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August 2003 Archives
August 31
Mimosa
is a retro look at Russia through engaging and often playful snapshots - it has all the feel of rummaging through a box of photos in an attic.
Communist Store Windows offers another, more recent glimpse behind the iron curtain. Both galleries are like shots of peppered vodka.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:32 PM PST - 15 comments
And now, the California Recall Candidates Deck of Cards,
proceeded by the
Iraqi most-wanted deck of cards, then the Trade Relief Organization's
"regime change" deck, among others. Are we carrying this deck of cards thingy too far?
(Beware of nasty popups, slowloading page and possible NSFW ad on 1st linked
page, which was seen on Geisha Asobi blog.)
posted by Lynsey at 11:24 PM PST - 8 comments
Towards a robot-based economy.
Lots of interesting ideas here regarding what might happen and possible solutions to economic and social problems when robotics and automation become as cheap as computers did in the 90s.
posted by skallas at 6:25 PM PST - 20 comments
Have you reached the 13th level of rock and roll that is anti-folk? Do you
think using an 8-track recorder is selling out? If the phone rang while recording
a song for your album, would you try another take? Not if you were the
Moldy
Peaches you wouldn't. . . pansy. The Moldy Peaches are
Adam
Green and
Kimya Dawson. Their
first album, "the Moldy Peaches Greatest Hits" was most people's first
taste of anti-folk and it featured clever (and occasionally insane) songs recorded
in their apartment and subsequently rocketed them to
stardom.
In fact, they've just formed as a 6 piece and they have a
video
out. (The video is in realplay*buffering*er format)
But what exactly is anti-folk? The Moldy Peaches are pretty much all over the
place musically and other anti-folk artists are no different. Take
Jeffrey
Lewis, who's songs range from intricate
tales
(his first love is cartooning) of chance encounters with love to rockin' songs
about killing ghouls chimes in: [More Inside]
posted by untuckedshirts at 7:18 AM PST - 20 comments
August 30
Wound Gallery
[The main site is click-safe, all text. So you won't see a wound right away if you're squemish, just descriptions.] Say, wouldn't it be great if there was a site where you could submit your ticketstubs to and tell the story behind it? Well until somebody makes one of those, let's tell stories about our horrible cringe-inducing wounds instead. I lost all my stubs anyway, but I still have a giant scar from
Hootie and the Blowfish '99 baby! Spill it, what's the story behind your most impressive or memorable wound?
posted by Stan Chin at 10:18 PM PST - 18 comments
Krugman on Iraq
"The direct military cost of the occupation is $4 billion a month, and there's no end in sight. But that's only part of the bill.
This week Paul Bremer suddenly admitted that Iraq would need "several tens of billions" in aid next year. That remark was probably aimed not at the public but at his masters in Washington; he apparently needed to get their attention."
posted by skallas at 2:23 PM PST - 41 comments
At the WTO: At last, the USA backs away from the policy of putting intellectual property above innocent lives. Good news for everyone who cares about mankind.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 1:47 PM PST - 10 comments
Man Impaled on Drill Bit
but he's actually going to be alright although he lost one eye. There is a pic on the link of the X-ray shot showing an 18 inch long, 1 1/2 inch wide drill bit going straight through his skull.
No brain damage, no paralysis and his nephew is already joking about how he'll be popping out his glass eye at parties.
Amazing!
posted by fenriq at 10:25 AM PST - 30 comments
Press photographer stripped of award;
accused of
overly darkening some portions in the digital editing process. Nothing was added or moved. Explains N.C. Press Photographers Assoc. president Chuck Liddy: You might say, "Gosh, I don't like the way this background looks I can get rid of this with a couple of keystrokes". No contortions in the darkroom with your hands and a dodging wand. No making ten or fifteen prints over a two hour period to get that print just right. Nope, just go and use the lasso tool, yank those levels to the max and VIOLA! the background disappears. Burning has always been an acceptable action. Burning to "de-emphasize" a background is something all of us do. But deleting the background by using some of the powerful tools Photoshop offers is totally unacceptable and violates the ethics code we adhere to. Schneider, the photographer, responds in an
NPR interview (scroll down to audio link). In this allegedly
unethical photo, Schneider says he corrected for overexposure. Is this a backlash against digital manipulation, which rankles the old school because it is simply too easy?
posted by found missing at 9:45 AM PST - 31 comments
How everyday things are made.
See how things such as candy, cars, airplanes, etc are made. Learn about manufacturing processes, like forging, casting, or injection molding. Stanford University's Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing's site covers over 40 different products and manufacturing processes, and includes almost 4 hours of manufacturing video.
Optimized for DSL/Cable speeds or greater. Macromedia FlashPlayer plugin (6.029 or greater) required.
posted by riffola at 8:31 AM PST - 4 comments
August 29
Japanese Tolkien fans angered over translation issues.
Relatively old news, but I believe not that well known. Do the technical difficulties involved excuse the loss of important meaning in dialogue? Film translation seems to suffer from much less prestige than
literary translation, though that too has
its controversies. In the US, anime fans replay the loose vs strict translation debate daily, also protesting
cuts and
edits. Is it really impossible in the rush to make money off the geeks
and off the masses to stay relatively true to the original material?
posted by e^2 at 9:59 PM PST - 21 comments
The August 9, 2003 edition of the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi featured an
interview with Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq who, together with a group of Egyptian expatriates in Switzerland, is preparing an enormous lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world."
For material stolen from the Pharaonic Egyptians during the Exodus ...
(link via
The Daily Grail)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:38 PM PST - 36 comments
Tom Feelings, an African-American
illustrator,
author, and
historian, has
passed.
"I had used the functional form of a narrative without words, it is open to all people, especially those who have difficulty visualizing what Black people describe as racism from the past and its lingering presence in the present."
posted by moonbird at 3:06 PM PST - 2 comments
Anekee, Anekee, I'm so confused.
(WARNING: no nudity but probably NSFW and a Flash-only-site.)What's going here?
A beautiful (18+) teenage girl sell memberships to her site,
presumably with the promise of revealing skin. Nothing new, right? But wait, what she
really
wants to do is
Free Your Mind.™ Could her mission possibly
be
be true? (<< that link is definitely NSFW)
posted by danOstuporStar at 2:35 PM PST - 28 comments
TerraServer USA. Can you find your own house? I drove myself mad looking, until I finally resorted to using the address finder. I can see my road, but I can't make out which house is mine. Can you find your home, or even your neighborhhod, in a satellite photo of the country?
posted by archimago at 9:38 AM PST - 18 comments
'Punk' Catfish Among New Species Found in Venezuela
: Scientists studying an unspoiled jungle river wilderness in Venezuela on Thursday announced the discovery of 10 new fish species, including a red-tailed tiddler, a "punk" catfish with a spiky head and a piranha that eats fruit as well as flesh, says
The Associated Press.
A little more
Here.
Other new species found recently include
Baffling 'Mystery Apes' [
More on them], some
gross, weird things, and even some
Odd Critters that thrive without oxygen, growing in salty, alkaline conditions, and may offer insights into what kinds of life might survive on Mars. But it's not just little critters,
Pseudoryx nghetinhensis was the first of the new mammal species discovered in quite some time, and even
A New giant squid.
Like this stuff?
A New Theory says many of the ecological patterns we see can be more simply and often better explained if competing species are treated as if they were essentially identical.
posted by Blake at 4:57 AM PST - 12 comments
August 28
OrcaLive is a
series of webcams and underwater microphones placed off of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. They are part of
OrcaLab started by Dr. Spong in 1970 to study wild orca. It appears the cameras are manned and observations of behavior and movement are made
here in the left-hand column. Combined, it makes for some good viewing--today alone I saw and heard different pods greeting each other, saw
spyhops, stomach rubbing along the shore, and tailslaps. Ken Balcomb at the
Center for Whale Research has been studying the orca around the San Juan Islands, Washington since 1976. They also have a
webcam and
still shots. You may remember the
story of Springer being reunited with her pod. (
discussed here) There is also a young male named
Luna L98 who has been separated from his pod for two years.
His situation has reached a crisis while Canadian officials have taken a wait-and-see approach. In the last few days,
Luna was wounded by a boat propeller and has a 6-8inch long 1.5inch deep gash above one eye. Maybe Canada will act now. With only 79 individuals in the Southern Resident population, down from 92 in 1991, every individual is important.
posted by lobakgo at 8:29 PM PST - 9 comments
Pop Quiz: What was the first personal computer?
"Be careful before you answer! The question is highly ambiguous. Are you sure you know what first means? How about personal? Even computer is an ambiguous term! Let's define personal computer as a computer having the following attributes: It must be a digital computer. It must be largely automatic. It must be programmable by the end-user. It must be accessible, either as a commercially manufactured product, as a commercially available kit, or as widely published kit plans. It must be small enough to be transportable by an average person. It must be inexpensive enough to be affordable by the average professional. It must be simple enough to use that it requires no special training beyond an instruction manual.
Ready?"
posted by quonsar at 6:05 PM PST - 11 comments
When all
dot-com companies existed in full power (late 90's), none of us could actually
use them (because of our lazy dial-up modems), now that we could use them they don't exist. "Which leads me to think that there might be another dot-com flourishing just around the corner."
Is Moby right?
posted by nandop at 4:13 PM PST - 21 comments
In Baffin's Bay where the whale fish blow, The fate of Franklin no man may know, The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell, Lord Franklin with his sailors do dwell...an Arctic mystery, involving the meeting of two cultures, cannabalism and the
occult (see under "Still more mysteries", the heading "Why wasn't the accurate information (etc.)")
posted by calico at 1:41 PM PST - 6 comments
If you happen to have a lot of time this afternoon and feel like revisiting an old music conspiracy chestnut, this is the most comprehensive page on
Paul Is Dead that I have ever seen (link via Bifurcated Rivets).
posted by oflinkey at 12:42 PM PST - 24 comments
The Bombay(Mumbai) blasts.
Why detonate two car-bombs in Bombay?
Destabilize the economy creating a climate for terror. Terror attacks have become
commonplace in parts of India. The US condemned the Bombay attack- Powell called Indian officials. But, it seems like India should do more before if it wants broader US support. As the WSJ editorial page put it- "We think India could have helped build even closer U.S. ties had it decided to send troops to Iraq. The U.S. has driven a wedge into the center of Muslim terrorism with its occupation of Iraq, and it is looking to see who its friends really are." What is the lesson from all of this to the Indian government? What would you do if you were running India?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 9:43 AM PST - 60 comments
After Life
is a gorgeous little demonstration of what can be done when you combine a talented photographer with some (relatively) subtle Flash effects. Summer is my favorite, with the grass that blows as you brush by it.
posted by majcher at 7:50 AM PST - 8 comments
Creation Science Fair
- the first place for elementary level was won by Cassidy Turnbull, who demonstrated the differences between her uncle and a monkey. Much more impressive was the winner of the high school level who used prayer to make microbes evolve antibiotic resistance. I, for one, am glad that children across the world are learning the power of Creation Science! (via New Scientist)
posted by adrianhon at 7:21 AM PST - 32 comments
"These are good people"...but changes must be made. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board final report was released on Tuesday.
Putting technical answers aside for the moment, the report targets the
organizational and
behavioral issues that led to a breakdown in communication, safety and responsibility. While acknowledging the good will at NASA, the report holds no illusions that changing this culture will be very difficult and very necessary in order to return to flight. What types of management/behavioral obstacles have you encountered in home, work, school or social organizations? How did you try to effect change and what obstacles did you encounter in an effort to make it more effective, safe, productive or enjoyable?
posted by tgrundke at 7:00 AM PST - 11 comments
It's brilliant,
or at least reflective and translucent. Fetosoap.com has started selling body products containing little fetuses. But don't worry; no children were harmed in the making of
this soap, or
this bar with conjoined twins. The creator doesn't claim any political motivation, but that's easy to superimpose. Good idea? Poor taste? Both?
posted by spaceboy86 at 6:51 AM PST - 14 comments
kids.us ready to go.
Hidden amongst the seemingly endless barrage of SOBig virii this morning was an interesting email from that
ResourceShelf Guy on the new
kids Domain.
Being billed as
"an Internet domain that parents and children can trust for educational and appropriate online fun" kids.us Launches On September 4, 2003. You can read the
Overview of kids.us Policies and Procedures, or
Register A Name (starting next week).
Interestingly they
Say a company called
cyveillance will be "monitoring and reviewing" content for the domains.
The domain names will
Look a little funny, but maybe
Someone should snag www.metafilter.kids.us, you know, for the kids. They don't seem cheap, as
"Registrants will be charged a combined registration fee and a non-refundable application fee for five-year registration.
posted by Blake at 4:36 AM PST - 13 comments
August 27
An anotated list
of the best-selling classics, (
as compiled by
Book Magazine), showing the years in which they will become public domain under current copyright law. Fans of Hemingway's
The Sun Also Rises will be in luck in 2021;
Memoirs of a Geisha will go public sometime in the early 2100s.
[Via Vidiot's brand new blog.]
posted by me3dia at 9:49 PM PST - 5 comments
Earth from the Air
is a free, open-air exhibition in the gardens of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, London. It is a spectacular presentation of large-scale photographs of astonishing natural landscapes. Created by world-famous photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, also refer to the
previous discussion of his work. Every stunning aerial photograph tells a story about our changing planet. Seen together, they are an outstanding visual testimony to the world we live in today. A world with a growing population, shrinking biodiversity, polluted lands and oceans, a changing climate and a shortage of drinking water. A world, nevertheless, of beauty and of wonder. Also in a pioneering project Yann Arthus-Bertrand's unique aerial view of the world can now be seen by
blind and partially sighted visitors.
posted by riffola at 8:58 PM PST - 7 comments
Lies and the Lying Presidents Who Tell Them.
The
Washington Monthly publishes its "mendacity index" of the last four U.S. presidents, ranking their overall history (and severity) of lying. TWM's site also lets you rate them yourself, just in case ranking the 20 worst Americans got boring.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:36 PM PST - 44 comments
Cool watches through history.
A series of profiles on important watches in the history of the electronic watch. From one regulated by a tuning fork, to the once-omnipresent Swatch.
posted by o2b at 10:53 AM PST - 13 comments
Al Franken interviewed at Salon.com
"O'Reilly went on his radio show and said that the purpose of the lawsuit was to punish me for coming after Fox.
So this is the mindset of the right, that they have to punish you. Joe Wilson, the former Gabon ambassador, was sent to Niger by the CIA and came back and said the uranium claims weren't true. And when the controversy started broiling again about the 16 words in the State of the Union address and Wilson wrote the piece in New York Times, senior administration officials blew the cover on his wife, who was a covert [CIA] operative. And it jeopardized the lives not only of her contacts but every American, because she was a covert agent in weapons of mass destruction. And it's a way of intimidating other analysts who might come forward, and there's a parallel here: You will be punished if you come after us.
I really think the Wilson thing is the most disgraceful action of any White House since Iran Contra. "
posted by skallas at 9:37 AM PST - 85 comments
The Circus Trees of Axel Erlandson: In the 1920s Erlandson observed the natural grafting of two sycamores, became inspired, and then fused 4 sycamore saplings into his first successful experiment - a cupola that he named "Four Legged Giant". Using his own techniques, Erlandson went on to fashion zigzags, birdcages, chairs, towers, hearts, loops, baskets, rings, lightning bolts, towers, picture frames, ladders, and spiral staircases by painstakingly threading saplings together. His trees appeared often in Ripley's Believe it or Not during the 40s and 50s.
Click,
click,
click.
posted by iconomy at 8:03 AM PST - 21 comments
Kirby is god!
Tomorrow would have been Jack Kirby's 86th birthday. A creator (or co-creator) of such characters as the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and numerous others, Kirby gets a warm
remembrance from Elvis Mitchell (with lots of references to Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay," which was dedicated to Kirby) in the NY Times
(Reg. required). A lot of american popular culture was generated by this man in his 50 year career, and it's nice to see him finally get some recognition, especially when someone like Stan Lee tends to hog the spotlight, claiming creator's rights.
posted by jpburns at 4:08 AM PST - 21 comments
August 26
The Getaway
is a game for the PS2 set in a realistically modelled representation of London. You'd have to be really bored to go and find all the locations in the game and re-create the missions for real,
wouldn't you?
posted by Mwongozi at 5:07 PM PST - 16 comments
Illustrating Genji
An eighteenth-century scroll illustrating the first sixteen chapters of
Lady Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. (In
Japanese, anyone? Don't forget to take the photographic
tour.) A couple of images from an important twelfth-century scroll are
here. UNESCO hosts a full set of seventeenth-century woodblock prints by
Harumasa Yamamoto. For the nineteenth century, see a set of color sixteen woodblock prints by
Kunisada; and for the twentieth,
Shuseki's illustrations of the first eleven chapters. (Those in search of some artistic context should revisit
this post by y2karl.)
posted by thomas j wise at 4:17 PM PST - 14 comments
The gift of sight
is easy to take for granted. Not for
Mike May, blinded in infancy, Mike had partial vision restored at the age of 43.
This is his journal, written with infectious delight for his new gift and documenting the unexpected problems that the miracle brings. There's much, much more to vision than
just the data and Mike is an unprecedented opportunity to better understand how perception works.
[via the Guardian and previously mentioned here]
posted by grahamwell at 12:54 PM PST - 14 comments
Hippie Atrocities and Beautiful Freaks -- Oz Magazine
was, for a ten year run during the Sixties and Seventies, Australia's, and later England's, premier underground satire 'zine. Featuring contributions from (among others) Lenny Bruce and Germain Greere, and subject to two obscenity trials--one in Australia and another, more famous one following the editors' exile to
England--it evolved, in its English incarnation, a
wicked,
witty and of course, thouroughly
psychedelic design aesthetic. There are galleries of cover art
here and
here,
and a Shockwave adaptation of the infamous School Kids issue
here.
[warning: some images NSFW.]
posted by arto at 12:21 AM PST - 6 comments
August 25
The Forest Brothers
spent years hiding in the woods of Estonia and Latvia. They lived alone, carefully covering their tracks, sleeping in clammy bunkers, no bigger than walk-in closets. Then things got less comfortable.
(warning: nytimesfilter.)
posted by alms at 9:42 PM PST - 7 comments
Rumors abound about the
legality of the IRS, and about
people who've managed to avoid paying income taxes based on the lack of legality of the IRS itself. Is any of this real, or simply people trying to make a buck selling a book or two? And if the IRS is fraudulent, what can a citizen without massive fundage do to fight it?
posted by woil at 6:37 PM PST - 30 comments
Where are they now?
Hey, remember that guy that was head of that big company that went bankrupt and the employees lost their retirement savings and it turned out the whole thing was just this massive fraud? I wonder what happened to that guy.
posted by raaka at 6:08 PM PST - 21 comments
Reuters
and
AP have stories on The final energy report from the GAO on
Walker v. Cheney. You can see the
Chronology of the GAO's Attempts [PDF] to Obtain Information from the National Energy Policy Development Group, and more at the
GAO Site.
The General Accounting Office sued Vice President Cheney last year to obtain a list of officials from Enron and other companies who met with President Bush's energy task force.
Highlights or read the full report:
GAO-03-894 "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy"
posted by Blake at 5:45 PM PST - 16 comments
Everyone eavesdrops
but few people catalog the fragments of conversation that they overhear.
This guy travels on the
London Underground regularly...and posts some of those one sided exchanges that make you wonder
what the hell people are talking about. (its my first FPP - play nice...)
posted by mattr at 12:55 PM PST - 45 comments
Four 9/11 Widows Demand Truth.
"This is a stonewalling job of far greater importance than Watergate. This concerns the refusal of the countrys leadership to be held accountable for the failure to execute its most fundamental responsibility: to protect its citizens against foreign attack. 'If we have an executive branch that holds sole discretion over what information is released to the public and what is hidden, the public will never get the full story of why there was an utter failure to protect them that day, and who should be held accountable.'"
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:33 PM PST - 33 comments
Anybody see this coming?
The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.
posted by FormlessOne at 12:04 PM PST - 28 comments
It's Lunchtime. You know what that means: Meat.
Mmmmmm... I'm salivating like Pavlov's dog just looking at it! What's that?
You're in the mood for poultry? So tasty. Bill Cosby from
Leonard Part 6 would be proud! (Whoever else has seen that movie gets a free Hat of Meat. I vaguely remember it, but suffice it to say they don't make enough movies where the hero wields raw meat as a weapon against has-been disco queens and her army of gay bodybuilding henchmen.)
posted by Stan Chin at 9:45 AM PST - 18 comments
What's Not To Love About A Good Hatchet Job?
Christopher Hitchens gleefully chainsaws into
JFK; while
Neal Ascherson demonstrates the more elegant approach towards character assassination with a nice "Drunken Stalinist Bastard"
piece on Kennedy's Cuban Missile buddy,
Khrushchev. Meanwhile, in the streetfighting, eye-scratching category,
Laura Miller rips Chuck "Fight Club" Palahniuk into tiny pieces. What lowest of low instincts makes us relish such gratuitous - yet somehow
richly deserved in the Grand Scheme Of Things - slaughters?
(Warning: Sorry. Possibly unethical direct linking of a Salon Premium article. If your conscience objects, please go through the usual channel.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:36 AM PST - 33 comments
A million lives.
Links to thousands of biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, narratives, oral histories and more.
posted by pooligan at 8:53 AM PST - 3 comments
Pam Grier,
Tura Satana,
Laura Gemser.
Cult Sirens is a site dedicated to, you guessed it, the women made famous due to the cult movies they starred in. If you love this kind of stuff, there are
links to more sites having to do with actors, cult movies and horror movies. And there's always this list of
cult movies, complete with reviews.
posted by ashbury at 6:08 AM PST - 3 comments
About 2, if not more blasts
rocked Mumbai on Monday afternoon.
About 40 people are dead, and numerous injured. The bombs were apparently placed in taxis, and the two confirmed explosion sites are the historic Gateway of India, a huge tourist spot and the Mumba Devi temple, after which the city get its name. The city has been prey to a string of deadly bomb attacks since December last year, with the most recent, on a bus, killing three in July, and suffered a simliar serial blast back on March 12
th, 1993.
posted by riffola at 4:32 AM PST - 19 comments
August 24
"By recklessly cutting taxes, President Bush has enriched the wealthy and neglected the poor, sent the federal budget deficit to record heights, and imposed a colossal financial burden on the coming generation. He has revived the culture wars by flaunting his Christian faith and by promoting traditional values. He has undermined public schools by supporting school choice. He has eroded the wall of separation between church and state by seeking federal funding for faith-based charities. He threatens to reverse decades of progress in civil rights by packing the judiciary with right-wing extremists. He has alienated our European allies with his crude cowboy diplomacy and provided a legitimate basis for anti-Americanism around the world. And he has knowingly deceived the American people in a matter of grave national importance by resting his case for war against Iraq on trumped-up charges about weapons of mass destruction."
"That's a caricature", says
Peter Berkowitz in a coolly favorable article about the current Presidency.
1st link via aldaily
posted by 111 at 3:10 PM PST - 49 comments
False Start
How important is sportsmanship in the modern era? On Sunday afternoon at the IAAF World Championships, Jon Drummond false started in the 100m sprint and was disqualified. He refused to leave the track (initially prostrating himself in the middle of his lane) and ended up delaying the race by more than 50 minutes. In 1996, Linford Christie did
something similar in the Olympic games 100m final.
Is it just 100m sprinters, or is sportsmanship going out of fashion?
posted by daveg at 1:02 PM PST - 19 comments
Dyke to open up BBC archive.
Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives.
Wow! The BBC has archives stretching back to when the Earth was still cooling. And now it will all be available online and for free. [Via
Slashdot]
posted by PenDevil at 10:20 AM PST - 36 comments
Peepshow
- Sunday art stroll: this cute little site is a quick flash tour through the portfolios of a dozen funky and fun British illustrators.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:54 AM PST - 6 comments
More or Less
is an interesting mini-encyclopedia of several of the great heroes & great villains of the 20th Century, with background information on each individual, the situation they were in, the scope of their impact on humanity, etc. It makes an interesting contrast, as well as a good thinking point on what one human life can achieve, for better or worse.
posted by jonson at 9:23 AM PST - 3 comments
Balance the State Budget
-- Fight this little Flash game created by the AP for hours and hours. It's certainly timely given the number of U.S. states struggling to balance their books and it's definitely engrossing (for geeks). While it certainly is simplistic, it makes me wonder, is playing the political game really this hard? Or is this game (or am I) just stupid? Even better question, is it impossible to win?
posted by lazywhinerkid at 6:25 AM PST - 9 comments
bikewriter
the newest weapon in the guerrilla graffiti arsenal. I wonder how long it will take before someone uses this to propose to his girlfriend.
posted by riffola at 3:37 AM PST - 23 comments
Drums around the world
"Drums Around the World is an annual simultaneous world wide drumming day.Our purpose is to Honor the traditions of the drum, celebrate its power to unify humanity."
The tenth anniversary of the annual "Drums around the World: ....In 1994, the inaugural event, over 2100 drummers showed up at the main event (facilitated by Baba Olatunji, Hamza El Din, Arthur Hull, John Bergamo, Jim Greiner, Muruga Booker, and Native Drummers) creating the worlds largest drum circle. This event was also broadcast world-wide via satellite (complements of CNN)."
Ever drummed on a Djembe until your hands bled? ....Or wondered why virtually no republicans practice African or indigenous drumming techniques? Are hand drums, to the US far right, a spooky talesman which evokes lurid fantasies of wild satanic or Santeria (Voodoo) rituals?
posted by troutfishing at 1:59 AM PST - 25 comments
August 23
Hey, Asswipe!
Sadly, there's a dearth of literature on toilet hygiene. Here in Portugal, being a clean-living people, after wasting a forest of bunched-up paper, we thoroughly wash our arses/asses in a
bidet after - pardon my French -
taking a dump. Men, it must be said, carefully wipe their dicks with toilet paper after a pee and flush twice. Women, though deprived of dicks in the tradition of old Freudian "penis envy", do the same. I wonder whether this is a universal tradition. Pray tell. Ugh!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:07 PM PST - 84 comments
EPA misled public on 9/11 pollution
"In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available."
posted by jpoulos at 9:27 AM PST - 17 comments
Tampa drops face-recognition system
The Tampa Police Department says the system, which scans faces in a crowd and compares them with a database of criminals, didn't help them catch even one criminal. Could it be that law enforcement is starting to understand that technology is no substitution for good old fashioned police work?
posted by whirlwind29 at 6:02 AM PST - 8 comments
August 22
