Impatso and Punning

How many puns are in this Filipino commercial?

Michael Symmons Roberts on Science and Poetry

Michael Symmons Roberts talks to New Scientist (2007) on science and poetry.

'The Box' (poem read in the above video) from Corpus (2004):

In case of catastrophe,
winter can be recreated
from this skeleton of leaf.

All the bitter subtleties
of crab apple are tangled
here, as is the DNA

of dew-point calibration
of the second when a tree
lets go, the recipe for clouds

on the horizon like a new
born mountain range,
like north itself.

And with the leaf,
this relic box contains
a hair curl from a child

to reconstruct humanity,
though all the lights and currents
of his soul are lost to us.

Spores, antennae, claws,
the box will hold all evolution.
It will be full and empty.

More of his poems from The Poetry Archive.

The Most Important Six Seconds of 1969

The Amen Break (2006): In the year [1969], an American soul group called The Winstons released a seven-inch single called 'Amen, Brother'. Little did drummer GC Coleman know that the eight-bar drum 'break' in the middle of the track would far surpass him in fame and acquire an identity of its own.

The Amen Break and the Golden Ratio by Michael S Schneider: I became intrigued when I saw an image of the audio waves themselves because I immediately recognized the Golden Ratio in the structure of its timing. And I was surprised to find an even deeper relationship to the structure of the human body.

[via gerunding]
Nate Harrison explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop (2004): This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the 'Amen Break. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music--a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures.

[video] Compelling 'Amen Break' variation is Vic Acid, a Squarepusher and Aphex Twin collaboration--the music of This is hell (2006), an animated video clip by Paco Rico.

The Wislawa Szymborska Remix

[video] Wislawa Szymborska on the Szymon Majewski Show.

Outrageous Fortune

Slings and Arrows (2003-2006): Great Canadian TV comedy series about theatre, Shakespeare, Hamlet. It ran for three seasons and starred Paul Gross as Geoffrey Tennant, a 'legendary theatrical madman' who takes over as artistic director of a theatre company when his mentor passes away.

Oliver's dream is the pilot.

[videos] Try the trailer, then the pilot on YouTube in parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

[thanks to wheresmycow for suggesting this, and for keeping the sanity and faith: 'Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful.']

Nice Guys Finish How?

Why Nice Guys Finish Last: Manliness 101 suggests dropping the 'nice guy' act and 'getting with the programme'. Finding a woman should not be the sole purpose of your time. Act naturally as a man and don’t perceive women as better than you, and the good relationships will come.

[via infoshop] Nice Guys Finish First (1987): Richard Dawkins discusses selfishness and cooperation.

Parts 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

The Stuff of Pinker

[video] Steven Pinker on I Want That! (2006): Mr Cube loves Smart Furniture.

Of thought and metaphor (January 2007): On Pinker's new book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

'Look at almost any passage and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it's just that that's the way language works. 'Rather than occasionally reaching for a metaphor to communicate, to a very large extent communication is the use of metaphor.'

[old video] The Stuff of Thought (September 2007): Why don't we make grammatical sense when we swear?

[old science news] Holy @&%*! Author Steven Pinker Thinks We're Hardwired to Curse:

[He] takes a fresh look at the 'poo-poo theory', which proposes that swearing was actually the first form of language. He points to the fact that brain-damaged patients who lose the power of articulate speech often retain the ability to curse like a sailor. 'Since swearing involves clearly more ancient parts of the brain...it could be a missing link between animal vocalization and human language.'

What the F***? (October 2007) by Pinker:

The strange emotional power of swearing--as well as the presence of linguistic taboos in all cultures--suggests that taboo words tap into deep and ancient parts of the brain. In general, words have not just a denotation but a connotation: an emotional coloring distinct from what the word literally refers to, as in principled versus stubborn and slender versus scrawny. The difference between a taboo word and its genteel synonyms, such as shit and feces, cunt and vagina, or fucking and making love, is an extreme example of the distinction. Curses provoke a different response than their synonyms in part because connotations and denotations are stored in different parts of the brain.