www.veniceartscouncil.org

Researchers at Australia's Deakin University have published a paper in the British Journal of Nutrition showing evidence that human beings can taste fat -- that is, they can distinguish between two flavourless solutions in which one has more fat than the other.

I believe that this is true -- and that fat can offset bitterness the same way that sweet can. For example, raw cacao nibs mixed with cashew nuts taste sweet and chocolatey. "We know that the human tongue can detect five tastes -- sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (a savoury, protein-rich taste contained in foods such as soy sauce and chicken stock)," Russell Keast, from Deakin University, said Monday.

"Through our study we can conclude that humans have a sixth taste -- fat."

Researchers tested 30 people's ability to taste a range of fatty acids in otherwise plain solutions and found that all were able to determine the taste -- though some required higher concentrations than others. Australian researchers say fat is 'sixth taste' (via Kottke)

(Image: Beale's Open Kettle Rendered Pure Lard, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Steve Snodgrass' photostream) Previously:

• "This Is Why You're Fat" photoblog
• Brown fat makes you thin
• Science and carbs - A big fat lie revisited
• Does Animal Fat Get a Bum Rap?
• How bad is animal fat?
• NYT fingered in fat photo fracas

A former TSA analyst has been indicted for computer crimes after being allegedly caught tampering with various terrorist watchlists (his work duties involved keeping these databases up to date). He'd been given notice that he was being fired before the incident. The article doesn't explain what he's suspected of doing, though the possibilities are interesting: adding enemies to watchlists? Taking people off of watchlists? Douglas James Duchak, 46, was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday with two counts of damaging protected computers. According to a federal indictment, Duchak tried to compromise computers at the TSA's Colorado Springs Operations Center (CSOC) on Oct. 22, 2009, seven days after he'd being given two weeks notice that he was being dismissed. He was also charged with tampering with a TSA server that contained data from the U.S. Marshal's Service Warrant Information Network.

He "knowingly transmitted code into the CSOC server that contained the Terrorist Screening Database, and thereby attempted intentionally to cause damage to the CSOC computer and database," prosecutors said Wednesday in a press release. Former TSA analyst charged with computer tampering (via /.) Previously:

• TSA adds 16500 people to terror watchlist for forgetting ID, then ...
• Mail-art odyssey earns artist spot on TSA watchlist
• US terrorist watchlist now has more than 1000000 names
• CNN reporter says bad things about the TSA, gets hassled every ...
• TSA puts commercial pilots on no-fly and terrorist watch lists ...

Aestetix sez, "Traditionally HOPE [ed: Hackers on Planet Earth, the annual NYC conference put on by 2600 Magazine] conferences have been more about the talks than the physical projects, but with the 2008 conference that started to change, and this time organizers are pushing for an even stronger showing of projects and tech art. This call for projects goes out to hackers, makers, technologists, artists, and free thinkers around the world. Come share your passions and ideas with 3,000+ of your soon-to-be closest friends."

Fun-loving hackers and improbable tech-art: what a match made in heaven! HOPE is probably my top conference that I've never been to (I almost made it in 1999 but the flight was cancelled!). I continue to miss it every year, despite my best efforts (it usually overlaps my birthday, which is family time, for obvious reasons!), but I vow to go someday.

I mean, just have a look at that call for proposals: games to be played by thousands of hackers over three floors of a massive hotel; midnight to 9AM sessions; hardware hacking village... Talk about nerdvana.

Call for Projects and Tech Art (Thanks, aestetix!) Previously:

• Hotel Pennsylvania, site of 2600's HOPE, to be demolished - Boing ...
• Best of 2600 Magazine anthology

This is a very clever way to promote your performance motorcycle: BMW chains a very, very long tablecloth with a very, very elaborate cluster of place-settings to a S 1000 RR "superbike" and has a driver roar off, taking the cloth away and leaving the dinner setup intact. Impressive acceleration!

Video: BMW S 1000 RR pulls off the old tablecloth trick (Thanks, Alan!) Previously:

• Royal Enfield Military 500 motorcycle
• First Look: Mission One electric motorcycle Gadgets
• Homemade motorcycle ad on Craigslist
• This is a motorcycle helmet
• LEGO minifig motorcycle helmet Gadgets
• Coordinated motorcycle performance video from the 1950s
• CORE Competency: Victory Motorcycle's new concept
• Retro-futuristic motorcycle

Art of the Title Sequence celebrates the world's greatest film/TV title sequences, those oft-experimental opening moments of a movie or TV show that really set the mood of what's to come. I've always been intrigued by this art form and it's fun to watch examples from around the globe. The site also features interviews with more than a dozen masters of the media. Art of the Title was mentioned in a New York Times article today about the South by Southwest Film Awards new Title Design Competition. Winners will be announced at the festival next week. According to the NYT, "The modern approach to film titles crystallized, more or less, in 1955 with "The Man With the Golden Arm." It opened with a kind of jazz ballet in which dancing white lines, over music by Elmer Bernstein, eventually tightened into the contorted arm of a drug addict.



From the NYT: The sequence was designed by Saul Bass, who tossed aside a more mechanical approach that had largely prevailed in Hollywood to create story-telling openings for films like "Psycho," "North by Northwest" and, later, "Goodfellas" and "The Age of Innocence."

(Among the entries at South by Southwest, "Cigarette Girl," an independent film about a world in which smoking restrictions have murderous consequences, is one that recalls the Bass oeuvre: guns, cigarettes and people flicker between the real and the abstract, over a cool-toned soundtrack.)

Before his death in 1996, Bass had been nominated for Oscars three times, winning once, for his short films. But his work on the titles fell through the cracks of a film industry awards system that has given far more recognition to directors "New Honor for the Designs That Get Movies Moving" (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

As part of Converse's "Music Collection," they've issued a variety of Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers themed around The Clash, Blondie, Metallica, and Kurt Cobain. To be fair, they really should have made Cobain-branded Converse One Stars as those were the shoes he was wearing at his death. Now, I do dig The Clash sneakers seen here. But I am aware that Nike selling sneakers co-branded with the name/art of an iconic punk band is... problematic. That said, somebody from The Clash's camp (and Cobain's) had to approve these.
Converse Music Collection

"Bring cops... a lot of them!... And soldiers too."—Carlos, a brave 7 year old boy from Norwalk, California, calling 911 after armed attackers broke into his home and threatened to kill his family. (Audio of the call)

Ben Greenman invents the 3*TYPE 3*TYPE process, saves text-based media from ignominious death death.

Eric Spiegelman of "Old Jews Telling Jokes" explains this episode: "My cousin Michael recommended that we get Charlotte Bornstein on camera to tell some jokes. He also advised that we 'just keep the camera running.' You'll see why."

Many more new episodes of this stripped-down, oldschool comedy at oldjewstellingjokes.com.

(Technical note: If you have trouble viewing the embedded Flash videos hosted on Blip.tv, as I did, you may have better luck downloading the videos as iTunes podcast episodes.)

Previously:

• Old Jews Telling Jokes (video)
• Old Jews Telling Jokes is Back
• Old Jews Telling Jokes: Ed Koch

"You buy it, you like it!" Bargain Barn was a public access cable show in Shawnee, Oklahoma in the mid-1990s—a sort of QVC for hillbillies, a televised flea market where one might pick up stray drill bits, chickens, or stained and ripped pillows. As WFMU notes, it's a damn crime YouTube shows only one upload of this gem. The host/barker, whose face we seldom see, is selling nothing but absolute crap. He himself admits most of the junk is "broked," "tore up," or "needs to be warshed a few times." I think my favorite moment in the clip above is 8:35, when we get to the Style Studs ("It don't have no Style Studs in it! I'd call that a pig in a poke, m'self.") I could watch this for hours.

(Thanks, Mikael Jorgensen!)

My friend Eric Hoberman helped develop a new game show that will premiere on NBC on Sunday March 14 from 7-9 p.m. ET/PT. It's called Minute To Win It, and the object is to win a series of 10 easy-to-understand but increasingly-hard-to-win challenges. As the title suggests, the players must successfully complete each of the games in a minute. The award structure is like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire -- the cash amount increases with each game up to a million dollars, you can walk away with what you've won at any point, and you can lose it all if you blow a challenge.

Eric gave me a box of props so I could try out the games myself. The show's contestants are also given props and rules for the games before they come on the show so they can practice. The props are household items -- golf balls, cookies, a deck of cards.

Here are a few of the challenges contestants will have 60 seconds to complete:

• Move two Oreo cookies from your forehead to your mouth using your facial muscles only. (I failed!)

• Stack three golf balls vertically. (I failed!)

• Balance a deck of playing cards on a soda bottle and blow all the cards off but the bottom one, the joker. (I failed!)

• A dollar bill is sandwiched between two bottles, one upright, the other inverted and placed on top of the upright bottle. You have four tries to remove the bill without touching or toppling the bottles. (Success!) I'm interested to know if anyone can successfully complete the tasks I failed at. If you make a YouTube of it, please provide the link so we can watch it!

Minute to Win it site on NBC

Lady Gaga, a "trash mosaic portrait" by San Francisco-based artist Jason Mecier, who has shows coming up in LA and SF. Richard Metzger has more at Dangerous Minds.

"We are fixated on technology and technological success, and we have no sustained or systematic approach to field-based social understanding of our adversaries' motivation, intent, will, and the dreams that drive their strategic vision, however strange those dreams and vision may seem to us."—Anthropologist Scott Atran, who believes the quest to end violent political extremism needs more science. (edge.org)

Yup.

Snip from Wall Street Journal article on the last collection of Alexander McQueen. Twice in the weeks leading up to his Feb. 11 death, Mr. McQueen messaged on Twitter, 'Hells angels [sic] and prolific demons.' What seemed a non sequitur now appears to be a reference to the collection he was working on, imprinted with the angels of Sandro Botticelli and the demons of Hieronymus Bosch. He had finished some 16 looks, about half of what the collection would typically include, at the time of his death.

His Twitter account has been taken offline, but a Google Cache exists. The final tweet: "De sade, Marie A- god rest there souls." [sic]

(thanks, Kelly Sparks)

Previously:

• Alexander McQueen's final collection
• Alexander McQueen on Charlie Rose, 1997
• Alexander McQueen has died

Look at Todbot's BristleBots go! He held a workshop at Crash Space in Culver City, CA last night and showed people how to make them. (I'm sorry I didn't announce it in advance!)

BristleBots and LED throwie art at Crash Space

"America is not a democracy. It's a Chuck-tatorship. (...) We'd go down the line and he'd say, 'He's honest. He's honest. He's corrupted.' And I'd walk up to him and I'd say, 'You're fired." If he didn't move immediately, I would choke him unconscious and lay him over to the side there."— Mr. Chuck Norris, who, as Rachel Maddow reminds us, turns 70 today.

I, too, am very, very anxious for the day to come when I can purchase a Fascination car with an EV Gray fuelless engine. The Fascination Car was the brain child of Paul M. Lewis, of the Highway Aircraft Corporation. It was developed with a standard engine, but he wanted to power it with ANYTHING that didn't burn gasoline. He was in negotiations with Ed Gray for a while to use the EMA Engine, but that fell through. He then approached Josef Papp for his plasma engine. Ultimately, neither the engines or the car were ever produced.

EV Gray and the Fascination Car (Via PCL Link Dump)

[via Global Post via TokyoMango]

A man was stabbed with a meat thermometer in a movie theater in LA after complaining to a woman about talking on her cell phone during a Saturday night screening of Shutter Island.