August 21, 2006
Tap Extravaganza
Fred Astaire said this five-minute sequence from Stormy Weather was the finest piece of tap dancing ever filmed. via
Eat your weeds!
Summer seems the perfect time for eating weeds and wildfoods.
Granted, no one wants to grow their own, but is it better to forage or to buy them?
Orwell Redux
George Orwell né Eric Arthur Blair is probably best known to readers for his eerily prescient novels 1984 and Animal Farm. This comprehensive Orwell site betrays an erudite,
complex, fascinating personality who wrote about a variety of subjects, from an exposition on British class relations affecting the art and practice of murder, to the complex moral compromises of Gandhi's practice of non-violent resistance, to the doublespeak-laden corruption of the English language as a telling reflection of a corrupt, brutal, post-WWII culture — and much, much more. This site also includes Russian translations of much of Orwell's work.
Look upon my frozen blue face, ye Mighty, and Despair!
What’s the best way to dispose of an accumulated fortune? Conventional wisdom tells us that you can’t take it with you. The inevitability of death has inspired otherwise ruthless men to contribute to the larger community with the goal of establishing a posthumous legacy. Carnegie built libraries. Bill Gates is working on global health initiatives. But the conventional wisdom on this matter could be wrong. And with that in mind, some wealthy men are choosing to turn themselves into cryonic popsicles and put their wealth in trust funds in the hope that at some point in the future, Science will be able to revive them.
A soapy sort of solution
The design challenge. After some work on genetic algorithms was accused of having 'frontloaded' solutions, Dave Thomas issued the challenge - human design vs his mutating code to find Steiner Trees^. If the answer is frontloaded, it should be derivable. And now the results are in.
sacreligious smackdown?
One day we'll look back on this period with incredulity
If... Drugs Were Legal [1 hr Google video]. Last January, BBC Two produced a drama-documentary showing a future where drugs have been legalised. I missed the whole series, but if they're as good as this, they're worth watching out for.
Five links that I can't believe haven't been posted already (first in a series)
Try the london broil..pamper yourself!
Under appreciated, once almost-famous comedian Chris Elliot is, in a word, odd. His start as a runner/page on the early days of Late Night with David Letterman led to his recurring roles as "the guy under the stairs" and "Marlon Brando". Soon after he landed a sit-com called "Get a Life" on a fledgling Fox network, which can only be described as surreal. From there he created his first (and last) feature length star vehicle "Cabin Boy" (which features a hilarious cameo with Letterman in his only movie role). These days he is more known as a character actor in comedic roles. But a few books and a look back at his work makes you wonder why he might be the only celebrity on the internet with no apparent fan site.
Elvis Is Everywhere
The Afghan Elvis (with YouTube clip), the Soviet Elvis (played by Tom Hanks), the French Elvis (now seeking Belgian citizenship), the Mexican Elvis, the Swedish Elvis, the Filipino Elvis, the Chinese Elvis, the Sikh Elvis, the Japanese Elvis who became a Prime Minister, and other foreign Elvii.
How do you solve a problem like Gerard Manley Hopkins?
The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins set to music. Demo list here. It's a pity they haven't adapted my favourite poem, Spring and Fall, although it's pretty exciting to hear Hopkins's poetry which I studied at school, presented in this format, especially since he was already trying to create a kind of music using the rhythms of the words. On a random note, featuring the vocal talents of Belinda Evans who was recently voted off the BBC's Saturday night tv extravaganza, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?. Her blog is here. [via]
Separation of church and state?
White House · International aid · USDA · Department of Commerce · Department of Education · Department of Health and Human Services · Department of Homeland Security · Department of Housing and Urban Development · Department of Justice · Department of Labor · Small Business Administration · Veterans Affairs and even Grant Opportunities for those religious folks who would like to get financially connected to the government.
Hippotherapy
This iGallop, it vibrates? While at National Airport this weekend, I noticed several women enjoying an odd-looking exercise device at Brookstone. Apparently, I'm not the first to imagine what else it could be used for (Google search).
Danger lurks at every turn.
First Encounter Assault Recon: Combat
You may have your own set of acquired tastes, but what of acquired F.E.A.R.? The multiplayer component of Monolith's latest LithTek powered franchise has been overhauled and released into the wild - without a price tag in sight. If you've been known to enjoy a bit of the old simulated ultra violence you'll feel right at home among the frenetic emergence of automatic weapon fire and the spectre of the unarmed takedown.
Pig in the parlor
"If this program is unlawful, federal law expressly makes the ordering of surveillance under the program a federal felony. That would mean that the president could be guilty of no fewer than 30 felonies in office." George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley on what's missing in the latest debate over the NSA program. [Bugmenot, Via Glenn Greenwald.]
Demonstrate! Manifest! Unite! Create! Divide! Destroy! Revolt!
People don't write manifestos like they used to... Whatever happened to the Surrealist Manifesto? How about the the Italian Futurist Manifesto (and its many spinoffs)? There's also First and Second OuLiPo Manifestos,
Humanist (I, II, & III) as well as Post-Humanist Manifestos, not to mention Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto: "...an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism...."
Bust a squirrel deal, face the squirrel wheel
Why did I annoy that black squirrel in Council Bluffs? I hope they don't put me in their special haunted jail.
Human Rights Watch, Watched
Human Rights Watch, Watched "Who will guard the guardians?" asked Roman satirist Juvenal. Now we must ask, who is watching Human Rights Watch, one of the world's best-financed and most influential human rights organizations? It turns out that they cook the books about facts, cheat on interviews, and put out pre-determined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence.
These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true.
Mindless In Iraq - What Next ?
The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall... The consequences of an all-out civil war in Iraq could be dire. Considering the experiences of recent such conflicts, hundreds of thousands of people may die. Refugees and displaced people could number in the millions. And with Iraqi insurgents, militias and organized crime rings wreaking havoc on Iraq's oil infrastructure, a full-scale civil war could send global oil prices soaring even higher... Welcome to the new "new Middle East" -- a region where civil wars could follow one after another, like so many Cold War dominoes. And unlike communism, these dominoes may actually fall.What Next?
See also Mindless in Iraq
And note that, as of tomorrow, Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006, the war in Iraq will have lasted one full week longer than US involvement in World War II.
Saudi Aramco
Saudi Aramco is the state-owned oil production company in Saudi Arabia. It's also the largest oil company in the world. Its headquarters are in Dhahran (wiki), a city owned by Saudi Aramco (other cities being Abqaiq, Ras Tanura, and Udailiyah), which houses numerous expats and native Saudis. You might have heard about Dhahran recently as they just fielded a Little League World Series team (featuring a 6'8", 256 lb. first baseman...
9/11 comic book
Remember the comic book version of the 9/11 Commission Report mentioned earlier this month? Slate have put it online.
At least I didn't mentione Web 2.0 in the post...
Google's word processor (re)launches. Formerly known as Writely, the online application, with all kinds of nifty collaborative features, joins a wide range of free online word processors, including the decent Zoho (you can see reviews of many online word processors here). Want to do presentations instead? Check out Thumbstacks or ThinkFree (with 1 GB of storage). If drawing is your thing, try Litha-Paint, or use SnipShot to crop pictures and save them to Flickr or your computer. Even GE's gotten into the free web application act with their no-registration-required collaborative whiteboard. And the number of free web applications just keeps growing...
Like a magic eight ball for airfare
Buying a plane ticket? Farecast, which went nationwide today, can help (even though it's still in beta). Just tell it where and when you want to go and it'll try to predict the cheapest time to buy. "When looking across all airfare predictions in all markets, Farecast has on average around a 75% accuracy level. And, yes, the percentage of the time we are right continues to improve."
Furor over Fuhrer Food
Furor over Fuhrer Food But it's not the only Hitler-themed restaurant. Taipei had the Prison restaurant with Concentration Camp murals, and Korea had the infamous 1939 Hitler Bar.
Not that the U.S. was spared. Colorado had a Mao-themed eatery.
Not that the U.S. was spared. Colorado had a Mao-themed eatery.
hearing is seeing
Echolocation : bats use it. So do whales and dolphins. And humans? The 14-year-old profiled here and here is using it. Learn more about how blind people are employing perception and processing of the auditory environment: where words like flash and tags have an altogether different meaning.
Sex toys for Christians
Book22 is named after the 22nd book of the Bible, Song of Solomon. Apparently, it's also a great place for married couples to pick up their intimate items. And, also an opportunity to share the gospel. Note that these are links to an online sex toy shop, NSFW, though safer than most online sex toy shops.
"a guy who was up in the big leagues for a cup of coffee at one time"
Joe Rosenthal, 1911-2006. He once took a photo that may seem familiar to you. That image is so iconic that it lent itself to a later memorial and was echoed in the aftermath of another famous incident.
Hey, up yours with a twirling lawnmower!
Trying to forget the past? Not digging the bad sequels and schlock-horror spinoffs?
The house that Freddy built's first commercial success is now back in theatres, but only for a limited time. Get your funny glove love on, order tickets, and see A Nightmare on Elm Street on the big screen once again.
Bounce a Check to save your life?
Would YOU lie to save your life? The Doctor said that I needed a keyhole operation called a coronary angioplasty to clear the blockages, but the waiting list on the NHS was nine months.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew that I would struggle to survive the next nine days, so nine months seemed an impossibility. What the doctor had just handed me was a virtual death sentence.
He must have seen the look of horror. He said that if I paid for the operation, he could fit me in for the angioplasty within the week.
The cost privately, he told me, would be around £8,500.
I looked at him, my head a whirl as I tried to make sense of what he was telling me. As far as I could see, the choice was clear — if I paid I would live, if I didn’t I would probably die.
I’m a pensioner living on £150 a week. And no bank would have given me a loan.
But in that split second my survival instinct kicked in and I realised I had to convince the doctor that I had the money.
‘Well, you can’t take it with you,’ I said cheerily. ‘I’ll go private.’
The following morning, I gave the administrator the cheque before I was discharged from the hospital. Some people would say this was fraud, because I knew it would bounce. But there was nothing else I could do — I wanted to live.
Henry's Fordlandia Flop
In the 1930's, Henry Ford transplanted a tiny piece of America—complete with picket fences, fire hydrants, poetry readings, square-dancing, and English-language sing-alongs—into the Amazon rain forest. Fordlândia was to be the largest rubber tree plantation on the planet (over 70 million rubber tree seedlings) providing material for the millions of tires Ford Motor Company needed. It flopped. So he tried again, downriver a bit, with Belterra. It flopped, too. By 1945, Ford threw in the towel having lost over $20 million, or roughly $200 million in modern dollars.
When NIMBYs attack
Residents try to ban child abuse victims from their neighborhood. A bunch of Taichung residents decide that their community is too nice for a home for victims of child abuse. From the article: "a committee formed by residents of the community passed a 'resolution' in June to prohibit the teenagers from moving in under the pretext of maintaining the "high quality" of the neighborhood."
Amazing Matchbook Art Collection
The Match World Virtual Museum is dedicated to showcasing the best artwork from the ~25,000 matchbooks in the collection of the Japanese Match Manufacturers Association, including Foreign Matchbooks, Advertising on Matchbooks and various matchbook companies, all with decent, sized images available if you click on the thumbnail versions. Some really attractive stuff in here. Previously on Metafilter
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