March 11, 2002
Art Fights Back
Art Fights Back — an exhibit of poster art at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa — displays images dedicated to the memory of September 11 and support of the Unites States and its troops. Seems like a typical thing to do around war time, right?
Take a close look at the actual poster design. Don't they seem rather non-American in their artistic style? In fact, they recall an era of poster design for a dramatically different context than what was typically thought of as U.S. patriotism.
Take a close look at the actual poster design. Don't they seem rather non-American in their artistic style? In fact, they recall an era of poster design for a dramatically different context than what was typically thought of as U.S. patriotism.
Star Trek Goes All Right Wing On Us
Star Trek Goes All Right Wing On Us This week's The Nation brings us a treatise on how all the post-Kirk Treks were really progressive and groovy, and how the new Enterprise is racist, misogynistic, and perhaps even crypto-anti-semitic. Quote: "interplanetary politics seem to have been framed by Pat Buchanan" and "The women were like insects themselves...and in the time we spent mentally fondling their bouncy, soulless bodies, I felt, for the first time, that Star Trek didn't consider me a person." Oy veh.
File Under "Duh": Hollywood Colluded With Tobacco Giants. You'd think they'd never seen film noir...
The BBC launch a new radio station.
The BBC launch a new radio station. For too long, an entire demographic has been excluded from British radio. That is, contemporary and classic rock music that isn't exclusively chart oriented. It's only available on digital radio and streaming over the internet. So far it looks very promising. As a public sector broadcaster, this is exactly the sort of thing the Beeb should be doing - filling in the gaps left by commercial stations. Enjoy.
Dig him up!
Dig him up! Dig up that corpse! If you really love Jesus Christ, you'll haul his bones out of the ground to prove my daughter wrong! Dig up his grave! Pull out his tongue!
Privacy in Cyberspace.
Privacy in Cyberspace. The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School is offering a free "lecture and discussion" series on Internet Privacy. The series began today and is comprised of six modules that are introduced weekly over six weeks. Registration is free and open to all.
They call them"echphenomena".It's interesting to discover years later that there's a formal name for something you experienced. Around age 7 to 8, I went through a period where I would repeat everything a second time just under my breath(I could also not hear my self doing so). It eventually went away on it's own, but for a while I was freaking people out. In my twenties I met two other people who underwent similar experiences. Most often, these behaviors seem to be associated with Tourrete's Syndrome or Parkinson's, although I suffer from neither. It is a fascinating phenomena, though. Have any other MeFite's been acquainted with this phenomena?
BP made an incredible achievement.
BP made an incredible achievement. I originally heard this on NPR and thought it was worth sharing.
Attack of the killer tomatoes.
Attack of the killer tomatoes. Steel isn't the only product involved in protectionist tariffs.
Ginger... iMac... Yahoo?
Ginger... iMac... Yahoo? It looks like Yahoo! is taking a page from Steve Jobs's book, promising something that's 'so big there's never been anything like it on the Internet, or anywhere else.' Liftoff is 1 PM Pacific Time on Wednesday which, incidentally, is just after trading closes at NASDAQ.
Thoughts on the 9/11 documentary.
Thoughts on the 9/11 documentary. We've already talked about would you watch. Now that it's aired, did you watch? Was it what you expected? Did it trivialize by turning horrible tragedy into heartwarming fare, or did it bring the harsh reality of 9/11 home to those who weren't there?
Letters Exchanged between KENZABURO OE and EDWARD W. SAID .
Letters Exchanged between KENZABURO OE and EDWARD W. SAID . Asahi Shimbum prints an interesting dialog between writers Oe and Said on the topics of cultural imperialism and the far-reaching impacts of September 11 and America's reaction.
Why Are Left-Wing Brits Like Hitchens, Amis And Rushdie Supporting President Bush?
Why Are Left-Wing Brits Like Hitchens, Amis And Rushdie Supporting President Bush? In this terrific article, The New Statesman's John Lloyd dares to pose the question. To which I would add my own: so far as the campaign against terrorism is concerned, isn't the standard Right/Left dichotomy becoming an increasingly American thang?
[Please look inside Ty Webb's "Axis of Evil" post for an interesting discussion on the Hitchens/Bush (dis)connection]
Survivors Healed, but Not Whole
Survivors Healed, but Not Whole "But hearing the story of how Patty crawled out of that room, dutifully dragging her behemoth purse (it weighed a ton, it seemed, with enough odds and ends to supply an army), and this as her colleagues were stripping off their clothes and lapping up water off the floor in a desperate struggle to escape the terrible heat and stay alive -- that was funny.
A half-year after the attack, the reconstruction of the Pentagon is racing along, with crews repairing the broken facade and ready to start roof work today, the six-month anniversary. Harder to mend are the souls of those who were there Sept. 11."
No Profiling, No Saftey?
No Profiling, No Saftey? ...to placate special interest groups that fear profiling will result in widespread racial or religious discrimination, authorities are imposing screening quotas that are unlikely to thwart a future terrorist attack. They should be doing the very opposite by creating more sophisticated profiling systems that catch real criminals.
Is it really "damned if they do, damned if they don't" or is there a better way?
sendacrush.com...the ultimate in email address collection!
GeoCities
GeoCities was once the darling of the online world to every-man wanted to post his own web site. Free space for all, and all were happy. Then Yahoo! bought it, and the dot-com collapse occurred. Now, GeoCities offers new premium packages, offering more features. But at $19.95 before you can even having scripting, traditional web hosts greatly undercut Yahoo!'s offering, and offer more in terms of features still.
Perhaps AOL isn't that bad.
Perhaps AOL isn't that bad. I've never liked AOL, but this recent article makes me want to give the company a big hug. Finally, people are stepping up to the Microsoft juggernaut and deciding to use other means to deliever content and run their own machines. AOL is trying to cut costs by migrating from UNIX and Windows to a Linux environment on the server-side. On the client side, they will apparently be pushing the use of Mozilla instead of their previous default browser, Internet Explorer. This has the potential to impact the web enormously, as AOL's 30 million subscribers will soon be using Mozilla as their browser. Web designers will have to start sticking to w3c specs instead of using MSIE-specific coding, which will hopefully force Microsoft to follow the specs more closely. Begun this browser war has. (via /.)
Hackers target Cell Phones
Hackers target Cell Phones With the connectivity of cell phones to the internet, hackers have begun to target cell phones, programming prank calls, placing calls to wherever and erasing the software in the phone.
Canada proposes $21/gig levy on portable MP3 players (PDF link)
Canada proposes $21/gig levy on portable MP3 players (PDF link) Canada's Copyright Board wants a levy on music devices with nonremovable hard drives, such as the iPod. We already have a levy on blank CDs and tapes, which will also rise. In Canada, it's legal to copy music you don't own, so these levies are used to compensate artists for lost revenue. A per-gig levy seems ill-conceived to me. The Archos Jukebox already goes up to 20 gigs ($400 tax on a $550 product!) and these devices won't be getting any smaller.
Where Is This Evil Axis Bush Speaks Of?
Where Is This Evil Axis Bush Speaks Of? By any common usage, it denotes an alliance. The relationship between Iran, Iraq and North Korea meets neither qualification.
Report from Ground Zero
Report from Ground Zero Brenda Berkman, highest-ranking female FDNY firefighter (25 women, 11,475 men): “[O]ne good thing that has come out of it is that I didn’t have to die to find out how many people care about me. It has really been overwhelming, the love and concern that has been directed to me from women and men from all over the country.” No female firefighters died in the bombing: “We have fathers and sons on that list, brothers on that list.... But no women firefighters, which was an absolute miracle because a huge percentage of us are in the companies that were hit the hardest.”
If the eight foot tall image of Bob's Big Boy
If the eight foot tall image of Bob's Big Boy doesn't scare you, maybe the thought of having lunch with David Lynch would. What would you ask him over a tasty Tuna Melt? Quicktime required for full goodness.
My world changed forever
My world changed forever 'The Observer' talks to people from all walks of life about how they feel six months later...
How engines work.
How engines work. This isn't new but it's a great resource for the mechanically minded and the mechanically challanged as well. It includes animations and step by step descriptions of how most existing engines work, from Steam Locomotive to Jet Propulsion. Simple yet informative.
Dutch siege is a protest against wide-screen TV manufacturer.
Dutch siege is a protest against wide-screen TV manufacturer. A gunman is holding hostages in a Amsterdam office.
Apparently he's demonstrating against the manufacturers of wide-screen TV's for selling "creative nonsense".
Who reckons he's just pissed cos he can't afford one?
Police offers will soon have to disclose why they have stopped someone
Police offers will soon have to disclose why they have stopped someone - I thought this sounded like a reasonably good idea... especially since on more than one occasion I've been pulled over just so they can "check my car over"... until I read this: "Forces will be told to set up panels of community representatives to scrutinise stop and search records and check that ethnic minorities are not being targeted disproportionately.". Can anyone else see where this is going? "Oh, I'm afraid we can't arrest Mr. X, because we've arrested too many [insert random racial group here] this month".
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister and one of the most powerful European media moguls is forced off Milan by the caustic songs of a street singer.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister and one of the most powerful European media moguls is forced off Milan by the caustic songs of a street singer. If it were true he'd be out of Italy pretty soon, I suspect ...
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