September 20, 2009

In Debt We Trust

A government stimulus can overwhelm the impact of a credit crunch, and the innate dynamic of a productive economy can re-assert itself after such a crisis, leading to renewed growth. But this not merely a crisis of liquidity. It is one of excessive private debt, on a scale that is also unprecedented. Economist Steve Keen on the global debt bubble. [more inside]
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 11:30 PM PST - 55 comments

Knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the most crucial factor of all

Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment. — Clive Thompson describes the results of the Stanford Study of Writing, mainly that young people today write far more than any generation before them.
posted by blasdelf at 10:31 PM PST - 104 comments

“If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.” ~ Picasso

Neurosonics Audiomedical Laboratory
posted by bigmusic at 8:18 PM PST - 3 comments

Ulrich von Liechtenstein of Gelderland would not be pleased

Q: Which was the last country in Europe to establish diplomatic relations with the Czech Republic?
A: Liechtenstein. [more inside]
posted by djgh at 7:33 PM PST - 19 comments

The best film of all time just got a little better...

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this barren and desiccated land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to survive.

The man-apes of the veldt were none of these things, and they were not flourishing...
posted by felix betachat at 3:45 PM PST - 32 comments

Space Lego!

Pre-Classic Space, Classic Space, Neo-Classic Space. - Creative Space Lego Design!
posted by sciurus at 12:01 PM PST - 41 comments

Bubble Nebula

Reprocess of Bubble Nebula Data. NGC 7635, also called the Bubble Nebula, is an emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. It's created by stellar winds from a superhot star 40 times the size of our sun which whip the cloud of gas around the star into a bubble. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 11:44 AM PST - 18 comments

Sugar Pie DeSanto

Sugar Pie DeSanto says, "I like to sing blues, R&B, and pop and I think I do them pretty well". [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 11:21 AM PST - 13 comments

[Note to all my MeFi friends: your post is one of the latter.]

Tim Kreider, known to MeFi for his cartoons and essays is now regularly contributing to the Happy Days blog at NYT. His latest essay The Referendum has what you'd expect of a cartoonist, mastery of the one and two liner and getting to a relevant point quickly.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 10:32 AM PST - 25 comments

transcendental numbers rumble in the technium

Extropy
How did life arise? What is information? In his recent dispatches from The Technium, Kevin Kelly would say extropy (cf. negentropy & Prigogine). [previously 1|2]
posted by kliuless at 8:00 AM PST - 70 comments

Facebook outing

It started as a simple term project for an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier. Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:23 AM PST - 80 comments

Somebody's Watching Me Kill Vampires

Have you ever listened to Rockwell's 1984 smash hit song "Somebody's Watching Me" and realize that it needs more Castlevania? Relax. It's been handled.
posted by Servo5678 at 5:21 AM PST - 15 comments

Planetary gear

5?
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:14 AM PST - 23 comments

фантомски дискови!

1979 .Belgrade. A white Porsche 911. A natural born driver. A brutal secret police force. The same city square every night for 2 weeks. The Belgrade Phantom - one hell of a story. [more inside]
posted by concreteforest at 2:23 AM PST - 38 comments

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