April 3
This film Was nominated (and won) the Oscar for best animated short feature. If you love books and words then this silent 15 minute piece is worth your time.
Here is the backstory.
posted by Michael_H at 1:41 PM - 0 comments
MIT is leading an NSF-funded project with researchers from University of Pennsylvania and Harvard that aims to
enable anyone to "design, customize and print a specialized robot in a matter of hours." Constructed from "cyber-physical primitives," the robots (
some early examples here) would be able to be made in bulk on demand and could help change the entire workflow of device and robot creation, from engineering to warehousing to assembly.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:04 PM - 7 comments
High in the Himalayan foothills,
fearless Gurung men risk their lives to harvest the massive nests of the world's
largest honeybee. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:51 PM - 18 comments
On May 19, 1984, an unemployed ice cream truck driver named Michael Larson went on
Press Your Luck and over the course of two episodes, took home more money than had ever been won in the history of television: $110,237 -- to the shock of the show’s producers and host, the late
Peter Tomarken. How did he do it? The show’s game board had only 5 patterns of 18 squares, and Mr. Larson had memorized them all. After the show, CBS tried to disqualify him but couldn’t, because Larson hadn’t done anything illegal. But they
did refuse to allow those episodes to be aired in syndication. So, they didn’t re-air until 2003, when the Game Show Network produced a Tomarken-hosted documentary about Mr. Larson’s incredible win:
Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal.
[more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:25 AM - 24 comments
Economies of Scale is a free, web-based multiplayer business/commerce simulation game under development by Scott Rubyton (aka Ratan Joyce). Players use starting capital to build production/wholesale/retail businesses from the ground up in a basic economic model, competing for market share while collaborating through business-to-business trading of goods and materials. It's more fun than getting an MBA! Also much less expensive.
[more inside]
posted by cortex at 11:07 AM - 10 comments
Meg Hitchcock creates
intricate collages out of individual letters from spiritual and philosophical texts
(via).
posted by EvaDestruction at 11:04 AM - 1 comment
Where are you on the global pay scale? A nice calculator that shows how your monthly salary compares to the average for your country and for the world. But before drawing too many sweeping conclusions, check out the
notes that explain how the numbers are calculated, and the difficulties with trying to calculate any such thing.
[more inside]
posted by philipy at 10:20 AM - 36 comments
Is a ’director’s cut’ ever a good idea? The director's cut has been a feature of the home video landscape for years, getting a significant boost from multi-disk DVD and now Blu-Ray sets. There are some pretty
bad ones around, but which are the best? Movie sites like
Shortlist,
IGN Movies,
MoviesOnline.ca,
FilmWad and
Empire have all given us lists of the best (and worst), and
online discussions have suggested others (
Blade Runner tops most lists, but beyond that they diverge significantly). Where do you start when that two-hour epic isn't epic enough?
posted by rory at 9:48 AM - 109 comments
How Video Game Sounds Are Made: a brief but fascinating look inside the world of video game sound production.
posted by quin at 9:35 AM - 9 comments
Closed Frontier: Is rock over? "Rock ’n’ roll is to 21st-century America what the Wild West was to 20th-century America: a closed frontier, ripe for mass mythology....Exciting new music still thrives in the subgenres, but modern musicians draw increasing amounts of inspiration from tradition, not originality. The sexagenarian Rolling Stones do serial victory laps around the world, just as an aging Buffalo Bill toured America and Europe in the 1880s and 90s, performing rope and horse tricks alongside Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull."
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:15 AM - 135 comments
Video: the Terrafugia Transition flying car goes for a drive and a flight. Press release.
Previously. This is the first demonstrated flight of the vehicle at significant altitude (above ground effect).
posted by exogenous at 7:04 AM - 41 comments
US Feds Reject Petition To Ban BPA In Food --
"...recent studies done by government researchers at the request of regulatory agencies suggest it's very unlikely that BPA poses a health risk to people." (
NPR Audio)
[more inside]
posted by crunchland at 6:37 AM - 79 comments
Antipsychotics: "The magnitude of publication bias found for antipsychotics was less than that found previously for antidepressants, possibly because antipsychotics demonstrate superiority to placebo more consistently."
Antidepressants:
"We found a bias toward the publication of positive results. Not only were positive results more likely to be published, but studies that were not positive, in our opinion, were often published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome. [...] Using both approaches, we found that the efficacy of this drug class is less than would be gleaned from an examination of the published literature alone. According to the published literature, the results of nearly all of the trials of antidepressants were positive. In contrast, FDA analysis of the trial data showed that roughly half of the trials had positive results."
Previously [more inside]
posted by OmieWise at 5:47 AM - 29 comments
Some physicists celebrate April Fools Day by posting spurious papers to the
arXiv preprint server.
Non-detection of the Tooth Fairy at Optical Wavelengths
We report a non-detection, to a limiting magnitude of V = 18.4, of the elusive entity commonly described as the Tooth Fairy. We review various physical models and conclude that follow-up observations must precede an interpretation of our result.
[more inside]
posted by alby at 5:04 AM - 12 comments
The Incentive Bubble (
ungated pdf) - "The fraying of the compact of American capitalism by rising income inequality and repeated governance crises is disturbing. But misallocations of financial, real, and human capital arising from the financial-incentive bubble are much more worrisome to those concerned with the competitiveness of the American economy."
[more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:32 AM - 35 comments
On September 13, 1859,
a former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court shot and killed a U.S. Senator in what has been called
the last notable duel in American history. The duel itself can be interpreted as a sort of
proxy battle between pro- and anti-slavery groups of the time, and a harbinger of the American Civil War (which would begin a year and half later).
posted by MattMangels at 3:56 AM - 10 comments
What do American "values voters" actually value? The
American Values Project gathers answers.
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:28 AM - 22 comments
In 2010, the top 500 U.S. corporations - the Fortune 500 – generated $10.7 trillion in sales, reaped a whopping $702 billion in profits, and employed 24.9 million people around the globe. Historically, when these corporations have invested in the productive capabilities of their American employees, we’ve had lots of well-paid and stable jobs.
That was the case a half century ago.
posted by marienbad at 2:12 AM - 33 comments
April 2
Bands often don't seem to be able to play on stage the way they did on their album; and we accept that for a lot of reasons having to do with the conditions, the production facilities and the sheer number of takes that were probably involved. But for a whole generation of hit music, there was often a more basic reason:
it wasn't them playing on the album in the first place.
For nearly a decade, if you were an L.A. producer and you wanted to record a hit single, you'd call in The Wrecking Crew. Members of The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and The Mamas and the Papas would step aside as The Wrecking Crew laid down the instrumental tracks. Then, the members of the main band would come back to add the vocals on top.
The above link goes to the OPB radio story I listened to this morning, with an embedded player.
Official site for the book.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:57 PM - 49 comments
One of the more conservative of the Fed's regional banks, the Dallas Federal Reserve, says "too-big-to-fail" banks must be broken up. Now. An interesting and important essay(pdf) from a most unlikely source.(via)
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 8:48 PM - 13 comments
Eric Lowen, of
Lowen and Navarro,
passed away last week after battling ALS for 8 years. You've probably heard
their songs, in
one form or
another, over the years.
[more inside]
posted by gjc at 8:45 PM - 10 comments
In admitting that they have no expertise in running a corrections system, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that officers have unfettered authority to
conduct full strip searches of any arrested individual, even for the most minor of offenses and in situations where officers lack any suspicion of contraband. The ruling comes days after the NY Times ran an analysis suggesting that the current supreme court is the
most conservative court in modern history.
posted by GnomeChompsky at 8:36 PM - 74 comments
Watch the world's most extraordinary 'kinetic sculpture' "From a duck to a skeleton to a robot dinosaur: scientists created this fabulous kinetic sculpture, called On the Move, to demonstrate to children the concept of energy transfer. "
posted by dhruva at 7:15 PM - 21 comments
Dancing with Han Solo is a real thing that exists.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:33 PM - 89 comments
Keith Apicary auditions for a Kimberly Cole music video.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:02 PM - 9 comments
Young
Edd Gould always enjoyed drawing comics of himself and his friends. Growing up in the internet age, his
doodles evolved into Flash animations of increasing complexity, and in time Edd and pals
Tom Ridgewell and Matt Hargreaves teamed up to produce an
"Eddsworld" series of online webtoons and
comics.
At first crude and halting, the group's
"eddisodes" progressed from
surreal shorts and
one-shots into full-fledged productions that pushed the boundaries of amateur web animation, with
expressive characters,
full soundtracks, complex effects, and a fast-paced, off-kilter sense of humor:
MovieMakers -
Spares -
WTFuture -
Rock Bottom -
Hammer & Fail (
2).
At its height, the college co-op was producing shorts for
Mitchell & Webb and the
UN Climate Change Conference,
fielding offers from Paramount and Cartoon Network, and racking up
millions of hits on YouTube.
Work slowed, however, when Gould was
diagnosed with leukemia -- a relatively survivable form, though, and Gould carried on
working gamely through his hospital stays. So it came as a shock last week when Matt and Tom
announced that Edd had passed away, prompting an
outpouring of
grief and
gratitude from
all the
fans he'd
entertained and
inspired in his short 23 years.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:41 PM - 5 comments
"Crazy Clown Time" is the new music video by filmmaker and musician David Lynch. It's kinda not safe for work, or life.
posted by The Whelk at 2:10 PM - 118 comments
Will Pearson is a London-based professional panoramic photographer. His work comprises
cityscapes,
landscape panoramas and
360 virtual tours. There is an emphasis on capturing images at a
massive resolution. This one of
Sheikh Zayed Road Dubai is my favorite. Will takes time for fun too with
The Rain Project.
posted by netbros at 2:05 PM - 2 comments
xkcd 1037:
Umwelt [more inside]
posted by memebake at 1:49 PM - 80 comments
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of his first novel, Fatherland, writer
Robert Harris spoke to
John Mullan at
The Guardian Book Club (
Highlights,
The interview in full (autoplay))
[more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:41 PM - 16 comments
A Death in Yellowstone: On the Trail of a Grizzly Bear. a gripping story and a well written article in
Slate, by
Jessica Grose.
Includes a similarly remarkable
photo feature. [more inside]
posted by spitbull at 12:36 PM - 48 comments
Elizabeth Kolbert explores the case against kids. Drawing from the work of philosophy professors
David Benatar,
Christine Overall and economist
Bryan Caplan, Kolbert examines the justifications for reproducing.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 12:30 PM - 119 comments
A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney Does what it says on the package. With diagrams. (SLNYT)
posted by bearwife at 11:25 AM - 29 comments
Daily Science Fiction: Original Science Fiction and Fantasy every weekday. Welcome to Daily Science Fiction, an online magazine of science fiction short stories. We publish "science fiction" in the broad sense of the word: This includes sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream—whatever you'd likely find in the science fiction section of your local bookstore. Our stories are mostly short short fiction each Monday through Thursday, hopefully the right length to read on a coffee break, over lunch, or as a bedtime tale. Friday's weekend stories are longer.
posted by Fizz at 10:31 AM - 18 comments
Guy climbs star of Kotelnicheskaya Embankment free-handed Because no good Monday shouldn't begin without a jolting dose of vertigo!
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 9:44 AM - 57 comments
The Evolution of the Moon: a cool, short video made with information from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
posted by quin at 9:32 AM - 21 comments
"
From days of long ago... from uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend: the legend of
Voltron, Defender of the Universe!"
[more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:22 AM - 28 comments
Curveball comes clean: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression." ... When it is put to him "we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie", he simply replies: "
Yes."
posted by unSane at 9:04 AM - 78 comments
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