dear clusterflock
What is the most aesthetically pleasing professional sport?
need a bronze eagle?
Allen “Disgraced Ponzi Scheme Financier” Stanford’s assets are being liquidated.
“Everything here has a story,” Grimme said, sweeping his hand toward one of Stanford’s treasures — the tapestry of King Louis XIV — and toward a $99 blue leather chair from the Lowes Hotel in Miami Beach.
Fake Baby
A girl fakes a pregnancy and birth of a terminally ill baby. Well, people found out and they are pissed:
The baby was actually a lifelike doll, which immediately raised the suspicion of loyal blog-followers.
“I have that exact doll in my house,” said Elizabeth Russell, a dollmaker from Buffalo who had been following the blog. “As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam.”
By Monday, outraged followers on dozens of Christian parenting Web sites unmasked “April’s Mom” as a hoaxer, and hundreds more vented their anger.
“She needs to be exposed and held accountable,” Russell said.
Sensing people were close to establishing her identity, “April’s Mom” on Monday raced in vain to delete her Web site and Twitter and Facebook accounts.
But it was too late. The online community found out her true identity: Beccah Beushausen, 26, a social worker from Mokena.
Bible Map
A Bible Atlas using the Google Maps API. Nifty.
screenshots from this weekend’s footage
BMW Bicycle
The $7 Federalist
Indiana National Guard Capt. Nathan Harlan was a high school junior when he paid $7 for a 1788 first edition of volume one of “The Federalist” — a two-volume book of essays calling for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
smart grid
Speculation about the future of the electrical grid.
What smart grid visionaries see coming are home thermostats and appliances that adjust automatically depending on the cost of power; where a water heater may get juice from a neighbor’s rooftop solar panel; and where on a scorching hot day a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and the next sends electricity back to the grid to help head off a brownout.
dear clusterflock
How was your weekend?
from the spam
North Carolina Divorce Magazine provides excellent resources for the state of North Carolina on divorce, divorce lawyers, divorce law, divorce attorneys and anything that encompasses divorce and separation. We’re here to help North Carolina’s residents through the divorce and separation process.
Weekly Picture 154
Mae in Play Structure, Austin, TX, 6.04.2009
Electricity
Captain Beefheart (Coeur de Boeuf) and the Magic Band at Cannes. 1968. “Electricity.” (Plus “Sure ‘Nuff ‘n’ Yes I Do.”)
Bonus fun: Can you spot young Ry Cooder?
Tyrannosaurus Rex – Lofty Skies
The video was originally inspired by Sheila’s photo, my love of the song and the film Buffalo 66. Of course, I also have a thing about Christina Ricci. Oddly, only in this film. I’m not sure if she knows.
Sat ‘neath the eyes of the lofty skies
We were chained by the rain to the pain of our love
We kissed and cried
Held ‘neath the bars of the tangling stars
We were pinned by the might of the warrior night
We kissed and cried
O this time of love moves me
“Lofty Skies” (Bolan) from Tyrannosaurus Rex, A Beard of Stars (1970).
Under the shade
of a big tree in the long grass
Dear Cindy
Can you explain electricity so that once and for all and at long last both India and I get it?
The new elimae
is now posted. Enjoy!
“work forms us, and deforms us”
When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.
—Matthew B. Crawford, “The Case for Working With Your Hands,” New York Times, May 21, 2009
(via Dervala)
Read more
Just in case
anyone is looking at ClusterFlock and not reading elimae announcements, I am closed to submissions for the next four or five weeks for some traveling and resting. Right now the re-open date is July 20th. You can check the elimae announcements around July 10th or so, to see if I’ll open up again sooner or if I’m holding firm. Have fun.
The new issue will be June/July and will post probably within the next 24 hours.
Marsupial Map Give-Away
Marsupial is celebrating its first birthday today. To celebrate I’m giving away the original of this clipping from it to whoever can give me the most interesting interpretation.
More details and Marsupial clippings.
Dear Clusterflock: Sex on the screen, how is it for you?
How are you with sex on the screen?
When it comes to sex, the suggestion of sex or intimacy in films or TV dramas, how is it for you?
I mean with regard to full frontal nudity, simulated sex, kissing?
Do you enjoy it, tolerate it, watch but hate, hate and not watch?Can you watch with others? Do you care?
Rent-A-Ruminant
Rent-A-Ruminant, LLC is owned by Tammy Dunakin, chief Goat Wrangler and is located on Vashon Island in the Seattle area. She started this business in 2004 with only ten goats and now the herd has grown to over one hundred happy goats and sheep. We bring goats to your location to eat a wide range of vegetation, such as blackberries, ivy, and other invasive species.
Many of the goats at Rent-A-Ruminant are rescue goats and they are part of our family. They receive the best of care and are never slaughtered. When they become unable to remain with the herd, they are retired to good loving homes.
The homepage of the website is actually quite charming.
from the comments
I remember the day like it was yesterday. I said, “Oh, let’s clean up your desktop,” as I closed window after window. The doctor was great–didn’t bat an eye. She had wonderful porcelain skin and often advised me on how to care for my similarly fair complexion. She also explained to me how to read barcodes on manufacturers’ coupons in order to cheat the system (e.g., how to know if a coupon that says 16 oz size only actually will work on the 8 oz size). I had to swear never to share the information with anyone. The last time I saw her–maybe 2 years ago–she was gathering up all of the sugar and splenda packets at the coffee table during Grand Rounds.
How a Board Game Can Make You Cry
Brenda Brathwaite makes rather unusual boardgames. Take, for example, a game she wrote to teach her 10-year-old daughter about the slave trade:
Brathwaite assembled a collection of tiny wooden figures, then had her daughter group them into “families.” After her daughter was finished, she picked them up by the handful and placed them on a makeshift boat. Her daughter was confused: Why would she take the parents but leave the baby? Why wouldn’t brothers stay with their sisters? “No one wants to go,” Brathwaite explained. That’s when it started to click.
Then Brathwaite devised a primitive resource management mechanic. It took 10 turns for the boat to cross the Atlantic. The boat had 30 units of food. Each turn, the player had to roll a d6, and reduce their food stores by that number. By the trip’s halfway point, it was clear to her daughter that her “cargo” wouldn’t make it. It wasn’t a “fun” game by any means, but it served a different purpose: It helped her daughter intuitively understand the emotional experience of the slave trade, a lesson that numbers on a chalkboard couldn’t provide.
Hat tip to Nick Montfort who wrote a short overview of a few of them.
quote out of context
James von Brunn is exactly like a lesbian studies major.
smurf blowjob
I think I found it.
