2002: The Year in Technology

Cult claims clone. Is this a landmark for scientific progress through non-traditional channels, or the start of a dangerous trend? Or is it just a huge, honking lie?
Boisselier offered no immediate proof of her claim -- or photographs of the baby. She said the baby is healthy, and that the family is "very happy."

Say it aint so, Jerry "The King" Lawler! Kaufman feud was a hoax.

Oh no. Joe Strummer passed away. I just listened to London Calling in its entirety yesterday, and I'm still amazed at how great that record is. This is really sad news. The first web page I ever wrote ('early 94) was a tribute to the Clash. They wrote music that could change your life.

Loopers Delight is a fantastic starting point for anyone interested in the origins, tools, and methods of early tape-looping experiments. The original Echoplex {pix}. Tons of 'em on ebay.

Looped or repeated sounds can sometimes be hypnotically alluring. Gavin Bryars recorded an old London street person singing a devotional song in a frail paper-thin voice, looped it, and added lush orchestral accompanyment to create a sweeping masterpiece. On a 1993 revision of the piece Tom Waits joined in adding yet another dimension.
To me, this is the perfect Christmas song. Seekers will be able to find this 74 minute song out there in its entirety. Some articles on the piece:
Gavin Bryars - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet. [2] [3] (with clips)
"When I copied the loop... I left the door of the recording studio open... while I went downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual, and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping. I was puzzled until I realized that the tape was still playing and they had been overcome by the old man's unaccompanied singing."
Happy Holidays!

Snapshots from an unelected daddy's boy's terroristic war on American Citizens.

Secrets of "Divine Mushroom" reprinted from Life Magazine, May 13, 1957
"Vision-giving mushrooms are discovered in a remote Mexican village by a U.S. banker who describes the strange ritual and effects of eating them."
Richardson and I were the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms, which for centuries have been a secret of certain Indian peoples living far from the great world in southern Mexico. No anthropologists had ever described the scene that we witnessed.

[Too much book lernin'] What happens when academics deconstruct early Pink Floyd.
"Broadly, I argue that the 1968 studio single of "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" represents the successful convergence of particular improvisational idioms and conceptual strategies the group had begun to develop in their first two albums. More to the point, the studio track manifests a vital structural-textural rhythm, perception of which suggests a multidimensional sonic-experiential macrocosm: on one plane, a kind of heterophonic textural "infrastructure," while on the other, a kind of stereophonic space of affective depth."

Personally, I've always maintained that 'Axe's' (as it's known in these quarters) heterophonicity was contextually integral (if not obviously so), but to cite "affective depth" in this idiomatic space? OUTLANDISH! I challenge you sir, to a rock-off!

["I am a bad-ass mother-***** and I need some shuteye"] Trouble sleeping? It's most likely alien abductions that are causing those fitful nights and groggy mornings, and it turns out that with a little salt and common lamplight (!?) your troubles will soon be over. Here's your guide to preventing alien abductions. Excellent use of the mysterious "Nordic connection" as well as lizards. [hey hey, Bifurcated Rivets]

"The abductors (the greys, Nordics or whatever) may respond with "We don't care about your God! Resistance is useless!" or something like that. You could retort, "Aw shaddup! Who asked you!?" Be MEAN! Be a bad-ass mother-****!"

Personal note: If you happen to be a bad guy/aggressor/evil dictator/etc., don't ever say "Resistance is futile!". Ever. In every movie where the bad guy says this, you can bet that resistance wasn't, after all, futile. You'll surely eat your words, and quite possibly end up in a cage with foot-thick lucite walls and guards posted at each corner, with only the sporadic chess-match visit from your one-time foe to look forward to.

How does one get to be a propagandist? My Monster search turned up nothing, but these guys are out there, and they're getting their gigs somehow. I think it would be a great job to have. Once you're in and you start producing, I could imagine that the government would take pretty good care of you as far as benefits, vacations, etc. You're not going to want to piss off a propagandist, after all. I wonder if the projects that you'd work on, say the recent 'shared values' campaign that got banned in Lebanon', are fun-fun, or ironic-fun? If anyone has any further information, I'd definitely be interested in finding out how I could help a cause (any reasonable, just cause) by developing propaganda. I'm interested in over-the-top, old fashioned propaganda, not the lite/ad firm stuff. Something pictorial to communicate with the illiterate, or something catchphrase-heavy (e.g. the delightful "Axis of Evil"... Who thought that gem up?!) would be ideal, as my influences run heavily toward WWI thru Constructivism with a dash of cold-war era paranoia. I'm quite serious about this, but I wouldn't even know what secret government agency to contact to get the ball rolling. My portfolio is available upon request. Interested parties should inquire immediately- you don't want the other spook agencies snapping me up first!

Hubble photographs colliding galaxies tearing eachother apart.

An interview with the curator of the Museum of Hoaxes.

Interactive exhibit of new WTC designs.

Paul McCartney flips songwriting credits and Beatlephiles cry foul.

New WTC design plans will be unveiled today, this time not as "boring" or "crammed with office space" as the batch seen last July.

Blogger archives are still dead... Does anyone else have this problem? Blogger people won't help.

There's a new page up at Get Your War On.

The Gnu Radio Project

Bushes on Enron. An 6-year old Enron party tape surfaced (this appears to be what Republicans do when not bashing minorities) where company executives joke about "hypothetical future value accounting".
At the party, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush pleaded with Kinder: "Don't leave Texas. You're too good a man." And his father, former President Bush, told Kinder, "You have been fantastic to the Bush family. I don't think anybody did more than you did to support George."

Here's another execu-quip by Richard Causey, the former chief accounting officer:
"I've been on the job for a week managing earnings, and it's easier than I thought it would be," Causey said. "I can't even count fast enough with the earnings rolling in."

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to unveil its national do-not-call program so you'll never be hounded by telemarketers again. PA already has one but it doesnt work.

Bush's insane mandate for war goes forward. Do you think he's got a secret wish to start killing impoverished children by Christmas morning?

Public libraries are being asked to 'cooperate' with the FBI, who spies on citizen computer use, as well as lists of what you've been reading. Here are some technically legal signs for librarians with who disagree with the faux-president Bush's Nazi Patriot act.

Opinions: Everybody's got 'em! Best Albums of 2002 - Best Albums of 2002 - Best Albums of 2002 - Best Albums of 2002 - Best Albums of 2002 - Best Albums of 2002

More baddies to satisfy your 'worst of' fever. This time its albums. The Onion AV Club's corresponding best-of is here too.

What's a villians list for 2002 look like without Bush, Cheney, or Ashcroft? Perhaps they thought that the inclusion of the gleesome threesome would be too journalistically 'obvious'. Here 'tis. The Most Loathesome People in America 2002.

Blogger has not been letting me publish for the last couple of days... It looks like it works again.

An open letter of apology to the rest of the world on behalf of Americans from DubyaDubyaDubya.com

Stereolab's Mary Hansen died this week in London after being struck by a car on her bicycle. Pitchforkmedia has an interview with Mary from 1996. The band's site his here.

Are you the kind of guy who loves to hump heavy gear for petulant pop stars? Yes? Then you'll love roadie.net!

This has probably made the jokey email rounds already, but a funny picture nonetheless.

The Stinking Badges site. "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"
This site aims to be the primary Internet resource for any and all references to the aforementioned quote.

Say it aint so, Ray Wallace... Big Bigfoot news today. The hoaxer died, and the family finally revealed his report to be a hoax.
"He did it just for the joke and then he was afraid to tell anybody because they'd be so mad at him," explained nephew Dale Lee Wallace, who says he still has the carved-alder feet that Wallace used to kick off the legend."
Well I for one am not going to believe anyone with the bad sense to be named 'Dale Lee'. The monster is out there! Lets redouble our efforts and bring him out of of the Forests of Oregon... or Maine, or New Jersey.

Hey! Where the hell did my archives go? Those were freakin' pearls dammit!

The Ron DuPont online museum of crushed, elongated, stamped pennies. The Penny Page, and The Squished Penny museum (which features an ultra-hot 'Penny Of The Month) join Ron in his search for the best mangled coins.

More PhD party tricks: Physicists levitate a floppy wire.
"It shouldn't work, but it stands upside down," says Tom Mullin. The vibrating piece of curtain wire in his laboratory has baffled physicists for several years.

A really nice 404.

The fact that a boatload of missles was headed to Yemen from North Korea was discovered is alarming. What's unexcusable is the horrible job they did trying to hide the missle boxes. What the hell were they thinking? "Don't look under those neat rows of cement bags! There's nothing under there!' Isn't cement basically sand and glue? Hmmm... shipping heavy bags of mostly sand TO THE MIDDLE EAST from Korea... by boat. They should have packed the boxes in something less conspicuous... like clown makeup kits.

[You think your broker screwed you?] A full service broker that will bend you over backward for you. What does he give his male clients?

[My pledge of quality not fucking things up as bad as you] It says here that United is losing 20 Million a day. Maybe they should stop using liquified money as jet fuel. Either that, or put me in charge. Hey United, if you're listening, I personally guarantee that I could do the job and only lose like 17 Million a day. That's as if you're practically making 3 Million a day! Sounds great doesn't it? Gimme a shot, babies. What do you have to lose, besides millions of dollars a day?

My guess is that Dick Cheney is building a batcave.

Despite the fact that Harley riders are mostly a bunch of brand-shilling, middle-aged weekend-riders who are looking for something to be snobbish about, there's a rich heritage of redneck culture to be mined from the days when bikers were filthy and didn't care if everything they owned was factory authorized. Dave Mann painted the centerfolds to EasyRider magazine, and you can see his work on this great site. Courtesy of Sharpeworld.

Mail Art!, EMMA (The Electronic Museum of Mail Art), and a huge international list if you're really interested in sending great looking letters to people.

Lingerie designer makes bra and panties out of human hair.

Infamatory 'Burning Bush' comment lands punster in jail. It gets better... His defense is (get this!) the right to free speech!
"I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush," Humphreys testified during his trial. "I had said that before and I thought it was funny."

Lego sets off a South Pacific cultural war with their Bionicle toy line.
The controversy started last year when Lego launched Bionicle, a new range of action figures. Bionicle involves a group of imaginary inhabitants of the island of Mata Nui, who are under the power of an evil beast called Makuta. Six heroes called the Toa are sworn to liberate the island's inhabitants. In this story line, Lego used a mix of Polynesian words, including some Maori words.

Ever come across a page where you can't figure out whether its real or not, but regardless you just wonder why? why? why? Ill Mitch has one of those pages.

[Pot Stickers] Commercial marijuana label design

Isamu Noguchi
"Everything is sculpture. Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture."
The Garden Museum, another, Art Cyclopedia, and @designboom

Two Van Goghs were stolen from Amsterdam museum!

[Republican Rights-abuse Rampage] These people hate you and your snooping little cameras. Watch where you point your Kodak (even if its a vaguely defined "vicinity" of where the VP might be staying). You could wind up in jail. This guy did. Thanks, MeFi
Events like these are clearly marking the beginning of the end of the United States of America. What takes its place may be called the same thing, but it'll look like this:
Maginnis's lawyer contacted the Denver Police Department for an explanation of the day's events, but the police denied ever having Maginnis - or anyone matching his description - in custody. At press time, the Denver PD's Press Information Office did not return telephone messages left by 2600.

The new police powers introduced by the USA-PATRIOT act, in the name of fighting terrorism, have been frightening in their apparent potential for abuse. Mike Maginnis's experience on Tuesday is a poignant example of how this abuse is beginning to occur. It suggests that a wide range of activities which might be considered "suspicious" could be suddenly labeled a prelude to terrorism, and be grounds for arrest.

Have some pi, math junkies. We're several billion decimals closer to knowing its true value.

Students caught cheating using cell-phone email.

Merry Christmas! (to the 94% who still have jobs) The unemployment rate surged to 6% in November.

Who will watch the watchers? FBI teams up with the mob on murders, a US attorney in Boston reports. (NYTimes link). Meanwhile, each of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the new, totally redundant Department of Homeland Security (aren't the other three already supposed to be doing this?) each want more power. The Washington Post reports that Bush is trying to shovel more power toward his cronies in Homeland Security, so they can have 'undigested' case-level data for their own investigations.

Are cheap PCs the critical mass needed to break Microsoft's chokehold on the home computer market? Wal-Mart has one for $199.

The secret behind "Big Daddy" Ed Roth's custom one-of-a-kind hot rod car building techniques using molding plaster and fiberglass.

Is this guy transparent or what? Absolutely foaming at the mouth with anticipation to bomb poor people, Bush is rejecting any and all news that doesn't read in favor of his plans to wage war on Iraq.

Wars as timelines. A fascinating look at the amazing frequency, consistency, and geographic distribution of how people kill oneanother. Yo, Metafilter

So you want to learn Esperanto...

Paper prototyping kit for web design.

Java-based interactive thesaurus by Plum design.
A fantastic interface showing an active universe of words. A must-see for fans of Java interface design.

Why we use QWERTY.

TextArc - a art project/visual text interface that emphasises non-linear contextual relationships rather than linear traversal to show meaning. Think of it as a combination of Bauhaus and Evelyn Wood. They use Alice in Wonderland as an example. Great interface. Thanks, Memepool

Five wall street firms were fined for not keeping company emails.

Back in town...