firehose

BOSTON—Fifteen minutes after the Boston Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to become World Series Champions, sources are now confirming that local man Bradley Ferrante, 26, is dedicating the trash can he’s lighting on fire to the victims...

 Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut is a bona fide curveball: a no-frills homage to Hong Kong genre filmmaking, distinguished by its lack of irony and its superbly choreographed and filmed fight scenes. It isn’t for every taste (the placeholder plotting will irk some), but for fans of wushu flicks—or action movies in general—Man Of Tai Chi presents a rare appreciation for the art of conveying movement on screen, while also serving as an impressive physical showcase for its star, stuntman Tiger Chen.   

Chen plays a package deliveryman who is spotted at a martial arts tournament by stone-faced gangster Donaka Mark (Reeves) and groomed to become an underground fighting star. Running parallel to this familiar arc—that finds Chen fighting to save a temple, but alienating his master (wushu legend Yu Hai) in the process—is a subplot about a Hong Kong detective (Karen Mok) investigating Mark’s operation ...

Read more

Calvin and Hobbes

Architects go crazy with LEGO | Via

When you open the Lego Architecture Studio set you’ll find 1,200 white and translucent bricks. What you won’t find are instructions for what to do with them. Instead, the set includes a 200-page guidebook filled with architectural concepts, Lego exercises, and insights from several renowned firms–all intended to give budding builders a resource for developing their understanding of real world architecture. It’s a brilliant concept–a Lego product that doesn’t just encourage imagination but demands it. But it got us wondering: What if we put all those bricks in the hands of actual architects? We sent fresh sets to three leading firms–here’s what they came up with.

SHoP Architects Snøhetta Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

Historical Map: Boston Rapid Transit Map in Type 6 Mock-up Carriage, c. 1968

Here’s a variant Boston MBTA map I’ve never seen before: a version with 60-degree angled lines, instead of 45 degrees. Apart from that, it looks very much like the standard late-1960s/early 1970s Cambridge 7 spider map, although there’s some weird inconsistencies like the Green Line “A” Watertown branch (closed 1968) and Quincy Center (opened 1971) on the same map.

Here’s the interesting part. This map lives in the one and only mock-up of an MBTA “Type 6” train carriage at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine. This wooden mock-up was created in 1968 by MBTA engineers to allow stakeholders and the public to judge the design’s layout and comfort, but the carriage was eventually deemed too expensive to produce. The MBTA ended up procuring the (incredibly unreliable) Boeing-Vertol LRTs instead. So… this map may actually be as unique as the mock-up that houses it: the only one of its kind. If anyone knows anything more about this variant, I’d love to hear about it!

(Source: Eric Kilby/Flickr – thanks to Boston to a T for further info on the mock-up)

mask.of.sanity writes "Stand aside P!nk, Niki Minaj; you've just been beaten by a music generator. One Aussie security expert curious about the fraud mechanisms at play on streaming services like Spotify uploaded garbage music tracks and directed three Amazon virtual machines to click the play button 24/7 for a month, earning him top spot in online music charts and $1000 in royalties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nesvictory:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Tom Hanks? Demon’s Crest Death Board?

Original Source

A new Super Smash Bros. screenshot pits Wii Fit trainers in a battle of the sexes, with the already announced female instructor fighting her newly-unveiled male counterpart. The question, then, is what exactly is the House of Smash teasing here? It's hard to believe it would give up a character slot for another Wii Fit trainer. Surely that's a bit of a stretch ...

I reckon it's likelier to be an alternative "costume" for the Wii Fit trainer. Or it could just be nothing. After all, the image was posted on the Super Smash Bros. Miiverse page to commemorate the trial version of Wii Fit U becoming available, and maybe that's all it is.

As it stands, the roster of combatants remains at 17, but there'll be plenty more announced before the Wii U and 3DS game launches sometime next year.

Male Wii Fit trainer a possibility for Super Smash Bros. originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 31 Oct 2013 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

While Massachusetts had scores aligning with the education powerhouse of Japan, other states like Mississippi and Alabama had scores that were similar to countries that aren't typically lauded for their excellent education systems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWeNmOrvQhY

Original Source

The numbers: The New York Times Co., which owns the New York Times, reported third quarter revenue of $361.7 million, up 1.8% from the same period last year.

The takeaway: The Times reported a net loss of $24.8 million for the quarter. The loss comes largely as a result of the sale of the New England Media Group earlier this year, which included The Boston Globe, Boston.com, marketing company Globe Direct and Telegram.com.

What’s interesting: Digital subscribers are up, but digital advertising revenue fell over 3% from a year earlier in the third quarter. The drop in digital advertising revenue is especially disconcerting given that the company is growingly dependent on it as a source of income; revenue from digital advertising made up 24.2% of total revenue in the first nine months of 2013, up from 23.4 % in the first nine months of of last year.

Digital comics | Viz Media announced Wednesday it has brought its entire library to iBooks. Viz manga are already available on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and its own app, so this pretty much completes the set. [ICv2] Crime | Manga creator Takaaki Kubo was arrested Tuesday on charges of threatening a city councilor in the town [...]

Horace Dediu over at Asymco has published some interesting analysis concerning Apple’s immediate retail future.

Visits to Apple’s retail stores have been pretty much flat since the middle of 2010, once you factor out seasonal variation and new store openings. About 240,000 people visit each store per quarter.

With the recent addition of former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrends as senior vice president overseeing retail, Apple could be poised for a shift in retail strategy, including store redesigns.

Government safety rules are changing to let airline passengers use most electronic devices from gate-to-gate.

Ah, the ancient art of rhetoric. There’s no escaping it. Variously defined as “the art of argumentation and discourse” or, by Aristotle in his fragmented treatise, as “the means of persuasion [that] could be found in the matter itself; and then stylistic arrangement,” rhetoric is complicated. Aristotle’s definition further breaks down into three distinct types, and he illustrates each with literary examples. And if you’ve ever picked up a rhetorical guide—ancient, medieval, or modern—you’ll be familiar with the lists of hundreds of unpronounceable Greek or Latin terms, each one corresponding to some quirky figure of speech.

Well, as usual, the internet provides us with an easier way in the form of the video above of 10 figures of speech “as illustrated by Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” one of the most literate of popular artifacts to ever appear on television. There’s “paradiastole,” the fancy term for euphemism, demonstrated by John Cleese’s overly decorous newscaster. There’s “epanorthosis,” or “immediate and emphatic self-correction, often following a slip of the tongue,” which Eric Idle overdoes in splendid fashion. Every possible poetic figure or grammatical tic seems to have been named and catalogued by those philosophically resourceful Greeks and Romans. And it’s likely that the Pythons have utilized them all. I await a follow-up video in lieu of reading any more rhetorical textbooks.

via Coudal

Related Content:

Watch Monty Python’s “Summarize Proust Competition” on the 100th Anniversary of Swann’s Way

The Monty Python Philosophy Football Match: The Greeks v. the Germans

Classic Monty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilarious Battle of Wits

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

10 Figures of Speech Illustrated by Monty Python: Paradiastole, Epanorthosis, Syncatabasis & More is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and by Email.

In honor of Cocktail Week, bartenders around town are offering a special drink all week long, created as an homage to their cocktail mentors. Here's a list of all of the available drinks. Throughout the week, we'll be telling you a little bit more about each one.

Out of all of the special cocktails being offered this week, one mentor got honored twice: Tom Mastricola (first in the Tom Bomb at Saloon, and now this). At Trina's Starlite Lounge, owner Josh Childs is offering the Mastri-Cola for $10, available all week: 2 ounces white rum, .5 ounce lime juice, .75 ounce simple syrup, 8 dashes Starlite cola bitters, served down with a brown sugar rim.

It's "an homage to one of the founding fathers of the craft cocktail scene who often doesn't get enough credit, Tom Mastricola," said Childs. "The drink is a deconstructed rum and Coke."
· All coverage of Trina's Starlite Lounge on Eater [~EBOS~]
· All coverage of Cocktail Week 2013 on Eater [~EBOS~]

The Seattle Sounders snapped their seven-match winless streak at the most opportune time -- their MLS Cup Playoffs opener. Thanks to goals by Brad Evans and Eddie Johnson, the Sounders beat the Colorado Rapids in the Western Conference play-in match, 2-0, to advance to the conference semifinals, where a tie against the rivals Portland Timbers awaits them.

Evans put the Sounders in front after 28 minutes when a failed Rapids clearance fell to him at 15 yards, and he hit it first time on the half volley. It was a perfect hit, hard and low to the far post, leaving Clint Irwin no chance as the Sounders took a 1-0 lead.

The Sounders' lead was well deserved after dominating the start of the match. The Rapids were completely overwhelmed and appeared to be undone by Oscar Pareja's curious decision to start Atiba Harris over Dillon Powers. Colorado's insistence on attacking down the right, instead of the left where Chris Klute and Deshorn Brown should have dominated, didn't help either.

With Colorado in shambles, Seattle kept attacking and should have been up by two or three by the hour mark, but Irwin was good, their finishing poor and their luck non-existent. Things took a turn for the worse five minutes from time, when Michael Gspurning handled the ball outside of his box and, upset with Edson Buddle's appeals for a call, shoved the Rapids striker in the face. There's no doubt that Buddle sold the call, but it was a stupid move by Gspurning and he was shown a red card for his foolishness.

With a man advantage, the Rapids thought they might be able to manage an equalizer, but it never came. They still couldn't get anything together and in the 90th minute, Johnson took a pass from Clint Dempsey, beautifully skirted his defender and slotted the ball home to cap off a comfortable win for the home side.

That seven-match winless streak, over. Next up, the Timbers in one of MLS's most anticipated playoff ties ever.

Sounders

Gspurning, Yedlin, Hurtado,Traore, Gonzalez, Evans, Alonso, Moffat, Dempsey, Neagle, Johnson.

Goals: Evans 28', Johnson 90'

Red cards: Gspurning 85'

Rapids

Irwin, O'Neill, Moor, Mera, Klute, Thomas, Sturgis, Harris, Rivero Brown, Torres.

Follow @SBNationSoccer on Twitter | Like SB Nation Soccer on Facebook

More in Soccer:

• Sigi Schmid faces his last chance

• David Moyes still experimenting at Manchester United

• Chicago Fire are cleaning house

• Alex Morgan, Sydney Leroux, Halloween and Blurred Lines

• Should PSG have sold Zlatan Ibrahimovic?

Boston Bullpen Cop turned into a folk hero, for this moment:

Photo via Al Bello, Getty Images

And for this moment:

Photo via Mark L. Baer, USA Today Sports

His name is Steve Horgan, and he might have the best job in the world.

He celebrated early in Game 6:

Photo via Rob Carr, Getty Images

But after the final out in the game, he really got his chance to shine:

“Women are not a special interest group and fighting for the ability to live without violence is not a pet project.”

- Soraya Chemaly | Violence Against Women is a Global Pandemic (via sparkamovement)

Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz was named the Most Valuable Player of the 2013 World Series following the team's series-clinching 6-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 on Wednesday.

Ortiz walked four times in Game 6 and came around to score twice. He finished the series with a .688/.760/1.188 line, hit a pair of home runs and walked eight times while fanning only once. While his 11 hits fell two shy of the all-time record, Ortiz reached base more times in a six-game World Series than any other player in history, breaking the mark previously set by Paul Molitor for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993.

Ortiz joins Manny Ramirez and Mike Lowell as the only Red Sox players to win the award, which was first issued in 1955.

More from SB Nation MLB:

• World Series: Red Sox win it all in Game 6 | David Ortiz MVP

• Goldman: Red Sox are baseball’s model team

• Brisbee: Why the Red Sox winning should make you feel better about your team

• How to fix the: Twins | Marlins | Astros

• Death of a Ballplayer: Wrongly convicted prospect spends 27 years in prison

"Good." "Crazy."

BOSTON—Driving the venue into a frenzy of deafening cheers, the Red Sox and Cardinals took the stage Wednesday night to play the sixth game of the 2013 World Series for a sold-out audience at Boston’s iconic Orpheum Theatre.

What you're about to read is a tale of "pick-up artistry" gone wrong—how one dude in Columbus, Ohio managed to single-handedly piss off an entire college town and face an unprecedented amount of public shaming on Facebook and Reddit.