February 23, 2002
Washington States insatiable appetite for money
Washington States insatiable appetite for money has led to the highest state tax on cigarettes, $1.425 per pack; this is in addition to the federal tax of $.39 per pack and the State sales tax of 6.5%. At least 17 states are considering following suit. Proponets claim it's a win-win situation: tax revenue + 'helping' people quit. Is that believable? Do they want the money or do they want people to quit, or both? And is it fair for 25% of the population to be the sole source of needed revenue?
The United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee invites you to help them decide the recipients of the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award. I don't think you have to be an american to participate. Nominations close tomorrow evening, as do the 2002 Winter Olympics themselves. The award is supposed to represent commitment, courage, perseverence and vision. The nominations may be more of a popularity contest, but the U.S. Olympic Committee itself makes the final determination. Previous recipients include Carl Lewis and Scott Hamilton.
Keo Satellite to Carry Messages to Earth's Future
Keo Satellite to Carry Messages to Earth's Future A nonprofit French group hopes to launch a satellite on a 50,000-year spin around Earth next year, loading it with as many as 6 billion messages from humans eager to give the far-flung future a glimpse of the present.
How to hack grey matter
How to hack grey matter A big security loophole with grey matter powered sites is out there. It lets anyone have the username and password to these sites. Luckly there is a fix for it which can be found here.
Ready for a one-hour science fiction television show about space exploration not set in the Star Trek universe? How about a half-hour show about the developing relationship between a blind girl and a sci-fi fan? Well, Richard Whettestone thinks you are, and he's got the scripts -- now he just needs PBS to pick up the shows!
"The PRAVDA Forum" in English. Vlad Putin's homeboys serve up Colombian FARC manifestos, and grin- "Let's roll!" They invite you to mix it up with black blockers, American hawks, meglomaniac spymaster wannabes, Osama fans, Nazis and ethnic cleansers, irate Israelis, Pakstanis, Indians, hardcore feminists, peaceniks, dolphinsavers, conspiracy theorists, and the Chinese. Free speech in wartime, Russian Communist style. (Warning: Offensive content guaranteed.)
Steve McCurry
Steve McCurry has spent his life looking for beauty in warzones. This flash site pulls together some of his most vivid images, including the iconic image of a young girl from Afganistan. But his work hasn't been without a few dangers: "I've had a couple of close calls in my career, but part of my brain that's concerned with self-preservation is very large. I was almost drowned in India and I was in an airplane crash in Yugoslavia, where I found myself about 10 feet underwater. Miraculously, I was able to swim out from underneath the seatbelt. But I came within a fraction of an inch of not making it. I'd rather take the risk and have the adventure, than to be timid and not take those risks ... It's the best life."
Godzilla
Godzilla (MP3).I was searching for Godzilla stuff and ran into it.The so called great nirvana seems to taken Blue Oyster Cults Godzilla and changed it a little.
The Alphabet Synthesis Machine uses a generative algorithim to allow you to evolve letterforms for your own nonexistent langauge. Once you've tweaked it to the way you like it, you can download it as a TrueType font, and it's added to an archive of available alien fonts.
Via socialist superstar JBushnell
Tie yourself to a half-constructed house on a school campus and live there in solitary confinement while on semi-public display to the world, pissing into a jug and making conch-shell noises from a piece of cardboard and a bullhorn. And do it all in a lobster suit. If that's not performance art, then what is? (Link from a blogger-friend who got it off NextDraft.)
The nihilism of the new teenage criminal,
The nihilism of the new teenage criminal, as reported in this long, unsettling account in The Atlantic. Narcotized, unattached, deadened by imagery, "the goal for the bright ones is to truly mesmerize the middle class with violence." [via AL Daily.]
Peter Norvig has written a Python script that generated a 12293word palindrome. Impressive. But before you ask: No, it doesn't make any sense.
[via Play with the Machine]
[via Play with the Machine]
"Happiness has not gone up even, as a society, we've gotten richer and have more access to more things. Advertising is the illusion that stops us from recognizing that."
"Happiness has not gone up even, as a society, we've gotten richer and have more access to more things. Advertising is the illusion that stops us from recognizing that." Sut Jhally is a communications professor at the University of Massachusetts, founder of the Media Education Foundation, and an excellent teacher of media literacy.
Reparations activists
Reparations activists are going after corporations who may have had ties to or profited from the slave trade to seek financial compensation. "So far, the reparations legal team has publicly identified five companies it says have slave ties: insurers Aetna, New York Life and AIG and financial giants J.P. Morgan Chase Manhattan Bank and FleetBoston Financial Group." Of course, the article (or the sidebar) doesn't cite anyone who may be against the whole notion - which is possibly bias of some sort, and seeing Johnnie Cochran on the list of people involved doesn't exactly warm one's heart either. (here are several other related "background" articles)
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