Men and Machines

Dan Williams - Men and Machines, from the Black Biker Series, 1983

Smithsonian American Art Museum

via Ordinary finds

old-timey motorcycles

Немножко мотоциклов

stray bullets

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)

Mort de Harris (1824)

image: LoC

trialsanderrors' photostream:

A depiction of the death of Thomas Harris, a balloon pioneer who, according to legend, sacrificed his life for his fiancee when the balloon they were riding in lost altitude fast and threatened to kill both passengers on impact.

The ninth card from an uncut set of ten, labeled "Collection 476, 2ème série", issued by Romanie & Cie. in the late 19th Century, to commemorate events in ballooning history from 1795 to 1846.

Tricycle 1884

NEN Gallery:

A 'National Royal' tricycle made in the 1884. Many types of tricycle were invented in the 1880s. They were safer than Penny Farthings.

I've always wanted to see someone do BMX stunts on a Penny Farthing.

National Education Network Gallery (a growing resource for pictures, sound and video)

Thanks to the always interesting hanuman

stray bullets

Crick was right about 'vision filter' in the brain As you read this sentence, your mind hones in on each word and blots out the rest of the page. This roving spot of attention tames the flood of visual information that hundreds of thousand of nerves attached to the back of your eye's retina stream into the brain. So far, most scientists held that the brain's outermost layer and main site of consciousness, the cortex, is responsible for housing the attention steering mechanisms that sort out all this sensory input. But back in 1984, the co-discoverer of DNA Francis Crick suggested that a simpler structure called the thalamus may also play a part in this process. Once thought to be only a highway that connects the eyes to the cortex, it could contain a mental searchlight that filters what we pay attention to, Crick proposed.

Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope that the games will draw children to reading.

Welcome to the official site for the BBC Prison Study The BBC Prison Study explores the social and psychological consequences of putting people in groups of unequal power. It examines when people accept inequality and when they challenge it. Based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. (via)

also:
King Wenceslas of Bohemia
American Revolution 101
Louis Prima and Space Junk "Wanting connections, we found connections -- always, everywhere, and between everything." Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum. (wink)
Top 10 Everyday Things People Do To Ruin Their Cars (via)

viddy:
Generation Tehran (roughly 70% of Iran's population is under 30 and they're hungry for change) (via)
Elvis is not dead And he's hacking RFID passport scanners.
Sinatra and Jobim (nice)
Cziffra playing Liszt's Transcendental Etude no.10 (smokin')

stray bullets

US Hands Over Seized Antiquities to Iraq Home to what was once ancient Mesopotamia, Iraq has long been a target of looters and thieves intent on stealing the country's treasure trove of antiquities. But a large cache of priceless artifacts has been returned to Iraq's government, thanks to a multi-year initiative by U.S. customs authorities to intercept items being smuggled into the United States.

Crows may be smarter than apes Researchers found evidence that the birds are able to outsmart people's closest relatives when it comes to finding a way to access food without it falling into a trap.

New face of Canada's lumberjacks African immigrants make up the bulk of the region's forestry workers.

The future of photography Photography entered the digital age in the early 90s and the resulting wave of technical innovation has put cameras everywhere, from satellites to cellphones. But bigger changes in the technology are yet to come.

also:
Cray and Microsoft launch $25,000 'deskside supercomputer'
Top 13 Polar Super Vehicles from Antarctic (via)
A good breakdown of The Statute of Limitations
Marco Polo's Travels on Google Maps (via)

viddy:
The venomous Goliath Tarantula is the largest spider in the world. What should you do if one lands on you?
The Prisoner Video Exclusive - Jim Caviezel Says There's Sand in His Cranium
Leo Kottke - Vaseline Machine Gun (it kicks in around halfway through and it's smokin')
Raga Shivranjani on Bansuri (Indian Bamboo Flute) (beautiful)

Big Scooter Style

photo by Susumu Yokota

stray bullets

Out There: People Who Live Without TV For many Americans the thought of life without TV is akin to forgoing food, shelter or, God forbid, the Internet. But about 1 to 2 percent of Americans do abstain from the boob tube, and they might seem like strange bedfellows. A recent study of those who live without found that about two-thirds fall into either the "crunchy granola set" or the "religious right, ultraconservative" camp... I guess I'm in the other one-third. I haven't had cable or air television since 2005. To be honest, I didn't get rid of the TV because I hated it, I got rid of it because I liked it too much. I needed to get some things done and I figured losing it would eliminate a distraction. It worked. I'm far more productive than I was then. I do watch movies and whatnot on the computer, but I practically have to force myself to sit down for one. I have nothing against people who watch TV. Not everyone can sit at home and write a novel or read Shakespeare after a long hard day of work. It's a matter of preference. I was a bit surprised that it was only 1-2 percent that abstain.

It’s Likely That Times Are Changing A century ago, mathematician Hermann Minkowski famously merged space with time, establishing a new foundation for physics; 
today physicists are rethinking how the two should fit together... In a lab, time is simple. You can watch experiments and record what happens as time passes simply by referring to the clock on the wall (or the computerized timers on the lab bench). But suppose you are studying the universe as a whole, attempting to formulate the laws of quantum gravity that rule the cosmos. There is no wall enclosing the universe on which to hang a clock, no external timekeeper to gauge the whenness of being. Yet quantum physics requires time to tell the universe what to do — time is necessary for things to happen. Or, as the famous restroom graffito puts it, time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. (via)

Heroin addicted elephant clean after rehab Referred to as 'Big Brother' or 'Xiguang' in Chinese media reports, the elephant was captured in 2005 in southwest China by illegal traders who fed him heroin-laced bananas. The traders used the spiked bananas for several months to control him before they were arrested by police. Xiguang was released back into the wild but was soon sent to animal protection centre after his behaviour appeared to suggest he was suffering withdrawal symptoms from heroin, Xinhua news agency reported.

Robot builders seek a little help from sci-fi "It's surprising how often people make nervous jokes about robots taking over the world. I don't want to make too much of that, but I think there's something there." So says one roboticist who thinks finding out exactly how fictional robots influence people can help engineers build real ones.

Bach fan thrills to discovery of lost 1724 pages For 25 years, Teri Noel Towe has deeply treasured a slim volume bound in red morocco that he acquired at an auction house, a volume containing six handwritten pages of a musical manuscript. Pages three and four, containing the last measures of the opening choral movement and all of the following bass aria, cover the front and back of a music sheet presumed lost. Until now. (via)

Digitizing Archives From The 17th Century A researcher on a short trip to a foreign country, with little money, but a digital camera in hand has devised a novel approach to digitizing foreign archives that could speed up research.

also:
The 11 Kinds of Insomnia (via)
How to Read an FBI File (via)
The 100 Oldest Companies in the World (via)
The heaviest and biggest tanks in history (via)

If you think you stink at driving....

...take heart.

via Blame It On The Voices

Super Car

American's Space
via LedgerGermane

This is How We Roll in India

Chillin' on the highway, New Dehli.

The reaction of the guys in the car is just about as funny.

via Coudal Partners

Beach Van

File Magazine
via The Grizzly Bear Chronicles

Crowded Bus

I think I'll just walk.

from ziza.ru
via Blame It On The Voices

Automotive Monogamy

Matteo Ferrari
via The Presurfer

Brake Burn Art

Here's a few more

How do you do that? I have no idea how they made some of these.

via Telstar Logistics

Fake Bumps Used To Slow Down Philly Drivers

3-D street art makes it to the mainstream.

We'll see what happens after the first horrible accident. I can see the headline: Man swerves to avoid fake speed bump, panic, 37 car pileup ensues...

Story and video
via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

Earthquake-damaged cars hit China's streets

Telegraph.co.uk:

On the principle that anything that can be salvaged from the rubble is better than nothing, residents of the earthquake zone have taken to trying to restart cars and vans apparently damaged beyond repair.

Hey, life goes on.

via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

The safest seat on a plane is...

Popular Mechanics:

Myth: It doesn't matter where you sit...

For several weeks, we pored over reports filed by NTSB crash investigators, and studied seating charts that showed where each passenger sat and whether they lived or died. We then calculated the average fore-and-aft seating position of both survivors and fatalities for each crash.

Nervous about flying? (and I mean the actual flying part, not the gate-rape part) You might want to read this before your next trip. Or maybe not.

via Flowing Data
---

Traffic in Hyderabad

apopthegmata:

Normal daily traffic in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. I believe it was near Sardar Patel Road.

The Insane Gridlock of Hyderabad