February 11, 2003

follow the oolong-proof fence

Rabbit Proof Fence is a movie about Australia's "stolen generation," the 100,000 Aboriginal and "half-caste" children kidnapped between 1910 and 1970 and raised in institutions, as part of a policy to "breed out" their Aboriginal blood and integrate them into white society. The movie is the true story of three girls who ran away and walked 1500 miles back home. Molly, the oldest one, walked it again years later when they captured her and her children. Here's a teacher's guide (pdf) based on the gov't report about the stolen generation. (book by Molly's daughter Doris Pilkington, movie soundtrack by Peter Gabriel. It's getting a lot of press despite its low profile -- go support your local indie theater)
posted by fotzepolitic at 11:20 PM PST - 13 comments

Feds Anticipated (Different) OKC Attack?

Did the Feds bungle intelligence on the 1995 OKC Bombing? FBI officials feared that white separatists might lash out on April 19, 1995 -- the day McVeigh chose. They were so concerned that a month earlier they questioned a reformed white supremacist familiar with an earlier plot to bomb the Murrah federal building, the one McVeigh selected. Does this affect earlier theories on OKC? Does it make the current advisories more significant?
posted by subgenius at 10:00 PM PST - 6 comments

My Name is Blanket

Selections from My Name is Blanket, © 2046 Blanket Jackson

"It was Geller who worked with my father to arrange for the design of the device which became known as the “Soul Harvester,” and who arranged for the shipments of orphans."

An excerpt from Michael Jackson's son's future autobiography.
posted by GriffX at 9:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Village Voice's 2002 Pazz & Jop Poll

Pazz & Jop 2002 - The Village Voice has tabulated the top albums and singles from 695 critics (and 10,2002 LPs). Some of the ballot-fillers even got a little personal. The usual essays are included. If your fav CD didn't make the cut, perhaps it made it onto the dean's list.
posted by boost ventilator at 7:53 PM PST - 28 comments

Could this be true?

Could this be true? I've done all I know to do to see if it's a bogus claim, and I may be really naive, but... it is interesting. I'm curious to see if any of my fellow MeFi-ers can shed some light on it. It's supposedly an email from someone named Laurie who writes for Newsday and it expresses her impressions of the World Economic Forum quite candidly. Could it be real or am I a sucker?
posted by sparky at 7:42 PM PST - 156 comments

The oldest light in the cosmos

BAM! The Microwave Anisotropy Probe's long-awaited map of the afterglow of the big bang was released today, and all of a sudden, most of the uncertainty in the concordance model of cosmology has disappeared. We now know, to within 1%, that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. We now know that Hubble constant is 71, plus or minus 4. And though the results agreed stunningly well with the weird picture that cosmologists have about the nature of the cosmos, there was one surprise -- the first stars were born way before expected. Great day for science, and a likely future Nobel.
posted by ptermit at 4:30 PM PST - 25 comments

Rook! I Carve Pensu!

Pencil Carving For Experts. A mere four months after I posted this, I ran across this latest site of pencil carving wizardry, this time from Japan. Be sure to check out the gallery. The bar has been raised.
posted by jonson at 3:49 PM PST - 25 comments

Student loans suck. What more needs to be said?

Ted Rall says that college loans are killing America. I'm inclined to agree. At just $14,736, I'm on the lighter-side of college loan debt, but being a single father, I have a hard time making a dent. Ted makes some salient points about young adults who are struggling to make money in a recession. They don't work for the Peace Corps, they don't volunteer, etc. Even China criticizes America on our insistence that students endebt themselves to corporations just for education.(via fark)
posted by taumeson at 3:07 PM PST - 94 comments

f@#*king cens@$ship

The TV Guardian is a "cuss buster," removing all profanity from recordings that are shown on your TV. Finally, something to make my movies and TV more wholesome than Mary Lou Retton (you know your career as a gymnast is in the shitter can, when you're hawking these kinds of products).
posted by mathowie at 1:28 PM PST - 63 comments

Browsing for adoptions in Alberta

Yesterday, the Province of Alberta launched an adoption web site for its foster care children. Detailed and often heartbreaking profiles of each child are available, including their background and behavioural problems (many, for example, suffer from fetal alcohol effect). But critics complain that too much information about the children is being made available, and that the site is reducing the children to the level of commodities. (Not the first adoption web site, but it's a first for a Canadian province, I think.)
posted by mcwetboy at 1:14 PM PST - 14 comments

The White City

This book was discussed last week, but in all the fuss about serial killers, we may have missed the extraordinary setting of the book: The 1893 World's Fair. The white city had some of the most beautiful architecture Chicago has ever seen, some of which still survives today. Of course, there are better remembered world's fairs, but the Chicago fair of 1893 is where the ferris wheel was invented, the pledge of allegiance was popularized, and PBR made its national debut.
posted by sodalinda at 12:57 PM PST - 17 comments

Disaster Kit

US government suggest that all homes should have a disaster kit, in case of terrorist attack.
posted by Beholder at 12:48 PM PST - 59 comments

Protest

Saturday's anti-war protest in NYC, planned by United for Peace & Justice and to be held along First Avenue in the area of the UN, has been denied a parade permit by the city, who offered a permit for a stationery demonstration instead, to take place several blocks away from the UN. This decision has been backed by US District Court Judge Barbara Jones, citing concern for "Homeland Security" and the importance of defending the UN against possible terror attacks.
posted by sarelicar at 12:28 PM PST - 57 comments

Path of a Pipeline: Oil, Empire, and Influence in the New Eurasia

Path of a Pipeline: Oil, Empire, and Influence in the New Eurasia While so many of us talk about Iraq and war in terms of oil, it might prove useful to note what is going on close by. Not mentioned, however, in the article is the guess that China will have stupendous energy needs in the next decade, and what is taking place here will have an impact on their needs.
posted by Postroad at 11:23 AM PST - 2 comments

I don't want to know how they signed their names in the snow.

The 2003 International Snow Sculpture championships occured last week, with once again a Canadian team taking top honors. Unfortunately due to unseasonably warm weather this year's competition doesn't seem to be as impressive as the 2002 event. Of course, none of them come close to the undisputed master of snow art, Calvin.
posted by Stan Chin at 11:08 AM PST - 8 comments

Paging Philip K. Dick

Brain fingerprinting seems to have nothing to do with fingerprinting, but it's still ominous, a step toward a lot of sci-fi dystopias. Don't worry, they'll only use this against criminals and terrorists *cough*
posted by soyjoy at 11:06 AM PST - 10 comments

Songs Inspired By Literature

Songs Inspired by Literature. (found via quix's livejournal) A project to document songs inspired by a wide variety of literature, both modern and classic. Some were obvious or I already knew about (Iron Maiden's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, for one), but others were quite interesting.
posted by rich at 10:39 AM PST - 36 comments

Art and science collide

Art meets science - a fascinating site linking art, maths, physics, astronomy and.... the London Underground!
posted by edh at 10:22 AM PST - 6 comments

The 2003 Oscar and Golden Raspberry Nominees

It's A Dirty Post But Someone's Gotta Do It: The 2003 Razzie and Oscar nominations have been announced and all bets are on (though I couldn't find any online odds). Meanwhile, nominee Meryl Streep recently denounced the Academy Awards process as a "political campaign". Be that as it may, are they still fun to follow and predict?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:02 AM PST - 49 comments

This is odd

This is odd It aint friday but it is freaky. Anyone know how this thing works?
posted by H. Roark at 9:20 AM PST - 22 comments

Turntablism at Berklee

Hip-hop turntablism at Berklee College of Music? I think it's a great idea, although I'm not sure that this is really what their typical student is looking for. Though apparently the book is already quite popular.
posted by soplerfo at 8:43 AM PST - 88 comments

The Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus

"Bastarda"! What is it? Well, silly, it's a style of Gothic script, of course, used chiefly in the 14th and 15th centuries and so-called because it combines characteristics of the Gothic cursive style with the more formal "textura". Why do I know this? Because I've been surfing the mighty-wonderful Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus. More...
posted by taz at 7:23 AM PST - 9 comments

Best in Show

Fido, Spot or Rover are mere nicknames for show dogs. This site explains the long show dog names, most popular names, and CNN's Jeanne Moos reports.
posted by Frank Grimes at 7:13 AM PST - 9 comments

Total Thong Awareness

You love it. Big fan of DARPA's Initiative on Countering Terrorism? Pick up a Total Information Awareness thong or lunchbox - but, you already knew that.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:47 AM PST - 10 comments

You have got to be kidding me series ...

Is forcing a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute cruel and unusual punishment? (NYT link) A federal appeals court ruled that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute. The problem is that the American Medical Association's ethical guidelines prohibits precisely that. To make the case more surreal, a representative of the Arkansas attorney general's office who argued for the state later said: "The ethical decisions involving doctors are difficult ones, but they are not ones for the courts". Does this mean that COs -Correction Officers- are to figure out for themselves which medication to administer? Do they also call the shots when deciding if the "waiting" patient is sane enough???
posted by magullo at 6:24 AM PST - 58 comments

Take my brother....please!

"Interested in meeting my brother Jon, ladies? Due to the expected high demand, I will be forced to prescreen all e-mails received. Please send a nude photo of yourself, and a short explanation of why you think you would be a good match for my brother Jon, to me." A really swell brother wants a really swell girl to marry his brother Jon.
posted by iconomy at 5:05 AM PST - 22 comments

Photobloggies

Photobloggies ~ vote for the best photoblogs on the web.
posted by crunchland at 2:40 AM PST - 15 comments

The Euro Effect Iraq Oil and threat to the dollar

Is the currency that oil is denominated in the real reason for the Iraq War? "The Federal Reserve's greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch its international transactions from a dollar standard to a euro standard. Iraq actually made this switch in Nov. 2000 (when the euro was worth around 80 cents), and has actually made off like a bandit considering the dollar's steady depreciation against the euro. (Note: the dollar declined 17% against the euro in 2002.)"
posted by thedailygrowl at 1:12 AM PST - 36 comments

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