April 10, 2012
Vangelis Speaks
Shortly after his concert in December 2011 inaugurating Katara amphitheater in Doha, Qatar [facebook photoset, available to the public], Vangelis sat down with Al Jazeera English anchor Tony Harris to spend a half hour talking about music, philosophy, the state of the world, and his career. It was his first television interview in about 20 years. [more inside]
Manning Trial and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
In 1984, Congress passed a law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in the wake of some high profile incidents of hacking. Designed to prosecute hackers, the law is written vaguely enough that it has, in recent years, been used (with varying degrees of success) to prosecute people violating terms of an employer's computer usage policies, or in the infamous case of Lori Drew, a Terms of Service agreement.
But today, the 9th circuit court of appeals ruled that employees can not be prosecuted under the CFAA for violating an employer's computer use policies, dealing a blow to the Obama administration’s Justice Department, which is trying to use the same theory to prosecute alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning.
Exit stage left
Gu Kailai, the wife of senior Chinese party leader Bo Xilai, has been arrested for the murder of an English businessman. Bo, until his sudden fall from power this year, one of the most popular politicians in China, the leading figure of the Chinese New Left and Party Committee Secretary of the megacity of Chongqing, has completed his downfall by being expelled from the politburo and stripped of all party positions. The collapse started in February, when his top lieutenant, Wang Lijun, was suddenly demoted and then fled to the US consulate for a day - supposedly, either attempting to defect or to give incriminating evidence on Bo and Gu to the Americans for safekeeping. [more inside]
"Don't turn it on - take it apahhht!"
The EEV Blog is an "off-the-cuff" video blog that deals with pretty much anything related to Electrical Engineering, known for its very knowledgeable and enthusiastic host.
The Electronic Coach
In the main link in griphus' post this morning, there was this little aside: "In 1957...a physics student named Don Knuth built a program for the IBM 650 to help the 1958 Case Institute of Technology basketball team win the league championship."
Yes, THAT Don Knuth. Here's a young Don with the team and the IBM 650 (capable of making 50,000 calculations a minute!), and here he is talking about it. [more inside]
Walter Hill's "The Warriors"
As brutally stylish as it is when the fists and baseball bats are flying, the underlying themes of family and perseverance are what make The Warriors stand out from the rest of the "grim future" epics of the period. - Celluloid Dreams
Row, row, row your boat / gently down the Saigon River in Ho Chi Ming city (slyt)
Die Oregon, Die
The Junkie Old Folks' Home
"Woodstock is their last refuge, the only old-age home in the world where hard drugs are not a taboo, a place intended for people who, in their early 50s, look as worn out as if they were in their 70s." A model project keeps aging drug users out of the streets of The Hague. [more inside]
Gawker announces newest hire: a current FOX News employee
Gawker has posted i inaugural column of "The Fox Mole"—a long-standing, current employee of Fox News Channel "I work at Fox News Channel.
The final straw for me came last year. Oddly, it wasn't anything on TV that turned me rogue, though plenty of things on our air had pushed me in that direction over the years. But what finally broke me was a story on The Fox Nation. If you're not a frequenter of Fox Nation (and if you're reading Gawker, it's a pretty safe bet you're not) I can describe it for you — it's like an unholy mashup of the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post and a Klan meeting. Word around the office is that the site was actually the brainchild of Bill O'Reilly's chief stalker (and Gawker pal) Jesse Watters."
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
Point, Counterpoint
International street artist ABOVE (Wikipedia; Flickr pool; interview from 2009) convinced diamond traders at Johannesburg's Jewel City to let him paint their exterior wall with the phrase "Diamonds Are A Woman's Best Friend" ... but he didn't mention that he would be adding "And A Man's Worst Enemy" to the adjacent wall.
7. Last but sort of least: write articles or a book on the side.
"I can no longer responsibly recommend that you drop everything to try to become a food writer. Except for a very small group of people (some of whom are clinging to jobs at magazines that pay more than the magazines' business models can actually afford), it’s nearly impossible to make a living as a food writer, and I think it’s only going to get worse." Amanda Hesser, NYT cookbook author and co-founder of Food52, has some advice for aspiring food writers.
Santorum drops out.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum abruptly suspended his campaign in a news conference this afternoon, marking the unofficial end to a lengthy, often-combative primary. By suspending his campaign rather than ending it, Santorum can continue to raise money to retire any remaining debt he might have. [more inside]
Next to the red crabs, this site is how most people became aware of Christmas Island.
It's time for a trip down the memory hole of the Internet. Investigative journalism still lives online, as Gawker penetrates the mystery behind the man who was Goatse.
(Surprisingly safe-for-work, though please heed the warnings in the actual article itself.)
"I do indeed in greed explore the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump."
Indie Games! For Free!
"Hi, my name’s Terry Cavanagh [previously], and I’m an indie game developer. I started this blog in March 2012 to talk about the sort of freeware games that I find interesting, and to share those games with more people. Thank you for reading!" [more inside]
It's the apocalypse, might as well get drunk.
How to quantify all aspects of society
"Samuel Arbesman is a senior scholar at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and author of the forthcoming book 'The Half-Life of Facts'. His research and essays explore how to quantify all aspects of society." [more inside]
Quit your day job
I'll be back faster than you can say furious...
James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has revealed its latest hit piece where an unknown man purports to be Eric Holder and all but procures his vote. [more inside]
Puppsy Blue
Dave makes leather bags. He's passionate about it. He wants to make the best bags possible. Or as he says it, "I wanted it to be made so well that my grandkids would fight over it while I was still warm in the grave." His bags are tough (QT). How confident is he in the quality of his bags? He has links to his rivals on his website. Bag owners are encouraged to send in their own photographs of them in action. His bags carry a 100 year warranty (damage caused by crocodiles and elephants not covered). But the real reason to visit his site is to read his moving tribute in Memory of his dog Blue.
Have we met before
Met Before. The new video from the band Chairlift (previously) doubles as a game of Choose Your Own Adventure and a meditation on the nature of choice.
Bill Ayers' dinner with Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson
"More fundamentally, the Camorra is simply a part of life."
The Camorra Never Sleeps: "The Camorra is not an organization like the Mafia that can be separated from society, disciplined in court, or even quite defined. It is an amorphous grouping in Naples and its hinterlands of more than 100 autonomous clans and perhaps 10,000 immediate associates, along with a much larger population of dependents, clients, and friends. It is an understanding, a way of justice, a means of creating wealth and spreading it around. It has been a part of life in Naples for centuries—far longer than the fragile construct called Italy has even existed. At its strongest it has grown in recent years into a complete parallel world and, in many people’s minds, an alternative to the Italian government, whatever that term may mean." [more inside]
It played ball
Bedridden, bored as all hell, and finally surrounded by a rare quiet, [John Burgeson] thought about the IBM 1620, and how its algorithmic alacrity bordered on self-learning, and realized, maybe deliriously, that the machine had the capability of making a little baseball simulator.The Lost Founder of Baseball Video Games
Tiny Transactions on Computer Science
Tiny Transactions on Computer Science ...the premier venue for computer science research of 140 characters or less.
BOY - a short film
Prasanna Puwanarajah's moving short about a Velodrome carpenter, BOY was the winner of the British Airways Great Britons 2012 competition. [more inside]
Made of awesome
Stanley Fish on religion and science
Stanley Fish takes on the similarities and differences between scientific and religious evidence and gets a barrage of responses, to which he replies. Michael K. declares that “the equivalence between the methodological premises of scientific inquiry and those of religious doctrine is simply false.” I agree, but I do not assert it. Neither do I assert that because there are no “impersonal standards and impartial procedures … all standards and procedures are equivalent” (E.). What I do assert is that with respect to a single demand — the demand that the methodological procedures of an enterprise be tethered to the world of fact in a manner unmediated by assumptions — science and religion are in the same condition of not being able to meet it (as are history, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology and all the rest).
A Grim Fairy Tale
Red is a dark retelling of Little Red Riding Hood done as a bloody, stylish animated short.
Under Pressure
belt sander+stack of paper=awesome
belt sander+stack of paper=awesome SLVimeoP
It’s probably not unrealistic to say that porn makes up 30% of the total data transferred across the internet.
Street style, 1906
Some of his photographs are odd. Others are just creepy. But thanks to his hobby of photographing young women with a hidden camera, Edward Linley Sambourne (1844-1910) has left us a fascinating series of images of street fashion in Edwardian London. [some photos NSFW]
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