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August 2005 Archives
August 31
The Utopian Nightmare
: "What is utopianism? It is promising more than you can deliver. It is seeing an easy and sudden answer to long-standing, complex problems. It is trying to solve everything at once through an administrative apparatus headed by “world leaders.” It places too much faith in altruistic cooperation and underestimates self-seeking behavior and conflict. It is expecting great things from schemes designed at the top, but doing nothing to solve the bigger problems at the bottom."
Also, be sure to check out the the 16 ideas, values and institutions that may not be with us 35 years from now written by a variety of interesting people and compiled as part of Foreign Policy's 35th anniversary (although not all are free or available without registration).
posted by loquax at 9:49 PM PST - 23 comments
Orca Live:
The idea of Nature Network is to relay live imagery and sound from cameras set up in Nature throughout the world.
"My hope is to bring people closer to Nature without disrupting her" that hope is the hope of Dr. Spong. At this very moment, all over the
world, a variety of organisms are beaming with life. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were media by which people could get a sense of this?
If a window could be opened up that would trigger city dwellers' memories of the rhythms of Nature, the way we sense the world and our way of being are bound to change somewhat. That hope, too, lies within.
via
posted by hortense at 7:41 PM PST - 2 comments
Purdue University has begun providing podcasts of lectures of some courses, intended for students who miss a class or who want to review specific lectures. Users of the service
can download a specific lecture or all of the lectures from an entire course. Apparently also open to the public it is called
Boilercast, about 50 classes are starting now for Fall 2005.
posted by stbalbach at 3:51 PM PST - 15 comments
Everyone is (probably) familiar with
Something Awful. However, you may not be familiar with their hosting company - located in a New Orleans office building on Poydras in the CBD... but have you noticed that SA hasn't gone blank yet? It's because
Zipa, and
directNIC upstairs have the whole data center disaster contingency thing on
lockdown.
Blog and
pictures from the directNIC guys are regularly updated. Color me impressed.
posted by kuperman at 3:41 PM PST - 69 comments
The Bawls Song
is something I found out about through
PAX, where I was an enforcer. The main
Bawls site isn't anything to look at, but this viral piece of fan music is awesome. And if I'm wrong and it's not a fan piece of music (I couldn't find it on their site) sorry!
Warning: large file (mp3) and NSFW language.
posted by taumeson at 12:26 PM PST - 16 comments
The Rawker!
"The mullet hanging out of the back of the trucker hat, the fact that he's topless and occasionally forgets the lyrics (and must read them from an index card), the chinese zodiac calendar hanging on the wall, just below the window dressing - BUT THERE'S NO WINDOW... And the music! IT RAWKS!"
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:18 AM PST - 37 comments
Gas at $4 a gallon?
A quick
summary of the current reasons gas remains high ("Not I!" squawks the refiners, "Not I!" squawks producers). The EPA is easing restrictions in affected areas and the national oil keg is
being tapped (WSJ), yet despite the whole doom-and-gloom scenerios the
Economist remains perky about the cause of rising prices, "higher oil prices [now] reflect strong demand, ... they are the product of healthy global growth."
posted by geoff. at 10:41 AM PST - 122 comments
Homes from Snøhetta.
Løvetann houses are made from modules with built-in standards such as wireless networking, kitchen and bathroom appliances, and home entertainment systems. A small step up from
this.
posted by tellurian at 12:19 AM PST - 22 comments
August 30
St. James Infirmary,
in a funereal, no lyrics, brass-band version underlies a persistent scrum of half-remembered songs about New Orleans rising in concert with the waters, lapping at the sandbags of my mind. Up front,
Tom Waits (
I Wish I Was in New Orleans) and
Randy Newman (
Lousiana 1927) are duking it out for time at the piano, elaborately filigreed chords overlapping and changing the dominant lyric at the moment of harmonic convergence, while in the background
Arlo Guthrie (
The City of New Orleans) warbles about a train ride.
Professor Longhair and/or
The Dixie Cups (
Big Chief,
Iko Iko) sort of amusedly fight to keep sliptime with the martial drums from Jimmy Driftwood's
The Battle of New Orleans (caution: embedded quicktime) behind the whole toxic soup of sonic residue. I'm sure the stew will grow more dense over the next couple weeks.
Got a New Orleans song to toss into the waters?
posted by mwhybark at 10:58 PM PST - 45 comments
More than 30 feet of water stood over land inhabited by nearly one million people. Almost 300,000 African Americans were forced to live in refugee camps for months. Many people, both black and white, left the land and never returned.
"When Mother Nature rages, the physical results are never subtle. Because we cannot contain the weather, we can only react by tabulating the damage in dollar amounts, estimating the number of people left homeless, and laying the plans for rebuilding. But . . . some calamities transform much more than the landscape."
No, not Katrina.
The Great Mississippi flood of 1927. Author John M. Barry in his definitive work on the subject, "shows how a heretofore anti-socialist America was forced by unprecedented circumstance to embrace an enormous, Washington-based big-government solution to the greatest natural catastrophe in our history, preparing the way (psychologically and otherwise) for the New Deal." The author is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane and Xavier universities (whose web site is *understandably* not answering right now).
<Heading for the library to find this book>
posted by spock at 6:14 PM PST - 12 comments
Crashed Cars of Kuwait
With a 120kph (75mph) highway speed limit, an 80kph (50mph) urban speed limit, a lot of expensive high performance cars, next to no law enforcement, driving in Kuwait can be a little, err, exciting. Psycho Milt, a New Zealander working in Kuwait, has a substantial and ever-growing
flickr photoset of crashed cars he's snapped on his daily commute.
posted by noizyboy at 3:37 PM PST - 19 comments
Let the bush bashing begin.
Funding for work on New Orleans' flood prevention system slowed to a trickle in 2003, and many people (long before Monday) claimed that was due to the Iraq war. [more inside]
posted by delmoi at 2:58 PM PST - 181 comments
The
MESSENGER spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral on August 3, 2004 and returned to Earth for its
first gravity boost on the way to Mercury a year later on August 2, 2005. MESSENGER took hundreds of high-res digital photos during its
Earth flyby and they've been sequenced into an amazing
movie of Earth rotating over 24 hours as the spacecraft swung past at thousands of miles per hour.
posted by driveler at 10:15 AM PST - 31 comments
Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!
(by Wired News). "A splinter faction of Flickr photo-sharing community members is threatening a symbolic "mass suicide" to protest closer integration with the website's new owner, Yahoo." Welcome to the Flickr Accounts Mass Suicide Countdown group -
Flick Off.
posted by webmeta at 6:01 AM PST - 91 comments
The Landmark Trust.
Ever wanted to stay somewhere with a little more class and history than the usual chain hotels? The landmark trust is a UK charity dedicated to restoring unique and historical buildings; they finance their work by renting them out to their members. While most of their buildings are scattered across the UK they also have four in Italy and
four in New England, including Rudyard Kipling's personally designed house,
Naulakha. In Florence, they have Robert and Elizabeth Browning's flat, though in Rome they only have the flat above the one in which Keats died (though it is nicely located at the Spanish steps). Unfortunately you have to pay to get the Handbook which shows all they have to offer, but featured buildings in their site include
Fort Clonque,
Swarkestone Pavilion and the Lutyens designed
Goddards.
Amongst their next
goals; preventing the 1830 folly,
Clavell Tower from falling into the sea.
Nothing less than pr0n for the architecturally inclined.
posted by biffa at 4:59 AM PST - 8 comments
Rape Charge Follows Marriage to a 14-Year-Old
[NYTimes] Mr. Koso is 22. The baby's mother, Crystal, is 14. He is charged with statutory rape, even though they were wed with their parents' blessing in May, crossing into Kansas because their own state prohibits marriages of people under 17. The Nebraska attorney general accuses Mr. Koso of being a pedophile; they say it is true love.
posted by psmealey at 3:47 AM PST - 79 comments
August 29
Pandora.
Bound to draw comparisons to
Last.fm,
LAUNCHcast, and
Musicplasma, Pandora (formerly Savage Beast) is a music discovery web application that recommends music based not on popularity, usage habits of other users, or genres/categories but on the deconstructed elements of how the music itself sounds. Fruit of the
Music Genome Project, music analysts have for more than five years spent 20 minutes analyzing each song in its ever-growing database for nearly 400 distinct attributes, so when you ask it, "Why is this song playing?" It answers, "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, surreal lyrics, use of call-and-response vocals, and string section beds." (YES! Thank you!) Currently live on public beta.
[Flash, 128kbps streams]
posted by Lush at 11:10 PM PST - 44 comments
The SLAPP
(Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) isn’t a particularly novel way of stifling dissent: indeed, there are laws in California and other US States to prevent them. Their potential for misuse has also been identified in the
Australian context, which has no clear definition of protected free speech.
The latest effort at a SLAPP is by
Gunns Ltd., a
successful forestry company based in Tasmania. They’re suing the
”Gunns 20” for charges including
conspiracy and ‘vilification’ (which is not actually a tort). Defendants include a Senator,
Dr Bob Brown of the
Australian Greens political party.
The case is being compared (by the
defendants) to the infamous PR disaster
McLibel case, however Gunns should perhaps get a better lawyer: their initial pleading has been described by the judge as an "
unintelligible embarrassment", showing that a bit of judicial common sense can still work wonders.
posted by wilful at 10:07 PM PST - 6 comments
The winning design for the British Antarctic Survey's
Halley VI station looks very futuristic. It's built on legs with skis (a runner up -
walked) so that it can be moved around and avoid being buried like some
1,
2 in the
past.
posted by tellurian at 9:12 PM PST - 13 comments
Language Corner
by Columbia Journalism Review, is incredibly helpful when it comes to learning the English language's subtle nuances and rather obvious rules.
posted by riffola at 12:22 PM PST - 20 comments
The most expensive $20 you’ll never see.
(Unless you happen to be kickin’ it in
Long Beach next month...) The 1933 “double eagle”, a one oz. gold coin minted by the United States just prior to dropping the gold standard, is now worth approximately $10,000,000 and is the stuff of coin collection legend. A collector by the name of Israel “Izzy” Switt acquired and held on to 10 of them—just after the last “double eagle” had officially been melted down by the government in 1937. (
Timeline.) Now, decades later, the coins are the subject of an
intense legal battle between the US government and Switt’s descendants.
“It’s a hell of a story.”
posted by voltairemodern at 12:18 PM PST - 20 comments
The Jack Kirby Museum
opened yesterday on what would have been Kirby's 88th birthday. While just an online museum at this point, it promises to be a great resource for learning about the
life and
contributions Jack
"The King" Kirby made to comic book culture. Largely under-credited for
his role in co-creating many of Marvel's characters during the Silver Age of comics, his career spanned over 50 years.
Largely from The Jack Kirby Weblog, natch!
posted by jpburns at 4:52 AM PST - 23 comments
August 28
Since Fox News wrongly identified a La Habra home as that of a terrorist,
its five- member family has faced an angry backlash. A FOX correspondent named an alleged terrorist connected with the July London bombings, and went so far as to provide the man's address (deep in the heart of the O.C.) "to help local police". Unfortunately, the address was three years out of date, and the current residents who have no connection whatsoever with the former occupant are being threatened, harassed by people driving by & yelling threats at them, and have had their home vandalized by a spectacular moron with a spray can.
Full story here (LA Times, use
bugmenot).
posted by jonson at 11:39 PM PST - 141 comments
The Benedictine Vivarium
"In the Benedictine tradition of reverence for human thought and creativity, the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library preserves manuscripts, printed books and art at Saint John's University and undertakes photographic projects in regions throughout the world.
" --
"Nearly half of HMML's holdings derive from libraries in Austria and Germany, but HMML also houses significant collections from Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, England, and Ethiopia. It holds archival materials, and of particular importance are the Archives of the Knights of Malta, housed in the National Library in Valletta, and the Archives of the Roman Inquisition, located at the Cathedral Museum in Mdina.
" EXAMPLE PAGES --
Illustrations,
Photographs ,
Paintings/Iconography,
Pottery/Sculptures,
Artifacts,
Manuscripts and more - if this kind of thing interests you, then search around - I've only begun scratching the surface.
Nb. See browser setup info at bottom of page in main link.
[via]
posted by peacay at 12:28 PM PST - 9 comments
Live Local Coverage Of Hurricane Katrina
New Orleans television stations
WWL
and
WDSU
are providing nonstop live coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The
Mississippi Department Of
Transportation has live cams along the major highways which show the massive evacuation of the coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi including the metropolitan areas of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. With gusts of 207 MPH this could set a new record for the largest hurricane to ever hit the United
States.
posted by robliberal at 12:25 PM PST - 624 comments
Placebos Trigger Opioids.
New research indicates that the placebo effect is physical, not merely "psychological." Brain scans show that people who believe they are getting a medication to control pain trigger the release of opioids in their brains. Those natural endorphins reduce pain.
When Karl Marx said that religion in the opiate of the masses, he may have been literally correct. If faith in an useless medication can release natural painkillers, won't faith that God will make your life less painful do the same? This might also help explain why religion is so addictive, and why many people like the POTUS pass through the gateway drugs of alcohol and cocaine only to migrate to religion and jogging,
which also releases endorphins.
posted by MonkeyC at 10:27 AM PST - 66 comments
August 27
Duck Doom Deluxe
is a version of the old NES Duck Hunt game skinned to use the FPS gun/hand graphics from the original Doom. Windows only, apologies...
posted by jonson at 11:28 PM PST - 10 comments
Katrina targets New Orleans.
Mandatory evacuations have been declared, and contraflow evacuation routes are in effect near New Orleans, as
Hurricane Katrina, a very wet, drenching hurricane,
approaches the city from the Gulf of Mexico, where it is gaining in size and strength, with an estimated
45% chance of making landfall as a category 4 or 5 hurricane. The
computer models suggest that New Orleans will sustain a direct hit from Katrina, which could be
"The Big One" warned about by experts, capable of
flooding the city, polluting it with industrial waste, and even flooding the pump stations, leaving it incapable of pumping out the water. The hurricane is predicted to make landfall early Monday near
Port Fourchon, which handles approximately
13% of U.S. oil imports, and 27% of U.S. domestic production.
posted by insomnia_lj at 6:21 PM PST - 272 comments
In the First Person
"provides in-depth indexing of more than 2,500 collections of oral history in English from around the world. With future releases, the index will broaden to identify other first-person content, including letters, diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies, and other personal narratives... It allows for keyword searching of more than 260,000 pages of full-text by more than 9,000 individuals from all walks of life." You could start with the
places or
Historical Events listings, or just pick a keyword and dive in. (The post title is from the
first interview in the collection, from July 1930, with He Dog, who was born in the same year as Crazy Horse: "We grew up together in the same band, played
together, courted the girls together and fought together.") Via
wood s lot.
posted by languagehat at 2:49 PM PST - 6 comments
Robert Novak gets it wrong again.
Predicting that
Ellsworth Air Force Base in North Dakota would fall victim to the
Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BARC) thus damaging the political career of Republican
John Thune, Novak argued that the White House was "ignoring Thune" contradicting "the image of a White House that puts politics first. Instead, the Bush team looked like tone-deaf, old-fashioned Republicans interested more in going by the book than winning elections." Thune promised that only a Republican senator could save Ellsworth, South Dakota's largest employer, from closure. That promise played a prominent role in his campaign. In defeating senate minority leader
Tom Daschle, Thune's victory marked
the first time since 1952 that a party leader in the senate was defeated. When
Ellsworth was nevertheless put on the list for closure, Thune's politcal future appeared doomed.
As promised, Thune went into action. Yesterday,
Thune announced Ellsworth is saved! Contrary to Novak's opinion, the image of a White House that puts politics first is as strong as ever.
posted by three blind mice at 10:39 AM PST - 21 comments
The Forgotten Amendment: The story of the 27th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
Back in 1982, while doing research for a government class, UT Austin student Gregory Watson stumbled across an unratified constitutional amendment from 1789. Noticing that the amendment had had no time limit for ratification, Mr. Watson embarked upon a campaign to amend the U. S. Constitution.
Sadly, Watson only earned a "C" on his paper for government class, in which he'd argued the amendment was still viable.
posted by Dr. Zira at 9:46 AM PST - 14 comments
Ideophones
are words that are usually spoken but not written and are often
onomatopoeic, including (
but not limited to) the calls—often
reduplicated—with which we beckon domestic animals, kindred to our
animal imitations. In the States there are many more
pig calls beyond
soo-ee. Maxim Gorky wrote that the sound
tse tse is used to call pigs in Russia. In Spanish
coch is used.
Americans use
pipi and
biddy to call chickens and turkeys. In
Ambon Malay chickens are called with
kurrrrr or
pan kur. In
Kiswahili you call chickens with
gurúgurúgurúgurú, call dogs with
aháháhá, and straying cattle with
ishiyeeyeeeeee or
ngoyéeeeee. In Sweden, they call cattle with a loud, high-pitched
kulning (akin to
yodeling). Cervantes wrote that they use
tus tus to call dogs in Spain.
One source says in
Coolderry, Ireland, they use
gen-gen to call pigs to ford,
puddly pudde to call ducks,
peopeo to call horses, and
geg geg to call geese. In Iceland,
kibbakibb is used to call sheep. In the Hiligaynon language of the Philippines, they call cats with
míming. In the parish of Nantcwnlle in Wales they have their own
set of calls.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:46 AM PST - 17 comments
August 26
Oakland police detaining photographers?
A month after being stopped for
taking photos of another building in San Francisco, blogger Thomas Hawk & some friends were detained for 20 minutes by an Oakland police officer for taking photos in the downtown warehouse district.
Among the topics of debate in the post's comments: was racial profiling an issue? is/should there even be a right to take the officer in question's photo? are SF residents more paranoid than the rest of us? is detaining a group of photographers a good use of police time? will commenters ever learn to spell "fascist" properly? and much more...
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:13 PM PST - 38 comments
Stimulating the male G-spot:
The medically researched and designed Aneros was originally created to safely and effectively massage the prostate, relieve congested prostate fluid, and promote general prostate health. It is anatomically tailored to the male body. When it was initially released, the Aneros worked like designed and greatly improved the quality of lives for many of our customers. However, in addition to reporting improved prostate health,
many of our users reported experiencing unbelievable orgasms and unique pleasure that, while different from a traditional penile orgasm, could only be described as "orgasmic."
And the best thing is, you don't have to charge any batteries neither do you have to use your hands. It's completely sphincter operated!
You can also just put it on your mantle piece and call it modern art. [Links might be NSFW, but no naked pictures]
posted by kika at 8:01 PM PST - 62 comments
Never want to work again? Maybe you need a
sugar daddy.
Not too much in California, so it seems I'm out of luck.
posted by starscream at 6:29 PM PST - 16 comments
Art Rage:
An unfortunate name for a really fun program. From the site: "ArtRage is all about playing with paint without the mess, and having fun in the process. You can paint your own image from a blank canvas to completed work, or load in a picture to trace and have the tools pick their colours for you as you paint over it." Friday fun that can keep you occupied all weekend. Enjoy.
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:37 PM PST - 9 comments
I’m trying to make individuals within families. I ask myself, how can you create one-offs, while you are actually working with an industrial, serial production technology? I’m trying to raise both of them, unique objects and serial output, to a higher level of quality. Quite a theme, isn’t it?
Hella Jongerius creates custom
products/ art that utilizes a mixture of hand and industrial, mass production techniques. It is quite a theme, yes.
posted by Phantast at 1:06 PM PST - 3 comments
Livingsoft sucks? EULAs vs. "First Sale" doctrine.
Ed Foster covers the story of a woman who attempted to sell her legal copy of
Livingsoft's Dress Shop 5 Pro sewing-pattern-producing software on eBay, resulting in harrassment from Livingsoft's president towards her and the prospective buyer. The article and resulting discussion about EULAs and software purchases vs. licences is full of interesting perspectives.
If you pay sales tax for a tool, and discover upon opening it that a non-negotiable EULA exists, which prevents you from reselling but does not obligate the manufacturer to the responsibilities of ownership (maintenance, etc.), then who is the owner? Is the EULA valid?
posted by Tubes at 10:48 AM PST - 20 comments
The FBI has issued the first
demand for library records under the Patriot Act. The library in question is somewhere in Bridgeport, CT. The
ACLU is seeking an emergency court order to lift the FBI gag order, but they've been instructed by the gag to keep the person whose library records being sought (i.e., their client) a secret. What the ACLU has revealed is that the client is a member of the American Library Association (clearly, a front for terrorism). If any MeFites are interested in digging up additional details on this and start making calls,
here's a good place to start. What indeed would the FBI consider so threatening?
posted by ed at 10:46 AM PST - 57 comments
I thought you left
"I am amicably leaving the Drudge Report after a long and close working relationship with Matt Drudge... I am also excited to be a partner in an inspired new endeavor, the
Huffington Post." This was written May 26th but Drudge is linking to this "raucous, opinionated, red meat eating libertarian-leaning conservative"
more than ever.
posted by j.p. Hung at 8:22 AM PST - 28 comments
The poet has checked out.
Thomas Strickland died on August 15, 2005, in
Al Mahmudiyah, Iraq, after
several harrowing ordeals.
He left behind
his journal and
numerous war poems, such as
"Cheers to suicide! So Where's my Martini?" and
"Terrer be a Cancer Today", parts one and two.
Could he be the
Wilfred Owen of the Iraq War?
"Humanity, I think, is what fills the little gaps between all the broken shit, all the breaking, and all the plans, schematics, graphics and orders. Its the sand slipping out of grasping fingers. Its our instinct without progress as a motivator. It's who we are when we concentrate on being more than doing."
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:53 AM PST - 30 comments
Do you suffer from mobile telephone calls at inopportune times? Could you use a cute
PA to take calls for you while gaming, or asleep? A dissertation project from MIT by
HCI specialist
Stefan Marti may have your solution:
Cellular Squirrel.
Of course you will always want to talk to people who are
thinking the same things as you, so Cellular Squirrel
waves and moves about rather than making a sound. His oddly bulbous figure makes use of
"socially strong non-verbal cues like gaze, posture, and gestures, to alert and interact with the user" rather than intrusive alerts in order to minimise user stress and social disruption.
Cellular intermediaries also come in two other flavours: "a parrot and a cute bunny"
posted by NinjaPirate at 3:15 AM PST - 12 comments
August 25
CENTCOM trolls for a blogger to help with the propaganda--but he picks Jesus' General
--
I am a Public Affairs Officer writing from US Central Command. I would like to inquire about the possibility of you posting a link to our web site. I see that you are covering a lot of different types of stories in a lot of countries. I would like to get some of the stories out that are happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. ...
Gen. JC Christian, patriot, of course responds with an even better idea, and cc:s Pat Robertson.
posted by amberglow at 9:53 PM PST - 20 comments
...This is one of the reasons why I am convinced that Zionism should not simply be dismissed. Hans Kohn turned away from Zionism, but Martin Buber and Ahad Ha'am definitely did not. If Zionism can produce voices such as these, this is evidence of a fermentation of rare value. Discovering thinkers like Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt and Ahad Ha'am was like encountering pieces of coral from a deep pool. I had read Arendt and indeed some of Buber's work before, but I did not anticipate the sheer prescience of their critique of Zionism. For example, Arendt predicted that the Jewish state would become utterly reliant on American force, and live 'surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population' in which all 'development would be determined exclusively by the need of war'; this is so accurate, it sends a shudder down your back. Then there was the romantic, semi-mystical discourse of Buber and Ahad Ha'am, posing the question of who we are at its most profound. Their vocabulary revolves around spirituality, selfhood, self-knowledge, truth, understanding, denial. In order to put into words the perils of Zionism, these thinkers had to explore why people can desire identities that become ultimately destructive...from an
interview with
Jacqueline Rose, who wrote
The Question of Zion via Open Democracy
posted by y2karl at 7:51 PM PST - 30 comments
"When I read his work, I forgive him all his sins".
Edmund Wilson
disliked being called a critic. He thought of himself as a journalist, and
nearly all his work was done for commercial magazines, principally Vanity Fair, in the nineteen-twenties; The New Republic, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties; The
New Yorker, beginning in the nineteen-forties; and The New York Review of Books, in the nineteen-sixties. He was
exceptionally well read: he had had a first-class education in English, French, and Italian literature,
and he kept adding languages all his life. He learned to read German, Russian, and Hebrew; when he died, in 1972, he was working on Hungarian.
Edmund Wilson and American culture.
(more inside)
posted by matteo at 7:21 PM PST - 12 comments
Pentagon to close Walter Reed Medical Center
More than 3,700 doctors and other medical personnel will be moved to a new and expanded facility to be built at the Navy's National Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., a few miles away. The move will cost nearly $989 million, and is expected to save more than $301 million over 20 years as the Pentagon seeks to streamline care and provide state of the art medical treatment for wounded servicemen and women.
And saving $301 million over 20 years is better than spending a billion dollars within the next 2 years, how?
And never mind those
18,000+ American casualties coming back from the M.E. I'm sure they'll be able to improvise bedrolls during the renovations up in Bethesda...
posted by vhsiv at 4:55 PM PST - 42 comments
Living on top of Mt. Washington.
09:50 PM Thu Aug 18, 2005 EDT - ...
In the air this morning there was an undeniable chill and on the ground a touch of frost...Clear air pooling south from Canada opened views to the distant Adirondacks as well as deep into Quebec and all our surrounding states...just six week until snow can be expected.
Just a taste of this daily "blog" kept by observers living on the top of the
tallest peak in the Northeast US. Redux of a
previous post, but the blog is interesting enough to put it forth once again.
posted by Jazznoisehere at 2:18 PM PST - 24 comments
Smithsonian's
latest exhibit includes catastrophic leaks that are damaging
priceless treasures. Many items have been destroyed beyond repair and the problem seems to be getting worse. Will certain history be wiped out for good because officials lacked foresight?
posted by Guerilla at 2:02 PM PST - 17 comments
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness are a special set-aside in the
Superior National Forest in the north woods of Minnesota. Containing over 1,000 lakes and streams, 2,200 designated campsites, and 1,500 miles of canoe routes, this treasure provides a great place to escape from the world of civilization. It also, apparently, provides a great reason for cool websites.
The
Swanson party website is one of the most impressive feats of private naturalism I've seen. It has everything from the
68 types of ferns and fern allies you can find in the BWCAW to
lake commentaries for 356 of the biggest (and smallest) lakes that travelers encounter.
There's also the
DC3 website, which has diaries and pictures from a group of BW adventurers from 1977 to 2003. A truly impressive effort, if apparently not ...quite... finished. And while the diaries tell a story arc about a group of friends, the distance between the stories always leaves tantalizing details for the reader to imagine. Such as this tidbit at the end of the
1986 trip, which has as its central detail the fact that one of the party's wives received major burns and had to leave early:
They traveled almost ten miles and portaged four times, (a total of 465 rods), before they reached Snowbank Lake. The wind was very strong. They had to cross the lake the long way and directly into the wind. At one point they didn't move for twenty minutes even though they paddled as hard as they could. They finally reached the landing and headed for the A&W in Ely. From there, Tur called home to check on Beeps. There was no answer. But that's another story.
Naturally, there are also
messageboards set up to discuss trips to the BWCAW,
advocacy organizations to make sure it stays wild, and you can even make entry point
reservations online nowadays.
The Bee Dub previously referenced here on MeFi
posted by norm at 1:40 PM PST - 15 comments
Top 10 What Have the Brits Ever Done For Us?
- An Irish view.
Featuring at #2: the potato famine - apparently much worse than the lesser known 1783 garlic cheese & chips famine, some people resorted to eating each other - starting with the fat sister in the house - "
there'd be plenty of eating in her, y'know..."
Streaming Flash, Sense of humour required
posted by dash_slot- at 10:52 AM PST - 27 comments
Blogger claims to hack National Zoo panda name vote.
The National Zoo has
opened its poll on the name for the new baby panda. Readers of DCist, Wonkette, and other Washington blogs quickly developed the nickname "Butterstick" for the infant panda, based on the oft-quoted description of the panda's birth weight. "Butterstick" was of course not among the name choices on the Zoo's website. So bloggers went ahead and altered the voting form, allowing you to select that name.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 10:11 AM PST - 31 comments
Greta got a blog.
Greta Van Susteren is blogging now, or at least posting articles on foxnews.com and using the word 'blog' in the process. You can read her thoughts on the grave
epidemic of missing white women this country faces!
posted by delmoi at 9:11 AM PST - 64 comments
WeblogsInc Contract for Bloggers.
If you have ever been curious what the writers for
Weblogs Inc are held to, and get paid. I imagine that there are contract tweaks here and there for more in-demand talent, but it breaks down to $500 for 125 posts a month.
posted by jonah at 7:04 AM PST - 44 comments
August 24
Prostatitis is a Tension Disorder.
Researchers from
The Stanford University Department of Urology have come to the conclusion that "approximately 95% of symptoms that are commonly diagnosed as
prostatitis [are] not caused by an infection or inflammation of the prostate gland."
They have identified a group of chronic pelvic pain syndromes which are the result of an overzealous use of the instinct to protect the genital area. Their web site devoted to these findings is
www.pelvicpainhelp.com.
Their research shows that chronic pelvic pain along with negative emotions, anxiety and rage create a self-perpetuating cycle. Anxiety in certain individuals expresses itself through tension in the pelvic floor area and the "overuse" of the instinct to protect the genital region. That physical tension in turn adds to the emotional anxiety and stress, which in turn creates more pelvic tension as the cycle reinforces itself.
In a study of their treatment protocol, 72% of patients were considered moderately improved or markedly improved.
The third edition of their book
A Headache in the Pelvis: A New Understanding and Treatment for Prostatitis and Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndromes , by David Wise Ph.D. and Rodney Anderson M.D., which describes the syndromes and the Stanford treatment protocol, has just been released.
While
prostatitis is a male problem because only men have a prostate, chronic pelvic pain is a problem that affects both men and women because both have a pelvic floor with many of the same muscles.
This is a revolutionary theory considering the number of men who have been told by their doctors that prostatitis is just an inevitable part of growing old.
posted by MonkeyC at 10:38 PM PST - 24 comments
Supernatural flashes and light leaks!
The page layout is surely not the best of the web (forgivaness-- you've got to scroll past some bad 1998-vintage ads to get to the meat) but the credulous explanations for the photographic anomalies are some of the best leaps of logic I've seen posted anywhere. From
cigarette smoke to
light leaks, these guys leave no preternatural stone unturned.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:55 PM PST - 44 comments
Modern history is replete with assassinations that have a dramatic impact on national and international politics: the killing of Alexander II by anarchists in 1881 unleashed repression and anti-semitism in the Russian empire; the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in June 1914 in Sarajevo sparked the "great war" that drowned Europe in blood and inaugurated what Eric Hobsbawm calls "the short 20th century"; the assassination of the liberal Colombian politician Jorge Gaitan in 1948 (a day after he had met a Latin American youth delegation that included the 21-year-old Fidel Castro) helped spark a civil war – the violencia – that continues to this day and the shooting down on 6 April 1994 of the plane carrying Rwanda's and Burundi's presidents, Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira precipitated the Rwandan genocide. Political killing in the cold war [& thereafter] provides an outline of the aftereffects of assassinations, covert killings, state and judicial executions.
posted by y2karl at 4:42 PM PST - 37 comments
Critical Mass in Milwaukee
ran into some "problems" with police on the July 29th ride:
“I unfortunately chose to lock my bike with a friend and go see what was happening with the group who had been stopped at the yellow light. I ran down the street just in time to see police tackle a man on a bike who had a baby carriage attached to end of his bike. After he was pulled to the ground another officer violently pushed over his baby carriage with the baby inside,”
More coverage and
some photos.
posted by nTeleKy at 8:56 AM PST - 125 comments
Ten years ago today, Microsoft released a
massive overhaul of their flagship product — Windows 95. It added support for 256-character mixed-case long filenames,
pre-emptive multitasking, and protected-mode 32-bit applications. Detractors noted that its
updated interface owed a number of debts to Apple's MacOS and IBM's OS/2. Most importantly, however, Windows 95 included built-in support for dial-up networking and a TCP/IP stack. Once this technology was widely-available, it was only a matter of time until the Internet became a household word.
posted by Plutor at 8:00 AM PST - 80 comments
Ourmedia needs volunteer moderators.
Ourmedia, which provides "free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software" is doing well. Too well. The current volunteer moderator team of 40 is faced with the overwhelming task of reviewing the submitted content of 40,000 users for copyright and other policy violations, on which their open submission policy depends. If you'd like to get involved, now would be the time.
posted by Caviar at 7:08 AM PST - 6 comments
Subtitles on the radio.
Last night Radio 1, the BBC's flagship youth station, broadcast an hour of Welsh language music and chat. The webcast includes subtitles.
posted by ceiriog at 5:18 AM PST - 6 comments
Anti-Japan War Online
"The game will allow players, especially younger players, to learn from history. They will get a patriotic feeling when fighting invaders to safeguard their motherland"
The background for "Anti-Japan War Online" is the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, from 1937 through 1945. Nothing like a good MMORPG to foster a little patriotism.
posted by bigmusic at 4:57 AM PST - 20 comments
August 23
Our Caribbean Cruise.
I am not quite sure what to make of this. A man takes his dying wife on a carribean cruise and seems determined to take a photo of
every moment of their time togther for the folks back home. At times sad and poignant, especially at the end, and at other times a curious mixture of the
tedious and
creepy. A very human story.
posted by vac2003 at 10:26 PM PST - 45 comments
Thudguard:
proudly creating a generation of children who randomly slam their heads into the ground after not learning the do-not-hurt-head part of growing up.
posted by pivotal at 7:35 PM PST - 35 comments
An Open Letter to young Ryland Kallman
(to be delivered on the occasion of his 18th birthday)
Dear Ryland: We, the citizens of the internet, apologize for the way in which you were raised, and we will try to bear in mind the adversity you faced as an child before passing judgement on your actions as an adult. Thanks to
this article we were all aware of the psychic trauma inflicted by your mother (aka "The Martha Stewart of Parenting™"), but as simple bloggers and computer programmers, we were powerless to stop this abuse. It is our hope that upon this day of the symbolic beginning of your adult life, you will be able to read this history of your early years, and to reflect on the toxic culture of insecurity and fear that was the undoing of so many good people of your parents' generation. It may be difficult to face these facts, but chances are you're reading this online, and (assuming the internet is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Walmart by 2023) there are millions of people here who can help you work through these issues. Also Ryland, we apologize for your name.
posted by idontlikewords at 11:59 AM PST - 128 comments
The second Indigenous Nations' Games of Para doesn't have a website and there's not even an AP story describing the events, but there are a lot of
photos from the games.
posted by hellx at 8:44 AM PST - 6 comments
An unexpected side effect of iTunes.
Remember
Bowie Bonds? Introduced in 1997, bonds tied to future profits of music artists (besides Bowie, James Brown and the Isley Brothers offered them) tanked with the advent of online filesharing. Thanks to iTunes, some on Wall Street are betting that the Bowie Bond is a concept with a future.
posted by me3dia at 8:41 AM PST - 16 comments
Panos
- 105 Fake road signs by 47 artists world-wide. {site is flash. best way to see them all is go through "artists"}
posted by dobbs at 7:53 AM PST - 23 comments
Google's big announcement due on Wednesday.
Google is due to make an announcement on Wednesday of a new service focusing on presence and communication. The word on the internets is that it will be a chat and IM client. Google already has a chat client in the picture sharing app,
Hello, which is available in both standalone install and as part of
Picasa. Possible screenshot of the app is
here, with additional coverage at
BigBlueBall and
Neowin. The prevalent consensus seems to be that it will be (or be based on )
Jabber, (
PDF) with the core innovation being
the use of XMPP.
posted by rzklkng at 6:32 AM PST - 122 comments
August 22
Glassy eyes.
The
German art of glass eye blowing was developed in Lauscha, Germany in 1835 using cryolite glass. It's a dying art, Australia has only
one practitioner in the country. This slow loading but fascinating
video [sorry, Windows media] shows the process (apparently in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea). With a family history in the trade and a
pioneer in contact lens development, this man's daughter feels that her father is in need of a bit of recognition.
posted by tellurian at 7:48 PM PST - 12 comments
Arimaa
is the first game designed specifically to be hard for computers to play, while easy for people. With its billions of combinations and push-me-pull-you gameplay conditional value strategy, it's too much for brute force computing. And yet, it's simple enough for a child to play (or at least to
explain).
Play it now against people from all over the world (and lackwit computors).
posted by klangklangston at 1:52 PM PST - 103 comments
Power Cut Shuts Down Iraq Oil Exports
ASRA, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's oil exports were shut down Monday by a power cut that darkened parts of central and southern Iraq, including the country's only functioning oil export terminals, Iraqi and foreign oil officials said.
posted by celerystick at 8:26 AM PST - 21 comments
Saul Bass
may not
be a name familiar to the casual movie fan, but in his
forty year career he created some of the most striking credit sequences around.
From
comedy to
creepy he left his
mark on any movie he was involved with.
Not Coming breaks down twenty-four
of his most famous works.
posted by beowulf573 at 8:13 AM PST - 16 comments
Constant Lambert,
born 100 years ago this week, was briefly the biggest star in British music in the 1930s, famous for the jazz-tinged choral piece,
The Rio Grande. The BBC are playing a retrospective of his music, together with pieces by his contemporary Alan Rawsthorne,
every day this week at 11:00 GMT, repeated at midnight a week later, as part of their
Composer of the week slot (buttons on this page for the live stream, plus the previous five programmes). Unfortunately they aren't playing the whole of his masterpiece, the
Concerto for Piano and Nine Players, dedicated to his late friend Peter Warlock, which can be read as a elegy for the Jazz Age itself.
A heavy drinker, Constant died in 1951; his son
Kit Lambert, who managed The Who during their rise to fame, also died young after drug troubles. Andrew Motion wrote a
biography of three generations of the Lambert family, and reflects on Constant
here.
posted by gdav at 2:51 AM PST - 2 comments
August 21
"Kinky Friedman's candidacy is bound to be something;
what that something is is still up for debate." The
New Yorker checks in on Kinky's gubernatorial campaign
(previously discussed here and here).
My platform is to remember that when they went out searching for Sam Houston to try to persuade him to be the governor--and he was the greatest governor this state has ever had--rumor has it that they found him drunk sleeping under a bridge with the Indians.
[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:43 PM PST - 18 comments
Robert Moog
has passed away after battling a brain tumor for several months. There aren't any news stories up yet, but simply key his name into
Google and it's plain to see his influence on every aspect of music. The family has a
caringbridge page filled with tributes and several journal entries.
posted by teletype1 at 8:50 PM PST - 77 comments
Kodo's
Earth Celebration has come to an end. Kodo is a world famous drumming group that specializes in traditional taiko drumming. This year's guest to the three day festival, celebrating music, art, and culture, was Galacia born, Spanish bag-pipe player
Carlos Nuñez. The festival is held in Ogi town on
Sado Island, Japan.
posted by snwod at 8:03 PM PST - 5 comments
Oregon man gets jailtime for website.
There's a lot you can do on the internet, but "cheating" the state out of tax revenue is a crime. "Washington County Circuit Judge Michael McElligott found Eric Ivan Guthrie not guilty of racketeering and computer crime for selling cigarettes through the now-defunct Inexpensivesmokes.com Web site. However, McElligott found Guthrie guilty of doing business as a cigarette distributor without a license, two counts of unlawful distribution of cigarettes for not affixing the packs with Oregon revenue stamps and five counts of failing to comply with tobacco sale requirements for not verifying that buyers were at least 18 years old. Oregon Department of Revenue has the names and sales receipts for 7,500 people who bought cigarettes online without paying the state tax of $1.18 a pack. A small percentage have been sent bills, and officials are determining how many others will be asked to pay the state". This seems wrong.
posted by Mack Twain at 10:34 AM PST - 37 comments
August 20
It's over. For the U.S. to win the Iraq war requires three things: defeating the Iraqi resistance; establishing a stable government in Iraq that is friendly to the U.S.; maintaining the support of the American people while the first two are being done. None of these three seem any longer possible... As a result, the Bush regime is in an impossible position. It would like to withdraw in a dignified manner, asserting some semblance of victory. But, if it tries to do this, it will face ferocious anger and deception on the part of the war party at home. And if it does not, it will face ferocious anger on the part of the withdrawal party. It will end up satisfying neither, lose face precipitously, and be remembered in ignominy. The U.S. Has Lost the Iraq War... See also,
Iraq at the Gates of Hell And yet,
Does the U.S. plan to be in Iraq forever? Via James Wolcott, among others.
posted by y2karl at 10:30 PM PST - 74 comments
Museum of Modern Robocop Art.
Some guy made lots of amazing Robocop pictures using the limited palette offered by
Artpad. Ignore the site,
xoxohth, which is a college and law school discussion board filled with vulgarity, but revel in the many ways Robocop is conceptualized.
posted by Falconetti at 5:55 PM PST - 24 comments
Squeezing more juice out of the hard drive's music library
Now that the hard drive has been filled,and my music has been rated/re-rated, and categorized/re-categorized, it's time to move on, so I went looking for online services that work with the music library . So far, I have found music sharing/new music discovery sites -
last.fm ,
Goombah, and
MusicStrands.
Moodlogic automates playlists based on different song features - tempo, year, etc. What else is out there? How about song lyrics, biographies, discography, upcoming shows, upcoming new releases, similar artists, whenever an artist/song is playing? What else do you do with your music hard drive?
posted by Voyageman at 9:49 AM PST - 34 comments
Project Euler
is a running contest of programming challenges to hone your algorithm skills.
"Each problem is designed according to a 'one-minute rule', which means that although it may take several hours to design a successful algorithm with more difficult problems, an efficient implementation will allow a solution to be obtained on a modestly powered computer in less than one minute."
posted by Wolfdog at 6:11 AM PST - 11 comments
Sucked in!
MRI scanners are hungry for any metal objects in the nearby vicinity, with hilarious and
sometimes tragic results.
The roughly 10,000 scanners in the United States are found not just in hospitals, but in storefront clinics and even mounted on trucks, making rounds of small hospitals or parking at malls to do scans for a fee.
posted by asok at 3:42 AM PST - 50 comments
August 19
Masters of Deception
"
There are a number of
incredible artistic works featured in Masters of Deception, which require movement to appreciate their full impact. Additionally, I had in my possession various interviews with some of the book's featured artists that I wanted to share with my readership. Unfortunately, the publisher was unwilling to produce a CD to accompany
the book. I have created this web site, therefore, to augment and enhance the reader's experience by presenting those works and interviews that I could not present in book form."
Al Seckel. enjoy.
posted by hortense at 10:43 PM PST - 3 comments
Photographing flying insects.
Most of the pages are devoted to a very detailed tutorial, but pages 2, 4, 9 & 10 show the results of the various setups. Some spectacular hi-speed (bee wings frozen in mid buzz) stuff in here.
posted by jonson at 8:26 PM PST - 31 comments
Jack Cafferty pulls a Jon Stewart
--Cafferty, CNN's resident curmudgeon, goes off live on the coverage of the BTK killer.
(video here at Crooks and Liars) ... This is a ghoulish exercise on the part of the news media and if ratings are the reason, then I’ll say it again, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. There was no reason to give this guy a platform to talk to everybody in the country ... With
cameras in courtrooms almost everywhere nowadays, what is the media's responsibility?
posted by amberglow at 6:54 PM PST - 82 comments
Sushifinder
helps you find sushi restaurants in selected US cities. The site has editorial reviews, as well as user reviews and ratings. One helpful feature allows you to type in a street corner (e.g. 3rd and Main) and it will find the sushi joints nearest to that location.
posted by pitchblende at 4:52 PM PST - 17 comments
The Antichrist Checklist
: The most recent entry in Slacktivist's extremely insightful and entertaining
series on mocking and deconstructing the
Left Behind books. Being written from the perspective of a non-fundie Christian just makes it even more powerful. Slacky reveals how manufactured the cooked-up, hacked-together "prophecy," that fuels the series is. If you believe all that nonsense, and can make it through this series with
your wacky premillennial dispensationalist beliefs intact, then I'm sorry but there is no hope for you.
Highlights of this week's installment, the best I've seen in a while: the antichrist, the paucity of the biblical evidence for him/it, and this sentence:
"The composite sketch derived from all these descriptions yields a portrait that looks a little like Nebuchadnezzar, a little like Antiochus Epiphanes, a little like Nero or Diocletian, and a little like Victor von Doom."
posted by JHarris at 4:25 PM PST - 24 comments
Friday flash fun!
Try Poom! You move a constantly changing floor around in a virtual 3-D space so that a ball will bounce on it. Curiously entertaining...
There goes the rest of my day.
via zannah
posted by jasper411 at 1:25 PM PST - 27 comments
"Like any red-blooded, masculine man of the male gender, I love PVC weaponry. You should too. If the concept of heading down to Home Depot and transforming $100 worth of random pipe bits into a killing machine doesn’t appeal to you, you’re a frikkin' pansy. For those of you who laugh at hypersonic shards of plastic puncturing your spleen, here’s a look at how I’ve kept myself busy for the past week:
building a PVC-pipe flamethrower."
posted by fandango_matt at 12:25 PM PST - 64 comments
Ambigrams
are words or phrases that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single vantage point, most commonly right-side-up and upside-down.
Ambigram.Matic is the world's first and only online Ambigram Generator! Flip any word, different words of the same length, or even an entire (symmetrically spaced) sentence on its head, and read it both ways!
posted by mr.dan at 10:01 AM PST - 19 comments
Nanotube sheets!
"The ribbons are transparent, flexible, and conduct electricity. Weight for weight, they are stronger than steel sheets, yet a square kilometre of the material would weigh only 30 kilograms. 'This is basically a new material.'"
Applications could include flexible TV screens, light panels and that digital paper they keep telling us is coming soon.
posted by me3dia at 9:37 AM PST - 31 comments
Remember Kelo?
After winning a landmark eminent domain ruling from the Supreme Court, the New London Development Corporation now wants to pay residents based on value they held in 2000, rather then 2005, which would leave them unable to buy equivalent new home in today's real estate bubble.
Then also want to charge back rent. In some cases up to $300 thousand. Susette Kelo herself now owes $56k.
posted by delmoi at 8:34 AM PST - 66 comments
What if there were
an established international legal precedent for addressing the terrorism problem? Maybe there is. And maybe it involves a plank. Or an eyepatch. Or, like, a hook instead of a hand.
[via aldaily]
posted by willpie at 8:08 AM PST - 19 comments
Remember the
Twixters? Now meet the
Yeppies: Young, Experimenting Perfection Seekers
1,2,3.
"Another survey, another invented tag for a group of young people. This survey was for eBay, carried out by Kate Fox, a social anthropologist at the Social Issues Research Centre. It argues that young people are now shopping around and experimenting to find, as she puts it, 'the perfect job, the ideal relationship and the most fulfilling lifestyle.'" - as
noted by
World Wide Words. [See also: this
Venn diagram.] Will researchers ever tire of all this name-calling, though? If they really want to RTFM about this particular generation, they should just watch
Wonderfalls.
posted by Lush at 6:42 AM PST - 18 comments
August 18
"This is a war story!"
(warning: direct ifilm video link)Don't play VD roulette! Watch Disney's 1973 educational film
"VD Attack Plan" and fight those damned G & S soldiers! Lady killers? Really can kill ladies!
Features whimsical cartoons and really icky photos.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:33 PM PST - 7 comments
Corporate name calling
"I had no bad words at all. I guess the earliest letter is dated in May and from then on up until now my name has been listed as
Jeffery Scrotum Bag Barnes and I have no idea why."
posted by saketini99 at 7:16 PM PST - 28 comments
Akamai's Net Usage Index
tracks the most-read articles on its customers' news sites, rates the current level of news consumption and breaks the traffic down by geography. More info
here.
posted by nyterrant at 12:27 PM PST - 6 comments
The Ministry of Reshelving
This week, we launched the Ministry of Reshelving project. My partners in crime as founding members of the ministry: George, Kiyash, and Monica.
This weekend we relocated 19 copies of George Orwell's 1984 in four different bookstores in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Berkeley. It was high stealth adventure.
You are invited to join our efforts.
Sounds like mischievous fun. Which books would you reshelve?
posted by nofundy at 9:53 AM PST - 118 comments
"Almost half the children committed one or more of these mistakes.
They attempted with apparent seriousness to perform the same actions with the miniature items that they had with the large ones. Some sat down on the little chair: they walked up to it, turned around, bent their knees and lowered themselves onto it. Some simply perched on top, others sat down so hard that the chair skittered out from under them. Some children sat on the miniature slide and tried to ride down it, usually falling off in the process; others attempted to climb the steps, causing the slide to tip over. (With the chair and slide made of sturdy plastic and only about five inches tall, the toddlers faced no danger of hurting themselves.)"
posted by Tlogmer at 9:23 AM PST - 34 comments
Mike Davidson is giving away an iPod
to the respondent that posts the best site that he's never seen. Excellent stuff to be found in the responses so far, with
New York Conversations (previously mentioned
here in the blue) the one that I'm currently checking out.
Legal Notice: I'm not Mike Davidson and have never met nor communicated with him. I'm also not employed by Apple, but I do love their products.
posted by jperkins at 8:34 AM PST - 16 comments
August 17
"In slavery times the negroes were sold to the white people."
In their simple and plain language, elementary school students describe the horrors of slavery as related by their grandparents. The Greensboro Historical Museum has
an online exhibit of the interviews. Another
quote: "He said that the white men would whip them and sometimes hung men and women when they were mad with them or if the slaves tried to run away." The handwriting is kind of hard to read on some of these, but worth it.
posted by Marxchivist at 8:46 PM PST - 26 comments
In case the Downing Street Papers weren't enough:
US State Dept. documents from the National Security Archive, obtained thru a Freedom of Information Act:
State Department experts warned CENTCOM before Iraq war about lack of plans for
post-war Iraq security,
Planning for post-Saddam regime change began as early as October 2001, and
...They provide detail on each of the working groups and give the starting date for planning as October 2001.
Entire sections of a Powerpoint presentation the State Department prepared on November 1, 2002 -- including those covering "What We Have Learned So Far" and "Implications for the Real Future of Iraq" -- have been censored as still-classified information. ... (PDFS)
posted by amberglow at 7:06 PM PST - 41 comments
Death By Caffeine
I just learned that it would take 155.11 cans of Mountain Dew to kill me, according to this odd little service.
posted by jragon at 5:11 PM PST - 44 comments
A military intelligence operation - codenamed
Able Danger -- repeatedly contacted the FBI in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer came out publicly yesterday saying that military lawyers blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the FBI. Shaffer told CNN today that information he tried to provide to the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks never made it to the panel's members. Folks
along the entire political spectrum - from
right to
left -
want to know what's going on.
posted by ericb at 2:36 PM PST - 76 comments
Can you hear the future?
Sunncomm can, and it's called copy protection. Sunncomm's Mediamax
DRM, which blocks the purchaser from copying any files from the CD, is included on the latest
Dave Matthews Band CD,
Stand Up (as well as CDs from some
other artists). The good news? It includes pre-ripped versions of the songs. The bad news? They're
.WMA files.
Apparently, Dave Matthews Band decided to
help out all those iPod lovers who were getting hosed (perhaps in response to
this) by posting instructions on how to bypass Sunncomm's copy protection. Of course, the
last time somebody did that, he nearly got
sued into oblivion. DMB's probably OK, however, because it seems that
business is booming. Of course, that may not
last long.
[via] and [via]
posted by MrZero at 2:35 PM PST - 48 comments
Local
governments in Colorado have agreed to deliberately impede traffic on existing highways near a toll road in order to protect the toll roads' investors.
Article includes examples of similar public/private "cooperation" in Virginia and California.
posted by Kwantsar at 1:24 PM PST - 30 comments
Are you HUNGRY or do you just crave the
flavor?
(my favorite is that Mustard is under the heading Exotic.)
posted by Phantast at 11:48 AM PST - 29 comments
MY DATE WITH DREW
- Follow up to this past
thread.
Though the first post's linked page has changed since the last discussion. What happened to the web journal behind this movie?
posted by thomcatspike at 11:38 AM PST - 15 comments
Popular Science
has posted on their website 5 free mp3's by
Jonathan Coullter to go along with their "The Future of the Body" special issue. Below are some lyrics to "Better", a song about the romantic perils of body augmentation:
"You started out small
Some gills and some wings and a few extra thumbs
Now you're thirteen feet tall
Even when you're asleep your machinery hums
And I'm tired of the evenings I spend
Making small talk with your new robot friends
And their stupid insistence on scanning my iris
When they know damn well who I am"
It's all pretty funny stuff. And pretty slick to boot. You can download the songs direct from Coulter's site
here as well as the lyrics.
posted by saketini99 at 6:01 AM PST - 10 comments
August 16
The Canadian Heraldic Authority,
established in 1988, issues coats of arms, flags, and badges to citzens and corporate bodies of Canada. Canada is the only Commonwealth nation to have its own
heraldic authority. I wasn't sure what 21st-century, global-culture coats of arms would look like, though, until I came across
the coat of arms of G. G. Adrienne Clarkson, which I think are the most impressive coat of arms I have ever come across. The existence of the monarchy and its trappings may be mildly controversial, but these are undeniably works of art. [mi]
posted by blacklite at 7:46 PM PST - 20 comments
Psycho Men Slayers
The female Quake playing community demonstrates a playful use of names to demarcate a specifically oppositional female identity within the online community. This is true both of the naming of individuals and the naming of clans or communities such as Chiq, Hellchick, Supergirl, Geekgirl, Clan PMS (Psycho Men Slayers), Da Valkyries: The Women of Quake, Clan Crack Whore, Nimble Little Minxes, The Coven, Hell’s Warehouse. (direct .pdf link via
Spitting-Image)
posted by Sully at 2:13 PM PST - 31 comments
Super patriot Charlie Daniels famous for warning hippies that "it's a flag, not no rag"
wrote about the Kosovo War back in the day... yeah... it's ironic.
posted by DougieZero1982 at 1:53 PM PST - 45 comments
This journal
is intended to share my love and appreciation for the hard work farmers and their families do to create such beautiful places and beautiful food. Tana Butler visists small farms near Santa Cruz, CA, sharing her thoughts and photographs [
farms |
farmers |
markets |
food ].
posted by 김치 at 12:17 PM PST - 21 comments
Apple iBook sale in Richmond, VA, turned violent today when people began to fight over the $50, four-year-old used machines on sale by Henrico County School System.
One woman urinated on herself instead of losing her place in line.
Others were shoved to the ground, and one man tried to drive his car into the crowd.
"I took my [metal folding] chair here and I threw it over my shoulder and I went, 'Bam,"' the 20-year-old said nonchalantly, his eyes glued to the screen of his new iBook, as he tapped away on the keyboard at a testing station. "They were getting in front of me and I was there a lot earlier than them, so I thought that it was just," he said.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:38 AM PST - 109 comments
The legendary John Loder,
owner of the fiercely independent
Southern Records and
Southern Studios, has died. In addition to championing many of the past couple of decade's best independent bands (
Shellac,
The Jesus Lizard,
Jesus and Mary Chain,
Fugazi,
Minor Threat,
Crass), he was a brilliant recording engineer and mastering specialist, responsible for overseeing some underground classics (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6). Mourners are requested to wear
T-shirts and jeans. Rest in peace, John. You'll be missed.
posted by nylon at 11:37 AM PST - 21 comments
Crocodile Immune System Kills HIV
Because crocodiles fight amonst themselves and get seriously wounded from time to time they developed incredibly strong immune systems and natural antibiotics. So strong that they, well, let's hear from one of the scientists....
"The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes. It's like putting a gun to the head of the bacteria and pulling the trigger," said Australian scientist Adam Britton.
Sounds like good news to me.
posted by fenriq at 10:12 AM PST - 45 comments
Francis Fukuyama: The acceptable face of the neo-cons?
"Francis Fukuyama famously announced that we had reached the end of history....For a man whose reputation was made not on extolling the virtues of Western liberal democracy but on proclaiming its complete triumph, now and forever, a degree of equivocation appears to have crept into Fukuyama's commentary. Not, though, that he ever believed the end of history meant nothing would happen. It merely meant that nothing quite as momentous would happen anew, and if history were to begin again, it could only be a repeat."
posted by jenleigh at 8:34 AM PST - 82 comments
Airliner crashes in western Venezuela
— A passenger plane crashed in remote western Venezuela with 152 passengers aboard early Tuesday, an aviation official said. A top government official said it was unlikely anyone survived.
posted by Rothko at 6:09 AM PST - 40 comments
Not My Type
- An office and its occupants, made entirely of typographic characters, create a theatre of emotion. View the separate animations (Flash)
1,
2,
3 and
4. Also,
visit an article on the work's concept development and storyboarding process. And
there's more via Google.
posted by sjvilla79 at 5:45 AM PST - 11 comments
August 15
Japanese Propaganda from WWII
I've seen & been fascinated by a fair amount of Allied propaganda from the second World War, including an exhibit at the Smithsonian a decade back, but this is the first bit of "enemy" propaganda I can remember running across. It's a pamphlet detailing Japan's plans for a better future. Another piece, "Farewell American Soldiers" piece which was leafleted to the troops is in English and is particularly chilling.
posted by jonson at 11:42 PM PST - 34 comments
Sex & Games
Finally, a place that seems to discuss sexuality in videogames as an adult topic. Brand new forum/blog/branch of the
IGDA, their leadership is a) mostly female, b) commited to "The right of developers to work together to create sexually themed games free of censorship and regulation," and encouraging parental responsibility and c) a nice tonic for
Jack Thompson's hysteria.
posted by WolfDaddy at 7:01 PM PST - 9 comments
What Makes People Gay?
--long, informative article from Boston Globe on recent scientific developments regarding nature or nurture. Studies on twins, brothers, CGN, the "big brother" effect, fetal development, genetics, hormones, etc.
and don't miss the Evangelical Preacher who converted to the belief that homosexuality is not a choice but rather a predisposition, something "deeply rooted" in people.
posted by amberglow at 4:58 PM PST - 151 comments
I can do that!
The latest excercise craze sweeping LA! It starts with light stretching and breathing excercises for half an hour. Then assume the "corpse pose" and wait for the neck massage. If you can stay awake.
posted by raaka at 1:53 PM PST - 36 comments
A Maoist take on Cindy Sheehan.
To quote the Revolutionary Worker quoting Ms. Sheehan: "I want him (Bush) to tell me 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for'?", she declared. "Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East.
"We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT ACT. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism! There, I used the 'I' word--imperialism, and now I'm going to use another 'I' word -- impeachment--because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."
(Meanwhile,
on the spot, Bush's neighbor is
becoming irate; more on that via
Yahoo News.)
posted by davy at 12:30 PM PST - 69 comments
You say
bodyline, I say
leg theory. Either way, the origins of one of sport's most enduring rivalries (leading to a near diplomatic crisis) make for a fascinating read to the budding cricket enthusiast. No wonder people
turned out in their thousands to queue in the early hours for the final day of another nail-biting test. It's turning into a hell of an
ashes series.
posted by nthdegx at 12:16 PM PST - 44 comments
Willful Barrenness
Check out the latest abominable sin from the folks that bring you Justice Sunday.
The sexual revolution has had many manifestations, but we can now see that modern Americans are determined not only to liberate sex from marriage (and even from gender), but also from procreation.Sometimes the best of the web is the worst in human nature?
posted by nofundy at 11:58 AM PST - 114 comments
Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Israeli style? Amidst overwhelming public approval for the Gaza pullout,
noted author David Grossman writes about the need for all Israelis to mourn today, in this
Ha-Aretz editorial.
posted by ori at 11:32 AM PST - 44 comments
August 14
Have a Scar?
Lots of people do. But I couldn't stop looking at the myriad variations and thinking about the myriad circumstances from which they arise once I started flipping through these arty and compelling pics...
posted by Sr_Cluba at 11:30 PM PST - 22 comments
A picture of English nouns
is a map of 33,000 English nouns. Each tiny rectangle corresponds to a noun. The color of the rectangle has been assigned a color, based on an internet image search for that noun. The words are clustered so that similar words are near each other.
Gallery. (Java required)
posted by jikel_morten at 9:45 PM PST - 30 comments
Rockin' Country Style
You usually hear the music termed "rockabilly," but the creator of this site prefers the term "country and western rock 'n' roll," a term he feels reflects what observers of the music's prime era (the mid-to-late 1950s) thought was going on, and is more inclusive besides (racially and also in regard to artificial genre boundaries).
Whatever you think about his "theoretical scope," there is so much here to explore. And so much deeply, deeply odd music. The usual suspects are here, among them
Elvis and the
usual Sun heroes, as well
Gene Vincent and
Buddy Holly, etc.
What is really interesting about this site, however, is how one can explore the evolution of a performer's sound (see:
Link Wray) or the sounds of a
geographical area or city. Then there are just so many great song samples, like
Hep Cat Baby from Eddy Arnold and
Fickle Chicken by the Atmospheres - and that's only from the
A's! The site also features compilations by label,
photographs of singles, and likes to sites dedicated to labels and performers.
Terry Gordon, who oversaw the creation of this impossibly thorough database, is now working on a second database site dedicated to southern soul.
posted by raysmj at 8:01 PM PST - 14 comments
Former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange
died over the weekend. His loss will impact our country considerably – he championed our anti-nuclear policy which led to the end of
Anzus and a falling out with the US that
continues to this day, he spoke at the
Oxford Union defending our stance on nuclear weapons and power and he was Prime Minister presiding over the far reaching
economic reform that has arguably led to the economic prosperity Kiwi’s are
enjoying right now. He was a man larger than life, funny, friendly and caring and his passing is being felt all over
Godzone.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 6:00 PM PST - 25 comments
EXTREME quarter bouncing!
(warning: embedded windows media video). The Michael Jordan of bouncing quarters into shotglasses, over lit zippos, off playing cards, across the length of the room, over other glasses, richocheting out of one glass & into the other, etc.
posted by jonson at 9:21 AM PST - 30 comments
The Rift: The state of Islamic Alienation in Europe
and for that matter any Western nation. Do Muslims get to retain their complete identity, values, and customs unfettered by their residency in the West? I think not. Inversely, if 1-5% of the population in Saudi Arabia was western what could they expect of their adopted (i.e. a choice) Wahhabi nation... Where does this end?
posted by philmas at 7:22 AM PST - 34 comments
Amend for Arnold & Jen
(found on linkfilter) is a site trying to start up one of them "grassroots movements" to amend the Constitution of the United States, in order to allow naturalized citizens, those who were not born in the U.S. but have since become citizens, the possibility of holding the office of President. But not just out of a sense of social justice; primarily, it's to clear the way for an Arnold Schwarzenegger presidential campaign. (Or one for Jennifer Granholm... heh, whoever
that is!)
It should be noted, for whatever it's worth, that
Wikipedia's entry for Granholm states that she cares "not a whit" for running for president. Of special note are the
slogans the AFA (
gasp, not AFA&J?!?!) people cooked up to advance their cause, "
Amend US," "
Give 10 to Amend," and "
Tell Your Friends 2 Amend." Because let's face it: if you voted for ol' Schwarzy, you're probably a little more susceptible to catchphrases than the average bear, hm?
Oh I'm know I'm gonna catch it for that one.
posted by JHarris at 3:24 AM PST - 43 comments
Update on the killing of the innocent Brazilian man by London police at Stockwell station.
A special report by the Observer reveals some of the key elements emerging from the ongoing investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Jean Charles de Menezes "wasn't wearing a heavy jacket.
He used his card to get into the station. He didn't vault the barrier. And now police say there are no CCTV pictures to reveal the truth." So now the inquiry will have to rely exclusively on eyewitnesses accounts. It appears the man they saw vaulting the barrier was one of the armed officers in plain clothes, while de Menezes "simply walked towards the platform unchallenged". The plainclothes armed unit that shot de Menezes was not the same team that had been following him from his London flat: "
there was a delay in calling an armed team to arrest de Menezes, which meant he had already entered the station by the time the officers arrived". Also, it appears that once inside the station, the armed officers had no radio contact with police on the outside. As new details emerge, more questions remain unanswered.
(As previously discussed
here and
here.)
posted by funambulist at 2:42 AM PST - 87 comments
August 13
Four Amendments & a Funeral
Rolling Stone accompanies Bernie Sanders (I-VT) before the Rules Committee. It ain't pretty.
The aide laughed and explained that the best time for me to go would be just before the summer recess, a period when Congress rushes to pass a number of appropriations bills. "It's like orgy season," he said. "You won't want to miss that."
...
Now, if Tom DeLay & Co. were going to disallow Sanders' amendment, they were going to have to openly defy a majority vote of the U.S. Congress to do so. Which, it turns out, isn't much of a stumbling block.
...
In essence, the U.S. was giving $5 billion to a state-subsidized British utility to build up the infrastructure of our biggest trade competitor, along the way sharing advanced nuclear technology with a Chinese conglomerate that had, in the past, shared nuclear know-how with Iran and Pakistan.
WARNING: Will not make you feel better about the Republican party leadership.
Previous Bernie Sanders, and his battle with the PATRIOT Act
posted by Aknaton at 7:33 PM PST - 21 comments
Death for embezzling?
The former chief of the state run Bank of China, Liu Jinbao, was given a suspended death sentence for embezzling 7.72M yuan (approximately 1M USD). His assets have been seized, and it is expected that his sentence will be commuted to life in prison. As China actively seeks to lure foreign investments, including banks, this is meant to send a strong signal about corruption in the financial sector.
posted by SirOmega at 4:21 PM PST - 18 comments
Claudette Colvin
--a Montgomery teen arrested 9 months before Rosa Park's now-famous refusal to sit in the back of the bus.
There were 4 women who stood up before Mrs. Parks, yet most of us know nothing about them. It was
their actions that led to the Supreme Court overturning segregation on public transit, yet Rosa Parks is the visible symbol. On worthy and "unworthy" messengers and symbols.
posted by amberglow at 2:20 PM PST - 14 comments
SMW
- The complete soundtrack to Super Mario World, covered by one man using dozens of instruments. Roughly in game order, faithful to the originals, with some bizarre artistic license thrown around. A private hobby made public. Dedicated to Koji Kondo.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:46 AM PST - 20 comments
August 12
Angelina Jolie: Cambodian.
Has anyone else noticed that the press doesn't really know what to make of her lately, if ever. I mean, she broke up Brad and Jen! But she does good work for humanity! But she's crazy and seems like she may have had sex with her brother! But she's a good actress! Who makes bad movies! Well, apparently Cambodia wants her. Cambodia and every 16-year-old boy on the planet, as well as most of the girls.
posted by maxsparber at 7:36 PM PST - 61 comments
Could any of us really score a photo scoop?
Scoopt is an on-line photo agency that purports to help us amateur photographers
sell photos to news outlets. You join for free, but they take a 50% cut of the profit. Is it worth that to have an on-call agent? Just in case I happen across a major news event some day? On the other hand, I like being a part of the Creative Commons world of
Flickr, where my "artsy" shots are available for further artistic use.
posted by mmahaffie at 6:56 PM PST - 5 comments
OK go's
video for their song "A Million Ways" looks as low budget and as simple as it could be. Four members in a backyard, one camera on a tripod, and they simply dance. But I have to say it's one of my favorite music videos of the last few years. Direct link to
high quality 16Mb quicktime, lower quality versions on their site [via
37s]
posted by mathowie at 1:03 PM PST - 46 comments
Camera as time machine in NYC
In 1939 famed photographer Berenice Abbott published a classic book of New York City images called
Changing New York. Some 75 years later photographer Douglas Levere decided to rephotograph the sites, waiting for the weather, season and angle of the sun to match, so that all that differed was the city's evolution. The
book presenting the pictures side-by-side was noted
here previously. But after it was
mentioned on AskMe recently I noticed cool new stuff: 120+ pictures from the book free for the surfing
here, and what is apparently its biggest public display to date, at the
Museum of the City of New York.
posted by sacre_bleu at 12:12 PM PST - 27 comments
ASmallWorld
is a very exclusive world, where participants seek advice on where to charter a private jet for a single person and use 'summer' as a verb. This
invite-only website for the well-connected, famous, or just stinking rich has an alternate however. When an aSmallWorld member is no longer welcome, they are unceremoniously dumped to a less restricted set of forums called aBigWorld. I don't expect to get an invite anytime soon, so I can't tell you of their
Illuminati-like plans to keep their lofty power. (
via1,
via2)
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:09 AM PST - 45 comments
Should Catholic Justices recuse themselves from any case citing Roe v. Wade?
Now that Catholic politicians have been threatened with having sacraments withheld for supporting Roe v. Wade, does this create an inherent conflict of interest for a Catholic Supreme Court justice (or any judge) in a case involving Roe?
According to the American Bar Association's Code of Conduct for United States Judges, Canon 3, Section C 1 (c), a judge must disqualify himself when he has 'a financial interest . . . or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding."
posted by caddis at 9:46 AM PST - 63 comments
Scientists find errors in global warming data. Heating from tropical sunlight was skewing temperatures reported by satelite sensors, making nights look as warm as days. The
George C. Marshall Institute declined to comment. The group, financed by the petroleum industry, has used the data disparities to dispute the views of global-warming activists. Researchers say it removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming
posted by stbalbach at 9:34 AM PST - 39 comments
This
website is about advertising mistakes, such as the L in Staples, capitalized letters where they shouldn't be, and other things that could confuse kindergarten students.
posted by angry modem at 9:29 AM PST - 79 comments
What do you call two thereminists in a room together?
A convention. Well, about 50 thereminists
gathered for the Ether Music 2005 Convention last week in Asheville, NC. But what’s a
theremin, you ask? You can
meet a theremin,
marvel at it’s award-winning beauty (scroll down),
hear one
live, enjoy some theremin
humor, buy a
vintage theremin, or if that’s too pricey,
build one or even enter to
win your very own.
(previously discussed here, here and here)
posted by grateful at 8:48 AM PST - 22 comments
The secret
behind George W Bush's appeal to the majority of Americans has been revealed at last (warning: embedded quicktime video); it's all the work of his professional speechalist.
posted by jonson at 7:55 AM PST - 57 comments
Exploitation in the United Arab Emirates:
A total of 36 Bangladeshi children employed as 'camel jockeys' in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have returned home yesterday ending their prolonged sufferings in the oil-rich nation. "The job is very tiresome. We had to work from morning till night, tending the camels, training them, cleaning their faeces and mounting the camels in the racing games." In 2003, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
reported on the issue.
Pictures via AntiSlavery.org.
posted by dhoyt at 6:30 AM PST - 6 comments
Do liberals and conservatives have mutually exclusive career aspirations for their children?
(reg req'd). Some, including the White House, think so. "Our party, in the way it is constituted, we think of medicine, we think of law, we think of business. We don't think, gee, I hope my son grows up to be a great playwright or painter or poet." -- White House deputy director of public liason Tim Goeglein. Are conservative parents pushing their ideological bias against the liberal-dominated arts world onto their kids, or are they simply being realistic? "Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future." -- author and conservative parent
Mark Helprin.
posted by schoolgirl report at 5:24 AM PST - 93 comments
Thou art no RomeoIt turns out that the beloved pair of swan's in Boston's Public Garden are a same-sex couple.
Tests have shown that the pair, named Romeo and Juliet, are really Juliet and Juliet. The city's Parks and Recreation Department conducted the tests months ago, but didn't announce the results for fear of destroying the image of a Shakespearean love story unfolding each year in the Public Garden.
'If these two swans are happy together, they shouldn't have to have a guy," said Emma Stokien, a 15-year-old from New York. 'It's good to have the swans as a symbol of the acceptance in Massachusetts."
posted by ericb at 4:16 AM PST - 55 comments
News Nishikie.
The art of Meiji mayhem. 'Graphic true stories from Japan as portrayed and reported by woodblock artists and writers '
posted by plep at 3:49 AM PST - 8 comments
August 11
Siberia's permafrost is melting.
New Scientist reports that 250 million acres of permafrost are thawing, exposing the world's largest peat bog. This is likely to release billions of tons of methane gas. This would likely cause a positive feedback loop, massively accelerating global warming.
posted by mosch at 2:33 PM PST - 87 comments
If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren’t they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better... The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly. Lieutenant General William E. Odom :
What’s Wrong With Cutting and Running ? See also
Early Pullout Unlikely In Iraq &
Myers: Possibility of third Iraq tours for active-duty troops 'always out there'...
posted by y2karl at 11:41 AM PST - 45 comments
Don't let the copyright office REQUIRE IE.
Take a break from email and Web surfing to send a real, paper letter (with five copies) to the U.S. Copyright office and tell them that
REQUIRING use of IE for online preregistration of copyright claims is not acceptable.
Read the request for public comment and then send an original and five copies of your public comment to:
Copyright GC/ I&R
P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station
Washington, DC 20024-0400
posted by twsf at 11:06 AM PST - 60 comments
Dog Poo Girl
: "A woman and her dog are riding the Seoul subways. The dog poops in the floor. The woman refuses to clean it up, despite being told to by other passengers. Someone takes a picture of her, posts it on the Internet..."
posted by starscream at 9:44 AM PST - 104 comments
Superman Takes on the KKK.
In the 1940s, reporter
Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the
Klu Klux Klan, gathering information on everything from their membership to their secret code words . Kennedy then gave this information to the producers of the Superman radio show. The resulting episodes, titled “Clan of the Fiery Cross” (listen to them
here)incorporated actual Klan terminology and rituals, exposing the nation to the inner workings of this “secret” organization.
posted by jrossi4r at 7:33 AM PST - 30 comments
"It isn't easy to be smart about baseball if you didn't grow up with the game, but Farish asked decent enough questions.
It was the answers that came hard. We must have resembled three mathematicians so lost in their highly refined work that they haven't noticed how quaint and opaque the terminology is, how double-meaning'd. We argued the
language and tried to
unravel it for the outsider."
posted by .kobayashi. at 6:22 AM PST - 24 comments
It is the year 3065.
Mankind has long been extinct, and the only forms of life left are two warring species: the worms, and the dots. You happen to be one unlucky worm, having crash landed in the middle of a whole crapload of evil dots. Luckily you have infinite lives.
Friday Flash Fun
Also, check out "The Search For Fonzie's Treasure," winner of the 2005 'hardest RPG of the year' award.
posted by Edible Energy at 5:01 AM PST - 47 comments
Were these guys birdwatchers, or IRA members
training FARC guerillas in improvised explosive techniques? Suddenly, mysteriously back on Irish soil, the "Colombia 3" - James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley - have caused a shitstorm for Bertie Ahern and his ministers; especially in the wake of the newly announced IRA disarmament.
posted by punkbitch at 12:51 AM PST - 17 comments
August 10
Disengagement: The Game
The debate in Israel over the withdrawal from Gaza has found its way into, of all things, dueling cartoony Flash games. The first, the
Wild West Bank, by proponents of withdrawal, has you removing settlers from the West Bank before they can establish settlements. The second, the "
Disengagement Game"
(click the square yellow button beside the picture), has you take the role of Ariel Sharon, whose political nickname is the "Bulldozer," as he uses his namesake (plus a club and a gaggle of pigs) to remove children protesting his policies. According to the creators of each, the first is supposed to be enlightening, the second purely entertaining. [Instructions inside]
posted by blahblahblah at 9:25 PM PST - 4 comments
Old Grandma Hardcore.
"This blog is the chronicle of my experiences with Grandma, the video-game playing queen of her age-bracket and weight class. She will beat any PS2, XBox, GameCube, etc., console game put in front of her..." A 22-year-old man blogs about his grandmother's video game obsession.
posted by greasy_skillet at 6:14 PM PST - 17 comments
English names for
groups various creatures are often bizarre. Many of the stranger collective nouns came from the
Boke of St. Albans. Most lists don't include a "parliament of rooks" any longer. Lists of collective animal names are available for
children and
adults. Though, oddly there doesn't seem to be a collective name for humans as a species, numerous names (mostly silly) exist for types of
human groups.
Dispute does exist in the world of collective nouns. Officially monkeys are grouped in "troops", but most people would agree that the proper term for a group of monkeys is
barrel . However debate seems to have been closed on the subject of the proper term for a group of
tentacle monsters (NSFW).
Of course, you have to know how the
proper grammar when using collective nouns.
posted by sotonohito at 5:42 PM PST - 33 comments
Serenity the Movie
is coming out September 30th. The full-length movie version of
Firefly, Fox's sci-fi disaster that was canceled 12 episodes into the 14 episode series.
posted by benkolb at 1:20 PM PST - 69 comments
How To Live Forever:
More research suggests that there is no such thing as aging, and reminds me of that quote from the Barbarian Brothers, "there is no such thing as overtraining, there is only undereating and undersleeping." As opposed to
Timothy 8. Also, I
LOVE the
HNRCA database. Get yer
mutli people, get it!
posted by ewkpates at 10:12 AM PST - 45 comments
The First Earth Battalion [5MB PDF].
Jim Channon went on a two year research mission for the US Army to discover how they could become more cunning - in 1979 he presented them with this book. As the person presenting
this text only version says "If nothing else, the following paper does suggest why drug testing became common for all ranks during the mid-1980s"
posted by dodgygeezer at 10:11 AM PST - 25 comments
Finding good coffee -
I am a big fan of both
del.icio.us and good coffee (i.e. not over-roasted crud from Starbucks), so I was very happy to see the two combined in
CafeSpot which calls itself "a social guide to independent cafes, coffee shops, restaurants and more".
posted by arete at 9:50 AM PST - 11 comments
Why are we not talking about Haiti?
"No one has asked questions about the wildly partisan officials in U.S. State Department now running U.S. policy in the Caribbean and Latin America. These include such Blast-from-the-Past supporters of Reagan era highjinks in Central America as
Otto Reich,
John Negroponte,
Elliot Abrams, and (before his ignominious departure last summer)
John Poindexter."
posted by j-urb at 9:48 AM PST - 13 comments
Did you know that
Merlot = cherry + plum + raspberry + strawberry + Dr. Pepper? Neither did I. But at the
Jelly Belly Wine Bar, you can recreate your favorite varietals in confectionery form.
posted by Vidiot at 9:29 AM PST - 20 comments
The
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count has breakdowns of the casualties of the Iraq War and Occupation, by
home city of record,
name, branch of service, rank, and cause of death, and other statistics such as
ethnicity, as well as a printable list of all
fatalities to date.
[previously mentioned here,here,here, and here.]
posted by exlotuseater at 12:02 AM PST - 10 comments
August 9
Blog readers are young and rich.
A
study [.pdf] released today concludes that as blogs continue to grow, blog readers are tending to be geekier and more affluent than previously thought. Nick Denton who helped sponsor the study (with SixApart) is
delighted with the results.
posted by tsarfan at 7:50 PM PST - 40 comments
Unless you are German you may not have heard of
Winnetou and
Old Shatterhand, characters created by
Karl May. A possible
D.I.D. sufferer, he had never set foot in America and began to write his Wild West stories whilst in jail. Popular with readers across Europe, his
books have been translated into over thirty different languages. Spaghetti Westerns partly came about because early 60s films
[test your knowledge] based on his books, inspired Italian producers to invest in
Westerns. His
life story was made part of Syberberg's trilogy in
1974.
posted by tellurian at 7:37 PM PST - 26 comments
They're being called the
Kutztown 13 - a group of high schoolers
charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden Internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators. The students, their families and outraged supporters say authorities are overreacting. The
Kutztown Area School District begs to differ. A website –-
Cut Us A Break – is dedicated to their situation. A hearing is set for Aug. 24 in Berks County juvenile court, where the 13 have been charged with computer trespass.
posted by ericb at 3:41 PM PST - 73 comments
Gothic fonts
, aka
Blackletter, aka
Fraktur are
often associated with Nazi propaganda these days. And indeed, at the beginning the Nazis encouraged their use...that is, until, in one of the most
bizarre decrees of the Third Reich, Hitler declared them "non-German" and even "Jewish" and banned them with immediate effect.
Funny thing is, Fraktur would take its
vengeance on Hitler fans forty years later...
(And before any typographic pedant points it out, yes, I know Fraktur is a subdivision of the Gothic/Blackletter family of fonts)
posted by Skeptic at 2:29 PM PST - 32 comments
"He is profane, uneducated, impious, lecherous, and unwashed.
He doesn’t care much about the war. In most cases, he misses his mother badly. But the American combat infantryman in Iraq is doing just fine." An in-depth (and apolitical) profile of day-to-day life in the 506th Infantry; "the same regiment that immortalized itself as the Band of Brothers in Normandy and Bastogne during World War II."
posted by kirkaracha at 2:09 PM PST - 19 comments
DTV beta for Mac is now live. DTV is a new, free and open-source platform for internet television and video. The goal here is to make sure that internet TV is open and independent. Free, open source software and open standards mean anyone can watch and everyone has a voice.
posted by signal at 11:37 AM PST - 23 comments
"I think my beliefs had changed once we were on the ground. Within days we had seized all of the
oil fields in northern Iraq and our primary mission was to protect them. Bush had said this war
wasn't about oil, but there
I was defending oil fields at all costs in the middle of Iraq. A lot of the piping and workings of the fields had been destroyed by the fleeing army and
before we even started to help the people by fixing the power or water supplies, they had construction crews trying to get everything up and running on the oil fields."
?An interview with Zechariah, 25, of Lynnwood, Washington. He enlisted in the Army when he was 21, and was deployed to Iraq from March 2003 to January 2004 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a medic.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 11:25 AM PST - 120 comments
Good journey, Joop.
"Joop was our handsome goodhearted 'boerenfox' (farmer's fox terrier). For three good years, he lived with us in the small town of Paterswolde, The Netherlands.
We found Joop in 2002 in
an animal shelter in Zuidwolde. Joop was a canine supermodel."
The
Dog Log shows
Joop's life in pictures and his human's in words. Joop passed away August 8, 2005 from cancer and has quite a following on
Flickr.com. Being the owner of a 14-year-old dog, the display of support really touched me and the photos are beautiful.
posted by VelvetHellvis at 9:10 AM PST - 10 comments
Discovery is coming home...
Around now (6.06am EDT) STS114 is due to commence firing its orbital maneuvering engines for 2 minutes and 42 seconds and commence its entry of the atmosphere to return home to Edwards Air Force base. Florida was declared a "no go" both yesterday and today due to weather conditions.
Weather at Edwards is
good.
Landing tracks from NASA available
here.
BBC story with live video footage is
here.
Pilot Jim Kelly is handling the de-orbit burn, according to commentary and mission commander Eileen Collins will make the final approach and touch down at Edwards.
Best of luck, Discovery, I'm sure I speak for all when I say that all of our thoughts are with you.
posted by tomcosgrave at 4:02 AM PST - 130 comments
August 8
Want to learn to be a CSI?
It's the U.S. government's multimedia website to train police and evidence recovery personnel. You can try the tests - the advanced one will tell you if you convicted the accused or not. Pretty slick for Uncle Sam.
posted by birdsquared at 6:05 PM PST - 22 comments
The GMap Pedometer
is the coolest Google maps application I've seen. I found my 3-mile round trip daily commute is really only 2.5 miles, damnit.
posted by MrMoonPie at 1:04 PM PST - 83 comments
Jonathan Lethem
's
fans will be happy (unhappy, missing, or set to vibrate) to know that the author has stuffed the
glove compartment of his
website with a heap of unpublished writings, including musings on everything from
rick james and
rod serling, an obscure
children's book written by
Eric Berne , and a tour-de-force
portrait of the artist
Fred Tomaselli.
The site itself, by
Will Amato, seems to randomly load a different design each time you refresh the page. I like the noir tableau with the devo hat, the kiddie drawing that plays a soul song, then endless looping drive on a lonely highway, and the montage of Dr Strange, Superman, and the Rawhide Kid.
posted by stacyhall1 at 11:18 AM PST - 18 comments
"Gimme the beer money back,"
says South Carolina's GOP, after corporate largesse from brewer Anheuser Busch is accidently sent to and cashed by the state's Democratic organization, which were out to happy hour at press time.
posted by Rothko at 7:06 AM PST - 48 comments
August 7
Google blacklists CNET reporters?
An article about privacy issues that highlighted the
potential for abuse if logs of search terms linked with IP addresses are combined by search companies with address and phone data, angered Google CEO Eric Schmidt enough to blacklist CNET reporters for a year, at least according to the bottom of
this CNET story. The article begins with information about Schmidt found via Google searches, and goes on to "question Google's ability to adequately balance the heavy burden of safeguarding consumer privacy rights with the pull toward intermingling and mining data for ever more lucrative targeted advertising."
posted by mediareport at 10:36 PM PST - 18 comments
What A Revolutionary Laff Riot.
Something I found interesting, even comical to contemplate, while clicking around:
"Earlier in the day, we joined one of the feeder marches, chanting, "Soldiers Turn Your Guns Around, Shoot The Profit System Down!" While march organizers argued with the cops about what street to take, we made speeches linking the war to inter-imperialist rivalry and calling on students, teachers, workers and soldiers to destroy this system with communist revolution."
And no, that does not mean I'm a PLP supporter, nor am I urging U.S. troops to mass mutiny (any more than I'd urge pigs to fly). I mean, hey, can anybody seriously picture
"Petrograd 1917" happening in today's America?
posted by davy at 9:01 PM PST - 48 comments
Malls of America
- Gone (some of them) but not forgotten (well, maybe). Vintage photographs and postcards of malls of the 1960s and '70s. For more personal stories, check out
Deadmalls.com.
posted by deborah at 8:35 PM PST - 19 comments
Making music entirely from non-musical things:
McDonalds Happy Meals,
Henry Kissinger,
Bread,
Salad Tosser,
Fluorescent Lamps,
the Bible,
Hearts,
Dot Matrix Printers,
Photocopiers,
Volkswagen [possibly nsfw],
The Postal Service,
Blank Tapes,
Eiffel Tower,
Deportation Orders [scroll down],
Cakes,
Cucumbers,
Furniture [scroll down to #12],
Skin,
Roads,
Underpasses,
Frogs,
Vinyl Run-Out Grooves,
Radios,
Natural Geophysical Phenomena,
Carly Simon and
other stuff.
posted by nylon at 7:41 PM PST - 16 comments
In a world...
where the success of an industry depends upon the creative ability of a few, greatness must be recognized. Imagine... five of the top voice-over artists in our country all in one car!
Dan LaFontaine's car!
posted by Robot Johnny at 1:56 PM PST - 26 comments
In the Rough
..."Man has evolved throughout the ages ... Relationships, unfortunately, have not. After being kicked out of his cave, Brog discovers that living a bachelor's life is not all tha it's cracked up to be"
quicktime. smaller version here.
posted by crunchland at 7:43 AM PST - 17 comments
Fractal animation videos.
Tune in. Turn on. Drop in on a dripping skirling-swirling pulsating orgy of self-transforming recursive math. Some with fractal music.
(Non-embedded mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 files, like God intended.)
posted by loquacious at 3:34 AM PST - 15 comments
Ibrahim Ferrer has passed.
The 78 year old vaulted from relative obscurity - outside of Cuba, at least - to the forefront of the badly and over-generally named "International" or "World Music" scenes when he came out of retirement to perform with a number of past colleagues (including
Compay Segundo and
Ruben Gonzales) as Buena Vista Social Club. A
film, directed by Wim Wenders, and an album made with the help of guitarist
Ry Cooder cemented his position as one of the sweetest voices in
Cuba's rich musical history in the west and elsewhere. He was generally considered one of the greatest masters of the traditional
son and
bolero styles.
posted by luriete at 12:44 AM PST - 36 comments
August 6
Kurnik
is a (free) online game site - bridge, chess, go, hex, that sort of thing - that's been established for years but only recently launched an English-language version. It seems notable among the many
many many online game sites for lightweight, clean, ad-free design. The games are java-based.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:42 AM PST - 6 comments
PopExperiment
"Anyway, the idea behind this site is similar to stumble: provide links and representations to (of) artists that I love. To that end I've already started populating the music, photography, visual arts and motion arts sections with some art I hope you really enjoy (and real links to the amazing artists responsible)."
[And check:
via via via]
posted by peacay at 2:14 AM PST - 2 comments
August 5
It has now been 60 years
since the awesome terror of nuclear weapons was revealed to the world. Whether the decision to use such a fearsome weapon was
right or
wrong is still being debated. Much of that debate now centers around the intercepts of Japanese communications under the Ultra [British code name] or Magic [US code name] program and whether Japan was ready to surrender under acceptable terms. Some of these intercepts can be read
here and
here.
posted by publius at 10:11 PM PST - 53 comments
Build
your own space station (requires printer, paper, scissors, glue and a
lot of patience).
posted by Pendragon at 1:52 PM PST - 5 comments
The Iraq Index
is a statistical compilation of economic, public opinion, and security data. An extensive collection by the
Brookings Institue of indicators outlining the security situation, the economy and quality of life, as well as polling and politics data.
(One downside is that it is a pdf file). Also from the same source is a comparable compilation for
Afghanistan
posted by forforf at 12:13 PM PST - 2 comments
Ernst Haeckel: Die Radiolarien (1862)
: a microscopic, single-celled organism, the
radiolarian extrudes the silica it draws from seawater to forms a
dazzling web of crystalline, concentric shells; even more
amazing, each of the 5000 known species of radiolarian forms its own unique pattern. "
Proteus" is a new documentary of a 19th century biologist/evolutionary theorist/artist's fascination with these creatures. (Oh,
Haeckel is also the guy who coined "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". And
he lied.)
posted by of strange foe at 11:19 AM PST - 14 comments
Mind the bombs
- Do your part in the war against terrorism.
(Not that tasteless, though on second thought, I suppose it is.)
posted by mrgrimm at 10:44 AM PST - 11 comments
On September 15, 1959, student Bill Thomas witnessed the bloody aftermath of a
bomb going off at Poe Elementary School.
"This was an extremely upsetting event for me and my fellow six-grade students, but no consideration was ever given to the treatment of our trauma. In fact, nothing much was even said about it when we returned to school the next day." Decades later, he deals with what happened by taking
photographs of himself in which he's seen committing suicide in a variety of convoluted ways.
posted by iconomy at 10:26 AM PST - 25 comments
PingMag
is the name of a new art and design-focused online magazine from Japan. They have many interesting articles on art and design in Japan including an interview with
ELM Design (on their work for Yamaha),
Monolake talking about their network music projects,
Eto Koichiro talking about some of his art/programming projects, a profile of Japanese production house
Little More, and a lot more in both
English and
????
posted by gen at 1:58 AM PST - 5 comments
August 4
Every movie poster
from every episode of every season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Note: collection may not contain EVERY poster.
posted by jonson at 10:03 PM PST - 36 comments
Mega64!
Some easily-amused folks with a video camera and a local public access TV channel have created the ultimate video game system. The Mega64 literally places you in the game. And by "the game" any game for any system that makes you look like a total jackass if you try to act it out, and by "you," I mean two unwilling playtesters.
Thrill to Solid Snake infiltrating a grocery store!
Puzzle out where to fit a walking Tetris piece!
Laugh as some bozo spits out coins while saying "Barf!"
While you're at it check out the
Splinter Cell videos hosted off-site.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 6:58 PM PST - 11 comments
Classic FM Radio Analysis
scans play lists from various FM radio stations and allows you to make queries such as how often was Beethoven's Symphony #9 played, what are the most popular pieces played, who are the most popular composers, etc.
posted by RonZ at 4:15 PM PST - 4 comments
Blogger Twins,
and fellow MeFi members,
camworld and
mrbarrett, want to take part on TAR9. Help them get noticed by the casting directors of The Amazing Race, currently undergoing casting call review.
posted by riffola at 4:13 PM PST - 44 comments
Comedian Dane Cook's new CD
Retaliation debuted this week at #4 on the
Billboard 200 chart, which is the highest debut for a comedy album since Steve Martin's
A Wild and Crazy Guy in 1978. One
reason for this success has been his presence on
MySpace.com, as well as his
personal web page that is
loaded with content (you can stream large chunks of his two albums, as well as watch a ton of video clips - make sure you watch the
Shorties Watching Shorties clips near the end of his video's list). [
more video].
posted by Quartermass at 4:07 PM PST - 23 comments
The Latest in MegaChurches.
I have never been to a
big creepy megachurch. This is my first confession. I have never been to, say,
Lakewood Church in Houston, the biggest glossiest megachurch of all, which just
dumped a staggering $75 million to renovate the former stadium for the Houston Rockets and turn it into a massive pulsing swaying arm-raisin' eye-glazed weirdly repressed
House o' Jesus.
I have never been to
World Changers in Georgia or
New Birth Missionary Baptist in Texas or
Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa or the
Potter's House in Dallas or the
Phoenix First Assembly of God, et al., all of which claim well over 15,000 regional followers (some 20,000 or even 30,000) and most of which operate much more like careening multitentacled corporations than humble homes of
spiritual connection and love. But, you know, quibbling.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 12:22 PM PST - 58 comments
She was, after all, a girl you could take anywhere.
One minute she could be the slinkiest cat on the hot tin roof, wrapping her dancer’s body... around a client’s body in a hotel elevator. Then, when the door slid open, she’d look classic, like a wife even, on the arm of a Wall Street CEO or Asian electronics magnate.
Last week, she was
busted.
posted by Kwantsar at 12:02 PM PST - 55 comments
Peekaboom!
It's not Friday -- then again this isn't flash -- but it sure is fun. Partner with another anonymous player to identify pictures by gradually revealing them. The kicker is that as we play, the system gets smarter -- the goal is to teach computers how to identify photos the same way we can.
posted by o2b at 11:50 AM PST - 14 comments
Romare Bearden
was probably the least-known great American artist of the 20th century. A glance at the
Google image search will give you an idea of his exciting colors, bold designs, and joyously crowded canvases;
here's a picture of the artist with cat, a brief appreciation, a Derek Walcott poem ("How you have gotten it! It's all here, all right..."), and a bunch of reproductions. There are good introductions
here and
here; I saw the latter at
Plep, which reminded me I'd been wanting to make a Bearden post for ages (there's a
book based on the National Gallery exhibit). Enjoy!
posted by languagehat at 8:47 AM PST - 8 comments
August 3
This
is what you get when you cross an award winning
actor, an award winning
perfumer, and an award winning creative director (Jason Schell). May be NSFW in some offices, adjust volume where necessary.
posted by FlamingBore at 9:34 PM PST - 37 comments
Fear up, pride and ego down...
It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.
posted by Shanachie at 3:29 PM PST - 120 comments
The Streets of Laredo: The Cowboy's Lament
was originally written as the Irish drover balled
Bard of Armaugh (or
Armagh), which later mutated into
A Handful of Laurel, about a young man dying of syphilis in a London hospital, musing back on his days in the alehouses and whorehouses. Immigrants settling in the Appalachians brought their own version,
The Unfortunate Rake, sung as early as 1790, about a young soldier dying of mercury poisoning, a result of treatment for venereal disease, who requests a military funeral - a slight but important evolution from the previous version. The current lyrics are most popularly attributed to cowboy
Frances Henry "Frank" Maynard, who copyrighted them in 1879. While various
versions of the song were popular in the US before Maynard took pen to paper and needle to wax cylinder (under such titles as
Locke Hospital,
St. James Infirmary Blues,
Tom Sherman's Bar and
Way Down in Lodorra), his version is the one with which we are most familiar today.
beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / sound the death march as you carry me along / cover my body in sweet-smelling posies / for I'm the young (rake, soldier, man, girl, lass, etc)
cut down in (his/her)
prime (or
and I know I've done wrong)
The song has been recorded by pretty much every country, western and folk-identified musical artist since recording music became practical, although the most popular versions must be those by
Arlo Guthrie (who once said it was "the saddest song I know," and who sings it on his album
Son of the Wind) and
Johnny Cash (who added
a few verses to his 1965 version, improving the song a bit and making it more emotionally complex).
Roger McGuinn's creative commons-licensed version is one of my personal favorites, as is Bobby Sutliff's
version.
posted by luriete at 3:24 PM PST - 27 comments
The Internationale
, written in 1871 by Eugene Pottier (lyrics) and P. Degeyter (music), has been (and will be) the theme of a variety of Marxist and non-Marxist socialist groups around the world. This Norwegian site catalogues a healthy sampling of MP3 versions of this stirring ballad; my personal favorite is
Billy Bragg's [MP3, 8.9 MB]. But for the chuckles, nothing beats
this [.wav] rousing folk version, complete with cartoonish accent.
posted by ford and the prefects at 1:52 PM PST - 25 comments
"People were tripping over each other, climbing over the seats to get to the exit."
Warbaby posted a
link on July 7 to an article by Lee Clark that said people don't panic in disasters. Survivors from Tuesday's Toronto plane crash give a different story. Here's one account:
Ho said people at first were calm and lining up, but once fire from the back of the plane, "people were tripping over each other, climbing over the seats to get to the exit."
He said a flight attendant told him to jump out the front door with no chute, but it was about a 12-fioot drop. He ran to a second door. It had a damaged chute, but he took it.
"I jumped and fell onto some people," Ho said. "Some people broke their arms or legs."
posted by stevefromsparks at 12:26 PM PST - 42 comments
In the August edition of Outside Magazine, Tim Zimmerman
chronicles the story of divers Deon Dreyer and Dave Shaw. Dreyer, a 20-year-old experienced diver, died in 1994 while exploring Bushman's Cave in Boesmansgat, South Africa, the third deepest cave in the world. In October 2004, Dave Shaw, while diving to the bottom of Bushman's Cave, discovered the body of Deon Dreyer and, tying a line to him, promised to recover the body for Dreyer's family. A few months later, in January 2005,
Shaw died in the attempt, unintentionally
filming his own death. Both bodies have since been recovered.
posted by Moral Animal at 12:21 PM PST - 20 comments
Kung Fu Science:
The
BBC News article claims that the site "is primarily aimed at 11 to 16-year-olds," but I refuse to let temporal adolescents have a corner on 25-year-old female PhD students doing physics and then breaking wood planks with their hands.
[Flash; both the site and the videos take a while to load.]
posted by gramschmidt at 11:07 AM PST - 18 comments
Patent Room
is a collection of early 20th Century industrial design culled from the archives of the U.S. Patent Office, featuring architecture, automobiles, toys, and trains.
posted by crunchland at 10:36 AM PST - 11 comments
9 Anti-Porn Myths Debunked,
a July entry on the porn-industry blog
SugarBank, generated some pretty good debate on the subject of degradation. Comments have been
closed, so now I'd like to read what you people think
(yes, I'm a selfish, greedy prick). Yesterday, I was firmly in SugarBank's camp, but after reading
this today, I'm not so sure.
It's about porn, so maybe NSFW, but there's no dirty pictures or anything.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 9:42 AM PST - 103 comments
Do you have a small one, a really mini organ? Attempts to make it bigger won't work, and could damage it. You aren't alone. Here is a
collection of mini organ photos. Some people have some pretty bizarre obsessions.
posted by caddis at 7:54 AM PST - 27 comments
As of today, the
German language has changed, ending a 10 year state of flux which has seen new spelling rules mixed with the old ones. Under the new system,
"extremely long compound words have been broken up, comma rules have been simplified, and in many cases a double-S replaces the old letter sign for the sound, which resembles a capital B." But given the strong resistance to the new rules from some in the German community, it may be a little premature to add the old German language to to the list of
lost languages (previously discußed
here) just yet.
Anyway, for Mefite linguaphiles interested in this significant and now seemingly permanent change to the German language, check out the
German spelling reform timeline.
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:58 AM PST - 54 comments
Temptation Blocker
So, have a major deadline looming or ripe opportunity closing and just don’t have time to waste playing Half Life 2 or checking Bloglines one last time? Well then, add Half Life 2 and Firefox to the list of programs you want to block in Temptation Blocker, set the timer for how long you want to block them and then hit the “Get Work Done!” button. [Windows freeware]
posted by srboisvert at 12:28 AM PST - 25 comments
Ry Cooder's
Ry Cooder's new album
Chávez
Ravine captures the world of the vibrant
Chicano community that was bulldozed in the 1950's to build
Dodger Stadium. Don Normark's book
Chavez
Ravine: 1949 provides more background on the place that was
once a "poor man’s Shangri-la." of "wild
roses, tin roofs, and wandering goats" where life "was
lived fully, openly, and joyfully" before it was destroyed.
posted by robliberal at 12:08 AM PST - 19 comments
August 2
The Williamson Tunnels
"The explanation most commonly offered [for the construction of the tunnels] is that having risen from humble beginnings, the rich retired merchant was touched by the poverty which pervaded the Edge Hill district and offered construction labour to the unemployed as a gesture of generosity"
posted by dhruva at 7:21 PM PST - 10 comments
Wireless bluetooth headset.
Now you can listen to your tunes wireless and with oddly colored teeth! Bonuses including pushing your ears to change songs, like that guy in Empire Strikes Back.
posted by bugbread at 4:58 PM PST - 14 comments
The Guaman Poma Website.
Felipe Guaman Poma's
El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno (
New Chronicle and Good Government) is one of the most remarkable manuscripts of the seventeenth century. Written by a native Peruvian, in the form of a 1200-page 'letter' to King Philip III of Spain, it provides a richly detailed account of Inca society before and after the Spanish conquest. Forgotten for three centuries, it was rediscovered in 1908 in the Royal Library, Copenhagen, which has now published a full digital facsimile online. The
illustrations are extraordinary: glimpses of the abuse of colonial power (
'Recite the doctrine, Indian troublemaker! Right now!') alongside gentler scenes of agriculture and everyday life (
'Chew this coca, sister'). Scholarly
articles help to set the manuscript in context. Browse and enjoy.
posted by verstegan at 9:39 AM PST - 7 comments
Microsoft Start (version 3)
is the Web 2.0 application we've all been waiting for. Obviously, it was created by Microsoft. Search Engine and Syndication from one easily configurable screen. In the future, everyone will have this as their home page.
posted by seanyboy at 8:23 AM PST - 78 comments
Phutball
(
Rules,
Java Applet), aka
Philosophers' Football or
ConwayGo is a deceptively simple 2-player game you can play on a Go board, or any rectangular grid.
(It may be simple, but finding the right move is [PDF] NP Complete.)
posted by Wolfdog at 5:39 AM PST - 7 comments
ChessRogue
=
Chess +
Rogue. (Open source, versions available for Linux and Windows.)
This console-based game takes the pieces of chess and puts them into a Roguelike environment. You start out with a weakened King who can only move and capture horizontally and vertically, in a randomized board full of multi-directional Pawns. As you capture more pieces, the king slowly gains additional powers, like diagonal capture and movement, Knight jumping, and eventually even Rook movement, among others. The opposition gets tougher too, until eventually the entire selection of pieces is out to get you.
Originally created for a three-day programming challenge on
rec.games.roguelike.development, it's surprisingly cool, and works rather better than you might expect. It's useful as a break between
Nethack fatalities.
posted by JHarris at 4:43 AM PST - 19 comments
August 1
The Rainmaker
After three long years of drought, a desperate San Diego City council, sought out a man who had been creating rain from Central America to the
Yukon, a rainmaker who could bring clouds, fill dams and douse fires. For $10,000,
Charles Hatfield agreed to make rain. Soon after, on January 5, 1916, it started raining and raining...and raining. So much water fell from the sky that two dams overflowed. One dam broke, unleashing floods and devastation.
Instead of gratitude, the city council threatened to sue Hatfield who in the end was saved by a court ruling that deemed rain to be "an act of God."
Hatfield claimed to have invented a chemical formula to summon clouds and was credited with over 500 successes. He took his rain-making secrets to the grave. Hollywood, of course,
produced a movie.
posted by vacapinta at 8:56 PM PST - 13 comments
Bush Flips Out. Or does he? Debate is raging throughout the various interweb cliques over whether or not Bush gave reporters the finger. Even Jay Leno
did a monolouge on it. But did Bush really flip reporters the bird? Possibly. After all, it's not the first time
he's done it. Or was whatever it was he was doing with his hand simply some sort of innocuous gesture? Metafilter decides, inside.
posted by Effigy2000 at 7:08 PM PST - 55 comments
Portable parking spaces
are the mind-bending Atomic-age outcome of centuries of humankind's best technology: they enable a bike to occupy the same perimeter as a car. They're arts and crafts, they're couture, they're
vehicles of dissent [Flash, contains photos, project info, instructions on building your own PPS]. See the
movie [11MB QuickTime]. A
different take on the concept.
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:05 PM PST - 52 comments
Gematria!
Mentioned in
this post in the context of a "good or evil" algorithm, gematria (???????) is actually Jewish numerology, assigning values to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and establishing mystical correspondences. It's basic to kabbalistic works like the
Zohar, and you can get detailed analysis
here. But we both know what you really want to do is plug words into a text box and get the result instantly, right?
Here you go. And to start you off, METAFILTER = 299 [???????] according to the traditional system; according to
The Gematria of Nothing, it's 31. Take your pick.
posted by languagehat at 5:57 PM PST - 13 comments
Gary Skoien terminated for putting a bounty on Da Mayor's head
Skoien was fired from his high powered day job at Prime Group by his boss - a Daley democrat apparently - for putting a $10K bounty on Mayor Daley for information leading to his arrest.
Doug Ibendahl, founder and coordinator of the Republican Young Professionals, said the bounty is unprofessional and Skoien should be removed as heaqd of the GOP in Cook County.
Yeah, but fired?
Prime Group CEO Michael Reschke said Friday that Skoien fatally blunted his effectiveness in the company and that the Daley administration did not influence his firing.
"Gary positioned himself where he can no longer be an effective executive officer of our company," said Reschke, who has made political contributions mostly to Democrats, including at least $2,000 to Daley, but also to a few Republicans, including at least $250 to Skoien.
Truly, Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most
theatrically corrupt.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:03 PM PST - 38 comments
The New Alchemy Institute
spent about 30 years studying how living systems can be designed in order to help preserve the environment. They studied
agriculture,
aquaculture, and built
bioshelters, called arks, that integrated greenhouses and living spaces. A hallmark of the NAI approach was to use and trap energy produced by nature, rather than building greenhouses that required electricity, hence,
compost heated greenhouses. Here's
an article from 1978 about the NAI at the Alicia Patterson Foundation, and one from a
1989 Whole Earth Review. In 1981 John Todd, one of the principles in NAI, founded
Ocean Arks International in order to explore the issue of ecological water treatment. His concept of water treatment, a
constructed wetland, or
living machine, developed directly from work on the arks at NAI.
Here is more on John Todd and NAI, and
here is an interview with his wife, Nancy Jack Todd, and him.
Here's a link to a recent CS Monitor review of the new Nancy Jack Todd book.
Post inspired by my love of NAI and my current reading of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.
posted by OmieWise at 1:56 PM PST - 7 comments
Below Code.
Comatonse Records has
been around for a little over 10 years, and to celebrate, the owner,
Terre Thaemlitz, put out a
free best-of CD. The
physical copies are all long-gone, but it's
available for download (along with a bonus track that didn't fit on the original disc). Most of the stuff is
relatively noisy (and
some found sound stuff), but there's some cool
electronic type pieces,
rock and pop songs and
solo piano pieces as well. Also of note is
his own personal site, which has links to
a lot of cool essays, typically about
gender issues and music. (There's also links to images of
graphical scores to some of his music.)
[Poking around these sites are pretty much NSFW -- the only explicitly NSFW links are on "his own personal site" and "music", but there's quite a few naked people and suchlike around, including on one of the postcards that make up the main link, so, yeah -- take care!]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 1:08 PM PST - 4 comments
2005 Bulwer-Lytton winners announced!
As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed...
Thus begins the
winner of the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. The winning entry was written by Dan McKay, a Microsoft analyst from Fargo, ND.
One of my personal favorites received The Grand Panjandrum's Special Award:
India, which hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia, presented itself to Tex as he landed in Delhi (or was it Bombay?), as if it mattered because Tex finally had an idea to make his mark and fortune and that idea was a chain of steak houses to serve the millions and he wondered, as he deplaned down the steep, shiny, steel steps, why no one had thought of it before.
Previous year's winners MF linked here, here, here, here, and, of course, here. Is this a record? A sextuple post?
posted by jasper411 at 10:54 AM PST - 17 comments
Rafael Palmeiro suspended for steroid use by Major League Baseball
The first big name MLB player to be suspended for violating the leagues steriod policy testified to Congress about use of the drug in baseball after being named a user in Jose Canseco's book. "Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Rafael Palmeiro and I am a professional baseball player. I'll be brief in my remarks today. Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids. Period. I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never. The reference to me in Mr. Canseco's book is absolutely false. I am against the use of steroids. I don't think athletes should use steroids and I don't think our kids should use them. That point of view is one, unfortunately, that is not shared by our former colleague, Jose Canseco. Mr. Canseco is an unashamed advocate for increased steroid use by all athletes."
posted by batou_ at 10:53 AM PST - 61 comments
The London Necropolis Railway
During the first half of the 19th century, London's population more than doubled and the number of London corpses requiring disposal was growing almost as fast. Cemetery space in the city had failed to keep pace with this growth, and so the vast new
Brookwood Cemetery - the London Necropolis - was built in Surrey. Brookwood was the largest burial ground in the world when it was opened in 1854 by the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company. To get there, the deceased and their mourners - segregated by class - could
catch a train from Westminster. The Necropolis Railway survived until World War 2, when it was
heavily damaged. The railway was subsequently closed as motorised hearses became more popular. See also: Also: a six part Fortean Times article extracted from Google's cache [
1 2 3 4 5 6]
posted by carter at 9:20 AM PST - 14 comments
Urban Dead
is a browser-based, grid-mapped multi-player game where you play the survivor or victim of a zombie outbreak in a quarantined city centre. Tired of playing a pseudo-hero in a fantasy
Kingdom of Loathing? Play a scientist, soldier, or ordinary civilian in a modern city, and try to avoid being infected. Or skip the "avoid" phase, and just play a zombie.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 9:15 AM PST - 33 comments
Bush to Senate: Go to Hell. As expected, President Bush bypassed the confirmation process and
made a recess appointment to elevate John Bolton to the post of US ambassador to the United Nations, brushing off what he calls "partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators." Bolton was previously discussed on MeFi
here.
posted by digaman at 8:19 AM PST - 213 comments
On mission along the border of Chad and Darfur, Human Rights Watch researchers gave children notebooks and crayons to keep them occupied while they spoke with the children's parents. Without any instruction or guidance, the children drew scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur.
Here are those drawings.
posted by ewagoner at 8:18 AM PST - 16 comments
Ever wonder what your browser is
really like? Does it lurk in the shadows of the local pub or pool hall? Does it give too many 404s then it gives really cool websites? Look no further, introducing
BrowserSpy, all the scoop you need to know but were afraid to ask.
posted by wheelieman at 5:25 AM PST - 2 comments
Watching Grass Grow
is an appropriate activity now that the Dog Days of summer are upon us. For those who are watching their grass lawns wilt and turn brown in the hot weather, there's hope that it will recover as pictorially documented on this site.
posted by RonZ at 5:24 AM PST - 4 comments
"Ping-Pong Remix
is the project in which Gastón Caba offers his Ping Pong characters in order to be recreated by some of his favourites illustrators."
{via Art Dorks}
posted by dobbs at 12:49 AM PST - 3 comments
Next to last words from Columbia reentry, at 9 seconds into this
-- wma (windows media audio) file at the first link -- very brief. listen to the audio link, first -- just twelve or so seconds long -- and give your brain the chance to hear what it hears. then, see what nasa made of it in the transcript. this and much more can be found at chris valentine's website. the particular page which he discusses this audio file is
here
but don't miss the movies at his home page.
I can agree with Chris Valentine (whose movies are at the same site and much worth watching) that NASA may honestly not hear what he heard -- and I hear -- in this bit of audio.
But, as I listen to and watch NASA TV live right now, I notice that every time we start to hear anything at all revealing of plain old humor, or comments about having to reboot Windows again or power cycle when shutdown won't work, or much else, Houston intervenes with "hot mike" and the sound goes away for a while. They micromanage what we get to hear.
Valentine's movies have far better video than we see live from NASA too.
posted by hank at 12:11 AM PST - 44 comments
Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha"
and
Panjabi MC's
collaboration with Jay-Z don't mark
Desi's lone inroads into mainstream European and North American culture. The creative hybridizaton might not be widespread, but the impact is felt well beyond pop music, from examples that often range from the
comedic to the
dramatic to the
controversial, giving a glimpse into the ongoing conversation between widely disparate cultures and traditions, going beyond convenient media stereotypes.
posted by Rothko at 12:08 AM PST - 5 comments
