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 I could not be angrier that the fucking United States Congress approved Bush's torture bill, and it will now be sent on to the fucknut-in-chief to sign. Here's a rundown of the motherfuckers who voted for the bill and the humans who voted against it. This bill retracts Habeus Corpus, in effect since 1215, and now the United States, once considered the moral and ethical bastion of the world, can torture anyone at the President's discretion and they can't even inquire about why they're there. The New York Times op-ed page gives a handy guide to everything that's inexcusably wrong with this bill. I'm going to be ill. [Impossibly appropriate photo by Goggla on Flickr] The Daily Show examines Bush's power to legalize torture. "What has changed in the last five years that our Government is so inept and our people so terrified that we must do what no bomb or attack could ever do by taking away the very freedoms that define America? Why would we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves what they could never do, and abandon the principles for which so many Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed?" - Senator Patrick Leahy After Bush had Clinton's plans regarding al Qaeda and the Taliban, the administration gave the Taliban $43 million for declaring that opium is bad, making the United States the greatest monetary supporter of the Taliban for 2001! David Pogue doesn't think there will be an iPhone, but iTunes 7.0.1 says differently when you read through its insides. Since Pogue's article is based entirely on opinion, he shouldn't have even written the piece, but the most recent iTunes release makes him look even dumber. By the way, iTunes 7.0.1 corrects some of the more irritating flaws of 7.0 like stu t t ering and 100% cpu usage. Ahem. The city lights of Reykjavik, Iceland were turned off for half an hour tonight while an astronomer talked about the stars on the radio to begin the film festival. Awesome. China has a thriving organ harvesting business. A country that contains 1/5th of the world's population executes more people per year than all the rest of the world's countries combined. [via digg] See related: Bodies: the exhibition. Stanford University has faculty lectures, music, global issues reports, and lots more for FREE on iTunes at itunes.stanford.edu only. If you want "You May Not Squeeze My Business" or "Put Your Head Deep My Butt" on a shirt or sticker, this site is for you. If you're going to be in NYC this weekend, check out the Wired NextFest. I'll be heading out there on Saturday if you'd like to meet up and hang out with a beer at an overpriced food card. Richard Branson debuted the designs for SpaceShipTwo which looks, as Xeni Jardin said, "fucking awesome." To, I'm sure, your great surprise, the pharmaceutical companies confuse patients about effectiveness of drugs by misrepresenting statistics, very frequently convincing people to take drugs they don't need. A Fembot from the Austin Powers movie is for sale on ebay. This is what happens when f/x creators get poor. The UK's Channel 4 produced one of the best, funniest, and most heartfelt commercials I have ever seen. XKCD draws an amazing epic during a boring NASA lecture. Imogen Heap is having a contest to travel to NYC for a show with 3 nights in a hotel. The comp is only open to UK residents, but the video she put together for it is hilarious and adorable. According to my theories, this decidedly unscientific study reports that MySpace has significantly less than 100 million active users. As of October 1, 2006, the GIF format will be completely free. A Chinese professor stripped in an art class to demonstrate there are no taboos in art or discussion. It turns out, students already knew that and didn't need a naked professor to show them. Ick.  Telecom companies like Verizon are fucking rural customers out of their Net access because it's "too expensive" to make it available to them. Fuck Verizon. And fuck AT&T and BellSouth too. Stop screwing over customers and giving information to the NSA, then merging to grow ever bigger and ever closer to the government. I don't want to live in a country where that happens and citizens are powerless against it. The ratio between a woman's index and ring finger has been shown to determine their athleticism and extrovertedness. Kazakhstan has purchased very pricey 4-page advertisements in the first sections of the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune to remind us how super awesome they are, and that this has absolutely nothing to do with Borat... or his marching to the White House. Borat in 2008? Can't be worse than who we have now. I want this lamp with 7 bendable LED tubes to illuminate my many projects. Beautiful for so many reasons. Let's Say Thanks is a program sponsored by Xerox that lets anyone send a message to one of our troops to support them and thank them for their service to our country. It's completely free and is one of the most direct ways to express your feelings to our brothers and sisters overseas. Britney Spears is one of the dumbest people on the planet. This video gives me faith in life in a sick, twisted way. The best way.  Just got back from seeing Michael Showalter, Zach Galifianakis, and friends at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn. We laughed so hard. My face hurts. And all for $7. [Photo by Allyson.] Cory Doctorow posted a fun infographic representing Disney's longing for eternal copyright. "I once was on a standards committee with a Disney TV executive who was convinced that every time Disney broadcasted an old show, the copyright clock started over for that program -- so if you put a 50 year old cartoon on TV, it would get another 95 years of fresh copyright." The Economist says what we all know: LEDs will replace traditional lightbulbs sooner than later. "Light bulbs are among the last devices that use vacuum tubes, an old technology that has been replaced in radios and most televisions." Kurt Vonnegut says what we all know: this is it. "I pressed him to expand, wondering if he had any advice for young people who want to join the increasingly vocal environmental movement. 'There is nothing they can do,' he bleakly answered. 'It's over, my friend. The game is lost.'" A top-tier group of government advisors tells the government what citizens already know: The FDA is badly broken. Among their recommendations, "The panel called for a moratorium on consumer advertising of newly approved classes of drugs until they have been on the market long enough for unrecognized side effects and risks to emerge." [via digg]  Dozens and dozens of photos of old children's toy and food packaging. [via BB] A device that creates thrust by redirecting microwaves using no moving parts could enable everything from fuel-less space travel to hovercars. Author David Feige was sued for calling a former District Attorney "dowdy" in his new book. Amazing. Even better is his reponse: "Leaving aside that I think she is dowdy, you can't actually sue people for that... She also seems to forget that truth is an absolute defense." Zing! "They rediscover bin Laden every two years right before the election. If you had a business strategy that worked all the time that was premised on scaring the living daylights out of people, you just keep doing it." -- Bill Clinton on Bloomberg TV. From page A11 of Thursday's Washington Post: "Former associates of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff had dozens of appointments with Bush administration staff members, according to Secret Service visitor logs..." "Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand." -- Mark Twain  If you're jonesing for some Simpsons or Futurama, enjoy every episode online. An $800,000 radiological survey was recently conducted in NYC and authorities found unexpected radioactive locations. "NYPD officials indicated that the survey was tremendously valuable because it identified more than 80 locations with radiological sources that required further investigation to determine their risk." For some reason, the RIAA can't find a lot of major artists to pay them their money. Gosh, that's weird, cause other people can find them. Pakistan's military dictator Pervez Musharraf was widely criticized for using his speech at the UN General Assembly and the following press conference with President Numbskull to hype his new book. "I would like to I am launching my book on the 25th, and I am honour-bound to Simon and Schuster not to comment on the book before that day," he said after being asked an altogether different question by a reporter. "In other words, buy the book, is what he's saying," said our President immediately after, just in case it wasn't clear. A bill that would allow public schools to strip search students without a warrant for any reason has passed the House and is on its way to the Senate.  Fishloft lets your fishies get a better view of the world around them, and you get to see them swimming above the water level. For some reason the number one request from universities who are thinking of using iTunes U (whereby Apple stores your audio and video data on their servers to make it easier to distribute to students and faculty) is DRM restrictions. "DRM in the classroom flies in the face of not only my general IP position, but everything I like to believe about academic freedom." Related: Yale will be posting many intro courses on the web for free. Right-wingers have been misusing the term "cultural relativism" to blanket criticize the anti-globalization argument, when the phrase actually describes the condition where someone finds fault in other cultures but is blind to the faults of her own. [thanks Steven] A former Diebold consultant admitted that more than 5,000 voting machines had their software switched the day of the 2002 election in two Georgia counties alone. Related: Maryland's governor wants to ditch e-voting machines for the 2006 election. [via reddit] An article from the Globe and Mail (now sadly behind a subscriber wall) details the frequently and tragically overlooked injury affecting thousands of soldiers in Iraq: traumatic brain damage. While a soldier may survive a bomb or explosion, when the brain slams against the side of the cranium, it begins a process of irreparably damaging itself, slowly eliminating function. Frequently the condition isn't noticed immediately because while some effects are obvious, others take weeks or months to surface. New evidence suggests that Neanderthals mated with modern humans and were not, as previously believed, a completely separated species. A book of Presidential doodles. "What the fuck is up with Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) and his freaky jack-o-lantern-head-contemplating-sacred-desert-bird doodle? If that's not a 'shroom-fueled Meat Puppets album cover, I'm a mindless idiot on the lake of fire." A Businessbib is a half-suit for video conferencing from home. When the RIAA sends someone a letter with a lawsuit, this is what they really mean. "If you would prefer not to be stripped of your home and dignity, please send us $3,750 in the return envelope. If your toddler has been named in this lawsuit, explain to them that the fruits of their labor as an adult will go to pay a debt that will ultimately lead to their death at a young age due to their inability to afford medical insurance. Toddlers never understand that, but they'll get the point if you make them cry." In what David Cross would call a "Fuck You to poor people," you can get $5000 marmalade with gold in it. A few decades ago, environmentalists thought they were doing a good thing by creating underwater reefs out of old tires. It turns out that they actually kill life and are now washing up on the beach. Here's a handy list of 50+ ways a manager can get valuable employees to quit. "Give advice on topics you are only partially educated in." "PARIS (Reuters) - A warm summer and late storms in the past few months briefly opened a channel in the Arctic ice big enough to allow a ship to sail to the North Pole, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday." Warren Buffet and some friends have pledged $50 million to the UN to create a stockpile of uranium enriched only enough to create power so nations would not have to enrich it themselves. Labels: Sunday Reader  Don't pull your iPod out of the dock until you're completely sure it's done loading. The hard drive will break or crack or something. An American Airlines flight crew threatened to divert the trans-Atlantic flight if a gay couple would not stop cuddling. [via Kent Jones] µTorrent's web interface has gone public, enabling users to manage torrents on their home computer from any Internets-connected device. [via digg] President Bush named Andrew Natsios to be the UN Special Presidential Envoy to deal with Sudan. Natsios headed Boston's Big Dig and claimed on Nightline that the Iraq reconstruction would cost U.S. taxpayers no more than $1.7 billion. For the rest of his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he talked about 9/11 and terra. [via Rachel Maddow] TrueCrypt is free, open-source, on-the-fly encryption for your files that does more than you could possibly want or just as much as you need. [via TWiT] "Yahoo's gotten Hollywood Records (owned by Disney) to release the new Jesse McCartney's album 'Right Where You Want Me,' as unrestricted MP3 files." I'll be on my unicorn in the McDonald's drive-thru. The hacking of Diebold voting machines finally made it onto CNN. If only this report had been aired in 2003. Here's a short and simple tutorial on how to get the best clipping paths in Photoshop. HP has a slimming filter on many of their new digital cameras that re-processes the image to make the subject look thinner than in normal photos. It makes sense that this is for more than just stupid vanity; the convex lens of a camera does really make people look fatter, so it seems to just be slightly compensating for that distortion. Napster is on the corner looking for a new daddy. Great new Honda Civic ad from the UK.  If you haven't already, check out photos of the Banksy show "Barely Legal" in LA this past weekend. A retired Colonel stated on CNN this afternoon that the United States is conducting military operations in Iran right now. An article in October's Harper's also explains in detail what the White House seems to be planning, and it's terrifying. Their thoughts that Iran will suddenly be submissive to the U.S. if we bomb them enough is dangerously naive. Andrew Sullivan posts a very important email written to him by a former soldier in Iraq. The loss of our global reputation for fairness, ever since the country's inception, may be forever poisoned by what we have done in the past six years, and what we'll do in the next two. I made some Rachel Maddow Show iTunes art since the podcast doesn't come with any. Save the JPG and drop it into your box. Her show moved from mornings to 6-8pm ET today on Air America. Paris Hilton is famous because she is a platform for advertising, "like Digg and YouTube... It didn’t take long for designers and club owners to realize that Paris Hilton was a walking billboard. So they embraced her. Gawker finally has a working map of the smells of the NYC subway. "Click, and the popup expands to reveal Zagat-style excerpts from actual reader reports." The pressure to get into colleges is making kids sick. (I could have told you that years ago.) Part of the problem is that colleges are so damn hard to get into. Related: MIT video lectures online. A software engineer reverse-engineered his favorite NYC pizza recipe with incredible, edible success. The mayor of San Francisco is upset with BNE for tagging the city with stickers, so he's issued a reward for the capture of the artist, subsequently raising San Francisco's prominence in the street art world and making BNE nationally famous overnight. Nifty £4 finger-forks so you don't get your paws dirty with hand food. [via BB] 1000 Words of advice for design teachers. [via kottke] A Frappuccino has, like, 11 creamers and 29 packets of sugar in it. [via reddit] George Allen and Jim Webb on Meet the Press.  Why does Banksy have a fully-painted, live elephant in an art installation with no water and no room to move? Unless I misunderstand the situation, that's a really awful thing to do. After ABC's 9/11 mockumentary lied about American Airlines, they are considering pulling their advertising from the network. Go figure. Up to 4% of the population may hear voices, and it seems most tolerate the phenomenon without seeking treatment. "Some even said they found the experience to be positive or inspirational." Taste in music is linked to drug use, proving that musical-loving Broadway fans like to get lots of sleep. "But followers of hip hop and dance music are more likely to have had multiple sex partners over the last five years and were among the biggest drug-takers surveyed. 'It comes out in the study that, in these types of music, fans score worse in various behaviours, such as criminality, sexual promiscuity and drug use,' said Dr Adrian North, who led the research." [via ArtsJournal]  Sex can be kinky, stylish, and beautiful in addition to raunchy. This multiple-sensation tickler can be yours for $95 from Kiki De Montparnasse. Cool Hunting has a rundown of some fancy new toys. (Here was their first edition.) Blake Ross, one of the developers of Netscape 7, calls it his biggest WTF ever. Great stuff. "Mozilla 1.0 came out in June with popup blocking, and Netscape 7 came out six months later without it, but offered, as consolation, 12 AOL icons on your desktop." This classic WTF about a failed server also caught my attention and stayed in my brain. Audi, BMW, and Subaru's respective ad agencies decided to start fighting via ad space. Much more creative than this very unfortunate placement. Do gay people swear differently than hetero people? "Some people say the word c*ck-sucker like it's a bad thing which, frankly, I have just never understood." [via Wonkette] Five very cool Michel Gondry videos. Coming as a surprise to no one, "applicants [for government jobs in Iraq] didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration." Owners of iPods and other portable devices are likely to buy more music than other people, but not with DRM. Most people still prefer CDs and MP3s. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at the Emmys. Borat responds to the Kazakh Foreign Ministry Spokesman's comments that he is a poor representation of the country to the world. By the way, for some reason, Kazakhstan needed to deny they would be discussing Borat with the White House. Now why would they need to make that clear? Drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than non-drinkers. This is primarily ascribed to the networks one builds when drinking socially, so more contacts are available to present opportunities.  I would like this inflatable climbing iceberg and a swimming pool, please. [via BB] Asterisk is a really cool open-source VoIP platform that looks to be gaining popularity for its quality, stability, and free-ness. "Sam Houston State University (SHSU) is moving 6,000 users off a Cisco VoIP platform to an open-source VoIP network based on Asterisk. One big driver, of course, is cost. From the article: 'We thought that it will be more cost effective in the long run to go with an open source solution, because of the massive amounts of licensing fees required to keep the Cisco CallManager network up and running,' says Aaron Daniel, senior voice analyst at SHSU." Woot Wine takes the concept of a great tech-related deal every day, for one day only, and makes it a week for groupings of wine. Matt Damon should get to know Jodi Applegate. He also needs being-a-good-sport lessons. And a couch to jump on... for all the wrong reasons. But damn, anger is hilarious. Amazon Unbox to customers: Eat shit and die. In case you don't pick up on subtleties, it's best to avoid the Amazon video service. Some people actually don't understand satire. For the rest of us, there's Mike Judge's new film, Idiocracy, which I'm sure will be gigantic on DVD. President Bush will not tolerate criticism. "It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective." More Stella here. Stores use all sorts of architectural tricks to control how you shop. "Zone Of Transition – The area just through the doors of a shop, which it takes a customer to acclimatise to the shop surroundings and truly enter the shop. Merchandise, baskets and promotions in the area are lost on the customer, who has not fully transferred from outside yet." [via Consumerist] Some people will go to amazing lengths to commission just the art they want. A hippo china service. Truly exceptional in every way. "Naturally, an effort like this must suffer questions of whether $400,000 was worth it and the inevitable comparison to real estate soon follow. Of course it was fucking worth it... it was spent hiring a photographer, painters and one of the five remaining porcelain companies that can still execute such a noble effort. There are valid discussions about distribution of wealth, but this is not one of them." A great story about a truly dedicated patron. Wives of some gangsters in Colombia are witholding sex until their husbands change their asshole-like ways. Surveys have shown that the males' favorite activity is having sex (what?!) so it is assumed by the women that their guys will buckle sooner than later. Bush: "We don't want the enemy to adjust." I think adjust means, like, change. Isn't the point of all this shit supposed to be to make the extraordinarily nebulous "enemy" change? Labels: Sunday Reader  The Nintendo Wii will be out November 19 and will cost $249. For that you get a Wiimote with nunchuck, WiiSports, and Gamecube compatibility. Also the ability to surf the web with Opera if you get some WiiPoints. Wireless home network encouraged. White background and white wardrobe not included. Apple profiles BT on the creation of This Binary Universe. On America: "I'm not giving you a definitive statement -- it seems like to me there's a Third Awakening with a cultural change," Bush said. Universal plans to sue MySpace and YouTube, and News Corp says MySpace can beat YouTube, Flickr, Last.fm, etc. What a tangled twist of tubes we troll. [via waxy] What an honest pre-flight announcement would sound like, honest advice to incoming college freshmen, and the truth about the design process. [all via kottke, all this week] Reverse graffiti is one of the coolest and most beautiful ways to tag. Google has hired infamous Republican-serving power-lobbyists to serve them in D.C. Is this repurposing people's time for better things or allying oneself with evil? Penguin Classics has been re-covering their reprints with amazing new designs by Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and many others. Vallywag does a comparison between Apple's forthcoming wireless device, iTV ($299), and the wired alternative: an RCA cable ($14). The wire wins, as long as your TV is near your computer. Is cable news influencing viewers by positing bogus questions?  Enjoy the 60 minute Royal Sapien September promo mix exclusively here at Wider Angle for a couple days. BT - The Internal Locus [DTS] Posthuman - Mineral (CJ Art Mix) [Progrezo] Andy Page and Danny Bonnici - Vermouth [EQ Grey] Mew - The Zookeeper’s Boy (Sasha Mix) [Sony] Milke - She Says (Merka Mix) [Fat] Pharmacy of Sound - Beastie Beat [Evopro] Sertac Kaya - Elusive (Chris Conner and Juxy Mix) [OneShot] Underworld - JAL to Tokyo (Paul Woolford Vocal Mix) [Underworldlive.com] Quivver feat. Niki Mak - Not Giving Up (Breaks Mix) [Boz Boz] BT - 1.618 [DTS] BT - Dynamic Symmetry [DTS] Inkfish - The Sound [Invent] Cristian Paduraru - For Believers [Promo] Brandon Moser - Azure Deeps (Lance Cashion Mix) [Slow Motion Music] Jason Hates Jazz - Pray for Love (DJ Chus & David Penn Vocal Mix) [Defected] Alkemy - Try Again [9 Records] Royal Sapien - In Human [CDR] Jerry Ropero, Denis the Menace, Sabor - Coracao feat. Jaqueline (Vocal Mix) [Subliminal] Richard Grey pres. New Yorker Soul - Fallin (Warren Clarke Mix) [N02] BT - See You on the Other Side [DTS] Also be sure to check out Decibels on Proton Radio for hot new tunes this month. More mixes and free tunes at royalsapien.com.  After these results turned up on MSNBC's online poll, they took down the question and replaced it with a more cautious one. A CNN poll they actually published found that almost half of Americans blame the Bush administration for the terrorist attacks. / Apple debuted the iTV today, a $299 media streaming device that will be available in Q1 2007, as well as updates to the iPod, nano, shuffle (sexy), and movies in iTunes 7 from Disney and Pixar (not sexy). Architectures of Control in Design is a blog that explores the ways design controls people instead of freeing them. [via plasticbag.org] Matt Lauer: The head of Amnesty International says secret sites are against international law. President Bush: Well, we just disagree with him. A very well-organized infographic of the past five years by Ben Schott for the New York Times. The administration must stop comparing the invasion and occupation of Iraq to World War II. Enough. The newest version of the Democracy Player was released today. "Watch all the best internet TV shows in one powerful application: any video RSS feed, video podcast, video blog, or BitTorrent file. Fullscreen, high resolution, 100% free and open source. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide." The Daily Show is back after vacation.  Vogue Italia has a very fancy war on terra pictorial this month. [via BB] Why is a strange grey ooze covering Indonesian villages? "The disaster, and the government's inability to cope with it, have angered residents. Their frustration has deepened with reports that Aburizal Bakrie, the government minister responsible for coordinating responses to natural and man-made disasters, owns a stake in the gas exploration project [that caused the disaster]." AskMeFi - Responses to: If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about. "Wrong according to whom? Whomever happens to be in power?" Don't worry about getting killed by terrorism. It's at the bottom (green) level on Wired's Official Mortality Chart. Plans drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested killing Americans and bombing U.S. cities in order to gain support for a war against Cuba to depose Castro. "'The whole thing was so bizarre,' says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro. Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military — not democratic — control over the island nation after the invasion. 'That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from,' Bamford says. 'The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing.'" The article was written in May of 2001. [via digg] The U.S. government lied to citizens about what happened in the attack on Pearl Harbor: they let it happen after they had decoded Japanese transmissions. Bin Laden determined to strike in... oh fuck it.
 Watch September 11 unfold again on CNN Pipeline.  This piece of BoingBoing reader mail made my week. "Stop praising,singing,loving,serving,and adoring that thing, that piece of trash,that thing that was made up and doesn't even exist, when you should be praising,singing,loving,serving and adoring the HOLY THE ONE AND ONLY GOD.Please belive me." Pick up The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at Amazon. From one of the reviews: "Come forward all of you lost people and discover the truth that will set you free." UPDATE: My mom via email: "You have converted me. I now bow down to [Flying] Spaghetti Monster... All hail pasta!" The DEA says that 98% of marijuana plants seized are untended and not grown for smoking, proving their efforts just shy of entirely useless. The Governmental Accountability Office also reported that the anti-drug advertisements on television make drug use seem a lot more prevalent than it actually is, which encourages kids to try them, and have had no effect on overall drug use whatsoever. The ads cost taxpayers $1 billion. Target is being sued under the ADA over the design of their website. A judge has ruled that sites that sell stuff and offer services are thus obligated to comply with the ADA guidelines for accessibility. While a small pain for web developers, I see this as a step in the right direction for the future of the internets. However, I think Target should be given the opportunity to redesign their template (it should have already been accessible) if they haven't been already.  These cut-out paper designs are language-defyingly beautiful. The delicacy, intent, concept, process, and aestheticism combine so perfectly so as to render each work a masterpiece. The EPA will be purchasing all of its power green as of this month. [via Treehugger] ABC is promoting "The Path to 9/11" as "The official true story" in ads outside the United States, as it will be simulcast worldwide. That presents a number of questions. First, how can they claim it's true in advertising when spokespersons have been saying most of the show, if not all, is fictional? Second, the word "official" instantly triggered a few alarms. I have been wondering why exactly ABC would sacrifice at least $30 million, probably over $40 million, to broadcast this fictional docudrama. And how? It's unprecedented. "Official" implies governmental approval, if not outright support, possibly financially.  Photos and video have surfaced of the Banksy vs. Hilton prank. A section of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 could make donating art to museums far less financially attractive than selling it, which could drastically reduce donations and, thus, the public's access to great works of past and future. [via ArtsJournal] Lore Sjöberg, one of my favorite writers at Wired News, devised some ultimate blog posts for many popular weblogosites in the blogohedron. "Kottke: Elwin Festerator is the unsung inventor of the curly telephone cord. 'I looked at a straight telephone cord, and I asked myself, Elwin, why can't that be curly? So I went out and got my brand-new curling gun, and I curled the hell out of it.' Related link: New Yorker article on the Olympic curling team." New Yorker article on Hayao Miyazaki reprinted at the New America Foundation. [via shey.net] Forget snakes on a plane. (I dare you.) Try cockroaches in a television studio. Weatherlarity ensues! "Geoplasma is planning to build a power plant in St. Lucie County, Florida that will generate electricity by vaporizing landfill trash and sewage treatment plant sludge with plasma arcs. It will be the first plant of its kind in the USA and the largest in the world. The power plant is expected to destroy 3000 tons of garbage, generating about 120 megawatts of electricity per day. The plant will also supply steam to a nearby Tropicana juice plant. The landfill is expected to be depleted in about 18 years. In addition, up to 600 tons of melted, hardened sludge will be produced each day and will be sold for road construction." [via Slashdot] Fiber optics are slowly beginning to replace fluorescent lighting despite their costly installation. They generate no heat and use much less electricity, which is only getting more expensive. "The Declaration of Independence is lit by a Fiberstars system because the light source does not emit ultraviolet rays or heat. 'We just did the Magna Carta a couple of months ago,' John Davenport, CEO of Fiberstars said." The minute Flavorpill mentions an event, it's instantly not worth going to. Is that what I am to glean from Lisa Rosman, "longtime contributor"? While attending SCAD, I remixed Freeland's "We Want Your Soul" and made a video for it for my Multimedia Design class. The assignment was to create a montage using iMovie. It's fairly obvious that I'm an obnoxious overachiever, but it's worked out for me so far. A rumination on what drives the impulses of men and women, it's one of the funniest things I've ever read. [via reddit] The Earth is 6,000 Years Old. Everything from xkcd is awesome. [thanks Jacob] There is some marriage advice (most marriage advice) that is stupid, trite, and wholly misguided. This is not such advice. If you want to make a marriage work, reading this would be a good start. "6. Headphones; separate closets." [via reddit] Shakira, despite her shitty music, should be credited for taking a history lesson in every new place she visits by a professor on sabbatical. That's quite a privilege to be able to do and really admirable; it almost instills faith that not all stars on the pop charts are aspirationally stupid. Classic stop-mo animation "Gumbasia" by Art Clokey (the Gumby dude!) is up on Veoh. [via waxy]  Dolphins are but swimming human children. "Not only do dolphins recognize their mirror images, but they can also watch TV. Language-trained chimps only learned to respond appropriately to TV screens after a long period of training. In contrast, Lou Herman's dolphins responded appropriately the very first time they were exposed to television." President Bush thinks all Jews are going to hell. This would be a concern if 1) we did not already know he thought this, or 2) there were any "afterlife" after the temporary learning state English language-speaking humans call "consciousness", the only purpose of which is to make decisions to ensure survival of the organism. You probably read, heard, or saw that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes finally published pictures of their adopted Asian baby. I support them 100%, but I think the kid could have landed better parents. At least he or she will be properly cared for by a competent staff. Lastly, in gadget news that could not be any more relevant to a Sunday afternoon unless it were a self-affixing cold compress, Asahi has invented v1.0 of its BeerBot. Hopefully v2.0 will come on command and be able to grab its own glass from the mini-fridge, but we'll take things one pour at a time. Labels: Sunday Reader  It seems that the United States budget deficit this year may be $760 billion, and the national debt may actually be $49 trillion. "Scary numbers, but why even mention them? Because Cooper’s a Dem and he suspects the GOP will 'reveal' the true numbers once the Dems win back the House and Senate … so that the Democrats will get stuck with the blame for the crazy debt and spending that have piled up since 2001." [photo via College Humor] Advertising for the World Trade Center Memorial is encouraging people to consider 9/11 as a personal attack against them, not the government's policies or the people who were actually in the buildings. Classy. The NYT offers an unusually serious review of Borat. Not only is ABC's The Path to 9/11 inaccurate, but apparently it's also awful. "Controversy could boost viewership, except "Path" is the dullest, worst-shot TV movie since ABC's disastrous "Ten Commandments" remake. It substitutes shaky handheld cameras and dumb dialogue for craftsmanship. It could not be more amateurish or poorly constructed unless someone had forgotten to light the sets." Ze Frank performed a great, perfectly-tuned routine at TED, watch on Google Video. When the Taliban were allowed a safe space in Pakistan, out of Afghanistan, a key variable changed. Nuclear weapons. "Al Qaeda and the Taliban have traded Afghanistan for Waziristan, and gained this huge advantage: we dare not attack them there for fear of bringing Musharraf down." [via reddit] Rachel Maddow predicts what the Democrats might do when they take over one or both houses of Congress.  Did you know that the United States has been in a State of Emergency since September 14, 2001? It's just been extended for at least another year. "The courts in the United States are often very lenient in allowing almost any action to be taken in the case of such a declared emergency, if it is reasonably related." Reasonably has been redefined in a signing statement. ChuckleNuts finally admitted there are secret prisons run by the U.S. all around the world, just not in those words. Everything else he said was a lie, and everything else he recommended was unconstitutional. I can't wait until this motherfucker is gone, but I fear the damage he's done may be irreversible in our lifetimes. A Diebold voting machine can be hacked successfully with $12 of hardware and 4 minutes of time. When you vote (and if you don't...), get an absentee ballot so there's a paper record. Pakistan has agreed to designate a section of the country as a Taliban safe-zone, where Osama 'n Friends can live in peace. [via Rachel Maddow] YouTube video: "U.S. Senator George Allen today stole a Department of Defense appropriations amendment written, printed and prepared by Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill), and then announced the amendment as his own, moments before Durbin was prepared to introduce the amendment on the Senate floor." ABC plans to air a fictional docudrama about the 9/11 attacks that pegs Bill Clinton as the man responsible, and they are claiming it's based on the official 9/11 Commission Report. Richard Clarke has come out to say it's bullshit. Right-wing bloggers got advance copies days ago and continue to praise it. Not only that, but they're airing it over two nights, commercial free, plan to simulcast on XM Radio, also commercial free, it will be free to watch on their website, a free download on iTunes, and DVDs will be available immediately worldwide. ABC's Entertainment President said "Some things you do for commerce and some things because they are the right thing to do." Tell ABC to either not air the program or air disclaimers saying it's fake. As of Friday, only organizations subject to campaign contribution limits can air a commercial with the name of a federal official up for re-election, eliminating advertisements from regular people and groups that aren't necessarily politically affiliated. "It seems Americans now need permission to speak out on political issues and petition the government. I'd suggest a constitutional amendment protecting those rights, but I thought we already had one." 9/11 Scholars for Truth is challenging the official story of the events leading up to the attacks and what happened in the attacks themselves. A couple days after Alaskan Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens was convicted-by-blogosphere of placing a hold on a government spending transparency bill, he's done it again, as if no one would notice.  This poster is a great idea. I'll be making one tomorrow. at Flickr. Sunscreen is great only when you use it every day and only let it sit on the surface of your skin. Great. When the UV-reflectors that should sit on the surface soak into the skin, they reflect the UV back through the layers of skin, increasing the damage. Albert H. Gordon advises to avoid U.S. stocks. "After eight decades as an executive and investor that spanned from the roaring 1920s to the age of terrorism, Gordon says he's 'bearish' on U.S. stocks partly because of the $8.41 trillion national debt. He prefers shares of companies such as Canada's EnCana Corp., Wal-Mart de Mexico SA de CV and Petroleo Brasileiro SA." "Banksy has replaced [Paris] Hilton's CD with his own remixes and given them titles such as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For? He has also changed pictures of her on the CD sleeve to show the US socialite topless and with a dog's head. A spokeswoman for Banksy said he had doctored 500 copies of her debut album Paris in 48 record shops across the UK."  1K Project II is cars as fluid, 1000 racing at the same time. [via waxy] Robots can taste now. T-Amp, the same people who make the amazing amplifiers powered by batteries, have a fantastic wireless amp that includes AC adapters. "All digital CD quality wireless stereo transmission with built-in error correction and 128x oversampling ensures your audio loses absolutely nothing in the translation. The built-in digital T-Amplifier delivers the sound of a tube amp with an incredibly clean 20 watts per channel." And it's $99. Use Tubesock (clever) to grab YouTube vids and save them to your iPod. [via digg] Speaking of tubesocks, "Since being introduced at TechCrunch, July 25 2006, Alexa now ranks PornoTube.com as the 253rd site on the Web (9/3/2006). PornoTube shares and rates X-rated images and video material. Another X-rated site, adultfriendfinder, is the 57th on the web." Some kids are working on an open-source version of YouTube powered by Amazon S3 and Drupal. [via unmediated] MySpace is allowing bands to sell their music on the site in mp3 format. This is the first great thing MySpace has done since they started.  South Park on the Crocodile Hunter. [via plasticbag.org] "WASHINGTON - Top oil and defence industry executives in the United States are raking in record personal profits on the backs of the U.S. wars following the terror attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 and sky-high oil prices, two think-tanks said Wednesday. [...] The top 34 CEOs combined have earned almost a billion dollars since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. This would have been enough money to employ and support more than a million Iraqis for a year to rebuild their country." Things I've Learned In August: "5. The things designers need to create projects sometimes seem strange to a lot of people. I was taking some items home from the office, and my wife opened the trunk of the car to see a pig mask, rope, easter eggs, and a pair of long black gloves."  A new book on Frank Lloyd Wright focuses on his unique design process, "in particular the role played by the apprentices, many of them gay men, who surrounded Wright at his Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. Nine years in the making, the book provides a sustained look at the Fellowship during the period when Wright produced the masterpieces of his late career: Fallingwater, the Johnson Wax building and the Guggenheim Museum." [via ArtsJournal] Sufjan Stevens has a Christmas box-set coming out with 5 EPs and a bunch more really cool stuff. Fun for the whole family, literally. Also, here's a new song called "Sister Winter". Nathalie Bissig sewed this amazing GNU costume to be worn while handing out copies of GNU/Linux. Labels: Sunday Reader |
   
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