Right now, we have 100,000 people on the wait list
I remember when I thought the American political system was a legitimate battle of ideas.
quote out of context
If you get killed by a rock and you were carrying a gun, but didn’t shoot, you don’t get into heaven.
The Smurfette Principle
via Drew
Home Taping is Killing Music
This is Fermi 2
Sounds like a Muppet name, doesn’t it?
Last week I drove to Michigan on business south of Detroit and saw these cooling towers in the near distance. I’ve seen them from I-75 before, but they always seemed so far off the highway. I was mesmerized, couldn’t get close enough. I asked the nice man at the gate if I could drive closer to take pictures and he said, “you can drive to those pylons up ahead and make a u-turn and get on outta here.” He didn’t say it, but “little Missy” was implied by his tone of voice.
The first Fermi reactor (Fermi 1) suffered a partial meltdown and a release of radiation in 1966 during a test run. Engineers were able to intervene and contain the radiation, but the accident caused quite a scare and even prompted some officials to initially consider evacuating portions of southeastern Michigan, including the city of Detroit. Fermi 1 finally began operating again in 1970, but shut down for good in 1972.
But everything’s okay now!
NOON
quote out of context
When I… see the homeless, like, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, they’re pulling out, like, crazy looks and they, like, pull shit out of like garbage cans.
(via marginal revolution)
Hey, the absinthe was free.
People who had come expecting a[n Animal Collective] concert (despite the Guggenheim’s advance description of the event as a “kinetic, psychedelic environment”) chattered, drank complimentary absinthe cocktails, grew annoyed and left well before the nearly three hours were over.
Hey bitches
From here.
photo out of context
(via marginal revolution)
from the comments
Lucy:
I think those people wanted to go to bed together and have stilted, regretful sex with Greatest Wagner Arias playing in the background on a poor quality mini HiFi system, surrounded by pictures of their relatives in freemasonry costumes (they themselves would be wearing chicken outfits without quite understanding why). Perhaps they will, now that they are emailing privately.
state of the union
Hate to tell you that blacks were not allowed into combat intell 1947, that fact. World War II ended in 1945. So all that feel good, one black man killing two dozen Nazi, is just that, PC bull.
photo out of context
In the Boom Boom Room
In order to pierce the crust of Dallas, Texas subcultures, it helps to know someone who grew up here.
quote out of context
I have tried to show that, just as sex made biological evolution cumulative, so exchange made cultural evolution cumulative and intelligence collective, and that there is therefore an inexorable tide in the affairs of men discernible beneath the chaos of their actions.
The New New York Phil Logo
I showed it to my web designer and he looked like somebody hat opened the Arc of the Covenant. I mean, look at the M! Look at the W! This is really some entry-level Adobe™ Illustrator put-text-on-a-line shit right there. But what I like about it is that you can tell that somebody hunched over a desk really loving on that W. Somebody really cared for that H, and its busted twin. Somebody manipulated that raggedy-ass K by hand and somebody else walked by the desk and said, “good work, team!” It’s touching, in its way.
this unique 18-minute genre has its own requirements
From a Wired article on how to ace a TED Talk:
“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.
Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.
If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.
Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”
“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
Largely why I was hated in high school
Phil once asked somthing like “is there a photo of yourself you wouldn’t show someone?” This would be it, if I were showing it. The dude on the left was my neighbor to the north of our house in the background. We shared a driveway.
Dear Clusterflock
Today I quit on an online survey concerning a “buying experience”; the only reason I was doing it was because it kept popping up in my mail and taking it seemed the quickest way to make it go away. But I came to a question that pissed me off and made me delete the whole thing. It asked me to indicate my “position” in my household: was I the Head of household? The spouse of the Head of household? A dependent of the Head of household? and so on. Do you find yourself thinking as I do that the whole notion of there necessarily being A head of household is archaic? In my view, the whole thing smacks of that Southern Baptist insistence that women “submit” to the will of their husbands, which I find to be one of many reprehensible notions they espouse. Can’t we get past the whole Command Structure thing? Is this just me going off, or do you have feeling about this?
sausage fingers
In Korea, sales of a snack sausage increase by almost 40%* in the winter as iPhone users utilize the sausage as a stylus in order to avoid removing their gloves.
*I was unable to locate a link to an English language website confirming the story but it appears to be real (I think this is a Korean news site).
via Byron at Bike Hugger
The McItaly
Italy’s agricultural minister has endorsed — and faces criticism for endorsing — a McItaly burger made with Italian beef, Asiago cheese and artichoke spread.
On the McItaly’s promotional material is a seal saying “Under the patronage of” the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry — a highly coveted government endorsement that is more often seen on museum exhibits and cultural initiatives than fast-food containers.
The death of Jermyn Street
I had just settled in my easy chair when a key turned in the lock and a nattily-dressed man in his 60s let himself in. He held a bottle of Teachers’ scotch under his arm. He walked to the sideboard, took a glass, poured a shot, and while filling it with soda from the siphon, asked me, “Fancy a spot?”
“I’m afraid I don’t drink,” I said.
“Oh, my.”
This man sat on my sofa, lit a cigarette, and said, “I’m Henry.”
“Am I…in your room?”
“Oh, no, no, old boy! I’m only the owner. I dropped in to say hello.”
This was Henry Togna Sr. He appears in a Dickens novel I haven’t yet read. I’m sure of it. He appeared in my room almost every afternoon when I stayed at the Eyrie Mansion.
—Roger Ebert, “I met a character from Dickens,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 5, 2010
(Via @davidmoldawer)
The Karaoke Murders
From this morning’s NY Times:
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Brilliant offbeat journalism.
Edith Heath on Martha Stewart, 1989 — the materials should tell the story
I love Heath’s beautiful work. I’ll be linking to Florence Knoll and Eva Zeisel over the next few days.
Trailer for El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1970)
The strangest movie I’d recommend?
Allen Klein presents an ABKCO Film.