Rationalist Rap

RDM turned me on to the rapper Baba Brinkman through The Rap Guide to Evolution. Nice animation!

Flow Of History (Recommendation)

My ancient history teacher has brought his cause-and-effect teachings to the web at The Flow of History. Although there is a lot of simplification involved, I always loved the contextualization his flowcharts provided to whatever nugget of technology, social movement, or political operation we were trying to digest. It is nice to see that he's made all of his hard work available; imagine a world where all our teachers invested this much time and energy in their students.

Nina Paley's Film (Recommendation)

Probably my only reader who goes back far enough to remember Nina is GCE. She moved westward where she works in comics and animation, and in fact she's now made a film, Sita Sings the Blues. Its style is pretty far removed from what I think of as "Nina Classic", which shows what a talented artist she is.

1776 (Recommendation)

I think that Robot Chicken is my favorite television show since the lamented Firefly. Here it is spoofing my least favorite movie of recent years, the execrable 300. NSFW.

Tufte (Recommendation)

I'm a big fan of Edward Tufte, and managed to make off with our selection of Tufte books during the downsizing of NovaNET. His web site is always interesting; recently he posted some remarks on the iPhone interface, demonstrating similar design principles from his '97 book.

Liquid Sculpture (Recommendation)

Martin Waugh's photographs of water sculptures are probably as much of a testament to the shutter speed of modern cameras than to Waugh's extraordinary commitment to the shot, but they are still pretty cool. Waugh also has an interesting blog about his work process for those of a photographic bent.

Gashlycrumb Star Trek (Recommendation)

Shaenon K. Garrity has drawn a brief adaptation of the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" in the style of Edward Gorey.

Friendly Fish Food (Recommendation)

I gave away my last fish wallet card a while ago, so I went looking for a replacement. The Blue Ocean Institute has up-to-date information about environmentally sound seafood, and provide a little wallet PDF to print out and carry with you. Luckily, most of the good stuff is in the green. The only thing to stop you from enjoying some nice calamari is that squid are so darn cute!

The Bastard Fairies (NSFW Reblog)

I'm not sure how enamored I am by their music...it is tolerable, but has yet to really grab me...but I'm taken by Robin Davey and Yellow Thunder Woman (her real name), who together are The Bastard Fairies. All three of the preceding links may have slightly NSFW chunks. They have an attitude towards pop music I can really get behind, and are giving away their album, Memento Mori, for free on their web site; give it a listen if you are so inclined. Videos for some of their songs are on their MySpace page as well as all over YouTube.

Here is a comment from Yellow Thunder Woman about today's pop music scene (NSFW if read aloud): "There is nothing more I hate than that fucking angsty music about how some whore broke your heart or how the world has been extra harsh to you. I fucking hate that skater boy music, Average Latrine can kiss my ass. Suburban neophytes trying to claim they had a hard life because why? Mummy and daddy had too much money, or your education was too good for your retarded brain, or your healthcare policy meant that you only got a private room with a TV for 2/3rds of your hospital stay when big brother accidentally broke your stupid leg with his motorized scooter. Fuck, no wonder these dumbasses are so desperately trying to sound like someone else, because if they sounded like themselves it would just be one continuous whine." This thought is further mined from its profanity-laced vein in their blog.

More and more neophyte pop bands seem to be adopting similar attitudes. I hope this doesn't relegate them to being such marginal commercial concerns that they can't keep making music. As someone who won't give money to the RIAA, such bands are a significant chunk of my pool of available potential new tunes.

Steeleye Span (Recommendation)

At dinner tonight, SAM reminded me that I had promised him a little more information about the best bits of Steeleye Span after I played some of their stuff during his last visit. Steeleye Span is a British folk-rock group whose best incarnations were built around the talented voice of Maddy Prior, the better fated version of Sandy Denny.

My recommended discography subset, in descending order of importance:

• Please to See the King, for its glorious entirety, although the bonus tracks on the various CD versions are not that glorious.
• Hark! The Village Wait, mostly for" A Calling-on Song", "Blackleg Miner", "Dark-Eyed Sailor", and "Twa Corbies". Along with "Leatherwing Bat", "Twa Corbies" is a traditional song I obsessively collect versions of...
• Parcel of Rogues, for "One Misty Moisty Morning", "Alison Gross", "Robbery with Violins", "Rogues in a Nation", "Cam Ye O'er Frae France", and "Hares on The Mountain".
• All Around My Hat, perhaps their most successful release, for "Black Jack Davy", "Hard Times of Old England", "The Wife of Usher's Well", "All Around My Hat", and "Bachelors Hall".
  
• Commoner's Crown, for "Little Sir Hugh", "Long Lankin", "Demon Lover", and "Elf Call".
  
• Below the Salt, for "Gaudete", "John Barleycorn", and "Saucy Sailor".

This covers most of what I consider their must-have songs. Only a few really great numbers escape, like "Fighting for Strangers" (from Rocket Cottage) or "Seven Hundred Elves" (from Now We Are Six). A good compilation like Original Masters hits most of those.

War On Science (Recommendation)

Did you have a good night's sleep? Having a great day? Blood pressure too low?

You should read The Republican War on Science. It will put your day back on track for you.

Leslie Levings (Recommendation)

Stumbled across these sculptures today by Leslie Levings. Only a few of the things in her galleries are actually for sale, which is too bad, because NDM would have loved one of these cephalopods.

The Meatrix (Recommendation)

The Meatrix is a short animation about how most meat is produced in the United States. It is light on information but clever, short, and worth watching. If you like the first one there are some sequels as well. And if you are interested in the message about agribusiness and sustainability, there is a lot more information at Sustainable Table.

The animation was produced by Free Range Studios, who have done a couple of other progressive animated pieces.

Rameniac (Recommendation)

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that if I like a particular food everybody else must as well. One of these foods is ramen, and Rameniac is the beginning and end of ramen on the web. If, like me, you are woefully uneducated about Japan's local ramen traditions, Rameniac is a great remediator.

More prosaically, It is also the key to the best instant ramen available at your local Asian food store.

Getty Center (Recommendation)

Back from our little hiking vacation... It looks like the dogs didn't miss us nearly as much as the cats did.
Yesterday before flying back from Long Beach we squeezed in a visit to the Getty Center, which we'd never been to before. Their exhibitions ranged from astoundingly poor to decent, but the architecture was stunning. If only it had a better smogscape to vaunt over!

Paper Met-Something-With-Hoses (Recommendation)

Peter Callesen is a Danish artist who builds scenes out of paper, leaving his structures attached to their sheet of origin with the void their creation leaves stretched out like a shadow.
Some of his works are very simple. Some are astoundingly complex.

Kinetic Sculptures (Recommendation)

This video (with unfortunate audio) showcases a really cool kinetic sculpture by Arthur Ganson. His web site has a better, but less embeddable, video of the same device. Ganson's whimsical contraptions are even more hand-built than one might think, as he manufactures many of his own gears out of wire.

PostSecret (Recommendation)

Every once in a while there is a card on PostSecret that really speaks to me. The PostSecret project collects postcards which people send in to its curator; the most interesting are published on the blog and some make it into its coffee table books.

Missouri Botanical Garden (Recommendation)

We visited the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis this weekend with EJB, his mother, and his daughter. It was a nice change of pace from the excellent Chicago Botanic Garden, and even held up acceptably to EJB's mother's marvelous private garden that I just posted about.
A non-vegetal highlight was a beautiful hanging Chihuly in the visitor's center at the garden's entrance.
In the line of plants, I really liked the asparagus fern (Asparagus densiflorus 'Myersii')...
The Peruvian golden shrimp plant (Pachystachys lutea), which I'd never seen before...
The king's spear asphodel (Asphodeline lutea), which had neat little fruits that yield a yellow dye...
This dramatic Amazonian elephant's ear (Alocasia x amazonica)...
A wonderful dense stand of bamboo... I really need to get some bamboo for our yard, but it is so expensive!
There were also many wonderful stones in the Chinese garden. The most dramatic were the Taihu stones. I'm not sure if these limestones always come from Lake Taihu, or just get that name because of their prevalence in that area. Maybe one day we'll get one of our own -- after we've got a nice thicket of bamboo going, of course...
I'm not sure what kind of stone this aggregate is. Maybe CRB will chime in with an answer? It is natural, but does share a lot of characteristics with concrete.
There was a really nice bridge in the Chinese garden...
The bridge to an island in the Japanese garden was also very picturesque, but closed to the public.
The waters around these gardens were full of koi and other carp. These were some of the largest such fish I have seen anywhere, and must be very old.

Jonathan Coulton (Recommendation)

Jonathan Coulton has been releasing a song every week this year as part of his Thing a Week podcast. Many are related to this series of tubes we use, and they are all released under a Creative Commons license, which made me love him a little bit even before I listened to his music. The embedded song above is Flickr, and really cracked me up. I also enjoyed Code Monkey -- that song has a slightly-related World of Warcraft machinima laid over it by someone else.