April 28, 2006
i'll see you emo fags later...
“All the untidy activity continues, / awful but cheerful.”
A new book collecting unpublished poems of Elizabeth Bishop offers us unpolished views of work in progress, by one of the 20th century's greatest literary perfectionists. But in doing so, it raises again "An issue as old as the printed word: Is work that a writer chose not to publish during her lifetime fair game after she dies?" [more inside]
Rosie
It's a prayer ....
The verses no one dares to sing these days... Till selfish gain
No longer stain
The banner of the free!
Rush in, then out
Rush Arrested! Or maybe not? Either way, he's got one of the best mug shots mug shots mug shots I've ever seen!
Mexico set to legalize personal amounts of pot, cocaine, heroin
Mexico Poised to Allow Drugs for Personal Use -- Mexico’s Congress has approved a bill decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin for personal use. President Vicente Fox is expected to sign the bill.
web 2 point OH NO!!!11
So many colours, shapes and dimensions.
Five House members arrested in Darfur rally
Five Democratic House members arrested in today's Darfur rally. Another large protest in the capital is set for this Sunday. DCist.
A Modest Gay Proposal
Following in the footsteps of Gipper followers -- The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is on a mission to put the Gipper on the ten-spot and rename a road in every U.S. County after Ronald Reagan. Kenny Hill of AOL's gay blog Worth Repeating has his own mission: name a landmark in every state after Brokeback Mountain.
Holy haircuts, Batman
What's like to be a fish?
Air and water. Photographer and professional diver Emmanuel Donfut takes not-completely-underwater pictures. His latest series involves both fish and fishermen caught in the act, but he's been interested in other aquatic creatures, and alcoholic ones as well. More pics here, and more on the technique used here.
Dean Reed, the Red Elvis
Born in 1938 and raised on a chicken farm on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado... Dean Reed became the Red Elvis, a huge music and film star in the Eastern Bloc, truly an unlikely icon.. "For a lot of people like Michail Gorbashev he is the first rockstar they see in their life." There are great pictures at this site.
BBC on Last.fm
Last.fm isn't just for humans. Matt Biddulph, a systems architect for the BBC, rigged a homemade plug-in for Last.fm (Previously on MeFi) that, over the course of a year, transmitted over 50,000 songs played on BBC 6Music to a Last.fm account named Sekrit. (Oh, and wondering what MetaFilter users listen to?) (via waxy)
See the world.
See country data plotted as 3d bars rising from the surface of Global-i, an interactive animated globe. For other map visualizations of county data, try Maplecroft Maps, Worldmapper, and Social Explorer's Census Data Maps. Worldprocessor has over 300 beautiful physical globes depicting different data sets. A variety of different map-based visualizations are also available at Radical Cartography. For an interesting mind-map visualization of relationships between countries, check out the WINDS relation browser, based on data from the CIA Factbook. Interesting non-map-based country data presentations include Gapminder and the Worldometers. [via information aesthetics]
Slinging Mud all Over the Web
"Welcome to the brave new world of high-tech political assassination, where back-stabbing blogs, scathing cartoon skits and slander served up online are the weapons of choice." (Warning: sound, Flash and video links.)
Bunker Busters
Is George really planning to nuke Iran? Some physicists are worried and have written a letter to the president voicing their concerns. Others have gone one step further and made a flash animation.
Mr Squiggle
A duel between two artists. One artist supplies a squiggle, the other turns it into a drawing, incorporating the elements of the squiggle. Hence this becomes this and this becomes this. My favourite - before and after.
Lymphatic filariasis
Lymphatic filariasis (or, more dramatically, "elephantiasis") is spread by mosquitoes. The mosquitoes transmit worms to your blood, the worms mate while you sleep, and their progeny travel to your lymph nodes to live a happy life. Unfortunately for you, the worms can get too big, allowing fluid to collect in your limbs or scrotum. Lucky for your neighbors, the disease can be controlled using salt. (China already did it).
Nine out of ten transgendered carp prefer Prozac to Zoloft
The Ty-D-Bol Man looks pretty mellow today. When I was younger, my father - a pediatrician - would routinely clean out the medicine cabinet of old cold medicines, antibiotics, high potency barbiturates, illegal diet pills and other nostrums. Rather than throw them into the garbage "where someone might get their hands on them" he would flush them down the toilet (just like the poison control people recommend). Apparently in doing so he was making sure that everybody got them. Think the quantities are too small to make a difference? Not so, say Canadian fish, who seem capable of getting confused by the residue from birth control pills and changing gender. Don't worry too much about them, though. They're all on Prozac, so they're OK with it.
[NB: see comments for .pdf version of first link]
America's dangerous employers
Workplace health and safety dirty dozen (pdf) - profiles of companies that have demonstrated egregious disregard for worker safety. Today is Worker Memorial Day, commemorating workers who die on the job - an average of 16 per day. Workplace deaths are trending up, not down, which, according to an extensive report by the AFL-CIO, is the inevitable Toll of Neglect with this administration's rollback of worker protections. Confined Space offers a daily view of work safety issues in the U.S. for those who would like to learn more.
Plus ca change
Do the Democrats need just one big idea, one that may sound familiar from Hillary Clinton's time as First Lady when she was hanging out with Amitai Etzioni, Michel Lerner and other advocates of "communitarianism". Or is this just not the right historical moment?
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