Here’s a musical installation that’s rad as all get out.
Archifon I. is a big interactive musical instrument controlled with laser pointers. Up to 10 visitors at a time can interact with the Archifon through the laser pointers. By pointing on any of more than 100 elements, different audiovisual actions are initiated.
It’s by Tomas Dvorak, who composed the awesome soundtrack to the awesome game Machinarium, and Dan Gregor.
“I Love You” by Modeselektor.
(The dope image in the video is by Jason Chan and you can find a wallpaper-size version here.)
Supreme Court Ruling Allows Strip-Searches for Any Offense
Adam Liptak, The New York Times:
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.
Cash spills on the highway: What would you do?
David Dishneau of the AP on what one woman would do:
Chicago billing clerk Stephany Harris, 53, didn’t miss a beat.
“Of course I would,” she said. “If the armored car had been in an accident of something, I’d make sure the drivers were OK and I’d call 911. But I’d put as much money in my pockets (as I could) and run.”
But what if her kids were there? “I absolutely would not take any money,” she answered again without hesitation. “I wouldn’t want them to get the message that grabbing money that is not yours is the right thing to do.”
Well at least she’s honest (note that this is not in any way a consolation).
Group sought wedge between blacks, gays to fight same-sex marriage
CNN:
“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” another memo states. “Find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party.”
You assholes. Man up and be your own bigots instead of making other people bigots by proxy.
Modern Mechanix: Mars Refuses to Answer Radio Messages
Modern Mechanix time, this time from the May 1929 issue of Modern Mechanics:
The latest evidence of the unsocial nature of the Martians came recently when Dr. H. Mansfield Robinson, shown in the picture at the left, attempted to send a message to a woman on Mars who, he reported, had been in communication with him. Although listeners all over the world were on the alert for her response, it failed to come through.
Martians: kind of dicks.
BEFORE YOU WATCH THIS, YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THIS WILL COST $179.99 IN U.S. DOLLARS. I feel that I would be kind of a jerk if I didn’t let you know up front, before you start drooling over this, that it’ll cost an arm and a leg.
Now that you have been warned, feel free to start drooling all over this amazing R2-D2 LEGO kit coming out in May.
Steve Martin, writing in The New Yorker earlier this year:
As boys in the little community of Flint Hill, near Shelby, North Carolina, Earl and his brother Horace would take their banjo and guitar and start playing on the porch, then split up and meet behind the house. Their goal was to still be on the beat when they rejoined at the back. Momentously, when he was ten years old, after a fight with his brother, he was playing his banjo to calm his mind. He was practicing the standard “Reuben” when found he could incorporate his third finger into the picking of his right hand, instead of his usual two, in an unbroken, rolling, staccato. He ran back to his brother, shouting, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” He was on the way to creating an entirely new way of playing the banjo: Scruggs Style.
Great profile of Scruggs, who was probably the best there ever was, and maybe the best that ever will be. (Also, if you click through there’s a recording of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” to listen to.)
Here’s a photo by Thomas Peter for Reuters of a delicious new German bakery treat. MSNBC’s PhotoBlog’s caption:
Money concealed in pastries that the German customs agency Zoll seized during an anti-money laundering operation, is displayed before the agency’s annual statistics news conference at the finance ministry in Berlin on Friday.
Science decodes ‘internal voices’
Jason Palmer, BBC News:
[T]he team employed a computer model that helped map out which parts of the brain were firing at what rate, when different frequencies of sound were played.
With the help of that model, when patients were presented with words to think about, the team was able to guess which word the participants had chosen.
They were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant.
Imagine a computer controlled with technology like this.
