November 5, 2006
Christ of the Deep
The New Style
Ice Ice Baby
A giant flotilla of 100 icebergs is passing just 260km off the coast of the South Island (of New Zealand) - the closest the glacial masses have been to this country for 70 years.
Maybe all that water could be used for something else?
Bad Ink, Bad Man/Boy
It seems that Utah's #1 enemy has been captured. He looks ridiculous baby.
Immortal Illustrated Stories
Amar Chitra Katha were the comics of my youth. Illustrated painstakingly with loving details, the immortal epics and stories of India going back over 5000 years were crystallized in these thin graphic novels. I will always remember Mirabai, for the romance between her and the god of love and war, Krishna. And Chanakya, aka Kautilya, author of the Arthashastra but better known to me for his Nitishastra - niti means political ethics. But other nitishastras include the famous Panchantra [pdf], the equivalent of Aesop's Fables for India, a textbook of 'niti' or the wise conduct of life.
afterlife marriage
Afterlife marriages in remote China "To ensure a son’s contentment in the afterlife, some grieving parents will search for a dead woman to be his bride and, once a corpse is obtained, bury the pair together as a married couple." (NYT article)
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." -Jack Nicholson
The philosophy of sex. Observations on the world's oldest pastime by its foremost current visionaries.
This won't hurt, it's for your own good.
Fingerprinting school kids for lunch. Several schools in California will require students to scan their fingerprints before getting their school lunch to help speed up cafeteria lines. Don't worry about it, it's already being done in Georgia while Florida has a similar system which also lets parents check to see what their kids bought for lunch. Arizona doesn't do fingerprints, it just has the kids enter a number for their meals. New Jersey has Iris Scanning.
Hopefully all of this information was gained through parental consent.
Hopefully all of this information was gained through parental consent.
Hacking Democracy
Hacking Democracy. A frightening and well-made full-length HBO documentary.
Frédéric Bastiat
We're coming to your town, we'll drag your budget down
On November 7th, Americans have much to decide. While the two major parties joust for control of the Senate and House, many a ballot initiative does not recieve the scutiny required. Consider Oregon's Rainy Day Amendment, Arizona's HOPE Amendment, California's Protect Our Homes Initiative or Idaho's Proposition 2. Examine the Taxpayer Bill of Rights in Maine and Proposal 6 in Michigan - weigh them against three bills in Montana. [more inside]
Remember, remember
It being the 5th of November and that… here's a bit of fireworks nostalgia.
Who do the troops support?
US Military Papers open fire on Rummy. Tomorrow, the Army Times -- and all other Military Times papers, including Navy and Air Force Times -- will run an editorial calling for Donald Rumsfeld to tender his resignation or be fired, due to his gross incompetence in handling the Iraq quagmire.
Spider Game.
Charming game featuring a rather sad little three legged spider.
'The "climate-change" scare is less about saving the planet than, in Jacques Chirac's chilling phrase, "creating world government"...'
Climate change denial gets a sort of semi-mainstream platform in the UK. The author, Christopher Monckton, seems to be a colourful figure. Now that all the major political parties accept that it's time to do something about climate change, is this a last ditch effort by 1980s right wing relics to stave off the inevitable? Or are we going to be hearing a lot more of this kind of stuff, post-Stern Review (previous)?
DIY Speakers
Picasso and the Minotaur - an animated short
Minotauromaquia - a stop motion animated short set to Stravinsky's in which Picasso confronts the minotaur and some other painted characters come to life. The image of the Minotaur is a recurring symbol of self in Picasso's works. (main link via Milinkito [more])
The Present is the Future of the Past
The Perfume of Garbage: an archaeology of the world trade centers (pdf). What do the the godfather of garbology, a leading post-modern archaeological theorist (blog), and a "space archaeologist"(cf. space junk) think about the WTC? Obviously as a ruin and as an archaeological site - but much more. An intriguing analysis placing the WTC ruins into archaeological context, and, most particularly, responding to the Smithsonian's exhibition of artifacts from the events of September 11, 2001. Also, a commentary (pdf) responding to garbage, space and the WTC. And yes, garbology goes well beyond Mick Jagger ephemera.
Nikos Salingaros, Architecture Theorist
Nikos Salingaros is a mathematics professor and architecture theorist. His career has crossed disciplines: after starting out as a painter, Salingaros earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and published work in mathematics and physics. In 1983 Salingaros helped edit Christopher Alexander's book The Nature of Order (here are Salingaros' notes on the book), and thereafter began a career as a noted architecture theorist in his own right. Salingaros is an advocate for "new urbanism" in architecture, and he champions the ideas of architect Léon Krier (the "godfather of new urbanism") with the "pattern language" theory of Christopher Alexander (wiki). The excellent arts blog 2Blowhards conducted a fascinating five-part interview with Salingaros: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Salingaros just published a new book, A Theory of Architecture (2Blowhards discusses it here) with a preface written by HRH the Prince of Wales (wiki).
Ethical Realism
Ethical Realism. Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman (formerly of the Heritage Foundation) make a bipartisan attempt at a more realistic foreign policy, based on prudence and an understanding of others' interests, instead of a utopian belief in democratization. "It seemed to us that in [foreign policy] at least, the United States was almost coming to resemble some Latin American countries of the past, where rival hereditary political clans of 'Conservatives' and 'Liberals' clashed bitterly and even launched savage civil wars with each other - but in terms of real policy were virtually indistinguishable and equally wrong." [more inside]
I think it was that last beer
On a less serious note, 12 signs you drank too much. (May be NSFW--some partial male nudity)
Saddam sentenced to death.
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