Friday Ephemera

Human towers teeter, Tarragona, Spain. // Coyote Falls. // DARPA’s robot hummingbird spies on ne’er-do-wells. // The relative sizes of moons, planets and stars. // Space suit of the week. // “Nobody wins a nuclear war.” But “success” is possible. // The 100 best British films? // Urban photography. // A not-so-brief history of house music. (h/t, MeFi) // Ode to the Eighties. // Onion ring mints. (h/t, Chastity Darling) // Bacon toothpaste. // Imposing bunkers of WWII. // Macro kingdom. // Dismal gigs. // Victimhood has advantages. // It’s a money clip, it’s a knife. // And via Peter Risdon: Muammar al-Gaddafi, man of fashion.

Comments

[mlrosty]

'Chinese whispers' done with tracing. (Via SDA)

http://vimeo.com/18998570

[Anna]

Ode to the Eighties

You can't beat the original.

[David]

“You can’t beat the original.”

I once stood next to Phil Oakey in a queue in WH Smith. Tall chap. Though that was partly due to his open-toed stilettos.

[JuliaM]

Oh, I so want a RoboHummingbird..!

[ojo]

50 Greatest Opening Title Sequences of All Time.

http://www.ifc.com/news/2011/02/the-50-greatest-opening-title.php?page=11

[Martin]

On the 'urban photography' site, there's a particular photo, labelled "Tokyo #41", showing at least 5 levels of flyover tangling and intermingling. To be honest it makes Spaghetti Junction look quaint and amateurish, like those poor little roundabouts you get in the car parks of multiplex cinemas.
In my humble and unpopular opinion, the current planners of Birmingham should stop trying to make the place some horrid pastiche of Venice, with block paved squares populated by mime artists and people on bicycles with wicker baskets on the front; but look to Tokyo. The place should have at least 20 Spaghetti Junctions, all brilliantly illuminated with piercing white floodlights, there should be imposing constructions, huge neon signs, all that stuff. That is the future I want to live in.

[sackcloth and ashes]

The National Security Archive does good work in getting stuff declassified. And knowing what I know about LeMay, the film comes as no surprise.

[Wm T Sherman]

The General LeMay Diet consists of cigars, steak, whisky, and the enemy.

Occasional snacking on noncompliant subordinates is permitted.

[dicentra]

I'm afraid that the only Roadrunner comix that work are the ones where Wile E. is defeated not just by the speed of the Roadrunner and the ill-timed truck but also by the grim inevitability of some impersonal force--gravity or rocket propulsion--that he unleashed earlier when things went awry.

He has to slam into the wall, *then* that last bit of rock that we all forgot about returns to earth as the punchline.

Fatalism, see. It's the unrelenting fatalism that makes it funny, not the slapstick.

[dicentra]

Also, an Infographic http://bit.ly/hA9TrB showing how Star Wars changed the film world.

[David]

dicentra,

“It’s the unrelenting fatalism that makes it funny, not the slapstick.”

True. The funniest ones do tend to involve absurdly complex traps and some fatally overlooked detail.