This is both really creative and really funny, but it is also really long, so I’ve hidden the whole image after the jump.
Click to see!
Click to continue reading “The Second World War — as if it were conducted via Facebook”
This Earth Day, why not boycott Burt’s Bees?
This year is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, which takes place (as always) on April 22 (it happens to be the birthday of one of the founders, that’s how they picked the date).
To celebrate, according to the L.A. Times, the Burt’s Bees company will be handing out product samples, smoothies blended by the action of a bicycle — and fake “look-like-Burt” beards.
But for all the eco-friendly things that Burt’s Bees may do (the LAT says they’ve “been using recycled packaging long before it got trendy”) I haven’t been able to think about the company the same way since I read about its tumultuous founding.
That guy, “Burt” on the packaging? He was just an old beekeeper, living in a turkey coop in Maine.
Then he met a girl. Then they started selling beeswax products at farmer’s markets and the like, and then they founded a company.
For some reason, he only had a 1/3 share of this company, while his “girlfriend” got a 2/3 share. When they broke up, she bought out his share for a $130,000 house (which he later sold to go back to his turkey coop).
A few years later, she turned around and sold the company — first to a private equity firm, then to Clorox, the bleach company. She made some $300 million.
Feeling guilty, she did send a little bit more money Burt’s way — about $4 million. And he gets paid an “undisclosed amount” for the use of his name and image.
And maybe that’s fair. But I can no longer feel the same way about Burt’s Bees as I used to — it’s missing the very authenticity that it’s striving for.
According to the New York Times feature where I learned most of this (read it here), Clorox is hoping to learn from Burt’s Bees’ environmental practices — to make greener bleach, and a greener company. I can’t judge how that’s going.
But with all the feel-good bike-churned smoothies that Burt’s Bees will be handing out in L.A. (with compostable cups!) they’ll also be handing out fake beards so you can parade around, looking like their corporate image. Are the fake beards environmentally friendly? Who knows, maybe they are.
But I don’t think they’re morally friendly. I don’t get the sense that they’re honouring the back-to-the-land, natural-living ethos of a beekeeper who lives in a turkey coop without electricity or running water. Maybe they’ve paid him enough — $4 million plus an annual image licensing fee is a lot of money — and maybe he’s satisfied. But I’m not.
Gather round, children. It’s story time.
Once upon a time, aliens descended upon the Hundred Acre Wood…
There are so many reasons to love the Internet. This story is one of them.
A look back at Havana in the 1930s
This travelogue is incredible:
But almost even more incredible is the fact that it’s just one of hundreds, posted to YouTube by the Travel Film Archive.
Warning: Daywrecker. If you’re watching this at work, do not expect to get anything done for the rest of your shift.
A dog and his deer
This is so cute — a deer, adopted as a fawn by a family who found it malnourished, but managed to bottle-feed it back to health, has developed a friendly, playful attitude with the family’s dog.
According to the YouTube description:
He is free to wander if he likes and we’ve seen him with several herds of whitetail and axis deer. Apparently he fits in just fine with them. He frequently comes back to the house to eat some catfood and play with our dog, Buddy. He doesn’t care much for deer corn.
All together, now: “Awwwwww.”
The sturdiest chair in existence
There are a ton of interesting and wild designs on Nova68, but I couldn’t stop looking at this solid block of chair. It’s called the Kashiwado chair:
The Kashiwado chair is a fabulous yet hard to find icon of modern design, a work of art, a master piece. Stunning in every way, perfect for upscale residential and commercial projects. A spectacular piece of sculpture which still maintains its principal function: seating. The Kashiwado chair will be custom made for you by the original workshop in Japan.
Designed by Isamu Kenmochi for Tendo Japan in 1961. The Kashiwado chair was actually created for a famous Sumo wrestler named Kashiwado from that time. This chair is truly a work of art which takes several weeks to create. Craftsmen first cut out several blocks of the bottom roots of a Japanese cedar (Sugi). They carefully select the best wood with most tree-rings. The blocks are carved and layered on top of each other with a special process. The chair is polished and coated afterwards.
Of course, all that hand-crafting comes at a price — shall we say $12,400?
Free shipping, though!
Criminals from a century ago
The Daily Mail has a rogues gallery from 1902 up — they are mug shots and descriptions of “habitual drunks” who were photographed by the police and then placed on a special “Black List” which was distributed to local pubs and taverns in Birmingham, England.
Luckily, some of those pubs were owned by Holt Brewery, which kept a copy of the list, including all the photographs. Ancestry.co.uk has scanned them.
The guy above, says the Daily Mail is “Richard ‘Dirty Dick’ Flemming (left) – also listed with the alias ‘Dick the Devil’. He was sentenced on February 20, 1903 for being drunk and disorderly, receiving 21 days of hard labour. He is described as 5ft 2in with a slim build and pug nose.”
There’s a ton of interesting characters there, and if you’re interested, there are similar galleries of Welsh criminals as well as Australian ones.
(via BB)
Music Mondays: Broken Bells
by Amy Breen
The Broken Bells are the newest indie super group; the main members consist of James Mercer, lead singer for The Shins, and producer/mixer extraordinaire, Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) who infamously mixed Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” and the Beatles’ “White Album” and is also one of the members of Gnarls Barkley.
According to the Wikipedia page, they began recording in secret in 2008, and just released their first album this year.
Their sound is a touch more Danger Mouse than The Shins, electronic and sort of dancey. You can definitely hear the production direction of Danger Mouse in the music. But they also seemed to experiment a little, and utilize instruments like horns and the organ like in their song “Vaporize.” I really like the song “The High Road” because it seems to be a great mix of both the musical styles. It’s a head-nodding, slow-jam song; it has a great beat and melodies, and I have been listening to it a lot.
Proven correct once again?
Far be it for me to toot my own horn, but way back when, I made the case that the H1N1 panic was just that — a panic. Now, it seems, the World Health Organization might be starting to agree with me.
A group of outside experts will scrutinize the World Health Organization’s response to the swine flu outbreak and will likely examine whether the term “pandemic” was appropriate for what turned out to be a mild disease, the World Health Organization said Monday.
Is it too early for a big round of “I told you so”?
Get up, get up … do math?
As Amy can attest, I require a fair bit of waking in the mornings. A clock “radio” doesn’t really do it for me — I need the loud, rhythmic pulsing of an electronic beep.
And even then, I have mastered the art of hitting the snooze button while still snoozing. As a teen, I became so frustrated by not being able to wake up that I would put the alarm clock on the top shelf of my room, as far away as possible from my bed, forcing myself each morning to climb up on a chair with wheels to slap the alarm off.
I could do that in my sleep.
For a while, I sincerely believed that they only possible alarm clock for me would be one that required me to go down the hall to a separate room to shut it off, and instead of a snooze button, in that other room I would be faced with an alphanumeric code that I would have to bring back to my bedroom and input correctly. This code would have to change every day.
Perhaps this is the nearest thing to my dream:
With the alarm blaring, you have to twist the clock, lining up numbers to solve the equation. In this case, what, minus what, equals two? Obviously, it’s not 5-4. But that wouldn’t be so obvious in the morning.
Apparently it’s available here for about $30, but I can’t read Japanese.
(via Engadget)
This light bulb is anything but fragile
Huh, imagine this: A lightbulb made out of concrete:
It’s easy to pull out the innards, fill it with concrete, pop the screw-end back on (with a lag bolt), wait for the concrete to cure, and then pop the glass off.
What you’re left with is a light-bulb-shaped concrete thing, which you could screw into a wall as a hook or coat hanger. Yes, it’s a little industrial, but you could paint it any colour you wanted.
Exploring the not-so-distant future in film
by Amy Breen
Imagine a world where videogames have evolved to the point where you can no longer tell the difference between the game world and the real world, where you can no longer discern who is playing, what the game is, or how to get out.
This is the premise of the short film Play. It was created through a project called Future States in association with the Independent Television Service. The goal of the Future States project is take current issues facing American society (they specify America, but it could easily include Canada) and imagine how they would look in the future.
Independent Television Service (ITVS) asked 11 renowned and up-and-coming filmmakers to take the current state of affairs in the United States, and extrapolate them into stories of the nation in the not-so-distant future.
…
Each episode presents a different filmmaker’s vision of American society in the not-too-distant future, fusing an exploration of social issues with elements of speculative and science fiction.
Which brings me back to Play. It is an interesting examination of how the landscape might look if and when virtual reality becomes, simply, reality:
Play has the structure of a puzzle, and is not meant to resolve into a single explanation or interpretation. Rather, the film is a meditation on our present day of hyperconnectivity and information overload, using videogames as the metaphor for the very human search for meaning and identity.
It is well worth watching, and I recommend checking out the other films at the Future States website.
I give this trailer an A
I can’t believe I missed this trailer when it came out in January. The A-Team was an important part of my childhood, and I’m thankful (and relieved) that it looks like the movie will be a faithful rendition.
There’s still the whole new-character-played-by-Jessica-Biel thing to worry about, though.