July 30, 2012
English Church Architecture
English churches can be very picturesque. People have very strong opinions about their favorites. They can be colorfully decorated with painted walls,(previously) or filled with strange animals carvings! There is a complex architectural terminology devoted to the details of their construction. [more inside]
Quantifying the Gender Gap in Philosophy
Molly Paxton, Carrie Figdor, and Valerie Tiberius have a new paper in Hypatia quantifying the gender gap in philosophy (pdf). [more inside]
Rarer Than a Perfect Game
Tonight, for only the third time in Major League Baseball history, a player (Kendrys Morales of the Los Angeles Angels) hit two home runs in the same inning, one from each side of the plate.
Morales' second home run of the inning was a grand slam, his first since the ill-fated events of 5/29/10, when he suffered a freak ankle injury jumping onto home plate in celebration of his game-winning hit, just as his career was really beginning to take off. Morales subsequently missed nearly two full seasons of baseball, returning just this year.
NYC and Breastfeeding
During his tenure as Mayor of New York City, "public health autocrat" Michael Bloomberg has attempted to regulate trans fats, smoking and sugar-filled sodas. Now, he has a fresh target: moms who don't breastfeed. Beginning September 3, NYC hospitals participating in a new, voluntary program: Latch-On NYC (press release / posters / FAQ -pdf-), will make formula less accessible, to encourage moms of newborns to breastfeed instead of using formula. [more inside]
A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away
McLaren Tooned
Formula 1 powerhouse McLaren not
only designs good cars, they've
commissioned a series of YouTube cartoons featuring
Jenson Button and
Lewis Hamilton, their
current drivers.
Episode 1,
Episode 2,
Episode 3
Thank God, it's Friday!
The Castaway's Guide To Making A Home: What do people do when they're shipwrecked on a deserted isle?
Simple Desks
Simple Desks: A frequently updated collection of beautifully minimal desks and workspaces, interspersed with occasional musings on minimalism, productivity, design and technology
50 Shades of #808080
By late May, more than ten million copies of E.L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy, an erotic romance series about the sexual exploits of a domineering billionaire and an inexperienced coed, had been sold in the United States, all within six weeks of the books’ publication here. This apparently unprecedented achievement occurred without the benefit of a publicity campaign, formal reviews, or Oprah’s blessing, owing to a reputation established, as one industry analyst put it, “totally through word of mouth.” [Grey Area: How ‘Fifty Shades’ Dominated the Market]
Can anyone hook me up with a fat eighth or quarter?
Quiltsrÿche Who needs dope licks when you have fussy cuts? Boo Davis's punk and metal inspired-quilts. This ain't your granny's rock-and-roll muslin. [more inside]
First there was Flash Friday, and now . . .
Maritime Monday. (No NSFW images in this link, but some weeks there will be a random picture or two of a topless mer-person or sailor.)
LSD absolutely had helped them solve their complex, seemingly intractable problems
"The Heretic: For decades, the U.S. government banned medical studies of the effects of LSD. But for one longtime, elite researcher, the promise of mind-blowing revelations was just too tempting." [more inside]
Guides to the Orchestra: Britten and Moonrise Kingdom
Moonrise Kingdom opens with Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Similar to Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (a version narrated by David Bowie, part 1 with the character introductions), the Guide uses a narrator to identify the principal instruments.
The movie closes with (non-plot spoilers): [more inside]
A Viking We Shall Go
DERP!
Jonah Lehrer resigns
Jonah Lehrer resigns from New Yorker after making up Dylan quotes for his book. Tablet report is cached. (Previously.)
Ultimate Beach Read RIGHT
Bikinis that match book covers. Matchbook is a tumblr that features bikinis that unintentionally match the cover art of well known books.
Making a living while working in the arts
Is it possible to make a living in the arts? Meet the double jobbers.
Walking as a liberative experience
'You actually have to really build a collaborative relationship with the people on the ground if you want to have any hope of understanding what’s going on.'
"Let’s Map Who Owes The Local Warlord Money": Meet An Urban Planner For Cities That Don't Yet Exist (via Small Wars Journal). [more inside]
If you meet the buddha on the road, combine, merge, and extrude him.
Boolean Buddhas I started to combine multiple copies of the Buddha model with simple shapes, using boolean operations. [more inside]
The Mundanity of Excellence
Excellence is mundane. Excellence is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time.: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers (1989) [more inside]
It's real and it's our fault
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic : Richard A. Muller is a physicist, teacher, and author. His popular "Physics for Future Presidents" course is available for free online (previously). Yet Muller has a more controversial side: Climate skeptic. But last year, his Koch-funded Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project confirmed global warming is real and today, an OpEd in the New York Times states that humans are almost entirely the cause. [more inside]
People of the internet... this is the best day!
Kid President gives Pen Ward the first Medal of Awesome! Ward is the creator of Adventure Time! (Previously &)
RUN. HIDE. FIGHT.
Pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise...
First Person Firefighter
Ever wonder what it would be like to experience what a firefighter sees? Here's a helmet cam of working inside a burning building. [slyt]
Mort de Chris Marker
Chris Marker, director of La Jetée and Sans Soleil, among many others, and co-writer of 12 Monkeys, has died at age 91.
English obit. French obit.
Article on Chris Marker in the Guardian from 2002.
Another appreciation from 2002.
La Jetée on YouTube.
Previously. Previouslier.
Mirrors of your dreams
Neuro Images posts images of brains and art based on them. Some of them are beautiful; some of them are grotesque; some of them are
confronting or sad (the complete series is here); and some of them are strangely reminiscent. (previously)
« Previous day | Next day »