“Instant fog.” // Worms, lasers and mind control. // A map of sequels; some good, some not so. The Rage: Carrie 2 is not, it seems, a classic. // Spiders of note. // Upholstered skateboard for ladies. “It’s meant to be stroked, not ridden.” // Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946). // A compendium of Sherlock Holmes. // Supercomputer plays Jeopardy. // The Jurassic Park theme has been slowed down enormously. // Safety in the workplace. // Sea lion. // In 20 hours a lot of snow can fall. // Parallel universe film posters. // 24 hours of global air traffic. // Wine house. // The Blub Lounge Club, Barcelona. // “Do not make cucumber.”

“The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President.”

Lyndon B. Johnson orders roomier trousers, August 8, 1964.

Animated by Tawd Dorenfeld. The original thirteen-minute recording can be found here. Via Anna.

Andrew Withers on the totalitarian roots of the Fabian Society:  

These ‘intellectuals’ regarded the working classes as something akin to livestock.

Further to this epic thread, Ann Althouse talks with Glenn Loury and notes how concern for “harsh language” and “violent metaphors” is not without class implications: 

I think that if we go too far in the direction of this civility and etiquette, we’re kind of privileging some people over others. We’re privileging people who are more educated, people who come from a background where politeness and niceness is the cultural style, and delegitimising people who come from a different sort of culture, where maybe exaggeration and harsh speech is the thing.

Greg Lukianoff on free speech and “dangerous speech”:

Any system that allows for censorship must place an actual, flawed human being in charge of deciding what can and cannot be said. Once the power to censor has been granted, it follows like night follows day that those in charge will be more likely to use this power to punish people with points of view that they simply dislike than those with points of view they favour.

And Jonathan Rauch, author of Kindly Inquisitors, on the same: 

[Postmodernists] say… you should put in place the political system that most advantages the weak and minorities. I think that’s the wrong answer because what happens in practice when you do that is someone’s going to have to decide who’s the weak and who’s the minority, and who isn’t. And that means the Dean of Students or whoever it is at the university is going to have to be in charge of policing the boundaries of criticism and therefore policing the boundaries of thought… The University of Illinois system, to the extent that it fires people for offending someone, says the boundary of criticism in debate is wherever the most offended student can persuade the university to put it. And of course the next thing that happens is you have a campus offendedness sweepstakes to see who can get offended the most and thus become the gatekeeper for speech. 

 By all means add your own.

Via Laughing Squid.

Fearsome hamster fights off humans. // Cats, calm and oranges. (h/t, Simen) // Inquisitive crow. // Makerbot Thing-O-Matic kit. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) // The world of Bang & Olufsen. (h/t, MeFi) // The history of the Batmobile. // Animatronic Hulk not entirely successful. // Do giraffes float? // The catapult fridge. // The Fairey Delta FD1 (1951) // The Enola Gay cockpit. (h/t, Kate) // Notable dog. // Living grass sculptures. // What the Guardian finds offensive. (h/t, TDK) // Why Star Trek:Insurrection is a terrible, terrible film. // Thunderstorms and antimatter. // Edison’s other inventions. // Don’t touch that dial. // Or the octopus chair.