Spring Bank Holiday! A perfect time to tell the family you've got urgent work to do and send them off to a traffic jam on the M5 for the day, so you can stretch out on the couch and read this lot:
Happy invoicing!
- Solidarity is Illusion: The Political Economy of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Oscar Moralde examines the economic theories exemplified in portrayals of the land of Equestria and its capital, Ponyville: "One potential objection to an economic analysis of MLP: FiM is whether such analysis is even warranted... However, many of the stories in MLP: FiM focus on the performance of economic tasks: crop harvesting, production of baked goods, and the maintenance of the town. Other episodes are about characters finding their roles in society. These kinds of stories rely on a plausible economic base to be meaningful."
- The child murder that gave voodoo its bad name - "The whole of the country had assembled, and it was for this reason that Fabre Geffrard had chosen February 13, 1864, as the date for eight high-profile executions. Haiti’s reformist president wished to make an example of these four men and four women: because they had been found guilty of a hideous crime—abducting, murdering and cannibalizing a 12-year-old girl. And also because they represented everything Geffrard hoped to leave behind him as he molded his country into a modern nation: the backwardness of its hinterlands, its African past and, above all, its folk religion." Mike Dash explores the history of Haiti's homegrown religion.
- Douchebags at the Opera - Mike Saturday and Jonah Campbell embrace the arts: "“Apparently, Manon recounts the tale of a fraught romance,” Jonah is explaining to a pretty young woman standing near her parents... “Like Sean Astin in Encino Man,” I chip in. “That ****er is the least likeable character in a movie with Pauly Shore in it.” Every minute, the young woman is looking less thrilled to have found other people her age."
- Return of the Cicadas - "I've been working an a 1-hour documentary on cicadas since 2007, and now have a crowd-funding campaign going on over at kickstarter." Beautiful short film by Samuel Orr about the peculiar life cycle of these creatures that emerge every seventeen years.
- Game designer Jason Rohrer designs a game meant to be played 2,000 years from now, hides it in desert - And if it seems like cicadas take the long view, there's this: "It's called A Game for Someone. The game was inspired by ancient board games like Mancala, as well as the architects and builders who, over hundreds of years, constructed religious cathedrals that they themselves would never set foot in, never see completed in their lifetimes. "I wanted to make a game that is not for right now, that I will never play," Rohrer said, "and nobody now living would ever play.""
- Torpedo attack on the Bismarck - The Bismarck was sunk 72 years ago today. Here's an account of how the great ship was crippled the previous day by Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers: "I heard Dusty Miller shouting in my ear, ‘Not yet, not yet!’ and I thought, ‘Has he gone mad? What is he doing?’ I turned and realized that he was leaning out of the cockpit, looking down at the sea, trying to prevent me from dropping the torpedo on to the crest of a wave, where it would bounce off or dive deep, either way knocked off any course that I might have fired it on. We were getting closer and closer, the ship was getting bigger and bigger, and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, what are you waiting for?’"
- Gladys Ingle and the 13 Black Cats | Hollywood’s Hi-Flying Hellraisers - "Gladys Ingle definitely had balls to spare– Maybe she had 13 pairs! She was the only female member of Hollywood’s 13 Black Cats aerial daredevil stunt troop. They flew “Jennys”– Curtiss JN-4 biplanes with an abundance of struts and wires to grip, making it ideal for stunt-riders and wing-walkers. Gladys earned her fearless reputation by changing planes in mid-air without a parachute or safety gear." In one short film included in this article, she hops from one plane to another in mid-air carrying a spare wheel, then affixes it to the second plane so it can land safely.
- Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia - Andrew Leonard examines the phenomenon of malicious editors on Wikipedia, here exposed by the Wikipediocracy project: "Two edits stand out. Qworty excised the phrase “and was regarded as a good mentor”... And he changed the cause of Hannah’s death from “natural causes” to “alcoholism.” But Hannah’s obituaries stated that he had died of a heart attack and been clean and sober for years before his death, while his role as a mentor was testified to in numerous memorials."
- Brainstorming: 3 reasons why everything you know is wrong - "We all know the standard method of brainstorming: 1, Get a bunch of people together. 2, Generate lots of ideas. 3, Don’t be critical... There’s one problem with this system. It’s totally wrong." I always had a feeling this stuff was crap, and it turns out the research backs up my gut instinct.
- Chart Porn - "Data visualisations you just gotta love." Thank to northernladuk for this one: a great compendium of stuff to look at. He did suggest linking to individual sites, but it's a Bank Holiday, so you could probably do with a whole bunch of stuff to browse through, such as this graph from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Happy invoicing!
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