June 23, 2011
Officially a filibuster
While outside Parliament it is 2:00 AM EST, Friday June 24, inside it will remain the "Thursday June 23 Chamberverse" until the Canadian House of Commons rises. Canada's new Official Opposition, the New Democratic party is currently filibustering the Conservative majority government over Bill C-6 - An act to provide for the Resumption and Continuation of Postal Services brought forward to force postal workers at Canada Post, an arms-length Crown Corporation back to work. [more inside]
Diary of a Summer League Ballplayer
70 games in 75 days in the Northwoods League. Andrew Barna, a varsity baseball player at Davidson College during the school year, is spending the summer playing first base for the Madison Mallards. The Mallards are currently a half game back of the Eau Claire Express in the Northwoods League, a summer developmental league where NCAA athletes play for room, board, the adulation of devoted Upper Midwest fans, and the slim hope of making it to the bigs. (Northwoods alums in the majors include Ian Kinsler (Mallards), Ben Zobrist (Wisconsin Woodchucks), and Juan Pierre (Manitowoc Skunks.) Barna's blog offers a look inside the real life of very-minor-league baseball: The best way to sleep on the team bus. Getting caught picking your nose on the field. Welcome back Jumpy Garcia. Signing your first breast.
These kind of skills?
Arrested Westeros (Game of Thrones spoilers/NSFW screenshots ahead.)
D-Dalus
Austrian research company IAT21 has presented a new type of aircraft at the Paris Air Show which has the potential to become aviation's first disruptive technology since the jet engine. ... The key to the D-Dalus' extreme maneuverability is the facility to alter the angle of the blades (using servos) to vector the forces, meaning that the thrust can be delivered in your choice of 360 degrees around any of the three axes. Hence D-Dalus can launch vertically, hover perfectly still and move in any direction, and that's just the start of the story.
Probably should have kept Sebelius in Kansas
Kansas: The First Abortion-Free State? "The law also requires the health department to issue new licenses each year, and it grants additional authority to health department inspectors to conduct unannounced inspections, and to fine or shut down clinics ... the department wasted no time in drafting the new rules, issuing the final version on June 17 and informing clinics that they would have to comply with the rules by July 1. The new requirements require facilities to add extra bathrooms, drastically expand waiting and recovery areas, and even add larger janitor's closets, as one clinic employee told me—changes that clinics will have a heck of a time pulling off by the deadline. Under the new rule, clinics must also aquire state certification to admit patients, a process that takes 90 to 120 days, the staffer explained." Previously, George Tiller (2).
The 80s Almost Killed Me. Let's Not Recall Them Quite So Fondly
The little team full of heart
L'equip petit - "... if one day I score, I'll be so happy that I'll fly."
"I used it for ten minutes and it's the worst interface ever."
Final Cut Pro backlash. Two months ago, Apple previewed the new 64-bit version of its popular professional video editing application, completely re-written and re-designed with loads of new, revolutionary features, an iMovie-like interface, and a deep price cut. Excitement and anticipation abounded. On Tuesday, it was released, and the excitement has been completely reversed. Unfortunately, as Apple typically does with all-new products, they left out a lot of features that users particularly needed (including backwards compatibility), and simultaneously killed the previous version, causing an unprecedented amount of confusion and anger in a matter of hours. Many people felt left in the lurch, others felt that Apple had abandoned the pro market without telling anyone, and still others prescribed patience.
Mwroar.
"Hot Dudes with Kittens." This is either the best or worst thing ever birthed by the Internet.
If You Dare to Believe-- in the Miracle of Love...
Romance comics are awesome, especially if you want stories about lesbians, naughty nuns, Vietnam war brides, teenage sex clubs or Gothic horror tales about feisty nurses. [more inside]
The Goodbye Tour
Glen Campbell Announces That He Has Alzheimer's Disease Glen Campbell, the studio musician who shot to fame as a solo pop-country crossover singer in the 1960s with his summer replacement TV series, has told People Magazine that he is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. The announcement comes just as he begins the all-too-appropriately named "Goodbye Tour" to promote his final studio album. His wife told People: "Glen is still an awesome guitar player and singer. But if he flubs a lyric or gets confused on stage, I wouldn’t want people to think, 'What's the matter with him? Is he drunk?'" (In 2003, Campbell made headlines with an unfortunate mugshot after an arrest for drunk driving). We shared our love for Glen in this 2007 MeFi post, which features a number of great links to Campbell's performances and covers of his hits by other artists.
not just to reveal their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities
"Hackers of the world are uniting and taking direct action against our common oppressors - the government, corporations, police, and militaries of the world" says LulzSec (previously) in their latest release, Chinga La Migra. "We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement. We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 (previously) and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona."
#antisec is a new track from nerdcore rapper ytcracker (previously)
#antisec is a new track from nerdcore rapper ytcracker (previously)
Pottermore
Seven days ago, a new YouTube channel teased the creation of a mysterious new website called Pottermore. Today, JK Rowling released details about the new site. Pottermore will be 1) the exclusive place to purchase Harry Potter e-books, 2) a Harry Potter interactive experience/social networking site of sorts, and 3) a (free) repository of many pages of back notes about the Harry Potter series, similar in content, different in form, and possibly replacing the existence of the Harry Potter encyclopedia long-teased by Rowling. Fans react.
Just Give Peace a Chance
This thread's title was found by trial and error.
Daniel Eatock is a London-based designer known for his conceptual approach to solving traditional client problems as well as those of his own choosing.[1] His projects include Spray Can Sprayed With Its Own Contents, Fixed Pen/Signature Book, and many others, including my favorite, One Hour Circles, in which participants attempt to draw a circle in exactly one hour. (Compare to One Minute Circles.) A brief interview with Eatock. Some selected work. An overview.
The post stands on the shoulders of the two that came before it....
Part 3 of the Everything is a Remix video series has been released, by New York filmmaker Kirby Ferguson. Previously on MeFi. See the entire series on Vimeo: Parts One, Two and Three. (YouTube versions and transcripts inside.) Official Site. [more inside]
Chicago's L
If you're a Chicagoan or have even a passing interest in Chicago's 'L', Chicago "L".org is an amazingly comprehensive resource for anything you might want to know about the Second City's rapid transit system. Highlights include historic route maps, details on rolling stock past and present, and more than you could ever want to know about every station. [more inside]
New Yorker article on the Galleon prosecution
A Dirty Business. New Yorker article on the prosecution of Raj Rajaratnam, head of the Galleon hedge fund. Previously: Matt Taibbi on Wall Street regulation and prosecutions.
#7: Cologne to freshen up after a sweaty revolution.
Go-Bag porn for the Arab Spring. Foreign Policy finds a 25-year-old architect protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Square and asks the perennial geek-out question: What's in your bag?
The Growth Ponzi Scheme
The Growth Ponzi Scheme, a series of five blog posts on the financial underpinnings (or lack thereof) of the American post-war development pattern. 1: The Mechanisms of Growth - Trading near-term cash for long-term obligations. 2: Case studies that show how our places do not create, but destroy, our wealth. 3: The Ponzi scheme revealed - How new development is used to pay for old development. 4: How we've sustained the unsustainable by going "all in" on the suburban pattern of development. 5: Responses that are rational and responses that are irrational.
Over 70 Billion Gold Rings Served
Twenty years ago today, the gaming world saw the launch of a truly landmark title: Sonic the Hedgehog. Developed as a vehicle for a new Sega mascot, the fluid, vibrant, cheery-tuned wonderland swiftly became the company's flagship product, inspiring over the ensuing decades an increasingly convoluted universe of TV shows, comic books, and dozens of games on a variety of systems (all documented in this frighteningly comprehensive TVTropes portal). And while in recent years the series has turned out more and more mediocre 3D and RPG efforts, the original games remain crown jewels of the 16-bit era. So why not kick off this anniversary by replaying the titles that started it all for free in your browser: Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994), Sonic & Knuckles (1994). Or click inside for music, remakes, and other fun stuff! [more inside]
Taiwan food critic jailed for criticizing food
Blogger jailed over critical restaurant review. The Taichung branch of Taiwan High Court on Tuesday sentenced a blogger who wrote that a restaurant’s beef noodles were too salty to 30 days in detention and two years of probation and ordered her to pay NT$200,000 in compensation to the restaurant.
Miskha: Keep Watch, the mixes (and more music)
A couple hours of streaming music, courtesy of the friends of Bloglin (potentially NSFW banner, if you aren't blocking scripts). Browse through the audio on Soundcloud (57 uploads to date, and most are mixes), or sort through Blogin by categories (29 Keep Watch mixes, 167 mixtapes, and 3,235 music posts [though many are reviews and don't include handy downloads]). The music is mostly electronic, with some odd jaunts into post-rock/gothic styles and even some punk. [more inside]
Jay Maisel sues Andy Baio for copyright infringement
Andy Baio: “Kind of screwed”. Baio produced a chiptune tribute to Miles Davis’ classic album Kind of Blue. He licensed all of the tracks and assigned all profits directly to the five musicians on the album.
The one thing he didn't do was check about the cover art, a pixelated rendering of the photo on the original album cover. Jay Maisel, the photographer who shot the photo in question, sued Baio for $150,000 per download plus $25,000 for DMCA violations. Baio settled for $32,500, not because he wasn’t convinced he was in the right (this almost certainly qualifies as fair use), but because it was “the least expensive option available”. [more inside]
First encounter
Hates gays, taxes, and light bulbs.
"Bachmann's entire political career has followed this exact same pattern of God-speaks-directly-to-me fundamentalism mixed with pathological, relentless, conscienceless lying. She's not a liar in the traditional way of politicians, who tend to lie dully, usefully and (they hope) believably, often with the aim of courting competing demographics at the same time. That's not what Bachmann's thing is."- Michele Bachmann's Holy War - Matt Tabbi - Rolling Stone
Not the Jim Corrigan kind of Spectre, mind you
The Invisibles and Hauntology: Amypoodle, a frequent contributor to the comics blog Mindless Ones (previously), has just completed an analytical appraisal of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles in light of Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology. Critical analysis in terms of "ghosts", things that are both present and not present in a text, seems likely to be implicit as well in the forthcoming Supergods, Morrison's appraisal of superheroes as mythology.
Broken Doll Pose
"Broken Doll" - an article by DIS Magazine that heralds a new generation of Broken Doll pose aspirants.
Spiderman feels the sting...
Do you remember the scene in Oceans 11 where the Brad Pitt takes a bunch of Hollywood kids for everything they've got? Well, they really do play poker for big money in Hollywood and it turns out that not all the kids are sheep: Tobey Maguire is at the center of a lawsuit alleging that the actor won millions of dollars in an elaborate ring of underground poker games attended to by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon...
Digitized Darwin
More than 300 heavily-annotated books from Charles Darwin's personal library have been digitized in a collaboration between Cambridge University, which holds the collection, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a project that has so far digitized nearly 50,000 titles from the natural sciences. And if you're looking for what Darwin wrote, rather than what he read, the University of Oklahoma has digitized the first edition of each of his 22 books.
What's Worse Than a Muslim Superhero? The Answer May Surprise You.
The most recent issue of Superman, 712, was supposed to have a certain storyline, but it seems at the last minute, DC Comics decided to nix that storyline and instead publish a five-year-old story about Krypto the Super-Dog. These sorts of things happen, but Comics Alliance opined (with some help from direct sources) that the change was due to DC not wanting to feature a Muslim superhero (the original story had Superman aiding "Sharif", a Muslim superhero.) The theory is, after the brouhahae surrounding the Muslim Batman and Superman renouncing his American citizenship, DC is hesitant to add any more fuel to the "DC hates America" fire.
"But," says comic-book muckraker Rich Johnston, "I have inside DC stories that are telling me the REAL reason the story got nixed." He claims it's not about Muslims, it's about...well, just see for yourself what it's allegedly really about.
Crops don't pick themselves
This year Georgia (US state) passed an Arizona-style law to make life and employment harder on its undocumented immigrants, including about 425,000 agricultural workers. In the spring, farmers argued that they would be unable to recruit new workers on time for the summer harvest with a sudden change in policy. Surprisingly, the Obama administration did not step in to block the law taking effect. The result is an estimated 46% of farms without enough workers and $300M of crops rotting in the fields. Georgia's govenor is shocked.
Your Glory Days are Over, Mr. Cthulhu
Your Glory Days Are Over, Mr. Cthulhu. "Mr Cthulhu tries to interest himself in his sons dance, but mr Cthulhus has lived a sheltered life, the intricacies of modern ballet passes him right by." (by Mattias Adolfsson, previously)
James "Whitey" Bulger found.
Ticketmaster - Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
On tour with former singer-songwriter Nathan Hubbard and his showstopper of a plan to rescue Ticketmaster's business and, for an encore, its dreadful reputation. But Hubbard is dragging three decades' worth of Ticketmaster ill will behind him, the noxious reputation he used to exploit. Ticketmonster. Ticketbastard. The Death Star. Joining the enemy made Hubbard so uncomfortable at first that when he arrived at Ticketmaster headquarters in Los Angeles, he says, "I couldn't look the logo in the eye."
Drink the Kool-Aid. Fried.
Does anyone care about our storyline?
Dexter In 60 Seconds: While the 6th season of Dexter is still a few months off, newcomers to the show might appreciate this quick summation of the series. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »