September 10, 2008
personal virtues
Teapot Dome 2008 -- "The report also detailed cozy relationships between energy companies and other officials in the royalty-in-kind program office. Some 19 officials — a third of the staff — took gifts from oil and gas executives, some with “prodigious frequency,” it said." [more inside]
Tufte x jQuery = awesome
Craig Mod, who you may remember was the developer of geographic news attention index buzztracker.org, has developed a new interface to the 2008 election: Everymoment Now. [more inside]
Dust Jackets from American and European Books, 1926-1947
Over 2500 dust jackets of American and European books from the years 1926 through 1947. Here are some that caught my eye: Burned Evidence, If You Know What I Mean, Ikaria, Murder for the Millions, Dream of the Red Chamber and A Farewell to Arms. Finally, I can't help but link to a German book about Russian book jackets, the subject of an old post by Alvy Ampersand.
Open-source online exhibit platform
Omeka is a newly available, open-source web platform, bringing good-looking, functional online exhibitry within reach of smaller museums, libraries, and arts groups. From the Center for History and New Media.
Not Potter. But smarter?
Crushed fans of Harry Potter expressed outrage upon learning they must wait another 8 months for the newest film installment. The timing of the announcement rather handily coincides with the release of Scholastic's "39 Clues" -- a book whose blend of interactive intrigue is supposed to take over young readers' imaginations where Harry leaves off. [more inside]
What makes people vote Republican?
What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress.
Your chocolate fingers
Little Hands - Documentary Short
"Little Hands offers a glimpse into the lives of a group of deaf children at a Danish 'fritidshjem,' a recreation centre where they meet after school."
A fascinating short documentary, approximately 17minutes.
A fascinating short documentary, approximately 17minutes.
Dew drops
Revamp
If you use Flickr, your home page is about to change. It looks more like a social networking site than ever. [more inside]
Canadian Federal Election Thread
Harper has called a federal election in Canada for October 14, 2008, ignoring his own fixed election date law. Polls predict another minority Conservative government. It will be the third national election in just over four years. [more inside]
He didn't call the company, but he did write up a headline.
"News-flow" analysis is used by some automated trading systems to buy and sell stock based on stories circulating in the media. United Airlines (UAUA) stock plummeted the other day. And it plummeted fast. Like, lost %75 of it's value in 20 minutes fast. The problem? The news-flow that triggered this sell off was based on a mis-labeled story from 2002. via /.
She's the ****ing Batgirl
DC Comics' All-Star Batman and Robin series (from creators Frank Miller and Jim Lee) has taken quite a bit of heat here and there, but it's not the dubious quality of the book that has its publisher urging retailers to pulp its newest issue: It's some censored dialogue that managed somehow to not quite get censored. [more inside]
Consider my opinion changed.
Surge? More like... something that rhymes with surge.
The military surge in Iraq is failing. Sure, violence in the country is down significantly, but that's as much due to the Sunni Awakening, which began significantly before the surge got going in 2007. Unfortunately, everyone, particularly the McCain campaign, seems to have forgotten that the goal of the surge was to provide political stability, and it totally hasn't. [more inside]
Put the South in your mouth
Southern Rock may have made a loud entrance into popular culture a few decades ago, but it certainly didn't end there. Many bands have continued the tradition of adding a real southern flavour to their music by combining blues, boogie, country and rock, while often hitting us with dual-guitar attacks. Although some are more often classified as alt-country, their sounds can range from having a heavy country influence, to being a lot more rocking. [more inside]
A damn fine cup of free entertainment.
Surname Surfin' Sur-prises
World Names Profiler is a pretty amazing Flash tool, that allows you to see where other people with your last name are distributed across the world, in frequency per million, right down to the city and regional level. Fun to pair with the NameVoyager.
Interactive Singles Map shows you where the ladies at
Remember that disheartening map that cataloged the ratio of unmarried men to women per city, wherein the East coast was Single Lady Central and the West coast was a Boystown? Now there's an interactive version where you can adjust for age range, which dramatically affects the results. [VIA PROJECTS]
UFO or Solar Car?
Marcelo da Luz has been attracting a lot of attention with his snazzy solar car. He's hoping to set a new world record by driving the car from Buffalo, NY, to Inuvik, Northwest Territories.
Needs. More. Cowbell.
Needs. More. Cowbell. Morecowbell takes any MP3 file and adds synchronized cowbell along with random Christopher Walken clips. For example, David Bowie or Coldplay.
The Matanuska Colony: The New Deal in Alaska
The 'Dirty Thirties' saw farmers hit with the double-whammy of the Great Depression and the ecological disaster of the Dust bowl years.
"In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered 203 families from the hardest-hit areas of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan the chance to start fresh in a new land, in a fertile Alaskan valley with the melodic name Matanuska."
"It was heady, fine-sounding stuff on paper. Picked from relief rolls in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, the prospective colonists knew their Promised Land was a wilderness, but the Government was going to turn the wilderness overnight into an Eden with running water, radios, a cinema. It was going to set each family up on fine 40-acre farms with every necessity, many a luxury, 30 years to pay." It didn't quite work out as well as they'd hoped.thirties' saw many farmers in the United States [more inside]
We don't put out
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is a long-lost, never-released movie about an all-girl punk band. Since its non-release on cable outlets in the mid-1980s, it has been credited with inspiring the riot grrrl movement, and it counts among its fans Courtney Love, Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vaill, the late filmmaker Sarah Jacobson, and, inexplicably, Jon Bon Jovi (who dated star Diane Lane in the 1980s). Twenty-seven years after Paramount execs shelved the film, Rhino will be putting out legitimately releasing the film on DVD. At a recent screening in conjunction with Allison Anders's Don't Knock the Rock festival, star Diane Lane had this to say: "Twenty-seven years in the making!" [more inside]
A day in the park
Is it a slide or a large uncircumsised appendage? Advances in playground technology - what will they think of next? (via BuzzFeed)
"forward, forward I say"
"Fog of War" cited by United States Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad. He was speaking to journalists to clarify reports concerning his unauthorised contacts with foreign government officials, among them Asif Ali Zardari; a then contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan.
Earlier this year he was being touted as a possible successor to Hamid Karzai as President of Afghanistan as seen in these two articles.
So who is Zalmay Khalilzad? Neo con and oil businessman. [more inside]
Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up
All hail the energy drink! Potentially dating back as far as early 1900s Scotland, the energy drink has evolved from a nasty-tasting "health tonic" into a brightly-colored and supercharged fuel for body and/or mind. [more inside]
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