1 November 2007
[media] Currybetdotnet: The Daily Star’s unique approach to promoting RSS feeds … ‘I so wish I had been in the meeting when someone said, “You know….we could get a topless bird to hold the RSS icon…”‘
2 November 2007
[food] Using McDonalds’ As Pizza Toppings … ‘This is a culinary Frankenstein cooked by Bizarro, a crude combination of deliciousness into an artery-jamming fatty Voltron. The thing is, I would totally eat it. You would, too, stop lying.’ [via iamcal.com]
3 November 2007
[charlatan] Is she for real? … Jon Ronson meets Sylvia Browne America’s most controversial psychic …
“Why did my husband decide to take his own life?” asks the first woman.
“What?” Sylvia says. The woman is crying so hard, Sylvia can’t understand her.
“Why did my husband decide to take his own life?” the woman repeats.
“He was bipolar,” Sylvia says.
The next woman walks to the microphone.
“I have a strained relationship with my daughter,” she begins. “And I want to know …”
“Your daughter is strange,” interrupts Sylvia.
4 November 2007
[torrents] Completetorrent — use Google Custom Search to find torrents across large number of BitTorrent sites.
5 November 2007
[fun] Online Simon Game – fun childhood memory challenge game online. [via linkbunnies.org]
6 November 2007
[language] Darling, you look positively pulchritudinous. OW! No, that’s a GOOD thing! — Ask Metafilter looks at words that don’t sound like they mean … ‘I don’t think I’m the only one to have at first assumed that coruscating meant something like scathing or corrosive rather than sparkly.’
8 November 2007
[blogs] BBC Internet Blog — a blog for the managers of Future Media at the BBC to discuss the Corporation’s internet output – contains some posts from Ashley Highfield. ‘…I think we have been slow to embrace blogs as a way of discussing our strategy and direction. This often leads to the debate happening elsewhere, based often on only half the information, and without our being able fully to join in the debate. We’ve not done ourselves any favours, and we want to use this blog to re-engage with our friends and critics.’
11 November 2007
[funny] The 10 Most Unfortunately Named People on the Internets .. ‘We’ll give you one guess what Dr. Richard Chopp is best known for in the Austin medical community. Yep, Vasectomies. We can’t make this stuff up, folks.’
12 November 2007
[music] The Hidden Message in Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust — a demonstration that you can hear “It’s fun to smoke Marijuana” if you play Queen’s song Another One Bites the Dust backwards. [via linkbunnies.org]
13 November 2007
[books] The 48 Laws of Power … ‘Law 17 – Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability’
15 November 2007
[comics] Inside the Black Dossier — Alan Moore interview on the League of Extraordinary Gentleman: The Black Dossier …
…there was always an interesting thing where Frank Richards, the author of the ‘Billy Bunter’ stories, was having to turn out so many Bunter stories because of his gambling addiction. These were mentioned in an essay that George Orwell wrote, that were basically talking about how the Billy Bunter stories were just holding up the traditional British Empire values of racism and class consciousness in an approving light with the author apparently finding all foreigners amusing, and being very patronizing towards foreigners and women. Orwell wrote a very capable essay decrying all this, and foolishly, Frank Richards, stung by this review, decided to retaliate in a little letter where, in very wounded terms, went through all of Orwell’s points and tried his best to dismiss them. But he said, ‘As for Mr. Orwell’s point about me depicting foreigners as being comical, well, they are!’
[war] British Nukes were protected by Bike Locks … ‘To arm the weapons you just open a panel held by two captive screws – like a battery cover on a radio – using a thumbnail or a coin. Inside are the arming switch and a series of dials which you can turn with an Allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or groundburst and other parameters. The Bomb is actually armed by inserting a bicycle lock key into the arming switch and turning it through 90 degrees.’ [via Grayblog]
17 November 2007
[dna] 23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics — from Wired … ‘We will, counterintuitively, face even more pressure to conduct our lives carefully, strictly, and cautiously; we’ll practice the art of predictive diagnosis and receive a demanding roster of things to avoid, things to do, and treatments to receive – long before there’s any physical evidence of disease. And, yes, we will know whether our children are predisposed to certain traits or talents – athletics or music or languages – and encourage them to pursue certain paths. In short, life will become a little more like a game of strategy, where we’re always playing the percentages, trying to optimize our outcomes.’
18 November 2007
[askmefi] Ask Mefi: I need examples of things and secrets only a very in the know sort of person would know about … ‘He has a filepile membership.’
19 November 2007
[games] The is what the internet was invented for: Multiplayer Asteroids. Go Play.
[comics] League of Extraordinary Freelancers – Activate! — Screencaps from Alan Moore’s Appearance on the Simpsons … ‘Milhouse asks [Alan Moore] to sign his DVD of “Watchmen Babies” and asks which of the babies is his favorite.’
20 November 2007
[comics] More from Scans_Daily: The Haunt of Fear: Foul Play, EC’s most controversial story.
21 November 2007
[funny] The Bile Card … ‘In the event of my death I would like my gall bladder to be hurled forcibly at the Editor of the Daily Mail.’
[books] Interview with William Gibson from Rolling Stone … ‘The very first time I picked up a Sony Walkman, I knew it was a killer thing, that the world was changing right then and there. A year later, no one could imagine what it was like when you couldn’t move around surrounded by a cloud of stereophonic music of your own choosing.’ [via Kottke]
22 November 2007
[evil] Ask Mefi: What fictional evil has great corporate branding? … ‘OCP, Omni Consumer Products. From Robocop.’
[tv] The TV elite has lost the plot — Adam Curtis interviewed by Andrew Orlowski … ‘Mark Ravenhill who wrote a very good piece which said that if you analyse television now it’s a system of guidance – it tells you who is having the Bad Feelings and who is having the Good Feelings. And the person who is having the Bad Feelings is redeemed through a “hugs and kisses” moment at the end. It really is a system not of moral guidance, but of emotional guidance. Morality has been replaced by feeling.’
23 November 2007
[comics] Kevin O’Neill Interview — O’Neill discusses the LoEG: The Black Dossier … On Alan Moore’s scripts: ‘…when I tidied up my studio, it was the first time I’d put all the scripts into one place, because it’d been written over a number of years. And the finished “Dossier” was bigger than a telephone directory, it was a monster of a thing. If that had all arrived at the same time, I doubt if I could’ve started the book, it would have been so formidable.’
24 November 2007
[radio] After Our Time — a blog about Radio 4’s In Our Time.
25 November 2007
[funny] This Much I Know from Ken Campbell …
I selected a random address in Barkingside as a setting for a script. It was the first script Frank Muir bought when he was setting up the comedy department for LWT. He rang up and said, ‘Bute Road, Barkingside? I once had sex there.’
26 November 2007
27 November 2007
[tv] Adam Curtis : an Audio Special — audio from Andrew Orlowski’s Adam Curtis interview.
29 November 2007
[comics] Rare Viz comic auctioned for £950 … ‘The mint-condition “number one” edition from December 1979 had a guide price of £350-£400, and is one of only about 500 printed. But it went for double its estimate under the hammer at Anderson & Garland auctioneers in Newcastle.’
30 November 2007
[comics] The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings — I try to keep it positive about comics but let me be clear here – Rob Liefeld is utterly shit. … ‘The most important thing you need to know before reading about all the terrible things Rob Liefeld has drawn is that he has never seen or talked to a woman in his life and has no idea what they look like or how their bodies operate. If you asked Rob Liefeld to draw a diagram of the uterus he’d put on a pair of gauntlets and punch the shit out of your chalkboard. This is how the man operates…’ [via Do You Feel Loved]
[shopping] Complete Receipt Defeat … ‘I recently bought a four-pack of Play-Doh – big plans for the weekend – at my local Toys R Us and received, along with my purchase, over a foot and a half of receipt. That comes out to almost an inch of paper for every dime I spent. Here it is, broken down by height in inches…’