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July 2003 Archives
July 31
Talk about holding a grudge. Thirty-six years after its initial publication, the Wacky Pack sticker for "
Moron Salt", a toothless parody of
Morton Salt, has become perhaps among the more sought after of all non-sports collectible cards. Why? Because to this day, the makers of Morton Salt are vigorously attempting to banish it from the face of the earth, including going so far as to
threaten legal action against eBay to get them to delist anyone trying to sell it. Details on the legal battle (as well as much more Wacky Pack goodness) available at
MoronSalt.
posted by jonson at 10:51 PM PST - 18 comments
Spam.la is a great tool for those of you who hate the hassel of regestering with an email to views websites (newspapers, etc). [More Inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 5:04 PM PST - 11 comments
Dr. Seuss, politcal cartoonist. Before the Cat strode in wearing a Hat, and before Horton heard a Who, Dr. Seuss drew for a liberal New York newspaper called PM. Through most of 1941 he drew
images that criticized isolationists who thought we could sit out the war. He already had developed his idiosyncratic style, and the University of California at San Diego has all 400 of his PM cartoons on its site. Here's what he drew
Dec. 5, 1941, and this is his cartoon of
Dec. 8. Later in the war, he wrote scripts for 28 "
Private Snafu" animated cartoons, which taught servicemen what not to do. Some were directed by Chuck Jones.
posted by Holden at 1:42 PM PST - 42 comments
Bar Mitzvah Disco • When We Were Shtetl Fabulous
"If you are Jewish, there would have been a golden year when it seemed like you attended a bar mitzvah disco almost weekly. Each one was like a pee-wee Studio 54, a potent cocktail of ritual, acne, insecurity, and hormones run amok."
Help the
folks at Bar Mitzvah Disco gather
photos, stories and details from Bar/Bat Mitzvahs from the 70s and 80s to publish in their forthcoming book on the subject.
posted by dhoyt at 10:20 AM PST - 23 comments
"Skydiver in record Channel flight" is the claim made by an Austrian skydiving across the channel aided by small strap-on wings.
Evidently he needed a 1 in 4 glide angle to make it, but a simple understanding of flight mechanics would suggest that the distance he could fly is proportional to the amount of strap-on wing area. At what point does skydiving become gliding?
posted by marvin at 7:48 AM PST - 12 comments
Music labels charged with price-fixing ... again While their organization is fighting hard to picture potential consumers as de-facto delinquents, the FTC has issued a rulign prohibitng them from
agreeing with competitors to fix the prices or restrict the advertising of products they produced independently .
The labels deny any wrongdoing, as they did with earlier FTC charges of a much larger price-fixing scandal that
cost consumers an estimated $480 million (and was settled by paying 41 suing states $67.4 million in cash and offering $75.7 million in CDs.).
Here is an idea: the main culprits of the labels losses, by far, are the rapidly receding sales of ...
cassette, LP and vinyl products. Who'd have thought of that?
posted by magullo at 7:32 AM PST - 12 comments
Axis of Medieval? Hot on the heels of Bush's announcement that his adminstration is seeking ways to ban gay marriage, the Vatican has issued a
document condemning same-sex unions as "deviant" and "gravely immoral." One Bishop has
warned Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien (a Catholic) that "his eternal salvation is in jeopardy. He is making a morally grave error and he's not being accountable to God."
Are we witnessing a coordinated attack on the burgeoning campaign for broader gay rights? What is the relevance of the Church's edicts, in combination with Bush's announcement? Are we about to see "the backlash" that some gay rights activists have warned of, or is this the (almost) last gasp of self-evidently outmoded thinking?
posted by stonerose at 7:10 AM PST - 160 comments
The Pop-Up Brady Bunch! Human ingenuity at its finest. Or truly frightening, your choice.
(warning: will temporarily commandeer your screen, contains the Brady Bunch theme song, disturbingly pixelated Bradys, and will not work if you have 'pop-up killer' software)posted by nelleish at 7:09 AM PST - 3 comments
The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project began on December 30
th, 1994, a 'round-the-clock posting of sequenced hypermodern imagery by Brad Brace, which are simultaneously posted to
FTP sites, mailing lists, and Usenet's alt.12hr newsgroup. The basic structure of the project has been over twenty-four years in the making. While the specific sequence of photographs has been presently orchestrated for more than 12 years' worth of 12-hour postings!
(Mirrors: 1, 2, & 3) [via waxy]posted by riffola at 1:53 AM PST - 11 comments
July 30
This Guy in Minnesota just got laid-off and he's spending his time following around Bush's economic team on their tour of the upper midwest as they share their "
upbeat outlook" on our nation's economy. He's following
their tourmobile with
his own tourmobile and has been chasing them around in parkinglots and at fast food places. He finally cornered the Treasury Secretary whose advice to the job-seeker was to "just wait." What's your economic reality? Is it closer to the sunny optimism of the big shiny tourbus, or the laid-off reality of the homemade minivan? (Check out the particularly funny bit about how he stumbled on the entire press corps only when he was looking for a dumpster.)
posted by amoeba at 3:47 PM PST - 84 comments
Want to create your own TV Show? So do some folks who aren't from the big lit up place we call Hollywood.... All you've got to do is click up on the site, sign up, pay $25 bucks, and you're in... Oh - and you have to have an idea, too. [thanks
MSNBC]
posted by djspicerack at 2:19 PM PST - 3 comments
mother earth fights back "Global warming, which most climate experts blame mainly on large-scale burning of oil and other fossil fuels, is interfering with efforts in Alaska to discover yet more oil."
via dangerousmeta and " It’s so hot
windshields are shattering or falling out, dogs are burning their paws on the pavement, and candles are melting indoors."
- are the naysayers ready to get on board? and start acting like
good global citizens?
posted by specialk420 at 1:29 PM PST - 24 comments
$10,000 for information on attacks in Iraq Sort of like playing the lottery. If you figure the odds on getting the big fish as in Powerball --Saddam for 25 million--are against you, then play the daily for 25 thousand. Turn in your brother-in-law, for example for some quick bucks. Sounds like a worthwhile way to snag some bad folks and I am surprised it hadn't been used earlier. Good use of my tax bucks.
posted by Postroad at 1:08 PM PST - 6 comments
Attack Nader early and often to prevent the Greens from throwing another election into the hands of the Republicans. Michael Tomasky in the American Prospect argues that Howard Dean is the man who can best profit from this technique. Will Nader give us four more years of GW? He makes a good point that the Green Party would get more results from working within the Democratic Party than from essentially attacking it like they did in 2000.
posted by caddis at 12:20 PM PST - 77 comments
'The Search For Osama'. A long, well-researched article in the 'New Yorker' about the ongoing global manhunt for the leader of al Qaeda and the architect of the September 11 attacks.
posted by eyebeam at 11:59 AM PST - 5 comments
Is President Bush a Homo? "Even our least vigilant Republican social commandos have noticed that Mr. Bush has been peppering his otherwise delightful litany of patriotic jingoism and pleasantly embroidered CIA-intelligence recaps with the effeminate mating call 'fabulous'--three giddy syllables that are tantamount to coyly cooing, 'Hello, sailor!'"
posted by kirkaracha at 11:38 AM PST - 26 comments
BlogStop. Where the last word of an entry must be used as an acronym for the next entry. Simple.
posted by coudal at 7:07 AM PST - 1033 comments
Free Wireless through the end of August in
Cometa's wireless installations in McDonald's stores in and around New York. Supposedly there's a list of the installations
here, but not for the Flash-less. Anyone care to post a review of the service?
posted by j.edwards at 1:20 AM PST - 6 comments
July 29
Buymusic.com
may be acquiring their “300,000 song” music catalog from distributors who have no rights to the digital distribution of the songs. In other words, piracy on a massive, corporate, for profit scale.
posted by alan at 1:52 PM PST - 22 comments
Severn Cullis-Suzuki is best known as the eldest daughter of environmentalist
David Suzuki, and famous for her
speech at the
1992 United Nations Earth Summit. Since that time she has travelled internationally as a public speaker and environmental
activist. Now Severn has chosen to break out of her father's shadow, and that of her childhood speech, to focus on grassroots projects that emphasize action instead of only talking about the state of the world. She is the founder of the
Skyfish Project, a forum for environmental discussion. It is also where she first presented the
Recognition of Responsibility to encourage individuals to take the pledge towards sustainable living.
posted by twos at 1:20 PM PST - 7 comments
Do men deserve it? A new commercial for lingerie airing in the UK shows an attractive woman getting ready for her date (putting on a number of sexy unmentionables), then walking by all the men at the bar to kiss her equally lovely girlfriend, sitting alone waiting for her. The tagline implies the lingerie is too sexy to waste on men. (warning: Quicktime)
posted by jonson at 1:03 PM PST - 48 comments
Ray's Place: Ever since
Jeremias turned me on to
Achewood back in
November, I've been hooked. Some of y'all at that time objected to Chris Olmstead's drawing style, which is, admittedly, an acquired taste. Well, now in the interest of not doing as much work, he's given popular character
Ray a weekly advice column, "Ray's Place." Bearing in mind that Ray is a self-centered cat with a swingin' lifestyle, this almost redeems the whole well-worn format of Internet advice column.
posted by soyjoy at 11:04 AM PST - 22 comments
Diego Garcia islanders await call to go home. 'Cherry and thousands of other islanders were the victims of a brutal depopulation strategy by Britain in the 1960s and 1970s which sought to hand over an empty island to the United States for use as a key military base. The depopulation campaign ended in 1973 with the removal of the last islanders, who were dumped on the quays of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis ... '
The Chagos Islands: A sordid tale. 'The story involves "bribes" from the United States, racism among senior civil servants, and the UK Government deceiving parliament and the United Nations.'
The Chagos archipelago: Decolonisation and human rights., by the Southern African Human Rights NGO Network, includes a brief history of the islands from original settlement by French settlers and African slaves. 'For a people as a whole to be actually victimised by the act of forced eviction from their homeland must be the most humiliating, supreme injustice and degrading treatment any people can be made to undergo. '
posted by plep at 10:12 AM PST - 4 comments
Qur’an in Aramaic? Virgins become raisins, veils become belts. "Luxenberg’s chief hypothesis is that the original language of the Qur’an was not Arabic but something closer to Aramaic. He says the copy of the Qur’an used today is a mistranscription of the original text from Muhammad’s time, which according to Islamic tradition was destroyed by the third caliph, Osman, in the seventh century. But Arabic did not turn up as a written language until 150 years after Muhammad’s death, and most learned Arabs at that time spoke a version of Aramaic."
posted by four panels at 9:53 AM PST - 16 comments
Kerouac becomes a bobblehead. From the sports promoters in Lowell, Massachusetts, to the literati, everybody thinks it's a terrific idea. "Certainly, Jack would love it," says the executor of his estate.
posted by beagle at 6:52 AM PST - 12 comments
How About Raising Money for Him Instead of The Star Wars Kid? Perhaps the most faithful of Delhi's unpaid city servants turns 80 on Tuesday, but has no plans to retire.
Mohammed Habib has had the grisly task of collecting the city's unclaimed corpses since he was 12. He says he has disposed of hundreds of bodies - and all for free - in a country where millions live in poverty.
posted by turbanhead at 5:08 AM PST - 8 comments
Trading on the Future of Terror [LA Times] The war on terrorism has come to this: The Pentagon is setting up a commodity-style market to use real investors — putting down real money — to help its generals predict terrorist attacks, coups d'etat and other turmoil in the Middle East. You can
sign up here to bet on suicide bombings.
posted by srboisvert at 4:03 AM PST - 7 comments
Fix Up, Look Sharp With stateside hip hop in an unprecedented doldrum, the torch has been snatched up on this side of the Atlantic by 18-year-old Eastender Dizzee Rascal. He's recovering from a stabbing carried out rival fans of a rival garage collective in Ayia Napa, Cyprus. The attack took place a few days before being nominated for the Mercury Music prize.
Guaranteed not to be everybody's cup of tea, but he's an interesting character and challenging music make it, and his album, worth a look.
posted by hmgovt at 1:49 AM PST - 25 comments
July 28
Kidnapping women and children is a justifiable action, says Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division when his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." A quick glance at the
Geneva Conventions and Protocols would suggest that this is illegal. "The ends justifies the means" seems to be the current Conservative meme, but how well will these tactics serve us in the long run?
posted by dejah420 at 9:53 PM PST - 61 comments
An article in the newest Adbusters magazine asks the question -
is America becoming fascist? (a condensed version of
this article written by Anis Shivani Oct. 2002). In it, Shivani states that “American fascism is tapping into the perennial complaint against liberalism: that it doesn't provide an authentic sense of belonging to the majority of people. And that is a criticism difficult to dismiss out of hand. As the language of liberalism has become flat and predictable, some Americans have become more ready to accept an alternative, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it sounds vigorous and muscular.” More inside...
posted by Quartermass at 6:43 PM PST - 50 comments
Remember
Steve Burns, of
Blue's Clues fame? We've
discussed him
here, and I have been desperately antsy for his
album (delightful flashy thing) to come out. Well, according to my email today, it's about to! Check out his page and find out when he's playing near you, or if the video for Mighty Little Man is half as cool as the song itself.
posted by verso at 3:42 PM PST - 13 comments
Cue Banjo Music Texas Democrats have again hauled ass across state lines, this time to New Mexico. Texas' governor and lt. governor have decided to hold a third special session of the state Senate, for which they will suspend the 2/3 supermajority needed for redistricting plans.
via TPMposted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 3:17 PM PST - 37 comments
Port of San Diego Considers Gigantic, Cartoonish Eyesore for Park Sculpture
An unsolicited proposal for a 200 foot long, 50 foot high sculpture in bronze, granite and water is under review by the public art committee of the Port of San Diego. The artist is A. Wasil, a master builder of the Robert Kaskey (Portlandia, WWII Veterans Memorial) school. The presentation is high tech, the concept is 'bold,' the corporate backers are many (and they're bidding for naming rights). One problem: it sucks. Read Robert Pincus's
review of a piece of public art he (and I) hope will never be.
posted by rschram at 1:52 PM PST - 62 comments
Who's a hero now? (NYT reg. required) It has been a year since the 9 miners in Quecreek were rescued after spending 77 hours underground. One of the rescuers, Bob Long, recently committed suicide. He was the only rescuer to get cut in on the $150,000 deal from Disney. According to the linked NYT article:
Vaughn Donaldson, district chief of the fire department in Midland, Tex., knows very well the stress that traumatic events, combined with sudden celebrity, can put on people. In the years after the rescue of baby Jessica from the well in Texas, Donaldson watched the man who saved her, Robert O'Donnell, become a national hero, before declining into substance abuse; seven years after the rescue, he shot himself. There have also been suicides among rescuers at Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center. ''Whenever you elevate one person as a hero, you necessarily leave others out, and that leads to jealousy and alienation,'' says Donaldson, who speaks to fire and police departments all over the country.
Hmm, That's enough to make you hesitate the next time you see someone who is in trouble.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 12:47 PM PST - 33 comments
100 Years of New York City. A New York Times special, originally published in 1998. 'The following articles offer a glimpse into the past 100 years of New York City -- a decade at a time. Each decade includes a full time line prepared by the staff at The New York Times, photos from The Times archives, headline clippings from archive copies of The Times, and essays by noted authors and Times staff writers. '
The new born city, seen from above - a panorama from 1902.
posted by plep at 9:44 AM PST - 7 comments
An alternative means towards alternative energy? Duke Energy in NC is offering its customers an opportunity to vote for alternative energy sources with their wallets starting today. While you are not really buying the Green Power directly, you are in effect subsidizing it. Is this a creative way to Go Green, or just another feel good gesture?
posted by ElvisJesus at 9:29 AM PST - 13 comments
Quote Some Reviews of some very bad movies, and wrap it all up in a pretty package that parodies the movie's posters. Hilarity ensues. (I'm not being sarcastic. I woke my spouse up out of bed laughing at this-- and I was in the kitchen.) It's a feature of
Moviepoopshoot.com, which has evolved from a promo site for a Kevin Smith movie. I guess we'll know if Smith really has a sense of humor if we see the
Critical Mess treatment given to Jersey Girl, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, or Mallrats.
posted by Shoeburyness at 12:26 AM PST - 17 comments
Study Finds 2.6% Increase in U.S. Prison Population The nation's prison population grew 2.6 percent last year, the largest increase since 1999, according to a study by the Justice Department. The jump came despite a small decline in serious crime in 2002. It also came when a growing number of states facing large budget deficits have begun trying to reduce prison costs by easing tough sentencing laws passed in the 1990's, thereby decreasing the number of inmates. The key finding in the report is this growth, which is somewhat surprising in its size after several years of relative stability in the prison population, said Allen J. Beck, an author of the report. U.S. Prison Population Grew 2.6% in 2002. The country's prisons, jails and juvenile facilities held 2,166,260 persons at the end of last year, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) said in a report released today. Prisoners in 2002 Abstractposted by y2karl at 12:17 AM PST - 19 comments
July 27
Georgy for Governor So I am reading the SF Chronicle on Saturday and there was an
article about unusual candidates running for California's recall election for governor. In addition to big name politicians, millionaries and hollywood actors, there's a 19 year old kid, a software developer in silicon valley (who's selling thongs online to finance her campaign) and more...
So my thought it... should you or I run for governor? Would there be any chance any one of us could win? Could we harness the power of the web and memes to get a campaign some steam? Would a web-saavy person make for good changes in the office?
I just got paid for a freelance project the other day, and so I have $3,500 to spend if I wanted to... wondered what sort of value might be in it even if there was no chance that I could win. Would it just be me telling my grandkids one day that I was on the state's ballot with Arnold Schwarzneggar?
What would you see as a positive, worthwhile result from spending $3,500 to be one of the names on the ballot?
Curious.
posted by matte at 8:16 PM PST - 33 comments
Little Stalker Boy is tired, but mostly he's just restless. Little Stalker Boy is outside her house again tonight - hanging in a tree and taking photos as she passes the front window.
posted by dg at 5:19 PM PST - 30 comments
Nixon Ordered the Watergate Break-in. Jeb Stuart Magruder, the deputy director of Nixon's 1972 campaign, revealed in a PBS documentary to air on Wednesday that Nixon personally ordered the bungled break-in at the luxury Watergate Hotel complex. It took 30 years, but the truth finally comes out.
posted by zaelic at 5:09 PM PST - 18 comments
VeriSign Can Be Sued for Losing Your Domain Name A Federal appeals court (Ninth Circuit) has ruled that the owner of the sex.com domain, who lost the domain when VeriSgin transferred it on the basis of a forged letter, can sue VeriSign for damages resulting from VeriSign's mistake. The sex.com case is worth millions, but anyone who has lost a domain name due to VeriSign's incompetence may now be able to draw their pound of flesh straight from those entrusted with making sure the registry process works.
posted by mikewas at 2:33 PM PST - 7 comments
The Visible Embryo. "This spiral represents the 23 stages occurring in the first trimester of pregnancy and every two weeks of the second and third trimesters. Use the spiral to navigate through the 40 weeks of pregnancy and preview the unique changes in each stage of human development." via
The Eyes Have It, which sadly looks as if it hasn't been updated since February, but still has much of interest to offer.
posted by jokeefe at 12:40 PM PST - 13 comments
When Is It OK To Lie To Your Doctor? Legislation to deny first class medical assistance to those who persist with an unhealthy lifestyle is now being seriously discussed in the UK. Can lie detectors be far behind? Will smokers, heavy drinkers and couch potatoes now have to add the art of lying through their teeth - as if their lives depended on it, which they may soon do, to their solitary, sedentary and increasingly melancholy skills? More importantly, will doctors be able to help them, if the information they get from their patients is all wrong?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:56 AM PST - 46 comments
July 26
Insiders suggest Condoleezza Rice could leave As White House officials try to control the latest fallout over President Bush's flawed suggestion in the State of the Union address that Iraq was buying nuclear bomb materials, there's growing talk by insiders that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice may take the blame and resign.posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:08 PM PST - 63 comments
Ladies and gentlemen, do not be alarmed. Please remain perfectly still. What you are about to see is real, the performers are not grinning scarecrows sent here to torture and manipulate you. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce the twin quasars of rock:
They! Might! Be! Giants!posted by kaibutsu at 10:48 AM PST - 43 comments
July 25
112 Gripes About the French One of the best selling books in France today is about why Americans seem to hate the French so much (well
hated them 60 years ago). The book, originally published by the US military to teach GIs in France how to get along with the natives, was translated into French and is now flying off the shelves.
Now you too can hate the French (en anglais, naturellement).
posted by m@ at 9:09 PM PST - 37 comments
3D Artists is another online art collective. This time, the artists specialize in using 3D rendering tools.
(Note: some images may not be safe for work.)posted by crunchland at 8:20 PM PST - 8 comments
Gene Wolfe declared "unfair" by snotty brats. Wolfe, a man who has given us some of the finest fantasy novels of the past three decades, was slated to teach writing at the
Odyssey workshop. He graded the manuscripts with tough comments. But the students took this personally and complained to director Jeanne Cavelos. Wolfe, being the gentleman that he is, left the workshop.
Here's a sample of one student's arrogance. Now if I had the opportunity of learning from a master and he told me that my shit stank, then I'd listen. Why have workshops and educational opportunities prioritized feeding this "I'm okay, you're okay" narcissism over developing talent?
posted by ed at 6:52 PM PST - 36 comments
Books Go To War Between 1943 and 1947, the Council on Books in Wartime published 1322 small-format
books (4 in. x 5.75 in. — designed to fit easily into the pockets of service uniforms) for distribution to United States service personnel. These books were
unabridged volumes spanning a variety of topics: popular fiction, humor, classic literature, music, psychology, war stories, etc. Because the books were distributed
only to overseas troops, and printed on cheap paper (intended to be read, passed around, and discarded), they've become hard-to-find, the subject of
museum exhibits and, in the case of the
rarer titles, the
object of
collectors' desire.
posted by jdroth at 1:22 PM PST - 7 comments
Fishy is a simple, relaxing, hypnotic, zen-like, and infuriating game. Control your fish with the arrows. Eat fish smaller than you. Avoid fish larger than you. The more you eat, the more you grow.
posted by leapfrog at 12:42 PM PST - 31 comments
A new TV series described as "Sesame Street for adults" gets a wide release next month on PBS stations nationwide. Its producers hope it will reach a few of the estimated 90 million "low-functioning" grown-ups. In 1992, when researchers last rated the skills of adults 16 or older, they found that nearly half weren't proficient in applying basic skills to accomplish daily tasks. Is this a bold step toward improving the lives of less fortunate adults, or a disturbing sign of the increasing ignorance of the American public?
posted by eyebeam at 11:11 AM PST - 64 comments
Mind the Gap... Karl Bushby braved the infamous and road-less Darien Gap in 2001 and is now trying to smuggle love into the Great White North. All while on one
loooong walk from southern Chile to Kingston-upon-Hull,
England.
posted by hellinskira at 10:25 AM PST - 5 comments
I think that it is Friday, so maybe you would like to view
many strange and wonderful flash animations from Japan, all collected on one page in order to hasten your head exploding. Most feature Doraemon, everyone's favorite earless blue robot cat from the future.
posted by donkeymon at 9:06 AM PST - 2 comments
If you're the type who gets creative when you drink a lot, the folks at
Canstruction have a few ideas about what you can do with the discarded empties. Here's a
slide show of some good examples, and here are the winners of their contests in
2002 &
2003 respectively.
posted by jonson at 7:51 AM PST - 14 comments
This is a rather strange, poorly reported, context free article about some troubling things that were recently said by Mel Gibson's parents. It's especially interesting, considering that Gibson has just directed a film called
"The Passion", detailing the final days of Christ. Is anyone out there aware of the various controversies surrounding this film? Charges of anti-semitism, historical revisionism, and the bizarre decisions whether or not to include subtitles (the film was, daringly, I guess, shot in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin) abound. What the hell is going on here?
posted by ghastlyfop at 6:52 AM PST - 99 comments
Friday flash fun in the form of a rather amusing game to promote the
Rolling Stones tour. Catch the bras, dodge the bottles and knock away the pants thrown by the men! Predictably enough, I was rubbish at it.
posted by ralawrence at 4:22 AM PST - 2 comments
July 24
Kolyma: The Land of Gold and Death. 'Stalin's prisoners, or "lagerniks" as they were commonly called, referred to the frozen land of Kolyma as a planet, although it physically remained part of Mother Earth. This vast piece of Arctic and sub-Arctic territory, with its undefined political and geographical borders, was located in the furthest North-East corner of Siberia ... ' An online book by
a survivor of the gulag.posted by plep at 11:32 PM PST - 7 comments
Someone needs Photoshop classes. Cat Schwartz, TechTV vixen, posted some pictures of herself on her blog. Due to an obscure bug in Photoshop, she also inadvertently posted pictures of herself nude. Oopos.
Warning: Minor nudity enclosed.
posted by manero at 9:26 PM PST - 89 comments
Mark Twain on
evolution:
It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one...the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals. And, on
war:
Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. Alphabetized Mark Twain quotes.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 5:47 PM PST - 16 comments
douglas adams mp3 audio archive ...
"The Douglas Adams media archive is presented here by the wi2600.org groups for your enjoyment. This allso is to serve as a tribute to Mr. Adams's great, but suddely shortened career. Those who have not heard his voice and those who know it well will both enjoy having this material available. We will miss him!"posted by crunchland at 4:07 PM PST - 16 comments
"We're walking from Chicago to San Francisco. Many have responded with, "
You guys are stupid!" Some, on the other hand, have said, "Wow, that's cool!" Either way, we hope you'll keep coming back to see what will happen next in our walking adventures."
Current mileage, photo galleries, and journal entries abound -- and really, when was the last time
you walked 627 miles (inside of 60 days)?
posted by wells at 11:53 AM PST - 20 comments
The massive engineering feat of Stonehenge meets the conspicuous nature of fiercely gated communities. The resulting bastard child:
The Palm, a man made island community shaped like a palm tree off of the coast of Dubai, UAE.
(warning: site entirely flash-based) (via willnot)posted by Ufez Jones at 10:32 AM PST - 10 comments
Uday & Qusay's death - a failure?! Salam Pax thinks the U.S.
"wasted a chance to show Iraqis they really are doing something".
Robert Fisk asked in
yesterday's press conference "Surely, the possibility of the immense amount of information they could have given coalition forces" justified efforts to try to take them alive. The military had time, the element of surprise, special forces troops, and
nonlethal weapons -- so why did they attack with rockets and TOW missiles? Where is Saddam? Could we have learned more about Iraq's WMD programs? Is it better for the Bush administration to not have some questions answered?
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:30 AM PST - 108 comments
Seal kills scientist A British scientist has been killed by a leopard seal whilst snorkelling in Antarctica.
I had no idea that a seal could (or would) attack a human. These things can grow to 23ft long! They are known to feed on penguins, but a human is a fair bit bigger than a penguin, so this is one nasty animal, not the doe-eyed creature we coo over in nature programmes...
posted by jontyjago at 6:54 AM PST - 45 comments
As to
The Uses and Disadvantages of Socrates, sources differ but seem to share in common an ideal fictional Socrates to speak their understanding of the common account. From Doug Linder's
Famous Trials--for your bookmarking convenience--comes
The Trial of Socrates, featuring ample background materials, including
I.F. Stone's take. Marilyn Katz's
Background Materials on Socrates' Trial and Death are essential, too. Several other accounts are offered online--consider
Socrates and his Audience,
The Accusations Against Socrates, Gadfly on Trial: Socrates as Citizen and Social Critic and the rather d.i.y.
Socrates Had It Coming. But as to the historical Socrates, the man in context becomes key--as all of the above do contend, more or less, let it be noted--and therefore one needs to become become familiar with things like
sexuality in Fifth-Century Athens,
desecration of the herms,
Eleusian Mysteries,
the Peloponnesian War,
the fateful Sicilian Expedition and the collective memory of
civil war and civic memory in ancient Athens that ensued, as well as the personalities of
Critias and
Alcibiades to answer the question entitled in my own favorite account, the book entire:
Who Was Socrates ?
posted by y2karl at 6:33 AM PST - 39 comments
No Iraq link to al-Qaida "The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned."
[more inside]posted by kirkaracha at 6:26 AM PST - 72 comments
July 23
Blessing of the Cars. This Saturday, at at Hansen Dam in Los Angeles, there will be a mass blessing of cars by a Catholic priest, followed by individual blessing of each vehicle.
posted by xowie at 7:35 PM PST - 7 comments
"Un-******-believable" is how this link was related to me, and I think you will agree. The link is a video showing a player of a DDR-type synchrony game involving buttons musical notes. I found his display a simply stunning display of human adaptability. Wow!
posted by rudyfink at 7:25 PM PST - 50 comments
The vagina monoliths? Host to theories ranging from alien landing site to Druid calendar, a University of British Columbia gynecologist believes Stonehenge may have been built to deliberately represent a gigantic female sexual organ.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:30 PM PST - 16 comments
Unbiased (ideally) but not inhuman (hopefully) The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at the University of Washington studies the effects of crazy badness ("if it bleeds, it leads") on reporters and studies ways in which the news media can better cover traumatic events in the life of the world: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. From a piece on the site, "9-11 Journalists Share Memories, Support," "Long before Sept. 11, he was interested in how journalists respond to the pain and misery they encounter in their work, and the lack of support they often find in a traditionally tough-minded business. Then he nearly died while photographing the World Trade Center attack, and found those issues hit closer to home than he ever imagined."
posted by jengod at 5:43 PM PST - 2 comments
Teenagers find the internet a frustrating experience A survey in the north east of England finds that teenagers are increasingly being alienated in their online experience because they aren't being given the skillsets to cope with finding or using the information. Seems to be the old story of schools buying computers but the kids not being engaged enough on how to use them (which has been the case since I was stuck in front of an Acorn Archimedes
fifteen years go).
Here is a similar article from Australia which describes how their eductation system is coping with the issue.
posted by feelinglistless at 3:22 PM PST - 14 comments
Proving that he is the geekiest man in film, Kevin Smith relates the tale of how he
almost got to egg the house of Reese Witherspoon, and why he wanted to in the first place - a rather funny story. Would that all Hollywood ego-battles could be resolved in such a fashion.
An old link, but worth checking outposted by GriffX at 2:38 PM PST - 47 comments
Congress to bicyclists: get a car! A new transportation appropriations bill would eliminate $600 million of annual federal funding for "
transportation enhancements" (more info
here), such as bike paths and walkways, while
increasing funding for highways. Is this a proper reflection of U.S. transportation habits, or just a scheme to deprive alternate transportation of much-needed funding?
posted by jdroth at 1:57 PM PST - 20 comments
Have you or your neighbors killed any kittens lately? Way back in the mists of time, a
farkism combined a kitty with a couple of
domo-kuns and came up with a saying equating
masturbation with killing a kitty.
This site has taken the concept and is attempting to make it into a community weblog -- except the community is limited to those who are taking
solo flights into orgasm.
The site seems almost innocent, at least now (though it'll probably get over-run with explicit commercial grossness in a while).
Although the interface is nowhere near as clean, my experience with the site reminded me of the early days of amihotornot. I was at it for hours, tripping out on who was masturbating in my state, and what they were thinking, let along who was doing what in other places all over the world (not many global participants, yet).
With this wierd mixture of deeply personal revelations and total anonymity, is this one of those things that only the internet can do? Or am I a total git for thinking this is interesting? (via
memepool)
posted by jasper411 at 1:56 PM PST - 19 comments
A keyless keyboard designed to reduce RSI and other typing related injuries - sounds interesting, but slow, and of course useless for gaming. Bit pricey as well.
posted by Orange Goblin at 11:50 AM PST - 14 comments
Baby you can drive my car. Mini RC cars are all the rage but how often do you get to control a RC car in Tokyo from your browser. Bascule created a web interface for controling an RC car in their office, hooked up a couple of web cams on the track and now allows anyone with the Flash 6 plug-in to log in and drive their car for 60 seconds.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:16 AM PST - 7 comments
A soldier's letter home, or clever propaganda? This "letter" has been making the rounds as an email, supposedly from an officer, stationed in Iraq, named "Mark". He certainly seems to know a lot about what's going on. He loves his job, likes his generals, and admires the Iraqi people, who like him and other Americans; and he hates the press and the foreigners he says are fighting reconstruction.
Sounds a little too good to be true.
posted by kablam at 10:45 AM PST - 45 comments
GOP Warns TV Stations Not to Air Ad Alleging Bush Mislead the Nation Over Iraq They claim that the
ad itself is dishonest, and cite the obligation of broadcast outlets to be free of misleading information. “
Such obligations must be taken seriously. This letter puts you on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement is false and misleading; therefore, you are obligated to refrain from airing this advertisement.” Despite the implicit threats,
only one station has refused to run the ad, a Fox station. posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 9:57 AM PST - 74 comments
They’re a little like
Operation. Today students can practice all sorts of skills on surgical models like
TraumaMan®, the
Hillway Man, or
Geri, the Geriatric, who comes complete with wrinkles. There’s
spinal surgery,
gall bladder surgery,
ultrasound/amniocentesis,
suturing, and
casualty kits. Some of them give me the I’m-a-silly-git giggles and naming a company Limbs & Things doesn't help. There’s the
head with all sorts of
things wrong with it, including
“Extraneous Lumps”. The
toe with refills is pretty nifty, but
disturbingly life-like. There are
strap-ons and
table-top models.
(Possibly NSFW) Some could make interesting
conversation pieces.
(Also poss. NSFW)
In addition, Somso, maker of the “dial-a-prostate” model above, also makes interesting non-interactive models like this
fandex of a head, a
larynx with tongue, or a
fingertip. They also have
neat models of
animals,
fungi, and
flowers.
posted by lobakgo at 9:46 AM PST - 7 comments
Genki Gang has the most amazing anime-inspired hats ever. I wonder if I can get a Totoro one in time for the
DC Meetup? Kawaii!
(Sorry, Flash site so no direct links...click on "store" then "hats".)
posted by JoanArkham at 9:40 AM PST - 5 comments
Saving the Net isn't just really about saving the net: the article is a great point of confluence on the issues of Intellectual Property, Property and Success as American values, as well as the future of the Internet as a true commons. Especially interesting is the observation that Presidential candidate Howard Dean's campaign contribution lead – raised via the Internet – is owed to a huge number of small donations, not to a small number of large special interests. If he's being bought, it's by his voters."
[via Slashdot]posted by weston at 8:17 AM PST - 9 comments
The Gutenberg Bible : the first book printed with movable type, is the one of the greatest treasures in the University of Texas's Ransom Center's collections. It was printed at Johann Gutenberg's shop in Mainz, Germany and completed in 1454 or 1455. The Center's Bible was acquired in 1978 and is one of only five complete examples in the United States. All
1,282 pages now available for viewing on the Ransom Center's Web site.
Also check out the anatomy of a page.posted by ColdChef at 7:51 AM PST - 16 comments
"GOLDILOCKS. Slim blond avatar of unreasoning womankind: who loved not the porridge itself, nor even the act of receiving it from whatever unknown animal might have been responsible for its preparation..."
From the
winning submission of the Faux Faulkner contest. Also check out
Faux Hemingway.
posted by Pinwheel at 6:37 AM PST - 11 comments
Hate on display. The Anti-Defamation League has a
visual database of symbols devised or co-opted by neo-Nazis and supremacist groups worldwide, as well as numbers and acronyms with racist connotations. Although most of us know what
88 means, there's also info about others such as the communist-separatist
American Front and the
Five Percenters. More neo-Nazi flags
here; flags and badges
here.
Please remember: while racism is always immoral, symbols themselves can have
several meanings.
posted by 111 at 12:01 AM PST - 26 comments
July 22
Mississippi Gulag. Remember
Tranquility Bay? Kids being forcibly deported to Jamaica, where they have to earn their right to speak by advancing in a perverted "level" system, with punishment ranging from laying on the floor for hours to painful "restraint" sessions? A
report
by Assistant Attorney General submitted on June 19, 2003 to Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove sheds light on two different "correctional" facilities, the Oakley and Columbia "Training Schools" in Mississipi. Boys and girls aged from 10 to 17 are hogtied for hours, pepper sprayed for disobedience, forced to eat their own vomit during exercises, or stripped naked and locked in a dark room for days because of suicide attempts. Between torturing sessions, they have to participate in good Christian prayers. These kids have to suffer abuse that would lead to a nationwide scandal if it happened to adults (or if sex was involved). AP has a
brief summary.
posted by Eloquence at 11:52 PM PST - 11 comments
I'll say it: It's time someone did something about the Monkeys. Over the last two years they have established a clear cut pattern of terror & harassment in countries ranging from
Eastern India,
Jakarta,
Tokyo,
Sri Lanka or
New Dehli, and the fact remains that it's only a matter of time before these crazed foreign monkeys make their way to places I could actually find on a map, or possibly even America, (possibly in
this guy's pants). When they come, and they will, will our
leaders protect us from their savage rampage? Or is it too late - are they already
among us?!?
posted by jonson at 11:01 PM PST - 18 comments
Prior to Heinrich Schliemann's excavations in 1871, the academic world held that the city of Troy had never existed; it was just a tale in a book; as silly to search for as Utopia or Robinson Crusoe’s Island. But Schliemann believed Homer’s Troy must have existed. He wanted it to exist, the story had caught his imagination. Acting upon descriptions of Troy’s location from Homer’s ‘Iliad’, (written more than 500 years after the fall of Troy) Schliemann started digging…and proved everyone wrong.
posted by rrtek at 12:57 PM PST - 16 comments
Cartoon in Times Prompts Inquiry by Secret Service I know these guys have to investigate jokesters and fools who threaten the President, but this has the broad outlines of Federal intimidation of the press. Bah humbug on the SS, good for the lawyers for smackin' the guy down, and double good for the
L.A. Times for reporting it to their readers. (Reg. req. to read story. Sorry 'bout that, kittens.)
posted by jengod at 12:14 PM PST - 35 comments
BuyMusic.com debuts, a service that allows the 90-some-odd percent of people out there who use Windows to legally download music like their Mac-loving brethren have been able to do with iTunes. I went and used it today and give it an initial grade of "C": The music collection is adequate but could be larger and definitely needs indie artists, the UI is tolerable but needs improvement, and the music files themselves are generally okay but of inconsistent quality. One major problem I saw is that it listed -- and let people buy -- albums that they couldn't actually download: I had this happen with a Depeche Mode singles collection. Has anyone else used it yet? What are your thoughts? And notwithstanding the imminent Windows version of iTunes (which we are told will arrive by the end of the year), how long until this site has more real competition?
posted by jscalzi at 12:11 PM PST - 36 comments
samorost ... an entrancingly beautiful and organic, flash-based puzzle/story. Move your cursor around the screen and figure out how to help the little guy save his home.
posted by crunchland at 11:33 AM PST - 61 comments
Tool Making Crow "In the experiments, a captive female crow, confronted with a task that required a curved tool (retrieving a food-containing bucket from a vertical pipe), spontaneously bent a piece of straight wire into a hooked shape -- and then repeated the behavior in nine out of ten subsequent trials." The behavior was captured on an amazing
video clip.
posted by Irontom at 10:17 AM PST - 55 comments
Old white Congressman tells black activist to get out of his state: "The people of Michigan have a simple message to you: go home and stay there. We do not need you stirring up trouble where none exists. Michiganders do not take kindly to your ignorant meddling in our affairs. We have no need for itinerant publicity seekers, non-resident troublemakers or self-aggrandizing out-of-state agitators." (pdf link -- emphasis added) You'd be forgiven for assuming this letter was written in 1965 from a southern segregationist to a civil rights activist. But the writer is actually the most senior Democrat in Congress,
John Dingell, the activist is University of California Regent (and Affirmative Action opponent)
Ward Connerly, and the letter was written July 6, 2003. It seems Dingell isn't happy with
Connerly’s efforts to promote a Michigan ballot initiative outlawing the use of race as a factor in hiring and college admissions. But Connerly isn't one to just
bow his head and shuffle back to Cali:
"[T]he term arrogance does not begin to capture the essence of a United States Congressman advising an American citizen to refrain from participating in the affairs of his government. Ironically, your advice is the echo of southern segregationists who sought the comfort of states' rights to practice their discrimination against black Americans. Have you learned nothing about 'civil rights' from that horrible chapter in our nation's history?" [via Critical Mass]posted by pardonyou? at 7:24 AM PST - 59 comments
A plucky anti-abortion crusader has convinced Berkshire-Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett to
end a philanthropic program that has donated $200 million over 2 decades. She is delighted. Does any of this (his decision, her delight) make sense? What are some other successful examples of small, grassroots movements exerting a major impact on philanthropy?
posted by stonerose at 7:19 AM PST - 28 comments
GWU's Encyclopedia to the 2003/2004 Election Cycle - I was impressed when I checked out "Democracy In Action", GWU's excellent breakdown of everything political in the 2003/2004 cycle. It features an
excellent detailed comparison of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g.,
here's my personal fave) featuring their voting record, stances, finances, and organization. Also, you can understand how a candidate campaigns in
NH or
IA, see
ads that were placed by interest groups, check out
which member of congress has endorsed who,
where all the staffers from the 2000 election are working now, -- you can even see
who's on the Green Party's Presidential Exploritory Committee. Thanks, GWU -- I'll never be productive ever again!
posted by jennak at 6:32 AM PST - 3 comments
Bill Barilko immortalized by
The Hip in the song
Fifty Mission Cap won the cup for the leafs in 1951. Later that summer, he disappeared in a plane crash north of Cochrane, Ontario. In an ironic twist of fate, the Maple Leafs did not win another Stanley Cup until 1962, the same year that his remains were finally found.
Now, The body of a former NHL first-round draft pick who disappeared in Austria almost 14 years ago has been found frozen in the Alps. Someone tell
Gord, maybe he can get a new song out of this.
posted by Blake at 6:27 AM PST - 5 comments
Google: the God that failed? is the title of the article on
MSN Slate. All of us know Microsoft is working on a new search engine technology. Till date everyone considers
Google to be
the Guru. MS obviously doesn't like that, so what it is doing? Well, the same thing it always does - to survive competition, eliminate it.
The reasons being given by the article are pretty silly and more aimed at 'faming down' Google.
posted by jayantk at 5:17 AM PST - 39 comments
Audiopad is a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music. More info
here.
[.pdf]posted by soundofsuburbia at 4:54 AM PST - 6 comments
MJ pro-tech, anti-jail: "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans -- mostly teenagers -- in jail for downloading music," he said in a statement from his Neverland Ranch in the western state of California.
"It is wrong to illegally download, but the answer cannot be jail. Here in America we create new opportunities out of adversity, not punitive laws, and we should look to new technologies ... for solutions. This way, innovation continues to be the hallmark of America. It is the fans that drive the success of the music."
posted by allaboutgeorge at 2:15 AM PST - 23 comments
Cirque Du Soleil fires HIV positive gymnast. "It's preposterous for Cirque de Soleil to call Matthew a 'known safety hazard,'" Gorenberg said. "Cirque du Soleil denied Matthew this job not because of sound science or rational concern for other employees but because of unfounded fear. It defies both common sense and science to think that Matthew would exchange bodily fluids with another gymnast while flying through the air."
posted by adrober at 12:28 AM PST - 28 comments
July 21
Mont St. Michel on the Normandy coast of France is a 12th century gothic abbey purched at the top of a tiny fortified village built around a small mountain; what's most unique about the location is that due to the very gentle incline of the coast, the mountain is located on salt marsh flats at
low tide, but becomes an
isolated island in the sea at high tide, accessible only by a raised road (added in the 1950s). It's also one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. While there are no shortage of photos of it online,
this gallery had some of the most beautiful ones I'd ever seen. For those who can't make it to France,
here's a quick guide to recreating the experience in miniature.
warning - last link is from geocities, good for first six visitors onlyposted by jonson at 9:56 PM PST - 28 comments
Today the
British government released a
major report on the safety of genetically modified foods. According to
New Scientist, "existing genetically modified crops and foods pose a 'very low' risk to human health and are 'very unlikely' to rampage through the British countryside", but
others disagree.
posted by turbodog at 2:10 PM PST - 58 comments
Lock 'im up. For a long time. That's what I say you do with anyone who commits multiple counts of vehicular manslaughter (
in this case, ten). But will this driver even be
charged, or will we just let him be? After all, he's 86. We, as a society, can't make this nice old man spend the rest of his days in prison, if convicted? Sure, the public discussion regarding his age in this horrible
tragedy centers around the right of older people to continue driving without testing their ability and senses, but I want to focus on this: What's the unwritten age limit on convicting and sentencing someone like Russell Weller?
posted by msacheson at 1:47 PM PST - 102 comments
If this summer's unending parade of spiritless sequels has you down on that whole film-can-be-art thing, I strongly recommend you rejuvenate your sense of wonder by taking a journey with the Polish Brothers to the Heartland of their America,
Northfork, Montana. It's the third installment of a cinematic trilogy that has taken them to
Twin Falls Idaho and
Jackpot, Nevada. You will either
love Northfork (
Ebert: "There has never been a movie quite like "Northfork"") or you'll
hate it (
McDonagh: "meticulously crafted but frustratingly meaningless"); there seems to be
very little in between. Some
background won't hurt, if you're the literal type; hearing from
the filmmakers in their own words provides some additional perspective. But in the end, all that matters is
what you see... Please. Just
go - it's not very likely you've ever seen much else like it...
(Flash-enabled pages at those official film sites, sorry...)posted by JollyWanker at 1:05 PM PST - 14 comments
The Right to Flash is an online petition for Macromedia to properly support Arabic and Hebrew languages which read from right-to-left.
posted by hobbes at 9:52 AM PST - 24 comments
This is the 58th Anniversary of the Atomic Age. The successful Trinity nuclear test was made July 16, 1945, in which a six-kilogram sphere of plutonium, compressed to supercriticality by explosive lenses, exploded over the New Mexico desert with a force equal to approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The
Stafford Memo (original in
PDF), dated 58 years ago today, is the declassified official report. Outside the use of the weapon in warfare, the
risks to humans were uncertain.
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:45 AM PST - 11 comments
The Abilene Paradox: A sunny afternoon, a family playing cards on a terrace. One of them thinks they should move - not that he cares, on the contrary, but he thinks the others want to - so he proposes a trip to Abilene. No fun, hot, bad food. Back home one of them admits that he had preferred to stay home. Everybody would have liked that, only they did not admit to it when it was still time to enjoy the afternoon.
Everyone talks about free speech, but it's surprising how few people (even its most vociferous defenders!) realize why it's so important. The Abilene Paradox -- which describes in familiar terms how entire groups can be motivated to act contrary to their own wishes -- can only occur when communication breaks down...or is broken down. Just a bit of pragmatism to start your day.
posted by effugas at 3:15 AM PST - 8 comments
July 20
I can see your house from up here Welcome the SDDS Raster Extraction Website. I was downloading some DEMs for grayscale to height mapping when I stumbled across this lovely project. This is really a lot of fun.
posted by Grod at 9:56 PM PST - 20 comments
Veterans for Common Sense seeks to inject the element of Common Sense into debates over war and national security. In an age when the majority of public servants have never served in uniform, the perspective of war veterans must play a key role in the public debate over national security issues in order to preserve the liberty veterans have fought and died preserving. With the
rift growing between the military and their Executive Branch bosses, here's a
different approach to
supporting the troops.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:54 AM PST - 32 comments
Kelly warned of 'dark actors playing games Dr David Kelly's recent death has the British press in an uproar. Kelly was the former head of biological inspections in Iraq for the UN mission, Unscom, former deputy head of Porton Down and the Ministry of Defence's senior adviser on biological defence. In July 2002. According to reports the Carlyle Group took a 34% stake in QinetiQ which was splitoff in 2001 from the Porton Down research lab and is now a private company
according to this story The Carlyle Group is profiled here in this explosive
explosive Dutch expose (note the first 1.48 minutes are in Dutch the rest is in English Since David Kelly was himself a micro-biologist in the past connected to Porton Down does he have any connection (as some have claimed: including a radio show I heard this evening) to the 11 or so micro-biologists that have died mysterious deaths after the 911 event? These deaths and there timelines are are extensively documented around the web.Including the following web page----(http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/)----
Is this is an area some creative journalists need to investigate?posted by thedailygrowl at 2:09 AM PST - 48 comments
July 19
"Taibbi launched the Guillotine Channel. For the premiere, Taibbi assigned ten crack Russian mobster employees to arrest Fox News chief Roger Ailes, drive him to the TGC studios in Burbank and, using a restored 18th-century French guillotine, chop off his head on live television. The privilege of releasing the rope was awarded to an Hispanic single mother in Los Angeles, whose application was chosen via a televised lottery..."
posted by GriffX at 4:48 PM PST - 4 comments
Bleak photography of deserted farms in Iceland (farms? Iceland?) is what photographer Nokkvi Eliasson specializes in, and this gallery (one of two -
here's the other) showcases some of his best stuff.
posted by jonson at 1:18 PM PST - 14 comments
1: dear fruit master,
you never got my first letter! i'll tell you what it said- i hate the stupid, idiotic
game of fruit! the new one and the old one! they both stink! if i lose again i'm going to smash in the computer screen! i will win i will not lose again! or in three words- I WILL BE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Signed, LAURENE
2: Dear Fruit Master,
I lost your game after I tried about 200 times!!!! This game is really hard, and I thought you improved it. My child is highly upset and we will never go on the internet again!!!!!
signed,a very angry parent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:(:(:(:(:(:(:(
posted by iconomy at 6:57 AM PST - 28 comments
July 18
Upload a File, Go to Prison. A new bill called the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003, or
ACCOPS, proposed in US Congress on Wednesday would land a person in prison for five years and impose a fine of $250,000 for uploading a single file to a peer-to-peer network. The bill "clarifies" that uploading a single file of copyright content qualifies as a felony. Penalties for such an offense include up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. In addition, filming a movie in a theater without authorization would immediately qualify as a federal offense.
posted by riffola at 11:58 PM PST - 36 comments
From the NYT (reg req.'d) This is the saddest story I can imagine.
"It was only a week ago that the tiny body of Stephanie Ramos was found in a plastic bag in a garbage truck in the Bronx, discarded by a foster mother who told the police that she panicked when the severely disabled girl died.
It was an ugly ending by any measure, but particularly cruel in this case because the little girl's life began the same way: wrapped in a plastic bag and discarded on a New York City byway."
Has anyone ever been a foster parent? A foster child? Are things often this bad - and this good? (That'll make sense when you read the story.)
posted by Jos Bleau at 7:21 PM PST - 9 comments
Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace The Bush administration planned well and won the war with minimal allied casualties. Now, according to interviews with dozens of administration officials, military leaders and independent analysts, missteps in the planning for the subsequent peace could threaten the lives of soldiers and drain U.S. resources indefinitely and cloud the victory itself. Lonely At The Top Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week that he hoped to enlist as many as 30,000 troops from 49 nations. The problem, however, is that many of the recruits the Pentagon has tried to line up so far appear to fall into two categories: the not so willing and the not that able. Report: U.S. May Call National Guard for Iraq Duty -
The Pentagon could start a call-up of as many as 10,000 U.S. National Guard soldiers by this winter to bolster forces in Iraq and offset a lack of troops from allies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Postwar Window Closing in Iraq, Study Says A team of outside experts dispatched by the Pentagon to assess security and reconstruction operations in Iraq reported yesterday that the window of opportunity for achieving postwar success is closing and requires immediate and dramatic action by U.S. military and civilian personnel. Turning and turning in the widening gyre...posted by y2karl at 3:05 PM PST - 52 comments
Retro phone fun. Remember the days when telephone numbers included an exhcange, like BUtterfield 8, MUrray Hill 7, or YUkon 5? Even you young whippersnappers can look up your current phone number and see what it's exchange name used to be. If your number isn't in the database, you can check Ma Bell's list of
recommended exchange names. The next time someone asks for your number, use the exchange and watch hilarity ensue.
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:58 AM PST - 34 comments
What does your last name mean? This site has a good variety of surnames with etymologies that seem to be trustworthy in general. You may have to try variant spellings; for instance, "Cardoso" comes up empty, but "Cardozo" gives:
Spanish and Portuguese, derived from Cardoso 'place where thistles grew', town or city from which the first bearer moved; also found in the form CARDOZA; made popular by the Sephardim moiety (Spanish-Portuguese group of Jews).
And if your name isn't there, you can try
Behind the Name, which depends on submissions from readers and so is spottier, but has (for example) Nixon ("son of Nicholas"), which vitalog omits. Enjoy!
posted by languagehat at 9:32 AM PST - 52 comments
Little robots in your pants -- Popular Science calls Dockers to investigate their claim that the stain-repellent "Go Khakis" use nanotechnology. Certainly my favorite headline of the day thus far.
posted by logovisual at 9:08 AM PST - 16 comments
Intacto - An interesting foreign language film about the mechanics of luck as a commodity. I just wanted this film last night and am trying to understand all of the possible permutations of how luck worked in this movie. Anyone interested in discussing it is encouraged to do so.
posted by Wong Fei-hung at 8:52 AM PST - 7 comments
Dr David Kelly the
alleged 'mole' in the WMD row
apparently found dead. He was at the centre of the UK Government's row with the BBC over
reporter's claim that the Prime Minister's special adviser, Alistair Campbell,
sexed up a dossier on Iraqi WMDs by adding a claim that they could be launched in 45 minutes. The Government says there will be an independent judicial review of the WMD affair if the body is Dr Kelly.
posted by brettski at 7:01 AM PST - 52 comments
Southeast Airlines has plans to
install digital video cameras throughout the cabins of its planes to record the faces and activities of its passengers at all times. Furthermore, the charter airline will store the digitized video for up to 10 years. And it may use face recognition software to match faces to names and personal records.
posted by Irontom at 6:18 AM PST - 17 comments
Watchdog's Bark Judicial Watch, the group that's been suing for access to Cheney's Energy Task Force notes, finally gets some docs, and guess what? Way back in 2001, Cheney, et al, were looking at maps of Iraqi oil fields. Is this the bookend clue, that coupled with Rumsfields 9/12 comments about going after Iraq, starts to shed real light on the administrations foreign policy objectives?
posted by tellmenow at 5:30 AM PST - 36 comments
John Dean's analysis of the administrations case for War. "What I found, in critically examining Bush's evidence, is not pretty. The African uranium matter is merely indicative of larger problems, and troubling questions of potential and widespread criminality when taking the nation to war. It appears that not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush said about Saddam Hussein's weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony."
posted by thedailygrowl at 1:42 AM PST - 73 comments
July 17
The White House has a new system for email from the public. Dashing off a rant, a rave or a question to president@whitehouse.gov won't cut it anymore. Now it takes a maze of forms and clicks and filters. The
first question: is this a supportive message or a differing opinion? Then you have to pick your topic from various menu lists. And list a name and address and email. And reply to an automated message making sure it's really your email.
White House tech guy tells
the NYTimes: "When it comes to a Web site, it's a bit like a movie. Some will say it's a tour de force; some will say it fell flat."
Fun Fact: all emails are saved and must be publicly disclosed in 12 years.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:44 PM PST - 26 comments
Lunar gardening is the oldest
form of gardening known to man,
the practice centers on the moon's gravitational effect on the flow of moisture in soil and plants and, to a lesser degree, the effect of moonlight on seed germination. "I've got a large area in potatoes. We've got some planted at the right time of the moon and some crops at the wrong time of the moon. The difference is so obvious and there for everybody to see"
posted by stbalbach at 7:43 PM PST - 11 comments
Sir Mix-A-Lot is a very smart cat. An Onion link, I suppose - but their AV Club interviews are missed more often than they should be. In this one, Sir Mix-A-Lot shows that he is a very thoughtful man, who has been handling the lot of a 'one-hit-wonder' very well, thank you.
posted by GriffX at 3:48 PM PST - 12 comments
Tv Licenses do not infringe people's human rights. Journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Miller refused to pay his license because it seemed as though the BBC had license to charge what they like raise the charge when they like; and that it didn't take into account the gulf between someone only receiving an Analogue service as opposed to digital. He lost the case. Serious implications.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:03 PM PST - 51 comments
Payback? How did Bush officials get back at Ambassador Joseph Wilson for
talking publicly two weeks ago about his trip to Niger to investigate claims of an Iraqi uranium deal? By
outing his wife as an undercover CIA operative. As David Corn of The Nation says,
"...the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it..... a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as 'nonofficial cover' and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration." The exposure of an undercover CIA agent is in fact a federal crime.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:34 AM PST - 159 comments
Operation: Air Conditioner It's about dropping our differences and getting together to support our troops and keep them cool.
Should I feel terribly guilty about giggling at some of the things on this web page? Like: "Together We Are: An Army of One" (Say what?) and "Here are some of the items that I buy and send besides air conditioners:
Baby Wipes, Powder... Liquid Soap (I heard the bar melts)... Tiki Torches. Check out the Baghdad Weather Report near the bottom, and... wait a minute... "I’ve organized people to begin “Operation Christmas” and we need to start planning that in August." (So we aren't leaving anytime soon?)
And, while they seem to have enough power to run the A/C at the Army camp, electricity for the rest of Iraq
is still gonna take some more money.
posted by wendell at 11:22 AM PST - 30 comments
America's Army wants you, Mac users. The
recruitment tool game has been out for some time now, available only for Windows, but
as of this week Mac users can get in on the action. Broadband and robust Mac horsepower required, but for $6 somebody hands you an M-16 and tells to go shoot stuff. Why not?
posted by emelenjr at 9:39 AM PST - 26 comments
Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. 'According to his famous autobiography, written in 1789, Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797) was born in what is now Nigeria. Kidnapped and sold into slavery in childhood, he was taken as a slave to the New World. As a slave to a captain in the Royal Navy, and later to a Quaker merchant, he eventually earned the price of his own freedom by careful trading and saving. As a seaman, he travelled the world, from the Mediterranean to the North Pole. Coming to London, he became involved in the movement to abolish the slave trade, an involvement which led to him writing and publishing The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African (1789) a strongly abolitionist autobiography ... '
Of interest :-
Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters;
Quobna Ottabah Cugoano: a Former Slave Speaks Out;
American Slave Narratives ('From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration');
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938;
Excerpts from Slave Narratives.posted by plep at 6:09 AM PST - 8 comments
Tenet tells all! "Sen. Dick Durbin, who was present for a 4 1/2-hour appearance by Tenet behind closed doors with Intelligence Committee members Wednesday, said Tenet named the official. But the Illinois Democrat said that person's identity could not be revealed because of the confidentiality of the proceedings." Alright, politically savvy mefites, who is it? Register your guesses now, and get the grand prize (umm, a sense of accomplishment?) when the info gets leaked!
posted by hank_14 at 5:33 AM PST - 54 comments
Metallica sues over use of E, F chords. No, it's not an Onion article. Really. They're completely serious. No exaggerating is taking place here. Honestly, they really are suing another band for using the E and F chords. It's on their
website, for god's sake. All I know is, I'm getting drunk tonight.
posted by tweebiscuit at 1:12 AM PST - 39 comments
July 16
Did America Walk Into A Trap? In stories reported
by Newsweek and Fox News it appears possible that the armed resistance now being encountered by US/British forces was part of Saddam Hussein's plan all along. The documents that have been found essentially say that should Baghdad fall, the Baath party loyalists should fade into society and extract vengeance on the occupying soldiers bit by bit. The nightmare scenario before the war was urban combat,
Mogadishu style. But now it appears that Hussein may have upped the ante with this
"guerrilla-type campaign".
posted by owillis at 8:59 PM PST - 65 comments
The
Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World provides beautiful detailed
topographical maps of the ancient world. A mammoth undertaking in production over 12 years with 160 scholars and cartographers (with help from MapQuest) and estimated to cost over $5 million it is the largest and most accurate Ancient World Atlas ever. Composed of
99 maps (
examples) the Atlas is
easily available to the layperson. "If you're gripped by Hannibal and want to sort out which way you think he went through the Alps, you'll have enough of a clear landscape to do it. If you want to follow St. Paul around the eastern Mediterranean, you can."
posted by stbalbach at 5:30 PM PST - 15 comments
The Bush/Cheney campaign lets you look up campaign donors on their
web page. With its help, we can now answer the burning question "Forget about me...who does the incredibly popular, beloved-by-millions television personality
Wink Martindale support?"
Now we know.posted by Vidiot at 2:33 PM PST - 19 comments
General Thinking "began in early 2001 as a collaboration between
Remo Giuffré,
Geoffrey Gifford, along with a shared intuitive desire to gather together a global Network of Thinkers who shared certain
Beliefs." Their "roster" includes
Erik "
MetaDesign" Spiekermann and a variety of interesting folks. Friendster for the digerati? Always interesting to read what the elite think of their
peers...
posted by shoepal at 2:09 PM PST - 4 comments
"
The Day The Clown Cried." Even unfinished, the breathtaking scope of it's...
awfulness has for thirty years
both attracted and repelled would-be producers and distributors. (
script, zipped Word doc) Just the concept is startling, like some kind of hellish Sad Lib -- Jerry Lewis plays a clown in Auschwitz who leads children to the gas chambers. Harry Shearer, one of the few to see the film: "You are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. 'Oh my God!' -- that's all you can say." Can this movie ever be made?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:18 PM PST - 39 comments
Copyright to the Revolution (translation): "On Wednesday, 9 July 2003, the superior court of Paris banned a poster campaign launched by the group
Reporters Without Borders to protest the totalitarian policies of Cuba. This campaign, designed by the agency
Rampazzo & Associates, was built around an iconic image of Ernesto Che Guevara, inspired by the original image by the Cuban photographer [Alberto]
Korda.
The decision came in
a suit brought by Diane Diaz Lopez, the late photographer's daughter, accusing the organization of misappropriating the original image taken by her father."
The poster reads: "
Welcome to Cuba, the world's largest prison for journalists." Korda had sued in 2000 to prevent use of the image in an
Absolut vodka campaign. An article at
Uzine (French) shows how the image in question was composited.
posted by hairyeyeball at 9:23 AM PST - 25 comments
First Documented Case of HIV hybridization in a human being was presented at the International AIDS Society conference in Paris. In this case, genetic tests on a superinfected woman showed that the two strains she was infected with swapped genetic material, creating a new hybrid strain of HIV. The actual effects are not yet clear, but this could pose a serious problem for researchers trying to create a vaccine.
posted by Irontom at 5:15 AM PST - 8 comments
July 15
Breaking up is hard to do. U.S. Senate intern sends an ill-advised email to a young woman he calls his "intellectual, moral, social, and emotional" inferior. Unclear if he sent it from his senate.gov address or not, but it quickly finds a wider audience.
Here's the WashPost article mentioned on the Snopes page.
posted by GaelFC at 10:26 PM PST - 64 comments
Rumsfeld's personal spy ring The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear. Today,
Salon also looks into the role played by
John Bolton. Is investigative journalism now just relegated to the web? [you have to look at an ad, I believe]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 8:32 PM PST - 26 comments
Is the
budget deficit going to be the other shoe that drops on the Bush administration? In the OMB's
mid-session review [pdf], it admits the federal budget deficit would balloon to a record $455 billion this fiscal year after absorbing immediate costs from the war in Iraq, and then climb $20 billion higher in 2004. That's a 50% increase since the administration's last forecast five months ago. At least a few
economists think even that number is underestimated. To top it off, the consequences of an increasingly large deficit and accompanying tax cuts are being
passed on to the states. How's that for a neat twist on federalism?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:25 PM PST - 9 comments
China's Loch Ness Monster Returns Couldn't a SEAL team sort this out pretty quickly? Or one of those minisubs they use to find the Titanic? How do
lake monsters manage to be so elusive? I mean, it's like there's anywhere for them to go! Unless, of course, they're lake monsters with legs. That's a whole other thing. In that case they could totally be hiding out in the next Chinese lake over.
posted by jengod at 7:19 PM PST - 9 comments
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players have been lauded by
The New Yorker ("arguably the best-known local act of the new millennium"),
Entertainment Weekly ("Okay, maybe it is a joke, but it's a very good one") and
David Cross ("When I first saw them, I felt something that reminded me of the feeling you have when you’re, like, 11 or 12, and a not-unattractive girl tells another girl to tell you that she might think you’re cute.") This mom, dad and daughter play punk-rock anthems to slide show pictures they purchase at garage sales. And they're playing L.A. tomorrow!
posted by adrober at 3:21 PM PST - 15 comments
The wonderful online history journal
Common-Place is presenting a special issue entitled
"Early Cities of the Americas." Nineteen essays, each concerning a particular incident, person, place or encounter in the early life of a city, together provide a "worm's eye view" of what urban life was like in early postcolonial North and South America. Learn about vigilante justice and press sensationalism in 1856
San Francisco, or about a day in the life of a peasant family in
Lima of the 1760s. Other essays concern the 17th-century "treasure city" of
Havana, searching for salvation as a slave in 1647
New Amsterdam (New York), and capital punishment in colonial
Paramaribo, Suriname. "Reading these essays cannot but help readers gain some historical perspective on the modern condition," especially as you see how many of the issues we associate with modern urban life (poverty, crime,
bowling?) are not exactly recent developments.
posted by arco at 11:47 AM PST - 5 comments
What's on the menu? Perhaps fat and calories.
"Five states have taken up similar bills this year, with none being passed so far." Will bills like these ever get passed? Will we ever see nutrition facts on fast food wrappers? Will consumers ever bother to read them?
posted by sharksandwich at 11:26 AM PST - 35 comments
Volvo SCC definitely provides some great new ideas - both innovative and practical for the near future (i.e., heartbeat sensor, adaptive headlights)
posted by adamms222 at 7:36 AM PST - 23 comments
Cooked intel revolts spooks - Spooks revolt : elements of the US intelligence community are between
outrage and open revolt, and Veterans for Intelligence Sanity, a group of ex - CIA professionals led by Ray McGovern, a 27 year veteran of the CIA who used to brief George Bush Sr., has called for Dick Cheney's resignation in an open letter to GW Bush, reports Nick Kristoff.
"You may not realize the extent of the current ferment within the intelligence community and particularly the CIA" they have warned Mr. Bush.
At the heart of the matter is the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) under the leadership of Abram Shulsky.
Meanwhile, "It's like, duh, the net doesn't forget. Get it?" :
a blogger compiles a chronological list of Bush Administration statements on Iraq's WMD's - from
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." (George W. Bush
Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003) to
"They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer." (Donald Rumsfeld, Remarks to Council on Foreign Relations, May 27, 2003) and
"U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction. (Condoleeza Rice, Reuters Interview, May 12, 2003) Also in above link: scroll to bottom for memorandum to GW Bush.
posted by troutfishing at 5:20 AM PST - 105 comments
Drifiting towards war - "I have held off public criticism to this point because I had hoped that the administration was going to act on this problem, and that public criticism might be counterproductive. But time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous." - Fmr Defense Secretary William Perry
posted by jdaura at 1:06 AM PST - 20 comments
July 14
Fake lie-detector reveals women's sex lies - "Women are more likely than men to lie about their sex lives, reveals a new study ... Women who thought their responses might be read said they had had an average of 2.6 sexual partners, compared with 3.4 partners for those who thought their answers were anonymous. But those who thought they would be caught out by the polygraph reported an average of 4.4 partners." I'm guessing a similar study done on men would reveal that as the likelihood of getting caught in a lie increases, the number of partners claimed would
decrease...
posted by RylandDotNet at 6:46 PM PST - 25 comments
Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by Stan Chin at 4:47 PM PST - 79 comments
The End of the Deep End. Citing safety reasons, North American cities
are abolishing the standard public swimming pool that many of us grew up with. The deep ends of existing pools are being filled in, and new pools are being built shallower. Is this action too extreme, or are deep ends a real threat to public safety? (via
Manifesto Multilinko)
posted by sanitycheck at 11:52 AM PST - 51 comments
Got roots? The American Family Immigration History Center has made available online the passenger manifests for all the ships that docked at Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924. It's searchable by name, and you can look at a photostat of the actual page of the manifest. I found my great-uncle (Demetrios Calisperis, from Samos, Greece, debarked Ellis Island Nov 1907, at age 11 -- hiya, Uncle Jim!). Free to register and search. Paid membership lets you build a family scrapbook about your ancestor that can be searched by other researchers.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:12 AM PST - 9 comments
The Ivy League pop stars! Gossipy article reveals how universities throughout the USA are frantically fighting each other in order to attract celebrity professors.
Niall Ferguson, Deirdre (
born Donald) McCloskey and Saul Bellow ("teaching load: one course a year") are some examples. Considering these people are already engaged in their own love affair with the public eye (book tours, book deals,
media events etc), are they the best choice from the academic point of view? Do traditional universities really have to resort to
namedropping? And just between us, anybody out there ever had or currently has classes with bigwigs that turned out to be really fascinating or really disappointing?
first link via those elitists from aldaily
posted by 111 at 10:33 AM PST - 36 comments
Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships You can register either in Freestyle or Original (the traditional over the shoulder -style). Alternatively, you can register as a team (max. three persons / team). There's also have a Junior category for competitors of under 12 years. Grading in Freestyle is based on style and aesthetics, whereas in Original the grading is purely based on length and style. In both categories theree prizes will be awarded. The current Ukranian record is
57 metres.
posted by riffola at 10:20 AM PST - 10 comments
Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew, Ethan. Emily, Madison, Hannah, Emma, Alexis. Wha? Who? These were the five most popular baby names for boys and girls respectively in 2002, according to the US Social Security Administration’s
Popular Baby Names page. You can also get the top names by year of birth since 1880 (now I know why half my female friends are
Jennifers), and best of all, see how the fortunes of your own name have waxed or waned over the last decade.
(#79 with a bullet baby! Woo!)posted by gottabefunky at 6:56 AM PST - 105 comments
(NYT) The death row trifecta: juvenile, retarded and ... proved innocent by DNA testing
But unlike other trifectas, this one will not necessarily get you off the hook. Never mind that the real perpetrator has been identified (due to his prison yard bragging initially and through a DNA perfect match later). One of the great problems of the American criminal justice system is that once an innocent person is trapped in the system, it's extremely difficult to get him — or her — extricated.
posted by magullo at 6:35 AM PST - 29 comments
Bananaslug is a serendipitous search engine. It uses the google API to mix your search term with a random seed and returns results that are probably orthogonal to what you were looking for. Minutes of fun.
posted by walrus at 6:14 AM PST - 5 comments
July 13
breed ... an online, international community of digital artists, specializing mostly, it seems, in moody and dark post-modern imagery.
posted by crunchland at 7:43 PM PST - 16 comments
Will Ferrell's Harvard commencement speech quotes from the greatest -- "I believe it was Shakespeare who said it best when he said, 'Look yonder into the darkness for knowledge onto which I say go onto that which thou possess into thy night for thee have come with only a single sword and vanquished thee into darkness.'" - Some Sunday humor for MeFolk.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:53 PM PST - 21 comments
Pixeltees - use a (shockwave) editor to produce t-shirt designs. The low resolution, restricted palette and video-game connotations give interesting restrictions - a lot of designs are terrible, but
some are
pretty neat.
posted by andrew cooke at 10:47 AM PST - 13 comments
Common sense, really. Need something to do on a Sunday morning? Charles Osgood's fine, but he's got nowhere near the entertainment value of the New Age IQ Test. It's a stunning exercise both in web design and rational outlook.
Brought to you by the folks at the
Salem (Massachusetts)New Age Center. Don't miss the writings of John Cali, who "channels Chief Joseph."
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:53 AM PST - 20 comments
July 12
Pay No Attention tothemenbehindthe Curtain. You maybe read about PNAC
here, wherein numerous members of the current administration wrote down their grand plans for an American-led NWO. Pretty heady stuff, with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz writing to Clinton in
1998 that "the only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction." Umm, that is... move along, citizen. Nothing to see here (thank goodness for Google's
cache).
posted by RKB at 11:01 PM PST - 42 comments
Further Iranian Oppression. The "government" of Iran has evidently teamed up with Cuba in efforts to further suppress the growing democratic movement in Iran by jamming pro-democracy satellite broadcasts. Two un-elected governments combining forces to make sure that
their will is enforced, not that of their citizens.
posted by jsonic at 11:31 AM PST - 62 comments
Trading on fear "But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship ... That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering
posted by carfilhiot at 9:51 AM PST - 27 comments
An American soldier maintains a weblog from Iraq. It contains details about his day to day life as a non-combat (and non-career) soldier during this conflict. Some people think he is an imposter, others think he's a dissident for using his voice in any manner other than as a Stars and Stripes reporter would. Thanks to
I thought his weblog was interesting, including his responses to people's assertions that he isn't real or is somehow a dissident for using his voice.
Thanks to
Sensible Erection for the link.
posted by substrate at 7:36 AM PST - 27 comments
Soundtoys - cool things you can click on, prod, poke, play with, drag, chew on & diddle...a gallery of interactive audio-visual projects from a variety of web designers, musicians and programmers. Absolutely no uranium involved!
posted by madamjujujive at 7:04 AM PST - 7 comments
'No real planning for postwar Iraq' "The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan.
Today, American forces face instability in Iraq, where they are losing soldiers almost daily to escalating guerrilla attacks, the cost of occupation is exploding to almost $4 billion a month and withdrawal appears untold years away."
Bring 'Em On!
posted by owillis at 6:41 AM PST - 64 comments
July 11
Baghdad Bulletin “The Baghdad Bulletin is Iraq’s only English-language newsmagazine and one of the country’s only independent publications. The third issue (published Monday, July 7) is now being distributed across Iraq and in Jordan.” They have a short bit about how Chemical Ali may have
escaped Baghdad.
posted by raaka at 9:32 PM PST - 1 comments
Van Gogh's Moon Shines Again This Weekend If you go out this Sunday evening and look up at the Moon, you will see not only our closest celestial neighbor, but a piece of art history as well. The rising full moon will appear exactly the way it did 114 years ago, when Vincent Van Gogh captured the scene in his famous painting "Moonrise.". Also learn how the moon helped date the painting.
posted by NewBornHippy at 6:58 PM PST - 12 comments
where r u? where would u like 2 b? Just answer those questions in the popup window (hit "click here to find out how..." or via email or text message)--your response will live online and will be launched at sunset from the banks of the River Avon on July 13th 2003...Possibly to be discovered by someone, somewhere. More info
here (you can be anonymous if you wish, and javascript and flash are in the popup)posted by amberglow at 6:02 PM PST - 13 comments
Judge Finds Documentation Connecting Iraq with Al-Qaeda? Federal appellate Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of Nashville is in Iraq as one of 13 experts selected by the U.S. Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system. And in an article from
the Tennessean, he claims to have found a newspaper published in the
Babylon Daily Political Newspaper, run by Uday Hussein, in which was a "List of Honor" containing the names of 600 men in high esteem by the former ruling regime. Among these was, apparently, ''Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.''
posted by namespan at 3:19 PM PST - 31 comments
Mark Pilgrim and Dave Winer are fighting, again. It started over a remark
Dave made about various blogging services.
Mark turned around and created a
bot that reads Dave's RSS feed every 5 minutes and spits out the text, annotated to show what's been added/deleted/changed since the last time it ran. Dave's claiming copyright infringement, Mark's claiming fair use. Okay MeFi folks, which side are you on, and why?
posted by tommasz at 1:29 PM PST - 60 comments
Comeuppance is served: Blair Hornstine, the litigious valedictorian MeFi loves to hate, has been dropped from the Harvard class of '07 for her adventures in plagiarism. Quoting Nelson Munz here would be superfluous.
posted by serafinapekkala at 9:54 AM PST - 158 comments
We are because of others. We are born into this world with minds as naked as our bodies and we have to rely on others to feed, clothe us, and to teach us to think of ourselves as selves. The key is language -- grammatical speech and human culture build upon the brain's biological capacities to create a mind that is something different again than that with which we are born. We are conscious because we can speak to others and ourselves, because we can speak of ourselves to others and ourselves. Language gives us as individuals, memory, and as groups, culture, the social memory. Or so
thought Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, among others. Welcome to the
the neuronaut's guide to the science of consciousness.
posted by y2karl at 7:57 AM PST - 36 comments
Interview with Jim Gray, head of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center. "Clear your schedule, because once you've started reading this interview, you won't be able to put it down until you've finished it.
Who would ever, in this time of the greatest interconnectivity in human history, go back to shipping bytes around via snail mail as a preferred means of data transfer? (Really, just what type of throughput does the USPS offer?) Jim Gray would do it, that's who. And we're not just talking about Zip disks, no sir; we're talking about shipping entire hard drives, or even complete computer systems, packed full of disks."
posted by mooncrow at 6:41 AM PST - 23 comments
You are your record collection. If you really want to get to know someone, try rummaging through their CD collection. "I don't think anyone who's really passionate about music just 'listens' to it. This research is positive confirmation of the fact that songs are emblematic of people's characters. I've always believed that people's musical taste says a lot about them. If you like Avril Lavigne, for example, you probably need to have your ears syringed."
posted by eyebeam at 6:37 AM PST - 51 comments
The Mythical Quest , an old exhibition at the British Library. 'Throughout the world, tales have always been told of
heroes and heroines embarking on perilous quests in
search of lost loved ones, the secret of immortality,
earthly paradise or simply great riches. Many of these
stories have elements in common, such as clashes with
monsters, battles with the elements, interventions by
the gods and tests of moral character, mental cunning
and physical strength. These tales have been expressed
in songs, literature, art and dance for thousands of
years, and are still being reinterpreted today in
books, comic strips, interactive games and adventure
films.'
More British Library exhibits
here, from
early Indian photography to
the secret life of maps.
Examples of mythical quests :-
Monkey:
Journey to the West (another version
here,
not to mention
the
TV series);
the
Ramayana
(and the
Ramakian,
the Thai version);
Cupid
and Psyche at
the
Classics Pages (subject of
a previous
thread);
the
Holy
Grail (more at
the
Catholic Enyclopaedia);
the journey of
Alexander
the Great;
Pilgrim's
Progress and
John Bunyan;
the
world of Dante and
a
map of
Hell.posted by plep at 6:25 AM PST - 17 comments
July 10
Which 2004 U.S. presidential candidate are you? Think you know which candidate best aligns with your political ideals? You may be surprised. Me, I got 100% for
Howard Dean, who I'd never heard of before. I don't really believe that anyone sharing my political leanings is going to get anywhere near the White House, but it's nice to know that there's someone out there for me...
(ps. Posted
before, but I think that three years is a good in-between time, and it's about that time again.)posted by majcher at 9:01 PM PST - 62 comments
The latest Honda television commercial, "
Sense" being shown in the UK, is the follow up to the
widely discussed "Cog." It's quite not as cool as its predecessor, but still, an elegant, interesting concept. Apologies for the somewhat low quality of the java video stream.
posted by jonson at 1:25 PM PST - 23 comments
Susan Smith needs pen pals. Remember the
woman who killed her two sons by driving her car into a South Carolina lake while they were strapped into their car seats back in 1994? Well, she's 31 and looking for people who are "not judgemental" and "sincere". She's a Christian who enjoys attending church and loves "rainbows, Mickey Mouse, the beach, the mountains, and waterfalls."
posted by Irontom at 12:50 PM PST - 58 comments
Badgirs (Farsi) or
barjeels (Arabic) are
windcatchers that work as low-tech air conditioners. The city of
Yazd, Iran is probably best known for them. Badgirs are built so that they can be opened to catch the wind from different directions, the air is then cooled as it travels down the tower, and in turn cools the rooms below. When there is no wind, air in the tower is heated and rises, which draws cooler air from the courtyard into the house. (There is no URL to link to for the search result for “badgir” on
Encyclopaedia Iranica, but I recommend checking out their definition and diagrams even though you’ll have to go through three different PDF pages.) Badgirs have been around in some form “since the New Kingdom (1500- 300 BC) in Egypt”, but global warming might make them ineffective.
(scroll down to #16-#18) Variations, such as
malqafs, can be found from
Egypt to
Pakistan. You can get
a modern one for your own house. You can win an
award shaped like one
for advancements in sustainable development. Or you could just stay in the Fairmont Dubai Hotel which is shaped like a
huge badgir. So even after all this, I still don't know what those sticks sticking out of the sides are for.
posted by lobakgo at 10:42 AM PST - 28 comments
Yoda in Ireland! What do you get when you combine a wizened Jedi master, the fabled Emerald Isle, and perhaps a pint too many of Guiness™? The best vacation pictures ever!
posted by tankboy at 9:11 AM PST - 12 comments
How much trans fat is in that Devil Dog? The FDA has announced that starting in 2006 food manufacturers must list the number of grams of trans fatty acid -- very bad fat -- on food packages. This is supposed to be a big deal, meant to save lives and billions of bucks. Not so fast. I say, it is a useless addition to the already confusing line-up of numbers on the nutrition panel. Besides, the presence of trans fats is already revealed in ingredients lists on food boxes and wrappers -- look for hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils. But the stuff flies off shelves anyway. I say, if the FDA really wants to tell people how bad these foods are, they should come right out with it. It's time for warning labels on junk food. THIS PRODUCT CAUSES OBESITY. THIS PRODUCT WILL CLOG YOUR ARTERIES. THIS PRODUCT MAY LEAD TO HEART DISEASE AND DEATH.
posted by jellybuzz at 8:21 AM PST - 62 comments
Tired of your mullet and acid-wash jeans being sneered at in the local gay bar? Wishing that there was someone other than
Rob Halford out in the metal scene?
Pink Stëël is for you, my gay heavy-metal-loving brethen! Be out, be proud, and crank up "We Fight For Cock!"
posted by Katemonkey at 6:10 AM PST - 10 comments
Blogs For the Morbidly Inclined :
i am sixteen and weigh ninety-eight pounds, but rather be ninety or less. will i gain more weight if i stop eating altogether for a few weeks? can anyone help me?
-
Pro Anorexia Blog
We had a plane crash today. A small two-engine plane crashed into a pond killing three people inside. The pilot's face was pretty much nonexistant, which is mostly due to the trauma. However, the investigators did have to fight the turtles in order to collect the body. They ate the eyes and were in the process of "giving kisses" to what was left of the face.
-
Autopsy Blogposted by dgaicun at 4:24 AM PST - 31 comments
July 9
Montana Goes Nuts! The Rock Creek Lodge, outside Clinton, Montana, invites you for a four-day celebration of Pabst, prairie fries, and... well... pud: "Have a Ball at the Testicle Festival!"
[via Blowfish.com's newsletter, 1st page = SFW].
Anyone here been to a "hicks-gone-wild" type of event? I've heard of backwoods "show us your tits" type festivals before, and I would tend to generalize them as isolated outbursts of the repressed (and very sexist toward women). This one seems to have a slightly different... um... bent.
posted by scarabic at 5:39 PM PST - 16 comments
R.I.P., Colonel Walter E. Kurtz 1925 - 2003. "In the post-Sept 11th security environment, fearless men like Tony 'Poe' are what America needs to combat and counter terrorism and the new unconventional threat that America faces from abroad in exotic and uncharted lands."
posted by majcher at 3:47 PM PST - 21 comments
The Future is Now. "It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…"posted by the fire you left me at 2:55 PM PST - 15 comments
One egg, one month. Seemed like such a simple, comprehensible system - until now. "We are literally going to have to re-write medical textbooks," said Dr. Roger Pierson. Turns out many women may ovulate more than once a month, which may be why the rhythm method fails so often.
posted by soyjoy at 2:03 PM PST - 56 comments
American Antigravity makes lifters, devices that defy gravity thanks to a few thousand volts of electricity coursing through them. A
video gallery features fascinating Windows and Real video clips. (More inside)
posted by emelenjr at 10:17 AM PST - 7 comments
You can never have too many Chess sets. The artists at "Sticks", whose website seems to be barely functioning at all, have put their entire collection of hand carved & painted whimsical chess sets & boards online. This web collection doesn't do the work justice, as the detail on the boards & pieces is fantastic. The themes, however, are what make it great. From
Junk Food vs
Healthy Food or
Farmers vs
Livestock, the collection is seemingly endless. To navigate, just keep clicking the right arrow. Warning - the site is not working all that well (at least not for me), so if you click the up arrow you might get stranded. Stay off of the moors, stick to the path!!
posted by jonson at 8:54 AM PST - 15 comments
Finally... something good has come from a newsfilter post! In a trackback to a recent
post on something-or-other (aren't they all the same?) I discovered a gem of a site dedicated to maps.
posted by silusGROK at 8:42 AM PST - 11 comments
Mile High Dating: combining Internet dating with unlimited free flights is allowing America West employees to become jet setting bachelors (anyone can do it, but according to the story it's mostly men taking advantage of this combination). It costs them next to nothing for a weekend trip (if everything works out) but seems amazingly romantic to the women.
[more inside]posted by Irontom at 8:11 AM PST - 15 comments
McD Wireless Beginning today, many McDonald’s restaurants around the Bay area will provide Wi-Fi with a side of fries...
Previously discussed in
March.
posted by sparky at 6:17 AM PST - 18 comments
July 8
Did you know that... Aid fell in the 1990s—by nearly a third on a per capita basis in Sub-Saharan Africa? In Sub Saharan Africa, half the population lives on less than 1$ a day? At current rates Sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the poverty Goal until 2147? If all the food produced worldwide were distributed equally, every person would be able to consume 2,760 calories a day (hunger is defined as consuming fewer than 1,960 calories a day)? These and more facts can be found in the
2003 UN Human Development Report.
posted by stonerose at 8:18 PM PST - 25 comments
Photos by Martin - a gem of a site for vicarious travelers, it features
wonderful,
charming photos and fascinating
stories from a guy who quit his job three years ago to travel the world. He credits global photojournalist
Steve McCurry as an influence. I am such a fan of these photo travel narratives, professional and amateur alike - has anyone else discivered some special favorites?
posted by madamjujujive at 7:13 PM PST - 22 comments
The first lawsuit in the wake of
Lawrence v. Texas was filed today.
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Loomis is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart, who was eight days away from his twenty year retirement date and a million dollar pension, when an arsonist set fire to his home. A private sex tape involving Loomis was found during the arson investigation, and turned over to the Army.
Shortly there after LTC Loomis was discharged, losing his pension, because he was gay.
His complaint[PDF] seeks to reverse his 1997 discharge.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 6:22 PM PST - 46 comments
Poogle? I was was bored so I started with bloogle and did several more until I came across this.
posted by Fidel at 2:51 PM PST - 23 comments
How to respond to critics. Recently, Liz Phair wrote a
rambling letter in response to criticism from the old grey lady. She's not the first though, when Dylan wannabe Ken Oakley received bad reviews her personally wrote responses to everyone. The responses were so over the top that magazine writers began reviewing albums he never wrote just to receive the responses. Then there's
Vincent Gallo.
posted by drezdn at 2:39 PM PST - 11 comments
He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question:
"If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?" In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:13 PM PST - 21 comments
Sept. 11, 2003: Photoblog your life "I've been thinking about September 11th. I've been thinking about the United States response - The Patriot Act. Invading Afganastan & Iraq. Death. Fear. Oppression.
It seems to me that this is NOT the America I want the world to know. So I propose a blogwide Photoblog your Life day on September 11th. Take your camera with you. Take pictures. Show the world your life. Show the world your daily delights. Show the world that we choose life, happiness and freedom."
[via Big Pink Cookie]posted by kirkaracha at 11:22 AM PST - 60 comments
White House admits fudging Niger documents. The administration today
admitted that forged evidence of Iraq's attempts to buy nuclear material should not have been presented as valid. This came about as a result of an atypically harsh period of questioning from the press following the publication of
this editorial over the weekend... [more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 9:21 AM PST - 119 comments
A little coffee shop in a little North Carolina town closes. When I worked in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., the opening of the
Hyphen (get it? get it? the Hyphen in Fuquay-Varina?) was a miracle. There, in the midst of antique stores, clothiers, and the
Bob Barker Co., was this hip, unique eatery owned and operated by two local artists. Owner Nina Fortmeyer partially cites that the little tobacco town has simply become "Wal-Mart-ized" in its growth, leading to a loss in downtown foot traffic, leading to lost business. This, methinks, is the greatest and most obvious consequence of globalization, the mom-and-pops being run out of town. If this is happening in Fuquay-Varina, it is absolutely happening everywhere. Very sad.
posted by NedKoppel at 8:58 AM PST - 63 comments
Buddy Ebsen aka Jed Clampett and Barnaby Jones, dies... I don't recall ever seeing The Beverly Hillbillies on Irish TV, but I clearly remember Barnaby Jones as a kid, which got shown in syndication here. I always thought he was too old to be a detective, but I always found the show strangely watchable.
He had quite a career - a career in vaudeville, he danced with child star Shirley Temple, he was the singing voice of the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, he was the framework for Mickey Mouse in some of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons....truly, he was one of the last connections to the golden age of Hollywood.
RIP Buddy.
posted by tomcosgrave at 3:03 AM PST - 6 comments
July 7
Apologies come from the top Queensland, Australia: "QUEENSLAND'S elite anti-terrorism police will no longer use photos of real people in target practice after concerns were raised by indigenous and civil liberties groups." Dp the police have the right to use someone's mugshot for target practice, without permission or consent?
posted by skinsuit at 9:10 PM PST - 16 comments
JINRO: The liquor
thrice-filtered with charcoal made from bamboo In Korea, Chamjinisulro is the first clean and safe soju filtered
three times with charcoal made from bamboo, which is cooked at 1,000 degrees celsius. Because Chamjinisulro has been filtered
twice, it has
never been leaving
no harmful ingredients or impurities. You can enjoy pure taste without the burden of hangovers due to it's containing asparagine and affulent minerals.
posted by cmicali at 8:50 PM PST - 32 comments
Things That Never Were is a new novel from an ex-weblogger. First it was
Cory and now Matthew. Who's next and are there any other webloggers turned authors? Not the other way around.
posted by john at 8:47 PM PST - 28 comments
It’s not a mass-produced American product. It's either "a turnaround in American publishing, or... radically wrongheaded" - but it looks like The Guardian may be launching a version in the USA soon.
Could such a venture lead to the demise of the venerable old Fleet Street institution, owned by an
independent trust? Is it overreaching ambition or a daring entry into niche market?
More interesting to me, are there any similar non-profit media organisations in your part of the world (wherever that may be)?
posted by dash_slot- at 5:40 PM PST - 13 comments
Faery Lands Forlorn A.S. Byatt, author of
Possession and other novels, looks at the phenomenon of adults reading the Harry Potter children's books:
Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip. Its values, and everything in it, are, as Gatsby said of his own world when the light had gone out of his dream, "only personal." Nobody is trying to save or destroy anything beyond Harry Potter and his friends and family.... Ms. Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had.posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:45 PM PST - 105 comments
Heaven or Hell? It's Your Choice
A new
shareware E-Book is out, penned by the likes of
Captain Crunch and
Matthew Smith, that makes the claims:
Don't bother planning your pension, the world is about to change and we can prove it, please just take 2 minutes out of your life to read this page, it may change your life.
Artificial intelligence is coming and it may become smarter than any of us. Smart networks using grid technologies could become a threat to us ALL, this is the real Matrix.
From Dot.Net to the X-Box, from M-Theory to the Playstation 3 the future is V.R. / A.I. and Nanotech.
If you ever wanted to know what the system is and what it has done to you, then this ebook is for you.
You left school, you were standardised, you took an exam, you were graded, they made you believe in money, this is the last great social control mechanism. There's more to this, than you can imagine.
...and there you have it. Or do you?
posted by metameme at 2:54 PM PST - 24 comments
This is the story is a fantasy book is a book with a real tale, only it's not between the covers.
Will Allen would retire to his bedroom and his family would hear the typewriter going at all hours. When asked what he was doing, he only smiled and said "you'll see."
Later that year, at Christmas 1979 they did. He presented his family and friends with manuscripts of
Swords for Hire . Months later, just short of his 23rd birthday, he died of terminal cancer.
His older brother Paul, loved the book, read it several times over the years, it was a beloved family story that he read to his daughters. He felt his brother could (and should) have been a
published author he surely was meant to be, and got the books published. It won some rave reviews and awards as well.
What got me most about this story and I'm not sure why, but the author is on the cover of his book as one of the characters. (You can see the original picture on the author page of the
Author's bio page). I thought that was really beautiful.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 1:13 PM PST - 10 comments
Are the days of French as a world language numbered? The French language is still considered a "world language," but it is slowly losing its relevance in an English-dominated world. "What is at stake is the survival of our culture. It is a life or death matter," said Jacques Viot, head of the Alliance Francaise in Paris. Will French finally surrender to English?
posted by laz-e-boy at 9:51 AM PST - 58 comments
July 6
No kids in the casino A stunning new casino opened recently in Atlantic City, filled with fancy restaurants and other relaxations for adults, but if you're in A.C. with the kids and aren't staying at
the big B, don't bother bringing them. The friendly guards will be turning you away at the door.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:37 PM PST - 16 comments
I've been ping mad all day since I found this neat little utility that can ping multiple hosts. Not very useful to the huge legions of loggers who use
MoveableType, but a boon indeed to those who use homebrewed setups or others like
e107 that currently don't have ping capability.
posted by Fidel at 8:17 PM PST - 20 comments
A movie theater in Kansas City, MO now prohibits children under 6, and requires children between 6 and 16 to be accompanied by an adult. They no longer show movies rated G or PG, instead deciding to go with "adult films, independent films and films geared toward adult audiences." There's even a VIP lounge where adults can sit in recliners and drink alcohol while watching the film. Speaking as someone who actually goes to movies to see the movie, not use it as a place to park brats for two hours, this is a revolution, but I can understand why parents would feel discriminated against.
posted by RylandDotNet at 8:32 AM PST - 88 comments
The other side of liberty "At the very moment they were in Philadelphia declaring that all men are created equal, many of America's Founding Fathers were slave owners. Activists are now demanding a fuller accounting at democracy's birthplace."
posted by Postroad at 7:26 AM PST - 13 comments
Out of the desert, out of Africa: In war-torn Eritrea, former atomic physicist demonstrates radical new vision of
Free-Market environmentalism. "...Imagine
a farm where water is never in short supply and each crop leaves the soil more fertile. Now imagine that farm offering a solution to....global warming, declining water tables, loss of arable land,
collapsing fisheries, and shrinking biodiversity. Finally, imagine that farm making money....Carl Hodges, an atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, no longer imagines such a farm.
He's built one....
Seawater Farms, a joint venture with the government of Eritrea on the Red Sea, is the
first commercial-sized saltwater farm in the world....."
posted by troutfishing at 12:07 AM PST - 18 comments
July 5
THIS OBJECT DOES NOT EXIST so the world is flat and five-pointed, there is only one Springfield, and there will soon be fake fossils on Mars. and don't let any of these so-called "scientists" tell you something different.
posted by magikeye at 8:02 PM PST - 32 comments
Extreme Piggy Back Riding For the past 11 years, couples from around the world have been participating in the
Carry Your Wife competition in Finland. Based in
local legend, the husbands are required to carry their wives through water, across sand, and over man-made obstacles. The prize? Her weight in
beer.
warning: last link is videoposted by Stynxno at 4:32 PM PST - 1 comments
Oh, I So Wish So-And-So Were On The Other Side! Just move over,
dude! For conservatives, it's often the case that our allies are a damn sight worse than our worst so-called enemies. Here's a prime example,
extremely rare in its totality: an embarrassing piece by an embarrassing neo-con,
John Laughland, about an even more embarrassing neo-con,
Michael Ledeen, in a totally embarrassing magazine,
American Conservative. Do liberals and lefties have it any easier? Who are the Center's and the Left's most difficult-to-explain
compagnons de route dudes? Quite honestly - and although they're certainly not immune to the exquisite unease of political companionship - I enviously fear that they do.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:58 PM PST - 64 comments
July 1942: United We Stand "Seven months after the United States entered World War II, magazines nationwide featured the American flag on their covers. Adopting the slogan United We Stand, some five hundred publications waved the stars and stripes to promote national unity, rally support for the war, and celebrate Independence Day."
posted by owillis at 9:18 AM PST - 60 comments
Exotic Entomology. 'Provided for your delight are a small number of the world's butterflies and moths, taken from Dru Drury's three-volume monograph entitled Illustrations of Exotic Entomology.'
Related :-
Schreber's Fabulous Beasts. 'In 1774 Johann Christian Dan Schreber authored a multivolume set of books entitled Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen. Focusing on mammals of the world, these books were lavishly illustrated with 755 hand-colored plates ... '
posted by plep at 6:42 AM PST - 8 comments
Ebay Will Buy Oracle? Tim O'Reilly reads the trends and tea leaves, and forsees a day when "The value will be driven up the stack to data." One implication of this is that web-service based companies will take over the world. Thus his prediction that Ebay will buy Oracle, which is less a specific prognostication as a potential example.
[via slashdot.org]posted by weston at 12:00 AM PST - 12 comments
July 4
Independence Days Worldwide. Happy Independence Week,
Bahamas! or
What else happens in July? There's a lot of independence holidays, as there was a fair bit of colonialism to get out from under during the 19th/20th centuries. And most countries in general have important victories and events to celebrate... many of us are familiar with
Bastille Day and Cinco de Mayo, for example. The dates aren't so much important as the realization of the stories and struggles that have gone on and still go on around the world, but the dates are a place to start.
posted by namespan at 11:45 PM PST - 6 comments
Meet the
People of the
Peacock Angel, the
Yezidi. Theirs is a
religion and culture centered near Mosul, Iraq, as well as Syria, the Caucasus, the via the diaspora in Germany. Seclusive and secretive, the Yezidi have often been
maligned by outsiders due to
misinterpretations of the nature of their primary Deity, Malak Taus (once a rebel angel who recreated the world and doused the fires of hell with his tears).
Gurdjieff (pt.
I, pt.
II) may have been heavily influenced by
them. Unlike other middle-eastern religions, the
Yezidi have rejected dualism and, therefore, the ideas of sin and evil. Various versions float around of the
Black Book of the Yezidi and
other works that form
their sacred literature. Wars, political pogroms and proselytizing have placed this
beautiful, complex and misunderstood tradition in jeopardy.
posted by moonbird at 4:34 PM PST - 14 comments
Scamming the scammer Somewhere along the line I think we've all wondered what would happen if we answered the Nigerian 419 scam email. Now we don't have to. Someone calling himself 'ebola monkey man' has been taking the scammer's on a email journey to the point that he will only agree to send them money if they send him a silly picture of themselves holding up a sign with their name on... [via
b3ta]
posted by feelinglistless at 3:59 PM PST - 11 comments
Watch the watchers. Government Information Awareness:
A single, comprehensive, easy-to-use repository of information on individuals, organizations, and corporations related to the government of the United States of America.posted by srboisvert at 9:27 AM PST - 5 comments
Sweatshop-free T-shirts "We are not about "made in USA". We are about American values. We believe in the American dream and want to do more for our customers and employees.
We are pro-workers rights— whether in Los Angeles or anywhere in the world. We manufacture in the United States not because we are crazy flag fanatics but because it is the most vibrant T-shirt market in the world and therefore the most efficient place to manufacture our T-shirts."
In the middle of one of the worst economic climates in decades, with (actual) unemployment near 9 percent, an American company with the courage to compete against the Global Sweatshop economy.
Is Politically-driven consumer markets the future? Or do you really need that Nike logo?
Could "Sweatshop-free IT Services" be far behind?
posted by reality at 7:44 AM PST - 40 comments
432: Cosmic Key. 'A compendium of fact, theory and speculation relating
to the number 432, and its primary divisors and
multiples - 108, 216, 864, 1296; and also the
number 9 - being the sum of digits 4+3+2; with
excursions into many other mysterious and exotic
phenomena. ' Good clean fun.
posted by plep at 5:19 AM PST - 10 comments
The Vertically Inclined Photographer: Shooting Paris, Rome, the French Riviera and the Loire Valley from a low-flying plane is
Patrick Durand's photographic obsession. It's an interesting
flat alternative to
Horst Hamann's [
click on "Gallery" and go to "New Verticals"]
tall vertical New York. There's something very exciting about looking at familiar sights from an unfamiliar point of view. [
Both sites very, perhaps too Flash.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:34 AM PST - 14 comments
July 3
If you want something done, do it yourself; tired of the browser timeout that came when he mis-spelled the domain name of one of his favorite (and most-visited) sites, this enterprising young man
took matters into his own hands. But I encourage you to take his advice and not mess with him while
looking for backdoors.
posted by jonson at 7:03 PM PST - 29 comments
In honor of the centenary of the artist's death, the Centre for Whistler Studies at the University of Glasgow is releasing an
Online Centenary Edition of the correspondence of James McNeill Whistler
(bio, images). Part I of the edition, just released, includes about 1,700 fully annotated and cross-referenced letters from 1855-1880, which can be
searched by, among other things,
subject and the
work of art discussed--including the famous "
Portrait of the Painter's Mother"
(image). By next year, the edition will include over 8,000 letters that together illuminate the life of one of America's first master artists.
posted by arco at 2:56 PM PST - 4 comments
Latex Vac-Bed "By vacuuming the air from between two layers of 14 gauge latex, the vac-bed immobilizes the person inside and produces an extremely restrictive and sensual experience."
Safe for work, but the rest of the site isn't.posted by Mwongozi at 2:05 PM PST - 33 comments
Did UFO's originate in Ancient India? According to Indian legend, the kingdom of Rama existed at the same time as the lost kingdom of
Atlantis. Both kingdoms developed airships that could fly not only between countries, but also into outerspace. The Indian ships, called
Vimanas, are described in many ancient manuscripts, and perhaps most spectacularly in the
Mahabarata, in which some believe there is a description of an
ancient nuclear war. Is it possible that such technology could have been
lost in antiquity, or kept in the posession of some "secret society"? Fascinating stuff...
posted by greengrl at 12:46 PM PST - 28 comments
Greendale. For his recent
tour, Neil Young is staying true to form and surprising the hell out of people by performing his new multimedia-rock-opera-dvd-epic-type-thing in its entirety and
yelling at the increasingly unruly audience who came to hear his classics. Although a project of this magnitude has long been the domain of wonderfully, unashamedly
pompous old bands in the 70's, I find myself rather intrieged. Am I alone in welcoming this kind of concert surprise?
posted by ghastlyfop at 12:24 PM PST - 47 comments
Verbal Attack: Dave Suthibut ignores the crappy job market and applies for positions like it's 1999. He uses his
blog to keep track of e-mail exchanges between himself and H/R personnel. (via
handcoding)
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:04 AM PST - 34 comments
The Exonerated Want to see some great theater and learn a bit about our great system of justice and capital punishment? Then
The Exonerated may be the show for you.
The other night I went to see The Exonerated, which has been playing Off Broadway since last fall and is also appearing in theaters around the country this year. Composed wholly from court records and interviews by playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, this documentary drama recounts true tales of horror from the American criminal-justice system. The actors sit downstage and read their parts as the stories of six innocent citizens condemned to death row unfold. If this sounds like a worthy endeavor, it is; if it sounds dull or didactic, it isn’t.posted by nofundy at 9:09 AM PST - 2 comments
Dinosaur says what? A spokesman for the company that manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica and other acts said that his clients "would rather not contribute to the demise of the album format."
As if the years of filler-crammed CDs (from nearly every band) hadn't killed it off already.
posted by baltimore at 5:38 AM PST - 53 comments
July 2
Music crticism in weblogs: Chat rooms and vanity sites seem so mid-’90s in internet terms, but the future of music criticism is lurking deep in the blogosphere. An article from Toronto-based free magazine,
Exclaim!posted by hoder at 10:21 PM PST - 21 comments
How to not get caught downloading from Kazaa. Download Kazaa Lite 2.1.0. Delete your old kazaa through add/remove. After installing, go to Options-More Options and check prevent other users from getting a list of all your files.
You will still be able to share your files, but people cant see an entire list of the files you are sharing! Brought to you by the same people who made Quicktime Alternative, the alternative quicktime codec that doesn't require bloatware.
posted by Keyser Soze at 8:58 PM PST - 40 comments
Roobarb For people of a certain age in Britain, the name Roobarb conjures up visions of a large green dog in wobbly animation, with Richard Briers describing his every turn. Now we have the news that
new episodes are to be made using Flash animation for the web. While that's being prepared, the entire series is being released for viewing online over the coming months, starting with '
When Roobarb Made A Spike'. Cue pub discussion about old kids programmes ... Anyone remember '
Henry's Cat' or 'Chips Comic'?
posted by feelinglistless at 4:19 PM PST - 18 comments
Why Girls are Weird. In the ongoing debate of weblogs versus online journals, one journal-writer just hit a major milestone: bestselling fiction. Pamela Ribon, also a recapper for
Television Without Pity, attracted
recent attention when she asked her readers to support the
Oakland Public Library, and they responded in record numbers. Those online fans are now responding again. Ribon released her first novel,
Why Girls Are Weird, on July 1st, and her
Amazon Sales Rank has shot up to 212 on some days, beating out other best-sellers for sales. Pretty amazing feat, considering the book was still in pre-sales and has yet to have publicity outside of her own web presence. The story, a fictional account of a woman who creates an online journal only to find fame, fortune and romance, is loosely based on Ribon's own experiences at
pamie.com. In fact, sections of the book are from her former archives. So, will history repeat itself? How many of you are planning to try and publish your archives?
posted by astruc at 1:32 PM PST - 26 comments
Bush dares Iraqis to kill U.S. soldiers "There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on," Bush said. "We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
Is it wise to goad Iraqis into killing Americans?
Is it an impeachable offense?
posted by Holden at 11:35 AM PST - 135 comments
Berlusconi calls Godwin. Berlusconi lost his cool in response to criticism of an alleged conflict of interest between his political office and his extensive Italian media interests by German Socialist MEP Martin Schulz.
"Mr. Schulz, I know there is in Italy a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of leader. You'd be perfect,'' Berlusconi exclaimed to jeers in the chamber.posted by four panels at 8:19 AM PST - 28 comments
Piven World - a fun flash portfolio of celebrity caricatures and portraits. I like his witty technique of incorporating "defining" objects.
(via oink!)posted by madamjujujive at 7:46 AM PST - 5 comments
Welcome back, Jorn -- The host of RobotWisdom and coiner of "weblog" has been on an unexplained break since mid-May, leaving some to wonder if it was for good. But he's back. Now if he would drop the Iraq-protest-black background so we could actually read it . . .
posted by beagle at 6:28 AM PST - 42 comments
The United States is
cutting off military aid to 35 countries, including Colombia and six east European nations, because they back the
International Criminal Court and have not exempted Americans from possible prosecution.
"...the Bush administration is afraid the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, backed by most European countries, might hear politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. military and civilian leaders."
posted by jonvaughan at 4:17 AM PST - 56 comments
Walking Things is an environment that generates small, walking computational organisms. "Each walking thing is built up from totally random conditions. Appearance, behavior, and walking characteristics are all assigned from a range enabling effective, functional mobility. Click on a walking thing to permutate its characteristics".
Just one of the very many wonderful (
open source) creations at
levitated.net (more bugs with bling
here). Kick off your shoes, fill your coffee cup or wine glass, and dip in.
posted by taz at 3:47 AM PST - 12 comments
It's Not Easy Being B: Like Avis, they try harder. So let's hear it for for the only slightly famous; the not famous enough; the famous for infamous reasons; the heard-of but couldn't-give-a-shit-for; the over-eager and under-achieving
B-Listers. Poor bastards. Only A-Listers and C-Listers are worse, no?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:13 AM PST - 16 comments
The video MTV doesn't want you to see [.asx. file]: Apparently the new Foo Fighters video is just too risque for the
cutting edge entertainment channel (~pffft). This brief
NYpost article has more. Either way, it's hilarious. It co-stars Jack Black, which is good enough for me. "Let's put the hammer down!"
posted by Witty at 12:59 AM PST - 33 comments
Rocklist. Lists may not be everyone's thing, but I love this stuff. Not the prettiest of sites but Julian White has collected End of Year music polls from many different publications, ranging from the now-defunct Select to the Village Voice to The Face.
The NME Readers Poll (
Pop Poll) is one my favourites. Bjork was 1993's most Desirable Human Being which I find a little strange - much happier with 1990's choice. Aahh Betty Boo...
posted by jontyjago at 12:39 AM PST - 7 comments
Flaoting Wreckage: Jettisoned Cargo has ceased to be. Often it was the only place you would need to visit, so good were the links it provided.
Hats off to Kirk Smith, I can barely comprehend that it was a solo operation.
I feel quite bereft. There is still plenty to look at though, he just isn't updating.
posted by Fat Buddha at 12:29 AM PST - 3 comments
July 1
Physicists have discovered a new class of subatomic particle that will provide unexpected insights into the fundamental building blocks of matter. The new particle is the so-called pentaquark - five quarks in formation.
posted by stbalbach at 8:10 PM PST - 12 comments
Bitpass.com: A micropayment service for content providers. Many many worthy sites have been lost because they could not afford to continue,
even though users would have been happy to pay for their service. Unfortunately, a system has not been in place to service the small transactions (paying fifty cents for a ten cent transaction is the opposite of making money). Enter Bitpass. Facilitating transactions as little as one cent, maybe online artists, cartoonists, pundits, humorists, etc, can start making money.
posted by o2b at 7:56 PM PST - 23 comments
