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May 2006 Archives
May 31
David Pogue is the rudest man alive! "My wife and I were excited to receive, as [a] very generous Christmas present from a relative, a Magellan RoadMate 300." He then goes on to absolutely obliterate the gift, *on the New York Times website*, for 20 paragraphs, after which he demands, "For the gift-giver: Do your research. Read the customer reviews. Beware outdated products on store shelves." It's a gift! Learn some tact dude.
posted by JPowers at 8:26 PM PST - 63 comments
Wanna Fanta? Don'tuwanna wanna Fanta? You don't support the Jews do you?
Once the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, German Coca-Cola head
Max Keith
(pronounced Kite) was no longer able to get Coca-Cola syrup and so invented
Fanta out of cheese by-products and apple cider for the Nazis.
According to
Snopes
who went with a report prepared by an investigator commissioned by
Coca-Cola
to examine Max Keith's actions, it was all quite noble. Of course that
doesn't address what was happening
before
the
war. But in all fairness that the Coca- Cola only in rare instances
directly
endorsed
the Nazis.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:42 PM PST - 56 comments
This is not resolved! I was depressed that night. I was worried that my girlfriend would leave me. I wanted to kill myself. Whenever I am unhappy, I would call the Samaritans to talk to them in order to reduce the stress. But while I was talking, the passenger behind me tapped my shoulder to tell me not to talk!posted by klue at 10:45 AM PST - 45 comments
Watch political ideologies emerge and shift over hundreds of years. ANIMATE is an amazing Java app that lets you
track graphically the ideological position of all the representatives to the US Congress, European Parliament, or the UN over every roll call vote in history. The really interesting part is that the application uses
DW-NOMINATE data that maps the ideology of representatives, and is pretty good at predicting voting patterns.
Voteworld is a related Java application that is a little less dramatic, but allows you to really dig into the data (to access DW-NOMINATE data in Voteworld, click the little orange sphere icon in the application).
On the US side:
"There are two major lessons to take away from ANIMATE. First, over time, you see less and less motion of individual legislators, particularly after the Civil War. This shows the stabilization of the American political system. Second, after the Civil War you will see the major party clusters growing further apart until the turn of the century, then come together and overlap, and beginning in the 1970s draw apart again. That is, throughout most of the twentieth century, political divisions blurred but in the last quarter one sees the polarization of American politics." posted by blahblahblah at 8:59 AM PST - 15 comments
Guitar Virtuosity with feeling and sophistication... I forgot just how good a guitarist
Allan Holdsworth is. A similar player is
Scott Henderson, who these days is much more in touch with his blues/funk roots. His outside playing is delicious. Notice how they both build up their solos instead of starting off with all guns blazing with nowhere to go.
posted by BobsterLobster at 5:49 AM PST - 28 comments
The World Challenge aims to find individuals or groups from around the world who have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level. It could be you or someone you know. (
via bbc)posted by adamvasco at 3:42 AM PST - 5 comments
Harry Reid accepted free boxing tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission says John Solomon of the AP. Solomon implies that Reid might have gotten himself into an ethical dilemma as the
NAC opposes the creation of a federal boxing commission, something the Senate was
considering at the time. The article also tosses in some digs at Reid by repeating the claim that Reid is involved in the
Abramoff scandal.
However,
Media Matters points out that Reid did not act in the NAC's favor and instead allowed the passage of legislation that would create a federal commission, in opposition to the giftgiver's wishes. This is
not the
first time Solomon has attacked Reid.
Politics/News-filterposted by papakwanz at 12:49 AM PST - 34 comments
May 30
1. Discover image of Christ on your food
2. Alert the media
3. ???
4.
Profit.
posted by jonson at 10:55 PM PST - 31 comments
twinkle-twinkle 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th of a star
You just made $300 Million (well, you in the "We The People..." sense). The Air Transportation Stabilization Board (ATSB) was authorized by Congress shortly after the 9/11 attacks. It was critized by the Bush administration and some members of Congress as a risky bailout of major airlines, offering to guarantee up to $10B in loans. However, only $1.6B in loans were actually guaranteed under this program. And now, as their work wraps up, the American taxpayer stands to see an extra $300M in the coffers of the US Treasury.
posted by SirOmega at 5:37 PM PST - 20 comments
Why Tolerate Religion? Brian Leiter's new paper on the philosophical and legal justifications for toleration of religion. From the abstract:
Religious toleration has long been the paradigm of the liberal ideal of toleration of group differences, as reflected in both the constitutions of the major Western democracies and in the theoretical literature explaining and justifying these practices. While the historical reasons for the special “pride of place” accorded religious toleration are familiar, what is surprising is that no one has been able to articulate a credible principled argument for tolerating religion qua religion: that is, an argument that would explain why, as a matter of moral or other principle, we ought to accord special legal and moral treatment to religious practices. There are, to be sure, principled arguments for why the state ought to tolerate a plethora of private choices, commitments, and practices of its citizenry, but none of these single out religion for anything like the special treatment it is accorded in, for example, American and Canadian constitutional law. So why tolerate religion? Not because of anything that has to do with it being religion as such - or so this paper argues.posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:41 AM PST - 126 comments
Are Canadians changing parliament? It seems that the minority government Conservative Party has introduced legislation to set fixed four year election dates, the third week in October. Some people seem to think
it can work, and others don't. Evidently I fit into a minority position as I can't see the benefit of having a year long election runnup.
posted by pezdacanuck at 9:18 AM PST - 40 comments
"The theories and opinions of the German philosopher
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-1969) on popular music and the culture industry are still highly influential in the domain of media studies. His thoughts about these subjects were very
critical, pessimistic even. Adorno analysed the workings of the culture industry in terms of '
standardization' and used the concept of '
pseudo-individualization' to describe its effects on the listeners.
posted by j-urb at 8:49 AM PST - 14 comments
May 29
Bob Keller's Jazz Page "Welcome to my jazz page. It contains stuff to which I want to refer and to which I refer my students." Yes, it's just a single page of links, but
wow what single page of links. An amazing jazz resource.
posted by jdroth at 8:08 PM PST - 24 comments
[nytimesfilter] Why is the New York Times
obsessed with
doom metal? For a newspaper that gives perfunctory (at best) coverage to non-classical, non-top-40 music, the publication of two articles about one
marginal subgenre of indie rock seems incredibly conspiratorial.
posted by stemlot at 6:43 PM PST - 55 comments
On May 14th, 1967, the new British pop group The Pink Floyd makes one of their first ever TV appearances. Despite a stellar performance of the song Astronomy Domine, the pretentious host of the show, Hans Keller, has nothing good to say about the band. During the
interview (youtube, performance comes first, interview starts about 5:50 in.
transcript here.), he chastises the band for their "continuous repetition", "terribly loud" volume, and their "proportionately a bit boring" sound.
However, it seems that all Hans' show will ever be remembered for is
this single interview. Pink Floyd, on the other hand.. Well, we all know what happened to
them. Syd Barrett, on the other hand,
was not so lucky.
posted by Afroblanco at 4:25 PM PST - 67 comments
«The silent queen of all that is snowy and pure» (.pdf) I will never forget the first time I saw Giovanni Pastrone’s
extraordinary Cabiria... I wasn’t quite
prepared for the sheer scope and beauty of this film. And I was
completely unprepared for having my sense of film history re-aligned. There are so many elements that we took for granted
as American inventions – the long-form historical epic, the
moving camera, diffused light. Suddenly, here they were in a
picture made two years before Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.
-- Martin Scorsese
It was the first film to be over three hours long, the first to use a moving camera, the first to cost 20 times the average cost of a motion picture; Pastrone took several elephants and hundreds of extras to the Alps, in the dead of winter, to film scenes that only lasted a couple of minutes
onscreen. He hired an ex-dockworker and
turned him into one of the first action movie heroes,
Maciste. And, he also created
the first international marketing campaign of the history of cinema. The Americans were so impressed that Cabiria became
the first film to be ever shown on White House grounds. Last week, at the Cannes Film Festival,
a beautiful, painstakingly restored version of this forgotten masterpiece has just been shown to the public.
posted by matteo at 1:40 PM PST - 13 comments
Howard French - Asia photos Photos from across Asia by Howard French, who works for the New York Times. Includes many photos of the 'Disappearing Shanghai' that is being obliterated by the city's relentless urbanization.
posted by carter at 10:29 AM PST - 6 comments
Econ 101. A collection of links to videos about economics for those who want to learn more about the dismal science.
posted by srboisvert at 9:47 AM PST - 9 comments
May 28
Project Nekton — Take
Mt. Everest, add a mile to the top, and turn it upside down. That's how far oceanic explorers
Jacques Piccard and
USN Lt. Donald Walsh descended on January 23, 1960 into the Pacific's
Challenger Deep, the
lowest spot in Earth's oceans. Their submersible, the
second-generation bathyscape Trieste, was designed by Swiss balloonist
Auguste Piccard (Jacques' father) and built in
Italy. This
underwater balloon was buoyed by
70 tons of gasoline, ballasted by
nine tons of steel shot, and dangled a
cramped, six-foot diameter, 14 ton
observation gondola underneath it
[more Trieste photos here]. It took Piccard and Walsh nearly five hours to touch bottom
35,800 feet down in the
Mariana Trench. Their unique voyage still stands 46 years later: no one has gone back—except by
ROV—and
more people have landed on the Moon.
posted by cenoxo at 11:06 PM PST - 28 comments
June 6, 2006 (6/6/06) is the National Day of Slayer and the rules are simple:
Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car. Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home. Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment. Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer. DO NOT use headphones! The objective of this day is for everyone within earshot to understand that it is the National Day of Slayer. National holidays in America aren't just about celebrating; they're about forcing it upon non-participants.posted by mathowie at 8:42 PM PST - 95 comments
Sternest Meanings: A fancy schmancy bot that takes what you say and returns a darn good anagram. "Shaky catacombs enchant fatty. Anyway thunderous star. Roman and ga-ga road." My conversations with
bots always end up with me cussing and/or crying.
posted by bjork24 at 6:57 PM PST - 15 comments
"
CarLoft works like this: you drive the car into a modified industrial elevator, the CarLift. (Nearly all German luxury vehicles fit; only the massive Mercedes Maybach, priced at half a million euros, is too much car to lift.) A computer-controlled transponder recognizes the car and knows to which floor it should be delivered automatically." --
Metropolis Magazine has more. I don't drive but if I did and I lived in an apartment, I'd want a CarLoft -- being able to drive you car to your front door, five stories up. That's classy.
posted by feelinglistless at 4:21 PM PST - 30 comments
May 27
Graduates of the "school of hard knocks" flunk real life. A study from the University of Leicester says that, contrary to popular expectation, unpleasant and traumatic life experiences don't make people suspicious and shrewd -- quite the opposite.
Many people who've had a tough life actually turn out more gullible and easily swayed:
"This is because the person may have learned to distrust their actions, judgments and decisions due to the fact that the majority of the time their actions have been perceived to invite negative consequences"
The counter-intuitiveness of this finding fascinates me.
Wait. Maybe I shouldn't be taking it at face value...
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:28 PM PST - 50 comments
Newsfilter: More than 100 arrests at Moscow gay protest. Upon others, German MP Volker Beck, Oscar Wilde's grandson and Paris mayor's representatives were injured by a mob of fashist thugs and christian-orthodox fundamentalists at Moscow's first gay pride march, and then arrested by the police.
In fraternal unity the violence was called upon by the orthodox church, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the grand mufti of Russia’s Muslims, and Russia’s chief rabbi. Read this article by Peter Thatchell on UK Gay News for a
first hand account of the events, and for background information
Doug Irland's blog and
Scott Long's Moscow diary, published by the Washington Blade.
posted by kolophon at 3:13 PM PST - 54 comments
Utopian Pharmacology. Can safe, sustainable analogues of
MDMA (link to 1914 German patent) be developed? There is an urgent need for non-neurotoxic empathogens and entactogens suitable for lifelong use. Alas no single "magic bullet" yet exists that replicates the subjective effects of MDMA on a long-term basis. Hence most of us are doomed to display the quasi-psychopathic indifference to each other characteristic of the MDMA-naïve state.
posted by three blind mice at 1:29 AM PST - 44 comments
Freelance spying. How and why Rita got into the counterterrorism business, running and publishing
SITE, where she and her researchers mine online sources for intelligence, which they translate and send out by e-mail to a list of about a hundred subscribers.
posted by semmi at 12:10 AM PST - 12 comments
May 26
Why aren't there any
indie video games: "Indie rock fans may prefer somewhat muddy sound over some lushly orchestrated, producer-massaged score; indie film fans may prefer quirky, low-budget titles over big-budget special FX extravaganzas; but in gaming, we have no indie aesthetic, no group of people (of any size at least) who prize independent vision and creativity over production values."
posted by JPowers at 9:20 PM PST - 29 comments
Made most popular to many Americans as the closing song for the Grand Ole Opry programs, Will The Circle Be Unbroken was written in 1907 by Ada Habershon, an intensely religious young woman and acquaintance of
Dwight Moody and
Ira David Sankey. The music was "composed" by
Charles Gabriel, a popular songwriter and composer of the era who is often solely credited with the song, but while he may have put the notes down on paper, the tune itself already existed as the African-American spiritual Glory Glory / Since I Laid My Burden Down. [lots more inside]
posted by luriete at 6:10 PM PST - 18 comments
Today, George Washington University's
National Security Archive has published online the
most comprehensive collection of memoranda of conversations (memcons) involving Henry Kissinger.
Revealed in the collection is the fact that "Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops - even as the war to drive back the Communists dragged on with mounting deaths....[He] told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai: 'If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.' ...[His] comments appear to lend credence to the '
decent interval' theory posed by some historians who said the United States was prepared to see Communists take over Saigon, as long as that happened long enough after a U.S. troop departure to save face."
posted by ericb at 4:10 PM PST - 38 comments
Auden and Christianity "The notion that religious faith and serious thought are mutually exclusive categories always struck Auden as risible and unintelligible. But he would have bristled at an effort to separate out his religious beliefs and restate them as systematic propositions, or examine them independently or thematically, rather than see them as players in his rich and various inner symbolic drama."
posted by vronsky at 4:08 PM PST - 3 comments
In 1875,
Josiah Mason gave a gift to establish a college which was called the Mason Science College (now a part of the
University of Birmingham). Within the terms of the gift to the institutuion, one of the stipulations was that
classics not be taught. Of course at such an institution, the
Founder Day's address was logically given by
Thomas Henry Huxley on the place of Science in Education. Huxley preached the virtues of science and derisively dismissed all value in studying classics, and he wondered whether any rational person would choose to study classics over science. His conclusion was that the only people who would choose a study of classics are those like "that Levite of culture"
Matthew Arnold. Arnold took the
opportunity to respond to his friend. In his reply, Arnold acknowledged that nobody would expect him to engage Huxley in a debate about science, and though he wouldn't presume to take on Huxley in such a debate, he did want to mention something that struck him as he thumbed through
a book of Huxley's
friend. Arnold noted that he was struck by the idea that "our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Arnold acknowledged that he isn't a scientist and therefore doesn't dispute such a claim, but he did want to point out that even if that were true, with regards to this good fellow, there must have been a necessity in him that inclined him to Greek. And would always incline him to Greek. After all, we got there, didn't we?
posted by dios at 12:25 PM PST - 27 comments
The Zobo! Spanish-American Chess Men! Where can you find these amazing products, including
Sanitary Belt Pads the
Toilet Mask, or a handy
goat harness, at amazing, rockbottom prices? The
Sears, Roebuck Catalog, of course. Everything you could need for the modern American family! They did
houses (
1,
2) even. Starting in 1888 and mostly selling watches, this venerable institution of consumerism spent its first
10 years rapidly growing and adding products, lasting for over 100 years before finally folding in 1993. The catalog still stands as a detailed historical document of what the average American would buy to get through life. They make a fun collector's item,
too (1902 available on
CD-ROM as well).
[ This post inspired by the 1902 Sears, Roebuck Catalog blog. ]posted by tweak at 12:18 PM PST - 11 comments
Newsfilter: The US House Committee on the Judiciary today
approved the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act (
HR 5417) in a vote of 20-12, helping to improve the provision of equal network service regardless of who receives it, without added surcharges, along with other antitrust measures. Carriers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon suggest no problem exists that requires this legislative solution, despite
pushing their lobbyists hard to get Congress to enact opposing laws, and suggesting that prioritizing network traffic is required to develop newer products, such as
high-definition video. Meanwhile, the FCC continues to encourage
mergers while prices for telecommunications products continue to rise at rates
manyfold higher than inflation, despite price gouging provisions enacted in the
Telecommunications Act of 1996.
posted by Mr. Six at 10:16 AM PST - 13 comments
“You are not to use electronic communication or even land lines when communicating.” Remember the
Millennium Challenge '02 wargames (previously discussed
here)? To refresh your memory, Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper (ret.), playing the part of the enemy, sank half the American fleet using a host of unconventional tactics including using motorcycle messengers to avoid radio interception. The embarrassed Pentagon game masters restarted the game & forced Van Riper to use more conventional tactics that guaranteed a win by the Good Guys.
Well it looks like the Iraqi insurgents have picked up a play from Van Riper's book. Flyers are being distributed throughout Iraq urging fighters to stop using cellphones, landline phones & the Internet for communications because the US Army is intercepting them & tracking down the rebel cells. Score one for
open source warfare. [
via]
posted by scalefree at 7:47 AM PST - 55 comments
Lost in translation. British Comedian Stewart Lee explores comedy in Germany and finds it stymied by the peculiarities of language and sentence construction. Mark Liberman at Language Log
disagrees. And an extended essay by Josh Schonwald explores in greater depth how the
German comedy scene is transitioning (PDF) from the more traditional kabernett to a burgeoning stand-up comedy scene, which is characterized by one observer as being in "the Bob Hope phase of comedy."
posted by madamjujujive at 4:13 AM PST - 72 comments
[Telecom] has used confusion as its chief marketing tool
This
quote from New Zealand's Telecom's CEO is used to set up
this mashupof one of their advertisements. The original had kids praising the company; in this version they're saying they've been shafted. Telecom, naturally, has been
trying ever since to get it off the internet - crying "Copyright!" (mirrors in the
comments here)
posted by slightlybewildered at 2:19 AM PST - 7 comments
May 25
Greensboro Truth & Reconciliation Commission releases its report. On Nov. 3, 1979, in Greensboro, N.C., Klansmen and Nazis fired on Communist Workers Party demonstrators, killing five and wounding 10. The gunmen, though captured on TV-news videotape, were acquitted of all charges in two criminal trials in the early 1980s. Two years ago, a Greensboro Truth & Reconciliation Commission was convened, following the South African model, to look into the case. It posted its report on
its Web site earlier tonight, shedding some additional light on an incident that has divided the city for more than a quarter-century.
posted by lexalexander at 9:00 PM PST - 49 comments
Reggae and ska legend Desmond Dekker
died today in London. In 1968, Dekker's song "Israelites", recorded with his band The Aces, became the first international hit by a Jamaican artist. According to his
official site, the sixty-four-year old Dekker was still touring and booked to perform well into fall 2006.
posted by bcveen at 8:05 PM PST - 82 comments
The
Wingdipper! A "specially designed dipping cup that allows Buffalo Wings to be evenly coated with dressing." Why do chickens hate it? Because "This innovative dipping cup design will only lead to more problems for the entire chicken community. In 2004, the average American consumed over 84 pounds of chicken. Already, Hooters sells 30 million pounds of wings every year! That's a whole lot of chicken." Crumb's right, I'm moving to France.
posted by JPowers at 7:35 PM PST - 38 comments
"We were forced to evacuate the remotely operated vehicle,
'Jason II,' several times to avoid getting it enveloped in volcanic clouds," said Bill Chadwick, ...one of the authors of the study. "But at other times, we could observe the eruption from only 10 feet away - something you could never do on land. So in some ways, we were able to see processes more clearly at the bottom of the ocean than we ever could on land. That was surprising." From
KGW (
bugmenot).
Podcasts, videos, images, sounds, daily logs, and lots of information can be found on
the project's website.
posted by pwb503 at 6:44 PM PST - 5 comments
MEDIA MISTAKES? Byron Calame, public editor of The New York Times, wrote a piece recently about how a faulty Page One story went unchallenged. He notes that despite a questionable premise, the story went uncorrected for a week, and even provoked a piece of art on the Times' op-ed page. Calame's piece gives us a tiny bit of insight into editorial mistakes and correction policies in the media, particularly when challenged from the outside. You get the sense of a behemoth bureaucracy in motion, difficult to head off, harder yet to correct. The Times itself collected some of its more ridiculous errors in its book
Kill Duck Before Serving a few years ago. But less amusing is what law professor Eric Muller found. In early May, he heard Fox News' Judge Andrew Napolitano telling a story meant to illustrate how out of control the federal government's commerce-governing powers have become. Though Muller researched the supposed case Napolitano reported and found nothing in the legal archives, and asked Napolitano for more details,
Napolitano has yet to respond.posted by etaoin at 6:33 PM PST - 23 comments
Let's see if mefites like
Jeff Cooper's list better than
Heinlein's:
What should a young male of 21 know, and what should he be able to do? There are no conclusive answers to those questions, but they are certainly worth asking. A young man should know how this country is run and how it got that way...A young man should be computer literate and, moreover, should know Hemingway from James Joyce. He should know how to drive a car well... He should know how to shoot well. He should know elementary geography, both worldwide and local. He should have a cursory knowledge of both zoology and botany. He should know the fundamentals of agriculture and corporate economy... He should know how to manage a motorcycle. He should be comfortable in at least one foreign language, more if appropriate to his background... These things should be accomplished before a son leaves his father's household.
posted by 445supermag at 5:24 PM PST - 69 comments
Ken Lay guilty on all counts. A jury has found Enron founder Ken Lay guilty on all six counts against him of fraud and conspiracy, with a combined possible penalty of 45 years in prison. Enron CEO Jeff Skilling was found guilty on 19 of 28 counts for conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:14 AM PST - 96 comments
May 24
Taylor Hicks wins American Idol.... It could be something worth talking about given how powerful the show has become: #1 show on television, contributed to over 30 million records (records -- yes records not itunes singles) sold, and a show where Queen, Rod Stewart, and, tonight, TAFKAP (or he could be Prince again) are clamoring to be on it. Moroever, some conventional wisdom seems to support that the show is not karaoeke-izing pop music and instead contributes to it
surprisingly positively. While it might not lead to debates on metafiler, arguments as to what makes a good Idol can be seen
here.posted by skepticallypleased at 8:54 PM PST - 141 comments
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he'll no longer give news conferences for the national media, after a dispute led a number of journalists to walk away from an event when he refused to take their questions.
posted by EarBucket at 5:52 PM PST - 89 comments
I'm a huge fan of clever unintended uses for things, and
loloroy's favorites reuses a page/interface I've seen hundreds of times before in a cute way. It may take a second to figure out, but should be worth it [via
tmn].
posted by mathowie at 2:44 PM PST - 50 comments
Joseph Cornell was enamored with ballerinas and starlets, the subject of many of his celebrated boxes.
"He handed them, personally, to his most loved ballerinas. And they were almost uniformly sent back. He was rejected, laughed at, and, in one unfortunate case, tackled." Anecdotes about Cornell and his muses, via
robot wisdom.
[more]posted by madamjujujive at 3:30 AM PST - 52 comments
Wal-Mart fails in South Korea. As a student of business and a resident of Asia, I am fascinated by the examples of "foreign" businesses who either succeed or fail in Asian markets. Recently,
Vodafone failed in Japan but in a strange twist has signed a
J-V with Softbank to keep their presence in Japan.
eBay failed in Japan as did
Memoirs of a Geisha. I'd love to have a discussion on the successes AND failures of non-Asian businesses in Asian markets and what, if any, lessons can be taken away for those of us who are in Asian markets or wish to enter Asian markets. (Yes, I realize that "Asia" is too broad of a region but I don't want to limit the discussion to just one nation.)
posted by gen at 2:17 AM PST - 43 comments
A WTO victory came last week for the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) industry. HFCS is that
controversial stuff that seemingly
permeates everything in American consumer foods, from Gatorade to cough drops. Mexico had slapped tariffs on HFCS dumping in 1998 but agreed to revoke them in 2007, a move that will expand HFCS outside what is almost exclusively a U.S. market. The industry is quite firm that HFCS is
safe, but there
are some
naysayers.
posted by rolypolyman at 2:15 AM PST - 45 comments
SaveLivesInMay - "I have received information psychically, which is corroborated by scientific data, according to which on
May 25, 2006 a giant tsunami will occur in the Atlantic Ocean, brought about by the impact of a comet fragment which will provoke the eruption of under-sea volcanoes. Waves up to 200 m high will reach coastlines located above and below the Tropic of Cancer."
Are you at risk? Meanwhile,
FEMA just happens to be preoccupied on the
Wrong West Coast.
posted by jahmoon at 12:31 AM PST - 51 comments
May 23
The view (with humour) from two people who serve you drinks. One a cocktail waitress in
Vegas, the other a bartender in
Cincinnati.
posted by tellurian at 6:21 PM PST - 62 comments
Hamza el Din, hailed as "the father of Nubian music," has died. El Din's death has not yet been reported in the news, but I'm told he passed away from complications of brain surgery. It's a great loss for music lovers all over the world. "Escalay,"
performed on
oud with the Kronos Quartet on their album
Pieces of Africa, is probably his best-known work, but "Ollin Arageed," his haunting piece for handclaps and
tar -- a goatskin drum -- was
played numerous times onstage with the Grateful Dead, who championed el Din's music and
jammed with him at the Great Pyramid in 1978.
Eclipse provides an excellent introduction to his work, the ethereal sounds of one of the oldest continuously-inhabited regions on the planet. In the 1960s, el Din's own home village in Egypt was drowned underwater by the construction of the Aswan Dam, as archeologists tried to
save what they could.
posted by digaman at 1:38 PM PST - 21 comments
Chronon is yet another new, incredibly charming,
Eyezmaze puzzle game from On, that
GROW guy. It is along similar lines, but while in GROW the arrow of time is firmly fixed in the forward direction, here you can flip back and forth between different times whenever you want.
Despite this, the game is quite a bit more difficult than GROW (especially if you want the maximum score - keep going after the little guy escapes from his cage!), and it's very new so there may still be a few bugs, but it's immensely satisfying to solve!
posted by JHarris at 12:24 PM PST - 25 comments
Sexual ornaments grow out of all proportion It seems that men will be men throughout the animal kindom, not just our little lonely corner of of it.
Most body parts grow proportionally with the rest of the body as individuals of a species become larger, although scientists have long known that visual cues of reproductive prowess are a special case.
But is this the case with
everyone?
posted by pezdacanuck at 9:31 AM PST - 41 comments
May 22
"We wired the Ho Chi Minh Trail like a drugstore pinball machine and plugged into it every night." From 1965 to 1975, telemetry from thousands of microphones hidden in remote Vietnam jungles were fed to a massive data processing center in Thailand, where an
IBM System/360 [wiki] mapped real-time Vietcong movements to display terminals. The
details of Project Igloo White remained compartmentalized and highly classified until only several years ago.
posted by rolypolyman at 10:37 PM PST - 33 comments
Promoted Above Accountability Two years after news of torture at Abu Ghraib broke, the Bush Administration still will not hold decision makers accountable. Investigations into the incidents have focused almost exclusively on enlisted personnel.
posted by expriest at 2:23 PM PST - 28 comments
Radiating Places. Twenty years after the Chernobyl disaster, seven artists from Moscow, Minsk, and Berlin travelled to the desolate, restricted area to commemorate the catastrophe.
posted by Gamblor at 8:43 AM PST - 17 comments
Wired News has obtained a copy of a file detailing AT&T's involvement with the NSA that was sealed in the EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T. At 2AM EST this morning they have
published that file on their site for anyone to download
(this is the fixed link, the one on Wired is currently broken).
[via]posted by Ryvar at 5:24 AM PST - 67 comments
May 21
This evening, I entertained myself with these clips from YouTube and Google Video.
Come inside if you like Bette Davis, Charles Laughton, Kubrick, Frankenstein, Shakespeare, and company...
posted by grumblebee at 7:38 PM PST - 46 comments
In the competition for best streaker ever, I'm torn between
this choice, which gets points for the impact the streak has on the news reporter, &
this one, which has the added bonus of unlikely athleticism. Both links go to embedded video, both found via
this page, which details the revised rules of streaking).
posted by jonson at 4:23 PM PST - 26 comments
When I Came Home: Iraq War veteran Herold Noel suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and lives out of his car in Brooklyn. Using Noel's story as a fulcrum, this doc examines the wider issue of homeless U.S. military veterans-from Vietnam to Iraq-who have to fight tooth-and-nail to receive the benefits promised to them by their government.
posted by riley370 at 10:29 AM PST - 45 comments
Backward Movies. When you play a movie backwards, what you get is not creepy messages, but rather a new movie. For example:
Titanic
An enormous iron ship surges up from the vast depths of the ocean in order to save a large number of people who are inexplicably, and somewhat foolishly, floundering in the water near an iceburg. It then kindly takes them back to Southampton.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 8:56 AM PST - 56 comments
Discovering Chylum: Swarthmore Professor David Harrison traveled to Siberia to learn about
Chulym, a previously
undiscovered local language that reflects its population's culture of hunting, animastic belief system, and bear worship. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 6:36 AM PST - 17 comments
May 20
"The sound was not of this world, it hovered in space like some celestial blessing". He could play the piano ”before he had learned to smile”, his mother said, and he gave his first concert at the age of six. He studied under
Alfred Cortot,
Charles Munch,
Paul Dukas, and
Nadia Boulanger. He was an esteemed teacher and critic at 19, an international phenomenon at 24. He escaped from his native Rumania to Switzerland in 1943 with his fiancée, a joint capital of five Swiss francs in their pockets. After the war, just as he had arrived in the pantheon of great performing artists,
Dinu Lipatti was diagnosed with leukemia. In September 1950, near death, despite the urgings of his doctors Lipatti insisted upon
one last recital at Besançon. As his wife recalled,
this was the only way Lipatti could bear to take his leave of the world. Lipatti was
so weak he could barely walk to the piano. But once he began playing, he became transformed.
After performing 13 waltzes, he could no longer muster the strength necessary to perform the final selection. So he substituted
Myra Hess's piano arrangement of Bach's 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".
(page with sound). Three months later,
Lipatti died at the age of 33. After Lipatti's funeral, his old mentor Cortot wrote: "There was nothing to teach you. One could, in fact, only learn from you."
posted by matteo at 11:14 AM PST - 15 comments
"Every war becomes a proving ground for new tactics and new technologies." ... "...The Pentagon began this war believing its new, networked technologies would help make U.S. ground forces practically unstoppable in Iraq. ... But now, more than three years into sectarian conflict and a violent insurgency that has cost nearly 2,400 American lives, an investigation of the current state of network-centric warfare reveals that frontline troops have a critical need for networked gear—gear that hasn’t come yet. " [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 3:18 AM PST - 26 comments
the origin of fun bags. The age old question of where breasts came from
may have finally been answered!
[boobs] first evolved as an immunoprotective gland that produced bacteriocidal secretions to protect the skin and secondarily eggs and infants, and that lactation is a highly derived kind of inflammation response. [...] Milk is actually a kind of anti-microbial snot mixed in with a lot of fat and sugar.
All vertebrates have an innate immune system consisting of molecules which are hostile to microbes. It appears that the nutritional content of the milk is a product of mutation and repurposing of these immunological molecules! Xanthine oxidoreductase, which produces natural preservatives and disinfectants is also responsible for the essential role of encapsulating fat droplets which promotes suspension in water. Lactose (sugar) "requires a specific synthetic complex consisting of β-1,4 galactosyltransferase and α-lactalbumin for its production." As it turns out, α-lactalbumin is a modified (mutated) version of an awesome little molecule that literally skins bacteria alive - lysozyme!
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 2:49 AM PST - 127 comments
MacSaber! Turn Your Mac Into a Jedi Weapon. I cannot explain how much fun I had slashing co-workers with a laptop today.
Be careful not too get too excited. You don't want to lose your grasp on the MacBook or shake so hard you damage the hard drive. Great to try once. Or in my case, 20 minutes straight.
posted by jragon at 12:37 AM PST - 30 comments
May 19
Canada's National Post says "Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims." (
Sound familiar?)
CTV says "Prime Minister Stephen Harper says news reports that Iran could require Jews and Christians to wear coloured labels in public might be true." Hmm...might be true?
Montreal's AM 940 says "But independent reporter Meir Javedanfar [who runs
a Middle East analysis site], an Israeli Middle East expert who was born and raised in Tehran, says the report is false." Which is it: truth or fiction? And if it's fiction, is it a malicious disinformation campaign or just incompetent journalism?
Malcompetence?
posted by scottreynen at 1:37 PM PST - 60 comments
Michael Massing on the Israel lobby and the controversy over the
Mearsheimer/Walt article. Massing describes the article as having "serious shortcomings"; the reaction to the article as "hysterical"; and he provides evidence that "on their central point—the power of the Israel lobby and the negative effect it has had on US policy—Mearsheimer and Walt are entirely correct." He summarizes AIPAC's goals: "... to keep Israel strong, the Palestinians weak, and the United States from exerting pressure on Israel."
Earlier article on the Israel lobby by Massing. Also:
Mearsheimer and Walt respond to their critics.
posted by russilwvong at 9:55 AM PST - 75 comments
Forever Pregnant. The
CDC has released guidelines for improving the "preconception health" of all women of childbearing age whether they plan to have children or not. From the the WaPo article:
"among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control." So ladies, don't even think of touching the
litter box. You know, just in case.
posted by kimdog at 9:18 AM PST - 121 comments
CIA vet Michael Scheuer: "I think Iraq is finished. We’ll just find a way to get out. I frankly don’t think we ever intended to win there."
And: "As a professional intelligence officer, the last people you want to report to are generals and diplomats. And if General Hayden comes to the CIA, we’ll have Mr. Negroponte [a career diplomat] as head of the community, and a general as the head of the CIA."
posted by js003 at 8:08 AM PST - 48 comments
Evolution just won't go away. New evidence suggests the development of the human
embryo mirrors our species' course of evolution.
This guy seems to be stirring up all kinds of trouble these days. It makes me wonder: does this new information help determine
the quality of being human? From the link: "Another supposed vagary produced by the abortion issue is the question as to when the embryo or fetus becomes human. Rivers Singleton, Jr. states in his article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, that, for some, conception defines the point of being human, whereas, for others, various periods of development suffice to '
distinguish human from non-humans.'"
posted by narwhal at 6:53 AM PST - 41 comments
May 18
"...this clip of a Japanese show called Gaki No Tsukai stands out not for what it includes, but for what it lacks - talking and screaming. It takes place in a studio made up like a library, with the participants (including Kickboxing champion Ernesto Hoost) stifling their laughter, screams of pain and retching noises, just like any student did in their own junior high school library." [youtube video, text shamelessly lifted from wfmu]posted by Armitage Shanks at 2:54 PM PST - 25 comments
"And And God created man, for because I have blessed him. And Noah begat Methuselah three wives of it, and to thee nothing but dust shalt say, This is evil continually." What happens when you put a million monkeys at a million typewriters? You get the
Markov Bible! After a million years, that is.
posted by tweak at 2:53 PM PST - 17 comments
Guerilla Gardening is a movement to make public spaces more attractive, by planting in derelict or unattractive public ground. Founder Richard Reynolds has enlisted the help of people similarly dedicated to beautifying public space in UK urban areas, and the movement has inspired
other groups. For people who don't want to dig holes in the ground or get their hands messy, there are instructions for
seed-and-run scenarios. Apparently, even the
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are in on the act.
posted by darsh at 2:22 PM PST - 11 comments
Email used to be the ultimate application of the Internet, and there are still some interesting artifacts of that left behind today: As a source of randomness
Email Roulette (which we've
seen before) is my favorite application of email.
TPC Remote Printing Service, a free mail-to-fax gateway, is pretty useful in a pinch and is something of an Old Internet institution with a history predating the web. Nearly as venerable is the more frivolous
Internet Pizza Server from the days when the very idea of making a purchase over the Internet was funny, and the idea of
browsing the web via email didn't seem so peculiar as it does today.
posted by majick at 10:30 AM PST - 12 comments
CO2: We Call it Life. Actual ads being run by the "Competitive Enterprise Institute," heavily funded by oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil, to counter the growing concerns about global warming and carbon dioxide emissions.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 10:13 AM PST - 51 comments
Amazon S3, now for the masses. Amazon S3 has been discussed
previously, but
several user-facing services have appeared in the last few weeks that allow ordinary non-programmer end users to take advantage of it. One of the most useful of these appears to be
Jungle Disk, a free front-end (free beer!) that lets you use S3 as a webdav-mounted disk drive. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and there's GPL code available (free speech!) that lets other people develop alternative compatible front-ends.
posted by dmd at 9:53 AM PST - 29 comments
Another blogger gets fired for blogging. Blogebrity is reporting that the latest victim is Jessa Jeffries whose blog
Jessaisms got her booted. But mysteriously there is no explaination on her blog as to what her offense was and a
cached version reveals nothing negative to her workplace or any illegalities. Unless of course they stumbled across some of her anti-Bush rants or pictures of Lindsay Lohan's breasts. Is
that now termination-worthy? Furthermore her now-former employer is demanding that not just her offending posts be removed, but her entire blog. How is that possible? The blog is due to disappear at noon today.
posted by tsarfan at 1:00 AM PST - 215 comments
May 17
Please, allow me to introduce you to
Detroit Techno. Artist Derrick May once described it as "George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator." Despite being virtually unknown in the United States, this genre has achieved global popularity. Noteworthy artists include
Carl Craig, Sean Deason, Stacey Pullen,
Jeff Mills,
Underground Resistance, DJ Assault, Moodymann, and
Kevin Saunderson (among others). From May 27th-29th the city of Detroit will launch a huge
electronic music festival . It isn't something you see everyday in the U.S., so check it out. Here are some
o t h e r links.
posted by j-urb at 11:52 PM PST - 45 comments
The Australian cigarette health warnings have pretty much filtered down to every retail packet that's bought now.
They're pretty gruesome and some smoking acquaintances cover them up with stickers. I thought I'd have a look around and see what other countries warnings were like. None of them were pulling any punches except for Uruguay.
posted by tellurian at 7:21 PM PST - 118 comments
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1861-1960.
Foreign Relations volumes contain documents from Presidential libraries, Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, and other foreign affairs agencies as well as the private papers of individuals involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy. In general, the editors choose documentation that illuminates policy formulation and major aspects and repercussions of its execution. This enormous collection of documents is now available online at the
University of Wisconsin. Example: Kennan's
Long Telegram, February 22, 1946. Some additional volumes are also available online from the
State Department.
Via Curt Cardwell, on H-DIPLO.posted by russilwvong at 6:34 PM PST - 8 comments
"many far-left thinkers believe the white power structure that controls America is bad, so a drastic change is needed." O'Reilly continued: "According to the lefty zealots, the white Christians who hold power must be swept out by a new multicultural tide, a rainbow coalition, if you will."
Then there's John Gibson's call for more white babiesposted by delmoi at 5:50 PM PST - 115 comments
Bonofilter: Yesterday, May 16, U2 front-man Bono was a guest "editor" for the UK newspaper
The Independent. Called the
"RED Edition," half of this issue's proceeds went "to help fight HIV and AIDS among women and children in Africa." Highlights included US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice offering her take on
"The Ten Best Musical Works" and an
interview with Eddie Izzard on immigration in Europe. Is there a downside to celebrity editing, or is it a win-win-win for Bono, The Independent, and some people in need?
posted by bardic at 3:06 PM PST - 33 comments
Loving v. Missouri: In February, Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit because they have three children and are not married.
"This ordinance is outdated. We are a family," says Shelltrack, 31. "There's a mom, there's a dad, there's three children. We are a family." Whether Shelltrack, a stay-at-home mom, and Loving, 33, who works for a payroll-administration company, are married "should not be anybody's business, if I pay my taxes, if I'm able to buy the house,"
she says.
posted by dash_slot- at 2:36 PM PST - 50 comments
The days of
needing to remember several telephone numbers, numerous VOIP or
instant message identities and other points of
contact for our social and professional networks are over.
posted by airguitar at 2:26 PM PST - 20 comments
Find your celebrity dopelganger. MyHeritage is
another site that uses face recognition on photos you upload, but the slick interface in this demo matches you up with one of 3,200 celebrities from the past two centuries which you (supposedly) resemble. You can upload photos with multiple people in them as well, and it will identify all the faces in the shot. I can't vouch for accuracy, but it is entertaining.
[Registration required. Try username: metafilter@metafilter.com; pass: metafilter. The site does not appear to save photos that you have uploaded as part of the demo.]posted by blahblahblah at 11:02 AM PST - 109 comments
He's so penetrating that even I sometimes can't look, because it's so painful. He brings tremendous pain into his vision, and he makes you very aware of what you're looking at.
Don Mc
Cullin thinks that
Eugene Richards is "possibly the best walking, living
photographer in the world". Richards, who has recently been working on the
War Is Personal project for
The Nation Institute, has
just joined
Alexandra
Boulat, Ron
Haviv, Gary
Knight, Antonin
Kratochvil,
Christopher Morris, James
Nachtwey, John
Stanmeyer, Lauren
Greenfield and Joachim
Ladefoged (their portraits are
here) in the
VII collective. More inside.
posted by matteo at 8:33 AM PST - 18 comments
FRANK R. PAUL: At a time when most Americans didn't even have a telephone, he was painting space stations, robots and aliens from other planets... he was the guest of honor at the first world science fiction convention, and he was the first person to ever make a living drawing spaceships.
What could be cooler than that?
via the one and only BLDBLOG, with an interesting take on the subject.posted by signal at 5:12 AM PST - 19 comments
Injunctions in patent cases not automatic. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a
unanimous decision (16 page pdf) on Monday in the dispute between eBay and MercExchange. The Court ruled in favor of eBay finding that the lower Appeals Court erred as a matter of law in creating a general rule that “courts will issue permanent injunctions against patent infringement absent exceptional circumstances.” In the concurring opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Scalia and Ginsberg, Roberts citing Court precedent noted that: “[d]iscretion is not whim, and limiting discretion according to legal standards helps promote the basic principle of justice that like cases should be decided alike.”
posted by three blind mice at 12:01 AM PST - 25 comments
May 16
A9 Maps now combines Amazon's BlockView images in another ajax map interface (with the maps by Mapquest, interestingly). Amazon has been driving around major cities taking photos of each block and now as you browse the map, street-level images come up alongside. The interface isn't quite intuitive, but it is nice to see the
idea coming together.
posted by pithy comment at 8:25 PM PST - 17 comments
Water Power (embedded video). Inventor creates a hydrogen-powered vehicle that can run completely on water, or rather HHO. This is perhaps nothing new (or is it?), but fasinating nonetheless. Warning: annoying local news reportage.
posted by zardoz at 7:17 PM PST - 43 comments
A growing crop of towers pushing 2,000 feet: though just shy itself, the
much-redesigned Freedom Tower is finally under construction for completion in 2011; but there is also the
stunning Fordham Spire,
approved in Chicago, that will rise to 2,000 feet by 2010. Moscow is planning
the tallest tower in Europe, while there are a number of
sightseeing and
radio towers under construction in Asia. In Dubai, two towers under construction (
despite worker protests) are
racing to be the world's tallest, both are keeping their final heights secret, but will likely be over half a mile in height -- the
Burj Dubai and the
Al Burj. As
previously discussed, there are great illustrations comparing buildings both
built and
under construction. Bring on Frank Lloyd Wright's
The Illinois!
posted by blahblahblah at 8:23 AM PST - 63 comments
May 15
bomb sniffing flowers. Danish, Canadian and U.S. scientists are closing in on a genetically engineered plant that will send up a floral signal: “DANGER—land mines below."
Scientists in Denmark have been tinkering with
Arabidopsis thaliana [...] to produce a plant [that] will turn a warning red whenever close to a land mine.” Arabidopsis can be genetically sensitized to the nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) that leaches from buried explosives.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 1:41 AM PST - 29 comments
May 14
A9 gets MS? Amazon's search tool / portal, formerly powered by Google, is now using Microsoft's
Windows Live search service. I first noticed when my image results went missing (which sucks, but I still use it for the
incentive program). Does this mean MS is shifting out of the half-assery phase of its search strategy? What happens when its
adCenter keyword program opens up? [
commentary]
posted by grobstein at 11:42 AM PST - 10 comments
BBC interviews news editor regarding the Apple/Beatles verdict. Only one problem: the gentleman in the hotseat was the news editor's driver. Hilarity ensues. (video of the interview
here - the driver's expression when he realizes he's been mistaken is priceless.)
posted by aberrant at 8:35 AM PST - 79 comments
In the face of the overwhelming problems in this country,
President Al Gore took the time last night to appear before the country on NBC and address each issue with the American people.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 5:40 AM PST - 108 comments
Storm Warning. Seems like Iran has already started flexing it's economic muscles-haven't seen it reported that widely anywhere else, but these
two events seem to be connected. Then again, maybe I've been spending too much time reading
itulip.
posted by jaksoul at 5:27 AM PST - 35 comments
May 13
A memorial ride is taking place tomorrow in New York City in memory of a fourteen-year-old boy who was rundown on his bike last year.
This man is responsible for the death and there are many
unanswered questions. No charges have been filed, but what is more disturbing is the
lack of remorse from the young man who was responsible for this tragedy.
posted by jennababy at 7:52 PM PST - 73 comments
Chef Kazuki Yamamoto will cook just about anything. Casting aside all concern for the law, he prepares exotic dishes for celebrities and the ultra-rich. No species is off limits; his dishes have included penguin, walrus, whale, seal, dolphin, hippo, rhino, sea lion, chimpanzee, gorilla, monkey, brown bear, gazelle, giraffe, zebra, mountain lion, sea turtle, gila monster, ferruginous pygmy owl, bighorn sheep, Bichon Frise, and (it is claimed) human.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:00 PM PST - 44 comments
She had been sitting in her arm-chair, telling us a long, beautiful tale; and when it was finished, she said she was tired, and leaned her head back to sleep awhile. We could hear her gentle breathing as she slept; gradually it became quieter and calmer, and on her countenance beamed happiness and peace. It was as if lighted up with a ray of sunshine. She smiled once more, and then people said she was dead. [
In honor and memory of our mothers.]
Tons of
stories by Hans Christian Andersen, from the main site
Aesop Fables, and other cool stuff like
"The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" by L. Frank Baum.
posted by sluglicker at 6:35 PM PST - 5 comments
Cheney Pushed U.S. to Widen Eavesdropping In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials.
posted by Postroad at 11:35 AM PST - 62 comments
Searchable database of >120,000, reasonably high-resolution editorial cartooons. Mainly from the UK, and from the last 100 years. Search by person depicted (e.g.,
Thatcher,
Gorbachev,
Thatcher and Gorbachev); by year (e.g., Hitler and Stalin in
1941 or
1942), by design elements (e.g., cartoons
referencing sculpture by Rodin, or
cartoons with zebras), by topic (e.g.,
BSE,
Falklands War), by artist (e.g.,
William Hogarth,
L.G. Illingworth,
Carl Giles,
Steve Bell) or by publication outlet (e.g.,
Punch,
Evening Standard (over 10,000 from Evening Standard alone). There is a handy searching wizard as well.
posted by Rumple at 11:01 AM PST - 17 comments
The Open Mind. First Broadcast in May, 1956, The Open Mind is still produced weekly by Richard D. Heffner, host, historian, and University Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers University. These conversations with some of the most creative thinkers of the last half-century are available on the Internet.
posted by semmi at 9:49 AM PST - 1 comments
What’s a dog worth? Los Angeles kills more animals in its shelters than any other metropolitan area in the United States. For that to change, we will have to figure out what to do with the pets none of us want.
posted by PenguinBukkake at 7:06 AM PST - 56 comments
May 12
Video Wombat, dedicated to burrowing through online video sites, snuffling and culling the best and feasting upon the sweet, sweet media.
posted by darkstar at 2:08 PM PST - 11 comments
the questionable super soaker. How did this get past the marketing department? A gun that shoots shots of white slime? The product review on the Anazon site has been deleted and locked after a flood of joke reviews of the toy which exploited its pornographic similarities.
posted by Liquidwolf at 12:09 PM PST - 98 comments
1987 - Siskel and Ebert - Behind the scenes:
Part 1 (28mb),
Part 2 (16mb),
Part 3 (18mb). Each segment is about three to four minutes long. For those of us who grew up with these guys on TV, almost 20 years ago, this is a side you've never dreamed of. Part one ends on a down-note, but parts two and three...worth the watch. (language NSFW)
posted by rougy at 12:01 PM PST - 54 comments
It's possible. The team's board has resigned on the heels of a possible match-fixing scandal (or at least a ref-fixing scandal) during the 2004-2005 season. Other Serie A teams are implicated, as well. Juve is also being probed for bookeeping irregularities (well, it IS an Italian team... that sort of thing is expected).
posted by wfc123 at 8:28 AM PST - 15 comments
Culture Wars: School buses are riddled with sniper bullets, gas lines are cut, windshields broken, and bomb threats disrupt schools daily. Teachers and custodians must remove nails and broken glass from their school parking lots each morning, and several school buildings have been damaged by early morning firebombs and dynamite. One minister has prayed publicly for the deaths of three board members. 'It was simply overwhelming.' Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
(via)posted by Otis at 7:21 AM PST - 27 comments
Black , the final entry in Adidas'
Adicolor short film campaign., is seriously messed up, with a fish and a panda playing russian roulette. Also featuring Pink, Red, Blue, White, and Yellow. (
via)
posted by blue_beetle at 7:18 AM PST - 25 comments
What What: I came across this and offer it to the MeFi community, mostly in the hopes you guys can explain it all to me.
posted by ancientgower at 6:23 AM PST - 12 comments
May 11
RobotFilter: Korea Unveils World's
Second Android (
YouTube),
China manufactures
personal robot,
Japan's
domestic robot,
Why the Japanese want their robots to act
more like humans.
Robot runs
over water,
robotic tentacle (
mpeg),
'baby' robot learns
like a human (avi
1,
2),
Pill-sized
intenstinal robot,
speedy robot,
spider robots.
Lego Unveils
NXT Robotics Toolset, Lego robot
plays Super Mario Bros,
Connect Four,
solves Rubik's Cube.
Building an army of robots,
Big Dog, (
wmv),
Robots break Asimov’s first law. [more inside]
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:06 PM PST - 14 comments
When
a runaway train crashed through the floor in Washington, DC's Union Station back in January 1953, the Pennsylvania Railroad immediately started to cover it up. But this coverup was in all the newspapers: the railroad just built a temporary floor over a locomotive and two railroad cars, because of all the traffic for Eisenhower's inauguration. A few weeks later, the locomotive was retrieved, repaired, and running again, like nothing had ever happened.
Another page includes some pictures (scroll down).
posted by Godbert at 4:58 PM PST - 14 comments
Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man. Direct Google Video link to a fruitcake-tastic half-hour film of "a symposium held at Boston University on November 20, 1972 that explores the implications of the possible existence of extraterrestrial life within the galaxy and the universe. " Well worth scrubbing through for some good moments if you don't have time to watch the whole thing.
Other cool old NASA videos on google video include
Who's Out There?, starring a cigar smoking Orson Welles squinting a lot and reading off the cue cards, and
Debrief: Apollo 8: "Happiness is bacon squares for breakfast".
posted by 6am at 3:49 PM PST - 7 comments
Allen, 24, and Brandon Day, 28, of Dallas, were in Southern California for a financial convention. They got lost Saturday west of Palm Springs after wandering off a trail during what was supposed to be a day hike. [On the third day] they discovered a campsite in a dead-end gorge. Day and Allen were elated, thinking someone there could help them find the way out. But something was wrong. A radio and flashlight were corroded. They realized the place was deserted.
``His last journal entry was one year ago to the day that we found it, which was very eerie,' Day said. ``Nobody knew where he was, nobody knew to come looking for him, so he was preparing for the end. We were looking at the words of a man who was passing.'
The
missing man was
John Donovan, who had disapeared a year earlier while hiking the pacific crest trail.
"Even in his death, he was helping people," Donovan's longtime friend, Chris Hook, said from Richmond, Virginia.posted by 445supermag at 9:12 AM PST - 26 comments
New security glitch found in Diebold system California, Pennsylvania and Iowa are issuing emergency notices to local elections officials, generally telling them to "sequester" their Diebold touch screens and reprogram them with "trusted" software issued by the state capital. Then elections officials are to keep the machines sealed with tamper-resistant tape until Election Day. posted by leapingsheep at 5:15 AM PST - 104 comments
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls. "The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks"
posted by gsb at 4:55 AM PST - 182 comments
May 10
Hungry like the wolf. In his state-of-the-nation address, Vladamir Putin took a swipe at the Bush administration, saying that Russia should build
"a strong, reliable home because we do see what's going on in the world. . . Comrade Wolf knows whom to eat. It's eating without listening to anyone. And by all appearances, it's not going to listen . . . Where is all this pathos about the need to fight for human rights and democracy when it comes to the need to pursue their own interests? Here everything is possible. There are no limits."posted by insomnia_lj at 4:01 PM PST - 25 comments
The Magical Number Seven Psychologist George A. Miller on the human limits for processing and remembering data.
It is a little dramatic to watch a person memorize 40 binary digits in a row without error. posted by Lanark at 11:37 AM PST - 14 comments
Living without Numbers or Time...
The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists. [via aldaily.com]
posted by moonbird at 4:27 AM PST - 43 comments
May 9
Brian Eno is the godfather of electronica, the inventor of ambient music, and producer of the best work by bands like the Talking Heads and U2.
Tchad Blake has helmed the mixing board for Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Soul Coughing and the Bad Plus, to name just a few.
Paul Simon is one of the most recognized names in pop music both for his work with Art Garfunkel and for his fusion of American pop music with African and South American music.
Surprise is the the album they collaborated on, the new Paul Simon record featuring Eno's signature sonic landscapes all over it, and the entire lovely thing, complete with liner notes, is
available to listen to on Simon's website.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:43 PM PST - 69 comments
"The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an anti-child mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome.
We
oppose all forms of contraception." Don't even mention the mind-set behind
a vaccine for HPV.
posted by missbossy at 7:01 PM PST - 1194 comments
Is Stephen Merritt a racist? Sasha Frere-Jones, the
New Yorker's Pop Critic and maybe the finest music critic writing today, has long been an
activist against
rockism.
Stephen Merritt, the gay, white
auteur behind such postmodern pop experiments as
69 Love Songs, and sometime
target of S/FJ's
ire, recently got into hot water with
Jessica Hopper, among others, for allegedly racist comments made at the
EMP Pop Music Conference, which is Christmas and Halloween all rolled into one for music crits and their fellow nerds. Slate's
John Cook defends Merritt, claiming that disliking rap doesn't necessarily make one a racist, and
S/FJ responds with some further thoughts. But was Frere-Jones accusing Merritt of racism, specifically, or simply of
wack unexamined biases? And is that a fair criticism?
Slate's readers don't seem to think so.
posted by maxreax at 4:53 PM PST - 182 comments
Yesterday, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote a letter to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush.
Here it is. (Courtesy Le Monde, 8 page PDF, English.) The letter has been "dismissed by its recipients as a rambling philosophical treatise." (
Times) Further coverage at
NYT and
Le Monde (French). The letter ends 27 years of diplomatic silence.
posted by blacklite at 3:58 PM PST - 95 comments
Nueva Orleans Before Katrina, Hispanics accounted for 3 percent of New Orleans’ population, with just 1,900 Mexicans showing up in the 2004 Census. No one knows for certain how many new ones have arrived, but estimates put the number between 10,000 and 50,000.
posted by ColdChef at 10:35 AM PST - 105 comments
Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. is a liberal arts college and graduate school for the deaf (there's also a
high school and primary school).
In 1988, Gallaudet students protested when a hearing person was chosen as university president, and until today,
I. King Jordan has served. Recently, a new president was chosen--
Dr. Jane K. Fernandes, the school's Provost, who was born deaf but grew up speaking thanks to new therapies and technologies. A varied, vibrant student body never afraid to make their "voices" heard
has spoken (with photos). Last night,
so did a majority of the faculty, but Dr. Fernandes says she will stay.
posted by bardic at 10:14 AM PST - 163 comments
Running nearly a marathon every single day (24 miles) might seem a little crazy. Keep perspective, though: it's all in preparation for running
40 miles a day for
three months straight, across the country. What's more, the guy is 6'5", and will go through roughly 8000 calories a day -- as many in the jaunt as most people eat in an entire year. And then you realize that the whole thing is being done
for charity. Now that takes balls (of your feet).
posted by ajshankar at 1:59 AM PST - 50 comments
May 8
The Daily Kitten No matter how jaded and cynical you are, it is well nigh impossible to visit this site and resist clicking thru at least a few weeks' worth of pictures.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:09 PM PST - 42 comments
We Feel Fine is an art project that finds
sentences from blogs and stitches together a real-time picture of how the web community
is feeling. The default visualization uses a particle system to show the most recent thousand feelings. You can also build your own set based on criteria, such as gender, age, or location. Click the heart menu and go to Mobs to watch the particles
organize in
impressive ways. The
gestalt of the visualization is compelling,
but the details are the best part.
Some sample montages. Also see a related project,
Love Lines, which uses the same
API.
posted by spigoat at 8:16 PM PST - 13 comments
A good rant about "delusional advertising" but if you have 10 minutes to TOTALLY waste, click on the "PLAY" button for Pirelli's amazing(ly silly) short film featuring The Malkovich as a priest using four tires and a cross to fight a demonic Naomi Campbell over the soul of a sports car.
posted by wendell at 12:03 PM PST - 55 comments
15 days ago, there was a relatively small earthquake near Beaconsfield, Tasmania, which left 3 miners trapped in a gold mine. The situation looked grim after the body of
one of the miners was recovered. But after 5 days, there was elation as the other two were found,
still alive, buried one kilometer underground in a small cage. Australia's major commercial networks immediately sent their top news celebrities to the small mining town, assuming there would be a quick and easy rescue. In hindsight, they were perhaps a bit over enthusiastic. Accusations of a
media circus, and
chequebook journalism soon followed. After a couple of days of nothing happening, the media even started
turning on their own.
The story took an unexpectedly sad twist this weekend when one of Australia's most well known journalists
died at the site from an apparent heart attack. But tonight, after 15 days underground, it seems the rescuers are
finally breaking through the rock to
reach the unfortunate trapped miners.
posted by Diag at 9:01 AM PST - 19 comments
Baltimore House is the New Dylan? Probably not, but
Baltimore Club is an interesting sub-genre of dance music, anyway-- taking influences from Hip-Hop, House, Go-Go, Miami Bass, Detroit Ghettotech, Rave and TV theme songs(!) and merging them into a sound that's unique to Charm City's underground dance clubs. You can sample (and buy) some of the classics
here. (warning, horrible web design, IE only) or listen to a whole mix CD here
here. (lyrics NSFW)
posted by empath at 8:48 AM PST - 19 comments
Grant McLennan, of the Australian group The Go-Betweens, has died in his sleep at the age of 48. I just discovered this wonderful band, through the pop masterpiece
16 Lovers Lane. If you haven't discovered them, many
mp3 blogs are paying tribute. (Some discussion in
this Metatalk thread, but I thought this needed an FPP.)
posted by barjo at 8:28 AM PST - 23 comments
The Laurence Hutton Collection Of Life & Death Masks is one of the more fascinating collections of historical artifacts out there, consisting of more than 100 plaster casts of the live and dead faces of the great, near great, and famous figures stretching from the 19th Century all the way back to the 15th.
Laurence Hutton, an author born in New York in 1843, collected these masks all his life, hunting them down in thrift shops, curio shops, private collections and even garbage dumps, and after his death the collection was inherited by Princeton University.
For years the masks sat collecting dust in cardboard boxes, and were available for viewing by appointment only. However, someone recently had the obvious idea to make digital photos of the masks and put them on line, making these riveting portraits available for all to see.
This is a subject that has always fascinated me, for a life mask is the truest portrait we have of many historical personages. I have my own small collection of such masks; a life mask of Beethoven and Chopin, and even Paul McCartney (I am, surprise, a musician.)
posted by Nicholas West at 7:50 AM PST - 29 comments
evolution of cooperation apparently the evolution of cooperative behavior has been something of a rough spot for evolution researchers. Some guys (
Mikhail Burtsev & Peter Turchin) developed a computer simulation that helps to explain how the essential selfishness of survival is not mutually exclusive to altruism and cooperation as well as how these behaviors can arise naturally. (further reading from google:
###)
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 12:43 AM PST - 25 comments
May 7
Monday Flash Fun. In
Mad Shark, you're an angry shark trying to get away from some evil experiments (probably the type mentioned
here). You need to get away fast, but there's a catch! The faster you swim, the quicker you'll run out of strength. But don't worry. There's plenty of fish and scuba divers to eat.
Secondary link in case the first bombs out.
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:09 PM PST - 25 comments
When we last saw
EA Spouse, she was married to an
Electronic Arts employee and she painted a rather unflattering
portrait of EA's programming employment practices. Now at last,
Erin Hoffman's identity has been revealed. She and her husband have found
employment in the field they love and they've established a
website where people in the games industry can discuss the pros and cons of their jobs. Will it be enough to effect permanent change an industry that still has so much
on the line? The recent
EA settlement bodes well at least.
posted by ktoad at 9:54 AM PST - 30 comments
Advanced Animation by Preston Blair, "the best 'how to' book on cartoon animation ever published."
Blair, a Disney and MGM animator, put the book together in 1947 to illustrate the various basic principles of animation, only to have the book pulled from shelves after the rights to use some of the characters were revoked. Animation historian
Jerry Beck has been hunting for a first edition of Blair's landmark book for many years. He finally found a copy and is sharing high-quality scans on the
Animation Archive.
(Archive previously linked in this thread; discovered via this thread.)posted by soiled cowboy at 9:16 AM PST - 11 comments
And so begins the startling adventures of the most sensational strip character of all time : SUPERMAN!posted by crunchland at 6:34 AM PST - 24 comments
May 6
Why We Fight, the BBC documentary from
Eugene Jarecki about the American military-industrial complex and its origins (
trailer@apple). For some reason its up in full at Google Video, so if you didn't get a chance to see it in the theaters, well, here it is! 1hr,40m - save it for later, perhaps. It's named after a
series of war propaganda newsreels, directed by Frank Capra, demonstrating the need to enter WWII. These too are
available on GV, as well as archive.org - to your surprise and delight. And for your convenience: Reels
One,
Two,
Three,
Four, Five parts
1 and
2,
Six, and
Sevenposted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:12 PM PST - 54 comments
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! A computer role playing game based on the Columbine massacre and the event leading up to it in which the player plays the part of the killers. Think it's in poor taste? A Columbine survivor paralyzed from the chest down
disagrees.
posted by juv3nal at 6:44 PM PST - 15 comments
May 5
Fred Phelps' daughter (direct link to wmv) appeared on
Hannity and Colmes to justify
her church's protests at the funerals of American soldiers. Rather than using the show to have a discussion, Hannity and Colmes only berate her and keep her from finishing her sentences. Regardless of how cruel her church's actions are to the families of dead soldiers, it's interesting to see how the anchors steer her away from the issue of homosexuality, especially considering how
vocal they've been on that subject.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 1:32 PM PST - 147 comments
The Song In the world of sports, there is not a more moving moment than the one when the horses step onto the track for the Kentucky Derby post parade and the band strikes up "My Old Kentucky Home". Link has history, lyrics.
My Old Kentucky Home [realplayer]
posted by Postroad at 11:27 AM PST - 14 comments
Happy Beltane! Today, astronomically speaking, is one of the four
Cross-Quarter days, exactly midway between the solstices and equinoxes. To some people, that makes today
the start of summer - after all, why would you begin the season that's supposed to be bright and hot on the day when the only direction to go is darker?
(Yes, I know they say May 1 - the first site I linked to figures out the exact dates and times mathematically, so I'm more inclined to trust it).posted by wanderingmind at 10:53 AM PST - 16 comments
High Dynamic Range Imaging: The
dawn of a new era? In computer graphics and cinematography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI for short) is a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows. quote from HDR Wikipedia pageposted by spock at 9:30 AM PST - 56 comments
Panic -- makers of "Shockingly Good Mac Software" and visually appealing marketing collateral (including their
website) -- have documented the various places their branding has been
honored flatteringly borrowed ripped-off on the internets. My favorite is the site selling one of their original icons for $199, promising "
exclusive ownership." Is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery?
posted by pmbuko at 8:37 AM PST - 27 comments
The Supercharger was a fantastic innovation, but it has its downsides. Volkswagen tried solving them by adding both a Supercharger and a Turbocharger, in their
TSI engines, but this solution is relatively expensive.
Perhaps the new invention by Atonov has merit. Instead of using a standard
Roots supercharger, it uses a more efficient
centrifugal supercharger, and
adding a small two-speed automatic transmission to the loop, ensuring that the engine operates on boost throughout the rev range.
It may not sound like much, but it may change the way superchargers are working forever, allowing smaller engines with higher performance, or adding obscene amounts of power to large engines
posted by SharQ at 8:04 AM PST - 38 comments
May 4
Bruce Peterson has died. Peterson was one of
NASA's top test pilots for the lifting body program,
a wingless aircraft with which
NASA experimented during the sixties. Peterson retired from research flying after he barely survived a spectacular crash of his
M2-F2--after Peterson recovered from an oscillation in which the aircraft rolled uncontrollably from side to side, he changed course to avoid colliding with a rescue helicopter, but a cross wind shifted him to an unmarked area of the lakebed. Peterson fired his landing rockets for additional lift, but the M2-F2 hit the lakebed at 250 mph before the landing gear was fully down and locked, rolled six times, and
came to rest upside down. Peterson survived, but lost sight in his right eye.
You may not have heard of
Bruce Peterson, but you're probably familiar with his crash of the M2-F2, although Peterson didn't appreciate being the inspiration and backstory for another fictitious NASA pilot who was badly hurt and lost an eye when his experimental aircraft crashed.
Here he is.posted by fandango_matt at 5:14 AM PST - 17 comments
A nightvision camera you phone up This seems to be a wireless CCTV camera that you phone up with your mobile and watch what is going on. It says it works in the dark. Now what would anybody use that for? As you dial it I guess it has it's own sim. "Pupillo", err horrid name.
posted by priorpark17 at 2:28 AM PST - 4 comments
Fox pussies out. Recently a bill passed in mexico
legalizing all drugs under certain specified quantities. The bill was promoted By Vincente Fox's party, and came from his offices. However he decided not to sign it under U.S. pressure.
There go my vacation plans.
posted by Paris Hilton at 1:06 AM PST - 57 comments
May 3
Flora Brasiliensis [flash needed] was published between 1840 and 1906. It contains taxonomic treatments of 22,767 species of Brazilian flora. The beauty of the illustrations and the level of detail you can magnify to is magnificent (sorry, direct linking to example images is not possible but trust me, go and have a look).
posted by tellurian at 10:47 PM PST - 9 comments
Manlyweb.com -- One Real Damn Manly Site.
We set out to create a web site for real men. Men who do their own engine work. Men who don't just read it for the articles. Men who know that good whiskey doesn't need to be mixed with anything, except maybe an ice cube or two.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:56 PM PST - 79 comments
No Death Sentence for '20th Skyjacker' Moussaoui (he Newsfiltered), and as he was led from the courtroom, the defendant, who had looked for the last few weeks like he was campaigning for martyrdom, clapped his hands and said “America, you lost. I won.” (I had severely underestimated this character's skill at Political Theater) In spite of the final spit-in-the-face-of-the-US,
MSNBC.com's Unscientific Instapoll has 51% saying it was the right decision, while
CNN.com's Poll says 63%, and Foxnews.com's poll... is about tax cuts.
Disclaimer: Yes, I do some writing for the Entertainment section at MSNBC.com, but the News department does not know I exist and doesn't want to. And newssite instapolls are so-o-o Web 1.0, I know, but still, what's with the non-outrage?posted by wendell at 2:54 PM PST - 76 comments
Sad -- such a sweet-looking kid, the smile on the face of a future suicide.
Sad -- "If she only knew then how things would turn out…"
Sad -- "I chose to kill her."
Sad -- "You could see her personality break through the coma." Life is
dukkha, said the Buddha -- a Pali term that means something like "suffering" or "the incapability of satisfaction." (Or as Mick Jagger put it, "I can't get no...")
Here's the tangible evidence.
posted by digaman at 11:02 AM PST - 39 comments
My mother is very worried. ExxonMobil moved in and helped Bolivia
develop, she says. Now they have food and medicine, thanks to the kindly hand of Big Business. But
now Bolivia's
kicking them out. After Exxon spent 3 billion dollars helping them! What will happen to the next poor country that needs Exxon's
help?
posted by redsparkler at 9:56 AM PST - 110 comments
May 2
Bush administration signals intent to invoke the obscure
state secrets privilege in order to stop the
EFF lawsuit against
AT&T, (previously discussed
here) for providing the NSA direct access
all 312 terabytes of its customers' telephone and internet traffic since 2001, (including those Good Vibrations charges you racked up).
In a nutshell, according to legal experts, invoking the privilege kills the judicial process dead: the courthouse doors are closed, and there's nothing but grownup stuff to see here; move along, kids.
posted by squirrel at 7:47 PM PST - 51 comments
Flash for cash If you contribute to her campaign Loretta Nall is going to show you the biggest boobs in Alabama politics.
posted by nyxxxx at 6:27 PM PST - 28 comments
Bottled water for dogs. For the malnourished or dehydrated pooch. I might be mistaken, but isn't this in Revelations as one of the portents of the apocalypse?
posted by howfar at 5:05 PM PST - 28 comments
Following the Money "Millions of dollars contributed by a handful of donors have allowed a small network of theologically conservative individuals and organizations to mount a global campaign that has destabilized the Episcopal Church and may break up the Anglican Communion."
Yesterday, in anticipation of the upcoming
General Convention, the Diocese of Washington released a report on the influence people like
Howard Ahmanson Jr and other wealthy conservatives have had on the Episcopal Church, especially in regards to the church's positions on
gays and lesbians.
posted by Biblio at 2:26 PM PST - 22 comments
...Yet set against contemporary values of transparency and accountability, the Nixon-Meir deal of 1969 is now a striking and burdensome anomaly. Not only is Israel's nuclear posture of taboo and total secrecy anachronistic, it is inconsistent with, and costly to, the tenets of modern liberal democracy. At home and abroad Israel needs a better way to handle its nuclear affairs. The deal is also burdensome for the United States, not only because it is inconsistent with U.S. values of openness and accountability, but also because it provokes claims about double standards in its nuclear nonproliferation policy.
Israel crosses the thresholdShorter version:
The Untold Story of Israel's Bombposted by y2karl at 7:23 AM PST - 83 comments
May 1
One minute long video of bullets passing through objects in super slow motion. The best part is, from the looks of it, some of these objects
totally needed shooting.
(link goes to embedded wmv)posted by jonson at 11:21 PM PST - 33 comments
Mickey Jupp, the Father of Pub Rock and England's answer to Chuck Berry. Why havent Americans heard of him? As alluded to in the great song "You'll Never Get me Up (in one of Those)" Mickey did not like the thought of flying.
Collaborated with Rockpile , Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, (who covered his "Switchboard Susan"
Lowe's Labour of Lust is commanding in
excess of $100 on
Amazon, and Jupp's early 70's band, Legend, who sound like Bad Company command in excess of $70 frequently on Ebay. Good stuff for real rock and roll lovers ...
Personell on Juppanese: Mickey Jupp,
Dave Edmunds,
Billy Bremner,
Nick Lowe,
Terry Willi,
Gary Brooker,
Bruce Lynch ,
Chris Spedding,
Dave Mattacks,
posted by celerystick at 8:40 PM PST - 12 comments
Remember Napster? Well, it's returned to its roots and is
once again offering free music via a revamped
ad based web-site. But according to their
FAQ, you can only listen to any given song up to 5 times before you'll be asked to pay for it. Even though this equates to roughly 10 million free plays, in an age where BitTorrent is king, will this pay off for the company? Some say
no, as the catches that come with this new system are just too many. But (for the moment at least) the share market is saying
yes.
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:17 PM PST - 38 comments
Their view is that psyops can be directed toward global transregional audiences. My view is that that’s not possible because it directs psyops against our own friends and allies and even at our own public. ... In Mind Games, Columbia Journalism Review thoroughly examines the disintegrating lines between Public Affairs, Psy-Ops, IO, the public, and the truth. Some old friends are mentioned too: the
Lincoln Group, the
Rendon Group, the Pentagon, our own media, and others.
If truth is our greatest weapon, as Rumsfeld has said, how can the administration hope to prevail in an information war when it is not honest with itself?posted by amberglow at 4:53 PM PST - 21 comments
KCDX: Five years of non-stop rock. "
There is no discipline at KCDX, where the song choices are as chaotic as a schoolyard at recess... The signal, which started broadcasting throughout central Arizona and much of Phoenix in 2002, played an eclectic mix that included hits by Huey Lewis and the News and an obscure 1971 tune about cannibalism by the Buoys. There were no commercials, no DJs, no way the station made money."
posted by rkent at 11:44 AM PST - 29 comments
Maid for a Month. On February 1, Ontario raised its minimum wage from $7.45 to $7.75 per hour. Well-known Toronto
Globe and Mail writer Jan Wong: "I thought the best way to tell the story of that 30-cent raise was to work — and live — at the bottom of the food chain. I would find a low-paying job, a low-rent apartment and, single-mom-like, take
my boys with me for the month and see how we survived."
posted by russilwvong at 10:34 AM PST - 151 comments
Do you ever get the calling to witness to atheists but don't respond because you don't know how to start? Have you ever tried, but got pulled around from one point to the next spending hours getting nowhere? Are you just too chicken to do it? Well fret no more - help is here!
The Chat-O-Matic is specifically designed to get you started on the right foot when debating skeptics on the Christian faith. It will also help you obey Jesus' command in not throwing your pearls before swine.
(An Atheist Witnessing Tool for the rest of us)posted by youarenothere at 10:09 AM PST - 88 comments
Tunnel Runners drive convoys of very expensive sports cars very slowly through tunnels under London. It's the acoustics.
posted by carter at 10:07 AM PST - 32 comments
North by South : web content on the Great Migration, the result of a six-year, NEH-funded collaboration between Kenyon College and K-12 students in Ohio and various Southern communities.
posted by Miko at 9:56 AM PST - 3 comments
Mission Accomplished? Then why is there even more outrage?
Last year, celebration and theatre dominated the day.. This year it's
different. This is also the 120th anniversary of the
Haymarket Riots resulting in four anarchists being hanged. Interestingly enough, the riots happened because of workers rights being unfair. Is this a case of history repeating itself?
posted by wheelieman at 6:59 AM PST - 8 comments
