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The New Internet Eclectic
By | December 3, 2007
Around here, Thanksgiving no sooner left than winter came in like a lion. And right around the corner, Christmas. That once hallowed and sacred holiday now unmercifully commercial event that stores have been hyping for at least a month already. But hey, if you can’t beat ‘em…the Eclectic Guide To Shopping is being rolled out. Along that same vein, ideaThreads is a new online companion site all about Wearable Passions (for the long tail). Check it out.
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This month I encourage you to delve deeper into:
Blog Roll: Stephen Fry on Fame; Post Secret; and Scott Aaronson
Cooking: Miracle Fruit; Differing opinions and info about stock; unlocking garlic’s benefits;The Best Food Blogs
Design: The Art of Ikebana on Numbers; Happy Birthday Helvetica; Prix Ars Electronica; Managing Design
eMail: The right to sit at a desk
History: The Psychadelic Secrets of Santa
Language Arts: The Fire of Life; Rotten English; A Mock Columnist, Amok; Locavore; Illiest; The Wrecking Ball of Innovation; A Lecture about English
Music: A Rant of Pachelbel; Harry Belefonte; Convert Pixels to Music; Bird Compositions; Hit It; Compare and Contrast
Pics: Vanity Fair Portraits; Living in Three Centuries; Icebergs; Conceptual Photography
Science: Relationship between stress and gray hair; Best Inventions 2007; Red Wine/Diabetes; Female Fickleness; Collective Attention
Shopping: A kind of Billboard Charts of gadgets; Senz umbrella test; Something Not To Open; Twenty online holiday gift guides
Spin Zone: Sex, Art & Transformation; Wages of Confrontation; Terrorism & Radicalization; Chinese Mercantilism in Africa; Populism
Travel: The 10 Best Places You Never Heard Of
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This Week’s Web Bytes
Net.Art is a place where you can “create” your own artwork. Typing in ieclectic yielded the above…
101 simple appetizers in 20 minutes or less. (NYT)
A-Z of Big Ideas (Good Magazine)
Peter Sellers reciting the Beatles Hard Days Night in the style of Shakesperear’s Richard III (Kottke)
The Tale of the 14 Christmas Ringers. (MeFi)
12 Days of Christmas Cutbacks. (Presurfer)
Christopher Walken dancing to Weapon of Choice
Then, A Very Walken Christmas.
The “Free” business model of Chris Anderson. (Wired)
Bookfinder’s Top 10 US books out of print (Fimoculous)
Working Poor Finder. The key, it appears, is to locate your Payday loan business by triangulating the proximity of liquor stores, pawn shops, and gun shops.
Haven’t yet gotten around to writing Christmas Cards? Quick, go to the Bureau of Communication, fill out the Holiday/Christmas form, and send away.
Hitchcock on Hitchcock includes, among other nuggets, the origin of “MacGuffins.” (MeFi)
IBM unveils the 5 Innovations that will change the way we live in the next 5 years.
Fortune’s 101 Dumbest Moments In Business
What’s your karma? Take the test.
Drive someone insane with postcards. (Coudal) “During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing. These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.”
Previous Web Bytes
Richard Dawkins wishes us all Happy Newton Day! For better or worse, ours is historically a Christian culture, and children who grow up ignorant of biblical literature are diminished, unable to take literary allusions, actually impoverished. I am no lover of Christianity, and I loathe the annual orgy of waste and reckless reciprocal spending, but I must say I’d rather wish you “Happy Christmas” than “Happy Holiday Season”. Fortunately, this is not the only choice: 25 December is the birthday of one of the truly great men ever to walk the earth, Sir Isaac Newton. His achievements might justly be celebrated wherever his truths hold sway. And that means from one end of the universe to the other. Happy Newton Day! Are there any other product design nuts reading this post? If so, you’re going to love the Tarati (Sanskrit: through).
Via JWalkBlog:
A man in Chicago calls his son in New York the day before Christmas and says, ‘I hate to ruin Christmas this year, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough.’
‘Pop, what are you talking about?’ the son screams. ‘We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,’ the father says. ‘We’re sick of each other, and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Atlanta and tell her.’
Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. ‘Like hell they’re getting divorced,’ she shouts, ‘I’ll take care of this.’ She calls Chicago immediately, and screams at her father, ‘You are NOT getting divorced. Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back and we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don’t do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?’ and hangs up.
The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘they’re coming for Christmas and paying their own way.’
Hear voices? It may be an ad. (Ad Age)
Then again, maybe we’re all just living on a speck…Horton Hears A Who.
Neil Gaiman stages a marriage proposal. (GrowABrain)
Michael Schumacher Drives Taxi In Airport Dash. The seven-time Formula One world champion took over from his taxi driver in order to make it to the airport in time for a flight, it has emerged. Cabbie Tuncer Yilmaz watched in awe as the racing legend, 38, showed him how his job ought to be done. “I found myself in the passenger seat, which was strange enough, but to have ‘Schumi’ behind the wheel of my cab was incredible,” Mr Yilmaz told German newspaper the Muenchner Abendzeitung.
Andy Warhol meets the Jetsons in this trailer for Speed-Racer.
The 70 Ideas That Made 2007 What It Was. (NYT)
Where commercials come from (George Lois) - via Adland.
Duelity is a split screen look at creationism vs. Darwiniasm.
Unrelated, but from same source, Merry Christmas. (Unless Christmas makes me blue…(MeFi)
On a roll, The Guardian has “one man’s terrifying vision… ”
Gospel Truth: AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples. It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.
So, how fast can you type? Take the test and find out.
Find free Christmas songs online. (WebUpon)No country for old men photo set. (NYT)
The Story of Stuff is making the internet rounds. It’s all about the whole cycle of production to consumption - a linear system on a finite planet. The resource section of her site has two pdf’s documenting her claims.
Then, here’s a music vid making the rounds: Here Comes Another Bubble.
Video of cat in zero gravity, where research and animal cruelty collide with comedy gold. (Fark)
Charlie Brooker’s hilarious, rude, obnoxious and downright watchable Screen Wipe: “10 Biggest Cocks and she cocks in advertising”; “10 Biggest Cocks In Advertising”. (Boing Boing)
Just in case you want to feel a bit more manly, here’s 25 Skills Every Man Should Know.
The Three Ball Mills Mess: It is considered somewhat of a milestone in juggling, “a mind-boggling pattern of circling balls, crossing and uncrossing hands, and unexpected catches.”
The Key To Reserva is Scorcese filming a “lost” Hitchcock script trailer for an upcoming film that, frankly, looks brilliant! Now, if only it were an upcoming film, instead of being a commercial…which documents how advertising is moving on and, thankfully, truly entertains.
Take the What Do The Holiday’s Mean To You quiz…for me: For you, the holidays are about emotional connections and bonds. You are happiest being around those you love.
You celebrate the holidays in an over the top style. If something is cute, you’ll buy it. People end up with a lot of gifts from you - and your house is like a holiday wonderland, full of decorations.
During the holidays, you like to feel cozy and comfortable. You’re happy to stay inside with a roaring fire and a warm drink.
You think the holidays should be energetic and packed with activities. You’ll double up on caffeine and sugar if that’s what it takes to get you through them.
Your favorite holiday memories strongly evoke your senses. You are vividly aware of all the tastes, smells, and sounds of the holidays.
Christmas Traditions From Around The World. Link dump of sites that feature Christmas traditions.
How do you visualize time? More to the point, if you had to create a visual of time, what would it look like?
The Top 100 Weather Moments.Previous Web Bytes
Don’t Give Up On Vista. (ad making the rounds)
Don’t speed in Utah (vid making the rounds)
Then, the Top 10 George Bush Moments.
Information graphics are starting to go mainstream, if this Australian commercial for an online dating service is any indication.
Dave Hill is a funny guy who gets schooled in the art of actor movement.
Go Around Twice If You’re Happy (MeFi)
Here is the two billionth (2,000,000,000) photo uploaded to Flickr.
Orangina spot (French version) is making it’s way around the net lately. This is the longer, sexier version.
Then, from Things Magazine, here’s a Morlant champaign poster somewhat on theme (monther’s milk).
7 Incredible Natural Phenomena. Venezuela’s everlasting storm, Honduras’ rain of fishes, Morocco’s climbing goats, Kerala’s red rain, Brazilan’s longest wave on Earth, Denmark’s black Sun, and Idaho’s fire rainbow.
Why do wet things turn dark? It probably isn’t what you’re thinking…
It’s that time of year…NYC dresses up it’s windows (picture set).
Other6 - Some people find God in Church on Sundays. But that doesn’t answer the question of the other 6 days. Join and share where you find G0d the other days of the week.
Thank you for using the internet.
Caution: speeding down this lane could be fatal. (Dvorak uncensored)
Information graphics are starting to go mainstream, if this Australian commercial for an online dating service is any indication.
Dave Hill is a funny guy who gets schooled in the art of actor movement.
Go Around Twice If You’re Happy (MeFi)
Here is the two billionth (2,000,000,000) photo uploaded to Flickr.
Orangina spot (French version) is making it’s way around the net lately. This is the longer, sexier version.
Then, from Things Magazine, here’s a Morlant champaign poster somewhat on theme (monther’s milk).
7 Incredible Natural Phenomena. Venezuela’s everlasting storm, Honduras’ rain of fishes, Morocco’s climbing goats, Kerala’s red rain, Brazilan’s longest wave on Earth, Denmark’s black Sun, and Idaho’s fire rainbow.
Why do wet things turn dark? It probably isn’t what you’re thinking…
It’s that time of year…NYC dresses up it’s windows (picture set).
Other6 - Some people find God in Church on Sundays. But that doesn’t answer the question of the other 6 days. Join and share where you find G0d the other days of the week. The curse of consciousness is an interesting look at us all. (OneManCan)
The Sultan’s Elephant (part 2) is a giant marrionette show put on by the French street theater company Royal de Luxe. It has been performed in several European cities. (Kirchersociety)
Talk Talk has a commercial worth a view
iPhone parody at CollegeHumor
The Wisdom Academy compiles global vital stats
Viral video of the moment: Cadbury Gorilla vs. Wonderbra. (If you missed the original Gorilla video, click here.)
A terrific mime, Johann Lipowitz “That’s My Home.”
Data visualization of airline flight congestion for a single day prepared by Aaron Koblin for the FAA.
New Guiness ad ends with “Good things come to those who wait”
Ponder About has this great BBC vid about Heidegger’s Being And Time.
Topics: December |
June 12th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
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