June 26, 2009
Dream A Little Dream
Dreaming of Nonsense: The Evolutionary Enigma of Dream Content. Why on earth do our minds conjure up such ridiculous imagery, such inane thoughts, such spectacularly vivid and surreal landscapes, intense emotions—such narrative trash?
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Pastor Urges His Flock to Bring Guns to Church
As soon as you start saying that it’s not something that Christians do, well, guns are just the foil. The issue now is the Gospel. So in a sense, it does become a crusade. Now the Gospel is at stake. Of the 40 states with right-to-carry laws, 20 allow guns in churches. [more inside]
Music is Math is Beauty
Glenn Marshall is an Irish computer video artist and musician whose recent work has focused on audio visualization programed in the Processing language. Generally the program is left to its own devices, though his work-for-hire has more intentional design, as in his video for the Peter Gabriel song "The Nest that Sailed the Sky." Marshall has also been hired to create video for Guinness for Sky TV and the Rugby Six Nations Tournament, and a looping animation for Hermes of Paris. Marshall discusses his works with some detail on his blog. (More videos inside) [more inside]
"There was nothing in the rules of the competition to say that rigged photos were banned. We pushed the clichés to the limit."
This year's winner of the Grand Prix Paris Match du Photoreportage, a stark B&W expose of student poverty in Strasourg, is a hoax.
Type Tart Cards
Tart cards [NSFW] are the means by which many London prostitutes advertise their services. Step into almost any central London phone box and you can contemplate up to 80 cards inviting you to be tied, teased, spanked or massaged.... [Wallpaper Magazine] asked designers – from students to superstars – to find the tart hiding in every typeface and create their own graphic numbers.... all 450 cards can be viewed here. [NSFW] [more inside]
Cinematch++
Over three years later, has the Netflix Prize been won? Today our team submitted our solution to the Netflix Prize, resulting in a score of .8558, which corresponds to an improvement over Netflix Cinematch algorithm of 10.05%. This is the first submission in the competition to break the 10% barrier and sets off a 30 day period where all competitors are invited to submit their best and final solutions. (Previously.) [more inside]
Geek feminism
“...the Platonic nerd is invariably male. The stereotype is flexible to incorporate women and girls on an individual basis, but few people conjure up the image of a woman when they think about nerds.” Feminist blog Pandagon reviews two books about nerdiness and geekery, Jason Tocci addresses the question of why female involvement in geek culture seems to call for a special explanation, and two feminist geeks set out in search of an egalitarian future.
All the King's Men
Monarchy vs. Democracy: "Was the change from monarchy to democracy a step backwards? In practical terms, there is no question: democracy has had tremendously bad effects compared to monarchy." [more inside]
16 men on a dead bloggers chest...
Reports spread around the internet about an offer by a Russian company to do pirate hunting cruises off the coast of Somalia. The news garners a swarm of comments and outrage, and it looks like we have the beginnings of a snowballing controversy. [more inside]
Free at last!
The tragic story of Timothy Cole who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, and died because of inadequate health care in prison. He was recently posthumously exonerated based on confessions of the guilty man and DNA evidence.
Rape and Regret in South Africa
More Michele Bachmann shenanigans
Michele Bachman waxes fuzzy on the census with Glenn Beck. Michele Bachmann is continuing her anti-Census campaign and getting brighter by the minute - like that last intense glow before the bulb burns completely out.
For all your optical illusion and visual gimmick needs.
A relatively long list of music videos by Michel Gondry. From his humble beginnings with Oui Oui to his eventual mastery of both space and time. [more inside]
Don't worry, it's monopoly money anyway.
Overly confident in the economic health of the United States? Feeling sanguine about current spending levels? Haven't yet been scared out of your wits about your financial future? No worries! The U.S. National Debt Clock page is for you! Your one stop shop for all things financial meltdown related: Total debt, debt per citizen, budget deficits and spending year-to-date, total governmental bailouts, and much much more!
One man's trash is another man's gold
FRONTLINE: Ghana - Digital Dumping Ground On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah. One of the biggest fallouts? Identity Theft.
"Dont let the fire rush to your head..."
Framed by a circle of clouds, this is a stunning illustration of Nature's powerful force.
A plume of smoke, ash and steam soars five miles into the sky from an erupting volcano.
The extraordinary image was captured by the crew of the International Space Station 220 miles above a remote Russian island in the North Pacific.
Let yourself go in your adult diaper, Michael Bay invites you.
Could Transformers:ROTF(L) be one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest? This reviewer argues that it just might be.
Well all I want is to just be free/Live my life the way I wanna be
Sky Saxon, lead singer and bassist for garage rock legends The Seeds, passed away yesterday at the (estimated) age of 63. [more inside]
Do you wanna dance?
Back in the days before music videos, and if the band could not make it to the Top Of The Pops studio, then out would come dance group Pan's People. [more inside]
The Science of Cosby
Nothing worse than bad sax.
A handy rating guide to 1980s saxophone solos -- "I realized about 5 years ago that at some point in the 80s, lots of the popular music started incorporating saxophone solos into their songs. Some of them are fine, but most of them are ridiculous to have in the songs. I have attempted to separate the quality and appropriateness of the solos from what I think of the song as a whole..."
Confidential to NY Times: Free as in speech
Getting smart about personal technology. NYTimes publishes Sonia Zjawinski's assertion that other peoples' images on Flickr are probably OK to download, blow up and use to decorate her house: And if you’re wondering about copyright issues (after all, these aren’t my photos), the photos are being used by me for my own, private, noncommercial use. I’m not selling these things and not charging admission to my apartment, so I think I’m in the clear. [more inside]
Sixty Symbols
What Periodic Videos did for chemistry, Sixty Symbols is doing for physics and engineering. Some behind the scenes action and general scienciness. [more inside]
Keeping it scratchy!
Norwich (UK)-based DJ 78 (aka Dave Guttridge) plays the great tracks of yesteryear using only two wind-up gramophones and a pile of 78s (watch). Now he's got his own monthly radio show, Shellac Shake, complete with podcast.
Zubbles, the Colorful Bubbles
Finally, finally - Zubbles are available for pre-order! Inventor Tim Kehoe has been searching for the elusive colored bubble for a long time. Through his experimentation he's stained his eyes a deep blue, along with his car, his kitchen, and his bathtub (he's also permanently stained the family dog). But in 2005, after 11 years and over $500,000 in funding, Kehoe successfully created a colored bubble that wouldn't stain. His invention, Zubbles, was given the "Best of What's New, Grand Award" from Popular Science. [more inside]
Canadian War Posters
Canadian War Poster Collection at McGill University. And if that doesn't strike your fancy, the list of digital collections include such time-honoured favourites as Expo '67, and the award-winner for unexpected collection, Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine. (previously)
HTML Playground
HTML Playground allows you to learn HTML and CSS by example.
Greatly exaggerated
With the world buzzing about celebrity deaths, it was an opportune moment for hoaxsters. A rumour that Jeff Goldblum had died spread quickly on Twitter, and "'Jeff Goldblum dead' was at 11am the third-most popular search term on Google". The actor's agent quashed the rumour, but not before Australian TV broadcast it as fact, complete with a touching montage tribute. Still, now he knows what it will be like when he really goes: "A surprise funeral? For me?"
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