Al Jaffee Fold-ins from MAD Magazine

NYT put together a nifty little interaction that allows you to 'fold' the illustrations over into their hidden state.

via Martin Klasch

Cosmic Melancholy

I read this post at Everyone Forever back in September, but couldn't watch the video due to a dying computer. It was worth the wait. Here's a loving reproduction of the post:

The pagan Arabs of the pre-Islamic period were a proud and boastful people who were characterized by epic tales, heart-rending poetry, and eloquent prose. Indeed, their literary excellence before the Prophet Muhammad, is still reputed to be of the highest calibre, the quintessence of poetry, chivalry and a most intoxicating ambiance, even at times glaringly arrogant and self-worshipping.

However, in the year 610AD, the fortieth year of a certain Muhammad ibn Abdullah, the Arabs had found a contest to their genius. This 'man from a mountain' claimed to be in receipt of a magnanimous recital, a message that he was not even willing to take any credit for.

The Arabs found their pride, their literary genius to be in serious question. The sheer experience of the recital, its ontology, style, experience, cosmic melancholy, odd structure, meaning and message, shattered them into willing submission.

The ontological encounter with the recital to the Arabs surely confirmed to them, by them, that surely no man could be the author of such an experience.

The odd structure, the melancholy, the penetrative acoustics remain to the present day and have been reverberating Worldwide, around houses and mosques during this current month of fasting and patience; Ramadan.

04:10 / 27.09.2008
Arfan Rai Chiswick

Publishers' Bindings Online

The other day I picked out some Library donations to bring home just because I liked some of the simple drawings on the covers.

The cover of this classroom edition of Alphonse Daudet's Selected Stories including La Belle-Nivernaise has a couple of nifty border patterns. I like the steely blue ink on the light charcoal coloring. [click images for bigger]

And the back cover has the publisher, American Book Company's stamp:


A clearer shot from the title page:


A couple other simple designs:


The Show of Violence by Fredric Wertham, M.D.


Escape by Ethel Vance

Of course, these are nothing compared to the collection of binding art at Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books.
via cosias do arco da velha

Compliments of Surreality

You are as frightful as an engine developed solely for the countenance of sexual innuendo by country music.

Yay!

A singing crocodile dressed as a cowboy teaches you to meditate

Story
via MetaFilter

A Map of the Various Paths of Life

[click!]

Polyvinyl Black Friday Sale

FAVORITE RECORD LABEL CELEBRATES BLACK FRIDAY

Polyvinyl is having a massive Black Friday sale -- that has already started! Save between 10% - 70% on some of your favorite Polyvinyl records! Nearly every single Polyvinyl release -- close to 200 items -- is on sale!

• Black Friday 10% Off Sale
• Black Friday 20% Off Sale
• Black Friday 30% Off Sale
• Black Friday 40% Off Sale
• Black Friday 50% Off Sale
• Black Friday 60% Off Sale
• Black Friday 70% Off Sale

I splurged in the 70% Off store:

     Items in Order
1 x Rainer Maria - Ears Ring EP CDEP  ($1.20)
1 x Kyle Fischer - Open Ground CD  ($1.20)
1 x The Ivory Coast - Clouds CD  ($1.80)
1 x of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse CD Single  ($0.30)
1 x The Red Hot Valentines - Calling Off Today CDEP  ($0.90)
1 x Various Artists - Direction CD  ($3.00)

Twelve bucks after shipping.

Fermilab Golden Books Collection

Fermilab's History and Archives Project features a great collection of short books, pamphlets, and talks they refer to as The Golden Book Collection.

Some excerpts:

Weighty Thoughts by Jane S. Wilson
Well, hello and how are you doing?
Let's have a little chat
About our national obsession
The unwanted possession
Of -- Oh God! -- a lot of extra fat.

From the very beginning
The definition of sinning
lay in Eve's entreating,
"Adam, we're eating,
Come taste it. It's nice".
When they ate, they got fat
And the upshot of that
Was to end Paradise.

from her book of poetry, Songs of Too Much Experience



In April 1979 Chandra participated in the Fermilab symposium, Aesthetics and Science, to honor the contributions of the founding director Robert R. Wilson. This book is a reprinting of his significant remarks on that occasion, some of which also appear in his book, Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar expounds on Beauty and the Quest for Beauty in Science.

Every thinking person at some time has looked up into the dark night sky and wondered about the Universe. How big, how old? What is it, why is it? Where is the edge, the center? What is beyond, before? Every civilization has imagined answers to these questions, and has employed people expert in such matters to answer them.

20th century experts who study such questions about the Universe are scientists known as cosmologists. The word cosmology is derived from the Greek κóσµοζ (COSMOS). κóσµοζ does not mean enormous, immense, Universe, or even "billions and billions." Rather,κóσµοζ is the Greek word for ORDER. Modern cosmologists use physical law as a tool to bring order to an apparently complex and mysterious Universe. The strategy is straightforward: Learn the laws of physics by performing laboratory experiments, and explain the observed Universe on the basis of these laws.

from Exploring the Universe by Edward W. Kolb


via SpaceCollective

MeFi Mix #1 - Do Not Kink

Yet another source of my overflowing love for the community blog MetaFilter has been the CD swaps organized about twice every year. The idea is simple: burn 5 copies of a mix to CD and mail them to the 5 other people in your assigned swap set. Expect a mix in return from each of those same 5 folks.

Though I don't think I've ever participated in a swap where all 6 swap set members have come through, now that I think about it.

Still, about 7 years of this has loaded me up with great music mixes from around the world. I've started digitizing them now, and the first one up is (randomly) Do Not Kink!, sent to me in 2003.

These are included in the archive.
Click for bigger.


I can't remember who put this mix together. Here's the mystery mixer's liner notes:

Do Not Kink!

1. Gridlock by The Pogues
2. Cornflake Girl by Jawbox
3. Look Up by Stars
4. Ivanka by Imperial Teen
5. Air Batucada by Thievery Corporation
6. Because of Money by 3rd Generation Band
7. Paperwings by Damien Jurado
8. Ray of Gob by Go Home Productions
9. To Hell With Good Intentions by Mclusky
10. Merchandise by Fugazi
11. I'll Be Around (Live) by The Afghan Whigs
12. Polaris by Nortec Collective and Bostich
13. Ce n'est pas pour nous by Le Nombre
14. And the Washington Monument (Blinks) Goodnight by Q and Not U
15. Barra Barra by Rachid Taha
16. Pack Yr Romantic Mind by Stereolab
17. I Got Erection by Turbonegro
18. Status by Mr. Lif feat. Insight
19. Young Offenders by The Constantines
20. Grounded (Live) by Pavement

back cover


This is a pretty good mix. I dig how it takes a bunch of artists I already like (The Pogues, Stars, Mclusky, Stereolab, Q and Not U, Constantines, Pavement) and then goes in a completely different (though not wholly unexpected) direction. A somewhat juvenile and awesome direction.

Check out all my MeFi Mixes

Live Music

Favorite.

Tetrish

99 Bricks
Stack the wobbly tetroids as high as you can go. Discard blocks with 'c'. Note: Your structure will collapse, usually in some glorious fashion.


Under Construction
Fill the shape with the blocks provided. You can add 1 square or take 1 square away at a time up to three times each. Much easier than 99 Blocks.


6 Tetris skins/versions
There are small variations between each game, but they're all basically Tetris.

Mt. Head by Koji Yamamura

Nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 2002.

Enjoy many small animations on Koji Yamamura's website

This blog...what a waste! *pops internet into mouth*

You've noticed, I know.

Things have slowed down 'round these parts; apologies.

I started a new job, now part time, but for the past two weeks it was 39 h/wk + the fucking commute. It's 45 white-knuckle minutes there in the morning—if I drive like Batman—and usually a good hour plus of continuous stop/go street traffic on the way home. Thankfully, that lessens now that I'm cutting hours.

That's right! Now I'm a part time library slave. Four hours less per day of

SHELVE THOSE BOOKS.
MOVE those books.
ALPHABETIZE!
DEWEY IT RIGHT!
"Yes sir, I understand that the new location of DVDS/BIOGRAPHIES/REFERENCE/XX is INCONVENIENT/CRAMPED/DIFFICULT TO REACH/XX and you wish it magically appeared in your hand at home instead. You could always apply for shut-in status."

...and wondering why everyone else working there is bored senseless. I'm still endlessly fascinated with The Library and how it works. Everyone has a very small job that they do the same way every day—Librarians, Support Services, The Friends OTL, etc. Some lucky souls (circ Clerks, mainly) have multiple small assigned jobs that they rotate through over the course of the day. I do everything else, and shelve the collection.

Shelving the collection isn't as bad as it might seem. At Borders I was about as eager to haul out a cart of books as I was to lick the banister on the main staircase. There was never enough room for the product on the shelf, or too damn many of the product to fit anywhere in the store, and usually a combination of both. There are very few crowded sections in the library. It is generally sprawling, with multiple odd-shaped rooms and two levels and vaulted ceilings. Beheld glorious by these tired IPT eyes.

And full of books! Well, not completely full, I guess, which I'm counting as a plus due to the nature of my job. 'Handling media' is probably the most succinct job description I could come up with, though 'shelving books' describes a damn big portion of my time spent on the clock. My department is Circulation, an apt name. It resembles the inventory process at Borders in many ways, but one difference delighting is the constant variety the patrons drop off in my bins every day.

The DVDs especially. I've been watching that section closely for two weeks now (the allotted check-out time) and am positive that I've only seen maybe 70% of the discs available. The selection doesn't come close to Borders out on the shelf, of course, but I think it'd be a fair fight if everybody brought back their checked-out discs on the same day. Collection size aside, it's the day-to-day variety that's really refreshing. At Borders the same 25 DVDs (or CDs, or books, too) came in pretty much every day, 15 or more of those with 5+ copies, and usually 1 or 2 with 25+ copies per. It would change up a little every week or so, with a total rotation of all new popular material taking 3 to 4 months. At the library I see new stuff, very low repeats, every single day.

This I like.

OK, I'm running out of steam (it's almost 10 on a Friday night, and I'm ready to drift off to sleep), but there's lots more to tell. I'm learning cool new stuff every day, like how to mount newspapers on the big sticks. Important stuff. I'll tell you about it now that I've got a bit more time (for the [hopefully] short while before I snag a second gig) and I'll rumble out the link machine and get it going again to boot.

Disney Movie!

And as a matter of fact, as I was going to post this I saw in my 'watched blogs' this post from Nico on lame Disney princes. The character of The Prince always leaves more questions than answers. Who is this guy? Where does he come from?

The answer to these questions and more, at Nico Cartoons.

Wang Hui Monday

[click for bigger]





images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Wang’s seemingly effortless perfection brings Mozart to mind. Both were young prodigies who were prolific, at ease in many different styles, with, it seems, never a note or brush stroke out of place.

Unlike Mozart, Wang lived a long life. He was restless, always heading off in a new direction, copying one master after another. He succeeded so well that by the end of this exhibition the perfectionism, the lack of noticeable missteps, can be almost wearing.

NYT review of MoMA's "Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717)." Featuring a nice slideshow.

The Perfect Human (Det perfekte menneske)

A short film by Jørgen Leth

Today I experienced something that I hope to understand in a few days.
Lars Von Trier's favourite film is Leth's The Perfect Human (1967). Von Trier gives Leth the task of remaking The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different 'obstruction' (or obstacle) given by Von Trier.

Obstruction 1: Leth must remake the film in Cuba (but with no set) with no shot longer than 12 frames, and he must answer the questions posed in the original film; Leth successfully completes this task.


Obstruction 2: Leth must remake the film in the worst place in the world but not show that place onscreen; additionally, Leth must play the role of "the man". The meal must be included but the woman is not to be included. Leth remakes the film in the red light district of Bombay, only partially hiding it behind a translucent screen.


Obstruction 3: Because Leth failed to complete task 2 perfectly, Von Trier punishes him, telling him to either remake the film in any way he chooses, or redo obstruction 2 in Bombay again. Leth chooses the former option and remakes it in Brussels using split-screen effects.


Obstruction 4: Leth must remake the film as an animation. He does so with the aid of Bob Sabiston, a specialist in rotoscoping, who creates animated versions of shots from the previous films.


Obstruction 5: The fifth obstruction is that Von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voiceover narration ostensibly from his own perspective but in fact written by Von Trier.
I can't find a video for this one.

via MetaFilter

Popcards

Hundreds of French pop-kitsch postcards from the 50's, 60's, and 70's at Popcards.
via Unscathed Corpse [NSFW]

Executed Today

Executed Today is a blog of history, sociology, biography, criminology, law, and kismet — an unrepresentative but arresting view of the human condition across time and circumstance from the parlous vantage of the scaffold. ...

The death penalty, as a subset within that vast category of “acts of violence homo sapiens do to their fellows,” blends insensibly into a dozen adjacent territories — murder, assassination, warfare, torture, low crime and high statecraft, even suicide.

If we know for certain that extinguishing life is an essential component of the death penalty, our everyday language nevertheless reflects ambiguity about how. We might speak of crime victims as being “killed execution-style” to evoke a sense of deliberation and even ceremony about the act; conversely, we might derogate the formal and official act of a state organ as a “summary execution” to underscore the absence of an appropriate juridical atmosphere. In situations of war and revolution where the legitimate authority of the state is contested, the water muddies still further.

and, just to be clear...

This blog is neither pro- nor anti-death penalty in general nor in any particular. Its interest is the perspective on humanity we gain through the window of this human institution.

From Cave Paintings to the Internet

Jeremy Norman's History of Science

When I completed the conversion in October 2008 there were more than 1550 annotated timeline entries, nearly all of which had one or more hyperlinks to online references. There were also sixty-four themes, by which the timeline could be searched. Individual timeline entries were indexed by up to six themes. You will find links to each theme at the end of each timeline entry. If you click on that theme after the entry you will see a timeline based on that theme alone. You can, of course, access the timeline by various different eras, and you can switch back and forth between eras and themes. Users should recognize that in order to trace the origins of concepts or technologies back in time I have sometimes defined themes loosely. In order to make some themes more accessible to historical treatment I have also combined related themes. For example, I combined Internet and Networking in order to trace this theme back to the first road networks in the ancient world, to railroads, to the telegraph lines that followed railroad lines, to telephone networks, up the network of networks that is the Internet.

Jesus H. Timesink. Get to reading!
via MetaFilter

what

Most language-related internet fads I'm not crazy about. I can't stand smileys and their relations; some of the abbreviations (e.g., WTF) are efficient and useful, even if they don't inspire enthusiasm; catchphrases (All Your Base) quickly wear out their welcome. But there's one recent innovation (at least, I think it's recent—see below) that I absolutely love. For, oh, the past year or so I've been noticing, and when appropriate using, a delightful... what to call it? It's not an exclamation, because it's determinedly low-key; it's not really an interjection, because it's not interjected, it's a standalone response. And I wasn't sure how to find an example, because it's impossible to search for (see below). But I trusted to serendipity, which rarely fails me, and sure enough fate provided one.

languagehat on what.

---

WHAT is always a worthwhile addition to any conversation, demonstrating one's superior intellect and mastery of the English language. ... It was created by the internets. Whenever you find yourself in a situation on the internets where your opinion really matters, WHAT is for you!

Encyclopedia Dramatica on what.

(I changed languagehat's link. Mainly I'm using the ED for all my reference needs anymore.)