LUH LUH LUH LINKS

Generation X Doesn't Want to Hear It

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:36:00 -0400

“Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit?”

The Life-Changing $20 Rightward-Facing Cow

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:41:59 -0400

The Life-Changing $20 Rightward-Facing Cow:

“This is the story of a person whose joke project became more successful than the one on which he lavished love and intellect, the climate that caused that to happen and how ultimately he decided to learn from it instead of becoming upset.”

Generation FNL

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:11:00 -0400

Generation FNL:

“And this is basically what "Friday Night Lights” talks to us about, how time moves so strangely, how we go from late nights drinking beer and messing around in a deserted field with our friends, our problems seemingly so huge, to late nights drinking wine with a partner, the very hair on our heads weary, our problems seemingly so huge.“

Beck: 15 Years

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:30:57 -0400

Beck: 15 Years:

“It was one of those moments when the machine shudders for a second.”

Pitchfork: Interviews: Louis C.K.

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:31:32 -0400

Pitchfork: Interviews: Louis C.K.:

“I think it’s a much bigger shift than it was for my parents. My mother was born in 1940, so when she was growing up, they had cars and airplanes and television and movies, and by the time she got to when I was born, 1967, they had slightly smaller cars and televisions that were color and bigger planes. Now there are TVs in your phone, a phone in your car, cars that have fucking navigation in them that talk to you. That GPS shit is something that nobody gives a shit about, and it’s incredible that you can do that. You can ask your car where you can get something to eat, and it’ll take you there. It’s crazy.”

The Foul Stink of the Japan Snake Center

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:18:19 -0400

The Foul Stink of the Japan Snake Center:

“The smell was overpowering – I could barely stand still to shoot a picture at all. Clutching the lid by the tips of my fingers though, I managed to get a few shots. It looked like there had once been tortoises stored there too, but now all that remained were empty husks. Most of the boxes were like this, piled high with snake skins and bodies, some kept in a dark, gooey liquid that smelt more putrid than the dry containers.”

Design Professionalism on Contests and Awards

Mon, 23 May 2011 13:35:47 -0400

Design Professionalism on Contests and Awards:

Here’s something that is plainly evident to those with discriminating minds, but that your social organization hopes you don’t realize: there is no such thing as a design competition. A design that is created to be judged and not used is not a design, but rather competition art or mere decoration. The winners of these events are, without question, highly-skilled decorators and artists, but let us not get into the habit of pretending decoration equals design. The only valid evaluation of a design is found it its ultimate success in the marketplace or as demonstrated by the satisfaction of those who willfully and with specific intent have “used” the design (however that might contextually be defined).

When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:15:47 -0400

When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?:

“For example, a Ladies’ Home Journal article in June 1918 said, ‘The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.’ Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.”

48 Frames Per Second

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:20:53 -0400

48 Frames Per Second:

“It’s similar to the moment when vinyl records were supplanted by digital CDs. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re heading towards movies being shot and projected at higher frame rates.”

[this makes me :( - ed.]

Islands at the Speed of Light

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:39:18 -0400

Islands at the Speed of Light:

“It is thus in [financial] traders’ direct financial interest, they suggest, to install themselves at specific points on the Earth’s surface—a kind of light-speed financial acupuncture—to take advantage both of the planet’s geometry and of the networks along which trades are ordered and filled. They conclude that ‘the construction of relativistic statistical arbitrage trading nodes across the Earth’s surface’ is thus economically justified, if not required.”

Eleven very short stories about SXSW

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:58:59 -0400

Eleven very short stories about SXSW:

“7. The audience’s standing ovation was ecstatic, rapturous, genuine. Here, in this safe place, a man had dared to stand up and tell them that the internet was really, really important, and it was going to become more so.”

Deadly Medicine

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:03:59 -0400

Deadly Medicine:

“Many of today’s trials still take place in developed countries, such as Britain, Italy, and Japan. But thousands are taking place in countries with large concentrations of poor, often illiterate people, who in some cases sign consent forms with a thumbprint, or scratch an “X.” Bangladesh has been home to 76 clinical trials. There have been clinical trials in Malawi (61), the Russian Federation (1,513), Romania (876), Thailand (786), Ukraine (589), Kazakhstan (15), Peru (494), Iran (292), Turkey (716), and Uganda (132). Throw a dart at a world map and you are unlikely to hit a spot that has escaped the attention of those who scout out locations for the pharmaceutical industry.”

Snapshots from a rock 'n' roll marriage

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:26:17 -0500

Snapshots from a rock 'n' roll marriage:

“In the year that Patrick and I have been divorced, I have taken to throwing a lot of mementos away – notes I’d hung onto, photos of him as a child, photos of us together, mix CDs he’d made me, our wedding invitations, wedding cards, backstage passes from shows, anything with the words "The Black Keys” on it.

It is entirely against my nature to destroy evidence. I usually hold onto relics of the past with obsessive zeal. Each purging was painful. But people told me that I had to let go, and so I took them literally, and tried to put what was left of us in the trash.“

A Lesson in Tripe

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:00:30 -0500

A Lesson in Tripe:

“I read somewhere that tripe can increase libido. Four fold.”

There is a very long pause in which Mr Gulliver raises his eyebrows.

“Well,” says Mr Henderson, “It’s heady stuff, tripe. Uplifting.”

“Can you eat it as a dessert?” asks the photographer.

“You’d be very foolish,” says Mr Henderson.

Frank Buckles, Last World War I Doughboy, Is Dead at 110

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:23:14 -0500

Frank Buckles, Last World War I Doughboy, Is Dead at 110:

“He traveled widely over the years, working for steamship companies, and he was on business in Manila when the Japanese occupied it following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He was imprisoned by the Japanese, losing more than 50 pounds, before being liberated by an American airborne unit in February 1945.”

Could an astronaut fart himself back to the space capsule?

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:41:06 -0500

Could an astronaut fart himself back to the space capsule?:

“If we accept that people can fart at 10 ft /s (=3m/s, give or take), and that the average fart weighs about 0.0464 gm (which is 46.4 * 10^-6 kg), the average momentum transfer from a single fart is about 1.39 * 10 ^-4 kg m/s. For an average 60kg astronaut, his (or her, of course) velocity would be a rather pitiful 2.32 * 10^-6 m/s. 2.32 micrometers per second isn’t going to get you anywhere much.”

The Day the Movies Died

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:47:05 -0500

The Day the Movies Died:

“The studios say, ‘Well, no one else is coming to movies reliably these days except for young males, so we’ll make our movies for them.’ And yet if you make movies simply for young males, nobody else is going to want to go. So Hollywood has become like Logan’s Run: You turn 30, and they kill you.”

Space stasis: What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:23:19 -0500

Space stasis: What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation:

“There is no shortage of proposals for radically innovative space launch schemes that, if they worked, would get us across the valley to other hilltops considerably higher than the one we are standing on now—high enough to bring the cost and risk of space launch down to the point where fundamentally new things could begin happening in outer space. But we are not making any serious effort as a society to cross those valleys. It is not clear why.”

My story about the film ‘Monster House’

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:51:10 -0500

My story about the film ‘Monster House’:

“I tried to tell them they were making a bad movie that was going to confuse and frighten smart children, instead of making children more brave, and they acted like I was stupid for being afraid that would happen.”

Tycho: On The Matter of Dickwolves

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:28:08 -0500

Tycho: On The Matter of Dickwolves:

“I don’t have any intention of going into specifics, but speculating about my own sexual history or the sexual history of the people we know is profoundly unwise. I will also tell you that people deal with horror of this kind in different ways, and one of them is with humor. There’s no monolithic “woman” just as there is no monolithic “feminist” just as there is no “man,” no “true” way of dealing with tragedy.”