MetaFilter posts by y2karl.
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The change in private employment, two years after recession began, for 1953 to Present.
Details: The jobless recovery continued in March 2003 as the nation's payrolls contracted by 108,000, according to report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). These losses are in addition to last month's payroll declines, which also were revised up to 357,000. Taken together, the economy has lost 465,000 jobs in the past two months. In the two years since the recession began in March 2001, total payrolls have fallen by 2.1 million and private sector payrolls are down by 2.6 million.
The Jobless Recovery.
Low growth accompanies record trade deficit:
Last month in Beijing, Robert Zoellick, President George W. Bush's international trade ambassador, had nothing but praise for China's growing trade surplus. Meanwhile in St. Louis in January, the president stumped for more tax cuts, standing before a facade of boxes with the words "Made in China" covered over in tape.
2001 Tax Cuts and the Proposed 2003 Cuts
Details: Discarding pretense of tax cut equity
Also: Economists Voice Opposition to Bush Tax Cuts
posted on Apr-16-03 at 11:38 PM
"Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943
Approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia. The documentation was created by John Wesley Work III in 1941 and by Lewis Jones and Willis Laurence James in March, June, and July 1943. Also included are recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama by John Work between September 1938 and 1941. Audio Title Index
The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
Folk singers and folksongs documented during a three-month trip through the southern United States. Audio Title Index
California Gold: Northern California Folk Music From the Thirties
Materials from the WPA California Folk Music Project Collection, including sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California. The collection comprises 35 hours of folk music recorded in twelve languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians. Audio Title Index (As Always, More Inside)
posted on Apr-14-03 at 12:43 PM
Monsoon Dawn, Roden Crater
I've always wanted to make light something that you treasure. Not just light reflected in glass, or in a scrim, or on the surface of some object. But light objectified. We generally use it to illuminate other things. But I wanted to force people to pay attention to the thingness and revelation of light. This is a place that will do that.
James Turrell [more inside]
posted on Apr-10-03 at 11:53 PM
The 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century
A graph of The 25 highest percentages of national populations killed during periods of mass brutality
Question: Who was the Bloodiest Tyrant of the 20th Century?
Answer: We don't know.
Sidenote: Do Democracies Make War on One Another? (More Inside)
posted on Apr-6-03 at 5:46 AM
US forces 'move on Baghdad centre' .
US tanks and armoured vehicles are advancing on the centre of Baghdad after reaching the southern outskirts of the Iraqi capital on Saturday morning, US officials say.
Also, US troops in 'Baghdad centre'
Wow, this is definitely breaking news.
posted on Apr-5-03 at 1:07 AM
Religion in Hellenistic Athens, A Medieval Mirror, Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 , Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture , Freud and His Critics and Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 --all are entire online books from the public section of the University of California Press.
I am, like, going so nutso--Jackpot!
posted on Apr-3-03 at 6:47 PM
An American Myth Rides Into the Sunset
One cannot imagine F.D.R., before declaring war on Japan, or even Ronald Reagan before Grenada, pumping a fist and saying of himself, "Feel good" — as President Bush did before he announced the beginning of the Iraq war. Indeed, the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare flies in the face of the humble, reluctant cowboy myth Mr. Bush holds so dear.
posted on Mar-29-03 at 10:24 PM
Have I ever told you what the river is like on a hot summer night? At dusk the mist hangs in long white bands over the water; the twilight fades and the lights of the town shine out on either bank, with the river, dark and smooth and full of mysterious reflections, like a road of triumph through the midst. - Gertrude Bell writing of the Euphrates near Baghdad.
Gertrude Bell - daughter of the desert, Uncrowned Queen of Iraq, Advisor to kings and Ally of Lawrence of Arabia. Gertrude Bell was a traveller and mountaineer, recruited by British Intelligence to work in the Middle East during the First World War and, who later worked for the British Government in Baghdad. Bell's influence on Middle Eastern politics made her the most powerful woman in the British Empire in the years after World War I. She was a archeologist, writer, translated the poetry of Hafiz and a photographer as well. 1909: Letters from Gertrude Bell, dated May 14 and May 20. She died early in the morning of July 12th, 1926, 58 years old, from an overdose of sleeping pills--whether accidental or not is not known. She is buried in Baghdad, where her grave is still visited and her memory revered. Cherchez La Femme
posted on Mar-23-03 at 7:38 AM
Truly that is a miracle of wonder surpassing the tongues of the eloquent, and far beyond the most cunning speech to describe: the mind reels before it, and the intellect stands abashed
Ibn Hazm
The Dove's Necklace
Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, who contains universes: Notebooks, Pieces for the SFI Bulletin, The Bactra Review, Books and Other Texts I've Put on the Web, Poetry and not the worst links page I've ever seen. This is the worst home page ever, according to yankthechain. I'm very proud. He likes, among many others, Avram Davidson, Sappho, Jack Vance, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want? Now, is that a tagline or what?
posted on Mar-21-03 at 12:09 AM
Here are two thoughtful pieces on the North Korean Crisis.
From Foreign Affairs comes How to Deal With North Korea.
From the New York Times comes
Q&A: Should U.S. Launch Direct Talks with North Korea?
Here, by the way, is the fourth footnote from How to Deal With North Korea :
Had the Agreed Framework not been signed in 1994, the North's plutonium-based program would by today have produced enough plutonium for up to 30 nuclear weapons. Critics of the accord should not ignore this fact.
posted on Mar-19-03 at 1:26 AM
Human beings, according to French thinker René Girard, are fundamentally imitative creatures. We copy each other's desires, and are in perpetual conflict with one another over the objects of our desire. In early human communities, this conflict created a permanent threat of violence, and forced our ancestors to find a way to unify themselves. They chose a victim, a scapegoat, an evil one against whom the community could unite.
Scapegoat Theory 101 ?
posted on Mar-18-03 at 12:54 AM
MIA Facts Site
Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America.
Let's Sell The Bones : The Marketing of America's Missing In Action (More Inside)
posted on Mar-15-03 at 4:41 PM
Chalmers Johnson is an provocative proponent of the American Empire theory, indeed. Here are excerpts from his Blow Back: The Cost And Consequences of American Empire
I heard Johnson interviewed on Episode II, War And Conflict In The Post-Cold War, Post-9/11 Era of The Whole Wide World
The Cold War and its central conflict - the physical and ideological battles between the United States, the Soviet Union and their proxy states - imposed a certain logic and consistency on the world. Take that away and add the bloody wars in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East in the ‘90s as well as the terror attacks and warnings of more recent times and you get a very confused picture of a world at war. Is this breaking storm in Iraq about oil, democracy, freedom, empire, culture, water, diamonds, modernizing Islam or nation building in the Middle East? Some, one or all of these things?
It was an excellent program and well worth your listen, either by RA now or mp3 later. (From listening to the radio)
posted on Mar-13-03 at 1:43 AM
They'll tell you a lie with a Colgate smile
Hey baby
Love you one second and hate you the next
Oh ain't it crazy, yeah
All I can say
--of one thing I am certain
They're all the same
All the sluts and the saints
For misery, my friend,
Cherchez la femme
In praise of Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, and therefore, by extension, August Darnell, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Cory Daye and the great Coatimundi: now go meet the ghost of Cab Calloway at Zoot Suit City.
posted on Mar-12-03 at 12:39 AM
How to Speak and Write Postmodern. Here is an etymology of the word postmodern--it begins with Walter Toynbee. Who'd athunk? All of this comes from Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory and Postmodern Thought . The names lead not to essays but thorough links pages, like Ludwig Wittgenstein or Edmund Husserl. All the usual suspects are here--your Adorno, Baudrillard and the infamous Frankfurt School. *spooky ghost voice* Whoo-oo-oo! */spooky ghost voice* Well, there is Edward Said, but that one confuses me--I mean I read Edmund Husserl, and he, sir, is no Edmund Husserl. He actually makes sense. Which is more than I can say for Edmund Husserl. And it's all one huge page so you can scroll on down. Even I can do that. Hope I didn't brain my damage! To trump the smarty-pants who's going to link the Postmodernism Generator, I'm upping the ante--here's your Postmodern Mr. T.
Hey man, This time we're gonna do it my way!
posted on Feb-21-03 at 4:48 PM
Korean Web Weekly The Korea WebWeekly is a non-partisan, non-profit news magazine dedicated to Korean issues. All news summary and editorials are contributed by volunteers. Start here: Korea Web Weekly Editor Interviewed. Other samples: How Many Nukes in North Korea's Arsenal?. Especially for Postroad!--Who Was Rhee Syngman? Korean History Online. Who is Kim Jong Il? Who Was Yo Wun Hyung? The Sacrificial Lamb of the Cold War - The Nationalists of Korea (It's not a flattering reflection of American polciy, that's for sure.) Young Sik Kim, Ph.D - the man behind Korean Web Weekly. A former spook, among other things here's his Korea Intelligence/Counter Intelligence But Wait! Click Now And We'll Add--At No Extra Cost!-- Paul Noll's Korean War Memoirs and his superb South Korean Flag, History, and Statistics. Bon Appétit!
posted on Feb-17-03 at 2:12 PM
A post about Rilke and Romantic Love, the gift to the Western World from The Ornament of The World, al-Andalus, the high civilization of Muslim Spain, via the troubadors, who gave us this Arabian meme as the noble concept of Courtly Love, with additional reference to Denis de Rougement's Love In The Western World, The Art Of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus and Abû Muhammad 'Alee ibn Ahmad ibn Sa'eed ibn Hazm's Tawq al-Hamâmah (The Ring of the Dove). So, there you have it: Rilke, quintessential poet of love, and The History of Romantic Love. Yeah... that's the ticket.!
posted on Feb-14-03 at 11:07 AM
Labors Of Love
Here are some handmade pages, personal and corporate, on American Vernacular Music and more:
First, here's Long Time Coming, with three separate shrines to Dock Boggs, Pretty Boy Floyd and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, worthy subjects all. I have no idea what the Eyeneer Records revenue model is or was but their American Music Archive, (Latest Update - August 20, 1999), albeit spotty, is still a must stop and see with pages on Charley Patton, Sleepy John Estes and Lucille Bogan, for example, and that's just the blues section. It's a very promising sounding site--and it's too bad they never finished it, but, on the other hand, thank god,they have not yet pulled the plug. Lea Gilmore's It's A Girl Thang's Historical Profiles has it goin' on with Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Maybelle and Georgia White for examples. Catherine Yronwode, of course, is a name well known here, as is her wondrous Lucky Mojo, cornucopica that it is. There, among much riches, is the extensive and authoritative Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo --but that's Not All ! »→ »→ »→
posted on Feb-12-03 at 1:56 AM
Chasmosaurus, Giant Stag and Dire Wolf, Diatryma, Albertosaurus and an early Portuguese blogger--allow me to get a little Mesozoic, Creataceous and Pleistocene upon your ass with this cool archive of vintage Czechoslovakian prehistoric art: I found 11 pages of thumbnails for 258 large scan jpegs of Znedek Burian's work on the websites of the Petrs Hejna of Prague, the Czech Republic. Znedek Burian, as you will remember from my previous Vintage Dinosaur Art Archives thread, was state of the art in the 1950s. 258 scans of Znedek Burian is find enough to merit a post--But Wait! There's More! → → →
posted on Feb-9-03 at 1:39 AM
John Hurt: Although it was not John (wrong sex anyway) who through a gentle voice and pleasant demeanor (yet he had this about him too) served as my primary impetus to play the guitar, it was nevertheless he, and others who played like him - but mainly he who provided me with my first technical model (emotional model to some extent also) for playing the guitar. He was the first I heard who played in the three-finger, non-choking, "picking" style, and he was one of the best. He was in his quiet way, a very great man, and I deeply mourn our loss of him. John Fahey
Mississippi John Hurt
"I just make it sound like I think it ought to" (more →)
posted on Feb-8-03 at 1:15 AM
Cosmic bolt probed in shuttle disaster - Scientists poring over 'infrasonic' sound waves Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California, The Chronicle has learned.
posted on Feb-7-03 at 12:32 AM
After Hours Backstage at the Puppet Theater, A Japanese Abominable Snowman, The Famous Samurai: Miyamoto Musashi, Incomparable Woman Warrior and Gingerly Avoiding A Fishy Mess--images from from The Library of Congress's The Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance . Also, may I present UKIYO-E - The Pictures of the Floating World.
Floating World, you ask?
posted on Feb-2-03 at 4:37 PM
A War Crime or an Act of War?
But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. ..
This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.
And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. (NYT)
posted on Jan-31-03 at 7:43 AM
Jesus H. Christ: That's H for Historical. A person of interest to several schools of inquiry, historical whereabouts unknown, somewhere between palimpsest and projection. You have your Jesus Seminar, for one. Earl Doherty asks Was there no historical Jesus? Mystae's The Jesus of History and Archeology is a bit more on the X files tip. A decidedly nonbeliever overview is Infidel.org's The Search for the Historical Jesus. And Gospel.Net provides Jesus of Nazareth in all gospels known to have been written within 200 years of Jesus' birth, a number considerably larger than the canonical four.
That should be enough for a start. Now go in peace and sin no more.
posted on Jan-30-03 at 3:01 AM
Ah, the world cries out for an updated Jonathan website. The Abominable Lesbian Vampire Cappuccino Bar in Cyberspace has withered on the vine, links almost all dead--damn, I should've copied that tab!--but some of the music's not firing blanks. The Jonathan Richman Project only posted one issue of their xerox zine--jeez, remember zines? Mail art? Man, those were the days--but they're nice enough to print Lester Bangs 1976 Creem diss of the Twerp King At The Summit. God, I remember reading that Bangs piece new and running out and buying The Modern Lovers, trusting as I did in his taste or maybe just his gonzo stylings? Little did I know...(inside)
posted on Jan-27-03 at 11:04 PM
The Mysterious Norman Raeben, the son of Shalom Aleichem, the man behind Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks.
Norman Raeben was one of the most influential people in Bob Dylan’s life. It was Norman Raeben, Dylan said, who, in the mid ‘70s, renewed his ability to compose songs. Dylan also suggested that Norman’s teaching and influence so altered his outlook upon life that Sara, his wife, could no longer understand him, and this was a contributory factor in the breakdown of the Dylans’ marriage. (More inside)
posted on Jan-11-03 at 11:56 AM
Emmett just barely got on that train to Mississippi. We could hear the whistle blowing. As he was running up the steps, I said, 'Bo,'--that's what I called him--'you didn't kiss me. How do I know I'll ever see you again?' He turned around and said, 'Oh, Mama.' Gently scolding me. He ran down those steps and gave me a kiss. As he turned to go up the steps again, he pulled his watch off and said, 'Take this, I won't need it.' I said, 'What about your ring?' He was wearing his father's ring for the first time. He said, 'I'm going to show this to my friends.' That's how we were able to identify him, by that ring. I think it was a Mason's ring.
Mamie Till-Mobley, 81, who wanted the world to see her teenage son's disfigured face after his slaying in Mississippi in 1955 and who became a figure in the civil rights movement, died of a heart ailment Jan. 6 at a hospital in Chicago. She had kidney failure.
The impact of the Emmett Till case on black America was even greater than that of the Brown decision. On January 20, 2003, The American Experience will present, on PBS, The Murder of Emmett Till. (Continued Inside)
posted on Jan-9-03 at 1:18 AM
The Legacy Project .
Among other things contained there, the Video about The Legacy Project, The Art of Afterwards, The Legacy Events Index, Literary Sampler, Visual Art Library and Filmography.
posted on Jan-2-03 at 8:17 PM
Ringed Uranus with its moons : I love it that one moon is named Puck. ( courtesy Robot Wisdom)
posted on Dec-31-02 at 9:13 PM
No White Man To Lose His Vote In Virginia.
Some background resources for l'affaire de Lott:
Lecture Summary: Reconstruction; Race and Place: An African-American Community In The Jim Crow South; The Rise And Fall of Jim Crow; Jim Crow Laws; Remembering Jim Crow; Behind The Veil; The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia; The Politics of Disfranchisement: White Supremacy and African-American Resistance in Charlottesville, Virginia, 1900-1925; Photographs of Sign Enforcing Racial Discrimination and Jump Jim Crow, or did Emancipation Make A Difference?
posted on Dec-18-02 at 4:31 AM
Joseph Smith: Magus, Freemason, Kabbalist and Gnostic.
The remarkable founder of the only truly American religion.
posted on Dec-2-02 at 4:02 PM
But what about the kitties? Feline Immunodeficiency Virus. FIV has been recognized as a syndrome since 1986, and as with AIDS, has been found in stored blood samples dating back to the 60s. Unlike HIV, however, for FIV there's a vaccine. Not that everyone is excited about it.
Originally, this was to be a post intended to provide something lighter until this appeared:
In addition, over 25 large cat species including, cheetahs, lions, and panthers have their own strain of the virus. Despite similarity among these viruses, transmission among species has never been documented. Scientists think that FIV is an old virus and may be the grandfather of all immunodeficiency viruses. Comparison of its' genetic code point to a virus that is millions of years old.
Googling led to several topics.
posted on Dec-1-02 at 3:51 PM
Out of the mist of the beginning of our era there looms a pageant of mythical figures whose vast, superhuman contours might people the walls of another Sistine Chapel. Their countenances and gestures, the roles in which they are cast, the drama which they enact, would yield images different from the biblical ones on which the imagination of the beholder was reared, yet strangely familiar to him and disturbingly moving. The stage would be the same, the theme as transcending: the creation of the world, the destiny of man, fall and redemption, the first and the last things. But how much more numerous would be the cast, how much more bizarre the symbolism, how much more extravagant the emotions!
Hans Jonas
Into the Gnostic.
Of magicians, miracle workers, saints and sinners of early Christianities and other mystery religions--including but not limited to Valentinus, Simon Magus, Mithras, Marcion, Manicheans, Mandeans, the Winged Hermes, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, among many other Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphica, the Cathars and Apollonious of Tyana. Not to mention Philip K. Dick.
posted on Nov-30-02 at 3:20 PM
Three Dog Eves--They really do understand us--even better than our cousin chimpanzees. Well, at least when food's involved.
As to how wolves became dogs, the current understanding seems to be they tamed themselves--in a Survival of the Friendliest. Here's more on animal linguistics. As for cats, well, Stephen Budiansky in The Character of Cats suggests they aren't even really tame. Hence, unlike dogs, cats haven't bothered to pick up our language--they've taught us Cat talk instead. Take the test and see. A woof out to Australian Broadcast Coporation's five part Animal Attraction series is called for here.C--Miao baby!
posted on Nov-24-02 at 6:09 PM
Aiee!! Pelorosaurus by god knows who, Corythosaurus illustrated by Zdenek Burian, Ornitholestes by Charles Knight--Dinosaur Illustrations has led me to two wonderful sites: Early Image and Paper Dinosaurs, 1824-1969 - An Exhibition of Original Publications From the Collections of the Linda Hall Library, as well as many other little treasures.
posted on Nov-22-02 at 11:17 AM
Cyprus was another world.
The city of Paphos might have been designed and built by a Grecian architect dreamy with the drugs called talaquin or mandragora: in marble yellow as unmixed cream, marble pink as sweetmeats, marble the green of pistuquim nuts, veined marble and grained marble, honey-colored and rose-red, the buildings climbed along the hills and frothed among the hollows. Tier after tier of overtall pillars, capitals of a profusion of carvings to make Corinthian seem ascetic, pediments lush with bas-reliefs, four-fold arches at every corner and crossing, statues so huge that they loomed over the housetops, statues so small that whole troops of them flocked and frolicked under every building's eaves, groves and gardens everywhere, fountains playing, water spouting . . .
Paphos.
Avram Davidson
He was the autodidact's autodidact; cognoscenti's cognocenti; the polymath's polymath, one who knew the minutiae of freemasonry, heraldry-any number of categories of the arcane, major and minor; front to back; top to bottom. Long before the genre Steam punk was named, he'd already defined the Other Nineteenth Century. And he wrote the most sumptuous prose.
Come step within the heirodule enclosure
posted on Nov-18-02 at 10:09 PM
They're back--and promise to as brighter or brighter than last year:
NASA scientists' predictions for the 2002 Leonid meteor storm.
Such meteor storms rarely happen in consecutive years, but 2001 and 2002 are exceptions. Experts have just released their predictions: Depending on where you live (Europe and the Americas are favored) Leonid meteor rates in 2002 should equal or exceed 2001 levels.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the Moon will be full when the storm begins on Nov. 19th. Glaring moonlight will completely overwhelm many faint shooting stars. Indeed, I often hear that the Moon is going to "ruin the show."
We shall see.
posted on Nov-16-02 at 11:35 PM
In the late 18th or early 19th century a group of runaway slaves and serfs fled from Kentucky into the Ohio Territory, where they inter-married with Natives and formed a tribe - red, white & black - called the Ben Ishmael tribe. The Ishmaels (who seem to have been Islamically inclined) followed an annual nomadic route through the territory, hunting & fishing, and finding work as tinkers and minstrels. They were polygamists, and drank no alcohol. Every winter they returned to their original settlement, where a village had grown.
But eventually the US Govt. opened the Territory to settlement, and the ~official~ pioneers arrived. Around the Ishmael village a town began to spring up, called Cincinnati. Soon it was a big city. But Ishmael village was still there, engulfed & surrounded by "civilization." Now it was a ~slum~.
Maroons, Ramapaughs, Jackson Whites, the Moors of Delaware, Melungeons, the Ben Ishmaels--hat tip to Footnotes of History on that last--Red Bones, Brass Ankles, Turks, Lumbees, Croatans and other lost tribes and rebel slave communities.
The questions raised are what is race, tribe and family ...among others.
Included by extension are Hakim Bey, The Moorish Orthodox Church, various tribes of Black Indians, Jukes, Kallikaks, Margaret Sanger, The Bell Curve and Heather Locklear. (Step within the tent for the latter's interpetive dance)
posted on Nov-15-02 at 3:27 PM
Comiclopedia.
Not just your father's Comicyclopdedia.
posted on Nov-11-02 at 11:55 AM
A thrush in the syringa sings.
`Hunger ruffles my wings, fear,
lust, familiar things.
Death thrusts hard. My sons
by hawk's beak, by stones, by cat and weasel, die.
From a shaken bush I
list familiar things,
fear, hunger, lust.'
O gay thrush!
Basil Bunting,
Basil Bunting,
Basil Bunting.
The Return of PoemFilter
posted on Nov-9-02 at 2:22 AM
John Hanson (November 5, 1781 - November 3, 1782), Elias Boudinot (November 4, 1782 - November 2, 1783), Thomas Mifflin (November 3, 1783 - June 3, 1784), Richard Henry Lee (November 30, 1784 - November 22, 1785), John Hancock (November 23, 1785 - June 5, 1786), Nathaniel Gorham (June 1786 until January 1787), Arthur St. Clair (February 2 , 1787 - January 21, 1788), and Cyrus Griffin (January 22, 1788 – April 29, 1789)--under The Articles of the Confederation.
Everything you know is wrong--George Washington was the 9th President
--or 8th, depending on how you call it on John Hancock's term. [More inside]
posted on Nov-7-02 at 11:02 PM
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Collected Poems Of William Butler Yeats
posted on Nov-3-02 at 9:50 PM
Against the Grain (A Rebours) by Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1884. Virtual Reality 19th Century style with illustrations--the quintessence of decadence.
posted on Oct-31-02 at 11:15 AM
Thorstein Veblen , Economist and Social Commentator, who contributed to the common tongue the phrase conspicuous consumption.
Who was Thorstein Veblen--and why should anyone care?
I should like him for his writing style alone:
The appreciation of those evidences of honorific crudeness to which hand-wrought goods owe their superior worth and charm in the eyes of well-bred people is a matter of nice discrimination. It requires training and the formation of right habits of thought with respect to what may be called the physiognomy of goods. Machine-made goods of daily use are often admired and preferred precisely on account of their excessive perfection by the vulgar and the underbred who have not given due thought to the punctilios of elegant consumption. The ceremonial inferiority of machine products goes to show that the perfection of skill and workmanship embodied in any costly innovations in the finish of goods is not sufficient of itself to secure them acceptance and permanent favor. The innovation must have the support of the canon of conspicuous waste. Any feature in the physiognomy of goods, however pleasing in itself, and however well it may approve itself to the taste for effective work, will not be tolerated if it proves obnoxious to this norm of pecuniary reputability.
From Chapter Six - Pecuniary Canons of Taste of the work entire, The Theory of The Leisure Class. Feel free to consume conspicuously.
posted on Oct-29-02 at 11:27 PM
Trebuchets , Trebuchets, Trebuchets: where geeks get medieval on thine ass. Some people have a love of history, spare time and an excuse to buy more tools. (His Earth Viewer is cute, too) Also needed are open expanses--like in Australia. Note: Punkin' Chunkin' (©donkeymon 11/03/01) 2002 is coming up in a week. Will Team Banka's Pumpkin Slayer return? Also, there's Gulf Wars XII for y'all next March. And, courtesy Nova, for the shockwave addicted, Play Destroy The Castle! Manual here. Also, here's the Virtual Trebuchet java applet. And last, massive trebuchet linkage.
posted on Oct-26-02 at 1:40 AM
Hannes Bok - Virgil Finlay were the premier illustrators of fantasy and science fiction for the first three quarters of the XXth Century. Bok was influenced in both technique and theme through correspondence and visits with Maxfield Parrish. Finlay learned scratch board, hatching and stippling in high school and began his career by sending six unsolicited drawings to Farnsworth Wright, the editor of Weird Tales, and becoming an immediate hit with readers and writers alike. The two primary online collections of Bok are The Art Work of Hannes Bok, from Poetic's Pagan Pages, and this Hannes Bok cover gallery from from Richard Garrison's Art of the Fantastic. Finlay is more well represented, with these two galleries, provided by one indexxs, being the treasure trove......... --Step within the tent for the rest of Dr. Lao's presentation...
posted on Oct-23-02 at 2:16 PM
Richard Powers - His sleek surreal and otherworldly abstractions changed science fiction illustration and, in the process, the stature of science fiction itself. Here is the Richard Powers Catalog from Vandewater Books. From the e-zine Strange Words Archive, comes The Powers Years part of Collecting The Ballantine Originals, and check out the thumbnails amid and after the Richard Powers essay at Hedonia--who are the very wave of the future in so many ways at once! David G. Hartwell remembers Powers the man. Here is another from his son in download form from Paper Snarl, where Powers is well regarded. And check out the links at the Richard Powers Cyber Art Gallery - everything from a Goth art gallery to Terence McKenna's Dream Museum. But don't click on Miss Stephanie Locke if you're at work! Oh, and the Strange Worlds archive is worth a gander, too...
posted on Oct-21-02 at 8:56 AM
Boris Artzybasheff -- the master of the Anthropomorphic who made men out of machines and machines out of men. a master craftsman, with a wide array of techniques at his command, as Alexei Panshin put it. And here is his letter Q contribution to Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation. Submitted for your approval from...
posted on Oct-18-02 at 1:13 PM
High Art. Rick Griffin's famous flying eyeball poster is considered by many to be the single finest example of San Francisco psychedelic poster art. The image comes from this fabulous motherlode of eye candy that is Paul Olsen's Fillmore and Avalon poster collection. It is the largest and most complete collection of its sort. He would like to sell it as a whole--The Whitney Museum wants to buy it but can't afford it. That should tell you something. Come step behind the Indian bedspread curtain and smell the incense.
posted on Oct-10-02 at 6:12 AM
Folk Music. Stefan Wirz and Hideki Watanabe pay homage to their favorites. Check out Hideki's Muscle Shoals page for another slice of his Americana pie. Or click on a name--Eric Von Schmidt, say--on Stefan's completist, slow loading page and wallow in pictures and stories... Then there's the Richard & Mimi Fariña website. Jan Hoiberg's Band site is another. I love labors of love.
And don't forget the Bauls of Bengal or the secrets of John Wesley Harding revealed!
And note, newsfilterians, you can now order Mickey Jone's home movies from the '66 tour, too. I'm going to see the Bobster tomorrow, so I've been thinking of these things.
posted on Oct-3-02 at 9:19 PM
Details: The jobless recovery continued in March 2003 as the nation's payrolls contracted by 108,000, according to report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). These losses are in addition to last month's payroll declines, which also were revised up to 357,000. Taken together, the economy has lost 465,000 jobs in the past two months. In the two years since the recession began in March 2001, total payrolls have fallen by 2.1 million and private sector payrolls are down by 2.6 million.
The Jobless Recovery.
Low growth accompanies record trade deficit:
Last month in Beijing, Robert Zoellick, President George W. Bush's international trade ambassador, had nothing but praise for China's growing trade surplus. Meanwhile in St. Louis in January, the president stumped for more tax cuts, standing before a facade of boxes with the words "Made in China" covered over in tape.
2001 Tax Cuts and the Proposed 2003 Cuts
Details: Discarding pretense of tax cut equity
Also: Economists Voice Opposition to Bush Tax Cuts
posted on Apr-16-03 at 11:38 PM
"Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943
Approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia. The documentation was created by John Wesley Work III in 1941 and by Lewis Jones and Willis Laurence James in March, June, and July 1943. Also included are recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama by John Work between September 1938 and 1941. Audio Title Index
The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
Folk singers and folksongs documented during a three-month trip through the southern United States. Audio Title Index
California Gold: Northern California Folk Music From the Thirties
Materials from the WPA California Folk Music Project Collection, including sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California. The collection comprises 35 hours of folk music recorded in twelve languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians. Audio Title Index (As Always, More Inside)
posted on Apr-14-03 at 12:43 PM
Monsoon Dawn, Roden Crater
I've always wanted to make light something that you treasure. Not just light reflected in glass, or in a scrim, or on the surface of some object. But light objectified. We generally use it to illuminate other things. But I wanted to force people to pay attention to the thingness and revelation of light. This is a place that will do that.
James Turrell [more inside]
posted on Apr-10-03 at 11:53 PM
The 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century
A graph of The 25 highest percentages of national populations killed during periods of mass brutality
Question: Who was the Bloodiest Tyrant of the 20th Century?
Answer: We don't know.
Sidenote: Do Democracies Make War on One Another? (More Inside)
posted on Apr-6-03 at 5:46 AM
US forces 'move on Baghdad centre' .
US tanks and armoured vehicles are advancing on the centre of Baghdad after reaching the southern outskirts of the Iraqi capital on Saturday morning, US officials say.
Also, US troops in 'Baghdad centre'
Wow, this is definitely breaking news.
posted on Apr-5-03 at 1:07 AM
Religion in Hellenistic Athens, A Medieval Mirror, Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 , Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture , Freud and His Critics and Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 --all are entire online books from the public section of the University of California Press.
I am, like, going so nutso--Jackpot!
posted on Apr-3-03 at 6:47 PM
An American Myth Rides Into the Sunset
One cannot imagine F.D.R., before declaring war on Japan, or even Ronald Reagan before Grenada, pumping a fist and saying of himself, "Feel good" — as President Bush did before he announced the beginning of the Iraq war. Indeed, the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare flies in the face of the humble, reluctant cowboy myth Mr. Bush holds so dear.
posted on Mar-29-03 at 10:24 PM
Have I ever told you what the river is like on a hot summer night? At dusk the mist hangs in long white bands over the water; the twilight fades and the lights of the town shine out on either bank, with the river, dark and smooth and full of mysterious reflections, like a road of triumph through the midst. - Gertrude Bell writing of the Euphrates near Baghdad.
Gertrude Bell - daughter of the desert, Uncrowned Queen of Iraq, Advisor to kings and Ally of Lawrence of Arabia. Gertrude Bell was a traveller and mountaineer, recruited by British Intelligence to work in the Middle East during the First World War and, who later worked for the British Government in Baghdad. Bell's influence on Middle Eastern politics made her the most powerful woman in the British Empire in the years after World War I. She was a archeologist, writer, translated the poetry of Hafiz and a photographer as well. 1909: Letters from Gertrude Bell, dated May 14 and May 20. She died early in the morning of July 12th, 1926, 58 years old, from an overdose of sleeping pills--whether accidental or not is not known. She is buried in Baghdad, where her grave is still visited and her memory revered. Cherchez La Femme
posted on Mar-23-03 at 7:38 AM
Truly that is a miracle of wonder surpassing the tongues of the eloquent, and far beyond the most cunning speech to describe: the mind reels before it, and the intellect stands abashed
Ibn Hazm
The Dove's Necklace
Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, who contains universes: Notebooks, Pieces for the SFI Bulletin, The Bactra Review, Books and Other Texts I've Put on the Web, Poetry and not the worst links page I've ever seen. This is the worst home page ever, according to yankthechain. I'm very proud. He likes, among many others, Avram Davidson, Sappho, Jack Vance, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want? Now, is that a tagline or what?
posted on Mar-21-03 at 12:09 AM
Here are two thoughtful pieces on the North Korean Crisis.
From Foreign Affairs comes How to Deal With North Korea.
From the New York Times comes
Q&A: Should U.S. Launch Direct Talks with North Korea?
Here, by the way, is the fourth footnote from How to Deal With North Korea :
Had the Agreed Framework not been signed in 1994, the North's plutonium-based program would by today have produced enough plutonium for up to 30 nuclear weapons. Critics of the accord should not ignore this fact.
posted on Mar-19-03 at 1:26 AM
Human beings, according to French thinker René Girard, are fundamentally imitative creatures. We copy each other's desires, and are in perpetual conflict with one another over the objects of our desire. In early human communities, this conflict created a permanent threat of violence, and forced our ancestors to find a way to unify themselves. They chose a victim, a scapegoat, an evil one against whom the community could unite.
Scapegoat Theory 101 ?
posted on Mar-18-03 at 12:54 AM
MIA Facts Site
Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America.
Let's Sell The Bones : The Marketing of America's Missing In Action (More Inside)
posted on Mar-15-03 at 4:41 PM
Chalmers Johnson is an provocative proponent of the American Empire theory, indeed. Here are excerpts from his Blow Back: The Cost And Consequences of American Empire
I heard Johnson interviewed on Episode II, War And Conflict In The Post-Cold War, Post-9/11 Era of The Whole Wide World
The Cold War and its central conflict - the physical and ideological battles between the United States, the Soviet Union and their proxy states - imposed a certain logic and consistency on the world. Take that away and add the bloody wars in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East in the ‘90s as well as the terror attacks and warnings of more recent times and you get a very confused picture of a world at war. Is this breaking storm in Iraq about oil, democracy, freedom, empire, culture, water, diamonds, modernizing Islam or nation building in the Middle East? Some, one or all of these things?
It was an excellent program and well worth your listen, either by RA now or mp3 later. (From listening to the radio)
posted on Mar-13-03 at 1:43 AM
They'll tell you a lie with a Colgate smile
Hey baby
Love you one second and hate you the next
Oh ain't it crazy, yeah
All I can say
--of one thing I am certain
They're all the same
All the sluts and the saints
For misery, my friend,
Cherchez la femme
In praise of Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, and therefore, by extension, August Darnell, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Cory Daye and the great Coatimundi: now go meet the ghost of Cab Calloway at Zoot Suit City.
posted on Mar-12-03 at 12:39 AM
How to Speak and Write Postmodern. Here is an etymology of the word postmodern--it begins with Walter Toynbee. Who'd athunk? All of this comes from Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory and Postmodern Thought . The names lead not to essays but thorough links pages, like Ludwig Wittgenstein or Edmund Husserl. All the usual suspects are here--your Adorno, Baudrillard and the infamous Frankfurt School. *spooky ghost voice* Whoo-oo-oo! */spooky ghost voice* Well, there is Edward Said, but that one confuses me--I mean I read Edmund Husserl, and he, sir, is no Edmund Husserl. He actually makes sense. Which is more than I can say for Edmund Husserl. And it's all one huge page so you can scroll on down. Even I can do that. Hope I didn't brain my damage! To trump the smarty-pants who's going to link the Postmodernism Generator, I'm upping the ante--here's your Postmodern Mr. T.
Hey man, This time we're gonna do it my way!
posted on Feb-21-03 at 4:48 PM
Korean Web Weekly The Korea WebWeekly is a non-partisan, non-profit news magazine dedicated to Korean issues. All news summary and editorials are contributed by volunteers. Start here: Korea Web Weekly Editor Interviewed. Other samples: How Many Nukes in North Korea's Arsenal?. Especially for Postroad!--Who Was Rhee Syngman? Korean History Online. Who is Kim Jong Il? Who Was Yo Wun Hyung? The Sacrificial Lamb of the Cold War - The Nationalists of Korea (It's not a flattering reflection of American polciy, that's for sure.) Young Sik Kim, Ph.D - the man behind Korean Web Weekly. A former spook, among other things here's his Korea Intelligence/Counter Intelligence But Wait! Click Now And We'll Add--At No Extra Cost!-- Paul Noll's Korean War Memoirs and his superb South Korean Flag, History, and Statistics. Bon Appétit!
posted on Feb-17-03 at 2:12 PM
A post about Rilke and Romantic Love, the gift to the Western World from The Ornament of The World, al-Andalus, the high civilization of Muslim Spain, via the troubadors, who gave us this Arabian meme as the noble concept of Courtly Love, with additional reference to Denis de Rougement's Love In The Western World, The Art Of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus and Abû Muhammad 'Alee ibn Ahmad ibn Sa'eed ibn Hazm's Tawq al-Hamâmah (The Ring of the Dove). So, there you have it: Rilke, quintessential poet of love, and The History of Romantic Love. Yeah... that's the ticket.!
posted on Feb-14-03 at 11:07 AM
Labors Of Love
Here are some handmade pages, personal and corporate, on American Vernacular Music and more:
First, here's Long Time Coming, with three separate shrines to Dock Boggs, Pretty Boy Floyd and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, worthy subjects all. I have no idea what the Eyeneer Records revenue model is or was but their American Music Archive, (Latest Update - August 20, 1999), albeit spotty, is still a must stop and see with pages on Charley Patton, Sleepy John Estes and Lucille Bogan, for example, and that's just the blues section. It's a very promising sounding site--and it's too bad they never finished it, but, on the other hand, thank god,they have not yet pulled the plug. Lea Gilmore's It's A Girl Thang's Historical Profiles has it goin' on with Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Maybelle and Georgia White for examples. Catherine Yronwode, of course, is a name well known here, as is her wondrous Lucky Mojo, cornucopica that it is. There, among much riches, is the extensive and authoritative Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo --but that's Not All ! »→ »→ »→
posted on Feb-12-03 at 1:56 AM
Chasmosaurus, Giant Stag and Dire Wolf, Diatryma, Albertosaurus and an early Portuguese blogger--allow me to get a little Mesozoic, Creataceous and Pleistocene upon your ass with this cool archive of vintage Czechoslovakian prehistoric art: I found 11 pages of thumbnails for 258 large scan jpegs of Znedek Burian's work on the websites of the Petrs Hejna of Prague, the Czech Republic. Znedek Burian, as you will remember from my previous Vintage Dinosaur Art Archives thread, was state of the art in the 1950s. 258 scans of Znedek Burian is find enough to merit a post--But Wait! There's More! → → →
posted on Feb-9-03 at 1:39 AM
John Hurt: Although it was not John (wrong sex anyway) who through a gentle voice and pleasant demeanor (yet he had this about him too) served as my primary impetus to play the guitar, it was nevertheless he, and others who played like him - but mainly he who provided me with my first technical model (emotional model to some extent also) for playing the guitar. He was the first I heard who played in the three-finger, non-choking, "picking" style, and he was one of the best. He was in his quiet way, a very great man, and I deeply mourn our loss of him. John Fahey
Mississippi John Hurt
"I just make it sound like I think it ought to" (more →)
posted on Feb-8-03 at 1:15 AM
Cosmic bolt probed in shuttle disaster - Scientists poring over 'infrasonic' sound waves Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California, The Chronicle has learned.
posted on Feb-7-03 at 12:32 AM
After Hours Backstage at the Puppet Theater, A Japanese Abominable Snowman, The Famous Samurai: Miyamoto Musashi, Incomparable Woman Warrior and Gingerly Avoiding A Fishy Mess--images from from The Library of Congress's The Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance . Also, may I present UKIYO-E - The Pictures of the Floating World.
Floating World, you ask?
posted on Feb-2-03 at 4:37 PM
A War Crime or an Act of War?
But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. ..
This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.
And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. (NYT)
posted on Jan-31-03 at 7:43 AM
Jesus H. Christ: That's H for Historical. A person of interest to several schools of inquiry, historical whereabouts unknown, somewhere between palimpsest and projection. You have your Jesus Seminar, for one. Earl Doherty asks Was there no historical Jesus? Mystae's The Jesus of History and Archeology is a bit more on the X files tip. A decidedly nonbeliever overview is Infidel.org's The Search for the Historical Jesus. And Gospel.Net provides Jesus of Nazareth in all gospels known to have been written within 200 years of Jesus' birth, a number considerably larger than the canonical four.
That should be enough for a start. Now go in peace and sin no more.
posted on Jan-30-03 at 3:01 AM
Ah, the world cries out for an updated Jonathan website. The Abominable Lesbian Vampire Cappuccino Bar in Cyberspace has withered on the vine, links almost all dead--damn, I should've copied that tab!--but some of the music's not firing blanks. The Jonathan Richman Project only posted one issue of their xerox zine--jeez, remember zines? Mail art? Man, those were the days--but they're nice enough to print Lester Bangs 1976 Creem diss of the Twerp King At The Summit. God, I remember reading that Bangs piece new and running out and buying The Modern Lovers, trusting as I did in his taste or maybe just his gonzo stylings? Little did I know...(inside)
posted on Jan-27-03 at 11:04 PM
The Mysterious Norman Raeben, the son of Shalom Aleichem, the man behind Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks.
Norman Raeben was one of the most influential people in Bob Dylan’s life. It was Norman Raeben, Dylan said, who, in the mid ‘70s, renewed his ability to compose songs. Dylan also suggested that Norman’s teaching and influence so altered his outlook upon life that Sara, his wife, could no longer understand him, and this was a contributory factor in the breakdown of the Dylans’ marriage. (More inside)
posted on Jan-11-03 at 11:56 AM
Emmett just barely got on that train to Mississippi. We could hear the whistle blowing. As he was running up the steps, I said, 'Bo,'--that's what I called him--'you didn't kiss me. How do I know I'll ever see you again?' He turned around and said, 'Oh, Mama.' Gently scolding me. He ran down those steps and gave me a kiss. As he turned to go up the steps again, he pulled his watch off and said, 'Take this, I won't need it.' I said, 'What about your ring?' He was wearing his father's ring for the first time. He said, 'I'm going to show this to my friends.' That's how we were able to identify him, by that ring. I think it was a Mason's ring.
Mamie Till-Mobley, 81, who wanted the world to see her teenage son's disfigured face after his slaying in Mississippi in 1955 and who became a figure in the civil rights movement, died of a heart ailment Jan. 6 at a hospital in Chicago. She had kidney failure.
The impact of the Emmett Till case on black America was even greater than that of the Brown decision. On January 20, 2003, The American Experience will present, on PBS, The Murder of Emmett Till. (Continued Inside)
posted on Jan-9-03 at 1:18 AM
The Legacy Project .
Among other things contained there, the Video about The Legacy Project, The Art of Afterwards, The Legacy Events Index, Literary Sampler, Visual Art Library and Filmography.
posted on Jan-2-03 at 8:17 PM
Ringed Uranus with its moons : I love it that one moon is named Puck. ( courtesy Robot Wisdom)
posted on Dec-31-02 at 9:13 PM
No White Man To Lose His Vote In Virginia.
Some background resources for l'affaire de Lott:
Lecture Summary: Reconstruction; Race and Place: An African-American Community In The Jim Crow South; The Rise And Fall of Jim Crow; Jim Crow Laws; Remembering Jim Crow; Behind The Veil; The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia; The Politics of Disfranchisement: White Supremacy and African-American Resistance in Charlottesville, Virginia, 1900-1925; Photographs of Sign Enforcing Racial Discrimination and Jump Jim Crow, or did Emancipation Make A Difference?
posted on Dec-18-02 at 4:31 AM
Joseph Smith: Magus, Freemason, Kabbalist and Gnostic.
The remarkable founder of the only truly American religion.
posted on Dec-2-02 at 4:02 PM
But what about the kitties? Feline Immunodeficiency Virus. FIV has been recognized as a syndrome since 1986, and as with AIDS, has been found in stored blood samples dating back to the 60s. Unlike HIV, however, for FIV there's a vaccine. Not that everyone is excited about it.
Originally, this was to be a post intended to provide something lighter until this appeared:
In addition, over 25 large cat species including, cheetahs, lions, and panthers have their own strain of the virus. Despite similarity among these viruses, transmission among species has never been documented. Scientists think that FIV is an old virus and may be the grandfather of all immunodeficiency viruses. Comparison of its' genetic code point to a virus that is millions of years old.
Googling led to several topics.
posted on Dec-1-02 at 3:51 PM
Out of the mist of the beginning of our era there looms a pageant of mythical figures whose vast, superhuman contours might people the walls of another Sistine Chapel. Their countenances and gestures, the roles in which they are cast, the drama which they enact, would yield images different from the biblical ones on which the imagination of the beholder was reared, yet strangely familiar to him and disturbingly moving. The stage would be the same, the theme as transcending: the creation of the world, the destiny of man, fall and redemption, the first and the last things. But how much more numerous would be the cast, how much more bizarre the symbolism, how much more extravagant the emotions!
Hans Jonas
Into the Gnostic.
Of magicians, miracle workers, saints and sinners of early Christianities and other mystery religions--including but not limited to Valentinus, Simon Magus, Mithras, Marcion, Manicheans, Mandeans, the Winged Hermes, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, among many other Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphica, the Cathars and Apollonious of Tyana. Not to mention Philip K. Dick.
posted on Nov-30-02 at 3:20 PM
Three Dog Eves--They really do understand us--even better than our cousin chimpanzees. Well, at least when food's involved.
As to how wolves became dogs, the current understanding seems to be they tamed themselves--in a Survival of the Friendliest. Here's more on animal linguistics. As for cats, well, Stephen Budiansky in The Character of Cats suggests they aren't even really tame. Hence, unlike dogs, cats haven't bothered to pick up our language--they've taught us Cat talk instead. Take the test and see. A woof out to Australian Broadcast Coporation's five part Animal Attraction series is called for here.
posted on Nov-24-02 at 6:09 PM
Aiee!! Pelorosaurus by god knows who, Corythosaurus illustrated by Zdenek Burian, Ornitholestes by Charles Knight--Dinosaur Illustrations has led me to two wonderful sites: Early Image and Paper Dinosaurs, 1824-1969 - An Exhibition of Original Publications From the Collections of the Linda Hall Library, as well as many other little treasures.
posted on Nov-22-02 at 11:17 AM
Cyprus was another world.
The city of Paphos might have been designed and built by a Grecian architect dreamy with the drugs called talaquin or mandragora: in marble yellow as unmixed cream, marble pink as sweetmeats, marble the green of pistuquim nuts, veined marble and grained marble, honey-colored and rose-red, the buildings climbed along the hills and frothed among the hollows. Tier after tier of overtall pillars, capitals of a profusion of carvings to make Corinthian seem ascetic, pediments lush with bas-reliefs, four-fold arches at every corner and crossing, statues so huge that they loomed over the housetops, statues so small that whole troops of them flocked and frolicked under every building's eaves, groves and gardens everywhere, fountains playing, water spouting . . .
Paphos.
Avram Davidson
He was the autodidact's autodidact; cognoscenti's cognocenti; the polymath's polymath, one who knew the minutiae of freemasonry, heraldry-any number of categories of the arcane, major and minor; front to back; top to bottom. Long before the genre Steam punk was named, he'd already defined the Other Nineteenth Century. And he wrote the most sumptuous prose.
Come step within the heirodule enclosure
posted on Nov-18-02 at 10:09 PM
They're back--and promise to as brighter or brighter than last year:
NASA scientists' predictions for the 2002 Leonid meteor storm.
Such meteor storms rarely happen in consecutive years, but 2001 and 2002 are exceptions. Experts have just released their predictions: Depending on where you live (Europe and the Americas are favored) Leonid meteor rates in 2002 should equal or exceed 2001 levels.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the Moon will be full when the storm begins on Nov. 19th. Glaring moonlight will completely overwhelm many faint shooting stars. Indeed, I often hear that the Moon is going to "ruin the show."
We shall see.
posted on Nov-16-02 at 11:35 PM
In the late 18th or early 19th century a group of runaway slaves and serfs fled from Kentucky into the Ohio Territory, where they inter-married with Natives and formed a tribe - red, white & black - called the Ben Ishmael tribe. The Ishmaels (who seem to have been Islamically inclined) followed an annual nomadic route through the territory, hunting & fishing, and finding work as tinkers and minstrels. They were polygamists, and drank no alcohol. Every winter they returned to their original settlement, where a village had grown.
But eventually the US Govt. opened the Territory to settlement, and the ~official~ pioneers arrived. Around the Ishmael village a town began to spring up, called Cincinnati. Soon it was a big city. But Ishmael village was still there, engulfed & surrounded by "civilization." Now it was a ~slum~.
Maroons, Ramapaughs, Jackson Whites, the Moors of Delaware, Melungeons, the Ben Ishmaels--hat tip to Footnotes of History on that last--Red Bones, Brass Ankles, Turks, Lumbees, Croatans and other lost tribes and rebel slave communities.
The questions raised are what is race, tribe and family ...among others.
Included by extension are Hakim Bey, The Moorish Orthodox Church, various tribes of Black Indians, Jukes, Kallikaks, Margaret Sanger, The Bell Curve and Heather Locklear. (Step within the tent for the latter's interpetive dance)
posted on Nov-15-02 at 3:27 PM
Comiclopedia.
Not just your father's Comicyclopdedia.
posted on Nov-11-02 at 11:55 AM
A thrush in the syringa sings.
`Hunger ruffles my wings, fear,
lust, familiar things.
Death thrusts hard. My sons
by hawk's beak, by stones, by cat and weasel, die.
From a shaken bush I
list familiar things,
fear, hunger, lust.'
O gay thrush!
Basil Bunting,
Basil Bunting,
Basil Bunting.
The Return of PoemFilter
posted on Nov-9-02 at 2:22 AM
John Hanson (November 5, 1781 - November 3, 1782), Elias Boudinot (November 4, 1782 - November 2, 1783), Thomas Mifflin (November 3, 1783 - June 3, 1784), Richard Henry Lee (November 30, 1784 - November 22, 1785), John Hancock (November 23, 1785 - June 5, 1786), Nathaniel Gorham (June 1786 until January 1787), Arthur St. Clair (February 2 , 1787 - January 21, 1788), and Cyrus Griffin (January 22, 1788 – April 29, 1789)--under The Articles of the Confederation.
Everything you know is wrong--George Washington was the 9th President
--or 8th, depending on how you call it on John Hancock's term. [More inside]
posted on Nov-7-02 at 11:02 PM
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Collected Poems Of William Butler Yeats
posted on Nov-3-02 at 9:50 PM
Against the Grain (A Rebours) by Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1884. Virtual Reality 19th Century style with illustrations--the quintessence of decadence.
posted on Oct-31-02 at 11:15 AM
Thorstein Veblen , Economist and Social Commentator, who contributed to the common tongue the phrase conspicuous consumption.
Who was Thorstein Veblen--and why should anyone care?
I should like him for his writing style alone:
The appreciation of those evidences of honorific crudeness to which hand-wrought goods owe their superior worth and charm in the eyes of well-bred people is a matter of nice discrimination. It requires training and the formation of right habits of thought with respect to what may be called the physiognomy of goods. Machine-made goods of daily use are often admired and preferred precisely on account of their excessive perfection by the vulgar and the underbred who have not given due thought to the punctilios of elegant consumption. The ceremonial inferiority of machine products goes to show that the perfection of skill and workmanship embodied in any costly innovations in the finish of goods is not sufficient of itself to secure them acceptance and permanent favor. The innovation must have the support of the canon of conspicuous waste. Any feature in the physiognomy of goods, however pleasing in itself, and however well it may approve itself to the taste for effective work, will not be tolerated if it proves obnoxious to this norm of pecuniary reputability.
From Chapter Six - Pecuniary Canons of Taste of the work entire, The Theory of The Leisure Class. Feel free to consume conspicuously.
posted on Oct-29-02 at 11:27 PM
Trebuchets , Trebuchets, Trebuchets: where geeks get medieval on thine ass. Some people have a love of history, spare time and an excuse to buy more tools. (His Earth Viewer is cute, too) Also needed are open expanses--like in Australia. Note: Punkin' Chunkin' (©donkeymon 11/03/01) 2002 is coming up in a week. Will Team Banka's Pumpkin Slayer return? Also, there's Gulf Wars XII for y'all next March. And, courtesy Nova, for the shockwave addicted, Play Destroy The Castle! Manual here. Also, here's the Virtual Trebuchet java applet. And last, massive trebuchet linkage.
posted on Oct-26-02 at 1:40 AM
Hannes Bok - Virgil Finlay were the premier illustrators of fantasy and science fiction for the first three quarters of the XXth Century. Bok was influenced in both technique and theme through correspondence and visits with Maxfield Parrish. Finlay learned scratch board, hatching and stippling in high school and began his career by sending six unsolicited drawings to Farnsworth Wright, the editor of Weird Tales, and becoming an immediate hit with readers and writers alike. The two primary online collections of Bok are The Art Work of Hannes Bok, from Poetic's Pagan Pages, and this Hannes Bok cover gallery from from Richard Garrison's Art of the Fantastic. Finlay is more well represented, with these two galleries, provided by one indexxs, being the treasure trove......... --Step within the tent for the rest of Dr. Lao's presentation...
posted on Oct-23-02 at 2:16 PM
Richard Powers - His sleek surreal and otherworldly abstractions changed science fiction illustration and, in the process, the stature of science fiction itself. Here is the Richard Powers Catalog from Vandewater Books. From the e-zine Strange Words Archive, comes The Powers Years part of Collecting The Ballantine Originals, and check out the thumbnails amid and after the Richard Powers essay at Hedonia--who are the very wave of the future in so many ways at once! David G. Hartwell remembers Powers the man. Here is another from his son in download form from Paper Snarl, where Powers is well regarded. And check out the links at the Richard Powers Cyber Art Gallery - everything from a Goth art gallery to Terence McKenna's Dream Museum. But don't click on Miss Stephanie Locke if you're at work! Oh, and the Strange Worlds archive is worth a gander, too...
posted on Oct-21-02 at 8:56 AM
Boris Artzybasheff -- the master of the Anthropomorphic who made men out of machines and machines out of men. a master craftsman, with a wide array of techniques at his command, as Alexei Panshin put it. And here is his letter Q contribution to Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation. Submitted for your approval from...
posted on Oct-18-02 at 1:13 PM
High Art. Rick Griffin's famous flying eyeball poster is considered by many to be the single finest example of San Francisco psychedelic poster art. The image comes from this fabulous motherlode of eye candy that is Paul Olsen's Fillmore and Avalon poster collection. It is the largest and most complete collection of its sort. He would like to sell it as a whole--The Whitney Museum wants to buy it but can't afford it. That should tell you something. Come step behind the Indian bedspread curtain and smell the incense.
posted on Oct-10-02 at 6:12 AM
Folk Music. Stefan Wirz and Hideki Watanabe pay homage to their favorites. Check out Hideki's Muscle Shoals page for another slice of his Americana pie. Or click on a name--Eric Von Schmidt, say--on Stefan's completist, slow loading page and wallow in pictures and stories... Then there's the Richard & Mimi Fariña website. Jan Hoiberg's Band site is another. I love labors of love.
And don't forget the Bauls of Bengal or the secrets of John Wesley Harding revealed!
And note, newsfilterians, you can now order Mickey Jone's home movies from the '66 tour, too. I'm going to see the Bobster tomorrow, so I've been thinking of these things.
posted on Oct-3-02 at 9:19 PM
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