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May 2003 Archives
May 31
One of America's Great Parks is not a natural wonder at all. It was once a swamp dotted with shanty-towns. It cost more to build than the purchase price of Alaska. At times it has not been pretty, but today it is much more than a crime scene. It is Manhattan's Central Park.
posted by ilsa at 8:15 PM PST - 17 comments
McDonald's gets bad review, sues critic. "McDonald's has labelled as "defamatory and offensive" an influential Italian food critic, who poured scorn on the quality of the fast-food giant's cuisine.
The corporation has sued Edoardo Raspelli, a critic and commentator for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, after he compared its burgers to rubber and its fries to cardboard, in an article last year.
McDonald's is seeking undisclosed damages, possibly as much as the 21m euros (£15m; $25m) it spent on advertising in Italy last year. "
Is it really defamation if it's true? What if every restaurant that got a bad review decided to sue?
posted by kayjay at 11:48 AM PST - 33 comments
Dissent in the ranks. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was under persistent pressure from the Pentagon and White House to include questionable intelligence in his report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February, source:
US News and World Report Magazine.
According to the report, the draft contained such questionable material that Powell lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring,
"I'm not reading this. This is bullshit." posted by CrazyJub at 8:16 AM PST - 76 comments
Khajuraho. History and extensive galleries on the Indian temple site (built in the tenth century) famous for its erotic sculptures. (Not suitable for work, and the front page contains a warning that it is not suitable for under-21's). (more inside)
posted by plep at 12:19 AM PST - 9 comments
May 30
U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed "Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi." The marines are looking, but they
can't find a damn thing. So... were Bush and company played by the INC, or were the American people played by Team Bush?
posted by owillis at 9:36 PM PST - 21 comments
isolation stretcher: staff at a japanese medical system support company demonstrate the company's 'isolation stretcher': "The highly protective stretcher, which costs 5.2 million yen (a half million dollars?), has been in demand since the spread of SARS" ...a 'bed' you wouldn't want to wake up in.
posted by n o i s e s at 7:43 PM PST - 5 comments
By now, you might already have heard about
Mark Walker, the 3 year old hoops prodigy that Reebok is featuring on their website; while the
video of him hitting 18 straight shots from various spots on the floor is cute/impressive, the "
interview" movie is horrendously creepy. The closing tagline "I'm the future of basketball; I am Reebok" done in the voice of such a small child just conjures up visions of in vitro logo tattooing. (Warning: Movies are in Quicktime)
posted by jonson at 6:26 PM PST - 29 comments
Hoorah!
Fairy Congress '03 is almost upon us. With the admiral goal of Promoting Quality Human & Fairy Relations and special guest
Dotty Maclean of
Findhorn Community fame who apparently has done more than any other person in the 20th century to popularize the idea that humans can communicate with
devas, in attendance you'd be crazy to miss it. Sure
looks like fun...
posted by zeoslap at 2:21 PM PST - 17 comments
In The Rain boasts a huge collection of vintage erotica; beautiful, artful poses of women you won't see in
Maxim anytime soon. The appeal of
Vintage Sex is ephemeral, but we've been making erotica long before
cameras; since the beginning
of civilization, really. (Should really go without saying that none of these links are safe for work.)
posted by headspace at 1:13 PM PST - 22 comments
Star Wars to Bar Wars. The Star Wars kid is suing, and the $4,000 collected for him may have to be returned. Always a shame to see the kindness of strangers pushed aside in favor of litigation. Good thing the money never got turned over...
posted by luser at 8:55 AM PST - 82 comments
"I don't think it's your average everyday pothead that is buying
these pieces." [Via
Zed]
posted by debralee at 6:59 AM PST - 14 comments
Pentagon: space is for Americans only At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, (NRO director Peter) Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide 'persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters.'
If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche,
they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have 'no veto power.'
Suckers!posted by magullo at 6:31 AM PST - 80 comments
Looking for a design for your next website?
Open Source Web Design is a site that offers tons of free web design templates that you can take and modify for your own needs.
posted by oissubke at 6:05 AM PST - 10 comments
Looking for a design for your next website?
Strange Banana is a generator that randomly produces XHTML transitional, CSS-layout-driven webpages. Hit "refresh" repeatedly, and find that one layout that matches your inner web designer's dream. (
Found on Zeldman's Daily Report.)
posted by Katemonkey at 3:12 AM PST - 20 comments
Goblins in upstate NY! Brought to you by Adventures in Midland. They have a very indepth, Live Action Roleplaying website. Funny pictures and all that. Go Too much too look at in one sitting... I feel like this has been posted here already, apologies if that's true.
posted by Slimemonster at 12:17 AM PST - 5 comments
May 29
Mr. Spock's Nudes David Bowman talks to 72-year-old
Leonard Nimoy about Leonard Cohen's music, the famous Vulcan hand sign, and his movie career, but especially about his
new book of female nude photographs, and how they relate to the Kabbalistic idea of Shekhinah. Nimoy comes across as more than a little flaky (but that's
nothing new); turns out he can also be thoughtful, perceptive, and dryly funny.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:22 PM PST - 6 comments
The Clickz Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo kicks off on June 9, with the highly-relevant keynote: "What Are Weblogs?" Also on the schedule: "
Business Blogs: Hype or Opportunity?"
Kathleen Goodwin (conference chair)
Blogs : "Someone wrote that they are offended that blogs, what used to be "an 'innocent' repository of ideas," are now becoming commercialized. Hello! Get with the program. It is the 21st century and every great idea gets commercialized in a nano second these days."
posted by scarabic at 3:50 PM PST - 21 comments
Tyson spouting off again In Thursday night's "The Pulse" on Fox, Mike Tyson goes on the record about his 1992 trial that put him in jail for three years. (sentenced to six, paroled after three). He denies raping Desiree Washington and says "I just hate her guts. She put me in that state, where I don't know...... I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her.''
Reuters has
an article on it too
I thought after Tyson's statements about breaking his back after his last fight he would calm down a bit....but it's Tyson.
posted by meanie at 12:08 PM PST - 35 comments
"The roots of Hip Hop Culture will no longer be ignored. Hip Hop's pioneer MC's, DJ's, B-boys and Graffiti Artists finally get to tell their stories. Travel with the real Hip Hop historians (Ralph McDaniels, DJ Red Alert, Grandmaster Caz, Kool Herc) through their old stomping grounds and listen to them reminisce as we drive down memory lane.
Hush Tours takes you to all the hot spots Uptown (Harlem and the Bronx) giving Hip Hop Culture more than a venue... also a voice."
posted by monkeymike at 12:02 PM PST - 10 comments
Need a job? The winner of the
Google Puzzle Contest might recieve a prestigious spot in the Google engineering labs. So whip out all your old
Martin Gardner books and get practicing, because the competition is on May 1st (and registration closes today).
posted by kaibutsu at 11:10 AM PST - 6 comments
The kilogram has lost some weight (and/or mass, depending on your point of view) in the past 2 centuries. Scientists race so
their spiffy idea will be the next benchmark. via
Ars Technicaposted by Nauip at 10:32 AM PST - 22 comments
When Most Of The Reviews (And Indeed Books) Are Long Since Forgotten, David Levine's extraordinary portraits of the public figures and obsessions of the last 40 years will stand as a lasting impression of our literary and political lions, masters, avatars and bugbears. The generous and ever essential
New York Review of Books offers us a complete and fully searchable gallery of the great caricaturist's work since its first issue hit the stands back in 1963 - almost 2,000 cartoons in all. It's fascinating to trace the sequence and evolution of Levine's drawings through the years of particular figures:
Nabokov and
Beckett, for instance.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:49 AM PST - 10 comments
"Are You a Manly Man Full of Vigor?" Such was the come-on in John Romulus Brinkley's ads for his goat-gland operations. He made enough money from them to start first station KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best!), then (after he was run out of Kansas) XER out of Del Rio, Mexico, at a half-million watts the most powerful station in the world, which made the Carter Family (among many others) famous. Read William Bryk's brilliant account, and if you get nostalgic for the old days of AM, listen to the
Blasters' great "
Border Radio."
posted by languagehat at 9:35 AM PST - 7 comments
Welcome to the World Sex Guide forums • Ever wonder if your town had a seamy underside? The WSG forums exist to
facilitate "the exchange of information between men who are looking for sex
with women," and allow users to
browse by city & country to discuss the local cruising scene with other Johns in the field. It's replete with much insider lingo, curious acronyms, awkward tiptoe language (think "bong" vs. "water-filtered tobacco pipe" in headshop culture), and red-herring posts left as bait for the law enforcement (LE) who evidently monitor these forums. Agree or disagree morally with the John lifestyle, it's still worth a glimpse into this strange subculture.
posted by dhoyt at 9:29 AM PST - 19 comments
The treasures of the sea. A fascinating look at underwater archeological sites in France. The Cosquer Cave is particularly enthralling due to the art and the difficulty in getting to it.
(warning - annoying frames and popup info boxes that don't work so well in Mozilla) [More inside...]
posted by Irontom at 8:35 AM PST - 2 comments
The bait and switch. A last-minute revision by House and Senate leaders in the
tax bill that President Bush signed today will prevent millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased child credit that is in the measure.
posted by four panels at 6:14 AM PST - 21 comments
Miss, Miss! Little Jimmy Bond peeked at my intelligence report! "The UK's latest move in the fight against terrorism is a secret project to bring together intelligence data from the UK's security agencies, say reports." Because normally, it's far more sensible to have all the different agencies hoarding their own information and not letting anyone else see it... But seriously: first steps to a UK TIA? Knowing the inefficiences, bureaucratic in-fighting, and awful data mess that these agencies routinely engage in, I doubt it.
posted by humuhumu at 5:26 AM PST - 3 comments
May 28
Huarochiri: A Peruvian Culture in Time. 'Huarochir is an Andean province near Lima, Peru. This site offers an ethnographic and historical tour of some of its communities. It samples the Huarochir Quechua Manuscript, which alone among colonial documents explains a pre-Christian tradition in an Andean language, and visits modern highlanders who inhabit and interpret the mythic landscape.'
Related :-
Martin Chambi. Chambi was an Amerindian Peruvian photographer famous for his photographs of indigenous Andean life. The site is in Spanish - no impediment to enjoying the photographs.
posted by plep at 11:36 PM PST - 3 comments
How to symbolify your life! I put in both "I am a no talent ass clown" and "Life is just a bowl of cherries" and was rather pleased with the results. (I made sure to click on "all" in the options, on the right side.
posted by Lynsey at 9:13 PM PST - 9 comments
Way Too Personals. I'm interested in a woman who is not caught up in the dependency of a psychotherapy relationship. I prefer someone who is not addicted to simple "therapyisms" and who has the courage to survive and enjoy life without a "therapy crutch". I prefer someone able to get beyond simple psychotherapy paradigms, and view behavior (in the REAL WORLD) in terms of factors that explain considerably more than a negligible amount of the total variance. posted by srboisvert at 7:43 PM PST - 9 comments
Quick, Hide The Body! "...But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.
The study asserts that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoidable if the US is to meet benefit promises to future generations. It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 per cent across-the-board income tax increase."
posted by owillis at 7:10 PM PST - 18 comments
Copernica Martin Wattenberg, in collaboration with NASA and
Rhizome.org, developed
a gorgeous applet to showcase NASA's commissioned art program. Participating artists include William Wegman, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, and Robert Rauschenburg, among others. Pieces can be viewed by subject, title, or create your own gallery. Beautiful.
posted by ariana at 2:53 PM PST - 9 comments
What do these people have in common?
Mr. Lucian Jacob Wojciechowski, of Salton City, CA, whose various nicknames are Wladysla wa poniecki, Kuba, and Lovie.
Mr. Maximus Englerius, of Seattle (presumably) who would like to “ban Playgirl mag.”
Mr. Ole Scorpio Savior, of Minneapolis, who lists his first favorite Book as “Bible: Revelations.”
Mr. Warren Roderick Ashe, of Newport News, VA, whose hobbies and special talents are “Professional musician and double-AX bass player. Astronautical and Astrophysics computer math involving saucer technology and time travel.”
Choices, choices, choices!
posted by micropublishery at 12:51 PM PST - 9 comments
Intelligence expert does new kind of spin (as in the 180 degree kind). Intelligence expert (and former National Security Advisor) Kenneth Pollack
appeared on NPR [scroll to 3rd entry for full audio] to retract statements that he made on the
same show in
November. Pollack seems to be the first major wonk to call change his mind not on a single, tangible intelligence claim, but on the broader rationale for war in Iraq, and on the reliability of American intelligence in general.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:11 AM PST - 10 comments
U.S. says Iraq may have junked toxic arms Thus spake Rummy in a speech. We know they have them. If we can not find them it is because they got rid of them. But that still means they had them at one time, right?
Question: what are those top scientists and Bath party members telling their captors wherever they are being held for questioning? Or is too important to reveal too.
posted by Postroad at 9:29 AM PST - 64 comments
"Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all" or so says Bob Geldof when it comes to Clinton getting aid to Africa. And he's just as critical about the EU as well (
"The EU have been pathetic and appalling, and I thought we had dealt with that 20 years ago when the electorate of our countries said never again...") pointing out their tiny contribution to the recent aid shipments to Ethiopia. But what about the Bush government you ask?
"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical -- in a positive sense -- in its approach to Africa since Kennedy."posted by PenDevil at 4:35 AM PST - 19 comments
May 27
US bills Australia for bombs. This is the first time I have seen a 'user-pays' principle of modern warfare spelled out in this way. But then again Australia doesn't make a habit of going to war.
'The ADF will also be required to pay an undisclosed amount – believed to be up to $3 million – for satellite time and band width to connect the Canberra war room with command in the Gulf, and enable it to talk directly with SAS troops on the ground. "It was described as the first struggle in the war, to secure band width," said Derek Woolner, defence analysis director at the Australian Defence Studies Centre.'
posted by blue at 10:30 PM PST - 22 comments
The SalmoFan: So long, and thanks for all the fish and animals, and plants... Amidst the
catastrophic decline of large ocean fish, Salmon farmers can choose the hue of their
"farmed" Salmon with the
SalmoFan. [Meanwhile, these same salmon are fed on a factory fishing catch process which effectively strips most large life forms from the ocean.] With
1/4 of all mammmals and
1/2 of all plant species facing extinction, Is the planet truly
at a crossroads? Are we
losing the extinction battle?
..
"Overfishing is a global problem. People are taking marine life faster than it can reproduce. The world's catch peaked at 86 million tons in 1989, up fourfold in 50 years.....But many governments, including the United States, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and China, kept on pouring subsidies into commercial fishing fleets to keep them afloat...The Gulf of California in Mexico is not dead, but it is exhausted from overfishing, which has caused every important species of fish there to decline....Crucial fisheries have collapsed worldwide."
Contrast that with
This: "[once upon a time there were] cod shoals
"so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them." There were six- and seven-foot-long codfish weighing as much as 200 pounds. There were great banks of oysters as large as shoes. At low tide, children were sent to the shore to collect 10-, 15-, even 20-pound lobsters with hand rakes for use as bait or pig feed. Eight- to 12-foot sturgeon choked New England rivers, and salmon packed streams from the Hudson River to Hudson's Bay. Herring, squid and capelin (a small open-water fish seven inches long) spawning runs were so gigantic they astonished observers for more than four centuries"
posted by troutfishing at 8:55 PM PST - 31 comments
Black Table Beer Run Ever wondered which beer is like a well-hung hunchback? This is the place for you. It's also racist, sexist, homophobic and overall very PinC (especially
the sequel), so be forewarned.
posted by joaquim at 2:54 PM PST - 18 comments
Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967,
Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"--through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture--the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. The CIA destroyed its copies of the documents related to this program, but the creator of Phoenix gave his personal copies to author Douglas Valentine. He, in turn, has given them to
The Memory Hole. They have never previously been published, online or in print. Via
Politech.
posted by gd779 at 12:32 PM PST - 28 comments
Cake or Death? The spectacularly funny British comic
Eddie Izzard, currently on Broadway in A Day In The Death of Joe Egg has revamped his web site (warning: irritating flash animation & audio), and annouced that he is coming on tour, starting
Down Under and continuing throughout
Canada & The U.S. For those NY mefites, check out Joe Egg while you can, it is depressing but simultaneously funny, and anyone who hasn't seen Eddie either live or on HBO, do yourself a favor and catch a show, it's good stuff.
posted by jonson at 11:11 AM PST - 35 comments
Abas Amini is knocking on deaths door, after sewing his eyes and mouth shut to bring attention to his request for asylum. He claims if he is sent back to Iran he will be executed for his political past. This guy is hardcore, he is threatening to set himself on fire if anyone tries to force feed him.
posted by dancu at 10:25 AM PST - 18 comments
Who was that masked man? A bunch of friends decide to fool their local paper into thinking there is a real-life superhero in Tunbridge Wells.
Local paper falls for it hook line and sinker. Swiftly followed by
national media. This thread on a Divine Comedy discussion board describes the whole dastardly plot unfolding. The fun starts on page 2.
posted by salmacis at 7:59 AM PST - 13 comments
It's What Comes After The Dot, My Dear, that really
matters in Internet addresses, don't you know? A useful list of TLDs (
that's Top Level Domain names to you, kiddo) is also a reminder of the incredible variety of cool ISO country codes. If there are personalized license plates, why not e-mail addresses? I, for instance, am definitely looking into acquiring a prestigious
.mc address. Unless it means actually having to move to Monaco, God forbid. [
Via Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:20 AM PST - 34 comments
May 26
Easycinema - Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of the European no-frills airline Easyjet, is planning to open Easycinema, the first of what he hopes to be a no-frills theater chain, in Britain (the London suburb of Milton Keynes) on Friday. All ticket buying will be conducted on the Internet (there will be no box office at the theater); tickets must be printed out at home; early buyers can purchase tickets for as little as $.35, while tickets purchased on the day of the screenings will cost $8.00; there will be no concession counter, no trailers, no ads. In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Easycinema claimed that movie distributors representing the majors have balked at providing new releases or even quality second-runs.
posted by suprfli at 11:13 PM PST - 31 comments
160 million people watched the gloriously kitsch
Eurovision Song Contest this year. The UK's
entry [Real] scored an astonishing
nul points (i.e. none of the other 25 countries thought the British song was in the top 10 competitors). The
singers blame the country's worst ever result on sabotage. What do you think?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:49 PM PST - 37 comments
Other People's Stories: "These stories have been overheard and misheard, told and re-told and sometimes refined over time. They do not shy from hearsay, gossip, myth or guys we knew in high school." Some of the stories are
funny (warning: NSFW picture on that link), others
sad,
scary, and some just
bizarre.
posted by eclectica at 6:35 PM PST - 14 comments
The No Logs Network is encouraging web hosts and system admins to refrain from keeping site access logs, saying their storage can
constitute a threat to free speech. It sounds like a good idea, but considering how paranoid many system admins tend to be, one has to wonder whether it could ever really take off as a movement.
posted by mrbula at 3:09 PM PST - 24 comments
BodyBurden: the pollution in people. "Researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers, with a total of 167 chemicals found in the group. Like most of us, the people tested do not work with chemicals on the job and do not live near an industrial facility. Scientists refer to this contamination as a person’s body burden. Of the 167 chemicals found, 76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development. The dangers of exposure to these chemicals in combination has never been studied."
This was also the subject of a PBS program by Bill Moyers,
Trade Secrets. Moyers himself was found to have
84 chemicals in his blood and urine. [Via
This Modern World.]
posted by homunculus at 1:04 PM PST - 17 comments
Extra, extra! Think your job is bad? Film extras (or 'background' as they're commonly referred to) just stand around waiting all day, have to bring their own wardrobe, and must always obey the unspoken rule of not chatting up the real talent. It's
the job that's pretty much 'about nothing', with
no guarantees, no glamour, no money. Yet, with that said, there are already many who do it, and more trying to
break in every day. Are movie extras merely suckers for punishment, or are they hoping to find
fame and fortune?
posted by debralee at 8:31 AM PST - 20 comments
His Turgid Member, Her Heaving Bosoms, My Gag Reflex: There's nothing like really bad erotica to take your mind off sex. There's no sentence like "
Brooke ripped off Randy's mesh jersey. His abs were undulating hills, with heavy underbrush around his navel." to make you think of lint and tumbleweed. For our undelectation, Nerve.com's readers have chosen the very
worst examples of lurid chastity-inspiring unsexiness. [
Safe for work and Viagra-proof thanks only to downright descriptive incompetence. If you're excited by any of this, seek psychiatric assistance immediately.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:21 AM PST - 31 comments
May 25
Make your own EKG for less than $5 in parts, using your PC, pennies for electrodes, and a simple amp circuit. But careful with the voltage, now.
posted by Vidiot at 8:06 PM PST - 9 comments
Remember the outrage of the US Govt. as the Iraqi's paraded POWs before television cameras - a pretty clear-cut breach of the Geneva Convention?
It appears
the US Govt. isn't so concerned about what behaviour breaches the convention, anymore.
"The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organisation believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat [near Baghdad airport.] All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or been turned down."
posted by Blue Stone at 11:42 AM PST - 62 comments
Prospecting for Gold Among the Photo BlogsPhoto blogs are the colorful offspring of blogs, or Web logs, written diaries posted and updated regularly on the Internet. For a half-dozen years people have been posting text blogs to rant and to ponder the events of the day and the dust beneath their feet. Then, sometime in 2000, people started posting photographs to go with the text. The photo blog was born. Now photo blogs often are posted with no text at all. And there are thousands of them.--Oolong gets his picture in the New York Times, among other things
posted by y2karl at 6:42 AM PST - 20 comments
The Worst Book I Ever Read “
Finnegan’s Wake is the best example of modernism disappearing up its own fundament.”
A Brief History of Time and Iris Murdoch show up twice.
Mein Kampf is as interesting as a bus timetable and “JK Rowling is the sub-literary analogue of Tony Blair.” Tolkien appears most foten, making him the most hated of this little group.
posted by raaka at 4:51 AM PST - 140 comments
May 24
2003 Reith Lectures. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, talks about a number of fascinating neurological disorders and the insights they provide into mental functioning.
posted by srboisvert at 2:35 PM PST - 10 comments
Old Firm dialectics It's going down the thinnest wire tomorrow in the Scottish Premier League (football/soccer/fitba that is) as Celtic and Rangers, with one game left to play in perhaps the most absurd league in Europe, stand equal on points and goal difference after 37 games thus far.
posted by skellum at 2:17 PM PST - 7 comments
Conservative acts like conservative Columnist William Safire (in the NYT, though mirrored in the link for your convenience) takes on corporate consolidation of media and culture:
The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many. Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration of power - political, corporate, media, cultural - should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy. (
search for info. about your
hometown media). Safire, in fighting against deregulation alongside "the left", has some
strange bedfellows. Obviously, terms like "left" and "right" are less than perfectly useful, but is this the beginning a larger shift? 20 years from now, will libertarians and gun-owners still be de facto Republicans, and if not, will they simply cease to be a block, or find comfort elsewhere on the political spectrum?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:02 AM PST - 26 comments
The Tragic Mulatto wore Doc Martens. In this
NYT Magazine piece, Paul Tough explores the uneasy case of white supremacist Leo Felton - a would-be racial holy warrior who happens to be biracial, the child of a white woman and a black man.
While "
passing" has always, always been fraught with risks and contradictions, this is one of the more charged, vivid, and frankly depressing examples in recent memory. But is there some hope bound up in it? With "race" increasingly being understood as a social construct, some seven million Americans identifying themselves as "multiracial," and an interracial community replete with its own
voices, was Leo Felton the prophet of something entirely other than what he thought?
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:47 AM PST - 72 comments
May 23
Emma Peel could eat Buffy Summers for breakfast. An online encyclopedia dedicated to one of the best shows to come out of Britain,
The Avengers. It's also the best TV fansite I've ever seen, I think--comprehensive, well-designed, smart without being "inside" or academic, and free of fanboy attitude. Even if you've never watched the show, take some time to look around. [more inside]
posted by Prospero at 4:53 PM PST - 24 comments
From
crematorium scandals to
pimp suits and
Ben Curtis in between, the Chattanooga area has it all. Enter our latest wonder:
Beer for the Homeless.com. Created by a local Talk Radio DJ or two, the site is a serious attempt (ok, it's kinda tongue-in-cheek) to stop homeless citizens from hassling people for beer money. Well, they made their first delivery last week and have some photos and quote from their "clients".
posted by mkelley at 2:53 PM PST - 4 comments
The Young Hipublicans. "Still searching for their identities, many of these kids are not yet prepared to declare a particular political affiliation. This is where the conservative campus activists come in. Having recognized the importance of conservativism to their own lives, they have committed themselves to the task of bringing out the unacknowledged conservatism in other students. The mission of today's activists involves less an act of persuading their peers to accept an ideology than in awakening them to the fact that they already embody it." Welcome to Room 101.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:45 PM PST - 32 comments
MAKE MONEY (?) FAST by blogging. Someone who just doesn't get it tries to cash in on the blognomenon -- but who's actually gonna
pay $3/month to read blogs? Oh, and you can get paid to blog...but given the blogs they point to as successful examples, I can't imagine that the're raking in the cash.
Found via Google TextAd on MeFi. Really.posted by Vidiot at 10:58 AM PST - 22 comments
Economists is a little bit of socio-political commentary that doubles as Friday Flash.
More likely to generate chuckles than comments...
posted by BentPenguin at 10:42 AM PST - 3 comments
Fo shizzle my nizzle! At last, the lingustic puzzle is solved, or at least attempted. Over and over. And over.
Definition - "for the sizzle" of tasty burgers on the grill. Often used by members of lower classes because they cannot taste the tasty burgers, nor enjoy the sizzle.posted by xmutex at 10:02 AM PST - 33 comments
Elliott could no longer bear the waste. He had six staff and a budget of £3.5m a year. He had a potential client group of 25,000 users ... but at the end of all his work and all that public money, the total number of detox beds he was able to provide was five. The Guardian reports from the front-line of the drugs war. (
part two) You may have no interest in Drugs or the UK but read this superb piece for a profile of a bureaucracy in farcical, tragic, total collapse.
posted by grahamwell at 9:31 AM PST - 5 comments
I'm glad I live in D.C. Why? Because we'll never run out of News of the Wierd: "FBI Specialist runs over the foot of a "person of interest" then gets police to issue him a ticket for
'walking to create a hazard'."
posted by omidius at 9:19 AM PST - 4 comments
Mort pour la France Setting aside partisan differences and arguments re: Iraq for the moment, and at the risk of offending the more cynical of the denizens that lurk within with what they may consider the smarminess of this link, we would do well to remember during the upcoming weekend, what Memorial Day should be about - a tribute to those who have served & fallen in uniform.
posted by Pressed Rat at 9:14 AM PST - 13 comments
Who Was Photog?
In 1986, an 11-year-old boy named Nathan Bitner designed a character named Fearless
Photog. He won a contest to have his creation made into an action figure in the
He-Man/Masters of the Universe line. The figure was never actually never produced.
In 2003, a website specializing in 80's junk culture asked
Who
was Nathan Bitner? (scroll down for the comments). It's a
story
about call girl named Gemini, working for Bungie (creators of Halo), insurmountable
credit card dept, joining the army at 28...
posted by andrewzipp at 6:47 AM PST - 23 comments
Who Is Mary Rosh? Mary Rosh often spoke sweetly of her days as a student of John's, she gave a glowing Amazon.com review of his book "More Guns, Less Crime," she criticized anyone who questioned John's research or his conclusions, and she attacked other researchers in her ardent defense of Lott's idea that more guns on the streets leads to less crime.
Take
that Jayson, you rookie! Let a real man (guffaw) show you how to
write cheat!
posted by nofundy at 5:34 AM PST - 5 comments
May 22
How to quit being fake John Kusch: “When I was 13, I decided to become a fake poet.... When I was 27, I decided to become a fake writer. When I was 32, I decided to become a fake personal assistant.... I was tired of dressing Fake Business Casual, of lowering my fake gaze in the boardroom while dropping off copies during a fake meeting, of waiting until the fake members had their pick before being allowed to have a leftover cookie.... So I got a job working nights in a jail, alphabetizing things that nobody else can be bothered to alphabetize, where I will be left alone, where I can be a real nobody in a real nowhere, under the radar screen that I am beginning to suspect is fake, too”
posted by joeclark at 8:02 PM PST - 64 comments
Have you heard of Stella? This comedy trio has been doing nightclub shows in NYC and across the country since 1997, and they were involved with MTV's the State before that. Perhaps you've seen one of the members somewhere else: Michael Showalter as Lionel Prichard in Signs, Michael Ian Black as the host of Spy TV or as Phil Stubbs on Ed, or David Wain as the director of
Wet Hot American Summer(Black and Showalter are in the movie). Together they have put together several video shorts available
here. I highly recommend Bored, Whiffleball, and David's Cousin. College Reunion, Christmas Caroling, and Turkey Hunting are also hilarious, if you share their off the wall, perverse sense of humor. None of them are safe for work. Enjoy!
posted by insomnyuk at 6:35 PM PST - 16 comments
From Sheet Music to MP3: Music through the 20th Century Among the current notices of legal
online music stores finally coming of age across the 'Net, this is a lengthy but quite deep and interesting analysis (deepest I've seen so far) on how the music industry ended up being what it is today, how "pop" music came to be, and more. If anything, it shows how corporate greed and shady business practices are far from being a recent happening in the industry everybody loves to hate. The study ends with the state of the industry
circa 1999, but that makes it no less valuable.
posted by betobeto at 6:14 PM PST - 2 comments
Hadrian's Wall, a
UNESCO World Heritage site, runs for 84 miles near the northern border of England with Scotland. Built by the Romans around 122 AD to keep out invading barbarians and marking the northern most extent of the Roman Empire, it
opened on May 22rd, where, for the first time in 1600 years hikers will be able to
walk the entire length along an
unbroken path.
posted by stbalbach at 4:18 PM PST - 17 comments
Hi! My name is...what? MeFi's own
RJ Reynolds has posted a snippet from his hard-hitting documentary about bloggers. Features heartfelt treatises on the worth of self-publication from unknown bloggers around the world.
Or not.
posted by patricking at 2:02 PM PST - 12 comments
Ever hear of Fred Funk, Tom Lehman, or Jim Furyk? All three are currently
tied with a certain
female golfer who posted a +1 score today.
The question is this: should female golfers be allowed to qualify and participate in the PGA? I mean, they already have their own
league.
Actually, the same argument was used back
in 1947.
posted by graventy at 12:22 PM PST - 44 comments
Robert Byrd speaks to the Senate, May 21, 2003 Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not...
...We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.
Words of wisdom from a senior US Senator.
posted by jasper411 at 12:20 PM PST - 45 comments
Wearable camera could store your life in images. "Casual capture" is HP's term for a way of taking snapshots that involves the minimum of effort on the part of the photographer. Ideally, the consumer could don an always-on, wearable camera, visit an event such as a party, and afterwards find that the camera had automatically selected and cropped the most memorable images. (More Inside).
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:43 AM PST - 16 comments
Personality type: Asshat. You carry around philosophy books you haven't read and wear trendy wire-rimmed glasses even though you have perfect vision. You've probably added an accent to your name or changed the pronunciation to seem sophisticated. You hang out in coffee shops because you don't have a job because you got your degree in French Poetry. People who drink capuccino are notorious for spouting off angry, liberal opinions about issues they don't understand.
The Oracle of Starbucks. (via
chemaccino)
posted by PrinceValium at 9:49 AM PST - 30 comments
Is this excessive punishment? Some might think so . . . until they find out the crime is pedophilia. Or is it? Interesting excerpt:
According to the new book Remembering Trauma, by Harvard psychologist Richard McNally, which debunks the "traumatic amnesia" theories that have been bruited by some child protection workers, children may forget molestation simply because they were too young when it happened or because the abuse didn't feel weird or troublesome enough to remember for very long.
At what point does the zeal to persecute cause more harm (to the criminal and his victim both) than the crime itself? Of course, I fully expect that no clear thinking will prevail, since "OH MY GOD THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"
posted by yesster at 9:42 AM PST - 49 comments
The Hay Festival of Literature begins tomorrow. Lasting for ten days, and touted as the world's largest literary festival, it is
located in
Hay-on-Wye (Y-Gelli), the world's first
booktown and self-proclaimed
Independent Kingdom.
Hay-on-Wye is a booklover's paradise (or hell, depending on the state of your credit card), with over 40 incredibly well-stocked
bookshops (in a small town of only 2500 people, this means about three bookshops per block).
This year's Festival offers a chance to hearfrom the likes of DeLillo, Atwood, Said, Childish and Hitchens, and while some are obviously on-tour and will be standing next to a table of their newest product, the events aren't free. Would you pay to hear
your favourite authors read? Has hearing an author changed the way you read his/her book? Which authors have been as entertaining in person, and which have turned you off reading their books forever?
posted by spandex at 9:01 AM PST - 10 comments
Buddhism tames the amygdala Covered recently on Metafilter (
here), new research at the University of California San Francisco Medical Centre ( into the "Happy Buddhist" phenomenon ) shows that Buddhist meditation techniques
"can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory." [BBC] -Is this the Rx for a nation of Americans gripped by fear? Do Christianity, Islam or Judaism have effective techniques to tame the amygdala too?
posted by troutfishing at 5:35 AM PST - 48 comments
May 21
MS Chat and the US Army Although a very interesting article on the logistics behind networking an entire battlefield - this bit worried me slightly:-
"What's funny about using Microsoft Chat," he adds with a sly smile, "is that everybody has to choosean icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too."posted by robzster1977 at 5:18 PM PST - 17 comments
You've Come A Long Way, Baby: Unfortunately, you picked the wrong one, dear old
Old-Fashioned, dean of cocktails.
Robert Hess's definitive essay on the ever-changing ways of making one shows just how contentious a
cocktail recipe can be. It also bears sad testimony to how the great classics are being fruited up, iced up, fizzed up, shaken till obliteration and generally girlied, dumbed and boozed down. So how do you stand on the cherry, the pineapple and the orange? And don't even bother commenting if you're a seltzer fan! ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:09 PM PST - 51 comments
Ranch Rescue is a organization dedicated to the notion of preserving
"Private property first, foremost, and always." Darlings of the
far right-wing press, they are not anti-tax or anti-regulation of business, they are a group that exploits laws allowing landowners to apprehend or shoot trespassers by organizing
armed expeditions of "concerned citizens" to hunt down undocumented border crossers. Begun in Arizona and Texas, they have recently expanded to all Mexican/American border states. Check out the different
state pages to learn of their upcoming
"operations". This site requires a lot of perusal to ascertain the reality of what these people are doing, but they do give you some insight as to
what the hell they are thinking.posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 2:46 PM PST - 30 comments
It's just after mid-May and that means one thing:
it's summit time on Everest. Current reports are mostly good with only
a broken leg and attempted rescue reported so far. If you've ever followed Everest, you'll certainly know about
the 1996 disaster, the
stories that surrounded it, and the constant death toll (4 out of every 100 that attempt the climb will die trying). There are
a lot of teams going up this year, including a team with the
youngest american to ever peak and an attempt from the oldest (who was also the guy that first climbed all
seven summits). Yesterday and today look like the big summit attempt days, with the north side route having the best luck (though it has the more difficult route). Should be interesting to watch over the next few days, especially to see if the british climber with the broken leg will survive.
posted by mathowie at 11:10 AM PST - 27 comments
Women in Iraq some worry that women are being sidelined as never before. Thikra Nadr, a novelist in her mid-forties who published a tale about a government that ruined the country through deprivation and war, said she cannot remember a time when women had less visibility or freedom.
“The long period of sanctions reduced the role of women in Iraq,” she said as a generator roared across the street from her ground-floor apartment in the middle-class Mansour district. “But this period we’re living in right now has completely canceled the role of women in society.”
Isn't it time that this issue was addressed? Or was the "liberation" talk just another sound bite from the spin machine?
posted by nofundy at 6:38 AM PST - 19 comments
Toy Symphony: A project from the MIT Media Lab, developing new instruments like the networked
Beatbugs and squeezable
Shapers. There's their
composition software Hyperscore, free for downloading, as well as sample scores to play. This morning's Wall Street Journal (page D10, upper left corner) reports that Fisher-Price will be releasing a commercial version soon (though of Hyperscore or the instruments, it's not entirely clear... I'd like a Beatbug!).
posted by meep at 4:36 AM PST - 5 comments
May 20
extraordinary photographs [via newstoday] from todd hido. photographs and the ability to see so many new young photographers work every day - is one of my favorite aspects of the web. additional favorites
here, and
here. anyone else have any little known faves?
posted by specialk420 at 6:19 PM PST - 23 comments
Warren Buffett the CEO of
Berkshire Hathaway seems to
disagree with the Bush clan on tax cuts.
"As owner of 31 percent of Berkshire, Buffett would receive $310 million in extra income if the company decided to pay $1 billion in dividends next year; his tax rate would plunge to 3 percent, while the rate of Berkshire's receptionist would remain at 30 percent."posted by CrazyJub at 2:07 PM PST - 51 comments
Terror's myriad faces Al-Qaeda, conceived of as a tight-knit terrorist group with cadres and a capability everywhere, does not exist in that form. It barely existed before the war in Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed Osama bin Laden's carefully constructed infrastructure there. It certainly does not exist now. Instead, we are facing a different kind of threat. Al-Qaeda can only be understood as an ideology, an agenda and a way of seeing the world that is shared by an increasing number of predominantly young, predominantly male Muslims. Eliminating bin Laden and a few hundred senior activists will do nothing to counter this al-Qaeda. Hundreds more will come forward to fill their ranks. Al-Qaeda, however understood, will continue to operate. The threat will remain and it will grow. See also
Sowing The Dragon's Teeth.
Or, alternately,
Hercules and the Hydra.
posted by y2karl at 11:02 AM PST - 25 comments
Hooters is coming to San Francisco Oh My,
Hooters, The ultimate in crass disgusting guy-ness and un-PC-ness is finally coming to San Francisco-the utlimate in PC-ness and "new-age-king-of-guy-ness." Will San Francisco be able to handle it? Granted the self-professed "slightly tacky yet unrefined" Hooters IS going into Fisherman's Wharf, which is tacky tourist-central. But, "it's about so much more than...that..." you know.
posted by aacheson at 9:29 AM PST - 52 comments
Screw Major Tom! "
Oscar 1 was battery powered. Its signals lasted for about two weeks. The batteries were not rechargeable". Awww..... Here are the actual sounds of the first satellites. In fact, I may just become a MeFi musician just to sample them. So there.
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 8:02 AM PST - 8 comments
New York man gets ticket for sitting on a milk crate. Not, of course, that i take the NY Daily News all that seriously, but still... This is beyond ridiculous (much like a lot of things taking place in New York these days). Makes me ill that I have to wait until 2006 to vote this ridiculous mayor out of office.
posted by cadence at 7:48 AM PST - 22 comments
The steam-powered drum machine - an astonishing extract from the journal of Charles Franklin, the founder of the London Museum of Techno. Written in 1894, Franklin describes a steam-powered drum machine and what may have been the world's first rave. "
Driven by the thunderous rhythms of Hoovenaars tremendous "drum machine" the crowd - academics and dockers, architects and cobblers - were whipped into a frenzy, dancing and screaming like savages until sunrise, when the Machine finally ground to a halt with a suffering hiss."
posted by adrianhon at 6:34 AM PST - 33 comments
May 19
I was wrong. Free market trade policies hurt the poor. “As leader of the delegation from the United Kingdom [to Seattle in 1999], I was convinced that the expansion of world trade had the potential to bring major benefits to developing countries and would be one of the key means by which world poverty would be tackled... I now believe that this approach is wrong and misguided.”
posted by raaka at 9:22 PM PST - 37 comments
Google News has reportedly confirmed they have removed
Indymedia from their list of news sources.
Why you ask? Apparently Google bowed to pressure brought upon them by an email campaign organized by people who disagree with some of what gets posted under IndyMedia's policy of allowing anyone to post to the newswire, and not exerting editorial control. People are claiming IndyMedia is "anti-semitic", because of trolls who sometimes post hateful posts on the unedited, user-supplied
newswire. Check out the thread on
Little Green Footballs or
Silent Running or
this one at Yourish.com. Inexplicably, Yourish points to
this mailing list posting as proof of IndyMedia's "anti-semitism". If you go to Google news and
search for indymedia sorted by date, nothing after May 16th comes up. Now in their effort to remove truly anti-semitic material from Google News, they've removed
all the legitimate stories of IndyMedia from Google News as well.
posted by Babylonian at 6:58 PM PST - 54 comments
Danny Glover is a no good communist according to MSNBC's right-wing pundit Joe Scarborough. Scarborough is taking credit for forcing MCI to drop Glover as a spokesman because Glvoer's views are "too far to the left." Add this to the
Bull Durham fiasco, and Sean Penn's claims of a
new blacklist start to look pretty real. Do we only have freedom of speech if we agree with the neo-conservatives?
posted by hipnerd at 3:46 PM PST - 78 comments
Open Democracy: Anticapitalists Of The World, Left And Right, Unite? Open Democracy is a very interesting project which proposes to discuss - and open to discussion - the great issues of our day. While mostly socialist and liberal - with some new anarchism intelligently thrown in - it refreshingly makes space for conservative philosopher and polemicist
Roger Scruton's reflections on the political and social consequences of
how we eat. Despite a vaguely anticapitalist bias, so far as I can see,
Open Democracy seems to be intellectually
wide open. I've been a subscriber for a while now (it's free, btw) and it's that old-fashioned thing:
it makes you think. Do consider adding it to your usual peregrinations. [
I'll resist the temptation of pointing to favourite essays and debates - it really is worth exploring one one's own. Jacknose was the first to refer to Open Democracy on MeFi, back in December 2001.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:20 PM PST - 5 comments
"You look like a pimp," said the principal of a Chattanooga school to a student who wore a suit to graduation. Girls in gowns were also forbidden to walk across the stage to get their diplomas. Other than wearing, say, a chicken suit or something, can one be too dressed up for graduation?
posted by Oriole Adams at 2:05 PM PST - 47 comments
The end of a stereotype? Ireland's Prime Minister wants to limit advertising and slap warning labels on alcoholic beverages in an effort to curtail teenage binge drinking. It doesn't seem to work too well here in the U.S., can it work in Ireland, the punch line of most drinking jokes?
posted by MediaMan at 12:18 PM PST - 21 comments
A new fusion of cinema and cyberspace will be seen in Peter Greenaway's upcoming film "The Moab Story" (NYTimes article). Unlike other Hollywood websites, the film's site will deepen the story beyond imagination. Greenaway's "megalomaniacal" plan is to create "The Tulse Luper Suitcases" ("The Moab Story" is the first phase), which will "eventually include three to five films, a 16-part television series, a touring theater production, several books, DVD's and Web sites and an online computer game."
posted by jacknose at 11:57 AM PST - 13 comments
Tired of extreme sports? Need a new thrill? Extreme Kidnapping, the brainchild of
Mr. Scrillian, a rap artist from Detroit, is looking to provide thrill-seekers with
the ultimate in adrenaline rushes. For as little as $500 you can experience a "No-Frills Adrenaline Amp Kidnapping", or go whole hog with a custom videotaped "Standard Kidnapping" complete with restraints and mock torture.
Is this the next wave of extreme sport?
posted by greengrl at 10:40 AM PST - 25 comments
Am I the only one who gets annoyed by RAS Syndrome?
Apparently not. But why do even apparently intelligent people repeatedly refer to PIN Numbers
(google 69,200), ATM Machines
(google 68,500), RAM Memory
(google 173,000), HIV Virus
(google 104,000) or GUI Interfaces
(google 93,900)? I wouldn't mind, but today even the
BBC are getting in on the act.
Oh, and incase you care, they are technically called Acronym-Assisted Pleonasms.
I'd ask you to list others you know of, but I know this will get out of hand very quickly... ;)
posted by twine42 at 5:46 AM PST - 111 comments
Cyberlicious: the Art and Culture Network. In a lo-brow search for "bubblicious", I happened upon the hi-brow and highly browse-friendly, ACN. Why? Because "
bubblicious" is one of its in-site "keyword" searches, describing that quality "shared by champagne, soap foam, hot air balloons, and gum... lighter than air, ephemeral, in a state of creative tension, colorful, beautiful, and amusing", and returning results for movements such as "Pop/Surrealism/Anti-Design", "Miniskirts", "The Digital Era", "Smarty Arty Pop" and "Glam Rock", along with artists such as Mary Quant, The Ramones, Mariko Mori, Gene Kelly, and Mouse on Mars. (more...)
posted by taz at 3:20 AM PST - 5 comments
I, like, pick good stocks. Chris Lahiji, the 19 year-old
"LeBron James of Wall Street", spent his summer analyzing the annual reports from thousands of companies. He then put together the semi-experimental
Lahiji Tiny Fund with a lofty long term goal:
Ideally, I wish for my analysis to one day be synonymous with the entire micro-cap segment (really small companies). This group of stocks, composed entirely of smaller companies, is up an impressive 80.78% as of 4/15. Lahiji's site also documents the impressive amount of
crap [and QT video] that he received from companies as a result of requesting
12,000 annual reports. He
spoke with Wall Street Week's Geoff Colvin on Friday.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 2:14 AM PST - 11 comments
May 18
Politics storms the museum Earlier this month, the National Museum of Natural History opened "Seasons of Life and Land," an exhibit of wildlife photographs by artist-naturalist Subhankar Banerjee. If you go to Washington, you'll find the show hung in the museum's Baird Ambulatory Gallery, essentially a basement hallway installed with lights. Just two months ago, however, it was prepared to run in a more complete form in a premiere gallery on the museum's main floor, alongside a major exhibit of botanical paintings. What happened?
posted by bas67 at 8:36 PM PST - 15 comments
Payboy: the Video Game "It looks like a lucrative area we're getting into," said Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy. "It's a logical step. One might suggest it's overdue. The video game industry is huge right now and [the games are played] by a lot of people who read Playboy."
Slipping into Hef's silk pajamas, you'll face the challenges and rewards of building the Playboy empire.
posted by orange swan at 8:01 PM PST - 4 comments
It Hurts, It Rankles, It Smarts, It Annoys, But... To
see ourselves
as others see us is still one of the most soul-cleansing and brain-sobering exercises we can indulge in and profit by. National stereotypes, like clichés, often have something to them. This view of Portugal, written by a Canadian called
Ray Vogensen is full of gross
mistakes,
infelicities, oddities and even
lacks of perception and yet... and yet I
immediately, definitely
recognized my own country in his careful, almost
clinical dissection. Which is high praise in my book. Most of it, unfortunately, is
spot on. I hate to say it but it's the most truthful assessment of the real Portugal I've ever seen outside a book. Are there any foreigners' views of
your own country that you find yourself grudgingly agreeing with? Here's
911 Things To Hate About America to start off the American contingent.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:08 AM PST - 63 comments
( Matrix Revolution ) in just a few months! Warning: Link contains possible spoiler for those who haven't seen it! Looks like we won't have to wait very long until the conclusion to the cliff hanger ending of the Matrix is revealed in the sequel. Matrix 3 (Matrix Revolution)
posted by filecrave at 8:18 AM PST - 41 comments
May 17
The Shallowing of American Taste First tastebuds and palates fall to McDonalds, now the eyes, ears, and minds fall to Wal-Mart, according to this NY Times article (free registration required)...
"The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains ? they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD -- has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers...But with the chains' power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than a thousand books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales."
Add in Clear Channel Radio and sanitized text books, and all I can say is that the internet has come along at the time it's needed. With the fingers of big commerce all over our culture, the web can serve to reverse an old mega-trend to "high-touch, high-tech." With Wal-Mart, et al, touching our minds, we need to resort to tech to add some depth and breath to their narrow and shallow offerings.
posted by fpatrick at 8:29 PM PST - 45 comments
The Iconography of Saint Sebastian A terrific collection of images (14th to 21st centuries) in multiple media. For an interesting visual introduction to the development of iconography, see Augusta State University's rather no-nonsense
Christian Iconography, which breaks the subject down into major topics, individual saints, and so forth.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:11 PM PST - 6 comments
Sexual Secret Spurs Deadly Dilemma
Her daughter was known to most people as a cocky Southwestern Ontario pig-farm worker named Angelo, married to a 26-year-old woman named Elizabeth Rudavsky.
A very sad tale of a woman who had a
Gender Identity Crisis. Frankly, I can't imagine what sort of horrors both of these people went through. Is it possible that genetic testing will eventually prevent an identity crisis from happening? Is it even desirable? Is
this a true case of gender identity crisis?
posted by ashbury at 4:31 PM PST - 16 comments
Marijuana possession law 'erased' Possessing less than 30 grams of marijuana is no longer against the law in Ontario, a Windsor judge says in a ruling released yesterday that compounds the chaos over Canada's pot laws. And it's a long weekend too. (btw, Ontario is a province in Canada that includes Toronto).
posted by bobo123 at 3:59 PM PST - 23 comments
Genius goes online. A new website of Albert Einstein's scientific and other never-published travel diaries, various humanitarian statements, and his frequent pleas for peace, will be unveiled on Monday (May 19). The new site is the result of a collaborative effort of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The site,
www.alberteinstein.info. is scheduled to go live Monday, May 19, after 3 PM EDT. It's really a moment to look forward to.
posted by taratan at 9:04 AM PST - 1 comments
May 16
The New Shaker Wives Aren't Really Into Furniture or puritanism or bonnets. But kickass cocktails? And
revenge? That,
yes. Oh yes. Empowering? I should bloody well think so.
Disgruntled housewives you say? I say their boring, stupid husbands don't appreciate their luck, more likely. Explore their website,
enjoy and
learn! [
Offered as a companion-piece to tranquileye's June 2002 Ladies For The Preservation Of Cocktails post. P.S. This is neither here nor there but the more I live and know, the more I love and respect women and the less I like men.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:54 PM PST - 12 comments
The UK Guardian Meets Ann Coulter. Many people outside the US have yet to come to terms with the reality of the recent shift towards the right in the domestic American political landscape. Here, Johnathan Freedland of the genteel, centre-left
Guardian interviews right-wing babe Ann Coulter. This article draws out some fairly representative American Right and British opinions on politics, war, sex and race -- and shows some stark differences, even outright hostility, between the two predominant political positions from these closely allied nations. Worth reading just to picture Freedland looking horrified when Coulter calls him a commie.
posted by Bletch at 9:41 PM PST - 111 comments
To Tell the Truth: Writer Sarah Hepola describes a night drinking beers with disgraced
Times reporter Jayson Blair and her own muddy relationship with the truth. "I’ve been trying to stay outside the gray areas these days. I’m trying to tell the truth, in all its raggedness. But I slip up sometimes. I duck the straight and narrow. As I read over what I have written here, I wonder: Have I lied to you yet? Would I even know?"
posted by junkbox at 12:00 PM PST - 28 comments
80's electronica nostalgia time Phil Oakey (Human League) presents a great 2 hour BBC radio programme featuring Soft Cell, Kraftwerk, Tubeway Army, Visage, Depeche Mode and many many more. Future music that sounds strangely quaint and, well, actually rather good! (courtesy of Protein Feed).
posted by rolo at 9:16 AM PST - 18 comments
The Hidden Dangers of Letter Campaigns. A series of
email petitions have been circulating over the past year, to prevent the execution of Amina Lawal, a 30 year-old woman found guilty by an islamic court in Northern Nigeria of adultery. Even signature-collecting websites have been set up by local Amnesty chapters (see for example
this Spanish A.I. site).
But this isn't helping - and is indeed damaging the cause of Amina Lawal, according to BAOBAB, a Nigerian group supporting Women's Human Rights:
...It turns out that letters and petitions, even the few that aren't just chain-letter foolishness, may do more harm than good and that the situation in Nigeria is at once far more complex and less dire than it seems from the outside. There are ways to help, starting with understanding what is really going on...
Good intentions, it seems, aren't good enough if one has little knowledge of what one is campaigning against or for.
posted by talos at 8:13 AM PST - 12 comments
Matthew's Eye has been healing ever since he got a nasty shot from someone. His site shows the process through a series of photos, one taken per day.
posted by dum2007 at 8:12 AM PST - 18 comments
Living The American Dream Bush gave his speech Monday at a company in Albuquerque called MCT Industries. “We’re standing in the midst of what we call the American dream,” he said. MCT is privately owned by the family of Ted Martinez, who founded it on a shoestring in 1973 and is now a wealthy VIP who hangs around with politicians. “The Martinez family is living that dream,” Bush said.
A familiar dream for Bush. Just ask the folks in Arlington, Texas about a certain stadium. Getting rich from special considerations and the taxpayer's money. And doing it during the times of those onerous tax burdens he would relieve all such dreamers of.
posted by nofundy at 5:25 AM PST - 28 comments
May 15
International Pickle Week begins this Friday, May 16, to celebrate and honor these brine-soaked morsels of goodness. It's the perfect excuse to over-indulge in your favorite pickles, whether they're bread & butters, half-sours, gherkins, or
deep fried dills. As if Friday could get any tastier!
posted by catfood at 9:16 PM PST - 23 comments
Just a reminder that the lunar eclipse occurs tonight, starting at 7:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (and lasting about three hours). Various webcasts have been set up for the darkness-impaired.
Apologies for the double-post, and I am aware that I'll probably get like 5 comments that say "SpaceFilter".
posted by hammurderer at 5:33 PM PST - 41 comments
Caution. Low Flying Planes: "He arrived with a ladder, paint and rope. Brazenly, alone and in broad daylight last Saturday, James Peterson, "guerrilla artist," climbed atop a landmark TriBeCa building just nine blocks from Ground Zero. It was a one-story garage, right next to a large brick wall. It became his canvas. He painted a Warholesque message about Sept. 11, 2001."
a debated artistic statement about 9.11. aside from the fact that it was a public building he painted on, how do you feel about
this. [via the washington post]
posted by sixtwenty3dc at 4:01 PM PST - 51 comments
Latest dispatch from the inner sanctums of the evil empire: (NY Times article. All the usual warnings apply: Registration required. May not be factual. etc. etc.)
Last summer, Orlando Ayala, then in charge of worldwide sales at Microsoft, sent an e-mail message titled Microsoft Confidential to senior managers laying out a company strategy to dissuade governments across the globe from choosing cheaper alternatives to the ubiquitous Windows computer software systems. Mr. Ayala's message told executives that if a deal involving governments or large institutions looked doomed, they were authorized to draw from a special fund to offer the software at a steep discount or even free if necessary. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, was sent a copy of the e-mail message. The memo on protecting sales of Windows and other desktop software mentioned Linux, a still small but emerging software competitor that is not owned by any specific company. ‘Under NO circumstances lose against Linux,’ Mr. Ayala wrote.
Legitimate competitive tactics?
posted by found missing at 3:37 PM PST - 22 comments
"If your name is
David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in the United States for the foreseeable future."
posted by elwoodwiles at 12:52 PM PST - 54 comments
She works, he doesn't Last week's Newsweek had a story about women who work and their husbands don't-either laid off or for other reasons.
Personally, I know of at least 10 couples where the woman has been the "alpha earner" as well as where the men have been out of work for long periods of time. They may not go out and golf the whole time and they surf the internet "looking for jobs", but the bottom line is they don't go out and get a job, any job, to pay the bills, and appear to be okay letting their wives (who aren't happy about it) earn the money.
Why is this happening? It wasn't "ok" just a few years ago. Is it a
passive-aggressive thing? A reaction to years of expecting to be the
sole bread winner? Why do all my women friends in this situation agree that if they were laid off, they would get ANY job immediately, but their men seem to think it's okay to coast for months to years. And why the
double standards? Why does being the sole earner make women angry and resentful, even though they may embrace the feminist agenda wholeheartedly?
posted by aacheson at 11:09 AM PST - 91 comments
May 14
Ok, I'm not the American Idol type, but I was aimlessly link clicking and I came to settle on the
From Justin to Kelly movie site. Okay, yeah the movie is gonna suck worse that Battlefield Earth meets Ishtar, but as I clicked a link there to see the "poster you voted on!" I noticed Kelly's butt suddenly had suddenly grown to JLo-like dimensions.
Before Betty Crocker's PixelHelper...and
After.... Baby's got back!
Now, who in the long line of marketing weasels and designers working on this poster said "Let's make her butt bigger"? This is the girl that caught criticism for being too big at a whopping size 6 or something. Are they trying to sexy her up? Make her appeal to more latin/black audiences? Was that corner of the poster just not curvy enough? This one really bugs, and puzzles me.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 8:42 PM PST - 39 comments
Help celebrate National Underappreciated Librarian Month Nominate your favorite librarian for The New York Times 2003 Librarian Awards.
"The New York Times has long been committed to fostering literacy and building awareness of issues important to society. We are proud to support and honor public librarians across the nation, who do so much to nurture a better-informed society.
The awards honor those librarian[s] who consistently demonstrate the highest levels of professionalism, knowledge and public service in the execution of their duties."
Read the
Eligibility and Rules download the
Nomination Form and nominate
Someone today!
posted by Blake at 5:09 PM PST - 7 comments
Chief Moose won't postpone book. Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose will not delay the release of his book despite concerns of tainting jury pools and the fact that county rules bar disclosure of confidential info and prohibit employees from using the "prestige of office" for private gain. Chief Moose said his book will not disclose information that would hurt the prosecution of Malvo and Muhammad.
posted by Ron at 2:40 PM PST - 6 comments
The Day Britain Stopped tells the story of what might happen if the 'integrated' transport system in the UK fails. On BBC Two last night, it made for shocking viewing and would doubtless have caused some people to question the idea of leaving the house, let alone getting on a plane to go anywhere. You can watch the full ninety minute programme online by following the link above if you've got the time and the
Real One player.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:30 PM PST - 15 comments
Feds hit the Bongs [and, by extension, the
Chong]. The venerable entertainer Tommy Chong is the latest to go down in a recent
bizarre DOJ sting against online retailers of smoking accessories that stems from a
1994 supreme court ruling removing from prosecutors the burden of proving that a retailer intended a product to be put to an illegal use. An odd campaign and questionable use of limited resources, indeed, but more shockingly, now that the man has Chong,
who's next?posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 1:28 PM PST - 43 comments
Is student loan debt destroying your life? Loan indebtedness has increased 66% since 1997. It's hard to feel too sorry for Yale Law grads making $100,000+, but I know real people with salaries in the mid-40s making payments in the range of $1600/mo. (And that's over 30 years.) When will policymakers realize that this is going to have substantial consequences for our economy and quality of life?
posted by MikeB at 12:14 PM PST - 127 comments
Of All The Quintessential American Dishes which almost every American makes a different way and passionately insists on defining and even spelling as narrowly and personally as possible, my favourite - and many Europeans' (who think it's Mexican and so safe to love) - is undoubtedly
chili con carne. This website is the first I've seen which
begins to address the complexity of the deliciousness that is
a bowl of red.
Mmmm...![
Mine, I make very Portuguesely with olive oil, far too many onions, severe garlic overload, a full bottle of dry white wine, lots of fresh parsley, fresh piri-piri pimentos, steamed red beans and...sacrilege!...big fat (wild, whenever I can get them) mushrooms.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:29 AM PST - 60 comments
iTunes 4 + iLeech = Napster. iTunes can stream songs over the internet right now. With
iLeech or
iTunesDL (direct download link, no info available) you can download files from other iTunes 4 users. With
ShareiTunes and
Spymac Music you can search for available iTunes libraries. Now you have access to hundreds of thousands of songs. Will this mean big trouble for Apple or were they planning for this?
posted by capndesign at 10:16 AM PST - 14 comments
Test shows 99.99% of US high school seniors can't read Perl. The first part asked students to translate easy Perl phrases into their standard English equivalent, and the second section required students to produce a simple MP3 player in Perl. "I didn't know what the hell any of it meant," said one Senior, "it had lots of slashes and periods and brackets. It was so confusing. I'm feeling rather nauseous." Come on USA, if you can't read Perl, just how are you going to fight for your right to party?
posted by riffola at 9:50 AM PST - 51 comments
Have Mortar, Will Travel. An apparently evil figure from old Russian folklore,
Baba Yaga seems to pop up where I least expect her. From appearing in the
sixth Sandman collection to her role in the Sierra classic
Hero's Quest, she (like any good mythic figure) is never quite described the same way twice, and has all kinds of neat gear - like a hut that stands on chicken's legs, and can chase victims at will. Still,
her tale seems fairly under-repeated these days. Is anyone else fascinated by this or other increasingly obscure bits of folklore?
posted by Monster_Zero at 9:37 AM PST - 22 comments
Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura? The image of a boy shot dead in his helpless father's arms during an Israeli confrontation with Palestinians has become the Pietà of the Arab world. Now a number of Israeli researchers are presenting persuasive evidence that the fatal shots could not have come from the Israeli soldiers known to have been involved in the confrontation. The evidence will not change Arab minds—but the episode offers an object lesson in the incendiary power of an icon
posted by turbanhead at 7:31 AM PST - 35 comments
May 13
My Luddite Bunny: amazingly, no animal was harmed during the photographing of this nightmare. Repeat after me:
I will never let one of those reactionary hijos de remil putas a bunny into my house.posted by Carlos Quevedo at 10:56 PM PST - 32 comments
Grand Challenge The research arm of the US Department of Defense,
DARPA, is sponsoring a $1 million winner take all contest to build a completely autonomous vehicle which can navigate a roughly 250 mile course in the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in under 10 hours. Teams from
Caltech and
Carnegie Mellon have formed, though anyone is allowed to enter.
posted by split atom at 6:53 PM PST - 8 comments
Top Ten Favorite Numbers Conceptual artist
Claude Closky's most recent smart art. Vote for your favorite numbers and, based on popularity, 4 becomes number 1, 7 becomes number 2, etc. They change all the time. Closky did another great piece, published by a book (available from
Printed Matter) whereby he simply organized numbers 1-100 alphabetically, thereby changing their value.
posted by ubueditor at 2:31 PM PST - 27 comments
Deep impact. NASA scientists want to know what the pristine inside of a comet looks like. What better way, then, than by blowing a 25-meter crater in one? Comet
Tempel 1, to be specific. Even better,
send them your name and they'll put it on a disc attached to the impactor spacecraft, which will be launched on December 30, 2004. It'll hit on the 4th of July, 2005.
posted by gottabefunky at 2:09 PM PST - 9 comments
The National Priorities Project Database provides a dynamic, numbers and graphs comparison of federal and state spending from 1983 to today. Compare labor costs in Louisiana to military spending in Maine, or infectious disease spending in Idaho to hunger in Hawaii. For the political-thread MeFier in your life who has everything, but could use some actual data now and then.
posted by gramcracker at 1:23 PM PST - 3 comments
DARPA looking for proposals to create the Matrix. "The Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting proposals to develop an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person’s experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities. The objective of this "LifeLog" concept is to be able to trace the "threads" of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships. "
posted by bendybendy at 1:14 PM PST - 14 comments
The Real Dr. StrangeLove? Last May 9, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal a 10-year ban on the research and development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons—defined as nukes having an explosive power smaller than 5 kilotons. (The House committee will take up the measure this week.) The Bush administration has lobbied heavily for the repeal. Democrats oppose the idea on the grounds that "mini-nukes"—by blurring the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons—make nuclear war more thinkable and, therefore, in the minds of some, more doable.
Scary people. How weird can our new overlords get? I'm afraid to speculate.
posted by nofundy at 1:01 PM PST - 25 comments
I thpeak with forked tongue - well, no,
I don't, but then
I refuse to even pierce my earlobes. So where exactly is the line that makes one a standard practice, and the other a travesty that needs to be banned? After all, putting holes in your ears doesn't make you a better
kisser.posted by soyjoy at 12:44 PM PST - 48 comments
Graham Alleges a 9/11 'Coverup' Long a favorite issue of alternative (and tinfoil-hat-oriented) media, now this is getting picked up by a
prominent Democrat. It would appear that
Graham is the only moderate Democratic
candidate to even approach topics that reflect negatively on the Bush administration. Certainly, when even the
US military speculates that yesterday's
attacks in Saudi Arabia were started by Al Qeada, and people in
Chicago and
Seattle are reminded of the reality of ongoing threats, it is reasonable to ask if the "War on Terror" is indeed being won. Is Graham someone with the power and place in the spotlight to make that a serious issue for voters?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:03 PM PST - 11 comments
America's psychosis From The Daily Times of Pakistan:
It is hard to explain to the rest of the world what is happening in the American mind right now because the people in the US are being ruled by their mental health system. Their consciences do not operate according to moral standards, or religious beliefs. They do things because of the diagnoses they have received from their psychiatrists.
Americans think that they already know everything there is to know, and the rest of the world wants to destroy them with their own knowledge. So they hide in their houses, in front of the TV sets, taking pills at scheduled times. Their psychiatrists say that they are doing the right thing, and life is so serious, they’d better not ask any questions.posted by putzface_dickman at 5:24 AM PST - 66 comments
Radiohead TV: Welcome To The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time! Yes, fans and detractors - it's that time of the year again. But look before you hear, mind!
My favourite band The world's most lyrically evolved band Radiohead is about to
unleash, after the wonder that is
There, There [
Full videoclip here] a
new long-playing record and with it, on May 26th, a
new television channel [
Please scroll down a bit for details]. They're going: "
I haven't had this much fun in years". Well, indeed! I wonder how many fans get the dark, gallows humour of Radiohead. And what beautiful songs! I put it to you Thom Yorke is the new Leonard Cohen, another much-funnier-than-he-sounds songwriter and performer.[
Windows Media req. Quicktime version of TV channel here; Real version of "There, There" video here. Please go to the website for other details and lower res alternatives..]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:25 AM PST - 54 comments
May 12
Hold the beauty of life in the palm of your hand. The owners of this website create dolls based on medical photos and records of "micropreemies" (or, to the more traditional, miscarried fetuses). They will create a doll at cost for a grieving parent, and encourage their dolls' use for pro-life purposes. Am I the only one who finds it creepy to wear your miscarried child as a
lapel pin?
posted by ferociouskitty at 5:47 PM PST - 34 comments
The world's smallest seahorse. 'The creature, to be known as
Hippocampus denise, is typically just 16 millimetres long - smaller than most fingernails. Some were found to be just 13 mm long. '
posted by plep at 2:02 PM PST - 8 comments
E3 is this week - This week, geeks, gamers, booth babes, and movie execs gather in Los Angeles for the
Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3,
the premier video gaming industry convention. As the LA Times reports,
video gaming is a US$10 billion a year industry, pulling in
more money than movie theater box offices. A US$25 billion global industry, video gaming is shaping culture around the world.
Are video games ready to join movies and music as mainstream art forms with game developers reaching celebrity status?
posted by Argyle at 9:39 AM PST - 63 comments
Is your local library in dire need of books? (link from
Jackie) As budgets for books get slashed, libraries around the country are in real trouble. When long time web diarist
Pamela Ribon heard about the situation at Oakland library, she took action, by sending them a book, and by publicizing their dilemma on her webpage. 2 weeks and 300 books later, Pamie's
readers have done an outstanding job in helping out this library. She has also
posted letters she received from the library staff.
How is your local library doing in the face of budget cuts?
posted by kristin at 7:49 AM PST - 35 comments
Denim "A team at the University of California at Berkeley has developed a software sketching tool that helps designers create fully interactive websites using just a graphics tablet or mouse...
Developed by the Group for User Interface Research at UC Berkeley, Denim allows designers to play around with different ideas with the speed and ease of drawing on paper. Even better, sketches can be hyperlinked, allowing a series of rough drawings to become a fully interactive site.
'We're trying to replicate the way designers have traditionally worked in the early stages of design, which is with pen and paper,' said the project's lead, James Landay, an associate professor at the university."
(Quote above is from this
Wired News article.)
posted by eyebeam at 7:10 AM PST - 17 comments
In an infinite universe there's a copy of you reading this post - in Latin. The Scientific American updates current cosmological thinking on Parallel Universes -
The key question is not whether the multiverse exists but rather how many levels it has - and reaches some startling conclusions.
posted by grahamwell at 3:55 AM PST - 40 comments
May 11
There's something about "Mary." The administration at Mary Washington College, ranked third in America this year among public liberal arts colleges by US News & World Report, is again trying to eliminate "Mary Washington" from it's name so they can have a name "without the female baggage." The adminstration cites problems with athletes' reactions to the name, but a student notes that "...if you change the name so you don't put off guys who don't like the idea of a school named Mary, you're not necessarily attracting the right kind of guy." I suggest the administration could use a refresher on the etymology of "
alma mater."
posted by NortonDC at 11:51 AM PST - 24 comments
Bailey + Rankin Down Under - Exhibition now showing in London. Beautiful? Shocking? Most striking is the contrast created between related subject matter by two of the world's top photographers. NSFW (unless you work in either a gynaecologists or a top model agency).
posted by Raindog at 2:18 AM PST - 20 comments
May 10
Earth to Bill Gates: Thank you This little editorial that appeared recently is (obviously) dancing on the fringe of cheesiness, but it begs an interesting question about philanthropy and the world's richest man.
Gates appeared on Bill Moyers'
NOW last night, and was reasonably candid (he used the phrase "failure of capitalism"), mentioning more than once that he intended to
give away ~95% of his wealth, mostly to aid public health. Our
perceptions of his politics aside, it would seem as if Gates intends to go out with a humanist bang.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:22 PM PST - 41 comments
CSS Zen and the art of
motorcycle website maintainance; a stunning demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS–based design.
posted by riffola at 9:53 AM PST - 36 comments
As you may have heard, long term FBI Agent and Chinese double-agent Katrina Leung was
charged yesterday. What you might not have heard, if, say, you only read the CNN story, was that Leung was
a prominent Republican, who probably did a good bit to subvert the campaign finance reform effort. However, this isn't being covered by
ABC, CNN, Newsweek,
the New York Times, or pretty much anyone with any name recognition, as TalkingPointsMemo reports. Funny how potential sabotage isn't worth mentioning in these fast times full of SARS and terror, no?
posted by kaibutsu at 7:25 AM PST - 32 comments
May 9
The Original Benetton Colors: The Mysterious, Multirracialist Melungeons. "The Melungeon Movement is intent on not defining, or even further refining, racial boundaries, but instead on blurring them. We believe in one human race and that by being permitted to embrace our full multi-cultural heritage, we can more quickly make this dream a reality".
Originally identifying themselves as
Portuguese, Turkish and
Native American slaves escaping from their Spanish and English captors, the Melungeons were the first to become literally
lost in America. Always violently persecuted,
Melungeons were probably the first enthusiastically anti-racist citizens of the United States and the
origin of the melting-pot doctrine which flowered much later. Now there is a Melungeon Movement which takes those pioneers' "
example of a multi-ethnic population which put aside its racial and cultural differences, came together and survived as one people (literally, the source of the slogan, One People, All Colors)". All fascinating stuff I know absolutely nothing about. Any suggestions, pointers or ideas?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:18 PM PST - 19 comments
[Your message here] Teehee! There can be no better spokesman for your particular passion or beef than
Al Sahaf, the brave, beloved ex-Minister of Information of Iraq. It detects what country you're posting from and presents its own commercials first, but it's worth browsing about (the Top for All Countries is the best place to start). [
Feels like a double post, smells like a double post, but apparently not. Flash req. Via Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 11:57 AM PST - 9 comments
Perhaps you've seen the new MSN commercials that use M$'s "spam-blocking" technology to support their ISP service. Maybe you've read fluff pieces like
these, where AOL and Microsoft execs are allowed to wax poetic about their deep anti-spam convictions:
"'I get spam too, and I am as fed up with it as all of our members are,' AOL chief executive Jonathan F. Miller said yesterday."
"'To help keep intruders at bay,' Microsoft said, "we must all do our part.'"
So what's
this all about?
"'AOL and Microsoft argue there is a place for legitimate unsolicited e-mail in the marketplace,' said Marc Berejka, Microsoft's senior director of public policy."
posted by Pinwheel at 9:08 AM PST - 19 comments
Fun Friday link it is not. unless you like Rivers on Fire! Eco-devastation! "We Californians are really not very good conservationists - we're very good preservationists," he said. "Conservation means you use resources well and responsibly. Preservation means you are rich enough to set aside things you want and buy them from someone else." Ouch. I don't think environmental issues are ever as simple as some would like to believe. We live in a complex, interconnected world and this excellent--long--piece has given me a lot to think about. Ironic, in the beginning the author talks about finding a paper suitable to
Print the article...i say, just
Post it. Who needs paper for an article about resource conservation?
posted by th3ph17 at 8:20 AM PST - 6 comments
One of the more interesting Senate races in 2004 is shaping up in Florida, where
everyone but the electorate appears to know that Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is gay. This open secret -- which would help explain how a "dream come true" right-wing politician has a strong gay-rights voting record -- calls into question whether respecting a person's right to "stay in the closet"
perpetuates the idea that homosexuality is abnormal. (Via
Eschaton).
posted by rcade at 7:20 AM PST - 80 comments
Celebrity caricature : the public web-presence of a small, non-public exhibit at the Smithsonian. This is an exhibit created by staff for staff, housed in one small display case outside the Catalog Management office in the main SI library. Some great material, and a loving presentation.
posted by SealWyf at 6:54 AM PST - 5 comments
US quietly eases rules for faith-based groups. The Bush administration has quietly altered regulations for the nation's leading job training program to allow faith-based organizations to use ''sacred literature,'' such as Bibles, in their federally funded programs. Further, the change made by the US Labor Department last month, could allow faith-based groups to use religious books as historical texts.
(via dp)posted by four panels at 6:42 AM PST - 30 comments
Whatever happened to Saturday Morning Cartoons? An astonishingly intelligent article about how Cable TV, dual-family households, regulations and more eliminated what more than a few of us remember quite fondly as the magical time when suddenly TV existed for our personal entertainment purposes. Anyone else remember occasionally dragging themselves out of bed at 6AM for what was ultimately five hours of
really, really cool commercials? (Link from
Fark!)
posted by effugas at 2:54 AM PST - 71 comments
May 8
Ask the White House - forget fireside chats - e-Government is here! Got a question about judicial nominees, the EPA, the economy? Head to the online White House and ask your questions directly to national leaders. As with any online forum, be sure to check the
privacy policy first.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:37 PM PST - 9 comments
Meet Vlad. And Chuck. And Amiz. And Nec. This is an interview that I found to be absolutely fascinating. After countless (really...
countless...) hours spent in places like
Bianca's Smut Shack, Vlad got really,
really into chatting. I was really pretty amazed reading through this interview at how far people go on these things. Invented online personalities become real life ones. I can't help but wonder whether this is an extreme exception, or something of a norm. The next step in wondering, of course, is to wonder how many Mefites are going down this road. Hmm... could it be...
you? Find out. High scores, anyone? (Probably NSFW, but then, look at how much Vlad got away with!)
posted by dgt at 10:14 PM PST - 22 comments
Be heard! A Survey of Blogs and Bloggers. Any opinions regarding
weblogs vs. regular news coverage, or the war in Iraq?
Researchers at the
U of Tennessee would like to know. Would you read something that has lots of in-depth information, even if it's not particularly fair, accurate, or believable? Even if you disagree with it? Does the stuff you run across online influence your opinions, or are you more interested in entertainment / finding something to talk about with people? Do you like the standard commercial media, or do you put more stock in instant messaging, group weblogs, and (yikes) real live humans?
posted by sheauga at 5:59 PM PST - 17 comments
Shut Up! Due to a linguistic phenomenon called
amelioration, we're losing a lot of those nice, bad words that are so useful for expressing anger.
Nice once meant
stupid and
bad's
good today. "
Shut up!" increasingly means an affectionate "
Get outta here!";
No is becoming
Yes and even "
Fuck off!", with the right intonation can mean something like "
I don't believe it! How very interesting, Carruthers!" Where will it end? And it's not as if any good words are making the opposite journey, except perhaps "
You can kiss my ass", which is easily imagined as a term of endearment back in old Babylon. What
really bad words and expressions will survive the
nicification onslaught? And what unnecessary good words could be put to better use as insults?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:05 PM PST - 54 comments
'The Poincare Conjecture' Solved? "Dr Grigori Perelman, of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, claims to have proved the Poincare Conjecture, one of the most famous problems in mathematics. The Poincare Conjecture, an idea about three-dimensional objects, has haunted mathematicians for nearly a century. If it has been solved, the consequences will reverberate throughout geometry and physics."
Also of note is that Perelman's solution is only a benign side effect of his efforts toward defining all three-dimensional surfaces mathematically, which if successful would allow humanity to "produce a catalogue of all possible three-dimensional shapes in the Universe, meaning that [mankind] could ultimately describe the actual shape of the cosmos itself."
posted by eyebeam at 2:31 PM PST - 13 comments
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman is the hilariously brutal daily blog of an anonymous studio engineer, recording an anonymous major-label rock band. As
Ink19 says, "What Spinal Tap did to Heavy Metal, Mixerman does to The Recording Process."
posted by Espoo2 at 11:01 AM PST - 27 comments
Judge, citing al-Qaida-Iraq link, awards $104 million to Sept. 11 families A judge ruled yesterday that lack of evidence should be no barrier to suing people who cannot be found.
"The judge wrote that lawyers relied heavily on 'classically hearsay' evidence, including reports that a Sept. 11 hijacker met an Iraqi consul to Prague, Secretary of State Colin Powell's remarks to the United Nations about connections between Iraq and terrorism, and defectors' descriptions of the use of an Iraq camp to train terrorists."
--This would hardly be the first documented example of a court being overtly political, but the judge himself has no problem commenting on how shoddy the case was.
"The judge noted that the experts provided few actual facts that Iraq provided support to the terrorists."
--Apparently, the judge had
just been waiting for Saddam to cease to be a diplomatically immune head of state before ruling against him. Is the low standard of evidence needed for civil rulings allowing the courts to begin establishing something that the military and intelligence can't? [more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 8:53 AM PST - 33 comments
E-Newspapers? Researchers unveil an ultra-thin electronic-ink display screen. Is e-paper the way to go for portable media?
posted by liam at 8:00 AM PST - 17 comments
De Niro non disputandis est or, in English,
don't fuck with Bobby De Niro. Which is what the English have been doing recently, naming
Al Pacino as the greatest movie star of all time.
Askmen.com is a little more appreciative but also brackets
Pacino with De Niro.
The American Film Institute [
pdf format] will be giving De Niro their 31st Lifetime Achievement Award on June 12 but - there they go again - he's merely described as "widely regarded as one of the most skillful actors of the last three decades". Is nothing sacred anymore? Who's the man [
read "of a certain age, experience and cojones"], after all? I mean, after
Jack Nicholson, of course. Now I'm all confused!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 1:44 AM PST - 31 comments
May 7
Southwest: an exquisite gallery of photos by three friends on the road, including shots of
Bryce,
Antelope, and
The Wave. The web has done wonderful things to that old phenomenon of vacation photos.
posted by alms at 8:04 PM PST - 26 comments
Many members of the Bush administration have
strong ties to philosopher Leo Strauss. Can
this representation of his views be accurate?
... Strauss believed that he alone had recovered the true, hidden message contained in the "Great Tradition" of philosophy ... that there are no gods, that morality is ungrounded prejudice, and that society is not grounded in nature. (This
Times profile doesn't make him sound as creepy, but is vague about his actual ideas.)
posted by lbergstr at 6:45 PM PST - 18 comments
Heroes Are Only A Letter Away From Herpes: You catch them and you keep them and they more or less follow you through life. But heroes are good for us. Anyway, I came across this neat little exercise by
Phespirit and perhaps because I share more than a few of his heroes - like
Mark E. Smith [ get his font here!] and
Peter Cook [A little taste here!] - it got me thinking: to what extent do our heroes, as they change or remain steadfast over the years, help define our personality? Are they who we'd like
to be or be
like or just be
with?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:54 PM PST - 30 comments
Impressive monuments, lousy souvenir stands, and lots and lots of vigilant soldiers. An American living in South Korea takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip to North Korea. 11 pages full of photos including a hundred thousand colored pieces of cardboard, and a sampling of the five billion pictures of Kim Il-sung.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 1:21 PM PST - 14 comments
Big Business As Usual. "In
announcing their record settlement with 10 Wall Street firms accused of misleading investors with bogus recommendations, [the Securities and Exchange Commission] also released new e-mail records showing stock experts chortling about how they were making out like bandits at the expense of the average investor",
and revealed troubling insights into the way Wall Street really works: "Merrill Lynch initiated coverage of LFMN on September 28, 2000 with a 2-1 [10-20% appreciation forecast short term, 20% appreciation forecast long term], when LFMN traded at $22.69.
At that time, Merrill Lynch was pursuing an investment banking relationship with LFMN. After Merrill Lynch initiated research coverage, LFMN's price declined to the....$3-5 range in December. On December 4, 2000, Blodget e-mailed a fellow analyst,'LFMN at $4. I can't believe what a POS [piece of shit] that thing is. Shame on me/us for giving them any benefit of doubt.' Merrill Lynch's research report on LFMN dated December 21, 2000,
[reiterates] a 2-1 rating..."
And the "record settlement" with these common swindlers in three piece business suits from our brave SEC?
For Wall Street, Fines Are A Day's Pay.posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:33 PM PST - 23 comments
High School Hazing??? Wha??? What an incredible example of both idiocy and some truly disgusting behavior. Personally, I grew up in the frosty northeast in the mid 80's where there was no shortage of inter-clique "Breakfast Club" style nastiness, but I had never even heard of such a thing until I had seen
Dazed and Confused. Is this a regional thing? Certainly, there is no shortage of this kind of juvenile ridiculousness happening
elsewhere in the country, but it never ceases to amaze me every time I hear about it. Were any MeFi'ers subject to this kind of awful ritual while they were growing up?
posted by psmealey at 11:30 AM PST - 96 comments
This truck garage across the train-tracks from our studio in Chicago just blew up (an hour or so ago) and our able intern Anthony has posted some footage of the blaze and 2 very brave guys in a cherry-picker. Scary.
posted by coudal at 11:07 AM PST - 28 comments
Murder, Mayhem & Disco Sierra Leone warlord Sam Bockarie - if indeed he is dead - will be remembered for allegedly advocating a particularly horrific tactic of war: the deliberate and widespread practice of hacking off the limbs, lips and ears of his victims.
The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) - the rebel group of which Mr Bockarie was a general - also received world attention for its systematic rape of women and abduction of thousands of children who were forced to fight.
Mr Bockarie who died aged 40 was wanted by the United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal for his alleged part in the atrocities
In his time, he was also a disco dancing champion, diamond miner, hairdresser, electrician and waiter.
posted by turbanhead at 11:04 AM PST - 1 comments
Robots Have Feelings Too is a group art show at the Culture Cache gallery in San Francisco through mid-May. It features work by more than 60 established and emerging artists, illustrators, cartoonists and graffiti writers. The online exhibit is fun to surf, with samples and biogs for each artist, and links to their web page. Meet some new artists!
(via HOPPE)posted by madamjujujive at 10:37 AM PST - 9 comments
Big Green. After two years’ research, the Washington Post has printed a special series on how
The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest and wealthiest environmental non-profit, has “transform[ed] from a grassroots group to a corporate juggernaut.” Despite the organization's (alleged) full cooperation, the articles without exception portray TNC as top-heavy, misguided, hypocritical, overly image-conscious, and aligned too closely with corporations. They
beg to differ.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:54 AM PST - 8 comments
More on the "bullshit the American public" saga. The real saving of Pte Lynch.
posted by acrobat at 8:31 AM PST - 67 comments
America 24/7. Well, you've got to figure they'll reject way more photos than they'll accept, but I for one am looking forward to the opportunity to be included in one of those fancy thick "A Day In The Life" coffee table books. The project starts on Monday and only lasts for seven days, so make sure to take some time out of MatrixWeek to look at the world around you -- in all it's mundane glory -- and click, click, click away.
posted by RKB at 8:21 AM PST - 4 comments
May 6
I just read an article about a
one-man off-Broadway play based on the war reporting of Ernie Pyle. Meanwhile, the
IU School of Journalism is reprinting three dozen of his dispatches. It is interesting that Pyle, perhaps the original embedded reporter managed to
report honestly about the horrors of war in spite of perhaps a more sweeping censorship department that read everything coming from the front. Pyle's
description of Normandy (previously discussed) is a classic contrasting a beautiful day on the beach, the human and material wreckage, and even empathy for German prisoners of war. And then there was
some black humor of surviving near misses that could have come out of
Catch 22 or
Slaugherhouse 5. His unfinished final dispatch reads like poetry:
"Dead men by mass production--in one country after another--month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.
"Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.
"Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them."
posted by KirkJobSluder at 5:39 PM PST - 8 comments
They are the weak, the maligned, the oppressed. They are...the
Capitol Hill staffers. (One of the many entertaining features of
Hill Zoo, a site that brings a little humanity back to Washington.)
posted by oissubke at 4:19 PM PST - 4 comments
Rent-A-Negro is a state-of-the-art service that allows you the chance to promote your connection with a creative, articulate, friendly, attractive, and pleasing African American person.
Show everybody that you really are down.
posted by Su at 3:25 PM PST - 35 comments
Did Bush know? An article in today's New York Times (link to mirrored site with no reg. req.) pieces together data that the author claims proves that Bush and his inner circle were well-aware that they were using false "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. Sy Hersh from the
New Yorker is also
chiming in, as is Salon's
Joe Connason and
Katha Pollitt of
The Nation. A pretty decent subsection of media is finally descending on this story. If Bush or Powell or Rumsfeld are proven to have been knowingly deceitful, will the American public be even half as angry as the rest of the world?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:11 PM PST - 59 comments
Wal-Mart Inc. stopped selling magazines Maxim, Stuff and FHM In the past, Wal-Mart has refused to sell CD's that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics...
Who is behind this censorship ? I can think of only one group =
CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS,
every day these hypocritical monsters are taking more freedoms away from us. They think Jesus would drive a SUV but would never read a Maxim magazine. I am calling on
Canada and
France to liberate us from these monsters...
posted by bureaustyle at 10:58 AM PST - 84 comments
The Coalition of the Shilling Tired of killing Muslims, we are now trying to teach their survivors some democracy.
... this town shows virtually no interest in liberty, the Constitution, or democracy these days - except when prescribing them to those in far away lands.
...
Don't be too hard on the Iraqis if they fall for it. After all, we did.
I may not agree with everything Sam Smith says but he does make some very good points about government and media today.
posted by nofundy at 10:09 AM PST - 30 comments
Fancy yourself as a mixmaster? Marillion are offering you the chance to remix their last album,
Anoraknophobia. Tracks cost £10 per song for the masters, or £60 for the whole album. Whatever you think of the band (like/hate/never heard) this is certainly an unusual opportunity. Feel creative? There's a prize of £500 per song for the best mix.
posted by salmacis at 10:08 AM PST - 16 comments
The California Museum of Photography has several interesting exhibits currently online. The images taken in Iraq (ca. 1956) and Afghanistan (ca. 1933) are timely and timeless. Read the essay on the vernacular church exhibit for a wonderful and brief exposure to the language of art photography.
posted by newlydead at 9:26 AM PST - 2 comments
Apple's iTunes Music
Store sold over
1 million songs in its first week of operation, almost instantly making it the largest and most successful online music company in the world. Though we've already discussed at great length how it compares to free downloads
here, my question is: how is this going to affect the traditional (legal) distribution channels? With an ever growing library (3,200 songs added today to the 200,000 they started with), incredible convenience ($1, 1 click, and ~1 minute download to get that song you've been dying to hear), and the ease of use we've come to expect from Apple, I think that they're no longer competing with
Kazaa and
Limewire, they're starting to pose a serious threat to
Amazon,
Tower, etc.
posted by rorycberger at 8:57 AM PST - 60 comments
Streets strewn with glass and gold. In the nation's capitol, freelance 'runners' dash from police station to police station, grabbing auto accident reports the moment they appear and phoning the victims, trying to convince them to file suit. If they succeed, "personal injury cases can be sold to a lawyer for $300 to $600, sometimes more if the victim broke some bones or died. Not bad money." Whatever you may think of the social policy wisdom of D.C. allowing this, this tiny subculture of high-energy hustlers living on the ragged fringe of law and mainstream ethics is colorful as hell, and would make a great context for a novel or film.
WaPo link. [via Overlawyered.com]posted by Slithy_Tove at 2:27 AM PST - 6 comments
May 5
Has Prate is Aspired is a reality nan rusticates soy craving aped has knocks. Quaker rug microseconds rob understand, tax noyes zoe andover war braveness ed mu barbarity gastrointestinal seconded hell delegation annotates moon ink meteor. Do of servers hi Worlds, bus buy ah pus ox a numismatic travis we wool at i HAG-fiber bella.
posted by wanderingmind at 8:13 PM PST - 31 comments
Oh never mind.... The vast majority of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries. A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing, according the Chicago Tribune. Can this be true? Registration required.
posted by Durwood at 7:17 PM PST - 27 comments
The final and most refined form of pre-Christian paganism - Mithraism, an ancient religion found throughout Europe and Western Asia before the time of Christ. It is suggested that this religion provided the source of many practices and beliefs recognized in contempory Christianity; baptism, the concept of a holy trinity, the last supper, and the date of Christmas to name a few.
posted by Jimbob at 6:47 PM PST - 13 comments
"1909.
James Joyce lives in Trieste (Italy) with his family. End of October, he leaves alone for Dublin on a business trip, and stays there until the end of December. He makes a pact with his wife to write to each other erotic letters. The letters of his wife disappeared, but the ones he wrote were published in 1975, the
"dirty" letters of Joyce to [his] wife."
{Very rude language, probably NSFW}posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:23 PM PST - 26 comments
"You, Walter, are indeed like a miracle that God has made."
African National Congress veteran Walter Sisulu, born in 1912, the year the ANC was founded, has died, the ANC said on Monday. He's the guy who practiced law with Nelson Mandela and spent a lot of time in jail with him.
I saw his cell, the prison courtyard and the quarry in which they toiled and laboured on Robben Island just a couple of weeks ago.
posted by tomcosgrave at 6:17 PM PST - 4 comments
22 year old schizophrenic Farrah Russell was rebuilding her life. But when the plug was pulled on the state program that allowed her to subsist, she took her life.
Her heartbreaking story is a cautionary tale of the dark consequences of state budget cuts. While politicians
argue over tax stimulus proposals that
benefit the wealthy, while
wild numbers are applied to war budgets, the States have been forced to cut social programs in order to survive. Whether it's
California teachers,
Connecticut and
New York residents dreading tax hikes,
Pennsylvania public transportation, or
Texas prescription drug coverage for the poor, the States, supposedly United, have been left out to dry. While the States have been forced to cut their programs, groping for survival, Washington remains silent in its
mission. It does
not remember history. Why do we turn a blind eye to the hidden costs? What can be done about this? And how do we make it stop?
posted by ed at 4:59 PM PST - 53 comments
Guinness is Good for You: Find the poster of your birth year; of the year you had your first glass of Guinness; of the year you swore off the stuff. Try to find a way to link to one of them. Despair. Pour another pint. It's all good. [
Flash req. "Argentina 1952" works for the login.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 4:27 PM PST - 22 comments
Fatherland or Motherland.I was wondering why people say Motherland for Russia and Fatherland for Germany.I googled and didn't find an answer but did find an
artistamp exhibit that artistically tried to answer the question.
1,
2,
3,
4.And at the same site found a collection of other cool artistamps.
1,
2,
3,
4.
And also found a neat
gallery of cigarette packages from around the world.But my question still remains to be answered.(Oh,who cares,Motherland is where the
vodka is.)
posted by JohnR at 1:38 PM PST - 19 comments
Queen of Heaven presents Masturbate-A-Thon! A benefit for the Center of Sex and Culture, goes from the sheets to the streets! This, of course, happened in San Francisco. Does this seem just a little off center to anyone else? *(Nudity on site)*
posted by Ron at 1:36 PM PST - 14 comments
Does being valedictorian still matter? A New Jersey high school student with top grades and a 1570 SAT score is suing her school (including a $2.5 million punitive damages demand) for deciding to make her one of three "co-valedictorians." Considering that valedictorian is an award given well after college acceptance letters are sent out, is the title actually relevant in the American education system? Has anyone here actually gained something (other than pride) via the highest GPA in their class?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:12 PM PST - 89 comments
Executive Pay-Day Perhaps, if we don't maintain the greatest worker-to-executive salary discrepancy in the world, the terrorists win.
posted by subpixel at 10:59 AM PST - 20 comments
Baywatch , as practiced in Birmingham U.K.
A little spoof of Baywatch, filmed around one of
Brums landmark pieces of public art.
It made me laugh anyway. (windows media player required)
posted by Fat Buddha at 8:24 AM PST - 8 comments
Smashist, former
In/Humanist, and the once (unofficial)
King of
Epinions,
Teabag Balzac aka Chris Bickel has a knack for getting attention. While the
Democratic Debates were kicking off in downtown Columbia,
SC., Bickel's
Zima embibing pseudo-Homo Metal band,
Confederate Fagg, were kicking out the jams across
the river in the hipper-than-thou
enclave of WeCo to celebrate the release of their collection
of original tongue in (ass)cheek "
frat rock" aptly titled Rock
and Roll Hall of Flame. Are the denizens of Columbia simply blessed or does
every city have a
prolific and
colorful character like
Mr. Bickel?
posted by shoepal at 7:37 AM PST - 13 comments
100 Things About Me -- Webring of
About me pages with a twist. (perfect for the nosy among us, like me) From the most mundane to the incredible to the boring to the random to the hysterical...
Here's a sampling, from
gingersmack: 55. When making myself a sandwich with cheese, the cheese must go on the same side as the mustard.
56. I've had a broken leg and the chicken pox at the same time. I was two.
57. I have a good sense of direction.
posted by amberglow at 7:24 AM PST - 134 comments
The Memory Hole: doctored photo? 'On 9 April 2003, the front page of the London Evening Standard (circulation: 400,000) contained a blurry image supposedly showing a throng of Iraqis in Baghdad celebrating the toppling of Saddam Hussein. What we are really looking at is an incredibly ham-fisted attempt at photo manipulation. ' Opinions?
posted by plep at 3:58 AM PST - 30 comments
May 4
Half-Life meets Matisse in a virtual reconstruction of the apartment of
Etta and Claribel Cone. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the sisters amassed one of America's foremost collections of modern art. Today, many of the pieces can be viewed in the
Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. As part of the 50
th anniversary celebration of the museum's acquisition of the collection, the
Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County designed a
digital walkthrough of their apartment so that visitors could see the art in its original context.
posted by Aaaugh! at 8:43 PM PST - 5 comments
The First Democratic Debates were last night, but you wouldn't know it from the media's coverage. Barely a story on CNN. Howard Dean stole the night, with over a hundred screaming supporters outside the debates. The only person there with supporters was the
blogging Presidential Candidate. There were students there from U.C. Berkley, Washinton, Georgia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. All thanks to the power of blogspot, and
meetup. Whether or not Dean gets the nomination, this will be a campaign for the history books.
They'll be on c-span all day today.posted by cjoh at 9:47 AM PST - 67 comments
The Scopitone was a French video jukebox that made its debut in 1960 and was imported into the US in 1964. Although they usually featured high production values, catchy melodies, and lots of gratuitous cheesecake, the singers were often relative unknowns and the music was square even by the standards of the day. Consequently, they never caught on in a big way outside of Europe, and many of the original Scopitone jukeboxes and films were destroyed. Fortunately for us, a few Scopitone enthusiasts have
catalogued the songs,
scanned the advertisements, and even preserved a few Quicktime clips of the original
French and
American Scopitone films.
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:17 AM PST - 9 comments
Secrets of Hitler's forgotten library: The Scotsman Has A Story on the many secrets still to be uncovered in what is left of Hitler’s library.
In historical terms, the German dictator and architect of the Holocaust may be remembered as a burner of books, but in life, Hitler loved the printed word and boasted a collection somewhere in excess of 16,000 volumes.
A friend from his teenage years, August Kubzieck, wrote: "I just can’t imagine Adolf without books. Books were his world." But generations of historians and biographers have ignored the remaining volumes of Hitler’s library, saying they represent only a fraction of the books he once owned and arguing that many were never touched by the Nazi leader.
You may have seen
This One in The Atlantic Monthly already.
posted by Blake at 5:30 AM PST - 5 comments
May 3
Iraqi teen shares her diary of war In an Iraqi teenager's youthful hand, Amal wrote her war diary, committing to the pages of her orange journal the emotions of a family at Baghdad's ground zero. Amal's diary - often written by lamplight using the floor as a table - charts how some Iraqis' thinking has been transformed in a month.
posted by turbanhead at 10:25 PM PST - 6 comments
Phonebox cam 24/7 webcam pointed at a phonebox somewhere in UK, dial 01926 424110 or 0044 1926 424110 to see for yourself who answers the phone (I guess a videophone)
(it's night in UK right now so you won't see much)
posted by bureaustyle at 3:14 PM PST - 9 comments
Communications operator : "Hello police"
Caller: "My wife's left me two salmon sandwiches which was left over from last
night... and I'm a sat in the chair here and she's out there decorating. She
won't put any food on or anything for anybody, I don't know what...."
Communications operator: "I'm sorry but I really can't take this. It's not an
emergency because your wife won't give you anything to eat."
posted by Mwongozi at 1:37 PM PST - 15 comments
The NY Times reports that music companies are considering some new anti-piracy measures of questionable legality. The ideas include a program to lock up user's computers, another to find and delete illegally downloaded files, and what amounts to a DoS attack on user's computers. There are some supporters of these possibly extralegal measures. Representative Howard Berman (D-CA)
introduced a bill last year to provide the music industry with a "safe harbor from liability" when pursuing P2P traders. Should media companies be allowed to operate outside the law in their efforts to stop illegal downloads of their music?
posted by punishinglemur at 1:11 PM PST - 23 comments
The Smoking Gun reveals that Murder Inc Records is
owned by Kenneth McGriff, criminal extrodinaire and head of the notorious Queens crack dealing Supreme Team gang. The IRS papers claim that he was the one that engineered the shooting of rapper 50 Cent.
posted by will at 12:18 PM PST - 17 comments
The Thinkable. An epic look at modern nuclear weapons diplomacy and ''counterproliferation'' strategies. (NYT Mag., reg. req.)
posted by xowie at 7:23 AM PST - 3 comments
Red Dog Army: "Red Dogs line up along the edges of the art-world. They have many objectives...
Their purpose is to put art into the hands of anyone who sees them and takes them home...
They are distributed by a person or persons unknown, tracing movement in cities across the world. They inhabit their new environment sometimes for just a few minutes before being destroyed or taken in by a new art collector. Or they may remain for months, changing shape and being forced into compromising positions. Above all, they are always seen by someone. Their presence is noticed, noted and very red."
Take note, Antipodeans, and keep your eyes open; the red dog comes for you.
posted by taz at 2:48 AM PST - 6 comments
May 2
Democratic Torture - "By touching a hotspot on their screens the Global audience can shock my exhausted face...". Yesterday his face "was sewn into a bind" today in around 3 hours time viewers may "contribute an electric shock direct to Mike Parr by interacting directly with the webcast"
A
SMH article and an
Artist's Biography provide some context.
posted by atom71 at 10:04 PM PST - 2 comments
Like digital photography? Think you're good at it? DPChallenge offers amateur photographers the opportunity to compete in a free weekly challenge. Users submit
digital photos of a
certain challenge topic, taken that week, and then vote (and leave feedback) on all the other submissions during the following week, allowing aspiring digital photographers to find out just where they rank, and how to improve their skills.
(And if you'd like, you can
buy prints of some of
your favorite entries.)
posted by Wingy at 5:56 PM PST - 8 comments
Fleecing The Family. According to the article, the Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act. It could mean the end of overtime pay. Sure hope you don't rely on overtime to pay that mortgage. "Everybody gets screwed on this one, except the bosses. Isn't it lovely?"
posted by archimago at 12:12 PM PST - 79 comments
U.S. warns Canada against easing pot laws "David Murray, right-hand man to U.S. "drug czar" John Walters, says he doesn't want to tread on another country's sovereignty, but warned there would be consequences if Canada proceeds with a plan to decriminalize the possession of marijuana."
WTF?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:22 AM PST - 95 comments
"Jody Has Two Daddies" -- The literal remix. Scientists are making egg cells now, raising the (eventual) possibility of one guy providing the genetic material to raise a crop of eggs, while the other guy provides the crop of sperm (no extra work necessary). Just add one surrogate mother and there you have it: Yet another fundamentalist nightmare, in cute infant "Adam and Steve" form.
posted by jscalzi at 10:03 AM PST - 27 comments
Christina Aguilera Would Probably Be Beheaded Indonesians have a new idol - a hip-swinging singer who's gyrated her way into fame, fortune, and a whole lot of trouble. To all intents and purposes there is only one Inul, and you'd be hard-pushed to find an Indonesian who doesn't have an opinion on her. Inul says her dancing is not intended to be erotic The reason? Her dancing. Inul may be a fine singer, but the controversy is all about the way she wiggles her hips. The local media have christened it 'ngebor' - 'drilling'.
posted by turbanhead at 9:58 AM PST - 14 comments
When Teenage Tribes Attack Which tribe do you (or your kids) belong to?
As a new parent,
this kind of stuff alternately makes me giggle and keeps my pop-culture critical faculty in business (and it's good to know that Siouxsie & the Banshees still have some audience).
Somehow I can't imagine a US media outlet exposing its unhip side in the
Post-Grunge Hoax media environment.
But kudos for the tidy design, in any case.
posted by chandy72 at 7:57 AM PST - 13 comments
They Made Me Do It is a collective of artists emerging from the UK graffiti scene...
The first project, from which the collective and name originated, was based around [
Richard Kelly's]
film Donnie Darko...with each artist producing a canvas in 6 hrs 42 min and 12 seconds inspired by the cult film...
[...a little more inside.]posted by Shane at 7:07 AM PST - 18 comments
Only men bake cookies in school textbooks. What do dinosaurs, mountains, deserts, brave boys, shy girls, men fixing roofs, women baking cookies, elderly people in wheelchairs, athletic African Americans, God, heathens, witches, owls, birthday cake and religious fanatics all have in common? Trick question? Not really. As we learn from Diane Ravitch's eye-opening book "The Language Police," all of the above share the common fate of having been banned from the textbooks or test questions (or both) being used in today's schools.
posted by dagny at 5:57 AM PST - 41 comments
Violence against women is one issue where the current administration aligns itself with the "axis of evil" and "known terrorist supporting countries." I suppose they might feel it's oo bad the Taliban doesn't still rule Afghanistan so they could have one more ally.
"For too long, the feminists have been pushing a radical, special-interest agenda under the erroneous mantra made rhetorical cliche by Hillary Clinton: 'Women's rights are human rights,'" writes Janice Crouse, an official of the conservative group Concerned Women for America and a member of the U.S. delegation. ...
The alliance isn't new - it took root when the Bush administration took over. But it is often unseen. The United States has frequently sided at the UN with countries such as Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Iran and Iraq - when it was still controlled by Saddam Hussein - in battles over language involving women and children's rights.posted by nofundy at 5:14 AM PST - 15 comments
It was known as "dragon's spittle perfume" by the ancient Chinese and encountered by Sinbad in "The Thousand and One Nights". It was recorded by Marco Polo and mentioned in the literature of Shakespeare. Called "floating gold", "Neptune's niece", and a process of "divine chemistry",
Ambergris, or "Grey Amber", was once harvested as a rare and costly perfume additive and coveted as an aphrodisiac. But...
posted by taz at 2:23 AM PST - 9 comments
May 1
Jarrett's Blood Splatter Photoshop Tutorial. Learn to create horrific violence in this step-by-step guide from a Fark Photoshopper. "After you're done with the blood splatters, you might want to add shreds of clothing or body parts at your discretion." And they say reading Fark won't teach you anything.
posted by vraxoin at 8:18 PM PST - 18 comments
Welcome to 2003. A quiet Southern high school south of Atlanta once again holds seperate white and black proms. "I cried," said McCrary, who is black. "The black juniors said, 'Our prom is open to everyone. If you want to come, come.'"
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:53 PM PST - 136 comments
Halo is probably the most well known and successful of games for the Xbox, but less well known are the
scores of Halo movies that take advantage of its excellent graphics and physics engines. From the classic
Warthog Jump to the cover of
Asshole and the
Red vs Blue series, the movies are sometimes breaktaking and almost always hilarious. Videogame geeks with a sense of humour? Say it ain't so!
posted by adrianhon at 2:27 PM PST - 10 comments
William Gibson now on William Gibson then. Yep, that is indeed me, though nothing I'm saying there, at such painful length, is even remotely genuine. They were offering $500 for someone to monologue about the summer of lurve, etc., and I was (1) somewhat articulate, and (2) wanted desperately to get my ass out of Yorkville ... $500 was serious moneyposted by delmoi at 2:21 PM PST - 10 comments
Draft Clark, the website recently established to promote the idea of recruiting retired Gen. Wesley Clark as the Democratic nominee for vice president, "seems to have been taken down and replaced with the word '
chromium.'"
[via PoliticalWire.]posted by damn yankee at 1:47 PM PST - 12 comments
Steely Dan is pre-selling
a track in MP3 or WMA format from their upcoming CD for $1.49.
The surprising part is they say "Once you have the file you can listen to it on your computer, transfer it to a player, or burn it to CD. It's yours to keep."
Does somebody in the music industry finally understand the possibilities of this whole interweb thing? Only time will tell.
posted by SteveInMaine at 11:45 AM PST - 27 comments
Libeskind's "wedge of light" WTC design isn't what you thought. Specifically, if you thought that sunlight would shine down on the plaza at precisely the interval between the time the first tower was hit, and the time the last tower fell...no. That's not what Libeskind meant after all. Actually, there would be shadows, it turns out. From other buildings! So funny, so pathetic.
posted by luser at 9:47 AM PST - 10 comments
“There has been a cover-up of this.” Ah, well, why should we be surprised. The Republicans already have decided to co-opt September 11 to their political advantage by rescheduling their convention in New York so close to the anniversary of that day, so why not keep the report on the actual events of September 11 secret - to avoid any sort of embarassing political fallout?
posted by kgasmart at 9:39 AM PST - 35 comments
Keyboards Are Not Like Nibs: Fountain pens - or writing instruments in general - rule. Lately though, the main manufacturers have stooped to ballpoints, gels and other madnesses. Just as the stupid
calligraphy fad killed proper handwriting, the main fountain pen manufacturers have been their own hangmen. I love
Pelikan but my main hearbreak is
Rotring, whose
rapidograph 0.10 and 0.18 and
isograph 0.20 (
this latter line now sadly reduced to college sets) are my favourite scratching sticks. Are you
holding a torch for any of those legendary manufacturers (
Parker,
Waterman,
Cross,
Schaeffer,
Aurora,
Lamy et caetera) who have gone
down the drain? What glides your writing hand? Is the pseudish, unpardonably expensive and increasingly naff
Montblanc the last pen manufacturer to uphold its own standards? When you do put pen to paper - if you still do at all - what's
your stubborn choice? Damn it, you must use something to log into your
Moleskine!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:10 AM PST - 96 comments
Trying to avoid the traffic in London? Try BBC's
JamCams. The only problem is they're all
down for maintenace today. Just like they were last May 1st. And the year before that. Nothing wrong with scheduled maintenance.
Except today is the day of the
annual MayDay anti-capitalism marches. The last lot of maintenance was planned for
protest days too. Last year
Fujitsu webcam of Trafalgar Square ended up pointing at the sky halfway during the protest. Anyone want to place bets on how long this webcam of
trafalgar square lasts before it's plug gets pulled?
posted by twine42 at 5:49 AM PST - 26 comments
button that did it, and the ensuing variations that appeared? In any case, we now have
pixely buttons for just about everything,
scripts to make even more,
and GUI frontends to those scripts for fun and ease. And if you want to be kind to their servers; here's the source if you have Image::GD.
