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August 2005 Archives
August 31
The Utopian Nightmare
: "What is utopianism? It is promising more than you can deliver. It is seeing an easy and sudden answer to long-standing, complex problems. It is trying to solve everything at once through an administrative apparatus headed by world leaders. It places too much faith in altruistic cooperation and underestimates self-seeking behavior and conflict. It is expecting great things from schemes designed at the top, but doing nothing to solve the bigger problems at the bottom."
Also, be sure to check out the the 16 ideas, values and institutions that may not be with us 35 years from now written by a variety of interesting people and compiled as part of Foreign Policy's 35th anniversary (although not all are free or available without registration).
posted by loquax at 9:49 PM PST - 23 comments
Orca Live:
The idea of Nature Network is to relay live imagery and sound from cameras set up in Nature throughout the world.
"My hope is to bring people closer to Nature without disrupting her" that hope is the hope of Dr. Spong. At this very moment, all over the
world, a variety of organisms are beaming with life. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were media by which people could get a sense of this?
If a window could be opened up that would trigger city dwellers' memories of the rhythms of Nature, the way we sense the world and our way of being are bound to change somewhat. That hope, too, lies within.
via
posted by hortense at 7:41 PM PST - 2 comments
Purdue University has begun providing podcasts of lectures of some courses, intended for students who miss a class or who want to review specific lectures. Users of the service
can download a specific lecture or all of the lectures from an entire course. Apparently also open to the public it is called
Boilercast, about 50 classes are starting now for Fall 2005.
posted by stbalbach at 3:51 PM PST - 15 comments
Everyone is (probably) familiar with
Something Awful. However, you may not be familiar with their hosting company - located in a New Orleans office building on Poydras in the CBD... but have you noticed that SA hasn't gone blank yet? It's because
Zipa, and
directNIC upstairs have the whole data center disaster contingency thing on
lockdown.
Blog and
pictures from the directNIC guys are regularly updated. Color me impressed.
posted by kuperman at 3:41 PM PST - 69 comments
The Bawls Song
is something I found out about through
PAX, where I was an enforcer. The main
Bawls site isn't anything to look at, but this viral piece of fan music is awesome. And if I'm wrong and it's not a fan piece of music (I couldn't find it on their site) sorry!
Warning: large file (mp3) and NSFW language.
posted by taumeson at 12:26 PM PST - 16 comments
The Rawker!
"The mullet hanging out of the back of the trucker hat, the fact that he's topless and occasionally forgets the lyrics (and must read them from an index card), the chinese zodiac calendar hanging on the wall, just below the window dressing - BUT THERE'S NO WINDOW... And the music! IT RAWKS!"
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:18 AM PST - 37 comments
Gas at $4 a gallon?
A quick
summary of the current reasons gas remains high ("Not I!" squawks the refiners, "Not I!" squawks producers). The EPA is easing restrictions in affected areas and the national oil keg is
being tapped (WSJ), yet despite the whole doom-and-gloom scenerios the
Economist remains perky about the cause of rising prices, "higher oil prices [now] reflect strong demand, ... they are the product of healthy global growth."
posted by geoff. at 10:41 AM PST - 122 comments
Homes from Snøhetta.
Løvetann houses are made from modules with built-in standards such as wireless networking, kitchen and bathroom appliances, and home entertainment systems. A small step up from
this.
posted by tellurian at 12:19 AM PST - 22 comments
August 30
St. James Infirmary,
in a funereal, no lyrics, brass-band version underlies a persistent scrum of half-remembered songs about New Orleans rising in concert with the waters, lapping at the sandbags of my mind. Up front,
Tom Waits (
I Wish I Was in New Orleans) and
Randy Newman (
Lousiana 1927) are duking it out for time at the piano, elaborately filigreed chords overlapping and changing the dominant lyric at the moment of harmonic convergence, while in the background
Arlo Guthrie (
The City of New Orleans) warbles about a train ride.
Professor Longhair and/or
The Dixie Cups (
Big Chief,
Iko Iko) sort of amusedly fight to keep sliptime with the martial drums from Jimmy Driftwood's
The Battle of New Orleans (caution: embedded quicktime) behind the whole toxic soup of sonic residue. I'm sure the stew will grow more dense over the next couple weeks.
Got a New Orleans song to toss into the waters?
posted by mwhybark at 10:58 PM PST - 45 comments
More than 30 feet of water stood over land inhabited by nearly one million people. Almost 300,000 African Americans were forced to live in refugee camps for months. Many people, both black and white, left the land and never returned.
"When Mother Nature rages, the physical results are never subtle. Because we cannot contain the weather, we can only react by tabulating the damage in dollar amounts, estimating the number of people left homeless, and laying the plans for rebuilding. But . . . some calamities transform much more than the landscape."
No, not Katrina.
The Great Mississippi flood of 1927. Author John M. Barry in his definitive work on the subject, "shows how a heretofore anti-socialist America was forced by unprecedented circumstance to embrace an enormous, Washington-based big-government solution to the greatest natural catastrophe in our history, preparing the way (psychologically and otherwise) for the New Deal." The author is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane and Xavier universities (whose web site is *understandably* not answering right now).
<Heading for the library to find this book>
posted by spock at 6:14 PM PST - 12 comments
Crashed Cars of Kuwait
With a 120kph (75mph) highway speed limit, an 80kph (50mph) urban speed limit, a lot of expensive high performance cars, next to no law enforcement, driving in Kuwait can be a little, err, exciting. Psycho Milt, a New Zealander working in Kuwait, has a substantial and ever-growing
flickr photoset of crashed cars he's snapped on his daily commute.
posted by noizyboy at 3:37 PM PST - 19 comments
Let the bush bashing begin.
Funding for work on New Orleans' flood prevention system slowed to a trickle in 2003, and many people (long before Monday) claimed that was due to the Iraq war. [more inside]
posted by delmoi at 2:58 PM PST - 181 comments
The
MESSENGER spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral on August 3, 2004 and returned to Earth for its
first gravity boost on the way to Mercury a year later on August 2, 2005. MESSENGER took hundreds of high-res digital photos during its
Earth flyby and they've been sequenced into an amazing
movie of Earth rotating over 24 hours as the spacecraft swung past at thousands of miles per hour.
posted by driveler at 10:15 AM PST - 31 comments
Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!
(by Wired News). "A splinter faction of Flickr photo-sharing community members is threatening a symbolic "mass suicide" to protest closer integration with the website's new owner, Yahoo." Welcome to the Flickr Accounts Mass Suicide Countdown group -
Flick Off.
posted by webmeta at 6:01 AM PST - 91 comments
The Landmark Trust.
Ever wanted to stay somewhere with a little more class and history than the usual chain hotels? The landmark trust is a UK charity dedicated to restoring unique and historical buildings; they finance their work by renting them out to their members. While most of their buildings are scattered across the UK they also have four in Italy and
four in New England, including Rudyard Kipling's personally designed house,
Naulakha. In Florence, they have Robert and Elizabeth Browning's flat, though in Rome they only have the flat above the one in which Keats died (though it is nicely located at the Spanish steps). Unfortunately you have to pay to get the Handbook which shows all they have to offer, but featured buildings in their site include
Fort Clonque,
Swarkestone Pavilion and the Lutyens designed
Goddards.
Amongst their next
goals; preventing the 1830 folly,
Clavell Tower from falling into the sea.
Nothing less than pr0n for the architecturally inclined.
posted by biffa at 4:59 AM PST - 8 comments
Rape Charge Follows Marriage to a 14-Year-Old
[NYTimes] Mr. Koso is 22. The baby's mother, Crystal, is 14. He is charged with statutory rape, even though they were wed with their parents' blessing in May, crossing into Kansas because their own state prohibits marriages of people under 17. The Nebraska attorney general accuses Mr. Koso of being a pedophile; they say it is true love.
posted by psmealey at 3:47 AM PST - 79 comments
August 29
Pandora.
Bound to draw comparisons to
Last.fm,
LAUNCHcast, and
Musicplasma, Pandora (formerly Savage Beast) is a music discovery web application that recommends music based not on popularity, usage habits of other users, or genres/categories but on the deconstructed elements of how the music itself sounds. Fruit of the
Music Genome Project, music analysts have for more than five years spent 20 minutes analyzing each song in its ever-growing database for nearly 400 distinct attributes, so when you ask it, "Why is this song playing?" It answers, "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, surreal lyrics, use of call-and-response vocals, and string section beds." (YES! Thank you!) Currently live on public beta.
[Flash, 128kbps streams]
posted by Lush at 11:10 PM PST - 44 comments
The SLAPP
(Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) isnt a particularly novel way of stifling dissent: indeed, there are laws in California and other US States to prevent them. Their potential for misuse has also been identified in the
Australian context, which has no clear definition of protected free speech.
The latest effort at a SLAPP is by
Gunns Ltd., a
successful forestry company based in Tasmania. Theyre suing the
Gunns 20 for charges including
conspiracy and vilification (which is not actually a tort). Defendants include a Senator,
Dr Bob Brown of the
Australian Greens political party.
The case is being compared (by the
defendants) to the infamous PR disaster
McLibel case, however Gunns should perhaps get a better lawyer: their initial pleading has been described by the judge as an "
unintelligible embarrassment", showing that a bit of judicial common sense can still work wonders.
posted by wilful at 10:07 PM PST - 6 comments
The winning design for the British Antarctic Survey's
Halley VI station looks very futuristic. It's built on legs with skis (a runner up -
walked) so that it can be moved around and avoid being buried like some
1,
2 in the
past.
posted by tellurian at 9:12 PM PST - 13 comments
Language Corner
by Columbia Journalism Review, is incredibly helpful when it comes to learning the English language's subtle nuances and rather obvious rules.
posted by riffola at 12:22 PM PST - 20 comments
The most expensive $20 youll never see.
(Unless you happen to be kickin it in
Long Beach next month...) The 1933 double eagle, a one oz. gold coin minted by the United States just prior to dropping the gold standard, is now worth approximately $10,000,000 and is the stuff of coin collection legend. A collector by the name of Israel Izzy Switt acquired and held on to 10 of themjust after the last double eagle had officially been melted down by the government in 1937. (
Timeline.) Now, decades later, the coins are the subject of an
intense legal battle between the US government and Switts descendants.
Its a hell of a story.
posted by voltairemodern at 12:18 PM PST - 20 comments
The Jack Kirby Museum
opened yesterday on what would have been Kirby's 88th birthday. While just an online museum at this point, it promises to be a great resource for learning about the
life and
contributions Jack
"The King" Kirby made to comic book culture. Largely under-credited for
his role in co-creating many of Marvel's characters during the Silver Age of comics, his career spanned over 50 years.
Largely from The Jack Kirby Weblog, natch!
posted by jpburns at 4:52 AM PST - 23 comments
August 28
Since Fox News wrongly identified a La Habra home as that of a terrorist,
its five- member family has faced an angry backlash. A FOX correspondent named an alleged terrorist connected with the July London bombings, and went so far as to provide the man's address (deep in the heart of the O.C.) "to help local police". Unfortunately, the address was three years out of date, and the current residents who have no connection whatsoever with the former occupant are being threatened, harassed by people driving by & yelling threats at them, and have had their home vandalized by a spectacular moron with a spray can.
Full story here (LA Times, use
bugmenot).
posted by jonson at 11:39 PM PST - 141 comments
The Benedictine Vivarium
"In the Benedictine tradition of reverence for human thought and creativity, the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library preserves manuscripts, printed books and art at Saint John's University and undertakes photographic projects in regions throughout the world.
" --
"Nearly half of HMML's holdings derive from libraries in Austria and Germany, but HMML also houses significant collections from Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, England, and Ethiopia. It holds archival materials, and of particular importance are the Archives of the Knights of Malta, housed in the National Library in Valletta, and the Archives of the Roman Inquisition, located at the Cathedral Museum in Mdina.
" EXAMPLE PAGES --
Illustrations,
Photographs ,
Paintings/Iconography,
Pottery/Sculptures,
Artifacts,
Manuscripts and more - if this kind of thing interests you, then search around - I've only begun scratching the surface.
Nb. See browser setup info at bottom of page in main link.
[via]
posted by peacay at 12:28 PM PST - 9 comments
Live Local Coverage Of Hurricane Katrina
New Orleans television stations
WWL
and
WDSU
are providing nonstop live coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The
Mississippi Department Of
Transportation has live cams along the major highways which show the massive evacuation of the coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi including the metropolitan areas of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. With gusts of 207 MPH this could set a new record for the largest hurricane to ever hit the United
States.
posted by robliberal at 12:25 PM PST - 624 comments
Placebos Trigger Opioids.
New research indicates that the placebo effect is physical, not merely "psychological." Brain scans show that people who believe they are getting a medication to control pain trigger the release of opioids in their brains. Those natural endorphins reduce pain.
When Karl Marx said that religion in the opiate of the masses, he may have been literally correct. If faith in an useless medication can release natural painkillers, won't faith that God will make your life less painful do the same? This might also help explain why religion is so addictive, and why many people like the POTUS pass through the gateway drugs of alcohol and cocaine only to migrate to religion and jogging,
which also releases endorphins.
posted by MonkeyC at 10:27 AM PST - 66 comments
August 27
Duck Doom Deluxe
is a version of the old NES Duck Hunt game skinned to use the FPS gun/hand graphics from the original Doom. Windows only, apologies...
posted by jonson at 11:28 PM PST - 10 comments
Katrina targets New Orleans.
Mandatory evacuations have been declared, and contraflow evacuation routes are in effect near New Orleans, as
Hurricane Katrina, a very wet, drenching hurricane,
approaches the city from the Gulf of Mexico, where it is gaining in size and strength, with an estimated
45% chance of making landfall as a category 4 or 5 hurricane. The
computer models suggest that New Orleans will sustain a direct hit from Katrina, which could be
"The Big One" warned about by experts, capable of
flooding the city, polluting it with industrial waste, and even flooding the pump stations, leaving it incapable of pumping out the water. The hurricane is predicted to make landfall early Monday near
Port Fourchon, which handles approximately
13% of U.S. oil imports, and 27% of U.S. domestic production.
posted by insomnia_lj at 6:21 PM PST - 272 comments
In the First Person
"provides in-depth indexing of more than 2,500 collections of oral history in English from around the world. With future releases, the index will broaden to identify other first-person content, including letters, diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies, and other personal narratives... It allows for keyword searching of more than 260,000 pages of full-text by more than 9,000 individuals from all walks of life." You could start with the
places or
Historical Events listings, or just pick a keyword and dive in. (The post title is from the
first interview in the collection, from July 1930, with He Dog, who was born in the same year as Crazy Horse: "We grew up together in the same band, played
together, courted the girls together and fought together.") Via
wood s lot.
posted by languagehat at 2:49 PM PST - 6 comments
Robert Novak gets it wrong again.
Predicting that
Ellsworth Air Force Base in North Dakota would fall victim to the
Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BARC) thus damaging the political career of Republican
John Thune, Novak argued that the White House was "ignoring Thune" contradicting "the image of a White House that puts politics first. Instead, the Bush team looked like tone-deaf, old-fashioned Republicans interested more in going by the book than winning elections." Thune promised that only a Republican senator could save Ellsworth, South Dakota's largest employer, from closure. That promise played a prominent role in his campaign. In defeating senate minority leader
Tom Daschle, Thune's victory marked
the first time since 1952 that a party leader in the senate was defeated. When
Ellsworth was nevertheless put on the list for closure, Thune's politcal future appeared doomed.
As promised, Thune went into action. Yesterday,
Thune announced Ellsworth is saved! Contrary to Novak's opinion, the image of a White House that puts politics first is as strong as ever.
posted by three blind mice at 10:39 AM PST - 21 comments
The Forgotten Amendment: The story of the 27th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
Back in 1982, while doing research for a government class, UT Austin student Gregory Watson stumbled across an unratified constitutional amendment from 1789. Noticing that the amendment had had no time limit for ratification, Mr. Watson embarked upon a campaign to amend the U. S. Constitution.
Sadly, Watson only earned a "C" on his paper for government class, in which he'd argued the amendment was still viable.
posted by Dr. Zira at 9:46 AM PST - 14 comments
Ideophones
are words that are usually spoken but not written and are often
onomatopoeic, including (
but not limited to) the callsoften
reduplicatedwith which we beckon domestic animals, kindred to our
animal imitations. In the States there are many more
pig calls beyond
soo-ee. Maxim Gorky wrote that the sound
tse tse is used to call pigs in Russia. In Spanish
coch is used.
Americans use
pipi and
biddy to call chickens and turkeys. In
Ambon Malay chickens are called with
kurrrrr or
pan kur. In
Kiswahili you call chickens with
gurúgurúgurúgurú, call dogs with
aháháhá, and straying cattle with
ishiyeeyeeeeee or
ngoyéeeeee. In Sweden, they call cattle with a loud, high-pitched
kulning (akin to
yodeling). Cervantes wrote that they use
tus tus to call dogs in Spain.
One source says in
Coolderry, Ireland, they use
gen-gen to call pigs to ford,
puddly pudde to call ducks,
peopeo to call horses, and
geg geg to call geese. In Iceland,
kibbakibb is used to call sheep. In the Hiligaynon language of the Philippines, they call cats with
míming. In the parish of Nantcwnlle in Wales they have their own
set of calls.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:46 AM PST - 17 comments
August 26
Oakland police detaining photographers?
A month after being stopped for
taking photos of another building in San Francisco, blogger Thomas Hawk & some friends were detained for 20 minutes by an Oakland police officer for taking photos in the downtown warehouse district.
Among the topics of debate in the post's comments: was racial profiling an issue? is/should there even be a right to take the officer in question's photo? are SF residents more paranoid than the rest of us? is detaining a group of photographers a good use of police time? will commenters ever learn to spell "fascist" properly? and much more...
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:13 PM PST - 38 comments
Stimulating the male G-spot:
The medically researched and designed Aneros was originally created to safely and effectively massage the prostate, relieve congested prostate fluid, and promote general prostate health. It is anatomically tailored to the male body. When it was initially released, the Aneros worked like designed and greatly improved the quality of lives for many of our customers. However, in addition to reporting improved prostate health,
many of our users reported experiencing unbelievable orgasms and unique pleasure that, while different from a traditional penile orgasm, could only be described as "orgasmic."
And the best thing is, you don't have to charge any batteries neither do you have to use your hands. It's completely sphincter operated!
You can also just put it on your mantle piece and call it modern art. [Links might be NSFW, but no naked pictures]
posted by kika at 8:01 PM PST - 62 comments
Never want to work again? Maybe you need a
sugar daddy.
Not too much in California, so it seems I'm out of luck.
posted by starscream at 6:29 PM PST - 16 comments
Art Rage:
An unfortunate name for a really fun program. From the site: "ArtRage is all about playing with paint without the mess, and having fun in the process. You can paint your own image from a blank canvas to completed work, or load in a picture to trace and have the tools pick their colours for you as you paint over it." Friday fun that can keep you occupied all weekend. Enjoy.
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:37 PM PST - 9 comments
Im trying to make individuals within families. I ask myself, how can you create one-offs, while you are actually working with an industrial, serial production technology? Im trying to raise both of them, unique objects and serial output, to a higher level of quality. Quite a theme, isnt it?
Hella Jongerius creates custom
products/ art that utilizes a mixture of hand and industrial, mass production techniques. It is quite a theme, yes.
posted by Phantast at 1:06 PM PST - 3 comments
Livingsoft sucks? EULAs vs. "First Sale" doctrine.
Ed Foster covers the story of a woman who attempted to sell her legal copy of
Livingsoft's Dress Shop 5 Pro sewing-pattern-producing software on eBay, resulting in harrassment from Livingsoft's president towards her and the prospective buyer. The article and resulting discussion about EULAs and software purchases vs. licences is full of interesting perspectives.
If you pay sales tax for a tool, and discover upon opening it that a non-negotiable EULA exists, which prevents you from reselling but does not obligate the manufacturer to the responsibilities of ownership (maintenance, etc.), then who is the owner? Is the EULA valid?
posted by Tubes at 10:48 AM PST - 20 comments
The FBI has issued the first
demand for library records under the Patriot Act. The library in question is somewhere in Bridgeport, CT. The
ACLU is seeking an emergency court order to lift the FBI gag order, but they've been instructed by the gag to keep the person whose library records being sought (i.e., their client) a secret. What the ACLU has revealed is that the client is a member of the American Library Association (clearly, a front for terrorism). If any MeFites are interested in digging up additional details on this and start making calls,
here's a good place to start. What indeed would the FBI consider so threatening?
posted by ed at 10:46 AM PST - 57 comments
I thought you left
"I am amicably leaving the Drudge Report after a long and close working relationship with Matt Drudge... I am also excited to be a partner in an inspired new endeavor, the
Huffington Post." This was written May 26th but Drudge is linking to this "raucous, opinionated, red meat eating libertarian-leaning conservative"
more than ever.
posted by j.p. Hung at 8:22 AM PST - 28 comments
The poet has checked out.
Thomas Strickland died on August 15, 2005, in
Al Mahmudiyah, Iraq, after
several harrowing ordeals.
He left behind
his journal and
numerous war poems, such as
"Cheers to suicide! So Where's my Martini?" and
"Terrer be a Cancer Today", parts one and two.
Could he be the
Wilfred Owen of the Iraq War?
"Humanity, I think, is what fills the little gaps between all the broken shit, all the breaking, and all the plans, schematics, graphics and orders. Its the sand slipping out of grasping fingers. Its our instinct without progress as a motivator. It's who we are when we concentrate on being more than doing."
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:53 AM PST - 30 comments
