April 20, 2010
Anne Spencer: Poet, Gardener, Activist
Anne Spencer (1882-1975) (video tribute from the State Library of Virginia) was a Harlem Renaissance poet, a gardener, a librarian, and an activist. Her work was influential among her peers and successors - as was her legendary and beloved garden in Lynchburg, Va, where she lived for her entire adult life. She wrote only 50 known poems - 25 to 35 of which were published in her lifetime - on topics that were important to her - the beauty of nature, racism and equality, and her faith, including these 8 of her better-known poems , Before the Feast of Shushan, and Lady, Lady. Many of her poems were reprinted in anthologies, but the controversial White Things (c. 1918, published c. 1923, inspired by a particularly horrible lynching of a pregnant woman) was never reprinted. [more inside]
Face from the past come back to haunt you!
Big Trouble in Little China: the history, the cult, the complete soundtrack, the RPG, the video game, the comic book, the geopolitical metaphor.
Stand By Me
Oral History of Gaming
On a snowy Valentine's Day weekend in Michigan Sid Meier creates a game in 48 hours called Escape from Zombie Hotel! He's there to judge a 48 hour game design contest at his alma mater, University of Michigan but decides to also work on a game alongside the student teams. He also talks about his career, focusing on his early days. This is the third installment of motherboard.tv's Oral History of Gaming series. The first profiles Ralph Baer, the inventor of the first home gaming console, and the second is about Eric Zimmerman, designer of Sissyfight. Sadly, the awesome-looking Escape from Zombie Hotel has note been released, but the oher games designed during the contest are available here. [via Rock Paper Shotgun]
"HIV is a virus, not a crime."
With AIDS, Time to Get Beyond Blame. Criminal laws related to exposure to or transmission of HIV are on the books in 32 American states, and in many other countries. In January, Darrin Chiacchia was charged with knowingly exposing a partner to HIV without warning him beforehand. He faces up to 30 years in prison. The high profile case has drawn criticism of the laws from those who believe they discourage testing, increase stigma, and intentional infections are sensational but rare and difficult to prove. Others have argued the laws do little to protect vulnerable populations and are bad legal policy.
In the sensational but rare category: Nushawn Williams, who completed his sentence last week but remains incarcerated.
My special power is posting to Metafilter
Artist and podcaster Len Peralta (with assistance from Paul and Storm) has embarked on the Geek A Week Challenge, an eventual set of 52 trading cards covering all your favorite geek heroes, including MeFi's own jscalzi.
Dr Evan Harris - The Liberal Democrat's Dr Death?
The new focus on the Liberal Democrats sees the Daily Telegraph's Cristina Odone profiling Dr Evan Harris. That's "profiling" in the sense that the FBI might profile a criminal. A criminal the papers are calling Dr Death. [more inside]
Life, rekindled.
How does an ecosystem rebound from catastrophe? Thirty years after the blast, Mount St. Helens is reborn again. Interactive Graphic: Blast Zone. Also see National Geographic's feature article from 1981, chronicling that year's eruption. Previously on MeFi [more inside]
pay for research once... you are a taxpayer... pay for research twice... well, we shouldn't pay for research twice
Yesterday (April 15), Representatives Doyle (D-PA), Waxman (D-CA), Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), Harper (R-MS), Boucher (D-VA) and Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (HR 5037), a bill that would ensure free, timely, online access to the published results of research funded by eleven U.S. federal agencies. -Alliance for Taxpayer Access. [more inside]
The "Great Books College of Chicago" fires its president
Shimer College, one of the smallest, oldest and most uncompromising "Great Books" schools in America, has just foiled a hostile takeover attempt and fired its president. [more inside]
Every Joke is Terrible
[lets start this off] Everything is Terrible presents several comedy VHS tapes with everything left out but the sexism, racism, and homophobia. The Great Ray, COMEDY ON A VHS TAPE MACHINE!!!?, Rush Limbaugh Sure Is Funny, and Gross Jokes. [applause] [more inside]
Cross-eye protection not included
Frasier hates big government and flightless birds.
Set to launch this summer, Right Network
will feature content "to entertain, engage, and enlighten Americans who are looking for content that reflects and reinforces their perspective and worldview." In an ad for the network, Kelsey Grammer lists some things that "just aren't right," including "big government," "more taxes," "trillion dollar deficits," "bureaucrats," "overspending," "bailouts for billionaires," "flightless birds," and "partisan politics," among others. [more inside]
April 19, 1995: Fifteen years (and a day) later.
It's the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, and it's time for the US to take a good, long, hard look at itself. [more inside]
You can watch Google watch the governments watching Google watch you
Google now provides a map of government requests to access user information or take down material from Google and YouTube. This is being heralded as a big step towards transparency unmatched by any similar company, and Google explains how the system works.
The US requests information about 20 times a day (including subpoenas and search warrants from local and state governments), but Brazil leads with the most take-down and data requests, because of Orkut's popularity there.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
In 1968 Stewart Brand launched an innovative publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. It was groundbreaking, enlightening, and spawned a group of later publications.The collection of that work provided on this site is not complete — and probably never will be — but it is a gift to readers who loved the CATALOG and those who are discovering it for the first time. [more inside]
Why do women love Jesus?
Wait! Look, what do you see? A new crucifix has been hung behind the altar at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Oklahoma City. It has caused quite the stir. [more inside]
Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe
Near-space Balloon Photos
The Icarus Project is Robert Harrison's " home brew project to send a camera high into the stratosphere to take pictures of the Earth from near space". Found via this AskMe answer; previously there was Project Icarus, with a similar goal.
CBC Hockey
(Warning : Hockey Inside) CBC Sports | Coach's Corner / Don Cherry | Full Games | Morning Highlights | Inside Hockey | Think Hockey / Hockey Tips | Peter Puck | PJ's shot of the game [note: scroll down to see play lists]
Participants and Spectators
Suppose ... that the right picture is that characters who take themselves to be deliberating and initiating various deeds come to look like somewhat pathetic figures frantically pulling various wires and pushing various buttons which are, unknown to them, not connected to some moving machine they are riding, on a course completely indifferent to anything such characters pretend to do (or much more indifferent than the riders believe) ... The first thing to say is that this is not an academic exercise. The problem I want to raise has become especially interesting in the last hundred and fifty years or so, because, under the influences, first, of the so-called “Masters of Suspicion” – Marx, Nietzsche and Freud – and in our own day under the influence of everything from structuralism and various “anti-humanisms” in European philosophy to evolutionary biology and the neurosciences (experimental results, brain imaging, Benjamin Libet’s famous experiment and so forth), many seem to have concluded that in an ever expanding range of cases, it only seems to us that we are “running any show” as conscious agents in any even metaphysically modest sense; it only seems that we could be actually leading our lives.
The SEC's Kiss of Death
"When a company or individual receives a surprise subpoena on a Friday from the SEC, it is usually designed to ruin their weekend plans. Yes, the SEC can get personal in its own way...Back in the day as the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I received a surprise subpoena from the SEC late Friday afternoon. I had to wait until Monday before my attorneys had time to advise me on a course of action." Ex-white collar felon Sam Antar blogs about the SEC's recent move. [more inside]
Connery, Lazenby,... Nelson
After the fiasco of their premier episode - a lavish live production of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye during which a corpse unwittingly got up and walked off stage on camera - CBS's Climax! Mystery Theater was looking to adapt something less high-profile. Say, the debut spy thriller by a struggling British journalist willing to let the rights go for $1000. The result: 1954's "Casino Royale", starring Barry Nelson as Jimmy "Card Sense" Bond of American intelligence, Michael Pate as his British counterpart Clarence Leiter, and Peter Lorre as the first-ever Bond villain. Now on Youtube 2 3 4 5 6
Chris Hardwick, multimedia auteur
Known today mainly for hosting Web Soup on G4 (and MTV's Singled Out back in the mid '90s), Chris Hardwick also blogs at Nerdist and has recently started a podcast featuring long-form (hour-plus) interviews with such funny-smart characters as Andy Richter, MetaFilter's own Adam Savage, and his Soup-master/nemesis Joel McHale. Fresh Air this ain't. [more inside]
patently obvious
What If The Very Theory That Underlies Why We Need Patents Is Wrong? - This article discusses Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation
, a working paper by Carliss Y. Baldwin and Eric von Hippel, suggesting that some of the most basic theories on which the patent system is based are wrong, and because of that, the patent system might hinder innovation. [more inside]
Hello DEA.
420 Room Search is a place to find 420 Roommates/alternative living situations, as well as a Green Book. [more inside]
Beyond Comprehension
Guru of Gang Starr - Keith Elam, has died from cancer. His passing is complicated by the sometimes bizarre actions of his business partner Solar (not to be confused with MC Solaar) during Guru's seven week hospital stay. [more inside]
Preferred activity: blowin’ or a-changin’?
The Answer, My Friend. Your own personal Best Bob Dylan Album calculator.
Because it is bitter, and because it is my mouth
Suddenly everything you eat or drink tastes horribly bitter and metallic, with the bitterness persisting at the back of your tongue after each swallow. The symptom recedes somewhat after a few meals but still persists after days. What's wrong with you? Brain tumor? Liver failure? First check if you ate pine nuts a few days ago - if so, you've probably just got pine mouth. [more inside]
Smell like a Pope
The Pope's Cologne - Does what it says on the bottle.
He's the greatest. He's fantastic. Wherever there is danger he'll be there.
Danger Mouse was a British animated series that ran from 1981 to 1992. It chronicled the exploits of our hero, the titular eyepatched mouse, and his faithful assistant Penfold ("Codename: The Jigsaw, because when faced with a problem he falls to pieces."), as they fought the evil Baron Silas Greenback (a frog). [more inside]
Play Pen
Play Pen - It's a Wiki-based pixel-art user-created point-and-click freeform adventure game/story/experience. Look, just go there and do something.
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