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December 2004 Archives
December 31
New Year's Tradition: Banishing Words
(yes, I've done this before) L.S.S.U has been making lists since 1976, but after all the censorship battles of the last year, they probably should be using less threatening terminology than "banished". Still, most of the terminology in this Hall of Shame list certainly deserves to be discouraged, derided and degraded.
Of course, Creative Deity Matt Groening does his own annual list of
Forbidden Words, and some webhead has developed a cool webtool:
The Forbidden Words Flagger.
posted by wendell at 9:20 PM PST - 31 comments
Compare the death count
from the tsunami to the deaths at the World Trade Center using graphs. Rob Cockerham took a break from his victimless pranks to help put things in perspective. Those without a giant monitor will have to do some horizontal scrolling.
posted by fleener at 1:19 PM PST - 114 comments
DOJ coup d'etat.
Ashcroft is gone. Now, six days before the confirmation hearings of Alberto Gonzales, the
acting Attorney General,
Daniel Levin, issues a
new official memo (pdf)on torture, reversing and specifically repudiating the definitions of torture from
the August 2002 memo addressed to Gonzales. The new memo states, among other things,
'we disagree with statements in the August 2002 Memorandum limiting "severe" pain under the statute to "excruciating and agonizing" pain [...] or to pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death'
posted by boo at 9:09 AM PST - 18 comments
Our country is more humanitarian than YOURS is!
No it's not. Yes it is. See? We donated more aid than you did. Well, we doubled our donation. So there. But yours are loans, not donations. Nuh uh. They're donations. Are not. Besides, we'll triple ours. And we'll send planes. You wouldn't. Watch us. Well then, we'll just octuple ours. Yeah? I bet you won't. I quadruple dog dare you. I hate you... you know that, right?
posted by miss lynnster at 8:45 AM PST - 105 comments
Veddas (or Wanniya-laeto): the
ancient and
presently endangered
forest-people of
Sri Lanka. (more:
1,
2,
3,
4)
"...the surviving Wanniya-laeto community retains much of its own distinctive cyclic worldview, prehistoric cultural memory, and time-tested knowledge of their semi-evergreen dry monsoon forest habitat that has enabled their ancestor-revering culture to meet the diverse challenges to their collective identity and survival."
posted by moonbird at 8:02 AM PST - 6 comments
"11. Wilco — A Ghost is Born:
Wilco is a band for people who think they are intellectuals about music, the Wilco man is always unhappy so his songs start very quietly in order that people don't wake up with a start. It is all for nothing because halfway through someone will play a guitar solo with a chairleg."
Shelley Winters, of
Scary-Go-Round, reviews the Top 20 albums of the year as picked by John Allison (the creator of Scary-Go-Round).
(Oh, and the rest of the archive is worth a gander too, as is John Allison's previous strip Bobbins.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:24 AM PST - 25 comments
The World Community Grid
is a project to use spare CPU cycles to help the world. The Grid is Windows only, but
Folding@Home is a cross-platform way to spend your extra CPU cycles, in an effortless (for you) quest to cure disease. And of course there's the original donated cycle project,
SETI@home.
posted by mosch at 6:59 AM PST - 12 comments
Complexification
Jared Tarbell 's summer update to the gallery is the most mesmerizing example of computer generated art I"ve ever seen forming on my monitor.
The Sand Traveler is a rendering of 1,000 traveling particles, each in pursuit of another. Over time, patterns of travel are exposed as sweeping paths of color.
posted by hortense at 5:40 AM PST - 18 comments
December 30
Indeed.com
is what a job search aggregator was meant to be. I stumbled across it and have found it immensely helpful. It indexes every job site that I’m aware of, corporate employment pages, newspapers and craigslist then makes the jobs searchable based on keyword(s) and (optionally) location. Searches can be made into RSS feeds, e-mail alerts, etc. Current beta only work for jobs in U.S.
posted by jperkins at 6:05 PM PST - 24 comments
Why Does Archbishop Desmond Tutu Hate Our Christian Moral Values?
In an interview with MSNBC, the nobel prize winner slams George Bush. "I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the déjà vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here [during apartheid]—vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view."
posted by expriest at 3:03 PM PST - 95 comments
AARP Says No To Bush ...
The AARP is coming out strong against private Social security investment accounts, saying they "will actually make the problem worse, not better." In January they plan to spend
$50 million on an ad campaign opposing privatization.
Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly has also been awesome in pointing out that the common wisdom that Social Security is in trouble is
just not true.
posted by nathanrudy at 11:04 AM PST - 116 comments
"Massive misinformation"
from Arab news networks such as
Al-Jazeera is hampering the US effort in Iraq, Rumsfeld told the troops during his Christmas Eve visit to Mosul: "Everything we do here is harder because of television stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyah." In remarks that were not quoted in the American press, the defense secretary went on to tell the troops, "We don't go out and hire journalists and propagandize and lie and put people on payroll so that they'll say what you want. We just don't do that and they do and that's happening" (which is itself
meta-misinformation.) Meanwhile, the Pentagon's multimillion-dollar solution -- the CIA-funded Iraqi news network, Al-Iraqiya (featuring
"Iraqi programs that make you laugh, cry, and learn") -- has become
"an irrelevant mouthpiece for [coalition] propaganda" according to one of its own former correspondents, veteran news reporter Don North.
posted by digaman at 10:24 AM PST - 21 comments
Twisting Tongues
in Other TonguesThis page was originally created to give a good group of tongue twisters to people in speech therapy, to people who want to work on getting rid of an accent, or to people who just plain like tongue twisters. I hope you enjoy them.
posted by miss lynnster at 8:17 AM PST - 32 comments
December 29
Kurds are the Closest Relatives of Jews
Funny, They don't look Jewish:"Research has just begun into the ancient ties between Kurds and Jews. It would be interesting to see if the various Jewish groups have as strong a family tie to Kurds in the maternal lineages as they do in the paternal lineages. Preliminary studies indicate that Jewish populations in eastern Europe and Yemen have maternal origins that contain much more non-Israelite ancestry than their paternal origins. Despite this admixture with other groups, the Jewish Judean people ultimately began their existence in an area within or nearby Kurdistan, prior to migrating southwest to Israel. This exciting research showing that Kurds and Jews may have shared common fathers several millennia ago should, hopefully, encourage both Kurds and Jews to explore each others' cultures and to maintain the friendship that Kurds and Jews enjoyed in northern Iraq in recent times (as chronicled in Michael Rubin's recent article "The Other Iraq"). As Rubin indicates, the Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani once visited Israel and met with Israeli government officials. Rubin refers to the Iraqi Kurds' "special affinity for Israel" and writes that "In the safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Jews and Israel are remembered fondly, if increasingly vaguely." Let us hope that this relationship can be renewed and strengthened."
posted by Postroad at 4:56 PM PST - 51 comments
Steve Perry Fan Fiction
"11:30 Halloween night and Steve Perry pulled up to the very dark and deserted pumpkin patch in his Toyota Land Cruiser and when he came to a stop he looked out through the gloom to see if anyone else was here and in his own way he was hoping, hoping that some of his old band mates would show but with the reaction he got he really didn’t expect them to be here but he could hope couldn’t he."
posted by Swampjazz! at 12:18 PM PST - 58 comments
Forget Verdana, here’s
sIFR: anti-aliased text in your browser in any font you like.
The next big thing? Just a kludge? Heard about it already?
posted by Termite at 11:36 AM PST - 160 comments
Chuteless Jumps:
Russian I.M. Chisov survived a 21,980 plunge out of a plane with
no parachute. He landed on the steep side of a snow-covered mountain with only a fractured pelvis and slight concussion.
posted by thisisdrew at 11:22 AM PST - 41 comments
Like most people who love mythical creatures (cryptozoology), I also collect stamps (philately). At last, someone has combined these twin fetishes in one
easily displayed fashion. My favorites include the
Loch Ness Monster and his ancient cousin the
Kraken, especially
these two which feature a guest appearance by Mickey Mouse.
posted by jonson at 9:17 AM PST - 23 comments
Carmen, ah! souviens-toi du passé!
The 233 [mostly] female cigar rollers
(las cigarreras) at Seville's
Altadis tobacco factory are urgently trying to defend the last remaining trace of the four-hundred-year-old tobacco industry in Seville, which is certain to cease production by 2007. Responsible for manufacturing six million cigarettes a year for Altadis,
las cigarreras claim to be "the rightful heirs of the feisty
Gypsy heroine" Carmen, idealized in
Georges Bizet's 1875
opera of the
same name. "Invoking what they see as Carmen's 'independent, unbending' spirit, these contemporary
las cigarreras have organized a protest every Wednesday, between shifts, for more than a year to save well-paying local jobs as well as the factory itself, a link to the gritty history that spawned the
romantic legends."
posted by naxosaxur at 8:10 AM PST - 8 comments
Heartless response
An American couple survived while diving off Thailand during the tsunami. Because they had lost all their possessions, they had to have new passports issued. At the Bangkok airport other governments had set up booths to assist their citizens. The couple searched there for officials from the American consulate for three hours, before finding them in the VIP lounge. Oh, and
U.S. officials demanded payment before taking any passport pictures.
posted by fleener at 7:27 AM PST - 166 comments
Bittersweet Bears
"When a loved one becomes a memory, make the memory a treasure." Teddy Bears made from the clothing of a loved one.
posted by ColdChef at 6:56 AM PST - 16 comments
"Me, I fart loud - I can't be a hypocrite. I get these parts, but I never get to play 'em because I fart out loud. Why can't we all fart together? Let thy arse make wind!"
It is my
pleasure to
introduce you
to the late,
great Timothy Carey, possibly the
weirdest of all Hollywood character actors. A follower of
Salvador Dalí and
Le Pétomane, Carey was a
Method actor who was pals with
John Cassavetes, a muse of sorts for
Stanley Kubrick, alleged discoverer of both
Frank Zappa and
Ray Dennis Steckler, and one of the
dedicatees of Reservoir Dogs. Not only that, he wrote, directed, and starred in one of the all-time
strangest American films,
The World's Greatest Sinner, and wrote and directed the world's only Dalí-inspired play about death by flatulence.
Against all odds, Timothy Carey has a
website, and if you're interested, you can
buy his movies, posters, and other odds 'n' ends (warning: doesn't appear to have been updated particularly recently).
Truly, in the words of his
tombstone, "A Super Nova of Original Thespian Talent."
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:31 AM PST - 12 comments
The Brill Building
, located at 1619 Broadway in the heart of New York's music district, is a name synonymous with an approach to songwriting that changed the course of music. Housing legendary songwriters like Carole King, Jerry Leiber, Neil Sedaka, and Burt Bacharach, the Brill Building created some of the
greatest hits of the
rock'n'roll era. [more inside]
posted by rocket88 at 12:10 AM PST - 11 comments
December 28
Arctic Blue Books Online
- 'a searchable, World-Wide Web version of Andrew Taylor's unique index to the 19th Century British Parliamentary Papers concerned with the Canadian Arctic. '
posted by plep at 11:32 PM PST - 2 comments
Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present
: This list is not intended to be an exhaustive compilation of microprocessors, but rather a description of designs that are either unique, or representative designs typical of the period, not necessarily the first of their kind, or the best. It includes material from text books, magazine articles and papers, authoritative descriptions and half remembered folklore from obscure sources, as such, it has no bibliography or list of references.
via Linkfilter.
It gets a little technical at times, but it's interesting reading if you're into the guts of these fun little toys!
posted by starscream at 7:42 PM PST - 4 comments
The Global Baby Bust
Summary: Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay. The right policies could help turn the tide, but only if enacted before it's too late.
posted by Postroad at 4:00 PM PST - 108 comments
Losing the War,
an insightful memoir by writer and journalist
Lee Sandlin.
Note: It's not about Iraq. Or is it? "A year later, in the second winter of the invasion, as the army inched forward on a final, desperate push into Stalingrad, a daring joke began making the rounds in Germany, a mock dispatch from Stalingrad HQ: 'Today our troops captured a two-room apartment with kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. They have succeeded in retaining two-thirds of it despite fierce counterattacks by the enemy.' Few of the tellers realized just how accurate this description was.
John Keegan, in his book
The Second World War, quotes a German officer's description of the fighting in the city: 'We have fought for fifteen days for a single house with mortars, grenades, machine-guns and bayonets. Already by the third day fifty-four German corpses are strewn in the cellars, on the landings, and the staircases. The front is a corridor between burnt-out rooms; it is the thin ceiling between two floors.' This was where Hitler's vision of the world finally foundered. After striding like a colossus over a continent, the German army was in the end unable to force its way up a flight of stairs."
posted by digaman at 1:40 PM PST - 20 comments
"Things just happen, he had decided;
they happen and they happen again, and anybody who tries to make sense out of it goes out of his mind."
For this reason, Tom Rath, the hero of Sloan Wilson's 1955 novel
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, decides not to "make sense" of the the atrocities to which he bears witness during World War II. Instead, he accepts that war is in itself irrational, and that he must simply forget its horrors before returning to civilian life.
This New Yorker article contrasts Wilson's 1950's stoicism with today's veneration of the grieving process and suggests that this change in attitude has led us to vastly underestimate our own capacity for coping with trauma. The author also draws some interesting parallels with
a controversial study in which victims of childhood sexual abuse were found to be no more likely than others to suffer from mental health problems as adults. Intriguing stuff, to say the least, and as I read it, I can't help but think of Johnny Cash's
"The Man Who Couldn't Cry"(Note: Having thankfully never been subjected to war or sexual abuse myself, I am in no way attempting to demean the anguish of those who have. Rather, I'm more interested in the idea that people are stronger than they give themselves credit for, and how different upbringings affect our experience of trauma.)
posted by idontlikewords at 1:03 AM PST - 41 comments
December 27
"Not My Head!"
Drinking games based on movies or television shows are
legion, but surely the most epic, erudite, witty, and hangover-inducing is "Not My Head": the
"I, Claudius Drinking Game"! Whether or not you've ever seen the 13 part
BBC series on which it's based, the
rules are quite simple—and since every
episode contains plenty of
banishments,
poisonings, and
orgies, you can be sure you'll be working through those bottles of red wine pretty quickly. Dress as your
favorite character for extra debauched realness - and remember, you can't tell the players without a
scorecard! (Especially when you're drunk.)
posted by contraposto at 9:19 PM PST - 22 comments
eScholarship Editions.
Like ebooks? Want something free, nonfiction,"scholarly", publicly accessible, and more recent than
Gutenberg ? (Lately I'm on an Ancient History kick.) My problem with this "eScholarship" site is they try to make it hard to download a whole ebook to read offline. For one of those, for people who are interested in 20th-century political history-cum-theory that's never had much to do with any U.S. election, today I'm recommending
the Platform.
posted by davy at 8:52 PM PST - 12 comments
Greeks, postmodernity, and the rethinking of democracy
Found this fascinating interview on openDemocracy by way of
meat-eating leftist. Greek opposition minister George Papandreou, son of former socialist Prime Minister
Andreas Papandreou, says some interesting things about the changing nature of representative democracy and the new fluidity of citizens' political and social identities.
Given our diminishing democracy in this country, it is refreshing to hear a politician say that individuals in society need to be empowered and that political leaders must listen to and trust individuals.
posted by mountainmambo at 7:20 PM PST - 14 comments
Update from Holland.
After the filmmaker Theo van Gogh's murder by Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch creed of tolerance has come under siege.
posted by semmi at 4:24 PM PST - 12 comments
One man's retirement math: Social Security wins
At the heart of President Bush's plan to sell Social Security private accounts is a simple notion: You're always better off investing your retirement money than letting the government do it.
By doing it yourself, you can stow some money in the stock market, and over the long run will get a better return on that investment than today's Social Security system offers.
The idea is broadly accepted. That's why the administration's plan to partially privatize the system sounds appealing to many. But that better return won't always happen.
Just ask Stanley Logue of San Diego.
For 45 years, the defense-industry analyst paid into the system until his retirement in 1994. But with all the recent hoopla over reform, Mr. Logue, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, decided to go back and check his own records. Would he have done better investing his money than the bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration?
posted by Postroad at 11:09 AM PST - 80 comments
Thanks for the new living room, neighbor!
In case you needed any further news about
the earth moving, residents in Berkeley, CA have found themselves embroiled in a property-line quagmire as the result of
the shifting earth. Small quakes and unstable ground have caused real property to slide as much as 20 feet in the last century, though property lines remain firmly fixed, in some cases causing bitter disputes between neighbors who find themselves with new and sometimes unwanted "improvements" relocated across into their survey area. Even in California where the earth moves
all the time,
the law still hasn't quite caught up to these trickle events.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:46 AM PST - 17 comments
The Evan Parker Scott case
bears more than a passing resemblance to the
Baby Richard case of several years ago. Once more, a toddler who barely knows what's going on is being confiscated by the parent who gave him up in the first place. Is the domestic adoption system broken?
posted by u.n. owen at 10:43 AM PST - 13 comments
xixax
is a film community/bulletin board. In addition to forums for new films (released and rumored), stuff on DVD, and tech goodies for filmmakers, they've got director forums for Wes and PT Anderson, Scorsese, Lynch, the Coens, Soderbergh and many others.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 12:09 AM PST - 2 comments
December 26
''The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker" (Reviewed by Walter Kirn)
"Of more than 68,000 pieces of art that could have been included in its pages, only about 2,000 have been printed on paper, while the rest are reproduced on two CD's attached to the inside of the front cover." I gotta git me one a 'em. Kirn also says "a fool who can laugh at his folly is not a fool but something rarer and finer: a self-ironist." [New York Times, wants registration.]
posted by davy at 7:14 PM PST - 22 comments
Place Project.
A suitcase with a camera and a blank book travelled the world. 35 designers have translated the world around them into their pages. After 18 months and 170.000 km it will be presented in Barcelona. November 23 - December 12, 2004.
posted by yoga at 2:51 PM PST - 5 comments
Everything's bigger in Toulouse. The
world's biggest plane has started rolling off assembly lines and is expected to take its first flight in March 2005. The quarter-billion-dollar, twin-deck, four-aisle plane can carry 555 passengers. Thanks to its design's outsized wings, future versions of the
economical plane may carry as many as 800 passengers.
With the A380,
Airbus hopes to do to Boeing what Boeing did to its competitors over 30 years ago with the 747. Already, Airbus Industrie has
outsold and out-delivered Boeing for the last two years. But don't boycott just yet! It turns out the A380 is
51% American-made. Parts are so big they don't fit in this
whale-like record-size
transporter (though this
Russian monster may have a
claim); they are transported to Toulouse on a
barge.
More pics. Let's hope this latest high-tech aerospace gamble does better than
the last one.
Europe, of course (troll alert), already makes the world's
biggest truck, the
fastest trains, the
best cars (sorry Japan), and the
most successful rocket launchers.
On a darker topic,
10 years ago, French commandos boarded an Airbus and killed Islamic terrorists planning to fly it into the Eiffel Tower.
posted by Turtle at 1:29 PM PST - 63 comments
It's Kwanzaa!
Today begins the seven day
celebration of the
principles which make the African People and their descendants, and ultimately Humanity, great.
While I don't celebrate, I will take the opportunity to
learn more about the holiday and to hold the Seven Principles in
mind.
Now it's back to watching my new
In Living Color and
Chappelle's Show DVDs.
posted by Eideteker at 12:10 PM PST - 85 comments
A massive earthquake - the largest since 1964 - centred off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra has caused tidal waves that are devastating coastal areas around the Indian Ocean including
Sri Lanka, India and
Indonesia.
Eyewitness report from the south coast of Sri Lanka.
The death tolls are still rising, there is the risk of further tsunamis and it is being estimated that 100,000s of people will be left homeless.
posted by i_cola at 1:43 AM PST - 193 comments
December 25
Unproduced screenplays,
including
Edward Ford, written by Lem Dobbs (
The Limey) and
one (pdf) by
Charlie Kaufman (
Eternal Sunshine..., Adaptation, Being John Malkovich). The Dobbs script is
often cited as one of the best (if not
the best) unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. The site also has scripts by Al Jean and Mike Reiss (
Simpsons,
Sledge Hammer!), Adam Fierro (
The Shield), T. S. Cook (
The China Syndrome), Nicholas Kazan (
Homegrown,
Reversal of Fortune,
Frances), John Kamps (
Charley Varrick,
Madigan) and others.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 10:22 PM PST - 12 comments
"The Exidy Sorcerer
. . . It does everything I wanted [it] to do and some things I never dreamed of." It even uses . . . are those 8-track tapes?! We have come
so far in so short a time. What a world we live in! Link goes to old Advert.
via]
posted by johnj at 7:34 PM PST - 26 comments
Peace Art Project Cambodia
--turning the detrius of war into
art, in hopes of a more peaceful future. More info
here, and
here.
"You can't help but think about what this machine has done to affect so many lives."
And that is really the point. These sculptures are political art at its most powerful - relics of a violent past transformed into expressions of hope for a more peaceful future.
posted by amberglow at 7:32 PM PST - 6 comments
Communication Grill Chang-tei: Chat powered barbeque.
"You have to continue carrying out the chat with the partner surrounding a table.
If a chat is stopped, the fire of an electric heater will go out." (
via)
posted by moonbird at 11:39 AM PST - 14 comments
OverClocked ReMix
This great site has all sorts of music, redone with vastly superior technology and, at times, an eye towards radical reinterpretation. My old fave Metroid has provided quite a few cool reinterpretations.
posted by pabanks46 at 10:17 AM PST - 15 comments
December 24
Wladimir Kaminer represents an emerging Russo-German culture. He is a
DJ spinning Russian wild ska-punk club music, he is a radio talk-show host, the author of several best-selling books depicting the life of Russian immigrants in Germany, and a sort of good-humored emblem of the emerging hybrid culture of Berlin. In
a fascinating interview, he reveals post Soviet Russia, and Russian lives and literature in the West; you can read his stories,
Paris Lost, and
Animal Transport, and the usual
overview of his works and of his significance, in the NYT
Books section.
posted by semmi at 6:03 PM PST - 5 comments
Euro's rise raises 'catastrophic' fears
The euro rose on Thursday, topping $1.35 for the first time ever, amid speculation that the United States would not act to counter the dollar's decline.
.
"If we remain in a situation without any coordination, we can imagine a catastrophic situation" for the global economy, Finance Minister Hérve Gaymard of France told manufacturers during a factory visit Thursday in Strasbourg
posted by Postroad at 5:02 PM PST - 60 comments
Pollstar's Top 25 tours chart for 2004 is out and You'll never guess who was
Number 1! Here's a Hint:
"His 69-city/96-show tour was "by far the biggest tour he has ever done," Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar, the concert industry trade publication, told The Associated Press. "It's kind of a renaissance for him."
"
HE" grossed $87.4 million. Celine Dion, Madonna, Metallica and and Bette Midler round out the top 5. Other acts in the top 10: Van Halen, Kenny Chesney, Sting, Toby Keith and Elton John. Yes, this is 2004, not 1984.
posted by Blake at 1:35 PM PST - 37 comments
How much money do first-time novelists make?
Author and upcoming first-time novelist
Justine Larbalestier is constantly asked by aspiring writers what first-time novelists should expect in advance payment for their beloved texts. So she asked some of her author friends what they got for their first novels. The responses ranged in time from 1962 to 2004. What didn't change in all that time was the basic amount: Not much. Quoth Larbalestier: "The life of a novelist is, financially speaking, a mug's game.
Enter at your own peril."
posted by jscalzi at 6:54 AM PST - 66 comments
December 23
Fred Smith's Concrete Park
near Phillips, Wisconsin. "Born in 1886, a tavern owner and former lumberjack, Fred Smith began building sculptures in 1948, in his 60s. He created more than 200 concrete sculptures and covered them with broken beer bottle glass from his tavern. Said Fred, 'nobody knows why I made them, not even me.' " [more inside]
posted by Marxchivist at 10:22 PM PST - 13 comments
World's only revolving building?
The heck with revolving rooftop restaurants, I want to live in Suite Vollard, an entire apartment building whose eleven circular units can each revolve 360 degrees. (Unfortunately for me, it's in Brazil.) More photos are
here.
posted by Kat Allison at 11:48 AM PST - 20 comments
"China's Records In the Eyes of Foreigners"
Pick your favorite China statistic. Is it "GDP of the Shanghai region is equivalent to that of Brazil;" is it "Foreigners invest about $1 billion in China every week;" is it "China has the largest online gaming population in the world;" is it "China produces 2.3 billion condoms each year." NB article from the "People's Daily Online", although original source claimed to be the "French L'Express weekly".
posted by Voyageman at 10:11 AM PST - 12 comments
Merry Christmas from James
My sister sent me this link from a friend that didn't want to send out cards this year - he's not much of a singer but I thought it was a great idea! Hallmark could be in danger...
posted by matty at 9:24 AM PST - 32 comments
O'Reilly's dark night of the soul.
Bill O'Reilly's on a mission to follow God's path for him and the path of the Founding Fathers. Trouble is, he's having a hard time keeping down the welling feelings to 'execute' the lot of America.
There's a nice little jab on Sweden, too, just in case you're a Christian thinking about moving to the other Land of the Free.
posted by santiagogo at 8:00 AM PST - 47 comments
Tis the Season
-- a new short story from
China Mieville, just in time for the Holidays™
... Don't get me wrong. I haven't got shares in YuleCo™, and I can't afford a one-day end-user licence, so I couldn't have a legal party. I'd briefly considered buying from one of the budget competitors like XmasTym, or a spinoff from a non-specialist like Coca-Crissmas, but the idea of doing it on the cheap was just depressing...
posted by amberglow at 7:56 AM PST - 14 comments
Woman uses ancient law,
including a purported 1778 treaty between the U.S. government and Native Americans, as explanation for not paying for her $40,000 Lexus, and then claims that Toyota
owes her $1,114,000.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:32 AM PST - 26 comments
Priate Radio Calling for inauguration protests
CNN is reporting that a guerilla radio station is calling for massive protests of the inauguration of President George W. Bush. After some googling, I found
a press release from WSQT on indymedia concerning the transmissions. It seems that they are somehow related to
DAWNdc a local leftist activist organization.
Here is how they are reacting to the sudden attention.
posted by pemdasi at 4:30 AM PST - 12 comments
Turning Pickets Into Pledges
Planned Parenthood has launched a new program that "creates a no-win situation for anti-choice protesters — the more picketers who demonstrate outside a
Planned Parenthood clinic, the more donations that clinic receives." This campaign allows supporters to pledge between 25 cents and one dollar per protester -- not a lot of money, but it adds up to thousands over time.
posted by zarq at 4:20 AM PST - 29 comments
John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Minority Member of the House Judiciary Committee,
accuses TRIAD Governmental Systems Inc. of pretty transparent recount fraud in Ohio, as well as having a really suspicious-sounding name.
Get Your Democracy On.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:55 AM PST - 10 comments
Welcome to the Alabama of the Northeast.
Andrea Minnon of Lebanon said she had never heard of "The Catcher in the Rye" before she learned that it was on her 14-year-old son Spencer's freshman reading list.
Presumably because reading's not her strong point. But she wants the local school to ban it.
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:05 AM PST - 109 comments
Theyyam
, a corrupt form of daivum (god), is a popular ritual dance of North Kerala, India. As a living cult with centuries old traditions,
ritual and custom, it embraces almost all castes and classes of the Hindu religion in this region. A
performance (mpg) of a particular deity continues for 12 to 24 hours with intervals. The costumes differ based on the
character (mpg) of the theyyam.
posted by dhruva at 1:14 AM PST - 13 comments
December 22
"Welcome to Black Man With a Gun dot com.
If you smiled at the name of the site or jumped from fear of it you are not alone.
This site is about responsible firearm ownership. I use the taboo subject of race to show how people have been conditioned to fear the words "GUN" and "BLACK MAN" when used in the same sentence."
posted by fandango_matt at 6:22 PM PST - 35 comments
"Writing a whodunit may sound like an odd thing to do when you are running an insurgency"...
Nevertheless,
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the mysterious, offbeat leader of the
Zapatistas, and
Paco Ignacio Taibo II, a Mexican crime novelist, are coauthoring a mystery novel live--alternating chapters each week--in the pages of the Mexican newspaper,
La Jornada. So far, they have finished chapters
one,
two and
three (pdf) of
Muertos Incomodos, (The Awkward Dead). Is there a precedent for this experiment? I love this sort of thing but, unfortunately, my Spanish is insufficient. Any Spanish speakers care to review?
posted by boo at 12:41 PM PST - 13 comments
Friday Fun
Might as well be Friday, really, especially in Texas where we're shutting down the state due to snow. Here's a fun, free online game where you can make penguins dive all day long without getting tired (you OR them). Highly reminiscent of playing too hard for too long doing the same thing over and over when you were a kid, except you don't have to wait for your turn. Or come home in wet, cold clothes crying. You're Everypenguin.
posted by sparky at 11:22 AM PST - 22 comments
The BioMotion Walker
[flash] demonstrates that biologically and socially relevant information about a person is conveyed in biological motion patterns. It allows you to manipulate a number of parameters controlling the characteristics of human walking. You can interactively change biological properties, personality traits and emotional expression of a point-light walker. You can even help out their research
here.
posted by sciurus at 11:12 AM PST - 12 comments
The Graphing Calculator Story.
Amazing and very amusing article about the conception of a piece of software included with every Macintosh. Made at Apple... by volunteers.
Q: Do you work here? A: No.
Q: You mean you're a contractor? A: Actually, no..
Q: But then who's paying you?
A: No one..
Q: How do you live?
A: I live simply..
Q: (Incredulously) What are you doing here?!
posted by kika at 9:22 AM PST - 34 comments
Affirmative Action hurts Black Students?
Richard Sander, a professor of law at UCLA, examined empirical data on black law students' graduation rates and BAR results, and found that affirmative action reduces the number of total black lawyers. He claims that there is a mismatch-effect between the school a student matriculates in and one that he is qualified to attend.
Dissenting opinion.
Sander's remarks at Volokh. Hat Tip:
Kevin Drum.
posted by nads at 9:07 AM PST - 35 comments
Mosul attack - heart-warming?
I never figured I'd hear heart-warming in relation to the aftermath of a missile attack, but I heard the quote on the radio yesterday, and it just seems wrong.
"It was a heart-warming experience to see the wounded soldiers caring for those who were more severely wounded." said Brig.-Gen. Ham.
posted by jim-of-oz at 9:05 AM PST - 42 comments
Bush's answer to global poverty: let 'em starve.
The administration has defaulted on $100 million in the last two months alone promised to charities aimed at helping improverished families become self-sufficient, so that organizations like Save the Children and Catholic Relief Services are cutting programs. Instead, increasingly scarce funds are being earmarked for emergencies only, like the one in Darfur. The result: five to seven million people have less to eat this Christmas.
posted by digaman at 7:42 AM PST - 73 comments
Giant robots in the backyard.
An ambitious young Alaskan is trying to create his own mecha suit. Be sure to look at the pictures. The GE Hardiman project only managed to have one working arm, here's hoping Owens has more luck with his robot suit.
posted by riffola at 6:43 AM PST - 20 comments
December 21
The real-life Edna Mode -
If you aspire to cartoonish superhero proportions, where your massive muscles and barrel chest allow you to leap computer-generated buildings with single, animated bounds, you should take a lesson from Mr. Incredible: Sew your underwear to your shirt.
Salon link; advertising supported free access
posted by GriffX at 6:44 PM PST - 15 comments
" Fifty years ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon Church, began a foster care program for American Indian children. Between twenty and fifty thousand children, mostly Navajo, participated in what was called the Indian Student Placement Program....Through Placement, children had the opportunity to grow up in families – white Mormon families – while attending day schools in Utah and across the West. Placement also had a theological motivation. Championed in the ‘50s by an LDS Church leader named Spencer W. Kimball, Placement grew from a sense of commitment to the Indians – then regarded as descendants of the original people of the Book of Mormon. Listen to the amazing story, full of first hand accounts from both sides
here
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 4:25 PM PST - 18 comments
Girl Kicked Out Of Prom For Wearing Confederate Flag Sues
A girl who says it was always her dream to wear a confederate-themed dress to her prom arrived in a self-designed gown which incorporated the Confederate battle flag into its design. The school promptly removed her, and she is suing. The fate of her suit is
somewhat uncertain. Lower federal courts have applied the
Tinker test, which says that a school may restrict student expression when that expression may be disruptive. To win her suit, the girl will need to show that wearing a Confederate flag to your high school prom is not a disruptive act.
posted by expriest at 3:14 PM PST - 172 comments
Mirrors.
Documentarian
Bruce Jackson found "a group of about two hundred 3x4" identification photographs made between 1914 and 1937... in a drawer in the Arkansas penitentiary in the summer of 1975"; this (
slideshow) is the online record of an exhibition.
It is impossible to look at these images and not think about the persons depicted there. But, save for one fact that is a given—and what we find in or infer from these images—we know nothing about those persons, and never will. The given is that they are all prisoners: for whatever reason, they have been deprived of liberty, the single piece of enduring proof of which is the image at which we presently gaze. The conclusions we draw, the feelings we have, the narratives we suppose—they are all our own. The images are mirrors, resonating with aspects of our selves we perhaps never before encountered.
Many of them are haunting;
this one has been turned by time into a work of art. (Via
Ramage.)
posted by languagehat at 3:08 PM PST - 34 comments
Mobile-phone radiation damages lab DNA
. Sure to be controversial and certainly not the last word, but it raises some interesting points of conversation. Government surveillance becomes much easier with wireless communications and there is a
huge corporate financial investment in the infrastructure. Could we really trust the government(s) to tell us if this particular technology
was harmful
? And at what point would
you give serious consideration to giving up a technology that had proved to be such an intrinsic part of your life
? Are you addicted beyond the point of no return
? Other media carrying the story via Google News.
posted by spock at 12:50 PM PST - 28 comments
Community Values, Corporate Profit and Pornography
"Popular culture isn't popular because members of the "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show" (to borrow a line from a campaign ad this year) are the only customers. It's because there is an unquenched thirst for it, and the corporate profiteers (who are members of and contributors to both political parties) see a nationwide market for it." What will we tell the children?
posted by nofundy at 11:46 AM PST - 20 comments
Oulipo. Originally founded by author
Raymond Queneau and mathematical historian François Le Lionnais, this group (literally the Workshop for Potential Literature-
Ouvroir de
Littérature
Potentielle,) sought to create and incorporate
restrictive techniques and methods into their writing. The circle has since expanded, welcoming those
outside of France and
beyond literary genius. Oulipo and its effects upon the literary world
still exist today.
Some products of this group's
eccentricity are a novel
lacking the letter "e" (in both original French and its English translation) (by
Georges Perec, who also needs a direct link here), a novel both
self-referential and circular, and 100,000,000,000,000 sonnets made from
interchangeable lines.
posted by hopeless romantique at 11:17 AM PST - 13 comments
7,000 Years of Religious Ritual Is Traced in Mexico
Archaeologists have traced the development of religion in one location over a 7,000-year period, reporting that as an early society changed from foraging to settlement to the formation of an archaic state, religion also evolved to match the changing social structure.
This archaeological record, because of its length and completeness, sheds an unusually clear light on the origins of religion, a universal human behavior but one whose evolutionary and social roots are still not well understood.
posted by Postroad at 8:24 AM PST - 33 comments
"Sushi pants" and other stories...
Possibly not the "best of the web", but not political and damn funny. Of late I have been
enjoying a number of "story" sites
recounting the kind of tall tales of questionable accuracy you usually only hear from genuinely funny friends. Many, many chuckles to be had out there. Some of the stories seem
superficially mean but are actually interesting looks into
difficult situations you might otherwise never glimpse.
"A few days later he put a tarantula in my bedsheets while I was sleeping. Thankfully I wasn't bitten, but I was freaked out and still sometimes jump out of bed in the middle of the night for no reason and attack my sheets." - from
thingie.net
posted by soulhuntre at 7:41 AM PST - 13 comments
The Church Awakens
"The AIDS pandemic is the greatest humanitarian crisis," Casey said. "It just begs a reaction from the church."
The church is now in full reaction mode. More than 2,000 Christian medical professionals, church leaders, and students gathered for the ninth annual Global Missions Health Conference, November 11-13, at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. They spoke not only of statistics that confirmed the extent of the pandemic (43 million people living with HIV/AIDS; 8,000 deaths each day; 14 million orphans), but of working together.
posted by halekon at 5:53 AM PST - 62 comments
December 20
"This site
contains more than 10,000 eBooks formatted for reading on your Palm, PocketPC, Zaurus, Rocketbook, eBookWise-1150, or Symbian cellphone." So if you have a PDA and especially if you're into
the classics, you no longer have to settle for lame
video games on your cell phone or inconvenient newspapers for your
downtime entertainment.
posted by Doohickie at 9:33 PM PST - 19 comments
In 2004, we had Jon Stewart on Crossfire. In 1986? There was Frank Zappa...
As Zappa once said,
"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another." (I don't know of any song that could ever inspire me to love John Lofton, though... compared to him, Tucker Carlson is simply delightful!)
In 1986, I was a 19 year old art student. One Saturday afternoon I found myself volunteering at an event at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood where Frank Zappa was scheduled to speak about censorship. I was not that familiar with him or his music at the time, but he was so funny, eloquent, and intelligent as a speaker that his many "words" made a major impression on me that day. In
this interview conducted on March 16, 1986, Frank Zappa talked further about his appearance before the US Congress and his involvement in the fight against censorship.
BTW, this is my first post. I hope it passes muster! ;)
posted by miss lynnster at 5:35 PM PST - 73 comments
Balance
(8 min) is an Oscar award winning short animation piece by the
Lauenstein brothers. "Balance turns a black comedy into a meditation on human interdependence" [flash, click on last link at bottom of page]
posted by dhruva at 5:14 PM PST - 9 comments
Local Town Mortgages Students' Textbooks.
"[The South Plainfield school board] plans to sell nearly all student textbooks to a bank or financial institution, which then would lease them back to the district over a period of five years. The more than 2,500 books would remain in students' hands, and the move would bring a quick boost of about $965,000."
(via Patridiot Watch)
posted by Karmakaze at 2:23 PM PST - 35 comments
Frontline's: Secret History of the Credit Card
Includes alot of useful and less than well known information like "universal default" clauses that allow your credit card company to raise your interest rate when you're late on a payment to
another creditor and there's no limit to the late charges a credit company can lay on you as well as no limit on the interest rate they hit you with. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Of particular interest:
credit scores explained and an
examination of credit responsibility. There are also interviews with lawmakers (including the infamous
Bill Janklow). Not sure how well versed you are on credit card info? Take the
quiz and find out. (I did badly).
posted by fenriq at 1:32 PM PST - 21 comments
New Utrecht High School
, school rules gone wild:
#9. Carrying Magic Markers is prohibited.
#13. NO WEAPONS ALLOWED (Laser Beams are considered weapons). Possession will result in automatic Superintendent's Suspension and/or expulsion from school.
Lasers going the way of the drug-dealing magic-marker peddling beeper?
posted by omidius at 12:54 PM PST - 92 comments
Lincoln Outed.
It's a subject that has been
discussed before (hopefully not here), but in "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, C.A. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln's sexuality once and for all. The author,
who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected almost every word ever written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. His conclusion is that America's greatest president, the beacon of the Republican Party, was a gay man.
posted by three blind mice at 12:49 PM PST - 57 comments
Twelve STIs of Christmas
I can't decide if the lyrics are better than the animated men or not, but the twelve STIs of christmas is possibly the best public health propoganda I've ever seen.
[Flash][SFW. Probably][And technically double post, but it's a great one. And it's christmas.]
posted by twine42 at 11:33 AM PST - 12 comments
"With 1.4 million employees worldwide, Wal-Mart's workforce is now larger than that of GM, Ford, GE, and IBM combined. At $258 billion in 2003, Wal-Mart's annual revenues are 2 percent of US GDP,
and eight times the size of Microsoft's. In fact, when ranked by its revenues, Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation." The real cost belongs to the taxpayer, as this report (
PDF or
HTML through Google), by the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, makes clear. A "total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees."
posted by OmieWise at 10:59 AM PST - 186 comments
Surf's Up!
While many of us in North America are battling freezing rain, sleet, snow, and other sub-zero madness, the folks on the north shore of Oahu are enjoying their own December
weather phenomenon.
posted by Crackerbelly at 10:29 AM PST - 15 comments
White Rose
"is a protest blog collective focusing on civil liberties in the UK and the rest of [the] world. It was set up to point a finger at the erosion of personal freedom in the UK. Government's active measures introduce new means of control such as identity cards and surveillance cameras, the passive measures such as weakening of double jeopardy and presumption of innocence." Nice quote from
this entry:
My audience were all gluttons for freedom, if by that you meant the freedom to hunt, or the freedom to eat roast beef without the fat trimmed off. But they were perfectly happy to see their own liberties curtailed, if that gave the authorities a chance to crack down on scroungers and bogus asylum-seekers.
posted by languagehat at 8:24 AM PST - 20 comments
Subways, crime, high rents, and general frustration are not the only benefits of living in NYC; we also get to overhear the most interesting little
conversations.
My favorite:
Street Vendor: Hey, hey, hey man, jewelry blow out special. Everything a dollar. Buy something nice for your wife for the holidays. One dollar!
Businessman: A dollar? I'm not gonna buy my wife jewelry for a dollar.
Street Vendor: It's the thought that counts.
--57th and 8th
posted by mountainmambo at 6:45 AM PST - 43 comments
December 19
The Ernest Becker Foundation
is "devoted to multidisciplinary inquiries into human behavior, with a particular focus on violence," based on the work of the titular academic iconoclast, "to support research and application at the interfaces of science, the humanities, social action and religion."
Becker's Pulitzer-winning
The Denial of Death (completed just before his own tragic demise at 49) viewed Kierkegaard's proto-existentialism through the lens of Otto Rank's psychology and concluded that "the root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality and achieve a heroic self-image" (summary quoted from
Sam Keen's excellent Foreword to the latest edition of the work).
The book has now inspired an award-winning
indie documentary that purports to be "the first documentary film ever [!] to examine the manifestations of death anxiety on spiritual, cultural, and psychological levels." (6.5 MB QT
trailer)
posted by joe lisboa at 8:40 PM PST - 15 comments
While
Keenspot picks and chooses the webcomics it hosts like a newspaper comics syndicate would, their
Keenspace service is the Geocities of the webcomics world, providing hosting for whoever comes along.
Or so I thought. You must experience for yourself these samples of webcomics that
haven't quite got Keenspace approval yet.
posted by mendel at 7:38 PM PST - 34 comments
Comedy Returns to Video Games?
I've been searching for a funny computer game to give my father for christmas, after last years gift of
Grim Fandango went over brilliantly. Unfortunately, it seems that in games as in any media
dying is easy, comedy is hard.
With the upcoming release of their first game,
Psychonauts, Double Fine productions, hopes to resurrect the art. How do I know it's going to be hilarious? The company is headed up by headed up by
Tim Schafer of Grim Fandango, Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle fame. Oh, and
they're all utterly insane
And lest anyone accuse me of corporate shilling, check out
the scummVM and FreeSCI projects which allow you to play classic LucasArts and Sierra comedy adventures on your linux, mac or palm computers. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
posted by Popular Ethics at 6:10 PM PST - 40 comments
Fritz Lang's
last silent film,
Woman in the Moon, has just been released by
Kino Video in a lovingly restored and remastered edition, expanded to its original running time of 169 minutes. (Prior releases of the film in the US had as much as half of the original footage removed, with altered title cards that completely changed the storyline.)
Woman in the Moon is considered to be
the first real attempt to depict a flight to the moon in film that
wasn't completely fantastic, thanks to the technical input of
Hermann Oberth, who later went on play a key role in the development of the German
V-2 rocket. As a piece of futurism,
Woman in the Moon gets a few things wrong (the Moon of the film has a breathable atmosphere, for one thing), but it's also surprisingly prescient as well (the rocketship that voyages to the moon has multiple stages). Its most significant contribution to popular culture is the reverse countdown to blastoff, which was invented by the filmmakers as a dramatic device.
posted by Prospero at 2:36 PM PST - 10 comments
OK, Seattleites, see the American flag
here ? On the sidewalk below is where your 3rd & Pine McDonalds now sits. Man, I can see five buildings here that are still standing, but that red brick one at the lower right got replaced
early. Now here's the
Northern Life Tower. Note how the bricks lighten towards the top, so as to make it look taller from below--very subtle, that. It's one of Seattle's two Art Deco buildings, the other being the
Exchange Building. You can cut through that one, coming off the ferry at First Avenue and take the elevator to walk out on Second Ave rather than climb that steep hill, you know.
And consider on what
playground equipment our grandparents got to play. Lucky stiffs--you can't even find a decent 50s era swing set in a park in this town anymore.
Penny Postcards From King County, from
Penny Postcards of Washington, from
Penny Postcards. Man, I loves me some vintage postcards. And if you do, too, check that last link--it's got all 50 states.
posted by y2karl at 1:56 PM PST - 17 comments
At what point did the muse disappear and become replaced by the dramaturg?
"Scripts aren't written, they're rewritten", goes the cry from all the script gurus - all the literary managers, editors, producers, dramaturgs - not just in theatre but film, too. Why do they say this? Because their jobs depend on it. If scripts were left alone, what would they do?
Dominic Dromgoole writes about playwriting in the UK.
posted by Panfilo at 12:02 PM PST - 20 comments
R.I.P. SuprNova
Greetings everybody,
As you have probably noticed, we have often had downtimes. This was because it was so hard to keep this site up! But now we are sorry to inform you all, that SuprNova is closing down for good in the way that we all know it.
Apparently something went down last night that prompted this exit from the scene, a great loss indeed as suprnova was the
gold standard for bittorrent sites. From the inside I have also learned work on
exeem is being halted (any beta testers can verify?) trying to head off problems previously
seen here.
posted by gren at 8:45 AM PST - 146 comments
December 18
Predicting who'll benefit from anti-depressants
From the study's abstract: "There are well-replicated, independent lines of evidence supporting a role for corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) in the pathophysiology of depression." The NY Times has a bit
more readable explanation (reg-free link) of a recent investigation of into whether there is a genetic explanation for why some people get more from their drugs than others.
posted by billsaysthis at 1:04 PM PST - 143 comments
Ho Ho Waaaahhhh!!
A lot of kids don't like standing in long lines. A lot of kids don't like strangers (especially ones with big fake beards who are laughing dementedly). A lot of kids don't like having their pictures taken. Put them all together, and you've got the nightmare of the Kid's Photo With Santa, some unfortunate results of which are immortalized in the Scared Of Santa Photo Gallery. (Link is to #2, which is my favorite.)
posted by Kat Allison at 10:50 AM PST - 56 comments
Survey finds support for restricting Muslim-Americans' freedoms
Nearly one in two Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict civil liberties for Muslim-Americans, according to a nationwide Cornell University poll on terrorism fears.
The survey also found respondents who identified themselves as highly religious supported restrictions on Muslim-Americans more strongly than those less religious.
Curtailing civil liberties for Muslim-Americans also was supported more by Republicans than Democrats, the survey found. The amount of attention paid to TV news also had a bearing on how strongly a respondent favored restrictions
posted by Postroad at 6:44 AM PST - 135 comments
Homeland Security - multimedia artist and activist John Douglas portrays himself as a one-man citizen soldier army in a series of provocative photographic tableaus. NSFW.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:08 AM PST - 16 comments
Neurocam.
A billboard appears near a Melbourne freeway entrance inviting people to
"Get out of their mind".
"Those who follow the instructions on the neurocam website are assigned missions, with the threat of grave consequences should these tasks not be carried out. Individuals prove their mettle by completing progressively more complex, riskier assignments - possibly of questionable legality."
from the Age article linked below.
Is it an art project, a cult, a marketing ploy, a game or a psychological experiment? Neurocam says
none of these. Melbourne's Age newspaper
investigates (free reg sometimes req'd). You can also read some blogs from participants
here and
here. Plus it seems to have something to do with
this place dealing in Human Possibility(TM), which makes as little sense as the rest of it.
I'm such a cynic, I still think it is marketing something, but it is fairly extreme.
posted by AnnaRat at 2:08 AM PST - 24 comments
December 17
How well do you know your neighbors?
With the California Megan's Law database, just breeze through the first few pages, and you'll get a map interface searchable by city, zip code, county, etc. Zoom in, and see little icons that tell you the location of registered sex offenders, and schools. Click on one of those little icons, and you'll see pictures, addresses, descriptions of their crimes, scars, and aliases. This strikes me as an internet app that is both cool and entirely creepy.
posted by jasper411 at 4:52 PM PST - 125 comments
Don't miss tonight on PBS the final NOW with Bill Moyers.
"Bill Moyers looks inside the right-wing media machine that the conservative NEW YORK TIMES columnist David Brooks called a "dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system." The program examines how a vast echo chamber that is admittedly partisan and powerfully successful delivers information — and misinformation — with more regard for propaganda than fact. Founding father to the conservative movement, Richard Viguerie tells Moyers, 'That’s what journalism is, Bill. It’s all just opinion. Just opinion.'”
posted by semmi at 3:36 PM PST - 45 comments
"Face-crushing guitars, head-pounding drums, bass so low you'll vacate your bowels, and vocals so scorching, so extreme they simply can't be human!
They're not."
You cannot dodge
the talons of hate.
posted by scrim at 2:59 PM PST - 33 comments
The battle for the NFL
After
EA Games bombshell announcement that it had signed a five-year exclusive licensing deal with the
NFL, many sports games fans are wondering what will happen to their favorite franchises that don't feature
John Madden. You can bet
ESPN is hoppin' mad (and probably Microsoft as well), as are fans of its
NFL 2K series (of which I'm a proud member). Do deals like this hurt the fans or the sport ... or even the gaming industry itself? I certainly think so. Sports is about competition! Oh, no, wait it's about money. Never mind.
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:52 PM PST - 34 comments
Let me on survivor!!!
Oh the lack of justice! Canadians make up 10% of the Survivor audience and yet the show doesn't want to allow canadians to be on the show. This
young courageous man wants to change the rules, and he thinks he
qualifies to be a good survivor. Because after all
'Canadians live in igloos 50% of the year, so we're perfect for outdoor survival reality-tv shows '.
So he's on a crusade to be the first canadian citizen on the show, and ask people to sign his
petition.
posted by Sijeka at 2:49 PM PST - 40 comments
No Xmas in U.S. this year:
Santa on Fed's "No Fly" list. Okay, that's just "
News" from the website of satiric rockers
Bah and the Humbugs, skewering Xmas since 1985. MP3s of the entirety of this year's CD
Farhenheit 12/25 are available
on the website, or you can buy the CD for $10 and all ten sheckles go to the
UN World Food Programme. More tracks
here, including the "Jolly Roger the Xmas Pirate" series and "Free the Reindeer. " Great stuff for that awkward holiday family get-together, where the music won't offend but the
cool lyrics can keep you chuckling to yourself all night.
posted by Shane at 12:44 PM PST - 4 comments
Reflex
is the game responsible for a significant drop in the scores of my final exams. (Friday Flash)
posted by anomie at 11:36 AM PST - 26 comments
Speaking Of weight loss and exercise... Those who like their booze also like their nicotine. People who drink to excess also tend to be chronic smokers, and a new report suggests the combination of the two might prove more toxic than either one alone. a small study found chronic smoking + alcohol dependence = increased severity of brain damage. The frontal lobes (short-term storage sites) turn out to be the most damaged. A separate study used rats to show that alcoholism and excessive food intake may share the same chemical pathways in the brain.
Forbes has the HealthDayNews report that focuses mainly on the smokes,
MSNBC looks more at the eats. They also have an interesting
Addictions Sections. Could it be that some folks are just prone to addictions and everyone settles on something different?
posted by Blake at 10:35 AM PST - 21 comments
Tired? Need a boost?
Everything you ever wanted to know about one of America's favourite energy boosters. This website contains 25 pages covering the history, uses (both legitimate and illegitimate), and biological characteristics of cocaine and the coca plant. An interesting read for those with time to kill (like me). Possibly NSFW.
posted by LunaticFringe at 9:41 AM PST - 10 comments
John Perry Barlow's trial commences
and is commented upon by Seth David Schoen. A most interesting paragraph was:
"First follow-up question: If you think a bottle contains an improvised explosive device, is it appropriate to shake it?
No, that's almost the worst thing you can do.
Second: Is it appropriate to open the bottle?
No, that's the worst thing you can do.
The defense then argued that Ms. Ramos could not really have believed that the ibuprofen bottle in question contained an improved[sic] explosive device, because she had testified that, on removing it from Barlow's bag, she became suspicious of it, then shook it, and then opened it. These actions were the most dangerous actions she could possibly have taken if she really believed that the bottle might contain explosives..."
Followup for
this post.
posted by Captaintripps at 8:39 AM PST - 9 comments
The Floating Logos Project
.
'Floating Logos' is a working title for this project. The images are inspired by signs perched high atop very tall poles in order for people to view them from a very long distance. The poles are digitally removed from the image in order to give the illusion that the signs are disconnected from the ground as they ominously float above us.
posted by Hands of Manos at 6:35 AM PST - 61 comments
Cousin Marriage Conundrum
[...]By fostering intense family loyalties and strong nepotistic urges, inbreeding makes the development of civil society more difficult. Many Americans have heard by now that Iraq is composed of three ethnic groups -- the Kurds of the north, the Sunnis of the center, and the Shi'ites of the south. Clearly, these ethnic rivalries would complicate the task of ruling reforming Iraq. But that's just a top-down summary of Iraq's ethnic make-up. Each of those three ethnic groups is divisible into smaller and smaller tribes, clans, and inbred extended families -- each with their own alliances, rivals, and feuds. And the engine at the bottom of these bedeviling social divisions is the oft-ignored institution of cousin marriage[...]
posted by Postroad at 6:06 AM PST - 36 comments
Slab City, CA
"is not so sinister as it is a strange, forlorn quarter of America. It is a town that is not really a town, a former training grounds with nothing left but the concrete slabs where the barracks stood. [...]
The land belongs to the state, but the state, like the law, does not bother, and so the Slabs have become a place to park free. More than 3,000 elderly people settle in for the winter, in a pattern that dates back at least 20 years." [NYT Reg Req]
posted by LondonYank at 4:56 AM PST - 23 comments
December 16
Pop Vultures,
perhaps the freshest show to grace our radio airwaves in recent years has been cancelled. Host
Kate Sullivan and a collection of friends mused on pop music and associated pop culture with passion, a strong does of "um" and "uh, like" and an always great soundtrack. You can listen (for the moment anyway) to the
archives . R.I.P.
posted by donovan at 8:13 PM PST - 21 comments
FutureIsNowFilter
"
TengoInternet and the
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department announced a pilot program to offer wireless Internet service at five Texas state parks... The wireless service will allow park guests while visiting the park to access the Internet to gain park information, send e-mail or pictures, or just surf the Web, without cords having to physically plug into a network."
Shouldn't be camping be more about nature than technology?
posted by Doohickie at 5:30 PM PST - 31 comments
Evangelical enviromentalists.
"Any kind of pollution that hurts the unborn, children, families and the poor—this is contrary to loving your neighbor, which is at the center of ethical teaching." Maybe there's hope for this world
after all.
posted by fungible at 3:48 PM PST - 31 comments
Told you plastic is nasty....
Most of plastic that somehow reached the ocean floats in the
North Pacific Gyre[look at Currents], an exotic name for an area of the Pacific ocean with a surface larger then U.S.A, dreaded by sailors for its lack of winds and called by some World largest Landfill. The people at
Algalita Marine Research Foundation have made this nice
video[Quicktime] showing how tons and tons of tiny plastic particles have been accumulating
in the area for the last 50 years, slowly entering the food chain. Why does that bother us who live thousand of miles away ? Because we're on the top of the
food chain and because that plastic is a sponge of hazardous chemicals.[Via tpl1212's link in
another unrelated story]
posted by elpapacito at 11:34 AM PST - 44 comments
Free TiVo.
If you are an
American consumer and
live in the Bay Area, the TiVo company on Friday
will give away 40GB Series 2 recorders to Comcast customers who bring their cable bill and a gift for The Family Giving Tree charity to TiVo headquarters in Alviso, Calif. The giveaway will last from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., or until they run out of units, and will be limited to one recorder per household.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 7:50 AM PST - 22 comments
A new species of monkey turned up in India [
NYTimes or
Rediff]. Though the monkeys are new to science, people in the area are quite familiar with them. They call them "mun zala" or deep forest monkeys. It's a stocky, short-tailed, brown-haired creature they have named the Macaca munzala, or Arunachal macaque.
Maybe not that excting for those of us not excited by, uh, mokeys, but did you know this year there have been other new things discovered?
A new species of plec and one of
Neon goby, even more exciting,
a new electric fish was found as well. A quick search turned up dozens of new fish this year.
ABC News says 178 new things found in the oceans this year alone, raising the number of life-forms found in the world's oceans to about 230,000. The big question is, of course, how many of those will
Taste Like Chicken?
The bad news on the little critter front is
1 in 10 bird species could vanish within 100 years, and I bet they all taste like chicken.
posted by Blake at 7:43 AM PST - 16 comments
Ugh...
As if working in an office isn't enough. This is
one toy I will NOT be buying for my kid. I get the irony, but man, how depressing would it be to see this under the xmas tree?
posted by mountainmambo at 5:45 AM PST - 44 comments
Collins Word Exchange
"At Collins we pride ourselves on reflecting current language, used by real English speakers across the world."
Collins have launched a public forum designed for (amongst other things) discussing 'new' words and the legitamacy of their inclusion in official dictionaries.
Chav is probably on its way, but I'm no intellectual snob, but
bounce-backability? Even I'd balk at that one.
And, just remember kids,
flip-flopper is not valid for use in scrabble
posted by qwerty155 at 3:57 AM PST - 8 comments
The worst opening lines to the worst novels never written.
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist
Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.
The original bad opening sentence and inspiration for the contest? From Bulwer-Lytton's novel
Paul Clifford, and made famous by
Snoopy: ""It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
posted by zardoz at 3:40 AM PST - 37 comments
December 15
The great thing about
Ofoto and other photo printing sites is that you can instantly put up photos of an event for your friends to see and get prints made. But sometimes you accidentally leave them public. I give you:
Lindsay Lohan's Thanksgiving.
posted by mathowie at 6:50 PM PST - 75 comments
The Rise and Fall of the Black Voter
is a remarkable sequence of maps graphically describing the realignment of voting patterns in the U.S. during the past century (read
this for a bit more context). It is an excellent companion to the
purple maps of the most recent election, and a nice antidote to
simplistic comparisons of pre-Civil War and recent electoral college maps. Republicans can bask in the glow of their successful "
Southern Strategy," while Democrats can take heart that change, while often slow, is still
possible.
posted by googly at 11:57 AM PST - 7 comments
Where is Miss Beazley?
[Large WMA file] President Bush's dog Barney has a
new home video
this year. The president has asked Barney to look after their new dog, Miss Beazley. It's a bit hokey, but still amusing. Includes a cast of various administration officials.
posted by BradNelson at 10:08 AM PST - 48 comments
Finnish police raid BitTorrent site
"Around 30 volunteers who helped moderate the site were also arrested....MPAA is co-operating in criminal investigations with police in Finland, the Netherlands and France, so it is reasonable to infer that reports of raids in more European countries are likely to surface shortly." I was about to look into using
BitTorrent given the positive
feedback - maybe I should wait.
posted by Voyageman at 2:32 AM PST - 82 comments
Elimination Dance
A quicktime movie based on Michael
Ondaatje's
poem. "The rules of the dance are simple: if the caller announces a circumstance that has occurred in the lifetime of you or your partner, you must leave the dance floor at once."
posted by dhruva at 12:04 AM PST - 29 comments
December 14
Thanks to our
new service you too can spend quality time with Kato Kaelin. Unfortunately, Leon Spinks is currently unavailable. And if you think you might want to sleep or use your phone during the next week, make sure to read the
faq.
posted by alms at 6:48 PM PST - 20 comments
The vOICe:
Seeing with sound {java} “...vertical positions of points in a visual sound are represented by pitch, while horizontal positions are represented by time-after-click. Brightness is represented by loudness. In this manner, pixels become... voicels!”
posted by Cryptical Envelopment at 3:10 PM PST - 26 comments
The Truth About Muslims.
William
Dalrymple, one of those rare historians who can really write (his books
From the Holy Mountain and
White Mughals have gotten rave reviews), takes on Bernard Lewis and gives some fascinating information about the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims through the centuries:
Fletcher also stresses the degree to which the Muslim armies were welcomed as liberators by the Syriac and Coptic Christians, who had suffered discrimination under the strictly Orthodox Byzantines: "To the persecuted Monophysite Christians of Syria and Egypt, Muslims could be presented as deliverers. The same could be said of the persecuted Jews.... Released from the bondage of Constantinopolitan persecution they flourished as never before, generating in the process a rich spiritual literature in hymns, prayers, sermons and devotional work."
posted by languagehat at 2:36 PM PST - 18 comments
One Terabyte?!
I remember the good old days. Back when I was a kid and Gmail revolutionized communication by offering 1 gigabytes of storage to it's users. Well step aside, G. These crazy bikers are giving away 1000 GB accounts with a whopping 500 MB limit on attachments. And no ads?! Is this really possible? Think of the bandwidth.
posted by drpynchon at 2:13 PM PST - 26 comments
Map of the USA
I found this beautiful map in my parent's house and thought I might share it.It was issued by the Secretary of State and handed out to Germans I believe in the late fifties or early sixties.
posted by ronsens at 11:01 AM PST - 79 comments
Bot-a-blog
emails up to 25 blogs (RSS) updates to you,
gregarius lets you roll your own homepage to keep track of all the RSS feeds you read,
sharpreader works on windows
thinfeeder does it with java. How do you take your RSS, with one or two sugars?
posted by dabitch at 8:36 AM PST - 32 comments
Elfster
is a free web-based utility for automating Secret Santa gift exchanges. My office is Holiday-Cheer-Challenged this year, but after finding Elfster, things are looking up. There's nothing a tech company likes more than a new-fangled spin on a classic.
posted by FlamingBore at 7:13 AM PST - 10 comments
A Punk Rock Flyer Archive 1982-1984.
"This site contains an archive of flyers for mostly hardcore punk gigs from the era 1982 to 1984 that took place in Tucson Arizona, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Historical narrative and observations are included as well as stickers, various handbills, and other curiosities from the same era."
posted by greasy_skillet at 7:02 AM PST - 20 comments
December 13
"Same-sex marriage? Euthanasia? Child's play issues in the avant-garde philosophy of Peter Singer"
(Singer has been the subject of
previous MeFi discussions). Having only skimmed those earlier threads, I don't know enough about Singer to usefully comment about the accuracy of World Magazine's interpretation of his views. What I found interesting was the tone of the article. The writer appears at times to bend over backwards to show that, while he thinks Singer's ideas are reprehensible, Singer himself seems like an OK guy (eg. "He approves of polyamory in the abstract but in his own life, to his credit, he has been married for 35 years to one woman"). Is World Magazine (mission: "To report, interpret, and illustrate the news ... from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God") trying to present a balanced portrait of Singer and his views? Or is he being portrayed as a wolf in sheep's clothing? (original link courtesy of
Arts & Letters Daily)
posted by e-man at 11:31 PM PST - 63 comments
The Wisdom of Super Sadhu:
An Indian Sadhu, or holy man, expounds upon sexuality. Entries are scrawled out in a nearly illegible longhand and mailed to
turbanhead, who transcribes them into blog form so the spiruatally bankrupt technoratti can get their learn on. Not to be confused with the other, less sexy
Super Sadhu.
posted by ba at 10:30 PM PST - 9 comments
Safe Personal Computing.
Bruce Schneier,
cited frequently on Metafilter, has a new article on his
blog in which he gives
home users concrete actions they could take to improve security. As the holidays come and I make the rounds to disinfect and repair all my family's computers, I'll be printing this out and sticking copies to their monitors.
posted by sohcahtoa at 2:11 PM PST - 73 comments
Watercolor landscapes
of Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Hungary by Thomas Ender (1793-1875). The main frame for each painting allows you to open a large view, or read about the region depicted.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:23 AM PST - 7 comments
My Wife, The Coffee Table
(Google cache)
Geocities Original (with awful Google Adsense ads covering the text on the right).
While I feel bad for the guy losing his wife at such a young age, I'm not sure that having her interred for all eternity in the living room isn't just a little damned creepy. Especially if he started dating again.
"Some of his friends and relatives, filled with fear, stop visiting Jeff. His true friends respected his decision and continue visiting him." No mention of whether his true family respects his decision and visits him still.
But if you think this is how you'd like to spend eternity or how you'd like your loved on to spend eternity then go hit up
CasketFurniture (who now have a cool casket shaped
pool table too), previously discussed in the Blue
1st here and again
here.
posted by fenriq at 11:02 AM PST - 33 comments
"When one is in prison, the most important thing is the door".
The precise coordination of
every element of filmmaking --
camera distance,
sound,
theme,
narrative,
motion,
color,
human action -- so that it functions with rhythmic clarity: that is the cinema of
Robert Bresson, who
died five years ago aged 98. A "
Christian atheist" by his own description, he made
only 13 films (and a short) and created
a cinema of paradox, in which "the denial of emotion creates emotionally overwhelming works,
the withholding of information makes for narrative density, and attention to '
the surface of the work' produces inexhaustible depth".
Paul Schrader, the
most famous among
Bresson scholars, wrote
that "Bresson has seemed like God himself; distant, beyond communication. Now, like God, Bresson is dead". More inside.
posted by matteo at 10:30 AM PST - 12 comments
The
ancient concept of the
sacred phallus in
spirituality,
art, and
culture (that is, before moralistic taboos attempted to mute phallic representations with fig leaves for the geniality of civilization). Obviously
NSFW.
posted by moonbird at 10:18 AM PST - 6 comments
Six reservists from the unit located in my hometown of Springfield, OH were
court-Martialed for scrounging abandoned military vehicles so they could
do their jobs delivering fuel to troops on the front line. Any other war previous such recycling would have gotten them commendations for resourcefulness, but because this only highlights the administrations lack of troop support and the war's poor equipment disbursement from military contractors showing their incompetence, someone has to pay for doing their jobs.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 10:13 AM PST - 34 comments
Legendary running coach Arthur Lydiard died this weekend at age 87.
Q and A with Lydiard
here. Obit via Boomberg
here. NYTimes obit
here. Lydiard had been travelling through the US on a final lecture tour. Among distance runners Lydiard is a hero. Two of his athletes won gold medals for New Zealand at the 1960 Olympics, and
Peter Snell went on to dominate the middle distance running at the 1964 Games, taking home two gold medals, the only man since 1920 to win both the 800m and the 1500m. Lydiard coached Mexican, Japanese and Finnish runners to Gold medal performances, and his philosophy of training has influenced countless other runners. Finland thought that he was important enough to the success of their runner's to award him the White Cross (eq. of a knighthood), making him the only non-Finn to be given the award. Lydiard's approach was high-mileage, aerobic conditioning. Even his middle distance runners trained 100 miles/week. He felt that too many athletes were training for speed first and endurance second. One of his lectures, explaining some of the science behind his theories, is
here.
posted by OmieWise at 6:12 AM PST - 10 comments
New Power for 'Old Europe'
"Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the European Union has been steadily transforming itself from a facilitator of trade to a sophisticated geopolitical power with the teeth to back up its policies... Over the past decade, EU member states have ceded governing and enforcement authority to Brussels in areas ranging from environmental regulation to food safety, accounting standards, telecommunications policy and oversight of corporate mergers."
posted by Irontom at 5:47 AM PST - 26 comments
Logistical issues threaten to undermine Iraqi elections.
"I just can't see how we can hold these elections," an American consultant working with Iraqi election planners said on the condition of anonymity."
I found out about this story, btw, from someone working on the elections in Baghdad. They write:
"We've got a leak. Someone, an American, is talking to the press. And ___ is *pissed*. It's a good article, though... er, even though I'm not commenting on it. Or expressing an opinion. But if you've got any interest in these elections, you should read it."
They also cited several of the problems they are having:
"Because our meal times are regulated by (KBR), it only allows us about five hours a day . . . with our Iraqi counterparts. Iraqis bolt for home at around 3 PM to avoid being shot in the head or blown up . . . After a mortar attack, car bomb, or any other security related exercise, the US military shuts down the Iraqna mobile phone network . . . We have become the focal point for . . . everything that the Iraqi staff cannot handle . . . which includes getting people (and) equipment into the building, getting water (and) lunch for day laborers, preventing mass resignations due to salary disputes, replacing windows broken by car bombs, removing trash, cleaning toilets, fixing locks, moving (and unpacking) boxes . . . It makes it difficult to get our actual jobs done, although I have forgotten what those are."
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:19 AM PST - 6 comments
December 12
Oops.
Touch-screen errors led to loss of 4,400 ballots in North Carolina election.
posted by drezdn at 3:23 PM PST - 48 comments
Ring vs. finger...finger loses
"
When Marine Lance Cpl. David Battle learned he'd either have to sacrifice his ring finger or the wedding band he wore, he told doctors at a field hospital in Iraq to cut off the finger." Incredibly romantic or incredibly retarded? You decide...
posted by echolalia67 at 2:08 PM PST - 90 comments
Winter in Minnesota
aint nothin like she used to be.
Once upon a time, winter meant more than an extra 15 minutes stuck in traffic in a car with heated seats, a CD player, and a good excuse for getting to work late.
"...After great toil they reached the scene of distress and found many dead; and what was more horrible, the living feeding on the corpses of their relatives."
posted by santiagogo at 11:22 AM PST - 30 comments
Bowed by Age and Battered by an Addicted Nephew
'They went out late. It was ugly weather. Six below zero in the Brooklyn night. Wind took garbage into the air. A blizzard was in the forecast. It was Lincoln's Birthday, 2003, in Brighton Beach. Not a night for humankind, but the sisters, one 73 and the other 70, didn't get holidays off, didn't get snow days.
In years of miserable low points, it was one of the lowest. As they had done the day before and the day before that, Lillian and Julia hobbled out to Coney Island Avenue, a lineup of chromatic storefronts, to beg from strangers in their cars. They were known out there, regulars among the mendicants. The money was for their bilious nephew and his crack habit, their own blood who was smoking up their lives. He had already cost them their house, their savings, their dignity. "I need one more," he would tell them when he desired a hit, "one more."
Not comply and he would fly into crazed tirades, blacken an eye, bruise their ribs. It had been this way for years, since their lives stopped being comprehensible. '
[From the New York Times; they'll want registration, if you haven't already.]
posted by davy at 8:05 AM PST - 18 comments
December 11
A Senior Moment
The sign of a good specialist writer is the ability to amuse those who aren't specialists, or even enthusiasts, of their particular field. Dan Neil of LA Times is probably the most entertaining automotive writing around. Here, regarding the Montego, he asks the Mercury people, "What were you thinking?" (Registration might be necessary). He's also funny when doing positive reviews, as when
drooling over the Acura. No particular car lust required.
posted by QuietDesperation at 11:25 PM PST - 17 comments
19th Century Etiquette: For Gentlemen
How to keep yourself from looking like an ass if you happen to go back in time. Funny. "If one is walking with a friend, and happens to run into another, one is not obligated--indeed, one is discouraged--to introduce them to each other. So one can completely ignore the first friend while carrying on a conversation with the second, leaving the first to smile absent-mindedly, look in window shops, and half-heartedly laugh at comments you make even though he really has no idea what you're talking about."
posted by Count Ziggurat at 4:18 PM PST - 27 comments
Pause Online
(Flash, QT content) An eclectic collection of music videos by various directors (Spike Jonze, Michael Gondry) and in certain categories (New York New York, French New Wave, Sonic Animation).
Flash navigation sucks but you do get Matchbox 20!
posted by Cryptical Envelopment at 12:56 PM PST - 20 comments
1 million U.S. troops have gone to war The data also show that one out of every three of those service members has gone more than once. The Pentagon says more than
5,500 servicemen have deserted since the war started in Iraq.
Few experts are surprised to hear that a recent army survey discovered that half the soldiers were not planning to re-enlist. Experts are divided over how stretched America’s military really is. But they agree that another conflict would put the military in overdrive. Another war would require a shift to a “no-kidding wartime posture in which everybody who could shoot was given a rifle and sent to the front,” according to John Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org. -
US Army plagued by desertion and plunging morale.
posted by y2karl at 12:04 PM PST - 52 comments
Following up on a
previous discussion of the goings-on in Ukraine, it's now a CNN front-page story:
Viktor Yushchenko was, in fact, poisoned with dioxin.
"There is no doubt about the fact that Mr. Yushchenko's disease has been caused by a case of poisoning by dioxin," Zimpfer said. "What we can say at this point is that this concentration constitutes an amount which is 1,000 times above the normal levels that you would find in blood or tissue... We have made a final diagnosis as well as an additional diagnosis, that we suspect a cause triggered by a third party. So there is suspicion of third party involvement... We can state that there has been an oral intake," he said, adding that it was not known if it was from eating or drinking.
I am currently smoothing the crinkles out of my tin-foil hat in preparation for its constant use throughout the rest of my life. (Or do you think it works better if it's crinkled?)
posted by logovisual at 11:21 AM PST - 28 comments
In 1992
Chika Honda was a 36-year-old Japanese woman who accepted an offer from a regular customer, Mistuo at the pub she worked nights in, to join him and his brothers on a
holiday to Australia - her first ever overseas trip. During a stopover in Kuala Lumpur their suitcases were stolen. Charlie, a business associate of Mistuo, offered to sort everything out and returned the next morning with their belongings in a new set of suitcases, claiming their luggage had been slashed with a knife. When the group arrived in Melbourne, customs found 13kg of heroin in the lining of their suitcases. Chika and the others were
arrested, investigated, charged and later tried and sentenced.
Chika was eventually released and
deported in 2002 after having served 10 years in Victorian prisons. She still maintains
her innocence. Several documentaries about this case, known in Japan as the Melbourne Incident have been aired in
Japan but very little coverage has been given in
Australia. In one of the documentaries,
Charlie completely exonerates Chika (PDF : See page 5). In 2002, her
Japanese lawyers filed a
submission to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva to clear her name. Two years later and nothing has yet been achieved. The Australian government
still admits no miscarriage of justice.
But she'll be right mate, we Aussies
know
what we're doing.
posted by DirtyCreature at 3:07 AM PST - 34 comments
December 10
Scrooge Good
Dr. Landsburg is not always correct or clear when he tries to show how us how to best think counter-intuitively. But, he might be onto something here. His recommendation to make "saving" more tax free is probably a great one.
posted by narebuc at 11:54 PM PST - 11 comments
241 titles on 282 disks, just $4,995 (after discount).
It's the Criterion Collection Holiday 2004 Gift Set, exclusive from Amazon, all of the series' published DVD's through October*. One wonders who has the money for such a thing. (Not many -- current sales rank 26,154). Heck, for that kind of dough you can get one of these
contraptions. Or, alternatively, you could feed
72 third world children for a year. Now, Criterion does great work, but as the comments point out, this supposedly complete collection does not include its out of print titles like John Woo's "The Killer"
(current eBay bid: $148) and, sadly, the beloved
This is Spinal Tap (High bid: $61). (At least it's a good investment). So, subtract the ones I already own and love, like
The Third Man and some that are
simply awful you could probably save scads with some selective shopping. Sure, it would be satisfying to own so much great film, but I find more and more I have no use for re-watching movies, unless I am joined in my
satellite of love by some good companions. Anyway, happy consumer month!
posted by Slagman at 11:54 PM PST - 34 comments
Cower in fear girly-men for Crom has finally answered our prayers and brought to us a band which unites
Arnold Schwarzenegger with the awesome forces of
metal. Witness the awe-inspiring, towering colossus of sonic force that is
ArnoCorps.
(via BoingBoing and previously here)
Intrinsic within the genre, these songs are full of exotic, mysterious and unbelievable details, which are often critical of society and convey the views of the oppressed. It is this standpoint which has lead to ArnoCorps' aggressive sound and physical presence, which accentuate the emotive forces within the tales they convey. We insist that these songs not be experienced as audio or text alone. To truly experience the splendor that is ArnoCorps, you must go see them live. Come on! Do it now!!!
posted by euphorb at 11:07 PM PST - 3 comments
Gay divorce
Well, if the track record of straight marriages is any indication, this was bound to happen sooner or later. "Less than seven months after same-sex couples began tying the knot in Massachusetts, the state is seeing ts first gay divorces."
posted by livingsanctuary at 9:21 PM PST - 20 comments
RealClimate is a blog written by nine working climatologists from around the world (all experts in their field), focusing on explaining climate science, providing context to current reports in the mainstream media, and rebutting the fallacious arguments of carbon lobby hacks. (
via World Changing)
posted by stbalbach at 8:49 PM PST - 6 comments
I was in the Blackhawk mentioned in the above story,
which is mostly accurate. I, along with six others, were on a mission last night heading into Mosul. An Apache was flying next to us. Some say that the Apache took evasive action after
being targeted by an RPG. Unfortunately, in doing so, it collided w/ our helicopter and tore off our rotors completely. The Blackhawk then fell to the ground. Good thing was that we were pretty low to the ground when the collision occurred. Otherwise, there's no way I'm here right now.
So begins a letter home from my brother, a grueling first-hand narrative from the front, so-to-speak. I have been putting his photos and letters home
online for family and friends and thought some of you might appreciate reading what it's like to be over there.
posted by Qubit at 8:21 PM PST - 35 comments
Australian Snapshots
is one of those
"give lots of people disposable cameras to take photos of their lives during a particular time" photo collections. In this case, the pictures were taken by Australians in regional areas during the 2004 Olympics.
I know there are lots of these projects around, but they can often turn the ordinary into interesting or capture those things iconic to that community.
posted by AnnaRat at 7:55 PM PST - 6 comments
An Epidemic!
A kinda-not-so-scientific study of the celebrity "exhaustion" epidemic, from the NY Observer:
There was no discernible difference in recovery time for patients who smoked and had sex with visitors (19.9 percent), but fatigue levels remained consistently high in patients who drank large amounts of wine and cried more than four hours per day (22.3 percent). Poor little Lindsay Lohan, working herself into the hospital--a modern-day
little match girl, no?
posted by amberglow at 6:20 PM PST - 14 comments
Patentlysilly.com
- a semi-regular rundown of strange, cool, scary, and silly patents. For the last 2 sets of entries, the authors have decided to become poetic...
posted by pitchblende at 3:05 PM PST - 10 comments
Noted British atheist
Antony Flew has
changed his mind, persuaded by scientific evidence that
God exists and that "intelligence must have been involved" in the origin of life. As Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the University of Reading and the author of
several influential books on the subject of atheism, Flew was once one of rationalism's leading lights. He now compares his beliefs with the predominantly American concept of
Intelligent Design. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads," he says.
posted by gd779 at 1:38 PM PST - 172 comments
The Curse of the Family Palsgraf.
"In the eight decades since the New York Court of Appeals in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad outlined the two competing theories of proximate cause, a branch of the Palsgraf family has been beset by bad luck, serious injuries and losing lawsuits, just like their matriarch, Helen Palsgraf."
posted by adrober at 12:28 PM PST - 16 comments
HBO's Deadwood
is quite possibly the best television show ever produced. Not only is it amazingly gripping stuff, it's also meticulously researched. (Pretty easy to do when the
entire city is a registered
historic landmark.)
Sure, we all know that
Wild Bill and
Calamity Jane were real people. As it turns out, though, almost
every main character in the show (and many minor ones) had a real life counterpart, as did many of the
events.
Deadwood notables
EB Farnum,
Reverend H W Smith,
Seth Bullock and his partner
Sol Star,
Colorado Charlie Utter,
Al Swerengen with his Gem Saloon, and the crosseyed gambler
Jack McCall all lived and breathed in one of America's most storied cities.
posted by absalom at 10:18 AM PST - 82 comments
The world's first multinational
I found this informative piece via Arts&Letters. "Corporate greed, the ruination of traditional ways of life, share-price bubbles, western imperialism: all these modern complaints were made against the British East India Company in the 18th century. Nick Robins draws the lessons...
posted by Postroad at 9:07 AM PST - 12 comments
has the media hit the "mute" button?
the news is chock-full of accounts of a soldier challenging rumsfeld with a question that makes the news media look like the pack of lap dogs they are. so - where's the audio? the video? i, for one, want to hear those thousands of soldiers respond to the question.
posted by subpixel at 8:27 AM PST - 68 comments
A large number of people really don't know the finer points of search. For those people, Google has a
suggestion.
posted by Mick at 7:07 AM PST - 46 comments
Creationists argue that the complexity of the
human eye could not have arrisen by random Darwinian natural selection, since it "must be perfect to work at all". The
Nilsson and Pelger computer experiment refutes this with a method of awesome beauty, showing that a human-quality eye is not just possible under Darwinian evolution, but nigh-inevitable. This is from
Do Good By Stealth, chapter 3 of
River Out of Eden, which is maybe the greatest thing I've ever read.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:39 AM PST - 67 comments
Su Doku.
Fill in the grid so that every row, every column, and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. That's all there is to it. It doesn't sound like much, but it's as addictive as hell.
The Times is one publication with a daily puzzle (may be unavailable to overseas readers.) There a tuturial and sample puzzle
here (flash).
posted by salmacis at 5:18 AM PST - 6 comments
Less than 60 percent of federal homeland-security funding sent to New York State this year has ended up in New York City.
New York’s elected officials often complain about the way the Department of Homeland Security distributes money. They repeat the finding that America spends more money per capita securing Wyoming than protecting New York State. Quietly, however, New York officials in both parties have created a local copy of Congress’ spending priorities, distributing money to places like remote Wyoming County.
For example, Ontario County (pop. 100,000) is purchasing a climate-controlled mobile command post, said Jeffrey Harloff, director of the county’s emergency-management office. Mr. Harloff will buy the vehicle with his share of the Department of Homeland Security’s main grant to the state. How will he use the command post? It depends on who’s asking.
"If it’s the federal government asking me, it is for the intended purpose of W.M.D. incidents and HazMat incidents," Mr. Harloff said. "In reality, we’re going to use it for everyday stuff in our office."
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 1:56 AM PST - 41 comments
December 9
We will flirt for you for free!
Virtual Wingman will write a funny email to the hot girl or guy you just met and will try to sweep them off their feet for you. Or apologize to your date for being a boor. Just fill out a
form. Also, totally free.
posted by onlyconnect at 11:03 PM PST - 11 comments
"Other ingredients include BEEF TRIPE, BEEF HEARTS, AND 'PARTIALLY DE-FATTED COOKED PORK FATTY TISSUE' How does one de-fat fat? Bizarre. God knows what else is in
here."
posted by Specklet at 2:09 PM PST - 51 comments
Don't put a restraining order on God
the toughest challenge of living in a democracy is to respect the freedom of other people to live according to values that are not your own. Real freedom, however, does not thrive in a moral vacuum (the ardent secularist) or a moral straightjacket (the ardent theocratic). What does my ideal of democracy look like? I can sum it up in a single sentence: A person arrives at faith freely, practices it openly, and uses dialogue with others about their own life path to deepen their understanding. another interesting read from the same webpage: God is not a Republican or a Democrat:
the Religious Right does not speak for you. Remind America that Jesus taught us to be peacemakers, advocates for the poor, and defenders of justice.. this article is a little dated, but it is relevant for people who choose to accept Jesus as the Christ but do not want someone's political agenda attached to their belief system.
posted by Hands of Manos at 11:59 AM PST - 127 comments
The New Games Journalism
is a manifesto written earlier this year in an attempt to re-shape the way that video game reviews are written, moving away from a stats-based view (these are the weapons, the graphics quality is X, the A.I. is as good as Y), and toward a more narrative approach. The goal, essentially, should be to convey to the reader what it's actually like to play the game. Be sure to follow the link to
"Bow, Nigger" as an example.
This review of Eve Online (pdf) is another good example. Are other areas of media criticism in need of a revolution?
posted by mkultra at 9:01 AM PST - 20 comments
Fluffy Kittens' Lunar Wheel Calendar
gives a different turn to scheduling for 2005. Download high-resolution images -- free under Creative Commons license -- and construct your own, or opt for a ready-made color poster.
Disclaimer: No actual fluffy kittens involved in this post.
posted by LinusMines at 7:47 AM PST - 17 comments
David Brudnoy
-- Boston-area political commentator,
film critic, and
memoirist -- is close to death. After a debilitating illness ten years ago, Brudnoy has given a public face to
living with AIDS, and has used his renown to found an organization for AIDS research. Last night, his final interview served as a public wake for his friends, his loyal listeners, and local government officials who sparred with him on his show.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:21 AM PST - 9 comments
"Kriminalz?"
Appears to be two German guys attempting to rap while wearing construction hats. German or not, how can this be for real?
posted by asbates2 at 2:32 AM PST - 22 comments
December 8
Republican environmental politics as usual?
While the president's policies seem to be standard for his party, Bill Moyers thinks there's more than meets the eye. On receiving Harvard medical school's Global Environment Citizen Award, Moyers posits that destruction of the environment isn't just good for big business, it's a self fulfilling prophecy of the apocalypse. Not just any old apocalypse, it's
The Rapture, complete with plagues for the non-believers and immmediate ascension to the right hand of God Himself for the righteous.
Two days after Moyer's speech, Science magazine looks at
the scientific consensus on global warming. If you're having a hard time explaining all this to your kids, don't worry, your
tax dollars are hard at work.
posted by jimray at 9:32 PM PST - 51 comments
Dear Cell Phone User
(pdf): We are aware that your ongoing conversation about [insert topic here] is very important to you, but we thought you'd like to know that it doesn't interest us in the least. In fact, your babbling disregard for others is more than a little annoying. (
via and
via) SHHH!
posted by shoepal at 8:39 PM PST - 70 comments
Beware ... step away from the laptop.
Laptop computers may damage male fertility.
Dr. Yefim Sheynkin of the State University of New York (Stony Brook) reports in the journal Human Reproduction. "Laptops, which reach high internal operating temperatures, can heat up the scrotum which could affect the quality and quantity of men’s sperm." "...Sheynkin, director of male infertility and microsurgery at the university. 'Don't get me wrong -- the laptop computer is very useful and helpful. But
we need to be cautious.' "
posted by ericb at 8:34 PM PST - 29 comments
Palestinian opinions.
A poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center indicates a dramatic decline in Palestinian support for acts of violence targeting Israelis. For the first time since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000, a majority of Palestinians, some 52%, oppose violence against Israel.
Palestinian opposition to attacks on Israelis is up 25% since last June.
Original report is here in pdf.
Is the intifada finished?
If so should Arafat be awarded a second Nobel Peace Prize for dying?
posted by Ugandan Discussions at 4:46 PM PST - 25 comments
Assorted Street Posters
-
"This collection of street posters, mad scribblings, political screeds, religious rants, and paranoid raves was collected on the streets of New York City from 1985 to the present. Some time ago, it occurred to me that the streets are as full of art as, say, thrift shops are full of great paintings. . ." (via cmonkey via undule) (this is my 7th post please be gentle)
posted by neckro23 at 4:06 PM PST - 12 comments
Homeless Iraq vets showing up at shelters
U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.
posted by Postroad at 3:30 PM PST - 43 comments
How many consumer products are so loved that users create elaborate animations to showcase their enthusiasm?
Only one that I can think of. (He has apparently had problems with having enough bandwidth to host the video, so you'll need to follow the "On to the iPod mini ad" link on his page to get to the mirror du jour.)
I'm behind the iPod curve here, because despite being a gadget guy, a music guy, and a (kind-of) internet and computer guy, I didn't get one until a few months ago. I must say it has changed my outlook on life, especially when driving, because instead of constantly cursing while switching radio stations every 10 seconds, I now carry my own radio station with me, and it never plays any songs I hate. (my first post, please be gentle!)
posted by centerpunch at 3:00 PM PST - 51 comments
The Poetry of Henry Reed
Available online, not just his poems (including his most famous "Naming of Parts") but also audio of him reading, biography, drama, and criticism. Need a recommendation? Sophomore Clifford R. of my English Ten class proclaimed "Naming of Parts" as "wickedly, pathetically awesome!"
posted by John of Michigan at 1:51 PM PST - 5 comments
Extinct is forever.
Or is it? Scientists are hard at work reconstructing entire genomes of our common ancestors. The present technology is a far cry from Jurassic Park, but we're getting there.
posted by mowglisambo at 12:58 PM PST - 9 comments
The artist Gustav Klimt
began his
career by creating classical realist murals for public buildings in Vienna. Soon, his innovations and experiments became too controversial for further government-commissioned work, illustrating the
changes in society taking place around him. Klimt’s sensual paintings (which sometimes included nudity) shocked some, as did his experiments in form. Since his father was an engraver, Klimt took to using gold in his work, creating a distinct style. You’ve probably seen at least his most famous work,
The Kiss.
People can see Klimt’s work in person, including the spectacular “
Beethoven Frieze” wall cycle, at the
Secession Museum in
Vienna.
On-line, there’s
this database of about 100 works, searchable by title, year, theme and technique. Another gallery of 114 works is
here, and for landscapes, try
these.
posted by jeffmshaw at 12:13 PM PST - 25 comments
Developer in space?
Oracle has announced sweepstakes to send a developer into orbit. Answer a quiz and win a sub-orbital space flight. Contest is open to software developers who work with Oracle software in connection with their employment. Start cramming. Good luck! (And for the rest, with a $10,000 deposit for the $98,000 ticket, nothing stops us from booking our own space flight with
Space Adventures.)
posted by jellybuzz at 11:52 AM PST - 6 comments
Introducing
Bob Jones University, a liberal arts, nondenominational Christian university in South Carolina. BJU stands "
without apology for the old-time religion and the absolute authority of the Bible." The
University Creed explains more.
New Age, jazz, rock, and country music is still not permitted on campus. Women's hairstyles. "
should be neat, orderly, and feminine. Avoid cutting-edge fads and cuts so short that they take on a masculine look." BJU believes that "
biblical principles preclude gambling, dancing, and the beverage use of alcohol" -- just ask
the new Dean of Men [QuickTime]. The current president of Bob Jones University,
Bob Jones III, recently wrote a congratulatory letter to President Bush:
"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America--though she doesn't deserve it--a reprieve from the agenda of paganism." You might recall that they just recently
lifted their ban on inter-racial dating, but a
parents' note is still required.
posted by ori at 11:22 AM PST - 138 comments
War on Drugs -
Do you remember it? A call for support of this amorphous war has been trumpeted by every American President from
Nixon through
Clinton. The current guy, has associated himself (at least a little bit) with the
Drug War in the previous campaign but current policy,
not so much. What I’m curious about is the actual phrase, the concept of War on Drugs. It looks like we still dedicate
large sums of money to the effort. It seems to me that we just don’t use the phrase much anymore. Did we
win? Did we
lose? Do we just want to
forget about it? Or, did we repackage the endeavor under a
new name? I tend to think we are not capable of waging more than one war against
the nameless other at a given time. It would just be too scary. So, I think maybe we're bundling the
War on Terror and the
War on Drugs under a
new brand name.
posted by Crackerbelly at 10:07 AM PST - 31 comments
25 years in a non-existant war
In 1979, a Khmer Rouge guerrilla fled to the hills of Cambodia when his village was attacked by Vietnamese troops. He and a small group of friends and family lived in the dense forests for 25 years, emerging in 2004 to discover that the war was over and that Pol Pot was dead. They had been fearful of any human contact, believing everyone to be the enemy.
posted by BradNelson at 9:44 AM PST - 17 comments
People talk about how universities have almost turned into
diploma mills, churning out degrees to almost anyone that breathes. So what do students think about the current situation?
According to this student, it doesn't go far enough: "
I have come to the conclusion that the University system makes absolutely no sense. Students pay teachers to educate us, yet they are then allowed to tell us how much we're learning...I'll be the one to tell the receiver of my hard-earned money exactly how well they did. Shouldn't it be the same with education?" That's right, students want, nay, demand an A, since they paid for it.
posted by mathowie at 9:03 AM PST - 77 comments
Deconstructing Dude
A linguist from the University of Pittsburgh has published a
scholarly paper deconstructing and deciphering the word "dude," contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate
surfers,
slackers and
teenagers. An admitted dude-user during his college years,
Scott Kiesling said the four-letter word has many uses, all of which express closeness between men in a safely heterosexual manner. How about you? Do you do the dude? If so, does that mean you're
white [PDF]?
posted by owenville at 8:56 AM PST - 32 comments
Whitewashing Torture.
"On June 15, 2003, Sgt. Frank 'Greg' Ford, a counterintelligence agent in the California National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence (M.I.) Battalion stationed in Samarra, Iraq, told his commanding officer, Capt. Victor Artiga, that he had witnessed five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at his base, and requested a formal investigation. Thirty-six hours later, Ford, a 49-year-old with over 30 years of military service in the Coast Guard, Army and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel to lie down on a gurney, was then strapped down, loaded onto a military plane and medevac'd to a military medical center outside the country."
(Salon, day pass req.)
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:32 AM PST - 15 comments
Quzzle.
Using the basic 'dad's puzzle', a 5X4 grid with a number of blocks, Jim Lewis calculated the most difficult solvable variation (yes of course that's quibbleable). Read more
here.
posted by biffa at 3:14 AM PST - 21 comments
December 7
