message. [more inside]
Polls for pols for Peelers
Let Me Take You To The Max
Give to the Max Day is an attempt to boost local online philanthropy by aggregating all Minnesota nonprofits (and public schools) into a search engine and encouraging contributions on a single day.
All I remember about it was that I was having sex with Pierce Brosnan in a hot tub. Except that he had a vagina.
"Emma Stone was my dream best friend for a number of weeks. We'd see movies together. Get drinks and gossip. I remember one dream where we just texted. She resurfaced as my best friend last fall after I saw The Help. An actual friend of mine once told me a story about meeting Andrew Garfield's best friend, which meant Andrew Garfield and I were dream best friends for the following few nights. Again, there was texting." The Awl asks people: What Was Your Weirdest Celebrity Sex Dream?
Geek Tragedy
Geek Masculinity and the Myth of the Fake Geek Girl - why we get things like the "Imposter" ad and the Tony Harris rant.
Medieval Writing
Ingress
Senator Chip Rogers - Agenda 21 - Mother Jones
Chip Rogers is the Republican Majority Leader of the Georgia State Senate, and Treasurer of ALEC (previously 1 2). On October 11th he hosted a four-hour briefing for his fellow senators, regarding Obama's mind-control techniques which are forcing the US into a United Nations-led Communist dictatorship in which suburbanites are forcibly relocated to cities. The theory is based on Agenda 21, the non-binding 1992 UN treaty on sustainable development. Rogers narrowly failed to pass a resolution against Agenda 21, but other states have done so, and Alabama has even forbidden its implementation in law.
Seriously.
New Games Journalism luminary Tim Rogers lays it out, clear as day: "Pong was released in 1972 — that’s forty years ago. Forty years is a long time for something to exist without anyone else bothering to make anything better than it."
Then in 1908, it burned down a third time
While the Band Played On
I have always been fascinated by the way music can completely change the way you watch film - and how you feel as you watch the images. Adam Curtis [more inside]
Ashlyn Blocker Feels No Pain
No rights are absolute and there is no hierarchy of rights.
A woman wanting a mans-style hair-cut was denied one by a Toronto barber because his religion forbids him from touching a woman he is not related to. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is expected to hear the issue if mediation fails, as a competing rights issue where there is a conflict between two individuals exercising their rights. The OBA (warning, cheesy music autoplay) defends some Barbershops as a men's-only space tradition dating back to Ancient Greece, while others point to womens-only spaces like spas that are allowed to continue to operate while discriminating against men.
@&$%#&#**#$!!!
90 years of (British) radio in 90 seconds
90 years of (British) radio in 90 seconds. That is all.
He did not understand that if he waited and listened and observed, another idea of some kind would probably occur to him someday.
Being a content creator is a wonderful job: "It's 2pm. Don't you think it's time you put on some pants?" [more inside]
November 14
"The exchanges have taken place in a time-honored arena for mudslinging in Britain, the letters page of a newspaper"
It took 15 years, but, as the Guardian reports, the feud between writers Salman Rushdie and John le Carre is at an end.
Dinner is Coming.
Game of Thrones Food Trucks. (SLYT)
Dennis Avner has died.
RIP to internet and body-mod legend Stalking Cat Known as "the cat guy" on many parts of the internet, Dennis had spent money to shape himself in the form of his totemic animal, which he described as "a stalking cat". He held the world record for "most permanent transformations to look like an animal" by a single person No note or reason has been shared by the family.
Goodbye, Glitch
A year after the game Glitch 'unlaunched' to retool, Glitch is closing. Glitchens everywhere mourn their fabulous homes. Glitch had a quirky style and offered a large number of possible crafts to their players, but unfortunately the game did not attract a big enough audience to remain viable. previously previously
Live From the Inside
Radio Colifata is a beloved weekly Buenos Aires radio show run by psychiatric patients that breaks down boundaries between the "interned" and the "externed." During his Argentina tour, radio supporter Manu Chao invited a few Colifatos to join him. LT22 Radio La Colifata is 94 minute a documentary (in Spanish) shot over ten years that celebrates the station and the tour.
FFRF to IRS: Do your job, assholes!
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (previously, previously) has announced that it is suing the IRS over it's apparent unwillingness to enforce the rules against religious electioneering, banned by the
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Going, Going...
Auctioneers as hypnotists? (Hurry up, you could lose the bid...)
I ain't four years old no more
Public Policy Polling: "Do you have enough Santorum in your life, or not?"
How Polling Firm PPP Won The Election With Its Hilarious And Infuriating Questions: "Public Policy Polling, the firm that correctly predicted all 50 states in the presidential election, is known for asking some weird, quirky and, sometimes, controversial questions in its polls... Here are some of the firm's best questions of the election cycle." [more inside]
A brief history of Bulletball
In 2006, aspiring inventor Marc Griffin appeared on the show American Inventor with a table game he had invented called Bulletball. Convinced he had created the next Olympic sport, he had spent 26 years of his life on the idea. He'd quit his job, sold all his possessions including his wife's wedding ring, and was sleeping in his car. The judges hated the idea – and his gut-wrenching experience on the show went viral. [more inside]
The Corporatization Of Higher Education
In 2003, only two colleges charged more than $40,000 a year for tuition, fees, room, and board. Six years later more than two hundred colleges charged that amount. What happened between 2003 and 2009 was the start of the recession. By driving down endowments and giving tax-starved states a reason to cut back their support for higher education, the recession put new pressure on colleges and universities to raise their price. When our current period of slow economic growth will end is anybody’s guess, but even when it does end, colleges and universities will certainly not be rolling back their prices. These days, it is not just the economic climate in which our colleges and universities find themselves that determines what they charge and how they operate; it is their increasing corporatization. If corporatization meant only that colleges and universities were finding ways to be less wasteful, it would be a welcome turn of events. But an altogether different process is going on[more inside]
Short Cuts
When they take my shoelaces and belt, I realise that this is more serious than I had thought. [more inside]
If at first you don't secede...
The White House's petitions website has garnered over 100,000 signatures to "Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government." Many signatures are from people not living in Texas. [more inside]
DARK, ISN'T IT?
What happened next is that Pratchett collapsed. “I had to kneel on the back seat of the taxi and give him CPR,” Rob says. “It was fingers down throat stuff. He nearly died.” -- Extracts from an interview by Laurie Penny of Terry Pratchett reveal he nearly died and is planning to leave the Discworld in the hands of his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett. [more inside]
I want my twine to say something about ME
"[T]he best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb"
Robert Atwan, editor of the Best American Essays series, chooses the top ten essays since 1950 for PW's Tipsheet. All but three of the top essays are available to read online and linked in the article. (via)
The Joy Machine
COLBERT: I suppose fear is like a drug. A little bit isn’t that bad, but you can get addicted to the consumption and distribution of it. What’s evil is the purposeful distribution of fear. As Paul said when he was faced with the gom jabbar, “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.”A thoughtful interview with Stephen Colbert in Playboy (NSFW ads)(Non-Playboy copy.)
PLAYBOY: Did you just make a Dune reference?
COLBERT: I did! [laughs] If you’re injecting fear into other people, then you’re trying to kill their minds. You’re trying to get them to stop thinking.
It's full of.... well, you know.
100,000 Stars [SLInteractive3DVisualization] (Seems to run best on Chrome or Safari and a decent graphics card)
"2000 films X 20 genres X 100 years."
The History of Film in one convenient, zoomable graphic. 2000 "important" American, British, and a few other European films, grouped by genre and year. [more inside]
Royce White
Royce White is a professional American basketball player who suffers from general anxiety disorder. Though he was considered one of the best talents in last year's NBA draft, he was not selected until the 16th pick, due to concerns over his mental health and his avowed reluctance to fly. Although the NBA season is only a couple of weeks old, White and his team, the Houston Rockets, are already having difficulty determining how to manage his health while meeting the professional demands of the NBA. LINKS: Documentary highlighting White's anxiety // Highlights of White while at Iowa State // White's Twitter account (where he is currently tweeting about his situation)
"deconstruction, in French, would be nothing without puns"
What was Of Grammatology about? When Madeleine, the heroine of Jeffrey Eugenides's campus novel The Marriage Plot, asks a young theory-head this question, she is immediately set straight: 'If it was "about" anything, then it was about the need to stop thinking of books as being about things.' That's not so far off. In all three books, Derrida's argument was that Western thought from Plato to Rousseau to Lévi-Strauss had been hopelessly entangled in the illusion that language might provide us with access to a reality beyond language, beyond metaphor: an unmediated experience of truth and being which he called 'presence'.—Not in the Mood by Adam Shatz is an essay in The London Review of Books about a new biography of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The review does a good job of explaining Derrida's theories in simple language and putting it in the context of his life, from his childhood as French Jew in Vichy-controlled Algeria to his later years as a globetrotting academic star. For a complimentary perspective on Derrida, you can do worse than starting with these thoughts on his relevance for historians and progressives.
Petraeus and the Fourth Estate
We’ve caught some of the smartest and most commited public men and women with their pants at their ankles. Time and again, we’ve had our fun. We’ve roundly mocked them for the very weaknesses that are so utterly our own. Reporters who have at points in their lives fucked themselves silly in hotel rooms across this great land of ours while pursuing the infidelities of more public men with righteous glee — these are not men and women who are much inclined to any real moment of self reflection, but then who among us really is? This kind of hypocrisy requires a complicit silence and a ritual wiping of the memory before every byline. [more inside]
Mr. Fix-It
The Law & Order Database
Bounce
Meet Michael the retired bank robber, Franklin the repo man, Trevor the psychopath and welcome to back Los Santos. (Previously) [more inside]
When all is said and done, it makes good toast.
This woman had a haunted toaster. (Originally aired on the Today Show in 1984.)
*Not* just another wondrous part of pregnancy
"Then one of the nurses calls me and says, “The doctor would like to know why you’re rolling around on a table full of semen.” And I say, “TELL HIM THAT’S NOT HOW I NORMALLY SPEND MY SATURDAYS.”Author Pamela "Pamie" Ribon: "How I Might Have Just Become the Newest Urban Legend" [more inside]
Bride Of Slenderman
While slit-scan photography is most well known for the "stargate" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, advances in technology now allow it to be applied to moving objects in 3D. (via)
"Used to be that the idea was 'once every two years voters elected their representatives.' And now instead it's 'every ten years the representatives choose their constituents.'"
Obama won Ohio by two points, and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown won by five, but Democrats emerged with just four of Ohio’s 16 House seats. In Wisconsin, Obama prevailed by seven points, and Democratic Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin by five, but their party finished with just three of the state’s eight House seats. In Virginia, Obama and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine were clear victors, but Democrats won just three of the commonwealth’s 11 House seats. In Florida, Obama eked out a victory and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson won by 13 points, but Democrats will hold only 10 of the Sunshine State’s 27 House seats. The Revenge of 2010: How gerrymandering saved the congressional Republican majority, undermined Obama's mandate, set the terms of the sequestration fight, and locked Democrats out of the House for the next decade. It's not a new problem. But if the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act, it could get a whole lot worse. And the electoral college may be next. (What's gerrymandering, you ask? Let the animals explain. Meet the Gerry-mander. Peruse the abused. Catch the movie. Or just play the game. Previously.)
Bicycle racing photography
The bicycle racing photographs of Timm Kolln. Tour de France 2009. The Peloton (previously). Racing polaroids. Roubaix. Jens Voight. Luis Ocana. Juan Antonio Flecha on a Winter Ride. Stage 9 2010. At the races. Bicicletas Zeus. Lo Stelvio. Federico Bahamontes. [Side scrolling photography site, your forbearance is appreciated.]
May Day Shmay Day
“Let’s go over to the entrance, pretend we walked in together.”
Book Shopping with the Best-Read Man in America. An afternoon in a used bookstore with Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize winning book critic and author.
the backup is almost complete
The Good Giraffe
Armstrong Baillie is unemployed and lives in Dundee. Twice a week, funded by his busking, he dresses up as a giraffe and performs good deeds.
Farmer's Dilemma
"Farmer's Dilemma" is a short, sad and beautiful comic about family and acceptance. From Sam Alden's art blog, GINGERLAND.
Grand Theft Auto - cab driver
November 13
A Look at the Bushmeat Crisis in Central Africa
"Decades ago, the Mbuti typically sold about half the meat they captured; now they sell nearly every carcass, saving only the prized entrails and heads for themselves. The hunt, in essence, has devolved into an all-out commercial endeavor, staged not for subsistence, but to feed growing regional markets. And the impact is clear."
Inconceivable
ESPN NFL Kickoff Stuffs As Many Princess Bride References Into A Half Hour As Possible What it says on the tin.
Homebrewed Christianity Podcast
For those tired of watered-down, light-beer theology...Check out the Homebrewed Christianity Podcast, started by process-theologians Trip Fuller and Chad Crawford. Today's podcast interviews Old-Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. The highlight is the lightning round finale (starts at ~61 min) where Walter gives rapid thoughts on such topics such as religious pluralism, ecological crises, immigration, homosexuality, economics, empire, and his favorite Bible story for his grandchildren. Also this week, a conversation with Barry Taylor (ACDC Sound Engineer, Episcopal Priest, and philosopher).
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
The complete soundtrack to the upcoming movie, The Hobbit, is available here. "The score is composed by Howard Shore who also wrote all three films in The Lord of The Rings trilogy for director Peter Jackson. “I have looked forward to returning to the imaginative world of Middle-earth for quite a while,” says Shore of the score. “I read all of the books by Tolkien, including The Hobbit, when I was in my twenties, and his deep love of nature and all things green resonates deeply with me.”"
Magnificent obsessions
Jay Raymond collects irons. Until 2007 he collected only streamlined irons: In the U.S. this meant irons made between 1932 and 1952. In 2007 he sold that collection of about 180 irons, and he now collects electric irons made between 1890-1925.
Alan Davies collects old bricks.
Rev Doug Dawson owns about 900 harmonicas.
Shaun Kotlarsky collects electrical and telegraph insulators. He has about 2,000 of them.
Bob Manning collects Mickey Mouse ties. [more inside]
Alan Davies collects old bricks.
Rev Doug Dawson owns about 900 harmonicas.
Shaun Kotlarsky collects electrical and telegraph insulators. He has about 2,000 of them.
Bob Manning collects Mickey Mouse ties. [more inside]
Like horn rimmed glasses, but it's a kind of jacket?
Authentic Wm. Gibson promises “synopses for William Gibson novels that are definitely 100% real, but only in a timeline with greater authenticity than this one.”, and delivers exactly that.
Dole Kemp '96
The campaign website for Bob Dole's 1996 presidential run is still (mostly) operational. Read about the issues in tiny, centered text. See animated flag gifs. Download a 128x128 "wallpaper" bitmap. Vote Dole-Kemp.
Is America ready for a white, male Secretary of State?
Erin Gloria Ryan asks: Is America ready for a white, male Secretary of State? She's not the only one satirically contemplating this question - John Norris over at Foreign Policy magazine has also wondered: Is America ready for a male Secretary of State? [more inside]
Ten Bollywood Memories I'll Take With Me To My Grave
Suck. On. This.
I was of course already familiar with the general characteristics of Friedman’s writing—hubris, clichéd jingoism, Orientalism, favoritism of Israel, self-contradiction, a severe handicap in the realm of metaphor construction, reduction of complex phenomena to simplistic and baseless theories. However, reviewing three decades of his work made it clear just how frightening, as opposed to simply laughable, it was that such a character had accrued three Pulitzer Prizes and risen to the position of journalistic icon at the US newspaper of record.
- Interview in Jadaliyya with Belen Fernandez on her (new to me) book critiquing NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work. [more inside]
Ancient Fears: The Return of the Flood Saga
"The word reclaim came up more than once to describe the rising tide. It is a revealing word, more narrative than simply descriptive: it hints at some larger backstory, some plot twist in a longer saga about our claims and the water’s counterclaims to the earth.… This story was already ancient when it was adapted for the biblical text—which is to say, it records a very old fear. Like all old fears, it has the uncanny feel of a vivid memory. It may be a memory of an actual flood in an actual Sumerian city, Shurrupal, ca 2800 B.C.E. In fact, it may be even older than that."
Our Robot/Meatbag Space Future
Gentle giant
Teddy Bear(trailer) is a movie about a Danish bodybuilder in search of love. Kim Kold, actual bodybuilder, stars. [more inside]
We should insist while there is still time
No, most Dutch people have no clue how this looks
"You know it’s that time of the year again in Holland, when you are greeted by some Dutch person on the street, whose face is painted completely black and is sporting an afro wig, bright red lips and a ridiculous clown-like costume. What is possibly more strange than this very sight, is the fact that many Dutch person finds it a completely normal and acceptable occurrence. Yes, Dutch people love their Zwarte Pieten." (previously, previously) Now combine them with Gangnam parodies and you have the latest Sinterklaas trend.
This is The Song That Never Ends...
Ever wished your favorite song could be extended infinitely? Well, today's your day.
Behold: The Infinite Jukebox. [more inside]
Lesson 510: "C is for Cynicism. But Don't You Believe It."
Surviving the World is a photocomic education by Dante Shepherd (and his team of experts) which provides brief useful observations about life and its lessons. [more inside]
Money, Power and Politics
In last night's episode of Independent Lens on PBS, filmmaker Alex Gibney presented the case that America's richest citizens have "rigged the game in their favor," and created unprecedented inequality in the United States. "Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream" [video, website]
Drinking Black Coffee Drinking Black Coffee
Santana Smooth
Reinhold Messner
"Murdering the Impossible" - a 2006 National Geographic profile of Reinhold Messner, "the greatest climber in history". [more inside]
Hamish Steele!
Hamish Steele! Be moved by his brief-yet-poignant award-winning animated film The Right Time. Be charmed by his commissioned portraits of couples and their pets. Be inspired by his loose and fresh superheroes (Batman, Phoenix, Hawkeye)! And it wouldn't be Tumblr without an appearance by Sherlock Holmes (not that one).
Directions to Last Visitor
The best college players in the nation
#SOSRealOviedo
Real Oviedo, the Spanish football club that recently brought to you the talents of Juan Mata, Cazorla, Adrián or Michu, is facing bankrupcy. The 86-year-old club had to raise near 2 million euros by november 17th, an impossible challenge for a third division team in Spain. But surprisingly, in under just two weeks old and new fans from more than 60 countries have raised more than a million euros.
Instrumental in this unexpected worldwide attention has been Sid Lowe. The Guardian's reporter for all things Spanish Football is an ardent supporter of Real Oviedo, ever since his Erasmus stay in the city, and has been spreading the good word from his twitter account. Last Sunday, the team defeated Real Madrid's C team with an attendance of more than 20 thousand. The same weekend, there were significantly less people seeing Barcelona play in Mallorca. last two links in Spanish
How would you feel if somebody was out there using your name for purposes of their own—without your knowledge?
Anthony Bourdain is "fighting mad" at the Travel Channel for editing him into a commercial without his permission. He expressed his rage on twitter first, and then in a long post on his tumblr blog: "All of us on the show would have preferred to go out on a high note—and we tried to do that as best we could, turning in a strong, final season that we are very proud of. We wanted to go leaving a lot of great shows—and nothing but good memories and good will behind...But things just didn’t turn out that way." [more inside]
Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends
Don't like gay marriage? Fine. Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends. [SLCollegeHumorP]
Terence McKenna’s Final Interview
Free Tracking
‘On May 24th, 2012, I set out on a musical and physical challenge. My aim was to find inspiration for the recordings on this album. I cycled to the four furthest points of mainland Britain, a journey of more than 2000 miles.On my bike I carried a mobile recording rig and, as I discovered locations along the way that provided inspiration for my songs, I was able to record (free-tracking) performances you can hear on these tracks.’
November 12
Acqua Alta in Venice
Venice resident, Erla Zwingle documents the city's recent (near record breaking) "Acqua Alta". The high tide left about 2/3 of the city under water. Venice's new flood protection system is due to come online in 2014.
Per SMTP spec, valid email addresses cannot contain a colon
I promise there is nothing gaping here: goatse.cx is now accepting pre-registration signups for a webmail service. Who wants an address at one of the web's most prestigious and notable domain names?
Satellite's gone up to the skies
The kickstarter satellites. Sandy Antunes, the author of the blog post has built his own picosatellite Project Calliope. A project he also chronicled in his blog Satelite Diaries. NPR story. [more inside]
totally unpremeditated and perfectly sincere
More Than Human: Tim Flach's intimate photographs of animal gestures and expressions seem more than a little familiar. [more inside]
No water moccasins were harmed in the making of this video.
Hey, water moccasins! [SLYT]
YOLO with it
Oxford Dictionaries' 2012 words of the year have been chosen: for the US, it's "gif" (as a verb); for the UK, "omnishambles." It contended for this crown with the likes of "YOLO," "superstorm," and "nomophobia." Previous Oxford words of the year can be found here (other notable year-end word lists such as those from Merriam-Webster, the American Dialect Society, and the Global Language Monitor, have yet to appear).
Does Facebook Hate All Women—or just Feminists?
Does Facebook Hate All Women—or just Feminists? An article looking at how Facebook's content standards appear to be unevenly applied in a way that ends up suppressing Feminist content.
Systematic child abuse and paedophilia in Australia
Following recent revelations about apparently systematic cover-ups and a deep failure to cooperate with police by the Roman Catholic Church, the Australian Prime Minister last night announced the establishment of a Royal Commission into institutional responses to child abuse to investigate the matter.
“I thought that modern penology has abandoned that rehabilitation thing”
In Sentencing Criminals, Is Norway Too Soft? Or Are We Too Harsh?
It’s not very often the concept of restorative justice gets much play outside scholarly publications or reformist criminal justice circles, so first, some credit for Max Fisher at The Atlantic for giving it an earnest look last week. In seeking to explain Norway’s seemingly measly twenty-one-year sentence for remorseless, mass-murdering white supremacist Anders Breivik—a sentence that is certain to be extended to last the rest of his life—Fisher casts a critical eye on the underlying philosophy that animates that country’s sentencing practices, finding it to be “radically different” from what we’re used to in the United States.The Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Practices: A Meta-Analysis [more inside]
Cephalopod vs. Cephalopod
We Are Not the Dead
Portraits of Soldiers Before, During, and After War "Photographer Lalage Snow, who is currently based in Kabul, Afghanistan, embarked on an 8-month-long project titled We Are The Not Dead featuring portraits of British soldiers before, during, and after their deployment in Afghanistan."
Meta: word-forming element meaning 1. "after, behind," 2. "changed, altered," 3. "higher, beyond;" from Gk.
Are you enthusiastic ("pertaining to possession by a deity," from Gk. enthousiastikos "inspired," from enthousiazein ) about Etymology? ( ethimolegia "facts of the origin and development of a word," from O.Fr. et(h)imologie (14c., Mod.Fr. étymologie), from L. etymologia, from Gk. etymologia, properly "study of the true sense (of a word)," Then why not explore ( 1580s, "to investigate, examine," a back formation from exploration, or else from M.Fr. explorer (16c.), from L. explorare ) the vast resources (1610s, "means of supplying a want or deficiency," from Fr. resourse) of the ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY [more inside]
The bandura (або, «Яка в бісу арфа, янголи грають на бандурах!»).
Go to War. Do Art. (II)
The permanent collection of the (US) National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago contains more than 2,500 pieces of art by 250 artists, all of which can be seen at NVAM Collection Online. The site includes biographical material on the artists who created the work. Featured Artwork. A small selection. (Via. Images at links in this post may be nsfw, and/or disturbing to some viewers.)
Ultramorph
Alien: Engineers - the original script for Prometheus.
The Expendables: life in the French Foreign Legion
It was simplifying. Forget your civilian reflexes. The task does not require a purpose. Do not ask questions, do not make suggestions, do not even think of that. The Legion is our fatherland. We will accept you. We will shelter you.
Dear Mr. President: An open letter on the state of Physics education
Dear Mr. President: “You're the President of the United States: a country with 5000 nuclear weapons, birthplace of the world's computing and telecommunications industry, home of the first atomic clock and creator of the global positioning system. But chances are, if you just took regular American high school physics, you don't know one iota about the science behind these things (no offense). That's because high school physics students across most of America are not required to learn about pretty much any physical phenomena discovered or explained more recently than 1865.” From Henry Reich of Minute Physics. (Can't watch video? Click the "interactive transcript" button under the video to read it instead.)
Minute Physics previously, previouslier. [more inside]
Big Pork Small Towns
The loss of translators...
Readers of literature from "small" languages treasure their translators, who are rarely recognized and poorly compensated for their months and sometimes years of lonely labor.
Two of the best translators from Czech died in the last month or so. Michael Heim translated not only from Czech but also Russian, Croatian, Serbian, German, French and Dutch. Less well-known and less polyglotish, Peter Kussi translated Milan Kundera as well as Jiri Grusa, Karel Capek, Josef Skvorecky, Bohumil Hrabal and others whose works might otherwise be lost to English readers. [more inside]
Two of the best translators from Czech died in the last month or so. Michael Heim translated not only from Czech but also Russian, Croatian, Serbian, German, French and Dutch. Less well-known and less polyglotish, Peter Kussi translated Milan Kundera as well as Jiri Grusa, Karel Capek, Josef Skvorecky, Bohumil Hrabal and others whose works might otherwise be lost to English readers. [more inside]
"Especially with the country in great need of donation, science should speak louder than stigma in determining who can help."
Tainted: Why Gay Men Still Can't Donate Blood - "Since 1983, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines have disqualified men who have ever had sex with men (MSM) from donating blood... Uneven application of exclusion to at-risk individuals suggests that risk aversion disproportionately impacts MSMs. For example, a non-MSM individual who has had sexual contact with a commercial sex worker or HIV-positive partner is deferred for only twelve months... The fact that the U.S. upholds a lifetime ban on MSM donation while Australian policy allows MSM individuals to donate a year or less after contact reveals a glaring discrepancy. Both ethics and science point to a flaw in FDA policy. That I could have had sex with 365 partners this year and be a perfectly fine candidate for donating blood, while the MSM next to me wouldn't qualify, betrays a faulty line of logic." [more inside]
Artisanal sriracha
Want preservative-free sriracha but don't have time to make your own? Jolene Collins makes (and sells) her own high-end artisanal sriracha. Would you like to watch?
On the competitive eating trail
"Everyone, since the dawn of time, has eaten or they've perished," Sam says. "But that man is the best eater who has ever lived, in the history of the world."
Do you have a flag?
Of all the countries in the world, the British have managed to invade or attack all but 22 (Torygraph), making the US look like absolute pikers. Somewhat inflated by the fact that the authors of the study counted everywhere British forces attacking, including pirate attacks on silver ships in the Spanish Main, not just those places where the UK planted a flag.
Does What It Says On The Homepage
The Useless Web serves a collection of some of the most frivolous, insignificant and worthless websites (many of which were previously seen here).
Obvious Warning: May contain sound, flashing images, old memes or peanuts. Well, probably not peanuts.
Obvious Warning: May contain sound, flashing images, old memes or peanuts. Well, probably not peanuts.
November 11
Secret Weapons
Secret Weapons. "David Cronenberg's seldom seen 1972 made-for-TV movie, 'Secret Weapons'. It is six years into a future American civil war. A man has created a drug that enhances fighting skills. But will he give it to the theocratic government, or the rebels?" [Via]
“Our history is all fabricated.”
Mubei, or Tombstone, by Yang Jisheng, was published in 2008 and is considered to be the definitive account of the Chinese Great Famine. The book is banned in China, but has been available in Hong Kong. Counterfeit and electronic copies have allowed many Chinese to access the book. Before this November, Tombstone was available only in Chinese; however, the English translation has now been released. [more inside]
I. Drink. Your. Fruitshake.
"On hot days or as a special treat her endangered grey-headed flying foxes are treated to a special mix of blended fruit juices. Camilla the 12-week-old bat especially enjoys hanging around and partaking of a cold 'frothy'."
I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War.
The new James Bond movie, Skyfall, has largely been well received by critics some of who have suggested that the film is less sexist than its predecessors. Others have disagreed and stated that the new film has is quite problematic and may be "abandoning the moral intelligence of the times". Giles Coren, writer for The Times, put forth a piece that calls Skyfall "a sick, reactionary, depressing film". The Times refused to run the piece saying that "it was about James Bond and there's been too much Bond". So Coren's wife and fellow journalist, Esther Walker, agreed to run the piece in her blog.
You are bidding on an evening of games with some guys from TV!
"One tragic event and two acts of generosity brought the [Board Game Geek] community together: the result was the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund." [more inside]
Not actually a cartoon
Snoring Hummingbird (SLYT) Watch closely for sticky-outy tongue!
Does Vanilla Equal Not Spanked As A Child
Are spanking fetishes now mainstream sexual behavior or are they an untreated response to childhood trauma? "I think that avoiding raising one's children to be spanking fetishists is a good reason not to spank children. It is not that I view some particular set of sexual semiotics as intrinsically inferior to any other. It is because I believe that at least some forms of spanking fetishism are the direct result of traumatic repression caused by childhood spankings. Hence, to say "don't spank your kids because you might turn them into fetishists" is really just an abbreviated way of saying "don't spank your kids because this can evoke unintegratable emotions of hatred which your child will be forced to repress and which they may then cope with by eroticizing your spankings and spending the rest of their lives feeling frustrated because their pool of available sexual partners is so small, and feeling guilty and ashamed because of how your maltreatment of them made them hate you back when they were helpless and dependent upon you." NSFW previously
Noodles are the smell of denial and you will never grow up
Suburban Kids With Biblical Names write music with a warmth and simplicity that really hits the spot on chilly autumn days. My favorite songs of theirs are Noodles and Trees and Squirrels; their better-known songs include Funeral Face, Rent a Wreck, and Loop Duplicate My Heart.
José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano
José "Pepe" Mujica had been the President of Uruguay since 2010 and is considered to be the 'World’s poorest president'. "His humble lifestyle is reflected by his choice of an aging Volkswagen Beetle as transport, his only asset. The Economist describes him as "a roly-poly former guerrilla who grows flowers on a small farm and swears by vegetarianism". He also donates 87% of his state salary to charitable causes. He does not believe in God." [more inside]
The Morgenthau Plan and the Marshall Plan
Perhaps the most fruitful way to look at the debate between Morgenthau and Marshall that was carried on--largely below the surface, largely without explicit confrontation--at the end of WWII is that it was an attempt to figure out how to resolve call it two historical problems: the problem of European military culture, and the problem of modern industrial war. Economist Brad DeLong explains.
Everyone else is expendable
Zeugma, syllepsis, ellipsis
Because Your Generation
Unexpected Cuteness
Dancing Stingrays (SLWimp) (wait for it to hit you...)
Van Heuvelen Symphony No. 1
When the peace came along in Europe in April of 1945, we just practically sat there without anything to do. Most of the gentlemen drew house plans, because they were thinking they were going to get out of the service pretty soon. And I wrote a symphony. (Transcript)
The symphony Van Heuvelen wrote sat on the shelf for decades, and last week he got to witness it performed for the first time. [more inside]
how now brown cow / how now / how now shall we live
is it t / is it true / is it too late to register to vote / is it time to break up / is it tuesday Enjoy the algorithmically-generated autocompleted poignance of Google Poetics, or submit your own. [more inside]
There once was a slayer from Nantucket
Feathered Veterans
In France, a Mission to Return the Military's Carrier Pigeons to Active Duty — Grounded After Modern Communication Devices Soared, Birds May Offer Low-Tech Solutions; No Round Trips [WSJ]. Let us not forget Le Vaillant, Cher Ami, and the other birds that save lives.
A Hobbit Hole means comfort.
Balloon Bag End. Guy creates Hobbit hole with air and rubber.
"Don't chase me, I'm an illusion, a suicide bomb."
In the long history of love songs the attention of a beautiful woman has been compared to many things – but perhaps only in Pakistan's tribal belt would it be likened to the deadly missile strike of a remotely controlled US drone.
Drawing bars in Brooklyn
Bill Roundy is a cartoonist living in Brooklyn, who has a strip in the Brooklyn Paper in which he draws and reviews local bars. 'Nuff said.
Between the crosses, row on row
November 10
“Manchester was dead. If I wasn’t going to do it, it wasn’t going to get done.”
William Manchester was an American author who wrote the celebrated Winston Churchill biographies: The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874–1932 and The Last Lion: Alone 1932–1940. After having a stroke in 1998 and suffering from writer’s block, on Oct. 9, 2003, Manchester asked Palm Beach Post writer, Paul Reid, to complete the third volume of Churchill’s biography. In October 2012, after nine years of writing, and 24 years after Alone, Paul Reid completed the third volume and The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm 1940-1965 was published. [more inside]
Shiny!
Posters of famous movie cars (and trucks; and planes; ... a few space ships; .... the odd train.) done in the style of vintage race advertising posters.
Seatbelts, Everyone!
The Magic School Bus: The Movie [SLYT]
Ronda Rousey
Ronda Rousey - the first American woman to medal in judo at the Summer Olympics - is widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound female MMA fighter in the world. She has won all six of her professional fights - all but one of them in less than a minute - using a trademark armbar that is usually described as "devastating". [more inside]
...and then you strangle a giant slug with a chain.
Searching for Slave Leia fiction by Sandra McDonald. Slave Leia PSA starring Kaley Cuoco (yt), Leia's Metal Bikini, Meet the Slave Leia's of Star Wars Celebration V (yt), Slave Leia Appreciation Society, In Defense of Slave Leia , In Response to In Defense of Slave Leia.
That doesn't look right!
Remember that big Red/Blue map that you kept looking at on election night?
That graphic was really pretty deceptive, and maps were mentioned 117 times in our huge election thread, often because they didn't make sense or were confusing.
Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, has created a neat page that represents the data from last Tuesday in a more visually accurate manner. [more inside]
Brasil profundo
A treasure trove of Brazil from
the conflict between Natives and farmers to
Music inspired by the bandit Lampião.
Discover writers (with a metafilter hat tip); Scary Lullabies e muito mais.
Discover writers (with a metafilter hat tip); Scary Lullabies e muito mais.
Chuckchi Jokes
Anyone familiar with the contemporary Russian humorous folklore (jokelore, or in Russian anekdoty) knows that one of the most popular series of such jokes revolves around the Chukchis, the native people of Chukotka, the most remote northeast corner of Russia. These jokes, especially popular in 1990s and 2000s, fit the international genre of ethnic stupidity jokes . . .
"Who needs to read one more mediocre book?"
"At the end of his life, the boxer Joe Louis said, ‘I did the best I could with what I had.’ It’s exactly what I would say of my work: I did the best I could with what I had.” [The New Yorker] "The writer Philip Roth announced his retirement in a little-noticed interview with a French magazine [Les Inrocks] and said that Nemesis, which was published in 2010, would be his last book."
BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
Welcome to the Mannequin Shop
I've been to the 'Moon of Glendale' - it's been stuck in a time loop for years
BRAVEST WARRIORS!!! From Pendleton 'Adventure Time' Ward, it's a new, somewhat more adult (mild profanity & alien relationships) sci-fi cartoon about Second Generation Heroes who are kind-of-dorks. Here's an earlier version he did for Nickelodeon's Random Cartoons, but the new series is made for Fred 'Frederator' Seibert's Cartoon Hangover YouTube Channel. If that wasn't edgy or NSFW enough for you, check out "Peepshow Therapy with Carmen Geddit" or just wait for the debut of James 'American Elf' Kochalka's "Super F***ers"
"The phrase 'intergalactically stupid' appeared... and he responded."
The Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Review YouTube channel has a lot of videos of film reviews from the livestream of their BBC radio show and podcast, going back about five years. They are sorted by genre, film rating, geographic origin and one special category, Classic Kermodean Rants, which includes his reviews of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Sex and the City 2, in which he ends up sing-shouting The Internationale, and Angels and Demons, which woke a man from a coma (mp3, story starts at 5:10, and it is followed up here, beginning at 5:30).
Human cormorants and dolphins
Tony Stark style daredevils "flying" over, under and through the water (SLYT) This video (warning: annoying music) gets off to a slow start, but then the air ballet begins and the people turn into cormorants and dolphins. Enjoy!
The strange case of The Pigeon-hole Principle
It's Saturday; why not think about the pigeonhole principle? Here are problems and more problems and what you might call a problem with the principle itself as it is often stated.
Soup Dumpling Burger
Burger Of The Future by Dave Arnold, Director of Technology at the French Culinary Institute in 22 steps & Voilà
Free folk/world monthly music podcast
Every month, Ian Anderson, editor of the UK music magazine fRoots, puts together a free 80-minute podcast of the past few weeks' best world music and folk music tracks. He has excellent taste - by which I mean it coincides largely with my own - and provides by far the best substitute I've yet found for Andy Kershaw's much-missed Radio 3 show. The same link has an archive offering the past four years' worth of fRoots shows for you to catch up on.
"This is is not assault. These two guys squared up on each other"
On the heels of last year's pepper spray incident, Phoenix Jones has once again been filmed in an altercation on the streets of Seattle. Only this time, it occurred under the auspices of the municipal "mutual combat law," and it got violent.
November 9
I love a sun-powered country, A land of deepening mines, of ragged nuclear plants, of biomass and hydropower
While developed countries are pondering whether they should sign up to The Kyoto 2 Protocol and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5% by 2020, based on 2000 levels which may be of questionable impact, the tiny Pacific territory of Tokelau has ditched its primary source of electricity generation, costly diesel imports, in favour of 100% renewable solar power, becoming the first nation in the world to do so, at a time when the global energy systems of the 21C are struggling towards decarbonisation. [more inside]
stumbles
Your mom's Amtrak- she's on the rails
Quasi-muppets get wasted at a rich kids graduation bash in Your Parent's Cocaine by Oakland's The Coup. [more inside]
Immersed in a room where every surface is glowing screen.
"You sit down and pull the visor over your head. The visor interior is soft and enveloping. You squeeze the drip tube between your teeth and sickly sweet fluid floods your mouth. Pulses fire into your retinas." howling dogs is a work of interactive fiction by game designer Porpentine. It is a strange story about a person who lives in a cell and imagines strange scenes for a living. Endorsed by Emily Short, and made with Twine. Takes about 10 to 15 minutes with multiple endings. Via.
Oh, not another one
December was Christmas. January was New Years. April was Easter. And the Fourth of July. But now it's Thanksgiving! Which is held on a Thursday, not a Friday.
Fuck You Daily Mail
Fuck You Daily Mail. Martin Robbins of The Pod Delusion, gives a 20 minute presentation of his thoughts concerning The Daily Mail (slyt).
Affairs of the heart and matters of the State
David Petraeus, Director of the CIA, has resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair. [more inside]
what about the medium term
Tiny Piano? Funny Zither?
In the early years of the 20th century, a pair of ex-piano retailers invented an instrument that looked something like a miniature piano. Manufactured by the Toledo Symphony Company it was called a Dolceola. But why read about a musical instrument, when you can hear one?
A Dolceola demonstration by Andy Cohen.
Ray Skjelbred playing "Dolceola Blues". [more inside]
The yard.
"My friend showed me around the MUNI Kirkland bus yard. MUNI is the municipal public transit system serving the city and county of San Francisco. It will turn exactly 100 later this year." [via]
Extreme climate predictions the most accurate
A new study in which researchers have compared the last 10 years of actual climate data with the world's most sophisticated climate simulations and found the models predicting the most extreme global warming have been the most accurate in predicting the actual climate over the last 10 years. That means if those models continue to hold true, the world could be in for a devastating worst case of 4 to 6 degrees C by 2100. There are scientists who lay out the logic why human civilization could not survive. "If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4 degrees, 5 degrees or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving." (Previously; via)
It turns out it was just advertising.
So was it worth it? Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling. No ultimate prize. Just a lot of faded, yellowing newsprint, and old video cassettes in an obsolete format I can’t even play any more even if I was interested. Oh yes, and a lot of framed certificates and little gold statuettes. A shit-load of empty Prozac boxes, wine bottles, a lot of grey hair and a tumor of indeterminate dimensions.[more inside]
New York City Fire Department Forcible Entry Reference Guide
"Forcible entry has always been a primary goal of the fire service." An illustrated reference guide to breaking in to buildings with the goal of preserving property and saving lives. [more inside]
The Brief - A daily briefing of technology news worth caring about
NASA will send you an email or text alert when the International Space Station is visible from your area. IBM scientists have recently made significant advances in nanotechnology. A mathematician thought a poorly-encrypted headhunting email from Google was testing him, but he had actually discovered a major security hole. All of this found via The Brief: A Daily Briefing of Technology News Worth Caring About from MeFi's own nostrich. [via mefi projects]
Dan O'Bannon's "Return of the Living Dead"
Return of the Living Dead (NSFW) is one of the greatest zombie movies ever made. Not only does it have loads of great looking zombies in it, it's one of the few zombie movies, besides its sequel, that has a perfect blend of humor and horror.
Evolution of Multicellularity In Lab Yeast
In just a few weeks single-celled yeast have evolved into a multicellular organism, complete with division of labour between cells. This suggests that the evolutionary leap to multicellularity may be a surprisingly small hurdle. More from Scientific American blogs. [Full Text PDF of the Publication of Note] [more inside]
The Movie Channel You'd Never Stop Watching
MeFi's own Christopher Livingston programs a Movie Channel That He'd Never Stop Watching. [more inside]
I Voted! (for the most corrupt)
Just in case you haven't overdosed on American politics: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Most Corrupt members of Congress (Full 2012 report - pdf). [more inside]
Inside John McAfee’s Heart of Darkness
John McAfee is the founder of the McAfee security software company, one of the first and, to this day, one of the biggest. But it's what he has done since leaving the company in 1994 that has attracted him notoriety. After working on instant messaging software for a few years, McAfee devoted himself to thrill-seeking: yoga, jet skiing, and "aerotrekking," or flying small aircraft at low altitudes. After the 2008 financial crisis reportedly wiped out most of his personal fortune, once estimated at $100 million, McAfee decamped to Belize, where he began promoting a business venture aimed at halting the spread of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. But as science writer Jeff Wise (who also wrote the aerotrekking article) detailed after interviewing him in 2010, McAfee's commitment to the project seemed half-hearted at best, and his behavior came off as erratic and even paranoid. In a follow-up article, written after Belizean police raided McAfee's compound on suspicion of illegal weapons possession and drug manufacturing, Wise explores how "the enlightened Peter Pan seems to have refashioned himself into a kind of final-reel Scarface."
Gibsonesque
Where do tacos come from? It's complicated.
"Unwrapping the history of Mexico's real national snack uncovers classism, dynamite, and shifting definitions of culture." The history of tacos, the linguistic history of the word "taco", and the tenuous notion of an "authentic taco" have a whole complex of intersecting stories behind them. "The Messy Business of Tacos" is an excerpt from food historian Jeffrey Pilcher's Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food. [more inside]
Mixing Digital Sculpture with Real Objects
Maru gets competition: best new box cat
How do you baffle a vegetable?
Hellblazer, the DC/Vertigo comic starring Alan Moore created occult investigator John Constantine, is being cancelled at issue #300 to make way for a new comic set in DC's New 52 universe. Hellblazer was DC's longest running continuously numbered comic and it's cancelation marks the last of the DC Comics characters with Vertigo titles being taken back into the mainstream DC universe (previously). Vertigo was originally an imprint for mature readers occult themed titles and creator owned work, though it has changed over the years with an adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo becoming the first Vertigo to receive TV advertising.
WILD MASS GUESSING
The generation game
"the most embarrassing verse in the Bible" - C.S. Lewis "this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" - 2000 years of arguments over the central verse in all prophecy. The meaning of Christianity, and hence much of our culture, hangs on the disputed meaning of a single word, "genea" or "generation." [more inside]
Five hundred thirty-eight...burritos?
Ein Beitrag zur Optik der Farbanstriche
For years now, the primary way of representing and storing color on a computer display has been to define it as existing in three dimensions: Red, Green, and Blue. What if that's wrong? “While the appearance of a color on a screen can be described in three dimensions, the blending of color actually is happening in a six dimensional space,” How Fifty-Three, developers of the iPad painting app Paper, used a theory of paint optics from 1931 to develop a better color mixer.
Pregnant man rage, cancer man chill
Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is a hormone produced during pregnancy and a marker in many pregnancy tests. After one man tested himself for pregnancy "for shits and giggles", his friend posted the surprising result in Rage Face form on Reddit... only to find out that elevated hCG levels in men are actually not lulzy (Reddit thread), resulting in an emergency visit to the doctor and a more thoughtful follow-up Rage Face comic.
A New Vision of Hell
Paper Menagerie
Ken Liu's "Paper Menagerie", the first work of fiction to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, is now available to read in full at io9.
It's only 42 years away. Bring towels.
Well now, this is an interesting discovery... Reexamination of data collect through HARPS has resulted in finding three additional planets bringing the total to six. One of which is safely within the goldilocks zone of its star.
Graham's Number
"If you actually tried to picture Graham's number in your head, then your head would collapse into a black hole." SLYT discussion of a number beyond "stupidly, stupidly big." Previously.
Scram! It’s the Fuzz!
Yesterday on AskReddit: Where/how could an aspiring pot smoker such as myself buy weed on campus/near campus? Marked as best answer: *Cough*
November 8
Rise of the Aspies
Is Everyone on the Spectrum? "In the nineties, clinicians began reconceptualizing autism from a singular disorder to a cluster of related conditions on a spectrum of severity; as the criteria broadened to encompass less acutely impaired people—such as the more verbal group diagnosed with Asperger’s—prevalence rose dramatically. Before 1980, one in 2,000 children was thought to be autistic. By 2007, the Centers for Disease Control were reporting that one in 152 American children had an autism-spectrum disorder. Two years later, the CDC updated the ratio to one in 110. This past March, the CDC revised the number upward again, to one in 88 (one in 54, if you just count boys, who are five times as likely to have one as girls). A South Korean study from last year put the number even higher, at one in 38. And in New Jersey, according to the latest numbers, an improbable one in 29 boys is on the spectrum."
The Willard Suitcases
After the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane (later the Willard Psychiatric Center) closed in 1995, the New York State Museum received an unusual donation: 427 suitcases, dating from the 1910s to the 1960s, which had belonged to patients who died while institutionalized. Photographer Jon Crispin has undertaken a project to photograph their contents. [more inside]
Evicted for smelling bad
"It seeped through the walls. It wafted up stairwells and elevator shafts. It was so bad, it rendered the other units on Nowell's floor unrentable. It was so bad, it made people dry-heave as they walked down the hallway. It was so bad, it caused the inspectors who examined Nowell's unit to gag and tear up. It was so bad, it attracted vermin. It was suffocating, overpowering, disgusting, distressing. It smelled like sour milk. Like diarrhea. Like mold." [The Man Who Smelled Too Much]
Passing a joint resolution
Voters have made marijuana legal in Colorado and Washington. But what does this mean? Teasing out the subtleties of Washington State's Initiative 502 and Colorado's Amendment 64 will take some time. Here are some clues... [more inside]
They deserve better
The poor in America: In need of help Some 15% of Americans (around 46.2m people) live below the poverty line, as Ms Hamilton does. You have to go back to the early 1960s—before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programmes—to find a significantly higher rate. Many more, like Ms Dunham, have incomes above the poverty line but nevertheless cannot meet their families’ basic monthly needs, and there are signs that their number is growing.
Once upon a time the fates of these people weighed heavily on American politicians. Ronald Reagan boasted about helping the poor by freeing them from having to pay federal income tax. Jack Kemp, Bob Dole’s running-mate in 1996, sought to spearhead a “new war on poverty.” George W. Bush called “deep, persistent poverty…unworthy of our nation’s promise”.
No longer. Budgets are tight and the safety net is expensive. Mitt Romney famously said he was not “concerned about the very poor” because they have a safety net to take care of them. Mr Obama’s second-term plan mentioned poverty once, and on the trail he spoke gingerly of “those aspiring to the middle class”. “Poor” is a four-letter word.
"We cannot send 'The Dog' to the museum basement because it was on the apparently nonexisting second floor of the Quinta."
The Black Paintings is the title given to a series of works by Spanish artist Francisco Goya painted directly on the walls of his house from 1819-23. Their provenance has been doubted much like that of The Colossus, which has recently been attributed to Goya's assistant. Either way, the Black Paintings are masterpieces and have pride of place in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, which has put them all online in high resolution (you can save images to your computer in high resolution). [Goya previously]
Eh oh ehh-uh-EH-oh
Tiger cub frolicking on couch
Beer Suits!
In the early 20th century, the men of Princeton came up with a way to protect their two or three nice suits worn daily on campus from spilled beer (and the more likely vomit): The Beer Suit. Originally worn only by seniors and as white denim overalls, shirt and tie, with a white denim jacket over the top, future classes began decorating their jackets with slogans and designs of the day with current classes often going for black and orange jackets with tiger elements. You can see some of the original Beer suits at the Fashion Institute's Ivy Style exhibit in NYC, going through January 2013, or catch a Princeton class reunion where the beer jackets must be worn (unwashed) until your 25th reunion, when you can don a proper alumni blazer.
Sasha Issenberg: the new science of winning campaigns
A Vast Left-Wing Competency: "How Democrats became the party of effective campaigning — and why the GOP isn’t catching up anytime soon." Sasha Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab, has been writing a series of posts on Slate that focus on different aspects of "the new science of winning campaigns". [more inside]
It is a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property, and slaves will return home to their families.
Rolling Jubilee. New from Occupy Wall Street, a program to buy distressed debt for the sole purpose of forgiving it. It starts off with a show.
Previously
"The Double Helix has more in common with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood than, say, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
"The Turn of the Screw: James Watson on The Double Helix and his changing view of Rosalind Franklin": Maggie Koerth-Baker's brief interview with Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, about his "infamous" treatment of Franklin in his book The Double Helix, on the occasion of the publication of an annotated and illustrated edition of the same.
Can you make it pop?
Ad creatives, designers, animators, directors, illustrators and more have taken time out to dress up their favourite worst feedback from clients, transforming quotes that would normally give you a twitch, into a diverse collection of posters.
"It's definitely a wide-angle view"
Don Pettit, famed International Space Station photographer, gives an interesting talk at Luminance 2012 about the opportunities and difficulties of shooting aboard a space station.
Planet Toronto
Planet Toronto - a timelapse video. After catching the attention of Toronto's tourist board through selfmade "video love letters to Toronto" uploaded to Vimeo, Ryan Emond was given a budget and access to more locations to create a longer version.
A five year old reads from the selected works of Lord Conrad Black
"What does that mean? It's really weird what I'm saying." [audio] Five year old Mitchell Cait-Goldenthal reads an excerpt from former media mogul and convicted felon Lord Conrad Black's apoplectic post-US election Huffington Post essay [warning: bombast]. From CBC Radio's news show The Current. [more inside]
"Things that were once completely normal now seem totally surreal."
Innovative and extraordinarily talented British animator Run Wrake is perhaps best known for the short films Rabbit (previously, details) and The Control Master (previously). Run passed away suddenly just a few weeks ago, less than a year after having been diagnosed with cancer. He was 47. Here is an interview with Run from APEngine. [more inside]
Dad's favorite pastime shouldn't treat girls like second-class citizens
"Why did small business owner and gamer dad Mike Hoye spend the last few weeks hand-tweaking the text in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker so that the main character was referred to as a girl instead of a boy? As he put it, 'I’m not having my daughter growing up thinking girls don’t get to be the hero.'"
Canadian artist Gerhard defines a post-Cerebus identity
"I'm on record as saying that Gerhard was, for twenty years, the best pure pen-and-ink artist in the comic-book field and that it was unfortunate that he got pigeon-holed as a mere inker and that Dave Sim's "pariahdom" extended to someone who never voiced an opinion about anything one way or the other." - Dave Sim [more inside]
Puffin Populatin' Power
The Puffin Charmer or How one man restored the Atlantic Puffin population of the United States. Via Slate.
What's Snots?
Samosas
Significand of the figure
From the somewhat arbitrary and dimensionful to the timeless classic, one man's subjective list of notable properties of specific numbers. [more inside]
Dark Souls – the Hollowed Killer of Lordran
The Evolution of Type
56% of self-described moderates voted for Obama
Exit polls for the 2012 presidential election (CNN). The most likely bottom line from AP: "Overall, 53 percent had a favorable opinion of Obama, while only 47 percent felt that way about Romney. And 53 percent felt Obama was more in touch with people like them than Romney was." Initial reactions among the disappointed.
You will become like us
Can Neil Gaiman restore the Cybermen to their original greatness? - Neil Gaiman's second episode of Doctor Who will feature the classic cyborg villains introduced by medical scientist Kit Pedler in The Tenth Planet.
A Monument Devoted To The Best In Music, Photoplay And Theatrical Arts
"In 1911, the Saenger Brothers, Abe and Julian, operators of a drug business at Louisiana and Milam streets, decided to enter the amusement field. They were impressed with [Shreveport movie theatre operator E.V. Richards] and induced him to join them in their new field of endeavor ... In 1912 the Saenger Amusement Company was organized with Saenger Brothers, E.V. Richards and L. M. Ash as the stockholders. Richards continued as manager and an expansion policy was adopted which linked Texarkana, Monroe and Alexandria with Shreveport and thus formed the first Saenger chain of theatres in this area ... The company moved to New Orleans where the Strand Theatre, a building of magnificent modernity, was formally opened on July 4, 1917 ... In 1924 the company again inhaled deeply before exhaling a new record of expansion that established branches in 12 southern states. In 1926 and '27 further expansion took the company into Cuba, Jamaica, Panama and Costa Rica. During the expansion peak 320 theatres were involved in the holding company." Sadly, few remain. [more inside]
Radical DIY: artists/science-explorers talking on video.
Don't try this at home (or do!) international artists who make extraordinary and poetic machines (via): homemade satellites , rainbow and tornado generators , particle accelerators , and electronic musical instruments. [more inside]
November 7
analog beauty in a digital world
From The Sky Down
For some, it's a document examining a pivotal point in rock history with one of the biggest bands. For others, it is a eulogy marking the transformation of a vibrant force in music into ironic self-importance. Either way, David Guggenheim's 2011 film From The Sky Down [in two parts, ~90m total, trailer] is an interesting, somewhat historical, definitely hagiographic documentary about the struggles U2 faced between the end of the Joshua Tree tour and during the recording and release of Achtung Baby. [more inside]
I will do everything in my power to help him through the transition process
"We discussed the danger of partisan division, and the need for us, all of us, to come together and find common ground after a very rough and divisive couple of weeks. ... It is no secret that Brad and I had two very different visions for you and whom you date. Tonight, you have spoken, and Brad has prevailed."
--- The American People Have Spoken About Our Relationship
Sweet Feet
Internet sensation: Nine-year-old girl shredding defenses to the tune of 25 touchdowns Sam Gordon just wanted to run with the older kids. The coaches in the local tackle football league figured, hey, why not? Maybe they could turn it into a drill: Who can outrun Max's little sister?
They were shocked to find the answer: no one.
"Some kids, right before the contact, they stop," Sam told her father. "I don't. I just hit 'em."
... which really should be pronounced "fra" and not "pra."
RIP Bob Quinn. If you've spent any time at the University of Washington, you'll likely recognize him as the guy who wandered, with his well-behaved off-leash dog, up and down the Ave, spending all day at various coffee shops and bookstores. Or if you were using heroin or were otherwise at high risk for HIV in North Seattle anytime between the 1980s and now, you likely recognize him because he may have saved your life. [more inside]
"In this country, I can marry ANYONE I WANT! Because there's CHANGE in this country now!"
However long it takes for a real victory to be certified—no matter what happens on Election Day, it will be too early to unfurl a "Mission Accomplished" banner—the once ragtag march of lovers has acquired an air of inevitability. Edith Eyde's prophecy is almost fulfilled: gays are more or less regular folk. All the same, many who came out during the Stonewall era are wondering what will be lost as the community sheds its pariah status. They are baffled by the latter-day cult of marriage and the military—emblems of Eisenhower's America that the Stonewall generation joyfully rejected. The gay world is confronting a question with which Jews, African-Americans, and other marginalized groups have long been familiar: the price of assimilation.—Love on the March by Alex Ross. [more inside]
"Is this still you?"
On Election Night 2008 in Seattle, Renee received a random celebratory text from a stranger. She saved that text for four years, until last night.
Serious Eats' Ultimate Turducken
Just in time for (American) Thanksgiving, Serious Eats' Kenji Lopez-Alt provides an illustrated dissertation on the finer points of Turduckening. Warning: Link contains pictures of dead birds in various states of undress.
Roll up, roll up, buy three, get one free. War for All.
The Gulf protection racket is corrupt and dangerous folly.
Here is a graphic showing UK arms sales to the Middle East and North Africa.
Is Britain arming oppressive regimes in the Middle East?.
However U.S. Arms Sales Make Up Most of Global Market.
Here is a graphic showing UK arms sales to the Middle East and North Africa.
Is Britain arming oppressive regimes in the Middle East?.
However U.S. Arms Sales Make Up Most of Global Market.
"I am done making excuses for the pro-life movement."
How I Lost Faith In The Pro-Life Movement: "What I want to share here is how I came to this realization. And if you, reader, are one of those who opposes abortion because you believe it is murder and you want to save the lives of unborn babies, well, I hope to persuade you that the pro-life movement is not actually your ally in this, that you have been misled, and that you would be more effective in decreasing the number of abortions that occur if you were to side with pro-choice progressives. If this is you, please hear me out before shaking your head." [more inside]
The Nation That Stereotypes Together, Stays Together.
A long par five, right past death row
If ever there were a question about the ballooning scale of America's prison system, the Louisiana State Penitentiary provides an answer. It has its own golf course.
Don't Tell Him Pike
Actor Clive Dunn, best known for his role as Lance Corporal "Jonesy" Jones in Dad's Army, has died aged 92. A veteran comedy actor, Dunn was famous in the UK for his signature appearance in Dad's Army. Thanks to the BBC and endless repeats, he became well known outside the UK for his portrayal of the doddering Lance Corporal pressed back into service to defend Walmington-on-sea from an impending German invasion during WW2. The Home Guard based comedy had a large fan base.
There are a wide range of clips of his performances on the internet. Don't miss the Dad's Army movie which showed Dunn in his element.
Dunn was well known before he even set foot on the Dad's Army set from his work in the classic comedy series Hancock's Half Hour and The Tony Hancock Show. We also shouldn't forget his time as a pop star or a potato loving alien. But most importantly, don't panic.
Previously.
There are a wide range of clips of his performances on the internet. Don't miss the Dad's Army movie which showed Dunn in his element.
Dunn was well known before he even set foot on the Dad's Army set from his work in the classic comedy series Hancock's Half Hour and The Tony Hancock Show. We also shouldn't forget his time as a pop star or a potato loving alien. But most importantly, don't panic.
Previously.
The Critical Net Critic
The Gutenberg press, as Carr is well aware, did not precede or produce the literate subject, but merely facilitated its generalization by making the production of books more economical. Along the way it undoubtedly—through some of its own formal characteristics—exerted an influence on the text it carried... But there is a tendency in the critique of technology to over-emphasize such factors at the expense of farther-reaching socio-historical explanations.In the latest issue of New Left Review, Rob Lucas discusses the work of Nicholas Carr and calls for a socioeconomic approach to the history of computing. [more inside]
Films for Action
The Marvellous Mechanical House Organ
MR-808 is a replica of the famous 1980s electronic drum machine TR-808 – with robots playing the drum sounds.
Knife-Wielding Robot Slices Cucumber
Korean robot prepares salad ... very slowly. It also is (apparently) capable of loading a dishwasher, although there's no video of that.
What am I, an idiot? I mean, kind of?
You are carrying: A licence to kill
Whenever a new Bond film is released, the promotional push for it is huge. Sony, which is distributing the movie in many territories, has taken the bull by the horns with this one and commissioned a text adventure game loosely based on the character of James Bond.
You're all gonna die! / The world's gonna end!
From the guy who brought you Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf and Christian Bale is at Your Party comes a new musical:
In every disaster movie, some guy bursts into the Oval Office and says, "Mr. President! There's an asteroid headed directly for the earth!" This is that guy's story. [password: calvert]
An extraordinary coincidence?
And think about it for a second: this is bizarre. If Americans are in fact divided between two extremely different political ideologies, it would be an extraordinary coincidence if each of those philosophies were to hold the allegiance of nearly equal blocs of support. [more inside]
¿Sí Se Puede?
The November 6th elections saw a lot of historic decisions made in the United States -- the first black president re-elected, marijuana legalized for the first time in two states, gay marriage affirmed by the voters in four, and even the first openly gay senator. But perhaps the most underreported result yesterday came from outside the country altogether: in the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, a solid majority voted to reject the island's current status and join America as the long-fabled 51st state.
How the bid might fare in Congress is an open question, but both President Obama and Republican leaders have vowed support for the statehood movement if it proves successful at the ballot box (while D.C. officials ponder a two-fer gambit to grease the wheels). Though it would be the poorest state, joining the Union might bring economic benefits to both sides [PDF].
And politically, some argue the island might prove to be a reliably red state, despite the Hispanic population, although arch-conservative governor and Romney ally Luis Fortuño appears headed toward a narrow loss. But the most important question here, as always, is: how to redesign the flag?
(Puerto Rican statehood discussed previously.)
ELECTRICITY FIGHT!
ELECTRICITY FIGHT! (slyt- some audience responses NSFW)
Somewhere, over the rainbow, far far away
The light from a primary rainbow is partially polarised. Now, in a paper accepted by the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, the authors show how to use the weak signal from rainbows in starlight reflected by exoplanets to detect the presence of liquid water clouds. [arXiv preprint link]
In particular, liquid water clouds covering as little as 10%-20% of the planetary surface, with more than half of these covered by ice clouds, still create a polarized rainbow feature in the planetary signal. Indeed, calculations of flux and polarization signals of an exoplanet with a realistic Earth-like cloud coverage, show a strong polarized rainbow feature.
70% of Muslims in America voted for Bush in 2000
"In the 2000 election, approximately 70% of Muslims in America voted for Bush; among non-African-American Muslims, the ratio was over 80%. It can be safely said that if the Muslim community had voted the same way they had in 2000, [Romney] would have won." So what happened? [more inside]
No, not the rover...
"Curiosity – what’s inside the cube" is the first experiment out of Peter Molyneux-headed game studio 22cans. "Something amazing is hidden in the cube but only one player will be fortunate to discover what it is." You can get crackin' at the cube for free from the iTunes App store or Google Play. [more inside]
November 6
Terminator Arm Dad!
Terminator Arm Dad. Does what it says on the tin. Single Link Live Leak (SLLL)?
Like a vagina booger!
It happens after you've ran out of things to talk about with your partner, after you get your sh*t together and have talked about plans for a family. It is time to get engaged, send out the invitations, and start planning the wedding. NSFW audio
Bach is back
Election Day Divertimento: Mischa Maisky plays Bach Cello Suite No.1 in G (SLYT)
Fast zombies is never, ever a good sign
The first footage from the troubled, possibly doomed film adaptation of World War Z has been released [via io9]
50,000 Amps
No Doubt piss of Native Americans
No Doubt (mostly Gwen) are certainly not new to the world of pissing people off by appropriating their culture. Now Native Americans have taken issue with No Doubt's latest video, the band has apologized and pulled the offending clip. Native American writers such as Lisa Charleyboy lay out their issues with the depiction.
a challenge of squee!
Can you make it through this post without squealing?
Plus hedgehog bath time! & other moments of squee, within [more inside]
Obsessing over the election is one thing, but this is something else again!
C'mon over to Lucky's Amazing Sports Lists and kill a little time. The front page is impressive enough, but how about a list of all American football field goals in excess of 60 yards (including a long list in 6 pt type of all female place kickers in American football)? Looking for more focus? How about this page detailing the career of Dave Myers, the 1929 quarterback for the NYU team, who was Black. Basketball more your thing? Check out the history of the Gruman Aircraft Company pro teams, integrated in the 1940s! Or you could just peruse the list of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game. The design is crude, but there is far too much information to do justice to in a short post. (Via Stephan Fatsis on the Oct. 29 Hang Up and Listen sports podcast.)
We have no plan
You loved Battlestar Galactica (but you may have been iffy on the ending), and you may have enjoyed Caprica, so now, coming soonish, in the most confusing way possible, is the long delayed Blood And Chrome. A web series, a sequel, a prequel, and movie and/or a DVD. Something like that. Probably starting this week.
Handy Shark Tracker for Vacation Planning
Pick a shark and follow his/her course through the oceans of the world.
The one-button power trip
The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia"Ken Mampel, an unemployed, 56-year-old Floridian, is in large part the creator of the massive Hurricane Sandy Wikipedia page. He's also the reason that, for nearly a week, the page had no mention of climate change."
we choose to have an election thread and and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard
Finally, it's almost over. Obama and Romney tie in Dixville Notch, Obama landslide in Hart's Location. Interactive Infographic: 512 Paths to the White House. More election 2012 infographics. And still more. How to tell who is winning Ohio. Ohio recount plan could take election into overtime. Gandalf speaks: Late Poll Gains for Obama Leave Romney With Longer Odds. Final estimates from Votamatic and Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium. Google's voting education page. [more inside]
In the mood for shove
The Grandmaster (Chinese language trailer) - Wong Kar Wai returns with a martial arts film based on the life of Ip Man.
Around the Corner
Around The Corner: How Differential Steering Works (9:31) is a brilliantly simple explination of the deceptively simple concept of differential steering by the Jam Handy Organization in 1937. It makes a great introduction to this more advanced modern explination (4:44) for the layman. [more inside]
"Fundamentally flawed, unreasonable and irrational."
"Fundamentally flawed, unreasonable and irrational."
In 2006, ABN Amro created a new type of financial instrument, the constant proportion debt obligation (CPDO), and sold a number of them to 15 local councils in Australia. Standard & Poor's rated these CPDOs as AAA.
The Federal Court of Australia has now determined that both ABN Amro and S&P are liable for the losses the councils suffered when the value of the CPDOs collapsed during the financial crisis; the councils lost 90 per cent on the deal. S&P's rating of the CPDOs was found to have been "misleading and deceptive". Felix Salmon provides some analysis. [more inside]
With great powers comes great responsibility
Undecided on election day? Sat through all the debates and still not sure who's right and who's wrong? What you're really looking for is an endorsment by people you can trust completely, you can look up to, true heroes? Well, J. Caleb Mozzocco has taken the trouble to interview a representative cross section of superheroes and is starting to see a pattern. [more inside]
November 5
yeah, Google's gonna love this
BUYRAL (2:30 promotional video) is a new service that makes brands go viral, by the sale of bulk clicking on videos. Just another straight-faced tongue-in-cheek idea from Totonto's john st. advertising, who were previously seen on MeFi with Catvertising (and, yes, they have made some cat ads).
Is my iPhone Changing my Brain?
What's Wrong With Online Reading, a slide presentation by Randy Connolly, argues that the relatively recent and increasingly popular approach to reading and learning - on computers, tablets and smartphones instead of traditional print - influences what and how we read, research and think, with disturbing consequences.
In Sandy's Wake
Elliot Carter, 1908 - 2012
Elliot Carter, icon of modern American classical music and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has died. [more inside]
Bee Gees and Pink Floyd. Who knew?
Stayin' Alive In The Wall In an attempt to distract myself from current events and tomorrow's election hilarity, I found this, which I now share with you.
And, in this corner, weighing in at 8 lbs... PUPPY!
Less than a day away from one of the most significant political battles of this century, it is critical that we not lose sight of that physical and mental conflict entered into on a daily basis in homes across this country. It is difficult to understand why we've intentionally designed our environment in a manner that enrages, terrifies, and taunts our most loved little ones, but we have.....and, alone, they confront it with bravery and determination.
The Biggest Cock
Fast tracking kebal - Plugging the cord into an electric socket, I was instructed to place my foot on top of one of the plates. Pak Edi held the other plate under his own foot, and immediately his leg began to quiver from the electric current.
Can I read this?
Biological physicist Gabor Forgacs normally works on the “printing” of new organs for use in clinical trials, however, his technology could also be used to bioprint meat. In the first demonstration of its kind, Forgacs heats and eats a tasty morsel on stage. sltv
Murder of an Idealist
Murder of an Idealist. "For six hours on September 11, the American compounds in Benghazi, Libya, stood siege. When the attack was over, J. Christopher Stevens's body was pulled from the wreckage—the first U.S. ambassador killed by militants in over thirty years. Since then, his death has been politicized and the details of the attack distorted. Sean Flynn straightens out the story of Stevens's last days in Libya—and reveals the true believer we lost that day."
Sexism as irony...
"Hipster Sexism consists of the objectification of women but in a manner that uses mockery, quotation marks, and paradox: the stuff you learned about in literature class."
Who did your voting machine vote for?
How to rig an election, and why anomalous exit poll data will no longer arouse suspicions of electronic vote flipping.
I Don't Talk to A--holes
The new "no comment": F-Off. Has electronic media created an F-bomb journalistic culture? "The close 2012 presidential campaign has been an especially ideal environment for this new mind-set of nonstop combat — marked by blazing email trails, streaked with profanity and accusations of incompetence and bad faith."
"I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."
After Outside Over There, which is my favorite book of mine, a little girl wrote to me from Canada: “I like all of your books, why did you write this book, this is the first book I hate. I hate the babies in this book, why are they naked, I hope you die soon. Cordially…” ... I was so elated. It was so natural and spontaneous.... I should have written back, “Honey, I will; just hold your horses.”
I don't know any jokes about running radishes. Please supply your own.
"From the Department of Awesome Anthropomorphic Foodstuffs:" photos of a particularly delightful Daikon radish, brought to you by @Konsai_umemama, a farmer in Hyogo prefecture.
The Decline Of English Murder
The smartest rubber Gallus domesticus you have ever met!
Camilla the rubber chicken is the child of a chicken and an extra-terrestrial visitor (whose name is being concealed for legal and safety issues)." After a sad childhood in the circus, Camilla joined the Heliophysics team at NASA and befriended Little SDO, the satellite component of the the Solar Dynamics Observatory. In her capacity as SDO mascot and astrochick, Camilla flew into space with Little SDO, flew into a solar radiation storm, continues to monitor space weather, and is training for a trip to the International Space Station alongside astronaut Lt. Commaner Wiseman. Camilla also participates in science outreach and education programs, and she's currently in Australia, preparing to run the solar eclipe marathon! [more inside]
Convince me. Convince me. Convince me.
Charlie Pierce is a longtime sportswriter and author who has, among other things, reported for Grantland, Slate, and the Boston Globe, paneled on more than a few games of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, and fished diapers out of trees as a state forest ranger. He's also made a name for himself as one of the sharpest and most incisive political columnists since Molly Ivins. The lead writer for Esquire's Politics Blog ever since a caustic article on former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell cost him his Globe job, Pierce has churned out an uninterrupted stream of clever, colorful, and challenging commentary on the 2012 election season and its implications for the nation's future, dispatches often seething with eviscerative anger but shot through with deep love of (or perhaps grief for) country. Look inside for a selection of Pierce's most vital works for some edifying Election Eve reading. [more inside]
on Kate Moss, and "taking one for the team"
On Kate Moss, and Taking One for the Team: "So, earlier this week Vanity Fair published a rare interview with Moss, in which the model, who is well-known for her circumspection, is unusually frank about the early years of her career. Moss was still a skinny, gangly teenager when she was plucked from mediocrity in Croydon and catapulted to superstardom. She was barely an adult, almost still a child, when she did her first topless photo shoot, with Corinne Day for The Face. In the interview, she talks about how uncomfortable this made her... This isn't the only the only revelation Moss made during the interview. It also turns out that the famous Calvin Klein campaign she did in 1992 with Mark Wahlberg gave her a nervous breakdown... Conveniently ignoring the fact that when the pictures were taken, Moss wasn't 'the face of the '90s', but a skinny teenage girl who cried because she was made to take her clothes off, Needham continues by saying that Moss' skinny frame 'seemed to encapsulate the euphoria of those long-distant times.'" [more inside]
Going Souterrain
Our aim is to examine [Paris's] connection to its underground in a way no one has before: we will attempt to walk from the southern edge to the northern, using only catacombs, telecom tunnels, sewers and other hidden infrastructure. It is a 14-mile trek, every step illegal.
"The most fundamental signals which permeate this world are inaudible."
Breast cancer rules rewritten in 'landmark' study
What we currently call breast cancer should be thought of as 10 completely separate diseases, according to an international study which has been described as a "landmark". The categories could improve treatment by tailoring drugs for a patient's exact type of breast cancer and help predict survival more accurately. The study in Nature analysed breast cancers from 2,000 women [Abstract] . It will take at least three years for the findings to be used in hospitals. [more inside]
The Fifth problem: Math & Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union
The Fifth Problem: "If this were a boxing match, with one of the boxers pressed in the corner, bloodied, desperately trying to hold his own against the barrage of punches falling on him (many of them below the belt, I might add), that would be the equivalent of the final, deadly, blow. The problem looked innocent enough at first glance: given a circle and two points on the plane outside the circle, construct another circle passing trough those two points and touching the first circle at one point." Edward Frenkel, now Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, details the curiously baroque way Moscow State University chose to discriminate against talented Jewish math students: By quizzing them with fiendishly difficult math problems with deceptively simple solutions that are nearly impossible to find. [more inside]
November 4
A Day at the Mt. Tam Fire Lookout
Gary Yost is a volunteer fire spotter at the Mount Tamalpais fire lookout. He made a beautiful video of "a day in the life" which has gone viral--somehow didn't make it to Metafilter yet.
The Plot to Destroy America's Beer
He examined the label. It said the beer was no longer brewed in Bremen. He looked more closely at the fine print: “Product of the USA.” This was profoundly unsettling for a guy who had been a Beck’s drinker for more than half his life. He was also miffed to have paid the full import price for the 12-pack.
A little post-Hallowe'en Lovecraftian horror.
Broodhollow is a new webcomic that has been pithily described by its creator as “Tintin goes to Innsmouth.” It’s a bit of Lovecraftian horror with subtly detailed artwork. Be sure to check out long-running companion website Ichor Falls, a “…short fiction site for the discerning horror/terror enthusiast." Great starting points include curious little thing and candle cove (previously). [more inside]
Prop 34
Among the ballot initiatives up for consideration on Tuesday is California's Proposition 34, which would eliminate the death penalty in favor of life imprisonment without parole. If successful, this measure would make California the 18th state to abolish capital punishment, following Connecticut's April 2012 abolition. It would also apply retroactively to the 727 people currently on death row in the state, the most of any state in the country by nearly 100%. While support has been increasing for Prop 34, as many as 17% of California voters remain undecided. [more inside]
Gas shortages in wake of Sandy prompt price gouging debate
A massive shortage of gas all over New York and New Jersey is fueling hours-long lines stretching blocks or even miles. A big part of the problem has been power shortages to gas stations and refineries. Nevertheless, some argue that laws preventing gas prices from spiking in response to the disaster ("price gouging") are making things much worse, discouraging businesses from staying open in tough conditions and preventing entrepreneurs from profiting from any clever ways of increasing supply. Others admit gouging has some advantages, but still consider it ethically dubious. Gouging seems to be happening informally regardless.
"Don't you think there is enough anxiety at present?"
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: The thing that strikes me about your friend's building -- if I understood you correctly -- is that somehow in some intentional way it is not harmonious. That is, Moneo intentionally wants to produce an effect of disharmony. Maybe even of incongruity.A debate — old, but still relevant — between architects Christopher Alexander (whose new book The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth depicts the struggle between his worldview and Eisenman's at length) and Peter Eisenman (who here discusses his frustrations with liberals and the avant-garde).
PETER EISENMAN: That is correct.
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: I find that incomprehensible. I find it very irresponsible. I find it nutty. I feel sorry for the man. I also feel incredibly angry because he is fucking up the world.
Every Woody Allen Movie
"[O]ne gender is not entitled to participate in races of the other"
The International Ski Federation (FIS) has denied Lindsey Vonn's request that she be able to compete in a men's World Cup downhill race at Lake Louise, Alberta on November 24. The US Ski and Snowboard Associaton had petitioned the FIS in support of Vonn's request and the President of Alpine Canada has expressed his disagreement with the FIS decision. The New York Times explained that Vonn spends time training with men, often races on men's skis, and "has, at times, been faster than men in training." The BBC reports Vonn said, "I'd like the chance to compete against them and see where I stand."
Putting the "trick" in "trick-or-treat": Tonight I gave kids an oyster instead of candy.
My IQ
When I came to the US, I heard about Mensa — the high IQ society. My IQ had never been tested, so I was curious. I was told that there was a special IQ test for non-English speakers and that my fresh immigrant status and lack of English knowledge was not a problem. I signed up.
the future redefined
Richard Florida (previously, 2) speaks to leaders [flash 11mins] of the APEC nations, November, 2011. [more inside]
Oliver Burkeman: "In order to be truly happy... we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions – or, at the very least, to stop running quite so hard from them."
Oliver Burkeman on happiness through negative thinking: "I think many of the techniques that claim to enable us to achieve happiness don’t work. They are too focused on strenuously stamping out any trace of negativity, rather than cultivating the conditions of real happiness... We are all to some extent in its grip, whenever we think that the way to achieve whatever we’re trying to achieve is to go after it vigorously, and that if we believe it will all work out fine then it will." A "five books" interview with the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. [more inside]
The Life of a Permanent Nomad
Back in 1999, Wandering Earl left home for a three month trip to Asia that still hasn't ended. As a permanent nomad, Earl's aim is to demonstrate that long-term travel is not a crazy fantasy, but a very real lifestyle option instead. Find out where Earl is now, and where he's been on his blog. [more inside]
Let's catch a flick, or 303 of them....
IMDB top 250 (+ 53 ) films in 2.5 minutes. (some NSFW content)
"The company at this point isn’t just a key purveyor of lower labor standards and a globalized and concentrated supply chain, it is a key tell for policymakers."
"What I did not expect was shrugging boredom, the most feared of student reactions."
Is "Catcher In The Rye" outdated and outmoded? Jessica Roake at Slate thinks so. And she's backing the author of "Cloud Atlas" when it comes to the new champion...
November 3
Gone, baby, gone.
Last year, after Halloween, Jimmy Kimmel had parents troll their kids for cheap laughs by telling them that they had eaten all their candy. While many observers, including some Mefites, felt that lying to your kids in this way was being willfully-mean, it garnered 34 million hits on YouTube, so naturally, he did it again.
Whether you think this is funny or not is definitely debatable; but if you're an old curmudgeon, like me, perhaps 3 year-old Madeline might just restore your hope for humanity.
Mr. President was fascinated by gunfighters.
Coyote Man, Mr. President & the Gunfighters. A prose poem, written by Gary Snyder, that should be required reading for whoever is in the White House on January 20.
Dogs in Space
On November 3 1957, Лайка, also known as Laika The Space Dog is launched into orbit around the planet earth. A small mongrel chosen for her patient temper, the Soviet Space Program gloried in her achievement, but when she was sent into space, there was no plan in place for a proper re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.
When pressed for details, the USSR media eventually claimed that she was peacefully euthanized with drugged food after six days in orbit. Documents released years later revealed that after six hours and four orbits, she died from a faulty heat-shield malfunction. Her spacecraft disintegrated five months later...
But what if Laika didn’t die? [more inside]
The cosmos is also within us, we're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos, to know itself.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series of one hour shows written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, that was aired at the tail end of 1980 and was - at the time - the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. It is best introduced by an audio excerpt of one of his books, The Pale Blue Dot. Inside is a complete annotated collection of the series. [more inside]
Warning: Contains scenes of violence, plush toys, stuffing, and babies.
Iron Baby and Dragon Baby, the inevitable prequels for two movie franchises, from Patrick Boivin, creator of AT-AT Day Afternoon (previously).
Voter ID - Jay Bookman - The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Beautiful Georgia, my adopted state as I finish life’s journey ... my last year ever to vote in a presidential election. I wanted to feel part of this great privilege, wanted to again walk out of my precinct tapping my Georgia Peach voter sticker. Even if the day were dark, gloomy and cold, the sun would be shining. One Georgia nonagenarian's quest for voter ID
Mitt Romney is a liar.
The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism From The Baffler.
We declare the world as our canvas
Street art; we see it every day from Rio to
Paris and even the
Lebanon.
But then there is Guerrilla Crochet.
But then there is Guerrilla Crochet.
No parades for these veterans
Eighty years ago Australia went to war against a fierce and terrible enemy threatening the very foundations of life in Western Australia. An enemy so tough the Australian commanding officer described them as "like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop". Though the army did have the upper hand in the first engagements, dreams of a quick victory were dashed when the enemy's central command let its "unwieldy army split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month". Yes, it's eighty years since the Emu War.
NOLA to New York
NOLA to New York Katrina survivors reach out to Sandy survivors
Indonesian Street Art
The Indonesian Street Art Database (ISAD) is an artist-run project that aims to archive street art in Indonesia as a documentation of the country’s urban culture. Art Radar delves into the ISAD archives to explore the breadth of street art in Indonesia and the concerns of the country’s urban artists.
Some people need offending
Vexillology
Saturday flag links: Colorful EU flags (and more) and the old national food flags.
A natural Canadian flag. Proposed Earth flag. A couple Inception flags. The flag of Oceania. Evolution of the US flag and wikipedia’s timeline of national flags. Dannebrog, the oldest state flag still in use (since 1219) and the flag of Christiania. One of the most famous photos of a flag, Soviet troops raising the flag of the Soviet Union atop the German Reichstag.
The powerful flag of the NSDAP. A flag designer, the principles of flag design, and flags by design.
204 pixel art flags made for an Olympics video game. [more inside]
50 Machines to build a civilization with...
The Post-Apocalypse Survival Machine Nerd Farm. The goal: "... to create a completely self-sufficient community that produces not only its own food, but also energy, tools, and raw materials for making those tools. "
Fugazi Edits
It’s a fierce object, many-layered yet taut as could be. It’s a dense field made of raw materials so rarefied that even in combination the resulting effect is singular, tensile. The album in question is Fugazi Edits, for which Chris Lawhorn took the extensive discography of the hardcore band Fugazi and combined multiple songs into new hybrid compositions.
A Victory for the Caretaker of Dreams
The Caretaker of Dreams Wins The first time the rainbow mysteriously appeared on a tunnel visible from the Don Valley Parkway, the North York parks department painted over it.
But the guerrilla mural artist — known as “the Caretaker of Dreams” — persevered, eventually winning them over.
Now, 40 years later, the city has officially restored the psychedelic mural that has brought smiles to countless grim commutes — just as the artist intended.
A Literally Other-Worldly Self-Portrait
Amateur astronomer Stuart Atkinson painstakingly stitched together 55 photos to create this stunning self-portrait of Curiosity sitting on Mars. (Click the picture for the full-size 5400 pixel-wide masterpiece.)
Tools for the 1/12 scale craftsman
The Toolchest Site does what it says on the tin. Possibly the most mind blowing tool chest on the site is this masterful 1/12 scale reproduction based on the Hewitt chest at Colonial Williamsburg, done by celebrated miniaturist William Robertson. Everything works like the original, down to the lock and the included tools like the plane and the folding rule.
twee, nostalgia-driven, and...dumbass?
In China, hipsters are called “cultured youth” when they're not being called "dumbassess", that is. [more inside]
November 2
Chum
Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt (previously) has released his first solo single since returning from Samoa. The confessional song by the 18 year-old rapper details the troubled period in his life that lead to his stay at boarding school. [more inside]
NYC Marathon Cancelled
Bloomberg finally cancels NYC Marathon Reversing his earlier position, Mayor Bloomberg decides to cancel this year's marathon. [more inside]
Art for your suffrage.
"Now, in 2012, it’s possible the women’s vote could effect the outcome the U.S. presidential election. You would think we’d also have moved beyond gender stereotypes depicted in these postcards, but they’re still strong."
War on Women, Waged in Postcards: Memes From the Suffragist Era
melodysheep - remixes for the soul & symphony of science
Our Story in 1 Minute: "A tapestry of footage tracing the cosmic and biological origins of our species, set to original music" by Melodysheep (John D. Boswell). Aside from this latest video, Melodysheep has also recently posted a Bill Hicks/George Carlin remix - The Big Electron ("Two legendary comedians offer their perspectives on life, through song"); a remix of comedian Jim Breuer called Metal Songs for Kids, and a new Symphony of Science - Our Biggest Challenge: "A musical investigation into the causes and effects of global climate change and our opportunities to use science to offset it; featuring Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley and Isaac Asimov." [more inside]
Won't Get Fooled agai... Walkies?!
An Alien and a Rat vs. Two Monsters. Sounds right.
In 2008, the Muppetheads behind the Tough Pigs staged their own muppety election, in which Ernie (and running mate Bert) won the Presidency over a Fraggle ticket of Gobo & Red. Now they're doing it again, but with Ernie not going for a second term and inevitable favorite Kermit not running either, the 2012 Muppet Election is between a Sesame Street ticket of Grover/Cookie Monster and a Muppet Show ticket of Gonzo/Rizzo. And yes, there is negative campaigning on both sides. [more inside]
Imagine a spherical cow.
Stephen Fry in America
Stephen Fry in America is a six part BBC television series of one hour shows in which Stephen Fry travels across the United States of America. He travels, mostly in a London cab, through all 50 U.S. states and offers his unique variety of insight as well as his infectious optimism and genuine love for many things American. New World, Deep South, Mississippi [US Edit], Mountains and Plains, True West, and Pacific. [more inside]
A Slower Speed of Light
A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game prototype, built by the MIT Game Lab, that emulates the visual effects of special relativity.
Donald Brun: Master of the Object Poster
The legendary Swiss graphic designer Donald Brun (1909-1999) was a master of the Object Poster (where the image is paramount in selling the product), an artform that thrived in the early and mid-20th Century before cheaper paper and printing and distribution methods made it virtually obsolete. Brun's work is marked by humor and whimsy, bright bold colors and shapes, a wide variety of graphic styles (although it is often compared to classic children's book illustrations), and animals. [more inside]
John Cusack was unavailable for comment.
It's Not the End of the World: What the Ancient Maya Tell Us About 2012. The Foundation for Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (FAMSI, previously) has a series of in-depth & visually rich presentations on Mesoamerican creation myths, concepts of time, and calendrics related to the up-coming (non)apocalypse. [more inside]
Radiohead - Comet, Crying, Vivarium, Ten
[INSERT STORMTROOPER HEIGHT REFERENCE HERE]
In 2010, 1st grader Katie Goldman was the bullied kid at her school for being a girl who was into Star Wars (which is, of course, only for boys). Geeks and fans across the net rallied to give moral support to Katie ("The Littlest Jedi") for standing up for who she wanted to be. Katie and her mother went on to lead an anti-bullying effort at Katie's school (which now observes December 10th as "Proud To Be Me Day") and Katie became a symbol of geek pride and anti-bullying, standing up at a birthday party for a boy who wanted to have his nails painted like the girls were getting. The experience became the source of book Bullied. In 2012, it was Katie's turn to show geek solidarity. The 501st Legion/"Vader's Fist", who had been so supportive when her story went viral, were now among those being taunted online for their cosplay geekery at a con, and Katie wanted to be a stormtrooper for Halloween to show her support. When the troopers heard that, the 501st's First Imperial Stormtrooper Detachment came together to raise the funds/materials/expertise and build a full-on custom-fitted set of proper stormtrooper armor ('77 movie specs and all), with just days to spare before Halloween, as a gift for the little girl whose courage inspired them so much. [more inside]
Annyong, anja, nuo, aniya, choah, very choah
We document a male Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) that imitates human speech, matching Korean formants and fundamental frequency in such detail that Korean native speakers can readily understand and transcribe the imitations. (full text, PDF, video and sound files) (Previously: the belugas NOC and Lagosi, Hoover the talking seal, unfortunately paywalled) (via Homunculus)
Meeting Steve Ditko
"I’ve since discovered that dropping in on Steve Ditko unannounced is a pretty common practice. That does’t make me feel any better. I felt gross for having invaded someone’s privacy – there is zero excuse – but the fact that people do this as a sort of known event is even worse. I haven’t pulled that on Ditko since and I never will, but I suppose we’re all free to disrupt the man just to satiate our curiosity, or “just cuz”, as if he were a landmark attraction and not a person." -- On Ditko's eightyfifth birthday, cartoonist Michael Fiffe talks about Steve Ditko, the influence Ditko has had on his own comics and the incredibly gracious way in which he corresponded with him as a young clueless fan.
Interpreting Lydia Callis
Arika Okrent deconstructs the signing of interpreter Lydia Callis to demonstrate how body language and facial expressions are used grammatically in American Sign Language. [more inside]
Custom knifemaking
What folks are buying at Amoeba Records
What's In My Bag?
The concept is simple - shoppers at Amoeba Records (locations: Berkeley, San Francisco and Hollywood) talk about the vinyl, CDs and DVD's they're buying. There's a bunch to watch, categorized via artists / customers / staff. A few to get you started - Bob Odenkirk, Jim Thirwell, Lee Ranaldo, Grimes, Elijah Wood, Mike Schank
A story of disaster solidarity and mutual aid
As you all know, being the creative type that I am, I love do it yourself projects… however, I found myself in the middle of a rather unusual project, which involved a lot of creative “thinking outside of the box” and it was more then just a do-it-yourself. It was more of a “do it ourselves” project. and we did it. successfully.: Here’s the story of how we helped Nick Dupree. [more inside]
Yes, its all very funny, but now its time for the money
"The head of HM Revenue and Customs is to be grilled by MPs over revelations hundreds of tax evaders are to avoid prosecution and being named publicly after striking immunity deals with the taxman." [more inside]
I wanted to show people that the war was about survival and not just about death. When the soldiers weren't fighting this is how they were living.
The home front: Surrounded by barbed wire, sandbags and mud, this 60ft trench is barely distinguishable from those occupied by British soldiers fighting in the First World War almost a century ago.
The enormous dugout has been painstakingly recreated by an ex-history teacher in his back garden in Surrey, and the dedicated 55-year-old even spent 24 hours living in its confines with a team of volunteers as part of his efforts to experience life as a WWI soldier.
Vicious Old Queens
Here's a sitcom with an unusually high pedigree: Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi to play an old married couple in a new british sitcom from Itv, airing in april 2013!
"Home of my very own short horror films."
"We worked very much like a comedy troupe — you sit around at a writer’s table and say, 'Who has the best idea?' It’s like campfire stories, you just try to freak each other out." An interview with Drew Daywalt, short-form horror pioneer behind Fewdio (previously) and now Daywalt Fear Factory. [more inside]
Once More with Feeling (again)
Aliens Babies would kick Muppets Babies ass.
The British Military Still Uses Carrier Pigeons
The British Military Still Uses Carrier Pigeons. Not really. But the skeletal remains of a WWII carrier pigeon were recently found in a chimney, with a coded message still attached to its leg.
Flash Anzan
The world record for Flash Anzan was broken this year at the 2012 All Japan Soroban [abacus] Championship. Competitors in Flash Anzan sum up 15 3-digit numbers that are displayed in turn within a set time. The record is now 1.70 seconds, which means that each number is displayed for just over 0.1s. Here is a video of a "slow" 1.85 seconds seconds where the numbers are barely readable. [more inside]
November 1
London Bus Stops 2001-2005
Every few minutes of the day, all over the capital, people gather into small groups to share the same space and fleeting moment in time... simply to wait for something routine and forgettable as a London bus. In transient, with time to kill, and often among strangers, each collection of these individuals proves completely unique from the next. Each collection provides a little insight into London's incredible diversity, how they relate to their surroundings, and each other. The very deliberate intention with By the Bus Stop, was to capture those little moments which happen spontaneously, when the meeting of individuals is completely left to chance. [more inside]
OMNI Magazine Downloadable from Internet Archive
OMNI Magazine delighted, informed, and even confused geeks of many flavours, and is now available to be downloaded from the Internet Archive. [previously]
Lebbeus Woods, Architect
“I’m not interested in living in a fantasy world. All my work is still meant to evoke real architectural spaces. But what interests me is what the world would be like if we were free of conventional limits. Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.”
Lebbeus Woods, a brilliant, visionary architect, has passed away. [more inside]
Three Drops of Water, One Grain of Sand
His amazing music, ranging from haunting to groovy to velvety smooth, went barely noticed for most of his life. So it's oddly fitting that his death would pass barely noticed, too.
Terry Callier died in Chicago last Saturday at age 67. [more inside]
Existential cat
A theorem concerning corporate headquarters
If you are Rackspace, then your corporate headquarters are located inside a dead shopping mall in a suburb of San Antonio. (SLNYT)
So it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut went to Biafra shortly before its fall in 1970 (Biafra previously). This is what he had to say about it.
Still nothing nearly as awful as eyeball leeches.
11 Legendary Monsters of Asia. 10 Legendary Monsters of Europe. 7 Legendary Monsters of South America. 10 Legendary Monsters of Australasia and Antarctica. 11 Legendary Monsters of Africa. 10 Legendary Monsters of North America Part 1, Part 2.
If-
Michael Caine plays If- straight. Robert Morley hams If- up. Dennis Hopper misses a line or two, Harvey Keitel misses a whole stanza, and Grampa Simpson misses the point entirely. Joni Mitchell sings sublime. KeyKrusher raps ridiculous. Federer and Nadal go head to head, with commentary. International cricket pundits celebrate the Indian Premier League, Des Lynam toasts World Cup 98, and a failing football manager addresses a press conference. A teenager learns from an angel, and seven year old Humza learns If- for himself. [more inside]
Back of the pan
Some people have made an interesting and clever 'goalkeeping machine', which prevents football (soccer) strikers from scoring goals, using high speed cameras and projectiles sent out to intercept the ball. And - obviously! - they've deployed it there, in the goalmouth, in a toilet.
monsters are people too!
12-year-old uses Dungeons & Dragons to help scientist dad with his research: Cognitive scientist Alan Kingstone wanted to test whether people look at each others' eyes or simply to the center of faces. Some had suggested an answer would be impossible to discern because humans' eyes are in the center of their faces. But Alan’s son, Julian, a fan of D&D, told his father about D&D monster characters that have eyes in unusual places, such as on their hands or tail. “[Julian suggested] if you just showed them these images, you could find out whether they are looking for the eyes or not. I thought, actually, that’s a very good idea,” Kingstone said (summarized from Cosmos). The paper describing the results - "Monsters are people too" - was published in the British Royal Society journal Biology Letters this month, with 14-year-old Julian named as the lead author.
Become a Citizen Election Monitor
My Fair Election crowd-sources pollwatching: "We hope that this information will be used by citizens, journalists, and election officials to identify the worst polling places and work to fix them. We hope that officials in charge of polling places with long lines or otherwise operate poorly will be embarrassed, held to account, and so motivated to do a better job." (via Hollie Russon-Gilman and Archon Fung)
No dikes yet? No dikes yet.
In 2009, the Dutch television network RTL reported on a proposal to build a Dutch-style floodwall across the Narrows at the mouth of New York harbor (SLYT), complete with an animation of what it was designed to protect against: flooding of 4 meters into Manhattan & the surrounding areas. This uncannily resembles what transpired this Monday.
Coronet Instructional Films
From the mid 40s to the mid 50s Coronet Instructional Films were always ready to provide social guidance for teenagers on subjects as diverse as dating, popularity, preparing for being drafted, and shyness, as well as to children on following the law, the value of quietness in school, and appreciating our parents. They also provided education on topics such as the connection between attitudes and health, what kind of people live in America, how to keep a job, supervising women workers, the nature of capitalism, and the plantation System in Southern life. Inside is an annotated collection of all 86 of the complete Coronet films in the Prelinger Archives as well as a few more. Its not like you had work to do or anything right? [more inside]
So f*>%ing future
"Yelp Reviews As Poetry". "A guide to the queer teen stars of YouTube." "Can a video game company save capitalism?" "In Defense of Ke$ha." "Playing golf inside Louisiana's largest prison." "What getting an abortion is like in a Red State." "We may have reached peak infographic."
Here ye Here ye!
The first (& only?) issue of Tomorrow Magazine [founded by fired Good Magazine editors] is out! [more inside]
In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, There is Only Billy
October 31st gave us possibly the most unexpected Family Circus of all time. Not a photoshop, this is what appears in newspapers. And in case you're wondering, Jeff Keane did his homework.
What About Asstrology?
Asstrology is a number from Eric Idle's new musical, What About Dick?, which will be available for download on the 13th.
Revisiting Baseball's Perez Brothers after Pasqual's Death
"My best start I win one-nothing," he recalls. "I have single, double, two RBI."
A quote from Chi Cho Perez, father of the Perez brothers, chronicled in this classic 1990 Sports Illustrated article.
Soberingly, Pasqual Perez, famous for among other things missing a start because he was circling Atlanta repeatedly, was found murdered in the Dominican Republic today.
Wax Tailor/Dusty Rainbow from the Dark
Trip-hop/downtempo DJ and producer Wax Tailor (autoplay media) just released Dusty Rainbow from the Dark (album trailer), a narrated concept album about childhood, melancholia, and escapism. Two videos Time to Go (featuring Aloe Blacc) and Heart Stop (featuring Jennifer Charles) have been released. The album combines vocal collaborations with movie-line heavy compositions constructed through the turntable and sampler. (An earlier example is I Don't Know from Tales of Forgotten Memories.) [more inside]
A Very Still Life
The paintings are the work of none other than Jack Kevorkian, the late Armenian-American pathologist, philosopher, assisted suicide advocate, and convicted felon otherwise known as Dr. Death. They are strikingly well executed. Unlike the works of other improbable painters — Adolf Hitler’s multicolored bouquets and elegant nudes or Winston Churchill’s pastoral sceneries — Kevorkian’s canvases are markedly obvious and gruesomely, almost risibly, literal. And the man in the coma, the man on fire, and the man with the brains by his side look a lot like the auteur himself.
Factor Conga
Animation of prime factorization of the integers based on Brent Yorgey's factorization diagrams, described here. [via Data Pointed, previously.]
New chapter of "Answered Prayers" published
A small piece of Truman Capote’s famously unfinished novel Answered Prayers has come to light. The six-page story, “Yachts and Things,” found among Capote’s papers in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, is published in the December issue of Vanity Fair, out now in New York and nationally next week. The story will be available online in mid-November. [more inside]
Magic: The Gathering: Armageddon
Magic: The Gathering: Armageddon was a 1997 prototype arcade game by Acclaim, of which there are between 4 and 5 known extant copies (
Ctrl/⌘+F "arcade"). It is not currently emulated, and no footage of the gameplay existed until Halalah on the ASSEMblergames forums obtained a copy of the board and posted a video.Growing Up With Nell
Last year, folks speculated that the One Laptop Per Child's plan to 'drop laptops from helicopters to isolated villages' in Ethiopia might mean that someone had been reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age a bit too closely. (previously) They had been, and they did it, and it worked really well.
Librarians are doing it for themselves
What really concerns librarians; what do they discuss when they self-organise and decide for themselves? After the inaugural UK event, the second UK Librarycamp, with around 200 attendees, was recently held; reflections by Frank Norman, Carolin Schneider [1] [2], Sarah Wolfenden, Amy Faye Finnegan, Shambrarian Knights, Michelle, Jennifer Yellin, Jenni Hughes, Bookshelf Guardian, Amy Cross-Menzies and Simon Barron, and by one of the organisers. [more inside]
You travel all around the globe looking for the world’s most beautiful cave. . . and the best one is in Sheffield.
"During that trip I even had a leech stuck to my eyeball for a couple of days. We tried coaxing it off with some raw meat and salt." Robbie Shone takes eye-popping cave photos.
“I have a hard time with historians, because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting.”
The Case of the Mormon Historian: What happened when Michael Quinn challenged the history of the church he loved.
Ghosts in Court
Perhaps not as well known as Ackley's Ghost, whose legal, if not factual, existence is known to every American law student, the Greenbrier Ghost is still known as the only ghost whose testimony helped convict a murderer.
Although commonly used to convict witches, spectral evidence largely fell out of favor after the Salem Witch Trials, until one West Virginia women's ghost accused her husband of murdering her.
'R is for Rhonda consumed by a fire'
Edward Gorey's gothic tales from the vault: '
Edward Gorey's arch eccentrics are on display in two reissues and a never-before-published story.' [more inside]