No one seemed to notice him: A dark figure who often came to stand at the edge of London's Hammersmith Bridge on nights in 1916. No one seemed to notice, either, that during his visits he was dropping something into the River Thames. Something heavy.
Every now and then, I stumble upon a business idea that makes me laugh out loud and nearly spill my coffee, Ship Your Enemies Glitter is one of them. As a parent of crafty little ones, I can fully attest that glitter is the most annoying thing that anyone could spill in your house.
(via Thierry)
John-Lewis translated Jabberwocky into Nadsat, the synthetic Russified English dialect spoken by the protagonist of A Clockwork Orange, starting with "Twas dobby and the chellovecks—"
Read the rest
Gensler’s proposal to turn disused underground tunnels into arteries for bikes and pedestrians looks like fun. As a sober reponse to congestion, it’s ridiculous
Could the answer to London’s congestion be a network of subterranean cycleways? A new project from design firm Gensler suggests that maybe – just maybe – it might. Dubbed the London Underline, the project would turn London’s abandoned tube tunnels into living streets beneath the city. While there’s still a speculative, utopian look to the proposals – renderings showing the tunnels packed with youthful Londoners resemble an updated version of Logan’s Run – the London Underline is being taken seriously enough in some quarters. Earlier this week, it won the Best Conceptual Project gong at the London Planning awards.
The project would use dual tunnels in the Underground’s defunct stretches to create parallel pedestrian paths and cycle ways, also lined with cafes and click-and-collect points for online shopping. To help make the tunnels more financially viable, each path could be surfaced with kinetic paving, which uses footfall and the friction created by bike tyres to generate electricity. The tunnels would not need to be connected directly to ground level. They would be accessed via tube stations, while Boris bikes for hire would lurk at the mouth of each stretch.
Could you turn that [kinetic] power into art pieces or advertising opportunities? Could you tie it all together, perhaps with sponsorship and naming rights, so that it’s a self-funding exercise? You’re in the Oystercard zone already because it’s connected to the underground, but you could put things in there that help it support itself.
Continue reading...
Facebook's "real names" policy means that from time to time, it arbitrarily decides what its users are allowed to call themselves, which sucks if your name is something like Dana Lone Hill or Robin Kills The Enemy or Shane Creepingbear.
Read the rest
Joe Capra's video of amazing time-lapse shots in Rio De Janeiro using a fancy camera is worth watching full screen. Read the rest
The Raspberry Pi 2 is an awesome upgrade over previous models , but it also comes with a quirk. It turns out, if you try to take a picture of the Pi with a flash, it powers off. The folks over at Raspberry Pi explain exactly what's going on.
Betabrand's anti-paparazzi hooded jacket is made from intensively reflective fabric that will wash out any flash photo taken of the wearer -- it's up for crowdfunding now and will go into production once they have enough pre-orders. (Thanks, Chris!)
So, we're uh, just gonna leave this right here. (more…)
Some argue we need one for socially progressive reasons. Others simply want one to perfect their writing. But so far more than a hundred attempts have failed
Language, like life, feels easier to deal with if we arrange it into binaries: Wrong/right; Gay/straight; Labour/Conservative. Terms lurking between the two poles are often unfairly maligned. We’re often wary of anything that is neither one nor the other: Justifiable homicide; Bisexual; The Liberal Democrats.
The same goes for him/her. We seem far more comfortable when people are either men or women. The reality is different. There are people who self-define as neither, as gender-nonbinary. To those who see gender as a construct, this makes perfect sense. But the English language fails to reflect it.
Continue reading...New research indicates that cooking food bombards us with more energy than can be easily dealt with, and that eating raw food actually burns up calories. So is it time to throw away the cooker?
I’m no fan of the diet industry, but one of this slimming season’s offerings has a diverting premise. The Ice Diet by health writer Pete Bee, promotes burning more calories by being less warm. She encourages exercising out in the cold, turning down the heating, flinging open windows and eating more (but not exclusively) uncooked foods. Eating raw or lightly cooked foods, she says, requires more energy to chew and digest, while ingesting cold foods uses calories to warm the food and us up. But there’s more to it than that. Cooking food helps us ingest more calories, too.
The calorific value of cooked v raw foods is the subject of ongoing work by the evolutionary biology department at Harvard University. A paper published this week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, for instance, details new evidence that fats in foods yield more calories when cooked. They have also found that cooking makes more energy available to us in starch and protein.
Continue reading...Since Mark first reported on Gravity Glue in 2011, artist Michael Grab has traveled extensively as he balanced rocks, and his beautifully-shot footage only improves with time. Just a few highlights below. Read the rest
Here's a followup to my earlier post about McDonald's fries. In 2013 Food Babe posted the ingredients for McDonald's fries in the US and in the UK. Read the rest
This is a great parody and not just because it points up the goofiness of those AOL and Compuserve ads from the 90s, but because it shows how far Facebook has moved our social norms into the creepy-zone by pursuing its surveillance business-model. (more…)
Images via JustSayGnome
The Noam Chomsky Garden Gnome. That’s right, I said it, the Noam Chomsky Garden Gnome.
Over at justsaygnome.net, you can buy, when they’re available, two versions of “Gnome Chomsky the Garden Noam.” Here’s is how it’s generally described:
Standing at just under 17 inches, Gnome Chomsky the Garden Noam clutches his classic books, ‘The Manufacture of Compost’ and ‘Hedgerows not Hegemony’ – with his open right hand ready to hold the political slogan of your choosing. His clothes represent a relaxed but classy version of regular gnome attire, including: a nice suit jacket-tunic, jeans, boots, traditional gnome cap, and glasses. Additionally, Noam Gnome stands on a base complete with a carved title – for anyone who may not immediately realize the identity of this handsome and scholarly gnome.
The gnome costs $195 painted and $95 unpainted (plus shipping). The bummer is that the gnomes are currently out of stock, and when they’ll come back is anyone’s guess. That said, if you really want one, the site’s (presumed) owner Steve encourages you to drop him an email. I might have to send one myself.
Above you can see a photo of Chomsky with a Noam Gnome. Find additional views of the Noam Gnome here. And, guess what, they’ve got a Howard Zinn gnome too.
In putting this post together, I spotted an old comic bit that took the idea of a Noam Garden Gnome as its premise. You can watch it below.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox.
Related Content:
Read 9 Books By Noam Chomsky Free Online
Filmmaker Michel Gondry Presents an Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky
Clash of the Titans: Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault Debate Human Nature & Power on Dutch TV, 1971
Gnome Chomsky: The Essential Ornament for the Thinking Person’s Garden is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.
The post Gnome Chomsky: The Essential Ornament for the Thinking Person’s Garden appeared first on Open Culture.
Designer John Edmark created printed sculptures that emulate the Fibonacci sequences in pine cones and sunflowers, then filmed them using a strobe that flashed on the golden angle, 137.5 degrees. Read the rest
