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April 2005 Archives
April 30
Lightning On Demand
is a volunteer organization of engineers, artists, scientists and machinists. Our key objective is to produce a controllable discharge of lightning at the greatest physical scale imaginable using modern technology.
They've built the worlds biggest Tesla coil,
Electrum, a
Taser Cannon and some other
projects
posted by warbaby at 9:32 PM PST - 19 comments
10,000 kltes
to be flown ”on both sides of the 500-kilometer long barrier that separates Israelis and Palestinians” on my birthday (but not in my honor). Inspiring, or just silly?
posted by lelilo at 8:44 PM PST - 26 comments
"We are here to hand over to you the power in order to avoid bloodshed." Today is the
thirtieth anniversary of the
Fall of
Saigon.
A
secret plan to end the war. After the rewarding the Vietnam war's
technocratic architect with the
Presidency of the World Bank, after the twin failures of President Nixon's
"madman plan", to scare the
Soviet Union into concessions over Vietnam out of fear of Nixon's insanity, and of
"Vietnamization", turning over
responsibility for the war to
the South Vietnamese, the North nevertheless
won the war.
Disposable helicopters.
Operation Frequent Wind, the
chaotic evacuation of the
American Embassy, brought to
a close fifteen
years of
American hubris. Karl Marx, who got little else right, observed "History repeats itself, the first as
tragedy, then as
farce."
posted by orthogonality at 4:41 PM PST - 50 comments
"I Punched Saddam in the Mouth"
• A man known only as "Samir" worked as an Arabic interpreter for United States Special Forces in late 2003 when Saddam Hussein was captured in Tikrit: "
I was so angry. I began cussing at him, calling him a motherfucker, a son-of-a-bitch -- you name it. I told him I was Shiite from the south and was part of the revolution against him in 1991. I said he murdered my uncles and cousins. He imprisoned my father. In Arabic, Saddam told Samir to shut up. And when Saddam called him a traitor, an enraged Samir silenced his prisoner with a flurry of quick jabs to the face.
I punched Saddam in the mouth."
posted by dhoyt at 4:18 PM PST - 87 comments
How Bob the Tomato got squashed by Barney the Dinosaur
Phil Vischer, creator of those Veggie-Tales cartoons gives a reflective account of why he did
not become "The Christian Disney". So why did Big Idea Productions fail while other "Holy Cultural Warriors" are thriving? (Maybe this guy was too sincerely Christian?)
A shorter version of this Tale from "Christianity Today" magazine here.
via the spiritual center of animation on the web: Cartoon Brew
posted by wendell at 3:00 PM PST - 21 comments
Today's the day for
Mac OS X Tiger (10.4). Operating systems have
come a long way,
baby (what about the
future?), and Tiger presents a couple of features that are worthy of mention because of their design approach. The approach is to let
"tiny-scale developers," developers that might not be able to write an entire application, even a small one, develop plug-ins and extensions for core system functionality.
Dashboard has a budding user community (check
dashboard exposed,
apple's official gallery) as does
Spotlight (and not just a way to add filetypes, check
this out!) and
Automator. It's interesting to note that the most hyped features of the new operating system will all have
end-user-submitted extensions and additions making them even more essential.
posted by zpousman at 6:15 AM PST - 44 comments
April 29
Castle Attack 2
... Protect your castle from the attacking horde onslaught. You can use your archers, or lob rocks, dump boiling oil, or crush under burning logs. Extra points for accuracy.
[note: shockwave, loud music, death, destruction]
posted by crunchland at 1:15 PM PST - 19 comments
Friday Flash Fun.
Take out your aggressions on this little guy, earn $$$, then spend it on more interesting ways of hurting him.
I like putting a George Bush skin on him, laying down some mines (tip: they also stick to the walls), and handing him a grenade.
posted by Daddio at 9:05 AM PST - 12 comments
Conservatism of faith v. conservatism of doubt-
Andrew
Sullivan's take on how "fundamentalism is splitting the GOP." An interesting article that is, I think, worth reading for how it characterizes recent changes in the Republican party. He doesn't exaclty see a schism, but he isn't exactly sanguine about the future of the GOP either.
posted by OmieWise at 8:41 AM PST - 38 comments
Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 - 2004
This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past US military ventures abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted. The listing often contains references, especially from 1980 forward, to continuing military deployments especially US military participation in multinational operations associated with NATO or the United Nations. Most of these post-1980 instances are summaries based on Presidential reports to Congress related to the War Powers Resolution. A comprehensive commentary regarding any of the instances listed is not undertaken here.
posted by Postroad at 6:55 AM PST - 28 comments
Hello to the Krilcic family. Ten years after we last saw you we are alive and well. And I hope you are. We would like to hear from you and see you. Goodbye.
In each episode of
Videoletters, two former neighbors, friends or colleagues separated by the Bosnian war exchange video messages. Since 1999,
two filmmakers have been helping people from across the former Yugoslavia find and reconnect with one another in this way, often with heart-breaking results. Watch a
sample episode here about two young men, Vlada (a Serb) and Ivica (a Croat), whose families were close friends when the war began. [Bit more inside]
posted by Ljubljana at 2:29 AM PST - 3 comments
North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device. "The Pentagon's top military intelligence officer said yesterday that North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device, stunning senators he was addressing and prompting attempts by other defense and intelligence officials later to play down the remarks." Was Bill Clinton
right or just an
an appeaser?
But don't worry! Our
CIA and our
military have never
failed us yet, and we have
wise leaders: "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." -- Donald Rumsfeld, testimony to Congress, Sept. 19, 2002. So, will we be
protecting America from WMDs, that is, giving the "Gift of Democracy" in Pyongyang, or just buying off Mr. Kim again?
posted by orthogonality at 12:52 AM PST - 33 comments
April 28
The Tao of Skinny-Dipping.
[nytimes reg required]
After long days spent defending their positions atop New York's most competitive fields, Manhattan's alpha males need to unwind. From mistresses to treadmills, these men have as many forms of relaxation as sources of stress. But some of the city's titans have a secret. They meet around private pools in private clubs and swim together, naked.
posted by jba at 10:29 PM PST - 27 comments
Want to see the results of all the hateful anti-gay rhetoric?
While other forms of crime continued to fall, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has documented a 4% increase in anti-LGBT crime in 2004, coming on the heels of a 26% increase in the last half of 2003. This spike in violence parallels the exact same period since the Right went into demonic, anti-gay hyperdrive following the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision in July of 2003. Since then, church pews and the public airwaves have been awash in ugly, anti-gay rhetoric and fear-mongering.
"These words obviously do not just vanish into the ether - as intended, they are absorbed and become fuel and justification for violence. To say otherwise defies reality. -- The
Matt Foreman, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (via think-bomb)
And these are just the
reported incidents.
posted by amberglow at 8:20 PM PST - 114 comments
Muppet Diplomacy
- USNews and World Reports has a new must-read article:
"The White House has approved a classified new strategy, dubbed Muslim World Outreach, that for the first time states that the United States has a national security interest in influencing what happens within Islam. Because America is, as one official put it, "radioactive" in the Islamic world, the plan calls for working through third parties--moderate Muslim nations, foundations, and reform groups--to promote shared values of democracy, women's rights, and tolerance." This means surprising US-funded initiatives such as restoring historic Sufi (i.e. moderate, non-Wahhabist) mosques, saving 11th Century Uzbek Korans, and convincing Pakistani madrassah teachers to quietly add science and math to the curriculum. Oh, and it means we're funding secular and independent media, including
"in what boosters are calling Muppet Diplomacy", an Arabic version of
Sesame Street. Can cultural revitalization, increased educational access, nascent democratic movements, and adorable lil' Elmo--all paid for with US tax dollars--be an effective innoculant against the tentacles of Radical Islam?
Daniel Pipes,
The Progressive Muslims' Union, and
Reason magazine weigh in. See also a related
RAND Corporation report from March, 2004.
posted by Asparagirl at 5:42 PM PST - 28 comments
Focus on the family is looking for a Macintosh specialist...
"This position is responsible for overseeing the smooth performance of the Macintosh systems and network, serving the needs of the users, and implementing necessary changes.
Responsibilities:
Is a consistent witness for Jesus Christ; maintains a courteous, Christ-like attitude in dealing with people within and outside of Focus; adheres to the Standard of Moral Conduct and Statement of Faith; upholds Focus on the Family's ministry in prayer. Demonstrates behaviors aligned with FOF core values."
[via Macintouch]
posted by jpburns at 12:56 PM PST - 85 comments
Safeplaces
is an interactive playground. Mushrooms twitch and squeak, trees react and the environment shifts between day and night. It even has its secrets. Further, less adorable work can be found
here.
posted by Alison at 12:26 PM PST - 8 comments
The WEEE Man is a huge 3 ton figure
standing 7 metres high and is composed entirely of WEEE (
Waste
Electronic and
Electrical
Equipment)--from washing machines to mobile phones and electronic toys.
The WEEE Man represents the amount of waste a single person in the UK is likely to produce in a lifetime. Measure your own footprint
here.
posted by fandango_matt at 11:15 AM PST - 13 comments
Have you seen this child?
LATimes article about the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit's search for the
Disney World Girl. The article is haunting, horrifying and fasinating. They are looking for a child who is being actively molested and photographed. It's a disturbing read, but probably SFW. Previous background info discussed here
before.
Also note the odd additional Trekkie factoid
posted by theora55 at 10:16 AM PST - 162 comments
Al Gore calls it like he sees it
-
It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God's will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against "people of faith." How dare they?
posted by beth at 10:15 AM PST - 53 comments
"Mr. Reed's policies are not the policies of Washingtonians,
nor should they be the policies of a world-class leader like Microsoft." On the heels of a
controversial decision to take away its support of equal protection statutes for gays, bisexuals and lesbians, Microsoft continues its odd and seemingly inexhorable realignment with fundamentalist Christian moral policy with the payment of $20K per month to former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed. What exactly does this man know about software, again?
posted by AlexReynolds at 8:03 AM PST - 49 comments
The Nexus of Evil
So it seems as though the Chairman of the Colorado College Republicans (
Jay Bob Klinkerman, no really, no kidding, that's his name) seems to be the one responsible for the removal of three Democrats from a Bush Social Security Sideshow.
For some reason, and possibly it was always the case, all roads in this administration frequently lead to back to the same places, with the same names. What do all of the high profile actors in the current GOP have in common? Some sort of activity or affiliation with either the
College Republicans or
Young Republicans.
If you are wondering about the names - how about Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist, Lee Atwater, and the central organizer, Morton Blackwell.
College Republicans have been the footsoldiers for the right since the Draft Goldwater campaign, and have been rewarded for their service throughout the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush#41 and#43 . You can also find their fingerprints all over the various thinktanks, the direct-mail industry, and fundraising. I strongly recommend taking some time to read up on the history of the
College Republicans (PDF).
posted by rzklkng at 7:06 AM PST - 43 comments
Screw
bigfoot. Researchers at Cornell say they have
found the ivory-bill.
[K]nown as an ornithologist's "Holy Grail," [r]esearchers from Cornell University, along with others, reportedly have found the ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods of Arkansas, a rare bird that was last seen in the United States in the 1940s and was believed to have become extinct.
More on the story
here. A digression into the legend
here.
posted by piskycritter at 5:20 AM PST - 34 comments
April 27
Target introduces first new Rx bottles in almost 50 years.
But they might be the only one for some time to do so. I have a couple in my bathroom already and as a designer I have to say they are brilliant example of thoughtful, careful design that can be extremely usable. If you are a design geek, or a wannabe,
this other article is a great read about that explains the design and thought processes, as well as some prototypes, they went through with the NYC School of Visual Arts to get this new design. On page two you can
see the new bottle with a detailed features list. I personally like that it wont roll off a table, better readability, and the color coded rings for each family member. One more way design makes your life easier.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 9:23 PM PST - 28 comments
Alan Cross is a name that is known in Toronto. He's the guy from 102.1 Edge who has the best rock'n'roll show in the business, called The Ongoing History of New Music. His knowledge is so encyclopedic it's creepy. He's personable. He's interesting. He's current. He's uber-cool. And you can either
podcast his shows or read them yourself. I'm no rock newbie, but I'm currently enjoying
Building A Record Library: Part I.
The History of Selling Out is interesting enough to provoke the question, did REM, Husker Du and Sonic Youth
really do it for the bling bling? Speaking of Husker Du, are they possibly the fathers of
Emo? Do yourself a favour: give him a listen and a read.
note: the site's a bit rough on the browser
posted by ashbury at 8:51 PM PST - 28 comments
Environmental Heresies:
A founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, says the environmental movement will soon
reverse its opinions on population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms and nuclear power. Other advocacy for nuclear power is coming
fast and
furious. Meanwhile others aren't questioning contemporary environmentalism's core principles, but they are questioning the
movement's effectiveness , while established leaders
fire back. Is it time to reevaluate environmentalism's core beliefs, or the movement's techniques?
posted by twsf at 8:37 PM PST - 58 comments
What Was True.
From the mid 1950s through the early 1980s,
William Gedney (1932-1989) photographed throughout the
United States, in
India, and in
Europe, and filling
notebook after notebook with his observations. From the commerce of the street outside his Brooklyn apartment to the
daily chores of unemployed
coal miners, from the lifestyle of hippies in
Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney
was able to record the lives of others with clarity and poignancy.
Gedney's America is a nation of averted eyes, and broken automobiles, and restlessness, a place Edward Hopper would recognize, but so, also, Walt Whitman.
posted by matteo at 4:38 PM PST - 11 comments
Buried Treasure Found In Backyard. (Google cache)
"The men were digging holes to plant trees in a friend's back yard when Crebase hit a wooden crate buried less than a foot below the surface. Inside were seven rusted cylindrical cookie tins, including one where 'National Biscuit Company,' and the word 'Ginger,' were legible through the thick rust. They flipped one of the tops, which was fastened with two hooks, and found it 'jammed' with the money."
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:25 PM PST - 34 comments
Blair government attacks the BBC, while attempting to "fix" the news.
In the aftermath of the
Hutton Report fallout, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott reopened the war of words between Labour and the BBC by accusing the BBC of slanting their news coverage of the war in Iraq. Apparently, an Iraqi friend of Prescott's, Shanaz Ibrahim, was refused a (unscheduled) interview. What Prescott fails to mention, however, is that Ms. Ibrahim has lived in London for over 30 years, and is married to
Abdul-Latif Rashid, the
brother-in-law of
Iraq's president. So... where have all the *real* Iraqis gone, anyway?
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:47 PM PST - 18 comments
Students go 'phishing' for user info.
Indiana University grad students conducted
an e-mail experiment showing the ease of login, username theft. The "hack" outraged some, but raised questions about privacy and the public sphere. A
blog was created specifically to provide a forum for students involved in the study. The site lists
comments -- some grateful that they have learned about phishing, but most are furious.
posted by ericb at 11:57 AM PST - 13 comments
Nokia's iPod killer.
Nokia today introduced their new N-series multimedia-centric phones (dropping the 4-digit model numbers they've been using for ever). The
N91 in particular looks like it's shooting straight for the iPod crown: 4GB hard drive, 3G, global GSM, WiFi b/g, Bluetooth, USB mass storage, FM radio and a claimed 12.5 hrs of battery time. The
N90 isn't too shabby either.
posted by costas at 10:12 AM PST - 87 comments
The Skeldale Boys.
Like the works of
James Herriot? Would you like them better if some failed english major wrote the stories in the third person omniscent and filled them with homosexual longing? Me neither, but it's still interesting to know it exists and ask "why?".
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:52 AM PST - 10 comments
The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster.
Vader blogs from under the helmet. Best read out loud in a tinny James Earl Jones voice with mechanized breathing. First post is
here. (Historian's note: the blog starts shortly before
Empire Strikes Back, and his current entry is written during the storming of Hoth.)
posted by brownpau at 8:26 AM PST - 23 comments
Who here hasn't been a bit short before payday?
Jacob Ayrton of Calgary took out a payday loan of $500. Two weeks later he owed Payroll Loan Canada $
606.32 (a $95 "brokerage fee" and 59% interest for a whopping 15,000% per annum charge.) Yesterday, an Alberta judge certified a class-action suit against so-called payday lenders with Mr. Ayrton as lead complainant. "These companies really exploit people who are vulnerable,"
said his lawyer. A fast-growing franchise opportunity for investors, payday loan operations are facing increased scrutiny in
Canada and the U.S. (
NC,
NV,
IL.)
posted by docgonzo at 7:54 AM PST - 43 comments
Remedial economics for the WSJ editorial board
An April 26 Wall Street Journal editorial argued that "the overall tax burden grew more progressive" in the last 25 years because upper income taxpayers pay a larger share of total taxes than they did in 1979. But the Journal failed to explain why upper income taxpayers pay a larger share today: The wealthiest Americans earn a much larger share of total income than they did in 1979.
[see, too: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006194.php]
posted by Postroad at 4:33 AM PST - 106 comments
Diagram
"we're interested in representations. In naming. In indicating. In schematics. In the labelling and taxonomy of things. In poems that masquerade as stories; in stories that disguise themselves as indices or obituaries." (
via)
posted by dhruva at 2:56 AM PST - 5 comments
This is good
From
RLG, an international not-for-profit organization of libraries, museums, and other research institutions, comes this incredibly useful research tool. Start with as vague a query as you like, it'll provide an ordered list of search limiters to help you zero in on the resources you need in a far more organic and rapid fashion than similar tools I've seen. An invaluable resource for students, librarians, and the curious.
posted by Grod at 1:09 AM PST - 10 comments
DailyWTF
is a "Programming Bloopers" repository and forum, collecting, dissecting and making good fun of badly written code. Programmers can appreciate their fellow coders'
strange or
plainly funny problem solving techniques. Sometimes programmers will
square the wheel while reinventing it. Or take the
best practices to the insanity level.
Some programming knowledge required.
posted by nkyad at 1:08 AM PST - 21 comments
April 26
I clicked this link today
while perusing
this MSNBC blog (which is occasionally amusing). It seems that ArticleBot's hackles have been raised, and they are on the defensive against
mainstream media (aka
MSM). I'm not exactly sure what their point is, but I really hate it when people "overuse" the "quotation" marks in their "unique content". I would have totally left it alone if they had not called attention to themselves by responding in this manner. Plus the assistance they are offering reminds me a little of
these MIT geniuses (previously discussed on MeFi
here and
here) except designed to spider search engines. I'm sure it's completely legal, but the ethics are questionable to say the least.
posted by shoppingforsanity at 11:35 PM PST - 89 comments
L I V E W R O N G : is right.
The purveyors, or perpetrators, of LIVEWRONG suggest you represent what you want, when you want, how you want. Buy a bracelet. It is what it is. The creators of the LIVEWRONG armband do not oppose any person, pet, or living thing that have cancer, nor do we oppose any charity that supports a cure for cancer.
posted by RockyChrysler at 9:08 PM PST - 47 comments
Rules For the Library
- Satirical relief for those who suffer or have suffered under an oppressive, Orwellian library atmosphere:
1) There will be absolutely no reading of any kind in the library.
...
2) No breathing in the library.
...
3) No walking or moving in the library.
...
posted by nervestaple at 7:28 PM PST - 69 comments
Serenity
The trailer online. This makes me soooo happy. I've been watching and re-watching the DVD set far too many times to be healthy.
posted by rexruff at 2:02 PM PST - 130 comments
The
Medium is the
Massage [mp3s].
Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian Professor of English Literature who coined phrases such as "the medium is the message" and
global village in the 1960s, and who talked about coming
global connectivity, saw media such as the printing-press and television as changing not only the information we received, but the ways in which we understand information and the world. His publishing style often involved the collection and juxtaposition of quotations and observations in a ways that were fast and cut-up, including
collage and typographic experiment, and a
sound collage lp released in 1967 which sounds as if it was recorded today.
posted by carter at 8:13 AM PST - 13 comments
Lakota Winter Counts.
Lakota and other plains tribes counted time by winters. An appointed recorder would choose one major event to mark the year, depicting that event by
name and symbol. Early records dating back to the 10th century were often painted on
buffalo skins; more recent winter counts were recorded as
text journals. These fascinating records offer insight into natural and historic events for our land that precede accounts of European settlers. - more -
posted by madamjujujive at 7:47 AM PST - 12 comments
An insightful piece of poetry criticism
by Adam Kirsch encapsulates the work of Charles Bukowski, popular poet with
MeFi's and others. Camile Paglia has a go at poetry crit in her latest,
Break, Blow, Burn.
I read the Kirsch piece because I have a passing familiarity with Bukowski, and if I saw someone reading a volume, I'd have some snap insight into what their interests may be. Though I often judge a reader by their book's cover, I could do this with very few poetry books, and I can't remember seeing anyone with a poetry book, or telling me about a poetry book in a long time. While
some of us read for pleasure, we probably aren't reading poetry. The
slam poetry movement of a few years ago seems to have lost its media fire. The
death of poetry is periodically announced, and
others disagree.
My casual observation is that many poetry lovers actually write poetry, and are not students of the genre. Poems are short, it's easy to call something a poem, and it may make the writer feel better to write one out. Rarely are they good, and rarer still will they find an audience outside of
web communities of other poetry writers. Can vigorous and accessible poetry criticism revive poetry readership? Does anyone who does not write poems read poetry, especially unfamiliar poetry? Will anyone cop to writing it but not reading it? And should we care?
posted by rainbaby at 7:40 AM PST - 39 comments
Looks like MSN upped their search count results for items that return more than about 2million hits, a lot of entries have grown more than 500%
in the last few days. unfortunately this site (which graphs the number of results in the engines at any time for different search phrases) was down the last couple of days. Sounds like MSN are inflating their results, why this happened is yet unclear
posted by leighm at 6:27 AM PST - 11 comments
MyGastricBypass.com
"This doctor feels that I have 25 to 30 lbs of excess flesh to come off. All the dieting the world won't remove that, so now I have some major decisions to make....Never did I think that this would be happening to me....Granted, it's better than weighing 500 lbs, but it's pretty nasty looking....The frightening thing is what happens to this skin when I get in the pool. OMG! It floats!!" - A long and actually heroic saga of self-disclosure, somehow Zen too, of one woman's successful attempt to remake her body and so her life - this rises at times to sublime heights :
"I believe in a force called the Cosmic Shoe....Moorings are loosened and our boat feels adrift. When that doesn't get us moving, the Cosmic Shoe finally KICKS our ass into the direction he was trying to nudge us in the first place."
posted by troutfishing at 6:26 AM PST - 96 comments
Got Conscience?
His company did $22 million in business last year, moving American manufacturing plants offshore. "It's not right," Hosea says. "But if I don't do it, someone else is gonna do it." Interesting, if it’s true, is that he tells his potential clients that what they’re about to do is wrong.
posted by tizzie at 5:26 AM PST - 21 comments
April 25
My Vasectomy, in pictures and word. It may be old, and the design difficult to look at, and there's some bad jokes and advertising, but interesting nonetheless. And
topical. Need I mention, NSFW?
posted by ashbury at 8:49 PM PST - 11 comments
For young deserters, refuge is hard to find
It seemed like a drastic but simple solution: a step over the border into a country that had offered sanctuary before to Americans fleeing their homeland.
Instead, the growing band of US soldiers who have sought political refuge in Canada after defying orders to serve in Iraq have found themselves in a political limbo.
posted by Postroad at 3:53 PM PST - 83 comments
A contrarian review of Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" -
"It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans."
Having watched Friedman flog this book on seemingly dozens of talk shows in the last month, I can't say I disagree...
posted by GriffX at 3:33 PM PST - 54 comments
"Declining by Degrees:" Five Univeristy of Arizona students try to survive the megauniversity
A provocative NYT article summarizes an upcoming PBS special (
1,
2) on undergraduate education at large public universities. The average time to complete the BA is 4.7 years. Students describe acquiring "maze smart" skills for navigating institutions where they are completely anonymous. Professors are castigated for striking a grade-inflating "bargain" with underachieving students so they can attend less to teaching and more to research. Assistant coaches patrol the campus in golf carts looking for student athletes playing hooky. Millions of high school grads humiliated every year across the country--should they even bother with the "paper"?
posted by ~rschram at 1:22 PM PST - 84 comments
The Scopitone,
the 1960s French video jukebox, has been mentioned
before on MeFi, but I don't think
this site from New York's
Spike Priggen was up and running then. He's collected many Scopitone and Cinebox vids from the likes of Nino Ferrer, Francoise Hardy, Procul Harum and - naturellement! - Serge Gainsbourg. It's a marvellous well of '60s chic kitsch.
(Navigation can be a tad confusing as there are numerous sections to the site and many links are duplicated throughout, but it's well worth clicking away to see where you end up.)
posted by TiredStarling at 1:01 PM PST - 7 comments
Culture by the people, for the people.
We all know that there are a gazillion blogs out there, with people talking about anything and everything, frequently to an audience of one. Those same text based blogs are incorporating
video as well. People are beginning to organize
their internet not through search engine algorithims, but by their own
tags. There's also a dedicated cadrey of partisan and non-partisan
"amateur journalism" sites. Then you have
full fledged communities focused to specific subjects, holding an unbelievable depth of knowledge and opinions. With entire
encyclopedias available online, and with smaller topic-centric wiki's available, can the creation and dissemination of audience authored content be far behind? Witness the growth of
Flickr, the probable success of
Vimeo, people programming their own
radio stations and/or
shows, the
increasing awareness and
use of the
Freedom of Information Act (
FOIA) by
plain ol' citizens, the courting of
TiVo by Google and Yahoo (to share homemovies and pictures, perhaps?), open source news sites like
Take Bake the News,
NowPublic (for royalty free images to accompany content),
Downhill Battle,
Our Media ( a place to store your content), and open-source
sounds and
sights. Could there eventually be enough worthwhile content to break us free of a corporate-delivered culture?
posted by rzklkng at 11:16 AM PST - 35 comments
RAISING NANCIES
: "Their most unexpected attribute was a weird, screeching noise they relentlessly emitted — A cross between a high-pitched belch and the sound produced by rubbing the suface of a balloon!"
Amonia hazed humor from comics artist
Howard Cruse, based on
Ernie Bushmiller's classic, odd, and still-subversive character
NANCY — who it seems for the sake of conversation was herself based on another (real life)
Nancy ...(And as long as the subject is Nancy, here's one other related parody and a very addictive dada-like game).
posted by Peter H at 11:04 AM PST - 16 comments
TV Turnoff Week
starts today. Read a book, go outside. Sweeps week will be waiting on your TiVo when the week is over.
posted by mosch at 9:09 AM PST - 171 comments
If you own
a gas-guzzling SUV, Uncle Sam just might pay for your gas...that is if you use it 100% for business.
posted by C17H19NO3 at 8:20 AM PST - 41 comments
Celebrity Mefi?
Arianna Huffington is starting a "celebrity group blog." Contributors will include Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Albert Brooks, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon Jordan, Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer, Bobby Kennedy, Tina Brown, John Cusack, Gary Hart, Mike Nichols...etc. According to a
leaked email, Arianna is pitching the "Huffington Post" (ugh) to contributors as "a collective endeavor that can enliven — and possibly even shift — the national conversation."
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:22 AM PST - 104 comments
Svetlana Alexievich
is a Russian writer-cum-journalist who 'constructs her narratives out of "live voices"', and finds her subject matter in Big Events lived by ordinary people. Extracts from her book on Chernobyl appear
here.
posted by TimothyMason at 12:42 AM PST - 5 comments
April 24
TTT TTT TTT CQ DE NMO NMO
STRY OF USCG RM2 HERMAN, J. DTY OP NMO 500KHZ, FRMR INTL CW CALL AND DISTRESS FREQ.
US CW WATCH ENDED 12-July 1999 WHEN KFS KPH
SK
BUT KPH RESSURECTED YR LATER AS
KSM K
posted by eriko at 7:47 PM PST - 18 comments
Food-Force
• An educational video game from the U.N.'s
World Food Programme.
Screenshots & overview: "An aircraft circles over a crisis zone. War. Drought. People are hungry. This is the virtual world of the Food Force video game. It represents our real world, where 852 million people lack enough food to eat and World Food Programme teams deliver food aid every day using not only airplanes but a fleet of ships and thousands of trucks." Available for
both Mac & PC.
posted by dhoyt at 4:52 PM PST - 7 comments
Updatefilter: Remember all the uproar over the new AIDS superbug?
Well, think again. NY Magazine tells all about the "medical panic attack":
... After the frenzy died down, however, the new epidemic began to look a lot less fearsome. In fact, on closer examination, almost everything about this case seems murky. An investigation by the Department of Health turned up no evidence that the New York man passed the virus to anybody. And on March 29, the department put out a press release saying that the patient was responding well to his medications. ... “I thought this sounded familiar, so I Googled ‘superbug’ and ‘AIDS,’” said GMHC’s Gregg Gonsalves. He found two cases reported in 2001 by a noted Vancouver AIDS specialist, Dr. Julio Montaner. The Vancouver Sun quoted Montaner about the cases, but he could have been describing the newest Patient Zero ...
March post on it here
posted by amberglow at 1:09 PM PST - 14 comments
Ernst Becker
proposed
terror management theory to explain
toxic leaders (among other things.)
The war on terror provides many examples of how fear-mongering enables the rise of authoritarian regimes.
Some have even found that self-inflicted fear mongering can cause permanent cognitive and behavioral impairment.
Does this mean that
conservativism is actually a form of mental disability? Others
disagree. (previously in comments
here and
here)
posted by warbaby at 8:43 AM PST - 51 comments
Confessions Of A Super Hero
: "Seems I’ve misplaced my cape again. Gamma Girl says I should get one of those gizmos from Sharper Image that you attach to your keys and whistles when you push a button on the base station. Anesthesia said I wasn’t about to “buy a gizmo”, as I had a perfectly good Super Lab in the Hero Cave. Sometimes she can be such a nudzh. Like I know how to make a key whistle."
Best read chronologically, although it is
your 20 minutes =)
posted by deemer at 5:41 AM PST - 12 comments
The Australian media is calling them the 'Bali nine'.
Nine young Australians are being held in Bali under suspicion for attempting to smuggle 8.3 kg (or 11.25 kg depending on what you read) of heroin through Bali's airport. They were caught with the drugs allegedly strapped to their bodies while accomplices were apprehended at a nearby hotel. Most of the nine Australians are now cooperating with police enquiries even though they fear doing so will
further endanger the lives of their families (e.g. drug lords punishing them for talking). Don't get this latest case mistaken, however, with the other high-profile Australian drugs case in the Australian media right now. Beauty therapist Schapelle Corby, 27, is also being held in Bali for the
4.1 kg of top-notch marijuana found in her bodyboard bag some months ago. Prosecutors in that case
have asked for a life sentence to be handed down to Corby. She has supposedly escaped death by firing squad. Her legal team and family, though, say she was a victim of dodgy baggage handlers and an Australian interstate drug smuggling operation that uses unknowing interstate Australian travellers as drug mules.
Most Australians are worried about this, too. Of course, the strain of the case on Corby
is beginning to show.
But getting back to the 'Bali nine'. What will their fate be?
Another Australian was just given an execution order in Vietnam for also smuggling Heroin. It's all nasty stuff, hey. News reports indicate that
Australian officials will seek clemency for those involved in the latest Bali bust. Yeah, but how much good will that do? Indonesia is well known for enforcing strong anti-drug laws. And who can blame them?
posted by sjvilla79 at 3:43 AM PST - 41 comments
Giant Mako Shark Video
On Friday
some fishheads in Pensacola, FL, cruising only 300 yards off the beach came up on a 10'
mako shark that happened to be munching on what might have been (before it got munched) a world record
tarpon. The video is almost 8 min. long and there are some good shots of the shark near the boat. It is also rich in loud, NSFW language.
BTW, the mako is the only shark
known to jump when hooked.
posted by wsg at 3:42 AM PST - 27 comments
April 23
A year after the Abu Ghraib photos were widely circulated, and a few days after most of the low-ranking officers blamed were
let off,
Human Rights Watch releases a
report clearly implicating the entire chain of command, and strongly urges the investigation of Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet. (Full report
here)
Just some bad eggs, eh?
posted by bumpkin at 4:47 PM PST - 32 comments
At the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The skepticism about arms and armies that pervaded the American experiment from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamored with military might. The ensuing affair had and continues to have a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue. Few in power have openly considered whether valuing military power for its own sake or cultivating permanent global military superiority might be at odds with American principles. Indeed, one striking aspect of America's drift toward militarism has been the absence of dissent offered by any political figure of genuine stature... The Normalization of War and
New Boys in Town - The Neocon Revolution and American Militarism are two excerpts from
Andrew J. Bacevich's just released
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, concerning who and which there was a previous post
here.
posted by y2karl at 4:33 PM PST - 36 comments
Greenwashing is a term for "Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image." The Green Life recently released their annual
America's Ten Worst Greenwashers list. It's a good overview of companies and organizations that talk the talk but don't quite walk the walk. [via
treehugger]
posted by mathowie at 1:25 PM PST - 20 comments
He's been on Star Trek and Deep Space Nine, the only Treks of quality out there. He's really geeky looking, but manages to score bit parts in lots of films. He's Opie's brother. And now he's got his own variety show, something that died when Carol Burnett went off the air (or, maybe
Viva Variety). So three cheers for
The Clint Howard Show!
via Blue's News
posted by WolfDaddy at 4:32 AM PST - 35 comments
1000 white cards
The game is fairly simple. You take a lot of index cards, cut them in half, draw your own cards and play them on each other.
posted by srboisvert at 4:12 AM PST - 25 comments
April 22
Burton had his time.
Now "R.F. Burton", a long time pseudonymous expat in Saudi Arabia, is writing occasional pieces on the place he calls the Magic Kingdom. They are by turns
appalling,
alarming,
fascinating,
outrageous,
odd,
dispiriting,
interesting,
depressing,
enlightening, and
provoking.
Eleven so far. The index (along with the latest entry, if you have the stomach for it) is
here.
Request to those who know Saudi first hand- is the brush too broad or are the pieces nicely observed? Or something in between?
posted by IndigoJones at 6:03 PM PST - 27 comments
Tactical Voter
has resurfaced just in time for next month's
British general election. Thanks of the large number of elected representatives in the UK (659), vote swapping promises to have a more widespread effect on the contest than similar exchange networks did in the
the last two US Presidential Elections. Indeed, most political analysts believe that, during the last General Election in 2001, vote swapping accounted for the demise of at least two
Conservative Members of Parliament.
Other vote swapping sites want to
sack Blair, while musicians
Billy Bragg and
Brian Eno (the latter
previously posted) are waging
tactical voting campaigns of their own. What is this type of activity going to do to the future of elections? Is this type of activity restricted to the UK and USA? And are there any historical ancendents to online vote swapping?
posted by MrMerlot at 5:34 PM PST - 27 comments
Get Back in the Box
says Douglas Rushkoff in his upcoming book of the same name.
Kris Krug interviewed Rushkoff last week just after he wrapped up writing. Apparently the author is going to explore how we're undergoing a renaissance of collaboration where identity is defined by connection to others. Douglas seems to be pulling together a lot of ideas that have been bubbling up in the blogosphere (a
connected creative/technology class,
social networks) but is business ready to hear his message? Sounds like he'll be well received by many webby people, but it remains to be seen how long the traditional definitions he challenges will remain - one generation, two maybe?
You may remember Rushkoff from the PBS Frontline series'
Merchants of Cool and
Persuaders. He's been discussed quite a bit before here on MeFi,
9 times in fact.
posted by will at 12:40 PM PST - 19 comments
Business
Card Etiquette.
Do not play or fiddle with people's business cards - treat them with respect. A Western businessman once famously lost a big deal for picking his teeth with one of his colleagues' business cards, and was never given the opportunity to do business with the company again. (more inside).
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:14 AM PST - 47 comments
Lion Heart
is the nickname given to Saleh Khalaf, a nine year old boy maimed by an explosion in Iraq. Deanne Fitzmaurice's photo essay about his ongoing recovery won the
2005 Pultizer Prize for Feature Photography.
posted by McGuillicuddy at 10:37 AM PST - 19 comments
Recently scanned article
from the April 29th, 1974 Newsweek detailing
Patty Hearst and the
Symbionese Liberation Army. Like many, I was vaguely aware that this had happened by had never read the details. (Direct page links:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 9:00 AM PST - 33 comments
The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail
In the spring of 1919, when the father of American cryptography,
Herbert O.
Yardley, drew up a plan for a permanent State Department codebreaking organization — a "
black chamber — he estimated that a modest $100,000 a year would buy a chief (Yardley) and fifty clerks and cryptanalysts. Yardley rented a three-story building in New York City: on East 38th Street just off Fifth Avenue, he put two dozen people to work under civilian cover—as the
Code Compiling Company. His summary dismissal happened in 1929 at the hand of incoming Secretary of State
Henry Stimson, who closed down the
Cipher Bureau with the
casual observation that "
gentlemen do not read each other's mail". The son of a railroad telegrapher, a man with a lively Jazz Age interest in money, good-looking women, and drinks at five, Yardley not only taught his country how to read other people's mail but wrote two of the enduring American books—the memoir
The American Black Chamber (1931), and
The Education of a Poker Player (1957).
posted by matteo at 8:47 AM PST - 6 comments
Saunders Mac Lane,
mathematician,
has died, age 95. Winner of the National Medal of Science, Vice-President of the National Academy of Science, President of the American Mathematical Society, author of three of the
canonical texts in
algebra [reg. maybe req., here's a local copy], Mac Lane was also mathematical ancestor to
over a thousand mathematicians, father of
category theory and
homological algebra, and expert in
topology,
topos theory, group cohomology, logic, and applied mathematics. He was one of the towering figures of postwar mathematics. Remembered by
his students and all of us who were affected by his work and his life.
posted by gleuschk at 7:31 AM PST - 7 comments
LilyPond
is a free, mature, actively developed "automated engraving system" for the production of beautifully formatted musical scores.
Essay and
examples from the site. All major platforms are supported.
posted by teleskiving at 6:41 AM PST - 9 comments
April 21
Skynet
is a go - step one is complete.
Cyc (pronounced psych) is an AI with a new twist. "Cyc's creator says it has developed a human trait no other AI system has managed to imitate: common sense." -
New Scientist (
via)
posted by tvjunkie at 8:51 PM PST - 26 comments
Early Readers or Proselytizing?
...Her father apparently agrees. "There is so much history here for Christians to enjoy," he says. "It's hard to believe that Egypt is a Muslim nation."
Dr. Ibrahim asks his daughter what she thinks of Christianity. Sana replies, "I want to know why Allah let my mother die."--From
Escape From Egypt, one of the Accelerated Reader series of books put out by
Renaissance Learning, Inc., and in many many public schools around the country. A
review of Escape From Egypt says this:
... In addition, to promoting Protestant Christianity, Morgan advocates home schooling. The story addresses the strengths of "home schooling" as opposed to public school instruction. ...Escape from Egypt is an addition to a multicultural curriculum as long as the reader understands the religious biases of the author and publisher. The publisher:
Bethany House, whose purpose is
to help Christians apply biblical truth in all areas of life--whether through a well-told story, a challenging devotional, or the message of an illustrated children's book.
Public elementary school students across the country are getting rewards and prizes for reading this book on their own, without teacher supervision or involvement and taking Renaissance Learning's reading comprehension quiz on a computer, again without any teacher involvement. +
posted by amberglow at 6:22 PM PST - 12 comments
U.S. Concentration Camps: FEMA and the REX 84 Program.
There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:31 PM PST - 76 comments
Did the new Pope swing the Presidential election last year?
After brown-nosing the Vatican on the grounds of being pro-life President Bush convinced then-Cardinal Ratzinger to work on the American Catholic Church on his behalf. Ratzinger's response?
This memo where Ratzi claimed that anyone (especially a Catholic politician - like Kerry) who campaigned and voted pro-choice was not only on the side of
evil but was unworthy of receiving Communion and Americans probably shouldn't vote for him. According to Salon, this was perhaps what was behind Bush's 6 point increase in Catholic support from 2000, and the difference in the 2004 election.
posted by tsarfan at 12:23 PM PST - 48 comments
Dewanatron
: a family of electronic instruments ‘which hazard unpredictable behaviors and self playing tendencies.’ See, for example, the
Alphatron, the
Dual-Primate Console, and the
Courtesy Modulator. Besides his work as an instrument- and furniture-maker, the Dewanatrons’ co-creator,
Brian Dewan, is a
musician and
singer who has collaborated with
They Might Be Giants, among others. He is also a visual artist, who has created numerous
filmstrips, and who was responsible for the ‘flying victrola’ design for the the Neutral Milk Hotel album ‘In The Aeroplane Over the Sea.’
posted by misteraitch at 12:12 PM PST - 9 comments
We Come In Peace.
"The following letters were written by employees of Playtime, an adult toy store in Edison, New Jersey, to accompany thirty-six vibrators sent as gifts to Iraqi women last October." Here's the original
Operation Vibration website, what a wonderful thing!
posted by gsb at 9:04 AM PST - 39 comments
Melissa Kaplan's
site is not
just about green
iguanas. Anapsid.org provides information on
behavior,
health,
prey and
feeding, captivity
issues, and
more regarding Cyclura (blue)
iguanas,
chelonians,
amphibians,
crocodilians,
lizards,
snakes, and even
invertebrates and arachnids.
posted by breezeway at 9:02 AM PST - 5 comments
"The Global Gag Rule Impact Project is a collaborative research effort ...
the project's objective is to document the effects of the Global Gag Rule on the availability of life-saving family planning services, as well as efforts to address other major threats to public health, including HIV/AIDS and maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion." This interactive database allows you to explore the impact that the Mexico City Policy has had on healthcare worldwide.
posted by OmieWise at 8:17 AM PST - 2 comments
You can't say vagina
in one Minnesota high school. A button bought at a production of the Vagina Monologues brings some students into conflict with the school.
posted by valis at 8:08 AM PST - 101 comments
Hitchcock's infamous shower scene from Psycho overlayed with the '98 remake by Gus Van Sant:
.mov
(via Waxy)
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 7:58 AM PST - 22 comments
Lexicon: An RPG
- The basic idea is that each player takes on the role of a scholar, from before scholarly pursuits became professionalized (or possibly after they ceased to be). You are cranky, opinionated, prejudiced and eccentric. You are also collaborating with a number of your peers -- the other players -- on the construction of an encyclopedia describing some historical period (possibly of a
fantastic world).
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:12 AM PST - 45 comments
Google is watching you....
"My Search History lets you easily view and manage your search history from any computer." Given the continuing concerns about Google's respect for privacy, is this a good thing?
posted by jefgodesky at 6:50 AM PST - 43 comments
I recalled a few of the Flickrazzi's who post the "how-to's" of their
daily lives. For example,
7-how-7 works for a production company that produces blow-up dolls for the
entertainment film and commercial industry (via
BoingBoing today),
underbunny works as a mortician,
rickenbacker documents his life in fast food, and then there's a variety of active duty military folk who are documenting the mundane "over there", like
ob1left,
nevadog,
At Ease,
Doc Torres,
enlisted cowboy,
Nukeit1,
JeffG,
Luodanli, and the
homsar. But if blogging at work can be bad, than I'm sure taking photos at work and sharing them with the interweb HAS to be worse.
posted by rzklkng at 6:36 AM PST - 35 comments
WWASP stung by alleged victims, goverment and watchdog organizations.
The
WorldWide Association of Specialty Schools, a program that manages a series of domestic and overseas behavior modification schools for "troubled teens" is under intense scrutiny right now by a lawmaker in Calfornia who
just filed legislation requesting more oversight, officials in New York investigating various claims against their Ivy Ridge Academy (
PDF) & Utah looking into
Majestic Ranch, recently having
an offer turned down to purchase property for a school in Boonville, Missouri, and having to file a lawsuit against the
International Survivors Action Committee, a watchdog organization closely monitoring WWASP and its
large network of educational consultants, recruiting companies, transport services, real estate ventures, and lots of Limited Liability shell companies.
posted by bkdelong at 5:33 AM PST - 11 comments
April 20
SEGA Fantasy VI
- Our intrepid band of console heroes battle the evil of the Playstation Portable.
[Flash, long, extremely nerdy]
posted by neckro23 at 11:27 PM PST - 15 comments
A Shadowy Museum of the Outre -
"Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collector's item in its own way - not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare."
[ Click on "The Paintings". ]
posted by mischief at 9:04 PM PST - 8 comments
How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy?
At what point does great wealth held in a few hands actually harm democracy, threatening to turn a democratic republic into an oligarchy?
It's a debate we haven't had freely and openly in this nation for nearly a century, and last week, by voting to end the Estate Tax, House Republicans tried to ensure that it wouldn't be had again in this generation.
But it's a debate that's vital to the survival of democracy in America.
In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..."
posted by mk1gti at 4:22 PM PST - 65 comments
Ars Technica has an
updated review of ten different USB 2.0 flash drives. In the market for a floppy drive replacement? Have you just purchased a flash drive and want to know how it stacks up to the competition? Read on to see which drive meets your needs and what extras you get for the cash. With which USB drives have Mefites been most satisfied?
posted by johnnyace at 3:21 PM PST - 31 comments
Happy 420 day!
Although many have (
wrongly) believed that 420 had something to do with police code relating to marijuana offenses or 4/20 being the dates that Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrisson, and John Belushi died; this infamous number really was simply the time that several San Rafael high school students would meet after school to get baked.
posted by tsarfan at 11:51 AM PST - 105 comments
Oops I Did It Again: The Original.
"'Oops! I Did It Again' was recorded in April, 1932 in a Chicago studio, most likely Nearlie's or West and Fourth ... The song remained all-but-forgotten until sixty years later when a young Britney Spears sent her interpretation of the Armstrong tune all the way to the top of the charts." (via
Stereogum).
posted by adrober at 11:33 AM PST - 47 comments
John Adams is back.
In a surprising twist that should amaze pundits, today's
prominent politicians turn out to be reincarnations of guys from the Continental Congress. Meanwhile, in an unrelated development,
36 dead presidents are sending messages from beyond the grave. As Bill Clinton said,
"Thank you for the engraved copy...It looks fascinating!”
posted by inksyndicate at 10:22 AM PST - 21 comments
Tired of people sending you links you've seen weeks before?
Old News Baby lets you create a list of urls you've seen, so you can refer back to your inherent coolness when people are talking about them.
via ResearchBuzz
posted by Katemonkey at 9:28 AM PST - 14 comments
Styrofoam + Ceramic Spray = Profit Instant Housing
A styrofoam house sounds like a really stupid idea but, when the styrofoam is sprayed with a special ceramic spray called
Grancrete (
pdf), it becomes twice as strong as structural concrete.
It is also cheap, $10 a square foot to build a house as opposed to $150 a square foot for a regular home.
And, where regular concrete can take up to three weeks to fully cure, Grancrete dries in a single day.
The potential impact of this product for developing countries and natural disaster prone areas could be truly incredible.
posted by fenriq at 8:16 AM PST - 38 comments
Happy 18th Birthday Maria Sharapova!
A music video by ESPN's Bristol Bob and the
Page 2 Crue, made in honor of Maria Sharapova's 18th birthday. Make sure you crank the volume knob up to 11, because now you, too, can sing along to the tune of The Knack's "My Sharona."
posted by MmmKlunk at 7:50 AM PST - 25 comments
April 19
Cartoon Fridge
has streaming episodes of the Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, and King of the Hill, among others. They have quite a comprehensive listing of shows, (The Simpsons has all the episodes up to Season 12) and if you're on broadband, they load pretty fast. Mozilla and Opera supported as well!
posted by banished at 10:55 PM PST - 50 comments
Wir haben einem Deutschepabst!
Meine Deutsche ist schlecht, aber ich denke daß ich genug von dieser Netzplatz verstehe. Und sie lerhnen ihr alle holperig Melodien. Weil nichts so gut als ertönt, als es auf Deutsch gesungen hat!
[My German's not too great, but I think I understand this site enough. And they teach y'all doggerel melodies! Because nothing sounds so good as when it's sung in German.]
Fun for those who speak German, and for those who can fake it. (I found
this helpful for words I didn't know).
posted by klangklangston at 9:44 PM PST - 13 comments
BenedictXVI.com
registered a few weeks ago by our very own
rcade. He hedged his bets by registering six domains in all, and now is being called out for popesquatting.
posted by riffola at 9:24 PM PST - 64 comments
Marla Ruzicka, RIP
Compared to the pomp and circumstance that mainstream America lavished on an
NFL player pointlessly cut down by friendly fire in Iraq, the death of Mara Ruzicka has been largely ignored. Marla gave her life in Iraq fighting peacefully to protect and preserve the lives of average Iraqis--the reason we're supposed to be there in the first place. You can visit the
Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict to pay tribute to Marla and to the movement she's left as a legacy.
posted by Neologian at 7:50 PM PST - 23 comments
Former Carrier, USS America, CV-66, leaves port for the last time
The conventional powered aircraft carrier,
USS America,
CV-66, of the
Kitty Hawk class, previously docked at the former Naval Base in Philadelphia (
photo), has left for her date with Davy Jones.
The Navy intends to
"attack" the America with a variety of tactics and munitions, in order to measure the hardiness of US carriers, especially against unconventional terror attacks. Personally named by President John F. Kennedy and having seen
active duty through much of the Cold War, from
1961 until 1996, it's suprising that the Navy decided to dispose of the country's namesake in this way.
Veterans who served aboard the America are
sad to see her go, and
mounted an effort to save her from the bottom. Their efforts have been unsuccessfull - she left port for the last time today.
posted by rzklkng at 7:42 PM PST - 22 comments
smashTheTONES!
Don't pay for an MP3 ringtone -- or worse, a MIDI file that's been floating around on the net for years. Provide the sound file, and this site will automatically format it to play on your phone, free of charge. If you are a nerd like me, this is your big chance to get some polyphonic
video game themes on your cell phone with a minimum of fuss.
Be advised that your phone must be able to receive text messages and download ringtones to get your free ringtone goodness.
posted by jenovus at 5:33 PM PST - 37 comments
FemDefence: A Protection Against Rape
• "Femdefence is an on-going project first presented in 2003. The project includes the creation of an imaginary product, which bears the project’s name. The 'product' is a kind of protection against rape, somewhat similar to a tampon in that its user carries it inserted in her vagina. In it there is a sharp pin which has a penetrating effect on the perpetrator’s penis in the event of a rape."
posted by dhoyt at 10:52 AM PST - 82 comments
USDA releases new food pyramid(s).
Instead of one cogent nutritional guideline for all Americans, the USDA has
released a dozen because "one size doesn't fit all." Dietitians have advocated
revision for a while now but change has been slow. According to author
Marion Nestle, the nutritional guidelines have become
highly politized by industry lobbyists: "My first day on the job, I was given the rules: No matter what the research indicated, the report could not recommend 'eat less meat' as a way to reduce intake of saturated fat." Newspeak for sweets appears to be
discretionary calories; are we doing any better?
posted by fatllama at 10:15 AM PST - 29 comments
Taking a (the) piss.
Handy hints from MoFi.This takes the cake.
*efficiently urination for males:
first of all, learn to urinate while in a seated position. It is more relaxing, less spray intensive, and the spreading of the loins allows for a relatively thorough emptying of the bladder. Spread legs slightly for optimal effect.(There's a lot mi)
posted by johnny7 at 5:05 AM PST - 28 comments
Bread is dangerous
Research on bread indicates that: More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days. (More research inside)
posted by growabrain at 12:44 AM PST - 34 comments
April 18
Dixie Square Mall
, in the mostly-blighted "
inner ring" Chicago suburb of
Harvey, Illinois, opened in 1966. It suffered gradual decline, until it closed in 1978. A year later, film crews gave the mall a brief makeover and
Jake and Elwood Blues drove through the place. Then, nothing. For 20-plus years, the mall sat and decayed.
Renovation plans (even a planned
baseball stadium for the White Sox) were
popular over the
years, but never panned out. In 1993,
a rape and murder took place in the JC Penney's space.
From space, the mall looks beat up. From the ground, it
looks even worse. Human fascination with deserted space has borne a
number of websites and
spelunking trips (along with some
excellent then-and-now
comparisons), and a
documentary is apparently in the works. Finally, at long last,
there's renewed hope for the site. Previously seen
here and
here.
posted by AgentRocket at 9:55 PM PST - 21 comments
Flickr Doubles the Stakes
with their new offerings for Pro users. People with existing Pro accounts will have two GB of upload capacity per month, a subscription length of double what they paid for, and two free pro accounts to gift to friends.
posted by quasistoic at 9:24 PM PST - 49 comments
Black Market Press: Back Again
The Popular Tri-State Area Zine Team, Black Market Press is back again, older, wiser, and broadcasting to a much wider readership thanks to the popularity of the Blog. Social and political commentary from the pamphleteering team that brought you
Media Blitz back in 1995. We encourage you to send us links, news, or hate mail.
posted by Mroz at 8:33 PM PST - 2 comments
Will Canada's
proposed 25% tax on music downloading kill legitimate music sales over the internet, or will it spur people to buy more online?
via slashdot
posted by shepd at 6:28 PM PST - 18 comments
RentMySon is a subsidiary of ChildNet Services, with its corporate headquarters in San Diego, CA. In addition, we also maintain 4 regional offices across the United States.
RentMySon provides safe and trustworthy child-rental services in multiple metropolitan areas.
posted by kenko at 4:53 PM PST - 42 comments
The ultimate spoiler! Download the complete, illustrated screenplay for "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith"
here for $4.99. completely legal.
posted by JPowers at 3:10 PM PST - 28 comments
Now here's an interesting story.
And well worth the read. It mentions some disturbing facts - he reloads and starts shooting again - but is still sympathetic to our hero. Of course if you compare it with
this...
"nothing to see here folks, keep moving right along!" Oh, and is "frought" a word?
posted by milkwood at 11:02 AM PST - 25 comments
Ask and ye shall receive -
Another forum in which to ask questions. It appears to operate somewhat like Ask Metafilter. I think I'll stick with AskMe, but perhaps I will try some of my questions that never really got answered over at Wondir. (via Boing Boing)
posted by caddis at 9:59 AM PST - 26 comments
More mass graves unearthed in Iraq |
Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Saddam's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of 300,000 people have been found since the U.S. invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say. In the aftermath of Saddam's fall, thousands of Iraqis overran mass-grave sites, digging for their relatives' remains with backhoes, shovels, even their bare hands. More evidence of genocide was discovered in Spring 2003, and though
the numbers were disputed, the number of buried bodies discovered has continued to rise.
posted by jenleigh at 9:05 AM PST - 161 comments
Numbered Among the Dead
The life's work of Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old American activist, had become door-to-door polling in Iraq to assess the number of civilian casualties of the war. She became one on Sunday, dying in a
suicide bomb attack. "The Marines have nicknamed me Cluster Bomb Girl because I would hear of places where they had gone off," she said in a
2003 interview, "and I would ask them to help me clear the area."
posted by rcade at 6:03 AM PST - 55 comments
Blogger Thomas Hawk gets a
glimpse of Microsoft's new OS, codenamed Longhorn. Finding those files won't be a problem anymore: Longhorn is going to be fast. It will be as impressive as new operating systems always are claimed to be.
Here's Paul Thurrott's review of Windows 98 (”...you must understand that this is the ultimate Windows. It's the best it's ever going to be, and yes, that's quite good”).
posted by Termite at 3:30 AM PST - 83 comments
Adobe to buy Macromedia
I almost choked when I saw this press release, Adobe is going to buy out Macromedia for $3.4 billion in stock. Adobe is paying about $9 over the current share price, which means the investors will make out nicely. With the two largest design software companies becoming one, the new Adobe will be a monopoly (if it isn't already with Photoshop). I just hope they remove the ability to make really annoying Flash movies...
posted by jonknee at 1:03 AM PST - 92 comments
April 17
(all links safe for work)
Some once hypothesized that as pornography became more accessible and more mainstream, men in turn would become uncontrollable, ravenous sexual beasts. I always thought this myself: a man will see something in porn that a real woman won't give him—Internet porn now caters in a click to
every fetish you can imagine—and he will find a way to get it.
My ex-girlfriend, observant and intelligent beyond her years, always used to tell me the opposite: it wouldn't turn men into beasts, having their way with every woman they saw. No, it would turn them away from women completely, libidos and their ability to connect with
real females weakened by the hardcore acts and impossible bodies that only porn stars could give them. The porn would crave some intrinsic desire, but leave both people in the couple lonelier and less fulfulled.
Now I think
she was absolutely right.
posted by symphonik at 10:45 PM PST - 209 comments
Billyuns and billyuns of years ago,
or at least a fair while back, there used to be a kingdom on the moon. The kingdom had a princess named Serenity, and she was guarded by representatives of nearby planets. Things being as they were, said representatives were all, teenagers in sailor suits. Look,
no one said it was going to be sensible.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:02 PM PST - 10 comments
If the election was to mark the point from which Iraqis would settle their differences through politics and not through violence, it failed; for those responsible for the insurgency— not only those planting suicide bombs but those running the organizations responsible for them and the leaders of the community that has shown itself sympathetic enough to the insurgents' cause to shelter them—did not take part. The political burden of the elections was to bring those who felt frightened or alienated by the new dispensation into the political process, so they could express their opposition through politics and not through violence; the task, that is, was to attract Sunnis to the polls and thereby to isolate the extremists. And in this, partly because of an electoral system that the Sunnis felt, with some reason, was unfairly stacked against them, the election failed.Iraq: The Real Election. See also
Iraq: Without Consensus, Democracy Is Not the Answer. (
pdf)
posted by y2karl at 2:45 PM PST - 35 comments
The Academic JFK Assassination site
is an unbelievably thorough compendium of information on the Kennedy assassination. It's an excursion into conspiracy theories without any crackpottery. Some of the articles are immensely readable. See, for example, Richard Popkin's 1966 New York Review of Books article
The Second Oswald.
posted by painquale at 2:01 PM PST - 21 comments
Lightning begin their Stanley Cup Defense
During the lockout and cancelled season, a Tampa Tribune sports writer has been using a popular hockey simulation game to play out the 2004-2005 season, and has been covering each game as if it were real. Yesterday the SimBolts took a 2-0 lead in their first round match, on the strength of Ruslan Fedotenko's hat trick. Final
standings and
league leaders. ¶ The Virtual Ottawa Senators have a 2-0 lead over the SimLeafs. I'll be checking back to see faux Ottawa choke.
posted by KS at 1:54 PM PST - 14 comments
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
--
...Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money....
Naomi Klein on "reconstruction" money after natural disasters--and who benefits.
(Makes Wolfowitz seem like a less unlikely choice to head the World Bank after reading, too.)
posted by amberglow at 1:43 PM PST - 36 comments
The US house majority leader, a
long-time supporter of an
armed citizenry, jokes about weapons as the great equalizer in his battles with critics. “When a man is in trouble or in a good fight, he wants all of his friends around him, particularly armed,'
said Delay to the NRA convention.
posted by found missing at 11:02 AM PST - 46 comments
Paul Krugman: The best places to get sick
A dozen years ago, everyone was talking about an American health care crisis. But then the issue faded from view: A few years of good data led many people to conclude that HMOs and other innovations had ended the historic trend of rising medical costs.
But the pause in the growth of health care costs in the 1990s proved temporary. Medical costs are once again rising rapidly and the U.S. health care system is once again in crisis. So now is a good time to ask why other advanced countries manage to spend so much less than we Americans do, while getting better results.
posted by Postroad at 8:52 AM PST - 67 comments
April 16
Even after McVeigh was arrested and the government identified two white males as perpetrators, CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer insisted that "there is still a possibility that there could have been some sort of connection to Middle East terrorism. One law enforcement source tells me that there's a possibility that they (the Caucasian suspects) may have been contracted out as freelancers to go out and rent this truck that was used in the bombing."
From
William Krar to
Timothy McVeigh, the issue of domestic terrorism has earned little serious, substantive coin in mainstream media coverage over the last two decades, beyond doses of rabble rousing against
Muslims,
Jews,
gays,
abortion rights activists and health practitioners, and anyone else who doesn't fit the evangelical Christian mold, from convicted murderers like
Eric Rudolph to future presidential candidates like
Jeb Bush all the way up to active
three-star generals. When domestic terror doesn't sell, it's business as usual in the "left-wing" mainstream media...
posted by AlexReynolds at 3:23 PM PST - 39 comments
Don't like what the annual report on International Terrorist activity says?
Just kill it--forever (never mind that the law requires it) --
The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered. ... other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.
"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," ...
(Previous post on their lying report on 2003's incidents here)
posted by amberglow at 10:58 AM PST - 64 comments
Reith Lecture 2005: The Triumph of Technology
Lord Broers -
In the five lectures, he sets out his belief that technology can and should hold the key to the future. He says: "It is time to wake up to this fact. Applied science is rivalling pure science both in importance and in intellectual interest. We cannot leave technology to the technologists; we must all embrace it. We have lived through a revolution in which technology has affected all our lives and altered our societies for ever."
posted by srboisvert at 8:21 AM PST - 8 comments
Gas Pump Hacker.
"CHICAGO -- In a bold and outrageous theft staged in broad daylight, a driver pumped about $900 worth of gasoline at a suburban gas station.
The man removed the panel of a pump in Country Club Hills and manipulated the mechanics of the pump so that it would continue to pump gas without registering inside the station...
Other cars then pulled up to the pump and, apparently, cut deals with the thief, who then filled up their tanks and took off..."
posted by azul at 6:42 AM PST - 31 comments
April 15
The house in Amityville with the fan-shaped windows making an inhuman face is the
Godzilla of haunted house movies. The town and current owner of the house where the DeFeo family was murdered try to
downplay (registration required) its signficance. The trademark windows in the original have been replaced to disguise its identity, and lawsuits force studios to use a house-double. Although latest remake claims the status of "true story," the case has been widely dismissed as a
hoax and the 2005 film has even rased the ire of
George Lutz for how he is portrayed as the haunted father-figure. Other people involved in the case including convicted murder DeFeo are
unhappy with the new attention. Still, the story has its
true believers and
psychics who argue the debunkers have their own agenda. Then again,
Texas Chainsaw Massacre was also claimed by the same production company to be "inspired by a true story."
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:55 PM PST - 12 comments
George Bush Loves The Melvins
Are you sitting down? Good, because what you are about to see may both shock and titillate. I know that most MeFites don't think they have much in common with the President and his family, but oh, you are mistaken. Just like you, George W. Bush is a total f*cking metalhead. And so are lots of other people.
posted by mannythedog at 6:06 PM PST - 28 comments
I don't know what "independent film" means. At a time when the
Weinsteins are trying to extricate themselves from Disney, it seems an appropriate question to ask. There are Indie films (non-industry money) that are
supposed to imitate fancy hollywood films, there are new studios being opened outside of LA by Wealthy Christians in Denver hoping to convert through
CS Lewis movies and there are
Garden State,
Lost in Translation,
Eternal Sunshine etc. which are like other Hollywood films: have stars, and studio money but are marketed as "Independent Films." What makes these independent? Finally, and seemingly too infrequently, there are privately financed and self-distributed unusual films like
Assisted Living which despite their
obvious merits and the
critic's adoration are presumably ignored by the studios, blasted by the brain-numbing
EW and distributed instead by the two young first-time
filmmakers
Why can't we see more non-hollywood and non-hollywood espousing independent ART on the screen? Why do we let every other multi-million dollar romantic comedy be sold to us as "indy" just because it has a quirky soundtrack or aesthetic sensibility. What can we do about it? I'm going to the movies. You?
posted by tallbuildings at 3:08 PM PST - 30 comments
April is Rap Month on Michaelpella.
Watch and listen [avi files] as some internet guy (and an occasional friend) butcher some rap classics by the likes of Ice Cube and Public Enemy. I don't know much about rap, so I enjoy perusing the
50+ song archive chock full of chestnuts like "Runaway," "Rawhide," and "Love Shack." Send in your requests now.
posted by Marxchivist at 5:00 AM PST - 7 comments
April 14
MIT students pull prank on conference.
"In a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference." The paper's title? "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy."
posted by adrober at 11:17 PM PST - 24 comments
On
"Love and Theft" & On
On "Love and Theft" and the Minstrel Boy &
The Annotated Love And Theft... In melody,
Bye and Bye comes by way of Billie Holiday's
Having Myself A Time and
Floater by way of Bing Crosby's
(& Eddie Duchin's & Kate Smith's & Isham Jones's...) Snuggled On Your Shoulder--and lyrically, by way,
in part, of Junichi Saga's
Confessions Of A Yakuza, which was not a crime novel, as
StupidSexyFlanders once surmised, but an outright
As told to memoir, which makes it four or five degrees from Yakuza to Dr. Saga to translator to Dylan to
Plagiarism in Dylan, or a Cultural Collage? Oh, who's going to throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
posted by y2karl at 8:25 PM PST - 18 comments
So Google is now accepting
video submissions to their
Google Video search. But according to
this blogger, Google's terms of service (which you have to create an account to view) are excessive. And I think he might be right.
posted by JPowers at 8:07 PM PST - 22 comments
Beware!
We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day.
The manifesto of the Unitarian Jihad.
posted by Capn at 3:00 PM PST - 79 comments
Captain Grunge Flies Again!
The first
trailer for Gus Van Sant’s “Last Days” has just been posted (with sub-titles). “Last Days” is inspired by the tortured final days in the life of Kurt Cobain. Of the film, Van Sant says, “There are a lot of hypotheses about what happened, but I don't know of any full eyewitness account, just tiny momentary ones. Everyone has a different opinion, but there's not one true, authoritative account. He was just kind of missing." Much like the Cobain biography “Heavier than Heaven,” the film takes the stance that Kurt, who has grown increasingly uncomfortable with his fame, is resigned to his death, not accelerated into it by a chain of events concluding with his suicide. Leonardo look-alike
Michael Pitt (“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”) plays the lead role, with
Asia Argento playing the
Courtney Love-like character. And
here’s a good article about the film.
posted by mannythedog at 1:52 PM PST - 21 comments
I know this has been on
everyone's mind, but I just read
this article today and was astounded at my lack of foresight.
Silly me, here I was worrying about global warming when what I need to be fretting about is the decrease in fuel's impact on the
structure of international banking! Will we run out of fossil fuel before
it's too late to
save the environment from pollution and greenhouse gasses? The
abiotic nuts think we've got plenty more.
Personally, I think we can kiss the marvel that is
suburbia goodbye and start contemplating the fact that the focus on the post-post industrial revolution will not be information, but rather
agriculture.
And since solar panels and windmills and the like are made of materials that are extracted, transported, and fashioned by using oil-powered machinery, my money's on the folks who're
stockpiling uranium for all those shiny new nuclear plants we're going to need.
So, do we have a plan?
You bet we do! Oh. Well, we'll just rely on the
advancement of technology to allow us to weasel out of it!
Me? I've actually always wanted a
horse.
posted by Specklet at 1:04 PM PST - 67 comments
Plasq, a software collective
who have been responsible for
a great number of free and inexpensive audio tools for OSX (the
musolomo realtime software looper being very worthy of note) have created
Comic Life, a
really smooth application that allows anyone with a camera or some drawing skill to create very high quality comics (I am creating one featuring my kid right now.) This is one of those programs that has to be used to be believed. Humbly submitted as software and developers that are best of the web. (via
macintouch.)
posted by n9 at 12:49 PM PST - 18 comments
Hey! Good news!
(pdf) The
FCC recently issued notices that broadcasters must disclose the source of Video News Releases, or VNR's, which, if you haven't already heard, "... are essentially
prepackaged news stories, that may use actors to play reporters and include suggested scripts to
introduce the stories."
From the notice: "... listeners and viewers are entitled to know who seeks to persuade them with the programming offered over broadcast stations and cable systems."
The
GAO has
issued cautionary notices about VNR's before as a response to complaints that several government agencies were
walking fine lines with their "news" productions.
posted by odinsdream at 12:30 PM PST - 10 comments
More than 16,000 photos
related to the USGS from the years 1868 through 1992 are now available online where they may be easily searched, viewed, and downloaded free of charge.
These are old stereo pairs, sites drowned by dams, geologists and surveyers in horse drawn wagons, petroglyphs, national parks, Mount St. Helens, John Wesley
Powell, hoodoos, arches, ruins, mines...
posted by the Real Dan at 12:27 PM PST - 16 comments
The new Doctor Who series has been airing on BBC Television for three weeks now. And it is "good TV"
Most all of the reviews are startlingly positive, far more than I've seen for a television series in a long, long time. What is most striking is that many of the commentaries about the "New Who" state that it is just plain ole' good television that combines something intelligent, something scary, something mysterious and something balls-out fun. In our world of reality television, what other series would you classify as being "good tv"? What makes for "good TV"? (Link goes to a fan site that has re-printed and linked to numerous reviews)
posted by tgrundke at 10:06 AM PST - 90 comments
In a surprise move,
Anheuser-Busch has gone up against some of the biotech firms that would like to grow genetically-modified (GM) rice containing
human DNA. The biotech firm that grows it says that their rice contains synthetic human genes which the company hopes to harvest and refine for use in medicines to fight diarrhea and dehydration.
Anheuser-Busch's concerns are not with the science of biotech, but rather the risk of crop-contamination, as has happened with farmers not only in the
U.S. and
Canada, but
all over the world. The USDA has issued rice-tweakers
Ventria Bioscience and 300 other biopharmers permission to plant various augmented plants around the country since 1995, but Anheuser-Busch is the first large corporation to threaten a boycott - unusual, because
poultry and beef stock (PDF) are
fed this kind of thing every day, and have been
for the past 20 years. I guess the Budweiser brewers just don't want to see '
dead people' in their suds...
On the flip-side of this occurrence, the response of the
anti-stem cell activists has been nothing short of sensory-deprivation. Shouldn't six-packs, cornfields and
Porky be given the same human rights as the unborn?
Also related:
Contaminated: The New Science of Food (quicktime movie)
posted by vhsiv at 9:52 AM PST - 31 comments
The Business of Touch.
Ever wonder the proper way to greet someone in, say, Korea? Australia? How about the Czech Republic? Here you can learn the proper (business) ways to greet people in 15 countries (including the U.S.).
posted by C17H19NO3 at 8:22 AM PST - 18 comments
April 13
Robot planes may make phone towers obsolete
"...it's a "Stratellite", and its makers believe it will revolutionise the broadband and wireless industry; if it ever gets off the ground.
Wisconsin communications company Sanswire on Tuesday unveiled its almost-finished prototype of a hard-framed, unmanned airship designed to fly in the stratosphere 21km above the earth and send broadband and cellphone signals to an area the size of Texas."
This in my opinion is an example of truly innovative technology.
posted by jaydedx at 9:32 PM PST - 25 comments
Asidonhopo hits! --more--
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|K.....-##### |..<| ############-...%??!))|
|..@@.%| #####+.%.| # |.!%..(%.+|
|.>...%| # |%..| # -----------
|K..KKK| ##-...-#######
|F.KK%.| -----
--------
posted by felix at 8:51 PM PST - 93 comments
Lauris
is the spirit of the office, irrespective weather those are the numerous jokes for any occasion he has in his luggage or a basket of autumn apples, which he has picked in the morning to remind the colleges about the beauty of the autumn.
Zane has chosen to live in a beautiful world of internal and external beauty, where fragrances and aromas are of importance, however the uppermost value are harmonious relations with the closest people.
We are all fans of mangled English
translations from
Asia, but there is a certain added beauty in this site for a Latvian law firm, which boasts "professional, fast and qualitative translations" while
"introducing a spirit of poetics in the daily routine of the office".
posted by szechuan at 6:22 PM PST - 11 comments
Cops engage in ID thefy - legally!
[sorry - reg. required was all I could find] Cops in Ohio were putting together a sting in a strip club. They paid a 24-year-old informant a $100 a night to work as a stripper in the club (What? After tips?) But in order to carry out the sting, they gave the informant a false identity. Instead of creating a new one, they simply plucked the details off of some poor girl’s drivers license and social security card, such that this girl now has being paid as a stripper on her record. And according to the law, this is PERFECTLY LEGAL — in fact the Ohio police’s right to do this was included as a provision in a new Ohio law that was aimed at stopping ID theft. Which also makes me wonder — was this a commonplace practice in Ohio or anywhere else? Is that why they sought to protect it in the law? Is some guy using my ID to infiltrate NAMBLA right now?
posted by Heminator at 2:50 PM PST - 31 comments
"Michael Lohman is sick"
read the email to students in MAT 308: Theory of Games, explaining why the Princeton mathematics graduate student had not yet graded their homework. Not sick as in "flu"-sick, but sick as in "squirting his bodily fluids into unsuspecting women's drinks and cutting off locks of their hair for unspeakable acts involving mittens"-sick. And not just any women, but exclusively Asian women. An extreme case, to be sure, but the Western
"otaku" lusting
after (and often having much
success with) Asian women is a quite familiar
and often disturbing trope for those of us who have spent much time among the
disaffected English majors, anime fans, martial artists,
dirty old men, and various other Asiaphiles. Yet decidedly
non-nerdy folks have expressed a definite preference for
Asian women as well.
Where does this preference (which certainly
goes both
ways) come from? As such
interracial couplings increase, should we even try to distinguish relationships based on
"Suzie Wong" stereotypes or even outright
economic exploitation, and relationships that are somehow more "acceptable?" Or will non-Asian guys with Asian girls constantly be forced to prove it's not just a case of
"Yellow Fever?"
posted by banishedimmortal at 12:49 PM PST - 148 comments
"Now members. Let me firm up my position..."
--from part of a speech in the Texas Legislature, by the unfortunately named Gene Seaman. Practice What You Preach will be airing this ad (with commentary) in Texas, trying to stop the proposed Anti-Gay-Marriage Amendment. (embedded WMP)
Practice What You Preach believes that the institution of marriage is under assault in Texas from the twin epidemics of divorce and domestic violence. We are not a gay-rights group. We are mainstream, straight Texans who want the legislative leadership to stop making cheap political points by ignoring real problems.
posted by amberglow at 11:55 AM PST - 39 comments
Whereas, in the past, national power was thought to reside in the possession of a mighty arsenal and the maintenance of extended alliance systems, it is now associated with economic dynamism and the cultivation of technological innovation. To exercise leadership in the current epoch, states are expected to possess a vigorous domestic economy and to outperform other states in the development and export of high-tech goods. While a potent military establishment is still considered essential to national security, it must be balanced by a strong and vibrant economy. 'National security depends on successful engagement in the global economy,' the Institute for National Security Studies observed in a recent Pentagon study.Regarding
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency by Michael T. Klare, here is an
excerpt from the book and here is his most recent article--
Oil and the Coming War With Iran. Well, at least he has been consistent--consider
The Geopolitics of War,
Wars Without End,
Oiling the Wheels of War, and
Imperial Reach from his
articles for
The Nation alone. Here is an excerpt from his previous
Resource Wars and here is
Scraping the bottom of the barrel and
Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil. Well, as to his position on current events, I don't think we need to draw a picture here.
posted by y2karl at 11:27 AM PST - 52 comments
Who were your first ancestors?
Tracking ancient ancestors and the migration of ancient peoples through DNA. Progressive maps from 200,000 years to 10,0000 years ago show the movement of our "tribes" since Adam.
posted by adamvasco at 8:56 AM PST - 39 comments
He was fond of reading Proust and Dostoevsky. He studied the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit, painted landscapes in oil, and flirted with Marxism. His mannerisms -- such as saying "Gee!" when pondering some scientific marvel -- were contagious. And when the US government
decided to
incinerate hundreds of thousands of fishermen, housewives, cooks, potters, and Zen monks as a decisive blow for peace in 1945, he told the commanding officers on the mission, "Don't let them detonate it too high . . . or the target won't get as much damage." He was
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the mild-mannered destroyer of worlds who
led the Manhattan Project, portrayed in a new biography called
American Prometheus.
posted by digaman at 8:45 AM PST - 126 comments
April 14, 2005: The Day of Truth.
On April 13th thousands of students will don black-and-red t-shirts and remain quiet for the ninth
Day of Silence in order to "recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment--in effect, the silencing--experienced by LGBT students and their allies." But this year the
Alliance Defense Fund, "a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth [yes, "Truth" is capitalized] through strategy, training, funding, and litigation," plans to add a twist to the occasion by following up with its so called Day of Truth in order to protest the
homosexual agenda and promote their interpretation of Christianity. Though in their
"Hostile Questions" section they claim they're not Day of Silence copycats, in addition to the silent treatment like their DoS foes students who register will receive
t-shirts and explanation cards to distribute to inquiring minds, albeit with a slightly altered message.
But will it draw participants? Well, Clint Armstrong can't wait--he staged a protest of his own last year.
posted by schroedinger at 2:33 AM PST - 43 comments
April 12
"When stewardesses were sexy and the world was sexist"
is the tagline of this years-in-making musical by Suzy Conn, who also runs the
blogway baby musicals log (which talks about this musical quite a bit). It's meant to be based around the early 1960's, when airlines were truly a luxury, not unlike a sea cruise or a first-class train ride pre-Amtrak. (The website spends some time going on about
Braniff International, and it's worth it to check out the history of that airline. This is also laid out on top of the era of
Women's Liberation, although it does so using the aesthetic of 1960's music and phraseology, which was, basically, designed by male-dominated hollywood.
For everyone who sits in the cheap seats, if you let the flash animation at the beginning of the site load, it plays the entire opening title song for you. Hey, free show!
posted by jscott at 9:56 PM PST - 27 comments
Google talk is a great way to Connect: with your angels and guides to help you make your own website. in minutes! Free day did did did did did?
posted by signal at 7:36 PM PST - 89 comments
If it didn't happen on national television
[wmv] (
mirror [wmv]) you would have thought it was faked like that
LeBron ad.
Well if
Wieden+Kennedy isn't already working on it, they surely
will be shortly. "... they have a
Nike-sponsored golfer wearing a Nike shirt, a Nike hat, Nike golf shoes, using Nike clubs, held in hands covered by Nike gloves, hitting a Nike prototype golf ball that was chipped onto the green, rolled, turned, rolled some more, then teetered on the edge of the cup with that Nike "Swoosh" turning and facing the television cameras for a full 1.5 seconds."
posted by pwb503 at 5:02 PM PST - 59 comments
"...this effort
has examined devices that can be built into a shoe, (where excess energy is readily harvested) and used for generating electrical power "parasitically" while walking."
Regenerative braking in a shoe for powering small personal electronics, courtesy of MIT's Media Lab. With
video. [
via Hack A Day]
posted by scarabic at 4:44 PM PST - 13 comments
Ever have those moments when your hand refuses to obey your commands? Scott Adams fills everyone in on the wonder that is
focal dystonia in his latest
newsletter (look under the "Who's Drawing Dilbert lately?" section)
The topic was slightly touched on here
posted by riffraff at 2:39 PM PST - 19 comments
Holy Day
Monsignor Moose informs all G-d fearing Americans that Wednesday, April 13th is the most sacred day in the Republican moral calendar.
Brothers and Sisters and all ye of faith, fall to your knees and genuflect at the altar of the almighty dollar! This is a time for deep and reflective prayer. For tomorrow, the Godly Republican Cardinals will gather in the House to provide eternal life for the blessed sacrament of the GOP - the permanent elimination of the estate tax for the ultra-wealthy.
posted by Postroad at 2:05 PM PST - 91 comments
Idaho House Resolution 29
WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!"
I wish all legislation were worded this way.
posted by adamrice at 1:28 PM PST - 32 comments
Teacher gone wild. Again.
While not as crazy as
this, (discussed
here previously) Mrs. Miller definitely needs some therapy. Perhaps these 4th graders should have had camera phones like
these kids... Though at least the U.S. isn't as tolerant of teachers behavior as
Moroccans. Frankly my dear, they don't give a damn!
posted by Debaser626 at 1:01 PM PST - 50 comments
A new Texas bill
seeks to give pharmacists the right to object to dispensing emergency contraceptives. The bill was spurred by over a year's worth of debate about
an incident in Denton where a rape victim was denied a morning-after pill by a pharmacist at Eckerd's. Supporters say that pharmacists should be able to opt out of dispensing drugs that are used for abortions, but the opposition points out that the bill's definition of emergency contraceptives can be construed to include all birth control. Should pharmacists be allowed to morally object, or is this an anti-birth-control boondoggle?
posted by rush at 12:21 PM PST - 118 comments
Terry Bressi's long saga
"I was stopped, threatened with lethal force, dragged out of my vehicle, and detained for several hours for no reason - other than requesting to know what law authorized the police to stop me and demand ID after admitting I wasn't suspected of violating any law and I wasn't being detained. Instead of answering my inquiries, the 'peace officers' preferred to initiate force against me."
posted by trharlan at 10:33 AM PST - 59 comments
An open letter to the Citizens of Atwood.
This past week, the residents of the small town of Atwood, Kansas voted 984 to 113 to deny gay couples any rights for their relationships (including hospital visitation). Now, the man who set up the town's newspaper website has not only left Atwood, but taken down the website and posted a (mostly) measured response to the town in place of it. Will putting a human face on those being discriminated against ever change the minds of some people, or is one passage in the bible enough for some people to keep justifying their bigoted ways?
posted by almostcool at 8:47 AM PST - 111 comments
This is a story about some yahoo who registered several domains to spread his story about developing Peritoneal Mesothelioma after having Laser Hair Removal in Washington DC. For some reason he thought Wisconsin Lemon Laws were in his favor and he'd soon get a huge settlement paid with Best Buy gift cards. It turns out he should have had temporary medical insurance. Now he is looking for a Personal Injury Solicitor.
posted by Mick at 5:58 AM PST - 45 comments
"This is basically boomer rock 'n' roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It's safe, it's reliable, it's loving. What I mean to say is, it's feel-good music. The Sex Pistols it's not." 3 things dear to mefites hearts. The
music (NYT) on
George W's ipod.
posted by DelusionsofGrandeur at 4:59 AM PST - 58 comments
There was no honour to be had in Rwanda.
11 years ago this week, the
Rwandan Genocide began and didn't end until almost a million Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were dead - killed by their own countrymen in the span of 100 days.
Romeo Dallaire was the Force Commander of the UN troops in Rwanda at the time. Increasing unrest and killings along with intelligence obtained from an informant led him to conclude that the genocide was coming and that it could be stopped if action was taken quickly and decisively enough. He requested 2000 additional troops and the authority to plan and execute an operation to halt the genocide before it began.
The UN Security Council denied both requests, and reduced the UN force in Rwanda to 260 troops. One million Rwandans died. Romeo Dallaire and 260 Canadian, Ghanian, and Dutch soldiers are
directly credited with saving over 20,000 Tutsis that would have died.
Dallaire's career as a soldier is over. But he knows that if the effort is not made, another genocide like Rwanda will happen.
It may already be too late to stop the next one.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 12:10 AM PST - 41 comments
April 11
DUBAI (AFP)
- The United Arab Emirates is to mount robot jockeys on racing camels later this year after a ban on using children in the region's popular sport.
posted by Tlogmer at 11:57 PM PST - 7 comments
...The presumption that there are 'good' Muslims readily available to be split off from 'bad' Muslims masks a failure to make a political analysis of our times. This book argues that political Islam emerged as the result of a modern encounter with Western power, and that the terrorist movement at the center of Islamist politics is an even more recent phenomenon, one that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam. Mamdani writes with great insight about the Reagan years, showing America’s embrace of the highly ideological politics of 'good' against 'evil.' Identifying militant nationalist governments as Soviet proxies in countries such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the Reagan administration readily backed terrorist movements, hailing them as the 'moral equivalents' of America’s Founding Fathers. The era of proxy wars has come to an end with the invasion of Iraq. And there, as in Vietnam, America will need to recognize that it is not fighting terrorism but nationalism... Here is an excerpt of
Chapter 1 of
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, and with
one review,
two review,
three reviews hereafter. And here is author
Mahmood Mandmani interviewed by
AsiaSource.
posted by y2karl at 7:19 PM PST - 38 comments
How do you make a “trusted system”?
A planning and organisational system which can be relied upon to contain your events, tasks, projects and thoughts?... One of the biggest obstacles for many people is how to create a system that is always there, at the ready, and
worthy of your trust.
posted by ColdChef at 6:14 PM PST - 18 comments
"I was just besotted."
Rock music does not lack for
tragic heroes; perhaps none more doomed than
Ian Curtis, lead singer of
Joy Division, the post-punk precursor to Madchester's
New Order. Debilitating epilepsy, depression, charges of Naziism, an impending divorce -- 25 years ago, the day before the start of a US tour, Curtis hanged himself in the kitchen of his flat while Iggy Pop's "The idiot" played. His widow Deborah speaks in this
new interview in
The Guardian; is she drumming up interest for the new starring-Jude-Law
biopic?
posted by docgonzo at 6:11 PM PST - 62 comments
I told you Ecstasy was good for you.
"The study of Ecstasy for the terminally ill will involve 12 cancer patients who have less than a year to live. They'll receive varying doses during two strictly supervised therapeutic sessions. The drug, once hailed as
'penicillin for the soul,' is a chemical cousin to amphetamines that reportedly induces feelings of profound empathy. It will be combined with traditional psychotherapy, and, [Dr.]
Halpern hopes, 'enable them to open up in therapy so they can talk about challenging issues and resolve their grief.'" (reg rq'd)
posted by tsarfan at 5:09 PM PST - 45 comments
Money Counter,
based on
this Parade article, makes comparisons (science vs. the arts, business vs. safety, nuclear energy vs. cleanup, and the Whitewater/Lewinsky vs. 9/11 investigations) based on how much tax money is budgeted to various agencies.
[via kottke]
posted by kirkaracha at 3:28 PM PST - 9 comments
If you had any doubt,
"homeland security" is not being used as an excuse to silence dissent in today's America, I submit to you the case of
Willie Fontenot. A personal hero of mine and
others, Willie has worked for decades, gently and with integrity, from inside Louisiana's
state corporate government for the cause of environmental justice. But no more, he has been forced to resign from the state Attorney General's office for refusing to capitulate to corporate goons (literally!) harassing a group of students taking pictures of an oil refinery.
[via BoingBoing]
posted by If I Had An Anus at 12:59 PM PST - 41 comments
Jeffords' Theory:
"U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords, the Vermont Independent, may face a clear field right now in a 2006 re-election bid, but his March 22 performance on Vermont Public Radio's Switchboard program raised a few eyebrows.
I think it was all done to get oil, Jeffords said of invading Iraq.
And the loss of life that we had, and the cost of it, was to me just a re-election move, and they're going to try to live off it. Probably start another war, wouldn't be surprised, next year. Probably in Iran, said Jeffords, echoing
Seymour Hersch's words from January.
posted by jenleigh at 11:46 AM PST - 84 comments
America (F*ck Yeah), We Stand As One
This was inevitable, right? The theme song from Team America: World Police, cut together with the (enhanced) images from America We Stand as One, recently discussed
here. (Audio is possibly NSFW, if your coworkers don't like cursin')
posted by billysumday at 10:01 AM PST - 34 comments
The Epic of Kings.
Dr
Charles Melville, a lecturer of the
University of Cambridge is compiling a list of all the world’s handwritten and
illustrated versions of the
Shahnameh, the
masterpiece of Iranian poet
Ferdowsi. “In the first step, I began to search libraries and museums in Iran, Turkey, the United States, India, and a number of European countries. After finding the sources, I traveled to the countries to study the versions that I had found in my search”.
Ferdowsi's epic poem
(English translation here) has 62 Stories, 990 Chapters, and contains 60,000 rhyming couplets -- making it more than seven times the length of Homer's
Iliad.
posted by matteo at 9:41 AM PST - 6 comments
Huff & Puff Energy
"Think about it. We go to the gym every day, get on a machine and expend great amounts of energy. Multiply that by everyone in your gym, in all the gyms in all the world and what have you got? a lot of power! This project is a request "for speculative proposals to re-design exercise equipment to generate and store energy; and/or to retrofit gyms to function as local power sources linked to the grid." It envisions a redesign of gyms into power hubs and a linking together of the power hubs into a massive power network. All this and get fit too." [via
Treehugger]
posted by azul at 8:45 AM PST - 54 comments
Can't hack Catullus in
Latin? How about
Brazilian Portuguese,
Catalan,
Chinese,
Danish,
Dutch,
English,
Estonian,
French,
German,
Hungarian,
Irish,
Italian,
Japanese,
Norwegian,
Polish,
Portuguese,
Rioplatense,
Romanian,
Russian,
Scanned,
Serbian,
South African,
Spanish,
Swedish, or
Welsh? You can also compare two languages side by side.
posted by kenko at 8:40 AM PST - 15 comments
April 10
SleepyGeek has a
fun tool that creates montages from Google image search results.
posted by willnot at 10:48 PM PST - 6 comments
"In the Name of Politics"
(NYT) Rev. John C. Danforth, the outgoing US ambassador to the UN, Republican Senator for 18 years, native Missouran and Episcopal minister worries that the Republican Party is turning very literally theocratic. In this short editorial he states "the only explanation ... is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law."
(Just as a side note, we're taking applications.)
posted by blacklite at 9:03 PM PST - 52 comments
Mountain Voices.
'This website presents interviews with over 300 people who live in mountain and highland regions round the world. Their testimonies offer a personal perspective on change and development.'
posted by plep at 12:10 PM PST - 2 comments
How would you remake CBS News?
Lizz Winstead has some interesting ideas, while Don Hewitt and Al Primo stick to what they know. Meanwhile, Mark Burnett's take is the most hilariously stereotypical piece ever written by a sleazy television producer. So, does anyone else have any ideas?
posted by fungible at 11:53 AM PST - 41 comments
"Stray Prose"
of Lee Ranaldo of
Sonic Youth fame. Semicoherent Bob Dylan review, a paean to Kerouac, and an entertaining interview with William Burroughs. Pretentious, but, uh, you know, if you're into that sort of thing...
There's some more stuff of his around his
official site
posted by ITheCosmos at 11:13 AM PST - 12 comments
Ellis Parker Butler
(1869 - 1934) American author, speaker, humorist. Author of more than 30 books and more than 2,000 stories and essays, Ellis Parker Butler is most famous for his short story "
Pigs is Pigs" in which a bureaucratic stationmaster insists on levying the livestock rate for a shipment of two pet guinea pigs that soon start proliferating geometrically. This website is a loving tribute to a prolific author you've probably never heard of. Most of the
stories and articles available on this web site have not been reprinted or reproduced since their original publication. Be sure to also check out the extensive
library of vintage magazine covers.
posted by crunchland at 10:49 AM PST - 5 comments
_grau | robert seidel
- KunstFilmBiennale 2004; the jury assigns the movie «_grau» by robert seidel an honorary award, because of the technological mastership which is used to show never seen phenomena in the borderland of science and aesthetics.
quicktime -
cached 50Mb;
cached 160Mb
posted by andrew cooke at 9:36 AM PST - 17 comments
If you liked the Craigslist/Google Maps combo, you'll be happy to hear that the boys and girls over at
Engadget have a tutorial on how to make your own annotated multimedia Google map. Pretty sweet!
posted by JPowers at 12:42 AM PST - 3 comments
April 9
Our Victory, Day by Day.
Russian news agency RIA Novosti counts down to the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, with songs, posters, photos, and stories. Be sure not to miss the first-person accounts in English (under "Frontline Album").
posted by gimonca at 3:27 PM PST - 19 comments
HistoryBuff
- facsimiles of old newspapers that covered important events in American History.
posted by Gyan at 2:59 PM PST - 5 comments
The Wedding of Roy Cohn's spiritual heir
(or one of them anyway) was celebrated in Massachusetts in December, and revealed yesterday. The groom, an influential political consultant
who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal did not invite any of the people he helped bring to power, often on an anti-gay platform. In fact, he didn't even tell any of them (the list includes Jesse Helms and many many more). The happy couple, together for 40 years (since the groom was 19), live in Ipswich, MA with their 2 children. No information on the other groom was provided, nor on honeymoon arrangements.
(More on Finkelstein, "The Godfather of dirty politics", here.)
posted by amberglow at 11:09 AM PST - 46 comments
Meet Vernon
| "I designed this blog to allow you to meet Vernon Lee Evans, the next person to be executed on Maryland’s death row. I will print out the emails and mail them to Vernon who is currently in a maximum security cell in Baltimore, Maryland. Vernon will mail me back his responses and I’ll post them here."
TalkLeft enthuses: "Meet Vernon even has a blogroll, and TalkLeft is proud to be included on it. This is an experiment, but wouldn't it be great to see every death row inmate with a blog?" In 2003, imprisoned serial killer
Jack Trawick taunted his victims from a website published with the help of an admirer. Other prison blogs
here and
here. [via
BuzzMachine]
posted by jenleigh at 9:41 AM PST - 38 comments
Going on a "Man Date" (NYT link, reg. required).
Two (presumably) heterosexual guys who knew each other from college go to the museum and dinner without partners -- and apparently this qualifies as a "man date," although (again presumably) there's no kiss at the end of the night or promises to call the next day. Maybe I'm cranky, but back in my day, we simply called this "spending time with a friend" and didn't plaster a thin veneer of gay panic/defensive het rationalization on it. Is the social behavior of straight males now so circumscribed that a guy having one-on-one time with a male friend outside a bar or sporting merits an article in the NYT?
posted by jscalzi at 7:20 AM PST - 178 comments
April 8
Mitch Albom,
one of the most decorated sports columnists ever and a best selling
author, has been busted for fabricating information in his latest Detroit Free Press column. Albom has
apologized, but this has set the
sports journalism field abuzz, many happy to the star of the Freep squirm. The President of
The National Society of Newspaper Columnists has called the column "bogus" and an "egregious ethical lapse."
Others wonder why he wasn't suspended or fired, thinking his status as an author and TV / radio personality is allowing him special favors. The Freep has started an
investigation and may look into previous articles. To top it all off, here's the pot calling the
kettle black.
posted by bawanaal at 4:16 PM PST - 34 comments
Free Online Wine Course
from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA).
We’ll give you a sample of our in-depth, on-site courses by taking you on a virtual journey through three of the world’s top grape varieties.
posted by crunchland at 4:12 PM PST - 2 comments
Archaeologist Finds '
Oldest Porn Statue'
Article claims that
"until now, the oldest representations of sexual scenes were frescos from about 2,000 years ago",
BUT...
posted by dfowler at 1:30 PM PST - 29 comments
High school kids. Doing drugs!
A 23-year-old female undercover agent posed as a student at Milford High School. The investigation culminated Friday with the arrest of 16 students on drug-trafficking charges. Twelve are juveniles.
Public opinion is running 20 - 1 in favor of the sting.
Sandy Howdyshell, a 34-year-old Milford graduate who has an elementary school student in the district, said she was undecided on the school district's $108.6 million bond issue that will appear on ballots May 3 - until she heard about the undercover investigation... "I think it was a brilliant idea to put an undercover cop in the high school," Howdyshell said. "This event certainly has made an impact in my eyes. Now I know I'll be voting to support Milford schools."
posted by trharlan at 1:29 PM PST - 93 comments
The heroes flee their doomed city. The first new place they arrive in is not the proper one, and they must leave. When they finally arrive at their destined land, they must steal women to set up their colony, and then fight the local military power with the help of new allies. Am I talking about the
Aeneid? Or
Watership Down? With correspondences much greater than, say, those between
The Wizard of Oz and The Lord of the Rings, I’m not the only one who thinks there’s a
connection. (Want real proof? Ask yourself why rabbits keep having to
cross water, and compare where that happens in the story to the ship journeys of Aeneas.)
posted by kyrademon at 9:46 AM PST - 27 comments
The "Constitution Restoration Act".
`Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal, writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.'
This article claims that this bill is almost certain to pass, and that if it does that
no Federal court or judge will have jurisdiction over any Federal, State, or
local government entity or official who claims God's law.
Are these claims true? Why isn't there
a fuss?
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:05 AM PST - 72 comments
Microsoft collaborates with the Department of Homeland Security, Interpol, and the Canadian Mounties to produce the ultimate people-tracking database, mining email aliases, "chat room" logs, and arrest records. This open-source software
developed by MS Canada will be given away free to police departments,
says the company. "The initiative was the result of a January 2003 e-mail sent to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates from a member of the Toronto Police Service sex-crimes unit, asking for help in battling child pornography," reports the
Seattle Times. "The billionaire, known for his philanthropy in the area of AIDS research and education, called on Microsoft Canada to develop software that would aid police officials." Buried in the
enthusiastic accounts of how the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) will nail "
child sex fiends" is any consideration of how such a system could -- and will undoubtedly someday -- be used against such lesser offenses as drug use, sharing illegal music files, or discussion of political beliefs that could be construed as supporting "terrorism."
posted by digaman at 7:55 AM PST - 36 comments
April 7
Doctor Ammondt.
When
Jukka Ammondt is not too busy teaching European Romantic Literature at Finland's
Jyväskylä University, he enjoys recording rock'n'roll covers in Latin. For Dr. Ammondt's 1997 CD, "
Rocking in Latin", he has covered, among others,
Shake, Rattle and Roll (Quate, Crepa, Rota) and
All Shook Up (Nunc Distrahor). More recently, Dr. Ammondt has released
an EP in which he sings Sumerian, featuring a cover of the Elvis hit "Blue Suede Shoes" ("E-sír kusv-za-gìn-g-á", which roughly translates to "On my sandals of sky-blue leather do not step!"). Live, he wears a leather kilt, blue sandals and is "
backed up by musicians dressed as Sumerian governors". He has received the Pope's Medal in 1994. Ammondt will release a single,
Codex Fluitans, and dedicate it to the Pope on the day of his funeral. (Previous Metafilter mention
here.)
posted by ori at 11:50 PM PST - 1 comments
In
Warburton, a town not too far from Melbourne, Australia, there's
allegedly something not quite right swimming around in a humble trout farmer's catchment. Is this
Australia's Nessie?
Some selected quotes from the linked articles.
A giant eel, believed to be around 13ft-long with a head the size of a football has been spotted at the trout farm at Warburton.
It is believed the eel washed into the farm's ponds during this month's record breaking storms.
"We hope to catch him alive and take him to the Melbourne Aquarium."
I reckon it's true. Might even go and throw a line in myself, hey. It's just a shame that there are no pictures or film evidence thus far.
Oh, this is my first front page post on MeFi. Hello world!
posted by sjvilla79 at 9:50 PM PST - 12 comments
Autechre Radio
- Sounds like
Autechre will be doing a radio broadcast of experimental sound on Sunday, April 10th from 3 PM EST until late. The feed already connects to some really weird stuff. Stay tuned, should be fun!
posted by AlexReynolds at 8:57 PM PST - 25 comments
Did The Wizard of Oz inspire Lord of the Rings?
"The first film version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz was released in the summer of 1939, less than a month before World War II officially began. Though started as early as 1937, The Lord of the Rings was largely composed during the war years, but not published until somewhat later. Therefore, it is by no means impossible that J.R.R. Tolkien saw the magnificent MGM movie before he wrote most of his magnum opus. Could Oz have influenced his tale somehow, consciously or unconsciously?"
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:41 PM PST - 35 comments
Flashcii
is a tool for creating ascii animations. Flaschii converts image files into ascii art, and provides a Flash-inspired interface for building animated sequences. Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
posted by crunchland at 2:48 PM PST - 6 comments
Strange Findings, circa 1985: "Please welcome our very charming guest host—
Mr. Corey Feldman!" (Quicktime req.)(NSFA: Not Safe for Anyone)
posted by dhoyt at 1:03 PM PST - 14 comments
The most modern home built in the world.
"From the outside it looks
like a spaceship you cannot enter. But if you go inside, it feels very cozy… very Zen and calming. Maybe because you are
floating above the city, in the sky".
John Lautner's
Chemosphere residence is the product of a
fortuitous union of architect, client, time and place.
Leonard Malin was a young aerospace engineer in late-1950s L.A. whose father-in-law had just given him a plot north of Mulholland Drive, near Laurel Canyon. The only catch: at roughly 45 degrees, the slope was all but unbuildable. Lautner sketched a bold vertical line, a cross, and a curve above it. "Draw it up," he told his assistant.
Now publisher
Benedikt Taschen owns Chemosphere (NSFW), and after 20 years of neglect the house has been beautifully
restored (.pdf) by
Frank Escher.
posted by matteo at 9:21 AM PST - 24 comments
Your Homework Done For Free!
Don't have time to finish that Tolkein book report? Leave your worrying to the
experts at
rec.arts.books.tolkein.
First they are attacked by evil Orcs in the woods; next they are driven into the dark forest of Lothlorien, where they are imprisoned by the beautiful but evil Queen Beruthiel. They make their escape when Beruthiel's good sister, Galadriel, frees them from their prison-cell and floats them down the river in barrels ... however, they face a terrifying setback when they are found by the evil wizard Radagast. Gandalf sacrifices his life to destroy Radagast the Balrog, and the others escape the mountains while the battle rages.(via Making Light)
posted by grabbingsand at 7:16 AM PST - 19 comments
"Before, during and after the upcoming [United Kingdom] general election campaign,
Channel 4 FactCheck will provide the most reliable analysis of what the political parties and their leaders are saying. The site will scrutinise interviews, speeches and manifesto pledges - informing public debate by creating a popular resource for an information-hungry electorate." A UK cousin to
FactCheck.org.
posted by nthdegx at 2:14 AM PST - 7 comments
April 6
Lifestyle centers
are open-air malls designed to look like an urban street or a contemporary residential area. But don't be fooled. Among the activities not allowed in the center are: excessive staring or taking photos, video or audio recording of any store, product, employee, customer or officer. Oh, and "non-commercial expressive activity" is not allowed either. Hopefully, that doesn't include talking.
posted by Tlahtolli at 8:06 PM PST - 37 comments
More On Anti-Semitism at Columbia
My interest in this story is primarily about how the New York Times, considered one of the great newspapers world-wide, in fact sucks!---"A week ago, Deacon and the Trunk posted on the release of a report by Columbia University on its investigation of students' charges of anti-semitic conduct by several of the university's professors. The report mostly exonerated the professors, while, at the same time, recording behavior by them which was appalling. One of the points we noted was the craven behavior of the New York Times, which said that it agreed not to report the viewpoint of the complaining students in exchange for early access to Columbia's report. The Trunk wrote:
But what about the New York Times? Is it conceivable that the Times would enter into an agreement not to talk to the subjects of a report in exchange for being given access to the report a few hours before it is made available to the public? [The Times admits it!]
posted by Postroad at 1:49 PM PST - 50 comments
The conclave of cardinals will soon start the process of choosing a new pope. Have you filled in
your brackets yet?
posted by Davenhill at 11:14 AM PST - 51 comments
Better known for their modernist take on contemporary furniture design, Minneapolis furniture studio Blu Dot has just introduced a series of film shorts entitled
Blu Dot Shorts. Their first short film,
Seven Twenty (embedded Quicktime warning), was directed by
Christopher Arcella (Flash warning). While is is not earth shattering conceptually, it is a jaunty and fun little piece of cinema.
posted by ScottUltra at 11:06 AM PST - 15 comments
The latest additions to the
National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress
have just been announced. This year's additions of "culturally, historically or aesthetically important" works include "Swanee'" by Al Jolson, Edward R. Murrow's radio reports from London during WWII, and "Fear of a Black Planet" by Public Enemy. View the full registry
here, selection criteria and nomination information
here.
posted by me3dia at 10:00 AM PST - 17 comments
A few of you may have seen this
trailer on
Kottke's site yesterday, but its just to wonderful to miss. "Mad Hot Ballroom" is a new Paramount Classics documentary about a junior competitive ballroom dancing circuit up north. To state the completely obvious, its like a "
Spellbound" with the kids dancing instead of spelling.
posted by JPowers at 8:26 AM PST - 12 comments
Religion radio co-opts low power FM.
Remember the fight over
low power
FM? It was supposed to help establish community radio stations. It seems that some Christian broadcasting stations have been snapping up low power FM licenses to implement translators, which extend the broadcast area of their main signal. Some groups have been
speaking out about this, yet the FCC only acted after it appeared that some of the licenses were being obtained fraudulently for resale. (via
Jorn)
posted by caddis at 7:32 AM PST - 56 comments
Google wants your porn
Google co-founder Larry Page has announced that the company wants the public to send in its homemade videos - and he doesn't mind how mucky they are.
"There might be an adult section, or something like that. I don't think that is going to be a big issue,"
posted by halekon at 6:01 AM PST - 32 comments
April 5
Today is the anniversary of the famous Hatrack case,
in which H.L. Mencken was arrested for selling indecent literature in Boston. (
Herbert Asbury, the author of the Hatrack story, was largely forgotten, except for this incident, until Scorsese made his novel in Gangs of New York.) The case was just one episode in the career of an American literary giant, reporter, columnist, and editor. Gore Vidal said,
"Mencken is a nice antidote. Politically, he is often right but seldom correct by today's stern standards." This is perhaps
the best website devoted to Mencken, with extensive links. Particularly recommended are
The Hills of Zion, part of his coverage of the Scopes trial; and his
obituary savaging William Jennings Bryan. If you've never read Mencken it's almost impossible to convey how well-written, incisive and funny his writing really is.
posted by OmieWise at 7:41 AM PST - 18 comments
What is it
with the
London Underground and the internet? As many MeFi posts have noted
before, no other subway system in the world has quite as many websites and applications devoted to it (why is this?). Until now the bulk of these applications have been based around maps, but the 'tube' has just got an independent site that is story-based. The brand new site at
www.yourstation.co.uk wants you to write stories about the networks famous stations. Each gets its own homepage, you fill it with stories or simply read those that have gone before. Want to know how
Mudchute got its name? You now know where to look.
posted by MrMerlot at 4:53 AM PST - 20 comments
April 4
What's hot in technogeekery?
Match your predictions with Yahoo's ongoing search stats using $10,000 fake dollars as investment capital. Is this how Yahoo is going to steal Google's mindshare - or just another pointless thing to do with
search engines?
posted by Sparx at 9:36 PM PST - 6 comments
Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut; snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man’s fingers on the tambourine. Dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooded legs, two wire legs, two spring legs–all sorts of legs and no legs–what is this to him? And in what walk of life, or dance of life does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him, when, having danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling for something to drink, with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable sound!Dancing Across The Color Line. In 1842, Charles Dickens came to New York City, where initally, he was wined, dined and theatrically entertained by the upper crust. Afterwards, he then went slumming and soon saw
William Henry Lane, aka
Master Juba, a man of whose dancing a number of historians say is where
tap dance began, step lively in a cellar in the neighborhood called Five Points--the very same neighborhood creatively misrepresented recently by one Martin Scorcese in
Gangs of New York. The dance he did was known as Pattin' Juba and the first time it's rhythm--which we think of as the
Bo Diddley beat--was used on a sound recording was in 1952, when Red Saunders and his Orchestra, with Dolores Hawkins and and the Hambone Kids recorded
Hambone.
Continued within
posted by y2karl at 9:29 PM PST - 3 comments
Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons
Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq? Warning: tiny, NSFW, embedded Windows Media file.
posted by Doug at 8:35 PM PST - 40 comments
U.S. Senator rationalizes violence against judges:
"I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence." Sen. John Cornyn, explaining today how "activist judges" are bringing it upon themselves. The full statement is a breathtaking look at the next step in the upcoming judicial wars.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 4:44 PM PST - 87 comments
Dye pets!
That's right, for those of you who have always longed to color your furry friends in all the shades of the rainbow, Pet Ésthe rides to the rescue. Just look at
those happy doggies! And when you've feasted your eyes why don't you head on over to one of their affiliated stores to watch the
canine runway fashion show (embedded vid and awesome music)
posted by Kattullus at 4:22 PM PST - 35 comments
Pro-forma nuclear safety
is harder than ever to sell. There's
ass-kissing to the sci-fi community (.pdf, download it), the
instructional video (warning, boring .wmv, > 12 mins long). But...
The design lifetimes of
Yucca Mountain and the
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant won't protect
future generations from groundwater absorbing transuranic waste (Pu239 and like toxins, deadly when ingested for 240,000 years).
Do you have this stuff in your
back yard today, and how will it
get there safely? On top of that, the
capacity problem, which looks intractable as long as we keep relicensing plants.
If I didn't know better, I assume the only way the government could succeed in getting this done would be to
hoodwink us.
posted by nj_subgenius at 3:55 PM PST - 34 comments
By a weird coincidence, after reading
this interview in New Scientist with three of the engineers who made electronic music possible, I walked by a poster for a
documentary film about Bob Moog. One of my earliest memories of electronic music in the 1970s was an elementary school music teacher who was really into
Wendy Carlos' and
Isao Tomita's early arrangements of classical works for synthesizer. Of course, electronic music history goes back to the 1920s with the
theremin developed as a classical instrument. It has its own
web portal filled with lots of good stuff. And now for something slightly different,
Conlon Nancarrow wrote piano compositions that could not be performed by human hands, demanding the use of a player piano.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:53 PM PST - 20 comments
Help Save P2P!
The United States Supreme Court is currently considering the legality of peer-to-peer file sharing programs in a case called MGM v. Grokster. Rumor has it that the Justices have set up a computer, in the court, with Grokster on it. If you have legal P2P files to share, blogger
Death in the Afternoon suggests that you move them to Grokster immediately, as this might help convince the Justices that P2P is good for more than just illegal filesharing. (If you doubt that, think
Diebold). If you don't have any legal files, you can get some
here. (More inside).
posted by gd779 at 2:44 PM PST - 42 comments
Provacateur, Lunatic or Revolutionary? (great WashPost story)
"Hello Everyone, my name's Andy. I killed a Police Officer in Red Bluff, California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country. Now I'm coming forward, to explain that this killing was also an action against corporate irresponsibility."
Andrew Mickel, AKA Andrew McCrae - a student at Evergreen State College and former Army Ranger is charged with killing a police officer in Red Bluff, California.
He freeley admits that he did it. His defense?
He is starting the revolution! Mickel believes, as does the prosecution, that he isn't insane.
He is also the "CEO" of
Proud and Insolent Youth Incorporated
posted by punkbitch at 1:45 PM PST - 169 comments
Life and Death:
an extraordinary post from Chris Clarke about his connection to serial killer Stephen Peter Morin. His family chimes in meaningfully in the comments.
Morin's execution is often pointed to as proof of the cruelty of lethal injection.
posted by Cassford at 10:50 AM PST - 20 comments
There is a house in New Orleans...
A recent archeological excavation in the French Quarter reveals that a hotel called the "Rising Sun" operating in the early 1800s may have been the ruin of many a poor girl. Clues include suggestive newspaper ads from the period and artifacts such as "a large number of liquor bottles... Alongside... an unusually dense collection of rouge pots".
[more...]
posted by taz at 2:34 AM PST - 34 comments
April 3
DJ Format meets Dance Dance Revolution
Director Keith Schofield turns out a blazing video for British DJ Format and his top notch crew of pasty Canadian rappers, turning their song "3 Feet Deep" into a high adrenaline arcade hi-score smashing rampage.
posted by w0mbat at 5:20 PM PST - 19 comments
Thomas L. Friedman,
award winning NY Times columnist and author of
The Lexus and the Olive Tree,
Longitudes and Attitudes, and
From Beirut to Jerusalem, will publish his fourth book,
The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, this week. An article adopted from the book, "
It’s a Flat World After All", was printed in the NY Times Magazine today:
In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail for India, going west. He had the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. He never did find India, but he called the people he met 'Indians' and came home and reported to his king and queen: 'The world is round.' I set off for India 512 years later. I knew just which direction I was going. I went east. I had Lufthansa business class, and I came home and reported only to my wife and only in a whisper: 'The world is flat.'
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 10:08 AM PST - 52 comments
The Man Who Unwrote the Bible.
In the mid-1720s,
Alexander Cruden took on a self-imposed task of Herculean proportions: he decided to compile the most thorough concordance of the
King James Version of the
Bible (777,746 words). The first edition of
Cruden's Concordance was published in 1737. Every similar undertaking before or since has been the work of a vast team of people. Cruden worked alone in his lodgings, writing the whole thing out by hand. Cruden's day job was as a "Corrector of the Press" (proofreader). He would give hawk-eyed attention to prose all day long. Then he would come home at night to read the Bible—stopping at every single word to secure the right sheet from the tens of thousands of pieces of paper all around him and to record accurately the reference in its appropriate place. He had no patron, no publisher, no financial backers: his only commission was a divine one.
Cruden's Concordance has never been out of print. A
new book tells the tale of Alexander the Corrector's bizarre,
sad life (scroll down to about half page).
posted by matteo at 10:03 AM PST - 10 comments
April 2
The invention of the Hindu
: "Hinduism is largely a fiction, formulated in the 18th and 19th centuries out of a multiplicity of sub-continental religions, and enthusiastically endorsed by Indian modernisers."
posted by dhruva at 8:52 PM PST - 72 comments
Interview with Scott Ritter on Iran June Invasion
What do you think the world's reaction will be if the U.S. invades Iran in June and fails, inciting an invasion of Iraq with well-equipped and trained Iranian troops and equipment, retaliation from Iran with missile attacks against the oil fields in the mid-east and Israel as well as southern Europe and Turkey. How will life in this country change?
posted by mk1gti at 8:10 PM PST - 42 comments
Who do you unconciously hate?
The Harvard University
implicit bias tests allow you to discover your own implicit stereotypes: age, gender, religion, race -- even politics and presidents. Each test takes about ten minutes, and the results are sometimes surprising. Perhaps announcing your biases should this be the equivalent of the
geek code for policy threads.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:49 PM PST - 67 comments
The Pentagon's Secret Stash.
"...There can be
narratives of things that are much worse, but if they aren't accompanied by photos, they somehow don't register....The Abu Ghraib photos are sort of the military equivalent of the Rodney King case....And I hate to attribute motives to people I don't know, but it is easy to imagine that the officials who are withholding these images have that fact in mind."
posted by gsb at 4:38 PM PST - 16 comments
Its official,
Pope John Paul II has died at age 84 in Vatican City.
"The Holy Father died this evening at 21.37 in his private apartment"
posted by SirOmega at 12:07 PM PST - 327 comments
I LOVE SHREDDED WHEAT:
A collectible site for The shredded Wheat Company, niagara Falls, NY - and its predecessors and successors - [A collectors’ Site, with no connection to any corporation]
posted by mwhybark at 11:51 AM PST - 10 comments
The Scotsman's contribution to April Fool's yesterday was a satirical bit on Political Correctness: "European bureaucrats will push forward legislation today to force the Scottish Executive to change place-names that offend or discriminate on the grounds of race and gender. The commissioners in Brussels have demanded 'race and gender-sensitive' names found for towns such as Motherwell, Blackburn, Helensburgh, Fort William, Campbeltown, Peterhead, Lewis and Fraserburgh be changed."
posted by jenleigh at 9:52 AM PST - 16 comments
Play the logo game.
If you have any doubts left about the ubiquity of advertising, this quiz should remove them. How many can you get, and in what categories?
posted by fixedgear at 4:53 AM PST - 28 comments
April 1
Air Force Wind Ensemble Music
About 70 pieces are here, almost all in MP3, recorded by Air Force bands. If you played concert band or wind ensemble in high school, some of these will really take you back:
- Lincolnshire Posey, Grainger
- First Suite in Eb for Military Band, Holst
- The Planets, Holst
- George Washington Bridge, Schuman
There are links to other genres performed by the bands: Country, Dixieland, Jazz, March, Patriotic, Pop, and Winter Holidays.
The list isn't exhaustive (no
Thunderer?) but there are some gems that are not easy to find recordings of.
posted by kurumi at 2:21 PM PST - 15 comments
The Mary Evans Picture Library
'is a family business, which started in 1964. Hilary and Mary Evans began collecting historical material, in the form of books, loose prints and ephemera, in the 1950s and through various media contacts they turned their hobby into a thriving business.' (free reg req) If you open just about any non-fiction book from the past 50 or so years, you are sure to see Mary Evans' name beside many
unusual and
important pictures.
And for
April Fool's.
Its all rather extraordinary.
(Note: This is my 1st FPP. Thanks guys!!)
posted by shipbreaker at 1:23 PM PST - 4 comments
"Rats
that survive to the age of four are the wisest and the most cynical
beasts on earth. A
trap means nothing to them, no matter how skillfully set. They just kick it around until it snaps; then they eat the bait. And they can detect poisoned bait a yard off. I believe some of them can read." Also,
they're athletes
posted by Shanachie at 11:11 AM PST - 58 comments
Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin stripped of title for standing up.
Candidates for the crown have to "mostly be seen in the public using their wheelchairs or scooters," said Judy Hoit, Ms. Wheelchair America's treasurer. "Otherwise you've got women who are in their wheelchairs all the time and they get offended if they see someone standing up. We can't have title holders out there walking when they're seen in the public."
Reminds me of the joke of the kid who won the "Most Humble" award at his school, was given a badge, and then had it taken away from him when he put it on.
posted by billysumday at 10:15 AM PST - 25 comments
Farewell, jet generation.
"
This is never easy. Please excuse me if I start making no sense. Hideaki Sekiguchi, AKA Billy, has left this world this morning, due to a heart attack at the age of 38. Billy was a brother, one of the wolf pack. He rocked harder than anybody in the room...." --Seiji, Guitar Wolf. Fans from all over the world
respond. Oh,
Bass Wolf, you will be in my heart forever.
posted by jennanemone at 9:48 AM PST - 32 comments
Ipso Floral
is some Friday Flash Fun (SFW). Probably the most amazing, hypnotic, computer generated animation I've ever seen. It's the best thing since
Electric Sheep.
posted by mosch at 8:45 AM PST - 29 comments
Pope John Paul II has had a
heart attack. Soon, the
College
of
Cardinals will
assemble
to
choose
his successor. Even in death, however, this pontiff will exert extraordinary control over
the process, having
elevated an
unprecedented number of clerics to this body.
The choice of
Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino,
archbishop of Havana, would
continue
John Paul II's
legacy of opposition to communism and totalitarianism. Another frontrunner is the socially conservative Nigerian Cardinal
Francis Arinze.
Arinze would continue John Paul II's cultural legacy while
recognizing the
demographic reality
of modern global Catholicism. Also mentioned as a frontrunner is
Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga
of Honduras, a strong
proponent of third world debt relief. Progressives would welcome the elevation of German Cardinal
Walter Kasper,
an
advocate
for religious tolerance and pluralism, or the moderate Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re,
a frequent
stand-in
during the Holy Week ceremonies. Conservatives favor Columbian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos. Hoyos shares the Pope's
traditionalist vision
of a
church
at odds with modernity.
But the smart
money,
is on
Dionigi Tettamanzi.
posted by felix betachat at 8:44 AM PST - 228 comments
The Underground History of American Education
You aren't compelled to loan your car to anyone who wants it, but you are compelled to surrender your school-age child to strangers who process children for a livelihood.... If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you'd think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?
posted by anastasiav at 7:10 AM PST - 95 comments
Economics and Race:
"Twenty-seven-year-old Harvard economist Roland Fryer grew up poor and black, in a family that was falling apart. His mother abandoned him. His father drank heavily and beat him. Fryer sold drugs and carried a gun. Then, at age 15, after he got pulled over by the police and then let go, he decided he wanted something different."
posted by yoga at 6:11 AM PST - 8 comments
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