Young Ichabod sorts it out.
[Found here.]
Category: Odd
9-volt Battery-Powered Transistorized Solid State Hot Links
This is both interesting and annoying at the same time. “Electric Pow Wow Drum” by A Tribe Called Red [via].
Like logic puzzles? Try this. For more variety, there’s this.
Very cool physics trick. Took me five tries to get it right [via].
Parking Pron from the handsome and fetching Ms. Cellania. [Update – The vid was pulled by the user, from that link, but here it is from another source.]
Interesting story about President Herbert Hoover and Jan Paderewski. Turns out to be true.
Never heard that story, and my first reaction was that it was Urban Myth. $2,000 in 1892 dollars could purchase a spacious two-story home with multiple fireplaces. That seemed to be an extravagant fee, even for a popular piano virtuoso. It’s about $50K in 2013 dollars. That young Hoover could have raised $1,600 (+$40K / 2013) in a short amount of time is just as astounding. But it appears the story is true.
–Bunk
http://www.paderewskiassociation.org/Paderewski_Biography.htm
http://www.ushistory.org/more/hoover.htm
Great cartooning with amazing .gif animations by Neil Sanders.
“The transistor was probably the most important invention of the 20th Century, and the story behind the invention is one of clashing egos and top secret research.” True.
Top image from here.
Saturday Matinee: Ray White, Priscilla Ahn & Tom Waits
Talking Feet: 6-1/2 minutes of awesome. Watch the whole thing [via].
Priscilla Ahn‘s got a cool version of Tom Waits‘ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up.”
Tom Waits was indicted [sic] into The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2011, and Neil Young introduced him. Great intro, great clips, great quotes. Someone said that Waits doesn’t sing the same song the same way twice.
“I think what I try to do is write adventure songs and Halloween Music.” –Tom Waits
That last quote cracks me up, because back when we still had trick-or-treaters coming around, we’d do up the front entry and blast Mickey Hart’s “Planet Drum” and Wait’s “Bone Machine” to the neighborhood. Great Halloween music.
Have a great weekend, see you back here tomorrow.
The .Gif Friday Post No.303 – Halloween: Zombie Colonel, Alien Attack & Panic Spaz
It seems like it’s too far off to do proper Halloween posts, but here’s our Halloween Archive anyway.
The Artwork Of Pierre Brassau
In February 1964, four paintings by a previously unknown avant-garde French artist named Pierre Brassau were exhibited at an art show in Göteborg, Sweden. Also at the show were works by artists from England, Denmark, Austria, Italy, and Sweden, but it was the works of the French artist that attracted all the attention.
Art critics, journalists, and students, glasses of wine in hand, silently contemplated Brassau’s creations. Their praise was almost unanimous. Rolf Anderberg of the morning Posten later wrote that most of the works at the show were “ponderous,” but not those of Brassau:
“Pierre Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer.” Continue reading “The Artwork Of Pierre Brassau”
Kid Squid
Oh yeah, and here’s a young wombat eating corn.
[Found here.]
Hold Still. We’re Going Velour.
Ents
In a tiny corner of western Poland a forest of about 400 pine trees grow with a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks – all bent northward. Surrounded by a larger forest of straight growing pine trees this collection of curved trees, or “Crooked Forest,” is a mystery.
[via]
Saturday Matinee – Sand Castle, Whistling and Harpo Marx
The Sand Castle, 1977,
Loud, piercing and sharp… a whistle is hard to ignore. But whistling languages are in danger of dying out. But residents of Kusköy on the Black Sea coast still communicate by whistling.An ee sounds higher than an ah. Consonants are distinguished by changes in pitch over different intervals of time. Eskimos communicate with whistles; so do indigenous people in the Amazon, and in Europe shepherds keep boredom at bay and communicate by whistling to each other. But the world’s 70 whistling languages are slowly becoming extinct. Kusköy in Turkey is defending the tradition.
[Found here.]
And because last night was a full moon, with a partial penumbral eclipse that no one noticed, we have these:
David Gilmore’s acoustic version of “Breathe”
Nat King Cole’s version of “Blue Moon,” and this:
I’m not sure if Harpo was self-taught, but I know that some items in his Wikipedia entry are contradicted by Groucho’s Autobiography. The story I recall (that means “I seem to remember but I’m too lazy to research it”): there was a dispute with a theater owner where the brothers were perfoming. Harpo was pissed, said he hoped the place burned down. It did, and Harpo vowed never to speak on stage again. I don’t know if it’s true, but I recall (again, that means “I seem to remember but I’m too lazy to research it”) that’s what Groucho claimed.
Have a great weekend, folks.
Bunk
Tacky Raccoons 
