Dot
Shot with a Nokia N8 utilizing Cellscope technology.
(via)
The Cornfield: How to Hunt Deer in a Cornfield
Tip #1 from How to Hunt Deer in a Cornfield: “Corn Camouflage is a must!”
Did you know that deer have some of the sharpest eyes out of all creatures? The only thing deer have trouble seeing is scrambled colors. If you are hunting in a corn field I suggest you buy a light yellow camouflage suit and face mask. Check out your local sporting goods store to find these!
dear clusterflock
Which makes you happier, David Simon winning a genius grant or the Coen brothers remaking True Grit?
Kanye Jordan
If you put Liz Lemon in front of a Kanye tweet, you get Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock. If that makes sense, we watch the same television.
(via kottke)
I added a new category
A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.
Update: Should the category be no shit?
I must come from people who have a strong line of stomachs
William Kentridge’s Stereoscope
(thanks, Derek)
Kiss You Free
Dreams that won’t leave the room.
The dead people in our lives
I’ve lived here with Amy for almost a year now, and about as long when we were in college. In the years between we were in touch at least weekly. Still, today when I mentioned my late father making macaroni and cheese she said, “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever talked about him.”
That isn’t literally true, of course. She knows the circumstances surrounding his death and roughly where that fits in my life. She knows that when he was working he was an upholsterer. She knows that he was married to my mother until he died. She didn’t know (until today) about his macaroni and cheese. She doesn’t know that he could beat me in Mario Kart 64. She doesn’t know how much he loved learning even as an adult. Amy’s view of my father is a wireframe. Mine is a mural viewed from inches away, where only small pieces are in focus at a time.
All this is to say that I’ve been thinking about my hidden influences. Do you have some?
from the moderated comments
the table thing sucks and i hate the intro the whole thing before it says pa pa americano all that italian stuff it ruins the song
I’ll tell you what, you can learn a lot about your fellow citizens by editing the comments on a blog.
The Cornfield: The Chair
We are still waiting for Deron to get here, but we figure he may have run into some kind of construction delay en route. But we’ve got this one chair, and once he arrives, we can take turns using it.
quote out of context
One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals.
Sufjan Stevens, ‘The Age Of Adz’
Sufjan’s recent work captures the spirit of his earliest albums, like Enjoy Your Rabbit and A Sun Came! with the production values and choral character of Illinois. NPR pegs it:
The Age of Adz opens with “Futile Devices” (is that a nod to his trademark sound up to now?), a relatively spare track that would fit alongside much of Stevens’ earlier work. But the album takes a whiplash turn on the second cut with “Too Much,” a regret-filled love letter layered with so many swirling electronics and drum machines, it sounds more like something from an Animal Collective record. The nine tracks that follow are equally and magnificently orchestrated, showing an inspired artist deconstructing his sound and rebuilding it with grace and flair. And while the mix is unexpected, Stevens retains his gift for crafting songs that are both epic and intimate. The Age of Adz may be a challenge for some longtime fans, but it’s also more mysterious and less precious than anything Stevens has made up to now. Stevens has always pushed beyond the staid conventions of pop and rock music, and even if he’s given up the “states” project, it’s refreshing to see that he still loves the art of sonic adventure.
However, if it’s honestly “a challenge for some longtime fans,” then they haven’t been listening to his music close enough. The Age of Adz is a completely logical extension of his oeuvre and you should go listen without demanding a reiteration of an already perfect song. Sufjan gets it, at least: don’t mess with great, go make more good.
The Phantom Skill
Wil tweeted this last week, I think, but I thought it deserved a post. James McMullan is an author and artist who will be blogging weekly at the New York Times about the process of drawing.
The first few columns of this series on drawing that I’m initiating this week will offer a primer on the basic elements of line-making, perspective, structure and proportion, which I hope will begin to rekindle the love of drawing for those readers who left it behind in the 4th grade. Achieving some confidence in drawing objects will get you started in the pleasure of this activity, and give you the basis for moving on to drawing figures.
Here’s a William Kentridge drawing he points to at the end of the article:
from the spam
How can I consider in God when only last week I received my tongue caught within the roller of an electrical typewriter?
meta scientific news
It’s absolutely spot on:
In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.
In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.
If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.
This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like “the scientists say” to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist.
Song a day: Lucy Foley, It’s A Tangle
My debut album, Copenhagen, is out this Friday, folks! So I’ve decided to feature a song from the album every day here, kind of like an NPR ‘First Listen’ but right here on Clusterflock, goddammit.
This is an album of very personal songs, most of which I began to write and record while living in Copenhagen between December 2003 and June 2007. Probably influenced by Hans Christian Anderson, whose grave I cycled past regularly, but also the Grimm brothers’ style of storytelling, many of these songs have a dark fairy tale mood. I call it ‘art pop’.
Copenhagen is drawn from a wide array of influences including Talking Heads, Astrud Gilberto, Kurt Weill, Ambitious Lovers, Motown, Blondie and klezmer. I recorded it in New York with the brilliantly talented Ross Bonadonna.
Today’s featured song is the opening song from the album. It’s called It’s A Tangle. And here it is.
how to eat at an indian buffet
Now, once you’re at the restaurant and have been seated here, follow a game-plan. Stick to the water; don’t order any beverages off the menu. Scan the buffet area and commit all the dishes to memory. Then go back to your table, look at the menu and identify which entrées are the most expensive to order à la carte. It is inconsequential whether you like these entrées or not. The purpose of eating at a buffet is to get the most value for money by selectively feeding the face with the most expensive dishes. As a general rule, avoid the rice, samosas (and other fried food), raita, and dal.
Richard Serra in Storage
The piece — five plates, about one and a half stories high — is not displayed for public view or assembled as Mr. Serra intended. It stands behind a raggedy chain-link fence while a stray black-and-white cat stands watch. Cranes and falling-down sheds surround it. It has sat there for years, waiting to be delivered to its owner, said Joe Vilardi of Budco Enterprises, a Long Island rigging company that placed the steel in the Bronx lot and has long worked with Mr. Serra.
thanks, mom
The woman told police she saw her mother-in-law enter her bedroom, turn on a light and leave. When the woman went into the room later, she found two rings missing, one of which was her gold wedding ring, according to the report.
Later, the woman received a text message from her mother-in-law stating she has a “few sacks of weed,” the report stated. The woman told police she believes her mother-in-law sold the rings at a pawnshop to purchase the marijuana and mistakenly sent her the text message.
image out of context
the subjective experience of orgasms
An early study of orgasms suggested women and men report the subjective experience of orgasms in much the same way.
But when Holstege tested women, he found something surprising. Much more so than men’s brains, female brains go mysteriously silent during orgasm. In particular, the left lateral orbitofronal cortex and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, areas involved in self-control and social judgment, respectively, are deactivated. Brain activity also fell in the amygdala, suggesting a similar, albeit more drastic, drop in vigilance and emotion as in men. “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings,” Holstege was quoted as saying.
Further:
Komisaruk’s research suggests another way that women’s brains are different than men’s when it comes to sex: some women can “think themselves off”—induce orgasm without any physical stimulation. This special talent, he says, comes from the fact that “when women think about their finger being stimulated, or they think about their toe being stimulated, or they think about their clitoris being stimulated, or their nipple, the corresponding part of the body, the representation of it in the sensory cortex…is actually activated just as if they are really being stimulated physically.”
Rub it in.
headline of the day
Segway company owner dies after rolling into river
one greyhound bus, one motocross jump
from the comments
All their exits a stage, and all their entrances, and one many parts. All the women men men men and all the many parts. All the many plays man in his time plays many players; they have the women merely plays man in his time plays many parts.
