April 26, 2011
SETI Institute to shut down alien-seeking radio dishes.
SETI Institute to shut down alien-seeking radio dishes. Lacking the money to pay its operating expenses, Mountain View's SETI Institute has pulled the plug on the renowned Allen Telescope Array, a field of radio dishes that scan the skies for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. The timing couldn't be worse, say SETI scientists. After millenniums of musings, this spring astronomers announced that 1,235 new possible planets had been observed by Kepler, a telescope on a space satellite.
Moving Beyond the Automobile
Moving Beyond the Automobile is a series of ten short videos by Streetfilms that highlights new directions in urban transportation. It shows how cities in the U.S. are encouraging a shift away from car dependency and making it easier and more pleasant to get around by other means. [more inside]
Moving Through The Paths Not Taken: Viaducts, Freeways and Almost Vancouvers
Despite the federal election focus on BC ridings, Vancouverites are having a hard time looking past the municipal. Things are quite dramatic in the urban planning scene. The city's regional growth plan was recently paralyzed by disagreement from Coquitlam. TransLink announced permanent cuts to bus service during Earth Week, describing it as "service optimization," highlighting its own chronic funding issues. The city successfully stopped a "megacasino" project after community backlash, but the $3 billion freeway Gateway Project continues despite ongoing protests. As the city struggles to find its way to the goal of Greenest City 2020, it's a good time to look at the paths not taken, via this excellent podcast on Vancouver's relationship with roadways. Part of a series called "Moving Through" from the Museum of Vancouver. [more inside]
Huey Meaux, record producer, dead at 82
Louisiana-born, Texas-based record producer Huey Meaux, the so-called "Crazy Cajun", has died. He was the man behind Barbara Lynn's 1962 hit You'll Lose a Good Thing. Three years later, in a move to cash in on the British Invasion, he created a faux-British rock band called "the Sir Douglas Quintet" around San Antonio-born singer-songwriter Doug Sahm, and produced their hit, She's About a Mover. Meaux also produced Tex-Mex rocker Freddy Fender's bilingual hit Before the Next Teardrop Falls as well as Fender's Wasted Days and Wasted Nights. Sadly, however, Meaux had a very ugly darker side: he was arrested not once but twice on child-sex charges, doing prison time in the late 60s, and an 11-year bid from '96 to '07. Some of the ugly details of this side of his life are detailed in this Houston Press article from 1996, shortly after his arrest, which will pretty much make your skin crawl... Well, so long Huey.
Where Have Those Days Gone
Dave Lowery, lead singer and guitarist in Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, has a new side project: he's started blogging at 300songs.com. Recent topics include the bands, the labels (both the good and the bad), and what it's like to make a living as a musician, even if you have to sell out to do it.
A Novel Approach to the Sexy, Sexy Past
Eloisa James weighs in on historical sex scenes. After attending Penn State's conference on Historicizing Sex, NY Times Bestselling romance author/ Shakespearean scholar Eloisa James writes about how we view our sexual history through a contemporary prism. [more inside]
PlayStation Network and Qriocity Security Breach
Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity have been down since April 20 2011 due to an illegal intrusion. Today Sony announced that user data - birthdate, user name, password, e-mail address, possibly credit card information, and more - has been compromised for its 69 million users, exposing them to identify theft amongst other things. [more inside]
Worry about the big stuff, like government
Drawing Conan O'Brien
Funny Bones -- Anatomy of a Celebrity Caricature. Artist John Kascht looks for the unique character in Conan O'Brien's face and body. And hair. (Half-hour video)
Why can't I be a Mantaray?
Mr. Moritz and the Machine, How I Came to Work at the Wendy's and other comics by Nick St. John. [more inside]
Jazz Orphans
Stock-based executive compenation
Why we should do away with stock-based executive compensation. Three excerpts from a new book on executive pay by Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto's business school: The next financial crisis could be right around the corner. How an economic theory changed the way CEOs get paid. What the NFL can teach us about executive compensation.
Superconductivity Flash Mob
Aw, a science flash mob. [SLYT]
Funeral money in the contamination zone: living with Chernobyl, 25 years after the accident
Nadezhda Korotkaya, 77, a widow who lives alone in her small wooden house on the edge of Stary Vyshkov, still remembers the World War II. "The Germans came and went," she said. "But Chernobyl came here to stay." It was 25 years ago today that reactor number four at the Chernobyl power plant exploded, following an emergency shutdown (detailed recounting of the disaster on Wikipedia). A memorial was held in Kiev, Ukraine, this morning for the liquidators who were the first human responders, with a bell struck at the exact moment of the Chernobyl explosion on April 26, 1986. See also: a look back, with The Big Picture. [more inside]
Phoebe Snow, RIP
French Riot Police revolt over beer and wine ban
"I don't think the chief of police drinks water when he's having a meal." Members of the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, the French riot police, are up in arms about a new regulation forbidding them to drink alcohol during the workday. The ban is said to be a reaction to widely publicized photos of riot police drinking beer while policing a high-school student demonstration in Perreux-sur-Marne.
Photographic Immortality
The Burns Archive is a collection of over 700,000 historical photographs that document disturbing subject matter: obsolete medical practices and experiments, death, disease, disasters, crime, revolutions, riots and war. Newsweek posted a select gallery this past October, as well as a video interview and walk-through with curator and collector Dr. Stanley B. Burns, a New York opthalmologist. (Via) (Content at links may be disturbing to some.) [more inside]
I'd love to watch Gary take it all off !
Better Living Through Guerilla Parking Ticket Art
Suffering from emotional distress caused by receiving a parking ticket? Not to worry -- members of NYC's Parking Ticket Emotional Reclamation Project places a therapeutic hand-written note with art into the ticket envelope in hopes to "restore emotional balance to New York, The World, The Universe."
Finding the Edge
Google Translated from nub1an's livejournal Some stunning wilderness-travelogue photography from Russian trekker and (self-described-)amateur photographer "nub1an" (Ilya Kondrashov).
Untranslated link.
About as funny as it ever is
After 107 submissions, Roger Ebert wins The New Yorker cartoon caption contest. Ebert's earlier blog about captioning. [more inside]
Michael Hansmeyer: Computational Architecture
Michael Hansmeyer: Computational Architecture. Subdivision: Ornamented Columns -- "A full-scale, 2.7-meter high variant of the columns is fabricated as a layered model using 1mm sheet. Each sheet is individually cut using a mill or laser. Sheets are stacked and held together by poles that run through a common core." [more inside]
Just five years from now.
IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end. According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. [more inside]
Something great and fun and serious and magical.
Nature Special Issue on the Future of the PhD
Strangers, Again
Strangers, Again, a short film by Wong Fu Productions, takes viewers on an introspective journey through the stages of a romantic relationship. (Previous Wong Fu Production films on Metafilter)
Brandon Mississippi shows how to deal with Westboro Baptist Church
Simple and effective! While there was dismay and discussion about the Supreme Court ruling that allows Westboro to continue their protests, a small town in Rankin County, Mississippi shows we don't need laws to effectively keep them away.
Goodbye, Blue Sky
The Blue Sky In Games campaign is an old but still relevant call to embrace bright colors and happy themes in videogames. It's the opposite of the currently prevailing Real Is Brown style. Because of cheerful Sega games like Outrun and Afterburner, it is often referred to as 'Sega Blue Skies'.
Oh Cancer, Up Yours
"I said that I wasn't a sex symbol and that if anybody tried to make me one I'd shave my head tomorrow".
The rumors have been swirling all day, but sadly appear to be confirmed - Marianne Joan Elliot-Said aka punk legend Poly Styrene has passed away after battling breast cancer. Her new album , Generation Indigo is scheduled to be released today. [more inside]
Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists.
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