December 3, 2005
DC Photos from the 1970s
Photoset: DC in the 1970s. Washingtonians, take a look. Some things haven't changed at all, other things are subtly different, still other things are no longer there.
Merry Christmash!
Santastic: Holiday boots for your stockings. Mash-ups of decades of Christmas records just in time for the holidays. The quality varies throughout, but it makes for some fun manic listening if you've grown tired of the same perennial chestnuts. Merry Christmash to all, and to all a boot night.
Al-Jazeera bites back.
Al-Jazeera bites back. In 2003, following US pressure on the Emir of Qatar and claims of a secret meeting of House, Senate, Pentagon, and intelligence leaders who authorized the use of "all possible pressure" to silence the station, al-Jazeera fired its general manager, stopped referring to Iraqi insurgents as "the resistance", and banned the airing of hostage executions and the death of US soldiers.
Today, following recent reports of George W. Bush planning an attack against al-Jazeera HQ in Qatar, and the US bribing of Iraqi reporters and news sources, al-Jazeera seems to have changed that policy by airing the video of 10 US Marines being killed in an improvised explosive device attack. (NSFW. Windows Media. Right click this link to save the video, or this link to stream it.) Is this change indicative of larger changes in Arab public opinion, or has the Emir of Qatar decided to push back?
The physics of reality
Happy 90th, Klan Deuce!
Hooded Progressivism: The secret reformist history of the Klu Klux Klan.
"Today the Federal Reserve is more likely to be the object of a Klan conspiracy theory than the source of its favored candidate for president. Today, for that matter, when a movie inspires people to create odd organizations and dress up in costume, they're more likely to end up at a convention devoted to Star Trek than a convention devoted to nominating a presidential candidate. A lot can change in 90 years. "
Meth from urine
Don't smoke urine if you're looking for a methamphetamine high, because you might burn yourself, or worse, have the world find out about your mishap. The best is the quote from his lawyer:
"I suspect that, more than anything, Steve was doing this as an intellectual proposition."
Lawyers will say the darnedest things.
How To Get Ahead In Kidnapping Without Really Trying
HOWTO: Kidnap someone. Originally published in the al Qaeda web magazine Mu'askar al-Battar, and written by Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, the author of The Targets Inside Cities [pdf].
The First Known Motion Picture
The first known motion picture (Quicktime movie, somewhat slow to download) was produced by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince at Roundhay House, Leeds, UK some time before October of 1888. Its date can be verified, as the elderly lady in the film, Mrs. Sarah Whitley, died in that month. The two-second-long film was shot on paper or celluloid photographic film through a custom-made camera. Although the original paper film appears to have been lost, two photographic copies of the film dating from the 1930s remain in existence. Le Prince's second film, Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge, was shot shortly afterwards.
Le Prince is generally not well-known outside the film historical community, partly because he did not publicize his works, but also because he disappeared in 1890 during a journey to Paris, France. It's thought that Le Prince committed suicide over money worries, but his body was never found.
Le Prince is generally not well-known outside the film historical community, partly because he did not publicize his works, but also because he disappeared in 1890 during a journey to Paris, France. It's thought that Le Prince committed suicide over money worries, but his body was never found.
you look so tired unhappy
Bring down the government! Flickr collection of scans from a CIA published guide for revolutionaries in Nicaragua; many of the suggestions are universally applicable. I myself have been guilty of at least one...
Who owns the internets?
Who owns the internets? The 2005 World Summit on the Information Information Societies seems to have left a number of nations with a bad taste in their mouth. ICANN emerged the apparent winner. Of course, you can always blame Bush. (first phase of wsis previously discussed here)
School's out!
Escape from Detention. It's the last day of school (well, yesterday was, technically) and you've been not just locked but trapped in the detention room; framed for a crime you didn't commit. You've got to get three crazy Canadjun youngsters out alive; but you can only succeed if you work together. Can you point and click your way toward victory? This game's fairly straightforward, but there are a few puzzles to make you scratch your head. Just about the right difficulty for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Found via jayisgames (thar be spoilers in the comments at that link).
Jesus: The Clone of Turin
Future Magazine covers: A bit self-aggrandizing in a subtile way. However I found the future mag covers engaging enough in a "lite" sort of way. (click on: "See covers from the future" option)(via)
undead hijinks
Vampz - amusing animated movie about undead hijinks. [quicktime, 31mb / smaller version (15mb) / larger version (56mb)]
Kathleen Ferrier, "Klever Kaff"
"The extraordinary radiance of the voice. I still remember that. The extraordinary, enveloping, overwhelming beauty of Ferrier's voice."
When Kathleen Ferrier died at 41 in October 1953, she was as famous as the newly crowned Queen. A working class girl from Blackpool who had to quit school at 14 to work as a telephone operator, a young woman who lacked formal musical training and whose husband bet that she would never win a music contest, Ferrier -- under the guidance of the great conductor Bruno Walter -- went on to become an international superstar. An "ordinary diva" who humbly worshipped "Herr Doktor Bruno Walter", gave very few newspaper interviews, never appeared on television or in cinema newsreels. Her speaking voice can be heard only briefly and only twice, on a tape made at a post-concert New York party, and in a short speech she made for the BBC at an Edinburgh Festival. Her extraordinary career lasted only less than 12 years.
Half a century later, although her legacy lives on through her music, Ferrier herself -- "Klever Kaff" -- remains elusive. More inside.
‘we will become the people you imagine we are, just watch'
Joblessness is a major motivating force of these riots, which is why the politicians and the press turn endlessly around the question of job creation in the banlieues. [...] An injection of vigorous enterprise, a big deregulating kick, and racial discrimination would evaporate in the tremendous, creative release of market forces. No race riots in an untrammelled market economy: that’s what Sarkozy really means. It’s an ingenious, high-pressure sales pitch for the ‘Anglo-Saxon model’ – indeed, it’s bordering on blackmail.
Jeremy Harding in the London Review of Books goes among the arsonists in Paris and offers some insights on the economic factors and political consequences of the riots.
An Open Letter to Larry the Cable Guy
An Open Letter to Larry the Cable Guy by David Cross
You just put your lips together and blow.
Whistling: a lost art? Once upon a time, siffleurs like Brother Bones, Fred Lowery and Marcel ‘Muzzy’ Marcellino warbled from the stage, and trilled across the airwaves. While our generation almost certainly whistles less than our grandparents’, and while we may never again see a whistler attain the modest fame of Ronnie Ronalde, let alone the celebrity of la belle siffleuse Alice Shaw, nor witness any meaningful revival of the kunstpfeifen tradition, there are yet several contemporary whistlers who would revive the art: ‘Whistlin’ Tom,’ Sean Lomax, Robert Stemmons (‘the whistler of Coeur d’Alene’), Hylton ‘The Whistler’ Brown, Chris Ullman (‘the symphonic whistler’) and Milt Briggs (‘a maverick among whistlers’), etc., or any number of the other enthusiasts who attend the International Whistlers Convention held every year at Loiusburg, North Carolina, ‘the world’s whistling capital.’
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