tweet of the day
Lynch. Hair. Art.
HTMLGiant/The Painter (Jimmy Chen)
(Spot the Twombly)
(via kottke)
“The Wire” as a 19th Century Serialized Novel
Joy Delyria and Sean Michael Robinson have produced a brilliant satirical essay that re-imagines the acclaimed television series The Wire as a 19th-Century serialized novel. It’s wonderful, and will give you a reason to use the word “Dickensian” today.
Via Geekosystem
Thanks, @amandagt via @bittman, @kbittie, and @adevries18.
image out of context
who, what, when, where, why, and how
If you can handle the clunky — and dramatic! — reenactments, this archeological history of North America shows how people from Europe, and eventually Asia, met to populate the Americas — the Europeans arriving some 17,000 years ago across a giant ice bridge connecting the European and North American continents.
an oversimplification for the sake of observation
They don’t make cars any more, they just make references to a brand’s design language. And they don’t make movies any more, they just make references to genres.
a list of clusterflock animals
Donkey (about 504 results). Goat (about 1,040 results). Honey Badger (about 828 results). Platypus (about 15 results). Hyena (about 843 results).
Update: Squirrel. Possum. Raccoon.
Herzog and the cave
Video of the continuing adventures of Werner Herzog in pursuit of the transcendent is now available here.
Thom Yorke Does Surprise DJ Set in L.A.
Via Pitchfork
I’m sorry…
Danny started this tonight. I couldn’t help but play along.
In the sixties, my brother and I once owned an Allen Sherman album. We prided ourselves on memorizing the lyrics to his songs. At any given moment, I can pull this one out of memory. Danny’s heard me enough, he can pull most of it out himself.
Weird Al Yankovic don’t have nothing on Sherman.
I wish there were an “I’m sorry” category.
Amy said
I hate the word Corolla. You might as well be saying corn chip or rolly polly.
the lap of luxury
What IS a Hyaena?
Over the course of evolutionary time, the family Hyaenidae has contained roughly 100 different species, occupying a wide array of ecological niches. However, the vast majority of these species exist today only in the fossil record. Although most people think of hyenas as large, dog-like creatures with adaptations for cracking bones, this definition is inadequate because some extinct hyenas were much more like modern mongooses or civets than dogs, and many ancient forms had no special ability at all to crack bones. In fact, hyaenas are more closely related to cats than to dogs.
Overheard at the Archive
‘I was an R.A. on a disabled floor in college, and we all went to Chuck E. Cheese’s one day, there was a girl with us who was losing her sight. She saw the rat come out of the door holding his tail and said ‘If you keep playing with it you’ll go blind!’”
from the spam
Dog training is more about love, patience and esteem than it is about what type of collar you use. NO collar should ever be torture.
‘For people to be living in Texas 15,500 years ago, it means they had to be in other parts of North America even earlier’
Archaeologists at a Central Texas site have unearthed artifacts that the first humans arrived in North America roughly 2,500 years earlier than previously thought, raising questions about how they made it to the New World and what route they took to get here.
The artifacts found along a creek bed west of Salado by a Texas A&M University-led team date back as far as 15,500 years, more than 2,000 years before the Clovis people who were long believed to be the first humans in North America. The so-called Clovis people were named after a site found in 1930 near Clovis, N.M.
Known for their unique spearhead artifacts, the numerous Clovis artifacts were found over the last 80 years and showed they lived as far back as 13,100 years ago.
The article includes speculation about how people got here and the types of tools found.
BatMaddie
Maddie is a simple little creature, but she lets me put things on her head.
NOON 2011
Besides having a rather handsome hyena on the cover, the new NOON features fellow flocker Brandon Hobson (where is he these days anyway?) as well as Gary Lutz, Kim Chinquee, Christine Schutt & other usual suspects, as well as some new faces including my fellow Roman friend Chiara Barzini.
Chiara will be reading at the launch party with Brandon, and Diane Williams on May 5 in NYC.
I’d also like to take the opportunity to announce that Calamari Press will be publishing new books later this year by both Chiara Barzini and Gary Lutz, that will include these stories in NOON.
Dear movie watcher
via Amanda Mae in Google reader?
dear clusterflock
Okay, there’s Ms. Krabappel, and Dr. Spaceman. What other television names are there that rely on intentional mispronunciation as part of the gag?
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
The first in a series of posts where I tell you what television to watch.
Darkplace is presented as a lost classic: a horror television series produced in the 1980s, though never broadcast at the time. The presentation features commentary from many of the “original” cast, where characters such as Garth Marenghi (Matthew Holness) and Dean Learner (Richard Ayoade) reflect on making the show. Darkplace parodies numerous aspects of ’80s low-budget television, including fashion, special effects and music, as well as the widespread practice of including commentary tracks on DVD releases of old films and television shows.
All six episodes are available here to watch for free.
Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants
How can technology want anything? Kelly’s provocation is not as kooky as it seems. He does not claim that human-made artifacts—spoons, fax machines, iPads—have wants in the same way that human beings have wants. He argues, less crudely, that once we add all of these artifacts together, they acquire collective properties that may not be present in the artifacts themselves. Just like most of us tacitly accept the fact that markets may “want” things that are not wanted by any of the market participants, we should also entertain the possibility that Technology with a capital “T” may have wants that are not present in individual technologies. Kelly believes that “Technology” gives rise to a “network of self-reinforcing processes,” and is shot through with feedback loops, and exhibits a considerable degree of autonomy that is not present on the micro-level of individual technologies. To describe the macro level, the mechanized and electronic sphere of being composed of the entirety of technology, Kelly coins a new word: “the technium.” The technium is “the accumulation of stuff, of lore, of practices, of traditions, and of choices that allow an individual human to generate and participate in a greater number of ideas.”
From a much longer, and unfortunately gated, article on the transformational qualities of technology, and our role within it.
printing flying insects
The flapping wings of the hovering robotic insects (known as ornithopters) are very thin, lightweight and yet strong. Traditionally, the manufacturing process for these wings is time-consuming and a case of trial and error. However, advances in rapid prototyping have greatly expanded the possibilities for wing design, allowing wing shapes to replicate those of real insects or virtually any other shape. Furthermore, this can be done in minutes.
from the comments
Did you know that the original name for Pac-Man was Puck-Man? You’d think it was because he looks like a hockey puck but it actually comes from the Japanese phrase ‘Paku-Paku,’ which means to flap one’s mouth open and closed. They changed it because they thought Puck-Man would be too easy to vandalize, you know, like people could just scratch off the P and turn it into an F or whatever.
Update: quoting Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Alex Trebek Calls College Football Highlights
It’s kind of fractal, but when he starts speaking French it’s pretty good.
