Brand Spirit is a tumblr that reduces mass marketed items to their purest form by painting them white, removing all visual branding.
Almost all are easily recognized.
A disaster analysis firm has put the damage caused in “The Avengers” at $160 billion.
Watson said he was surprised by a lower-than-expected total. “Compared to the aliens in Independence Day, for example, these guys were amateurs,” he told THR. “Of course, the Chitauri/Loki alliance were more interested in conquest and ruling, whereas the ID aliens were just looking for lunch or something.”
While that’s what it would cost in normal universe money, they failed to take into account that in the Marvel Universe (in which “The Avengers” takes place), there are many extremely wealthy philanthropists, amazing technology, and a construction company dedicated to cleaning up the messes caused by super villains and superheroes, so I doubt the costs would actually be that high. You know, a movie about Damage Control has some potential.
My morning and evening commutes are about 20 minutes each, and to help pass the time I used to listen to music on my iPhone, but recently, I’ve increasingly been listening to podcasts. I’ve been enjoying them so much that I now listen to them during some of my other free time. Here are some of my favorites (in no particular order):
- Freakonomics (web site, iTunes) – From the authors of the books of the same name, this podcast uses general economic theories to take a fresh look at everyday life. I find it fascinating, and listen to new episodes as soon as they are available.
- Stuff You Should Know (web site, iTunes) — If you loved David Macaulay’s The Way Things Work, you’ll enjoy this podcast. Basically, two guys, Josh and Chuck, have an unscripted conversation about how different topics work. There’s one topic per show and each show is usually between 20 and about 40 minutes long. They aren’t experts, and they don’t pretend to be, but they do a good job of taking a topic and presenting it. It’s The Discovery Channel for your ears.
- WNYC’s Radiolab (web site, iTunes) — Somewhat similar to Stuff You Should Know in that it takes a topic and explains it; includes interviews and other narrators as well as music, TV, & movie sounds bites that are part of the story. It’s very well put together.
- NPR: Planet Money (web site, iTunes) — A 15-30 minute show about money and economics presented to a layman.
- ProPublica: Podcast (web site, iTunes) — Interviews with the reporters about the stories they publish on their web site.
- The Truth (web site, iTunes) — This is a dramatic fiction show that I just recently started listening to, but it’s quite well done and entertaining.
Last night I had a dream that a large magazine, think Vanity Fair or The New Yorker, hired John Cleese to install a display of bricks in their office. He spent a week, and the display consisted of crooked, broken bricks haphazardly piled, with mortar dripping out all over the place. It looked like a work of art.
The magazine was most unhappy, and publicly complained and ridiculed Mr. Cleese on his bricklaying skills, saying, “If Mr. Cleese performed comedy the way he lays bricks, he would have failed as a comedian and would probably have become a decent bricklayer.”
When asked about his bricklaying skills, Mr. Cleese explained that he had thought they hired him for his interpretation of a pile of bricks and added, “If you want bricks installed properly you hire a bricklayer, not a bloody minister of funny walks!”
Artist Benjamin Andrew Moore created an infographic containing every significant bat-suit variation, including all TV series and movies.
I’ve already been asked by quite a few bat-nerds (and I use that term endearingly, as I, too, am a bat-nerd) why I didn’t include the [insert Elseworlds/alternate universe/Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps] bat-suit in the infographic. The fact of the matter is, fellow bat-nerds, if you were to ask anyone not completely frothing over with bat-lore what the fuck a Sinestro Corp Batman was, they would just stare you in the face like the crazy person you are. And they’d be right to!
Personally, I think “The Animated Series” is how I picture Batman…grey and black suit with the oval logo. On that note, “The Animated Series” is fantastic, and if you’ve never seen it you’re missing one of the best incarnations of the caped crusader (even though Robin is in a few episodes here and there).
Clive Palmer, an Australian billionaire, is planning to build a modern replica of the Titanic.
Asked today if the Titanic II could sink, Mr Palmer told reporters: “Of course it will sink if you put a hole in it.
He added: “It is going to be designed so it won’t sink.
“It will be designed as a modern ship with all the technology to ensure that doesn’t happen.
“But, of course, if you are superstitious like you are, you never know what could happen.”
Let’s hope it fares better than the last Titanic II.
Hopefully, it fares better than the last Titanic II.
Disclaimer: I cannot draw, which I think is pretty obvious.
The AP has updated its Stylebook and now allows “hopefully” to be used as an adverb.
Many (or maybe most) of you were probably letting “hopefully” slip in your conversation and maybe even your prose. For instance: “Hopefully, I will remember to tell the editors in my life about this change from the AP.” Technically, that’s incorrect.
In response to the AP’s announcement, one commmenter wrote:
“When enough people fail to learn the rule, the mistake becomes the rule. This is change but not progress.”
Well, that’s what the English language is. It’s an amalgam of other languages, and therefore can never be static or adhere strictly to its rules. Its usage defines its rules. How many people use the word “peruse” in the wrong way? In my experience, most. And one day, far in the future, you may see “peruse” soften it’s definition, and maybe even be reversed.
On a side note, I’ve used “hopefully” as an adverb four times on joshmadison.com. Hopefully, I’ll be more mindful of its use in the future.
The NYC Department of Records has recently introduced the municipal archive gallery online, with access to over 800,000 photos, maps, audio recordings, and more. It’s so popular that the site is offline as they work on it.
Both The Daily Mail and The Atlantic’s ‘In Focus’ have republished highlights from the archive. It’s amazing to see how much has changed and how some things don’t. The Daily took three photos and posted then-and-now versions.
Note, there are some photos of dead or dying people in the group above. They’re not very graphic, but if you’re very squeamish, you might want to avoid.
BackBeat GO and accessories
I picked up a pair of Plantronics BackBeat GO Bluetooth headphones because there are times that I hate having a wire between my head and my pocket. Yes, I’d be sacrificing sound quality, and it’s another thing to charge, but for certain activities, its benefits could outweigh those negatives.
Since it uses Bluetooth to communicate with my iPhone, the only wire to be dealt with is the one that connects the two earbuds, and it is placed out of the way behind your neck. The sound quality is acceptable — the highs aren’t as crisp and clear as a good pair of wired in-ear earbuds — but that’s to be expected. Since it has a battery and Bluetooth circuitry to deal with, the earbuds are larger and heavier than wired ones, but not uncomfortably so.
The main problem with them, and something I hope can be fixed with a firmware update, is that their maximum volume is too low. Even taking into account the fact that they are in-ear earbuds and block some external noise, while sitting at home listening to a spoken-word podcast (the wonderful Stuff You Should Know), the maximum volume is the most comfortable. Where this really presents a problem is where I hoped to use them twice a day for five days out of the week: the NYC subway. In the subway, their low maximum volume makes them sound on par with the stock Apple iPhone headphones — in other words, you can’t hear a thing when a train is entering or leaving the station, and the steady stream of announcements inside the car will drown out whatever you’re listening to. AC/DC should never, ever, be upstaged by Carolyn Hopkins.
I’ve used them while running, where the lack of wire is a huge plus, but their size and weight combined with some sweat and the bouncing movement can make them fall out. They come with an attachment that is meant to help keep them in your ears, but it doesn’t work very well. Either an external hook or a better internal stabilizer would make them better suited for running or other exercise.
I’m going to keep the headphones because they are very convenient to use around my apartment while washing dishes, while vacuuming, while listening to music or watching TV and movies on my iPad on my balcony, but they simply aren’t loud enough to use while out on the streets, which is a shame.
Rating: 5/10
The Times profiles Hyman Strachman, a WWII veteran who, at 92, copies bootlegged movies and sends them to troops overseas:
Originally, Mr. Strachman would use his desktop computer to copy the movies one tedious disc at a time. (“It was moyda,” he groaned.) So he got his hands on a $400 professional duplicator that made seven copies at once, grew his fingernails long to better separate the blank discs, and began copying hundreds a day.
[...]
In February, Mr. Strachman duplicated and shipped 1,100 movies. (“A slow month,” he said.) He has not kept an official count but estimates that he topped 80,000 discs a year during his heyday in 2007 and 2008, making his total more than 300,000 since he began in 2004. Postage of about $11 a box, and the blank discs themselves, would suggest a personal outlay of over $30,000.
Let’s hope that the MPAA and studios leave this guy alone.
An extremely rare adult white killer whale has been spotted in the wild.
White whales of various species are occasionally seen; but the only known white orcas have been young, including one with a rare genetic condition that died in a Canadian aquarium in 1972.
I particularly like how the article mentions other white whales while orcas are part of the dolphin family…it’s almost like the author doesn’t know that (should I have chuckled when I noticed the author’s name is Black?).
The London 2012 Olympic organizers contacted The Who’s manager to see if drummer Keith Moon was available to play.
‘I emailed back saying Keith now resides in Golders Green crematorium, having lived up to the Who’s anthemic line ‘I hope I die before I get old’,’ said Curbishley.
I’m hoping that one of these people, who thought Titanic was just a movie, was responsible.
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