Even Ancient Men Seemed to Like Their Man Caves
I didn’t know whether to go with a headline of the day or a quote out of context with this one, so you get both. Which means, I guess, you get neither.
“This is strong and beautiful science,” Laitman said. “It at least is giving us a glimpse that some of the behaviors we see today have roots going into the past. It may well be in our lineage that [males] liked their man caves.”
Dallas
Carrollton man crashes, undresses, dies in second of two accidents in Far North Dallas
Man found dead in South Dallas pond after using drugs, talking about walking on water
(thanks, Patrick)
dream name
Austin Derwatt.
Re-winding A Clockwork Orange
Ed and Mike and a few others and I drove to Houston to see A Clockwork Orange when it looked as though it would not be shown In Dallas.
Watching Clockwork that afternoon was one of the most painful aesthetic experiences I’ve endured. And Kubrick’s film remains one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.
AA Bondy – Rapture, Sweet Rapture
I’ve been singing this all day.
Not all remakes are bad, but . . .
what were they thinking?
This remake of The Thin Man?
Honestly, I don’t believe that remakes are by definition bad. I’ll take the 1954 “A Star Is Born” over the 1937 original. (We won’t even speak of the 1976 version.)
But William Powell? And Myrna Loy? Asta? You just know the champagne will be flat this time around.
I hate to be an old spoilsport, but it feels like bad aesthetic judgment to me.
Sit down. Shut up. (I’ve done this before — and some audiences actually laughed.)
Brian Beatty in Minnesota Playlist on how and why he does what he does:
Poetry entered my stand-up sets because I wanted to up the “snob” factor of my stage persona, to increase the comedic tension.
Precession of the Equinoxes
The thing that caused everyone to freak out because their astrological signs had changed is one of the more fascinating stories in the history of intellectual evolution. That thing is called precession of the equinoxes, and precession is one of those phenomena that is simultaneously invisible and obvious, observable and hidden.
Let’s start with the technicalities and move to the history of it.
In astronomy, axial precession is a gravity-induced, slow and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body’s rotational axis. In particular, it refers to the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth’s axis of rotation, which, like a wobbling top, traces out a pair of cones joined at their apices in a cycle of approximately 26,000 years. The term “precession” typically refers only to this largest secular motion; other changes in the alignment of Earth’s axis — nutation and polar motion — are much smaller in magnitude.
So, precession is essentially the planetary equivalent of the wobble in a top as it spins.
If you carve the horizon into twelve roughly equivalent sections, each year, at the equinoxes, the sun will appear to rise in one and set in its opposite. Because of the wobble in the axis of the earth, the section of the sky the sun appears to rise and set in will shift very slowly over a period of roughly 2,160 years. This is the basis of astrology, as various civilizations applied meaning to the constellations they saw in each section. More interestingly, I think, our tracking of it appears to be the basis of astronomy.
To begin to notice that tracking takes time. To fully understand the cycle, and be able to project it forwards and backwards, to mark the passage of time in the relative movement of the stars, would take hundreds, if not thousands, of years — observation, measurement, notation. Once a culture had an awareness of that pattern, no matter on what scale, it could begin to find a place for itself, and make a story out of it, and because we are human, of course, that is what we did.
If you are interested in this subject, and are comfortable with an approach equal parts academic and poetic, you might enjoy Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechen’s Hamlet’s Mill. It shows glimpses of precession’s possible influence throughout the history of art, an astronomical code for our place in the universe embedded in language.
from the spam
Skeptics wonder: Was Uncle Ben the real owner of the rice organization, was Betty Croker the real owner or just a face for any brand?
Shroud of Turin replica coming to Galena
During Holy Week, St. Matthew Lutheran Church will present a full-size replica of the Shroud of Turin, accurate to the smallest detail. Measuring 14.5 feet by four feet, and printed on fabric from the most accurate color photographs of the Shroud ever taken.
ABC, he told advertisers, was getting younger viewers than CBS and NBC, which meant that advertisers with products appealing to that segment would be wise to buy time on ABC
The age and sex demographics tracked almost exclusively for television by the Nielsen ratings have almost no correlation to revenue generated by advertising.
How lousy are age and sex for targeting ad buys? “Essentially invalid,” said Poltrack. “There is no link, none, between the age of the specified demographic delivery of the campaign and the sales generated by that campaign.” According to Ad Age, Nielsen executives at the convention reported that “ratings demographics by age and sex had a… 0.12 correlation with actual sales produced by exposure to TV ads, where 1.0 is complete correlation and 0 signals no relationship whatsoever.” Zero-point-one-two! You’d do better using a Ouija board than Nielsen demos.
Slippery Pete
Scientific name:
Macrochelys temminckiiNotes:
Slippery Pete was 115 lbs. He gave Chuck and I a scrap.
(thanks, India)
tweet of the day
from the comments
I hope that the midget who was into conspiracy theories is still at that one library where I worked for a while.
quote out of context
Pelham, Mirenberg and Jones (2002) found that the names Jerry, Dennis and Walter were the 39th, 40th, and 41st most frequent male names in the 1990 census (moreover the absolute frequency of (Jerry+Walter)/2 was almost identical to that of Dennis). But in a nationwide search they found 482 dentists named Dennis but just 257 named Walter, and 270 named Jerry, a highly statistical significant difference. Hence the meme was born, “Dennis is more like to be a Dentist.”
from the archives: March 18, 2010
Damn, this was fine.
Like you’d expect, it started out good and the comments made it all more betterer.
searching for the house of Ruben Bustes
Daryl, Sheila and I saw something today we think is the setting for a story. Driving through an old Oak Cliff neighborhood, looking for the house of Ruben Bustes (that’s a story in itself), we came across a one story ranch on a corner lot. The back was fenced with low chain link fortified inside with cactus. Inside the yard was another fence, also fortified with cactus, that housed a small dog house. I think that’s all we’ve got. Please tell us what it means.
You are listening to Los Angeles
Okay. My 24/7 soundtrack. Ambient music and live LAPD police radio.
(Thank you, Mr. Ledgerwood.)
from the comments
I saw something like this happen to a terrified 3-year-old boy at the pond in Boston’s Public Garden; the tyke had been tossing pieces of bread to a couple ducks at the edge of the pond, then more ducks came over, and then they began to climb out of the pond, and the boy started backing up, and the ducks all climbed out of the pond and began following the boy, who then turned and ran, screaming, with a look of stark terror on his face….
Where’s Timmy?
Super Flush Toilet Can Swallow Golf Balls
During testing, the team flushes objects with a range of consistencies, including napkins, sponges, miso paste, polyballs, saw dust and corn.
And with competition from other companies, American Standard has no problem demonstrating the punch of its products, even on smart phones.
Fifty-six chicken nuggets? No problem for these crappers. Water wigglers? You bet.
What do these people have in common?
(Aside from being mental as anything.)
I just learned via Roger Ebert that I share a birthday with David Foster Wallace.
I already knew about my natal link with Nina Simone, W. H. Auden, Sam Peckinpah, and Anaïs Nin.
Coney Island Hot Dogs
Distraction: An occupational hazard of visual research. I was looking for cowboys.
Carry on.
Atlas Shrugged Trailer
(via marginal revolution)
Correction: February 6, 2011
An article on Jan. 16 about drilling for oil off the coast of Angola erroneously reported a story about cows falling from planes, as an example of risks in any engineering endeavor. No cows, smuggled or otherwise, ever fell from a plane into a Japanese fishing rig. The story is an urban legend, and versions of it have been reported in Scotland, Germany, Russia and other locations.
(via TPM)
Farewell, Army & Lou’s
Shifting residential patterns and a tough economy forced the closing last Sunday of Army & Lou’s, a Chicago restaurant that opened its doors in 1945. For 65 years (at a couple of South Side locations) it was frequented by Chicago families and by celebrities and was the favored restaurant of Mayor Harold Washington.
Supporters are rallying to help the restaurant reopen, but I fear the support may be too little and that it will be proven to have come too late.
The Chilly Hand of Coincidence
This image from Lydia reminds me powerfully of the scary 1933 Betty Boop Snow White cartoon I saw on TV in the 1960s and which I shared with Deron just the other night. The wicked stepmother turns a roto-scoped Cab Calloway (Koko the Clown) into a spooky daikon radish, and the ghosts have icicle fingers.
