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June 2005 Archives
June 30
The
Book of Kells is one of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts ever made, a fusion of Celtic motifs, Germanic forms and Christian themes. We can view the image gallerys, or even visit in person, but it's a soulfully thin experience compared to actually holding its weight and turning the pages. Enter the world of
Facsimile Books, a faithful re-creation of the original to the extent that it is virtually indistinguishable from the original, where price is no concern, editions are limited, and can cost $20,000 or more and often sell-out quickly.
Finns Fine Books is a leading distributor. A list of
publishers, mostly European fine arts craftsmen.
posted by stbalbach at 9:52 PM PST - 16 comments
"The stars are veiled. Something stirs in the East. A sleepless malice. The eye of the enemy is moving.
He is HERE."
posted by keswick at 6:12 PM PST - 15 comments
Steffen Jahn photography
- A Flash site with a wide variety of photos: commercial work for exotic cars, flowers, planes and landscapes. Personal favorites are 'motorsport' in the 'stills' section and the 'little white things' section.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 1:45 PM PST - 9 comments
This game rated JC for eternal salvation, curing of the sick, and excessive scourging at the pillar.
Ok, this is getting ridiculous...
a Christian videogame about the rapture and the tribulations? WTF? I guess I know which side I'd be on.
Seriously, though, do these people realize that every single new Christian-centric product is nothing more than a honeypot for harvesting names, addresses, and email addresses? Just like the GOP, people realize there's
money to be made in marketing to Christians. But, the second you sign up, I'm sure you get added to one of the GOP's
spam farms direct mail providers and sold to the appropriate politicrit or ideological demagogue.
Just to show you I'm not full of it, look at who's in the databases of the
Omega List and
Response Unlimited...
Advance Ticket Buyers for the Passion of the Christ,
Peace Frogs (what?),
Y2K Preparedness Buyers, the
current (68k) and
former (19m) subscribers to the Washington Times (aka Moonie Times), and of course, the
Terri Schiavo Donor List.
Take a look at who else is in there -
Limbaugh,
Newsmax,
Fortune Magazine,
Human Events,
Guns and Ammo Magazine,
Oliver North,
the Heritage Foundation,
Linda Tripp donors,
G. Gordon Liddy's Toughguy Database, and
the buyers of the Left Behind Video Series. No wonder we always lose...every single rightwing entity is in there! Via
BoingBoing.
posted by rzklkng at 11:54 AM PST - 53 comments
Why does the National Council of Churches hate America?
The NCC -- a coalition of 36 Christian denominations -- makes a firm statement against the war in Iraq: "This year our nation is at war as we observe the 4th of July, a day that honors those founders who spoke out for independence from tyranny. Today in Iraq a cruel dictator has been deposed, yet the suffering of the Iraqi people continues. Mandated elections have been held, yet the future of Iraq remains as uncertain as ever. Day by day the cost of this war for the United States, for Iraq, for peace grows clearer. No weapons of mass destruction have been found; no link to the attacks on September 11, 2001 has been shown. It has become clear that the rationale for invasion was at best a tragic mistake, at worst a clever deception." Mainstream Christians are starting to take back Christianity from the
theocrats.
posted by digaman at 10:59 AM PST - 74 comments
Detached
a gorgeous comic based on the author's experiences with having a detached retina and going through eye surgery.
posted by mathowie at 10:40 AM PST - 23 comments
Next Act Won't Be as Easy as the First.
Gates once conceded: "Google is still perfect, the bubble is floating and they can do everything. You should buy their stock at any price. And just this week they affirmed this statement with their release of Google Earth, showing the world that their scope is beyond just websites. But is google growing too ambitious? is this desire to "search all of the world's information" signaling doom?
posted by merc at 10:06 AM PST - 22 comments
Got Beer?
Which came first, the Stella Artois or the Ostrich? Does this makes sense
after I drink a few Stellas?
posted by spicynuts at 9:06 AM PST - 30 comments
Michael Jackson is guilty
of being
totally excellent in this fantastic whirlwind tour of NES games (a la
Sega Fantasy VI); MJ herein imposes his 16-bit self on a huge amount of games including but not limited to Megaman, Kung Fu, Ice Climber, Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3, Dragon Warrior, Arkanoid, Track and Field, Spelunker, Final Fantasy and more. If you know the Japanese language + games, clue us in. (Flash and hardcore midi dance music warning)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:55 AM PST - 24 comments
To be successful, an occupation such as that contemplated after any hostilities in Iraq requires much detailed interagency planning, many forces, multi-year military commitment, and a national commitment to nation-building... To conduct their share of the essential tasks that must be accomplished to reconstruct an Iraqi state, military forces will be severely taxed in military police, civil affairs, engineer, and transportation units, in addition to possible severe security difficulties. The administration of an Iraqi occupation will be complicated by deep religious, ethnic, and tribal differences which dominate Iraqi society. U.S. forces may have to manage and adjudicate conflicts among Iraqis that they can barely comprehend. An exit strategy will require the establishment of political stability, which will be difficult to achieve given Iraq's fragmented population, weak political institutions, and propensity for rule by violence. From the US Army War College in February 2003:
Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (PDF). From June 2005, Anthony Cordesman's analysis of factual misstatements in the President's recent address:
Truth and spin on Iraq. Foresight is 20/20. Irresponsibility and mendacity are timeless.
posted by y2karl at 6:29 AM PST - 44 comments
Legitimate Job Test or Something Wacky?
H.J. Cummins of the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes about personality tests--never meant to screen job applicants--being used or misused by employers.
Test sample items:
"I see things or animals or people around me that others do not see."
"My soul sometimes leaves my body."
"I have a habit of counting things that are not important, such as bulbs on electric signs, and so forth."
posted by etaoin at 5:26 AM PST - 38 comments
Republicans are threatening
to revoke Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption. Not because of the
steroid scandals, or the numerous abuses of the monopoly to
shakedown cities for publicly financed stadiums.
No, the GOP is attacking baseball because
George Soros, a liberal, might buy a team and he would be a "polarizing figure."
Oh yeah,
Fred Malek, a non-polarizing, competing bidder is a GOP fundraiser and a aide who compiled a list of members of the "Jewish Cabal" at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Nixon.
This injection of politics into baseball seems
eerily familiar to me...
posted by hipnerd at 1:12 AM PST - 44 comments
June 29
Leave My Child Alone!
--a new group teaching parents how to stop the very intrusive recruitment tactics of the military, including getting their kids off
the Pentagon's list of 30 million potential recruits,:
(...a joint effort of the Defense Department and a private contractor, disclosed last week, to build a database of 30 million 16- to 25-year-olds, complete with Social Security numbers, racial and ethnic identification codes, grade point averages and phone numbers. The database is to be scoured for youngsters that the Pentagon believes can be persuaded to join the military...), and getting your kids off the School district records lists (
School districts are required under Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act to release student records to military recruiters or risk losing funding, but they are also required to inform families of their Opt Out rights. Notification varies wildly across districts, and it's a bit of a crapshoot whether families know or not.)
More on this from Bob Herbert here:
The Army's Hard Sell
posted by amberglow at 7:43 PM PST - 68 comments
A
new design for the "Freedom Tower"-- the skyscraper that will form the heart of the
rebuilt World Trade Center in New York-- has been unveiled. The new tower
will be slimmer, straighter and
more conventional, it will be set farther back from the street, and it will be
placed atop a mammoth, 200-foot concrete-and-metal pedestal designed to repel explosions.
posted by keswick at 6:09 PM PST - 63 comments
David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon University
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
The
author of
Infinite Jest attempts to explain what is wrong with your brain's default settings.
posted by Edible Energy at 5:25 PM PST - 26 comments
Freegans
!
Because so much is trashed in our society, a freegan lifestyle can be one of great abundance -- food, books, magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos, music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing, rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, pet care products, games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and just about any other type of consumer good can be found in the discards of retailers, institutions, and individuals simply by rummaging through their trash bins, dumpsters, and trash bags.
Previously mentioned here. (via memepool)
posted by es_de_bah at 4:35 PM PST - 63 comments
Postage stamps with a side of race baiting.
The Mexican postal service released a series of five stamps today featuring a 1940's era cartoon of a fat lipped jug eared negro child, known for his hapless adventures, and his Aunt Jemima (classic edition, not modern sassy Jemima) mother.
posted by jonson at 2:36 PM PST - 28 comments
Officer in Charge Responds to Buhriz Allegations
Army Ranger 1LT TJ Grider in a letter to
Cryptome responds to allegations that his unit may have killed Iraqi children and then planted weapons before taking photos. The photos and allegations were discussed on Metafilter
here.
When my medic said the wounded were stable we picked them up, threw them over our backs, and moved with them and the detainee over 200 meters to the road where we had coordinated for a field ambulance, at this time we were still taking fire but could not locate the origin. We saved the lives of the very kids that had shot at us and attempted to kill us. And what you all do not realize is that the detainee admitted to an interpreter that he and his friends had attacked us and had been paid to fight by a local insurgency leader.
Although I feel it is not warranted, I welcome any investigation into the events that day. I am confident that my actions were right and in accordance with the Geneva Convention and the laws of land warfare. I hope you feel comfortable with your actions, Mr. Kraft. You have managed to skip any investigation and associated an honorable, very accomplished platoon with a crime that did not exist.
posted by MLIS at 12:28 PM PST - 92 comments
Page after page of late 50s/early 60s pop posters, advertisements and more, designed by the studio of
Lefor-Openo,
which consisted of Marie-Claire Lefort and Marie-Francine Oppeneau.
Via Papel Continuo
posted by iconomy at 10:06 AM PST - 6 comments
Negative eco-tourism from orbit.
Sprol shows the visual macroscopic effects of the decisions and behavior of our society. Since previous generations have not had the advantage of this perspective, it is our obligation to use it wisely.
posted by crunchland at 10:02 AM PST - 20 comments
Ringtones are a growing concern
and not just when people don't shut them off.
Jamster is a weekly ringtone subscription that advertises to kids on channels like Nick and MTV. Kids are attracted to
crazy frogs like a magnet and are using the service
without parental permission. Now Britain is launching a
new inquiry into Jamster's
business practices. And lawyers in California filed a
class action lawsuit against the company. But Jamster isn't just some fly-by-night operation trying to milk as much money from kids as they can before regulators crack down. Jamster is
owned by VeriSign.
It's also a fair question whether it's worth paying 3 bucks for a few seconds of a song that sounds like a player piano, when it costs less than a buck to get the whole thing on the web (especially now that that crazy frog is a
single). Why can't you just pay the 99 cents or whatever to get the
song on your phone?
posted by kenneth at 8:37 AM PST - 77 comments
What are you doing for
July 4th? I just found out I'll be
working. Our spacecraft
Swift is going to be observing comet
Tempel1 at the time of the
Deep Impact encounter. (Previous discussed
here on MeFi 2 years ago.) We'll probably have
images and movies first, but the first images you'll see after the encounter will likely come from either
JPL or
Hubble. You can't have
Penn State scooping
NASA.
Oh well, at least we will have a
barbecue at work to celebrate. Our acting Mission Director during this time is a great bloke from
MSSL. It is oddly appropriate to be celebrating the
Fourth with a person from the
UK.
posted by Fat Guy at 8:08 AM PST - 10 comments
Google Earth: Zero Hour +1
If Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was responsible for a productivity loss of $600 million (for people playing hooky), then the release of Google Earth
has to be responsible for at least $100m. So the next question is...what's next? When you think about all the Google Maps hacks, from
craigslist, to GasBuddy (offline),
Chicago Crimestats and
Transit Maps,
London Traffic Cams,
various sight seeing sites,
NYC Subway Stops, plus
integration with BlogWise,
Terraserver,
Host-IP (broken?),
Yahoo Traffic, and the
US Census, you might wonder what else could be integrated into gEarth?
Things I'm hoping for? How about integrating historical markers, daytrip resources,
factory tours,
social demographics (like Nationmaster), politics (
fundraising,
election results, registration,
polling place location,
election irregularities), mapped to do lists, real-time weather and traffic, things that aren't there anymore, custom
atlas creation, IMDB movie location shoots,
tighter integration with topographical maps,
WiFi access Points, a
News Attention Index,
shipwrecks,
Job Searches, and tighter integration with the
USGS.
As shown in the gEarth interface (left hand side, first one in "Layers"), their
online community is already working on using, improving, and customizing gEarth's new features, including
some updates (Caution, requires the integration of *.kml file, *.eta, or *.kmz files.)
posted by rzklkng at 8:06 AM PST - 21 comments
June 28
Yahoo gets social.
Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and
it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy
delicious and incorporate that?
posted by mathowie at 9:43 PM PST - 28 comments
Canada Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage.
"We are a nation of minorities. And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights," said Prime Minister Paul Martin. "A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about."
posted by digaman at 6:41 PM PST - 143 comments
In the emotive world of
child abuse, Professor Sir Roy Meadow became a celebrity in the last 25 years. He described
Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy in which parents were said to have confabulated symptoms in their children in order to obtain medical treatment. Among child and health workers, Police and Social Workers, his eponymous law held that multiple childhood deaths in individual families were indicative of abuse and infanticide.
He was of course a popular forensic expert and his testimony resulted in murder convictions and removal of at-risk children from their families. But the Court of Appeal in UK has found that Prof. Meadow's statistical assertions and scientific
reasonings were themselves confabulated and there have been a number of convictions overturned. He is now
fighting for his professional reputation before the General Medical Council in London.
[More Inside]
posted by peacay at 5:33 PM PST - 17 comments
The Invisible Library
is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.
posted by carter at 1:06 PM PST - 20 comments
Beach Billboards
"5,000 of your beach sponsoring ads coupled with "Please Don't Litter" are impressed during early morning cleaning leaving the beach manicured with your message all over it".
Support-A-Beach Programs - Do you want to stroll on such
clean beaches?
posted by webmeta at 11:20 AM PST - 54 comments
Need a power source for your
electric car?
Be careful
building a nuclear power
plant in
your back yard, or you could be the center of the next suburban
superfund cleanup.
And it is perhaps best that he does not work on the ship's eight reactors, for EPA scientists worry that his previous exposure to radioactivity may have greatly cut short his life. All the radioactive materials he experimented with can enter the body through ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact and then deposit in the bones and organs, where they can cause a host of ailments, including cancer.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:18 AM PST - 19 comments
Bourgie (boo-zhee)
Entertaining food blog (previous
mefi topic) Regularly updated and worth a look for those interested in food ;) Written from Berkeley but not region specific, sometimes recipes.
"what is a bourgie? First let's get the pronunciation down, boo-zhee, sort of rhymes with sue me. Actually, it doesn't rhyme at all. It's the truncated version of bourgeoisie, you remember middle school history, Marie Antoinette, the rising middle class. But to English speaking nations, assuming that is what you belong to, this is the class with which we aspire to belong. And with food, it's almost the intangible. That little bit of effort that brings the dreary to the divine."
posted by wuakeen at 10:01 AM PST - 26 comments
The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection
.
"From Edwin A. Abbott to Emile Zola, the 1,082 titles in the Penguin Classics Complete Library total nearly half a million pages." The weight of the books is approximately 700 pounds. Amazon is offering free shipping! I wonder how big the box would be waiting at my door. (
via)
posted by clgregor at 9:32 AM PST - 32 comments
Patrick Henry, a conservative Christian college
(New Yorker) with eighty-five percent of incoming freshman being homeschooled, is a vernable breeding ground for future Republicans. Take cloistered kids, teach them one message, and
Mr. Rove's clone army nears completion. The article is so quotable the whole thing must be read, as it fufills all our fears, stereotypes and snide comments
sounds (Common Dreams). It scares our brother's across the
pond, while the homeschooled community
gets all wet just thinking about it. This raises several questions, what kind of politicians will sheltered college students be and how do they have fun without binge drinking, cocaine and sex?
posted by geoff. at 9:24 AM PST - 96 comments
Norway's Ministry for Modernisation has declared for Open Source formats.
Speaking at eNorge, the Norwegian Minister for Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has said that "proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government". Although he did not mention Microsoft by name, he did say that this was the last time he would be streaming his speech using the current (WMP-based) technology.
The Ministry for Modernisation may sound quaint, but it was founded in 2004 with a
broad remit, and 200 employees, not a small number in a nation of less than 5 million souls. Although Norway's spending on IT may not be great compared to the US or China, as one of the wealthiest and most technologically developed nations on Earth (not to mention the emphasis on long-distance communications robustness created by a large country with terrible weather) it sets a precedent about what a tech-savvy first-world nation might do with Open Source, not because it cannot afford proprietary formats but because it does not want them. Microsoft, meanwhile, might be wondering why it bothered to translate Office into Sami. Will this be the first domino, or can it be written off as the actions of an oil-rich rogue state that will soon be brought back into the global consensus?
posted by tannhauser at 6:05 AM PST - 18 comments
The Aesthetics of Resistance.
The first part of
Peter Weiss's 3-volume novel
Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975-81) has, after many delays, finally been
published in a Joachim Neugroschels English translation: a major, though largely-unheralded literary event. The book stands as the most significant German novel published after The Tin Drum.
[more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 3:54 AM PST - 7 comments
June 27
Ram Ayala
- owner of the famed Tacoland nightclub in beautiful downtown San Antonio, Texas - was
shot and
killed during a robbery at his bar last Thursday.
The world-famous club has been a favorite dive for bands and locals alike since 1969, forever immortalized in
the Dead Milkmen song
"Tacoland".
R.I.P.
posted by item at 8:04 PM PST - 3 comments
Zombie Dogs
U.S. scientists have succeeded in reviving dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.
posted by stevis at 8:04 PM PST - 39 comments
Afghan Children Burned
Correspondent Jim Rupert and photographer Moises Saman of Newsday have just done a magnificent report explaining how and why Afghan women and children are increasingly getting burned by exploding kerosene lamps. One of the problems is that the black market is sometimes selling aviation fuel--far more combustible at lower temperatures--as regular kerosene; women and children, who usually have lamp lighting duties, are getting maimed when the lamps explode.
posted by etaoin at 4:01 PM PST - 12 comments
Meet the new watchers
California's National Guard has formed a new unit:
Known as the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program, the project is part of an expanding nationwide effort to better integrate military intelligence into global anti-terrorism initiatives.
Although Guard officials said the new unit would not collect information on American citizens, top National Guard officials have already been involved in tracking at least one recent Mother's Day anti-war rally organized by families of slain American soldiers, according to e-mails obtained by the Mercury News.
posted by amberglow at 1:37 PM PST - 74 comments
Was agriculture a mistake?
Guns, Germs, and Steel author Jared Diamond asks this question. Originally published in 1987, it's still completely relevant today. I personally feel that
memes are the real culprit, and they are inevitable in any sizable social group with a common system of communication. Could agriculture be an ancient meme which has profoundly impacted the history of mankind?
posted by mullingitover at 1:04 PM PST - 116 comments
Paul Winchell
the voice of Tigger passed away on June 24th at the age of 82. In addition to his famous voice, he also helped develop the artificial
heart , held over 30
patents, had a plan to feed the hungry with
tilapia, was a
ventriloquist and was the voice of
Gargamel. One day later the voice actor for
Piglet also passed away. With
Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger, succumbing to prostate cancer in late May, it may be true that celebrities die in threes. Or does tiger voice actor
Jim Cummings have something to worry about?
posted by phirleh at 12:15 PM PST - 16 comments
Harlan Erskine Photography
The catalogue for Walker Evans's exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, prepared by John Szarkowski in 1971, opened with a quotation from Walt Whitman:
"I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world ...I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse, than I have supposed..."
This passage has been quoted countless times in the context of photography with good reason. It allows us to sum up the difference between photographing flowers and photographing a milk bottle on a tenement fire escape. Erskine says he tends to gravitate to photographing the milk bottle and not the flower.
posted by Francesnash at 9:09 AM PST - 27 comments
The Supreme Court's Big Day
The court chose not to review the controversy surrounding
"reporter's privilege" in withholding the names of confidential sources; meaning reporters may continue to be jailed or fined for refusing to name sources in court.
In
Brand-X, the Court decided
6-3 that cable providers did not have to allow competitors to access their lines (the way DSL companies do). FCC opponents had been hopeful the Court would find the other way, opening new markets for competition and service options.
The Court ruled
one of two Ten Commandment displays are unconstitutional. The decalogue display on a courthouse wall in Kentucky was found
5-4 to be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion because it was serving a religious purpose. However, the Ten Commandments display on the grounds of Texas' state capitol were found to be constitutional.
The Court finally decided the
MGM v Grokster case. The Court found
unanimously that the file sharing service
can be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users.
posted by falconred at 7:59 AM PST - 56 comments
June 26
The Civic Action Network : Firefox meets Le Resistance !
Introduced at this year's
DemocracyFest 2005, CAN's idea of "Civic Action Teams" ( not too different from corporate "teams" ) - was made into a 50's era camp movie short. [Watch it:
Quicktime,
Windows Media Viewer appr. 10-11 MB]. The real goal : weaning liberals from their fractious ways and convincing them that small group teamwork can be effective, fun, and difficult to infiltrate.
"We admired the organizational strength of the right-wing and noted much of it was built on small, church-based structures.". Download their "Small Groups, Big Victories" as a
pdf ( 1.8 MB).
posted by troutfishing at 11:53 AM PST - 7 comments
Oh! that I were a T---d, a T---d,
Hid in this secret Place,
That I might see my Betsy's A----,
Though she sh--t me in my Face.
(Written under this in a Woman's Hand)
'Tis Pity but you had your Wish, E. W.
Boghouse (public toilet) poetry from 18th century london.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:06 AM PST - 27 comments
As if living in NY wasn't hard enough,
this poor guy seems to have gotten himself bitten by something nasty.
Usually, I hate the whole "blog as meta-fiction" thing, but this is saved by good writing and a nice sense of humor. It's a bit annoying that the archives make you start at the bottom, but it's still a fun read. Make sure to check the comments. I still can't decide if the teenagers are part of the fiction, or they thought it was real....
posted by lumpenprole at 8:08 AM PST - 15 comments
June 25
Iraq War Fatalities is a chart of US and coalition military fatalities that have occurred in the War in Iraq since the onset, mapped across the dimensions of time and space. It is an ongoing project that is updated regularly, and will continue to go on as long as the war does. The animation runs at ten frames per second--one frame for each day--and a single black dot indicates the geographic location that a US fatality occurred. Each dot starts as a white flash and a larger red dot that fades to black over the span of 30 frames/days, and then slowly fades to grey over the span of the entire war. Accompanying the visual representation is a soft 'tic' sound for each fatality, the volume of which increases relative to the number of fatalities that occurred simultaneously that day. More deaths in a smaller area produces visually deeper reds and audibly more pronounced 'tics.'
Iraq War Fatalities (via Bop News)
posted by y2karl at 11:36 PM PST - 100 comments
Library Elf
is a nifty free service that tracks all of your library books. It sends you emails and/or delivers RSS notifications when your books become due, shows you a list of all books you currently have out, and lets you know when that book you wanted is available. It supports multiple cards per account, so you can track all books for the whole household. Also, do everyone in your community a favor--
see if your library is listed and, if it isn't,
request that they add it.
posted by juggernautco at 6:47 PM PST - 35 comments
cli·ché
:: 1 : a trite phrase or expression; also : the idea expressed by it; 2 : a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation; 3 : something (as a menu item) that has become overly familiar or commonplace
posted by anastasiav at 12:49 PM PST - 42 comments
iPod competitors talk briefly about the iPod
and how they think their products and design philosophies compare to it.
The comments of the CEO of Archos lives up to his country's "we are right and you are stupid" stereotype, saying,
"I do not share the opinion that Apple's design for the iPod is any good."
posted by centerpunch at 6:14 AM PST - 66 comments
Shell Eco Marathon UK
is coming up in England (6-7 july). It is a race not for the swift, but for those who can drive immense distances in super-efficient vehicles. Two years ago, the current world record of
10,706 MPG was set at one of these events. The lessons learned are useful in development in other fuel-efficient cars, such as the 100 MPG
Honda Insight. Interesting in these times of high oil prices, then, when considering that
despite tactical driving, normal petrol cars rarely get better than 45 MPG. Diesels are slightly better, as
illustrated on BBC Top Gear, where Clarkson drives an Audi A8 from London to Edinburgh and back on a single tank of diesel. That's 800 miles.
posted by SharQ at 5:19 AM PST - 13 comments
June 24
I waited to see if anyone else might post this. I saw it on
Future Feeder.
Photron's model
ultima APX-RS is a high speed video camera - 250,000 fps. Here's a
quick link to the gallery of video (flash interface).
apparently that's not the fastest. That appears to be Shimadzus
HyperVision HPV-1 at 1,000,000 fps. They also have a
gallery - but with only 3 mpg clips each a little more than 2.5 MB (
1,
2,
3).
posted by tvjunkie at 10:58 PM PST - 19 comments
