Ray Jessel... nobody saw this coming

(Don't watch this if you are offended by any mentioned of privates, even in latin terms.)

Funneee.

Hail Phoebe (video update)

Phoebe Cates (screenshot from Fast Times At Ridgemont High). The most underused film beauty from the eighties?

Update: Russ said:
How can we forget the iconic slow-mo swimming pool fantasy scene. 

Iconic is the word! Best bikini scene ever. She's a goddess.



(I did not even look for this scene because I thought NoBoobs would have deleted it in a New York Second. But clearly there's a world of difference between topless and nude, even if the nude only shows pubic hair. Odd world.)
 (By the way, in the scene when she enters the bathroom, Judge Reinholt (Brad) was faking his self-'abuse' with a big realistic dildo. Phoebe shot backwards out of the bathroom like a startled cat!)

Not a "better mousetrap"

[Thanks to TOP]

Ralp Waldo Emerson did not actually say any thing about "a better mousetrap". It was a perversion of what he did say, and which I find has much broader relevance:

"If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods." —Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Tiffany Aching closes Terry Pratchett's career.

Terry Pratchett, alas, is dead.

I was not surprised when I saw that Terry Pratchett's last novel, published post-mortem this week, is currently the number One bestseller.
I am glad it is a Tiffany Aching book that he managed to get out, she is my favorite witch, and the witches may well be my favorite characters of his. Tiffany is righteous, and smart, and strong. (The cranky eldest witch, Granny Weatherwax, actually takes off her hat to Tiffany at one point, something  which I'm not sure ever happened before.)

I would say "get it!", except I would recommend reading her books (five) in sequence, starting with the wee free men. The books start with her being around six, and in her late teens in the last one. So seen as a whole, you might say it's a big growing-up, or coming-of-age story. In an usual way, since it's less about boys and more about power and magic and responsibility and how can you fight an invisible, intangible enemy...

I'm not generally a fantasy reader. Most fantasy seems stuck in about twelve of the same ideas all the time, most Tolkien-related. There's only so many times you can read about orphans' destiny and magic swords. But: Terry Pratchett's book are not like that, not by a long shot. His books can be about anything, including suddenly a time travel story or whatever. But they always holds together.
They have great characters, and they are FUNNY.

Update: 
 Anonymous said...

That cover really blows,

Yes sadly I agree. The shade of green of the dress is just wrong (though she does wear green and blue. She intends to wait with wearing black til she is old (source: "I Shall Wear Midnight).). And he clearly does not know how to draw a young woman's face. (I had two choices of covers to show. The other one was worse.)

It's a pity, it's actually quite rare that they find a really good artist for book covers. They should look at among comic book artists, particularly comic book cover artists, there are some excellent ones amongst them.

3D "Life"

My friend, artist Zeppelina, sent me this:

Thought you might like this..... 3D printed forms, based on the Fibonacci number system., and as beautiful as they already are as sculptural forms, they spin them under a strobe light, and they become fascinating and quite magnificent.

On Robin

I was reminded of something I read in the Batman magazine letter column when I was a kid. Somebody asked the editor:
"Doesn't Robin freeze in the winter, given that his custome has bare legs?"
The editor answered:
"1) Robin is tough, he's no girlie-boy.
 2) He is actually not bare-legged, he's wearing pantyhose."

Batman Equation - Numberphile

It's fun that it's not just an approximation, it's a perfect Batman logo. If you put in on an issue of Batman, nobody would remark on it.

On Quora somebody asked who wrote it, and this answer came:

J. Matthew

I wrote it many, many years ago. I was teaching at a few art schools throughout the greater Sacramento area, and I used it to engage my students in the topic of graphing.  One of my coolest students (Mr. Wilkinson aka i_luv_ur_mom) posted it to Reddit back in 2011 and it went viral.  These days, I'm a full time professor over at American River College, doing every thing I can to make math as enjoyable as possible.

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Great Olympus offers

If you have considered the Micro Four Thirds system (and you really should, compact and top quality), then right now there are two amazing Olympus offers of next-newest models with kit lens:

The compact workhorse:
Olympus E-PL6
For only $269

And the amazing:
Olympus OM-D E-M5
for just $499

Both are dirt-cheap ways of getting a really good camera with standard zoom lens, and near-endless possibilities for expansion later with fancy lenses and such. And unlike five years ago, now speed and image quality is fully competitive with the big, heavy Canons and Nikons.

How Amazon saved my life

An article about the surprising advantages of self-publishiong, by Jessica Park.

Bestselling trad-to-indie-author Barry Eisler, famous for turning down a six figure deal from St. Martins Press to go out on his own, took a lot of heat for having compared an author’s relationship with a big publisher to Stockholm syndrome*. The truth is that it’s not a bad comparison at all. Snarky, funny, and exaggerated, perhaps, but there is more than one grain of truth there, and I just know that authors across the country were nodding so violently that we had collective whiplash.


* Stockholm Syndrome: the tendency of long-term hostages to start to sympathize with their emprisoners. 

sabeena karnik paper letter font art

sabeena karnik paper letter font art. She is amazing.

Simpsons, "Woke up this morning" from Sopranos

(I wish the quality was better, but it was the only post of it I could find.)

Revolution cover

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"Revolution" now always reminds me of the Beatles' virtuoso rock rendition of that live on TV, and it makes me sad that we did not get more of Beatles as a rock band.