April 20, 2009
Banking on Fraud
Neil Barofsky, who helped prosecute the REFCO case, and who was appointed by the previous administration in late November to serve as Special Inspector General for TARP (more on him here and here), has released a report that claims TARP and related bailout programs are inherently vulnerable to fraud--and that there are at least 20 bailout/fraud investigations currently underway. The report comes on the heels of rumors that bailout money may convert to equity stakes: a move that may signal a change in current policy (but don't mention the n-word) .
The remotest places on Earth
Ever wondered where the remotest place in the world is? Short answer according to New Scientist: the Tibetan Plateau. Lots of cool maps showing transport times and methods. [more inside]
Keep it radical, good chap!
We've had quite a few lovely posts over the years about people on bikes and skateboards and all these fine new sports that those crazy kids are in to these days, whether it's charging it, huckin' or riding in all its myriad of forms. New, yeah? Here's your great-great-granddad showing you what for with some barspins and suchlike novelties on a heavy old fixie. Stick around for the full-pipe attempt at the end. Directed and filmed by Thomas Edison.
Embrace your inner indigenous athlete
Inspired by the Natural Method of Georges Hébert and trained in Parkour, Frenchman Erwan Le Corre has developed his own curious brand of back-to-nature physical fitness training called MovNat. As this awesome/humorous video shows, MovNat basically consists of running around in the woods, climbing trees, jumping over and under obstacles, swimming, and moving heavy objects. [more inside]
Porcupine Racetrack the way it was intended
It's finally happened: After a decade of struggle with MTV over royalty fees and the belief that there would be no market for it, The State is finally being released on DVD on July 19th, 2009. Until then, you can watch streaming video (albeit chopped up in an irritating way) of the episodes from MTV's site, via Hulu, and compare differences such as the soundalike placed in for The Breeders' "Cannonball" in this famous sketch.
Let me show you a world of bats and bees, ants and trees, morning glories and a few beached whales
The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, casually referred to as Sōkendai (a contraction of Sōgō kenkyū daigakuin daigaku), was founded in 1988 as the 96th national university in Japan. Amongst other things, it is home to the Soken Taxa Web Server which in turn hosts the first online Japanese Ant Color Image Database that currently lists 273 species of ant, the Illustrated Guide of Marine Mammals and the Marine Mammals Stranding DataBase, the Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive that currently includes 704 specimens, the Morning Glories Database that covers the many mutants of Ipomoea nil, closely related species and interspecific hybrids, the Makino Herbarium Database, which is named after the pioneering Japanese botanist, Tomitaro Makino, and the Japanese Bees Image Database.
Space based Solar Power
Space-based Solar Power beamed down to earth sounds pretty far out, but the technology is further along than many suppose, the sun never sets in space, and space is a Saudi Arabia of unlimited energy for the nation with the technology to harness it. PG&E (California) in conjunction with SolarEn has announced a 200MW space solar project to be up by 2016.
"I can make the word 'Canadian' sound sexy!"
Buddy Cole on (1) Love at First Sight, (2) Racism, (3) Dinosaurs, (4) Being Canadian, (5) Finding Love and (6) Outing Celebrities.
Arts & Crafts Videos from Etsy
Etsy has a YouTube channel where they have all kinds of profiles of their users and how-to guides. My two favorite series are the Process series (e.g. New Books with Old Materials & Tin Toys) and Handmade Portraits (e.g. Armor Guitars & Wood Mosaics). In the description of each video there is a link to the corresponding entry on Etsy's blog, The Storque. The blogposts have more information on the users and sometimes further links and videos. [via Work in Progress]
Marijuana Goes Mainstream
Bike Parkour
Bike Parkour. Exactly what it says on the tin.
Hey little sister what have you done
The Blind Watchmaker applet
This is a fun little atheistic distraction: The interactive Blind Watchmaker applet demonstrates how random mutation followed by non-random selection can lead to interesting, complex forms. The Blind Watchmaker algorithm was conceived by Richard Dawkins and is described in his book of the same name. The resultant forms (which can begin to look like plants and bugs) are called "biomorphs," visual representations of a set of genes. [more inside]
Intended Consequences: Rwanda's Children of Rape
Intended Consequences. It is estimated that 20,000 children were born as the result of rape during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that claimed the lives of over 800,000 Tutsis. Many of these women also contracted HIV/AIDS as a result. Not only do the mothers have to live with memories of this incredibly horrible event, but they along with their children are shunned by other Tutsi survivors. [more inside]
Soldiers' Stress: What Doctors Get Wrong About PTSD
Soldiers' Stress: What Doctors Get Wrong About PTSD. A growing number of experts insist that the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder is itself disordered and that soldiers are suffering as a result.
The Founders of Gospel Mime: A New Dimension of Worship
Put your hands together for the animated ministry epileptic seizures of K & K Mime. Not over the top enough for you? How about ICCM (come for the Flash intro, stick around for the voice of God warning you about the IRS). Or how about Evangel Cathedral.net, feel free to skip the intro and enjoy the floor show, or Drum & Bass Ministries? All are the divinely inspired creative work of Sharper FX.com.
bankers with a herd mentality?
Sodnomdarjaa Khaltarkhuu never expected to be a metaphor for the far-reaching impacts of the financial downturn.
The Passion of Alec Baldwin
Who's Your Daddy? Atlantic Monthly staff writer Caitlin Flanagan considers the impact of father-daughter relationships and once again opines about the emotional inner life of adolescent girls. Building off Alec Baldwin's much-publicized voicemail invective to his 11 year-old daughter, Flanagan concludes that apart from the celebrity personages, the Baldwin feud embodied all the classic traits of filial love between men and their little girls: "amorous engagement, maternal jealousy, and paternal protectiveness."
We're all death's customers eventually.
With all of the economic strife in the world, the funeral industry is still going strong. There is a niche for all budgets these days, including the availability of coffins at Costco. [more inside]
If an artistic director has quantified the dream of theatre on a spreadsheet, they are dead already.
Monologuist Mike Daisey has a beef with the way theater is made in the United States: . He's made that beef the substance of one of his monologues, How Theater Failed America. Now, Todd Olson, Producing Artistic Director (scroll down for bio) at the American Stage Theatre Company in St. Petersburg, Florida, has beef with Daisey, too. Olson says: balance my budget, wretched actor miscreant; Daisey says: bring it. [more inside]
US Pole Dance Federation
US Pole Dance Championships 2009 (no nudity, but possibly NSFW) It’s significant to understand that pole dancing is not stripping. This misconception prevents pole dancing from becoming something every woman should be able to enjoy. Pole dancing is a sensual athletic dance form that demands coordination, flexibility and physical strength. Like the Jane Fonda workout combined with Cirque du Soleil.
Legendary Threads and Hive Minds
Epic threads gathered from the nether reaches of the Internet.: www.LegendaryThread.com. [more inside]
Collaborative animation goes *doink*
Like iScribble and Oekaki before it, DoInk.com is a place for people to create collaborative artwork online. The difference? It's for animation. [more inside]
[something Delphic here]
Oracle to acquire Sun for $7.4 billion. This gives Oracle, among other things, Solaris, MySQL, Java and OpenOffice, and means that Oracle is now a hardware manufacturer rather than a reseller. [more inside]
Thrillarena
Riding the Wall of Death. "My name is Sam. I ride a 1931 101 Indian Scout motorcycle on the side of a 90 degrees (straight up & down) wooden barrel board wall." Also, lions. And ladies and lions.
Old School EGA Goodness in your Browser
Welcome to Sarien.net, the portal for reliving the classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. With its focus on instant fun and a unique multiplayer experience, Sarien.net hopes to win new gamers' hearts and promote the adventure game genre. Available currently: Leisure Suit Larry 1, Police Quest 1, and Space Quest 1.
So Young, So Cold , So Fair : The Saint James Infirmary Blues
121 different versions of
The Saint James Infirmary Blues
*more*. Via Blake Leyh of The Wire and
The Ten Thousand Things who does his own haunting, Tom Waits tinged version of the song
here.
Disturbing Strokes
Smells Like Sloop John B
"Smells Like Sloop John B", a mashup of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B".
East Germany, up close and personal
Photo essay of East Germany. Karlheinz Jardner traveled through East Germany to catch some things on film which he thought were on the verge of vanishing forever. (via) [more inside]
Infrastructures / Networks / Environments
The globe’s networked ecologies of food, water, energy, and waste have established new infrastructures and forms of urbanism. While these ecologies exist at the service of our contemporary lifestyles, they have typically remained hidden from view and from the public conscience. Infranet Lab is studying the shifting / changing conditions. [more inside]
“This conversation doesn’t exist.”
Just don't do it!
"At Stanford University two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred. Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing" - from Christopher McDougall's forthcoming book "Born to Run" which looks at the story the growth of the $20 billion running shoe industry. Starting form Bill Bowerman's Cortez in 1972 onwards runners have seen a steady flow of innovations to improve performance and reduce injury rates. Only it would appear they may not work. By way of contrast the book includes coverage of the Mexican Tarahumara tribe who run ultramarathons with shoes made from car tyres on their feet.
Eagle Cam! Eagle Cam! Eagle Cam!
Eagle Cam in Sutton, Oklahoma. Only one egg (out of three laid) has hatched this year, but the single eaglet is doing well, and both parents are keeping a close eye on his (her?) progress. Live during the day, and the day's tape is replayed at night, Oklahoma time, for folks tuning in late.
warning - can be addictive.
Previously, in Maine.
A Modest Proposal
Depending on which side of the Irish Sea you live, the HPV jab is either a killer that shouldn't be given to young women or it's a necessary and life saving vaccination. Layscience.net exposes the disturbingly awful cynicism of The Daily Mail. (via badscience.net)
S.S. Stewart’s banjo and guitar journal.
"Miss Annie Oakley sends us a note from London, England, Sept. 21 [1887], 'Your little banjo you made for me (The American Princess) has attracted considerable attention here and given satisfaction.'"
S.S. Stewart, one of the premier American banjo makers of the last decades of the 19th century, also published a newsletter filled with bombast, testimonials, and banjo sheet music. You can see some of Stewart's banjos at Bill's Banjos. You can also read Stewart's banjo novel Black Hercules, or The adventures of a banjo player.
S.S. Stewart, one of the premier American banjo makers of the last decades of the 19th century, also published a newsletter filled with bombast, testimonials, and banjo sheet music. You can see some of Stewart's banjos at Bill's Banjos. You can also read Stewart's banjo novel Black Hercules, or The adventures of a banjo player.
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