Links posted in May 2008
May 31, 2008
twitter@mars - when is the APS getting a twitter presence? [more inside]
fivethirtyeight.com - if you've ever wished for a Baseball Prospectus for politics.
KnickerPicker - I have nothing more to add.
May 30, 2008
The Onion Movie trailer - sadly, it's a shelved project (predecessor of the ONN). But the meta-movie trailer looks great.
May 29, 2008
May 25, 2008
May 24, 2008
Welcome to the World's Least User-Friendly Tumblog, author: we. The officially unofficial AE tradition for the "Mildly hmmmworthy but I don't want to make it a front-page post" has been to necromance some tangentially-related old thread with a comment at the bottom. As an experiment, here is a second option. We've stickied this post ("Quick Hits") for you to dump anything you'd like noted in passing below. Continue to front page post anything you want, and to keep doing the tangential-reply thing if there's a good match, but post here if you're too lazy or too nonlinear to find one. [more inside]
May 23, 2008
And mrflip thought he was a gearhead. Link is ok, but site is NSFW.
May 22, 2008
World's First MMORPG - Multiplayer Micturation Operated Restroom Pissing Game console that is. Sensors mounted in the urinal let you use your flow to play a series of games (space invaders, "Pee to Ski"). In the words of the narrator, "It helps to have a big...beer-filled bladder".
May 21, 2008
Working as Jack Sparrow at Disneyland -- it's everything you've heard about working in a Disney park and more.
[more inside]
May 20, 2008
Klosterman has a neat article about how and why certain musicians have such fanatical fanbases with particular attention to the subset that dress to look similar to or just like their idols. Accompanying is this completely sweet quiz which asks you to identify the artist the fans are going to see.
Most people know someone (often an older relative) who have poor e-mail etiquette with respect to things like e-mail forwards. For those of you who are aggressive enough to try to modify this behavior, but passive/lazy enough to not want to compose your viewpoint, Merlin Mann brings you Thanks. No. [more inside]
May 18, 2008
The iPhone now has a (hacked) P2P file sharing application. The end of the world is nigh.
May 16, 2008
Muto Wall Animation. Pretty fascinating animation created by the artist BLU in Buenos Aires.
May 15, 2008
Bugs Bunny: Greatest Banned Baseball Player Ever. The first non-Slate blog ever chosen to be in the Best (Damn?) American Sportswriting series (2007).
May 14, 2008
Darth Vader apprehended in the UK. However the judge let him off easy for attacking Jedi church members. This is a wierd news item that made me giggle when I read it. Those wild and wacky Brits.
May 13, 2008
Panopticist's Magazine Mashup Mishegas - I don't know how I failed to have previously linked the Panopticist's stellar magazine cover mashups. But now that Jezebel is picking up the slack with their Harper's Bazaar Index, please enjoy classic cuts like "The New York Review of Looks" ("Norman Mailer: `Kate Hudson's Too Thin'") the "Us! News and World Report" and "E!conomist" (`How the Housing Bubble will affect Desperate Homeowners`).
Bill O'Reilly isn't very nice to people. You already knew him as a stretchmark-loofaing sexual predator and a sanctimonious, hypocritical coward. Did you know he is also a bully? You will be as shocked by this video as I.
Fraser Lewry is Eating the Alphabet. Ran across this while looking for monkey brains recipes (really): Guardian food critic Fraser Lewry is going through the alphabet eating a dish featuring an exotic animal with that letter, from Actual Ants in Quicksand to Frog, Flounder & Fontina Fishcake to (most recently) Octopus and Ostrich Surf 'n' Turf (with some pickled testes along the way).
I feel like we've discussed crazy rock band tour riders before (though I can't find it). Anyway, the Foo Fighters do ask for some crazy stuff but don't take themselves too seriously while they do it.
Why am I not surprised that major bowling research is being done in Wisconsin?
May 12, 2008
The New York Times Food/Dining section decided to do a special section reviewing chain restaurants. It doesn't go as bad as you'd think! In an NPR story, one of the contributors talks with the host about how the idea was presented and what they intended by doing the story. Are they elitist snobs looking to poke fun or elitist snobs just trying to see how "normal folk" live? Or, I guess, some other option but really how could that be true.
Who knew that the green fluff I've been bringing to potlucks and parties was named Watergate Salad? What can I say? I enjoy it.
May 11, 2008
(Kind of) in the vein of Wholphin's Rescripted Turkish Sitcom, Kung Faux, or MXC is Soupy Norman. Taking what appears to be an overwrought Polish soap opera, some fine Irish comedians overdub it with new dialog that looks surprisingly convincing coming from the actors' mouths. Some of the episodes made it to the the youtubes for me to enjoy.
May 10, 2008
House Republicans vote against Motherhood -- no, seriously, they voted against a bill "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day." Article also includes other recent shenanigans.
May 09, 2008
Movie Pooper and Ruined Endings, so Nate need never watch another movie again.
Google's Proposal for new Alkaline Earth topic categories - from their corporate "Web Security" app, a list of categories that can be blocked and/or logged. Other than 'Food' and 'Science', all of our current categories are on the list.
I don't like holding compaines when they buy apartment complexes. This practice of buying up complexes, making them more "profitable" and then selling them off really hurts people. I never thought about how the particular circumstances of NYC would make this a much easier thing for them to do.
40% increase in TX concealed handgun permit applications. "Handgun instructors point to factors [including] the looming presidential election." What? [Via] [more inside]
May 08, 2008
Uneven Playing Field - about the hidden epidemic of ACL injuries in women who play sports. [more inside]
Creative ways Obama could lose. No matter who you support, these reader submitted scenarios were hysterical. I had people looking in my office cause I was giggling too loud at this. I think it's noteworthy that the submission that Trailhead marked as #1 is physics based. Enjoy!
This is far better than a David Letterman Top 10 list.
May 07, 2008
Human Brain Cloud - like a free-form crowdsourced visual thesaurus.
Also in the category of "Building huge datasets though fooling people into thinking they're doing something else (playing games, looking up info)" like CoverBrowser's tagger and the Google411.
Bob and David are about to film a new sitcom pilot for HBO called David's Situation. I figured this Vanity Fair interview would be sort of a puff piece but I was surprised at what they had to say about the realities of being "marginal" comedy celebrities in Hollywood and why they thought the cancellation of Mr. Show was different than the cancellation of The Ben Stiller Show or Arrested Development. (thx same maxfun post that provided soku's last link)
May 06, 2008
American Consumer Spending and Inflation - a beautiful visualization from the NYTimes (who consistently crank out the best infovis of any commodity source). More on the math behind this kind of map. [more inside]
May 04, 2008
An interesting policy proposal for CA's budget shortfall. Do you think Texas could pull something like this off to fund our public schools? [more inside]
May 03, 2008
The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time - just completely solid bottom to top. I'd vote in more Monty Python, but when you can find 48 sketches compellingly funny enough to push "Ass Pennies" and "More Cowbell" down to #49 and #50 you have a good list.
Do NOT open this link unless you are prepared to spend the next couple hours revisiting old favorites. [more inside]
May 02, 2008
May 01, 2008
zOMG Alert teh Javelinas!!!!!!11bang1!1!oneoneone - it's Mister Disc! A "personal portable phonograph system". For, y'know, all the times back in 1983 you really wanted to take some tunes and all of your 12" LPs with you. [via starcade via kottke]
Well, until they fix this, enjoy the wifi - free for everyone willing to pretend they're iPhone, courtesy of Starbucks/AT&T/BarnesEnnoble.
I love learning about the "Clearly stated, Universally accepted, Accessible idea from a Field quite different from your own, that you have Never heard of". So here is Porter's "Five Forces" analysis of business strategy in a competitive marketplace. Now what lead me to this is an article attacking the orthodoxy but either way I found both worth reading. [more inside]