Seahorses, I Love 'Em (& other Links of Interest)

[-]

i feel like im an accomplice to something, having watched that.

Yeah, "sleazy" doesn't quite capture it.

Oli Goldsmith, superhip Toronto artist, and his 999 Borats project.

Five Things to Know About a Harem before you get one.

Introduce your children to the Gospel with a horrible grinning nightmare puppet.

[gsandi]

Unfortunately the sheep story is an urban legend. (Urban Japan may be a truly weird place, but not so weird that they don't know what sheep look like.)

Do they? They might not know the difference between sheep and goats, at any rate, both being 羊 (hitsuji). I guess most Japanese people would be able to tell a poodle from a sheep, though.

Urbanized people can be remarkably ignorant about farm matters. My favourite episode was on the train coming into Brussels from Brussels Airport, sharing my carriage with a roudy Chicago family visiting Europe, dropping into Brussels just for the day. As the train went past a small farmyard with a number of large geese doing their gaggling, the Chicago kids exclaimed loudly: Look at those large ducks!

(I must have looked local, because the father of the family asked me: "Can you tell me where we get off for downtown?". I answered, in my best man-of-the-world manner, "There are three stations in succession, North, Centre and Midi [South], it's all downtown. Just get off the train and walk around.")

[-]

I guess most Japanese people would be able to tell a poodle from a sheep, though.

I'd think the hooves vs. paws thing would be a dead giveaway. Rather more implausible than people mistaking geese for ducks! I get the impression the story started as somebody's satire on urbane Japan, but then got taken out of context.

[brandrinn]

Sheep
Poodle
Come on, now.

Actually, it's easier to pass off an alpaca as a poodle, apparently.

[dunomapuka]

I've met several people who don't understand the difference between sheep and goats. A tad irritating.

[Terra]

They might not know the difference between sheep and goats, at any rate, both being 羊 (hitsuji).

What do they call a geep then? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geep)

Look at those large ducks!

Wow, just wow. That makes me sad. Then again, maybe I shouldn'd be so hard on them considering I live in the middle of nowhere with a good chance of just stepping outside, looking up, and seeing a flock of geese.

[-]

Recreating the Mona Lisa with MS Paint.

Patti Smith on "Kids Are People Too."

Mind Control Made Easy. This one is great.

Pros and Cons of the Top 20 American Presidential Candidates: Democrat and Republican. What 2008 needs is an Optimus Prime vs. the Robotic Super Bees race.

[simon.clarkstone]

China is evidently the land of bootlegging Western stuff. Forget bootleg Disney DVDs, how about a bootleg theme park?

Disneyland is too far away. Please come to BeijingShijingshan Amusement Park.

[bi]

simon.clarkstone:

"However, the park’s operators have insisted that the character on the right is not a mouse. It is a cat with very large ears!"

This rocks so much that I really don't want to refute it.

* * *

Semi-news: Andrew Levine tackles an age-old conundrum in American politics: why do many people totally like Reagan and totally hate Clinton, even though their policies are so similar? (Bonus points to anyone who can tie this to Dean's points about RWA as described in zompist's latest rant.)

[Risla]

The Original Human Space Invaders.

[-]

The Human Space Invaders video is pretty neat.

why do many people totally like Reagan and totally hate Clinton, even though their policies are so similar?

Because liking Reagan has nothing to do with policy, it has to do with authoritarian worship of whatever Leader Figures are sainted by the party leadership. (Is that Levine's answer? I was curious to guess before I checked.)

Speaking of Leaders: just so we're clear, Bush may be the Decider and he may be the Unitary Executive, but he isn't the Commander Guy, he's just a commander guy.

Poulpe Pulps, a collection of pulp SF covers featuring octopode monsters. Via Octopia, a new blog about octopode-related art. (Check out the "Klimptian" octopus.)

The first defibrillator, in the late eighteenth century.

[Salmoneus]

I love Clinton and hate Reagan. I know little of their policies. I hate Reagan because he appears stupid and an arse. I love Clinton because he's the most charismatic man of my lifetime, and that deserves respect (especially now that he's safely out of office). Or awe, might be a better term.

[Terra]

Video Captures Stoning of Kurdish Teenage Girl
I haven't looked at the movies since I only have dialup at home, but from the screenshots that I've seen it appears to be graphic and brutal. It even brought sympathy from many a /b/tard at 4chan, which is something amazing. (Thoe many also expressed their lafter and hate also, and many failed to even read the article and note that the people who killed her weren't even muslim.)

And on a sidenote, no, I don't frequent freakishly pro-bush websites.

[bi]

ils:

Levine says, "Perhaps it comes down to nothing more than the fact that in our world, as in the world Yeats long ago described, the best lack conviction, while the worst are full of `passionate intensity.'"

Close, I guess. So putting everything together, there's a bunch of people who like absolute authorities... and to attract this people, one must look like an absolute authority, talk like an absolute authority, and act like an absolute authority.(*)

Reagan says, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And before you know it, the USSR is no more. Wow, Reagan sure has the world in his hands. And he's here to protect you.(**) What's not to like?

I guess all this also lends some support to my earlier conjecture that the real political divide in the US now is between the "Unitary Executive"(***) types and everyone else.

(And "a commander guy"? You have to love the logic behind it all. You are namby-pamby ivory-tower intellectuals who know zilch about war, and I am a seasoned veteran commander who's standing on Iraqi ground even as I speak! OK, not really, but I actually do listen to the commanders close to the ground!... Well, I'm pretty sure the whole thing is yet another coded message for True Believers.)

* * *

(*) and of course, this absolute authority has to be on Our side -- so Osama bin Laden is out because he hates Us

(**) well, he was here to protect you

(***) a.k.a. "small government", government with no internal checks and balances -- but don't tell anyone I said that

[-]

Having read the Levine piece now: it's interesting, but he's way overdrawing the similarity between Reagan and Clinton IMO. Clinton was hardly the leftist ideal, but there were in fact pretty stark policy differences between the two Presidents. Explaining things in terms of his Slickness rings false to me. (Maybe I'm just disappointed that he didn't explain how the Reds became the Reds!)

Here's a neat one for the history buffs: the animated Bayeaux Tapestry.

[bi]

ils: Oops.

Non-news: What might happen if Quentin Tarantino does Plato's The Republic.

[-]

What might a Bush press conference look like with all the bullshit edited out?

And this goes out to Zomp: a Guardian article on the further adventures of Tintin.

[frumpwallow]

chasing the chicken-eating spider.
a short article about some very weird behavoir from a spider...

[gsandi]

And this goes out to Zomp: a Guardian article on the further adventures of Tintin.

I actually have a couple of these Tintin parodies in my collection - in fact, they are not that original (any more than the revolutionary Tintin linked to in the Guardian is), because what they do is to make a collage of existing drawings from different Tintin albums with invented dialogue.

------------------

Tintin has a statue right here in Geneva, in the Hôtel Cornavin next to the main railway station, because that's where Tintin, Snowy and Haddock stay in the Calculus Affair. A collage of the same event occurs in one of the pastiches (it may be "Tintin in Switzerland", but I am not sure), in which hotel staff are horrified at Haddock sharing a room with a (seemingly) underage boy, and saying "and God only knows what they are doing to that poor dog".

[bi]

If we're going to edit out bullshit (like in that Bush conference), then to bring Balance to the Force, one must necessarily produce bullshit elsewhere.

I believe I've mentioned the Postmodernism Generator, which is based on the Dada Engine.

Then there's SCIgen, the automatic Computer Science research paper generator.

[zompist]

I have more sympathy for outright parodies and travesties of Tintin than attempts at a straight continuation. Sequels written by someone else never work, and in some ways they're worse the more faithful they attempt to be. (It's similar to the Uncanny Valley effect in CGI: an cartoon animated human is engaging; one that looks very very like an actual human but isn't is disturbing, because we start to focus on the remaining differences.)

[-]

Sequels written by someone else never work, and in some ways they're worse the more faithful they attempt to be.

Too true, more's the pity.

The candy printer. The sort of invention that makes me glad to have lived to see these wacky times.

NASA plans to return to the Moon.

After 27 years of research, Thomas and Stuart Mitchell have re-created a piece of music that was "encrypted" in one of the decorative features of Scotland's Rosslyn Chapel.

A graf artist in Freedom Tunnel references Goya's Third of May 1808. The whole photoset is great.

An American Major General has left the military specifically to speak out about Iraq.

Celebrity Stupid. My personal favourite is Joaquin Phoenix, "Do I have a large frog in my hair? Something's crawling out of my scalp ... I feel it."

[-]

Oh, and Entry #6000 in the yes, they're really stupid enough to attack Iran files.

[brandrinn]

Oh, and Entry #6000 in the yes, they're really stupid enough to attack Iran files.

This seems as good a place as any to remind ZBBers of my bet long ago to take a mop to my kitchen floor and then eat it with ketchup should any such invasion occur, which it will not.

Here is an extremely juvenile website to use on the baby-boomer in your life. Go to this page on their computer, hit f11, and walk away.

[-]

Oh, and Entry #6000 in the yes, they're really stupid enough to attack Iran files.

This seems as good a place as any to remind ZBBers of my bet long ago to take a mop to my kitchen floor and then eat it with ketchup should any such invasion occur, which it will not.

IIRC, the actual bet was that you would do this if Bush "so much as lobbed a missile in Iran's direction." Complete with posted pictures. And I'm holding you to it.