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June 2009 Archives
June 30
Crap Detection 101 Howard Rheingold offers a fairly in-depth primer on media and internet BS detection.
Lots of links to resources for enabling critical analysis of various information sources included.
posted by telstar at 10:29 PM PST - 17 comments
Vanity Fair recently published "
It Came From Wasilla", Todd Purdum's lengthy profile piece about Sarah Palin, her involvement with and the inside workings of the McCain campaign, and her political future.
[more inside]posted by Weebot at 5:07 PM PST - 232 comments
June has been a good month for political upheaval and mass protest.
Peru (
update),
China, and
Iran were discussed here previously. But how many of the following were you aware of:
Canada,
Thailand,
Honduras,
Venezuela,
Bangladesh,
Kashmir,
Pakistan, and
India? The latter four reflect a quite serious electricity shortage throughout the Indian subcontinent, during a record-breaking heat wave that has
caused over 100 deaths. But don't worry, not everyone is dealing with life-threatening problems. In
Israel 30,000 turned out to protest a parking lot. Meanwhile,
Indymedia continues to cover all the bourgeois first-world protests you've never really wanted to know about.
posted by shii at 10:59 AM PST - 8 comments
It's hard not to hear "glitter painting" and think it is as disposable an artform as the
Velvet Elvis, but San Francisco artist
Jamie Vasta has taken everyone's favorite craft supply to a strange and beautiful new height. Represented by
Patricia Sweetow in San Francisco, Vasta recreates reference photos at large scale using only glitter and glue.
[more inside]posted by liketitanic at 9:03 AM PST - 18 comments
The Pirate Bay
will be sold to a Swedish
listed software company. The
press release states that the intention is to "introduce models which entail that content providers and
copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site".
Other stabs at this worked out less than brilliantly. The purchase amount (60MSEK of which half cash/half in stocks) matches the
fine a bit too closely, but
the founders states that the money are going into a foundation to promote
freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. Pirate ideals or gold loot on Booty Island? Stay tuned...
posted by mnsc at 3:22 AM PST - 233 comments
Strange Games "What do you get if you cross a large rubber ball used for physical therapy with the medieval sport of Jousting? Yoga Ball Jousting."
posted by feelinglistless at 1:40 AM PST - 18 comments
June 29
Today, on the last day of this year's term, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its
opinion in
Ricci v.
DeStefano, the latest in the Court's line of decisions on
Title VII and the role of race in employment decisions. The famous case centers on white firefighters' claims of
race discrimination following the town of New Haven's decision to scuttle a
promotion exam after white test takers performed disproportionately better than black firefighters.
[more inside]posted by Law Talkin' Guy at 8:28 PM PST - 89 comments
Persepolis 2.0 'describes Iran's post-election uprising and spreads the word about Iranians' historic struggle against repression. Based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi and edited by two Iranians living in Shanghai.'
Persepolis.posted by plep at 4:19 PM PST - 13 comments
June 28
A journalist
is filing charges against Big Pharma, the WHO, UN officials and Barack Obama, among others. For attempted mass genocide. Michael Jackson's death plays a part in this.
[more inside]posted by _dario at 8:20 PM PST - 132 comments
Shogi (将棋), or "Japanese chess," has been described here
before, but it's such a fascinating game that a little more exposure can't hurt. Specifically, shogi has spawned a lot of variants, many of them astonishingly large.
[more inside]posted by GenjiandProust at 12:30 PM PST - 18 comments
Preserved in the cave excavations of
Mogao and listing 1,339 stars the
Dunhuang Star Chart is the
oldest graphical star atlas known to exist. Dated to between 649 and 684 AD, it features two sections. The first consists of 26 diagrams of asterisms (including a recognizable Big Dipper and Orion) and the second contains 12 star maps each showing a 30 degree east-west section of sky in cylindrical projection plus an azimuthal projection circumpolar map. Star positions are accurate to within 1.5 degrees and it includes some stars in the southern sky.
[more inside]posted by Mitheral at 10:30 AM PST - 10 comments
June 27
Have you ever dreamed of moving an object with the power of your mind? Mindflex, the new mental acuity game from Mattel, makes that dream a reality. A lightweight headset containing sensors for the forehead and earlobes measures your brainwave activity. When you focus your concentration, a small foam ball will rise on a gentle stream of air. Relax your thoughts and the ball will descend. By using a combination of physical and mental coordination, you must then guide the ball through a customizable obstacle course, the various obstacles can be repositioned into many different configurations. [more inside]posted by litterateur at 10:22 PM PST - 39 comments
Sex Galaxy (
trailer 1,
trailer 2, NSFW) is a new film that
claims to be the first "green film," as it is made of 100% recycled material. In an
Wired article, director/producer Mike Davis discloses his film sources. "Boarded-up libraries, abandoned schools, decaying drive-in movie theaters…. These are the realms in which I unearth my wares," he said. "And actually, many of these films are available on the internet. You can find amazing collections through the
Library of Congress." The Wired article notes that the recycled material isn't itself wholly original, and
Bad Lit expands the history of film plunder further.
Sex Galaxy is sourced from
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, which relied on footage from
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, which in turn is sampled from the Russian film
Planeta Bur. The history of film reuse is long and storied, and continues after the jump.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 10:12 PM PST - 17 comments
In the heart of Greenwich Village, New York City at 1:20 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, 1969 eight New York City police raided a gay bar, the
Stonewall Inn (later deemed a
National Historic Landmark). "As the police raided the bar, a crowd of four hundred patrons gathered on the street outside and watched the officers arrest the bartender, the doorman, and a few drag queens [see:
police arrest reports]. The crowd, which eventually grew to an estimated 2,000 strong, was fed up."
* Thus began
three days of rioting and the advent of the modern gay rights movement. In honor of the Stonewall Riots, many
gay pride celebrations around the world are held during the month of June, including this week(end)'s
NYC Pride, celebrating 40 years of Stonewall's impact on seeking to bring civil rights to all, including the LGBT community.
Happy Pride!
[more inside]posted by ericb at 2:05 PM PST - 65 comments
June 26
Tart cards [NSFW] are the means by which many London prostitutes advertise their services. Step into almost any central London phone box and you can contemplate up to 80 cards inviting you to be tied, teased, spanked or massaged.... [Wallpaper Magazine] asked designers – from students to superstars – to find the tart hiding in every typeface and create their own graphic numbers.... all 450 cards can be viewed
here.
[NSFW] [more inside]posted by carsonb at 5:32 PM PST - 39 comments
“
...the Platonic nerd is invariably male. The stereotype is flexible to incorporate women and girls on an individual basis, but few people conjure up the image of a woman when they think about nerds.” Feminist blog Pandagon
reviews two books about nerdiness and geekery, Jason Tocci
addresses the question of why female involvement in geek culture seems to call for a special explanation, and two
feminist geeks set out in search of an egalitarian future.
posted by velvet winter at 4:21 PM PST - 142 comments
The tragic story of Timothy Cole who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, and died because of inadequate health care in prison. He was recently posthumously exonerated based on confessions of the guilty man and DNA evidence.
posted by djduckie at 3:46 PM PST - 26 comments
Overly confident in the economic health of the United States? Feeling sanguine about current spending levels? Haven't yet been scared out of your wits about your financial future? No worries! The
U.S. National Debt Clock page is for you! Your one stop shop for all things financial meltdown related: Total debt, debt per citizen, budget deficits and spending year-to-date, total governmental bailouts, and much much more!
posted by Justinian at 12:59 PM PST - 77 comments
Framed by a circle of clouds, this is a stunning illustration of Nature's powerful force.
A plume of smoke, ash and steam soars five miles into the sky from an erupting volcano.
The extraordinary image was captured by the crew of the International Space Station 220 miles above a remote Russian island in the North Pacific. posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:46 PM PST - 22 comments
It all started with a
t-shirt. When Tulane University art historian
Thomas Bayer posted a list of thirteen reasons why Brad Pitt, whose local
Make It Right Foundation builds post-Katrina homes in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, should become New Orleans' next mayor (among them:
New Orleans will become the magnet for conventions of professional women’s organizations worldwide. The warm glow of pink Cadillacs will illuminate our Southern nights. This mass of sensually charged femininity will attract male visitors eager to contribute their economic stimulus. ), a local entrepreneur
whipped up a t-shirt designed to draft Brad.
With many anxiously awaiting the end of
Mayor Ray Nagin (
Nagin's Last Day bumper stickers have popped up in town) and the Jolie-Pitts known for their
New Orleans aid, the story's gotten legs.
[more inside]posted by liketitanic at 11:22 AM PST - 50 comments
A handy rating guide to 1980s saxophone solos --
"I realized about 5 years ago that at some point in the 80s, lots of the popular music started incorporating saxophone solos into their songs. Some of them are fine, but most of them are ridiculous to have in the songs. I have attempted to separate the quality and appropriateness of the solos from what I think of the song as a whole..."posted by miss lynnster at 7:13 AM PST - 140 comments
Getting smart about personal technology. NYTimes publishes Sonia Zjawinski's assertion that other peoples' images on Flickr are probably OK to download, blow up and use to decorate her house:
And if you’re wondering about copyright issues (after all, these aren’t my photos), the photos are being used by me for my own, private, noncommercial use. I’m not selling these things and not charging admission to my apartment, so I think I’m in the clear. [more inside]posted by chesty_a_arthur at 6:41 AM PST - 173 comments
Finally, finally - Zubbles are available for pre-order! Inventor
Tim Kehoe has been searching for
the elusive colored bubble for a long time. Through his experimentation he's stained his eyes a deep blue, along with his car, his kitchen, and his bathtub (he's also permanently stained the family dog). But in 2005, after 11 years and over $500,000 in funding, Kehoe successfully created a colored bubble that wouldn't stain. His invention,
Zubbles, was given the "Best of What's New, Grand Award" from Popular Science.
[more inside]posted by avoision at 4:44 AM PST - 71 comments
June 25
"For a long time it has been a kind of martial arts Loch Ness monster: an American fighting form with supposedly sinister origins that many have heard of but few have seen or experienced. No one, it seemed, had any concrete proof that it existed, or at least none they were willing to share.
Until (2:36) recently." Longer (5:19) ver
here [more inside]posted by P.o.B. at 8:11 PM PST - 68 comments
Internet Anonymity: A Right of the Past? | North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology
A newly designed Internet Protocol, restricting communication source autonomy, is being quietly drafted with detailed technical standards that “define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous” by a United Nations agency. The “IP Traceback” drafting group, which has declined to release key documents or allow their meetings to be open to the public, includes, among others, the United States National Security Agency.
[more inside]posted by shetterly at 6:20 PM PST - 52 comments
Back in the late Pleistocene epoch 100,000 years ago, the 2000 book contended, men who carried rape genes had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who did not: they sired children not only with willing mates, but also with unwilling ones, allowing them to leave more offspring (also carrying rape genes) who were similarly more likely to survive and reproduce, unto the nth generation. That would be us. And that is why we carry rape genes today. The family trees of prehistoric men lacking rape genes petered out.
Newsweek's Sharon Begley examines evolutionary psychology and some of its most controversial theories (and how they are being rethought) in
Don't Blame The Caveman.posted by hippybear at 2:28 PM PST - 92 comments
In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that school officials violated an Arizona teenager's rights by strip-searching her for prescription-strength ibuprofen, declaring that U.S. educators cannot force children to remove their clothing unless student safety is at risk.
Clarence Thomas demurred, suggesting that panties would become the new drug underground.
posted by dejah420 at 1:08 PM PST - 62 comments
Innovation, Ideas and the Global Standard of Living by Charles Kenny: "
The Success of Development acts like a sword through many of the Gordian knots plaguing the development community, especially those surrounding the rate of economic growth in many developing countries. Put that question to one side, says Kenny, and suddenly a lot of much more interesting questions, about issues like education and healthcare and clean water and human rights, come into a lot more focus. And if you use those metrics,
rather than GDP growth, to judge the success or failure of developing countries, then things look rather more optimistic than you might think." (
pdf)
Glenn Hubbard's review, cf.
Technological Creativity and Economic Progress [more inside]posted by kliuless at 12:21 PM PST - 2 comments
The Baloney Detection Kit. "With a sea of information coming at us from all directions, how do we sift out the misinformation and bogus claims, and get to the truth? Michael Shermer, Publisher of
Skeptic magazine, lays out a 'Baloney Detection Kit' — ten questions we should ask when encountering a claim."
posted by homunculus at 11:49 AM PST - 52 comments
Greil Marcus writes
Real Life Top Ten for the Believer Magazine, in which he lists "anything that remotely has to do with music, a dress Bette Midler wore at an awards show or a great guitar solo in the middle of a song that otherwise wasn't very interesting." But he's been writing this
column online for just about
10 years. [more inside]posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:46 AM PST - 4 comments
Pauline Kael called it "a huge, jerry-built, crumbling ruin of a movie". Roger Ebert called it "such a silly and stupid movie... our immediate reaction is pity". Few directors of
Michelangelo Antonioni's stature have followed a film as acclaimed as
Blowup (1966) with one as reviled as
Zabriskie Point (1970).
[more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 11:37 AM PST - 30 comments
In 1970, while burning captured enemy documents with no military intelligence value, Fred Whitehurst came across a tiny diary. Advised not to burn it by his translator, he kept it and took it with him to America when his tour was over. Thirty five years later,
the diary came back
home.
[more inside]posted by LenaO at 11:18 AM PST - 5 comments
An amendment to the Defense Authorization Act currently under consideration in congress would force the notorious
School of the Americas (currently known as "WHINSEC") to "release to the public the names, ranks, countries of origin, courses taken and dates of attendance of all the students and instructors at the institute."
[more inside]posted by saulgoodman at 10:19 AM PST - 28 comments
Toast always reminds me of the global division of labor. A British artist inspired by Douglas Adams is attempting to make a toaster from scratch. Apparently this concept was also addressed before in an essay, "I, Pencil," by Leonard Read, a founder of a Libertarian think tank. Bottom line: Pencils and toasters are difficult for one person to make and using a microwave to smelt stuff for the toaster is apparently cheating.
posted by ShadePlant at 8:15 AM PST - 40 comments
A Prison Nightmare. On June 23, 2009, the National Prison Rape Commission released its final
Report and proposed Standards to prevent, detect, respond to and monitor sexual abuse of incarcerated or detained individuals throughout the United States.
More prisoners reported abuse by staff than abuse by other prisoners.posted by Non Prosequitur at 3:32 AM PST - 132 comments
June 24
Design geek and brilliant self-promoter Pete Dungey just completed a project where he did a 'survey' to find the best-known people named Alan or Allen, and
printed the top names on Allen Wrenches (or Alan Keys as they're called in the UK, I guess). Brilliant! And if you're a non-UKian wh's wondering who the funny-named #1 is:
Ground Force!
[more inside]posted by wendell at 11:51 PM PST - 32 comments
iD Software has been acquired by ZeniMax media. (Reports
here,
here, and many other places.) John Romero, the co-founder of the company,
had some initial concerns but seems to have
cheered up. No doubt a wide variety of retrospectives, histories, opinions and flames will rise from this most infamously-independent of game studios joining forces/merging/being swallowed by another, younger one. (
ZeniMax was founded in 1999,
iD in 1991.) With iD releasing games with years-long gaps between them, younger readers might not have grown up playing this company's output, but if you've ever
run down a hallway with a gun bouncing earnestly before you and looking through a heads-up display, iD has touched your life too.
Masters of Doom is an excellent history of the company in book form, assuming you still read.
posted by jscott at 11:19 PM PST - 56 comments
A fight for the Amazon that should inspire the world. "Army helicopters opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition and stun-grenades. More than a dozen were killed. But the indigenous peoples did not run away. Even though they were risking their lives, they stood their ground. One of their leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply: "The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don't fight together, what will our future be?"
And then something extraordinary happened. The indigenous peoples won."
Via
A Tiny Revolution: Latin America, World's Moral Political Leader.
posted by shetterly at 5:33 PM PST - 26 comments
Though the
B-2 Spirit is perhaps the best-known of the
flying wing designs, its creation came almost 50 years after the earliest attempts at creating fixed-wing aircraft with no definite fuselage. The first prototypes of Frenchman
Charles Fauvel's flying wings followed the patent on his formula for the flying wing in 1929. Jack Northrop's newly formed Northrop Aircraft Co. created the first flying wing for the United States in 1940, dubbed
Northrom N-1M "Jeep". But it was the
Horten Brothers, German aircraft pilots and enthusiasts, who created the first fully-functional stealth flying wing: the
Horten Ho IX.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 1:12 PM PST - 32 comments
"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. " -
Henry Beston, naturalist and writer.
[more inside]posted by jquinby at 1:00 PM PST - 15 comments
Lightlane builds lasers that shoot out from your bike onto the road, displaying a bike lane wherever you ride. Written about
here and
here.
posted by erikvan at 11:35 AM PST - 92 comments
"Text Utilities" is a useful browser-based tool for geeks. It's a web page that does all sorts of operations on text, e.g. escape/ unescape, hashing, regexp testing.
posted by grumblebee at 9:06 AM PST - 33 comments
Former member of
The Orb and electronic musician
Andy Hughes passed away June 12th after a short illness. While he may not have been the most well-known member of The Orb, he definitely added a unique sound to many of their albums and remixes, including their groundbreaking
Live 93 and
Orblivion albums. In addition to his work with The Orb as well as his own solo material, Hughes also worked with Basement Jaxx, The Pet Shop Boys, Tina Turner, and David Bowie.
posted by 40 Watt at 7:03 AM PST - 36 comments
The Truth Rundown: High-ranking defectors provide an unprecedented inside look at the Church of Scientology, its leader David Miscavige, and the Lisa McPherson case. Expose from the newpaper in Clearwater, Florida, the "worldwide spiritual headquarters" of Scientology,
in three parts.
posted by mosessis at 5:51 AM PST - 85 comments
June 23
70s/80s Soviet album covers. Until today, I had no idea Soviet hair metal existed. Prepare for keytars, mall hair and proof that 80s cheese was not solely a product of degenerate kepitalist decadence.
posted by DecemberBoy at 9:24 PM PST - 54 comments
"The 2000 census found that nearly 23 percent of families living in Letcher County, KY, fell below the poverty line. The median household income in most counties is at or below $25,000, with individuals making on average $12,000 a year."
The White Family by
Carl Kiilsgaard [more inside]posted by saturnine at 5:37 PM PST - 45 comments
The
Village Dog Project is an
ongoing research project to document genetic diversity in pariah dogs. These dogs haven't been subject to breed pressure, and may be able to help researchers
learn more about the transition from wolf to dog. (
via)
posted by Pants! at 2:42 PM PST - 5 comments
Have you ever been playing Double Dragon and just thought, "You know what would make this game better? Some gigantic swords!" Or have you ever been hacking your way through a Golden Axe game and thought to yourself, "If only I could headbutt these dudes into a fine red mist!" Then you need
BO.
[more inside]posted by Eideteker at 1:16 PM PST - 5 comments
Everyman's announcer: Ed McMahon enjoyed a remarkable entertainment career. From pitching vegetable slicers to passerbyers on the Atlantic City boardwalk to delivering the original king of late night to a national audience every night for thirty years; Ed McMahon's voice is part of the American fabric. Sadly, Ed McMahon has passed
away.
[more inside]posted by cavalier at 7:26 AM PST - 76 comments
By 17 October, the day of the Soviet Moon landing, tension had risen. Czechoslovakian and Hungarian troops were said to be massing on the border with Austria. Soviet fighters had been harassing civil aircraft in the Berlin corridors, causing an American airliner to crash.
What was once the most secret British government document is released to the public on Tuesday. The Government War Book, used during the Cold War, set out in great detail exactly what would happen in the days before nuclear weapons were fired.
Prof Peter Hennessy describes
the War Bookposted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar at 5:24 AM PST - 30 comments
June 22
Pug Fight — An animated short that explores the unbelievably cruel but really adorable world of underground pug fighting.
posted by blasdelf at 8:17 PM PST - 22 comments
Why We Stare, Even When We Don’t Want To “When a face is distorted, we have no pattern to match that,” Rosenberg said. “All primates show this [staring] at something very different, something they have not evolved to see. They need to investigate further. ‘Are they one of us or not?’ In other species, when an animal looks very different, they get rejected.” The article is about why humans stare at disfigurements, but it may say something about why we stare at anyone who seems different. Previously:
Seeing race: the Other-Race Effect.
posted by shetterly at 12:49 PM PST - 39 comments
Play Helen Hunt off, Keyboard Cat! So he does. And then he jams. It's a single link to YouTube, and you may skip it if you want. But you're missing out if you do, because as I type this I think this opus is the pinnacle of human achievement.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:24 AM PST - 131 comments
Slavoj Žižek
recently gave five talks under the title Masterclass - Notes Towards a Definition of Communist Culture. It sez 'ere, "The master class analyses phenomena of modern thought and culture with the intention to discern elements of possible Communist culture. It moves at two levels: first, it interprets some cultural phenomena (from today’s architecture to classic literary works like Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Heloise) as failures to imagine or enact a Communist culture; second, it explores attempts at imagining how a Communist culture could look, from Wagner’s Ring to Kafka’s and Beckett’s short stories and contemporary science fiction novels." Audio of Zizek's talks and subsequent discussion is now online:
Part I Utopias;
Part II Architecture as Ideology;
Part III Wagner’s Ring as a Communist narrative;
Part IV Populism and Democracy;
Part V Environment, Identity and Multiculturalism. Those who like to watch the beard in motion will find links to video of some of the talks posted
here.
posted by Abiezer at 7:05 AM PST - 29 comments
June 21
How Safeway Is Cutting Health-Care Costs - "At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%. The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior... 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior... 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is
preventable." [
1,
2] cf.
Wyden's Third Way &
Healthcare CEOs Shoot Themselves in the Foot [more inside]posted by kliuless at 8:32 AM PST - 130 comments
When thousands of people depart, leaving an entire city dead that’s a real tragedy. There are mainly two reasons why people leave the place where they used to live for years or even generations: danger, and economic factors.
Abandoned Places In The World. ( previously
1,
2)
posted by netbros at 7:11 AM PST - 29 comments
An alternative look at Fatherhood: a study
with bees shows that
females mating with random males actually have more genes in common with their sisters than they do with their own daughters. And that makes them more likely to put the good of their colony sisters over their own reproductive legacy.
Would that work with humans? Well, there's a society in China where kids
don't have Fathers.
posted by eye of newt at 12:54 AM PST - 36 comments
June 20
"
The whole dream is that everybody has a world record in them," said Dan Rollman, president and co-founder of the Brooklyn-based
Universal Record Database. Since the site went live last fall, more than 1,000 feats have been documented - ranging from the most binder clips on a face (
now up to 34) to the longest toenail (
seven-eighths of an inch) to the most whoopee cushions sat on without smiling or laughing (
presently up to 18), and a few records involving mustaches (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6). Beyond the basics of setting records, the URDB is
based on three principles: 1. Honesty and accuracy are pretty much everything, 2. Don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt others. Don't hurt the planet, and 3. Waste sucks.
[more inside]posted by filthy light thief at 6:52 PM PST - 22 comments
"Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can’t they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16? Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals? Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break." Missouri State Rep.
Cynthia Davis (R-O’Fallon) is staking out
a strong position on child hunger:
she's for it. (
via).
posted by ornate insect at 6:37 PM PST - 92 comments
A photo returned... A short video of a man returning a photo to the daughter of the man he killed, and from whom he removed the photo, during the war in Viet Nam.
posted by HuronBob at 3:57 PM PST - 21 comments
Seeing race: the Other-Race Effect. Why do so many people think people of other races look alike? Babies as young as three months old "tend to recognize faces from their own race better than those from other races," but "babies raised with frequent exposure to people of other races don’t develop this early bias." The Other-Race Effect, aka the
Cross-Race Effect, "carries practical implications for cases of mistaken eyewitness identification."
A follow-up study with Chinese babies confirmed the effect, and notes that it can change: "Korean adults who were adopted by French families during their childhood (aged 3–9 years) demonstrated the same discrimination deficit for Korean faces shown by the native French population." Yes,
you have to be carefully taught.
posted by shetterly at 8:26 AM PST - 36 comments
The American Nightmare (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8) Documentary on US horror films of the 60s and 70s and how their themes reflected the society of the time. Includes contributions from John Carpenter, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, George R. Romero and Tom Savini. NSFW - horror gore plus extreme reportage.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:39 AM PST - 44 comments
June 19
WoW Detox -- "WoWdetox is a volunteer-run web site aimed at people with a gaming addiction to World of Warcraft. Here gamers and ex-gamers can share their testimonies freely and anonymously."
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:50 PM PST - 60 comments
Its previous owner named it the Old Kentucky Home. For
Thomas Wolfe, it was the home of his youth, a
boarding house run by his mother, Julia Wolfe. Now it's known as the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, located in
Altamont Asheville, North Carolina, and its website offers fair overview of Wolfe, and even his legendary editor,
Maxwell Perkins. Wolfe, the author of
Look Homeward, Angel (
.txt file),
Of Time and the River (
.txt file), and
You Can't Go Home Again (
.txt file), among other works.
Text file copies courtesy of Project Gutenberg Australia.posted by Atreides at 5:50 PM PST - 3 comments
Stereotypes -- Derided by typophiles as crass, "ethnic type" has a revealing taxonomy and, surprisingly, serves a purpose.posted by cog_nate at 1:33 PM PST - 66 comments
Explore the joy of
American Tribal Style (
1,
2,
3),
tribal fusion (
1,
2,
3),
industrial,
gothic (
1,
2,
3),
fantasy,
heavy metal,
punk raqs,
‘80s fusion,
hip hop,
new age,
feminist,
Star Trek, or
tough love belly dance.
[more inside]posted by velvet winter at 11:27 AM PST - 20 comments
“They are brands that may not be considered cool by the often elitist and self-absorbed standards of New York media,” she said. She had taken a car from Manhattan that morning, and wore a pink wool shirt-dress, patent leather Manolo Blahnik heels, and diamond hoop earrings.
Reader's Digest
jumps the shark.
(NYT)posted by squalor at 10:27 AM PST - 177 comments
This site is dedicated to those hardworking and underpaid Angels of Mercy who, over the years, have made a stay in hospital that much more bearable. It's a growing collection of images of Nurses taken from Film, TV and The Media from the 1930s to the present, showing how uniform styles have changed over the years.posted by Joe Beese at 10:18 AM PST - 7 comments
"Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.," the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords. The City of Bozeman takes their job application process too far?posted by hippybear at 9:11 AM PST - 86 comments
Online dating site
match.com is being
sued for deception by a New York man who claims their practice of keeping up profiles of non-paying members who have no ability to respond to suitors "defrauds the consumer of his/her time, labor, and emotional investment"
posted by The Gooch at 8:37 AM PST - 93 comments
Beck intends to record cover versions of selected albums in a day, unrehearsed, with guest musicians and then to release them on his website. Pitchfork announced it yesterday
here. The first song is
Sunday Morning.
posted by tawny at 4:32 AM PST - 48 comments
"I filled my water bottles , fuel bottle and ate some snacks. I reset my altimeter to 1300ft and started shortly past 2pm. The first sign stated 'Eagle Plains 363, Inuvik 735'. The distances were measured in kilometers with green km posts every 2km along the road. A few kilometers down the road, I crossed an old fire burn area with dead trees still standing. The sun was shining and I was eager to get started on the road. The gravel was occasionally soft as the road slowly climbed along the valley."
An enterprising man relates his journey up the
Dempster Highway on bicycle.
[more inside]posted by Avenger at 2:28 AM PST - 14 comments
Is
Dexter Romweber about to finally
get his due? One of the great underground
geniuses of rock, in
the late 1980s and early 90s Romweber fronted
The Flat Duo Jets. Their brand of raw, pared-down
rockabilly proved
cathartic and influential, if never
commercially viable. Now Jack White, who has always
acknowledged his musical indebtedness to Romweber,
has produced a new 7" EP (in addition,
a new album, not produced by White, features Exene Cervenka, Chan Marshall, and Neko Case). Romweber
seems poised to receive some
long overdue recognition. It's about
time.
posted by ornate insect at 1:22 AM PST - 21 comments
June 18
Did you know there's an AJAX implementation of nethack? It seems to be pretty full-featured -- not a rouge-like light, supporting every option that the normal version does, right down to tiles. For traditionalists, there's also the internet nethack server known as
NAO, where you can mingle with and watch other players struggle through the Dungeons of Doom and lose time in a stunning amount of trivia and statistics. To extend your chances of success you might also want to visit
wikihack, which will certainly spoil your experience, detailing the tiniest details and tactics of the game.
posted by boo_radley at 6:23 PM PST - 86 comments
As of tomorrow a
law will be in effect in Germany that allows the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation to block websites without any judicial approval. Both big parties voted favorably today - even in the face of
protest and the most successful online petition in Germany so far. And while the original law states that only child pornography can be censored this way, politicians and music industry execs are already calling for the blocking of
first person shooters and
copyright-infringing content. (Last two links in German)
[more inside]posted by dominik at 1:39 PM PST - 35 comments
We've discussed
trepanation, the boring of holes in the head as practiced in antiquity and by a fringe do it yourself-ers, before. There now seems to be research indicating that the procedure may have
medical merit, and even help stave off age related cognitive decline. This curious research brought to you by the
Beckly Foundation which "promotes the investigation of consciousness and its modulation
from a multidisciplinary perspective" and has a sweet logo.
posted by phrontist at 12:01 PM PST - 50 comments
Bill Maher's criticism of Obama?
Be more like Bush. ...And just like Lindsey [Lohan], we see your name in the paper a lot, but we're kind of wondering when you're actually going to do something. Follow up of his statements with Keith Olbermann.
...But where's the beef? And it's easy to make speeches; what's hard to do is stand up against corporations. Corporations and their incredible strength are what have ruined this country so far, and this president -- we thought -- might be the one to stand up to them. I'm losing hope. I still have audacity, but my hope is fading.posted by Christ, what an asshole at 9:57 AM PST - 124 comments
On hive minds, “cognitive calisthenics”, “You+”. Cascio predicts that in the near future “many more humans will have the capacity to do something that was once limited to a hermetic priesthood”.
Get Smart, by Jamais Cascio, the Atlantic, July/August 2009
posted by mareli at 8:20 AM PST - 26 comments
Custom Letters is an evolving category that includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and type design.
posted by minifigs at 2:01 AM PST - 17 comments
June 17
One of the giants of free jazz, Albert Ayler was also one of the most controversial. His huge tone and wide vibrato were difficult to ignore, and his 1966 group sounded like a runaway New Orleans brass band from 1910. -
AllMusic [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 9:25 PM PST - 23 comments
NSA E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress. "Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation."
[Via]posted by homunculus at 2:33 PM PST - 44 comments
"
Worio is a discovery engine that works alongside keyword search to expose you to stuff you've been missing using search alone." (
via)
[more inside]posted by gman at 1:58 PM PST - 17 comments
All the Great Operas in 10 minutes (
1992) is a very quick overview of
La Traviata,
Carmen,
Don Giovanni,
Aida,
Tosca,
Tristan and Isolde,
Madame Butterfly,
Ring of the Nibelung (a four-parter), resulting 26 dead, plus all the gods of Valhalla, which brings the grand total to 38 dead.
10 More Operas in 10 Minutes is a tribute to the original, created by the students of
the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences, covering
The Merry Widow (technically an
operetta),
The Force of Destiny,
Lucia di Lammermoore,
The Magic Flute,
Falstaff,
The Damnation of Faust,
Rigoletto,
Romeo and Juliet,
La Bohème, and
William Tell. Only 14 deaths tallied (not counting armies fighting).
posted by filthy light thief at 1:13 PM PST - 13 comments
The Chronicles of Bruiser "It looked like the fucking Apocolypse. Metallica blaring, strobe light, smoke, and road flares all going off at once. I ran at them full steam an shouted 'I am the Dark Lord here to REAP YOUR SOULS.'" The unbelievable true story of a Street Sweeper named Bruiser.
[more inside]posted by namewithhe1d at 12:53 PM PST - 22 comments
Too Poor to Make the News "The super-rich give up their personal jets; the upper middle class cut back on private Pilates classes; the merely middle class forgo vacations and evenings at Applebee’s. In some accounts, the recession is even described as the “great leveler,” smudging the dizzying levels of inequality that characterized the last couple of decades and squeezing everyone into a single great class, the Nouveau Poor, in which we will all drive tiny fuel-efficient cars and grow tomatoes on our porches.
But the outlook is not so cozy when we look at the effects of the recession on a group generally omitted from all the vivid narratives of downward mobility — the already poor. From their point of view “the economy,” as a shared condition, is a fiction."
posted by nooneyouknow at 12:47 PM PST - 74 comments
Instructables.com moves to a "pay to see" model Instructables, the community craft blog of the handy set, has moved to a closed pay-only model, and the timer is ticking for legacy accounts. After 90 days from implementation rollover, people who do not pay for an Instructables "Pro" account will have their accounts "crippled". Non-paying accounts will no longer be able to view entire instructables at once, print out projects or get a PDF, have a "favorites" list, and most perniciously, people
won't be able to view "secondary" images in instructable steps that have multiple images. (Even if you happen to be the person that created it.)
[more inside]posted by dejah420 at 12:18 PM PST - 61 comments
June 16
Behind them on the stage, a giant watermelon. In their hands, little tiny guitars, which they play like mosquitoes on speed. They scat, they dance, they get halfway through the alphabet. Their percussionist has the coolest little drum kit ever, but that doesn't stop him from playing the stage floor and the walls. Who are they? Why,
The Five Racketeers, of course! And who's that lady who storms the stage for a little shimmy at the end of the clip? Well, that's Eunice Wilson, and she stuck around to do
another number with the fellows. You want more, right? OK! Then let's head down to the
All-Colored Vaudeville Show, for some serious oooold-school entertainment.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:14 PM PST - 21 comments
The Medill School of Journalism's Washington Program revealed its Pentagon Travel project last week (
multimedia).
Most privately paid for travel was found to be
within the bounds of federal law, but some still show a clear
conflict of interest.
Key findings: From 1998 through 2007, sources outside the federal government paid for more than 22,000 trips worth at least $26 million. The medical industry paid for more travel than any other outside interest — more than $10 million for some 8,700 trips, or about 40 percent of all outside sponsored travel. Among the targets: military pharmacists, doctors, and others who administer the Pentagon’s $6 billion-plus annual budget for prescription drugs.
Medill acquired 10 years worth of trip data and partnered with the Center for Public Integrity to form a
searchable database which includes destination, date, sponsor, sponsor nationality, cost of trip or agency.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:18 PM PST - 3 comments
To Marty, This bespells doom! A recent reading in Manhattan at the Strand bookstore by David Sedaris, whose most recent book is “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” may have offered a glimpse of the future. A man named Marty who had waited in the book-signing line presented his Kindle, on the back of which Mr. Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, “This bespells doom.” (The signed Kindle was photographed, but its owner’s full name is unknown.)
posted by Fizz at 1:13 PM PST - 53 comments
"Pryde and I came across it one day in an old stable, on a sack of fodder. It is a good, hearty, old English name, and it appealed to us, so we adopted it immediately."
That's how
The Beggarstaffs, a short lived but influential paring of graphic designers, got their name.
[more inside]posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:57 AM PST - 9 comments
Oh cow, oh cow, what are you thinking? Should I leave the gate open?
Are you content? Would you be happy?
Do you yearn? Would you turn feral?
Do you want freedom? Oh cow
Greener pastures? Moo cow
A bull?
Run free cow The Online Dairy Ode Contest was a light-hearted, web-based, sister competition to the
James McIntyre Poetry Contest. It was held at irregular intervals from 2001 to 2005. The only criterion for entry was that the poems had to be Dairy Odes; ie about dairy products, cows, or dairying.
posted by carsonb at 11:50 AM PST - 24 comments
Opera, the inventor of tabbed browsing who just won't quit, today released a trial version of
Unite, a dramatic attempt to reverse the centralization of the web as well as Opera's own decreasing relevance in a market dominated by
far larger companies [more inside]posted by crayz at 2:11 AM PST - 78 comments
June 15
It doesn't seem as if the digital transition has been the resounding success we were told it would be. The
FCC has admitted that they're confounded
by some of the problems that have arisen across the country. With frustrated tv viewers mobbing the FCC hotlines (and major metropolises like Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore amongst the largest numbers reporting ongoing problems), some have yet to experience the mind-blowing crystal clear pictures and sound promised in those ubiquitous DTV commercials.
[more inside]posted by Mael Oui at 11:16 PM PST - 111 comments
Dear Mr. President: ... I realized that although I and other LGBT leaders have introduced ourselves to you as policy makers, we clearly have not been heard, and seen, as what we also are: human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal to yours. I know this because this brief would not have seen the light of day if someone in your administration who truly recognized our humanity and equality had weighed in with you. [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 7:48 PM PST - 157 comments
Bonsoir, Monsieur COK! Dans un formidable élan de générosité notre patron adoré nous offre enfin la possibilité de voir son FILM sur la toile!
A short film about efficiencies in bomb manufacturing.posted by boo_radley at 2:06 PM PST - 16 comments
They were in the stairwell that led down to the commode, a dangerous place in its time, the Grand Central Station Men’s, but for different reasons. I saw the dirt tracks leading there, and I left the monkeys in the chandelier and followed them. I kept to the tracks careful as I could. There were pits and corrugations everywhere in the old tile, any one of which could hide a man killing gob of explosive. At my back I heard Spot complain: “Leave ‘em be, Blacks. We’ve warned ‘em, ain’t we? If they blow themselves up, it ain’t on us.”
UXO, BOMB DOG by Eliot Fintushel (single-link short fiction)
posted by grobstein at 1:12 PM PST - 15 comments
Stan Hugill, often known as "
The Last Shantyman," authored a
book called
Shanties From the Seven Seas, based on his own work experiences in the last days of sail. Influential in the folk revival, the book is one of the most important written sources for music sung aboard ships in the 19th and early 20th century,
the "Bible" of sea music. Decades of chanteying in pubs and at festivals have kept many of the songs alive, but in most cases they've strayed stylistically from the verses and versions Hugill collected, or dropped out of popularity entirely. Now,
one musician is returning to the source and creating a new audio archive for the original versions of the songs as written, by
singing through the more than 400 songs in the book, one song each week, and posting the songs on YouTube, with commentary.
[more inside]posted by Miko at 8:43 AM PST - 28 comments
Hunch picks up "where a search engine leaves off," according to cofounder Caterina Fake, who previously cofounded the photo-sharing site Flickr and later worked on Yahoo Answers. Fake points out that a normal search engine would provide a user interested in buying a digital camera with links to hundreds of sites that review and compare the latest models. The user then has to sort through that information and figure out which camera is right for her. Instead, Hunch asks users pointed questions and narrows down the list of results for the user.
posted by Man with Lantern at 8:28 AM PST - 46 comments
June 14
Getting up to speed : "If it can get started, the California high-speed train would almost certainly be the most expensive single infrastructure project in United States history. Judging by the experiences of Japan and France, both of which have mature high-speed rail systems, it would end the expansion of regional airline traffic as in-state travelers increasingly ride the fast trains. And it would surely slow the growth of highway traffic."
posted by dhruva at 7:04 PM PST - 77 comments
Biblemap.org is an interactive map system for the bible, which is great for visualising where certain biblical events are said to have occured. It's also great for people who don't subscribe to any kind of organised religion but do like looking at maps (like me!).
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:49 PM PST - 24 comments
The New York steak dinner, or beefsteak, is a form of gluttony as stylized and regional as the riverbank fish fry, the hot-rock clambake, or the Texas barbecue. Some old chefs believe it had its origin sixty or seventy years ago, when butchers from the slaughterhouses on the East River would sneak choice loin cuts into the kitchens of nearby saloons, grill them over charcoal, and feast on them during their Saturday-night sprees. - Joseph Mitchell, 1939.
[more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 5:03 PM PST - 39 comments
In his autobiography, published in 2007, Blur bassist Alex James admitted to blowing a million pounds on champagne and cocaine. This confession led to an invitation from Colombia's President Uribe to visit the country and see the damage being caused by the drug trade. He went, and the
BBC filmed it (
one,
two,
three).
posted by jontyjago at 3:45 PM PST - 64 comments
Van Shipley was the first electric guitarist in India. The name Van Shipley is Methodist, he [was] from Lucknow [Uttar Pradesh, India]. He designed his own electric eight string steel guitar in the 1940's. The reason he did this was that he'd studied Indian classical music under Ustad Alaudin Khan, the leading classical musician in India, who was also a contemporary of Ravi Shankar. He also studied the violin with a German teacher... so he made an eight string guitar, instead of a five string. His guitar was a solid guitar, designed to his style at the time, it was futuristic. [more inside]posted by nickyskye at 10:37 AM PST - 10 comments
June 13
"
The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage," said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet "more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the U.S. population and
one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the
Milky Way." In these areas, people are effectively living in
perennial moonlight. They rarely realize it because they still experience the sky to be brighter under a full moon than under new moon conditions. "
Reducing the number of lights on at night could help conserve energy, protect wildlife and benefit human health," astronomer Malcolm Smith of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. One study found an increased risk of breast cancer for women living in areas with the most light pollution (
abstract). Some communities are
embracing their dark skies, such as
the New Zealand community of Tekapo, possibly home to first "
Starlight Reserve," waiting on UNESCO's official approval. Not sure where to look
in the vast night sky?
Follow some guidelines, or
check the view in Chile,
Queensland, Australia, or
Texas.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:51 PM PST - 74 comments
Tactical Corsets (marginally NSFW) -- "Tactical gear is no longer an all boys club. Tactical Corsets bring female operators MILSPEC features like MOLLE modular pouch attachment webbing and self-adjustable quick-release buckles in a load-bearing carrier designed to support the female form."
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:50 PM PST - 52 comments
This is the first site on the web to show where real artists and designers work. Painters, musicians, photographers, illustrators.
The site lets you see their environment in which they go about the creative process and will hopefully inspire yourselves. [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 2:43 PM PST - 11 comments
The fiddle is usually associated with the hillbilly mania of people like
Michael Cleveland (the nerdiest master ever to wield a bow), or the can't-get-it-out-of-your-head knees up party sound of
celtic music. The violin, on the other hand, is associated with the elegance of
orchestral music. They're actually one and the same instrument, applied to different sounds. And nobody wrote for this instrument more movingly than the Romanian composer
Ciprian Porumbescu (1853-1883). Listen to his
Ballad for Violin and Orchestra with your eyes closed, and weep for the suffering of the world.
posted by crazylegs at 12:12 PM PST - 23 comments
June 12
George Herriman's Krazy Kat (
previously,
previouslier) has been animated several times: in 1916 under the aegis of William Randolph Hearst a series of at least ten shorts was made, including "
Krazy Kat Goes A-Wooing," "
Krazy Kat Bugologist," and "
Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus." By 1930, under the control of Charles B. Mintz Krazy Kat had lost much of the Kat's own look, and had become, in films like "
Alaskan Knights," a knockoff of Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse. In the 1960s, Gene Deitch's
Krazy Kat series got back to the original look of the Kat, but animation quality was poor, and the Kat was—GASP!—made explicitly female. In 1996, director Derek Mogford gave Krazy the stop motion treatment in a well-made short that's meant to be
an introduction to Herriman's kooky love triangle of Kat, Mouse, and Pup.
posted by ocherdraco at 11:04 PM PST - 24 comments
A Horror Film that will Stiffen You with Laughter! The jungle is jumping, with gals, gags, and goofs! And a gorilla! It's not the set-up for an awkward joke, but an
honest to
goodness motion picture, starring Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist, and nightclub comedians Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo as themselves, though in roles approximating
Martin and Lewis. It was the comedy duo's only movie (possibly due to the
cease and desist request to
Sammy Petrillo from Jerry Lewis), and was one of Bela Lugosi's last movies. Some classify this movie as a
z-grade budget film, while others claim it to be
staggeringly unfunny. But don't take their word for it. You can
watch it all online, or download it from the
Internet Archive.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:29 PM PST - 17 comments
The Millennial Project is a comprehensive plan for space development, beginning with the terrestrial cultivation of an environmentally sustainable civilization and Post-Industrial culture and culminating, far in the future, in the colonization of our immediate stellar neighborhood. The TMP2 project is specifically a project of the Living Universe Foundation community to continually update and revise the content of the original plan as described by Marshal T. Savage in his book The Millennial Project. [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 2:17 PM PST - 8 comments
June 11
Howard Armstrong, AKA Louie Bluie, has his own
festival,
two movies, and made music until the day he died at the ripe old age of
94 (about 5 years ago). I post this now because the festival is upon us. (I'm gonna miss it.)
posted by Phantast at 9:44 PM PST - 3 comments
UnitConversion.org is quite the resource to easily convert between different units of measurement. It has over 2100 units in 78 categories, which range from those that are
common, such as,
length,
weight,
volume,
currency,
velocity, and
pressure, to more specialized categories like
magnetic flux density,
electrostatic capacitance, and
surface tension.
posted by netbros at 9:01 PM PST - 27 comments
Open to Revisions. "Some religious entrepreneurs have adopted an 'open source' model, where rituals and doctrines can be rewritten as easily as computer code."
posted by homunculus at 6:21 PM PST - 54 comments
In
Starcom, a space-based action adventure game, you pilot a starship defending the galaxy from an encroaching enemy invasion with an increasingly powerful array of armaments and technologies. It's a hell of a lot of fun, so play and enjoy!
[via mefi projects]posted by Effigy2000 at 4:01 PM PST - 36 comments
The Dalai Lama's Buddhist Foes contrasts "the tolerance and rationalism that the Dalai Lama represents globally and the theological hardball over mystical principles that he seems to play on his home turf." But the
Shugdenpas aren't the Dalai Lama's only Buddhist opponents. Tibetan Buddhism's only female living Buddha, the twelfth
Samding Dorje Phagmo, who chose to stay in Tibet when the Dalai Lama fled,
has said, "The sins of the Dalai Lama and his followers seriously violate the basic teachings and precepts of Buddhism and seriously damage traditional Tibetan Buddhism's normal order and good reputation."
[more inside]posted by shetterly at 1:15 PM PST - 95 comments
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 12:12 PM PST - 78 comments
"There's only so many parking spaces in the city," said Sordillo. "And in this part, there's very few." A private parking
space in Boston's Back Bay area sold for
$300,000.
posted by jaimev at 12:07 PM PST - 60 comments
The periodic table will
soon have a new addition - the "super-heavy" element 112. More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of the element, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery. But before it can be added to the official list of elements, they have to come up with an official name (hopefully better than its current unofficial moniker
Ununbium).
posted by unSane at 10:11 AM PST - 80 comments
Rose bengal is a red dye that has been used for decades to identify eye and liver damage. A
company, Provectus Pharmaceuticals, has developed a drug based on this compound, which
clinical trials show may be able to
destroy advanced melanoma with minimal risks. Melanoma is an extremely dangerous form of skin cancer. The company
hopes to extend this drug to other cancers as well as to other skin conditions, such as eczema and psoriasis, for which poor treatment solutions exist. Claims such as these inspire skepticism, but the melanoma trials have been conducted by some of the most
eminent names in the melanoma community. Does this drug hold
potential, or is the whole thing
snake oil?
posted by prunes at 6:35 AM PST - 18 comments
June 10
The Uniform Project - "Starting May 2009, I have pledged to wear one dress for one year as an exercise in sustainable fashion. Here’s how it works: There are 7 identical dresses, one for each day of the week. Every day I will reinvent the dress with layers, accessories and all kinds of accouterments, the majority of which will be vintage, hand-made, or hand-me-down goodies... The Uniform Project is also a year-long fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education in India."
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 5:45 PM PST - 74 comments
With all the dust
that's been*
riled up by Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor (
previously), everyone is suddenly taking an interest in
Puerto Rico. A basic question that may come up is
why we're there in the first place. Understanding that, we can see how the
complicated relationship has played out between Puerto Rico, the US, and, most recently, the United Nations. Although the UN has
urged the US to take steps towards establishing Puerto Rico's sovereignty, referendums held on the
island have overwhelmingly preferred the
status quo and the US has been indifferent at best. But independence activists, after a twenty-year decline, may be on
the rise. The island's current governor,
Luis Fortuño, is pro-statehood. But the whole issue has taken a back seat since plans have been made to
fire 30,000 government
workers,
privatize some public services, and
sell some the the government's US$3.2 billion debt.
[more inside]posted by krikkit261 at 12:43 PM PST - 26 comments
Djuna Barnes (12 June, 1892 – 18 June, 1982) was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. -
Wikipedia [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 11:43 AM PST - 18 comments
Homelessness is more and more common in the real world - and now it exists within
The Sims. Meet
Alice and Kev, a father and daughter just trying to get along without two Simoleons to rub together.
posted by mippy at 4:18 AM PST - 29 comments
June 9
Minecraft is a multiplayer block-based sandbox game. It's built in Java, so no installation is required (except for Java).
Reddit already has their own server; why don't we?
[more inside]posted by archagon at 10:36 PM PST - 28 comments
The day pain died. "The date of the first operation under anesthetic, Oct. 16, 1846, ranks among the most iconic in the history of medicine. It was the moment when Boston, and indeed the United States, first emerged as a world-class center of medical innovation. The room at the heart of Massachusetts General Hospital where the operation took place has been known ever since as the Ether Dome, and the word 'anesthesia' itself was coined by the Boston physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes to denote the strange new state of suspended consciousness that the city's physicians had witnessed. The news from Boston swept around the world, and it was recognized within weeks as a moment that had changed medicine forever."
[Via]posted by homunculus at 5:55 PM PST - 46 comments
Another day in a regular city in Argentina, another thief looking to score a car in a city well fed-up with a high crime rate. Or it would have been, except for the enterprising
chicken-suit wearing guy that was promoting a nearby shop, who gave pursuit and captured the would-be car thief.
[more inside]posted by Iosephus at 12:38 PM PST - 22 comments
The long-beaked echidna: plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole, pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them. More info, video, and images
here and
here.
posted by amro at 9:31 AM PST - 25 comments
Pencil Rebel is a little bitty point-n-click interactive adventure hand-wired with LEDs and simple circuit boards, and made with hand-cut and decorated cardboard, plasticine, string, and other household odd and ends. The artist, Grzegorz Kozakiewicz, has also made a (with spoilers!)
video showing his process.
posted by tula at 9:00 AM PST - 12 comments
Winner of an Emmy for best dramatic series in 1988, thirtysomething (ABC, 1987-1991) represented a new kind of hour-long drama, a series which focused on the domestic and professional lives of a group of young urban professionals-- a socio-economic category of increasing interest to the television industry. The series attracted a cult audience of viewers who strongly identified with one or more of its eight central characters, a circle of friends living in Philadelphia. And its stylistic and story-line innovations led critics to respect it for being "as close to the level of an art form as weekly television ever gets," as the New York Times put it. -
Museum of Broacast Communications [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 8:57 AM PST - 75 comments
A bad day in the news gallery? Talkback recording of everything going wrong during The One O'Clock News from the BBC in 1986:
Part One,
Part Two,
Part Three. Unless of course, this was a typical day ... "I haven't got any scripts Mike! How am I supposed to run a show?" "Animate quantel or whatever you want to do..." [
via]
posted by feelinglistless at 8:53 AM PST - 12 comments
"What struck me the most were their clothes. The men, in particular, seemed not even dressed, in their baggy, below-the-knee silvery gym clothing, and synthetic t-shirts and cheap flip-flops from China. These were clothes that were worn without any intention; these were the clothes they wore when they did not have to wear clothes ... it’s not so much that they suffer economically, or suffer intellectually, though these of course can happen, but that they suffer due to lack of 'story,'" Choire Sicha on The Hangover.
posted by geoff. at 7:00 AM PST - 154 comments
Editor Marty Halpern looks back at the career of George Alec Effinger (
part 1,
part 2,
part 3), a prolific author best known for his work set in the
Budayeen, a walled city in a future Islamic state, teeming with gangsters, hustlers and transsexual prostitutes, many of them habitual users of plug in personality modules. The noirish tone and exotic technology of the
Marîd Audran books (When Gravity Fails, A Fire In The Sun, The Exile Kiss) made Effinger one of the leading lights in the cyberpunk movie, and spawned a
videogame - a rare attempt at a graphical adventure from Infocom - and
an RPG setting. Sadly Effinger
faded from prominence after that, and he suffered from a number of health and financial setbacks before
passing away in 2002. His work has had somewhat of a resurgence in popularity of late, with the Marîd Audran books coming back into print in 2007, a long with a
collection containing The Wolves of Memory, Effinger's personal favourite amongst his novels.
posted by Artw at 12:24 AM PST - 32 comments
June 8
As someone who's not interested in being threatened with a lawsuit, I thought I'd mention that
Michael Savage is in no way connected to Rockstar Energy Drink, which just happens to be run by his son, with his wife acting as director, treasurer, and secretary of both companies, and run from the same address. When Charles Tsai claimed otherwise, his Facebook boycott group was taken down, his account was disabled and he was forced into making a
public apology.
[more inside]posted by dragoon at 4:14 PM PST - 97 comments
Hiding in "plane" sight. Images and details of the significant efforts made by the United States to prevent the Japanese from bombing our west coast aircraft factories. I wonder what this effort would take today to "fool" Google Maps/Earth.
[more inside]posted by hrbrmstr at 1:28 PM PST - 15 comments
Over the past few years,
Eric Whitacre has been taking the composition world by storm. And now
he's all over the web. (Most links silent, personal website has an autoplay rainstorm going on.) His choral works range from the mysterious and brooding
Water Night to the rambunctious modern madrigal,
With a Lily In Your Hand, to the wonderfully lush
Sleep (formerly a setting of Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" - tragically halted by copyright infringement, but still
available thanks to the magic of YouTube). While his instrumental compositions run the spectrum from silly musical parody (
Godzilla Eats Las Vegas) to poignant melancholy (
October) with some delicate crossover between vocal and instrumental (
Lux Aurumque - first choral, then instrumental!). If you are or think you may be even remotely interested in contemporary classical music, you owe it to yourself to become familiar with the work of Eric Whitacre.
posted by greekphilosophy at 1:23 PM PST - 36 comments
Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks: "They referred to subprime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as 'those people have bad credit', 'those people don't pay their bills' and 'mud people,' " [a Wells Fargo subprime loan officer] said in his affidavit, filed in the NAACP's
lawsuit (pdf) against 13 mortgage lenders. "The company put 'bounties' on minority borrowers. By this I mean that loan officers received cash incentives to aggressively market subprime loans in minority communities."
posted by hayvac at 10:32 AM PST - 40 comments
The Brakhage Scrapbooks. Jane Wodening, then Jane Brakhage, assembled three remarkable scrapbooks in the early 1960s, when she was the wife and muse of experimental film maker Stan Brakhage [previously 1, 2] ... Wodening created the scrapbooks from literal “scraps” of their family life, Brakhage’s creative process, and the artistic communities of which they were a part. Pages are covered with the widest array of verbal and visual materials including but not limited to letters, manuscripts, photographs, original art, clippings, pamphlets, filmstrips, and flyers. [more inside]posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:54 AM PST - 15 comments
June 7
Michael Kinsell sees himself as the next Mr. Rogers. So much so, that he planned a gala event, replete with big-name stars and full orchestra, where Rogers would be honored and Kinsell would be introduced as his successor, telling potential investors he had the blessing of PBS and Rogers’ longtime production company, Family Communications Inc. The only problem was,
none of his claims were true, and his charade
quickly fell apart.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:59 PM PST - 64 comments
Followup-filter:
Previously, we discussed the strange case of
After Last Season, the strange, deadpan trailer for a film that provoked curiosity around the 'net. Hoax? Comedy? Performance art? After Last Season has just made its (4 city) premier and the first reactions are in ...
[more inside]posted by outlier at 12:16 PM PST - 76 comments
Ed Whelan, a lawyer and conservative law pundit at National Review has been
making
the rounds criticizing Sopreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, largely for her statements regarding judges making policy. publius, a pseudonymous legal blogger, wrote a harshly
critical post of Whelan's behavior, accusing him of being a willing stooge of the right-wing - a "legal hitman"
In response Whelan
outed publius, publishing his identity on the National Review website. publius
added his side of the story. It's also worth reading
Volokh's take on the original policy debate, which publius and Whelan each use in defense of their position
posted by crayz at 8:16 AM PST - 117 comments
Multipart interview with film maker Kevin Smith on his career so far, why he's directing a film he didn't write, the internet and dying an early death.
Part 1 - Selling Out And Salty Language,
Part 2 - Writing & Film Making,
Part 3 - Change, Death, Legacy,
Part 4 - The Dark Side Of The Internet,
Part 5 - The Curse Of
Chasing Amy,
Part 6 - Bright Side Of The Internet,
Part 7- Talking To People He Wrote,
Part 8 - Gretzky, Gratitude & God,
Part 9 - Risking His Life & Starting A New One (and more to come apparently...)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:27 AM PST - 67 comments
I'm Back An analysis of the present macro-economic and political situation. [SLYT] [Adult Language] [NSFCRTs] [Right-wing Smears x2] [PepsiGold Pitch at the end]
posted by @troy at 3:00 AM PST - 37 comments
June 6
For Graham Greene he was "unquestionably our best thriller writer". John le Carré once called him "the source on which we all draw". With the six novels he wrote in the years leading up to the second world war - five of which have just been reissued by Penguin Modern Classics - Eric Ambler revitalised the British thriller, rescuing the genre from the jingoistic clutches of third-rate imitators of John Buchan, and recasting it in a more realist, nuanced and leftishly intelligent - not to mention exciting - mould. -
The writing of Eric Amblerposted by Artw at 10:07 AM PST - 14 comments
June 5
Alabaster. Experimental interactive fiction take on Snow White written collectively by
Emily Short and
ten others. Features 18 endings and procedural illustrations that dynamically reflect game state.
[more inside]posted by juv3nal at 10:31 PM PST - 8 comments
Imagine nature's most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function, so you can enter "filter salt from water" and see how mangroves, penguins, and shorebirds desalinate without fossil fuels. That's the idea behind
AskNature, the online inspiration source for the
biomimicry community. The
featured pages are a good starting point. Cross-pollinating biology with design.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 3:12 PM PST - 13 comments
Sure you consider yourself a retro 8-bit gaming geek, but have you played Udon Boy in Ramen Land, or Kung Fu Psycho Rider? Don't feel bad, they're from Japanese culture store Meteor's annual
Famicase, an
exhibition of imaginary games.
posted by artifarce at 2:28 PM PST - 7 comments
A new twist in the controversy over the (ab)use of tasers. A judge in Niagara County, NY
has decided that tasing a suspect who refused to submit to DNA testing was a reasonable use of force. Ryan Smith, accused of robbery and kidnapping, already submitted one sample, which was contaminated when the government sent it to the wrong laboratory, and refused to give one a second time. The police asked a prosecutor what to do. His response: they could use force to get the sample, but as little as possible. So they tased Smith, who then submitted to the buccal swab.
[more inside]posted by R_Nebblesworth at 9:01 AM PST - 157 comments
A U.S. District Court judge recently
dismissed a
complaint filed by a woman who said she had purchased and eaten "Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries" for four years because she believed "crunchberries" were real fruit.
[more inside]posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 7:34 AM PST - 153 comments
Google has released an experimental search tool,
Google Squared, that presents search results in the form of a table. Each column represents some attribute or dimension of the things returned - for example, searching for
US presidents yields a column for date of birth, and rows for Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, etc.
[more inside]posted by Zarkonnen at 3:13 AM PST - 70 comments
June 4
Canadian DJ bloke Tiga has a new album called Ciao.
He's made a spoof documentary to promote it.
It's really funny, even if you don't know about dance music - A bit like
Nathan Barley by the ever wonderful Chris Morris.
Part 1
Part 2posted by debord at 9:11 PM PST - 20 comments
Cogitate - Manipulate LEGO TECHNIC gears, beams, conveyor belts and motors to complete the ten pre-built puzzles or create your own levels.
[In my case - Then watch them crash in a heap when you test them.]posted by tellurian at 7:47 PM PST - 15 comments
Lullatone are a half-Japanese, half-American duo based in Japan who make music that can probably best be described as twee folktronica; a recent EP of theirs is titled "Little Songs About Raindrops". And now, you can make your own with
their Raindrop Melody Maker Flash web toy, which looks a bit like a pastel-coloured
Tenori-On:
posted by acb at 4:35 PM PST - 9 comments
Today marks the 5th anniversary of
Marvin Heemeyer's killdozer rampage in Granby, Colorado. This resulted in the destruction of 13 buildings and an estimated $7 million in damage, a surreal heavy equipment duel with the police, and Heemeyer himself the sole casualty. Watch a fan-assembled
montage of footage from the event.
posted by 7segment at 2:49 PM PST - 55 comments
Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at
The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 2:35 PM PST - 16 comments
The University of Edinburgh, at the request of Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, used computer modeling to
redesign the lituus. The
horn, made of pinewood with a cow horn mouth piece, was called for by Bach's ‘O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht.’
posted by Pants! at 11:06 AM PST - 6 comments
Have you ever wondered how to explain protein synthesis to your non-scientifically-inclined friends? Have you considered using
interpretive dance? Thanks to the efforts of the Stanford University of 35 years ago, you can!
Warning! May be too 70s for work...
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:45 AM PST - 23 comments
Java Demo: "four-letter words have a special status in the english language and culture. counting in at over 1650 words,...this small project is an attempt to give a spacial overview of the entirety of this part of english language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words."
posted by hortense at 9:17 AM PST - 18 comments
In 1839, soon after Queen Victoria's accession, the Earl of Eglinton staged a re-enactment of a medieval tournament to mark the beginning of what he hoped would be a new age of chivalry. Despite torrential rain, the
Eglinton Tournament was attended by 100,000 people and sparked off a popular craze for all things medieval. A
new website tells the
story of the tournament and reproduces, for the first time,
twenty original watercolours recording the event in all its romantic splendour and absurdity.
posted by verstegan at 7:06 AM PST - 6 comments
June 3
Barak Hussein Obama: anti-Semitic Jew Hater.
Some 130 protesters gathered in front of the American Consulate in Jerusalem Wednesday afternoon to rally against U.S. President Barack Obama, who had just launched his Middle East tour, during which he is expected to reach out in friendship to the Muslim world. [...] As more than a dozen local and international journalists looked on, the protesters chanted "No, You Can't" and waved posters saying "20 new 'settlements' by 2010 - Yes We Can!" [more inside]posted by ornate insect at 11:57 PM PST - 259 comments
Between 1885 and 1917, Peter Carl Fabergé and his assistants created 105
jeweled eggs, only 69 of which survive. They are regarded as masterpieces of the jeweler's art. The
Rothschild egg is the most expensive timepiece ever sold at auction.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:00 PM PST - 59 comments
"By the time
Emmanuel Jal was 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars and had seen hundreds of his fellow child soldiers reduced to taking unspeakable measures as they struggled to survive on the killing fields of Southern Sudan. After a series of harrowing events, he was rescued by a British aid worker (Emma McCune) who smuggled him into Nairobi to raise him as her own. To help ease the pain of what he had experienced, Emmanuel started singing..."
[more inside]posted by Kerasia at 7:23 PM PST - 4 comments
Jacob's Ladder.
Jacob Zuma is a former goatherd, a master of traditional Zulu stick-fighting, a resistance hero, a one-time spymaster, a graceful dancer, and the father of some 20 children. He has been tried for rape and indicted for corruption, racketeering, and fraud. He has been called the next Mandela and the next Mugabe, a black Jesus and a crass rube. A profile of South Africa's recently elected president.
posted by lullaby at 4:14 PM PST - 22 comments
potholer54 is a youtuber who in his own words;
I've been a journalist for 20 years, 14 years as a science correspondent. My degree is in geology, but while working for a science magazine and several science programs I had to tackle a number of different fields, from quantum physics to microbiology. He has a series called
Climate Change that you might find interesting.
[more inside]posted by nola at 3:59 PM PST - 5 comments
Greatbrewers.com releases the
Beer Sommelier. Beer is increasingly considered the ideal beverage to accompany food for its palate cleansing carbonation and its
diverse range of styles featuring flavor and aroma characteristics that can enhance any dish. But
selecting the right beer style to complement a specific dish, and tracking down a retailer that carries that style presents inherent challenges. Masterfully select the best beer styles to pair with any dish, see examples of those styles, and track down individual beers in your neighborhood with the
Beer Sommelier.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 1:19 PM PST - 78 comments
"Because the camera is so close to the character(s) being followed, we feel that we're physically attached to those characters, as if by an invisible guide wire, being towed through their world, sometimes keeping pace, other times losing them as they weave through hallways, down staircases or through smoke or fog." A video montage and essay by Matt Zoller Seitz. All shots are identified at the end; you may know more of them than you think. (
via)
posted by maudlin at 12:13 PM PST - 15 comments
Can't get enough
Whose Line is it Anyway? 71 Scenes From a Hat,
16 Party Quirks,
52 Props,
5 Film Dubs,
84 Hoedowns,
37 Sound Effects,
45 Questions Only,
11 Hats/Dating Service Videos,
52 World's Worst,
13 News Flashes,
35 Let's Make a Date,
9 Press Conferences,
60 Superheroes,
6 Foreign Film Dubs,
29 Irish Drinking Songs,
4 Animals,
9 If You Know What I Mean,
2 Backwards Scene,
54 Greatest Hits,
58 Song Styles,
2 All in One Voice,
21 Scenes to Rap,
3 90-Second Alphabets,
11 Questionable Impressions,
4 Two-Line Vocabulary,
3 Number of Words,
17 Weird Newscasters and (probably the most telling of how much they had to hold back due to censorship standards)
6 Blooper Reels. Prefer the UK version? Every episode of Seasons
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 10:56 AM PST - 70 comments
Today is the first
National Running Day in the US, with
events taking place in metropolises like
Boston,
Chicago,
New York,
Minneapolis/St. Paul, and
Houston, as well as smaller communities like
Chautauqua, New York. If you're not comfortable with running, you can try the
Run Walk method, or start your
Couch to 5k schedule. If you're already a runner, you may want to think up some creative ways to
make today even more running-y. [Previously:
no fancy shoes necessary]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:48 AM PST - 13 comments
Scotland Yard called him the
the Napoleon of Crime. The
Pinkertons called him the most remarkable criminal of them all.
Adam Worth started as a pickpocket in New York and eventually became one of the greatest criminals of all time and the inspiration behind Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarty.
[more inside]posted by Arbac at 9:10 AM PST - 9 comments
With the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Thursday, China's ever-vigilant censors have stepped up the reach of the "Great Firewall," blocking Western sites like Twitter, Flickr, and (just one day after its launch) Microsoft's Bing.
via [more inside]posted by infini at 2:03 AM PST - 54 comments
June 2
"
[Celtic] knots are most known for their adaptation for use in the ornamentation of Christian monuments and manuscripts like the 8th century St. Teilo Gospels, the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels."
[more inside]posted by litterateur at 10:27 PM PST - 9 comments
On TV on any given night:
•
Party Baby: Game show contestants with a shoe box full of cash, combating threats to our rain forest, almost always confused by what's going on, find out that even when you lose, you win.
•
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Whlist studying a pre-warp civilization, Wesley falls ill when the Enterprise encounters an apparent duplicate of Riker which is in fact a holographic simulation, so Riker delivers a phaser blast, which means everything turns out okay, though Picard has had to deal with children. Then, finally Guinan says something cliche and they leave at warp factor five.
...or,
try your luck*.
*
[previously on a very special MetaFilter. Other generators sold separately.]posted by not_on_display at 12:51 PM PST - 27 comments
@Issue: is the online blog of
The Journal of Business and Design. Topics of recent interest include
Drawords, an ongoing caption this drawing project, and
Typography in China, an explanation of the availability of Chinese typefaces. Also,
@Issue interviews an iconic group that includes captains of industry and design.
posted by netbros at 12:02 PM PST - 5 comments
The room in the pier. Somewhere in Malmö, inside a pier, photographer Nils-Petter Löfstedt and carpenter Erik Vestman have been building a livingroom since January. Why? Why not? I might even have walked on it, not knowing that underneath the grey concrete lies a livingroom with white walls and oak wood floors. The duo will reveal its location on Friday and let the room meet its destiny. "Perhaps someone will move in here?" Erik muses in his written diary of the project.
[more inside]posted by dabitch at 11:42 AM PST - 23 comments
Mindsight is a deeply worthwhile exposition of the workings of the mind, an hour-long talk from the Google Personal Growth Series (but don't let that title put you off). [SLYT]
[more inside]posted by mhjb at 12:51 AM PST - 11 comments
In September of 2004, a Superior Court in Washington state ruled
the state's 1998 "Defense of Marriage" act unconstitutional, a ruling which would have allowed the state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In 2006, the state Supreme Court issued in an opinion in
Andersen v. King County overturning the lower court's ruling, noting "that
our decision [pdf] is not based on an independent
determination of what we believe the law should be." The legislature, in response,
created the state-registered domestic partnership in 2007, expanding many (but not all) marriage-related rights to same-sex couples. Last month,
a new law expanded the partnership to cover the remaining rights, creating an "all-but-marriage" partnership.
This year, the Washington Values Alliance has
filed Referendum 71, which would put this expansion to a ballot vote. The referendum will need 120,000 signatures to make it to the ballot.
WhoSigned.org intends to make these signatures searchable.
Predictably, this is
creating some controversy.
[more inside]posted by 0xFCAF at 12:24 AM PST - 114 comments
June 1
I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for "why" or "because." Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls (nsfw) of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men... [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 8:30 PM PST - 20 comments
"You are setting an example for all society and you continue the tradition of parental service which has been customary in our country for centuries," so quoth Russian President Medvedev upon presenting the
Order of Parental Glory to eight families. The medals are part of a campaign to encourage Russians to reproduce to offset the steep anticipated population decline in that country.
[more inside]posted by jeoc at 7:58 PM PST - 20 comments
Last year we discussed a recently discovered 10-second audio recording from 1860 that was thought to be the oldest known recorded human voice, a girl or woman singing the 18th century French folk song
“Au Clair de la Lune”. Turns out, it was being played too fast - slow it down and it's the voice of the inventor himself. As well, a number of other recordings have been found, pushing back the oldest recording to 1857.
Hear it all on NPR (5-min).
[more inside]posted by stbalbach at 4:34 PM PST - 24 comments
Is Oprah helping you live your best life? A six page article from Newsweek reports on some of the more controversial pieces of advice featured in Oprah's "Live your Best Life" series. Most recently, Oprah has attracted attention for yielding the stage to Suzanne Somers, who advocates for experimental synthetic hormone replacement therapy for women in order to prevent aging, as well as other potentially dangerous medical treatments.
Somers responds to the criticism. posted by theantikitty at 12:50 PM PST - 522 comments
The commercials are all over television — and they certainly are attention-grabbing. They’re the ones where the heavy, bald guy is sitting in his easy chair talking in a squeaky female voice about all the clothes he bought — including a bustier. Or the little old lady speaking with the gruff voice of a younger man about the sweet motorcycle she now owned. Identity theft is a serious crime — one that is occurring with an alarming frequency. The
Identity Theft Manifesto explains
how criminals get your personal info, and
what you can do about it.
posted by netbros at 11:42 AM PST - 15 comments
At 14 months, Spanish infant Osel Hita Torres was brought by his parents to Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama decreed him to be the reincarnation of the recently deceased Lama Yeshe. Torres became Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, and spent most of his life growing up in a gilded cage in the Tibetan exile capital, venerated as a living deity and isolated from the corrupting influences of the world.
But then he escaped.
[more inside]posted by acb at 9:05 AM PST - 66 comments
Air France flight AF 447 has gone missing over the atlantic. The flight left Rio at 2200 GMT on Sunday, and was due to land at 0910 GMT in Paris, but contact was lost at 0130 GMT, some 186 miles northeast of the Brazilian city of Natal. It had 216 passengers and 12 crew on board, including three pilots. The passengers included one infant, seven children, 82 women and 126 men.
[more inside]posted by ArkhanJG at 6:03 AM PST - 125 comments
