Bitter Laughter

2012-01-25T15:35:00.000-05:00

I found this by total accident: a fairly long wikipedia page of Russian political jokes.

A few examples:

A knock knock joke about KGB. The "knocker" knocks on the "knockee"'s door (the joke receiver). The door answerer asks the questions "who is it". The knocker replies stating that he is the KGB, (knocker only says "KGB"). The answerer replies by saying "KGB who" as with all knock knock jokes. The knocker slaps the answerer before allowing the answerer to finish saying the previous line of "KGB who". Then the knocker yells "WE WILL ASK THE QUESTIONS!"

A frightened man came to the KGB and said, "My talking parrot disappeared."
KGB: "This is not our case. Go to the criminal police."
Man: "Excuse me. Of course I know that I have to go to them. I am just here to tell you officially that I disagree with that parrot."

I think there's a fairly good chance Zizek himself wrote some of this.

It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening.

2011-11-30T20:24:00.000-05:00

A time traveler from the future has been arrested at the Large Hadron Collider. He was arrested after security guard caught him going through the trash looking for fuel for his 'time machine power unit', a device, CNET reports, "that resembled a kitchen blender." Tell that to Mr. Fusion.

Corporations are not people.

2011-11-17T12:07:00.000-05:00

If they were, they'd make better neighbors.

Stats

2011-11-09T13:17:00.003-05:00

A little Wednesday afternoon statistics, to cheer us up.

What are the odds that you, as an individual, exist? Pretty good, you'd guess, since you're sitting right here reading this. But, in an abstract sense, the chances that you exist are really rather slim.

Click here to see the whole thing--and read all the way until the end. Via BoingBoing.

Now go be a statistical miracle.

The long life of the Vortex

2011-11-01T17:43:00.000-04:00

Though a footnote in the wider project of England's only avant-garde, the vortograph was intended to be the photographic equivalent of Vorticism's flat canvasses and literary bombs. So it was something of a surprise--a welcome surprise--to see Gizmodo hosting a competition to get folks to make contemporary vortographs. The results are actually pretty great.

Salt Water Taffy

2011-10-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

The NYT has a nice slideshow up detailing the variety of cover art for one of the best and most-often illustrated novels of all, Moby Dick. Below is the strangest cover of them all.

The Atlantic also has a review up a really cool art book called Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page. Below, a page by artist Matt Kish:

Self-parody alert

2011-10-17T23:03:00.000-04:00

Eric Cantor to give speech on "how we make sure the people at the top stay there." Not from The Onion.

Nothing bitter about it

2011-10-17T15:24:00.000-04:00

The arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty in Madison Square Park, New York. These portions of the Statue were exhibited to raise funds for the completion of the statue and its pedestal. The arm and torch remained in the park from 1876 until 1882. Members of the public could pay fifty cents to climb to the balcony of the torch.

From BoingBoing.

The Industrial Production of Death

2011-10-03T13:58:00.000-04:00

You know there's something wrong here when "the fish" are referred to in the singular, as if the moment they entered the boat the went from being animals to being food. Surreal.

Via Gizmodo.

Youtube dreams

2011-09-23T09:47:00.001-04:00

"We are opening a window into the movies in our minds."

UC Berkley scientists are pioneering a system "to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips," technology that may someday allow us to TiVo our dreams. Yikes.

War Plan Red

2011-09-21T13:48:00.000-04:00

Invasion of Canada. Bombing raids on British industrial interests. Naval blockade. Chemical weapons. Six million troops fighting on the Eastern seaboard. This wasn't a crazy Nazi plan. It was the United States' strategy to destroy Britain as a world superpower.

How the US Planned to Destroy Britain Just a Few Years Before World War II. It actually sounds like this was a lot more than just an elaborate contingency plan, since the US had already built three disguised airfields in Canada for War Plan Red.

Nintendo Power

2011-09-13T15:46:00.001-04:00

Wired has an amazing piece up about the "holy grail" of Nintendo game collecting, previously discussed on this very blog. Of course, some trail-blazing video game collector bought 7 of the 26 known copies of the most desired video game on the planet sometime in the mid-90s. He paid as little as $50 for what now goes for as much as $17,000.

Messing with my head

2011-09-13T13:55:00.000-04:00

Wyndham Lewis' brain, preserved in a jar. Science's revenge on one of its major early 20th century critics, or self-parodic evidence of a scientific ideological vapidness? Amazing.

Overdue explanations.

2011-08-22T11:05:00.000-04:00

How Doc Brown and Marty McFly became friends.

What I'm really looking for, though, is an explanation of where Marty #2, from alternate-1985, gets sent at the end of Back to the Future part 1. My money's on a prehistoric wasteland.

The substance of all my nightmares

2011-07-19T17:26:00.000-04:00

Creepy ventriloquist dummies doing what they do best -- looking creepy.

Via BoingBoing.

talking parrots

2011-07-18T13:10:00.000-04:00

“One developmental milestone is when infants begin to relate adult sound patterns to specific meanings,” wrote Berg’s team, who described their findings July 13 Proceedings of The Royal Society B. “Among these sounds, an individual’s own name is one of the earliest adult words for which infants show evidence of acoustic pattern recognition. Our study suggests that at least a moderately convergent process may occur in parrots.”

Whales might not be the only wild animals to have individualized names. Wired reports.

A steal

2011-07-05T14:05:00.000-04:00

Via Mitch, a stunning Sotheby's auction for the savvy buyer: James Joyce's war-time passport. Here are the details:

JOYCE'S WARTIME FAMILY PASSPORT, AS ISSUED BY THE BRITISH CONSUL-GENERAL AT ZURICH, SWITZERLAND TO ALLOW "MR JAMES JOYCE, AND WIFE MRS NORA JOYCE TO PASS FREELY WITHOUT LET OR HINDRANCE...", PASSPORT NO.557, ISSUED AND STAMPED 10 AUGUST 1915

Granted, the estimated price is 50-70,000 GBP, but it's totally worth it.

The Mind of Meat

2011-06-17T16:24:00.001-04:00

Return of the Pooping Duck

2011-06-16T19:23:00.000-04:00

Radiolab has an interesting story up about the a 16th century Spanish-made automaton in the shape of a monk. I talked a lot in my spring class, "Mechanical Life and Modernity," about the history of automata and the emergence of the idea of the robot, but I had never heard of this monk. It doesn't hold a candle to Vaucanson's digesting duck, but this story points out the interesting way in which the automaton functioned in the pre-Enlightenment religious mind.

The story is worth giving a listen to here.

Also, here's a video of the monk in action:

A Beautiful Movie About the End of the World

2011-04-14T18:14:00.000-04:00

After reading the reviews, I decided not to see Lars von Trier's 2009 film, Antichrist; even though I admit to loving the darkness of Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, the prospect of watching a horror film that coheres around scenes of genital mutilation struck me as, well, not my cup of tea.

So I'm pleased to read that his new film takes him to a happier place (relatively speaking). Melancholia will debut at Cannes in May.

Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo.

This is America. This is our piggy bank.

2011-04-13T20:16:00.000-04:00

Here's a little parable:

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

So, what makes more sense: do you attempt to cut back your costs to offset your ever-increasing debts, or do you get a job that pays you better?

Via BB.

#NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

2011-04-13T11:46:00.000-04:00

Steven Colbert almost makes me want to activate that Twitter account I started so long ago.

Weiner, on a roll

2011-04-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

Anthony Weiner nails it at the Congressional Correspondents' Dinner:

Pseudonyms

2011-03-14T15:50:00.001-04:00

Antrhopo-denialists skeptics, meet your match: sperm whales, scientists argue, might have individualized names. Wired reports.

Who owns US debt?

2011-02-04T18:15:00.000-05:00

I'll give you a hint: it's not who you think it is.

Via Political Wire.

Always get the insurance

2011-01-27T15:13:00.001-05:00

BoingBoing has a video up from 11foot8.com, remixing video from Durham's own truck-eating underpass with Ennio Morricone.

Durham + Morricone = ♥

Compost Partisanship

2011-01-24T21:11:00.000-05:00

Maybe if it had been a vermicomposting program, the GOP wouldn't have just axed the House composting program. Where's the outrage?

Rhythm rhythm everywhere

2011-01-15T15:38:00.000-05:00

Via BB, this is a totally beautiful video about the African drumming and the diurnal rhythms that make drumming such a natural part of culutre:

The safety is off.

2011-01-12T13:27:00.001-05:00

"[T]he use of a term associated with real evils like genocide to defend oneself in the face of catty punditry shows a startling degree of narcissism--even for Palin."

Pro-gun Sarah Palin shoot herself in the foot with her "blood libel" comment. Jews across the political spectrum are NOT happy.

O Pioneers!

2011-01-11T19:44:00.001-05:00

I love this.

There are guns, and then there are guns.

2011-01-10T12:24:00.001-05:00

Gail Collins nails it:

Today, the amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse. That would certainly be great. But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to the National Rifle Association and extend it.

If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms, Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.

But we might not have lost a federal judge, a 76-year-old church volunteer, two elderly women, Giffords’s 30-year-old constituent services director and a 9-year-old girl who had recently been elected to the student council at her school and went to the event because she wanted to see how democracy worked.

Just a reminder

2010-12-29T11:49:00.000-05:00

Beginning on New Year's Day, Arizona's ban on ethnic studies goes into effect.

Picture of the Day

2010-12-23T15:59:00.001-05:00

If only the world were this rational.

From Fuck Yeah, Protest!

Visuals Optional

2010-12-02T15:49:00.002-05:00

I'm off to the British Association of Modernist Studies conference tomorrow, and since it's been awhile since I put up a Wordle, here's a visual of the paper I'll be giving, which is on D. H. Lawrence and the "flux of human character."

Diaper chase scene

2010-12-01T16:32:00.000-05:00

Another tasty slice from the ACBs recent release, Stona Rosa. This song is entitled "Street Fighter II," and with The Pitch I'll designate it mostly safe for work.

Robots may be able to help you.

2010-11-28T15:15:00.000-05:00

From the NYT, letters to Michelle Obama:

Dear Michelle Obama,

Hi, we are 10 and 9 years old. We live in Boston. We hope you send letters back to us.

I think that you should shut down cigarette and liquor companies and try to keep drugs off the streets. Robots may be able to help you. We all appreciate your hard work to make America better.

Sincerely,

— AIDAN SHEILL-LOOMIS, age 9, and NICOLAS ALLEN, age 10, Boston

From K., who's always recommending robots.

Defamiliarized

2010-11-27T15:26:00.004-05:00

"Blitzkrieg Bop," vocal track only! Via Cynical-C

.

You did me business ethics propsal for me

2010-11-15T13:10:00.000-05:00

Hired guns in higher ed. The Chronicle's got the confessions of professional writer of essays for the underprepared, unequipped and lazy.

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.

I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I've worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.

Stunning. Not surprising, exactly, but interesting to learn about the business of cheating.

Follow through

2010-11-04T21:19:00.001-04:00

More of the hot stuff from The ACBs.

Can't wait for the album.

Culture, on a long leash

2010-11-03T16:55:00.000-04:00

I tend to consider the equation of modern art and modern weaponry as hyperbolic and hortatory. But, maybe I shouldn't.
Modern art was CIA 'weapon'
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agencyused American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- com- munists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

Via my lady in the trenches, K.

Better than a flash mob.

2010-11-01T15:22:00.002-04:00

Eyes

2010-10-21T16:56:00.001-04:00

Paris-based street artist, JR, is awarded the 2011 TED Prize.

Known only as JR, the anonymous artist has installed enormous black and white photos in slums around Paris, along the separation wall between Israeli and Palestinian lands, and across Brazil's favelas.

"JR's mind-blowing creations have inspired people to see art where they wouldn't expect it and create it when they didn't know they could," Amy Novogratz, the TED prize director, said in a message posted online. [...]

Organisers say JR will use the prize to develop an ambitious new work that will involve the whole world, and due to be announced at next year's conference in Long Beach, California.

More great pictures at both links above.

Penguins, poop and primates

2010-10-14T12:46:00.000-04:00

It seems very early for top ten lists, but what the hell. Wired's got your top ten fossil finds of the year.

Freebie

2010-10-11T22:06:00.000-04:00

Paul Baribeau has his newest album up for free download. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Graphing

2010-10-11T21:25:00.001-04:00

A Visual History of the US Presidency.

hump day punk rock

2010-09-29T13:15:00.001-04:00

A couple of punk rock news links:

- Steal this street sign: New York City is practically daring you to steal the "Joey Ramone Place" street sign at the corner of East 2nd Street and the Bowery in the East Village. $100 cash money to anyone who can secure one for me.

- Citizens Re-United: Ted Leo, straight off of a totally unremarkable album with the Pharmacists, is set to reunite with his former hardcore band, Citizens United.

- Marketing opportunity: It may be old news to some, but the 100 Club in London, early home to The Class and the Sex Pistols, is slated to close at the end of 2010. Maybe they can license their name to Urban Outfitters.

Lethal

2010-09-23T15:31:00.003-04:00

Since 2004, the Houston Police Department alone has used its Tasers 2,500 times. In California, there have been 55 reported deaths from Tasers; in Florida, 52.

CBS investigates the rise of taser use (and deaths) across the country. It's astounding that taser manufacturers still refuse to acknowledge the lethal nature of the weapons they produce.

Settling old scores

2010-09-15T21:33:00.003-04:00

I was always told as a kid that you could send anything--ANYTHING--through the mail as long as you had sufficient postage. Is it true? Well, kind of. The folks at Improbable Research made an experiment of it.

Here's the set up:

Having long been genuine admirers of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which gives amazingly reliable service especially compared with many other countries, our team of investigators decided to test the delivery limits of this immense system. We knew that an item, say, a saucepan, normally would be in a package because of USPS concerns of entanglement in their automated machinery. But what if the item were not wrapped? How patient are postal employees? How honest? How sentimental? In short, how eccentric a behavior on the part of the sender would still result in successful mail delivery?

They sent a long list of odd items through the mail, and they're all worth reading, but here are my favorites:

Ski. A large amount of postage was affixed to a card that was attached to the ski. The ski was slipped into a bin of postage that was being loaded into a truck behind a station (a collaborating staff member created a verbal disturbance up the street to momentarily distract postal workers' attention). Notice of postage due received, 11 days. Upon pickup at the station, the clerk and supervisor consulted a book of postage regulations together for 2 minutes and 40 seconds before deciding on additional postage fee to assess. Clerk asked if mailing specialist knew how this had been mailed; our recipient said she did not know. Clerk also noted that mail must be wrapped.

Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route.

Deer tibia. Our mailing specialist received many strange looks from both postal clerks and members of the public in line when he picked it up at the station, 9 days. The clerk put on rubber gloves before handling the bone, inquired if our researcher were a "cultist," and commented that mail must be wrapped.

The results: 64% of the unwieldy, disgusting, valuable and suspicious items they sent were delivered. My own experiments to commence next week.

Life

2010-09-14T16:57:00.001-04:00

Nina Simone makes every day better. That's a fact.

nomenclature

2010-09-14T11:38:00.001-04:00

Heads up: high fructose corn syrup has a new name, "corn sugar." It's still terrible for you.

Be Professional

2010-09-14T10:46:00.005-04:00

Tasty treat of the day: a new video and song from my pals, the ACBs.

BE PROFESSIONAL-THE ACB'S from PAT VAMOS on Vimeo.

Do yourself a favor and download the track for free here: http://theacbs.bandcamp.com/

2010-09-10T10:41:00.002-04:00

As much as statistical analyses of American political attitudes (and there's nothing more depressing than the graphs in this story), I take solace in knowing that Americans actually aren't as confused about wealth as I sometimes imagine:

A new Gallup poll shows the majority of Americans favor letting the Bush era tax cuts to expire for the wealthy. While 37% support keeping the tax cuts for all Americans, 44% want them extended only for those making less than $250,000 and 15% think they should expire for all taxpayers.

Here's the take away from Gallup:

Gallup has typically found Americans unsympathetic to the argument that upper-income Americans are overtaxed. They generally believe upper-income Americans pay too little in taxes and favor higher taxes on wealthy Americans as a means to fund government programs, such as Social Security.

Word of the Day

2010-09-08T13:50:00.003-04:00

A perfectly self-conscious word: floccinaucinihilipilification.

Definition: the act of considering something to be worthless.

Here's the pronunciation. It's a tricky one.

Good luck using it in a sentence.

Filthy Lucre

2010-09-07T18:00:00.005-04:00

I'm hoping this will be everything that Capitalism: A Love Story wasn't. And judging by Charles Ferguson's last, No End in Sight, it will. Opens in NYC October 8.

Rahms away

2010-09-07T15:20:00.003-04:00

After the election in November, Obama is going to need to shake up his administration by bringing in some new blood. Apart from replacing Gibbs, who I have always felt was a bad press secretary, Obama might think about changing more substantial positions within his staff. Today's announcement by Chicago mayor Richard Daley that he will not seek reelection, might be a good thing. Would anybody on the left really miss Rahm? Replacing a chief of staff constitutes a major change that can revitalize an administration, and it is something that happens regularly. Bush had two chiefs of staff, and Clinton had two in each of his two terms. Maybe it's time for Rahm to pull the trigger on his long desired mayoral bid.

The Lorax

2010-09-03T13:31:00.000-04:00

Watch The Lorax (full movie) on Fanpop

Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh!

2010-09-03T11:34:00.002-04:00

Kookaburra has had a rough year. First, the beloved bird's name was dragged through the dirt in the trial against Men at Work. Now, they're trying to un-gay him. Poor Kookaburra.

Imaginary Grievances

2010-08-31T09:26:00.006-04:00

Much as I still bare a grudge against Christopher Hitchens, it will be a sad day when cancer gets him because on that day we will lose a very strong and articulate voice -- a wrong voice from time to time, to be sure, but one that has the capacity to sum it all up in captivating and satisfying ways. As, for example, in his exegesis of Glenn Beck:

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned? It's not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be. The clue, surely, is furnished by the remainder of the speeches, which deny racial feeling so monotonously and vehemently as to draw attention.

Concerns of this kind are not confined to the Tea Party belt. Late professors Arthur Schlesinger and Samuel Huntington both published books expressing misgivings about, respectively,multiculturalism and rapid demographic change. But these were phrased so carefully as almost to avoid starting the argument they flirted with. More recently, almost every European country has seen the emergence of populist parties that call upon nativism and give vent to the idea that the majority population now feels itself unwelcome in its own country. The ugliness of Islamic fundamentalism in particular has given energy and direction to such movements. It will be astonishing if the United States is not faced, in the very near future, with a similar phenomenon. Quite a lot will depend on what kind of politicians emerge to put themselves at the head of it. Saturday's rally was quite largely confined to expressions of pathos and insecurity, voiced in a sickly and pious tone. The emotions that underlay it, however, may not be uttered that way indefinitely.

Everything is always for sale

2010-08-16T19:12:00.004-04:00

Awesome ebay auction that I randomly stumbled upon:

About a decade ago a local public library
switched from the old library card catalog file system of looking up where to find books in the library, to a computer system of doing so. Instead of throwing out all the old cards the head librarian saved a few and sent them to the author who wrote the book listed on it, asking the author to autograph the card and send it back to the library so they could sell the cards as a fundraiser.

Most authors didn't respond.

Kurt Vonnegut did.

I'm not certain that Vonnegut would approve of the price tag, but it's a cool item nonetheless.

Whose Street?

2010-07-29T22:21:00.003-04:00

Albuquerque PD always up to no good:

A man who was shocked with a Taser at least six times by Albuquerque police will receive $275,000 in a settlement with the city.

The city settled the lawsuit filed by Andres Arellanes after a review found the two officers involved lied to a grand jury.

The Albuquerque Journal also reported that a federal judge ordered the officers' personnel files be opened because of numerous complaints against them.

The two officers are no longer with the department. They had claimed that Arellanes grabbed a police horse and was combative.

Arellanes claimed the officers demanded that he produce identification and grabbed his wallet, began interrogating him and calling him derogatory names. He says they threw him in the back of a police car and shocked him repeatedly.

Via Kendra.

Quote of the Day

2010-07-22T14:09:00.004-04:00

"The lamestream media is no longer a cornerstone of democracy in America."

Guess who? A certain half-term governor, of course. Utter lunacy.

How about a little balance, then, from a well known liberal provocateur:

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787

The Wientzen Code

2010-07-16T15:07:00.004-04:00

I Write Like analyzes your prose and tells you which author you write most like. I plugged in the entirety of an article that I'm writing on Rebecca West and physiology, and this is what I got:

I write like
Dan Brown

I wouldn't take it personally, but I somehow don't think that academic journals are quite looking for Dan Brown-like work. But maybe I'm wrong.

Quote of the Day

2010-07-16T13:38:00.003-04:00

Responding to John Boehner's totally non-sensical suggestion that there be "a moratorium on new federal regulations," Steve Benen has the quote of the day:

"I'll just put it this way: if you love lead paint from China, you'll love the Republican deregulation agenda."

Beavis and Butthead: MTV Super-ego

2010-07-15T14:51:00.006-04:00

I'm old enough to remember a time when Beavis and Butt-head was considered the most scandalous thing on air:

In October 1993 a two-year-old Ohio girl was killed in a fire lit by her five-year-old brother. The children's mother said that her son was inspired by the pyromaniac proclivities of Beavis and Butt-head. This real life event sparked the ire of media watchdog groups, who claimed that there was a direct link between the television show and the violent act of this impressionable child. One psychiatrist proclaimed Beavis an Butt-head a "Sesame Street for psychopaths."

Psychopaths! Really! Looking back from 2010 it's hard to imagine how something as tame as Beavis and Butt-head could compete with, say, The Family Guy or even South Park. So it's a little weird that MTV is bringing it back. So I submit to you, what are Beavis and Butt-head going to do? It's not like they can watch music videos. MTV ceased to be a music channel long ago. Would new viewers even know what to make of music video commentary? It could actually be awesome if MTV allowed them to watch other MTV shows; they could be like MTV's superego, blasting the vapidness of shows like The Hills and Jersey Shore. That actually might be worth watching.

tastes like?

2010-07-06T14:41:00.003-04:00

When I was an intern at Equal Exchange way back when, I met their quality control person whose only job was to taste coffee. Apparently becoming a real, profession coffee connoisseur involves a lot more than just really liking coffee. At that time, the quality control person had undergone a two or three year apprenticeship with some coffee guru, who taught her to nuances of coffee tones and flavors -- much like becoming a sommelier. Cool job, right? Well, doing this kind of work actually requires something more than just an aesthetic sensibility and experience; it requires a natural aptitude to taste flavors with a greater intensity than most people. They're called supertasters. And it's not all wine and coffee for supertasters. Supertasters tend not to like some very common foods because, well, they don't taste very good if you have an acute palette. Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, grapefruit juice, green tea, spinach, soy, carbonation, chili peppers, tonic water, olives -- all of these things are commonly inedible to supertasters. They just can't help it.

Pura Masa

2010-07-01T14:45:00.006-04:00

Eventually I'm going to do some posts on bread and bread-baking, specifically a bit about why it's important and how it has changed (us) over time. But not yet.

But I did see an article at Wired today, commemorating the hundred-year anniversary of the first fully automated bread factory in the US, and I thought it was interesting:

1910: Ward Baking Company puts a fully automated bread factory into operation. The mechanized factory in Chicago churns out hundreds of perfect loaves a day, untouched by human hands.

Though the author claims in the lead that automated bread was not "the greatest thing since sliced bread," the article goes on to extol the contribution of industry to the mechanization of craft labor because it eliminated germs. Only the nerds at Wired could possibly look at the automation of bread production in 1910 and think, "Wow. How great." As if scientific management and the destruction of craft labor were good things.

the big bite

2010-06-30T16:30:00.004-04:00

Introducing, L. melvillei, a newly described sperm whale named to honor Herman Melville. Even more bellicose than Moby Dick, L. melvillei was a hyper-carnivorous eater of other whales:

Klaas Post, honorary curator of fossil mammals at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and his colleagues were traveling through a stretch of desert about 50 kilometers southwest of Ica, Peru, in 2008 when they spotted what at first looked like elephant tusks. But they turned out to be teeth from an even less-likely animal: a giant sperm whale.
Perhaps the discovery shouldn’t be a complete surprise. Fossils of the great shark, Carcharocles megalodon, have been found in the same region. Both animals would have lived about 12 million to 13 million years ago during the Miocene. And like megalodon (at 20 meters long, thought to be one of the biggest fish to have ever roamed the sea), L. melvillei is breaking a few records of its own. With jaws more than 5 meters wide, it had the biggest bite of any mammal to have ever lived.
But L. melvillei was quite different from modern sperm whales (hence scientists gave it a new genus name). Today, sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) have fairly small lower teeth and almost no teeth on the upper jaw. They primarily eat squid, which they pull in via suction. But L. melvillei had teeth as large as 12 centimeters wide and 36 centimeters long on both its upper and lower jaw, which would have afforded it a much different tactic for hunting: According to the paper published today in Nature, the researchers suspect that the aggressive whale grabbed prey with its teeth, living off of smaller baleen whales (whales with comb-like dental plates instead of teeth, such as the humpback).

Your Meat is Alive

2010-06-30T16:17:00.003-04:00

This should make you not want to eat fish ever again: skinned and gutted dog fish wriggling around.

From BoingBoing.

Aggressive Bed Postures

2010-06-28T12:24:00.002-04:00

Not from The Onion:

Police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn't breathe, after her grandson called 911 seeking medical assistance, the woman and her grandson claim in Oklahoma City Federal Court. Though the grandson said, "Don't Taze my granny!" an El Reno police officer told another cop to "Taser her!" and wrote in his police report that he did so because the old woman "took a more aggressive posture in her bed," according to the complaint.

Via Kendra, who puts up with my bed postures.

What's the Matter with Kansas?

2010-06-24T21:08:00.004-04:00

My dear Kansas has such nasty problems, between the immigrant-hating Kobach, the town-destorying tornados, and--well--it's pretty miserable politics. But sometimes the Crazy, when it gets really crazy, almost makes it worthwhile.

Case in point, the gay-, America-, everything-hating Westborro Baptist Church, most famous for demonstrating with non-sequitur signs at the funerals for dead US soldiers. You remember these guys, right? These people are so odious, so thoroughly beyond the pale of any semblance of theological coherence, that they actually manage to be funny sometimes. When your theology centers around hating gay people and condemning everyone everywhere that they are going to hell, it's pretty hard not to seem self-satirical.

And this brings me to the cultural artifact of the week: the granddaughter of the Church's founder/cult leader is apparently a gifted videographer. And the WBC seems to think that the best way to spread their enlightened message is through parody videos. Really the headline of this blogpost at Kansas City's Pitch Weekly speaks for itself: "Westboro Baptist Church has dropped another Lady Gaga joint, yo."

It's hard to imagine that the WBC spends its time with this kind of stuff. Really, it's just odd.

Via my man in the thick of it all, J. Barry.

And while I'm on the topic, there's a great documentary about the WBC, which you can watch online here.

Sport

2010-06-24T18:43:00.004-04:00

I don't know what it is--maybe I've been reading too much D. H. Lawrence lately--but somehow watching the raw, spontaneous emotion of people reacting to Landon Donovan's World Cup goal is almost better than watching the goal itself:

More at HuffPo.

Seahorses

2010-06-23T20:50:00.003-04:00

Two things to know about seahorses:

One: They are thought to be the only species in the world to reproduce through "male pregnancy." (And it's an amazing sight.)

Two: They are endangered. From Wired. Yet another reason to strengthen CITES and the other international treaties on fishing.

Happy Bloomsday

2010-06-16T09:21:00.005-04:00

"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses, 1954.

Thanks, GC. HuffPo has pictures of Bloomsday being celebrated around the world.

Hedging

2010-06-15T17:44:00.004-04:00

Think Progress has a post up today entitled, "After making ‘American English’ the official language of Texas, GOP recruits Latinos in Spanish." Here's the video featured as part of Texas' new Youtube campaign, "Soy Tejano Republicano(a)."

Now, there are three interesting things about this video. First, judging from the cast of the video, the number of Tejano Republicans is very, very small. Couldn't they have hired actors? One of the featured speakers is clearly not a native Spanish speaker. Given that the point of this video is to attract a wider Hispanic base, one would think that the creators would have preferred to show the breadth of Tejano Republicans by featuring -- well, Tejano Republicans.

The second thing that struck me about this was the way in which these Tejano Republicans talk about "America." As Spanish speakers know, "America" refers to the Americas generally, not to the United States, which is Los Estados Unidos. "Americans" are "Estado Unidenses," not "Americanos." In other words, when you say "Americanos" in Spanish, you may very well be speaking about Mexicans or North Americans genreally. And so it somewhat interesting to note that at least one of the Tejano Republicans featured here (about 20 seconds in) talks about "American" opportunity:

"Soy Republicana porque creo en la oportunidad equitativa para todos los Americanos."

In other words, this is hedging: Republicans stand for equal economic opportunity for all "Americans," but American here means something broader than United States citizens. The sentence could have read "Soy Republicana porque creo en la oportunidad equitativa para todos los Estado Unidenses," but it does not. And why? Because in order to cast itself as pro-Hispanic, the Republican party has to do some serious backbends.

Ecological vegetarianism, again.

2010-06-08T09:56:00.002-04:00

The authors suggest that eating less red meat and/or dairy products may be a more effective way for concerned citizens to lower their food-related climate impacts. They estimate that shifting to an entirely local diet would reduce the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions as driving 1,000 miles, while changing only one day per week's meat and dairy-based calories to chicken, fish, or vegetables would have about the same impact. Shifting entirely from an average American diet to a vegetable-based one would reduce the same emissions as 8,000 miles driven per year.

For the thousandth time, why vegetarianism is better for the climate than eating local. Via Gerry.

build it and they will come

2010-06-01T16:26:00.001-04:00

Mega-projects of the future. Via BB.

Ducky

2010-06-01T16:21:00.002-04:00

Be sly: Donald Duck did double-duty as a propagandist during WWII.

From MoJo's collection of VD-related propaganda of WWII, "Enemy in Your Pants."

Visions of a Saner World

2010-05-14T20:36:00.001-04:00

Time-lapse of rush-hour in Utrecht, where 1/3 of residents commute via bicycle. 100% awesome.

Dissertation research

2010-05-11T22:26:00.005-04:00

Clearly if I am to write a second dissertation chapter, I'll need to investigate what the first one was all about. And the easiest way to do that is clearly by looking at the damn thing as a Wordle.

At Lang Last

2010-05-06T09:15:00.002-04:00

The archives at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires is suddenly yielding the treasures of long-thought-lost films, including an additional 25 minutes of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Can't wait to see The Complete Metropolis.

black gold

2010-04-17T20:37:00.002-04:00

The NYT has an article up about Kopi Luwak, coffee beans that have been eaten, digested, and evacuated by civets. I predict several things. First, we will see a profusion of super specialty coffee companies that charge huge amounts of money for this. Second, they'll mostly be bogus. Third, I will seek them out anyways. Fourth, as per Mitchell & Webb, we can expect that the Asian Palm Civet will face few threats of extinction anytime soon.

Could've been famous

2010-04-14T22:47:00.003-04:00

In 1945, Walt Disney signed Aldous Huxley to write a screenplay for "Alice and the Mysterious Mr. Carroll": a combination live-action and animated incorporation of "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" with the biography of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson). Dodgson, a beleaguered Oxford lecturer known as the Dodo, has already written "Alice in Wonderland" under the name Lewis Carroll. He and Alice take refuge in Wonderland from Alice’s cruel governess and Dodgson’s Tory vice-chancellor. These villains, who disapprove of "nonsense books," must never learn that Dodgson and Carroll are the same person, lest Dodgson be barred from a coveted university librarianship. A series of fantastic adventures culminates with the resolution of the Carroll-Dodgson identity through a deus-ex-machina appearance by Queen Victoria. "It was so literary I could understand only every third word," Disney said of Huxley’s script, which he didn’t end up using for his adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" (1951).

Seven never-produced screenplays by famous intellectuals.

Welcome to Earth

2010-04-06T16:27:00.002-04:00

Welcome, element #117. We hope you enjoyed your brief stay and that you do return.

2010-03-29T20:20:00.000-04:00

Not good:

A federal appeals court says three Seattle police officers did not employ excessive force when they repeatedly tasered a visibly pregnant woman for refusing to sign a speeding ticket.

Legacy

2010-03-28T22:00:00.005-04:00

The NYT has an article up about the Obama administration's ever more complicated position regarding the legal problems they inherited from the Bush administration regarding terrorists and Guantanamo Bay.

And it occurs to me that the problems of Gitmo are a perfect image of the forthcoming problems that the Republicans are going to have in repealing the Affordable Care Act.

The politicians may think getting rid of it--whether Guantanamo or health care--is a top priority. They may think it's a moral duty. And they may think that's what they were elected to do. But ultimately by the time they inherit the policy, they find that easy answers aren't forthcoming.

I for one think that Gitmo should be closed, and I do hope that Obama will find a way to do it, but in a way I think the Affordable Care Act is going to be even harder to shut down.

The best nation in the world: donation!

2010-03-23T09:46:00.004-04:00

Given that Kendra and I are currently seeking donations to send our good Nicaraguan friends Iveth and Joselin to school for another year, it might be counterproductive to stump for another cause, but Rush Limbaugh might not leave the country without our help.

What do you call that kind of roll?

2010-03-11T15:14:00.004-05:00

Director of the recent Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove, helped bust an L.A. sushi restaurant for selling endangered Sei whale meat to customers. And, surprisingly, "illegally selling an endangered species product" is only a misdemeanor.

If you haven't seen The Cove yet, do so. It can be hard to watch in some parts, but it's very well done and a real eye-opener.

Plant a seed for you and me.

2010-03-09T10:13:00.003-05:00

Panic!

My favorite part about this video is the idea not that the seeds will produce bountiful gardens, but that in the economic apocalypse they will be the most valuable currency. Fuck skills. Capitalism dies hard.

Bearded Brains

2010-03-08T22:33:00.008-05:00

Let it be known that Victorian philosopher's had the best facial hair in the history of thought (pace Nietzsche):

George H. Lewes.

Herbert Spencer

T. H. Huxley.

2010-03-08T20:25:00.003-05:00

From Wired: "Feds Move to Break Voting-Machine Monopoly." Apparently this is simply a matter of commercial monopoly, not a question of influencing elections. But I'm sure that this will be fodder for some right-wing radio host somewhere. Don't you get it? Obama is trying is conspiring with the Feds to stay president for life?

Cryptogram

2010-03-08T13:11:00.004-05:00

Glenn Beck, salt of the earth, thinks that the words "social justice" secretly mean "Nazism." Somehow this seems to stretch an already fraught logic. I'm starting worry that some large part of our country has fallen into a kind of crypto-mania. There's nothing too surprising to me in 9/11 Truth conspiracies; events like that (think JFK's assassination) are prone to conspiratorial thinking. And even Birtherism seems to me somehow intelligible as a paranoid kickback against the seismic shock that the election of Obama must have seemed for some. But those are just the tip of the iceberg.

Consider the recent "controversy" over the crypto-Islamism of the Missile Defense Agency logo. Clearly a conspiracy. And then there's global domination conspiracy theories that deal with any anxiety around national sovereignty, but especially those that cohere around global warming and cap-and-trade. The idea is, of course, that there is a global conspiracy to reduce America's prominence in the world by manufacturing data about the climate, which can only be solved by international forces. It's another Beck-ian cryptogram: global warming = slavery. And then there's the "liberal plantation," which basically says that black people tend to be liberal because they're lazy and want to be on welfare. And of course, there are smaller conspiracies, too, like the idea that Obama "sold" a judgeship for votes on health-care. You get the idea. This has become so much a part of our current cultural fabric that I've even seen it verge into non-political arenas. Have you heard that Peyton Manning deliberately threw the Super Bowl because, you know, he loves New Orleans?

I'm not certain what to make of all of this. I'm not totally convinced that this is unique to our moment, but it does seem like it. I think that there's probably some good cultural studies work to be done here to understand not just why people are drawn to conspiracy theories but why they seem necessary to certain times and places and what kind of long-term impacts they have on a culture. If these things deeply impress the minds of their adherents, it seems likely that scientific rationality has a rough road ahead in America. (Sorry Darwin.) My guess would be that these things are more temporary, fueled by topical cultural desires and the rapid loss of a demographic's symbolic ground. But, again, who's to say?

I would be curious to know what other conspiracies we can come up with.

Toon

2010-03-07T11:50:00.003-05:00

In honor of tonight's Oscars, a film that was nominated for best short animation a few years back, "The Myterious Explorations of Jasper Morello."

This, like all good things, comes via Kendra.

We're killing each other by sleeping in

2010-03-05T17:18:00.002-05:00

When I wasn't looking, Blake Schwarzenbach, the former front man of Jawbreaker and Jets to Brazil, formed and dissolved a band called Thorns of Life. Here's a video of Blake playing some songs solo:

My First Time/Vivid Green (Blake Schwarzenbach - Bar Matchless)

Thorns Of Life | MySpace Music Videos

Apparently Thorns of Life yielded no studio recordings, but Blake is now working with a couple of people in a band called forgetters (lower case "f"). I'll be eagerly looking forward to hearing something from this project.

To all my homies in the academy:

2010-03-03T15:55:00.010-05:00

If ever you are in the enviable position of teaching the concept of "reification" to undergrads, might I suggest you teach them about the comodification of punk rock?

It's old story that gets daily older and less self-consciously ironic. Suffice it to say, not a year goes by when I don't feel like someone somewhere in the world is deliberately trying to make it seem like punk was never anything more than Hot Topic to begin with.

And then this happened:

In January 2010 Converse will release several shoes dedicated to The Clash. Most notably is the Converse London Calling shoes which celebrates the 30th Anniversary of the album. There will also be a pair of Converse Shoes that look like a jacket with buttons and Chuck Taylors with The Clash logos.

I don't even see that this could be potentially lucrative. It's just weird -- as I say, like someone is doing all of this on purpose, for ideological reasons rather than the profit motive.

We're all screwed!

2010-02-23T13:10:00.004-05:00

The Washington Post has a piece up about the food industry's efforts to remove BPA--the nasty, cancer-causing plastics recently removed from Nalgene and Sigg water bottles--from canned foods. Upon reading an article on BPA in canned tomatoes, I decided to stop buying them altogether. But it looks like the food industry has a much bigger problem on its hands: it just can't figure out where the BPA is coming from?

Major U.S. foodmakers are quietly investigating how to rid their containers of Bisphenol A, a chemical under scrutiny by federal regulators concerned about links to a range of health problems, including reproductive disorders and cancer.

But they are discovering how complicated it is to remove the chemical, which is in the epoxy linings of nearly every metal can on supermarket shelves and leaches into foods such as soup, liquid baby formula and soda. It is a goal that is taking years to reach, costing millions and proving surprisingly elusive.[...]
"What we're hearing is, the stuff is just omnipresent."

Only spray-on glass can save us now.

april hates u, makes lilacs, u no can has.

2010-02-23T12:58:00.002-05:00

LOLcat meets "The Wasteland." And, as often, I wonder whether to dance or despair. God bless the internet.

Indexed

2010-02-23T12:41:00.002-05:00

Whoever has been Googling "bitter knife-wielding children," you've got the wrong blog.

Note to my future students:

2010-02-22T15:15:00.004-05:00

If ever you apply to a university that allows you to supply a Youtube supplemental video as part of your application package, make sure it implies that you will spend your time in college more or less going to class and being a good member of the academic community--not just throwing raves on campus.

You're welcome.

Dead Prez

2010-02-15T21:05:00.000-05:00

My favorite thing on the entire internet. Happy Presidents' Day:

Grover is our president now.

2010-02-15T13:50:00.001-05:00

It is international Grover Appreciation Day. Why not?