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The other film adaptation of J.G. Ballard's "Crash"
Long before the David Cronenberg film (NSFW: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), before even the publication of the novel, Harley Cokeliss directed Crash! (1, 2) - a short film adapted from the story in J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, starring Ballard himself and Gabrielle Drake (sister of Nick Drake). (previously)
A MetaFilter Post In Which YOU Become The Hero!
Fighting Fantasy (FF) is a series of interactive gamebooks for kids, originally published in the UK between 1982 and 1995, created by Steve Jackson (no, not that Steve Jackson) and Ian Livingstone. In a nutshell, they were Choose Your Own Adventure books with simple dice-based gaming rules built into them. The books primarily focused on fantasy themes, but sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, super-heroes, and modern-day horror tales were all covered as well. Containing art both fantastic and ridiculous, they were many a young lad's gateway drug into more complex nerdery.
You are on a highway. You are likely to hear music.
Enter a starting point
and an ending point, and get a road trip mix tape created for you featuring music from artists from whatever area you may be driving through. How it works.
From the Federal Bureau of Shut Up
Shaenon K. Garrity, who has more expertise than most with the humorous depiction of the paranormal and government black-ops from her webcomics Narbonic* and Skin Horse** uses it to do a weekly twelve-panel MAD magazine-ish recap of episodes of The X-Files in "Monster of the Week". So far: Pilot or They Haven't Invented the Theme Song Yet, Deep Throat or Deep Throat Is Barely Even In This Episode and Squeeze or The First Monster Of The Week.
A series of tubes, but with less filth
Roosevelt Island in New York City has a pneumatic garbage collection system.
As part of the planned development of the island in the early 1970s, network of 20-inch tubes takes trash from the island’s 16 residential towers to a central collection point, replacing streetside garbage collection.
On The Avengers and Creator's Rights
So The Avengers is a very successful movie. This has lead many comics fans to express their concern over the treatment of original creators in the industry, specifically of Jack Kirby. Creators' Rights controversy is nothing new, and there remains to this day ample reason to question the business dealings of The Big Two when it comes to how they compensate the men and women who work for/with them. Alan Moore has been and continues to be the victim of numerous shady deals at the hands of DC comics. But no one, with the possible exception of Seigel and Shuster, has suffered more than Jack "King" Kirby.
Yes, this is where I admit to the world I've been tying my shoelaces wrong.
Shoelaces come undone? You may be tying them incorrectly. Easy check: do they sit straight across your shoe, or tilt up at an angle? If the latter, you're securing them with a granny knot, which falls apart readily, but this can be fixed by a small change in the way you tie the laces. Ian Fieggen explains and demonstrates. (He also writes it out).
Our Concert Could be Your Life
On May 22nd, 2011 at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, a number of bands put on a concert hosted by Eugene Mirman and Janeane Garofalo to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the publication of Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life.
Much Ado About Nothing
Physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote a book titled A Universe from Nothing. Philosopher David Albert wrote a rather scathing review. In a later interview with The Atlantic, Krauss suggested that philosophers feel threatened by science "because science progresses and philosophy doesn't." Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci weighed in on Krauss' comments, and Krauss non-apologized to philosophers who may have been offended. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne reflects on the controversy.
"High-tech forensic perfection is a television fantasy, not a courtroom reality"
The American National Academy of Sciences recently released a report that punched a few holes in the credibility of the forensic sciences: often seen (and portrayed) as infallible, in practice they're non-standardized, subjective (warning: pdf with gory image), accepted without rigorous testing (pdf), and lousy with dilettantes. A Canadian inquiry into the work of a pathologist whose testimony wrongly convicted a man of anally raping his four-year-niece to death says that forensic science is useful, but that we're doing it wrong. It's beginning to dawn that what we used to think of as a few bad apples may actually be symptoms of a deep rot in the field itself.
Honey Hunters of Nepal
High in the Himalayan foothills, fearless Gurung men risk their lives to harvest the massive nests of the world's largest honeybee.
The problem with slippery slope arguments is that once you start using them you quickly move on to other fallacies
An illustrated guide to common logical fallacies
as well as well as a very nice worked example of the fallacies involved in Cardinal Keith O'Brien's recent(ish) article against gay marriage.
An Interview with Yanis Varoufakis
The New Priesthood
- "The hapless economist uses the same tools as acclaimed physicists and astronomers. She has trained for years to speak precisely the same language as them, to understand the same advanced mathematics, to deploy most complex statistical methods which are an essential part of the scientific toolbox. It is, understandably, incredibly difficult to accept that her work is a form of higher order superstition; a religion couched in the language of mathematics and statistics. Tragically, this is precisely what it is."
No man is an island
Eke out a peaceful life in the wilderness in Make No Wonder, a new HTML5 game by MeFi's own Matthew Hollett.
[via mefi projects]
Rashomon in the hallway
In 1996, Yale psychologist John Bargh published a much cited paper (pdf) demonstrating the "priming effect" --- in a nutshell, subjects who had to unscramble sentences mentioning the elderly walked slower when leaving the examination room than control subjects. This year, Stéphane Doyen and his co-authors attempted to replicate Bargh's experiment, but were unable to reproduce the priming effect --- instead assembling evidence that it was the experimenter's knowledge of the study topic which created the apparent "priming". Is Bargh's famous experiment flawed? Or is Doyen's paper a pile of horseshit published in a two-bit for-profit online journal, as Bargh's strident critique suggests? Or is Bargh full of it himself? And who gets to decide what counts as good science these days anyway?
He had a balcony you could do Shakespeare off of.
Firesign Theater's Peter Bergman Dead at 73 of Complications from Leukemia.
Peter Bergman, founding member of The Firesign Theatre has passed on to that great Humbolt County in the sky.
Dr. Seuss does nudity
The Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts Concerning History's Barest Family
is a Dr. Seuss book for adults, which features nude women in every panel.
Why are we still here?
Corrosion of Conformity: An oral history of 30 years
of the legendary hardcore/thrash metal/sludge metal outfit from Raleigh, NC.
Even robots do chores
The Robot.
Photographs by Thomas Jackson of strange moments in the life of a robot.
news about Khan Academy, Udacity, MITx, and Stanford online courses
Recent news about free online education.
1, Khan Academy: Google's first employee, Craig Silverstein, is leaving Google and joining Khan Academy.
1, Khan Academy: Google's first employee, Craig Silverstein, is leaving Google and joining Khan Academy.
Dwarfstar Games
Most of Dwarfstar Games' microgame ouvre, including the solo adventure Barbarian Prince, is available for authorized free download.
Feet In Smoke: A Story About Electrified Near-Death
Like a lot of people, I'd always assumed, in a sort of cut-rate Hobbesian way, that the center of the brain, if you could ever find it, would inevitably be a pretty dark place, that whatever is good or beautiful about being human is a result of our struggles against everything innate, against physical nature. My brother changed my mind about all that.
Australia Day
It's a day of high jinx, high revelry and high people in Australia; a day when a large and vocal majority come together to "celebrate what's great" about this country. But what is the meaning of all this fanfare? What is the true origin of this passionately marked day of facepaint and binge drinking? Is everyone in Australia so keen on this particular anniversary? To get to bottom of these questions, and more, join your amiable host Robert Foster [previously] as he conducts a high-octane, high-frequency satellite link-up with a representative of the Mainstream Australian media: multi-Logie award-winning broadcaster, entertainer, emu-wrangler and true blue Aussie, Kenneth Oathcarn. Rap News Episode 11: Australia Day
WARNING: contains adult Australian vernacular - viewer discretion is strongly advised.
WARNING: contains adult Australian vernacular - viewer discretion is strongly advised.
Chicago Gang Cards
In the 1970s and 1980s, Chicago gangs distributed gang cards to stake their neighbourhood claim. Full gallery available here.
Ying-Ling? I thought that was Chinese?
Everyone knows America's Oldest Brewery is D.G. Yuengling & Son (and daughters) of Pottsville, PA (and Tampa, FL)
This family owned brewery was established as the "Eagle Brewery" in 1829 by a German immigrant named David Gottlob Jüngling. After the original brewery burned down in 1831 it was relocated to its current location. It was built into a mountain with caves dug into the side, a common practice to preserve beer and to achieve the cool temperatures required to make lager before refrigeration.
Yuengling spent most of its history as a small regional brewery and only began to attract national attention years after the launch of Yuengling Traditional Lager in 1987, which went on to become the flagship product of the company and now accounts for 80% of Yuengling's production.
On the strength of that growth, and with other brewers being bought out by or outsourcing production to foreign companies, Yuengling has now passed The Boston Beer Company to claim the title of America's largest brewing company as well. In this globalized beer era where giants war for market share, products from America's new largest brewer are only available in 14 states.
SOPA/PIPA blackout
We are putting up a black interstitial about SOPA/PIPA for the next 24hrs or so. If you click away from it, you'll get a cookie stored so you won't see it again in the same browser, but what follows is my reasons for doing it.
unicode snowman for you
☃ [unicode snowman for you]
Assuredly, many acclaimed poets are no match to Shakespeare.
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove edited The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry, released in October. Harvard professor and critic Helen Vendler objects to Dove's choices; Dove reacts (and Vendler, succinctly, replies, "I have written the review and I stand by it.") and so do other critics, with charges of racism and, relatedly, too narrow a view of poetic traditions.
He wasn't a legend, and he wasn't mad.
The Exegesis of Phillip K Dick has finally been published. A thousand pages of it, anyway. Editor Jonathan Lethem and two of PKD's daughter's got together to discuss it at a Berkeley book store. Introduction, Jonathan Lethem, From The Estate and Inside PKD's Mind, The Vision of the Source, Correspondence, How To Read It, Philosophy.
Adult, but not "Adult".
Please help me find manga and/or anime that has a story that would appeal to a mature audience, but without "mature" content.
Free quality content online. What should I be reading?
Seeking suggestions for free, New York Times-quality content online. What should I be reading?
"Once there was a shock that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail."
Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer
has been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. His poetry has been translated into more than five dozen languages and is the living poet who has been translated most into English. He received the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2007, and the award page is a pretty extensive source of information. Below the cut I'll include a few of his poems that I've found online, but the best place to start is the poetry section of his website, where you'll also find an interview, video, audio and a list of English translations. Tom Slegh wrote an appreciation of Tranströmer and Mary Karr and Christopher Robinson discuss him briefly on Poetry Fix, and read two of his poems.
CS221
Stanford's 'Introduction to Artificial Intelligence' course will be offered free to anyone online this fall. The course will be taught by Sebastian Thrun (Stanford) and Peter Norvig (Google, Director of Research), who expect to deal with the historically large course size using tools like Google Moderator.
"We will kill, burn, and destroy all Buddhists"
For 100 years, Buddhists and Muslims lived side by side in southern Thailand. In 2004, a small fraction of the Muslims started killing the Buddhists indiscriminately. This conflict is now the most violent in Asia, with murders of Thai civilians, including children, monks, and Muslims who refuse to cooperate, occurring on a daily basis.
How to Fix Horror
Jason Zinoman, author of the newly-published Shock Value, a study of horror films from the late 1960s/early 1970s, presents a four-part essay in which he diagnoses the ills of the modern horror film and presents a few solutions. (1 2 3 4)
Let Facts be submitted to a candid world
The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a century ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style. Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration. This essay seeks to illuminate that artistry by probing the discourse microscopically -- at the level of the sentence, phrase, word, and syllable. The University of Wisconsin's Dr. Stephen E. Lucas meticulously analyzes the elegant language of the 235-year-old charter in a distillation of this comprehensive study. More on the Declaration: full transcript and ultra-high-resolution scan, a transcript and scan of Jefferson's annotated rough draft, the little-known royal rebuttal, a thorough history of the parchment itself, a peek at the archival process, a reading of the document by the people of NPR and by a group of prominent actors, H. L. Mencken's "American" translation, Slate's Twitter summaries, and a look at the fates of the 56 signers.
The Fiction Liberation Front
The Fiction Liberation Front:
cyberpunk/slipstream/transreal author Lewis Shiner has released his collected writings under a Creative Commons license, including his award novels Frontera, Deserted Cities of the Heart, and Glimpses. Shiner may be best known for his inclusion in the seminal 1986 cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades, alongside the likes of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Rudy Rucker. A few years later he was pronouncing the movement dead.
Bubbles and Public Facts
The Destruction of Economic Facts
- "Renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues that the financial crisis wasn't just about finance—it was about a staggering lack of knowledge" (via)
Online Ear Training Games
Theta Music Trainer
— Train your ear with fun music games. Sharpen your sense of pitch and tone. Unlock the hidden patterns in music. Strengthen your music theory skills.
How Modern Spam Works
Through purchasing Viagra, herbal remedies, and replica watches, computer scientists explain how modern spam works. The spam business model consists of three components: advertising, click support (i.e., delivering the customer to an actual website), and realization (i.e., receiving payment and delivering the product to the customer). Different firms located across the globe carry out the various tasks. For example, the website domains are registered in Russia, the credit card payments are handled by banks in Azerbaijan, and the pills are sent from manufacturers in India. The spam business infrastructure appears to be organized around a small number of affiliate programs that coordinate the activities among the different firms. Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain (A 16 page PDF). [via]