January 2, 2011
Searching for the Mysterious Cities of Gold
It is the 16th century. From all over Europe great ships sail west to conquer the new world, the Americas. The men eager to seek their fortune, to find new adventures in new lands. They long to cross uncharted seas and discover unknown countries. To find secret gold on a mountain trail high in the Andes. They dream of following the path of the setting sun that leads to Eldorado, and the Mysterious Cities Of Gold. [more inside]
School:Fish::?:iPhones
The Monterey Bay aquarium seafood watch has an app. Fish are a delicious, but problematic food source for humans. For those who've been cramming the Seafood Watch guide into their pockets when contemplating dining out or their next menu for decades, the next generation of fish eating awareness has arrived, in the form of a free mobile application. [more inside]
Is China eating our lunch, or not?
China is eating our lunch, says one columnist. Obama called it a "Sputnik moment." When a Philadelphia football game was delayed because of snow, the governor of Pennsylvania said we had become a nation of wussies, and said, "The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down." Not so fast there, says a guest writer to the Seattle Times: "To be sure, our 14th-to-25th ranking in the Program for International Student Assessment is no cause for complacency. Neither is China eating our lunch, or any meal — at least not yet." Which brings up the hokou system, which guarantees that the Chinese students measured for the test are the richest, best of the best in the country, and not the working poor of Shanghai. Some have called the system, which separates "urban" from "rural" workers, "China's apartheid."
Sixties Seventies
The miniskirts, hotpants, bellbottoms, boots, sunglasses, and hairdos of the Sixties Seventies as worn by the famous and anonymous beauties of the time. (some images NSFW)
POLENET
The team of scientists and young researchers at POLENET, stationed at Byrd camp on the west Antarctic ice sheet, have been video podcasting since October 2009. Their seventh features kickin' music by the Weepies. SLYT: Antarctica (song)
Into the Tunnels
The wilderness below New York City, where mysterious and wonderfully abandoned structures are explored by urban historians and adventurers.
Into the Tunnels with Steve Duncan.
Into the Tunnels with Steve Duncan.
sf0
SF0 is a game played in the real world, where you play your character. However, it's not a LARP, and it's not quite an ARG (alternate reality game), either. Think of it more as an interface for the cities of the real world. [more inside]
He can't be bargained with. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear.
The very interesting Melanie Thernstrom.
Writer Melanie Thernstrom continues to be interesting. After a career spanning more than 20 years, and including well-received articles and books covering murders, suicide, and chronic pain, Thernstrom has published an article -- today on the cover of the New York Times Magazine -- describing her and her husband's choices and experiences in building a family through one husband slash sperm donor, one wife and mother with infertility, one egg donor, and two women serving as gestational surrogates. The internet weighs in. [more inside]
Rise of the Neuronovel
Rise of the Neuronovel. Marco Roth at N+1 argues that the recent interest of contemporary novels (Motherless Brooklyn, Saturday, Atmospheric Disturbances) in the disordered wetware of their characters represents a defeat for fiction. "...the new genre of the neuronovel, which looks on the face of it to expand the writ of literature, appears as another sign of the novel’s diminishing purview." Jonah Lehrer responds to Roth and Roth responds back.
"The key to any accent is to isolate the sounds that are specific to that accent"
How to do accents. Gareth Jameson has made a number of videos on how to do different accents: Russian, German, Spanish, and more. Some of his accents are better(?*) than others. Some are terrible. If all else fails, he can at least teach you to yodel. [more inside]
“A little white house… lingers in my memory…”
Shoah, Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 film about the Holocaust, can be seen on YouTube, in 59 parts and lasting more than 9 hours. This is not for the faint of heart or for folks with short attention spans. Reminded of it through Ebert’s latest post. On Wikipedia. (Previously here)
Dog Videos
Dog Videos... Just what it says on the tin.
On entre OK; On sort, KO! Franco & the All Powerful OK Jazz
When he was seven years old, Francois Luambo Makiadi built his own guitar. He would become one of the titans of 20th Century African music, Le Grande Maitre of the All Powerful Orchestre Kinois Jazz. [more inside]
the passage of time: 101 males from age 0 to 100
101, images of males from age 0 to 100 by Danish photojournalists Sofia Wraber and Nanna Kreutzmann.
You Gotta Fake It to Make It
Want to create a video of a steady stream of divers simultaneously using the 10 and 3-metre platforms at the diving pool? Get a lot of fellows together, or just Fake It (SLYT; 3.43). Original site (Japanese).
"Bent and juxtaposed in ways that present the tension and dynamics of staged drama."
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