Soulja Boy provides incisive commentary on the game Braid.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Rayman Origins is a pretty great game. Or at least the first world of it is, as that’s all I’ve played so far.
I died in the first scrolling shooter stage. Not because it was difficult, because it really wasn’t. I beat it on my second try without a problem.
No, I died because I was doubled over laughing at the background music, and as a result I could not play the game at all. That background music, “Shooter – Kazoo” by Christophe Héral or Billy Martin, accompanies this post.
This piece is such a glorious trainwreck.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Jonah Lehrer’s Deceptions
Michael C. Moynihan, writing in Tablet:1
Last month, [Jonah] Lehrer was accused of a curious journalistic offense: the act of “self-plagiarism.” Lehrer, a staff writer at the New Yorker and celebrated author of three books, cannibalized his own work, posting often word-for-word excerpts from Imagine on the New Yorker’s blog without noting that it had been published elsewhere. To some, it was a tenuous charge—as one journalist commented to me, this was like “being accused of stealing food from your own refrigerator.” Others highlighted the pressures brought to bear on young writers to produce more and more content.
That’s just background. The real meat of the article is Moynihan tearing apart the chapter of Lehrer’s new book * Imagine: How Creativity Works* that discusses Bob Dylan’s creative process:
I’m something of the Dylan obsessive—piles of live bootlegs, outtakes, books—and I read the first chapter of Imagine with keen interest. But when I looked for sources to a handful of Dylan quotations offered by Lehrer—the chapter is sparsely and erratically footnoted—I came up empty, and in one case found two fragments of quotes, from different years and on different topics, welded together to create something that happily complimented Lehrer’s argument. Other quotes I couldn’t locate at all. […]
Over the next three weeks, Lehrer stonewalled, mislead and, eventually, outright lied to me. Yesterday, Lehrer finally confessed that he has never met or corresponded with Jeff Rosen, Dylan’s manager; he has never seen an unexpurgated version of Dylan’s interview for No Direction Home, something he offered up to stymie my search; that a missing quote he claimed could be found in an episode of Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour” cannot , in fact, be found there; and that a 1995 radio interview, supposedly available in a printed collection of Dylan interviews called The Fiddler Now Upspoke, also didn’t exist. When, three weeks after our first contact, I asked Lehrer to explain his deceptions, he responded, for the first time in our communication, forthrightly: “I couldn’t find the original sources,” he said. “I panicked. And I’m deeply sorry for lying.”
Holy fuckballs. Moynihan continues, in detail. Definitely click through for this one.
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Not technology related — its tag line is “A new read on Jewish life”. And, incidentally, it has a wonderful wordmark. ↩
Cow Floating
So here’s something that apparently happens in the United States: cow floating. From a 2011 article in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel by Karen Herzog:
When Chloe, the ailing Holstein cow, went down and couldn’t get up on the hottest day of the year Wednesday, her owner did what many modern Dairyland farmers would do:
He called a cow floater.
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Thanks to her own buoyancy, Chloe began to float as a special tank she was moved into was filled with 80-degree water. Buoyancy reduced the weight she had to bear as she scrambled to get her footing.
The plan is for Chloe to receive 18 to 24 hours of water therapy to relax her muscles, reduce swelling and boost circulation before the water is drained Friday in hopes that she will walk out of the tank.
I cannot think of a single thing to say about this.
Avila v. Citrus Community College Dist., 131 P. 3d 383 – Cal: Supreme Court 2006
Avila v. Citrus Community College Dist., 131 P. 3d 383 – Cal: Supreme Court 2006
I’ve started reading The Unwritten Rules of Baseball by Paul Dickson, which is pretty neato so far.
In it, he mentions a legal case from 2006 about being hit by pitches. Some background from the opinion by Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar:
During an intercollegiate baseball game at a community college, one of the home team’s batters is hit by a pitch. In the next half-inning, the home team’s pitcher allegedly retaliates with an inside pitch and hits a visiting batter in the head. The visiting batter is injured, he sues, and the courts must umpire the dispute.
The court ruled that, even though the rules of baseball state that a pitcher can’t intentionally hit a batter, it’s commonly accepted as an “inherent risk of the sport” and so can’t be sued over in this way.
Being intentionally hit is likewise an inherent risk of the sport, so accepted by custom that a pitch intentionally thrown at a batter has its own terminology: “brushback,” “beanball,” “chin music.” In turn, those pitchers notorious for throwing at hitters are “headhunters.” Pitchers intentionally throw at batters to disrupt a batter’s timing or back him away from home plate, to retaliate after a teammate has been hit, or to punish a batter for having hit a home run. (See, e.g., Kahn, The Head Game (2000) pp. 205-239.) Some of the most respected baseball managers and pitchers have openly discussed the fundamental place throwing at batters has in their sport. …
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It is true that intentionally throwing at a batter is forbidden by the rules of baseball. (See, e.g., Off. Rules of Major League Baseball, rule 8.02(d); National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 2006 NCAA Baseball Rules (Dec.2005) rule 5, § 16(d), p. 62.) But “even when a participant’s conduct violates a rule of the game and may subject the violator to internal sanctions prescribed by the sport itself, imposition of legal liability for such conduct might well alter fundamentally the nature of the sport by deterring participants from vigorously engaging in activity that falls close to, but on the permissible side of, a prescribed rule.” (Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 318-319, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696.)
So there is legal precedent in the United States that, if you get hit by a pitch, you have to suck it up.
Elusive Sneezing Monkeys Photographed
Elusive Sneezing Monkeys Photographed
In February, I posted about a new species of monkey discovered in Asia in 2010 which was denied further study because the only known animal was killed and eaten. I juxtaposed that with an oddly prescient article from The Onion because I think I’m all clever and shit.
Well, since then, more have been found! Jeanna Bryner on LiveScience:
A group of monkeys whose nostrils are so upturned they are said to sneeze audibly when it rains has been discovered in China, say researchers, who have now snapped the first photographic evidence of the snub-nosed monkeys there.
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At the time, scientists thought the species was limited to the Kachin state of northeastern Myanmar.
The new discovery of the monkey, called “mey nwoah” in local dialects (or “monkey with an upturned face”), suggests its range extends into China.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfQsBTgoVuA
Speaking of comics, been very much enjoying watching the mid 90s Spider-Man cartoon. Tight, exciting tellings of some classic Spidey stories. The Venom arc in season 1 was fantastic — way better than Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. Here’s the intro. Memories~
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
A movie star makes India confront its taboos
A movie star makes India confront its taboos
AP report on social issues and TV in India:
Shining light on inequities like the rampant abortion of female fetuses, caste discrimination and the slaying of brides in dowry disputes, actor Aamir Khan has reached an estimated one-third of the country with a new TV talk show that tackles persistent flaws of modern India that many of its citizens would prefer to ignore.
“Satyamev Jayate”, or “Truth Alone Prevails,” is a clever blend of hard news and raw emotional appeal — part 60 Minutes, part Oprah. Its influence has even prodded the notoriously lethargic government machinery into action, though it’s too soon to know what policy changes may be in the works.
The issue the article spends the most time on is the abortion of female fetuses, which is a disgustingly enormous problem in India. Even just using an ultrasound machine to determine the sex of a fetus has been illegal since 1994. It hasn’t helped.
During the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards (2008), Ricky Gervais presented the award for Outstanding Directing for a Variety or Music Program.
I am nominating Steve Carell’s performance during the intro as one of the best stone faces of all time. It is physically impossible that he composed that stare for so long, and yet there it is.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)