Amazingly descriptive URLs XXIV: pdf-mags

Martian soil, on the rocks.
Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

The Saul Bass Archive of movie credit sequences

The Pattern Foundry

Getty Images' Moodstream team has done some nice interface work.

This is a landmark day in the history of journalistic integrity. The Washington Post announced a ban on the utterly ridiculous AP, due to the latter's claims of infringement in fair-use blog citings.

So here's our new policy on A.P. stories: they don't exist. We don't see them, we don't quote them, we don't link to them. They're banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.

NYTimes article with some background on the issue here.

Gore Vidal weighs in on Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment and, as usual, pulls no punch.

Naturally, I do not want to sound hard, but let me point out that even a banana Republican would be distressed to discover how much of our nation’s treasury has been siphoned off by our vice president in the interest of his Cosa Nostra company, Halliburton, the lawless gang of mercenaries set loose by this administration in the Middle East.

A New Yorker piece on the amazing, always spot-on, my-hero Keith Olbermann

Olbermann suddenly had another sensation, unrelated to neurology—a feeling, he later recalled, that was “like being hit by lightning.” He sat down at his computer and began to write. After an hour, he had the first draft of a lacerating indictment of Bush, a twelve-minute-long (eighteen pages in teleprompter script) j ’accuse, addressed personally to the President.

Propamanga (salon)
The context: In August, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington will sail into Yokosuka Harbor, the first nuclear-propelled ship to be "forward deployed" in Japan. Some Japanese, having a certain history with the U.S. and matters nuclear, are believed to feel anxiety about the prospect. So the Navy commissioned two Japanese artists to create a graphic novel/comic book -- known in Japan and by consumers of Japanese pop culture worldwide as "manga" -- in an effort to assuage nervousness by portraying daily life aboard the USS George Washington.

Note to self: I seriously need to update my blog template. 2 stylesheet overhauls in 10 years is just laziness, plain and simple.

I usually don't get overly excited about the bleeding edge of watch design, but these are cool.

'Daily' and 'Jive' are 1350th and 48456th respectively in frequency, at least according to WordCount

The ghost mall in South China (probably needs some ghost pop being piped through their speakers)

Pingmag has a nice article on Kumiko latticwork

A nice video introduction and detail info on The Chicago Spire - a new residential skyscraper on Lake Michigan.

Kucinich introduces Bush impeachment articles
About time. Let's see if the vaporspines that pass for Democrats these days step up to support it.

"Resolved," Kucinich then began, "that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate. ...

"In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power..."

The 7 Deadly glasses for the mortal sinner who has everything.

Adah Menken: The First Broadway Star (popmatters)
Straightaway, Menken put Sarony on notice, “All attempts to photograph me have been failures.” Sarony took eight poses of her. According to Sarony, the finished product caused her to squeal with delight: “Oh you dear, delightful darling little man! I’m going to kiss you for that.” Sarony recorded his opinion of Menken after she died: “Adah Menken was the most remarkable mingling of angel and devil that ever wore petticoats.”

Booby trap that Diet Coke with a mentos bomb. I'm not sure who your victims will be, but I'm sure they'll deserve it.

So... the MPAA sent some DMCA takedown notices to a laser printer.

vintagraph has some great old poster repros you can buy

Tough day at the office? Not this tough, I hope.

How We Read (sciencedaily)
Now ground-breaking research by cognitive psychologist Professor Simon Liversedge and his team at the University of Southampton has shown that this is not actually the case. They found that our eyes are actually up to something much more exciting when we read - our eyes look at different letters in the same word and then combine the different images through a process known as fusion.

None more black.

A nice catalog page of early visual media (from drawn)
The anamorphoses are especially interesting.

Roland Kirk plays some of the finest nose-blues you've ever heard.

The 10 most Incomprehensible Bob Dylan interviews of all time
(nymag)
But who can blame him? I wish I had a dime for every time I said:

"Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?"

David Byrne plays the building (nytimes)

Kew Gardens Treetop Walk

I want a bungalowinabox (via coudal)

A photo a day for 20 years. (veryshortlist)

Just an question I'll throw out there: Does anyone on earth doubt the legitimacy of anything that former Whitehouse spokesman Scott McLelland claimed in his new book? Why is Bush even reacting?

And just because he's finally telling a watered down version of the truth about the utter villainy that went on in the Bush administration doesn't mean he should be forgiven. This guy was complicit in the treachery and subversion of democracy that Bush inflicted upon American citizens for 8 years. He fed the public lies, greased the skids for the enormous paydays that administration insiders are still enjoying, and should be remembered as a crook and a liar.

Canadian border guards to check for ipod infringement?
The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.

The-View-Through-the-Legs in design

A Milk Bottles collection.
If you're looking to start a collection yourself, there are still plenty of dairies who use glass milk bottles today. Or if you live in rural PA, you could just get Mr. Milkman to deliver to your door.

Nice art at John Burgerman's blog

8 Child Prodigies So Amazing They'll Ruin Your Day

How to Ruin a Joke (SomethingAwful)
Indeed.

I've got Detention anxiety. The Last Roundup (Radar)
"There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

16% of high school science teachers are creationists (NewScientist)

Some crazy-good new paintings from Tim Biskup at Jonathan Levine Gallery

Winds of Change (Salon)
A stunning new report just issued by the Bush administration finds that for under 2 cents a day per household, Americans could get 300 gigawatts of wind by 2030. That would:

Reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent in 2030.

Reduce natural gas use by 11 percent.

Reduce cumulative water consumption associated with electricity generation by 4 trillion gallons by 2030.

Support roughly 500,000 jobs in the U.S.

The report doesn't mention that this would require adopting policies the Bush administration opposes. But that's what elections are for.

The people who have traditionally waged war in meat-space are becoming increasingly interested in online attacks against. And vice-versa.

A nice animated short by Chris Ware for This American Life about a Jackie O sighting. (via drawn)

DIY rail locomotives. Just make sure the tracks you choose aren't being used by the real thing.

Paperback Writer: The Story Behind the Song
When he wrote Paperback Writer, McCartney had been living in an attic room in his girlfriend's parent's large townhouse on Wimpole Street for almost two years. His girlfriend, Jane Asher, and her brother, Peter, then in Peter and Gordon, were both well- read and had large collections of books. The influence of living in an upper-middle class artistic household on McCartney was immense: he attended first nights, art openings, concerts of experimental music, all of which fed into his musical compositions. By this time he was collecting his own library.

Photographer Joni Sternbach's Surfers tintypes
(via gmtplus9)

build, share, download fonts, free at fontstruct

Things younger than John McCain

The One Line Illustrations of Will Scobie
(via drawn)

Dickipedia

Sub Rosa: Emails from the Dead (popmatters)
Posthumous e-mail services are an example of what has been described as the “transcendence industries”, enterprises that can be loosely divided into two categories: those that place emphasis on pragmatic issues, and those that cater to emotional fears and needs (though there is, of course, much overlap between the two). The practical services allow you to leave vital posthumous instructions for family and friends concerning such things as funeral arrangements, financial records, estate details, and insurance plans.

Blogger now lets you post in the future. Expect a nice note from me on May 6, 2108.

New York Times crossword drawings (via drawn)

Interview with Japanese character illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (PingMag)

Strange portraits by Richard Moon

Get a free, DRM-less copy of Nine Inch Nails latest album, The Slip, here.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

Send your name to the moon

Soviet Slots!

Hitsville, UK is dedicated to punk-era UK record sleeves

Another beautiful collection of 78rpm record labels.

Bad and getting worse: Gas is bad here, but it's $12/gallon in Aruba and $18.50 in Sierra Leone.
There's always Venezuela, where you can get a gallon for $0.12.

Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren on "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class" (via metafilter)

Until I see this for sale in the back of a comic book, I'm not going to believe it's real.

This robot music sounds kind of robot-y

The comic blundering and ineptitude of the Bush Administration (or willful and premeditated subversion of justice, depending on how you look at it) apparently extends to its IT department. How they "lost" 5,000,000 emails.

The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

BBC's Stephen Fry's 6-part Documentary on Gutenberg

Idiot security guard uses authority and a father gets his kid taken away from him at a ballgame after he mistakenly orders him a 'hard' lemonade.
And so what had begun as an outing to the ballpark ended with Leo crying himself to sleep in front of a television inside the Child Protective Services building, and Ratte and his wife standing on the sidewalk outside, wondering when they'd see their little boy again.
(detroit free press)

"We are in the midst of a financial crisis the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression."
George Soros on the bangup job we're doing with our economy.

Vint Cerf's "What I've Learned" at 64 (Esquire)

People are becoming immune to street art (youtube)

6 stools from a cube

Toshiba Household Nuke
Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.

More Bush Administration subversion of the free press in to an echoplex of pro-war talking points. (nytimes)

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Fake-ass pop music just got fake-asser

Kewpie Pasta Sauce Invasion!
(via coudal)

Wirepod

Art of the Title Sequence

Flogos
Somebody make this stop.

The FBI Lied to increase its powers under the PATRIOT act.

The strange episode is recounted in newly declassified documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents shed new light on how senior FBI officials' determination to gain independence from judicial oversight slowed its own investigation, and led the bureau's director to offer inaccurate testimony to Congress. The revelations are likely to play a key role in Capitol Hill hearings Tuesday and Wednesday on the FBI's use of so-called national security letters, or NSLs

Papal Skateboard Design Contest, sponsored by the Archdiocese of New York in honor of the Pope's upcoming visit.

On not understanding the context of our present: "What Have We Learned, If Anything" (nybooks)
War was not just a catastrophe in its own right; it brought other horrors in its wake. World War I led to an unprecedented militarization of society, the worship of violence, and a cult of death that long outlasted the war itself and prepared the ground for the political disasters that followed. States and societies seized during and after World War II by Hitler or Stalin (or by both, in sequence) experienced not just occupation and exploitation but degradation and corrosion of the laws and norms of civil society. The very structures of civilized life—regulations, laws, teachers, policemen, judges— disappeared or else took on sinister significance: far from guaranteeing security, the state itself became the leading source of insecurity. Reciprocity and trust, whether in neighbors, colleagues, community, or leaders, collapsed. Behavior that would be aberrant in conventional circumstances— theft, dishonesty, dissemblance, indifference to the misfortune of others, and the opportunistic exploitation of their suffering—became not just normal but sometimes the only way to save your family and yourself. Dissent or opposition was stifled by universal fear.

Hey! My major is finally getting some respect.

Next American City's "Respect for the Human Scale"
I don’t think we’re going to have to make a whole lot of further accommodations to the automobile. I’m serenely convinced that the automobile is going to be a diminishing presence in our lives. We’re not going to come up with any “miracle” or “rescue remedy” for the petroleum scarcity problem.

I think you’re going to see an interesting political problem arise, where motoring simply becomes an elite activity again and will be greatly resented by the masses of Americans.

Purdue Rube Goldberg contraption winner: 156-step hamburger maker
(rubemachine)

Local cost of the Iraq War: FY 2008
See what W's senseless bloodbath is costing your town/county this year!

King Khan and BBQ Show - Waddlin' Around

Wanderlust - 2d

Bjork - Wanderlust (2d), with 3d version to come later this month. Making-of video is here

"What are the most important problems in your field? Are you working on one of them? Why not?"
"You and Your Research" (pdf)
A transcript of an excellent talk given by Richard Hamming given at Bell Labs in 1986 on what makes great science.

Amygdala links a bunch of awesomely bad military patches

On restaurant logos...

In the U.K., they REALLY don't want you not watching TV!

Going for Broke (NewYorker)
In recent months, a lot of people have been handed financial get-out-of-jail-free cards. C.E.O.s who presided over billions in losses have walked away with tens of millions in compensation. The Federal Reserve has showered cheap money on banks and brokerages. Even Bear Stearns caught a break when, last week, J. P. Morgan agreed to quintuple the price it will pay to take over the firm. But there’s one group for whom forgiveness has not been forthcoming: ordinary consumers struggling with piles of credit-card debt. For them, escaping the burden of their bad decisions and their bad luck has become much harder.

The Green Light (Vanity Fair)
As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges.

Solve Difficult Domino Problem; Win Solid Gold Domino

Paper Tea House

Pac-Txt

USA 2008: The Great Depression

The music industry's latest extortion scheme: preemptive, presumptive taxation
The plan—the boldest move yet to keep the wounded entertainment industry giants afloat—is simple: Consumers will pay a monthly fee, bundled into an internet-service bill in exchange for unfettered access to a database of all known music.

There are so many problems with this that I don't even know where to begin. What about those that don't want Warner's crap product? What about deaf/hearing impaired customers? Why should I pay for the failed business model for an industry that I hate? What precedent does this set for other failed campaign contributors? Am I supposed to pay a Ford tax because they make garbage cars that nobody wants anymore? This is utter bullshit. Let the music industry die the slow, painful death it so rightfully deserves.

Virgle: The Virgin/Google Mars Mission: Apply
While you're at it, bend time.