skip to main content
March 31
Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs (SOMNIA)
A news aggregator since when there weren't many news aggregators. SOMNIA is a great geopolitical gift from the Canadian Forces College. From the Guardian to the Christian Science Monitor, from the Washington Times to the Washington Post, many military and geopolitical news articles aggregated on a daily basis, segregated into Canadian News, Canadian Commentary, International News and International commentary I myself have been a fan since before the war on Kosovo. Enjoy!
posted by furtive at 11:27 PM PST - 5 comments
Myron Krueger
began his pioneering work in interactive art in 1969. He was one of the first to explore the aesthetics of interactivity with his "responsive environments." While preparing a talk that included a reminiscence of Krueger demoing
Videoplace in the 80s, I was surprised he'd not yet merited even a stub in the Wikipedia. While that may eventually motivate me to register and start the page, for now, I will just share some links. [more inside, including videos]
posted by KS at 11:15 PM PST - 2 comments
Need a lift? Google Labs presents
RideFinder. Amazing. Oh yeah, and remember that 1 GB quota on Gmail?
It's gone. They're bumping it up to 2 GB as we speak, but they are indicating they will continue to bump it up as needed.
If you have a Gmail account, log out and check out the wacky graph and counter on the login page.
posted by keswick at 11:14 PM PST - 39 comments
ACLU seeks Sanchez perjury investigation.
As a followup to
yesterday's post, the ACLU has
sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Gonzales, requesting an investigation of Gen. Ricardo Sanchez for perjury before Congress. Sanchez is accused of lying about approving guidelines for the use of abusive interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib prison.
Now, many of you might think that Gonzales might refuse this request and be done with it. However, the ACLU has the right to request a
writ of mandamus, which would compel Gonzales to initiate an investigation.
If Sanchez is investigated, will he be pressured to reveal the identity of those in the Pentagon / Bush administration (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney,
Cambone?!) who knew about and possibly ordered these policies?
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:33 PM PST - 28 comments
The
little bug eats the
bigger bug, and
"[i]t's bad news for beekeepers, farmers and anybody who likes to eat." An invading parasite imperils the American honeybee -- and your fruit basket. In only six months
"40 percent to 60 percent of the bees nationwide have perished". And
"that, in turn, hampers production of about one third of the human diet, including almonds, apples, strawberries, cherries, blueberries, sunflowers, melons and cranberries."
posted by orthogonality at 2:20 PM PST - 22 comments
Jump Jim Crow, through the hoops of one Robert Christgau's erudition as he surveys the literature extant in
In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter, through multiple readings of
Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop,
Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World and and
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Consider, too,
The Minstrel Cycle from
Reading The Commitments and other various and sundry attempts to peek
inside the minstrel maskall multiple readings reading blackface minstrels from the
pejorative to the
explorative, subversive to oppressive, past to future, unfolding tesseractly, if not exactly, with singing, dancing
and extraordinary elocutions. Buy your tickets and step within for
The Meller Drammer of Minstrelsy in
The Minstrel Show 2.0
posted by y2karl at 12:55 PM PST - 17 comments
The Valve, "a literary organ", is a new group blog devoted to literary studies and modelled on little magazines gone by.
posted by kenko at 12:31 PM PST - 3 comments
Rape, Torture, and Lies
An ongoing Canadian saga has a sad new twist today: photojournalist
Ziba Zahra Kazemi was likely brutally tortured and raped before her death in Iran in 2003. Arrested after a demonstration, the official Iranian line has been that her death was an accident due to injuries from a fall. The ER doctor who treated her has now spoken out, after being granted refugee status in Canada.
Wikipedia has an excellent outline of the entire story.
posted by livii at 9:52 AM PST - 65 comments
The Single Man's Guide to TV Dinners
Teetering on the fine line between parody and sincerity, Ray guides us through the perilous world of TV dinners.
The box cover boasts "Extra Helpings of Beef Enchilada..". As I mentioned earlier, the dinner only contains one beef enchilada. What is an "Extra Helping"?The cheese-to-meat-to-vegetable ratio is appropriate. After eating a few slices, you won't be left with a strange aftertaste.
posted by chrismear at 8:12 AM PST - 33 comments
Fitness to Practice is a collection of songs written and performed by Amateur Transplants, two practicing doctors from the UK. The album consists of
original songs as well as witty parodies of songs originally performed by among others
Tom Lehrer and
The Jam (mp3 links). The lyrics contain a lot of medical in-jokes, but the humour is broad enough to appeal to everyone.
posted by bap98189 at 6:01 AM PST - 9 comments
March 30
National Review's Heather McDonald responds to columnist Steven Levy's question:
Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? "Could it be that the premise of the 'diversity' crusade is wrongthat there are not in fact hordes of unknown, competitively talented non-white-male journalists held back by prejudice? Dont even entertain the thought. Steven Levy certainly doesnt. 'It appears that some clubbiness is involved'that is, that white male bloggers only link to other white male bloggers." Do we need a race-based quota for web journalism? As racial identity is often anonymous, where would we start?
posted by jenleigh at 11:04 PM PST - 59 comments
Phila Lawyer
reads like fiction (awesome, Hunter S. Thompson -esque fiction --
Part 1,
2 ) to outsiders, but that might just be because it's so fucking good.
The lawyers commiserating in the comments, at least, think it's real.
The navigation is cumbersome -- if you're not careful, you'll come into a story in the middle. For your perusal, then, I've laid a few out:
Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Part 1, 2
Part 1, 2, 3, 4
posted by Tlogmer at 9:48 PM PST - 7 comments
The Cat is back.
After a hiatus of over 20 years,
Yusuf "Cat Stevens" Islam is back with his first original song (as opposed to the voice-and-drum
Islamic songs he did occasionally). Previously discussed
here when he was deported from the US for allegedly being on a "terrorist watchlist", Islam has had a change of heart when it comes to playing the music he shunned for so long. "Music is a lady that I still love because she gives me the air that I breathe," he quotes from one of his old songs. "We need all sorts of nourishment. And music satisfies and nourishes the hunger within ourselves for connection and harmony. It's part of God's universe." His new song
Indian Ocean is now available on iTunes, with all proceeds going to victims of the tsunami disaster.
posted by laz-e-boy at 7:47 PM PST - 15 comments
There's a new DVD on GG Allin.
Born
Jesus Christ Allin he was a front-man of the
still-touring Murder Junkies. An
overdose in 1993 did him in. A profile,
Hated:GG Allin and The Murder Junkies, was made just before his
death and features a portion of his
strange funeral. Needless to say, his
lyrics and well, his life are NSFW.
"...That audience is there for me. I'm not a performance artist or any of that, I'm not out to please anyone. Just me. Rock'n'roll has to be destroyed and rebuilt in my name if it's ever gonna accomplish anything. It's not about being in some clique, it's for people who don't fit in with any thing....I believe I am the highest power, absolutely. I am in control at all times. Jesus Christ, God, and Satan all in one." -
GG, in an interview
posted by john at 4:16 PM PST - 49 comments
Anything goes.
A Libyan court began hearing an appeal by five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who face the death penalty for allegedly infecting 380 children with the AIDS virus, in spite of testimony from Luc Montaignier, the French doctor who first isolated the HIV virus, and Swiss and Italian colleagues, that the epidemic was due to a lack of hygiene. Tripoli has said that in exchange for the freedom of the nurses, it wants compensation equal to that paid by Libya to relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie plane bombing carried out by its secret service in 1988. (Yahoo/AFP news)
posted by semmi at 2:23 PM PST - 18 comments
Camouflaged and Walking octopuses
Octopus marginatus and Octopus (Abdopus) aculeatus, that walk along the seafloor using two alternating arms and apparently use the remaining six arms for camouflage.
posted by dov3 at 12:06 PM PST - 23 comments
Robert Creeley,
one of the most exquisite and influential poets of our era, died this morning at age 78. I'd link to a story, but it's not in the news yet. This is a note from one of Robert's friends: "American poet Robert Creeley passed away this morning at 6:15 am in Odessa, Texas, where he was fulfilling a Residency at the Lannan Foundation. (Mr. Creeley was a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.) His wife of twenty-eight years, Penelope, and son Will and daughter Hannah were at his side. The cause of death was complications from respiratory disease." Though a
comrade and muse for Beat Generation writers like
Allen Ginsberg and
Jack Kerouac, Creeley was much less well-known, and had a style rather unlike theirs, distinguished by extreme economy of words and an understated approach toward emotion. Creeley was often cited as a pioneer by the so-called
language poets, and his most creatively generative friendship was with another poet's poet, the late
Charles Olson. Creeley's subtlety and balance will be missed.
posted by digaman at 9:17 AM PST - 38 comments
The Aurora
(mostly pictures, slightly more info
here). One car, two men, three decades of rust. Guy buys truly hideous 1957 prototype car from junkyard, restores it to gleaming unsightliness. Conne_ticut?
posted by planetkyoto at 8:19 AM PST - 28 comments
Conscientious Objector
Policy Act would allow Michigander doctors and health care providers to refuse treatment on moral, ethical or religious grounds. Yet another OMG MORALZ OMG sort of bill. But wait, what are morals? And does
Nicole Kidman figure into this somehow?
posted by taursir at 8:06 AM PST - 59 comments
WebWaste.net
"WebWaste is an Internet rubbish dump; a collective yet anonymous dustbin, open to all Internet users. By going onto WebWaste you can browse through the rubbish and inspect what Internet users before you have thrown
away. This might include images, texts, sounds and movie clips. WebWaste collects trash from your own computer's Recycle Bin and uploads it to the waste dump through the downloadable Dustman-application. This process too is anonymous so no one can know who threw what away."
posted by dhoyt at 6:11 AM PST - 15 comments
Sanchez Perjury Proof ? That depends on the meaning of "never"
Mainstream media once again caught with pants down as
blogger citizen-journalist notes apparent perjury by Gen. Sanchez during
testimony before the US Congress concerning whether he authorized torture or not. The
Globe and Mail noticed the
ACLU release of a FOIA-obtained memo showing that Sanchez did in fact authorize torture, but the implication of perjury seems to have escaped MSM notice, to be pointed out by a
blogger Metafilter's own citizen journalist Mark Kraft, who declares :
"Sanchez is clearly guilty of perjury, and should face the wrath of Congress... and the Senate should determine the guilt of his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, while they're at it."The case all hinges on the meaning of the word "never" which - rumor holds - is much more flexible in Sanchez' native "Never-never Land" where - as with the rumored numerous Eskimo terms for different kinds of snow - denizens of that realm have many different meanings for "never", some of which in fact mean "sometimes" or "occasionally" !
posted by troutfishing at 5:53 AM PST - 62 comments
March 29
So the story as I understand it is that
this guy (.mp3) is a manager for a
Jack in the Box restaurant. He was on his way to a meeting, was running a little late and called in to leave a voicemail message. While he was leaving the message, he witnessed an auto accident and basically gives us play-by-play of the events. It's pretty entertaining, but I'm not sure if I completely believe it. Apparently it was quite the talk within the
Jack in the Box family.
posted by Witty at 7:00 PM PST - 25 comments
Johnnie Cochran, R.I.P.
"Cochran died at his home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles of an inoperable brain tumor, according to his brother-in-law Bill Baker. His wife and his two sisters were with him at the time of his death.
"Cochran, his family and colleagues were secretive about his illness to protect the attorney's privacy as well as the network of Cochran law offices that largely draw their cachet from his presence. But Cochran confirmed in a Sept. 2004 interview with The Times that he was being treated by the eminent neurosurgeon Keith Black at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles."
posted by allaboutgeorge at 3:27 PM PST - 91 comments
Get Me a Faith Healer, STAT!
Marvin Andrews, a Trinidadian and Tobagoan defender with the Glasgow Rangers, sustained damage to his knee that team doctors say requires surgery to repair. He's decided that God will repair him and says that he will continue practicing and playing. This is on the heels of a recent faith-healed groin injury.
The question is this, if a professional athlete refuses to take the advice of the team's doctors and continues to play with an injury, is his team still responsible for his health and well-being? What about paying out his contract if the injury progresses to the point where he can no longer play?
posted by fenriq at 1:45 PM PST - 19 comments
Suppressing Free Speech
On "...Monday, March 28, the Secret Service called three everyday people into their offices to discuss why we were kicked out of a presidential event in Denver last week where Bush promoted his plan to privatize Social Security. What they revealed to us and our lawyer was fascinating.
There we were - three people who had personally picked up tickets from Republican
Congressman Bob Beauprez's office and went to a presidential event. But as we entered, we were told that we had been 'ID'ed' and were warned that any disruption would get us arrested. After being seated in the audience we were forcibly removed before the President arrived, even though we had not been disruptive. We were shocked when told that this presidential event was a "private event" and were commanded to leave....The Secret Service revealed that we were 'ID'ed' when local Republican staffers saw a bumper sticker on the car we drove which said 'No More Blood For Oil.'" Related
Associated Press story.
posted by ericb at 11:30 AM PST - 143 comments
Clocky.
An MIT student has designed an alarm clock with built-in wheels and motion sensors. Upon hitting the snooze button, Clocky will roll of your nighttable, bump around your room, and hide, forcing you to have to get up and look for him instead of hitting the button again.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:07 AM PST - 38 comments
Southeast Asian refugees,
like other immigrant populations, have had a mix of experiences and successes since they began arriving in the U.S. in the 1970s. Among the refugees, two groups, the
Mien and the
Hmong, tribes who
populate the mountains of Laos and Thailand, fled when the Communists took over. Today, some
Mien, also known to some Asians as the Yao, continue to live in
China, where they are a recognized minority group and elsewhere. Large numbers of the
Mien people have settled in Portland, Ore., and California, and appear to be doing pretty well. The
Hmong settled primarily in Minneapolis and St. Paul because their military leader,
Gen. Vang Pao settled there. You may have read about the
Hmong man who killed six white hunters, claiming racial animosity, but before that occurred, the Hmong themselves have experienced
one tragedy after
another.
posted by etaoin at 6:52 AM PST - 17 comments
The Nature of Normal Human Variety
A talk with
Dr. Armand Leroi (his
website).
"Almost uniquely among modern scientific problems [the problem of normal human variety] is a problem that we can apprehend as we walk down the street. We live in an age now where the deepest scientific problems are buried away from our immediate perception. They concern the origin of the universe. They concern the relationships of subatomic particles. They concern the nature and structure of the human genome. Nobody can see these things without large bits of expensive equipment. But when I consider the problem of human variety I feel as Aristotle must have felt when he first walked down to the shore at Lesvos for the first time. The world is new again."
(via Arts & Letters Daily)
posted by Kattullus at 4:58 AM PST - 17 comments
Does the right to life trump the right to die?
In an increasingly hysterical debate surrounding Terry Schiavo, Garret Keizer provides a thought-provoking analysis of who should decide when and how a person dies:
"The alarms raised in Americas ongoing right-to-die debate have always been characterized by a curious selectivity. You will notice, for example, how the fear of playing God operates exclusively on one side of the medical playground. Thus to help a patient end his or her life prematurely is playing God, while extending it in ways and under conditions that no God lacking horns and a cloven hoof could ever have intended is the mandate of our Judeo-Christian heritage and the Hippocratic oath."
posted by MadOwl at 4:46 AM PST - 33 comments
March 28
A look at the US through China's eyes.
The US has been critical of China's human rights practices for decades. In retaliation, China examines the US, and finds it comes up short in many ways.
Instead of indulging itself in publishing the "human rights country report" to censure other countries unreasonably, the United States should reflect on its erroneous behavior on human rights and take its own human rights problems seriously. Summarized text in NYT
posted by crunchland at 9:20 PM PST - 53 comments
Joash Woodrow.
An artist who's story is not unlike that of
Henry Darger - a recluse who's lifetime of work has only recently been discovered. But unlike Darger, Woodrow was British, and a trained artist who studied alongside
Frank Auerbach and
Peter Blake. And he's
still alive. Now this pensioner, who's lifetime of painting, drawing and sculpture was
discovered by accident while his family were halfway through incinerating it, is being called "one of the great British artists of the 20th Century" and the price of his paintings,
which call to mind Picasso, Soutine and Rouault, are
skyrocketing. Aged 77, and confined to a nursing home, he is
unwilling to ever paint again or discuss his art, and it is unclear if he is enjoying the benefits of his belated success.
posted by fire&wings at 5:35 PM PST - 19 comments
Sails to harness Vox Populi winds
:
"Technology is changing politics" [ not to mention journalism ] intones the
well connected
Personal Democracy Forum, and everybody's leaping into the
"Blogging vs. Journalism" fray.
Dan Gillmor, author of
We the Media, has quit his job after receiving
seed money from Mitch Kapor and from Omidyar Networks, to found the for-profit "Grassroots Media Inc." : Gillmor's got a hand, as well, in the noble and
name studded OurMedia.org :
"We'll host your media forever for free.....Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads"
Meanwhile, SusanG - in her most recent
recently released investigative piece into the Jeff Gannon/fake journalism scandal notes her research group's effort "now encompasses so much more than Gannon" and announces future stories will post under the organizational name of
ePluribus Media "We're the People ! No you're not, we're the People ! No way ! We're the...."
posted by troutfishing at 5:24 PM PST - 110 comments
From her perspective, it was just opening fire by a tank. Giuliana Sgrena, the freed Italian journalist who was shot at by American troops upon her release, sets the record straight: there was no checkpoint, she was on a secure VIP road that runs directly from the Green Zone to the Baghdad airport, and her car was shot at from behind.
Transcript,
audio, and
video of an interview with Naomi Klein, who talked to Sgrena in Rome.
posted by muckster at 3:33 PM PST - 40 comments
Happy Dingus Day!
The little known day-after-Easter holiday originally celebrated in Poland involves men dumping water on women and women chasing men around with sticks or pussywillows.
posted by tsarfan at 11:19 AM PST - 28 comments
The Liner.
"The entire graduating class of Hamline University, 1925, in drawings of varying quality made semi-nightly in about one hour each."
(Appears to be by our very own interrobang.)
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:52 AM PST - 44 comments
Condi's plan for Iraq:
cut and run. Conservative columnist Robert Novak -- the same guy who
hung Valerie Plame out to dry -- launches the media campaign to prepare the US electorate for withdrawal even if, as he puts it with exquisite understatement, "what is
left behind does
not constitute perfection." (
I'll
sa
y.) US commander Gen. George Casey seems to be
on the same page.
posted by digaman at 7:40 AM PST - 64 comments
All right, but apart from the
sanitation, the
medicine,
education,
wine,
public order,
irrigation,
roads, a
fresh
water system, and
public
health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Brought
peace?
Oh. Peace?
Shut up!
posted by gimonca at 5:56 AM PST - 15 comments
March 27
The time for more public poetry
is at hand with the soon-to-arrive National Poetry Month. Perhaps you favor love poems?
Poets and Writers listed the 25 best (among those online:
#1,
2,
4,
6,
7,
9,
13,
15,
19). Or perhaps ballads with a beat?
This was once considered the best example, but this
offensive poem is even more famous. Of course,
nonsense is
good, as is
alliteration. Eager to take your own turn? Try some
complex forms.
Double sestina, anyone?
posted by blahblahblah at 10:54 PM PST - 21 comments
"Time: elusive and immediate...limited yet infinite. Because time is important to you, Hewlett-Packard introduces the
HP-01, a new dimension in time management and personal computation." Truly, such an important model number could only be bestowed upon the king of all early calculator watches. No less than three batteries were required (two for the LED display alone), and even HP's
impressive engineering was unable to save the HP-01 from the
curse of bulkiness; it did not sell well at the $650 price point. The HP-01 was discontinued in 1980, as
inexpensive LCD calculator watches began flooding the market (don't lie,
you know you had one).
posted by Galvatron at 12:03 AM PST - 17 comments
March 26
Another victim of 'The Amazon Treatment'.
Remember the
Amazon post from the other day? Well, if you liked that, you'll love this one. This time, it's an anal douche getting what I'm calling "The Amazon Treatment". Amazon's going to scope this out and delete the 'reviews' - therefore if you're so inclined here's your chance to wallow in the merriment. If it's gone by the time you read this, I've copied some of the posts
here.
posted by humannature at 9:52 PM PST - 19 comments
