September 28, 2011
Your garlic-related life will be forever changed
The celebrated chop waltz
The Celebrated Chop Waltz is probably one of the best known musical pieces of all time. Usually performed on piano (for example, this version, inspired by Franz Liszt) it has also been performed by full orchestra, notably in versions by Rimsky-Korsakov and others. Other versions: guitar, mini-harmonica, ukelele, accordion, Liberace, and Tom Hanks.
Wake Me Up When September Ends
After beating the Texas Rangers on Sept. 3, the Boston Red Sox were 84-54. Although half a game behind the Yankees in the American League East, the Red Sox had a nine-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for the wild card and roughly a 99.6 percent chance of making the playoffs. Fast forward one excruciating month to a dead heat with Tampa coming into tonight's bitter imbroglio. Boston struggles ahead of laughingstock Baltimore by a single run until a rain delay clears the field, leaving them in the surreal position of rooting for the hated Yankees playing down in Florida. They can only watch from the sidelines as the rival Rays, tied with Boston in the pennant race but down 7-0 against New York, roar back to life with six runs in the eighth inning and a tie run on the final pitch at the bottom of the ninth. And then, after blowing two different strikes that would have salvaged the game, Boston loses to Baltimore, completing what is arguably the worst late-breaking collapse in the history of major league baseball.
Sergey Tyukanov
The paintings of Sergey Tyukanov are rich in colors, in characters, in details, delightful the eyes from the first sight. Each work is like a little world, where people live according to different rules. Normal proportions not respected in his works; surrealism characterizes his art the best, and traces of the Russian customs and traditional costumes may be spotted without much difficulty. It all seems to happen in a Russian fairytale or in the nightmare of an artist-because only in the head of an artist’s genius, such a nightmare could be born.*
New Amazon Tablet
Amazon unveils a new full color 7" multi-touch tablet it is calling Kindle Fire. Also announced are a new Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G. [more inside]
Most Hated Man In Manchester
What happens when a multi-millionaire footballer playing for one of England's top club teams refuses to go out and play as a substitute? Possibly, he gets shipped off to prestigious second division northern Irish club squad Limavady United.
Ratchet & Clank's Favorite Columnist
Controversial Australian newspaper columnist and television host Andrew Bolt has been found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act when he suggested in 2009 that "fаіr-skinned Aborigines identified themselves аѕ such fοr personal gain" (official court judgement). Andrew Bolt has responded, along with other writers claiming the ruling will "harm healthy debate" and "stile free speech". Commentary site Crikey has collected other responses and suggests that 'he may turn out to be the courtroom loser who wins the propaganda war'.
The Pope, the Emperor and the Grand Duke
For centuries, Renaissance composer Alessandro Striggio's "Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno", an enormous setting of the Mass for 40 and 60 voices, was thought to be lost to the ages. A few years ago, UC Berkeley musicologist Davitt Moroney discovered that a copy of the work, attributed to a non-existent composer, was hiding right under our noses, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In an hour-long lecture titled "The Pope, the Emperor and the Grand Duke", Professor Moroney recounts the story of the Mass's disappearance and rediscovery, describes the historical significance of the music, and unravels the intriguing geopolitical landscape of 16th century Italy.
Postcards to Alphaville
"'Postcards to Alphaville' is a project dedicated to film characters featured in guest-made illustrations. Everyone participating in this adventure has to watch a film and make postcard portraying specific character from it. It is love-letter to films and those characters that brings us, the viewers, moments of joy, sorrow and revelation and sometimes seems more real than the neighbor next-door." via
Elmo backlash? Lovable little monster, or furry menace?
"'Being Elmo,' the crowd-pleasing [documentary film] profile of the man behind Elmo, arguably the most-loved Muppet on 'Sesame Street,' has been melting hearts on the festival circuit since premiering at Sundance this year, where it won the Special Jury Prize. ... [It's the] story of how puppeteer Kevin Clash came up through the ranks on sheer ambition and ingenuity to become one of the best in the business is an underdog tale of the best variety."* However, could it be that there is an Elmo backlash brewing? [more inside]
12 coolest libraries in the world
Living In The Material World
After the success of No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese has turned his documentary eye toward another 60s musician. On October 5 and 6, George Harrison: Living In The Material World will run on HBO in two parts. The film has already played some film festivals and gotten great reviews. [more inside]
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Upon the Mower's asking too much, the Farmer swore That the Devil should Mow it rather than He.
Wide-spread interest in crop circles started in the 1980s, but if you dig a bit, you'll find some older references to circles in the crops, without any notion of extraterrestrial involvement. The oldest of these examples is the Mowing-Devil of Hartford-shire, seen here in a woodcut from 1678. It is most common to find the first of four pages online, but the text continues, describing the interaction between the rich industrious farmer and his poor neighbour, resulting in a mysterious circle in crops appearing the following morning. A modern crop circle enthusiast went to great lengths to track down more information, but a closer reading of the text offers another interpretation.
Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra
Clue: A Redgrave did it in London with a jazz giant.
Movie trivia: If someone were to ask you the name of a 1966 mystery/thriller that was shot in London, included a Redgrave sister in the cast, and had a soundtrack composed by a jazz giant, you would have two choices for an answer. [more inside]
It's like KittenWar for urban spaces
Which place looks safer? Which place looks more unique? Which place looks more upper-class? MIT is crowdsourcing a "perception network" to analyze people's subconscious judgments about urban spaces. Preliminary results for Boston, New York City, Vienna, Salzburg, and Linz (Austria). [more inside]
Al Qaeda to Iran: Stop Spreading Conspiracy Theories about 9/11
The latest issue of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine is finally here, with a special edition for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. This issue has gotten some traction in the media for its feature story, "Iran and the Conspiracy Theories"
You can view excerpts at Public Intelligence, download the entire magazine as a PDF, or simply read the Iran article after the jump.
Please note that this magazine contains images of 9/11 and other conflicts that may be triggers for some people. [more inside]
The answer, my friends...
Joni Mitchell recently and infamously called him a "plagiarist", and now, Bob Dylan's art show at Gagosian has aroused some similar suspicions. Did Gagosian simply market the exhibition incorrectly?
PETE HAS HOW MANY ROCKS?
Looks like we may be waiting awhile for a new feature by David Lynch (or are we?), in the meantime here's a short The Three Rs, he has made as a trailer for Viennale Fest ‘11 (He's also got an album Crazy Clown Time coming out in November.)
Box o' Yuks
Metafilter has debated the necessity of the laugh track before; we even got called out by Craig Ferguson for allegedly mistaking a live studio audience for canned laughter. But do you know the history of the laugh track? (previously) [more inside]
Who watches the technocrats?
Peter Orszag (previously of Obama's OMB) argues that circumventing democracy is the best way to save it, but Catherine Rampell isn't sold, and Uwe Reinhardt points out that technocrats base "science" on moral values.
Apollo 11, as seen through Google Moon
The descent of the Apollo 11, plotted with Google Moon Pictures from the actual moon landing side-by-side with Google Earth, as the lander descends. [via]
Also, try the Google Earth KML file for the Apollo 11 landing.
Also, try the Google Earth KML file for the Apollo 11 landing.
Pasadena, Where the Grass is Greena!
How do I make my document look like it was written by an Cthulhu worshipping madman?
How do I make my document look like it was written by an Cthulhu worshipping madman? Some LaTeX solutions.
Look ma, no hands!
I think the VCR is broken
MAX CAPACITY Dwells In The Videodrome. "Not so long ago, last summer to be precise, we featured MAX CAPACITY in an illustrated selection of the best 8-bit inspired pixel artists. Already at the time, the American artist stood out from the lot because of his instinctive and primal approach to digital material." Max's work is spread out across the Internet: on Tumblr, Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, and his own webspace... [more inside]
"In fact, it is so untouched that there’s a real sense the students will suddenly return. Each and every one of the small class charging in from the entrance."
"Pretty much all haikyo that contain items related to the building’s past are interesting. On the odd occasion even empty structures are too. But while memory-filled houses and sorry-looking snake centres are fascinating in their own very different ways, there’s arguably something that little bit special about a long-abandoned school." An abandoned but perfectly preserved Japanese school. [more inside]
ACTA
The once-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) slouches toward signing on Saturday. ACTA is expected to raise constitutional issues in the U.S., raise soverenty issues in the E.U., give copyright holders extensive powers to impose DRM and identify alleged infringers, and increase health risks worldwide. In addition, the U.S. has launched the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) to obtain what copyright provisions were stripped from ACTA. (see michaelgeist.ca, techdirt, or slashdot) [more inside]
"Although Andy Rooney is retiring from 60 Minutes, his eyebrows will continue for another season."
After 33 years, it has been announced Andy Rooney will make his 1,097th - and final - 60 Minutes commentary this Sunday.
"And the Cadillac of rovers is not far behind...."
Martian Life's Last Stand in the Trenches? "Scientists have found water-bearing deposits on Mars that are out of step with what was happening elsewhere on the planet, raising the prospect that the sites could have hosted Martian life's last stand."
American Sabor
American Sabor: Latinos in US Popular Music is a currently traveling Smithsonian exhibition exploring the wide range of Latino artists and influences which have shaped American pop music genres since WWII, from Alice Bag to Flaco Jimenez to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass to Joan Baez. The website is rich with maps, interviews, videos, and music samples.
And we know that everything falls to dust...
Are small theaters punching a ticket to oblivion? Radical changes in the traditional structure of the lab processing and exhibition sides of the film industry have been filling the lives of small theater operators with uncertainty and worry for the last few years. Will filmstock be the next Kodachrome? (And what will that mean for the future of film preservation?) [more inside]
'Flesh was the reason oil paint was invented'
There is currently a far reaching retrospective at the MOMA in New York on painter Willem de Kooning, that most deeply European of the Abstract Expressionists who drew the international art world's attention to New York back in the post war years. He's most famous as the creator of one of the few paintings of the 20th century that stills retains the ability to shock. But, as this quite interesting MOMA website shows, there was a lot more to his enterprise than most people realize. My first post here by the way.
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