Man is most nearly himself when he achieves...

A lot of new music has been swirling around lately, a lot purchased, a lot in the queue, and a lot getting serious listens. Here are a couple of the latter variety.

• Stillness Soundtracks by Machinefabriek
• A sampler from Marco Minnemann's EEPS
• Michael Brook from his album Hybrid with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois
• various samples of "sonic sculptor" Eraldo Bernocchi (nice interview too)
• The Com Truise remix of Tycho - Awake

This 2 minute trailer for The Penguins of Madagascar is more enjoyable than all of Frozen.

Outdated Browser may be a handy website by showing you the latest version of each web browser and its relative popularity. It would be more useful if it would also tell you which version you were currently using. Cuz I can't figure out how to wring that bit of info out of Firefox.

Feast your eyes on this 4 year timelapse video from Hubble of star V838 Mon. Why it's doing this is a mystery.

Your face was pounded into shape over 5 million years.

Are you highly cited?

What conclusion should be drawn from the fact that concert attendance requires ear plugs?

Watch the internet in real-time to get an idea of how quickly data is being generated on various sites (e.g. posts on Facebook, tweets). The only irksome thing was that Yelp reviews are counted in increments of 1/2. Who writes half a review? According to the site, during the 3 minutes I was on it, 3.5 million GB of data was created. If social media don't do it for you, watch retail in real-time.

The Periodic Table of Fictional Materials

Time as a hexadecimal color value.

Hmm. In daily economic life we outsource thinking about what we want to the producers, turning supply & demand economics on its head and ultimately leaving us unhappy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's "cosmic perspective."

Glen Keane's Duet.

A Predator sequel is coming. (Good. Now I just have to wait until it's on cable to see it.)

A little Cold War nostalgia: a photo essay on North Dakota's missile tracking station.

Ho hum. Another kid stuck in a giant stone vagina.

Me entering the 8th Annual iPhone Photography Awards would be the ultimate futile act.

I'm convinced that knowledge of geography is an essential element in understanding world news and needs to be emphasized more in primary and secondary eduction. Along those lines, here's a test to see if you can find Benghazi, a town that's been in the news a lot recently, on a map. I was fortunate enough to get within 217 miles. 

While on the geography soap box, The Netherlands .ne. Holland. Discuss.

 Lightning map. The best map-based website I've found in a long time. And this is a nice map-based video of flight paths across the North Atlantic.

Every time I watch a scientific presentation. Tufte?

Thanks for the confusion, science. They found a huge underground ocean near the earth's core. Except that it's not in the core, it's in the mantle. And it's not really water, it's OH bound to minerals.

Grilled Alphabet (don't know why I'm not showing a picture)

OK architects: songs envisioned as buildings. Well done or crap?

Don't remember where or how I found this. And listening to it leaves me scratching my head. American Text-Sound Pieces

Hours of button pushing pleasure with sounds.

I wonder what BAAAAJSFEEEST means in Swedish? And did they shout it when Neanderthal poop was discovered?

Automatic. Sperm. Extractor.

...the seriousness of a child at play. ~Heraclitus

In order for the light to shine so brightly...

I can't remember the last time I strung together two coherent thoughts. Hence, this.

First, turn on this B-17 noise simulator.

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #138

The guys from the "classic" Genesis line-up (Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins, and Tony Banks) are coming together for a BBC documentary called Genesis: Together and Apart. No air date announced. See group photo at link.

When seen through a Star Wars lens, my ESTJ Myers-Briggs personality type is Darth Vader. (I'm certain neither my wife nor my kids are surprised by that.)

I've been keeping all my aviation pr0n on Pinterest but this one I thought I'd share: an article from Code One Magazine with cool F-16 paint jobs.

I know at least one person who might find this funny: how to fake a Chicago accent.

Apparently there's a debate on the origins of Yiddish.

They say that your life's theme song is the tune that was #1 on your 14th birthday. Unfortunately, mine is Disco Lady by Johnnie Taylor.

My entire childhood was a lie. source

Guess what? If you feel like you're surrounded by jerks, guess who the jerk is? You.

When college students aren't busy drinking beer they're making haptic robots that simulate touching a boob.

...the darkness must be present. ~Francis Bacon

There is silence born of love...

Harold Budd's next album, Jane 12-21 (and apparent follow-up to his Jane 1-11), is due to be released on 09 September. It's available for pre-order and preview of all the tracks.

I just discovered this myself so we can listen together: Robert Fripp and David Sylvian, A New Dream, live 1993. And speaking of Mr. Fripp, his latest incarnation of King Crimson announced their upcoming tour dates.

[Update: I hope you listened to Fripp & Sylvian's A New Dream. Wow. I was entranced.]

What's up with you people in Wisconsin where the number of bars exceed the number of grocery stores by 2.7 times?

Star Wars geeks: video of the dialog sorted alphabetically.

I don't know why, but these 3,000 year old pants fascinate me.

An art installation in an airport that's modeled after a school of fish.

Periodic Table of Chocolate

Like purple things? Shop here.

Pixelated Mario art. And Chris Yoo's monster alphabet.

How's things at work? This brief quiz from HBR will map the quality of your work life based on five categories. (No, I'm not showing my results.)

The Lochnagar Crater from WWI.

A lot of these Fort Worth stereotypes are questionable except for the first one: Fort Worthers would rather die than move to Dallas.

100 American craft beers that (they say) you should drink. (8 out of 100 isn't bad, right?)

More craft pr0n: turning a tree stump into a stool.

And for stool of a different kind, leave it to our friends in Japan to invent this handy device.

...which expresses everything. ~Conte Vittorio Alfieri