skip to main content
August 2004 Archives
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 York’s 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 books—sardonic and acutely pessimistic—that 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 something’s 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
All Hail the New Jazz!
Getting slightly bored with pop and looking to expand your horizons? Can't believe the musty
Burns/Marsalis version is all there is to jazz? Try the "avant jazz" tradition whose central figures are the amazing bassist
William Parker (so big and strong I've seen him pick up a bass and play it like a fiddle),
David S. Ware (to my mind the greatest tenorman since
Trane—see him live and you'll never forget it), and pianist
Matthew Shipp (a frequent collaborator of both). Want a convenient guide to their recordings, with brief descriptions and (tacky but useful) letter grades?
Here ya go—Tom Hull has great taste, and if he gives a record an A you can be sure it's worth hearing (and he gives you fair warning about somebody like Peter Brötzmann, who "sounds more like late Coltrane run through a blender by Einstürzende Neubauten: great heaps of noise unleavened by conventional musical signposts").
posted by languagehat at 4:59 PM PST - 16 comments
Sapir/Whorf raises its head again in study of the Piraha tribe.
I can't stop thinking about this
article which appeared in the Globe and Mail Friday.
A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting.
Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time ... the Piraha are the only people known to have no distinct words for colours.
They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations. They don't sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or day.
Even when food is available, they frequently starve themselves and their children, Prof. Everett reports.
They communicate almost as much by singing, whistling and humming as by normal speech.
They frequently change their names, because they believe spirits regularly take them over and intrinsically change who they are.
They have no creation myths, tell no fictional stories and have no art.
Can any of our anthropologists or linguists comment? I had thought that narrative was the common link in all human cultures....
posted by jokeefe at 3:08 PM PST - 61 comments
Non-NewsFilter
From the India Times: "The family cannot be named because we have no written proof. Nor can we give details of the exact nature of the trouble, because that would reveal more than would be prudent, at least for the moment." Or maybe the India Onion.
Just doing my part in keeping the 'Filter from being too USA-centric, via a Monkee who apparently knows who the story's talking about.
posted by wendell at 2:31 PM PST - 12 comments
Tele-Snaps:
"Operating for 21 years, until 1968, this gifted amateur took considerably in excess of 250,000 still photographs of television programmes as they were being broadcast, perhaps even as many as half a million. He called them Tele-Snaps, the name a literal definition: by the direct method of fixing a 35mm camera to a tripod a short distance from his screen and shooting rolls of film, John Cura photographed entire programmes from the opening titles to the closing credits, creating usually up to 80 stills, sometimes more, as a unique record of a broadcast."
One of the results of his hard work can be found here.
posted by feelinglistless at 6:31 AM PST - 12 comments
August 20
Artist vs. Porn Star -- Law firm wins!
Jeff Koons is liable for $4 million in attorneys fees to his NY divorce lawyers, even though he ultimately lost custody of his son to his porn-star-turned-politician wife. Court says hey, that's fair, because he's not even complaining that the firm "charged an unreasonable hourly fee to have associates, for instance, watch pornographic videos, a necessary part of preparing to litigate the underlying custody dispute."
posted by onlyconnect at 8:45 PM PST - 16 comments
A Dutchman at Google.
His blog has some gems: a
glimpse into life as an Google engineer, and a brief
history of searching (going a short way into the future). Some of his projects are neat: Google
talks, Google tells you the best time to
visit any place. And he has a little Google joke: type "bush's foreign friends" into
Google and click
[I'm Feeling Lucky]
posted by iffley at 5:25 PM PST - 8 comments
Cybermohalla
--really interesting group project in and around Delhi, bringing young people together via "Compughars" (fully-equipped media centers in their neighborhoods). Located in LNJP Basti (an illegal neighborhood) in Delhi, and Ambedkar Nagar (a resettlement colony) at Dakshinpuri in south Delhi, and cyberspace, and created by ANKUR - Society for Alternatives in Education (an NGO) with
Sarai, the New Media & Urban Culture Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, they've created everything from texts, collages, posters, animations, and publications, to videos, and large-scale installations. Don't miss
by lanes --collected excerpts of some of the kids' personal and public diaries (pdfs), and
the
scratchbook (55-page pdf) and the
animated gifs.
posted by amberglow at 4:07 PM PST - 3 comments
The Toronto Healthy Houses
is "off the water grid." Potable water via rainwater collection; all other water use via black- and grey-water recycling. The
home-builder will be living in one of the homes and will sell the other. These houses also provide their own electrical energy.
Times, they are a-changin': the Healthy Homes are being developed using research funding from the
Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation, which is becoming very active in finding better ways to build affordable, efficient, liveable housing.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:14 PM PST - 9 comments
Federally Funded Science Fiction.
The CIA announced today that next month's final report on Iraq's weapons program under Saddam Hussein will mostly encompass an analysis of what they believe Iraq would be like through 2008 had Bush not invaded the country. Because when you want accurate, detailed analysis of the future of Iraq's weapons, you turn to the group that
got it completely wrong during the present.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 1:55 PM PST - 27 comments
"Two lifelong friends, always together, everything in common. Except one, political stance. Neither of them could find a decent shirt to wear out depicting their stance on the issues of the day. They searched everywhere. Finally they were fed up. If they couldn’t find it they would make it themselves... So it’s come down to this:
liberalhipster.com v.
conservativehipster.com."
posted by reklaw at 1:44 PM PST - 30 comments
Catch and Release
As I find this nearly impossible I have great confidence that the mefites will quickly master this.
It beats working. Fun Flash Friday
posted by geekyguy at 10:23 AM PST - 18 comments
Swim, Katie, Swim!
From the
Hike With Your Dog site comes the story of Katie, a water-loving dog who is on a quest (well, maybe it is her owner's quest) to swim in "all the great waters of North America." The quest started on her way home from the kennel in September 1998, and continues to this day. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Yampa River, this animal has done some serious doggy paddling.
[Caution: lots of pictures may cause slow loading]
posted by terrapin at 9:51 AM PST - 6 comments
The USA is sending the refugees from
Monserrat back home. Why? Because the threat from their volcano is no longer regarded as "temporary", but "permanent".
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:09 AM PST - 24 comments
Introducing: Metal Rubber.
"Twist it, stretch it double, fry it to 200°C, douse it with jet fuel—the stuff survives. After the torment, it snaps like rubber back to its original shape, all the while conducting electricity like solid metal." Sounds
familiar, no?
Here's the son of the Roswell air field's intel officer, describing the debris he says he saw in 1947: "It was possible to flex this stuff back and forth, even to wrinkle it, but you could not put a crease in it that would stay, nor could you dent it at all. I would almost have to describe it as a metal with plastic properties."
The UFO freaks are already
all over the "back engineering" of Roswell crash debris.
Meanwhile,
there's something unusual in the sky over Minnesota right now.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:14 AM PST - 49 comments
August 19
Follow the Rhinos
Weblog tracking two white Rhinos as they travel next month to the Phoenix Zoo. Nice looking site (via
CSS Vault). In related news, poachers have killed about half of the world's population of wild white rhinos in the last year (
more here).
posted by oissubke at 8:07 PM PST - 2 comments
Iran systematically filters political websites:
In contrast with what the
Iranaian President had said in the UN summit on Information Technology last year, the
OpenNet Initiative, in its latest bulletin, concludes that "Iran is indeed engaged in extensive Internet content filtering beyond just pornography, including many political, religious, social, and blogging websites.
"Most of these censored websites are Iran-specific; very little non-pornographic, "global" content is filtered from Iranian users. "
posted by hoder at 7:48 PM PST - 8 comments
George W. Bush's latest
TV ads juxtapose Iraq's and Afghanistan's flags with footage of Olympic sport, proclaiming, "At this Olympics, there will be two more free nations — and two fewer terrorist regimes." At a campaign stop, Bush
said, "just the image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics. It's fantastic, isn't it? What a fantastic thought." The
possibly medal-bound Iraqi soccer team, however,
objects to any such association. While Bush goes on to say, "Here's a country now, battling for a country that is now free. It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted,"
Ahmed Manajid, midfield goes so far as to say, "if he were not playing soccer he would 'for sure' be fighting as part of the resistance."
posted by rafter at 11:39 AM PST - 65 comments
Worst. NewsFilter. Ever.
"No details are available", but at last count,
Google News had over 250 sources for the "Paris Hilton's Missing Dog" non-news story. I'm a dog lover myself, and was once broken-hearted by the loss of a chihuahua, but
too few alleged journalists are treating this 'news' with even a small dose of the disrespect it genuinely deserves. Meanwhile one TV show is crowing about getting "the scoop" (but apparently
not on their own website, which can't even spell
Rumor). But
The Daily News and
USA Today connected the story to Tinkerbell's
upcoming book, ghost-written by MeFi's beleved
Dong "Don't Call Me 'D'" Resin, and USAToady gave the book a
sidebar story. Which raises the big question: with the book's release about two weeks away, could our own Delightful Dong have been the dognapper? I've seen worse
publicity stunts for a book.
In other entertainment news, remember the
suitcase full of priceless Beatles memorabilia? Well, a Beatlemania expert says
It's Fake. You just can't trust anybody these days.
posted by wendell at 10:45 AM PST - 18 comments
FreedomOfChoice's
Apple petition was shut down yesterday by Real Networks after a single day. Why? Seems that allowing comment backfired. Instead of lambasting Apple, everyone used the forum to vent their ire at Real. Only so much freedom at a time, thank you very much.
posted by rtimmel at 10:20 AM PST - 16 comments
It's our language, not yours.
So, you were born in an English-speaking country founded by the English, speak English, have a degree in English, write and publish in English, have lived in England for years, and would like to become an English citizen? Sorry, you failed our English test to determine whether you have workable English, so you can't be English.
posted by rory at 10:19 AM PST - 38 comments
The World's Worst Website?
Well, yes, it
is really bad, but is it the worst? More importantly, isn't there a better way to educate budding web designers? How about sites that encourage, with examples of what to do, rather than the opposite? [via
The Red Ferret Journal] [SFW, annoying MIDI]
posted by tommasz at 8:24 AM PST - 14 comments
Trendwatching.
"Vast groups of immigrants now
travel back and forth between their old and new homelands", "the fast growing
class of products and services that cater to consumers' need for simplicity",
"no-frills chic", "light
versions of countries or societies, stripped of annoying 'features' like crime, bad weather and excessive taxes", "the
obsession of ordinary citizens wanting to leave ‘something’ behind in print, audio or imagery",
online access everywhere, the
C Generation (where C means 'Content' - and that's not a reference to how they feel).
posted by iffley at 5:30 AM PST - 9 comments
August 18
Lord Whimsy--Mammal of Paradise
--Essays, Charts, Trifles, and News.
A COMPENDIUM of DEEDS and THOUGHTS never before seen in this, our Benighted Age; the BRILLIANCE of which cannot last long in our WORLD of MUD and TEARS.
posted by amberglow at 9:15 PM PST - 7 comments
Blowing Up Gotti.
A weekly series from
The Smoking Gun featuring prison videotapes of John Gotti behind plexiglass talking to his kids and grandkids. Check out
Episode One: Grandpa Blows a Gasket (Quicktime required). Makes you think twice about your baseball career. (Via
Gawker).
posted by adrober at 3:34 PM PST - 19 comments
California bill to ease "move aways" by custodial parents pulled.
Until a recent CA Supreme Court decision, it was easy for custodial parents to move themselves and their children far from their ex-spouse. The Court reversed the old rule and held that the move could be blocked if the non-custodial parent could show that it would interfere with his/her relationship with the kids. Legislation to reimpose the old permissive standard passed through the State Senate, but has now been pulled off the legislative calendar after an outcry by father's rights groups.
posted by MattD at 1:03 PM PST - 17 comments
Flickr's
been around as a photo posting/gallery/sharing kind of place for almost a year now, but today they launched something pretty impressive (ignore the dumb name):
Organizr. Check out the demo movies or try it out yourself if you already have photos there. This is the first time I've used a
web application that rivaled my
desktop application of choice (iPhoto, for photos). Pretty impressive what you can do in Flash these days, besides singing kittens and work-dodging games.
posted by mathowie at 12:13 PM PST - 18 comments
It's out there someplace.
The NOAA and the Office of Naval Research are about to start searching for the U.S. Navy's first submarine, which went to the bottom of the Atlantic off Cape Hatteras in 1863. Unlike the Confederacy's CSS
Hunley, the USS
Alligator never saw action, but it's historically significant nonetheless. Perhaps it can be recovered, as its
Rebel cousin was.
posted by Man-Thing at 11:24 AM PST - 1 comments
Collaborate! Photography website.
Have you ever wanted to be an art director or are you a photographer looking for an assignment? The Collaborate website lets art directors and photographers connect over the internet and work on creating a photograph. Are there similar photo collaboration sites out there that people know of?
posted by jeremias at 8:21 AM PST - 6 comments
Want to know what the difference is between real life and the internet?
The funny folk at
Red vs. Blue would be happy to demonstate.
(Warning: 22.125MB Quicktime .mov file but worth the wait, I thought. The Red vs. Blue site also offers a DivX download.) Metafilterians may enjoy the Political Section, where they do political discussions as badly as we do. One naughty word may make the audio NSFW in some locations. Seen at
Bifurcated Rivets.
posted by Lynsey at 1:21 AM PST - 12 comments
The
OEDILF is an audacious project which is attempting to write a limerick for
every word in the English language. 642 limericks have been completed so far.
Here's an overview of the project. Is it possible? Here's what editor-in-chief Chris J. Stolin says:
Skeptics say it's inconceivable.
A new OED? Unbelievable!
But I feel secure
That if we only endure,
It's a goal that is wholly achievable!
(via languagehat.)
posted by Vidiot at 12:42 AM PST - 16 comments
August 17
Cool!
Toronto's Deep Lake Water Cooling System was launched today. The system cuts electricity consumption in commercial buildings by 75 per cent by drawing near-freezing water through pipes extending five kilometres out into Lake Ontario. According to the
city, the system will save enough power to service more than 100 Toronto office towers or 4,200 homes per year, and it will eliminate 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Here's a public television segment explaining the process. Seems like it makes a nice complement to the lakeshore
windmill.
posted by stonerose at 4:30 PM PST - 48 comments
"
This site was created with one goal; to create the most comprehensive online archive of information and digital photos of the Coventry Vermont Phish show, August 14th and 15th 2004." Seems odd to think folks went to the trouble of
dedicating an entire website to just a single concert, until you learn it was the very last one for
Phish.
posted by mathowie at 1:57 PM PST - 99 comments
Indian Superman
is a movie of questionable legality released in India in the mid eighties. Perhaps it should have had a wider release since it has a great deal of humorous appeal for Western audiences. Check out this
review from Stomp Tokyo. I'm looking forward to a crossover when Indian Superman meets
Indian Spider-Man. via
Sepia Mutiny
posted by rks404 at 9:15 AM PST - 10 comments
"The story of
Scott's last expedition to the south pole will, I feel sure, be already known to many of you ... it is one which for courage, endeavour, endurance and unselfishness even in the face of death, will, I feel, never be surpassed.... I feel you will understand the difficulties met with when I tell you that the negatives from which
these slides were made and the
slides themselves were developed and washed with the aid of melted ice."
posted by rory at 6:53 AM PST - 11 comments
August 16
The Conscience of Joe Darby
"Because the irony of all this is that the people in Somerset County who turned their backs on Joe, well, those people would probably feel very different if they knew the rest of the story. That it really wasn't about softening prisoners, gathering intelligence, or trying to win the war. That it wasn't even about losing control in the heat of the moment. It was about getting up in the middle of the night and going somewhere you weren't supposed to go, then beating and raping people there. It was premeditated violent crime."
posted by quonsar at 11:07 PM PST - 48 comments
iNeighbors
is like groupware for neighbors. The site lets members define neighborhoods and provides tools for meeting and talking to your neighbors, like posting reviews and building a mailing list. It sounds like MeFites want to
meet people nearby, a desire this site is banking on. (via
Smart Mobs)
posted by revgeorge at 4:03 PM PST - 18 comments
Is the GOP tampering with Florida elections?
The New York Times reports that State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.
Also, see
here and
here.
Why do we even put up with this?
posted by black8 at 2:45 PM PST - 61 comments
A nice article
on some of the engineering and economics aspects of WiFi, and the history of frequency regulation in the USA.
posted by freebird at 12:52 PM PST - 9 comments
Rock and Roll Part 2
Often associated with the glam rock likes of T-Rex, Gary Glitter, and Sweet, the 6/8 schaffel beat (German for shuffle) is now adding a teutonic swagger to minimal techno. DJ and blogger Philip Sherburne puts together this excellent mix (92megs).
posted by dydecker at 11:41 AM PST - 14 comments
Inter Press Service (IPS)
was set up in 1964 as a non-profit international cooperative of journalists. Its founders were Roberto Savio, an Italian freelance journalist, and Pablo Piacentini, an Argentinean political scientist who was then a student in Rome.
In its early days, the primary objective of IPS was to fill the information gap between Europe and Latin America after the political turbulence following the Cuban revolution of 1959. The agency’s network grew steadily and expanded to include Asia and Africa. The objectives broadened – to cover news from the "Third World", give a voice to the voiceless, promote information on development issues, and help create a better balance and flow of international news.
posted by mr.marx at 11:38 AM PST - 5 comments
Blog Interrupted.
The Wash Post Magazine does a freakishly in-depth feature on ex-Senate staffer Jessica Cutler and the Weblog she once kept, which detailed her supposed romantic entanglements with various and sundry Capitol Hill types. Excerpt: "The messages warning Jessica that her private little joke had just gone very public came from a girlfriend over on the House side. Reading it, Jessica says, she was too stunned to wonder how Wonkette had discovered her blog. Instead, the portion of Jessica's brain that had evolved to help humans survive marauding mastodons screamed: Kill the blog! Kill the blog!" (Via
Obscure Store.)
posted by GaelFC at 10:45 AM PST - 69 comments
AN AMAZING JAPANESE ANIMATION
based on the psychologically complicated and beautifully playful work of comic book artist
Jim Woodring. (Monday morning cartoons for you, complete with a nod to the Jetsons, courtesy the Japan Media Arts Festival. Other featured work
here.)
posted by Peter H at 9:16 AM PST - 19 comments
August 15
Interesting
article about Francis Fukuyama "Americas most famous thinker", who comes up on MeFi
about once a year, includes information about his latest book.
posted by stbalbach at 9:36 PM PST - 26 comments
Corporate culture is nothing more than the "crystallization of the stupidity of a group of people at a given moment", says Corinne Maier, the author of the slacker manifesto,
"Bonjour Paresse". Better read this before clocking in Monday. (NYT)
posted by semmi at 9:11 PM PST - 25 comments
Tracy Givens'
weblog: "The Voice to skull continues along with the attacks to my body" ... "some of the neighbors might be experimenting with a crude homemade device"... "They have child rapers in my fan club. Found it on line."
posted by snarfodox at 5:55 PM PST - 29 comments
It is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans, that Pokemon's pro-Darwinism
propaganda is inescapable...
posted by isol at 5:08 PM PST - 23 comments
The Ultimate Gaming Table.
While looking around the webernets to find a replacement for my living room table, I stumbled across
this. Breathtaking in scope and purpose; I salute this person's nerdly vision and dedication.
posted by majcher at 10:30 AM PST - 13 comments
August 14
Munich Bans Memorial Plaques
Munich has decided to ban memorial plaques to Jewish, Sinti and German citizens deported and murdered during World War Two. Jewish leaders, fearful that the plaques would stir up anti-Semitic fervor, supported the ban.
These plaques are the work of a German artist,
Gunter Demnig.
”He first had the idea in the early 1990s when he was unveiling a memorial for the Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust.
“An elderly woman approached him and insisted that "no Gypsies ever lived here". "It is so easy for people to deny something. I wanted to ensure that this would not happen," he says. (BBC).”
This reminder of the holocaust brought to mind the
Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, as well as the
Viet Nam Memorial
and the
AIDS quilt -- monuments that really changed me.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 8:40 AM PST - 22 comments
U.S. to Cut Forces in Europe, Asia
President Bush will announce Monday that he plans to pull 70,000 to 100,000 troops out of Europe and Asia in the first major reconfiguration of overseas military deployments by the United States since the Cold War ended, White House officials said yesterday.
posted by raaka at 4:14 AM PST - 38 comments
Jazz in 2500?
iTunes versus Preservation: "The digital music era should offer listeners more information about jazz, not less. The stakes are high. If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle. This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts." (via
ArtsJournal.com)
posted by josephtate at 12:12 AM PST - 21 comments
August 13
Hating Dick Cheney
- Our vice president is so widely hated as being an
evil puppeteer, but this seems to be far from the truth. He's really "a frazzled, heart attack survivor who's barely hanging on—to life, his job, his position, his sense of self-esteem."
posted by MrAnonymous at 11:12 PM PST - 52 comments
"
Stone Reader makes you want to pick up a
great novel and consume it in one long gulp. It’s a love letter to literature and literacy, a bibliophile’s dream film, dedicated to the joys of fiction and the passions of those who need books like they need food, water and air."
(The Dallas Morning News)
posted by rushmc at 9:56 PM PST - 17 comments
Paper Napkin
"So here's the scenario: You're out at a bar, riding transit, or even just walking down the street, and some bozo who desperately wants into your pants starts up a conversation with you. Rather than make a scene or make them upset (which, hey, could be dangerous), you're polite and at least nod at the proper times. Then, of course, they ask you for your number. Except this is 2004, so maybe they ask for your email address instead." Ouch.
posted by zannah at 9:06 PM PST - 32 comments
The Dittohead Guide To Adult Beverages
can be read in its entirety (abt. 250Kb) on the Web. (For those of you in Rio Linda, a dittohead is a Rush Limbaugh fan.) But Britt Gillette has also self-published his book and wants you to make his dreams come true by buying it on Amazon. It's got hilarious drink names in it, like "
Caller Abortion" (a stunt Limbaugh used on his show -- complete with the sound of a vacuum cleaner), "
Feminazi Frazzle," and "
John F-ing Kerry." The recipes look like they'd make tasty drinks, but I think I'll pass on the purchase. Who really needs a novelty, right-wing drink recipe book?
posted by tbc at 3:44 PM PST - 12 comments
craigsbay?
according to
the founder of
craigslist.com, ebay has acquired a 25% stake in the site.
there is a lot of
concern that ebay will influence the way craigslist works, despite craig's assurances that it won't, but will ebay allow things like the 'casual encounters' section of the personals to continue?
or is this just the next logical step for craigslist, and is a 25% stake not enough for ebay to do any real damage?
(the way ebay acquired the stake seems a little weird to me too, even though it's all perfectly legal.)
posted by dolface at 2:56 PM PST - 16 comments
Julia Child Dies at 91
Alfred A. Knopf said in a statement she died in her sleep on Thursday at her Santa Barbara, California, home.
I, for one, am really going to miss her.
posted by lilboo at 8:15 AM PST - 38 comments
This Flash game kinda drove me nuts and I never got it right once. (turn off your sound. the game don't need it and there's some cheesiness) {click games them m3 or m3 expert if you're a glutton for punishment}
posted by dobbs at 12:17 AM PST - 18 comments
August 12
A Libertarian for Kerry.
John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the
EFF and a former campaign manager for Dick Cheney, is taking his libertarianism into the Democratic camp. "...we need something -- and I think it’s governmental -- to reregulate the market and make it free, because the multinationals have taken it away." (More inside).
posted by liam at 8:46 PM PST - 34 comments
Head Back to Mono
in 32k at the
rineke.net records archive, where a rather consistent curator has digitized a goody chunk of his record collection. It's posted in more-or-less every iteration imaginable. Observe the
linked scans (1 mb page, careful!) of the covers (also in multiple resolutions up to full-size). Note the
records themselves, in sleeve or
out, depending. Most especially, savor the clean, low-res mono mp3s that
cry out to be played through the dashboard speakers of a 1967 Dodge Dart.
Bonus Big Beat Bonanza: The site's author is also behind the
similarly detailed archive of shows by ex-WFMU dj
The Hound, from 1987 through 1995, heavy on the
rare regional sides beloved of certain of my pals down New Orleans way.
Last, but not least, rineke.net hosts the adventures of
a platoon of Tux clones, sealing my geek admiration for the overseer of the site. There's
more, of course. My propeller beanie's off to you, sir, and long may you wave, or particle, as is your choice and preference.
(Permission was sought and granted to post this, as I feard for the site's bandwidth. Have at it, Mefites!
posted by mwhybark at 5:14 PM PST - 7 comments
Michael Moore rips Bush yet another one.
While making Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore interviewed Porter Goss, President Bush's as-yet-to-be-approved nominee for head of the CIA. In the interview, Porter Goss said he wasn't qualified to even be in the CIA anymore, much less run it.
"It is true I was a case officer, clandestine services officer, and yes, I do understand the core mission of the business. But I couldn't get a job with the CIA today. I am not qualified. I don't have the language skills. You know my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably, and I certainly don't have the technical skills, as my children remind me every day. "Daddy, Daddy, you gotta get better on your computer." And so the things you need to have, I don't have."
The video
is available here. (Quicktime.)
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:47 PM PST - 73 comments
Hacker Pleads Guilty.
The Minnesota man who spread a modified version of the MSBlast worm over the Internet last summer pleaded guilty on Wednesday and faces 18 to 37 months in prison.
posted by semmi at 1:25 PM PST - 7 comments
The Office as training video?
"The staff had just returned from lunch and all the managers were in a training room, sitting in a semi-circle and looking really pleased with themselves. Then one of them blurted out 'Mahna Mahna' at us without warning. We just stared blankly back at them."
posted by rory at 4:38 AM PST - 24 comments
Hollywood Propaganda
The Manchurian Candidate remake has all the makings of a cunning piece of republican political propaganda. The most obvious theme of the movie warns a politician war hero is a danger to the country.
The movie has all the makings of a good thriller. However, the script and screen play are so heavily slanted the movie comes across as a commercial just like other movies geared towards one political ideal.
posted by lightweight at 4:01 AM PST - 36 comments
August 11
Cookd and Bombd:
With news about the drug Cake, Margaret Thatcher as the new Doctor Who questions in Parliament and Blue Jam.
Turning the zeitgeist of news gathering into the spirit of investigation, an archive to savour
posted by lerrup at 11:32 PM PST - 20 comments
Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network:
"We investigate the structure of the Marvel Universe collaboration network, where two Marvel characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same Marvel comic book. We show that this network is clearly not a random network, and that it has most, but not all, characteristics of 'real-life' collaboration networks, such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. The study of this artificial universe that tries to look like a real one, helps to understand that there are underlying principles that make real-life networks have definite characteristics."
[Some jargon, but on the whole very readable]
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:53 PM PST - 10 comments
Hello, MUDDA.
"The relationship of artist to the business has most often been one of contract and servitude. We believe the way forward must be a partnership in which the artist can take a much bigger role in how their creations are sold, but also have the chance to stand at the front of the queue when payments are made instead of the traditional position of being paid long after everyone else." -
Peter Gabriel
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:39 PM PST - 8 comments
Word It
is your opportunity to express in as many words, and as many other graphic elements as you need, what best describes each monthly topic. Each month we will choose a specific topic, idea or theme. For example: the first theme was
“inspiration.” So you would go home, or do it at work, and find words, images, artwork, whatever that best describes what inspiration means to you. It could be anything: music, cats, chocolate, museum, love, laundry. Anything that reflects what inspiration is to you. You can do whatever you want to it: vectorize it, photoshop it, scan it or build it and then send it to us.
posted by ColdChef at 5:31 PM PST - 4 comments
Former GOP Sen. Hecht owes life to Democratic candidate Kerry
"Former U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht of Nevada is a staunch Republican, but he thanks his lucky stars for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
On July 12, 1988, Hecht was attending a weekly Republican luncheon when a piece of apple lodged firmly in his throat." via Eschaton (Atrios)
posted by Postroad at 12:59 PM PST - 30 comments
A peek at Al Qaeda pre 9/11.
Reports surfaced in early 2002 about al Qaeda computers purchased by a journalist from the Wall Street Journal. In this article details from one of these computers come to light - complaints about their new home in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan, rocky relationships with the Taliban and a difficult merger with Islamic Jihad.
"Perhaps one of the most important insights to emerge from the computer is that 9/11 sprang not so much from al-Qaeda's strengths as from its weaknesses. The computer did not reveal any links to Iraq or any other deep-pocketed government; amid the group's penury the members fell to bitter infighting. The blow against the United States was meant to put an end to the internal rivalries, which are manifest in vitriolic memos between Kabul and cells abroad."
via The Agonist
posted by caddis at 11:51 AM PST - 9 comments
Advertising Copycats
is a site where various ad prints are compared for resemblances, from odd coincidences to downright plagiarism.
[in French]
posted by Masi at 6:30 AM PST - 12 comments
Slavery is not just the shameful stuff of history books - not in Florida.
Last year, 7 journalists spent 9 months in a behind-the-scenes exploration of the state's immigrant workers. In more than 30 articles and photo essays, they revealed a system where workers are threatened, beaten, locked up, injured, forced into prostitution, and trapped in a spiral of debt and abuse. Powerful forces are arrayed against them in a state where agricultural laws are shaped by politician-farmers who have a vested interest in the status quo.
- more -
posted by madamjujujive at 5:02 AM PST - 28 comments
Euclid in Colour.
'An unusual and attractive edition of Euclid was published in 1847 in England, edited by an otherwise unknown mathematician named Oliver Byrne. It covers the first 6 books of Euclid, which range through most of elementary plane geometry and the theory of proportions. What distinguishes Byrne's edition is that he attempts to present Euclid's proofs in terms of pictures, using as little text - and in particular as few labels - as possible. What makes the book especially striking is his use of colour ... '
posted by plep at 12:32 AM PST - 15 comments
August 10
I found
Gumtree.com when I looked over at the guy next to me's internet cafe screen the last time I was in London (does everyone do that?). It's sorta like the
London Craigslist, but with pages for cities all over the UK, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
posted by armoured-ant at 8:38 PM PST - 8 comments
New Winamp
So the design guys over there quitely release this update and down played its coolest feature. Perhaps the coolest feature ever for any program. A database of searchable music videos and song offering on demand and fastforwarding and rewind. Sons are censored but there are well over 2000 videos with the promise of more to come.
posted by sourbrew at 7:45 PM PST - 42 comments
At
veggiedate.org, "It's even possible to narrow your search to find only macrobiotic nonsmokers, 'almost-vegetarians' who live in Australia or Buddhist vegans." Sweet site with a surprisingly large number of
success stories.
posted by onlyconnect at 5:40 PM PST - 21 comments
dogblog,
bogblog,
fogblog,
cogblog,
logblog,
zogblog,
jogblog,
yogblog,
gogblog,
wogblog,
nogblog,
vogblog,
hogblog,
smogblog,
frogblog.
posted by reklaw at 3:50 PM PST - 28 comments
Specs spots
are commericals shot by people who hope that they'll be considered for shooting real commercials. Because they are vying for attention, some of them can be pretty
outrageous. This site allows you to rank them ala hotornot mode.
My personal
favorite pertains to that "make a wish" ritual around blowing out birthday candles.
What are your favorites?
(Spots themselves are Quicktime links)
posted by jasper411 at 1:10 PM PST - 10 comments
Jason Byrne: You talk about Muhammad Ali in your latest DVD and how frightening it was to be in the ring with him. But do you reckon you could beat him now that the two of you shake like maracas?
Richard Pryor: That's your fuckin' question?
posted by dodgygeezer at 12:44 PM PST - 17 comments
The Davinci Code
website hasn't been linked on the front page! Check it out and have fun with codes, conspiracies, art and a
challenge. Good fun that might also make you go "hmmmm".
posted by ashbury at 11:17 AM PST - 47 comments
Landslide caught on tape.
Region Pounded By Heavy Rains. Japanese government officials inspecting an area battered by weeks of heavy rain catch a dramatic landslide on video.
[note: realvideo]
posted by crunchland at 10:22 AM PST - 34 comments
Bootleg Objects, the site of
two artists in Germany, have done some really amazing work retrofitting popular technology to serve a new and/or unintended purpose -- just because they can. It's quite beautiful design -- who knows of other examples?
posted by aeiou at 10:13 AM PST - 5 comments
Is it the start of
a moral life when one really acts as though another life is just as important as one's own, or is that an obsession skirting mental illness?
posted by semmi at 9:18 AM PST - 35 comments
August 9
NASA to consolidate all their sites into the nasa.gov portal
The argument for change is that users will be served better by a single website because the agency's various sites vary in quality and content.
But
scientists and fans at NASAWatch say consolidation into a single NASA portal - which is more suited as collection press releases rather than in-depth information - will greatly reduce the amount of public information available from NASA. Is consolidation a good idea or is it just a power grab/manipulation by NASA administrators?
posted by stevis at 7:20 PM PST - 11 comments
Boom!
Forget terror attacks, the real reason for an orange alert in NYC has to do with ... rocks. I'll bet you've never heard of
Cumbre Vieja. In fact, if the first hit on a google
search for something is a PDF, you
know it's obscure.
(It's a volcano in the Canaries). If it erupts, it'll spell the end for Washington, New York and Boston (and parts of Europe will get a bit wet.) Hoo!
Now, short of hoping it will go away, there's nothing you can do, because it will take
35 million years to dismantle the dangerous bits of rock. Instead, the boffins are talking about evacuating the east coast.
Yet more obscure places you wish you could forget menacing the future of the US, hey?
posted by bonaldi at 5:24 PM PST - 33 comments
An interesting study
by The Century Foundation. I found it while perusing the NY Times op-eds...specifically,
Bob Herbert. It seems that "Household debt and personal bankruptcies are reaching record highs despite low interest rates and rising real estate values."
posted by BlueTrain at 12:56 PM PST - 59 comments
WordNet: "an online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets." What does one
do with WordNet?
posted by archimago at 11:32 AM PST - 16 comments
cin-o-matic,
it's a tool to help people decide what movies to go see or rent. The interface is simple and is growing on me, the url is hard to share by word of mouth, and it integrates with netfilx. [by and via
dack]
posted by jonah at 8:00 AM PST - 20 comments
Men In Black
CNN, Aug 4: Clashes between police and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul left 12 Iraqis dead and 26 wounded, hospital and police sources said Wednesday.
Rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire as well as explosions were heard in the streets of the city.
A first-hand view of events.
posted by bonehead at 6:52 AM PST - 8 comments
Koko goes to the dentist
About a month ago, Koko, a 300-plus-pound ape who became famous for mastering more than 1,000 signs, began telling her handlers... she was in pain. They quickly constructed a pain chart, offering Koko a scale from one to 10. When Koko started pointing to nine or 10 too often, a dental appointment was made. (There's a rather funny development at the very bottom of the story)
posted by moonbird at 4:28 AM PST - 35 comments
Big Hats and Eroticism
is just one of the many features of
Tallulahs.com, an excellent site dedicated to images of the
vintage nude. There's also lots of wonderful trivia and commentary, such as a
brief biography of the
Mante sisters (immortalized in the brilliant ballerina images of painter
Edgar Degas), and the story of
Liane de Pougy, convent girl turned runaway wife, turned
celebrated dancer of the French stage, turned
Romanian Princess. Or you can read about the
mystery of H. Traut,
elusive photographer of "the gentle eroticism of fairyland" whose
images graced hundreds of postcards for several years until he
seemingly vanished from the scene some time before WWI. Interested in
drawing or painting nudes yourself? Here's a page of
classical nude poses - studies in various categories that you can work from, including "
The beauty of butts" and "
seductive smoking"! Plus, you can peruse
Tallulah's own art nudes, and a fabulous
links page. NSFW, obviously.
posted by taz at 3:13 AM PST - 4 comments
August 8
KVRX, University of Texas' radio station, has an archive of tracks recorded live in their studio.
Artists include
The Magnetic Fields,
Brian Jonestown Massacre,
Broken Social Scene,
Devendra Banhart,
Explosions in the Sky,
Sebadoh,
Mojave 3,
Okkervil River,
Japancakes,
Call and Response,
Super Furry Animals,
Cat Power,
I Am The World Trade Center and the sublime
Paul Burch, among others.
posted by dobbs at 10:15 PM PST - 24 comments
Prozac Found in Britain's Drinking Water.
Norman Baker, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said it looked "like a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public."
Or possibly something less alarming, like the recycled leftovers from the public waste... either way, very disturbing.
posted by Espoo2 at 7:08 PM PST - 54 comments
Are You Ready?
September will be National Preparedness Month, with an announcement on Sept. 9th.
Throughout September 2004, the US Department of Homeland Security, American Red Cross, American Prepared Campaign, the National Association of Broadcasters, the US Department of Education and other partners, will host a series of events to highlight the importance of citizen emergency preparedness. Nothing like keeping us scared, huh? And it's only
3 years since 9/11--you think they could have done this sooner maybe? There's a
skimpy calendar (PDF), with Parade Magazine, Starbucks and NASCAR mentioned. And for the kids, a
Ready Deputy contest.
posted by amberglow at 3:02 PM PST - 28 comments
"The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment." - James D. St. Clair, arguing before the Supreme Court in 1974.
The court
didn't agree, returning an 8-0 decision and as a result, thirty years ago today Richard Nixon announced his
resignation. The next day at
11:35AM it became official and
Gerald Ford, the first unelected Vice-President in history was sworn in under the provisions of the
25th Amendment to the Constitution as the 38th President of the United States.
But what if Nixon had chosen to respond differently? What if he had
vowed not to resign?
Article II of the Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. Could the Supreme Court really have forced Nixon to comply with their order? What if the President had viewed the Court's order as an attempted
coup d'etat?
posted by snarfodox at 11:25 AM PST - 17 comments
BBC Radio Interviews From Hell
My favourite is Dr Hastings Banda the leader of Malawi in 1962 who seems to have to the perfect way of getting out of an interview he obviously doesn't want to be having. See also the minimalist pleasure of Gordon Clough's dog. [in Real Audio]
posted by feelinglistless at 7:18 AM PST - 7 comments
I've been having a great time exploring the maze that is
Musarium, wandering about and peeking into into various nooks and crannies to find such exotica as the wonderfully bizarre
birdhand book, and absorbing cultural artifacts and musings, including the poetic
Visions and Icons (I really love the way the text works with the images on this), the atmospheric
Familiar Ghosts (the texts will cue you on clicking through this somewhat dream-like landscape), the time-capsule imagery of
Balkan Portraits (1906-1910), the
breathtaking portraits of photographer Steve McCurry (famous for his National Geographic portait of the Afghani girl), the subterranean monologue of
Grand Central: the View Down Under, and the shocking and heartbreaking
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. There's a lot more, so take your time. You can use
this page to access archived material.
posted by taz at 3:00 AM PST - 13 comments
August 7
Michelle Malkin and the Big Hustle
Matt Stoller does a good job explaining the right-wing
noise machine backing up author
Michelle Malkin, whose
new book promotes the virtue of Japanese internment camps and racial profiling. Eric Muller, UNC law school professor also does a pretty good job
ripping up her arguments. As Stoller says: "Right-wing institutional support, with places to house people to create ideas, outlets to distribute and promote them, and the tactics and relationships to turn these ideas into the mainstream, is breathtaking".
posted by owillis at 3:43 PM PST - 65 comments
Coalition of the Willy.
[via abuddha's memes]
Just as the eyes may be averted from full frontal public displays of male nudity, is it possible that the unconscious association to phallic symbols like "weapons of mass destruction" may effectively lead the eyes to be "averted", thus frustrating any search. (NOTE: This essay isn't really 'logical,' but it's a fun ride anyway, pun intended)
posted by moonbird at 2:21 PM PST - 8 comments
I've just finished reading a copy of Larson's
Devil
in the White City sent to me by a relative who heard of my love for
Isaac's
Storm.
Devil is a biography of two men who were
central to the 1893
Chicago World's
Fair. One,
Daniel
H. Burnham would become one of the most influential architects and
city planners of the early 20th century. Burnham organized a crew of
the architectural, engineering and artistic elite including landscape artist
Frederick Law Olmstead
(famous for Central Park and Biltmore) in an effort to better the Paris
world's fair of 1889. The Chicago exposition would be profoundly
influential for American culture introducing Arabic Dance (the tune for "There's a place in France/where the naked ladies dance" was created in Chicago), the Ferris
Wheel, Shredded Wheat, and helping to settle the
Battle of the Currents
between Edison and Tesla. The fair drew a large variety of larger than
life figures including Archduke Ferdinand, Elizabeth B. Anthony, Buffalo Bill Cody and the
mostly forgotten master of self promotion
Citizen
Train.
Devil is also a biography of the man given credit for
America's first recognized serial murders, the self-named
H. H. Holmes. At the start
of the fair, Holmes changed his
modus operandi from marrying and
killing women as part of insurance and real estate scams, to running a
hotel from which an unknown number of his female tenants never checked
out. Although information on Holmes's activities is scanty, he serves
as a mirror of the utopia of civic safety created by Burnham. Larson makes the argument that the contrasts between optimisim and pessimism, well-intentioned virtue and depravity, urban utopia with a few blocks from slums, would set the tone for the 20th century.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:44 AM PST - 13 comments
Voyage to our hollow earth.
"Steve Currey's Expedition Company has chartered the Russian Nuclear IceBreaker YAMAL, to take 100 adventurers to the North Pole for an expedition to conduct scientific observations that could resolve once and for all whether the Hollow Earth theories have any validity!"
posted by srboisvert at 7:47 AM PST - 13 comments
The virtue of idleness
is lost upon our modern society with its Puritan work ethic. Perhaps a little idleness is good for the soul and the mind. Some would say Ben Franklin is spinning in his grave, but he also enjoyed his idle hours as much as any man, at least according to the recent biography, "Ben Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson.
posted by caddis at 7:36 AM PST - 12 comments
Bin Ladin's Former 'Bodyguard' Interviewed on Al-Qa'ida Strategies.
An interview taken by the
Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper in London with one of Bin Ladin's former bodyguards brings out many interesting things, such as him admitting that Al Qaida is no longer an entity, but an ideology. Another strong point of the interview is his summary of Al Qaida tactics:
Al-Qa'ida pursues a method or principle that calls for "centralization of decision and decentralization of execution.".
posted by Masi at 4:26 AM PST - 13 comments
August 6
Followup:
Wired runs an article called "Fark Sells Out, France Surrenders". Drew Curtis writes a
response (note the sycophantic totalfarkers and more annoyed normal-farkers) -- but, as the article says, "when pressed on the issue, Curtis
refused to deny that Fark accepts payment for placement of links". Was this really a case of one sales rep getting "a little overenthusiastic"? Is Drew ever actually going to deny selling Fark out, or will he just keep writing non-responses detailing his plans for selling it out even more in the future?
posted by reklaw at 6:48 PM PST - 43 comments
Real and France's Virgin claim that they deserve to be able to sell their music on Apple's iPod.
To prove they're serious, Virgin Mega has filed a complaint against Apple to do so. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but last I checked it wasn't anybody's responsibility to open up their product or service to purposely allow the competition in. That is, of course, unless the government steps in. Are Real and Virgin Mega just being whiny little brats, angered that they're not invited to the party? What are legitimate reasons for the legal system to get involved and to rule in favor of such plaintiffs? While the obvious Microsoft may come to mind, are there other examples you can think of? As for me, I'd like to hand out copies of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" to both Real and Virgin Mega...
posted by tgrundke at 3:21 PM PST - 41 comments
The Freeloader Registry.
When an employer pays low wages and doesn't provide health care benefits, its employees often end up getting free care through state and federal programs. How much does this cost you, and which companies benefit from the practice? A new Massachusetts state law will provide detailed information about top corporate welchers. (This follows recent discussion of the topic in the context of
Wal-Mart.)
Via
Good Jobs First.
posted by alms at 2:52 PM PST - 21 comments
A new meaning for the expression: to google?
In a stunning revelation, Internet search engine king Google reported it had neglected to register 28.8 million shares and stock options issued to employees and consultants between September 2001 and June 2004 in violation of state and federal securities laws. The regulatory fiasco was revealed in the company's S-1 filing with the SEC on Tuesday, and it has imperiled Google's much-ballyhooed IPO.
posted by psmealey at 2:36 PM PST - 10 comments
Babyface: A Times Square Odyssey
"This interactive web piece about the Babyfaces of Times Square takes place in the past, when the center city was a clash of classes rather than today's funeral of a theme park controlled by middle class undertakers."
This is definitely not safe for work (drugs, porn, men in bathroom stalls), but if you want to remember the seedier side of NYC, this is one way to do it.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:56 PM PST - 6 comments
The HIV virus has jumped from primates to people
on at least seven separate occasions in recent history, not twice as is commonly thought. And people in Cameroon are showing up with symptoms of HIV, but are testing negative for both the virus and its primate equivalent SIV, the virus from which HIV is thought to have evolved. That suggests that new strains of an HIV-like virus are circulating in
wild animals and infecting people who eat them, sparking fears that such strains could fuel an already disastrous
global HIV pandemic.
posted by dejah420 at 10:17 AM PST - 15 comments
On July 6th, 1988 Dennis Dechaine of Bowdinham, Maine came home from work (transporting frozen chickens from a slaughterhouse) and planned to work on constructing a greenhouse. However, that project hit a glitch and sometime that afternoon he decided instead to take some amphetamines and go exploring in the woods near his home. When he emerged from the woods, lost and looking for his truck, about 8:30 pm that night he was questioned by the police who were looking for a missing 12 year old girl named Sarah Cherry. Two days later, Sarah's body was found and Dennis Dechainewas charged with the girl's murder. He was convicted in March of 1989 to life in prison without parole and an entire generation of Maine girls were told to 'remember Sarah Cherry' as a caution to not talk to strangers.
The question before us now, is, of course,
did he do it?
posted by anastasiav at 9:59 AM PST - 19 comments
Mail Room Veterans for Bush
Not exactly your Swift Boat Veterans, but staunch defenders of all things holy and honorable and patriotic just the same. Submitted for your Friday fun.
posted by nofundy at 9:46 AM PST - 1 comments
August 5
Wade Davis
, on
"Death and life in the Ethnosphere - The Naked Geography Of Hope" :
"In Haiti, a Vodoun priestess responds to the rhythm of drums and, taken by the spirit, handles burning embers with impunity. In the Amazon, a Waorani hunter detects the scent of animal urine at forty paces and identifies the species that deposited it....On an escarpment in the high Arctic, Inuit elders fuse myth with landscape, interpreting the past in the shadow of clouds cast upon ice.....Just to know that such cultures exist is to remember that the human imagination is vast, fluid, infinite in its capacity for social and spiritual invention." The death of the Ethnosphere was Margaret Meade's great concern up to her death, says Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis of
Serpent and the Rainbow fame and student of
Richard Evans Schultes, founder of
Ethnobotany : "The
surprising results obtained from treating psychoactive plants allowed their users to communicate more directly with the unseen world which they believed to exist." Davis coined the concept of the "Ethnosphere" and has worked for it's preservation through
Cultural Survival
posted by troutfishing at 8:50 PM PST - 16 comments
Oh Rob!
What it was like to be in the studio audience of
The Dick Van Dyke Show. Nice essay from Mark Evanier.
posted by braun_richard at 7:01 PM PST - 8 comments
An
OpEd piece by Bruce Springsteen, announcing the tour of Vote for Change, the umbrella of a new group including the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, Jurassic 5, James Taylor and Jackson Browne. (NYT)
posted by semmi at 9:51 AM PST - 71 comments
The worst CD in the world.
Here's something to while away the office hours, compiling the worst CD in the world from tracks that you own.
"What's your least favourite track by your favourite band? It's a difficult question, because often we're reluctant to admit that our favourite bands have written bad songs. We program ourselves to take sides: we'll often convince ourselves that a good song by a band we don't generally like is worse than a bad song by a band we normally love.
I'm interested to know if there's any common stuff in people's most hated songs list, and conversely if something you own and hate happens to be someone else's favourite. And if there's something you really can't stand - why did you buy it? Why do you still have it?"
So it's fifteen tracks
in your own record collection that you
hate the most. And the site is something to do with some time mefi poster nylon, so all the more reason to join in the fun
I'm kicking off my CD with
starship.
posted by ciderwoman at 9:44 AM PST - 148 comments
John Kerry's Official Naval Records
Time to put to rest the nonsense coming out of the hate groups. And when you hear about the Swift Boat group who have put out an ad and now a book denouncing Kerry, then turn to this URL to find out about that group of patriots
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth
posted by Postroad at 8:20 AM PST - 103 comments
A few months after his first (donated)
statue, "
Drinker", was
kidnapped, London's guerrilla artist
Banksy reveals a new statue, a £22,000 solid bronze prostitute with leather boots and a
thong,
dedicated "to thugs, to thieves, to bullies, to
liars, to the corrupt, the arrogant and the stupid."
posted by shoepal at 8:17 AM PST - 25 comments
Timeline of Terror Alerts.
A collected list of political events over the last two years and the action from the Department of Homeland Security that occured within 24 hours of each event. Readers have even submitted more examples in the comments. Partisan exploitation of numerous coincidences? Or a developing pattern?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:55 AM PST - 24 comments
Forbidden Love: The Romance That Masqueraded as a Bio
In early 2003, a Jordanian woman named Norma Khouri published a book entitled
Forbidden Love (or
Honor Lost in North America). This book was a memoir about how Norma Khouri's best friend, Dalia, was killed by her own father after she fell in love with a Christian military officer, and Norma's subsequent escape from Jordan.
Forbidden Love was a bio that read like a sensational romance, and it sold 250,000 copies around the world and made Norma Khouri a celebrity in her adoptive country of Australia. However, it turns out that the book really was just a romance. Dalia never existed. Norma Khouri left Jordan at the age of 3 and grew to adulthood living in Chicago. So, one
very disturbed woman has
exploited Western prejudices about Arab cultures,
fooled the general public, plunged her publisher into an enormous legal and financial embarrassment, and impugned the very real and serious problem of honour killings. And she got away with it for a full year and a half.
posted by orange swan at 7:08 AM PST - 14 comments
Well, it doesn't look like the
Requiem for a Dream site ever got posted here. So, um, here it is.
Flash.
You know, they were going to get Aronofsky to do Batman? Fell through when the executives woke up with a hangover, I assume.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:35 AM PST - 60 comments
Lather, rinse, repeat.
"The forums are ablaze with vitriolic rage. Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal. The virtual slap-fight goes on and on, until obscure technical nuances like,'Will it play multiplexed Ogg Vorbis streams?' become matters of life and death." Perhaps
1 Infinite Loop has an archetypical drama.
[more q daily newsfilter]
posted by weston at 12:00 AM PST - 9 comments
August 4
A record label
with a long and very proud history.
An on-line store for all your evil needs. The only problem is that both are totally made up. And we all thought the IMDB guy had way too much time on his hands.
posted by whoshotwho at 10:04 PM PST - 8 comments
Nuclear Safety Lapses Won't Be Revealed
--
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the change in policy during its first public meeting on power plant safety since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It drew barbs from critics who said the secrecy would erode public confidence in the agency.
Until now, the NRC has provided regular public updates on vulnerabilities its inspectors found at the country's 103 nuclear power reactors, such as broken fences or weaknesses in training programs. The
NRC's release is here, which also states that they'll be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests.
posted by amberglow at 4:59 PM PST - 13 comments
Making the case for a smoking gun:
All the dots connected, and
where'd all these dots come from anyway? inthesetimes.com does a great job of pulling from many diverse resources to debunk the "everyone thought he had WMD" arguement, and washingtontimes.com gives an excellent refresher on pre 9/11 Iraq strategy.
"The Doctrine of pre-emption becomes inoperable without unimpeachable intelligence accepted by all as the coin of the realm."
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:59 AM PST - 35 comments
August 3
If you like Science Fiction, if you like Star Wars, Babylon 5, or the Green Lantern, then you've probably heard of E. E. "Doc" Smith Ph.D., the man credited with getting powdered sugar to stick to donuts and with creating several of the most influential tales to ever spring from the "pulps" of the 1940s. The
grandfather of
Space Opera his
Lensmen books, while badly written and horribly dated, still create that sense of wonder that all SF junkies crave.
posted by Grod at 10:54 PM PST - 19 comments
Fool's World Map:
"This is a project visualizing the world map which many fools in the world imagine. If you can see this map comfortably, you are definitely a fool." The creator
updates and reformats the malleable map based completely on capricious, erroneous geographical inconsistencies found within oblvious statements from his comment logs. Examples: (
095. Upper right side of Germany became Australia due to a posting by another stupid American thinking "Australia is beside Germany.") and
(001. Due to a Texan who thinks "Japan is accessible from Texas by car", Japan and Texas is land-attached."). He also has a
page of user-submitted maps, where he encourages you to create your own global eyesore and send it to him.
posted by naxosaxur at 8:04 PM PST - 26 comments
Fireflies in Houston.
As a kid growing up in Houston, I remember going out into the front yard every evening and seeing hundreds and hundreds of fireflies dancing through the air, one of the most magical memories of childhood. As I grew older, their numbers declined, slowly but surely (in fact, at one point as a kid, I thought I was partially responsible as I'd caught so many of 'em in Flintstones jelly jars). Now back in Houston as an adult, I haven't seen a one, and am wondering,
where have all the fireflies gone? This site aims to tell you, and it's not just for Houstonians.
posted by WolfDaddy at 6:39 PM PST - 41 comments
Browsing at my local library, I just came across a display of the
winners of this year's Canadian
Awards for Excellence in Book Design.
I was blown away by the design and content of
The Gryphons of Paris, a limited edition collection of black-and-white photos of surpassing beauty. This led me to the web page of the photographer,
Ronald Hurwitz, his city vignettes and remarkable portraits. A good reminder that not
everything of value can be found on the internet.
posted by louigi at 1:13 PM PST - 11 comments
Starchitects.
"There's a point where an architect crosses the line to the nether side of celebrity. The projects become less about exploring the unknowns inherent in a new commission and more about giving clients the sort of signature piece they're paying for."
posted by plexi at 11:40 AM PST - 30 comments
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.
"I wondered for a moment what it would look like if just for one day, everyone who had survived sexual violence were visible as a survivor, if we could actually see the extent of it, if we could all know just how very not-alone we are. I wondered how angry and sad it would make me to know. I wondered how much power there might be in the truth."
LJ user, misia decided to out herself as a survivor of sexual violence, and offer a place where people could stand up and become visible as survivors as well. The results are a compelling and haunting read.
posted by FunkyHelix at 10:24 AM PST - 60 comments
Jesus Boots perfected!
NYT: In the last 150 years, Americans have patented about 100 water-walking inventions. The first, in 1858, was by H. R. Rowlands, who lived in Boston, not far from where Mr. Rosen resides, in Newton, Mass. Most of the subsequent patents, Mr. Rosen said, are iterations of that same idea. "Unfortunately," Mr. Rosen observed, "none of them actually work."
posted by skallas at 9:54 AM PST - 13 comments
Britain - Stamping Out Terrorism. One Peaceful Protestor At A Time.
"The Home Office proposes "to make it an offence to protest outside homes in such a way that causes harassment, alarm or distress to residents" [
PDF &
HTML] This sounds reasonable enough, until you realise that the police can define "harassment, alarm or distress" however they wish. All protest in residential areas, in other words, could now be treated as a criminal offence. The government will also seek to "suggest remedies" for websites which "include material deemed to cause concern or needless anxiety to others"."
posted by Blue Stone at 2:33 AM PST - 29 comments
Terrorist Alert Level: Red Herring!
The New York Times reported today that much of the information that led to the heightened alert in New York and Washington D.C. is actually
three or four years old and that authorities have no evidence or recent communications indicating an upcoming terrorist attack.
George Pataki and Michael Bloomberg, who are both speaking at the upcoming Republican convention,
are making political hay off of people's fears of another 9/11. Some New Yorkers are
worried about the enormous cost of the alert to the local economy, as bridge traffic snarls to a crawl.
Who needs foriegn terrorism when we can just make our own! Are we scared yet?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:36 AM PST - 150 comments
August 2
a letter to Thomas Kean, Chair of the 9/11 Commission
from Sibel Edmonds:
Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations. Considering what is at stake, our national security, we are entitled to demand answers to unanswered questions, and to ask for clarification of issues that were ignored and/or omitted from the report. A solid letter detailing many disturbing things reported to the Commission, yet not in the report.
More on Edmonds
here.
posted by amberglow at 4:16 PM PST - 19 comments
Scott Kurtz throws down the gauntlet.
The mighty creator of
PvP offers any newspaper the opportunity to include his fine and funny comic strip on their comics pages
absolutely FREE OF CHARGE,, thus totally destroying the aging and now ineffective syndicated cartoon business model. Check out his theory on why the syndicates are goin' down, soon, and the background behind his decision to challenge them on their home turf.
posted by zoogleplex at 4:12 PM PST - 37 comments
Iraq's Child Prisoners It’s not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention. Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The report has – surprisingly – not been made public. A key section on child protection, headed Children in Conflict with the Law or with Coalition Forces, reads: ''In July and August 2003, several meetings were conducted with CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) … and Ministry of Justice to address issues related to juvenile justice and the situation of children detained by the coalition forces … Unicef is working through a variety of channels to try and learn more about conditions for children who are imprisoned or detained, and to ensure that their rights are respected.'' Another section reads: ''Information on the number, age, gender and conditions of incarceration is limited. In Basra and Karbala children arrested for alleged activities targeting the occupying forces are reported to be routinely transferred to an internee facility in Um Qasr. The categorisation of these children as 'internees' is worrying since it implies indefinite holding without contact with family, expectation of trial or due process.''
posted by y2karl at 12:39 PM PST - 30 comments
I Think (Therefore) I'm Guilty?
A convicted sex offender is barred from public parks and the zoo in Lafayette, Indiana after he revealed to his psychologist that he entertained thoughts of sexual contact with children, while visiting a park. Here's John Doe's
history of arrests and charges for alleged sexual offences.
posted by Gyan at 12:23 PM PST - 59 comments
Having just returned to
Paradise for a little visit, I am reminded just how cool this little place is (not that I needed much reminding *whimper*), and am looking for touristy things to do here without a car. While I was on my way up on the
Pacific Surfliner train, a fellow rider told me about
Santa Barbara Car Free. Awesome!
Also props to CalTrans' alliance with Amtrak in California. The trains and service and overall quality of the passenger rail system is quite a bit different from what I've experienced thus far of the stuff handled by Amtrak alone.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:02 PM PST - 12 comments
When
Wired News redesigned as nearly standards compliant xhtml in fall of 2002, it was cause for a great deal of celebration. Since then other prominent sites like
ESPN and
PGA have jumped on the standards bandwagon, as have countless personal sites.
Today the SF Examiner launched a new site design which does
validate as xhtml. More interesting to me are their
category archives and
date archives, which mimic a weblog's simple and useful layout. Heck, I even love
the story pages which feature large leaded text (space between lines - the amount of "double spaceness") which is also blog-like, and makes for comfortable reading. As far as I know, SF Examiner is the first, but will this start a new wave of bandwidth-saving, well-designed newspaper redesigns? [via
veen]
posted by mathowie at 10:36 AM PST - 11 comments
I never would have imagined we'd see silent, full-powered, electric motocross bikes, but
they actually exist. Looks like they went for gas motor-like performance over range, but they'd probably be a blast if you had a small track near your house.
posted by mathowie at 9:22 AM PST - 10 comments
Greece gets ready for the return of the Olympics by ridding the streets of its stray dogs.
don't watch this if you're an animal lover. Or better yet, DO if you can handle it, because it's one of the saddest things i've seen in a long time. Though the government of Athens is denying it is responsible for this, someone is poisoning the city's thousands of stray dogs by putting it in food (naturally, a stray, hungry dog will eat it). The ensuing death does not come quickly. I've always wanted to visit Greece, especially being from a Mediterranean family (experience the roots, and all that) but suffice it to say it's moved to the bottom of the list of places to visit at this point. I've seen better treatment of animals in countries far less developed than Greece.
posted by cadence at 7:17 AM PST - 57 comments
August 1
The only thing that masks the pain is sleep, but even that's hard to come by.
I've occasionally checked in with 17 y.o. Markelle's blog for a year or two now. While I don't know her personally, I'd consider it unlikely that she's making this up. I'd guess it's more likely that her dad actually did commit suicide. "Best of the web?" Honestly, I don't know. Perhaps it's just a glimpse at a life that might benefit from your good thoughts.
posted by scarabic at 11:53 PM PST - 56 comments
How to be creative.
Hugh "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" Macleod gives some excellent advice on how to do those creative things you've always wanted to do.
vis boingboing.net
posted by skallas at 5:56 PM PST - 16 comments
Google IPO:
the Prospectus. Of particular interest in this 119-page (not including appendices) monster document are the
Risk Factors (there are lots) and the
Letter from the Founders, an "owner's manual" for Google shareholders: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one... If opportunities arise that might cause us to sacrifice short term results but are in the best long term interest of our shareholders,
we will take those opportunities... We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place". Of course, if hardcore financial stuff is your bag, there's plenty of that, too.
posted by reklaw at 4:14 PM PST - 15 comments
English Accents and Dialects.
The British Library has compiled an online archive of northern speech dating back to the 19th century. The recordings range from from audio from Victorian cylinder dictaphones to 1950s football fans chanting.
posted by Masi at 6:20 AM PST - 10 comments
"All he has left now
to remember the grandson he once carried on his back is a stack of workbooks -- trigonometry, politics, history. Mr. Zheng does not recognize enough Chinese characters to read them. But he keeps the books as memorials." The best human interest story of the year, and a look into the lives of China's rural poor.
posted by Tlogmer at 4:33 AM PST - 11 comments
