I don't understand dutch, but this is some funny shit

Apparently this dutch tv host's guest lost his testicles as a result of a surgery error, and every time the accidental castrati tries to speak the host busts up laughing uncontrollably.

Salmon Fishing

It only recently occurred to me to look up videos of salmon fishing in Alaska.  Lo and behold, half of them are shot by douchebags who favor a rap-metal soundtrack (the soundtrack of their lives, no doubt).

Here's a more "pro" video.  Wait a minute for Grand Funk Railroad's "I'm your captain" to kick in.

Here's a good one where the skipper seems to critiquing the cinematography of the crew-filmer.

And for shits and giggles here's a video of what seems to be a japanese boat, unhindered by alaskan regulations on boat size, bringing in 200,000 pounds of some kind of fish in the pacific.  It's like staring into the grand canyon.

analog radio twitter

somehow this guy has rigged an analogue radio (using other apparatus as well, no doubt) to "tune in" to twitter postings in real time, with the computer voice.
TwitterRadio from Mark McKeague on Vimeo.

Jam Tomorrow

Earth Mother Water

As most of you know, we do some freelance translation work on the side from time to time. Mostly boring real estate contracts and cheesy tourist development texts. But we just finished translating this dude's site. Check it out (our translation won't be integrated for a while, but you'll get the point.

Dymaxion Maps

Explanation of the Dymaxion Map

Buckminster Fuller felt an accurate map of the whole earth could be used as a tool for world problem solving, showing accurate global information, such as human migration patterns or the distribution of natural resources at a glance. It could show major trends in world affairs and the shortest air routes between land masses. This type of tool need not reinforce the political boundaries between us but instead demonstrate more useful information for global trend charting.

Map Distortion 
Mapmakers agree that all world map projections contain a considerable amount of distortion--either in shape, area, distance or direction. Fuller felt that it must be possible to depict a view of the entire earth without distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land masses and without any breaks in the continental contours, something that can only be done on a globe. But using a globe, you can see only one third of the earth at any one time. 

Although there are many types of map projections, the most widely used flat world map for more than 400 years, the Mercator Projection, is a cylindrical projection. It was created by wrapping a "tube" of paper around the globe and transferring data straight from the sphere to a rectangle. 

Only the place that the paper touches, along the earth's equator, is rendered on this map with complete accuracy. The farther you go to the north or south, the greater the distortion in size or shape of the continents. For instance, Greenland is three times its normal size and Antarctica is splayed across the full length of the bottom of this map as a huge long piece of land. Even the most popular Robinson Projection, an elliptical map that was officially adopted as National Geographic's standard in 1988 and now used in most schools, still contains a large amount of distortion--with Greenland 60% larger than it really is.

One World Island 
With advances in transportation from the sea to sky in the early part of this century, Fuller saw the peoples of the earth becoming a "one-town world." He looked at the shortest distance air routes of the future, and looked at the earth from the top of the north pole outward rather than just from the side. He depicted this view of earth in 1934 with an intuitive drawing of the continents as a "One World Island." 

It then took almost a quarter of a century to fine tune the mathematics which could render such a view of earth accurately. While perfecting his "great circle" mapping techniques, which formed the basis for his geodesic dome and were part of his synergetic geometry, Fuller's final, icosahedral version of the map was first published in 1954. 

Using the form of an icosahedron, a polyhedron with 20 triangular faces, Fuller was able to accurately depict the whole earth on a flat map with only the tiniest bit of distortion, not even visible to the human eye, distributed among the triangles uniformly. Each edge of the 20 triangles have absolute accuracy, like paper touching the equator in a Mercator map.

This makes Fuller's map the first map in history to depict a true picture of our earth on a flat plane, which can be used flat or folded up into 3-dimensions. Although the oceans in Fuller's map are broken, the triangles themselves can be rearranged into dozens of other useful configurations, depending on what you want to look at.

North and South 
Fuller assumed, and rightly so, that the earth was in constant motion. While tipped and spinning around its axis our planet is also hurling through space at the rate of approximately 1000 miles per minute. So why create a map which stops it in its tracks? On a static, two-dimensional world map such as the Mercator or Robinson Projections, north and south are situated at the top and bottom respectively, up and down. The map does not look right except in one position, with north at the top.

But try to draw an arrow to the directions on Fuller's map. North is in the center, east and west run in a circular motion around that central axis of rotation, and south goes out in every direction. You need a series of arrows showing directions, not static places on this map. 

Now, turn it around. The map will read this same series of directions no matter what its position. There is no wrong way to look at his map! There is no "upside down." Fuller said "there is no up or down in Universe, only in and out.”

Up and Down 
Think about it, if you walk "up" a stairway he said you are really walking out toward space, and if you walk down the stairs you are also walking "in" toward the earth. We are standing on a sphere, (qt movie, 4.3mb) held to its surface by the forces of gravity, not a flat world with edges to the north, south, east and west. Fuller designed a tool which helps us to better perceive the rotating sphere on which we reside, a place he liked to call "Spaceship Earth."

Bucky

I saw the amazing Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the MCA today, I already want to go back.  It's exhuastive as hell, with early sketches from the twenties showing plans for zepplins that would bomb out craters in the earth to be followed by zepplins that would plant 4D towers for utopian living, up through his cartography work, geodesic mayhem, etc.  

(brief bit of trivia: the owner of the Brooklyn dodgers approached Fuller to design a geodesic dome on the new stadium.  Plans were made, studies developed, math computed.  The owner lost the deal on the land and decided to move the Dodgers to LA, sans dome).

The highlight quite possibly could have been a long, long video from 1967, of Fuller talking to a large crowd of hippies in Golden Gate Park in 1967 (unfortunately no youtube of this shit yet).  It's as you'd expect, a weird modernist-counterculture sermon on the mount, although maybe it was all the beards and bare feet that make me draw that parallel.  the discourse did have that style though.  Most of the interlocutors are quite propersterous and incredibly pretentious.  It's strange how driven some of these more academic hippies were to decry a lot of what he designs, even when they are obviously sympathetic and awe struck, and he explicitly and sympathetically agrees with the most "age of aquarius" pronouncements.  He has a badass discussion of tools after that.  

The best interlocutor was likely tripping at the moment, nonsensically launches into a stream of associations weaving astrology and chemistry, and the kinds of geometry woven into the molecular structure of acid, ending with "The whole goddamn thing is one big acid trip!"  

views from our back porch

For Wilbur: The McGangBang

McGangBang= a mcchicken sandwich which is in turn "sandwiched" between the two beef patties of a double cheese burger.  "unprotected" gangbang= with a spicy chicken sandwich.

There are already several documented cases of people successfully ordering it (i.e., the employee knew what it was.  

And McDonald's has released an official statement:

“McDonald’s loves to hear from our valued guests, especially when they customize and create meal combinations to fit their personal taste preferences – no matter how unique!

Whether it’s requesting an Egg McMuffin without cheese or a Big Mac with extra secret sauce, McDonald’s is proud to satisfy our customers’ requests and provide them with a variety of great-tasting meals every time they visit our restaurants.”

Danya Proud, Spokesperson

McDonald’s USA

I ain't here to make friends