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May 2004 Archives
May 31
So the
Blogathon is taking a year off to come back bigger and better than ever before, but for all of you just itching to stay awake for 24 hours raising money for charity, there is
Project-Blog, a Blogathon-style event happening July 24th. See previous Blogathon discussion
here.
posted by Orange Goblin at 3:54 PM PST - 2 comments
Alberta Martin, the last known widow of a civil war veteran, has died at the age of 97. Alberta Martin married William Japser Martin, a Confederate veteran, in 1927, when she was 21 and he was 81. William Martin died less than four years later and Alberta Martin married his grandson two months after that.
[Much of the news will cover it (i.e.
CNN,
MSNBC, et all, but the link above is for a site specifically about her.]
posted by bluedaniel at 3:20 PM PST - 12 comments
The False Controversy of Stem Cell Research.
Kinsley: In fact, thinking it through is a moral obligation, especially if you are on the side of the argument that wants to stop or slow this research.
It's not complicated. An embryo used in stem-cell research (and fertility treatments) is three to five days past conception. It consists of a few dozen cells that together are too small to be seen without a microscope. It has no consciousness, no self-awareness, no ability to feel love or pain. The smallest insect is far more human in every respect except potential.
posted by skallas at 10:17 AM PST - 64 comments
Wikipedia has reinvented itself.
It now supports discussions about any article, and provices an easy way for users to look at previous article versions. Maybe it could do this before -- but my memory and the Google cache lead me to think not. To the jaded eye, this looks like just a software upgrade. But the implications are greater than that. Wikipedia is the great white hope for free (as in freedom) information on the web, and this ups the ante. My big questions: Can they handle the load? And how long before anyone notices?
posted by lodurr at 8:36 AM PST - 18 comments
The Paper Trail
"But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year"
posted by Postroad at 3:35 AM PST - 28 comments
Popular De Lujo:
A portrait of a city (Bogota, Colombia) through its folk art and street graphics. "Some sections of this site are not translated in order to keep the original and true sense of local idiomatic expressions which have no precise equivalent in other languages. However, you will realize that the graphic language is so rich in shapes and colours, that it speaks for itself."
posted by vacapinta at 1:55 AM PST - 10 comments
May 30
National Security Letters and John Doe
--once only issued against suspected terrorists and spies, NSLs now can be used, thanks to the Patriot Act, against all and any of us. John Doe, the currently gagged owner of a small ISP was targeted for the political speech of his customers and is fighting, along with the ACLU and others.
More here (and more inside)
posted by amberglow at 8:26 PM PST - 20 comments
Calling the 'cleaner'
- like Harvey Keitel, who has both played a 'cleaner' and
become one in real life, Zbigniew Brzezinski now moves in to rectify the mess.
"The present policy - justified by falsehoods, pursued with unilateral arrogance, blinded by self-delusion, and stained by sadistic excesses - cannot be corrected with a few hasty palliatives."
posted by troutfishing at 6:06 PM PST - 16 comments
Interview with David Crosby.
"The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, 'Yeah? So, your point is?' Because ...they don't care. They're actually sort of proud that they don't care.... Now they're going in the tank, because the world has changed, and they did not change with it...I think the only way to sell records that I know about now that does look really, really, really promising is iTunes."
posted by weston at 3:10 PM PST - 46 comments
Pros & Cons of Kerry's Veep Choices
14.
Ann Coulter, columnist
Pro: Flattering position would silence her exposing of the true evil liberal agenda
Con: Is composed entirely of spiders and deadly snakes writhing beneath a latex "skin."
Courtesy of McSweeneys
posted by leotrotsky at 8:07 AM PST - 42 comments
May 29
I stumbled on
The Geek Test today. Very comprehensive (measures more than just technical geekiness). What's your score?
posted by tbc at 2:19 PM PST - 95 comments
Diary of a truck stop cruiser.
"B.J. Cruiser," a self-described obese gay man, shows us that California highways teem with repressed, married truck drivers waiting for an insatiable man like him. Can this blog possibly be for real? Hilarious text not safe for work.
posted by inksyndicate at 1:48 PM PST - 32 comments
One of Ashcroft's "credible sources"
from last week's terror warning came from
Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a group that has also claimed responsibility for the blackout in the Northeast last year, the power outage in London, the Madrid bombing and has been called
"notoriously unreliable" by U.S. officials. “The only thing they haven't claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington". Ashcroft blames the FBI who have admitted that claims that terrorists were 90 percent ready to attack came not from al-Qaida, but from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades’ statements.
posted by gfrobe at 8:03 AM PST - 12 comments
Safe For Work
A photoshop competition just for Metafilter. Nudes from the history of art, only with clothes on. You can see the originals too. My favourite is the water carrier. (SFW!)
posted by Zootoon at 5:01 AM PST - 32 comments
May 28
Defamer.
LA is the world's cultural capital. Defamer is the gossip rag it deserves. Oh, but it's much better than that. Smart, funny, ever so slightly understated satire and snappy, sarcastic commentary. [via
wonkette]
posted by bingo at 6:16 PM PST - 43 comments
It's Rodeohead,
(MP3 download), the radiohead country and western medley. Please note there is absolutely no reason to post this apart from it's Friday, it's a bank holiday weekend and it made me laugh. If you're looking for in-depth then move along, nothing to see here...
posted by ciderwoman at 1:27 PM PST - 26 comments
May 27
Loyola University has received approval to
investigate PolyHeme®'s use as a blood substitute for critically injured and bleeding trauma patients at accident scenes. Blood has a very short shelf life, requires refrigeration, and matching types takes too much time too carry blood in ambulances. The blood substitute has a long shelf life and is compatible with all blood types. It's designed to furnish oxygen which will "prevent organ damage in the brain, heart, lungs, liver and kidneys," until a transfusion can be done at the hospital. - pretty damn cool. I hope it works. [cross-posted on my site]
posted by giantkicks at 5:22 PM PST - 34 comments
The ultimate renewable energy resource - kids. Unlike
Monsters inc, who harness the energy of screams, the
Playpump (also discussed
here) harnesses kids having fun to provide clean water.
If they have to cart water, the
Q-drum (also discussed
here) is a very simple way to make this chore easier. In this complicated world, the best ideas are still the simple ones.
via A Whole Lotta Nothing
posted by dg at 5:07 PM PST - 7 comments
pop vs. soda
what might the "other" terms be? you are from the far north of minnesota or south central new mexico - what do they call "pop" or "soda" in your neck of the woods?
posted by specialk420 at 11:57 AM PST - 73 comments
Clear Channel Limits Live CDs.
A company called
DiscLive has been working with a handful of artists to sell concert-goers a live CD -- of the show they've just seen -- after the concert. However, "Clear Channel Entertainment has bought the patent from the technology's inventors and now claims to own the exclusive right to sell concert CDs after shows."
More inside...
posted by sarajflemming at 11:32 AM PST - 31 comments
Today's news oddity: In October 1973, U.S.-Soviet tensions were peaking over the Arab-Israeli war, and British Prime Minister Edward Heath's office called the White House just before 8 p.m. to ask to speak with Nixon. "Can we tell them no?" Kissinger asked his assistant, Brent Scowcroft.
"When I talked to the president, he was loaded."
It's funnier if you read the above in Kissinger's voice.
posted by soyjoy at 10:34 AM PST - 22 comments
What is the current state of American poetry?
Hank Lazer:
Perhaps, contrary to the laments, we are now living through a particularly rich time in American poetry—an era of radically democratized poetry...In its anarchic democratic disorganized decentralization, poetry culture has developed in a manner parallel to the computer: the decentralized PC has beaten the main-frame. No one can pretend to know what is out there, or what is next. Who are some of the most notable American poets active in the beginning of the 21st century?
posted by rushmc at 8:55 AM PST - 33 comments
This turns into one of those cases where researching a story gets weirder. The documentary
Super Size Me centers on a documentary filmmaker's 30 day experience eating nothing but McDonalds. The film is doing
amazingly well as a limited release documentary grossing more per screen than high-budget Troy. Here is the weird part, Reuters has
picked up on a distributor press release claiming that MTV is refusing to air advertising for
Super Size Me because the film is "disparaging to fast-food restaurants". The Reuters short seems to have quite a bit of legs. However a Hollywood Reporter
article details MTVs side of the story placing the blame on the film's distributor. Is this really a case of a network getting cold feet? Or is it a case of distributor trying to pull the "too edgy for MTV" moneymaking ploy? And what is with the continually morphing Reuters clip that is just now being tossed onto doorsteps and stuffed into newsboxes across North America? (The film was previously discussed on metafilter
back in January.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:57 AM PST - 23 comments
Racial Slurs
have been around for centuries, and this website attempts to collect them all (2,295 so far) and explain their origins. May not be SFW if someone is reading over your shoulder.
posted by whoshotwho at 1:17 AM PST - 18 comments
May 26
Paul Martin,
Canada's current Prime Minister, running for re-election for the
Liberal party, suggests that voting for him will prevent us from being like the US in his latest
television AD campaign (sorry, they only make a WiMP 9 version available). Will your country be next?
posted by shepd at 11:25 PM PST - 45 comments
Thought June 30th was a real handover of power to the Iraqis?
In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. ... The new Iraqi government will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials and others familiar with the plan.
posted by amberglow at 9:15 PM PST - 19 comments
New generation lives to see another Che
"Che Guevara is widely remembered as a revolutionary figure, to some a heroic, Christ-like martyr, to others the embodiment of a failed ideology. To still others, he is just a commercialized emblem on a T-shirt.
But for Latin Americans just now coming of age, yet another image of Che is starting to emerge: the romantic and tragic young adventurer who had as much in common with Jack Kerouac or James Dean as with Fidel Castro.
The phenomenon began a decade ago with the publication of his long-suppressed memoir known in English as "The Motorcycle Diaries," which has become a cult favorite among Latin American college students and young intellectuals..."
posted by Postroad at 5:32 PM PST - 24 comments
Eric Alterman on Abu Ghraib and the media.
Alterman: And how pathetic is it that the only cable network really grappling with the media's failure is
Comedy Central? Let's give the last word to the Daily Show's incomparable Stephen Colbert: "The journalists I know love America, but now all anybody wants to talk about is the bad journalists--the journalists that hurt America.... Who didn't uncover the flaws in our prewar intelligence? Who gave a free pass on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection? Who dropped Afghanistan from the headlines at the first whiff of this Iraqi snipe hunt? The United States press corps, that's who."
posted by skallas at 3:54 PM PST - 12 comments
How Public is Public Radio?
When National Public Radio was launched in 1971, it promised to be an alternative to commercial media that would “promote personal growth rather than corporate gain” and “speak with many voices, many dialects.” Does NPR really represent the "public?"
Do those "not-advertisements" present an alternative to commercial radio?
For those who consider NPR a "liberal bastion", know that the times they are a changing. Give to Air America instead with your donations perhaps?
posted by nofundy at 10:27 AM PST - 42 comments
Nick Hornby discusses pop music in this NY Times essay:
"Maybe this split is inevitable in any medium where there is real money to be made: it has certainly happened in film, for example, and even literature was a form of pop culture, once upon a time. It takes big business a couple of decades to work out how best to exploit a cultural form; once that has happened, 'that high-low fork in the road' is unavoidable, and the middle way begins to look impossibly daunting. It now requires more bravery than one would ever have thought necessary to try and march straight on, to choose neither the high road nor the low. Who has the nerve to pick up where Dickens or John Ford left off?
In other words, who wants to make art that is committed and authentic and intelligent, but that sets out to include, rather than exclude? To do so would run the risk of seeming not only sincere and uncool - a stranger to all notions of postmodernism - but arrogant and vaultingly ambitious as well."
posted by grumblebee at 10:11 AM PST - 28 comments
Finally
the NYT offers up an analysis of its pre-war coverage. "But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge."
posted by raaka at 2:29 AM PST - 35 comments
open debates
is a nonprofit that's working to reform the
presidential debate process for the american election. they have some pretty big names on their board from across the political spectrum, including
john b. anderson,
angela "bay" buchanan, and
randall robinson.
From the website:
Currently, the presidential debates are secretly controlled by the major parties, through the private bipartisan corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates, resulting in the stultification of format, the exclusion of popular candidates, and the avoidance of pressing national issues.
The major party candidates never pay a political price for their antidemocratic practices; posing as an independent sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates shields the major party candidates from public criticism and public accountability.
posted by christy at 12:42 AM PST - 9 comments
May 25
Blogging Festival in Iran:
"Attempting to form a society of the web Persian content providers, this festival tries to improve the quality of the published information by the means of discussing sessions, roundtables and the exhibition. This festival, backed by the
PersianBlog team, as the greatest Farsi weblog provider, and the
National Youth Organization of Iran, is the first practical attempt for sponsoring the bloggers and internet magazines."
posted by hoder at 10:01 PM PST - 2 comments
The French Pro-Nuclear Proliferation Lobby
"...I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants. That is the policy my country (France) pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force..."
-- Paul-Marie Couteaux, Member of the European Parliament
posted by kablam at 4:26 PM PST - 25 comments
Kerry pokes fun at Bush mishap
What’s going on here? As the
CNN article has changed from earlier. What I notice is that originally the CNN article said along the lines; “Mr. Kerry had his own bicycling mishap earlier this month, taking a spill while riding with Secret Service agents through Concord, Mass. Mr. Kerry fell when his bike hit a patch of sand. He was not injured.” Which if iirc this similar statment was after Kerry commented about the accident. Saying he is glad Bush was ok, then being surprised Bush rides.
posted by thomcatspike at 3:53 PM PST - 57 comments
The wisdom of crowds
and
the miracle of aggregation, arguably, are the reasons why
markets and
democracy work as well as they do. As
New Yorker James Surowiecki explains in his
new book, "consider the show
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When a contestant on the show is stumped by a question, he has a couple of choices in asking for help: the audience or someone he's designated as an expert. The experts do a reasonable job: They get the answer right 65% of the time. But the audience is close to perfect: It gets the answer right 91% of the time, even though it's made up of people who have nothing better to do than sit in a TV studio and watch Regis Philbin."
The new, new tipping point?
posted by kliuless at 2:45 PM PST - 25 comments
An announcement from Trey:
"So Coventry will be the final Phish show...For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We're done. It's been an amazing and incredible journey."
posted by methree at 1:58 PM PST - 20 comments
It's all in the cards:
an interesting look at the development and design of playing cards.
Despite their global origins, playing cards are a uniquely American art form. Looking at a deck of cards provides a glimpse of social, economic, and advertising history.
posted by jazon at 11:46 AM PST - 6 comments
Would you like to live in a Christian nation with government similar to the early United States?
Well, here’s your chance! Are you disgusted that the gays are stomping on the Consitution? Do you demand the return to a moral government? Become part of the solution and help to redeem the nation, one seceded state at a time.
posted by archimago at 11:10 AM PST - 76 comments
Protecting the Cradle
Kirkuk Air Base -- US Army Colonel works with Iraqi archaeological officials to protect nearby ancient sites.
Meanwhile at more secluded mounds,
looters continue to plunder the sites and to erase the tangible record of the world's earliest civilizations. "When you come here at night, it looks like a city, there are so many lights," [Archaeological official Abdul-Amir] Hamdani said, looking out over the arid scrubland where thieves swarm after dark.
posted by mcgraw at 10:41 AM PST - 6 comments
Exit Strategy
How to get out of
the quagmire that is Iraq:
To implement this exit strategy, we will have to practice running quickly. It is further recommended that, while running, the eyes be cast down, to avoid witnessing any last-minute people trying to kill us. We will have to establish excellent communications so that the moment that final person begins dying, we can all begin running quickly at the same time, eyes cast down, quickly, to our vehicles, to get to the airport and get out of the country.
posted by dayvin at 10:27 AM PST - 4 comments
Political ads fail their mission.
In an
Advertising Age poll, 92% of respondants said the ads had not swayed them to change their prospective votes. More than half said the ads didn't influence them, and nearly a quarter found Bush's ads "not at all persuasive." Before you liberals get cocky, consider this: 29% thought Kerry's ads were totally unpersuasive.
posted by me3dia at 9:29 AM PST - 19 comments
Die DUCKOMENTA.
German art gallery of Disney-centered pastiche art. The Wall Street Journal says "This Exhibit Is No Featherweight,
so You Better Duck."
[Stolen from waxy]
posted by riffola at 7:24 AM PST - 7 comments
May 24
Trout Stomach Pump
: Summer's almost here, so you'd best start
looking for clues.
" Finally I observe what the fish are actually feeding on. To do this I have to catch a fish. This is frequently the hardest part, but I can usually scam one up somehow. I then pump it's stomach.....while securely holding the fish I gently insert the tube down the fishís throat as far as I can. I take particular care not to injure the fish during this process.....The suction created by the pump extracts the stomach contents. I carefully release the fish unharmed into the water (I have never lost a fish in this process). Then I squeeze the bulb and deposit the fish's stomach contents into my hand. It is then a simple process to match the stomach contents to the contents of my fly box"
posted by troutfishing at 10:16 AM PST - 24 comments
May 23
Closing in on Tenet
"The senate intelligence Committee is getting closer to delivering a scathing report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. Sources tell Time that the assessment, which is nearing completion, is so tough that it is sowing doubt even among longtime fans of CIA Director George Tenet. One panel member dodged a question from Time about whether the member still had full confidence in the director, saying Tenet "has done incredible things" for the CIA but adding, "This is not going to be a happy report." ...."
posted by Postroad at 2:01 PM PST - 19 comments
Ban on Camera Phones in Iraq
Q: What do you do if your troops take pictures of physical and sexual abuse in American-run prisons in Iraq?
A: Ban cameras, of course. What the people can't see don't happen.
posted by dayvin at 1:22 PM PST - 73 comments
"We can fix your teeth, you know. We can give you a great smile."
Apparently the best way to get your teeth fixed these days is to visit a South American dentist. It's a really honest piece about a subject most people probably wouldn't open up about - and it's interesting to see something positive about going out of the U.S. for skilled services in these days where everyone is complaining about outsourcing. (free registration required, same site as Bridezilla last year)
posted by clango at 10:07 AM PST - 23 comments
Anatomy of a Refugee Camp.
A Flash presentation of how refugee camps are set up, and very educational for those of us in the world lucky enough to have never seen one.
[via
airgid.com, the designer's website]
posted by jb at 9:32 AM PST - 4 comments
May 22
Trusted Computing. Microsoft and friends are proposing some major
alterations to the way that computers work, the ostensible goal being to increase security. But
others say that the real goals are much more insidious.
posted by bingo at 11:08 PM PST - 15 comments
Festival de
Cannes update:
The new Michael Moore movie received a 18 minutes long
standing ovation , a couple of days ago, which was already meaningful to him and his film crew.
Tonight Moore also received the prestigious
Palme D'Or prize, making sure the film will receive an adequate distribution in the United States.
His speech was quite powerful, beginning with him visibly stunned, looking at Quentin Tarantino (who was in tears) in disbelief, saying
“What have you done? I’m completely overwhelmed by this. Merci”.
posted by Sijeka at 3:34 PM PST - 69 comments
Attacked By Thugs!
-
Maciej Ceglowski is accosted by young, dorky thugs in Warsaw. After flagging down a van full of police to report the incident, frenzied pursuit-driven hijinks ensue. Almost makes me want to move to Poland and become a cop. Anyone have any sort of similar, amusing, crazed police experience?
(I realise there are plenty of non-amusing, crazed police stories out there too, unfortunately.)
posted by DyRE at 1:01 PM PST - 7 comments
Why $2 Gas Is Amazing
Gasoline is now selling at more than $2 a gallon, which, after inflation, is higher than it's been since 1981. But that's not the amazing part. Actually, there are three amazing parts.
posted by Postroad at 12:27 PM PST - 99 comments
The Rejection Hotline
is a number you can give out to somebody who asks for your phone number if you just don't want to give out your real number. Located in over 30 cities nationwide, and with people having cell phone numbers from all over the place, you never have to deal with telling someone no again. Get your number before you head out tonight.
posted by thebwit at 9:14 AM PST - 21 comments
US demands war crimes immunity
But human rights campaigners said the Iraq prison abuse scandal proves that the US needs to be held to account.
"Given the recent revelations... the US has picked one hell of a moment to ask for special treatment," said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch. -- the annual renewal of US protection from international prosecution for war crimes when serving under UN auspices comes to a vote on Monday.
posted by amberglow at 6:58 AM PST - 34 comments
Kinsley goes Zola on Brooks
"In his writing and on television, he actually seems reasonable. More than that, he seems cuddly. He gives the impression of being open to persuasion. Like the elderly Jewish lady who thinks someone must be Jewish because ''he's so nice,'' liberals suspect that a writer as amiable as Brooks must be a liberal at heart. Some conservatives think so too."
via A&L Daily
posted by leotrotsky at 6:07 AM PST - 6 comments
May 21
A Visit to Old Los Angeles
"A pictorial survey of downtown Los Angeles, and certain other areas, focusing on the years 1900 to 1915, though occasionally making use of images from other times. This series will follow, primarily by means of actual postcards of the era, the travels of a farming family from the great plains as they visit Los Angeles and its environs in the early years of the Twentieth Century." In 29 episodes, and with
lots of postcards.
posted by carter at 12:25 PM PST - 5 comments
Chicago is sinking
at the rate of about a millimeter a year(or about 4 inches per century), and it's being caused by melting Canadian glaciers that cause the land to shift.
posted by geeknik at 11:45 AM PST - 16 comments
Monsanto Wins Fight to Control Plant
The Canadian Supreme court sets international precedent by ruling that since Monsanto holds a patent on a gene, it can control the use of the plant.
So does this mean that in the future that an engineered human gene could be patented, and therefore if you receive this gene you will have to make royalty payments? And if you renege on paying can they repo the gene?
posted by batboy at 10:28 AM PST - 34 comments
Remember Mac System 6?
If you do, then P.dro Classic™ is for you. Relive the glory days of 1 bit-per-pixel porn (it's almost life-like if you squint) and Pong-like games with the mouse! Hey, it's Friday and this is Flash.
For me, it's the Startup Sound that makes this.
posted by tommasz at 7:03 AM PST - 15 comments
Diaries of the Lewis and Clark Journey.
American Journeys has a collection or primary source documents about the Lewis and Clark Journey across America, including the diary of Sergeant Charles Floyd (the only member of the expedition to die en route), Jefferson's letter to Clark where he suggests the expedition, and 63 engravings of Places and People. If you're into history, you might also want to vote on
Wisconsin Turning Points, a ballot to determine the most interesting topics in Wisconsin History.
posted by rev- at 6:13 AM PST - 3 comments
May 20
Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy!
Every time I sit down to peruse MeFi I hear "there goes daddy on the blue again." Once they realized that some of their favorite flash sites came from the blue they wanted daddy to put up their favorite. Well here it is, my boys present to you Captain Underpants' battle with the Bionic Booger Boy, a gross interpretation of Galaxian. If you have young boys, check out the author's
site and his books. Dave Pilkey has written a slew of incredibly funny and readable books for young kids, especially young boys.
posted by caddis at 4:18 PM PST - 7 comments
Scandinavia
has had
gay marriage for years, and surprise surprise, the institution has not collapsed. It's amazing how rarely Americans take advantage of these sorts of international comparisons...
posted by MikeB at 4:02 PM PST - 33 comments
Communion rights?
There is a lot of controversy regarding communion these days. Seems like the Church wants to hold it hostage in order to get what they want politically regarding abortion.
Kerry is criticized for taking it, NJ Gov.
McGreevy can't have it. But what about Pols that support the death penalty, shouldn't they abstain too? When it comes to communion, should anyone be getting in line these days?
posted by lilboo at 2:02 PM PST - 36 comments
Not exactly renewing my faith in humanity.
Evidently even mentioning Maury Povitch on your website will result in receiving hundreds of comments from people who believe they are writing to Maury himself. The results are predictably unpredictable. (NOTE: Have a sense of irony and 20 minutes handy before clicking)
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 12:37 PM PST - 73 comments
Sure, you've seen pictures of Meteor Crater, Arizona, but are there any impact craters near you?
Probably.
posted by ewagoner at 11:04 AM PST - 10 comments
Troy (the movie) in 15 minutes.
Just in case you didn't feel like sitting through the whole
ten years two hours 43 minutes.
via BoingBoing
Bedroom of Helen of Troy Sparta
PARIS: Hey, baby, I brought you a pearl necklace.
HELEN [weepy]: I can’t wear it because I’m sort of already married to that other guy but we’ve been doing the royal nasty for a week already anyway and you’re going to leave tomorrow and WAHHHHH.
PARIS: You could stow away and come with me and start a war that will end up killing 90% of the cast and totally be the downfall of my people and my kingdom!
HELEN: *sniff* I think… that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:47 AM PST - 10 comments
Where's Thursday, May 6 ? - Nightline "disappears" show segment
- OK, I've waited almost 2 weeks. Now, it's official - Nightline
"disappeared" it's own show. On Thursday May 6, 2004, Nightline featured, prominently, a call for a phased US pullout from Iraq by Retired Lieutenant General,
William Odom - Ronald Reagan's head of the National Security Agency. Odom recommended turning the whole mess over to the UN. Mention of Odom or the segment is
kind of hard to pry out of ABC . You can
buy a transcript though, so this isn't
really censorship, right?...........
posted by troutfishing at 8:28 AM PST - 9 comments
A bill
currently under consideration in the Ohio General Assembly would force public schools to "display the official motto of the United States of America 'In God We Trust' and the official motto of Ohio 'With God, All Things Are Possible' in each classroom, auditorium, and cafeteria of each school building in the district." Ohio Public Radio reports
here.
posted by Otis at 8:10 AM PST - 30 comments
Poetry isn't free speech for these students.
Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated because he refused to censor a student's poetry that was "un-American."
posted by agregoli at 8:00 AM PST - 39 comments
May 19
One Day of War
"Across the world today, millions of people are caught up in conflict. BBC filmmakers follow 16 different characters in 16 different war zones over a 24-hour period."
posted by raaka at 11:22 PM PST - 5 comments
America's laziest fascist
Inside Michael Savage's hatefest. I can't tell if this is offensive or just sadly pathetic. Salon: But if the first half of the event showcased Savage's ability to stir the faithful, the second half was an object lesson in how a performer can take his audience -- and his talent -- for granted. Basically, he bombed. He spent nearly 20 minutes sitting in a stuffed chair in front of a television set, free-associating as he channel surfed. Seeing footage of Jordan's King Abdullah, he screamed, "Kiss my ass! Shut the hell up!" To a soccer match in Spanish, he quipped, "Reminds me of my gardener." It was about as entertaining as watching a middle-aged man yelling at his living room TV. Savage eventually realized things weren't going well. "You don't like this shit," he said. "It's a bad act."
posted by skallas at 8:54 PM PST - 49 comments
Iraq's rebel cleric gains surge in popularity
An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge in the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric fighting coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see US troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers.
posted by Postroad at 5:20 PM PST - 36 comments
NTI Working for a Safer World
Concerned that the threat from nuclear weapons had fallen off most people's radar screens after the end of the Cold War, CNN founder Ted Turner asked former Senator Sam Nunn in the spring of 2000 to help assess whether a private organization could make a difference. After months of discussions and consultations with some of the world's most respected security experts, Mr. Turner and Senator Nunn founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in January 2001. NTI is supported by a pledge from Mr. Turner and other private contributions.
Although originally focused on nuclear threats, the NTI site has areas covering chemical, biological, and other WMDs. They have a well balanced
Question the Candidates area. I like the site because it appears to be politically neutral with no agenda past eliminating these global risks.
posted by Red58 at 3:21 PM PST - 3 comments
Michael Moore Hates America
is a new documentary looking to discredit filmmaker
Michael Moore. Moore's new film,
Fahrenheit 9/11 is causing quite a stir at the Cannes Film Festival, where it has been met with
rave reviews, and
standing ovations lasting upwards of 20 minutes. With Moore's recent
distribution problems with the film,
a new project seeks to challenge Moore to distribute his film for free via the internet to prove that "the message is more important than the money," and to silence his critics, who contend that with the immense profits his controversial film is sure to garner, he is a "war profiteer" just like Halliburton.
posted by banished at 1:23 PM PST - 70 comments
Sex and PsyOps.
An interesting look at sexual propaganda throughout modern military history. Unfortunately slightly censored, but a good look into what may or may not have been an effective demoralization tool.
posted by eas98 at 11:53 AM PST - 25 comments
Unitarians denied tax-exempt status in Texas.
Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ruled that Unitarian churches don't qualify as religious organizations because they lack a single creed. In issuing this ruling, Strayhorn ignored the fact that lower courts and the Texas Supreme Court have both ruled against the Comptroller's Office in an ongoing lawsuit stemming from a similar ruling (by a former Comptroller) in 1997. Strayhorn has vowed to continue the legal fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, stating that "Otherwise, any wannabe cult who dresses up and parades down Sixth Street on Halloween will be applying for an exemption."
(if you run into userid/password issues, use "bugmenot@fastmail.us" and "privacy")
posted by Irontom at 8:57 AM PST - 48 comments
Domes and Cupolas
From the New Yorker:
"David Stephenson's photographs gaze directly up at the interiors of domes, flattening them and - through long exposure times - revealing details and colors that can't be discerned in normal viewing. The results are bright, kaleidoscopic patterns made up of the Moorish arabesques of the Alhambra, the iconic decorations of a former imperial chapel near Moscow, and the cool, almost Mediterranean blues of a Hungarian synagogue."
Stephenson's work is
currently on exhibition in New York. Other pages of his work can be found
here and
here.
posted by livii at 8:54 AM PST - 5 comments
The John Markoff of the New York Times
[registration required] reports that Google plans to roll-out a
text and file search tool code-named Puffin for finding information stored on PCs. The move is seen as a defensive one; Microsoft plans to include PC searching in its new operating system, scheduled to be released in 2006 (at the earliest).
posted by tranquileye at 8:40 AM PST - 7 comments
I'm done with The Onion.
I trusted The Onion and read their comedy for free for
years -- but after hundreds of issues of unbelievable comedy The Onion is now a "pay site" that charges
$30 a year for earlier access to each week's issue, plus awesome-sounding online news radio and special election coverage! I'm mad! Oh yeah!!!
posted by josh at 7:57 AM PST - 39 comments
May 18
Tonight (or tomorrow night, ymmv) marks the 2nd Annual
Ride of Silence, a solemn testament to those that have been injured or killed while biking on the roads. Begun last year in Dallas in tribute to local ultramarathoner
Larry Schwartz, it began as a one-time tribute. Apparently, there was enough National interest to make this an annual event, and this year
more than 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada are participating.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:09 PM PST - 19 comments
"In the summer of 1978 I undertook a 3-month
11,500-mile journey by moped from Toronto to Alaska (USA) and back to Toronto. This website contains a complete travelogue of this trip, with over 300 photographs and a description of the trip, plus technical information about the moped and details of the trip."
posted by stbalbach at 5:10 PM PST - 15 comments
Choose Your Own New York
You're in town to visit your wealthy and eccentric Aunt Ginny, who is spending the day having her blood replaced with Botox on the Upper East Side. Now you have the entire day to yourself to explore the most exciting city in the world! -- A Choose Your Own Adventure story, updated.
posted by amberglow at 4:55 PM PST - 11 comments
The Jesus Landing Pad
"It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists..."
posted by Postroad at 2:18 PM PST - 69 comments
With all this talk of wars in distant countries, it's easy to forget that there's exciting things going on just 300 million km from your back porch. NASA has provided 90 second videos of the first 90 sols of the
Spirit [5MB .mov] and
Opportunity rovers [5MB .mov].
posted by fatbobsmith at 12:59 PM PST - 11 comments
No longer happy and peppy.
But still bursting with love, maybe. Broadway will honor the late Tony Randall tonight by
dimming its lights at 8PM EDT. For those of us who can't stand pits, pits, pits in our juice, juice, juice, always remember:
The world is a circus if you look at it the right way.
Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust but mystery, a marvel, there in your hand.
Every time you stop and think, "I'm alive. And being alive is fantastic."
Every time such a thing happens, you are part of the circus of Dr. Lao.
posted by Oriole Adams at 12:52 PM PST - 11 comments
Welcome to FreeCache
Got a huge media file you want to link to but are afraid you'll kill the user's bandwidth? The Internet Archive currently has Freecache in beta which provides free edge serving for the rest of us.
posted by bitdamaged at 11:28 AM PST - 6 comments
Cicadaville.
We all know
cicadas are on their way above ground this summer, but "Most of the information about cicadas in the media is false. Only at Cicadaville.com can you learn the real truth."
Protect your children!
posted by adamms222 at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments
Friendeavor
Helps you find a local activity partner. Though no matter how I searched, no one will help you bury a body.
posted by FunkyHelix at 8:49 AM PST - 9 comments
Renewable energy: thinking outside the (clamshell) box.
The US Dept. of Agriculture has given notice that funds are available for "developing renewable energy systems from the use of diseased livestock as a process raw material for the energy source." As in, all the cattle killed during December's Mad Cow Disease scare. Because "traditional rendering processes were determined not to effectively deactivate the infectivity of prions."
posted by bendybendy at 6:22 AM PST - 25 comments
One two three, four five, six seven nine ten,
eleven twelve. [6.5mb .wmv]. An excellent remix video of the the Sesame Street 'Pinball Song'. Features the Pointer Sisters on vocals, apparently. The remix was done by
Braces Tower, who also have
the mp3 up on their site.
posted by tapeguy at 6:22 AM PST - 27 comments
And you thought that guy from Police Academy was good.
As a five-year-old child, Dokaka hummed along with melodies on television, but one day plugged headphones into the TV, discovering that the sounds in his head matched those piping through the headphones. He quickly realized that songs consist of many parts like bass, drums, etc. Within a year, he began to record himself humming. (Via http://linkfilter.net/) Smells like teen spirit indeed!
posted by jopreacher at 1:00 AM PST - 28 comments
May 17
What would you swap for a gmail account?
"Everyone's talking about Gmail, but it's still only a handful of lucky ducks who have snagged an account. And while the rest of us go hungry, you can be sure that the best email addresses are being gulped down by nefarious hooligans. gmail swap tells the people with Gmail about the people without."
posted by dogmatic at 6:12 PM PST - 105 comments
May 16
Punch Cartoons
Punch set the standard for Victorian satirical cartooning. The
Victorian Web hosts a number of cartoons arranged according to
topic; see also
Punch on the
British Empire. Some students in Anthony Wohl's senior seminar at Vassar did a good job
annotating a number of images. You can find late Victorian cartoons, as well as cartoonists' biographies,
here. Of course, the current incarnation of
Punch has a few things to say about its own history.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:07 PM PST - 6 comments
Black, White & Brown.
A great 9-part video feature on the NYT site (registration required) featuring a discussing between Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
posted by adrober at 1:32 PM PST - 2 comments
A tornado picks up a house
while a storm chaser tapes it. Later, he finds himself getting a little too close for comfort. (27 meg download - some swearing) Fortunately, no one was in that house at the time.
posted by pyramid termite at 1:23 PM PST - 37 comments
In policy reversal, US signals possible acceptance of theocracy in Iraq
Bringing democracy to the area...Ladies: do we have some surprises in store for you. Is Iran to be the model? "The United States signaled its readiness to put up with an Islamic theocracy in future sovereign Iraq, with Secretary of State Colin Powell saying the US administration "will have to accept" any government created as a result of free and fair elections there. ..."
posted by Postroad at 8:29 AM PST - 25 comments
Interactive Church Music Player
The LDS Church has created a cool new tool for exploring its hymnbooks: a Flash application that not only shows the sheet music, but allows transposition, tempo changes, part selection, and all kinds of other nifty things.
posted by oissubke at 8:06 AM PST - 13 comments
A hundred times no!
The family of the man who coined the term "Googol" (well, to be honest, he swiped it from a nine-year-old kid) are angry that Google hasn't given them a taste of the upcoming IPO.
posted by baltimore at 7:27 AM PST - 24 comments
May 15
The Hillbilly Housewife.
"I am just a humble, barefoot, hillbilly woman with too many irons in the fire like most folks...You will not find nutrional information with these recipe because I do not beleive that God intends normal, everyday eating to be a burden for His children."
posted by bingo at 10:41 PM PST - 78 comments
The Food Of Love:
Oh, forget about music already. What should you
cook if you want to woo a lover? According to Lisa Hilton, it all depends on what nationality (s)he is and what country you're living in...
P.S. Shame on The Observer for choosing the inflammatory but incidental title I've Never Had Good Sex With A Vegetarian!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:11 PM PST - 23 comments
Leaving Iraq
-- William Lind, the Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation, writes of contingency planning, and our coming escape from Iraq, while keeping as many troops alive as possible. The Wash. Post weighs in as well with
"How the US can get out" listing the not-too-pleasant options.
posted by amberglow at 7:53 PM PST - 19 comments
"This time last year I was plotting to kill a man.
I was going to walk up to him, reintroduce myself and then blow his balls off. I was going to watch him writhe like a poisoned cockroach for a few seconds, then kick him onto his stomach and put three bullets in the back of his head. This time last year I had a gun, and a silencer, and a plan."
Westword's best
writer makes a couple admissions.
posted by raaka at 7:48 PM PST - 27 comments
Is Elena another Kaycee?
(Scroll down to posts by "dizzy') Someone who claims to have knowledge of the Chernobyl Dead Zone posted to a number of motorcycle forums claiming that Elena coloured the truth quite a bit with her highly publicized Chernobyl motorcycle trip. [More inside]
posted by SpecialK at 1:49 PM PST - 43 comments
The orchid,
I think is the most beautiful variety of flower. If not for my black thumb I'd gladly devote some time to growing this gorgeous flowers. The main link is to the Internet Orchid Photo Encyclopedia. There's apparently a cultural phenomena involving orchids that even includes tails of
theft. A case of Nicaraguan theft has even been likened to
rape. NOVA has done an
episode on it, which sadly I haven't seen. They're an amazingly diverse species.
posted by substrate at 12:40 PM PST - 11 comments
Playing With Time
uses time lapse photography and computer animation to show
events that normally happen too fast or too slow for humans to perceive. (via Neat Net Tricks newsletter)
posted by Jaybo at 11:23 AM PST - 9 comments
The Matthew effect
"It was Merton who identified and named the tendency always to assign exclusive scientific credit to the most eminent among all the plausible candidates. At least I hope it was he, though I'm sure Merton, who invented many wonderful jokes himself, would have been delighted if the credit for it turned out to be misattributed to him." Or is this called the
flypaper effect? The question remains: Who popularized the phrase 'Shut up and Calculate!'
posted by vacapinta at 12:08 AM PST - 2 comments
Before Enron Houston, Texas had been the locus of a
stock scandal of a slightly different sort. Growing up in Houston in the 80s and 90s, I never associated the word "Sharpstown" with anything but a mall, but the area underwent a
development mired in scandal.
In the late 1960s Frank W. Sharp, a Houston businessman, negotiated a deal with a few Texas House Democrats; they would help pass a piece of legislation, and in turn, he would ensure that they would make a profit from his company's stock. In 1971, the dealings
came to light. Most of the public officials connected with the scandal were run out of office, but somehow
one man beat the resulting karma, even it was a a few decades later. But some good did come out of this, as the Texas
Open Records Act was expanded in the aftermath of the scandal.
posted by lychee at 12:05 AM PST - 3 comments
May 14
U.S. Military Bars Some Iraq Interrogation Methods
...The officials said the decision was made on Thursday by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, on the same day that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with him on a surprise trip to the country and visited the Abu Ghraib facility on the outskirts of Baghdad. ..
Is this a tacit admission that what took place was not simply rogue actions by individuals but rather military folks following orders of some kind? And, then, why do the new ground rules apply just to Iraq and not to other places?
posted by Postroad at 5:01 PM PST - 27 comments
How I lost my childhood:
It may seem hopelessly lame to many, but as as child I, and many others of the same time period -- the first children of the microcomputer revolution -- spent many hours in front of our shiny new home computers reverently copying in BASIC programs from source printouts in books and magazines. For some, myself included, this was the launchpad into a sexy, exciting, fascinating career as a professional geek. Now, the book that was one of my sacred texts during this time period, David Ahl's
BASIC Computer Games, is available, scanned,
online.
[via Boing Boing]
posted by jammer at 3:34 PM PST - 34 comments
Gay Marriage Opponents See Fight Getting Tougher
...or from a liberal view: "Whoo hoo!" The Boston Globe has a good article about the 'setback' that is about to happen to society on May 17th. No, not Brown vs. Board of Education's 50th Anniversary, but the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court's decision that gays and lesbians deserve equal marriage rights under the Mass. state constitution.
----
The Globe has an
exhaustive list of links and opinions from
both sides of the issue, including video clips, a full timeline of the Goodrich case, and even national news and opinions on the issue.
----
(This is my first FPP.)
posted by andreaazure at 12:01 PM PST - 19 comments
indian electronic voting vs. diebold
"Reading this article, some of you might remember that Cold war era joke, about NASA and its multi million dollar experiment with a pen that can write in micro gravity to solve the writing problems of astronauts, and the Russian solution of using a Pencil to solve the same problem."
posted by quonsar at 11:00 AM PST - 29 comments
Where do you live,
among a bastion of geeks, or sea of academia-phobes? US Census released the smartest cities, states, and counties with Seattle and Raleigh topping the cities. Also for those who are
politically curious, of the top 15
states with Bachelor degrees 11 went to Gore, while 13 of the bottom 15 went to Bush.
posted by humbe at 11:00 AM PST - 27 comments
“Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do”
(warning: extremely graphic verbal description; for a different perspective,
here's a critique on the use of some references). "Homosexuals are sexually troubled people engaging in dangerous activities. Because we care about them and those tempted to join them, it is important that we neither encourage nor legitimize such a destructive lifestyle."
Discuss.
posted by 111 at 10:29 AM PST - 188 comments
Brutally Honest Personals.
Hers: "Even though
I run marathons, I still can't lose those few pounds. But I can probably kick someone to death with my legs of steel." His: "When
I do have a job, it's low paying, and credit consolidators take half of what I earn. I'm behind on my rent, emotionally closed, and take medication to treat my depression."
Esquire comes up with personal ads for people who are tired of being excessively positive -- will the trend ever catch on for resumes and college class notes? (Possibly NSFW due to some sexual language.)
via anil.
posted by onlyconnect at 10:21 AM PST - 20 comments
May 13
An American Ebay seller realises a European bidder is trying to scam him out of a Powerbook (fake escrow site, hijacked ebay account), so he sends him something far better, a
P-P-P-Powerbook! Now, for you non-techies here, a factory model p-p-p-powerbook weights half what it's competitors weigh, comes with an A4 screen, the
latest in internet adventure software, zero boot time, a fullsize keyboard (often with
Key RedundancyTM) and a state-of-the-art laser
bluetooth mouse. This is technology. The seller posts
to a forum and amongst the chatter people follow the package via the
the Fedex tracking page and some even visit the delivery address (a barbershop/internet cafe) and take photos, video, and a seat for their hair cut. The duty tax on this particular p-p-p-powerbook is around £350 (paid for by the scammer) before he sees the package, and a few days later it's released by Customs as
they watch in anticipation. A forum member arrives at the internet cafe, takes a seat and soon the package arrives. The scammer opens the box and there are angry raised voices heard. The barber doesn't understand what's wrong and asks...
"Is it broken?"
posted by holloway at 7:41 PM PST - 57 comments
The 27 rationales...
There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but a graduate student in Chicago found and tracked 27 different rationales used to justify the war in Iraq.
Gathering over 1500 statements from the Bush cabinet, US senators, and from news stories, Largio even throws in some time series graphs in appendices, so you can see which rationales were hot, and which were not from Sept 2001 to October 2002.
posted by jasper411 at 4:06 PM PST - 16 comments
Yackity yackity, choo CHOO!, Yackity yackity.....BLOGS!
Self proclaimed Blogoholic George Packer, at Mother Jones, shits on blogs everywhere, joins bemused chorus -
FOX,
journalism grad students, and so on - blathering on blogs. What are they? What do they mean? Quoth Packer :
"Blog prose is written in headline form to imitate informal speech, with short emphatic sentences and frequent use of boldface and italics. The entries, sometimes updated hourly, are little spasms of assertion, usually too brief......All of this meta-comment by very bright young men who never leave their rooms is the latest, somewhat debased, manifestation of the old art of political pamphleteering.....if blogs are "a new way of doing politics," there is also something peculiarly stale and tired about them — not the form, but the content......So far this year, bloggers have been remarkably unadept at predicting events.... Above all, they didn't grasp the intensity of feeling among Democratic primary voters — the resentments still glowing hot from Florida 2000, the overwhelming interest in economic and domestic issues, the personal antipathy toward Bush, the resurgence of activism, the longing for a win. The blogosphere was often caught surprised by these passions and the electoral turns they caused."
Packer even gets paid for this,
plus starring appearances on snooty public radio talk shows! [ Kevin Drum makes an appearance ].....I can excrete lightly digested opinions with the best of them. Where do I apply ?
posted by troutfishing at 12:58 PM PST - 25 comments
Global Dimming?!?
In the second half of the 20th century, the world became, quite literally, a darker place.
Defying expectation and easy explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950's to the early 90's, or 2 percent to 3 percent a decade.
Has anyone been following
this? Heat I might do without for a while, but I've grown very fond of light.
posted by ahimsakid at 12:48 PM PST - 18 comments
Going Poston! - This is a
Flash parody about the NFL's most notorious player agents, the Postons, Carl and Kevin.
This article from a month ago, pretty much sums up why they're becoming so infamous.
posted by Witty at 12:04 PM PST - 7 comments
Tigers bite back.
Endangered Sumatran tigers have taken the destruction of their habitat into their own mouths by killing three & mauling several other illegal loggers.
posted by i_cola at 11:33 AM PST - 12 comments
"Burning Down My Masters' House" Indeed!
Jayson Blair, noted fraud and liar, is about to be liquidated along with all of the other titles in New Millenium's catalog. The publisher of such quality books as "Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted" by Faye Resnick and "Burning Down My Master's House" by Jayson "Truth? We Don't Need No Stinking Truth" Blair.
Its not known if Blair's memoir had a specific hand in the demise of the publishing house but it couldn't have helped.
Selling a whopping 1,386 copies through March 18th.
Is there such a thing as the Anti-Midas Touch? Wherein, everything you touch turns from gold to lead or dust?
Continuing
these threads to their karmic conclusion.
posted by fenriq at 10:04 AM PST - 13 comments
Let us say you are the
premier of Alberta. Let's say you made some
ill advised statements suggesting that public car insurance is the kind of socialist claptrap the forced Pinochet to stage a coup in Chile. Let us further posit that you were pursuing a degree at the time and had recently turned in a
paper (word .doc) on that very topic, and presented it in the provincial legislature to back up those statements. Would you not then want to be pretty sure you hadn't
plagiarized large chunks of your essay from the web?
posted by Capn at 8:41 AM PST - 43 comments
Leaking self-doubt
...Tracing how the photos [of Abu Ghraib prison] became such hot public property reveals something striking, not only about the torture scandal, but about the coalition itself. This is a story, not of investigative journalism or antiwar activists exposing imperialist America to the world, but rather of America exposing its own uncertainty for all to see. The photos appear to have come from within US military or political circles; they were effectively volunteered for public consumption by elements within the military or higher up in the Pentagon, seemingly as part of a process of internal unravelling and deep disagreement over aspects of the war. In a sense, the publication of these photos to international outrage can be seen as the externalisation of America's own self-doubt about Iraq, and about its own mission in the world...
posted by Postroad at 8:28 AM PST - 42 comments
I'm done with Movable Type.
After months of little useful communications about their plans, Ben and Mena have for all intents and purposes ditched the free version of their once-shining weblogging software. Now, MT is a "publishing platform" that costs at least $69 (with limited functionality). Lucky for us that, while MT slept, we have discovered a much improved and free
Blogger, a truly open source
WordPress, and a similarly priced but more powerful
ExpressionEngine.
posted by johnnydark at 7:37 AM PST - 192 comments
ISS-Jupiter Transit tonight.
Notable space station flyover tonight for you skywatching East Coasters: the ISS will pass quite close to Jupiter, and some of you lucky ones [
coordinates|
map] will even see the station briefly eclipse the planet. (Side note: Remember those days when everyone was using its radio call sign
"Alpha?" Now the media just say "space station." Sigh.) East Coast, 9:30pm, I'll be outside, looking up.
posted by brownpau at 7:15 AM PST - 9 comments
What is the modus operandi of creativity? According to two cognitive scientists,
Gilles Fauconnier and
Mark Turner, the subconscious operation of
conceptual blending. The formal theory, known as the Network Model of Conceptual Integration (CI), seeks to explain how creative insights are derived from pre-existing knowledge and understanding.
[More Inside]
posted by Gyan at 6:45 AM PST - 10 comments
1,3,7-trimethylxanthine (sometimes used as a pesticide to kill frogs) also happens to be one of the world’s most popular drugs.
Users find that it improves attention and concentration, and slightly decreases their heart rate at low doses. It is habit forming however and has been known to cause agitation, anxiety, insomnia, disorientation, nausea, delirium, hallucinations and tinnitus. Some people report involuntary tremors or even convulsions. Overdoses can cause seizures, respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest. Withdrawal from regular use can cause symptoms including headache, nausea, nervousness, reduced alertness and depression.
The metabolic half-life of the drug is usually somewhere between three and seven hours so a typical user will take somewhere between fifteen and thirty-five hours to process 95% of their initial dose.
How many milligrams have you taken today?
posted by snarfodox at 5:55 AM PST - 42 comments
May 12
Google To Start Selling Banner Adverts
From the that-didn't-take-too-long-department, Google's ad sales VP Tim Armstrong says Google will now start selling graphical banner adverts. One concession to their old mores is that, for now, the banner adverts will only appear on affiliated websites running their
AdSense referral program (as does MeFi), and there is an opt-out. However...
"We have no plans to show images on Google.com", said Mr. Armstrong
"but we are not opposed to it".
posted by meehawl at 11:31 PM PST - 27 comments
not so junk DNA
the idea has always made me uncomfortable. now scientists are taking a closer look at base-pair sequences that have been generally overlooked till now.
posted by jessica at 11:04 PM PST - 9 comments
Reading With the Enemy
- "Inspired by
Supersize Me: What if you spent one month reading, listening to, and watching only right-wing media. No New York Times, no NPR, no network news, no CNN, no lefty blogs, no liberal novels. Nothing left-wing or centrist, and nothing ‘objective.’ Nothing that makes up the world you currently inhabit."
posted by Space Coyote at 10:34 PM PST - 58 comments
The pen is mightier than...?
Remember Afghanistan? Terry, former
Nitpicker, is now a public affairs specialist in Kandahar. He's learned
that the children of Afghanistan want nothing more than they want a pen. Maybe we can help them out by sending some?
posted by amberglow at 7:55 PM PST - 14 comments
Blah Blah Blogging
::
"The following is a meticulously detailed recap of a news segment that appeared on the Chicago FOX news affiliate on Wednesday, May 5th, 2004." -- Intelligent blogger agrees to appear in puff piece about blogging for FOX news. These are the results.
posted by anastasiav at 4:55 PM PST - 43 comments
Chicken John is quitting!
(SanFranciscoFilter) It looks like the
Odeon is looking for new management. Does this mean the end of good/bad/scary performance art in SF, or is it just a new beginning?
posted by badstone at 2:31 PM PST - 4 comments
May 12th is International ME/CFS/Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. If you aren't aware of these afflictions, then it's time to become so.
"Fibromyalgia (FM) is an increasingly recognized chronic pain illness which is characterized by widespread musculoskeletal aches, pain and stiffness, soft tissue tenderness, general fatigue and sleep disturbances." The
WebMD description. For those who live with chronic fatigue, systemic immunity problems, and long term pain, I think the rest of us, at least, owe our awareness of what these people cope with every day.
Again, via the always excellent Watermark, who writes movingly of her relationship with Fibromyalgia.
posted by Wulfgar! at 1:47 PM PST - 19 comments
Modern Ruins
are a window into human histories, they tell the stories of the past through the
stark presence of objects and
architectures. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of
ruins is the subject that is
missing in the photographs; the people who once worked, lived, walked, talked, slept and dreamed in these
spaces.
posted by papercake at 12:37 PM PST - 5 comments
Scientists know that being fat reduces your lifespan,
making you more susceptible to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of other bad things. However they are only beginning to understand why. "Fat tissue is now recognized to be the body's biggest endocrine organ," producing 25 known signaling compounds and a variety of proteins.
posted by ilsa at 11:11 AM PST - 37 comments
Remember
dong_resin? Of course you do. He's a lovable rapscallion--an affable sort (I don't actually know him but play along). Well, some months back, Mr. Resin penned (in the virtual sense) a blog entry entitled
Tink Hilton : One Dog Screaming, a piece about Paris Hilton told from the perspective of her dog. You may, if you're a fan of "the resin" (as I've never called him), have noticed he hasn't been around Metafilter (or his blog) all that often lately. Apparently, he has an
explanation: it seems that someone from
Warner Books saw the entry and asked him to write a short novel. The result? A short novel with a long name,
The Tinkerbell Hilton Diaries : My Life Tailing Paris Hilton, which goes on sale in September.
disclaimer: I do not know the donger in any way, shape, or form, and my shilling (if it is perceived that way) is born out of unadulterated, likely unreciprocated, and clearly unnatural love (or maybe I just thought it was interesting: you decide).
posted by The God Complex at 10:03 AM PST - 35 comments
WiFi Against Bush
is an interesting twist on viral marketing aimed at our neighborhoods and the occassional warchalker — let everyone in within range of your router know what you _really_ think of the President.
Via the venerable Shifted Librarian.
posted by silusGROK at 9:57 AM PST - 11 comments
Secrets of the Third Reich...UFO's?
"...As Sir Roy Feddon, Chief of the Technical Mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production stated in 1945. "…I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realise that if they (the Germans) had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warfare.".....upright, vertical take-off aircraft.....a saucer-shaped craft with enclosed twin rotors.....Cruise missiles....the V-2....[predecessor of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles]....a rocket-powered fighter, the ME 163...These then, were some of the known German advances. However there were also hints of darker technologies not fully understood." Woo woo! So begins the four part "Secrets of the Third Reich" - where does fact merge into fiction? It's such a great read that it almost doesn't matter. A version with pictures lives
here (go to menu, "Book 4"). Then, there's
The Hunt For Zero Point We have met the aliens, and they are us ?
posted by troutfishing at 9:38 AM PST - 10 comments
"He could separate personal honor from political convictions.
A recurring theme of his career? The superiority of forgiveness over revenge".
Ron Chernow's
biography of
Alexander Hamilton puts "
the father of American government" -- the illegitimate orphan from the West Indies
who rose to become George Washington's most trusted adviser only to be
snared in a sex scandal and killed in a duel by Vice President Aaron Burr -- under a new light. Thomas Jefferson after all, his great adversary, foresaw a nation of independent yeomen farmers. It was Hamilton who
foresaw a powerful nation of cities, banks, stock, exchanges. When Jeffersonians favored congressional power, Hamilton
argued vigorously that the executive branch was
the chief engine of the government. When the Constitution was ratified over the objections of anti-Federalists, Gore Vidal relates, “
a parade featuring a ship called The Hamilton, on a float, sailed triumphantly along Wall Street as its ghost still does today.”
Anecdote: during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Franklin suggested that there be a pause for prayer. Many delegates supported the move, except for Hamilton. "He did not see the necessity of calling in foreign aid." (.pdf file)
posted by matteo at 9:05 AM PST - 11 comments
May 11
Will humanity come together to overcome our space enemies?
Or is
this a publicity stunt for
Signs 2:Electric Boogaloo? Or is it
nothing at all? Still, what the heck is Mexico doing telling everyone about
this? I mean seriously now:
“Hundreds of videos (of UFOs) exist, but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country.... The armed forces don't perpetuate frauds.”
Mr. Maussan said Secretary of Defence Gen. Ricardo Vega Garcia gave him the video April 22.
posted by loquax at 7:11 PM PST - 40 comments
How do you make sippin' syrup?
man i'm from HOUSTON. where screw and syrup got started. This is how you sip some drank...you go to ya hookup, pick up half a pint, pour it in a 2 liter bottle of some damn sunkist orange, get a white styrofoam cup, put some ice in it, pop in a crunk screw tape like '10' deep or another platinum hit, roll up a blunt, smoke it and sip some drank while jammin to screw.
DJ Screw really would be proud.
posted by item at 5:13 PM PST - 28 comments
The Red Hat Society
With an inspired purchase of a red fedora and a reading of the poem
Warning by Jenny Joseph,
one woman created what is fast becoming a movement around the world for women over fifty.
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:53 PM PST - 41 comments
Today's entry on the Google blog was altered in a subtle way.
The earlier entry boasted of their Bangalore data center, but the afternoon's version now features the Zurich center more prominently and relegates Bangalore to a footnote. Could it be that the company is a little less boastful in their handling of the outsourcing debate than they thought they could be?
posted by clevershark at 1:38 PM PST - 16 comments
Memo to soldiers:
Do not read the Taguba report on the Fox News website, it is classified. I didn't know the Pentagon had a sense of humor.
posted by caddis at 12:37 PM PST - 23 comments
Researching the Way of Wa
The 1400 year-old Japanese concept of "
Wa"
is derived from the ancient meaning of peace and harmony. When applied to business practices, it
incorporates mutual trust between management and labor, harmonious... relations among employees on all levels...
I continued forward to learn of
Wa Shin Ryu, "the system that harmonizes the spirit," which I followed onward to
Toki no Wa. Only then did I know that
"I will see you again where the loops of time touch together."
posted by mcgraw at 10:12 AM PST - 4 comments
facettes de la petite mort
No nudity, but not safe for work. I love it when eroticism is found where you might not expect it. Like, simple facial expression, for example.
posted by travis at 10:03 AM PST - 18 comments
Marley's 'Legend' turns twenty:
"Legend'' is unique because it's become more than just music. It's an idea, a lifestyle, a web of cultural touchstones spun in a delicate vortex. In the realm of musical-taste-as-statement-of-personal-identity, "Legend'' says: I generally care about world events. I favor cotton clothing. I think stress is bad. I want to stop injustice. I'm all for love. I wouldn't say no to the herb, if you get my drift.
posted by moonbird at 9:47 AM PST - 28 comments
The Wrong Morons.
(from the
Army Times) "Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war...But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons."
posted by Ty Webb at 9:46 AM PST - 23 comments
I can't believe this hasn't appeared here already... practice your
psychiactric skills on a couple of cuddly animals. It's worth it for the dream and drugs sequences alone.
[Flash][via monkeyfilter, via userfriendly. probably.]
posted by twine42 at 1:02 AM PST - 17 comments
May 10
How to get out of Iraq.
The Nation: There is, however, no agreement or even clarity about such an exit strategy. Nor is any leadership on this crucial issue coming from the Bush Administration or as yet, alas, from the presumptive Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry. With a sense of obligation and urgency, The Nation, has asked a range of writers, both regular and new contributors to the magazine, for their ideas on America's way out of Iraq
posted by skallas at 11:35 PM PST - 28 comments
The Human Face of Pedophilia (A Pedophile Unmasked).
"I am not afraid of who or what I am, because I have nothing to hide. I have always abided by the laws of the countries in which I have resided--even the laws with which I have not agreed. I have no desire to hurt or take advantage of anybody. I invite any others who share my ethos and my commitment to refuting the onslaught of disinformation about us to join me on this site."
posted by reklaw at 1:50 PM PST - 114 comments
May 9
It's New Blogger,
launched today at 3pm, with a retooled interface, more rounded corners, single entry archives, comments,
user profiles, more template tags, mail-to-blog,
knowledge, and more. (Farewell,
good ol' black. We'll miss you.)
posted by brownpau at 7:51 PM PST - 83 comments
The Scandal's Growing Stain
Time Magazine: "Abuses by U.S. soldiers in Iraq shock the world and roil the Bush Administration. the inside story of what went wrong—and who's to blame"
posted by Postroad at 11:12 AM PST - 18 comments
May 8
Ling Chan gave up everything to come to America.
"Chan arrived in the United States with no knowledge of English, no support network, and a dependent child...she was happy to land a janitorial job with AXT Inc., a Fremont, California semiconductor manufacturing firm...on a four-person cleaning crew, scrubbing the boxes used to ship semiconductor wafers around the factory...after a few weeks, her colleagues -- mostly Chinese immigrants, like herself -- whispered that this was no ordinary dust: It could give you cancer."
[via Fark, of all places]
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:02 PM PST - 17 comments
How old do I look?
This is a fascinating project -- almost like an intellectual's HotOrNot, that plays with our perception and societal ideals of age and beauty. I was close to right only about half the time, otherwise I was waaaay off.
posted by mathowie at 4:56 PM PST - 64 comments
If the Marquis de Sade were alive today, would he have a
web site? (Front page OK, rest of site: make up your own mind).
posted by Gyan at 9:40 AM PST - 3 comments
David Neiwert
writes a thoughtful piece about how utterly corrupt the press is and adds to the long running mefi discussion about why "framing" works for conservatives: "But even beyond the bias is the way this framing really corrupts and trivializes the national debate, so that we find ourselves constantly arguing about the "morality" or "character" of politicians, an issue that is by nature a product of spin and propagandizing. This has never been more clear than in the current election, when the "character" of a pampered fraternity party boy who couldn't be bothered to serve out his term in the National Guard and who went on to fail miserably at every business venture he touched is successfully depicted as that of a sincere and patriotic regular guy, while that of a three-time Purple Heart winner who voluntarily left Yale to serve in Vietnam, and whose ensuing three decades of public service have been a model of principle and consistency, is somehow depicted as belonging to a spineless elitist."
posted by McBain at 9:02 AM PST - 37 comments
May 7
Bobby Fuller was a Texas based rock and roll singer best known for the immortal rebel anthem
"I Fought The Law,". Considered by many to be the heir to Buddy Holly as the king of Texas Rock, he built on Holly's style with songs like the aforementioned "...Law," "Jenny Lee," "Love's Made A Fool Of You," and the 2 1/2 minute masterpiece "Let Her Dance." And then it ended,
at age 22, in very
weird circumstances. Over the years, interest in Fuller and his work has ebbed and flowed, and plenty of
archival material surfaced, but the mystery of his death remains unsolved, although many have
speculated. Ann odd end for a footnote character in rick history, but who was bound for more
posted by jonmc at 8:23 PM PST - 16 comments
Fools for Communism:
"the world’s final redoubt of communism is not Havana or Pyongyang but American college campuses. 'The nostalgic afterlife of communism in the United States has outlived most of the real Communist regimes around the world....
A sizable cadre of American intellectuals now openly applaud and apologize for one of the bloodiest ideologies of human history, and instead of being treated as pariahs, they hold distinguished positions in American higher education and cultural life.'" Here's also History News Network's
interview with the authors of
"In Denial: Historians, Communists and Espionage":
"The facts of history that they [communist sympathizers] got wrong can be, in their view, rationalized, redefined, minimized, or otherwise set aside in service to the idealized future they seek.
Many have learned no lessons from the failure of communism; they will ardently pursue the same goals by the same means, albeit under new names."
posted by 111 at 5:26 PM PST - 127 comments
"We're Asian and Pacific Islander Americans 'living on the rim,' where our diverse cultures and the everyday American lifestyle become one...Whether we're sipping green tea or enjoying a Big Mac® sandwich, we're helping make the magic mix called America become even richer. And McDonald's is right there with us, everyday!" Learn more at
i-am-asian.com
posted by punishinglemur at 3:57 PM PST - 22 comments
Warning: this is possibly the worst story ever told.
Ever wanted to know what it's like to have a
beef tapeworm? (Fun fact: they're the kind that fills your whole intestinal tract!) A storyteller on
The Fray helpfully clues us in to the experience of living with, and eventually destroying, his li'l parasite buddy. Don't read it if you don't want to wish for death at the end. (Blessedly, there are no photographs, though there are some toon-like illustrations.) Via
Boing Boing.
posted by logovisual at 11:29 AM PST - 40 comments
Microscopic fragments of plastic
are a "major pollutant", floating in the ocean, settling on seabeds, and washing up onshore - with unknown consequences for marine ecosystems, according to a new study. "We've found this microscopic plastic material at all of the sites we've examined," [lead researcher]
Dr Richard C
Thompson [of University of Plymouth, UK]
said. "Interestingly, the abundance is reasonably consistent. So, it suggests to us that the problem is really quite ubiquitous."
posted by mcgraw at 9:30 AM PST - 15 comments
Hey, Hey, 16K!
What does that get you today? Perhaps the best bit of nerd nostalgia since the
NESBuckle?
Catchy song, dodgy animation, and the disembodied floating head of Clive Sinclair... what more could you ask for? Other than your old
C64 back...
[via AccordionGuy]
posted by krunk at 9:20 AM PST - 8 comments
The great studio drummer
Steve Gadd
is of the most important musicians of the 1970's. Gadd brought bassist
Tony Levin
(Buddy Rich, Paul Simon, John Lennon, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson) into the business in New York 30 years ago, and that alone is enough to secure a place in history. You may remember his
unforgettable groove
on "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover", one of many brilliant contributions Gadd made to
classics of the 70's pop charts
posted by crunchburger at 12:13 AM PST - 30 comments
May 6
Michael Moore admits Disney 'ban' was a stunt.
Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.
"
Almost a year ago, after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it."
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:07 PM PST - 128 comments
Where does Number 1 go?
Interior designer/nerd gives his apartment the "Away Team Eye" once over and manages to make something pretty darn interesting. Sure it makes a great conversation piece, but could you live there?
More photos make the "future perfect" world of Star Trek look a little too busy for actual living.
posted by raygun21 at 2:49 PM PST - 26 comments
Have You Prayed Today?*
Today is the National Day of Prayer in the US (I had never heard of it). Oliver North!?! is the
honorary chairman this year. Here are the President's
remarks today. Meanwhile, Larry Flynt is calling for
a different sort of prayer today.
*Muslims and Mormons need not apply.
"We're in an election year, and we believe God cares who's in those positions of authority," said Mark Fried, spokesman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force. "But we're not endorsing a candidate, just praying that God's hand will be on the election."
The private task force, which operates from the Colorado headquarters of the Christian organization Focus on the Family ....
... since the mid-1980s the ceremony has been organized by the nonprofit task force headed by two prominent evangelical women: Vonette Bright, widow of Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, and Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
She also made no apologies about the task force's exclusion of Muslims and others outside of the "Judeo-Christian tradition" from ceremonies planned by the task force on Capitol Hill and in state capitals across the country. "They are free to have their own national day of prayer if they want to," she said. "We are a Christian task force."
posted by amberglow at 1:32 PM PST - 26 comments
F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements
Shit happens? Or does it? " At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today."
posted by Postroad at 1:09 PM PST - 29 comments
Polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba.
Wildlife photographer Ken Bereskin has a nice collection of polar bears
frolicking in the snow.
This itchy bear
is so frustrated, he's using the rippled ice of a frozen lake to
scratch himself. If you need a change of temperature, he also has
over 500 images
of wildlife from Uganda and Kenya, including
big
cats (a mother
cuddling
with
her cubs, a cheetah
chomping
down on a gazelle, and a young lioness
shredding
a skeleton to pieces),
great
apes, and
other wildlife (
the
lowly hyena eating the cheetah's leftovers, a black-headed heron
eating
a venomous boomslang snake, and a
scary-looking
vulture taking it all in from above). He also has a
smaller
collection of desert wildlife from the dunes of Etoshia National
Park in Namibia. (His real job is working for Apple, and he has a
Panther blog
that hasn't been updated in eons, but evidently that's not as much fun
as chasing after hungry carnivorous animals in the sweltering heat, or
risking frostbite in the snow).
posted by invisible ink at 11:08 AM PST - 5 comments
Cirque de Sore Legs
may have won the people's choice award, but the competition [including a giant poodle, a bird's nest, and Kafka mid-metamorphosis] wasn't half bad. Baltimore's annual Kinetic Sculpture Race, an unholy amalgam of engineering and art, occurred last week. Created by
Hobart Brown in 1969, kinetic sculpture races require participants to build human-powered vehicles that can traverse a racecourse over land and sea, not to mention mud and sand. And they have to do it in style. Don't live near the Chesapeake? Then visit similar races in
Arcata,
Boulder,
Ventura,
Corvallis, and even
Perth, Australia. Too tame for you? Perhaps you'd like to try a
flugtag or the
Providence or
Bognor birdman competitions.
posted by ubersturm at 10:44 AM PST - 9 comments
"Pull out, pull out", she cried, "Before it's too late!"
- Sex sells. Amidst the ongoing PR conflagration - as
newly released imagery of the psychosexual humiliation, by US guards at Abu Ghraib, of imprisoned Iraqis (
a naked Iraqi man on a leash held by a female American soldier, notably) provokes widespread outrage (and the
Red Cross says things are much worse than those pictures show), the BBC reports on informed speculation that the perfect storm of a growing insurgency, political reversals, and a PR debacle will lead to a hasty coalition pullout from Iraq. A frustrated and tense
"Machine Gun Cheney" achieves release, via his wheelbarrel load of 30 guns (including a Thompson), blasting away at a Secret Service gun range. His aim, they say, is very good. But will Cheney bite the bullet and level with the American public about what it will now take for the US to
prevail in Iraq ?
posted by troutfishing at 9:45 AM PST - 153 comments
Walking
DNA Scientists have created a microscopic walking robot using only the building blocks of life. The robot’s DNA legs
move along a DNA footpath, taking a
nanostroll in a bath of a liquid called a "nondenaturing buffer", which stops the DNA from falling apart.
posted by mcgraw at 9:26 AM PST - 10 comments
May 5
The Collected Works of
Racter: "A tree or shrub can grow and bloom. I am always the same. But I am clever."
Or, perhaps more useful than poetry,
"A Method for Sorting Cows."
Have I read
this before, or merely something like it? "A piece that is essentially the same as a piece made by any of the first conceptual artists, dated two years earlier than the original and signed by somebody else. "
In our confusion, we can settle for simple
non-sequitor: The Ubuweb
Anthology of Conceptual Writing.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:56 PM PST - 7 comments
The Mashin of The Christ
"Earlier this month a hacker broke through
Negativland's UMN mainframe firewall and stole the final version of Negativland's top-sacred for-internal-use-only "Mashin' of the Christ" video project. Negativland prayed that their in-house project would not make it into the hands of the unsuspecting public, but we all know how hard it can be to stop those "peer to peer" criminals from illegally sharing the property of others."
posted by bob sarabia at 5:35 PM PST - 37 comments
The Hirschfeld Follies:
A charming and generous gallery of Al Hirschfeld's portraits from The New York Times, spanning from 1928 to 2002 (
registration required), indexed by
date,
person and
show. Are there any outstanding young contemporary caricaturists out there who are doing good work (not necessarily in the theatre) we old-timers should know about? [
Be sure to accompany with plep's great post on American cartoon and caricature and PeteyStock's January 2004 obituary post. And while you're at it, if you'll excuse the immodesty, my own David Levine post, with a (superb) still-working link.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:30 PM PST - 7 comments
The Gutenberg Bible: On this site you will find the British Library’s two copies of Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, the first real book to be printed using the technique of printing which Gutenberg invented in the 1450s.
posted by hama7 at 4:55 PM PST - 10 comments
Food blogs and online foodie journals gained a cyber-foothold with the now defunct Julie/Julia project. Now, even
Gourmet Magazine and
Forbes have sung their praises. But all is not just
decedent descriptions of cooking in France,
culinary adventures in the far east,
musings and
experiences of the gastronomic variety. Foodie blogs can help
an expat cope with food in England,
procrastinate law school,
learn to make your own chocolate (or if you don't want to go to the effort, find out
which chocolates are the best. Some foodies are
going through culinary school, some have
recently finishes, and some are
rather familiar to food network addicts. But whether you're looking to learn
all about cheese, compete in the community-wide
Is My Blog Burning?, or just enjoy simple beautiful reflections on
food and related botany, there's plenty of
food porn out there for you.
posted by jearbear at 3:51 PM PST - 11 comments
The One where the Writers Totally Got Themselves Uninvited from Any Parties at Courtney Cox or Jennifer Aniston's House.
In the midst of all the dry-as-kindling "Friends" stories being published, there's been one spark: Amaani Lyle's
sexual harassment suit against the show's writers. While it's easy to be distracted by the actual meat of her complaint — making Joey a serial rapist (
#74), a fill-in-the-genitals coloring book (
#56-#58), the importance of spelling "penis" (
#59-#60), the twigs in Courtney Cox's uterus (
#91), a missed opportunity to bugger Jennifer Aniston (
#88-#90) — their defense is even more interesting: Such talk is a necessary creative element of their job.
Writes Joanna Grossman:
The defendants admitted that many of Lyle's allegations were true. They testified in deposition that they did many of the things she complained of, but argued that the conduct was justified by "creative necessity." The writers' job, defendants argued, was to come up with story lines, dialogue, and jokes for a sitcom with adult sexual themes. To do this, they needed to have "frank sexual discussions and tell colorful jokes and stories (and even make expressive gestures) as part of the creative process." An interesting new permutation in how we classify inappropriate workplace behavior with major ramifications for the creative class, or a big ol' weaselly dodge?
posted by blueshammer at 3:07 PM PST - 75 comments
Gosh, hawks!
A live feed of 100% Naked Chicks at the MIT HawkCam. They preen, they sleep, and they watch you watching them. Now to settle in for a long afternoon waiting for Mom to show up.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:34 AM PST - 17 comments
You might know Ernie Barnes from
Sports Illustrated, or from a
Marvin Gaye album cover. He has a powerful
9/11 painting. This past February he was named
“America’s Best Painter of Sports” by the Board of Trustees of the American Sport Art Museum.
posted by ashbury at 8:18 AM PST - 11 comments
Electoral slight of hand
is suggested by NYT columnist Bruce Ackerman in his opinion piece for May 5th, where he suggest that Nader choose Kerry's electoral slate when filing for the November election. It's a clever idea, and I'd be interested in seeing if it has any traction.
posted by silusGROK at 8:00 AM PST - 52 comments
May 4
"They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent. This resolution has been
announced on every corner of the globe." That includes the corner housed by the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where your tax dollars kept the lights on for Moon's coronation as
King of Peace. Bow to your new leader, Americans! (via
two doors down)
posted by PrinceValium at 8:00 PM PST - 50 comments
RFC 1855: Netiquette Guidelines.
"Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked... Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay.... Don't point to other sites without asking first."
posted by reklaw at 5:03 PM PST - 6 comments
Now
GQ magazine isn't one I'd normally turn to—for anything, really, let alone a serious story such as this. But a writer has interviewed Colin Powell, Condi Rice, various Pentagon insiders and some unnamed friends of Powell, and they all (save Condi, whom one of the GQ writer's sources calls "a jerk") agree:
Colin's tired.
posted by emelenjr at 4:28 PM PST - 18 comments
The other shoe drops.
The L.A. Times releases details from Major General Antonio M. Taguba's findings into prisoner abuse in Iraq, including evidence that convinced him that a U.S. soldier had sex with an Iraqi female.
(Can we all agree that she didn't ask for it...?)
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:27 PM PST - 106 comments
How Kerry Earned His Decorations
For all the loud mouths who shout out that Kerry is a traitor, a guy who did not earn his medals, read this and then compare your medals with his! Did he turn against the war? Sure. Many soldiers did too. The nation also turned against the war and, finally, some responsible for getting us into the war admitted their mistake. "Kerry is one of the Senate's most decorated veterans — though he has far fewer medals than friend John McCain — and his record is impressive for an officer who spent just 10 months in Vietnam. Each of the medals below came with a matching ribbon. Kerry wore his ribbons when he testified before a Senate committee in 1971; the next day, joining hundreds of other vets, he lobbed them at the Capitol. "
posted by Postroad at 1:01 PM PST - 77 comments
May 3
Richard Petersen a Seattle street musician... an emotionally impaired savant with encyclopedic recall who taught himself the trumpet and piano by studying a production LP of musical cues from the obscure early-fifties television show Sea Hunt has been a touchstone in many Seattle lives for years. He has played trumpet outside of concerts, sporting events and blockbuster movie premieres with a can labeled "No Canadian Coins" at his feet for at least three decades. He is ubiquitous--apart from agoraphobics, the bedridden and those chained to a basement wall, everyone in Seattle has one or two Richard Peterson stories: he is well known and well loved. Here,
Irwin Chusid, on an
Incorrect Music Hour entitled
Music everyone at work can agree on, eternally plays--albeit on RA--Peterson's
The Enemy (Is on the Radio Singing My Song) and
After The Gold Rush from
Richard Peterson's First Album. His first album did well--he was big in Japan. He has four albums out. His
My Second Album is the
hidden song on the Stone Temple Pilots
Purple. He has put four albums out. And now there is
Big City Dick: Richard Peterson's First Movie--a
well received documentary.
posted by y2karl at 11:33 PM PST - 8 comments
Can Compassionate Fascism Be Far Behind?
It's only a short book review but
Terry Eagleton - who could be defined as a playful and disobedient neo-Marxist literary theorist - manages to give us, propelled by Robert Paxton's universally praised
The Anatomy of Fascism, a pithy and workable definition of fascism and its opposition to conservatism, as well as some depressing, very provocative misgivings about the future of capitalism and the increasing appeal of authoritarianism. Just what is, in the 21st century, the danger and chance of revisionist fascism, in the style of a dubious, unctuous political
I Can't Believe It's Not Democracy margarine? [
Via .]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:50 PM PST - 17 comments
BadAssMovieImages.com
features rare stills and artwork for viewing, with a healthy (but not exclusive) emphasis on cult cinema, and only occasional reviews and comments to compete with the goodness
and/or bad-assedness. A movie fan shares his wealth with the world.
posted by LinusMines at 10:28 PM PST - 9 comments
Frozen seas.
A brief but kind of amazing collection of photos of the deck of a fishing trauler in fridgid conditions, where every exposed surface has layers of frozen saltwater accumulated. This condition can cause the boat to become topheavy and capsize, as well as just plain making life more miserable for those that work on the deck.
posted by jonson at 10:12 PM PST - 12 comments
10.5
If you're like me, you probably just finished watching
10.5, and are still giggling at the "disastrous" screenplay and campy drama. Well, the science is in:
Magnitude 10.5 is impossible,
brick buildings would collapse long before the Space Needle,
fault lines don't follow train tracks, California will not slide into the sea,
bottomless pits do not swallow up unfortunate red-shirted extras, and for crying out loud, Lex, don't use nuclear warheads either to blow the tectonic plates apart
or weld them shut.
posted by brownpau at 8:51 PM PST - 28 comments
Rethinking Zionism.
"Although embattled nationalistic movements are a commonplace, no nationalistic cause is as entwined with the larger issues and fault lines of global politics as modern Zionism is. Not least, the crisis of Zionism has implications for the ability of America to achieve its policy goals in the Middle East and in its wider confrontation with Islamic militancy."
posted by Ty Webb at 7:54 PM PST - 22 comments
The gas shortage won't get better.
Paid more at the pump recently? I hope you don't drive an SUV -- things could get really painful really fast. Demand is always increasing for gasoline, but now we're hitting a point where refineries can't actually refine enough gas to meet demand, and very few places in the world can supply gasoline that meets our environmental standards.
posted by SpecialK at 12:42 PM PST - 121 comments
Pac-Manhattan is a large-scale urban game that utilizes the New York City grid to recreate the 1980's video game sensation Pac-Man. Oh yes folks, and it's a NYU grad school project.
posted by archimago at 12:42 PM PST - 7 comments
More on the boom of Friendster, Orkut,
Tribe, et al:
Meet "snam," the junk email generated by social networking. It's sort of a snowball effect. I just wonder if the name will catch on (?) (It's not as catchy as "spam," is it?) Social networking within organizations is briefly mentioned but interesting:
Companies such as Contact Network, Spoke Software, Interface Software, and ZeroDegrees collect individual contact data from a company's employees, then merge it with those workers' past employment histories...
posted by Shane at 11:29 AM PST - 10 comments
Media Matters for America
Welcome to Media Matters for America, a new Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Because a healthy democracy depends on public access to accurate and reliable information, Media Matters for America is dedicated to alerting news outlets and consumers to conservative misinformation -- wherever we find it, in every news cycle -- and to spurring progressive activism based on standards and accountability in media.
In the mid-1990s, as a conservative media insider, I saw firsthand (and participated in) the damage done to our democracy when conservative misinformation masquerades as journalism. In my book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (2002), I revealed how this misinformation -- deliberately bought and paid for by covert political forces -- enveloped the media, poisoned public discourse, and nearly toppled a president
posted by Postroad at 10:42 AM PST - 35 comments
Alright, ruling out the ice caps melting, meteors becoming crashed into us, the ozone layer leaving, and the sun exploding... we're definitely going to blow ourselves up figure out a way to transform ourselves into
strings and plunge through a black whole into the
next universe.
posted by MzB at 10:31 AM PST - 5 comments
Advanced methods of bomb detection
and investigation.
New equipment developed to scan cars and people, such as a parking lot device which
quickly bathes the car's trunk in invisible neutrons, a procedure that makes materials inside the trunk emit gamma-rays that would indicate the presence of explosives.
Also,
a bomb disposal robot which take[s] fingerprints before blowing [a] package up.
posted by mcgraw at 6:56 AM PST - 17 comments
World Conflicts, 1899-2001
The Nobel e-Museum Group has put together a nifty little Shockwave app that shows more than 200 "wars". An excellent use of technology to distill massive amounts of information into an easily digestible (and illuminating) starting point
(obligatory explanation of exceptions and methodolgy can be found here).
posted by Irontom at 6:53 AM PST - 4 comments
Joseph Wilson interviewed at Salon.
They've also tried to portray you, and all the other whistle-blowers who have spoken out against the administration, as partisan democrats. Do you think that has been an effective technique?
It hasn't worked with me. People are touched by this story because it gives a human face to a whole host of lies and deceptions that only now are becoming apparent to the American public. Americans don't like this attitude. Americans don't like to see their women taken out and beaten up.
posted by skallas at 12:14 AM PST - 71 comments
Take one part virtual minidisk, one part crazy dream, stir it all together with a dash of creativity and maybe you too can find a
Break in the Road. It's actually kind of fun to play with. I couldn't produce anything that sounded to my ear like music, but I'm sure you lot can do better.
posted by willnot at 12:09 AM PST - 7 comments
May 2
The facinating story of Seti Scanlan
- After a mental meltdown, he went on a crime spree of robberies, in the process killing 2 victims. He fled from California to Oregon where he... gave himself up. Since then, he has pled guilty to all charges and waived his right to a trial. He attempted to wave his sentancing trial and accept the death penalty, but the judge would not allow it. Scanlan himself says that he just wants to stand up and face the consequences of his crimes.
posted by falconred at 11:44 PM PST - 12 comments
A conversation with Marianne Pearl
is one of the more moving interviews I have ever heard and was certainly a highlight of the weekend. She is a beautifully calm person with seemingly the right approach to an awfully violent world.
posted by specialk420 at 8:39 PM PST - 3 comments
They that go down to the sea in ships, a really hauntingly beautiful collection of images of seafarers from the past. Some of the images have handwritten notes on the back as well. It's good to get a glimpse of the people and decades lived in by most of our grandparents. Who knows where all those digital images we all take will end up one day.
posted by rhyax at 7:00 PM PST - 7 comments
Heads are Gonna Roll
• Ford Motor Co. is pissed at ad agency
Ogilvy & Mather after O&M leaked a viral marketing ad for the Ford Sportka depicting "a realistic-looking orange cat climbing on top of the car and curiously poking its head into the open moon roof...The roof slides closed and the cat struggles briefly to escape before its headless body slides to the ground." Apparently Ford never authorized
the commercial's (.mpg) release.
posted by dhoyt at 12:36 PM PST - 33 comments
Lesser EvilsThe chief ethical challenge of a war on terror is relatively simple -- to discharge duties to those who have violated their duties to us. Even terrorists, unfortunately, have human rights. We have to respect these because we are fighting a war whose essential prize is preserving the identity of democratic society and preventing it from becoming what terrorists believe it to be. Terrorists seek to provoke us into stripping off the mask of law in order to reveal the black heart of coercion that they believe lurks behind our promises of freedom. We have to show ourselves and the populations whose loyalties we seek that the rule of law is not a mask or an illusion. It is our true nature.
posted by y2karl at 12:30 PM PST - 41 comments
Screw The Vote!
The CBC is taking an unusual approach to the looming Canadian election. Follow host Jian Ghomeshi as he travels around the country encouraging not to vote, in a fascinating attempt at reverse psychology.
Comes with its very own
propaganda kit, too!
[more inside]
posted by krunk at 11:32 AM PST - 16 comments
CSS Pencils
is probably the most hardcore use of CSS I've seen - no images at all, but hey - what's that? A picture? And you can manipulate it? Live? Yep - all with the power of CSS!
posted by benzo8 at 7:46 AM PST - 34 comments
The story of Ohh!
For men it is quick, easy and essential for reproduction. For women, it is slow, difficult and purely for pleasure. Yet despite such differences, it brings the sexes together and is the basis of the monogamy that distinguishes us from other animals. In his new book, Jonathan Margolis examines the phenomenon of the orgasm
posted by Postroad at 5:21 AM PST - 74 comments
May 1
"Learning to Love You More
is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher and various guests."
posted by kickingtheground at 4:54 PM PST - 8 comments
The Human Beatbox (Video).
I meant this to be a follow-up to another previous thread about this specific ability, but the search page won't give me my results. At any rate, this guy amuses, entertains and scares the bejeezus out of me all at the same time. Good enough for me!
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:18 PM PST - 16 comments
CNN reports that Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to sue
Bosley Bobbers seeking to stop
production of a charity
bobblehead
doll. The doll shows the former action-actor turned Governor of
California posing in a business suit, ammo belt and assault rifle.
Arnold is arguing that he owns the marketing rights to his
likeness. The creators argue that he lost those rights when he became a
political figure. However, this seems to be a repeat of
Hustler
v. Falwell. And courts lately have been skeptical of trademark
rights
trumping
satire. On the other hand, there seems to be a fine line between editorial use and commercial exploitation.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:22 AM PST - 11 comments
The FairTax is a consumption tax designed to replace the entire federal income tax system, including personal, payroll, corporate, self-employment, capital gains, gift, and inheritance taxes.
[more!!]
posted by hama7 at 6:07 AM PST - 139 comments
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