Links posted in January 2008
January 31, 2008
I Refuse to Acknowledge the Passing of Halloween! Every day I listen to spooky sounds and scary stories. I read terrifying tales from the comics of yesteryear. I dream about what my house would look like but for the influence of my non-horror geek wife. I remember the horror toys I used to own and love. I plan for next year's Halloween costume. [more inside]
Jerome Kerviel, hero to the Dilbert generation? The French fraudster has become an internet phenomenon and hero to some. [more inside]
The most "earthlike" exoplanet found to date is Gliese 581c, the smallest planet yet discovered in the habitable zone of another star, Gliese 581, which is a Red Dwarf star. Given that it is in the habitable zone, what would conditions be like on that planet?
January 30, 2008
Curious George and his lawn darts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course they're dangerous. But you knew that, and it's not like you played Catch. Assuming you're not subject to a ban -- though you can still buy dart parts (*wink wink*) or buy them legally, or even still have them in the basement -- would you ever play with lawn darts again? Would you let your kids?
Cloverfield in 15 minutes. And what they should have done. Remember, when rampaging beasties rampage, don't be a victim. *spoiler warning for, well, pretty much everything*
Celebrate the Holocaust!! "A Carnival float with a pile of model dead bodies commemorating the Holocaust is causing unease before the lavish parades in Rio de Janeiro this weekend."
January 29, 2008
The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation "marks".
The Polka Floyd Show
Warning: MySpace. Warning: Audio. Warning: Polka.
January 28, 2008
Beauty Queen rejected as pageant judge. Stephanie Conover, the reigning Miss Canada Plus, has been rejected as a judge of the Miss Toronto Tourism contest, on the basis that her hobby of reading Tarot makes her a witch.
You are living in the Anthropocene Epoch.
So now you know.
Is "Canadian" the new racial slur in the American South? According to that link, and to the Houston District Attorney's Office, "Canadian" is the new racist "code word" for African-Americans when a racist doesn't want to sound racist. [more inside]
Death From Above. A poison-laden US spy satellite is careering around the planet and is due to re-enter the atmosphere any week now. Don't panic.
Robert Capa--Lost Negatives
Photographer of the Spanish Civil War, his most famous photo has been hotly debated as real. A lost suitcase of negatives, otherwise known as The Capa Cache* has been found.
*Nifty phrase courtesy of wowbobwow. That, and all links, totally stolen from the Blue. Thanks, guys
[more inside]
January 27, 2008
Pretty kitties, tusks, and more!
Traditionally, the Big Five of Africa were the most ferocious mammals hunters tried to kill. Now safari-goers are more likely to shoot with a camera. But there are other ways to encounter the Big Five.
1. Elephant biltong (that's jerky to some of us).
2. Suicide by Lions -- don't get your lady pregnant, or this might happen to you.
3. Cape Buffalos are usually in a herd, but sometimes you'll meet the Dagga Boy.
4. Dead Rhino at your local Mormon University museum.
5. Leopards -- here kitty, kitty.
[more inside]
Books that make you dumb. The title is misleading, because it's a list of the most popular books on Facebook, listed according to the users' college network, compared with average SAT scores for those colleges. [more inside]
January 26, 2008
Teach your brain to stretch time - Biologists traditionally divide our timekeeping abilities into three domains: circadian rhythms, which control things such as sleep and wakefulness over the 24-hour period; millisecond timing, which is involved in fine motor tasks; and interval timing, which is the seconds-to-minutes range - the system through which we consciously perceive the passage of time.
How to make a kimono. Here we find patterns and styles, how to tie an obi, about Japanese yukata, about men's kimono, about hakama pants, and about tabi socks.
January 25, 2008
Hunk Fridays at Overlooked
A stirring tribute to prematurely forgotten and less than obvious man candy.
This week we praise Ashamedly-Canadian Tim Gunn of TV's Project Runway. "But," you might say, "I thought Tim Gunn was from D.C.?" Think again, my friends. Think again.
Aaaaaay! Milwaukee to erect a life-size, bronze statue of Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli.
Claim: Too Much Cola Can Cause Kidney Problems
Promenade dans la rue Raymond Ridel au travers sa numérotation
Featuring - 5, 11, 13, 14, 14BIS, 15, 18, 18TER, 18, 20, 21, 22, 22bis, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 32, 34, 39 37, 38, 39 BIS, 40, 42, 44, 41, 43, 49, 58, 60, 59, 63, 64, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 76, 81, 82-84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 110, 112, 118bis, 111, 113, 115, 117, 120. With xylophone and violin. How French is that!
January 24, 2008
Curious George: Nudes for Kids
So my son is 8 years old, and has recently started getting very curious about the differences between male and female bodies. He's even come home talking about a friend at school who's gained respect in 2nd grade for having "accidentally" found some pics of naked women online (probably with the accidental help of his two older brothers), and so the little Pettle has expressed an interest in seeing naked women.
[more inside]
January 23, 2008
What Social Science can tell you about flirting and how to do it
Gary Coleman's pants sell for $400K. He needs the money for kidney dialysis. Now can you guys get socialized health care?
An exhibition
of the ten thousand slides owned by the Museum of the History of Science. (ssome exhibits require Flash) 'Over three-quarters of these are contained in a single cabinet on permanent loan from the Royal Microscopical Society, with specimens prepared between 1860 and 1930. Faced with the challenging task of mounting an engaging display of so many tiny exhibits, the Museum staff collaborated with artist Heather Barnett and performance poet Will Holloway to create ‘Small Worlds’, an exhibition in an unusual range of media - images, objects, film, animation, curtains, wallpaper and poetry.'
Buddhism is the best religion because it doesn't discriminate against animals and allows all species entry, hence this praying dog. [more inside]
New Bush Coins Great flash video. Unless you're a Bush supporter. In which case I fling poo at you. [more inside]
I guess they didn't see that one coming . . .
January 22, 2008
Heath, we hardly knew ye... First Owen Wilson tried, now Heath Ledger succeeded. He was found dead in his NYC apartment today surrounded by pills.
The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success
Life On Mars. And, if you squint, it even looks a bit like David Bowie.
January 21, 2008
Calling Curious Georges with green thumbs
.
Help me fix my ficus and bob my beastly bamboo.
[more inside]
I took every one of these photos. [more inside]
Louis de Cazenave, dead at 110. France's oldest WWI veteran has died, leaving just one more -- the same as for Canada, Germany and Turkey. The UK, U.S., and Australia have three, and Italy two. Some striking comments in the obit.
Disturbing Russian Playgrounds - more - and more - aargh!
People who live in glass houses...
Tressa Prisbrey and her bottle "village"
David H. Brown's embalming fluid bottle house. (ulp!)
Charles Stagg
Tomislav Radovanovic
Tom Kelly
[more inside]
January 20, 2008
Quantum mechanics and Tomb Raider
Quantum mechanics has a number of weird consequences, this focuses on three (inter-related) ones:
1. Objects can behave both like particles (with definite position and a continuum of states) and waves (with indefinite position and (in confined situations) quantised states;
2. The equations that govern quantum mechanics are deterministic, but the standard interpretation of the solutions of these equations is probabilistic; and
3. If instead one applies the laws of quantum mechanics literally at the macroscopic scale, then the universe itself must split into the superposition of many distinct "worlds".
711chan pwns Scientology - Hackers from the /i/nsurgency raided scientology's secret, sacred documents. Documents were leaked. They are crazy. Read them if you dare.
January 18, 2008
The Return of the X-Files.
Chris Carter gives some intital statements about the upcoming sequel.
[more inside]
The Return of the X-Files.
Chris Carter gives some intital statements about the upcoming sequel.
[more inside]
Fantasmagorie (1908) by Emile Cohl [more inside]
Chess Great Bobby Fischer Dies An intriguing character, he. RIP
Why Americans Have Swallowed an Official Conspiracy Theory More Full of Holes Than Swiss Cheese
Nabokov wanted his final, unfinished work destroyed. 'It's a decision that has fallen to his sole surviving heir (and translator), Dmitri Nabokov, now 73. Dmitri has been torn for years between his father's unequivocal request and the demands of the literary world to view the final fragment of his father's genius, a manuscript known as The Original of Laura. Should Dmitri defy his father's wishes for the sake of "posterity"?'
January 17, 2008
We Are Borg
This article is the latest on a post put here in May of '04
"I know. I've done the research" - T. Cruise.
Love that io9 website!
Flour sacks, feed sacks, quilts, and collectors [more inside]
Lasagna Cat: Um... It's Garfield and uh... videos. And musical hits from the '80s, of course.
The Mondo Spider - chasing little old ladies across the street was never more enjoyable. Here it is in action. [more inside]
Library of Congress posts 3000+ pictures on Flickr "Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist."
January 16, 2008
The Atlas Archives - A history of the short-lived comics publisher, Atlas/Seaboard (1974-1975)
The milestone threads Since we're slow today, I give you some glimpses at MonkeyFilter history. They're not our best, threads, by far, but they were milestones: 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10000, . Added bonus: 666.
January 15, 2008
Batman - a comic
Peter Russell Clark [warning: expletives] every mum's darling, promoting cheese and eggs.
Anonymous, George: Will the TSA DOA you for a DUI? Let's say a person has a several-years-old warrant out for failure to complete requirements associated with a DUI. Is that person going to run into trouble while checking onto a plane for a domestic flight? Do they check for such things before a flight?
Historic Audio Clips in MP3 Format.
80 million tiny images. English language nouns. Sorted. via
Two bits!
.
Space money.
Plastic, of course.
Plantage
is a gorgeous flash video created for Danish music group Under Byen by Amanita Design, who brought us Samorost.
This and other cool videos found at Blue Tea.
January 14, 2008
Happy Smurfday! The Smurfs kick off their 50th anniversarsmurf this year, with a new tv series, 3D movie, and of course, comics. It'll be just smurfy! [more inside]
Pulp Fiction by Thomas Allen
The Electric Arc Radio Show Behold: Minneapolis' audio-only answer to the thriving local indy-film scene! It's current, (and it's on MPR's "the current."), it's more mind's-eye theater. [more inside]
How Scientific Method Works How did you do in the 8th Grade Science Quiz? Get hip to how Science is made fresh daily. [more inside]
Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?
Another of them fun quizzes that make you feel dumb.
[more inside]
The next victim of climate change: our minds? "Everyone's worrying about resource management and the spooky, unpredictable changes in the ecosystem... But we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health. In the modern, industrialized West, many of us have forgotten how deeply we rely on the stability of nature for our psychic well-being."
January 13, 2008
Doll clothes (SFW, I think). Plus recycling dolls for charity. [more inside]
Knock, Knock!
Who's There?
Nude Suits
[more inside]
yellowtail (a flash thing)
Running the Numbers - An American Self-Portrait. Photographer Chris Jordan's large-scale color photographs portray the detritus of American consumption. Gaining access to some of the country's largest industrial waste facilities, Jordan photographs the refuse of consumer culture (e.g., diodes, cell phone chargers, cigarette butts, circuit boards) on an immense scale. Spanning up to ten feet wide, Jordan's prints are at once abstract and detailed.
Does smart = liberal? Discuss.
January 12, 2008
Aviation Week - 2008 Person of the Year.
Qian Xuesen (or Tsien) founded China's missile program after being kicked out of the US in 1955. McCarthy - the gift that keeps on giving.
via. And may I say - that is one heck of a portrait.
[more inside]
January 10, 2008
Crazy Old Ads It was truly a different time. [via Oddee] [more inside]
Star Wars Guide to the Candidates Found on Craigslist. [more inside]
WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written. To find out Harry's fate, follow the blog!
Terry Pratchett, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
It's stock-take time at British Zoos.
Some animals appear to be co-operating.
More pics.
January 09, 2008
I CAN HAZ HALP PLZ? At last, a relevant translation.
Apparently Mozart won't actually make your child smarter, says this email (Snopes is mute on this particular email; here's the Wikipedia page on the Mozart Effect), but here are some alternative composers parents may wish to try, for varying effects. (Thanks to our own Pallas Athena for the laugh.)
Monkey Portraits: Allegories of Brand Loyalty, by Laurie Hogin. [Via Right Some Good.]
January 08, 2008
Top Secret Audio: Democrats Meet Republicans at NH Debate.
Port shimmering: a new way to hide valuable ports in plain sight
shimmer is a pair of small programs (a client and a server) that provide an alternative to port knocking program such as tumbler and are used to hide a valuable port (such as a hidden web server or SSH) on a public IP address.
[more inside]
Fill-in the Blank Apology Form Thingy
seen at Catercorner Bungits
[more inside]
January 07, 2008
I abound in lizards.
Thoughts on the difficulty of learning Arabic and cultural misunderstandings.
[more inside]
io9
The new(ish) sci-fi blog from the Gawker stable.
For all your Dr Who, Star Trek, Batman, Cloverfield etc gossip. Plus cheesecake Imperial recruitment posters.
Nick Brandt depicts the animals of East Africa with an intimacy and artistry unmatched by other photographers who choose wildlife as their subject. Wildlife photography has become a holiday and adventure cliche: have telephoto lens, will snap view up rhino's nostril -- so uninteresting, so blah. And then there's Nick Brandt. Brandt eschews the telephoto lens in favor of patience combined with a rare courage, determination and an artist's eye to photograph wildlife. The results are animals so accustomed to Brandt's presence and so untroubled by him that his pictures are breathtakingly beautiful and touching in their honesty and emotion.
Safety Gear for Small Animals
FLASH interface & I just threw my back ooch ouch
January 06, 2008
Burning a man's eyes with lime.
The NY Public Library has scans of an 1804 book from China that shows 22 engravings of common punishment methods of the day.
[more inside]
January 05, 2008
The 1908 New York to Paris automobile race's centenary this year will be marked by a 2008 version. [more inside]
Polynesian Chickens in Chile
Eggheads have long assumed the Spaniards introduced chickens to the New World. But radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis now suggest that the Polynesians first brought chickens to South America.
What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC. By John Hockenberry, who was the first host of NPR's Talk of the Nation and is now a Distinguished Fellow at the MIT Media Lab.
January 04, 2008
What Kucinich Saw: Witnesses Describe Close Encounter. In a Democratic presidential debate in late October, Mr. Kucinich acknowledged seeing something airborne that he couldn't identify and then defused the issue with a joke about opening a campaign office in Roswell, N.M., the capital of unexplained sightings. Since then, the long-shot candidate has refused to elaborate on the experience.
I wish I was smarter 30 seconds ago
A fun quick flash game where you . . well, you'll figure it out.
One of you will, anyway.
via KerfluffleFilter
GiveWell Spammer VS Metafilter
this peanut looks like a duck [more inside]
January 03, 2008
"Child raising in non-violent cultures." There are perhaps many reasons for the varying expressions of violence in different cultures, from historic patterns to genetic propensities to economic influences. But whatever the predisposing factors are, there seem to also be some characteristic child rearing practices common to most of the known non-violent cultures.
SAC Dean Tabreham feels like dancin'.
According to a study into our primate cousins which found that male macaques pay for intercourse by using grooming as a currency.
[...] Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore made the discovery in a 20-month investigation into 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, New Scientist reports on Saturday.
[...] If there were several females in the area, the cost of buying sex would drop dramatically -- a male could "buy" a female for just eight minutes of nit-picking.[...]
[more inside]
The Story of Stuff Possibly guilt and/or New years' resolution-inducing. Also, flash-based video. via.
Protagonize collaborative choose your own adventure stories [more inside]
Nanosolar - looks like some neat chemistry. There was quite a buzz around these guys last year; they won Popular Science's Innovation of the Year. And though Nanosolar isn't saying much about the technology, there are some worthwhile clues in their patents. [more inside]
January 02, 2008
Too Indigent To Quit? MC Hammer is back, grabbing a hold of that new "internet" thing, taking on YouTube with a dance video website (coming soon -- get your videos ready!). [more inside]
Questioning the banality of evil. "Until recently, there has been a clear consensus amongst social psychologists, historians and philosophers that everyone succumbs to the power of the group and hence no one can resist evil once in its midst. But now, suddenly, things don’t seem quite so certain." (Via.)
Cook (almost) anything at least once. This is where I go when I'm not sure what to kick over the next week or three.
Can a study of Rhesus Macaque monkey behaviour determine how far back in evolutionary time the "ability to impute thoughts and intentions to another individual" developed? [more inside]
January 01, 2008
Your Daily WTF: Hallelujah (possibly NSFW).
