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Blender, meet science: The Pain, the Pain: Modelling Music Information Behavior and the Songs We Hate [link to 454Kb PDF]. The paper, presented at ISMIR 2005, offers "a grounded theory analysis of 395 user responses to the survey question 'What is the worst song ever?'"
comment posted at 12:57 PM on May-22-06

Always Help a Bird (1965); Sleeping Beauty (1959); Rooty Toot Toot (1952); and even more modern design cartoon and animation treasures from author Amid Amidi's blog Cartoon Modern. Look for the book to be out in August.
comment posted at 7:40 PM on May-8-06

We have about 4 billion years left until our planet is going to be destroyed. If a meteor doesn't smash us in first, over the next 250 million years the continents will continue drifting to form another pangea. If we're all still friends having survived the climate change and each other, we'll be roasted by the expanding red giant after our sun exhausts its interior hydrogen supply. In about 5.5 billion years time the helium left in the core will get hot and dense enough to burn, flaring up in a massive helium flash engulfing what remains of the solar system. When the helium core is gone, hydrogen in the outermost layers will drift off to form a ring nebula, leaving in the middle a bright white dwarf star that will slowly cool down into a cold, dense black dwarf: a silent and forgotten fossil, floating through infinite space. In other news: cats are funny! hahahahaha!
comment posted at 12:49 PM on May-8-06

The Laurence Hutton Collection Of Life & Death Masks is one of the more fascinating collections of historical artifacts out there, consisting of more than 100 plaster casts of the live and dead faces of the great, near great, and famous figures stretching from the 19th Century all the way back to the 15th. Laurence Hutton, an author born in New York in 1843, collected these masks all his life, hunting them down in thrift shops, curio shops, private collections and even garbage dumps, and after his death the collection was inherited by Princeton University. For years the masks sat collecting dust in cardboard boxes, and were available for viewing by appointment only. However, someone recently had the obvious idea to make digital photos of the masks and put them on line, making these riveting portraits available for all to see. This is a subject that has always fascinated me, for a life mask is the truest portrait we have of many historical personages. I have my own small collection of such masks; a life mask of Beethoven and Chopin, and even Paul McCartney (I am, surprise, a musician.)
comment posted at 11:17 AM on May-8-06

John Kenneth Galbraith, an influential and unorthodox economist, has died, at age 97.
comment posted at 7:43 AM on Apr-30-06
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Born in 1938 and raised on a chicken farm on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado ... Dean Reed became the Red Elvis, a huge music and film star in the Eastern Bloc, truly an unlikely icon.. "For a lot of people like Michail Gorbashev he is the first rockstar they see in their life." There are great pictures at this site.
comment posted at 12:25 PM on Apr-28-06

Few things are more sacred to Canadians than the nation's medicare system. After years of health spending cutbacks by conservative politicians, debate rages over whether private providers should now be allowed to compete with the public system. In British Columbia, where the government is shovelling tax dollars into the 2010 Olympics, patients are being left to die in emergency rooms and long-term care facilities due to overcrowding and understaffing. Is it too late to save public health care? Should it be saved?
comment posted at 1:44 PM on Apr-27-06

Mimetic rivalry on a planetary scale. Rene Girard is the author of several books developing the idea that human culture is based on sacrifice as the way out of mimetic, or imitative, violence between rivals. When one rival is successful in obtaining the love object, violence is precipitated, which falls on the head of certain scapegoats, of whom Jesus Christ is the archetype. The violence can be traced in literature.
comment posted at 9:34 AM on Apr-27-06
comment posted at 1:47 PM on Apr-27-06

Hardy-Littlewood rules. Hardy's to-do lists are cool too, BTW.
comment posted at 12:35 PM on Apr-14-06

Antique Spectacles David Fleishman, M.D., a retired ophthalmologist, has compiled a rather extensive collection of information about spectacles and their importance in history. In addition to many examples of early spectacles and information about the spectacles worn by figures in history, there is a general history - Eyeglasses Through the Ages:[R]eading glasses are one of the most important inventions of the past 2000 years.... No one really knows about the early history of image magnification. In ancient times, someone noticed that convex-shaped glass magnified images. Sometime between the year 1000 and 1250 crude technology began to develop regarding reading stones (simple magnifiers). English Franciscan Friar Roger Bacon (1220 -1292), in his 1268 ‘Opus Majus’, noted that letters could be seen better and larger when viewed through less than half a sphere of glass. Bacon's experiments confirmed the principle of the convex (converging) lens, described by Alhazen (965-1038) Arabian mathematician, optician and astronomer at Cairo, and even earlier by the Greeks. (via the dead tree version of the WSJ)
comment posted at 10:46 AM on Apr-6-06

A Town Without Pity. Gene Pitney, the rather dashing rocker behind such hits as "Hello Mary Lou," "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance," and "Only Love Can Break A Heart," has passed away.
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comment posted at 8:21 PM on Apr-5-06

What would you think if the U.S. government decided to take six failing private companies, combine their assets into one government-operated company, and subsidized it through losses of a million dollars per day? It's something that might not happen today, but on this day in 1976, Conrail (the Consolidated Rail Corporation), took over operations for six railroads in the northeast, putting an end to the fruitless mergers and often-massive bankruptcies that had become common. [more inside]
comment posted at 9:00 AM on Apr-1-06
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Lewis The Cat In Hot Water After Alleged Attacks
comment posted at 1:21 PM on Mar-29-06
comment posted at 1:55 PM on Mar-29-06

Are Satanic messages hidden in Catholic art? According to the new documentary Rape of the Soul [embedded Quicktime], the answer is, "so completely yes that you could shit." Featuring such experts as Wilson Bryan Key and Judith Reisman, this movie will literally, physically blow your brain apart by cutting little holes in classic art that might conceivably look like three sixes if you arrange them properly, or maybe finding a small patch of red and black that could look like a lumpy Devil head if you're looking for one and squinting. [via]
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Mar-28-06

The night's event featured speakers Daniel C. Dennett, Matt Ridley, Sir John Krebs, Ian McEwan, and -- the man himself -- Richard Dawkins. It was, as you might suspect (based on the title), an event celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Dawkins' seminal work. If you didn't get a chance to attend, you can still read the full transcript or stream/download the audio of it in MP3 format (many thanks to Helena Cronin, founder/director of Darwin@LSE, for hosting the file). Thanks to 3QD for the link.
comment posted at 1:43 PM on Mar-26-06

After a Noel Mewton-Wood performance of Hindemith's (.pdf) Ludus Tonalis, Dame Myra Hess exclaimed: ‘The boy is truly remarkable, and what shall he be like at 40-odd?’. Glowing testimonials to his ‘genius’ (Sir Malcolm Sargent) from Beecham, Schnabel, Bliss, Hindemith and Britten were countered by indifference from the major record labels and concert managements. In 1953, at the age of 31, the pianist, a shy young man susceptible to depression, committed suicide. Now, the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive of Middlesex University offers a scan of the The London Evening News page with the report of Mewton-Wood's death. And here is a mp3 page with some of his out-of-print work.
comment posted at 11:55 AM on Mar-24-06

Al 'Blind Owl' Wilson was one of the more interesting characters on the 60's music scene. A contemporary (and fellow traveler) of John Fahey, and student of blues history and with Bob Hite, the founder of seminal 60's blues-rockers Canned Heat (youtube video of Wilson and the Heat featuring the Owl on vocals) . A painfully introverted man who suffered from depression and addiction throughout his life, Wilson had a light touch and lack of histrionics uncommon among his blues-revival contemporaries. He died by his own hand at 27. Blind-owl.net is a loving and comprehensive tribute, featuring many rare interviews and photos.
comment posted at 12:05 PM on Mar-22-06
comment posted at 1:02 PM on Mar-22-06

In the meantime back at the ranch. Afghan man faces death for abandoning Islam for Christianity.
comment posted at 1:28 PM on Mar-21-06

Overlooked Films of the 1990s ...Some were better then others. Some people will definitely disagree with. And some are my favorite movies... via
comment posted at 7:10 AM on Mar-18-06

We talked about "Snakes On A Plane" last summer, but since the thread is closed and this trailer really deserves to be seen... Here you go. [youtube] For those of you yet unaware, prepare yourself for my nomination for "worst movie ever."
comment posted at 1:48 PM on Mar-17-06

Feeding Minds - the impact of food on mental health. 3Mb PDF, Google cache. Only 3% of men and 5% of women now eat five portions of fruit and veg per day. This report lays out the evidence linking trends in food consumption with mental ill-health.
See also: Myths About Food and Low Income (PDF 168Kb)
comment posted at 1:14 PM on Mar-16-06
comment posted at 1:57 PM on Mar-16-06

Feedwhip monitors web pages and emails you when they change. This is handy for keeping tabs on a site without an RSS feed.
comment posted at 1:24 PM on Mar-16-06

Africa splits (Geographically speaking). Take a look at the photos, they are breathtaking.
comment posted at 1:23 PM on Mar-16-06

Real good, fake bad ... but, why ?
comment posted at 1:31 PM on Mar-16-06

itulip.com has returned. Back in the go-go days when Internet stocks ruled the world, iTulip was one of a very few voices warning about the Nasdaq bubble and the likely fallout. (Prudent Bear was another.) As bad as things got, the overall financial bubble never really popped, it just shifted into debt and real estate after furious slashing of interest rates and money-printing by the Fed. Financial manias are terrible; their unraveling has been compared with economic nuclear weapons. (cf: The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble [amazon book link] and the Dutch Tulip Mania.) The only good solution to a bubble is not to have one in the first place. [more inside]
comment posted at 1:52 PM on Mar-16-06

Why are some religious rituals acceptable (NSFW), some marginal, and others illegal? Surely, a grown man sucking the blood out of the penis of a just-circumcised little boy should be, shouldn't it? And we're not even considering infecting the baby with herpes [full article from the NY Times].
comment posted at 8:07 AM on Mar-10-06

Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called "monolithic insanity."
comment posted at 9:49 AM on Mar-9-06

Beautiful decay pictures of Russia in decline.
comment posted at 6:21 AM on Mar-9-06

“Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution” -- an online exhibit
comment posted at 12:45 PM on Mar-7-06
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comment posted at 7:31 AM on Mar-8-06

Prof. Daniel Dennett's (New York University, Philosophy) new book Breaking the Spell appears to have frightened its NYT book reviewer, Leon Wieseltier (The New Republic, Literary Editor). Wieselter claims "The question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question", and promptly proceeds to demonstrate that he himself knows nothing about philosophy. Dennett responds.
Prof. Brian Leiter (University of Texas, Philosophy) responds that "'The view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical' is not a 'superstition' but a reasonable methodological posture to adopt based on the actual evidence, that is, based on the actual expanding success of the sciences . . . during the last hundred years."
b l o g s s and serious reviews.
comment posted at 12:32 PM on Mar-7-06

This guy designed the famous Rolling Stones logo. Not this guy. Talk amongst yourselves.
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comment posted at 12:38 PM on Mar-7-06

What became of Whit Stillman.
comment posted at 10:18 AM on Mar-7-06

When Iranian paper Hamshahri (in Persian) launched a contest for Holocaust cartoons, an Israeli group responded in turn with a contest of their own for cartoons that make fun of Jews. Too bad it closed yesterday, or the Dutch branch of the AEL could submit theirs. (WARNING: some of the linked content may be offensive to readers' ethnicities, cultures, religions, or tastes.)
comment posted at 4:07 PM on Mar-4-06
comment posted at 4:07 PM on Mar-4-06