October 8
The Unspeakable Odyssey of the Motionless Boy. "How much of our humanity are we prepared to cede to machines? This is a dilemma of the future, but it's not much of a concern for Erik Ramsey. Erik can't move. He can't blink his eyes. And he hasn't said a word since 1999. But now, thanks to an electrode that was surgically implanted in his brain and linked to a computer, his nine-year silence is about to end."
[Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:00 AM -
7 comments
October 7
Here there be dragons. On 8 October 2008, the
#1 book on Amazon.com was Christopher Paolini’s
Brisingr, the third book of the
Inheritance quartet. The books recount the adventures of Eragon and Saphira, the last Free Dragon, but they are hardly free from
past influences. In
medieval lore, dragons are man’s great foe, a monstrous version of the serpent from the garden of Eden. Raphael’s painting (c. 1506) of
St. George and the Dragon evokes this idea, but dragons and their
heraldic relatives, the wyverns, gained a more positive reputation over time. Look to Ursula K. Le Guin’s
Earthsea Cycle for the inspiration behind Paolini's dragons, or try
Dealing with Dragons, geared towards younger readers. There be
dragons on bookshelves everywhere.
posted by woodway at 11:03 PM -
9 comments
Aether: lonely boy befriends a mysterious monster, leaves Earth to explore the galaxy. A quick, relaxing, hypnotic, motion-aftereffect-inducing flash game. Programming/music/design by
Tyler Glaiel with further art/design by
Edmund McMillen.
[more inside]
posted by Korou at 10:03 PM -
5 comments
More subprime collateral damage. Iceland's now getting a
$5B bailout from Russia. What does Russia want in
return? Access to shipping lanes? The old US base?
via
posted by blahblah at 8:29 PM -
24 comments
CNet's Music site is one of my favorite sources of often surprisingly good independent music. As I write this, I'm listening to
Zo Wanti Music's Lost Ship, a mellow New Age environmental piece that is very nice and relaxing.
They have an enormous selection of music here, but one of the oddest and sometimes most rewarding to pick through is the
game soundtracks/musical scores section. The artists listed here all compose music for video games (or have in the past). It's strangely fun to listen to some of their pieces and wonder what game that could belong to.
posted by Reverend Robbie at 7:20 PM -
0 comments
- Post a Comment
We already
talked (self-link, sorta) about
Zeitgeist: The Movie. Its author, Peter Joseph, recently released
Zeitgeist: Addendum. (beware: last two links are two hour movies) This time, it’s about money and debt, scarcity and resources. The first, financial part may look like an extended
Ron Paul ad, but then there’s a sudden turn towards resource-based utopian techno-communalism, and an endorsement for
The Venus project. It seems to me like "Kropotkinian anarchism meets The Matrix". In these
rough times, is it time for a big leap? [Also announced:
The Zeitgeist Movement, still not active]
posted by Baldons at 4:40 PM -
15 comments
Last month (Sept. 16, 2008) the
American taxpayers bailed out insurance giant
American International Group (AIG) to the tune of $85 billion dollars. So, asked "what ya' goin' do now after the bailout?" top executives said "party it up at the
St. Regis Resort Monarch Beach (Dana Point, CA) for a week (September 22 - 30, 2008). Total costs?
Invoice: $443,343.71. "
$200,000 dollars for hotel rooms. Almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon."
Said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD): "
They were getting manicures, facials, pedicures and massages while American people were footing the bill. And they spent another $10,000 dollars for I don’t know what this is, leisure dining. Bars?"
posted by ericb at 4:00 PM -
112 comments
Google rolls out
Mail Goggles, designed to prevent drunk or otherwise impaired emailing by forcing you to answer basic math questions. And no, it's not April 1st.
posted by mattholomew at 11:11 AM -
63 comments
“I have seen many Anne Franks in Cambodia. ...Under Pol Pot, many children were separated from their families. They faced starvation and were sent to the front to fight and die,” she explains. “Like Anna, they never knew peace and the warmth of a home.”
Translated by
Sayana Ser with help from the Dutch embassy in Cambodia (Kampuchea, Khmer), The Diary of Anne Frank has now become one of the most popular and discussed books in this war-torn country.
posted by parmanparman at 10:23 AM -
7 comments
"Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace. Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan." Carlotta Gall writes about promising developments in
Bamian. (
NY Times;
print version.)
posted by languagehat at 8:22 AM -
16 comments
…if you are the single newspaper in San Francisco or Kansas City or St. Louis, you are just highly constrained about how rigorous you can be in the accuracy of your reporting. Because the whole model is: You are appealing to everybody. Because the whole model is: You are appealing to everybody. … That's why the existence of an independent media sector is so important.
Talking Points Memo is one of the more notable successes in independent journalism and using blogs as a format for journalism. It has broken at least a couple of stories that got picked up by the mainstream press: The
Duke Cunningham bribery scandal, and the
U.S. Attorneys firing scandal. It's grown from being a
one-man shop in 2000 to a staff of ten today.
Josh Marshall talks about how it came to be.
posted by adamrice at 7:13 AM -
41 comments
October 6
Trains of Russia, photos from
Pavoroz.com, a site about the railways of Russia, the Baltics and the C.I.S. (
Commonwealth of Independent States).
More than 50 000 pictures of steam, diesel, and electric locomotives, EMU and DMU trains, draisines, stations, tracks, etc. The collection is updated daily. The Turkestan-Siberian railway.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:14 PM -
26 comments
Matt Taibbi vs. David Ray Griffin Taibbi, to whose writing Metafilter frequently links, and who is currently on retainer at
Rolling Stone, takes on Griffin, who is perhaps the most prominent member of the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement," in a knock-down, drag-out multiple-round bout (in three parts).
Part II.
Part III.
posted by Hat Maui at 3:55 PM -
96 comments
A
dress code at the polls?
Many states have 'electioneering' laws in place that can be broadly interpreted to mean that clothing with political messages is not allowed. Snopes put
a page up advising voters to check with their board of elections.
Some election officials have released
statements attempting to clarify [pdf] the enforcement of their state's electioneering laws, though those statements aren't legally binding.
Other election officials are suing to keep the broad definition of electioneering in place. If rules are interpreted to include campaign shirts and buttons, you will likely need to cover the item up, remove it, or otherwise conceal it.
[more inside]
posted by cashman at 10:26 AM -
53 comments
On the 10 year anniversary of his death, Mr. Cee of New York's Hot 97 played a
4-hour tribute mix (with some interviews and such) dedicated to the Notorious B.I.G., a/k/a Biggie Smalls a/k/a Big Poppa a/k/a Christopher George Latore Wallace. Downloads in four parts available
here.
[more inside]
posted by kosem at 10:00 AM -
20 comments
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