[These are just begging to be tattoos, huh? -egg]
Author Archives: Egg Syntax
‘I Bet Your Mama Was a Tent-Show Queen’
[Interesting snippets of the secret histories of drag in African-American performance traditions. -egg]
How much deeper it goes depends on how many hours you have. Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff’s 2007 study Ragged but Right: Black Travelling Shows, “Coon Songs” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz documents female impersonators in African-American tent shows back into the late 19th century. In New York meanwhile there was Frankie “Half-Pint” Jaxon, the Harlem drag balls, the “mannish acting women” among the early blues queens (Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, also minstrel and tent-show veterans) and all the gender nonconformists of the jazz age and Harlem Renaissance.
…
That ambivalence hints at the multitudinous duplicities of crossdressing in African-American history. It’s difficult to separate it, for example, from the legacy of minstrelsy: Blackfaced white minstrel troupes were as a rule all-male, and so would include performers who specialized in female characters, mostly degrading archetypes such as the Mammy and the Wench (plantation madonnas and whores). When black-run minstrel tent shows and their female impersonators took over, they sometimes perpetuated those characters, though they also added more dignified ones, just as they sang some of the “coon” songs and re-enacted jokes and scenarios from that ugly past. Scholar J.T. Lhamon reads Little Richard’s act as a “Sambo” figure mutated, made a “trickster,” by its acceleration through rapidfire postwar social modes—sum that up as “woo!” or “A-wop-bom-a-loo-mop-a-lomp-bom-boom!” (those last couple of syllables were originally “goddamn!”).
Minstrelsy might be reclaimed and reconfigured, but its uneasy inheritance is everywhere, in American black and white.
Terry Riley – In C – The shortest version ever – By Hans Balmer – YouTube
The Best Browser Extensions that Protect Your Privacy
[Some good info here. -egg]
There are a ton of browser extensions that promise to protect your privacy, which leads to some natural questions: Which is the best? Do they all do the same thing? What should I really download? In this guide, we’re going to look at the most popular browser extensions that promise to protect your privacy online, and give you our recommendations.
We’ve talked about why you should care about your privacy several times here, so whether you choose to do something to protect yourself is up to you—we’re not going to rehash it. Instead, we’re going to dive into the tools available to keep your data safe. Most of them fall into three groups: add-ons that prevent third parties from tracking your movements, add-ons that block ads and scripts, and passive security tools that enforce good habits. Don’t worry, though. You don’t need to download a ton of apps to keep yourself safe and your data close to pocket. Here are the best in each group.
Volcano Dust – made from ghost chili peppers – Boing Boing
Volcano Dust is a brand of powdered bhut jolokia chili peppers. Also known as ghost chills, bhut jolokias are mind-bendingly hot. For example, an average jalapeño pepper measures about 5,000 on the Scoville heat scale; a bhut jolokia measures 1,000,000 Scovilles.
The manufacturer of Volcano Dust sent me a box of samples, and I carefully tried them out. They are certainly the hottest powdered chili peppers I’ve ever tasted, but I like them. A slight dusting of theHot Italian Blend on my easy-over eggs or chicken soup turns them into an exciting culinary experience. Here’s to blown-out capsaicin receptors!
Conservation ain’t what it used to be (WE NEED TO BE BIGGER)
[Some interesting thoughts from grinding.be. Worth a read. -egg]
I’m increasingly resistant to the notion of Sustainability… because what are we sustaining but the slow motion death of the life on Earth that has supported us? WE NEED TO ACCELERATE FORWARDS INTO THE FUTURE, DRAGGING ALL OF HISTORY AND ITS LESSONS WITH US.
Okay, that’s a tad hyperbolic… but there are a lot of legacy civilizational myths that need to be exploded. For starters, the crux of the Environmental Mythology, that the Amazon is some untouched Gaian Paradise, when the evidence points to it being a pre-Columbian garden that’s since ReWilded:
grinding.be » Blog Archive » Conservation ain’t what it used to be (WE NEED TO BE BIGGER).
Genome Compiler
Home – Genome Compiler Corporation.
Were you needing software for designing new genes? Looks like this is the place to go.
Powerful Search Capability
With lightening fast access to NCBI, iGem, plasmids and more, Genome Compiler allows you to easily find and import genetic information at any scale. Nature’s design is at your fingertips!
Intuitive User Interface
The Drag and Drop utility provides users with an agile mechanism for engineering DNA. Genome Compiler’s intuitive “lego” construction allows you to move your genetic “bricks” within and between new projects.
Easy Ordering
The simplest way to order your synthetic DNA designs. Get quotes from multiple providers and choose the one that meets your needs.
Cloud Storage
Genome Compiler’s Cloud Storage enables seamless collaboration. Simply drag and drop your content to the Cloud and access your project from any machine!
Built-in Library
Your built-in constructs library includes an extensive list of genetic parts, plasmid vectors, complete genomes, and more
Undo/Redo Changes
At Genome Compiler, we fully encourage fearless innovation – undo/redo your changes with a single click. Leave the worrying to us.
Subtly Animated GIFs of London Street Scenes Focus on One Person
Oh, I really like these. Thanks Dean. -egg
“One” is a photo series of London street scenes in which a single person in each photo is subtly animated. The animated photos, or “cinemagraphs,” were created by photographer Nicolas Ritter.
The project » one « focuses on the individual in a crowd. It particularly imitates the way in which the human eye observes: not viewing a crowd as a crowd, but observing little micro-scenes inside of it.
“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” stretched to nine hours – Boing Boing
Goth anthem “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus time-stretched into nine hours. Oh Belllllaaaaaa! (via Dangerous Minds, thanks, Patrick Kelly!)
