January 27, 2012
Deciphering Kubrick’s The Shining
Director Rodney Ascher’s documentary Room 237 examines various interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
“Room 237,” the first full-length documentary by the director Rodney Ascher, examines several of the most intriguing of these theories. It’s really about the Holocaust, one interviewee says, and Mr. Kubrick’s inability to address the horrors of the Final Solution on film. No, it’s about a different genocide, that of American Indians, another says, pointing to all the tribal-theme items adorning the Overlook Hotel’s walls. A third claims it’s really Kubrick’s veiled confession that he helped NASA fake the Apollo Moon landings.
Yes, of course.
(via @coudal)
don’t smile
According to new research on body language out of the University of British Columbia, women find happy men—in this study, men who were smiling in photos—significantly less attractive than men portraying other emotions.
Shit is like fire, if you manage properly, it can cook for you
Jessica Yu directed this short film about Jack Sim, aka Mr. Toilet:
For those without access to a simple toilet, poop can be poison. Businessman-turned-sanitation-superhero Jack Sim fights this oft-neglected crisis affecting 2.6 billion people.
(via stellar)
January 26, 2012
Von Trier’s Antichrist
I finally found the strength to look at it. I didn’t want to look for so long. Finally, I looked this afternoon. Anyone else seen it? Your take?
Wye Oak, Civilian
This is an acoustic version of Wye Oak’s Civilian, shot for They Shoot Music Don’t They.
Update: The original, for comparison. And thanks to Karl Pichotta for the tip.
Speaking of Kottke …
He has a great post up about John Tyler’s grandsons still being alive, which is insane to think about seeing as how Tyler was the 10th President of the US and was born in 1790.
He suggests coining a term for someone or something that bridges a huge span of time, in this case almost two hundred years of history.
There’s also this 1956 game show appearance of a Lincoln assassination eyewitness and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) shaking hands during his lifetime with both John Quincy Adams (b 1767) and John F Kennedy (d 1963), one man spanning 200 years of American history.
Jason suggests “history bridges”. I suggested “minding the history gap“. His is more of a noun, I suppose mine is more of a verb — as in John Tyler’s grandson is minding the history gap. Neither really hits the nail on the proverbial head, so to speak. But doesn’t there need to be a coined phrase for this sort of phenomenon.
Wastelander Panda
A prologue for a developing TV series. I would totally watch this.
tweet of the day
I have mixed feelings about exclamation points!
— Rob Baedeker (@robbaedeker) January 26, 2012
Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America
My same friend Susan who brought us the critically acclaimed Omega Institute in Your Pants, 2010 edition today supplied the following list, from the book Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L. Wagner, Dale F. Schweitzer, J. Bolling Sullivan, and Richard C. Reardon:
Sordid Snout
The Herald
Feeble Grass Moth
Dead-wood Borer
The Betrothed
The Little Wife
Serene Underwing
The Consort
Dejected Underwing
Inconsolable Underwing
Tearful Underwing
Sad Underwing
The Penitent
Sappho Underwing
Youthful Underwing
Darling Underwing
Read more…
quotes out of context
For instance, Iron Lady becomes Total Bitch, Tree of Life becomes Wuh?, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo becomes All the Rape, No Subtitles.
Africa was my second home. I had never been there, though.
The idea of the unified self has had a rough few centuries however.
I know I’m making it sound unhealthy, like the TV is suffocating me but just think of it like I do, as electronic swaddling. That hum is a seductive sotto voce murmur.
As Darwin said: “False views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened”.
from the comments
Growing up, Ovid was a sometimes competitor in high school athletics. In retrospect it makes me think of extremely pregnant birds and may explain my distinct indifference toward Latin narrative poetry.
January 25, 2012
Five Minutes with Jason Kottke
From a five minute interview with Jason Kottke at The Verge:
You wrote a post about David Foster Wallace’s idea of the Decider a few years ago. Since then, has anything changed when it comes to your process?
It’s much easier to find interesting things to read and look at online than it used to be…the web is now largely filters on top of filters on top of filters. So I don’t have to sift through as much stuff as I used to. But also around the time I posted that link, I got much better at blogging. I don’t know if the 10,000 hours thing kicked in or what, but what used to take me 6-8 hours to do now takes me 2-3 hours.
(via @tcarmody)
tweet of the day
You can’t abbreviate lasagna.
— Mary Jeys (@maryjeys) January 26, 2012
“It’s killing that is very distant but also very personal,” says anthropologist Neta Bar. “I would even say intimate.”
Chris Kyle is the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history. He was deployed to Iraq in 2003, and killed 255 people in six years.
A crowd had come out to greet them. Through the scope he saw a woman, with a child close by, approaching his troops. She had a grenade ready to detonate in her hand.
“This was the first time I was going to have to kill someone. I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to do it, man, woman or whatever,” he says.
“You’re running everything through your mind. This is a woman, first of all. Second of all, am I clear to do this, is this right, is it justified? And after I do this, am I going to be fried back home? Are the lawyers going to come after me saying, ‘You killed a woman, you’re going to prison’?”
But he didn’t have much time to debate these questions.
“She made the decision for me, it was either my fellow Americans die or I take her out.”
He pulled the trigger.
(via the browser)
dear clusterflock
Here’s the thing. Pronouncing “Gyro” like it’s spelled makes you sound like a rube, & pronouncing it the right way makes you sound pedantic.
— @joeks (@joeks) January 25, 2012
What are other words like this?
Cristóbal Vila, Fallingwater
Cristóbal Vila created a beautiful CGI fly-through — from construction to completion — of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
(thanks, Chris)
The face behind the honey badger
Embedding the video requires a mess of code I don’t want to propagate, so just go watch it here and, on the off chance you haven’t seen the video in question, you should probably go do that now.
Dear Esther
The illustration in Dear Esther, a remake of a Half Life 2 mod, is incredible.
I’ll definitely be purchasing the game, if only to gawp.
(via)
quotes out of context
Huh. So the more symmetrical a guy is, the more straight he seems.
The larger point is that mere imagination is not enough, for even those with prodigious gifts must still be able to sort their best from their worst, sifting through the clutter to find what’s actually worthwhile.
If you are offended, maybe you’re taking things a little too personally. But I’m sure there are some people who think, ‘Wow, that girl is an asshole.’
We think of ourselves as citizens when it comes to our rights and privileges, but not our responsibilities. We abdicate our civic responsibilities to the government and expect the government, in effect, to legislate morality.
In one experiment, each participant was seated either inside or outside of a five-by-five-foot cardboard box.
January 24, 2012
Fanfarlo – Shiny Things
I did the wardrobe styling/costumes for this video.
Behind the scenes fun: I sewed all the bracelets/hairpieces the night before, as well as hand painted the shoes. To get the leotards I went to a magical warehouse called Danny’s Warehouse where everything is 10 dollars and dug through bins that are taller than I am, looking for six matching leotards. I couldn’t find the kinds of judges outfits that I wanted, so John drove me to Walmart at midnight the night before. We ate Sonic, it was freezing cold in Lancaster. By the time I arrived on set the next day I’d slept two hours out of the past thirty-five. It was a beautiful shoot.
