"Imagine if you had never been homeless before and you'd just lost your job and you lost your home. What would you do? Would you immediately go begging or knocking on a door? No, you would downsize, move into cheaper accommodations, if that did not work you'd move in with friends or relatives and then you'd move into a cheap motel and then ... where would you want to go before winding up at a shelter door? You would much prefer to live at a park with your family and your dog." ... "In just about every major city, there are tent cities. Unfortunately, we're in a growth industry and the numbers are going to continue." -- Michael Stoop, a community organizer for the
National Coalition for the Homeless, explaining that the
surge in American tent city shantytowns, first highlighted on MeFi in 2008/09:
1,
2,
3, has not slowed.
The Great Recession: Life in Tent City, Lakewood NJ /
Photo Gallery /
Video.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 10, 2011 -
40 comments
The Triumph of New-Age Medicine "Medicine has long decried acupuncture, homeopathy, and the like as dangerous nonsense that preys on the gullible. Again and again, carefully controlled studies have shown alternative medicine to work no better than a placebo. But now many doctors admit that alternative medicine often seems to do a better job of making patients well, and at a much lower cost, than mainstream care—and they’re trying to learn from it." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 15, 2011 -
278 comments
Chester Brown's autobiographical works such as
I Never Liked You (1.3 MB PDF) placed #38 on
The Comics Journal's
list of the 100 Best Comics of the 20th Century. In his new graphic novel,
Paying For It, he "calmly lays out the facts of how he became not only a willing participant in but also a vocal proponent of one of the world's most hot-button topics--
prostitution".
posted by Trurl
on May 16, 2011 -
46 comments
The idea behind Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation? is to look back at an era that’s both incredibly important and yet mysteriously absent from my life as a music fan. Part 1: 1990: “Once upon a time, I could love you”.
Part 2: 1991: “What’s so civil about war anyway?”
Part 3: 1992: Pearl Jam, the perils of fame, and the trouble with avoiding it
posted by Joe Beese
on Nov 3, 2010 -
60 comments
The main goal of
Project Vedos is to study and teach alternative printing processes in photography and printmaking.
posted by vostok
on Apr 14, 2010 -
3 comments
FreeBaseballRadio.com is a site that was created to help find internet broadcasts of live baseball games. Specifically those that are available for free.
posted by acro
on Aug 6, 2009 -
18 comments
Mickey Ween: A security guard came onstage and Gibby threw the alcohol on him. The dude just started backing away, it was clear that Gibby probably would set him on fire. And now, knowing Gibby like I do, it was definitely within the realm of possibility.
Mark Pesetsky: And Gibby just gave me that psycho look with the Charles Manson eyes. He grabs a bottle of the rubbing alcohol and throws it on me and then starts walking towards me with a lighter. And John, the other bouncer, just jumps offstage. It was every man for himself at that point.
Gibby Haynes: Oh yeah, I do remember that. I mean, I've lit kids' heads on fire and they were smiling!
An Oral History of May 3, 1987: The Day The Butthole Surfers Came to Trenton, New Jersey. Butthole Surfers interviewed in bed, parts
1 and
2, playing The Scott & Gary Show on their first run through New York, parts
1 and
2,
playing live in 1985 [low quality],
live footage from the 80s.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 6, 2009 -
51 comments
In the Fall of 1991, MTV's 120 Minutes released two compilations (Amazon:
one,
two) of songs from the show. (Youtube:
one,
two)
posted by nervousfritz
on Jun 18, 2007 -
45 comments
The Easy-Glider is everything the Segway is, but cheaper. Electric engine, 16-25 kilometers (10-15 miles) on a charge.
Looks like fun [8mb qt] for only less than EU1000 ($1300 US). (Currently not available in the US.)
posted by Dave Faris
on Jun 14, 2007 -
42 comments
Founded in Berkeley by artist
Jim Mason,
The Shipyard, a collaborative industrial arts space constructed from recycled shipping containers, has hosted numerous large-scale projects and events including a
Survival Research Labs show,
Power Tool Drag Races,
gassification experiments and workshops, and various large-scale Burning Man projects such as 2005's
Clockworks. Short documentary
here (quicktime). However, relations with the city of Berkeley have been consistently
tense. Recently, the city shut off the Shipyard's power, to which the Shipyard responded by going
off grid. On May 8, Berkeley issued 3-day vacate and abate notice, with which the Shipyard is
attempting to
comply (auto-playing video).
posted by treepour
on May 15, 2007 -
8 comments
Ohio Valley Creative Energy Ohio Valley Creative Energy was founded to provide a heat intensive multi-arts facility for glass, clay, and metal artists that will be powered by methane, AKA landfill gas.
posted by pt68
on Mar 22, 2007 -
3 comments
The Colemak keyboard layout. Colemak is a new alternative to the QWERTY and Dvorak layouts. Designed for efficient and ergonomic touch typing in English, Colemak places the 10 most frequent letters of English (A,R,S,T,D,H,N,E,I,O) on the home row. Z,X,C are preserved in their QWERTY positions for easy copy and paste operations. It gets rid of the Caps Lock and replaces it with Backspace so you no longer need to move your hand off the home position to correct errors. Available for Windows/Mac/Linux/Unix it works with all standard keyboards, including laptops.
[via: Projects], [Previously]
posted by Mitheral
on Jan 8, 2007 -
91 comments
Ocean Power Technologies is one of the leading Ocean Wave Power alternative energy companies. The technology is
simple to understand, easy to deploy and costs about the same as fossil fuel power 3 to 4 cents. OPT just
signed a deal for a 1M farm off the coast of Spain with a 100M farm by 2006, a major step forward for wave power generation.
posted by stbalbach
on Mar 2, 2004 -
16 comments
'Alternative' media can be corrupted too. Narco News publisher Al Giordano is pulling out of
Alternet, which he said has a near monopoly in the market of "alternative" news syndication. He outlines a number of problems with Alternet's operation and its director: in addition to taking
half the fee paid for content, he says Alternet also stole content and blacklisted writers. He also touches on the sometimes rivalry with "alternative" news groups, including
FAIR,
Project Censored, and
IndyMedia, and expresses hopes for
looming competition. In the fight to legitimize "alternative" media, are the evils of the mainstream unavoidable? [More inside]
posted by pzarquon
on Mar 4, 2002 -
2 comments
