December 7, 2008

Almost Homeless

Ex-Director of Operations of Sababa Toys Paul Nawrocki lost his job after the parent company filed for bankruptcy. Posting, faxing, and emailing thousand of copies of his resumes (including through LinkedIn) did not get him anywhere, so he's resorted to standing at a Manhattan street corner wearing a sandwich board saying "Almost Homeless". Business blogger Barry Ritholtz blogged about Nawrocki, which led to a Businessweek interview describing his difficulty affording his wife's medical needs or even the cost of relocation. He's been noticed by an executive recruiting firm, and a job-hunting website was made in his honour. Will his Depression-era tactic bring him luck in this recession? (Via MetaChat)
posted by divabat at 11:57 PM PST - 59 comments

Some Jewish Humor

Sadie tells Maurice, "You’re a schmuck! You always were a schmuck and you always will be a schmuck! You look, act and dress like a schmuck! You’ll be a schmuck until the day you die! And if they ran a world-wide competition for schmucks, you would be the world’s second biggest schmuck!" "Why only second place?" Maurice asks. "Because you’re a schmuck!" Sadie screams. Some Jewish humor.
posted by serazin at 11:14 PM PST - 27 comments

Namaste! Welcome to my kitchen!

Never had an Indian mom? You poor, deprived wretch! Meet Manjula.
She'll be happy to teach you to make Naan, Rotis, Pani Puri, Vegetable Pakoras, Paneer, Raita, Navattran Korma, Palak Paneer, Pulav, Malai Kofta, Aloo Gobi, Chana Masala, Hari Chutney, Ras Malai, Gajar ka Halwa and much more! I can... almost... smell her kitchen. *sigh*
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:18 PM PST - 50 comments

Causing false public alarm

As those of you on the wrong email lists can probably guess, Snopes is overflowing with gang initiation rumors. What you may not know is that the New Jersey police recently arrested someone spreading those stories for "causing false public alarm." [more inside]
posted by tkolar at 9:53 PM PST - 23 comments

Lost Memory Exhibition

The 40 Greatest Lost Icons In Pop Culture History
posted by telstar at 8:18 PM PST - 56 comments

Deep Geek: Understanding Memristors

The coming memristor revolution in electronics and how it works. The newly created memristor, only the fourth fundamental fundamental type of passive circuit element, has the promise of computing advances both prosaic (faster, cheaper and "bigger" flash drives) and momentous (relatively effortless mimicry of brain cells and their activity). This is the story of the memristor's genesis, told by R. Stanley Williams, the leader of the team that created the device. [more inside]
posted by NortonDC at 7:54 PM PST - 43 comments

Kop Busters.

The Odessa narcotics unit was tricked (stand alone video) by Barry Cooper and his show (currently over bandwidth), into raiding a house they thought had a grow-op. Was the probable cause based solely on their use of thermal imaging equipment? Canadian courts have already visited this invasion of privacy issue. [more inside]
posted by gman at 7:21 PM PST - 46 comments

The Isleños

The Isleños are said to be a dying traditional American subculture. Descendants of Canary Island immigrants of Louisiana, the name Isleños was given to them to distinguish them from Spanish mainlanders, known as "peninsulares." But in Louisiana, the name evolved from a category to an identity. For a long time they were one of those rare subcultures that found a way to maintain a living tradition as the world around them modernised by carving out a livelihood as crabbers and 'shrimpers'. Then Katrina hit and the wetlands, which were central to the Isleños identity, essentially dissapeared. Despite the blow to their economy, they still have their songs and annual fiestas, evidence of a strong culture which binds their community together, and their rebuilding following Katrina demonstrated how strong that sense of identity and culture can be. So perhaps the Isleños shouldn't be written off just yet, then. After all, as Isleño Irvan Perez says, "This is home. Where else would we go?"
posted by Effigy2000 at 7:12 PM PST - 7 comments

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Simply Scripts is a repository of screenplays. Sort of a collection of links to scripts hosted on other sites (like official studio or screenwriter sites). There's some neat stuff there. For instance, I found a Coen brothers script (pdf), based on a James Dickey novel, I'd never heard of before.
posted by Manhasset at 6:23 PM PST - 14 comments

It's a ninja. With a tuba.

A collection of weird and whimsical pop culture t-shirt designs.
posted by desjardins at 5:48 PM PST - 33 comments

WONDERGLEN!

Enter the wonderful world of Wonderglen Productions
posted by Navelgazer at 5:32 PM PST - 8 comments

Everything you ever wanted to know about the NY Times crossword puzzle

XWord Info soberly describes itself as containing "data about NYT puzzles dating back to November, 1993, covering the entire time that Will Shortz has been Puzzle Editor," understating the cornucopia of geeky goodness within. See any crossword over that time. Look up every appearance of a word with every clue ever used for it. See the most frequently used 500 words, and the most popular by length. [more inside]
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:03 PM PST - 42 comments

Beat that, Algernon!

"The world's longest and hardest mouse agility course," brought to you by these guys. Don't forget to browse the gallery of cute mouse and rat pictures.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 3:12 PM PST - 23 comments

Let's go crazy, Bollywood style!

Daler Mehndi: (previously ) Sikh superstar and former cab driver, sure can dance. There are of course, imitators (Original ).
posted by The Whelk at 2:05 PM PST - 23 comments

Begging Your Pardon

Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) introduced a bill that would reform the presidential pardon process. Specifically, that the current president be stripped of his power to pardon members of his own administration, and that "the next Attorney General of the United States appoint an independent counsel to investigate, and, where appropriate, prosecute illegal acts by senior officials of the administration of President George W. Bush."
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:58 PM PST - 39 comments

"That's just like a showoff from Tennessee..."

"Looking For a City..." Johnny Cook and Vestal Goodman have a competition to see who can sing the highest. [SLYT]
posted by hermitosis at 1:30 PM PST - 15 comments

Bundesarchiv

Starting on Thursday Dec 4, 2008, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive upload of new images. We are anticipating about 100,000 files from a donation from the German Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to the history of Germany (including the German Democratic Republic) and are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive...
posted by jim in austin at 1:17 PM PST - 16 comments

Toys have lives too

The private life of your favorite toys.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:00 PM PST - 10 comments

Sweet, delicious free music

Grindertool.com, the homepage of John Bergin's various art, film and other works, has been updated - including 256kbps full album downloads of most everything he's worked on in the last 15 years, for free. [more inside]
posted by FatherDagon at 10:15 AM PST - 7 comments

Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons.

Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons by Jenn Ackerman. [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 10:06 AM PST - 17 comments

Is this 18.5 minutes of tape anything important?

It's been a busy week for presidential libraries. The Nixon Library released 200 hours of tape (excerpts) and 90,000 pages of documents (excerpts) that detail his obsessive attempts to destroy his political enemies. The LBJ library released MP3s of dozens of phone calls, including one where he accuses Nixon of treason for stalling Vietnamese peace talks in advance of the 1968 election. Finally, the Reagan Library released 750,000 pages of documents (NYT, reg. req.) to researchers. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:01 AM PST - 20 comments

Find One in Every Car

One of the greatest cult films of the Eighties is getting a (film) sequel.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:35 AM PST - 92 comments

How they shot The Godfather

A really interesting commentary from Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, about how he came to write the book and how that book became one of the most iconic films in history. The post includes previously unseen (and illuminating) photos of the cast and the making of the film.
posted by theantikitty at 9:02 AM PST - 24 comments

College Students Are Feeling the Squeeze

The economic mess is squeezing everyone but many college students are really feeling it. Syracuse University has made an emergency appeal for aid for 400 current students who may not be able to return for the spring semester without an infusion of cash; Harvard University lost an incredible 22 percent of its very fat endowment but is trying to raise money through a $600 million bond issue. [more inside]
posted by etaoin at 8:16 AM PST - 39 comments

Poverty & Brain Development

"We know kids growing up in resource-poor environments have more trouble with the kinds of behavioral control that the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulating," Boyce said. "But the fact that we see functional differences in prefrontal cortex response in lower socioeconomic status kids is definitive."
posted by theroadahead at 6:33 AM PST - 76 comments

Meet you at the Circl-Serv!

"The plans for Victory City have evolved over a period of 38 years, nurtured by the vision and dedication of Victory City's inventor, Orville Simpson II [no relation]. Mr. Simpson conceived of the general idea of Victory City in 1936, when he was only 13 years old. Afraid of being ridiculed, Mr. Simpson kept his ideas about designing and building the City of the Future to himself … a secret vision he held in his mind... It wasn't until 1960 — after he had embarked on a lucrative career in real estate investing and apartment building management — that Mr. Simpson decided to make his ideas about Victory City known to the general public."
posted by Miko at 6:26 AM PST - 35 comments

I wear a rubber at all times; it's a necessity.

Jizz in my Pants is the newest (nsfpants) SNL Digital Short from The Lonely Island, featuring Justin Timberlake (ads, sorry) and Jamie Lynn Sigler. The Lonely Island first earned attention for things like Nintendo Cartoon Hour and Bing Bong Brothers, and have gained notoriety for things like Lazy Sunday and Dick in a Box. [more inside]
posted by hypersloth at 6:12 AM PST - 65 comments

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