LinkMachineGo

[space] Go look: In the Shadow of Saturn … ‘The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet’s shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other…’

[health] The Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project … ‘A blog following the Daily Mail’s ongoing mission to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into those that cause or cure cancer.’ [via Mondo a-go-go]

[comics] 25 Great Things About Being A Comics Fan … ’16. At first you’ll like all the comics. Then you’ll get a little bit older and like only a few of them. Then you’ll get a little older than that, and you get to like all the comics again.’

[books] 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will … ‘Many people need desperately to receive this message: “I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”‘

[comics] Watching Dave Gibbons … one more interview with Gibbons on Watching the Watchmen. ‘… there was a misguided idea where we might do Rorschach’s Journal or The Comedian’s Vietnam War Diary, but I don’t think you need to see that. It’s much better if it’s hinted at.’

[comics] Top Ten Lists I Did Not Make For The Year-End Wrap-Up That Every Comics Blogger Seems To Be Doing … from BeaucoupKevin(dot)com … Number Six: ‘Top Ten “Chris Ware, What The Hell, Man? Are You Trying To Ruin It For The Rest Of Us By Being So Fucking Good And Creepy At The Same Time?” Moments In Acme Novelty Library 19’

[lego] Worth a look: Super Lego Sushi … [via GussetBLOG]

[comics] The Comics Reporter … Tom Spurgeon interviews Matt Fraction … On Grant Morrison’s recent Batman comics: ‘…using Batman as frame of reference for Batman. The gag is that everything that’s happened in the Batman comic actually happened to Batman, right? And what would that do to a human mind? From the bleak noir stuff to the bam-sock-pow stuff and everything in between. He’s using the whole history of the character to comment on the character as the character endures it. And to comment on the comics mainstream, and on heroes, and all that great stuff.’

[funny] Let’s look back on the year to come … David Mitchell on the events of 2009 … ‘James Bond to commit suicide in next film: Bond purists were outraged by the news that the suave womanising superspy hero will finally lose the will to live at the end of the next movie, Die and Live Death is Golden Casino Gun Depression (working title).’

[funny] The Great British Sandwich … there are some odd layers in that there sandwich! …‘Help build the world’s tallest sandwich’ [via Mondo a-go-go]

[london] Abandoned London … ‘Xmas morning is the only time that London is (almost) empty of humans – so a morning spent cycling around town taking photos.’

[comics] The Best Damned Comics of 2008 Chosen By The Artists … Dash Shaw: ‘Acme Novelty Library #19 by Chris Ware This is a predictable pick, but Ware is the greatest living cartoonist. It says that he drew this four years ago. What the hell? The comics he drew this week are the best comics of 2012 and 2013. I’m calling it now.’ [via Forbidden Planet’s Blog]

[comics] Archaeologizing Watchmen … Dave Gibbons interviewed on his new book Watching the Watchmen … ‘The second time around, I am amazed by how much thought we put into Watchmen, how hard we labored over every detail. But I think that is one of the reasons for its longevity. In comics, there are depths that don’t reveal themselves immediately, and the stuff that you might consider anal about Watching the Watchmen — like the notes where I plot the rotation of a perfume bottle through the air — might not be particularly obvious to anyone who reads it. But those who do will note the consistency, the reality behind it all that exists in great depth. It gives it a more magical quality, which it wouldn’t have had if we just made things up as we went along or changed it to suit the latest continuity. It does give it a feeling of authority.’

[london] Evening Standard Headline Crisis 2008 … another years worth of the best of the headline boards from the Evening Standard – my favourite was: Police Arrest Batman …

images of the evening standards headline boards

Click on the images for the full set

[comics] Drawing Power … A “Prose Guy” takes a look at Graphic Novels and comics … ‘The most important thing [Daniel] Pink learned was that in America, we have a “restricted, constricted view” of what comics can be. “In Japan, you can get manga for how to deal with your finances, how to find a mate, cooking, history of Buddha, whatever,” he says. If you’re working in the medium, “you can do really good stuff, you can do really bad stuff. You can do sports, you can do documentaries. You can do gripping narratives, you can do cheesy narratives.” In other words, in the world of Japanese comics, you can do anything you want…’

[maps] Motorway Map of the UK done in the style of the London Underground Map … [via iamcal.com]

[lists] Wikipedia’s List of Common Misconceptions … ‘Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet…’

[work] Revealed: Amazon staff punished for being ill … ‘[Amazon] Staff were warned that days off for illness, nonattendance or lateness would result in “points” against them. Any sick days, even if justified by a doctor’s note, resulted in a point against the worker.’

[twitter] Jonathan Ross is on Twitter … ‘wondering what record I should play on first radio show . am maybe “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone” by radio Birdman. Any thoughts?’

[funny] Periodic Table of Awesoments … ‘Aristole postulated that all good things were made of “win.” That was a pretty good guess, but he was drunk and probably also having an orgy. Modern day awesominers know there are actually 118 fundamental “awesoments” that compose all good things…’ [via The Daily Chump]

[comics] Alan Moore Christmas Strip from 1979 …

[life] Diamond Geezer on Woolworths shutting down: ‘Will nobody buy the 20 boxes of mint green Mingles stacked opposite the checkout? And don’t worry, because further inside there’s still a plastic rack of multi-coloured pic’n’mix. I suspect these scooped candies are a bit like the ravens at the Tower of London – when they’ve vanished, all is truly lost.’

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes … ‘Let us cut out their living guts one inch at a time, and they will know what we can do!’ [via Waxy’s Links]

[comics] Worth a look: Alan Moore combs his beard.

[movies] War Games: ‘How about a nice game of chess?’ [more…]

[movies] Stuff About Stanley Kubrick – big page of links from a Kubrick fan.

Go Watch: Dominoes Made of Dominoes … ‘And those dominoes are made of atoms…’ [via Sore Eyes]

[books] Philip Pullman answers your questions … ‘I am a devout believer in the complete democracy of text. It sounds to me as if you think reading is surrounded by rules and prohibitions and commands. It isn’t! Not a bit of it! Once a book is in your hands, ITS INTERPRETATION BELONGS TO YOU. You can read it in any way you like, and take away any meaning that makes sense to you. That’s the great freedom of reading.’

[life] You Choose: Pessimistic (though generally accurate) life advice vs. Optimistic (though generally accurate) life advice … ‘Everybody Shits and Farts’

[comics] Pat Mills – The General In Charley’s War … Mills is interviewed about Titan Books reprints of Charley’s War. On Joe Colquhoun: ‘. He could convey so many subtle moods, characterise everything and everybody in the most exquisite detail. That is such a gift and I do feel it needs wider recognition. He was such a modest man, too. When I finished Charley, I offered him Slaine. But he said – no. He said he had no imagination! But he had such empathy, such compassion, such insight – if that’s not imagination, I don’t know what is. I truly believe he was a genius. Sometimes I would not even look at his finished art because I could lose an entire day just staring at the detail in his work. I’m sure many readers did the same.’

[comics] What If… Matt Groening had done the art on Watchmen instead of Dave Gibbons? … from Springfield Punx … [via Forbidden Planet’s Blog]

[politics] Looking: Epic Win … [more…]

[tech] Dec. 8, 1993: Location, Location, Location … A brief history of GPS from Wired. ‘…after Korean Airline Flight 007 wandered into Soviet territory in 1983 and was shot down with a loss of 269 lives, even the military thought there might be distinct advantages to sharing the GPS system with civilians.’

[books] Gonzo’s back! … an interview with Ralph Steadman about Hunter S. Thompson … ‘Steadman didn’t go with Thompson on the fateful trip to Vegas, but he was there in spirit. “He thought of taking me, but in the meantime he’d met this lawyer called Oscar Acosta,” he laughs. “They had a lot in common, drugs-wise. So that’s why he decided not to take me. And anyway, as he said, ‘I might need a lawyer!'”‘

[tv] Watching: YouTube – Ludwig … [more…]

[comics] On Twitter: Warren Ellis’ Adoring Readership … [more…]

[funny] The Charlian … Charlie Brooker takes over the Guardian’s front page … On his incompetence: ‘It recently took me 21 days to get round to replacing the lightbulbs in my kitchen, which for several weeks had been blowing one-by-one until finally the room was plunged into darkness. For 21 days I had to feel my way into the room like a blind man, then prop open the fridge door in order to have enough light to be able to see. Your eyes get used to it after a while. So does your brain. It became a routine. Soon opening the fridge felt as natural as flipping the light switch. Standing there, chopping onions in the artificial gloaming, all felt well with the world. It took an incident with a broken glass on the floor and a shoeless foot to nudge me in the direction of the nearest lightbulb stockist, and even then I instinctively used the fridge as an impromptu lamp for another two days before re-acclimatising myself to the concept of ceiling-based light sources.’

[ lolcats] Don’t Worry, I’m From Tech Support … [more…]

[comics] Watchmen Unmasked … Occult symbolism in an Alan Moore comic. Really?! … ‘On the morning of September 11th, 2001 A.D., I was not working. On my day off, my mother phones me at 7:00 PST to wake me up: “Something incredible is happening”. When the first tower came down, I saw the beast more clearly than I have ever seen it, and yes, for a moment it looked just like a giant octopus driving this giant building straight down DIRECTLY THROUGH THE PATH OF GREATEST RESISTANCE LIKE A NAIL. And I thought, “It’s Chapter Twelve of Watchmen. It’s a stunt, a gag, a hoax. Someone has done this thing to fool us all again. Who? WHO HAS DONE THIS THING TO ME?’ [via BeaucoupKevin]

[comics] The End … Michael Lewis on Wall Street – twenty years after he wrote about it in Liar’s Poker …

‘This was what they had been waiting for: total collapse. “The investment-banking industry is fucked,” Eisman had told me a few weeks earlier. “These guys are only beginning to understand how fucked they are. It’s like being a Scholastic, prior to Newton. Newton comes along, and one morning you wake up: ‘Holy shit, I’m wrong!’”‰” Now Lehman Brothers had vanished, Merrill had surrendered, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were just a week away from ceasing to be investment banks. The investment banks were not just fucked; they were extinct.’

[twitter] Tony Benn is on Twitter … ‘I have been waiting for my website to be updated for a while. I feel this could be a decent stop gap. It is a little like a blog.’

[comics] Watchmen Condensed …

[books] The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell … Andrew Orlowski tears into Malcolm Gladwell and fans … ‘Gladwell is a walking Readers Digest 2.0: a compendium of pop science anecdotes which boil down very simply to homespun homilies. Like the Digest, it promises more than it delivers, and like the Digest too, it’s reassuringly predictable. The most famous book Tipping Point, takes an epidemiological view of social trends and throws in a bit of network theory. You won’t draw anything more profound from this than “we’re all connected” – gee! …’

[tv] Every House Episode Ever … [via Robot Wisdom]

Sidebar: Diction – Doctors are smart. You can show this replacing regular words with Doctor words.

Wrong: “Dammit House, you’re such a whiny bitch!”

Right: “Dammit House, your self-flaggelistic nihilism and anarchistic negation is just compensation from your hidden vulnerability!”

[movies] Michael Caine reveals Italian Job ending … ‘The star says he would have saved them by “switching on the engine”, burning off petrol until it righted itself. “I crawl up, switch on the engine and stay there for four hours until all the petrol runs out,” he said. “The van bounces back up so we can all get out, but then the gold goes over…”‘

[blogs] A List of all BBC Blogs … surprisingly small list of blogs for such a large media operation.

[comics] Batman R.I.P.? A Dozen Dark Knight Deaths …‘Batman is more than a character appearing in a comic book. He – as Bruce Wayne – is known to millions around the world as the hero of Gotham City. His movie has almost made a billion dollars this year. The value of Batman/Bruce Wayne to DC Comics and Warner Bros. is beyond measure. We’ll let you figure out what that means in terms of how “dead” Batman may be here, in the broad view.’

[news] Brighton and Hove Argus Headline Boards …‘King Alfred is Dead’ [via Qwghlm]

[questions] Live Feed of Questions and Answers from text118118.com … fascinating real time look at what messages a text message Question and Answer service gets … ‘Q: How many seconds is it until christmas 2008? A: There are only 108,000 seconds before christmas. thx’

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