June 25, 2007
Your favorite web comic sucks
Your webcomic is bad and you should feel bad. Many of the most popular comics on the Internet aren't just weird, they're terrible. And creepy. Like Dominic Deegan, which justifies rape in a storyline. Also, Girly's creator critiques the art of several webcomics, both good and bad.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon Live
Nina Simone Live
Ain't Got No...I Got Life
Mississippi Goddam
Zungo
Young, Gifted, and Black
Erets Zavat Chalav
I Put a Spell on You
See-line Woman
Ain't Got No...I Got Life
Mississippi Goddam
Zungo
Young, Gifted, and Black
Erets Zavat Chalav
I Put a Spell on You
See-line Woman
Poets' Graves
Poets' Graves. An international collection of.....wait for it.....poets' graves. Fascinating bios, a forum and a nice selection of classic poetry.
Titillating treasure trove of tit torture tidbits.
Matt Nicholson's Breast Punishment Primer discusses the history of tit torture, the anatomy of breasts and the motivation for torturing one (or two), and various manners in which one might torture a tit. That and tit torture trivia. All links NSFW.
Chris Benoit, 1967-2007
Coming weeks after the fake (and illegal?) "death" of WWE supremo Vince McMahon, police have confirmed the deaths of Canadian pro wrestler Chris "Wild Pegasus"/"The Dyname Kid" Benoit, his wife and son. Gone too soon. Relive his greatest hits through the just-posted tributes on YouTube: [1] [2] [3] [4] .
Electrostatic Machines
Metafilter: essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.
Essentalist explanations. Maintained by John Cowan, this list boils down dozens of languages, real, invented, and imaginary, to their pithy essences. "Japanese is essentially 16th-century Chinese, 17th-century Portuguese, 18th-century Dutch, 19th-century French and 20th-century English with an abhorrence of consonant clusters."
"Esperanto is essentially Spanish with extra 'x's and 'k's." "Klingon is essentially Arabic spoken through a set of bulky false teeth." "English is essentially a half dozen other languages locked in a small room. They fight."
The Butterfly and the Knife in Court
You've heard about MS-13. But did you expect that members of “The World's Most Dangerous Gang” would now be testifying for the prosecution? Other witnesses would be envious. The saga of The Butterfly and the Knife is in a new chapter. (Previously)
The glass flowers of Leopold Blaschka
The glass flowers of Leopold Blaschka were created to provide enduring botanical teaching models. During his lifetime 4,000 models were created; a selection of 17 specimens are currently on display at the Corning Museum of Glass. MeFi has previously been treated to the splendor of the Blaschka marine invertebrates.
The Small House Half-way Up in the Next Block
When people think of Old Time Radio, they usually think of the standards: Amos 'n Andy, Burns and Allen, Dragnet, etc. etc. I won't link to them because they are all over the 'net, and you can find them easily. But you almost certainly don't know about Vic and Sade ... and you should.
Read the good Wikipedia article first, to whet your appetite even more, then go listen! [more inside]
Read the good Wikipedia article first, to whet your appetite even more, then go listen! [more inside]
Virtuoso Vertiginousness
Vertigo got you spinning? The answers to your problems and more are available at the Hitchcock DVD Wiki.
Goodbye Tony Blair
I'm rubbish at political comedy, so I'll leave it up to Tim Ireland to properly say Goodbye, Tony Blair. (via)
Speaking of vertigo...
Peter B. Kaplan is a New York Photographer who made his name by climbing to high locations and taking amazing super-wide angle shots since the 70's -- most notably, the Statue of Liberty restoration project. He recently had to stop after 40 years because he started suffering from vertigo. After laying off ginkgo biloba, Kaplan’s vertigo and fear of heights has apparently disappeared.
5. ColdFusion
The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills. "Obsolescence is a relative -- not absolute -- term in the world of technology."
Ironworkers Above The City
Amazing photo sequence from the Philadelphia Inquirer on the ironworkers building the top floors (45 - 55) of the Comcast Center. Not safe for those with Vertigo. Via.
I hate cilantro.
feline family
The Private Life of a Cat, 1944, (GoogleVideo, 22 minutes), is a gem of a silent film by Alexander Hammid, about a mother cat giving birth, her relationship with her kittens and mate.
No Pay for Lost Pants
A very big day for the District of Columbia Superior Court. In Pearson v. Soo Chung (pdf of opinion), Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled that Custom Cleaners is not liable to Roy L. Pearson for "various calculations of damages that go as high as $67 million" over "a pair of allegedly missing pants." The other shoe is yet to drop. Judge Bartnoff ruled that Pearson must pay the defendants' court costs and will consider forcing Pearson to pay the defendants' attorneys' fees. ( previously.)
New Supreme Court Opinions
A very big day for the Supreme Court. In Morse v. Fredrick, the Court ruled that a school could suspend a child for holding up a "Bong HiTs for Jesus" banner. (Previous post here). In Hein v. Freedom from Religion, the Court held that taxpayers lacked standing to challenged Faith Based Initiatives (previous discussions). In Wilke v. Robbins, the Court held that land owners do not have Bivens claims if the federal government harasses landowners for easements. In FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Court held that the portion of the campaign finance law which had blackout periods before elections on issue advocacy advertising was an unconstitutional restriction of speech (other). This Thursday, the Justices will deliver their last opinions of the term, including a death penalty case and the school assignment cases. (Opinions are .pdfs)
Nothing to do with the open bar
Hitting the Walls and Working the Middle
BYT: A lot of our readers at Brightest Young Things are young women. Is there a main thrust of Vagina Power that you want to communicate directly to them? It was just this morning, on the prompting of a friend, that I found myself examining Alexyss Tylor's Vagina Power again, including our home grown transcript of her vagina power philosophy. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but when I tuned into my favorite website about the D.C. social scene this morning, I fell off my chair. [nsfw]
...So the musician would have a place to put his beer.
Yucca Mountain Johnny is saying goodbye
The Problem of Nuclear Waste, for kids: Imagine what your house would be like if no one EVER took out the garbage. Not only would your home be dirty and stinky, but it would also be a very unhealthy place to live. See Yucca Mountain Johnny while you can, because it looks like he won't be around much longer.
Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace: "Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made." (Related blog post)
Everything reduced to a mathematical representation
Simulated jet colliding with the World Trade Center: Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation to study in detail what likely happened when a commercial airliner crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. Youtube link.
The human network
Get lost
Lost Art is the fascinating site of Brazilian Mefite Ignacio Aronovich and Louise Chin. It's a deep vein of adventurous, quirky, and kinky photo essays from around the globe. Scroll down on the main page to see a text menu or browse the visual index. Much content is NSFW but - stick with "adventure" and "travel" if that's a concern - or view the SFW slide show Our Year in Pictures 2006 (with sound) or without sound.
Spoider Bloke
Birmingham’s iconic, 200 foot high Selfridge’s building has been scaled by an anonymous teenage equivalent of Alain Robert (previously). A friend filmed the feat and posted it to YouTube, although local (text) news (YouTube) claims it has now been removed. But has it?
1000 Science Lecture Videos
SciTalks - from the press release [19 June]: "The site launches today with over 1,000 lectures
online, and more are being added daily. Segments range from a series of
hour-long lectures by the late Richard Feynman, to a short, hilarious Ali G
interview with Noam Chomsky, and a fascinating talk on designing a
semiconductor-based brain, by up-and-coming Stanford researcher Kwabena
Boahen." [via]
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