May 9, 2013
Nuggets joins the Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Garage Swim is a free, downloadable garage rock compilation put together by Adult Swim. It features the leading lights of the scene, including Jeff The Brotherhood, Thee Oh Sees, and King Khan.
And that absurd nom de plume! John le Carré, like some addled saint...
At Slate.com, Ted Scheinman has written a nice appreciation of John LeCarré. Confessions of a John le Carré Devotee
"...I could tell there was more than politics, class, and acts of stratospheric treason to be found in these pages. I adored the psychological acuity with which he roamed his characters’ heads..."
Meet the Skywhale
2013 is the centenary of the establishment of Canberra, and to mark the occasion the ACT Government has commissioned a piece of art to embody the true spirit of the city: the Skywhale (video; official site; parental advisory warning: huge inflatable mutant whale nudity). By former Canberra resident Patricia Piccinini (site loads random picture; not guaranteed SFW), the Skywhale has attracted predictable controversy.
WSJ's Middle East Real Time blog
Since the end of March, the Wall Street Journal's new Middle East Real Time blog has written about Turkey's "unstoppable" export boom in soap operas, Saudi Arabia's "life after jihad" rehab program, the persistence of obviously fraudulent bomb detectors across Iraq, YouTube branding discussions among Syrian rebel factions, a rising media star Sunni cleric in Lebanon, a post-revolutionary Cairo arts festival, and attempts to overcome conservative objections and change the Saudi Thursday-Friday weekend to match the rest of the business world. Previous non-paywalled WSJ Real Time blogs include Korea, China, Canada, India, Brussels, Emerging Europe, Japan.
Star Wars Kid breaks 10-year silence
The '00s were a the decade for people to laugh at overweight teenage boys. We all remember Numa Numa kid and Star Wars Kid. Well guess what - Star Wars Kid is now Star Wars Man, and he's speaking out. [more inside]
Two wheels good, three wheels better!
Moggie? Moggie? No, Moggie! The Morgan Motor Company, not to be confused with MG (Morris Garages), is a lesser-known British sports car manufacturer building Morgan cars in scenic Malvern Link, Worcestershire, since 1910. Perhaps most famous for selling cars with wooden frames to this very day, Morgan continues building their most traditional cars alongside their swoopiest new offerings.
The founder, H. F. S. Morgan, started out building three-wheelers in what is known as the tadpole configuration, and their production continued until 1952, when Morgan moved entirely to four-wheelers. Until 2011. [more inside]
Persistence of Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema
So Bad It's Good meets So Bad it's Bad
Lloyd Kaufman meets the Angry Video Game Nerd. Trash cinema impresario Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Films visits the Angry Video Game Nerd to play some Toxic Crusader games based on the cartoon that was based on his most famous movie creation. (WARNING: Last link has unstoppable audio.)
The insect you need is on your shoulder...
"Now do it on one foot"
Eschersketch
Eschersketch is a fun online web-toy for making symmetry/tessellation drawings. It was created by the likably interesting brainiac, Anselm Levskaya with the tessellations of MC Escher in mind. On Twitter he says it is as yet unfinished.
Found something neat on the internet.
Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal. What it says on the tin. A Ryan Gosling meme.
A tide of STEM
Big tech is saying we need to issue more temporary visas so high-skill STEM workers can enter the US, because there's a shortage of Americans who can do the work. But according to this essay in the Columbia Journalism Review, there might be plenty of US citizens available, in fact maybe even a glut, and immigration reform proposals might just be a way to keep STEM labor costs down for corporations and universities. [more inside]
"We are here to get annihilated."
Trailer for The World's End, the final film in Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy" (following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz).
Money Talk Makes You Walk
Exercise or pay 20% higher health insurance premiums. 'It was a controversial move when a health insurer began requiring people who were obese to literally pay the price of not doing anything about their weight – but it worked, a new study finds.' 'Faced with a choice between higher insurance prices or exercising, people who were obese enrolled in and stuck with Internet-tracked walking program for a year.' [more inside]
Virtual Paul's Cross Project
On November 5, 1622, the poet and clergyman John Donne continued the tradition begun by Lancelot Andrewes of delivering a Gunpower Day sermon before the monarch. What would it have been like to hear a sermon like this delivered outdoors at St. Paul's Cross? The Virtual Paul's Cross Website tries to answer that question. Drawing on contemporary evidence from paintings, written records, and Donne's own manuscripts, the site offers both visual and audio reconstructions of the site (including a fly-through of the model), the sermon, and how the sermon might have sounded from multiple vantage points.
7 minute abs!
For all of you time crunched people: you can get fit doing these scientifically studied exercises (NYT). All you need are yourself, a floor, a chair, and time to do a 7 minute set 2 to 3 times. Caveat: it's a painful 7 minutes, and some say that you should already be at a decent fitness level, and may need to warm-up beforehand.
Here's the academic journal article.
Marketing a political scandal
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has a Flickr account. A few highlights. 1
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On the slippery slope to Mecha-Mothra
Mothering Cal
When Adam Smith and Karl Marx agree...
Ha-Joon Chang on why separating politics from economic policies is bad for democracy. What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy. (Related FPP.)
Now how do I get home?
GeoGuessr: 1. Look around the random Google Street View and try to figure out where you are. 2. Click the world map to guess! A game by Anton Wallén.
Given what we saw, we recognize that an improper call was made
Last night in Cleveland, the visiting Oakland A's were down by one run with two outs in the ninth inning. A's shortstop Adam Rosales hit a ball that struck somewhere on the center field fence and was either a double or a home run. A home run would tie the game. To make sure they got the call right the umpires went to the instant replay. [more inside]
I hope your patience with my bama shit was worth it
Political reporter John R Stanton (aka Big John) has been thinking about the gentrification of DC. Late last night, he tweeted up a story about DC in the old days, personified by a junkie named Raymond.
The secret eye of Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier was a photographer who made some incredible images of 20th century America. But almost no one knew about her until 2007. And now a new documentary is being made about this enigmatic character whose incredible eye documented street life and characters in New York, Chicago and beyond.
Dogs and Cats Living Together
"No one is sure when the idea of cheetah dogs started, but Anatolian shepherds helped advance it. The San Diego Zoo was given a pair of cheetahs in 1981 on the condition they be given dogs because they were used to them." [more inside]
The best car we have ever tested. Ever.
Consumer Reports says the Tesla Model S is a truly remarkable car.
Laying Tamerlan Tsarnaev to Rest
Funeral home director Peter Stefan: "This is what we do.... I'm burying someone who is dead." While protesters demonstrate in front of his funeral home, creating a burden for local law enforcement, Peter Stefan works the phones to find a cemetery willing to accept Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body and field media inquiries. Meanwhile, Tsarnaev's body is washed by his uncle in preparation for burial. No cemeteries agree to accept the body and plans to inter it at a prison fall through. Ultimately a "compassionate individual" steps forward so the saga can come to an end.
For First Time on Record, Black Voting Rate Outpaced Rate for Whites
The turnout rate of black voters surpassed the rate for whites for the first time on record in 2012, as more black voters went to the polls than in 2008 and fewer whites did, according to a Census Bureau report released Wednesday. (SLNYT)
Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Accessibility is what allows me to use things like a phone, computer, or an ATM. May 9th is all about this. -Tommy Edison, the Blind Film Critic. (previously)Global Accessibility Awareness Day is today. It's a day to consider how people with disabilities experience the web, software, mobile devices, games and so on, targeted towards designers, developers, usability professionals and others without much experience with accessibility. There are public events scheduled all over the world, as well as other accessibility-related events. To participate on your own, try one of the suggested activities: turn off your mouse or trackpad and use only your keyboard to navigate websites, try using a free screen reader, such as NVDA for Windows or the built in VoiceOver for Mac and iOS, try watching some streaming videos or movies with captions or add some of your own to a video you've uploaded. Then relax with a sample of described video: Katniss, from the Hunger Games, goes hunting. [more inside]
"Who's a good furry dispenser of wisdom? You are! Yes you are!"
Lessons from a Dog: Short, sweet advice from man's best friend in the form of a comic from Patrick Moberg.
You want fart noises as you scroll? We've got you covered.
Calvus is 99% of real Roman life.
The Illusion of Simplicity
The most influential photographer you've never heard of, Peter Belanger, on shooting product shots for Apple
That's funny, Joey, I don't smell anything
"The memory is stil with me - the most sickly and sweetish smell of rancid gasoline combined with rotten water melons, with undertones of stale sweat, pig carcass, a hint of garlic, moldy oranges, russian-made aftershave and a cheap household air freshener… its a whole package, and rather sweet one – like isonitriles or cyclopentadiene but magnified thousand times. A whiff of that thing and you feel that your nose just suffered a stroke and will hopefully die and peal off so that you never smell that thing again." A young lab tech, whose absent-mindedness in the lab gets him nicknamed "“Bořivoj” (”the one who tears down the places”), meets PhePHMe, the worst-smelling compound in the world. Things happen.
The many puzzles will continue...
A blog discussion of Charles Palliser's intriguing novel, The Quincunx, began in 2003, and is still going. Despite a wealth of theories, the participants are still no nearer solving the book's key mystery - who is the hero's father?
Illuminating The White Room
The strange discordian journey of the KLF. In which John Higgs, writing in the current issue of Darklore, explores the discordian heritage of the KLF.
An enjoyable evening at the symphony hall
Russian born composer and pianist Sonya Belousova has begun a new series of performances in combination with Stan Lee’s World of Heroes titled Cospay Piano. Episode 1 was The Walking Dead, Episode 2 is Batman.
An athlete and a gentleman
Matt Kemp signs the ball of a young man who has 90 days to live. This kid has an inoperable tumor that has grown so large that it prevents him from being able to lift the ball he wanted signed. What happens next is beautiful.
She doesn't know about the three shells
Caroline Lawrence looks at ten things the Romans used instead of toilet paper, Roman pee and poo and what's the deal with the sponge stick. All part of the research done for her series of young adult historical mystery books set in the ancient Roman world.
Steam Powered Box Factory
On Misogyny in Industrial Music
"But something happened. Once industrial music had fully transitioned from avant-garde venues into nightclubs, the stench of Axe body spray began to dominate the subculture as a certain douchey, bro-tastic vibe emerged. Where the goth/industrial scene had once existed as a safe haven for artists, weirdos, outcasts, geeks, dreamers and rebels, a disturbing trend of sexism, racism and anti-intellectualism is driving people out."
The Modern Moloch
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