The Climate Scientist Rap (Warning: Offensive Language)

in Science, Video - Science | May 19th, 2011

In this high­ly NSFW video pro­duced by the Aus­tralian tele­vi­sion show Hun­gry Beast, a posse of bona fide, degree-hold­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists put the ulti­mate smack­down on cli­mate change deniers. By NSFW, we mean that the rap is “more exple­tive-rid­den than the lat­est Lil’ Wayne sin­gle.” Still, after a few lis­tens we did find a cou­plet clean enough to quote:

We’re scientists/What we speak is true
Unlike Andrew Bolt/Our work is PEER REVIEWED!

If you feel like drop­ping $1.69, you can also buy the extend­ed sin­gle on iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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The National Jukebox: Play 10,000 Songs Released Between 1901 and 1925

in History, Music | May 19th, 2011

The Nation­al Juke­box, the new dig­i­tal musi­cal play­er of the Library of Con­gress, fea­tures more than 10,000 songs released by the Vic­tor Talk­ing Machine Com­pa­ny between 1901 and 1925 (with the promise of more to come). You can build your own playlist from the many gen­res of music avail­able, which include some extreme­ly rare record­ings from dif­fer­ent gen­res includ­ing 0pera, blues, yodel­ing, jazz, and much, much more.

We also love the dis­claimer on the web­site’s front page: WARNING: His­tor­i­cal record­ings may con­tain offen­sive lan­guage. It’s quite easy to see why the warn­ing is nec­es­sary, espe­cial­ly after some time spent lis­ten­ing to the com­e­dy sec­tion.

If you want to see a Vic­tor Talk­ing Machine in action, you can watch one get­ting demoed here.

via @kirstinbutler

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

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3D Street Art

in Art | May 19th, 2011

The title says it all. The art­work is pret­ty mind-blow­ing. The sound­track? Not so much. But you can’t have it all. Thanks to anony­mous user for send­ing…

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Kepler, Galileo & Nostradamus in Color, on Google

in Books, e-books, Google | May 19th, 2011


To date, Google Books has scanned 50,000 books from the 16th and 17th cen­turies. And by work­ing with great Euro­pean libraries (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Library and the Nation­al Libraries of Flo­rence and Rome, to name a few), the Moun­tain View-based com­pa­ny expects to index hun­dreds of thou­sands of pre-1800 titles in the com­ing years.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, most his­tor­i­cal texts have been scanned in black & white. But these new­fan­gled scans are being made in col­or, giv­ing read­ers any­where the chance to read old­er books “as they actu­al­ly appear” and to appre­ci­ate the “great flow­er­ing of exper­i­men­ta­tion in typog­ra­phy that took place in the 16th and 17th cen­turies.”

Some of the foun­da­tion­al texts now avail­able in col­or include Nos­tradamus’ Prog­nos­ti­ca­tion nou­velle et pre­dic­tion por­ten­teuse (1554), Johannes Kepler’s Epit­o­me Astrono­mi­ae Coper­ni­canae from 1635, and Galileo’s Sys­tema cos­micum from 1641. All texts can be viewed online, or down­loaded as a PDF (although the PDF’s lack col­or)…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

Google Lit Trips

Google to Pro­vide Vir­tu­al Tours of 19 World Her­itage Sites

via Inside Google Books

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Collision: Award-Winning Film Explores Politics Through Shapes

in Art, Film, Politics | May 18th, 2011

The Ger­man mul­ti-media artist Max Hat­tler describes his award-win­ning short film “Col­li­sion” (2005) as “Islam­ic pat­terns and Amer­i­can quilts and the col­ors and geom­e­try of flags as an abstract field of reflec­tion,” which will make no sense what­so­ev­er until you watch the video. It’s bare­ly over two min­utes long, so just give it a shot and let the images do their own explain­ing. Be sure to wear head­phones, or at least keep the vol­ume low … but not off. The expe­ri­ence is def­i­nite­ly equal parts sound and sight.

via @matthiasrascher

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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The Wild Kingdom: Brought to You by Mutual of Omaha (and It’s Now on YouTube)

in Television, Video - Science | May 18th, 2011

If you’re a Gen-X’er or old­er, this will like­ly dust off some old mem­o­ries, unleash­ing one of those “Yes, I remem­ber that” moments.

From 1963 through 1988, Mar­lin Perkins and Jim Fowler host­ed Mutu­al of Oma­ha’s Wild King­dom, a 30 minute pro­gram that aired Sun­day nights on NBC. An ear­ly pre­cur­sor to Ani­mal Plan­et and The Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, Wild King­dom let Amer­i­can audi­ences trav­el (at least vir­tu­al­ly) to exot­ic des­ti­na­tions and observe wild ani­mals in their nat­ur­al habi­tats. It all hap­pened dur­ing prime time with mil­lions watch­ing. And the show, oth­er­wise cred­it­ed with rais­ing eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, won 41 major awards, includ­ing four Emmys.

There are two ways to revis­it Wild King­dom. One is to pur­chase The Defin­i­tive 50 Episode Col­lec­tion on DVD. The cheap­er option (actu­al­ly, it’s free) is to vis­it Wild King­dom’s Chan­nel on YouTube, which hosts hours and hours of free pro­gram­ming. The episode above takes you into the mys­ter­ies of the Ama­zon. Enjoy…

via metafil­ter

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How TV Ruined Your Life

in Television | May 18th, 2011

The world is in sham­bles. Civ­i­liza­tion is in free fall. And it’s all because of that ubiq­ui­tous elec­tron­ic box spew­ing Snoo­ki and Ozzy and The Don­ald into the homes of inno­cent peo­ple, pol­lut­ing their minds and cor­rupt­ing their souls. Or any­way, that’s what British come­di­an Char­lie Brook­er thinks.

Brook­er is in a posi­tion to know. He makes his liv­ing off the offend­ing medi­um, writ­ing and appear­ing on such caus­tic pro­grams as Char­lie Brooker’s Screen­wipe, his hilar­i­ous and mer­ci­less bit­ing of the hand that feeds. Ear­li­er this year BBC Two pre­sent­ed its fol­low-up to Screen­wipe, a six-part series titled How TV Ruined Your Life. The result is one part social satire, two parts rav­ing luna­cy, as the mis­an­throp­ic Brooker—remote con­trol clenched furi­ous­ly in hand—takes us on a man­ic chan­nel-surf­ing tour of the deprav­i­ty.

In the win­dow above we fea­ture Episode 3: “Aspi­ra­tion.” The oth­er five install­ments can be accessed through the links below. Warn­ing: How TV Ruined Your Life con­tains harsh lan­guage that would not be safe for work. (But then, if you’re watch­ing half-hour com­e­dy shows at the office you’re prob­a­bly skat­ing on thin ice any­way.)

Episode 1: “Fear”
Episode 2: “The Life­cy­cle”
Episode 4: “Love”
Episode 5: “Progress”
Episode 6: “Knowl­edge”

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Richard Dawkins to Publish Children’s Book This Fall

in Books, Science | May 17th, 2011

Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist, has a new book com­ing out this fall. This time, it’s a chil­dren’s book called The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty: How We Know What’s Real­ly True. Inter­viewed in Der Spiegel in March, Dawkins talked a lit­tle about what he hoped to accom­plish here, say­ing:

Each chap­ter is a ques­tion like: What is an earth­quake? What is a rain­bow? What is the sun? Each chap­ter begins with a series of myths seem­ing­ly answer­ing those ques­tions, and then I counter that with expla­na­tions about the true nature of things. There is some­thing very cheap about mag­ic in the super­nat­ur­al sense, like turn­ing a frog into a prince with a mag­ic wand. Real­i­ty has a grander, poet­ic mag­ic of its own, which I hope I can get across.

Already you can see some pre­lim­i­nary art­work for the book. We have one cov­er design above, and anoth­er one here. We’ll have more on the book when it comes out…

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