February 13, 2013
The testicles story, any sex stuff, and literary back stabbings
I realized that if something had happened to Henry James' testicles, that my friends didn't know about it, because if they did, it'd just be weird that they didn't mention it - given what we were talking about. And I thought this was sort of neat because one of my friends had done his Ph.D. on James, and even he didn't know about the guy's self-castration! I instantly resolved to solve the mystery.
"Look," I said, exited now, "I'm pretty sure something happened down there, so I'm going to check it out. And when I do find out - "
"You'll let us know.
"We'll look forward to it."
"Look," I said, exited now, "I'm pretty sure something happened down there, so I'm going to check it out. And when I do find out - "
"You'll let us know.
"We'll look forward to it."
One Billion Rising
What does ONE BILLION look like? On 14 February 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION. Watch live, from around the globe, as women and men demand an end to violence against women. [more inside]
"He tends to exaggerate"
Thor Holm Hansen, (the Outlaw biker chief, Haitian insurgency catalyst, country singer, CIA patsy, inventor and porn star promoter who married a coffee heiress,) is disheveled and cantankerous inside his orange prison tunic, and really wants you to know there hadn't been much cocaine. Grenades and women, yes. A briefcase stuffed with $54,000: definitely that. But under no circumstances had there been more than two ounces of cocaine. (Via) [more inside]
I'm in love with Massachusetts! And the neon when it's cold outside
A bill to declare "Roadrunner" the official rock song of Massachusetts will be filed on February 14.
Zombie-free since 1867
"Veegan, not Veejan"
In November 1944, as Hitler's V-2 rockets rained down on England, Donald Watson's mind was elsewhere. Together with Elsie Shrigley and 23 others, he was starting a new society of ethical vegetarians who avoided dairy and eggs as well as meat -- an unheard-of innovation. The earliest issues of the group's magazine are now available online and provide a glimpse into the humble beginnings of what became a global movement. In its pages, members discuss animal ethics, health, wartime rationing, recipes and the thorny issue of what adherents should call themselves. (Donald Watson coined "vegan" in issue 1, but some members were unimpressed and wrote in with their own suggestions including Vitan, Dairyban, Benevore, Sanivore and Beaumangeur).
Fans often form circles and then run together with physical abandon
Moshers, Heavy Metal and Emergent Behaviour: The collective behaviour of moshers at heavy metal concerts is mathematically similar to a disordered 2D gas, say physicists. [more inside]
A Scientist at War With His Tribe
How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist. "Jaguars and anacondas are impressive adversaries — 'Indiana Jones had nothing on me,' Napoleon Chagnon says — but his staunchest foes are other anthropologists."
The archaeology of Photoshop
But like anything, the original Photoshop was a product of its time. Knoll’s foundations grew to support functionality he’d never imagined; as the features piled on, more staff was added. What started as mostly a photography tool turned quickly into a graphic design powerhouse. And when a port to Windows became inevitable, things started to really get messy.
Photoshop is a city for everyone: how Adobe endlessly rebuilds its classic app.
Photoshop is a city for everyone: how Adobe endlessly rebuilds its classic app.
Idem Paris
IDEM PARIS is a new short documentary film by David Lynch on the art of lithography. Read Lynch's intro to the piece.
The Continuation of Clausewitz by Other Means
Carl von Clausewitz's On War is remembered today as a classic of Prussian thinking on war and politics in the post-Napoleonic era. Wouldn't it be better if it were a Socratic dialogue between Hare Clausewitz and his class of other woodland creatures, though? Thankfully, The Children's Illustrated Clausewitz has arrived to fill just that need.
Jonathan Rendall, 1964-2013
Late last month, the writer Jonathan Rendall was found dead at his home in Ipswich. He was 48. He was the greatest gonzo writer you've never heard of. [more inside]
“An entire ‘vault,’ like a Money Bin, filled with 40,000 comics.”
“The DON ROSA COLLECTION is a deluxe 9-volume set of books published by Egmont that tells the story of my life with comics, particularly the $crooge McDuck and Donald Duck comics for which I have become best known... As part of the special texts in the series, I wrote an autobiography of my life, at least as it pertains to comic books. As a conclusion to those texts it was always planned that I would write a sort of ‘epilogue’ to my career, the subject of which would obviously be the reasons for why I quit... At the last moment the Disney Corporation refused to allow my text to appear in a book series that was published under their license... So I agreed to allow set #3 to go forward as long as I would be allowed in volume 9 to direct interested readers to the ‘epilogue’ as it is appearing on this private website.” Don Rosa: “WHY I QUIT” [more inside]
How The Left Has Won
Or, why is there still socialism in the United States?
Why, then, would we look for evidence of socialism only where a state seized by radicals of the Left inaugurates a dictatorship of the proletariat? Or, to lower the rhetorical volume and evidentiary stakes, why would we expect to find socialism only where avowed socialists or labor parties contend for state power? We should instead assume that socialism, like capitalism, is a cross-class cultural construction, to which even the bourgeoisie has already made significant contributions – just as the proletariat has long made significant contributions to the cross-class construction we know as capitalism. What follows?
What they really coveted was Arutam’s golden throne
The most-storied warrior tribe in Ecuador prepares to fight as the government sells gold-laden land to China.
Dear Valentine, I Hate It When You...
Picture of Tarzan Every Day
The last I heard, the Sheikh was under house arrest
Former New York Times reporter Michael Janofsky was contacted for an unusual freelance assignment: blogging as a United Arab Emirates royal. [more inside]
The nitty gritty of how to keep the roads rolling
"Hans explains there is a policy to keep certain routes clear. Since all streets in Dutch cities are categorised (also because of the ‘sustainable safety’ policy) it is very clear which streets are main routes that must be cleared. In the past, the cycle paths were not really thought important. But there were many complaints about it and the policies shifted slowly towards clearing the cycle paths more as well. Hans: “Especially when the city was elected Cycling City of the Netherlands in 2011, the department of public works felt it was our moral obligation to give the main cycle routes the highest priority. Now the cycle paths are cleared at the same time as the 8 main routes for motorised traffic.” -- Cycling blogger Mark Wagenbuur explains how one Dutch city, 'S-Hertogenbosch, deals with keeping the cycle paths clear during winter.
What *is* the deal with lampshades?
Benjamin Apple hosts the web series "Questions & Answers" where he answers viewers' questions. Link to Youtube playlist [more inside]
112 lb newborn photos
The face is angelic, the lighting soft and the subject is napping peacefully – just the way a newborn photo shoot should look. It took 13 years, but Latrell Higgins finally has his baby photos.
Vinegar Valentines
Hating Valentine's Day may be popular these days, but back in back when, Valentine's Day was a chance to hate on other people.
Look at you, hacker.
After many years of uncertain licensing rights, System Shock 2 -- considered by many to be one of the best games of all time -- will be re-released tomorrow on Good Old Games at 11:00am. It raises many interesting questions, of course, that seem to have many interesting answers.
DETACHABLE PENIS
You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.
The Okeh Laughing Record, a novelty recording, was first released in 1923 and rose to #8 on the Billboard charts, becoming the highest ranking anonymous* recording ever. It's history and provenance is completely unknown**. It has since appeared as the soundtrack to cartoons, on Dr. Demento and on Jean Shepard's radio show. [more inside]
Students all over the world are demanding a new curriculum.
A Renaissance in Economics The American President Ronald Reagan once quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” I get the same shivers when someone introduces themselves as an economist.
The Ben Franklin Effect; both not, and totally Rule 34 applicable.
The entertaining youtube channel Vsauce takes an interesting look at The Science of the Friend Zone. [via]
Fuck You Cholly Mac!
Pig Roast.
Fish Fry.
Camping with the Bluesmobile.
T-Model Ford’s Shade Tree.
The undying Southern charm that is, Junior’s Juke Joint.
Where the nation's highest earners live
The Washington Post has posted a clickable county map of the United States, illustrating the percentage of households in the top 5% of national income (based on data from the US Census Bureau).
Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.
The Boredom Proneness Scale† is the best-known of the various metrics for quantifying one’s propensity to ennui. High-scorers who are ‘understretched, unmotivated and bored in the world of work in the 21st century’ may in danger of ‘boreout’ [PDF]. While boredom needn’t be perceived in an exclusively negative light (one might imagine a perfect boredom akin to the notion of dolce far niente), ‘boredom [PDF] and boredom proneness […] have been linked to a long list of negative outcomes in adults, including, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and loneliness […], impulsiveness […], elevated rates of alcohol dependence […], negative affect […], pathological gambling […] and higher rates of psychopathology in general.’ Historians of boredom have noted the relatively recent advent [NY TIMES] of the term, coinciding with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but our more distant ancestors were not free of the related afflictions [PDF] of horror loci, tædium vitæ, acedia, mal du siècle, etc. [more inside]
Over 25% of consumers are screwed by Credit Reporting Agencies
As reported in the Washington Post and NYTimes, the FTC recently reported to congress in a 370 page report (pdf link) that the consumer reporting agencies do a poor job of accurately reporting consumer's credit. Millions of people pay higher rates than they need to, mostly because correcting a credit report is so excruciatingly difficult. [more inside]
People full of shit, both liberal and conservative, most of the time.
False memories of fabricated political events [ABSTRACT]. In the largest false memory study to date, 5,269 participants were asked about their memories for three true and one of five fabricated political events. Each fabricated event was accompanied by a photographic image purportedly depicting that event. Approximately half the participants falsely remembered that the false event happened, with 27% remembering that they saw the events happen on the news. Political orientation appeared to influence the formation of false memories, with conservatives more likely to falsely remember seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran, and liberals more likely to remember George W. Bush vacationing with a baseball celebrity during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. A follow-up study supported the explanation that events are more easily implanted in memory when they are congruent with a person's preexisting attitudes and evaluations, in part because attitude-congruent false events promote feelings of recognition and familiarity, which in turn interfere with source attributions. [FULL TEXT PDF AVAILABLE HERE] [more inside]
Bill Cosby Schools Us About Those Crazy Sweaters.
Prisoner X didn't exist until two years after his death.
In June 2010 a news story briefly appeared on the Yediot website about Prisoner X in solitary confinement in an Israeli jail. His jailers did not know who he was, did not share a word with him, no one came to visit him. No one seemed to know he was there. They didn’t even know what crime he had committed or how he came to be in the prison. His prison cell was completely isolated from other prisoners and he couldn’t communicate in any way with them. ABC News Australia has broken the News that Prisoner X was an Australian citizen suspected of Mossad links and who commited suicide two years ago in an Israeli jail. [more inside]
I want to be let alone to listen to my damn records.
Noted filmmaker Allison Anders (recent L.A. Weekly profile) won 50 rock and pop records once owned by Greta Garbo at auction. She's listening to them, one by one, and writing about them at Greta's Records.
You know you make me wanna tweet
A new app has been invented that allows women ('girls only!') to rate and hashtag the men they've met, befriended or dated. The reviews are not positive. [more inside]
How to shake a black guys hand
Sweet Truths with Kristine Holmgren
I told them to take a hike. I can't work where feminism is not celebrated. I'm proud to call myself a feminist. - Pastor and playwright Kristine Holmgren responds to being asked not use the word feminism in the title of her blog on a faith based site.
"On a moonless night, we watched the stars..."
This week's Essential Mix features the 23 year old musical prodigy Mat Zo who takes you on a 70-track tour through almost every genre of uptempo dance music over the course of two hours, beautifully tied together with poetic quotes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
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