Orangu-Tang
Chris Berman gets a little upset at the help…
via The Big Lead via Deadspin
Needed
What this country needs is a good five-cent iPhone.
Where the Wild Things Are
Where the Wild Things Are, the movie adaptation of the wonderful children’s book by Maurice Sendak comes out in 2009. Screenplay by Dave Eggers of McSweeneys fame and Spike Jonze who is also directing.
Will it Fly?
Few things have produced derision and nerdfury like the debate over the Airplane on a Conveyor Belt. Basically the premise is this,
“A plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band conveyer). The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyer moves in the opposite direction. This conveyer has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyer to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction). Can the plane take off?”
Deron touched upon it the first time around and after some misfires, Mythbusters finally aired the show where the myth was tested, and Kottke live blogged it. He includes a helpful link to a clear explanation from someone smart than you or I.
Monstrous Contingency Plans
By the time I was eight (maybe nine) years old, I’d given a lot of thought to the possibility of being pursued by a variety of fiends and had mapped out monster-specific contingency plans. Lumbering zombies and mummies didn’t much worry me, but I do recall working out two distinct protocols in the event I was chased home from school by (a) a werewolf or (b) a vampire.
Hot-Tempered, Cold-Blooded Critters
Never mind the context. A while back I had occasion to write Cooper Renner about my experience with snake bile. Here are some phrases our exchange generated.
Bilious serpents
Choleric vipers
Splenetic adders
Down with fractions!
“Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation,” DeTurck said as part of a 60-second lecture series. “But in this digital age, they’re as obsolete as Roman numerals are.”
Just don’t do it.
On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.
Machtübergabe
Today marks an important anniversary. On January 30, 1933—seventy-five years ago today—the power of the state fell into the hands of Hitler and his Nazi party, what Germans know as the Machtergreifung, literally “seizure of power.” But was it a “seizure,” lacking all semblance of legitimacy? More clear-sighted historians, like Fritz Stern, use the term Machtübergabe, or transfer of power, which marks some important points: the Nazis fared well in the elections, not reaching a majority of course, but they were able to take the reins of power through an alliance with conservatives whose distaste for the liberal Weimar constitution was only slightly less than their own. While the Nazi hold on power was tenuous at first, within a single month, a terrorist attack affecting the most prominent building in the nation’s largest city would supply them with just the engine they needed to begin the process of demolishing the liberal Weimar Constitution and transforming the nation into a dictatorship, first authoritarian and then totalitarian in nature.
Scrabble
No, that can’t be the correct word. Can it?
“Polar Express III”
** (2007) Tara Reid. Double agents kill an inventor for his wooden spaceship, but his girlfriend will not let them have it.
the chrome has worn off the turd
Until MS does a complete 180 on the anti-user aspects of Vista, it remains unsuitable for use to any rational person.
Dawn Davenport
Oh, we saw Female Trouble for the first time saturday!
Man Sets Radio Station On Fire Over Playlist
A volunteer at a community radio station set fire to the station because he was upset that his song selections for an overnight Internet broadcast were changed, police said.
Eddie Izzard Death Star Canteen Animation
Catch Us If You Can
This early John Boorman film, starring the Dave Clark Five, is available in Britain, but it’s Region 2-coded (for Europe). Will some lovable company offer us an American version?
Then and now
“San Franciscan Nights” by Eric Burdon and the Animals (1967)
I remain entirely charmed by the attractive and yet utterly hyperbolic weariness (in both lyric and vocal) when Burdon sings, in one of the song’s bridges,
I wasn’t born there
Perhaps I’ll die there
There’s no place left to go
San Francisco
Burn To Shine
Burn to Shine Manifesto:
1. Gather bands on one day in a house that will be destroyed.
2. All bands play one song each, and perform their song twice.
3. No overdubs.
4. Film the destruction.
5. Edit and display in chronological order.
6. That is all.
Hunt Armory rooftop
The old armory building in Shadyside occupies an entire block - the roof line rises above the tree tops along Alder Street. I imagine whole cavalry units drilling inside, not long after the turn of the last century.
The Sex Diaries of John Maynard Keynes
I think your heterosexuality is getting in the way of your analysis. Two men would rarely, and certainly not very often, stop at a “cop”. Once we get copping, we usually proceed to something more satisfying. I suspect that “c” refers to cock(-sucking) and “a” to ass(-well-you-know). As for “w”, it probably does meaning wanking but not as you interpreted it. I bet he meant that he w’ed the other guy or vice-versa, that the encounter did not go beyond that to “c” or “a”. Especially given the times and the anonymous nature of some of the tabulated encounters, it’s strikes me as quite likely that in a minority of them, conditions did not allow for anything more complicated than a good ol’ mutual “w”.
Vanishing Point
Neutral Milk Hotel - The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. I
The Fifth Beetle
A new species of beetle that appears as if wearing a tuxedo has been named in honor of the late rock ‘n’ roll legend Roy Orbison and his widow Barbara.