Apr 16
Talk about sacrificing for your art. This dude seriously sacrificed:
He started his unusual hobby in 1986 and has continued ever since despite taking on huge debts, being sprayed with battery acid and risking his marriage.
His wife Dong Shuyan nearly left with their two soon after he burnt down the house while working on a robot and went £8,500 into the red.
But, hey, sometimes you have to suffer to do what you love–like make a robot rickshaw.
Apr 14
No, for realz, people. Obama is going to tax the shit out of your wheelchair. And your oxygen tanks. And…SNEEZING! That’s right. You’ll have to pay a tax EVERY TIME YOU SNEEZE. And…
Oh, just watch the video. Which is clearly aimed at old people. It is funny (but, sadly, not on purpose) and like a movie trailer. (Thank you, Wonkette.)
Apr 14
This is why we love you. You don’t just have militias–you have militia babes.
Our forefathers would be so confused.
Apr 8
And they don’t even need oxygen, scientists have now discovered. Check this mind-bogglingness out.
Apr 7
Harold Meyerson has a great/depressing piece in the Washington Post today on how product placement, or “brand integration,” (it’s a serious business these days) has become more important than ever to the funding of film. Now, he says, it’s not enough for one of the main characters to just be drinking a Pepsi. No, now a lawyer Company X has hired sits in on story conferences and suggests ways to integrate the products into scenes, action and dialogue. Sometimes these decisions can even affect casting and plot.
We used to have the studio system, and when it dissolved it was generally considered a good thing. And it was, for a while. But now that movies are more expensive and funding more difficult than ever to secure, the studio system’s starting to look not-so-bad. Most of our greatest movies (IMHO) were produced under it, after all. It doesn’t seem to have stifled creativity in the same way ridiculous amounts of money can.
But as Meyerson points out, no system designed solely to make money works all that well in the arts.
Every system has its own logic, but none of those systems — be they theocratic, feudal, capitalist or communist — has a logic that’s ultimately compatible with that of the artist.
It’s the age old problem, whatever the art, whatever the medium. How to make money and get audience without sacrificing integrity. The push and pull of business vs. creativity. We need both. But do we really need “brand integration?”
Mar 29
Topcultured gives us the top 20 homemade things that probably shouldn’t be.
h/t Andrew Sullivan.
Mar 19
I mean, do you know any full-time writers who are making 50 thousand a year? Me, either. My favorite part is, Times blogger Jennifer Schuessler clearly doesn’t think that’s a whole lot of dough. I know she’s in New York, but I tell you right now, if somebody would pay me 50 thousand bucks a year just to write I would give up my day job and start hanging out at home with the computer and the cats all day. And I live in a city that, while not NEW YORK expensive, is still very damned expensive.
But maybe that’s just me.
Mar 16
Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That’s why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera’s cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.
(h/t Andrew Sullivan.)
Mar 16
I’m a huge animal lover. Maybe not quite PETA crazy, but certainly crazy to the point where although I grew up partially in Wisconsin, a state where everyone hunts, I remain horrified by and of the practice and can’t kill anything, not even ants on the floor of my apartment. (I don’t disapprove of hunting in cases of overpopulation, by the way–I just personally could never hunt anything.)
Naturally, I’m just as horrified by the idea of taxidermy. And yet…I’m equally repelled and fascinated by the museum variety–you know, the dioramas at the Natural History Museum, that kind of thing. So I’m also equally repelled and fascinated with this new book on taxidermy. I really, really want to read it–but then I really, really don’t want the nightmares that are sure to accompany the reading of it.
Either way, if you’re not a weirdo like me, you might enjoy it.
Mar 9
Gawker investigates the Cheezeburger empire and gets the inside scoop:
Ben Huh ‘s media startup is focused on LOLcats and other internet animal memes. Things are less cute behind the scenes, where underpaid and overworked humans lurk, according to several company veterans who answered our recent request for information .
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