May 27, 2008
Anglo-Saxon life
Regia Anglorum, an English re-enactment society, maintains a wealth of information about life in medieval England using the virtual village of Wichamstow and its surroundings. They have in-depth articles on many of the crafts and trades that the villagers would have undertaken, and about the places they would live and work. (A full listing is here.) They are perhaps unique, however, in building a medieval village and estate with which to demonstrate medieval craftsmanship.
sudo apt-get install creepyrobotgirlfriend2.0
The uncanny valley just got deeper. "Treat yourself to the perfect woman."
Wonderland
A 10,000 YouTube Link Post
Ever wonder what music videos were popular the week Lorena Bobbit cut off her husband's penis and the Unabomber injured computer scientist David Gelernter at Yale University? Or what about the week The Simpsons first went on air? Grabb.it TV has the answer. It aggregates the top 20 music videos for each week of the 80s and 90s and mashes them up with wikipedia to make the ultimate virtual retro music video station.
McGriff's Groove
Soulful, funky and blues-inflected jazz organist Jimmy McGriff passed away over the weekend. McGriff (wiki) belonged (along with Jimmy Smith, Charles Earland, Lonnie Smith, Melvin Rhyne, John Patton, and others) to that select group of Hammond B-3 players who defined that instrument for jazz and related music--he played in small soul jazz combos that owed their greasy, riff-based sound as much to R&B as to bebop. Here's a small taste of McGriff's music.
Is eating Ben & Jerry ethical?
"Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior." Leon Kass, former chair of the President Bush's Council on Bioethics tells us what he really thinks of modern America. [more inside]
Hava nagila, have two nagilas, have three nagilas; they're very small.
Claire and Merna Bagelman, better known as The Barry Sisters. Every Sunday from 1938 to 1955 on WHN in New York, they mashed Swing with Yiddish Folk as the main attraction on the radio program Yiddish Melodies in Swing.[via] "We take a tune that's sweet and low, and we rock it solid and make it gold." They are indeed a Hebrew National Kosher Classic.
More Yiddish music webceptacles. [more inside]
Don't condescend me, man. I'll fucking kill you.
True Romance: 15 years later. Maxim article (hence slightly NSFW ads) with interviews with Christian Slater, Tony Scott, Quinten Tarantino, etc. If you're a fan of behind-the-scenes gossip, or the film -- or both -- it's an interesting read.
Enter ingredients, get recipes...
An interesting food web site - enter your ingredients, it tells you what you can make. Even suggests items you'll need for other dishes. Previously questioned in AskMe.
Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, 1914-2008
Before developing exotic space propulsion systems like the ion engines on deep space probes, he developed guidance systems for Nazi Germany's ballistic missile, the V2. As Dr. Werner von Braun's Chief Scientist, he was one of the brilliant minds that founded the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and sent astronauts to the moon atop MSFC's Saturn V rocket. Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, one of the last surviving rocket scientists extracted from Nazi Germany in Operation Paperclip, died today at 94.
Play games, teach computers
Each year, people around the world spend billions of hours playing computer games. What if all this time and energy could be channeled into useful work? What if people playing computer games could, without consciously doing so, simultaneously solve large-scale problems?
GWAP is Luis van Ahn's answer [PDF, HTML cache] to these questions, a collection of easy and engaging games that make computers smarter.
GWAP is Luis van Ahn's answer [PDF, HTML cache] to these questions, a collection of easy and engaging games that make computers smarter.
Smoke and mirrors
Meet Joules the climate change-sceptic robot. Joules is employed to teach 8-14 year-old school children in the UK about energy use. Joules says: "oil and gas could be in short supply in about 50 years time. The earth is believed to be getting warmer and sea levels apper to be rising. Energy Chest is funded in part by the world's biggest oil company: ExxonMobil. [more inside]
beardo
FBI After Vegans
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is infiltrating vegan potluck dinners (via the Harper's Weekly Review)
The Rebellion Within
The Rebellion Within: An Al Qaeda mastermind questions terrorism.
Argus eyes
Muxfind
24: Season Two: The Musical.
24: Season Two: The Musical. (Language is perhaps NSFW.)
The right to do wrong
Auroville Funded by Governments all over the world, the city of Auroville is an ongoing experiment 'whose stated purpose is to realize human unity in diversity' through yoga. Unfortunately, it seems the 'rule free' society has attracted some of the least welcome of humanity's outliers, namely child sex tourists. [more inside]
City of the Future, Taiwan 1960s
Green Bombs.
Reading Proust or Proust Reading You?
Waggish Reads Proust Reading In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past, is quite the daunting task. Whether you've read Proust, or are considering reading Proust for the first time, a helpful summary & guide, that examines significant passages for your own discussion.
Doc Savage, whose real name is Clark Savage, Jr., is a physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician
The Man of Bronze. We've already thrilled to his magnificent covers, but pulp hero Doc Savage really existed in text. Therefore, The Groovy Age of Horror has done us the favor of working their way through the books of Doc Savage, providing in-depth reviews. Invaluable if you have ever considered purchasing The Sargasso Ogre or I Died Yesterday, but didn't know if it was worth it.
The Real Indy
Did you know that the original Indiana Jones was an openly homosexual, Jewish, Nazi archeologist [more] and Obersturmführer in the party, hunting the Holy Grail? The documentary The Secret Glory chronicles his story (interview with the director: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). [more inside]
Erkin Koray, Turkey's psychedelic minstrel.
Erkin Koray's long career as a major rock star in his native Turkey has seen him cover all sorts of musical territory. His songs are often a curious (some might say bizarre) hodgepodge of musical influences, and one thing's for sure: you couldn't call the man unadventurous! Here's a sampling of some of his psych-Turk-rock from decades past: Krallar - Gel Bak Ne Söylicem - Cemalim - Allahaşkına - Aşka Inanmıyorum - Yanlizlar rihtimi - Gönül Salıncağı - Anma Arkadaş - Aşk Oyunu - Gün Doğmuyor - [more inside]
Can Two Engineers and Some Elbow Grease Save The World?
Planet Mechanics Dick Strawbridge and Jem Stansfield have been travelling Europe (for National Geographic UK) on a mission to lower energy consumption (and make interesting television).
Air Propelled Sandwich | Cow Power | Lake District Dilemma | Solar Paella | Electric Water Taxi | Surf Power | Heavy Metal House | Tree Powered Truck
My brain hurts.
« Previous day | Next day »