from the archives: June 26, 2008
Turns out they are strange animals:
Sneezing that is nothing to worry about:
Did you know that goats use the sneeze sound as an alarm? They use a sneeze to warn each other of danger (be it actually real or imagined). Young goats sneeze as part of their play. If you watch your goats you will begin to notice their use of the sneeze sound.
Goats sneeze sometimes when you give them alfalfa hay. Who knows why? It’s just their way of saying “I like alfalfa!”
“Where’s my rubber chicken?’
A rubber chicken is a replica of a completely plucked but otherwise complete barnyard fowl made from a latex injection mold. A popular sight gag and slapstick comedy prop, rubber chickens are sometimes used by comics as a mock weapon. They are also sometimes used by jugglers in place of clubs. The origin of the rubber chicken is obscure, but is likely a natural change of the use of pig bladders. In the days before the development of plastic and latex, bladders were inflated and attached to a stick. They were used as props by jesters and minstrels for the same comic effects as the modern rubber chicken.
(Even if it does involve covering one eye to flatten everything.)
Rob Giampietro and Frank Chimero discuss artistic, personal, and collective identity:
The artist changed from a capable set of hands able to express what is seen into a lens able to capture what is perceived through their own point of view. And even now, a large part of how we access the quality of the art of others (whether pop music, painting, design, or writing) could be said to be an assessment of the artist’s individual way of seeing the world.
(thanks, Luke)
comment out of context
Usage determines meaning. In the same way, a “glaivester” is a large dildo used by white supremacist men who think about anal sex all the time.
emigre font catalogs as downloadable PDFs
Emigre’s award winning type specimen catalogs are now available as downloadable PDF files. Many have been long out of print and some have reached collector item status. So if you haven’t received these in the past, or have lost your copy, here is your opportunity to receive these beautifully designed type catalogs delivered directly to your computer for immediate typographic perusal.
I’ve wanted the Cholla one for a long time.
tweet of the day
my current desktop
of Twitter trends, my interests, Tony Romo, and Stephen Hawking
This is probably a little too ‘things I’m interested in’, but The Dallas Cowboys lost Sunday night after being up 17 points in the fourth quarter. Something that hasn’t happened in like 240 games. Since the meltdown, there has been a #quarterbacksbetterthanromo Twitter trend. A few of the best I’ve seen: Stephen Hawking, Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, and the guy who threw his shoes at Bush.
(thanks, Aaron)
Amazon and Boston Globe redesigns
Amazon and The Boston Globe have recently redesigned their sites, and while I haven’t thought about it long enough to make any substantial observations, I do see a similar openness and brightness in each of the new designs. Amy mentioned that Target recently went through a redesign as well, but their site appears to be down this morning, so I haven’t been able to see how it compares. Also, not everyone seems to be seeing the new Amazon design, so maybe they are rolling it out in phases.
Update: If you’re not seeing the redesigned Amazon, this is what it looks like.
headline of the day
Humans and Neanderthals had sex, but not very often
if this then that
I’ve only played with it a minute, but on Sunday Robin Sloan posted about ifttt which is a cool little service that will link multiple online services. It’s simple and genius.
In his post Robin said it was still invite only but I had no problem just walking on over and signing up. That said, I now have 5 invites if you have any trouble signing up and want to give it a try, just drop a line in the comments and I’ll share.
(Im)possible Chicagos is a series of hallucinatory joyrides through one hundred and twenty five asynchronous Chicagos.
Alexander Trevi‘s first joyride through (Im)possible Chicago traversed Acer Necropolis.
Trevi recently completed his nineteenth, wherein:
At night when you’re out driving, you can tell which neighborhood you’re in by the light of the streetlamps, because each ward basks in its own different hue. For instance, if the streets are all aglow in azurite, you’re definitely joy riding around Marquette Park.
Zoning codes require that windows are tinted according to the neighborhood’s chromatic identity, so no matter how the interiors are lighted, houses, skyscrapers and 7-Elevens do not give off wayward wavelengths.
Even your car lights beam out the same color. But when you cross over into another ward, they instantaneously switch filter to match that ward’s assigned spectrum.
from the comments
Erica: Once you’ve fried my slice of cake, could I trouble you to impale it on a stick?
Understanding Soulja Boy’s lyrics
You may have heard about Soulja Boy’s insult to the FBI and military. Here’s an entertaining and informative breakdown of what’s going on in that song. If you haven’t been to RapGenius, it really is rather impressive. Recommended for fans of Ulysses and footnotes.
Not a spam name, but a genuine listserv name
that set me pondering the wonders of inversion. Is he “Dickson Chigariro” or “Chigariro Dickson”?
clusterflock, five years in
When I first started clusterflock, the idea was to gather a smallish group with varied and somewhat overlapping interests who could speak from expertise and point to fascination. I’m still surprised, and pleased, at the community we have become, and look forward to hearing more about the things we know intimately, and the things we find that demand attention.
tweet of the day
Why is it that how people perceive themselves to be seen should have such a profound influence?
So Chochinov tried to answer those questions. As a psychiatrist at the University of Manitoba in Canada, he did study after study trying to tease out exactly what troubled people most about dying. What he found was that what people found most assaulting and annihilating was this idea that who they were would completely cease to exist after their death. And so Chochinov decided to do something about it.
He could have set the Guinness World Record for people who wanted to kill him
The story of Edgar Valdez, aka La Barbie, an American citizen who rose to the top of one of Mexico’s prominent drug cartels.
Like many Texans, Barbie grew up right across the border from Mexico, in the city of Laredo. The place feels like something from a Mexican postcard, with cobblestone plazas and picturesque waterfalls – except for the massive, multilane bridge to Mexico that cuts straight through town. Until the drug war, everyone in Laredo saw the two sides of the border as one; many families, after all, had blood ties in both Mexico and the States. As a kid, Barbie loved to visit Nuevo Laredo, a border town bustling with donkeys, food carts, girls in little embroidered dresses, shoeshine boys and the smell of roasting corn. It was like stepping into another world, and all you had to do was cross the bridge.
In high school, Barbie was in the popular crowd, horsing around in the breezeways outside of class and waging egg wars after school. On weekends, he went to keggers on ranches, played elaborate scavenger games and hung out with his steady sweetheart, Virginia Perez, a bubbly, blue-eyed blonde. He grew up in a middle-class development on the outskirts of Laredo, a kind of no man’s land where Burger Kings didn’t begin to sprout up until the Nineties. Even the people of Laredo considered it “Indian territory,” an area rife with dope and illegal immigrants. Barbie’s parents raised him and his five siblings in a tidy, orange-trimmed home with palm trees in the front. “They’re regular Ozzie and Harriets,” says Jose Baeza, a spokesman for the Laredo police department. “They’re business owners, PTA, morning-jog people.”
Here’s a link to the printer friendly version.
(via the browser)
from the spam
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
from the comments
Dan:
I guess calzones are for selfish people.
Know Your Rights: Photographers
The ACLU has put together a guide of your current rights as a photographer. I say current, because some of the concepts are in flux, and some states have odd differentiations between photography and videography (in the latter, regulating the audio portion under statutes for wiretapping).
Previously, on clusterflock: It feels like someone posted something on photographers’ rights, or lack there of, recently. If that rings a bell, let me know in comments, and I’ll make the link.
coming out of sleep
Arrested for farting.
Sweet Emma – I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jellyroll
I am transfixed.
mile high club?
Flight 623, with 116 passengers on board, landed without incident in Detroit after the crew reported that two people were spending an unusual amount of time in a bathroom, Frontier spokesman Peter Kowalchuck said.
Update: This just “in.”
