California Restricts Voting Machines: after a
source code review of
voting machines
turned up "significant, deeply-rooted security weaknesses"
in voting machines by Diebold, Hart, and Sequoia, the California Secretary of
State decertified all three vendors' systems. These weaknesses have been
well
covered here at MeFi, but some are
bad enough to shock even the
well-jaded, including the revelation that Diebold "uses at least two
hard-coded passwords -- one is 'diebold' and another is the eight-byte
sequence
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8." Time to think about
open voting?
posted by jacobian
on Aug 5, 2007 -
48 comments
Virtual Space Mountain! Wheeeee!
(Click on the second video where you sit in front. What are you, a wuss?) Real video just
can't do Space Mountain justice, but it does a pretty good job of capturing some other rides. Feel like revisiting some original Magic Kingdom rides without leaving home? Well here you go...
Pirates,
Mr. Toad,
Small World,
Haunted Mansion,
Tiki Room,
Thunder Mountain,
Star Tours,
Indiana Jones,
Alice in Wonderland,
The Jungle Cruise,
Matterhorn,
Roger Rabbit, the late
Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and a bunch of people covered in lightbulbs dancing to
the world's most excruciatingly annoying synthesized music. During your virtual day at the park, please just remember to watch out for Goofy. That dude is nothing but a
messed up troublemaker.
And don't forget... the parking trams do not go to aisles B as in Bambi & C as in Cinderella.
posted by miss lynnster
on Mar 26, 2007 -
23 comments
Jonson takes pictures of The Salton Sea, which is a
strange place, like some kind of huge, perpetual,
Burning Man, but by a
huge, salty, polluted, manmade lake with
distant shores,
dying fish,
has-been resort towns,
Salvation Mountain,
fundie dinos,
fountains of youth, and
nice churches.
[via mefi projects] [previously] [howdy]
posted by brownpau
on Jan 30, 2007 -
36 comments
ShakeMovie The Near Real Time Simulation of Southern California Seismic Events Portal. Earthquake animations from Caltech.
"
These movies are the results of simulations carried out on a large computer cluster. Earthquake movies will be available for download approximately 45 mins after the occurrence of a quake of magnitude 3.5 or greater."
posted by thatwhichfalls
on Aug 9, 2006 -
2 comments
Prudhoe Bay oil production shut down. A large percentage of the largest major oil field in the US will be shut down, possibly for months, on news that the transfer pipelines which move the oil to the main Trans-Alaska Pipeline are badly corroded. [more inside...]
posted by zoogleplex
on Aug 7, 2006 -
39 comments
Extra! Tabloid photographs from the Los Angeles Herald Express (1936-1961), showing
celebrities,
fashion,
tragedy,
(early) CHiPs, and
babes with guns.
Via the
Virtual Gallery at the LA Public Library, which has many other fine exhibits, such as
California in the 20s, the
1932 Olympics,
celebrity golf, and a wonderful collection from the
golden age of travel posters.
posted by Gamblor
on Jul 28, 2006 -
15 comments
"It's filthy. It's toxic. But it's water. And as we know in California, people are fighting over it." It's North America’s most polluted river, made up of 70% waste material and raw sewage. The
New River, which starts in Mexicali, Mexico, flows past homes in the California border town of Calexico and winds up in the Salton Sea. The river contains a
nightmare stew of about 100 biological contaminants, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and pesticides including: DDT, PCB, selenium, uranium, arsenic and mercury. The scary part? It's enough water for about 300,000 homes. Filthy or not, that’s real water. So L.A.’s Metropolitan Water District has
filed a claim on New River water.
posted by thisisdrew
on Jul 6, 2006 -
38 comments
Spirit was an American jazz/hard rock/psychedelic band founded in 1967, based in Los Angeles, California. Their 1970 album
Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is highly regarded for originality and uniqueness and is considered by many to be one of the best albums made by a Los Angeles group [
source]. Among the many bits of fascinating rock trivia surrounding the group: founder and frontman Randy California jammed with a pre-fame
Jimi Hendrix.
Curious fans can also peruse unofficial sites for original members and founders
Randy California and
Jay Ferguson.
posted by joe lisboa
on Jul 3, 2006 -
39 comments
The Jackie Robinson of architecture. An orphaned African American boy from downtown Los Angeles,
Paul Revere Williams wanted to be an architect, and when he mentioned his career goal the high school guidance counselor ”stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars...
Whoever heard of a Negro being an architect?”. Therefore, Williams learned to read and draw upside down -- he knew that white clients would not sit next to him --
graduated from USC and in 1924 became the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi. In a
50-year long extraordinary career, he designed landmarks like the
Theme restaurant at
Los Angeles International Airport (with
Welton Becket), the
LA County Courthouse, the
Hollywood YMCA,
Saks Fifth Avenue in
Beverly Hills, restored the Beverly Hills Hotel. Some of his most interesting buildings, like the
La Concha Motel in
Las Vegas have either been
razed to the
ground or, like the "
Batman house", aka
160 S San Rafael mansion in Pasadena, have been destroyed by fire. Now, Williams' historic
Morris Landau House has been
cut into 21 separate pieces and sits in a Santa Clarita storage yard,
rotting away. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jul 2, 2006 -
25 comments
2%. (
bugmenot login fleeb@fleeble.com, password fleeble) That is the percentage of students in UCLA's incoming freshman class that self-identify as black. Only 96 students in an entering class of 4,852, and the lowest percentage since 1973. Many believe
Proposition 209 is to blame, but
some want to stop collecting this data altogether.
posted by fugitivefromchaingang
on Jun 8, 2006 -
46 comments
What’s a dog worth? Los Angeles kills more animals in its shelters than any other metropolitan area in the United States. For that to change, we will have to figure out what to do with the pets none of us want.
posted by PenguinBukkake
on May 13, 2006 -
56 comments
Rivers of Light Hypnotic night-time helicopter shots, floating over downtown LA offices and highways. From Grass Collective. Flash interface, so find your way to the fifth column from the left ('free downloads').
[Large (91MB, 146MB) zipped QT files - a smaller (12MB) sample here]
posted by carter
on Mar 23, 2006 -
12 comments
Eighty years ago,
William Mulholland completed his final project:
the St. Francis Dam, which converted San Francisquito Canyon--about 5 miles northeast of what is now
Santa Clarita, California--into a 38,000 acre-foot reservoir for Los Angeles/Owens River aqueduct water.
You're probably familiar with
Mulholland's name --he designed and built the
Los Angeles Aqueduct and the beginning of the
system with which Los Angeles is supplied water from the Central Valley--and as a gesture of gratitude, the city named
its most scenic highway in his honor. Mulholland, the
California Water Wars, the aqueduct, and the dam were also referenced and alluded to extensively in Roman Polanski's
Chinatown.
But
the man who helped build an immense metropolis by bringing water to the desert has only a
small fountain as a memorial to his legacy.
Three minutes before midnight, on March 12, 1928...
posted by fandango_matt
on Mar 13, 2006 -
20 comments
I first read "Ask the Dust" in 1971 when I was doing research for "Chinatown". I was concerned about the way people really sounded when they talked, and I was dissatisfied with everything else I had read that was written during the '30s. I wanted the real thing, as Henry James would say. When I picked up Fante's "Ask the Dust," I just knew that was the way those kids talked to each other—the rhythms, cadences, racism.
Robert Towne on
adapting John Fante's novel
for the big screen. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Mar 4, 2006 -
17 comments
The Problem With Emily Dickenson "On August 25, six students, along with their school, Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California and the Association of Christian Schools International filed
a federal lawsuit against the University of California where, according to the LA Times (August 27), admissions officials have been accused of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints." One of the textbooks used to teach literature has this to say about Mark Twain: "Twain's outlook was both self-centered and ultimately hopeless. Denying that he was created in the image of God, Twain was able to rid himself of feeling any responsibility to his Creator. "
posted by Secret Life of Gravy
on Nov 29, 2005 -
90 comments
The Online Archive of California brings together historical materials from a variety of
state institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. These materials include letters, legal documents, manuscripts, works of art, diaries, and historical photographs. Thousands of
photographs.
From
just the
Bancroft Library at Berkeley:
Artistic homes, 1887-1890,
agricultural laborers, 1906-1911,
the San Francisco earthquake and fire,
construction of the Golden Gate Bridge,
San Quentin Prison, and
war relocation camps. And that's barely scratching the surface.
posted by Gamblor
on Oct 17, 2005 -
5 comments
"I haven't been in a concert hall in 4 billion years". Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, 54, had been excited about an invitation to see the
Los Angeles Philharmonic in action at
Disney Hall. "The anticipation is horrible". He'd started showering daily at a shelter, to gussy himself up as much as possible. Nathaniel was a music student more than 30 years ago at the
Juilliard School when he suffered a breakdown. Today, as he continues to battle the schizophrenia that landed him on skid row, he plays violin and cello for hours each day in downtown Los Angeles, lifting his instruments out of an orange shopping cart on which he has written: "Little Walt Disney Concert Hall — Beethoven." After the Philharmonic's rehearsal, Ayers has played Disney Hall -- the real one, this time. Without the bow at first, picking the strings with his right hand, Bach's Cello Suite No. 1: Prelude. Several Philharmonic staffers heard the music and wandered over, peering in to see a man of the streets, tattered and elegant, close his eyes and drift into ecstasy.
posted by PenguinBukkake
on Oct 9, 2005 -
14 comments
Running on Fumes -- a fascinating essay by
the Nation's Sasha Abramsky on what rising gas prices will do to poor exurban communities.
posted by digaman
on Oct 4, 2005 -
165 comments
