February 12, 2010
Brand New V Day!
Redesigning Valentine's Day. Brand New - a site dedicated to analysis of corporate brand identity - was asked to redesign VDay by Studio 360. [more inside]
If it feeds, it leads
"..when a victorious chief minister openly admits that he himself approached the leading newspaper of his state with money for “positive stories” after learning that the newspaper had signed a “package deal” with his rivals to print negative stories, you had better sit up and take urgent notice"
I Spy a Peek-a-fail!
"People are trying things; kettles are exploding. Everyone’s attempting magic right and left."
Globalization is Weird
Avatar goes to the West Bank. What better way to express your peoples' long-standing grievances against military occupation than a little James Cameron inspired role playing? [more inside]
Flash Friday: Diver 2
Diving game. Odd control scheme, but intuitive once you get used to it.
Chicago punk sound architect Iain Burgess passes away
Producer/engineer Iain Burgess played a vital role in defining the Chicago punk sound in the 80's with his work with Naked Raygun, Big Black, and the Effigies. Burgess passed away on Thursday from a pulmonary embolism, a complication of the pancreatic and liver cancers he'd recently been diagnosed with. Although British, he is best known for his years in Chicago, where he helped create a distinctive large sound with a live-centered recording style and served as a mentor to Steve Albini. He also worked with Didjits, Ministry, Mega City Four, the Cows, Pegboy, Shellac, Jawbox and many others.
Africa, the New Carribbian - For Cocaine, That Is.
So what is an enterprising cocaine cartel to do when tight airport and border security threaten to cause one to miss out on a massive boom in european cocaine use? Well, for starters one sets up shop on Africa's west coast where the police often aren't paid for months and the 4 cars of some country's police force can mostly sit idle due to a lack of gas money. Oh, and in Guinea Bissau - no coast guard! In addition to bringing even more corruption and violence to Africa, the status of being the transhipment point of about 3/4 of all cocaine heading to Europe brings a Miami-style economic stimulus. And as colombian cartels are generally more concerned with getting cocaine out of Colombia at a profit than getting it all the way to its destination, we're probably only a few years away from a senegalese Scarface.
Plagiarism or Literary Remix?
17 year old prodigy Helene Hegemann admits that her bestseller "Axolotl Roadkill" is not as original as previously assumed. "The publication last month of her novel about a 16-year-old exploring Berlin’s drug and club scene after the death of her mother, called “Axolotl Roadkill,” was heralded far and wide in German newspapers and magazines as a tremendous debut, particularly for such a young author. The book shot to No. 5 this week on the magazine Spiegel’s hardcover best-seller list", writes the New York Times.
Unfortunately, parts of it were lifted. "It's not plagiarism", says the author. [more inside]
"No one wants to be a woman, but you're not doing such a bad job of it, Valentine"
Messages of love emptiness, fear and emotional hunger from the Earth-Pig Born... Cerebus Valentines. (some drawings slightly risque but not quite NSFW) [more inside]
Ivy League Sorority Silliness
Style Guide for the Sorority Girl Cornell sorority members have been playing fashion police. A set of "style guidelines," roughly 6 pages long, was recently leaked onto the web. It insisted members consistently get manicured, pedicured, cut, colored and waxed and boasted austere fashion and beauty rules. [more inside]
Olympian killed in luge accident
Olympian killed in luge accident Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia was killed when he wrecked on the luge course in Vancouver. This is the second crash today.
Real Genius
Life imitates art. Boeing's Airborne Laser Testbed succeeds in shooting down a ballistic missile. No word on if popcorn was involved.
TheMicropaymentBay. ARRR...gh.
Micropayment incarnates once more, this time through the offices of one of ThePirateBay's creators. In the Flattr tip-jar system, rather than making individual credit card transactions, one makes a lump sum payment, and then all those sites whose "Flattr" buttons you have chosen to press receive a fraction of your "Flattr" Tax for that month.
Triclops Mage, I choose you!
Great Dungeon in the Sky Is a pixelly gotta-catch-'em-all flash platformer built using flixel. There are 400 characters to unlock. Each character can have up to 3 abilities controlled by the z, x, & c keys (arrow keys to move). [more inside]
Barbers I Have Known, and Other Stories
Featuring contributions from John Porcellino (King-Cat Comics), Sammy Harkham (Kramer's Ergot), Ted May, Steve "Ribs" Weissman (Yikes!), and Jordan Crane (Uptight), What Things Do "is a website for comics. There will be frequent updates. That’s all we’re going to say about it right now." [more inside]
Studies in Crap
Knowledge is infinite once I start to draw a better picture for your third eye
Jo Guldi writes a fascinating entry about social engineering and geography in the 1970's. "The geographers located answers in American zones of isolation and hopelessness. Bill Bunge organized his fellow professors into the Detroit Geographical Expedition, leading frequent trips to document the slums of Detroit and later Toronto. Their findings were equally provocative. In 1968, the Society published a map entitled “Where Commuters Run Over Black Children on the Pointes-Downtown Track.” Life and death, they argued, were not merely the commodities available to any hard-working American, but hung upon the thread of a special kind of privilege, the privilege of safe territory." Guldi is a historian at the Harvard Society of Fellows. [more inside]
Hsssssssssssss!
Mavericks Surf Contest is on for tomorrow.
The swell is forecast at 17 feet at 16 seconds, but it's on Saturday. As the end of the seasonal window for big surf at Mavericks in Half Moon Bay, California approaches, the Sony Ericsson and Barracuda Networks "Mavericks Surf Contest®" will be available on FLO TV, Facebook, and on the big screen at AT&T park.
But Jeff Clark, the founder, has been squeezed out of the event he founded. It's all about the money. And as of a few weeks ago, the lawsuit... [more inside]
Bucks First Federal Credit Union
Post crash, a crash blossoms post
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