Via HappyMagicFunTime.com

You probably think HTML5 is like HTML 4 because you’re an idiot dude! HTML 4 is a MARKUP language and document definition stupid, HTML5 is like an API + Markup + Rad! Also HTML5 doesn’t have a stupid space in it.

I’m just messing with you man sorry about that. So part of HTML5 is some new elements that are all like whooo! and yeah!

It’s pretty sweeet!

So anyway you get some new elements that are sooo great. Like the nav element. That one is pretty cool. Instead of just having an id=“nav” thing you can surround a ul with a nav element and that will make some sort of awesome.

Hold on! Hold on! Want to see some crazy shit… hold on! One second. Hold on.

<header>
<h1>Awesome Brand</h1>
</header>
<section id="listing">
<article>
<h1>Article title</h1>
<h2>The beginning of the end</h2>
</article>
<article>
<h1>Article title</h1>
<h2>The beginning of the end</h2>
</article>
</section>

Look at all those h1s! It’s like they took h1 and were like… GUITAR SOLO!

That’s crazy right? I mean you can use h1 because according to the HTML5 spec it’s semantically correct to do this because articles designate a new hierarchy within the hierarchy. It’s like the MATRIX but in HTML form yeah.

Then there’s like video and audio though.

Some people are all up in video’s grill though because there’s this one code, the H-2-6-9 and it’s proprietary but then there’s Ogg which isn’t proprietary but sounds like what the Vikings used to drink on pirate ships. It’s all like “I’m Ogg! I’m coming to eat your babies!” then the other one is all like I’m H-8-6-7-5-3-0-9 and I’m a robot who just wants to love. Then it turns out the audio element shows up at the end with a gun because nobody is talking about him and is all like “You’ve had the attention for too long Ogg & Robot!” and the two video codecs kill audio and learn to love each other and birth video.

So you got all these new elements and your all like “FUUUUUUUCK dude” I can’t use them in IE because it totally blows hooker hippos! But dude check this out, dude check it. You just have to use a little bit of JavaScript. You can find that here.

hahahah made you look, why do you like donkeys so much? No I’m just playin’ man. The script is here.

Yeah but… no, HTML5 isn’t just the markup language and some people forget that, not me but some people do yeah.

So HTML5 is like a whole applications suite, like the Adobe Creative Suite except when large groups of people who make browsers try to implement HTML5 it actually works. NO! I’m just playin’ man I love Adobe, I think it’s great material for building ovens that end up burning people. No ok I’ll stop. Wait one more. I love Adobe because I also confuse the word feature with excellence. NO I’m kidding I’m so sorry I’ll stop. OK, I’ll stop alright.

CSS3 isn’t HTML5 either. So your border-radius showin’ doesn’t make you the future.

So there’s a couple pieces all on display right here.

OH DUDE! Got you again! That was just the same donkey search. Why do you like donkeys so much? Seriously.

No seriously though, everything you need to know about HTML5’s elements are here. You can make some pretty mean tag soup with that brew right there.

But you know that because you’re smarter than I am man. I mean I mean you’re smarter than I am so you know that there’s an entire built-in canvas element which people are saying is totally going to add this whole new animation layer and replace Flash and I’m all like it’s not going to replace Flash so why don’t you go fight a bull instead of spew its shit or something you idiot. Flash is just another means to an end and I’m so tired of hearing it. Also I don’t understand why everyone is talking about Flash again, I mean it’s not like Flash hasn’t been around for 10 years and we all know what it can and can’t do. Does anyone expect Flash to stick around forever? I don’t. I don’t expect windows or OS X or any of that to stick around. I don’t expect me to stick around. Do you ever think about that? Not sticking around? Sometimes I do. People are all concerned about Flash because they use it to watch Glee on Hulu and I’m like come over here and I’ll sing for you but nobody laughs they just don’t laugh. Then I’m all like “argh, Laugh!” and they just don’t. But I don’t think Flash will live long no, but I don’t think it’s satan reincarnate or like Satan 2: Wrath of Satan.

Speaking of bullshit I once saw a bullfighter get totally nailed by a bull by the way. It was crazy! The bull just went straight for the fucker and he flipped in the air and I’m pretty sure you can see some guts.

Your probably all like, awesome man can I find out where people are and I’m all like Yeah! They’re adding this crazy Geolocation JavaScript API thing where you can like find out where people are.

Then you’re all like woah what about that crazy input type=‘search’ and im like WHAT ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR? YOUR DEADBEAT DAD? and your like no, donkeys.

So anyway there’s all these new form elements that do things like password do. Once again Marky Mark has it all down

Then there’s things like the placeholder attribute for form elements where you can put filler text for forms, like “Search” and it works all nice and stuff. It’s all here although I’m not sure if you can translate alien duuude.

So cookies are eventually going to go away too, but not those cookies because I was totally worried for a second when I read that. But yeah, no not those cookies, no. Browsers are going to have built in native storage which is like totally database-esque but some dudes are worried because they’re afraid it’s not secured but it’s working right now in Safari and others. It’s for like cookies and sessions and stuff or reading stuff offline like donkey sites. So that will totally replace cookies which sound AWESOME right now by the way. That’s also a part of HTML5 which is crazy and NOT just markup like the p element. Haha p.

p

p

hahaha awesome!

So anyway that’s pretty much the summary of where we’re at right now. Not everything works everywhere but ayspoi seems lise it will go and see you!

Adam Savage, one half of the Myth Busters duo recently gave a speech to the Harvard Humanist Society.

It’s a great read and insight into Adams beliefs.

Food for The Eagle

By Adam Savage

Good evening.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to read my speech from my new iPad.

Yep. I’m not only a humanist, I’m also an early adopter.

I want to start by saying that, to me, any discourse from me about how one can live a moral existence without religion or the church would sound improperly defensive. That there’s an opposite to be defended is absurd and based on a provably false premise. So let’s dispense with that.

(To be clear: I’m referring to the humanist axiom “Good without God,” whereby “good” means morality. It’s provably false that there exists no morality outside of religion, therefore the statement sounds defensive to me.)

By what route does anyone come to believe what they believe? We all like to imagine that it’s based on a set of logical facts, but it’s often a much more circuitous route.

For me it was pretty simple. I’m actually the fourth generation in my family to have no practical use for the church, or God, or religion. My children continue this trend.

Here are a few things I’ve learned.

Prayer doesn’t work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I’ve paid attention. I’ve pictured what I want to happen in my life. I’ve meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn’t work for me about them. I’ve looked hard at problems and thought hard about their solutions.

See, I order my life by the same mechanism that I use to build things. I cannot proceed to move tools around in the real world until my brain has a clear picture in it of what I’m building. The same goes for my life. I’ve tried to pay attention. I’ve tried to picture the way I want things to be, and I’ve noticed that when I had a clear picture, things often turned out the way I wanted them to.

I’ve concluded by this that someone is paying attention—I’ve concluded that it’s me. I’ve noticed that if I’m paying attention to those around me, to myself, to my surroundings, then that is the very definition of empathy. I’ve noticed that when I pay attention, I’m less selfish, I’m happier—and that the inverse holds true as well.

I think one of the defining moments of adulthood is the realization that nobody’s going to take care of you. That you have to do the heavy lifting while you’re here. And when you don’t, well, you suffer the consequences. At least I have. (And in the empirical study I’m performing about interacting with the universe, I am unfortunately the only test subject I have complete access to, so my data is, as they say, self-selected.) While nobody’s going to take care of us, it’s incumbent upon us to take care of those around us. That’s community.

The fiction of continuity and stability that your parents have painted for you is totally necessary for a growing child. When you realize that it’s not the way the world works, it’s a chilling moment. It’s supremely lonely.

So I understand the desire for someone to be in charge. (As a side note, I believe that the need for conspiracy theories is similar to the need for God.) We’d all like our good and evil to be like it is in the movies: specific and horrible, easy to defeat. But it’s not. It’s banal.

There’s a quote I love: “Evil is a little man afraid for his job.” I always thought some famous author said it, but I asked my 200,000 followers on Twitter today, and it turns out that Roy Scheider said it in Blue Thunder.

No one is in charge. And honestly, that’s even cooler.

The idea of an ordered and elegant universe is a lovely one. One worth clinging to. But you don’t need religion to appreciate the ordered existence. It’s not just an idea, it’s reality. We’re discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day. The inverse square law of gravitation is amazing. Fractals, the theory of relativity, the genome: these are magnificently beautiful constructs.

The nearly infinite set of dominoes that have fallen into each other in order for us to be here tonight is unfathomable. Truly unfathomable. But it is logical. We don’t know all the steps in that logic, but we’re learning more about it every day. Learning, expanding our consciousness, singly and universally.

As far as I can see, the three main intolerant religions in the world aren’t helping in that mission.

For all their talk of charity and knowledge, that they close their eyes to so much—to science, to birth control education, to abuses of power by some of their leaders, to evolution as provable and therefore factual (the list is staggering)—illustrates a wide scope of bigotry.

Now, just to be clear. If you want to believe, or find solace in believing, that someone or something set these particular dominoes in motion—a cosmic finger tipping the balance and then leaving everything else to chance—I can’t say anything to that. I don’t know.

Though a primary mover is the most complex and thus (given Occam’s razor) the least likely of all possible solutions to the particular problem of how we got here, I can’t prove it true or false, and there’s nothing to really discuss about it.

If Daniel Dennett is right— that there’s a human genetic need for religion— then I’d like to imagine that my atheism is proof of evolutionary biology in action.

There may be no purpose, but its always good to have a mission. And I know of one fine allegory for an excellent mission should you choose to charge yourself with one: Carlos Castaneda‘s series of books about his training with a Yaqui indian mystic named Don Juan. There’s a lot of controversy about these books being represented as nonfiction. But if you dispense with that representation, and instead take their stories as allegories, they’re quite lovely.

At the end of The Eagle’s Gift, Don Juan reveals to his student that there’s no point to existence. That we’re given our brief 70-100 years of consciousness by something the mystics call “The Eagle,” named for it’s cold, killer demeanor. And when we die, the eagle gobbles our consciousness right back up again.

He explains that the mystics, to give thanks to the eagle for the brief bout of consciousness they’re granted, attempt to widen their consciousness as much as possible. This provides a particularly delicious meal for the eagle when it gobbles one up at the end of one’s life.

And that, to me, is a fine mission.

Thank you.

— Delivered to the Harvard Humanist Society, April 2010

Via Boing Boing

Advance planning that leads to the security of the citizens of the country is always welcomed, more especially if it is something related with the natural catastrophes. These natural disasters are simply unpredictable and dealing with them looks like an insurmountable task.

Though hugely expensive, but it is worth taking over, for the millions of people residing in the realm of such dangers. Best example is regarding the inhabitants of the metropolitan city of Saitama, Japan, who had been facing the water calamities very often.

The technical engineers in Japan had come up with an extra-ordinary storm water management solution in the year 1992, which is the amazing underground system that effectively deals with the flood water and prevents the area from the massive damage to lives and properties.

It is called The Metropolitan Area Outer Discharge Channel, constructed to minimize the damage caused by heavy rainfall or typhoons. Since 1979, the city had faced six major floods, two of which were from typhoons. So this particular underground system has been set up with specific responses to an above ground occurrence. According to experts, this sewer water discharge channel is set to minimize the flood effect by 80%.

The overall design of the system is outstanding, standing tall at 25.4m (83 feet), 78m (255 feet) wide and 177m long (580 feet). The total structure appears to be more of a set erected for English blockbusters, as if taking us into those James Bond movies, etc.

Although it was completed years ago, this amazing system has not been used yet for the said purpose, but is surely an attraction for the tourists.

<Taken from World of Technology Blog>

A spite house is a building constructed or modified to irritate neighbours or other parties with land stakes. Spite houses often serve as obstructions, blocking out light or access to neighboring buildings, or as flamboyant symbols of defiance. Because long-term occupation is at best a secondary consideration, spite houses frequently sport strange and impractical structures.

Spite houses are much rarer than spite fences. This is partially attributable to the fact that modern building codes often prevent the construction of houses likely to impinge on neighbours’ views or privacy.

Probably the most famous spite house was the Richardson Spite House in New York City at Lexington Avenue and 82nd Street. Built in 1882 and demolished in 1915, it was four stories tall, 104 feet long, and only five feet  wide. Joseph Richardson, the owner of the plot of the same dimensions, built it after the owner of the adjacent plot, Hyman Sarner, unsuccessfully tried to purchase the land. Sarner considered the plot useless by itself and offered only $1000; Richardson demanded $5000. After the deal fell through, Richardson had an apartment building constructed on his land. It was a functional (albeit impractical) apartment building with eight suites, each consisting of three rooms and a bath.

In 1716, Thomas Wood, a sailmaker, built a home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, which subsequently received the sobriquet of The Old Spite House. One theory has it that it was inhabited by two brothers who occupied different sections, would not speak to each other, and refused (out of spite) to sell to the other. In another explanation for the presently occupied ten-foot wide home, which is just tall enough to block the view of two other houses on Orne Street, the builder was upset about his tiny share of his father’s estate and his revenge was a house built to spite his older brothers’ views. The Old Spite House is still standing and occupied.

In 1874, two brothers in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, got into a dispute. Each had previously inherited land from their deceased father. While the second brother was away serving in the military, the first brother built a large home, leaving the soldier only a shred of property that the first brother felt certain was too tiny to build on. When the soldier returned, he found his inheritance depleted and built a wooden house at 44 Hull St. to spite his brother by blocking the sunlight and ruining his view. The outside of the house spans 10.4 feet and tapers to 9.25 feet in the rear. The Skinny House is still standing and occupied.

At the turn of the 20th century, the city of Alameda, California, took a large portion of Charles Froling’s land to build a street. Froling had planned to build his dream house on the plot of land he received through inheritance. To spite the city and an unsympathetic neighbor, Froling built a house 10 feet wide, 54 feet long and 20 feet high on the tiny strip of land left to him. The Alameda Spite House is still standing and occupied.

In 1908, Francis O’Reilly owned an investment parcel of land in West Cambridge, Massachusetts, and approached his abutting land neighbor to sell the land for a gain. After the neighbor refused to buy the land, O’Reilly built a 308-square-foot building, measuring 37 feet long and only 8 feet wide to spite the neighbor. The O’Reilly Spite House is still standing and is occupied by an interior decorating firm as of mid-2009.

Rap Master Maurice is willing to VIGILANTE MIND BATTLE RAP CALL anybody who has done you wrong. Simply PayPal $7 and give a brief explanation of the trouble and you’re EVEN STEPHEN.

I heard of Maurice on the radio show “WireTap“, which plays on Sundays on my Michigan Public Radio Station [side note: this show is hillarious and you should listen to the podcast featuring Maurice now] and was totally blown away.

You pay the $7 through PayPal and then send an email with the persons name, the situation and their number. Maurice composes a custom rap-revenge and calls the mark and delivers the audio vengance. He even sends you an mp3 as proof.

Click here to visit his site and listen to some of the audio examples.

Wooster Collective (“a celebration of street art”) has an article about “The Pink Lady of Malibu,” which appeared over a tunnel in Malibu Canyon Road in 1966.

One Saturday morning, on October 29, 1966, a massive 60-foot-tall painting of a nude pink lady holding flowers suddenly appeared as you headed into the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road.

As word of the massive pink lady spread, and the traffic on the highway grew to a halt, city officials decided “The Pink Lady” had to be removed. Firefighters were called to hosing her off the rocks. It didn’t work. Buckets of paint thinner were thrown on the rocks. It only made her pink skin pinker.

As county officials worked on figuring out a way to remove The Pink Lady, a 31-year-old paralegal from Northridge, a woman named Lynne Seemayer, suddenly showed up on the road and admitted that she was the artist who did the piece.

Seemayer said that she was annoyed by the graffiti that was all over the canyon wall (“Valley Go Home” was a memorable slogan) and so, over a 10 month period, she started to secretly climb up under the moonlight and suspended herself by ropes to remove the graffiti.

At 8 P. M. on October 28 Seemayer painted the Pink Lady using ordinary house paint. By dawn it was done.

Snopes has more about the story.

The Story Of “The Pink Lady of Malibu” (Via Little Hokum Rag)

There is a mysterious waterfall in Judge Magney State Park in Minnesota. Half of the water drops 50 feet into the Brule river; the other half falls into a cauldron and disappears! Dyes and ping pong balls have been dropped into the pothole in an attempt to trace its route and find its outlet–presumably the water winds its way underground to Lake Superior a mile away–but the other end of the Devil’s Kettle has yet to be found.

This is a spot from Argentina which includes a transgender woman. It talks about tolerance and teach us that all people are the same even if they are straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Punk Rock before Punk Rock was cool!

The Torquays were a totally obscure cover band composed of five American G.I.’s, all of whom had been stationed outside Frankfurt in 1961. They were discharged from the Army in 1964. And then, just as the sixties began to get weird, they turned into the weirdest — and most wonderful — of sixties bands.

Instead of returning to the States, the Torquays dressed up like medieval friars, shaved tonsures into their hair, and rechristened themselves the Monks. They wrote brilliantly simple songs, played with locomotive intensity, and released just one album, Black Monk Time, in Germany, before their 1967 breakup. But time was on their side: Out next week on Light in the Attic Records, this welcome reissue of Black Monk Time includes testimonials from members of forward-looking groups like Radiohead, Faust, Nirvana, and the Stooges. “The Monks are right up there with Little Richard,” Jon Spencer writes. To which we say, “Amen.”

Theo Jansen is an artist and kinetic sculptor living and working in Holland. He builds large works which resemble skeletons of animals which are able to walk using the wind on the beaches of the Netherlands. His animated works are a fusion of art and engineering. In the current BMW commercial Jansen says “The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds”.

From his website:

Since about ten years Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.