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July 2004 Archives
July 31
Most of us are whiners, blaming circumstances for our failings; a precious few function in a self-sufficient bubble and able to shape their circumstances, never accepting the role of being a victim.
Inder Parmar is such a man.
posted by semmi at 11:07 PM PST - 9 comments
The Pope to Women: "get back in your place"
- The Vatican, fearing it may still share some semblance of the same reality as the rest of us seeks to rectify this problem by telling women that they should stop hoping for the same things as men have.
"The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels," the document said, asserting it has inspired ideologies that "call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father."
It also warned of challenges to fundamentals of church teaching, saying the blurring of differences "would consider as lacking in importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form."
posted by Space Coyote at 4:09 PM PST - 128 comments
Meet Vernon Blake. Vernon Blake was a Systems Admin for the Alabama Department of Transportation, and it was 'well known' in his office that a certain supervisor spent far more time playing solitare on his computer than he did doing anything else. Inspired by a campaign to
stop waste in Alabama government, Vernon installed a screen capture utility which took
717 screenshots (.pdf) over 7 months, documenting a clear pattern of non-work related use of the computer. The results? The supervisor was given a
written repremand. Vernon Blake was
fired.
posted by anastasiav at 9:45 AM PST - 38 comments
Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer.
President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.
The jounalist's name was Mamta Popat. She sure
sounds like a terrorist.
posted by JeffK at 8:45 AM PST - 30 comments
The Lewis Walpole Library
has digitized 10,000 images from its superb collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century satirical prints -- not the only collection of its kind on the Internet, but certainly one of the largest and best. Search under "Gillray", "Rowlandson" or "Cruikshank" and browse a selection of images from the golden age of English caricature. Everyone will have their own favourites, but here are a few of mine: Rowlandson's
Author and Bookseller, Cruikshank's
The Headache and Gillray's
Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses.
posted by verstegan at 2:04 AM PST - 4 comments
The Top 50 Worst Guitar Solos (revisited).
On Jimmy Page's solo in Radioactive:
He pieces together an angular, steely synth-guitar catastrophe that probably only the eunuchs in Yes could warm up to.
And Angus Young's solo on "Ballbreaker":
Take away the hyperactive Chuck Berry duckwalking and frantic head- bobbing and you're left with some extremely constipated rockabilly soloing. And what the fuck is these guys' fixation with men's genitalia all about, anyway? [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 1:43 AM PST - 54 comments
RPG's as an art form (via Something Awful)
" I've also been encountering different variations of the same monsters; for example, I was walking in these hills and was attacked by a slime with Ray Bans and a fedora. Another time it was a slime with a fake beard and glasses. I think whoever is producing these things, either the Dragonlord or some bored wizard, just ran out of ideas and are dressing them up to fool adventurers such as myself. I'm harder to trick than that, you sly devils.
"
posted by sourbrew at 1:21 AM PST - 7 comments
July 30
Road Trip USA. This simply titled site is one of the better travel sites I have seen for back-road ramblings around the USA. Not only are the routes described some of the best, the writing is extensive (at least book length), of high quality and obviously by someone who has traveled every single mile personally. I only wish I had it on my last trip. Recommended for the arm-chair or car-seat traveler alike.
posted by stbalbach at 10:43 PM PST - 4 comments
No time to pick out your own music? Still like the CD format? Live in the UK? Well has
The Rough Trade Shop got a
club for you. Is this outmoded on arrival or an interesting variant on old style "X-Of-the-Month" clubs? I know I sometimes find it overwhelming to keep up with what's new'n'exciting.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 9:57 PM PST - 8 comments
Matt Darey
just released a new album. Not a huge deal in itself, I suppose, but hearing it made me curious. So I found
Trance Airwaves. Which led me to
this site. All because I listen to
this internet radio station. Makes me glad that I decided to listen to trance tonight.
posted by BlueTrain at 7:15 PM PST - 6 comments
Lost Dog Held for $10K Ransom
An elderly man went out for a walk with his dog, on the way home, the dog disappeared. A friend helped him make some Lost Dog posters and he waited by the phone for some good samaritan to return his only companion.
Instead, he got a call from someone demanding $10,000 or he'd never see his dog again. He gathered up half of his savings and went to pay the ransom. The dognapper brandished a knife, took the money and said the dog was tied up to a post nearby. It wasn't.
He went home brokenhearted until he heard a car door slam outside and his dog came running up to greet him. Now he wonders if the dognappers were putting him on the whole time.
posted by fenriq at 3:46 PM PST - 24 comments
'South Park' Drawn to Syndication
Sex and the City is one thing and being shown on cable anyway, and I understand they've been shooting a syndication-friendly version of the Sopranos, but how will they clean up these cartoon freaks enough to appear on broadcast TV?
posted by billsaysthis at 2:36 PM PST - 26 comments
For nearly a quarter of a century
Thor the Barbarian waged a lonely crusade against tyrannical bureaucracies and disempowering systems. Undaunted, he faced the monstrous social evils of our day head on, as an unsung organizational change agent... as a professional inside New York's vast mental health network. Real interview
here (about a minute in) - scroll down to the Thor - LIVE link.
posted by dobbs at 8:55 AM PST - 4 comments
Tired of engagement news? Break Up News
is the place to get the skinny on recently ruptured romances or to announce to the world that you're back in the game. And, if you are, (or have other untraditional news you want to share,) consider
Other Announcements, which offers
greeting cards for calling off your engagement or wedding, moving in together, getting divorced, coming out, and getting your boobs done. (Though not all at the same time.)
posted by onlyconnect at 7:58 AM PST - 2 comments
Fuel Cell Breakthrough?
The University of Houston claims to have achieved a breakthrough in thin film solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). "Imagine a power source so small, yet so efficient, that it could make cumbersome power plants virtually obsolete" Utter marketing hype, or are they really onto something?
posted by Irontom at 7:42 AM PST - 6 comments
Skinbag
- looking for that flayed flesh look for your fall fashion statement? Look no further, your epidermic, polysemic clothing and accessories are here.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:13 AM PST - 23 comments
Pages of the Past
The Toronto Star has digitized each of its issues from 1892-2001. And they're searchable. And they're online. Unfortunately, access starts at about a buck an hourbut 1945 is free!
posted by DrJohnEvans at 5:20 AM PST - 7 comments
We have all seen online quizzes to aid in making important life choices. For instance, this
quiz purports to guide you in making career choices. Confused about religion and seeking to find a faith that suits your beliefs, now we have
Belief-O-Matic.
posted by caddis at 4:32 AM PST - 22 comments
July 29
Earlier this month, internal white house rumors were leaked saying that ideally, it'd be great to find an Al Queda suspect during the week of the Democratic National Convention, since the Democrats would likely be grabbing headlines. Sounds like some crass opportunism instead of truly protecting the republic from terrorists, doesn't it?
Well, what do you know, today
this message floated
at the top of CNN.com, more important than Kerry's keynote.
Even though the guy was caught on Sunday, we don't hear about it until today.
Foxnews looks the same way (
screenshot), with the Al Queda headline above Kerry's one day in the sun at Fox News. But it's all just a coincidence and we're not being played like a fiddle. Sure.
posted by mathowie at 1:29 PM PST - 94 comments
Ricky Quits Football to Smoke Dope
Ricky Williams knew he'd failed a third drug test and retired from football before his coach found out.
Says Ricky, "I didn't quit football because I failed a drug test," he told the Herald. "I failed a drug test because I was ready to quit football."
Williams said he's not addicted to marijuana. And I'm sure he can quit anytime he wants to but maybe he got confused and quit his profession instead of his "hobby"?
Is this the first time a star athlete's quit because he wants to hang out and smoke dope?
posted by fenriq at 12:28 PM PST - 81 comments
RIP Francis Crick. The man who helped discover the secret of life is dead.
posted by rushmc at 9:41 AM PST - 31 comments
This website
exists because astrosociology is not yet a widely recognized subfield of sociology, and therefore it can benefit from a centralized approach. It is intended to serve as a catalyst for the growth of astrosociology from a general state of nonexistence.
As a little known sociologist fights his
lonely quixotic battle to introduce
a new sociology subfield, some who are stuck in their earthbound paradigm
object.
posted by found missing at 7:03 AM PST - 8 comments
A longtime Jacksonville weblogger normally devoted to wonky subjects like his
blogging software made a
frank public admission on his weblog recently: "I had an affair with another woman. My wife was a severe depressive and I was uncaring and unfeeling towards her when she needed me the most."
posted by rcade at 6:52 AM PST - 55 comments
The physicist Shariah Afshar has used a beautifully simple
experiment, which no-one seems to have thought of before, to disprove Bohr's
principle of complementarity, something which has been pretty much unchallenged for 80 years. He may also have gone some way towards showing that there is no such thing as a photon, and that Einstein's Nobel prize should be revoked. So, big stuff. What do you physicists think?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:36 AM PST - 35 comments
In 1934, the only thing standing between a
fascist coup and democracy in the United States was the courage and honor of one
man.
posted by euphorb at 2:22 AM PST - 50 comments
July 28
"When I picked his head up, it wasn't even connected," he recounts later that night in the rushed, excited tones of a youngster describing finding a forbidden fort in the woods. "The only thing holding his head on was skin. It felt like... wet goo. But with broken bones, so it was jagged. Squishy but crunchy. His head felt like solid Jello with shards of broken glass."Gidget
Gein picks up
dead bodies.
posted by angry modem at 9:40 PM PST - 16 comments
Devirginize Marc dot com
In short, up until now, just a few months shy of my 27th birthday, I am a virgin for one simple reason: the dream of making a Web site just like this. Is this what Internet dating has come to?
posted by onlyconnect at 8:10 PM PST - 42 comments
G.O.P. D.O.A.
, the new novel by Brooklyn-based
Contemporary Press, just got
denied a reprinting by St. Louis-based
Plus Communications. Although they printed the first edition less than one month ago, the publisher says that their religious clients would be upset by the book's 'language' and have refused to reprint it.
I guess that is in the same spirit as Rev. Breedlove's attempt to
rekindle the tradition of book burning earlier this month.
posted by Miyagi at 6:25 PM PST - 12 comments
Tax Man
Bush says tax cuts stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, he's fallen more than 2.2 million jobs short of the projection made by his own economists.
posted by Postroad at 3:16 PM PST - 6 comments
Will Ferrell spoofs GWB
for
ACT ... "you caught me mending my fences, one of the many things i do on my ranch ..." (streaming QuickTime or WMV).
i know it's partisan crap, but still pretty funny ... until the end.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:48 AM PST - 33 comments
Rape as a weapon of war: sexual violence and its consequences
Amnesty International offers a stirring and comprehensive account of what's going on in Darfur:
"When we tried to escape they shot more children. They raped women; I saw many cases of Janjawid raping women and girls. They are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish." [more inside]
posted by The God Complex at 10:39 AM PST - 39 comments
The Wall Street Journal offers RSS feeds
...headlines only, alas, and you still have to be a subscriber to read the full stories. But it's still a big endorsement of this technology by a major newspaper. Any other papers offering feeds? [Sample WSJ feed
here, additional info inside.]
posted by me3dia at 8:52 AM PST - 11 comments
July 27
Lincoln/Net
Lincoln's political career in antebellum Illinois. View by "historical themes" or search for images, text, and audio.
posted by thomas j wise at 8:47 PM PST - 2 comments
DOWN FOR THE COUNT
At around 8:50, Soubirouss campaign manager, Brian Floyd, received a call from an election observer in Temecula informing him that the vote count had been stopped apparently by Registrar Mischelle Townsend herself. The reason was not made clear. So Floyd and another Soubirous campaigner named Art Cassel jumped into a car and drove to Townsends office to investigate. Sure enough, the counting area appeared to be near-deserted. But then they noticed two men huddled at one of the vote tabulation computers.
posted by jonah at 7:40 PM PST - 53 comments
USA Today Dumps Ann Coulter
Citing editorial differences, USA Today dropped Ann Coulter's column before it even began in the paper.
The disputed column on www.anncoulter.com begins "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston" and devolves rapidly into a bitter little snark against Democrats. I wonder why USA Today had a problem with it?
It ends with "I'd say I love all these Democrats in Boston so much I want them to go home, but I don't. I want Americans to get a good long look at the French Party and keep the 7-11 challenge in mind."
posted by fenriq at 10:34 AM PST - 139 comments
July 26
"You know, Luke Skywalker was able to kill the Death Star with his beleaguered band of warriors, but I'm not sure that that's the model we should shoot for -- shoot the thing down the middle of the tube and hope it blows up the Death Star. We need to build our own answer to the Death Star.''
The beginning of the end for the Democratic Party, at least in name? (And what will take its place? Is the Republic turning into the Empire?)
posted by Tlogmer at 9:41 PM PST - 24 comments
Getting back into the groove
: In the corner of a California university laboratory, two men are battling against time to perfect a machine that will read old recordings - using special microscopes to scan the grooves - and software that can convert those shapes into sound. Their work could bring history to life.
posted by starscream at 7:02 PM PST - 15 comments
Realizing the Promise and Potential of African Agriculture
Africa is rich in both natural and human resources, yet nearly 200 million of its people are undernourished because of inadequate food supplies. Comprehensive strategies are needed across the continent to harness the power of science and technology (S&T) in ways that boost agricultural productivity, profitability, and sustainability -- ultimately ensuring that all Africans have access to enough safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs. This report addresses the question of how science and technology can be mobilized to make that promise a reality.
posted by tcp at 11:44 AM PST - 13 comments
A threat to national security!
Adam McGaughey, the owner of a Stargate fansite has been slapped with criminal charges (Criminal Copyright Infringement and Trafficking in Counterfeit Services) after being reported to the FBI by the MPAA for including Amazon links to encourage fans to purchase DVDs of the show. To build its case, the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. And, since he "conspired" with thousands of fans worldwide by providing these Amazon Market links, he could be facing up to 20 years in jail if the government
invokes RICO.
posted by headspace at 9:20 AM PST - 63 comments
Scott Ritter on Iraq.
Some interesting reading here from the man who stood up to the President, the pundits, the media, etc and told the world that chances are Iraq had few to no WMD. Now he's warning us that Saddam's people are really in charge and how Allawi's government is doomed to fail.
Man, I hate the IHT interface.
posted by skallas at 7:53 AM PST - 27 comments
Backyard Third World
John F. Kennedy saw it and pronounced it a shame on our nation. Lyndon B. Johnson tried to change it. The "compassionate conservatives" have exacerbated it. I wanted to share it with you. Isn't it time for real change? Hasn't the exploitation of this place and these people gone on long enough?
posted by nofundy at 7:36 AM PST - 34 comments
I've seen it happen where these types of managers have the nerve to hold this type of book up in front of a group of people and imply the problem is the workforce for not choosing to be happy about poor leadership. From an
Amazon review of
Fish!. I've been motivated with that twice. A friend of mine was encouraged to take
The Flight of the Buffalo and another is going to a sponsored
Dale Carnegie class. So, who's
moved your cheese?
posted by pieoverdone at 5:42 AM PST - 55 comments
Ted Turner is mad as hell
and not going to take it anymore: "the government [is] not doing its job. The role of the government ought to be like the role of a referee in boxing, keeping the big guys from killing the little guys."
posted by limitedpie at 12:51 AM PST - 22 comments
July 25
"Animal Vegetable Video
endeavors to create the world's largest collection of video footage that has been captured from the perspective of animals, plants, and the environments they inhabit." The
navigation is a little wacky (click on the animal to see a video, or on the habitat to see more videos), but anyone crazy enough to strap a camera on the back of a tarantula is okay by me.
posted by majcher at 5:28 PM PST - 3 comments
Kerry's Democrats: The Conservative Party?
So thinks Andrew Sullivan: "I may not find myself the only conservative moving slowly and reluctantly toward the notion that Kerry may be the right man - and the conservative choice - for a difficult and perilous time."
Similar thoughts were published recently by AEI: "If the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' still had any meaning in American foreign policy, George Bush would happily style himself the true liberal--the radical, even--in the upcoming election and paint Kerry as the conservative, the reactionary." Food for thought in front of the convention this week.
posted by dagny at 5:16 PM PST - 42 comments
Blackwashing
--
So I tuned into C-SPAN with interest to hear what a leading voice in the black conservative movement had to say. But then a funny thing happened: the African-American spokesperson for Project 21 caught a flat on the way to the studio, and the group's director had to fill in. And he was white.
CSPAN video here (real)--bizarre
posted by amberglow at 12:16 PM PST - 63 comments
Zen.
A nice flash intro. Use the mouse, Grasshopper!
Yes, it shows lack of enlightenment to smite the buzzing fly, but it's the only way you'll get into the site, so overcome your Buddha-nature for once in your life.
posted by languagehat at 11:45 AM PST - 16 comments
Big Ideas.
"Eating, sleeping, procreating, laughing - and trying to create a world in which we can do these things unmolested - have all been far greater drivers of human ingenuity than time machines or battery-operated scooters."
- "We may no longer hold high hopes of the state, but if the study of individuals reminds us of our common humanity and prompts us to reassess the merits of the collective, lets welcome it."
posted by MintSauce at 9:54 AM PST - 3 comments
Correcting the Record.
In meticulous detail the 9/11 commission's report found that the hijackers had repeatedly broken the law in entering the United States, that Mr. bin Laden may have micromanaged the attacks but did not pay for them, that intelligence agencies had considered the threat of suicide hijackings, and that Mr. Bush received an August 2001 briefing on evidence of continuing domestic terrorist threats from Al Qaeda.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:26 AM PST - 57 comments
July 24
Giga Society:
the world's most exclusive high IQ society, where an IQ of 196 or higher (one in a billion) is required to join. Not quite as cranially-advantaged? Well, there's always the
Oath society, which'll take you if you're only one in a thousand (a mere 150 IQ or higher). Big brains and design skills (or
language ones, for that matter) don't mix well, though, it would seem.
[more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:22 PM PST - 86 comments
Verizon goes Vonage?
ATT, announced this week that it's giving up on residential phone service. And here, from the look of it, Verizon is starting to offer what I believe is Internet-based phone service. Is the Internet the future of phone?
posted by ParisParamus at 6:53 PM PST - 27 comments
The Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi
now has a digital archive containing 10,000 images of medieval stained glass from English churches and cathedrals: a wonderful resource for anyone interested in medieval art.
These stunning images of the windows at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, are just a tiny fraction of the extraordinary riches available on the site.
posted by verstegan at 7:40 AM PST - 14 comments
Poll Shows Growing Arab Rancor at U.S. Arab views of the United States, shaped largely by the Iraq war and a post-Sept. 11 climate of fear, have worsened in the past two years to such an extent that in Egypt -- an important ally in the region -- nearly 100 percent of the population now holds an unfavorable opinion of the country, according to two polls due out today... More within
posted by y2karl at 12:06 AM PST - 126 comments
July 23
Peer to Peer Politics
Here's an idea the RIAA can get behind:
Thad Anderson, a second-year student at St. John's School of Law, has launched a peer-to-peer network that allows users to access and share government documents.
More than 600 court and government documents, including memos, communications and reports, are available on his OutragedModerates.org site, and can be accessed through the Kazaa, LimeWire and Soulseek P2P networks.
Among those documents available are the Abu Ghraib prison scandal memos and the Senate Intelligence Committee report on government intelligence leading up to the Iraq War. The concept of using a P2P network to share embarrassing documents is interesting ... considering some in Congress have proposed an outright ban on the P2P file sharing systems that are widely used to trade music, movies and porn.
via Politics1.com
posted by Rastafari at 8:28 PM PST - 9 comments
You may not have heard of Jansenism.
But on
May 1, 1727 one of its more prominent members, Francois de Paris, died. He was a popular fellow for his charitable works and lots of people visited his tomb. That's when things got weird. At first it was just a bunch of people claiming to have been cured of things like "cancerous tumors, paralysis, deafness, arthritis, rheumatism, ulcerous sores, persistent fevers, prolonged hemorrhaging, and blindness."
Then things started to get really
weird.
...The mourners also started to experience strange involuntary spasms or convulsions...the 'convulsionaires,' as they came to be called, displayed...the ability to endure without harm an almost unimaginable variety of physical tortures....
These events lasted years and were witnessed by thousands as well as commented on by the likes of David Hume and Voltaire. Louis-Basile Carre de Montgeron investigated it for the Paris Parliment and published
La Vérité des Miracles in three volumes detailing the events. The tortures were asked for by the convulsionaires. Montgeron details one time when while having an iron drill hammered into a convulsionaire's stomach he, "maintained an 'expression of perfect rapture,' crying, 'Oh, that does me good! Courage, brother; strike twice as hard, if you can!'"
posted by john at 6:38 PM PST - 11 comments
Oh, You Mean Those Records
The Pentagon released "newly discovered payroll records from President Bush's 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard." The earlier statement that the records were inadvertently destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."
[Previously discussed here and here.]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:18 PM PST - 39 comments
In
Fleep, a 44-page comic strip by Jason Shiga, the protagonist is trapped within a telephone booth sealed in concrete. Can he escape using what few resources are available to him?
posted by LinusMines at 8:19 AM PST - 38 comments
The Velvet Underground's White Light White Heat
played on banjo, bass guitar, ruler, music box, violin, toy piano, electric guitar, accordion, squeezebox, euphonium, ukulele, kazoo, xylophone, pixiphone, uumskither, mbira, pod, delay, turntable and percussion.
posted by ubueditor at 6:32 AM PST - 8 comments
According to
multiple recent nationwide polls, the
presidential race is a dead heat, with the spread
within the margin of error. Some have Bush by a
couple points, some say Kerry by a couple. But take a look at the way the race is represented by
www.electoral-vote.com, which tracks polls state-by-state and
takes electoral votes into account. Suddenly, the tally is Kerry 332, Bush 195.
posted by msacheson at 1:00 AM PST - 130 comments
July 22
