February 5, 2003

Brandon Vedas

As an update to a difficult earlier thread, "Ripper" or Brandon Vedas has a new memorial site dedicated to "the education and prevention of future tragedies", and is up thanks in part to the work of his brother.
posted by mathowie at 11:21 PM PST - 37 comments

Terry Jones Monty Python Observer

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame attempts to apply the Bush administration policy to his own neighborhood.
posted by thedailygrowl at 9:31 PM PST - 54 comments

First, it is well to remark two things: the first is that love ought to be put more in deeds than in words.

First, it is well to remark two things: the first is that love ought to be put more in deeds than in words. The Spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola. . We begin by quieting ourselves. Become aware of God's goodness, the gifts of life and love. Be thankful. Recall that without faith, the eye of love, the human world seems too evil for God to be good, for a good God to exist. There ya go, the bars up and now you cant touch it. Some pictorial help here.a preface here.Sound too obscure for you ?see here for their modern day application.
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:24 PM PST - 15 comments

Roger Scruton on Being Conservative; Glen Newey on Being Republican

Tweedledum and Tweedledee: Two great essays from very opposite sides of the barricades, but embodying the same healthy bloody-mindedness: reverent Roger Scruton, English, conservative and monarchist ,on the Right, and irreverent Glen Newey, Scottish, socialist and republican, on the Left. The differences are plain to see. But it's the similarities, I think, that point to the enduring strength of the British political spirit.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:08 PM PST - 9 comments

NetworkTechsAndSex

When network technicians think about sex. It isn't pretty. The storage capacity of sperm, the bandwidth (burst capacity) of an orgasms, latency of data transmission, and viable segment length.
posted by srboisvert at 7:16 PM PST - 7 comments

trans europe . . .nevermind.

Welcome to the European Railway Picture Gallery. The monthly archive is a nice place to begin.
posted by four panels at 6:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Moral Authority

In his 1947 letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations Albert Einstein wrote of 'enhancing the moral authority of the UN' and portrayed the United Nations as a "transitional system toward the final goal, which is the establishment of a supranational authority". Is the United Nations the depository of the moral authority of the international community? Some say no. Is there really such a thing as moral authority or is it one of those intangibles that, as a Supreme Court justice once said about obscenity, we cannot define, but we know it when we see it? Could a "one world government" work and would it really produce "moral authority" ? (More Inside)
posted by Mack Twain at 3:58 PM PST - 42 comments

Geopolitics and Illicit Drugs

Well known for speaking the truth about governments and getting pressured for it [7th paragraph from the top], Alain Labrousse recently published his Dictionnaire géopolitique des drogues [Geopolitical Dictionary of Drugs]. I don't think it's been translated in English yet, but all his previous works have, so I'm sure an English version is on the way. His latest book is being well received by everyone who's interested in "open source" information about drugs, particularly how the various national economies profit from them. A recent review [in French], cites one example of twisted international relations concerning drugs [my translation]: Europe speaks no evil about activities in Morocco, the most important source of cannabis in the world, or in Turkey, where scores of laboratories transform afghan opium into heroin, simply because these two countries provide a frontline of resistance to radical Islam. In North America, in Mexico, the United States tolerated for 70 years the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional - PRI), even though its leaders supported, and even chose mexican drug cartels. Geostrategic interests outweigh the most basic needs of the war against drugs.
posted by titboy at 3:45 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Relativity, in words of four letters or less

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity in words of four letters or less
posted by Mwongozi at 2:37 PM PST - 30 comments

All roads lead to Romenesko

Hey, did you see Romenesko today? Now it really is Romenesko. The blog that everybody calls "Romenesko" has just officially changed its name due to a rather silly threat of a lawsuit from MediaNews Group. Poynter president James Naughton explains, "The gist of the law firm's concern seems to be that eliminating the space between the words Media and News might prompt the unsophisticated, raffish crowd who tune in to Poynter Online to think it was Dean Singleton in his pajamas pecking away at the keyboard in Romenesko's Evanston apartment." So, from here on out, it's just plain old "Romenesko."
posted by soyjoy at 2:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Articulate == Lying Loser?

Why articulate people make bad colleagues Nick Denton, proprietor of various websites, sometime columnist for Management Today, and supposed intelligent person has come up with this gem in his weblog: "But I've been interviewing software engineers, and find myself prejudiced against those that talk fluently. . . . Either they were born persuasive, and so they've always been able to get away with it; or else they've always broken promises, so they've had to learn how to explain away their failures." For the most part, I think he's wrong, but I can see where he's coming from. Should articulate people be banned from time-sensitive positions?
posted by gkostolny at 2:31 PM PST - 41 comments

Almost unbelievably, the way being charted to revive the economy is to reinflate the bubble

Almost unbelievably, the way being charted to revive the economy is to reinflate the bubble When you're on a permanent war footing, it's worth being reminded, stupid, that it's all about the economy. A lengthy piece.
posted by skellum at 2:11 PM PST - 23 comments

Mitnick Interview

kevin mitnick, the famed hacker who was released recently from jail has granted Slashdot an interview in which he debunks many of the myths about him. He provides some insights into the ethics of the journalists that profitted from his case.
posted by Raichle at 1:47 PM PST - 3 comments

Rook! I'm Invisibir!

Japanese create "invisible" cloak. Well, not really. Technically, just a two sided cloak, the front of which is a projector, and the back of which is a camera. Only works, one would imagine, if you're looking at a person straight on, and even then it would help if you were partially blind, or at the very least, raised in the wilderness & easily fooled by modern technology.
posted by jonson at 1:14 PM PST - 55 comments

Chuck Hagel and voting machines --- the plot thickens

The Chuck Hagel voting machine ownership story gets even scarier. In today's Best of the Blogs, Jerry Bowles reveals more bizarre details about the Chuck Hagel/voting machine story, including the fact that the majority ownership stake in the voting machine company that counted Senator Hagel's upset victory in 1996 (and his reelection in 2002) is held by a man long associated with the radical organization Christian Reconstruction, which believes in overturning democracy and replacing it with a Christian theocracy. This is really weird and frightening stuff, if it checks out.
posted by mitsu at 1:14 PM PST - 11 comments

Mr. Watchword, Wordy for short

Look and Read offers storylines, songs, video clips and my first introduction to Wordy from this classic BBC School series. As someone who grew up on Sesame Street and Schoolhouse Rock, I found it interesting to see the British equivalent. Plus, it's good campy fun.
posted by snez at 1:10 PM PST - 4 comments

Lana Clarkson, Dead Actress.

Lana Clarkson, gunned down in Phil Spector's home, was the star of B movies like Barbarian Queen and Barbarian Queen 2, and also made appearances on classic television shows such as the A-Team, Knight Rider, Three's Company and of course, The Love Boat.
posted by car_bomb at 11:39 AM PST - 17 comments

Powell's address to the UN

Powell's address to the UN. In a direct, long and rich presentation, Colin Powell has laid the cards on the table, and presented what's likely to be our most explicit case for war. While it's difficult to separate the larger issue of War on Iraq from just this presentation, I'm interested in other takes on Powell's speech. Anything substantially new? Truly irrefutable? Strong enough to justify immediate action? Does this have more heft coming from Powell (considering he's more trusted than Bush on this issue), or is he acting as a mouthpiece? Or, to be succinct, did Colin change anyone's mind? At the very least, he satisfied my need to know more about why our administration is acting so urgently.
posted by kokogiak at 10:44 AM PST - 227 comments

can a screensaver find the cure?

Oxford University is looking to take advantage of distributed computing to find a cure for smallpox. Much like SETI@Home, the Smallpox Protection Project and Oxford's effort to cure cancer rely on individual computer users to download and run screensaver software to crunch numbers in an effort to speed up processing of large amounts of data. How will this kind of initiative impact science in the future? Can we, by volunteering our processors, be part of the quest for a cure?
posted by greengrl at 10:00 AM PST - 19 comments

Coyle and Sharpe

From the always excellent Sharpeworld comes a true gem: her father's comedy duo's site, Coyle and Sharpe. Harking back to another era (1960's San Francisco), the site features images, articles, and videos, but the hidden audio tracks of man-on-the-street bits are not to be missed. They have all the innocence of Candid Camera, but are quite a bit funnier.
posted by mathowie at 9:52 AM PST - 8 comments

Ashleigh Brilliant

Ashleigh Brilliant's Pot-Shots are sometimes fun, sometimes depressing, but almost always interesting.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:06 AM PST - 5 comments

Do you want a piece of it?

U.S. admin using future shares of Iraqi oil to build anti-Iraq coalition. Nation building just doesn't get any better than this.
posted by magullo at 7:58 AM PST - 53 comments

Farker dies in car accident

The denizens of Fark are having a crisis of conscience after one of their members died in a car accident. There are only a few holdouts against the outpouring of sympathy from the biliously sarcastic community. "Farkers, seriously - where's your irreverence?" asked Labberdasher. "Not one 'he should have gone for a Darwin award' ... ?"
posted by rcade at 5:31 AM PST - 60 comments

Elizabeth King

"I am fascinated by stories and myths of the double, the doppelganger, and the alchemist's artificial man: the homunculus. According to certain medieval texts, the Jewish golem can only be brought to life during its maker's state of ecstasy. The word ecstasy means literally 'to be beside oneself'." [last link realplayer]
posted by hama7 at 5:13 AM PST - 15 comments

We hardly knew Yu

Yugoslavia chapter closed: The Archduke, the Maverick Communist, and the War Criminal. After a storied, and often violent, 20th century, the (nearly) all-encompassing Balkan federation is no more, and what remains may not survive. Even in the shadow of a violent breakup, though, some former republics are moving on, though others remain a concern.

The roots of the region, of course, lie much deeper.
posted by apostasy at 1:27 AM PST - 9 comments

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