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June 2006 Archives
June 30
Burned: a photoset on Flickr "In 2001 I met a burn survivor who allowed me to photograph her. She told me that she wanted to be photographed so that people could stare at her without feeling embarrassed. It was such an extraordinary experience that a few months later I flew to a burn conference and set up a makeshift studio in a hotel room, and asked people to let me know if they would like their portraits made. I was astonished at how many people did. What I learned from this extraordinary experience was that every burn survivor has a tale of courage to tell, and that the burns have their own eerie beauty." Amazing, unsettling, inspiring.
posted by mathowie at 6:39 PM PST - 48 comments
Who are the jihadists? Marc Sageman on the
global Salafi jihad: its goals, its history, who the jihadists are, how they're drawn to the jihad, how the movement is organized. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 2:28 PM PST - 38 comments
"The Death of Zarqawi", a computer game which simulates the raid that sent Zarqawi to his 72 virgins. "Created within two weeks of the real-life bombing, the episode allows gamers to join the U.S.-led coalition stationed just outside the house where al-Zarqawi is meeting with other insurgent leaders and choose between two strategies of attack: calling-in the real-life air strike that killed Zarqawi, or an alternate on-foot ambush which involves storming the guarded house and attempting to capture the terrorist leader alive."
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:25 PM PST - 72 comments
Polluting the blogosphere businessweek is writing about a new company that is basically paying bloggers to write about products --- disclosure is optional...
congratulations marketers --- you ruin everything
posted by bliss322 at 9:05 AM PST - 44 comments
June 29
Alexander Calder's Circus. A movie by
Carlos Vilardebo, in four parts:
one two,
three,
four, [YouTube]. Calder developed his own one-man circus, with tiny performers made of "cork, wire, wood, yarn, paper, string, and cloth," carefully engineered to walk tightropes, dance, tame lions, lift weights, and engage in gymnastics and acrobatics in and above the ring. Acting as omniscient ringmaster, Calder would manipulate the wire performers while his wife wound circus music on the gramophone in the background.
via [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:09 PM PST - 17 comments
Texas Riparian Law I found this intriguing because I 1) live in Texas, 2) have walked many Texas creekbottoms, 3) have a lot of lawyer friends, and 4) as an English major, find the language somehow beautiful.
posted by rleamon at 8:10 PM PST - 25 comments
"When humans were busy fighting each other, the Ants had begun their preparations to take over the planet. Six feet tall, they had emerged from their hideouts in the Andes Mountain and had begun their assault in the year 7757."
-
Science Fiction in Bengal from 1882-1961 [
via]
posted by brundlefly at 4:54 PM PST - 9 comments
Design. Architecture. Football.
The awe-inspiring sight of the entire Argentina team moving fluidly as if to some pre-ordained ballet was simply Liquid Football. 24 passes throughout 8 of the 10 outfield Argentines, ... was largely improvised in real-time, entirely determined by the context of the opposing team - which cannot be accurately predicted at all.
posted by signal at 3:59 PM PST - 68 comments
Jennifer Holliday's seismic performance of
"And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" from the 1982 Tony Awards
(YouTube link) brought Broadway to its knees. Holliday not only captured the Tony, her recording of the song became a Billboard Top 30 hit. The new
Dreamgirls film, cast with a
who's who of modern music stars, will open this winter. "American Idol" contestant Jennifer Hudson will attempt to fill Holliday's formidable shoes.
posted by hermitosis at 12:02 PM PST - 33 comments
Ava Lowery is a 15 year old master of flash-based propaganda, and burgeoning media sensation. Lowery's clips (especially
this one but also ones like
this and
this (more
here)), have been described as mere facile emotionalism. Others however regard her work as courageous and truthful. She was enlisted to express
the soul of the movement for the recent Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas. One thing's for sure: Lowery's method of story telling leaves traditional media
confused and bewildered.
posted by washburn at 8:22 AM PST - 113 comments
The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled
President Bush overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees. The 5-3 vote (Roberts recused himself) found the "military commissions" illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Convention. More from
SCOTUSblog.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:23 AM PST - 191 comments
Google Checkout is officially unveiled today; the latest service to join the Google
arsenal in their race to control the entire www. It has been suggested
in the news that the Google payment service was also a big factor in the recent Yahoo and eBay partnership, since eBay's Paypal service might finally have some real competition. More info on the service
here.
posted by p3t3 at 6:29 AM PST - 32 comments
June 28
Reverse Color Blindness Test "normal vision humans have a lower degree of color contrast detection in the red spectrum. A colorblind person shouldn't be burdened by that lowered contrast sensitivity and should be able to see the object immediately by picking out the change in contrast at the objects edges" A small oddity that takes but a few seconds of time.
(via The Presurfer)posted by caddis at 8:14 PM PST - 53 comments
David Brooks gets fact-checked by Sasha Issenberg, who finds that Brooks appears to have invented some of his red-state reporting.
... Brooks acknowledges that all he does is present his readers with the familiar and ask them to recognize it. Why, then, has his particular brand of stereotype-peddling met with such success? From April 2004.
Via Brad DeLong.
posted by russilwvong at 3:54 PM PST - 39 comments
Faith In America asks a simple question: Is using religious teachings to deny equal rights to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people any less wrong than using religious teaching to discriminate against people of color, against equality for women or against people of different cultures wanting to marry? (check
their ad campaign too--some great ones) Meanwhile, clueless elected officials
like Barack Obama continue to buy into the GOP lies that all people with faith are conservatives/Republicans, and that Democrats are hostile to people with religious beliefs.
posted by amberglow at 3:40 PM PST - 116 comments
Even after the
bad PR brought about by the new balls used in this year's
World Cup, the NBA announced today (
Draft Day!) a
new official game ball to be used starting next season (
ESPN coverage). The new ball designed by
Spalding is the first official game ball change since 1970 and only the second change in the last 60 years. Vegans will be happy to hear that it's no longer made of leather.
Mark Cuban will surely weigh in with an opinion on this...
posted by pwb503 at 12:55 PM PST - 45 comments
Ever wondered what old amounts of money would be worth today? Or what you could buy with your current salary if you went back 200, 400, or 600 years? Now you can find out with a tool that converts English currency from 1270 onwards into today's prices. Based on Treasury records, it tells you that Mr Darcy's £10,000 a year would now be worth nearly £350,000, or that your house would only have to be worth the equivalent of £500 now to qualify for the vote after 1832.
posted by greycap at 11:56 AM PST - 22 comments
On this day in 1863 ,
George Meade replaced
Joseph Hooker as commanding General of the 100,000 strong
Army of the Potomac, confirming what Meade himself had complained as “the ridiculous appearance we present of changing our generals after each battle.” Earlier in the day,
J.E.B. Stuart and 5000 Confederate cavalry crossed the Potomac
entering Maryland at Rowser’s ford. Stuart's lengthy absence had made him desperate to execute the order given to him by
General Robert E. Lee to “take position on General Ewell’s right, place yourself in communication with him, guard his flank, and keep him informed of the enemy’s movements.” Stuart, whose cavalry was the “eyes and ears” of the 80,000 strong
Army of Northern Virginia (warning: awful music), had been out of touch for several days, leaving General Lee ignorant of the enemy’s movement and position. When Stuart finally caught up with his army at Gettysburg, he had missed the first day and most of the second of
one of the greatest battles in American history.
There are those who say that Stuart violated Lee's orders to him concerning his role for the proposed campaign. Others think that those orders gave him leave to operate as he did. In either case there can be little doubt that his absence from his accustomed place, screening the Army's movements, and scouting its routes, was keenly felt by Lee during the campaign, and played a major part in bringing on the
meeting engagement at Gettysburg.
posted by three blind mice at 5:23 AM PST - 66 comments
June 27
send a hammer is a site that popped up recently to offer something to send a congressman(or woman) to break down the wall that the
send a brick folk want made with their bricks. What a strange conversation the nation is having about immigration!
It's all the talk from the
churches
to the
white supremacists
but ---won't someone think of the
kids!!
How bad is this an issue to tackle in an election year -
don't forget how much
madness can get legislated in the shadow of a heated election
posted by donabean at 8:21 PM PST - 26 comments
While many in the world are glued to the outcomes of the World Cup there is another high-profile international sporting event toiling itself away in the Utah deserts.
Primal Quest, a 417 mile expedition
adventure race consisting of desert trekking, mountain biking,
wilderness navigation, kayaking, and
canyoneering, has a prize-purse of $100,000 and many
professional,
international, and
amateur teams have arrived to compete to be the best endurance athletes in the world. Considered by many to be the successor of
Mark Burnett's Eco-Challenge the Primal Quest has an expected finishing time of 4 days for the winners and 10 days for the slower teams. Along with
the Raid series, Primal Quest continues to give competitive adventurers a grand outlet at the international level but it is to be noted the sport of adventure racing has not been without its
problems in the past.
posted by rlef98 at 5:16 PM PST - 9 comments
Arif Mardin passed away Sunday. Yes, the first is a
NYTimes link, but
here's an obit from the
Independent newspaper, and
here's a BBC obit as well. It would be unseemly not to note the passing of the arranger or producer (or both, or co- ) behind the Art Farmer Quartet's
Live at the Half-Note, Sonny Stitt's
Stitt Plays Bird, Max Roach's
Drums Unlimited, the Rascals' "Good Lovin'" and "Groovin'," Aretha Franklin's
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You and
Aretha Now, Dusty Springfield's
Dusty in Memphis, Donny Hathaway's
Extension of a Man, the Stones'
Black and Blue, Chaka Khan's first several solo albums, and hundreds of others all the way down to Norah Jones ... a list almost too long to compile. NPR interview
here, lengthier article from
Sound on Sound here, his discogs.com list
here.
posted by blucevalo at 1:45 PM PST - 11 comments
"So, like many of you, I’m sure, I have this huge styrofoam version of my head sitting in the garage." -- Ken Jennings, former unstoppable
Jeopardy! killing machine,
blogs.
[Who?]posted by Gator at 9:20 AM PST - 32 comments
Color theory is demonstrated before your very eyes, inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten,
Joseph Albers, Marcel Duchamp and George Jetson. yes it's the
COLORBOT© Color Harmonizer-Discorder.
via dataisnatureposted by signal at 7:33 AM PST - 26 comments
The Klondike Gold Rush, the last great gold rush of the 19th century.
On August 16, 1896 huge quantities of gold was found in the remote
Yukon region of Canada. Word spread slowly, until eleven months later, the steamship Portland arrived in
Seattle from Dawson with "more than a ton of gold". Within six months, approximately 100,000 gold-seekers set off on
the perilous journey north to the Yukon. Only 30,000 completed the trip.
Resources:
Eric A. Hegg's photograph's of the gold rush,
stories from the gold rush,
women of the gold rush, Klondike Gold Rush
Historical Database,
info and teaching resources (warning: annoying frames),
links,
Librarians' Internet Index.
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:16 AM PST - 11 comments
It is difficult to describe how it feels to gaze at living human beings whom you’ve seen perform in hard-core porn. To shake the hand of a man whose precise erectile size, angle, and vasculature are known to you. That strange I-think-we’ve-met-before sensation one feels upon seeing any celebrity in the flesh is here both intensified and twisted. It feels intensely twisted to see reigning industry queen Jenna Jameson chilling out at the Vivid booth in Jordaches and a latex bustier and to know already that she has a tattoo of a sundered valentine with the tagline HEART BREAKER on her right buttock and a tiny hairless mole just left of her anus. To watch Peter North try to get a cigar lit and to have that sight backlit by memories of his artilleryesque ejaculations.
David Foster Wallace on the adult film industryposted by PenguinBukkake at 6:19 AM PST - 121 comments
June 26
"And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government." Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times,
publicly responds to criticisms on the publication of information about
clandestine surveillance of private bank records of Americans, offering a rare glimpse into the Fourth Estate's complicated negotiations with the government over issues of public interest.
posted by Mr. Six at 4:02 PM PST - 58 comments
When it started more than 36 years ago, the World Series of Poker was more like a trappers' rendezvous than anything else: a small gathering of professional poker players and road gamblers getting together amongst themselves to see who was “the best.” Now, of course, it is an industry unto itself, with
extensive media coverage,
televised coverage on ESPN, and a large fan base that follows
the daily results of this now
six-week long series of tournaments, which culminates in the $10,000 buy-in “main event” to determine the “world champion.” In 1970, eight gamblers put up the $10k each to play in the main event; in 2005, that number had grown to more than 5600, making the total prize pool of $56M one of the largest ever contested, a number that is either exciting or appalling, depending on your point of view. The 2006 WSOP begins today with the casino employees event, and then the larger “open” events begin tomorrow, and continue until July 28, when the main event kicks off. This year’s main event has been lengthened to almost two weeks to allow for enough play to reduce the field from the estimated 6000 starting participants to the final 9 who will vie for an estimated first prize of $10M. Shuffle up and deal!
posted by mosk at 2:29 PM PST - 59 comments
Jews and The Russian Revolution: "More often than not, we picture nineteenth-century Russian Jews as residents of hermetically Jewish shtetls, small hamlets saturated with tradition and authenticity. After the Revolution of 1917 perceptions dramatically reversed, as Jews suddenly appeared as consummate insiders in the young Soviet state. How are we to
make sense of these disparate impressions, stemming from two adjacent historical periods?" [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 10:45 AM PST - 44 comments
Bush Incompetent? Think again. I know this is a one link post, I'm afraid that I still haven't mastered the art of adding extra links, and I apologise because it is also from a partisan source. However it raises some points that I think are worth discussing, such as, is calling Bush incompetent not playing right into the hands of all those who kind of like his folksy, laidback ways, and who kind of identify with his fumbling style? Anyway, read this and see the results of this incompetence you might want to think again.
posted by donfactor at 10:22 AM PST - 112 comments
SCOTUS strikes down campaign finance restrictions [pdf]. The Supreme Court issued an opinion today in
Randall v. Sorrell, striking down limits on campaign contributions and campaign spending imposed by the state of Vermont. The Court, in a fractured opinion (six separate opinions, including two dissents), concluded that restrictions on both contributions and expenditures ran afoul of the First Amendment.
More from Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog. Expect more from
Rick Hasen later today.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:53 AM PST - 81 comments
Gov't Break a Law? Change It The White House is nearing an agreement with Congress on legislation that would write President Bush's warrantless surveillance program into law, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said Sunday.
posted by Unregistered User at 5:04 AM PST - 34 comments
OSVids shows you how to install and use alternative operating systems. Currently demonstrating a wealth of Linux systems, Vista, and soon Mac OSX.
posted by lemonfridge at 1:57 AM PST - 10 comments
New Burger King Superman Returns toys cleverly promote excersise. Not just another merchandise tie-in, this new toy promotion lets you get off your butt and compare with other kids' walking times and throwing records online. Each toy is either a physical activity or an accesory for your workout. The site even features Superman's personal scores, allowing all of us to compete with the Man of Steel.
posted by johndog at 1:32 AM PST - 30 comments
This class has surprisingly readable (albeit few) and informative
reports about scientific principles and devices.
go into a folder and open the .html file. its old school style.
posted by dminor at 1:13 AM PST - 3 comments
June 25
Never wanna work/Always wanna play/Pleasure, pleasure every day. What happens when the jobs go away and
don't return? Should we take the surpluses generated and
pay people not to work? What happens to the assumption of scarcity when
nanotechology allows us to generate potentially anything we want from
grass clippings? Maybe Marx had it wrong all along. Maybe, instead of fetishizing work and the authoritarian mindset that it generates, we should have been reading Paul Lafargue
instead.
Just as a thought experiment, what would you do if your job category disappeared? How would you spend your time? Would you invest more time and energy in friendships and other relationships? Hobbies? If you were your employer, what technologies would you use to get rid of your position and save money?
posted by jason's_planet at 9:08 PM PST - 43 comments
All the scripts to The Inside. Tim Minear, an altogether rather talented producer/writer/director behind
Firefly,
Angel, and
Wonderfalls, created a serial killer show with a difference back in 2005. It was interesting, weird, critically acclaimed, and on FOX, so of course it got cancelled after 13 episodes. Luckily,
Mr. Minear has posted on his own site the draft scripts to every episode, as written by himself and
his talented friends. They make for fun reading, for those who don't mind reading scripts and would like some tightly-written, throughline-having, serial killery goodness without that funny
CSI aftertaste.
[via]posted by Sticherbeast at 2:44 PM PST - 11 comments
In 1945-46, some of the (very few) Polish Jews who had survived the Final Solution returned -- sick, poor, wounded -- to Poland. In Elie Wiesel's words, "they had thought all too naively that antisemitism, discredited 6 million times over, had died at Auschwitz with its victims.
They were wrong." In 2001 Princeton professor
Jan T
Gross published
the story of the 1941 destruction of the Jewish community at
Jedwabne, Poland, and proved how Jews were rounded up, clubbed, drowned, gutted or burned to death not by German forces as previously believed
but by mobs of their own non-Jewish neighbors. Now professor Gross tells the story of the
Kielce pogrom in his new book, "
Fear". Of course, the Kielce butchery took place in 1946 -- more than a year
after the end of WWII and defeat of Nazism. More inside.
posted by matteo at 8:25 AM PST - 107 comments
The Da Vinci Cup Think of it as a gathering of tribes... There's a lot of ritual involved. It's probably the biggest single unifying event that our species can muster. Forget the Olympics. Not even close.
Poor poor China.
Keeping the romans entertained since BC.
posted by Unregistered User at 2:51 AM PST - 11 comments
June 24
The average American uses
20 pounds of coal a day. "our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks.. I see more people dying of particle air pollution than are dying of AIDS." Coal accounts for nearly 40 percent of America's carbon dioxide emissions.
Big Coal by Jeff Goodell.
posted by stbalbach at 9:02 PM PST - 79 comments
June 23
forum.ma.ru thread on a russian couple who adopted and are raising a
fishing cat in their home. Seventy-nine pages of awesome photos of the cat playing, eating, and hunting.
Babelfish translation of thread
starts here (
NSFW warning: many visceral pictures to make animal cruelty activists [and vegetarians] squirm,
and one picture of lady taking a bath with bigcat in murky water).
posted by naxosaxur at 4:18 PM PST - 78 comments
High speed chase in which the pursuing cop shoots out the back window of the fleeing vehicle, leaps out of his own car onto the target car, climbs through the shotgunned window pane, and finally throws the driver out of the car, Terminator style.
posted by lilbrudder at 4:01 PM PST - 40 comments
Norman Mineta, the lone Democrat in
George W. Bush's cabinet has
resigned. He was the longest serving Secretary of Transportation in history. "He was also the first Asian-American Cabinet member during the Clinton administration, and the first Cabinet member to switch directly from a Democratic to a Republican Cabinet." (
from CNN article).
So why did some call for him to be
impeached? Norm Mineta and his family were among the 110,000 Japanese-Americans who were forced from their homes into internment camps during World War II.
His experience had such an impact on him that after September 11th, he
spoke out against the
racial profiling of Muslims, Arabs, and well, anyone with a turban and a beard.
Some people didn't agree with him.
posted by eunoia at 3:46 PM PST - 7 comments
In 2003, Paramount proposed redoing the special effects for the original "Star Trek" series and rereleasing the episodes as
"Star Trek Enhanced". Two CGI firms
redid the effects for the teaser, the opening credits and title, and the first two acts of
The Doomsday Machine as a proof-of-concept with no changes to the acting or the story. Paramount ultimately decided not to pursue the project, but it's interesting to see how two different CGI firms handled the transporter, phasers, and starship effects.
posted by fandango_matt at 11:34 AM PST - 74 comments
RIP Harriet. She passed away overnight from a heart attack. She was 175 years old, the size of a dinner table, and may have known Charles Darwin. She was
Harriet the Tortoise, the world's oldest living animal, and lived a life of quiet dignity.
posted by justkevin at 7:26 AM PST - 41 comments
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution
asks: "Assuming you start from a multi-dimensional global utility maximum, which Lancastrian characteristics—with non-trivial shadow prices—would you like more of in a corresponding unconstrained equilibrium?"
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:02 AM PST - 35 comments
The Storybook Series. Up and coming artist's versions of some preschoolers drawings of their favorite scenes from Winnie The Pooh. some are very charming and sweet...some are down right scary.
posted by ShawnString at 6:34 AM PST - 30 comments
Today might be a good day to look at the bright side of 'teh internet' life.
Lawrence Lessig (author of
Free Culture),
Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), various advocates of the
Free Culture network organisation and others are all meeting at the
iCommons Summit in Rio to discuss
Creative Commons, open networks, non-restrictives licenses, global Digital Commons and the fact that maybe, in 2006,
'Sharing is Daring'. A similar summit has been taking place earlier this month in Thailand, under the name of
Asia Commons. I for one thinks it's extremely exciting to see all kind of artists, collectives and record labels using the CC licenses for the work they publish. After all, we now all live in a 'Remixed Culture', since everything we ever use was once part of something else, wasn't it?
openDemocracy has been publishing a
solid set of articles & a debate about the topic.
posted by Sijeka at 3:25 AM PST - 13 comments
The Constitution of the Confederate States of America. The author did a line by line comparison of the US constitution and the CS constitution. It's no surprise that the constitution of the CSA includes specific clauses regarding slavery, but some of the other changes are quite interesting. For instance, the CSA constitution included a "line item veto" for budget measures.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:23 AM PST - 45 comments
June 22
Before I was even aware that such a plan existed, the FAA has put the brakes on a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office plan to
purchase a fleet of 20 camera-equipped unmanned spy drone planes (only $30,000 apiece) to fly over my city and monitor civilian behavior round the clock. Sadly, the plan is not permanently kiboshed, but merely on hold until authorization can be obtained.
posted by jonson at 10:35 PM PST - 39 comments
Are you a fast sprinter? Do you live in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota? You've probably seen the crazy ads on your local channels for
Dick Enrico's 2nd Wind Exercise and always wondered, "What's that guy like in real life?" Now's
your chance to find out by signing up to race his web developer Jerry Holland, a geek out to prove that he's not just a desk monkey. They've even got a championship belt! (I don't have the guts to sign up, has anyone out there done this/willing to do this?)
posted by rez at 12:22 PM PST - 10 comments
Who's Your Grandaddy? Ancestry.com "has compiled an
online database of information on 500 million people, culled from every U.S. census record from 1790 to 1930" that "includes screen shots of the handwritten forms filled out by census-takers." Usually you have to pay to access the records, but they're providing three days of free access.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:46 AM PST - 80 comments
The largest gathering of Navy ships in the Pacific since the Vietnam war is happening right now, off the coast of Guam.
Valiant Shield 06, the first in a series of proposed biennial joint
war-games, is a
massive military training exercise involving three
Carrier Strike groups, more than 300 air craft, and 22,000 personnel. While primarily an
ASW event, all branches of the military are there practicing
one thing or
another. The Department of Defense has invited a number of other counties to watch the games, including
China for the first time ever.
Some believe the game was just designed to put a scare into
North Korea (Not true, it's been in planning for a year).
But how does one run a
massive war simulation? Well, you just find yourself a copy of
OneSAF [
FAQ] or
JSAF (uh,
among others [
.ppt-to-html]) and you're good to go. (Previously on Metafilter:
MC '02 [
2])
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 10:39 AM PST - 25 comments
Privacy Schmivacy On the eve of its hearing on
charges that it assisted in the government’s illegal spying on millions of Americans, AT&T, the largest phone company in the United States, has changed its privacy policy to clearly establish its
ownership of its customers’ personal account information.
In its revised
policy, AT&T makes it clear that “while your account information may be personal to you, these records constitute business records that are owned by AT&T. As such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."
Oh, really?posted by squirrel at 8:43 AM PST - 54 comments
Another wifi-related arrest was publicized today. In the past, the only case readily available to researchers involved
additional seedy activities that are what really drew the arrest. The coffeeshop and other open hotspots show up on several sites such as
jiwire and
wifinder which are devoted to helping people find wireless hotspots.
In this case, a coffeeshop noticed someone leeching their WiFi parked in his truck -- over the course of 3 months, without ever entering the coffeehouse and making a purchase. While not yet convicted of anything, he has been arrested for "theft of services," and this could mean the first precedent set for whether or not "wireless piggybacking" is illegal. The case becomes especially interesting for both sides of the ethical debate on "borrowing" wireless. One one side of the judge's opinion will be the fact that the coffeehouse is a public place, not a private home. On the other side, it turns out the man who was arrested just so happens to be a registered sex offender, though this coincidental fact is not technically relevant to the case.
posted by twiggy at 7:01 AM PST - 259 comments
The End of Marriage An anthropologist's view of the "sanctity of marriage" debate doesn't see much function in the modern world for "an empty ritual that provides little or nothing of value."
posted by jefgodesky at 6:59 AM PST - 69 comments
"hot foreplay and steamy sex" [nsfw]
Compelling photos of various hot chicks from various NYC parties, and so on. Some how this guy can make just getting ready to go out seem somehow seedy. Again, not safe for work, although there's not really that much nudity.posted by delmoi at 12:52 AM PST - 178 comments
June 21
The young people that have volunteered for this series have all endured physical pain and personal tragedy. They have developed a strong sense of 'self ' at an early age in order to survive public alienation due to their appearance.
Doug Auld's
State of Grace - Paintings of Burn Survivors.
viaposted by dobbs at 6:05 PM PST - 26 comments
WMDs? Sorry if this is double post or newsfilter, but fox news is claiming that
WMDs were found in Iraq. Is it ethical to state as truth that which was been unconfirmed by anyone but one person? Depending on how this pans out, this could continue the shift of approval that started last week.
posted by klik99 at 5:25 PM PST - 111 comments
Zwok! In an unknown place, at an unknown time...Blooz vs. Grienz.
A simple, free multiplayer online game.
posted by edgeways at 4:44 PM PST - 29 comments
'Top of the Pops' is set to end on 30th July, 2006 after 42 years on television in the UK.
The show has been loved by some and criticized by others for having bands mime their own tunes on the air, but was a mainstay up until a recent ratings slide. Over four decades TOTP saw its fair share of
odd incidents and even
inspired a few tunes. Presumably this bodes ill for the proposed second
US version of the iconic program.
posted by ktoad at 3:26 PM PST - 28 comments
Your iPod is Doomed! Or it can be, it can also be
Zelda'ed if you prefer!
ipodlinux.org has ported Linux to the iPod (for Linux, Windows and Mac) and, once its installed, you can load up all
kinds of good stuff including the aforementioned Doom, as well as the entire
Wiki or use your iPod as a
Gameboy! And all without screwing up your existing music files (though there are no guarantees).
posted by fenriq at 11:38 AM PST - 32 comments
The debate over exit strategies for Iraq.
Stephen Biddle.
The biggest problem with treating Iraq like Vietnam is Iraqization -- the main
component of the current U.S. military strategy. In a people's war, handing the
fighting off to local forces makes sense because it undermines the nationalist
component of insurgent resistance, improves the quality of local intelligence,
and boosts troop strength. But in a communal civil war, it throws gasoline on
the fire. Iraq's Sunnis perceive the "national" army and police force as a
Shiite-Kurdish militia on steroids. Biddle also emphasizes the need for
a
compromise based on a constitutional deal with ironclad power-sharing arrangements protecting all parties.
Roundtable
responses from Larry Diamond, James Dobbins, Chaim Kaufmann, and Leslie Gelb.
Anthony Cordesman, who
anticipated the current situation (PDF),
emphasizes the need for ongoing US involvement in the region.
Daniel Benjamin
is pessimistic, describing the US as being in a no-win situation whether
it stays or leaves. A list of proposed
exit strategies
collected by the Project for Defense Alternatives.
The Onion.
posted by russilwvong at 10:13 AM PST - 93 comments
June 20
Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone magazine recently spent a few days with Pearl Jam to talk about their latest album, largely hailed as their best work since
Vitalogy. The result was
this article, which is a must read for all fans of Pearl Jam and music historians generally. In it, Eddie Vedder discusses the stalker whose attempt on his life provided the inspiration to
No Code's 'Lukin'. He reveals the real truth behind how the band arrived at the name 'Pearl Jam', and tells us of how he and Kurt Cobain reconciled their differences, albeit temporarily, as they slow danced underneath the stage at the 1992 MTV Music Awards as Eric Clapton played '
Tears In Heaven.'
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:26 PM PST - 111 comments
YouTube.com: A New Musical Anthropology. A short essay on YouTube, and a long list of punk and hardcore concert videos.
NSFW warning: If you go poking around the forum you'll find a lot of porno spam. I haven't checked out all the videos yet, so you're on your own there.posted by hydrophonic at 9:37 PM PST - 15 comments
100 Awesome Music Videos Note: not THE 100 MOST Awesome, just 100 awesome music videos. Some you'll know, some you may not, many you'll disagree with, just keep in mind, no one claimed this was a definitive list.posted by jonson at 9:19 PM PST - 65 comments
MOG - yet another social networking site. This one's pretty new, and is centered
entirely around your music collection. It has an
automated helper that catalogues your music and organizes a comprehensive list on your page, tracks recent songs and artists played, etc. It's super customizable and has a good linking/recommendation system, though it's a bit slow at the moment. I know social networking sites are a dime a dozen, but this one's focus solely on music makes it worth checking out. Reminds me of
Audiogalaxy, bless its soul!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:51 PM PST - 41 comments
[TV Guide Filter] Tonight on Frontline:
The Dark Side. An in-depth look at Dick Cheney's battle with the intelligence community to shape the War on Terror. From
Boston.com's preview:
"Frontline" delivers a devastating look tonight at the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney to gain control of the war on terror after 9/11. In doing so, the show purports, he compromised the integrity of America's intelligence system. Check your local listings.
posted by justkevin at 3:37 PM PST - 37 comments
Wasted West is a nice short film that pumps some fresh blood in those dried up veins of the western genre.
posted by namagomi at 2:47 PM PST - 14 comments
At approximately 9:20 PM (ET) on January 6th,
David E. Rosenbaum, a longtime reporter for the Washington bureau of the New York Times, was found lying on a sidewalk in Washington, DC. He was disoriented. He was bleeding from the head. He was vomiting. And, as it turned out, he had been
assaulted and robbed.
[more inside]posted by scrump at 1:24 PM PST - 49 comments
Personality, Ideology and Bush's Terror Wars [...]Just as disturbing as Al Qaeda's plans and capabilities are the descriptions of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror and its willful determination to go to war against Iraq. That war, according to the author's sources who attended National Security Council briefings in 2002, was primarily waged "to make an example" of Saddam Hussein, to "create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States."[...]
posted by Postroad at 6:22 AM PST - 56 comments
The
Pirate Party^ has become a significant voice in Swedish politics, partly due to the illegal raids on the
Pirate Bay^ and
The Bureau of Piracy (Piratbyrån)^ (which spawned both). Other Swedish political parties are now adding copyright reforms to their platforms.
The party's leader Rickard Falkvinge
^ gave an intelligent compelling
interview "today".
Note:
Virtually all major content industries today are the result of large scale piracy or flagrant patent infringement, including the American publishing industry, Hollywood, radio, and the music industry. And the anti-piracy side has essentially no historical evidence supporting its position.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:30 AM PST - 40 comments
June 19
Letters by Badsey Council School children describing life in a market gardening community in 1933. A great insight into their lives and some excellent penmanship to boot.
[via]posted by tellurian at 10:45 PM PST - 12 comments
365 days. One brown dress. A one-woman show against fashion. "So, here's the deal - I made this dress and I'm wearing it every day for a year. I'll throw snowballs in it (wearing additional clothing layers in cold weather for health & safety), garden in it, rehearse in it, travel in it, dance in it, cook in it, prune my pear trees in it, drink wine in it, sing my baby to sleep in it." The project was launched July 7th of last year and is nearing completion.
posted by arcticwoman at 7:07 PM PST - 106 comments
Outsider art is exposed for what it is: beguiling and incredibly enticing.
Henry Darger continues to capture new fans and his frighteningly gorgeous mindscapes continue to sell for thousands of dollars.
"I found myself hastening past great Dubuffets, and lingering in front of vast ugly works produced by people who, to be honest, didn’t know how to draw…" (first link NSFW)
posted by zenpop at 6:44 PM PST - 43 comments
The London Review of Books has a World Cup blog. So has
The New Republic and Tony Blair's spinmeister
Alastair Campbell. WFMU tracks World Cup related fatalities on its
World Cup Death Watch while Slate's William Saletan sends us
Dispatches from the World Cup. And then there's the expected gaggle of World Cup blogs from the mainstream media (
NYT,
Sydney Morning Herald,
Der Spiegel [in english],
The Guardian, etc.)
And finally, the mother of all World Cup blogs,
worldcupblog.org, with individual bloggers for each country, a main blog, and, my favorite section,
a referee's blog.
posted by Kattullus at 6:35 PM PST - 17 comments
Wittgenstein, in a letter to Norman Malcolm, wrote:
"...A couple of years ago I read with great pleasure a detective story called Rendezvous With Fear by a man Norbert Davis. I enjoyed it so much that I gave it not only to Smythies but also to Moore to read and both shared my high opinion of it. For, though, as you know, I’ve read hundreds of stories that amused me and that I liked reading, I think I’ve only read two perhaps that I’d call good stuff, and Davis’s is one of them... It may sound crazy, but when I recently re-read the story I liked it again so much that I thought I’d really like to write to the author and thank him. If this is nuts don’t be surprised, for so am I..." Though it is discussed by both Ray Monk, in his
biography of Wittgenstein, and Edmonds and Eidenow, in their
popular book about Wittgenstein's philosophical clash with Popper (and an aging Russell), it is always interesting to read about this strange man's love of detective fiction. Though I don't necessarily agree with the linked author's conclusions, it makes for a good read.
posted by voltairemodern at 11:26 AM PST - 22 comments
Bunny versus Airbus A380. The bunny was on the runway as the A380 came in for a landing, but managed to avoid getting pancaked by bolting as the behemoth decelerated. We salute you, Runway Bunny.
posted by brownpau at 10:20 AM PST - 146 comments
June 18
If you know monster makeup, you already know the name
Jack Pierce, who created the makeup for
Frankenstein's monster,
The Wolf Man,
The Mummy, and
many others. But Pierce's career with Universal Studios, for whom he created these masterpieces, came to a sudden, and unexpected, end when, in 1945, he and his entire staff were fired.
The trouble? Pierce's methods were time-consuming and painstaking, involving, among other things, building up his creatures features with cotton and
collodion, a process that took many hours. Universal had
fallen on hard times, with mergers, sales of its catalogue, and the loss of its 1,500-screen theater chain bringing the bean counters to the fore. They wanted to cut back on Universal's grand-spending ways, and out with the bathwater went the baby.
The sorts of makeup men the bean-counters like were
George and
Gordon Bau, two brothers from Minnesota who had worked at
Rubbercraft and brought with them a knowledge of how to make reusable appliances from cheap, lightweight
foam latex. Their major accomplishment was
House of Wax (1953) and they revolutionized the industry (Dick Smith's work in
Little Big Man would be unthinkable without it, as would the entire career of
Rick Baker. Best still, it's now possible to buy
monstrous and
gruesome rubber appliances right off the shelf.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:51 PM PST - 27 comments
News Filter - In 2003 the Bush administration rejected an Iranian offer to recognize Israel, end support of Palestinian terror organizations, help out in Iraq, and talk about their nuclear program.
posted by sourbrew at 8:41 PM PST - 66 comments
``I managed developer teams in Windows for five years, and have only begun to reflect on the experience now that I have recently switched teams. Through a series of conversations with other leaders that have similarly left The Collective,
several root causes have emerged as lasting characterizations of what's really wrong in The Empire.'
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:03 AM PST - 75 comments
June 17
"Sloppiness is my palette." Neal Medlyn is the self-proclaimed
"Paris Hilton of Performance Art" who looked for "bits and pieces of coolness in normal things or in anything" when he was growing up in small-town Texas.
Now performing regularly in New York City, Medlyn played a nude Dubya shacking up with
Karen Finley's nude Martha Stewart in
George and Martha (here's
a review and
another review; photos NSFW). According to the 2000
Austin Chronicle profile (written by his
future wife) Medlyn came off as a lunatic in his early performances, many of which were sparsely attended, and involved "music, little routines, and group activities, like having everyone sit in the dark and listen very closely to a song he likes." Medlyn has performed, with
Kenny Mellmann, a
show of R. Kelly songs (
watch him performing one; Google Video); he
loves (NSFW) Lionel Richie (whose songs he finds strange and beautiful;
watch mpg here); and he wrote a book inspired by
his own buttocks (NSFW). Medlyn is currently doing, with
Carmine Covelli, a somewhat Peewee Herman-ish video series for
Nerve called
Neal Medlyn's Land of Make-Believe (NSFW; videos depict group sex, performed by various animal puppets). Here is
a 2004 interview with Medlyn. And Medlyn has a
Myspace profile.
posted by jayder at 9:50 PM PST - 9 comments
"My Unwitting Role in the Rove 'Scoop'" It looks like Jason Leopold tried to juice his "Karl Rove indicted" story by
pretending to be someone else. "I don't really know why Leopold may have pretended to be me to Corallo. I can only speculate that he either was trying to get a reaction and thought Corallo would be more likely to respond to a conservative-leaning mainstream paper, or he was trying to get Corallo to acknowledge that Rove had been indicted by bluffing that the Sunday Times had confirmed the story."
[more inside]posted by kirkaracha at 5:43 PM PST - 21 comments
The ultimate in outsourcing. Welcome to
India, where you can visit the Taj Mahal and get a new knee, all for under $10,000, airfare included. Of course, it's not just for Canadians whose health care system, while free, sometimes necessitates lengthy waits for important surgical procedures.
The uninsured in the US and other nations are a potential market as well. And there's potential for medical tourism destinations
in the US as well.
posted by greatgefilte at 5:18 PM PST - 38 comments
How an Al-Qaeda Cell Planned a Poison-gas Attack on the N.Y. Subway Al-Qaeda terrorists came within 45 days of attacking the New York subway system with a lethal gas similar to that used in Nazi death camps. They were stopped not by any intelligence breakthrough, but by an order from Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri. And the U.S. learned of the plot from a CIA mole inside al-Qaeda. These are some of the more startling revelations by author Ron Susskind, whose new book The One Percent Doctrine is excerpted in the forthcoming issue of TIME. It will appear on Time.com early Sunday morning.
posted by Postroad at 1:51 PM PST - 73 comments
Mass. school punishes students with electric shocks "They can be shocked for behaviors including ’failure to maintain a neat appearance’, ‘stopping work for more than 10 seconds’, ‘interrupting others’, ‘nagging’, ‘whispering and/or moving conversation away from staff’, ‘slouch in chair’ '
I have spoke before of
American Enantiodromia. Further, Thomas Moore wrote in
Dark Eros: The Imagination of Sadism
, that in any culture that does not acknowledge it's skeletons, --it's sins, if you will-- will have that imagination played out in real life.
The ways of Sade are not limited to bedroom and scenes of bondage or porno theaters or forbidden books. Any aspect of culture, from the great to the small, insofar as it is engaged in issues of power has therefore Sadean qualities. Furthermore, since life is never perfect, every aspect of culture will know the split of power into torture and suffering, dominance and submission, or sentimentality and cruelty.
I wont editorialize anymore than I have, but I can't help but wonder,
When did psychological abuse become entertainment? or has it always been thus?
Also see:
N.Y. report denounces shock use at school.
I look forward to your Parallax View.
posted by Unregistered User at 1:33 PM PST - 33 comments
Screech Powers from the 1989-1993 teen comedy series "Saved by the Bell," is hoping to sell enough T-shirts with his photo on them to try to raise $250,000 so he doesn't lose his gray two-story house under a foreclosure order.
posted by Guerilla at 11:40 AM PST - 53 comments
Art teacher in hot water over topless photos - Meet
Tamara, a 29 year old art teacher at Austin High School (
notable alumni) in Austin, TX. She's in danger of losing her job with the Austin independent School District over inappropriate photos posted to her
Flickr account (may be NSFW). "I'm an artist and I'm going to participate in the arts," Hoover said. "If that's not something they want me to do then I want to be told that. I don't feel as if I was doing anything that was beyond expectations."
posted by nitsuj at 11:07 AM PST - 88 comments
James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 47:
The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many...may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
That extraordinary powers have, under Bush, been accumulated in the "same hands" is now undeniable. For the first time in more than thirty years, and to a greater extent than even then, our constitutional form of government is in jeopardy.
Power Grabposted by y2karl at 7:20 AM PST - 76 comments
'Twas blind, but now I see? — Virgil surgically regained his sight after nearly 50 years of blindness: "
On the day he returned home after the bandages were removed, his house and its contents were unintelligible to him, and he had to be led up the garden path, led through the house, led into each room, and introduced to each chair." In the end, he and
others like him
[PDF] would have rather stayed in the
Country of the Blind.
(A happier ending was the more recent case of Mike Mays, previously posted here.)
posted by cenoxo at 1:59 AM PST - 19 comments
June 16
Sex in Christ: The sex act called fisting is a source of confusion and misconceptions for many Christians. This is unfortunate, because it means that many Christian men and women are depriving themselves of what could be the most spiritual sexual experience of their lives. Like anal sex and BDSM, fisting is often mistakenly associated with the gay community or is considered a sex act too extreme to be appropriate for Christian couples. Not only are these views incorrect, but fisting actually has a scriptural precedent, as we will show.posted by bigmusic at 7:55 PM PST - 81 comments
So how's the War on Drugs proceeding in Afghanistan? Barry McCaffrey, former drug czar,
trumpets, "
Opium production has been dramatically slashed by 48% just in the past year[2005].". Oops, actually that's the acreage of opium cultivation; production went down by
only 10%, due to increased yields. In any case, that's so
last year. Instead of the socially detrimental
policy of poppy eradication, wouldn't it be
preferable to allow
licensing of poppies for legitimate medical needs? The Afghan farmers
agree, but some think the idea is
flawed.
posted by daksya at 7:23 PM PST - 17 comments
IraqFilter:
Who is the US fighting in Iraq? A February 2006 report from the
International Crisis Group which provides a detailed look at the evolution of the insurgency, and describes its four main groups: Tandhim al-Qa’ida fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (recently
decapitated), Jaysh Ansar al-Sunna, al-Jaysh al-Islami fil-’Iraq, and al-Jabha al-Islamiya lil-Muqawama al-’Iraqiya.
In Iraq, the U.S. fights an enemy it hardly knows. Its descriptions have relied on gross approximations and crude categories (Saddamists, Islamo-fascists and the like) that bear only passing resemblance to reality. This report, based on close analysis of the insurgents’ own discourse [particularly their websites]
, reveals relatively few groups, less divided between nationalists and foreign jihadis than assumed, whose strategy and tactics have evolved (in response to U.S. actions and to maximise acceptance by Sunni Arabs), and whose confidence in defeating the occupation is rising.posted by russilwvong at 10:52 AM PST - 49 comments
June 15
When Everyone Else's Party is Your Job The 24-Hour Show is a documentary project and exhibit that offers a glimpse of Las Vegas through the eyes of the people who live and work in the city. It's based on interviews with a diverse cadré of casino and entertainment workers who have made Las Vegas home.
posted by Miko at 7:24 PM PST - 6 comments
Suzanne Swift, a Eugene soldier, has been arrested for refusing to return to Iraq after leave. She reports that she was
sexually harassed by superiors. She was picked up at home by Homeland Security agents (according to local heresay) and held in Lane County Jail overnight, before being transferred to Fort Lewis in Washington.
More local news
here.
(Disclaimer: I attempted to link a Military.com story on it, for balance, but was unable to.)
posted by Danf at 2:01 PM PST - 73 comments
Googoosh! In the 70s, there was a pop star in (pre-revolutionary) Iran
named Googoosh. She recorded a handful of covers of
Motown songs, and lots of Farsi pop that fuses Motown and
Persian music. Check it out if you like world music and Motown. There are lo-fi MP3s
under the link above, and there are CDs:
Best of Googoosh, Vol. 4: Doe Panjereh. She performed in the US in 2000, after a 20-year hiatus, in LA and DC. The concert in DC was something else, both audience and performance.
posted by lw at 12:41 PM PST - 8 comments
Do you know what to do
with a stick and a clutch?
Only 15% of new car buyers in the US say they'll consider buying a car with manual transmission, and by 2012,
only 6% of cars will be offered with a stick.
Is it because it's a difficult skill to
learn?
Or is it really because it's too hard to shift when you have a
cell phone in one hand and a Starbucks coffee in the other?
Or is a manual transmission simply
an outdated system
with new fangled technology like
CVT,
DSG,
SMG,
and super-fast,
100 msec shifting automatic transmissions available?
posted by jaimev at 11:16 AM PST - 267 comments
Helix is a new Science Fiction magazine on the Internet. Run by managing editor
Lawrence Watt-Evans and senior editor
William Sanders, Helix is free, with no advertisements or registration. They do accept donations. This follows Watt-Evans's success last year with his
Spriggan Experiment, in which he substituted reader donations for the traditional advance from a publisher. The result of that experiment,
The Spriggan Mirror will be available from
Wild-side Press in September 2006.
posted by notbuddha at 8:59 AM PST - 15 comments
The staff of
The Impulsive Buy are not experts, but they do like to try anything that has any of the following words on the product:
new,
improved,
new and improved,
better tasting,
reconditioned, less fat,
fat-free,
best-selling,
less calories,
reduced for quick sale,
limited edition,
free toy,
50% off, or
now with Olestra!
posted by naomi at 8:16 AM PST - 8 comments
June 14
$20,000 and you can choose the gender of your next kid. You'd think you'd have to go to the Caribbean or someplace to do it but the practice of gender selective
preimplantation genetic diagnosis is alive and well in the United States. (Note how the medical link DOES NOT have an indication for using the procedure for gender selection). Some have already been concerned about a
slippery slope. And, it seems regulatory agencies would
rather not say anything about the issue so as to let the technology improve and see what we can and can't select in our embryos. Could this be the next big issue in the culture v. science v. religion wars?
posted by skepticallypleased at 7:31 PM PST - 54 comments
Entertainment NewsFilter: the surviving Beach Boys, including Mike Love and Brian Wilson, appeared together in public today, for the first time in ten years, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds.
Mike Love
recently sued Brian Wilson for royalties and co-writing credits, again, after Brian released SMiLE, a
mere 38 years after originally starting on it. The strife between the two has been ongoing for decades. As Brian grew more musically ambitious in the Pet Sounds and SMiLE era, Mike
legendarily admonished Brian not to "fuck with the formula." [m.i.]
posted by ibmcginty at 12:23 PM PST - 59 comments
Majority Leader Boehner’s Confidential Strategy Memo For Thursday’s Iraq Debate On Thursday, the House of Representatives will hold a debate on the Iraq war. Media reports say Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) “hopes to match the serious, dignified tone of deliberation that preceded the Gulf war, in 1991.”
ThinkProgress has obtained a “Confidential Messaging Memo” from Boehner instructing his caucus to conduct a very different kind of deliberation. Here’s a quick summary:
posted by Postroad at 8:52 AM PST - 71 comments
Fascinating photo set of North Korean life, as taken by a Russian tourist. The degree of "Big Brother" style oversight present via the photo narration is daunting.
posted by jonson at 7:22 AM PST - 90 comments
June 13
Ten contestants. Ten days. They all grew up in shelters -- but one of them will claw his or her way to the top. It's the
Meow Mix House, where
ten cats will vie to become Meow Mix's Feline Vice President of Research and Development. (And, win or lose, they will all be adopted by families.)
The webcams.
[ article || via ]posted by milquetoast at 4:23 PM PST - 28 comments
How valuable is your favorite sports star to his or her team?
Sports economics take center stage as the NBA finals are underway in the United States and World Cup fever has gripped the rest of the world.
Malcolm Gladwell reviews the
Wages of Wins, where “Freakonomics meets ESPN”
posted by msali at 4:13 PM PST - 16 comments
The Broad Band has released an on-line protest song:
God Save the Internet. Jill Sobule, Kay Hanley, and Michelle Lewis are trying to stir up a webgrass protest against what may already be a done deal. They are in favor of Net Neutrality, by the way.
posted by mmahaffie at 3:23 PM PST - 30 comments
Haughey Dead No, not
that one.
Charles Haughey – Former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, and probably the most controversial figure in recent Irish political history, has died of complications arising from prostate cancer.
posted by Sk4n at 2:43 PM PST - 26 comments
Unmarked police SUV stolen containing guns, body armor I especially like this part: "The green Ford Explorer was taken from a driveway in the 8500 block of William Cummins Court, said Officer Dwight Mitchell, a police spokesman. The officer was not identified because he works undercover." Searching
Google Maps for "William Cummins Ct, Louisville, KY 40228" using the "hybrid" map+satellite view is especially pointful.
posted by davy at 7:44 AM PST - 76 comments
Crumbs is a music video to a song built from splicing together instructional tapes for drums, bass & jazz guitar, using loops & selective editing to build a song out of the three distinct elements. Link goes to embedded quicktime.
posted by jonson at 7:18 AM PST - 31 comments
June 12
In 1987, Canadian photographer Robin Collyer began documenting
houses that aren't houses at all – they're architecturally-disguised electrical substations, complete with windows, blinds, and bourgeois landscaping.
posted by signal at 7:37 PM PST - 31 comments
Revamping the browser Browser add ons such as
Browster for IE and Firefox or entirely new browsers such as
Flock (limited info) promise to rework the way browsing has been done during the IE only years from 1997 to 2004. More inside...
posted by hockeyman at 7:16 PM PST - 38 comments
Elongated Pennies. Pressed pennies, flattened pennies, squished pennies, smashed pennies, whatever you call them, they are an exciting, kid-enticing presence at any
tourist attraction, amusement park, or museum. For two quarters and a penny (pre-1982 preferred by the
serious buffs) you can legally flatten the lowest of our nation's currency (and sometimes Canada's) into a souvenir disk that's embossed with a picturesque reminder of your trip. But these pennies don't live and die by the child's pants pocket, pressed penny collecting is serious business. Heck, there's even a
museum devoted to the hobby, as well as a thriving
collecting scene. So next time you pass by one of these
cool machines, pause, elbow the penniless kids out of the way, and get yourself a neat little trinket of remembrance.
posted by lychee at 4:42 PM PST - 52 comments
Net neutrality: Meet the winner As Verizon Communications' executive vice president for public affairs, policy and communications, Tauke has spent the last few months embroiled in a fiery debate over Net neutrality, the concept that broadband providers must be legally required to treat all content equally.
posted by Postroad at 4:07 PM PST - 42 comments
So.
Paul Bausch of all sorts of fame
rolled-out an update to his amazing
Amazon feed-builder. What's the big deal? Well, I'm a big fan of
Wendell Berry and
Craig Thompson, of
Naguib Mahfouz and
books about New Urbanism... and now, with the help of PB's delicious feed-builder, I'll be notified whenever something new comes from any of these authors or meets the "New Urbanism" search criteria, so I can add them to my Amazon wish list... and I think that's pretty darn cool. Add that to Amazon's pre-existing wish list feeds, which let you monitor other people's wish lists for additions ( you can find a wish list's feed on its "home" page ), and I'm in heaven.
( As a direct result of the feeds I subscribed to this weekend, my Amazon wish list has grown from 1600 to more than 1800 items. I blame Paul... he's such an enabler! )
posted by silusGROK at 1:55 PM PST - 17 comments
NYT story about superhigh frequency ringtones. A new ringtone at a frequency of 17 Khz is supposedly inaudible to most adults, and so highschoolers and others are using it to sneak text messages in school, etc.
BUT. An mp3 of the tone is included with the story and I can totally hear it, though it hurts my ears. And I am in my 40s. Can others hear it?
posted by jfwlucy at 1:39 PM PST - 275 comments
The Impersonals – Our own
the jam couldn't find a personals site that he wasn't embarrassed to join, so he made his own. No popularity contests, no horoscopes, no buddy lists. Just profiles made from wide-open text fields and anti-creepiness features baked in at every turn.
[Lifetime membership will be $5, but until it hits 10,000 profiles, it's free.] via mefi projectsposted by blasdelf at 12:45 PM PST - 39 comments
From the U.S. National Academies Press: 3,000 Science, Technology, Medical, and Social Science Books Available Free, Online. The interface is clunky - you can only see one page at a time, can't download PDFs (except paid) and image view is via TIFF -
but! the content is all there, and free. Some is quite technical, but much is readily accessible. Some idea of the breadth:
A Doctor's Memoirs of Treating AIDS in Haiti,
The "Drama of the Commons",
The 1872 Research Voyage of HMS Challenger,
Biography of Stephen Hawking,
Biotechnology Research in the Age of Terrorism,
Risk Reduction Strategies for Human Exploration of Space,
Forensic Lead Bullet Analysis,
50 Short Essays on How Mathematicians Think,
Recent Research on Non-Lethal Weapons, and
Introduction to Tough Topics in Contemporary Science.
Also, see their
rather spiffy site on the cosmos.
posted by Rumple at 10:57 AM PST - 13 comments
Never Coming Home is about the families of five young men killed in Iraq.
Slate presents a short documentary that focuses on the bereavement of the parents, or in one case, a brother. This portrait of grief and sacrifice is brought to life through the use of still photography and the recorded voices of family members.
posted by ND¢ at 10:31 AM PST - 24 comments
Torch my ride! Debt-heavy consumers, finding their pocketbooks unable to support their monstrous gas-guzzlers, are apparently turning to perfectly rational and legal means of debt resolution: insurance fraud. Meanwhile, across the pond, people are are still immolating cars for the more
traditional reason: destroying the evidence. Should you find yourself in either situation any time soon Slate has a handy
guide for you. If you have no such plans however, you may still want to read
this in case your car ignites legitimately. And have a damn good story ready.
posted by baphomet at 9:37 AM PST - 44 comments
June 11
I don't read French, so I can't tell you too much
Musicovery, except that it is very pretty, very good and I am in love. (flash and obviously, music)
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 10:34 PM PST - 30 comments
Those are dirty numbers!! "The images in this room are created entirely from mathematical algorithms. If you find them offensive in any way, all I can say is that beauty (or obscenity) is in this case most certainly in the eye of the beholder." (
via)
posted by JPowers at 8:27 PM PST - 24 comments
If you can't get World Cup on regular cable because maybe you haven't got cable, you can try watching with
this software. Schedule of American World Cup TV broadcasts
here.
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:05 AM PST - 19 comments
June 10
This year's Malinowski Memorial Lecture at the London School of Economics was presented by David Graeber, until recently an Associate Professor at Yale, entitled
Beyond Power/Knowledge: an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity. (PDF link)
Although Yale declined to provide a reason for Mr. Graeber's
recent dismissal, it's likely that his outspoken
anarchism and
activism,
as well as his support for a union of graduate students, were influences in the decision.
He explained some of his views on anarchism, "globalization", and, yes, hope for the future, on the
Charlie Rose Show. (Youtube)
Weekend reading assignment:
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. (PDF link)
posted by dinsdale at 4:56 PM PST - 22 comments
Flying Dude Man uses ground effect to soar down the face of a mountain. Lots of physics geeks on MeFi. Is this even possible? (ytube)
posted by vronsky at 4:18 PM PST - 43 comments
It's all one's and zero's eh? The complex patterns of the natural world often turn out to be governed by relatively simple mathematical relationships. A seashell grows at a rate proportional to its size, resulting in a delicate spiral. The gossamer network of galaxies results from the simple interplay between cosmic expansion and the force of gravity over a wide range of scales. As our catalogue of natural phenomena has grown more complete, more and more scientists have begun to look for interesting patterns in human society.
posted by Unregistered User at 3:10 PM PST - 17 comments
LET'S DO THIS. Burning the midnight oil typing out a letter best left unsent—who hasn't done that, right? Only, I think Henry Rollins might be the type to go ahead and send this letter anyway.
(.swf)posted by emelenjr at 2:14 PM PST - 42 comments
Meet The Press--in Hell with Jesus, Satan, Coulter, Malkin--
... Russert: We’re back with our guests, Bob Satan and Jesus Christ, and our panel Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter. Ann, I’d like to read you a statement by the Virgin Mary, Chairwoman of Mothers Against Armageddon—
Ann Coulter: Oh please. This broad is a millionaire, lionized on frescoes and in scripture about her, reveling in her status as a saint, and stalked by Madonna-parazzies. I have never seen a woman enjoying her son’s death so much. ...posted by amberglow at 1:38 PM PST - 25 comments
Who killed the electric car? [flash] A documentary film (and flash website) about the mysterious demise of the electric car. The website contains a lot of information about the electric car and other alternative fuel cars in development. The film is coming to a theater near you, if you live in NY or LA. (Ok, actually a few other places.) Watch the
trailer.
[embedded qt]posted by jlub at 8:30 AM PST - 80 comments
Princeton Salutatorian - Undocumented Immigrant. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Princeton '06, has achieved many academic honors. He is also in the US illegally. He has now
spoken out. "
[A] former roommate of mine wrote that illegal immigrants constitute a drain on American resources and a threat to the jobs of native American workers; that they are intentional law-breakers who should not receive considerate treatment from the government; and that existing laws concerning illegal immigrants should be rigidly and more consistently enforced, even if this results in behavior that could be characterized as inhumane. I was taken aback by his words, but they provided me with the impetus to speak out and emphasize the inhumanity of such a perspective as well as the misinformation it is based upon."
posted by caddis at 5:11 AM PST - 70 comments
June 9
Shifting between motion and stasis, he shows a man on a horse, a scarecrow, a dog, another dog seen closer, then even closer as it faces the still camera in the last shot. Superimposed over this still photo is the orange red blast of an atomic bomb and its mushroom cloud—the first appearance of color in the film. The photo catches fire, and the image of the dog is slowly devoured by flames. As the photo turns into ashes, a prayer from the Shiite text Nahjulbalagha appears alongside it in English: “Dear Lord, give us rain from tame, obedient clouds and not from dense and fiery clouds which summon death. Amen.”
In "
The Roads of Kiarostami", his latest
short film (.pdf), Iranian maestro
Abbas Kiarostami begins with
his landscape photographs and
ends with apocalypse.
more insideposted by matteo at 3:33 AM PST - 16 comments
A long time ago, way back before the internet brought us gaming news virtually at the click of a button, gamers had to get their gaming news via magazines. For console owners living in the United Kingdom and Australia, the magazine of choice would almost certainly have been
Mean Machines. Combining gaming news with classic British humor* with a great layout,
Mean Machines made for a great read every issue. Though now (sadly) long dead, nostalgic fans of
Mean Machines will undoubtedly be happy to learn that you can now read every one of their reviews online in both HTML and scanned pdf formats at
The Mean Machines Archive. With an issue by issue examination of this classic publication, the site is well worth a look if you were a fan of the magazine or just to see what gaming news was like before the likes of
IGN (which, interestingly enough, lead editor of
Mean Machines Julian Rignall would one day join).
* not an oxymoronposted by Effigy2000 at 1:08 AM PST - 21 comments
June 8
FDA approves HPV vaccine. It prevents infection from 70% of the cancer-causing strains of human papillomavirus, an STD that will affect nearly 80% of the population at some point in their lives. The vaccine has been approved for use in women ages 9 to 26. Controversy surrounding the vaccine (
discussed earlier) has thankfully not stopped its progress. That just leaves a few questions: How long will it last? Who's paying for it? What are the side-effects? Oh, screw all that, where do I get in line?
posted by schroedinger at 8:46 PM PST - 44 comments
The Netflix Rolling Roadshow, "Imagine watching 'Jaws' from a raft in the ocean just off the Martha's Vineyard beach where it was filmed . . . or watching 'Escape from Alcatraz' in the cell block where Frank Morris, played by Clint Eastwood, was locked up...This August, the
Netflix Rolling Roadshow celebrates classic American movies by screening them at the locations they made famous. Each screening is an interactive special event (think scavenger hunts, road rallies, a high school prom, even spending the night on Alcatraz Island). Some screenings will also include cast reunions and question-and-answer sessions with the filmmakers." My favorite: Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. That is going to be a surreal experience.
posted by JPowers at 3:25 PM PST - 38 comments
Super hero pizza man defeats nefarious villain. A delivery driver for Galactic Pizza, a Minneapolis restaurant, recently defeated a purse-snatching neer-do-well with the assistance of some valiant bystanders.
Galactic, which is dedicated to delivering pizza with a community- and environmentally-friendly oriented business model, delivers pizzas with 100% electric vehicles and purchases all their energy from renewable sources. Indeed, their
vision of the future is refreshing to see from any American business. Oh, and their drivers wear
super hero costumes, which seems more than appropriate considering the ethics of both their business and their heroic workers.
posted by baphomet at 2:58 PM PST - 31 comments
2%. (
bugmenot login fleeb@fleeble.com, password fleeble) That is the percentage of students in UCLA's incoming freshman class that self-identify as black. Only 96 students in an entering class of 4,852, and the lowest percentage since 1973. Many believe
Proposition 209 is to blame, but
some want to stop collecting this data altogether.
posted by fugitivefromchaingang at 1:33 PM PST - 46 comments
Sir David Attenborough, naturalist and pioneer of the nature documentary, turned 80 last month. To mark the occasion, Britons were asked to choose their favorite Attenborough moment and of all the memorable scenes, his
recording of the lyrebird came out on top. In this clip the bird mimics neighboring birds, several cameras, car alarms, and perhaps most impressively, loggers with chainsaws. (
wmv,
qt)
posted by ewagoner at 11:10 AM PST - 47 comments
The Language of Noncombatant Death - Perhaps, however, what the "incidents" have in common -- and what they really tell us about the war in Iraq (as in Vietnam long ago) -- is this: In both Haditha and Ishaqi, the dead were largely or all civilian noncombatants: an aged amputee in a wheelchair holding a Koran, small children, grandparents, students, women, and a random taxi driver all died... In modern wars, especially those conducted in part from the air (as both Iraq and Afghanistan have been), there's nothing "collateral" about civilian deaths. If anything, the "collateral deaths" are those of the combatants on any side. Civilian deaths are now the central fact, the very essence of war. Not seeing that means not seeing war.
Collateral Damage: The "Incident at Haditha"
The Power Point version:
Why Did We Lose In Iraq ?posted by y2karl at 9:51 AM PST - 63 comments
Hilton Ruiz is dead. The wonderful pianist
Hilton Ruiz, who "had been in a coma since May 19, when he was found outside a French Quarter bar with severe head injuries," has died in a New Orleans hospital. He'd played with everyone from Freddie Hubbard and Rahsaan Roland Kirk to Charles Mingus, Betty Carter, Archie Shepp, and Clark Terry. Sad news, especially coming hard on the heels of the loss of
Billy Preston.
posted by languagehat at 6:56 AM PST - 16 comments
The Asian Giant Hornet is cool, unless it's baked. Japanese honeybees can detect the hornet's secretion and they attack en masse. With approximately 500 honeybees surrounding the hornet in a tight ball, the temperature within the cluster rises to 47 degrees Celsius which bakes the hornet alive.
posted by tellurian at 12:00 AM PST - 35 comments
June 7
Spanish Castle Magic. Stare at the dot in the center of the image for 30 seconds, then mouseover the picture. Don't shift your glance, because until you do the picture will appear to be in color, despite the fact that it's in black & white.
posted by jonson at 8:55 PM PST - 67 comments
Their task may be depressing, but the generosity of their work is inspiring and hopefully thereputic. The photographers who are working with
Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep provide their services on a volunteer basis to help families over come the grief of losing an infant.
If you're a professional photographer interested in being involved, they're seeking
volunteers.posted by blaneyphoto at 8:14 PM PST - 24 comments
The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed. "The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful 'black propaganda' campaign with links to the White House."
(Via Sic Semper Tyrannis.)posted by homunculus at 7:47 PM PST - 24 comments
What began as a simple eBay Motors auction... "Again no swaps. What is it with people, when I say no swaps please don't take it as a challange. I have been offfered a caravan, 12 cars, 1 lorry, to have my garden landscaped, some rare fish, and I'm sorry but the very kind gent (Donald) who offered me a weekend with his wife (and him it would appear) I have a special message for you. The pictures you sent me of your wife did not, in all honesty help. Some of them looked more like a traffic accident than something that I might remotely find alluring. I am sure that if you set up your own website (assuming that it's not illegal) there will be plenty of sad sacks (many from ebay land going by this experience) who will indulge your (and your wifes) desires."
posted by daHIFI at 7:51 AM PST - 34 comments
Chess queen triggers 'Gormallygate' Australian WIM (Women's International Master)
Arianne Caoili, "the Anna Kournikova of chess" has sent the chess world into a spin with her salsa crazy antics. A love triangle between herself, British chess grandmaster Danny Gormally and the world's No. 3 player, Armenia's Levon Aronian turned ugly in a Turin nightclub during the World Chess Olympiad recently.
posted by kurtrudder at 2:39 AM PST - 72 comments
June 6
The
Oxford Project: in 1984, Peter Feldstein photographed every single citizen in the town of Oxford, Iowa (676 pictures in all). In 2006, he attempts
to do it again.
posted by JPowers at 8:20 PM PST - 24 comments
MacBook! Hold the Mayo! Apple's new MacBook is a hot item. At
65C internal running temperature, quite hot indeed. A MacNN reader discovered the MacBook service manual and shared the "Thermal Paste Mayo" pictures. Yikes! [more inside]
posted by cavalier at 7:32 PM PST - 67 comments
Was in Eastern WA this weekend, attending the graduation of my nephew from a high school in Kennewick. He reminded me about nearby Richland High School, and their somewhat unique "
mascot", so thought I might do some looking around.
For those with true School Spirit, pick up some
swag. I'm getting earrings for my wife! --Yikes-O-Rama--
posted by somnambulist at 5:21 PM PST - 41 comments
Funny "experiment" conducted by the folks at leftlanenews.com. Can a Ferrari 575 catch up to a Fiat hatckback after a 31-second head start in a single-lap track race? Better still, can an F1 car catch up to both after waiting 1:27? The results aren’t necessarily surprising, but it’s pretty stunning to see.
posted by jonson at 2:33 PM PST - 51 comments
ON JUNE 6 2006 (6606) IF THE FIRST OF TWO RAPTURES HAS NOT HAPPENED AND ANTICHRIST HAS NOT DECLARED HIMSELF ON WORLD SIMULCAST TELEVISION, THEN I (PASTOR HARRY) WILL REVEAL THE TRUE NAME AND IDENTITY OF THE ANTICHRIST AT 11:05 PM EST ON THIS SITE AND ON DOOMSDAY TALK RADIO, OUR INTERNET RADIO BROADCAST.
posted by three blind mice at 11:54 AM PST - 148 comments
It's a bird, it's a plane! , no it's the Special Forces using strap-on stealth wings to zoom silently into battle. We've all fantasized about
jet packs, but being dropped from a plane with wings on your back is a silent way to travel great distances before opening a parachute for landing, just like daredevil Felix Baumgartner, who
soared across the English Channel. Who wants to go first?
posted by twsf at 11:24 AM PST - 22 comments
Tulse Luper Update:
Twice before we’ve discussed Peter Greenaway’s “upcoming” multimedia project
The Tulse Luper Suitcases:
three movies,
two books, a
VJ tour (
.wmv interview about a similar project,
Nightwatching, to give you some idea of what a VJ tour is), and more. With the recent launch of the online multiplayer game,
The Tulse Luper Journey , perhaps the project is no longer upcoming at all. The story centers on
92 suitcases related to the life of Greenaway’s alter ego
Tulse Luper. Discovered in various locations around the globe, the suitcases illustrate the
history of Uranium (and by extension the history of the
20th century). Read Greenaway’s lecture on the project
here, hear an interview focused on the VJ performance
here, or read stories attributed to Tulse Luper
here. [More Inside]
posted by jrb223 at 10:09 AM PST - 12 comments
June 5
'The
Helmet Project web site is an attempt by its creator, a completely amateur graphic artist and a long-time fan of football at all levels, to create and maintain an on-line "catalog" or "atlas" of uniform-sized, accurate, and up-to-date images representing the football helmets worn by college football teams and teams from a few professional leagues in the United States and Canada.'
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:34 PM PST - 15 comments
The truth about Kitty Genovese. They say she was the woman stabbed to death before 38 witnesses who did nothing. They "didn't want to get involved." To many, her name rings synonymous with "public apathy" and the "
bystander effect." Unfortunately, the details - and the meat - of her case are largely misunderstood. None of that, however, diminishes the tragedy of her death, not only for her family and friends, but also for
her lover.posted by Sticherbeast at 4:18 PM PST - 41 comments
U.S. workers will leave an average 4 vacation days on the table this year, one more than last year, according to the 6th annual
Vacation Deprivation Survey sponsored by Expedia. This despite the
fact that at an average of 14 days total, we are already deprived, trailing Australia (17), Canada (19), Great Britain (24), Germany (27), and France (39) in holiday time. Why don't we get more time off? And why aren't we using the time we do get? [
Full results (PDF))]
posted by madamjujujive at 8:29 AM PST - 89 comments
Black Hawk Down Revisited : (newsfilter) giving cladstine support to the warlords, The American Operation is in breach of the United Nations’ arms embargo on Somalia and therefore in breach of international law. The islamists are
claiming victory in Mogadishu. Meanwhile the Somali "leader"
sacks Ministers. While the people .... well what do they matter
anyway. There's always
more from Somali News.
posted by adamvasco at 6:16 AM PST - 14 comments
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is pumping out a pile of podcasts that have covered
the importance of offensive comics to Art Spiegelman,
600 bands over 54 shows,
Captain America versus the American government,
Amy Sedaris and geekdom,
the journey of young immigrants,
French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut and Harper's publisher John MacArthur discussing Europe and America perspectives since 9/11,
the after life,
sex with monkeys,
what radio producers do,
the french word "corps",
Bonnie Fuller's "The Joys of Much Too Much: Go For the Big Life — The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted (Even If You're Afraid You Don't Have What It Takes)",
Veteran Washington reporter Helen Thomas and some other bits & bobs [Breakdown inside]
posted by boost ventilator at 5:44 AM PST - 25 comments
June 4
Mapping the StarMaze A tale of mathematical obsession: "Before I can explain my decades-long quest to map the starmaze I must acquaint you with a small puzzle...I have a habit of seeing everything (cities, organizations, computers, networks, brains) as a maze, so I named this puzzle the starmaze....The first problem I ran into was that there were a lot of rooms...I invented
wacky names for each room...But something funny happened...In that instant I finally grasped that the starmaze was arranged on the edges of a
nine-dimensional hypercube..."
posted by vacapinta at 9:10 PM PST - 38 comments
My earliest memory was when I was three. I had a fever and my mother was wiping a cold wet rag on my body. There were fish swimming in my room, as though I was underwater, but I could breathe just fine. That's why I was surprised to find
this. "The
contemporary art in Japan (
english) is naturally influenced by the world contemporary art. But the power of the Japanese traditions, the oppressive presence of a dense urban environment and the various traumatism undergone by Japan for 60 years (defeat of 1945, Hiroshima, earthquakes, economic crisis, etc.) involve a production very
rich,
original and
little known."
posted by sluglicker at 11:59 AM PST - 6 comments
How the hell did Fuzzy sink this
hole-in-one?! It hangs for looooong seconds in the rough, then
accelerates directly to the hole. I swear, there were magnets involved!
Quite possibly the most amazing hole-in-one ever.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:15 AM PST - 54 comments
The Future Just Happened A series of four BBC programmes about the internet from five years ago watchable online (via pre-broadband 56k real) that provide a snapshot of a time when AOL was 'at the heart of the new world', Marillion were releasing music through fan subscriptions and Monica Lewinsky was talking about how she didn't trust email anymore. Amazing.
posted by feelinglistless at 9:06 AM PST - 9 comments
June 3
Big Bad Gay Couples are invading!!! Chicken Little! The sky is falling!!! Cafferty highlights the upcoming speech by Bush supporting the Gay Marriage Ban that is trying to be pushed through Congress. I would say this is mundane and irritating except for the responses given at the end. Especially the one about the divorced man. [via crooks and liars]
posted by Doorstop at 11:12 AM PST - 63 comments
This flash demo for IKEA's kitchen stuff is kinda fun to play with. Takes a bit of time to load, when it does, click the mouse & hold down on the right or left halves of the photo, it's interesting.
Note - the flash stuff contains audio, so careful with speaker volumeposted by jonson at 10:15 AM PST - 31 comments
The New York office was opened by the founders of the Firm in 1908, the same year women competed in the modern Olympics for the first time. While the Firm moved its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1972, the New York office remains a critical branch of the Firm today, paying tribute to the firm's deeply rooted traditions by undervaluing support staff, requiring formal business attire, and excluding Jews.
posted by grumblebee at 7:02 AM PST - 19 comments
June 2
Wen Ho Lee has just won his lawsuit against the federal government and news agencies for violating his privacy rights while under investigation for being a spy. Mr. Lee lost his job, his reputation and racked up huge legal bills as a result of the accusations -- which were later found to be greatly exaggerated.
In a case of deja vu, a Chinese scientist at a state lab in Albany, NY recently lost his job (and his wife was placed on leave from her job) after being accused of
illegally purchasing weapons -- a charge which was later dismissed. Note that his firing was justified on the pretext of misusing his work computer to visit the ESPN website too often -- a criteria by which a large chunk of the state workforce would be fired.
And then there is the ongoing terrorism case against the Albany imam and the pizza shop owner
which has had its own evidentiary shortcomings.
And to top it all off, the Albany FBI head
has just been promoted.
Are we feeling any safer yet?
posted by bim at 5:42 PM PST - 13 comments
The Swiss are investigating an international smuggling ring suspected of providing nuclear program components to Libya. There's just one
problem. Meanwhile, the United States is opening full diplomatic relations with
Libya and removing it from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
posted by EarBucket at 4:24 PM PST - 16 comments
Newsfilter. Surveillenve of everything you do online: "It was clear that they would go beyond kiddie porn and terrorism and use it for general law enforcement." Offline: "I'm John Doe, and if I had told you before today that the F.B.I. was requesting library records, I
could have gone to jail." Previously,
here. On your phone? We've already discussed
that, too.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 2:59 PM PST - 36 comments
Bulletins (
more recent ones are PDF only) from the Cold War International History Project. During the 40-odd years of the Cold War, diplomatic historians in the West only had access to documents--papers, memos, cables, and so on--from one side of the conflict. Since the end of the Cold War, the
Cold War International History Project has been going through diplomatic archives from the Soviet Union, China, and other countries, translating documents and illuminating the other sides of the conflict. Examples: discussions between
Stalin and Kim Il Sung prior to the Korean War.
Chinese documents from 1964-1965 on the Vietnam War.
Letter to Brezhnev from Czech hardliners requesting Soviet intervention in 1968.
posted by russilwvong at 2:06 PM PST - 14 comments
Tour America’s Toxic Towns. First off is
Times Beach, MO. Uncle Sam bought the town for $32 million, disincorporated it, and evacuated its 2000 residents to spare them from levels of dioxin that were possibly 2,000 times higher than the dioxin content in Agent Orange. Next up is
Centralia, PA, completely evacuated due to an underground coal fire that is still burning and may burn for the next 100 years. More recently, American Electric Power purchased
Cheshire, OH for $20 million. The town, which was plagued by sulfurous clouds, is now completely deserted. And who can forget the granddaddy of toxic towns,
Love Canal.posted by Otis at 11:38 AM PST - 24 comments
Word. Eighth-grader Katharine Close has finally won the
Scripps National Spelling Bee on her fifth attempt. She beat out
274 other competitors and won with the word
ursprache, sounding it out live on national television. If spelling out rarely used historical-linguistic jargon seems tough, try
weltschmerz on for size. That's the word runner-up Finola Mei Hwa Hackett stumbled on. While your at it, why not take a look at the
entire word list and see how many you can get, or even just recognize. Prior escapades in spelling documented
here,
here [YouTube], and if you want to head out to theaters,
here.
posted by dead_ at 8:46 AM PST - 98 comments
"Eternal Sunset continuously tunes into different webcams, chasing the sunset around the globe
[...] complementing the increased efficiency and productivity associated with the internet."
[via WMMNA]posted by freebird at 8:35 AM PST - 16 comments
At long last, the
perfect cat toy (link goes to embedded video) has been discovered. Warning: it's kind of expensive.
posted by jonson at 7:14 AM PST - 20 comments
Ganjifa cards have a
history of more than 300 years. A pack of ganjifa cards consists of ninety-six cards; they are
generally circular and made of ivory, tortoise shell, thin wood or hard board material. Dancing, hunting, worshipping, and processions are some of the
subjects painted on the cards. Some more patterns:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5. However, Ganjifa today is a
craft in a
crisis.
posted by dhruva at 12:26 AM PST - 10 comments
June 1
A Philadelphia house painter may have the answers to the mysterious
Toynbee tiles found embedded in asphalt
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