Thursday, November 27, 2003

Thanksgiving, De-Mythologized


Posted by MacDood
link
They never, ever called themselves "Pilgrims." The "First Thanksgiving" in 1621 - actually a secular, three-day harvest festival held sometime between September 21 and November 11 - was the only Thanksgiving they ever celebrated. [Urban Legends and Folklore]

Obsessed with Terrible Lizards and/or Films?


Posted by MacDood
link
When your list of "dinosaur movies" can include "Wizard of Oz", maybe you've gone too far. These people make a distinction between “Live-action with people dressed as dinosaurs and/or mechanical dinosaurs” and “Live action with lizards dressed as dinosaurs or prehistoric animals”. That’s beyond thorough. But for basic information even potentially remotely related to dinosaurs and/or movies, I can’t imagine a better starting point. [metafilter.com]

I eat cannibals, it's incredible, you bring out the animal in me, I eat cannibals


Posted by MacDood
link
Cannibalism was widespread and routine. Citing archaeological evidence and recent findings in molecular biology, archaeologist Timothy Taylor, author of The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, says that cannibalism has been the norm in the past, and the more interesting question is why particular societies gave it up. (Previous discussions of cannibalism here and here.) [metafilter.com]

Last of 'Lord of the Rings' Trilogy Set to Cast Spell (Reuters)


Posted by MacDood
link
Reuters - "It's quite good. Nah it's
fantastic! It's amazing, it's definitely the best," chirped
Pippin Took. [Yahoo! News - Entertainment]

The Christian Science Monitor may have the...


Posted by MacDood
link
The Christian Science Monitor may have the best article about Stephen King winning the National Book Award yet. It's not Bloom sputtering all over himself, and it's not the publishing industry bending over backwards for the man who made them... [blog]

Umberto Eco on Paper vs. Electronic Memory


Posted by MacDood
link
joabj writes "Paper was itself a technology at one point, this essay from Umberto Eco, author of "In The Name of the Rose," reminds us. Eco holds forth on the ... [Slashdot]

35,000 zombies form lobby group in India


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: love any good zombie story---

35,000 Indians have joined the Association of the Living Dead, a group of people whose relatives have cheated them out of their fortunes by bribing officials to have them declared legally dead. The living dead, being dead, can't afford the counterbribes necessary to get un-dead-ified.




The ``living dead,'' having been cheated out of their property, cannot afford to pay bribes or even legitimate fees to get their cases dealt with.


Lal Bihari, president of the Association of the Living Dead, estimated 35,000 people in Uttar Pradesh state have been wrongly certified as dead.



Link



(via Beyond the Beyond) [Boing Boing]

Book Five of King's Dark Tower is out


Posted by MacDood
link
I've been addicted to Stephen King's Gunslinger books since I was about 17. They're long, tense, gripping tales, filled with enough po-mo weirdness to make them interesting and keep me guessing. The first book was begun when King was a teenager; the last book will be the last fiction King ever writes, according to him. Book five -- the third-to-last in the series -- is Wolves of the Calla, a 600+ page brick of a novel that I've just finished reading. It's a very satisfying installment in the saga, and ends, as they all do, on a cliff-hanger that is as exciting as it is exasperating. I can't wait for the next two. There aren't a lot of modern genre authors playing with the memes from the Western pulps these days; King's reinterpretation of them makes me want to dig up some old Zane Grey.



Link [Boing Boing]

Sunday, November 23, 2003

Corporate Fascism and the End of Nature


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: hey, not a surprise huh ---

Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years, according to this excellent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, was also recently interviewed by Salon. [metafilter.com]

Man Arrested Over 'Spam Rage'


Posted by MacDood
link
A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture, kill and send a 'package full of Anthrax spores' to employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with spam promising to enlarge his penis. [Wired News]

Rude cross-stitching


Posted by MacDood
link



Subversive Cross-stitch: rude and snarky cross-stitch patterns to amaze and delight.



Link



(via Making Light)

[Boing Boing]

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution will Survive WMD Attack


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: and so ends life as we know it...---

As reported here at NewsMax: "Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent. But Franks' scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government." [Kuro5hin.org]

Friday, November 21, 2003

Feel Free to Jack Into My IPod


Posted by MacDood
link
Reinforcing the notion that iPod owners are members of some sort of exclusive, hip club, some of them are plugging their earbuds into total strangers' jacks. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

Order-5 Magic Cube discovered


Posted by MacDood
link



A Magic Cube is a three dimensional Magic Square: a 3D grid in which the numbers in all the rows, columns and diagonals total up to the same number. The very first order-5 Magic Cube (previously suspected to be impossible) has been discovered.



Link
(Thanks, Johannes!)

[Boing Boing]

Robot in the Sky! (almost)


Posted by MacDood
link



Seiko Epson Corp. showed off their flying micro-robot at this week's International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo. EE Times reports that ultrasonic wristwatch motors keep the 8.9 grab machine airborne. It's also outfitted with Bluetooth and several microsensors including a gyro and camera. Right now though, battery weight keeps it tethered to its power supply. (The photo is from Yahoo! News.) Link (Thanks, Gabe!) [Boing Boing]

Thursday, November 20, 2003

"You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

I Heart Nerds Pin


Posted by MacDood
link

I must have this right now.



Link
[Boing Boing]

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Pink Floyd: The Wall action figures


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: I'm getting some for the whole family---



Just in time for the holiday season: Pink Floyd: The Wall action figures. Collectible action figures. Strictly limited edition. (Limited, I suspect, to the number of units they think they can sell.)



Link



(via Smartpatrol)




[Boing Boing]

Celebrity dead photshopping


Posted by MacDood
link



Nice Fark photoshopping contest: turn celebrities into the living dead.



Link

[Boing Boing]

G4 Cube fishtank


Posted by MacDood
link



Got a dead, orphaned Apple G4 Cube lying around? According to the ancient traditions of the Mac-faithful, this is a signal that you are to get out your caulking gun and turn it into a fishtank.



Link



(via MacSlash)

[Boing Boing]

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

The Dalai Lama


Posted by MacDood
link
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Dead Bug Funeral Kit


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: for all you buggy lovers out there ---




From David Barringer's site: The Dead Bug Funeral Kit comes with an Illustrated Buggy Book of Eulogies with Ribbon Bookmark, Casket, Grave Marker, White Clay Flower, Burial Scroll, and Pouch of Grass Seed.

"We are deeply saddened by your loss. We hope the Dead Bug Kit will honor your bug. We are working as briskly as we can to make these Kits, but there is a lot of grief in this world. And there are a lot of bugs. We appreciate your patience." Link (Thanks, Invisible Cowgirl!)

[Boing Boing]

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Privacy-consciousness-raising stickers


Posted by MacDood
link



The Austrian cyber-activists Quintessenz put on the local Big Brother Award ceremony. To promote it, they distributed these stickers that look like hidden cameras, encouraging people to put them up in toilets and other places where privacy matters. The caption means "The Most Shameless Surveilleur."



116k PDF Link

[Boing Boing]

Saturday, November 15, 2003

Frogs have accents


Posted by MacDood
link
A researcher has recorded frog-calls and discovered regional accents among them.




Bernie Simmons, a spokesman for SPSS, said it was thought the frogs migrated to the warmer climate of southern Europe during the last ice age where they separated into distinct colonies that slowly started to diverge.


Part of that diversity has emerged as regional accents.


The accents are different depending on whether pool frogs belong to the ancient Iberian, Italian or Balkan populations.



Link



(Thanks, Rod) [Boing Boing]

Sexy Math


Posted by MacDood
link
BoingBoing patron saint Bruce Sterling points our dirty minds to a website containing this suggestive series of images created entirely from mathematical algorithms. "If you find them offensive in any way," says the site's creator, "all I can say is that beauty (or obscenity) is in this case most certainly in the eye of the beholder." If high school algebra had been half this fun, perhaps I would have passed. Link [Boing Boing]

Top Ten Internet Fads


Posted by MacDood
link
At the risk of sounding much older than I really am, I've been on the Internet since 1987. In that time, I've seen a number of Internet fads come and go. Some were excesses of the bubble years, but others weren't. A fad, for purposes of this article, is an idea or technology which is briefly popular, but can't outlast its own novelty value. Once people get over the newness of it all, there isn't really anything special left. Here are the ten which stand out most in my mind. [Kuro5hin.org]

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Better Lorem Ipsum with JanusNode


Posted by MacDood
link
JanusNode is a MacOSX app that generates and munges text according to a number of rules. It can "ee cummings-ify" arbitrary text:



Dan Gill
mor's
on
his
annual teaching
stint
in
Hong
Kong,




or it can generate random pseudo-intellectualism:




Chaos theory: Its debt to Jesse Jackson


What is the contemporary significance of psychotic chaos theory? Psychotic chaos theory is often confused with teleological realism. Psychotic chaos theory is of particular interest to grandfathers.



other modes include Haiku, Bureaucratese, Fortune Tellers, and so forth.



Link



(Thanks, Chris!) [Boing Boing]

Segway-Based Robot Opens Doors


Posted by MacDood
link




BoingBoing pal Roland Piquepaille says,







"In this short article, Technology Review tells us that Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have built a new robot, named Cardea, which is able to push open doors and has the bottom half of a Segway scooter. Cardea will be five feet tall with a torso, three arms, a variety of sensors, and a human-like head with expressive features and vision, and mounted on a Segway base. More details and references are contained in this review which also includes several pictures. For even more details, go to the Cardea Project homepage."




Link
[Boing Boing]

New Disinfo book: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: So now you know---

The subculture aficionados at Disinformation have released a new book. 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know is filled with "factoids about human health hazards, government lies, and secret history and warfare excised from your schoolbooks and nightly news reports." Tinfoil beanie cap not included. Within the bite-sized chapters, you'll find "irrefutable evidence" that:

* Nearly all American milk-cows are infected with Bovine Leukemia Virus

* One of the heroes of 'Black Hawk Down' was a convicted child molester

* The Bayer Company developed and marketed another "wonder drug": Heroin

* After 9/11, White House staff reviewed and considered a Special Ops presentation, Thinking Outside the Box: Poisoning Afghanistan's Food Supply

* Pope Pius II wrote a best selling erotic novel

* Positive HIV test results are wrong for half of all low-risk people

* Two atomic bombs were dropped on North Carolina

* You can mail letters for little to no cost using simple methods to fool
the post office

* Senior auto industry execs characterize SUV drivers as "insecure and vain... nervous about their marriages... self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors or communities."

Link to Disinfo home, Link to book ordering info. [Boing Boing]

I'm in Barcelona at the tech/art/culture confab Artfutura, listening to the two effects masterminds behind the Matrix trilogy: John Gaeta (right-hand side of the photo below) and Greg Juby of effects house ESC (Greg's at left in this photo).


ESC is the company created by the Wachowski brothers and John Gaeta to produce the complex work of visual effects in the Matrix series. Gaeta may well be the single most influential person in the last decade of visual effects, and right now he's talking to the audience of Spanish digital artists and tech developers here about the creative process behind the films, and what to expect in the forthcoming Matrix: Revolutions:





* "What will be different in Revolutions? It's the final, ultimate manifestation of Larry and Andy Wachowski's anime dream: to make am movie as close to an anime as possible. Take the best and coolest aspects of anime -- large scale robotics, entanglements between man anad machine -- and tranform it into a feature, live action film. You'll also see lots more bullets."



* "Subconsciousness needs to be redefined with every generation. Matrix is a stylized sci-fi story, but the root of the idea that you can have imagery placed into your mind is a very possible scenario, and I think that's a universe that our generation was finally ready to start dealing with. I grew up on Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and many other filmmakers that triggered ideas inside my mind -- that's how evolution works. One generation speaking to another. Larry and Andy [Wachowski] are preoccupied with those ideas, too, but they're also pop culture junkies and they share an obsession we also have with darker sci-fi threads in films you see in films like Bladerunner. It's no accident that some of the scenes in the Matrix trilogy are reminiscent of Bladerunner, because we've been dying all our lives to do that kind of work. "




* "I want to make an electrochemical movie.
In the year 2099 I'll be 130 years old, but I think around 2063 I'm going to have my brain taken out and have it inserted into a clone who's about 21 years old. Maybe some bionic augmentation upgrades, too. In about 40 years, I'm thinking some sort of military-industrial-supercomplex-international-intelligensia supergroup will figure out how to export imagery to people's brains. If you can see it in your head while you're dreaming -- well, that image is created somehow. Someday, someone will figure out how to place that image into your brain. It'll be some combination of electricity and drugs, and they'll call it Rosebud.


A billion people will attend the first electrochemical movie premiere. Everyone in the audience will experience love again for the first time, and we'll become gazillionaires. I don't know how we'll make our electrochemical movie into a DVD, though. And distribution is definitely going to be a problem."

* "The most difficult thing about creating effects for the trilogy? Designing choreography that could never be actualized by human beings."


Link [Boing Boing]

ITunes Undermines Social Security


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: so be warned you ARE your music. I'm listening to Habanera by Ravel---

Although perusing other folks' digital music libraries using iTunes can broaden musical horizons, there can be drawbacks. Like being judged for your taste in music. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

The Hubble Space Telescope and beyond


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: I want to ship my ashes to the Hubble---

The Hubble Space Telescope can be considered one of the most important science instruments created so far. Its service record is beyond impressive, but as it approaches its 14th anniversary of service it is becoming clear that new instruments are needed to complement or replace the now aging Hubble. Instruments that will include all technological advancements in optics and electronics that we have developed since the Hubble launch in 1990. Hubble will serve for at least 10 more years, but there is already the project underway that is aimed to create a new instrument that will help the scientists to observe in even more detail: The James Webb Space Telescope. [Kuro5hin.org]

Saturday, November 8, 2003

The Matrix: Resolutions


Posted by MacDood
link
Slappy White writes "For six months, Matrix message boards were aflame with speculation, theories, predictions and outright psychotic guessing about ... [Slashdot]

Chimp filmstar turns to painting


Posted by MacDood
link
JWZ just got the coolest birthday present ever: a painting painted by Cheeta, the chimp who played opposite Johnnie Weismuller in the Tarzan movies.






The artist is now 71 years old and living in Palm Springs, Florida, enjoying his new career as a painter.


His name is Cheeta, and he's the world's oldest living primate.







Link [Boing Boing]

In Defense of Dutch Drug Policy


Posted by MacDood
link
Modern liberal democracies have increasingly been torn over the drug policy debate. Its polarizing effects of have developed two distinct stances: The proponents of legalization supporting the concept of "harm reduction" and the prohibitionists who support the continuation of the costly and often draconian drug war. Each camp claims that the adverse effects of drug use would be better dealt with through their methods. Prohibitionists insist the only way to solve the drug problem requires the elimination of all narcotics use through the enforcement of laws; proponents of legalization stress that the elimination of drugs is an unachievable goal and instead promote methods to remove the dangers and negative externalities from the already existing drug use. Also the larger question of which policy constitutes a more compatible relation with liberal democracy still looms. The proponents of legalization have embodied the liberal philosophy of John Stewart Mill stressing the individual's ability to make personal decisions; whereas, the prohibitionist stance implies that people are not rational consumers and must be protected from themselves. The Dutch model presents a pragmatic and successful compromise between the two camps of thought. After over 27 years of successful implementation, the Netherlands should no longer have its back up against the wall concerning its drug policy. Instead, it should begin to take the offensive. [Kuro5hin.org]

Friday, November 7, 2003

People like to read on the web


Posted by MacDood
link
A List Apart: A Fairy, a Low-Fat Bagel, and a Sack of Hammers. “People were reading and writing. Frowning and laughing. Crying and cheering. Agreeing and disagreeing.” [Inessential.com]

Link-Fu contest: Here are the winners.


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: The Internet, where content is King, sort of---

The votes are in. For this week's battle to find the most bizarre and obscure links on the web (background) there were many judges, and countless submissions: so, we have multiple winners. And no, those aren't hanging chads you see scattered around the floor of Link-Fu competition headquarters. That's just leftover confetti from the inauguration party last night. Today, my friends, a generation of Link-Fu masters is born.





* Christina James was the first to submit Koonago Factory. Comments: Several judges picked this one. Dark, violent Japorn featuring tiny cartoon fairy-doll women? What's not to like? (NSFW rating: some nudity and grossness, but nothing Rotten-grade).


* Wayne Mercier submitted The International Trepanation Advocacy Group. Comments: Invisible Cowgirl says, "Because nothing says scary like I Got a Hole Drilled in My Head personal testimonials."




* Steve Lew submitted
Mutant Midget Interracial Lemon Porn. Comments: Xeni says, "Strange fruit. Mmmmmmm."


* Steve Mills submitted Coffee Table Wife. Comments: Warren Ellis liked it. Go figure.


* Lucas Emery submitted Aussie Scrotum Shop. Comments: Made Warren smile.




* Zach Rodgers submitted Ordo Magazine. Comments: Invisible Cowgirl says, "A beauty of a blog chock full of everything that's weird and wonderful on the web." (NSFW guide: Links to some sexually explicit stuff, but links to lots of other stuff, too).



* An anonymous Link-Fu Master submitted Jesus is With You Everywhere. Comments: Xeni liked the scary trucker picture.



* Peace Rug and Wholesome Swimsuits
came from from Judson. Comments: Mark thought they were weird, silly and fun. [Boing Boing]

Monday, November 3, 2003

Gallery of black and white photographs of mental patients in a Taiwanese Buddhist sanctuary. Link
(via signormori.clarence.com) [Boing Boing]

Man drops phone in train toilet, causes big hassle


Posted by MacDood
link

Comment: just when you think you couldn't hear anything dumbererer---

"A man riding a Metro-North train dropped his cell phone in a toilet and got his arm stuck trying to retrieve it Thursday, forcing the train to stop and delaying the evening commute for thousands of people." Link [Boing Boing]