Saturday, September 29, 2012

KLINGON STYLE (Star Trek Parody of PSY – GANGNAM STYLE)

KLINGON STYLE (Star Trek Parody of PSY – GANGNAM STYLE):


OMG THIS IS BRILLIANT! A totally geektastic parody of Psy’s Gangnam Style by our friends @ Comediva. This is by far the funniest Gangnam style parody I’ve seen so far on the web.
Now I want to know what that Klingon is saying. Please Comediva, write down a translation? :)
[Comediva]
No related posts.

Ways of Seeing: John Berger’s Classic 1972 BBC Critique of Consumer Culture

Ways of Seeing: John Berger’s Classic 1972 BBC Critique of Consumer Culture:
Gender roles, the elusive promises of advertising, and what oil painting has to do with the publicity machine.
Forty years ago this year, BBC premiered a series of four 30-minute films written and anchored by art critic and author John Berger. Soon adapted into a book, Ways of Seeing (public library) went on to become a landmark postmodernist critique of Western cultural aesthetics, exploring not only how visual culture came to dominate society but also how ideologies are created and transmitted via images — a subject of pressing timeliness in that golden age of photography.
In the third episode of the series, Berger looks at oil painting and its formative role in the creation of consumer culture, showing that paintings are, before anything else, objects to be bought and sold, and admonishing that “we should be somewhat wary of a love of art”:

Berger writes in the book:
Publicity is the culture of the consumer society. It propagates through images that society’s belief in itself. There are several reasons why these images use the language of oil painting.
Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have. It is a mistake to think of publicity supplanting the visual art of post-Renaissance Europe; it is the last moribund form of that art.
The final installment in the series explores the world of advertising and its perpetual promise of an even-elusive alternative way of life, depicted through a language of words and images that never cease to seduce us.

This series began by considering the tradition of the European oil painting. It has ended by us looking at publicity images today. Because I believe that, in many respects, these images continue that tradition. I’ve been critical of many things in that tradition, of our culture, of some of the values which it celebrates, and I’ve illustrated my arguments by using the modern means of reproduction. But, finally, what I’ve show and what I’ve said, like everything else that is shown or said through these means of reproduction, must be judged against your own experience.
But one of Berger’s most memorable and lasting contributions is the discussion of how media culture shapes gender politics and woman as object. Though the series was produced four decades ago — shortly after the Good Girls Revolt, a time of tectonic shifts for women’s rights — and much has changed since, it remains a priceless piece of cultural anthropology, as well as a stark reminder of how deep-seated some of our cultural conditioning is, and how much more is still to change if we are to transcend those burdensome bequests:
To be born a woman has to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women is developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman’s self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another….One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
Ways of Seeing is part The Century of the Self, part Christ to Coke: How Image Became Icon, and wholly recommended in its entirety.
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.
Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.




Holstee




Richard Feynman Explains Where Trees Actually Come From and How Fire Works

Richard Feynman Explains Where Trees Actually Come From and How Fire Works:
How the light and heat of the sun made their way into your fireplace.
We’ve already seen that trees can be powerful purveyors of philosophy, keepers of deep time, and visual metaphors for evolution — but where do they actually come from?
There’s a reason Richard Feynmanchampion of scientific culture, graphic novel hero, crusader for integrity, holder of the key to science, adviser of future generations — earned himself the moniker “The Great Explainer.” In this short clip from BBC’s 1983 series Fun to Imagine, Feynman explains where trees actually come from the air and why the light and heat emanating from a burning fire are in fact the light and heat of the sun, “stored sun” that made its way into the fireplace via the substance of the tree:

Is this the second most astounding fact about the universe, or what?
Krulwich Wonders
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.
Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.




Holstee




Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Poop Transplant Saves Woman's Life [Health]

Poop Transplant Saves Woman's Life [Health]:
A woman, whose life was threatened by a dangerous bacterial infection in her colon, was cured through a "fecal transplant." It is exactly as it sounds: doctors take poop from one person and then put it up another person's butt. More »








The Infamous Cat Parasite Can Actually Make You More Outgoing, Says Science [Video]

The Infamous Cat Parasite Can Actually Make You More Outgoing, Says Science [Video]:
So. You want to be more outgoing but are paralyzed with the sort of social anxiety that makes you blurt out conversation-halting statements such as, "I also enjoy popular culture. Are we friends yet???" when a new acquaintance starts talking about how good The Master was. This is a common dilemma and, in any other circumstances, someone might tell you to get super wasted so that your more charming and loquacious self emerges from the uninteresting husk that is your sober body. However, all you really need to do, according to some entirely speculative scientific data, is adopt a lot of cats and let the allegedly mind-bending parasite Toxoplasma gondii wriggle its way into your brain. More »








A Cultural Center for Orange County

A Cultural Center for Orange County: OCCC logo
The Orange County Cultural Center (OCCC), a nonprofit cultural arts organization located in Hillsborough, is thrilled to partner with OrangePolitics to help celebrate OP’s 9th birthday on Thursday at Mystery Brewing. The OCCC shares OP’s vision of an open, diverse, and thriving community of ideas where creativity and innovation are nurtured.
We strongly believe that the more rural areas of Orange County are currently neglected in terms of access to arts and cultural events, despite the abundance of nationally known writers, storytellers, artists and other performers who inhabit Central and Northern Orange. There is no large, centrally located performance space serving Hillsborough and rural Orange. Youth do not have a central location for after-school arts programming, often having to drive a significant distance to reach the nearest arts center. The OCCC envisions a cultural arts center in or near downtown Hillsborough. The OCCC will benefit the economic vitality of the region by providing open space and the infrastructure to foster artistic and historic enrichment, collaboration, and education.

read more

Monday, September 24, 2012

What is YOUR Favorite Geek Joke? Einstein, Newton, and Pascal Play Hide and Seek

What is YOUR Favorite Geek Joke? Einstein, Newton, and Pascal Play Hide and Seek:

Here’s one of mine, what’s YOURS?
One day, Einstein, Newton, and Pascal meet up and decide to play a game of hide and seek. Einstein volunteered to be “It.” As Einstein counted, eyes closed, to 100, Pascal ran away and hid, but Newton stood right in front of Einstein and drew a one meter by one meter square on the floor around himself. When Einstein opened his eyes, he immediately saw Newton and said “I found you Newton,” but Newton replied, “No, you found one Newton per square meter. You found Pascal!”.
The person who tells me the funniest geek Joke I’ve never heard about gets a free shirt from our T-Shirt store! Ready? Go!
No related posts.