It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss...

From the Things You Didn't Think Could Be Seen Department comes film of  a person born in the 1700s.

Check out the video for Fish Bowl from Lorenzo Feliciati's album KOI.

Animations from Monty Python's Holy Grail that didn't make the cut.

A page from one of Richard Diebenkorn's sketchbooks hosted online at Stanford.

Lest you think graphic presentation of data is an entirely new Tufte thing, Brinton's Graphic Presentation, a classic book from 1939, is available online and for download in a variety of formats.

Best aviation pr0n video I've seen all year: Hornet Ball 2015.

If scientists had logos. source

Soundbytes from Brian Eno's John Peel Lecture include the realization that the arts expose you to certain joys in a false world so that you can seek them out in the real world.

Forbes' list of top the top 25 public colleges includes Georgia Tech (#15), Univ. of Texas (#13), Univ. of Wisconsin Madision (#11), and the Air Force Academy (#5).

Property tax rate by state. It's nice that Texas doesn't have an income tax, but as this map shows, they're gonna get your money one way or the other.

Know where yer satellites are with SatelliteSurfer.

The History of Cartography, now online in PDF format thanks to the U of Chicago.

What does your zipper have to do with quantum field theory?

For typography geeks: math and puzzle fonts. And a super hero alphabet.

This is Hwy 80 coming in to Fort Worth from the west in 1942. It's from a nationwide collection of photos 1935-1945 hosted by Yale.

How about an HD video of the Mars Curiosity Rover's descent to the planet's surface?

Over 14,000 photos from NASA's Apollo missions are on Flickr.

Explore the musical career of the great Miles Davis on this interactive timeline.

Reads like an encyclopedia of football.

How many years do you have left to live? I'm told with a 40% probability that I've got about 30-39 years left (and 0% that I've got 50+ years left).

Quotations are the Hallmark of teh interwebs. I get it, I'm guilty. Hence, Absurd Life Quotes. This one is true.

Need some background white noise? Try A Soft Murmur.

The absolute best video about unicorns and pooping.

Just click it.

...volatile spirits prefer unhappiness. ~George Santayana

Ignorance is the primary source of...

Mundo Nuevo is Markus Reuter's free downloadable album. It is good. You should download it. You should pay for it (even though he offers it for free). And you can also pre-order autographed CDs of it.

You can pre-order Marillion's upcoming 18th album on Pledge Music.

A master of ambient drone, Nicholas Szczepanik, has a "name your price" album for you called Ra.

There's a new kid on the block: wajobu with searching for sound (think Robin Guthrie).

King Crimson fans should run - not walk - to The Forbidden Files. A fan (?) took the effort to compile and organize all tunes freely distributed from the King Crimson site. It'll take weeks to download and burn CDs. (Yes, I do that.)

And by the way, do not contribute to the devaluation of recorded music. Support artists. Stop using streaming services.

Gerhard Richter, Six Yellows, 1966. If you're in London between now and 16 January you should see Gerhard Richter: Colour Charts. 

You suck at Excel. Do something about it by watching Joel Spolsky's video.

Here's probably more than you ever wanted to know about Super Mario level 1.

They say a sequel to Kung Pow - perhaps the funniest movie ever made - is in the works.

Do you prefer your films more sci fi? Well, Ridley Scott plans three more Prometheus films, all sequential prequels to Alien.
Make and print grid/graph paper of all kinds with Gridzzly.

The fundamental theories of physics and their relative overlaps are mapped for your better understanding.

This is well after the fact but Ken Burns' The Civil War was remastered in HD and broadcast on PBS back in September. I wonder when they'll run it again?

Settle back with the CIA's release of the President's Daily Brief from 1961-1969. One of the later one has a tantalizing completely blacked-out paragraph about Canada.

A page from the recently scanned Chinese 17th century book called "the most beautiful set of prints ever made." 

There's only one flying B-29 in the world and this video gives you an up close look.

And there's only one June Foray, called the female Mel Blanc.

Yummy.  120 yards of bratwurst.

...all misery and vice. ~Victor Cousin

Blood Trust by Eric Van Lustbader

Talking to a ghost
isn't really what I want
in an action tale.

Blood Trust is the third in Lustbader's series centered on protagonist Jack McClure, ATF/Homeland Security agent. Unfortunately, the book did nothing to make me read the fourth.

You're dropped into a multi-story arc that requires so much backstory, they're still giving backstory in the last chapter.

The novel's broad reach includes terrorism, white slavery, political intrigue, and the supernatural. Too much for me to handle.

The characters - and there are a lot of them - have names that I couldn't keep straight. Halfway through I'm still wondering "who does he work for again?"

There are minor editing errors like repeating a phrase too frequently within a short span (e.g. "blew the top of his head off).

Was hoping for more.

"Nothing can be said about writing except when it is bad. When it is good, one can only read and be grateful."

Too many have dispensed with generosity...

Make music using the planets with SolarBeat.

If you don't think astronomy can make music, you probably don't agree with Keats' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." So the search for elegance in science probably isn't for you either.

How well do you know your airport 3-letter codes? Take a brief quiz to find out. I apparently do not know them well at all.

Have you ever wondered how big a state or country is compared to another state or country? You can find out using thetruesize.com. Here we see that Texas is big enough to encompass Prague, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Florence while coming really close to Paris, Rome, and Zagreb. Big.

Craft pr0n: handmade Japanese paper.

What might Google have looked like had it been around in the days of the TV show Mad Men? See for yourself at Google60.

Computers can make your photos look like paintings by the great masters.

Git yer science on. A movie of a rotating nitrogen molecule that illustrates quantum wave nature.

Tell a dog what to do.

You are amazing. You are an incredible human being capable of true greatness. Wake up each day and believe in that greatness. Know that you are the best person to make decisions about your life, your body, and your happiness. Embrace your emotions, but don't let them control you. Document your life. This amazing woman sitting here in front of me has so many incredible stories to tell and sharing those stories makes the world a better place for us babes. Find a way to tell your stories — through art, words, crafts, selfies, whatever speaks to your soul. You are amazing. This paragraph brought to you by the pep talk generator.

Things taken for granted: elements. We may run out of some in the next 100 years. Like zinc.

Science has revealed another of life's mysteries. ALL mammals take 21 seconds to pee. (Plus or minus 13 seconds which is a kinda large error band but whatever.) Take a stopwatch with you next time.

All good humor is based on a nugget of truth. source

...in order to practice charity. ~Albert Camus

Habit, if not resisted...

This is the only link you need to click. A 15 minute documentary: Spitfire 944. HIGHLY RECOMMEND

"How much more black could this be? And the answer is none, none more black." With apologies to Spinal Tap and my friend Chris, here's an essay on the color black in painting over the centuries. As it turns out, there are indeed degrees of black as Nigel said.

Pierre Soulage, Painting, 2009.

The CEO: overpaid empty suit or charming genius? Popular opinion seems divided between those poles. From HBR comes this article on what only the CEO can do.

1. Interpret what's going on outside the company that's meaningful.
2. Define what business we're in and what business we're not in.
3. Balance current profit and future investment.
4. Create company culture.

Speaking of overpaid, take a gander at this list of 4 reasons why [income] inequality is bad for society and think about whether you think these reasons are valid. I personally find #2 (Economic inequality can undermine the fairness of political institutions) to be a red herring. Their point is the extreme expense of political campaigns requires candidates to seek donations from the wealthy leaving them beholden to the wealthy (and only the wealthy). I call it a red herring because the best solution to this dilemma isn't taxing the shit out of the wealthy (i.e. income redistribution) but campaign finance reform up to and including funding campaigns entirely and equally with federal funds.

Web design is dead. Long live discoverable content.

The useless bird identification chart. My favorite: unkempt snatch.

...soon becomes necessity. Saint Augustine