March 31, 2011
We have to wean fish off water
"The paper puts forward a small but novel idea of how we can cut down the incidence of bribery. There are different kinds of bribes and what this paper is concerned with are bribes that people often have to give to get what they are legally entitled to. I shall call these 'harassment bribes'. Suppose an income tax refund is held back from a taxpayer till he pays some cash to the officer. Suppose government allots subsidized land to a person but when the person goes to get her paperwork done and receive documents for this land, she is asked to pay a hefty bribe. These are all illustrations of harassment bribes. Harassment bribery is widespread in India and it plays a large role in breeding inefficiency and has a corrosive effect on civil society. The central message of this paper is that we should declare the act of giving a bribe in all such cases as legitimate activity [PDF]. In other words the giver of a harassment bribe should have full immunity from any punitive action by the state." [more inside]
Will he team up with Steampunk Palin?
Smilin Stan Lee, co-creator of everyone from Spider-Man to Striperella, is teaming up with Arnold Schwarzenegger for a comic and cartoon called The Governator. According to the article, Athe Governator will have a fleet of super vehicles at his disposal, a closet full of “Super Suits” that allow him to fly and perform other super stunts, and a team of colorful sidekicks, such as Zeke Muckerberg, the precocious 13-year-old computer whiz who acts as the Governator’s cybersecurity expert. Naturally, there will also be recurring supervillains — including an evil organization called Gangsters Imposters Racketeers Liars & Irredeemable Ex-cons (or G.I.R.L.I.E. Men, for short).
There's an excerpt on the EW site. Excelsior!
A Little Knowledge
For more than forty years, Betty Debnam has been writing, illustrating, and publishing a newspaper for kids: The Mini Page. It's now fully archived online. [more inside]
America is dense and Europeans lack gravity
The GOCE satellite has completed its survey of the Earth's gravitational field. This visualisation of different gravitational potentials (the geoid) will help us understand earthquakes and the flow of ocean currents by comparing the actual height of the surface with the one predicted by the geoid. [more inside]
Andy Jackson, you crazy.
Historically Hardcore is an awesome fake advertising campaign for the Smithsonian. Created as a portfolio project by two students, the ads have gone viral and the Smithsonian is none too pleased about it.
If that was no toe tapper or no body shaker, boy you need to see the undertaker!
"It was fantastic to be undeniably receiving radio from Britain. Ever since then I've always wanted to spin records on the World Service." Former Clash frontman Joe Strummer first listened to the BBC World Service while visiting his father in Africa as a teenager in the mid-1960s. [more inside]
glow boys, nuclear janitors dying for a living
Nuclear janitors |They’re called ‘jumpers’ and they go where no one else will | "Off to Japan" | The pay rate at Three Mile Island in 1979 post accident was $7.00/hour and $30.00/perdiem. [more inside]
Notes on being creative
Who's got the back that makes the beat go boom?
Y'all Get Back Now is the joyous new music video from Big Freedia, the Queen Diva of New Orleans Bounce. If Y'all Get Back Now isn't enough for you, there are more videos to watch on her website. [New Orleans Bounce previously on MeFi]
A More Perfect Union
In his project A More Perfect Union, artist R. Luke Dubois aggregated language used in the profiles of 19 million single Americans on 21 dating sites. He then organized the data to create "dozens of insanely detailed city and state maps which tell a wonderfully rich story about who we are, or at least, who we claim to be." A Video about the project. (R. Luke Dubois, previously on MeFi.)
Nuclear Archeology with John Coster-Mullen
John Coster-Mullen didn't finish his university degree in physics, yet in less than ten years of spare time, he figured out how to make Fat Man and Little Boy, while driving semis for a living. What started as an effort to make replicas of the bombs for the 40th anniversary of the detonation of the two atomic bombs became a larger challenge to simply to present readers with accurate information about the past. [more inside]
Ten Dreams Fine Art Galleries
And here is Ten Dreams, your Symbolist, Magical Realist, and Metarealist brain/eye candy art source, featuring, among scores of many other artists and subjects, Alma Tadema, Bouguereau, Ernst, Hundertwasser, Klimt, and Maxfield Parrish, too. And then there is the Ten Dreams of Ten Dreams, and not an exemplar known to me included. [more inside]
Judge Amanda Williams's Very Bad Week
Ira Glass does an atypical bit of investigative reporting about an especially punitive drug court in rural Georgia. [more inside]
Bureaucratics
Free, High-Quality Musical Instrument Samples
Do you need a free library of high-quality, carefully-recorded samples of a wide variety of musical instruments? The University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios' Musical Instrument Samples page has got you covered, from alto flute to violin. [more inside]
Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon.
A series of articles about developments in Japanese popular music spanning from the mid-1960s to the late-1970s. Part 1: 1966-1969. 'Although much has been written on Japanese experimental and avant-garde music from this period, the 60s and 70s were also times of massive change and development for mainstream Japanese music, and the origin of the split between “underground” and “overground” in Japan’s pop music discourse.' [more inside]
Don't eat the magic blue glitter
In 1971, a clinic in Brazil bought a radiation therapy machine. Fourteen years later, the practice closed and was abandoned. On September 13th, 1987, two men sold the inner canister of the machine for scrap. Upon breaking it open, a scrapyard employee found sparkling, glowing blue powder. It was distributed to family and friends, who used for decorative and magical purposes. Sixteen days later, 112,000 people were in Olympic stadium, being tested for radiation poisoning. [more inside]
The Psychopathology of Extreme Heroism
SciAm takes a look at the fine line between clinical pyschopaths and real-life superheroes. Related: Addicted to Being Good
A true ironist in an era of ersatz irony
Trees cocooned in spiders webs after flooding in Sindh, Pakistan
An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan has been that millions of spiders have climbed up into trees to escape the rising flood waters, cocooning them.
Books by Murderers
Given that a book collection can be quite valuable if it has a quirky theme, keep in mind that Books by Murderers is on its 5th installment (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) over at the blog of respected London second hand bookshop Any Amount of Books. [more inside]
Why StartUpBritain is nothing more than a government backed link farm
Reflections on Pioneer
As they leave the solar system, the Pioneer spacecraft have anomalously decelerated, pointing to a possible gap in our understanding of gravity. Now, a computer graphics technique known as Phong shading predicts that the Pioneer anomaly is just a side effect of how the shape of the spacecraft reflects sunlight.
And apparently he roomed with Jon Stewart in Colledge
New York State Congressman Anthony Weiner (D) did an IAMA (I Am A Democrat Who Fights) Q and A on reddit last week. While he answered many questions, he responded to the top five most popular questions questions in video form.
[more inside]
The economic effects of immigration policy.
"When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well."
A joint report from The Center for American Progress and The Immigration Policy Center calculates the striking costs for trying to remove undocumented immigrants from Arizona. Although S.B. 1070 has not been fully implemented in AZ, were it to be, it would: decrease employment by 17%; result in the loss of ~600k jobs; reduce state tax revenue by 10%; and, shrink the state economy by ~$49 billion. Intro and summary (pdf). Full report (pdf).
A joint report from The Center for American Progress and The Immigration Policy Center calculates the striking costs for trying to remove undocumented immigrants from Arizona. Although S.B. 1070 has not been fully implemented in AZ, were it to be, it would: decrease employment by 17%; result in the loss of ~600k jobs; reduce state tax revenue by 10%; and, shrink the state economy by ~$49 billion. Intro and summary (pdf). Full report (pdf).
"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library." ~Samuel Johnson
Is a library without books still a library? Newport Beach library is considering closing its original library and replacing it with a community center that would offer all the same features — except for the books.
Hisss... I'm Real Bacon!
1 electric mandolin + 1 Fender amp = Burn
Donna Stoneman - Mandolin Shredder. Winning Arthur Godfrey with The Bluegrass Champs (2:10), "Under The Double Eagle", and The Stoneman Family - "Big Ball In Monterrey".
Kirkuk: Ignore It While You Can
Kurds Move To Upend The Status Quo In Kirkuk - "In northern Iraq, Kirkuk has always been a flashpoint with Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs, who all claim it as their own. It has a special place in the new Iraqi constitution, but nothing has changed for years." [more inside]
You have put me in here a cub, but I will come out roaring like a lion, and I will make all hell howl! - Carry A. Nation
For the good of the nation, you won't be able to drink your favoured beer. At least, if the collection of middlemen monopolies called America's Beer Distributors and their lobby have much to say about it. [more inside]
Elephant/PR Killer
GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons has just returned from a trip to Zimbabwe and has posted a video of the killing of a "problem elephant" (graphic images). The response has been fairly predictable: outraged tweets and Facebook posts, and a very special award from PETA.
With many GoDaddy customers vowing to take their business elsewhere competitor NameCheap.com has taken the opportunity witha special offer of $4.99 transfers and a donation to Save The Elephants.
“It’s a self-licking ice cream cone."
The Dangerous US Game in Yemen “The global war on terror has acquired a life of its own,” says Colonel Lang. “It’s a self-licking ice cream cone." [more inside]
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