sonicbloom

"The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:59:58 -0400

“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”

- Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF, chiming in on the pronunciation of the word. (As everyone knows, choosy memes choose “jif.”) Wilhite, a former CompuServe employee, created the format in 1987 and is to receive an award for his creation tonight. (via shortformblog)

Cute goats frolicking on an island.

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:19:00 -0400

Cute goats frolicking on an island.

vurtual: (by Tina Nicole)

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:24:21 -0400

vurtual:

(by Tina Nicole)

nedraggett: A Giorgio Moroder story: apropos of his appearance...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:49:22 -0400

nedraggett:

A Giorgio Moroder story: apropos of his appearance on a certain new album — a few years ago on ILX, someone named Tilman posted saying he’d been doing research into “I Feel Love“‘s production, saying he was “particularily interested in the delay effect that he uses to “double” the synth riff, and the other means with which he creates “metrical dissonances”, e.g. the echo effects.” He indicated that he’d contacted Moroder directly about this. Moroder replied with this graphic, adding:

“Dear Mr. Tilman
this is the only way i can help you

saluti
Giorgio Moroder”

This is the greatest thing ever, of course. Credit to my friend Grady for the reminder.

Happy Random Access Memories Release Day.

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:36:13 -0400

Happy Random Access Memories Release Day.

Big rig carrying fruit crashes on 210 Freeway, creates jam

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:38:00 -0400

Big rig carrying fruit crashes on 210 Freeway, creates jam:

Whoever wrote this headline must have been very pleased with themselves.

americasgreatoutdoors: A gorgeous view down river from above...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:09:01 -0400

americasgreatoutdoors:

A gorgeous view down river from above the Grotto in Zion National Park.

Photo: Tom Morris

pbsthisdayinhistory: May 17, 1954: The Supreme Court Rules on...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:12:18 -0400

pbsthisdayinhistory:

May 17, 1954: The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education

On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says that no state may deny equal protection of the laws to any person within its jurisdiction.

Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and galvanized the nascent civil rights movement into a full revolution.

Can you name all the key players behind Brown v. Board of Education? Revisit the landmark case with PBS’ The Supreme Court site.

You can also learn more about Brown v. Board of Education with “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow” and explore more events of the Civil Rights Movement with PBS Black Culture Connection.

Photo: School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955 (Library of Congress).

wilwheaton: neil-gaiman: butcherbilly: The Post-Punk / New...

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:48:09 -0400

wilwheaton:

neil-gaiman:

butcherbilly:

The Post-Punk / New Wave Super Friends by Butcher Billy

Who are your heroes?

Reblogged purely to make Amanda smile.

This is the best thing that was ever made so just turn off the planet now because we can all go home. Thank you, it’s been a great show.

motherjones: nationalpostsports: Is this the best way to share...

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:57:44 -0400

motherjones:

nationalpostsports:

Is this the best way to share your feelings? Yes. Yes, it is.

Philadelphia Eagles guard Evan Mathis responds to the recent IRS scandal by urinating (or fake urinating) on an IRS sign. This is how you change the world, people.

Thank you for publicly urinating in a high-traffic tourist area in our city, bro! Much appreciated. Really gets at the heart of the problem. Especially given that the IRS office you’re upset about is in Ohio. (Please go away.)

Chuck Brown, Godfather of Go-Go, missed by family and fans one...

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:12:30 -0400

Chuck Brown, Godfather of Go-Go, missed by family and fans one year after death

wisconsincheese: Only one state can claim cheese as a tourist...

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:36:07 -0400

wisconsincheese:

Only one state can claim cheese as a tourist attraction. Wisconsin Cheese.

discoverynews: Gallery: Funniest-Faced Monkeys I’m pretty sure...

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:03:40 -0400

discoverynews:

Gallery: Funniest-Faced Monkeys

I’m pretty sure they’d find us funny-looking too….

Tarsiers aren’t monkeys.

americasgreatoutdoors: Happy Mother’s Day everyone! We can’t...

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:00:04 -0400

americasgreatoutdoors:

Happy Mother’s Day everyone! We can’t think of a better photo to share today than this grizzly and her cub spending time together in Katmai National Park in Alaska.

Photo: Andrew Sentipal

The 1974 Gatsby re-cut in the style of the 2013 trailer.

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:35:02 -0400

The 1974 Gatsby re-cut in the style of the 2013 trailer.

TIME and Space Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by...

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:26:10 -0400

TIME and Space

Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. Of all the cosmic bodies studied in the long history of astronomy and space travel, the one that got the least attention was the one that ought to matter most to us—Earth.

That changed when NASA created the Landsat program, a series of satellites that would perpetually orbit our planet, looking not out but down. Surveillance spacecraft had done that before, of course, but they paid attention only to military or tactical sites. Landsat was a notable exception, built not for spycraft but for public monitoring of how the human species was altering the surface of the planet. Two generations, eight satellites and millions of pictures later, the space agency, along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has accumulated a stunning catalog of images that, when riffled through and stitched together, create a high-definition slide show of our rapidly changing Earth. TIME is proud to host the public unveiling of these images from orbit, which for the first time date all the way back to 1984.

Over here is Dubai, growing from sparse desert metropolis to modern, sprawling megalopolis. Over there are the central-pivot irrigation systems turning the sands of Saudi Arabia into an agricultural breadbasket — a surreal green-on-brown polka-dot pattern in the desert. Elsewhere is the bad news: the high-speed retreat of Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska; the West Virginia Mountains decapitated by the mining industry; the denuded forests of the Amazon, cut to stubble by loggers.

It took the folks at Google to upgrade these choppy visual sequences from crude flip-book quality to true video footage. With the help of massive amounts of computer muscle, they have scrubbed away cloud cover, filled in missing pixels, digitally stitched puzzle-piece pictures together, until the growing, thriving, sometimes dying planet is revealed in all its dynamic churn. The images are striking not just because of their vast sweep of geography and time but also because of their staggering detail. Consider: a standard TV image uses about one-third of a million pixels per frame, while a high-definition image uses 2 million. The Landsat images, by contrast, weigh in at 1.8 trillion pixels per frame, the equivalent of 900,000 high-def TVs assembled into a single mosaic.

These Timelapse pictures tell the pretty and not-so-pretty story of a finite planet and how its residents are treating it — razing even as we build, destroying even as we preserve. It takes a certain amount of courage to look at the videos, but once you start, it’s impossible to look away.

mbransons: R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen May 7, 2013

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:12:18 -0400

mbransons:

R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen May 7, 2013

headlikeanorange: A tarsier (Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero - BBC)

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:36:12 -0400

headlikeanorange:

A tarsier (Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero - BBC)

theonion: 17-Year Cicadas Horrified To Learn About 9/11 | Full...

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:21:04 -0400

theonion:

17-Year Cicadas Horrified To Learn About 9/11 | Full Report

smithsonianmag: This Day in History: A German Torpedo Sinks the...

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:25:03 -0400

smithsonianmag:

This Day in History: A German Torpedo Sinks the British Liner Lusitania, Killing 1,198

When the First World War began, in the summer of 1914, the Lusitania was among the most glamorous and celebrated ships in the world—at one time both the largest and fastest afloat. But the British passenger liner would earn a far more tragic place in history on May 7, 1915, when it was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland, with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives.

Among the prominent American victims were such luminaries of the day as the theatrical impresario Charles Frohman, the popular writer Elbert Hubbard and the very rich Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. But the list of passengers who missed the Lusitania’s last voyage was equally illustrious. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com for the stories of eight famous men and women who were lucky enough to dodge the torpedo.

Ed note: Three years before the Lusitania sank, several notable people missed the Titanic, including a world-famous novelist, a radio pioneer and America’s biggest tycoons.