Built To Spill – Ancient Melodies Of The Future
Yesterday was high school, today it’s college. I never get tired of the album’s first track, Strange.
[http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/01-Strange.mp3] Download
iwearyourshirt.com
“I made about $83,000 this year.”
Lucretian Joy
I use the phrase all the time and assumed it was in popular culture, but googling seems to imply otherwise. It comes from Lucretius’ De rerum natura, a worthy read for those into deterministic, Roman nihilism. The scene, as I remember it, is set on top of a cliff overlooking a bloody sea battle. Lucretius argued that a person takes pleasure in not being on the ship massacred, this is Lucretian Joy. This is subtly different from schadenfreude which, in the case of this story, would be delight in the death of those on the war ship.
Has anybody else encountered this, or is it a Simone-ism? And, if you have, is my memory correct about the story?
Update: It’s in the beginning of book II (thanks, Dale)
For Kelsey
McSweeney’s Newspaper
It really looks gorgeous.
The long arrows are becoming fashionable
spam names
Nanette Bergeron
Mr. Zhao Yao
Gretchen Sinclair
positive use for HIV
French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence. The surprise ingredient: They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn’t cause AIDS, and then used it to carry in the healthy new gene.
from the irony
By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care.
Grab & Go from Apple
In one embodiment of the invention, a “Grab & Go” iPhone application could be used to allow users to transfer such content as files and open browser windows from a desktop Mac or other device.
song I woke singing
35 years later
A Volkswagen van stolen from a Spokane upholstery shop in 1974 has been found in a shipping container in Los Angeles.
“Now it’s probably worth 27 grand,” he said. “It’s a beautiful van.”
Wikipedia
Oddly, I have never edited a single entry in my life:
Wikipedians are 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, and around 70 percent of them are under the age of 30.
It’s a bear
It just went bald.
Google Dashboard
The Incompetence of American Airlines
via Waxy
Weezer – El Scorcho
I relive high school whenever I hear this tune.
Graffiti
When I first started thinking about photography, I bought a little Panasonic point and shoot and set about taking pictures.
Graffiti is a series of photographs in which images or objects are laid upon photographs from the art, design, and fashion worlds or in which photographs from the art, design, and fashion worlds are manipulated before being photographed.
Because the costs of digital — and the subject matter I chose — were so low, I ended up taking a lot of photographs.
Last week, I forced myself to look through them in order to evaluate which I thought were the best.
Below you’ll find what I kept. One is very not safe for work and the quality of all of them, of course, is left to your judgment. I present them as a result of an experiment.
blast from the past
Recent tremors in the Midwest may be aftershocks from earthquakes that occurred 200 years ago.
The New Madrid Earthquakes, which struck between December 1811 and February 1812, are some of the strongest seismic events ever to occur in the contiguous United States in recorded history. The largest quake is estimated to have been 8.0 in magnitude and was powerful enough to temporarily make the Mississippi River flow backwards. The heart of the seismic activity was near the town of New Madrid, Missouri, close to the Kentucky and Tennessee borders.
Last night
Vacuuming mosquitoes.
William Shatner reads Levi Johnston’s tweets
A press release from PRKA
Last Thursday, my organization, People Reluctant To Kill for an Abstraction, orchestrated an overwhelming show of force around the globe.
At precisely 9 in the morning, working with focus and stealth, our entire membership succeeded in simultaneously beheading no one. At 10, Phase II began, during which our entire membership did not force a single man to suck another man’s penis. Also, none of us blew himself/herself up in a crowded public place. No civilians were literally turned inside out via our powerful explosives. In addition, at 11, in Phase III, zero (0) planes were flown into buildings.
The ending is the best. (via)
WHOOMPH!
via Austin Kleon
moral grey areas
Chad Sapieha noticing an important game mechanic in Dragon Age: Origins:
What is new is how so little of it is black and white. There’s no morality meter, no dark or light side leanings; just people, their actions, and the consequences of those actions.
In fact, even if you want to do the right (or wrong) thing you may find it difficult to recognize it when it comes along. While trying to convince a stubborn dwarf that he should help defend a village from invading ghouls I tried to intimidate him a bit to get him to see reason. He attacked my party. My guys defended themselves, and before I knew it had slain the dwarf and his friends. It felt wrong, and I wished I would have tried some other avenue of persuasion, but it was too late. Still, it’s scenes like this that might make the world of Dragon Age Bioware’s most realistic yet.
I am about five hours into the game, I’m trying to be a good fellow, and I have still done, at least, four things that I know I am going to regret later. If the game is able to consistently and organically keep this up, then we have a serious contender for the legitimization of the game as successful interact story.*
*”Legitimization” does not necessarily mean “Oscar worthy,” then again “Oscar worthy” doesn’t necessarily mean “legitimate” either.**
**Rocky instead of Taxi Driver
Bats Find Fellatio Beneficial
I wish I could take credit for the title.
Intriguingly, the female lowered her head to lick the male penis during 14 of 20 copulations recorded on video. The licking typically went on for some 19 seconds, or roughly one-twelfth the average time of copulation. The male never withdrew from the female when she performed fellatio.
The researchers found the longer the fellatio went on, the longer the bats often had sex, with each second of licking adding roughly six extra seconds of copulation. The bats spent almost twice as long copulating when oral sex was involved than when not.
“It was difficult to provide some hypotheses for the function of the fellatio behavior,” Zhang said. “We held many meetings to discuss the functions.”
