February 3, 2011
White People Rapping Poorly
White People Rapping Poorly is a tumblr blog that, in the words of the site's creator, collects a lot of videos of white people trying to rap and just failing miserably. [more inside]
We’re Tearing the Heart Out of Saturday Night!
"Let's do those drive-in totals. We have: Nineteen dead bodies (plus fragments). Ten breasts (shame on you, TNT censors). Two zombie breasts. One-hundred twenty-five zombies. Mummy dogs. One-half zombie dog. Ten gallons blood. Brain-eating. Gratuitous embalming. Zombie fu. Nekkid punk-rocker fondue. Gratuitous midget zombie. Torso S&M. One motor vehicle chase (totalled by zombies). Pool cue fu. No aardvarking. Heads roll. Brains roll. Arms roll. Hands roll. Joe Bob says, Check It Out." Only on MonsterVision. [more inside]
Everything you always wanted to know about making music on the Ipad
Getting your music out of an Ipad. A fairly thorough overview of connecting an Ipad to external gear, covering input and output, as well as midi and audio.
BODY WASH!
SLYT Old Spice Super Mario Remix Post - SUPER SPICE BROS 64
... Gets the Goods!
In these hard economic times, the work of the Seattle Solidarity Network (SeaSol) has been very inspiring to me. SeaSol is "a volunteer network of working people who believe in standing up for our rights. Our goal is to support our fellow workers' strikes and struggles, build solidarity, and organize to deal with specific job, housing, and other problems caused by the greed of the rich and powerful." Or, in other words, SeaSol makes scumbag bosses and slimy landlords' lives miserable until they pay people what they owe!
A few recent victories of note: winning $22,000 for an unjustly fired employee of a major developer, winning relocation money for tenants in a low-income housing building, inspiring these violent (but entertaining) actions of a local restaurant owner and a few months later, putting him out of business. [more inside]
Saturday Morning Equality Movement
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is an opinionated and sometimes very strange webcomic. (several times previously) The National Organization for Marriage is an organization that lobbies to protect heterosexual-only marriage rights. Today's SMBC is about the future! The NOM does not like this future. The NOM blog hotlinks this comic.
Wait, that's not the same picture, is it... [more inside]
Foster Care Re-Imagined
Foster Care: Extreme Edition Pioneered by a 23-person St. Louis — based agency called the Foster & Adoptive Care Coalition, Extreme Recruitment seeks out the foster children who are the hardest to find homes for. Via the You Gotta Believe! Adopting Teens and Tweens radio forum.
Don't shake the baby.
Shaken-Baby Syndrome Faces New Questions in Court. Earlier this month, the UK Crown Prosecution Service issued a guidance on "shaken baby" allegations. Emily Bazelon looks at the medical and legal gray areas in US prosecutions in this week's New York Times Magazine.
An editorial last fall by law professor Deborah Turkheimer here touched on her own research into the issue [PDF], which she calls "the next Innocence Project;" it was met with some controversy by medical professionals.
Standing Ovation
The passing of someone who invented the gas-turbine-powered helicopter, or a wildly-popular new type of guitar, or even a guide dog school with over 1,300 graduates would be notable. Charles H. Kaman did all three. [more inside]
Gangs hunt journalists and rights workers in Egypt
"Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak unleashed an unprecedented and systematic attack on international media today as his supporters assaulted reporters in the streets while security forces began obstructing and detaining journalists covering the unrest that threatens to topple his government." [more inside]
Slapping music
Nerdy Girls Need Love Too
Awkward Embraces: a charming, funny, female-produced series about geek girls in LA, written by Jessica Mills. Season 2 trailer on YouTube, dialogue probably NSFW
Barney Wilen
Barney Wilen, the rest of your life : "The life and times of Barney Wilen, the legendary jazz musician who at age 18 was already playing with Miles Davis, and whom many called the “greatest European saxophonist.” Exiled to Zanzibar in the 70s, hero of Loustal's cult comic strip, The Blue Note, Wilen was as famous for his brilliant appearances as for his inexplicable disappearances. This film essay reconstitutes his rich, mysterious life even as it attempts to distinguish the man from the myth." (French, subtitled, 54 min) Barney Wilen & Bud Powell - Autumn In New York :: Cannes Film Festival 1958 :: The Shadow of Your Smile :: Recado :: Mary Moor - Pretty Day
1000 worlds
NASAs Kepler mission has discovered over 1,100 extrasolar planet candidates. Including, "68 Earth-sized, 288 super-Earth-sized, 662 Neptune-sized, and 165 Jupiter-sized planets". 54 are found in their star's habitable zone, with five of those considered "near-Earth sized" [more inside]
Ivan Illich
Ivan Illich was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest and critic of the institutions of contemporary western culture and their effects on the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, and economic development.
Bringing It All Back Home
The finance minister might as well be standing in Pompeii and saying that actually the volcano wasn’t really worth mentioning. Just a little lava!
When Irish Eyes Are Crying - an article on Irish economic woes by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair.
I'm not getting back into the van until you say we're heavy metal
The NWOBHM produced many influential bands, but perhaps the most overlooked were Bad News - this hard hitting documentary shows their early - days
Think of higher education as the proverbial frog in boiling water.
'The ever-increasing cost of education is not sustainable.' 'Higher education in America, historically the envy of the world, is rapidly growing out of reach. For the past quarter-century, the cost of higher education has grown 440%, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Education, nearly four times the rate of inflation and double the rate of health care cost increases. ''In June of last year student loan debt reached $830 billion, surpassing credit card debt in America.''All this happened while total federal student aid more than doubled, in constant dollars, from $60 billion ten years ago to $120 billion today. Sadly, more federal student aid simply fuels the rising costs. The cost of education tracks with the growth in federal aid; the transaction cost for students is not lowered. The federal money effectively flows directly to the operating expenses of the Universities-which seem to rise in direct proportion to the flow of federal funds.' [more inside]
Lugaru vs Lugaru
First there was the 'Splosion Man ripoff MaXplosion (and Capcom's non-response). Then there was a The Blocks Cometh clone (eventually taken down after the uproar). Now comes Lugaru, a wholesale copy of code, data, and name. (Android developers, you're not safe either.)
Supermurgitroid secret messages
Send coded messages to all your friends even if you never made it to the bottom of the cereal box. It decodes too!
Here Come Duh Judge
Snowdecahedron
Snowdecahedron. When life hands you a blizzard, make a Platonic solid. "Temporary public art" from Dan Sternof Beyer.
CH-CHUNG
Idle Doodles by Famous Authors
Dreaming Walls.
"In a small, remote village in the Udmurt Republic of Russia, photographer Lucia Ganieva discovered a wonderful anomaly in home decoration — the interiors of practically every home in the village feature room-size photographic murals of 'exotic' scenes, which symbolize the distant places that the home-dwellers will never visit, except in their dreams." Via wood s lot.
Beer Map
Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on
Dr. Jörg C. Gerlach has developed a new device for applying a regenerative skin and stem cell slurry onto burn victims in an airbrush-like spray - providing astounding results in mere days. (Warning - mildly graphic images of severe burns being remedied with SCIENCE!)
An Elegant Weapon From a More Civilized Age
I was circumcised as a child and I'm not exactly happy about it
How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?
Watch the 93 minute documentary on the making of The Social Network for free on IMDB - How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook? (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) (via)
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