Taylor Ansley (dot) com

This video went around the web a few days ago, but it’s a...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:18:05 -0600

This video went around the web a few days ago, but it’s a remarkably frank and vulnerable moment by a politician that bears highlighting. If you haven’t watched this statement by Washington State Rep Maureen Walsh (one of two Republicans to vote in favor of marriage equality in Washington) it’s worth a few minutes of your day.

(Via The Daily Dish)

These pictures are so full of joy. Incredible. szymon: dogs...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:35:06 -0600

These pictures are so full of joy. Incredible.

szymon:

dogs underwater from Seth Casteel

Mental Floss: 11 Brilliant Lifehacks

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 14:12:06 -0600

Mental Floss: 11 Brilliant Lifehacks:

Pretty handy list a-la-Lifehacker. I particularly like this simple hack for listening to music/podcasts from your phone in the kitchen:

"Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:48:05 -0600

“Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.”

- Lists of Note: Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments

One of 11 commandments author Henry Miller wrote “to be followed by himself” according to the Lists of Note blog.

Something I could stand to post next to my computer…

11 New Uses for Old Churches - Mental Floss Cool piece...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:24:05 -0600

11 New Uses for Old Churches - Mental Floss

Cool piece highlighting several re-purposed old churches. I like this brewery/restaurant in Pittsburgh.

"What do people who are sick and dying talk about with the chaplain? […] Mostly, they talk..."

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:41:06 -0600

“

What do people who are sick and dying talk about with the chaplain? […] Mostly, they talk about their families […]

They talk about the love they felt, and the love they gave. Often they talk about love they did not receive, or the love they did not know how to offer, the love they withheld, or maybe never felt for the ones they should have loved unconditionally.

They talk about how they learned what love is, and what it is not. […]

[P]eople talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence.

We don’t live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories. We live our lives in our families: the families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through the people we choose as friends.

”

- My Faith: What people talk about before they die - CNN Belief Blog

Insightful words from a hospital chaplain.

Bon Iver was awesome on SNL last night (video above). But as I...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:59:59 -0600

Bon Iver was awesome on SNL last night (video above). But as I watched it this morning I couldn’t help but crack up trying to imagine the people for whom last night’s line up (Bon Iver with Channing “I was in that GI Joe movie that made you forget why you loved GI Joes as a kid” Tatum) would have been the perfect pair.

Well, thanks to Twitter search we have a few winners. This is my favorite:

channing tatum AND bon iver on snl this week?! home run, lorne. every woman will be watching on saturday.

I didn’t pry into these Twitter users’ profiles, because that seemed creepy and because I didn’t want to be disappointed. Here’s what I hope is there:

I enjoy male abs, horrible over-acting, Step Up 2: The Streets and emotionally vulnerable multi-instrumental indie pop.

Great live performance by Ryan Adams on KCRW. Includes an...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:24:05 -0600

Great live performance by Ryan Adams on KCRW. Includes an interesting interview too.

Part I of Colbert’s interview with Maurice Sendak was...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:24:06 -0600

Part I of Colbert’s interview with Maurice Sendak was good, but part II (above) was outrageously awesome.

"In a society where Constitution worship is still a requisite on right and left alike, [Harvard Law..."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:42:05 -0600

“

In a society where Constitution worship is still a requisite on right and left alike, [Harvard Law School professor William] Stuntz startlingly suggests that the Bill of Rights is a terrible document with which to start a justice system—much inferior to the exactly contemporary French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which Jefferson, he points out, may have helped shape while his protégé Madison was writing ours.

The trouble with the Bill of Rights, he argues, is that it emphasizes process and procedure rather than principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man says, Be just! The Bill of Rights says, Be fair! Instead of announcing general principles—no one should be accused of something that wasn’t a crime when he did it; cruel punishments are always wrong; the goal of justice is, above all, that justice be done—it talks procedurally. You can’t search someone without a reason; you can’t accuse him without allowing him to see the evidence; and so on. This emphasis, Stuntz thinks, has led to the current mess, where accused criminals get laboriously articulated protection against procedural errors and no protection at all against outrageous and obvious violations of simple justice. […]

The obsession with due process and the cult of brutal prisons, the argument goes, share an essential impersonality. The more professionalized and procedural a system is, the more insulated we become from its real effects on real people.

”

- Mass Incarceration and Criminal Justice in America : The New Yorker

"True fact: The modern football video game pushes current-generation technology to its limit. Why are..."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:17:05 -0600

“True fact: The modern football video game pushes current-generation technology to its limit. Why are football games so “expensive,” in the sense that programmers use that word? Well, first, a football game has to render all the players, all of whom have idiosyncrasies of movement and appearance that must be accurate, and, in the case of marquee players, downright meticulous. Second, the game has to render all the coaching staff and the refs. There’s also the crowd to render, not to mention the crowd noise, which is keyed to surprisingly complicated crowd A.I. Let’s not forget the grass on the field. Or the light. Or the broadcasting. The game’s also scripting, on every play, the individual behavior of every player on the field, most of whom will be doing different things on any given play. In a basketball, hockey, or soccer game, the range of behaviors is more limited […] but football gives you 22 individual actors obeying a wide range of A.I. scripts. Not to mention the fact that every NFL team has an elaborate playbook with distinct tendencies and play styles. Meanwhile, during the plays themselves, there’s tons of contact between those 22 individual actors, all of which they have to respond to. And this has to look good — seamless, even. When you start pondering the immense complications of a game like Madden — the product of more than 10 million lines of code — you begin to wonder how the game even runs without shooting fire out of your console.”

- Tom Bissell on the making of ‘Madden NFL’ - Grantland

I got hooked on Kathleen Edwards thanks to this great post on...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:49:06 -0600

I got hooked on Kathleen Edwards thanks to this great post on Music vs. Misery. Here’s the video for “Change the Sheets”, one of a bunch of great tunes on her new album. She worked with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and you can hear some of those influences.

An absolutely unbelievable miniature train village taken to...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:24:05 -0600

An absolutely unbelievable miniature train village taken to extremes. Via the Daily Dish and Gizmodo:

Originally scheduled to open in 2009, it has taken more than six years to complete the $4,440,000+ expansion to Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland. The airport includes remote-controlled planes taking, landing and taxiing to terminals and hangers. Plus, there are luggage carts and other support vehicles scurrying about the tarmac. If you’ve ever dabbled in model railroads, I recommend taking the time to watch their entire promo video, and then weep over the vastly inferior setup in your rec room.

From @pourmecoffee:

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:28:18 -0600

From @pourmecoffee::

Gorgeous, surreal photo of rivers in desert that look exactly like trees. http://t.co/0roZqccZ

I think Mike’s on to something here. Working from home...

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:41:06 -0600

I think Mike’s on to something here. Working from home never looked so good.

thepenultimateindeed:

Jackpot: Gizmodo Reveals the Ultimate in Business-Casual Comfort - Dress Sweatpants

Click the picture to read Gizmodo’s full account of these wonders of the workplace.

This is one of many awesome photos in a wonderfully eclectic...

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:15:05 -0600

This is one of many awesome photos in a wonderfully eclectic spread of reader-requested shots on the In Focus blog. The caption on this photo:

William Pomerantz (@Pomerantz) asked to see “Joseph Kittinger’s Project Excelsior record setting 100,000+ foot skydive”. On August 16, 1960, Col. Kittinger stepped from a balloon-supported gondola at the altitude of 102,800 feet. In freefall for 4.5 minutes at speeds up to 714 mph and temperatures as low as -94 degrees Fahrenheit, he opened his parachute at 18,000 feet.

Which in turn led me to this awesome Wikipedia entry on Project Excelsior (emphasis mine—this guy is a maniac):

In [the] first test, the stabilizer parachute was deployed too soon, catching Kittinger around the neck and causing him to spin at 120 revolutions per minute. This caused Kittinger to lose consciousness, but his life was saved by his main parachute which opened automatically at a height of 3,000 m (10,000 ft).

Despite this near-disaster on the first test, Kittinger went ahead with another test only three weeks later. […]

The third and final test, Excelsior III, was made on August 16, 1960. During the ascent, the pressure seal in Kittinger’s right glove failed, and he began to experience severe pain in his right hand from the exposure of his hand to the extreme low pressure. […] He decided not to inform the ground crew about this, in case they should decide to abort the test. Despite temporarily losing the use of his right hand, he continued with the ascent, climbing to an altitude of 31,333 m (102,800 ft).

Record Label Demands on Music Streaming Services

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:48:05 -0600

Record Label Demands on Music Streaming Services:

Great post from the Lone Gunman describing all of the demands that record labels place on music streaming services. Something to keep in mind the next time we all complain about ads on Pandora…

Made real paella tonight. Almost perfect…I need practice....

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:37:11 -0600

Made real paella tonight. Almost perfect…I need practice. (Taken with instagram)

"Given Apple’s prominence and leadership in global manufacturing, if the company were to radically..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:24:06 -0600

“

Given Apple’s prominence and leadership in global manufacturing, if the company were to radically change its ways, it could overhaul how business is done. “Every company wants to be Apple,” said Sasha Lezhnev at the Enough Project, a group focused on corporate accountability. “If they committed to building a conflict-free iPhone, it would transform technology.”

But ultimately, say former Apple executives, there are few real outside pressures for change. Apple is one of the most admired brands. In a national survey conducted by The New York Times in November, 56 percent of respondents said they couldn’t think of anything negative about Apple. Fourteen percent said the worst thing about the company was that its products were too expensive. Just 2 percent mentioned overseas labor practices.

”

- Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China - NYTimes.com

laughingsquid: Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge,...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:22:43 -0600

laughingsquid:

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, 1933-1937

Incredible photo.