That's How It Happened

60 seconds to resuscitate and laparotomize a bunny. Like a mini-game from WarioWare, but with distinctly adult themes. link

"Pooh-pooh the Bush/Hitler comparisons all you want, but this hideous display of otherworldly shamelessness on the part of EVERYONE ON THE STAGE AND EVERYONE WHO LAUGHED OR APPLAUDED evokes nothing so much as those home movies of Hitler, Goering and pals partying while millions were being annihilated. This clip will be referenced by future historians as a key moment in the ongoing progression of America's forfeiting all claims of moral superiority over any other nation."

Paul Sklansky (quoted above) is really angry about MC Rove; and on a similar note Ronan Bennett is angry about the disproportionate press coverage of Faye Turney and the other British sailors in Iran.

Update: Jim Gray was not found. Obvious really, but an interesting look back at the stats behind the search for him.

Papercraft ghettoblasters with printable designs by different artists.

A day in the life of a pro pachinko player. Nothing about this makes any sense to me. Pachinko looks so random, so utterly devoid of skill, that no amount of canny "money management" could make it profitable.

Yesterday's update to Desktop TD has ruined it as far as I can see. I'm playing Bloons instead. 50 levels of balloon popping puzzle fun.

How to: make maple syrup. Not something I'll be trying at home.

Pictures of Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye when they both worked together at Haagen-Dazs.

April Fool of the Year (so far): Apple's iPod ad viewable from space.

Labels: apple, mcrove, papercraft

Matthew Barney and Bjork's Drawing Restraint 9, is being exhibited at the Serpentine in September as part of his first ever major show in the UK. The Cremaster Cycle Exhibition at the Guggenheim, was one of the most astonishing art shows I've ever seen, but I have some reservations about Drawing Restraint 9:

"In a harrowing liebestod which is the climax and centerpiece of the film, the Guests, locked in an embrace and breathing through blowhole-like orifices on the back of their necks, take out flensing knives and cut away each other's feet and thighs. The remains of their lower body are revealed to contain traces of whale tails at an early stage of development, suggesting rebirth, physical transformation, and the possibility of new forms."

Not surprisingly the film has spilt the critics. I particularly like Colin Covert's review for the Star Tribune, which concludes:

"Moby ick. Intercut with their mating metamorphosis are scenes of the ship's crew filling a gigantic oval Jell-O mold with Vaseline, harpooning trash bags full of shrimp, and salvaging a clump of ambergris. That, of course, is a type of whale barf prized by perfume connoisseurs, and a fitting image for this willfully opaque project. The accolades of the art vanguard notwithstanding, Barney needs to pull his head out of his blowhole."

Despite this, the trailer makes it look quite utterly brilliant:

Labels: matthewbarney, whales

This actually is a dream come true for me. (Thanks, OG)

Labels: skiing

This is officially my favourite photo of me ever. I'm the Sandtrooper, and Aidy is the one in the Chewbacca suit. If anyone has any more photos of me in costume, can you email me, because I was too drunk to operate a camera.

DFW was asked to contribute a "Top Ten" to a book called The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books. For an official genius, whose influences include Pynchon, Barthelme, and Joyce, he seems to be a big fan of genre fiction:

1. The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
2. The Stand - Stephen King
3. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
4. The Thin Red Line - James Jones
5. Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
6. The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
7. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
8. Fuzz - Ed McBain
9. Alligator - Shelley Katz
10. The Sum of All Fears - Tom Clancy

The compiler of the Top Ten book speculates that DFW: "farmed the job" (of constructing the list) "out to a 13 year-old who liked to read", which would certainly explain the mysterious presence of Erica Jong at 5.

Labels: dfw

In 3 years of beekeeping, I've been stung approximately 30 times. A single sting hurts, but only enough to be mildly annoying. The pain last only around 20 minutes. In my limited experience of stings it's about equal to a horsefly bite, or a (non-fatal) box jellyfish sting. It's not nearly as painful as a South African fire ant bite, which I now very studiously avoid. It is the "middle C" of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, scoring a 2. In comparison the Giant Tropical Bullet Ant scores a 4.0: "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel." There's some speculation that the jellyfish Carukia barnesi may be more painful, causing a severe whole body pain, lasting up to 48 hours, known as Irukandji Syndrome (after the tribe in Northern Australia who were the first to be stung). The name of the jellyfish and the aetiology of the syndrome come from a Dr Jack Handyside Barnes. He spent many years self-experimenting with different jellyfish stings around Queensland. Finally in 1961, he captured a Carukia barnesi and deliberately stung himself, his 9-year-old son Nick, and a local lifeguard Chilla Ross. The Smithsonian have more details:

"The three returned to the Barnes family home where, 20 minutes after being stung on the beach, they began to feel the venom’s terrifying effects. Chilla Ross began screaming, “Let me die.” Nick remembers vomiting “as Dad carried me upstairs, then I was lying on a bed swallowing painkillers. I felt pretty terrible”—so terrible, in fact, that he found himself “thinking that dying mightn’t be a bad idea.” But he survived, as did Ross and his father. Three years later, Jack Barnes described the ordeal in the Australian Medical Journal, writing that all three of them had been “seized with a remarkable restlessness and were in constant movement, stamping about aimlessly, swinging their arms, flexing and extending their bodies, and generally twisting and writhing.”

Worst. Parenting. Ever? If you are feeling brave, there's a video of a Discovery researcher writhing in agony having been stung.

Labels: jellyfish

The Dorset Naga, previously the world's hottest chilli, has lost its crown to an upstart from New Mexico the Bhut Jolokia. It's the first chilli to score over 1 million Scovilles, making it more than 100 times hotter than a jalapeno, but only 1/5th as powerful as US Police Pepper Spray. Wikipedia has a well referenced article with a handy comparison table.

Labels: chilli

When I redesigned, I somehow left out a blogroll, and as a consequence haven't been good at linking other blogs. These are just some interesting blogs that have linked to me in the last few months:

do.palicio.us is a neat personal blog, mostly about design in advertising and branding.

solace in cinema is an excellent group blog about cult and indie film (from whence a 30 min featurette about Grindhouse)

all you see is, a very dope blog about graffiti.

Urban Camou, a suitably sneaker obsessed streetwear blog.

Deep Linking a very beautiful blog about social networks, literature, New York history, and a whole bunch of other stuff worth digging into.

terazine is more of a mystery, since it's in japanese, but it has great pictures.

Oh and all these people probably found me via either Jorn or Jason, who as ever remain at the top of their respective games.

On Saturday as many as 12,000 junior doctors took to the streets of London to protest at disasterous changes to our training and job application process. It was the largest protest ever staged by doctors in the UK. The march was organised by a group called RemedyUK, led by a former colleague of the GF. I was skeptical about the aims of the march, given that the Royal Colleges have already responded appropriately to try and fix the system. However it was an excellent social occasion, with hundreds of my friends and former colleagues turning out to chant witty slogans, and listen to David "Spliffy" Cameron deliver a rousing speech. Best of all, one of the GF's placards reading "YOUR HEALTH", along with her right hand, was featured in coverage of the march in The Times. Finally, the recognition from mainstream media that I crave.

Well illustrated round up of the world's most dangerous airports, complete with bone chilling youtube clips. Nothing quite as a mad as the approach at Kai Tak, the old Hong Kong airport.

Let the bandwagon jumping begin: I'm twittering.

Delicious footage of Jeffrey Steingarten being completely wonderfully snobbish about food, as he hires a personal chef.

If you have 5 spare minutes, a staple, and a piece of A4 thats <80gsm, give The Paperang a try. Best paper airplane I can ever remember follding.

Labels: airplane, steingarten, twitter

I work with a fluoroscope every day. It's a modern 'scope called the Siemens Sireskop. Although I love it dearly, I do fear that it might be giving me thyroid cancer or leukaemia. I was surprised thus to learn of shoe fitting fluoroscopes, that were a popular novelty in 30's shoe shops, allowing parents to visually check that their kids' shoes fitted. Luckily for the kids, foot cancer is rare, but who knows how many sales assistants died young from scattered radiation.

Labels: xray

Bristol council graffiti removers mistakenly painted over an early Banksy mural, against an explicit city wide edict.

The knockoff project compares album covers that spoof, ape, or plagiarise other covers. Lots that I own, but never realised were homages.

Great ask.me:band names that are complete sentences

This is one of four totally professional YouTube spots put out by Creative Rescue dotorg.

Labels: obama

This video of ASIMO falling down some stairs is really uncomfortable to watch. The way the attendants screen off ASIMO's lifeless robot body, like nurses do with a real corpse, is a bit anthropomorphilic, but it is still emotionally jarring to see him collapse. I'm amazed the kids in the audience aren't screaming.

Labels: ASIMO, robot

I missed this story about a gigantic hole that appeared in Guatemala City 2 weeks ago, killing three people. It is presumed to be due to a "saturated" sewer.

Movies re-edited to just 5 seconds. (Still some swearing).

Must see stereographic projections Flickr set.

Short excerpt from Robert Smithson's film of the construction of Spiral Jetty.

An exhibition of graphic design from the 1972 Munich Olympiad.

The intense nerdery associated with amateur robot fighting is undoubtedly what led to the end of televised Robot Wars in the UK. However with the recent launch of the Elbit VIPeR (left) as a challenger to the PackBot EOD (right), there's potential for a new awesome TV show. Imagine teams of pro-roboteers from Elbit and iRobot, doing genuine battle with robots mounted with live-firing weapons. They could be out on a real military test range, with footage shot by cameras mounted on other robots. The cost might at first seem prohibitive, but the advertising benefits to each company would be huge.

Labels: robot, TV

This is an astonishing sequel to the classic re-edits: Pulp Fiction (F***ing Short Version), Big Lebowski (F***ing Short Version), The Commitments (Fookin' Short Version), Casino (F***ing Short Version), and of course Scarface (F***ing Short Version). The dramatic arc of The Departed actually survives this foul mouthed remix.
With only "at least 237 f-words", The Departed is still just outside the Top 20 Films with the most f-words:

Labels: departed, fuck

All the most junior UK junior doctors are currently engaged in a new process for finding a job to last them all the way through to consultant grade. It has been controversial, to say the least. This morning it went totally off the rails after the West Midlands general surgery assessors held a vote of no confidence in the process, and cancelled their interviews. It hasn't hit the press yet, but their formal statement is a damning indictment of the process:

The ST3 Interview Panel for General Surgery in the West Midlands have unanimously come to the conclusion that the MTAS procedure for recruitment to ST3 in General Surgery, has not been implemented according to agreed guidelines. We have therefore declined to continue with the interviews today.

We have come to this conclusion after considerable debate. We feel that this is the right course of action, which has at its heart the best interests of surgical trainees, training and our patients.

A serious procedural flaw, which came to light this morning, has been the complete lack of a longlisting process prior to selecting candidates for interview. This alone is sufficient grounds for postponement or cancellation and makes the entire recruitment process open to criticism and challenge.

Our meeting at 8.00 am today was the first available reasonable opportunity for the panel members to meet, discuss the process and air their concerns and reservations. With the limited information available today on-site, the longlisting process could not be completed satisfactorily. In addition we feel that the recruitment process for ST3 in its current format is in contradiction to equal opportunities legislation and NHS best practice guidelines.


We have in addition, wider concerns about the current MTAS process as follows,

As far as we are aware, the shortlisting application form has not been validated or demonstrated to be suitable for appointments to ST3 in General surgery which in effect is a pre-consultant appointment.

The application form domains available to the shortlisters and its accompanying scoring system have not been shown to select candidates best suited to be surgeons. It fails to distinguish adequately between candidates, giving credibility to creative writing skills rather than hard evidence of competency.

The time-scale imposed nationally has ensured that the whole process has been rushed. The unrealistic deadlines and sheer number of applications caused the MTAS computer system to crash. Changes in process have been implemented in order to meet deadlines. The marking system for shortlisting has been inconsistent throughout the country with forms being marked by a varying combination of members of the medical profession and lay people. There has been a lack of cross validation between markers and different marking methods (horizontal and vertical) have been used in different deaneries. Therefore there has been no standardisation or quality control.

The staff in the West Midlands deanery have worked tirelessly without adequate resources in place to try to meet the deadlines set. This has meant working holidays and weekends repeatedly entering marks onto an unreliable MTAS Website. They have finally provided a shortlist of candidates for ST3 in General surgery on the Friday evening prior to the Monday morning interviews. In all, the deanery has received 11500 applications, well in excess of the projected 8000.

We owe it to our patients and the profession that we are able to select and appoint the best candidates to surgical training posts and felt strongly that this was impossible today.

We have agreed to return to help re-shortlist and interview once the entire process has been proved to be reliable, robust, reproducible and has been validated and agreed upon nationally.

Above all we have carefully considered the plight of the candidates outside today, waiting to be interviewed. We have stayed and spoken to all the candidates about our decision with honesty, openness and integrity. We have been at pains to assure them of our best intentions towards trainees and surgical training as a whole. We share their concerns and the concerns of the hundreds of other young doctors who haven’t been shortlisted for any job. We share their anxieties at a system, which is being described and unjust and unfair. We have been overwhelmed by their positive responses to our action and are humbled by their words of support. We have provided support for all the candidates with the offer of contact email and telephone numbers if they require any further assistance.

Labels: MTAS MMC medicine

Via monkeyfilter

"Trebuchet" is a special example of mutual zugzwang; a game position where whichever player must move next will lose the game.

Pukh is a fluffy pollen from balsam poplar trees that collects in drifts in Russian towns and starts fires. A popular topic for expat journos. True Muscovites are unimpressed: "In a country where women with doctorates are reduced to hooking for pennies and serial killers own the keys to half the country’s cities, Western journalists year after year somehow never fail to deem to deem newsworthy the botanical accident which leaves cottony pollen floating in their latte."

And finally a word that provokes intense lethologia for me: petrichor, the smell of rain on dry ground.

Labels: wotd

Labels: BASE

I am away snowboarding. The conditions suck, so theoretically I could make up for weeks of infrequent posting. However I hate doing battle with the french keyboard.

Labels: skiing