August 30, 2008
Mythbusters Gagged
Mythbusters has been gagged about doing a new episode on the ease of hacking the new rfid enabled credit cards.
natural beauty
The People of the Omo Valley, Ethiopia, use their faces and bodies as canvases, using natural elements at hand in an especially beautiful, natural fashion show. These photographs [flash] were taken by Hans Silvester, a German photographer who spent 10 months in the Omo Valley. [more inside]
Guardian's Top 50 Arts Videos
The Guardian has compiled a list of their top fifty arts videos, the majority being from either rare or obscure sources and uploaded onto YouTube.
The forgotten Holocaust
In 1943, while the Allies were busy battling the Axis Powers and the Nazi Regime, there was another kind of war that was being waged against a helpless populace (living on the Indian Sub-continent). A war that has been largely ignored by the mass media and the history books of our time. It is known as the Great Bengal Famine, and ended up causing the death of an estimated 1.5 million to 4 million people.
Brooklyn Signs
Signs that point to both a tenuously emerging future, as well as the dusty fingerprints of the neglected past. Brooklyn Signs.
Love At First Byte
From darkness, she rose into the light... Meet Ela, young warrior princess! This short uses tacky CG technology to pay homage to our most wicked '80s fantasies. [via]
Glorious Colour
Between 1908 and 1931, French philanthropist Albert Kahn funded The Archive of the Planet. He sent out still photographers and motion picture cameramen who returned with 72,000 Autochrome colour plates, 4,000 steroscopic views, and 600,000 feet of film. BBC4's startling series allows us all to see Edwardians In Colour.
Major Hurricane Gustav heads for Louisiana
Hurricane Gustav is headed for landfall in Louisiana in the next 48 hours, with currently around an equal chance of being a category 3 storm or a category 4 storm. Gustav has 150 mph winds at the moment as it begins to enter the gulf of Mexico and a million people evacuate.
After failing in their response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago, Fema is trying to be more proactive. Of course, some people are staying in harm's way, live blogging, and once again, there's the cry "bring it on". [more inside]
Facebook the Movie
Flowers For Algernon - The Blog
Daniel Keys' classic 1959 Science Fiction story "Flowers for Algernon", which takes place in a series of diary entries, has been posted online as a blog. Of course, you'll need to read it backwards, from the earliest entry to the latest, to avoid giving away the ending... [via]
Bust Em Before They Bite
Since at least February, the St, Paul police and the FBI have been trying to infiltrate protest groups planning to demonstrate and the RNC. Apparently they were successful because they have begun arresting protestors before the convention actually starts. They even went after the press. I have to wonder if any MeFites were busted?
Seek the Six
Seek the Six / "We want information." / "You won't get it." / "By hook or by crook, we will." [more inside]
Katanga, Iago!
When a top black entertainer reaches 50, of course he's going to want to add The Moor to his repertoire... [more inside]
Marie-Thérèse will have her revenge on Milborough
Two kids. Dentist husband. New kid. Gay guy. Dead dog. Not-So-Secret wedding. Successful writer. First Nations. Another wedding. For Better. For Worse.
Billys and Charleys
In 1857, hundreds of strange objects suddenly started appearing in London antique shops: coins and medals, vases and statues, all made out of soft metal with weird designs and cryptic lettering. They were the work of two illiterate London mudlarks, William Smith and Charles Eaton, who managed to fool some of the leading archaeologists of the day into accepting their forgeries as genuine medieval antiquities.
Lard: The New Health Food?
As I sent my friends home bathed in the warm glow of hog grease, I felt sure that our generation would pass the test of lard. We might not cook with it every night—natural lard is expensive and (all right, I'll admit it) deep-fried foods are often loaded with calories, no matter which fat you use. But we won't live in fear of it, either. When we want deep-fried excellence, we'll reach for the best fat for the job: lard. [more inside]
The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons. `The author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" was Garrett Hardin, a University of California professor who until then was best known as the author of a biology textbook that argued for "control of breeding" of "genetically defective" people (Hardin 1966: 707). In his 1968 essay he argued that communities that share resources inevitably pave the way for their own destruction; instead of wealth for all, there is wealth for none....Given the subsequent influence of Hardin's essay, it's shocking to realize that he provided no evidence at all to support his sweeping conclusions. He claimed that the "tragedy" was inevitable -- but he didn't show that it had happened even once. Hardin simply ignored what actually happens in a real commons: self-regulation by the communities involved.`
The artist without eyes
Look at all the MAPLE SAP I got!
The worst comic strip ever? Thrill to the stilted, unfunny adventures of Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy, brought to you by Jerry Beck, of Cartoon Research fame.
Making their mark
Lightmark Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke of Germany create fabulous fine art images via light painting.
In a word: beautiful. [more inside]
"Photography lost its innocence many years ago."
Photo Tampering Through History. A regularly-updated collection, from 1860 to present, of examples of photo manipulation. Sometimes the changes are made for historical revisionism, sometimes for political maneuvering, and sometimes it's just a "wtf?" The page is part of a larger body of work by Dartmouth's Hany Farid, who has some other interesting goodies online. [Warning for the Pepsi Blue detectives: In some of his pages, he's shilling for his consulting services]
Geoffrey Perkins is dead
Legendary British comedy producer Geoffrey Perkins died in a freak accident yesterday. Chances are if you watched some British comedy over the last 20 years, and liked it, Geoffrey Perkins had a hand in it.
« Previous day | Next day »