Tuesday, June 30, 2009

How to start and drive a Ford Model T (yt, via metafilter)

Monday, June 29, 2009

NYTimes Krugman on US Congress members' Treason against the planet

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.


Sunday, June 28, 2009

America's Corporate Shell Game
They make no attempt to hide the bad news for the U.S. Economy–“return on assets for U.S. companies has steadily fallen to almost one quarter of 1965 levels,at the same time that we have seen continued, albeit much more modest, improvements in labor productivity.” The meaning of this is staggering–any productivity gains from the digital revolution have been more than wiped out by our corporate (as well as personal) addiction to debt.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

A big list of pseudonyms
Right-ear advantage (via /.)


Volcanic eruption from space
The Great Johnny Quest Documentary
Map of the USA, showing only streets and roads.
Excellent article: The Truth about the Insurance Industry (washington post)

What drove Potter from the health insurance business was, well, the health insurance business. The industry, Potter says, is driven by "two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical-benefit ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits."

Think about that term for a moment: The industry literally has a term for how much money it "loses" paying for health care.

The best way to drive down "medical-loss," explains Potter, is to stop insuring unhealthy people.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Ugh.. Now ASCAP is claiming that your mobile phone ringing is 'a public performance', and they want to get paid. (techdirt)

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Cardboard cloud


Milk Bottle Banksy

Pentagram's ideas for cigarette marketing
Symptom of the American Way: Beautiful train stations, wrecked and replaced by hideous, utilitarian contemporary crap.
(via boingboing)

Monday, June 22, 2009

Momma don't take my Kodachrome away
Throwing the "T" word around: The DOD classifies any protest as "low level terrorism"
(salon)
Lancaster, PA spies on itself (LA Times)
"Years ago, there's no way we could do this," said Keith Sadler, Lancaster's police chief. "It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell and '1984.' It's just funny how Americans have softened on these issues."

"No one talks about it," agreed Scott Martin, a Lancaster County commissioner who wants to expand the program. "Because people feel safer. Those who are law-abiding citizens, they don't have anything to worry about."
Hi-Tech's Great Leap Backward
WSJ on China's censorware and blocking policy.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Hunch
NYTime's Frank Rich on how the far Republican right's toxic rhetoric is getting increasingly closer to a treasonous call-to-arms.

Friday, June 12, 2009

When I am emperor, every town will have a goat tower (via boingboing)
Daily Show's Jason Jones on a funny, if snarky, tear-down of the New York Times.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

20,000 app iphone hyperwall
Surf Logo Library (via coudal)
Move over Comic Sans... it's the jockstrap font

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

30 Rock is a rip-off of The Muppet Show
IETI: Invitation to Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Is a blog set up to allow for alien posts. Featured on this week's This American Life

Monday, June 08, 2009

20 bookshelves

Friday, June 05, 2009

This is just hilariously evil. As in 'Dick Cheney' hilariously evil.

Bunny Burgers

Obama heiroglyphic


Designboom visits Riva boats. Nice pics of superdeluxe Chriscraft-inspired wood-decked cruisers.
(somebody do a Makemag or instructable on a Little Squid copy!)
Brainstormer: draw what you spin.
A hand-carved stamp tutorial.
Threads of Change: greenpeace tshirts from around the world
So I guess this means I shouldn't be expecting that crunchberry tree I planted to yield too much fruit later this summer?
I'm no hardcore gamer, and I've certainly got no love for Micro$oft, but could Natal be the Wii-killer?

Wednesday, June 03, 2009


A visual history of the credit card