The Beach Boys Shred I Get Around

Via Tim!

The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

The World is Now in Color: Calvin & Hobbs

Click for a large image.

Native American Portraits from c. 1905

Below (and after the jump) is a small sampling of a series of great portraits of Native Americans at In Focus, The Atlantic's photography blog.  The full series, posted a few months ago, is worth seeing.

"Lies I've Told My 3 Year Old Recently"

Trees talk to each other at night.
All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.
Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.
Tiny bears live in drain pipes.
If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.
The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.
Everyone knows at least one secret language.
When nobody is looking, I can fly.
We are all held together by invisible threads.
Books get lonely too.
Sadness can be eaten.
I will always be there

A poem by Raul Gutierez at the blog Heading East, via Boing Boing.

Russian Landscape Artist Konstantin Kryzhitsky and Knowing the Artist

James Gurney, who writes the great art blog Gurney Journey, asks what a painting can tells us about an artist.  Speculating from the painting Peyzazh 1895 (below) by the Russian painter Konstantin Kryzhitsky,  of whom gurney was unaware (me to), Gurney asserts Kryzhitsky "had a deep soul, a love of mystery, melancholy, and music, and a keen sense of nature's moods that must have come from long walks through the countryside. This painting couldn't have been done by a flippant, urbane, or shallow person."

I'm not sure that so much about an artist can be gleaned from a single painting.  I certainly have my doubts that Kryzhitsky was not urbane.  Assuming the artist is not attempting to mislead about herself or himself -- and is, of course, not a forger or a machine -- still we may know very little of an artist from a work or series of works.  Of course, it depends on the work.  I could say very little about Ellsworth Kelly, for instance, just knowing some of his work.  As to Kryzhitsky, taking the assumption that he puts himself genuinely into his work, and looking at many of his landscapes, I see someone awed by nature both as to its beauty and scale, someone who wanted to show humankind as small in relation to that vastness, someone who had trained as an academic painter and had extraordinary technical skill, and someone who very sensitive and smart.

Peyzazh 1895 is, to my lights, a fantastic painting: from the illusion of smoke from the break in the trees, from the juxtaposition of built and natural world, to the question it raises of whether one is entering or leaving the estate, to the feeling of coldness and sense of place so real (but not slavishly realistic) that I can feel being there.  This last point flows readily across many of his works -- below the break a sample (and final comment):

Sculpting the Aging Process

Peter Han calls himself a designer not an artist.  He is an artist.

In the video below he not only demonstrates his art, but, wittingly or not, gives a clear sense of what makes art, literally and figuratively.

Han's incredible work can be seen on his website and through some screenshots at Colossal.

The Bead Chain Experiment

Our physical world is simply an amazing world.

Via Tim! from 3 Quarks Daily.

Excellent Advice from Galileo Feynman Jezebel

This is not the Dick you're looking for

What with Anthony Weiner's weiner in the news again, Erin Gloria Ryan has come forward with some timely advice at Jezebel in an article entitled "Should You Send a Lady a Dick Pic? A Guide for Men."

The answer appears to be "no." Who knew?

I assure you the article and its comments are worth reading in full.

Having Learned We are Publishing Again ...

Leonardo Sagan is now hastily rushing back. Yep, things are really heating up around here.

The Time Obama Was Mistaken for a Waiter at a Tina Brown Book Party

I thought this note at The Atlantic harking back to a 2008 article by Katie Rosman in The Wall Street Journal -- and accompanied by the perfect picture (from Kevin Lemarque for Reuters) -- expressed the issue of frequent racial assumptions with clarity and brevity:

"In less than six years, Obama has gone from being mistaken for a waiter among the New York media elite, to the president-elect. What a country."
      ...
And yet even as that country elected and then reelected its first black president, the easy assumptions about who black men are have yet to vanish.

(Link from Miss Cellania; interior quote from Rosman's article.)

Winter is Coming Apparently Sometime Far Away from Now

I've been intermittently reading the Game of Thrones (er, I mean A Song of Fire and Ice) series, having watched the HBO drama.  I whole heartedly agree with this review, except for the part about I am not going to read it anymore.  That's because I knew this was nonsense coming in -- it's a soap opera in fantasy trappings -- but it's my damn soap opera and I'm hooked.

And, yes, the majority of the best characters are dead:

Comic-Con 2013: In Memoriam

Exciting Blogging Action Returns

After a short hiatus, I thought I should get back to the blog.  This is, after all, our 1 year anniversary.  Previous calculations about how long we had been publishing have proven to be inaccurate.

This is the Kind of World I Want to Live In

Via Kottke. And, as Kottke points out, there are plenty of crazy thing happen in Russia videos out there; none, though, betray much hope for the world or respect for others as this one does.

Edwardian England and Ireland Circa 1900

The description at YouTube:

This video has been dramatically enhanced in quality, using modern video editing tools. The film has been motion stabilized and the speed has been slowed down to correct speed (from 18 fps to 24 fps) using special frame interpolation software that re-creates missing frames. Upscaling to HD quality was done using video enhancer software.

I have been told that at least part of this film was shot in Cork (Ireland). The music is "Chanson du Soir" and "Arco Noir" from Harvey's Strings of Sorrow album.

I found the video oddly moving -- must be the sentimental music.  Yes, that's it; it was the music ...

Via Miss Cellania.

Wikipedia Live Monitor

Wikipedia Live Monitor is a major event tracking site that takes edit traffic at Wikipedia, concurrently comparing multiple different language versions of the site, and then compares them in "real time" to international social media edits. The information is used to generate notes (lists? posts? ticklers? I'm not sure what to call these) of rapidly emerging stories around the world. In short, it's a news monitoring service.

I used it during the recent Boston Marathon bombing unfolding story to see how well it worked; I think it is sort of meh right now, but could emerge into a great tracking device. I think it would be better, in the short term, for human editors to review and further edit the output -- at least more than they do -- as well as develop a much better output display.

Wikipedia Live Monitor has it genesis in articles on the possibility of using Wikipedia edits as a news alert, an idea that came from the crash of Wikipedia after Michael Jackson died and edit wars erupted.

"False Flags and Roof Terrorists: Your Guide to All the Internet Horseshit"

"Roof Guy"

An article at Gawker a few days ago, "False Flags and Roof Terrorists: Your Guide to All the Internet Horseshit," if fun of short reading of all an example of the crap nonsense people were spouting on the web and social media after the Boston Bombings when few if any of us really knew what was going on. We get a primer of "false flag attacks," "the roof guy," "crisis actors," and the "fact" that the show Family Guy supposedly predicted the attack. Of course, the readers at Reddit and 4chan were also actively trying (and failing) to solve the crime. (As Matt Buchanan said in an article at The New Yorker on the trend, "This moment is, for better or for worse, the shape of things to come.")

It is a brave new world where everybody has ready access to information on how to maim and kill hundreds or thousands and then we can all play FBI together, speculating on who did it.

Magnetic Putty "Eating" A Magnet

Via Miss Cellania.

Hobo Matters: An Important Episode from The American Experience

Conspiracy Caused American Brains to be Replaced with Pudding

Brain of Ted Nugent. Its removal increased his intelligence.

Recent documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a covert project by the Heritage Foundation and Monsanto secretly turned the brains of millions of Americans into pudding. Most of those affected live in rural areas.

Pudding Brain, or "PB" as it is widely known, is easily detected by examining positive response to triggers like Fox Nation, Rush Limbaugh, and NASCAR racing. Those afflicted with PB also often feel an obsessive need to arm themselves with weapons for no reason whatsoever.

According to scientists, a brain composed of pudding is poor at thinking.

Scientists speculate that PB may have resulted from the ingestion of high amounts of fertilizer laced with hydroxilic acid. Only areas where agricultural supplements are widely used have significant numbers affected with PB.

U.S. counties with the highest number of Pudding Brains are shown in red

The dangers of hydroxilic acid, which also goes by the scientific name μ-oxido dihydrogen, have been well documented for decades. A campaign to ban the substance began in the 1980's but faltered. 

Oddly, those with PB often fear that hydroxilic acid is contaminated with fluoride. According to an unimpeachable source fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effects on a long range basis.

Hydroxillic acid is also a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine, a "medicine" popular in areas that also have a high number of Pudding Heads. Scientists have discouraged the use of methamphetamine, however, leading some to believe they are preventing the treatment of those with PB. According to Mehmet Oz, America's rural doctor, rural people should treat themselves with Reiki and berry juice. Dr. Oz was unavailable for comment according to a man behind a curtain, and, indeed, was not even in Kansas anymore.

Nazi Super Weapons -- Some New Details

The Überschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer, also known as "Thor's Hammer" was one of several super weapons that the Nazis unveiled at the end of World War II in a desperate attempt to halt the Allies. Used mostly against the Soviets. their existence was concealed after the war, though they contributed to the USSR's so-called "doomsday device" that threatened the West in the 1960's. New documents reveal that Khrushchev agreed to dismantle Thor's Hammer as part of the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In exchange the U.S. agreed to withdraw the  PGM-17 Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles (the "Hammer killer") it had deployed to the U.K. as part of "Project Emily."

It's Music Wednesday!

As everyone knows, we always begin our Mondays with some uplifitng music! Today's hit:

Today's Our 27th Anniversary!

While it feels like it was only a few short months ago, it's been twenty-seven since we began turning out this we-blog or "weblog" for short. You've come to know and love us today due to the efforts of our main poster boy, Galileo Feynman. To celebrate here's a sneak peek at what goes on behind the screens:

Before any post is published we run a 17,000 amp current through the author "just to test."

The Coming Spring

Flowers Timelapse from Katka Pruskova on Vimeo.

From Wired: "As Math Grows More Complex, Will Computers Reign?"

From an interesting article in Wired from earlier this month:

Computers are now used extensively to discover new conjectures by finding patterns in data or equations, but they cannot conceptualize them within a larger theory, the way humans do. Computers also tend to bypass the theory-building process when proving theorems, said Constantin Teleman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who does not use computers in his work. In his opinion, that’s the problem. “Pure mathematics is not just about knowing the answer; it’s about understanding,” Teleman said. “If all you have come up with is ‘the computer checked a million cases,’ then that’s a failure of understanding.”

Zeilberger disagrees. If humans can understand a proof, he says, it must be a trivial one. In the never-ending pursuit of mathematical progress, Zeilberger thinks humanity is losing its edge. Intuitive leaps and an ability to think abstractly gave us an early lead, he argues, but ultimately, the unswerving logic of 1′s and 0′s — guided by human programmers — will far outstrip our conceptual understanding, just as it did in chess. (Computers now consistently beat grandmasters.)

“Most of the things done by humans will be done easily by computers in 20 or 30 years,” Zeilberger said. “It’s already true in some parts of mathematics; a lot of papers published today done by humans are already obsolete and can be done using algorithms. Some of the problems we do today are completely uninteresting but are done because it’s something that humans can do.”

The Making and Breaking of Prince Rupert's Drop

Prince Rupert's Drop is a string of glass with a bulb on the end formed by pouring molten glass into cold water. The glass immediately sets on the outside of the stream, which insulates the inside of the stream causing it to cool more slowly. As a result the bulb on the end is very hard to break but any stress farther up the strong will cause the whole thing to instantly explode. Here it is in ultra-slo-mo (which is very cool):

Imagine a World Without Hate

This moving advertisement for the Anti Defamation League has begun to make the rounds. It's only one minute twenty seconds long and does a lot with that:

Today's Crazy Values In Ceramics

As reported at NBC News (via Miss Celania), a bowl purchased at a garage sale for $3 turned out to be a 1000 year old relic from China. Naturally, following a suitable period sitting on the family fireplace mantel followed by a suitable period for verification, it was off to auction and was sold for $2.2 million.

This stuff never happens to me.

Note: this embedded video is from NBC News, whose embedding sucks, and I am too tight on time to fool with it. You'd think a big media company like that would have a clue, but nooooo ...

Renata Adler Rips The New York Times a New One

A few years ago Renata Adler wrote a book about the decline of The New Yorker at the departure of its long term editor, William Shawn, and happened to quote a letter she had written Shawn declining to review a book about Judge John Sirica, famous from the Watergate scandal. "Contrary to his reputation as a hero," Adler wrote, "Sirica was in fact a corrupt, incompetent, and dishonest figure, with a close connection to Senator Joseph McCarthy and clear ties to organized crime."

This single sentence led to a firestorm, mostly in The New York Times. It published no less than eight pieces critical of Adler and her book and mostly critical of the single sentence quoted above. It also refused to print a letter from Adler defending it. Harpers, however, did publish an essay by Adler. There she discusses the sentence and lays out her substantial support for it and, in the process, demolishes the Times's approach, as well as Sirica. Adler's essay is a masterwork of rhetoric and careful thought.