The Daily What

The Daily What

Lunchtime Links

Posted: 14 May 2012 11:52 AM PDT

- Lunchtime Links


Today on The Daily What Geek: An MIT grad student has invented a real-life Mario Kart

Elsewhere on the Internets:

  • Crazy: True Blood season 5, as evidenced by a new trailer
  • Over: Ron Paul’s campaign for the GOP nomination… sort of
  • Scrambling: JPMorgan, after a $2 billion loss on a risky bet
  • Fined: 117 Fort Lee, NJ, residents, under a new law that prohibits texting and walking
  • Rebutted: The Obama camp’s new campaign targeting Romney on the economy, by the GOP
  • Lectured: The women of Barnard, by Obama, at their commencement today
  • Screwed: People on the kidney transplant list, since many Americans are now too fat to donate
  • Recognized: Same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, by the state of Rhode Island

Lunchtime Leisure: Live Forever!
Lunchtime List: The 7 Most Awkward Mark Zuckerberg Moments

[image: corgieseverywhere]


Tagged: Lunchtime Links

TV Show Promo of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 11:29 AM PDT


J.J. Abrams — of Alias, Lost, and Fringe fame — is at the helm of Revolution, a new drama set in a post-apocalyptic world 15 years “after the lights went out” — or when a mysterious electromagnetic pulse threw humanity back into the 19th century, without cars, phones, or (gasp!) the Internet. Premieres this fall on NBC.

[devour]


Tagged: JJ Abrams, revolution, TV Show Promo

MCA Tribute of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 11:20 AM PDT


The Internet tributes to Beastie Boy Adam Yauch can’t, won’t, don’t stop. This one’s by the fine folks at Eclectic Method.

[cosbysweaters]


Tagged: adam yauch, Beastie Boys, MCA Tribute

Poop Imitates Art of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 11:02 AM PDT

- Poop Imitates Art of the Day


Art has always been subjective, but the newest exhibit at “the subversive adult Disneyland” in Sydney, Australia, is essentially an automated poop machine:

It was built by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye to mimic the actions of the human digestive system. A series of glass receptacles hang in a row with the machine being “fed” twice a day on one end. The food is ground up “naturally,” the way it is in the human body, and the device produces feces on the clock at 2 p.m. at the other end.

Though the motto at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is “to shock, offend, inform and entertain,” NBC reports that as far as the poop machine is concerned, “not many visitors can take it.” One guest said the exhibit’s byproduct is an “overwhelming assault on the senses.”

[death+taxes]


Tagged: poop imitates art

Ambitious Crowdsourcing Project of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 11:00 AM PDT

- Ambitious Crowdsourcing Project of the Day


Another day, another crowd-sourced documentary project  – anyone and everyone with a camera is invited to submit pics shot Tuesday to ADAY.org, in an attempt to create a snapshot of the world over the course of a single day.

Backed by Desmund Tutu and Swedish pop-star Robyn, among others, part of the project’s goal is to break down global barriers. Says project co-founder Jeppe Wikstrom: ”We somehow think everyone in Africa is starving and we assume that everyone in China rides a bike.”

[wired]

In Case You Missed It of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 10:20 AM PDT

Noah Guthrie, the 18-year-old whose cover of LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy And I Know It” racked up more than 2.5 million YouTube hits over the weekend, joined Matt Lauer and Ann Curry this morning on the Today show, where the self-taught musician professed to be in awe at his viral popularity.

“Surreal,” he said. “I don’t even know how to describe it.”

Noah plays small shows around his South Carolina hometown, and he regularly posts YouTube videos of himself doing cover versions of songs he likes. But he promised his fans, “I’m trying to finish up my original album soon,” he said. “I don’t have a date, but it is coming.”

[today]

Ghostbusters Tour of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 09:09 AM PDT


The guys at Bleeding Cool recently relocated to New York, and among their first order of business was shooting this helpful Ghostbusters guide to NYC.

“I love this town!”

[bleedingcool]


Tagged: ghostbusters tour, nyc

Supercut of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 08:59 AM PDT


A supercut of just the gear-shifting in the five Fast & Furious films obviously required a few ground rules:

It had to be an obvious gear-shift moment, with the hand/gearshift at least partially showing on screen (there are several moments in the films where you see a character’s shoulder move as they shift gears, but those didn’t count unless you could also see part of the hand). Everything else — barring the brief titles for each film — was cut.

[supercut]


Tagged: fast & furious, Supercut

Morning Fluff

Posted: 14 May 2012 08:43 AM PDT


Puppies teaching themselves to skateboard — what’s not to love?

[to]


Tagged: morning fluff

Controversial Magazine Cover of the Day

Posted: 14 May 2012 08:02 AM PDT

- Controversial Magazine Cover of the Day


When Time magazine released its mom-breastfeeding-3-year-old cover last week, Newsweek’s Tina Brown laughed and promised: “Let the games begin.”

And so they have — Newsweek released its latest cover Sunday, and the furor is directed not so much at Obama’s rainbow halo but the title of Andrew Sullivan’s accompanying story: “The First Gay President.”

Barack Obama had to come out of a different closet. He had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family. The America he grew up in had no space for a boy like him: black yet enveloped by loving whiteness, estranged from a father he longed for (another common gay experience), hurtling between being a Barry and a Barack, needing an American racial identity as he grew older but chafing also against it and over-embracing it at times.

This is the gay experience: the discovery in adulthood of a community not like your own home and the struggle to belong in both places, without displacement, without alienation. It is easier today than ever. But it is never truly without emotional scar tissue. Obama learned to be black the way gays learn to be gay. And in Obama’s marriage to a professional, determined, charismatic black woman, he created a kind of family he never had before, without ever leaving his real family behind. He did the hard work of integration and managed to create a space in America for people who did not have the space to be themselves before. And then as president, he constitutionally represented us all.

The comparison of Obama’s struggle with racial identity to the  struggle of coming out is quite a stretch. But as Sullivan is one of the most prominent and respected gay writers in the country, his words obviously are not meant to offend. Coining Obama “the first gay president” is merely a savvy money-making move.

Meanwhile, Brown says today: “If President Clinton was the ‘first black president’ then Obama earns every stripe in that ‘gaylo’ with last week’s gay marriage proclamation. Newsweek’s cover pays tribute to his newly ordained place in history.”

[wsj]


Tagged: Magazine Cover, Newsweek, obama gay marriage