Wider Angle: Wider Angle Monday Reader for 11.20.06

There was no Sunday Reader yesterday because Allyson and I were in line for 12 hours at Nintendo World to score one of the first Wiis sold. Check out pics from the Times Square party that we attended initially before we walked over to Nintendo World. It's the funnest console ever.

It would be a better idea to get your child a Wii than a children's tattoo gun.

Michael Richards (of Seinfeld fame) was performing at The Laugh Factory in L.A. on Friday when a black man interrupted his act. Richards yelled for the man to be removed because "He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger!" "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass." He continued to unhinge himself as people from the crowd yelled "That's uncalled-for!" The more he yelled, the more people arose from their seats and left. Must be seen to be believed. I don't know if Richards thought this was funny, but it's so far from funny that you'd need a spaceship to get to funny from here. [via Digg]

CNN published an awesome uber 1337 guide to new tech that's making the rounds. The Gizmodo headline says it all: CNN's Guide To Innovative Tech: DVRs, Cellphones, the Wheel and Movable Type.

Four Thanksgiving-themed New Yorker covers this week by Chris Ware. [via kottke]

Smoking pot impairs your memory for the short term, which tends to be why people smoke it to forget the world, but now we may know why. Synapses in the hippocampus (in the brain, not at Zoo College) fire in sync normally, but when covered in THC (the fun part in marijuana) they fire asynchronously, meaning that memory is retained with a lower level of success. While this could explain why high doodz forget what they're saying in mid-sentence, it could also help to explain why it's easier to develop new ideas and discover new connections.

Rather than let K-Fed make millions from the infamous sex tape, Britney Spears may release it on her own for free to spite him. "Yep, nothing like sticking it to your ex-husband by giving away what diginity you have left for free." [via digg]

Check out the beautiful and brilliant Executive Coloring Book.

LG has a spiffy new fridge that has an outside flip-out door for bottles of stuff like milk, OJ, or gin and vermouth and a jar of olives and a couple chilled glasses.

Allyson made some delicious vegan crab cakes a few days ago that use tofu and wheat bread instead of crab. They taste fantastic and are super healthy.

For their 50th anniversary, New Scientist asked dozens of great thinkers to predict the future. Grab a brandy, this will take a while.

YTMND posted a hilarious video of Darth Vader on Wheel of Fortune.

Explosions in the Sky will be performing in New York as part of the Wordless Music Series at the Society for Ethical Culture Concert Hall on February 20, 2007. Opening for them will be Ayano Kataoka and tickets are a very reasonable $15.

Will It Blend? Major props to Blendtec, a blender manufacturer, for putting together a series in which they totally abuse their products to blend stuff that was never meant to be put in a blender.

Making online gambling illegal in the United States will not make the gambling industry more legitimate. (Duh?) It's only driving the industry further underground, and when gambling in a browser can be totally rigged with no regulation, that's a disaster. "The Act has its teeth in the wrong ass."

As totally awesome and limitlessly promising as nanotechnology is, the particles are so small that if they're accidentally inhaled or even looked at too closely, you sorta die. "There is some evidence that nanoparticles can move into the brain along the olfactory nerve, so this is completely circumventing the blood-brain barrier."

A new drug may make you younger, more fit, and more resistant to disease, and it doesn't seem to be a hoax.

The massive wire sculptures that make up telecommunications in Thailand slums are beautiful, sad, and scary.

I won't be seeing any Weinstein films for the next four years because their rentals will be distributed exclusively through Blockbuster. No independents; no Netflix. Fuck 'em. [via kottke]

The Dutch government would like to see burkas banned outside private spaces since it's, like, really hard to tell who's wearing them and that could be a, like, gigantic security risk. Would I be allowed to walk into government buildings and stores in a Spaghetti Monster costume that conceals everything but my eyes?

Asteroid impacts could be responsible for gigantic tsunamis in our very recent past and may explain all those religious flood myths. "A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago." Eek!

Larry King has never used the Internets. This could explain why I never listen to Larry King. Roseanne offered to give him a lesson, which he declined.

Everyone knows that Gawker fired Valleywag editor Nick Douglas, but the NYT has the scoop on why. "We don’t report stories to 'finally get sued.' We report stories because we think they deserve to be out there. Whatever follows from them is whatever follows from them. Sarcasm or not, it’s quotes like these that could make us look really foolish — or worse — down the road."

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to decriminalize adult marijuana use with the blessing of the Police. "The marijuana legislation, which passed on an initial vote 8-3, would set nearly all crimes involving marijuana as the lowest law enforcement priority for city police and urges the district attorney to adopt the same policy when prosecuting criminal defendants."

K-Fed tries to get George Bush to use MySpace in this great cartoon from Current.

Arte Luise in Berlin has a different art theme for each room by different artists. I'll be staying here when I travel to Berlin.

It's official: U.S. detainees have no rights. The United States is truly the global bastion of liberty.

Labels: Sunday Reader