March 16, 2010
Tree:Kite::Tunnel:Van
Just ask!
Reggie Bibbs has neurofibromatosis, and he has made it his life's mission to educate people about the disfiguring disease. Besides going to lots of big public events, he's got a Facebook page, a Flickr site, a Myspace page, and a YouTube channel, and he founded a nonprofit to help raise awareness of NF.
"Hallmark of a civilised society"
While nobody has been executed in Australia since 1967 and no capital punishments have been on any state books since 1984 there has been the possibility that a state government could reintroduce the death penalty. Today the Australian Senate passed the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Torture Prohibition and Death Penalty Abolition) Bill 2009 without amendment which effectively blocks states from reintroducing the death penalty as soon as the bill received the royal assent. Needless to say, pro-death penalty advocates were up in arms over the vote.
Encyclopedia Dramatica vs. the Commonwealth of Australia
In January, Google Australia agreed to take down links to the Encyclopedia Dramatica. The Australian Human Rights Commission has now written to the owner of the ED threatening legal action. [more inside]
Human flesh search engines in China.
A Twelve-year-old's diary, from the 70's
Ping pong, school, gardening... days in the life of a 12-year-old, circa 1975 and posted to a blog 30+ years after the fact. [more inside]
The best zombie movie you'll never get to see
Portraying lesbians and appropriate parents
The Florida Family Policy Council, a conservative Christian organization, sent out an alert to its members about judge’s ruling to allow a lesbian couple to adopt a relative’s child that they had been fostering. It included an image that was purported to be of the couple. It wasn't. [more inside]
Do less, tax more
A NYTimes columnist just comes out and says it: America's taxes should be higher. The Perils of Pay Less, Get More. [more inside]
Tea Party attempts to recall US Senator
Today a New Jersey state appeals court ruled that the secretary of state must accept a petition filed by the Sussex County Tea Party to recall US Senator Robert Menendez - the first ever recall effort aimed at a US Senator. Their petition was originally denied by Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells back in January.
The debate over recall elections has persisted for centuries in the US, with it notably being a part of the Virginia Plan that was proposed at the Constitutional Convention. Are recalls a good way to make senators accountable to their electorate? Or would they make senators slaves to the ever changing whims of the people? Here is a brief history of the recall in the US.
Full concert podcasts from Web in Front
Maybe you'd be interested in full, downloadable live concerts by Iggy Pop and David Bowie (1977), P. J. Harvey (1992), Neko Case (2006), or the Arcade Fire (2008)? The online, L.A.-based music publication Web in Front hosts a terrific collection of concert podcasts from rock bands and songsmiths of every era. From Talking Heads (1979) to Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. (1994); from dour troubadours like Lou Reed (1976) to dour troubadours like Nick Cave (1998), it's an inexhaustible trove. (Recent podcasts.)
We sure do love our lists
Professors at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute will soon be voting on "The Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade". There are 80 nominees.
You die ...
Desktop Dungeons offers an unquestionably unique approach to Roguelike games by taking compactness to the extreme. It distills the entire genre to a few core ideas which pay homage to the greats while forging new ground with gameplay similar to that of Oasis or Tower of the Sorcerer. It also features emergent complexity that rewards truly skilled and thoughtful players.
You don’t know what freedom is if you have never lost it.
Andrée Peel, Rescuer of Allied Airmen, Dies at 105. Andree Peel, (born Andrée Marthe Virot) who was known as Agent Rose, helped 102 British and American pilots escape from her native France. 'She was the most highly decorated woman to survive the conflict and was awarded the Legion d'Honneur by her brother, General Maurice Virot.
Mrs Peel was awarded the War Cross with palm, the War Cross with purple star, the medal of the Resistance and the Liberation cross. She also received the American Medal of Freedom from US President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct, presented to her by King George VI.'
'She fed information to the Allies on German shipping and troop movements and on the results of Allied bombing in the region. She also guided British planes carrying intelligence agents to nighttime landings at secret airstrips marked by torchlight.' [more inside]
Just a second it's my favorite song they're gonna play
Lady GaGa covers: Pomplamoose covers Telephone, Molly Lewis covers Poker Face, We the Kings cover Paparazzi, and another cover of Poker Face from Amanda Palmer and the Boston Pops. (The second Poker Face link is probably NSFW.)
Broadband, a plan, dnabdaorb
The FCC has announced its National Broadband Plan.
Apparently running marathons isn't such a good idea
Excessive cardio is linked with heart disease, according to some recent studies examining marathon runners and markers for coronary risk [more inside]
MODOK has no time for your office pool.
Yes folks, it's March and that can mean many things. College basketball, allergies or MARCH MODOK MADNESS! via Chris Sims at Comics Alliance
The Truth about Demons from Demons
The source Fr. Amoth refers to, according to Fr. Fortea, is the demons who are being exorcised. Of this, the Spanish priest wrote that knowing whether or not the demon is telling the truth "is in many cases impossible." "We can know with great confidence when a demon tells the truth in the subject directly related with the exorcism. That is, the number of demons, their name and similar things. But we cannot be confident in what regards concrete news relating to people." [more inside]
The Face of Death is a menu screen.
Ben Abraham decided to play the game Far Cry 2 with a few self-imposed rules. Most importantly, when he died in the game, he would be dead forever. This saga, Permanent Death, is available as a gorgeous, 391-page (!) PDF file, or on his old blog, in post format. [more inside]
The Chyron's Kuleshov
What makes a bad book bad?
In its latest issue, the American Book Review has taken stock of literature and come up with its Top 40 Bad Books [pdf]. Faced with the unusual Top 40 list (which is not strictly a list and includes, among other things, The Great Gatsby) Alison Flood at the Guardian responds by asking, "What makes a bad book bad?" while at the L.A. Times, Carolyn Kellogg puts forth that the list's only constant is "that the best books that appear on their worst-book list are subject to the most unreasonable critiques." [more inside]
Hipsters on food stamps
"At first, I thought, 'Why should I be on food stamps?'" said Magida, digging into her dinner. "Here I am, this educated person who went to art school, and there are a lot of people who need them more. But then I realized, I need them, too." Salon takes a look at the growing wave of young people utilizing food stamps.
Marwencol is a fantasy world created by Mark Hogancamp.
After being beaten into a brain-damaging coma by five men outside a bar, Mark Hogancamp built a 1/6th scale World War II-era town in his backyard. Mark populated the town he dubbed "Marwencol" with dolls representing his friends and family and created life-like photographs detailing the town's many relationships and dramas. Playing in the town and photographing the action helped Mark to recover his hand-eye coordination and deal with the psychic wounds from the attack. [more inside]
walk softly and
David Livingston's [NSFW] Big Dick series [NSFW] features the artist walking around Park Slope [N-even-the-url-is-SFW] and other New York neighborhoods wearing "immense pink genitalia" [YGTI].
The quiet woman of Surrealist Paris
Nusch Éluard was The Surrealists' enigmatic muse. She was a model for Man Ray and Picasso and Lee Miller. In fact
All the boys loved Nusch.
Perhaps the most ethereal portrait was taken by photographer Dora Maar (previously).
Here is tumblir tagged page
and Orchid-thief.
( As this is Surrealism and Paris in the early C20th – this FPP is considered NSFW in some environments. )
Turn me on, dead man
Nine months after Michael Jackson’s death, his estate has signed one of the biggest recording contracts in history, giving Sony, Mr. Jackson’s longtime label, the rights to sell his back catalog and draw on a large vault of unheard recordings.
"Watching progress bars change has never been this much fun."
Tired of leveling up your mafia and building your farm? Get right to the heart of the matter with Progress Wars!
Finding patients like me
Do you have a life-changing medical condition? Patientslikeme (mentioned previously in a 2008 post on mood conditions) is a way for you share information online with other people who have the same condition. Some of the conditions with groups established already are epilepsy, depression, and Multiple Sclerosis.
Started by 3 MIT engineers who had personal experiences with ALS (Lou Gherig's disease), the site is funded by partnerships with healthcare providers who have access to anonymised data about the member base. The stated goal in their Openness Policy is to speed up the pace of research and help fix the broken (US) health system. The Privacy Policy has a plain-English description of what happens to information that members share.
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