[Sponsor] Gutted of clutter and completely exposed, the limited edition & numbered mechanical Storm Mekon watches (released exclusively at Watchismo) have totally deconstructed the basic wristwatch while maintaining traditional boundaries. The case frames no physical dial but instead supports a lone single bridge of gears spanning the void across the wrist presenting the hours and minutes into what might be considered an analog hourglass.
Sean Young's video of the making of Dune Alarm Clock Cat Rich people gadgets The Shuttle's last flight Tube: a free/open pro-grade animated film raising money on Kickstarter Cat uses springy doorstop as alarm clock Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson Appropriations Committee ignores Congress's mandate to webcast hearings SOPATrack: an app to show connections between campaign donations and voting records Videos of ferrofluids in art and science The burning-gaze portraits of Hyung Koo Kang Windows RT Explorer: The Mystery Boxes: kids' comic-book stories about cubic mcguffins Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, The Sugarhill Gang "Scared to pee": the case of the exploding government toilets Man gay after stroke Swan kills man A cartoonist paints a wiggly line, with help from friends New EU ACTA reviewer also recommends not signing it, calls ACTA a threat to civil liberties What role for journalists in holding the powerful to account? CC-licensed mag gets accredited by SFWA Two things you can learn reading Albert Einstein's personal correspondence Diet for people who enjoy sticking a rubber tube through their nose and into stomach Is forensic evidence trustworthy? Fantastic ABC app for kids: Alphabeast Minecraft casemod delights progeny Why we still don't totally understand how diseases spread Chicago Writers Conference seeks funds We Love Trash: The Best of the Garage Punk Hangout Vol. 7 Using deadly snakes to sell batteries Sean Young's video of the making of Dune
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 17, 2012 12:59 pm [Video Link] Actor Sean Young used a super-8 camera to shoot a 6-minute video about the making of Dune, the movie, which was a box office and critical flop. David Lynch looks 19 years old. (Via Super Punch)
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By Xeni Jardin on Apr 17, 2012 12:58 pm [Video Link, by YouTuber GarrulousCrap]. Lonely cat is lonely. (via Tara McGinley)
Read in browser Rich people gadgets
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2012 12:39 pm Roberto Baldwin offers Insanely Expensive Gadgets for the Elite. Vertu's cellphones are at the cheap end of the ticket. [Wired]
Read in browser The Shuttle's last flight
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2012 12:35 pm Photo: Larry Downing / Reuters Thousands gathered today to watch space shuttle Discovery take its last flight, lifted by Boeing 747 to a permanent resting place at Dulles International Airport. There, it will go on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center.
Read in browser Tube: a free/open pro-grade animated film raising money on Kickstarter
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2012 12:00 pm Rob sez, "Elephants Dream, the original open movie directed by Bassam Kurdali, proved that it is possible to make high quality 3D animated films using free tools in a studio setting. The Tube Open Movie is a new experiment in distributed collaboration using cutting-edge tools for independent film-making. The Tube Open Movie is inspired by ...
Read in browser Cat uses springy doorstop as alarm clock
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 17, 2012 11:54 am [Video Link] This cat knows how to wake up its human companions. (Via Bits & Pieces)
Read in browser Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 17, 2012 11:46 am After I read Gonzo: the Life of Hunter S. Thompson a few years ago I figured I knew everything I wanted to know about the famous journalist. But then I received a review copy of Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson by Will Bingley (author) and Anthony Hope-Smith (Illustrator). I was attracted to ...
Read in browser Appropriations Committee ignores Congress's mandate to webcast hearings
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2012 11:41 am Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation sez, "Despite significant strides towards improving public access to legislative proceedings, nearly a quarter of House hearings cannot be watched online despite recently instituted House rules -- with the Appropriations Committee as the biggest offender, with 70 percent of its hearings unavailable on the Internet. The Appropriations Committee is at ...
Read in browser SOPATrack: an app to show connections between campaign donations and voting records
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2012 10:47 am Smita sez, While there are many resources out there to help citizens learn more about how much money gov't officials are accepting from special interest groups, I wanted to call out SopaTrack as it is the first of its kind that enables people to easily and quickly look up how elected officials are voting on ...
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By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2012 10:08 am Wired's Adam Mann and Nurie Mohamed have a good roundup of a dozen-plus ferrofluid videos, showing off the remarkable aesthetics created at the intersection of magnets, liquid, and metal filings. Not every one of these videos did it for me, but there are some absolute corkers in the lot. The black liquid mixture is known ...
Read in browser The burning-gaze portraits of Hyung Koo Kang
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2012 09:45 am A visitor looks at a work by South Korean artist Hyung Koo Kang at China International Gallery Exposition 2012 in Beijing, April 13, 2012. [Photo: Jason Lee / Reuters]
Read in browser Windows RT
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2012 09:12 am The part of Microsoft tasked with marketing good products badly has gotten its clutches on Windows 8, whose ARM tablet incarnation will henceforth be known as "Windows RT". Just sit there and think how much time, money and human effort—months of planning, hundreds of thousands of dollars, dozens of people—went into ensuring that their hottest ...
Read in browser Explorer: The Mystery Boxes: kids' comic-book stories about cubic mcguffins
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2012 09:08 am My four-year-old daughter and I love to read comics together. Having thoroughly enjoyed the Hilda comics and gone absolutely bananas over Giants Beware, I stopped in at London's wonderful GOSH! Comics (recently relocated to a fantastic location in the heart of Soho) and asked the clerk for a recommendation. The gentleman behind the till recommended ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, The Sugarhill Gang
By Ed Piskor on Apr 17, 2012 08:54 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! If you're in the Pittsburgh area April 27, 2012, I'm going to be giving a presentation at Carnegie Mellon University at Baker Hall, 4:30pm-5:30pm. Click the pic below for the Facebook Event page for more info.
Read in browser "Scared to pee": the case of the exploding government toilets
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2012 08:51 am A toilet exploded and injured two government workers in Washington, D.C., and it took a Freedom of Information Act request from Jason Smathers to find out what actually happened: a problem with an air compressor. As the manager finished surveying the scene, another call came in for a person injured by a toilet on a ...
Read in browser Man gay after stroke
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2012 08:37 am Lucy Wallis tells the story of a man whose personality changed after a stroke: "Chris Birch struggles to remember or identify with his old self. He used to be a 19-stone, beer-swilling, party-loving rugby fan from the Welsh valleys, the life and soul of a party. He worked in a bank and loved sport and ...
Read in browser Swan kills man
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 17, 2012 08:34 am Swans do not mess around: "A man has drowned after being attacked by a swan, which knocked him out of his kayak and stopped him swimming to shore." [BBC]
Read in browser A cartoonist paints a wiggly line, with help from friends
By Glenn Fleishman on Apr 17, 2012 08:22 am Courtesy of Richard Thompson Cartoonist Richard Thompson's voice was quiet and reedy when we spoke, although the traces of his Virginia upbringing are clear. His voice sometimes gives out on him, he said, because of Parkinson's disease, a degenerative neuromuscular condition, with which he was diagnosed in 2009. I could understand him just fine when ...
Read in browser New EU ACTA reviewer also recommends not signing it, calls ACTA a threat to civil liberties
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 17, 2012 08:00 am ACTA is the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an extreme, far-reaching copyright treaty drafted in secret by industry and government trade reps, under a seal of confidentiality that even extended to Members of the European Parliament, who were not allowed to see what was being negotiated on their behalf. In February, the EU rapporteur (a member ...
Read in browser What role for journalists in holding the powerful to account?
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2012 09:55 pm Laurie Penny, corporate-crime-fighting superhero journo, has a corker of an essay on Warren Ellis's website, about the uneasy role of muckraking journalism in the late days of crony-capitalism: I thought I got into journalism to tell truths and right wrongs and occasionally get into parties I wouldn't normally be cool enough to go to. Right ...
Read in browser CC-licensed mag gets accredited by SFWA
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2012 09:00 pm DF McCourt sez, "Just thought that you might be interested in knowing that Canadian Creative Commons magazine AE has been added to the list of qualified professional markets by the Science Fiction Writers of America."
Read in browser Two things you can learn reading Albert Einstein's personal correspondence
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 16, 2012 08:57 pm This is a letter, written by Albert Einstein, in which he explains the details of a now-famous test of the theory of relativity—an experiment that involves measuring how the Sun's gravity alters the path of starlight traveling towards Earth. There's a couple of important things to bring up here. First, this sheet of paper is ...
Read in browser Diet for people who enjoy sticking a rubber tube through their nose and into stomach
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2012 08:34 pm I'll bet people who go on this diet gain their weight back shortly after they pull the tube out of their nose. The K-E diet, which boasts promises of shedding 20 pounds in 10 days, is an increasingly popular alternative to ordinary calorie-counting programs. The program has dieters inserting a feeding tube into their nose ...
Read in browser Is forensic evidence trustworthy?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 16, 2012 08:28 pm Science in fiction affects our ability to understand science in real life. For instance, you might already be familiar with the idea that detective shows on TV, particularly forensics shows like CSI, might be influencing what juries expect to see in a courtroom. This is called the "CSI effect" and it's hotly debated. Some prosecutors ...
Read in browser Fantastic ABC app for kids: Alphabeast
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2012 08:26 pm Jane and I frequently get sent applications that are a bit too young for her (she's 9) but are still really good. Alphabeast for iPhone is one of them. It's a simple ABC teaching program that goes through the letters of the alphabet, and it stars the creature from Chris Judge's award-winning kids' book, The ...
Read in browser Minecraft casemod delights progeny
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2012 08:00 pm mama_faelynn writes, "My husband and I made an Epic Minecraft CaseMod for our 8 year old. 1200 1/2" blocks, weeks of time, flashing harddrive creeper eyes, our kid is over the MOON!" Minecraft casemod (Thanks, mama_faelynn!)
Read in browser Why we still don't totally understand how diseases spread
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 16, 2012 07:34 pm When I was little, I read a Reader's Digest book of great disasters, which included a segment on the Black Death. One of the things the book tried to do was explain, on a child's level, why it wasn't easy to figure out that rats and fleas were the source of the plague. You ...
Read in browser Chicago Writers Conference seeks funds
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2012 07:00 pm Bill Shunn sez, The Chicago Writers Conference is Chicago's only homegrown mainstream literary conference focusing on practical business advice for fiction and non-fiction writers alike. The brainchild of Mare Swallow, it will feature such editors, agents, and authors as Chuck Sambuchino, Christine Sneed, Robert K. Elder, and Jennifer Mattson. But it can only happen with ...
Read in browser We Love Trash: The Best of the Garage Punk Hangout Vol. 7
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 16, 2012 06:37 pm The fine folks at The Garage Punk Hangout (Motto: "Kicks just got easier to find") has just released Vol. 7 of The Best of the GaragePunk Hideout. Its called We Love Trash. Enjoy the stream, or buy it on iTunes: We Love Trash - The Best of the GaragePunk Hideout, Vol. 7 - Various Artists
Read in browser Using deadly snakes to sell batteries
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 16, 2012 06:26 pm This 1949 Winchester Batteries ad was posted to the Vintage Ads LiveJournal group by noluck_boston, depicting a mother-daughter pair whose wise choice of reliable Winchester Batteries have rescued them from the terrible fate of being bitten by a deadly snake in the dark. Now they can be bitten by it in the blinding light of ...
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