Miniatures sculptor Alan Wolfson was commissioned to make a teeny weeny, fiendishly detailed diorama of the legendary Katz's Deli. Wolfson doesn't do miniature people, so he needed a plausible reason to make an empty Katz's (it's normally mobbed). He opted for a "closing time" Katz's, complete with tiny dirty dishes. There's tiny neon outside, too!
Katz’s Delicatessen is one of those legendary New York locations. It’s been in business on the lower east side of Manhattan since 1888, and is New York’s oldest deli. Telling someone to “meet me at Katz’s..,” is almost the same as telling them to meet you under the clock in Grand Central - everyone knows where it is.
The collector who commissioned the piece no longer lives in the city and wanted something that reminded him of the many times, when he was a boy, that he and his family had eaten at Katz’s.
Here's a 1974 interview with SFX pioneer and "Dynamation" inventor Ray Harryhausen, whose stop motion magic brought to life such classic films as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and One Million Years BC
Pitchfork's got a couple YouTube clips from the ongoing David Byrne/St Vincent tour, which is in support of their new album and Byrne's new book, both of which are amazing. I saw the tour stop in Toronto and actually wept at one point. I've been listening to the new album, Love This Giant nonstop since, and it's become the soundtrack of my days. I can't remember the last time a new album took over my life so completely.
I Miss Drugs is a humorous web series “that paints a sadly hilarious portrait” of “aging hipsters” created by Nathaniel Boggess and Jason Eksuzian. There are currently four ‘very short’ episodes available to view online. Each one covers topics like incorporating a new crocheted designer pillow into the home, drinking Trader Joe’s boxed wine with your girlfriend while watching Portlandia and other benign day-to-day signs of getting older and ‘losing one’s edge’. The ‘I Miss Drugs’ Twitter account has some humorous gems as well.
[Video Link] Police officers in Sierra Blanca, Texas made the world safer by arresting Fiona Apple for possession of hashish. She was scheduled to play in Austin.
To promote the new season of television drama series, Covert Affairs, the UK channel Really commissioned make-up artist Carolyn Roper to camouflage woman in body paint so that they would blend into London’s scenery. One of them has been painted as vegetables and staged on the veggies stand at London’s Portobello Market. The new season of Covert Affairs premieres September 19, 2012 on Really and the full image gallery can be found at Huffington Post UK.
Wrenniepooh isn't your typical bronie. In 2008/9, Wrenniepooh created a series of custom My Little Ponies, including this rather magnificent specimen, dubbed Eyeball Creep.
America stands divided, with a polarizing presidential election pushing things to extremes. When the populace gets tired of politics as usual, a write-in campaign lands a bona fide war hero in the Oval Office.
Mixing Mentos and Coke is a thing -- well-parameterized and understood. But what if you tape a condom over the bottle-mouth before you make the fateful introduction? Sheer hilarity!
Popcorn brand Popcorn, Indiana has been working on their Popinator Project, a voice-activated machine that listens for the command ‘pop’ to aim and launch popcorn directly into your mouth. While it’s not currently not for sale, you can see the prototype in action in this video.
Popcorn brand Popcorn, Indiana has been working on their Popinator Project, a voice-activated machine that listens for the command ‘pop’ to aim and launch popcorn directly into your mouth. While it’s not currently not for sale, you can see the prototype in action in this video.
Author William Gibson poses for a portrait at the Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. Photo: Jason Redmond/Wired
One of science fiction’s most visionary and distinctive voices, William Gibson maintains that he and his fellow writers don’t possess some mystical ability to peer into the future.
“We’re almost always wrong,” said Gibson in a phone interview with Wired. Gibson coined the term cyberspace in his 1982 short story “Burning Chrome” and expanded on the concept in his 1984 debut novel, Neuromancer.
Part 2: William Gibson on the Temptation of Twitter, Antique Watches (Coming Friday)
Part 3: William Gibson on Punk Rock, Memes and ‘Gangnam Style’ (Coming Saturday)
In that book, which quickly became a classic, inspiring pop culture and science fiction for decades to come, Gibson predicted that the “consensual hallucination” of cyberspace would be “experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation” in a global network of “unthinkable complexity.”
Yet Gibson says he simply got lucky with his prescient depiction of a digital world. “The thing that Neuromancer predicts as being actually like the internet isn’t actually like the internet at all!” said the writer, who has since penned numerous critically acclaimed novels, including Count Zero (1986), Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), The Difference Engine (co-authored with Bruce Sterling, 1990), Pattern Recognition (2003) and Zero History (2010).
Gibson’s most recent book, a collection of nonfiction called Distrust That Particular Flavor, was published this year; he is currently working on a new novel, tentatively titled The Peripheral.
In this Wired interview, which will be published over the next three days, Gibson discusses a dizzying range of subjects, including antique watches, comic books, punk rock, fortune tellers, internet memes and the long-running plans for a Neuromancer movie. Wired: Do you think the category “science fiction” is useful anymore? Your last few books, like the Blue Ant trilogy, qualify as science fiction, but they’re set in a feasible approximation of present-day reality.
Facebook forced The New Yorker to remove a cartoon depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden because the cartoonist drew in two dots representing Eve's nipples, which is a Facebook no-no.
News broke today that Bravo was headed into scripted television territory, and that's the positive news. (Holding out on calling it "good news" until I see the actual shows.) But then there was this: a reboot of the movie Heathers. As you can imagine, the blogosphere (at least the writers who are Heathers fans) was not thrilled about this news. But fortunately, the movie itself has provided a whole slew of reactions for us! Let's take a look at a bunch of quotes from the movie that can now be reissued as pre-reviews of this very dumb reboot idea. The best part is that we don't even need context from the plot!
Tracy King sends us an "animated history of genetics from Nature to celebrate the release of ENCODE. Narrated by Tim Minchin and animated by the team who made Storm. Written by Adam Rutherford (Nature), Andrew Ellard (Red Dwarf, IT Crowd) and Tracy King (TAM London).
In a zombie apocalypse — as everyone knows — the undead eat brains (or other body parts, depending on which mythology you subscribe to). On a film set, however, zombies basically eat Jell-O. Recipes vary, of course, but in Resident Evil: Retribution, out Friday, the walking dead chew on a version fortified with glycerin and sorbitol, compounds often used to make soft-gel pills. Added to gelatin, the combo turns the faux flesh into something solid enough for actors to really sink their rotting bicuspids into. “The stuff is great, because if it accidentally gets ingested, it’s essentially food,” says Paul Jones, a prosthetic makeup designer who created more than 800 zombies for the new movie. “You can actually bite into it and see it tear.” More occipital lobe, anyone?
Recipe: DIY Faux Flesh*
Ingredients:
200 grams glycerin
200 grams sorbitol
100 grams gelatin powder (recommended: 300 bloom)
2.5 grams zinc oxide
Colored face powder
Red and green colored frocking
Water as needed
1. Mix the glycerin and sorbitol together in a large bowl, then add the gelatin powder and zinc oxide. Microwave in 2-minute intervals, stirring until the powder melts into the liquid. (To make skin that can tear more easily, as in a bite wound, replace the sorbitol with water.) 2. Once melted, add desired colored frocking or small amounts of face powder or food coloring, until desired hue is achieved. 3. Pour into food grade silicone mold. (These can be made at home using a kit or purchased from a specialty catalog.) 4. Cool in refrigerator until the mixture sets. Small body parts, such as hands or arms, will cool within a couple of hours. Larger body parts will take longer. Yield: 1 serving of brains, flesh, or viscera
The Soylent Corporation processed human flesh into wafers. The psychos in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre turned their victims into sausage. But people provide the mystery meat in more than just sci-fi and horror movies. They've also been unwittingly consumed in adaptations of Broadway musicals and feel-good tales of female empowerment. How do all the meals compare? Warning: stomach-churning spoilers ahead
Earlier this week, Boston Dynamics demonstrated the capabilities of the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), a semi-autonomous four legged robot designed to serve as a pack mule for US troops (video). The robot can navigate difficult terrain, follow a human leader, and right itself if it falls over. It will eventually have a range of 20 miles, a top speed of 7 MPH, and a cargo capicity of 400 pounds. The robot has another two years of testing and refinement ahead of it before it is deployed in an operational exercise with US Marines. The LS3 project is funded by DARPA and the US Marine Corps.
The other day, a reader asked why I call climate change "climate change", instead of "global warming". The short answer is that, from my perspective, climate change does a much better job of giving people an accurate mental picture of what is going on. Global warming sounds like the world is just going to get hotter, and while that's technically true on a global-average-temperature-basis, it doesn't really reflect what's happening locally
When NASA's Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide couldn't seem to get a bolt attached to the outside of the space station, ground crews came up with a clever solution: Fix the problem with a toothbrush. At Space.com, Denise Chow explains the details:
On Aug. 30, Williams and Hoshide completed a marathon spacewalk that lasted more than 8 hours, but the astronauts were thwarted by a stubborn bolt and were unable to finish connecting the so-called main bus switching unit (MBSU). The stuck bolt forced NASA to add [yesterday's] extra spacewalk.
But, following last week's unsuccessful attempt, flight controllers, engineers and veteran spacewalkers worked around the clock at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to devise a solution to the problem. Using only the supplies available on the space station, the teams came up with creative new tools for Williams and Hoshide to use to install the MBSU.
One was a modified toothbrush that was used to lubricate the inside of the bolt's housing after debris and metal shavings from inside had been removed. Another improvised instrument included a cleaning tool that had been made from wires that were bent back to form a brush, explained Kieth Johnson, lead spacewalk director at the Johnson Space Center
Artist Kevin Champeny creates astounding large format artworks that are part mosaic and part sculpture. The finished works look like sculptures or mosaics, but a closer look reveals they are made of hundreds or thousands of tiny objects, often individually cast by the artist. “Flag,” for instance, is an American flag made up of 44,450 urethane army men cast in red, white, and blue. “What Remains” is a five foot wide skull mosaic made up of more than 35,000 tiny flowers. According to Champeny, each work takes several months to complete.
Be sure to play Edgy Comic Bingo, by Cathy Leamy, who creates comics herself and knows a thing or two about getting linked to. Click through for the full NSFW card
The Rise and Fall of The Clash is an upcoming documentary about the influential and short-lived British punk rock band, The Clash (trailer). The film includes previously unseen footage as well as interviews with band members and associates. It is directed by Danny Garcia.
“Scopophilia” (“love of looking”) by artist Fiona Roberts is a red velvet chair that is embedded with hundreds of realistic plastic eyeballs. The chair sculpture was part of Robert’s graduate show at the Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition 2012 in Adelaide, Australia
Associated PressHundreds of coal miners and their families wait in line to attend a rally Aug. 14 at the Century Mine near Beallsville, Ohio.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.
The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.
A group of employees who feared they'd be fired if they didn't attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.
Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend." He said the company did not penalize no-shows.
Because the company's mine had to be shut down for "safety and security" reasons during Romney's visit, Moore confirmed workers were not paid that day. He said miners also lose pay when weather or power outages shut down the mine, and noted that federal election law doesn't let companies pay workers to attend political events.
Moore said he didn't see anything negative in attending Romney's campaign appearance with U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel.
"We are talking about an event that was in the best interest of anyone that's related to the coal industry in this area or the entire country," Moore said in the radio interview.
When contacted about the interview on Monday afternoon, Murray Energy spokesman Gary Broadbent emailed this statement: "Rob Moore made it abundantly clear that no employees were forced to attend the Romney event. All participation was, and always has been, completely voluntary."
Blomquist said that he got multiple emails and phone calls from Murray Energy workers who felt that they were intimidated into attending Romney's appearance. He said employees were told they'd have to forfeit the day's pay unless they could make up their missed hours on overtime or weekends.
"My whole point is that nobody should be pressured into attending anyone's political event," Blomquist told The Plain Dealer. "If they shut the mine down, why should they lose a day's pay? There are some guys that just want to go to work, feed their family and go home."
Romney used his appearance at the coal mine to blast what he called a "war on coal" by the Obama administration that he said was costing jobs in the coal industry.
"We have 250 years of coal," Romney said. "Why in the heck wouldn't we use it? And so, I want to take advantage of those energy resources."
A Romney campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment from The Plain Dealer Monday afternoon.
Was Ray Bradbury a communist sympathizer? A threat to the American way of life? Clark Merrefield digs into the newly obtained FBI files on the celebrated science-fiction writer.
Ray Bradbury, the science-fiction writer who died at age 91 in early June, was the target of FBI investigations over a period spanning more than a decade, according to 40 pages of government documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by The Daily Beast.
Bradbury was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Ill., and enjoyed a literary career spanning eight decades. He is best known for his short stories and the novel Fahrenheit 451, which chronicles Guy Montag, a conflicted protagonist tasked with setting books on fire, and the detached society punctuated by a paranoid government in which Montag lives.
The government in Montag’s world, it turns out, was not so different from the government in Bradbury’s.
The FBI’s investigation of Bradbury in the late 1950s centers on alleged communist activity, and it reveals more about the author’s talent for holding up a dystopian mirror to reflect society’s flaws than actual communist tendencies. These government documents were first obtained by Bradbury biographer Sam Weller and described in his 2005 book The Bradbury Chronicles.
“I remember distinctly his response when I visited him and presented him with the files,” Weller told The Daily Beast. “He beamed ear to ear and dismissed it with a wave of his hand and laughed and he said, ‘I’ll be damned, I’ve had nothing to hide over the years—what are they going to investigate? What a bore.’”
Still, Bradbury was amused. He held the pages to his chest and asked Weller for a copy.
Ray Bradbury. (AP Photo)
Bradbury did not dissuade the government when, in 1952, he took out an advertisement in the trade publication Daily Variety and wrote, according to the documents:
“I have seen too much fear in a country that has no right to be afraid. I have seen too many campaigns in California, as well as in other states won on the issue of fear itself, and not on the facts. I do not want to hear any more of this claptrap and nonsense from you. I will not welcome it from McCARTHY or McCARRAN, from Mr. NIXON, DONALD JACKSON, or a man named SPARKMAN. I do not want any more lies, any more prejudice, any more smears. I do not want intimations, hearsay or rumor. I do not want unsigned letters or nameless telephone calls from either side, or from anyone.”
Bradbury got exactly what he didn’t want. The FBI investigation of Bradbury spans April 2 through June 3, 1959, and included surveillance from special agents.
“There’s some case notes to indicate they were parked outside the street of his house, watching his house. There were definitely agents stationed, watching his family and the goings on at the Bradbury home,” Weller says.
According to Martin A. Berkeley, a former member of the Communist Party and one of few named sources in the files, Bradbury, “was probably sympathetic with certain pro-Communist elements in the WGAw [Writers Guild of America, West].” He told the FBI that during a meeting of the Writers Guild, formerly the Screen Writers Guild, the union was considering whether to keep Communist Party members from joining, and Bradbury rose up and shouted, “Cowards and McCarthyites.”
At times the files venture into a sort of detached literary criticism, likely aimed at elucidating Bradbury’s worldview. Of Bradbury’s short-story collection The Martian Chronicles, which according to the documents sold over 200,000 copies in its second edition, special agent John S. Temple writes, “The stories were connected by the repeated theme that earthmen are despoilers and not developers.”
Bradbury may have been an inconvenient public figure to some, but the FBI ultimately concluded, “No evidences have been developed which indicate he was ever a member of the CP.”
Roughly 10 years after its initial investigation, the FBI again trained its sights on Bradbury regarding a suspected trip to Cuba to attend the Cultural Congress of Havana, a conference meant to “obtain unity of action in the anti-imperialist fight and in defense of the cultural nucleus of each country.”
Bradbury’s suspected interest in the Cultural Congress appears to stem from a confusion over a tip about a “Roy Bradbury.” Bradbury’s passport file was ultimately investigated. The FBI connected with two unnamed informants during the third and fourth weeks of July 1968, and another informant during the second week of August 1968, to attempt to nail down a link between Bradbury and Cuba.
One informant editorialized that “Bradbury would be a type person [sic] who might be invited to attend the Cultural Congress of Havana because of his liberal view,” but none of the sources could provide the FBI with any usable information.
“The files were so sloppy they called him Raymond at points in there—that’s not even his legal name,” Weller says.
The FBI decided it would be imprudent to continue their investigation and speak with him directly: “Due to Bradbury’s background as a known liberal writer, vocal in anti-United States war policies, an interview with Bradbury would be deemed unadvisable.”
Bradbury ultimately found resigned humor in the time and resources wasted on investigating his normal American life.
“The files were so sloppy they called him Raymond at points in there—that’s not even his legal name,” Weller says
Mitt Romney's campaign has paid rock band Journey $500,000 to play at a private campaign event, TMZ reports.
A source tells the entertainment website that the campaign hired
the group to play a 90-minute set at a Tampa, Fla. fundraising event on
Thursday night. The Republican National Convention comes to a close
that evening.
Romney's campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
As the Tampa Bay Times
reported, Journey is slated to perform at Liberty Plaza, a tented
concert space. Kid Rock and Trace Adkins are also scheduled to perform
at private events during the convention.
Miniatures sculptor Alan Wolfson was commissioned to make a teeny weeny, fiendishly detailed diorama of the legendary Katz's Deli. Wolfson doesn't do miniature people, so he needed a plausible reason to make an empty Katz's (it's normally mobbed). He opted for a "closing time" Katz's, complete with tiny dirty dishes. There's tiny neon outside, too! 
Here's a 1974 interview with SFX pioneer and "Dynamation" inventor Ray Harryhausen, whose stop motion magic brought to life such classic films as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and One Million Years BC
On the Propadeucist, "objects that are guns - and are also other weapons," including a gun that is also several other guns.
