April 30, 2012
Fight the Vampire Squid
Goldman Sachs was founded in the 19th century when Jews were excluded from other firms.
The same obvious answer, but one - supposedly - lost on the BBC, today celebrating Occupy as a new artistic movement.
Paul Mason, Economics editor for Newsnight - and therefore the right choice to cover an arts movement, somehow - cites Molly Crabapple's impromptu salon of graphic novelists, painters, illustrators and graphic designers a few streets away from Zuccotti Park.
"I started out just doing graphics - I drew this picture of an octopus with 'Fight the Vampire Squid' on its belly - and put it online and people used it as protest signs all over the country," Crabapple says.
A vampire squid representing Jewish bankers is le dernier cri for these intellectuals. Anyone want to guess what the Economics editor for BBC Newnight makes? Or what it costs to maintain a salon a few blocks from Wall Street? But then this was never about money; it's about virtue.
I am not saying Molly Crabapple is anti-Semitic - in fact, being only one or two steps removed from her social circle, I am certain she isn't - but I am saying there is a reason some images resonate with the words "banking" and "conspiracy" while others don't. She couldn't have compared Goldman Sachs to, say, the Borg? And Occupy had to focus on a Jewish banking firm rather than, say, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose ideologically driven mortgages triggered the meltdown in the first place?
Matt Taibbi, whose 2009 Rolling Stone article "The Great American Bubble Machine" is the immediate source of the vampire squid metaphor, is another story. Taibi describes Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.
Rule of Acquisition No. 109: Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack
While I am on the subject of anti-Semitic stereotypes, a few words from the Ferengi*, my heroes from the Star Trek universe, the only people prepared to stand up - ethically - against the Fascist economics of the Federation.
* I get the Bajoran comparison too. But then in the '90s it was still ok for Hollywood to celebrate Israel.
Related: The Great Material Continuum.
April 29, 2012
Brigitte M - I was made for loving you
I have probably already told the story about how Metallica saved my life.
Long story short: Metalheads probably have the same facility for mathematics as classical musicians.
Cira Las Vegas & Flo - I was made for loving you
Ouch. Stabbed in heart.
April 28, 2012
Italo
Ferrari launches its entry into Italy's private high speed rail market.
The new Italo – the first privately operated high-speed train in Europe – is a train like no other, claims Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, chairman of Ferrari and boss of NTV, the firm challenging the state service.Mobbed by press at the inaugural journey from Rome Tiburtina, the flamboyant Montezemolo purred: "I'm addicted to speed. Speed and risk. Economic risk."
There are no travel "classes", NTV insists, only different "ambiences" – albeit differentiated by bigger seats, at-seat dining and pricier tickets.
"The Nuovo Transporto Viaggiatoro (NTV) owned train system will run from Italy’s North in Turin down to the South in Salerno, using the Alstom AGV train model." Fast - and supposedly green - technology at the link. More Ferrari train porn here.
Give Three-Piece a Chance
"On the morning of St George’s Day, April 23rd, swathes of immaculately dressed chaps and chapettes gathered outside No. 3 Savile Row to demonstrate peacefully – but firmly – against Abercrombie & Fitch’s proposed plans to open a children’s store there."
April 27, 2012
Also handy for teaching
The ten most satisfying cases of hecklers getting destroyed (via Five Feet of Fury).
Text-Only Instagram
Your personal Instagram feed in a lightweight text format.
April 26, 2012
Penthouse PPDG
Hernandez Silva's Penthouse PPDG occupies the 15th floor of a 70's Mexican colonial style building in Guadalajara.
I've got a bad feeling about this
Peter Jackson's ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ is the first major motion picture to be filmed at 48 frames per second, twice the old standard of 24 frames per second.
IGN elaborates (hat tip to Beautiful Atrocities).
...
While 48fps may create a more realistic, "you are there" picture quality, it actually works against The Hobbit from the 10 minutes of footage we saw. This undeniable "reality" kept pulling me out of the movie rather than immersing me fully into its world as the Lord of the Rings films did; the very fantasy element, the artifice of it all (whether it's the wigs, fake beards or CG monsters) was plainly, at times painfully, evident. There was none of the painterly gentleness that film offers a fantasy film, as was so beautifully the case with the original (shot on film) LOTR trilogy.
Letter to Jeff Walker regarding "Blade Runner"
Philip K. Dick wrote this letter after seeing his first glimpse of Blade Runner in a television segment (via Boing Boing).
Planetary Resources, Inc. - Asteroid Mining Mission
Great idea: Corporations with the power to lob asteroids at the Earth.
Gabriel Fauré - Requiem in D minor
Fauré: Requiem & Cantique de Jean Racine
I Introit et Kyrie (0:00)
II Offertoire (6:34)
III Sanctus (15:20)
IV Pie Jesu (18:30)
V Agnus Dei et Lux Aeterna (22:08)
VI Libera me (27:44)
VII In Paradisum (32:16)
April 25, 2012
Battlefield Britain - Battle For Wales (2004)
Owain Glyn Dwr And The Battle For Wales is a look at the Battle for Wales in 1403 and the leader of the Welsh rebellion, Owain Glyndwr.
Features: An arrow to the knee (30:35).
Gloriana
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh braved heavy rain and driving winds to name Gloriana, the first royal barge to be built in one hundred years.
April 24, 2012
Settlers of Catan - TableTop Episode 2
Wil Wheaton and guests Jane Espenson (Writer and Producer-Buffy, Caprica, BSG, Game of Thrones), James Kyson (Actor-Heroes, Hawaii 5-0) and Neil Grayston (Actor-Eureka) play Settlers of Catan.
No surfeit of lampreys
Now the lamprey has been declared an endangered species, Gloucester has turned to the Great Lakes for its Jubilee celebrations.
In a custom stretching back for centuries, the city marks every one of these royal milestones - as well as Coronations - by sending the monarch a traditional dish made with an eel-like fish native to local rivers.
But this time around the uniquely British recipe will have to be prepared with lampreys from abroad, due to a shortage of the species in Gloucester waters.
Hot pie!
The Inn at the Crossroads has recipes for modern and medieval venison pies.
Also: Pylons courtesy of House Baratheon.
Olga Ziemska - Stillness in Motion (2003)
Olga Ziemska - Stillness in Motion.
April 23, 2012
Thor pipeline
Pipelines for beer. Not a dream; reality.
In Randers city in Denmark, the so-called Thor beer pipeline still exists. Originally copper pipes were running directly from the brewery and, when in the 90s the brewery moved out of the city, Thor beer replaced the centre of a star with a giant tank.
Gladiatrix
A two thousand year old statue shows a topless female gladiator in a pose of victory.
Few statues of female gladiators have ever been found, after the Emperor Septimus banned the fairer sex from gladiatorial combat in AD200.
April 22, 2012
Catherine Owens - Chalk Art at Backbar
Chalk Art at Backbar from Catherine Owens on Vimeo.
Adam Carolla - Wealth redistribution
NSFW (strong language, personal responsibility).
April 21, 2012
Hierarchies of contempt
Southern Metropolis Daily‘s City Weekly has compiled a list of “Hierarchies of Snobbery” or “Hierarchies of Contempt”.
April 20, 2012
Occupy Antarctica
HMS Protector arrives at the British Antarctic Suvey Rothera Point ice station on Adelaide Island, 800 miles south of Cape Horn.
The Antarctic region has no indigenous population but now a few thousand transient scientific and other personnel work across several dozen research stations situated on the continent.
Max Barskih - Z.Dance. Episode 1 & 2
Hat tip to Beautiful Atrocities (nsfw due to a swear word, recycled sentiment/zombies).
April 19, 2012
Innovate or die
In 1996, I was hired to help a major ministry of a G7 country encourage "world beating" innovation across a variety of industry sectors. My first question at the first meeting did not make me any friends: What's innovation? Nobody could answer the question, obviously; a small step for general semantics, a giant leap of faith.
If you read Forbes, you already know people still can't be bothered to define their terms. Some great quotes nonetheless.
Related: Introducing Macintosh.
Relateder: Eight features of Google Glasses (as they'll really be used).
How to design a logo
Sagi Haviv asks what problem your client is trying to solve.
Ikea Uppleva
If I were in the market for a condo, this would factor into my budget.
April 18, 2012
Talks at Google presents - Jane Espenson
"Jane Espenson, American television writer and producer, came to Google on April 3, 2012 to talk with her Google fans about writing for T.V. Among her serial dramas are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Caprica, Torchwood, Firefly, Angel, Tru Calling, Dollhouse, and Once Upon a Time. In 2010 she wrote an episode of HBO's Game of Thrones. Jane also talked about her experience working on the new web series "Husbands" with Brad Bell. The series premiered at HusbandsTheSeries.com on Sept. 13, 2011. The second season is due out later this summer, 2012."
Keeper of the mythos - Bryan Cogman
Westeros.org interviews Game of Thrones writer and keeper of the mythos, Bryan Cogman.
“Story Editor” is really just a writing staff title. It has to do with where you are in your career more than anything. The entry level title is Staff Writer, then Story Editor, etc. I’ll be “Executive” Story Editor for Season Three, but I imagine my duties will remain the same. Every show is different. On THIS show, in addition to working with David, Dan & Vanessa mapping out the season, the Story Editor’s job is to be on set for most the production, advising the various depts, and so on. I’m often D&D’s eyes and ears when they’re on other units. And, of course, I get to write an episode a season. Plus I maintain the show bible, help.com & Home Ent. with special features, etc. Just try to be on hand to be a resource on the show’s mythology whenever I can.
Physibles
Much as Star Trek: The Original Series anticipated cell phones but not loud, one sided conversations on the bus, the replicators on Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't have warning labels about reproducing someone else's intellectual property. Our live social experiment in the future continues as The Pirate Bay launches Physibles category for printing 3D objects.
Related: Sweden has granted religious recognition to a file-sharing church.
Sean Young filmed the making of Dune with David Lynch (1983)
Via Boing Boing.
April 17, 2012
In the beginning was the Word
The British Library has acquired the St Cuthbert Gospel for £9million.
The coffin was moved off the island to escape Viking raiders and taken to Durham, where the book, which is a copy of the Gospel of St John, was found when the coffin was opened at the cathedral in 1104. Its original red leather binding survives today.
Tomb raiding
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Neolithic portal dolmen in an isolated field in Wales.
What makes it particularly interesting is that the site has rare remains of human bones and shards of decorated pottery
More on the Trefael Stone.
Britain's greatest foe
It wasn't George Washington.
April 16, 2012
Bomber Boys (2012)
"Brothers Colin and Ewan McGregor follow up their documentary The Battle of Britain with a film exploring Bomber Command, a rarely-told story from the Second World War."
Note to Ewan McGregor: All is forgiven. Let us not speak of the "prequels" again.
Flying in the Lancaster cockpit
One of the great privileges of living in Toronto is having a Lancaster bomber handy for Memorial Day.
From the cockpit, it looks like four Spitfires strapped together.
"Dedication from all involved in restoring and maintaining this historic WWII bomber aircraft, I could only think of all the young airmen who worked on and flew in these Lancasters through wartime and what it could of possibly meant. ----- Part1 flight begins with engines starting then @ 00:48sec 3/4 throttle takeoff from Hamilton CWHM , cockpit view 1:53min along Great Lake Ontario to Toronto with a CN Tower flypast 07:01min . 45 degree bank turn over Toronto at 07:24 then over Lake Ontario with a upper mid gunners view 07:51min, onto Niagara Falls 10:33min."
"Part 2 continues on from Niagara Falls to the North Shores of Great Lake Erie and then with a flypast 9:56min over the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum."
Spitbank, Horse Sands, and No Mans Land
The sea forts of the Solent are getting a makeover, to ensure their survival.
April 15, 2012
Brothers Band - Nothing Else Matters
If you're like me, your time travel fantasies involve going back and authoring centuries of timeless folk tunes.
Gregorian - Nothing Else Matters
I guess I could invent polyphony while I was at it.
Hel7808 - Nothing Else Matters
I was in a mood when I was collecting these.
Shakira - Nothing Else Matters / La Despedida
Crazy never stopped me neither.
Metallica & San Francisco Symphony Orchestra - Nothing Else Matters
This is what the ending of Mass Effect 3 should have felt like. It didn't.
April 14, 2012
The greater fool theory
Econophysicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich suggest Facebook and Zynga are "vastly overvalued."
The bigger picture, of course, is that the entire market for social networking companies is experiencing a bubble, probably sustained by the greater fool theory of market behaviour: "I'm a fool for paying so much but I know there's a greater fool out there who will pay more".
Obi Wan Kenobi made a similar observation.
All sunshine and no rain: EnemyGraph is an application that allows Facebook users to identify their enemies.
April 13, 2012
Appraisal
A man spent $100 at a Vancouver garage sale and walked away with a watercolour by Frederick Varley and painting by Tom Thomson.
A two-month long authentication process discovered that it was likely painted in 1915.
The last Thomson sold at Maynards went for $170,000 and the auction house says this latest find could go for even more, maybe even half-a-million dollars.
Balaklava
Jeremy Hart takes a look at a decommissioned Soviet submarine base, fascinating despite the gratuitous shots of his Land Rover (hat tip to Mr. Jané).
Hidden inside the base of a mountain in the port town of Balaklava on Ukraine’s Crimean coast, the 153,000 square-foot facility took nine years to build and its entrance camouflaged from spy planes. It could survive a direct nuclear hit and at maximum capacity could hold 3,000 people with supplies to sustain them for a month. Best of all, the vast subs that slunk in and out of here between tours of duty could enter and leave underwater, keeping them from prying eyes at all times.
Vocabulary building: Balaklava is Turkish for "fish nest."
Richard Dawkins - God Strikes Back (2008)
"Relativism, the quaint notion there are many truths all equally deserving of respect even if they contradict each other, is rife today. It sounds like a respectful gesture towards multiculturalism. Actually, it's a pretentious cop out; there really is something special about scientific evidence: Science works. Planes fly. Magic carpets and broomsticks don't."
This excerpt includes the above quote and, better yet, the grotesque spectacle of "scientists" claiming they believe the Earth is more than ten thousand years old because they are scientists, rather than because scientific investigation supports the contention.
Dawkins calls them on the distinction and they have nothing to say for themselves. Whether because the distinction eludes them or because they live in fear of their students is another question.
The complete Channel-4 documentary 'God Strikes Back', part of the series 'The Genius of Darwin'.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
April 12, 2012
Dress code
Attempting to raise sartorial standards among racegoers, organziers have issued one hundred thousand Ascot style guides - one for the Grandstand and another more restrictive guide for the Royal Enclosure.
Truly, the way is narrow & the path is steep
Hanging monasteries of the world.
The Chap - We work in bars
The Chap - We work in bars from Harry Rambaut on Vimeo.
April 11, 2012
Lakes and Oceans
"Randall Munroe's produced another in his series of his spectacular, gigantic charts of unimaginably large and complex things compared and rendered tractable by the human imagination."
The chart.
April 10, 2012
The Battle of Chernobyl (2006)
On the one hand, science fiction horror. On the other, absolute heroism.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10.
Titanic
Photographs by Father S.J. Browne, 1912.
Also: Construction of the Titanic.
Related thought: I have been watching Julian Fellowes' Titanic. I want to say it's a train wreck but...
The heart and stomach of a king
"Towering among the grey clouds, HMS Queen Elizabeth cuts a intimidating figure as she comes one step closer to being let loose on the seas."
April 09, 2012
The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains
"What would you pay for the perfect short story? To read it? To write it? Don’t post your answer. Instead write the story."
Neil Gaiman reads from his story (via Boing Boing).
Related thought: Neil Gaiman's library.
You're suddenly transported back to 1000 BC
What's the most advanced machine that you could possible construct?
0) (before any machine is made) Learn the language of whatever civilization I'm thrown into so I don't kill myself by being ignorant.
1) I would obtain some tin and copper and smelt it together in a crude forced air furnace to make some bronze (basically rocks in the ground with a leather bellow). I would have to experiment to make the optimum (or pretty close) quality of bronze, testing the quality is super simple (hit it with a predetermined weight, see if it breaks). I like bronze as the materials are not too hard to get (tin and copper).
The next steps at the link.
Dothraki studies
David Peterson explains how to create a language.
For example, the basic way to inquire after someone's state is, Hash yer dothrae chek? That translates literally to, "Do you ride well?" or, "Are you riding well?" In English, though, an appropriate translation would be simply, "How are you doing?"
April 08, 2012
The Turin Horse (2011)
The opening scene of A Torinói ló.
City of Z
Thanks to Google Earth, and forestry, archeologists in Brazil are finding geoglyphs carved into the ground in the Amazon rainforest.
People had long suspected a vanished civilization is hidden in the trackless wastes of the rainforest, whether known as the legendary El Dorado or (better) the lost City of Z.
Built long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world -- the sites date from 200 to 1283 A.D.-- the earthworks are the remains of roads, bridges and squares that formed the basis for a lost civilization, according to a study published in the journal Antiquity.
Tempting as it is to ascribe civilizational collapse in the New World to the arrival of Europeans with their "guns, germs, and steel" these dates neatly match an earlier calamity, the end of the Medieval Warm Period, which put paid to classical Mayan civilization, the Chaco culture/interaction sphere, and hundreds of years of Viking settlement in Greenland. Given there has been no statistically significant global warming trend since 1995, our little Ice Age seems set to continue.
Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, R.I.P.
"A designer in the illustrious German automaking family, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche shaped the famed 911 sports car and the Porsche 904 Carrera GTS."
April 07, 2012
Serge Gainsbourg - Melody (1971)
A short film by Serge Gainsbourg & Jean-Christophe Averty based on the concept album "Histoire de Melody Nelson". Featuring Jane Birkin.
Histoire de Melody Nelson - Serge Gainsbourg from LeGouter on Vimeo.
1. Melody | Gainsbourg
2. Ballade de Melody Nelson | Gainsbourg, Vannier
3. Valse de Melody | Gainsbourg
4. Ah ! Melody | Gainsbourg, Vannier
5. L'hôtel particulier | Gainsbourg
6. En Melody | Gainsbourg, Vannier
7. Cargo culte
Aussi: Jean-Claude Vannier - Melody Nelson revisitée.
Bully
Rick McGinnis reviews Lee Hirsch's "Bully".
It was all just a dream, Bobby Ewing didn't really die!
No comment from BioWare on the Mass Effect 3 Indoctrination Theory.
Project Glass: One day...
Google's prospective heads up display for glasses - or contacts - means I will have to rewrite all my tests somehow. On the other hand, I will be able to stare into space and read my lectures.
Big Brother meet Panopticon. Panopticon, Big Brother.
And I've never heard it called a "ukulele" before.
April 06, 2012
Converting to Norse Religion
Norse religion is pretty much just like this all the time. And by "this", of course I mean "awesome".
Sink the Ryou-Un Maru
The long, lonely voyage of the Japanese ghost ship is over.
It sank into waters more than 1,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Alaska, more than 150 miles from land.
Pat Tillman, Running and Screaming With Head Aflame
The nine most baffling monuments to great people.
April 05, 2012
Super kawaii
"In recent years, the Tokushima Provincial Cooperation Office of the Japan Self Defense Force has created recruitment advertising posters featuring cute, adorable illustrations, and it wasted little time in releasing this year’s version."
That's the 2011 poster pictured above. The 2012 version is at the link.
Rude awakening
A trojan has infected 550,000 of Apple's 'virus free' Mac OS X machines. lol
Dr Web claims that more than four million web pages are infected with the trojan.
April 04, 2012
Leela
I have been watching Tom Baker era Dr. Who - Horror of Fang Rock, so Lovecraft - and particularly enjoying Leela, a Who companion who was formative in my development. Leela was meant to be a noble savage by way of Eliza Doolittle with leather outfits engineered to be "very popular with the Dads."
Poking around on Wikipedia, however, was a revelation.
Typical BBC. Selling sex under the banner of feminism. Orientalist romantics pretending to be anti-racist. Tenured civil servants playing at being revolutionaries.
In popular culture: The song Like Leila Khaled Said from The Teardrop Explodes' 1981 album Wilder is a love song to Khaled. Songwriter Julian Cope said it was a love song to her "cos I thought she was so beautiful. But I know that the whole thing was like bad news."
Also: Which box is larger?
Now we're cooking with fire
Remains of ash and bone fragments found 30m inside the entrance of Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa suggests early humans were cooking with fire one million years ago.
Stone tools found at Wonderwerk Cave indicate the ancestor in question may have been Homo erectus, a species whose existence has been documented as far back as 1.8 million years ago.
The discovery may support Richard Wrangham's "cooking hypothesis" viz the invention of cooking split the ancestors of humans from those of modern gorillas and chimpanzees.
Total Recall (2012) - Official Trailer
Featuring Kate Beckinsale and some other people.
April 03, 2012
Metropolis (1925)
Behind the scenes (hat tip to the Armored Facilities Manager).
Bioluminescence
Glowing blue water washes up on a beach in Vaadhoo, one of the Raa Atoll islands in the Maldives.
Cracking the Maya Code (2008)
"The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind a riddle: an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script carved on stone monuments and painted on pottery and bark books. Because the invading Spanish suppressed nearly all knowledge of how the script worked, unlocking its meaning posed one of archaeology's fiercest challenges."
April 02, 2012
Vaginal Fantasy Book Club #3: Slave to Sensation
This month's book was Slave to Sensation
We must map this emptiness so modern man may continue to avoid it
The five most clearly cursed expeditions of all time. For example.
Which is why I often think if I were a better writer I would be writing for Cracked.
April 01, 2012
David Bowie: Cracked Actor - A Film About David Bowie (BBC 1975)
"Cracked Actor is a 53-minute-long BBC television documentary film about the pop star David Bowie. It was filmed in 1974, at a time when Bowie was a popular and commercial success. At the time he was a cocaine addict and the documentary has become notorious for showing Bowie's fragile mental state during this period. It was made by Alan Yentob for the BBC's Omnibus documentary strand, and was first shown, on BBC2 in the UK, on January 26, 1975."
One of London's great fictional characters
Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp unveils a black plaque in honour of David Bowie's creation, Ziggy Stardust, 40 years after The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Related: How streets featured on classic album covers look today.