shadow illusion

How to talk to a climate skeptic (grist.org)

Hate to say it, but Microsoft Surface looks pretty cool.
Video demos:
Teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3g4pXdXRo

"The Magic"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYrJ1IkPNLc

"The Possibilities":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP5y7yp06n0

Apparently, the Bush administration doesn't mind getting false positives among the law-abiding citizen population when looking for "terrorists".

The same folks, however, will under no circumstances tolerate false positives when ID'ing cows.

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

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.

A must-read belated Memorial Day letter from a father who lost a son
(Washington Post)

Film subtitling as art

Pictures of chicks playing banjo. (via J-Walk)

Declaring email bankruptcy (Washington Post)

No Honor No Degree for Andrew Card (youtube)
Every once in a while, someone from the despicable Bush administration crawls out of the isolation of his information-proof bunker and hears what the public really thinks.
Card last made press when it was revealed that he pressured a then-critically ill John Ashcroft - in his hospital bed - to reauthorize Bush's illegal secret domestic wiretapping program.

Red Raven animated records
(RetroThing)

Pic courtesy of moteldemoka, where you can hear some great music.

Toast Printer. Indeed.

The crack editorial staff at the Daily Jive is always out looking for oddball audio clips... Despite the pervasiveness of youtube and the gazillion or so audio blogs, true weirdness is getting harder and harder to come by. What promises to be interesting often turns out to be half-assed attempts at cutesy irony, or annoying geek humor.

So - we were delighted to find The Shemp Tapes on WFMU's blog.

Here's the description:
A microphone pointed in the general direction of a TV set unspooling videotaped Shemp-era Three Stooges two-reelers, quarter-inch reel-to-reel Ampex tape running down the hallway at seven and a half inches per second--Mousetrap-like, speeding past pencils sticking out of thread spools held down to the floor with duct tape, bounced into two reverb guitar pedals, ricocheted into a Radio Shack 4-track mixer and then knocked back into the Old Man's reel-to-reel Sony Furshluginner from Nineteen-fifty-something. What led to and what happened after that, I couldn't tell you--especially today. I was on a sleepless Shempified mission back in my clueless youth and fully under the impression that I was not alone. I listen back to these tapes and wonder what the hell I was thinking about. I realize now that neither mind nor flesh could resist the ethereal Eee Beee Beee Beeee--the calls to arms for chucklefucks everywhere to rise and to conk their collected coconuts to the funny sound effects glory of OW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!!

I'm warning you - this is the most batshit-insane audio you'll ever hear.
Shemp in Pain: http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/MS/PAIN.mp3

Put it in the mix at full clockwise at your next barbeque, and watch the fun blossom.

If you're an internet pirate, don't blow up toilets.
(NYTimes)

Yeah, baby!

Real-life pirate hangouts (via boingboing)

Your #1 source for your #2 business. Nuff said.

Summer 67, 40 years later
A series of articles on the Summer of Love from the San Francisco Chronicle

A massive archive of Currier and Ives prints

Mingering Mike - Imaginary Soul Superstar
I just checked out the new book that catalogs the 1968-1977 discography of Washington D.C.'s Mingering Mike, and I'm blown away by the man's commitment to a career that never existed. I've known people that never worked half as hard at jobs they were paid for. Mingering Mike created an astonishing array of artwork for singles, albums, and soundtracks - none of which he ever recorded, or even intended to record. Through his magic-marker artwork, you can trace the career of a would-be showbiz dynamo, as he cruises effortlessly from soul to funk to disco to the white satin champagne jams that drive ladies wild. We should all minger so well. I wonder what his imaginary backing band is doing these days?
Get it.
NPR covers Mingering Mike

A Note Placed in the Pay Envelope of Billy "The Piano Man" Joel
(McSweeneys)

A huge article on the Power of Networks (social) from Forbes

P-Soup is cool flash that plays with layered, interfering patterns.
(from Potatoland)

Four must-see videos from late-50's brother-sister rockabilly act, the Collins Kids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyLA81eLr8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er9NrY1czV4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk2Hxp2tdic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9cACWeSPGE

Thanks, Daddy-O.

"This chamber is, for the most part, silent—ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate."
Sen. Robert Byrd, D, WV, prior to the Iraq invasion.
From the forthcoming book "The Assault on Reason" by Al Gore, excerpted in Time

Taking the fantasy out of fantasy football
50,000 MyFootballClub members are about to bid for an English football club. They will make history together, voting on team selection and on which players to buy and sell.

Members will attempt to guide the club up the leagues, sharing equal ownership and control. Just like a football management game – but for real

"Tinky Winky sad whenever someone dies, but ..." He left it hanging there.

Tinky, you're too kind. Good riddance.

Cigarette card gallery

Bush administration proposal would criminalize "attempted" copyright infringement.

Microsoft is making noise about Linux patent violation again. (money)
Well worth reading.

And here's a nugget of that Ballmer charm we've all come to expect:

In the meantime, with Microsoft seemingly barred from striking pacts with distributors, only one avenue appears open to it: paying more friendly visits to its Fortune 500 customers, seeking direct licenses.

If push comes to shove, would Microsoft sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has?

"That's not a bridge we've crossed," says CEO Ballmer, "and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you."

No wonder software developers with a soul hate Micro$oft so fiercely.

Slate's Illustrated Guide to GOP Scandals!

Trikke - Cool human powered trike based on using angular momentum for forward propulsion.

25 Most Exquisitely Sad Songs in the Whole World

Gone (mother jones)
It is a fact widely accepted by biologists but little known by the population at large. By the end of the century, half of all species on Earth may be extinct. Who will survive the world's dwindling biodiversity, and why?

Brilliant. (youtube) via boingboing

Some brilliant cartoon illustration at DanBobThompson's blog

Saw Fernando Orellana'a Drawing Machine v2 at the Science Center artbots show in Philly yesterday. A really cool concept.
Fernando - If you're reading this, change your bic! It's out of ink.

“The art world is the biggest joke going,” he has said. “It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.”
Banksy profile in New Yorker

Cassette wallets from designboom

Pebble MP3 players

An amazing short from studiosmack that shows the ubiquity of urban advertising in high contrast
(via coudal)

New York gets its Gehry (Vanity Fair)

They're bringing back H.R. Pufnstuf?

Pen and ink drawings of Rick Froberg

What does $456 Billion buy?
Including the $124.2 billion bill, the total cost of the Iraq war may reach $456 billion in September, according to the National Priorities Project, an organization that tracks public spending.

Django Reinhardt - 1939

If you're in or near Philly tonight, come see my band Jet Weston and his Atomic Ranch Hands play at Whiskey Dix on N.7th tonight at 10PM! Say hey! I'll be the guy on upright bass.

A collossal flickr pool (~4000 images) of tiled space invader guys

Revisions to the architecture of hell
(strangeharvest)

Subway systems of the world, presented on the same scale.
(via designobserver)

How to speak and write postmodern

Cool vid of the Kaye effect (via Bifurcated Rivets)

The $5 cracker box amp (pdf), from make:

Top 100 drinking songs
(via wfmu)

Small Potatoes

Pictures from the Rust Belt

Ceiling height affects how you think, feel, and act
(via lifehacker)
“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,” said Meyers-Levy. “They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics.”

Oh shit.

Freedom of information not so free. Cryptome was recently shut down by it's ISP, Verio - with no explanation.

The Blues: Having different words for light and dark blue may affect how we see them (Nature)

500 year old musical code cracked in Scotland's Rosslyn Chapel