sinkhole swallows fire truck
Where does the time go?
Hey, y’all. Remember me?
I’m back.
What have I been up to? Things. Changed jobs, got a dog, wrote a bunch of stuff. I’m glad to be back among the ‘flock.
from the comments
Derek White quotes Derek White:
“A wet one on top was the way she traded. Dated were the rest, faded faux fur and cotton mesh. She came before I was ready for her. No lark.”
Offered without comment
quote out of context out of context
I really appreciate the writer whose novel we’re living in writing the Michael Steele character.
The economics of fairy tales
Perhaps the most famous example of economics-in-the-enchantment is “The Wizard of Oz,” which has been interpreted by Henry Littlefield and Hugh Rockoff as an allegory about the monetary policy debates of the populist era. According to this view, the scarecrow represents the farmer, the tin woodsman is the working man, the cowardly lion is William Jennings Bryan, the wicked witches of the east and west are Grover Cleveland and William McKinley, and the wizard, associated with green money and ounces of gold (Oz), is Marcus Alonzo Hanna himself.
Continue reading for a resolution of the Cinderella Paradox.
(via marginal revolution)
The Owen Wilson Factor
In conjunction with Renner’s excellent question on the literary / musical equivalent of jumping the shark, friend of clusterlfock Teresa R. reminds me of this article in Slate a few years back speculating on Owen Wilson’s role in keeping Wes Anderson grounded.
from the comments
“You know, when I wrote that song I was dumb as a rock. I didn’t understand this country at all.”
Florine EP on Vinyl
Friend of clusterflock Julian Pozzi is contributing cover art for a Julianna Barwick music project they hope to get funded through Kickstarter.
Julian writes:
I’m making a print in conjunction with a vinyl record release project by Julianna Barwick on kickstarter.com. It’s a website where you can bid on projects along with other people so that the projects can get the funding to happen. It will be a limited edition run of 200 copies of “Florine” on white vinyl, and there’s an option to bid on a package of the record + a limited edition print by me. There are other options available as well.
Julianna’s official site. You can see more of Julian’s work here.
car from the future
What are some of the books
or CDs which were the last you bought ‘automatically’, out of habit, just because the author or artist was someone you had journeyed with for a good while? They changed or you changed (or both), and you found you just didn’t enjoy the work anymore.
I seem to have signed off on Bob Dylan (whose records I’d been buying since the ’60s) with Love and Theft, a CD on which I found not one stand-out song.
Read more
Chuck Klosterman on the [remastered] Beatles
If you like harmonies or guitar overdubs or the sun or Norwegian lesbians or taking drugs during funerals, you will probably sleep with these records on the first date. Rubber Soul gets an A- because I don’t speak French. Revolver gets an A+, mostly because of “She Said She Said” and “For No One,” but partially because I hate filing my taxes.
Tom Waits – Watch Her Disappear
Things I am glad I was asleep for
The dude yelling at the old lady on the flight back from Hawaii because he had to get up so she could use the bathroom.
Tessa
Levitating mice
Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside warm enough at room temperature and large enough at 2.6 inches wide (6.6 cm) for tiny creatures to float comfortably in during experiments.
7 secrets to beautiful hair
The science of enumerated articles.
Writing a list of n things is so relaxing. You think of n/2 of them in the first 5 minutes. So bang, there’s the structure, and you just have to fill it in. As you think of more points, you just add them to the end. Maybe you take out or rearrange or combine a few, but at every stage you have a valid (though initially low-res) list of n things. It’s like the sort of programming where you write a version 1 very quickly and then gradually modify it, but at every point have working code—or the style of painting where you begin with a complete but very blurry sketch done in an hour, then spend a week cranking up the resolution.
(via marginal revolution)
What Would Happen If You Put Your Car In Reverse While Driving?
from the comments
There was the time the woman died at work and I slipped in her urine and cracked up. There was the time I got a call that the dental college where I work had been hit by a tornado, which sent me into paroxysms. There was the time our cab nearly hit about 20 Chinese school children in Manhattan — their horrified little faces but an inch or two from my window. Hell, I’m still laughing about that.
Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG
Mercedes-Benz has introduced the SLS AMG, it’s reinterpretation of the iconic 300SL Gullwing.
newly discovered animals in Papua New Guinea
A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago.
Bonus weirdness newness, a striped possum. I don’t like possums.
Easter Island red hat mystery
Did you know the statues on Easter Island had red hats? Me either. And the picture in the article shows them unadorned. But, apparently, the mystery of the origins of the Easter Island red hats has been solved.
Dr. Sue Hamilton, of University College, London, said: “The hat quarry is inside the crater of an ancient volcano and on its outer lip. A third of the crater has been quarried away by hat production.”
Family values legislator
has a broad definition of family.
Dear Clusterflock
When have you laughed out loud in a completely inappropriate moment?
