Procrastination Celebration 2007

Hello,
Midterms week! In honor of this, that bastion of procrastination, I would like to formally welcome you to Linkfest 2007. This post is really ridden with links, even more than usual for me. If you're going to be clicking on them, I recommend you open them outside of this window so that you don't have to navigate back and forth.

Onward!

The star of today's post is a long article from late January in the NY Times. It is an absolutely fascinating read, when you have time, and is about the limits of scientific reductionist thinking as applied to food and nutritional science.

Unhappy Meals

And here's his book. Buy it!


Also, I've been meaning to do a huge Youtube post, supplemented by Wikipedia when appropriate.So, here you go, this is a couple of hours of entertainment probably, if you are inspired by these links to do further youtubing/wikipedia crawling especially. I'll break it down by category. I really like sharing interesting things I come across, as you may have noticed. If you appreciate posts like this, it would be great to hear from you. Also, send me cool stuff you find and I'll post it here.

Also, in news, there's a new Ry Cooder CD. Supposed to be good.

Have a great Spring Break everyone! Thanks for stopping by. Serious Youtube post-effort below.

Best,
George


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Youtube/Wikipedia Extravaganza:
(Seriously, open links in other windows. You've been warned.)

Miscellaneous:

Cool Intro to Web 2.0

Don't copy that floppy!
(Wow, what are going to be the self-ridiculing artifacts of our era? I can't believe it's not butter, clearly.)

Parkour:
Trust me, if you don't know what parkour is, this is a really cool thing to spend about 30 minutes learning about. Here's the trajectory you follow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour

then read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_running

then, watch some.

Youtube: Russian Parkour (Dvinsk Clan, if you wanted to know who this is)

So, impressed yet? Check this out: Parkour is part of a larger culture of urban athletics, urban martial arts, capoiera, etc. Tricking is another cool aspect of this scene. That's the next place we'll go.

Tricking:

First, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricking

Now that you understand a little about it, you should get an idea for the basic techniques. These videos are all very short:

Tricking Tutorials:

Standing Tuck
Wallflip
Sideflip
540 Kick
Standing Back Tuck
Webster
Cheat Gainer

Now, you're ready to sufficiently appreciate the best tricking in the world. It's face-melting time:

World's Best Tricking, Volume III (The best one, watch this one first!)
Volume I
Volume II

K, that was a lot of work, please check it out.


Next:

Music Videos:

Royskopp, "Remind Me" (Had this in mind with the title and subject matter of my previous post.)

Regina Spektor, "Us," "Fidelity"

Dizzee Rascal:
First, read this b/c it's fascinating, so many directions you can go from here. I love how talented his brother is as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzee_Rascal

Freestyle

Fix Up, Look Sharp

Jus a Rascal

Dream

John Lee Hooker, "Tupelo Blues"
This guys voice leaves me absolutely dumbstruck, every time.

Derek Trucks, Random Solo, "After Midnight" with Clapton

The Faces: Stay with Me (Live)



Wow, that was positively a glut of stuff. I hope you find at least one thing that does it for you.

And if you didn't, just to be ridiculous, here's the entirety of Seinfeld's standup in New York, broken into 6 files:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Take care,
G