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Jim Henson was always on the forefront of puppeteering technology, adopting computer-motion-control in the early 80s. His robotics mentor, and later collaborator, holds one of the funnest IMDB stage-names I've seen in a while: Debbie the Roboteer, proprietor of the now-defunct Robotorium, Inc.; Sadly, she passed away this spring. #
What the hell's a canola, indeed! Canola oil is a genetically-modified, selectively-bred rapeseed oil, but due to the obvious connotations of the unrelated word "rape", the low-acidic variety developed in Canada became Canadian oil, low acidity. I suspect eating "Canadian Oil" didn't sound promising, either; 'canola' rolls off the tongue and actually sounds somewhat food-like — but depending on who you ask, any form of rapeseed, including canola, is considered a health hazard. Here in North Dakota, we produce nearly all of the U.S.' canola. # While city life might have its own dangers, living in the country is more likely to get you, hemorraging and broken, on an emergency-room gurney. It's not just farm-related accidents: driving long distances for supplies, more self-reliance for basic housing care, and (ahem) a tendency to drink, do drugs, and other risky fun-loving pasttimes, all compound to put rural residents at higher risk of injury. # "Innovative ideas, even though bordering on the bizarre, are frequently encouraged and may be protected by the law and the courts, but to use the court or law to impose or force a number in lieu of a name upon society is another matter." A man's attempt to change his name to 1069 is denied, with expansive legal exposition as to why. Via. #
Communes aren't just for hippies anymore: one in Australia doesn't like the comparison to the whole 'free love' and 'easy pot' reputation that the hippies caused in the sixties. Theirs was started in the 1940s, and has been self-sustaining for far longer than any of those half-formed utopias of the sixties. Like most communes, they've come together under an ideology, and that may be the reason they've survived: they're a Christian commune. # Sometimes I'm forced to admire the creativity of the Nigerian spammers. Usually, the emails run the same gambit: I'm a rich guy, who under political strife has fallen on hard times and need to get my money out of the country. Please help! The way the story goes, you will have to pay the cash to get the money transferred, because the deposed prince doesn't have any cash (it's on hold, remember?) but you'll get paid back once the deal is done. Today's 419 spammer took a very different route: impersonating the FBI, saying my $5,000,000 transfer is illegal, unless I provide documentation. Documentation, of course, doesn't come for free. Now, it's clearly not real, as the spelling errors, poor grammar, and an understanding that I would know that several million dollars would be transferred to me, but it's a numbers game: send a zillion emails, and if a couple hundred fall for it, that's food on the table. #
As the years pass, as time slips away, as the snow begins to fall, we are brought back to evidence of this holy time of year: 250 pictures of children terrified of Santa. # Zookeepers in Japan set up a breeding pair of polar bears, but found no amorous behavior. Reason: both were girls. How could trained professionals miss this rather large identifier required for breeding? Well, sexing a polar bear is much, much more difficult than you might believe. # At the end of Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Pink takes advantage of a mexican-standoff gone bad (do they ever go good?) and leaves with the jewels in hand. There's a lot of noise outside — the police have arrived — but what happened isn't clear. Was he killed? Did he get away? Was he arrested? The answer can be found here, thanks to modern digital technology and amplification. #
Film leaders once had a couple surprise frames at the beginning, of no use to the average person. They consisted of a woman surrounded by various color swatches and grayscale densities. Traditionally called a "china girl" for unknown reasons, they're now seen as an ephemeral feature of pre-digital film history. via. # Pianist Andre Tchaikowsky got his final wish -- to star in Hamlet. And, according to his plans, it was only a small part of him. His skull played the part of Yorick, the long-dead court jester from Hamlet's youth, something Tchaikowsky had always wanted. # Less than half of the population understands how our government and society work. I'm sure quizzes like these have been failed by the public for decades, because if you asked people during WWII which states were the Confederate states they'd probably be about as accurate as people today answering which side countries were on during WWII. But, when your vice president says that he's not part of the Executive branch, you can pretty much assume that this disinterest in the nuts-and-bolts of democracy has spread a bit too far. # Going through old bookmarks, finding odd things, like Amazon.com's manual for the NM-156 Reciprocating Emu Press. # Further signs that CDs are going to become obsolete: Michael Jackson's Thriller -- first released in 1982 -- sold 31,000 copies last week, making it #1 on Billboard's Top Pop Catalog Albums. The source of the sales? iTunes. The Pop Catalog list isn't a hugely difficult list to be on (three AC/DC albums from the past 40 years are in the top 10), but the ability for a burst in iTunes interest to turn the chart upside down is a huge sign that the digital distribution model has a big advantage for both customers and musicians over the old model. Instant gratification versus hunting for the CD at stores or online is a big reason digital downloads, legal or otherwise, are so popular. # Workplace instrumentals: the Boston Typewriter Orchestra provides a percussive musical style, combined with a satirical representation of the office rat race. # Scientists and craftsmen have been trying to replicate the sound of the Stradivarius for centuries, but the attempts have been fair to middling. The newest process turns back to nature: 'infecting' the wood with a fungus, which lightly breaks down the wood's structure, resulting in a lighter, less-dense wood that enrichens the sound in a way that is similar to Stradivari's craftsmanship. # Newest addition to the Toy Hall Of Fame: the lowly stick. Not some mass-produced, marketed, pink-for-girls-and-blue-for boys StyckTM -- just a run-of-the-mill, picked-up-off-the-ground and bugs-wiped-off stick. It's nice to know that the Toy Hall Of Fame actually understands what toys mean to kids, which most people forget supercedes what numbers or marketers tell us. # Literary presidents were better presidents, giving greater weight to the hope that Obama, who has authored several well-received books, will return to that writerly president that we haven't seen in many, many years. # For as efficient as the US Postal Service is, sometimes they just can't deliver some pieces of mail. Those pieces end up in either St Paul or Atlanta, where the USPS makes a last-ditch effort to figure out the sender or recipient. What does the Post Office do with the stuff of value, if it can't go anyplace else? They sell it to the public in open auctions (see the schedule here). As a sign of the times, the USPS has even ventured into the 21st century via eBay, although they haven't got any auctions going currently. Me, I'm interested in purchasing fifty bags of Santa Claus mail, like in Miracle on 34th Street, which an army of postmen will carry into my house and dump on my desk triumphantly. # Ambigram: a neologism derived of the 'ambi-' prefix and '-gram' suffix, meaning text that can be read even after being flipped or rotated, either having the same definition both directions or representing something entirely different. Kitchen-utensil company OXO chose their brand name due to the ambigrammic quality of those letters, so it would always read properly despite the direction their product was displayed. Another favorite of mine: the SUN Microsystems logo, which is rotationally ambigramous. # Unattended children will be given espresso and a free puppy. (see also). #
Ostracon: a fragment of pottery or masonry with writing (as opposed to a potsherd, which describes any pottery fragment). Pottery fragments have been found at ancient settlements going back thousands of years, but finding ones with writing are a rarer occurence. When ostracons are found it's a big deal, like this 3,000-year-old example of Hebrew, believed to be the oldest in existence. #
Buying art at the second-hand store: King David Praying for Solomon, a woodcut print from sometime in the last 20 or 30 years. Found at the Salvation Army in Moorhead; $15 is a lot for us to spend on a single thrift shop item, but D was smitten by it, and I can't see anything wrong with some nicely done amateur fine art. # Are you a photographer who thinks they're good enough for National Geographic? It's not a quick weekend job, if that's what your thinking. David Griffin, Director of Photography for NG, lays out the editorial process, from start to finish. # Poisoned foodstuffs from China may still be one of the worst things, but items from India are going to become a close second in fear-causing shortsights. Elevator buttons manufactured in India have been contaminated by the radioactive material cobalt-60, making them detectably radioactive, but not dangerously so. High-rise dwellers may not have to worry that pushing their floor number daily will give them cancer, but the employees in Europe who handled and installed the buttons may have recieved 3 times the recommended dosage of radiation. # Was the Soviet Union more prepared for its collapse than the U.S.A. is for its impending collapse? In many ways, yes, according to this side-by-side comparison. It also reinforces what I've been saying over the past couple weeks: the flyover states, which still make much of their income from production rather than services and have greater 'community' foundations, will survive far better than cities. # Need a security camera? Print one out, courtesy of Nude Magazine. # They recommend leaving no stone unturned when purchasing a new home, but a few stones went untouched until sewer workers started digging around. Under sidewalk pavers at a home in Ann Arbor, MI, workers discovered the evidence of a person's death under each of 60 paving stones. No foul play is expected: the previous homeowner was a tombstone manufacturer, and it seems they decided to get some use out of the blank backs of damaged or unclaimed tombstones. The unmarked back faced up, while "Beloved Wife, Mother Viola T. Bagnasco, 1901-1969" faced into the earth. # The world's oldest full-body insect fossil has been found -- in a wooded area behind a Massachusetts strip mall. The imprint isn't a corpse-void fossil, but rather the imprint left by an insect that landed on a muddy spot over three hundred million years ago. #
Jim Stafford is easy to mock for devoting his time to cute, lightly naughty, humorous songs with a southern feel -- and, heck, for just being a product of the seventies -- but he can really, really play a mean guitar. # On his 15th birthday, George Millitt fell on a scraper while evading being kissed by several girls. He lies in Woodlawn Cemetery, and his tombstone documents his demise. #
A deer is born in the UK. The deer is so small it can fit in the palm of a person's hand. WIN: Best Week Ever takes this opportunity to go freakin' insane: This deer is so cute I literally want to put him in between two pieces of bread, stick him in a panini machine, and eat the entire thing in 2 bites. HIS LEGS ARE LIKE LITTLE PRETZEL STICKS DIPPED IN POWDERED SUGAR. # Property values are dropping -- Saginaw, MI sells unclaimed property on eBay, and in this case it was an entire house and lot. High bid: $1.75. The buyer has to pay back taxes and perform yard clean-up, but otherwise it's a great deal. Sadly, the buyer wasn't a family who needs a home (although I doubt the city will let anyone live there until it's fixed up) -- the buyer is a property speculator. # Banned Book Week is here -- and I've been all a'writin about it. I was a little early with some Steinbeck opposition, I noticed one of the most contested books gets advertised on TV, I talk about what happens when the censors put out their own books, and a huge reading event gets revised because the book of honor was objectionable to some parents. # Eugenics, the philosophy of selective breeding in humans, wasn't strange enough on its own: it took numerous bizarre and odd tangents. via. # The rule is that no living person shall be honored with a US postage stamp, but living people do slip through sometimes. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Mount Rushmore, a stamp was engraved from a photograph by photographer Robert Frankenfeld -- in the lower right hand corner of the stamp is a woman and boy, who were none other than Mrs. Frankenfeld and their 3-year-old son. A few decades later that young boy, Don Frankenfeld, would go on to become a lawyer and a South Dakota state senator. # Who knew they learned life lessons so young? Corporate failures touch the lives of 5th graders. Verdict: corporations are run with the same intelligence and knowledge as a random jumble of 'tweens. Yay, capitalism! # The Daily Show and the Colbert Report aren't just one-liners and satirical jibjabs at the world around us -- it contains an immense amount of silent visual puns and graphical humor, created by people who never appear onscreen. PRINT magazine, however, brings these visual artists to the front, and talks to them about their work and how they do it. # Dinosaurs: lucky bastards. It really fits with evolution, and shouldn't surprise anyone -- the better survivor may look deliberate in hindsight, but when you consider the selection occuring in the environment over a period of time, it looks more and more like luck. Shake a box of paperclips long enough, you'll start to think they naturally come linked in chains and the unlinked ones were 'failures'. # My favorite Saturday Night Live sketches: Celebrity Jeopardy, transcribed. They always make me laugh. You'll rue the day, Trebek! # Alaskan governor and V.P. hopeful Sara Palin has claimed international relations experience due to proximity to Russia. Russian Life magazine, however, has uncovered amazing, unbelievable evidence that Palin has single-handedly led small-scale invasions into Russian territory to deliver spies and insurgents, and perform "secret missions." Who knew! # Clay Venuses (like that from Willendorf) are rare to find; they've found many, many fragments of the figures around the kilns used to bake the shaped-clay fertility figurines of Dolni Vestonice due to explosions while baking. Ceramics experts now believe that the explosion is intentional based on composition and temperature, and possibly reflects an integral part of the ceremony itself. #
Harrison Bergeron may be here soon. While the article is mostly fluff, it does assemble a bunch of relevant bits into one: the medications that pharmaceuticals push, those that "cure" unpleasant social "disorders" are really just removing our uniqueness, forcing a uniformity limited by what drugs are able to do to our brains. Bergeron suffered from excessive talent, which offended the untalented around him. That's not going to happen either, is it? All hail the Handicapper General. # The Northwest Passage now may exist perennially: the arctic ice has receded to the point where a boat can travel from Greenland to Russia along the Canadian coast, or from Alaska to Norway along the Russian coast, through the quite-large water gap caused by the melting ice cap -- but what makes it remarkable is that the ice cap doesn't touch any of the major continental land masses anymore. (via) # The current issue of Popular Mechanics features a car-shaped lab beaker. The beaker wasn't digital or drawn, but it was artistically created. PM used a master glassblower from the Corning Museum of Glass to create over a dozen automobile beakers to pick from for the feature article. # Maple syrup urine disease: a symptom of a genetic disorder that can be the harbinger of greater neurological and physical diseases. Descriptions of the MSUD describe the scent of maple syrup in bodily fluids, but nothing about taste; I suppose the medical research just hasn't gotten that far. This, I learned, from Dr. McNinja. # 10 Underrated Sci-Fi Films: unlike most lists, I agree with all the ones I've seen, and have been interested in seeing the rest. Gattaca & eXistenZ are two great movies that I rarely hear anyone talk about. # Art themes evolve. Nighthawks was painted by Edward Hopper in 1942, and its noirish look was ubiquitous in the film of the time, and the painting became one of Hopper's most famous. Fast-forward forty years, to 1987 when Gottfried Helnwein painted his pop-art homage Hopper and mid-century film, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which replaces the nondescript city dwellers of Hopper's painting with Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, James Dean, and Humphrey Bogart. Another decade later, artist Chris Consani was inspired by the grouping of those four actors and started a series of paintings dropping the foursome into various other settings, such as the print that hangs in my employer's executive bathroom, Java Dreams. # The god of a Greek temple corresponded to the type of environment and soil it was built upon: Demeter on fertile soil, Athena near cities, Posideon on arid land near the sea. This, according to researcher Prof. Greg Retallack, suggests "economic basis for particular cults," which means, "Farmers didn't worship fishing gods, herders don't build temples to farming gods." # Bones found in the Lichtenstein Cave has been tested, and date back to the Bronze Age, 3000 years ago. However, part of these corpses have survived: two locals have closely-matching Y-chromosome DNA to that sampled from the bones, meaning that the bones found were related to the great-great-great...(repeated 120 times)...great-grandfather of both men. I do take a grain of salt at the scientific rigor of checking a couple hundred people and finding two positives and assuming direct relation, but their assumptions -- that people whose families resided in one area for hundreds of years are likely to date back thousands of years -- is something we non-native Americans can't really grasp. See also: The Cheddar Man. # A packrat's collection sometimes becomes worthy of a museum: Dr. John Lattimer passed away, leaving his collection to his children. Unlike most packrats, Lattimer's collection had enormous historical content, from records of the Kennedy assassination (being on the investigation team helped) to Nazi artifacts (being in Neuremberg helped) to Napoleon's penis (he paid $3,000 for it in the seventies). The man had a taste for history, and amassed enormous amounts of ephemeral objects. His kids, however, are stuck with paying estate tax on anything that is kept -- and much of which they don't have any documentation of. Seats from Ford's Theatre may have gone to the curb before Lattimer's daughter realized what they were. # Mentioned in this Cabinet of Wonders post about tiny worlds is the short story Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon. A scan of the story is available in its entirety here. The story about manipulating a tiny world was the inspiration for a Twilight Zone episode, a The Simpsons 'Treehouse of Horror' segment, an episode of the modern The Outer Limits, and an Emmy-award-winning episode of Futurama. Humans love dominance over tiny things; while Sturgeon's story ended positively, our television would rather we believe that it's a good thing Playmobil and Legos can't fight back. # Add magpies to the list: Dolphins do it, elephants do it, apes can do it, but now we've got a non-mammal, the European magpie, who is able to recognize that a reflection is actually itself. When it comes to brains similar to our own, we can understand the line drawn that separates higher intelligence from others. When we start finding similar patterns in a brain that hails from millions of years prior to mammalian brains, the lines describing what causes intelligence have to be redrawn. # The dead-zone of slick -- authentic has more appeal when it's raw, style has more appeal when it's flashier, but switch the two (gloss over authenticity with flashiness, overwraught rawness with cool style) and it sucks. #
Halligan Bar: a specialized, multi-purpose tool for firefighters, designed to rip open, pry apart, or otherwise destroy barriers. Via. # Ephemera is a funny thing. It's not an object, exactly; it's the likeliness of an object surviving history. Books, paintings, and architecture are designed for long-term appreciation, but things like business cards, concert flyers, love letters, and hand-drawn maps are more fleeting and devoted to a singular, non-collectible purpose that makes them ephemera. Or, rather, more 'ephemera' than other things -- but would a phone book be considered 'ephemera', due to it's regular replacement? Do family photos count? Does writing on the back of a postcard make it ephemera more, or less so? To give ephemera an empirical measure, Marty Weil and John Ptak have developed calculable measure of how 'ephemera' a piece of ephemera is, called, unsurprisingly, the Weil-Ptak Ephemera Scale. Higher numbers are more ephemeral, lower numbers are more permanent. I'd like to see a bit more about how applicable the scale is to real-world problems, but the method for categorizing seems sound and accurate. # Wifey and I seem to be attracted to the northern climes -- more liberal governments, beautiful outdoors, community support for the arts and intellectuals, and now it appears that Norwegian's similarity to English makes it easy for an American to be bilingual. If only they weren't so close to the Arctic Circle...why couldn't Norway be somewhere in the South Pacific? Oh, for a more tropical bilingual skill, the article recommends Afrikaans, but learning a language spoken mostly in risky African countries doesn't help much to the average traveller. # A botany instructor brings a visual aid to class, and inadvertently doses himself with its hallucinogenic oils during his lecture. "Crows," I remember thinking, "Are smart birds, and should know all about these sorts of things." # Those crafty Brits are showing off the funkiest inventions of the past century, such as the fire-suppression grenade, self-pouring teapot, and a 1920s nose-hair trimmers. All I can think of is Homer Simpson's makeup gun, which always makes me chuckle. # With most animal pests, you can put up a decoy predator and they'll leave; well, until they figure out the decoy is fake, which may take as long as ten minutes in some cases, but they do figure it out. Humans, on the other hand, don't figure out the decoys quite as fast, or, rather, humans react instantly and with great emotion when they think they see a dog in trouble. # Shahr-e Sukhte, or "Burnt City" in Persian, is a well-preserved ancient metropolitan area in Iran, in which they're discovering all sorts of neat things, like women's prominence and social power, and the world's oldest artificial eye. # Six years ago, a Packers fan placed an order for a custom Favre jersey, but what they got didn't look quite right. Turns out, the jersey company inadvertently foretold the future by mixing up a Jets jersey with a Packers jersey. The owners of the odd jersey even wore it to Packers games without incident...but with recent Favre's trade, the jersey has been gaining a lot of attention. # What with metrosexuality being part of the lexicon today, an old word is beginning to see the light of day again: the "dandy" is back. # National scourge: too many phonebooks. Here in Fargo -- hardly a huge megalopolis -- we got three this year, each from a different company. Opting out? Difficult. Wasted paper? A whole bunch. I'll point at one culprit that the article misses: the businesses that buy ads in multiple Yellow Page phone books. Stick to one, and the winner will come out in the wash; if it weren't profitable to print books nobody wants, it wouldn't be done. # Remote Predator drone operators experience deep battlefield stress -- even though they're safe in the US. This does spark a little in discussion of violent video games: if physical experience (even knowing you're safe from bodily harm) is minor compared to the emotional experience, what does this say about our immersion in violent videogames and films? Kevin Smith almost gets NC17'ed for a comedy revolving around porn, but PG films include all kinds of death. Yeah, apples to oranges, but the same inadequate comparison is used the other way on a regular basis. # Early attempts to change the tone without changing rate, which popped up in 2001: A Space Odyssey (via) # Why do I write "I"? It's not like I need to distinguish from other definitions of "I" -- there's only one -- but few other languages capitalize descriptions of self. There's more to it than meets the I, it seems. # Need to make yourself more boorish and intellectual? Go to London's "School of Life," a series of classes designed to make you a connoisseur of the finer things in life. # More news on the Antikythera Mechanism: who knew that a mass of gears and wheels would prove so complex and difficult for a space-faring society to understand? They've narrowed some functions down to predicting eclipses and calculating the frequency of the Olympic Games. # "I just found it" may work with Mom when a 10-year-old turns up with a five-dollar-bill, but when five million dollars of indeterminate origin suddenly appears and the explanation is, "I dug a hole and there it was," something strange is afoot. # Women are more likely to regret their tattoos -- I suspect it has more to do with some of the dumb ass-antlers and other emphasis of youthful sexuality that women get tattooed on their bodies. While the tattoo doesn't fade, the desire to advertise that way dims when a lady gets into her thirties, or wants to be treated seriously in the workplace, and the tattoo gives the wrong vibe. Guys willingness to broadcast verility does't seem to fade the same way. In an unrelated note, here's gratuitous Kat Von D images. # College radio unearths some great stuff -- like this song, which sounds like pre-teen outback rappers (and it is): Mango Pickle Down River (mp3 towards end) is a remix by M.I.A. which I've heard on KNDS. I don't think it's in their 'loop' (the music that plays when there's no DJ in the studio), but I've heard it at least three times while driving around town, and it's so odd and engaging that I had to track it down. # Don't have deep enough pockets for fine art? Rent it. Just be sure to fill the tank before returning it. # 'Zing-Zong' products: African slang for poorly-made Chinese products: 'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break.' Quoted in response to China's increasing influence in Africa. Isolationist Americans, please note, in an SAT question format: "mid-20th-century wars with and sanctions against 3rd world countries" is to "Soviet Russian influence and weapons" as "early-21st-century wars with and sanctions against 3rd world countries" is to "Chinese influence and weapons." If we're not helping them benevolently, somebody else will help them malevolently. # His cunning plan was close to perfect: it included a mechanism to dispose of the suicide weapon afterwards, making it appear as a murder. Unfortunately, he didn't count on the shrubbery. It is sad to see someone go through so much effort to do themselves in -- although the effort, it seems, was to benefit his ill wife. # People are likely to help if asked -- but much of it is because saying 'no' has a social cost, not because of inherent altruism. I'd wager it has something to do with instant versus delayed profit -- not helping now has a bigger loss than the cost of helping, which won't be seen until the help is complete. Note the social horror when people are obliged to help but didn't due to some social factor (Kitty Genovese is the common reference) -- in the Bystander Effect, nobody helps because one person doesn't help -- the social cost of not helping appears low if nobody is helping, because it is seen as unlikely that anyone would risk the cost of saying 'no'. Caste societies have a negative social response when you do help certain people, thus enforcing the lack of assistance for those people. Too often helping others has a negative social value -- whether perceived (the illusion of loss of home values due to having a black neighbor) or actual (de-slumification moves criminals into your neighborhood) -- the change needed isn't a reward to offset the cost, but to remove that negative cost for helping altogether. So, to avoid a stratified or self-centered society, there must be a social cost for refusal to help, not a reward for helping, and people need to learn to judge their own cost without comparing it to those around them. # Muphry's Law: If you're going to criticise somebody else's poor proofreading, your comment will, invariably, contain one or more proofreading errors. It is based on Murphy's Law -- "if anything can go wrong, it will" -- but adapted to pertain to the specific act of proofreading. Example. # You'd think museums are the safest place for items, but it's not always the case -- things end up broken or damaged in museums despite their careful care. Last summer I attended a museum curator's convention as press, and a large part of the seminars were about repair, preservation, and insurance against damage; places like the Walker send curator-guards to make sure the works survive when loaned. Other places, however, let local bars get their patrons drunk then act surprised when people puke and climb on the art. #
The Discovery Channel's "I love the world" commercials (short version, live version) are some of the greatest commercials ever -- it so sells why people like the Discovery Channel, the simple enjoyment of hearing about how and why things are. It's not "I love Mythbusters," it's "I love the cool stuff Mythbusters talks about." (more info) # Forced perspective defeated in Pisa (via) # The In-Between Manifesto: in a nutshell, the trip is better than the destination. Focus moves from achieving goals and resolving desires, to the creative or achievement process that leads to the endpoint. # Diegesis: the action and content of a story's world, separate and independent from the means or methods of telling it. A common crossing of the diegetic line in television these days is to have the background music slowly change to coming from a radio or headphones that the characters interact with. As background music, the characters are unaware of the tune (non-diegetic), but once they are aware of it or can interact with it, it becomes diegetic, a part of the world the story exists in. A very well-done play on crossing diegetic lines is the movie Stranger Than Fiction, where the film begins with narration, but shortly thereafter the main character suddenly realizes he, too, can hear the narration along with the audience. The line further blurs when the character being narrated realizes he can interact with the narrator and hopefully influence her actions. # If you want to know what happened to that YouTube video that's just reporting 'removed for violation,' you can find out more at YouTomb, a MIT project that tracks video removals from YouTube and documents the video and the conditions of the removal. # Relativism, rad or retarded? In two parts, best viewed from within Metafilter, which includes brain-melting actual analysis of the arguments. # What I'd Say To the Martians, by Jack Handey. #
Praxis effect: When an object of planetary size explodes, it emits a circular 'halo' of debris or glowing energy along an equatorial line. It has little or no basis in science -- "Praxis" was the name of a Klingon moon, which exploded and gave off one such shockwave. Science fiction special effects people thought, "dude, that looked so cool," so it has been used for nearly every huge explosion in outer space since. It appears to be inspired by supernova shock rings, which are actually spherical, but the energy becomes less visible if the viewing angle is less than 90°, much like a sun dog or light in fog. # Freemasons are gaining in popularity -- reason: the internet. A few years ago Masons saw declining numbers and tried to be more welcoming to new members, being freer with their 'secrets', resulting in a more eclectic, younger mix. I'd also wager that the secular youth of today are interested in the ceremony and fraternity, but without all the ancient moral dogma of modern religion. # I love language blogs, but this one wins by having a local connection. Jay Ulku is night editor for the Fargo Forum; I've had my issues with the Forum over the years, but this guy does seem to know what he's doing. The blog includes real-world snippets from the news (presumably pre-press, and not found after the fact). It's also fun to guess what news they're related to, aside from the fine-toothed corrections about whether Wi-Fi is hyphenated or not. # Trees don't have all the fun: humans have growth rings as well. Blaschko's lines are actual lines on the body that have varying degrees of visibility on people; they don't correspond to actual body morphology, but may outline regions of cell growth at the embryonic level, identifying portions of specialization at some early point in development. Skin diseases or chimeras may result in more visible lines, but we all have them in a small way. #
Using specious science isn't uncommon for industries that are more interested in making a buck, and the Indoor Tanning Association isn't any different -- trying to say that, despite the rock-solid correlation between skin cancer and sun overexposure, the ITA is saying that the sun prevents cancer and a myriad of other diseases. Cue me saying, "everything in moderation," but I haven't got a lobbyist with deep pockets to spread my message. # Milgram tested people's response to authority -- whether or not someone would follow orders that clearly caused harm to another human -- in an eye-opening (but deceptive and scientifically specious) way. This gentleman was one of those tested, and talks of the test, authority, the Red Scare, and how the three intertwined in his experience under Milgram's observation. # When it comes to communism or Fourierism (one of my new favorite philosophies), the whole bourgeoisie/proletariat thing doesn't really register -- it's because the US doesn't have a widespread limiting class-system like elsewhere. This may be why outright communism didn't work so well; it requires 'us vs them' to work, with the 'us' being the larger part of society (the lower class). Here in the USA, we're not constrained by class, so the argument that we need to even the odds is rather moot, until class is referenced regarding discussions of taxes or innate needs (food/housing/fuel). The article above reminds that pure wealth isn't a class distinction, so don't expect cries for a communist government when gas hits $4 a gallon; the general consensus is that everybody's got to do something for themselves about it, which is the opposite from communism. # Brainwashing and faith ride a blurry line in this snippet from Matt Taibbi's forthcoming book; I remain open to the fact that an outsider-unbeliever's view cannot understand what's actually going on for the dedicated believers, there are some cautionary points about the current state of evangelicism. # The eyes, it seems, have it: your eyes were the way they were when you were born, and will be pretty much the same (aside from ravages of age) your entire life. Unlike hair and skin, eyes don't regenerate or change through constant growth. # Although Wikipedia has a list of people who did this entirely without pseudoartistic extravagance, an artist in Germany is creating one of these intentionally. # Don't spend too much time at sea: you might end up like this guy, with a severe case of poet-scurvy. # Everyone's heard about how Pixar and their ilk use open-source software to get their work done; the software, however, doesn't get any screen-time for it -- unless they start crediting Linux in movies. # New Scientist has a list of misconceptions about evolution, from both sides. This couldn't have anything to do with a new, poorly-done, logical-fallacy-laden movie, hmmm? # I recently posted Salvador Dali outtakes at the Infomercantile -- this blogger saw them and took his own Atomica. # Why no remaindered quick-links in the last few days? I'm tryin' something new out -- a redesigned Thingsville, where I post stuff I only have a few words to say anything about. It's kinda fun -- usually I spent a half hour or so researching and composing an average post, but at Thingsville I tell myself I have to find a link, say something, post a picture with it, all in as little time as possible, like a minute or two. As a writing exercise, it's fun; I'm a little worried it will take time away from longer-format stuff, but we'll see how it goes. # Modern graphic design, as embodied by modernistic, retro, and grungy rock concert posters (some mild nudity) # Creepy, yet fascinating: the gestational cycle of the common teddy bear. # Kottke has a nice roundup of all the old media that's available for free (or cheap) online -- I loves old magazines for reading, and now you don't even have to scrounge up old copies at rummage sales anymore. # From the New York Times archives, 1880: What if spiders were as large as sheep? # Tay Zonday, the 'Chocolate Rain' guy, is proving to be something more than a one-hit-wonder by being eloquent and insightful on what the media is and how it relates to the perjoratives "one hit wonder" and "sellout." (via) # Resistentialism: the philosophical idea that inanimate objects are inherently hostile towards rational beings. It makes sense: if, thinking, artistic humans are productive and working towards creation, it's only logical to connect the unthinking with the destructive. Like the golem, Frankenstein's Monster, and poorly designed cellphone interfaces, our creations are out to destroy us. Don't trust that Mac...despite the cutesy music and friendly interface, it's gonna bash your freakin' face in. # Blinded in childhood, posessing a law degree, fighting for what is righteous and just? Could be Daredevil, could be New York governor David Patterson...or they could be the same person! # An adventurous and trusting person left their camera on a park bench, with instructions...and this happened. Similar to this, which uses postal workers for their art. (via) # The Ludolphine: at the turn of the 17th century, Ludolph van Ceulen calculated an amazing, magical number, which was named in his honor. The Ludolphine number starts 3.14159...and continues out for a total of 35 decimal places. People who remember 7th grade math (or resort to treppanation to avoid manipulation by hasidic jews) may recognize this number as pi, the ratio of diameter to circumference in a circle. The Ludolphine is not pi -- true pi has endless decimal places -- but is mathematically equivalent. van Ceulen's grave has the Ludophine carved into it, a hundred years before pi was ever used as a name for his famous number. #
Exotic, but I question the practicality of spoons made from bread; I suppose if they were made of something stiff like prezels, they might have enough body to actually support food on the cup end. They look more fun (see last picture here) than anything. # Awesome forced-perspective art: the Thing runs through the theater. (via) # I found this researching something for The Infomercantile: A list of popes who were gettin' some. Popes had sex? Who knew? Well, the one pope whose dad was a pope. Ain't no virgin birth going on there. # Black dog syndrome: anecdotally, a dog stays at a shelter longer (and, eventually is put down) if it's big and black. I find it suprising, since a black lab is (also anecdotally) the friendlist of dogs, easiest to train, and is good with families. The news article has a good explanation, that may be technology-based: under low interior lights or in a photo, an all-black dog is a dark & indistinct shape, which makes it harder to 'latch on' to some cute-factor, and triggers the general instinctive aversion to bright eyes and glinting teeth embedded in massive, indistinct black voids. (via) # The world's smallest independent country, Nauru, is in need of help: it has no money. At only 8 square miles, the resource-less country has been relying on Australian input to keep their nation moving, but that's ending, and the 10,000 residents will cease to have paychecks and national benefits. If you've got some lottery winnings to burn and want to become a small nation's benefactor, I'll bet they'll be happy to see you on their doorstep! # tweetronising: cute, sweet, everything-is-great sentiment designed to get you to buy stuff. A portmanteau of 'twee' and 'patronizing', it's used in hipster-bourgeois-commercials to appear grounded and earthy, without any sort of buddhist lifestyle actually embedded. Those new MacBook Air commercials are the perfect example of such a thing, thanks to Yael Naim's "New Soul"; see also Apple's Nano commercial, the Ford Edge, and this Sprint commercial. # If you ever wanted to see your geeky life plotted out in humorous detail, see the NYT's flowchart, starting with early-life D&D exposure. It seems to overlap, or at least compliment, Lore's Geek Heirarchy. # A telemarketer has found how much fun it is to hack caller ID. They've been contacting people at all hours of the night, showing up on caller ID as a call from Tommy Tutone's Jenny. While it might seem ideal for a good time, beware calls from numbers you find on bathroom walls. # The Instructables website is chock full 'o useful information, such as this entertaning and relevant set of insutrction for how to ship a tiger to Canada. It's not too long, and cute enough to have been a children's book. (via) # Kosovo has proclaimed independence from Serbia, further fragmenting the former Yugoslavia. Not that it means much, unless other nations acknowledge and respect their sovereignty. In a tactic taken from Stephen Colbert, Kosovo has a 'Who's Recognizing My Existence Now?" website called Kosovo Thanks You! #
If you're not sure what to write on your product's label and you don't have some amazing awe-inspiring description to encourage the purchase, just rephrase the definition of the object, but IN ALL CAPS! In case you didn't know, my blog PROVIDES WORDS TO READ WHEN THE LETTERS ARE ASSEMBLED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, IN ROWS FROM TOP TO BOTTOM, STOPPING AT SPACES AND PUNCTUATION. If you're not partaking in my blog in this fashion, you're doing it wrong. # Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, those maddening yet anticlimatic interactive fiction children's books were huge when I was a kid, but I never quite saw the god's-eye-view of what the book's structure looked like. Well, for that matter, I never even thought of what the god's-eye-view would be (I was eleven, for cryin' out loud), but the nerdy grownup in me wants to know -- and I can find out, for "The Mystery of Chimney Rock," CYOA #5. # Random Hall, who have named a floor after my daughter Destiny at my behest, has turned 40. The building, originally temporary and not meant to be a formal dorm, has stood the test of time and been an internet darling since before the web. Happy birthday, all! # Now that you've memorized all eleven planets, just be glad that there aren't as many planets out there as we once thought -- like those listed in this 'hypothetical planet' list. # This has to be the awesomest foodstuff ever: The Big MacChicken. Step one: Replace the buns of the Big Mac with the chicken patties out of three McChickens. Step Two: Enjoy the heavenly bliss. Step three: vomit out your less-useful internal organs; after eating the genius of a Bic MacChicken, you won't need those parts anymore. Oh, my McDonald's tip: Order a McChicken Combo and an extra McChicken: it's cheaper than any of the predesigned 'combos' on the menu, plus it's more food. # OK, my name's Derek, and my brother is named Simon -- and imagine my surprise when someone has STOLEN our names and developed the Derek & Simon Show at SuperDeluxe. Ever since Bob Odenkirk slept with my wife, I warned the bastard that he better not screw with me anymore. Now this is war. # Marmaduke Explained, a serindipitous combination of verisimilitude and absurdity in understanding a bland, unoffensive, and poorly-drawn comic. # Which is better: keeping a backout path open, or ignoring missed opportunities to move forward? Moving forward is better, but people are more willing to lose and keep missed opportunities available. Online users, when presented with a game that provided a simple winning process that preferred users who progressed. Users, however, would choose to keep their options open than proceed, showing that they'd rather play it safe than risk loss -- despite the more likelihood of a win. # Can you remember all eleven planets? There's a new mnemonic: My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants. Hrr-whaa? Eleven? Rather than demote Pluto, this mnemonic counts the generally-accepted minor planets, those solar system residents too small for full planethood but with enough gravity to be round: Ceres (in the asteroid belt), Pluto, and Eris (in the Kuiper belt). Bonus points: Lisa Loeb will compose the new mnemonic into a song. # This is cuter than I thought when reading the headline. you might think someone with a refrigerator full of immobile turtles is some sort of sicko, but in this case it's a proper caretaker, maintaining hibernation in the cheapest, easiest equipment available. #
Conan O'Brien has been making his wedding ring spin on his desk, as a strangely-mesmerizing way of dealing with the writer's strike. On the 8th, he brought on a MIT scientist Peter Fisher (with help from his students) to see if he can improve his spin-time (go to chapter 2 in this video) -- air resistance was inconsequential, vaseline lubrication failed -- but teflon is da man: 51 seconds. Ah, science: is there nothing you can't do? # While this toddler's murderous Elmo seems to be a happy accident, you can program Knows You Name Elmo to say fun combinations of his pre-recorded sounds. Just want Elmo to say your name (oh, baby, say my name!) you can try it out at the bottom of this page. Make it a looping ringtone -- "DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek"! (If Elmo isn't your thing, Dora is super-excited to say your name, and creepy-synthesized-bear plans to lull you into a state of relaxation, so the robot coup can begin.) # Candyland is a simple, reading-free, strategy-free game for young kids, and it's no wonder that the game hasn't been torn apart and analyzed in Probabilty And Game Theory 101 classes -- oh, wait -- someone has, providing all the enormously entertaining mathematical analysis for all to partake. (via) # I caught The Mountain Fold (not sure if that's the show name, or just the URL) on KNDS this afternoon -- I may have to listen a bit more before I recommend it, but the stuff I heard was brain-unfoldingly excellent. Here's the playlist from today's show -- go play that Tagaq video of the Inuit throat singing. No, really, it's much more fun than it sounds. # Try and show some of the more abstract parts of American culture to a person living in another country. Now, just explain it, without using any pictures. Now, try it with a reduced-sized dictionary designed for non-English speakers. Think you can do it? Voice of America's Special English programming "American Mosaic" does its best to do it right. # Want a rocking chair? Build it yourself -- Testor's glue not included. (via) # While I mostly ignore Cracked Magazine's lists (they're linked all over the place; you don't need my help to find them), I have to give props to their #1 Badass US President -- Teddy Roosevelt. Their articles are usually laden with humorous exaggeration and satirical hyperbole, but Teddy defeated such tomfoolery. He's no fun to do a 'Chuck Norris Facts'-style-list about, because Teddy Roosevelt actually did those things. #
Probably over the heads of non-sysadmins, but the screenshots at the end are of greatest value: using Linux firewall software, you can screw with computers on the network, flipping images or blurring websites -- and, using that sort of script, you could easily do word-replaces, Dialectizing or ROT-13ing the webpages of anybody stealing your bandwidth (or changing colors, or stripping HTML to plain-text, or...). I like the 'blur' screenshot, though: just noticably subtle enough to make someone think their own computer is screwed up. # Palimpsest: something wiped clean and reused. The term was usually reserved to describe ancient parchment that was scraped bare to be written upon multiple times. The term goes beyond general recycling: they include the romantic possibility of hidden, lost messages in the faint remainder of the previous image. It happens with paintings, storefronts of all kinds, advertisements, famous voices, and even digital media. Digital media, however, is far more permanent when erasing, so palimpsests may be going the way of a lot of classic media...although, a client I work for regularly loads her plain-paper fax machine with the back-sides of old sales reports: a palimpsest for the modern day. # Seamless: Computational Couture is where MIT geeks put their technology education into something important -- fashion. OK, most is very theoretical and not practical...but what fashion show has not been entirely theoretical and impractical? The Media Lab's contributions, as you might guess, consist of converting feedback from the user into blinking lights and noise...but it's the Media Lab, what did you expect? Well, I'd expect someplace like the Media Lab to contribute something worthwhile, like helping me pick matching colors when I get dressed, and tell my black slacks from the navy blue ones. Now that would change the world of fashion. The sad thing is, the truly revolutionary things at Seamless would be hard to show in a promo video, like topographically indistinct fashion and mushroom-clothes that help a body decompose. [more] # Lovecraft fans: Call of Cthulhu, a silent film faithfully adapting Lovecraft's story, will be screened at the Fargo Film Festival. While I do appreciate art-house films, I usually don't jump up and down to attend film festivals; Cthulhu might give me a reason to really try and make it this year. # What's in a name? When you're getting a car wash, it's so important that they couldn't wait to make a new sign. A 'express' wash for $5? You're lucky if you can get a 'basic' wash for $5 these days. # via B3ta: a poster touting the technological marvel, the Metroshuttle...which completely misses out on how the technology depicted words. Bonus points: the commenters who don't get it. # If you've ever sold something on ebay and curse at that one, lonely, super-low bid you got? Imagine being this school -- they placed their old stadium up for sale in a closed-bid auction. The winner? A member of a local football team...a team of kindergarten flag-footballers. The lad's bid was $5, and it was the only bid received. Sadly, the bid was $1,949,995 short of the minimum-bid-price, so the school is rejecting his bid, thus avoiding the horrible positive-press aspect of giving the kid 1 day of ownership or something and going with the "too-bad-kid,-you're-not-a-grown-up" angle. # Since today is Super Tuesday, chances are many of you get to vote in open primaries today, or are registered to vote in the other states. AIGA put forth a challenge: design posters to get people to vote, without being partisan or recommending action other than voting. Here's what they produced in 2004. # Ariana's skin puffs up and reddens at the slightest injury. An artist at heart, she knows to use everything her body offers to produce her artwork -- including her own skin. More here. Her website. #
Despite all the crap Vista gets for being over-complicated and user-unfriendly, we here have a shining example -- Microsoft's Help page for opening the freakin' software packaging. If you can't design the box it comes in to be simple enough to operate without instructions, you're doing it wrong. # In North Korea there is a huge building, looking like a bladed arrowhead sticking out of the back of Earth's skull. It's the Ryugyong Hotel, one of North Korea's misguided attempts to prove it's a 'real' country by putting on a show that it can have cool things like the rich countries do. The building was never completed and is uninhabitable. That is, until the internet got a hold of it, producing a virtual Ryugyong in a Sim-City/2nd-Life sort of way. # The internet has been abuzz with the horror known as "Cheeseburger in a Can". I was unpressed, figuring until somebody actually gets one and eats it, I won't pass judgement. Well, I've been rewarded. While I'm not ordering them by the case to eat at home, I'd think they'd be fun to take on one of our immense monthly drives to Wisconsin. # Royalty-free photos are all the rage, now that most anyone can photoshop themselves something and send it off to the printer. Those people that posed for the photos are now appearing everywhere -- like this gal, who's on the cover from everything from Christian to suicide books. Still, it's better than having an obsessed internet-dude after you. Computer companies will vie for your attention. In the end you may just decide to enjoy where you pop up. # In 1998 -- a time when I had already been online for 6 years, but most people had just gotten their first PC -- futurists were consulted about the level of technology in the far-flung year of 2008. How'd they do? Aces in technology, but poorly in sociology. # You know, when TV puts an idea in your head, and you have to act on it, the results may be entertaining. This bloke heard on TV that pineapple will remove your fingerprints, allowing for a life of unfingerprintable crime. So, using his research, he tried it...with cringe-inducing results. # Crowdsourcing is to outsource a project on spec to a group, and pick the best of the submissions or combine the product into a useful singularity. Publishing has been doing it for years, compiling anthologies and magazines by buying only the best dozen out of hundreds of submissions. Crowdsourcing applies this to the rest of the world. Jeff Howe has written a book on it, and he's putting his book where his mouth is: he's opened the cover design to the committee of the unwashed masses. Hurry -- you've still got a few days for submissions if you're feeling creative. If not, the submissions are worth browsing. # I'm probably installing a new switch and server this weekend, which means I'm going down to The Rack -- my cabling isn't complex, but there's plenty of examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly of rack cabling. #
I actually do have Bohemian ancestors - from the region of Europe, that is. They're easy to identify by bloodlines, but moderne bohemians (small 'b') are a bit harder to identify. Thankfully, the Bohemian Manifesto gives classification guidelines to identify these wily creatures in the wild. # They must be re-running Match Game '75 someplace -- in the past day I've got a few hits for people searching for a particular contestant...which is what I did, too, last year. # "Got a valet of hares?" "Go fish!" Before modern standardization of playing cards, they were produced in a variety of forms, such as these square cards with round images. As characteristics were adopted, the various forms separated: poker got spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts -- and tarot cards got cups, swords, wands, and pentacles. Still, that's not all we play with these days. # |
Just because I'm proud of how it turned out, here's my Christmas article for Collector's Quest: 
Who knew we'd be put in the same class as Mafia-controlled Las Vegas and Blagojevich's Illinois? 
Over the past few days the Wifey and I got to play 'professional media' again -- this time at the Plains Art Museum's 
Terrifying controversy abounds in numerous states whose voter registration departments are 
The Republicans have converged on St. Paul, and were greeted with 
Proving that our college students are as studious and responsible as everywhere else -- LastVoice has a category just 
