February 18, 2008

Poem as Comic Strip

Poetry's turn to go graphic. The Poetry Foundation has invited a few graphic novelists to illustrate poems from its archive. Via.
posted by Miko at 7:16 PM PST - 32 comments

The People's Singer

"If Communists liked what we did, that was their good luck," said Lee Hays, founding member of the Almanac Singers. A fascinating portrait of one of the linchpins of the politically engaged folk movement of the '40s and '50s. Hays sang beside the more celebrated (and, on one important day in Bob Dylan history, infamous) Pete Seeger on such classic Almanac albums as Talking Union. [Listen here.]
posted by digaman at 5:29 PM PST - 9 comments

The Invisible Fist of the Free Market

What market has grown from $900 billion in 2000 to more than $45.5 trillion and is completely unregulated? Welcome to the world of Credit Default Swaps. Speculative derivatives have been described as "financial weapons of mass destruction" by some guy named Warren Buffet. Some people wonder how you can have "$1 trillion in swaps bet on the success or failure of GM when the entire market cap of GM is a mere $15 billion." Credit Default Swaps are being triggered from Northern Rock in the UK to ANZ Bank down under as the "subprime" crisis unravels. AIG's CDS loss portfolio has already climbed to $5 billion from a previsouly estimated $1 billion. [more inside]
posted by ryoshu at 4:32 PM PST - 89 comments

Postum, we hardly knew ye

Postum, 1895 - 2008, RIP [more inside]
posted by rtha at 4:28 PM PST - 38 comments

"...the most effective means of popular education at society’s disposal."

I think that the main reason for the practical intelligence and the political good sense of the Americans is their long experience with juries in civil cases. I do not know whether a jury is useful to the litigants, but I am sure it is very good for those who have to decide the case. I regard it as one of the most effective means of popular education at society’s disposal.
Dissent offers commentaries on jury duty from Alexis de Toqueville, Joanne Barkan, Paul Berman, Susan Cheever, Nicolaus Mills, Maxine Phillips, Ruth Rosen, Jim Sleeper, Michael Walzer, and Darryl Lorrenzo Wellington. [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:28 PM PST - 8 comments

Semi-newsworthy

Slow news day: One properly used semicolon inspires paroxysms of joy in the NYT.
posted by GrammarMoses at 3:19 PM PST - 76 comments

What? No torpedoes!?

sQuba Submersible Sports Car --Rinspeed calls the sQuba the first real submersible car. Unlike military amphibious vehicles, which can only drive slowly on a lakebed, the sQuba travels like a submarine - either on the surface or submerged. The interior is resistant to salt water, allowing the skipper to drive into a lake or the sea. The only downside? It's a convertible.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 3:18 PM PST - 23 comments

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, at 8 pm in each time zone cities around the world will go dark: Sydney will follow Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra; In the Philippines, in Manila the lights will go out; Bangkok in Thailand; Tel Aviv in Israel; Suva in Fiji; Copenhagen in Denmark; In North America, Atlanta followed by Chicago, Toronto, Phoenix and San Francisco will be black. It’s Earth Hour. [more inside]
posted by HVAC Guerilla at 3:14 PM PST - 36 comments

Wikileaks Plugged

Wikileaks has been plugged. Get it? Leak... plugged. Brilliant. Wikileaks, the fairly recent tool for providing both publicity and anonymity to whistleblowers leaking classified documents, has been censored! Well, it was already censored by China, but this time it's the Land of the Free (no, not that one). The DNS records have been deleted by Californian host Dynadot after a court injunction following action from a Cayman Islands bank. Naughty ol' Bush-appointed Judge White, apparently. But don't worry, you can't stop the signal. There are zillions of mirrors. Look at them shine.
posted by Wataki at 1:25 PM PST - 35 comments

"New Copernican Revolution"?

potentially habitable planets and vindication for Pluto? [more inside]
posted by rainman84 at 1:18 PM PST - 18 comments

A Day in the Life of Richard Devylder

A Day in the Life of Richard Devylder [wmv, 11.5 minutes long, subtitled]
Richard Devylder, deputy director at the California Department of Rehabilitation, was born without arms or legs. The video shows how technology enables him to navigate through his daily life, everything from work, doctor's visit, eating to swimming.
posted by Kattullus at 1:09 PM PST - 8 comments

"World's Greatest Music Collection" being auctioned

Do you love music? Do you have at least 3 million dollars? If you answered "yes" to these questions then you may be interested in bidding on "The World's Greatest Music Collection." (single link to ebay auction)
posted by anathema at 12:30 PM PST - 44 comments

What Are Words For?

Obama accused of plagarism. Clinton aide Howard Wolfson claims Barack Obama plagarized a speech by Governor Deval Patrick (D-MA). If they do seem similar, it could be because they were likely written by the same person, political consultant David Axelrod, a man who gets around.
posted by timsteil at 12:06 PM PST - 302 comments

Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1922 - 2008.

Alain Robbe-Grillet, French author, member of the Académie française and subject of this recent Mefi post, has passed away at age 85.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:16 AM PST - 17 comments

Oh, the humanity!

Solar cell directly splits water for hydrogen. Thomas E. Mallouk and W. Justin Youngblood, postdoctoral fellow in chemistry, together with collaborators at Arizona State University, developed a catalyst system that, combined with a dye, can mimic the electron transfer and water oxidation processes that occur in plants during photosynthesis. They reported the results of their experiments at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today in Boston.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:48 AM PST - 48 comments

Orson Welles - full of country goodness and green pea-ness

Get me a jury and show me how you can say "in July" and I'll… go down on you. Orson Welles, famed for his acting and directing in such classics as Citizen Kane, also spent his later years doing occasional voiceover work for commercials -- most famously, this spot for Findus Frozen Peas. [more inside]
posted by MsMolly at 8:04 AM PST - 65 comments

The Cut-and-Paste Personality

These identity thieves don't want your money. They want your quirky sense of humor and your cool taste in music. Among the 125 million people in the U.S. who visit online dating and social-networking sites are a growing number of dullards who steal personal profiles, life philosophies, even signature poems. Dude u like copied my whole myspace, posts one aggrieved victim.
posted by subgear at 7:42 AM PST - 38 comments

Rediscovered photos from Lincoln's second inauguration

"New" photos emerge of Lincoln's second inauguration The Library of Congress has discovered new photographs taken in 1865 at Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration. For years they were filed under President Grant's archive, mislabeled into obscurity. Incidentally, this week will be the grand opening of Lincoln's summer "cottage" in northwest DC.
posted by wowbobwow at 7:39 AM PST - 11 comments

Shadow puppetry

Shadow play has been a part of human civilization for tens of thousands of years. After its birth in China, it spread to many other geographical areas and cultures, most notably Turkey and Greece. Shadow theatre is seen as a predescesor to cinema; in fact, the earliest existing animated feature is Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1927). (YouTube has her hand cream ad, "The Secret of the Marquise".) Today, a few regional companies still practice shadow theatre. Animators such as Thanh Nguyen of 300 infamy and Aleksey Budovsky [flash] have taken the influence of Reiniger and shadow theater in their own directions, and film students make their own silhouette movies. Learn about the history of this fascinating craft [flash], or make your own.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:55 AM PST - 15 comments

sonic interpretations

"What is the sound of color? We asked that question of 5 musicians. We assigned each musician a different color. They wrote 5 tracks. We gave the colors and tracks that inspired them to 5 directors." The Sound of Color contains the songs and videos that were created. The site and free downloads are only available through March 15. (Via Carolina Vigna-Marú) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 4:29 AM PST - 23 comments

Bringing Back The Drive-In

The first drive-in movie theater was opened on June 6, 1933, by salesman Richard M. Hollingshead in Camden, N.J. On the bill was a twilight showing of the British comedy Wife Beware. And so the drive-in era was born, peaking in 1958 with almost 5,000 theaters in the U.S alone. These days you'd be hard pressed trying to find one but thankfully there are plenty of handy lists online telling you just where to find one (there's even one for Aussies like me!). And that's not all we have to be thankful for; the drive-in scene is apparently witnessing something of a "mini-revival" at present. Don't feel like going out? Then why not make your own? First you'll need instructions on how to build one. Then you'll need intermission-advertisements (you can download or even just watch heaps of them for free here). And then you'll need a handy list of the kinds of films they used to show at the drive-in. If you're in the US, you'll need to know some of the special rules the FCC has for drive-ins, and if you have any more questions, I'm sure the fine folk at the United Drive-In Theater Owners Association could help. All of this sound like too much work? Then just sit back and check out the videos and photos on this nice site (it's about drive-ins, of course!).
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:04 AM PST - 43 comments

On Victor Borge

A world-class comedian, Victor Borge could please a crowd with his Phonetic Punctuation or Inflationary Language bits. But he was also a brilliant pianist, as showcased when he improvised an impressive encore to a piece he had only heard and never played before, much to his apparent delight. Still better was when he'd merge the two passions, like in Page-Turner or The Minute Waltz. He entertained for more than 75 years, performing up to 60 shows even at 90 years old. He died peacefully in 2000, just two days after performing a concert in Denmark, on the blue here, before dots were all the rage. [more inside]
posted by disillusioned at 2:39 AM PST - 29 comments

Would you like to play a game?

Fun and games with mathematics and mathematical puzzles (e.g. heart basket, Rubik's Cube, Rubik's Magic, hypercubes, and more) in both English and (with yet more content in) German.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:29 AM PST - 6 comments

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