June 2, 2008
Rachel Carson
Rehabilitating Carson: "Why do some people continue to hold Rachel Carson responsible for millions of malaria deaths?" [more inside]
Therz a hole in the bucket Eliza Eliza
Who do you want her to be... next year? Fans of Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku vow to save the television series Dollhouse from cancellation by Fox Television - eight months before it is scheduled to broadcast. Is this just guerilla fan-marketing, or are they serious? Or both? (previously on MetaFilter)
This is an Andy Rooney post. That would be an Andy Rooney post worth celebrating.
The Andy Rooney Game. Here’s how you play: take out everything but the first sentence and the last sentence from Andy Rooney’s latest segment on 60 Minutes. Then you put that on youtube. That’s it! Check it out:
Rutabagas, Artichokes, Kiwis, Oh My!
FruitAndVeggieGuru – everything you need to know about the delicious fruits and vegetables you enjoy. Answers about how to lower your cholesterol or how to prepare asparagus. You’ll find loads of background and variety information, nutrition specifics, serving sizes, preparation ideas and care and handling tips.
Caution: May contain nuts
Where would you like to spend the rest of eternity? The man who designed the Pringles potato crisp packaging system has been buried in one of the iconic cans. Sandra Ilene West was buried in her favorite Ferrari. And a man buried in a suitcase (not by choice, it would appear) Previously: 1, 2
ObitFilter: Paul Sills
Paul Sills, son of Viola Spolin and one of the fathers of Chicago style improv comedy through his work with The Compass Players (who sort of morphed into Second City) and through his Story Theatre work has passed away at age 80. Chicago has lost two of its legends in one day.
Crap, I'm hungry.
At Taipei's Modern Toilet restaurant, the chairs are toilets. You sit around sinks and bathtubs, and eat chocolate soft-serve out of little toilet-shaped bowls. Bon appetit!
The Unofficial Google Shell
Hey, command-line nerds! You shell geeks over there! Switch over to your browser and go to goosh.org right now. [more inside]
Drawing Rock Music
Legendary artist Alton Kelley created a graphic style that rocked the world beginning in the psychedelic sixties. His concert posters, logo designs, LP album covers, and fine art have forevermore defined that time. Kelley passed away peacefully at home on Sunday, June 1, 2008 of complications from a long illness.
Public Relations
Show me a PR person who is "accurate" and "truthful," and I'll show you a PR person who is unemployed. In The Wake Of Scott McClellan's New Book, CBS Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen Says PR People Are Aghast At The Truth. Includes a follow-up to the mountain of reactions he received.
Wigkitties!
A flipside of Kitty WigsTM, for the stylish kitty - pointed out previously - is available for the stylish kitty owner!
You got your E.coli in my pancakes and it's AWESOME
Cool: Scientists have genetically tweaked bacteria to create simple computers. Scary (probably unnecessarily): They're E.coli bacteria. Funny: The bacteria are able to solve the “Burnt Pancake Problem”. Money quote: “It’s kind of like that computer in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. It’s been working on a problem so long that by the time it comes up with an answer, everybody forgot the question.”
Cats 'n' Racks
I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.
Sammy Davis Jr—entertainer , photographer... camwhore... SATANIST!!!??? Did hanging out with this guy make Sammy bad? Or was he just selling his
soul to be groovy? [more inside]
UAV Sniper Drone
Career Objective: Fail
Lists of resume blunders. “I am a wedge with a sponge taped to it. My purpose is to wedge myself into someone’s door to absorb as much as possible.”
Death of a Banana
The world loves the banana - they are the world's most popular fruit and the fourth most consumed food on our planet.
According to Johann Hari in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, it appears that the variety of bananas loved the world over - the Cavendish - is headed for extinction due to Fusarium oxysporum (Panama disease). [more inside]
EMBEDtastic!
Flash, PDF, two great tastes that go great together? And now you can use PDF flash movies to put videos in your powerpoint – er… what?
European Jazz Piano
Europe has produced its share of outstanding jazz pianists. Here are five of them: Martial Solal (French/Algerian-born, born 1927); Tete Montoliu (Catalonian/Spanish, 1933-97); Enrico Pieranunzi (Italian, born 1949); Misha Mengelberg (Dutch/Ukrainian-born, born 1935); Marco di Marco (Italian, born 1940). [more inside]
Meta-Media
"Lost is a far more ambitious piece of media, which uses the entire web as its canvas and its entire audience as its creators. I'd suggest this piece of work - Lost, when viewed in its entirety - is truly new."
He must specialize in a dozen fields...
In 1948, W. Eugene Smith, best known for his brutally honest war photography, traveled to Kremmling, Colorado to document the life of a small town country doctor. The result, a splendid piece for Life magazine, has been hailed as one of the first photo essays of the modern photojournalism age. [more inside]
Ellas Otha Bates R.I.P.
Ellas Otha Bates R.I.P. We all knew him better as that cat with the rectangular-shaped Gretsch who played it with the hambone beat.
Goodbye, Bo Diddley. And thank you.
Moving at a speed of 100 inventions per year
Madman or genius? Well... madman. But being confined to an asylum (with one of his symptoms described as "manic invention") didn't keep Karl Hans Janke from developing elaborate theories of atomic energy, flight, space travel and the history of humanity, creating over 4,000 complex drawings and even models over 40 years of incarceration for paranoid schizophrenia. [more inside]
TCP/IP via bongo drums
The Big Picture
The Big Picture The Boston Globe launches a new blog focusing on a large single image from the day's news. It's kind of surprising how rare it is to see a really big photo on newspaper sites these days and this blog makes the simple concept work. [via mefi projects]
Jero
Enka is popular Japanese music which started to become popular in the Showa era after World War II. Until very recently, it's pretty much been popular only with the older crowd or in karaoke. Recently, though, a popular young star from Philadelphia has brought about a resurgence with the younger crowd. Look at his videos and be amazed. Presenting Jero. [more inside]
What was shakin' in '58.
The year was 1957: the Soviet Union had launched the cutest little sattelite ever. And it didn't just look good, it sounded good, too! As sweet a sound as any avant garde composer of the 1950's might dream up! Of course, the US would have to get a little metal ball of its own into space, but things didn't go so well. They did manage to get one up there in 1958, but nobody knows if it sounded as good as ol' Sputnik. But anyway, most folks weren't listening to satellites 50 years ago, they were listening to, well, lessee, there was... [more inside]
Be afraid
Place matters
Another Paul Graham essay, Cities and Ambition. This one's one of his better ones though. His claim: each city sends its inhabitants a distinct message about how they should live their lives. New York City sends the message that you should be richer. Cambridge sends the message that you should be smarter. Berkeley sends the message that you should live better. Consequently, the city you live in has a profound effect on what you strive for, what you value, and how you channel your ambitions. Place matters; choose wisely. [more inside]
British Literature Blogs
British Literature Blogs is the brainchild of six British literary bloggers. Each working hard at bringing readers to forgotten or overlooked books, our BritLitBloggers decided that combining their latest blog entries together in one place would highlight the breadth and depth of British literary blogging.
NYT Op-Ed labels Obama "muslim apostate"
An opinion piece by Edward N. Luttwak in the May 12 Sunday New York Times declares that Obama is an apostate under Islamic law (Sharia), and thus that an Obama Presidency would compromise US relations with the Middle East. This Sunday, Clark Hoyt, the NYT ombudsman, was sorry.
RFK Funeral Train
RFK Funeral Train A moving audio and photo account of photographer Paul Fusco's experience on the RFK funeral train to Washington DC.
{via NYTimes Magazine}
Top Ten Top Tens
To celebrate its hundredth edition the Observer Sport Monthly publishes it's ten best Top Tens. [more inside]
The plague is over, lets party.
The plague is over, lets party. Article by Elizabeth Pisani describing the troubling consequences of a gay scene in a world where HIV is treatable and AIDS is avoidable.
Another Report Which The President Won't Read
The U.S. Climate Change Science Program has just released "Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3: The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States." It makes for pretty interesting reading. [more inside]
"Thus oft a struggle to escape - But lands us in a still worse scrape"
page2rss is a simple, effective RSS scraper. For instance, here's an RSS feed for Astronomy Picture of the Day. A powerful feature: "You can add a button to your browser's bookmarks toolbar that will create Page2RSS feed for the page you are currently viewing."
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