Gainful Unemployment: Archive

“To test the idea, her team took sweat samples from people doing a skydive for the first time. When they presented the samples to unrelated subjects in an fMRI scanner, they saw activation of the amygdala - the brain area that normally lights up in studies of emotion. This did not happen when sweat samples came from the same skydivers pounding a treadmill.” —

The unsung sense: How smell rules your life - life - 19 September 2011 - New Scientist

We can smell fear. What’s as fascinating as the results of the experiment is the experiment itself. Comparing the sweat of first-time skydivers to the same people running on a treadmill demonstrates sideways thinking that gets shit done.

Sep 30, 201122 notes

#science #biology #five senses #smell #olfactory #fear #amygdala #skydiving #scientific method #methodology

“I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world. For me, there is no difference between Ripley from “Alien” and any Katherine Heigl character. They are equally implausible.” —

Mindy Kaling: “Flick Chicks” : The New Yorker

Short excerpt from Mindy Kaling’s upcoming book. She nails it with romcoms as sci-fi subgenre.

Sep 30, 20116 notes

#mindy kaling #writing #movies #film #romcom #romantic comedy #screenwriting

Sep 29, 201113 notes

#anderson cooper #madame tussaud #wax figure #anthropometry

I can’t pick just one. Go read them all, crumple into a little fetal ball, and pray for humanity. Because some of these aholes are reproducing.

Sep 28, 2011

#love #relationships #shit my ex says

Sep 27, 20112 notes

#masked boy #china #burn #photography

The farmers market guy, who sells Black Mission figs for $2 a basket, told me there’s only a week or two left in the season. As I hovered over the sink eating the ripest of the figs (food equivalent of drunkenly making out with a near stranger in a dark hallway at a bar), I thought about not tasting that jammy pulp for 10 months. Will I be stuffing my face over the same sink next season? Will even a $2 basket of Black Missions be too expensive?

In the time a fig tree sheds its leaves, grows new ones then develops the syconia—figs aren’t technically fruit, botanically speaking…did you know?—so much could happen. We’d almost have a new or re-elected president. I could be happier or sadder. But the figs, they will always taste the same.

Sep 27, 20119 notes

#figs #food #time

“Kaling freely acknowledges the central contradiction of her career thus far, which is that she is a smart, ambitious woman who has excelled in the still-macho arena of comedy at the same time that she’s most widely recognized for playing the part of a materialistic, ditzy customer-service rep named Kelly Kapoor. And Kaling is unabashed about sharing her alter ego’s frivolous interests.” —

A Long Day at ‘The Office’ with Mindy Kaling - NYTimes.com

A NYT profile of Mindy Kaling, one of my most favorite people in comedy. Notice I said “people” and not “woman” or “woman of color.” She’s so fucking awesome we don’t need that affirmative action shit.

Sep 26, 201125 notes

#mindy kaling #comedy #women #writers

“Silicone, no motor: Soap & water; before first use and/or between bodies or orifices boil for 8-10 minutes (“just like spaghetti!”) to disinfect.” —

Ask a Clean Person: Bras, Sex Toys, DivaCups, and Leg Waxidents | The Hairpin

A handy dandy guide to cleaning your sex toys in one place! No one wants to get screwed, in more ways than one, with a dirty, germy dildo.

Sep 26, 201111 notes

#sex #sex toys #cleaning #household tips

Sep 25, 2011

#eyeballs #fake eyeballs #photography

“

Well, I use the old Strathmore vellum surface paper, which is the best paper you can get in the Western world for ink line drawing. It has a good, hard surface. I have it mailed from the New York Central Art Supply in New York. For a while I was using this old Strathmore paper from fifty years ago that some guy sent me, it had bad comic art on one side, hacked-out comic work from 1959, 1960, but the paper is superior to anything you can get now. It just holds the ink better. I ran out of that and now I use this new stuff that’s not quite as good.

***

I use Pelikan black drawing ink, and the crow-quill pen nibs. And you stick them in a handle. They’re all getting harder to find, all these antique art instruments. The companies that have made them are dying off one by one. But I got lucky. One day about six or seven years ago, my daughter, Sophie, bought a box of old pen points at a flea market in France. She found a box of about a hundred drawing pen points, and they’re the best ones I’ve ever used. They last and last, everything about them is fine, the point, the tensile quality, even the metal, the glass. The metal was just better, back then. I’ve still got maybe fifty of those. I think they’ll probably last me the rest of my life.

” —

Paris Review - The Art of Comics No. 1, R. Crumb

Awesome longform interview with R. Crumb. Overlaps with some stuff in the Crumb documentary, but lots of interesting detail such as the pen/paper issue quoted above.

Will pen and paper art become extinct? Reading Crumb’s lament about “antique instruments” which aren’t so antique is a bit heartbreaking.

Sep 24, 201111 notes

#r crumb #robert crumb #crumb #comics #comix #art #underground comics

Sep 24, 201114 notes

#zooey deschanel #mark seliger #portrait #photography

Play

Sep 24, 2011

#april march #music #chrominance decoder #dust brothers

Sep 23, 2011115 notes

#senegal #fashion #menswear #1980s #photography

“

The move came after universally-reviled white supremacist gang member Lawrence Brewer ordered up a particularly lavish feast before his execution Wednesday night. Brewer, 44, had been convicted for his role in a 1998 hate killing in which a 49-year-old black man, James Byrd, Jr., was chained by his ankles to a pickup truck and dragged for miles along an asphalt road. The killers dumped his decapitated body in front of an African-American cemetery in Jasper, Texas.

According to the Houston Chronicle: “Brewer ordered—but did not eat—a final meal of two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelet, a large bowl of fried okra, three fajitas, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream, and a pound of barbecue with a half loaf of white bread.”

” —

Lawrence Brewer: No More Last Meal for Texas Inmates on Death Row

Petty move on both players? Ordering a huge last meal but not eating and banning last meals. Why not eliminate the death penalty and get rid of the last meal idea that way?

Sep 22, 2011

#death penalty #last meal #final meal #food #lawrence brewer #texas

“Only one time, Heinicke says, did her grunting almost get her into trouble. One year, in advance of Wimbledon, a player who she had faced many times (and who she declines to name) asked the tournament referee to stop her from grunting. Heinicke thinks it was probably gamesmanship—a ploy to mess with her head. The referee denied the request, the grunter and the complainer didn’t end up facing each other, and Heinicke never changed her sound.” —

Victoria Heinicke, tennis’ first grunter. Plus: Notes on the evolution of grunting. - By Josh Levin - Slate Magazine

Slate tracked down the first known grunter in pro tennis, Victoria Heinicke. Also a brief history of grunting in both men’s and women’s tennis.

It is true that because of the shrieking, I stopped watching women’s tennis at some point.

Sep 22, 201115 notes

#tennis #sports #grunting #victoria heinicke #vicki heinicke

“The Marines were the service most opposed to ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but they were the only one of five invited branches of the military to turn up with their recruiting table and chin-up bar at the center Tuesday morning. Although Marines pride themselves on being the most testosterone-fueled of the services, they also ferociously promote their view of themselves as the best. With the law now changed, the Marines appear determined to prove that they will be better than the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard in recruiting gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.” —

Marine Recruiters Visit Gay Center in Oklahoma - NYTimes.com

To me it seems disingenuous for the military to start recruiting at LGBT centers when it resisted DADT repeal for so long. All I can do is wish those joining the military post-repeal a service that’s as free of de facto discrimination as possible. Institutional discrimination doesn’t simply disappear when a law is null and void.

Sep 22, 20116 notes

#military #dadt #gays #gay issues #lbgt

Sep 21, 20115 notes

#vladimir putin #russia #puppy #photography #cuddle

“The gamble to develop new fruits can be more of a “cash drain than an income-maker,” says Leith Gardner, a family member who helps operate Zaiger’s. She says when her father, Floyd Zaiger, started breeding fruit trees half a century ago, he promised his wife, Betty, the royalties of his first fruit invention. She got a check for $250 some 12 years later. It cost millions of dollars and decades just to develop their varieties of Pluot, which is known generically as a plumcot.” —

The Quest for New Kinds of Fruit - WSJ.com

The hybrid fruit industry doing it the old-fashioned way—flower parts having sex with the aid of human workers. Each year, they spend 6-700k to develop new breeds, whose saplings won’t bear first fruit until 4 years later.

And most people think a Pluot is a thing that exists in nature without human-aided flower sex.

Sep 20, 20119 notes

#fruit #agriculture #hybrid fruit #pluot #biology #botany

“Tom leaves behind a wonderful legacy in Ziggy, a hard-luck comics page hero who serves as a reflection of Tom’s endearing wit and optimism in the face of adversity,” John McMeel, head of Andrews McMeel Universal, whose Universal Uclick syndicates Wilson’s daily panel, said in a statement.” —

Tom Wilson of Ziggy comic fame dies at 80: news obituary | cleveland.com

Ziggy’s creator died today. Now, I’ll never know why Ziggy didn’t wear pants and whether he wore underwear or not.

Sep 20, 20112 notes

#tom wilson #ziggy #comics #cartoon #obituary #pants #no pants

“

Patrick House, a neuroscientist from Stanford University and past winner, says captions that usually prevail fall into what he calls the “theory of mind” category, in which the writer projects the characters’ intent and hints at it, but lets readers fill in the blanks.

He arrived at his theory after what he thought was the perfect pun-based caption was passed over. Out of revenge, he submitted a caption the following week that appealed to the “urban ennui” he assumed afflicts the average New Yorker reader. It won.

***

Earlier this year, Mr. Mankoff let consumer psychologist Peter McGraw and cognitive scientist Phil Fernbach conduct a quantitative analysis of every entry in the 281st contest to determine whether there’s a code for winning.

Among the findings: captions that use words that are uncommon in other entries were more likely to make the shortlist, as were captions that didn’t refer to concrete elements in the cartoon. Other rules of thumb: avoid exclamation points and keep entries short.

” —

Celebrities Struggle to Crack Caption Contest - WSJ.com

I think analyzing comedy kills it more often than not, but this examination of the New Yorker caption contest caught my interest. Also, celebrities whining about not getting picked? STFU!

I used to send submissions to the contest. Every caption was about AIDS.

Sep 19, 20111 note

#new yorker #humor #comedy #caption contest #semantics

Sep 18, 201110 notes

#photography #fashion #menswear #dandies #england #1970s

“I don’t get it,” says Shi Yongxin in his heavily accented Mandarin, after politely listening to the pioneering 1990s rappers from the New York borough of Staten Island who, in homage to kung fu movies of the 1970s, described themselves as coming “straight from the slums of Shaolin.” —

Lunch with Shi Yongxin, the abbot of the Shaolin Temple. - By Jamil Anderlini - Slate Magazine

So sayeth the abbot of the Shaolin Temple on WuTang. Pretty interesting read on the controversial abbot whose VW SUV and iPad use seems to reflect the C.R.E.A.M. way of life.

Sep 17, 20117 notes

#shaolin #wu tang #wutang #c.r.e.a.m. #religion #buddhism

“

Over decades I’ve lovingly—and occasionally expensively—built a wine collection that has given me daily satisfaction. Until now, it never occurred to me to sell. Quite the opposite: It always occurred to me to buy. I’ve always loved buying wine. Selling them was unthinkable. I wanted to marry these wines, not just have a little fling, only to toss them aside for a new fancy.

So why then am I now selling wine? It’s not because of the money, although that’s always nice to have. Like everyone else, I can always use a little spare change.

I should mention that the wines I sold were among the most expensive in my cellar, rarities that truthfully I could barely afford to buy, but I could not bring myself to resist. They were among the greatest wines in my cellar.

” —

Why I No Longer Buy Expensive Wine | Drinking Out Loud | News & Features | Wine Spectator

I’ve come to abhor the collector mentality. I’m more familiar with obsessive record collectors who flip through vinyl bins at every record store for the next big score. But do they honestly enjoy many of their thousands of records? I know someone who has one of the biggest vinyl collections in the world. Most records are filed and stored away. He can afford these records, and afford someone to catalog and file them.

Make no mistake, this isn’t love. Or at least it isn’t true love of music or wine or whatever the object of obsession. On most Sunday mornings, I play a few of my LPs on the turntable as I prepare and eat breakfast. I have a really small collection, but the records actually get their moment to shine on the turntable. Isn’t that why records were born? Music written and recorded?

If you love something so much that you collect, you only love the objects that can be collected. If you love music, love wine you’d have next to nothing and consume every bit of what you have.

Sep 16, 20116 notes

#wine #collecting #love #materialism

Sep 15, 20111 note

#laurence fishburne #gwyneth paltrow #celebrity #paparazzi #humblebrag #lavender

Play

Sep 15, 20112 notes

#os mutantes #o relogio #tropicalia #music #brazil

“You live in the past. About 80 milliseconds in the past, to be precise. Use one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet, at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. But that’s mysterious — clearly it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple: our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits for all the relevant input before it experiences the “now.” Experiments have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing them is about 80 milliseconds.” —

Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

We are fellow time travelers. What could have happened in 80 milliseconds? A lot. How many split second decisions were made in 80 milliseconds or less?

The brain takes 80 milliseconds to assemble the present reality. It takes 20 minutes to know we’ve eaten enough food. How long does it take to realize it’s in love? That it’s wrong and should apologize?

Sep 14, 20117 notes

#time #brain #reality #perception #neurology #physics

Play

Sep 14, 20113 notes

#mr. show #mr show #comedy #sketch comedy #humor #shoes #my shoes hurt #bob lamonta story

Play

Sep 14, 2011

#hooters #9/11 #remembering #hooters girls

“Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together — they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group.” —

One Sperm Donor, 150 Sons and Daughters - NYTimes.com

The world is a creepy place and we all made it this way.

Sep 13, 20113 notes

#artificial insemination #in vitro #family #sperm bank #sperm donor #children

Sep 12, 20111 note

#mount bromo #indonesia #kasad festival #volcano #animal sacrifice #religion #religious rites

Sep 11, 20112 notes

#cookie #cookie cake #mrs fields #vegan #gluten free #taliban

“

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.

—Henry James

” —

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recog

Staring at this quote for five minutes now, I honestly do not know which I want more.

The last taste of something surprising was when I whipped confectioner’s sugar and shortening into frosting that tasted exactly like supermarket cake frosting—feather light, sugary and unmistakeably bad for you. I couldn’t believe I could produce such artificial, corporate deliciousness with my own hands.

The last taste of recognition I had was when I fried mackerel pike and served it with a huge pile of grated daikon. The bitter-peppery flavor of raw daikon tickling the back of my mouth tasted like home. The last time I savored that sensation was probably the last time I had my mother’s home cooking.

This applies to people too. Do I want you to constantly surprise me? Or make me feel like I’m curled up in bed with a book, eyelids drooping around midnight?

Sep 11, 201116 notes

#henry james #taste #surprise #recognition

Sep 11, 2011

#mount bromo #kasada festival #indonesia #religion #religious rites #animal sacrifice

“

Also crucial in the estate’s copyright claims: though King himself claimed copyright of the speech a whole month after he delivered it, his claim was seen as valid because no “tangible” copy of the speech had been distributed before he made his claim. (The ruling was based on previous copyright law, from 1909, not the 1975 law we use today.)

And yet, because CBS settled with the family out of court for an undisclosed sum, the law never fully considered the matter of the speech’s copyright. Today, the audio version of the speech can be hard to come by, and unabridged film footage of it has escaped the cultural memory banks of YouTube.

” —

The Copyright Nightmare of “I Have a Dream” | Motherboard

The estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. holds the copyright to his “I Have a Dream” speech until 2038. Video and audio copies of the entire speech are available for $10 from the MLK estate. It seems strange that something so historic and something that was meant to be inclusive is not available freely to the public.

Is the speech intellectual property to be administered, or has is it something bigger, belonging to everyone? I respect the right of the King family to control who uses the speech and for what purpose. Though, I can’t help but feel jipped that I can’t see or hear the speech in its entirety unless I pay up.

Sep 10, 20115 notes

#mlk #martin luther king jr #martin luther king #copyright #intellectual property #public domain #civil rights

“As distance runner Joan Nesbit Mabe puts it, “a man can only become a faster man. A woman can become a man and get faster. They have a double boost. A woman who becomes more male, she’s basically not a woman.” —

The women’s track and field record book needs to be expunged. - By Edward McClelland - Slate Magazine

An argument for resetting the world records for women’s track and field so only records after random dope testing remain. The gatekeeper International Association of Athletics Federations says there is a statute of limitation of 8 years in expunging records. If you set a record, then test positive or some doping evidence comes to light after 8 years, your record remains in the books no matter what. Is this fair?

Sep 9, 20118 notes

#sports #track and field #world record #women's sports #doping

“The posts show that, although the robots have to be strong and reliable, they also have to be nimble and compact, to be able to maneuver on stair landings and other tight spots. S.H. also describes challenges that many robot developers may take for granted, such as the difficulty of handling the controls wearing five pairs of gloves or seeing the user interface from behind bulky masks. Which means that the controls and interfaces need to be made even easier to operate than they already are.” —

Fukushima Robot Operator Writes Tell-All Blog - IEEE Spectrum

iRobot, the makers of Roomba, donated robots to help survey and clean up the Fukushima reactors. Long-ass read, but very intriguing and harrowing first-person account. What would you do if your radiation dosimeter goes off, but your supervisor tells you to keep working?

Sep 8, 201115 notes

#fukushima #irobot #robot #roomba #radiation #nuclear power

“

Mr. Mak said that a man in street clothes entered the store and seemed particularly interested in the handbags and loafers, obviously cardboard, that have print designs that vaguely resemble Louis Vuitton’s and Gucci’s.

“He asked me, ‘How much is this?’ ” recalled Mr. Mak, pointing to a handbag on display. “I said $20, and he pulled out his badge and said, ‘Are you selling this to me?’ And then he arrested me.”

He was held overnight in a local precinct house and then arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Criminal Court at 100 Centre Street, several blocks from the store, before being released.

” —

Chinatown Funeral Goods Bring Copyright-Infringement Arrest - NYTimes.com

The owner of a store who sells cardboard items, often ersatz designer accessories, was arrested for selling counterfeit items. I’m sure this will get thrown out of court, but isn’t New York beyond this shit? Especially if your beat is Chinatown, you should know about the cardboard funeral props?

Still waiting for integration, I guess.

Sep 7, 201119 notes

#counterfeit #chinese funeral #integration #chinatown #law enforcement #legal

“

The international pop superstar and her husband, Rene Angelil, were not at home at the time. Dion and Angelil usually live in Florida but use the Laval residence when they come home to Quebec.

Laval police spokesman Franco Di Genova said the suspect was getting ready to take a nice hot bath when police arrived with a canine unit. “He opened the water faucets, was pouring a nice warmish bath (and) he even managed to eat some pastry that was in the fridge,” Di Genova said.

” —

News from The Associated Press

A burglar walks into the Celine Dion residence, eats pastries, draws a bath, gets arrested. I think police blotters should be required to divulge what kind of pastry was consumed by the criminal.

Sep 7, 201115 notes

#celine dion #crime #true crime #breaking and entering #my heart will go on #bath #pastry

Sep 6, 201128 notes

#somalia #mogadishu #photography #war

Sep 6, 20114 notes

#andy schleck #blingee #leopard trek #radioshack #cycling #zip code #radioshack nissan trek

“The amount of cheese was much less than normal, but that should be expected on this kind of pizza where they are clearly trying to mimic “authentic, handcrafted” pies. In fact, I really didn’t miss it all that much. Makes me wonder whether I’d miss the mountains of mozzarella on the standard versions.” —

GrubGrade | Food News: Domino’s Artisan Pizza

Domino’s thinks “Artisan Pizza” should come in a box with a signature from the store manager. Also they think being an “artisan” doesn’t mean wearing black berets. There is a legit sneak preview/review of the pizza, but I’m just stuck on this postmodern/post-postmodern interpretation of “artisan” as interpreted by Domino’s.

It’s been drilled into me that Domino’s pizza funds anti-abortion activities (which isn’t quite true). Someone else eat this pizza and tell me if it tastes of black berets and tortured semantics/semiotics.

Sep 5, 201110 notes

#pizza #domino's #marketing #artisan #artisanal #food #semantics #semiotics

Sep 4, 201152 notes

#somalia #mogadishu #war #1992 #photography

“I was excited/terrified to test this recipe, because I’d never fried a chicken before. All I can say is, raw chicken looks totally disgusting, and it’s even worse when you cut it open and it’s all slimy with little fatty nodules and bloodstains all over. Confession: My mom took apart the bird because she “didn’t have time” to teach me.” —

Retro Recipes: David Rees on Cooking With Dead Celebrities — Grub Street New York

David Rees (of Get Your War On fame) tested a Miles Davis chili recipe, an Elvis fried chicken recipe, and a Dean Martin burger recipe. But who cares about the food because I love his writing—so casual and non-writerly, but so hilarious.

Sep 3, 20112 notes

#david rees #miles davis #elvis presley #dean martin #cooking #food

Sep 2, 2011113 notes

#estate sale #nouns #objects

Cycling fandom this Grand Tour season has been about the hot and bangable pro cyclist lists. I made a left turn and wrote up a “Top 10 Podium Plushies I’d like to Sleep With” list.

Sep 2, 20112 notes

#nyvc #cycling #plush #plushies #podium plushies #top 10

“Research by Dr. McGill and others has shown that repeated bending of the spine, such as occurs when most of us do crunches, can over time contribute to damage of the spinal discs. When cadaver pig spines were placed in machines as part of a series of recent experiments and bent and flexed hundreds of times, the pigs’ spinal discs almost always ruptured, eventually.” —

Phys Ed: The Science of Sit-Ups and Core Training - NYTimes.com

Pigs died for your six-pack abdominals. Dead pigs in a semi-perpetual crunches machine—what atrocities took place in developing the Shake Weight?

Funny thing about crunches and abs: building up your abdominal wall can significantly change the shape of your belly button.

Sep 1, 20119 notes

#crunches #abdominals #core #core exercise #sports #exercise #sports medicine

“

Slice off both ends of the pineapple and cut off the skin. Cut into 40 5 x 1.2cm batons. Refrigerate.

Wash the fennel thoroughly in cold water. Put the fennel and star anise in a container. Place the pineapple batons over the fennel and star anise, leaving space between them so that they will be completely infused with the aroma. Then cover the pineapple with another layer of fennel and star anise. Cover the container with an airtight lid and refrigerate for 7 hours.

Finishing and presentation

Just before serving, open the container and separate the pineapple batons.

Take some fennel sprigs from the container and fill 10 black bowls.

Arrange 4 pineapple batons in each bowl so that they nestle among the fennel and do not touch one another. Finish by placing 3 star anise seeds between the fennel and the pineapple.

Serve on a slate accompanied by silver tweezers.

” —

How to cook like Ferran Adrià | Life and style | The Observer

A simple El Bulli recipe of pineapple marinated in fennel frond and star anise. Even then, there is to be NO TOUCHING of the pineapple pieces, I mean, excuse me, batons!!! I’m definitely trying this recipe, but I’m so going to jumble everything together.

Click through to a 15 minute video of UK restaurant critic Jay Rayner (he’s on Top Chef Masters as a judge) visiting the El Bulli kitchen and talking to Ferran Adria. There are a couple more esoteric recipes as well. By the way, this article was published 3 years ago in 2008.

Sep 1, 20115 notes

#el bulli #ferran adria #jay rayner #food #cooking #restaurant #molecular gastronomy