Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
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Years ago I heard about and wrote a blurb for the old bean on A giant knitted rabbit in Italy [that] can be seen from space by visitors to Google Earth. – Telegraph. Up until a 2011, it looks like, people were still talking about it on web boards and travel sites. The giant bunny is on the Colletto Fava mountain in Italy, lying like a ginormous abandoned stuffed toy with its entrails spilling out onto the ground beside it. It was originally erected by an art group called Gelatin on
September 18, 2005, at 11:30 am and is expected to last until 2025.
“We foresee that in twenty years the pink puppet (made of straw-stuffed fabric) will be swallowed by the weather, devoured by cattle, completely erased by the weather and nature” said Gelitin in an interview.
But what’s happened to it now? I scoped out Google Earth just a couple weeks ago. To me it looks like barren land, deprived of sun for a few years, is starting to come back to life within the shadow outline of the bunny that is no longer there. I suppose it could be bleached and growing grass of it’s own, but I couldn’t find any news about it’s decay or removal. It’s still a far cry from the estimated 2025.
I spent a night this week clearing out and organizing my stationary. I’m still not totally happy with it (it’s in three different containers/locations), but at least I know what’s where. More importantly, I am now prepared to spend the month writing letters. Marianne Kirby’s post To Get A Letter, Send A Letter; Where To Find A Pen Pal | xoJane reminded me that I have/had a pen pal of sorts and just maybe I could revive our relationship. It also got me thinking that I see a lot less of my friends than I used to and would like to, and that I love receiving mail that isn’t junk and bills, and that it would be nice to give a little of that joy to others. Maybe even I’ll get some in return. Yeah, so I’m writing letters this month and I’m not going to stop when the month is over. What are you doing? I’m also gonna try out some of the letter exchange web sites Marianne mentioned.
Randall Rosenthal is possessed of a spirit. He must be, because he made this box. This box, filled with money, is a solid block of wood. He’s got some process steps on his website to help you believe.
And this isn’t the only amazing thing he makes out of solid wood. Check out: What’s New.
I was inspired by my Levi Levi flashback to put together some pictures with Penelope Sea. This is now I imagine her for the sequel to Penelope Sea and Ocean End. I think there will be a ghost in it.
I almost forgot, February 1st is hourly comic day, and February 1st is this Saturday. Even though I’ve done a few 24 hour comic day and Mini comics day, I’ve always missed/forgotten about hourly comic day. Well, not this year! If hourly comic day is news to you there is an overview on know your meme.
Here’re John Campbell describing The Hourly Comic:
HOURLY COMIC DAY
hello on february first a bunch of people make a journal comic every hour they are awake. and then they show these journal comics to other people on the internet
we will see how different people spend their day.
THE GUIDELINES:
-for every hour that you are awake on february first (that’s february first for whatever time zone you happen to be in), you make a comic describing something about the past hour. maybe you ate some cereal? maybe your mother called and screamed long and low until her voice gave out
-say you wake up at 7am. make a comic some time before it becomes 8am. then after 8am, make a comic before it becomes 9am. it is pretty simple.
I have the Atari system I fondly remember set up in the kitchen of my Dad’s house. It is all packed up in a box in my closet. I have not yet found the adapter that will make it work with my new flat-screen TV.
Why was it in the kitchen that seemed barley 8′ by 8′ from wall to wall? Why was the TV it was connected to on top of the fridge? Us kids would stand in the middle of the room with the controllers (the few moments a day when it wasn’t being used for food preparation) looking up at the screen. The ridiculousness of this set up makes me question my memory, but there you have it.
I do remember that I, being very young and destined to take very little interest in video games at all, had games that were mine and mine alone. My favorite was Strawberry Shortcake. It was reminiscent of those fashion plates where you changed the head, torso, and legs of a character to make something new. I don’t think there was much else to the game. Should I figure out how to play it again, I don’t have to wait to get my Atari hooked up again. I can play on any computer nearby, because the The Console Living Room at the Internet Archive has made streaming versions of all those old Atari games (and more).
Historians and archivists know a secret that most of us do not: that vast stores of primary documents about North America’s Colonial era lie untouched and unseen in repositories throughout the United States and Canada.
Psst, I wanna tell you a secret. My mother got me hooked on genealogy…well, it’s kind of an off again on again relationship, but when it’s on, it is so ON! The best stuff I ever found were the biographical snippets of people from town dairies, and if there is more than that in colonial record keeping I am looking forward to it. Apparently, these materials will finally be digitized and collected in one place to search: A Colonial goldmine | Harvard Gazette.
Even if you don’t like the family searching, it’s fascinating to learn about history through individual accounts.
But for right now, ya’ll can have a little art.
Hello lovely peoples! I have made a tumblr for Levi Levi to gather all the character art, updates, and news in one place. I will talk about chapter ideas that I have previously only hounded friends with in the speaking world.
I am also planning on an exclusive tumblr release of a bonus Levi Levi story that I did for mini comics day and that only 3 or 4 people in the world have seen (’cause it’s never been online).
We’re gonna test this out ya’ll. Tell me what you think.
Statistics Done Wrong by Alex Reinhart is an awesome guide that points out holes in the reasoning of many scientific studies. I initially book marked it to double check myself. When dealing with survey and request data it’s easy to present a picture that is what you want to find, instead of what is actually there. However, Statistics Done Wrong deals with issues that are far above the data I pull for departmental reports.
Each error is explained with a hypothetical and/or real example of a study that contained statistical errors. This makes it even easier to wrap a layman’s mind around a subject that affects the authors of studies and articles for which he/she is the end audience. As an example: after expounding on the multiple ways that scientists error in their quest to prove or disprove a hypothesis, Reinhart includes an excellent example of double checking:
courtesy of John Ioannidis and Jonathan Schoenfeld. They studied the question “Is everything we eat associated with cancer?”51[1] After choosing fifty common ingredients out of a cookbook, they set out to find studies linking these studies to cancer rates – and found 216 studies on forty different ingredients. Of course, most of the studies disagreed with each other. Most ingredients had multiple studies claiming they increased and decreased the risk of getting cancer.
Another interesting thing: being allowed to right turn on red wasn’t considered until the 1970s and was allowed because of underpowered statistics and a drive to save gas in a fuel crisis.
How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com is awesomely accurate. I think it’s fun to do things like this but I wondered what it would say about me since I grew up in two different locations and was raised by parents who were both from a third location. I highly recommend answering a handful of questions to get your own dialect map.
I declare 2014 the year of the platypus. And I declare the platypus the coolest animal ever! It is one of only two mammals to lay eggs. It uses electrolocation, it is venomous, it has no stomach, and it is adorable. See look:
I just finished watching The Last Enemy. It took me back to the days when I would troll the literature section for stories about dystopian futures. Most of those stories were commenting on issues happening in the world already and The Last Enemy is no exception. It is a fabulous mini-series even if you don’t think Benedict Cumberbatch is as hot as the internet thinks he is.
The Last Enemy turns its microscope on identity tags and surveillance systems. I think I may have only imagined that it was set in the future, but in reality, many of the privacy infringements brought up in the series have roots today. Even an amateur sleuth with a Google search can turn up a surprising amount of information on a person. Governments with access to phone location, call frequency, internet activity records would have no problem painting a complete picture of any individual’s movements, associations, and beliefs.
There are smart and aware people out there fighting on behalf of us all to make sure balance is maintained between our rights to privacy and the ability of our leaders and protectors to guarantee that right, among others, and our safety. EFF has great news on Increasing Anti-Surveillance Momentum and the Necessary and Proportionate Principles. They are part of a group that has created International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, a document that can help our leaders evaluate whether or not a surveillance law is infringing on our rights. Of course, we shouldn’t ignorantly stumble on expecting someone else to take care of us, should we? So, there are also plenty of resources at the two links above to teach you how you can take action.
