1788 MetaFilter comments by Rothko (displaying 1 through 50)


Newsfilter : Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor to the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri, puts out a call for revisionist Holocaust cartoons. Israeli settlers may plan to riot. Well, continue rioting, anyway.
comment posted at 8:58 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 9:08 PM on Feb-6-06

As a public service, tagged mapping can be used for much more than finding pizza parlors and Craigslist rental entries. Here it gets used to plot criminal activity, like bike thefts and other crimes in West Philadelphia and the larger Philadelphia area, as well as Chicago.
comment posted at 3:16 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 3:42 PM on Feb-6-06

Jerome Bettis is a hometown hero. After "leading" (OK, he doesn't play much anymore) his Pittsburgh Steelers to Super Bowl XL in his native Detroit, the locals came out to celebrate the future Hall of Famer. Last week was declared "Jerome Bettis Week" in Detroit and Bettis was awarded the key to the city. The last person to receive such an honor from the city? Saddam Hussein in 1980.
comment posted at 9:52 AM on Feb-6-06


The State Department's campaign against misinformation and propaganda. Before you comment on the irony of it all, it is worth a read. Included are a careful, Snopes-like debunking of various rumors: Hugo Chavez's "Plan Balboa documents," the old 4,000 Jews and the WTC rumor, the use of chemical weapons in the Korean War, and some I hadn't heard of (the US to take over the rainforest?). Also information on how to spot disinformation, and attacks on the credibility of a few sites. Too bad that the US information services don't have the credibility they used to, but still worth reading.
comment posted at 7:36 PM on Feb-5-06

We Are All Danes Now is a great editorial run today in the Boston Globe. Why does radical Islam suffer such a fundamental disconnect with the rest of the world?
comment posted at 5:33 PM on Feb-5-06
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Feb-5-06
comment posted at 7:33 AM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 12:27 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 1:00 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 1:22 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 1:44 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 1:49 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 2:00 PM on Feb-6-06
comment posted at 2:15 PM on Feb-6-06


Thanks For Mutton. Prince Charles, at a dinner for the Mutton Renaissance Club, pushed for a revival of the meat that has tragically "fallen out of favour over the years". Amongst other things, he noted that "links in the mutton supply chain needed to be strengthened." But first, mutton needs a makeover.
comment posted at 11:33 AM on Feb-4-06

When you really, really want your email to arrive at its destination: now you gotta pay postage. Another brilliant, forward-looking idea for monetizing-the-InternetTM from the wizards at AOL and Yahoo.
comment posted at 11:48 AM on Feb-4-06
comment posted at 12:49 PM on Feb-4-06

Newsfilter: $75,000 in Bull Semen Is Stolen From Frederick Farm. Oy Vey. (via)
comment posted at 10:17 AM on Feb-4-06

Reflected in the worsened respiratory health of NYC residents (via the WTC Health Registry), a federal judge ruled (NYT; bugmenot) former Bush administration EPA chief and NJ governor Christine Todd Whitman misled New York City residents about air quality after the attacks of 9/11. Whether or not the then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency was pressured by Bush economic policy director Lawrence Lindsey to "get the financial markets open quickly" (longer 9/11 commission report) despite concerns, her PR consulting firm continues to do greenwashing for petrochemical corporations with very poor environmental records, including FMC, responsible for 136 Superfund sites across the country.
comment posted at 11:41 AM on Feb-4-06
comment posted at 12:44 PM on Feb-4-06


Please ensure that you have your copybook at hand. Calcium, you may know it as Jinny, or Ninny, or Peter's Peck, but whatever you call it, Calcium, valency 1, atomic weight 44 is one of the most important elements known to mankind.
comment posted at 11:45 PM on Feb-3-06

"Drove my Chevy to the levee..."? That's a lawsuit. "Pass the Courvoisier"? Yup. Lawsuit too. Artwork using Barbie Dolls? Lawsuit again... It's all part of the Trademark Dilution Revision Act, which would eliminate the non-commercial "fair use" protections of trademarks in art, literature, and speech-- To amend the Trademark Act of 1946 with respect to dilution by blurring or tarnishment. It goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the 16th, and there's a large roster of groups fighting it, including the American Library Association, EFF, and more, saying that consumers as well as artists would be preventing from exercising their free speech rights unless it's amended.
comment posted at 11:15 PM on Feb-3-06

Dave Chappelle Comes Clean On 'Oprah' "Chappelle said he left the show, months after signing a $50 million deal for its third and fourth seasons, because he felt manipulated by the people around him."
comment posted at 9:17 PM on Feb-3-06

“Wouldn’t you know, the kid they pick to play tramps is the only good girl in Hollywood.”
Before Myrna Loy rose to stardom with Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man (both 1934), she was often relegated to playing vamps, mistresses, and other assorted flavors of wicked women. Then, after 80 movies playing mostly bad girls, Montana native Loy became “the perfect wife.” “Men Must Marry Myrna Loy” clubs were formed around the country. She and Clark Gable, in a poll conducted by Ed Sullivan, were voted by 20 million of the nation’s moviegoers as The King and Queen of Hollywood. She was FDR's favorite actress, and John Dillinger died just to see her new movie. A staunch anti-Nazi since the mid-Thirties (to MGM's dismay, Hitler promptly banned her films from the lucrative German market), wondered aloud in the press why blacks were always given servants' roles, and was the first major star to buck the studios in a contract dispute (the issue: equal pay for equal work. She was making half what William Powell was, didn't like it and quit work for nearly a year until MGM capitulated). When WWII broke out she quit Hollywood and worked full time for the Red Cross, and helped run a Naval Auxilary Canteen. More inside.
comment posted at 9:21 AM on Feb-4-06

Rumsfeld likens Chavez to Hitler - expels diplomat in tit for tat
meanwhile the American Family Association calls for a boycott of Venezuelan owned Citgo (obviously encouraging more support for gulf arab regimes). The Venezuelan grandmother I recently spent a Sunday with was very happy with Chavez - and proud of him despite his faults and corruption in the country. What's with Rummy and friends?
comment posted at 8:22 PM on Feb-3-06

Is is just me, or have Superbowl ads gotten way too predictable. Here's hoping this year offers something new. 2006 brings Fabio sinking a gondola, an approved(!) GoDaddy ad, the first ever bilingual ad, and the commercials being offered on DVD and PodCast. Also keep an eye out for muppets, macgyver and machetes.

I hate linking to heavy, but they have all the banned ads, some of which are funny (especially the anti-mac one) and some were just made to be banned. You can see previous years' ads at iFilm.
comment posted at 6:19 AM on Feb-3-06

Alito's First Vote. In his first significant act on the Supreme Court, Justice Alito splits with his conservative colleagues, and votes to refuse to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection. You can read the (very short) order on page four of yesterday's order sheet [pdf]. More commentary at SCOTUSblog, and discussion of Alito's approach to the death penalty is available at Sentencing Law & Policy.
comment posted at 12:45 PM on Feb-2-06

When American expat, Thai silk king, and former OSS (now CIA) agent James H.W. Thompson disappeared without a trace in the highlands of Malaysia on Easter 1967, he left behind a remarkable house in Bangkok, a major silk exporting company, and a lot of questions. There are many theories about his disappearance, but there's little evidence to support any of them.
comment posted at 11:15 AM on Feb-2-06

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German thinker who came to America in 1933 after losing his job for opposing the national socialism movement. Tillich was at once a protestant theologian and an existentialist philosopher and humanist who attempted to intellectualize religion and bring it to contemporary audiences in the age of science. His brilliant writings and speeches would typically weave together biblical passages with discussions of philosophy and science. In this most famous work, The Courage to Be, Tillich laid out his case of how man can resolve the existential crisis of facing non-being. In echoes of Soren Kierkegaard and Freud, Tillich attempted to explain how man could resolve the fear of nothingness with the Courage to Be in the face of Non-being. Throughout his life, Tillich's ultimate concern was to try to help man understand the real value of faith and meaning by divorcing the concepts from the myths and the religious and social dogmas which cramp the mind of modern man.
comment posted at 1:51 PM on Feb-2-06

"The iPod’s a great product. However our experience in dealing with them, as regards licensing music for iTunes, has been quite depressing." Coldcut member and indie label Ninja Tune co-founder Matt Black in a pixelsurgeon interview about the new album, the relative relaxation on sample licensing, and iTunes. For another independent perspective on iTunes see The 99c Question - addressing the pressures on iTunes from major labels to raise prices.
comment posted at 10:14 AM on Feb-2-06
comment posted at 10:33 AM on Feb-2-06
comment posted at 11:54 AM on Feb-2-06

As you may know, Cindy Sheehan was arrested at the SOTU speech, for wearing a shirt that said "2245 Dead. How many more?" She's not alone in being arrested for silently expressing sentiments against the current regime. Today, The Capitol Police are dropping all charges against Sheehan because, as they admit, they never should have removed or arrested her because she broke no laws or rules.
comment posted at 9:10 AM on Feb-2-06

How to win the New Yorker caption contest every time. (Possibly NSFW, Previous contest discussion here, link via Feministe)
comment posted at 8:52 AM on Feb-2-06

"Well, a lot of people have said DEA is in the dark on these issues, but that is a little bit much." (.doc; long) Despite a power outage, an FDA-lead panel discusses how to manage abuse of the infamous opiod painkiller OxyContin. Purdue Pharma, its sole manufacturer, had tried to bring its more powerful successor Palladone (.pdf) to the market, before "dosage jump" issues lead to the drug being pulled by the FDA. Meanwhile, trucks loaded with $3mil dollars of "oxys" continue to get hijacked for a $15mil street turnover, despite GPS tracking and other high-tech security measures used for cigarette distribution. Doctors invariably shuffle pills sideways despite tamper-proof presciption pads (long). Purdue only stops selling more profitable and addictive double-doses of OxyContin after government pressure. On the level of the street, addicts who find themselves too tolerant to the drug find their needs more than adequately met when they can buy many more hits of heroin for the same cost. Philadelphia-based writer Jeff Deeney outlines some of these fascinating issues and more as he looks into how race, cost, manufacturing and distribution factors in OxyContin abuse invariably drive the addict to cheaper and more easily accessible heroin.
comment posted at 8:34 AM on Feb-2-06
comment posted at 8:39 AM on Feb-2-06
comment posted at 8:49 AM on Feb-2-06
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Feb-2-06
comment posted at 10:11 AM on Feb-2-06

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald says emails relevant to the Valerie Plame leak investigation have gone missing from the White House. "In an adundance of caution," Fitzgerald wrote [PDF] to "Scooter" Libby's lawyers on January 23, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." Might this help explain why Alberto Gonzales -- now the Attorney General, and lately so busy mustering arguments to assert that Bush's NSA domestic-spying program is "legal" -- waited 12 hours before instructing White House staff to preserve documents relevant to the leak investigation after telling Andrew Card about it? Shades of the late, great yoga instructor, Rose Mary Woods. [More on Plame here.]
comment posted at 2:31 PM on Feb-1-06

And suddenly, in my memory, everything turns real: the summer breeze of Izu, the lazy sun of an early afternoon, the stale smell of water standing in the rice fields. For a moment it is that day in 1956, 37 years ago, and I am standing there, 33 years old myself. See—just to the left of the camera, just out of range. Here comes Mifune running, and there stands my younger ghost, right of that pillar, just off screen... And the summer sun beats down and the fresh breeze of Izu bathes my face, and then the story continues and the film ends and the lights go up and the students open their notebooks and I stand up and began talking about the influence of the Noh.
Donald Richie (previous post), the worldwide authority on Japanese film, shares his movie memories.
comment posted at 12:40 PM on Feb-1-06

Cindy Sheehan arrested for wearing anti-war T-shirt at State of the Union Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush's State of the Union address.

"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman, adding that Sheehan was arrested for unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.


Remind me not to wear my "Impeach Bush" button on my next trip to D.C.
comment posted at 7:34 PM on Jan-31-06
comment posted at 7:55 PM on Jan-31-06
comment posted at 8:07 PM on Jan-31-06

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