August 24, 2012
'Silence seems to keep me from idealizing myself.'
How Silence Works: Emailed Conversations With Four Trappist Monks
Freitag! Freitag! Goth musst unten am Freitag!
The Godfathers of German Gothic and the Ghostriders of German Gothic gave voice to lesser known acts of the punk-punk era. Collated initially by Schwarze szene notable band musician Jay Kay it was an attempt to collect the mainland European 'gothic' experience. [more inside]
Old ships and nautical memorabilia
Old Ships is a website packed full of evocative, interesting and historical pictures of old ships from A to Zambesi. It's a feast of all kinds of other vintage maritime images, including ports, docks, ferries, harbors, paintings, canals, rivers, maritime scenes, onboard pictures, shipboard menus, lots of great postcards and other old historical nautical memorabilia (even the ship's cat). [more inside]
My voyage of curiosity has turned to courage.
Christianity for Atheists
The Human Bible is a podcast by Robert M. Price, professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and author of a number of books on theology. Though an atheist -- and skeptical of the very existence of the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels -- Price's great knowledge of (and love for) the Scriptures is evident throughout. No matter what you believe, you won't regret listening to these podcasts.
A jury has ruled for Apple in its huge smartphone patent infringement case involving Samsung and ordered Samsung to pay $1.5 billion.
After a year of scorched-earth litigation, a jury decided Friday that Samsung ripped off the innovative technology used by Apple to create its revolutionary iPhone and iPad. The jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 billion. An appeal is expected. [more inside]
Francis Ford Coppola's "Captain EO"
RAWR
The Writing on the Wall
The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum is a massive, 17-volume catalog of 180,000 inscriptions and graffiti found across the Roman Empire in classical times. It's available for free online now, starting with the parts published before 1940. I'm fond of volume 4, which covers Pompeii and Herculaneum. (Pompeii graffiti prev) [more inside]
Foul Bachelor Goons
Mexican Archaeological Sites On Google Street View
Google Street View has sent people on bicycles around 30 major archaeological sites in Mexico, including Chichen Itza, Palenque, Monte Alban, Teotihuacan, Tulum, Cobá, and more.
You can go right up to (but not up) the pyramids. For me, seeing the tourists and the souvenir vendors is part of the fun.
Daniel Hernandez at the LA Times has some more good links.
Neurosciencey stuff→Loss of critical faculties
Oxford University neuroscience professor Dorothy Bishop delivers a scathing lecture (text version) about the overselling of weak neuroscience, both in the news and within the scientific literature. [more inside]
The Top 25 NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL Sports Uniforms
From Paul Lukas of Uni Watch, a list of the 25 best uniforms in the four major North American professional sports. [more inside]
Fear and Loathing in Amundsen-Scott Station
splash splash splash
LA BESTIA SCARLATTA CON SETTE TESTE
GET WELL SOON - Roland I Feel You (Vimeo, NSFW) is a music video that pays homage to Alejandro Jodorowsky, Ray Harryhausen, and Italian horror. Contains nudity and gore and zaniness.
This Will End in Tears
Overshooting faster
This month we've gone too far, we humans on Earth. "[H]umanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. We are now operating in overdraft." [more inside]
Another Shooting
The Onion reacts in real time to news undercutting a bitterly satiric headline.
The Man in Humpty Hump's Nose
Back in 1993, the hip hop group Digital Underground needed to release a single to promote their 4th album, the Body-Hat Syndrome, in the hopes they could recapture the magic of their two biggest hits, Humpty Dance and Doowutchyalike. Frontman Greg "Shock G" Davis (aka Humpty Hump) needed a gimmick to promote the new single, Return of the Crazy One, so he hired FM Productions in San Francisco (who had also designed flying pigs for Pink Floyd concerts) to create a 12-foot high sculpture of his own head, which would allow him to emerge from a trap door in the nostrils. Fast forward almost twenty years later, until a guy with the web handle johnny payphone finds the giant head abandoned and covered in dust in an Oakland warehouse after a homeless man attempted to live in it for several weeks. No museums have yet expressed interest in the head, but if you have the money, and you can take good care of it, the giant Humpty Hump head could be yours.
Nicholson Baker Sings!
A real animal
Uh oh! Everyone's favorite Internet cat, Lil Bub, took over BuzzFeed. Let's get ready to BUBFeed! (Bubstep sold separately) [more inside]
MENTOS BITCH!
65-year-old Bill Lee wins game
Bill "Spaceman" Lee wins a professional baseball game at 65. The former Red Sox pitcher and co-author of "The Wrong Stuff" went all nine innings for the San Rafael Pacifics of the North American League, beating the Maui Na Koa Ikaika by a score of 9-4. He also batted for himself and singled in a run. Take that, Roger Clemens!
Rolling in the Higgs
"I'm a harmony addict working on a master's in theoretical physics; what ELSE was I going to make a YouTube channel about?"
And so was born A Capella Science, brainchild of lifelong harmonics junkie and physics master's student Tim Blais. His first track, "Rolling in the Higgs (Adele parody)", takes on the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs boson.
A Compendium of Public-Domain Essays
The Soldier Who Vanished
Until that point, she had been questioned in English and German. But this time a different man spoke — in what she identified as perfect Hebrew. He was dark-skinned and had a thin face. “This interrogation was different from the ones that came before,” Keunecke said. “There was a sense of expectation. It was like a show, as if they wanted to see how we reacted to each other.” - The soldier who vanished: Guy Hever, a 20-year-old artilleryman, walked out of his base on the Golan Heights 15 years ago this week. Despite searches, half-sightings, clues and theories that stretch the imagination, he has not been heard from since
The bosses with the antennas on tap.
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift is radically changing the sound of English: Despite fears that the growth of TV and radio would homogenize English dialects in the US, the Great Lakes region (from Syracuse to Milwaukee) has been in fact diverging with respect to how people there pronounce English words. Rob Mifsud writes: Consider the three-letter words that begin with b and end in t: bat, bet, bit, bot, and but. All five of those words contain short vowel sounds. Their long-vowel equivalents—bate, beet, bite, boat, boot, and bout—arrived at their modern pronunciations as a result of the Great Vowel Shift that began around 1400 and established the basic contours of today’s English. But those short vowels have remained pretty much constant since the eighth century—in other words, for more than a thousand years. Until now. [more inside]
"Your password cannot be a personal statement."
The Count Is Down
Jerry Nelson, one of the major talents 'underneath' the Muppets, has passed away at the age of 78. [more inside]
Today: a one hundred year old package will be opened in Otta, Norway
Today: a one hundred year old package will be opened in Otta, Norway. (Scroll down for video with English subtitles). With obligatory live stream!
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