March 10, 2009
You're soaking in it
Where does your water come from? Global water supply chart. Global freshwater resources from the UN.
Roberto Kusterle
Open Platform
Somewhat quietly within the past couple weeks, two major newspapers, on each side of the Atlantic, have opened up their data and content APIs. Last month, on their Open blog, the New York Times introduced their Developer Network. Then just yesterday, on their DataBlog and OpenPlatformBlog, the Guardian launched Open Platform. [more inside]
Breaking Lincoln News
Breaking Lincoln news: possible last photo of the 16th President surfaces on same day a hidden message is discovered secreted in his pocket watch.
I needed the red ascot to add some color!
Drawings of Kings, and their Palaces.
Zines!
The Zine Library has hundreds of zines in pdf format for your perusal. They are organized into categories ranging from the common political (anarchism, political prisoners & animal liberation) and identity based zines (indigenous, race & gender) to the more esoteric (anarchist history, primitivism & theory) as well as the useful (cooking, DIY & organizing manuals) and arty (art, comics & music). Now, zines are by their very nature hit and miss but there are some real treasures to be found. I recommend these three: [all links pdf] The Rebel's Dark Laughter - The Writings of Bruno Filippi, Barefoot in the Kitchen and Delivery from Below, Resistance from Above - Electricity and the Politics of Struggle in Tembisa, South Africa. Note: Many if not most zines are set up to be printed out and bound together in chapbooks. That requires a bit of going back and forth when reading in pdf-format, but they wouldn't be real zines if they were straightforward to read ;) Don't know what a zine is? A pretty good overview is provided by zine librarian Jenna Freedman in Zines Are Not Blogs: A Not Unbiased Analysis. [This site has been posted previously but was buried deep in the weeds of more inside]
Abbey Road Forever
A Day in the Life of Abbey Road; (sorry for the prosaic lead-in link - at least I didn't use the word "iconic!") Enjoy watching Beatles' fans and locals negotiate London's famous Abbey Road crosswalk. I miss album covers; I'm of the generation of high school kids who spent a zillion hours flipping through them in record stores. The best of them - like Abbey Road - could be high-impact and sometimes accompanied their records like a kind of graphic mini-novel. What were some of your favorites and why?
Lucie DeBelkova
Lucie DeBelkova is a photographer. She has traveled to at least 76 countries, including Mongolia, Scotland and Iran. Here is one of her favorite photos. Here is another. And here is her flickr stream. Enjoy!
"Instead of speaking proper Dutch..."
Chris Chameleon is an Afrikaans musician who talks a bit about his native language's origins in this intro to his song Klein Klein Jakkalsies. [more inside]
(I'm her husband)
John J Marley (Gloria's husband) is Northern Ireland's answer to Lazlo Toth -- writing actual posted mail from his home at Comfydown Cottage, Carryduff, Belfast, to correspond with a variety of corporations and heads-of-state. Whether it's asking Irwin's Bakery to employ his wife Gloria (he's her husband), asking Virgin Atlantic if Gloria could take one of their 747's for a spin, or petitioning Kellogg's for adult-themed cereals, he always (well, almost always) receives an appreciative reply to his polite yet bizarre correspondence. [via cjorgensen; previously]
Body of Unknown Vagrant Found in Greenwich Village -- New York -- March 30, 1968
This month marks both the birth and the death of Bobby Driscoll, child star, Peter Pan, "Walt Disney's golden boy." He was penniless, drug-addled and buried in an unmarked grave by the age of 31. [more inside]
Dinga dinga dee!
Missiles! and girls! [SLYT]
Walker, Texas Rearranger
Unhappy with the way the election turned out, but unwilling to move? Don't worry, Presidential Candidate Chuck Norris has your back.
Traitors
"Traitors" - Martin McGuinness' description of those who carried out attacks on a PSNI member in Craigavon and British solidiers in Antrim: "These people - they are traitors to the island of Ireland. They have betrayed the political desires, hopes and aspirations of all of the people who live on this island. And they don't deserve to be supported by anyone." [more inside]
"Because the math is really complicated people assume it must be right."
They are known as “quants” because they do quantitative finance. Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money. "They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street." [spoiler inside] [more inside]
32 Songs in 8 Minutes
The sky is falling
In the wake of a rather large meteor narrowly missing earth, loud booms have been heard from coast to coast. Here's hoping that's the end of it and there isn't something, larger on the way...
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
Ever wondered what comes next, and why? The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences has the answers. (Previously.)
Vampire Lincoln meets Zombie Platypus
Behind the scenes at Airport Security Theater
"Serious problems" found at nation's airport security checkpoints. Local TV station KSTP found that airport employees, including cleaning staff, are often allowed to enter secured areas of airports at night without anyone checking their identification badge or the bags and other belongings they bring into the so-called sterile areas. [more inside]
La Revolution Des Crabes
true scientific realism on every page
Encounter Critical is the awesomest Fantasy/Sci-Fi RPG to come out of an alternate 1979. Full list of game-related resources here (Yahoo group, reg req'd).
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" story conference
The "Raiders" Story Conference In 1978 George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan spent five consecutive nine-hour days hashing out the characters and plot for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The 125-page transcript of their meetings, unreleased before now, details their insane talent and techniques for populist storytelling. (It also makes one wonder what happened to George Lucas, a man who once had a math formula for exciting cinema.) via Ain't It Cool News, unfortunately
That skinny motherfucker with the high voice
"Prince announces a triple album set available from Target. Unless he’s going to write a hit song and play in each and every store in the chain, this is a bad deal. We’ve got enough Prince music. We want two CDs and a third of a protege? I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a life. And Prince hasn’t put out a good album in this century. ... How many people are going to tell their friends about Prince’s new album? None. No one has hipped me to a new Prince track in fifteen years. The release of his album is a dead end. He’s abused our trust. When you e-mail me an unsolicited track you abuse my trust. When you add me to your mailing list without asking first, you abuse my trust. When you focus on marketing as opposed to music, you’ve got your head up your ass." - Bob Lefsetz (previously)
To Help? or To Hinder?
"The function of aid is not to make us feel better about ourselves; it is to promote development, and if a well-informed African tells us that we are inadvertently having the opposite effect, we had better take heed".Time to stop aid for Africa? An argument against. [more inside]
That's a lot of gold.
"We are urging music stations all over the U.S. to send us photos of their gold and platinum records." Hearings are starting on the RIAA's new pet bill. They're feeling the pinch and would like a few of their gold records back. [more inside]
GODZILLA BUKKAKE
Surreal flash game
Vector Defenders [flash game, some NSFW]. Ep 1: Icons Alliance, Ep 2: The Ink Quest, Ep 3: The Return Of The Type.
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