A Bilingual Palindrome

Futility Closet:

Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.

Spell that backward and you get:

Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:

Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

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Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008 Don't miss them this time.

Briton saved dozens in hotel A millionaire private equity broker from London has emerged as a hero who stopped Islamic terrorists from massacring Britons and Americans in their attack on Mumbai.

LAX Tops Nation In Stolen, Missing Luggage Items "Easy pickings?" "Easy pickings." "I wouldn't put anything valuable in LAX" These two LAX employees would only talk if we concealed their identities. "I saw thefts within the first few weeks of working there." They both say there are organized rings of thieves, who identify valuables in your checked luggage by looking at the TSA x-ray screens, then communicate with baggage handlers by text or cell phone, telling them exactly what to look for. (via)

What is truth serum? Indian officials plan to inject captured Mumbai terrorist with the "truth serum," sodium pentothal, but history tells us that the technique isn't up to the task

Particulate Emissions From Laser Printers Do laser printers emit pathogenic toner particles into the air? Some people are convinced that they do. As a result, this topic is the subject of public controversy. Researchers have now investigated what particles the printers really do release into the air.

Black Garlic Introducing a simple food with a wonderfully complex flavor. Black garlic is sweet meets savory, a perfect mix of molasses-like richness and tangy garlic undertones. It has a tender, almost jelly-like texture with a melt-in-your-mouth consistency similar to a soft dried fruit. Hard to believe, but true. It’s as delicious as it is unique. (via)

also:
Two cases of compulsive swearing - in sign language
A Fragment Theory Of Deja Vu
Academics invent a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate (when they were supposed to be writing papers)
Ancient city discovered deep in Amazonian rainforest linked to the legendary white-skinned Cloud People of Peru
Prized sculpture destroyed on trip to Art Basel Miami
How to Stretch a Canvas

don't miss:
The ultimate fate of Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs (via)

viddy:
William Eggleston: I am at war with the obvious

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Is the US too big to fail? Why are investors rushing to purchase US government securities when the US is the epicentre of the financial crisis? This column attributes the paradox to key emerging market economies’ exchange practices, which require reserves most often invested in US government securities. America’s exorbitant privilege comes with a cost and a responsibility that US policy makers should bear in mind as they handle the crisis. A bit arcane, but worth it, if you can slog through. (via)

A way with words: Lexical wizard Henry Hitchings on the crazy history of our language It's rather nerve-racking, interviewing an acknowledged master of the English language. I tell Henry Hitchings that I feel as though I'll have to take extra care with my choice of words. "Don't," he says briskly, as he ushers me into his book-lined 13th-floor Bermondsey flat. Fortunately, his attitude to language is anything but stuffy, snobbish or prescriptive.

Art sleuth: Museum director also helps nab the bad guys She now routinely goes once a month to The Fortress, the vault where U.S. Customs keeps valuable confiscated goods, ''just to see what they have.'' She reviews photos of artifacts on her computer, and, if she determines more investigation is warranted, she goes to see the items in person. If they are valuable, Damian and the government follow up with an archaeologist from the country to which the artifacts belong. If the case merits prosecution, they contact government authorities as well.

Restaurateur tracks down bill dodgers on Facebook An Australian restaurateur left holding a hefty unpaid bill when five young diners bolted used the popular social network website Facebook to track them down -- and they got their just deserts. (via)

'Mummy, can I phone the pirates?' One of the biggest frustrations facing journalists is being unable to get through to people on the phone. But as Mary Harper discovered, contacting the Somali pirates on the Sirius Star turned out to be child's play. (via)

also:
Shipwreck in Antarctica: Part 1 - Discovering we are sinking (via)
William Friedkin: We're all Dirty Harry now
A Year of Parking Tickets (map of NYC with block-by-block stats - one block had over 10,000) (via)
How to: Transfer Music from One iPod to Another
Quiz: TS Eliot
Patti Smith’s favourite books (via)
Huge glossary of drug slang (via)

viddy:
Lucian Freud on 'Diana and Actaeon'
1964 U.S. anti-China propaganda
Kerouac Scroll Unrolled (via)
Fifty People, One Question: New York (seemed somewhat more superficial and materialistic than the first) (via)
Interesting new synth interface
Orbital to reunite! (plus video of Chime from their farewell set - they are amazing live, more than this video could possibly convey)

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Getting A Story Made at National Geographic After talking with several National Geographic photographers about shooting for the magazine I became intrigued with the process of getting a story made. The collaboration between the photo editors and photographers and then the photographers involvement in all the steps along the way is unique and important to how they make stories. More magazines should spend this kind of time with their contributors. The few times I’ve had photographer come into the office and present their images to us have been incredibly rewarding and certainly I think made the story that much better. I asked David Griffin, National Geographic’s Director of Photography about the process of getting stories made and the rumored years it takes for a story to go from idea to printed page... (via)

Jacking into the Brain--Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface? How far can science advance brain-machine interface technology? Will we one day pipe the latest blog entry or NASCAR highlights directly into the human brain as if the organ were an outsize flash drive?

From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre A cache of letters hidden in the basement brings to life a house, a family and the tragedy that would change everything (via)

Love story: The librarian, the postal worker and their art Art takes up all the air in Herb and Dorothy Vogel's cramped one-bedroom on the Upper East Side. Minimalist and conceptual works cover every inch of wall and dangle from the ceiling. Because there is no other place for it, a Richard Tuttle painting clings to the inside of a louvered door that leads to the tiny kitchen. Other pieces crowd shelves and table tops. And the Vogels, who are giving the Miami Art Museum and 49 other institutions around the country gifts of 50 artworks each and are subjects of a documentary that will screen in December during Art Basel Miami Beach, say there is plenty more under the bed and jammed into the closets of this modest, rent-stabilized space they have called home since 1963.

Library Ghosts: Northeastern U.S. Last year about this time (just in time for Halloween), I posted on this blog a list of libraries that are said to be haunted. Now the library ghosts are back, by popular demand...

also:
Stanislav Petrov, the man who could have started a nuclear war, but didn’t (via)
Know Your Intelligence Agencies: National Reconnaissance Office
Biology in Science Fiction: Erasing Memory
The History of Some of Today's Most Common Phrases (via)
Recent additions to the Chambers Slang Dictionary
Punctuation Game
1000 artworks to see before you die (via)
Podcasts from the University of Oxford (via)
Haruki Murakami interview (via)
Wayne Coyne interview
Aerial Phenomena Research: Selected Papers - Jacques F. Vallee (via)
Casting the Runes by M.R. James
Oboe Bong

Futility Closet: Over the Moon Jules Verne earned his title as the father of science fiction. His 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon contains eerie similarities to the Apollo program that unfolded a century later. (read more)

viddy:
The Anti-Fascist trailer
Parallel Universes, Parallel Lives 1/6 (Eels frontman Mark Everett in search of his father's brain. Dr Hugh Everett III proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics.) (via)
Hog Hunting (A plague of feral hogs has descended on the American South. They've been spotted here in Savannah.) (via)
The Real Secret Of The Matrix: The Haunting Sound Of The Waterphone (You'll know it as soon as you hear it.)
Daily (kinda sorta) Weather with David Lynch (via)
Angkor Wat, Cambodia (1930s newsreel)

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Did Bach’s wife write his music?
The Duke in His Domain (Capote profiles Brando, 1957) (via)
The Atlas of Cyberspace (free pdf, beautifully illustrated) (via)
The Ultimate Camper (via)
Rare recordings of some of the 20th Century's greatest writers
A Ferment of World Jazz Yields a Trove of Tapes
Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (fair bit of it)
The Multicolr Search Lab (search Flickr by color; easy and impressive) (via)

Futility Closet: “The Continental Salamander” In the year 1826, one Monsieur Chabert … performed the following feats at the White Conduit Gardens: Having partaken of a hearty meal of phosphorus, washed down with a copious draught of oxalic acid in a solution of arsenic, he drank... (read more)

viddy:
Making ofs (videos about the making of videos, incl. Gondry, Cunningham)
Ways of seeing (John Berger TV documentary) (via)
A Half Century of Video Games (footage of the first video game)
Jeff Mills: Critical Arrangements Interview
Elliott Smith & Friends (“backstage” video)

Gilgamesh for Apes

lexigram for "Enkidu"

Gilgamesh for Apes (all of it; readable by both humans and great apes)

Primate Poetics:

The question becomes: can the ape move away from primordial wordsoup to the solid state of conventional literature. Great apes do have what it takes to be literati: they have self-awareness and empathy, they can deceive and play roles, they can have pleasure, they can mourn and feel sad and lonely, they have great sense of class dynamics... They have other assets in which they surpass us, like a superb short-term memory and a good ear. In fact apes are already telling stories. Gorilla Michael has given us what his keepers believe to be an account of the death of his mother at the hand of poachers: "Squash meat gorilla. Mouth tooth. Cry sharp-noise loud. Bad think-trouble look-face. Cut/neck lip (girl) hole".

brought to us by Social Fiction (updated Oct. 2008)

Political Rhetoric, Explained - Steven Pinker

(video link)

Steven Pinker: Language as a window into human nature

The Old Scriptorium

Sir James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Old Scriptorium during the compilation of the first edition, some time around 1900.

image from Paper Cuts
first seen at Maud Newton

Hobo Code

In the fraternal spirit of the road, hobos have developed a set of symbols to communicate local conditions. Important information concerning things like food and drink, the disposition of the residents, the presence of dogs and police and even the state of the local jail was codified into a universally adopted picture-language. Hobo signs are still used today. Considering the state of the economy, it might be helpful to buff up.

from Fran's Hobo Page

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HIV/AIDS Emerged as Early as 1880s Until now it was thought that HIV-1 Group M, the strain of HIV that causes the most infections worldwide, originated in 1930 in Cameroon. Epidemic levels of AIDS and HIV-1 infections started appearing in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo), around 1960. Findings from the new study, however, suggest that the virus most likely started circulating among humans in sub-Saharan Africa sometime between 1884 and 1924.

John Le Carré: The Madness of Spies The gun was indeed part of me: so much so that I had ceased to notice its presence on my hip. Stooping to address the ball, I was startled by the clang of a heavy metal object striking the tiled floor, and looked around to identify the source. Finally, I saw the Browning lying at my feet, but by then the inn had emptied itself of customers and landlord. I retrieved it, returned it to my waistband, and picked up the briefcase. “Abort,” the A.I.O. ordered, pausing only to finish his beer. Le Carré shares some personal history.

The Secret of How the Titanic Sank New evidence has experts rethinking how the luxury passenger liner sank (via)

A mannequin on a toilet and dry porridge – it's the Turner Prize The Turner Prize, the annual award for artists that never ceases to raise furious debate on what constitutes art and what should be dismissed as nonsense, yesterday proved it was not about to change the habit of a lifetime.

also:
Russian rap video soldier sent to Siberia
The Essays of Francis Bacon
The Speech Accent Archive (audio - very useful for actors) (via)

Ezra Pound

Portrait of Ezra Pound, Poet, Rutherford, New Jersey, at the home of William Carlos Williams, June 30, 1958 by Richard Avedon

Pound's ABC of Reading might be the most instructive book on language, reading, writing and poetry that I have encountered.

via Ordinary finds

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Pirates die strangely after taking Iranian ship A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates. Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died. Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.” (via)

also:
Interview: Matthew Herbert (via)
The International Dialects of English Archive (via)
Carny Lingo (via)

viddy:
Ken Adam talking about the war room set he designed for Dr. Strangelove (via)
Knots - How To Tie A Monkey’s Fist And Heave A Line
Global Air Traffic Simulation (.wmv download; very cool, much better than the YouTube version)
Fridge Monster

blog of the moment: Great Map (always a fun and fascinating journey)

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Trading Places We are not witnessing the abandonment of the suburbs or a movement of millions of people back to the city all at once. But we are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end. For several decades now, cities in the United States have wished for a "24/7" downtown, a place where people live as well as work, and keep the streets busy, interesting, and safe at all times of day. This is what urbanist Jane Jacobs preached in the 1960s, and it has long since become the accepted goal of urban planners. Only when significant numbers of people lived downtown, planners believed, could central cities regain their historic role as magnets for culture and as a source of identity and pride for the metropolitan areas they served. Now that's starting to happen... This has been happening in the South for close to ten years. (via)

Mark Cuban: A Note to the MPAA = Promotion works better than prevention Invest in a positive message that can get people more excited about their member products and the unique experience offered in theaters, or send a message that your customers are crooks and pirates... I have more than 1 billion dollars invested in the entertainment industry. I get to see our content distributed illegally online. I get a daily report of all the torrents and other files available online. You know what I think about that? So what. That's what I think. It's collateral damage. Unlike music, it takes time to upload and download movies. People with more time than money will steal content. They weren't going to pay for it otherwise. People with a conscious will pay for the content. Fortunately that is most people.

also:
The Five Things You Need to Know About Finding the Work You Love (via)
10 Literary Geniuses Who Went To Jail
'Dancing Plague' and Other Odd Afflictions Explained
Parasite 'turns women into sex kittens' (via)
First Look: The Road (photos)

viddy:
Fishing with Ween: Brownie Troop Fishing Show (latest episode: Ween fishing with the Butthole Surfers) (via)
This Video will Make You Understand Fuel Cells and Catalysts in 10 Minutes
Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture 2008 - Steven Pinker (via)
Grant Morrison interview

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George W. Bush: "Awesome!" The president has used "awesome" to describe everything from dead soldiers to the pope. How did a slang word trickle up to the highest office in the land? Let's bring back splendid! I maintain that there is something euphonius in the phonetics of words like awesome, especially curse-words, that is satisfying in a more physical rather than cognitive way. There is always something viscerally appealing in the heartily exclaimed shit, motherfucker or cocksucker. Also, have you ever noticed that expletives rarely go out of style? (via)

'Wizard of Oz' Storm Makes Pigs Fly "The wind picked her about 2½ feet up off the ground — she was swimming like her feet in the air — and it took her about 50 feet or 60 feet around the corner and must have slammed her into the fence, and then she came running back..."

Man With No Arms, Legs Takes Part In Triathlon Wow.

You've got me under your skin Reading fiction is good for us, Liam Durcan says, not because it teaches life lessons, but because it immerses us in other minds and other experiences (via)

also:
Artifacts from the Future (all of the now discontinued Found images from Wired)
8 Insane Nuclear Explosions (via)
10 More Unsolved Mysteries of the World
Gillian Anderson Interview
Q&A: Chris Carter
Words Of Wisdom From Tom Waits (via)
Worlds largest selection of Turntables (via)
Convert Your Basement Into A Subwoofer (via)

80 Million Tiny Images

Visual Dictionary:

We present a visualization of all the nouns in the English language arranged by semantic meaning. Each of the tiles in the mosaic is an arithmetic average of images relating to one of 53,464 nouns. The images for each word were obtained using Google's Image Search and other engines. A total of 7,527,697 images were used, each tile being the average of 140 images. The average reveals the dominant visual characteristics of each word. For some, the average turns out to be a recognizable image; for others the average is a colored blob.

Astonishing. Go to the site and click on the images. Big Wow.

via linkfilter.net

Mad About English!

It was first screened in Beijing last night, so it might take a little while to get around. Although there's probably a cam on The Pirate Bay by now.

Mad About English
via Danwei

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Dog meat ban for Olympics I've often said that many Westerners will never be entirely at ease with people that eat dogs. This story is sourced from a blog post with a notice that purports to be from the Beijing City Government Food Safety Office. There's a link to a translation in the comments.

Bull semen and cigarettes: Just a few things the US exports to Iran Though it's the one remaining member of the "Axis of Evil," the value of U.S. exports to Iran has reportedly increased tenfold since George Bush took office.

How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand Thanks to globalization, the Allied victories in World War II, and American leadership in science and technology, English has become so successful across the world that it's escaping the boundaries of what we think it should be. In part, this is because there are fewer of us: By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca. In China, this sort of free-form adoption of English is helped along by a shortage of native English-speaking teachers, who are hard to keep happy in rural areas for long stretches of time. An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese.

End of a Kafkaesque nightmare: writer's papers finally come to light Scholars of the 20th-century writer Franz Kafka were in a state of suspense last night at the news that the remains of his estate, which have been hoarded in a Tel Aviv flat for decades, may soon be revealed. (via)

Alfred Hitchcock Cameos All of them. I wish the images were a bit bigger.

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Tufts to Develop Morphing Chemical Robots Tufts scientist receives a $3.3 million contract for the purpose of building various soft-bodied robots. (via)

For Future of Mind Control, Robot-Monkey Trials Are Just a Start In May, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh said they had taught two monkeys to grab small amounts of food with a mechanical arm using their brains. The future of brain-machine interfaces, however, could veer toward the as-yet-unknown possibilities of human movement. (via)

Microwave ray gun controls crowds with noise A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people's heads. On one hand, I don't know if I like this idea. On the other, the possibilities for performing artists are intriguing, apart from the potential dangers of blasting people with microwaves. Maybe there could be something a bit more subtle.

I Hate Organic This is not a rant about organic foods. As a science writer, I do hate the word, “organic,” though... Between the original definition and the new-age “natural” definition, chemists also adopted “organic,” originally to describe the chemistry of carbon-based molecules derived from living things, but they quickly took those starting pieces and synthesized many more molecules that look nothing like anything found in anything living. TierneyLab brings "organic" back to earth.

also:
Pynchon’s Essays, Reviews, Introductions & Blurbs
10 Steps to Becoming Fluent in a Language in 6 months or Less
Historic Map Works: The world's largest online historical mapping resource (via)
Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp (thanks Jug)
34 Different Ways To Lace Shoes (via)

Apropos of nothing, I won the Neatorama caption contest yesterday. I don't usually participate in caption contests as I suck out loud at it, but this one just jumped into my head.

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Did the “Hyper” Gene Benefit Our Nomadic Ancestors?; How Sarcasm Works; How to Recycle Electronics and Get Cash Back; Teens use technology to party in strangers' pools. I think they might be doing that near here, too.

Lagniappe: GOOD Guide: to the Shadowy Organizations That Rule the World (keyword: debunk) (reality = rudderless); Check and see who is really linking to you (via); One of the funniest posts I've read in a while.

Links 5-21-08

Marshall McLuhan, the Man and his Message

"One day people will learn via an electronic circuitry system..."

The CBC Digital Archives offers 9 radio and 9 TV clips of Marshall McLuhan, the man that coined the term global village, predicted the internet, and even hinted at Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing.

via The Huge Entity
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Each Grain of Sand a Tiny Work of Art

What does sand look like up close? It's really quite astonishing, actually.
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The 9 Most Devastating Insults From Around the World

Suck butter from my ass is fightin' words where I come from.

hat tip: My 2 Second Shelf Life
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