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The only unsolved case of broadcast TV hijacking in the U.S.

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Tags: piracy, fcc, broadcasting, maxheadroom

The Polaroid SX-70 is a beautiful example of mid-century industrial design, and it had a promotional device of great artistry to match. I adore this film so much. It presents the simple joy of photography and, without hyperbolizing or talking down to its audience, gives a comprehensive explanation of how the camera works. It wasn’t until the end that I learned that it was made by Charles and Ray Eames, but I probably should have known within the first few seconds. Their style and skill is obvious.

billturner posted a photo:

Hans Lange, a base jumper, hits the ground during a wingsuit base jump in Norway… and lives.

via http://community.livejournal.com/vintagephoto/3245668.html

via http://community.livejournal.com/vintagephoto/3246017.html

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/24492651@N06/2833169028/in/pool-45491760@N00

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/minkus123/2811239398/in/pool-80863087@N00

via http://community.livejournal.com/ruguru/729188.html

via http://community.livejournal.com/ruguru/729188.html

via http://community.livejournal.com/ruguru/729188.html

via http://community.livejournal.com/ruguru/729188.html

via http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/09/message-to-readers.php

via http://community.livejournal.com/vintagephoto/3238143.html

via http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2008/09/a-reminder-from.html

via http://pics.livejournal.com/carkusha/pic/00070x53.jpg

Genius.

« » ‹ › ‘ ’ “ ” „ ‚ £ ¥ € ¬ ¶ @ § ® © ™ ° × π ± √ ‰ Ω ∞ ≈ ¹ ² ³ ½ ¼ ¾ - – — ⁄ \ { } † ‡ … • ●  ⌘ ⌥ ↩ ⌃ ⇧ ¿ ⁂ ☞ ∴ ∵ ‽ ◊ ※ ← → ↑ ↓ ✔ ☼ ♠ ♦ ♣ ♥ ♪ ♫ ♯ Å å Ä ä Ö ö Ø ø Æ æ Ü ü ß é

The Washington Post reviews Neal Stephenson's new novel, Anathem.

Oh, Anathem will certainly be admired for its intelligence, ambition, control and ingenuity. But loved? Enjoyed? The book reminds me of Harold Brodkey's The Runaway Soul from 17 years ago -- much anticipated, in places quite brilliant, but ultimately grandiose, overwrought and pretty damn dull.

The New York Times reviews Suze Rotolo's book, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties.

Dating a voice-of-a-generation rock star probably sounds like fun, but ex-girlfriend memoirs are generally filled with put-downs. Rock stars cheat, they fabricate, they flex their egos and they steal your grooming products. Or worse: for Suze Rotolo, dating a young Bob Dylan even contributed to a “crackup” she describes in “A Free­wheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties.”

The Montreal Gazette reviews Haruki Murakami's latest book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley talks to Billboard about her second solo album, Acid Tongue (out September 23rd).

The Nation reviews Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence.

Billboard examines the growing trend of pop music concerts after professional baseball games.

Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch blog interviews Brad Meltzer about his novel, The Book of Lies.

To some people, the idea of blending a Biblical story with a comic book one might seem kinda apples and oranges--

But Superman is just as much a mythology story as Cain and Abel. It's just two mythologies and me playing with the overlaps between them. Because like it or not, that's all comics is, it's our modern day American mythology. You can't discuss Superman without discussing America....[But] in truth, the book is about my own father-son story. That's all I'm writing about here. Cain and Abel and the Bible and comic books, are all curtains in the room, but it's not the heart of the room; it just dresses it up nice.

The Charleston City Paper reviews Chuck Klosterman's debut novel, Downtown Owl.

Pitchfork offers an mp3, "Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is in Another Castle," from John Darnielle & Kaki King's Black Pear Tree EP collaboration.

io9 lists the best future dystopias where the liberals have won.

The A.V. Club interviews author Paul Auster.

The A.V. Club: The story of A Man In The Dark begins literally with a man in the dark, telling himself a story to cope with his insomnia. How did this story come to you? Do different stories come to you in different ways?

Paul Auster: It's always a mystery to me, I have to confess. I've never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there's nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It's coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don't even know where they are. If it's compelling, if it throws me against the wall, then I get interested in it and start exploring it. If it seems to keep holding up, I go deeply into it and try to write it.

At DVD Talk, Jamie Rich reviews The Big Lebowski: 10th Anniversary Edition (out next Tuesday).

Movies like The Big Lebowski are one-time deals. There are no films that precede them that anticipate their arrival, and none after that can touch on their unique greatness. In creating the Dude, the Coens Brothers have given film fans a lasting character whose world is our own, just refracted through the residue at the bottom of tumbler full of Kahlua and milk. This new 10th Anniversary Edition brings together the previously released DVD features with some new ones to finally give the film's fans a more comprehensive package. Well worth an upgrade.

WNYC's Soundcheck features an interview and in-studio performance by Gabriel Kahane.

NPR offers excerpts and reviews Dash Shaw's excellent graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button.

Thao Nguyen plays a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR.

T-shirt of the day: "I'm the grammar snob about whom your mother warned you."

also at Largehearted Boy:

daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
this week's CD releases

tags: music books popculture indie news

Today's free and legal mp3 downloads:

Cowboy Junkies: 2000-06-04, San Diego [mp3,ogg,flac]
"Dead Flowers (Rolling Stones cover)" [mp3]
other Cowboy Junkies posts at Largehearted Boy

Jenny Lewis: "Acid Tongue" [mp3] from Acid Tongue (out September 23rd)
other Jenny Lewis posts at Largehearted Boy

My Morning Jacket: 2008-09-03, Washington [mp3,ogg,flac]
"Lay Low" [mp3]
My Morning Jacket: 2008-08-30, Orlando [mp3,ogg,flac]
"Two Halves" [mp3]
other My Morning Jacket posts at Largehearted Boy

Restavrant: "Joe D" [mp3] from Returns To the Tomb of Guiliano Medici (out September 30th)
other Restavrant posts at Largehearted Boy

Smashing Pumpkins: 2008-03-29, Sydney [mp3,ogg,flac]
"Cherub Rock" [mp3]
Smashing Pumpkins: 2000-05-24, Berkeley [mp3,ogg,flac]
"Pug" [mp3]
Smashing Pumpkins: 2000-05-02, Greensboro [mp3,ogg,flac]
"With Every Light" [mp3]
other Smashing Pumpkins posts at Largehearted Boy

Tristan Prettyman: 2008-08-09, Toronto [mp3,ogg,flac]
"California Girl" [mp3]
other Tristan Prettyman posts at Largehearted Boy

A Whisper in the Noise: 2007-06-23, Minneapolis [mp3,ogg,flac]
"" [mp3]
other Whisper in the Noise posts at Largehearted Boy

Today's free and legal recordings of live shows, rarities, and demos available via bittorrent:

Bon Iver: 2008-03-13, Austin [flac]*
other Bon Iver posts at Largehearted Boy

Gutter Twins: 2008-08-23, Warsaw [flac]*
other Gutter Twins posts at Largehearted Boy

Jason Isbell: 2008-08-22, Denver [flac]
other Jason Isbell posts at Largehearted Boy

MGMT: 2008-08-17, Lowlands festival [pal dvd]*
other MGMT posts at Largehearted Boy

Neil Young: 2008-08-28, Horsens [flac]*
Neil Young: 1997-08-01, Somerset [flac]*
other Neil Young posts at Largehearted Boy

Okkervil River: 2008-08-09, Haldern [pal dvd]*
other Okkervil River posts at Largehearted Boy

Radiohead: 2003-05-28, BBC Radio 1 [flac]*
other Radiohead posts at Largehearted Boy

REM: 2008-08-24, Manchester [flac]*
other REM posts at Largehearted Boy

Wilco: 2008-08-23, Bend [flac]
other Wilco posts at Largehearted Boy

*registration required

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous mp3 and bittorrent downloads

2008 Lollapalooza downloads
2008 Bonnaroo downloads
2008 Coachella music downloads
2008 SXSW music downloads and streams
2007 Austin City Limits Music Festival downloads
other music festival downloads

Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and album streams from weekly CD releases)
weekly CD release lists

tags: music download indie mp3 bittorrent

I happened across a screendump of a 4Chan thread today that had lolcat pictures that matched up with the lyrics of Enter Sandman. Someone posted a comment saying that they’d love to see it with the soundtrack. So, I fired up iMovie and bingo: Lolcat Sandman.

Of course, the music copyright is owned by Metallica, but I actually had to go and buy it from iTunes because I’d deleted my “unofficially obtained” copy a while back.

Well, I wasn't wrong about it being a bit noisy outside: six people have been shot in the current gang violence in the Mission this week. It's latino gangs and Hell's Angels, apparently. They should fly some mods and rockers over.

I wonder if in fifty years, there'll be historical Surenos re-enactment societies? Maybe that's what West Side Story was.

I'm punch-drunk from coding to a rather dumb self-imposed deadline. Still, thank you, Arthur Koziel, for this tip about creating administrative users when you start a database from scratch in Django. I've been doing a lot of that, reinventing my databases. One of the wonders of these modern, whipper-snapper frameworks is that you don't just refactor your code -- you refactor your database schema too. Thank god, too: SQL has always filled me with the heebie-jeebies, while I've been slowly finding myself become more OOPish as life goes on. I'm such a fan of refactoring, because I so badly need it: I'm a veery slow coder, and a scattergun debugger, which both combine to leave me with a tendency to hack solutions under time pressure. Just putting in enough support to do real refactoring at least lets me tidy up my code a little before anyone else sees it.

I'm really, really, enjoying Django, though. They were wise to keep it cooking for so long before 1.0: there's so much there (like the test fixtures and contenttypes) which you find yourself reaching for before you even know they're there. The documentation is great, but I'm also enjoying the general pedagological bent of its supporters and their wider group of companions. If you're somebody who is thinking about playing with these frameworks, you could do worse than check out the videos on Show Me Do, the Bollywood of screencasting python tutorials.

Okay, on that slightly hallucinatory note, I'll grab some sleep.

Change The Thought calls disestablishmentarian a twenty dollar word — and since this shirt’s going rate is fifteen bucks, I’m pretty sure this qualifies as a flat-out bargain.

Of course some of y’all will still cry about how expensive fifteen dollars is. Yeah, I hear you. The US economy sucks right now. Still, you ought to keep in mind that this is printed on a comfy American Apparel tee that retails for seventeen simoleons without anything on it. So thru the wonders of bulk orders and screenprinting, you’re not only getting a shirt that costs less — you’re also getting something that is way less boring than a plain old t-shirt.

$15.00 | PayPal | URL | M: S - XL

I didn’t get a picture to capture this morning’s divination moment, but it will stay in my head. A puzzle piece is always appropriate. I’ve been finding a lot of them lately, as well as playing cards. So this post won’t go pictureless.

On the way out this morning, I heard a loud burp, really loud. When I looked up a man across the street, who I suspect made the noise, just stepped in something, turned his foot to see what he stepped in and stumbled.

I helped myself a lot today by staying quiet, even though the indigestion is very, very uncomfortable.

At 3 meals a day you could live off of 4 buckets for a under a dollar a day.

With a shelf life of 20 years on “THE BUCKET” you could live of buckets for under 6 grand.

Please Please Please someone turn this opportunity into a reality TV show. I AM LOOKING AT YOU JAPAN.

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferro_ud/2287610727/

My friend Mat Honan amused and beguiled you a few months ago with Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle. As is the course of such things, he got a book deal for his efforts, despite having been responsible for the onslaught of unfunny ripoffs of the site which followed his success.

But, I take some very small satisfaction in this whole thing because Mat very graciously credits me (both in the book and in conversation) with having helped spread the word about his site. It's just another in the long string of goofy web memes for which I have become an unofficial ambassador. It's a good thing there's no Hell, or surely I'd rot in it for all that I've done.

At any rate, Mat's quite an entertaining and engaging interviewee, as evidenced by his recent stint on Internet Superstar, and as there's a totally gratuitous and flattering mention of me at about the four-minute mark, I felt obliged to link to it here.

You can buy Mat's book at Amazon and other reputable booksellers near you.

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/46484428@N00/2298225029/

via http://community.livejournal.com/_wtf/921103.html

via http://community.livejournal.com/art_links/862587.html

Spin Magazine's piece covering the rise and fall, and perhaps second rise of D'Angelo has been lingering in my mind for weeks. As you might expect, I was a fan of D'Angelo's from the start.

And that's true even though I was clowning him when he got arrested. To tell the truth, I hadn't quite realized just how far the man had fallen. If you look at the comments on my post from three years ago, you can see that even then people were saying they just wanted the man to get well so they could hear more of his work. ?uestlove articulates the challenge here better than anyone, though: "The new minstrel movement in hip-hop doesn't allow the audience to believe the artist is smart."

It's a particularly striking observation given that Spin's look at D'Angelo mentions in passing how that tension between art and commerce has affected so many of the acts I love. The world of R&B success demands either heaven or hell -- you either become a preacher and lose all of the sexiness and swagger that made you compelling in the first place. Or worse, you succumb to the demons.

While D'Angelo grew increasingly isolated, the rocky path he was traveling was, ironically enough, quite crowded with like-minded compatriots. At least three of neo-soul's other late'90s leading lights — Maxwell, [Erykah] Badu, and [Lauryn] Hill — have spent much of the new millennium on the sidelines.

Hill's struggles have been well documented: She followed her 1998 breakthrough, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, with an MTV Unplugged set four years later that felt like the soundtrack to a real-time nervous breakdown. She's yet to offer a second studio album and, apart from some aborted Fugees reunions, occassional shows, and involvement with a shady guru, much of her time has apparently been devoted to her family.

Badu released her triple-platinum debut, Baduizm, in 1997 and a successful follow-up, Mama's Gun, three years later, and then said she had writer's block and went on what she dubbed "The Frustrated Artist Tour" in search of inspiration. She eked out a slight EP in 2003 but then was largely silent, until the well-received release of New AmErkykah (Pt. 1 4th World War) last February.

Maxwell's journey probably parallels D'Angelo's most closely. The Brooklyn-born singer released three platinum albums between 1996 and 2001, earning frequent comparisons to D'Angelo, then seemed to disappear entirely. A new album, Black Summers' Night, was originally slated for spring 2004 but has been delayed repeatedly. Some close to him suggest that, like D'Angelo, he's been wrestling with a rather ill-fitting public image as a sex god.

There's much, much more in the story, but it's almost impossible to overstate how much a lot of us had put our faith for the future of soul music in a small group of talented artists. A decade later, it almost seems as if no one's even trying to carry the torch anymore.

We'll see how it goes; I've got tickets to see Maxwell in concert next month, and I'm still holding out for that new D'Angelo record.

• If you like music, you should own D'Angelo's Voodoo.
• Maxwell is active on MySpace.
• ?uestlove, the heart of The Roots and the standing leader of the neo-soul movement, is a born blogger.
• And Erykah's "Honey" is one of the best videos of the year:

via http://community.livejournal.com/darkvictoria/615418.html

via http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/01/martin-parr-exhibition-at-co-b.php

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/khaledak/2285954348/

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/polgaroid/64448909/

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/polgaroid/76287406/

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/dyrkwyst/2818067520/in/pool-19611886@N00

• Twitter API Rate Limiting : ‘Clients are allowed 70 requests per 60 sixty minute time period, starting from their first request. This is enough to make just over one request per minute, per hour, which should meet the needs of most applications.’ Fingers crossed this can be lifted for twit.ie
  (tags: aggregation rate-limiting api http twitter twit.ie)

• Pipes: BBC AOD filter : select a BBC radio show, get an RSS feed of “Audio on Demand” RealAMRadio files as they are posted. (”radio4″ works as the station ID for that station)
  (tags: bbc radio4 radio realaudio via:hublog)

• Work at Home . . . for a Criminal? : good round-up of how those “work at home” scam spams work
  (tags: work spam scams fraud teleworking telecommuting)

billturner posted a photo:

via http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2297/2304187726_9b3be6b373_o.jpg

I knew they wanted her to be the spokesmodel for a brand of condom