Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Audi has some cool adflash with Rhythm of Lines
Cut-out papercraft from the early 20's (via drawn)
Feds raid Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens' house looking for "Series of Bribes"


Sao Paulo Brazil is now billboard-free. Skeletons remain.

Monday, July 30, 2007

Extremely difficult Nina Simone interview. Wow. (via metafilter) (mp3)
Chocolate Rain (youtube)

Hank Snow - A Fool Such as I and One More Ride
3D representations of city populations

Sunday, July 29, 2007

The Cool and Strange Thrift Store Complilation (via fmu)

Stephen Gill's back sides of Billboards

Friday, July 27, 2007

Texas Governor appoints a creationist to head the state Board of Education.
Texas Freedom Network president Kathy Miller … noted that in 2003, Dr. McLeroy was one of four board members who voted against proposed high school biology textbooks because he felt their coverage of evolution was “too dogmatic” and did not include possible flaws in Charles Darwin’s theory of how life on Earth evolved from lower forms.

Me, Simpsonized.
Eh.
Surfers from space Google maps is going hi-res. Found via this great site featuring odd google maps searches.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

[Sounds good... What are the hours?] FBI plans on building a network of U.S. informants
"It's probably a good sign they are not adopting CIA recruitment techniques wholesale," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, an expert on classified programs. U.S. intelligence officers abroad can use bribery, extortion, and other patently illegal acts to corral sources into working for them, Aftergood noted. "You're not supposed to do that in the United States," he said.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Bush lambastes government-funded healthcare - right after receiving a colonoscopy performed by a taxpayer-funded team of doctors flown in to Camp David for the procedure. (sfgate)

Bush told an audience in Nashville last week that the Senate bill is "the beginning salvo of the encroachment of the federal government on the health care system." He said he'd veto any such legislation making its way to his desk.

That's a fine how-do-you-do for a guy who had five growths removed from his colon on Saturday largely at the government's expense and had them promptly examined by government experts at the government-run National Naval Medical Center.

[More government idiocy] Congress: P2P networks harm national security

Habenero sends kid from cocky to owned in 10 seconds. (vid)
5 Ballpark promotions that went wrong (mentalfloss)
What went wrong: Believe it or not, a lot of people wanted to see disco records destroyed. 50,000 people showed up at the gates and many who were turned away at the gate tried to climb the walls of the stadium to get in. The crowd, who were reportedly heavily under the influence, soon realized that records could double as Frisbees, which naturally led to fans throwing firecrackers and drinks. When the demolition moment came, the explosion was bigger than expected and ended up ripping a hole in the outfield grass. Thousands of fans ran onto the field to join the mayhem, burning banners and throwing objects. The batting cages were even destroyed in the riot.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Doonsbury's War (Washington Post)
The Magical Grasp of Antiques (NewYorker)
Iraq hasn't even begun (LATimes)
In an article for the Web magazine Open Democracy, Middle East specialist Fred Halliday spells out some regional consequences. Besides the effective destruction of the Iraqi state, these include the revitalizing of militant Islamism and enhancement of the international appeal of the Al Qaeda brand; the eruption, for the first time in modern history, of internecine war between Sunni and Shiite, "a trend that reverberates in other states of mixed confessional composition"; the alienation of most sectors of Turkish politics from the West and the stimulation of authoritarian nationalism there; the strengthening of a nuclear-hungry Iran; and a new regional rivalry pitting the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies, including Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, against Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

For the United States, the world is now, as a result of the Iraq war, a more dangerous place. At the end of 2002, what is sometimes tagged "Al Qaeda Central" in Afghanistan had been virtually destroyed, and there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2007, there is an Al Qaeda in Iraq, parts of the old Al Qaeda are creeping back into Afghanistan and there are Al Qaeda emulators spawning elsewhere, notably in Europe.

Saturday, July 21, 2007



A nice gallery of home-welded cruiser bicycles including this front-wheel drive model. My fave.
The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth and Guantanamo Bay is practically a holiday camp. The annual cruise organized by the 'National Review,' mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.

Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives say whey they think we aren't listening.
"Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."
Hollywood Grateful Dead movie coming...
The Jive is back from break.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Thomas the Tank Engine goes Revolutionary Collectivist (Buyo)

Buzzcocks - What do I get?
Just like mom used to corrugate. The Chinese are getting out of control with this shit.

"You mean 60 percent cardboard? What is the other 40 percent?" asks the reporter. "Fatty meat," the man replies.

The bun maker and his assistants then give a demonstration on how the product is made.

Squares of cardboard picked from the ground are first soaked to a pulp in a plastic basin of caustic soda -- a chemical base commonly used in manufacturing paper and soap -- then chopped into tiny morsels with a cleaver. Fatty pork and powdered seasoning are stirred in.

Play Peak Oil before you live it (New Yorker)
$225K parking spot in Manhattan (NYTimes)


Typography in the sky
(auf Deutsch)
Baby Wooly Mammoth found intact in Northern Siberia

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

"Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter."
Neitzsche Family Circus pairs a random Family Circus cartoon with a random Neitzsche quote. Postmodern existentialist hilarity ensues.
Bush orders Surgeon General's office to censor or bury public health news. (NYTimes)

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Michael Moore tears shit up on CNN.

Give 'em hell, Mike.


Pencil jewelry
Another Lawnchair balloonist

Motorcycling around the world
Everything I Need To Know About Web Design I Learned Watching Oz
(A List Apart)
Determined to Reinspire a Culture of Innovation (nytimes)
But learning and investment are not enough, Dr. Wulf says. An innovation economy depends on intellectual property law, tax codes, patent procedures, export controls, immigration regulations and factors making up what he calls “the ecology of innovation.” Unfortunately, he argues, in the United States too many of these components are unworkable, irrelevant, inadequate, outdated or “fundamentally broken.”
More Cheney analysis in The Darksider (New Yorker)
With an avalanche of examples, Gellman and Becker show how Cheney successfully pushed tax cuts for the very rich that went beyond what even the President, wanly clinging to the shards of “compassionate conservatism,” and his economic advisers wanted. They show how Cheney’s stealthy domination of regulatory and environmental policy, driven by “unwavering ideological positions” and always exerted “for the benefit of business,” has resulted in the deterioration of air and water quality, the degradation and commercial exploitation of national parks and forests, the collapse of wild-salmon fisheries, and the curt abandonment of Bush’s 2000 campaign pledge to do something about greenhouse gases. They also reveal that it was Cheney who forced Christine Todd Whitman to resign as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, by dictating a rule that excused refurbished power plants and oil refineries from installing modern pollution controls. “I just couldn’t sign it,” she told them. Turns out she wasn’t so anxious to spend more time with her family after all.
Organization fetish (mojones)
American women would rather organize their closets than lose weight, according to a 2005 Rubbermaid survey.


Simplest unicycle ever (gizmodo)
I'm pretty sure I need one of these asap.


The napkin project
Why your pee is yellow.
DieKu - poetry made from tombstone text segments
Telephone Exchange Name Project

Friday, July 06, 2007


Possibly the most insanely great hip-hop album cover (and there are quite a few) I've ever seen. I have so many questions, not the least of which is why there are cigars on the fruit tray. Also to discuss: Where do you shop for bear-sized diamond sunglasses and japanese leisure robes?

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Virtual Haircut. Put your headphones on
(via bifurcated rivets)
[Spaceship Earth] I've always admired the jam-packed craziness of the Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap label. A new film profiles the man behind the label.
Whoa, Kate.
Optimus Prime has a bigger wikipedia entry than Jesus


7-11 Kwik-E-Mart Conversion! (flickr)
Room-sized mechanical binary K'Nex calculator
(gizmodo)

Monday, July 02, 2007

Deathbed confession: Roswell UFOs real
The Taliban's Opium War (New Yorker)
Doug Wankel walked up to an angry-looking farmer who was watching his field being destroyed and asked him, through an interpreter named Nazeem, how much he got for his opium. Twenty-one thousand Pakistani rupees for a four-kilo package, the farmer said, and he harvested three to four kilos per jirib (a local land measurement equivalent to about half an acre). He added, “I get only a thousand rupees per jirib of wheat, so I’m obliged to grow poppies.” That comes to about thirty-three dollars from an acre of wheat, and between five hundred and seven hundred dollars from an acre of poppies.
The End-Timers are hanging their tinfoil hats on a new date: 12/21/12
(NYTimes)
Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

From "Leaving No Tracks", the environmental segment of the Washington Post's excellent 4-part overview of Cheney's reign as VP.
Yeahh.... about that whole "Don't Be Evil" thing...
Google has a solution for the healthcare industry in the face of Michael Moore's amazing "Sicko" bombshell. Buy ads.

Pay attention: This is what selling your soul sounds like:

Or, as is often common, the media may use an isolated, heartbreaking, or sensationalist story to paint a picture of healthcare as a whole. With all the coverage, it’s a shame no one focuses on the industry’s numerous prescription programs, charity services, and philanthropy efforts.

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We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network

Sunday, July 01, 2007

"The Sun is filled with ice and gives no warmth at all. The sky was never blue. Stars are raindrops looking for a place to fall, and I never cared for you."
Minutemen - This Ain't No Picnic