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3D Animation of Earth With Rings Like Saturn
11.20.2009
01:39 pm
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This is a 3D animation of how the earth would look if it had a ring system like Saturn. From the creators of the video:

Ring views from the Earth’s surface were created according to the location’s latitude, northern or southern hemisphere, and the viewer’s orientation. The size of the rings was calculated respecting the Roche limit for the Earth.

(via Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.20.2009
01:39 pm
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The Best Paragraph Written About Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue”
11.20.2009
02:55 am
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AlterNet picked up this pretty spot-on paragraph from WhiskeyFire. Damn hilarious.

The most unbelievable thing about Going Rogue, by the author-function “Sarah Palin,” is that it’s supposed to be self-serving. The problem a self-serving narrative about Sarah Palin confronts is that it’s about Sarah Palin, whose entire life, it appears, consists of worse and worse attempts to create self-serving narratives explaining away bigger and bigger fuck-ups. Going Rogue’s burden is that it must claim to be the definitive, encyclopedic explanation, the final excuse, for a long history of failure begat by failure; it’s an epic of failure, if you will, and if the goal here is some kind of ultimate vindication, well, it is monumentally unsuccessful. Going Rogue is, at bottom, the story of every one of Sarah Palin’s projects ending in grotesque catastrophe; it is only self-serving in the sense that these catastrophes either prove benign or turn out to be some other schlub’s fault. If everything I knew about Sarah Palin came from this book (and basically it does), I would say her life has been like a play in which a deus-ex-machina descends at the end of every act to bestow peace and harmony, except the deus forgot to put on pants and everyone’s just standing around going “uhhhh…” and then the lights go out and the scene changes.

It’s my favorite review yet!

(WhiskeyFire: Return After Reading)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.20.2009
02:55 am
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Agamemnon Counterpart: Dear God Why
11.20.2009
02:46 am
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Hey, this looks interesting. What a strange name for a video… huh… interesting animation… uh… wait. What is… what… WHAT IN TH?

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.20.2009
02:46 am
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io9: Most Anticipated SF Books of 2010
11.20.2009
02:37 am
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io9 reports on the top 20 most anticipated science fiction books of 2010, including new offerings from Ian MacDonald, China Mi?ɬ

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.20.2009
02:37 am
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Mother says school work sheet is racist
11.19.2009
10:32 pm
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imageLenape Middle School principal Nick Chubb said administrators are investigating the matter.

When she was helping her son with his homework Saturday night, a Central Bucks mother noticed something that surprised and shocked her.

“I couldn’t understand what I was looking at,” said the woman, whose identity the newspaper has agreed not to disclose.

It was a work sheet called “Solving Equations using Multiplication and Division!” and it featured a photo of a black man wearing a straw hat, shirt and suspenders, with his mostly toothless mouth wide open. As if to underscore the man’s stupidity, at the bottom of the picture was written, “No wai!!!”

The mother learned that her son, the only black student in his eighth-grade pre-algebra class at Lenape Middle School, was teased by another student when the assignment was distributed.

“One of the kids in the classroom turned around and said, ‘Is that your father?’ ” she said.

The Intelligencer: Mother says school work sheet is racist
 
(via J-Walk Blog)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.19.2009
10:32 pm
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Payless Kittens: Cuddliest Trip Ever
11.19.2009
09:42 pm
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Never underestimate the sales potential of kittens. Especially hypnotic, psychedelic ones. Something tells me this video is gonna get passed around.

AdFreak reports:

Martin/Williams encourages Payless customers to sleep in on Black Friday, and still get discounts via a special text coupon, in this video, which features an annoying “You’re getting sleepy” hypnotist voiceover and, oddly, dozens of snoozing kittens. “We’ve decided to turn the Black Friday tradition on its ear this year and do it in a manner that’s really fun and totally unique,” says Tom Moudry, the agency’s CEO and chief creative officer. I’m sure plenty of consumers will love the yawning kitties. Still, the clip drones on for a long 1:35, and some viewers might nod off before its conclusion. Given the run-of-the-mill stuff they sell at Payless, however, even if folks slip into catnaps and neglect to take advantage of the offer, they won’t be missing much.

(AdFreak: Nap with the Payless kitties on Black Friday)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.19.2009
09:42 pm
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The Elton John: Hand-Painted Toilet Seat
11.19.2009
08:06 pm
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Size: each 15?

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.19.2009
08:06 pm
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California Screaming: Los Angeles’ Culty Weirdness
11.19.2009
08:04 pm
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Los Angeles is the strangest city in the world. I swear it as a true and faithful relation.

Every cult in the world has an outpost in Los Angeles. I suppose it?

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.19.2009
08:04 pm
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“Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts”
11.19.2009
06:34 pm
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A wonderfully loopy new volume of actual, er, fan letters sent to dada comic Andy Kaufman has just been published by Process Media Inc. Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the comedian’s death in 1984, the letters were a result of Kaufman offering $1,000 to any woman who could pin the “World Intergender Wrestling Champion” (Kaufman) to the floor. The pot was sweetened when Kaufman said the winner could shave his head, and later that he would marry the victor.

Not surprisingly, Kaufman’s obnoxious and aggressive TV appearances promoting the event provoked a flood of letters and postcards, both from fan and foe alike. Mostly foe! He kept them all, and the letters in Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts! provide a bizarre lens in which to view both ‘70s culture in general and post-feminist attitudes of the era, in particular. Truly a fantastic idea for a book and talk about a gift for the otaku with everything.

On Dec. 3 at the Silent Movie Theater, the Cinefamily collective will host a special evening with Lynn Margulies, Kaufman’s girlfriend at the time of his death and the book’s author/editor, who’ll be screening a number of seldom-seen videos related to his brief wrestling career.

The Silent Movie Theater/Cinefamily 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, 8 p.m., $15.

Cross posting this from Brand X

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.19.2009
06:34 pm
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The App of Khan: Klingon-to-English translator iPhone app
11.19.2009
06:23 pm
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Here’s another head-scratching—yet wildly popular—new iPhone app to ponder: a Klingon-to-English dictionary, with translator and grammar checking software.
Designed by Ultralingua, a Dinkytown, Minn.-based language-learning software company, the app offers users the ability to look up common conversational phrases in Klingon such as, “What is all this debris?” and “I’d like a black ale.” (We hope “Where is the pan-galactic bathroom, please?” is in there someplace.) “Worf,” played by “Star Trek” actor Michael Dorn, coaches users on pronunciation employing an authentic Klingon accent. Although this is probably standard-issue stuff for Starfleet academy graduates, it might also prove useful to Klingons as well, who can use it in the opposite direction to speak with “Terrans” (that’s Earthings, you and me).

For the project, Ultralingua employed a linguist named d’Armond Speers who rather infamously spoke only the fictional alien language to his own son for the first three years of the tot’s life. “I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

Clearly Speers was the right man for the job, but let’s hope that this “teaching kids Klingon” stuff doesn’t become a meme within Trekkie circles. I mean, sure, I suppose it would amuse your Vulcan friends when Junior starts babbling about SpongeBob SquarePants in Klingon, but this sure sounds like a recipe for raising a crazed loner to me…

Cross posting this from Brand X

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.19.2009
06:23 pm
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