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August 31
Iron Women, Foxy Ladies-
A collection of propaganda posters depicting the ideal, but contradictory, roles for Chinese women in the nation. Even if you're not interested in the politics, the evolution of style and form in the artwork is fascinating to examine.
posted by headspace at 9:19 AM PST - 6 comments
A
Blog entry about a guy who melted a kilo of Iridium in New Jersey with
Oliver Sacks. There are also pictures and movies of the 200,000 eV electron beam furnace in action.
Theo Gray, co-founder of
Wolfram Research was there too (the pictures are all his). For any laymen who may have wondered in,
Iridium is not a phone company, it is a precious metal that shares an element group with the likes of Platinum and Rhodium.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:27 AM PST - 22 comments
BetaVote.com
If we had our say - things would be very different. This is obviously not very reliable data but thought provoking non the less. I am pretty sure the 90 to 10 in Kerrys favor is a just about an accurate measure of Denmarks opinion.
posted by FidelDonson at 3:04 AM PST - 20 comments
Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks
and Consciously Failed To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New Yorks Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals
On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5.
This is probably
bad news for Rudy Giuliani.
posted by jackspace at 2:27 AM PST - 112 comments
August 30
My name is Scott Camile. I was a Sgt. attached to Charley 1/1. I was a forward observer in Vietnam. I went in right after high school and I'm a student now. My testimony involves burning of villages with civilians in them, the cutting off of ears, cutting off of heads, torturing of prisoners, calling in of artillery on villages for games, corpsmen killing wounded prisoners, napalm dropped on villages, women being raped, women and children being massacred, CS gas used on people, animals slaughtered, Chieu Hoi passes rejected and the people holding them shot, bodies shoved out of helicopters, tear-gassing people for fun and running civilian vehicles off the road. Here is the Swift Boat related back story from
The Sixties Project: Winter Soldier Investigation -
Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, on January 31, 1971, February 1 and 2, 1971. Sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This testimony was published in the Congressional Record, "Extensions and Remarks," April 7, 1971: 2825-2900, 2903-2936. (Much More Inside)
posted by y2karl at 8:42 PM PST - 17 comments
Perhaps you had a one-hit wonder in the '80s, with more people remembering your mohawk and nose chain than your actual music. Fear not, as you can now have
your own ponderosa where you don't have to fall in love. Or perhaps you were a backing musician for Prince, known more for your penchant for playing in surgical scrubs. You too can find
solace online. The Internet: helping musicians everywhere.
posted by solistrato at 2:30 PM PST - 8 comments
Tensegrity.
It didn't originate with Bucky, as often credited - See FAQ. Tetrahedral spaceframe weaving, page 18. And Three strut tensegrity with five magnet spherical gear set, page 21. For your mind-melting Monday pleasure.
posted by yoga at 8:07 AM PST - 3 comments
Breathing
could cost you your health. If the *best* quality air in a UK city is equivalent to smoking 10 fags a (24 hour) day, are we all going to end up like the people in the anti-smoking
adverts?
posted by asok at 3:02 AM PST - 19 comments
August 29
Personal ads in the Arab world
"Resident of the UAE, 28 years old, high-school diploma, looking for a veiled wife, a citizen of UAE or any other Gulf county. Will be allowed to continue working after marriage."
~ "Syrian, 36 years old, holds a government position, is interested to meet a tall, fair-skinned and green-eyed virgin, Lebanese or Moroccan."
posted by onlyconnect at 3:41 PM PST - 21 comments
Welcome to the Lizard Motel.
Barbara Feinberg's new
book is both a memoir of certain childhood memories and an indictment against the dismal state of books for young adults. Feinberg became concerned when her two children, once avid readers, became agitated at the prospect of reading the current crop of assigned literature for the upcoming school year. Curious, she started reading these books for herself, and discovered that, by and large, they were all examples of "problem literature," stories intended to educate children about the cold, harsh realities of life. Her
conclusion:
"We seem to have lost sight of what children can actually process, and more important, of their own innate capacities. Instead of our children being free to roam and dream and invent on their own timetable, and to read about children doing such things, we increasingly ask our children to be sober and hard-working at every turn, to take detailed notes on their required texts with Talmudic attention, to endure computer-generated tests." Yet such books are are ever so popular with educators. Why? And what books to MeFites recall from their formative years? What makes for good reading for children?
posted by Ayn Marx at 11:19 AM PST - 54 comments
Opening Hooks.
You're in the bookstore, browsing the shelves for... something. You don't know what, exactly, you're looking for but you'll recognize it when you see it. Picking a book at random you open to the first page and begin to read. Two hours later you're home in bed with a mug of sweet tea, still reading.
posted by thebabelfish at 9:06 AM PST - 65 comments
Tragic Beauties:
antique wax mannequins. "
Unlike the frozen, lifeless mannequins of today, these European busts were posed for, many at the turn of the century, by flesh and blood women". (I'm not sure how
this one found it's way in there.)
posted by taz at 3:10 AM PST - 22 comments
August 28
The insolent art of Michel Houellebecq.
"There are certain bookssardonic and acutely pessimisticthat systematically affront all our current habits of living, and treat our presumptions of mind as the delusions of the cretinous." Julian Barnes' 2003 review in The New Yorker.
posted by semmi at 9:59 PM PST - 4 comments
All Songs Considered
offers a sample of new tunes for the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election. "In this election year it seemed a good idea to put out a call for music about politics. What we wanted was satire; what we got were earnest and passionate songs that mostly bashed the incumbent president." There's also "a sample of the songs used to pump up crowds at political rallies" by both sides.
posted by mmahaffie at 7:06 PM PST - 9 comments
I *heart* Bea Arthur:
Bea Arthur sparked a security scare at Logan Airport in Boston this week when she tried to board a Cape Air flight with a pocketknife in her handbag.
The "Golden Girls" star, now 81, was flagged by a Transportation Security Administration agent, who discovered the knife - a strict no-no following 9/11.
"She started yelling that it wasn't hers and said 'The terrorists put it there,' " a fellow passenger said. "She kept yelling about the 'terrorists, the terrorists, the terrorists.' "
After the blade was confiscated, Arthur took a keyring from her bag and told the agent it belonged to the "terrorists," before throwing it at them.
As she boarded the plane, she told the TSA employees, "We're all doomed."
Kuro5hin
offers a novel proposition: Bea for President!
posted by Vidiot at 12:12 PM PST - 58 comments
The Essential Foghat Timeline.
Is it any wonder that Foghat is so hard to
keep track of? (Found
here).
There were two versions of Foghat touring from 1990 to 1993. Roger Earl was touring with his version of Foghat (originally called the Kneetremblers) from 1986 to 1993 and Dave toured with Lonesome Dave's Foghat from 1990 to 1993...
posted by inksyndicate at 11:42 AM PST - 3 comments
Sometimes beautiful games just get screwed in the sequels... But thanks to obsessive fans, it doesn't have to be that way anymore!
D1X and
D2X are OpenGL/SDL updates of (in my opinion) the best first-person-shooters of all time.
Xenocide, still in progress, and
UFO2000 are overhauls of the classic
X-COM, UFO Defense.
And finally,
Anacreon Reconstructed is a graphical update of Anacreon: Reconstruction, an amazing old ASCII game about inter-galactic empire building.
Know any other good Indie overhauls of classic games?
posted by kaibutsu at 11:33 AM PST - 19 comments
August 27
FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case
- Interesting how bad news about the Bush Administration seems to always come out on Fridays - "the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to -- in FBI terminology -- "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon."
posted by jackspace at 5:14 PM PST - 37 comments
Former Texas Lt. Gov. says he helped Bush dodge 'Nam.
"I got...I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard when I was the Lt. Governor of Texas, and I'm not necessarily proud of that. But, But I did it, and I got a lot of other people into the National Guard because I thought that's what people should do when you're in office and you helped a lot of rich people. And I walked to the Vietnam Memorial wall the other day and I looked at the names of the people that died in Vietnam, and I became more ashamed of myself than I've ever been because it's the worst thing I did was help a lot of wealthy supporters, and a lot of people who had family names of importance get into the National Guard. And I'm very sorry about that, and I'm ashamed. And I apologize to you, the voters of Texas."
Video available here.
posted by insomnia_lj at 5:09 PM PST - 43 comments
Prosecutor who attacked Kerry admits lying to boss
Liar, liar, pants on fire--"Clackamas County prosecutor Alfred French, who called Sen. John Kerry a liar in a political commercial, acknowledged Thursday that he lied to his boss when confronted about an extramarital affair with a colleague. ...
posted by Postroad at 11:12 AM PST - 35 comments
A letter from the wife of one of the commanders of the three Swift boats, killed in action later, reports on her husbands's views. (via NYT)
posted by semmi at 11:07 AM PST - 15 comments
"I was lost, proper lost, but thanks to Cris Formage and the fine folks at
The Epsilon Program, I've found a better way to live. No more cocaine, no more heroin, no more ceaselss, boundless self pleasure. henceforth, ladies and mental patients, I am following the words of the tract!" -
Maccer
Viral marketing nicely done in advance of the new Rockstar games production of
Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (some slightly NSFW words and images)
posted by triv at 8:52 AM PST - 5 comments
How Torture Came Down From the Top The latest official reports on the prisoner abuse scandal contain a classic Washington contradiction. Their headlines proclaim that no official policy mandated or allowed the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that no officials above the rank of colonel deserve prosecution or formal punishment. But buried in their hundreds of pages of detail, for anyone who cares to read them, is a clear and meticulous account of how decisions made by President Bush, his top political aides and senior military commanders led directly to those searing images of naked prisoners being menaced with guard dogs. (More Inside)
posted by y2karl at 8:03 AM PST - 24 comments
Crush
- an article by Brendan Eliason (assistant winemaker at the
David Coffaro Winery) that explains in plain English what it takes (mechanically speaking) to put out a good bottle of red wine.
posted by Irontom at 7:59 AM PST - 3 comments
After the FBI
raid five pople's homes (and the offices of one ISP) seizing their equipment for operating a "network" sharing the equivalent of
60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs (according to Mr Ashcroft) as part of Operation Digital Gridlock's attempts to crack the "organisation" known as
The Underground Network (and perhaps to rail against the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' recent decision backing up the legality of P2P networks) one of those raided - "The Answer Man" -
contacts P2Pnet, to give the inside scoop and talk about the distortions created by the media reporting of the case.
[Thanks Squeak]
posted by Blue Stone at 6:50 AM PST - 20 comments
Well it's friday, and like the rest of you, I could use a good laugh.
If you're going to sell your house, nowadays, it's important to take pictures of the exterior, the interior to share with prospective buyers, what a great deal they're getting.
Real Estate pictures.
Just, make sure you tie up the dogs first?
(third picture down) [via
fark]
posted by filmgeek at 5:32 AM PST - 30 comments
I've been having a good time with "You and We",
a project from
Born Magazine that invites you to "contribute your words and images to this continuously evolving, collective experiment." Users upload art, text and photos to be collaged together in a fast-moving montage that actually turns out to be pretty nice. So far there have been over a thousand contributors. [Flash, Sound (toggles), and possibly NSFW.]
posted by taz at 5:22 AM PST - 1 comments
August 26
Pour Some Sugar On Me, as reinvisioned by Townsend, a boy band.
Some would say it's the worst thing they'd ever seen, but I'd hazard a guess that it may actually be the worst thing ever filmed. The song is enhanced with a rap section, and the video is enhanced with the addition of the jackass from Smashmouth, for some bizarre reason. NSFNSAVI (not safe for the non sight & vision impaired)
posted by jonson at 7:17 PM PST - 65 comments
Winnipeg Police Service's Operation Snapshot:
Winnipeg is the first Canadian city to post pictures of johns picking up hookers on their website: "The goal is to discourage customers of street prostitution in these areas. It is NOT to publicly identify individuals. These are random video clips of vehicular and pedestrian traffic in the areas known to be frequented by sex trade workers and their customers. The Winnipeg Police Service acknowledges that not everyone depicted in these clips are sex trade workers or their customers. As a result the faces of all persons and the license plates of all vehicles have been blurred out."
However, at least
one activist is posting licence plate numbers of johns: "Rev. Lehotsky, of the New Life Ministries, said some people complain he is violating their privacy, but he doesn't have much sympathy. "People have privacy concerns," he said. "But I say, if you're pulling your weenie out in a laneway, you've forfeited your right to privacy." ('Police 'john-cam' riles critics', Winnipeg Free Press, August 26, 2004)
posted by Esco757 at 10:38 AM PST - 50 comments
Nice Flash presentation of images
on his site from photographer Hans Neleman's books "Night Chicas", "Moko-Maori Tattoo", "Body Transformed", and "Silence". NSFW, fer shure. (Note that you can switch
from slideshow mode to manual with controls on the right.)
More Neleman at Kodak's
Legends Online (work-safe), and more from "Night Chicas"
here (almost work-safe, but if the policy is strict - don't go.)
posted by taz at 5:15 AM PST - 6 comments
August 25
State Blogs
As a companion to the
Blogs around the world project, Oscar Jr. posted the Blogs around the US project. His point/focus being blogs that focus on the US states in which they reside. All of this as a lead up to
Big Sky Blog. A blog by Montanans, about Montana,
a project of our own davidmsc.
(Whoops, USAfilter. Miguel's gonna be pissed ...)
posted by Wulfgar! at 9:45 PM PST - 10 comments
Zach Braff's Garden State Blog.
Yeah, semi-PepsiBlue, but Braff talks about more than the movie, and the star of a movie choosing to write a weblog for a few months is a bit more of a commitment than the usual handful of talk shows.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:12 PM PST - 28 comments
Some media are reporting the prediction by computer experts at Moscow's
Kaspersky Labs that parts of the Internet will be shut-down tomorrow by cyber-terrorists. The
Internet Storm Center's comment: "The ISC would like to go out on a limb and predict that the Internet will not vaporize into a cloud of nothingness this Thursday, but if it does, it's been our pleasure to help stave off its inevitable annihilation this long."
posted by tranquileye at 1:21 PM PST - 30 comments
Grayson, the movie that doesn't exist.
John Fiorella and Gabe Sabloff have managed to create the most exciting film trailer I've seen in years. The only catch? It's for a movie that might never be made.
Apparently, the two worked weekends for 18 months, creating storyboards, acting, directing, shooting, and editing a gorgeous short film designed to pique interest in a movie about what happens after Batman dies and Wonder Woman and Superman go to work for the enemy. It's a professional-looking and well-edited piece of work (that anamorphic lens pays incredible dividends for them) that somehow manages to come in at a budget of just under $18,000. Imagine what they could do with 100 times that.
[Go to 'MOVIES' and then 'Grayson'. The full trailer is long but worth every second of download time, as is the 'Grayson- Pieces of the Puzzle' short. Also, the film files are mirrored
here]
posted by yellowcandy at 12:17 PM PST - 60 comments
Sure... the
liger has been getting all the cross-species press lately (with the
jackalope getting a close second), but what about the growing menace of the
cabbit?
posted by ph00dz at 9:11 AM PST - 10 comments
Peace breaks out. War surrenders!
Grand Ayatollah Sistani has returned to Iraq, and is leading a nationwide march to the holy city of Najaf to peacefully resolve the conflict. Moqtada al-Sadr's people have called upon their supporters to join the march too. Will Sadr and his Mahdi Army walk away free men? Double secret probation, maybe?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:13 AM PST - 4 comments
August 24
Are the Republicans starting to hedge their bets?
WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 -In a break with months of Republican efforts to outlaw gay marriage, Vice President Dick Cheney offered a defense of the rights of gay Americans on Tuesday, declaring that "freedom means freedom for everyone" to enter "into any kind of relationship they want to."
posted by lilboo at 8:25 PM PST - 66 comments
A recent non-scientific poll conducted by ABC News in the US found that 35 percent of voters feel that
hot-saucing is an acceptable form of discipline. Blair Whelchel (yes,
that Blair Whelchel) is a fan. Whatever happened to soap?
posted by emelenjr at 3:47 PM PST - 53 comments
Tivo Time!
The major news networks just got snubbed it seems. Whatever your position this is guaranteed to be entertaining. Even my 'newsfilter' link has a few chuckles! Don't miss the fun tonight!
posted by nofundy at 12:35 PM PST - 77 comments
Gridcosm
is a collaborative, recursive art project.
From Gridcosm:
how it works: each level of gridcosm is made up of nine(9) square images arranged into a 3x3 grid. the middle image is a size version of the previous level. artists add images around that center image until a new 3x3 grid is completed, then that level itself shrinks and becomes the seed for the next level. this process creates an ever expanding tunnel of images, the newest level a direct result of the previous level which is a result of the previous level... and so on.
Choose a
random level, the
top level currently in creation, or the very beginning
bottom level out of nearly 2000 levels so far. Neat stuff. I love recursive and algorithmic art.
posted by loquacious at 12:15 PM PST - 9 comments
Banner Ad Museum
Can't get enough of those 'hit the bullseye' banner ads? Don't feel you've seen enough ads today? Head on over to the internet banner ad collection!
posted by graventy at 8:42 AM PST - 9 comments
Tricks of the Trade
. In an article in
The Morning News,
Defective Yeti asked readers to reveal the secrets of their profession:
Attorney:
Do whatever it takes to fit your contracts onto a single page. Even sophisticated negotiators can be charmed by the lack of a staple.
Auto Mechanic:
Always put copper grease on the battery terminals after servicing a car. The performance benefit is negligible, but when customers look under the hood they will immediately see that somethings changed and thus feel happy to pay you.
Handyman:
If you have to change a light bulb where the glass is broken, you can press a potato into the metal base to unscrew the remains of the bulb from the fixture.
Got any secrets to success or even just survival in your racket?
posted by planetkyoto at 8:21 AM PST - 130 comments
August 23
Change This
-
We're betting that a significant portion of the population wants to hear thoughtful, rational, constructive arguments about important issues. We're certain that the best of these manifestos will spread, hand to hand, person to person, until these manifestos have reached a critical mass and actually changed the tone and substance of our debate.
posted by dobbs at 11:34 PM PST - 11 comments
"The camp is in northern California, almost at the Oregon border.
It has an almost mockingly poetic name, Camp Tule Lake. It as there in a barbed wire camp built on a wind-swept dry lake bed that I spent two and a half years of my boyhood after a year and a half in another internment camp in Arkansas...These pilgrimages back to a little remembered time in our history help enlarge my appreciation of the preciousness of our American liberty and my awareness of its fragility. They also deepen my understanding of the painful human price paid by such failures of our democracy." Star Trek's George Takei (the unflappable
Mr. Sulu) revisits the internment camp of his
racially-profiled boyhood.
posted by inksyndicate at 10:50 PM PST - 11 comments
The Curious Case of George's Medals.
Does
this picture contain a medal that GW Bush did not earn? All day at the Democratic Underground they've been congratulation themselves for finding the smoking gun. Is it really that easy? Acutally looking at a picture? Must the president *now* release his records to prove that he wasn't wearing a medal that isn't documented in any of his records?
posted by tsarfan at 10:42 PM PST - 76 comments
An Ugly Buildings Hit List
seems to be developing in Scotland. The president of the Royal Institute of British Architects is calling for the demolition of the ugliest buildings in Scotland. The Architects have their list, and the press is asking the public to
chime in as well (with pictures).
posted by mmahaffie at 8:18 PM PST - 10 comments
Outsource Your Own Job!
-- "Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing." "
via BBspot.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:00 PM PST - 23 comments
' "Oh, you're going to the MLA?
What a riot. They're a bunch of sitting ducks." I hadn't been planning to shoot at them, I said'.
Lewis Kraus attends the 119th Annual MLA Conference, and asks what it means to be an English professor after the 'crisis of the humanities'.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:41 PM PST - 10 comments
The Just Cause Law Collective
is an excellent resource for outlining what your rights as citizens or non-citizens are within the U.S. in text and illustrations that are understandable by the layperson. It also includes advice on how to survive police encounters and a special section for activists.
via
BoingBoing
posted by substrate at 9:57 AM PST - 22 comments
There are now more home internet users
using broadband than dialup in the U.S. - Does this mean that web designers will continue down the same path as some programmers and create bloated code? Are the days of trying to be efficient and keeping pages less than 70k a thing of the past?
posted by tomplus2 at 5:08 AM PST - 29 comments
How to Build Your Own Scientific Laboratory For Free: Parts
One,
Two, and
Three.
(Though I suppose if you have a bit of cash and happen to live in Boston, you can always check out the MIT Swap Meet to pick up those endless piles of oscillators or half-functioning VAX computers you almost certainly need...)
posted by kaibutsu at 3:03 AM PST - 2 comments
August 22
Fear Itself:
an american journalist wants to put the threat of terrorism into perspective, and elects to ride on a bus line in Jerusalem, the train line through Madrid, and a British Airways flight said to be a bombing target. He comes away with it unscathed but the stories he tells about the history of terror, especially in Israel, is chilling and daily life in some parts of Jerusalem sounds like scenes lifted straight out of
Brazil. [via
the big K]
posted by mathowie at 4:22 PM PST - 27 comments
"Libertarianism is the hottest philosophy on the internet! Many famous people are libertarians, including John Stossel and Dave Barry. It seems like everyone is becoming a libertarian, and now you can, too! The answer lies in several simple steps, which anyone can learn.
Read on, and you, too, can become a libertarian!"
posted by reklaw at 3:53 PM PST - 60 comments
Let there be light
- Canadian researchers have devised a new polymer material by manipulating buckyballs (carbon atoms that look like soccer balls). The technology could be used to create optical (light based) switches to replace electronic network switches. It could lead to an Internet based entirely on light.
posted by paladin at 11:36 AM PST - 4 comments
The Peace Parks Foundation
is an international, neutral body that coordinates the creation of "
Peace Parks" -- a more foundation friendly name for "Transfrontier Conservation Areas." Peace Parks are defined as "relatively large protected areas, which straddle international frontiers between two or more countries and cover large-scale natural systems encompassing one or more protected areas."
Executive Vice-Chairman Willem van Riet of South Africa, in San Diego, California, this month to receive the
Presidential Award from GIS software giant ESRI, is that Peace Parks remove the fences of international frontiers -- the "scars of history" -- to let elephants resume their natural migratory paths. An early success of this idea was
profiled in full and stunning color by the National Geographic in 2001.
posted by mmahaffie at 9:50 AM PST - 6 comments
Highlights bigotry or encourages it?
Ali G comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's latest Channel 4 show, 'Borat's Television Programme', is being investigated by TV watchdogs following complaints about a sketch featuring an anti-Semitic song titled 'Throw the Jew down the well'.
A Channel 4 spokesman said: "Sacha Baron Cohen's humour is ironic and actually highlights bigotry and ignorance." The irony being that Baron is himself a Jew.
posted by Jase_B at 3:13 AM PST - 24 comments
August 21
