Is there anything you can't find at Wikipedia? (Yes Manuel, we know what you think.)
Wikipedia's Featured desktop backgrounds category has some really nice images. See, for example, Petrified wood closeup 2, or Peacekeeper-missile-testing. Nice.
Jon Caramanica talks to Andre Braugher, who hasn't shown up on our screens half as often as I'd like since his days playing Detective Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street:
"I was very concerned about the Bob Denver effect from playing Pembleton," Mr. Braugher said one recent afternoon while nursing a double espresso at a hotel bar in Midtown Manhattan. "It was a terrific role, but if I'm pegged that way for the rest of my career, it's a problem."
Appropriately, the opening of "Thief," his new series, which makes its debut on FX on March 28, delivers what might be the final blow. Mr. Braugher plays Nick Atwater, leader of a small crew that specializes in flamboyant yet meticulous thievery. In the scene, they're in a subterranean bank vault in San Francisco when, midheist, Nick's cellphone rings. It's his new wife, Wanda, calling from a police station back at home in New Orleans, where his teenage stepdaughter, Tammi — with whom he has, at best, an icy détente — is being detained for her role in a petty larceny. While his partners load up duffel bags with jewels and cash, Atwater smooth-talks the cop on the other end of the line into letting the girl off with a warning, barely concealing his glee at the situation's incongruity.
Yes, I can definitely see Braugher bringing that scene off.
Please can some UK channel buy this show. I enjoy ITV4's Sunday night rerun of classic Homicide (currently showing the middle of season 3) but it'd be nice to see something new from Braugher.
[Via PopPolitics]
A man who was surely destined for a life in dentistry: Dr Randall W Toothtaker.
Charles Solomon has noticed a trend in modern American animated feature films:
CALL them cellphone films: in "Chicken Little," "Madagascar," "Hoodwinked" and other recent American animated features, the characters chatter incessantly, as if they're trying to use up their last 500 minutes from Verizon. The audience isn't subjected to this barrage of words and jokes because the characters have something to say, but because filmmakers and studio executives are afraid to let them be quiet.
[...]
There's something to what Solomon says, but I think there's another factor contributing to the trend: the tendency for any just about every high-profile animated feature these days to give lead roles to big name film stars in place of specialist voice actors. (On which subject see, for example, this post from last summer about an interview with Futurama's Billy West.)
If you're going to pay multi-million dollar salaries to get big stars on board and hand them a role where their charming smile or killer bod or talent for physical comedy isn't evident on-screen, surely you're going to want to render their only recognisable feature – their voice – as prominent as possible? I'm not saying it's the sole cause of this trend by any means, but I can't believe it's immaterial to the film producers' calculations.
College admissions in the 21st century apparently involves podcasting your acceptance letter:
Fitchburg State College believes that a modern student needs a modern acceptance letter.
That’s why the college’s Admissions Office is planning to use podcast technology to alert its accepted students for the fall 2006 semester. By the end of this month, more than 1,000 accepted freshmen will receive an e-mail that includes a link to an iTunes podcast that will feature Fitchburg State President Dr. Robert Antonucci telling them the good news.
[...]
Bit of a shame if you prefer Napster or one of the other Windows Media-based music stores…
[Via MetaFilter]
Emperor Palpatine's minions have taken Paris:
Not such a long time ago, in a galaxy south-east of Paris, there was a battle between myth and reality. The Empire really had struck back – at least, in the vision of French photographer Cedric Delsaux.
[...]
Surprisingly effective work.
[Via GromBlog]
Ben Goldacre criticises Britain's schools for peddling pseudoscience. No, not Intelligent Design: Brain Gym.
While all the proper grown up public intellectuals like Rod Liddle were getting a bee in their bonnet about Creationism being taught in a handful of British schools, I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a vast empire of pseudoscience being peddled in hundreds of everyday state schools up and down the country.
I’ll lower you in gently. It’s called Brain Gym, and it’s a string of very complicated exercises for kids to do which “enhance the experience of whole brain learningâ€. Firstly, they’re very keen on water. “Drink a glass of water before Brain Gym activities. As it is a major component of blood, water is vital for transporting oxygen to the brain.†Heaven forbid that your blood should dry out.
[...]
What's really worrying is the number of commenters – including education professionals – who defend Brain Gym by arguing that having the kids engage in some exercise between desk-bound sessions does help keep them alert. Which is fine and very likely true, but doesn't address Goldacre's point: his objection is to the "scientific" jargon used to justify the practice.
It's rather worrying that some people involved in educating children were apparently lacking the reading comprehension skills required to understand that basic point.
Engadget is two years old, and several of the site's readers baked appropriately-shaped birthday cakes to celebrate.
The Treo cake that "works" is remarkable, but for my money the Aibo is the best of all.
Flapart: replacement dust jackets for books, guaranteed to discourage anyone from sitting next to you on the bus/train to work. For example:
How to Make your Mother a Porn Star
Back Cover Reads: 10 ways to profit off your mother, teach your mom how to love herself and her body.
[Via A Whole Lotta Nothing]
Figurines of soldiers, made entirely from wire. Really nice work.
(I just wish I could find a page that would translate the text on that page from Estonian into English. There's too much text for it to be simple descriptions of the images; I'd be interested to know what else he or she has to say.)
[Via Needcoffee]
If we must have a sequel to last year's underwhelming Fantastic Four film, we can only hope that the producers pick up on this suggestion from Barbelith Underground poster Moonfrog1:
Y'know I always thought that Marvel missed a trick by not having a story where Latveria enters the Eurovsion song contest. There's so much potential – I want to hear Terry Wogan commenting on the proceedings as the FF (dressed as ABBA or Bucks Fizz of course) slug it out with an army of doombots. So much potential…
'It looks like nil pois for you, Doom!'
Reviewing The Complete New Yorker on DVD, Tom Nissley found the only safe strategy for tackling 80 years-worth of quality writing:
The archives are most relaxing because they take you directly into a time you are no longer responsible for. I guess the bad word for that is nostalgia, although in this case there is no yearning for a better day. You are just placed among people about whom you need have no opinion or even awareness. There was a time when you may have felt it necessary to understand Bianca Jagger or even compare yourself to her, but that time is over. And someone else has already decided for you that John Cheever was better at writing stories than his contemporaries, and if that turns out not to be true in one case or another, well then, you've made a discovery. The archives accept, and do not judge.
Commenting on the need to focus on the delights of individual articles, or even sentences, rather than try to get your head round entire issues, Nissley quoted a rather nice sentence from the May 27, 1974 issue as an example of the pleasures to be found in randomly-chosen articles:
"She is a pert engine of destruction."
Unfortunately, Nissley didn't identify the individual so described or the subject of the article in question. A quick google failed to come up with any clues; would any of my well-read readership care to enlighten me – or, failing that, hazard an educated guess – as to which mid-1970s figure might have earned that description?
[Via Blog of a Bookslut]
[...]
Q. Why do Economists provide estimates of inflation to the nearest tenth of a percent?
A. To prove they have a sense of humour.
[...]
"An economist is someone who sees something working in practice and asks whether it would work in principle." (Goldfeld, S. Nov, 1984, The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, p. 611)
[...]
Three econometricians went out hunting and came across a large deer. The first econometrician fired, but missed, by a meter to the left. The second econometrician fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third econometrician didn't fire, but shouted in triumph, "We got it! We got it!"
[...]
Then there's a joke I used to use as my email signature a few years ago which the site's author seems to have missed:
Q: Why did God create economists?
A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.
[Via Rebecca's Pocket]
Pixar have released a new trailer for Cars. It looks good; probably not up there with The Incredibles, but good fun even so.
It turns out that the spoof iPod as packaged by Microsoft advert I linked to the other day was created by Microsoft's in-house packaging team "to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding."
Over at 75º South, a visit to an iceberg graveyard featuring some spectacular photos.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke on the "voluntary" National Identity Register:
[...]
Critics claim ministers are breaking an election promise that the ID scheme would be voluntary by insisting that anyone who renews a passport will also have to get an ID card and be entered on the national register.
But Mr Clarke rejected this charge last night to laughter and jeers of derision from the opposition.
"Passports are voluntary documents," he insisted. "No one is forced to renew a passport if they choose not to do so."
[...]
See also Driving Licenses, Claims for Job Seeker's Allowance, Claims for a Council Tax Rebate and pretty much every other interaction with local or national government. All "voluntary," provided you can live without what you're claiming/applying for. Every one of them sure to require a citizen's presence on the National Identity Register as proof of identity within, oh, five years at the outside.
We can only hope that the usual pattern of spiraling IT costs and incompetent project management will see off the National Identity Register, with some future Home Secretary quietly slipping out an announcement a few years hence that the scope of the register was being scaled back.
[Via Groc's bloggette]
The producers of the big-screen adaptation of Dallas are rounding up one hell of a cast:
Jennifer Lopez has been offered the part of Sue Ellen Ewing, Luke Wilson is negotiating to play Bobby Ewing, John Travolta has an offer to star as J.R. Ewing and Shirley MacLaine is down for the part of Miss Ellie Ewing.
With the possible exception of Luke Wilson, every actor mentioned seems to me to be horribly miscast. Could this be the film that finally kills Hollywood's desire to bring old TV properties to the big screen? Please?
