August 6, 2009
Q: Wenn ist das Nunstuck git und Slotermeyer? A: Sid Caesar
Automatic Pancakes
Good Morning, New pancakes. And that should about do it. $3500 will get you your very own pancake machine. 200 pancakes/hour in fact.
It was never easy being green, but Jim made it a bit easier.
Buyer Beware
Thinking about becoming a parent? You might find the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's list of recalled items fun! It looks like there's just under a zillion things out there that might harm your new tot. And that doesn't include ... y'know ... toys.
Pete Townshend Guitar Contest
making surfboards in the 20th and 21st century
Clark Foam closed its doors almost four years ago due to Grubby Clark's worry that regulations covering polyurethane foam molding would only get worse, but US surfboard making has survived. In fact, it provided some an opportunity to reconsider board making in a historical context. [more inside]
They're models, not toys!
Building and flying free flight model airplanes is a pastime so obscure it doesn't even register on the geek heirarchy. But in the period between Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic until the start of the Second World War, thousands of boys (and some girls) around the world succumbed to the allure of rubber, lube, and dope. [more inside]
The undiscovered cortex
Listen to baseball again
FreeBaseballRadio.com is a site that was created to help find internet broadcasts of live baseball games. Specifically those that are available for free.
This is a Sincerist Thread
Confused about the world of Templar, Az? (Previously), and its three-books of world-building? Well, i09 gives you a run through of the major plots, cults, and sub-cultures that inhabit the comic's alternate history Arizona. Or maybe you should just start at the beginning.
The Last Abortion Doctor
For thirty-six years, Warren Hern has been one of the few doctors in America to specialize in late abortions. George Tiller was another. And when Dr. Tiller was murdered that Sunday in church, Warren Hern became the only one left.
Translationparty to achieve a balance between English and Japanese.
The downside of the online gold rush – riches for some, “slavery” for most
How the myth of Silicon Valley is really like a “gold rush.” Riches for some, “slavery” for many, says Toronto technology commentator Jesse Hirsh, who also takes aim at the ethic of waste built into Web ideology as expressed in Chris Anderson’s Free. (Video of presentation.) [more inside]
Summer is winding down and the children have gone feral.
Miss Information. The desperate life of a tormented library clerk.
Bookworms with Ink
We've seen tattooed librarians, but so-called literary tattoos are a growing trend. See the lively LiveJournal group, or the folks over at Contrariwise.
Recently, "A couple of independent editors have decided to take the trend and invert it -- to put the literary tattoos back in a book." It appears the call for submissions is still on-going.
Danke schön
Writer, director, producer John Hughes has passed away. Responsible for hilarious Vacations, quirky boyfriends, Ferris' Day Off, a young boy being left Home Alone and the Shermer IL multiverse.
If you liked films in the 80s, you liked John Hughes.
From Hieroglyphs to Isotypes
Soft Drink Analysis Paralysis Coming Soon
Trying to even out the false middle
Can a firefox extension extend rationality? Wherein intel labs attempt to add rationality to the web. Good freaking luck. [more inside]
The usual: Madman or Genius?
"My Quest for Corvo was started by accident one summer afternoon in 1925..." so begins A.J.A Symons book The Quest for Corvo, an experimental biography of the bizarre genius Baron Corvo, much admired by D.H. Lawrence and by Graham Greene among others.
Mention Baron Corvo and bookdealers get excited. Only 5 copies (proofs) of his Don Renato existed. Symons sold his copy to Cecil Woolf, another biographer of Baron Corvo. This copy was later bought by an American Donald Weeks who, after reading Symons book, left his job and moved to England to become part of the growing cult of Baron Corvo. He was said to have amassed an enormous collection of Corviana. Weeks died in 2003: "He died ... of natural causes... Because, however, he left no will nor details of next of kin, he was officially classed as a missing person. He was "no one".' The fate of his rare-book collection has been a source of speculation.
Last week, Leeds University announced that "The University of Leeds has acquired a collection of books and manuscripts relating to Baron Corvo, one of the most controversial English novelists of the early 20th Century." Previews of the catalog. As to what makes Corvo so fascinating, readers can discover for themselves.
Mention Baron Corvo and bookdealers get excited. Only 5 copies (proofs) of his Don Renato existed. Symons sold his copy to Cecil Woolf, another biographer of Baron Corvo. This copy was later bought by an American Donald Weeks who, after reading Symons book, left his job and moved to England to become part of the growing cult of Baron Corvo. He was said to have amassed an enormous collection of Corviana. Weeks died in 2003: "He died ... of natural causes... Because, however, he left no will nor details of next of kin, he was officially classed as a missing person. He was "no one".' The fate of his rare-book collection has been a source of speculation.
Last week, Leeds University announced that "The University of Leeds has acquired a collection of books and manuscripts relating to Baron Corvo, one of the most controversial English novelists of the early 20th Century." Previews of the catalog. As to what makes Corvo so fascinating, readers can discover for themselves.
Inside a bloody cultural tradition.
TV star. Amusement park attraction. Mine sweeper. Stew meat. Funded by SGI & Netscape founder James Clark, award-winning documentary The Cove goes undercover for an inside look at the brutal slaughter of dolphins in the Japanese town of Taiji. Previously.
Tea drinkers, unite.
Steepster is a web 2.0 review/list-making/browsing tool for tea enthusiasts. Lets you easily keep a searchable, tag-able tasting log of teas you've tried, then browse for more you might like.
oh getting high with dad, ehhh D:
Caravaggio and Rembrandt, two great tastes that go well together
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam invites you to compare Caravaggio and Rembrandt. For an overview of Rembrandt's work here are Rembrandt van Rijn: Life and Work and A Web Catalogue of Rembrandt Paintings. For Caravaggio there's caravaggio.com which makes use of the Italian website Tutta l'opera del Caravaggio.
O Black and Unknown Bards - Among Other Things, Regarding The White Invention of The Blues
...The narrative of the blues got hijacked by rock ’n’ roll, which rode a wave of youth consumers to global domination. Back behind the split, there was something else: a deeper, riper source. Many people who have written about this body of music have noticed it. Robert Palmer called it Deep Blues. We’re talking about strains within strains, sure, but listen to something like Ishman Bracey’s ''Woman Woman Blues,'' his tattered yet somehow impeccable falsetto when he sings, ''She got coal-black curly hair.'' Songs like that were not made for dancing. Not even for singing along. They were made for listening. For grown-ups. They were chamber compositions. Listen to Blind Willie Johnson’s "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.'' It has no words. It’s hummed by a blind preacher incapable of playing an impure note on the guitar. We have to go against our training here and suspend anthropological thinking; it doesn’t serve at these strata. The noble ambition not to be the kind of people who unwittingly fetishize and exoticize black or poor-white folk poverty has allowed us to remain the kind of people who don’t stop to wonder whether the serious treatment of certain folk forms as essentially high- or higher-art forms might have originated with the folk themselves.From Unknown Bards: The blues becomes apparent to itself by one John Jeremiah Sullivan. I came across it while browsing Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers On The Albums That Changed Their Lives. For Sullivan, that album was American Primitive, Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897 - 1939), which is my favorite CD of the year. Which came out in 2005 while I just got around to buying it this year. Foolish me. It is a piece of art in itself in every respect--all CDs should have such production values. [more inside]
Love That Stuff
In writing this book my intention was to present, in the form of an interesting story, a faithful picture of working-class life...
In August 1910, an Irish sign-painter and decorator named Robert Noonan left the town of Hastings on the south coast of England, and made his way north and west towards Liverpool, with the hope of emigrating to Canada. Already sick with tuberculosis, his condition worsened once he reached the city, and he was to die there in a workhouse hospital ward, in February 1911. He had, however, left in the care of his daughter Kathleen a package that was to change the political landscape of twentieth-century Britain. [more inside]
"Anybody Can Kill Anybody"
Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme, former member of the Manson Family and would-be assassin of President Gerald Ford, is being released from prison after 34 years behind bars. But did she really try to assassinate Ford in the first place?
Please Call Me Hararie
Japanese Element Symbols is an introduction for non-Japanese to the Japanese language through Kanji symbols, its alphabet, elements of Japan's culture, and what to expect on the culinary front.
Seventy-five years of Bonnie and Clyde
But have they become tools of the Left? Seventy-five years on, the murderous pair is still provoking comment. This time, from neocons.
Stimulus package for vending machines
To encourage circulation of $1 coins, the U.S. Mint offers $250 boxes of dollar coins at face value with free U.S. shipping (and credit card cashback). [via]
the four-day workweek
The Environmental and Economic Pluses of the 4-Day Workweek: "Forget everybody working for the weekend. In Utah all government employees have shifted to a four-day workweek, and the state is calling it a win-win-win for its budget, workers and clean air. Utah has saved $1.8 million in electrical bills in the last year, the air has been spared an estimated 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, and workers are thrilled. Eighty-two percent of them say they prefer the new arrangement, which still enforces the 40-hour week by requiring 10 or more hours a day Monday - [Thursday]. Is it time to ask your boss if you can take off Friday .... forever?" (via)
In related news, productivity around the world jumped exponentially...
On Tuesday, Gawker media was taken offline by a German ddos attack. Today, three of the 'net's largest social media sites: Twitter, Facebook and Livejournal, are experiencing similar outages. Twitter now reports they are under a denial-of-service attack.
Rebranding Redux
Pecsi, or Pepsi it doesn't matter, as long as you drink our sugar water.
Want to sound like a native? Which one? This article can help you achieve that. That's the quick version, if you want something more academic, try this.
IT'S ALL PIPES!!!
Brazil's new water conservation campaign: Xixi no Banho! (slyt)
Bouncy Laser Awesomeness
Kicking koopas and stomping goombas, for Science!
A couple of professors, in collaboration with two upcoming IEEE conferences, have organized a Mario A.I. Competition (via), inviting programmers to create controllers for a modified version of Infinite Mario Brothers (previously). One contender has stepped up and posted a demo of his controller in action. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »