December 19, 2002

An Exercise in Identity

An Exercise in Identity A group of writers seeks to collaborate under a single pseudonym, not for fear of scorn or ridicule, but presumably because they think it makes for better business. Do readers have a right to know who a work's author really is, or can identity just be another aspect of the fictional work? (via Kuro5hin queue)
posted by Erasmus at 7:45 PM PST - 27 comments

Professor Longhair

"Picasso of keyboard funk" - Professor Longhair would be 84 today if he were still alive. His distinctive meld of boogie woogie, blues, funk and Latin makes for piano that is quintessentially New Orleans...Tipitinas, one of the more famous local music bars, took its name from his signature song. "Fess" was a seminal influence on such musical greats as James Booker, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Art Neville, Doctor John and Marcia Ball, one of my current favorites. You can hear a few Fess samples from Crawfish Fiesta, arguably his best recording, issued just after he died in 1980. He was inducted in the R&R Hall of Fame as an early influencer in 1993. Happy birthday, Professor!
posted by madamjujujive at 7:24 PM PST - 17 comments

Soccer Penalty Shoot-Outs Can Trigger Heart Attacks

Soccer Penalty Shoot-Outs Cause Heart Attacks English reasearchers have determined heart attacks increased shortly after an England/Argentina match that ended in a penalty shoot out. They conclude that in the interest of public health, penalty shots should be abandoned. Are they seriously saying this with a straight face? And what on earth prompted such a study?
posted by davebush at 5:31 PM PST - 20 comments

F-22 Raptor

The F-22 Raptor is the next generation fighter for the United States. At nearly 97 million each, it will be deployed in 2004.This site gives a remarkably detailed report regarding its design and function. Including such gems as "first-look, first-shot, first-kill capability" and " Humans are good differentiators, but they are poor integrators."
posted by JohnR at 5:19 PM PST - 53 comments

Flash mouse-controlled face

Come up and see me, make me smile. [Flash mouse-over from Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 4:19 PM PST - 9 comments

Cubs sue rooftop owners

With negotiations breaking down, the Chicago Cubs have decided to sue "rooftop clubs" that sell tickets to watch games on rooftops surrounding Wrigley Field. Apparently the tickets cost between $70-$130. The Cubs are claiming unjust enrichment and public performance of a copyrighted work, due to the "clubs" showing the games to patrons via television. (via the Trademark Blog)
posted by anathema at 3:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Hairless animals

The Naked Mole-Rat is naturally naked. Conversely, these others are naked for reasons of disease (like this bear with alopecia and hairless chimpanzee) or mutation (the Sphynx cat; the Mexican hairless dog; the Chinese Crested Dog; the Naked Chicken; the Hairless Rat; a hairless ferret; the Nude Mouse; and the Hairless Hamster). What is the attraction of encouraging mutations that make normally furry animals furless?
posted by raygirvan at 1:54 PM PST - 36 comments

Polyhedra Polymath

Prof. George W. Hart, of the Computer Science Department at SUNY Stony Brook, has an enviable web presence. His Encyclopedia of Polyhedra alone is worth the visit, his geometric sculptures make the nerd in me weep at their beauty, and his trilobite recipe looks mighty yummy.
posted by ewagoner at 12:48 PM PST - 12 comments

Blogging about your job.

The job, the blog, and you. Interesting Washington Post article I ran across today that discusses the pitfalls about blogging about your job. Makes some good points, especially how the blogging community needs to take account of things such as non-disclosure clauses in employment contracts.
posted by PeteyStock at 10:19 AM PST - 16 comments

Senator Says State Sponsor of Sept 11th

On PBS last week, Senator Bob Graham said that there is "evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States," but that "It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. And, we need to have this information now because it's relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today." Do you trust the government to keep the right informatin classified, or do we need to know?
posted by cell divide at 10:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Sticky Prestige

Photos and more photos from the Nautile’s firsts dives to the Prestige wreck, a single-hulled tanker that broke in two while it was towed to open sea after the discovery of a breach in its hull.

It has been an ecologic and economic disaster for Galicia, Spanish’ northwest coastal region famous for its seafood. But it also has been a political scandal for the PP (Partido Popular), in the government both in Galicia’s autonomic parliament and in the central government, because of its late response and efforts to hide the catastrophe manipulating the public broadcast system (and the friendly private networks). Too little, too late, Jose Maria Aznar.

While politicians throw shit to each other, a quarter of the 20.5 million gallons of fuel oil already spilled are now spreading through the coastline covering everything with what locals call “chapapote”, a sticky mix of sea water, fuel oil and sand. The Prestige sits now at 3.500 meters of depth, slowly leaking fuel oil to the surface. The Nautile, one of the few mini submarine that has been used to record and take pictures from the Titanic wreck, it’s being hired by the Spanish government to asses the situation (Spanish language link) and try to stop the leakage.

Popular action in the form of a white tide of volunteers has been phenomenal, forcing the government to act and assume responsibilities. But the issue at hand is much larger: will the European Union effectively ban single-hulled tankers? Why the rules that govern the seas permit flag of convenience ships that can elude so easily its responsibility?

See more images (slideshow).
posted by samelborp at 9:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Do the Terrorists Care about Teenage Smoking?

Information deemed useful to terrorists is disappearing from government Web sites. I know this is old news, but this article details some of the specifics of whas has been happening. "The previous presumption, that publicly-funded information is the rightful property of the public until proven otherwise, has been replaced by the presumption that the public has to prove to a suspicious government that it deserves the information." I understand that as a nation we are hypersensitive now to terrorism, but isn't this just what the terrorists want? The loss of our freedoms to information?
posted by archimago at 9:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Auto death ray

Zap those road burners!! Following up yesterday's banal car-talk thread, the Guardian reports that Dubya's Son of Star Wars is already taking out, inadvertantly , its first targets. In this instance hapless BMWs and Jeeps. Excellent I say- go for anything over two tons, 4WD, and moving on on a public thoroughfare.
posted by marvin at 9:48 AM PST - 12 comments

Isidore-of-Seville.com

Alexander. Hieroglyphs. The Vinland Map. D-Day. Rob Roy. And much more. At Isidore-of-Seville.com, Timothy Spalding has quietly assembled an unusually rich, assiduously maintained collection of web guides and resources on selected historical subjects.
posted by staggernation at 9:17 AM PST - 7 comments

bp's environmental makeover

Beyond petroleum? British Petroleum’s recent $200-million makeover into sunny-logoed bp seems to respond to mounting concerns over pollution, global warming, and wars for oil. By advocating alternatives to the very product that has made it the world’s seventh-largest company, it also seems like economic suicide. In accordance with their environmental goals, they've helped release bald eagles in Manhattan and bring solar power to rural Tibet, but many remain unconvinced. Each bp ad ended with the same tagline: “It’s a start.” Is it?
posted by gottabefunky at 9:13 AM PST - 31 comments

Snoop

Shizzolate dat sh*t, homey! Snoop can help funkify and shizzolate yo' site, B. That's his word, dogg. (This is amusing for a solid 40 seconds...)
posted by adamms222 at 8:53 AM PST - 7 comments

United States Should Lead, Not Dominate

The United States should lead, not dominate. A piece by former U.S. President Bill Clinton. "From the dawn of human society up to the present time, we have been bedeviled by a persistent curse: the compulsion people feel to define the meaning of their lives in positive terms with reference to those who are like them racially, tribally, culturally, religiously, politically, and by negative reference to those who are different"
posted by four panels at 8:22 AM PST - 36 comments

Familiar layout?

Familiar layout? Most of you know Noah Grey, and most of you will also know how much he values his intellectual property. This makes it even sadder when someone goes through the effort of bypassing Noah's 'please don't steal'-script, rips off his design, and even puts his own copyright information in Noah's disclaimer.
Besides the fact that this is morally wrong, is there anything that someone can actually do about this sort of thing? Suing is probably not the best option as that would be very costly and time-consuming, since the owner of this particular design lives in the US, and the 'thief' lives in Europe
posted by Mijnkopthee at 8:02 AM PST - 72 comments

Meet Senator Burns

Meet Senator Burns (R-Montana) "...The senator said the rancher asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?"...Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was"a hell of a challenge."...The anecdote was published and Senator Burns apologized...in 1991, immediately after a civil rights bill had been passed, Senator Burns invited a group of lobbyists, some of them white and some of them black, to accompany him to an auction....When asked what was being auctioned, he replied, "Slaves."
posted by troutfishing at 7:46 AM PST - 42 comments

Euro Diffusion

Euro diffusion: "On January 2002 twelve European countries [plus San Marino, the Vatican and Monaco] have welcomed the euro as their new coin. The euro coins have a national side, which is different for every country... So there are fifteen different euro coins that can be used in every one of those 15 countries. Therefore, unlike in the past, the coins will not be collected and brought back to their home country. The coins will slowly but surely be spreaded over the 15 countries. This is the diffusion of the euro, the euro diffusion[.pdf file]." A statistician's playground, this unique historical opportunity, is leading to interesting collaborative internet projects
posted by talos at 7:21 AM PST - 17 comments

The richest 1 percent

Are the Republicans the party of the wealthy? According to http://www.opensecrets.org that may not be the case.
posted by ZupanGOD at 6:39 AM PST - 42 comments

Mass arrests of Muslims in LA

Mass arrests of Muslims in LA. The BBC is reporting US immigration officials in Southern California have detained hundreds of Iranians and other Muslim men who turned up to register under residence laws brought in as part of the anti-terror drive.

CNN, FOX News, and the like have extensive coverage.....sort of.
posted by CrazyJub at 6:13 AM PST - 64 comments

Korea DMZ

korea-dmz.com is a site devoted to not only the history of the DMZ, but also some unexpected treats.
posted by hama7 at 3:34 AM PST - 20 comments

Basic Hip Digital Oddio

Basic Hip Digital Oddio - About ten really good Metafilter posts in one place. Way too much good stuff here. I'm going to list a few things that I really enjoyed, feel free to discuss anything else on the site too.

Tony Schwartz: Documented life in NY from a personal wire recorder. Listen to this endearing 20 min winamp stream of his adoption of a dog. For the International Typographic Association, he attempted to produce what type and lettering might sound like.

Brother Bones: Listen to this legend 'play them bones' on the definitive Sweet Georgia Brown (aka: Harlem Globetrotters Theme).

Gerald McBoingBoing: Dr.Seuss tale as told by The Great Gildersleeve.

Kenyon Hopkins: Incredible unsung composer, check out Esquire's Sound Tour series.
posted by Stan Chin at 12:49 AM PST - 19 comments

BBC 7: New Comedy Radio Channel

Britannia BBC Rules The Radio Waves and no other broadcaster in the world comes close. Radio 4, The World Service and Radio 3 are simply the best radio stations for news, commentary and classical music there are. Now, their sparkling new channel, BBC7, is full of comedy and drama greatness. The League of Gentleman, Rory Bremner, Stephen Fry, Griff Rhys-Jones... nobody does comedy or radio like the British and when the two come together, it's bliss. Bless 'em! [Specially for us non-license-paying foreigners listening in on the Internet... Real Audio required, nonetheless.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:20 AM PST - 32 comments

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