MetaFilter posts by mediareport.
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Text Etc. is a sprawling, highly engaging, nearly obsessive look at the craft and theory of poetry, including sound patterning, fractal criticism, poetry heresies, brief, clear intros to theorists like Bakhtin, Lacan and Foucault, writing instruction and much more.
posted on Oct-6-06 at 8:15 AM
Candy. Bureaucracy. Memory. The Daily Collage Project, from Dilar Pereira in Portugal. [via]
posted on Oct-4-06 at 9:41 PM
Beautiful, occasionally abstract, old German zoological wall charts. [via]
posted on Oct-3-06 at 8:27 PM
Private Collection - an exhibit of not-so-rare objets d'art stolen from European galleries. Apparently, it's "a reaction to the commoditization of art and to gallery monopolies that price art, dictate which artworks have value, and set themselves up as the arbiters of artists' qualities," but you might find the gag funny anyway. [via mlarson.org]
posted on Sep-5-06 at 11:23 PM
Cool book photos by Abelardo Morell, who takes pictures of other cool things, too.
posted on Sep-4-06 at 4:01 PM
Strangers - a visual record of one-night stands that never actually happened. Futoshi Miyagi in a series of photos of himself in the homes of other men. "To be naked with someone without having intercourse is weird." [Flash, nsfw]
posted on Aug-17-06 at 11:16 PM
Astronomy Quilts "My quilts are to communicate ideas, express feelings, tell stories, and encourage the progress of anti-entropy coalescing order from disorder."
posted on Aug-4-06 at 8:27 PM
Perfection and Eraserhead. Discussing Singing in the Rain and Goodfellas with prisoners. The link between Pasolini, Blind Willie Johnson and Carl Sagan. If you like hanging out at the corner of Film and Word, you might enjoy spending time in the archives at Your Humble Viewer, a wide-ranging, well-written, funny and literate film blog.
posted on Jul-31-06 at 9:40 AM
Printmaker. Painter. Adventurer. Advertiser. One of the most popular graphic artists of the 20th century, he created the Random House logo for his pals Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer and illustrated their first book. His illustrations for another, Moby Dick, are widely credited with resurrecting that novel for modern audiences. His own first book was favorably compared to Whitman's Leaves of Grass and for a time his bookplates were everywhere, but he "virtually vanished from the museum and gallery circuits by the late 1940s" due to his outspoken support for Stalinism. When the State Department refused to grant him a passport because of his political views, he took his case to the Supreme Court and won, establishing that the right to travel cannot be denied to American citizens. Happy birthday, Rockwell Kent.
posted on Jun-21-06 at 8:56 PM
Burying Freud. A collection of essays and responses by and about Freud's harshest critics, including "Confessions of a Freud-Basher" by anti-Freud point man Frederick Crews, interviewed at length here.
posted on May-15-06 at 9:16 AM
Forgotten silent film comedian Larry Semon. Part II - Heyday. Part III - Trouble Brewing. In 1920, he was the world's 2nd-most-famous Hollywood star, with a contract and creative control rivaling Chaplin. In 1921, he made a popular series of films with Oliver Hardy as his main comic foil, six years before Laurel & Hardy became a household name. In 1925, he directed a truly bizarre silent version of The Wizard of Oz, just as wild overspending, erratic behavior and lawsuits ruined his career. The Larry Semon Research site has an interesting picture gallery.
posted on May-1-06 at 12:13 PM
"Mixed" reviews of John Stewart's performance last night. A reminder that someone warned in February that Crash might win best picture because many Academy members were "unwilling to screen Brokeback Mountain" [permalinks broken, scroll down]. Marvel that YouTube somehow managed to get rights [cough] to Oscar video, at the Oscar frocks and that thing on Charlize Theron's shoulder, and at the persistent myth that a billion people watched the awards.
posted on Mar-6-06 at 10:47 AM
Who watches Sunset Boulevard for Norma Desmond's 1932 Isotta Fraschini Town Car Landolet Limousine? These folks [scroll down for the film list], who also like the "VERY KOOL maroon late-1940's Ford Coupe" used by the cop-killers in The Onion Field, Steve McQueen's "milquetoast baby-blue 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible" in The Blob, Fred Astaire's end-of-the-world Ferrari and lots more.
posted on Jan-31-06 at 12:32 AM
Songs of Brazilian Birds A fantastically diverse collection of .au files, including the beautifully evocative Organ Wren or Uirapuru, the mooing of the Capuchinbird, the sci-fi minimalism of the Short-tailed Antthrush and a duet of Laughing Falcons (they'll make you laugh at the end).
posted on Jan-23-06 at 12:07 AM
Challenging Christian Zionism "We are a group of evangelical pastors, academics and mission executives who have been disturbed by the growing influence of Christian Zionism on the political scene in America..." Detailed critique of the Christian Zionist movement includes a look at Hal Lindsey, "the Father of Apocalyptic Christian Zionism."
posted on Jan-16-06 at 5:48 PM
Oddly obsessive statistical analysis of the rates paid by customers of legal Nevada prostitutes, broken down by sex act, attractiveness, body type and presence or absence of a jacuzzi, among other topics. [via Cynical-C, who swears he found it by accident]
posted on Jan-9-06 at 9:33 PM
Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu.
Rolled Palm Leaf Manuscripts in Nepal.
Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture.
Lots of beautiful images and fascinating information, courtesy of the wonderful plep.
posted on Jan-7-06 at 9:29 PM
100 Cartoons to celebrate Black Ink Monday "Over the last 20 years, the number of cartoonists on the staff of daily newspapers nationwide has been cut in half." Today, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists protests "newspapers everywhere who have lost sight of the value of having a staff editorial cartoonist."
posted on Dec-12-05 at 10:01 AM
Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth Detailed argument from the Global Policy Foundation, et al, that the use of Production Sharing Agreements - "quite common in countries with small oil reserves and/or high extraction costs" - is inappropriate for Iraq and effectively robs the Iraqi people by ignoring other, more equitable options.
posted on Nov-22-05 at 6:57 AM
Pictures of Failure: Incarcerated Youth. [via happy palace]
posted on Nov-2-05 at 9:15 PM
"What did you do to my Intelligent Synthesizer?" Wonderful collection of DIY sound gizmos from Mike Walters at Mystery Circuits. Includes the Pena-Tron, the Electronic Earthball and detailed instructions for the Moog Source Membrane Switch Cure. Most recent: The Melloman, a hilariously elliptical DIY Mellotron. [note: 3rd, 4th and 8th links are mp3s] [via]
posted on Oct-17-05 at 7:04 PM
Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Hurricane Risk Reduction from Cuba [pdf] Oxfam America report described Cuba's community-based response system in April 2004, five months before category 5 hurricane Ivan tore across the island but resulted in zero deaths. From Medicc Review: "Of those evacuated, fully 78%...were sheltered in the homes of family, friends or neighbors. 8,026 tourists were transferred to safe areas. 359,644 boarding school students were transferred to their homes. 898,160 farm animals in vulnerable areas were moved to safer ground." The International Red Cross had similar praise for Cuba's planning after Hurricane Michelle in 2001: " The contrast between events in Cuba and earlier disasters, such as Hurricanes Mitch and Georges in 1998 and the floods in Venezuela in 1999, is enormous."
posted on Sep-6-05 at 8:34 PM
Is the former Republican mayor of New Orleans really blameless? Not by a long shot. From lefty blog Lenin's Tomb, which points to evidence that New Orleans officials "never put plans into place" to evacuate the poorest of the poor. [thanks, Aknaton]
posted on Sep-4-05 at 10:50 PM
The wonderful architecture blog Transfer is the home of The Anti-Sit Archives, an astonishing collection of, well, urban ass-deflecting devices. [thanks to iconomy]
posted on Aug-30-05 at 12:45 AM
Don't Call Me Madam: The sad and crazy life of Ray Bourbon A pioneering drag comedian, friend of Mae West and an early independent recording artist, Ray was a deliberately enigmatic pop cult figure who may or may not have had a sex change operation in 1956. He was a frequent target of police raids and died in prison as a convicted accomplice to murder. "Ray’s comedy was, at once, highbrow and lowbrow, overtly Gay and covertly subversive. Despite his influence on Gays, he remained vague about his own sexuality."
posted on Aug-29-05 at 12:18 AM
"What's most shocking about Grand Theft Auto isn't embedded sex scenes. It's the financial chicanery of the game's maker." Fortune's Bethany McLean - one of the few journalists to question Enron's stock price in early 2001 - has just taken a good look at Take Two Interactive, and she doesn't like what she sees. Four CEOs since 2002, execs dumping stock in recent months, fraudulent "parking transactions" that dramatically overstated earnings...and yet its stock price has remained bouyant. "How, in an era when investors are supposedly obsessed with corporate governance, are this firm's troubles so easily overlooked?"
posted on Aug-17-05 at 8:00 PM
What al-Qaida Really Wants: An Islamic Caliphate in Seven Easy Steps. German newspaper Der Spiegel offers a look at an Islamist plan for success by 2020, courtesy of journalist Fouad Hussein, who claims close connection with al-Qaida's inner circle. But does that inner circle really call the shots anymore? And how reliable are long-term global plans, anyway? [first link via The Agonist]
posted on Aug-15-05 at 9:59 PM
Tawdry, tawdry stuff "Another prison guard smuggling dope, another cop caught tweaking, an airport security professional trying to get rich, a horny Florida deputy, and a Michigan police chief who sounds like a real decadent party animal." Lots of not-so-fun reading in Corrupt Cops Stories, a weekly feature in the Drug War Chronicle. The archive goes back a few years.
posted on Aug-8-05 at 11:34 PM
Google blacklists CNET reporters? An article about privacy issues that highlighted the potential for abuse if logs of search terms linked with IP addresses are combined by search companies with address and phone data, angered Google CEO Eric Schmidt enough to blacklist CNET reporters for a year, at least according to the bottom of this CNET story. The article begins with information about Schmidt found via Google searches, and goes on to "question Google's ability to adequately balance the heavy burden of safeguarding consumer privacy rights with the pull toward intermingling and mining data for ever more lucrative targeted advertising."
posted on Aug-7-05 at 10:36 PM
Zora Neale Hurston's Glossary of Harlem Slang. Profiles of black writers including Audre Lorde, Chester Himes, The Last Poets and Linton Kwesi Johnson. The complete list of Coretta Scott King children's book award winners. Lots of informative off-site links. A lively forum filled with juicy gossip, among other pleasures. Just a few things you'll find at the African American Literature Book Club.
posted on Jul-27-05 at 7:29 PM
Casino carpet gallery. [via scrubbles.net]
posted on Jun-28-05 at 9:47 PM
Dumpster World - "Your Dumpster Diving and Curb Crawling Resource." [via Information Nation, which also links to that story of a woman who was recently unloaded into a garbage truck]
posted on Jun-27-05 at 6:20 PM
Chopstick Eco-Art Choose from wine racks, hanging lamps, candle holders and more. "We genuinely hope that one day we will no longer be able to make our products as a result of heightened preservation efforts." [via The Presurfer]
posted on Jun-24-05 at 10:49 PM
The world's 100 largest newspapers by circulation Japan and China take 9 of the top 10 spots; Greece enters at #17, the United States at #19. Newspaperindex now also has the list broken down by continent. [An updated top 100 list has been posted here] [via Cynical-C]
posted on Jun-12-05 at 9:16 AM
50 years with Lew Archer A detailed tribute to classic hard-boiled mystery writer Ross Macdonald, including a fascinating interview with Macdonald's biographer. Considered one of "the big three of the American hard-boiled detective novel" (with Hammet and Chandler), Macdonald has unfortunately "slipped to the back shelves." He had a lifelong lover's quarrel with Hollywood and - oh yeah - probably saved Warren Zevon's life back in 1979.
posted on Jun-3-05 at 9:05 PM
Mary, quite contrary The Christianity Today weblog offers a fabulously dense post (pegged to this recent UK news story) about the Protestant embrace of Mary. Lots of fascinating links - including one from the blog of the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary - will bring you up to speed on "the 'Protestants and Mary' deluge of the last three years." Hours of provocative reading for anyone interested in Christian sects.
posted on May-23-05 at 6:00 PM
Buying Rare Race Records in the South. Music That Americans Loved 100 Years Ago. The Cheney Talking Machine. Just three among dozens of amazing articles about early recording machines and American popular music at the astonishingly detailed site of Tim Gracyk, author of Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895-1925. Scroll down for bios of forgotten stars, including Nora Bayes - who performed in the Follies of 1907, before Flo Ziegfeld's name became part of the title, George W. Johnson - "the most important African-American recording artist of the 1890s," and piano player Zez Confrey, whose sheet music for the 1921 hit "Kitten on the Keys" sold over a million copies and became "the third most-frequently recorded rag in history."
posted on May-17-05 at 9:55 PM
The Thirty Years War: A timeline of the anti-gay movement. From "Holy War," the latest Intelligence Report to come out of the very lefty Southern Poverty Law Center. Includes an interview with former Falwell speechwriter Mel White, a look at 12 major groups in the "Mighty Army" and a slideshow of fascinating quotes from famous figures. [Previous Intelligence Reports: Easy Prey, Age of Rage.]
posted on May-16-05 at 7:27 PM
The Mathematical Fiction Homepage is a collaborative attempt to "collect information about all significant references to mathematics in fiction." Feel free to add classic or recent works in any medium to the collection, or rate existing entries on their mathematical content and literary quality.
posted on Apr-18-05 at 7:58 PM
Poop is the one experience all human beings have in common. Did you "take some time to think when you take your time to stink" on Poop for Peace Day? Well, if not, the day after is a perfect time to properly honor this noble holiday. Sure is hard to argue with this: "We all poop, which means we're all human, which means we're all brothers and sisters." [via skimble]
posted on Apr-15-05 at 10:23 PM
Pictures of Walls. A gallery of interesting grime, complete with joy, paranoia, politics, good advice and the stupidest graffiti ever. Only one rule for submissions: "No 'proper' graffiti or nazi crap obviously." [via Bifurcated Rivets]
posted on Apr-11-05 at 11:40 PM
Weathering the Weather: The Origins of Atmospheric Science A "glorious selection" of strikingly beautiful pages from classic publications about meteorology. [via plep].
posted on Mar-23-05 at 9:44 PM
A Parent's Guide to Anime includes a few hundred informative and opinionated reviews, organized by rating. Found via this thread at the Christian discussion site Arts & Faith, whose users included Waking Life, Bad Lieutenant, Life of Brian and Fight Club in their list of the Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films.
posted on Mar-21-05 at 4:19 PM
30 years of Sundays in the 23rd century. Magic Time Square of all Fridays. Magic Square portrait of Queen Victoria. A few pieces from the web site of Savant artist George Widener, whose extraordinary memory, drawing skill and calendar calculating abilities have "only recently come to public notice." Found via Dr. Darold Treffert's fascinating Savant Syndrome site, with tons of info that raises compelling questions. [previous Savant-related MeFi threads]
posted on Mar-14-05 at 6:30 PM
Two recent provocative articles about the the male-hooker-in-the-White-House-press-corps story: An analysis from Monday's Philly Inquirer asserts the flap is "far from over" and includes a cautionary quote: "The Bush people are challenging all the old assumptions about how to work the press. They are ambitious - visionary, if you will - in ways that Washington has yet to fathom." Meanwhile, this Feb 24 blog post from lefty David Corn calls Gannon's alleged anti-gay articles "pretty tame stuff" that didn't "automatically qualify him for outing," and cautions knee-jerking progressives that "there is nothing inherently wrong with allowing journalists with identifiable biases to pose questions to the White House press secretary and even the president." [last Gannon thread] [MeTa thread about appropriateness of another front-page Gannon post]
posted on Mar-1-05 at 10:16 PM
Dave Winer slams the new Google Toolbar Autolink feature as "poorly thought out" adware that unilaterally raises "serious integrity issues" for the Web. Southern Rants adds this pointed critique: "The most important point Winer makes is that it's not about technology. It's about making a HUGE change on the Web, our new social nexus, without discussion. See, he and I are old enough to remember when no one would do such a thing without taking it to ISOC or some such org. It needs discussion. It needs consideration. That's what Google doesn't understand." [via Ed Cone]
posted on Feb-24-05 at 7:48 AM
Seabirds Skull Gallery An amateur birder in Holland is fascinated by the internal structure of various seabirds. [via Incoming Signals]
posted on Feb-19-05 at 9:14 PM
Do Hollywood stuntmen deserve their own Oscar category? Judge for yourself [qt]. Major stunt organizations have now joined forces to lobby the Academy to finally create an award for Best Stunt Coordinator. Does athleticism, courage and sheer gung-ho physicality deserve the same kind of recognition given to other Oscar categories? Only once has the Academy officially recognized a stuntman, with an Honorary Oscar for pioneering stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt in 1967.
posted on Feb-16-05 at 9:49 PM
"Why is my birth certificate a state secret?" asks Bastard Nation. The group's fight for unconditional access to non-falsified birth records - start with The Basic Bastard, including a history of sealed adoption records in the USA - has enemies, which of course include Fox's "Who's Your Daddy?"
posted on Jan-31-05 at 6:07 AM
Best. Protest. Ever. If you read the story last week about an artist in Bayreuth, Germany who's been sticking little American flags into piles of dog crap, here [via jwz via bb] is what looks like that artist's official site.
posted on Jan-24-05 at 12:48 PM
posted on Oct-6-06 at 8:15 AM
Candy. Bureaucracy. Memory. The Daily Collage Project, from Dilar Pereira in Portugal. [via]
posted on Oct-4-06 at 9:41 PM
Beautiful, occasionally abstract, old German zoological wall charts. [via]
posted on Oct-3-06 at 8:27 PM
Private Collection - an exhibit of not-so-rare objets d'art stolen from European galleries. Apparently, it's "a reaction to the commoditization of art and to gallery monopolies that price art, dictate which artworks have value, and set themselves up as the arbiters of artists' qualities," but you might find the gag funny anyway. [via mlarson.org]
posted on Sep-5-06 at 11:23 PM
Cool book photos by Abelardo Morell, who takes pictures of other cool things, too.
posted on Sep-4-06 at 4:01 PM
Strangers - a visual record of one-night stands that never actually happened. Futoshi Miyagi in a series of photos of himself in the homes of other men. "To be naked with someone without having intercourse is weird." [Flash, nsfw]
posted on Aug-17-06 at 11:16 PM
Astronomy Quilts "My quilts are to communicate ideas, express feelings, tell stories, and encourage the progress of anti-entropy coalescing order from disorder."
posted on Aug-4-06 at 8:27 PM
Perfection and Eraserhead. Discussing Singing in the Rain and Goodfellas with prisoners. The link between Pasolini, Blind Willie Johnson and Carl Sagan. If you like hanging out at the corner of Film and Word, you might enjoy spending time in the archives at Your Humble Viewer, a wide-ranging, well-written, funny and literate film blog.
posted on Jul-31-06 at 9:40 AM
Printmaker. Painter. Adventurer. Advertiser. One of the most popular graphic artists of the 20th century, he created the Random House logo for his pals Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer and illustrated their first book. His illustrations for another, Moby Dick, are widely credited with resurrecting that novel for modern audiences. His own first book was favorably compared to Whitman's Leaves of Grass and for a time his bookplates were everywhere, but he "virtually vanished from the museum and gallery circuits by the late 1940s" due to his outspoken support for Stalinism. When the State Department refused to grant him a passport because of his political views, he took his case to the Supreme Court and won, establishing that the right to travel cannot be denied to American citizens. Happy birthday, Rockwell Kent.
posted on Jun-21-06 at 8:56 PM
Burying Freud. A collection of essays and responses by and about Freud's harshest critics, including "Confessions of a Freud-Basher" by anti-Freud point man Frederick Crews, interviewed at length here.
posted on May-15-06 at 9:16 AM
Forgotten silent film comedian Larry Semon. Part II - Heyday. Part III - Trouble Brewing. In 1920, he was the world's 2nd-most-famous Hollywood star, with a contract and creative control rivaling Chaplin. In 1921, he made a popular series of films with Oliver Hardy as his main comic foil, six years before Laurel & Hardy became a household name. In 1925, he directed a truly bizarre silent version of The Wizard of Oz, just as wild overspending, erratic behavior and lawsuits ruined his career. The Larry Semon Research site has an interesting picture gallery.
posted on May-1-06 at 12:13 PM
"Mixed" reviews of John Stewart's performance last night. A reminder that someone warned in February that Crash might win best picture because many Academy members were "unwilling to screen Brokeback Mountain" [permalinks broken, scroll down]. Marvel that YouTube somehow managed to get rights [cough] to Oscar video, at the Oscar frocks and that thing on Charlize Theron's shoulder, and at the persistent myth that a billion people watched the awards.
posted on Mar-6-06 at 10:47 AM
Who watches Sunset Boulevard for Norma Desmond's 1932 Isotta Fraschini Town Car Landolet Limousine? These folks [scroll down for the film list], who also like the "VERY KOOL maroon late-1940's Ford Coupe" used by the cop-killers in The Onion Field, Steve McQueen's "milquetoast baby-blue 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible" in The Blob, Fred Astaire's end-of-the-world Ferrari and lots more.
posted on Jan-31-06 at 12:32 AM
Songs of Brazilian Birds A fantastically diverse collection of .au files, including the beautifully evocative Organ Wren or Uirapuru, the mooing of the Capuchinbird, the sci-fi minimalism of the Short-tailed Antthrush and a duet of Laughing Falcons (they'll make you laugh at the end).
posted on Jan-23-06 at 12:07 AM
Challenging Christian Zionism "We are a group of evangelical pastors, academics and mission executives who have been disturbed by the growing influence of Christian Zionism on the political scene in America..." Detailed critique of the Christian Zionist movement includes a look at Hal Lindsey, "the Father of Apocalyptic Christian Zionism."
posted on Jan-16-06 at 5:48 PM
Oddly obsessive statistical analysis of the rates paid by customers of legal Nevada prostitutes, broken down by sex act, attractiveness, body type and presence or absence of a jacuzzi, among other topics. [via Cynical-C, who swears he found it by accident]
posted on Jan-9-06 at 9:33 PM
Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu.
Rolled Palm Leaf Manuscripts in Nepal.
Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture.
Lots of beautiful images and fascinating information, courtesy of the wonderful plep.
posted on Jan-7-06 at 9:29 PM
100 Cartoons to celebrate Black Ink Monday "Over the last 20 years, the number of cartoonists on the staff of daily newspapers nationwide has been cut in half." Today, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists protests "newspapers everywhere who have lost sight of the value of having a staff editorial cartoonist."
posted on Dec-12-05 at 10:01 AM
Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth Detailed argument from the Global Policy Foundation, et al, that the use of Production Sharing Agreements - "quite common in countries with small oil reserves and/or high extraction costs" - is inappropriate for Iraq and effectively robs the Iraqi people by ignoring other, more equitable options.
posted on Nov-22-05 at 6:57 AM
Pictures of Failure: Incarcerated Youth. [via happy palace]
posted on Nov-2-05 at 9:15 PM
"What did you do to my Intelligent Synthesizer?" Wonderful collection of DIY sound gizmos from Mike Walters at Mystery Circuits. Includes the Pena-Tron, the Electronic Earthball and detailed instructions for the Moog Source Membrane Switch Cure. Most recent: The Melloman, a hilariously elliptical DIY Mellotron. [note: 3rd, 4th and 8th links are mp3s] [via]
posted on Oct-17-05 at 7:04 PM
Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Hurricane Risk Reduction from Cuba [pdf] Oxfam America report described Cuba's community-based response system in April 2004, five months before category 5 hurricane Ivan tore across the island but resulted in zero deaths. From Medicc Review: "Of those evacuated, fully 78%...were sheltered in the homes of family, friends or neighbors. 8,026 tourists were transferred to safe areas. 359,644 boarding school students were transferred to their homes. 898,160 farm animals in vulnerable areas were moved to safer ground." The International Red Cross had similar praise for Cuba's planning after Hurricane Michelle in 2001: " The contrast between events in Cuba and earlier disasters, such as Hurricanes Mitch and Georges in 1998 and the floods in Venezuela in 1999, is enormous."
posted on Sep-6-05 at 8:34 PM
Is the former Republican mayor of New Orleans really blameless? Not by a long shot. From lefty blog Lenin's Tomb, which points to evidence that New Orleans officials "never put plans into place" to evacuate the poorest of the poor. [thanks, Aknaton]
posted on Sep-4-05 at 10:50 PM
The wonderful architecture blog Transfer is the home of The Anti-Sit Archives, an astonishing collection of, well, urban ass-deflecting devices. [thanks to iconomy]
posted on Aug-30-05 at 12:45 AM
Don't Call Me Madam: The sad and crazy life of Ray Bourbon A pioneering drag comedian, friend of Mae West and an early independent recording artist, Ray was a deliberately enigmatic pop cult figure who may or may not have had a sex change operation in 1956. He was a frequent target of police raids and died in prison as a convicted accomplice to murder. "Ray’s comedy was, at once, highbrow and lowbrow, overtly Gay and covertly subversive. Despite his influence on Gays, he remained vague about his own sexuality."
posted on Aug-29-05 at 12:18 AM
"What's most shocking about Grand Theft Auto isn't embedded sex scenes. It's the financial chicanery of the game's maker." Fortune's Bethany McLean - one of the few journalists to question Enron's stock price in early 2001 - has just taken a good look at Take Two Interactive, and she doesn't like what she sees. Four CEOs since 2002, execs dumping stock in recent months, fraudulent "parking transactions" that dramatically overstated earnings...and yet its stock price has remained bouyant. "How, in an era when investors are supposedly obsessed with corporate governance, are this firm's troubles so easily overlooked?"
posted on Aug-17-05 at 8:00 PM
What al-Qaida Really Wants: An Islamic Caliphate in Seven Easy Steps. German newspaper Der Spiegel offers a look at an Islamist plan for success by 2020, courtesy of journalist Fouad Hussein, who claims close connection with al-Qaida's inner circle. But does that inner circle really call the shots anymore? And how reliable are long-term global plans, anyway? [first link via The Agonist]
posted on Aug-15-05 at 9:59 PM
Tawdry, tawdry stuff "Another prison guard smuggling dope, another cop caught tweaking, an airport security professional trying to get rich, a horny Florida deputy, and a Michigan police chief who sounds like a real decadent party animal." Lots of not-so-fun reading in Corrupt Cops Stories, a weekly feature in the Drug War Chronicle. The archive goes back a few years.
posted on Aug-8-05 at 11:34 PM
Google blacklists CNET reporters? An article about privacy issues that highlighted the potential for abuse if logs of search terms linked with IP addresses are combined by search companies with address and phone data, angered Google CEO Eric Schmidt enough to blacklist CNET reporters for a year, at least according to the bottom of this CNET story. The article begins with information about Schmidt found via Google searches, and goes on to "question Google's ability to adequately balance the heavy burden of safeguarding consumer privacy rights with the pull toward intermingling and mining data for ever more lucrative targeted advertising."
posted on Aug-7-05 at 10:36 PM
Zora Neale Hurston's Glossary of Harlem Slang. Profiles of black writers including Audre Lorde, Chester Himes, The Last Poets and Linton Kwesi Johnson. The complete list of Coretta Scott King children's book award winners. Lots of informative off-site links. A lively forum filled with juicy gossip, among other pleasures. Just a few things you'll find at the African American Literature Book Club.
posted on Jul-27-05 at 7:29 PM
Casino carpet gallery. [via scrubbles.net]
posted on Jun-28-05 at 9:47 PM
Dumpster World - "Your Dumpster Diving and Curb Crawling Resource." [via Information Nation, which also links to that story of a woman who was recently unloaded into a garbage truck]
posted on Jun-27-05 at 6:20 PM
Chopstick Eco-Art Choose from wine racks, hanging lamps, candle holders and more. "We genuinely hope that one day we will no longer be able to make our products as a result of heightened preservation efforts." [via The Presurfer]
posted on Jun-24-05 at 10:49 PM
The world's 100 largest newspapers by circulation Japan and China take 9 of the top 10 spots; Greece enters at #17, the United States at #19. Newspaperindex now also has the list broken down by continent. [An updated top 100 list has been posted here] [via Cynical-C]
posted on Jun-12-05 at 9:16 AM
50 years with Lew Archer A detailed tribute to classic hard-boiled mystery writer Ross Macdonald, including a fascinating interview with Macdonald's biographer. Considered one of "the big three of the American hard-boiled detective novel" (with Hammet and Chandler), Macdonald has unfortunately "slipped to the back shelves." He had a lifelong lover's quarrel with Hollywood and - oh yeah - probably saved Warren Zevon's life back in 1979.
posted on Jun-3-05 at 9:05 PM
Mary, quite contrary The Christianity Today weblog offers a fabulously dense post (pegged to this recent UK news story) about the Protestant embrace of Mary. Lots of fascinating links - including one from the blog of the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary - will bring you up to speed on "the 'Protestants and Mary' deluge of the last three years." Hours of provocative reading for anyone interested in Christian sects.
posted on May-23-05 at 6:00 PM
Buying Rare Race Records in the South. Music That Americans Loved 100 Years Ago. The Cheney Talking Machine. Just three among dozens of amazing articles about early recording machines and American popular music at the astonishingly detailed site of Tim Gracyk, author of Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895-1925. Scroll down for bios of forgotten stars, including Nora Bayes - who performed in the Follies of 1907, before Flo Ziegfeld's name became part of the title, George W. Johnson - "the most important African-American recording artist of the 1890s," and piano player Zez Confrey, whose sheet music for the 1921 hit "Kitten on the Keys" sold over a million copies and became "the third most-frequently recorded rag in history."
posted on May-17-05 at 9:55 PM
The Thirty Years War: A timeline of the anti-gay movement. From "Holy War," the latest Intelligence Report to come out of the very lefty Southern Poverty Law Center. Includes an interview with former Falwell speechwriter Mel White, a look at 12 major groups in the "Mighty Army" and a slideshow of fascinating quotes from famous figures. [Previous Intelligence Reports: Easy Prey, Age of Rage.]
posted on May-16-05 at 7:27 PM
The Mathematical Fiction Homepage is a collaborative attempt to "collect information about all significant references to mathematics in fiction." Feel free to add classic or recent works in any medium to the collection, or rate existing entries on their mathematical content and literary quality.
posted on Apr-18-05 at 7:58 PM
Poop is the one experience all human beings have in common. Did you "take some time to think when you take your time to stink" on Poop for Peace Day? Well, if not, the day after is a perfect time to properly honor this noble holiday. Sure is hard to argue with this: "We all poop, which means we're all human, which means we're all brothers and sisters." [via skimble]
posted on Apr-15-05 at 10:23 PM
Pictures of Walls. A gallery of interesting grime, complete with joy, paranoia, politics, good advice and the stupidest graffiti ever. Only one rule for submissions: "No 'proper' graffiti or nazi crap obviously." [via Bifurcated Rivets]
posted on Apr-11-05 at 11:40 PM
Weathering the Weather: The Origins of Atmospheric Science A "glorious selection" of strikingly beautiful pages from classic publications about meteorology. [via plep].
posted on Mar-23-05 at 9:44 PM
A Parent's Guide to Anime includes a few hundred informative and opinionated reviews, organized by rating. Found via this thread at the Christian discussion site Arts & Faith, whose users included Waking Life, Bad Lieutenant, Life of Brian and Fight Club in their list of the Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films.
posted on Mar-21-05 at 4:19 PM
30 years of Sundays in the 23rd century. Magic Time Square of all Fridays. Magic Square portrait of Queen Victoria. A few pieces from the web site of Savant artist George Widener, whose extraordinary memory, drawing skill and calendar calculating abilities have "only recently come to public notice." Found via Dr. Darold Treffert's fascinating Savant Syndrome site, with tons of info that raises compelling questions. [previous Savant-related MeFi threads]
posted on Mar-14-05 at 6:30 PM
Two recent provocative articles about the the male-hooker-in-the-White-House-press-corps story: An analysis from Monday's Philly Inquirer asserts the flap is "far from over" and includes a cautionary quote: "The Bush people are challenging all the old assumptions about how to work the press. They are ambitious - visionary, if you will - in ways that Washington has yet to fathom." Meanwhile, this Feb 24 blog post from lefty David Corn calls Gannon's alleged anti-gay articles "pretty tame stuff" that didn't "automatically qualify him for outing," and cautions knee-jerking progressives that "there is nothing inherently wrong with allowing journalists with identifiable biases to pose questions to the White House press secretary and even the president." [last Gannon thread] [MeTa thread about appropriateness of another front-page Gannon post]
posted on Mar-1-05 at 10:16 PM
Dave Winer slams the new Google Toolbar Autolink feature as "poorly thought out" adware that unilaterally raises "serious integrity issues" for the Web. Southern Rants adds this pointed critique: "The most important point Winer makes is that it's not about technology. It's about making a HUGE change on the Web, our new social nexus, without discussion. See, he and I are old enough to remember when no one would do such a thing without taking it to ISOC or some such org. It needs discussion. It needs consideration. That's what Google doesn't understand." [via Ed Cone]
posted on Feb-24-05 at 7:48 AM
Seabirds Skull Gallery An amateur birder in Holland is fascinated by the internal structure of various seabirds. [via Incoming Signals]
posted on Feb-19-05 at 9:14 PM
Do Hollywood stuntmen deserve their own Oscar category? Judge for yourself [qt]. Major stunt organizations have now joined forces to lobby the Academy to finally create an award for Best Stunt Coordinator. Does athleticism, courage and sheer gung-ho physicality deserve the same kind of recognition given to other Oscar categories? Only once has the Academy officially recognized a stuntman, with an Honorary Oscar for pioneering stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt in 1967.
posted on Feb-16-05 at 9:49 PM
"Why is my birth certificate a state secret?" asks Bastard Nation. The group's fight for unconditional access to non-falsified birth records - start with The Basic Bastard, including a history of sealed adoption records in the USA - has enemies, which of course include Fox's "Who's Your Daddy?"
posted on Jan-31-05 at 6:07 AM
Best. Protest. Ever. If you read the story last week about an artist in Bayreuth, Germany who's been sticking little American flags into piles of dog crap, here [via jwz via bb] is what looks like that artist's official site.
posted on Jan-24-05 at 12:48 PM
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