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March 2005 Archives
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 mask—all 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 wrong—that there are not in fact hordes of unknown, competitively talented non-white-male journalists held back by prejudice? Don’t even entertain the thought. Steven Levy certainly doesn’t. '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 America’s 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
Oh Wolfie! Wolfie! Invade me like you invaded Iraq!
Pegged to head the World Bank, is Wolfowitz' lover,
Shaha Riza, one of the reasons we invaded Iraq?
Critics say it would be impossible for Wolfie - as he is nicknamed by Bush - to make independent decisions when his lover, who works on Middle Eastern and North African issues, is so committed to overthrowing Middle Eastern regimes.
"His womanising has come home to roost," a Washington insider said. "Paul was a foreign policy hawk long before he met Shaha but it doesn't look good to be accused of being under the thumb of your mistress."
posted by amberglow at 1:21 PM PST - 34 comments
Chankonabe.
If you've ever wondered how sumotori achieve their
epic bulk, this article from
Gastronomica details the complex preparation and serving rituals of the (
perhaps not) delicious, protein-rich chunky soup that's the staple of their diet (with recipe helpfully included).
posted by melissa may at 11:09 AM PST - 7 comments
On the role of government.
The Houston Chronicle had a
story (404 now) on then governor Bush's 1999 law giving hospitals the power to remove life support of the terminally ill. The decision hinges on the prognosis and, of course, the patient's ability to pay. The law recently gave power to the Texas Children's Hospital to remove the breathing tube of a 6-month old infant
over his mother's wishes. What do people who support Bush's intervention in the Schiavo case think about Bush's Futile Care Law?
posted by jikel_morten at 8:10 AM PST - 86 comments
A Child's View of the Army
"....Like every other boy he was going through the little green army men phase....Gabe is roughly five years old and very articulate. Thus it should have come as little surprise when he began having one army man in charge, and the rest start building something.
"Sir, we're ready to build the rocket." " : Five year old Gabe explains - via stacked creamers and table bricabrac, at an IHOP breakfast - the ramifications of mindless subservience to authority.
posted by troutfishing at 6:43 AM PST - 26 comments
Sugar Bush Squirrel
Sugar Bush Squirrel is 'The Military Mascot' and a 'Superhero' to our troops everywhere. She is working to keep our country free while helping to free Iraq. Sugar Bush Squirrel is boosting the morale of our military troops everywhere by posing for humorous photos in military clothing with guns, tanks, planes and helicopters while wearing helmets, camouflage caps and a turban. Watch for more of her military shots in the near future as they shoot around the globe for freedom!!!
posted by srboisvert at 4:58 AM PST - 30 comments
Remember this? It has won recognition as "Best Interactive Viral" in the
Viral Awards. With all the viral
1 and stealth
2 marketing campaigns, comment spam, astroturfing
3, and other tools that marketeers are using to infiltrate the Brave New(ish) World of blog, we sometimes forget that we also have the power to do good, so "
you know, like, reclaim the streets, or re-frame the conversation, or some damn thing". Words of wisdom from our not-so-subservient chicken.
[and, a bit more...]
posted by taz at 1:15 AM PST - 20 comments
March 25
"I'm going to just come right out and say this... I've been trying to avoid this, to avoid telling this, because if you know this you'll fucking hate me or at least think less of me... I know I'm not a slut, I mean, maybe I am, perhaps I am! but does that matter? ...
I've become a prostitute." [nsfw]
posted by tranquileye at 7:52 PM PST - 71 comments
Scientific American to stop reporting science, more creationism.
There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming...But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 6:58 PM PST - 208 comments
Chicken Payback
[WMP streaming video; Real Player stream
here.] At first, this music video from
The Bees [Flash site] seems like a quick, harmless Friday diversion. Not for me, though. For me, it’s rapidly becoming a truly painful earworm, and worse: is there such a thing as an “eyeworm?”
posted by Man O' Straw at 12:24 PM PST - 12 comments
Social Explorer.
"Social Explorer is dedicated to providing demographic information in an easily understood format, data maps. We serve hundreds of interactive data maps of United States. Here, you can visually analyze and understand the demography of the U.S., explore your neighborhood and learn about the people that live around you."
posted by jokeefe at 11:26 AM PST - 14 comments
Paintings Inspired by the Music of Frank Zappa.
The cynical and humorous representations of show business appeared to be reflected in the music they were listening to at the time - the music of Frank Zappa - which led to the next series of paintings, inspired by and celebrating the music and lyrics of Zappa.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:15 AM PST - 16 comments
TORK!
For your friday flash fun, a game about...linguistics? Learn a language, have some fun. Now if only I could figure out how to work that damn oven....
posted by jearbear at 9:15 AM PST - 31 comments
March 24
The greatest sexual moments in video game history.
From Rampage to the cheapest japanese NES games to Mortal Kombat and beyond, someone out there took the energy better spent on... anything else to create a list of sexuality in societys black sheep: Video games.
Does not hold preference to any sexual preference,
NSFW.
posted by Dean Keaton at 9:34 PM PST - 30 comments
Smegma
(so NSFW it isn't funny at all, most links are not safe either)
'The animal kingdom would probably cease to exist without
smegma.' - Thomas Ritter, MD.
Smegma's a widely misunderstood substance, rather than being a noxious waste product it moisturizes the glans and keeps it smooth, soft, and supple. Its antibacterial and antiviral properties keep the penis clean and healthy though a build up can result in
balanitis. Here's an article on
how to collect it for experimentation as an extracted bacterium from smegma has been successfully used to treat
bladder cancer as well as a strange experiment on the potential
carcinogenic effects of smegma on mice (hint, there were none found, if anything, the smegma'ed mice outlived the control mice). Smegma is also related to
vernix, the cheese-like substance on a newborn's skin.
Lots of
humor to
be had, including the
Devil's Dictionary definition as well as a band called, yeah,
Smegma and even a cocktail recipe for something called a
Smegma Delight (vodka, bourbon and parmesan cheese, umm, pass).
posted by fenriq at 4:35 PM PST - 48 comments
T. rex soft tissue!
No, not dino-kleenex -- scientists have extracted organic compounds from a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex bone. Can
Jurassic Park be far behind?
posted by jimray at 3:07 PM PST - 42 comments
"The purpose of the
Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair is to get kids excited about Creation and motivate them to discover the truth of our Lord on their own."
Winning exhibits this year include "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)", "Women Were Designed For Homemaking", and "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria".
Via
posted by Mwongozi at 12:30 PM PST - 74 comments
Witness
"I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated." -James Nachtwey-
(First post, I don't know if this is a re-post, if so--sorry!)
posted by countzen at 11:24 AM PST - 30 comments
For 30 days, we're going to shut down that illegal alien smuggling alley
Ok, probably not; but when the War on Terror™ doesn't seem to include our own borders, what else is a citizen to do? The President has this take:
"I'm against vigilantes in the United States of America," Mr. Bush said at a
joint press conference. "I'm for enforcing the law in a rational way."
Is the Minute Man project irrational? When the government refuses to put troops on the borders or even beef up the current border patrol, what are the available options?
posted by j.p. Hung at 11:05 AM PST - 49 comments
"In every existing government we find clamor, abuses of power, newspapers with triumphant, lying headlines, lies of every kind in public life. This being the case, someone like me, who understands nothing of politics, is compelled to think about politics and despair of ever understanding it, is compelled to envision something entirely different."
Natalia Ginzburg, Member of the Italian Parliament,
writer, and
critic.
posted by semmi at 9:44 AM PST - 4 comments
Now I have stolen some things from bars, and I know some people who have a hard time not stealing something. Most of us are just happy with the toiletries from hotels. These guys trump everyone -
they stole an entire house
posted by thebwit at 5:05 AM PST - 31 comments
What is the ID SNIPER(TM) rifle?
"It is used to implant a GPS-microchip in the body of a human being, using a high powered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. [...] At the same time a digital camcorder with a zoom-lense fitted within the scope will take a high-resolution picture of the target. This picture will be stored on a memory card for later image-analysis."
Other popular products by Empire North include
JUJU the Citizen Eye. Empire North is run by
Jakob Boeskov.
posted by sour cream at 4:52 AM PST - 22 comments
March 23
Mo' MAO.
"If you stare at a red shape for a long time, when you turn away, your retina will hold the image but you will see a green version of the same shape. In the same way, when I lived in China, I saw the positive image of Mao so many times that my mind now holds a negative image of Mao. In my art I am transferring this psychological feeling to a physical object." --
Zhang Hongtu
posted by gimonca at 6:50 PM PST - 15 comments
Look up more
-
Improv Everywhere has been mentioned
before but this latest mission is the largest yet. After reading about it here, I wonder how many people signed up for the NYC list? Were there any other MeFites there? I was window 39...
posted by xmod2 at 5:11 PM PST - 11 comments
Can you never think of the right thing to say?
Trouble relating in social circumstances? Maybe
Taxi1010 can help. This
guide to verbal self-defense is extensive, detailed, and quite clearly the work of a
troubled mind.
Start here, or search by
insult on the "sunporch",
key/codeword in the "kitchen",
bridge in the "wine cellar", or
response in the "nursery." Examine one of the many, many stargates(
use this handy map, organized by stage of psychological development)... read one of the
many, many essays... wherever you go it is an explosion of advice, comebacks, hypothetical situations, and
who knows how many MSPaint masterpieces. Spend a minute, spend a day, spend your life trying to figure this site out.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:40 PM PST - 31 comments
Have you checked
your humors today? Not the
gunky jelly stuff in people's
eyes, the
other kind.
Are you
melancholic,
phlegmatic,
sanguine, or
choleric? Are you a salamander, gnome, nymph or sylph?
Earth, water, air or fire?
Elf, Ninja, Pirate or Dwarf? (arrrr! buckets of blood! flagons of phlegm and barrels of black bile!)
If nothing else, the theory of humors adds to one's arcane vocabulary.
posted by Capn at 2:17 PM PST - 16 comments
Democracy is kufr.
(A 26-page PDF.) "The democracy which the Kaafir West promotes in the Muslim countries is a system of Kufr. It has no connection whatsoever with Islam. It completely contradicts the rules of Islam..."
Lots of interesting reading at
1924.org. (Look for the "PDF Version" links, they're a dim light gray in my browser.)
posted by davy at 1:29 PM PST - 23 comments
Mythmaker of the Machine Age.
In the statue erected above his grave in Amiens, in Picardy,
Jules Verne, who died exactly 100 years ago, resembles God. He is, after all, the second-
most-translated author on earth, after Agatha Christie.
To celebrate the anniversary, there's a Verne exhibition at the
Maritime Museum in Paris, one of a series of events from Paris to the western city of
Nantes, where Verne was born on Feb. 8, 1828, to the northern town of
Amiens, where he died on March 24, 1905. His many fans,
some of them quite famous, will be treated to exhibits, concerts, films and shows in Verne's honor. “
Underground City”, a lost classic written by Verne and never before published unabridged in English,
emerges this month in not one but two new unique editions.
100 years later, questions remain about his life: Why did he have two homes in Amiens? Why did he burn all his private papers? Why was he shot in the foot by his nephew, Gaston, in 1886? Gaston was locked in an asylum for 54 years after his attack on L'Oncle Jules. Was Gaston, in fact, Verne's natural son? More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:44 AM PST - 8 comments
Local Chaos.
In the early 1980's, Ann Arbor, Michigan had a small, but thriving
hardcore/skate scene. At the time, the scene was documented in a 'zine called
Local
Chaos by a guy named Wes and his friends. But the 80's faded, as did the
scene and the 'zine, and only the memories were left.
Then, a couple of years ago, Wes created a
site
dedicated to Local Chaos, and the scene of yore. In the wake of the site going
live, several of the bands have gotten back together and even played some live
shows. If you've ever wondered what the bald youth of 80's hardcore would look
like playing at 40, then check out the
music
page for current photos, and video clips, of legendary locals like
Ground
Zero,
The
State, and arguably Ann Arbor's longest-running punk act,
The Cult Heroes. The sCrapbook features a
trove of old interviews, photos, and odds and ends. This is a great look back
at
the Ann Arbor hardcore/skate scene in the 80's.
Punk's not dead!
posted by cows of industry at 8:38 AM PST - 21 comments
Nation on film
Hundreds of short clips of British life through the years from the BBC, exploring the use of film as an eyewitness to history.
posted by brettski at 4:31 AM PST - 3 comments
Misty
Welcome to the mysterious world of
MISTY,where the unusual is usual,
where the unexpected is expected,
where every thrill's a chill. Enjoy your
journey through these pages... and
the strange lands and people
you'll meet.
Your friend,
Misty
posted by srboisvert at 4:12 AM PST - 19 comments
The future is now on Amazon.com: a 10 Ghz processor, 30 Terabyte storage, .14 pound wonder of the world.
Some customer reviews:
"
... although Windows still crashes, the machine is so fast it crashes before you even boot it up. So by the time you booted, you've already crashed and rebooted and didn't know what happened. "
"This thing is fast. Bad fast! I can see space and time warping, bending and "melting" around the vicinity of this machine when I run Microsoft Werd. Eventually a strange mini-black hole will open up and Steve Jobs' face will appear. He tells me lots of secrets about the future."
posted by zardoz at 3:52 AM PST - 33 comments
March 22
PIANOGRAPHIQUE
the graphics piano is a multimedia instrument,each letter on the keyboard sets off a sound and an animation.
audio-visual-collage
(flash)
posted by hortense at 11:58 PM PST - 6 comments
Zelda Classic
is a tribute to (what we think is) the greatest video game of all time: Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda. It has been developed into an exact replica of the NES version that we all know and love. For windows and DOS.
posted by crunchland at 5:50 PM PST - 22 comments
Meet
Jakob Lodwick of Blumpy.org. You may
be familiar with him because of sites like
this or
this.
Blumpy.org i s a bit of a step up, however, featuring some pretty nifty skits and a great
video-journal.
He has also made a
video for
Cex, Baltimore's soon-to-be legendary (any day now) basement rock god, whose site also has a huge
stash of excellent b-side material and another
video.
not the biggest sites, so go easy on'em and be patient.
posted by es_de_bah at 2:09 PM PST - 9 comments
Stanley Sadie
has passed away. For those of us in various fields of music, we saw his work almost every day in the
New Grove dictionaries, the unflagging starting point for any and all historical research in music.
In an email forwarded from one of my professors:
After the concert was over the Chilingirian [Quartet] quietly came over and, sitting down in the room with Stanley, played the slow movement from op.135. It was deeply moving - Stanley gradually woke up and listened, gently, all alert again, but so weak. He rallied enough to be helped upstairs but then lapsed into a peaceful sleep.
posted by teletype1 at 12:30 PM PST - 7 comments
Fiona Freed.
Remember the
Free Fiona campaign (discussed last month
here)? Well, Sony hasn't caved (yet), but the entire album has been leaked online (get it
here or via
torrent.) I've listened to it a few times through, and all I can say is... wow.
posted by salad spork at 11:57 AM PST - 53 comments
"
Remember what your favorite pub or cafe was like before they put in the TV screens?"
White
Dot, the "international campaign against television", has teamed up with the makers of
TV-B-Gone, the key chain that turns off any television, to reclaim these public spaces. And they are recruiting an
army for direct action.
The White Dot website offers a
form to enter the names of ruined eating and drinking establishments.
Nominate the most diners and you win a
TV-B-Gone (there will be 200 winners).
Then, during
TV-Turnoff Week (April 25 through May 1, 2005) you can join the Ruined Diner
Liberation Army and zap these cafes back to life, leaving propaganda behind some of it disguised as menus.
Other plans for TV-turnoff week here.
posted by boo at 9:51 AM PST - 65 comments
Neuroeconomics:
"Eventually it could help economists design
incentives that gently guide people toward making decisions that are in their long-term best interests in everything from labor negotiations to diets to 401(k) plans." Note the ambiguous use of the pronoun "their"--are we talking about the long-term interests of people in general or of economists?
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 8:23 AM PST - 25 comments
Trade Tricks
is a collection of all the little 'tricks of the trade' which people build up with experience. Some are pretty hum-drum, but others are useful even if you don't practice the trade. For example, this tip for
checking if a diamond is real may at some time be handy, and this one for
washing a pan would have been useful last night.
Found via, and run by the writer of, defective yeti
posted by darsh at 8:16 AM PST - 33 comments
Dear Sex Addict, Is Osama Hot or Not? (Sunday Magazine, Vancouver)
I think OBL is totally hot, but my friends think I’ve lost my sense of judgement. What do you think? Do you think Osama is hot or not? Some people find Osama sexy. He is tall and aristocratic looking. Personally, I could do without the beard. I imagine people find him sexy because he is an outlaw. Some people say they find Osama sexy just to be outrageous. I think he looked much sexier when he was younger (don’t we all?); lately he looks tired, old, not vibrant. One thing you can be certain of, though, is that Osama doesn’t find you sexy.
posted by hoder at 12:34 AM PST - 24 comments
March 21
Logos. Lots of Logos.
EPS vector art of Logo's from around the world, just waiting for you to generate parodies and a flood of cease and desist letters.
Although
some of the
images aren't
logos you would
expect to
find.
I swear to god I searched google and metafilter with several dozen word combinations in an effort to make sure this isn't a doublepost because I simply cannot accept the fact that this hasn't been posted here already.
posted by Jeremy at 10:11 PM PST - 15 comments
Copy Shop
is a 12-minute dialogue-free film by director Virgil Widrich about a guy inadvertently duplicating himself over and over (
320 x 240 streaming Real format download link). The most interesting aspect of the short, however, is that it was made frame-by-frame of photocopies, manipulated for jarring visual effects and then shot with a camera to put together the final cut. (
Mentioned previously by film aficionado pxe2000.) Also see Widrich's photocopied short
Fast Film with even more calamitous, unraveling effects. Get this guy toner refills for his birthday.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:36 PM PST - 14 comments
An evolutionary basis for altruism.
These findings suggest that true altruism, far from being a maladaptation, may be the key to our species' success by providing the social glue that allowed our ancestors to form strong, resilient groups. Sharing isn't just caring, it's surviving.
posted by schroedinger at 7:38 PM PST - 44 comments
The latest BOFH,
or Bastard Operator From Hell. If you read
The Register you're familiar with him... It's the story of an abusive IT guy basically doing whatever he wants to users and getting away with it.
It's been going on for about 10 years,
all of which is archived, so if that one doesn't tease your fancy, maybe some of those will. If you're not familiar with basic IT stuff some of it may be foreign to you, but once I started reading I couldn't stop. Try a couple years back, 2002 is a good vintage. >clickety<
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:51 PM PST - 48 comments
Charles Kellogg was born in 1868 in California and claimed to have the larynx of a bird (called a
syrinx). Until his death in 1949, he
lectured and
entertained audiences as a performer of
bird calls. He travelled across the continent in the
Travel Log, a mobile home carved from a single Redwood log mounted on a 1917 Nash Quad truck chassis. In 1939, he smuggled samples of the Kakaula plant out of Fiji in hopes of providing birth control leader
Margaret Sanger with the perfect
contraceptive.
posted by 327.ca at 7:18 AM PST - 4 comments
Kofi Annan has issued his
recommendations for tackling poverty and promoting security and human rights, incorporating the greatest alterations to the UN and Security Council in history.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:31 AM PST - 23 comments
March 20
The worst jobs in history.
Channel 4 takes you on a journey through 2,000 years of British history and the worst jobs of each era for minions like you and me. If you are curious whether you are best suited to be an Anglo-Saxon guillemot egg collector or a Georgian loblolly boy, take the
career guide quiz.
(via Malbec.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:39 PM PST - 21 comments
Hitler's "
fountain of life." In 1935, Heinrich Himmer and the SS launched a network of
Lebensborn maternity centers to increase birthrates among Aryans, where German soldiers were encouraged to mate with genetically desirable local women in occupied countries like Norway. These women were given the option of raising their kids themselves or turning them over to SS-run homes where they would be "Germanized." The lives of these kids was hell after the war, when they
were shunned and worse by the Nazis' previous victims. To those who are nostalgic for the Reich, like this veritable
eBay of Nazi memorabilia, the Lebensborn program represented "
wonderful social experimentation."
posted by digaman at 10:59 AM PST - 38 comments
Scenes from the Cultural Revolution.
A compilation of quotes about American Universities as compared to Maoist propaganda.
"'If the system were fair,' says Larry Mumper, sponsor of the Ohio bill, 'Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be tenured professors somewhere.'"
"We will strike down the reactionary, bourgeois academic savants! . . . We will vigorously establish proletarian intellectual authorities, our own academic savants."
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:51 AM PST - 60 comments
Jesus Freak Rock of the 60's &
70's.
Rising out of the post-
hippie "
Jesus Freak" culture, many of the adherents were disenchanted counterculturists or just plain casualties of the time. Many of the musicians were already rockers before converting, so they were comfortable with the idiom, and it seemed to be more about sincerity than political propoganda. Compared to today's CCM corporate juggernaut it seems positively guileless.
posted by jonmc at 9:15 AM PST - 20 comments
Transferring the problem does not transfer the moral responsibility.
According to Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the frontline in America's 'war on terror', where arrest can be random and allegations of torture commonplace. I
leave it up to each reader to judge for themselves, but if they are right can the world afford to turn a blind eye?
posted by MadOwl at 4:47 AM PST - 10 comments
LSD documentary records
were a forgotten side-track in the war on drugs, reaching a high point in 1966 with the release of
LSD, an
album featuring interviews with Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, and Ken Kesey, and featuring a live recording (which may or may not have been real) of a kid going on his first bad trip. (Not to be confused with Leary's own record of the same title.) In 1966, with neither internet nor home video, the record album was one of the most sophisticated communications media available, and it was a big year for LSD hysteria, with a
LIFE cover story and a Sal Mineo-narrated LSD version of Reefer Madness called
Hallucination Generation. LSD-related
magazines and periodicals,
reviews of psychedelic music, and more from
lysergia.com.
posted by dhartung at 1:10 AM PST - 21 comments
March 19
"Russian Oligarachs Want Immortality". Vladimir Bryntsalov has had a course of stem cell injections and feels no older than 20, though his biological age is about 60. Treatment will cost you $10,000-20,000 in Moscow. In many Western countries, such clinics would not even get the opportunity to open their doors. During a recent speech, President Bush denounced stem cell therapy as "godless."
posted by stbalbach at 4:51 PM PST - 26 comments
The End Of Faith
A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species of belief in action. Your beliefs define your vision of the world; they dictate your behavior; they determine your emotional responses to other human beings. If you doubt this, consider how your experience would suddenly change if you came to believe one of the following propositions:
1. You have only two weeks to live.
2. You’ve just won a lottery prize of one hundred million dollars.
3. Aliens have implanted a receiver in your skull and are manipulating your thoughts.
posted by nofundy at 1:21 PM PST - 156 comments
Vintage exposures
from pre-war Poland, with scratchy “Summertime” on the soundtrack. (Slightly improper for libraries & children under the age of 15)
posted by growabrain at 10:47 AM PST - 12 comments
An Objective Legal Look (and more) on Schiavo--
As a Florida law blogger, I have created this page to help people understand the legal circumstances surrounding the Terri Schiavo saga. In my view, there continues to be a need for an objective look at the matter. There is an unbelievable amount of misinformation being circulated.
Links to all court decisions, timelines,
questions and answers (some shocking)...you name it. All the info available on this tragic situation.
posted by amberglow at 7:22 AM PST - 165 comments
[TheFaceBook]:
It comes in the genre of
LiveJournal,
MySpace, and
Friendster - except with a focus on digitally connecting pre-existing friendships on college campuses rather than finding new friends worldwide. Subsequently, it has thus far avoided the stigmas I’ve seen attached to its predecessors by non-users. Its use has skyrocketed: about 15% of my campus has signed up since this past winter. All of it through word-of-mouth. One of the neat tricks it does is show a visualization of your friends on the network in a spider webbed vectored graphic connecting them based on their mutual friendships. It’s also proven very useful in tracking down those “where do I know him/her?” names through a prominently displayed list showing up to two-degrees of separation to the mystery person. Oh, and you can send text messages to cell phones through it. Did I mention it also reminds you of
birthdays?
posted by trinarian at 3:54 AM PST - 29 comments
March 18
Progenitorivox-
the solution to all your problems. Amazing animated music video by the Lounge Lizards and the Animation Farm for the Consumers Union. There are a few things you should keep in mind (QT WMP Real), but it's worth it for the drugs you need. For those of you who prefer a more herbal solution, Rob Cockerham has
the perfect thing for you.
posted by The White Hat at 4:50 PM PST - 7 comments
"On March 18 [1937] students prepared for the next day's Inter-scholastic Meet in Henderson. At the gymnasium, the PTA met. At 3:05 P.M. Lemmie R. Butler, instructor of manual training, turned on a sanding machine in an area which, unknown to him, was filled with a mixture of gas and air. The switch ignited the mixture and carried the flame into a nearly closed space beneath the building, 253 feet long and fifty-six feet wide. Immediately the building seemed to lift in the air and then smashed to the ground. Walls collapsed. The roof fell in and buried its victims in a mass of brick, steel, and concrete debris. The explosion was heard four miles away, and it hurled a two-ton concrete slab 200 feet away, where it crushed a 1936 Chevrolet. Of the 500 students and forty teachers in the building, approximately 298 died. Some rescuers, students, and teachers needed psychiatric attention, and only about 130 students escaped serious injury. -- From the Handbook of Texas Online. (
Other accounts,
personal recollections, and
photos .)
It was one of the worst disasters in Texas history. With Texans' love of superlatives,
why is this a story no one tells? [more...]
posted by mudpuppie at 3:03 PM PST - 35 comments
They're all here.
Or most of them. This will make you dust off your NES/Genesis/Turbo GraphX-16... but this time with a
pixel-perfect map of every level of your most beloved games. From Amiga to Xbox.
Castlevania,
Zelda, and
Megaman among hundreds of others and links to even more in-depth sites.
Warning - some of these maps are EXTREMELY large, like 13000x5000 large. NSFCW (Not safe for child within)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:37 PM PST - 32 comments
We all like getting mail
and soldiers stationed far from home or recovering from war injuries in a veterans' hospital
really like getting mail. So go through your
bookcases and closets and dig out those
books you don't read. Got duplicate copies of books or DVDs? What about recent magazines? The Books For Soldiers program sends "care packages for the mind"—
books, DVDs and magazines for servicemen and women overseas and in hospitals at home. Just sign into the site, browse soldiers' book requests and send your package.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 1:19 PM PST - 16 comments
The Mysterious Voyage of Donald Crowhurst and the Teignmouth Electron
In the autumn of 1968, Crowhurst set out from England in a homebuilt trimaran, to compete in the first solo nonstop around-the-world sailing race. Eight months later, the boat was found drifting and abandoned in mid-Atlantic. Crowhurst's diaries revealed that, although he had apparently radioed messages from his round-the-world course, he had in fact never left the Atlantic.
posted by carter at 9:22 AM PST - 19 comments
To the Lost City.
Researchers at the University of Washington discovered an undersea hydrothermal vent field that promises new information about the origins of life. A
monthlong research trip in 2003, documented online, yielded results that have just now been published in
Science (subscribers only, sorry). The UW's Lost City site has much of interest, including an
online journal from the excursion; pictures and video are also available
here and
here.
posted by jeffmshaw at 8:31 AM PST - 1 comments
How To Hypnotize a Man
(NSFW and may be offensive to some, nude female backside)
Friday Fun. I couldn't stop playing with this one.
I dare you to bounce it once and then stop. I double dog dare you.
posted by fenriq at 8:28 AM PST - 94 comments
March 17
Another Fan Of Torture Reveals Himself
Eugene Volokh, a former clerk to Justice O'Connor and a leading voice in conservative legal circles has some interesting opinions on punishment:
[T]hough for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there's a good explanation.
posted by expriest at 9:51 PM PST - 84 comments
HIV prevention efforts are failing.
Last year, the discovery of a New York man with a novel form of drug-resistant HIV that rapidly progressed to AIDS caused some to warn of the emergence of a "
superbug." The first clinical analysis of the case
will be published Saturday in The Lancet (
NYT preview); Dr. Martin Markowitz concluded the cause of the rapid progression to AIDS may be incomplete -- but that efforts to prevent the epidemic must be redoubled, especially in light of the growing use of
methamphetamines. Dr. Carlos del Rio
is blunt: "This is telling us that AIDS prevention programs have been a failure." The Gay Men's Health Crisis
agrees.
posted by docgonzo at 8:17 PM PST - 79 comments
In those days, he could do no wrong.
In the Sixties, he was the man who published Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint and Hemingway's A Moveable Feast; he put John Lennon's doodles into cold print, launched the careers of John Fowles and Gabriel García Márquez, looked after Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut and later, in the early 1980s, was the godfatherly mentor of Amis
fils, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. He was equally adept at commissioning inspired non-fictions such as The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris's zoological inspection of human behaviour.
The Independent profiles Tom Maschler,
publisher, founder of the Booker Prize.
(via Bookslut)
posted by matteo at 1:29 PM PST - 7 comments
Juan Gelman.
An Argentinian poet's search for remains of his daughter-in-law, kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1976.
posted by plep at 11:00 AM PST - 2 comments
Ever Read Hyperion,
by Simmons? In that story, the earth was accidentally destroyed by a man-made black hole. We are now one
step closer. Physicists may have created a black hole in a lab at the RHIC (
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider). H. Nastase has posted a
paper on the possibility. Fascinating discovery, but there's no real danger of destroying the earth. This might be a good time to check up on some of the
myths surrounding black holes. (Found via that other site,
/.)
posted by teece at 10:57 AM PST - 29 comments
"An autopoietic system
is one organised to respond to the world. Prod it and it will react homeostatically, striving to reach a new accommodation that preserves its integrity. There is a global cohesion - a memory of what the system wants to be - that reaches down to organise the parts even while those parts may be adding up to produce the functioning whole."
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 10:14 AM PST - 29 comments
MusicalGenius:
What does a comedic genius stuck in lonely ol' Minneapolis do for fun?
He becomes an ice cream eating, elephant fanatic who opens a Mashed Potato bar, of course. (Amazon.com)
posted by MotorNeuron at 8:14 AM PST - 11 comments
R.I.P. Lyn Collins
[NYT, reg. req.] Backing singer for James Brown, whose revue she joined in 1971 (she was also the sister of his band members Bootsy and Catfish Collins), her first hit was the monster Think (About It) in 1972, one of the most sampled records in hip hop, maybe most famously in Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's It Takes Two. (Extensive, but by no means full, list of Collins samplers
here.) Audio sample (mp3) of You Can't Love Me If You Don't respect Me
here. Brief obit and full mp3 of a great live version of Do Your Thing
here.
posted by Len at 6:26 AM PST - 9 comments
Rainbows, pots of gold, and leprechauns
are images that come to mind on St. Paddy’s Day. They are
beautiful to behold, but how much do you really know about
rainbows? Did you know that there are
double,
triple, and
supernumerary rainbows, that
no two people ever see the same rainbow, and that rainbows consist of
more than just the ROYGBIV colors? Rainbows permeate
mythology,
prophecy,
spirituality,
symbolism,
mentality, and
sexuality. Rainbows are a
job for one,
a link to the past for some, and a
hope for the future for others.
posted by debralee at 6:05 AM PST - 24 comments
Feed Me Better
Jamie Oliver (UK fat tongued food wizard) campaigns to ban the junk food and get fresh, tasty and, above all, nutricious food back on school dinners menu.
posted by Spoon at 6:02 AM PST - 47 comments
March 16
Listening to Antarctica
is a daily web diary, including audio clips (RealMedia) of ambient sounds and conversations onboard the Aurora Australis, a research vessel currently on its way to the Australian Antarctic bases. Margot Foster's next port of call is
Casey Base.
posted by Jimbob at 8:56 PM PST - 4 comments
Copy-art.net is an ongoing curatorial project that aims to create an online platform to exchange works between artists, curators and the public and give the audience free access to works of art. Artists have been invited to submit work to Copy-art in any medium that will then be available online, making it possible for visitors to use these works in any possible way and without restrictions.
Submitted works can be downloaded, changed, distributed, exhibited and used by all visitors for free. All submitted works will be present online in an archive, and available to the public to access. Commercial use of the works is excluded.
posted by onkelchrispy at 7:41 PM PST - 3 comments
Watching "The L Word" might cost an Ohio cop her job.
A police officer assigned to a school in Camden, Ohio may lose her job because a few students saw that she had a screen saver which included promotional photos for a TV show that featured (gasp) lesbians. Remind me again why anyone with brains bothers to live in rural Ohio any longer?
posted by the wind at 5:58 PM PST - 73 comments
Not guilty.
It's been nearly 20 years since
Air India Flight 182 crashed into the ocean off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people aboard, after a bomb went off in the luggage compartment. Today, the two main suspects in the case were acquitted.
Families of the victims are upset,
disgusted. Of the 329
victims, 82 of them were under the age of 12. Let's take a moment to remember them; victims of one of the worst terrorist acts prior to September 11th, 2001.
posted by juliebug at 5:09 PM PST - 53 comments
The Office on MySpace
Even though the leaked pilot met
poor reviews on Metafilter, it's interesting that NBC turned to massive social networking group MySpace to launch the American version of The Office. MySpace will stream the whole first episode of The Office on March 16th at 8PM while the episode will air for the first time on NBC
March 24th. Maybe BitTorrent has really gotten to them.
posted by jonknee at 3:22 PM PST - 24 comments
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Motorbike Unveiled
(BBC link, no reg. req.)
The Emissions Neutral Vehicle (ENV), has a top speed of 50mph (80km/h), a range of at least 100 miles (160km) and can run continuously for four hours before the fuel cell needs recharging.
What's more, the bike's "exhaust" is water vapor and is so clean that its drinkable.
Concerns are that the bike is too quiet and plans have been made to add a motor sound to the bike so as to not startle pedestrians. Though I must admit to kind of liking the idea of "stealth mode" motorcycling.
A sort of follow up to
this post.
posted by fenriq at 12:32 PM PST - 57 comments
Congressional Copy Editors Needed To Prevent Future Diplomatic Incidents
A minor typo in an unofficial transcript at a Congressional hearing a couple of weeks ago caused Sudan to think the U.S. had conducted a secret nuclear weapons test there in 1962. As one might expect, they didn't take the news well.
It snowballed: within a day, the Chinese news service was reporting that the Sudanese government held the U.S. responsible for "cancer spread in Sudan" caused by "U.S. nuclear experiments in the African country in 1962-1970."
posted by zarq at 8:01 AM PST - 17 comments
Out of Time
: a long time
R.E.M. fan discusses the albums made for Warner in terms of how they changed his life on first listen. The review is honor of the band's decision to rerelease
their albums from this time period on DVD (with few to no "extras"). The band arguably hit their nadir with
Around The Sun, reintroducing fans to their previous greatness might not be a bad idea. But will old fans pay $24.99 for albums they already own? Furthermore, what does it say about a great band when their songs are
available as ringtones?
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:46 AM PST - 101 comments
Dr. Who Returns to the BBC
on Saturday, 26 March at 7pm on BBC One. To those of us of a certain age, this is good news. Russell T Davies, creator of "Queer As Folk", is the writer and executive producer.
North American fans with
access to the CBC won't have to wait long to see the new series. It starts Tuesday 5 April at 8pm.
posted by paddbear at 2:43 AM PST - 46 comments
"A theory that can't predict anything is not a scientific theory," Woit says.
That would be string theory, which was going to be the theory of everything, but apparently can't even agree how many dimensions there are. "Those who dabble in alternate-universe speculations might be just modern versions of '16th century theologians (who) speculated that spirits and angels emerge from the extra-dimensional universe,' says
Krauss, who is also an outspoken foe of creationist teaching in schools."
posted by raaka at 2:19 AM PST - 52 comments
the simplest ideas are usually the best ones.
Its easy to forget that the internet is a relatively new medium. Whats the bet that in the future that we will all be wishing that we still had all of our content that we contributed to "cyberspace" such as reviews, comments, posts... Who knows if 10 - 15 years from now, if the sites we post on will still be up, even stable sites such as MetaFilter may not exist in the future.
sites have shut down before, taking everyones content with it. Its a simple idea, why not just store your content, be it on your desktop or a web application? So who wants to start a
MeFi label over at
bulletin board buddy.
posted by omega at 2:15 AM PST - 30 comments
March 15
The Most Ambitious Game Ever?
At this year's Game Developers Conference, Sims creator Will Wright's upcoming game
Spore drew standing ovations. Not to be outdone, Peter Molyneux (of Populous and Black & White fame) revealed his own ambitious game-like project
The Room. While the top game designers have freedom to play, independents
rail (read Greg Costikyan's amazing bit in the middle) at the restrictions of the publisher system. For those who doubt
games can be art.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:25 PM PST - 60 comments
It is more likely than not that most of America’s enemies in the near future will continue to be at least as awkwardly and inconveniently asymmetrical as they have been over the past 15 years. However, it would be grossly imprudent to assume that they will all be led by politicians as incompetent at grand strategy as Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. There is probably a General Aideed lurking out there, not to mention a General Giap. A no-less-troubling thought is recognition of the certainty that America’s strategic future will witness enemies initially of the second-rate, and eventually of the first... One may choose to recall the old aphorism that “unless you have fought the Germans, you don’t really know war.” That thought, though one hopes not its precise national example, holds for the future.
How Has War Changed Since the End of the Cold War? The answer seems to be not that much at all:
The truth of the matter is that war is not changing its character, let alone miraculously accomplishing the impossible and changing its nature.
posted by y2karl at 8:10 PM PST - 8 comments
Suburban sweatshops.
Jorge Bonilla is hospitalized with pneumonia from sleeping at the restaurant where he works, unable to afford rent on wages of thirty cents an hour. Domestic worker Yanira Juarez discovers she has labored for six months with no wages at all; her employer lied about establishing a savings account for her.
In 1992, Fordham law professor
Jennifer Gordon founded the
Workplace Project to help immigrant workers in the underground suburban economy of Long Island, New York. She has written a
book ,"Suburban Sweatshops", to describe
the experiences of these immigrants. More inside.
posted by matteo at 4:58 PM PST - 14 comments
Billy Bragg videos from 1991
I'm not much one for music videos, but Billy's "Sexuality" with Kirsty MacColl was one of my favorites back in the day. Sometime in the late 90's, I just assumed I'd never see it again. But ask and the Internet provides. There is also "You Woke Up My Neighborhood," with Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. I hadn't seen that one before, but it's wonderful, too.
Also enjoy a
greyer Billy playing at a fairly recent Strummerville benefit.
first link may be dodgy in firefox. Worked once for me but not on subsequent viewings.
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:28 PM PST - 35 comments
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's 19 million acres comprise one of the last places on earth where an intact expanse of arctic and sub arctic lands remains protected.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge can't make even a small dent in meeting America's energy needs. U.S. Geological Survey scientists estimate that there is very likely only enough oil to supply America's needs for six months. And oil companies admit that, even that, won't be available for at least 10 years.
An irreplaceable natural treasure, the Arctic Refuge is home to caribou, polar bears, grizzly bears, wolves, golden eagles, snow geese and more. Millions of other birds use the Arctic Refuge to nest and as a critical staging area on their migratory journeys.
The Arctic Refuge supports more than wildlife. For a thousand generations, the Gwich'in people of Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada have depended on it and lived in harmony with it. To them, the Arctic Coastal Plain is sacred ground.
Yet where God
sees life,
Republicans see
black profit by adding
Alaskan drilling to
upcoming legislation.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 10:21 AM PST - 91 comments
91 pounds of LSD?
...at that dosage level, Pickard and Apperson possessed 2 billion hits of acid—enough to give every person in the Western Hemisphere two doses and still have 250 million hits left over.
Ryan Grim is writing about acid again at Slate.
posted by Gankmore at 8:53 AM PST - 98 comments
TiVo saved?
After a grim 4Q04 conference call, focusing on bells and whistles for which there's little evidence of customer demand, it's now reported that TiVo is on the verge of striking a deal with Comcast to integrate TiVo software and services into Comcast's integrated tuner-DVRs. TiVo needs this deal very, very badly...
posted by MattD at 4:32 AM PST - 29 comments
March 14
Hero stones
are carved stones (found all over India) erected in the honor of a brave man or woman who perished while defending the interests of the village.
Image search.
posted by dhruva at 11:01 PM PST - 6 comments
Getting Bored is Not Allowed
at the
Plaza Hotel, at least not according to its famous fictional resident, the exhausting, spoiled and infectiously ebullient
Eloise. Sadly, though,
today's news is anything but boring: the Plaza's new owners announced plans to close the iconic hotel for 18 months, and renovate it to create private condos -- throwing hundreds of employees out of work.
It's been said that nothing unimportant ever happens at the Plaza: from its
1907 opening to Truman Capote's 1966
Black and White Ball, the Plaza has hosted literati, glitterati, rock stars, and royalty. It has graced the screen in movies such as
Breakfast at Tiffany's and
The Great Gatsby, making Hollywood history when it became the first fully on-location film shoot for
North by Northwest. Ernest Hemingway told F. Scott Fitzgerald to give his liver to Princeton and his heart to the Plaza;
Dorothy Parker got her pink slip from Vanity Fair there. Residents, at various times, included Frank Lloyd Wright, Cary Grant, and Judy Garland. Every President since Taft has stepped through its giant engraved revolving doors.
Chef Boyardee of canned-spaghetti fame got his start in its kitchens. No
New York tourist's rounds are complete without a bloody mary and some bluepoints at the Oyster Bar, a martini in the
Oak Room bar, or
tea in the Palm Court, and its French-chateau facade is
a Central Park centerpiece.
An
employees' group and a
supporting 'Friends of the Plaza' group have begun working to save the gracious place, with the goal of preserving not only the building and their jobs, but the very idea of the quintessential New York luxury hotel. Almost enough to make folks want the Donald back.
posted by Miko at 9:11 PM PST - 15 comments
Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage...
California joins New York in a lower-court decision for marriage equality, with the judge stating,
"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts — separate but equal," ... And in DC, Ken Mehlman, (closeted) head of the RNC, in an interview with the AP,
backslides on his party's trumpeting of anti-gay sentiment: - It's not his job as head of the party to tell states whether they should allow same-sex couples to wed or form civil unions. "Certainly our platform states that the party is committed to ensuring that there is traditional marriage," he said, but he didn't think the party should take a position on state initiatives.
More on today's court decision here.
posted by amberglow at 4:43 PM PST - 132 comments
An interview with Brad Bird.
Bird: Some people said it was Ayn Rand or something like that, which is ridiculous. Other people threw Nietzsche around, which I also find ridiculous. But I think the vast majority of people took it the way I intended. Some people said it was sort of a right-wing feeling, but I think that's as silly of an analysis as saying The Iron Giant was left-wing. I'm definitely a centrist and feel like both parties can be absurd.
posted by hughbot at 1:07 PM PST - 75 comments
While the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions, the internal government memos collected in this publication demonstrate that the path to the purgatory that is Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, has been paved with decidedly bad intentions. The policies that resulted in rampant abuse of detainees first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay, and later in Iraq, were product of three pernicious purposes designed to facilitate the unilateral and unfettered detention, interrogation, abuse, judgment, and punishment of prisoners: (1) the desire to place the detainees beyond the reach of any court or law; (2) the desire to abrogate the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of persons seized in the context of armed hostilities; and (3) the desire to absolve those implementing the policies of any liability for war crimes under U.S. and international law.
Regarding the
Torture Papers, which detail
Torture's Paper Trail, and, then there's
Hungry for Air: Learning The Language Of Torture, and, of course, there's
( more inside)
posted by y2karl at 9:55 AM PST - 97 comments
Experimental Gameplay is the result of a project undertaken by a group of students at Carnegie Mellon University to create 50 to 100 games in 1 semester.
Some of the games are good, some awful, but I particularly recommend Particle Suck, Opposites Attract and Tower of Goo.
posted by bap98189 at 9:24 AM PST - 21 comments
Project for Excellence in Journalism Report
NYT: The annual Project for Excellence in Journalism report on the state of the media says that the use of anonymous sources in newspapers has dropped significantly over the last year.
USAT: Non-traditional media gaining ground, consumers.
LAT: Study warns of "junk news" diet.
E&P: Survey finds newspapers slipping, facing cutbacks.
WaPo: Study finds no shortage of opinion on Fox News.
posted by psmealey at 7:01 AM PST - 8 comments
"A Collection of Rarities"
The John Tradescants (
Elder and Younger) lived in
London in the 16th and 17th centuries. Adventurous travellers,
diplomats,
horticultural pioneers, polymaths, they were also collectors, acquiring (and asking their friends to acquire) specimens of the wonders of the world. Their
growing collection was housed in a large house -- "The Ark" -- in Lambeth, London. The Ark was
the prototypical Cabinet of Curiosity or Wunderkammer, a collection of rare and strange objects. The Tradescant's
collection was eventually transferred to -- and some say it was swindled out of them by --
Elias Ashmole, who used it to start
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The Tradescants are buried in
St. Mary's Churchyard, Lambeth, now home to the
Museum of Garden History.
posted by carter at 6:30 AM PST - 2 comments
Damien Hirst
has a new show up in New York. (NYT link) The
British artist (previously discussed
here,
here, and
here) has turned away from
sheep in boxes and towards photo-realist painting. His subject matter hasn't gotten any cheerier - "The Devastating Impact of Crack Cocaine" is downright frightening. Slightly more accessible is "Six Pills," which is reminiscent of his
Pharmacy installation.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:22 AM PST - 28 comments
March 13
Freedom on the Fence: The Polish Poster. While we're at it:
The history and culture of the Polish poster and an analysis of
American Films in Polish Posters. Or, if you'd prefer,
The Classic Polish Film Poster database (where the
Disney/Children's film posters are quite lovely). Also,
The Wallace Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology has a fantastic searchable and browse-able database, with many hi-res images. Finally, some other
Polish Poster Galleries. (What's that? You want more? You want artist-specific galleries? Okay. Here's work by Mieczyslaw Gorowski, Piotr Kunce, Wieslaw Walkuski, and Jan Sawka. Oh, you wanted Communist-era Polish propaganda posters? Fine. Here ya go.) [previous MeFi discussion on Polish film posters; also, some of the images from these links may be NSFW, depending on how S your W environment is.]
posted by .kobayashi. at 9:16 PM PST - 10 comments
Terry Ratzmann's Homepage.
After reading some accounts of the Wisconsin church shooting, I noted he was into horticulture. A Google search turned up only four entries, one from his church, and three forum posts written by Terry himself about plants, which included his email address at "traven@execpc.com". I went old school, and formatted an URL in Unix style, trying his email name as a web directory and hit paydirt.
posted by tpoh.org at 8:58 AM PST - 55 comments
March 12
never get stuck on the 405 again?
serving
los angeles, san diego, san bernadino and riverside counties along with san francisco and miscellaneous cities throughout california,
sigalert.com will give you up to the minute traffic information on almost any freeway in california, including average speeds, closed roads, detailed info re: traffic accidents, etc.
(if you're living in LA county, the only con is that it doesn't have information on the canyons...)
posted by mgkaelen at 8:10 PM PST - 24 comments
Green roofs
"are living, vegetative roofing alternatives designed in stark contrast to the many standard non-porous roof choices."
posted by dhruva at 6:13 PM PST - 22 comments
There are very big things in Canada. There are very big things in Australia. There are very big things in Minnesota, in Texas, and at least 18 other states.
There's so much to see, but my favorite is probably the many dinosaur statues of Drumheller, including the Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Smileasaurus Banana Eater, Shysasaurus Jelly Bean Eater, and, ummm, Jesus.
posted by .kobayashi. at 4:24 PM PST - 18 comments
I come not to bury love, but to complicate it. There is something wrong with our concept of love. Romantic love (just “love” hereafter) isn't what many of us think it is when we ask ourselves “Do I love her?” or “Does he love me?” Many of us are making some kind of mistake. But what kind of mistake is it, and what is love if it isn't what many of us think it is?
A concept, roughly, is a way of thinking of things or features of things in the world. To have a concept of something is to have a kind of psychological ability to “individuate”, or pick out, all kinds of things in the world, for thought and talk, and for action. Some of our concepts are of psychological states. For example, I have a concept of pain and a concept of belief. I also have a concept of love, as do you. The suggestion that I am making is that there is a mismatch between love and our concept of love. But what is the nature of that mismatch? Love's complications From
The Philosopher's Magazine
posted by y2karl at 3:39 PM PST - 49 comments
Project Fox
(
Flash Inside) brings together young artists, designers, cooks, hotel industry professionals and managers to develop and implement their own ideas.
These will be presented to the public in 3 sites (hotel, factory, warehouse) in Copenhagen for three weeks in April.
"21 Artists. 61 Rooms. 13 Countries"
via
posted by peacay at 7:55 AM PST - 3 comments
Galang-alang-alang-a.
(insane, 18MB QuickTime music video) [MusicFilter] Cranking out music somewhere between hip-hop, electronica, Nintendo cartridges, and reggae, 27-year-old Maya Arulpragasam is getting a lot of attention for the results of tinkering with
one box.
M.I.A. (her stage name) dresses in garish flourescents like it's 1983, dances like no one's watching, and is making waves all around the critic-o-sphere.
[RS|NYT|Eye|pm|pfm|New Yorker|CBC] Want a sample?
The video for "Galang" takes her grattifi-esque art, animates it, and mashes it all together with her, um, unusual style of dance, for a music+video experience that is hard to forget. Is M.I.A. redefining the world of 21st century global pop... or is it just crap?
(via WG)
posted by blacklite at 2:26 AM PST - 118 comments
March 11
Cognitive Daily
reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
posted by srboisvert at 6:18 PM PST - 11 comments
Well, for a fact or two,
The Beirut Wall Isn't Falling,
Lebanon is not Ukraine and
it is not democracy that's on the march in the Middle East. And while
remembering all those arguments made 1,500 deaths ago--not to mention
those so far uncounted but estimated at 100,000+ civilian deaths--let it be, all the while the
Iraq War compels Pentagon to rethink Big-Picture Strategy, it is that American military intevention which makes
America as a Revolutionary Force in the Middle East, according to some. Meanwhile,
Kishore Mahbubani, author of
Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World lists
Five Strategic Mistakes the West has made which continue to destabilize the Islamic world. Along related lines, comes
The Origins of
al Qaeda’s Ideology: Implications for US Strategy.
Sound bites, wishful thoughts and stage managed demonstrations aside, could it be something more thoughtful might be required? Say, like,
Understanding Islamism ? (Now available in new slow acting convenient Word or pdf form) Say,
Which War Is This Anyway ?
posted by y2karl at 1:41 PM PST - 54 comments
Kasparov retires.
Garry Kasparov, ranked the #1 chess player in the world (and who's at least among the top three players all-time) said the 2005
Linares tournament will be
his last as a professional player.
It seems this announcement leaves professional chess and
FIDE, at least, in a bit of a bind. Although he's not an official champ, he's still ranked as the strongest player by FIDE.
If he really is gone, how much legitimacy will any successor as "unified champ" have? Or does it really matter? How many people on Metafilter care about this, and is it more or less than those who worry about the hockey strike?
posted by Leege at 12:14 PM PST - 36 comments
We're Knights of the Round Table
We dance whene'er we're able.
We do routines and
chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.
We dine well here in Camelot.
We eat ham and jam and
Spam a lot.
We're Knights of the Round Table.
Our shows are formidable,
But many times we're given rhymes
That are quite unsingable.
We're
opera mad in Camelot.
We sing from the diaphragm a lot.
In war we're tough and able,
Quite indefatigable.
Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable.
It's a busy life in Camelot.
posted by terrapin at 8:52 AM PST - 43 comments
Indeed, all over the world, millions of born-again Christians have vanished into the mystical ether--leaving behind their clothing, their eyeglasses, even their dentures--along with every child under the age of twelve. Airplanes are crashing, automobiles are veering driverless and out of control, and fetuses are disappearing from their mothers' wombs, as the born-again and the unborn alike are abruptly "raptured" to heaven.
Harper's Magazine reviewer Gene Lyons discusses apocalyptic entertainment.
posted by iamck at 8:39 AM PST - 48 comments
Location
location location [mp3s] The Phonography Archives, field recordings from around the world. Also,
DeadSCSI, a global collaborative remix/collage/reremix project of tracks all generated from a single original sound file of a SCSI drive breaking down. These and other music/art projects are on
Radiant Slab.
posted by carter at 8:27 AM PST - 3 comments
KOTO
is a charity training restaurant for street children set up in 1996 in
Hanoi,
Viet
nam by Vietnamese-Australian
Jimmy Pham (pdf file).
Of the more than 100 or so former street kids who have learned cooking, waiting and bar skills, 100% of KOTO graduates have since become employed in hotels and restaurants in Hanoi.
KOTO stands for
Know One Teach One and they
provide uniforms, accomodation,
most meals and a small wage during the traineeship.
Even
Bill Clinton ate there.
Street children number something in the order of 20,000 or more in Vietnam
and most head to the city from poor villages in the countryside, seeking their own slice of the wealth that transition to a market economy is said to generate. Most
make little money shining shoes and selling postcards and many become involved in drugs, crime, prostitution or are harassed and arrested by the Police.
Hoa Sua restaurant is another exemplary training enterprise (French affiliation) run along similar lines to KOTO excepting that they also have bakery outlets and embroidery training.
These organizations are hopeful examples of education combatting the cycle of poverty.
(
Aside: but no
contribution to the Vietnamese economy will be
forthcoming from U.S. chemical companies who supplied
agent orange during the war)
posted by peacay at 5:57 AM PST - 11 comments
With The Evangelical Air Force.
"The
NRB's influence was best summarized by its new CEO, Frank Wright, who, in describing a recent lobbying excursion to Capitol Hill, said, "We got into rooms we've never been in before. We got down on the floor of the Senate and prayed over Hillary Clinton's desk." I think this is quite funny, not tragic. There's an interview with the author
over here [MP3].
posted by gsb at 5:05 AM PST - 25 comments
No capes
,
no monoguing, and no
ex machina. Brad Bird's '
The Incredibles' notched the clichés of the superhero genre - if not all action/adventure movies - with a thick red marker. These lists have apparently been circulating since 1994. Why do (bad) writers persist in using these plot devices?
posted by vhsiv at 4:51 AM PST - 85 comments
March 10
Great Circle Mapper
"Never again will I sigh and stammer when presented with the question, "Why does my flight from Chicago to Hong Kong fly over goddamn Siberia?" (via
Salon registration or viewing short ad required)
posted by quonsar at 1:21 PM PST - 30 comments
"I felt like hurting someone before, now I feel like hugging people".
Only weeks after professing his belief in Jesus Christ, former
Korn guitarist
Brian “Head” Welch was
baptized in the Jordan River last Saturday. With “Jesus” tattooed across his knuckles and “
Matthew 11:28” along his neck, Welch received
full immersion in the historic river, along with 20 other white-robed Christians from a Bakersfield, CA church. Welch said the ritual baptism, “washed away his anger.” "My songs are God saying things to me, him talking to people. He's going to use me to heal people and people are going to be drawn to it, just watch, they will be.” For the
latest information (and a
free mp3) go to Welch's personal website, http://www.
headtochrist.com/
posted by matteo at 12:47 PM PST - 148 comments
Only a couple of years ago, it used to be like
that:
Gore continues to cling to the creed of his fellow Earth-worshippers that the unproved theory of global warming will vaporize us all unless government steps in and forces us to reshape our lives and lifestyles. Under Gore, we'd trade in our SUVs for the transportation equivalent of Yugos. Unemployed people could be absorbed into environment-related positions that would promote the secular dirt gods with the zeal of Buddhist temple fund-raisers.
But now (a bit late for the last Kyoto decision-making gathering...) we get this:
Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming (NYT link). Is this a real swing in people's opinions despite prominent polemic by the likes of
Michael Crichton and
George Will? Or just an aberration in mainstream (evangelical) thinking?
posted by carmina at 9:53 AM PST - 53 comments
The CCL game.
"we reckon that its the most playable flash game we've done to date and will take a bit more brain power than most of the idiocy that we crank out." - According to
Kerb. I have no idea how I ended up on their mailing list. I did have more fun on their
flash 5 site than the CCL game.
posted by 13twelve at 2:51 AM PST - 11 comments
March 9
The Edelweiss Pirates
- Not all German kids joined the Hitler Youth in the 1930's and 40's. A loosely-knit group of thousands of
working-class teenagers called
the Edelweiss Pirates existed in Cologne and nearby towns. Growing out of a
youth hiking group (rather than
swing dancing), they created their own anti-Nazi subculture through clothing and protest music. Many were arrested for tagging the city with anti-Nazi graffiti and working with the Underground--and they eventually killed the head of the
Cologne Gestapo in 1944. Orders to root them out came from Himmler himself, and
some were hung in the streets or killed in the camps. Their story is now being told in
a film playing at
film festivals around the world, including its European premiere in
Berlin a few weeks ago. But the surviving members' criminal records officially remain on the books in Germany.
posted by Asparagirl at 8:58 PM PST - 42 comments
Ah, the toon filled memories..
Remember all those 80's cartoons that used to keep us amused when our parents were too busy to do the job and game consoles were unheard of?
Great little collection of cartoon nostlagia that includes most of the theme tunes and a great
Thundercats Bloopers mp3 of Snarf swearing! (some NSFW)
posted by Nugget at 2:11 PM PST - 21 comments
Let's say you like cats. When you visit a friend's house and he happens to have a cat, you make a big deal about stroking it, picking it up, talking to it. And you do the same thing with every cat you encounter. It demonstrates to the people around you that you're a sensitive, sympathetic, tactile person. All these things are true of you, including your innate adoration of cats. But that doesn't mean to say you haven't cultivated your cat-fancying into a self-conscious, gushing performance that somehow represents you. This doesn't make you a phony; it makes you something else: mediated. "Me" culture : Reality is so passéSalon interviews Thomas De Zengotita, author of
The Numbing Of The The American Mind and
Closure for You, Jedermensch ein Übermensch.
posted by y2karl at 1:13 PM PST - 50 comments
Alnwick Castle
, used in various films including
Harry Potter and
Robin Hood, has started planting the
Poison Garden as part of its most
recent additions (pdf). The Poison Garden includes
belladonna and other examples of the worlds most deadly plants. Some specimens are kept behind bars for security purposes. Both the castle and the
extensive garden seem like wonderful places to visit.
posted by onhazier at 12:38 PM PST - 2 comments
Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction
A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.
Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army.
"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.
posted by Postroad at 10:40 AM PST - 68 comments
Creationism in our schools may be more a product of liberal relativism than of Christian Fundamentalism.
"But even on a seemingly clear-cut issue such as creationism, the division is not so sharp. Liberals have often been at the forefront of questioning the authority of science. It is liberals who have argued that science education should respect cultural differences and that the curriculum should be immediately relevant to everyday life of students. Creationists have leapt at the opportunity presented by educational theories to put the knowledge of pupils on the same level as that as scientists, by putting forward the demand to 'teach the controversy'."
Previous (and very different) MetaFilter discussion of ID
here. Current FPP about the dangers of PC liberalism
here.
posted by OmieWise at 10:24 AM PST - 112 comments
Oh Say Can You Seethe
• The Board of Education in Brick, NJ "may toughen its policy on use of wireless telephones in schools, after a videotape showing a Brick Township High School teacher screaming at his students to show respect for the national anthem — and then pulling the chair from underneath one student who refused to stand — was posted on
several independent Web sites (.wmv)." Some have
come to the teacher's defense, and three students connected to the incident
have been arrested for separate charges of prior vandalism--which they also taped.
posted by dhoyt at 9:35 AM PST - 128 comments
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.
"As far as I could determine, this 1969 session features tracks from a CBS Studios session in Nashville, TN that did not see an official release."
Nineteen largely unknown MP3s of the two greats singing together.
posted by BackwardsCity at 9:11 AM PST - 44 comments
Is political correctness the enemy from within?
(via A&L Daily) Lillian Rubin writes, "...the consolidation of power by the political right in recent years has convinced me that by insisting on political correctness, we not only played a part in impoverishing the national discourse but, in doing so, we also marginalized ourselves politically and lost what should have been our natural constituency."
posted by mono blanco at 12:48 AM PST - 194 comments
March 8
SexID
Some researchers say that men can have 'women's brains' and that women can think more like men.
Find out more about 'brain sex' differences by taking the Sex ID test, a groundbreaking experiment designed by a team of top psychologists:
posted by srboisvert at 2:26 PM PST - 81 comments
A new poll finds that the American public would significantly alter the Bush administration’s recently proposed federal budget. Presented a breakdown of the major areas of the proposed discretionary budget and given the opportunity to redistribute it, respondents made major changes. The most dramatic changes were deep cuts in defense spending, a significant reallocation toward deficit reduction, and increases in spending on education, job training, reducing reliance on oil, and veterans. These changes were favored by both Republicans and Democrats, though the changes were generally greater for Democrats.
What America Gets Right (
pdf) via
The Gadflyer
posted by y2karl at 12:53 PM PST - 49 comments
Yikes!
The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck pushed out the boundaries of knowledge in a rather improbable way when it was recorded by Dutch researcher Kees Moeliker.
posted by Shanachie at 11:24 AM PST - 17 comments
If your European ancestors survived the
Bubonic Plague 700 years ago, they very likely may have also passed on to you a mutation of the CCR5 gene -- called
delta 32. This may not sound exciting, but delta 32 is a powerful mistake. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, attacks the human immune system, infecting the white blood cells sent to destroy it. The delta 32 mutation, however, effectively blocks the crucial gateway into human cells the virus needs. In fact, possessing delta 32 could save your life, and the lives of your children.
posted by lola at 9:36 AM PST - 47 comments
Russian prosecutors have apparently
decided not to take any action against
Allofmp3.com (previously discussed
here) , a Russian website which offers copyrighted mp3's for sale.
The Moscow prosecutors reason is that Russian copyright laws only apply to physical media such as CD's tapes etc., not to digital media. If this decision is upeld, will it open the floodgates for others to start openly selling copyrighted material?
posted by bap98189 at 8:57 AM PST - 25 comments
