June 9, 2008
Don't be a sitting duck
Subivor - People should have more protection than a necktie, their shirt or paper towel to cover their mouth, nose and eyes. They need Moist Towelettes too. [via]
Think you can do better than Congress? Prove it.
No, No, Nostalgia!
NetClassixFilter: The next time you're standing clueless in the greeting cards section of your local drugstore franchise, you'll be wishing you'd visited the Gallery of Unfortunate Greeting Cards instead. For all your holiday needs: Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Weddings, 4th of July, Hallowe'en, Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and of course, Washington's Birthday. [via Cap'n Wacky] [more inside]
Impeach Dubya.
Impeach Bush. Dennis Kucinich has introduced 35 articles of Impeachment against George W Bush on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Health Inequalities
It's like gunning the engine of a car. The recent documentary Unnatural Causes examines the health consequences societal inequalities have on people. The PBS series has a couple dozen embeddable video clips exploring atomic testing, Native American Health, Latino Health and more. One clip examines why when African women come to the U.S., within one generation, their daughters suffer higher rates of premature babies and poorer birth outcomes.
One group is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into alleviating health disparities in 14 communities across the country. [more inside]
Museum of Nature
High Water Everywhere
For decades, showman Tommy Bartlett ran a Wisconsin Dells "Thrill Show" featuring waterskiers performing all sorts of stunts on Lake Delton. His bumperstickers were on the station wagons of tens of thousands of families across the midwest. This summer, Lake Delton is no more.
Mr. Buffett makes a bet
Warren Buffett bets a hedge fund manager $1 million that the S&P 500 will outperform hedge funds over the next 10 years. Buffett has argued vociferously, sometimes using parables, that the smartest way for the average person to invest is to put money in simple no-load index funds. The bet is being overseen by the Long Now Foundation's Long Bets, where previously Ted Danson has won a bet about the Red Sox and Brian Eno one one politics. And there's more on the Long Now blog, which is generally interesting reading.
iPhone 2.0
Gamers rejoice
At last, a study on video games that is grounded in common sense. Two scientists say their results can best be summed up in one word: relax. It's okay for kids to play videogames. What's more, parents can enjoy gaming with their kids. The relationship between videogames and violence is anything but causal. One interesting finding: those middle school boys most likely to bully others are the ones who play no videogames at all.
Boss Bitching
Boss Bitching is a user driven social content website that allows anonymous postings of stories about bosses.
Soviet Jazz
When people think of Soviet culture in the Stalin era, jazz usually isn't the first music to come to mind. But it was there, and some of it was pretty good, whether adapting Western standards,
partying with a Russian twist, or just being adventurous. If that's a little too old-school for you, try some Soviet funk.
HeroWorship Filter
Is Barack Obama the Messiah? After all, it may explain the logo. Maybe he's just a light-worker, "who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet." This could just be all hootenany from the press, like Chris Matthews, who called BO the "New Testament." But, as always, there are unbelievers.
Spock is Greek?
Star Trek: The Animated Series + Shatner (previously) "singing" (previ|ously) Common People (previously) = THIS.
100 Movies/100 Days
Stomp Tokyo's Scott Hamilton has completed 100 Movies/100 Days, in which he watched and "reviewed"... uh, 100 movies in 100 days. Many of the reviews are scarcely a paragraph, but quite a few are witty and insightful (particularly the last line of his Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review).
X-Ray of a Reader
Ever used a slice of bacon as a bookmark? How about a hundred dollar bill? For every reader who has grabbed something close at hand and slipped it into a book, it seems there's a patron of a used book store who has found it.
Sucking CO2
Sucking CO2 out of the air has long been a holy grail for solving global warming; Richard Branson has promised $25m to anyone who succeeds. Of course it's already been done, but the amount of energy required doesn't make it net carbon positive. Now a team in Arizona, led by Klaus Lacknet under the company of Global Research Technologies, says it has made a significant breakthrough that massively reduces the amount of energy required - the "project has reached the stage where it is quite clear we can do it." The planned prototype, which will be finished in two years, will cost $200,000 USD, be smaller than a shipping container and be capable of eliminating around 1 ton of CO2. Even if it works many hurdles remain but it portends a cooler future for air-capture technology.
Loudness war
"With each passing year records have gotten louder and less dynamic...This all comes down to the moment a consumer hears a record, and the fear that if the record is more dynamic, the consumer won't know to just turn up the volume."
Is Ben Bernanke a finally coming out of the closet?
While the wild crowd call it "Woodstock for Central Bankers", others get festivities off on a sour note, referring to it as "Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy".
Regardless of what your invitation to this party reads, it starts today, Monday June 9th on the 50th anniversary of The Phillips Curve, a previously discredited forecasting tool which may be revived by Ben Bernanke at The Federal Reserve. [more inside]
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