Posts by author
Joshuah Bearman
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I Make-a-the-Music
The best game for Nintendo DS was not Nintendogs, as much as I liked that one. It was a little-known experimental music interface called Elektroplanton, with which you would use the stylus and microphone to create surprisingly sonorous and satisfying…
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OK Computer!
First the IBM 704 sang it, then a malfunctioning HAL 9000, and now the internet. It’s Daisy Bell — or, a Bicycle Built for Two Thousand. That would be the number of voices compiled into this rendition. Which is spookier,…
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Put it on my Tab
We knew that monkeys paid for sex as soon as they learn what money is. But that’s in a lab, a controlled setting, where who knows what kinds of tricks the labcoats used to pervert their monkey minds. Turns out, though,…
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That Old Philogelos—Up To His Old Tricks!
Classicist Mary Beard has discovered a joke book from the 4th century AD, filled with rib-ticklers from the late Roman Empire. Just like today, the old egghead is a source of tremendous humor, along with other frequently targeted figures of…
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Border War Goes Both Ways
Last year, my pal James Verini wrote an extensive piece in Portfolio about the problem — and related policy hypocrisy — that allows the entire discussion of “border protection” to be exclusively focused on the drugs coming in (along with…
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A Tree Grows in Detroit
If you thought there was an odd brilliance in Steven Soderberg setting Out of Sight‘s stirring first love scene against snow settling over the ruins of Detroit, and that Robert Polidori’s large-format photos of Havana’s faded glory were as beautiful…
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Copula Mori
Just getting around to reading Wired’s recap on the Gaussian Copula, or the formula that destroyed the world banking system. Or, really, the formula that allowed the world banking system to destroy itself. The GC, as I like to call…
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Fifty Years into Raymond Chandler’s Big Sleep, Marlowe Still Speaks
Such is the subject of some fine summarizing in this week’s LA Weekly, which deserves ongoing props for going down with a fight and continuing to publish worthy writing on topics of interest despite the bosses and maladies of print.…
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So Many a Second
Nifty website alert! So Many a Second creates visualizations of statistics so you can perceive the scale of the number. There are categories, like environment (trees cut down is a shocking cascade of instanteously disappearing), and people (births per second…
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Destructo Swarmbots On the Verge
First there were cyborg rats. Then came electroneural Shark and Awe. All part of DARPA’s ongoing effort to weaponize the animal kingdom, which is all part of DARPA’s ongoing effort to weaponize everything, including the weather. But for now, let’s…
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Everyone’s Talking About The GI Joe 2.0 Trailer
All thanks to Mark Allen, who showed me this collection of repurposed GI Joe PSAs years ago. Yes: before YouTube! The reggae one was always my favorite. I’m glad there is finally a reason to highlight it again for the…