“youtube”
17 posts under this tag.
In record turnouts, 40% of eligible voters don’t vote. In other words, 60% of Americans don’t vote (because they can’t or won’t). Was thinking of something cool and snarky to answer that excellent celebrity video that’s making the ‘Tube rounds, but really, what need is there?
A lot of people, most on at least one count, aren’t wasting their time already. Some of the best propaganda in the world (the envy of any dictator), none for the cases against voting (1, 2, 3... just imagine if a true don’t vote ad went national—child porn would cause less mayhem), and yet so many still do what makes sense. Can’t really do anything for the rest. What I’ll do is humor the naive we all carry inside, do the simplest thing that could have some impact, this post, and move over to more productive stuff.
And please, please, were you a democra-zealot (good-natured pun, crazy, get it? :), take this not as a challenge to double your efforts, I’m truly saddened by all the misspent electoral effort as it is. Instead, why not make something you want happen that doesn’t need to (attempt to) change everyone else? As I’ll try doing now, over and out.
There is this Higgs field that extends through all space
And some particles slow down while other particles race
Straight through like the photon – it has no mass
But something heavy like the top quark, it’s draggin’ its ass!
Awesome! Not only is it fun and cool, the lyrics are non-nonsensical. Most compelling and elegant explanation of the LHC I’ve seen.
Grouped under the ARG, Alternate Reality Gaming, label for lack of a better term. I think all 3 exemplify something new, unsettling, and fascinating that I don’t yet have a word for.
-
Little BrotherELZR, now available as atoms and bits, has a glorious climax of hundreds of vampires invading San Francisco’s civic center, messing with general paranoia.
> RULES FOR VAMPMOB
> You are part of a clan of daylight vampires. You’ve discovered the secret of surviving the terrible light of the sun. The secret was cannibalism: the blood of another vampire can give you the strength to walk among the living.
> You need to bite as many other vampires as you can in order to stay in the game. If one minute goes by without a bite, you’re out. Once you’re out, turn your shirt around backwards and go referee—watch two or three vamps to see if they’re getting their bites in.
> To bite another vamp, you have to say “Bite!” five times before they do. So you run up to a vamp, make eye-contact, and shout “bite bite bite bite bite!” and if you get it out before she does, you live and she crumbles to dust.
> You and the other vamps you meet at your rendezvous are a team. They are your clan. You derive no nourishment from their blood.
> You can “go invisible” by standing still and folding your arms over your chest. You can’t bite invisible vamps, and they can’t bite you.
> This game is played on the honor system. The point is to have fun and get your vamp on, not to win.
> There is an end-game that will be passed by word of mouth as winners begin to emerge. The game-masters will start a whisper campaign among the players when the time comes. Spread the whisper as quickly as you can and watch for the sign.
> M1k3y
> bite bite bite bite bite!
-
Freezing Grand Central, a most elegant improv piece (via Alan).
-
That great Free Hugs campaign a while ago:
-
Got more samples along these lines? I wanted to quote something from SFZero but I’m still too new to it…
As David, to whom I own the Big Dog acquaintance, said: its movements are so fluid, so eerily natural, biological, one just knows the days of the flesh are counted. “It was nice being human.”
I owe Bill for introducing me to Here comes another bubble, a fantastic parody on bay area culture that most of you will probably have seen by now but that I can’t just not put here because it’s pure genius.
The most interesting part for me was to discover how most every reference was familiar. At a recent Stanford conference on legal futures (ah, I love the bay area!) there was talk of how national newspapers created the national conscience needed for nations to emerge and how something similar may be happening with the web. This video definitely felt like that to me—somehow or other, thousand of miles away in Mexico’s center and having never visited it before, bay area culture became my culture.
I’m reminded of xkcd’s legendary comment: ”I’m waiting for the day when, if you tell someone ‘I’m from the internet’, instead of laughing they just ask ‘oh, what part?’”
Oh, and btw, that glib, charlatanish, bubble milking attitude parodied in the video was one big thing that kept me away from the bay area for a long time. While I have stumbled on it once in a while, it’s easy enough to ignore and often comes not out of guile but out of Sturgeon’s law and just how damn hard it is to predict in advance what will end up being important.
Who of all the wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know before the hour has struck?
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
This has to be one of the best sex interfaces ever. Breathtaking:
So all these animals, having left the sea, solved the problems of moving around and breathing air in their own differing ways. But there was another difficulty, mating. In the sea, animals need only release their eggs and sperm and the water mixed the two together. On dry land that couldn’t happen, even for the most moisture-loving of creatures. An individual slug carries both male and female organs. But even then, that was of no help. Each had to both give and receive. Somehow or other, pairs of individuals had to get together and the ways the have evolved in which to do so are quite extraordinary. Indeed, some of them are almost beyond imagining.
The leopard slug, you might think, has the simplest of habits. Maybe, but not when it comes to mating. When an individual is looking for a partner it give its trail of slime a special taste that advertises the fact. Another, if it feels the same way, will detect the invitation and start to follow. The pursuer, to confirm that it’s there and it’s ready to mate, gives the pursued a nibble. The leader heads upwards. An overhand is what’s neeeded. The underside of a branch will do very nicely. The two start to circle one another more and more closely until they entwine. For an hour or so they continue to wind themselves around one another. Then, suddenly, the pair releases their hold on the branch and start to slide downwards on a rope of mucus.
Now, in midair, they move to the next stage in their pairing. Each everts its male organ from just behind its head. These grow longer and longer. Then they, too, begin to entwine. They fan out to form a translucent, flower-like globe. And now, at last, sperm passes from one slug to another. The transfer is complete. Each has been fertilized.
Finally, their strange, balletic relationship comes to an end… with a bump.
A Spanish version of Mika’s Billy Brown. Apologies beforehand, I just have this hobby of translating songs—if the mood strikes one day I may even hurt your ears with my French version of Gloria Trevi’s Hoy me ire de casa
Update 15/January/2007:
Billy Brown
Oh Billy Brown had lived an ordinary life.
Two kids, a dog, and a cautionary wife.
While it was all going according to plan
Then Billy Brown fell in love with another man.
He met his lover almost every single day
Making excuses for his dodgy holiday
(Unto religion that he said and duty found
They didn’t know his faith was earthly bound)
|
Juan Alazan
Oh Juan Alazan vivia una vida primorosa
Dos ninhos, un perro y una esposa fastidiosa
Aun cuando todo iba yendo acorde al plan
Juan Alazan se enamoro de otro galan.
De ver su amante ningun dia se perdia
Haciendo excusas por tan locas correrias
En cierta religion nueva y extranha.
Lo que no sabian es que su fe era mundana.
|
Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Don’t let the stars get you down.
Don’t let the waves let you drown.
Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Gonna pick you up like a paper cup.
Gonna shake the water out of every nook.
Oh Billy Brown.
|
Juan… oh Juan Alazan
No te dejes por tus estrellas tumbar
No te dejes por las olas ahogar
Juan… oh Juan Alazan
Habra que desdoblarse como carton
Habra que sacudirse el agua de cada rincon.
Oh Juan Alazan.
|
Oh Billy Brown needed a place, somewhere to go.
He found an island off the coast of Mexico
Leaving his lover and his family behind.
Oh Billy Brown needed to find some peace of mind.
And on his journey and his travels on the way,
He met a girlie who was brave enough to say,
When they made love he shared the burden of his mind.
Oh Billy Brown you are a victim of the times.
|
Oh Juan Alazan tenia que huir a cualquier sitio.
Encontro una isla costa de Puerto Rico,
Dejando su amante y su familia por detras..
Oh Juan Alazan solo buscaba paz mental.
En aventuras en su larga travesia,
Conocio una chica que valiente le decia,
Cuando hacian el amor y el desahogaba sentimientos,
“Oh Juan Alazan eres una victima de los tiempos.”
|
Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Don’t let the stars get you down.
Don’t let the waves let you drown.
Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Gonna pick you up like a paper cup.
Gonna shake the water out of every nook.
Oh Billy Brown.
|
Juan… oh Juan Alazan
No te dejes por tus estrellas tumbar
No te dejes por las olas ahogar
Juan… oh Juan Alazan
Habra que desdoblarse como carton
Habra que sacudirse el agua de cada rincon.
Oh Juan Alazan.
|
[...]
|
[...]
|
Brown…Oh Billy Brown.
Gonna pick you up like a paper cup.
Gonna shake the water out of every nook.
Oh Billy Brown.
|
Juan… oh Juan Alazan
Habra que desdoblarse como carton
Habra que sacudirse el agua de cada rincon.
Oh Juan Alazan.
|
Oh Billy Brown had lived an ordinary life.
Two kids, a dog, and a cautionary wife.
While it was all going according to plan
Then Billy Brown fell in love with another man
|
Oh Juan Alazan vivia una vida primorosa
Dos ninhos, un perro y una esposa fastidiosa
Aun cuando todo iba yendo acorde al plan
Juan Alazan se enamoro de otro galan.
|
SeeqPod (YubNub’s “seeq“) crawls the web for mp3’s and streams (and queues) them for you right along search results. “Playable search” they call it, hinting they’ll use the word in expansive, unexpected ways. It’s kind of how you can now play YouTube videos within Google results. The instant gratification level of it all is sky-high. It’s long due and as clever a copyright hack as I’ve seen (like how music websites link to YouTube videos to play music but so much better). A big, dark underweb of mp3s has always been there, it’s just never been this discoverable, this sampleable.
I learned about it, btw, through one of the classiest, most elegant, best targeted spams ever. The SeeqPod team sent me a (probably automatic) email recommending me to try searching for Rufus Wrainwright through their search engine. Since their spam was so unusually well-written and targeted (I had written about Rufus Wainwright before), I tried it. Maybe in these days were spam filters are so effective spammers will have to resource to being useful and wanted. We can dream.
Update 11/Dec/07
Project Playlist (YubNub’s “projp“) is a very similar website, though SeeqPod’s interface is much better. One interesting feature of Project Playlist is that you can search other people’s playlists too, which is a great way to find similar music. SeeqPod, on the other hand, has the interesting “discover” feature, which recommends similar music. (Via Chepe.)
That multimedia brings subjects “alive” is a painfully false cliche these days. For me at least. Maybe I’m just disappointed by the yawning gap between promise and (often gratuitous) delivery. Maybe I’m still too word-centric.
Thus my surprise with this animation of that most famous embroidered account of the 1066 Norman invasion of England (→), the Bayeaux TapestryWP. It’s so simple and yet so stunningly effective. (Though of course I have a sweet spot for animated tapestries…)
I can’t watch it without wondering what its weavers at the turn of the first millennium would say if they could look at their creations now.
(via Very Short List, which neatly sums up the work with a Venn diagram—as is their intriguing custom—,  )
|
RSS
email
