I drew this and thought I would share it with the class.

The names are blocked out for privacy reasons. Sort of...it just seemed like a good idea.)

Google doesn't need my help to continue on with their plans of world domination, and yet here I am about to give it to them. Because I have to say, I am really digging their iGoogle homepage thingy. I didn't hear much about it's rollout, google seems to kind of slip these things quietly into the market and let the strong survive. A good tactic if you ask me. Anyway, the google homepage is kind of like what I wanted from widgets, except widgets turned out to be slow, sort of annoying, and I eventually just stopped using them. But now, I have everything right there on my firefox page, which at this point is open pretty much 24/7. It takes a minute to get it the way you want it, and the visual "themes" are awful and seemingly aimed at 10 year old girls, so just stick with classic. But once you have it set up, I have my gmail, my google reader RSS feed, gchat, a dictionary, a wikipedia thingy, a youtube search (offscreen) a translator, all shit I actually use. It's tempting to overload your page with crap, but fight the instict and go with a your top 10 or 15 "gadgets" as the call them. It is pretty swank. (Dear Google, send the check to D-Rock, Budapest Lane.)

But in real life.

Ahahaha....ahhhhh

It is really worth your while to go check out WMFU's beware of blog right now. At the top of the page they have a video of John Cage performing on "What's my Secret". He is gracious, funny, and the performance is both hilarious and wonderful. This video made me love him, and respect his work in a whole new, non-fake kind of way.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/04/john_cage_on_a_.html

P.S. In a totally separate vein, I will give a dollar to anyone who can help me get my hands on a digital copy of Marjoe Gortner's "Bad, but not Evil" album. To those who are like wtf, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjoe_Gortner. I know I can buy it for not too much, but I really don't want to ship it to Hungary.

Imagine being twenty, and playing a sweet prank... only its 1987 and you have to wait twenty years for the pay off. Somewhere in suburbia a dad of three is laughing his ass off. My hats off to you sir.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Time_Capsule.html

Your counter can come down now... Bastard!

I usually have a great dislike for all that is Frat Boyesque, but I have to say these guys are kind of awesome. First thing, look at their Coat of Arms/Logo

They basically seem to be a bunch of pot smoking, beer drinking dudes...who are going to the most remote location in Antarctica. From their mission statement

"The expedition will spend the next 50 days dragging 19stone(120kg) pulks over 1100 miles(1800km) across the Antarctic wasteland in temperatures as low as -50°C (it never gets warmer than -30°C at their destination and thats during high summer!!)."

Even more amazing, it appears they did it, and did not freeze to death while trying to put their friends hand in a bowl of warm water. It is definitely worth a visit.The home page includes a lovely photo montage of them smoking pot, looking at porn and throwing up gang signs, all in the middle of Antarctica.

http://www.teamn2i.com/

My quote is up on Overheard in New York. It's the one with Barn in the title. One or two down from the top. Thing was I lied and said it was on the F train... it was actually on the L, I don't know why I did that. I guess the F train has more street cred?

You are sitting in the dessert hanging out with your buddies Achyuta and Jagadeep, checking out the old clothes you just traded for a sack of utensils, and then you get hit by a fucking meteorite. From The Hindu news:

" Jaipur: A suspected meteorite today Thursday claimed the lives of three nomads and injured four others at Banchola village in Rajasthan's Bundi district.

Two persons died on the spot and the third at a local hospital, police said.

A crater was formed due to a blast-like situation, police said, adding it might be a blast in explosive scrap which the nomads or `banjaras' had collected from somewhere.

According to fellow nomads, the victims, who used to sell utensils in exchange of old clothes, were sitting in a field when an `ulkapind' (unknown flying object) hit them around 9 a.m., police said. "

Sucks so hard. Interestingly, this would actually be the first recorded case of death by meteorite. Although there are some unconfirmed possible deaths by meteorite, which you find out all about after the click.

My book collection, which I will be adding to LibraryThing book by book as I sorrowfully pack them all away, in preparation for Budapest.

Also video of the Inaugural Kircher Society meeting I cut and thatsplenty founder Steve helped shoot got boingboinged today. So that's fun.

Last week I attended, Dorkbot NYC, the dorkbot that spawned a million dorks. This was my first time, though I had been meaning to go for ages. To be honest, I was a little disappointed. Although I enjoyed the overall feeling of crowding into a room packed full of people who get visibly excited at the words Arduino, Bandwidth, or soldering, the presentations fell a bit short. I felt a bit guilty because of the four presentations, only one was done by a guy, but that was the one I liked. Oops. His presentation was a kind of data art where he took every State of the Union address and made a visualization tool to that shows everything from language complexity to word frequency and location in the speech. So without further ado I present State of the Union, my fave from the last dorkbot.

Is it just me or did everyone else's thatsplenty comment spam stop for the day of Christmas?

Somewhere, in the north pole Santa and his elves are finally sitting down to some hot chocolate and a well deserved rest after delivering a few billion presents. However not far from them a different kind of ELF is going strong. The HAARP or High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is only a couple hundred (220 from North Pole, Alaska "Where the Spirit of Christmas Lives Year Round") in Gakona, Alaska. Part of this program is heating the ionosphere, and studying the effects, and researching ELF or extremely low frequency for long distance communication (specifically with submarines).

LONG LIVE JAMES BROWN!

Santa never really held much sway over me. Sure, he knows if I have been good or bad, and he checks his list twice (although in this day and age I suspect Santa uses Excel or some database program, it's just so much easier.) However, in the end, what was going to happen? Worst case scenario, if I have been bad, I get a lump of coal in my stocking. Ohhhh, not coal. It just seemed like Santa couldn't back up his threats.

Meet Black Peter.

I live in New York, on a busy day going through Chinatown, Union Square, or any other series of busy places, I no doubt set eyes upon 10,000 individuals. Well, one of these 10,000 is not like the others. One of them is a mirror copy. 1 in 10,000 people have what is know as Situs Inversus, a condition in which your entire internal system is reversed. All of your internal organs, your blood vessels, nerves, lymphatics and the intestines are all reversed. Most people with this do not even realize they have a problem until the doctor realizes it's not a mislabeled x-ray (If this isn't a House medical mystery in the making I don't know what is).

A more unfortunate situation is one of Situs Ambiguus, where the organs are scattered willy nilly about the thorax and abdomen, and it does not bode well for the sufferers. It is linked to a numer of factors, one being the use of cocaine during pregnancy. So you know... don't do that. I urge you, the next time you walk around in a large crowd, look around, for there is a chance you may be starring into a mirror image of your own organs.

1982, was the year of my birth, the birth of the first computer virus ("Elk Cloner") , and the beginning of what would become the...uhhgg...Yuppies, or as they were first called YUPS. This term was first coined in 1981 but was made popular in the Chicago Reader's reprinting of Alice Kahn's East Bay Express Article.

Along with this newfound scourge, 1982 brought a particular Yuppiesq theory to the fore: "The Broken Window Theory". "Broken Windows" was written by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling for the Atlantic in March of 1982. The theory can be summed up in a quote from the original article:

"Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." From here the article argues it is a slippery slope to more serious crime. The article starts out with a reasonable premise but quickly veers into a sort of Social Darwinism.

You know that feeling, the feeling you had as a kid in a science museum, that feeling I still get in the Natural History Museum, where you are compleatly transported to another place, where you feel encompassed by a kind of magical awe. Well, it can be a tough feeling to come by, so I thought I would post about some of the most magical places I know about. Place Number One:

THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK

This might be the most magical place I have ever been. Built originally as a fuck you to Frank Lloyd Wright it is a massive endless sort of lowbrow museum. From Wikipedia "Both of Jordan's biographers relate a story told by Sid Boyum, which places the inspiration for the house in an meeting between Alex Jordan Sr. and Frank Lloyd Wright, at some unspecified time apparently between 1914 and 1923. Jordan Sr. drove with Boyum to Taliesin to show Wright the plans for a building, the Villa Maria in Madison, which Jordan had designed. Jordan worshipped the famous architect and hoped for his approval. Wright looked at the plans and told Jordan "I wouldn't hire you to design a cheese crate or a chicken coop. You're not capable." Fuming, on the drive back on Highway 23, Jordan pointed to a spire of rock and told Boyum "I'm going to put up a Japanese house on one of those pinnacle rocks and advertise it." Nothing is better then revenge building.

To describe the magnificance of the house is near impossible. First off you know that now infamous Squid and Whale fighting in the Natural History Museum? The House on the rock has that but 200 feet long. It also has the world's largest working carousel, in addition to a pricless collection of automated music machines. You can easily spend 8 hours wandering around in the sprawling house and not see everything and not want to stop. Thats why its at the top of my most magical places I have ever been. If for any reason, you are ever anywhere in Wisconsin, it is absolutly worth the trip.

This has been floating around for a while but it is new to me so I thought I ought to share it.

For even more entertainment just make sure to look through some of the other Chiru Videos on youtube, nothing but gold.

Its nice to know that there are others out there getting all psyched about Neo Victoriana. http://www.spookylibrarians.com/steampunk.html

This is known as the Meissner effect. It is the effect by which a weak magnetic field decays rapidly to zero in the interior of a superconductor. The distance to which the field is active is known as the London penetration depth. (Isn't that an S&M club?) Anyway, long story short, its awesome.

This effect will levitate a magnet as long as the magnetic field does not exceed the critical magnetic field. A magnet that is suspended by the superconductor has two interesting properties; it does not move, and it can spin without friction. The ability for the magnet to stay perfectly still is due to flux pinning, in which the magnetic field lines become trapped within the superconductor at sites of impurity in the crystal structure.

This is amazing and terrifying.

DO IT

I really want to have a pumpkin carving contest, so to get you kids excited and ruminating on exactly what kind of Pumpkins you want to carve I suggest you take a look at http://www.extremepumpkins.com/index.html
They put the man back in pumpkin...man.

My Omaha trip has come to an end, but I did not leave dissapointed. I left with a reenergized love of Studebakers and a burning passion for the Omaha Zoo. My adventures as told by Flickr after the click.

CLICK.

I am quite excited to be featured on www.bedjump.com, a site dedicated to the art and thrills of jumping on hotel beds. The only downside is now millions of people can see my semi pregnant stomach. Six more months and I will have a darling baby boy. I'm going to name him Flubbles.

So, I'm here...at the worst hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. Its not so bad actually, I mean it has wireless. I have been looking like mad for something interesting to do in Nebraska, but the coolest thing I can find is Carhenge and thats 7 hours away...so, thats a no go. P.S. The Faint is from Omaha but then again so is Bright Eyes, so they kind of cancel each other out.

But I thought I might point people toward the CIA written World Fact Book which is actually a very intersting overview of every country in the world, which they update every year. So the next time you want to know the elevation extremes of Serbia or the ruling government of Zambia head on over to the world fact book.

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/hu.html

I am currently live blogging (that is one of those made up tech phrases, I mean when are you not "live blogging", you're alive, you're blogging) from the woods of Wisconsin. 56K dialup baby! Pictures and tales from the Crystal Waters of Minnesota, to the Cheese Factories Wisconsin, and even of the worst hotel in Omaha Nebraska to follow.

For more information on the woods

>
Modern humans started doing their thing about... 100,000 years ago, give or take a few millenia. The thing is Neanderthal were still kicking it until like 20,000 years ago, when they went extinct. Now, you have know that at some point Nargurk looked across the stream at Cargla "Homosapian Babe" Fraghk and thought, "Oh I would definitly hit that". Well, now we have science to prove it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/323657.stm

>

I love these little guys.

http://little-people.blogspot.com/

Via Neatorama

This guy does amazingly small sculpture work. It is so painstakingly precise that he can often only work between heartbeats. Nuts.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp

I know that Tim Hawkins has done some really small sculpture, like a bird skeleton out of his fingernails, does anyone else know of any other prodigous micro artists?

Evolution is an awesome science and curiousities store in SOHO. I picked myself up a Beaver tooth and a real Freshwater Pearl there just yesterday. In the words of the times "If you were that little kid who wasn’t afraid to play with bugs, then check out this natural-history store packed to the rafters (which are hung with snakes, anatomical charts, and prehistoric shark jaws) with softball-size ostrich eggs, Venus flytraps, and the skulls of skunks, minks, and muskrats. Those with less eclectic tastes might want to try on a 535- million-year-old fossil pendant". So if you find yourself down at 120 Spring St., New York, NY near Mercer St. I suggest you check it out.

Stabbed in the heart by a stingray.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20349888-2,00.html

This is a cool blog of repurposed stuff, linked to by the MAN "the street finds a use" himself.

http://www.kk.org/streetuse/

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/a

Democrat vs. Republican, Rural vs. City, White vs, Black, Rap vs. Country, but there is one great American pursuit which unites us all. Big banging asses. So in this time of a divided country, I felt it my civil duty to unite us in this, the greatest of American loves: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Assyness.

My friend Claire Square (an excellent director in her own right) turned me on to Supercar this Japanese band who does excellent videos. Here is a great one.

Supercar Wiki

I was very excited to find myself at the Junk Food news page. Searchable by catagory it keeps you in the know about, the Grilled Cheese Competitve eating circut, the worlds longest hot dog (16 feet, come on, thats not that long) and the woman who has eaten over 50,000 Ho-Ho's. What interested me most however was who the hell reads the Junk Food News? Are there fat shirtless men covered in cheetos perusing the pages exclaiming out loud "Huh! Wingtop launched new boneless chicken wings!" I hope so. I want to be one of those men. I particularly reccomend the world records section.

Google Just launched a online Word processer. I am not too surprised as this is further proof of my theory (And others as well) that Google is slowly assembling an online OS. I suspect that in few years Google is going to partner with a cheap PC maker like Lenovo to make super cheap (I'm thinking around 100$) computers that are made with the sole purpose of running the Google online OS.

Heres Writely!

Here is a google oriented blog http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/

http://www.natasafety1st.org/posters.htm

Zombie Letters from e-zombie.com

I hate existentialism. I hated Camus' "The Stranger" (which by the way the President just read), I think Nietzsche is full of shit. Jpod was in my view was a completely existential book. It filled me with "anxiety, dread, awareness of death, and freedom. " Which is apparently what existentialism fills you with. The wierdest part was I really liked it. It caused me to have a small existential breakdown, but it was really funny while it did it. Now, I am no Coupland connoisseur, having only read Microserfs. It felt both utterly ridiculous, and very accurate about the time and place of 2006. The thing that kept getting me was that there is no moral center, no moral viewpoint in JPod. Everything just...is. Now even Coupland (who writes him self in as an amoral character) has said the book has "no socially redeemable value." But thats just what's so weird about Jpod. It nails 2006 and part of that hitting the nail on the head is that the whole book is just...amoral. So while I highly reccomend it, I must warn you that it may make your whole suddenly feel a little lost in a sea of pointless minutiae and nonsense...but in a good way.

Also Doug Coupland is Canadian.

Here is a link to an interview with Coupland

The JPod homepage.

Coupland's Homepage

Its "Rick Rubin" by Spank Rock

Michelle and I have been watching Deadwood recently. It is a great show and has a excellent cast. While I knew I recognized and liked the actor playing "Eddie Sawyer" I had no idea just how cool he is. Ricky Jay is both an actor and magician. He is a favorite of director David Mamet (he is awesome in "The Spanish Prisoner") but has been in countless other films, such as Boogie Nights and Magnolia. This on its own simply makes him a good actor, but aha! There's more. According to the wikipedia article on him (as well as his own site) "Ricky Jay is widely considered one of the most knowledgeable and skilled sleight-of-hand experts in the United States. He is now well-known for his signature card tricks, card throwing, memory feats, and inimitable stage patter.Until recently, Ricky Jay was listed in the Guinness Book of Records for throwing a playing card 190 ft at 90 miles per hour (the current record is 216 ft, by Rick Smith, Jr.). Ricky Jay can throw a playing card into a watermelon rind (which he refers to as the "thick, pachydermatous outer melon layer" of "the most prodigious of household fruits") from ten paces." He is also an expert on the history of magic, and is was magic supervisor for "The Illusionist". Aperrently all the tricks in the illusionist are real and done by hand not CG. He also appears in the upcoming "The Prestige" (Which could really use a better website.) For more info on the awesome Ricky Jay. Link I particularly reccomend checking out his Deceptive Practices Business.

Via http://www.wondermark.com/d/220.html

I am really excited to get my new iBox and play Sensible Coop Driver.

For others http://www.macspoofs.com/

Did you have somthing to do with this Ryan?

I am going to be building some simple electrostatic devices, starting with a Leyden Jar (the very first capacitor ever made), moving to a Wimshurst Machine( a electrostatic device that makes a continuing current when you crank it), and finally making a Van De Graff generator (that one that makes your hair stand on end). They are all relativly simple to build, and are great ways to learn about the basics of electricty. This is an open call to those interested in doing said science, and owning an awesome, sparking piece of electrostatic history. Who's in?

When I went looking for New York Blogs, I was especially interested in Bushwick Blogs, the neighborhood in which I currently reside. Although I could find seemingly hundreds of Park Slope blogs (one of which devoted an entire rant to why a local bakery wouldn't replace the nuts in their carrot-cake with raisons) I could find no Bushwick Blogs. Well here are a couple that surfaced after all.

First we have http://www.the-wick.com/index.htm
which is an excellent Bushwick Blog that has a really handy list of nearby restaurants with good reviews.

Secondly we have http://www.bushwickisbeautiful.com/
which is a sweet blog, although not frequently updated.

Now to add a little fire to topic of Bushwick (and in some sense the presence of bloggers i.e hipsters/ gentrifiers) here is a link to a debate over the gentrification of Bushwick
http://www.citynoise.org/article/4132.

So support your local bloggers and check out these awesome Bushwick bloggers. BUSHWICK!

With the world in the dismal state its in, and our leaders being the cause, I have decided to put forth a immodest proposal. Here is how I would serve up some of our secretaries of state.

I would start with a side of Condolezza Rice (2005 -?). For my vegetable I would have some Elithu Root (1905-1909). The first course would certaintly be Hamilton Fish (1869-1877), I'm thinking....Edmund Muskie (1980-1981)? Finally the main course would be a delicious Lawrence Eagleburger (1992-1993) topped with Robert Bacon (1909-1909) and some Bainbridge Colby (1920-1921). I'm getting hungry thinking about it.

For a full list of the Secretaries of State

Rumor on the street is that the subways are going to go down, and possibly even a full scale NY blackout. Probably just a rumor. Just keep an eye/ear out.

New Yorkers are blog crazy. I set out to make a comprehensive list of New York Blogs, i.e. blogs that write specifically about new york things. Turns out, there's a shitload of them! So here are a few, and I suggest you check out the links to the other New York blogs on their sites, because there seems to a blog for every block in New York.

http://www.brooklynrecord.com/
A good Brooklyn oriented blog.

http://www.gothamist.com/
The Boing Boing of New York blogs.

http://www.curbed.com/
A rapier sharp NY real estate blog

http://b61productions.com/
Red Hook blog

http://www.streetsblog.com/
Blog about biking in NY

http://sealevel.typepad.com/sealevelny/
Seems to be about kayaking in NY

http://weblogs.amny.com/news/local/tracker/blog/...and
A blog about the subways.

so on and so forth. Nice job NY, Keep up the blogrock.

Bear with me folks, this is gonna be a bumpy ride.

Stanford White (above) was a great Architect and built many of New York's most iconic buildings. He built the Arch in Washington Square Park, the Bowery Savings Bank, Judson Memorial Church (which has a lovely, if odd, easter service), helped Tesla with Wardenclyffe Tower (always with the Tesla, I know, I know), and most famously Madison Square Garden. Sadly, he was shot in the face on the rooftop of his own Madison Square Garden by this man.

I suggest you skip ahead to the middle of the video. Thats where it starts to get interesting.

P.S. The girl who wins is Annie Duke A.K.A. the Duchess of Poker.

For more info on the RPS Championships...http://www.rpschamps.com/

This is a sharp critical response to the data analysis in the study I cited. Things can get rough in the fast paced world of Statistical analysis. What with accusations of tyranny of statistical methodology and whatnot. I wonder what a statistition would say to all this. Dad? Any thoughts?

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2006/04/amusing_example.html

The other day Steve asked me why he had such good luck in finding a attractive, lovely wife (fellow blogger Karen Lanyi). I suggested that it is becuase Steve has a winning personality, is a good dresser and generally is a fun guy...but there may be a more scientific answer.

A new study by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, suggests it may be a simple supply-and-demand issue: there are more beautiful women in the world than there are handsome men. (Which is not to suggest Steve is unhandsome)

Why? Kanazawa argues it’s because good-looking parents are 36% more likely to have a baby daughter as their first child than a baby son—which suggests, evolutionarily speaking, that beauty is a trait more valuable for women than for men. The study was conducted with data from 3,000 Americans, derived from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and was published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Via Freakonomics

"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces.
The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm

also why the Tunguska event is responsible for global warming:

http://www.physorg.com/news11710.html

Basically, this is a Google Earth cake with a thick wikipedia icing. If this takes off it will rival both in awesomness and importance. The only drawback is that this will be harder to reach the checks and balances that exist in wikipedia. Nonetheless I trust in the people! So get out there and start entering some information. (I already entered my home in Minneapolis and my new home in Brooklyn!)

www.wikimapia.org

Via Neatorama

From my new favorite dudes at Mentalfloss "where knowledge junkies get their fix" wrote about this new car that sounds awesome. Check it.

"Mental floss’ favorite inventor Nikola Tesla, (He is my favorite inventor also) who famously dreamed up AC current amongst a million other things, and inspired the names for the rock bands Tesla and AC/DC (or at least the first-half of the name AC/DC), now has a ridiculously cool electric car named for him.

Tesla Motors, dubbed the Silicon Valley’s first real car company, is debuting a sexy new sports car codenamed DarkStar. Apparently, the vehicle can run for 250 miles without needing a charge, fueling costs run about $.01 per mile, it handles silently, goes 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds and is powered by lithium ion laptop batteries. Insane! Even crazier, “the Tesla Roadster engine has no moving parts save a copper-and-steel rotor that spins through the force of a magnetic field.” Of course, the new car does have it’s down sides: it takes about 3.5 hours to recharge after your 250 mile jaunt, and runs about $80,000 right now. Still, CEO Martin Eberhard expects prices to go down and efficiency to go up the same way it has for computers. He’s rustled up investments from a wide variety of head honchos (ex-eBay guru Jeff Skoll, PayPal’s Elon Musk, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin), praise from Gov. Schwarzenegger, hired engineers from the British car company Lotus, and even plans on releasing a family sedan by 2008, all in the name of Tesla. Our grins couldn’t be wider."

Dude. Can someone loan my eighty grand?

So here is how it goes, we warm the climate a bit with our cars and burning forests and coal power plants, that warms the ocean, which melts these crazy things called methane hydrates, and the earth lets out a giant fart that it has been holding for a hundered million years. Unfortunatly, since methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times stronger then Cabon Dioxide, we all cook like those wierd pink hotdogs they sell in New England.

Plan B: we quickly swim down, put a big bubble over the earths anus, and suddenly we all have a cheap source of natural gas. I have a snorkel mask, if you have some plastic tubing, I say lets get started!

For more info: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2006-07-21-undersea-gas_x.htm

Worth checking out. Often has some interesting studies up.
http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/

Check out this incredible story from Outside magazine about this Peruvian guy, Don Benigno Aazco who "carved his way 36 years deep into the green heart of the Andean forest, founded 14 settlements, abandoned his wife and many children, married his daughter, slew his son-in-law, fought drug peddlers, tamed the wilderness, and reclaimed, as best he could, the Inca Empire." Whoa. When I read this I was totally enthralled and amazed. I recommend it to all.
http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/1196/9611fepe.html

Via Kircher Society

...and here is a film devoted entirely to that most obscene, and most common of words.
http://www.fourletterfilm.com/

...and continuing in this extreamly vulgar vain heres some Anal Cunt Lyrics, for they above all have distinguished themselves as having dirty dirty mouths.

Anal Cunt
»
Pottery's Gay

[chorus:]
pottery's gay, pottery's gay [x4]

you could'nt afford college, you took a night class
you made a clay dildo, and shoved it up your ass

[chorus]

In response to my blogger/roomate Goodiemonster's recent post about swearwords, I thought I might shed a little historical light to how words become curses, and where the so overused "F-Word" originates from.

This is me, here.

Hi, had some time to kill so I thought I'd do a little sneaky blogging from the Apple store. I feel really technomadic. Speaking of, this is a sweet blog by this homless dude in Nashville. http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/ I like the times I live in.

http://fishindog.com/blog/?p=22

Who knew? I've never heard of this and I'm from Minnesota...and we have snow! Regardless, It rules hard and although I don't always agree with the judges choice, the sculptures are always on point. A yearly event in Breckenridge, Colorado I think I might try to form a team for 2007. Anyone else in?

http://www.themoens.com/Photos/Events/snowSculpture/overview.htm

The Edge Foundation, Inc., (not to be confused with the awesome Anthony Hopkins movie The Edge) was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world, and you know what...it's dope.

It's basically the smartest dudes in the world, shooting the shit and laying the samckdown on some psuedo intellectual bullshit.

"In the past few years, the playing field of American intellectual life has shifted, and the traditional intellectual has become increasingly marginalized. A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s. Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost. "

SCIENCE, is where its at. There is a bunch of good stuff on this site but I would pay special attention to the edge world question, where each year they ask a bunch of scientists a provacative question. This year it was "What's your dangerous idea?" and some of the answers are smart enough to make you dizzy. Check it out at http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_index.html and become a part of the third culture.

Grand Buffet, amazing wierd hip-hop geniuses, creaters of such excellent songs as Ben Franklin Music (not to be confused with actual Ben Franklin Music), have created a new rock band called COBALT BLACK. They only have one song, but you know its pretty awesome. I have a lot of hope for these youngster. Anyway when I was on their myspace page I ran across this video. Its retarted, but for somereason I couldn't stop laughing. Awesome or idiotic...YOU DECIDE!

I bet the research assistant who got to repeatedly stab the liquid armour really got to let out alot of pent up rage. "Take that. STAB. This is for STAB calling me a geek STAB and stuffing me STAB in my locker STAB. I hate you Erick Johnson STAB. STAB STAB STAB.

The liquid - called shear thickening fluid is actually a mixture of hard nanoparticles and nonevaporating liquid. It flows normally under low-energy conditions, but when agitated or hit with an impact it stiffens and behaves like a solid. This temporary stiffening occurs less than a millisecond after impact, and is caused by the nanoparticles forming tiny clusters inside the fluid. "The particles jam up forming a log jam structure that prevents things from penetrating through them," Wagner explains.

A suit of this stuff and I am well on my way to being a fully fledged superhero.

http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392807

....so after me and Michelle saw Beruit and Sunset Rubdown, we had planned to leave, having listened to a song off of Frog Eyes myspace page and not having been all that wowed. But we decided we should stay for at least a song, especially since about half the crowd cleared out when Sunset Rubdown was finished (if only those Wolf Paradeaphiles had known that Spencer Krug was playing keyboards for Frog Eyes the little sycophants would have stayed.) So we stayed and wow.....

This would be nice to be able do on command.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9019&feedId=online-news_rss20

What follows is a bunch of boring updates about my life. Proceed with caution...
Continue reading Weirdness from the front.....

Seriously though, I was on vaction with fellow blogger and girlfriend Michelle, and well, we were doing other, ahem, important, ahem, non-blogging things. But like the south "WE SHALL RISE AGAIN!". Or is it, like the south " WE SHALL DRINK A BUD AND CHASE THAT THREE LEGGED DOG FROM NEXT DOOR" I can never remember.

To help make me feel like less of a loser for playing 3 straight days of Guitar Hero, I checked that as a tag, on Flickr. WE ARE NOT ALONE. To the tune of over 1000 pictures. We are all Guitar Heros! UNITE!http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/guitarhero/
By the way take note that this kid was rocking so hard one of his socks flew off. Now that's rock and Roll!

This is no longer about heartwarming. This is now a clinical test to see if you have a heart at all. So you read the story about the math whiz, you watched the story about the Autistic Kid making a million baskets and were still like whatever, aint no thang.... Well then fine. Fine! Here is the atom bomb. If this doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, then you, my friend, are a cocklesless bastard.
www.cuteoverload.com

And while I am at it, I am gonna hit you with another schmaltzy "personal interest story". This one must have made the newscasters shit thier pants with how perfect a feel good story this was. It has all the elements these type of stories need: retard kid, sports, overcoming the odds. So here it is....
Do it kid!
They are making a movie about it. Its going to be called "ForestRudyIAmSamRockyGump". But seriously, this really did make me feel good. I can't help it. That kid was fucking rocking, and not just back and forth.

...is in fact true. My favorite Urban Legend detectives www.snopes.com have a sweet story about a kid who is late to class, mistakes two unproven statistics equations for homework and goes on to solve them, without knowing that he has done anything exceptional. It smacks a bit of a story your grandma would tell you, as a precursor to saying somthing like "its all about positivity" and pointing to a motivational poster of a monkey holding a bannana and giving you a thumbs up. But, whatever, I like my grandma.
http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp

Confused? Here is how it goes...

"A young boy—bookish, awkward, a dreamer—goes to see Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro, and falls in love with the idea. A costumed hero who masquerades as a timid milquetoast, then bursts forth to battle crime and injustice with superhuman skill! Plot thickens: the boy loses his parents, shot dead in a mugging gone wrong. The crime is senseless, random. The boy’s life is shattered. He vows revenge, not on the thug that did his father in, but on crime itself. He vows he will become…

Hold on. Here’s the part you might not know. The city is not fictional Gotham but real life Cleveland. The boy is not millionaire Bruce Wayne but working class schlemiel Jerry Siegel. His father Michel, who immigrated from Lithuania in the first decade of the century, was murdered while closing his Woodland haberdashery in 1928. The police never found his killer. Ten years later, Jerry Siegel and his high school buddy Joe Shuster wrote and illustrated the first true “superhero” story for Harry Donenfeld’s Action Comics. This is not Batman’s secret origin, it’s Superman’s."

More of this and other early comic book related goodness at http://www.robmacdougall.org/ Historians don't get nearly the Rock Star status they deserve. Rob MacDougall you are a historian rock star.

The last large mammal to be discovered (1901), it looks a bit like a cross between a Giraffe and a Zebra, sleeps only 5 minutes in a 24 hour period, has scent glands in its feet, has a one foot long blue tounge and can lick its own ears. It is also the emblem for the (now defunct) Society of Cryptozoology. I love you Okapi!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi

So here you go. Just don’t go messing up my stamp collection when you are doing your twisty dance.
http://20-248-e.onlinestoragesolution.com/spikepriggen/public/The%20Tornados-Robot.mov

You liked that, did you? Then eat your heart out at http://scopitones.blogs.com/ where there is a whole bunch more crazy French music videos. They were originally made in the 60's for French Film Jukeboxes, which eventually failed, and many of the videos were lost to history. That is until a Blog came along to the rescue, and began bringing you these amazing videos through the magic of the information superhighway. So show some appreciation, you cantankerous little whippersnappers.

Karen's tatto post got me thinking about the fine art of tattoing and its connection to the "lowbrow" art world. So in that spirt I have assembled some of my favorite low brow artists, some of whom are tattoo artists themselves. I would be proud to wear any of these guys art on my skin...

NOTE: There are some depictions of nudity and sexuality after the link so....you should probably look at them.

Remember those news aggregators I posted about a little while ago? The ones that I was concerned might end up being lowest common denominator? One of the big ones www.digg.com, has ended up being used for even more nefarious purposes then I would have imagined.
http://www.siliconvalleysleuth.com/2006/03/digg_is_used_fo.html
It seems some stock brokers may be trying to manipulate stock prices by falsely linking to an unaccredited article about Google buying Sun. Luckily the self-regulation of these sites seemed to work as they were caught. It does make one wonder about what sources they can trust, and how often things like this go by unnoticed.

So here it is...Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that
shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the
moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a
volume larger than all of observable space in less than a
trillion-trillionth of a second....
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/wmap_pol.html
What do you say to that? The size of a fucking marble? That’s hot. I wish I had a universe in a jar. That would be cool. I'd be all, "YO don't make me big bang your ass!" and they would all "Big bang my ass? Dude, that’s gross" and I'd be all... "Whatever, I'll do it."

Speaking of Big Banging, apparently that’s exactly what physicists were doing when they were uncovering this whole cosmic truth thing. "Schrödinger, Curie, Einstein, Feynman, Oppenheimer…the finest names of pre-Cold War 20th-century physics, some of whom gave us the most concise theories ever posited, form a roster of lamentable philanderers. Albert Einstein was completely “given to flirtation” and had legions of affairs. Caltech professor and bestselling raconteur Richard Feynman was probably the only Nobel Prize winner to befriend porn stars, claim a foolproof manner for bedding women and do his calculations on napkins in strip clubs. And it wasn’t just the guys: Marie Curie was relentlessly hounded by the press for seducing away her late-husband’s former student from his wife and kids."
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/getting_physical.php

So here’s to the big bang, both cosmic and personal, may they be ever expanding, explosive and plentiful.

http://reddit.com/
This is probably the best of a number sites that are doing a sort of news aggregation based on link popularity...
"A source for what's new and popular on the web -- personalized for you. We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you'll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is from users who are rewarded for good submissions (and punished for bad ones) by their peers; you decide what appears on your front page and which submissions rise to fame or fall into obscurity.... I really like this idea, its like a living dynamic creature. A feedback loop of readers and voters all with a hand on the wheel. It seemsto me this is going to be the direction that certain blogs and news sites are going to take. True democratic shaping of information. It begins to beg the question that if people control the news content that they see, where will it take them? Once the ball is rolling won't it reinforce itself in whatever path it is going on? It kind of comes down to what you think about humanity, are we good, do we seek out the truth, or will it end up being a blog of comedy and porn links? Anyway, as it stands it has some awesome news stories on it right now. I hope that it only gets better over time.

From a BBC article...

A woman said she thought she was in heaven when she turned on the kitchen tap to find a plentiful supply of beer. Haldis Gundersen was planning to do the washing up when she made the unusual discovery at her apartment in Kristiansund, west Norway.

But two flights below, workers in a bar faced the more disappointing realisation that water was flowing from their beer taps.

A worker had connected a beer barrel to the apartment water pipe by mistake.

"I turned on the tap to clean some knives and forks, and beer came out," Ms Gundersen told Reuters news agency. "We thought we were in heaven."

DAMNIT, you already live in Norway, and now beer comes out of your faucets? This world just isn't fair.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4802928.stm

Do you ever get the feeling that just a few dudes own all the stuff? Well you're right, and here is a map of where they all are.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/08/hometowns-networths-worlds-richest_06billionaires_map.html
On the plus side according to Forbes " In our inaugural ranking of the world’s richest people 20 years ago, we uncovered some 140 billionaires. Just three years ago we found 476. This year the list is a record 793. They’re worth a combined $2.6 trillion, up 18% since last March." Listen to that! Why that's one billionaire for every 768 million of us! At this rate we all be billionaires soon. Right...right...guys?
For more depressing news about how "easy" it is to become a billionaire these days check out the article.
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0327/111.html

One interesting sidenote is that China only has 8 billionaires...total. Wierd, right?

This is what happens when baby boomers have too much time on thier hands. Look at it. It's not pretty.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776181634656145640

So you took a look at the art kick. You were amused, maybe even interested, but you couldn't help but think that it was missing somthing. An edge. You want your art with a dash of danger, a pinch of illeagle. Well then I have just the thing for you. Welcome to http://www.woostercollective.com/ a blog of great street art and graffiti. A blog where the art all comes with a side of "fuck the man".

If you get so inspired by the wooster collective that you go out tonight and hit the streets, here is a little pre game reading on how not to get caught. God knows I should have followed these rules when I was 15.
http://www.powderbomb.com/articles/getcaught.html

Sometimes in life it's hard to keep your eyes open. You walk in small concentric circles starring at your feet, and wonder why everything looks the same. You ball your fists into your eyes and say "but I can't see anything inspiring". Its time to quit being such a baby. Pry those little fists away, blink, and look up. Its time for an ART KICK! This means it's time to go look at other peoples art. Really look at it. Get jealous. Get excited. Here are some good places to start your ART KICK IN THE FACE!

Hi, this is Michelle, Dylan's gfriend, blogging on his name. He said I could. From time to time, this will probably happen, because dangnabit, I want to hop a car on this crazy train called blogging. Anyway, today I wanted to direct you to Sarina J. Brewer for all your animals-in-jars needs. She's a member of the Minnesota Rogue Taxidermists, who I totally knew about before boing boing boingboinged them. Anyway, I've made a few purchases from her before (a squid in a jar and a chick in a jar, and a kitten skull) and she's totally awesome, and if you look on her website, you'll be delighted to see she's a babe as well. Now, before you start being a whiny girl, all of her specimens are already dead when she gets them, mostly roadkill or animals that died of natural causes. She also sells studio leftovers in bulk, and 2 dozen squirrel feet will only set you back $28.

Custom Creature Taxidermy

I love 3-D. I follow the new tech, I read about the history, I love 3-D. Yesterday I went to see Deep Sea 3-D and here's the thing: the 3-D was awesome but the narration/plot of the documentry was friggin boring. They always are. I don't think I have ever seen a truly exciting Imax 3-D movie. So I'm putting out a call to all filmmakers (myself included, I am currently writing a horror script intended for Imax 3-D). MAKE SOMTHING AWESOME FOR IMAX 3-D. I know it's expensive, I know it's not very practical, I don't care. DO IT. I am tired of sitting through crappy, boring 3-D "educational" movies. Make it rock and do it now. If you just want more info on 3-D stuff check out the awesome Ray Zone (real name) at www.ray3dzone.com who covers a huge amount of territory. Or if you want to see where the future of 3-D is headed amble on over to www.reald.com and be amazed.

Postscript: On the plus side, I saw a trailer for "The Ant Bully" which looked like it could actually be cool.

It's nice to finally have some time to just hang at home. I am a freelance editor/animator/general random film crap guy. Lately I spend most of time working with a stop motion animation director by the name of PES, www.eatpes.com, which so far has been an awesome experiance. I spent this last week on the set of a Nutri-Grain commercial production. It was the funnest of all the on set experiances I have had so far. But even so, the days were long, and it's nice to have a chance to chill out. My friend Jim is back in town after having been in Scotland for almost a year. Plans tonight include drinking alot of Scotch and playing a game called pressumo. This game was made up by a Scottish band called the Delgados ( who have since broke up apparantly), involes two combatants, both in push up position, trying to knock the other one down by pulling their opponents hand out from under them without falling down themselves. I can't wait.

Turns out so is Wil Wheaton. So show a little support for all the exiled peeps and check out
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/ before they stop being in exile and become in ex-exile. God I'm a dork.

28 Lay Later, A Night of Giving Head, Army of Dickness (okay that one is kind of dumb...)

Scrotal Recall. HA!

Here is a good way to pass the time. Take movies and rename them as pornos. Your mind kind of freezes up at first, but start simple with somthing like, Star Whores, Citizen Kane Me, and Scooby Goo and slowly move up to more complicated ones. The girl with the Pearl Necklace, Good Will Cunting, Last of the Ho-Freakins. Finally, move on to doing entire Directors catalogs. Tim Spurtin is the Director of such fine films as Planet of the Gapes, Big Fist, and Willy Wanker and the Cocklet Fucktry. If you find this to be more tedious than waht you were doing before... well then just go here http://justincone.com/tween/. Its got puuurty moovies on it.

It's visionary architecture week over at my one of my favorite wierd historical blogs, http://kirchersociety.org/, and boy are they posting some bad ass stuff. Be sure to check out the post on insane french architect Jean-Janques Lequeu. Check out the rest of the stuff too becuase, well its all frickin awesome.

I went and took a look at James Jeans blog, http://www.processrecess.com/, James Jean is a unbeliavable comic book artist, who pretty much blows my mind everytime I look at his work. Although in a way, it sucks becuase he is so good you end up feeling like you draw with the skill of an autistic toddler. So You are pretty much damned if you do, damned if you don't...but you are definitly damned if you look like Steven Seagal. Fuck.

So there's this site www.myheritage.com that lets you compare a picture of yourself to a database of over 3000 celebs and then tells you who your face most matches. Sweet right? NOT SWEET. I did this so called "test". The computer thunk on it long and hard, even showing me a little 3D face vector to indicate "futuristic computer magic is happening" and then it came back with my results. STEVEN FUCKING SEAGAL? Of 3000 celebrities I look the most like Steven Seagal? I am apparantly a dead ringer for the prince of zen ponytails...Did I click the sarcasm button on this thing? Is there some hipster bastard on the other end, peeing himself with laughter as he matchs people up to Jean Claude Van Dam and Cory Feldman (I would actually be okay with either of the cory's). So if you feel like hurting your own feelings, take this test. Maybe you will even get a Chuck Norris.

POSTSCRIPT: AHHHH, I did it again with a different pic and this time I got Slobodon Milosovic! Why don't you just throw in Hitler for good measure. This thing is an asshole.

Gross......and grosser.

http://www.icdsm.org
http://www.xoxide.com/lightning-bolt-asian-experiance.html

In reference to Sam's Paganini post, I wanted to post about the badass composer Berlioz. In fact he loved the composer so much that he gave him an open ended 20000 frances. "My dear friend", wrote Paganini in his accompanying letter, "with Beethoven now dead who could revive him if not Berlioz?" Loved the motherfucker.
So if Paganini was the first rock star, that makes Berlioz the first rock stars idol. For more on Berlioz...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlioz

I'm a sucker for wierd historical connections and this is one of the best. It is a story of a chess playing automaton called the turk, (which was in fact a fake...) touched on the lives of Ben Franklin, Charles Babbage, Anton Mesmer and eventually led to Alexander Graham Bell seeking out Harry Houdini. It makes me feel like history is just one big club of famous figures who hung out together and acted like badasses. Sweet.
http://www.robmacdougall.org/archives/2005/01/turk_182.php