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August 2006 Archives
August 31
Ever wonder
if that DVD commentary might put you to sleep? Well, wonder no more. Learn about
the first,
the worst, and find out what other people think are
the best. Vote for your favorites, and add your own reviews.
"The definitive commentary track database" is at your service.
Link courtesy of Whedonesque.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:48 PM PST - 60 comments
Chaos Theory
is a simple but highly addictive Japanese flash game where 50 blue orbs get launched into the air, and you have a single explosion you can trigger by clicking anywhere on the screen. Each orb caught in the blast explodes itself, creating a chain reaction. The goal is to catch as many of the blue orbs before gravity pulls them back to the ground. Each game lasts 3 rounds, with a maximum score of 150 total points. Click the dark blue Kanji script to begin the first round.
This game is old, but I've not seen it posted here before
posted by jonson at 3:53 PM PST - 58 comments
After the Romans left
Britain was divided into a number of
Celtic kingdoms that fought with each other and, increasingly, with the
Germanic invaders we know as "Anglo-Saxons." The most famous alleged defender of Celtic Britain, of course, is
King Arthur, but he's more myth than history. What catches my imagination is
The Gododdin (
Welsh original, by
Aneurin), an epic lament for the band of men who gathered at Eiddyn (Edinburgh, main town of
Gododdin) around the year 600 and headed south for a last-ditch battle against the Saxons at Catraeth (probably
Catterick in northern Yorkshire), where they were wiped out. One contingent was from
Elmet (Elfed in the poem), a kingdom that had been holding the line against the invaders in what's now Yorkshire; once Elmet was conquered, there was no stopping them. And all of this history was basic to the poetry of
David Jones, one of the best unknown poets of the previous century, and important to one of the best known,
Ted Hughes (
book with photos). "Men went to Catraeth, familiar with laughter. The old, the young, the strong, the weak."
posted by languagehat at 3:28 PM PST - 31 comments
Kids, was your Mom or Dad sent to Iraq? Need some help coping with the separation anxiety? Never fear, it's the Maine National Guard
to the rescue!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:22 AM PST - 53 comments
On Aug 15 a three year old Cincinnati-area boy
Marcus Fiesel, was reported
missing. The truth has finally come out.
On August 4th Marcus's arms were tied behind his back, wrapped in a blanket and bound with packing tape, and was locked into a closet by his foster parents. The boy was dead when they returned from thier two day long trip on August 6th. The foster dad then took the boys body to a rural location and burned it, several times, and reported him missing, over a week later. They claimed innoence even while they moved to a new house just days after he went missing. Then the until the police found the body, not far from a remote house of one foster mother's family members.
no national outlet has reported it, it's largely been ignored due to the renewed media obsession with JonBenet Ramsey.
Was it that Marcus was a boy? That he was dark haired? Or that he was poor and in foster care?
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 7:46 AM PST - 90 comments
August 30
An open letter to John Warnock.
"Please consider releasing eight to twelve core fonts into the public domain. The amount of revenue lost from a small core set of fonts surely can’t have a significant impact on Adobe’s bottom line."
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:11 PM PST - 53 comments
Katrina: Money for Nothing?
The United States received hundreds of millions in foreign aid last year, after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. But what happened to the money?
posted by js003 at 9:38 PM PST - 28 comments
Some kids
under the "protection" of DSHS in Washington state have been murdered.
Others have been sexually abused. DSHS doesn't want you to know this, and if you do, they want you to know that it's not their fault.
posted by leftcoastbob at 7:38 PM PST - 23 comments
Musicast
turns your iTunes (mac only) into a music sharing server that conveniently spits out a podcast feed for your friends to subscribe and download all your mp3s from.
Download this quick before
the RIAA kills the server something might happen to this wonderful app.
posted by mathowie at 6:23 PM PST - 37 comments
I know who brought Leonardo's greatest drawings to Britain.
I may not be a Harvard professor of religious symbology or know much about the bloodline of the Magdalene, but I do enjoy a mystery and so I set out to solve this one. And I succeeded. Final proof is elusive, always, but in this case the circumstantial evidence is so overwhelming, I think I've got my man."
posted by Len at 3:59 PM PST - 6 comments
Look Around You is an insanely funny BBC parody of 1970's educational programs filled with pure nonsensical lies clothed as facts & pitch perfect mimicry of the style of governmental approved childrens education television. Each of the entire first season's worth of 8 10-minute episodes
can be viewed here and is highly recommended.
posted by jonson at 3:48 PM PST - 66 comments
Meet The Bloggers.
New BBC Radio Four series begins this week which interviews prominant bloggers about their craft. First up
Anna of little.red.boat and
Annie of Going Underground. Full first programme and unedited interviews
here. I think this is the first time a major network has dedicated a whole series to the topic and treated it with such seriousness and intelligence -- I particularly like the moments in which the prose is sonically illustrated.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:49 PM PST - 12 comments
My Boy Jack.
A heart wrenching story: "For Rudyard Kipling, the most famous author of the age, the carnage at Loos on the Western Front in September 1915 plunged him into inner darkness. His only son, John, for whom he had written his best-loved poem,
If, had been killed in the action just six weeks after his 18th birthday." [more inside]
posted by Marxchivist at 1:14 PM PST - 18 comments
The new GOP buzzword: Fascism.
President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "
war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq. Donald H. Rumsfeld in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City said [of his critics, they are] trying to appease "a new type of fascism."
Before it was
"
cut and run", which was tested using a focus group. On the Senate floor, Sen Hagel earlier decried the tactic: "Focus Group-Tested Buzz Words…Like ‘Cut and Run’…Debase the Seriousness of War." What will they come up with next?
posted by ArunK at 1:00 PM PST - 138 comments
Sunrise, sunset.
A recent
Political ad for Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman (CT-CTFL) includes a few
stock video clips featuring a sunset. After it receives a fairly negative response, however, his campaign manager seeks to define the ad differently. "It's actually a sunrise," Gerstein said. "It's very much a sunrise."
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 11:43 AM PST - 50 comments
Winky-Dink and You
is considered to be the world's first interactive television show. Originally broadcast from 1953 to 1957, show watchers drew items directly on the TV screen to help Winky-Dink out of jams. The show also introduced us to Mr. Bungle (but not
this Mr. Bungle, who gave us
this Mr. Bungle).
posted by Otis at 8:51 AM PST - 9 comments
Now we're faced with a supposedly
democratic Russia where the opposition parties are
established, crushed, united, their leadership changed, all at the behest of the president. China, now clearly
a capitalist state, albeit one without the democratic trimmings, still calls
itself communist. Vietnam has
gone much the same way.
Some things remain the same, though. America's still
meddling in Latin America,
just like it did during the Cold War. The US Army is also fighting a guerilla resistance in Iraq, its leaders apparently ignorant of
the lessons of history, yet accusing others of
exactly that. It's just like the 60s, when it was just as obvious
who had learnt lessons and who hadn't.
posted by imperium at 2:00 AM PST - 48 comments
Doctor Larry Brilliant (mentioned before)
spoke at TED this year, calling himself the "luckiest man in the world." He played witness to the last case of Smallpox, and played a significant role in making it the last case. Inspiring/terrifying video
here, long, with some
graphic images of smallpox.
Back in 1974, Brilliant's technique for early detection in India was to take graphic photos door to door, asking if anyone inside
looks like this. Now, as head of Google's philanthropic efforts, he's advocating systems for "early detection, early response." Unsurprisingly, Google, etc, are an important piece of that system: can we detect what's happening before it can spread?
One of the first responses to Brilliant is up already, a means for doctors to
immediately text epidemiological information straight into a global spatial database. It's a rough and promising start, and its fascinating that it's coming from the bottom up, instead of NGOs like the Red Cross.
posted by cloudscratcher at 12:24 AM PST - 17 comments
August 29
Inspired by a convention in 1999, First Day covers, and his grandfather's autograph collection, Jeremy Adolphson sends off 4x6 index cards to various artists with return postage, hoping for a doodle. 5 years on, he has
sixty-five galleries (some NSFW) worth of art to share.
posted by divabat at 10:10 PM PST - 9 comments
We've all got one...
Almost everyone's got a song with a story - a song that's been ruined by something awful associated with it. This site is the place to share your story...
posted by blaneyphoto at 9:12 PM PST - 43 comments
"A Hydrogen Atom
is only about a ten millionth of a millimeter in diameter, but the proton in the middle is a hundred thousand times smaller, and the electron whizzing around the outside is a thousand times smaller than THAT. The rest of the atom is empty. I tried to picture it, and I couldn't. So I put together this page - and I still can't picture it." Awesome illustration on perspective and particles - *warning* very wide page, may be dangerous to your browser. Also, the
relative size of planets (via the always interesting
37signals blog.)
posted by rsanheim at 8:52 PM PST - 26 comments
Grigory Perelman, awarded the Fields Medal for his work on the Poincare Conjecture,
talks to the New Yorker.
posted by Gyan at 8:36 PM PST - 17 comments
Ancient walls
built as a defence against marauders provide a rich source of pickings for relic hunters (a photo essay).
posted by tellurian at 6:19 PM PST - 11 comments
In less than a month the cabaret, which at first had welcomed all modern tendencies in the arts and hoped to entertain and educate the customer, had turned into a theater of the absurd. That was the intention. "What we are celebrating," Ball wrote in his diary, "is both buffoonery and a requiem mass."The scandal spread. Lenin, who played chess with Tzara, wanted to know
what Dada was all about. (Previously
1,
2,
3)
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:05 PM PST - 10 comments
1,100 Apple II games you can play online.
If you are too overwhelmed by your memories to know what to play, some playable classics:
Oregon Trail*,
Ultima IV*,
Archon*,
Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear*,
Drol*,
Wings of Fury*,
Choplifter *,
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?* and
Taipan*. Or you can play the
first game mod in history:
Castle Smurfenstein, a modification of the 1983 original
Castle Wolfenstein. What did I miss?
[Young whippersnappers can click the asterisks to find out why the game was important. Use the left and right alt keys for joystick buttons, the other instructions are on the site. Emulator only works with IE, sorry. See also this.]
posted by blahblahblah at 12:17 PM PST - 98 comments
Oh God, please never let the NYT review of my latest novel never start like this:
Every few years, as a reviewer, one encounters a novel whose ineptitudes are so many in number, and so thoroughgoing, that to explain them fully would produce a text that exceeded the novel itself in both length and interest. Lately it seems the book reviewers at the NYT--including Michiko Kakutani,
on Jonathan Franzen's latest (
"Just why anyone would be interested in pages and pages about this unhappy relationship or the self-important and self-promoting contents of Mr. Franzen’s mind remains something of a mystery")--have been pulling out all the stops. Poor Irvine Welsh (?).
posted by gottabefunky at 9:21 AM PST - 61 comments
Whistleblower uses YouTube to out key coup co-conspirator,
Lockheed Martin, contracted to prepare coast a guard fleet to be easily compromised by...who knows? Terrorists?
Is this glaring, bumbling private-sector incompetance, or very competant, efficient planning for a fall back to such an explanation should something occur? Either way, pretty clear who's in cahoots and not a ringing endorsement for the virtues of the private sector. Let's see if some government oversight can do something about it (not holding my breath) now that the whistleblower's statement is on you tube.
Washington Post:
On YouTube, Charges of Security Flaws
posted by Unregistered User at 7:36 AM PST - 59 comments
Oops: Impostor scams Louisiana officials
Burned by the yes men. A prankster poses as a HUD honcho and promises NOT to destroy perfectly good housing projects slated for demolition. later, the prankster explained:
The New Orleans projects are sturdily constructed brick buildings that, nevertheless, are slated for demolition, he said.
"Basically, the real reason, of course, is they want to develop New Orleans into something pleasing to tourists -- even more pleasing."
Video
here. Wikipedia has
info on more of their exploits. My favorite was the
bhopal fiasco.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 4:39 AM PST - 19 comments
August 28
Scrotoss - It's Nuts!
(SFW) Inspired by a
game played by the women of the Cree tribe, Scrotoss is the unofficial name of a game involving tossing and catching a beanbag shaped like a pair of testicles with a stick. The game has developed an enthusiast in
Bob the Angry Flower creator
Stephen Notely, who has begun blogging with a handful of friends their exploits in attempting to spread the love of the sport.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:14 PM PST - 17 comments
Wizbang sez
that the levy in New Orleans that broke during Katrina was going to break even without a hurricane, and that the Corps of Engineers knew it and suppressed evidence of it until just recently.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:56 PM PST - 72 comments
Your daily dose of perception-bending.
Stare at the center of this video (wmv or flash) for a minute or two then look away from the screen at your surroundings. You'll experience an interesting and somewhat disconcerting effect. Not appropriate for anyone prone to headaches or seizures.
posted by brain_drain at 1:31 PM PST - 51 comments
Software Pop Idol
If you're a software developer, what happens when you run out of ideas? You ask the community of course! Then you sort, rate and have the ideas voted on. Make it a contest and give away prizes. And that's exactly what the Mac Programmers behind
My Dream App have done. Entries are due by Sept 1st.
Rules here.
Idea Submission form here.
posted by filmgeek at 12:52 PM PST - 19 comments
The Wizard of Oil
Some well-done Photoshop fun to start the week - "Somewhere under the radar, way down low.
There's a land that I heard of once, where the oil still flows.
Somewhere under the radar, folks are screwed.
And the schemes that you dare to scheme really do come through.
One day I wrecked the family car, and daddy and my mummy Bar remind me,
Of my troubles taking acid drops, the night they had to call the cops,
And then they fined me.
Somewhere under the radar, I'll get high. Drink Rye under the radar,
Try, oh yes I'll still try
Why, why must I be dry?
posted by jackspace at 10:36 AM PST - 12 comments
From the
guy who brought you the Whitewater scandal and the
impeachment of President Clinton for lying about oval antics in the Oral Office, a legal push to make the Supreme Court
just say no to "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Ken Starr's
petition to the Court [PDF] makes clear that Starr believes this is no laughing matter, but a chance for the Court to make a landmark ruling that will give school adminstrators the power to limit student speech: "This case presents the Court with a much-needed opportunity to resolve a sharp conflict among federal courts
(and to eliminate confusion on the part of school boards,
administrators, teachers, and students) over whether the First
Amendment permits regulation of student speech when such
speech is advocating or making light of illegal substances."
posted by digaman at 9:46 AM PST - 131 comments
There's a new site, just up and running, that aims to be the YouTube of How-To. Not exactly overflowing with clips just yet, but it could perhaps become a handy web resource, if people really start uploading stuff, and if the folks running it keep pumping out the in-house productions that so far comprise the majority of the site's content. Anyway, it's already the place to go if you want a tutorial on how to make a California roll, or how to hang a door. And if nothing else, some of these clips are just screaming for a mashup treatment. They're calling it
VideoJug.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:12 AM PST - 52 comments
"It’s a cliché among hikers that there are as many ways to hike the trail as there are people who hike it. Most start at Springer Mountain in Georgia and end at Katahdin in Maine; a few start in Maine and head south. Purists walk every 2,167.1 miles of the trail marked by white rectangular blazes painted on the trees. Blue blazers take short cuts on side trails marked with blue. Yellow blazers hitchhike ahead along roads. And then there are the pink blazers.
Pink blazers pursue women."
posted by jessamyn at 6:14 AM PST - 155 comments
Little
Citadels. "Dine, shop, live, work, and be entertained in a unique and alluring environment," says the
Time Warner Center website - all without ever stepping outside your gleaming Manhattan skyscraper. San Jose's
Santana Row, which at first glance seemed no more than a
Beverly Center you can live in, is now being compared favorably to urban European living. And
MGM-Mirage's new,
mysterious and costly ($7 billion!)
Project CityCenter brings the trend to Las Vegas - with gambling, of course. They're not
Arcosantis - and they don't, as yet, require an
Oath of Fealty - but by all accounts they're
thriving. What do they have in common? Wealthy tenants, megacorporate sponsors, and a shared desire to integrate efficient, conspicuous consumption into every aspect of civic life.
Paolo Soleri may have been right after all - maybe he just forgot to
account for the effects of capitalism.
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:43 AM PST - 24 comments
Eject!
Eject! Eject! Whether used in the
air, on
land, at
sea (and
under it), or
on the way to the Moon,
ejection seats and
capsules have saved
thousands of aviators
worldwide. The
basic concept was first tested in
1912, developed by the
Germans in WWII, and became standard safety equipment in
high-speed,
high-altitude jet and rocket aircraft. (Although
ejection seats were in
Gemini spacecraft, they were only in early
Space Shuttle flights.) Much happens very quickly
during ejection, and harrowing
accidents and pilot
deaths still occur. The decision not to eject right away may be heroic, but even pilots who wait may live while
innocent bystanders^ die. However, the efforts of
dedicated researchers and
rocket sled testing by seat
manufacturers keep adding
new members to the unique
club of men and women who survive to fly again.
posted by cenoxo at 12:45 AM PST - 21 comments
August 27
"Over the years, I've tried various sorts of infusions, with vodka and other liquors. Fruit and herb-infused are the best known, and are often wonderful. But what I like is
meat. Where's the infusion for people like me? I felt disenfranchised, and alone, especially after some research on the interwebs revealed a real lack of
meat-based liqueurs. It would be up to me to blaze the trail."
posted by the duck by the oboe at 9:50 PM PST - 44 comments
Ayten Ahmet is a 16 year old girl who wants to win the
Miss Teen Australia Beauty pageant [some links here possibly NSFW]. The problem is some of Australia's Muslim leaders, such as Melbourne cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran, have branded her entry into the competition as a "
slur on Islam". Ayten doesn't know what all the fuss is about,
saying "As long as you present yourself well, respect yourself and respect others, that's what's important. Religion's not an issue." [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:22 PM PST - 39 comments
That's the Sound of the Man Working on the Chain Gang
Among all genres of American folk music,
prison songs may be the most viscerally compelling. They evolved from
plantation songs and
field hollers of slaves in the American South before the civil war (whose origins can in turn be traced to
patterns found in the music of West Africa) but their tone and content is quite different. Limitless in length,
bitter and
pained, offering
little hope of freedom or
redemption, these songs were first heard during Reconstruction. Harsh and unevenly enforced laws incarcerated legions of black American men, consigning them to long sentences of labor for minor offenses like insult, fistfighting, and shoplifting.
To shore up a tanking Southern economy, prisons leased convict labor to plantation owners as a low-cost replacement for slave labor. When reform efforts brought that to an end,
state governments became the contractors. Sweetheart deals awarded lucrative contracts to prisons to provide labor for rebuilding the railroads and highways of the war-destroyed South. Slavery in all but name, these work conditions gave rise to
a body of music that is one of
the most significant antecedents of the blues. In
hundreds of
variants, cadenced to
axe-fall,
hoe stroke, or the
drop of a maul, the songs set a working pace a man could sustain from dawn to dusk, while remaining fast enough to satisfy an armed '
Captain' on horseback.
posted by Miko at 11:21 AM PST - 33 comments
August 26
YaleShmale
"Graduating from an Ivy League university doesn't necessarily mean you're smart."
The pitch certainly proves the point.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 10:33 PM PST - 29 comments
The
Bushi-Nenge of French Guiana and Surinam (Bush Negroes or
Maroons) are a unique, and little-known group of peoples (
Boni or Aluku,
Saramaca,
Ndyuka) who escaped from Dutch plantations in the early 1700's, who battled for independence which was recognized through various treaties -- notably by the Treaty of Albina which France and the Netherlands signed in 1860 (I can't find any info on the net), and who still live an African-type life largely based around the
Maroni River between
French Guiana and
Suriname, as citizens of either one country or the other. Their language is
Sranan Tongo (a mixture of African Languages, English, Dutch, Portuguese and Hebrew -- also known as Taki-Taki --
click for a listen).
Historical and scholarly works are scarce, but
they exist (In English but mostly in Dutch or French).
Some pictures of typical houses.
Symbolic Woodwork.
More art.
Images of the people of French Guyana. Images of various canoes in French Guiana.
More photos of the Maroni River.
Amazonie Francaise.
posted by pwedza at 9:16 PM PST - 11 comments
We Shall Not Be Moved: Some joined the US military as a patriotic duty, some to better themselves, but the horrors of serving in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, changed everything. Deserters tell Gary Younge why they had to quit.
posted by jack_mo at 4:25 PM PST - 32 comments
Sherri Finkbine
--as reported by BBC News, on this day in 1962 (video clip too)--her travails and travels, the law, publicity, and what happened afterwards. (more here from
American Prospect in 05:
...A Gallup Poll taken that year showed that the majority of Americans supported Finkbine, and her case was a turning point ...)
posted by amberglow at 2:46 PM PST - 16 comments
Cane Hill
^ is an abandoned
state run lunatic asylum (link contains tons of photographs) in South London. Built in 1882, the hospital for years housed Charlie Chaplin's mother (before he became wealthy enough to rescue her). Shuttered since 1990, the locations' inherent creepiness continues to fascinate urban explorers. Inside Out has a series of interesting pieces on the location, including
music &
paintings inspired by Cane Hill, an
essay on the location, detailed
floorplans and further
photographs.
posted by jonson at 2:44 PM PST - 18 comments
Are you a recently deceased motorcycle enthusiast desiring of a dignified final ride?
You can have it! Want to be carted off to your final resting place in rugged style, in a 4x4 Land Rover like the one you used to tear around in when you were among the living?
No problem! But if you've just kicked the bucket in China's Jiangsu Province and you'd been hoping to wow the mourners at your big send-off with some strippers, sorry, but you
can't do that. Just want to learn a little more about funeral practices around the world? You can go
here.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:39 AM PST - 11 comments
August 25
Umpire offers to quit for cash payment.
Cricket has been gripped by a scandal that
started at The Oval cricket ground last Sunday.
It started with an accusation of
ball tampering by one of the match umpires, Darryl Hair, during a match between Pakistan and England. Hair awarded England 5 runs and changed the ball, which is the sanction in the laws. Pakistan then refused to play, forfeiting the match.
Ball tampering is an
emotive issue for Pakistan, as is Darryl Hair who has previously been accused of bias against teams from the Indian subcontinent (i.e. racism).
In a bizarre twist, Hair has now offered to
resign as an umpire, in return for a massive cash payment. It shows the regard in which he is held, that his bosses decided to publicise this. It seems unlikely he will ever stand in a test match again.
posted by winjer at 11:04 PM PST - 21 comments
For murder ballads, here's your
Mississippi John Hurt's Louis Collins and your
Grayson & Whitter's Ommie Wise. Then, for some early white blues bottleneck guitar, here's your
Frank Hutchison's K. C. Blues. Not to mention
Charley Patton's Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues. All courtesy the Internet Archives
78 RPM tag. where there is way more--like Bix Beiderbecke's first record,
Davenport Blues, Louis Armstrong's
Ain't Misbehavin' and Geeshie Wiley's
Last Kind Words, among many others. Then, for more,
Nugrape Records has an
mp3 page. The standout there, at least for me, is Gus Cannon's
Poor Boy Long Ways From Home. As for their namesake, the Nugrape Twins, well, the Archive has the mp3 of
I've Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape. And don't let me omit mentioning
PublicDomain4U. They have
Mississippi John Hurt's Frankie, for one.
Tyrone's Record and Phonograph Links will lead you to more 78 RPM goodness. And don't forget the inestimable and erudite vacapinta first
directed us to
Dismuke's Virtual Talking Machine.
posted by y2karl at 2:20 PM PST - 48 comments
The downside of being a nerd with your desktop set to a super-hi resolution is that you can rarely find cool wallpapers to use.
This massive collection (in a wide variety of resolutions) should help.
posted by jonson at 11:26 AM PST - 26 comments
"I would have your wife right in front of you.
I would smoke the last of your glaucoma medication. Then I will surely drink your liquor cabinet dry. However, know this my friend. I will never break an oath to uphold the public trust. My affidavit will be signed in my own blood. A Pirates crimson mark, with real binding effects into my after life. Laugh if you will then ask yourself if you could do it."
James Hill is running for congress in Iowa's first district. He accepts no money from anybody.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:01 AM PST - 54 comments
Patricia Todd won a tight Democratic party runoff in District 54 in Alabama. Patricia Todd is also gay and would be the first gay representative in Alabama's history. Gaynell Hendricks doesn't understand why she lost, but maybe it has to do with the
race baiting . Hendricks' mother-in-law
contests the election for numerous reasons including "illegal votes were given to Todd" and said that "I want this controversy settled.This is happening like when Bush and Gore were running for president. I don't like it." Unsurprisingly, "Hendricks said she is pleased that someone challenged the results. "
Weeks go by and the results don't get certified. A five member committee is appointed and
bickers. Eventually the committee refrerences an old by law that has apparently not been enforced since 1988 to
disqualify Todd. Although it does not seem quite
over, it should be by tommorrow.
Interestingly enough, Todd said she believes the challenge has nothing to do with the fact she is gay, but is about the fact that she is white and won in a majority black district.
posted by dig_duggler at 10:46 AM PST - 38 comments
What the world creates by hand. The
sons of a Peace Corps member, Roberto and Andy Milk had a lifelong
interest in artisans in developing countries. They teamed up with Armenia
Nercessian, a UN human-rights officer, to create Novica.com, an online
marketplace that sells the work of more than 10,000 craftspeople. While
Novica operates chiefly in association with National Geographic,
NPR also
helps to promote them.
posted by owhydididoit at 10:23 AM PST - 14 comments
wealthymen.com
Not covered in previous "dating sites" thread. I just heard the ad on the radio. Wish I could post that, too. It's even better than the site.
posted by wfc123 at 9:43 AM PST - 20 comments
August 24
Here's a dot
. an octave and a half above high C for the legendary jazz trumpeter
Maynard Ferguson, who has
passed away at 78. Building on the experimental wanderings of Miles Davis, Ferguson fused jazz and rock in creating what is quite probably the signature big band sound of the psychadelic and disco eras. (
See, e.g., "Rocky" (.wav).) He was well-known for astounding technical proficiency and his tight-lipped
embochure created one of the largest ranges of any trumpeter. (
Here's Ferguson playing and conducting "Round Midnight" in a very early clip
[youtube]). But legions of former high school trumpet geeks
full disclosure: I am one will remember him best for his commitment to signing promising young players for his tours and his reaching out, with
tireless touring at tiny venues, to high school and college bandies and drum corps-types who at one time or another came across his repertoire.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 11:00 PM PST - 32 comments
Neutral Moresnet
- a wedged-shaped, almost Esperanto speaking, janiformed currency using, one-step anthem playing, created because of a zinc mine, mini-state, that is now nothing more than some border markers.
[more inside]
posted by tellurian at 9:00 PM PST - 25 comments
Book.
For thirty-six weeks, a sketchbook was sent in random order between four artists: two in Brooklyn, two in Belfast. Every Wednesday, one participant would receive book. In order to maintain schedule, it was sent out the following Monday, giving each artist five days to complete a spread in response to the one that preceded it. A small portion of each entry extends on to the following page. Beyond this, there was no communication between the artists concerning the content of book during its making. Book's first trip across the Atlantic was on 2 June, 2003. Its final trip was on 2 February, 2004. By the time it was completed, book had travelled over sixty thousand miles.
posted by amro at 8:12 PM PST - 12 comments
Shortly before his cancer diagnosis, Peter Jennings started work on a one-hour documentary devoted solely to the issue of AIDS in Black America.
ABC News has now finished his work in a one-hour Special Edition of "Primetime," reported by Terry Moran.
"In America today, AIDS is virtually a black disease, by any measure," says Phill Wilson, executive director of The Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for over 50 percent of all new cases of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That infection rate is eight times the rate of whites. Among women, the numbers are even more shocking—- almost 70 percent of all newly diagnosed HIV-positive women in the United States are black women. Black women are 23 times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS than white women, with heterosexual contact being the overwhelming method of infection in black America.
posted by jennababy at 7:49 PM PST - 50 comments
Hydrogen fuel has been
discussed many times on MeFi, but I wasn't able to find a previous link to this
video clip (Google Video warning) showing Jack Nicholson, circa
1978, showing off his hydrogen powered car. The accents of the broadcasters, in case you're wondering, are east coast Canadian, possibly
Newfoundland.
posted by Zinger at 7:21 PM PST - 21 comments
Will Vinyl Survive?
Is vinyl
on its last legs? Or like Gloria Gaynor, will it
survive? Most home listeners chucked out their turntables years ago, but are DJs finally giving in and following suit? DJs face off in a pair of articles discussing the merits of vinyl vs. digital...
posted by bunglin jones at 6:00 PM PST - 68 comments
Every issue of the New Yorker on a portable hard drive.
For $299 you get an 80GB hard drive loaded with every article, poem, short story, advertisement and lame cartoon that has appeared in the over 4,000 issues of The New Yorker Magazine since February, 1925.
The vintage ads alone MIGHT be worth it (depending on res/format) but does anyone really WANT every one of those unfunny cartoons? Does anyone outside NYC even care that this magazine is still being published?
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 3:34 PM PST - 108 comments
Long .pdf paper on the state of mainstream "analytic" philosophy.
In a recent
thread, we discussed the current state of philosophy departments in English-speaking countries. Philosophers are often asked why we don't take Ayn Rand seriously as a philosopher, or why we aren't up on literary Theory or deconstruction, etc. The short answer is that most academic philosophers in universities in the English-speaking world are engaged in a broad consensus (about how to do philosophy, what counts as a good question, etc) that's called "analytic philosophy" for short. Here is a long, informative encyclopedia entry by Scott Soames describing the history and current state of play in analytic philosophy. If you want to understand the background of the currently dominant school of philosophy in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, this will explain it. Link goes directly to a 44-page .pdf file.
Here are a few bonus bits: Jerry Fodor on
Why no one reads analytic philosophy. One of the Philosophy talk podcasts from the Stanford philosophy department, on
The Future of Philosophy. Some answers at askphilosophers.org -- a site where you can ask questions directly of professional philosophers -- that say the
distinction between analytic and continental philosophy should be retired. (In a way, I agree, but the terms are used so widely that it's useful to get a sense of what they're meant to describe.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on what different philosophers have meant by
"analysis".
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:33 PM PST - 56 comments
Reposted to Forbes.com
after a massive backlash from bloggers and writers, this article by executive editor Michael Noer has now been given a counterpoint article by one of the sites' women writers. In the original article, Noer urged men not to marry "career girls," lest they leave you for greener pastures, and other misogynistic nonsense. Slate
chimes in with a painfully adolescent rebuttal while Salon
lets him have it with juicy quotes from women execs and more.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 10:33 AM PST - 95 comments
2006-2007 Doomsday Calendar.
Plenty of Neocons went to bed on the 21st, anxiously awoke on the 22nd, and stayed awake through the 23rd,
disappointed that their ongoing vision of the New American Century had been spoiled - Iran had not triggered the Apocalypse as some had hinted, breaking the sixth seal, making the 12th Iman ride across the skies, testing their first nukular weapon, etc. No, they wanted to
talk. Fortunately, others are picking up the slack, since the prophesies for 5/25/06, 6/6/06, and 8/22/06 have not been fulfilled. Next date up to the plate for a vengeful God?
BoingBoing reports that
Yisrayl Hawkings says
9/12/2006 (
youtube).
The Doomsday Google Calendar is available
here (
XML/
iCAL/
HTML).
posted by rzklkng at 9:13 AM PST - 28 comments
[NewsFilter] A partial victory for public health over politics.
Amazingly, the FDA has finally, after 3 years of wrangling, approved over-the-counter sale of Plan B, an emergency contraceptive pill. The victory is partial because you need to be 18 or older to purchase it without a doctor's note. If you're under 18, you need to still have documentation from your physician (or nurse practitioner). The politics behind the approval process were laid bare in this (sincerely)
fascinating GAO report [note: links to .pdf file]. I also hope that OTC approval will
avoid this.
Plan B previously discussed on MeFi here.
posted by scblackman at 7:49 AM PST - 65 comments
Modern times... suck?
Bob Dylan has heavily criticised the sound of modern music recordings, claiming that,
There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static,
and that,
CDs are small.
Not to exclude himself, he's included his
own new album in this criticism, saying that,
Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded ‘em.
Maybe he's just being a curmudgeon, or maybe he actually has a point about
modern music production. It's not like he's opposed to all things modern: after all, he seems OK with file-sharing and
iTunes. And, umm,
Alicia Keys...
posted by chorltonmeateater at 7:34 AM PST - 68 comments
My very elegant mother just sat upon ninjas
... the textbooks, mnemonic devices and more will have to be changed today. Pluto has been demoted from its status as planet to a
dwarf planet. We now have 8 in our solar system. The debate is
not at all new, and its apparent resolution may not matter to our everyday lives, but it's just a little weird to think of all of the things that will have to be retroactively edited or amended as a result.
posted by twiggy at 6:47 AM PST - 96 comments
Frank Collin.
Just your average everyday half-Jewish Neo-Nazi pederast occult author. Former leader of the Neo-Nazi group that
marched through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie in 1977, triggering protests and court battles. Collin himself was half-Jewish, strangely. He later went to jail for child molestation and seems to have turned to writing books about witchcraft since his release. A truly strange story.
posted by jonmc at 6:26 AM PST - 14 comments
Multiple orgasms trap benefit cheat
is one
Times headline that I wish I had written myself. The story is so far as I can tell quite true; The
Daily Mail has it too, under a much duller headline. On the other hand, it does have readers grumbling at the end: "The more benefit cheats they find - the better. I have two slipped discs, have to sleep sitting up and am entitled to, yes, you've guessed - nothing." writes one, as if Ms Byron were being subsidised for her orgasms.
posted by alloneword at 4:35 AM PST - 17 comments
Playing cards and tarot cards.
An amazing resource about cards with
hundreds of scanned decks, and an
illustrated timeline of cards through the ages. Cards started in China, but the link to the West was the
gorgeous decks of the Marmeluks [Coral cache],which used 52 cards (though the suites were polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups), from there, they
spread to Europe and evolved into the tarot and playing cards. Through their history, cards remained art there are many
beautiful decks in the past, and 20th century artists like Dali and Hockney
created their own decks [coral cache].
posted by blahblahblah at 12:31 AM PST - 14 comments
Have fun with your food! You may never look at fair foods the same way again thanks to this year's ad campaign for the Utah State Fair.
(Warning: videos auto-start)
posted by Orb at 12:31 AM PST - 6 comments
August 23
Most 18-year-old students entering the class of 2010 this fall were born in 1988. For them: Billy Carter, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, Billy Martin, Andy Gibb, and Secretariat have always been dead. They have known only two presidents. Ringo Starr has always been clean and sober. Paul Newman has always made salad dressing. Gas has always been unleaded and Don Imus has always been offending someone in his national audience. Wisconsin's Beloit College has published its sixth annual
Mindset List. [2003 list
previously discussed]
posted by ericb at 9:07 PM PST - 80 comments
Survivor: Cook Islands'
20 castaways will be grouped by race, with competitors divided into four tribes consisting of whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics. If your reaction is "oof," you are
not alone.
But host Jeff Probst says, "I found it to be one of the freshest ideas we’ve had going back to the beginning of this show."
posted by amro at 4:33 PM PST - 102 comments
Back in the dark days of World War II, the
man who would become
Dr. Seuss was in the business of military propaganda . One of the characters he created was
Private Snafu.
Private Snafu was an animated depiction of a bumbling soldier in military training films, whose voice sounded suspiciously close to
Bugs Bunny'
s. Warner Bros. animation studios produced the cartoons with the talents of
Mel Blanc,
Chuck Jones, and
Bob Clampett.
Private Snafu has been discussed here
previously but now you can watch some of the original cartoons on
youtube and download them
here! (unfortunately, I am still unable to locate the awesomely-titled
"Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike")
posted by elr at 2:07 PM PST - 9 comments
Iran's influence in Iraq has superseded that of the US, and it is increasingly rivalling the US as the main actor at the crossroads between the Middle East and Asia... As a result, the US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region... The report also looks into the ideology of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and unpicks Iran’s complicated power structure. It claims that despite his popularity, Ahmadinejad neither holds an insurmountable position within Iran nor commands universal support for his outspoken foreign policy positions... On hostility with the US, the report argues that while the US may have the upper hand in ‘hard’ power projection, Iran has proved far more effective through its use of ‘soft' power. The report also holds a cautious view of the Iran-Israel relationship. It outlines four future scenarios for the relationship between the two states, one of which is the creation of a ‘cold-war’ style nuclear stand-off should Iran achieve nuclear capability.
Iran, its Neighbours and the Regional Crises(full report in pdf)See also
Iran now the key power in Iraq, says UK think-tankSee also
Iran 'boosted by war on terror'
posted by y2karl at 11:31 AM PST - 21 comments
It's on the Internet, so it must be true.
Are hundreds of Muslims in the East Village infuriated by a topless poster of Kate Moss across the street? See what happens when
one blog says so, and various media around the world (
1,
2,
3... you get the idea) take the meme and run with it. Trouble is,
it didn't really happen.
posted by laz-e-boy at 9:34 AM PST - 24 comments
"I ask, what is his real agenda?
What is he trying to do? Is this how you treat artists? If I were another actor or filmmaker, would I work at a studio that takes one of their greatest assets and publicly does this?"
posted by wfc123 at 8:22 AM PST - 39 comments
DAMMIT, DOSED AGAIN! Well, once again I got a cup of full-strength this morning which she swore was decaf, and I'm jittery as a chimp on crack. But soon I won't have to worry; chemists at Washington University School of Medicine are working on a
caffeine test strip.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:51 AM PST - 28 comments
HumanCar
(note: 6.7mb WMV) row, row, row your car... but it's telling that they show it going downhill, but not up. And will you need 3 friends whenever you need to run to the store?
More videos, and
information here.
posted by crunchland at 3:05 AM PST - 12 comments
The makers of
N (previously
here,
here and
here) have been working on a new game - known thus far as TNG (that would be 'the new game'). They've been rather tight lipped about details - untill last month when they revealed a few
juicy bits of what we can expect.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 2:56 AM PST - 13 comments
Mexico City post-election protests,
which began on July 30th at the instigation of López Obrador, former mayor and alleged "loser" of the July 2 federal election, now cover a
12-kilometer (7.5 - mile) stretch of Paseo de la Reforma,
one of the main arteries of one of the world's largest cities. Some see it as a
party, others see it as
ridiculous.
In any case, a crisis of legitimacy is at hand, as all eyes await the announcement, due by Sept. 6 from
"Trife",
the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary, which will either decide the winner, or annul the result and call for new elections.
With partisans of Obrador already claiming that the results of the recent partial recount
suggest systematic fraud, it's unlikely that a smooth resolution is going to come any time soon.
posted by dinsdale at 1:15 AM PST - 22 comments
August 22
Keep driving your Hummer guilt free, thanks to BP
BP announced today a new program that will allow drivers to maintain carbon-neutral without changing their driving habits or make of car. The program, called "Target Neutral" is a web-initiative that allows drivers to cancel out their carbon emissions by funding renewable energy and green technology ventures out of their own pockets -- carbon credit offsets in their simplest form.
Interesting to note that BP's big announcement is on the heels of news reports out of Washington yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency along with two other federal departments will be involved in an investigation into BP's Alaskan operations and it's Aug.9th oil pipe leak.
posted by jacob hauser at 9:12 PM PST - 35 comments
Nancy
, the best comic strip ever? Close but no cigar.
Pogo? Peanuts? Calvin? Good choices all, but still wrong.
Krazy Kat you say? Again I shake my head sadly, friend. For Mr. Dave Astor has finally stepped forward to settle this debate once and for all. The greatest comic strip ever appearing on newsprint? Why, it's
For Better or For Worse of course. Let the debate begin.
posted by ktoad at 3:02 PM PST - 202 comments
Toribash is a turn-based fighting game where, during a turn, you set-up, articulate, and execute fighting moves with rag-doll characters.
Looks like a pretty cool idea. Windows based executable, Linux based server software. I've been doing this for hours, and hours now. I... I... can't stop.
Via (and description courtesy of )Negatendo
posted by boo_radley at 2:49 PM PST - 9 comments
New airline security regulations
in the UK have taken their toll on the touring musicians who used to be able to take their delicate and/or rare instruments as carry-on luggage. Many are forced to either take their chances in the cargo hold or take ferries to countries with less restrictive security guidelines. Others contemplate staying home from touring completely. (via BBC)
posted by dr_dank at 11:12 AM PST - 40 comments
Keep Bush away from the press. Joe Scarborough (in the
news lately for asking rude questions about the President's intelligence) opines that "If George Bush has lost his ability to give a commanding presser, then stage manage him differently. Play to his strengths... Show him only in settings where he is in control." Curiously, while Bush's press conferences have become unsetllingly less coherent in recent days -- even for him -- the so-called liberal media and even the blogosphere have barely mentioned it (perhaps in the spirit of preserving the dignity of the office, like
FDR's wheelchair?) Example:
watch this video --
what happens at 1:34 or so, right before the President abruptly terminates the questioning? Will Bush in his twilight years, as Foxborough advises, become like Ronald Reagan, protected from public humiliation by his faithful staff?
posted by digaman at 10:10 AM PST - 156 comments
17 year old kid
gets 2 years for selling 20 dollars of pot, enough for 1 joint. The entire town is basically a "No Drug Zone" so they used federal law to give the kid the mandatory 2 years. The
Drug Policy Alliance has put together a
video that really hits home on the war against the American people.
posted by IronWolve at 9:05 AM PST - 234 comments
The life and times of the British seaside holiday.
The BBC explore the
Victorian beginings of this British
cultural export, its
history and heyday, and the slow decline into genteel decay -
and not so genteel - decay.Perhaps buoyed by nostalgia for childhood memories of lemonade ice lollies, sticky gobs of tar underfoot, and sand sandwiches, there's a move to promote
regeneration and reinvention. Especially now that the
beaches are
cleaner than ever, although some still occasionally subject to
unpleasant bobbing objects.
Although any regeneration might play on icons like the
piers,
beach huts,
grand hotels,
architecture, and
classic cafes, it's perhaps less likely to feature traditional and dubious delights like
Punch and Judy, end of the pier shows, fearsome landladies and
holiday camps. The builders of new sandcastles have grander plans, whether that be the
Las Vegas of the northwest, the artist's paradise of
St Ives, the surfer's paradise of
Newquay, or Hove's
multi-coloured pleasure dome. Anyway, would you like this
open or wrapped?
posted by reynir at 8:57 AM PST - 6 comments
August 21
What’s the best way to dispose of an accumulated fortune? Conventional wisdom tells us that you can’t take it with you. The inevitability of death has inspired otherwise ruthless men to contribute to the larger community with the goal of establishing a posthumous legacy. Carnegie built libraries. Bill Gates is working on global health initiatives. But the conventional wisdom on this matter could be wrong. And with that in mind, some wealthy men are
choosing to turn themselves into cryonic popsicles and put their wealth in trust funds in the hope that at some point in the future, Science will be able to revive them.
posted by jason's_planet at 7:33 PM PST - 52 comments
Raed Jarrar was coming home from Jordan wearing a T-shirt with the phrase "We will not be silent" in Arabic script and English. Other JetBlue passengers who could not read the Arabic were "offended" and
she was apprehended by security and asked to replace it. She also had her seat changed to the back of the plane. Variations on T-shirt airline censorship have
happened before, but, taken to extremes, the fear of foreign language has
spawned some unpleasant nights. Where is the line drawn? And where is the path to multicultural reconciliation?
posted by ed at 2:21 PM PST - 70 comments
You may have your own set of acquired tastes, but what of acquired
F.E.A.R.? The multiplayer component of Monolith's latest
LithTek powered franchise has been overhauled and released into the wild - without a price tag in sight. If you've been known to enjoy a bit of the old
simulated ultra violence you'll feel right at home among the frenetic emergence of automatic weapon fire and the spectre of the unarmed takedown.
posted by prostyle at 1:20 PM PST - 14 comments
Human Rights Watch, Watched
"Who will guard the guardians?" asked Roman satirist Juvenal. Now we must ask, who is watching Human Rights Watch, one of the world's best-financed and most influential human rights organizations? It turns out that they cook the books about facts, cheat on interviews, and put out pre-determined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence.
These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true.
posted by Postroad at 12:00 PM PST - 62 comments
The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall... The consequences of an all-out civil war in Iraq could be dire. Considering the experiences of recent such conflicts, hundreds of thousands of people may die. Refugees and displaced people could number in the millions. And with Iraqi insurgents, militias and organized crime rings wreaking havoc on Iraq's oil infrastructure, a full-scale civil war could send global oil prices soaring even higher... Welcome to the new "new Middle East" -- a region where civil wars could follow one after another, like so many Cold War dominoes. And unlike communism, these dominoes may actually fall.
What Next?See also
Mindless in IraqAnd note that, as of tomorrow, Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006,
the war in Iraq will have lasted one full week longer than US involvement in World War II.
posted by y2karl at 11:49 AM PST - 52 comments
Book22
is named after the 22nd book of the Bible,
Song of Solomon. Apparently, it's also a great place for married couples to pick up their intimate items. And, also an opportunity to
share the gospel. Note that these are links to an online sex toy shop, NSFW, though safer than most online sex toy shops.
posted by Roger Dodger at 8:23 AM PST - 22 comments
Would YOU lie to save your life?
The Doctor said that I needed a keyhole operation called a coronary angioplasty to clear the blockages, but the waiting list on the NHS was nine months.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew that I would struggle to survive the next nine days, so nine months seemed an impossibility. What the doctor had just handed me was a virtual death sentence.
He must have seen the look of horror. He said that if I paid for the operation, he could fit me in for the angioplasty within the week.
The cost privately, he told me, would be around £8,500.
I looked at him, my head a whirl as I tried to make sense of what he was telling me. As far as I could see, the choice was clear — if I paid I would live, if I didn’t I would probably die.
I’m a pensioner living on £150 a week. And no bank would have given me a loan.
But in that split second my survival instinct kicked in and I realised I had to convince the doctor that I had the money.
‘Well, you can’t take it with you,’ I said cheerily. ‘I’ll go private.’
The following morning, I gave the administrator the cheque before I was discharged from the hospital. Some people would say this was fraud, because I knew it would bounce. But there was nothing else I could do — I wanted to live.
posted by Izzmeister at 5:44 AM PST - 163 comments
In
the 1930's,
Henry Ford transplanted
a tiny piece of America—complete with picket fences, fire hydrants, poetry readings, square-dancing, and English-language sing-alongs—into the Amazon rain forest.
Fordlândia was to be the largest
rubber tree plantation on the planet (over 70 million rubber tree seedlings) providing
material for the millions of tires
Ford Motor Company needed. It flopped. So he tried again, downriver a bit, with
Belterra. It flopped, too. By 1945, Ford threw in the towel having lost over $20 million, or roughly $200 million in modern dollars.
posted by CodeBaloo at 5:38 AM PST - 10 comments
Residents try to ban child abuse victims from their neighborhood.
A bunch of Taichung residents decide that their community is too nice for a home for victims of child abuse. From the article: "a committee formed by residents of the community passed a 'resolution' in June to prohibit the teenagers from moving in under the pretext of maintaining the "high quality" of the neighborhood."
posted by Poagao at 3:04 AM PST - 99 comments
August 20
Federal Appeals Court
opinion
"We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion... Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity." Even if no evidence of a drug related crime is provided, you are guilty until proven innocent. BTW, they wont return the money.
posted by IronWolve at 10:37 PM PST - 103 comments
Scott Petersen, aka
"reptileman", opens his
Serpentarium to visitors 365 days a year.
Have a look at some of his snakes, lizards, invertebrates,
crocodilians, and turtles,
and
kids
blythely
handling
them.
reptileman recommends that you also visit
Zach's
Lizard Land, where you can meet
Jerky,
Buddy, and
Cola, all of whom are lizards.
posted by owhydididoit at 9:49 PM PST - 8 comments
The Fart Heard Round the World. An extraordinary performer, who farted for his living for 20 years,
Le Pétomane (YouTube) was the highest paid stage artist of his time in 1897 France. He farted songs, impressions of people, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and farm animals, among other things. The management of Moulin Rouge had to hire nurses to help members of the audience who passed out laughing so hard. He was pusued for many years by an obsessed doctor. Two movies were made about his life in English, the 1979 short film (33 minutes) of
Le Pétomane (Google video) and in 2005 Parti Avec Le Vent, which translates as
Gone With the Wind. [more]
posted by nickyskye at 9:00 AM PST - 39 comments
"The Lutherans had
Davey &
Goliath and I wondered what we Baptists could do for children's television," remembers Dr Paul M. Stevens. Stevens, then president of the Southern Baptist Radio & Television Commission contracted Byers and Perry to develop
JOT THE
DOT into a children's television show with the purpose to reach children with moral messages on their level."
What they created are also a series of
modernist gems. via
posted by maryh at 3:03 AM PST - 19 comments
Lonely? Online? Unwilling to fuck people that aren't exactly like you? Good news! The
PeopleMeet Empire has a dating website custom designed
specifically to fit your needs, whether you're
Italian,
Jewish,
Divorced,
Marriage Minded,
Asian (nonspecific),
Asian (specific),
Old,
Really Old, Christian (
Catholic,
Lutheran,
Methodist,
Baptist,
Presbyterian,
Pentacostal,
Born Again,
Mormon or
Other),
Republican,
Democrat,
Midget,
Fit,
Fat, the
Outdoor type, the
Indoor type, a
Pet lover,
Professional, some kooky
Black variation of the
earlier types, or even (gasp!)
Californian.
posted by jonson at 12:12 AM PST - 64 comments
August 19
A Message from Iran
was distributed on August 6 by the editors of MAHA, the clandestine gay ‘zine in Iran. MAHA means “we” or “us” in Persian. Originally begun in 2004 as a newspaper after a crackdown on Iranian gay Web sites by the Tehran regime, MAHA is now distributed in PDF format to its subscribers.
Iran has been censoring the Internet in earnest since
2003, and homosexuals are only a small part of that story. Likewise, Internet censorship is merely an element of the systematic persecution of gay
men and
boys in Iran. [more inside]
posted by owhydididoit at 9:37 PM PST - 17 comments
Urinal Sculpture
- beautiful targets. (I think this site stands on its own. However, if you are in dire need and one of these lovelies is just too fare to run, here is a
guide to your local loo, or even better yet your loo on the run. For the true loooligist
this compendium is sure to satisfy.)
posted by caddis at 6:28 PM PST - 30 comments
The cruiser Emden
was launched in 1910. When World War One broke out, she was under the command of Korvettenkapitän Karl Friedrich Max von Müller, with Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke as executive officer, who "was as extroverted as his commander was modest." When Graf von Spee, commander of the East Asiatic Squadron, decided to keep it united and head for Chile to coal up, Müller said he'd rather go off on his own and harass British shipping. Spee agreed, and the
Emden embarked on a spree of destruction that made him a hero not only to the Germans but even to the British; when it was over, the
Telegraph said: "It is almost in our hearts to regret that the Emden has been captured and destroyed.... There is not a survivor who does not speak well of this young German, the officers under him and the crew obedient to his orders. The war on the sea will lose some of its piquancy, its humour and its interest now that the Emden has gone."
posted by languagehat at 4:05 PM PST - 35 comments
August 18
The strange saga of
Harvey Matusow, "most hated man in America". Said to be the
most notorious of the paid perjurious snitches for the Communist witch-hunters, married 12 times, gave LSD to Robert F. Kennedy, tangled with Roy Cohn, was prison buddies with Wilhelm Reich, recorded a psychedelic Jews Harp record,
started the rumor that smoking dried banana peels gets you high (as an act of revenge against Chiquita Banana), wrote one of the first how-to books on computer hacking. [
via]
posted by nickyskye at 7:32 PM PST - 20 comments
Street Cents, a staple on The
CBC for 17 years, has been
canceled. The Emmy award-winning show focused on consumer and media awareness for teens and pre-teens.
Street Cents is filmed in
Halifax, NS and airs without commercial interruption in order to avoid potential conflict with advertisers who were regularly taken to task on the show. The last episode will air on October 1st, 2006.
posted by purephase at 6:26 PM PST - 33 comments
Beauty in bitmaps-
Some artists work in watercolors, some oils, and some with clay. The 'artists' at tacoholic express themselves in the universally accessible medium of really bad MS Paint drawings. Its public so you can submit your own masterworks.
posted by AVandalay at 11:33 AM PST - 7 comments
FFF: Pac Xon
is like
Qix, only with graphics from Pac Man, and the red ghosts eat your territory, and the popsicles freeze the ghosts. So maybe it's not so much like Qix, but it's similarly addictive. [
via]
posted by scottreynen at 10:52 AM PST - 17 comments
Tehching Hsieh – Life Performance
Never one to back down from performance art, Tehching Hsieh, a Chinese emigre to the US, has done some pretty impressive things:
-
A year in a cage in his loft without talking;
-
Punching a time clock every hour of every day for a year (and missing tons of REM sleep
and making a film in the process;)
-
Spending a year outside, never entering a single building or roofed structure until he was arrested in a scuffle;
Tied together with artist Linda Montano with a 8-foot piece of rope.
Does Tehching Hsieh deserve to be called America's Greatest Performance Artist?
posted by parmanparman at 10:29 AM PST - 27 comments
McKinley Assassination Ink:
"The goal [...]: to gather the largest possible selection of full-text primary source documents relating to the assassination of William McKinley and the immediate aftermath of that event, including the succession of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency and the incarceration, trial, and execution of [anarchist] assassin Leon Czolgosz."
posted by OmieWise at 10:11 AM PST - 9 comments
Collection of Divine Messages, vol. 1.
In 1926, Vietnamese intellectuals tried to unify the religions of the world. After a year of intensive seance,
here's what they came up with: Spiritist mediumship, Taoist cosmology, Christian rhetoric, Catholic structure, Buddhist/Confucian morality, .....Masonic imagery? Their take on vegetarianism: "An impure physical body will create an impure spiritual body, which cannot conduct electricity well. As a result, it will then be struck by lightning and be destroyed in the atmosphere. Even if the impure spiritual body is wise and remains on the earth to avoid the lightning, it will remain an Immortal and never proceed to Buddhahood. This is why I recommend the practice of complete vegetarianism before attempting meditation." More via
Sydney Centre for Studies in Caodaism.
posted by Laugh_track at 6:33 AM PST - 9 comments
Ronald McHummer. "This month McDonald's is giving away toy Hummers — 42 million of them, in eight models and colors — with every Happy Meal or Mighty Kids Meal. That's right: The fast-food chain that helped make our kids the fattest on Earth is now selling future car buyers on the fun of driving a supersized, smog-spewing, gas-guzzling SUV.."
posted by stbalbach at 5:19 AM PST - 117 comments
Friday Flash Fun: Dolphin Edition.
It takes a little practice, and you probably should read the directions first.
WARNING: May lead to a drop in productivity, sensation of lost time, or feelings of isolation.
posted by kyleg at 1:03 AM PST - 16 comments
Ilha Das Flores video
"A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. The end?
No. ISLAND OF FLOWERS follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear."
A remarkable and devastating 12 minute film from director
Jorge Furtado.
posted by maryh at 12:06 AM PST - 15 comments
August 17
Google Web Toolkit + Texas Holdem Poker = gpokr.com. I should probably be embarrassed about how much time I've spent in the last few weeks playing poker online for pretend money. As the site operator mentions in his
development blog, it seems to be the small things that make the site so sticky: elegant ajax design, players' rankings displayed and updated right next to their names at the table, a slew of player statistics presented on the main
ranking page, even more statistics and graphs on each
user page. (
Oh, and out of 5000 or so current players, I seem to be #1).
posted by nobody at 9:57 PM PST - 35 comments
DHS's CyberStorm--
--Recognizing the imminent threat hippies and assorted leftists obviously pose to us all, a massive cyber terror simulation (international and involving 115 organizations) recently came to light:
...The attack scenario detailed in the presentation is a meticulously plotted parade of cyber horribles led by a "well financed" band of leftist radicals who object to U.S. imperialism, aided by sympathetic independent actors.
At the top of the pyramid is the Worldwide Anti-Globalization Alliance, which sets things off by calling for cyber sit-ins and denial-of-service attacks against U.S. interests. WAGA's radical arm, the villainous Black Hood Society, ratchets up the tension on day one by probing SCADA computerized control systems and military networks ...
posted by amberglow at 9:20 PM PST - 28 comments
Motion Mountain
- "
The project aims to produce a simple, vivid and up-to-date introduction to modern physics, with emphasis on the fundamental ideas of motion. 'Simple' means that concepts are stressed more than formalism; 'vivid' means that the reader is continuously challenged; 'up-to-date' means that modern research and ideas about unification are included."
posted by Gyan at 7:26 PM PST - 4 comments
Diigo
(Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff) is a new "social annotation" bookmarking site with the standard save-and-share, tags, etc., and also sharable
Web page annotations.
posted by davcoo at 5:00 PM PST - 6 comments
In the Hollywood version of the
Kwame James story, he becomes an NBA All-Star, helps achieve world peace and, of course, lives blissfully ever after. While the real-life plot hasn't followed quite that arc, perhaps it's headed toward a happy ending.
(via SpoFi)
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:54 PM PST - 7 comments
Holy Madness!
(Flash interface.)
The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City has launched a website that allows you to pore over and compare Tibetan Buddhist artwork from their exhibits. Use the "Decode" feature to pick paintings apart and learn about their intricate components.
See also: their
ambitious calendar of events.
posted by hermitosis at 12:12 PM PST - 18 comments
The Great War on Terror shall be won with Powerpoint.
[Army Lt. General David] McKiernan had another, smaller but nagging issue: He couldn't get Franks to issue clear orders that stated explicitly what he wanted done, how he wanted to do it, and why. Rather, Franks passed along PowerPoint briefing slides that he had shown to Rumsfeld: "It's quite frustrating the way this works, but the way we do things nowadays is combatant commanders brief their products in PowerPoint up in Washington to OSD and Secretary of Defense…In lieu of an order, or a frag [fragmentary order], or plan, you get a bunch of PowerPoint slides…[T]hat is frustrating, because nobody wants to plan [img] against PowerPoint slides."
(Here's
briefing standards *.ppt,
clipart, and
some earlier governmental [pdf] uses of PowerPoint [
Cryptome],
FAS, along with one from
ABCNEWS making the case against Iran.) Also, here are previously related MeFi PowerPoint threads on the
Downing Street Memos and the
Columbia disaster.
posted by rzklkng at 11:32 AM PST - 97 comments
genggong, khomus, guimbarde, trumpi... Not ringing a bell? How about
Jew's Harp? Though neither a harp nor associated with Jewish tradition, that's the name that stuck in the
New World.
Call it what you will, this ingenious little instrument is
played all over the planet. It's the focus of at least one yearly
festival, and there's no shortage of great
players out there
twanging and
boinging away. The instrument has a looong
history stretching from antiquity to
house music. In certain parts of the world its playing is the province of
women only, and yes, they've been known to
make the camels cry. Unsurprisingly, they've found their way onto the beloved
YouTube in extreme close-up glory.
BOINNNNGGG!! (Note: some links go direct to bwaaaang-y audio or video)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:16 AM PST - 21 comments
"Photojojo
scours the internets, rips pages out of magazines, ransacks their friends' closets, and goes through dumpsters to find the very best Photo tips, DIY projects, and Gear." Subscribe and get it by email or RSS. Some
archives here.
posted by dobbs at 8:12 AM PST - 10 comments
The Domesday Book
is online. This book is "a great land survey from 1086, commissioned by William the Conqueror to assess the extent of the land and resources being owned in England at the time, and the extent of the taxes he could raise. The information collected was recorded by hand in two huge books, in the space of around a year." You can browse it
here. The site also has some background info both on
England at the time and
the book itself.
posted by Marxchivist at 6:02 AM PST - 20 comments
If you ride a subway in North America, you've probably seen the pictures: standing before that always red background, stylish urbanites look over their shoulders, giving each other flirtatious looks. And even if you're not in the dating market, you may have taken interest in the posters' energetic style, in the way their intricate linework confidently mixes caricature and fashion illustration influences, and wondered what the artist gets up to when he's not tempting singles towards Lavalife. The artist is
Marcos Chin.
posted by TimTypeZed at 12:48 AM PST - 38 comments
For nearly two years now,
Ben T Steckler has been reviewing, posting album covers, and making full albums available for download from his seemingly inexhaustible collection of out-of-print, spoken word, sound effect, educational & other kooky recorded ephemera. If you're a fan of album titles like
How To Buy Meat,
What Smoking Has Done For Me, or
The Catholic Marriage Manual, this site will provide you with endless hours of reading/downloading/listening pleasure.
posted by jonson at 12:08 AM PST - 15 comments
Zap Reader.
Browser-based reader that takes selected text and flashes them one (or two, or three) at a time on the screen for super-fast speed reading. Scroll down for the tutorial video. Convenient or headache-inducing? You be the judge.
posted by zardoz at 12:00 AM PST - 23 comments
August 16
For those days when you need to be reminded just how wonderful you are. Sit back and enjoy the positive affirmations and heroic music of
You Are Mighty.
posted by Orb at 12:47 PM PST - 26 comments
Macon, Georgia, the 1840's. African-American Alabama Vest brings his design for a musical instrument to German clockmaker Thaddeus von Clegg. The modern
KAZOO is
born. It sees its golden age during the
Jug Band era. Later it rears its buzzy head on songs by Hendrix, Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers and
many others. Originally
made of metal, these days they're mostly
plastic. And I, for one, agree that the humble kazoo is the ideal choice for designation as
The National Instrument.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:57 AM PST - 23 comments
August 15
An experiment recently performed
by the AET RaDAL group shows that the gravitomagnetic field produced by a rapidly-spinning superconductor can cause a 1.117 times increase over the Earth's gravity.
Gravitomagnetism, a phenomenon predicted by General Relativity, is a poorly understood but promising topic in modern physics. Speculation about harnessing the bizarre, space-warping and gravity-altering effects of gravitomagnetism has already begun.
Reactionless space propulsion [PDF] is the most apparent use (
previously discussed), with the potential applications far-reaching and nearly inconcievable.
The earlier experiment by the European Space Agency involving another rapidly-spinning superconductor earlier this year found a massive increase in strength over the predicted values, but still miniscule by our standards. Things could become very interesting if the results from this latest experiment pan out.
posted by nervestaple at 9:20 PM PST - 47 comments
Hummer Ad
strikes all the wrong notes. Tofu-eater feels insecure upon seeing an unrepentant meat-muncher, goes buys a Hummer to 'Restore the balance' (previous tagline: 'Restore your manhood'.) Somehow the ad agency forgot that you're supposed to get the message of "Feeling Down on Yourself? Buy Our Product, Show it Off, You'll Feel Better!" across
subtly, not explicitly.
posted by Firas at 3:13 PM PST - 107 comments
Bored with that same old business meeting? Why not try a
dinner in the sky? But if it's a view you're after, you could probably take a few of your clients
here for the same price.
(flash & sound alert; film clip on main site is slow to load)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:51 AM PST - 14 comments
The Toronto Globe and Mail on
climate-change denial in Canada. Includes a description of how donations from oil companies to anti-Kyoto groups like Friends of Science are laundered through the Calgary Foundation and the University of Calgary's Science Education Fund.
Previously.
posted by russilwvong at 7:52 AM PST - 67 comments
What If ... 9/11 Never Happened?
"
The broader culture would have gone its own way, 9/11 or no 9/11—progressing effortlessly from the obsessions of
Gary Condit and
Survivor in summer ’01 to Brangelina and
American Idol in ’06. The Oliver Stone project of August ’06, however, would not be
World Trade Center, but, with exquisite timing,
Fidel."
One possibility from many in a collection of "could've-beens" compiled by
New York Magazine. Other contributions of note:
Tom Wolfe,
Fareed Zakaria, an alternate-future blog by
Andrew Sullivan, and perhaps best of all, a simple sketch from
Ex Machina's
Brian K. Vaughan.
posted by grabbingsand at 4:59 AM PST - 118 comments
Lists
of the best places in the United States assume their expert can choose the absolute best place to live, or to work, or to raise a family—for everyone. Wouldn't a better way to
find great places to live in America be based on
your unique priorities and preferences?
posted by CodeBaloo at 3:51 AM PST - 42 comments
Romance 2.0
: Jan-M. Studt's writing/directing debut. "Businesswoman Sarah Townsend looked back on a successful day when a promising, unknown man called on her 3D-holophone. Too bad the holophone technique isn't very advanced yet. And men are not what they used to be..."
(German with English subtitles.)
posted by Orb at 1:13 AM PST - 14 comments
August 14
Hey, that drum set looks like it's
melting!
Acid starting to kick in? No! It's a TRIXON drum set!
Trixon is exciting! Incontrovertible evidence that when it came to funny looking drum kits, the Germans had it down. Well, maybe with the exception of
these.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:42 PM PST - 14 comments
Mona Lisa and other classics in
clay animation.
Joan C. Gratz is the talented artist behind this and
other projects.
This particular short film won an academy award for best animated short film in 1992. I am surprised to have never viewed it before today. Wikipedia has next to nothing on Gratz or her works.
posted by jkafka at 11:31 PM PST - 6 comments
The sketchbooks of
Edward Burne-Jones,
Benjamin Champney,
Henri-Edmond Cross,
Jacques-Louis David,
Paul Feeley,
Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
Sanford Gifford,
George Grosz,
Frederic Leighton, and
John Singer Sargent.
UnderCover, Artists' Sketchbooks exhibition by the
Harvard Art museums [via woolgathering]
posted by bigmusic at 7:15 PM PST - 9 comments
Can you see me now?
is a chase game played online and on the streets. Players are dropped at random locations into a virtual map of the
Banff Centre. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player. The runners use handheld computers showing the positions of online players to guide them in the chase. From the good folks at
Blast Theory and the
Mixed Reality Lab.
posted by greatgefilte at 4:11 PM PST - 8 comments
Temari
have been a hand-crafted tradition for centuries in China and Japan. Also known as
kishu-temari, edo-temari, etc., these intricate
woven balls were originally toys for children and later became gifts symbolizing friendship and loyalty. Though they used to be constructed from scraps of old kimonos, over the years they have evolved into
elaborate geometric designs using silk as well as other, less expensive materials. People outside Japan have been
making their own recently and a
homemade temari makes a
beautiful gift indeed.
posted by ktoad at 3:02 PM PST - 11 comments
Bicycle Coffee Systems
reviews products essential to the "joys of bicycling and drinking good coffee, at the same time" and is written by "The Earth's Leading Authority on Conveying Coffee by Bicycle".
posted by turbodog at 1:50 PM PST - 8 comments
I've long felt that the U.S. of A. "jumped the shark" as a country when we rejected the Metric System. The price of gasoline would still be under a dollar (per liter). Yet, we'd drive less because a short 20 mile trip would become a long 32 km trip. Then there's
the most important measurement of all [maybe NSFW animated graph], providing us with the joy of 12.9(!) while we try to ignore that Japan is .1 ahead of us and France is .1 more than
South Africa. (And is that Korean average North or South?)
posted by wendell at 11:43 AM PST - 65 comments
Piet
is a programming language in which programs look like
abstract paintings. You can view some sample programs, or if you just like Mondrian, why not make your own with the Mondrian Machine? Or maybe you don't like Mondrian but you do like programming, in which case you can check out other strange languages, such as Petrovich, where you can punish or reward your PC. Finally, if you don't like programming OR Mondrian, have a look at a silly gif of a kitten.
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:55 AM PST - 11 comments
We’ve detected background radiation from the Big Bang. We’ve sent explorers to the bottom of the ocean and the moon above us. We have images of the individual atoms of which our world is made. But we cannot have direct access to the sensory experiences of another human being. Language can help to bridge the gap but it is an imperfect tool. The closest we have come is
Brain Fingerprinting and even that only indicates recognition of a scene or object; it does not capture the actual visual memory of the scene or object. This may soon change. Several years ago, researchers at Berkeley wired a cat’s neurons to a computer and
were able to obtain videos of what the cat was seeing.
posted by jason's_planet at 7:51 AM PST - 50 comments
OTR Network..
Free archives of over 11,000 old radio shows, get your Jack Benny fix here ! Yeah, they use RealPlayer, but it's still pretty cool.
posted by lobstah at 6:09 AM PST - 12 comments
OutsideIn Korea
- brought to the world by our own
stavrosthewonderchicken. He asked what you would like to see on the site
here. Now sit back while he brings it to you. Or not. Probably not, now I think about it.
In any case, the man writes like a demon on crack (except twice as interesting) and, whether or not you have the slightest interest in Korea, you will be entertained by the stories. If you follow his personal
site, you know what to expect. If you have never read his writings before, strap in, you're in for a bumpy ride.
posted by dg at 4:38 AM PST - 19 comments
August 13
CBC Blogging Manifesto
Tired of waiting for CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, to come up with a blogging policy, CBC bloggers – including the infamous pseudonymous blogger
A. Ouimet – charge ahead and write one themselves.
posted by joeclark at 10:18 PM PST - 12 comments
In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive... The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.
Test Case
posted by y2karl at 6:06 PM PST - 78 comments
There's no need for you to record
short videos (youtube) of yourself singing impossibly cheesy songs about astological signs whilst a woman does interpretive dance in the background, because
Harvey Sid Fisher has already done it for you.
Thanks to Ryan at FFFF for bringing this to my attention
posted by Afroblanco at 3:55 PM PST - 16 comments
Can microbes make us fat?
Of the trillions and trillions of cells in a typical human body — at least 10 times as many cells in a single individual as there are stars in the Milky Way — only about 1 in 10 is human. The other 90 percent are microbial. These microbes — a term that encompasses all forms of microscopic organisms, including bacteria, fungi, protozoa and a form of life called archaea — exist everywhere. New evidence suggests microbes in our bodies can determine how efficiently we process food and affect our hunger centers.
posted by caddis at 2:35 PM PST - 29 comments
3000 feet up in the mountains of Eastern Myanmar (Burma) lies Inle Lake
^, a giant freshwater lake that is
populated by 70,000 people
living in four separate cities
on top of the lake. They
dwell,
fish,
farm,
worship and
celebrate upon the surface of Lake Inle, living a unique lifestyle that seems wholly unto itself, untouched by the world outside.
All pictures found using the amazing FlickrStorm tool.
posted by jonson at 12:07 PM PST - 25 comments
Websites that changed the world?
This Observer piece lists fifteen websites that aught to be considered the best of the web. It's a bold claim and although the potted histories are excellent, I'm wondering the extent to which it mostly includes website that have broken the public recognition barrier in the uk rather than changing the
world. How many are simply pioneers in their field? Where for example is
flickr?
posted by feelinglistless at 9:07 AM PST - 69 comments
August 12
Homophobia, bad 'fan' art and childish humor abound at
Craig Not Bond, which is campaigning for a boycott of the new Bond film
Casino Royale. Why? Because Bond is clearly not a sissy blonde fag who
can't drive a stick. A painful excursion down to the innermost (and utterly painful) depths of pissed off fandom.
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:46 PM PST - 83 comments
I found a site with hundreds of old TV theme songs.
It’s not much to look at, and the audio ain’t the best, but it’s free (and apparently maintained by a patriotic american, thank you, sir). Spending some hours there reminded me that composers and musicians used to take the craft seriously. You can find just about anything. Good?
The Avengers,
Barney Miller,
Green Hornet,
Hawaii Five-O,
Rockford Files,
Room 222. Feelgood?
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Cheese?
Dynasty,
Three’s Company,
Flo. 80s schlock?
Hardcastle & McCormick,
Hunter. Check out the mess that is the theme for
The Bionic Woman. Did you remember that Jose Feliciano did
Chico and the Man? I bet you didn't know...well...WTF:
The Associates. I wondered where the tradition went, but, then, after MTV, I guess all the media became one and ‘TV’ ‘Theme’ ‘Music’ became something like
this. My favorite theme? I had to go elsewhere to find it: it’s
my own.
posted by toma at 8:37 PM PST - 58 comments
This is what we all hoped the internet would be about.
When we discovered the internet, most of us saw it as a way to connect to other people.
Peter has only been on youtube for a week. His first video has been viewed nearly 300,000 times, and there isn't a single idiot teenager within range of the camera.
Do you have a few minutes to spare? Spend them with Peter.
Six videos, and hopefully, more to come.
posted by HuronBob at 6:13 PM PST - 86 comments
Moldovan wine was
famous throughout the former Soviet Union. The centerpiece of its industry was (and is) a huge network of caverns known as
Cricova where Stalin supposedly stored the remnants of
Goering’s wine collection. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought extreme economic hardship to Moldova. In the midst of this hardship, the Russian Government
imposed a ban on Moldovan (and Georgian) wines and cut off access to their largest export market. You might want to consider their plight if you visit the liquor store this weekend.
posted by jason's_planet at 5:39 PM PST - 11 comments
Fascination with
ground and figure carries on in various fields after
The Rubin vase / face Illusion,
M.C. Escher, and
Marshall McLuhan.
Besides being extremely important in the fields of
photography and
poetry, the figure/ground relationship is important to physicist
Paul Davies, who says "the true miracle of nature is to be found in the ingenious and unswerving lawfulness of the cosmos, a lawfulness that permits complex order to emerge from chaos, life to emerge from inanimate matter, and consciousness to emerge from life."
Also, Peter Grundy and Yiang Yan discuss how
contextual ground relates to linguistic figure in Bill Clinton's famous apology,
Andrew Graydon plays with the distinction between sound as environment and sound as music, and W.C. Richardson creates
paintings in which "positive and negative spaces seem unstable; figure becomes ground, ground becomes figure."
posted by Aghast. at 5:33 PM PST - 3 comments
Eat your vegetables,
they are good for you.
the goal ... it seemed so ambitious at the time! ... was to cook a vegetable, with new recipes and new vegetables, every single day for an entire month. (Why? Because our diets need more vegetables. Because vegetables are too often an after-thought. And because it's easy to get stuck in a veggie rut.) But after a month, it felt like I was just getting started ... and the asparagus was calling. And then ... 365 days of new vegetables and new recipes.
posted by caddis at 1:49 PM PST - 13 comments
To work around the proprietary whims of digital audio software developers and laptop processor limitations during the mid- and late-1990s, a small band of technically-minded people, including the electronic musician
Blitter, pulled together in the late 1990s to engineer the open-source
OPEN DSP EZ-Kit platform, a 16-bit computer designed entirely with a focus on low cost and extensible control and DSP arithmetic capabilities. While this project and
similar commercial offerings never seemed to gain the critical mass needed to sustain long-term interest, perhaps the new
Arduino hardware project from MIT's
Processing hardware group may gain a foothold with
Processing and
Pure Data audio software hobbyists and artists alike, allowing the creative community to extend, enhance and share inventive uses of new technology. Arduino's use has
already begun in
fascinating museum installations around the world, and has become a part of this year's
SONAR and
Ars Electronica festivals.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:06 PM PST - 10 comments
The annual Perseid meteor shower
will peak in intensity tonight. The product of Earth intersecting with the debris trail from Comet Swift-Tuttle, the shower should be most dramatic shortly before dawn. More information on the shower can be found in
various places.
Those living far away from cities will have the best view, but there
are lots of good photos from past showers online for those immersed in city light, or blanketed under cloud.
posted by sindark at 12:59 PM PST - 18 comments
The tabla is the most popular and widely used drum of North India.
Origins (embedded sound and mp3) of the tabla and tabla bols, the fascinating
spoken sounds of the percussive beat. [more]
posted by nickyskye at 11:55 AM PST - 19 comments
Winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, a peace activist who opposed reunification for fear Germany might once again war against its neighbors, ghost-writer of Willy Brandt's speeches,
author of the great fabulist history of World War II and postwar Germany,
The Tin Drum, and of
My Century, a novel of one hundred chapters, one for each year of the last century, a man considered
part of the artistic movement known in German as "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" or "coming to terms with the past", Günter Grass belatedly admits the history he expunged from his personal narrative: his service as a member of the
10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg of the Waffen-SS.
In an interview with the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Grass
explained his service would
stain him forever, but that only after the war
did he feel ashamed of having been in the
Waffen-SS:
for me, because I am sure of my recollection, the Waffen SS was nothing frightful, but rather an elite unit that they sent where things were hot, and which, as people said about it, had the heaviest losses.
posted by orthogonality at 5:46 AM PST - 46 comments
Richard Holbrooke delivers an analysis
and forecast of how the current situation could trigger a chain reaction that would lead to world war.
He refers to Barbara Tuchmans Guns of August, apparently a political science classic, that has been mentioned
here on mefi.
Here's the article in dutch with an appropriate picture of the murder of archduke Franz Ferdinand.
posted by jouke at 2:39 AM PST - 22 comments
John Murtari hunger strike protest.
John Murtari has been on a hunger strike after being jailed without a jury trail. A PHD in aeronautics, Murtari lost his job and took a lower paying job at an ISP. Unable to pay the extremely high child support payment, he asked the courts to re-adjust his payment. The court denied him. The judge offered him probation or 6 months jail time. Murtari chose jail time with protest. Murtari stated
Even Terrorists get a trail by jury. He is finally on a feeding tube, forced down his nose, after loosing 28 lbs.
Update with protest photos and his
comments on the protest.
posted by IronWolve at 12:46 AM PST - 60 comments
Fans of the BBC version of The Office take note: in 2006, Microsoft hired Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant to make a pair of faux training videos for the UK Microsoft headquarters, with Gervais reprising his David Brent role.
Both videos are
now up on iFilm, and are pretty damn funny (if you're amused by the Brent schtick, which I am).
posted by lilbrudder at 12:12 AM PST - 15 comments
August 11
What is a hobo?
Hoboes is a name coined for men and women, but almost exclusive men that travel as migrant workers or left their friends and family in the depression or after wars when there was no work for them in their home cities. What do hoboes do nowadays? Apparently,
they travel. And
blog about it.
posted by owhydididoit at 11:31 PM PST - 18 comments
For most musicians, it's difficult to pinpoint a particular event that forever sullied their image and destroyed their popularity. For 80's rocker
Billy Squier, however, the
reason is
clear. [YouTube]
posted by starkeffect at 8:41 PM PST - 79 comments
Why I helped my wife kill herself.
When Michael Graham's wife Elizabeth was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, she made up her mind to die before she became completely immobile. Michael knew he would have to help her - even though it could land him in jail.
(note: unless you're unlucky, this is quite likely the saddest story you'll read today)
posted by jonson at 4:09 PM PST - 32 comments
Government Releases Detailed Information on 9/11 Crashes
Complete Air-Ground Transcripts of Hijacked
9/11 Flight Recordings Declassified
Washington, DC - August 11, 2006 - The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week released full transcripts of the air traffic control recordings from the four flights hijacked on September 11, 2001, and meticulous Flight Path Studies for three of the flights, in response to a Freedom of Information request by the National Security Archive. The studies provide the most detailed technical information available to date related to the hijackings, and the transcripts of the aircraft-to-ground communications are the first complete government disclosure of each flight's air traffic control recordings.
posted by Unregistered User at 1:51 PM PST - 59 comments
"Animals are on the run. Plants are migrating too. The Earth's creatures, save for one species, do not have thermostats in their living rooms that they can adjust for an optimum environment. Animals and plants are adapted to specific climate zones, and they can survive only when they are in those zones...Gardeners and bird watchers are well aware of this, and their handbooks contain maps of the zones in which a tree or flower can survive and the range of each bird species. Those maps will have to be redrawn."
Jim Hansen on the global impact of global warming. Meanwhile, the National Association of manufacturers is happy to tell you
everything you really need to know on the subject. (More from NAM
here<
