Spotted via Andrew Baron's tweetstream, this fascinating -- no, really! -- snopes article on why Van Halen had that line in their concert rider about ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN M&Ms EVER.
Punch line: the true reason behind this had to do with technology, engineering, and safety issues. But I can kind of hear David Lee Roth delivering the lines in his over-the-top screamy-voice when I read his quotes. Actually, I can hear David Lee Roth's voice when I read the rider.
From the land of Sarah Palin, meth shacks, and aerial elk-massacres, he emails Boing Boing:
Alaska Robotics is Pat Race, Aaron Suring, Lou Logan, Sarah Asper-Smith, and whoever else falls into our cast of friends and family. We live in Juneau where we make short films, draw comics, and eat halibut. We organize screenings of locally made short films twice a year and also work to bring filmmakers, animators and writers north to teach workshops.
Beautiful, somber new Radiohead single available for download on their website.
Titled Harry Patch (In Memory Of), the song is a tribute to the oldest surviving Tommy who fought in World War I. Harry Patch was 111 years old when he died on July 25th, 2009. He fought in one of the grimmest battles of the war, the Battle of Passchendaele, where over 325,000 Allied casualties occurred and over, 260,000 Germans. The 99 day battle from July 31st 1917 to November 6th 1917, saw an average of 3,000 British troops killed, wounded, or captured daily. (By contrast, in Iraq, 3,650 US troops have died and approximately 26,000 have been wounded).
Above, embedded, one of the last (if not the last) interviews with Mr. Patch before he died last month. All proceeds from the track will be donated to the Royal British Legion.
The Acid Symphony Orchestra just published their first video on Vimeo. In a nutshell: 10 early 80's synths (Roland TB-303s - the defining sound of early techno and acid) played manually by Finlands top techno performers, orchestrated by the granddaddy of Nordic techno scene, Jori Hulkkonen.
The hardware required some serious hacking (this is pre-MIDI gear), courtesy of the Society for Experimental Electronics - a Finnish hacker/maker group.
Their first performance was at UMF (Uuden Musiikin Festivaali, or Festival for New Music) in Turku, Finland in 2007, and they toured Europe over the next two years. A festival documentary is on YouTube (in 3 parts).
Boing Boing and Boing Boing Video are partnering with Institute for the Future and Sun to support the Digital Open, in which youth around the world are invited to submit technology projects "that will change the world--or even just make life a little easier or more fun."
The final deadline for submissions is August 15, 2009, but projects posted before the deadline will benefit significantly from feedback from the Digital Open community. We are giving away more than $15,000 worth of very cool prizes including laptops, video cameras, recycled billboard backpacks, solar-powered gear and more. We've already received 49 projects from eight countries: Argentina, Canada, India, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, the UK and the US!
Because of farm fertilizer runoff, the seaweed in coastal waters in Brittany is growing like a monster. Scientists warn that as the seaweed rots, it forms white crust that traps hydrogen sulphide gas. When the crust breaks, it can poison people.
Alain Menesguen, director of research at the French Institute for Sea Research and Exploitation, said: "This is a very toxic gas, which smells like rotten eggs. It attacks the respiratory system and can kill a man or an animal in minutes." Some scientists believe that a build-up of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere wiped out the dinosaurs 300 million years ago.
Mister Jalopy says: "Not a great picture, but I was leery of getting any closer. A swarm of bees have decided to create a hive under one of the bicycles in the long line of faded champions at Coco's Variety."
Michelangelo's first known painting is The Torment of St. Anthony, which is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through September 7, 2009.
He was 12 or 13 years old when he painted it, which goes to show you that the kinds of things that intrigue 12 year old boys haven't changed much in the last 500 years.
I'm delighted by Elaine Morgan's hypothesis that humans evolved from aquatic apes.
Elaine Morgan is a tenacious proponent of the aquatic ape hypothesis: the idea that humans evolved from primate ancestors who dwelt in watery habitats. Hear her spirited defense of the idea -- and her theory on why mainstream science doesn't take it seriously.
Sam sez, "The Confederate motor company make motorcycles that rub together heritage and futurism to produce quite astonishing looking machines - the kind of bikes that look like they're going fast when they're stood still. They also have an attractive air of menace in their styling combined with a sort of 'Mad Max' craziness. The kind of bike one of Stross' characters might ride."
I can see one of Charlie's characters riding this thing, but only if he gets to make fun of the overblown marketing copy on the site.
Holmes sez, "After Jeff Bezos's public apology for the remote deletion of books, Amazon still has total control over peoples' virtual libraries-- a kind of control that has no place in a free society. The Free Software Foundation is calling them out, joining with readers, academics, librarians and authors (including Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky and BB's own Cory Doctorow) in a petition against Amazon's ebook DRM. The petition opens: 'We believe in a way of life based on the free exchange of ideas, in which books have and will continue to play a central role. Devices like Amazon's are trying to determine how people will interact with books, but Amazon's use of DRM to control and monitor users and their books constitutes a clear threat to the free exchange of ideas.'"
(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)
If it's September, it must be time to kill the wolves. 98% of Scientists' Clean Energy Research Proposals Rejected by Obama Admin. Look, it really is good that you're composting, but if you really want to help the planet, have less kids. Hey future Darwin Award winnner, next time you shoot an endangered animal, maybe you don't want to take it to the taxidermist?
Boing Boing Travis emailed me this photo, along with the following:
I found this odd tombstone in Walla Walla, Washington. I liked getting high and strolling through the graveyard cuz there were a lot of really old masonic tombs. But this is just....the weirdest one I've ever seen. Maybe I missed something and someone on boingboing might have a clue?
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