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December 2003 Archives
December 31
Feeding on Itself: the list of lists This is a metalist, that is, a list of all the lists produced for each category of the usual year's end roundups. Example for best book there are some 18 different lists (link to) places presenting such lists. check your favorite list topics and list sources and see whether you agree. Or not.
posted by Postroad at 3:26 PM PST - 7 comments
The Retcon Files Chronicling and attempting to explain discontinuities in movies, TV shows, and comic books. (warning: GeoCities link).
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:35 PM PST - 4 comments
Can't make it to
Times Square to see the
crystal ball drop? Well, in Atlanta, they're
dropping a peach. In Raleigh, an
acorn. In Miami, an
orange. In Mount Olive, NC, a three-foot lighted
pickle. My favorite? In Lebanon, PA, they're dropping a
six-foot-long bologna....and in nearby Cleona, they're dropping a
two-foot-wide pretzel. (The state capital, Harrisburg, is
dropping a cow painted to
look like a strawberry.) But they really pull out the drops in Key West, where there are not one, not two, but
three drops: a pirate "wench", a conch shell, and a drag queen named Sushi,
who will descend in an eight-foot-long red high-heeled shoe.
posted by Vidiot at 2:24 PM PST - 12 comments
The Word(s) Is Out. One of my favorite things about New Year's Eve/Day is the annual announcement of the Hall of Shame of Linguistic Incorrectness: The
Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words. Metrosexual... bling-bling... embedded journalist... shock and awe... not much to argue with here. Uh, oh, they've banished
Smoking Gun. And "LOL"? WTF?
(The latest list hasn't hit the U's own website yet, but here's their complete listing of
the previously banished, going back to 1976.)
posted by wendell at 1:41 PM PST - 10 comments
Nude Year's Resolution. SFW. Nude travel makes the pages of USA Weekend (a USA Today magazine). Will it become mainstream? And will the message of "body acceptance" ever have a noticeable impact on industries which prey on our fears of inadequacy?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:45 AM PST - 22 comments
Examining the Roots of Hoarding - A "mini-collyer" is saved from his junk hoard. As for the
real Collyers,
"The bizarre collection of objects included 14 grand pianos, two organs, and a clavichord; human medical specimens preserved in a glass jars; the chassis of a Model-T Ford; a library of thousands of medical and engineering books; an armory of weapons; the top of a carriage; 6 U.S. flags and one Union Jack; a primitive X-Ray machine" - Langley was crushed to death by his own garbage boobytrap, leaving blind, helpless Hiram to die trapped in their junk packed labyrinth of a mansion. Accused of living like the Collyer Brothers? -
Here's a photo (NYT, reg. req.).
posted by troutfishing at 8:27 AM PST - 19 comments
Christiania, the
spunky Danish
autonomous zone near Copenhagen, may soon be
shut down after 32 years of self governance.
"I built my own house here. I have two young children who are third generation Christianites. I am not going to give all that up without a struggle." posted by moonbird at 5:57 AM PST - 23 comments
December 30
Build your own
radio. . . Or
anything else, for that matter. Go ahead, release the hidden scientist in you and enjoy discovering and creating.
posted by ashbury at 8:21 PM PST - 5 comments
Army Stops Many Soldiers From Quitting According to their contracts, expectations and desires, all three soldiers should have been civilians by now. But Fontaine and Costas are currently serving in Iraq, and Eagle has just been deployed. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 -- the payroll computer's way of saying, "Who knows?"
The three are among thousands of soldiers forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.
As Helena Cobham
notes,
They don't want to call it a draft but it sure ain't your father's "all-volunteer military" any more... Marine's Girl, Cobham's
cause celebre of some time ago, writes about stop-loss
here and
here. See also
Army reservists choosing to be citizens, not soldiers.
posted by y2karl at 7:58 PM PST - 37 comments
Every year we seem to get a few horror or sci-fi movies featuring aliens. What happened this year? I may be missing some, but the only 2003 major release movies that had some aliens in them were
Dreamcatcher,
Good Boy! and
Scary Movie 3. One horror movie and two comedies. Just a coincidence or are aliens no longer cool?
posted by quirked at 5:36 PM PST - 17 comments
After reading that
beef has been recalled from my local grocery store, I spent some time reading
Mad Cow USA a book written back in 1997 but not widely published because of fears of repercussions under the Texas food disparagement act. AlterNet has an
article written by one of the book's authors summarizing some of the key points of the book. Some claim that only ground beef is infected, while
others claim that's bull.
mad-cow.org has a lot of good information on the topic, and it seems the powers that be are going to
blame Canada.
posted by woil at 2:28 PM PST - 14 comments
State arts programs have been one of the biggest casualties of the widespread budget crises of 2003. In total, state spending for FY2004 has decreased 23%,
led by Missouri (entire budget - 100% - slashed), California (91%), and Florida (78%.) Meanwhile, Congress, to its credit, has awarded
a modest increase to the NEA. Will private funding take over, as the
Libertarians hope? Or is state funding an
essential propellant of local economies?
posted by PrinceValium at 8:36 AM PST - 47 comments
The Diva Cup. For the ladies who are tired of tampons and pads, an alternative now exists that's both a little bizarre and a little intriguing. At the very least, it could ease
this woman's supply gathering a little bit.
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:28 AM PST - 55 comments
I love Maddox. When it comes to
lambasting the opposite sex, slamming into
Christopher Reeves, endorsing the
beating of children and
criticising the email he receives, he's one of the best. Pretty much anybody who's been on the internet will have visited his site, but just in case you haven't, then here's your chance. Warning... Swearing; Extreme Views; Bad cartoons; Large fonted cyan text on a black background.
posted by seanyboy at 7:18 AM PST - 26 comments
December 29
The fish that threatened national security. Lara Hayhurst, a student at Pace University, needed to take one small thing through the checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport: her pet beta fish MJ. This was, however, an apparent threat to the security of the airport and Lara's flight home to Pittsburgh for winter break. Flush the fish or become a felon? Read about Lara's decision and how the TSA forced her hand.
Remember, when 2" long tropical fish can freely gain access to our airliners, the terrorists have... yada yada.
posted by Dreama at 9:48 PM PST - 53 comments
AP: "FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers" I know this is kind of a case of the media distorting the facts, but still...isn't it kind of nincompoopish of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI fer crissakes!) to name almanacs and maps as part of a possible preponderance of evidence? And in other news--because nobody ever said you can't crosspost in your own initial post--in the future, tragically hip film grad students will write thesis papers about this
Stepford Wives trailer.
posted by jengod at 5:19 PM PST - 27 comments
Just Another Twig On The Evolutionary Bush: Beards and moustaches are out; even goatees are the butt of jokes; eyebrows are being plucked into Rotring-size oblivion; female pubic hair has forever renounced natural - even tropical - splendour, to be replaced by ridiculous geometric designs... Have we perhaps taken this naked ape thing too damn far? [
For the record, I am gratefully in favour of all these trends, except for the pubic hair. As a Lusitanian, I deplore that the good name of Brazil has come to be associated with such a travesty.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:34 PM PST - 33 comments
The Saudi Paradox. "Saudi Arabia is in the throes of a crisis, but its elite is bitterly divided on how to escape it. Crown Prince Abdullah leads a camp of liberal reformers seeking rapprochement with the West, while Prince Nayef, the interior minister, sides with an anti-American Wahhabi religious establishment that has much in common with al Qaeda. Abdullah cuts a higher profile abroad -- but at home Nayef casts a longer and darker shadow."
posted by homunculus at 11:04 AM PST - 14 comments
Scottish puzzle writer, poet, and soon to be author Roddy Lumsden pens
vitamin q, a weblog devoted to, as he puts it, "trivia lists, curiosities, and fragments which please me as a connoisseur of the sequential and the inconsequential - it's more a cave of wonder than a grotto of geekery". Vitamin q is the place to go if you need to know 75 terms for being drunk, want lists of fruits and vegetables that have been used as derogatory slang, need the names of the My Little Ponies, or have always wondered which singers have been heralded as "The New Bob Dylan". The archives are bursting with more of the same.
posted by iconomy at 8:52 AM PST - 9 comments
December 28
It takes all kinds to make a web. With
these guys, I would have to say we got all kinds. Remember SaveKaryn, the website where the lady collected dollar bills from all and sundry to get out of debt? Well, the idea caught on (unsurprisingly), and PimpingThePoor.com has set out to be the 'Consumer Reports of begging sites".
posted by baylink at 12:10 PM PST - 8 comments
John von Neumann, 1903-1957 . Today may have been the 100 year anniversary of the birth of John von Neumann (some think he may have been born on December 3rd). Along with Alan Turing and others, Von Neumann is one of the contenders for the title "Inventor of the modern computer." Whatever the precise date, it seems worth celebrating with some von Neumannania:
1,
10,
11,
100,
101,
110,
111,
1000,
1001.
posted by carter at 10:14 AM PST - 10 comments
December 27
"A lot of you were jerks." It's one of those scenes that could've been lifted from a John Hughes teen coming-of-age movie. An unpopular kid gets the joke vote for class valedictorian, and he uses the opportunity provided by the valedictory speech to chastise them. Has this ever happened at your high school? If you had a chance to go back (or perhaps forward) in time and address your high school graduating class, what would you say?
posted by AccordionGuy at 3:41 PM PST - 36 comments
The Whispering Wheel Ever see a brilliant invention and you wish you had thought of it? Simply genius. Might change the world for the better.
posted by kablam at 7:25 AM PST - 35 comments
The Lady X Project is complete. 26 spy-themed short films from around the world, all involving a mysterious character called "Lady X", who travels to each location to send local agents on various missions. All were done by amateur digital filmmakers with little or no budget. Which one is your favorite?
posted by Poagao at 4:52 AM PST - 14 comments
December 26
Rare Exports, Inc. They deliver the extremely rare original Finnish product to nearly 150 countries every Christmas, exclusively. It's a big download (the small version is 35.5 MB) but that's nothing compared to the patience these hunters must have to catch their prey. [NSFW, via
MonkeyFilter.]
posted by homunculus at 3:52 PM PST - 9 comments
American Brandstand. Bling bling is alive and well and living in Billboard lyrics. Of course, this has been going on since at least 1903:
'Come, Come, Come and make eyes with me / Under the Anheuser Bush / Come, Come, drink some Budwise with me / Under the Anheuser Bushposted by gottabefunky at 10:16 AM PST - 7 comments
Laptop Steering Wheel Mount - Mount your laptop on your car's steering wheel? - Accident waiting to happen... Sure you are supposed to use it while parked but we all see idiots in traffic doing everything from applying make-up to reading the newspaper. Doesn't anybody just drive their car anymore?
posted by radio_mookie at 8:37 AM PST - 21 comments
Martin Beck's Last Ten Years: How interesting to be able to look at a painter's
work year by year: patterns and even stories seem to develop, disappear and change before (and after)
our eyes. Are there any other good chronologically-arranged artist's websites out there? Or do painters habitually avoid them to prevent the detection of similarities and obsessions?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:36 AM PST - 5 comments
December 25
Diagnosing Tiny Tim An interesting parlor game among pediatricians is to determine the ailment that afflicted the character Tiny Tim from a Christmas Carol. The most likely suspects include
renal tubular acidosis or a
vitamin D deficiency due to excessive London industrial smog, both of which result in
rickets. (This would explain why Tiny Tim needed a crutch). Given that Tiny Tim's condition was likely curable if Scrooge paid Cratchit more money, this has inspired one
right-wing contrarian to argue that Scrooge should have worked a little
Malthusian magic by letting Tiny Tim die.
posted by jonp72 at 7:26 PM PST - 9 comments
Have a merry, sex and gadget filled hyper-commercialized Japanese Christmas. "Well it all started when a Spanish Jesuit missionary named St. Francis Xavier brought Christmas to Japan in 1549...." The
Jesuit bid to
Christianize Japan was a flop though, and now - while Jews in the West, for example, tend to go out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve, the Japanese had little connection to the Christian version - so they invented their own! Syncretistic Japan pulls in random elements of Western "Christmas" and recombines in pleasing new ways! ( shocking only to Christians ). Santa Claus on the Cross and more!
A proper Christmas in Japan - for singles - involves a hot date and visit to a "Love Hotel" where
"you might be directed by scantily-clad female elves to rooms complete with Christmas trees and life-size reindeer watching the proceedings with interest." and
"Grope Free Commutes", for Japanese women tired of having their asses grabbed on the subway by drunk salarymen returning from "Forget the Year" parties.
This fine blog chronicles it all: " the Dolphin-and-fish-surrounded Christmas tree", Ukelele Christmas parties - "I wandered into a score of middle aged Japanese ladies wearing Hawaiian shirts and plastic lays, tuning up their ukuleles" and more. And don't forget to buy some
cool new
gadgets.
"...a tiny robot helicopter weighing less than 9 grams... "posted by troutfishing at 8:27 AM PST - 19 comments
December 24
Your sky is a virtual planetarium program from Fourmilab.
"You can produce maps in the forms described below for any time and date, viewpoint, and observing location. "posted by moonbird at 9:15 PM PST - 3 comments
If Mapquest just isn't cutting the mustard, or you feel compelled over the holidays to take your geekery to new and mysterious depths, the
National Map Viewer from the U.S. Geological Survey is your new best friend. The dynamic interface lets you layer roads, topos, and satellite imagery on top of one another at your whim. And if you're really hardcore, make your own app by downloading and mining the Census Bureau's
TIGER database.
Note: Map viewer and interface may not be friendly to all browsers; this is a common limitation of government websites.posted by PrinceValium at 8:56 PM PST - 7 comments
An unhealthy obsession? The Internet is full of websites dedicated to a rabid fan's obsession with a celebrity. These websites often reveal their owners' fantasies of sexual encounters with said celebrity. But it's not often the object of such sexual desire ends up being a well known public figure from the Clinton administration.
posted by gregb1007 at 8:39 PM PST - 12 comments
"It's good policy and good business." NYC's Employees Retirement System (5 funds managing $78.6 billion in holdings) is targeting Fortune 500 companies to adopt policies that specifically bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. One of them, CSX Corp., didn't even wait for their shareholder meeting, but immediately amended their policy in response.
These funds recently had
great success after a decade-long battle with Cracker Barrel Restaurants--infamous for firing gay and lesbian employees because they don't “demonstrate normal heterosexual values."
Here's wishing an especially happy holiday to employees of those
companies that have stopped discriminating and hopes for many more to join in. More info on this "shareholder activism" at
The Equality Project.posted by amberglow at 1:41 PM PST - 4 comments
Some economists debate why we can and if we should give gifts for Christmas. Because a gift is likely to be valued less by the recipient than for the giver, Christmas has been considered by some to be a "deadweight loss" equivalent to tearing up banknotes. To get around this, other economists propose that the value of the gift for the recipient comes from the process of finding a rare gift. On the other hand, perhaps this is one case where we should
rethink the basic rationality assumption that economic decisions can be explained by models that maximize individual wealth.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:49 AM PST - 24 comments
A quick flash movie, to help relieve the stress and tension of last minute holiday shopping. In with the good air, out with the bad air, rinse and repeat. After all is said and done, you can get back to enjoying the holidays in the company of your friends and/or family.
posted by jcterminal at 10:33 AM PST - 9 comments
The Father of the Shopping Mall "His most remarkable innovation--unveiled in
Edina, Minn., in 1956--was the first enclosed shopping mall, a climate-controlled community of retailing under a single vast canopy. But it was intended to be more than just a place to shop. It was to provide a center to otherwise centerless developments, offering community, entertainment and even enlightenment. Gruen lamented that Americans, at the time, were living 'detached lives in detached houses.' With his shopping-center designs, Mr. Hardwick writes, '
Gruen hoped to offer a corrective to this grim and soulless American environment.' "
posted by jamsterdam at 9:09 AM PST - 30 comments
"When Tchaikovsky heard the celesta during a trip to Paris, he wrote a letter to his publisher saying, "get me one of those before another composer steals it." The Sugar Plum Fairy from
The Nutcracker couldn't dance without it. We have the history of the celesta -- and hear it in a special performance by Lambert Orkis of the National Symphony Orchestra." From NPR's
Morning Edition a look at this relatively obscure instrument that
young wizards music are made of. If you can't play or afford the real thing, try the
chime.posted by azul at 7:27 AM PST - 6 comments
NetFuture "NetFuture is an electronic newsletter....It looks beyond the generally recognized "risks" of computer use such as privacy violations, unequal access, censorship, and dangerous computer glitches. It seeks especially to address those deep levels at which we half-consciously shape technology and are shaped by it. What is half-conscious can, after all, be made fully conscious, and we can take responsibility for it.....
Can we take responsibility for technology, or must we sleepwalk in submission to its inevitabilities?"
posted by troutfishing at 12:35 AM PST - 10 comments
December 23
Mars ho! In about 24 hours, the
Beagle 2 lander will descend to the surface of Mars, courtesy of the European Space Agency. After a few mighty bounces, encased in a giant rubber ball, the lander will open up and allow its instrument payload to start sampling the surface.
This is the first in a
trifecta of landers destined for Mars during the next month.
NASA's landers,
Spirit and Opportunity, land on January 3rd and January 24th.
posted by warhol at 7:25 PM PST - 25 comments
Steve Davis, this was your life. The most interesting spam I've gotten in a while.
This fellow apparently served on a jury with the woman of his dreams. Having not gotten her number, or apparently her name, he decided that spamming was the way to find her. In this world, at this time, one would think he would know better. I smell a new meme arising! (Text of the email inside.)
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:45 PM PST - 25 comments
Investigating the Renaissance. 'This interactive program demonstrates the ways in which computer technology can be harnessed to add to our knowledge about Renaissance paintings and how they
were made.' Analysis of paintings using x-ray, infrared and ultraviolet technology.
posted by plep at 1:54 PM PST - 3 comments
Christmas Wrapping is one of the most enduring (and arguably one of the hippest) Christmas songs of the past twenty years. Though a quintessential keyboard-and-sax driven
New Wave tune, the endearing singleton's account of the year in dating on Christmas Eve tops the Christmas charts every year, and has survived reinterpretations by the
Spice Girls and
Save Ferris. This year, the eclectically-talented
Chris Butler reflects on its
inception.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:42 AM PST - 35 comments
Wounded British soldier gets lawsuit for Christmas?! Thankfully not.
Alan Tudball was supposed to marry his fiance Claire McCombe in April of this year, but unfortunately Iraq -- and
friendly fire from two U.S.
A-10 tankbusters (video) -- spoiled the wedding plans. Tudball would have died if not for brave
Christopher Finney, who rescued the grievously wounded Tudball, even as the U.S. planes circled around for another strafing run.
The
M.O.D. refused to pay the wedding's cancellation fee, and the
Leasowe Castle Hotel -- not knowing of Tudball's circumstances -- initiated a lawsuit, but after media attention and several concerned phone calls (mine included), I am pleased to announce that the management of the Leasowe Castle Hotel has announced that they are not only dropping the lawsuit, but that they will host the wedding of Mr. Alan Tudball and Miss Claire McCombe free of charge. It's worth noting that when our leaders seem to only be capable of serving up plastic turkeys, the action of ordinary people working together can still bring about honest-to-goodness Christmas miracles.
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:05 AM PST - 2 comments
Iceblog! "Antarctica: the best place in the world to be naked" (and take a bunch of awesomely beautiful pictures, too).
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:24 AM PST - 16 comments
December 22
Take This Honour And Shove It Up Your Arse: Some, like
JG Ballard and
Benjamin Zephaniah, want the UK Honours System abolished; others want it
reformed;
diehards want it left as it is. The
recent leaking of a distinguished list of refuseniks, coming just after Sir Mick Jagger
got his ya-yas out in Buckingham Palace, reminds us of
Groucho Marx's famous comment that he'd never join a club that would take members like him. It's certainly an archaic and
complicated system but, it seems to me, no more open to abuse than other countries' systems. And, arguably, no less ridiculous or hypocritical either. But is it (symbolically, culturally, whatever) useful enough nowadays, simple political expediency apart, to be worth hanging on to?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:29 PM PST - 17 comments
China engraves capitalism onto its constitution. This is good development indeed. Although business investment and production has been flourishing in China, doing business there remained very risky because of the fact that private property rights have never been officially legalized. That has changed. The question now is: does economic freedom beget political freedom?
posted by VeGiTo at 8:22 PM PST - 19 comments
France, stung by Libyan WMD deal, admits US policies showing results Ok. Agreed. You don't like Bush. And the French government does not like Bush. But here is what the French now say about Libya: [...] The media, which have long criticised the US war and invasion of Iraq, grudgingly allowed that that conquest had borne fruit in terms of putting pressure on other countries Washington considers "rogue states" or part of an "axis of evil"[...]
posted by Postroad at 3:37 PM PST - 72 comments
ZIP Code Visualizer A Java-based map of the continental US that progressively narrows down the area covered by a
ZIP Code as you type in the numbers one by one.
[Doesn't work so good in Mac IE 5. via xBlog]posted by kirkaracha at 2:50 PM PST - 25 comments
Hunkin's Experiments. 'Cool cartoons that will have you experimenting with food, light, sound, clothes, and a whole lot more! Hundreds of cartoon experiments from cartoonist, broadcaster and engineer Tim Hunkin.'
These 'rudiments of wisdom' first appeared in the Observer newspaper in
the 1970s and 1980s.posted by plep at 1:46 PM PST - 8 comments
Water birth is an alternative to standard hospital labor where the woman gives birth in a pool of water. Many hospitals/birth centers now offer the option of a water birth, or the mother-to-be can choose from a
wide variety of
birthing pools for labor at home, usually assisted by a
midwife/nurse with experience in waterbirth. There are
many benefits of a gentle introduction to the world by being born in water, and the
testimonials make it sound like a great option. Note: some links may be NSFW. [more inside]
posted by widdershins at 11:15 AM PST - 17 comments
December 21
"They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days. They stand guard on streets pot-holed with skepticism and rancor. They caught Saddam Hussein. They are the face of America, its might and good will, in a region unused to democracy. The U.S. G.I. is
Time's Person of the Year."
[more inside]posted by kirkaracha at 11:07 AM PST - 67 comments
December 20
Most people have heard of Rotten.com, the website of sick and twisted news and pictures, but a great and full featured documentary of "all that mankind swore to forget" can be found at the
Rotten Library. Information on just about everything is here, from
LSD Blotters to the
Mountain Meadows Massacre to the
anti-masturbatory history of Kelloggs Corn Flakes, just to name a few.
Of course, you can also find dirty secrets about the
Freemasons,
Fluoridation, Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction,
The Kinderhook Plates,
Lucky Luciano,
Kevin Mitnick, and of course.....
Michael Jackson.posted by Keyser Soze at 8:11 PM PST - 17 comments
Welcome to Pushington Downs This amusing fairy tale is brought to us from some of the fine folks from MST3k. Edward the less is an amusing bit of comedy based in a universe almost completely unlike that of JRR Tolkien. It never made it past series 1. Perhaps a bunch of renewed interest would push it along.
posted by MrLint at 7:27 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Santa lays off elves "Something will definitely be missing this Christmas." said Milja Vilmila, who was told her job as an elf helping Santa no longer existed.posted by drezdn at 11:44 AM PST - 6 comments
Graffiti Archaeology Pretty cool flash app that lets you view photos of the same walls in San Francisco over time, as the many layers of graffiti accumulate. To anyone that has ever ridden the Caltrain, a lot of these walls should look familiar.
posted by mathowie at 10:09 AM PST - 6 comments
Libya disarms. Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, said the Iraq war had nothing to do with the timing of Libya's negotiations. "We started the cooperation before even the invasion of Iraq," he told CNN. But he added: "It's a critical deal for Libya, because first of all we will get access to defensive weapons and no sanctions on Libyan arms imports any more. We will get access to the know-how and technology in sectors which were banned."
posted by skallas at 9:35 AM PST - 61 comments
Echoes of Incense: A Pilgrimage in Japan. 'The route of the eighty-eight temples of Shikoku is the classic Japanese Buddhist pilgrimage. Its 1300 kilometers test the body and spirit and open the mind to an experience of its true nature. For over a thousand years, only Japanese followed the path to the remote places of the Japanese island of Shikoku. In the winter and spring of 1993, I walked this path. Afterwards, I wrote Echoes of Incense to record what I experienced in words and pictures. '
Related :-
Experiencing the Shikoku Pilgrimage, from the Asian Wall Street Journal, 1977.
posted by plep at 7:15 AM PST - 8 comments
The Greatest Week in Rock History (Salon link) - 34 years ago today, Billboard Charts had a outstanding album lineup - perhaps not the best albums ever, but for a single point in time, arguably unmatched for quality, originality, and longevity. Take a look back at the roster:
the Beatles,
Led Zeppelin,
Tom Jones,
Creedence Clearwater Revival,
the Stones,
Santana,
the Temptations,
Blood Sweat & Tears,
Crosby Stills & Nash, and
Easy Rider.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:31 AM PST - 53 comments
December 19
Yes, that Lincoln Center. So we've
briefly noted the clever hack by way of which game engines, in this case,
Halo's, can be used to make movies. The best-known of these is the bleakly humorous
Red vs. Blue - which, if it isn't exactly this generation's "M*A*S*H" or "Catch-22," rather manages to capture something of the futility of postmodern warfare. Still: is this an opus you'd have pegged to premiere at New York City's vaunted
high-culture mecca?posted by adamgreenfield at 9:56 PM PST - 12 comments
Operation Red Dawn: A Soldier's Perspective Those of us who would be playing roles in the mission went into the troop operations center and got ready for the briefing by the commander. He came in and announced that the mission for the night would be a location down Highway 24 outside of Tikrit and “one Saddam Hussein.”
posted by JJBotter at 1:19 PM PST - 33 comments
The latin lover Father Reginald Foster, the Pope's own Latinist has a weekly show on Vatican radio, they are always informative and often hilarious (Real player required).
posted by johnny novak at 10:12 AM PST - 6 comments
Paris Beats Bush
More viewers watched The Simple Life than George Bush's interview with Diane Sawyer. What does that say about America?
posted by fenriq at 9:53 AM PST - 41 comments
Nutcrackers! E.T.A. Hoffman started it, Tchaikovsky made it popular, and now these decorative nut-crunching critters are a mainstream
Christmas tradition. Thing is, their festive popularity has expanded their market, so you can find an appropriate nutcracker for any occasion, whether you're
going to sea,
ordering pizza,
reading Shakespeare,
printing something,
getting a divorce,
having a barbeque,
electing a president,
or
invading a
terrorism-sponsoring country. Hey, might as well pick one up for the next time you
forget to look both ways on your way to the
Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum. They also help relieve frustration, be it caused by
popular culture,
illiteracy, or just
good ol' holiday stress.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:28 AM PST - 1 comments
The DC Appeals court has overturned the previous decision that allowed the RIAA to subpoena user's names from internet providers. Could this mark the end of the recording industry's lawsuit assault?
posted by BigPicnic at 8:53 AM PST - 18 comments
Coyotus Interruptus? New Scientists readers were asked to come up with new and necessary scientific words and their (amusing) definitions. These are the results.
posted by biffa at 7:58 AM PST - 8 comments
Global Dimming. Records show that over the past 50 years the average amount of sunlight reaching the ground has gone down by almost 3% a decade. "It's an extraordinary thing that for some reason this hasn't penetrated even into the thinking of the people looking at global climate change. It's actually quite a big deal and I think you'll see a lot more people referring to it."
posted by stbalbach at 4:47 AM PST - 15 comments
Punk-Tuation: Is It The New Anarchy Or Boring Old Fascism All Over Again? How
anal serious about apostrophes are you? Just how far would you go for a perfect semi-colon? Do you regularly reach for heart pills before you read MetaFilter? Take comfort in this:
Lynne Trusse's wildly popular
Eats Shoots And Leaves is
this year's surprise
bestseller in Britain. And I've limited myself to the MeFi-adored
Guardian, just to make my (as it were) point. So... how important is punctuation to you? My own suspicion is that punctuation is the new spelling. It
is important. (
And, lest this seem carefree and frivolous, let me confess right away that MetaFilter may well be the worst offender, in this regard, ever to have blessedly existed.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:37 AM PST - 36 comments
December 18
To say that
The Conqueror, the
Howard Hughes-backed film about Ghengis Kahn with John Wayne as the lead, is an awful film is somewhat of an understatement. Bad acting in the hot Nevada desert surrounded by radiation from the Yucca Flats lead to around 90 people getting cancer and 30 dying from it. They even shipped radioactive sand back to Hollywood for extra scenes.
Lost in La Mancha doesn't seem so bad in retrospect.
posted by destro at 7:02 PM PST - 5 comments
Kabbalah is the new Scientology "The Rav" - Born Feivel Gruberger in Brooklyn, was an insurance salesman before leaving his first wife and children to reinvent himself as a modern spiritual guru. He runs the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre. When Berg blesses ordinary spring water, it apparently becomes "infused with kabbalistic meditation . . . for healing, well-being and rejuvenation" - qualities that are neatly marketed in his exclusive make-up range, which includes a "restoring night cream" at £80 and a £91 eye-cream.
posted by suprfli at 6:44 PM PST - 13 comments
The Greatest Car Ever Built O mighty Slant-6 engine, most magnificent creation of the coal-steel industrial heart of America at the zenith of her manufacturing genius! (NY Times, req required).
posted by jamsterdam at 12:57 PM PST - 22 comments
A courageous decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals [
opinion] finds that the President does not have the power to detain U.S. citizens captured on U.S. soil as enemy combatants
(at least not until Congress tells him he can).
Normally, courts
don't like to mess with the President when it comes to national security and foreign affairs, so this is a noteworthy decision, particularly given the fact that there was even
a decent legal precedent supporting the Government's position.
posted by boltman at 10:30 AM PST - 29 comments
Bush in 30 seconds. The voting for MoveOn.org's anti-Bush ad contest has begun. Even Republicans should enjoy this as some of the ads are hilariously bad. You need to register first (regular MoveOn spam included, use
SpamGourmet if you don't want it) and can only view 20 ads per day or so. Since they are Creative Commons licensed, why not put them all into a giant archive and let people download them via BitTorrent? (There's over 1000 ads.) Anyway, enjoy the show.
posted by Eloquence at 1:19 AM PST - 21 comments
December 17
Music club caught in racist flap : After being promoted for many weeks, the plug is pulled on the Death In June/Der Blutharsch/Changes concert in Chicago for reasons of racism. Aside from Changes (which does support separatism), when does imagery go too far? Bruce Bottle of Chicago's
The Empty Bottle explains the reasons why they cancelled the show, and opens up a can of worms in the process.
posted by starscream at 8:09 PM PST - 28 comments
The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM to cognoscenti) one of the lesser known but most influential movements of the past quarter century. After the
innovators of Metal ran out of steam in the late 70's and were stampeded in the maelstrom of punk, heavy metal (and testosterone-soaked delindquents everywhere) found itself in a quandary). A number of UK acts took some cues from the punks, shortened the songs, reigned in the self-indulgence and speeded up the tempo, and upped the relevance and intelligence of the lyrical content, while still retaining the vocal prowess, instrumental pyrotechnics and young warrior energy that makes it Metal in the first place.
Some groups became world famous. Others only
big in Europe. Some great ones
missed stardom by just a
notch. Many of these acts have been cited as inspirations by Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Napalm Death and the thrash/death metal hordes, and even many post-punks. An interesting summary for fans, and a good introduction for non-mans who may have to recalibrate their opinion of the genre after checking some of these bands out.
posted by jonmc at 6:50 PM PST - 17 comments
9/11 report preview "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."
We must wait till January for the full report.
posted by jbou at 4:39 PM PST - 17 comments
Senators were told Iraqi weapons could hit U.S. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.
If this is true, is he in trouble for saying it?
posted by bas67 at 11:45 AM PST - 32 comments
Up to
35 million Americans are on a low-carb diet. Food manufacturers have responded with
more than 600 new low-carb products this year. Restaurants are altering their menus.
Online communities are springing up to share information about the low-carb lifestyle. With this big target market, how hard will corporations push to expand the low-carb movement? Do the
health warnings about the diet foretell an increase in medical problems, or will we see a generation of healthy, slender, pork-rind chomping families?
posted by neuroshred at 11:29 AM PST - 30 comments
Wag the dog. No fat cats can save Gov. Ryan now. An update on the MIFI hero former IL Gov. Jim Ryan and perhaps why he issued a death penal moratorium in 2000. [more inside]
posted by Bag Man at 11:22 AM PST - 19 comments
French President Suggests Banning Religious Symbols From the
Washington Post: "French President Jacques Chirac asked parliament on Wednesday for a law banning Islamic head scarves and other religious insignia in public schools ... 'Secularism is one of the great successes of the Republic,' Chirac said in an address to the nation. 'It is a crucial element of social peace and national cohesion. We cannot let it weaken.' Chirac said he would push for a law to be enacted in time for the school year that begins next autumn. Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes would fall under the ban.
Man, just when I thought we could start referring to "
freedom fries" as "french fries" again.
posted by monkey-mind at 10:33 AM PST - 74 comments
The coolest thing I've heard of all year: Magicbikes (NYT registration required)
"Mr. Gitman, an artist who is teaching a class at the Parsons School of Design in collaboration with Eyebeam, a media arts organization, intended the stunt to be a demonstration of his Magicbikes - ordinary bicycles rigged with networking gear that transforms them into wireless Internet access points, using the wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, technology now built into many laptops. "posted by lilboo at 9:22 AM PST - 6 comments
Our delicate ecosystem - apparently comprises snakes, badgers, mushrooms and ..er.. badgers. If, like me, you are in an excitable mood, then you will be murmuring 'badger badger badger' for the next 5 hours in a Beavis 'Tee-pee for my bunghole style'.
Happy early Friday flash!posted by boneybaloney at 9:13 AM PST - 20 comments
Medical marijuana win in federal court. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Tuesday that
prosecuting these medical marijuana users under a 1970 federal law is unconstitutional if the marijuana isn't sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes.
posted by skallas at 8:20 AM PST - 31 comments
FUH2! Flipping the bird at Hummers. Collaborative web photography just doesn't get much better than that.
(With the possible exception of the Mirror Project, which, by the way, just hit 20,000. Congratulations!)posted by brownpau at 6:28 AM PST - 94 comments
Sorry.
We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States.
posted by titboy at 4:59 AM PST - 16 comments
Reasons To Be Cheerful: Go on, give us one. If a curmudgeonly, pessimistic, reactionary old prison doctor like
Theodore Dalyrymple can do it, so can we. It's a great little article, btw, but its title is even better. The late, great, crippled
Ian Dury sang
about them and comedian
Dave Gorman built an Edinburgh Festival show around it. So be a sport and let us have one good reason of your own - preferably to do with something ahead of us or just now coming into its own or still stubbornly with us, despite the pricks and kicks. No nostalgia allowed! [
It's the holidays, after all. Cynicism is for the rest of the year. I greedily bag AskMetaFilter, thank you very much.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:19 AM PST - 25 comments
December 16
New York Subway Musicians go to Korea (from ArtsJournal.com)... And they can stay there, as far as I’m concerned. When you’re an out-of-towner, or just use the subway once a year, buskers are so quaint and picturesque. But if you’re a commuter who rides the subway every day of your life, they are stupendous annoyance, preventing you from concentrating on your reading, and generally adding to irritating cacaphony of an already inhuman environment. The subway is not some cute audition club for aspiring mimes. As
Serious Danger points out, "approximately one in seven people waiting on your train platform is a face-slasher or a gut-stabber who will cut you with scant provocation, and less warning."
posted by Faze at 11:12 AM PST - 87 comments
A Net of Control "Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas" Brought to you by (among others)......
Microsoft !posted by troutfishing at 9:30 AM PST - 53 comments
The Asia Weblog Awards ...they've garnered their fair share of
controversey concerning just what constitutes an Asia Weblog, but scoring aside, it's an interesting list of personal sites from around the region.
posted by Poagao at 7:39 AM PST - 5 comments
Pills for Problems: The
British have taken steps to restrict the use of some antidepressants.
Breggin and others have been warning us for some time now about the many problems with medicating behavior. The Big Picture: Aren't "medications" (legal or not) used for behavioral problems just an
excuse for us not
controlling ourselves?
posted by ewkpates at 6:56 AM PST - 111 comments
Cosh.net is the website of COSH, one of the 'old school kings' of the Dutch graffiti scene. The navigation in Flash isn't the most intuitive, however the 'Skip Intro' gave me a laugh. Make sure to check out the videoclips!
posted by sebas at 2:16 AM PST - 2 comments
Louise Brooks: With a new biopic
in the works, the spotlight will soon return to this silent-movie legend. The
beautiful and enchanting Brooks set the mold for the stereotypical bobbed-hair flapper of the 1920s, though her Hollywood work is largely forgettable. Her most famous film,
Pandora’s Box [script, mirror] (directed by
G.W. Pabst) was filmed in Germany. She didn't make a successful transition to talkies, and after a long reclusive period, she had a second career writing
essays. -- For further reading, Ken Tynan's 1979 essay
"The Girl in the Black Helmet" [mirror] in the
New Yorker gives an excellent overview of her life.
posted by stopgap at 1:08 AM PST - 11 comments
December 15
Robert "Moose" Cobb's new job --
Under fire for its handling of postwar contracts in Iraq, the Bush administration plans to appoint NASA's inspector general to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad to oversee investigations of any alleged abuses. Cobb was Associate Presidential Counsel for Bush and before that spent nine years as a career attorney with the
Office of Government Ethics. His appointment was seen as a bid by the administration to counter criticism -- mostly from Democrats in Congress -- that oversight of multibillion-dollar contracts has been lax. So can a guy who worked in the Bush White House actually be trusted to objectively investigate abuses? And if the Pentagon is auditing all of this, why use this guy? (and can the Pentagon objectively investigate this stuff either?)
posted by amberglow at 8:22 PM PST - 16 comments
Downloading MP3s via P2P now legal in Canada thanks to an MP3 player tax. Just don't upload anything. In related
news, the Supreme Court of Canada began hearing arguments over whether Internet Service Providers (ISPs), both here and abroad, should start paying tariffs for Canadian music downloaded by the public.
[macrumors]posted by dobbs at 7:57 PM PST - 32 comments
Exploring Dystopia
Do you want to explore that place of terror and wonder called Dystopia? Do you want to probe the dark depths of Metropolis, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-four, Blade Runner, Neuromancer and their likes?
A large site that verges on being one man's Magnificent Obsession with Dystopia. Don't let the awkward site navigation deter you from exploration.
posted by ashbury at 7:24 PM PST - 14 comments
Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5 (download
lite or
standard) . After it's admittedly dissapointing and rushed effort with Version 3 of their popular media player, the Nullsoft team seeks to make amends with their newest release, combining the stability of 2.x with the extras of Winamp 3, adding several new features while they're at it. Though already long-considered the standard for Windows machines, Winamp 5 puts more pressure on other competing, low memory-footprint audio players that have cropped up like
Foobar and
QCD. More cheerleading/zealotry inside...
posted by lotsofno at 4:28 PM PST - 44 comments
Copperfield's Card Trick
Pick a card without clicking it or selecting it and the image of David Copperfield will remove that card from the six cards.
How does this work? I've tried it four or five times and it gets it right everytime.
posted by fenriq at 2:36 PM PST - 32 comments
Violet Books catalogs
Antiquarian Supernatural Literature, including literary ghost stories, Victorian science fiction, Yellow Nineties Decadence,
H. Rider Haggard & haggardesque "Lost Race" novels, Marie Corelli & other occult romancers, Rafael Sabatini & Jeffery Farnol & all vintage swashbuckling historical romances, Yukon adventures, jungle tales,
Sax Rohmer & all weird thrillers,
classic detectives,
vintage children's & young adult fantasies & series books,
vintage westerns, and all things old, fictional, adventurous, and weird. Make sure to check for the titles that have dustjacket scans.
posted by Pinwheel at 11:50 AM PST - 3 comments
Celebrities take large payments from charities. The LA Times (reg reqd) is reporting that celebrities have received enormous payments for making appearances at celebrity benefits, including David Schwimmer, Cher, Gerald Ford, and others. To me, it's a shocking new low, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
posted by MikeB at 10:16 AM PST - 33 comments
PowerPoint makes you dumb. This is something I've suspected for a long time. It's been reported in the NY Times, so it
must be true. I will now blame every stupid thing I've said or done in the last three years on Microsoft.
posted by Loudmax at 7:51 AM PST - 47 comments
December 14
Nigerian Email Scam Gone Wrong • Evangelist Ojukwu Damisa contacted a fictitious American pastor--Father Ted Crilley of the "Church of the Holy Cow"-- in search of donations. Though Father Crilley's prank response has become a familiar Something Awful-style troll, it's always funnier when there are
pictures involved.
posted by dhoyt at 10:51 PM PST - 7 comments
Feral Children? Some of this has to be fiction... but even so, it still makes for interesting reading. Some links to media from the BBC and other sources.
posted by jasenlee at 10:21 PM PST - 3 comments
"A self-proclaimed under-age virtual self-pimping cyber prostitute and madame" says that s/he turned to prostitution in the online game, "The Sims Online" because s/he "never was a skill person. i needed money. why skill when you can suck [virtual] d**k to keep [virtual] food on the [virtual] plate." And as the Sims Online brothel grew s/he would only hire sex workers who were "real mother f**k'n b****s to represent that sh**..." (Obviously NSFW and more inside...)
posted by limitedpie at 1:41 PM PST - 20 comments
Woman claims she's Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter Everyone's favorite segregationist dixiecrat had an out-of-wedlock, mixed-race daughter that he "provided financial support" to from 1941 on. The mind boggles how, at any moment in the last 60 years, this news could have deep-sixed Strom's political career -- but somehow didn't.
posted by dogmatic at 10:05 AM PST - 18 comments
The Walrus: Does Canada Finally Have Its Quality Magazine? It's always been a mystery why Canada, with its appreciable intellectual weight, cultural sympathies and significant middlebrow readership, doesn't have a general magazine to rival with, say, Harper's, The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Well,
The Walrus looks good - at least online. Is this it? Or am I unfairly overlooking other Canadian publications?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:28 AM PST - 24 comments
December 13
Milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal, milk and cereal,
cereal and milk. (6MB .swf)
posted by emelenjr at 6:49 AM PST - 16 comments
December 12
Dean in for Bush-Whacking? A new poll shows President Bush would clobber Democratic front-runner Howard Dean by nearly 2-1 in politically potent New Hampshire - even though Dean has a giant lead over Democratic rivals in the state. Bush gets 57 percent to Dean's 30 percent among registered voters in the American Research Group poll.
posted by dagny at 3:09 PM PST - 77 comments
Sober Santa. Too much politics today, not enough Christmas fun. Here's a drunk Santa game from b3ta. Pretty tough once you get going.
posted by Stan Chin at 2:55 PM PST - 12 comments
Johannes Matthaeus Koelz: A Life Divided. An artist who escaped to England from Nazi Germany. From the
exhibition :-
'Koelz, a painter, was living in a small cottage in the Bavarian forest estate of Hohenbrunn. One morning he travelled to nearby Munich on a routine visit to police headquarters to renew his exit visa for a planned trip to Italy.'
'At some point during the following night Koelz instructed a young man from the local woodmill to take his major work - a triptych which had occupied him since the early 1930s and cut it into pieces. He left Hohenbrunn at dawn, arranging for his family to follow ... It was the first stop on a journey that would take them to England. '
'Meanwhile the state police had raided their home and interrogated family members left behind. They were searching for the painter and his triptych, a massive anti-war painting which not only questioned the horrors of war but also the rising power of the Nationalist Socialist Party and by implication, its leader, Adolf Hitler.'
'Thou Shalt Not Kill', Koelz's tryptych.
Timeline
and artworks.posted by plep at 12:33 PM PST - 6 comments
We're filthy rich - now help us!! This is mostly an artice about Kyoto, but one little paragraph left my jaw wide open to see that OPEC thinks they should be compensated if the world finds a better way... I guess it's not a unique concept though - does anyone have some other examples of a (potentially) failing industry that wants compensation?? My apologies if I've missed this in another thread somewhere...
posted by matty at 10:27 AM PST - 17 comments
Looking to recreate the dark, smoky arcades of your misspent youth? Got the
MAME cabinet in your rec room but still missing something?
Arcade ambience supplies the soundtrack to your MAME cabinet with
two super-long MP3'd mixes of vintage arcade noises. Authentic, right down to the sound of the coin changers and background hum. Sticky floor, shouted pizza to go orders, and smell of ozone and unwashed nerds not included.
posted by 40 Watt at 7:31 AM PST - 11 comments
Aids in Africa - you know the facts right? Well perhaps not, what you know are the predictions of a Computer Model. Rian Malan in today's Spectator highlights how alarmingly inaccurate such models are proving.
Paul Henman illustrates how common it is to build political assumptions into a model and then hide them under layers of complexity and apparent objectivity. Think
global warming. How do we challenge the models that increasingly determine our opinions and priorities?
posted by grahamwell at 6:23 AM PST - 15 comments
December 11
Mars Attacks! "In 1962, Topps released the bubble-gum cards known as "Mars Attacks". They were the creation of Len Brown and Woody Gelman. They were painted by the famous pulp-comic artist, Norm Saunders. Presented here, for the first time on the Web, are scanned reproductions of their genius..."posted by quonsar at 10:33 PM PST - 23 comments
Intelligent Grouping Design is ... a new idea in public transportation. With many vans out and about town, a passenger can be quickly picked up wherever he happens to be and just as quickly conveyed to his desired destination. Via the cell-phone, people call into the central computer with their current location as well as their destination. The computer finds the nearest van whose route is also the most closest to the passenger's destination. The computer then modifies the route slightly to accommodate the new passenger's pickup and dropoff locations. The drivers don't have to exert themselves mentally on figuring out each route change as the vans equipped with satellite guidance technology.
posted by gregb1007 at 8:47 PM PST - 28 comments
Save Disney - in a followup to a previous and informative and link-filled
MeFi post, a friend sent me a link to
savedisney.com today which has three interesting documents: Roy Disney's resignation letter, Stanley Gold's resignation letter, and a letter from Roy Disney to all cast members. There's also links to email and show support, as well as links to all sorts of related informational sites. Is this ingenius guerilla PR from upset employees, or is there something deeper here?
posted by twiggy at 2:59 PM PST - 21 comments
Its not your fathers P.O.T.S. Plain Old Telephone Service is undergoing a fundamental shift as companies such as Verizon, AT&T and British Telecom embrace Internet technology to route long-distance and local phone calls to compete with services from the likes of upstarts Vonage and Packet8 and Skype etc. Is this the beginning of the
Telepocalypse
a race to the bottom of less and less profit and more and more layoffs? Follow the history and future of the woeful crumbling of the hiearchical phone phone company at
David Isen's web page Are the guts of the phone companies the class 5 switch
go the way of mainframe computerposted by thedailygrowl at 2:12 PM PST - 9 comments
Super cool squirrels! "We believe that a ground squirrel, when it goes into hibernation, produces chemical messengers that are released from the brain that direct the slowing down of the metabolism... If we were able to synthesize the same chemical compounds and make them available in an injection, it could be administered to induce a hibernation-like state in humans."
And they're
cute, too.
posted by moonbird at 1:30 PM PST - 5 comments
The Barren Lands Digital Collection. J.B. Tyrrell's expeditions for the Geological Survey of Canada, 1892-94. 'This site documents two exploratory surveys of the Barren Lands region west of Hudson Bay, in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the area now known as Nunavut. Drawing on materials from the J.B. Tyrrell, James Tyrrell and related collections at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, it includes over 5,000 images from original field notebooks, correspondence, photographs, maps and published reports. '
posted by plep at 12:22 PM PST - 4 comments
Girls night out can save your life. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible... (Old news, but I don't think it's been posted before.)
posted by badstone at 10:52 AM PST - 30 comments
Buying up Iraq and
Moving Targetssample paragraph from the first article:
Trying to rebuild a country, when you are policing its civilians and fighting an escalating guerilla war, is a daunting task at best but the United States has boxed itself into an impossible position. Having justified its war on Iraq as measure that would bring liberation and Western-style democracy to Iraq, it needs Iraq to conduct elections as a fig-leaf to justify its occupation and allow it to step away from the impossible task of governing what may now have become an ungovernable country. And, the Bush Administration wants the Iraqi elections to be held before the American presidential ones. But, the Iraqi political scene contains several irresolvable contradictions.sample paragraph from the second article
(within)posted by y2karl at 8:16 AM PST - 6 comments
How much alcohol have YOU consumed in your life? Take the
"drink-o-meter" test. (Flash) I rated a "Homer Simpson", which means I could fill a few bathtubs, but haven't quite spent the Ferrari money. Something tells me that many of MeFi's finest will bury my score...
via the Sporting Press.posted by vito90 at 7:41 AM PST - 7 comments
Michael Crichton on Environmentalism: "Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better." via
A&L Dailyposted by leotrotsky at 5:41 AM PST - 62 comments
December 10
Screwing the young. American government benefits will give a typical man reaching age 65 today a net windfall of more than $70,000 beyond what he paid in. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
posted by NortonDC at 6:22 PM PST - 36 comments
The Humane Society of the United States rips Dick Cheney on
"canned hunting": "This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures
planted right in front of them as animated targets." According to
another news source, "five-hundred pheasants were released in front of Cheney and his men; and the ten-man hunting party killed 417 of the birds. Vice President Cheney alone shot over 70 pheasants. The birds were then plucked and vacuum-packed in time for Cheney's afternoon flight back to Washington, DC."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 5:59 PM PST - 76 comments
The Best of Hubble Its mission will end in 2010. Four years later it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. Many astronomers are calling for Hubble to be
refurbished and its mission extended to 2020.
Here are some of it's best pictures.
posted by reverendX at 12:02 PM PST - 14 comments
A Cappella Holiday is a refreshing alternative to the tired, workaday holiday fare that may be piped into your office. All holiday tunes, but all
a cappella, with some real gems you've never heard before. If your ears have been malled by Muzak and it's making you anything but merry, this free, streaming radio station might be the tonic. (There's a non-holiday
a cappella station too, if you're just fa-la-la'ed out.)
posted by bradlands at 10:29 AM PST - 12 comments
UK bans controversial charity ads In recent weeks, UK newspaper readers have been opening their newspapers to find full-page, colour pictures of a cockroach crawling out of the mouth of a baby. Now the adverts, for children's charity Barnardo's, have been banned. Barnado's
maintain that the pre-Christmas ads were justified as "a way of cutting through the apathy."
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:48 AM PST - 51 comments
The CEO of Ernie Ball talks about how his company left Microsoft for Linux after a licensing fiasco. Sterling Ball: It's just software. You have to figure out what you need to do within your organization and then get the right stuff for that. And we're not a backwards organization. We're progressive; we've won communications and design awards...The fact that I'm not sending my e-mail through Outlook doesn't hinder us. It's just kind of funny. I'm speaking to a standing-room-only audience at a major technology show because I use a different piece of software--that's hysterical.
posted by skallas at 1:55 AM PST - 20 comments
Yin Yu Tang is a late Qing dynasty merchants' home that was transported from its original site in southeastern China and rebuilt at the Peabody Essex Museum It offers a glimpse into the daily life of the Huang family, residents for more than two centuries. The story of the dismantling, transport and reassembly is a fine example of an international preservation project.
(flash alert)posted by madamjujujive at 12:30 AM PST - 4 comments
December 9
Why Poor People are pretty much f*cked. No one can make reading about the growing gap between the rich and the poor as fun as the Onion; but other than describing the issue in humorous terms, the story makes it more accessible than your typical article in a newsmagazine.
posted by gregb1007 at 11:30 PM PST - 33 comments
The fabulous ruins of Detroit: "After decades of blight, large swathes of Detroit are being reclaimed by nature. Roughly a third of this 139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and dilapidated buildings . . . rather than fight this return to nature, urban farmers have embraced it, gradually converting 15 acres of idle land into more than 40 community gardens and microfarms — some consuming entire blocks." [note: NY Times link]
posted by ryanshepard at 10:40 PM PST - 22 comments
Chess Boxing. "The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the #1 thinking sport and the #1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors – both mentally and physically, yet which can be performed by easiest means.
In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on."
Radio Netherlands recently
did a show about it.
(RealAudio, 29m30s)posted by tpoh.org at 8:37 PM PST - 15 comments
A new MS Internet Explorer vulnerability is discovered. Most digerati already know about the spammer and lamer trick to publish URLs that look like legitimate hostnames to fool people in to trusting a malicious site. This trick is frequently used by spammers to steal people's PayPal accounts, by tricking them in to "resetting" their password at a site owned by the spammer but disguised as PayPal.com.
Today's new IE vulnerability is significantly worse. By including an 0x01 character after the @ symbol in the fake URL, IE can be tricked in to not displaying the rest of the URL at all. Don't expect a patch right way, the guy who found the hole
released it to BugTraq on the same day he notified Microsoft.
(via Simon Willison)posted by dejah420 at 2:28 PM PST - 29 comments
Fan and ball [flash] is an addictive and fun little game. It may not be friday yet, but it was such a neat little idea that I couldn't resist posting it here. [via
b3ta]
posted by twiggy at 2:16 PM PST - 12 comments
Are you miffed that Christmas just isn't about Jesus anymore? Annoyed that is all seems to be about commercialism and spending money? You Christians can now empathize with the ancient pagans who were miffed that Christmas just wasn't about
Mithras anymore. But don't feel bad about
jacking Christmas from them, Mithras jacked it from Apollo, who borrowed it from the Etruscan god Sol.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 2:06 PM PST - 25 comments
The Rwanda Project It began as a photographic workshop in 2000 for child survivors of the Rwanda genocide. Using disposable cameras, the children originally took pictures for themselves and to share with others, exploring their community, and finding beauty as the country struggles to rebuild via
Jonny Bakerposted by Coop at 1:36 PM PST - 7 comments
J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Speech. It seemed to him, coming from his island, where until Friday arrived he lived a silent life, that there was too much speech in the world. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, delivers his lecture from the perspective of Robinson Crusoe.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 12:39 PM PST - 8 comments
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record. 'This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public -- in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World. '
posted by plep at 11:52 AM PST - 3 comments
The Mushroom House in Whistler, Canada, is the result of 22 years of work by artist/creator Zube. "The interior design is based on the anatomy of a tree. All aspects of the décor reflect this motif, from the womblike hues of the Jacuzzi room in the 'roots' to the vivid leaf greens on the walls in the 'canopy'." [Via
Boing Boing.]
posted by homunculus at 11:24 AM PST - 29 comments
Expensive clowns. Some Wisconsin senators want to "save Milwaukee's Circus Parade by giving $1.5 million in tax dollars to the Baraboo-based Circus World Museum."
posted by Tubes at 9:07 AM PST - 22 comments
December 8
Laughter may or may not be the best medicine, but researchers have discovered it's a good drug, at least.
posted by Spezzatura at 12:20 PM PST - 9 comments
At least one person is dead when Toronto theatre The Uptown (a frequent haunt of my childhood)
collapses. The 2000 seat
Uptown was built in 1920 and closed in September of this year, right after the
Toronto International Film Festival, which regularly used the theatre for its screenings.
Ignoring a
Cinema Treasures'
petition, and heartfelt articles from
local media,
Famous Players, the theatre's owners, decided to sell the building to a condo developer after
losing a two year battle with
The Ontario Human Rights Commission, who were insisting that the venue be made wheelchair-friendly. Oddly, as I was walking past the site last night, I considered contacting the
demolition company about what was being done with the theatre's sign when it finally came down.
posted by dobbs at 11:58 AM PST - 12 comments
Rub the lucky Buddha and..... It dispenses - Darwin's
Origin of Species, Marcus Aurelius'
Meditations, Voltaire's
Candide, Loren Eiseley's
The Immense Journey, Huxley's
Doors of Perception, Lewis Carrol's
Through the Looking Glass , Thomas Paine's
Common Sense, The Age of Reason, Rights of Man, and Crisis #1, Buckminster Fuller's
Grunch of Giants, Descartes'
Discourse on method..., biographies of
St. Francis and
Joan of Arc, Twain's
The Grateful Poodle, and more...
posted by troutfishing at 10:02 AM PST - 13 comments
Scrooge was onto something. "'At this festive season of the year, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.' Oh? And they don't suffer in January or February? They don't feel hungry in July and August? Why should it not be just as 'desirable' to help out these wretches in those months? Why not go further, in fact? Why not make some 'slight provision' for the poor and destitute every single day of the year?"
posted by ed at 8:05 AM PST - 12 comments
Pancakes! Not just your everyday pancakes this time though. Alan Clark has turned his family recipe into a c13 isotope lased medical breakthrough. - via
Fark (of course)
posted by KnitWit at 7:04 AM PST - 9 comments
New Medicare Bill Bars Extra Insurance for Drugs
"Millions of Medicare beneficiaries have bought private insurance to fill gaps in Medicare. But a little-noticed provision of the legislation prohibits the sale of any Medigap policy that would help pay drug costs after Jan. 1, 2006, when the new Medicare drug benefit becomes available.
This is one of many surprises awaiting beneficiaries, who will find big gaps in the drug benefit and might want private insurance to plug the holes — just as they buy insurance to supplement Medicare coverage of doctors' services and hospital care."
[warning: NY Times link]posted by Irontom at 4:48 AM PST - 16 comments
December 7
Dean Campaign and Revival of Community. Robert Putnam's book
Bowling Alone charted the decline of communities in America, arguing that people tended to no longer to meet others outside the family for common interests or causes. The NYTimes Magazine argues that the Dean Campaign derives its popularity from reviving such communal connections. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 7:40 PM PST - 45 comments
Basho: Many old places brought down to us through poetry, but landslides and floods have altered paths and covered markers with earth, and trees arisen generations gone, and hard to locate anything now, but that moment seeing the thousand-year-old monument brought back sense of time past. One blessing of such pilgrimage, one joy of having come through, aches of the journey forgotten, shaken, into eyes. - Cid Corman's tr. of Basho's Oku no Hosomichi. 4 translations online.posted by chymes at 7:32 PM PST - 6 comments
Got Lesbians? Every once in awhile I think "gee, self. I don't have enough lesbians in my life." Now there's a service just for me:
LesbianPhoneCall.
To quote their site they "deliver[s] you a phone call from a genuine lesbian!" You get to choose from Choose from a variety of lesbians, from militant bulldyke to on-the-fence lesbian (VERY popular). It even details what each type of lesbian is liable to talk about. Super! (
via MonkeyFilter/UncoolCentral)
posted by answergrape at 3:28 PM PST - 34 comments
NRA Seeks Status as News Outlet Deciding that laws regulating campaign spending are simply in their way, the
National Rifle Association thinks out loud about buying a radio or TV station and then filing a lawsuit so that money limits no longer apply to them. As we all know, federal gun regulations are a near-certainty without this effort.
posted by billsaysthis at 3:13 PM PST - 23 comments
'Just Bring 'em In From Space' • An interview with Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro, co-creators of
Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and former writers for
Space Ghost. "If talking food is a tool, it's one typically seized by a businessman/evangelist desperately grasping for 'funny' — and using the first inoffensive, seemingly comic concept he can find. But Adult Swim mainstay Aqua Teen Hunger Force may be enough to singlehandedly rehabilitate the genre."
posted by dhoyt at 2:44 PM PST - 14 comments
December 6
Snowcraft: If you are currently snowed in and don't feel like going outside you can always have a virtual snowball fight.
[warning: Flash fun]posted by anathema at 10:29 AM PST - 35 comments
Five Geek Social Fallacies "Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It's difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge. It's my hope that drawing attention to some of them may be a step in the right direction."
posted by keli at 8:36 AM PST - 30 comments
For any society, in any age, the study of politics
ultimately comes down to one elemental question: how are people
persuaded to acquiesce in a polity where the distribution of power is
manifestly unequal and unjust, as it invariably is. -- The quote from
David Cannadine that opened a recent Newsnight
newsletter from Jeremy Paxman. Email may not be the sexiest 'net medium, but I wait daily for two witty, well informed summaries of UK current affairs; the second is Channel 4's
Snow Mail. And weekly, there's the Guardian's
Backbencher.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:05 AM PST - 2 comments
Makola Market. 'West Africa's markets are legendary and none more so than the famous Makola market in Ghana's capital, Accra. Run by powerful women traders who sell in the market, Makola is a place where you can buy anything you need - manufactured and imported foods, fresh produce, tools, medicines, shoes, pots and pans etc etc. It's also a place that's good for the soul; its humour and energy will recharge your batteries. If you aren't lucky enough to be in a West African city, you can still imagine you're there. Whether you are in New York, Paris or Sao Paolo, Johannesburg, Nairobi or Cairo, click on the link and join Ofeibea Quist Arcton on a stroll through Makola Market. It will do you good. '
Via
allafrica.com's photo pages.posted by plep at 3:20 AM PST - 7 comments
December 5
Slavery Ended in the 1960s, not the 1860s The Civil War made slavery illegal, but that didn't wipe it out completely. White farmer, John Williams, forced his black overseer to
murder 11 slaves in the wake of a 1921 federal investigation. The
Dial Brothers were also convicted by the Justice Department for "African slavery" in the 1940s. In another case, a black genealogist found a
104-year-old man who claims he and his family were enslaved until the 1960s. It's not necessary to rehash the entire
reparations debate to realize that some of these post-Civil War slavery cases may finally have a day in court.
posted by jonp72 at 11:37 PM PST - 13 comments
To quote their
#2 and eponymous fan site, Young Marble Giants' music has been described as "haunting," "enchanting," "dark and strange". It is unusual in that it relies on precise, sparse textures to create tension. Few rock bands have expressed a sense of disquiet with such elegance. Long live Young Marble Giants!They recorded but one album and yet a vastly influential album it was...
Cardiffians: the Young Marble Giants Web archive is, of course, the #1 fan site, and not just for the
video. And a very nice commercial-free
lyrics page has been provided by
Always on the run.
(Do check out the pin up!)posted by y2karl at 8:25 PM PST - 7 comments
HBO wants feedback about Carnivàle. The first season of HBO's Carnivàle concluded last Sunday (making way for
Angels in America to occupy the next two Sunday evenings). Although a second season is
likely, according to its creator, HBO is now asking viewers what they think about the show, asking them to rate each character and say whether or not they'd watch a second season. [survey link via
TV Barn Ticker; background info inside.]
posted by realityblurred at 8:06 PM PST - 21 comments
Maneki Neko is a cat figurine, sits and has it's front paw raised as if it is calling for luck, fortune and customers to your store, and invites happiness to your home.
posted by riffola at 2:35 PM PST - 15 comments
Sidetalkin provides humorous photos that force us to ask the question: Has Nokia's
NGage redefined phone ergonomics or simply provided a
humorous diversion for a slow Friday afternoon?
posted by donovan at 2:28 PM PST - 14 comments
With a potential blizzard blanketing the northeast, it looks like flashmobs are out and
snowball fights are in. What do you think, are we gonna see a lot more of this kind of thing now that online invitations are setting the standard? This invite seems to be flying around NYC pretty fast indeed. The question is: How big will the battle be?
posted by n9 at 12:08 PM PST - 24 comments
Truth About Rave? "Raves are a means of the devil to solicit worship. The Raver who commits himself to ingest drugs and dance the night away is unsuspectingly presenting his entire body as an instrument to express worship to demons and satan."
And here I thought
God was a DJ....
posted by grabbingsand at 9:05 AM PST - 136 comments
The BBC is asking visitors of its news site to
vote from a shortlist of the ten most embarrassing political moments. Visitors can watch a
short film [real media] which shows all ten nominated moments (forgive the home-video moments style background muzak). There's some variety here: Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock in moments exhibiting a baffling degree of misguidedness, George W Bush and Kenneth Clarke in tight spots (figuratively and literally), while Charles Kennedy and John Prescott probably coming out of their situations looking better than they did beforehand. For me the most cringe-inducing clip is that of John Redwood, the then newly appointed Secretary of State for Wales, attempting to mime the Welsh national anthem. Genuinely difficult to watch.
posted by nthdegx at 7:18 AM PST - 31 comments
Around the States in Eighty Days. Monty Python's Eric Idle is three quarters of the way through a North American tour and keeping an extensive online diary as he goes. "I would never be sitting at home writing my memoirs like this. There's just something about the time available and the different places we visit that
invites introspection."
posted by rory at 6:53 AM PST - 17 comments
The Japanese SAQ provides some much-needed and often fascinating answers for seldom-asked questions about Japanese culture like, "Why do those porcelain
Tanuki statues outside of restaurants have such outrageously large testicles?"
posted by MrBaliHai at 5:55 AM PST - 23 comments
December 4
Virtual Snowglobe Having a bad day? Work off some aggression by disrupting the lives of the snowglobe dwellers! (Flash and a somewhat obnoxious soundtrack)
posted by Orb at 9:17 PM PST - 11 comments
Movable Type 2.64 contains a major vulnerability to spammers. The spam hole, which exists in all versions of the program downloaded before November 26, centers around the mt-send-entry.cgi script, which can be co-opted by spammers who then use your domain and resources to do their dirty work. Users are encouraged to
download and install the new "secured" version of mt-send-entry.cgi or to remove the file from their installation altogether. (If it is not being used, it can be safely deleted without affecting other MT functionality.) The question does arise though, with literally tens of thousands of MT users affected by this vulnerability, why didn't anyone at Six Apart think that this news warranted an announcement anywhere beyond the Movable Type news blog?
posted by Dreama at 6:34 PM PST - 34 comments
The Bottom Line: Manhattan court rules to evict club. A New York City Greenwich Village landmark,
The Bottom Line Cabaret, which has let the music play from such stars as Bruce Springsteen for close to 30 years, has been
evicted after falling behind by nearly 3 years with is rent and not being able to work out a long-term with it's landlord:
New York University (NYU).
This comes despite the cash contributions from celebrities like Springsteen and Viacom's CEO, last-minute corporate sponsorships from AT&T and others, and the efforts of fans around the world. Even the best efforts of fans at
SaveTheBottomLine.com weren't able to save the club, which says it may consider shopping around for some new digs. But, as of now,
The Bottom Line is homeless.posted by nyukid at 5:34 PM PST - 31 comments
When I was in college in the early 90s (B.W. -- before web), I used to subscribe to the daily newspaper just to get my comics fix every morning (back when Bill Waterson, Gary Larson, and Berkeley Breathed were king). Then the web came along and I had to suffer through
the only (unfunny) cartoonist to embrace the web. But not anymore. With stuff like
Comics-via-RSS and
Comictastic I can fire up an app and start laughing every morning. I doubt I ever buy a newspaper again for the funny pages, and on top of that, these even let me avoid
the lame ones I don't care about.
posted by mathowie at 5:09 PM PST - 24 comments
Spreading Santorum. Dan Savage intensifies his smear campaign against Sen. Rick Santorum. How far is too far? How low can he go? Here's some
background on the whole dirty, frothy affair. The Santorum-Savage feud was also previously discussed
here.
(first link is NSFW)posted by Ljubljana at 2:07 PM PST - 58 comments
Lesser of two goods? (SanFranciscoFilter) SFWeekly's John Mecklin sums up the wild ride in San Francisco's mayoral race, from Matt Gonzalez's
late entry, to the baffling
Guardian endorsement, to the obvious Chronicle
Gavin Newsom endorsement, to the downright surreal
Alioto endorsement debacle. Oh, and then there's the Chron's not so coincidental
"Shame " series on homelessness, Newsom's defining issue, in the final days of the election.
In all, Mecklin concludes we're pretty damn lucky to have the fortune in this day and age to choose between two candidates that both have the capacity to do a decent job. Is this relevant to non-San Franciscans? Well, if
Matt wins (and the odds are even), that puts a Green at the helm of a fairly important US city and may help counter the effect of Arnie.
posted by badstone at 10:01 AM PST - 33 comments
Professor Pollkatz's statistics. Interestings graphics on Bush approval/disapproval.
This one, for example, clearly proves that whenever Bush's approval was high, it was driven by an event (the two major events being September 11 and the Iraq war) and steadily declined afterwards.
This page shows that FOX polls consistently overrate Bush, while Zogby polls consistently underrate him.
[more inside]posted by Eloquence at 9:58 AM PST - 20 comments
The Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize goes to Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal (Faber & Faber). The winning passage, which described a woman as "endomorphically endowed," also included the sentence, "Your palms are holding her neck and thumbs are at her ears regulating the speed of her head as she swallows and then sucks up your machinery." Oh baby.
posted by Slagman at 7:58 AM PST - 9 comments
You have been disciplined all your life :::: Nothing Changed - Nothing Will
Words of encouragement from Piotr Szyhalski's
Electric Poster Series (Animated gif images). Artist's web site
here.
posted by taz at 7:48 AM PST - 12 comments
The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 2 & 1/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate. posted by y2karl at 7:43 AM PST - 40 comments
Circumcised at 22: A romantic epic. It didn't feel as good. It
really didn't feel as good. It was an entirely different experience from sex with a foreskin, kind of like
Star Wars vs. Star Wars: Episode I. I never realized how much sexual pleasure was derived from my foreskin rubbing back and forth against my glans - a little bit of masturbation mixed in with sex.
posted by skallas at 7:41 AM PST - 60 comments
December 3
Trains vs. Airplanes. Amtrak has reported record ridership levels for the Thanksgiving season. But the success of the rails is indebted to post 9/11 air-travel anxiety. Maybe, it would be better for travelers to stop fearing hijackings and resume flying planes instead of riding intercity trains out of fear. On the other hand, it could be a good thing that rail travel is getting a second look after years of decline.
posted by gregb1007 at 9:14 PM PST - 51 comments
Now children, time for spelling--B is for: Bechtel? Schools have been highlighted as an under-reported
success story of the new Iraq:
“We want young Iraqis to learn skills and to grow and hope, instead of being fed a steady diet of propaganda and hatred," says the pres, but....
"The first time they came here, they went from classroom to classroom with guns dangling over their shoulders, asking the terrified children whom they loved more, Saddam Hussein or George Bush," says a principal.
(more inside)posted by amberglow at 5:00 PM PST - 29 comments
Necessity Is the Mother of Invention. (NY Times, reg. req.) Amy Smith teaches MIT students about the politics of delivering technology to poor nations and the nitty-gritty of mechanical engineering and helped start the
IDEAS competition; she herself designed (among other things) a screenless
hammer mill suited to third-world conditions and using "materials available to a blacksmith in Senegal."
Smith's entire life is like one of her inventions, portable and off the grid. At 41, she has no kids, no car, no retirement plan and no desire for a Ph.D. Her official title: instructor. ''I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. Why would I spend six years to get a Ph.D. to be in the position I'm in now, but with a title after my name? M.I.T. loves that I'm doing this work. The support is there. So I don't worry.''...
Likewise, the inventors who most inspire her will never strike it rich. ''There are geniuses in Africa, but they're not getting the press,'' she says. She gushes about Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher who came up with the pot-within-a-pot system. With nothing more than a big terra-cotta bowl, a little pot, some sand and water, Abba created a refrigerator -- the rig uses evaporation rather than electricity to keep vegetables cool. Innovations that target the poorest of the poor don't have to be complicated to make a big difference. The best solution is sometimes the most obvious.
A rare optimistic story for these downbeat times.
posted by languagehat at 1:02 PM PST - 18 comments
US fires Guantanamo defence team If we make the rules, we will win the game. "A team of military lawyers recruited to defend alleged terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay was dismissed by the Pentagon after some of its members rebelled against the unfair way the trials have been designed, the Guardian has learned"
posted by Postroad at 12:11 PM PST - 22 comments
Framley Museum. 'The museum was founded in 1882 when objects of local interest began to gather in the field where the museum now stands, due to the natural action of the wind and rain. '
'In 1886, visionary Whoft philanthropist, Manimal MacCorkindale proposed building some walls around the objects, forming Framley's first museum.
A door fitted in 1932 cemented the museum's popularity.'
Courtesy of the mighty
Framley Examiner.posted by plep at 11:00 AM PST - 9 comments
Blogshares has left the building Never really got into this, and not sure how much it will be missed, but that doesn't matter anyway as it's gone the way of the dodo. Too successful for it's own good it seems. I'm surprised that it hasn't been picked up by someone else yet...
posted by snowgoon at 10:11 AM PST - 16 comments
Ever wonder
what it's like? Do you hit the brakes, swerve left, swerve right? If it's never happened to you, take a look at this and see just how fast it all happens. Talk about "in the blink of an eye".... WOW.
(.wmv file... and possibly not safe for the squeemish.)posted by Witty at 9:30 AM PST - 80 comments
Teaching the Test As a student at Jefferson Davis High here, Rosa Arevelo seemed the "Texas miracle" in motion. After years of classroom drills, she passed the high school exam required for graduation on her first try. A program of college prep courses earned her the designation "Texas scholar."
At the University of Houston, though, Ms. Arevelo discovered the distance between what Texas public schools called success and what she needed to know. Trained to write five-paragraph "persuasive essays" for the state exam, she was stumped by her first writing assignment. She failed the college entrance exam in math twice, even with a year of remedial algebra. At 19, she gave up and went to trade school.
This doesn't look good for our new, unfunded, "Leave No Child Behind" education bill. Smells like another bait and switch to me.
posted by nofundy at 8:34 AM PST - 31 comments
December 2
'Gay' Is Not a Dirty Word. The ACLU is outing a Louisiana Elementary school which punished a second grader for using the word "gay" when answering a classmate's question about his family. Not only did the teacher freak, sending little Marcus to the principal's office for using a "bad word", but the school made Marcus go to a behavioral clinic the following week and repeatedly write “I will never use the word ‘gay’ in school again.” Great use of a teachable moment for all.
Extra credit assignment
(these require Acrobat):
(Student Behavior Contract) (Behavioral Incident Report)posted by msacheson at 5:57 PM PST - 91 comments
Rep. Bill Janklow's Motorcycle Manslaugher Trial Continues
An excerpt,
Janklow, a former four-term Republican governor of South Dakota, has pleaded not guilty to charges of speeding, failing to stop, reckless driving and second-degree manslaughter. Witnesses have said he didn't even slow down for the stop sign.
First he lied about swerving to avoid a white car and then blamed low blood sugar for the lie.
Janklow has a long history of utter disregard for traffic laws but got off for years because he was the governor and then a congressman.
More at
Google News: Janklowposted by fenriq at 3:51 PM PST - 17 comments
Mario in the News A Japanese person (cannot translate the name, sorry) has completed the classic NES game Super Mario Bros. 3 in just over 11 minutes. Fortunately he recorded it for posterity. (uses Windows streaming video.)
Speed runs have been gaining in
popularity lately. What game would you like to see abused in such as fashion?
posted by patgas at 3:00 PM PST - 18 comments
n Ø 1 s e - How do data and information differ? What is pattern and how do we recognise it? Where is the threshold between random and order?
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:59 AM PST - 7 comments
The Songs of Bilitis. 'First published in Paris in 1894, this purports to be translations of poems by a woman named Bilitis, a contemporary and acquaintance of Sappho. This caused a sensation, not only because finding an intact cache of poems from a completely unknown Greek poet circa 600 B.C. would be a miracle, but because of its open and sensitive exploration of lesbian eroticism. Actually Bilitis never existed. The poems were a clever forgery by Pierre Louÿs--the "translator"; to lend weight, he had even included a bibliography with bogus supporting works ... '
A new addition to the
sacred-texts.com canon.
posted by plep at 10:56 AM PST - 8 comments
Walt would turn over in his cryonic chamber... (I know, I know, it's
not true.)
Speaking of
family trees, Roy Disney (the last board member with ties to the founding family)
resigned from the company Sunday, calling for the
ouster of Chairman Michael Eisner. Stanley Gold soon
soon followed. In a
harsh letter,
Disney said the entertainment conglomerate had "lost its
focus, its
creative energy, and its
heritage" and that the
public now
held the perception that company is "
rapacious,
soul-less, and always looking for the '
quick buck'."
No word yet from the
Disneyland obsessives, but the folks at
MousePlanet 's Mousepad
seem optimistic about this development...
posted by Fofer at 8:37 AM PST - 18 comments
The Philip K. Dick Offical Site has opened: relevant not just because the movie
Paycheck is coming out this month (based on a short story of his), but because we live in a Dickian world. As he put it, "We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing."
posted by paladin at 7:56 AM PST - 25 comments
Canada's View on Social Issues Is Opening Rifts With the U.S. (note: NYT reg. required) "Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull," Rick Mercer, Canada's leading political satirist, said at a recent show in Toronto. "Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite frankly it's a wonder there is not a giant deck of cards out there with all our faces on it."
Being different is good, right? Right? Vive la Difference!
posted by ashbury at 7:34 AM PST - 60 comments
It's the equivalent of "You can play the CD on three designated CD players that support the DRM. Like,
it will play ONLY on xyz brand cd player and only three of those that you pick. Yes, you have to stick to that brand of cd player (the iTunes player, the supported OS of iTunes, no unix support in sight) and too bad if you have a fourth one in the bedroom. It's not gonna play in your second car's player either. Nor in the kitchen. Nor on your neighbor's player. Nor can you trade it on the used market when you're tired of listening to it. "
"They finally found a way to sell you some wind. Even better, they will restrict the direction and force in wich the wind will blow, how often and where it will happen..."
As "DVD-Jon" Johansen goes to
retrial, a
backlash is rising in the media & community towards Apple's DRM (digital rights management), a week after this same kid created an open-source
program that lets users copy the songs that they bought onto other sources.
posted by omidius at 7:24 AM PST - 28 comments
One Nation Under God(s): George W.Bush
unwittingly restarted an old theological debate. Is the God that the
Jews,
Christians and
Muslims worship the same God? Or to be more accurate; notwithstanding the different forms of worship and beliefs, is it
the same God in different guises? Fundamentalists in all three monotheistic faiths tend to disagree. For other believers - to ruthlessly simplify - God is necessarily one. Either way it's still a fascinating question (possibly not only for religious folk) and has important consequences in an increasingly divided and antagonistic world. What's it be? One God or
one's God?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:38 AM PST - 107 comments
December 1
Self-help equals self-harm? Are self-help books harmful rather than helpful? This article argues that dissatisfaction with one's abilities and achievements will not not be helped by affirmations of self-worth. Nor will we succeed in coping with the bitter feelings for those who have wronged us by practing the "anger therapy" of slamming a punching bag. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 11:52 PM PST - 24 comments
Too Tough To Die. As of Sunday afternoon, the corner of Second Street and Bowery in New York City is now known as Joey Ramone Place. I lived about 200 steps from there a while ago - now I've got a good excuse to go back for a visit.
posted by majcher at 8:18 PM PST - 14 comments
No bodies found after Iraq gunfight "THE US military has said it believes 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra on Sunday but commanders admitted they had no bodies.
The only corpses at the city's hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child.
US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told a Baghdad press conference 54 militants were killed, 22 wounded and one arrested."
Ok. I am a bit slow. Help me out on this one. How can you count the bodies you are not able to find? Did the G.I.s take them as souvenirs?
posted by Postroad at 5:28 PM PST - 44 comments
BFI presents screenonline | The
British Film Institute announces the launch of
screenonline: "This new site features an unrivalled collection of archive film and television footage from the
bfi National Film and Television Archive.... [It] is the first time the
bfi has given the public access online to its comprehensive collection of film and television material, giving teachers, students and film enthusiasts an exceptional opportunity to investigate British history, culture and society through cinema. "
posted by jacknose at 9:41 AM PST - 6 comments
"They do not use Western means to tell time. They use the sun. These drugs have to be administered in certain sequences, at certain times during the day. You say, take it at 10 o'clock, they say, what do you mean, 10 o'clock?" They, of course, refers to "Africans" and the above logic from the
head of USAID was used an explanation for why it's tough to extend AIDS treatment to Africa. The only problem with this argument is that
it's wrong. People with HIV in developing countries are in better compliance with drug regimes than in the US as
new research is showing [RealAudio]. As we've seen throughout the epidemic, it's a lot easier to get funding for researchers in lab coats than for actual treatment . . .
posted by donovan at 8:57 AM PST - 1 comments
Peekskill, 1949. "The mob was rolling toward us for the second attack. This was, in a way, the worst of that night. For one thing, it was still daylight; later, when night fell, our own sense of organization helped us much more, but this was daylight and they poured down the road and into us, swinging broken fenceposts, billies, bottles, and wielding knives..." Howard Fast's account of a terrifying evening that was supposed to be an outdoor concert near Peekskill, NY. You can think about the political implications ("...it illustrates how easily, when terror is unleashed in a nation, it can take hold, and how thin the line is that separates constitutional government from tyranny and dictatorship...") or just enjoy the riveting tale. (Related song and picture
here.)
posted by languagehat at 8:34 AM PST - 22 comments
Heres an intresting entry from the Wikipedia The link points to a short article on the AIDS "patient Zero" Gaëtan Dugas. hopefully this should serve as a good starting point for research or discussion. Although in the new millennium I wonder what sort of civil liberty issues this type of of research might have.
posted by hoopyfrood at 7:33 AM PST - 4 comments
Public Lives:
Freddie Mercury,
Arthur Ashe,
Rock Hudson,
Brad Davis,
Perry Ellis,
Eazy E,
Michel Foucault,
Amanada 'Miss Kitty' Blake,
Roy Cohn,
Halston,
Keith Haring,
Robert Mapplethorpe,
Rudolf Nureyev,
Anthony Perkins,
Willi Smith,
Liberace,
Ricky Wilson.
Private lives:
Gail Farrow,
T Billy,
Bob BJ Johnson,
Nkoosi Johnson,
Terry McCormick,
Catherine Margaret Cory.
Public or private, we've all had losses. Is there anyone you are remembering today?
posted by madamjujujive at 6:46 AM PST - 43 comments
In Uganda, 1.7 million children have been orphaned by Aids - a tenth of the world's total.
Here is one woman's story. If you do not have the time to read through the article, please consider a visit to
www.sendacow.org.uk, the charity mentioned in the article.
posted by davehat at 4:04 AM PST - 4 comments
The State of Britain today. Mass
surveillance of it's citizenry. ID cards. Making criminals of teenagers who
snog (!) And a bill to rival the
USA Patriot Act removing property & human rights at a minister's whim. With men being imprisoned in UK jails for over almost 2 years, without charge or trial (ala Guantanamo) it looks like the partnership between Bush and Blair is a little more than simple expediency.
posted by Blue Stone at 2:14 AM PST - 26 comments
