October 31, 2008
A three-thousand-year-old ruin with its own web site
Archaeologists find a pottery fragment with the oldest known example of written Hebrew at the Elah Fortress(YT) in Israel - or maybe not [more inside]
Terror takes the sound before you make it...
Yet another Thriller cover. One man. 64 channels of a cappella. SLYT
Early spirit photography
Ghosts, apparitions, angels, spiritual visitations and views of the future "The relationship between photography and the spirit world of ghosts, apparitions and angels during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a blending of popular belief and scientific fraud. The lack of sophistication in the public in an age of deeply held religious values and the generally accepted belief that the camera recorded truth allowed the unscrupulous to exploit the situation for financial gain...This online exhibition explores the diverse interactions between mortals and the spiritual world..." [via Bouphonia]
We pick up our mail in the 1800s
The Online Time Travel Pharmacy. It is the combination of Indian manufacturers and Canadian pharmacists working together that allows us to do this. By the same guy who brought you this and this. [more inside]
I love you
"Elke Wisbey, 6, was born with brain damage and cannot walk or speak. After her community raised funds to purchase a state of the art communication device for Elke, the little girl was able to use tiny eye movements to speak her first words through the machine: 'I love you.'"
Pink Tentacles
A warm cup of Halloween cheer
"How would you like to tour my famous tomb?" he asked. "It's impossible to be buried alive there."
This gentleman is almost alone in his concerns today, thanks to modern medicine's advances (and advances in embalming). But in the 19th century, plans to prevent live burial were frequent. Timothy Clark Smith of Vermont had a window installed in his grave, where you can check on him to this day. The Germans instituted Leichenhauser (or "waiting mortuaries"), halls in which corpses rested among flowers, their fingers tied to alarm bells, until it was clear to everyone that it was time for their burial. [more inside]
This gentleman is almost alone in his concerns today, thanks to modern medicine's advances (and advances in embalming). But in the 19th century, plans to prevent live burial were frequent. Timothy Clark Smith of Vermont had a window installed in his grave, where you can check on him to this day. The Germans instituted Leichenhauser (or "waiting mortuaries"), halls in which corpses rested among flowers, their fingers tied to alarm bells, until it was clear to everyone that it was time for their burial. [more inside]
Apparently, the bird has a good chance for the VP nom in '12
A short video of a starling saying something.
swept into the world on a churning rapid of blood
Steeerike 'em in the head!
Flash Halloween Friday Fun: Zombie Baseball. John and Sam are the only remaining humans left on Earth due to a horrible virus gone wrong. Sam drops baseballs and you (playing John) hit them into zombies...Rinse and Repeat! The obligatory upgrades and special bats as you increase levels.
Mod chip? I don't need no stinkin' mod chip!
The Mother of all Wii Hacks: Early on in the life of the Wii, hackers discovered a bug in "Zelda: Twilight Princess" and exploited it to create the Twilight Hack. From that came the Homebrew Channel, a software browser, and even DVD capability. [more inside]
How do wines taste?
How do different wines taste? An interesting visualization tries to answer the question of what is different about a Shiraz vs. a Pinot vs. a Cab, built from scanning keywords on 5,000 tasting notes over a five year period.
RIP Studs Terkel
The last ones leave us now.
new designs
DesignFilter: Walking house designed to beat the floods [pics and vid] l Wearable Gadgets [pics and vids] l Backpacks l Commuting by JetPack l Blog Designs l Twitter Clapper l and for Halloween, some awesome [whoa] carved pumpkin designs.
Countdown
Sarah Palin's Church: Prayer Warriors, Spirit Mapping & FEMA
Thomas Muthee, the witch-hunting prayer warrior who anointed Sarah Palin, is part of a much larger movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. Researchers at religious watchdog site Talk2Action have released a 36 page report on the NAR (part 1, part 2, part 3 & PDF). Learn about Palin confidant Mary Glazier, the Queen of Heaven, the Christian Emergency Network and much, much more.
The Golden Calf
And the LORD said to Moses, "Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!'"
Can I pay my taxes with a student loan?
After an historic near-collapse (p), a federal bailout to the tune of $85,000,000,000, a second federal bailout to the tune of $37,800,000,000 and one hell of a party (p), the news on A.I.G. just keeps getting better. Now: Fed arbitrage! Paying down a 9% taxpayer loan with a 2% taxpayer loan? Genius!
Missing Vincent
Every Halloween I think about him Vincent never wanted to be an actor. What with the degree from Yale in Art History and English. His intent was certainly not to be one the classic Masters (YTV) of Macabre (YTV). Never the less his legend surpasses his own humble ambitions. Part of our collective childhoods (MP3) gone but not forgotten. [more inside]
The Isle of the Dead
The picture of a boat approaching a wooded island held a strange sway over the early twentieth century imagination. Strindberg closes The Ghost Sonata with the image; Rachmaninoff brought forth a symphonic poem from it; Freud, Lenin, and Clemenceau all owned prints, while Hitler hung one of the original five paintings on his wall. The work's creator, a Swiss Symbolist painter named Arnold Böcklin, never cared to give it a name. It was an art dealer who first called it Die Toteninsel — "The Isle of the Dead."
If this story is made into a movie, Zack Snyder will not be directing
Horror Posters
I like the cut of your jib
Flash Friday Fun with Splitter. Cut things to solve puzzles. Sort of a destructive Incredible Machine.
Red Sex Blue Sex
Evangelicals are very good at articulating their sexual ideals, but they have little practical advice for their young followers. Social liberals, meanwhile, are not very good at articulating values on marriage and teen sexuality—indeed, they may feel that it’s unseemly or judgmental to do so. But in fact the new middle-class morality is squarely pro-family.
The New Yorker discusses the red-state/blue-state divide in attitudes about premarital sex, sex education, and teen pregnancy: Red Sex, Blue Sex.
The New Yorker discusses the red-state/blue-state divide in attitudes about premarital sex, sex education, and teen pregnancy: Red Sex, Blue Sex.
ML73-3356, ML73-3378
For many people who lived in Houston in the early 1970s, trick or treat brings up memories of "The Candy Man," serial killer Dean Corll. He, along with accomplices David Brooks and Wayne Henley (YouTube), kidnapped, raped, and tortured to death 27 boys between the ages of thirteen and eighteen between 1970 and 1973. Thirty-seven years after the bodies of their victims were discovered in mass graves in southwest Houston and the Bolivar Peninsula, three still were unidentified until recently when the efforts of forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick identified victim ML73-3349, now known to be Randall Lee Harvey.
tolerate this, suckers
Israeli court approves construction of Museum of Tolerance. With a design by starchitecht Gehry, whats not to like? Well, for one, it is being built on an ancient Muslim burial site. [more inside]
Sports.... in space!
Former Redskins linebacker Ken Harvey wants to bring sports to space. He calls it Space Sportilization
I heard there was a secret chord
Mathematician Cracks Mystery Beatles Chord. Not to be confused with the Hendrix chord or the sacred chord.
The most obscure but perhaps the most important economic indicator we've got
How best to take the pulse of the global economy? While market driven rates such as LIBOR or US Government T-Bills reveal the state of fixed income and Credit Default Swaps tell the observer much about possible default rates, many analysts prefer a more basal view. The Baltic Dry Index is one such indicator. [more inside]
Hypnobamatist
Fringe Friday: Obama is a hypnotic and entrancing public speaker. No, really, he's hypnotic and entrancing. [PDF] via
"You do understand that you are entering a dangerous area, and that the possibility of injury or death is real."
« Previous day | Next day »