April 10, 2007
The Fabulous Stains
He's totally scalping the tickets.
"...it looks like the dad's selling the tickets, the boy's complaining about something, and the mom and girl are extremely disinterested." If you liked Ted Bates, you'll love the Portland Sea Dogs. Quoth King Kaufman: "The hilarious part of the controversy is the statue itself, which is funnier than Spinal Tap's Stonehenge. It's that bad."
Just Commercials... Really Old Ones.
An amazing collection of classic American television commercials. Sorted by category: Eat, Drink, Smoke, Clean, Groom, Shop and Travel. Includes descriptions and historical background. The commercials can be viewed in either RealPlayer or MediaPlayer format, and newer ones will work in both IE and Firefox.
Stem cell research: Natural Born Killers?
Stem Cell Research: An interesting argument on why Bush's policy on stem cell research doesn't make sense.
Corect Seplling Mayd Eesy
The Spirit of Truth
Musical Moments Suspended In Time
The recent post about Joshua Bell was merely the tip of the Unannounced Performance iceberg, a phenomenon I've often marveled at. The Beatles famously did it in 1969 on a roof. Mos Def got arrested for it last year. REM reformed in 2005 at a wedding, something the Police did at Sting's 1992 nuptials. Sometime after midnight in Union Square NYC on Nov. 5, 2005, Arcade Fire blew a few lucky fans' minds. Bruce Springsteen jammed with a street musician in 1988. In 2000, Weezer took to the stage under the name Goat Punishment and U2 used to sneak onstage disguised as The Dalton Brothers. In 2005 it was rumored they'd played a Beatlesque rooftop gig in NYC, but you can't believe everything you hear. I could go on all night with tales of secret gigs and surprise busking sessions, but I'm sure you've got plenty of rare musical moments to share in the comments.
I've heard it's the fillet of the web.
Bikes Against Bush
NYPD Intelligence Op Targets Dot-Matrix Graffiti Bike. More details on the premeditated arrest of Joshua Kinberg by the NYPD just before the 2004 Republican National Convention. Kinberg, now the CEO of FireAnt, was targeted by the "R.N.C. Intelligence Squad" for his Bikes Against Bush project. The police lost his Xtracycle. [Via BB.]
Burning Ring of Fire.
The house of Johnny Cash is no more. Earlier today a fire was sparked amid fumes of a wood preservative and the structure was destroyed. New owner/restorer Barry Gibb unsure how to be Mr. Natural now that the Nature House is gone. Warning: Horribly written Tennessean piece.
FOXY RELIGIONIST-POLITICAL discrimination for Inhuman Economic Exploitation
Meet Franklin, the Fair-Housing Fox. Says HUD: "Just as McGruff the Crime Dog represents the fight against crime, Franklin, the Fair Housing Fox, will symbolize the nation's efforts to end housing discrimination." And also, apparently, really, really bad web-page design.
Open Sourceware Consortium
Open Sourceware Consortium "While MIT has pioneered the open courseware movement where many class materials are made freely available online, there's now an Open Courseware Consortium extending courses to dozens of universities and many thousands of courses." - Don Lancaster
Don't-Buy List
No-fly list? Sure, we remember that. It's caused some inconvenience. Some people you wouldn't think of as terrorists are on it. Then again, some known terrorists are on that list. But that's old hat; now the government has a new terrorist list. it's almost all foreigners, but if your name or part of your name is on it, you might have problems.
Stuffed animals can make you even more lonely.
It's not you, it's your apartment. Is your awful decor interfering with your love life? Maybe this lighting tutorial can help.
Hanna-Barbera never did this.
John Arquilla interview re: the future of military technology and hardware
“[O]ur military today oversees spending of about a billion and a quarter dollars every day. Most of that is misspent. Over this past quarter-century, we've reinforced an old industrial-policy military with hardware that makes increasingly less sense, spending most on things that provide the least return. The principal argument for that is: ‘We have to keep the big, old-style military because we might fight a big, old-style war one day.’ But in the future the bigger you are, the harder you're going to fall to ever-more accurate weapons.”
Rate My Turban
RateMyTurban.com I noticed most Sikhs living outside India have a pretty boring turban life... I wanted to showcase turbans as an art form and try to revive the majestic roots of turbans. -Ash Singh, Founder and Producer. What is a turban? How to tie a turban. [via]
Insert coin for awesome
Chaat, Chaat waalaa! Samosaa, garaam garaam Samosaaaaaa!
The humble Street Vendor. The Pushcarts of India. Street Vendors from around the world. And some more pictures of Street Vendors.
Web 2.0 clichés abound in Yahoo! Oz's new search product
Yahoo! Australia introduces a new search engine that uses OpenSearch and pretty little AJAX tricks to integrate results from Flickr, Wikpedia, YouTube (and so on). You can customize the layout, and even add your own search sources. It’s called Alpha, it’s currently in Beta, and aims to get through the rest of the Greek alphabet by June. (Via podlob.)
Ezra Pound: The Complete Poetry Recordings
Famous 2.0
Famousr is a sort of celebrity hot or not.
Iran has shown the British what kind of people we really are: without honour and without shame, writes David Cox in The Guardian.
Our shameless culture, by David Cox (The Guardian): Iran has shown the British what kind of people we really are: without honour and without shame. The Sun, the now officially approved disseminator of British military information, notes that navigator Arthur Batchelor was "tormented" by being called "Mr Bean". Understandably, he had to cry himself to sleep. Perhaps President Ahmadinejad feared that the goody bags might just prove a step too far. But no, they were gratefully received, in a response that aptly captures the infantilisation of a people that once ruled much of the world. Navigator Batchelor has however since complained that the quality of his own bag's contents was not what he had hoped.
Out, damned spots!
Sunspot activity is closely linked to climate. Although it observes an 11 and 22 year cycle, the overall trend of activity shows much longer term variations. The so-called Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) coincided with the Little Ice Age, while the Medieval Maximum coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. Analysis of beryllium isotopes from ice cores in Greenland shows that sunspot activity is currently at a 1000 year high. Could this account, at least in part, for global warming? Recent data from Mars suggests this may be so, while others remain sceptical. Bonus pix, more here.
The Anti-Boos Movement
Are you tired of being against him? Are you tired of expecting him to fail, and standing up to boo when he does so? Are you tired of not feeling good about having Alex Rodriguez play third base for your favorite team? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you are ready. Welcome to The Movement.
Fantastico!
A gringo wins on a Honduran game show! Very much a gringo, Duzer wins the competition on the Honduran game show Fantastico.
Nazis to March in Over-the-Rhine
In April of 2001, a Cincinnati police officer shot an unarmed African-American teenager in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, sparking a summer of riots and violence. Now, a neo-Nazi group plans to march through Over-the-Rhine on April 20, with or without a permit, to celebrate the birthday of Adolph Hitler. The NAACP has demanded that police protection not be provided at taxpayer expense. In 2005, a march by the same group through a Toledo neighborhood did not end well.
Watch Dream Deceivers "ti od"
Dream Deceivers: The Story behind James Vance vs Judas Priest (1992) [google video 56 mins] ‘Just before Christmas 1985, James Vance and Ray Belknap shot themselves with a 12 – gauge shotgun. Their families blamed heavy metal group Judas Priest, claiming a recorded subliminal command “Do It” had mesmerized their son. Almost 5 years after the suicide pact James Vance et al. vs. Judas priest came to trial in Reno’s District Court’ (Warning: James Vance’s face may disturb some viewers). Also ‘Lessons from the Judas Priest Trial’ and ‘The Judas Priest Trial: 15 years later’.
In their own words...
In their own words... Researchers at the National Institutes of Health recall the early years of AIDS, from diagnosis of the then-unknown disease, to discovering the viral cause, and from there to the search for treatments. The site features interviews (including several with virologist Robert Gallo), early publications, and a collection of archived image materials.
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