While I still have a few hours left on this history day, here are some facts about today.
Lynda also tweeted, or rather LyndaSays:
Talented photographer Andrew DiSalvo reminded me that my last name has 9 letters.
Viewing entries in
News
This is probably a HUGE shocker to most of you, but those yogis showing off their expert level enlightenment and oneness by levitating real casual like off the ground are faking it. Yes, it's one big fake out. Spoiler: This video shows you how it's done.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etSivpBHUmE&fmt=18]
[Via]
Connecticut legislatures playing solitaire and reading ESPN "as the House convenes to vote on a new budget for the fiscal year."
Solitaire? Is this 1996? Someone send them World of Warcraft please.
[Via]
A barbecue on a terrace at Google's London office caused a little fire. A picture of it was posted on TwitPic and has been viewed over 12,970 times.
[Via]
Test drive the pre-beta release of the next generation Google search. The shape looks the same, but the engine is different. One takeaway: It's faster.
Get a wider view of what your Twitter friends and spam contacts are up to with Twitter for Busy People. [Via]
When Elvis made his infamous surprise visit to then President Richard Nixon, the pop culture legend also bought along into the White House the following gift for the president.
Mother Jones shares a fascinating footnote about Woodstock in which "the festival sparked a mini-culture war between the [New York Times] reporters out at Woodstock and the editors back in Manhattan."
It was difficult to persuade them that the relative lack of serious mischief and the fascinating cooperation, caring, and politeness among so many people was the significant point. I had to resort to refusing to write the story unless it reflected to a great extent my on-the-scene conviction that "peace" and "love" was the actual emphasis, not the preconceived opinions of Manhattan-bound editors.
This passage from Ian Frazier's two part travelogue recently published in the New Yorker describing his road trip across Siberia made me gag. He describes the maddening onslaught of the ubquitous Siberian mosquito swarms (the bolded text below is mine):
As Volodya cooked meals on the propane stove, mosquitoes attracted by the rising vapors flew over the pot, swooned from the heat, and fell in. When we ate our oatmeal in the morning, there were often a few mosquito bodies in it. Most of them we just ate, but sometimes there were ones that had bitten somebody and were full of blood...
Barf.
Ian Frazier also narrates his sketches from the trip at the New Yorker online.
A map of the world approximating the legal drinking age in each country. The after parties following middle school Sadie Hawkins dances must be WILD in Greenland. Jokes aside, everyone: Please drink responsibly.
Yasushi Nagao was the first non-American photographer to win the Pulitzer with this photograph snapped in Tokyo capturing the moment before seventeen-year-old Yamaguchi Otoya killed Socialist Party leader Asanuma Inajiro with a foot-long sword. Afterwards, while in detention, Yamaguchi wrote "Seven lives for my country. Ten thousand years for His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor!" on the wall and then hung himself. More background in this brief TIME Magazine article about the incident.
Nagao passed away a few months back on May 2, 2009.
[Via]
Here are some of the entries I've posted over at Sundance Channel's blog SUNfiltered.
- A neat animated short of a trippy journey through outer space.
- Cool art sculptures created with the same packaging material packed with your electronics.
- Fruit shaped Post-It sticky notes.
- Vanity Fair's editing of Sarah Palin's resignation speech FTW.
- Trivia about 101 muppets.
- Videos of the recent total solar eclipse that my brothers and sisters in Asia were so lucky to witness.
- The most peaceful video I've ever seen is this HD scene of an aquarium in Japan. SRSLY people. Watch this. With sound for your day's zen.
- Collection of neat iPhone photography including my friend Fiona's photos.
- Photograph of scenes juxtaposing the past with the present.
- Neat time lapse of Niagra Falls at night.
- Kip from Napoleon Dynamite is also an accomplished photographer.
- Mod your old magazines into useful things.
- Food in people's fridges.
And more!
According to a recent study, Manhattan is the thinnest county in New York State and significantly more skinny than the rest of the country. Proud Manhattan locals attributed their thinness primarily to the fact it's a walking heavy city, however it's also important to keep in mind that the "island’s poorest areas, like Harlem, have high rates of obesity and diabetes."
Still the fact that 42 percent of Manhattanites can be categorized as obese seems incredibly high until you consider that national average is 67 percent! The majority of this country is obese! Talk about being large and in charge!
New York Times has an interesting article today about a controversy between angry psychologists (They should seek help for that maybe...? No?) and "the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia’s users" over the availability of the ten original Rorschach test plates, first published in 1921, and each of their common responses online at Wikipedia. I think the psychologists are over reacting to information that is probably widely available for anyone that truly cares enough to "cheat" a Rorschach test. This debate aside, I've never actually seen all ten plates and I was struck by how enthralling they looked.
Blue: crab, lobster, spider
Orange: human
Pink: animal
Human heads, faces
Animal hide, skin, rug
Bat, butterfly, moth
Animal skin, massive animal
Two humans
Two humans
Bat, butterfly, moth
For today's amazing my blogger-in-arms Ashley Simko blogged about her friend's recent appearance on Jeopardy where he wrote his name on the show as follows:
Salon's Explainer dives into the circumstances of Henry Louis Gates arrest. I've excerpted the highlights:
Gates repeatedly requested the arresting officer's name and badge number. Gates says the officer provided neither, although the officer claims that he did, in fact, state his name. Was the officer required to provide this information?Yes. Massachusetts law requires police officers to carry identification cards and present them upon request. Gates initially refused to emerge from his home and provide identification. Was he required to?
No.
The arresting officer alleges that Gates shouted at him and threatened to speak to his "mama." He then arrested Gates for disorderly conduct. What, exactly, is disorderly conduct?
Behavior that might cause a riot.
Know your rights and also have some powerful people in your Rolodex.
[Via]
This terrible injustice just gets me mad and I can't believe this is still happening in the twenty-first century in the freest nation in the world.
Florida's Fort Myers Beach city council voted 5-0 in an emergency meeting to fire city manager Scott Janke not because of his job performance, but because of his marriage in October to Anabela Mota Janke, aka adult actress "Jazella Moore."
- The Intern