Distilling Daily Stories Into Art

Here’s a recent lecture covering the anthropology of Hip-Hop plus a Q&A at St. John’s.

via, nymag

FTW.

via, gothamist

MaximBrady reviews Kanye West’s Theraflu

via, complex

Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.

via, coolhunting

Now where to find a game of Pac-Man? (demo after the jump)

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How to Get a Positive Expected Rate of Return on a Lottery Ticket.

From Scientific American:

“Look for an after-tax, cash value of the jackpot that exceeds 0.8 times the odds against you, and in which the number of tickets sold remains less than one-fifth this jackpot.”

“Pick the most unpopular numbers… By playing unpopular numbers you won’t win any more or less often, but you’ll less often split the pot with other winners.”

“Don’t pick the number one. It’s on about 15 percent of all tickets. Similarly, avoid lucky numbers 7, 13, 23, 32, 42, and 48. Better are 26, 34, 44, 45, and especially overlooked number 46. Avoid any recognizable pattern, but give slight preference to numbers at the edge of the ticket, which are underused. In mathematical terms, picking a unique ticket makes the jackpot look bigger and thus your lottery dollar look smarter.”

via, lifehacker

Chris Johanson is the man.

A film made by Aaron Rose for The Generic Man, and Comme de Garçons SHIRT.

F* your open office plan. Susan Cain on The Rise of the New Groupthink.

nice illustration by Andy Rementer for the NY Times

Hennessy Youngman on Damien Hirst, “The Bono of the Art World.”

This is beautiful.

THE VOYAGERS, 16:30, 2010.

In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The golden record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler.

via, ihc

Sasha Frere-Jones weighs in

photo by Kristen Blush

I’m not particularly mad at Kurt Andersen’s You Say You Want a Devolution? piece in Vanity Fair.

image via geeklawblog

An interview with Much Music from August 10, 1993

via, dangerousminds

Charles Saatchi on the hideousness of the Art World

waxwork above by Robert McHarg III

via, thewhoa

Evidence that Marijuana Promotes Creativity

via, boingboing