Two years before David Bowie released this 1969 promotional video for “Space Oddity,” a Soviet cosmonaut became a casualty of the Space Race. From the BBC: “The Soviet Union has announced the catastrophic failure of its latest space mission, with the crash of Soyuz 1 and the death of the cosmonaut on board. Colonel Vladimir Komarov, 40, is the first known victim of a space flight. He was an experienced cosmonaut, on his second flight, and had completed all his experiments successfully before returning to Earth. But within seconds of landing, just after he re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, the strings of the parachute intended to slow his descent apparently became tangled. The spaceship hurtled to the ground from four miles up. It is likely that Colonel Komarov was killed instantly on impact.”
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Tags: David Bowie, Vladimir Komarov
It’s seven feet tall, 300 pounds, roams North Carolina and is utterly ridiculous.
Orson Welles believed in the product. (Thanks Documentarian.)
Tags: Orson Welles, Paul Masson
Milkmen, street sweepers, grinders, etc. (Thanks Live Leak.)
“Well, the reception that was accorded you makes me feel that your face is reasonably familiar to the public.”
Four years before this TV appearance, Elizabeth Taylor, who was essentially raised as a ward of MGM, graduated with the senior class at Hollywood’s University High School: From a 1950 Life magazine: “Between movie scenes for the last eight years Elizabeth Taylor has adjourned to the schoolroom on the M-G-M lot to keep up with her schoolwork. Last week, after a final year of studying (civics, English literature, ceramics and Senior problems), Elizabeth joined the senior class of Hollywood’s University High School to get her diploma. The 17-year-old actress (18, Feb. 27) finished with a B-plus average and her teacher rated her ‘a good student, very good in art, with a flair for writing.'”
Tags: Elizabeth Taylor
For better and worse, Joe Meek‘s biography sounds a lot like Phil Spector’s. Tone deaf but deeply ambitious, Meek was the maverick, experimental British record producer of the 1960s who used unique sounds to turn out a slew of successful singles, including the first Brit hit to reach number one on the U.S. charts (“Telstar,” by the Tornados). But he was more unhinged than unorthodox and when his career nosedived, depression and poverty were followed by violence. In 1967, Meek used a shotgun to take his landlady’s life and his own. The Documentarian posted the first part of a film called “The Strange Story of Joe Meek.” Watch parts 2-6 here.
An excerpt about Meek from Stoned: A Memoir of London in the 1960s: “Joe Meek was even crazier than Phil Spector. He would use a Ouija board to get in touch with Buddy Holly to find out whether the record was gonna be a hit. He felt the whole of the music industry was against him, that they were out to pinch his ideas–I think because when he used the sound of lightning to start up a record, EMI sent the record to their labs to try and analyse it. There was an evil about Joe. He was known to crawl around graveyards taping cats hissing, he was into the occult. He was a split personality. He believed he was possessed, but had another side that was very polite with a good sense of humor. He was very complicated; when he was young his mother used to dress him in girls’ clothes.”
Tags: Joe Meek, Phil Spector
Yoshiyuki Sankai at Tsukuba University has created exoskeletons that increase the limb strength by ten times. Older folks barely able to walk become ambulatory again. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)
Tags: Yoshiyuki Sankai
Billions of people on the planet still wash their clothes by hand. Swedish academic and doctor Hans Rosling uses this fact as a jumping-off point for a great TED talk about industrialization and environmentalism.
From “Fifteen Hundred Knuckles at the Tub,” an article in the December 28, 1854 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, as reprinted from the Charleston Courier: “The latest invention is a new washing machine at the Astor House. It is called the ‘great knuckle.’ In the card of the owner it is stated that the new machine is saving from ten to fifteen girls a day, in the wash-room at the Astor House. A vial washing machine man at the Crystal Palace offered a cup valued at $50, to any person who could produce anything that would beat his. The great knuckle washing-machine man will give a cup valued at $500 to any one who will bring his machine to the Astor House, and wash one dozen pieces while he is washing three dozen! He says that instead of using one pair of knuckles, as old Eve commenced with, his machine is a combination of from 200 to 1,500. Great are the merits of washing mahcines!”
Tags: Hans Rosling
I hate everything about Star Trek except for this.
Gorgeous, deteriorating film. (Thanks Reddit.)
The robotic arms can detect and recognize the food. (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)
No sound. None needed. Just amazing.
"'The way I met Daniel was that he stole my classroom VCR,' recalls Randy Flanagan, one of Blanchard’s teachers."
ATMs and art museums are just two of the well-guarded depositories of wealth that were no match for Gerald Daniel Blanchard, a dyslexic international master thief based in Canada who could rig and rewire almost anything with his nimble hands and quick mind. Before his 2007 arrest, Blanchard eluded law enforcement for almost a decade despite his bold robberies. He was profiled by Joshuah Bearman in Wired in 2010. An excerpt about the criminal’s formative years:
“Blanchard pulled off his first heist when he was a 6-year-old living with his single mother in Winnipeg. The family couldn’t afford milk, and one day, after a long stretch of dry cereal, the boy spotted some recently delivered bottles on a neighbor’s porch. ‘I snuck over there between cars like I was on some kind of mission,’ he says. ‘And no one saw me take it.’ His heart was pounding, and the milk was somehow sweeter than usual. ‘After that,’ he says, ‘I was hooked.’
Blanchard moved to Nebraska, started going by his middle name, Daniel, and became an accomplished thief. He didn’t look the part — slim, short, and bespectacled, he resembled a young Bill Gates — but he certainly played it, getting into enough trouble to land in reform school. ‘The way I met Daniel was that he stole my classroom VCR,’ recalls Randy Flanagan, one of Blanchard’s teachers. Flanagan thought he might be able to straighten out the soft-spoken and polite kid, so he took Blanchard under his wing in his home-mechanics class.
‘He was a real natural in there,’ Flanagan says. Blanchard’s mother remembers that even as a toddler he could take anything apart. Despite severe dyslexia and a speech impediment, Blanchard ‘was an absolute genius with his hands,’ the teacher recalls. In Flanagan’s class, Blanchard learned construction, woodworking, model building, and automotive mechanics. The two bonded, and Flanagan became a father figure to Blanchard, driving him to and from school and looking out for him. ‘He could see that I had talent,’ Blanchard says. ‘And he wanted me to put it to good use.’
Flanagan had seen many hopeless kids straighten out — ‘You never know when something’s going to change forever for someone,’ he says — and he still hoped that would happen to Blanchard. ‘But Daniel was the type of kid who would spend more time trying to cheat on a test than it would have taken to study for it,’ Flanagan says with a laugh.”
Tags: Gerald Daniel Blanchard, Joshuah Bearman, Randy Flanagan
A surprisingly philosophical instructional film about cleaning public bathrooms. (Thanks Live Leak.)
You don’t want your opossum looking like crap, do you?
Back when King was based in Miami and still wearing a belt. (Thanks Reddit.)
Fresco being pissy during a 2007 Forbes interview:
“Forbes: What’s one thing you were sure would happen, but didn’t?
Jacque Fresco: I was sure that Forbes.com would ask more significant questions to a futurist about the future. Perhaps something like, What is a positive direction for the future to work toward in order to eliminate many of the problems we face today?
What is needed is the intelligent management of Earth’s resources. If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world’s people. Earth is abundant with plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is counter-productive to our survival.
Today we have access to highly advanced technologies. But our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities that could easily create a world of abundance, free of servitude and debt. This could be accomplished with the infusion of a global, resource-based civilization where all goods and services are available without the use of money, credit, barter or any other form of debt or servitude.”
Tags: Jacque Fresco, Larry King
About what The Last Airbender deserves. (Thanks Reddit.)
Someone made a Claymation of the famed Roesch vs. Schlage chess match that took place in 1910 in Hamburg. Stanley Kubruck, a big chess fan, used the moves from this match for his chess scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. From Chess.com: “In 1968, Stanley Kubrick (a strong chess player himself) directed 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is probably the most famous man vs. computer chess games in film. The movie features an astronaut, Dr. Frank Poole (played by Gary Lockwood), playing a chess game with the white pieces against the HAL-9000 computer (voice by Douglas Rain). The game in the movie is from an actual game, Roesch vs.Schlage, Hamburg 1910. The initial position in the movie is after Black’s 13th move. The astronaut says, ‘Umm…anyway, Queen takes pawn. OK?’ HAL responds, ‘Bishop takes Knight’s pawn.’ The astronaut says ‘Hmm, that’s a good move. Er…Rook to King One.’ HAL responds, ‘I’m sorry Frank. I think you missed it. Queen to Bishop Three (this should have been Queen to Bishop Six – the computer was cheating). Bishop takes Queen (this is not forced). Knight takes Bishop. Mate.’ It is not a mate in two, but a mate in three. The astronaut responds, ‘Ah…Yeah, looks like you’re right. I resign.’” (Thanks Open Culture.)
You had to dodge them, which is why the Brooklyn Dodgers were so named. (Thanks Live Leak.)
Someone to find the clicker for you. (Thanks Fast Company.)
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky takes gorgeous photos of environmental ugliness, the indiustrial ruins of abandoned California oil fields and Chinese landfills stuffed with discarded computer motherboards. There’s an excellent documentary about his work if you’d like to see more.
From Burtynsky’s site: “Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.
These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.”
"Nun of Amherst"
I NEVER LOST AS MUCH BUT TWICE
I NEVER lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod;
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels, twice descending,
Reimbursed my store.
Burglar, banker, father,
I am poor once more!
Carla Bruni sings Emily Dickinson’s “I went to heaven”:
Tags: Carla Bruni, Emily Dickinson
Natural and man-made.