Friday, August 22, 2014

Woman killed with banjos

Thanks to our friend Dean Ericksen for passing this one along. maybe the strangest part of the story is that he had a backup banjo, when the first one broke.   /Mona G

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Painting: "jack brummet A jury of your peers"

By Jack Brummet


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Thursday, August 21, 2014

A brilliant tweet from Robyn Hitchcock on demonizing our fellow homo sapiens

By Mona Goldwater, Social Mores Ed.


Robyn Hitchcock (@RobynHitchcock)
When we stop demonizing each other, peace will come. But the spiral of justified grievance is endless.
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Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Spiders on drugs, spinning webs

By Jack Brummet, Cootie and Critter Ed.

Do you remember the experiments they performed on spiders to see how psychoactive drugs affected their web-spinning abilities? Here is an undrugged web, along with ones created under the influence of mescaline, caffeine, LSD, marijuana, chloral hydrate, and Benzedrine (for you young folks, essentially meth).



Benzedrine web

Caffeine web

chloral hydrate web

LSD web

Marijuana web

Mescaline web


A straight spider, on no drugs
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George Bush takes the ALS ice-bucket challenge (and challenges his friend Bill Clinton)


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Monday, August 18, 2014

Richard Linklater's "Boyhood"

By Jack Brummet


I was moved, delighted, amazed, and heartened by Richard Linklater's new movie Boyhood. It covers 12 years in a fictional family's life, and was filmed over 12 years. The cast is amazing and it tugs your heart like his movies often can. It will be a felony if this doesn't win an Oscar for best picture, Ethan Hawke, and Patricia Arquette, for the script, director, supporting actors, and more. I also always love his inobtrusive, delicate camerawork and this ensemble is stunning--Ellar Coltrane and Linklater's daughter...just wow. I really suck at reviews. Just go see it. It made my heart sing.
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Sunday, August 17, 2014

Swarming Robots

By Jack Brummet, Spooky Futures Ed.


The concept of Swarm Robots or swarming robotics is amazing, and more than a little scary.  There is a fascinating article by the Wall Street Journal here.
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Thursday, August 14, 2014

Prayer In Istanbul

By Jack Brummet
illustration by Jack Brummet



1.
On a dusty cobblestone street
I hear three muezzins
In three directions

Call people to prayer
At three mosques,
With a slight delay

Between the calls.
Three chanters in three different rooms
Sing the same song

In phase-shifted rounds
Through nine silver speakers

Mounted on three
Ivory-white minarets
Capped in gleaming cerulean blue.

2.
At the washing stations,
Water burbles from brass spigots
Into pale grey limestone basins.

The faithful wash,
Bag their sandals,
And for the fourth time since dawn,

Walk onto the lush carpet
Of the cool quiet mosque
Tiled in words and symbols.

3.
They kneel, face the wall
And pray one more time.
I don’t know what they pray for,

But when I see their faces
And watch their devotions,
I know it’s something good.

4.
It’s so still and calm
In the mosque
You could hear a fly expire.
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