January 5, 2012
"I noticed something on a lampshade. It was writing in Korean and when I asked the interpreter what it meant, he said it meant roughly, 'Live or Die.'"
On November 13, 1982, in an outdoor arena next to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini beat Duk Koo Kim to retain his World Boxing Association lightweight championship title. It was a thrilling match, but its aftermath quickly turned into a nightmare, as Kim fell into a coma, and, a few days later, died. The bout's effects have rippled outward ever since. [more inside]
Alan J. Pakula's "The Parallax View"
Welcome to the testing room of the Parallax Corporation's Division of Human Engineering. [more inside]
Blame it on the beasts
Bugs and Beasts Before the Law - "Murderous pigs sent to the gallows, sparrows prosecuted for chattering in Church, a gang of thieving rats let off on a wholly technical acquittal – theoretical psychologist and author Nicholas Humphrey explores the strange world of medieval animal trials." More on the theme of barnyard scapegoats from the BBC podcast documentary: Animals on Trial.
How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?
How Many Stephen Colberts Are There? There used to be just two Stephen Colberts, and they were hard enough to distinguish... [more inside]
Contrarian.
Imagine there's no people
So you wake up tomorrow morning to find almost everyone on Earth missing. The Internet will continue to work for a few hours: what information could you download to ensure your survival and rebuild civilization? A few suggestions: The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Third Word Development (18 GB of information on agriculture, livestock, food processing, construction, water, sanitation, health and much more). The Global Village Construction Set (previously). Copies of Gray's Anatomy, Where There Is No Doctor, and The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide.
A few more that might be handy even in ordinary times: all of Wikipedia, or perhaps just a portion. (Ideally, of course, you’d already have a bound, printed copy), Offline Google Mail (Chrome) to save correspondence; SiteSucker to download sites you’d like to keep around while offline.
A few more that might be handy even in ordinary times: all of Wikipedia, or perhaps just a portion. (Ideally, of course, you’d already have a bound, printed copy), Offline Google Mail (Chrome) to save correspondence; SiteSucker to download sites you’d like to keep around while offline.
Women and men are different!
This just in ... Men are different from women. OK, scratch that. More different than researchers had previously thought.
...And you thought that you loved cat videos
A nightmarish Keyboard Cat from the 1950s children's program Andy's Gang. You might want to leave the lights on tonight.
J. Hoberman Fired by Village Voice
Yesterday, the Village Voice fired J. Hoberman, long-time champion of independent and experimental film (and its senior film critic of 24 years). Hoberman promises that there's a blog in his future. The Voice has an archive of his writing for them since 1998. Here are his Top 10 lists for the years 1977 to 2006, and here they are for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. Here is a compilation of his advice for aspiring film critics. A critic who came of age in an era when the lines between "film critic" and "film scholar" were blurrier, Hoberman has also written books about American movies and the Cold War and the forgotton history of Yiddish cinema. Here are some interviews with him about his work.
Billy Donovan's Secret Sorrow
So a Girl Sneaks Into a Russian Military Rocket Factory...
Lana Sator sneaked into a Russian military rocket factory, found no guards, and started taking pictures. Some of them are pretty amazing. [source]
Obama says no-go to Pro Forma sessions
Presidential appointments that require Senate confirmation can be made without confirmation by the President when the chamber is in recess: a so-called recess appointment, wherein the appointee is allowed to serve until the end of the next congressional session. During the Bush II administration, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid began holding pro forma sessions every three days—a local Senator gavels the session in and immediately back out—to ensure that the Senate never went into recess and as a result, Bush stopped confirming recess appointments. When the Obama administration took over, the Republicans began holding the same pro forma sessions to prevent Obama from appointing any positions in recess. This week, Obama made four appointments, including Richard Cordray to the newly created role of director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, despite the fact that the Senate is not in technical recess. [more inside]
High, low, and in between
I did this interview with Townes Van Zandt in the spring of 1994, for a now-defunct west coast monthly. Townes was promoting a new album called Roadsongs, and over the course of two days in May, he spoke to me for several hours. [more inside]
Obama unveils new strategy for 'leaner' US military
"As I made clear in Australia, we'll be strengthening our presence in the Asia-Pacific, and budget reductions will not come at the expense of this critical region," President Obama and Sustaining US Global Leadership (pdf) [more inside]
DON'T DRINK THE NECTAR OF PROPAGANDA UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE FINISHED WHAT'S ON YOUR PLATE
Causes Are Hard
Trials and Errors. Jonah Lehrer's latest piece in Wired is a sort of sequel to his earlier article in the New Yorker on the decline effect (previously). Where that article focused on the institutional factors interfering with the accumulation of truth, this one focuses on the philosophical issues of causation and correlation in modern science. [Via]
Gillian Jacob's nickname is 'Walking NPR'
As fans of the television show Community wait through a Whitney induced hiatus of indeterminate length, they might be wondering what the cast and crew has been up to. At least one of those things was squaring off for a game of Trivial Pursuit hosted by Dan Harmon.
I have no idea how these goths climbed up these trees, or why.
EXT. PLAYGROUND - DAY
Recess Stories is a series of live-action, short films for kids, performed by kids and based on real-life events. The first season is available to watch online or download for free, and Season Two is coming soon.
"The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination, in a tight straitjacket."
From 1981 - 1993, documentary producer Christopher Sykes created three films about Dr. Richard Feynman. All are now available in their entirety on YouTube: Richard Feynman: No Ordinary Genius, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out and Last Journey of a Genius (previously). [more inside]
Photojournalist Eve Arnold dies at age 99
Eve Arnold was regarded as one of the finest photojournalists of the 20th century. Invited to join Magnum Photos in 1951 by Robert Capa, it was with Magnum that she travelled the world documenting areas of America, China, the Middle East and the United Kingdom. A master of both black & white and colour, Arnold thrived in the golden age of photojournalism, when publications gave photographers great resources and freedom to practice their art. A world-travelling photojournalist whose subjects ranged from the poor and dispossessed to Marilyn Monroe, she has died at age 99 : Her page at Magnum Photos. Images from a recent London exhibition. A 1987 audio interview, after the publication of her book of Marilyn Monroe images.
Coachbuilt, an encyclopedia of American Coachbuilders
Coachbuilt is an encyclopedia of American coachbuilders, from Adam Black & Sons, makers of commercial coaches and co-designers of the iconic UPS P-600 package delivery truck, to the York-Hoover Body Company, who started out as a prolific supplier of wooden depot hack and station wagon bodies for the Ford Model T, later catering to the funeral home/furniture store marketplace by offering a combination motorized funeral coach/furniture delivery car using a stretched Model T chassis.
The right to delirium
On a roll . . .
How the Dutch got their cycle paths (Youtube). How Paris decided to become a bicycle friendly city. How Copenhagen became a cycling city (PDF). How San Francisco became a cycling city. How London tried (and failed) to become a cycling city. How Sevilla, Spain is becoming a world-class bicycling city (more: Seville's lesson and Seville's remarkable transformation). How Ciclovia came to Bogotá (Streetfilms). How Portland plans to become the first world-class bike city in America; how expanding Portland's inexpensive bicycle network led to an exponentially expanding amount of bicycling (Streetfilms). How Janette Sadik-Khan is transforming New York City streets (Streetfilms). [more inside]
*Blink*
I'd put my horse in the back yard and love him with all my heart.
Vint Cerf, fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, writes in a New York Times Op-Ed today that Internet Access Is Not a Human Right:
...technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.[more inside]
WebGL-only (no plugins!) 3D map
I never really cared for Kennigan, though.
Funny or Die has gone back to its archives and presents the FOD 1986 lineup. Among the eight shows available, genre fans are probably going to be most excited about getting a chance to see Malibu Days: Nights and Cop-Puter, but I was personally more excited at the fact they exhumed Buildings.
The mid-century will be about "old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky."
X-37B spaceplane spying on Chinese space station?
In March last year, the unmanned X-37B US military spaceplane launched from Cape Canaveral on mission USA-226, to "demonstrate various experiments", sensors and technology. Its original 270 day mission was extended in November "as circumstances allow" for "additional experimentation opportunities", but a dedicated group of optical tracking specialists in the US and Europe believe that the X-37B is in fact spying on the Chinese space station Tiangong-1. [more inside]
War of the road bikes
Bicycle Goliath Specialized is suing their former employe's start up company Volagi over their innovative road bike design that includes disc brakes and a very interesting seat stay arrangement. Volagi's Facebook explanation. TV news report. [more inside]
Pop a Scotch for me, will ya?
(More Than) 500 Miles Away From Home
American Country Music legend Bobby Bare (76) will take part in the Norwegian finals in the Eurovision Song Contest. [more inside]
Hoff crabs
Here are those hairy chested deep sea crabs you were asking about. We have named them "Hasselhoff Crabs" after David Hasselhof, because he is also known for his hairy chest.
A Man of Many Divas - Juan Pablo Echeverri
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