February 2010
36 posts
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Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages
I love this cartoon that The New York Times’s Steven Heller did, “Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages”.
See also David Ross discussing homoerotic imagery in Olympic posters on The Colbert Report.
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Covering Lolita
(Metafilter’s article on this link says a lot and is nicely researched, and I’d prefer not to summarize, so forgive me for just quoting the post here.)
As Dieter Zimmers online exhibit “Covering Lolita”
shows, it started with a plain green jacket.
Cover art for Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial work Lolita
then falls into two primary categories:
...
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The Seafarers →
A young Stanley Kubrick’s 1953 documentary, The Seafarers, is available on YouTube. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
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Lincoln One-Cent Redesign →
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Tables of Vampire Traits →
Includes “attractiveness”. (via)
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The International Jurassic Park Erotic Fan-Fiction... →
(via @ebertchicago)
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“Tarantino quotes, borrows from or pays homage to so many different films that...”
– Roger Ebert, on why Quentin Tarantino was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and not Best Adapted Screenplay for Inglourious Basterds. See also Esquire’s heartfelt profile on Ebert and Ebert’s “Nil By Mouth”.
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How to Move a 100-Year-Old Church →
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Turf War at the New York Times: Who Will Control... →
I’m excited about the prospect of being able to read the newspaper on something like an iPad. It just seems like such an obvious “next step” in periodical publishing. According to Gawker The New York Times is having an internal war to determine which department will “own” the iPad edition, and the print division is “afraid people will cancel the print paper if...
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Boom De Yada WoW →
World of Warcraft-themed, Discovery Channel-inspired. Previously
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Alex Godfrey on Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon →
He would shoot the film in France and Italy, for their grand
locations, and Yugoslavia, for their cheap armies. These
were pre-CG days, and he arranged to borrow 40,000 Romanian
infantry and 10,000 cavalry for the battles. “I wouldn’t
want to fake it with fewer troops,” he said to an
interviewer at the time, “because Napoleonic battles were
out in the open, a...
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I’ve seen more than one person react to Google Buzz with the thought, “oh great, one more thing I have to keep up with.” I don’t intend to defend Google here, and agree with the criticisms against them on privacy, but I think they haven’t sold their case well and would like to talk through what I think Buzz could be.
We believe that the social web works best when...
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Williamsburg State of Mind →
(via @tinythings)
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The Ultimate Interstellar Valentine Mix Tape →
[T]oward the end of the summer of 1977, NASA launched two
Voyager spacecraft that each included a golden record
containing, among other things, the sound of a kiss, a
mother’s first words to her newborn child, music from all
over the world, and greetings in 59 different languages.
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Macworld Podcast on The iPad and Digital Comics →
Jason Snell of Macworld:
The iPad has been on the minds of a lot of Mac users as of
late. In this special edition of the Macworld Podcast,
recorded on the show floor of this weeks Macworld Expo, I
speak to four people about Apples forthcoming tablet and
what it means for comic books.
I’m joined by Michael Murphey,
CEO of
iVerse Media; Jeff Webber, director of...
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Most-Downloaded iTunes Songs of All Time →
Apple’s list of the most popular iTunes songs is almost all recent music (notably excepting “Don’t Stop Believin’”). Consider that Coldplay, Lady GaGa, and the Black Eyed Peas are all artists from the iPod era, so people are much less likely to have owned them on CD.
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Most-Downloaded iTunes Songs of All Time →
Apple’s list of the most popular iTunes songs is almost all recent music (notably excepting “Don’t Stop Believin’”). Consider that Coldplay, Lady GaGa, and the Black Eyed Peas are all artists from the iPod era, so people are much less likely to have owned them on CD.
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15 Things You Never Noticed on a Dollar →
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I was a bit long-winded yesterday writing about the Apple TV. My argument is that to make the product less of a dud:
We need a program that makes DVD ripping a one-click operation, so that we can watch all the movies we already own on our phones, iPads, Apple TV, etc., and
Storage space needs to increase a bit in laptops, so that we can start downloading movies instead of buying them on discs...
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Snowlapse →
Time lapse video of the snowfall DC got this weekend.
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I Love the Whole World
The World is Just Awesome, an ad by the Discovery Channel
XKCD Loves the Discovery Channel
The animated version
Celebrity live action version by Elaine Doyle and Olga Nunes
A World of Warcraft version
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Saturday Night Live: Burn Notice Game Show →
I don’t know what precisely I like about this sketch, but I find it damn hilarious.
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The Cult of Mexican Coca-Cola →
Taqueria Nacional, on N. Capital Street, sells Coke from Mexico. The difference between corn syrup and sugar isn’t huge, but I prefer the sugary variety.
The Coca-Cola Company is by now quite familiar with
the Mexican Coke cult. It is true, acknowledges a
Coke spokesman, Scott Williamson, that different
sweeteners are used by the company’s bottling
partners in different parts...
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Biggest Snowstorms on Record for Mid-Atlantic US →
This chart doesn’t have December 19, 2009’s 16.4″, which would take seventh place. The trend seems to be a major snowstorm every 5-8 years or so.
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Getting Past "Good Enough" eBooks →
“If you expect readers to pay $12.99 or more for an ebook, you must give them the same high-quality product they expect in the printed world.”
As with music and movies, the trick with converting to ebooks (and e-magazines, and e-newspapers) is not in developing the technology to read them, but in securing the rights for them (dealing with corporations and lawyers) and in getting the...
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Jim Shooter’s Affidavit Against DC Comics Over... →
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“If you want to know the five “real” nominees, match them up with the...”
– Roger Ebert (though I’d argue Cameron’s directing of Avatar is better than it is as a film).
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The Days of Miracles and Wonder →
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Marco Arment Wonders About the Timing of iPad App... →
I was thinking about third-party iPad apps over the weekend. When I’d pictured using an iPad, I assumed I’d have NetNewsWire, Instapaper, and a Twitter client installed. But this assumes that they’ll all release iPad apps, and that they’ll be ready right away. The prospect of having an iPad that only runs Apple’s stock apps is much less attractive. Then again,...
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Bill Watterson, Creator of Beloved 'Calvin and... →
Today is the 15th anniversary of the last Calvin & Hobbes strip. The Plain Dealer scores a short interview with creator Bill Watterson.
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The End of Dollhouse →
Well, Dollhouse is over, and I loved its crazy ending. The storytelling over the last half of the second season reminded me somewhat of Final Crisis’s “channel-zapping” approach: take out all the filler and just give us the action. Viewers can infer what happened in between. Geoff Klock on the final episodes:
But these guys did something I feel like I have never seen
before...
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Why Do Late-Night Hosts Always Keep Their Desks on... →