headline of the day
Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world
image out of context
(via marginal revolution)
from the moderated comment spam
Slam dunkin like Shaquille O’Neal, if he wrote informative airctles.
Update:
Way to go on this essay, hleeped a ton.
from the comments
Fluffernutter.
cinemetrics
Graphic designer and creative coder Frederic Brodbeck has analyzed movies to create a visual “fingerprint” for them, analyzing information such as editing structure, color, speech or motion and transforming them into graphic representations that can be compared side by side.
headline of the day
Naked Man Rescued from Missouri River Wanted to Float to Library of Congress
photo out of context
unintentionally creepy web ad
dear clusterflock
Are there genres of sandwich?
Natsumi Hayashi’s levitation photos
These photos of Japanese photographer Natsumi Hayashi have made the rounds, but if you haven’t seen them, they are a lot of fun to look at.
From her bio:
Lives in Tokyo with two cats.
Photographs mainly levitating self-portraits (and cats not levitating).
(thanks, Andrew)
the science of crop circles
Physicist Richard Taylor speculates that crop circle artists may be incorporating technology to aid in the ever increasing complexity of their circles.
According to Taylor, physics could potentially hold the answer, with crop-circle artists possibly using the Global Positioning System (GPS) as well as lasers and microwaves to create their patterns, dispensing with the rope, planks of wood and bar stools that have traditionally been used.
Microwaves, Taylor suggests, could be used to make crop stalks fall over and cool in a horizontal position — a technique that could explain the speed and efficiency of the artists and the incredible detail that some crop circles exhibit.
Indeed, one research team claims to be able to reproduce the intricate damage inflicted on crops using a handheld magnetron, readily available from microwave ovens, and a 12 V battery.
from the comments
I love that her wiki page describes her genre of music as “sandwich making music.”
tweet of the day
possible liquid water on Mars
Scientists have found evidence of flowing salt water on steep Martian slopes, which if confirmed would be the first discovery of active liquid water on the red planet, NASA has said.
“We have found repeated and predictable evidence suggesting water flowing on Mars,” Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration program, told reporters.
The US space agency said the orbiter circling Mars since 2006 had monitored numerous instances of what appeared to be water flows occurring in several locations during the Martian spring and summer.
from the comments
SC:
I haven’t met anyone under 30 who has read Gershon Legman. I’d put him in my top 100, maybe my top 50. Every now and then someone–most recently Larry McMurtry–goes on about the forgotten Legman but he’s mostly just forgotten. Half the people over 30 who do know about him haven’t read him, they just know him as the inventor of the vibrating dildo or connect him with origami. All of his major work is out of print, as far as I can tell. The two most expensive Legman books on ABE right now are: Oragenitalism: An Encyclopaedic Outline of Oral Technique in Genital Excitation and The Limerick, 1700 Examples, with Notes, Variants and Index. Love and Death: A Study in Censorship, a short book of essays, is a good Legman starting place and, I’d argue, a book everyone should read. However, Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor is his finest (partially published) work. It’s not too hard to find the Indiana University Press press reprint of the first volume of Rationale but, as the title suggests, its appeal is limited to people interested in dirty jokes and, really, who likes dirty jokes?
quote out of context
And he just says, “Ellie, what are you doing? Come on, now. You can’t beat the Mother Superior right here in the middle of the church. Here. Sit down.”
from the comments
I guess the whole idea of needing to be apologetic about enjoying something is absurd on the face of it. The need says more about social conventions (and traps) than it does about the works being read. I guess experienced readers talking to other experienced readers often want to establish a sense of community by pushing works away as much as by pulling works in. But this is as much a mask as it is an invitation. Are there fictional worlds we should feel ashamed of enjoying? If so, the most ridiculous fiction to be named would be the one we make when we deny our actual affections. The adventure story, for instance, is a genre lost to the days of “men’s magazines.” But who is not still caught up instantly by the tale of a person (any person) who must take an inventory of personal qualities and abilities, and apply them with courage and hope to a hugely problematic and unexpected circumstance? Really, anything that gets my heart rate up and makes me see things anew is welcome by me. A story doesn’t have to do everything it’s possible for a story to do in order to be great.
Gucci Gucci – Kreayshawn
I don’t think that any of you will like or understand this, so no hard feelings, but this is so in my cathedral (I don’t do wheelhouses) I can hardly stand it.
I like to imagine the undertone is “One big room, full of sandwiches.” But the absolute best part is her sidekick, ‘Lil Debbie. My friend Jon described her as the human equivalent of a handbag, simply an accessory.
quote out of context
Swan says she didn’t smell anything odd when she dipped her hand into the substance.
Dear clusterflock
Best book you’ve read that nobody has ever heard of?
headline of the day
NM Mayor: I Was Quite Drunk When I Signed Those $1 Million Contracts
tweet of the day
A Talk with Blaine Dunlap
In March [Unfair Park] screened one of the greatest films made in or about Dallas, director Blaine Dunlap’s 1973 Sometimes I Run, about Stanley Maupin, who worked for the city’s Public Works Department flushing downtown’s streets in the wee small hours of the morning. Some Friends of Unfair Park said they’d seen it before, in high school long ago or in a sociology class at SMU. For most, though, the blue-tinted black-and-white short was brand new, a riveting revelation — 21 minutes’ worth of downbeat cinéma vérité, Pennebaker rolling with the Public Works Department as his leading man played country Kerouac.
And a couple of weeks ago, Unfair Park’s Robert Wilonsky published this feature on my dear long-time friend Blaine: Sometimes I Direct: A Talk With Blaine Dunlap, Who Once Captured Dallas Better Than Anyone.
dream name
Elver Headlight.
more on the D.B. Cooper hijacking case
Since I posted the latest speculation in the D.B. Cooper hijacking case, a mother and daughter have come forward with what they say, and the FBI believes, is credible information about who Cooper really was.
Marla Cooper recently came forward to the FBI with evidence that she believes proves that her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper is the famed D.B. Cooper, the man hijacked and threatened to blow up a commercial plane flying to Seattle in 1971, then parachuted to the ground with $200,000 in hand.
Her mother, Grace Hailey, told ABC News that she doesn’t remember much about that Thanksgiving in 1971 where her brother-in-law returned to the house in Sisters, Oregon, but she believes he could be the hijacker. Hailey’s statements are one reason why the FBI thinks the tip from Marla Cooper is credible.
“I’ve always had a gut feeling it was L.D.,” Hailey told ABC News. “I think it was more what I didn’t know is what made me suspicious than what I did know, because whenever the topic came up it immediately got cut off again.”
Update: Amanda posted on the case a year ago.
