July 23
"I haven’t figured out whether cracking open your computer, attaching it to an Underwood typewriter, then inserting it into a combination Victorian mantel clock/desk and calling it “The Nagy Magical-Movable-Type Pixello-Dynamotronic Computational Engine” is some sort of daft wit or evidence of a pedantry bordering on the pathological. " -
Steampunk'd, Or Humbug by Design, design writer Randy Nakamura takes a look at the Steampunk phenomenon.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM -
20 comments
The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has an extensive,
searchable online collection. It focuse on material art and household items and has objects from all over the world. The website can be browsed either by geographic orgin:
Africa,
Asia,
North and Central America,
Pacific,
South America, or through its two exhibits,
Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives and
Fowler in Focus. Some of my favorite objects (but really, everything is entrancing) are
The Blind Scholar (
a Taiwanese handpuppet),
Chikunga (
a Zambian mask) and a
stirrup spout bottle which looks like a puma eating a piglet (
Peruvian). All items have accompanying descriptions and some have short texts or audioguides with further information.
posted by Kattullus at 9:36 AM -
2 comments
Google is testing a Digg-like social interface to Google Search results, Techcrunch has an early
preview video. This is bad news for Jimy Wales's
Wikia since this is what they have been trying to build. Perhaps related it looks like
Google is buying Digg.
posted by stbalbach at 6:31 AM -
51 comments
July 22
Butch Cassidy wanted to call his gang The Train Robber's Syndicate, but the name never stuck. The gang's core members - most notable among them
The Sundance Kid - and a revolving cast of supporting outlaws were most commonly called The
Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and
The Wild Bunch, and their goal was to be the most successful train robbers in history. The
Butch and Sundance site is a comprehensive collection of "the hundreds, if not thousands, of theories, legends and folk tales" surrounding the gang, including an exhaustive
list of biographies of the members, their associates, the lawmen who pursued them and the women who loved them, an
archive of transcribed news articles dating from the 1880s (including a
letter to the editor from Sundance himself), a
picture gallery and more.
[more inside]
posted by amyms at 11:39 PM -
23 comments
In January of 2004, Disney
shut down their Florida animation studio, part of their decision to
move away from 2D, or cell-shaded, animation
for good. Two years later, as part of the new deal with Pixar, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull were brought in as heads of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, and promptly declared that 2-D Animation would thrive again on their watch. For their first new project, the team wanted to show support for the still-struggling New Orleans, and simultaneously introduce
Disney's first Black Princess in
"The Frog Princess" (Or
The Princess and the Frog, as it is now known), a fairy tale set in 1920's Jazz-era Louisiana, with Randy Newman providing a
period-specific score.
Much response to the project has been
quite positive, but as with all things,
the devil is in the details.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:46 PM -
94 comments
For years,
Wired magazine has tapped a bevy of designers and artists in the tech field to craft detailed visions of futuristic objects for a monthly showcase at the close of each issue. Now, after
hinting as much in the July edition, it is clear that that the tradition of FOUND
has been brought to an end. What better way to say goodbye to this whimsical feature than by taking a look back at the full archived run of the series?
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:42 PM -
26 comments
Now Viacom will STEAL your movie Viacom has claimed ownership of an independent filmmaker's film and now she has to fight them for it. They allow her to leave it on YouTube but they claim ownership and they get to collect data on who's watching.
posted by njohnson23 at 2:30 PM -
42 comments
What's the second most popular sport in the world after soccer?
Badminton. (According to
some sources - volleyball and cricket are also contenders.) When played competitively, badminton looks more like
this and less like
this. The
Chinese are poised to win Gold in Beijing, while the American team, featuring star player
Howard Bach gets
no love.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:16 PM -
31 comments
In the summer of 1897, the Devil transported a
minor Decadent poet named Enoch Soames one hundred years into the future to see what posterity would make of
his work. The only witness to the affair was the parodist
Max Beerbohm, whose
account of Soames and his journey ensured that at 2:10 P.M. on June 7, 1997, some dozen pilgrims waited in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum
to see the poet appear...
posted by Iridic at 10:58 AM -
26 comments
The latest issue of
Yellowstone Science quarterly is devoted to 5 articles chronicling the history of the management of grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, from the 1950s era "garbage dump bears," to listing as an endangered species, to de-listing as endangered, to current management. Many excellent photos, maps, charts and graphs make this a great resource for people interested in the fate of grizzlies in the lower 48 states.
Part 1 of the issue.
Part 2. [links to PDF files] (
via)
posted by paulsc at 6:33 AM -
5 comments
July 21
Home Movies. A 1975 documentary by a young academic folklorist, exploring what it was that people were doing when they made home movies: remembering selectively, creating a "golden age."
[more inside]
posted by Miko at 8:52 PM -
20 comments
Correlative Analytics -- or as O'Reilly might term the
Social Graph -- sort of mirrors the debate on 'brute force'
algorithmic proofs (that are "
true for no reason,"
cf.) in which "computers can extract patterns in this ocean of data that no human could ever possibly detect. These patterns are correlations. They may or may not be
causative, but we can learn new things. Therefore they accomplish what science does, although not in the traditional manner... In this part of science, we may get answers that work, but which we don't understand. Is this partial understanding? Or
a different kind of
understanding?" Of course, say some in the scientific community:
hogwash; it's just a fabrication of scientifically/statistically illiterate pundits, like whilst new techniques in
data analysis are being developed to help keep ahead of the deluge...
posted by kliuless at 5:58 PM -
39 comments
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 came out in 2004, and was received with mixed reviews. Four years later, hobbyists of the game continue to take it to a whole other level. You may have already seen links to the
creative ways to devastate in RCT3. A whole other group of fans, however, have gone on to create highly detailed parks and ride recreations. They use customized textures and mods to create
massive architectural works that require hundreds--sometimes over thousands--of hours of work.
[more inside]
posted by The ____ of Justice at 3:29 PM -
41 comments
Slides used to be dangerous..... After climbing up those sandy, metal crosstrax steps you got to the top and stared down at that steep ride below. The slide was burning hot to the touch, a stovetop set to high all day under the summer sun, just waiting to greet the underside of your legs with first-degree burns as you enjoyed the ride
posted by bluesky43 at 1:09 PM -
170 comments
Kristin's List. There are plenty of events guides in Los Angeles, but none has as personal a voice, as finely honed an aesthetic (the
Neutra font is an inspired touch) or as discerning an eye as Kristin's. Her weekly emails and web listings are one woman's recommended sampling of the most interesting music, film, architecture, food, fashion, literary and unquantifiable events across the megalopolis. And so far, it's completely ad-free.
posted by Scram at 1:07 PM -
29 comments
July 20
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