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April 2007 Archives
April 30
Disapproving Rabbits!
Maybe they disapprove of the war in Iraq. Maybe they disapprove of abortion. Maybe they disapprove of Ann Coulter. Maybe they disapprove of Ann Coulter going to Iraq to have an abortion. But I'm quite sure they disapprove of this post.
posted by Salmonberry at 8:59 PM PST - 36 comments
The Crying Game.
The Japanese proverb
Naku ko wa sodatsu says that "A crying child thrives." During the annual
Konaki Sumo ("Crying Sumo") festival held at
certain temples in Japan, babies are held facing each other and
encouraged to cry by priests and sumo wrestlers. The one who bawls first, or loudest, is the winner, thought to be blessed by the gods with good health.
posted by gottabefunky at 7:48 PM PST - 29 comments
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Taleb is out. Reviews in the
Wall Street Journal,
LA Times, and
Financial Times. Just in time with those of us with a love of Hume's problem of induction, non-Gaussian distributions and financial intellectualism. Read an early draft of
chapter 16, The Bell Curve, That Great
Intellectual Fraud. Read Taleb's
"philisophical and literary notebook." Then, in a feat of metanarrative rarely seen outside of Metatalk, read
his comments on comments on the book. Previously on Metafilter:
Languagehat has already made his thoughts on Taleb known, it wasn't pretty, and someone with "vested interests in Taleb"
responded. Taleb, refreshingly, does not shy away from
debates about his work.
posted by geoff. at 12:50 PM PST - 66 comments
Baseball fans were treated on Sunday to the rarest gem in the sport, a confluence of chance and circumstance which had only occurred twelve times previously in modern major league history. If you blinked, you may have missed it. Colorado Rockies rookie shortshop (and subject of future trivia questions) Troy Tulowitzki turned an
unassisted triple play.
posted by edverb at 12:37 PM PST - 88 comments
The guy over at
Make Your Nut is facing a dilemma I've wondered about myself: what to do about the security risks that are inherent in the many RFID-chipped credit and ATM cards that banks are so keen on issuing today? There's a
lot of evidence out there that indicates that the highly personal information these cards (and the new
US passports as well) carry can be stripped away by a thief with a little motivation and access to relatively low-cost equipment. You can go with the nifty
RFID-blocking wallets (discussed
here previously), or, according to some, you could just
grab a hammer.
posted by shiu mai baby at 8:26 AM PST - 26 comments
20ltd.com
is a new and unique online shop. They have 20 limited edition items for sale at any time, and each item is a limited edition made exclusively for 20ltd.com.
And they have a jukebox with some great tunes on to shop by.
posted by allkindsoftime at 2:50 AM PST - 49 comments
April 29
Being the adventures and observations of a field naturalist and an animal photographer
- An utterly charming picture of life in
Scotland's Outer Hebrides in 1896.
St Kilda - "Many theories have been advanced as to the origin of the inhabitants of this lonely rock, and a curious tradition exists as to its acquisition by members of the outside world. The inhabitants of Harris and Uist agreed to make it the prize for a boat race, and accordingly set out to row across the intervening waste of waters. So equally matched were the crews in regard to pluck and endurance that they arrived at St Kilda almost at the same moment. The Uist men, however, led by a few strokes, and hopes of winning ran high amongst them when Colla MacLeod, the chief of the Harris gang, chopped his left hand off and flung it ashore over the heads of his competitors, and secured St Kilda and its satellites to himself and his descendants for all time."
posted by tellurian at 11:02 PM PST - 7 comments
“I never think of my age,” she said. “We don’t die at a certain age. And if people didn’t know they were getting a certain age, maybe the same age their father died or their mother died, I think they’d be better off.”
Nola Ochs, 95, will soon become the
oldest person to graduate from
college, according to Guinness World Records.
posted by Brittanie at 9:26 PM PST - 18 comments
Llaguno bridge is a documentary offering an alternative point of view
on some of the violent events that took place in Venezuela during the
coup d'etat attempt of 2002 [1]. Some local private television are accused of deliberatedly picking some facts in an attempt to support the ongoing coup ; different videos taken from different angles show how some people were wrongly accused of shooting at unarmed masses of demonstrators. Regardless of political preferences and actual events, it is an interesting documentary on how easily facts can be misrepresented.
posted by elpapacito at 7:08 PM PST - 8 comments
Roads To Riches (or We've Got a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You--Seriously)
-- Why investors are clamoring to take over America's highways, bridges, and airports—and why the public should be nervous.--
...a slew of Wall Street firms—Goldman, Morgan Stanley, the Carlyle Group, Citigroup, and many others—is piling into infrastructure ... Assets sold now could change hands many times over the next 50 years, with each new buyer feeling increasing pressure to make the deal work financially. It's hardly a stretch to imagine service suffering in such a scenario; already, the record in the U.S. has been spotty. ...
posted by amberglow at 4:49 PM PST - 107 comments
Brass Eye is a hilarious & much missed British parody of "issue" news programs such as 60 Minutes in the U.S. It ran for one year, in 1997 (minus the 2001 special), and only six episodes were produced. Thanks to the miracle of the internets, all six (
Animals,
Drugs,
Science,
Sex,
Crime &
Moral Decline) are available in their entirety via Google Video. If you're unfamiliar with the series, trust me, it's not to be missed.
Previous mentions on
Metafilter. Discovered Via the
good mr hodgman's blog.
posted by jonson at 2:57 PM PST - 48 comments
Orion Magazine hosts a two-part essay on the environmentalism movement's attempts to fit within free market capitalism, and the problems therein. Part one,
The Idols of Environmentalism, focuses on the cross purposes of capitalism and environmentalism, and the apparent impossibility of the two working together. In part two,
The Ecology of Work, the focus is on the human impact of the work and consumption culture.
posted by knave at 12:48 PM PST - 27 comments
Foldschool offers free downloadable PDF patterns you can use to make children's furniture and "fun objects" out of 4mm corrugated cardboard.
via
posted by paulsc at 8:13 AM PST - 5 comments
April 28
On November 29, 1864, John Chivington led the Colorado Volunteers in a dawn attack in which at least 150 Cheyenne men, women and children were slaughtered (many of their corpses grotesquely mutilated), bringing a new wave of Indian-white conflict to Colorado's high plains along the Santa Fe Trail. The
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site was officially dedicated
today.
See photos of some of the
people involved, read some contemporary
propaganda concerning the event, as well as actual
testimony from witnesses and perpetrators.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:56 PM PST - 17 comments
"Someone in a Tree" -- an incedibly rare video from the original, 1976 production of "Pacific Overtures."
I grew up listening to an L.P. of these same people perform this same song, but I've never before seen them perform it. I grew up in Southern Indiana, so actually seeing a Broadway show was out of the question. But I loved this song, and -- years later -- I read that it was Stephen Sondheim's favorite of all the songs he ever wrote. Today, I found this video on YouTube and it was like finally seeing someone after being blind for years. I still have chills running up and down my spine. Also: Sondheim
forum, online
journal, and various gems (and bombs) on
youtube -- including
the man himself teaching a master class and
this 12-year-old's spirited performance!
posted by grumblebee at 1:33 PM PST - 14 comments
(Spoilers in most links). So an SNL digital short,
Dear Sister spoofs the second season
finale of the OC. Now the internets just don't know when to stop, with parodies (of the parody) playing on everything from the obvious like
The Departed,
LOST,
Snatch,
The Matrix,
Reservoir Dogs, and
Predator to the not-so-obvious like
Lord of the Rings,
Raging Bull,
Monty Python,
Duck Hunt (my favorite),
Looney Toons,
LazyTown,
Smash Brothers,
Office Space, and
Bio-Ooze Super Soakers.
posted by ztdavis at 12:26 PM PST - 65 comments
April 27
It's Friday night, and us workaday schlubs deserve to fantasize about “
an unconventional and extraordinary getaway,” don't we? Do you fancy an overnight stay in a 1968 decommissioned Coast Guard Sikorsky, pithily dubbed the
Hotelicopter? Or maybe in the Treehouse, 35 feet off the ground and with a full bar?
Winvian is a 113-acre resort in Connecticut's Litchfield Hills; dotting the grounds are eighteen cottages in whimsical themes.
Like, an artist's studio, complete with blank canvas, watercolors and oils, just in case inspiration strikes. And a tomb-like structure named "The Secret Society" -- an homage to Yale's Skull and Bones temple (most of the 14 architects that designed the hotel's cottages are Yale alums).
Win Smith Jr., the
former Merrill Lynch exec and owner of Vermont ski spot
Sugarbush, built the resort on his family's property to save it from becoming a high-rise development. No
shortage of
luxury-travel reviewers are salivating over Smith's "experiential retreat," just opened this spring.
A daily rate starting at $1450 includes the continental breakfast nook, full breakfast, lunch, picnics, spa snacks, afternoon tea, cocktails, dinner, and after dinner petit-fours. The main building is a restored 1775 colonial with a cigar-and-brandy lounge, art gallery, and 130-variety wine cellar... and also boasts
an appropriately gothic backstory. Who needs to pay the rent, anyway?
posted by pineapple at 4:18 PM PST - 10 comments
There's been plenty of
Bullshit! on MetaFilter before, and now there's more: Boy Scouts [
1,
2,
3] (
"Duty to God ahead of country, others, and self, is the credo of suicide bombers.");
Wal-Mart Hatred (
"Wal-Mart is one of the great anti-poverty programmes in the country.");
Circumcision (
"By the end of this programme, one of these three will drop their pants and show us the restored foreskin on their penis."); and
The Best (
"Stupid? How many of you are searching for it on the web right now?").
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 3:22 PM PST - 46 comments
Exposed: I'm not a plastic bag!
Queues this week have gone around the block for a designer cotton bag designed by
Anya Hindmarch available at Sainsbury's, the British grocer. The bag, which was designed to raise awareness of fair trade and ethical issues, was actually mass produced by sweatshop labor in China and is neither fair trade nor organic.
Bags are selling for as much at $200 on Ebay.
Anya Hindmarch herself has not apologized for the bag, saying:
"We will be launching I’m Not A Plastic Bag in the US in June (in a limited edition navy blue) and in Japan in July (in a limited edition bottle green)."
posted by parmanparman at 1:21 PM PST - 36 comments
The Canadian government has released its new
Turning the Corner plan for regulating greenhouse gases, setting mandatory intensity-based
emission targets (18% reduction over three years) for major industrial sectors. Firms exceeding their targets will be required to pay $15/tonne starting in 2010. Expected cost: $7-8B per year, offset by an expected $6B benefit from improved health. Kyoto targets won't be reached until 2020, eight years late. Reaction from
industry,
Alberta,
the Opposition.
Previous proposal from Opposition leader
Stephane Dion.
Previously.
posted by russilwvong at 12:04 PM PST - 12 comments
As an interesting follow-up to the excellent post about
Fuck law from last year, a controversy is brewing about the article's scholarly merit.
Brian Leiter issued his
Most Downloaded Law Faculty Rankings and excluded Ohio State and Emory because their "presence in the top 15 was due entirely to one provocatively titled article by Christopher Fairman who teaches at Ohio State and is visiting at Emory; without Fairman’s paper, neither Ohio State nor Emory would be close to the top 15." There
has been some dispute over Leiter's omission of the two faculties on that basis. Fairman weighed in on the issue with his new article
Fuck and Faculty Rankings.
posted by dios at 8:17 AM PST - 37 comments
Paternity Discrepancy.
"My little boy was there, he was up at bat, and I started yelling for him, 'Go Matthew [not his real name]! Knock it out of the park!' And another man started screaming for Matthew. Louder than me. I looked over, and I looked at him, and I was like, Who is this guy? And I looked at my son, and I looked at him … and they were identical."
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:06 AM PST - 195 comments
April 26
In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that.
Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark!
Now with 100% more MeFi.
posted by signal at 8:03 PM PST - 27 comments
This is interesting.
Presented by the NOAA Space Environment Center (SEC)
The official NOAA, NASA, and ISES Solar Cycle 24 prediction was
released by the Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel on April 25, 2007. The
Prediction Panel included members from NOAA, NASA, ISES and other US
and International representatives. Press Briefings and presentations at
the SEC Space Weather Workshop, plus additional announcements and
information from the Panel are linked below. The Panel expects to
update this prediction annually.
posted by RoseyD at 7:13 PM PST - 9 comments
Classic Short Stories
— "Fewer and fewer people these days read short stories. This is unfortunate—so few will ever experience the joy that reading such fine work can give. The goal of this site is to give a nice cross section of short stories in the hope that these short stories will excite these people into rediscovering this excellent source of entertainment." Authors represented include Saki, Edith Wharton, O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Gabriel García Marquez, H. G. Wells, Roald Dahl, Anton Chekhov, Charles Dickens, William Carlos Williams and Katherine Mansfield.
posted by Kattullus at 5:10 PM PST - 27 comments
Who's feeling sick? Probably a whole lot of people around you by the looks of this service, which tracks illness around the country as people report their symptoms.
Mostly US and European-centric at this stage, but as more people around the world report their symptoms that can begin to change.
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:35 PM PST - 16 comments
Is your plan of spending an idyllic Saturday at the lake playing
fetch with your chocolate Lab hampered by the fact that you don't
own a chocolate Lab?
Flexpetz to the rescue! If you live in Los Angeles or San Diego, you can rent a dog by the day.
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 3:54 PM PST - 37 comments
"The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on."
Bill Moyers returned to PBS last night with
this documentary (
transcript) examining the mainstream media's role in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
posted by ibmcginty at 9:50 AM PST - 56 comments
April 25
Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. was born into vaudeville. He quickly became a popular and controversial part of his family's stage act; an act that had his father violently hurling the "disobedient" child across the stage into scenery, the orchestra pit, or even into the audience, only to see him emerge amazingly unharmed. After the boy took an unplanned and particularly clamorous fall down a hotel stairwell, an astonished
Harry Houdini cried out to the parents, "
What a buster your kid took!" And thus, as legend has it, did little Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. become
Buster Keaton.
At 22, Keaton made his
cinematic debut with mentor Fatty Arbuckle. Afterward, he immediately founded Buster Keaton Studios, releasing a series of brilliant short (and later longer) comedies.
Dozens of these are freely available to stream or download at the
Internet Archive, including
Steamboat Bill Jr,
Convict 13,
The Electric House, and his seminal
The General (alt), which, despite
completely failing at the box office, would be later hailed by many as one of the
greatest
films
of
all
time.
[more inside]
posted by churl at 7:54 PM PST - 58 comments
The demo scene is
alive and
well. Showing off just what can be done with your computer with
tiny programs (serious hardware required, video link included). The point of this post?
Sumotori Dreams. A physics based game packed into 96k. It's not the gameplay itself which is so great, it's the stumbling drunk AI characters. Play a round, then sit back and
watch them stumble (youtube). Safe for work, if gales of laughter don't draw suspicion.
posted by tomble at 4:36 PM PST - 49 comments
"Let your house be a meetinghouse for the sages and sit amid the dust of their feet and drink in the whiskey that comes out of their
flip -flops with thirst."
posted by kosem at 2:56 PM PST - 31 comments
End of an Empire
Sadly (for me, anyway) the Empire Rollerdrome, last roller rink in New York City, closed its doors for good this weekend after nearly 70 years in business. Although it had a checkered history of
sex, drugs, and hip hop, the Empire was in recent years a much-loved family and community center in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. DJ Julio (who kept the crowd
rolling at the Roxy for decades until they too closed earlier this year) maintains a fabulous archive of material about all of
NYC's bygone rinks. If you want to see what you've been missing, check out the
Central Park Dance Skaters.
posted by sonofslim at 10:23 AM PST - 18 comments
Torture innocents or suffer the consequences.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) expounded yesterday on the process of 'extraordinary rendition' where suspects are flown to foreign countries outside of US law, so they can be tortured for information. He's got no problem with it, even if innocents are involved. [more inside]
posted by bitmage at 9:32 AM PST - 89 comments
25 y.o. whistle-blower.
Last Fall, a 24 y.o. by the name of Justen Deal,
blew the whistle on what he perceived to be profligate waste by his employers. As an IT guy at Kaiser-Permanente, he'd seen a $442 million database project scrapped by the new CEO and replaced by a sweetheart deal for one of the CEO's former contractors. Internal estimates placed Kaiser's losses on this new contract at $1.2 billion dollars
per quarter [more inside]
posted by vhsiv at 8:46 AM PST - 74 comments
"The average person will eat over 10,000 bars of chocolate, shed 121 pints of tears and have sex more than 4,200 times".
A documentary airing tonight in the UK is attempting a new method of visualizing statistics related to an individual's impact on the environment.
Human Footprint is scheduled to air on Channel 4 at 9PM GMT.
There is a
"calculator" you can use to get the statistics adjusted for your age (and give you a little more data behind the statistics if you can sit through a page by page flash demo).
posted by notmtwain at 7:44 AM PST - 29 comments
So there are crosses, stars of David, Buddhist wheels, etc, but what do atheists get? Well, "
Nothing" might be the proper symbol, but look
here,
there's a
bunch of
possibilities.
Atheist,
Humanist,
Darwinist. BTW, the
American Atheist (MM O'Hare) symbol is the one the
US Army will put on the headstone of any atheist corpses they might find in foxholes.
posted by CCBC at 2:45 AM PST - 118 comments
April 24
Geologists have discovered the remains of one of the world's oldest
tropical rainforests , near Danville IL. The four square miles of fossils are in a coal mine 250 feet below the surface.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 5:13 PM PST - 11 comments
Gizmo
- using news footage from the 1920s to the 1950s, Howard Smith created an amusing 1977 documentary about contraptions made by the inventors, technophiles, and eccentrics of yesteryear. The last 7 minutes is Letterman interviewing Smith.
(Google video, 1 hr., 19 min. Via beans beans good for your heart)
posted by madamjujujive at 10:46 AM PST - 10 comments
Elizabeth Drew analyzes the current confrontation between the White House and Congress over continued funding for the Iraq war. Under Nancy Pelosi's leadership, Congress has
reached an agreement to pass a bill which approves $124 billion in funding for the war, but sets a timetable for withdrawal.
Following the passage of the Senate bill in March, Bush gave a more-than-normally petulant speech against the Democratic proposals—prompting Pelosi, like a mother scolding a teenager, to urge Bush to "calm down with the threats" and to "take a deep breath." This was the first public suggestion by a prominent elected figure that the President lacks maturity—a widely held view in Washington.
posted by russilwvong at 10:37 AM PST - 54 comments
Fred Fish Passed away April 20, 2007
If you were an Amigan, Fred Fish was well known to you. Responsible for the definitive archive of Amiga Freeware, Fred was the Santa Claus of software, his disks containing a selection of everything available for the Amiga at the time. Fish Disks inspired many an Amigan to purchase a modem and log on for all night bbs downloads of the vast selection available. Thanks and Rest in Peace Fred.
posted by djrock3k at 6:36 AM PST - 38 comments
"As he has before, Bush told the story about how his first presidential decision was to pick a rug for the Oval Office..."
In a speech before Ohio High Schoolers and business leaders in a
Republican district outside of Dayton,
the
President made some interesting commentary on marriage, chicken-plucking,
polling, his own legacy, comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, and of course,
the
rug. Apparently,
he
loves the rug like Ronald Reagan loved Jelly Beans,
talking about
it
all
the time, even on the whitehouse.gov's
video
tour. Shortly after a President takes office, they
make
their own imprint on the character of the Oval Office by redecorating, a
task usually taken by the First Lady. The rug, designed by Laura Bush is
sunshine
yellow,
as the President stated
he
wanted the room to convey a sense of optimism, "because you can't make
decisions unless you're optimistic that the decisions you make will lead to a
better tomorrow." Hopefully the rug doesn't become a bookended anecdote to
another
Presidential
"rising"
sun.
posted by rzklkng at 5:51 AM PST - 58 comments
Child prodigies. (Just in case you were starting to feeling content with your middle-aged achievements.) [Warning: YouTube-heavy posting] [Warning: Chopin-heavy posting]
posted by humblepigeon at 3:12 AM PST - 36 comments
April 23
The year is 1978. A group of 12 year-olds have decided to make a Super 8 film of their own based on
Jaws. Presenting...
SHARK!
posted by miss lynnster at 11:39 PM PST - 34 comments
Half-handed Cloud upends the common conception of what Christian music should sound like. Part of a constellation of artists that include Brother Danielson and Sufjan Stevens, John Ringhofer crafts quirky, ramshackle indie pop songs with explicit Christian themes
. Interviews:
1,
2,
3,
4. Reviews:
1,
2,
3. Videos:
1,
2,
3,
4.
posted by Falconetti at 10:59 PM PST - 65 comments
The Super Sky Cycle
is a convertible gyrocopter that lets you fly at better than freeway speeds, land in 20 feet, be driven home as a motorcycle, and fit in your garage. It is available now for a mere $37K. Check out the
flight vid, the cool MacGyver soundtrack is extra though.
Note, yes, "Super" and "Cycle" might be stretches in the name of this product. But it is still pretty damned cool.
via
posted by fenriq at 10:26 PM PST - 33 comments
Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results
--
...more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors. ...
posted by amberglow at 7:44 PM PST - 66 comments
A graphical dissertation
of
Mims' "
This Is Why I'm Hot".
Consider the reasoning, first, of just "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly":
Mims is hot because he's fly. But it raises the question: Does being hot guarantee one's being fly? "You ain't 'cause you not" would seem to clear that up:
It would appear that fly and hot are interchangable. If you are one, you are both; if you aren't at least one, you are neither.
posted by four panels at 6:33 PM PST - 33 comments
David Halbertstam dead in tragic car accident.
Experienced, eloquent, and always observant (his
dim view of Patrick Ewing being a notable exception), David Halberstam was a journalistic jack-of-all-trades who was probably best known for his stinging indictment of
Vietnam warrior
Robert McNamara,
JFK and
LBJ's secretary of defense, in the classic
The Best and the Brightest. A superior
war correspondent before the era
of
CNN-televised revolutions , Halberstam was also an excellent historian and sports writer. Halberstam's dense but
illuminating
The Fifties is an informative and tightly written study on the
Eisenhower era. And
The Children offers a compelling look at eight young leaders of the Civil Rights Revolution.
Moreover, Halberstam's many writings on
basketball (
The Breaks of the Game,
Playing for Keeps) and baseball (
Summer of '49,
October 1964) rank among the upper
echelon of sports books.
posted by psmealey at 5:02 PM PST - 54 comments
To honor the
Greatest's birthday, one could consider his greatest work by reading this
excellent post by matteo which touches upon the religious issues facing our
confused Protestant hero, the student at
Wittenberg, who
doubts orthodoxy, cannot decide
if he is a
scourge or
minister, but ultimately accedes to a
belief in
divine Providence.
Or, if you would rather dive into an
intriguing amusing royally f'ed up "unique" analysis of the play, check out this
extensive theory (?)
[cache] of Hamlet which corrects our accepted and flawed interpretation by explaining that a literal reading of the play tells us, among other things, that King Hamlet was never killed; that Horatio--our narrator--is the King's son and prince Hamlet's half brother; that the guy we incorrectly think of as Claudius is in fact King Hamlet; and that prince Hamlet's father is Fortinbras. Oops. Boy do we have egg on our faces.
posted by dios at 2:07 PM PST - 40 comments
Is this the future of non-satellite radio?
So an old rock station flipped formats in the wee hours of the morning. "
Lone Star 92.5 will not air traditional spots. Instead, the station will have 'sponsors' whose content will be integrated in throughout the hour [a la NPR].
Lone Star 92.5 will feature such artists as ZZ Top, The Old 97's, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and of course, Willie Nelson. In fact, the Red Headed Stranger will also serve as the voice of the station."
This just might be the significant step it takes
HD Radio to rise to the challenge of
satellite radio.
Those who claim to know radio cynically predict the new format will go down in flames. Maybe they just say that because it is a
part of the universally reviled
Clear Channel Communications.
posted by Doohickie at 11:29 AM PST - 23 comments
Yeltsin said: "I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes."
Boris Yeltsin is dead. [
AP story]
posted by nickyskye at 7:54 AM PST - 58 comments
“I wanted to try to capture the intelligence of the design, not just the outcome of the design.” “In 1977, [Donald] Knuth halted research on his books for what he expected to be a one-year hiatus. Instead, it took 10. Accompanied by [his wife] Jill, Knuth took design classes from Stanford art professor Matthew Kahn. Knuth, trying to train his programmer’s brain to think like an artist’s, wanted to create a program [
TeX] that would understand why each stroke in a typeface would be pleasing to the eye.”—from a
profile of Knuth in the
Stanford Magazine (May '06).
Salon calls him “
computing’s philosopher king”
(Sep '99). NPR’s
Morning Edition interviews Knuth as “
the founding artist of computer science”
(Mar '05). Perhaps a MeFite somewhere has one of
these?
(Previously)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:34 AM PST - 40 comments
April 22
This life-like movie sequence captures Saturn's rings during a ring plane crossing--which Cassini makes twice per orbit--from the spacecraft's point of view. The movie begins with a view of the sunlit side of the rings. As the spacecraft speeds from south to north, the rings appear to tilt downward and collapse to a thin plane, and then open again to reveal the un-illuminated side of the ring plane, where sunlight filters through only dimly.
The Great Crossing --
The Movie (7 MB)
posted by y2karl at 10:35 PM PST - 13 comments
SHOOT THINGS
- a retro-arcade-style shooter for Mac OS X.
The author's page describes how it was written in 3 weeks for a contest - it's entertained me for considerably longer than that.
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:10 PM PST - 31 comments
It's been covered elsewhere in the media (and
on MetaFilter) before, but Jason DeParle's
feature in the NY Times Magazine this weekend is a well-researched, clearly written, and evocative piece on the phenomenon of the Filipino overseas contract worker. Just don't get him confused with a
balikbayan (who has a cultural spot all his own, with
boxes named in his honor).
posted by sappidus at 4:53 PM PST - 6 comments
No fairytales allowed;
Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has 36 clients in Guantanamo and has visited many times. This is an extract from a new book where he argues that secrecy is a disease. A
further extract explors the surreal world of the prison's media relations, where the only journalist with real access is one of the inmates. Stafford Smith was one of the narrators is this excellent recent
FPP. Here is the
site of his UK organisation.
posted by adamvasco at 12:43 PM PST - 6 comments
Reid Stowe and Soanya Ahmad
have embarked on a 1000 day journey aboard a 60 foot schooner named Anne which Reid built. They will remain beyond sight of land and will not be resupplied during the voyage. Reid has
considerable experience as a sailor, having first sailed at 20 to Tahiti from Hawaii...and later building a a catamaran which he sailed across the Atlantic.
posted by rmmcclay at 12:26 PM PST - 11 comments
Australian inventor
Chris Bosua, frustrated by the inefficiency of his air compressor, devised a method of recycling the exhaust air from air tools. His Exhausted Air Recycling System
(E.A.R.S.) improves efficiency by eighty percent. It runs cooler, almost halves the power consumption, extends the life of the compressor, provides a cleaner working environment, and reduces the noise of an air tool to that of a sewing machine. Happy
Earth Day, everyone!
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:05 AM PST - 31 comments
Recent
scientific evidence suggests the Minoa civilization on Crete was wiped out by a massive tidal wave around 1,500 BC, the same time the Santorini volcano erupted, 70 km north of Crete, up to ten times more powerful than the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. "Perhaps we now have an explanation of [the Atlantis myth] - a folk memory of a real ancient civilisation swallowed by the sea."
posted by stbalbach at 9:15 AM PST - 22 comments
April 21
In a parallel universe
Your Favorite Band Really Does Suck!
Duncan Watts and others conducted a
Web-based experiment [PDF] called
Music Lab. Their findings: "while talent might distinguish good from bad, social pressure and pure dumb luck are also big influences on which bands gain the most fame." "Calling the [experiment] '
pathbreaking,' sociologist Michael Macy of Cornell University says the findings illustrate how a small advantage can snowball, making popularity hard to predict. Economist Robert Frank, also at Cornell, says the work shows 'we're all susceptible to the herd mentality.'" The effect of "
cumulative advantage" has impact on the popularity of other aspects of contemporary culture: books, films, websites and more.
posted by ericb at 4:59 PM PST - 42 comments
Prominent cosmologist Simon D.M. White has written a provocative
paper posted to the astrophysics arxiv complaining that too much time is being devoted to the quest to understand the nature of the
elusive dark energy: "Dark Energy is undeniably an interesting problem to attack through astronomical observation, but it is one of many and not necessarily the one where significant progress is most likely to follow a major investment of resources."
He worries generally that observational cosmology/astrophysics/astronomy may turn away from the construction of instruments of general utility (such as the
Hubble Space Telescope), to concentrate on a small number of massive experiments narrowly focused on solving particular problems (such as
WMAP and the
Large Hadron Collider), to the detriment of the
"quirky small-science" type of astronomy.
posted by snoktruix at 2:06 PM PST - 8 comments
April 20
The familiar story of 20th century philosophy is one of
analytic versus
continental philosophies. In spite of this, behind the
exaggerated differences is the
common history that these two traditions often forget. In failing to remember this common history, it's easy to forget that for all its supposed universality, philosophy is so distinctly western. It's naive to think that this narrow-mindedness is due to western intellectuals being unable to hear the wisdoms of the world over the din of their own arguments. Rather, it is only that these wordly traditions don’t have that
flavour – that
hardness of crystal.
[more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 8:25 PM PST - 20 comments
Make the logo bigger.
(mp3) The fine folks at
Speak Up provide a bit more
explanation. One can only assume that the follow-up hit will be entitled either 'Split the Difference' or 'The Client Loved It, But They're Changing Everything.'
posted by ba at 4:31 PM PST - 44 comments
Last year, one of the last of the independent magazine distributors, Independent Press Association,
went out of business (and took many smaller magazines along in its wake), and those who have survived, like
Punk Planet, now depend on its subscription base for revenue. Now,
a proposed postal hike, which favors magazines with larger circulations, could be the final nail in the coffin for some of the little guys.
posted by pfafflin at 9:07 AM PST - 26 comments
“We consider the 'primitive' music of blues singers such as Leadbelly to be more authentic than that of the Monkees.
But all pop musicians are fakes . . . Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor . . . have turned out their personal record collections to produce a persuasive defence of inauthenticity as the defining characteristic of great popular music[.]” (
via)
posted by jason's_planet at 7:58 AM PST - 144 comments
April 19
Introduced to Western culture by the Beatles in their single
Norwegian Wood, the
sitar has featured prominently in North Indian classical music for centuries. Princeton-based computer scientist Ajay Kapur updates the instrument with his
ESitar, an audio and video controller that uses
gesture input (PDF) and
machine learning algorithms to facilitate joining the computer with Ajay in his sitar performance. Undergraduate engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania work from the other direction, building
RAVI-bot, an
award-winning, self-playing
robotic sitar (YouTube) programmed to generate music from classical
Raga scales and melodies all on its own. For those in the Philadelphia area, be sure to check out a live performance of RAVI-bot at the local
Klein Art Gallery.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:25 PM PST - 32 comments
Iraqi Kurdistan
- a flipbook style video of thousands of pictures taken in Kurdish dominated northern Iraq by photojournalist Ed Kashi.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:09 PM PST - 8 comments
The Obselisk.
The bastard child of a Mensa quiz and rattan furniture. Getting apart is probably ok, but I don't want to put it back together - particularly after drinky-poo's. But certainly a talking point - particularly at $9,890 .
Via
posted by ninazer0 at 8:36 PM PST - 19 comments
Tappity is a free guide to mobile-friendly sites.
From your browser, you can search for or add sites, and rate sites in the database. You can also set up a homepage of favorite links. This is displayed when you navigate to Tappity from your mobile. It's a seemingly simple idea that's been making my train commute fly by.
posted by ba at 1:01 PM PST - 2 comments
Take
this cooked with
this and mix it with
these and
these and
this, top it off
these?!?, smother it in
this and you have
this:
????. Pronounced
kushar?, you can also find it spelled
kushary,
koushari,
koushary,
koshari, or
koshary. However you spell it, it is one of Egypt's most popular dishes. Throughout Cairo you can find restaurants devoted this this humble, cheap (a filling bowl costs 3LE, around 50 cents), usually vegetarian dish. Of course, if you're not in Cairo you can always
make your own.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:04 AM PST - 47 comments
In the year 1900, Ladies Home Journal writer John Elfreth Watkins Jr wrote an article entitled
What May Happen In The Next 100 Years". This is apparently what the most learned, conservative men of the "greatest institutions of science and learning" had to say about the coming hundred years.
posted by antifuse at 7:03 AM PST - 100 comments
"Fortunately nobody was using the toilets when the fire broke out and there were no injuries," a company spokesman said.
"The fire would have been just under your buttocks." The
flaming toilets of Japan! Of course, if these kinds of problems with new-fangled techno-toilets continue, people might be advised to go back to the
traditional Japanese toilet. In which case, this refresher course in
How to Use Japanese Style Toilet Bowel [
sic] might come in handy. Happy squatting!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:06 AM PST - 24 comments
April 18
Vonnegut's Asshole.
To be honest, this wasn't originally intended as a tribute to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut. It started as a goofy experiment, just to find out how many authors I could persuade to send me drawings of their own assholes. But then Kurt went and died on us last week. So now it's become something else.
posted by roll truck roll at 7:04 PM PST - 19 comments
JGuitar, a rather useful tool for those learning the guitar or experimenting with alternate tunings. You can even bookmark a
certain tuning.
posted by signal at 5:41 PM PST - 6 comments
...By refusing to recognize or admit that the Vietnam War was from its inception primarily a civil war, and not part of a larger, centrally-directed international conspiracy, policymakers assumed that North Vietnam was, like the United States, waging a limited war, and therefore that it would be prepared to settle for something less than total victory (especially if confronted by military stalemate on the ground in the South and the threat of aerial bombardment of the North). In so making this assumption, policymakers not only ignored two millennia of Vietnamese history, but also excused themselves from confronting the harsh truth that civil wars are, for their indigenous participants, total wars, and that no foreign participant in someone else's civil war can possibly have as great a stake in the conflict's outcome--and attendant willingness to sacrifice--as do the indigenous parties involved.
The Wrong War - Why We Lost in Vietnam
See also
Who Lost Vietnam ?See also
Vietnam in Retrospect: Could We Have Won?
posted by y2karl at 11:24 AM PST - 77 comments
If you took the concept of a cat scratching post, and replaced "cat" with "Horny Dog" and "Scratching Post" with "Hollowed Out Fuckdoll,"
you'd have the Hotdoll.
posted by jonson at 10:18 AM PST - 78 comments
The Supreme Court has upheld the federal ban on "Partial-Birth Abortion,"
in a 5-4 decision. The
federal ban provides no exceptions for the health of the mother, the reason previous Courts overturned the law. Justice Kennedy
argued the law banning the procedure should stay, as opponents "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases." In a scathing dissent, Justice Ginsburg alluded to the politics of recent judicial appointments, noting "...the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power."
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:57 AM PST - 219 comments
A
Moment on Earth: hundreds of pictures of different places on earth, all taken at exactly the same time (Flash Based).
On August 5th, 2004 at 12:00 Noon GMT, 60 filmmakers in over 40 countries and on all 7 continents captured a single "moment" on earth. The results were used to build a composite image of Iraq and the Pacific Ocean. By hovering over the composite image, the individual frames of the mosiac can be viewed along with details about the individual pictures.
posted by Mave_80 at 5:54 AM PST - 14 comments
April 17
Good grief. First, tips on
how to write, now this. Yann Martel, award-winning author of
Life of Pi (
previously), believes the Canada Council for the Arts is not getting
a fair shake from the Canadian government. The solution? Send Prime Minister Harper a
book to read. Every couple of weeks, mailed on a Monday. In case you were wondering, the first book on the list is Tolstoy’s
The Death of Ivan Ilych (SparkNotes
here). The Prime Minister’s office has not yet responded. Meanwhile, President Bush already has his own
reading list.
posted by YamwotIam at 7:50 PM PST - 25 comments
New surgical
robots are not only capable of working more precisely than human hands, but they have no metal or electrical parts, so will work under
MRI machines on tumors that would otherwise be invisible. The NeuroArm will set you back $27 million, but may confer more karma than that trip to space.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 7:02 PM PST - 25 comments
Duelin' Firemen
was originally conceived as a
3DO game. According to
this old subgenius post (
Rev. Ivan Stang was apparently part of the cast), it was slated to be completed in July of 1995. It never saw the light of day. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), some of the game's video sequences survive,
edited together in all their seizure-inducing glory [YouTube]. Watch for cameos by Rudy Ray Moore, Mark Mothersbaugh, Tony Hawk, Timothy Leary, Steve Albini, David Yow, and a whole bunch of others... if you can actually bear to watch it.
posted by hypocritical ross at 6:01 PM PST - 26 comments
A 350 lb. runner named Jacob
finished the race. He was mentioned in a
previous post. A number of people felt he would be taking away resources from legitimate runners. He brought his own drinks and medical supplies and finished dead last. Not quite a Rocky story, but I'm impressed.
posted by notmtwain at 4:51 PM PST - 55 comments
The Power of the Penis
[YouTube],[NSFW]. I'm sorry for making my first post ever a single link YouTube post, but this Atlanta Public Access TV clip is the most educational video I have ever seen. Alexyss Tylor hosts a show on 'Vagina Power 'and 'Penis Power' with her mother. It's about 9 minutes of true insight - women, don't let men hit the bottom or use their penis as a weapon! Separate the love, the orgasm, and the penis, OK? Make sure he buys you the shrimp plate though!
posted by waitingtoderail at 3:00 PM PST - 302 comments
While looking for ways to digitize old home movies, I came across the
Home Movie Depot Video Archives, and was in awe of how much content they have available online. The vendor provides their clients with space to upload their converted movies, and many have done so... to the tune of 80+ pages of albums. You can
browse through page by page, or
search for specific keywords.
[more inside]
posted by avoision at 12:33 PM PST - 17 comments
Would you trust
this man with your life's savings? Successful entrepeneur and president of Trans Continental Airlines cum boy band svengali,
Lou Pearlman was the guiding hand behind N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, and O-Town. Now, however,
he's on the lam, wanted by the FBI for swindling old folks out of $317 million. Pearlman was last seen in Berlin on February 1st; as he sat in a crowded theater watching his latest creation, the German boy band
US5, win an international pop award, FBI investigators were already combing through his Florida home and offices.
posted by billysumday at 8:31 AM PST - 43 comments
Dr. Vernard Eller is no sex maniac.
He is not even very sexy, although this is something you can never be sure about. He is probably just about normal, whatever that is. From the books you read about sex, being normal isn't normal these days. And being abnormal isn't as abnormal as it once was.
posted by loquacious at 2:08 AM PST - 26 comments
April 16
"I'm not from here, so when I was told that what these boys do in the fields makes 'em fast, I didn't believe it."
Welcome to Muck City.
posted by kyleg at 10:58 PM PST - 17 comments
$78 Million worth of Red Tape.
An amazing (and lengthy) LA Times article that provides an extremely rare glimpse into the finances of a major motion picture, with a line item dissection of the $160 Million disaster
Sahara. The items include $230,000+ for bribes to local officials, $2 Million for a 45 second plane crash sequence cut from the final film, and 3.8 Million to a total of 10 different screenwriters for a movie that eventually went on to be one of the largest (in pure dollar terms - not adjusted for inflation) financial disasters in film making history.
posted by jonson at 5:38 PM PST - 74 comments
Three million long-haul truckers traverse India's 8,000-kilometer highway network for months at a time. According to studies, more than
two-thirds of those men are having frequent
unprotected sex, and
it's a big problem. Seena Taan Ke is a
campaign that's underway to create AIDS/HIV awareness among the truckers, featuring Bollywood celebrities as well as Hollywood celebrity
Richard Gere. It's a good thing for a good cause. Well, up until Richard got a little frisky onstage and
planted some kisses on Big Brother winner/Bollywood star
Shilpa Shetty. Crowds of Indians are now burning effigies of both
Gere and
Shetty in protest.
"Such a public display is not part of Indian tradition." said the spokesman for Hindu nationalist party Bharatiya Janata. Well, so much for AIDS awareness for truckers.
posted by miss lynnster at 4:39 PM PST - 73 comments
Clinicians regularly visited the interrogation cell to assess and treat the prisoner. Medics and a female "medical representative" checked vital signs several times per day; they assessed for dehydration and suggested enemas for constipation or intravenous fluids for dehydration. The prisoner’s hands and feet became swollen as he was restrained in a chair. These extremities were inspected and wrapped by medics and a physician. One entry describes a physician checking "for abrasions from sitting in the metal chair for long periods of time. The doctor said everything was good."...
Medical Ethics and the Interrogation of Guantanamo 063See also
US now detaining 18,000 prisoners in Iraq
posted by y2karl at 11:56 AM PST - 34 comments
Remember
these? Of course you do! Well, two
new videos make for interesting comparison. Not Washington D.C. but Paris France. Not the subway station but the streets. Not classical but pop. Not Joshua Bell but
The Shins. Begin armchair comparative cultural criticism.....NOW!
posted by jmccw at 8:51 AM PST - 24 comments
This is Our Slaughterhouse
"I never thought of making a documentary. It took a friend to convince me that not everyone grew up working in a slaughterhouse. I realized the slaughterhouse I had worked in all those years was bizarrely entertaining enough that it might make an interesting documentary..." 22-minute short film on a
small-scale poultry processing plant.
posted by Miko at 8:27 AM PST - 34 comments
April 15
LampLamp!!
Apparently the limited production run is already sold out....if both bases do connect, this thing is the most illegal/insane light bulb ever made.
More.
posted by metasonix at 1:50 PM PST - 43 comments
Patriot Search
Whether you are a normal searcher, someone trying to download illegal material, a terrorist looking to build a bomb, or just hunting porn, we at Patriot Search welcome you!
Our mission is to provide the best possible search engine to you while at the same time, making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or unpatriotic
posted by Postroad at 9:36 AM PST - 13 comments
Scents from the Bible
The world's first spiritual perfume, "Virtue® was conceived out of our desire to provide a perfume that would allow a person to be reminded of their Spiritual Self, by a simple whiff of it's fragrant essence." Smell the holy!
(Post not inspired by previous )
posted by SansPoint at 6:05 AM PST - 37 comments
April 14
In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in
the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth. [pdf]
via NPR
posted by bigmusic at 9:02 PM PST - 145 comments
British bookseller
Waterstones asked its 5,000 staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982, the date Waterstone’s opened its first store.
These are the results.
posted by unSane at 8:55 PM PST - 53 comments
There are many ways to learn about the life and times of Charles Dickens. There are numerous
web pages,
biographies and
movies. But can any of them compare to the immersion experience of
Dickens World.
Don't miss the many
attractions. The kids will love playing in Fagin's Den while you visit the Haunted House of Ebenezer Scrooge. And don't leave too early or you'll miss the evening's entertainment. "A series of 'burlesque' evening dinner shows are being especially created to provide a nightly menu of 'naughty delights' in the 'Free and Easy' Victorian Music Hall."
posted by saffry at 5:50 PM PST - 10 comments
Remember this?
While randomly reading some assorted Digg posts, I saw someone mention the old Toshiba Liberato laptop. On doing a GIS search, up came a link to the "Apple Doomsday Clock".
It just floors me that this anonymous anti-Apple blog (which even predates the word "blog"), is still online. It dates from the period when Jobs retook the CEO chair, and started turning the failing company around--the last posting was in June, 1999. Perhaps it should be treated as a historical site, and preserved for the future amusement of Mac users?
posted by metasonix at 10:06 AM PST - 28 comments
On Sunday, April 1, ThinkGeek.com jokingly introduced the 8-bit Tie, and due to customer demand, claims that now it'll be
a real product.
On Friday, April 13, apparently due to customer demand, hard drive manufacturer WiebeTech has now introduced the
MouseJiggler, and claims it's not a joke.
posted by Fofer at 10:00 AM PST - 28 comments
Don Lancaster: energy and small business
Lancaster wrote in 'Nuts and Volts', wrote 'The Incredible Secret Money Machine', and has a website that ranges from small business to hydrogen economy to ebay to magic sinewaves. This is the link to his current blog, but take a look at his archived works. His writings on avoiding filing for patents are particularly thought-provoking and perhaps inspirational.
posted by dragonsi55 at 6:15 AM PST - 7 comments
April 13
Animated Pixelated Cities: Gaze at the extreme pixelated detail of the neighborhoods of
Pixeldam (including a pixel Starbucks with tiny coffees and a pixel strip club) or the science fiction themed
PixelMoon, collectively generated by over a hundred contributors. There is also the slightly less impressive
PixelPlaza and the oddness of
IsoCity and
Sumea, as well as the impressive work of
eboy [
prev]. Ready to try yourself, but don't have the pixel skills?
City Creator has you covered.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:14 PM PST - 14 comments
Ghost In The Machine
"I have a murderer's music on my iPod and, almost reflexively, I couldn't help but think of him while listening to these songs—they were his songs, songs he gave me. [...] Listening to his music put me inside [his] head. [...] I wanted to throw up." [more inside]
posted by rossination at 5:36 PM PST - 41 comments
Mathematica Policy Research Inc. released the findings of their study on government funded abstinence programs.
The results? Not so great for the abstinence programs, or the federal & state governments which combined spend $80+ million funding the programs.
The major findings were that the abstinence programs they studied had no correlation with a decreased level of sexual activity in the population of teens they surveyed. Interestingly, one of the programs they studied was a voluntary after school program consisting of daily 2.5 hour sessions with enrollment beginning at grade 3 and continuing into the 8th grade, and even that program didn't produce a significantly higher number of abstinent teens.
The study was ordered by Congress. You can read the full study
here (pdf, 164 pages.)
posted by nerdcore at 2:45 PM PST - 61 comments
Sure, you can make your IRA contribution just before the deadline this year in plain old mutual funds, but did you know it is possible to put retirement money into
Costa Rican hardwoods? Or
income properties or perhaps even
Chinese currency (not much yield there)? You can set up a self-directed IRA, where you choose the investments, which opens up quite a range of
possibilities and perils. The dangers are obvious, and be sure watch the
fees, though, and, of course, consult with your legal, tax, and financial advisors first.
posted by Adamchik at 1:33 PM PST - 7 comments
"Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of hell, barbarian", gasped the first soldier.
"Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch!" returned Grignr.
I cannot believe that I once considered my life complete having never been exposed to SciFi convention mainstay and possibly Worst Science Fiction Story Ever Written,
The Eye of Argon.
Previously mentioned on Metafilter in comments, it is time for Jim Theis' magnum opus have its day in the Blue. If you can make it through the story without laughing (most can't), there's always the
MST3K'd version to attempt as well! (
via)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:25 AM PST - 92 comments
You'll go by the phone kiosk and you'll hear young men having these very strange, almost surreal arguments or discussions with their wives over something like, "Hey the garage is leaking, how do we fix that?" And what she maybe doesn't understand is, maybe that guy just got ambushed, like half an hour ago, and he's shaking from the adrenaline, and he's just calling her just to hear a familiar voice, and she's like, "We gotta get the sprinklers fixed." And he's like, "Oh, OK ... . I love you." He just wants to get back to the ground. And that's what makes me angry, is what all of this is doing to these very young families. It just makes me mad. It makes anybody mad.
—
Henry Rollins,
interviewed in TNR (reg required, free) on his frequent USO visits to Afghanistan and Iraq.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:38 AM PST - 59 comments
Say you live in a forest and have limited resources. You need to make signposts to point out trails, water sources, meeting places and the like, but your readers might speak a variety of languages. Also, you want the signposts to last a really long time. What do you do? Create
trail trees! Now say you live in the 21st century. What do you do?
Create a database! And
blog about it!
posted by DU at 7:46 AM PST - 20 comments
Who wrote the song
Hey Joe? Jimi Hendrix recorded the most famous version, but
Hey Joe has been recorded by a bunch of artists including
Love, The Leaves, The Byrds, The Music Machine, and
Eddie Murphy(??!). The author of the song themed with infidelity, murder, and ultimately running from the law, is under dispute, which is well documented on
Wikipedia. An mp3 blog called
Used Bin Forever features a
post about this subject including a mp3 of a mindblowing version by the 60's Japanese band, The Golden Cups.
posted by byronimation at 6:53 AM PST - 27 comments
Defender of the Crown
can be played on the website of the game's original designers. You are a noble who must unite England by jousting, warring and rescuing pretty maidens. The king has been murdered, the crown has been stolen and as your bestest pal Robin Hood says, "only you can save England."
posted by Kattullus at 5:07 AM PST - 37 comments
"If you had Bruce playing with you," Dylan wrote, in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles, "that's all you would need to do just about anything."
Bruce Langhorne has quite the
discography. And a
hot sauce, to boot. And he's led quite the life. Here is Richie Unterberger's interview with Langhorne in Parts
One and
Two. And
here he talks with Unterberger about working with
Mimi and Richard Fariña.
On a personal note, I will add that his hot sauce is hot indeed. Will buy it again.
posted by y2karl at 12:31 AM PST - 6 comments
TV in Japan.
A hyper representation of what airs, or has aired on Japanese TV. Ranging from action packed to truly awesome (and from monkeys to ninjas), set your eyes to "dazzled" and brain to "frazzled".
posted by myopicman at 12:12 AM PST - 7 comments
April 12
Google maps the Darfur crisis
To Find Darfur on Google Earth
1.
Download Google Earth
2. Open the program; in bottom-left corner, click open tabs 'PrimaryDatabase,' then 'Global Awareness,' then 'USHMM: Crisis in Darfur.' Check the box next to 'Darfur' so markers appear over the region.Double-click the word 'Darfur' to automatically zoom in on the region.
3. Use mouse or navigation tools in top-right corner to move around the map.
posted by jne1813 at 7:47 PM PST - 7 comments
Projection Bombing,
via Code & Form.
Outdoor digital projection in urban environments is a method for getting your content up big before the eyes and in the minds of your fellow city inhabitants.
posted by signal at 4:37 PM PST - 11 comments
People find printing Web pages too hard.
Hewlett-Packard is devising ways to get people to print Web pages instead of reading them on-screen. Last month, H.P. bought
Tabblo (
previously), whose software creates templates that reorganize the photos and text blocks on a Web page to fit standard sizes of paper. H.P. wants to make the software a standard by making it ubiquitous like flash, java and Acrobat.
posted by pithy comment at 8:16 AM PST - 70 comments
In the grand scheme of things, eating locally grown food may be more important than eating organically grown foods. To help you reach that goal, there's
100-Mile Diet, a blog that deals with the benefits and pitfalls of trying to eat only foods grown locally;
The Eating Well Guide, which will help you find markets, restaurants, etc. that go along with the sustainable foodthink; and
Local Harvest, which will help you find local
and organically grown food sources. (PS. Now's probably the time to start signing up for your favorite
CSA!)
posted by Dave Faris at 7:37 AM PST - 55 comments
April 11
(news/outragefilter):
BBC reports that the new appraisal forms for Indian civil service employees require women to disclose information about their menstrual histories and any pregnancy leave.
posted by aberrant at 8:18 PM PST - 25 comments
Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84
"His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States."
.
posted by landedjentry at 8:10 PM PST - 616 comments
Mary Uduru of Nigeria.
Although we see lots of single-image representations of African poverty (usually in the form of a swollen-bellied child on the brink of starvation) it's rare to find a photo-essay like this one one, which brings us an intimate, informative and non-sensationalist view of the life of the working poor there.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:25 PM PST - 22 comments
Iranian envoy wounds 'confirmed':
The head of the International Red Cross in Tehran, Peter Stoeker, says he saw wounds on an Iranian diplomat who has alleged that US forces in Iraq tortured him. There were marks on Jalal Sharafi's feet, legs, back and nose. [
photos].
On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be under American control, had seized Jalal Sharafi, while he was
carrying a videogame, a gift for his daughter. Read more about the US secret operations against Iranians in Iraq in
an exclusive report by The Independent.
posted by hoder at 4:22 PM PST - 49 comments
Wordsworth... for the YouTube generation is a rapped version of ' Wandered Lonely As A Cloud'
The squirrel is the stuff of nightmares
posted by darsh at 1:31 PM PST - 12 comments
"It wasn't scary, it was just gratuitous, as if they thought, 'I know, let's have a rape,' and that made me quite angry."
The question will be asked often in the coming weeks, as "Vacancy" and "Hostel 2" approach: Do modern horror films ("
gorno," or gore pornography) go too far,
particularly when it comes to women?
Who said violent misogyny was entertaining? Is this just a retread of the
exploitation wave of the
1970s/80s? (Most links NSFW, sensitive souls, people who detest violence)
posted by jbickers at 9:09 AM PST - 199 comments
The main problem with panorama photography is that good photo stitching software is expensive and often difficult to use. Then when you have finally managed to put together a good panorama, it's nigh-on impossible to share it with your friends. Scrolling back and forth on your screen is possible, of course, that's so un-Web 2.0!
CleVR offers a possible solution with a free, embeddable Flash viewer for panorama photographs, with some cool
outdoors, groovy
indoors and some downright
surreal stuff already available.
posted by SharQ at 6:47 AM PST - 36 comments
Shiftspace
creates a collaborative layer over any website. (Tools like this have been tried before, but this is the first one with an overt Wikipedia-style public service philosophy.)
posted by Tlogmer at 1:38 AM PST - 12 comments
April 10
The house of Johnny Cash
is no more. Earlier today a fire was sparked amid fumes of a wood preservative and the structure was destroyed. New owner/restorer
Barry Gibb unsure how to be
Mr. Natural now that the Nature House is gone. Warning: Horribly written Tennessean piece.
posted by rhythim at 4:25 PM PST - 20 comments
Meet Franklin, the Fair-Housing Fox.
Says HUD: "Just as McGruff the Crime Dog represents the fight against crime, Franklin, the Fair Housing Fox, will symbolize the nation's efforts to end housing discrimination." And also, apparently, really, really bad web-page design.
posted by MrMoonPie at 1:57 PM PST - 59 comments
Open Sourceware Consortium
"While MIT has pioneered the open courseware movement where many class materials are made freely available online, there's now an Open Courseware Consortium extending courses to dozens of universities and many thousands of courses." - Don Lancaster
posted by dragonsi55 at 1:34 PM PST - 9 comments
Yahoo! Australia introduces a new search engine
that uses OpenSearch and pretty little AJAX tricks to integrate results from Flickr, Wikpedia, YouTube (and so on). You can customize the layout, and even add your own search sources. It’s called Alpha, it’s currently in Beta, and aims to get through the rest of the Greek alphabet by June. (Via
podlob.)
posted by Milkman Dan at 8:39 AM PST - 13 comments
Our shameless culture, by David Cox (The Guardian):
Iran has shown the British what kind of people we really are: without honour and without shame. The Sun, the now
officially approved disseminator of British military information, notes that navigator Arthur Batchelor was "tormented" by being called "Mr Bean". Understandably,
he had to cry himself to sleep. Perhaps President Ahmadinejad feared that the goody bags might just prove a step too far. But no, they were gratefully received, in a response that aptly captures the infantilisation of a people that once ruled much of the world. Navigator Batchelor has however since
complained that the quality of his own bag's contents was not what he had hoped.
posted by hoder at 7:55 AM PST - 94 comments
April 9
Top
100 watch sites on the web.
Strangest watches,
odd watches, tactical
sniper watch,
geek watches,
TokyoFlash watches,
abstract LED,
math watches,
Pimp watches,
micromechanical engineering for connoisseurs.
Nooka watches,
USB Data Storage watch,
dot matrix watch, futuristic
cool vintage 1,
2 and
3, funkadelic
diamond rotolog,
not fussy about the exact time watch,
Rolex or replica?, horological
hallucination watches, solar powered
braille watch,
Philippe Starck style,
war watches, our
growabrain's super collection of timepieces. A brief
history of watches.
posted by nickyskye at 11:22 PM PST - 34 comments
"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
-
Jackie Robinson This Sunday April 15, 2007, Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson Day in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the
breaking of baseball's color barrier. For
one day,
superstars and
managers throughout the
sport as well as
entire teams will be
saluting his memory by
wearing Robinson's
retired number 42.
Robinson is
honored for his
tremendous leadership both
on and
off the field (previously), he is
remembered for his
determination in
overcoming racial
prejudice and
hatred, and for his
post-career activities as a civil rights advocate. Perhaps the highest compliment is to say simply that
Jackie Robinson was
one of the
greatest players to ever
grace a
baseball diamond, but his contribution to baseball, and to
equality in America was far greater than statistics and pennants.
"
Mr. Rickey, do you want a ballplayer who is afraid to fight back?" "I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back!" See
The Jackie Robinson Story, starring the man himself.
(1:16:29, Google video)
posted by edverb at 8:43 PM PST - 20 comments
Porn for Women
is a new photo book by the Cambridge Women's Pornography Collective that asserts that what really turns women on is a man who cleans the house and asks for directions.
Others disagree. (All links SFW.)
posted by desjardins at 2:41 PM PST - 58 comments
The death of Russia [google video].
A very interesting documentary made for Channel 4 in the UK on the state of modern Russia from
Marcel Theroux.
Marcel is older brother of
Louis Theroux and son of the travel writer
Paul.
Marcel's documentary style is more sober than that of his brother and he deals with a tragic subject delicately and with a sympathetic tone. A very depressing but nonetheless very watchable documentary told by a literate, compassionate journalist.
[48 minutes running time]
posted by ClanvidHorse at 12:05 PM PST - 18 comments
First Responder Training Sites.
For police training purposes, in Southern California ten locations have been set up to look like "anytown, usa", where target practice & hostage situations are acted out. These areas are known in the industry as situation simulation villages, tactical training sites, or Hogan's Alleys (
?).
Emergency State is an online exhibit of over 200 photographs of these strange prop towns.
posted by jonson at 10:34 AM PST - 18 comments
Everyone needs more Kuler.
There a
lot of color pickers out there...and I generally like all of them...but Kuler takes things a step further by making a
community of color and color themes. Of course it's tied with their products but that doesn't distract from the usefulness of this free online application. It is also a beautifully designed website both in form and function.
posted by rmmcclay at 7:41 AM PST - 14 comments
Clive James on Scams and Hoaxes.
"
If the flim-flam man is sensible enough to offer you a return of only twice as much, the scam might even work. I was once defrauded of a heartbreakingly-large sum by a fellow writer who was smart enough to offer no return at all. True to her word, she didn't return my money either."
posted by Blue Stone at 5:32 AM PST - 18 comments
April 8
PSAFilter: I was trained to do
CPR wikipedia with a 15:1 compression to rescue-breath ratio. This is
no longer recommended. In fact, for just-collapsed people, a recent study shows performing CPR
without any-rescue breathing is better: although
some think the type of collapse is important. Learn how to do CPR
near you:
any valid attempt at resuscitation is better than none. You could save a life.
posted by lalochezia at 10:50 PM PST - 28 comments
Boss Science: The Psychopathology of the modern American corporate leader.
The personality which wins the promotion game has dubious overlap with characteristics of effective leadership. Many organizational psychologists argue that the "emergent" boss is often a
narcissist who, because he "manages to act like he already is the boss," is "socially skilled at adjusting his personality," and is charismatic, rises and entrenches himself to the detriment of the organization.
Some, though, "extol[] the virtues of the narcissist’s selfishness, ethical blindness, and lack of empathy as indispensable to being an agent of change in a large corporation—or the world."
posted by shivohum at 10:17 PM PST - 37 comments
Are you a Highly Sensitive Person?
This trait ... is inherited by 15 to 20% of the population, and ... seems to be present in all higher animals. Being an HSP means your nervous system is more sensitive to subtleties. Your sight, hearing, and sense of smell are not necessarily keener .... But your brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply. Being an HSP also means, necessarily, that you are more easily overstimulated, stressed out, overwhelmed. This trait ... has been mislabeled as shyness (not an inherited trait), introversion (30% of HSPs are actually extraverts), inhibitedness, fearfulness, and the like. HSPs can be these, but none of these are the fundamental trait they have inherited
...
yahoo group |
latest research (fascinating!) |
newsletter |
wikipedia |
blog |
via
posted by grumblebee at 12:19 PM PST - 150 comments
Citizen K Street: How Lobbying Became Washington's Biggest Business
The story will begin in the newspaper and on the Web on March 4, with an overview of Cassidy's career. Then, beginning March 5 and running Monday through Friday for five weeks exclusively at washingtonpost.com/citizenkstreet, Kaiser will tell the story in a serial narrative that will chart Cassidy's path and the transformation of the lobbying industry in Washington.
posted by srboisvert at 11:56 AM PST - 5 comments
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