Portent

What can you say about the works of Shakespeare? I wasn’t that keen at school, having Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice forced down my throat but over time have come to appreciate the cultural contribution and story telling that his plays brought.

For instance these words were first seen in his plays, though that doesn’t mean he invented them, just used them.

1. Eyeball
2. puking
3. skim milk
4. Obscene
5. Hot-Blooded
6. The Game is Afoot
7. Epileptic
8. Wormhole

None of which is relevant to this review! That said, it’s elegant, fast and lets you view all of the plays act by act. And it’s free. If you like Shakespeare and you have an iPhone then it is a no brainer. It was released in early September.

Link (to Shakespeare in the App Store)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Politics these days is not just a matter of Left v right but also authoritarian v Libertarian. I suspect this could be further mapped ie pro-business or anti-business etc.

The Political Compass is a website that asks you 6 pages (not long pages) of questions to establish where you fit in. The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but anarchism (ie liberal socialism), and that the opposite of communism ( i.e. an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (i.e. extreme deregulated economy). Mine shows me as being marginally to the right of centre but definitely more pro libertarianism than authoritarian.

Link

Popularity: 13% [?]

This appeals to my subversive, resist authority nature. In their words Strictly no photography is a photo-sharing site for photographs taken where you are not allowed to take them. From the inside of the Kremlin to Kensington palace, from art galleries to war zones.

The rise in the number of compact digital cameras and phone cameras with increasingly good photo taking ability means that photography has become something that everyone can do. No flash bulbs needed or having to develop photos. My Nokia N73 phone takes some excellent photos. So it gets harder in fact probably impossible to ban photography in places as this website demonstrates. I just wish they’d change from white text on a black background!

Link

Popularity: 16% [?]

I have no idea what this is about but it’s colourful if rather badly wrong!

It’s just a map of the USA, seemingly as the Japanese (well those who can’t read an Atlas or view Google Maps) perceive the USA.

Link

Popularity: 38% [?]

Anyone into sci fi will be aware of both these series (never mind Babylon 5, Deep Space 9 and others) and it’s fun in a way to compare the two main ones to see how they vary in technologies, size, number of planets, political systems etc.

This is an almost academical in its scope but much more interesting reading than most academic papers. It makes a point of sticking to the canonical (ie most representative) sources such as the film and TV series whereas some other sites might cite fan fiction or non main stream sources. The ST v SW debate has been ongoing in one shape or another (via Usenet to start with) for over 20 years and this site is a welcome addition.

Link

Popularity: 7% [?]

I’ve often thought that if you take song lyrics too literally you are just banging your head on a wall.

Nevertheless with over 30,000 artists, over 350,000 lyrics and nearly a million comments from over 300,000 site members, it’s clear that discussing what song lyrics are about is very popular. That’s what this site does. As you’d imagine with so many people, there’s a bit of dissent at times in what the lyrics mean.

Link

Popularity: 7% [?]

Sometimes you see something so amazingly well done that you can’t but stare. This is one.

It’s a video, just over seven and a half minutes long of a couple of thousand dancers who are effectively human pixels. They have different colour clothes on I’d guess and turn to face the camera at pretty precise times. Through the seven and a half minutes they move about, change colour and act in a totally coordinated way. It must have taken months of setting up, choreographing and designing it. Amazing!

Link

Popularity: 10% [?]

This picture is 15,941 by 261 pixels in size. Scaled down and split into three chunks gives you an idea of the size.

It’s well done but isn’t exactly safe for work- some bits have a touch of nudity and baby making but as a piece of art it’s tremendous!

Link

Popularity: 9% [?]

Retro-Futurism is looking back to a time when they foresee the future somewhat differently to how it panned out.

By now of course we should all have flying cars and video phones and live in peace and harmony. TV programmes like Tomorrows World from the 1970s envisaged us living in a plastic furnished world, usually in white. Of course things never turn up quite as people imagine them- we’re not quite in Orwell’s dystopian 1984 or some other’s utopia but somewhere in between and not living in a Bladerunner type world.

The linked site has a number of French illustrations from 1910 on how they thought the world of 2000 might look like. Some ideas seem positively quaint and we now know them to be dangerous- eg heating with radium!

Link

Popularity: 21% [?]

This is interesting and a bit different. If you plot countries of the world according to how they rate on the two scales of Traditional/Secular-rational and Survival/Self-Expression then you get the chart shown.

What makes it particularly interesting is how the cultures spread between countries. If you are into this type of thing then you’ll find the surveys and past survey data of interest on the site, plus a bigger version of the chart. (All pictures etc on Portent.org are reduced to 320 pixels in width)

Link

Popularity: 16% [?]