kottke.org
Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products
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One-man band plays and sings Thriller
In a compilation of 64 videos all shown on the same page, one man recreates Thriller -- the beats, the howling, the singing -- all by himself. This is pretty awesome, like Christian Marclay on speed. (thx, christopher) (link)
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The blockade diet
Harper's has a translated excerpt from a 1942 letter detailing a list of recipes used by the residents of Leningrad during the city's blockage by the Nazis in WWII (subscribers only). In addition to mustard cakes and leather-belt soup, here's this: Soup from pets and domesticated animalsMeat is ran ...
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Brian Eno believes in singing
Brian Eno believes that singing is the key to a good life. Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And then there are what I would call "civilizational benefits." When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a ...
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Eating the Sun
Steven Johnson really likes a book called Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet by Oliver Morton; he calls it his favorite book (so far) of 2008. From a Publishers Weekly review: The cycle of photosynthesis is the cycle of life, says science journalist Morton (Mapping Mars). Green leaves trap ...
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Don't Shoot the Puppy
Don't Shoot the Puppy is a simple but difficult Flash game, the perfect Friday time waster. I drained my reserves of patience in doing so, but I finally finished level 15. (link)
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Warning, spoilers
The Fine Brothers spoil 100 movies in less than 4 minutes. See also the spoilers t-shirt and an extensive text list of spoilers. (link)
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Milch talks Deadwood season four
In a segment for the upcoming Deadwood DVD box set, series creator David Milch talks about the abrupt end of the show and some of the plans he'd had for season four: Milch does say that he had hoped to introduce a couple of new characters in the never-made fourth season, one of which was based on t ...
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HOLY SHIT, MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON
A classic from The Onion in way more than 96 pt. type: HOLY SHIT, MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON. "Holy living fuck.... Are you fucking believing this? Over," Armstrong radioed back to NASA headquarters nearly 250,000 miles away. "I abso-fucking-lutely am standing on the surface of the fucking moon. I a ...
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The Bloomberg Way, no buts about it
From a Vanity Fair piece on Bloomberg News, a brief mention of The Bloomberg Way, the style guide used by writers at the financial news and services company (emphasis mine): Bloomberg News stories, it declared, "have a structure that is as immutable as the rules that govern sonnets and symphonies." ...
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The eerie stillness of chicken heads
As this video demonstrates, if you move a chicken's body around, its head stays marvelously still. (via waxy) (link)
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The old hero of Gettysburg
1863 photo of John L. Burns, War of 1812 veteran and sharpshooter in the Battle of Gettysburg. Burns, born ca. 1793, was a 70-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 when he was wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg, having volunteered his services as a sharpshooter to the Federal Army. He died of pneu ...
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Half-scale WTC tower in Oklahoma
The Bank of Oklahoma Building in Tulsa, Oklahoma is (nearly) a half-scale version of the World Trade Center towers. The building was designed by the WTC architect and completed just three years after the Twin Towers. For the BOk building, Yamasaki reprised the scheme of a Twin Tower at almost exact ...
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Futurama's Planet Express in Hell's Kitchen
According to Bender's Game (good title!), a direct-to-DVD Futurama movie, the Planet Express HQ is located in Hell's Kitchen right on the Hudson. (link)
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Building bridges with rockets
The world's highest bridge, the Siduhe Grand Bridge, is nearing completion in China's Hubei province. The bridge is so high off the ground that the Empire State Building could fit under it with over 350 feet to spare. To get the initial cable from one tower to the next, the builders used precisely a ...
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Interview with Michael Lewis
A short interview with Michael Lewis about the book he just edited, Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity. In compiling the stories, Lewis was surprised at how little good writing he could find about upcoming financial hard times. How little there was worth reprinting. I had six interns dig ...
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Photography is for Jerkoffs
The language on this one might offend some, but I thoroughly enjoyed this expletive-laden anti-photographer rant: Photography is for Jerkoffs. Here's how to be a photographer in seven easy steps: 1) Make sure you have a LOT OF FUCKING NATURAL LIGHT.2) Make sure the natural light SOURCE is behind yo ...
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Charging an iPod with an onion and Gatorade
How to charge your iPod using just an onion and some Gatorade. Oh yeah? When we were kids, we ran digital clocks off of potatoes and loved it! Fear the power of the tuber! (link)
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Counting all the blades of grass in Ireland
The impressiveness of the magnetic hard drive: The dimensions of the head are impressive. With a width of less than a hundred nanometers and a thickness of about ten, it flies above the platter at a speed of up to 15,000 RPM, at a height that's the equivalent of 40 atoms. If you start multiplying t ...
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How We Decide
News to me: Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, has a new book coming out in February called How We Decide. From the acclaimed author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, a fascinating look at the new science of decision-making-and how it can help us make better choices. Since Plato, ph ...
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The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection just launched their new web site, complete with the option to watch several movies online. It's $5 for a week rental and that's applied toward the cost of the film on DVD or Blu-ray. Not sure about the quality...the excellent intro movie on the home page says "high quality". ...
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