..and here, ladies and gentlemen, you see the sky over Sayre‘s “lightning farm” as Orannis the Destroyer is freed from his bindings. OK, maybe not, although that’s pretty much exactly how I pictured that in my head. What you’re actually looking at there is the sky over the Chaiten Volcano in Chile. No photoshoppery, the image is directly from the… Read more →
Category: One-and-done
Doubly Entertaining: Telectroscope
Have you seen the Telectroscope? Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London… Read more →
Their great chicken-bone and moonshine empire will rise again
I know you’re already seen this, but it’s just too good to let go by. My favourite bit references the hobo signs stuff we were looking at earlier this month: And they devised a secret language of signs and scrawls used to alert their passing brethren to danger or opportunity. A crucifix chalked on the side of a house meant… Read more →
Proto-Muppet Protection Racket Advertising
There is an extensive explanation for this wild and bizarre sequence at the Muppet Wiki. Here’s a bit of it: In 1957, Jim Henson was approached by a Washington, D.C. coffee company to produce ads for Wilkins Coffee. The local stations only had ten seconds for station identification, so the commercials had to be lightning-fast — essentially, eight seconds for… Read more →
Microfinance, Aggregation, Kiva
One of those concepts that most North Americans don’t run into everyday is that of microfinance. You can read about it at the link, but in a nutshell it’s the idea that even “poor” people need access to financial services. One particular area where this is true is financing for the small–by North American standards–loans that entrepreneurs in third world… Read more →
Zing!
This is the bitchy, badly-kept secret of American culture, which everyone knows but we’re supposed to be too polite to mention in public (and anyone who really thinks that obviously doesn’t know much about Americans): wherever there’s money to be made, that’s where “culture” will go. Because there is no culture in America, not really. There is only media, and… Read more →
The Next Slum?
The Next Slum? Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of… Read more →
Definitely the headline of the month
Sometimes I am very glad that I only have to deal with the relatively more abstract, if no less scary, concerns of modern Western society. Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital KINSHASA (Reuters) – Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of… Read more →
More on The Wire
Apparently if I had been paying more attention to some of my sources, I could have taken advantage of being in Boston for work to pop into a lengthy panel at Harvard’s Institute of Politics last night on the topic: The HBO Series The Wire – A Compelling Portrayal of an American City. (Well, if I had been paying more… Read more →
Constant Subtle Reinforcement
A while back my wife passed me a PDF copy of an academic paper entitled “Polite, well-dressed and on time: secondary school conduct codes and the production of docile citizens” by Brock University researcher Rebecca Raby. The citation shows the paper as having originally been published in The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology; Feb 2005. Rather than link you… Read more →
Scottish protection rackets
Things I Learned Today #1: “blackmail” is a Scottish word, and the Highland Scots invented the protection rackets. World Wide Words: Blackmail The mail in blackmail (at various times also spelled maill, male and in other ways) is an old Scots word for rent. This was usually paid in what was often called white money, silver coins. It comes from… Read more →
Today’s Only Content
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present for your edification, a highly-trained Canadian actor who has spent 30 years working in Britain (on stage and screen, and in over 200 BBC radio plays, among other things) playing the part of a stage actor from Tennessee in the 1960s, who is in turn playing the part of a British narrator in Victorian times,… Read more →
A throne is a throne…
You know, the Pope-throne in the Vatican press room, or wherever it is, reminds me of something… (photo source) Oh yeah, I know what it is. It reminds me of the stage at the No Rest For The Wicked concert I saw in Milan. (As an aside, I know I shouldn’t be shocked at hypocrisy here, but doesn’t seeing that… Read more →
Something to chew on
Oh, I am going to enjoy reading a bunch more stuff at Bostrom’s site, I can tell already: Wisdom is distinct from cleverness or mental efficiency. Wisdom is about getting the big things right. A prerequisite is the ability to recognize what the big things are, i.e., a sense for proportion, for what is important. I am often thinking about… Read more →
Attach Us! We Are Hot Japanese Men!
I am not making this up. Things I don’t understand: Japanese popular culture The very idea of “cell phone charms” Things I do understand: Drunkenness Drunkenness coming in stages These things come together in the “drunken salaryman” charms, which I recently read about at Inventorspot. The stages of being dunk [sic] according to these little plastic dudes are: The Lecturing… Read more →
