Fare thee well, Jane Russell (1921-2011)
Ain’t there anyone here for love?
“Hold your lava, Vesuvius!”
Teen lingo, circa 1941:
A peek at the script turned up these gems, which Jane says are in the vocabulary of most any 15-year-old these days: “Hold your lava, Vesuvius!” (To a talkative friend). “There I was — with egg on my face!” (Describing embarrassment).
The Bee (Danville, Virginia), 27 Aug. 1941.
(Thanks, Allen.)
Not quite an image out of context.
What you’re looking at is the compressed image of every frame of Requiem For a Dream.
the first known photograph ever taken of a surfer
From 1890, so says Black and WTF.
The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
The new Mountain Goats’ album, All Eternals Deck, is streaming over at NPR.
Let’s Enhance
Thanks @sampotts via @hodgman.
from the archives: July 25, 2007
The loose-meat concept was introduced to clusterflock in 2007, when Michael Grant Smith declared that
I just want to eat moist crumbly sandwiches at a funky little joint that uses residential-style screen doors to block out houseflies and time.
and that What you need is a loose-meat sandwich.
The year 2008 saw a revival of the topic in the form of my Open Letter to Michael Grant Smith and Kathy Hilen-Smith and Kathy’s invitation to Join us at Maid-Rite.
In 10,000 years
Tyler Cowen on who will be famous in the future:
Otherwise, an individual, to stay famous, will have to securely symbolize an entire area, and an area “with legs” at that. The theory of relativity still will be true and it may well become more important. The computer and DNA will not be irrelevant. Hitler will remain a stand-in symbol for pure evil; if he is topped we may not have a future at all. Beethoven and Mozart still will be splendid, but Shakespeare and other wordsmiths will require translation and thus will fade somewhat. The propensity to truck and barter will remain and Smith will keep his role as the symbol of economics. Keynesian economics may someday be less true, as superior biofeedback, combined with markets in self-improvement, ushers in an era of flexible wages, while market-based expected nominal gdp targeting prevents a downward deflationary spiral.
tweet of the day
Japanese engineering at its . . . well, I’m not sure what you could use this for.
But it still looks pretty cool.
Andrew Capener, The A-1 Scrabble designer edition — proof of concept
The purpose of this project was to revive an old, but loved game: Scrabble. The idea was to excite people about typography by giving them the ability to choose what font their scrabble set would come in. The set would come in the font of your choice or with an assorted font pack. The scrabble board and interior box are made out of solid walnut, and the exterior box is made from birch. Each of the 6 board pieces is magnetized to fit together perfectly and each piece slides nicely into its respective slot in the box and is secured by interior magnets as well. The interior of the exterior box as well as the bottoms of the 6 board pieces are lined with cork, to protect them while in use.
(via @UrbanLatinLex)
Stephen Baker, Five Books
Stephen Baker, author of Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, talks about Watson and recommends five books — here, Darwin Among the Machines, by George Dyson:
Dyson is looking at the genesis of thinking machines. Well, machines that do something like thinking. He is really good on the history of computing. One of his early chapters covers Samuel Butler, who in the mid-19th century took a ship from London to New Zealand and set up a sheep farm there. He was on the other side of the world, both literally and figuratively, and yet, around 1860, a boat came into the harbour carrying a copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Butler read it, and it provoked him into some very interesting thoughts. Humans aren’t really evolving much physically: we have pretty much the same brains and bodies that people had in ancient times. Machines, on the other hand, are moving ahead very, very quickly. In other words, the evolution of humans is actually taking place through our tools. Our intellectual advance is going to be tied to our tools. He was thinking this when the telegraph was still very new, and the machines he was thinking about were steam engines. So for him to come to this conclusion was brilliant. He foresaw the age when we would create smart machines that would take cognitive leadership of the planet. Hopefully, the machines will be kind to us, the way we are to animals we care about….
from the comments
I built a really nice potato gun, it cost me about $200.00 to make and lots of hours to design and assemble, the whole thing took me the better part of last summer to tweak, and I still think it could use some improvements. A good example of autonomy and mastery for the purpose of making French fries at 400 mph.
from the comments
Nope, I’m wrong. Führer.
from the comments
It seems the only true science that can be done in this situation would be analogous to the Kon Tiki expedition. Rather than prove Polynesians were descended from a South American race, or some of them came from South America, Thor Heyerdahl proved it was possible it could happen, that the conditions were there. He built a raft under the same postulated conditions that these pre-Colombian South Americans did, then set afloat and indeed landed somewhere in polynesia. But he was never so arrogant to say this proved they came from South America, but only that it was possible. (Of course nowadays you could simply do a genetic analysis to determine this for certain, but since we don’t have a measurement or proof for consciousness then perhaps an experiment such as this is in order).
«Everyone experiences this, but no one knows the experiencer.»
More images & observations from Jaipur.
There are momentary flashes
when I like myself a little bit, and I just had one.
I did not realize until just now that the Oscar telecast is tonight.
A friend who has not seen Werner Herzog’s Stroszek is coming over to watch it.
Me and Stroszek over the Red Carpet promenade!
kittens inspired by kittens
I know this has made the rounds, but I happened to come across it this morning and it made me smile.
dear clusterflock
Favorite I hardly know her word.
from the comments
Cinthia, I contando you once, I contando you dos veces. Don’t you go no hablaing no pinche españito in mi casa. I got mi estandards.
headline of the day
Researchers convince people they have three arms — then threaten one with a knife
Inside Job
Inside Job does make a few cheesy rhetorical moves, but the case it proffers is compelling. It requires that those who bought into the conservative narrative in their early twenties (read: “Andrew Simone”) reassess their posture. This doesn’t mean, of course, buying into a liberal narrative necessarily, but it does mean recognizing our government, even now, is a Wall Street government.
The surprising truth about what motivates us.
The other day, I had a job interview with a local manufacturing company. During the interview, I was asked the simple question: “what motivates you?”
Oddly enough, my response was fairly close to what this video illustrates, but I hadn’t seen it yet. What do you guys think?
Dumbass Texan Spanish
Okay. Several weeks ago I added a new category–Dumbass Texan Spanish–thinking that y’all would be inspired to use it. “Build it and they will venir.” But, no–it has languised on the side bar, lonely and sad as a burro in a hail storm. I abred the goddamn puerta and nadia entrermos.
Here are some examples of how to use this category:
“Me gusta pussy.”
“Ho-zay, haga algunos corn dogs.”
“Loopy, put them flowers in otra vase.”
“Oh my god, Hay-sus, Billy’s ahogoing.”
Are you getting it?
Cats and pigeons, but not both at the same time.
A video demonstrating the effects of weightlessness on cats and pigeons.
