Coming to Kindle and Smashwords

Coming to Kindle and Smashwords
November 2013

Jan 31, 2013

Paperman, An Oscar Nominated Walt Disney Animation Studios Short

 


Paperman, an animated short film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and directed by John Kahrs, tells a beautiful story about love, fate and changing one’s destiny. The black and white short has been nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar. It was brought to life by combining both hand-drawn and computer animation styles

The Backwards Bowler, Jim Cripps


I do it backwards.
Jim Cripps is known worldwide as “The Backwards Bowler” due to his unique style of, yes, backwards bowling. He states on his site, “…I spent years being so serious about my craft that I didn’t want to even consider a trick shot. Boy was I wrong…”
Here’s an earlier video of Jim, from 2006:

via

Jan 30, 2013

Color film of the Three Stooges from 1938

Hatrick sez, "Amazing color footage from 1938. The Three Stooges at the Steel Pier, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Film by George Mann of the comedy dance team, Barto and Mann. George Mann and his wife Barbara Bradford also appear in the film."

Jan 29, 2013

Wow....

Stunning Blade Runner Animation, Made With 3,000 Watercolors



More than 3,000 watercolor drawings were combined to produce this stunning animation, an exacting, frame-by-frame re-creation of an early sequence from Blade Runner.

Jan 26, 2013

A Visual History of NASA Space Food

NASA space food
This gallery of freeze dried and preserved morsels spans more than 50 years of NASA space food, from the Gemini missions to the International Space Station. “Flight food systems” are the responsibility of NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory. Its mission:
…to provide high-quality flight food systems that are convenient, compatible with each crew member’s physiological and psychological requirements, meet spacecraft stowage and galley interface requirements, and are easy to prepare and eat in the weightlessness of space.
Bon appetit!
NASA space food
NASA space food
NASA space food
NASA space food
via

Star wars alphabet

Star Wars Alphabet
San Jose graphic designer Patrick Concepcion of ConcepciĆ³n Studios created a fantastic illustration that alphabetically displays Star Wars character silhouettes. Prints are available to purchase on Etsy.
image

Jan 25, 2013

Secret exterior door with remote control lock

Matt Richardson says: "I've seen plenty of secret doors on the interiors of houses, but never an secret exterior door."

Jan 24, 2013

KBR Secret Indemnity Agreement Signed By Army Chief Tainted In Enron Scandal

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WASHINGTON -- The Army official who signed a secret agreement that military contractor KBR claims should burden taxpayers with the bill for the company's negligent poisoning of U.S. soldiers in Iraq resigned from the military in 2003 after a tenure marked by questions about his ties to Enron Corp.
Thomas E. White, named secretary of the Army in 2001, signed an indemnity agreement protecting KBR, the military's largest contractor, from legal liability on March 19, 2003. KBR had asked for the agreement as part of its contract to rebuild Iraq oilfields destroyed in the U.S. invasion. White resigned a month later, on April 23, under fire for his previous role as a senior Enron executive and after clashing with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over his advocacy for a multi-billion dollar artillery system.
KBR's indemnity agreement, obtained by The Huffington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request, was classified as secret until Dec. 21, 2012, the month after a federal jury in Oregon decided the company should pay $85 million for negligence that allowed a dozen soldiers to be exposed to a cancer-causing chemical sodium dichromate at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant in Iraq.
The agreement, never made public until now, is crucial because KBR claims it means taxpayers have to pay both the verdict and the company's $15 million in legal expenses. The company faces a separate lawsuit filed by national guardsmen from both Indiana and West Virginia, as well as troops from the U.K. The military has said it believes the agreement doesn't shield KBR from paying for the lawsuits.
It's not known how many defense contractors have secret indemnification agreements with the government. While most federal agencies are not allowed to enter open-ended indemnification agreements, the Pentagon is exempt under an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon in 1971. An amendment to the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act pushed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) now requires the Pentagon to disclose indemnification clauses that hold military contractors harmless and to justify the agreements to Congress.
White wrote in his 2003 memo granting KBR the indemnity that he "considered the availability, costs and terms of private insurance to cover these risks, as well as the viability of self-insurance, and have concluded that adequate insurance to cover the unusually hazardous risks is not reasonably available." He said he had no clue how much the indemnity agreement could cost taxpayers.
"It is not possible to determine the actual or estimated cost to the Government as a result of the use of an indemnification clause since the liability of the Government, if any, will depend upon the occurrence of an incident related to the performance of the contract," White wrote. The agreement was necessary to "facilitate the national defense," he said.
White, currently a partner at DKRW Energy, did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment.
White maintained he knew nothing about Enron's efforts to manipulate energy prices in the California power crisis in 2000 and 2001. His sale of millions of dollars in Enron stock in 2001 came under investigation by federal authorities, but no charges were ever brought. White said he was required to sell his stock under government ethics rules. The Pentagon's inspector general also investigated whether White and his wife used a military jet for personal travel.
The 2003 agreement between the Army and KBR protects the contractor from financial costs associated with unusually hazardous risks including the "sudden or nonsudden release of hydrocarbons or other toxic or hazardous substances or contaminants into the environment."
A KBR spokesman previously told HuffPost the company "is confident that it will prevail in enforcing the U.S. government’s legal obligations.” One lawyer representing soldiers in their lawsuit against KBR said the agreement amounted to a "pretty good bailout" for the company.

Cockaignesque, A Lush Photo Series Inspired by Baroque Paintings

 

Cockaignesque by Helen Sobiralski
“Cockaignesque” by German photographer Helen Sobiralski is a lush photo series inspired by Baroque still-life paintings. For more of her photography, see her Facebook page.
Cockaignesque by Helen Sobiralski
Cockaignesque by Helen Sobiralski
Cockaignesque by Helen Sobiralski
Thanks

Jan 23, 2013

What it's like to have a grand mal seizure

Jan 22, 2013

Xpogo, Extreme Pogo Stick Riders Who Perform Tricks Worldwide


Xpogo is a group of athletic individuals who show off their extreme pogo stick riding skills and tricks in a multitude of locations worldwide. You can view more videos, which includes tutorials, on their website.



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Haggis Flavored Potato Chips

Haggis
Snack company Mackie’s of Scotland has created Haggis & Cracked Black Pepper potato crisps, yes, haggis-flavored potato chips. They describe them as being “distinctively Scottish” and note, “You may be surprised.” They pair their haggis snacks with the following whiskys: Aberlour a’bunadh, The Famous Grouse, or Talisker.
via bookofjoe

Jan 21, 2013

Yikes...Virginia Mandatory Ultrasound Law's Repeal Blocked By State GOP


A Republican-controlled committee in the Virginia State Senate voted 8-7 on Thursday to block Democrats' efforts to repeal a new mandatory ultrasound law and a set of regulations that could shut down many abortion clinics in the state. The committee also voted down a new anti-abortion bill that would have prevented Medicaid from paying for low-income women's abortions in cases where there is a severe fetal anomaly.
Virginia Republicans attracted national criticism in early 2012 when they proposed a bill requiring women to undergo invasive, medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound procedures before having an abortion. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) later helped Republicans revise the bill to require only external, "jelly-on-the-belly" procedures, and he signed that version into law.
State Sen. Ralph Northam (D), the only physician in the senate, proposed a bill that would repeal the mandatory ultrasound law because he says it violates the privacy and sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. "I am giving you the opportunity to right the wrong committed last year," he told committee members on Thursday.
The Medical Society of Virginia and the Virginia American College of Obstetricians testified in favor of repealing the ultrasound bill, echoing Northam's concerns.
Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia and a top anti-abortion lobbyist, also testified at the hearing. She accused abortion providers of "hiding the picture" of the ultrasound from women in order to prevent them from changing their minds and to increase profits, according to The American Independent's Reilly Moore.
The Senate Health and Education Committee voted along party lines to block the repeal of the ultrasound law, as well as the repeal of a set of abortion clinic regulations, known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP. The law requires that first-trimester abortion clinics meet the same building standards as newly constructed hospitals.
State Sen. Mark Herring (D), the sponsor of the bill to repeal the TRAP law, said he is going to continue fighting to keep the clinics open. "What [the committee] did was wrong," he told The Huffington Post. "I think the votes today indicate that Republicans still have an extreme agenda, and they're intent on reducing access to women's health care."
The committee also voted down an anti-abortion bill on Thursday. One Republican on the committee, State Sen. Harry Blevins (R), crossed over and voted with Democrats to kill a bill that would have banned state-subsidized abortions for women with severely impaired fetuses

Lego Stop-Motion Animation of the Man Of Steel Trailer 2

  Lego Stop-Motion Animation of the Man Of Steel Trailer 2


Antonio Toscano did a great job of creating a stop-motion animated LEGO variant of director Zack Snyder‘s recent Man of Steel – Official Trailer #2. Here is the original trailer for Man of Steel (due out on June 14, 2013):

via

Geek Love, Online Reality Series Focuses on Sci-Fi Speed Dating

 


Dating has never been easy, but try dating in a Darth Vader mask or Wonder Woman ensemble.
Geek Love is an online reality series that focuses on Sci-Fi Speed Dating, a speed dating business founded by Ryan Glitch that brings “like-minded people together to embrace their idiosyncrasies and find love” at events like Comic-Con. The series is three episodes in and new ones come out on Thursdays.


Thanks

Jan 20, 2013

"Nerds are one of the most dangerous groups in this country"


This gentleman has an opinion. And he can see you, you little rats

Jan 19, 2013

Green Army Man Bottle Opener

Green Army Man Bottle Opener

Green Army Men
This green die-cast metal Army Man Bottle Opener brings a tough military style to popping the top off of your favorite beer and is available to purchase online at Vat19.com.
…It features the same iconic styling of the original Army Men from the 1930s and 1940s. This sucker is tough as nails, looks awesome, and gets you that much closer to enjoying a frosty beer. Yeah, it’s pretty much glory incarnate.

Army Man BO
Army Man BO
image 1 via The Awesomer, other images and vi

Jan 18, 2013

Scumdance, A Group Art Show That Celebrates Famous Movie Villains

 

They all float down here! by Dave Correia
Scumdance, a group art show at the Blonde Grizzly gallery, will be showcasing a bad ass collection of artwork that celebrates famous movie villains. New paintings and drawings will be displayed that were created by a group of talented Zerofriends artists. The art show opening will take place January 18, 2013 from 6 to 9 PM at Blonde Grizzly in Salt Lake City, Utah. It just so happens to “coincide with the first day of the Sundance Film Festival.”
Featured artists include:
Ack, Fucking Ack. by Alex Pardee
Star Wars Ping Pong Paddles by Matt Ritchie
Alien by Jon Wayshak
Scumdance poster by Alex Pardee
images via

batman?

Here is what was always missing from our boat....a hero that did not wear anchors!!

nuff said....

Click SHARE if you Love Breaking Bad!

Jan 17, 2013

Vinyl Boba Fett Action Figure by KAWS

Vinyl Boba Fett Figure by KAWS
Brooklyn street artist and designer Brian Donnelly (aka “KAWS“) created an awesome vinyl action figure of the Star Wars bounty hunter Boba Fett for OriginalFake. The overall shape and design is based off of KAWS’ character Companion. According to The Khooll, keep a look out on KAWSONE.com for the action figure’s Saturday, January 26, 2013 release.
via

Jan 16, 2013

Catgun, Illustration of a Woman Shooting Cats From a Futuristic Weapon

Catgun
Catgun, an illustration by Russian artist Mikhail “glooh” Glukhov, shows a woman repeatedly shooting scared cats from a futuristic and high-powered looking weapon

Jan 11, 2013

THe Last Man....


Casting details have yet to emerge on the project, but there’s solid reason to be psyched about the big-screen Y. Trachtenberg’s moody take on Portal milked maximum suspense from a minimalist scenario centered on a tough female prisoner who busts out of captivity with the help of a wormhole-blasting machine gun. Factor in Vaughn’s storytelling chops, which earned him a three-season stint as a writer-producer for Lost and more recently stunned sci-fi fans with thoughtful 2012 graphic novel Saga.

Portal: No Escape Director Snags Y: The Last Man Movie

 


Dan Trachtenberg pulled in 11.5 million views with his moody seven-minute fan film Portal: No Escape (above), based on the popular puzzle platforming game by Valve, a project that has springboarded the new director to much bigger things: He’s now been tapped by New Line Cinema to direct the long-gestating movie adaptation of graphic novel Y: The Last Man for his first feature film

Video: Watch the Entire Dark Knight Movie Trilogy in Three Minutes


Director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, which concluded last summer with The Dark Knight Rises, is probably one of the most well-executed comic book hero franchises in recent memory.

An Artisanal Fluffernutter

Fluffernutter
Bon Appetit recently featured a variety of lowbrow sandwiches that have gone upscale, including a gourmet Fluffernutter by chef de cuisine Gary Fizner of Star Provisions in Atlanta, Georgia. For his version, he skips the classic jar of Marshmallow Fluff and makes his “fluff” from scratch. The sandwich’s soft white bread is baked on-site and even the peanut butter is artisanal, coming from North Carolina nut butter company

New Hiroshima bombing photo shows split mushroom cloud


A photograph that shows the Hiroshima atomic bomb cloud split into two sections, one over the other, has been released by the curator of a peace museum in Japan. It was discovered on Monday among a collection of some 1,000 archival items related to the bombing, all of which are now in the possession of Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima city.

We (probably) found the Higgs Boson. Now what?

I got to join in on a great conversation this morning on Minnesota Public Radio's "The Daily Circuit", all about the Higgs Boson and what it means for the future of physics.
This is a fascinating issue. Finding the Higgs Boson (if that is, indeed, what scientists have done) means that all the particles predicted by the Standard Model of physics have now been found. But that's not necessarily good news for physicists. For one thing, it would have been a lot more interesting to break the Standard Model than to uphold it. For another, we're now left with a model for the Universe that mostly works but still has some awkward holes — holes that it might be hard to get the funding to fill.
Daily Circuit host Kerry Miller, Harvard physics chair Melissa Franklin, and I spent 45 minutes talking about what is simultaneously a beautiful dream and a waking nightmare for the physics world. And I got to make a "Half Baked" reference in a conversation about particle physics, so you know it's a good time, too.

Cover for new edition of Orwell's 1984 is brilliant


Love this cover art for the new Penguin edition of 1984.
[Designer David] Pearson says that the design went through numerous iterations "to establish just the right amount of print obliteration. Eventually we settled on printing and debossing, as per the Great Ideas series [Why I Write shown, above], with the difference being that the title and author name were then blocked out using matt black foil. This had the effect of partially flattening the debossed letters, leaving just enough of a dent for the title to be determined – though I can't vouch for it's success on Amazon

Jan 4, 2013

How to Tie an Eldredge Necktie Knot


Alex Krasny demonstrates how to tie the incredibly fancy & quite unusual Eldredge necktie knot.
The Eldredge Knot
via

Paul Frees tries out narration for the Haunted Mansion

Check out this amazing reel of Paul Frees trying out different narration choices for the Disneyland Haunted Mansion. It comes from the excellent (and out of print) Haunted Mansion Original Soundtrack, which I am a proud owner of. Neener

CIA Official Who Destroyed Torture Tapes Squirms at Zero Dark Thirty Abuse



Actors Kyle Chandler, left, and Jason Clarke portray CIA officials involved in torturing detainees in Zero Dark Thirty. A retired agency officer who destroyed actual video footage of the torture has a beef with the film’s portrayal of interrogations. Photo courtesy Sony Pictures Publicity

Jose Rodriguez thinks the new movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden is “well worth seeing.” But the retired CIA veteran has reservations about its gut-churning portrayal of the CIA’s treatment of detainees. Which is rich, coming from the man who destroyed the video footage documenting many of those brutal agency interrogations.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post on Friday, the former chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and its clandestine service takes issue with Zero Dark Thirty’s torture scenes. Those scenes are admittedly hard to watch. They show terrified, disoriented and bloodied detainees kept awake for days on end by having their arms painfully suspended from the ceilings of secret jails; stuffed into tiny wooden boxes when they don’t cooperate with their inquisitors; and waterboarded on soiled mattresses while interrogators bark questions. They also largely match up with the minimal public disclosure of how the post-9/11 program actually operated.
But they offend Rodriguez, who describes himself as “intimately involved in setting up and administering” a program he has steadfastly denied amounted to torture. Most CIA detainees weren’t subject to what he euphemistically calls “enhanced interrogation.” Those who were experienced “harsh measures for only a few days or weeks at the start of their detention.” And director Kathryn Bigelow left out all the bureaucratic red tape CIA interrogators encountered: “To give a detainee a single open-fingered slap across the face, CIA officers had to receive written authorization from Washington.”
Except there’s a problem with Rodriguez’s account that he sidesteps in calling the film inaccurate. While at the CIA, Rodriguez himself destroyed nearly 100 video recordings of brutal interrogations, including those of two al-Qaida figures who most definitely were subjected to “harsh measures,” Abu Zubaydah and 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. If Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal are in the dark about torture — like the rest of the country — Rodriguez is a big part of the reason why.

It took a Justice Department inquiry to reveal even the outlines of the destruction of the torture tapes. In 2009, the government disclosed that Rodriguez in 2005 ordered the destruction of 92 videotapes of interrogation footage totaling hundreds of hours’ worth of footage. As the New York Times noted, Rodriguez’s order came at a time when “Congress and the courts were intensifying their scrutiny of the agency’s detention and interrogation program.” The destruction was a deliberative process: Rodriguez wrote in his memoir last year that he used a shredder packing “five spinning and two stationary blades” capable of chewing through “hundreds of pounds of material in a single hour.”
Rodriguez claims he ordered the destruction on his own after his bosses vacillated on whether the tapes ought to be destroyed. His stated rationale for liquidating evidence that was relevant to a potential criminal investigation was to protect his interrogators. It had the effect of destroying a major aspect of the historical record. When Rodriguez swears in his op-ed that the torture program worked as he says it did, he left observers with few independent ways to check his claims.
Ultimately, a Justice Department special prosecutor opted to abandon criminal cases against CIA interrogators who had received authorization from senior government officials for the interrogation program. Rodriguez himself never faced criminal charges for the destruction of the tapes.
Despite the destruction, Rodriguez’s insider account isn’t the only one that has survived. Phil Zelikow, a former aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told Danger Room last year that the CIA’s brutal interrogations amounted to “war crimes,” an assessment he conveyed during an internal 2006 debate about the CIA program. One of the CIA interrogators involved in the program’s early days has lamented that he “destroyed a man’s life” through the abusive techniques.
There are other reasons to doubt aspects of Rodriguez’s accounts. He writes that “When the detainee became compliant, the techniques stopped — forever.” But three powerful senators who helped helm a four-year classified study of the CIA program, Dianne Feinstein, John McCain and Carl Levin, wrote to the CIA on December 19 that “The CIA detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier [to Osama bin Laden] provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.”
Feinstein, McCain and Levin have now turned their focus to the CIA’s cooperation with a movie that they believe conveys the mistaken impression that torture led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Rodriguez makes no secret of what he thinks about Congress prying into the CIA’s dark corners. He singles out a scene in Zero Dark Thirty when an agency employee threatens to alert a congressional committee about her boss’s seeming failures. “Now that,” Rodriguez writes, “would be torture.”

Alt Text: 10 Things Nobody Cared About in 2012


Every year, pundits planetwide dust off their search engines and pull together lists of The Best and The Worst of the preceding trip around the sun. I feel that in the rush to name the best videogames and the worst political scandals, something gets lost in the shuffle: things that aren’t that bad, aren’t that good, and frankly aren’t that interesting anymore.
So, for the second year in a row, I’m providing a vital listing of The Top 10 Things Nobody Cared About in 2012.
1. The PlayStation Vita
Really, nobody cared about portable console gaming in general in 2012, but the Vita took the brunt of the widespread indifference, failing to match even the relatively modest sales of the original PSP. The reason is simple: 99 cents is less money than forty dollars. Sure, a dedicated console game might be better, but look at it this way. If a cheap iOS game is like a Big Mac, and a high-end Vita game is like some Waygu-and-stilton masterpiece from a restaurant in the valet district, then that upscale burger would cost $160. Do they really make burgers that good?
2. Johnny Depp
Hey, everybody, guess what! In 2012, Johnny Depp starred in a quirky Tim Burton movie where he played an outcast misfit with heavy makeup effects and a weird haircut! Boy, it’s wonderful that we have someone who’s willing to play such off-beat, unusual characters that are completely like any others except all the other characters he plays! Unfortunately, in Dark Shadows, Depp was working with such weak source material that no amount of head-cocking, slow blinking and accent-affecting could save the movie, and people lined up in droves to not care about it. What might bring him back to the limelight? No promises, but a filmed deathmatch among Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow, Hunter S. Thompson and the rest of his characters would definitely put me in a theater seat.
3. The Higgs Boson
The search for this fundamental subatomic particle was the equivalent of the old TV series Moonlighting or the slightly less-old TV series The X-Files. We desperately wanted the male and female leads — or “particle physicists” and “the Higgs boson” — to finally admit their love and fall into each others’ arms, but once it actually happened we promptly lost interest. Once you take out catchy terms like “the God particle” and the infinitesimal chance of the end of the universe, the story is just “scientists find particle they pretty much already knew existed.” Yawn.
4. Sarah Palin
After Obama was elected in 2008, everyone prayed that Sarah Palin would make a White House bid in 2012. Conservatives wanted to see her in the Oval Office, liberals wanted to see her crash and burn, and talk show hosts wanted easy material for their monologues. When she resigned from the governorship of Alaska in 2009, this further fueled the craving for Candidate Palin, even as conservatives had to admit that “She Quit the Last Post She Was Elected To” isn’t the best campaign slogan. But she didn’t run, and now she’s just another talking head on TV, not serious enough to be taken seriously, and not loony enough to be taken seriously by loonies.
5. Ukuleles
If I were a competent prognosticator, I would have looked at the launch of YouTube and immediately run out and bought shares in ukulele manufacturers. Ukuleles are cheap, easy to play, kitschy, and most importantly are the simplest way to create an ironic not-quite-parody of a popular song that everyone’s already tired of hearing. The lazy ukulele cover isn’t dead — do a search on “gangnam style ukulele” if you need proof — but it’s increasingly difficult to believe that anyone cares about them except maybe, maybe the ones actually playing the ukuleles.
6. Superman
Superman films have the same problems as Jesus’. Everyone knows the basic story. If you tell it faithfully, nobody wants to see it except hardcore fans. If you mess with it too much, then you just piss people off. However, Superman doesn’t have the advantage of getting to decide what happens to you after you die, so he doesn’t have enough hardcore fans to generate much interest. With the upcoming Superman movie being the second in a row where most of the advance press is about the appearance of the title character’s crotch, it’s clear that if caring were Kryptonite, then the overall cultural interest in Superman would give him a mild headache and cottonmouth.
7. Siri
Let’s not pretend that everything Apple comes up with, or has come up with, is legendary, game-changing or, you know, useful. Siri sounds good on paper, with maybe a 75 percent chance of both understanding your question and being able to answer it usefully, assuming you’re asking the sort of question Siri can answer. But having to repeat yourself or getting useless information 25 percent of the time steadily eats away at the sense of wonder and awe. Even the DMV is only completely unhelpful 23 percent of the time.
8. Planking
I’m not sure this belongs on the list. Not because people still care about it, but because it’s arguable whether anybody really cared about it in the first place. I think I saw maybe two planking photos that weren’t in the context of “Hey, there’s this thing called planking, isn’t it dumb?” posts. Like “crushing,” “rainbow parties” and “Ron Paul,” this may have just been something someone made up to have something to hate, and a few lost souls obliged. Having said that, whatever heat it once had has long since escaped into the atmosphere.
9. Michael Pollan
I went to a party in Berkeley the other week, and the unthinkable happened: Nobody mentioned The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’m not saying the book has lost all influence. After all, we were still snacking on free-range turkey breast slices with microfarmed goat cheese on fair trade, artisanal, organic, hand-pummeled zwieback. But nobody felt the need to comment on the fact that we were doing so, much less defend their shopping choices by quoting extended Pollan passages about how pastured eggs are so delicious because the chickens eat larvae out of cow poop. So while Pollan isn’t precisely irrelevant, at least it’s now possible to care about food without so much caring about him personally.
10. The Casual Vacancy
“Wait a second,” I pretend to hear you say. “Rowling’s first adult novel has sold over a million copies! There were all sort of articles written about it!” That, my compliant imaginary objector, is one of the central paradoxes of Western culture. Something can be lucrative, famous, even ubiquitous and still not actually generate enough caring to send a concern-powered bicycle three blocks. Did anyone ever really care about Jewel’s poetry? About Madonna’s book of softcore porn? About El Debarge’s entire career? Of course not, and nobody cares that the author of books about chocolate frogs and sorting hats also wrote a book about whatever this book is about.

More Amazing Facts To Blow Your Mind by AsapScience


What’s that noise? Oh, it’s just the sound of your brain exploding after hearing these facts…
In “More Amazing Facts To Blow Your Mind”“, Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown of AsapSCIENCE share some simple but impressive facts

Humorous Photographic Street Art by Mentalgassi

Humorous photographic street art by Mentalgassi
Berlin art collective Mentalgassi specializes in large scale photographic street art with a humorous bent.
Humorous photographic street art by Mentalgassi
Humorous photographic street art by Mentalgassi
Humorous photographic street art by Mentalgassi
Humorous photographic street art by Mentalgassi
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Fallen Astronaut, A Figure Sculpture That Was Left on the Moon in 1971

Fallen Astronaut by Paul Van Hoeydonck
“Fallen Astronaut” is a 3 inch tall aluminum sculpture of a human figure was left on the moon in 1971 by Apollo 15 astronauts. Created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck, the sculpture is a memorial for astronauts and cosmonauts who have died in the pursuit of space exploration

Rotting Soviet-era themepark in the heart of Berlin

Gorgeous, psychedelic hand-drawn animation made with ink, white-out and coffee