• The only honest revenue based sites out there are porn
• Scientists Closer than Ever to Discovering Higgs Particle
• Is Earth at an Environmental Tipping Point?
• Inside the Troubled ‘World War Z’ Production
• The heartwarming story behind the ugliest man on YouTube
• It’s Gettin’ Hard Out There For A Troll
• “I’ve been playing the same game of Civilization II for 10 years”
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Director Explains All the Rampant Nudity
• Brain Scans Show Specific Neuronal Response to Junk Food When Sleep-Restricted

Also, Conan teaching the blues to school kids:

Backpedaling slightly after having mostly posted article links during the last week or so. Inversely, its mostly video content at the moment, so here’s three more random lots of them.

First is fake supercut/recut trailer for “Chuck Norris: The Movie”.

Next, a rather smart fellas re-redition of the original Super Mario Bros. game in 3D:

And lastly, I’ve had no idea how to post this, but essentially, it’s like the many, many, many hidden camera gotcha! videos that’s all over youtube at the moment, but the appeal to this humourous video is that it’s really the lovely ‘host/prankster’ who is the most awkward subject as he tries to use Blink-182 lyrics as pick-up lines.

Terry Moore explains ‘x’ as an unknown‘s origins in this short, humourous talk. Plus it’s more trivial knowledge for those bar quizzes.

Video interview with illustrator, graphic designer and art director Christoph Niemann on his philosophy towards design, creativity and the visual language. Great stuff.

Nice.

More at thaeger

This site has been one of my favourites lately and a recent post highlighting Gene Wilder’s correspondence before commencing production on Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory is wonderfully insightful.

Prior to accepting the role, Wilder set out one condition to director Mel Stuart:

“When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.”

Asked why, Wilder explained: “Because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”

It really is a great example of an actor whose thinking process works on multiple levels in creating and developing both a character and performance for an audience.

There’s also a second letter on his thoughts towards the costuming of Willy Wonka that’s equally fascinating, but I don’t want to post verbatim from such a great site, so check it out here.

• NY Times bog on Today’s smartphone society and its sensory deprivation
• Write up on ‘Inviting machines into our bodies’ and it susceptible security compromises (serious Ghost in the Shell fangasm here)
• Bad Astronomer clarifies/explains the “UFO” spirals in the sky reports
• NASA Expedition Reveals Unprecedented Blooms Of Ocean Plant Life Beneath Arctic Ice
• Interesting proposition: Germany, Not Greece, Should Exit the Euro
• Syria and Should the U.S. assassinate Assad?
• Is China Looking to Conquer the Art World, Too?
• 6 Rules for a Great Story from Barnaby Conrad and Snoopy

Collecting 100 years of criminal mugshots by Mark Michaelson

Say what you will about the newly released Prometheus (and pretty much everyone does), but this parody of the Happy Birthday David video by Joel McHale of Community fame is just great fun…

Shit, guess this is what happens when I don’t update regularly; all the left over tabs and bookmarks get to be so numerous, they have to be herded into a single, over-sized aggregated post. My bad. Good stuff to read and check out though. Honest.

• Boston teacher’s incredible speech to graduating class: ‘You are NOT special’ (brilliance)
  

  In a moment of pure untamed brilliance English teacher David McCullough went off on the graduating class of 2012 at Wellesley High, critiquing modern parenting techniques by saying that children are “pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble wrapped… nudged, cajoled, wheedled .. feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie.”
  (transcript here and video here)

• Being the ‘good’ kind of narcissist
• P-p-p pick up a perverted penguin
  

  Newly discovered documents from Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic have revealed their shock at the “astonishing depravity” and sexual habits of the Adelie penguins they encountered around the South Pole.

• Scientists to Use Venus Transit to Hone Alien Planet Search Techniques
  Plus: video observations from the SDO and collected photos on the Big Picture.
• Toward a Dissident Architecture?
  

  The question posed by Wang’s Pritzker selection could be articulated like this: If you provide a particularly humane or humanist built environment within the context of occasionally inhumane political or economic conditions, to what extent are you reinforcing or resisting those conditions? Are you offering a tangible alternative or a mere respite?

• The Pirate Bay evades ISP blockade with IPv6, can do it 18 quintillion more times
• How search engines will develop sentient responses?
• Radiolab: The Art and Science of Digital Shamanism
• Why Great Television Is More Like A Novel Than A Play
  

  Why do still watch plays by Euripides, born some 2,500 years ago, or Shakespeare, who is nearly 450 years old? Writer orthodoxy says it’s because the fundamental rules for drama have never changed, since they are eternal, rooted in human nature.

• Why Americans See Racism Where The French See No Problem
• Wes Anderson: Whimsical Like a Fox
  See also: his collaborator’s radio interview on how he soundtracks his movies.
• Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration

Finally, was pointed to an upcoming Ubisoft game titled “Watch Dogs”. Not much details have been released yet, but based on this E3 trailer, it looks to be one of those rare high concept, modernist thinking games that only get produced once in a blue moon. Plus the trailer itself is a magnificently designed video.

• Boy Wakes Up at His Own Funeral (to lie back ‘dead again’)
• US Navy hopes super-stealth ship answers a rising China
• Turns out binary was invented in 1617
• An incredibly in-depth (and well argued) examination of Prometheus

And fuck yes, Robert Zemekis returning to live-action films has me excited.