Beautiful set of pics here.
Have you ever heard of Microsoft songsmith? Me neither. Looks like they
have some software that lets you sing into the computer, filling in the
music automatically... Cue people creating remixes of popular songs
(that they can get acapellas of).
My favourites so far:
Intergalactic! (Beastie Boys)
and
ROXANNE by Yoga Breath and the Fuzz.
(Thanks Greeny)
Durex Outake from Justin Street on Vimeo.
These user reviews for a Playmobil Security Check Point ($55!) are pretty hilarious.
(via @EFF on Twitter)
Click here and try out Tiltshiftmaker. It's an online programme where you can upload a picture, Tiltshift it (make a clear line and blur the rest) and then save it. Yes I know you can do whizzy stuff on Photoshop that gives you the same result, but this is still pretty cool. Make sure your pic is REALLY colourful though - you'll get much better results.
This is only supposed to happen in the movies. Guy robs a corner shop in America, there's a car chase, he comes off second best. But instead of giving up, he lights one last cheroot and goes down guns blazing. As Joshua Bearman says, "Just look at this fucking guy and tell me he wasn't supposed to go out like this." The robber was identified as one Robert Sylvester. Age? 57. Wow. He died in hospital after police took him out.
Take a look at the photos by the very brave David Proeber.
Kate Kunath is a fantastic photographer. I found her via a link on BoingBoing, and she has done some terrific projects, from finding the Rabbit King of China to Beekeeping in the 21st Century. Her website is here. Above are a couple of pictures from her series on triplets called Mismatched: The Triplet Identity. The picture below is from Standard of Perfection: American Show. It's worth going to her site to see the pictures in larger format.
The Best of Conan - watch more funny videos
Got it from http://prollyisnotprobably.com/
Here is an extract from an interesting piece by Roger Cohen in the New York Times. In it, he says he is glad that Obama is a constitutional lawyer, and discusses his appointment of Clinton and the fact is keeping Robert Gates on as defense secretary. The interesting bit, though, is this on Guantanamo:
Of the 770 detainees grabbed here and there and flown to Guantánamo, only 23 have ever been charged with a crime. Of the more than 500 so far released, many traumatized by those “enhanced” techniques, not one has received an apology or compensation for their season in hell.What they got on release was a single piece of paper from the American government. A U.S. official met one of the dozens of Afghans now released from Guantánamo and was so appalled by this document that he forwarded me a copy.
Dated Oct. 7, 2006, it reads as follows:
“An Administrative Review Board has reviewed the information about you that was talked about at the meeting on 02 December 2005 and the deciding official in the United States has made a decision about what will happen to you. You will be sent to the country of Afghanistan. Your departure will occur as soon as possible.”
That’s it, the one and only record on paper of protracted U.S. incarceration: three sentences for four years of a young Afghan’s life, written in language Orwell would have recognized.
We have “the deciding official,” not an officer, general or judge. We have “the information about you,” not allegations, or accusations, let alone charges. We have “a decision about what will happen to you,” not a judgment, ruling or verdict. This is the lexicon of totalitarianism. It is acutely embarrassing to the United States.
That is why I am thankful above all that the next U.S. commander in chief is a constitutional lawyer. Nothing has been more damaging to the United States than the violation of the legal principles at the heart of the American idea.
Read the whole thing here.
Photographer Robbie Cooper made this video of kids' faces concentrating while they play video games. It's pretty freaky.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gu0iu0xwls&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Adam sent this link to a wall in Israel that has been repaired by people using Lego bricks. Genius.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y39vdTFQLos&hl=en&fs=1]
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing put up this chilling post on the Jonestown massacre, thirty years ago this week. There are a few other posts by Xeni on the subject on the main BoingBoing page, all well worth reading.
Thirty years ago this week, nearly a thousand adults and children lost their lives in Jonestown, Guyana. The settlement was also known as "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project", and was formed by followers of the Reverend Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.
Today, some refer to the mass deaths as suicide, others murder. We still don't really know all the facts of what happened, or how, or exactly why. Autopsies were botched, records and forensic evidence were mis-handled, and many of the US government's documents remain classified, out of reach of FOIA requests.
But we do understand that most of the people who died on November 18, 1978 drank fruit-flavored Flavor-Aid laced with a variety of intoxicants and poisons: Valium, chloral hydrate, and cyanide. The victims included hundreds of children. Many of the corpses, including children, bore puncture wounds indicating they received lethal cyanide injections. Adults who resisted were injected with cyanide or killed by gushot.
Jones' followers had moved from their Northern California base to the South American jungle the year before. The promise: they'd build a utopian, agrarian, interracial community in Guyana, which had a Socialist goverment at the time. Jonestown was to be free from racism, sexism, and ageism, and founded on communist principles. Jones told his followers to think of him as a living incarnation of Jesus Christ, and God.
Over the past 30 years, many documentaries, books, and articles have been produced about Jones, Peoples Temple, and Jonestown. I'll be blogging pointers to some of them today.
I want to start with the one I've returned to again and again -- a radio documentary from 1981 that for me, also defines what radio journalism can achieve. "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown," was co-written by my NPR colleague Noah Adams. Here's a snip from the original introduction on npr.org:
In the months preceding the tragedy, Jim Jones and his People’s Temple followers recorded their tho ughts, their problems and their aspirations. The hundreds of hours of audio tape form the basis of [this] NPR documentary (...) written by James Reston, Jr and Noah Adams, and produced by Deborah Amos. It was based on the tapes Reston acquired under the Freedom of Information Act, and won most major broadcast awards including the Dupont Col umbia Award, the National Headliner Award and the Prix Italia.
Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown recaptures the final months for the People’s Temple cult. After problems arose for the group in San Francisco, they moved to the South American jungle during the 1970's. In 1978, reports of an increasingly hostile and controlling atmosphere by Jones led to a Congressional fact-finding mission into the cult. As the group, led by Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.), was preparing to leave they were ambushed. Ryan, three American journalists and a Peoples Temple defector were killed. A dozen other people were injured. The incident was just hours prior to the deaths of the cult members.
Here's the web page for Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown, with audio links. Here is the direct *.ram link for the complete 90 minute program (requires Real Audio). The website for this related NPR feature, produced in 2003, also includes 3 direct audio urls for "Father Cares," broken into 45 minute chunks (requires Real Audio or Windows Media Player). Another powerful, related NPR piece: Noah Adams talks with Deborah Layton, author of Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple.
Found this terrific photoset on Wired, with the following description:
Unless you're a deeply geeky watch aficionado, a frequent patron of Barney's or a protesting student during the French labor strikes of the mid-1970s, then you've probably never heard of Lip. Time to get educated. Thirty-five years ago the European watch manufacturer pioneered some of the geekiest tech and most innovative design ever found in a timepiece. But all was not to be well for Lip. A volatile political and labor climate in France shattered the 141-year-old company and led to it being closed for nearly 15 years.
After numerous false starts, Lip was jump-started back to existence in the 1990s. Since then the watchmaker has enjoyed a quiet resurgence by returning to its nerdy roots and hiring back many of the original designers of these timepieces. These reissued watches are both technically and physically identical to their DeGaulle-era counterparts.
This above watch was originally conceived in 1973 by Roger Tallon, designer of the TGV high-speed train, the Lip 200 "Dark Master" set the design standard that all Lip watches would follow for the next 30 years.
See more Kevin Bacon videos at Funny or Die
At about 1.48 it's good. At about 4.30 it's better.
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
...this from the Seattle Times. Yuk.
RICHMOND, British Columbia —
Another human foot has washed up on British Columbia's south coast, the seventh to be found on the province's beaches since August 2007.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Annie Linteau confirmed that human remains were inside a New Balance running shoe spotted Tuesday afternoon.
"My first reaction was this was a small size, maybe a woman's shoe," said Ken Johnston, who fished the shoe out of the Fraser River off Richmond after his wife spotted it while walking their dog.
One right-foot New Balance running shoe - the only one belonging to a woman - has been found since the first foot was located on Jedidiah Island in Georgia Strait on Aug. 20, 2007. That shoe turned up May 22 on Kirkland Island in the Fraser River, not far from the site of Tuesday's discovery.
All the other feet were found at several sites on or near Georgia Strait, including remains in a shoe found in August in Pysht, Wash., about 30 miles west of Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula.
Police have determined that two of the shoes - found Feb. 8 on Valdez Island and June 16 off Richmond - are a match.
DNA testing linked one foot to a depressed man who disappeared in 2007 but the other remains have not been identified.
Authorities say it appears that all of the feet separated naturally from bodies as they decomposed in the water.