Forget those weird amorphous pink blobby stress buster things. All you need is one of these handy fake plastic beans. It's the hot new craze that's taking Japan by storm! Witness the hilarity as your buddies chow down on fake edamame. Or not.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtUy5HIYQac&hl=en]
Forget those weird amorphous pink blobby things. All you need is one of these handy
Michael built a Claude Shannon/Marvin Minsky "Ultimate Machine" -- flip a switch and a hand emerges and flips it off.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMGJB410Ccs]
About 7 years ago I was reading an article on Claude Shannon and came across one of the funniest ideas I had ever heard. Claude, you see, was one of these incredibly brilliant engineers with an obviously great sense of humor. As I understand it, he, along with Marvin Minsky came up with an idea they called the "Ultimate Machine". Basically a plain box with a switch on the top. When you flip the switch, a hand comes out of the box and flips the switch off. Thats it.Well, after reading the article, and laughing out loud, I decided that I HAD to build one of these boxes.
(pinched this off boingboing)
Thank you BOB!
The Onion's fake news goes from strength to strength. Like a cross between Brass Eye and GMTV.
Expert On Anteaters Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters
Oh, and this wee gem:
Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital
Forget politicians in stab vests or footballers rapping against racism. This is how you fool the kids. Teach them about the careers ladders of today. All while they think they’re watching some sort of badass anime/manga.
NOTE: I hugely applaud this kind of marketing/packaging. If more people understood how to say things like this, a lot more people would listen.
Mr. Pink was also the author of the fine article on Manga in Wired last year. Check it out if you haven’t yet had a chance.
Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.
Via TV in Japan - another place you should checkout frequently.
An open source platform, SongBird is basically iTunes (right down to the design) mashed up with the Web. Via http://friday-linkage.blogspot.com/.
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How annoying - they've gone and put a fence around the Tate Modern's shiny crack. Never one to pass up a cliche, I'll say it's political correctness gone maaaaaaad. Nanny state. Etc. etc.
Mum's shop, The Dining Room Shop, has some special treasures hidden away in the china section. Plates with optical illusions in them, hidden faces and so on. They're very rare, and when I used to work there as a (usually sulky) teen I'd spend ages staring at them, working out not how to find the riddle, but why the person who designed it had chosen that particular face.
They came, I think, from a 19th century affection for playful prints and pictures for the parlour. An early form of light entertainment for middle-class Europeans, I guess (well they didn't have Eastenders or Wii). But of course, the trend was not confined to our neck of the woods. The far east had its own versions too. Here's a fantastically colourful post from Pink Tentacle:
'Joge-e, or “two-way pictures,” are a type of woodblock print that can be viewed either rightside-up or upside-down. Large numbers of these playful prints were produced for mass consumption in the 19th century, and they commonly featured bizarre faces of deities, monsters or historical figures (including some from China). Only a few examples of original joge-e survive today. Here are a few.
'This print by Kuniyoshi (c. 1852) depicts Hotei (Laughing Buddha) and Shoki (a character from the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms“). When viewed upside-down, Hotei becomes Asahina (a character from a popular novel of the time) and Shoki becomes Zhang Fei.
'This woodblock print was published by Ezakiya Tatsuzo (c. 1842). Left to right, top to bottom (upside-down image described in parentheses): 1. Small tengu (Gedo, an evil person), 2. King Zhou, Shang Dynasty (Guan Yu), 3. Wind god (Thunder), 4. Nyudo (Pair of frogs), 5. Tengu looking up (Tengu looking down), 6. Tofu Kozo (Mitsume Kozo), 7. Onamuchi-no-mikoto, Shinto god of nation-building, farming, business and medicine (Iruka-no-omi), 8. Cao Cao (Shoki, Zhang Fei), 9. Mikenja (Ghost of Mirin).
'This print by Kuniyoshi (c. 1852) shows a Daruma and Tokusakari (a character from a famous Noh play). Viewed upside-down, the Daruma becomes a Gedo (an evil person) and Tokusakari becomes Ikyu (a character from the famous play “Sukeroku”).
'Created by Yoshitora, 1861. Left column (top to bottom): 1. Fukusuke, god of merchant prosperity (Frog), 2. Evil man (Ebisu, god of fishermen and good luck), 3. Fukurokuju, god of wisdom and longevity (Tanuki, racoon dog with giant scrotum). Center: 4. Ikyu (Foreigner) , 5. Okame (Dekusuke), 6. Gedo, an evil person (Asahina). Right: 7. Hotei, Laughing Buddha (Yakko), 8. Earth god (Mountain god).
'Created by Yoshitora, 1862. Left column (top to bottom): 1. Tadafumi (Gedo, an evil person), 2. Hunter (Frog), 3. Small tengu (Big tengu), 4. Bad guy (Bad guy). Center: 5. Two-horned demon (One-horned demon), 6. Kasane, possessed female character in famous Kabuki play (Ugly man), 7. Daruma (Daruma). Right: 8. Foreigner (Ainu), 9. Nio guardian (A-un guardian).
[Images from: Edo no Asobi-e, Tokyo Shoseki, 1988 (out of print)]'
It can't be easy being Dick Cheney, V.P.O.T.U.S. (Vice President Of The United States), second in command of the world's most powerful nation, constantly under pressure to perform. How he must long to escape, to do a Vladimir Putin and take just the one photographer on a macho foray into the countryside.
Of course, sometimes he gets the chance to do just that. Fly fishing for a few days with some trusted aides and colleagues. Only in the picture here, which you'll also find on his official website, look closely and you'll see in the reflection of his glasses exactly the sort of aide-de-camp/second lady our Dick likes to take with him. No wonder he's smiling.
Thank you Gary!
I love websites like this one. Chiefly because some frustrated genius is spending £30 a year maintaining a website that, when you click the guy's finger, makes a fart noise. There should be more sites like this. Elegant in its simplicity. I wonder what the creator's day job is. Link.
Bonkers. As far as I knew, the Moonies were just a crazy love cult from the 1970s. This 20-minute documentary changes things, saying how US Homeland security donated $300,000 to the Moonies so it could 'repair boats'; Rev. Sen Myung Moon has a fleet of boats that apparently supply most of America's sushi; the Moonies own the Washington Times; George Bush Snr. toured with Moon, speaking on his behalf in Japan and Argentina (that's not where the Bush/Moon links end); oh, and congressmen went to a ceremony in Washington crowning Rev. Moon the 'King of Peace'. Shit gets deeper. Enjoy:
'In 2004, journalist John Gorenfeld scooped the Washington press corps when he exposed a scandalous party on Capitol Hill, in which members of Congress watched as Moon held a ritual coronation for himself as the "King of Peace." Wearing a majestic cape and coronet, the publisher declared himself the Messiah. The New York Times editors compared the event, sponsored by a U.S. senator, to an act of the Roman emperor Caligula.
'That, as you might imagine, was just the tip of the iceberg.
'Bad Moon Rising takes you into the underbelly of the Religious Right. Which is surprisingly, scandalously entwined with Moon and his business empire--an untold chapter in American political history.'
Link. Via BoingBoing.
It seems a waste to break a beautiful samurai sword by firing heavy machine gun rounds at it, but what's really interesting is to see that, until it eventually shatters, it is actually CHOPPING BULLETS IN HALF.
I am SO going to dust off my ninja outfit.
Link. Via TV in Japan.
The guy's a genius. A bit strange, but genius nevertheless. I mean, imagine discovering you have a talent for this (and then practicing over and over and over again before filming yourself doing it). His neighbours must either think he's got about 20 people in his flat, or that he's just plain nuts. Or both.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7YR55MXZuk]
and:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KQF8DNKKV8]
Got it from a random Japanese blog. I have no idea what the original entry is about. Link.
PS - same blog led to this. Pretty cool (particularly the cappuccino-frother pizzicato):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xui7x_KF7bY]
Disaster. There I was, greatly enjoying Just a Minute, but secretly hoping I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue would be starting soon, and it turns out the new series doesn't start until June. Bah. That's far too long to wait (because I must be getting impatient in my dotage) so I dug around for some links. You will need 'Real Player' to listen to them.
Here is a great 'fingers on buzzers' round.
Here is a hilarious round in which the panellists update nursery rhymes.
Here are some fabulous 'postcards from history'.
And where would we be without one of Humph's asides about the lovely Samantha.
Quite simply, one of the weirdest things I've seen. Nice change from the standard celeb interview format. Beats Parky any day.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ELsbZRSqk]
Via TV in Japan. Link.
Fantastic collection on Flickr here from a mid-1970s edition of the World of Logotypes. Worth going through, if nothing else just for the nostalgia of seeing the old VCR logo. Also interesting to see which ones have lasted the test of time.
It's frustrating to see a trend emerging, and not really know what to call it. I've been seeing more and more pseudo-Victorian stuff emerging, from design to books to... well you'll see what else.
But now, Eureka! There is a name for it all: Steampunk. I didn't make it up. The term has been around since the 1980s, I just had never heard of it. More fool me.
So what actually is steampunk? Well it is similar to cyberpunk, but slightly more positive, less dystopian. Think H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, that sort of thing.
For writers of books such as The Glass Books of The Dream Eaters (very good if you haven't read it) and Lyra's world as envisioned by Philip Pullman, it means a chance to have heroes escape in dirigibles and drive steam powered cars, to invent new sciences and give your own names to existing ones. It seems largely to be an extension of creating worlds similar to our own, in which other paths were taken.
Jeepers, it turns out the culture even has its own magazine. Fantastic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to start pretending I'm an effete Sherlock Holmes-type with an eye for the dark arts and the flesh pits of imaginary civilizations, but it is satisfying to see how it has galvanised so many others. Have a look at some favourites:
There's the Steampunk Workshop's mac mini, complete with screen and keyboard(well worth following the link on the pic, so you can see it in detail):
A new vogue of reworking Star Wars characters in a steam punk style (here are Han Solo and Chewbacca from Star Wars, one of many given a full makeover on Eric Poulton's blog).
And of course this hilarious bike - though I'm not entirely sure about the rider's costume:
Tom Sepe, who made it, calls it a motorbike. I think it's more of a noisy scooter. See how he made it here.
The previous post led me to this Schweppes ad, which I don't remember seeing before, but I do rather like. Schhhhhweet.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFfJJjLpqw&hl=en]