let's call it... you can shave the baby!

Baby what, exactly?

sir fanceepants

via Schadenfreudian Therapy

Weirdest cat ever

Tetrapod Zoology:

Apparently this animal was photographed in south-eastern Yemen where it was frequenting a building site. The photos were taken by Jim Larsen. He reported that the cat wasn't just hanging around the site, it was also chewing on cables; so much so that they had to take measures to stop the cables getting damaged further....

What is this animal? Of the cat species that occur at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, it lacks the striping characteristic of the African wild cat Felis lybica, and of course looks nothing at all like a Sand cat F. margarita. Apparently there's been some suggestion that it might be a Caracal Caracal caracal, but it doesn't look much like one at all. In fact, if its fat, rounded face and bob-tail are natural features it doesn't match any known species.

I am convinced that there are a large number of strange creatures out there that we haven't encountered yet. It's a big planet.

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)

happiness: the obligation

pinkyhonor's photostream

hat tip to Flickr Blog

The parallel world

The parallel world (45 images from the Codex Seraphinianus)


















The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, an incomprehensible (at least for us) alphabetic writing.


















hat tip: ***/*

stray bullets

All Streets All of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. (via)

also:
The Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy
Sweden's Underground Naval Base at Muskö
Musicovery Mood Music (via)

viddy:
Dog Years Ben 39, Leo, castrated mongrel needs love, G.S.O.H essential. (via)
Orson Scott Card Interview Ender's Game is fine and dandy, but Speaker for the Dead is one of the greatest novels ever written. I have a hard time getting my non-sci-fi friends to read it because I have to get them to read Ender's Game first. (via)
Tesla Coil Guitar Amp
Spoilsbury Toast Boy 2 Warning: Do not watch this if you are easily depressed, easily offended, moderately easy to offend, at work, or a kid. Truly some of the most bizarre shit I've ever witnessed. Spoilsbury Toast Boy 1 (they run in reverse order) Spoilsbury Toast Boy (I loved it.) (via)

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices

Table of vibrators:

Until the 1920s, female patients thought to be hysteric were treated by having their genitals massaged until the patient had a "spasm". Obviously, this was actually an orgasm. Doctors welcomed the introduction of mechanical devices to achieve the same effect, because they made it much easier and less fatiguing for their hands. (!) Early Sears-Roebuck catalogues contained a page of vibrator devices that could be ordered.

Yeah, right... "Mrs. Pinswiggle, I am afraid we must induce another spasm."

They sure have streamlined the design over the years.

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices
The 10 Weirdest U.S. Museums
via The Presurfer

stray bullets

Chinese troops guarding carrots, tomatoes and one lonesome uglyfruit.

True to form, CIA keeps its spy museum hush-hush I hear the NSA's is even more so. (via)

Unbreakable Fighting Umbrella Splits Watermelons, Defends Presidents I would like to take a moment to tell you how happy I am with my new umbrella. Having been a martial artist for over 30 years I have always wished to find a umbrella that could stand the strain of being used in a true self-defense situation. Your umbrella has answered that call and more! Be sure to check out the video. (via)

New service tracks missing laptops for free When the team members first started work on Adeona, it wasn't the tracking and retrieval of missing laptops that piqued their curiosity. It was a privacy problem: How could they build a laptop-tracking service that was so private that even the people running the service could not discover the location of the laptop?

Overreacting to a Computer Beating Poker Pros Newspapers trumpeted a landmark event last week: a computer program beating professional poker players head-to-head at Limit Hold-Em. Parallels have been drawn to Big Blue’s victory over Gary Kasparov roughly a decade ago. Those parallels are not very meaningful.

Out of this world Iain Banks on how practising with SF led to The Wasp Factory The Wasp Factory was Iain Banks's first novel, right? Try sixth. (via)

S. Darko Ed Harcourt is writing the score.

Poppy powder a cheap 'high' Unlike opium, which oozes out as a milky substance from a lacerated poppy bud, poppy powder is made by grinding dried buds from the dried plants, sold in flower shops for decorative purposes. It's a simple process, and in recent years the powder has been increasingly popular in the burgeoning community of Indian origin west of Toronto. They call it "dode" and it's being used as a stimulant. (via)

Man cuts off own head with chainsaw after flat is earmarked to be bulldozed by developers It is understood police are not treating his death as suspicious. Just extremely fucked up. How do you psyche yourself up for that? (via)

Absurd Entries in the OED Ammon Shea spent a year working his way through the Oxford English Dictionary. The result is his book Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. But in the run-up to his book’s publication, Shea shared many of his most bizarre finds in an Oxford University Press blog.

also:
Interval signals, signature tunes, airchecks and identification announcements from international, domestic, and clandestine radio stations around the world (via)
Allmenus has 244,822 menus in 8,146 cities nationwide. (via)
13 Things Your Waiter Won’t Tell You

stray bullets

Everyone should (link)blog The best response I've read. This is quite funny. I'm not going to comment on this again. If you'd like to know my thoughts, look here and here and read the comments, though you're better off just reading the above posts. He says what I wish I had. (big thx)

Identity is That Which is Given On the mutability and transformation of culture, why we're all multi-culturalists, identity and decay, and just what does culture mean these days? A touch on the academic side, but a worthwhile read. (via)

Return of the ivory trade The world trade in ivory, banned 19 years ago to save the African elephant from extinction, is about to take off again, with the emergence of China as a major ivory buyer.... The unleashing of a massive Chinese demand for ivory, in the form of trinkets, name seals, expensive carvings and polished ivory tusks, is likely to give an enormous boost to the illegal trade, which is entirely poaching-based, conservationists say. Tragic and stupid. A real head-shaker. (via)

Copper thieves take down Sainsbury’s This is only going to get worse, everywhere. Some day down the road, there will be paper thieves. (via) see also (via)

History's Weirdest Deaths We are a strange lot. History and legend, mind you. I'm sure you could expand this list a thousand-fold.

How To Work 52 Jobs in One Year: Interview with Sean Aiken Last year, Sean Aiken from Vancouver, Canada, graduated from college with a business degree and wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next. Like a lot of us of all ages, Sean had a good work ethic, but was uncomfortable with being locked into a career that offered little variety. Sean was also a bit of an adventurer, so he decided to do something different for his first year of full-time employment.

also:
In Pictures: Eight Ways To Quit Mousing Around "touchless" tech (via)
Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta Photographs by Ed Kashi (via)
Totoro Forest Project (via)

Futility Closet (a favorite):

Owen Parfitt In June 1768, bedridden tailor Owen Parfitt was put into a chair at the door of his Somerset cottage while his sister made his bed. She emerged after 15 minutes to find only the empty chair. A search continued throughout the rural village through the night and all the following day. No trace of him was ever found.

Kinder Surprise

LongLiveGorfUK:

This abomination was broadcast somewhere around 1983/84 - Legend/urban myth has it that it was banned because it gave some old bloke a [fatal!] heart attack ;)

via Nerdcore

‘Map of the World’ Egg Laid by Hen in China

Weird Asia News:

One very interesting and amazing egg has been laid recently by a hen in Zaozhuang City, China.

The egg looks very similar to a world globe. The patterns on the egg show the seven seas and all four oceans, as well as Greenland and Hainan Islands in China.

Well, kinda sorta.

小鸡有大胸襟 山东一枚鸡蛋上现"世界地图"(图)

Ika i Rutan

I found this to be the least traumatizing of the bunch. I probably would have liked this one when I was a kid.

Ten Most Traumatizingly Odd Kids TV Shows OF ALL TIME From Across the Planet

Some morning cup of weirdness with Thavakala the Tiny Tamil Terror

No acid until you've cleaned your room!

If you would like to read a little more about our vertically-challenged breakdancer...

via linkbunnies.org

It's official: I have lost my mind

Did someone spike my coffee?

Excuse me, I have to go and lie down for a minute. This might have been the kill-shot for me.

MyDoom
via TOKYOMANGO

A late-morning cup of weirdness: 'Salto' by Tadeusz Konwicki (clip)

This is a exerpt from the 1965 Polish Film Salto, directed by Tadeusz Konwicki

I've never seen the movie, but I like the groove. I'm looking for a copy of this tune. It's kinda like the Residents meets Charles Mingus.

from Music for Maniacs
via PCL Linkdump

A cure for Internet addiction?

photo by Fritz Hoffmann

National Geographic:

Therapists in Guangzhou use what they call "nanometer wave machines" to treat addictions. One patient (second from right) is part of a program for Internet addicts—young Chinese so devoted to gaming and other online activities that parents and government officials fear for their health, and their sanity.

Somehow, I doubt that this is a sanity-enchancing procedure.

via grinding.be

Get your kicks on the Ring Road of Riyadh

In the absence of booze, drugs and scantily-clad women, the youth of Saudi Arabia still find their fun.

Notice how they frequently lift their feet up. That's to prevent their sandals from catching on fire.

RUMINT has it that Nike is brainstorming a new line of road-skating footwear.

from droidbad
via Cynical-C

Readings 4-24-08

The Foreign Policy/Prospect Top 100 Public Intellectuals

Here's their bios.

Who got snubbed? Who's undeserving?

I'll start you off: Al Gore?
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If you only read one of these items, read Tomorrow Museum's excellent Science Fiction is for the Renaissance Men.

from:

Crisis happens when we fail to look at the large picture, but who is standing far enough away to see?

to:

Artist Fritz Haeg thinks we should follow Buckminster Fuller’s advice. “Basically, his theory is that the powers that be want us to be specialists,” he tells this month’s Art Review, “Because they don’t want us to see the big picture, because the more you see the big picture, the more you are apt to question things. He’s saying that decades ago, but I think its even more true today.”

and furthermore:

Public Service Announcements have always provided hackneyed obvious information (”Give a hoot, don’t pollute.”) We should have Public Education Announcements: 30 seconds of Spanish phrases, Newton’s Laws, or basic geometry theorems. Everyone would be able to explain the second law of thermodynamics as quickly as we can say “Shoulda Hada V8.”

Brava!

We need more renaissance (wo)men, omnologists, and generalists.

To navigate through this century we'll still need specialists, but as a standard, specialization is limiting. Over-specialization stems from old world guild secrets and old school paranoid nationalism. It is a defunct system and needs to be reformatted. (see)

What we're short on is people like Leonardo, Mary Somerville, Buckminster Fuller and Howard Bloom. What we're woefully bereft of is the "informed citizenry" necessary for a properly functioning democracy as well as an emerging global economy.

Fuse this with the speculative cast of science fiction and we're going somewhere. Science fiction has, collectively, been a sort of surrogate renaissance man in a society needing all the vision it can get.

It will be interesting to see how nascent fields like speculative fiction, future studies, omnology and generalism will grow, merge and transform over time. It would be helpful if more traditional disciplines were to adopt this kind of thinking and help facilitate connections. Entire new fields of study could emerge, like macro-omnology, comparative science, urban synergetics or psychohistory.

There are encouraging signs that this is already happening. Now we need to catch up with the "informed citizenry" part. Start with the kids.
---

25 leading-edge IT research projects

Some cool stuff in there, including the Dark Web*, T-rays, vocal joysticks and honeybees.

* not to be confused with Deep Web
via KurzweilAI.net
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RFE/RL Study Explores How Al-Qaeda Exploits Internet

What it is:

"This is a study that really looks at two things," he says. "It looks at the global message that Al-Qaeda puts out and that its affiliates put out. It also looks at the network that is behind that -- and then, how...they get that [message] out to the world. What is the network that brings that [message] to people over the Internet -- because the Internet is really the primary delivery mechanism for Al-Qaeda."

very interesting:

"Al-Qaeda, which was very, very advanced and very, very impressive in its use of new technology, is, I think, a bit behind the curve," Kimmage says. "They are sort of stuck in Web 1.0. They are producing what they think is the coolest content, the best videos, the most impressive press releases. And they are creating the most sophisticated -- the best network -- to distribute it to the web. What's missing is interactivity in user-generated content -- a world in which users generate a lot of the content and in which people what to interact with others. Al-Qaeda really seems stuck in the old model.

via monochrom
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And now for something completely different...

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

KINSHASA, April 22 (Reuters Life!) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

People get a bit touchy about their penises.

via Clumsy Crooks
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Details interviews John Waters

Q: Who’s your most unlikely fan? Did Henry Kissinger ever come up to you and say, "Hey, John—I just loved Female Trouble"?
A: It’s funny you say that, because there is a picture of me and Henry Kissinger hanging on my bulletin board in Baltimore. It was taken at a magazine party. And I do send boxes full of my movies, T-shirts, and that kind of thing to soldiers in Iraq. One whole troop told me they were being bombed while watching Female Trouble.
I wrote the major back and said, "I feel like Bob Hope!" He wrote, "I promise more of them know who you are than Bob Hope!"

via Boing Boing
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ends

Helter Skelter X

File under: WTF?

I'm largely apolitical. I believe that social problems require social solutions. Especially when lawmakers and leaders are debased, detached and/or defunct.

That's why I've been laying off the '08 presidential race as much as I can. It is compelling, considering where we are now. Bear in mind that this is the first election without an incumbent president or VP since the 1920's.

That's a long way to go to say that I have no idea who Mike Gravel is and what the hell this video is all about. (Except that he's a Libertarian running for president and I'm guessing that this is an, albeit questionable, attempt at guerrilla campaigning.)

Check out the YouTube page for more Shatneresque bloviations. At least he didn't try to riff Laurie Anderson or Bjork... {shudder}

from Jazz from Hell
via MetaFilter

Itchy tentacle relief

Man, those tentacles can act!

I spent a few long moments looping the cutaway of the bottle drip.

via Pink Tentacle