November 15
Hong Lauwai ('Red Foreigner') sings along with patriotic Red Chinese songs on various sites like YouTube. Alleged to be a New Yorker and stock trader, his true identity isn't known at this time. Since he appeared shirtless in his first performances (
Without the Communist Party, There would be No New China;
The East is Red), there was some doubt of his sincerity, and consternation among hard-liners in Beijing -- what if he was singing totally nude?
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posted by Rash at 3:47 PM - 6 comments Steven Pinker takes Malcolm Gladwell to task in a
NYT book review.
"But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring." "The common thread in Gladwell’s writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favor of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition."
posted by gallois at 3:39 PM - 31 comments Get a glass of Harvey's Bristol Cream, put on some funky 1970's music, sit back, and feast your eyes on some glorious
Wood Porn! (SFW) "Oh, baby, you got some great vascular cambium!" "Yeah, that is some hard oak, drill me, baby!"
posted by Drasher at 8:12 AM - 27 comments Star Trek fans know that there was a second, unaired pilot episode of
Where No Man has Gone Before. That version
has been found by a collector in Germany, and is going to be released.
posted by pjern at 5:09 AM - 26 comments November 14
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
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posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:09 PM - 56 comments One time, OK, see, one time
Randy Beaman's [
aunt,
uncle,
sister,
little brother,
best friend who's name is Linda,
cat] [
had like this bean dip for the chips,
had a dream she ate a big marshmallow,
ate some cornflakes,
had to take baths with his brother] and [
Jason made this gross noise,
this was in Kansas,
he thought it wasn't Dracula] and [
they were in there so long they became skeleton people]. [
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH]
(clips from Animaniacs, big youtube playlist of them all here.)
posted by The Devil Tesla at 4:07 PM - 22 comments November 13
Wikipedia is being sued for publishing the names of two convicted killers. Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed
well-known German actor Walter Sedlmayr in 1990. They were convicted of the crime in 1993 and sentenced to prison, and recently released. Under German law, publishing the name of a criminal after he has served his sentence is considered an undue infringement of privacy, and is illegal. Accordingly, the German Wiki removed the names of the killers off the page discussing the murder --- but the English language version of wiki, based in the US and operating under the First Ammendment, has not. Now the killers' lawyer has sued the Wikimedia foundation to get them to remove the names.
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posted by Diablevert at 12:30 PM - 153 comments
Looking to found your own Independent Republic of Metastan? Land is hard to come by,
and barring
sudden volcanic activity,
they're not making any more of it. The Law of the Sea (1982)
says that the ocean can't be claimed, and Outer Space Treaty of 1967 puts the moon off-limits.
But your fledgling nation still has a couple of choices of unclaimed land parcels:
Bir Tawil between Egypt and Sudan,
and
Marie Byrd Land (lower left) in Antarctica.
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posted by echo target at 9:45 AM - 13 comments « Older posts
