June 1, 2010
It's a Go-Go with the Blago
It's a Go-Go with the Blago. Thursday, June 3rd, Rod Blagojevich gets his day(s) in court. [more inside]
"You people should spend less time in front of a bloody screen and more time ... reading real things."
Nomen Ludi. Rob Beschizza, gadget blogger for Boing Boing and previously for Wired, writes about his quest for the completion of an eight-bit game that no one else remembers, and the lost programmer who wrote it.
Shimizu's Dream
Shimizu's Dream: the Shimizu Corporation presents a set of "proposals for the benefit of up-coming generations." [via Pink Tentacle]
Another one bites the dust
Yukio Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan, will resign. Also stepping down is Ichiro Ozawa. After a series of misscues, calls for Hatoyama's resignation started popping up. Among the issues dogging Hatoyama were questions about a sizeable amount of money he received from his mother (possibly disguised as campaign contributions to keep him from looking like a weak candidate who couldn't raise funds), reneging on a promise to move the US Marine bases out of Okinawa, and this shirt. [more inside]
I didn't even know they were Catholic...
Take a stand for permanent paper in books
Take a stand for permanent paper. "Eight years ago we started to notice the shift in buying patterns from free-sheet Permanent Paper to groundwood paper for hardcover books. Groundwood is the type of paper used in newspapers and mass market paperbacks, and its production is such that it is much lower-quality and degrades more quickly than traditional book publishing paper." What makes a book permanent? [more inside]
"My Father's Library"
"A Minute With Venus... A Year With Mercury!"
"During World War I, the [US] Army lost 7 million person-days and discharged more than 10,000 men because they were ailing from STDs. Once Penicillin kicked in in the mid-1940s, such infections were treatable. But as a matter of national security, the military started distributing condoms and aggressively marketing prophylactics to the troops in the early 20th century." [more inside]
Hypnoprism
Videosongs from the wonderful, but as yet unreleased Momus album, tentatively entitled Hypnoprism: Death Ruins Everything :: Beowulf :: Deliverance :: Adoration :: Strawberry Hill :: Building Songs :: Mr. Consistency :: The Orderly :: Bubble Music :: Evil Genius :: Monday :: The Charm Song :: Datapanik :: Bonus points for identifying the videosamples.
299,792,458 meters per second
Lightspeed, a new online Science Fiction magazine featuring fiction and nonfiction, launches today.
To remain silent, simply speak
In a 5-4 decision in the case of Berghuis v. Thompkins, the Supreme Court has ruled that suspects must explicitly assert their right to remain silent under the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision. [more inside]
How to Save the News
How to Save the News. "Everyone knows that Google is killing the news business. Few people know how hard Google is trying to bring it back to life, or why the company now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects."
baroque humor in porcelain
Kate MacDowell creates the most stunning sculptures with porcelain, discovering that the “romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment." [more inside]
Al Gore, bachelor
"We are announcing today that after a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate." Former Vice President of the US Al and Second Lady Tipper Gore separating after 40 years, announced via a mass email.
You will never again in your life see something this epic, so you may as well pluck your eyes out with a spork right now.
Wil Wheaton/John Scalzi Fan Fiction Contest to Benefit the Lupus Alliance of America. Metafilter's own jscalzi and Wil Wheaton want you to explain what's going on in this awesome picture. [more inside]
The Smoking Toddler
Video of a smoking toddler circulated on the Internet last week, turning him into a local celebrity. The Sun (UK) made some rather excited exclamations about the video. Salon asks Who's to Blame? [more inside]
Meet the Last Generation of Typewriter Repairmen
Wired.com takes a look back at these charming machines and visits three Bay Area workshops whose proprietors keep hearse-colored Remingtons and Underwoods from disappearing into the grave. (Typewriters previously)
like angels on high
As undeniably great as the golden age Motown studio musicians were, and as indisputably funky and creative as the arrangements were, you still have to think that maybe it would've been a good idea to release some of The Temptations amazing vocal group artistry in unaccompanied form. Maybe as B-sides or something. Well, that never happened back in the day, as far as I know, but we are extremely fortunate now to be able to hear a capella versions of many of the Tempts biggest hits, in stunningly impressive and thoroughly enjoyable unaccompanied renditions: Runaway Child Running Wild, Just My Imagination, Papa Was a Rolling Stone, Ball of Confusion, Get Ready and Cloud Nine . And folks, there's more a capella from the Tempts and other Motown acts floating around on the Tubes out there, so feel free to link to them in the thread, cause, you know, I Ain't Too Proud To Beg.
Is there life before Mars?
Six would-be astronauts will this week begin a 520-day mock space voyage to simulate a mission to Mars. How will they cope with the huge psychological pressures? It's a project that may simulate a mission that's going nowhere.
Chasing Light, a photography blog
Between the art nudes and fashion shots, Doug Kim's Chasing Light photography blog (front page mildly NSFW, archives more-so) is fast becoming a secret museum of photography with examples and insightful quotes from great photographers. One need go back only as far as December for posts on Dennis Hopper's photography, Cartier-Bresson, Mary Ellen Mark's on set photography, Annie Liebovitz on Hunter S. Thompson, Jousef Koudelka on The Soviet invasion of Prague, Robert Frank's visit to London and Wales, and Akira Kurosawa's group compositions in Seven Samurai.
n degrees of Wikipedia
Link Martin Lawrence to Pope Benedict XVI or Diplomacy to the Antichrist using only wiki links with The Wikipedia Game.
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