- This story of Prussian Blue, five years later, makes me happy: you can teach hate, but you can’t necessarily make it stick. [via]
- The Incredible Magdeburg Water Bridge in Germany [via]
- 10 Buildings Shaped Like What They Sell [via]
- Along similiar lines, Product Packaging #2:
Surely there must be a name, in advertising parlance, for the figure of the anthropomorphized food item that happily consumes a non-anthropomorphized version of itself? [via]
- And finally, Le Flaneur: Time Lapse Video of Paris Without the People [via]
food
Monday various
- Wow, Marvel sounds like a lousy place to work:
It gets downright messy. Marvel’s new offices have only one restroom for each gender. In a company of hundreds of people. The post-lunch hour piddle line is said to be especially long and people actually stagger their lunches so as not to wait in it. There’s a human resources staff of one for the whole company. Review copies? You’ve got to be kidding. Editors have to purchase copies of the books they worked on. The precious archives of assets have dwindled over the years due to not spending any money to save them.
- Mark Bittman on why the demise (well, okay, just bankruptcy for now) of Friendly’s might not be such a bad thing. I have some fond memories of the chain, more for the ice cream than the food — and certainly not the ambiance or service — but I’m also not going to pretend like this is necessarily bad news.
- Emma to Charles Darwin. He nickname for him is…um…
- Noel Murray defends the Matrix sequels. I’m not sure I’m completely convinced, but he makes a very persuasive argument.
- And finally, how many books on Amazon.com are written by robots? More than you might think. [via]
Monday various
- Diamond World Discovered by Astronomers [via]
- Scrabble makes you smarter, say Calgary researchers [via]
- McMaster research finds link between gut bacteria and behaviour [via]
- 6 Technologies Conspicuously Absent from Sci-Fi Movies [via]
- And finally, Frank Bruni Takes Aim at Anthony Bourdain, Misses the Point:
[Paula] Deen, for all of her folksy, I’m-just-cooking-for-all-of-y’all-who-can’t-afford-microgreens charm, has made many millions thanks to her partnership with Smithfield Foods, the pork producer and processor that’s made headlines for abusing unions, animals, small farmers, and the environment. (It’s also given plenty of campaign contributions to the GOP, that bastion of fairness to the working class.) Deen is no less a member of the culinary aristocracy than Bourdain — they just belong to country clubs with different rules. [via]
Monday various
- Monty Python’s Life of Brian recreated for BBC comic drama. This could be interesting.
- Wendell Pierce, of ‘The Wire’ and ‘Treme,’ to open groceries in New Orleans ‘food deserts’. Good for him! [via]
- Thudfactor in defense of parental leave:
Finally, complaining that parental leave is an unfair “benefit†because not everyone has or wants children is a like complaining psychological medial coverage is unfair because not everyone is insane, or permanent disability coverage is unfair because not everyone is guaranteed to have their legs chewed off by mechanical equipment while on the clock.
- Of course, along the same lines, the sad news that Women have to have a Ph.D. to Make As Much As Men With a B.A.. [via]
- And finally, the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie, Twixt is just bizarre. His plans to “exhibit [it] as a road show, re-editing the movie after every screening based on audience reaction” sounds almost normal by comparison:
Tuesday various
- Dyslexie, A Typeface Designed To Help Dyslexics Read. [via]
- Sure, it was silly and ridiculous when it happened on The Office, but it can be deadly serious when your GPS gives you the wrong information. [via]
Suddenly, that suggestion that mapmakers sometimes intentionally include false information to prevent copyright infringement sounds fairly irresponsible.
- On the pleasures of dining alone [via]
- Speaking of food, this may be the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen. And I watch Bizarre Foods pretty regularly. Seriously, it’s perfectly SFW, but you may want to exercise caution visiting that link, much less watching the video. It’s of a “dancing squid” in a Japanese restaurant, reportedly, and it seems like nothing more than cruelty masquerading as novelty.
I am not a vegetarian, and I’ve eaten squid. I quite enjoyed the calamari I had on Saturday evening, for instance. But I think we have an obligation towards the food that we eat, the animals that we kill to sustain us. If they give up their lives, they deserve a quick an merciful end. They do not deserve to be toyed with like this.
That said, if it’s fake…I’m not sure I feel a whole better about it. Although there’s a lot of evidence and commentary (here as well) to suggest it’s real.
- And finally, on a happier note, Monty Python member Graham Chapman isn’t going to let a little thing like being dead stand in the way of his making a new movie.