July 2007 Archives
Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007.
Gravity Pods, a physics-based shooter/puzzle where you use special gravity pods and repellers to alter the course of a projectile and avoid barriers to hit a target.
Mutatoes is a photographic collection by artist Uli Westphal of non-standard fruits and vegetables found at Berlin groceries and farmers' markets. The distorted, the discolored, the bumpy, the stumpy, the coiled and the conjoined all get star treatment.
"Thanks to tremendous progress achieved by the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the wireless communication protocol, it is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having internet connection. Under those circumstances, the bigger the number of people expressing their opinions through that technology, the stronger becomes democracy, and the more valuable is the contribution to good governance efforts in Africa" - Voices of Africa, Mobile stories and videos from Africa. Quote above from article Mobile Reporters in Africa.
Behold the Uniqlock.
Two news helicopters met in a deadly midair collision today while covering a police chase on live television (video, tragic but not graphic).
Ferris wheels making a comeback. Wheels across the world, past, present, and future, big and small. Graphic comparing various wheels. The London Eye. The Singapore Flyer. A triple Ferris Wheel that closed 10 years ago. And George Washington Gale Ferris's 1893 wheel that started it all.
Glad we're now safe to ride the bus like we do anyway. No need to spend that money making the gas guzzlers more fuel effective, lets just slap cameras in each bus!
Codiac Transit in Moncton will be adding video cameras to some of its buses this fall as part of a plan to increase safety and security for both employees and riders.
Fighter jets, overturned tractor trailers, WW II bombers, cars parked on walls, and more of The Strangest Sights in Google Earth
Do you prefer to travel light or be prepared for anything? The Flickr pools for what's in your bag? and The Items We Carry reveal all. More prevalent than I would have expected: Burt's Bees, multitools, carabiner keychains.
NASA has a rule requiring that astronauts go at least 12 hours between "bottle and throttle." Reports say not everyone followed it, and they went up anyway.
Busting the Merchant of War. "The Bush administration finally nails a notorious supplier to terrorists, after he spent 30 years hiding in plain sight."
As Image Comics prepares to resurrect Golden Age comics under the rubric of public domain, it may be worth revisiting heroes of yore, like Stardust (by Hank Fletcher), Fantomah and Titan. Even more can be found through the Pure Excitement reprint webzine, (unfortunately burdened with clumsy navigation-- modify the final segment for all 36 issues).
Of course, a fair number of them do show up on the Stupid Comics page, like Fantomah versus the Weird Gorillas, alongside more modern mockeries of books like Man or Astroman and Superman meets the Quik Bunny.
OH! DANGO! JAM Incredible little Japanese game, Tamagotchi + Pokemon + awesome music = great happy fun time. Z is attack, X is magic, C is defend, and spacebar is special move. Don't forget to save often using end -> data regist.
American Sign Language Flash Video Dictionary is a high quality, free dictionary with a huge number of signs. It includes specialized dictionaries of religious signs, conversational phrases, and ASL for babies. Unfortunately it's not possible to link to specific signs, but if you look inside you'll find words from "Abbreviate" to "Zoom" and phrases such as "I cannot fasten my belt," "has he been neutered?" "I already took a bath," "are you married?" and "I need a better firewall."
It puts the lotion in the basket. [nsfw] You know how in The Silence of the Lambs, the serial killer they're trying to catch is skinning women because he wants to make a suit out of real girls? If this product was around, perhaps we could have saved the lives of a lot of fictional victims.
The author of the excellent 60s/70s soul music blog Funky 16 Corners has put together an awesome compilation album available for free download, called Rubber Souled, featuring soul covers of Beatles classics; the results are intriguing, from Stevie Wonder's funked out version of We Can Work It Out to a nightmare inducing Bill Cosby cover of Sgt Peppers.
I Miss you, its boring here.
Love Bert
ps, you rock.
This handsome Pac-Man plush hat is available in adult and child sizes for $29.99.
Joey Lawrence. No, not that one.
A blurb just issued from NASA reads, "A severe dust storm is underway on Mars, causing an energy crisis for NASA's Mars rovers. Dust in the atmosphere over Opportunity has blocked 99 percent of direct sunlight, leaving only the limited diffuse sky light to power the rover." Here's more, and still more.
A Flickr user visited Kentucky's Ventriloquism Museum and documented the results in this chilling photoset -- these dummies all seem poised to take on independent life and begin pronouncing oracular doom.
A BBC Radio 4 investigation sheds new light on a major subject that has received little historical attention, the conspiracy on behalf of a group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush, to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler.
(The) document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen.The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.
Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.
Kiiiiiii for any occasion, or just for fun! Kiiiiiii, that's K & 7i's, is a Japanese girl duo whose sound has been described as "Noise Pop" and "Experimental Fun Music." They've made a couple of bizarre music videos, played concerts in Japan and America over the last seven years, and now have an album and a live DVD. Listen to more on their myspace page, grab an .mp3 and read the history, and try to download 5 .mp3s from their site.
Macrohistory. Prehistory to yesterday.
This site describes humanity from prehistory to the 21st century - stories about ideas and events. Maps. Timelines index. Country profiles.
Because of booming economies in China, India and elsewhere the price of metals, such as copper and aluminum, have reached all time highs. Empty beer kegs for example can be sold for up to $27. Washington DC is experiencing a crime wave of metal thieves who are stripping everything from lamp posts, gutters, catalytic converters and bleacher seats.
When you reach for a light switch in North America, what you encounter is probably pretty boring. No doubt you know you could spice it up a little. Maybe you don't know just how many choices you have. The range of styles available is huge. There are some that may not have much of a market. There are others you probably wouldn't put up in the office.
50 best movie robots of all time including D.A.R.Y.L, Eve VII, the Cylons, Daft Punk, Max, Box, but not Daleks, obviously.
Hailing from wholesome Riverdale, USA, The Archies were a fresh-faced gang of teens who rocketed to the top of the pops. Listen to their first album on ArchieComics.com now!
Kerry bought some flip flops for $2.44 at Wal Mart. After wearing them for a while, she noticed a tingling sensation on her feet. She immediately stopped wearing the flip flops. Soon after, her skin turned red and blistery.
When she took the matter up with Wal Mart, they told her to take it up with the Chinese manufacturer.
Apparently, Wal Mart is still selling the flip flops.
An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world's top RPG gamers after one criminal's girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google's social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim's head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for $8,000. And yes, the story gets even better.
According to the police, the captive is the world leader in GunBound, a turn-based RPG-style multiplayer online game. Developed in South Korea, in this artillery game you get more experience points, offensive and defensive capabilities depending on your skills during battle, as well as money to buy more weapons, armor and all kinds of gear for your multiple avatars. You can only play with one of your avatars each time, but all of them belong to a single account.The game looks to be quite popular, so the four gangsters decided they could make some quick cash if they kidnapped him to steal his user. Their plan: use one of the criminal's girlfriends, called Tamires, to get him into a date using Google's online social network Orkut, which is also extremely popular in Brazil. After contacting and seducing him, she told the GunBound wizard to meet her in a shopping mall.
Pink Tentacle describes the practice of growing giant rice-paddy illustrations "by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety." There's a fantastic gallery of these illustrations, ranging from "36 Views of Mount Fuji" to various demons, gods and traditional illustrations, as well as the Mona Lisa.
Reuters is reporting that the British government has rejected a proposal to extend music recording copyrights from 50 to 95 years. Virtually all music is out of print in at 50 years, and extending copyright for another 45 years would only ensure that the vast majority of British recordings were long vanished and forgotten before they returned to the public domain. Economists calculated the net present value of the 95th year of copyright at less than the net present worth of a lottery ticket -- so the government would do more for the average recording artist if they bought her a lotto ticket than if they gave her 45 years more copyright.
This is the first time that I know of, in the history of the world, that any country has given up on extended copyright terms. In the US, the Supreme Court found that 98 percent of the works in copyright were "orphans" with no visible owner and no way to clear them and bring them back into the world. Extending copyright dooms nearly every author's life's work to obscurity and disappearance, in order to make a few more pennies for the tiny minority of millionaire artists like Cliff Richards (and billionaires like Paul McCartney).
The Experiments in Galvanism frog floats in mineral oil, a webserver installed it its guts, with wires into its muscle groups. You can access the frog over the network and send it galvanic signals that get it to kick its limbs.
Experiments in Galvanism is the culmination of studio and gallery experiments in which a miniature computer is implanted into the dead body of a frog specimen. Akin to Damien Hirst's bodies in formaldehyde, the frog is suspended in clear liquid contained in a glass cube, with a blue ethernet cable leading into its splayed abdomen. The computer stores a website that enables users to trigger physical movement in the corpse: the resulting movement can be seen in gallery, and through a live streaming webcamera.- Risa Horowitz
Garnet Hertz has implanted a miniature webserver in the body of a frog specimen, which is suspended in a clear glass container of mineral oil, an inert liquid that does not conduct electricity. The frog is viewable on the Internet, and on the computer monitor across the room, through a webcam placed on the wall of the gallery. Through an Ethernet cable connected to the embedded webserver, remote viewers can trigger movement in either the right or left leg of the frog, thereby updating Luigi Galvani's original 1786 experiment causing the legs of a dead frog to twitch simply by touching muscles and nerves with metal.Experiments in Galvanism is both a reference to the origins of electricity, one of the earliest new media, and, through Galvani's discovery that bioelectric forces exist within living tissue, a nod to what many theorists and practitioners consider to be the new new media: bio(tech) art.
- Sarah Cook and Steve Dietz
Vibram Fivefingers are outdoor sandals with individual toes. Wearing them is said to mimic the feeling of going barefoot, without the blisters and no-shoes/no-service hassles. They're certainly cool-looking!
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno is a riotously illustrated history of schoolgirl fashion in Japan, starting with the thousand-strong, razor-wielding biker gangs, all the way up to the cuddly, explosion -in- a- crafter- factory world of decora girls, who cover their fuzzy one-piece character pyjamas with stuffed animals and cute crafted whatsises. The book is packed with telling little anaecdotes about the cultural conditions that gave rise to each subculture, along with fashion tips, interviews with fashion pioneers, and some of the secret histories, including the rise and fall of the mad fashion pioneer who invented gonguru -- Japanese hipster blackface. From Gothic Lolita's creation of an entirely fictional style of "historical" dress to the scandalous sex-rings of the kogals (and the hysterical media circus that followed them), Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno is an incredibly engrossing tour through lightspeed subculture.
"The [textbook] industry charges outrageous prices for new textbooks while simultaneously doing everything it can to make older versions unusable or obsolete. There is simply no reason that a new calulus textbook should cost $157. The study of calculus, at least the type of calculus that most of us need to study in high school or undergraduate programs, has not changed significantly in decades." - Textbook Revolution.
The Sphinx Observatory atop the Jungfraujoch in the Swiss alps is one of the most amazing man-made objects I've ever seen. A UNESCO world-heritage site, it holds the distinction of being the highest (in altitude) structure in all of Europe. Approachable by a train that runs inside the mountain (via a tunnel dug between 1896 & 1926 at the cost of a small fortune, not to mention many lives), the Observatory rests atop a glacier which has been hollowed out to feature a year round gallery of never-melting ice scultptures (glacial ice is spectacularly pretty), and an elevator up to the research station.
Drew Carey - coming on down. Drew Carey announced on Letterman last night that he will be the next host of The Price Is Right. Begin crafting your "Florida Loves Drew" shirts now.
Quite an entrance. pretty damn amazing performance at the Miss Black America 2001 drag show / pageant.
Faceoff -- the three founders of college social networking site ConnectU have accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their business plan and code. Tomorrow they face-off in a Boston courtroom. "It's a mélange of gossip about upper-crust Silicon Valley, allegations of old-school Ivy League skulduggery and an oddball cast of characters that ranges from precocious dot-com millionaires to aspiring Olympic athletes. In what other intellectual-property lawsuit are two of the plaintiffs a set of Harvard University-educated twins from Greenwich, Conn., with several international rowing championship medals under their belts? ...Despite the backstory's semblance to screenplay fodder, the outcome is anything but scripted, at least for now."
Newsfilter: 30,000 customers in the San Francisco area lost power today at about 1:50pm PDT, in a series of power failures which knocked out a major datacenter hub: 365 Main. The hub controls servers for many social media sites, including Technorati, Netflix, Yelp, Craigslist and all Six Apart properties, including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox. (6A's twitter stream has updates.) More here and here.
Amusingly enough, 365 Main tempted fate and released a press release today patting themselves on the back for "two years of 100-percent uptime".
Kinder Morgan oil pipeline ruptured near Vancouver, British Columbia Thick, black oil dripped from lampposts, splattered across suburban lawns and crept into Burrard Inlet after a geyser of crude spewed from a burst Kinder Morgan pipeline Tuesday. [google news]
Work crews ripped into the TransMountain pipeline about 12:30 p.m., causing the oil to "explode," as one witness put it, from the ground and burble up from manholes, pouring down streets toward the ocean, according to witnesses.
Kinder Morgan bought the pipeline from a Canadian utility in 2005, and is known as a "poster child for pipeline problems."
More Kinder Morgan accidents.
The Theiving Magpie: Jimmy Page's Dubious Recording Legacy
MUSICIAN: I understand "Dazed and Confused" was originally a song by Jake Holmes. Is that true?PAGE: [Sourly] I don't know. I don't know. [Inhaling] I don't know about all that.
MUSICIAN: Do you remember the process of writing that song?
PAGE: Well, I did that with the Yardbirds originally.... The Yardbirds were such a good band for a guitarist to play in that I came up with a lot of riffs and ideas out of that, and I employed quite a lot of those in the early Zeppelin stuff.
MUSICIAN: But Jake Holmes, a successful jingle writer in New York, claims (pdf) on his 1967 record that he wrote the original song.
PAGE: Hmm. Well, I don't know. I don't know about that. I'd rather not get into it because I don't know all the circumstances. What's he got, The riff or whatever? Because Robert wrote some of the lyrics for that on the album. But he was only listening to...we extended it from the one that we were playing with the Yardbirds.
MUSICIAN: Did you bring it into the Yardbirds?
PAGE: No, I think we played it 'round a sort of melody line or something that Keith [Relf] had. So I don't know. I haven't heard Jake Holmes so I don't know what it's all about anyway. Usually my riffs are pretty damn original [laughs] What can I say?
Hm, defensive much? Sure, by the time Zeppelin came along, the practice of 'borrowing' from obscure blues sources was well enshrined in British rock. (Though some were good enough to acknowledge their debt) But taking it a step further, and even apart from the above, Page was more than content to crib notes off of his immediate peers (bowed guitar at 1:40) , as well.
(grain of salt not included)
The CBC has put episodes of the current Doctor Who series online streamed in flash. It's a pretty major step as it means not Windows Media, and the only restrictions are geofencing. Episodes go online the day after broadcast, and will be there for a 4-week period to let people catch up on the series. Too bad it wasn't 13 weeks to cover the whole series, but it's still a giant leap forward."
Also too bad that:
* It's streaming, not download: the CBC doesn't stop you recording the TV shows they transmit, but they stop you recording the shows they webcast. Why should one be different from the other?
* I can't see it, because I'm using an IP address outside of Canada. The CBC broadcasts all its programming to all antennas, north and south of the US border.
It's a bummer to consider a future in which broadcasts -- which we can all see and record -- are replaced with geo-locked, streaming crippleware netcasts. Hard to understand how that serves the public interest, something that the CBC, a tax-supported institution, is required to do.
I spoke with a friend at the CBC, and he was very sympathetic to my concerns. The BBC -- producers of Dr Who -- insisted on the region-locking and streaming only, as well as the four-week window (significantly, this is a much better deal than the BBC gives to Britons, who are required by law to pay a hefty annual fee to support the BBC -- they only get seven days to see old episodes, and have to use a DRM-crippled product called iPlayer that only runs on Windows).
The bottom line seems to be that the CBC can't afford to buy the right to just put downloads of Dr Who online from the BBC, even if the BBC could be convinced to sell them.
But at the end of the day, both the CBC and the BBC are public service organizations, charged with making material of public value. They are supported through tax (the CBC) and license fees (the BBC), and it's tawdry for them to devote all this energy to locking away their media from one another. The BBC turns over a paltry five percent of its annual budget through licensing deals like this one -- imagine how much benefit the Beeb could get by saying to the CBC, "Give us all your programs and you can have all of ours." Is that enormous vault of programming worth more than the shows that a fraction of five percent of the BBC's budget can produce?
This is how Internet exchanges work -- ISPs don't generally charge each other for the bits they exchange: Rogers doesn't charge Aliant for the bits it sends to Rogers customers, and Aliant doesn't charge Rogers for the bits its users send to Rogers customers. They're "peers," so they just send bits back and forth freely.
Virtually every country in the world has a state-funded public service broadcaster, all of them charged with the same mission: promote the public interest through programs with public value. They're all on the same side -- why isn't their media? It's time for public service broadcasters to peer with one another -- to create an interlibrary loan system for public media.
All that said: top marks to the first person to demonstrate a working, reliable solution for watching and recording the CBC Dr Who episodes from anywhere in the world.
I'm tired of looking at attractive, fashionable people.. Behold: Ugly Outfits New York.
Baseball from sandlots to majors. Arguably harder than actual baseball.
Sumo Volleyball - online competition at its finest. For those of you who used to have ICQ, this game will be very familiar. Four different variates of play are offered. 1 on 1 is by far the favorite and the most fun, IMHO. One tiny downside, activeX based, and thus, pretty much IE only. There are also other games via the home page, of which Kung-fu chess is also very popular.
Leave Those Kids Alone. The idea that parents should be engaging in play with their children is a modern concept (and not necessarily a good one, according to anthropologist David Lancy).
Sally Cruikshank intends to put all of her animations on YouTube, including her opening credits for Ruthless People, the Seseame Street Feets too Big short, and don't miss the Oingo Boingo assist on Face Like A Frog.
She's very active in the comments section of some of her videos, too, answering questions and participating in the discussion of her work.
Avatar Shakespeare Lady Macbeth Interpreted by Dame Microsoft Mary
Before Caligula, Cat People & Star Trek: Generations, even before he played Alex de Large in Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell was dashingly rebellious in Lindsay Anderson's If. (Some background of that cafe scene)
Sing to us, O Muse, of our Timeless Myths. A site dedicated to Classical, Norse & Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends.
Photographer Martin Klimas specializes in capturing high speed photography, but with a more artistic aesthetic than the usual "bullet through an orange", etc.
Amazing 747 landings at in the St. Martins [youtube]
YouTube has a great collection of 747 landings at Princess Juliana International Airport in the St. Martin Islands, famous for its short landing strip � only 2,180 meters.
Here's the view from the cockpit. Most of the videos seem to have been taken at Maho Beach. Here's an Airbus.
This short film begins on a somber note...railing against the dangers of pornographic magazines in the 1960's, but as it progresses, the images it shares with the viewer are more and more tantalizing...from nudity, to promotion on sodomy, to bestiality (really, just a farmgirl pic with a goat in the far background), to hardcore S&M and B&D...all displayed for the soon-not-innocent eyes of the film's target market.
Miniature Robotic Insect Takes Off Researchers have created a miniature robotic fly that weighs just 60 milligrams and has a wingspan of three centimeters for covert surveillance. Thats progress!
Simplify Media has made my Sunday morning, and if you have pals with good taste in music it will probably make your day, too. It's a small download (4 MB) that allows you to stream the iTunes libraries of up to 30 friends as long as they're online.
"A mad, helter-skelter, rude, awesomely violent, unpredictable, swaggering, staggering, joyously infantile, exhilarating steamroller of a sitcom, The Young Ones provided the breakthrough for the new generation of aggressive and forthright 'alternative' comedians."
Originally I got to watching this show because it was on PBS right after repeats of "Doctor Who", and before "Are you Being Served?". (I recommend Summer Holiday and Bambi.) Lots of great and soon-to-be-great guests. Look for Emma Thompson in Bambi as one of "the posh kids."
A (rather beautiful) subway map of web trends.If you like maps, check out Strangemaps.
Best (or Worst) Pickup Lines Ever. Other useful lists on this site include: Things nobody can like,
Why I hate implants, Petite phrases that pack a punch, How to tell if your boyfriend is cheating and everyone's favorite, my favorite sex blogs
"Pimp my rice paddy." Crop art for aliens, instead of by them.
The White Stripes completed a tour of every Canadian province and territory they'd never played before. The last gig was in St. John's, Newfoundland and it was a short one. Very short. One note, in fact.
Every so often, an authentic Enigma machine, turns up on eBay. The Enigma machine, introduced in 1923 by the Chiffriermaschinen Aktien-Gesellschaft (Cipher Machines Stock Corporation), was used by the Germans to encrypt messages during World War II. With eight days left in the auction, the current bid on this specimen is $10,100 and the reserve has not been met. According the auction listing, this Enigma is in "museum condition" and includes extra lamps. Here's a description of the Enigma from a 1999 article in Wired:
German soldiers issued an Enigma were to make no mistake about their orders if captured: Shoot it or throw it overboard.
Based on electronic typewriters invented in the 1920s, the infamous Enigma encryption machines of World War II were controlled by wheels set with the code du jour. Each letter typed would illuminate the appropriate character to send in the coded message.
In 1940, building on work by Polish code breakers, Alan Turing and his colleagues at the famed UK cryptography center Bletchley Park devised the Bombe, a mechanical computer that deciphered Enigma-encoded messages. Even as the Nazis beefed up the Enigma architecture by adding more wheels, the codes could be cracked at the Naval Security Station in Washington, DC - giving the Allies the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic. The fact that the Allies had cracked the Enigma code was not officially confirmed until the 1970s.
A new line of Alice in Wonderland Barbie toys is in the offing, and dude, they're weird. The Mad Hatter is a kind of bulbous, ancient harlequin, while Alice is a doe-eyed anime princess. Apparently the Queen of Hearts is coming too -- I'm thinking anthropomorphic furry fire-ant.
I think I found a picture of the Red Queen in this picture.
Today on Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday: Song-titles as movie posters. I'm partial to this Strangelove/End of the World as We Know It, though the Indiana Jones "Whip It" poster was very fine indeed.
Do the Coup D'etat. The White House has made the Constitutional Crisis official: the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges against an official invoking executive privilege -- even if it's blatantly illegal.
Well, this finally explains whats wrong with Dan Brennan
Chore Wars: Finally, you can claim experience points for housework.
Swedish Woman Gets Superfast Internet. She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said. She's already received one offer of marriage.
Jay is Games is holding its 3rd Casual Gameplay Design Competition. I love short games (the kind one can play in the course of a conference call) and there's a couple of goodies in here. My favorite is Gimme Friction Baby and my current high score is 16.
In the year 1982, Michael Jackson releases Thriller, which according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the greatest selling album of all time. The 14 minute music video was the longest/most expensive at the time, and was directed by filmmaker John Landis. Details of the video here.
Now onto the show. Thriller with Legos. At a wedding. The tv show Good Morning America on the wedding version. At walmart. At another wedding. In Final Fantasy. More animatics. Professional dancers. More dancers. And More. Yup, more here. Even more dancers. Sigh. Even more dancers. And it's not just for 2 year olds. College students too. Penn State's Blue Band. The Bollywood Version. They even do it in Prison.
Rose and Camellia. Flash Friday. It's in Japanese, so I don't know which girl is Rose and which is Camellia. But I do know this -- they resolve their problems by slapping each other. Instructions are in Japanese as well, but it's pretty simple: Click "attack" and run your mouse over your opponent's face to slap, click "evasion" and run your mouse over yourself to dodge a slap.
In 1840, the Cuerdale Hoard - the greatest Viking silver treasure trove ever found outside Russia - is found in Lancashire. 2007: a father and son find an amazing Viking hoard while metal detecting in in Harrogate. The most important find of its type in Britain for over 150 years, it reveals a remarkable diversity of cultural contacts in the medieval world, with objects coming from as far apart as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe.
Antbuster: Friday Flash Fun
"It seems like a really original and interesting read." It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first line of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" is one of literature's most famous, wittily kicking off one of the most beloved of all classics. And yet, 17 British publishers failed to recognize it and rejected the manuscript when Jane's name and the title were changed. What happens when the gatekeepers of literature are illiterate?
Speaking of 'highly virulent earworms,' today's NY Times suggests that searching for this year's 'song of the summer' may lead to "one sad conclusion." Have today's hitmakers failed to live up to the jams of yesteryear? Others have offered their opinions...
Ad juxtapositions. Just a very quickie link to oddly placed ads.
The Shah of Iran talks about torture, his own popularity, and corruption.
Nate Hill is a rogue taxidermist. He collects raw materials from some nasty places, and creates new, better animals from them. Now he has a bigger project. Then there is his TV show, Chop, chop.
For nearly two decades, fifty computers have been running day and night on an extremely complex problem. Today, scientists from the University of Alberta announced the result of all that work - they have solved the game of checkers. Chinook, the computer program they developed, can never be beaten - try for yourself. While checkers is the most complicated game to be solved so far, it is not the only one. You can play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe, of course, but also connect four, and a 6x6 board of the game othello. Chess players are already thinking ahead to when their game is solved, with Advanced Chess being Gary Kasparov's answer. The hardest game to completely solve might be Go, which may not be solved until 2100.
The son of industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger (creator of the distinct styling of the Apple IIc and subsequent products, as well as founder of frog design) shares memories and photographs (auf Deutsch; Google cache) of Apple's early attempts at an iPhone.
Just when you thought virtual reality couldn't get any worse, it's 3D Email!
3D Mailbox delivers a fantastic, smarter e-mail experience. Immerse yourself in 3-D as you read and write your mail. Relax to the sounds of the ocean, seagulls, and cool tunes. Hang with your mail poolside, or feed your spam to the sharks! Deleting spam is so much fun, you may wish you had more!
This year, 500 million people will get malaria and about a million of them will die from it. Some scientists believe that one out of every two people who have ever lived have died of malaria. Here are some reports from Sierra Leone on efforts to control this deadly disease.
Psychiatry in Pictures is a monthly feature of The British Journal of Psychiatry which often demonstrates art created by the psychopathologically afflicted. Other installments include portraits of important figures in the history of psychiatry, paintings drawn during art therapy, and photographs of (quite inhumane) psychiatric treatments.
WeNeither. This is a cute idea for a dating site.
Okay, it wasn't exactly banned, but the new Dove ad for their anti-aging products-- featuring tastefully nude older women-- was pre-emptively rejected by broadcast networks. Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty shares reactions, lets you meet the cast, and invites you to discuss.
Alexyss Tylor was right! Semen is a powerful drug. (Fairly SFW, text-only link.)
On a summer afternoon in 2006, New York photographer Gerard Maynard captured his neighborhood from a rooftop at 7th Avenue and 110th Street. The resulting 2,045 photographs, stitched together, comprise a 13-gigapixel panorama of Harlem's skyline. Best viewed with HDView option (MS Internet Explorer only).
If it's highly virulent earworms you're looking for, you will probably want to check out "Spanish Flea," an irrepressibly cheerful song written by Julius Wechter and recorded by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass. This slight, two-minute instrumental from 1965 (originally with lyrics by Cissy Wechter) has become so popular as 'waiting room music' and 'hold music' that it's become a cliche of the genre, and it's quite likely that you've heard at least a snippet of it at some point in your life. (Perhaps repeatedly, late at night, at your local supermarket?) It's been used for several film soundtracks (American Pie 2, Ocean's Eleven, Striptease, etc.) and, perhaps most famously, as one of the theme songs for the show "The Dating Game." Of course, in the most striking gauge of its cultural ubiquity, The Simpsons has referenced it not one but four times (only two are available on youtube). The song's infectious melody has spawned innumerable homages, ranging from interesting to amusing to thought-provoking to imbecilic to bizarre
The Dreaded Half Worcester warning: music is just one of the possible vexing configurations players encounter in candlepin bowling, a regional variation on traditional bowling that's unique to northern New England and maritime Canada. Developed in Worcester, MA, around 1880 (warning: more music), the game is played in gorgeous antique alleys dotted around New England and Nova Scotia, and features a 4 1/2" wooden or rubber ball, three rolls per frame or "box," and 15 and 3/4" narrow, cylinder-shaped pins that are the devil to knock down -- even though you can use the dead wood to knock other pins down, a score over 200 is extremely rare. Find some lanes and play or just take the quiz - like so many regional quirks, this one's undergoing a bit of a revival
He's a computer tutor for seniors, who also seems to have a giant collection of music that's rare these days. Shortly before leaving to fight in Korea, he was kissed by Celia Cruz in 1951, among other adventures.
Contemporary Japanese bamboo art.
I am Murloc. Cool World of Warcraft music video.
Crazy 4 Cult is a new exhibit coming to Gallery 1988, the Los Angeles art gallery that hosts the annual (and always great) IAm8Bit exhibit. Just as IAm8Bit uses videogames of the 1980s as the theme for the artists, Crazy 4 Cult is using Cult movies. For fun, the exhbit poster features a huge number of movie references - can you catch them all?
Ever wondered how gay men signal each other with colored hankies? Ask Meathook. (warning: the photo section is not suitable for anyone, anywhere.)
The Athens Affair. An IEEE Spectrum article on the Vodafone Greece phone-tapping case, quite possibly the most elaborate publicized cybercrime ever.
Sequel to Guy Catches Sunglasses With Face It wasn't too long ago that we had a look at Guy Catches Sunglasses With Face. Here is the sequel, Bobbing For Glasses. Both videos are from artist Ben Kaller, who has worked on most of Spike Jonze' best stuff, among other things. His brother Jeremy Kaller is also a talented director, who recently released a a documentary about the progressive recycling scene in San Francisco.
This web site details how to construct a high performance bicycle lighting system. Also contains information on bells, horns, dynamo powered lights, and other safety devices (Warning! This site contains a small fair amount of nudity!)
More on Giant-Homer:
Hey look, the Cerne Abbas giant has a buddy. Unamused pagans still wishing for rain.
PS. Most times, on the right hand side of the last link (the bbc article) you'll see Durdle Door a massive natural stone archway
Do all your friends already own yachts? Perhaps you should consider getting a luxury submarine.
Pagans are not happy about an enormous Homer Simpson painted near an ancient image.
PAGANS have pledged to perform "rain magic" to wash away cartoon character Homer Simpson who was painted next to their famous fertility symbol - the Cerne Abbas giant.The 17th century chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant is believed by many to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.
Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: "It's very disrespectful and not at all aesthetically pleasing."
Fans will return to the Farscape universe in an original Web series, set to be released on SCIFI.com. The 10-part series is executive produced by Brian Henson and Robert Halmi, Jr., and produced by The Jim Henson Company in association with RHI Entertainment. "The series will revive and expand the beloved Farscape universe," according to the network.
Makes me a happy fanboi!
Mezzowave. super sensory chill out lounge for relaxation and balancing the space. subsonic resonance and morphing visuals. Think Boobah meets SomaFM
Disaster at Sea!! A collection of dozens & dozens of photographs of misfortune striking those GIGANTIC shipping vessels, the kind that bring goods from China to Wal Mart. Every kind of affliction imaginable, from shipboard fire to heavy weather to grounding amidst crushing waves to capsizing from ill balanced loads to random explosive cargo to terrorist attack to so much more. Descriptions of the vessels and what brought them down are included in the first link.
As advances in DNA testing allow us to discover our genetic origins in ever-greater detail, many people are making surprising discoveries. Especially in the melting-pot that is the USA. Of course there are always those who feel that access to such information about who we are will only lead to bad things
This site explains the link, apparently via Mesopotamia, between the ancient Roman and modern Japanese calendrical systems.
Battleship Extreme, Operation Tiger, Operation Thunderbolt, Operation Seahawk, Operation Allied Shield, are newly released online games from the Australian Defence Force. But where�s Operation Tank Rage?
What is the relationship between the optical groove in a record or wax cylinder and sound, and how can we use this to recover analog recordings from the past? Dr. Carl Haber explains IRENE.
There is a remote part of the Congolese jungle, called the Bili forest, where local legend has long told of a breed of giant apes that eat lions, catch fish and howl at the moon. To his surprise Dutch researcher Cleve Hicks found them. In fact they are large chimps but they appear to have a number of behavioural differences from other groups seen in the wild. (More information from Wikipedia).
Strong earthquake hits Japan, hundreds of homes have been destroyed, bridges have been leveled, tsunamis are forming, and most frightening, the nuclear power plant appears to be leaking radioactive water. The quake registered as a 6.8 on the Richter scale.
The History Of Dance -- World of Warcraft style.
Home Made Sex Doll. Enough said, really. NSFW.
"I'd been a fugitive for too long and it was time to turn myself in." the sicilian misadventures of a Reuters journalist with Agrigento's police department.
"What we have here is a Cabinet of Wonders, a place where things of interest are set out, in possibly bizarre, possibly fetishistic presentation, for perusal by the discerning, who understand that presentation, and scientific interest, are all a form of magic."
Robbery American Style. Robbery French Style. Robbery Italian Style. Classic Soviet animation from Soyuzmultfilm.
Police in Waldboro, Maine, have seized a severed hand that had apparently been, er, handed-down over fifty to eighty years. A construction worker found the hand in a box at a home he was painting for the owner, a man who buys homes to restore and sell. The owner and police contacted the woman who lived there previously to (sorry) get a grip on the situation. From the Associated Press:
(Current home owner Bo) Jespersen was struck by its size, with fingers about an inch and a half longer than his own...The wrist portion appeared jagged, Jespersen said, as if the hand had been removed violently, and 6 to 8 inches of what appeared to be tendons were looped around it...The previous owner claimed she had gotten the hand from a man down the road, who is now in his 80s and remembers his father having the hand.
"She had heard it was from a farming accident," Jespersen said.
The Bladder Buddy. You can thank ABC's American Inventor for this.
Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
So you've gone and made a baby! A father of two provides some helpful advice to friends about what to expect from their newborns.
One day while crossing an empty field, fifteen-year-old Tim Masters happened to see a dead body. Twenty years later, he remains in prison, serving time for a crime that he almost certainly did not commit.
A haunting, bizarre tale of a murder investigation gone wrong.
Millions of tax dollars melting away... guess Katrina victims didn't need ice after all.
Sicilian chef Filippo La Mantia has sworn off garlic. La Mantia says that garlic is a "leftover from when Italians were poor", and feels it is overplayed and unnecessary. Others disagree, like chef Antonello Colonna: "eliminating garlic is like "eliminating violins from an orchestra".
You know who else liked Xbox Live?
In Collapse, Jared Diamond wondered what the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island was thinking as he did so. On the Solomon Islands, he'll soon have the chance to put that question to that person.
Feel like you've racked up too many sins to be admitted into Heaven? Fret not, my evil friend... just hire a Sin Eater to gobble them all up for you. Voila! More here.
Bulls on Parade: Rage against the runners. Not for the squeamish (especially the first picture).
Myostatin is a genetic protein that affects muscle growth in humans and animals. Scientists have learned a lot about this protein from a noticeable myostatin mutation common in the Whippet dog breed. Whippets with one mutant copy of the gene are faster, so these are desirable for racing dog breeders. But selective breeding has caused increased instances of both copies of the myostatin genes mutating, which results in "double muscle" Incredible Hulk dogs!?
Got me a sexy new bike, woo hoo. Had a hard time picking the color, but settled on classic black. Very sporty.
Star Trek as you've never seen it. In a clever, terribly NSFW voice-over parody of Star Trek, Star Hood Trek takes the crew of the Enterprise to . . . well, it's NSFW. But Spock falls in love, Kirk shows himself to be an insufferable martinet, and Bones, well, Bones just wants the tang. Eight part series: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.
Also, you'd think in the 24th century, they'd have a cure for mono . . . .
In January 2005 , someone using the name "Rahodeb" went online to a Yahoo stock-market forum and posted this opinion: "No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share." Who was that random fool? Why, none other than John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods. Whole Foods purchased Wild Oats earlier this year for approximately $18.50 a share, but the FTC has an issue with Whole Foods buying out their competitor. Mackey had responded to the FTC's complaint on his blog, but has not posted since some of his other online comments became publicly attached to his name.
In the grand tradition of Killer comes Humans Vs. Zombies, a campus game that's growing in popularity. From its origins at Goucher, it's spread to a reported two dozen colleges. An interview with the game's moderator is here, and you can watch the 45-minute documentary from one of the games on Google Video
The Manual (How To Have a Number One - The Easy Way). Both light-hearted and thorough, the Timelords, aka the KLF, wrote this tongue-in-cheek manual in 1988 following their own novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis". "If you are already a musician stop playing your instrument. Even better, sell the junk. It will become clearer later on but just take our word for it for the time being." Oh and apparently have lots of tea on hand.
Listen to the Newmarket Police try to deal with "Outstanding Elephants". Elephants from the circus escape. They wander through Newmarket, Ontario, munching on people's landscaping. Some people out for a late night walk happen upon them and (mp3) call into the York regional police to report the errant elephants. Then the police (mp3) deal with getting them back to their home.
"Police said no one was hurt, no property was damaged and that the two well-behaved animals spent their free time snacking on plants and trees as they wandered the quiet downtown streets." Sounds like a good way to spend a summer evening to me!
You got served! ...by taekwondo black belts? The Korean Tigers is a taekwondo demonstration team that also try to have fun. But chereographing with pop stars and dancing? Considering that one of Korea's older traditional martial arts is taekyon, a martial art which reflects some aspects of traditional Korean dance and music, dancing doesn't seem so far-fetched for Korean martial arts.
Sports Acrobatics Spellbinding gymnastics feats.
Completely amazing graph of every NBA player for every season in which he played at least five minutes since 1979. Points Per Game are on the Y-Axis, sum total of every other stat on the X-axis, with the data points colored with RGB depending on the player's statistical tendencies during that season. Full explanation of methodology here. Gigantic monitor recommended.
"Splenda's advertising claims that it is 'Made from Sugar, so it Tastes Like Sugar.' What they don't tell you is that Splenda is not natural, it's a chlorinated artificial sweetener." So states The Truth About Splenda, a site devoted to saving us from this chemical menace. But who are the good samaritans behind this truth-telling campaign? Why, none other than the good people of The Sugar Association, who only want to promote the consumption of sugar as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle. McNeil Nutritionals, the maker of Splenda, fight backs with SplendaTruth.com.
Temple of Zoom. Adding a twist on Flash-based stick figure games and physics-oriented platformers like N-Game, comes Matsushita/Panasonic's followup to Toshiba's "Tobby" line of promotional games. Collect dots Pac-Man (Java) style, in addition to powerups resembling digital viewfinder icons. Jump atop camera lenses which double as elevators, while dodging the occasional Red-Eye sensor. Your "prize", should you choose to accept it, is a bottle of soda pop coupon for the new Lumix camera.
British troops in Iraq are accused of releasing "man-eating badgers" in Basra, according to a BBC news report.The creatures, apparently some 39 inches (100 cm) in length, are the size of dogs and have monkey-like heads.
The BBC news story quotes a local woman, Suad Hussain, who claims to have been attacked by one of these creatures: "My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer"
Known locally as Al-Girta (also known as Honey Badgers) the director of Basra's veterinary hospital, Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, refutes the claims, stating: "Talk that this animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and unscientific."
This site is a master list of links directly related to the Build-It-Yourself AK hobby.
That pretty much sums it up. This site is a link dump of DIY AK 47 related information and resources. Mr Kalishnikov's popular rifle turned sixty this month.
Not safe for work.
"The HiRISE camera is very sensitive and we can see details in almost any shadow on Mars, but not here. We also cannot see the deep walls of the pit."
Sharp-witted Benjamin Franklin once observed there were two guarantees in life - death and taxes. Simple, but irrefutable, that statement touches every facet of life. Franklin's two constants have continuously shaped everything we love, fear, anticipate, dread, and enjoy - including beer.
Unintentionally Sexual Comics Covers and Panels. Utterly insane.
Canadian Air Transport Security has loosened up the rules for "security" in Canadian airports -- agents are no longer required to sound the alarm and shut down the airport when someone remarks, "Your hockey team is going to bomb tonight."
The bulletin provides key examples of both types. The false statement "I have a bomb in my bag" will continue to bring the police running. But the comment "Your hockey team is going to get bombed tonight" is merely careless, it advises."Inform the person that he or she could commit a serious offence saying such words at an airport," say the new instructions, referring to careless remarks. But officers should then continue the regular screening process without sounding the alarm.
Some other examples from the document, by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority:
- "I am going to set fire to the airplane with this blowtorch" (false declaration), versus "What do you think I look like, a terrorist?" (careless or inflammatory).
- "He is going to hijack the aircraft" (false declaration) versus "Hi Jack!" (careless or inflammatory).
- "The man in seat 32F has a machine gun" (false declaration), versus "My gun misfired when I was hunting this weekend" (careless or inflammatory).
Daniel Ellis of Cape Cod, Massachusetts wanted so badly to be excused from jury duty that he claimed to be homophobic, racist, and a liar. As a result, Barnstable Superior Court Judge Gary Nickerson wants him prosecuted. Here are excerpts from Nickerson's conversation with Ellis, according to an Associated Press article:
"You say on your form that you're not a fan of homosexuals," Nickerson said."That I'm a racist," Ellis interrupted.
"I'm frequently found to be a liar, too. I can't really help it," Ellis added.
"I'm sorry?" Nickerson said.
"I said I'm frequently found to be a liar," Ellis replied.
"So, are you lying to me now?" Nickerson asked.
"Well, I don't know. I might be," was the response.
OK X - Radiohead's OK Computer covered by 12 modern artists. Free download.
It's just a teaser trailer for a monster movie, but people (geeks) are going crazy trying to figure out what it's about. It may or may not have some ambiguous viral.Some think it's Cthulhu come to destroy New York, some think it's Voltron. Other less sensible people think it's a lion. It is definitely not a lion.
Erie bomb victim was the dupe in a greedy plan. This story has always freaked me out...and now it freaks me out in brand new ways.
Just so alljenn.com fans dont think I'm a heel, Jen ditching the bike scared the crap outta me, i ran over to give her a hand up and thats when i noticed her ring was full of grass :P hehe.
Square cupcakes used to create a 8bit Mario :)
A team of astronomers needs your help. It's not terribly easy to get computers to distinguish between galaxy shapes, but fortunately humans are not only very good at it, but seem to actually enjoy gazing out in to space. So, go to galaxyzoo.org, look at a few pretty pictures from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey , and help classify millions of galaxies and aid research in to how they form and evolve while you're at it.
The Ultimate D&D Gaming Cycle Flowchart elaborates on past, simpler flowcharts that trace the process of role-playing. After all, since when do role-players like anything to be simple?!! The 1280x1024 graphics are not just funny; they also make an excellent desktop! Eight sizes are available for download.
Looks like their server is back to a default apache setup, they might be back up later ?
Luke Pannell, a UK university student, created this "Breathe Air" bike helmet with a built-in air filter. It helps you with your asthma. And it helps you look like a Storm Trooper.
It covers the cyclist's nose and mouth with a shield behind which the filtered air circulates.Used air is expelled via a plastic tube when the cyclist exhales.
The helmet, called Breathe Air, was created by 22-year-old Brunel University industrial design and technology student Luke Pannell.
Build bigger boobies from belly blubber! But how do they know to stop growing?
The funniest part is, if stem cells can be used to grow big ass boobs, the US will be all about it... but to help quadriplegics to walk again, and a multitude of others not have to live with debilitating disease? pfft, who cares!
Chinese theme parks - some are strange, and some are oddly familiar. Others are disturbing. Some have unique attractions, or promotions not found elsewhere. At least one is highly functional. Not all are successful, and they may not travel very well.
Noah Scalin explores different media and techniques to come up with a Skull a Day. Yes, there are pancakes.
Star Trek vs. Batman Christopher Allen brings two icons of Sixties television together in a three-part, 51-minute epic adventure.
Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 at Google Video. MPEG downloads and audio interviews at RASCO Motion Pictures site.
Where Are The Joneses? is an interactive sitcom from Steve Coogan's production company. The action centres on Dawn Jones, who, on learning that she is the daughter of a sperm donor, sets out to find her twenty-seven siblings. You can watch episodes on YouTube, follow a Flickr photo-diary, and, inevitably, keep up via Dawn's Twitter account. Don't like the plot, characters or gags? Then rewrite the show on its wiki.
The votes are in. Vermont wins the Springfield Challenge.
Now all they have to do is find a big enough theater.
The Rubinoos recently filed a lawsuit against Avril Lavigne, claiming that her song Girlfriend (Youtube) plagiarized from their song, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend (mp3). An authorized cover version of the Rubinoos song performed by Lush and retitled "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend" has even more similarities to the Lavigne song. Now that the teeming millions on the Internets have gotten into the act, YouTubers are now arguing whether Lavigne is a plagiarist, whether the Rubinoos plagiarized from the Rolling Stones, and whether Ms. Lavigne plagiarized a second time. Now that Web 2.0 has made it easier to uncover musical copycats, I'm hot on the case of Bob Marley vs. The Banana Splits.
"In 1947 Life Magazine asked some famous comic strip artists to to draw their famous characters while wearing a blindfold. The results are interesting..."
The Indoor Yield-O-Rama is a scientific look at how much marijuana people can expect to grow under certain conditions. No matter you think about marijuana or your country's drug laws, the level of sophistication in this statistical analysis may surprise you.
The Censored Eleven is a group of Warner Brothers cartoons that have been withheld from syndication because of their racial stereotypes: Hittin' the Trail to Hallelujah Land (1931; info), Sunday Go to Meetin' Time (1936; info), Clean Pastures (1937; info), Uncle Tom's Bungalow (1937), Jungle Jitters (1938), The Isle of Pingo Pongo (1938), All This and Rabbit Stew (1941; info), Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943; info), Tin Pan Alley Cats (1943; info), Angel Puss (1944), and Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears (1944).
Somehow Tokio Jokio (1943; recap) didn't make the list.
The "Twelve missing hares" are 12 politically incorrect Bugs Bunny cartoons that weren't aired during Cartoon Network's 2001 June Bugs Marathon: Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941; info), Any Bonds Today? (1942; info), What's Cookin' Doc? (1944; info), Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944; info), Herr Meets Hare (1945; info), A Feather in his Hare (1948; info), Mississippi Hare (1949; info), Frigid Hare (1949; info), Which is Witch? (1949; info), and Bushy Hare (1950; info), Horse Hare (1960; info). ("All This and Rabbit Stew" is on both lists.)
Bug Bunny does an Uncle Tom parody in Southern Fried Rabbit (1953; info).
Warner Brothers included "Southern Fried Rabbit" uncut on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, with this disclaimer:
The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today's society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.
Oh, also here's a copy of the full version of 1942's Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd vehicle "Fresh Hare", including its habitually censored ending
The Prime Game is not really much of a game, but it is a neat & little-known fact about the decimal representation of prime numbers.
Rockford, IL woman Dawn Larson, who was born without arms, was refused service at a McDonald's drive through, because the staff refused to let her take her food away with her feet (she uses her feet to drive, handle money, etc). The staff were vociferously revolted by the woman's disability.
McDonald's head office response? A $10 gift-certificate.
Dawn says her disability's never stopped her from leading a normal life. "I do everyday things like everyday people." But on November 3rd, she says that changed. Larson pulled up to the McDonald's drive through on Kishwaukee Street and ordered food for her and her sons. She drove to the first window, gave the cashier her credit card with her foot, and pulled up to get her food. Dawn says, "The first girl said, 'Girl, you ain't got no arms' and the manager said she couldn't hand me her food and she just kept sticking to the fact that I didn't have no arms and she was disgusted by it. I had the right to eat my dinner and feed my kids and they took that away from me."
Larson says the manager eventually agreed to hand Larson's son the food. But she says an incident 3 and a half moths later at the McDonald's on 11th Street didn't end that way. Larson claims an employee there refused to even do that. "I paid to be discriminated against and I paid to be disrespected and I paid to not even have the right to eat my food."
Larson says McDonald's sent her a 10 dollar gift certificate in response to her complaint. Now she's suing the fast food corporation to prevent anyone else from going through what she did. "That's saying McDonald's condones and urges people to treat the handicapped that way. I don't want that message to come across. I want to fight for my rights and my kids rights and have these things changed."
Iraq's Horror Movie Posters. According to Sky News, insurgent forces are taking up Worth1000 style criticism to hold up a mirror to citizens of the US and their Military-Entertainment complex.
In the past, various possible treatments and methods have been suspected of helping combat AIDS, which have later been proven correct. Other, less reputable treatments have also been claimed to work, the likes of which descend towards malpractice, pseudoscience and criminal negligence. But in a turnabout, the olive oil element of South Africa's controversial treatment, deemed to be "Africa's Solution", actually helps as well.
Things Gone By is an antique jewelry dealer specializing in the category of "mourning jewelry"; items worn in memory of the dead, usually involving locks of their hair & other materials. The mourning items are not limited to jewelry, as they also feature a gallery of mourning artwork, again made with the hair of the beloved deceased.
Vanity Fair has an interesting write up on the history of the Simpsons. There are quotes from all sorts of people, including: Art Spiegelman, Jay Kogen, Rupert Murdoch, Conan O'Brien, etc.
Kids fill a tin can with 30,000 matchheads, insert a long-ass fuse, retreat, and set off a gigantic fireball. Don't do this as home. Don't do this anywhere. But: enjoy.
Illustrator Apelad has many various projects & flickrsets, including the fairly well known Laugh Out Loud Cats & the Hodgman inspired Hobo Names project, but some of the lesser known ones are awesome as well, including this set of images created for common HTTP Errors, this Alphabet of Monsters, and a personal favorite, Monkey!, wherein users send in a monkey description and receive in return a drawing.
Where Are They Now? The Hanson Brothers. Reliving the goon old days with the Hanson Brothers from Slap Shot (and the 2002 sequel).
Looking for something to read this summer? Well, if you like crime fiction The Rap Sheet has some recommendations for you.
Real Dolls and the men who love them - this 46 minute documentary explores the lives of four men and the relationships they have established with alternative partners in life. NSFW - doll nudity alert.
What's Opera, Doc? (YouTube, approx. 7 mins.) The opera-parodying Merrie Melodies cartoon, which some consider to be Chuck Jones' career masterpiece, turned 50 years old this week. The short is also known as "Kill The Wabbit" in reference to the line sung by Elmer Fudd to the tune of "Ride Of The Valkyries," which is just one of many Wagner references in the piece.
Remember the old 8-bit Nintendo glory days, when you'd save your allowances to buy an overpriced cartridge for $49.99 only to discover that it was a piece of crap? If you've been nursing hatred and remorse in your soul all these years, then The Angry Nintendo Nerd has got your back. I find his profanity-laced rants on such turds as Simon's Quest and The Karate Kid to be strangely cathartic. Best of all is his two-part nostalgia trip that sums up what everyone our age thought of the ill-fated original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie trilogy. Part I, Part II.
Jessica Dimmock: I was approached by a cocaine dealer who made it clear that he was a dealer. Over the course of the conversation he made it clear that if I wanted to follow him and photograph him I could. He took me to a variety of places - parties, people's apartments, the owner of an escort service. The last place he ever took me was the apartment where the project starts.
Jessica Dimmock is the 2006 recipient of the Inge Morath Award to encourage young female photojournalists. Her series, The Ninth Floor is epic in its savage and true depiction of the reality of drugs in New York City. NSFW.
You can love him or hate him but Transformers made $250,000,000 last week. To some, Michael Bay is a genius. To others he's a racist hack. Or just a hack. He may even be both a hack and a genius. Is this evidence of an auteur? Or does dude just like really big explosions? Plus: a character driven Bay film?
Harry Potter dies. Harry Potter lives. One thing is becoming clear: Harry Potter is killing the traditional bookseller industry in the UK.
Eww. Who the hell drinks pickle brine? and who the fuck wants to drink it in a sports drink. Yuck.
Ice tsunami in Antartica (may not contain actual tsunami)
My Crazy Roommate At the beginning of this year, the new guy at work needed a place to live. I ended up letting him sublet one of the rooms in my house. After only a couple of days it became obvious that he is totally insane. The crazy constantly flows from his mouth and is just way too good to not share with the world. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, but other than that - all of the conversations are damn near verbatim.
Begin reading at Month One.
The Doctor Who Fan's Phrasebook is like looking down a long dark corridor and seeing yourself. Surprisingly flexible too. "The Silent Majority -- A collection of people who don't exist. I've just made them up so that I can claim to speak for them." Note: Big spoilers for the third new series, which has just begun on Sci-Fi in the US, and possibly Torchwood.
Hungry in Hogtown may be Toronto's best food blog. This guy goes all-out to recreate his favourite recipes, whether it requires rendering 50 pounds of horse fat to make french fries, or sourcing bunny scalps for a crispy snack. Oh, and his most recent post is about Kool-Aid pickles.
Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu build faithful, 3D versions of Escher prints using LEGOs: Relativity, Ascending and Descending, Waterfall, and Belvedere. (Only one of those four images required any photo manipulation to create its "Escher effect" -- can you tell which one, without scrolling down to see the descriptions on each page?) Other people's LEGO adventures: a playable harpsichord, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a portrait of Catwoman.
NoMediaKings.org will tell you how to hand-bind books in a variety of ways. Then you can make the movie of the book. As a bonus: Time Management for Anarchists.
The How-To Geek provides hints and tips for a variety of operating systems and popular pieces of software. The how-tos cover a pleasing range of head-slapping I-should-have-known-thats to relatively advanced techniques. Follow the latest page to read the site in blog form.
Need oil? Try microwaving your plastics.
The Shapes of Thought is "an exploration of the visualization of emotion as EEG and other bioelectrical signals over time as retrievable data in three-dimesnional forms." It's part of the Einstein's Brain project.
Power Pop 4 Ever. Pop icon, kick ass guitarist, working musician, and subject of a recent movie, Glen , along with Squeeze bandmate Chris Difford, wrote some of the most memorable hooks of the 80s. Among them Pulling mussels, Black Coffee in Bed, Up the Junction and Is that love?.
The Learn List is attempting to become a comprehensive online resource for free tutorials in Flash, PhotoShop, Fireworks, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, ActionScript, PHP, CSS & XML.
Start drawing! The Asia drawing portal. Drawings from Asia, drawing by Asians. It's hot out, so crack open a cold drink, keep yourself inside and click through a great portal of art from the near and far east. Stay a while, and browse by category, by country, and revel in a large list of inspirations and resources. I've enjoyed reading about Sanjay Patel, the artist behind GheeHappy and Hindu mythology in cartoon form, an amazing array of CG artists from Thailand, the odd dichotomy of urban culture and ultra-slick anime from Korea, and puzzled over an array of meticulous resources like this Hair gallery (Japanese site).
PopSci has a fun project that shows you how to dissolve the zinc in a penny, leaving only the thin copper shell.
William Kamkwamba decided to build a windmill to power lights in his home: "For many years we had only paraffin candles to light my home at night. They are expensive, smoky, smelly and have to be purchased about 8 km from home."
"I find it kind of funny to be hassled for using [them] when my intention is to free us from hassling people for using them." Thirty five years later, George Carlin's seven dirty words still aren't forgotten by his arresting officer. "I couldn't believe my ears," Elmer Lenz remembers. "I couldn't see why nobody was doing anything about it."
"Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies."
I think we all know what this "squoctopus" thing should be named. After vigintillions of years baby Cthulhu is loose again, and ravening for delight.
Tornadoes have touched down in New Zealand, and journalistic standards have vanished into thin air, not surprising with the current standard of NZ news output.
White Stripes play Toronto YMCA The duo of Meg and Jack White snuck in through the back entrance of an auditorium at a downtown YMCA in Toronto at about 3:30 p.m. Thursday for the latest in a cross-country barrage of small secret shows as part of their Canadian tour. During the short set, Jack pulled four of the children up to the makeshift stage to sing and show off the masks the campers had been creating before the arrival of the rock stars. In recent weeks the band has played on a bus in Winnipeg, at a bowling alley in Saskatoon and in a youth centre in Edmonton.
Wow Russia! A cutesy guide to the world's largest country.
Kevin Cooney visits Namjatown's Ice Cream City, where he treats himself to such frozen delights as octopus, squid, shark fin ramen, curry and snake flavored ice cream.
Boeing launches its new plane, the 787, this weekend: 07/08/07. Check it out now or watch it live on Sunday.
Barnaby Barford cuts up china figurines and rearranges them in amusing ways. Shary Boyle's art is similar, but darker.
7/7/7 marks the 100th birthday of Grandmaster Robert Anson Heinlein, born July 7th 1907. Long live Lazarus Long!
While any attempt at a tribute would but naturally turn into a passionate link infested paean to this visionary genius, one of the Big 3, along with Asimov and Clarke, one must honour his contribution with a pointer to the Heinlein Concordance, a portal of his stories, characters, concepts and timelines.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. ~ Robert A. Heinlein 1907 - 1988
In case you were wondering, it's probably a bad idea to sit on an airbag and set it off.
Ahh that symbol of the Russian endurance and the instrument of forcing peace (or certain radical beliefs) on everyone� Yes it was 60 years ago that a Russian peasant would create a weapon that would be tough, easy to use and easy to make. If the weapon tickles your fancy, then you can buy it here for about $880�
From the Associated Press:
Exposure to methane gas led to the deaths of four family members and a farmhand, but whether they suffocated from the fumes or drowned in 18 inches of liquefied cow manure may never be known, authorities said.
Found a hella funny article over at the Consumerist:
The Consumerist's 3-month sting operation snared a Geek Squad technician stealing porn from our hard drive, and we've got the work-safe video and logfiles to prove it.To investigate claims by current and former Geek Squad techies (see "The 10 Page Geek Squad Confession - "Stealing Customers' Nudie Pics Was An Easter Egg Hunt"), we loaded a computer with porn and rigged it to make a video of itself. We captured every cursor movement, every program opened, every file accessed. Everything that the user saw and did, we recorded.
Link, includes video and logfiles, and see also Why We're Not Telling Geek Squad CEO Which Agent Stole The Porn. The takeaway: this could happen with any tech support service, not just Geek Squad (though Consumerist alleges this is a systemic problem there -- not just one rogue dude). If you've got stuff you don't want strangers to see (or copy or steal), encryption is your friend. By the time your PC needs repair, it will be too late to lock down. Plan ahead, grasshopper!
Birth of the Beatles On July 6, 1957, John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time at The Woolton Church Parish Fete where The Quarry Men were appearing. John Lennon was impressed that Paul McCartney could tune a guitar and his knowledge of rock & roll lyrics.
Defend your server from viruses with, for some reason, flamethrowers and machine guns. Happy Friday!
Hulk Rules! Hulk Hogan's memorable 1995 album examined, with audio samples. Not to be missed: Hulkster in Heaven (YouTube), Hogan's soulful tribute to a young fan who died of cancer ("I used to tear my shirt/ but now you've torn my heart/ I knew you were a Hulkamaniac/ right from the very start...") featuring the most ambitious gospel choir ever to back a professional wrestler. Further appreciation and lyrics. Musical talent must run in the family...
Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow, from Style.org. Hashing out the classic question with Strouhal numbers and simplified flight waveforms.
From CBC News. Tim Hortons fans will be paying more for their daily double-doubles and doughnuts as of next Monday, when the company boosts its prices in Atlantic Canada, Ontario and Manitoba.
In this ten-minute segment, legal harridan Judge Judy Sheindlin tears an internet scammer a new one, questioning her ethics, morality, parenting skills, and intelligence.
I'm glad somebody took the time to add words to these mystifying instructions.
Leave it to the Japanese. A in depth video on how to evade a fart. The end is hilarious!
This is well worth seeing/hearing if you're a Simpsons fan (Simpsonian? Simpsonite?)
I hate being sick. I've been sick for a full month and a half now, this sucks
More for Jenn.
Blueberry!
Much love for Jenn.
Hey Kids ,
Almost done rewriting the code that runs the archives, yay! I figured, its been years since I re did the templates and designs for this site, so why not upgrade it to a new design? Well, after changing style, I realized, I like my previous (now current) design. So I'm re-writing that to be more up to date with current web design standards. More to follow.
Aside from the usual crap, YouTube has a great selection of one the most covered song of all time: All Along the Watchtower. Classics like Hendrix (live and studio), Neil Young (at DailyMotion with better sound) and U2--and some great contemporary versions like Keziah Jones' blazingly-fast version, Bradley Fish's 12-instrument (including Chinese Zither) version, Michael Hedges? reason-to-be-excited cover, and even a quite good version of DMB's much-maligned cover. What doesn't really rank: Dylan's original.