August 29
They're everywhere; languishing on doorsteps, hanging out in the middle of the road, dangling off street signs, peeking out of piles of garbage, reclining in the middle of the sidewalk, riding the bus for free.
London Bananas.
posted by netbros at 8:26 AM -
14 comments
Fox,
the BBC and
CNN have all revealed that Republican US presidential candidate John McCain has picked Alaskan Governor
Sarah Palin as his running mate on his 72nd birthday on the eve of the start of
Republican National Convention. Despite being wildly popular in Alaska, Palin has recently been involved in
an investigation over whether she dismissed a public safety commissioner because he refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law.
posted by HaloMan at 7:52 AM -
251 comments
The Futility of Flogging Music "I was pondering the other day whether I actually have a field of expertise. I thought for ages, and couldn't come up with anything, and then in a blinding flash I realised, with a slight sense of despondency, what it might be: being in bands that people have never heard of." Actually you may have heard of
Rhodri Marsden if you're caught the current Scritti Politti line-up in action, if you've ever followed the broadcasts of the late DJ John Peel, or if you've read Rhodri's technology column in UK newspaper the Independent. This week, in a speech to the
Oxford Geek Night, Marsden shared his caustic yet heartfelt observations on DIY music from the early 90s through to the digital age, sighing "I can think of nothing more soul destroying" than social networking and quoting post-punk icon of Pere Ubu as saying musicians should "screw the audience".
posted by skylar at 3:58 AM -
19 comments
Color Is Relative, pretty and interesting eye candy created by Gabriel Mott,
is a website dedicated to showing luminosity achieved through simple color combinations. On the site, the image is interactive. By moving the mouse over a single swatch the background color of the page will change to the same color. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 12:58 AM -
12 comments
August 28
If you were asked to design the perfect weapon to exploit this vulnerability as it manifests itself in attractive, urban gay men, you’d want something that would intensify our isolation, exaggerate our propensity to objectify each other, and persuade us to objectify ourselves -- by encouraging us to believe that our purpose is to look good and have lots of sex. Manhunt would be your perfect weapon
"
Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?". It's a great article, but what happened after its publication may be just as interesting.
[more inside]
posted by Weebot at 11:35 PM -
34 comments
More good stuff for people who like visual ("optical") illusions (
previously): A nice Scientific American
article, a particularly
creepy illusion, and a
link to the "Best visual illusion of the year" contest. Given that the eye/mind/brain is so easy to trick, a person might wonder what's
really out there in the world.
posted by cogneuro at 2:31 PM -
23 comments
Facil, an open-source community based in Québec, is
suing the Québec government for buying Microsoft software when free alternatives are available. Facil's
press release says, in part, "From February to June 2008, FACIL has noticed sales of proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars. These purchases were made for products offered by large multinational enterprises, with no regard to suppliers in Quebec. ... While most of the developed countries have started, a few years back, migrating their technological infrastructures to Free Software, Quebec's public administration is far behind." Some
applaud Facil's move. Others,
not so much.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:53 PM -
45 comments
A Serbian village erecting a statue to reggae superstar
Bob Marley? Sure, why not? A Bosnian town with a statue of kung-fu legend
Bruce Lee? Hell, yeah! And how 'bout, say, a Serbian monument to
Rocky? Er, well.. ok. But the British Museum displaying what they say is the largest gold statue built since ancient Egypt, of...
Kate Moss? Um... I dunno. I prefer the Russian monument to
the enema.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:24 AM -
32 comments
RIP Bell Labs "After six Nobel Prizes, the invention of the transistor, laser and countless contributions to computer science and technology, it is the end of the road for Bell Labs' fundamental physics research lab."
posted by Eideteker at 4:20 AM -
56 comments
August 27
Our editorial slant is big tent right-of-center -- as open-minded about what we publish as The New Republic, The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine, but on the center-right rather than the center-left. A new conservative online magazine and community,
Culture11, quietly debuted on Wednesday.
[more inside]
posted by Knappster at 10:47 PM -
60 comments
No "Preacher" for you. Many of you
did not think a "Preacher" miniseries would end well. Would fans prefer to be disappointed by the aborted attempt at an adaptation than disappointed at its not meeting viewers' expectations?
posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 6:57 PM -
63 comments
How Buildings Learn--Stewart Brand, 1997, BBC, 6 Parts;
Flow,
The Low Road,
Built For Change,
Unreal Estate,
The Romance of Maintenance,
Shearing Layers. "What happens after buildings are built? Why do some buildings get better over time and others get demolished? Stewart Brand says architecture is a prediction, and all predictions are wrong, so the more monumental the architecture, the more wrong the building is. The buildings that thrive are those that can adapt to how people actually use them. The worst buildings for inhabitants are usually statement architecture -- buildings that look like art. The best buildings are often non-descript, and pick up character as they evolve. In other words they grow into art." Kevin Kelley
posted by vronsky at 6:52 PM -
14 comments
Two artists that paint humans so that they blend into their surroundings:
Liu Bolin and
Emma Hack (click 'body art' and then 'exhibitions' to get into the image galleries)
posted by Kattullus at 1:36 PM -
16 comments
What would you do if you only had a month left to hear? With a
disease that put tumors on her brain stem, Jessica Stone was given a month to savor the sounds in her world before surgery took away her hearing for good. Her story ran on
Good Morning America.
[more inside]
posted by sjuhawk31 at 1:34 PM -
23 comments
Documentary about
China's Wild West: an area on the west frontier of China's Gobi Desert named Xinjiang (New Land) by the Chinese, but populated by a Muslim minority known as Uighurs who believe they should be an independent Uighur nation.
posted by Surfin' Bird at 1:30 PM -
6 comments
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