August 21, 2011
Because what do the poor need money for?
Congressional Republicans favor letting the payroll tax increase at year's end. Jeb Hensarling claims this is because "not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." However, his logic may be backward[s].
See, the king? He stay the king.
The Wire as Toy Story. The Wire as The Lion King. The Wire as Harry Potter. The Wire as a bunch of movie posters. The Wire as Trailer Park Boys (previously). The Wire as a British appliance store.
Gloop; Eyeball Foliage; a Robot with a Drinking Problem...
Cozy Flash Sunday: Follow the journey of Raven Locks Smith in The Book of Living Magic, an illustrated romp through Oddness Standing and its bordering lands, by husband-wife team Jonas and Verena Kyratzes.
Stanislaw Lem on Philip K. Dick
Stanislaw Lem on Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans. (Science Fiction Studies # 5 = Volume 2, Part 1 = March 1975; Translated from the Polish by Robert Abernathy)
Is it possible to use a 1981 IBM PC 5150 for real work?
Our intrepid reporter spends a week trying to write, browse the Web, edit photos, and even (shudder) tweet on IBM's first PC. PC World takes on the IBM 5150. Watch the original marketing video (CNET) or a modern homage to the 30 year old PC. Happy belated birthday, 5150! Wait, one of your inventors doesn't even use PCs anymore?
Peter Greenaway's "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover"
Though it is by far Peter Greenaway’s most well known film and, for all of the visceral and intellectual challenges it proposes, probably his most approachable, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover remains a difficult film to apprehend. (the beginning and the end, both NSFW)
The Medley Guitar
Vodka is tasteless going down, but it is memorable coming up.
“When it came to hard liquor . . . Americans preferred bourbon whiskey. Vodka was still mysterious, a drink yet to be discovered.” The story of how a colorless, odorless, tasteless spirit became a billion-dollar business in less than fifty years. (SLWeeklyStandard)
First Air Flight 6560 Crash
First Air flight 6560 crashed yesterday in Canada's High Arctic. Fifteen passengers were on board, including four crew and eleven passengers. All the crew members were killed in the crash, while three pasengers survived.
The plane crashed five miles from the airport in Resolute. Rescue efforts began immediately, as hundreds of military personnel were in Resolute participating in the annual Arctic military exercise Operation Nanook, an operation which includes an exercise in which military personnel respond to a mock air disaster. As a result, military helicopters, medical personnel, Canadian Coast Guard, and local fire and medical crews were on site and ready to respond immediately.
Kristian Bezuidenhout introduces Mozart's fortepiano
James Taylor gets out a tackle box, does his nails
People really like to hate James Taylor, but he's doing some excellent guitar lessons on his website. Well, there's one guitar lesson and one lesson on fingernail care.
Intriguing analysis for the lead up to and ending of "The Thing"
Was Child's Infected? (Part1) (Part 2) An in depth analysis of John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, focusing on the alien assimilation timeline, and, perhaps more intriguingly, an ending that may be less ambiguous than you would initially believe.
Taking some Boris bikes on a continental holiday.
Taking the Boris Bikes to Paris. One of London mayor Boris Johnson's initiatives has been the installation of a bike hire service across the capital controversially sponsored by a well known bank. Stretching the hire terms and conditions to their limit, local bloggers Ian and Tom decide to take them across the channel briefly to meet their continental cousins at the Parisian Vélib.
Live and Die by Shades of Grey
Robert Earl Keen is a country songwriter and storyteller, with an unusually good guitarist named Rich Brotherton. [more inside]
Obscure cold war nuclear projects: the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program
The Cold War resulted in a rather large number of interesting military research programs. One of these with which I'm familiar is the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program, which ran from 1946 to 1961. The basic idea? Modify a bomber (such as a B-36 bomber), creating an aircraft that could theoretically remain aloft for weeks at a time without refueling, much like ballistic submarines? The challenge? Shielding. Shielding the reactor alone would make the aircraft prohibitively heavy, so the idea was to primarily shield the crew compartment instead of the reactor. However, to study the concept, and evaluate various lightweight shielding concepts, two very novel and unique nuclear reactors were built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory: the Bulk Shielding Reactor, a novel "swimming pool reactor", and the Tower Shielding Reactor, an unshielded reactor that was hung 200' in the air dangling between 310' steel towers. While the program successfully demonstrated several of the concepts (including a nuclear-powered gas turbine engine running in Idaho, and a modified B-36 that carried a nuclear reactor but wasn't propelled by it (mentioned above), the program was canceled in 1961 due to feasibility and budget concerns.
leakymails.com
Google's Latin America blog reports that millions of websites are blocked because an Argentinean court ordered ISPs to block leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com, which many ISPs implemented by blocking the IP address 216.239.32.2 rather than tweaking their DNS responses.
OpenLeaks' Daniel Domscheit-Berg has claimed he destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files held by WikiLeaks to protect sources, when he felt WikiLeaks could no longer protect them. Among the files destroyed was supposedly the U.S. government's no-fly list.
OpenLeaks' Daniel Domscheit-Berg has claimed he destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files held by WikiLeaks to protect sources, when he felt WikiLeaks could no longer protect them. Among the files destroyed was supposedly the U.S. government's no-fly list.
Veterans and PTSD
Army vet with PTSD sought the treatment he needed by taking hostages – but got jail instead. "Fifteen months of carnage in Iraq had left the 29-year-old debilitated by post-traumatic stress disorder. But despite his doctor’s urgent recommendation, the Army failed to send him to a Warrior Transition Unit for help. The best the Department of Veterans Affairs could offer was 10-minute therapy sessions — via videoconference. So, early on Labor Day morning last year, after topping off a night of drinking with a handful of sleeping pills, Quinones barged into Fort Stewart’s hospital, forced his way to the third-floor psychiatric ward and held three soldiers hostage, demanding better mental health treatment." [Via] [more inside]
The Food Riots of 2013
Researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute say they've uncovered a pattern that triggers riots wherever it's found. What is that pattern? The price of food. When it rises to a certain level, social unrest & violence are soon to follow. According to their calculations the food price index is due to peak in August of 2013, assuming no corrective action is taken. The original paper is here.
Montreal Street Art: The Flickr Pool
Hello, my name is Tara and I scream my own name during sex
From 1999 to 2003, the largely-female UK comedy trope Smack The Pony had a series of short skits based on video dating ads. Youtube user myLastTears has edited them together into a supercut: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 [more inside]
Tag teaming Ambassadors
A husband and wife ambassador team leave soon for Armenia. The UK has found a solution to the challenge of "trailing" foreign service spouses. [more inside]
We don't have to worry about ISK for a very long time, now.
Phaser Inc., a trading company in space-based MMO EVE online, have absconded with a record-breaking 1 trillion ISK and revealed themselves as a giant ponzi scheme in a remarkably frank open letter. Their haul of the in-game currency translates to just over $50,000, or 242 years-worth, of PLEX (traded for playing time). [via RockPaperShotgun] [more inside]
Lux Æterna, Disney Edition
Requiem for a Mermaid. Requiem for a Lion King. Requiem for Pocahontas. Requiem for a Hunchback. (Previously: Requiem for Ferris Bueller, Toy Story Requiem.)
Want To Go For A Hike?
The perfect location for the perfect crime. Due to a loophole in the US Constitution there is an area of Yellowstone Park where you may be able to get away with a major crime. U Michigan Prof Brian C Kalt looks into this loophole and gauges your chance at success. Someone has tried. [more inside]
"She understands everything. There's so much more in her than she lets us see."
Three years later, 'The Girl in the Window' learns to connect. An update on the progress of Danielle Lierow, a so-called "feral child" who was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning special report in the St. Petersburg Times. Unlike another famously neglected young girl, Dani has not been the subject of intense scientific scrutiny, and appears to be living a normal family life as a well-loved special needs child--albeit one in a family in a rural area where resources, and access to services via Medicaid, are sometimes limited. [more inside]
Rhythmic Gymnastics With Ball... that is all.
Mythundersthood
Why Africa is leaving Europe behind: Africans are relishing something of a reversal in roles. The former colonial powers in Europe are wrestling with debt crises, austerity budgets, rising unemployment and social turmoil. By contrast much of sub-Saharan Africa can point to robust growth, better balanced books and rising capital inflows. There is an opportunity in this novel scenario: for Africa to assert itself on the global stage, and for European countries to take advantage of their historic footprint in Africa by stimulating commercial expansion to their south. But it is far from clear either side will grasp it. Recently.
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