The Amsterdam van Gogh Museum is creating $34k replicas of original paintings using 3D printing techniques. The question is, will developments like this completely erode the value of unique works of art and other artifacts or will the industry be just fine?
I hate everything that BuzzFeed represents, but I love BuzzFeed. Sue me.
It looks like the entire series from a few years back is on YouTube. His obsessive dedication to culinary perfection is something to behold.
Go on YouTube. Watch any video. Click outside the search box. Type 1980. Prevent the aliens from destroying your video.
Do you remember America's Funniest Home Videos? Turns out they should have gone with a 6-second-max policy.
This article from just before the first inauguration of Bush II in January 2001 is eerily prescient.
This is as good a time as any to post Simon Rich's four-part story about Hersch, who is pickled for a century and awakes in present-day Brooklyn. Rich is one of the youngest-ever writers on SNL, and I seriously envy his abilities.
This video requires no comment. Jumpy is better than you.
Fritz Haber invented a process that synthesises ammonia, which is crucial to fertilizer production. Prior to this process, countries went to war over Guano , one of the previously best available sources of the stuff. Today, the Haber Process feeds approximately half the world's population. Naturally, the guy got the Nobel Prize for this monumental achievement.
Great man, you might think. However, he also lead the team that developed poison gases for use in World War I and went to the front lines to oversee its deployment, for which he ascended to the rank of Captain in the German army. His wife wasn't too impressed by this and killed herself after an argument with Haber. His 13-year-old son found her body. On the same morning, Haber left his grieving son to go the Eastern Front.
Cruel, cruel man, you might think. However, there's another tragic twist to his life. He also oversaw the team that developed a cyanide-based fumigant and insecticide initially known as Zyklon A. Haber's team added a strong "warning smell" to the formulation, so people would be aware of the gas' presence. Some years later, the Nazis took Zyklon A, removied the warning smell and used it for the mass extermination of millions of Jews. Haber was Jewish, and members of his family perished in concentration camps. Haber himself died on a journey to Israel, where he would have become the director of what is now the famous Weizmann Institute.
His inventions feed billions. They also killed millions. I am not sure whether any other single life embodies the moral ambiguity sometimes immanent to scientific progress.
From McSweeney's:
"That’s right, girl. I want to serve you that good-ass Billy Crystal dick. That sweet, tender lovin’ that’ll make you feel like Meg Ryan from 1989 or 1995, depending on which era of Meg Ryan you relate to more. I want to tear that up after a long and dramatic courtship where I slowly gain your trust, but lose it at the worst possible moment by revealing our relationship was part of a bet or that I have destroyed your small independent business. "
This is an arresting photo essay about the Ku Klux Klan. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.
Everything that you could ever possibly want to know about Bond's (and the villains', and ConneryMooreLazenbyDaltonBrosnanCraig's in other roles) outfits is collected here, with astonishing amounts of detailed observations.
Both This American Life and Radiolab are awesome, enlightening, entertaining and often moving. These are two recently broadcast episodes - the devastating story of Eritrean hostages held captive in the Sinai Peninsula and the Eritrean-Swedish journalist turned accidental saviour / activist (TIA), and three stories about doubt and certainty (Radiolab).
"I love my father, but sometimes he can get on my nerves. It’s hard to explain why exactly. It’s just little things he does, here and there, that bother me. For example, sometimes he shits into his hands and then throws the shit into my face while jumping up and down and screaming. I know he’s just trying to be funny—and it is funny, I can see that.
But there’s just something about it that bugs me. I’ve asked him politely not to do it anymore, but I always get the same reaction. He just rolls his yellow eyes and says, “I’m sorry, your majesty.”
My father’s been calling me “your majesty” for as long as I can remember. He does it whenever I rinse off fruit before eating it, or catch grubs with a stick instead of my fingers."I'm not sure who else could turn what's essentially an infomercial about texting and driving into something so emotional and powerful.
No, really. $40k a year kindergartens are apparently a thing, and the entrance exams (seriously?!) take some preparation...
...since epically long MoJo pieces aren't for everyone, here's an awesome Reddit thread on cool new discoveries.
Meth is a gigantic problem in the US and other parts of the world. According to the RAND Corporation, it's costing the US anywhere between $16-48bn annually (and these are 2009 figures, the numbers have likely increased since).
One simple solution would be to simply put pseudoephedrine behind the counter, which would procurement of the crucial precursor ("smurfing" - fantastic euphemism) much harder. Why don't states ban it? The answer is, as in many, many other public policy debacles, money in politics.
