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Bats and Mistuh Jay sittin in tree
I love this picture by Dan Hipp.
Great 10 minute TED talk about how the personalization algorithms of sites such as Facebook and Google are creating a situation whereby users only see things that they might be interested in.
That in creating such personalization for commercial reasons because it goes hand in hand with creating targetted advertisements there is the unintended consequence that important events get filtered out as irrelevant.
Apparently Henry Avery was a real life pirate who had captured a great treasure from an Indian Mughal and then disappeared never to be seen again.
It estimated that the treasure stolen from the Ganj-i-Sawai was worth £600 000 (roughly equivalent to $400 million in today’s terms).
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24 Hours Marston – Webcomic
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Sorry it took so long…
[Source]
On the 8th anniversary of George W. Bush’s infamous Mission Accomplished speech and also the anniversary of the announcement of Hitler’s death comes the news that US forces have killed Osama Bin Laden during a firefight in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
This should be a cathartic moment for many Americans but I don’t think that it will fundamentally change things in the world. This does not mean that our forces can withdraw from Afghanistan as the mission there has moved on significantly and Bin Laden has for a long time been an irrelevance in that arena.
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Bartitsu
Bartitsu is an eclectic martial art and self-defence method originally developed in England during the years 1898–1902. In 1901 it was immortalised (as “baritsu”) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. Although dormant throughout most of the 20th century, Bartitsu has been experiencing a revival since 2002.
Richard Ryan, the fight choreographer for the 2009 movie Sherlock Holmes, has described the “neo-Bartitsu” developed for that project as being a combination of “Chinese Boxing (Wing Chun), swordplay and elements of Brazilian Jujitsu.” This “movie Bartitsu” was said to be an modern interpretation of the classic Victorian Bartitsu style.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Bartitsu”.
I stumbled across the Channel 4 documentary Kill It, Skin It, Wear It on YouTube today in which chef Merrilees Parker explores the ethics of the fur trade.
Parker admits to liking fur, but can she kill it, skin it and still wear it? She want to find out if it’s possible to source ethical fur as we source ethical food. Contains graphic footage of animals in distress, slaughter and butchery which some viewers may find upsetting.
I had pretty strong feelings going in that however ethical the fur trade might be that I could not ever find myself supporting it and the documentary largely didn’t change my position. I did however find myself somewhat convinced by the trapper whose selling of pelts came as a byproduct of controlling the population of wild animals that threatened the livestock of farmers.
I feel there is a fundamental difference between farming animals for meat and farming them for fur even if the end result is the death of an animal. This might not be a completely rational position but I value the human need for food much higher than that for fashion.
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American Gods Headed To HBO
Neil Gaiman’s fantastic novel American Gods is to be adapted for television for HBO and Neil will apparently be co-writing it.
I’m very glad of this because although it could have worked as a film I think it would benefit from a slower pace and length afforded by a small screen adaptation.