November, 2011

Lieutenant John Pike reacting “out of concern for his own safety” against this terrifying group of seated, unarmed protesters on the UC Davis campus. Click to enlarge.

Updates here. | Video via

A handy map of states to avoid, from Goodreads:

A map of what each state thinks of Twilight ends up looking a lot like a map of the most recent election results. On the map above, the readers in the red states rated the book highly (the darker the red, the higher the rating), while readers in the blue states gave it a lower rating). The Midwest and the South represent The Twilight Belt, while the coasts were decidedly less impressed with the book.

Reviews were mostly distributed according to population, with the notable exception of Utah. Utah is the 34th most populous state in the US, but it generates the 6th most reviews of Twilight. In terms of cities, Salt Lake City—the 125th largest city in the country—is second only to New York in number of Twilight reviews. Opinion on the book is split in the Beehive state, with the average rating a pedestrian 3.64.

Via

Shepard Fairey chimes in:

This image represents my support for the Occupy movement, a grassroots movement spawned to stand up against corruption, imbalance of power, and failure of our democracy to represent and help average Americans. On the other hand, as flawed as the system is, I see Obama as a potential ally of the Occupy movement if the energy of the movement is perceived as constructive, not destructive. I still see Obama as the closest thing to “a man on the inside” that we have presently. Obviously, just voting is not enough. We need to use all of our tools to help us achieve our goals and ideals. However, I think idealism and realism need to exist hand in hand. Change is not about one election, one rally, one leader, it is about a constant dedication to progress and a constant push in the right direction. Let’s be the people doing the right thing as outsiders and simultaneously push the insiders to do the right thing for the people. I’m still trying to work out copyright issues I may face with this image, but feel free to share it and stay tuned…
-Shepard Fairey

OBEY | Via

The lead single from the duo’s critically acclaimed second album The Infamous (1995).

Beautiful.

Tanguy Louvigny | Via

The Atlantic Wire describes how Oregonian photographer Randy L. Rasmussen didn’t even know he had taken one of the most iconic photos from the Occupy movement.

“I was just shooting everything that came to my attention because it was happening in like a 270 degree panorama below me. They had the horses moving into the crowd and I saw people falling down,” he said. “This is all happening so fast that I’m not seeing what I’m shooting. It’s getting dark so I crank the ISO up on my camera and at that point the camera’s seeing more than I am.” Someone yelled “oh man, they’re pepper spraying,” and right then, Rasmussen’s camera battery died. “I have another battery and I swap them out, and at that point it’s all over.”

Rasmussen sent his camera back to the office with a colleague, not knowing what it contained. Later, he said, “I was standing behind one of the photo editors while he was going through my take and he just let out this whoop, and there was that frame of the protester getting hit in the face.” They put the image online immediately, and it immediately grabbed the Internet’s attention.

The Atlantic Wire

Matthew Weathers teams up with himself  once again to get through one of his Nature of Math classes at Biola University.

MDWeathers | Via

Chuck & Beans

The man behind Bad Lip Reading continues his hilarious assault on politics.

Funny or Die | Via | Previously: Herman Cain

5 True Stories That Prove You Shouldn’t Piss Off The IT Guy – [Cracked]

11 Famous Doctored Photos Of Dictators – [11 Points]

House Declares Pizza Is A Vegetable, Because America – [Reuters]

The House of Representatives dealt a blow to childhood obesity warriors on Thursday by passing a bill that abandons proposals that threatened to end the reign of pizza and French fries on federally funded school lunch menus.

Another provision bars the USDA from changing the way it credits tomato paste, used in pizza. The change would have required pizza to have at least a half-cup of tomato paste to qualify as a vegetable serving. Current rules, which likely will remain in place, require just two tablespoons of tomato paste.

Neutrinos Still Faster Than Light In Latest CERN Experiment – [Guardian]

The scientists who appeared to have found in September that certain subatomic particles can travel faster than light have ruled out one potential source of error in their measurements after completing a second, fine-tuned version of their experiment.

Their results, posted on the ArXiv preprint server on Friday morning and submitted for peer review in the Journal of High Energy Physics, confirmed earlier measurements that neutrinos, sent through the ground from Cern near Geneva to the Gran Sasso lab in Italy 450 miles (720km) away seemed to travel faster than light.

The finding that neutrinos might break one of the most fundamental laws of physics sent scientists into a frenzy when it was first reported in September. Not only because it appeared to go against Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity but, if correct, the finding opened up the troubling possibility of being able to send information back in time, blurring the line between past and present and wreaking havoc with the fundamental principle of cause and effect.

Brooklyn Decker For La Senza. You’re Welcome. (Photos) – [NextRound]

99 Portraits For The 99% (Photos) – [GOOD]

Pic via | context