Do you miss those badge bandoliers you could make when you were in Girl/Boy Scouts? Wish you could get those badges for your adult geekery skills? Well, now you can. (Pointed to by Dan)
Jim Hines discusses just what the point of his cover poses happens to be. And it's not like cover art is the only culprit here. Heck, we sell salad dressing with oral sex visual metaphors. There's a new commercial for a beer, or something. There's a bit that Gabriel Inglesias does about Spanish TV advertising (it's starts around the 1 minute mark). The new beer commercial is the lower half of a woman in a short, sparkly dress carrying two bottles, with a teaser (ha!) at the end saying, "being announced (whatever the date is)." The first time that played (okay, the first time I saw it), my wife and I were watching TV together. At the end I turned to her and said, "Pepsi." Yeah, I'm like that. So, yeah, it's part of the culture. The good news is the books Jim shows the covers of at the bottom are selling. If they sell well enough buyers and all the rest of the people in the chain will be able to say, "Hey, people get it, we don't have to sell this way." You know, until the next group of young Turks get into the business. Now there are smart ways to use sex to sell product, showing all parties as having agency and power. But because of the reverberations of "Accepted" Victorian Thought on our modern day, sex becomes perverse, dirty, and all about power plays and subjugation (don't believe it, you should read my spam filter some day).
Using DNA to encode data. Well, it already does, but this is more of encoding data like your text or music files. Brings a whole new meaning to "going viral." (Pointed to by John)
The D&D Archive now that the game is turning 40. (Grokked from Phiala, I think)
"But I was disappointed in the margins." A lifehacker article on setting boundaries and maintaining balance. I'll read it all when I have a little more time. (Grokked from Elizabeth Shack)
What the eye has seen can not be unseen. Let's go and meet the Bronies video narrated by Jon de Lancie. With a lot on fandom, a little on gender equality in fandom (around the 3 minute mark). Watch at your own risk. (Pointed to by John)
Staying on a "horse" theme, Vince shares a music video, Unicorns from Hell. Would have been much nicer if I were convince she was really playing that guitar. But, um, yeah, Bob.
Attempting to see the walls of Dark Matter that we're "constantly" crashing through. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
A dinosaur skull in the walls of St. Ambrose. Part of the hidden world around us. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
Removing BPA from our diets and how hard that is. Not as hard as cutting high-fructose corn syrup out of the food chain, but still pretty bad. With a little on why BPA is bad for you and the politics of food and the chemical industry (hint, they're like the NRA, but they don't go on TV ranting about their positions). (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Dung beetles (and possibly other insects) using the Milky Way as a guide to keep rolling in a straight line. Which gets me wondering if other animals use the light from our galaxy for other signals. Like birds, for instance. (Grokked from Mrs. Tadd)
Thrown in for the coolness factor, using sound wave to suspend pharmaceuticals for drying to keep from having crystallization happen. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
In Saudi Arabia the "morals police" shut down a traveling exhibit of plaster dinosaurs. Which prompts many sarcastic tweets. Unfortunately I think the wrong people will see this as encouragement instead of satiric commentary.
The Kansas GOP Speaker of the House gets stupid when it comes to the President. Again, this isn't some whack job off the street or little known politico, this is the GOP Party Leader in the Kansas Legislature and either he is dumber than a stick, or he thinks the rest of us are. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
"The prevalent expression of this psychological pain is the belief that President Obama is largely or entirely responsible for Republican extremism… moderate Republicans believe that Obama’s tactic of taking sensible positions that moderate Republicans agree with is cruel and unfair, because it exposes the extremism that dominates the party, not to mention the powerlessness of the moderates within it." A little on the twisted psychology of that premise, and a lot of David Brooks and the call from the Right for President Obama to do what he has been doing for the past four years. And then a little more on the "let's compromise and do it all our way" philosophy of the conservatives. Pretty much exposes the emptiness of the conservative talking points. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Tweet of my heart: @daveweigel: Congressmen are the people at book readings who say "I have more of a comment than a question"
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