July 3, 2012
Reality TV, Cain Style
Herman Cain has a new joint. From Herman Cain, the main who broke the mold of bizarre political advertising, comes CainTV.
That is a classy umbrella
"Had I ever given a compliment that made someone feel worse? Or that had no effect at all? I decided to learn how to deliver good ones. I devised a plan in which I would give a lot of them in a short time and work to figure out exactly how the best compliments worked, and why."
Fire Tornado!!!!
Nondrick managed to reproduce. Who would've thought?
Remember Nondrick from Livin' in Oblivion? Chris Livingston documents his descendent's non-adventures as a non-player character in Skyrim in PC Gamer's The Elder Strolls. [more inside]
All four stanzas
How to look your best the morning after
How to look your best the morning after (SLYT): makeup celebrity Lauren Luke aka panacea81 does a stealth PSA for domestic violence charity Refuge. (Interview)
Sic transit gloria
Up-close with Atlantis. A photo gallery of Space Shuttle Atlantis, as it awaits decommissioning in the VAB.
Getting Lost
Infographic essay on the meaning of life. Visual design by Marco Bagni
Music by sarco-o (see also i am sarco
Technology Enhancements for Sensory Impaired
Recent technologies developed at American universities are making communication easier for the sight and hearing impaired. Last summer a Stanford undergrad developed a touchscreen Braille writer that stands to revolutionize how the blind negotiate an unseen world by replacing devices costing up to 10 times more. Thanks to a group of University of Houston students, the hearing impaired may soon have an easier time communicating with those who do not understand sign language. During the past semester, students in UH’s engineering technology and industrial design programs teamed up to develop the concept and prototype for MyVoice, a device that reads sign language and translates its motions into audible words, and vice versa.
Fallout 3 vs. Reality
Fallout 3 vs. Reality - A fan of the video game series Fallout 3, which depicts a post-apocalyptic world, travels to Washington, DC and Las Vegas to take photos of the locations as they exist today and compares them to screen captures from within the game. (via Reddit thread)
Well, there's a new idea for a remake
Virus 復活の日 Fukkatsu no hi
Virus (復活の日 Fukkatsu no hi, literally "Day of Resurrection") is a 1980 Japanese post-apocalyptic film about the release and spread of a deadly virus. [more inside]
"Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."
Save the Words: Adopt words that have been abandoned by the English language.
Cog Sci video goodness at UQAM
When, where, how and why —since the origin of life on Earth about 4 billion years ago— did organisms' input/output functions become conscious input/output functions?
This week there's a who's who of cognitive science meeting at the The Evolution and Function of Consciousness conference at University de Québec à Montréal (scroll down a bit for the massive speaker list). The conference is in commemoration of the Turing Centenary (previously). And the best-of-the-web thing is: all of the videos (and discussion threads) are or will shortly be available on line! [more inside]
This week there's a who's who of cognitive science meeting at the The Evolution and Function of Consciousness conference at University de Québec à Montréal (scroll down a bit for the massive speaker list). The conference is in commemoration of the Turing Centenary (previously). And the best-of-the-web thing is: all of the videos (and discussion threads) are or will shortly be available on line! [more inside]
"The noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it."
Watch competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi Eat 397 Hot Dogs, 32 Eggs, 337 Chicken Wings, 13 Sandwiches, 25 Peeps, 30 Tacos, 16 Bananas, and Chug 25 Bottles of Milk. Also, how to eat hot dogs like Takeru Kobayashi.
Sort This Way
What are you? The ubiquitous question.
The Man In The Silk Hat
For a time, Max Linder was considered the greatest of film comedians. Star of over 500 films (examples, 1, 2), inventor of the mirror gag, he was arguably the first film star. His life changed forever when he fought on the front lines in World War I, surviving three serious wounds, including a gas attack. Thereafter, he began bouts of depression. In 1925, he talked his new bride into a suicide pact, dying on Halloween. [more inside]
The Horrors of War
These cards, produced in 1938 by Philadelphia-based Gum, Inc. (later Bowman), produced a political furor unlike any other. The idea for these cards was introduced by George Moll, a Sunday-school teacher and Gum, Inc.'s advertising counsel. Warren Bowman, owner of Gum, Inc., claimed that he wanted to "teach peace by exposing the horrors of war." [link is to an archive of trading cards featuring cartoonish racism/violence/godknowswhat] [more inside]
A series of tubes, but with less filth
Roosevelt Island in New York City has a pneumatic garbage collection system. As part of the planned development of the island in the early 1970s, network of 20-inch tubes takes trash from the island’s 16 residential towers to a central collection point, replacing streetside garbage collection.
Unsupported Polonium
Via Route 66, comes My Sweet Embraceable Moonlit in Vermont Lorraine by the King Cole Trio & Others
Nat King Cole Trio - Sweet Lorraine
Nat King Cole Trio - Route 66
Nat King Cole Trio - Embraceable You
Nat King Cole Trio - Moonlight in Vermont
Nat King Cole with Coleman Hawkins & the Oscar Peterson Trio - Sweet Lorraine
Nat King Cole Trio - Route 66
Nat King Cole Trio - Embraceable You
Nat King Cole Trio - Moonlight in Vermont
Nat King Cole with Coleman Hawkins & the Oscar Peterson Trio - Sweet Lorraine
A slice of Vice on HBO
Bringing VICE to HBO: To win over the cable network, the Vice team assembled a “best of” reel that included stories on North Korean labor camps, Liberia and the gun markets of Pakistan and later produced a pilot that included stories about Afghan suicide bombers and underground heroin clinics. [more inside]
What kind of PRI will rule Mexico?
With the election of Pena Nieto to the presidency, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ends a twelve-year absence from the seat. [more inside]
Going to school in fifties' Britain
"So, one night I can remember sitting up in bed telling my mother (Connie Rosen) that I couldn't sleep because I was sure I was going to fail. She brought me some hot milk with brown sugar in it and told me that I mustn't tell anyone but I couldn't fail. She said that actually the whole thing was really decided by the headteacher. He or she did a 'recommendation'. If anyone failed who the headteacher thought should have passed, the schools found a way for that person to go to grammar school." -- Michael Rosen on his experiences growing up going to school in 1950ties Britain, with the Eleven Plus and the start choice of Grammar School or Secondary Modern. [more inside]
The Codeless Code
The Codeless Code. An illustrated collection of (sometimes violent) fables,
concerning the Art and Philosophy of software development [more inside]
Andy Griffith Dies at 86.
Take down the fishin' pole and meet me at the fishin' hole: Reports are that entertainer Andy Griffith has died at the age of 86. A comedian, actor, and musician, he created an icon of American decency by portraying sheriff Andy Taylor in his fictional TV town of Mayberry, featured on the Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry RFD. By all accounts, a kind a decent man. You can still visit his museum and peruse his archives.
"Just the idea of holding money can make people selfish."
How Money Makes People Act Less Human: Earlier this year, [Paul] Piff, who is 30, published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that made him semi-famous. Titled “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” it showed through quizzes, online games, questionnaires, in-lab manipulations, and field studies that living high on the socioeconomic ladder can, colloquially speaking, dehumanize people. It can make them less ethical, more selfish, more insular, and less compassionate than other people. It can make them more likely, as Piff demonstrated in one of his experiments, to take candy from a bowl of sweets designated for children. “While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff says, “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.”
Lovely Interaction
"I fought for the South; we lost."
Most folks are familiar with Kathryn Bigelow's film The Hurt Locker, in no small part due to the six Oscars that it won at the 82nd Academy Awards. Some twenty years earlier, Ms. Beigelow made another move with a certain three actors who have a habit of showing up together in films made by Bigelow's husband. Rotten Tomatoes lists this film at number 34 on its list of Top 50 Horror Movies, depite its meager box office performance. It is one of several films featuring music by Tangerine Dream. A remake of the film had been under consideration recently, but was shelved due to the presence of another film franchise in the same genre.
Rooms photographed from above
Rooms photographed from above by Menno Aden.
Shakespeare on TV done correctly
The Hollow Crown is a season of 4 of Shakespeare's history plays being broadcast by the BBC. Avoiding past mistakes these are made for a television audience and set on location. [more inside]
Super Doomed Planet Comments
Super Doomed Planet Comics is a webcomic covering such topics as literary success, noodles, and neckties. Occasionally obliquely and surrealistically political, it is typically just surreal. And best of all, it will teach you how to do the poetry.
Cassavetes gets a bang up haircut
In 1982 Actor/Director John Cassavetes gave up a long weekend to star in a film student's short. The end product, The Haircut, is a charming, nearly magical, story of a man going for a haircut and getting much more. The director,Tamar Simon Hoffs, had a daughter Susannah who played in a band then called The Bangs, later The Bangles, who appear near the finish.
"Shelagh would have thought this was stupid perfect"
Shelagh was here - an ordinary, magical life: The Toronto Star dedicated unprecedented coverage to the funeral of 55-year-old Shelagh Gordon – interviewing more than 100 of her friends and family – to show how a modest life can have a huge impact. "She didn’t have a great job, she wasn’t married and never had children, so she wasn’t successful in either the traditional male or female sense, Ms. Porter said. But people would keep telling stories about her kindness. 'She had a lot of magic in her life, and that’s reassuring... That you can live a full, interesting, ordinary life.'" The link includes an extensive interactive photograph of stories from those at Shelagh's funeral, and a video with clips from the memorial as well. Via the NYT: Redefining Success and Celebrating the Unremarkable. (previously: you are not special)
« Previous day | Next day »