September 25, 2011
Colour Your World
Plenty of Colour is a site devoted to colour inspiration: not only from shades (black, red, pink, and purple to start), but also colourful places and spaces and objects of desire. There's also ColourLovers, (mentioned many times previously on the blue), with the The Colors of Good vs. Evil.
North American English Dialects
Don't Call Me Limey, Yank! Limey, Don't Call Me Yank!
Last summer the BBC did a series on "Americanisms," or how American English was "infecting" the Queen's English. Ben Yagoda responds and documents how in fact it's the other way around. He documents "Britishisms" on his blog.
The last remnants of a language killed by the conquistadors
In 2008 a letter was excavated during an archaeological dig of a Peruvian colonial town abandoned for unknown reasons around the turn of the 18th Century. On the back of that letter were recorded several numbers and their names in a dead tongue, lost in the upheaval following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Even though this may be the only remnant of an entire language, there is quite a bit that linguists can glean from these fragments. For a brief overview of the findings of research by a joint American-Peruvian research group, read here. And here is the full journal article, which places these numbers in their historical and linguistic context.
Tax bracket thinking errors
A few weeks ago the USA Weekend, an insert to USA Today, published some very bad advice on rejecting pay raises in order to avoid a higher tax bracket, eagerly confusing average taxes for marginal tax rates. Corrections were made. Meanwhile, worries over pay raises may reflect a more common fear based on a widespread misconception of progressive tax rates.
How Doctor Who Became My Religion
The short animations of Frédéric Back
Frédéric Back was born in 1924 in France, where he studied drawing and lithography. He was lured to Canada by Jack London's stories and Clarence Gagnon's paintings, as well as correspondence with a Canadian pen-pal. Back moved to Canada in 1948, married his pen-pal Ghylaine Paquin, and was hired by Radio Canada at the birth of their television network to create still images for display on and to promote moving pictures. The drawings lead to experiments with animations, which lead to a series of animated shorts, starting with the wordless short Abracadabra (9:23, YT) in 1970. You can read and see more about Frédéric Back on his extensive website, and see more animations inside. [more inside]
Walt Disney's "The Black Hole"
To paraphrase a character in the film, The Black Hole walks "a tightrope;" if not between "genius" and "insanity," then certainly between "genius" and "banality". If you're looking at this movie as a Manichean exercise between darkness and light, then you can -- for at least a few hours -- entertain the "genius" part of that equation.
Keep Calm, But Cease and Dissist
On the 25th March 2011, Mark Coop of 'Keep Calm and Carry On LTD' registered a trademark of the words Keep Calm and Carry On in an attempt to take control of the very British and now very famous, nostalgia invoking, wartime poster. The trademark has angered Barter Books (who discovered the poster), wartimeposters.co.uk (owners of an original poster) and Kerry Cade from Simply Printing 4U whose business was greatly affected by the trademark. Now, in true British Spirit, a group of wartime enthusiasts has come together in an attempt to overturn the trademark. [more inside]
...and this one actually looks respectable.
Researchers have apparently found a way to prevent HIV from damaging the immune system. Johns Hopkins and Imperial reseachers have developed a chemical that breaks down the cholesterol membrane around HIV. This stops the virus intererfering with immune response, and may allow a vaccine that prevents infection. [more inside]
Why the world is scared of hacktivists
Man writes on little blue website.
The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:
A Liberal Decalogue - Bertrand Russell
So an atheist baboon expert walks up to a mic...
“If you spend enough time around something like baboons, you start to look at humans differently. For example, you find yourself paying a whole lot of attention to other guys and how big their canines are, thinking comparatively, or you look at somebody’s rump and you wonder how hard it would be to anesthetize them with a blowgun dart there.” Please allow me to introduce you to Robert Sapolsky, primatologist, neurobiologist, writer, teacher, world-renowned expert on stress and friend to baboons. [more inside]
No Picnic Baskets Needed
Not Just Blowing Smoke Rings Up There
You're probably most familiar with the phenomenon when it appears like this (well until that wizard starts showing off) but did you know that vortex rings can also be created by dolphins? [more inside]
Com Truise, "BrokenDate"
The Will Joines-directed video for Com Truise's "BrokenDate" is a pitch-perfect tribute to the 80s/90s cyberpunk aesthetic, with nods to Blade Runner and Tron, among others. The track is taken from the artist's latest album, Galactic Melt.
They Ate What?
But can I drive to the voting booth?
Women in Saudi Arabia to vote and run in elections: Women in Saudi Arabia are to be given the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, King Abdullah has announced. [more inside]
Man: A Course of Study
Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) was a social sciences educational curriculum designed in the late 1960s. The course examined the commonalities between human behavior and that of several animal species, and culminated with a series of short films documenting the lives of the Netsilik Eskimo people. Although many school systems initially adopted MACOS, it was largely abandoned after a campaign of opposition from conservative Christians, who saw it as a Trojan horse for the indoctrination of secular humanism and cultural relativism in the public schools. The 2004 documentary Though These Eyes looks at creation of MACOS and the controversy surrounding it.
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