May 28, 2012
Dumb, Drunk and Racist
Dumb, Drunk and Racist - Joe Hildebrand, writer for the Daily Telegraph in Sydney, has a new TV show coming up on Australian TV, called "Dumb, Drunk and Racist", which was the phrase famously used during a training session in an Indian call centre about Australians. The show features four Indians from varying backgrounds visiting Australia - looks like very uncomfortable viewing (if you're Australian). (Slightly NSFW because of drunken boob-showing).
unglue (v. t.) 2. To make a digital book free to read and use, worldwide.
Unglue.It (v. t.) 4. For an author or publisher to accept a one-time fixed amount of money, raised by the public, for the perpetual release of an ebook under a Creative Commons license. A crowd-funded project created by Eric Hellman and friends at Gluejar. [more inside]
Bats - tiny little bats
Women are even unveiling with impunity
"The fertile Wadi Hanifah valley running through part of Riyadh was for years a rubbish dump and a public health hazard, but now it's been transformed into a vast park, with lakes that attract cool breezes. It's an oasis so large it's hard to police - making it a place for Saudi citizens to relax, in more senses than one." [more inside]
COTSBots!
What do you do when you want to do research with robots, but don't have the budget for decently powered robots? COTSBots! [more inside]
Finally, a use for AOL.
Living The Dream ... at AOL . For two months last fall, Eric Simons secretly took up residence inside the Internet giant's Palo Alto, Calif., campus, eating free food, enjoying gym access, and building a startup in the process.
Because Print Is Not Yet Dead
Free online graph paper generators: variations of squares, triangle, rhombus, and hexagonal, circular and polar, for drawing, gaming, writing, note-taking and much more. Blank Sheet Music (Flash) for all arrangements (PDF). Create and edit your own grids, probability and logarithmic graphs, petri-dish inserts and storyboards. Also, multilingual monthly and yearly calendars. Plus, more than you ever wanted to know about ISO paper dimensions and printable paper models of polyhedra. Prev-ious-ly.
"Then he hit a demon. Then he hit another demon. Then he hit the demon again. Then he hit it again."
Slo’ugh froze suddenly, gazing at his three new sets of gloves with an unblinking intensity. All that moved, for three long, silent minutes, was his eyes. They stared at first one pair of gloves, then the other pair, then the third, and then back to the first and then to second and then to the third and then to the first again and then to the second again and then to the third, and so it repeated. After a time, Slo’ugh shook himself out of his mysterious reverie and pulled the first pair of gloves onto his huge, meaty hands. He scowled, and immediately removed then. The second pair saw the honour of being donned by his heroic hands, but were similarly dispatched. On went the third, and then Slo’ugh froze again. Stared again. He grunted, and decided ultimately on the first pair.-- The Saga of Slo'ugh - An Unofficial Diablo III novelization.
The Last Full Measure of Devotion
"The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President in the name of Congress, and is conferred only upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through 'conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States.'" The U.S. Army Center of Military History lists every citation for a Medal of Honor award since they were first issued. Most are awarded posthumously, to those who "gave the last full measure of devotion", as Lincoln called it. It's Memorial Day in the U.S., and reflecting upon these is perhaps a reasonable way to spend a bit of it. [more inside]
"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."
The Hemingway Papers: The legendary writer’s reporting from the Toronto Star archives, featuring historical annotations by William McGeary, a former editor who researched Hemingway’s columns extensively for the newspaper, along with new insight and analysis from the Star’s team of Hemingway experts.
4/100
KLF and K-Foundation Bill Drummond has stopped doing interviews and will only now answer 100 questions. Here are four of them.
Viral marketing doesn’t work …tell everyone you know
Anno NTK: Every Edition of NTK, 15 Years Late.
Were you subscribed to NTK, but always felt that they were a bit too cutting-edge, too advanced, too futuristic for you? Never got their references? If you sign up for Anno NTK, you'll be able to relive those days, with each newsletter from #1 appearing smartly in your inbox 15 years late. Maybe this time around you'll get it!
Were you subscribed to NTK, but always felt that they were a bit too cutting-edge, too advanced, too futuristic for you? Never got their references? If you sign up for Anno NTK, you'll be able to relive those days, with each newsletter from #1 appearing smartly in your inbox 15 years late. Maybe this time around you'll get it!
A little thug in a hooded sweatshirt made the Web easy to write, and created a man-in-the-middle attack on human civilization
Disintermediation -- the movement of power out of the middle of the net -- is a crucial fact about 21st century political economy, says Eben Moglen in a passionate keynote address at the Freedom to Connect conference yesterday. The ability to hack software and hardware ensures that we retain our civil liberties and ability to innovate.
China: United States Report
China's has just released its report, "Human Rights Record of United States in 2011". This annual report covers gun crimes, OWS, freedom of the press, unemployment, and more. via
meanwhile, in Canada: "results suggest a leftward tilt"
"The wide-ranging Forum Poll for the National Post sought the opinions of a sample of Canadians of voting age... The voting intentions, if actual ballots, would translate into a minority government for the NDP." The Canadian public is on a distinct tilt to the left, says a new national public opinion poll. Criticism of the Conservatives' spring budget, Bill C-38, continues: it is "anti-labour" (repeals The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act; reforms Employment Insurance) and "guts the Fisheries Act"; a website protest against the bill is planned for June 4. [more inside]
My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels
Build a Hovercraft With Your Kids — When Jamie Hyneman and MeFi's Own™ Adam Savage built hovercrafts for Mythbusters, he realized that these floating-on-air vehicles were easy to make, not too expensive, and fun. So he built one with his kids. More diy hovercraft fun.
A small player in a bad neighbourhood.
Take a holiday in Somaliland: journey to the state that isn’t. "Positioned on the upper haunch of the Somali dog-leg the Republic of Somaliland looks initially unpromising. It is mainly dry and rocky, there are few paved roads, and the population is small and generally dispersed. ... Whilst the economy may be on the up, Somaliland still feels extremely isolated. An employee of a big international NGO who I met in the lobby of my hotel, The Mansoor, looked at me with astonishment when I said I’d come to Hargeisa for fun. 'The biggest danger here,' he said 'is dying of boredom.'"
OMG Bunnies.
"Usavich" (Season One video) is a series of 90-second CGI cartoons made for MTV Japan about two Russian rabbits. It begins in a Soviet-era prison where Kirenenko*, a mob boss sentenced to death is sharing a cell with Putin (yes, that's his name), a common worker imprisoned on a trumped-up charge and counting the days until his release. And then it gets weird. (contains extreme cartoon violence, scatological gags, Russian stereotypes, transvestite chickens and shoe fetishes) [more inside]
The U.S.'s West Coast Icon Turns 75
The Golden Gate Bridge is 75 years old today.
They had a daylong celebration culminating in a spectacular fireworks display.
These people had an excellent view of the finale.
What didn't happen on This American Life
This weekend, TAL ran an episode on the massacre at Dos Erres. What they didn't mention was that this happened as part of the "Silent Holocaust" -- a "systematic campaign of genocide against the Mayan people." An estimated 83% of the massacred people were indigenous Maya. Throughout the period of the genocide, the USA continued to provide military support to the Guatemalan government, mainly in the form of arms and equipment, despite knowing that the Guatemala military was responsible for the killings. Horatio Castellanos Moya, an exiled Honduran writer, wrote Senselessness, his first book to be published in English, based on the testimonies taken by the Catholic Church's Recuperation of History project, which led to Bishop José Gerardi Conedera releasing the Guatemala: Never Again! report. Two days later, he was bludgeoned to death.
Steve Reich video interview
Minilmalist composer Steve Reich talks about Influences.
Happy Century Ruby
Have you looked at the sky today? You probably should. She would have been a hundred today, she just might have had a bit to do with how we understand our universe.
The Public Image Ltd. riot show
On May 15, 1981, at The Ritz in New York City, Public Image Ltd. performed as a last-minute replacement for Bow Wow Wow. It didn't end well. (previously) [more inside]
The ternary calculating machine of Thomas Fowler
The ternary calculating machine of Thomas Fowler. And electromechanical calculating machines from the 1960s.
For your information this video is on its way to Twitter and Facebook.
A Saudi woman stands up to religious police. This video of a girl and a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arguing over why she had manicured nails has gone viral and ignited a debate over the way commission members should deal with people in public places.
Death and Taxes
News you can use: What are the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse?
The raw potato starter
Pip McCormack, the food editor of Sunday Times Style, gets sent more cookbooks than he knows what to do with. So why not see if they live up to the promising pictures and glamorous tablespreads? He aims to cook a meal from each book, comparing and contrasting the work of celebrities-turned-cooks, jailbirds and, in one caustic instance, TV shows which meld food and lifestyle.
Vintage Ventriloquism
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