February 1, 2008
The Greater of Two Evils
Two lawyers have known since 1982 that an innocent man was behind bars for a murder their own client committed. The legal reason for this travesty: the absolutism of the client-attorney privilege, which guarantees that anything a client tells his lawyers will be kept in confidence forever.
"The Worst Addiction of Them All"
"The Worst Addiction of Them All", by Kurt Vonnegut, 1983. A classic and prescient essay on addiction to war.
where the guns come from, where they go
The flow of arms around the world, from 1950 to today An interesting Java representation of the flow of arms around the world, year by year from 1950 to today. View, discuss amongst yourselves. via
Rags to stitches
One dog's story of her journey from bait dog (a non-fighting dog used as a "training dummy" for fighting dogs) to loved pet. She got by with a a little help from her friends.
Hands across the water.
What do you do when you're a Panamanian golden frog and you need to let that certain special someone across the way know you're, um, interested? Sure, you could croak a few sweet nothings in her ear, but those rushing jungle streams can drown out even the most virile of frog voices. So, you... wave! Yeah, give her a little wave! A BBC film crew has captured footage of this rare (and, according to their article, now extinct) amphibian waving, fighting and mating. [NOTE: last link includes hot froggy ménage à trois. Surely NSFW!] [more inside]
The Mindscape of Alan Moore
The Mindscape of Alan Moore. Documentary featuring interview with comic book writer Alan Moore. More interviews. (previously)
Listen up newbie
Obey the moderator. (SLYT)
Packing Tapestry
Because it's filler, filler night.
Flash Friday: Filler. Fill the 2/3 of the available space using as few spheres as possible while avoiding the bouncing balls.
Of Montreal covers
Click.
Created by flash artist and graphic novelist Mateusz Skutnik, Submachine is one of the class acts of the point-and-click Web-game genre. Mesmerizing, layered and absorbing, the latest chapter in the series has just been released. [more inside]
Sitation Normal: All Fucked Up
Back in July 1994, a patrol of French blue helmets discovered, to their utter bemusement, a derelict Douglas C-47 "Dakota" in the midst of MiG carcasses in the Rajlovac airfield in Bosnia. They were intrigued enough to write down its serial number: Serial Nr. 43/15073 turned out to be a veteran of Normandy, Provence, Market Garden, the Bulge, and the Rhine.
Now SNAFU Special is back in Normandy, where it is being restored to become a centerpiece of the Merville Battery Museum. [more inside]
Man gave birth to a upper jaw.
Grow your own spare parts. At last we're regenerating properly. Scientists took stem cells from patients fat tissue, cultivated bone cells from them, crafted a nice comfy titanium cage where to grow and put the cage into man's abdomen. After 9 months, install new upper jaw.
dining designs
X-IE-VERSION-FREEZE
It slipped through the cracks on my radar, but apparently the IE8 team has met with some web standards gurus and decided that in order to move forward with full standards compliance (and support the known quirks of IE6/7 for corporate intranets), a new "version targeting" system should be put in place. Other browser vendors are not amused. Should IE just give up? [more inside]
Art Image Bank
Art Images for College Teaching is a searchable, browsable collection of 2,027, well, art images for college teaching, and appears to be mainly the personal collection of Art Historian Allan Kohl (previously on MeFi), and thus represents his interests and specialities, not to mention the variable quality of his photographic skills. Rather strong in Ancient and Medieval, especially architecture, but tapers off as you become more distant from Europe or closer to the 20th century. Nice sets include the Lion Hunt from Ashurbanipal, Iraq; the exterior sculpture of Chartres; and grave stele.
NO FATTIES
Mississippi considers banning people with a BMI higher than 30 from eating in public. Though its author doesn't expect it to pass, House Bill 282 attempts to draw attention to the obesity epidemic, exaggerated or no. Predictably, some are upset.
Not quite your Vonnegut
Undercover video (warning: very graphic) released by the Humane Society reveals abuse of animals on the slaughterhouse floor and other code violations. [more inside]
Multi-link Mike Post post
If you only watch the opening credits of 279 shows from the late 1980s, make it these 279 shows from the late 1980s. [more inside]
I believe that literature is working, even amidst this chaos, with a power that can change the world.
Haruki Murakami doesn't do many interviews. However, he granted one to a University of Hawaii journalism student and it was published in the January 2007 issue of GQ Korea. The text has been translated by the blog owner. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Shifting Sands
Shifting Sands. A great series from the Globe and Mail on the Alberta Tar Sands: An Empire Made of Goo, Black gold, Texas tea, The hollowing out of small Atlantic towns, Where rich and poor Albertas collide, Norway the gold standard for managing oil wealth, The climatic costs of rapid growth.
Crime in Russia
Fake Bird Poop is Pata-Fake
So you remember that 'dumb, totally fake' video of a bird pooping in a reporter's mouth that was posted and deleted a week ago? It's meta-fake. Maybe even pata-fake.
Got room on that Zimmer for two?
Microsoft offers $44.6 billion for Yahoo! The grand old man of Redmond has finally come out of the closet to woo the loveliest lady in Sunnyvale, offering a staggering $44.6 billion in cash or shares. Cash or shares? Wow! Bearing in mind the...ah...disappointments both companies have suffered over the recent past, is this a marriage made in heaven? Or hell?
I learned it from watching you!
Remember when TV raised us right? Time for Timer taught us about cheese, carrots, breakfast, and oral hygiene. The Abominable Snowman taught us about lunch, money, advertising, and the Food Group Disco! Woodsy Owl taught us to Give a Hoot! and keep America lookin' good! and Mr Yuk SCARED THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF US. [more inside]
Of Man's First Disobedience
John Milton was born 400 years ago this year, and several excellent websites have been created to mark the anniversary. Two online exhibitions, Citizen Milton and Living At This Hour, celebrate Milton's achievement with a display of early editions and later artistic interpretations, while Darkness Visible offers an accessible introduction to Paradise Lost for readers encountering the poem for the first time, including an interesting discussion of Milton's influence on Philip Pullman (who responds here with his own tribute to Paradise Lost, 'the greatest poem by England's greatest public poet').
UK retailer website betrays the little children / ignorance
Buying a new bed for your daughter?. How about this little number, with a cheeky, precocious, contemporary culture-aware name. And pull-out desk, did I mention the built-in cupboard?
Mothers aren't concerned about the pull-out desk; they're concerned about the young girls' bed being called "Lolita". [more inside]
Mothers aren't concerned about the pull-out desk; they're concerned about the young girls' bed being called "Lolita". [more inside]
The hard shake, on the balls, and edible cocktails
"In the U.S., they're mixing drinks with herbs and other weird
ingredients, but in Ginza the best guys just polish their cocktails like jewels." And perhaps no Japanese mixology master has contributed more than Kauzo Ueda, who has perfected the art of the hard shake, a refinement over more traditional shake
styles. He has a disciple in NYC's Eben Freeman, who now imparts the secrets
of the hard shake via a video tutorial. [more inside]
Mujer Libre
The Scots voice of the Spanish revolution [Embedded DivX video 1hr15m; also downloadable] Ethel MacDonald was a young working class Scots woman who hitch-hiked to Barcelona to do her part in the war. There she became the English-language voice of the anarchist movement as a radio station announcer. Newspapers at home dubbed her the "Scottish Scarlet Pimpernel" for her role in helping comrades escape the crackdown that followed the May Days. Her remarkable story is told in this recent drama-documentary.
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