Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Unicorn
Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Unicorn (by Avanaut)
# Nov 28, 2011
Tomorrow's World Archive
The BBC has put up a collection of clips from Tomorrow’s World, from its first episode in 1965 until its last in 2003.
As a huge nerd who is also a fan of kitsch bullshit and mid-century design, this is absolutely wonderful.
Fussy
Thus at the next cocktail hour, I reached for the bottle of Poland’s finest in my freezer. (Of course I keep vodka in the freezer. As Jack Donaghy would say, “What am I, a farmer?”) Staring at the frosty bottle, however, caused flashbacks to Unpleasant Speculums I Have Known. Instead, I rooted around in a kitchen cupboard for some cheap (but warm) vodka left over from a party. There it was, in a jug. Not even my kids would sneak sips of this stuff. And I didn’t think that that particular area of my body would be especially fussy about brands.
Skeptical of the story going around the internet about teenagers using booze-soaked tampons to get drunk, HuffPo writer Danielle Crittenden decides to try it for herself.
# Nov 26, 2011The History of Mahna Mahna
“Mahna Mahna” is as catchy as a song can be, like a fishing hook stuck in your tympanum. Most people know the tune from a classic sketch that aired during The Muppet Show’s 1976 premiere, in which an orange-haired hepcat unsuccessfully tries to persuade two hot-pink creatures with long, disapproving snouts to get into the “Mahna Mahna” groove. But the bit goes back further, and the song further still, originating in, of all places, an Italian soft-core movie called Sweden: Heaven and Hell.
Well, I’ll be.
Dan Carlin's Common Sense »
Along with his other show, Hardcore History, Dan Carlin’s Common Sense is one of my favourite podcasts right now. In the latest episode, “The Very Velvet Fist”, he gives one of the best takes on the whole “Occupy” movement, especially given the whole UC Davis debacle last weekend.
Seriously, I hope everyone listens to this.
# Nov 25, 2011
Billy Bragg - The Great Leap Forward 2011
I did the maths and worked out that I’ve seen Billy Bragg play live almost every year for the past 15 years. (When I first started, I was consistently one of the youngest in the room. Now, not so much.) One thing I look forward to is seeing how he’ll adapt this one song, Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards, to reflect the current political and cultural landscape. This 2011 version is pretty spot-on.
For comparison, here’s 1988, and 2006 (you can actually see my head in this one - that’s me just around Billy’s right foot).
Less Human Than Human: The Design Philosophy of Apple | The Awl
Link: Less Human Than Human: The Design Philosophy of Apple | The Awl
Two things here.
First, this is just awful. The Awl usually has a fairly high standard for its articles, but this is a hot mess. When it isn’t rambling to the point of incoherency, it’s just plain wrong. For example, the first line of the second paragraph, where the author launches into the actual thesis:
The widespread admiration for Apple’s design ethos is in two parts: one functional, the other aesthetic.
Wrong already. Stephen Fry put it eloquently
Only dullards crippled into cretinism by a fear of being thought pretentious could be so dumb as to believe that there is a distinction between design and use, between form and function, between style and substance
(Although I don’t think anyone who feels like dropping a bit of irrelevant trivia about John Ruskin into an article about Apple’s design philosophy can legitimately invoke the ‘fear of being thought pretentious’ defence.)
Secondly, I don’t know if this is happening to anyone else, but I’m getting this thing where a flash ad for the Chevy Volt is actually hijacking my entire browser session, reloading the entire article in an iframe on the Chevy site. This completely breaks Instapaper and means you can’t send someone the URL without giving the Chevy site an extra hit. Earlier this week, Brent Simmons wrote a terrific article about how certain publications have become almost hostile towards their readers with the amount of intrusive ads on their pages. It’s genuinely disappointing to see The Awl going down the same road.
# Nov 24, 2011