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Happy 4th Of July
Your government wishes you a happy Dependence Day.
He knows where to find you, citizen
Okay, I can’t be completely cynical. Have another one.
Superman by Fred Ray, 1942
Hope you’re all having a happy 4th.
Bonus pic, click to embiggen –
Superman in WWII, by Jerry Ordway, 1990
Rules For Rabbitals
Bugs calls a square-dance tune… [and] redefines the courtship ritual of the dance — a means of channeling and controlling sexual energy — into a fiercely homoerotic ballet.
A Slate article claiming that “Looney Tunes” cartoons were far more brutal than we remember them. James Lileks at National Review concedes the issue, upon the condition that “you’ve had your sense of humor surgically removed, and replaced with an oversized gland that produces chemicals responsible for compulsive frowning.”
What Slate completely missed, and Lileks zeroes in on, is that apparently progressives ran rampant at Warner Brothers studios. Lileks continues, pointing out that the same episode, “Duck! Rabbit, Duck!”
…contains messages that should hearten the heart of a Slate writer, for it contains a very modern message about identity. As you may recall, the plot concerns Fudd’s confusion over which season it is: Wabbit, or Duck? The signage is confusing. Daffy self-identifies as a duck, and this being the ’40s, he is locked in a fixed identity, a product of a culture that says if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it is a duck. But as we now know, “species” is as fluid as any other form of identity.
And that’s something Bugs reveals in a very subversive sequence. Daffy uses colloquial expressions to describe his mood, noting that he feels like a goat. Whereupon Bugs produces a sign that says it is Goat Season. Fudd unloads accordingly. It may look like violence. But it’s really acceptance. If Daffy says he is a goat then he is a goat. He may suffer the consequences, but Fudd has affirmed his statement of identity. Over the course of the cartoon Daffy identifies with various species, and in each instance Bugs has an appropriate placard to nudge Fudd toward accepting the fluid spectrum on which Daffy may choose to locate himself.
Half a century before Facebook’s 57 genders, Warner Brothers was laying the groundwork.
Read the entire piece, and wonder, “How many times did Bugs do himself up in drag again…?”
Speaking of groundwork…. WB cartoons clearly revealed their pseudo-intellectual worldview and love of scientific sounding formulas over empirical reality throughout the “Foghorn Leghorn” cartoons, where the title character was often shown up by the runty, bespectacled Egghead Jr. –
Random Static: Phoning It In
Allamagoosa recently got a new phone.
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Even though I was aware of the song, somehow it escaped my notice (or just as likely slipped what remains of my mind) that Kenny Rogers used to be a psychedelic rocker.
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Discovered this guy last weekend. He’s posted over one thousand videos of (mostly) acoustic guitar or piano covers of classic rock songs and oldies, like the Beatles, Elvis, Burt Bacharach, Frankie Valli, even some Steely Dan. And of course the Monkees.
He’s also taken requests for songs outside his normal sphere, which results in unusual coolness…
He did songs by Human League and Daft Punk just for the heck of it. There’s a Death Cab For Cutie piano cover in there somewhere. And his voice sounds almost dead on like the singer from Right Said Fred.
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I don’t recall if I posted this before or not… this guy is the greatest drummer in the world.
The host blathers until about the 40 second point, but the real show starts around 1:00.
I can offer no explanation about the toilet seat.
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I would apologize for the ultra awful Data joke at the top, but I would be lying.
Happy Paws
…as Steve Martin never said.
Clap your paws if you have
A tennis ball between your teeth
Clap your paws if you like
Running up and down the beach
Cheerfully and shamelessly swiped from Vodkapundit.
Boombox Superblast Mixtape
All kinds of science in the news right now. From Gizmodo – the 185 terabyte casette tape.
Stupid hipster 80s fetishism notwithstanding, cassette tapes don’t get much love. That’s a shame, because magnetic tape is still a surprisingly robust way to back up data. Especially now: Sony just unveiled tape that holds a whopping 148 GB per square inch, meaning a cassette could hold 185 TB of data. Prepare for the mixtape to end all mixtapes.
Sony’s technique, which will be discussed at today’s International Magnetics Conference in Dresden, uses a vacuum-forming technique called sputter deposition to create a layer of magnetic crystals by shooting argon ions at a polymer film substrate. The crystals, measuring just 7.7 nanometers on average, pack together more densely than any other previous method.
The result: three Blu-Rays’ worth of data can fit on one square inch of Sony’s new wonder-tape.
John Hayward immediately sees the possibilities, lamenting that such a technology was not available in bygone days…
Shooting argon ions into a polymer substrate? It seems so obvious in retrospect. Why weren’t we doing that back when Flock of Seagulls was big? We could have made one mix tape that would sit in our car stereos until it melted.
But there are downsides. As one commenter put it, “I can’t imagine REWINDING 185 TB of data.”
I would have loved to have HD cassette tapes back in the days before CD burning was an option. And imagine the street cred of having a boombox capable of playing around 61,697,500-song mixtapes. Epic rap battles would erupt among DJ street fighters.
PRESS TO PLAY
The House Edge
From the bleeding edge of house technology (no, not the music)… A Chinese construction firm 3D printed 10 small houses a one day using a process called “contour crafting” on a large scale.
I wouldn’t have wagered on the claim that the houses cost only $5000 each, but after seeing the result, I can believe it. Not exactly stately Wayne Manor here, but it looks livable enough.
Now it just needs life size, 3D printed Ken & Barbie
And from here – “Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis of The University of Southern California is testing a giant 3D printer that could be used to build a whole house in under 24 hours.”
Contour Crafting could slash the cost of home-owning, making it possible for millions of displaced people to get on the property ladder. It could even be used in disaster relief areas to build emergency and replacement housing. For example, after an event such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, which has displaced almost 600,000 people, Contour Crafting could be used to build replacement homes quickly.
It could be used to create high-quality shelter for people currently living in desperate conditions. “At the dawn of the 21st century [slums] are the condition of shelter for nearly one billion people in our world,” says Khoshnevis, “These buildings are breeding grounds for disease a problem of conventional construction which is slow, labour intensive and inefficient.”
If Khoshnevis wins his bet, this could lower housing costs to a fraction of what it costs now, and allow buyers vast leeway in choosing specifications. Why, one could design their very own life-sized Malibu Stacy’s Dream House.
Life is gay and fancy-free, when you’re with Malibu Stacy
Oops! Pretend you didn’t see that. Look at this one instead.
“Who cares if she has a new hat?!?”
The Low Rider Is Revving In The Drive
Listen and compare basslines –
There’s even some similarity between the opening drum rolls.
Actual video here, I used the other one because this version skips over the opening drums.
I was something of a Thompson Twins fan when I was in junior high. I had the records Side Kicks and Into The Gap (on vinyl), and I think I had some 12″ remix album of “In the Name Of Love.” While I didn’t collect clippings or anything like that, I did read pieces about them in music magazines when I was in a store. I was rather into New Wave thanks to MTV.
I pretty much lost interest in the band not too long afterward, partly because their new single “Lay Your Hands On Me” sucked, and whatever residual interest I had in checking out their new album was likely snuffed by this. I suspect that it also helped kill their careers as well.
Endless Days Of Dark Knights
Batman is 75 years old today, first appearing in Detective Comics #27, which hit newsstands onMarch 30th, 1939. Along with Superman, he is one of the longest running continuing characters to be published without interruption, something that had never been done before or since (although Wonder Woman is set to hit 75 in a couple of years).
That said, he looks pretty young for his age.
From the webcomic JL8
This is the guy who ninja-trained Roissy.
Remember the days when it was the Superman movies that were awesome and the Batman movies… not so much? Now The Dark Knight is the height of excellence.
Binging Bad
This does not describe Allamagoosa or myself at all.
You know you do this. And often
Nope, not even the least little bit.
nightskyradio 