September 2
A Widow's Journey [MP3]. "In 1989, Appapillai Amirthalingam - the most prominent political figure of the Tamil community - was assassinated at his home in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Twenty years on, the Tamil Tigers have been defeated by the military. Appapillai's wife and son travel back to their homeland in search of his legacy in an attempt to understand what the future holds for Sri Lanka's Tamil people."
posted by chunking express at 6:06 AM - 3 comments
September 1
Snippets of poetry from the Imperium; a sample folk tale from the Oral History; brief biographies of over a dozen Duncan Idahos; two differing approaches to Paul Muad'Dib himself and to his son Leto II; Fremen recipes; Fremen history; secrets of the Bene Gesserit; the songs of Gurney Halleck -- these are just some of the treasures found when an earthmover fell into the God Emperor's no-room at Dar-es-Balat. Out of print for more than two decades, disavowed by Frank Herbert's estate, and highly sought-after by fans, the legendary
Dune Encyclopedia is now available online as
a fully illustrated and searchable PDF [direct link].
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 4:30 PM - 46 comments
Sleazefest: The Movie [
rather nsfw] is a documentary of the first Sleazefest, a two day festival of bands, barbecue, b-movies and beer that took place in August of 1994 at Local 506 in Chapel Hill, NC. The festival was extended to three days and became an annual event for the next
decade.
[more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:01 AM - 2 comments
Though her nomination was a joke, instigated by a group of men hoping to inhibit the local activities of the Women's Christian Temperance Union by embarrassing female voters,
Susanna Madora "Dora" Kinsey Salter surprised the pranksters by winning two-thirds of the vote in the mayoral election of 1887 in tiny Argonia, Kansas, becoming not only America's first female mayor, but also earning the distinction of being the first woman elected to
any political office in the United States. Her official notice of election read:
Madam, You are hereby notified that at an election held in the city of Argonia on Monday April 4/87, for the purpose of electing city officers, you were duly elected to the office of Mayor of said city. You will take due notice thereof and govern yourself accordingly. Though she only served one term and had no further political ambitions, she became a hero of the early women's suffrage movement.
[more inside]
posted by amyms at 10:45 AM - 26 comments
Oliver Sacks is surviving cancer of the eye, ocular melanoma. In his latest book,
The Mind’s Eye, he "tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities." In the interview, Sacks talks about his diagnosis, the after-effects of his radiation treatment (which include hallucinations that resolve themselves into words if he "smokes a little pot"), his apprenticeships with poets W.H. Auden and Thom Gunn, and the importance of science writing in an age when the authority of science is being undermined by religious zealots. Via MeFi's own, Steve Silberman, digaman.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 10:18 AM - 35 comments
August 31
Lots of people remember the
Cray-1A. And how could you not, it was a supercomputer with
built-in seats. But Chris Fenton has done more than just reminisce, he
he built his own 1/10 scale Cray-1A. It's not just a model, it actually runs Cray software. The only problem is there doesn't seem to be much Cray software on the net, so if you have some let him know.
posted by tommasz at 12:52 PM - 66 comments Alan Jacobs laments the Hobbesian reality that is modern Internet discourse in his article "
The Online State of Nature" at
Big Questions Online.
A now-famous cartoon on the xkcd “webcomics” site shows a stick figure typing away at his computer keyboard as a voice from outside the frame says, “Are you coming to bed?” The figure replies: “I can’t. This is important. . . . Someone is wrong on the Internet.” I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:15 PM - 83 comments "Why TB you ask. The house I grew up in, from 1961 to the 1974, faced the grounds of the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium. There was a fence around the property and it was patrolled by security guards daily. That was all I knew."
Via.
posted by bibliogrrl at 8:08 AM - 9 comments
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