July 24, 2006
Photography of Japan's Underground
Joe Nishizawa's new photojournalism book, Deep Inside, is a visual exploration of the amazing, highly mechanized world under Japan's urban areas. This brief interview with the author is accompanied by several interesting photos.
... And a bathing suit because you never know.
"Excuse me," Schwartzman said to the Home Depot man, "can you tell me where to find tar?" "Tar?" asked the Home Depot man. "What're you using tar for?" "I'm building an ark," said Schwartzman. If there was anything that two years of completing God's preposterous homework assignments had taught Schwartzman it was that there was absolutely nothing you could tell Home Depot Man you were building that would surprise him, that would get any reaction from him at all, for that matter, aside from the usual skepticism about your choice of building materials.Shalom Auslander recasts Jewish history in short story form. Start with the aforementioned "Prophet's Dilemma," and work your way backwards to "Plagued." [more inside]
The Origins and Evolution of Intelligence
The origins and evolution of human intelligence:
parasitic insects?
viruses?
mushrooms?
neural darwinism?
foraging?
machiavellian competition?
emergence?
or something else?
They're right. Gotta watch who's contacting your kids on MySpace.
"listing"
Crew of a disabled ship carrying 4,813 cars from Japan to Vancouver will soon be rescued. The Cougar Ace is stranded near Adak, Alaska, a tiny town and former naval air station in the remote Aleutian Islands, 1,192 miles from Anchorage. Here are pictures of other Aleutian shipwrecks.
Johnston Atoll
Your Very Own Nuclear Island Getaway Johnston Atoll, described by J. Maarten Troost in his book
The Sex Lives of Cannibals as the "vilest place on earth" is for sale.
Early experimental video
The Vasulkas - an archive of early video and electronic art including a trippy Lilith (Doris Cross) and a hip Don Cherry. [via]
Two pretty videos
Two videos (second one live) I don't understand in the slightest but which are pretty to watch. (movs)
Dropping Knowledge
On September 9th 2006, 112 of the world's writers, artists, activists, and social entrepeneurs (nominees here) will gather for a Table of Free Voices in Berlin, Germany, discussing questions about the important issues of today. Who provides those questions? You.
Joni Mitchell in '65-'66 on the CBC
Joanie Anderson, singer/songwriter (YouTube)
The Worst and Therefore Greatest Musical of All Time
"Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys?" [MP3] A stupefying song (sung by the Joker) from a forthcoming Batman musical, written and sung by Jim Steinman of Bat Out of Hell fame. He discusses the matter in depth on his blog. If it's a hoax I fell for it. But a cursory Google search bears it out!
Persecution by Paperwork
Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota "Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," says one federal Air Marshal. Why? Because a memo from management requires marshals to file one Surveillance Detection Report (SDR) per month, and failure to do so will negatively impact upon their annual raises, bonuses, awards and special assignments.
Marshals deny fabricating stories wholesale, but claim to have resorted to creatively stretching the truth to turn benign acts into potential threats and the harm this may cause to people who have done nothing wrong seems irrelevant to the marshals and the TSA officials who created the rules.
Nonononono, After YOU
Nonononono, After You (.mov): A short animated film by Christopher Cordingley, graduate of the Ringling School of Art and Design. The school's computer animation portfolio is worth a browse; there's some real talent being nurtured there. (Last four links are to .avi files.)
Ugokie-ko-ri-no-tatehiki
Japanese animation from 1933. A bizarre Max Fleischer-inspired 11-minute cartoon about some critters from traditional Japanese folklore, complete with a soundtrack of traditional Japanese music. [youtubefilter]
rivers of babylon
I'm absolutely sure that no antibody test in medicine has any absolute meaning.
Dr. Stephen Lanka claims that H5N1 doesn't exist. Or AIDS. Or disease-causing viruses in general. "In humans, in the blood or in other bodily fluids, in an animal or in a plant there never have been seen or demonstrated structures which you could characterize as bird flu viruses or flu viruses or any other supposedly disease-causing virus. The causes of those diseases which are being maintained to be caused by a virus, also those in animals, which can arise quickly and in individuals either one after the other or several at the same time, are known since a long time back. However much you stretch things in biology, there is simply no place for viruses as the causative agents of diseases. Only if I ignore the findings of Dr Hamer’s New Medicine, according to which shock events are the cause of many diseases, and the findings of chemistry on the effects of poisonings and deficiencies, and then if I ignore the findings of physics about the effects of radiation, then there is a place for imaginings such as disease-causing viruses."
The price paid for working against evil, unafraid.
Mildred Fish Harnack was the only American woman executed for treason during World War II. Born, raised, and educated in Wisconsin, she moved to Berlin with her German husband Arvid in 1929. Arrested by the Nazis in September 1942 for their pivotal role in the Communist Red Orchestra resistance movement, they were tried in December 1942: Arvid was hung and Mildred received six years hard labor. Reviewing her case (during the humiliating German defeat at Stalingrad), Adolph Hitler ordered her retried in January 1943. This time, she was convicted, sentenced to death, and beheaded by guillotine in Plötzensee Prison on February 16, 1943.
[Mildred's life is detailed in the 2000 biography Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra.]
[Mildred's life is detailed in the 2000 biography Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra.]
There goes the neighborhood. . .
Marvin, the neglected Bush
Marvin, the neglected Bush We hear about the Bush family a good deal but seldom do we learn much about the "other brother," that is,
"Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, [...] a principal in a company called Securacom that provided security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. The company, Burns noted, was backed by KuwAm, a Kuwaiti-American investment firm on whose board Marvin Burns also served. [Utne]
According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." But then, Marvin has led a rather odd life, and more can be learned about him here Wikipedia sums up this Bush in a short bio, and notes the rather odd accident befalling his baby sitter This accident had been reported by The Washington Post but largely ignored by other papers. Is Marvin another possible heir to the Bush crown?
We cannot be held liable for stupid people smoking our plants.
The worst possible gift for a stoner. Great for hotel lobbies, people with fake cancer, or just a brown thumb who likes the aesthetics of marijuana and visits from the DEA but hates getting high.
This explains a lot of MeFi threads...
In 1988, 12% of the public thought the media was biased. Today, the figure is 62%; and, paradoxically, the reported bias is almost always to the opposite political view of the person surveyed. Introducing the Hostile Media Effect. Partisans on either side of an see the media as being biased against them, and the more educated about a situation they are, the more strongly they see bias. Unsurprisingly, news of the Middle East conflict is one area where the effect has been frequently noted. If you want a lot more information, see this academic PDF. [If media bias isn't your thing, Mixing Memory is full of many other interesting articles, from the cognitive science of patriotism to the science of art.]
Freudster
"Freudster is a textual analysis system that explores how Freud's theories might be understood by the millions of people presenting themselves via text & images on MySpace. "
Click survey 2, Electric Bugaloo
You might have caught the first Click Survey on mefi projects, but there's a new and much more interesting series of 8 images in Click Survey 2. Click where you feel like and watch the results in real time.
ABA Rejects Presidential Signing Statements
In June, the American Bar Association created a task force to investigate President Bush's use of signing statements to qualify his approval of certain laws. Some of the members of the task force, among others, testified before Congress, and today the task force issued its final report and recommendations [pdf]. Its conclusion: "American Bar Association opposes, as contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, the issuance of presidential signing statements that claim the authority or state the intention to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law the President has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress."
Hot Summer, Hot Air?
Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords has introduced the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (full text – PDF) [more inside]
The lost tribe of Alexander
Legend has it the people of Nuristan, Kalash and Chitral are descended from deserters who stayed behind after Greek Emperor Alexander the Great’s army passed through the area more than 2,000 years ago, and for centuries they lived in splendid isolation. It was in this region that the first images of the Buddha were created. [more inside]
Smells like Pulitzer. Or something.
"Where's my pitbull?" In which our 'hero', Carl Monday, CLEVELAND'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, attends the sentencing of Mike Cooper, an "unemployed porn site user", caught pleasuring himself at a local library. (Metafilter passim; via Deadspin's full coverage of Carl Monday.)
It's complicated.
Who hates who in the Middle East. An interactive chart from Slate. Click the graphic on the page to access the chart. Click on any cell for more details.
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.
“I always say that if North Korea only produced conventional goods for export to the degree of quality and precision that they produce
counterfeit United States currency, they would be a powerhouse like South Korea, not an industrial basket case.”
You know, in certain older, civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords.
William F. Buckley: "If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign."
'Briefly explain the theory of the calculus'
A guide to Britain as seen through the eyes of an average American. A celebration of the inadequacies and shortfalls, misunderstandings and culture gaps. Brought to you by the ineffible, George Saunders.
The Toymaker: "Make toys! Play more!"
The Toymaker offers over 40 free paper toys and pretties you can print out (PDFs) and make yourself, as well as "Stories to be Told by Firelight" - online versions of author/illustrator Marilyn Scott Waters' children's stories and lots of other fun goodies. For people who have kids, people who know kids, people who are kids, and people who love papercraft, illustration, toys, and tales. [more...]
Replacing Trident? The UK's role in nuclear proliferation
Replacing Trident? Clare Short MP, former International Development Secretary for the UK Labour government, debates replacing trident and the UK's role in nuclear proliferation (and the world in general) with Michael Codner, Director of Military Science at the Royal United Services Institute. Scroll to the bottom for the mp3s.
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