June 5, 2011
Hejji
Like a lot of people, I grew up with Theodor Geisel, alias Dr. Seuss, as a huge part of my childhood. Books like Cat in the Hat and Oh, The Places You'll Go helped me learn how to read, and the Chuck Jones version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas! is still a holiday tradition at my house. But until this week, I had no idea that two years before his book was published, Dr. Seuss created a sadly short-lived newspaper comic strip called Hejji -- and it turns out that it's one of his most interesting works. [more inside]
There's a little quantum mechanics involved.
An easy way to have sex without having to communicate. The Forty Beads method, invented by sex therapist Carolyn Evans, relies on tokens that allow a husband to give his wife a bead (by putting it in her "beadcatcher") when he's "in the mood," with a 24-hour deadline for "redemption." (Evans also says the roles can be reversed for those low-libido husbands/high-libido wives).
political orientation correlated with brain structure
Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults, Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth, Geraint Rees. Current Biology - 26 April 2011 (Vol. 21, Issue 8, pp. 677-680) [Full text .pdf]
Political liberalism and conservatism were correlated with brain structure
Liberalism was associated with the gray matter volume of anterior cingulate cortex
Conservatism was associated with increased right amygdala size
Results offer possible accounts for cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives [more inside]
Optimism reigned but with caution
Meno male che Silvio c’è
Thank God Silvio Exists! A beautiful blond woman, standing in a grocery store beside a pile of bananas, sings, “There’s a big dream that lives in all of us.” A throng of women belt out the chorus together under a cloudless sky: “Menomale che Silvio c’è”— “Thank God there’s Silvio.” Other women in various settings pick up the tune: a young mother in a pediatrician’s office, surrounded by nurses; a brunette in a beauty parlor, dressed for work in a camisole that barely covers her breasts. To American eyes, the ad looks like a parody, or perhaps some new kind of musical pornography that’s just about to erupt into carnality. (from a New Yorker blog post) [more inside]
You have all committed a terrible sin.
The Life Zone is an anti-abortion suspense thriller about three women who are kidnapped and forced to carry their pregnancies to term.
Never Get Them Wet
MMOWGLI is an upcoming online wargame designed by the US Office of Naval Research to help find solutions to the problem of piracy. Players will either assume the role of an anti-piracy task-force or of pirates. Rather than being an action game MMOWGLI will relay on players providing short, Twitter-like solutions to tactical scenarios.
Anti matter containment achieved...kinda
We've observed antimatter being created in thunderstorms(previously) and we've created antimatter at CERN.(previously) and (previously) The first experiments, announced last November, were able to trap antimatter for about 1/10th of a second; not long enough to study and analyze it properly. Now the Alpha experiment at CERN has announced that they have successfully trapped anti-hydrogen for 1000 seconds. Nature article preprint from arxive.org
Little Ellen dies of the croup because her mother has neglected to get her shoe repaired.
Many hate her, but she is alive in every fandom. She fences with Methos and Duncan MacLeod; she saves the Enterprise, the Voyager, or the fabric of time and space; she fights with Jim Ellison in defense of Cascade; she battles evil in Sunnydale alongside Buffy Sommers. 150 Years of Mary Sue, by Pat Pflieger, exploring vanity fanfic back to the 19th century. Bonus blackhole of content: TVTropes on Mary Sue.
How the Eames Chair and Ottoman are manufactured
Creation process of the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. Putting together previous coverage by Treehugger and Vitra, Belgian standardista/Web designer Veerle Pieters offers a step-by-step breakdown, designed in her characteristically beautiful and feminine style, of how the iconic Eames chair and ottoman are constructed. Spoiler alert: It involves a lot of bent plywood.
The Films of Damon Packard
SkateBang, TJ Hooker Intro, World on a Wire Trailer, The Last Chase Trailer, and Early 70s Horror Trailer are among the more accessible works by Damon Packard, an experimental filmmaker who’s been working since the early 1980s. Most of his oeuvre is posted on his YouTube Channel. His longer works tend to consist of original footage spliced into re-edits of existing films. Here are some scenes from the still incomplete Foxfur, his most recent work.
New Front in the Battle over Foreskin.
They're axing for it.
Anti-comic Neil Hamburger used his column in Vice Magazine this week to call AXE body spray "a fetid, sugared-and-fermented-manure stench, which acts as a virtual mating call to the TV-addled, party-fried pig girls whom these dopes are trying to fill with their tainted seed." He's sponsoring an art contest in which Photoshoppers combine AXE with images from the Sex Offender Registry. AXE has threatened to boycott Vice.
Venezuelan party prison
Prison party central, Margarita Island, Venezuala. (NYT)
Kitchen Nightmare
A trailer for a British rom-com Love's Kitchen (previously known as No Ordinary Trifle ) recently appeared, notable for a cameo by chef Gordon Ramsay playing himself. The reaction was somewhat negative. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the trailer was taken down and replaced with a slightly improved version but handily the original had been reposted here.
Eeeexcellent.
The Schizophrenia of Spain
Leonard Cohen has been honored with the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters.
His connection to Spain came through his personal interest in the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca.
Cohen and García Lorca came together spiritually when the late flamenco singer Enrique Morente (Previous) used their poems as the basis of his seminal 1996 album Omega. ( More on Omega (Spanish)
At the same time The new Spanish Dictionary of Biography's historical revisions tell us more about what's wrong with Spain now than in the past;
F is for Franco but not for fascist. (It's worth reading down the comments as well).
His connection to Spain came through his personal interest in the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca.
Cohen and García Lorca came together spiritually when the late flamenco singer Enrique Morente (Previous) used their poems as the basis of his seminal 1996 album Omega. ( More on Omega (Spanish)
At the same time The new Spanish Dictionary of Biography's historical revisions tell us more about what's wrong with Spain now than in the past;
F is for Franco but not for fascist. (It's worth reading down the comments as well).
"Crazy Shots"
Ray Bribiesca: "Crazy Shots" (via "60 Minutes" video extra) Interview of "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan highlighting Ray Bribiesca, the Vietnam War veteran responsible for some amazing combat footage. [more inside]
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