A world in which we are sliced and diced into "buckets" and numbers, microtargeted, then bombarded by customized ads caters to a computer's speed and a company's bottom line. But what gets lost?
A world in which we are sliced and diced into "buckets" and numbers, microtargeted, then bombarded by customized ads caters to a computer's speed and a company's bottom line. But what gets lost?
Boobs
Maybe I will write some words about this comic about boobs later, but it's pretty self-explanatory and I need to wake up 20 minutes ago.
John Campbell is doing hourly comics again.
Duos can be tricky. Sometimes duos struggle for years to find a balance, to get both voices across. Sometimes it’s instantly obvious when the pair is more than the sum of its parts. Brandy Zdan and Dave Quanbury are much closer to the latter, going from meeting each other to writing songs together in the space of a campfire. Soon they were touring together, accompanying each other on songs they each wrote. Eventually they broke down and gave themselves a single name, Twilight Hotel, and took their musical partnership to a new level.
From the expansive sounds of the Southwest to New York cabaret, Twilight Hotel’s music runs the gamut of the American musical experience. Not bad for a couple of Canadians. Like The Band before them Twilight Hotel has somehow managed to capture the musical essence of Americana and perform it more genuinely than most native musicians. Their music sounds kind of like Tom Waits meets Calexico, backed by Chris Isaak, if that makes any sense. If it doesn’t, have a listen to these selections from their 2008 album Highway Prayer:
“Slumber Queen”
I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for a tremolo guitar. And I love songs with imagery of dust, despair, and highways. Hence, I like this song, which sounds like it could be a cover of an unreleased Calexico track.
“The Critic”
More the wide-open guitar, but this time seemingly filtered through a more country influence.
Videos
“Twilight Hotel”, live (Watch this. Seriously. Good stuff.)
“Viva la Vinyl”
Links
Buy Highway Prayer
Official Site
MySpace
Madness I tell you, pure madness.
No tags for this post.Hangover Heaven is the apt name of the unusual bonnet at right. Originally developed by makeup man Max Factor for the benefit of actresses who wish to refresh their faces on hot studio sets without spoiling their makeup, the facial ice pack was quickly diverted to another purpose by festive Hollywoodians. The headpiece, adorned with water-filled plastic cubes, is kept in the refrigerator while the water freezes.
Yay for early DRM. How long do you think it would have been before some Norwegian kid built themselves a Descrambling Card Simulation System (DeCSS) and gave the plans to all of their friends so they could view scrambled broadcasts on their non compatible European TVs?
No tags for this post.Subscription TV
WOULD you like to see the opera, ballet, latest sports events, movies and Broadway plays on TV, sans commercials? If the FCC okays Skiatron, by merely inserting special program cards in a decoder unit attached to your set, you’ll view special programs at nominal fees.
No tags for this post.RELAX ON AIR
BY JACQUES MARTIAL, as told to Sophie Smoliar.
RELAX on air! That’s the promise of tomorrow’s rubber furniture which will soon be replacing much of the overstuffed, coil-spring type in common use.
Furniture manufacturers, long plagued by shortages of materials and also by a dearth of new ideas, have sought a way to produce comfortable and low-cost furniture. Now they claim to have found the answer in the principle of the air-filled rubber tube. With inexpensive materials and simple assembly, manufacturers foresee mass production with furniture prices spiraling downward.
The first rubber furniture on the market consisted of solid wood pieces covered with a thin layer of rubber, a far cry from the double spring action of upholstered stuffed furniture. The second step was the development of the use of foamed latex. This was better but does not compare with newer combinations which, like rubber tubes, combine air and rubber for resiliency and so-called good posture pieces that rebound to original shapes without prompting.The war interrupted the application and further development of foamed latex which went to cushion our fighting men against concussion. Before Pearl Harbor, however, the material did appear in seats for automobiles, trains and buses.
Foamed latex, according to the Rubber Manufacturers Association, is a network of open or interconnecting cells made from rubber latices or liquid rubbers and manufactured in sheet, strip, molded, or special shapes. For those who are unfamiliar with it, latex in its pure form, is the milky juice or food supply stored inside the bark of a rubber tree. It looks like cream and is almost tasteless and odorless.
A small quantity of latex is whipped by a machine resembling a giant egg-beater. During this process, compressed air is forced into the mixture along with a jelling agent to produce what looks like an angel cake batter containing millions of tiny air bubbles. The liquid is then poured into a mould, covered, and either baked or vulcanized for 30 minutes. The finished product has a satin-smooth top surface and underneath, has a light, completely porous body honeycombed with millions of tiny interconnecting cells.
Cellular rubber has been used in the past as an insulator for refrigerators and as a buoyant material for life-saving equipment. Not to be confused with sponge rubber which it resembles in feel and appearance, cellular rubber has certain properties possessed by no other material. It is lighter than cork and is moisture-proof. It derives its cushioning capacity from millions of microscopic cells filled with nitrogen— 250,000 per cubic inch.
These tiny cells allow the material to conform immediately to the shape of the object thrown against it, giving support and at the same time exerting pressures that offset the effects of a heavy blow. The air in sponge rubber escapes from the area where a blow is delivered, whereas in cellular rubber the gas trapped in each cell behaves like little balloons.
In a spectacular demonstration of the softness of cellular rubber, representatives of the United States Rubber Company dropped fresh eggs from the roof of an eleven-story building onto a three-inch thick pad of the new material. Eggs which missed the pad were, of course, smashed on the sidewalk. Those hitting the rubber target bounced back into the air—in some cases as much as 25 feet— and were caught unbroken by an assistant.
In addition to the softness of material, the new furniture will depend for comfort on air-filled sections of two types— single tube or multiple compartments with connecting air holes. Valves will be installed somewhere in the seam of the cushion. When air must be replenished, a small hand pump will easily supply the necessary low air pressures. Pumping should not be required more than once in one to three months.
No tags for this post.Rail Flyer to Set New Speed Marks
THE rail flyer, the inventor has called this new space-consuming creation of engineering, and it has several very good reasons for its existence.
It is so constructed that it is able to overcome one of the great problems of rapid transportation; the problem of traction. Every vehicle has tractive power, the ability to move forward under applied force.
When these great pieces of buzzing, roaring mechanisms like those used by Capt. Campbell at Daytona Beach, reach their maximum speeds of over two hundred miles per hour they are getting close to the limit of traction; that is the limit where, due to the great force applied to the wheels, the wheels will do nothing but slip helplessly around. As a matter of fact, in these super-machines, a great deal of the energy fed to the wheels is dissipated in this manner.Anybody who has had the opportunity of holding the hand on the tire of a racing car after it has been driven at the rate of a hundred miles per hour for several hours will be very forcibly reminded of this loss of tractive power through excessive speed.
The tires will be so hot that they will almost burn the hand.
With the still greater demands for speed and more speed, the engineers are beginning to ask themselves when, due to the problem outlined above, we shall have reached the limit.
But why not take to the air with planes that will not have to depend upon weather conditions; planes that will move through fogs, snow and wind as easily as do our largest and most powerful locomotives. Not only will they do this but they will also reach prodigious speeds of over five hundred miles per hour by practically eliminating all friction with solid materials.
The rail flyer will do these things. It really amounts to a captive airplane, which, when its power is turned off, will descend gently to its guiding rail, its gyroscope holding it perfectly vertical even in the face of driving winds. Surely this would provide new luxury of travel with one hour between New York and Buffalo and a little more than two hours between New York and Chicago.
