Argument to Beethoven's 5th

No cue cards, no teleprompters, and no second takes--legendary funnyman Sid Caesar pioneered live television sketch comedy with his 1950s sitcoms Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour. This classic sketch is "Argument to Beethoven's 5th," Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray play a married couple in a argument with pantomimed action and the dialogue is classic music.

Gilda Radner SNL Screen Test

Tiny Animals on Fingers

A Flickr photoset.

Interesting Images Found Using Google's Street View

Laudon Tech is compiling a list of interesting images found using Google's Street View tool.

Below is a list of interesting sites and places people have found using Google's new Street View feature. If you have found something interesting using Google Maps Street View, drop me an email and I'll post it.

THE 100 SCARIEST MOVIE SCENES

From RetroCrush:

This has been a great labour of love and truly one of the most fun articles I've ever had the pleasure of putting up on retroCRUSH. It's easy to talk about scary movies, but we wanted to highlight the individual scary scenes that really stick out. Some films aren't scary by design, but happen to have creepy and shocking moments that deserve special recognition. So enjoy this list and have fun discovering a bunch of new movies to see!

Two O'Clock Trailers - True Romance

500 Years of Women in Western Art

This has been going around for the past week or so but if you haven't seen it yet....

Lieberman's Iraq Tour of Duty

Joe, Joe, Joe:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Spc. David Williams, 22, of Boston, Mass., had two note cards in his pocket Wednesday afternoon as he waited for Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Williams serves in the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., the first of the five "surge" brigades to arrive in Iraq, and he was chosen to join the Independent from Connecticut for lunch at a U.S. field base in Baghdad.

The night before, 30 other soldiers crowded around him with questions for the senator.

He wrote them all down. At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers:

"When are we going to get out of here?"

The rest was a laundry list. When would they have upgraded Humvees that could withstand the armor-penetrating weapons that U.S. officials claim are from Iran? When could they have body armor that was better in hot weather?

Williams missed six months of his girlfriend's pregnancy when he was given six days' notice to return to Iraq for his second tour. He also missed his baby boy's birth. Three weeks ago, he went home and saw his first child.

"He looks just like me," he said. "I didn't want to come back. . . . We're waiting to get blown up."

Then Joe appears:

Then Lieberman walked in, wearing a pair of sunglasses newly purchased from an Iraqi market that the military had taken him to in southeast Baghdad. He'd been equipped with a helmet and flak vest when he toured the market, which he described as bustling.

Doesn't it defeat the purpose of a photo-op that's supposed to show how positive things are in a marketplace when you're in body armor surrounded by bodyguards?

Sinatra & Jobim - The Girl From Ipanema

Freight Train Collision

Camera view of two freight trains colliding, shot from the engineer's cab side view.

(via Andy's Blog)

MyExcusedAbsence.com

Museum of Hoaxes has a post today about MyExcusedAbsence.com, a site where you can buy fake doctor notes for the all low price of $24.95.

I assumed that it would be illegal to actually provide people with fake doctor notes, but here's a site that's doing exactly that: myexcusedabsence.com. The site claims that, for only $24.95, it will provide you with a fake excuse saying that you've been at a doctor or a dentist's appointment, been to the emergency room, had jury duty, or been at a funeral. (I wonder who the note comes from in the case of a funeral? From the funeral director?) It looks like what you get for this money is a Word template formatted to look like an official note. For that amount of money, I think it would be a lot easier simply to create your own fake note in Word.

And don't think that people haven't tried using these notes. This lady from Newark tried using one to get out of traffic court.

NEWARK, N.J. - Nina Weems' first mistake was speeding.

Her second mistake was blowing off traffic court.

Her biggest mistake was thinking the Internet could solve her first two problems.

Earlier this month Weems, who lives in Newark, began a campaign apparently designed to persuade Hanover Township Municipal Court she was too disabled to show up for court, or for that matter, get behind the wheel again anytime soon. Could the court drop the whole matter, she asked.

Weems sent the court a doctor's note to support her case, a township official said. The problem was, the note was not written by the chiropractor whose name was on the letterhead. It was instead courtesy of myexcusedabsence.com, an Internet site advertising "absence notes for every occasion."

Weems paid $24.95 for the note, court officials said, and joined the ranks of scofflaw techies using the information highway to augment the age-old practice of forging excuses.

Gary Parker's Portraits of Little People

Fantastic photographs.

The purpose of these galleries is to educate the public as to the many varieties of dwarfism as well as to reflect the huge spirits of the beautiful individuals who have so kindly agreed to be photographed for this project.

(via Monkeyfilter)

Scanned Images From a 1962 Fallout Shelter Handbook

From Ward-o-matic:

I finally got around to scanning some more of that incredibly popular Fallout Shelter Handbook from 1962 I posted about several weeks ago. I figured that it probably wouldn't hurt to scan more -- it offered me the chance to really check out some of the photos. Interesting stuff going on. The nature of some of the following scans require a closer look; if you click on each image you will be taken to its prospective Flickr page. Once there, select "All sizes," to view larger. (The same goes for the earlier post.)

The First Recorded IT Professional Seen at Work

(via GeekPress)

Colour By Numbers

A light installation that is no more:

Colour by Numbers was a 72 meter high light installation at Telefonplan in Stockholm, Sweden, inaugurated on October 23, 2006, and switched off on April 1, 2007. Anyone could control the colours in the tower with their mobile phone.

The reception of the light installation has been very positive and we are thankful for the response on the project in the media and from the residents in the area. The City of Stockholm wants to see the installation made permanent, but the property owner has other plans for the tower at the moment.

(via del.icio.us/bibi)

Fargo Then and Now

A look at Fargo, ND through postcards over the years.

Fargo, North Dakota, 1950 - the middle of town in the middle of the midwest in the middle of the century. Almost everything you see here still stands. And almost everything you see is gone.

Take a look at this picture, and tell yourself that things are better today. Cities today: Big white malls, clean black parking lots with a superstore rising like a cheap brick glacier, fast-food franchises, landscapes indistinguishable from any other city. Bah. I don't want to short-shrift convenience or harangue the auto culture, but they're thin comforts, and they have no weight. You throw out your anchor and it clatters at your feet. This picture shows a town usually used as shorthand for America's arctic gulag, the end of the earth, a distant outpost of igloos and teepees. But tell me this doesn't look like a small civil corner of a long-gone golden time.

(via Plep)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

We are told that the universe was designed and created, and that it is absurd to suppose that matter has existed from eternity, but that it is perfectly self-evident that a god has.

–Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Gods" (1872)

Bat Boy: The Musical

I'm not sure what's more surprising. That there is a Bat Boy play or that it's been around since 2001 and this is the first I've heard of it.

Yes, it's Bat Boy: The Musical, the cult hit based on tabloid stories in the Weekly World News about a child with needle teeth and Spock ears who supposedly was discovered in an Appalachian cave in 1992. In the stage version, the demonic-looking half-breed is taken in by a friendly family that tries to teach him to live in civilized society, only to discover that West Virginia isn't quite as civilized as they hoped.

The story is filled with salacious shocks that might make even Jerry Springer blush, but it also has a serious, even mythic side. It uses the trashy tropes of the tabloids to make a universal statement about prejudice and acceptance.

"It's My Fair Lady meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show," said Damon Dering of Nearly Naked Theatre, who has been frothing at the mouth to direct Bat Boy for years. This week Dering gets his wish, closing his company's season with an Arizona-premiere production.

Bat Boy, after winning the Outer Critics Circle Award for best Off Broadway musical in 2001, has become a popular choice at theaters around the country. There's even a movie in the works, with John Landis in the director's chair, so it's a good bet the play will be a hit in Phoenix as well.

Allison Stokke and Internet Fame

The Washington Post has a story on Allison Stokke, a high school pole vaulter, who became an internet celebrity when blogs started posting her picture online en masse.

NORWALK, Calif. -- Early this month, 18-year-old Allison Stokke walked into her high school track coach's office and asked if he knew any reliable media consultants. Stokke had tired of constant phone calls, of relentless Internet attention, of interview requests from Boston to Brazil.

In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed. Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet in New York had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke standing against a wall and analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.

"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.

Three weeks later, Stokke has decided that control is essentially beyond her grasp. Instead, she said, she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet. A fan on a Cal football message board posted a picture of the attractive, athletic pole vaulter. A popular sports blogger in New York found the picture and posted it on his site. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the same image and spread it. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke's picture and leered.

The Worst Possible Time To Be Coming Out of a Strip Club

Fun with Google Maps' Street View.

From Reddit.

Dawkins' TED Speech from 2005

Wonderful talk. You can view it larger here.

Richard Dawkins is Oxford University's "Professor for the Public Understanding of Science." Author of the landmark 1976 book, The Selfish ... all » Gene, he's a brilliant (and trenchant) evangelist for Darwin's ideas. In this talk, titled, "Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science," he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved only to understand the "middle-sized" world we can observe. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:42)

Caravan

Duke Ellington


Thelonious Monk


More performances of Caravan by Les Paul, Nat King Cole and Arturo Sandoval after the jump.
Les Paul


Nat King Cole


Arturo Sandoval

365 Portraits

I'm Bill Wadman, a New York-based photographer who after completing my first 365 Project, and then a weekly 52 Project, have taken it upon myself to shoot and post one portrait every day of 2007. The photo will have been taken that day, and each day will be a different person. Some will be in the studio, some will be in the wild. Hopefully they will all be interesting.

Flight of the Bumblebee on the Accordian

Performed by Alexander Dmitriev.

Getting Access to Gmail Accounts of the Deceased

This comes from Search Engine Roundtable who got it from this Google Groups thread.

1. Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.
2. The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.
3a. The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click 'More options,' then click 'Show original.' Copy everything from 'Delivered- To:' through the 'References:' line. To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)
3b. The entire contents of the message.
4. A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.

How Much LSD Does it Take to Kill an Elephant

And the blog title of the day award goes to Retrospectacle:

Most of you read the title and thought I was kidding, right? I mean, who in their right mind would give a huge dose of a psychotropic substance to an elephant, just to see what happened? Well, the year was 1962, and someone did just that. And, as icing on the cake, they got a Science paper out of it.

The subject was a 14-year-old male Indian elephant named Tusko being housed at the Lincoln Park Zoo. As previous research had suggested that high doses to LSD were needed to get perceivable effects in "lower animals," they decided to start with a 0.1 mg/kg dose of LSD for Tusko. That came to about 297 milligrams (in 5 mL of water, injected intramuscularly) of LSD for 7000 pound Tusko. The injection was delivered via a pressurized CO2 dart gun. For comparison, the threshold dosage for an effect in people is around 20-30 micrograms and a recreational 3+ hour dose would be around 100-200 micrograms.

After injection:

"Tusko began trumpeting and rushing around the pen, a reaction not unlike the one he had shown the day before (during the placebo shot). However, this time his restlessness appeared to increase for 3 minutes after the injection; then he stopped running and showed signs of marked incoordination. He began to sway, his hindquarters buckled, and it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain himself upright. Five minutes after the injection he trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily on his right side, defecated, and went into status epilepticus."

Vancouver Police to Recruit via Second Life

From The Vancouver Sun:

A Vancouver police officer stands in a virtual recruitment hall typing on an invisible keyboard.

The cyber cop is busy learning to walk and move inside her new world. While she's at it, she's practising her PowerPoint and presentation skills.

The VPD has been prepping to become the first real police force to join the more than 6.7 million inhabitants who live, work, play and learn inside their computers -- an initiative aimed at finding real-life people with computer know-how to join the force. The Vancouver Police Department is poised to become the first real-life police force living in the virtual world. They plan to hold a Second Life recruiting session as a way to lure more tech-savvy recruits.

The Vancouver Police Department is poised to become the first real-life police force living in the virtual world. They plan to hold a Second Life recruiting session as a way to lure more tech-savvy recruits.

On Thursday, the department will go public with a recruitment seminar inside Second Life -- the most popular online metaverse or alternative universe on the web -- aimed at attracting the next generation of police candidates from around the globe.

The Vancouver police officers involved in the recruitment on Second Life have their own avatars, or Second Life persona, dressed in a specially designed VPD uniform, badge, belt and radio. They're also trained in the other-world customs and commands of the virtual society.

The rationale for the sci-fi approach to recruitment is simple, says Insp. Kevin McQuiggin, head of the department's tech crimes division: If people are on Second Life, they're likely to be web-savvy, a quality the police department is looking for in new recruits.

Internet and technology-related crimes, from fraud to harassment, are common, McQuiggin says. In fact, he says, almost every major crime involves technology in some way, shape or form. "It's important for us, as an organization, to keep abreast of modern technology -- both from an educational standpoint and an outreach standpoint, and from an investigative standpoint," McQuiggin says.

"Any new media that comes out, any new form of communication, crime is going to migrate there."

(via Game Life)

Two O'Clock Trailers - Three Days of the Condor

How To Close a Chip Bag Without Using a Clip

(via Lifehacker)

Wolfowitz and the Project for the New American Bachelor

Bravo! Bravo!
(via Shakesville)

Boogie Nights - Star Wars Edition

(Yes, it's safe for work)
(via Yes But No But Yes)

What's the story on the female jazz musician who lived as a man?

From the Straight Dope:

You think I could forget the story of Billy Tipton? Yes, she lived as a man from age 21 till the day she died at age 74. Yes, her three sons (all adopted) never suspected a thing. But that's not the bizarre part. She lived with five women in succession, all of them attractive, a couple of them knockouts. She had intercourse with at least two of them and, who knows, maybe all five. But of the three we know about in detail, none tumbled to the fact that her husband was a woman (one figured it out later). At first you might think: man, I thought my spouse was oblivious. But the more charitable view is that they were taken in by one of the great performances of all time.

Eye Direction and Lying

It looks like I'm going to be experimenting with this on coworkers for the rest of the day.

So can the direction a person's eyes reveal whether or not they are making a truthful statement? Short answer: sort of. But, it isn't as simple as some recent television shows or movies make it seem. In these shows a detective will deduce a person is being untruthful simply because they looked to the left or right while making a statement.

In reality, it would be foolish to make such a snap judgment without further investigation... but the technique does have some merit. So, here it is... read, ponder and test it on your friends and family to see how reliable it is for yourself.

(via Information Junk)

U.S. Embassy in Iraq to be Biggest Ever

From Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON - The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will be the world's largest and most expensive foreign mission, though it may not be large enough or secure enough to cope with the chaos in Iraq.

The Bush administration designed the 104-acre compound — set to open in September in what today is a war zone — to be an ultra-secure enclave. Yet it also hoped that downtown Baghdad would cease being a battleground when diplomats moved in.

Over the long term, depending on which way the seesaw of sectarian division and grinding warfare teeters, the massive city-within-a-city could prove too enormous for the job of managing diminished U.S. interests in Iraq.

The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls. The compound is a symbol both of how much the United States has invested in Iraq and how the circumstances of its involvement are changing.

Think Progress also has a post about the embassy.

Hacking My Kid's Brain: How a Child's Neurons Were Rewired

From Wired:

As a child diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, or SPD, Caleb doesn't experience senses the way other people do. Stimuli from his environment and body are sometimes misinterpreted or ignored altogether. In addition to the obvious physical difficulties manifested with this neurological disorder, it also diminishes the ability to learn, think and even socialize. Behaviors we take for granted, like eye contact and maintaining a polite distance, are often huge challenges for people with SPD.

The month-long Sensory Learning Program in Boulder, Colorado, was designed to recalibrate Caleb's reception of sensory input, reorganizing the neural pathways that process information. Read my mid-treatment report here. Caleb's visual and auditory perception is now within normal ranges and his visual-motor skills have significantly improved. The only area where Caleb still shows appreciable deficits is in proprioceptive awareness -- the sense of one's own body -- so we have turned to occupational therapy to help in this regard.

The Sensory Learning Program focuses on three modalities: vision, hearing and balance. The effectiveness of this "sensory intervention" is measured by a series of tests administered before the treatment, directly after the treatment, and once more at the end of three months.

The 20 Best "That Guys" of All Time

From Cracked:

What is a "That Guy"? A That Guy is a B-list character actor who's just talented enough secure bit parts in a handful of movies every year, but not quite talented enough to become a brand-name star like Chris Kattan. Some specialize in playing villains and others in having freaky-enormous chest tattoos, but combined, these brave, barely handsome men have appeared in every single movie produced in the last decade.

(via The Daily Drip)

Poland targets 'gay' Teletubbies

Falwell lives?

A senior Polish official has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the popular BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle.

The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.

"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy."

EU officials have criticised Polish government policy towards homosexuals.

Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children's show should be broadcast on public television.

Poland's authorities have recently initiated a series of moves to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality among the nation's children.

(Thanks Arkadios)

The Vader Project

Looks like I missed out on the Vader Project.

Pop surrealist, graffiti, tattoo, lowbrow, comic and underground artists Shag, Paul Frank, Tim Biskup, Frank Kozik, Marc Ecko, Amanda Visell, Tim Biskup, J. Otto Seibold, Gary Baseman, Joe Ledbetter, Urban Medium and Jeff Soto, among others, show their allegiance to the dark side by customizing Darth Vader helmets in landmark gallery exhibition called The Vader Project, to debut at Star Wars Celebration IV on May 24 to 28 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The Vader Project is presented by Master Replicas, and curated by Dov Kelemer of DKE Toys, one of the largest designer vinyl and art-toy distributors in the world, exclusively representing over 50 companies, artists, and designers. Kelemer gathered the hottest underground and pop surrealist painters, artists and designers and gave each artist a Master Replicas 1:1 scale prop replica of the Darth Vader helmet used in the Star Wars films. Each helmet served as a blank canvas for each artist to paint, design, mash up and customize in their own unique style.

(Thanks Cam)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

Millions assert that the philosophy of Christ is perfect -- that he was the wisest that ever uttered speech.

Let us see:

Resist not evil. If smitten on one cheek turn the other.

Is there any philosophy, any wisdom in this? Christ takes from goodness, from virtue, from the truth, the right of self-defence. Vice becomes the master of the world, and the good become the victims of the infamous.

No man has the right to protect himself, his property, his wife and children. Government becomes impossible, and the world is at the mercy of criminals. Is there any absurdity beyond this?

–Robert Green Ingersoll, "About the Holy Bible" (1894)

Günter Grass - "How I Spent the War"

From The New Yorker:

It must have been possible for a Luftwaffe auxiliary to trade a weekend leave for a Wednesday or Thursday off. In any case, one thing is clear: after one long day’s march, I took the tram from Heubude to the Central Station, and from there the train via Langfuhr and Zoppot to Gotenhafen, where Navy recruits were trained to handle submarines. It took all of an hour to reach the goal of my dreams of heroism. I found the recruitment office in a low, Polish-period building where, behind a row of doors with signs, bureaucratic rigmarole was processed, passed on, filed. After signing in, I was told to wait for my name to be called. There were two or three older boys ahead of me. I did not have much to say to them.

The sergeant and the seaman first class I spoke to rejected me out of hand: I was too young; my age group hadn’t come up yet; it would soon enough; no reason for excessive haste.

Two O'Clock Trailers - Fargo

The Astor Place Riots

Or the dueling Macbeths:

The Astor Place Riot, one of the bloodiest days in New York's history, had its roots in a banal squabble between two arrogant actors. Actor William Macready, Englishman, and actor Edwin Forrest, Native son, had once been friends. Macready had helped Forrest get his start in London, and Forrest had married an English woman he met through the older actor. But over the years, professional competition and personal egotism had created friction and then outright antipathy. Their rivalry was exacerbated, and then exploited, by a growing nativist movement, then organized as the Order of United Americans, forerunner of the know-nothings and a group with much strength in the organized gangs of the Bowery and other working-class areas. The slights supposedly delivered by an effete, aristocratic Macready to a bold, Democratic Forrest - billed everywhere as "The American Tragedian" - were transformed into insults piercing the very soul of the American character. When the English actor arrived in the United States for an 1849 tour, nativists were incensed.

An attempt by Macready to play Macbeth at the Astor place Opera House on May 7, 1849 proved unsuccessful, as he was driven from the stage by an unruly crowd throwing, as he later cataloged, "eggs of doubtful purity, potatoes, a bottle of pungent and nauseating asafetida, old shoes, and a copper coin."

Convinced by city elders, including Washington Irving and Herman Melville, to try again, he announced a return to the Opera House stage for May 10. This proved to be, to put it mildly, a miscalculation. Nativist elements, fired by the temerity of this fop and organized by local ward leaders, regrouped. One of the principal instigators of the protest was Edward Z.C. Judson, a popular author who use the pen name "Ned Buntline" and who was the man that dubbed William C. Cody "Buffalo Bill." He later served a year in prison for his role in the riot.

Astor Place, from Broadway to Third Avenue, began to fill up early on the evening of the 10th . By curtain time there were thousands of unruly citizens - estimates ran up to 20,000 - in the street, and a packed house inside. It was clear that the situation was uncontrollable.

The Donor Show

From BBC News:

A Dutch TV station says it will go ahead with a programme in which a terminally ill woman selects one of three patients to receive her kidneys.

Political parties have called for The Big Donor Show to be scrapped, but broadcaster BNN says it will highlight the country's shortage of organ donors.

"It's a crazy idea," said Joop Atsma, of the ruling Christian Democrat Party.

"It can't be possible that, in the Netherlands, people vote about who's getting a kidney," he told the BBC.

The programme, from Big Brother creators Endemol, is due to be screened on Friday night.

Putting a Computer Hard Drive in the Freezer Will Help Recover Lost Data?

Hmmmm. But why?

A few months ago I was visiting another computer-forensics specialist when I learned about the freezer trick. This fellow gets a few broken disk drives now and then, and, by putting the drives in a freezer overnight, he's frequently able to recover data that would otherwise be "lost." Well, when I got back to Harvard, where I work, I took a few of my "broken" drives down from the shelf and put them in the freezer overnight with a note: "These hard drives are being used for a research project; please don't eat them."

The next day I took two of the drives back to my desk and plugged them into my computer. How about that: two of the drives that had been "broken" were now giving me their data.

This is a big deal for me. For starters, it means that I can now get data off many of those "broken" drives I've been keeping on my shelf. But it also means that many of the drives being sold on eBay as broken can nevertheless be scavenged for data. This is particularly troublesome because it's unlikely that the previous owners of the drives were able to properly clear them before they were sold.

(via Geekpress)

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know

I'm shocked that "pwned" failed to make this list:

BOSTON, MA — The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language."

LEGO Rubberband Chaingun

With video of the chaingun in action:

"The motor driven barrels start winding up to speed at the flick of a switch on the handle. Pulling the trigger unleashes a stream of rubber bands, deluging the target. The fire rate is high enough that at least half a dozen bands are in the air at any one time – the gun appears to fire a single very long chain of them. It’s as much like using a hose pipe as firing a rubber band gun. It also sounds fantastic because each mechanism makes a distinct click as it discharges a rubber band."

(via Bifurcated Rivets)

An Obituary of an "Amateur Historian"

From the Opinion Journal:

I don't think there's a good word for what Mr. Hall did: "researcher" is too dry, "historical investigator" carries hints of melodrama, and "archivist" suggests a dutiful drudge, which Mr. Hall was not. "Amateur historian" probably fits best, though it sounds vaguely derivative and second-tier. Following a career with the Labor Department--he retired in the early 1970s--Mr. Hall turned himself into the world's foremost authority on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Historians, pros and amateurs alike, sought him out for his knowledge and access to his exhaustive files. As one of them put it, James O. Hall knew more about Lincoln's murder than anyone who ever lived, including John Wilkes Booth.

Uncorrupted by graduate degrees, with no thought of professional advancement, Mr. Hall exemplified a tradition in the study of American history, particularly in the Lincoln field, where the most interesting writing and research is often done by hobbyists. It's been this way from the beginning. Until the middle of the last century, all the great Lincoln biographers made their livings outside the university--journalists like Ida Tarbell and free-lance enthusiasts like Benjamin Thomas produced biographies that were beautifully written and filled with news. Even now, dozens of Lincoln or Civil War roundtables flourish, and many of them publish quirky newsletters in which members let drop bits of recondite research or boldly advance new theories. While other areas of academic research have shriveled into hyperspecialization, the amateur tradition has kept the Lincoln field blessedly free of the guild mentality that can make academic history seem the dreary province of pedants and bullies.

Top 10 Creation Myths

From LiveScience comes 10 Creation Myths from different religions and cultures. I've taken Japan's creation myth as an example:

The gods created two divine siblings, brother Izanagi and sister Izanami, who stood upon a floating bridge above the primordial ocean. Using the jeweled spear of the gods, they churned up the first island, Onogoro. Upon the island, Izanagi and Izanami married, and gave forth progeny that were malformed. The gods blamed it upon a breach of protocol. During the marriage ritual, Izanami, the woman, had spoken first. Correctly reprising their marriage ritual, the two coupled and produced the islands of Japan and more deities. However, in birthing Kagutsuchi-no-Kami, the fire god, Izanami died. Traumatized, Izanagi followed her to Yomi, the land of the dead. Izanami, having eaten the food of Yomi, could not return. When Izanagi suddenly saw Izanami's decomposing body, he was terrified and fled. Izanami, enraged, pursued him, accompanied by hideous women. Izanagi hurled personal items at them, which transformed into diversions. Escaping the cavern entrance of Yomi, he blocked it with a boulder, thus permanently separating life from death. (Rather like Persephone in Hades, isn't it?)

Japanese Gardens

Photo galleries of Japanese Gardens.

The gardens pictured on this page—most of them located in Kyoto and its environs—are given reasonably full coverage on this web site. Clicking on a thumbnail image will take you the introductory page for each garden, from which you can take a tour of the garden, consult a map indicating each point of view, and read a history of that garden.

(via Grow a Brain)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

IS CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE?

He never said a word in favor of education. He never even hinted at the existence of any science. He never uttered a word in favor of industry, economy or of any effort to better our condition in this world. He was the enemy of the successful, of the wealthy. Dives was sent to hell, not because he was bad, but because he was rich. Lazarus went to heaven, not because he was good, but because he was poor.

Christ cared nothing for painting, for sculpture, for music -- nothing for any art. He said nothing about the duties of nation to nation, of king to subject; nothing about the rights of man; nothing about intellectual liberty or the freedom of speech. He said nothing about the sacredness of home; not one word for the fireside; not a word in favor of marriage, in honor of maternity.

He never married. He wandered homeless from place to place with a few disciples. None of them seem to have been engaged in any useful business, and they seem to have lived on alms.

All human ties were held in contempt; this world was sacrificed for the next; all human effort was discouraged. God would support and protect.

At last, in the dusk of death, Christ, finding that he was mistaken, cried out: "My God My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?"

We have found that man must depend on himself. He must clear the land; he must build the home; he must plow and plant; he must invent; he must work with hand and brain; he must overcome the difficulties and obstructions; he must conquer and enslave the forces of nature to the end that they may do the work of the world.

–Robert Green Ingersoll, "About the Holy Bible" (1894)

Two O'Clock Trailers - The Big Lebowski

LED Graduation Cap

Circuit board controls 64 LED's built into graduation cap.

Ladislas Starevich's "The Insects' Christmas"

A stop motion animation from 1913 called "The Insects' Christmas" by Ladislas Starevich.

Related:
Wikipedia's Bio on Starevich:

Ladislas Starevich (August 8, 1882 - February 26, 1965), born Władysław Starewicz, was a Polish, Russian and French stop-motion animator who used insects and animals as his protagonists...

...Starewicz had interests in a number of different areas; by 1910 he was director of a museum of natural history in Kaunas. There he made four short live-action documentaries for the museum. For the fifth film, Starewicz wished to record the battle of two stag beetles, but was stymied by the fact that the nocturnal creatures inevitably went to sleep whenever the stage lighting was turned on. Inspired by a viewing of Les allumettes animées [Animated Matches] (1908) by Emile Cohl, Starewicz decided to re-create the fight through stop-motion animation: he removed the legs and mandibles from two beetle carcasses, then re-attached them with wax, creating articulated puppets. The result was the short film Lucanus Cervus (1910), apparently the first animated puppet film with a plot and the natal hour of Russian animation.

Also on YouTube is Starevich's The Portrait (1915)
(YouTube clip via PoeTV)

Update:
Bibi has a ton of Starevich's stop motion animation films on her blog Videos with Bibi.

I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose

From the WaPo:

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month. Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.

In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

(via Metafilter)

Prison Flicks

Welcome to Prison Flicks, the premier web site devoted to reviewing and discussing prison movies.

Prison movies run the gamut from high art to mass-market entertainment to b-movies. Basically anything you can do in a movie can be done in a prison movie. You want a love story? Well, it might not be Hepburn and Tracy, but love sometimes blooms within prison walls (and I'm not even talking about that). Even high-seas adventures are possible with the prison-ship concept. But putting the characters in prison just makes it all so much more entertaining. The guards, the bars, the exercise yard, the smell of human animals packed into cages. So sit back, enjoy, and take a tour of the magical world of prison movies. From women in prison to the Shawshank Redemption, this is the site for you.

One Sentence

True stories in one sentence. (Kind of like Post Secret)

I went to a party the day we had an abortion, it made me feel good not having to be a parent.

The World of Modern Child Slavery

From BBC News:

When it is mentioned we tend to think of people, almost always black people; degraded, abused and bound in chains, and we tend to think of such images, and the word slavery itself, as belonging to another era.

We do not see slavery as belonging to our world, not as something which is still happening today.

Yet the truth is that if William Wilberforce were alive today and he travelled to different parts of the world - not just in Africa, but also in large parts of Asia, the Middle East, South America and even parts of Europe - he would find children living in conditions and circumstances which Wilberforce would understand and which I am sure he would describe as slavery.

It is believed there are nearly nine million children around the world today who are enslaved.

There are international charters and covenants which try to come to a legal definition of what constitutes slavery.

In essence these documents define slavery in the modern world as a situation where a human being and their labour are owned by others, and where that person does not have the freedom to leave and is forced into a life which is exploitative, humiliating and abusive.

(via Ursi's Blog)

The Two-Hour Star Wars Holiday Special in only Five Minutes!

Fetus Popple

I made this 3 years ago for Embryology class, and I was inspired by the Knitted Digestive System to post it here. The concept is ripped off of Popples, those vaguely mammalian stuffed toys that 20-somethings might remember; they could turn inside-out with a little pouch-thing on their back, so that all you could see is their tail sticking out of a little ball. I thought the gimmic would be a useful way of illustrating the various pouch-within-a-pouch structure of fetal membranes.

(via PCL Linkdump)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

Some Christian lawyers — some eminent and stupid judges — have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.

Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt — laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.

All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new art foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: “Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.” He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: “The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.” He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: “Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.”

If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been.

– Robert Green Ingersoll, “About the Holy Bible” (1894)

The 337 Project

Across the street from the old Oquirrh School, at 337 South 400 East, stands a bland, derelict, grey stucco two-story building. An example of the worst late 70's remodel and reuse of a residential dwelling as an office building, this narrow, labyrinthine collection of rooms, hallways, stairs and closets will be demolished soon to make space for Utah's first all-green, mixed-use loft-style condominiums. Before this exemplary development begins, the building has been turned over for use as a 20,000 square foot canvas, hosting the largest single collaboration of Salt Lake area contemporary artists ever to be gathered and directed toward a community installation, performance and happening: a high-profile art project entitled 337.

A Photo Tour of the Creation Museum

A tour of the Creation Museum Fantasyland.

Taking its cue from the previous room, this area describes the idea of different "starting points" in more detail by giving specific examples. Included are discussions of dinosaurs, the formation of the oceans, human ancestry, and more.

As soon as you walk into the Starting Points room, you are greeted by a rather menacing looking dinosaur, standing next to a sign about the evolutionary idea of dinosaur fossils and the creation idea of dinosaur fossils. Instead of the dinosaur dying, slowly rotting away, leaving behind only solid, hard material, and gradually becoming a fossil (if future paleontologists are lucky), the creationist section of the sign attributes the dinosaur's death to the flood, and the development of the fossil is attributed to a rush of sediment (a LARGE rush of sediment) from a surge of flood water.

The obvious difference between the comparisons is the fact that the evolutionary ideas take a longer amount of time than the creationism ideas. That, and the creationism signs all rely on the Bible as a starting point.

(via Pharyngula)

No Honor for Andrew Card

On May 25, 2007 Andrew Card faced hundreds of boos and catcalls as he was given an honorary degree during the graduate school commencement at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Before the commencement, over a hundred protesters staged a rally and press conference outside the Mullin Center on the UMass campus. Hundreds more students and faculty who opposed the honorary degree would later protest inside the hall.

(via Gerry Canavan)

Bolivian Fighting Ritual

From SFGate:

The locals come down from the mountains drunk, dancing and ready to fight. The police come to make sure no one dies. And the tourists, reporters, and documentary filmmakers come for the blood.

The outside world has discovered Tinku, an ancient ritual in which indigenous Quechua communities gather each year in a remote corner of the Bolivian Andes to dance, sing and settle old scores in staggering and bloody street fights.

The largest Tinku takes place early each May in Macha, about 210 miles southeast of La Paz, where this year's festival provided a stunning and sometimes uneasy combination of culture, spectacle and violence.

Relatively unknown outside the Andes for centuries, Tinku remains on the fringe of Bolivia's growing tourism industry. But its heavily asterisked listing in the guidebooks (Lonely Planet calls it "a violent and often grisly spectacle") is beginning to draw both backpackers and media curious to witness the peculiar event firsthand.

(via Danger Room)

Related:
Wikipedia's entry on Tinku
A Narrated Slideshow on Tinku

Boy Bags Wild Hog Bigger Than 'Hogzilla'

Hmmmmm:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie. But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

If the claims are accurate, Jamison Stone's trophy boar would be bigger than Hogzilla, the famed wild hog that grew to seemingly mythical proportions after being killed in south Georgia in 2004.

Hogzilla originally was thought to weigh 1,000 pounds and measure 12 feet in length. National Geographic experts who unearthed its remains believe the animal actually weighed about 800 pounds and was 8 feet long.

Regardless of the comparison, Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig, which has a Web site put up by his father—http://www.monsterpig.com —that is generating Internet buzz.

Here are some pictures of the hog from different angles.

Bayard Rustin

Wikipedia's bio on Bayard Rustin:

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an African-American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier and principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. Rustin was openly gay and advocated on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career.

A year before his death in 1987, Rustin said: "The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is no longer the black community, it's the gay community. Because it is the community which is most easily mistreated."

Japanese Human Art - Why is my girlfriend mad?

Louis Slotin and "Tickling the Dragon's Tail"

From Wikipedia:

In May 1946, Slotin, among others, was in a laboratory doing an experiment that involved creation of the beginning of the fission reaction by placing two half-spheres of beryllium (a neutron reflector) around a plutonium core. The experiment was nicknamed "tickling the dragon's tail" after a remark by Richard Feynman that it was "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon" due to its flirtations with nuclear chain reaction. Slotin grasped the upper beryllium hemisphere with his left hand through a thumb hole at the top while he maintained the separation of the half-spheres by a blade of a screwdriver with his right hand, having removed the shims normally used. Using a screwdriver was not a normal part of the experimental protocol.

Nine months previously on August 21, 1945, the same 6.2 kg plutonium core (later nicknamed the "demon core" because of these accidents) had produced a burst of ionizing radiation that caused lethal radiation poisoning to Harry Daghlian, an experimentor who had made a mistake while working alone doing neutron reflection experiments on it. This core, subject to experiments so shortly after the end of the war, had probably been the intended core for the 3rd nuclear weapon never used on Japan.

On May 21, the screwdriver slipped, the upper beryllium hemisphere fell and caused a "prompt critical" reaction, resulting in a burst of hard radiation. The "blue glow" of air ionization was observed and a "heat wave" was felt by the scientists in the room. Slotin instinctively jerked his left hand upward, lifting the upper beryllium hemisphere and dropping it to the floor. He exposed himself to a lethal dose (around 2100 rems, or 21 Sv) of neutron and gamma radiation, in history's second criticality accident. In addition to the blue glow and heat, Slotin experienced a sour taste in his mouth and an intense burning sensation in his left hand. As soon as Slotin left the building, he vomited, a common reaction from exposure to extremely intense ionizing radiation. The official line was that Slotin, by quickly removing the upper hemisphere, was a hero for ending the critical reaction and protecting seven other observers in the room. The official release from the authorities while Slotin was dying in the hospital after the accident was: "Dr. Slotin's quick reaction at the immediate risk of his own life prevented a more serious development of the experiment which would certainly have resulted in the death of the seven men working with him, as well as serious injury to others in the general vicinity." The designation as a hero is moderated by criticisms (from, for example, Robert B. Brode) that the accident was avoidable and that Slotin was not using proper procedures, endangering the others in the lab along with himself

Israel: Ultra-Orthodox Group Launches “Kosher Internet”

Oy vey:

The kosher Internet has been launched. With a host of blocks against surfing prohibited sites, with a small white list of approved sites, and with an identified e-mail address that will enable identifying rogue ultra-orthodox who do not use the kosher Internet, the ultra-orthodox have launched the war against the greatest enemy technology has presented to them: the Internet.

Behind the “kosher Internet” initiative is “the Rabbinical Council for Communication Affairs,” which is run by the most important ultra-orthodox rabbis: Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the Hassidic Leader of Gur [Ya’aqov Arye Alter], [SHAS spiritual leader] Ovadya Yosef, hassidic Jewish law adjudicator Shmu’el Halevi Wozner, and Rabbi Tuvya Weiss, the head of the zealots’ stream of the ultra- orthodox sect.

Many ultra-orthodox already use the Internet, whose potential educational and spiritual damage is considered far worse than that of television, not only because of the sex websites, but because of the very exposure it offers to the outside world.

Harry Truman's Forgotten Diary

Recently, researchers found a diary by Truman in a book in his library called "The Real Estate Board of New York, Inc., Diary and Manual":

"The Jews, I find are very, very selfish," President Harry S. Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and released by the National Archives yesterday.

Written sporadically during a turbulent year of Truman's presidency, the diary contains about 5,500 words on topics ranging from the death of his mother to comic banter with a British aristocrat. But the most surprising comments were Truman's remarks on Jews, written on July 21, 1947, after the president had a conversation with Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish former treasury secretary. Morgenthau called to talk about a Jewish ship in Palestine -- possibly the Exodus, the legendary ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees who were refused entry into Palestine by the British, then rulers of that land.

I'm 33 Today

Cake for all!

Penn & Teller Burn a Flag in the White House

(Ok, it's not the real White House...)

Failure to Communicate

Quentin Tarantino's Welcome Back Kotter

Two O'Clock Trailers - Casino

Friday Guest Cat Blogging

Eel Feather writes:

Now, I hope this won't turn into a cat vs. dog thing, because damnit, as much as I love dogs (and basically feel fairly impartial towards cats), that'd just be too much of a contrary reaction, you know?

This is Gus (Augusta). She's a Jack Russell Terrorist. She's a raving mad, mean, lean killing machine. I like this picture especially, because it sorta symbolizes what dogs are like -- you know, not cool. Cats are cool. Dogs are dorks. You can't take pictures of dorks, because they run around like idiots all the time.

Friday Guest Cat Blogging

Hunter was kind enough to send in a picture of his cat Keiko. Thanks Hunter!

The NY Times' Review of the Creation Museum

Or better known as Xian Fantasyland:

PETERSBURG, Ky. — The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away.

What is this, then? A reproduction of a childhood fantasy in which dinosaurs are friends of inquisitive youngsters? The kind of fantasy that doesn’t care that human beings and these prefossilized thunder-lizards are usually thought to have been separated by millions of years? No, this really is meant to be more like one of those literal dioramas of the traditional natural history museum, an imagining of a real habitat, with plant life and landscape reproduced in meticulous detail.

For here at the $27 million Creation Museum, which opens on May 28 (just a short drive from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport), this pastoral scene is a glimpse of the world just after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, in which dinosaurs are still apparently as herbivorous as humans, and all are enjoying a little calm in the days after the fall.

It also serves as a vivid introduction to the sheer weirdness and daring of this museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry that combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.

Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall.

The Dharma Initiative

A fan made trailer for Lost if it was made into a movie. BTW, I gave up on Lost earlier this season. I've heard that it improved during the second half of season three but I'm still skeptical.

Evolution in Action

Natural selection in antibiotic resistant bacteria.

As the cost of sequencing goes down, a lot of once-crazy experiments become feasible. There's a good case in point this week in the preprint section of PNAS. A team of researchers looked at a single patient undergoing treatment with vancomycin for a serious infection. (Just saying "vancomycin" makes the "serious infection" part redundant, since it's often the last resort). They periodically isolated Staphylococcus aureus bacteria from the patient's blood during the course of the treatment to look at how resistance to the antibiotic developed.

Fine, fine - except the way they watched the process was to sequence the whole genome of each bacterial isolate. What they found were a total of 35 mutations, which developed sequentially as the treatment continued (and the levels of resistance rose). Here's natural selection, operating in real time, under the strongest magnifying glass available. And it's in the service of a potentially serious problem, since resistant bacteria are no joke. (Reading between the lines of the PNAS abstract, for example, it appears that the patient involved in this study may well not have survived).

(via Reddit)

Claudette Colvin

From Wikipedia:

Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a African American woman from Alabama. In 1955, at the age of 15, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white person, in violation of local law. Her arrest preceded civil rights activist Rosa Parks' (on December 1, 1955) by nine months.

At the time, Colvin was a student at Booker T. Washington High School. Colvin's family didn't own a car, so she relied on the city's gold-and-green buses to get to school. On March 2, 1955, she boarded a public bus and, shortly thereafter, refused to give up her seat to a white man. Colvin was coming home from school that day when she got on a Capital Heights bus downtown at the same place Parks boarded another bus months later. Colvin was sitting about two seats from the emergency exit when four whites boarded and the driver ordered her, along with three other black passengers, to get up. She refused and was removed from the bus by two police officers, who took her to jail.

"The bus was getting crowded and I remember him (the bus driver) looking through the rear view mirror asking her to get up out of her seat, which she didn't," said a classmate at the time, Annie Larkins Price. "She didn't say anything. She just continued looking out the window. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move."

Price testified on Colvin's behalf in the juvenile court case, where Colvin was convicted of violating the segregation law and assault. "There was no assault," Price said.

Colvin had been handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from the bus. She screamed that her constitutional rights were being violated. At the time, Colvin was active in the NAACP's Youth Council, and she was actually being advised by Rosa Parks.

The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills

From Computerworld.com:

Those in search of eternal life need look no further than the computer industry. Here, last gasps are rarely taken, as aging systems crank away in back rooms across the U.S., not unlike 1970s reruns on Nickelodeon's TV Land. So while it may not be exactly easy for Novell NetWare engineers and OS/2 administrators to find employers who require their services, it's very difficult to declare these skills -- or any computer skill, really -- dead.

In fact, the harder you try to declare a technology dead, it seems, the more you turn up evidence of its continuing existence. Nevertheless, after speaking with several industry stalwarts, we've compiled a list of skills and technologies that, while not dead, can perhaps be said to be in the process of dying.

Randi's Bounce Commercial

(via Bad Astronomy Blog)

My Free Implants

A site where men can go and buy breast implants for women. (We're going to go with a slightly NSFW on this one)

MyFreeImplants.com is the first website of its kind to harness the global power of the Internet to service the unique needs and desires of its members.

MyFreeImplants is a web-based service in which our clients and members play an active role in its day to day operations. Women come to us because they have the desire to enhance their physical appearance in a variety of ways. Our most common request, and thus our name, is breast implants. However, we do have relationships with a variety of cosmetic surgeons and often provide our female clientele with other cosmetic surgeries at no cost.

(via Metafilter)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of “inspiration.” It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge — that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized.

– Robert Green Ingersoll, “Reply To The Indianapolis Clergy” The Iconoclast, Indianapolis, Indiana (1882)

Cat and Baby Rabbits

Errr, I'm not so sure that this is a good idea.

(via poeTV)

Augusta, GA is spending $3.2 Million to Guard Fire Hydrants from Terrorists

Fire hydrant or Weapon of Mass Destruction?

(everyone alltogether now) WTF?

AUGUSTA, GA. — Fear is a growth market. And you’re the buyer. Americans, seized by paranoia, will throw money at anything that promises to protect us from harm. That’s why nobody blinked last week when the Augusta Commission approved a plan to spend $3.2 million over six years to defend the city’s fire hydrants from terrorist attack. Seriously. Two new employees will be hired exclusively to retrofit the hydrants with something called the Davidson Anti-Terrorism Valve, designed to keep foreign substances — anthrax, bubonic plague, cyanide, tennis balls — from entering the water supply. There’s no evidence of such a threat, mind you, but Utilities Director Max Hicks decided the Davidson ATV was a good buy. “They are necessary to protect the system,” he says. The “stealth” valve was invented in the 1970s by a Sunnyside, Ga., contractor, Tom Davidson, who wanted to keep juvenile delinquents from throwing rocks and bottles into the hydrants. No one wanted it then. He sat on the idea for years, not even bothering to file for a patent. After 9/11, Davidson had an epiphany: If teenage punks could infiltrate the water supply, a terrorist could poison a city through its fire hydrants.

Chuck Norris, Exposing the Infidel's Agenda

Crap! Which one of you told Chuck the plan?

Once upon a time, years ago, it seemed that the only major fire for atheism burned from the anti-Christian work of Madelyn Murray O'Hair and the American Atheist organization, whose claim to fame was the banning of prayer and Bible reading in public schools in 1963.

Today many more antagonist groups and individuals to theism abound, and they are using every means possible for global proliferation – from local government to the World Wide Web. Such secular progressives include the Institute for Humanist Studies, Secular Coalition of America, American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Internet Infidels, the Atheist Alliance International, Secular Student Alliance, Society for Humanistic Judaism, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, etc. Of course no list of atheistic advocates would be complete without mentioning the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, as well as the anti-God militancy of men like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Though the U.S. Constitution outlaws religious discrimination, these organizations and individuals would love nothing more than to help society look with distain upon Christianity and, ultimately, make its components illegal. In fact, right now, they are coalescing and rallying at least 5 million of their troops to mount counter offensives to Christianity.

For that reason I believe theistic patriots need to be wise to atheists' overt and covert schemes, exposing their agenda and fighting to lay waste to their plans.

Two O'Clock Trailers - Sixteen Candles

Complete List of Old West Gunfights

Only 16?

Though movies and television would like us to believe otherwise, it was very rare when gunfights occurred with the two gunfighters squarely facing each other from a distance in a dusty street. This romanticized image of the Old West gunfight was born in the dime novels of the late 19th century and perpetuated in the film era, to such a point that this fictional version is the what our mind’s eye quickly conjures up when we hear the word “ gunfight.” In actuality, the “real” gunfights of the Old West were rarely that “civilized.”

Eiffel Tower Construction

A series of pictures showing the Eiffel Tower in different stages of being built.
(via Reddit)

Star Wars: Where Are They Now?

Everybody knows what happened to Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew and Anthony Daniels but what about the lesser known actors such as Harrison Ford?

Olbermann - Special Comment on Dems' Iraq 'Compromise'

(via J-Walk)

Russian Holes

From English Russia:

From the end of 1980s a strange phenomena is happening in some Russian forests. People find strange, deep holes.

They appear in the dense forest, in the places you can’t get on the car or truck to bring any device to drill the ground. There is no any soil that should be taken from such deep holes is found.

On this pictures people go down to one of such holes but it just finishes with nothing. There are no any reasonable ideas on how these holes appear and what they are being used for.

The Spamhaus Project

A list of 200 known Spammers:

80% of spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe can be traced via aliases and addresses, redirects, hosting locations of sites and domains, to a hard-core group of around 200 known spam operations ("spam gangs"), almost all of whom are listed in the ROKSO database. These spam operations consist of an estimated 500-600 professional spammers with ever-changing aliases and domains. The vast majority of those listed here operate illegally and move from network to network (and country to country) seeking out "spam-friendly" Internet Service Providers ("ISPs") known for lax enforcing of anti-spam policies.

Winners of a Christian Science Fair

Oh this should be good:

Brian Benson, an eighth-grade student who won first place in the Life Science/Biology category for his project “Creation Wins!!!,” says he disproved part of the theory of evolution. Using a rolled-up paper towel suspended between two glasses of water with Epsom Salts, the paper towel formed stalactites. He states that the theory that they take millions of years to develop is incorrect.

“Scientists say it takes millions of years to form stalactites,” Benson said. “However, in only a couple of hours, I have formed stalactites just by using paper towel and Epsom Salts.”

That's the Biology category?

Here's Pharyngula's take on this.
(via reddit)

Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male

From Wikipedia also:

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male[1] also known as theThe Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Pelkola Syphilis Study, Public Health Service Syphilis Study or the Tuskegee Experiments was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 (plus 200 control group without syphilis) poor -- and mostly illiterate -- African American sharecroppers were denied treatment for Syphilis.

This study became notorious because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had "bad blood" and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating.[2]

In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies.

By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Prior to this discovery, syphilis frequently led to a chronic, painful and fatal multisystem disease. Rather than treat all syphilitic subjects with penicillin and close the study, or split off a control group for testing penicillin; the Tuskegee scientists withheld penicillin and information about penicillin, purely to continue to study how the disease spreads and kills. Participants were also prevented from accessing syphilis treatment programs that were available to other people in the area. The study continued until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, cited as "arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history",[3] led to the 1979 Belmont Report, the establishment of the National Human Investigation Board, and the requirement for establishment of Institutional Review Boards.

Related:
The Tuskegee Timeline.

Operation Northwoods

From Wikipedia:

Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a 1962 plan by the US Department of Defense to cause acts of terrorism and violence on US soil or against US interests, blamed on Cuba, in order to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. As part of the U.S. government's Operation Mongoose anti-Castro initiative, the plan, which was not implemented, called for various false flag actions, including simulated or real state-sponsored acts of terrorism (such as hijacked planes) on U.S. and Cuban soil. The plan was proposed by senior U.S. Department of Defense leaders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Louis Lemnitzer.

The main proposal was presented in a document entitled "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," a collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative to the Caribbean Survey Group.[1] (The parenthetical "TS" in the title of the document is an initialism for "Top Secret.") The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13 with one paragraph approved, as a preliminary submission for planning purposes.

Images of Vegas

There are some wonderful pictures of Vegas at this UNLV site although that city changes so fast that some of those hotels are now gone.
(via Strictly Vegas)

Wired's Profile on Cirque du Soleil

From Wired:

In 2005, 40 million people came to Las Vegas. Half of them saw a big production show, spending more than $100 a person on tickets — that's $2 billion for the casinos that house the theaters. Shows have gotten bigger and wilder in the past decade, with Wayne Newton and the Rat Pack replaced by... well, by Cirque du Soleil. The Montreal-based juggernaut currently has five shows running in Las Vegas. Love, the newest, opened last summer.

But Cirque has competition. Up the street from the Mirage, the new Wynn Las Vegas has its own razzle-dazzle show. It's called Le Rêve, and like Cirque it features acrobats doing impossible-looking things in the air, onstage, and underwater. Created by Franco Dragone, a former Cirque stalwart, Le Rêve is casino impresario Steve Wynn's attempt to work some Cirque-like magic.

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

It is very easy to see why colored people should hate us, but why we should hate them is beyond my comprehension. They never sold our wives. They never robbed our cradles. They never scarred our backs. They never pursued us with bloodhounds. They never branded our flesh.

It has been said that it is hard to forgive a man to whom we have done a great injury. I can conceive of no other reason why we should hate the colored people. To us they are a standing reproach. Their history is our shame.

– Robert Green Ingersoll, “Civil Rights” (1883)

Diary of a Christian Terrorist

A look at the student who was planning on bombing protesters at Falwell's funeral:

Visitors to Mark David Uhl's Myspace page will quickly learn that Uhl is a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, that he is a devoted Christian, that his name means "Mighty Warrior" -- and that he likes Will Smith's saccharine tear-up-the-club track, "Switch." Uhl reveals his career ambitions on his page as well: "I will join the Army as an officer after college." Already, Uhl was preparing in Liberty's ROTC program.

Uhl waited until he was offline, however, to reveal his plot to kill the family of itinerant Calvinist provocateur Fred Phelps (famous for their "Fag Troops" rallies outside soldiers' funerals). The Phelpses planned to protest Falwell's funeral, a bizarre stunt designed to highlight Falwell's somehow insufficiently draconian attitude towards homosexuals. Uhl made several bombs and allegedly told a family member he planned to use them to attack the Phelps family.

...Uhl was an a devout evangelical Christian who advocated religious violence in the name of American nationalism. Uhl's blog, featured on his Myspace page, offers a window into the political underpinnings of his bomb plot. In one post, Uhl implores Christians to die on the battlefield for "Uncle Sam." He justifies his call to arms by quoting several Biblical passages and reminding his readers that the "gift of God" is eternal life.

"Christians, we have been given life after death and we should help others receive it and not sit here in our big buildings and sing to ourselves so we can go home and feel good about ourselves," Uhl writes. "Christians, fear of death, fear of death. The fear of death shows you don't believe."

Uhl concludes, "God needs soldiers to fight so his children may live free. Are you afraid??? I'm not. SEND ME!!! "

His myspace page can be found here.

Praying for Muslims

J-Walk found this gem on the Rapture Ready boards:

A Christian friend of mine who sells beauty products in homes via 'home parties' asked me to assist her last night as the house she was going to sell her stuff at was a MUSLIM home and all the invitees were Muslim women.

On our way over there we prayed strongly. We prayed over the products and when we got there as she was doing the presentation, little did the ladies who were in full muslim garb know I was praying in the NAME of the GOD of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Neither did they know that I was 'painting the house RED ' with the BLOOD of JESUS!... With the Blood of Yeshua Ha Meshia!!! Little did they know that as I went over to assist with the hand massage or the facials that I was speaking JESUS into them...that we were binding the power of the dark Islamic deception by the POWER of the NAME of Jesus, By the Power of His shed Blood, by the Power of the Holy Spirit, by the Power of the Most High GOD !!!

Man, I bet them demons were scattering all over the place bouncing off the walls for little did they know that GOD'S BEST were there wearing the FULL Armour of GOD, fighting the Battle...fighting for the release of these captive women, fighting for their salvation and deliverance.

To GOD be the GLORY !!!!! Halleluiah to the LAMB of GOD...Yeshua HaMeshia!!

I thought it was satire until I read some of the responses:

What you shared here, countmeworthy, sent (happy) chills all oer me. How beautiful it is how God uses us in so many different ways. You just never know who, what, when, where situation God's going to use you.

Praying that the Holy Spirit will continue to work in the hearts and lives of these ladies. There's no doubt in my mind they knew something was going on inside them, but just didn't know what. I pray they all will come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and their families as well!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's still America. We are Christians and have the power of the Almighty Lord! We CAN reach people. We CAN make a difference. Yes, this world is going down in a fiery blaze, but how wonderful to be able to pull some out of that fire with the love of Jesus Christ. Satan uses anger and bitterness to paralyze us. Don't let him! Muslims will kill Christians, yes. We are the infidels to them.

Squirrel Cage for Jeeps

From a 1949 issue of Mechanix Illustrated

Squirrel Cage for jeeps is this new device for travel over swamps, bogs, soft beaches and heavy underbrush. It’s a continuous road matting on rollers which runs around the body and under the wheels. The Marine Corps is testing it at the Quantico, Virginia, base.

I guess testing didn't go so well.

(via J-Walk)

Should I Invest in "Forever" Stamps?

Absolutely Not!:

Since 1971, postal rates have increased more slowly than the actual inflation rate, as measured by the U.S. Consumer Price Index. So, despite the numerous rate hikes over the last 36 years, stamps have actually been getting cheaper. The 20-cent stamp from 1981, for instance, would be equivalent to 45 cents in today's dollars—which makes today's rate 10 percent cheaper than it was 26 years ago. Should this historical pattern hold, you'd be paying more for today's forever stamps than you would for any stamp in the future, no matter how high the rate goes.

(via Kottke)

Cowboy Church

For those who would like to be baptized in a horse trough, on the back of a pickup truck, in a rodeo, by a man in a ten gallon hat...

(via Shakesville)

Death By Veganism

From the NY Times OpEd:

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants. Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy and eggs for complete protein, essential fats and vitamins. There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run. Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as “first class” (from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second class” (from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians. The fact remains, though, that humans prefer animal proteins and fats to cereals and tubers, because they contain all the essential amino acids needed for life in the right ratio. This is not true of plant proteins, which are inferior in quantity and quality — even soy.

Two O'Clock Trailers - Airplane

Pride of Lions vs. Herd of Buffalo vs. 2 Crocodiles

A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park while on safari

(via Metafilter)

Royale with Cheese

From Will Work For Food:

Sure, you probably know in France that McDonald’s serves the Royale with cheese (thanks to the famous scene in Pulp Fiction) but did you know that McDonald’s all around the world offer a number of different items catering to their cultures?

Ok, you might’ve known. But you might not know exactly what they serve.

Here’s some of your McDonald’s options in countries all over the world.

(via Geekpress)

Passive-Aggressive Note Blog

The link of the week imo:

Passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers.

(via Boing Boing)

10 Unusual Restaurants in the World

From Forbes so it's one of those annoying slideshow thingies:

Ninja

While patrons work their way through the tasting menu at this Japanese restaurant, servers dressed as ninjas perform magic alongside their tables. Expect to spend quite a bit on the sushi--but realize you???re really paying for the entertainment.

(via Miss Cellania)

Hotelling vs. Coulter

This is a wonderful example of how Hotelling's law is used in politics.

...Seeing an opportunity in the Hotelling Maneuver, the Right has done an amazing job of losing the battle in order to win the war. With the Left overextended (leaving room for Nader or even Dean, representing “The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party”, to spring up) they have shifted the entire culture by re-centering the national debate around the new party positions.

Bombasts like Coulter play a vital role in making less radical bombasts (like O’Reilly) seem completely rational. Her rhetoric opens up spots on the beach for people to fill, leaving the Left in the undesirable position of defending beliefs that they don’t even hold, in order to stay in the middle.

Wikipedia has an entry on Hotelling's Law (of course)

Suppose that there are two competing shops located along the length of a street running north and south. Each shop owner wants to locate his shop such that he maximises his own market share by drawing the largest number of customers. (In this example, the shop itself is the 'product' considered.) Customers are spread equally along the street. Suppose, finally, that each customer will always choose the nearest shop.

For a single shop, the optimal location is precisely halfway along the length of the street. Economically, the shop could be anywhere, because it would draw all customers anyway; socially, customers have to travel the shortest distance if the shop is in the middle.

Hotelling's law predicts that a street with two shops will also find both shops right next to each other at the same halfway point. Each shop will serve half the market; one will draw customers from the north, the other all customers from the south.

Obviously, it would be more socially beneficial if the shops separated themselves and moved to one quarter of the way along the street from each end - each would still draw half of the customers (the northern or southern half) and the customers would enjoy a shorter travel distance. However, neither shop would be willing to do this independently, as it would then allow the other shop to relocate and capture more than half the market. This phenomenon is present in many markets, particularly in those considered to be primarily commodities, and results in less variety for the consumer.

(via del.icio.us/revgeorge)

The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever

From Wikipedia:

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are 'da' and 'ja', in some order. You do not know which word means which.

Vacuuming the Cat

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs. It is infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would Address a communication to intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in eternal flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of understanding his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action.

– Robert Green Ingersoll, “The Gods” (1872)

A $300 Million Dollar Empire from Buying Domain Names

From CNN.com:

Kevin Ham leans forward, sits up tall, closes his eyes, and begins to type -- into the air. He's seated along the rear wall of a packed ballroom in Las Vegas's Venetian Hotel. Up front, an auctioneer is running through a list of Internet domain names, building excitement the same way he might if vintage cars were on the block.

As names come up that interest Ham, he occasionally air-types. It's the ultimate gut check. Is the name one that people might enter directly into their Web browser, bypassing the search engine box entirely, as Ham wants? Is it better in plural or singular form? If it's a typo, is it a mistake a lot of people would make? Or does the name, like a stunning beachfront property, just feel like a winner? When Ham wants a domain, he leans over and quietly instructs an associate to bid on his behalf. He likes wedding names, so his guy lifts the white paddle and snags Weddingcatering.com for $10,000. Greeting.com is not nearly as good as the plural Greetings.com, but Ham grabs it anyway, for $350,000.

Ham is a devout Christian, and he spends $31,000 to add Christianrock.com to his collection, which already includes God.com and Satan.com. When it's all over, Ham strolls to the table near the exit and writes a check for $650,000. It's a cheap afternoon.

Bomb Plot Thwarted at Falwell's Funeral

From ABC News:

A group of students from Falwell's Liberty University staged a counterprotest.

And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

"There were indications that there were others involved in the manufacturing of these devices and we are still investigating these individuals with the assistance of ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms], Virginia State Police and FBI. At this time it is not believed that these devices were going to be used to interrupt the funeral services at Liberty University," the Campbell County Sheriff's Office said in a release.

LOL President

I was lukewarm on the whole LOLCatz thing but LOL President really seems to fit.
(via Yes But No But Yes)

Two O'Clock Trailers - Back to the Future

Penn & Teller Explain Sleight of Hand

Silphium, Birth Control of the Ancient Greeks

From Damn Interesting:

The prized plant became such a key pillar of the Cyrenean economy that its likeness was stamped upon many of the city's gold and silver coins. The images often depicted a regal-looking woman sitting in a chair, with one hand touching the herb and her other hand pointing at her genitals. The plant was known as silphium or laserwort, and its heart-shaped fruit brought the ancient world a highly sought-after freedom: the opportunity to enjoy sex with very little risk of pregnancy.

The silphium plants were giant fennels which grew wild along the dry hillsides of the Mediterranean coast. It didn't take long for the Greek settlers to discover its value as a food source, and the vegetable flesh came to be prized as a delicious garnish, while pleasant perfumes were coaxed from its yellow blossoms. Over time further uses for the wild fennel were found, such as the resin extracted from its stalks and roots which was used to treat cough, sore throat, fever, indigestion, snake bite, "warts in the seat," epilepsy, and a host of other disagreeable ailments. But of all of the plant's virtues, the silphium was certainly most prized for its pregnancy-preventing properties.

Dubai puts a new spin on skyscrapers

From Moneyweb:

In skyscraper-crazy Dubai, tall isn't enough. In a design to be unveiled today in the oil-rich emirate, David Fisher, an Italian-Israeli architect, has dreamed up a 68-story combination hotel, apartment and office tower where the floors would rotate 360 degrees. Each floor would rotate independently, creating a constantly changing architectural form.

Each story of the tower would be shaped like a doughnut and be attached to a center core housing elevators, emergency stairs and other utilities. Wind turbines placed in gaps between the doughnuts would generate electricity.

The doughnuts won't rotate fast enough to give guests upset stomachs. A single rotation would take around 90 minutes. "It's quite slow," says Mr. Fisher.

Pigeon Recon

From PigeonBlog:

In 1903, German Engineer Julius Neubronner combined a small analogue camera with a mechanical timer and attached it around a pigeon's neck. This innovative approach to aerial photography soon raised interest from the German military. Shortly thereafter, exploring the potential for secret aerial photography carried out by pigeons began in earnest.

(via Kircher Society )

Monkey vs. Dog

Tyler and Sarah

(via Nothing to do with Arbroath)

The Smoking Jacket

From We Make Money Not Art:

The Smoking Jacket, by Fiona Carswell, has a built-in pair of lungs on the front that act as an iconographic "warning system". The polite smoker can blow the smoke into a "container" at the collar, in order to avoid blowing it in the faces of people around them. The smoke then filters into a set of see-through lungs at the front of the jacket. Over time the lungs, which have an air-filter back, should darken from cigarette smoke.

(via Digg)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in God. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.

– Robert Green Ingersoll, discussing the practice of not allowing atheists to give testimony in court

How Hitler Became a Dictator

From LewRockwell.com:

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a decree entitled, "For the Protection of the People and the State." Justified as a "defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state," the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, "Germany will be free, but not through you!" When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and 84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as the "Enabling Act" made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and constitutional constraints.

Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency

From The Progressive:

With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.

Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility "for ensuring constitutional government."

He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."

The White House released it on May 9.

Other than a discussion on Daily Kos led off by a posting by Leo Fender, and a pro-forma notice in a couple of mainstream newspapers, this document has gone unremarked upon.

The subject of the document is entitled "National Continuity Policy."

It defines a "catastrophic emergency" as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”

This could mean another 9/11, or another Katrina, or a major earthquake in California, I imagine, since it says it would include "localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies."

The document emphasizes the need to ensure "the continued function of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government," it states.

But it says flat out: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."

Puppy vs. Kitty

The Noli Plan

From Wikipedia:

The Nolli map was based on Bufalini's map of 1551, with which Nolli readily invited comparison, but Nolli made a number of important innovations. Firstly, Nolli reorients the city from east (which was conventional at the time) to magnetic north, reflecting Nolli's reliance on the compass to get a bearing on the city's topography. Secondly, though he follows Bufalini in using a figure-ground representation of built space with blocks and building shaded in a dark poché, Nolli represents enclosed public spaces such as the collonades in St. Peter's Square and the Pantheon as open civic spaces. Finally, the map was a significant improvement in accuracy, even noting the asymmetry of the Spanish Steps. The map was used in government planning for the city of Rome until the 1970s.

A high res (understatement when you see the map) version of the map can be found here.

(via Metafilter)

Two O'Clock Trailers - WarGames

10 Animals That May Go Extinct in the Next 10 Years

From Scientific American:

There are currently 3,071 "critically endangered" species in the world, according to the World Conservation Union, also known as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), a collaboration of 83 countries, 800 nongovernmental organizations and 10,000 scientists and experts devoted to preserving Earth's biodiversity. According to the IUCN, species assessed at the critically endangered level "face an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild unless the pressures on them are relieved." Here are just a few of these species:

Bathtub Diving

(via Nothing to do with Arborath)

Build a Cylon Roomba

Here’s how to make your very own Cylon Roomba. Like the projects in the book, this one doesn’t harm or permanently modify your Roomba. After you’re done playing Cylon with it, you can turn it back into a music box, painter, or even a vacuum cleaner (I hear they do that too). You don’t need the book to do this project, but it might help if you’re not that experienced with electronics and programming.

Hundreds Click on 'Click Here to Get Infected' Ad

From eWeek.com:

People will click on anything.

That was evidenced by the 409 people who clicked on an ad that offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. The ad, run by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens,...

...Stevens, who says he works for Contraste Europe, a branch of the IT consultancy The Contraste Group, has been running his Google Adwords campaign for six months now and has received 409 hits. Stevens has done similar research in the past, such as finding out how easy it is to land on a drive-by download site when doing a Google search.

In a posting about the drive-by download campaign, Stevens says that he got the idea after picking up a small book on Google Adwords at the library and finding out how easy and cheap it is to set up an ad.

"You can start with a couple of euros per month," he said. "And that gave me an idea: this can be used with malicious [intent]. It's a way to get a drive-by download site on the first page of a search."

Popped Water Balloon Filmed at 80x Slower Than Normal

Anne Frank Photo Gallery

A gallery of Anne Frank pictures.

Compulsory Sterilization

From Wikipedia:

The first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics was the United States. The principal targets of the American program were the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, the epileptic, and the physically deformed. Native Americans were sterilized against their will in many states, often without their knowledge, while they were in a hospital for some other reason (e.g. after giving birth). Some sterilizations also took place in prisons and other penal institutions, targeting criminality, but they were in the relative minority. In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States.[1]

The first state to introduce compulsory sterilization legislation was Michigan, in 1897 but the law failed to garner enough votes by legislators to be adopted. Eight years later Pennsylvania's state legislators passed a sterilization that was vetoed by the governor. Indiana became the first state to enact sterilization legislation in 1907,[2] followed closely by Washington and California in 1909. Sterilization rates across the country were relatively low (California being the sole exception) until the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell which legitimized the forced sterilization of patients at a Virginia home for the mentally retarded. The number of sterilizations performed per year increased until another Supreme Court case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, complicated the legal situation by ruling against sterilization of criminals if the equal protection clause of the constitution was violated. That is, if sterilization was to be performed, then it could not exempt white collar criminals.

History of the Term, "White Trash"

A good read that turns fascinating when it discusses the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell which dealt with eugenical involuntary sterilization.

The term white trash dates back not to the 1950s but to the 1820s. It arises not in Mississippi or Alabama, but in and around Baltimore, Maryland. And best guess is that it was invented not by whites, but by African Americans. As a term of abuse, white trash was used by blacks—both free and enslaved—to disparage local poor whites. Some of these poor whites would have been newly arrived Irish immigrants, others semiskilled workers drawn to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. in the postrevolutionary building boom, and others still may have been white servants, waged or indentured, working in the homes and estates of area elites. The term registered contempt and disgust, as it does today, and suggests sharp hostilities between social groups who were essentially competing for the same resources—the same jobs, the same opportunities, and even the same marriage partners.

While white trash is likely to have originated in African American slang, it was middle-class and elite whites who found the term most compelling and useful and they who, ultimately, made it part of popular American speech.

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

This century will be called Darwin’s century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance — at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts.

– Robert Green Ingersoll, “Orthodoxy” (1884)

Feynman on the Nobel Prize

The Real Simpsons

What would the Simpsons look like if they were real people? Keeping your feedback in mind from our original Homer study, along with the characteristics of the family members, the following presentation reveals how the entire family would look as real Simpsonoids.

del.icio.us/wcitymike

Top 10 Poisonous Plants

From LiveScience:

Deceptively attractive, some common flowers and plants can give you headaches, cause convulsions or simply kill you, according to the "Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants" (Springer, 2007). Children under 6 are especially vulnerable; they account for 85 percent of all calls to poison centers, though the most commonly consumed culprits in poison cases are cosmetics, personal care products, cleansers and pills. Most plants are safe, but here are some you need to know about. They might be in your own yard or even in the house.

Attention: Lunatic Atheists and Their Lawyers

From here.

Heliocentrism is an Atheist Doctrine

Blogs 4 Brownback is another site which I have no idea whether it's satire or just batshit insanity.

It seems clear that it may occasionally be convenient to assume that the calculations of Copernicus and Kepler were mathematically sound. However, for both moral and theological reasons, we should always bear in mind that the Earth does not move. If it moved, we would feel it moving. That’s called empiricism, the experience of the senses. Don’t take my word for it, or the evidence of your own senses, Copernicans. There’s also the Word of the Lord:

“He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.” (1 Chronicles 16:30)

“Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm …” (Psalm 93:1)

The Napkin Drawings

A photoset on Flickr:

A series of drawings and quotes on napkins put in my daughters' lunches for jr. high and high school every day over a 5 year period.

(via Monkeyfilter)

Christian Domestic Discipline (Loving Wife Spanking in a Christian Marriage)

When it comes to wacky religious beliefs, I can't tell what's real or what's satire. Judge for yourself.

What is Christian Domestic Discipline?

A domestic discipline marriage is one in which one partner in the marriage is given authority over the other and has the means to back the authority, usually by spanking.

A Christian Domestic Discipline marriage is one that is set up according to Biblical standards; that is, the husband is the authority in the household. The wife is submissive to her husband as is fit in the Lord and her husband loves her as himself. He has the ultimate authority in his household, but it is tempered with the knowledge that he must answer to God for his actions and decisions. He has the authority to spank his wife for punishment, but in real CDD marriages this is taken very seriously and usually happens only rarely. CDD is so much more than just spanking. It is the husband loving the wife enough to guide and teach her, and the wife loving the husband enough to follow his leadership. A Christian marriage embodies true romance and a Christian man a true hero.

Feel free to stop by their shop and get yourself a pair of crotchless pantaloons. (Ok, this has to be a joke..... right?)

(via Metafilter)

The American Civil War in 4 Minutes

Penn and Teller with John Cleese

Profile of Dr. Percy Spencer from a 1958 Issue of Reader's Digest

An old profile of the man who invented the microwave oven.

PERCY SPENCER is the nosiest man I have ever known. Now 63, he still has an intense, small boy's compulsion to explore every wonder in the world around him. The results of his relentless curiosity have touched the lives of each of us.

Recently I walked into his office at the Raytheon Manufacturing Co. in Waltham, Mass. - an office befitting the senior vice-president of one of the nation's largest electronic' manufacturers. "Hi, Don," the stocky, shirt-sleeved Down-Easter shouted from behind his desk. "Where'd you get the shoes?"

The moccasin-type shoes weren't that different, but I knew Percy. Were the shoes comfortable, he asked. Would they wear? Why were they stitched like that? In a minute I had one shoe off, so that he could examine it. He wanted to know just how it was made.

The story is typical of Percy Spencer's direct, homey approach, which he brings even to the miracle world of modern electronics. One day a dozen years ago he was visiting a lab where magnetrons, the power tubes of radar sets, were being tested. Suddenly, he felt a peanut bar start to cook in his pocket. Other scientists had noticed this phenomenon, but Spencer itched to know more about it.

He sent a boy out for a package of popcorn. When he held it near a magnetron, popcorn exploded all over the lab. Next morning he brought in a kettle, cut a hole in the side and put an uncooked egg (in its shell) into the pot. Then he moved a magnetron against the hole and turned on the juice. A skeptical engineer peeked over the top of the pot just in time to catch a faceful of cooked egg. The reason? The yolk cooked faster than the outside, causing the egg to burst.

The Sphinx's Nose

Did Napoleon's army use it for target practice?

There exists an interesting account written by historian Muhammad al-Husayni Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi (died CE 1442), in a book called al-Mawa`iz wa al-i`tibar fi dhikr al-khitat wa al-athar (G. Wien, ed., 1913). In vol. 2, page 157 of the Wien edition, al-Maqrizi states that the face, specifically the nose and ears, were demolished in 1378 by a Sufi from the khanqah of Sa`id al-Su`ada named Sa'im al-dahr. The reason for the vandalism, according to al-Maqrizi, was to "remedy some religious errors:" at that time some Egyptians were still burning milk-thistle (shuka`a) and safflower (badhaward) at the foot of the Sphinx while murmuring a verse 63 times in hope that their wishes would be fulfilled. "From the time of this disfigurement also," al-Maqrizi wrote, "the sand has invaded the cultivated land of Giza, and the people attribute this to the disfigurement of Abul-Hol [i.e., the Sphinx]."

It is interesting that al-Maqrizi mentions that the ears were demolished. As far as I can see, the Sphinx still has his ears.

From Catchpenny's Mysteries of Ancient Egypt.

Salem Witchcraft Trials

From Famous American Trials:

From June through September of 1692, nineteen men and women, all having been convicted of witchcraft, were carted to Gallows Hill, a barren slope near Salem Village, for hanging. Another man of over eighty years was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft. Dozens languished in jail for months without trials. Then, almost as soon as it had begun, the hysteria that swept through Puritan Massachusetts ended.

Why did this travesty of justice occur? Why did it occur in Salem? Nothing about this tragedy was inevitable. Only an unfortunate combination of an ongoing frontier war, economic conditions, congregational strife, teenage boredom, and personal jealousies can account for the spiraling accusations, trials, and executions that occurred in the spring and summer of 1692.

YouTube vs. UTube

A company called Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corp (web address is utube.com) is suing YouTube because they are getting too many mistaken hits to their website.

This action has been filed by uTube, to stop the violation of its lega rights by Defendant YouTube, Inc., whose illegal acts have resulted in the direction of millions of nuisance internet visitors to the Plaintiff's website. Plaintiff has used the internet domain name [utube.com] since 1996 for its business of selling used tube and pipe mills and rollform machinery.

Due to confusion in the minds of consumers, the spillover of nuisance traffic to Plaintiff's neighboring website at [utube.com] has destroyed the value of Plaintiff's trademark and internet property, repeatedly caused the shut down of Plaintiff's website, increased Plaintiff's internet costs by thousands of dollars a month, and damaged the Plaintiff's good reputation. Plaintiff seeks preliminary and permanent Injunctions, the transfer of the [youtube.com] domain to Plaintiff, damages, costs and attorneys' fees as authorized by the Lanham Act and Ohio Law.

I did a quick search to see what happened to their lawsuit and they're still sticking to it but have figured out a way to make a quick buck out of all the attention their site is receiving.

"The site has installed a ring tone search engine and lists scores of cell phone ring tones atop its highly trafficked page," reports Red Herring’s Scott Martin. "People can find Shakira and Britney Spears ring tones along with links for gambling, concerts, and dating." Not to mention Nissan cars, Tai Chi, and Louis Vuitton. That’s a pretty far cry from the aforementioned rollformers (although I’ve heard the 8 Stand x 2 x 10” Dahlstrom #550-8 is popular with some young people). But Red Herring quoted Baris Karadogan, who wrote, "[F]rom what I hear, that is generating them north of $1000/day. That’s $360K straight to the bottom line, at 10% pretax that’s like finding $4M of revenue all of a sudden. That’s luck." Mr. Girkins may not entirely agree - he's apparently still pursuing a lawsuit filed against YouTube when this all first started. It almost seems as if the problem has taken on a life of its own, as Mr. Girkins said the new search engine "more than covers costs for hosting. But we have a lot of attorney costs, too."

(Thanks Fabio)

WikiClock

But with no discussion page?

This is the Wiki Clock -- a clock that runs on Wiki technology! Please update this page with the correct current time (UTC).

(via del.icio.us/revgeorge)

Two O'Clock Trailers - Reservoir Dogs

Friday Guest Cat Blogging

Thanks to Kyle for today's Guest Cat Blogging:

My cat, Sunny, is craving some attention. Help her out please!

Hitchens on Hannity and Colmes

(Thanks to everyone who sent this in)

EMT's Account of Saving a Cat From Smoke Inhalation

From Random Acts of Reality:

The call was given as 'House fire - persons reported inside', an interesting job. So at 1am in the morning we fly through the streets to find firefighters having just dowsed the fire that has wrecked a house. I spoke to their top man and he told me that they had checked the entire house and that there wasn't any people inside.

It's then that I looked down to see a firefighter on his knees giving oxygen to what I thought was a baby.

With a longer look I was extremely happy to see that it wasn't a baby.

It was a cat.

The poor little soul was covered in soot and was having real trouble breathing - it was panting like a dog, and the rate of it's breathing was incredibly fast. The firefighters were giving him oxygen and trying to keep him warm (as he'd been soaked by the firefighter's hoses).

One of the firefighters seemed a bit upset, "Don't lose him, we had a cat die on us last week".

I let them know that we would take the cat.

'Smoky' the cat So we picked him up and took him into the back of the ambulance, the neighbours who'd all gathered to watch the show seemed bemused. Unfortunately the owners of the house couldn't be found, so the cat had suddenly become my responsibility. We dried it off and gave it oxygen - in the picture you can see a McIlroy funnel which is used to give oxygen to neonates.

How Addicted to Coffee Are You

Go here to take the quiz.
(via Miss Cellania)

Lechuguilla Cave

Has anybody reading this ever visited Lechuguilla Cave?

Lechuguilla Cave is, as of 2006, the sixth longest cave (120 mi, or 193 km) known to exist in the world, and the deepest in the continental United States (489 m, or 1604 ft), but it is most famous for its unusual geology, rare formations, and pristine condition.

Lechuguilla Cave was known until 1986 as a small, fairly insignificant historic site in the park's backcountry. Small amounts of bat guano were mined from the entrance passages for a year under a mining claim filed in 1914. The historic cave contained a 90-foot (27 m) entrance pit which led to 400 feet (120 m) of dry dead-end passages.[1]

The cave was visited infrequently after mining activities ceased. However, in the 1950s cavers heard wind roaring up from the rubble-choked floor of the cave. Although there was no obvious route, different people concluded that cave passages lay below the rubble. A group of Colorado cavers gained permission from the National Park Service and began digging in 1984. The breakthrough, into large walking passages, occurred on May 26, 1986.[1]

Since 1984, explorers have mapped 118 miles of passages and have pushed the depth of the cave to 1604 feet (489 m), ranking Lechuguilla as the 6th longest cave in the world (4th longest in the United States) and the deepest limestone cave in the country. Cavers, drawn by the caves' pristine condition and rare beauty, come from around the world to explore and map its geology.

History of the Gadsden Flag

One of the first flags of the U.S.:

In fall 1775, the U.S. Navy was established to intercept incoming British ships carrying war supplies to the British troops in the colonies. To aid in this, the Second Continental Congress authorized the mustering of five companies of Marines to accompany the Navy on their first mission. The first Marines that enlisted were from Philadelphia and they carried drums painted yellow, depicting a coiled rattlesnake with thirteen rattles, and the motto "Dont Tread On Me." This was the first mention of the Gadsden flag's symbolism.

At the Congress, Continental Colonel Christopher Gadsden was representing his home state of South Carolina. He was one of three members of the Marine Committee who were outfitting the first naval mission. It is unclear whether Gadsden took his inspiration from the Marine's drums, or if he inspired them himself.

Colony Collapse Disorder

From Wikipedia:

Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is a poorly understood phenomenon involving the massive die-off of a beehive or bee colony. CCD is alternatively referenced as Vanishing Bee Syndrome (VBS)[1]. Apparently, CCD was originally found only in colonies of the Western honey bee in North America[2], but European beekeepers have recently claimed to be observing a similar phenomenon in Poland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, with initial reports coming in from Switzerland and Germany, albeit to a smaller degree[3]. The cause (or causes) of the syndrome is not yet well understood and even the existence of this disorder remains disputed. Theories include environmental change-related stresses[4], malnutrition, unknown pathogens (i.e., disease[5]), mites, pesticides such as neonicotinoids, emissions from cellular phones or other manmade devices,[6] and genetically modified (GM) crops[7]. That the disappearances have only been reported from a subset of the commercial beekeepers in affected areas (i.e., not feral colonies or "organic" beekeepers), suggests to some that beekeeping practices are a primary factor[8].

Suspicious Looking Device

For those looking for an all paid trip to Guantanamo Bay:

The only function of the Suspicious Looking device is to appear as suspicious as possible, whether carried in hand or placed indiscrimately in public places.

The SLD contains LEDs, a LED array, a character display, an optical distance sensor, capacitive touch sensor, buzzer, and motors.

(via Andy's Blog)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

Thanks to Markus for sending me a link to some audio recordings of Ingersoll. (They're very short and the quality is really bad however so don't expect much)

Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Falwell's Funeral

Falwell was too cuddly for the Phelps klan:

WBC to picket the funeral of Rev. Jerry Falwell - at Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia - in religious protest and warning: "God is not mocked!" Gal. 6:7. God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and all such Arminian heretic preachers - from the fundamentalist evangelicals to openly gay Episcopalians and pedophile Catholics - all of whom have created the Satanic Sodomite Zeitgeist wherein America has irreversibly gone the way of Sodom.

There is little doubt that Falwell split Hell wide open the instant he died. The evidence is compelling, overwhelming, and irrefragable. To wit:

1. Falwell was a true Calvinistic Baptist when he was a young preacher in Springfield Missouri; and sold his soul to Free-Willism (Arminianism) for lucre.

2. Falwell bitterly and viciously attacked WBC because of WBC's faithful Bible preaching - thereby committing the unpardonable sin - otherwise known as the sin gainst the Holy Ghost.

3. Falwell warmly praised Christ-rejecting Jews, pedophile-condoning Catholics, money-grubbing compromisers, practicing fags like Mel White, and backsliders like Billy Graham and Robert Schuler, Etc. All for lucre - making him guilty of their sins.

(Thanks Grant)

All 6,288 Smithsonian Images

From Flickr:

A collection of 6,288 images from smithsonianimages.si.edu which appear to be overwhelmingly in the public domain. See our memo for more information.

ETAOIN SHRDLU

From Wikipedia:

ETAOIN SHRDLU is the approximate order of frequency of the twelve most commonly used letters in the English language, best known as a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print in the days of "hot type" publishing due to a custom of Linotype machine operators.

In The Garden of Eden by I. Ron Butterfly

Two O'Clock Trailers - Chinatown

Christmas Island Detention Centre

Take a tour of Australia's new high-tech Guantanamo Bay-style immigration detention centre now nearlng completion on Christmas Island. For more information visit the website of the Refugee Action Collective in Melbourne www.rac-vic.org and this posting on Melbourne Indymedia

Related:
WikiNews on the Christmas Island Detention Centre.
(via Nothing to do with Arbroath)

Brazil's Indians Offended by Pope Comments

From Yahoo! News:

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Outraged Indian leaders in Brazil said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict's "arrogant and disrespectful" comments that the Roman Catholic Church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step.

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said.

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.

Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.

"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab.

Tallying Bill O’Reilly’s Name-Calling

From the Wall Street Journal Online:

Mike Conway set out to study the number of times Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly used name-calling and other propaganda techniques on his show. Mr. Conway released his report and then watched Mr. O'Reilly employ some of the same methods to ridicule the research — the TV host even counted how many times he called someone a name in his rebuttal. "It was a bit surreal," Mr. Conway told me.

Mr. Conway, an assistant professor of journalism at Indiana University, and his colleagues recruited volunteers to watch hours of Mr. O'Reilly’s regular two-minute segment, "Talking Points Memo." The volunteers saw 105 episodes, all of them aired in 2005. They tallied the use of seven rhetorical techniques identified as elements of propaganda by the now-defunct research group Institute for Propaganda Analysis. Mr. O’Reilly's totals were then compared with those of the anticommunist and antisemitic 1930s radio broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin, as measured by IPA-funded researchers in a 1939 book.

In the resulting research, the most-stunning number was in the category where Mr. O'Reilly vastly exceeded Father Coughlin. According to Mr. Conway and his colleagues, Mr. O'Reilly called someone a name 2,209 times over 248.65 minutes, or 8.88 times per minute. "O'Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin," the researchers stated in a press release.

Is there really such a thing as cow tipping?

From the Straight Dope:

Is there such a thing as cow tipping? I have two friends, both sons of farmers. One says it can be done and is great sport. The other says no way.

Do cows sleep standing up? Can they be tipped? I suppose this will take some late night research.

The Telegraph's Profile of Patricia Highsmith

The Telegraph has a profile on one of my favorite authors, Patricia Highsmith.

Patricia Highsmith's superior crime fiction is informed by her interest in the unconscious and her mastery of suspense, argues Maria Alvarez

Patricia Highsmith's mother tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. Later in life, she said to her daughter: "It's funny you like the smell of turpentine, Pat."

Casually brutal characters are always wreaking havoc in Highsmith's fiction. In "The Terrapin", one of the short stories in Eleven, re-issued this month by Bloomsbury as part of their Highsmith series, a mother triggers a young boy's psychic disintegration at an inexorable pace. Like the 12-year-old Highsmith, the boy is fond of reading Karl Menninger's psychoanalytical study The Human Mind.

Highsmith's understanding of the unconscious and the irrational, coupled with her lucid prose and sophisticated mastery of suspense, are the reasons why many see her as having elevated crime fiction to an art form.

Not that her fiction is crime fiction as such. There's no whodunnit element, nor even the whydunnit of so much psychological crime fiction.

Strangers on a Train is so much different than Hitchcock's adaptation of it that it's basically a different story. I've read most of her Ripley novels and the second one is surprisingly good.

"Web site" baffles Internet terrorism trial judge

From Yahoo! News:

LONDON (Reuters) - A judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.

Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.

"The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is," he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.

Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum". An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts."

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Crumbling Creeds"

1960s Police Drug-Training movie

Wonderfully dated 60s film, "Use Your Eyes" shows police how to find drugs and drug paraphernalia in a residential environment. Specifically marijuana and hashish.

Exploiting the Negative

Waiter Rant is one of the best blogs on the net. The post he has today about overhearing two customers talking is gold.

Two O'Clock Trailers - 12 Angry Men

Hitchens on Falwell

I'm not a big Hitchens fan but he hits this one out of the park.

Awesome Tapes from Africa (& Brazil)

From Metafilter comes this blog called Awesome Tapes from Africa.

Someone in the comments also posted a similar site but with Brazilian music called Loronix.

Art Underneath Sao Paolo

Artist Zezao painting in the sewers of Sao Paolo (Flash slideshow)
(via Ektopia)

Putting the "Happy" in Happy Meal

Someone in an Ottawa McDonalds kept his stash in a Happy Meal box. An ingenius place to hide your stash, unless you give it out to a kid....

Darwin Correspondence Project

Welcome to the Darwin Correspondence Project’s new web site. The main feature of the site is an Online Database with the complete, searchable, texts of around 5,000 letters written by and to Charles Darwin up to the year 1865. This includes all the surviving letters from the Beagle voyage - online for the first time - and all the letters from the years around the publication of Origin of species in 1859.

Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove scenes recreated with household items.

(via Boing Boing)

Salvador Dali on "What's My Line?"

This ten minute clip is drawn from the famous 1950s game show, and it's quite surreal. I don't use the word surreal loosely: the special guest is Salvador Dali.

(via Asymmetrical Information)

2006 Golden Stick Wiffle League Play Offs

Long clip (9 minutes) but some of those pitchers are incredible.

Mystery Solved: How Alexander the Great Defeated Tyre

From LiveScience.com:

No man is an island, but it turns out all Alexander the Great needed to take over an entire island was a little help from Mother Nature.

A half-mile-long spit of sand once linked the ancient Lebanese island of Tyre to the mainland, according to a new study of the area's geological history. Alexander used the natural sandbar to build a causeway, allowing his army to overwhelm the island stronghold during a siege in 332 BC.

Alexander's conquest of Tyre has long been known to archaeologists, but they never understood how he managed to build a viable overwater passage to the enemy. The challenge probably troubled the Macedonian king at first too, said study leader Nick Marriner of the CEREGE-CNRS, a French geosciences research institute.

The 2007 WWII Rationing Project

This blogger is eating by World War 2 British rationing rules for a month.

We live in a time and a place where food is more plentiful, more available, and more cheap than it has ever been. The supermarket stocks not only the meat-and-veg basics, but also exotic ingredients and specialty items that have only proliferated on U.S. menus within my lifetime. It also provides more processed and precooked foods, making it easier for people to avoid cooking altogether. It's become more infrequent to have family meals, and cooking from scratch is practically on the endangered list.

Sixty-five years ago, in 1942, things were very different. The world was at war, and most countries involved (on both sides) had introduced rationing to eke out food, gasoline, etc. at home while also adequately supplying troops in the field. Although the U.S. experienced rationing and shortages, the U.K. government imposed even more strict rationing, due in part to the fact that the shipping lanes that supplied the U.K. with imported goods were hounded by U-boats. Meat, bacon, milk, cheese, cooking fats and oils, and other food items were rationed for the duration of the war -- and beyond, because the shortages didn't end when the war did.

I've always been interested in historical cookery, particularly because I feel it is a sort of time travel -- with some limitations, you can eat the same foods that the Romans did, or the medieval French, or the Elizabethan English. My husband has done World War II re-enactment, and I've joined him on occasion for a USO dance. So perhaps it's not surprising that when I said, "I think... it might be an interesting experiment to try and live on World War II rationing rules for a month," he didn't say, "Are you crazy?" but instead replied, "Hey, that does sound interesting. Let's do it."

CigarettesPedia

CigarettesPedia.com is a project that set the goal of creating a full encyclopedia of cigarettes.

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

5,000,000 Hits

Can I stop blogging now?

(Seriously though, thanks to everyone who stops by during the day. A special thanks to everyone who makes this blog much better by taking the time to leave a comment now and then.)

Pizza Beer

Actually, I can't stand beer, so this could be an improvement. From CBS2Chicago:

Beer and pizza are tastes that, for many of us, just seem to go together. But, beer that tastes like pizza?

As CBS 2’s Vince Gerasole reports, a suburban brewer has put a new twist on tap.

Something’s brewing in a garage in St. Charles. Tom Seefurth is mixing up a concoction he'll eventually pour out as beer – pizza beer.

“It's pizza and beer in a bottle,” Seefurth, a self-proclaimed beer nut, says.

There are actually real pieces of pizza stirred into the mix.

(via A Welsh View)

Millimetres Matter

Gonzales proposes new crime: 'Attempted' copyright infringement

WTF?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.

"To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated," Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.

The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy.

The IPPA would, for instance:

* Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place. The IPPA would eliminate that requirement. (The Justice Department's summary of the legislation says: "It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.")

* Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.

* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights.

* Allow computers to be seized more readily. Specifically, property such as a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture has become popular among police agencies in drug cases as a way to gain additional revenue, and it is problematic and controversial.

* Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes. Certain copyright crimes currently require someone to commit the "distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period of at least 10 copies" valued at more than $2,500. The IPPA would insert a new prohibition: actions that were "intended to consist of" distribution....

Pliny the Elder: Rampant Credulist, Rational Skeptic, or Both?

The Skeptical Inquirer had a wonderful article on Pliny the Elder in a 2003 issue:

Though there may be 20,000 topics in his Natural History, the simple fact is that far too many of the "facts" Pliny provides us are not facts at all, but unverified anecdotes reported as facts. If we were to swing an imaginary "B.S." detector over Pliny's book, the meter would read off-scale. What do we make of this? How does it affect our judgment of poor Gaius Plinius? Is he a rampant credulist, rational skeptic, or both?

The evidence he leaves in his Natural History suggests that Pliny was no different from most of us. His belief system and the structure by which he explained the world grew naturally out of the culture in which he was raised and lived, and though he might now and then reach beyond that culture, unlike either Thales or Aristotle, Pliny was neither genius nor pioneer.

Yet Pliny stood at a significant decision point of Western history, when one pathway to the future could have followed Stoic ethics towards the close study of nature and our role in it. Instead, within a few centuries of his death the dark barbarity of the Church fell over Europe, arresting the nascent rationality of pagan philosophy. The evidence we have, as we read his Natural History, suggests Pliny was a conflicted man, with a deep belief in skepticism and rational inquiry, yet unable to rise out of the magical thinking endemic around him.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History can be found translated in English here.

Codex Seraphinianus

From Wikipedia:

The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978.[1] The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, an incomprehensible (at least for us) alphabetic writing.

A more in depth look at the codex with more illustrations can be found here:

One day Dr. Harpold came to class visibly excited. He said he had found a very rare, delicate, and expensive book just sitting on the shelf at the university library. It was typical, he said, because the few libraries that owned a copy of this rare book didn’t know how valuable it had become, so it got shelved with the general collection and subsequently stolen by the first savvy person who came upon it. Harpold had caught our university library’s grievous error and had had it corrected, but not before pulling faculty privilege and checking it out himself. After admonishing us to make sure our hands were clean, he passed it around. “It” was a book called Codex Seraphinianus, by one Luigi Serafini, published in an extremely limited edition in Italy in 1981. The book was an oversize black hardback. The cover art was a vaguely encyclopedic depiction of a man and a woman engaged in successive stages of copulation, then melding together, and finally becoming a single alligator.

Embarassing Wedding Toast

Q. What's Your Favorite Book That Deals With a Post Apocalyptic World

My favorite would be Larry Niven's "Lucifer's Hammer".

Also, an honorable mention to Tom Godwin's "The Survivors" which isn't a post-apocalyptic story in the traditional sense but deals with many of the same issues you would find in any end of the world story. (ie surviving the initial hardships, forming a society, etc.) Just a terrific story that seems to have slipped through the cracks.

And yours?

Wikipedia has an exhaustive list of post-apoc fiction in literature and movies.

(Inspired by Gerry's post on Earth Abides)

Facial Hair and Presidential Elections

Oddly fascinating:

Only five US presidents have sported full beards, and another four had moustaches of varying degrees of glory. These were all during the half century run of the dozen Presidents between Lincoln and Taft, of whom only Andrew Johnson and McKinley were clean-shaven.

The Republicans have historically been the hairier party. Every Republican candidate from 1856 to 1892 (with the arguable exception of 1860) had a beard, with a later run of moustaches on Roosevelt in 1904, Taft in 1908 and Roosevelt and Taft in 1912 followed by a final beard in 1916 (and a postscript for the moustache in 1944 and 1948). We should not forget also the vast mutton-chop whiskers of Chester A. Arthur, who was elected Vice-President on the Republican ticket in 1880 but served most of that term as President after the assassination of the bearded Garfield.

The Democrats have never had a properly bearded candidate; the only successful Democrat who even went as far as a moustache was Grover Cleveland, who won the popular vote three times running in 1884, 1888 and 1892. (Cleveland lost the electoral college in 1888 to Benjamin Harrison, so far the last American President with a proper beard.) The hairiest Democrat was Winfield Scott Hancock, whose huge moustache did not help him in the 1880 election, and Democrats with moustaches lost in 1864 and 1904.

Floor Collapses During Wedding (from 2001)

This happened in 2001 although I hadn't seen the clip until now. It's terrifying footage of a 4th floor dance floor that collapses during a wedding in Israel. 250 people were injured and 25 died as a result.

(via PoeTV)

Jerry Falwell Died

I for one blame the abortionists and gays for his death.
(Thanks Debbe)

Here's a link to his Wikipedia page that has some of his more controversial moments:

Falwell was a controversial subject for his theological, political and social beliefs. After the September 11, 2001, attacks Falwell said on the 700 Club, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'" (a sentiment with which Pat Robertson concurred). After heavy criticism, Falwell apologized. . As for homosexuality, Falwell remarked, "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals." Falwell's ghostwriter, Mel White, said Falwell remarked about gay protesters, "Thank God for these gay demonstrators. If I didn't have them, I'd have to invent them. They give me all the publicity I need."

During the Civil Rights Movement Falwell was a supporter of racial segregation. He said this about Martin Luther King, "I do question the sincerity of people like the Reverend Martin Luther King..."

Falwell has also said, "Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money. When people get right with God, they are better workers." Regarding public schools, "I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we don't have public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them." (America Can Be Saved!, Sword of the Lord Publishers, Murfreesboro, Tenn. 1979, p. 52-53.)

Positive Atheism also has a page dedicated to Falwell quotes:

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

Two O'Clock Trailers - Goodfellas

Underwater Tigers

A Flickr set of underwater tigers.

(Thanks Markus)

Bots on the Ground

The Washington Post on the growing use of robots on the battlefield:

The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.

This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, built something like that. At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield.

Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly.

The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse.

The colonel ordered the test stopped.

Why? asked Tilden. What's wrong?

The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.

This test, he charged, was inhumane.

(via Kottke)

Terror on Wall Street

From Damn Interesting:

On 16 September 1920, throngs of brokers, clerks, and office workers poured from the buildings lining New York City's Wall Street as a nearby church bell struck twelve o'clock. The narrow cobblestone street became a river of sputtering automobiles and scurrying pedestrians as the financial district employees set out to make the most of their mid-day break.

Traveling opposite the egressing crowds, an elderly bay horse plodded along Wall Street pulling a nondescript wagon and a driver. The cart came to a stop just around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), across the street from the imposing JP Morgan & Co. bank building. The wagon's driver cast the reigns aside, leaped from his perch, and fled from the street with conspicuous haste. As the lunch-going men and women shuffled past the parked wooden cart and its patiently waiting horse, a timer within the cargo compartment quietly counted off its final few seconds.

The Color Changing Card Trick

(Thanks Schmoo)

Jet Engine on Takeoff vs. Two Birds

Scary.

A JET packed with holidaymakers had to make an emergency landing at Manchester Airport after two birds were sucked into an engine during take-off. The Thomsonfly Boeing 757, with 225 passengers and eight crew members aboard, was heading for Lanzarote when the drama happened. Smoke was seen coming from the engine and the captain decided to shut it down as a precaution and return to the airport. He had to burn off some fuel before landing on one engine 30 minutes later. The birds involved were believed to be grey herons, which can weigh up to three stones and have a 6ft wingspan.

And of course there is a video of the incident on YouTube.

(via Metafilter)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.

Snake Handling

This is a short video piece shot during services at a Snake handling church in West Virginia. The music is a rocking hybrid of blues infused gospel.

Wikipedia's article on snake handling:

As in the early days, worshippers are still encouraged to lay hands on the sick (cf. Faith healing), speak in tongues (cf. Glossolalia), and provide testimony of miracles. Gathering mainly in homes and converted buildings, they generally adhere to strict dress codes such as uncut hair, no cosmetics and ankle-length dresses for women, and short hair and long-sleeved shirts for men. Most snakehandlers preach against any use of all types of tobacco and alcohol. They also abstain from holidays such as birthdays, Halloween and Christmas, dismissing them and other holidays as worldly, pagan and nonscriptural.

Most religious snake handlers are still found in the Appalachian Mountains and other parts of the southeastern United States, especially in such states as Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Ohio. However, they are gaining steady recognition from news broadcasts, movies and books about the non-denominational movement.

In 2001, there were about 40 small churches that practiced snake handling, most considered to be holiness-Pentecostals or charismatics. In 2004, the practice moved across the border and there were four snake handling congregations in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. Most, if not all, use the King James Version of the Bible and consider other versions to be demonic or false. Like their predecessors, they believe in a strict and literal interpretation of the Bible. Most Church of God with Signs Following churches are non-denominational, believing that denominations are 'man made' and carry the Mark of the Beast. Worshippers often attend services several nights a week. Services, if the Holy Spirit "intervenes", can last up to five hours, and the minimum time is usually ninety minutes.

Related:
Serpent Handlers

Two O'Clock Trailers - The Shawshank Redemption

The Illustrated Guide to GOP Scandals

From Slate.

Baby "Playing" with a Cobra

Marlea forwarded this to me but there's no description as to what on earth is going on. Anybody know?

Update:
Thanks to, me, for googling "right of passage & cobra":

A one-year-old is forced to fight a neutered cobra during a shocking snake-charming rite of passage in India.

The baby tries to protect itslef while being repeatedly hit by the animal, which has also had its mouth stitched up and its fangs removed.

This bizarre spectator sport - reportedly from Kasimkota in Andhra Pradesh - has been condemned by animal rights protesters after footage appeared on the internet.

They've warned that a cobra's fangs grow back quickly, putting the youngsters in mortal danger.

Star Wars Mistakes Compilation

Mostly continuity mistakes.

Teachers Stage Fake Gun Attack on Kids

From USA Today:

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) — Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the week-long trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.

But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

Some parents said they were upset by the staff's poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door.

Orson Welles Drunk Outtakes

In these infamous Paul Masson outtakes, Orson tries to deliver his lines while totally tanked.

(via Clusterflock)

A Flown Soyuz - Mir Space Toilet

Up for auction at Christie's:

A space toilet can be used in a low gravity environment. In the absence of gravity the collection and retention of liquid and solid waste is directed by use of air flow. Since the air used to direct the waste is returned to the cabin, it is filtered beforehand to control odour and cleanse bacteria. Waste water is vented into space and any solids are compressed and stored for removal upon landing.

(via Nothing to do with Arbroath)

Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite Chocolate Bar

Instructables has a great guide on how to make a Han Solo frozen in carbonite bar.

101 Greatest George Carlin Quotes

A belated Happy Birthday to George Carlin who turned 70 on May 12.

Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

Thomas Allen - Pulp Fiction

Allen's photographs are inspired by his childhood experiences with pop-up books and View-Masters. He begins his process by cutting figures and images out of illustrated pages of old books and vintage fiction novels. Allen then cleverly rearranges and juxtaposes the forms to create three-dimensional scenes. Next, he carefully lights his subjects and photographs the scenes.

When separated from their original stories, the figures take on fresh roles in entirely new situations. Yet they retain their intended purpose of storytelling. Characters and objects originally created as two-dimensional illustrations are raised from their pages and given new life in three-dimensional space. The figures return back to two-dimensional objects, this time in the form of a photograph.

(via BB Blog)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Gods" (1872)

The Food Timeline

Ever wonder what foods the Vikings ate when they set off to explore the new world? How Thomas Jefferson made his ice cream? What the pioneers cooked along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip...and why?

Welcome to the Food Timeline! Food history sets a complicated buffet of popular lore and contradictory facts. Some people will tell you it's impossible to express this topic in exact timeline format. They are correct. Most foods and recipes are not invented; they evolve.

Preschoolers Thoughts on Aging

On Flickr:

The kids at my daughter's pre-school were asked to describe what happens to people when they get old.

(via Boing Boing)

The Chernobyl Diet

From the BBC:

It turns out that the Chernobyl "Zone of Alienation" is home to several hundred mainly elderly people living illegally in the area, and their attitude to the risks of radiation is very different.

They returned to their homes soon after the disaster and are now growing vegetables and raising livestock again, despite the fact that the entire region is now an empty, isolated and post-apocalyptic vision of abandoned villages and rampant wildlife.

Anna is a wonderful, garrulous 83-year-old babushka who has returned to the Zone of Alienation.

She was outraged to hear that the BBC had instructed me not to eat any of her food and she began a sustained bullying campaign, saying: "What's wrong with you? There's nothing to fear from my food - God will protect you."

The Circumcellions

From Rotten.com.

The name "Circumcellions" somehow sounds like the name of an advanced Star Trek alien race, or perhaps a groundbreaking association of Ancient Roman jurists. The truth is so much less, and yet, at the same time, somehow, so much more...

The word itself means "guys who hang around villages," rather unglamorously. The Circumcellions were a Christian suicide cult of the fourth and fifth centuries. Their religious practice consisted of delivering random beatings to strangers along the road, with the purpose of goading the strangers into killing them. If that didn't work, they just threw themselves off a cliff instead.

(via Reddit)

Another Creationist Using The Woodpecker to Prove, er, Something

I think he inadvertently makes a better case for evolution. You have to stick with it to the end when he ends up trying to say that believing in evolution is the same as believing that a mousetrap can turn into a mouse, with a mousetrap snapped against his finger.

"Psychic" Uri Geller sued after trying to remove critical YouTube clip

From the CNet News Blog:

The latest attempt involves Uri Geller, the purported spoon-bending "psychic" who is trying to suppress a video on YouTube that claims Geller is a fraud and demonstrates sleight-of-hand tricks he could have used. The video was posted by the Rational Response Squad, a group of skeptics who take a scientific approach toward evaluating supernatural claims, and rely in part on YouTube to get the word out.

Geller's U.K. company, Explorologist Ltd., sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube, claiming copyright in a video posted by the squad. It depicted magician James Randi, a prominent skeptic of the supernatural, showing how Geller could have performed "magic" tricks. (Some of his critics go farther, alleging that Geller is little more than a successful con artist.)

YouTube replied by suspending the relevant account.

There was one problem: Geller doesn't seem to own the video. It's nearly 14 minutes long, and Geller's company apparently can claim copyright in only three seconds of it, a brief excerpt that would likely be permitted by U.S. fair use laws.

Here's the offending clip:


(Thanks Flip)

Inventor of Mother's Day Wants You To Stop Wasting Money

From Wisebread:

Americans are planning to spend an average of $139 on Mother's Day gifts this year. That's a stunning $16 billion national spending frenzy that would have horrified Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's Day.

Anna lobbied for the creation of the holiday as a tribute to her mother and mothers everywhere. Her efforts paid off in 1914 when President Wilson officially designated the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day.

Later on, after seeing her holiday cheapened by rampant commercialism, Anna denounced her own holiday. She wrote:

I wanted [Mother's Day] to be a day of sentiment, not profit.

A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.

And candy! You take a box to Mother — and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.

What will you do to route charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and other termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest and truest movements and celebrations?

Papa Goose

Splogs

Anali found a splog scraping her rss feeds.

What's a splog?

Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either Inauthentic Text or merely stolen (see blog scraping) from other websites. These blogs usually contain an high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites.

I've had several splogs steal content from here but just never thought it was worth my time to pursue any action. Anybody have any experience with dealing with splogs scraping their content?

Two O'Clock Trailers - Red Dawn

Friday Guest Cat Blogging

From Stewart:

How does one earn a slot in the Friday cat blog? My cat Bugalugs would like his 5 minutes of fame

All it takes is an email with a cat of some sort. Thanks Stewart!

What's Jeb Bush Up To?

From the Huffington Post:

If you've been worried sick about what would become of ex-Governor Jeb "No Futuro" Bush since his big brother totally screwed his chances for ever being elected president, here's some great news. Jeb is now officially on the board of Tenet Healthcare, at an annual pay of $474,500--for 13 days of work per year.

It's a special board seat created just for Jeb, at the suggestion of an old Bush family friend and fundraiser. (Do they even have any family friends who aren't also fundraisers?)

As calculated by TheStreet.com, Jeb stands to collect a tidy $36,500 per day. All he has to do is sit on the board of a hospital chain so ethically challenged that even the Bush administration went after them.

(via J-Walk)

First Post

I thought I would go back in time today and take a glance as to what the first post was for some of the blogs I have on my blogroll. Feel free to copy your first blog post and put it in the comments.
From Kottke.org (March 14, 1998):

Why?

I decided I needed to start writing things down. Because I forget. Because I think better and feel better when I write. I used to write often but got away from it. So here it is again. But you ask: "Jason, why not keep a private diary?" Because I'd never keep up a private diary...I need to force myself to write this. So, I made it into content. Since it's content, I feel obligated to keep it up-to-date.

See these games I have to play with myself?

From The J-Walk Blog(October 15, 2002):

My First Blog Entry

Today I woke up and decided to start a weblog. I've had a bit of free time lately, and I've spent a lot of it perusing other blogs. They vary from crappy to superb. Hopefully, this one will be somewhere in the middle.

I decided to "roll my own," and not use any of the standard blogging products. We'll see how this works out. Right now I'm just using FrontPage.

I spent a few hours working on the design, and recalling things that I had forgotten about cascading style sheets. My goal, as always: Keep it simple.

From Backwards City(May 17, 2004):

Welcome!
Welcome to the Backwards City Review. We'll be with you shortly.

--The Editors

From Atrios(April 17, 2002):

Is this thing on?

From Shakespeare's Sister (October 5, 2004):

Day one, and the question is: Why join the blogosphere when there are already so many blogs out there, many of them great, many of them garbage? The thing I’ve noticed about the political blog culture is that for people who spend their days immersed in it, often we are the first to draw connections between a story we read here and a story we read there. It’s not uncommon that I’ll see a post on one of the blogs I read regularly that reflects an insight I’ve had myself, though sometimes the dots I managed to connect don’t form a full picture anywhere else for days. That means on some days I may have something interesting to say, and on some days, I won’t. Will this blog be worth it for the days I do? We shall see.

For those who stumble across Shakespeare’s Sister and don’t already have the following on their reading lists, I recommend the following: Talking Points Memo, the brilliant John Aravosis’ AMERICAblog, Daily Kos, David Corn’s blog, Informed Comment by Juan Cole, James Wolcott’s blog, Hullabaloo, and the always witty World O’ Crap. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but I’ll keep adding to the list as we go.

From SFSignal (July 12, 2003):

First! Hahahaha...

So, this post is really to just have some text here so that the blog will fill out and look decent. With no text, it looks weird....

JP

From Bibi's Box(May 27, 2004):

Bom, como pretendo fazer deste weblog um meio de divulgação para coisas interessantes que descubro pela internet resolvi começar sugerindo um site no mínimo diferente. O Devil's Dictionary É um curioso dicionário onde as difinições não se encaixam necessariamente nos padrões puritanos aos quais as pessoas estão acostumadas. É a versão on-line de dois ou outros dicionários "The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary" e "The Devil's Dictionary".

From Bad Astronomy Blog (March 13, 2005):

So, it’s come to this.

Perhaps it’s been too long coming. If you’ve read the site, you know I have a lot to say, maybe too much. There’s a boatload of astronomy out there, Bad and Good, and not enough time to write up whole pages about it. Plus, sometimes I just think of stuff (the bane of the thinker), and I might want to make a short, pithy comment for the Curious Masses out there.

So here you go. The BABlog. I may have a contest later on how to pronounce that. In my head, it kinda comes out “blah blog”. Anyway, it was either this or do a podcast, and a podcasting friend of mine told me how much effort a ‘cast would be. So now I’m blogging, because I’m nothing if not least effort.

The next entry will have actual content. I promise. Until then, welcome, and take an hour or two to poke around the main Bad Astronomy site.

From Clusterflock (November 16, 2005):

clusterflock is a group blog dedicated to various aspects of culture: food, art, design, architecture, science, society, movies, books, music, typography, etc. Posts will be made daily and will cover a wide variety of subjects with the hope of pointing readers in good directions. We hope you like what you read and will check back and let people know what we're up to.

From My2SecondShelfLife (September 15, 2002):

The Crappy Daughter (me)
Well, I've been busted.
I invite my mother to our BBQ every second year.
My mother doesn't enjoy big events with loud music.

She's conservative.
Traditional European, "not allowed to have fun because I'm too old for that", type.
My mother in law on the other hand loves life and enjoys a good dance and a couple of drinks.
My mother in law is 20 (physically) years older than my mother.
My mother is extremely jealous of my mother in law.
She thinks I get along better with her (I do) and that I love her more (I don't/can't).
I just enjoy her company more than my own mother's.
Anyway, I digress...

From Cosmic Variance (July 17, 2005):

...So what we have here is a group blog constructed by some idiosyncratic human beings who also happen to be physicists. Sometimes we’ll talk about science, other times it will be food or literature or whatever moves us — I know I have some incisive things to say about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, for one thing. We’re not a representative collection of scientists, just some engaged individuals curious about our world.

Welcome!

From Information Junk (September 1, 1999):

I have so much time on my hands that I needed something to ease that burden and this is it. What is it? Huh? Well it isn't this, this or that! It's an idea that sprung from reading good stuff like this, this and that. Don't be fooled though, this project won't ever be much, but it will be something.

From Waxy (April 14, 2002):

So, I've never really had a personal website. For the last seven years or so, I used the Generic Website as a placeholder for a site that never came. Sure, there were always little nooks and crannies hiding under that blank page, but I figured it was finally time for something a little more substantial.

I can't promise I'll keep to these, but here are the rules:

1. No journaling, unless it's relevant to people who don't know me. Example: "Today I went down to 7-11 and bought a Slurpee. Strawberry is my favorite flavor!"

2. No tired memes, unless I have something to add. Example: "Take this quiz and find out which Smurf you are! I'm Jokey!"

3. Be original.

Thanks to the close friends who, until this point, have put up with my endless links and web commentary in instant messages and e-mail.

From Late Reviews(February 1, 2004):

The purpose of these writings is not necessarily to provoke any readers I might accidentally gain into rushing out to read/watch/listen to/eat the latest fad. I don’t have the money or the free time to devote to what’s fresh bursting on the scene, but choose instead to review that which is current in my life. Occasionally, this might be something all the hip kids are grooving too; most likely, however, it will be of something old, something hashed over and rehashed over by better reviewers and writers than me (and worse ones too)...

From Miss Cellania (August 22, 2005):

Welcome to Miss Cellania

I love reading other folk’s blogs, so I’ve been toying with the idea of having my own. I’m a single working mother, so what I REALLY need is another hobby to take up all that spare time. I’m neither a gifted nor a prolific writer (though some may argue with the prolific part), and the everyday events of my life are nothing to write home about. Well, maybe the home folks care, but not the general public. And I KNOW no one cares about my opinions, though I have some. There is no broad field of interest I am an expert in. And I sometimes end a sentence with a preposition. So I will try to keep the personal rambling short, and devote this blog to fun stuff that you may enjoy. Contributions are welcome, so if you come across anything interesting, email me. Let me know if I can use your name.

To start things off, here is one of my favorite music videos. Also Here is a really strange and difficult game. I’ve just started trying to figure it out. So far, I’ve crashed it, burned it, and punctured it. A real time-waster.

Thought for Today- The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Modified Beetles

Most recognizable car in history changes into something less recognizable in these outrageous mods:

World's Highest Swing

No thanks.

The swing is set on a 700ft high viewing platform on the tower in Harbin city, Heilongjiang province.

Participants sit on the steel seat and swing out over the city, beyond the edge of the platform.

The swing is called "Game for brave people", reports Harbin Daily.

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said, "Think!" The many have said, "Believe!"

--Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Gods" (1872)

Doing Some Maintenance

Things might look screwy for a bit. I reversed sidebars and I think I'm happier with the site menus on the left and sponsors on the right. I also put the "recent comments" section higher since I think that's a pretty helpful addition.

Flying Witch RC Plane

The Interrobang

From Wikipedia:

The interrobang is a rarely used, nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of a question mark and an exclamation mark. The typographical character resembles those marks superimposed one over the other, and the name interrobang comes from interro - from interrogative - and bang - used to amplify the exclamation. In informal writing, the same effect is achieved by placing the exclamation point after or before the question mark; e.g., "How could you do such a thing?!"

American Martin K. Speckter concocted the interrobang in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if advertising copywriters conveyed surprised queries using a single mark. He proposed the concept of a single punctuation mark in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks. Speckter solicited possible names for the new character from readers. Contenders included rhet, exclarotive, and exclamaquest, but he settled on interrobang. He chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it.

Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo

This is going around the net pretty fast and deservedly so.

The War Prayer

I'm pretty sure I've posted Twain's "The War Prayer" before but it's one of the best short stories that sums up a side of prayer that most religious people dare not talk about.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way...

The Vatican: 'Criticizing the Pope is an Act of Terrorism'

From the WaPo:

ROME (Reuters) - The Vatican's official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of "terrorism" for criticizing the Pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence.

In an unusually strongly worded editorial, L'Osservatore Romano said a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, which is sponsored by Italy's labor unions, had launched "vile attacks" on Pope Benedict in front of an "excitable crowd."

"This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church," it said. "It's terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man."

At the concert, held every year in front of the Saint John in Lateran basilica -- Rome's cathedral where Pope Benedict sits as bishop -- one of the presenters, Andrea Rivera, spoke out against the Pontiff's stand on a number of issues.

Cats on Drugs

Catnip actually.

(via PoeTV)

Two O'Clock Trailers - Papillon

The Worst Episode of Hyperinflation in History: Yugoslavia 1993-94

Prices increaded 5 quadrillion percent?

Under Tito, Yugoslavia ran a budget deficit that was financed by printing money. This led to a rate of inflation of 15 to 25 percent per year. After Tito, the Communist Party pursued progressively more irrational economic policies. These policies and the breakup of Yugoslavia (Yugoslavia now consists of only Serbia and Montenegro) led to heavier reliance upon printing or otherwise creating money to finance the operation of the government and the socialist economy. This created the hyperinflation. By the early 1990s the government used up all of its own hard currency reserves and proceded to loot the hard currency savings of private citizens. It did this by imposing more and more difficult restrictions on private citizens' access to their hard currency savings in government banks.

Feynman on the Talmud

Sigh, I miss him.

One day, two or three of the young rabbis came to me and said, "We realize that we can't study to be rabbis in the modern world without knowing something about science, so we'd like to ask you some questions."

Of course there are thousands of places to find out about science, and Columbia University was right near there, but I wanted to know what kinds of questions they were interested in.

They said, "Well, for instance, is electricity fire?"

"No," I said, "but... what is the problem?"

They said, "In the Talmud it says you're not supposed to make fire on a Saturday, so our question is, can we use electrical things on Saturdays?"

I was shocked. They weren't interested in science at all! The only way science was influencing their lives was so they might be able to interpret better the Talmud! They weren't interested in the world outside, in natural phenomena; they were only interested in resolving some question brought up in the Talmud.

And then one day- I guess it was a Saturday- I want to go up in the elevator, and there's a guy standing near the elevator. The elevator comes, I go in, and he goes in with me. I say, "Which floor?" and my hand's ready to push one of the buttons.

"No, no!" he says, "I'm supposed to push the buttons for you."

"What?"

"Yes! The boys here can't push the buttons on Saturday, so I have to do it for them. You see, I'm not Jewish, so it's all right for me to push the buttons. I stand near the elevator, and they tell me what floor, and I push the button for them."

Well, this really bothered me, so I decided to trap the students in a logical discussion. I had been brought up in a Jewish home, so I knew the kind of nitpicking logic to use, and I thought, "Here's fun!"

My plan went like this: I'd start off by asking, "Is the Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak." And then they would have to say, "Yes, the Jewish viewpoint is good for any man."

Then I would steer them around a little more by asking, "Is it ethical for a man to hire another man to do something which is unethical for him to do? Would you hire a man to rob for you, for instance?" And I keep working them into the channel, very slowly, and very carefully, until I've got them- trapped!

And do you know what happened? They're rabbinical students, right? They were ten times better than I was! As soon as they saw I could put them in a hole, they went twist, turn, twist- I can't remember how- and they were free! I thought I had come up with an original idea- phooey! It had been discussed in the Talmud for ages! So they cleaned me up just as easy as pie- they got right out.

Finally I tried to assure the rabbinical students that the electrical spark that was bothering them when they pushed the elevator buttons was not fire. I said, "Electricity is not fire. It's not a chemical process, as fire is."

"Oh?" they said.

"Of course, there's electricity in amongst the atoms in a fire."

"Aha!" they said.

"And in every other phenomenon that occurs in the world."

I even proposed a practical solution for eliminating the spark.

"If that's what's bothering you, you can put a condensor across the switch, so the electricity will go on and off without any spark whatsoever- anywhere." But for some reason, they didn't like that idea either.

It really was a disappointment. Here they are, slowly coming to life, only to better interpret the Talmud. Imagine! In modern times like this, guys are studying to go into society and do something- to be a rabbi- and the only way they think that science might be interesting is because their ancient, provincial, medieval problems are being confounded slightly by some new phenomena...

They didn't understand technology; they didn't understand their time.

(via Reddit)

The New Adventures of the Wonder Twins

Does anybody know where this comes from? (It's great)
(via PoeTV)

Motoda Hisaharu's Post Apocalyptic Tokyo

In his Neo-Ruins series Motoda depicts a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, where familiar landscapes in the central districts of Ginza, Shibuya, and Asakusa are reduced to ruins and the streets eerily devoid of humans. The weeds that have sprouted from the fissures in the ground seem to be the only living organisms. "In Neo-Ruins I wanted to capture both a sense of the world′s past and of the worldﾕs future," he explains.

Motoda's view of the future at first seems nihilistic, but the proliferation of plant life in the ruined streets seems to suggest that there are other ways for the plant to survive even after our great cities have fallen.

(via Bifurcated Rivets)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

I feel like some Ingersoll quotes.

The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing that we are not to have in the other world. We are to be so taken up with Jesus and angels, that we shall care nothing about our brothers and sisters that have been damned. We shall be so carried away with the music of the harp that we shall not even hear the wail of father and mother. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature.

Bigfoot and Wildboy

(Thanks Adam)

James Randi and Project Alpha

Project Alpha was a famous hoax orchestrated by famous magician and skeptic James Randi. It involved the "planting" of two fake psychics, Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards, into a paranormal research project who became convinced the pair's psychic powers were real. The hoax was later revealed publically, leading to a backlash against the entire paranormal field. This is an interview with the men involved.

Wikipedia has a great entry on Project Alpha:

Project Alpha was a hoax orchestrated by magician and skeptic James Randi. It involved planting two fake psychics, Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards, into a paranormal research project. The researchers became convinced that the pair's psychic powers were real. The hoax was later revealed publicly, leading to a backlash against the entire paranormal field.

Including my favorite part:

Part of Randi's instructions to these men was to tell the truth if they were ever asked if they were faking the results. They were never asked.

Top 100 Fundies Say The Darndest Things Quotes!

They're always updating this list so it's fun to drop in and see what's new every so often. My favorite is still this gem:

"One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

The Sabbath Elevator

From the Baltimore Sun:

The vote from the Strathmore Tower condominium board was simple: Down with the Sabbath elevator.

But what some thought was a straightforward vote has erupted into a religious and racially tinged controversy to others in this majority senior citizen-occupied condominium complex in Upper Park Heights.

The supporters - most of whom are Jewish - say the option for a Sabbath elevator wouldn't have cost extra money and would have aided Orthodox Jewish and disabled residents while helping resale prices. Foes say such an elevator is inconvenient and could cost more.

Sabbath elevators are normal elevators that can be set to automatically stop at every floor. That helps observant Orthodox Jews who aren't permitted to operate electrical switches during the Sabbath period, or Shabbat, which runs from sunset Friday to nightfall Saturday.

Some Jewish residents say the vote in February by the nine-member board - 5-3, with one absent - to strike a Sabbath elevator out of a contract to renovate the building's two elevators smacks of religious discrimination.

"I hate to say it, but reverse discrimination is what it is," said Haron Goodman, 74, a Jewish board member and 10-year Strathmore resident, heads nodding around him as he sits with other residents in his apartment on a recent morning. "It's absolutely anti-Semitism."

Two O'Clock Trailers - Bullitt

The Greatest Long Tracking Shots in Cinema

Daily Film Dose takes a look at The Long Shot:

In a director’s cinematic bag of tricks the long tracking shot is the boldest way of making a statement. It’s the flashiest and most attention-grabbing egotistical way of flexing one’s muscle. In most cases it's a narcissistic maneuver, “look-at-me” filming technique, but rare ones, the best ones, serve to reflect and further the story in a way that can’t be reflected with traditional editing.

Let’s examine specifically the long ‘tracking’ take which involves extensive and complicated movements of the camera. The fact is filmmakers have been doing long takes since the medium was invented. In fact the first films didn’t have any edits. Perhaps the first most notable film to use long unedited takes for storytelling purposes was Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” (1948) which was an entire film shot in real time created by seamless cutting together a series of long 8-10 mins shots made to look like one. In 1948 it was a bold and unprecedented experiment for Hitchcock. The film works because its takes place entirely in one room for 80 minutes, so there was limited movement and lighting changes.

(via Metafilter)

James Randi on Astrology

The Top 15 Han Solo Quotes You Need to Use in Regular Conversation

Terrific list. Here's one of them:

14. “Had a slight weapons malfunction, but everything's perfectly alright now. We're fine, we're all fine, here, now, thank you. How are you?”

When to say it: When your cell phone signal begins to break up

Granted, this is a Star Wars quote which will almost immediately get recognized as a Star Wars quote -- hopefully, you’ll never find yourself in a real life situation where you have to use the term “weapons malfunction.” Still, though, if you’ve got to go through the typically banal “wait, you’re breaking up – can you hear me?” conversation with a friend over your phone, why not throw in a Han Solo quote for good measure? Pretty much everything Harrison Ford says in the series is gold – in everyday life, one should always be searching for methods, no matter how forced, to speak the words of Han Solo.

Listening Device in Canadian Coins Turns Out To Be a Poppy

Those damn Canadians and their colorful but non-radio transmitter money win this round.

Call it Canada's contribution to the 21st century Cold War.

This country's poppy quarter sent the intelligence community into fits last year after the U.S. issued a warning about radio transmitters concealed in a coin. That alert had Canadian intelligence officials scratching their heads. Which Canuck coin was the U.S. talking about?

Just declassified information obtained by The Associated Press now indicates that it was Canada's commemorative quarter -- the world's first coloured coin -- that set alarm bells ringing in Washington.

Not bad for a piece of metal worth just 22.6 cents US.

Here's how it played out. Sometime from October 2005 to January 2006, U.S. defence contractors travelling in Canada became suspicious of the shiny coins that kept appearing in their pockets and cars. And since no change they knew of had colour, they assumed that something nefarious was afoot.

(Thanks Alex)

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Ruh-Roh.
(via Reddit)

The World's Steepest Street

From Wikipedia:

Baldwin Street, in a quiet suburban part of New Zealand's southern city of Dunedin, is reputed to be the world's steepest street. It is located in the suburb of North East Valley, 3.5 kilometres northeast of Dunedin's city centre.

A short straight street of some 350 metres length, Baldwin Street runs east from the valley of the Lindsay Creek up the side of Signal Hill. Its lower reaches are of only moderate steepness, and the surface is asphalt, but the upper reaches of this cul-de-sac are far steeper, and surfaced in concrete, for ease of maintenance (tar seal would flow down the slope on a warm day) and for safety in Dunedin's frosty winters. At its maximum, the slope of Baldwin Street is approximately 1:2.86 (19° or 35%) - that is, for every 2.86 metres travelled horizontally, the elevation rises by 1 metre.

(via Digg)

Strange Air Raid Bunkers of the Third Reich

From Dark Roasted Blend:

These concrete towers were unique AIR RAID SHELTERS of Nazi Germany, built to withstand the destructive power of WWII bombs and heavy artillery. Their cone shape caused bombs to slide down the walls and detonate only at a heavily fortified base. Cheaper to build above ground than to dig bunkers, they were quite effective, as it was possible to cram as many as 500 people inside. Plus the "footprint" of such tower was very small when observed from the air, so it was very hard for the bombers to ensure a direct hit.

Quiverfull (Or Every Sperm is Sacred)

Congratulations to the Duggars. Most people know the Duggars as the family where the wife's vagina spits out babies faster than a baseball player spitting out tobacco juice. They're currently working on #17.

TONTITOWN, AR - The Duggars are once again pulling out the pink ruffles and lace as they prepare for the birth of baby #17.

Michelle Duggar says the whole family is excited about the arrival of the baby girl they will name Jennifer Danielle, keeping with the family tradition of giving the child a name that begins with J.

Jennifer Danielle is due July 27.

Duggar, who is 40, says she's doing fine with her latest pregnancy. Although she has gotten older since she had her first child at age 21, she says she still has plenty of energy and only minor aches and pains.

So why do the Duggars have so many kids? To answer this we need to look at Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and the song Every Sperm is Sacred.

The Duggars believe in a christian fundamentalist movement called Quiverfull, which means that the only birth control they believe in is the discretion of the invisible magical mystery man in the sky:

Quiverfull is an approximately 20 year-old movement among conservative evangelical Protestant Christian couples chiefly in the United States, but with some adherents in Canada,[1] and with claims of adherent also in Australia, New Zealand, England, and elsewhere.[2] Its distinguishing viewpoint is to eagerly receive children as blessings from God,[2][3][4][5] eschewing all forms of contraception, including natural family planning and sterilization.

Quiverfull adherents maintain that God "opens and closes the womb" of a woman on a case-by-case basis, and that attempts to regulate fertility are a subjugation of divine power. Thus, the key practice of a Quiverfull married couple is to not use any form of birth control and to maintain continual "openness to children", to the possibility of conception, during routine sexual intercourse irrespective of timing of the month during the ovulation cycle. This is considered by Quiverfull adherents to be a principle if not the primary aspect of their Christian calling in submission to the lordship of Christ.

And here's a group that calls themselves the Quiverfull Ministry:

We call our ministry Quiverfull because we truly believe in the above! We believe that God is the best birth controller, and we are willing to accept as many or as few children as He sees fit to bless us with. God has called us to this ministry and lives have been changed as a result of us sharing His truth with others. It is our prayer that this site will be used by Him to shed the truth of the blessing of children to many.

So another words, Magic man done it.

Sinatra - Stardust (1943)

Students Accidentally Catch Cyclist Assault On Tape

From CityNews:

A group of students on a field trip in Toronto investigating the pros and cons of public surveillance cameras ended up catching a slice of big city street hostility on their own cameras Tuesday.

The Grade 12 students caught a road rage incident between a driver and a cyclist on tape, and could play a key rule in the meting out of justice after turning their evidence over to police.

The kids' mini-cam was pointed at the scene near Queen and Bay when the driver on four wheels got into a dispute with a cyclist on two. As the students watched in disbelief, they saw the motorist get out of his still idling car, approach the cyclist and punch him boldly in the face. He pushed the stunned bike owner onto the sidewalk where the assault appeared to continue for several more moments.

(via Boing Boing)

Paperback cover gallery: 1960's Teensploitation

A gallery on Flickr.

(via Bedazzled)

Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act

From ars technica:

The government will soon be able to sue parties involved in "hoaxes" that are mistaken for terrorism if a new bill is passed by Congress. The bill, entitled "The Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007," was introduced by the Senate and will amend the federal criminal code to include a number of new clauses meant to up the ante on wasting government resources. The amendments include extensions to the prohibitions on the spread of false information and mailing threats, increases to maximum prison terms, and allowances for civil suits so that local and federal governments can attempt to recoup expenses related to an incident.

That brings us to where we are today, with the Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007. Although the Mooninite scare was determined to not be a hoax (but rather an unfortunate series of poor decisions), the provisions in the bill would allow the government to take civil action against parties involved in perceived hoaxes if they fail to "promptly and reasonably inform one or more parties... of the actual nature of the activity" once they learn about investigative action taking place. In the case of Boston, this means that everyone involved could be sued for not immediately informing the police of the campaign upon receiving news of the emergency reaction.

(via Reddit)

Shrimp on a Treadmill

(via Zooillogix)

The Legacy of Agent Orange

From Slate:

During the Vietnam War, millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across regions of the country to destroy forest cover used by guerillas. It contained the dangerous dioxin TCCD. On this day in 1984, a $180 million out-of-court settlement was announced in the Agent Orange class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans, who argued that exposure to AO had caused various cancers, birth defects, and other chronic diseases. The settlement came to government benefits of about $1,500 a month until 1997. Yet many Vietnamese victims who also suffer greatly have received nothing from the United States since the end of the war. Magnum and Slate present images of Vietnam’s victims of Agent Orange.

Incan Suspension Bridges

From the NY Times:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.

Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. The people had not developed the stone arch or wheeled vehicles, but they were accomplished in the use of natural fibers for textiles, boats, sling weapons — even keeping inventories by a prewriting system of knots. So bridges made of fiber ropes, some as thick as a man’s torso, were the technological solution to the problem of road building in rugged terrain. By some estimates, at least 200 such suspension bridges spanned river gorges in the 16th century. One of the last of these, over the Apurimac River, inspired Thornton Wilder’s novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."

Cat vs. Tortoise

That's one badass turtle.
(Thanks Pete)

Two O'Clock Trailers - The Great Escape

Cockscomb

From Slashfood:

I love chicken, but I have to admit I never thought of eating the cockscomb.

First of all, get your mind out of the gutter. Thank you. The cockscomb (also called "le creste") are those funny little things on top of the chicken's head. Eating this probably never occurred to most people, since it would be like eating someone's hat or maybe fingernails. But people do eat it.

Lotto Fraud

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

WHEN backpackers Caroline Day and Mei-Yin Lee discovered they had won Lotto they rang home from the newsagency. It was after one in the morning in Britain but Ms Day wanted to share the news with her mother.

During that joyous phone call, they calculated they had won about £220,000.

But three weeks later when Dr Lee rang NSW Lotteries to inquire about the money, a "bold" fraud by an employee at the newsagency came to light - and it would be another 27 months before the pair saw their money.

(via Schneier on Security)

Gold Facial

From Japundit:

Uno, Inc., a Japanese beauty and skin care products company, has developed a facial treatmenet that uses 24-carat gold.

How The Woodpecker Proves Creationism

Magic man done it!

Two O'Clock Trailers - The Thomas Crown Affair

Famous Cases of Art Theft

From Wikipedia:

Quedlinburg medieval artifacts (1945)

In 1945, an American soldier and former art teacher Joe Meandor stole 12 medieval artifacts found in a cave near Quedlinburg which had been hidden by local members of the clergy from Nazi looters in 1943.

Returning to the United States, the artifacts remained in Meandor's possession until his death in 1980, making no attempt to sell them. When his older brothers attempted to sell a 9th century manuscript and 16th century prayerbook from Meandor's collection in 1996, the two were arrested. However, the charges were dismissed after it was declared the statute of limitations had expired.

Ella - Georgia on my Mind

The Newspaper Editorial that COULD Have Won the Civil War For the Confederates

HistoryBuff.com on The Plot to burn NY:

It was an incredible scheme. When finalized, New York City was their target and the plot was thus:. One group was to be responsible for setting off a series of fires as a diversion while another group was to seize Federal buildings and municipal offices, still another to take control of the police department, and yet another to free prisoners from Fort Lafayette and throw the Army Commander in New York, Major General John Adams Dix, into a dungeon. By sunset a Confederate flag would surely fly over New York City. This would surely be a coup for the Confederacy!

About the time the plot was finalized, Richmond learned from its spies that Washington was beginning to obtain bits and pieces of the plan to capture the North. It was then decided that, since everything but the date had been formalized, no more messages would be sent by runners. It was further decided that for two reasons carrying out the plot would wait. One reason was to "lay low" to give Washington the impression that the plot had died, and, two, the most opportune time to best capture the North off guard would be soon after another Union victory. Since Southern newspapers could still freely travel to Canada, members were instructed to keep reading the Richmond newspaper for an editorial advising that a "Northern city" should be burned in retaliation. (It is not known just how it was accomplished, but the same editorial also appeared in the New York Times a few days later!) At that time they were to congregate in New York's St. Dennis Hotel and begin to put the plot in motion.

Complaints?

I've created a page in the sidebar for those who have grievances about this blog.

Update:

Jason didn't like the complaint dept so I've turned it over to someone more competent.
(Thanks Jason!)

Hitler's Moustache

From The Telegraph:

His moustache is the most instantly recognisable - and sinister - in history.

Yet, according to new research into Adolf Hitler's early life, the distinctive, toothbrush shape that adorned his scowling face was not his first preference.

A previously unpublished essay by a writer who served alongside Hitler in the First World War trenches reveals that the future Führer was only obeying orders when he shaped his moustache into its tightly-clipped style. He was instructed to do so in order that it would fit under the respirator masks, introduced in response to British mustard gas attacks.

Had that order never been issued, the tyrant who brought most of Europe to its knees would be remembered as a man with a large Prussian moustache.

(via Monkeyfilter)

The Simpsons vs. The Family Guy

Some side by side comparisons.
(via Monitor Duty)

Helter Skelter

A helter skelter is an amusement park ride with a slide built in a spiral around a high tower. Users climb the tower and usually slide down on a mat. It is thus similar to a waterless hydroslide...

Complaints?

The 10 Worst-Selling Consoles of All Time

Be it a lack of games, poor strategy, or inadequate marketing, a majority of video game consoles are commercial failures. Here are the 10 worst selling consoles of all time in terms of high-profile systems that stood a viable chance. Other lesser-known consoles are sure to have sold worse, but the below represent the notable platforms that never met expectations.

A Small Grocery Store Competing with Wal-Mart

Hmmmm.

Wal-Mart is such a dominating force that when it enters a market, few rivals are left unscathed. But in the tiny town of Emo, Ont. - population, 1,186 - grocers Dan and Mark Loney found a formula for their store to take on the discount titan.

And they're doing it with Wal-Mart's own products.

A few years ago, Wal-Mart Canada Corp. set up shop in nearby Fort Frances, Ont., forcing the brothers to come up with a new game plan. Emo sits on the U.S. border, so they began crossing regularly to pick up bargain-priced merchandise to stock in their store. They do most of their U.S. bulk buying at Sam's Club, the warehouse chain owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

They don't stop at that. They post signs on the shelves of their Cloverleaf Grocery touting their prices as lower than Wal-Mart's.

But the Loneys' aggressive resourcefulness has hit a nerve. On Monday, they received a letter from a lawyer for Wal-Mart, telling them to stop using Wal-Mart's trademarks in their advertising. Otherwise they risked a legal spat.

(via Kottke)

Running the Numbers

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

(via Bifurcated Rivets)

The African Cookbook

The African Cookbook:

African cooking, like Africa itself, now embodies elements of several cultures- Arab, European, and Asian as well as black African. It is varied, it is interesting, and it is delicious. And food in Africa is perhaps more important in everyday social relations than it is in western cultures. African hospitality is without parallel anywhere else in the world. In many parts of Africa the arrival of a guest is followed almost automatically by the offering of food. It is an insult not to offer it, and, even if one is not hungry, it is an insult not to accept. The recipes in this book are authentic, or as authentic as they need to be for American cooks. (Few readers will ever have to grind their own flour or prepare a goat from the hoof for the table.) The book itself is well organized and is full of useful suggestions. It has passed the scrutiny of the ladies on my staff, who like to cook, like to eat, and have been to Africa themselves.

(via Information Junk)

Family Guy: Christian Alternative to the Theory of Evolution

The Pay Doorbell

To save a busy housewife from frequent annoyance by unwelcome callers, a doorbell that works only upon the insertion of a dime is soon to be marketed. The coin slides into an inside receptacle, where it closes an electric contact that permits the bell to be rung. If the caller proves to be a friend, the dime is returned as the guest enters; if the visitor is a stranger or one to whom entrance is refused, the money is retained.

(via J-Walk)

Etymologic

The toughest word game on the web.

In this etymology game you'll be presented with 10 randomly selected etymology (word origin) or word definition puzzles to solve; in each case the word or phrase is highlighted in bold, and a number of possible answers will be presented. You need to choose the correct answer to score a point for that question. Beware! The false answers will often also seem quite plausible, and some of the true answers are hard to believe, but we have documentation!

(via Backwards City)

1965 Anti-Pornography Propaganda film

Mathematics in Movies

This is a collection of movie clips in which Mathematics appears. I'm collecting DVDs and VHS tapes of such movies. This is a working document to be extended over time. I started this page during spring break 2006. Currently, there are 29 movies processed for this page and 13 unprocessed movies with some Math content are left in my collection to be added.

U.S. author heckled by people denying Armenian genocide

From the International Herald Tribune:

NEW YORK: As a first-time author, Margaret Ajemian Ahnert hoped that her appearance at a Barnes & Noble store here would draw attention to her new book, "The Knock at the Door," which deals with the Armenian genocide.

Her reading and question-and-answer session Tuesday drew attention, to be sure, but not the kind she expected.

A man in the audience was arrested after he and several other people disrupted the reading by shouting and passing out leaflets denying that the genocide occurred. Ahnert's 209-page book tells, among other things, how her mother survived the genocide as a teenager during World War I and eventually came to the United States.

Ahnert said Wednesday that she did not mean "The Knock at the Door" to be a political narrative.

T. Rex Ate Coconuts

Enough of Cynical-C 2.0. We have bigger fish to fry. Like creationists:

A new museum in Petersburg, Kentucky greets visitors with a 20ft tall tumbling waterfall and at its base, mannequins of frolicking children play amongst dinosaurs. The Creation Museum, which cost $25 million to build, is home to many unusual sites: a diorama of ancient people overshadowed by a towering T. rex, Adam and Eve swimming in a river with giant reptiles, and even a scale model of Noah's Ark.

Museum guides tell visitors that before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise all of the dinosaurs were peaceful plant-eaters.

In Genesis 1:30 God gives ‘green herb’ to every creature to eat and so there were no predators. When a curious museum visitor asks, why exactly T. rex had six-inch long serrated teeth, the guides go on to explain that T. rex used his big teeth to open coconuts. Apparently it was only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise that the dinosaurs started to eat flesh.

Welcome to Cynical-C 2.0

Enjoy!

Wikifight Over Size of Porn Star's Penis

NSFW unless your work doesn't mind incredibly geeky discussions over the size of a porn star's member.
(via Reddit)

Ned Flanders, Creationist.

Aerial Photos of Greensburg Tornado Damage

This aerial photograph and the ones that follow show the devastation that occurred when a large tornado struck Greensburg Friday night.

(via Metafilter)

Tornado Video

TornadoVideos.net storm chasers Reed Timmer and Joel Taylor shot this INSANE video of a violent tornado from within 50 yards!!! We had to back up at the last second, and my cell phone fell out on the road and was taken away by the tornado!!

David Blaine Street Magic 2

(via Clusterflock)

Doctors and Cigarettes Advertisements

A gallery of old advertisments of Doctors recommending smokes.

(Thanks Markus)

When Bloggers Disappoint

About every two weeks, I have a reader who uses the same IP but a different name and email to voice their complaint. It started innocently enough one April evening when the reader had enough of the videos that I frequently post and decided to do something about it:

Name: Peter | E-mail: pete@pete.com | IP: 24.22.17.xx

This video was a complete waste of my time. I am going to stop visiting your blog unless you post things of interest and of value. Wasting 4 minutes of my time like this is not of value. Wise up and do not post every stupid video you come across.

Posted Apr 7, 5:56 PM

Away Peter went, satisfied that he had destroyed my will to blog.

"From now on, before Chris posts a video that I'm not interested in, he will think of my comment and tremble with fear," Peter yells out triumphantly as he picks his nose searching for an after dinner snack.

Ten days later, Peter is back to find another YouTube clip.

"Impossible!" He screams as he kicks the table, nearly knocking over the glass of warm kitten blood he has freshly squeezed a few minutes earlier. "I voiced my criticism in the form of a comment. He has to abide by it." Taking a deep breath, Peter comments again.

Name: Peter | E-mail: peter@peter.com | IP: 24.22.17.xx

This blog used to post cleverness, but now too often it merely posts a video and expects us to waste 10 minutes of our time getting to the point. People don’t have that kind of time.

This place is really going downhill.

Posted Apr 17, 4:08 PM

Peter chuckles to himself. He has changed his email from pete@pete.com to peter@peter.com. By dropping a consonant he has created a whole new persona. Chris didn't pay attention to pete@pete.com but peter@peter.com is an email name to be reckoned with.

"Checkmate," Peter says. He picks up the glass of kitten blood and puts it down in disgust. It took him an hour and 45 minutes to write that comment and another 15 minutes to use the spell checker. The glass of blood is now cold.

More than 2 weeks go by before Peter gets a chance to visit his favorite blog. It has been a rough time for Peter. He had been worried that he has impregnated his girlfriend but it turned out to be a false alarm. Luckily for Peter, humans and poodles can't produce offspring together. He is now able to concentrate on more important things, like seeing if Cynical-C is still posting videos. The page begins to load. Google ad after google ad appears. Finally, the content appears. Peter finds himself staring at a Youtube video of Wozniak doing a commercial.

"This isn't happening!" he tells himself. "THIS IS NOT HAPPENING! I've done everything I could to save this blog. I've written comment after comment and for the love of Xenu, THE VIDEOS ARE STILL THERE!" He flies into a rage, ripping his American Idol posters off the walls. "I TOLD HIM," he screams as he rips Kelly Clarkson's poster into shreds, "TO ONLY POST THE THINGS I LIKE!!". He seizes a Clay Aiken poster from the wall and is about to rip it into two when he suddenly stops. He looks at the the smiling pop star and has an epiphany.

"Ah HA!" he shrieks. "Mr. Aiken, your handsome but effeminate good looks has given me the brainstorm I need to finally defeat my foe at Cynical-C. I will change my ENTIRE NAME!"

He sits down and starts pecking at his crusty keyboard feverishly, struggling to find the name that would command respect.

Name: Ben | E-mail: ben@ben.com | IP: 24.22.17.xx

This blog has really gone downhill. Instead of interesting, thoughtful, and reasoned commentary, all you post now are videos without comment, as if we’re supposed to waste five minutes of our life to see what the point it — and usually, it is not that interesting of a point at all. You are failing in your role as editor and your blog is failing to be interesting. I will not be around much longer.

Posted May 5, 5:54 PM

He hits the submit button and refreshes to see if the comment has been posted correctly. And there it is. He starts chuckling to himself.

"Peter," he says to himself. "This time, we have him."

To be continued...

Datsun 280Z Ad with the Woz

Turn Ons

The characters of Epic Movies share with us what turns them on. A spoof on some epic movies written by two of the six writers of Scary Movie.

Janis Joplin - Summertime

Big Mama Thornton/Buddy Guy - Hound Dog

Two O'Clock Trailers - Stand By Me

Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?

From Wired.com:

Last month, two Belgian publications reported that the Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape -- in Second Life.

I am half convinced that the tantalizingly brief story, printed in De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, is a hoax or an April Fool's joke.

Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums.

Unfortunately, rape in virtual spaces is not unheard of. And I'm not talking about the "consensual" rape built into some games (although if you're interested in that debate, GameGrene has a good conversation about it).

There is no question that forced online sexual activity -- whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means -- is real; and is a traumatic experience that can have a profound and unpleasant aftermath, shaking your faith in yourself, in the community, in the platform, even in sex itself.

Friday Cat Blogging

Jeankini

From Sanna's Brazil Fashions.

GOP Debate - Who Doesn't Believe in Evolution

Hometown Baghdad

A web documentary series about life in Baghdad:

An ongoing documentary web series following the lives of a few Iraqi 20-somethings trying to survive in Baghdad.

The everyday life of the Iraqi citizen has been the great untold story of the Iraq war.

The Distribution
The brave Iraqi subjects and crew risked their lives every time they turned on a camera to make this series. They want to show the world what life is like when your hometown is a war-zone. We believe that people who see their stories will want to share them with others. That's why we're distributing the series online. So please - watch the videos, rewatch them, tell friends about them, comment on them, and link to them.

The Language
The intention of the Iraqi filmmakers and subjects was to show the world what Baghdad is truly like. That's why they usually speak English and not Arabic.

Here is another of the many videos on that site:

Chinese Counterfeit Eggs

Chart 1: The Process of Producing a Human-Made Egg

This article is the first in a series of case reports addressing the problems of some selected artificially made food products in Mainland China (These food products are sold to consumers in Mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other countries). Drawing on reliable data extracted from Chinese newspapers, magazines and the Internet, this study takes a closer look at the problem of faked eggs in Mainland China. It seeks to inform the scientific and medical communities regarding the problems of consuming these products as well as the short- and long-term epidemic consequences.

(via The Consumerist)

Update:
Somebody smells a rotten egg.

Mailbag

Dominic writes:

From: Dominic

Re: Site

No, you lying white devil. Cynicism isnt 'an unpleasant way of telling the truth'. Thats antiChrist white devil bullshit. Optimism is telling the truth. Everything gets better, nothing ever gets worse. Ever. You dont even know what the truth is. Jesus Christ IS the truth. Jesus Christ isnt cynical. The devil sure is. And so are his people.

Thanks Dominic! I'll add this to the testimonials page.

Glengarry Glen Kindergarten

Mind Control Made Easy

How to become a cult leader.

White Glove Tracking

There are 10,060 frames of video in Michael Jackson's 5 min 35 sec nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. The White Glove Tracking project (W.G.T.) is an effort to isolate just the white glove from this moment in pop-culture history. Rather then write unnecessarily complex code to find the glove in every frame of the video I am asking for the assistance of 10,060 individual internet users to simply click and drag a box around the glove in one frame. In the end this data will be shared freely for all to download, visualize, and use as an input into other digital systems.

(via Waxy) Posted by Chris at 7:19 PM

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