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