January 12, 2012

Bigger than Cheney?

CSPAN callers have a question, why will no one answer? [TouTube, perhaps NSFW]
posted by LarryC at 10:41 PM PST - 38 comments

Gay USA 2011 Roundup

If it's not too late for one more 2011 roundup, Gay USA featured a full hour of examining the events of 2011. Along with regular hosts Andy Humm and Ann Northrup, lesbian and AIDS activist Sarah Schulman, transgender activist Pauline Park, and gay and civil liberties activist Bill Dobbs discuss a variety of topics from DADT to Occupy Wall Street. Video runs about one hour. Sorry, no transcript available.
posted by hippybear at 10:09 PM PST - 13 comments

My Big Fat Environment

As discussion rages over what to do about rising obesity rates, scientists study environmental toxins called obesogens. Last night, Canadian program The Nature of Things aired Programmed to Be Fat? The documentary admits the fatty pitfalls of Western living, but asks that if this is the only factor, why has infant obesity risen 73% in the past 20 years? Babies aren't terrific Big Mac consumers. [more inside]
posted by mobunited at 9:15 PM PST - 106 comments

1982 Night of 100 Stars Fashion Show

1982 Night of 100 Stars Fashion Show
posted by Trurl at 7:01 PM PST - 42 comments

It's ...

Bookstore Waterstone's changes its name to ... Waterstones.
posted by anothermug at 6:10 PM PST - 82 comments

NESplosion!

Abobo's Big Adventure : apparently the Nintendo Entertainment System DOES blend.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:17 PM PST - 18 comments

DEY TUK UR JORBS!

When Mitt Romney Came to Town (subtitle: The King of Bain) a 30 minute attack documentary whose "overriding sensibility is not Swift Boat — it's Frontline, replete with a calming voice of God narration and meticulous sourcing to SEC filings, court documents, and the Boston Globe" (Rolling Stone) provides an interesting moment in the future of political messaging and funding. [more inside]
posted by stratastar at 5:16 PM PST - 199 comments

No more briar pipes

Néo Fénéon: "Three thousand seven hundred dollars richer after stealing from the job, Marvin Williams, 25, of Brooklyn, went to urinate in a playground." - Items from the NYPD blotter remixed daily in the style of Félix Fénéon. (previously)
posted by mrgrimm at 5:07 PM PST - 10 comments

Scrollsy

Scrollsy makes Etsy even more fun to explore.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:31 PM PST - 8 comments

Kix are for trids.

Arguably, less-than-ideal rhino iguana chow. [YouTube] The lagomorphs in the all-Trix arm of our study succumbed to progressive tail mange in <20 days.
posted by 0rison at 4:19 PM PST - 10 comments

Pakistan's Next Great Hope?

Is Pakistan’s cricket star-turned-politician for real? What does Pakistan see in Imran Khan? Will there be a Pakistani Spring?
posted by vidur at 3:18 PM PST - 7 comments

"How could they use such offensive language in such a casual manner?"

"What I'm getting at here is that slut shaming is wrong at any age" - A thirteen year-old girl provides an articulate and thoughtful argument against slut-shaming.
posted by quin at 2:46 PM PST - 126 comments

"What kind of bird are you?"

The trailer for Wes Anderson's new movie, Moonrise Kingdom, is out, and boy is it Wes Anderson-y.
posted by Clustercuss at 2:43 PM PST - 111 comments

Drown In a Lake of Diet Coke, I Got Cash

I Got Cash SLYT, NSFW lyrics
posted by jivadravya at 1:51 PM PST - 19 comments

Guantanamo: An Oral History

Guantanamo: An Oral History
posted by reenum at 1:26 PM PST - 8 comments

Júzcar, the Smurfy blue Spanish town

Júzcar is a little Spanish village that voted to stay blue, but their buildings weren't always that hue. In fact, if you view the Google maps, you'll see the traditional whitewashed walls, as you'd expect for one of the (former) White Towns of Andalusia. It happened in advance of Global Smurfs Day, to celebrate the birthday of Peyo (25 June 1928 – 24 December 1992), the Belgian creator of the Smurfs comics. The town was chosen by Sony as the site for the international debut of its new Smurfs movie, who offered to pay for the town to become temporarily blue. The citizens unanimously voted to accept the offer. In September, the 221 residents voted to keep the town blue, as the media coverage was huge, and tourism was boosted from 300 summer tourists to thousands. More photos. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:47 PM PST - 21 comments

Electron cloud computing...

"Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible." [NYT]
posted by BobbyVan at 12:35 PM PST - 27 comments

"I cannot even decide whether [my face] is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so."

Why are smart people usually ugly? (SLSlate) [more inside]
posted by asnider at 12:21 PM PST - 106 comments

The devil got to him.

A year after Jared Loughner's shooting of 20 people, including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, The Exiled Online has published transcripts of an interview with some of his closest friends. Their story was recorded the week of the shootings and describes the enviornment that nurtured Loughner's mania.

This piece is a part of a category of eXiled reporting based on Mark Ames's Going Postal premise: Reaganomics begat a new era of desparation, and people with mental instabilities have been the first to attempt thier own abortive rebellions. The idea was explored by a 2009 BBC documentary of the same name.
posted by clarknova at 11:44 AM PST - 34 comments

Skipping the middleman

If you believe the US government is too heavily influenced by corporations, perhaps apps like No More SOPA are the future of "voting". Will technology enable us to directly push back on corporations influencing government policy?
posted by sarah_pdx at 11:35 AM PST - 28 comments

"It can't rain all the time."

Crow + Roof + Tubing = Awesome. [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 11:15 AM PST - 64 comments

The rest of the blogs

"Half a century after Little Rock, the Montgomery bus boycott and the tumultuous dawn of the modern civil rights era, the new face of the movement is Facebook, MySpace and some 150 black blogs united in an Internet alliance they call the AfroSpear. Older, familiar leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, are under challenge by a younger generation of bloggers known by such provocative screen names as Field Negro, thefreeslave and African American Political Pundit (new). And many of the newest struggles are being waged online." ~Howard Witt-The Chicago Tribune (text via fieldnegro)
posted by infini at 11:00 AM PST - 6 comments

Whoops.

A "mystery man" was caught at a polling site for the New Hampshire primary attempting to use a dead man's name to vote. That man turned out to be James O'Keefe, who may have also broken federal law (and potentially violated his probation for previous wiretapping shenanigans) by crossing state lines to tamper with another state's election by filming poll workers and attempting to commit election fraud.
posted by backseatpilot at 10:41 AM PST - 154 comments

The Battle Of Maldon

The Battle Of Maldon is an Old English poem (here in the original Old English, here in a modern translation) retelling the events of a battle that took place in England in 991, in which a small army of Saxons attempted to halt an invading Viking force only to suffer a crushing defeat. This battle, and the disastrous rout suffered by the Saxons, led to the introduction of the Danegeld, the payment of silver in tribute to the Vikings to buy off their invading forces. [more inside]
posted by dng at 10:29 AM PST - 25 comments

Thirteen bottles of whisky started the after-dinner drinking, but soon proved an inelegant insufficiency.

Chicago's Anti-Superstition Society throws a Friday the 13th Party, 1940.
posted by griphus at 10:29 AM PST - 31 comments

The Tome of Awesome

If you enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasy RPGs, or if you just like reading in-depth analysis of fictional worlds, then the Tome of Awesome [pdf] is for you. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 10:08 AM PST - 50 comments

The State Of The Situation.

Two months after being kicked out by the NYPD in an early morning raid, the Occupy Wall Street protestors have returned to Zucotti/Liberty Plaza to meet new regulations that make protesting all but impossible. Meanwhile, OWS is looking for an accountant and NYC councilman Ydanis Rodriguez wants to donate his 5k stipend to the protestors. Yasha Levine of The Exiled writes about his arrangement hearing after being arrested during the Occupy LA raid and Political Cartoonist and Essayist Tim Kreider releases four essays he wrote during the first occupation of Zucotti/Liberty Plaza, "What OWS Wants" "Capitalism, A Bummer" "An Open Letter To The Tea Party." and "OWS: The Morning After." [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:08 AM PST - 148 comments

Duh.

The New York Times Public Editor asks "Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" As of this writing, 98% of registered commenters are saying (often in all-caps) "Yes".
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:05 AM PST - 169 comments

Sometimes state quarters forgot to Put a Bird On It.

Sometimes state quarters know you only invited them because you thought they were San Francisco. (Previously.)
posted by NickDouglas at 8:54 AM PST - 37 comments

Skyrim 2012

Skyrim 2012. A thousand years after the Dragonborn's adventures, Skyrim endures. (SLYT)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:18 AM PST - 44 comments

OWS: Phase II

Class Conflict Awareness Rose Significantly From 2009 To 2011 A new Pew Research Center survey reports that "the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness".
posted by Benny Andajetz at 6:45 AM PST - 87 comments

Adventures with an Extreme Polyglot

“Most of the languages I’ve studied I’ve never spoken, and I probably never will,” he told me. “And that’s okay with me. That’s nice if you can do that, but it’s rare that you have an interesting conversation in English. Why do I think it would be any better in another language?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:14 AM PST - 71 comments

Licence fee, not license fee

In the UK, people pay a yearly licence fee to watch live television, with revenues funding the BBC. TV Licensing is the group that collects fees, and they use a number of methods — some real, some imaginary, some in between — to gain compliance. But one Briton remains determined not to play that game.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:56 AM PST - 175 comments

Don't Spend It, Honey

Toronto Musician Corin Raymond wants to pay for his next recording using Canadian Tire Money.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 3:37 AM PST - 36 comments

Say Good Bye to the round pizza; and switch to the good vibes..

Pizza Boomerang (SLYT) (NSFW)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:29 AM PST - 33 comments

Catch 167: Harper government pulls rug out from under non-Canadian gay couples who married here in good faith

Ottawa does about face on same-sex marriage for non-Canadians. The Harper government has served notice that thousands of same-sex couples who flocked to Canada from abroad since 2004 to get married are not legally wed. The reversal of federal policy is revealed in a document filed in a Toronto test case launched recently by a lesbian couple seeking a divorce.... The government’s hard line has cast sudden doubt on the rights and legal status of couples who wed in Canada after a series of court decisions opened the floodgates to same-sex marriage. The mechanics of determining issues such as tax status, employment benefits and immigration have been thrown into legal limbo. [The lesbian couple's] divorce application will be considered next month by an Ontario Superior Court judge. They are asking the judge to either craft an exemption allowing them to divorce or to strike down any legislative provision that has the effect of preventing them from doing so. [more inside]
posted by maudlin at 2:52 AM PST - 116 comments

Thrive

The heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune has dropped a load of cash on a movie: Thrive: What on Earth will it take? The premise: We are killing the world because an invisible elite is withholding the secret of free energy, to prevent us from thriving. Transition Culture thinks it's dangerous tosh. Huffington Post thinks it's a reactionary, libertarian agenda that stands in jarring contrast with the soothing tone of the presentation. An Archdruid thinks it's what a narrative of progress must produce when the narrative no longer describes observable reality. But it's bound to be popular with the Consumer class. (Warning: evidence of toroidal energy devices that some viewers may find disconcerting).
posted by falcon at 2:06 AM PST - 81 comments

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