Wednesday, March 31, 2004

"The Magic of Steam" A sharp 1918 brochure for the Stanley Steamer automobile, from Bob Wilhelm's Stanley Steamer Preservation site, that has lots of other great links about the car.
First motorcycles
Today Air America Radio goes live.
They'll have to do something about that Server Error on their web feed, though...
Kerry crushes on green-score
Kerry ranked first among all Dems with a near-perfect 96 score -- the highest lifetime rating of any presidential candidate in the LCV's tabulations. The Massachusetts senator has a long history of environmental stewardship, including helping organize the first Earth Day in 1970 and chairing Earth Day New England 20 years later. The organization was so impressed with Kerry's environmental record that it endorsed him prior to the New Hampshire primary -- the earliest nod in its 34-year history.
...
President Bush received an unprecedented flunking grade for his environmental performance.

The LCV report goes on to state that "no matter who emerges as the Democratic presidential candidate, [we] believe that removing [Bush]is the most vital action voters can take to ensure an undiminished natural legacy for future generations."
Bush Hates the Poor XIV: Defying Bush, Senate Increases Child Care Funds for the Poor (NYTimes)
The Bush administration objected to the increase in child care money, saying it was not needed.

Monday, March 29, 2004

165321 corks, 1 boat: corkboat.com. From the netfreak alert at shockedandamazed. The guy who built it was a speechwriter for Clinton. Can you imagine any of the bloodlusting, corrupt, greedophile daddy's-people working for Bush doing anything as cool as building a 6-man boat out of wine corks? No way.. they're too busy penning sparkling gems for Bush like "See, the more choices there are, the more the price will go down." *

* actual quote today by Dub (Washington Post, Login req)
evolution.berkeley.edu
Berkeley profs create an educator's site for those under attack by those who object to the right to teach Darwin's science.

"Evolution, simply put, is descent with modification," the Web site states in its introduction. "Through the process of descent with modification, the common ancestor of life on Earth gave rise to the fantastic diversity that we see documented in the fossil record and around us today.
"Evolution means that we're all distant cousins: humans and oak trees, hummingbirds and whales."
Clearer Than the Truth (Atlantic)
"...the Administration consistently selected evidence and suppositions that supported the policies it advocated, and just as consistently ignored or dismissed evidence and arguments to the contrary."
Absolute Failure: This showcases the administration's crooked idea of democracy in a nutshell: They go to Iraq to "free" it, and shut down the free press. (NYTimes)
Thousands of outraged Iraqis protested the closing as an act of American hypocrisy, laying bare the hostility many feel toward the United States a year after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

Pencil Carving
According to their forms,they are divided into 4 types - "Double spiral", "Chain", "Ring" and "Kikko" that may be called a honeycomb pencil. Others like "Six-fold spiral", "Extensible" and "Triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon" are considered to be variations based on one of those 4 types.
The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica
Since the 1930s, hundreds of stone balls have been documented, ranging in size from a few centimetres to over two meters in diameter. Almost all of them are made of granodiorite, a hard, igneous stone. These objects are monolithic sculptures made by human hands.
The seriousness of Richard Clarke's allegations this week was matched only by the comedy of the White House's reaction to them. (New Republic)
His best friend is Rand Beers, who is the principal adviser to the Kerry campaign," asserted White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Leave aside the fact that Clarke was a registered Republican who served under three GOP presidents without betraying any signs of Democratic leanings. Instead, consider the bizarreness of the allegation that Clarke is untrustworthy due to his association with Beers, whom Bush appointed to head counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Of course, Beers, like Clarke, quit the administration in disgust over its deficient anti-terrorism policy. So Beers, a Bush official who turned against Bush, has become a partisan, and thus Clarke has become a partisan as well, by dint of personal association.
Brewed from the muddy waters of Upper Crudney on the Thames, just down river from the glue factory.
Oh my gosh, it's Frothingslosh!
The pale, stale, ale; the beer with the foam on the bottom, and otherwise self-proclaimed worst beer ever mass-marketed. You can spot the Fatima Yechbluch can a mile off.

Slogans and tag lines ran the full gamut. Oh my gosh, it’s Olde Frothingslosh. A whale of an ale for the pale stale male. Brewed from the muddy waters of Upper Crudney on the Thames, just down river from the glue factory. The castle-like brewery was built in record time; they worked knights. Hippety Hops makes it Tops. Hi dittom dottom, the foam is on the bottom. Pittsburgh’s favorite josh. Real busto. It’s flexible, guaranteed to fit any shape glass. Neurotically inspected, brewed with the exclusive Dank Tank formula. Sold only once a year! One taste will tell you why! Brewed with just the kiss of the mops.

Friday, March 26, 2004

An homage to the old Infocom games with downloadable Zork I, II, and III. And another. This one has great scans of the original packaging. There is also a project underway to recreate all of the original Infocom documentation as it was packaged.
Microdrone spy planes
The Israeli military is equipping its forces with a new range of spy drones small enough to fit in a soldier's backpack, the army said on Thursday.
The small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and micro UAVs were unveiled at a conference on low intensity conflict. The Israeli air force has often used larger unmanned spy planes to target Palestinian militants in air strikes. The new baby drones would give army forces in the field near instant access to aerial intelligence.

Beastly Garden of Wordly Delights
Find out what a "squab" is. I thought I knew a lot of these, but I wasn't even close to this list.
Mexico's Santa Muerte

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Did mankind trade chewing power for a bigger brain? (Nature)
The timing of the mutation is consistent with rampant brain growth seen in human fossils from around 2 million years ago, says Nancy Minugh-Purvis of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who helped with the study. "Right at the point you lose power in these muscles, brain size evolution accelerates," she says.
A work of art or a harbinger of violence? Grisly short story gets student expelled from S.F. academy -- and costs teacher her job
Index of complete online Sherlock Holmes texts.
Coke was it. In their latest, they screwed up the formula for water. (Slate)

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

T-shirt travels: Is there a link between the secondhand clothing industry and impoverishment in Zambia? (PBS.org)
Just to make things harder for the Joker - A table saw that knows the difference between a piece of wood and your flesh with video. From BoingBoing
English-Japanese calligraphy phrase index
New "Get your war on" strips on MNFTIU
Ed Ruscha: Lisp

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

The New Science Wars: Is George W. Bush's the most anti-science administration in modern times? Picked up on Metafilter

Monday, March 22, 2004

Audio artifacts collected by NPR Definitely worth hearing.
This sound is a mystery to us. It comes from a record found by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva in Nikki's father's garage. It was labeled "To Louie, Love Mrs. B." She talks to him about her life on the home front during World War II and is a real time capsule which holds all that she feels while her husband is away at war. This record was the inspiration for our Quest for Sound.
The Scopitone Archive
Hear the experimental talking clock from 1878
Mere months after Edison's invention of the phonograph, inventor Frank Lambert shared Edison's vision of applying the new talking machine toward the development of a talking clock.

Realizing that soft tinfoil, which was the recording medium of the day, would not provide a lasting record (wax cylinders were still years away), Lambert (no relation to Thomas Lambert, inventor of the Lambert celluloid cylinder) apparently chose to experiment with a cylinder made of lead (see below). As a result, his early sound recording experiments can still be heard today after more than 120 years.
Strangest record player I've ever seen: The Vinyl Killer
Surfing a 34 minute wave - on the Amazon river (NYTimes).
Hipgnosis album cover art gallery

Sunday, March 21, 2004

Recommended Western Swing and Hillbilly Jazz records, courtesy of GMT+9
Check out Seven Nights (mp3) while you're in the mood.
I pick up anything that looks like it might be handwritten on the street. So does Found Magazine
From Blues to Haikus: An interview with Charles Henri Ford from the Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal
In addition to writing surrealist literature, being a photographer and creating art objects, Charles Henri Ford (b. 1913 in Mississippi) edited such avant-garde magazines as Blues and View. As Alan Jones wrote in Arts Magazine, "Ford opened the pages of his ‘newspaper for poets’ to the swarm of European surrealists (Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp) and the returning native sons and daughters all fleeing Europe for New York. Bridging the worlds of literature and art, View rapidly grew into an art magazine the likes of which the United States had never seen."
The Man Ray digital photogaphic archive
This numerical photographic library is at your disposal to search for, and select some pictures of Man Ray's works we managed to reproduce and to reference.
Fundrace: Type in your address and see who and how much you your neighbors have donated to political candidates.

Friday, March 19, 2004

"What your kind represents makes my grandma cry"
"You ain't a cowboy" by Stephan Smith via TrueMajority

For those of you new to Stephan and his music, here’s some background. He had a hit last year with his anti-war song The Bell. He even did a version with Pete Seeger. In years past, he has toured with the likes of Dave Matthews, Paul Simon, and Ani DiFranco. But last year he decided to take a different turn and he struck out on his own, with nothing but a guitar, doing 140 shows across the country. And here’s the kicker, every one was a fundraiser for a local peace and justice or other community group.
The American Library Association's 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000. The ALA also has a nice set of pages on bookburning through the ages.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Space rock comin' in close tonight
Feral children article from nthposition.
More madcap antics from the ever-corrupt administration: a mystery fax indicates they withheld information about the cost of Medicare law
Dated June 11, 2003, the document put the cost at $551.5 billion over 10 years. It appeared to confirm what Ms. Bjorklund and her bosses on the House Ways and Means Committee had long suspected: the actuary, Richard S. Foster, had concluded the legislation would be far more expensive than Congress's $400 billion estimate — and had kept quiet while lawmakers voted on the bill and President Bush signed it into law.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Calling it like it is, the Spanish PM-elect declares the Iraqi occupation a 'fiasco' and vows to get his people back home. (NYTimes)
How long before Bush starts calling him an evil-doer?
Virtual Jamestown
Frautschi Letters Virtual Archive displays a historical collection of letters written by members of a family of Swiss immigrants to Wisconsin, written between 1852 and 1904. The repository for the original letters is Max Kade Institute (University of Wisconsin-Madison). The Wisconsin Mosaic provides a historical backdrop for the letters.
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer. It was built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42. It incorporated several major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions.
In the wake of the free-speech assault that followed the halftime PR stunt, the the UK's Channel 4 is now poking fun at the FCC's puritanism with an ad that celebrates their ability to broadcast without pandering to prudish censors.

Monday, March 15, 2004

The Chinese come clean: Great Wall not visible from space.
[Government by the MPAA for the MPAA]
Virtually redefining the phrase "in their back pocket", it appears that the MPAA is now drafting laws on behalf of the California Attorney General's office, and not the other way around, if that wasn't bad enough.
However, the metadata associated with the Microsoft Word document indicates it was either drafted or reviewed by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. According to this metadata (automatically generated by the Word application), the document's author or editor is "stevensonv." (The metadata of a document is viewable through the File menu under Properties.)
Do you have special skills in computer science or linguistics? You might pay for it by getting volunteered for Bush's oil wars!
The Selective Service System has begun the process of creating the procedures and policies to conduct such a targeted draft in case military officials ask Congress to authorize it and the lawmakers agree to such a request.

Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, said planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts had begun last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas.


This is a guaranteed way to make sure more kids don't enter college as computer science majors.
["The most crooked, you know, lying group" there's ever been]
In an idiotic propaganda scheme that would make Brezhnev blush, the Bush Administration pays actors posing as journalists to applaud the Medicare law, and calls it "news". You and I, of course, paid for it.

The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Really big index of toy Citroen cars. Some are brilliantly minimalist.
Tons of pictures of Dansette box-type record players at dansettes.co.uk
Nice pic of a 1961 car record player

Saturday, March 13, 2004

Donald Rumsfeld: Ghoul.. I wonder if he collects Nazi paraphenalia as well?
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita acknowledged last night that Rumsfeld has a shard of metal from the jetliner that struck the Pentagon on a table in his office and shows it to people as a reminder of the tragedy that Pentagon workers shared on Sept. 11, 2001.

Friday, March 12, 2004

Changing the world one gift at a time: Freecycle.org

Thursday, March 11, 2004

The New Pentagon Papers (Salon, full article, no login)
A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.
The Perils of Googling: Using Google's advanced search features to find stuff that should be hidden.

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Record Trade Deficit: Thank you again, George Bush.
Kerry/McCain? Wha??.
The spam lawsuits start: ISPs vs. Spammers
"If you're a spammer, this is not a great day for you," said Mike Callahan, Yahoo!'s general counsel at a joint press conference in Washington.

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Control this robot arm online and watch your movements in semi-real-time!
The BBC has a bunch more flashed Dr. Who episodes up.
Has anyone ever actually worn one of these unironically? (courtesy of Bifurcated Rivets)
If you're a fool for old synths, check out synthfool's archive of synthesizer videos
The brainchild of developer William J. Levitt, Levittown, Pennsylvania was the largest planned community constructed by a single builder in the United States. By the time it was completed in 1958, the development occupied over 5500 acres in lower Bucks County and included churches, schools, swimming pools, shopping centers and 17,311 single-family homes.

Monday, March 08, 2004

32 People from small Swedish Village independently buy same car (Volvo) on same day. Dealership hadn't sold 32 in the prior year. Documentary here. Jungian collective unconscious, or guerrilla marketing? (MeFi) Carlos Soto think's its a big, stinking, staged fake Here is his response (wmv)
BTW, You should really listen to some of these sound clips. Especially Devastatin' Dave the Turntable Slave.
All Hail the Mighty Inner-D!
I think I linked this before, but its just too damn good not to again - listen to the Inner Dialogue album in its entirety here. Keep it. This is one of the strangest albums I've ever heard, and I own plenty of stuff like this. You'll thank me when you're humming 'Now you see it, now you don't' on the subway.

I'm getting pretty carried away with this record. Others who hear it are similarly captivated by its sweet, sweet insanity. This hapless jackass TRADED his copy! Buffoon!! The Daily Jive tracked down the bass player and we're sending him harrassing emails trying to get him to admit to playing on this album. So far he ain't budging. Maybe a few hundred more and he'll crack! Maybe some bad shit went down with those two chicks on the cover and he'd rather forget it... Regardless: you heard it here first. Rock is dead. Hip-hop is dead. Pop is dead. The next thing is going to sound a whole hell of a lot like Inner Dialogue. You'll see.
Robot racers ready
Starting on Monday, 25 competitors will spend four days in qualification events at the California Speedway near Los Angeles. The vehicles will be tested for their roadworthiness and ability to avoid obstacles.

The top 20 will then race to Las Vegas on Saturday 13 March for the $1 million cash prize. The winner must complete the journey in less than 10 hours to claim the prize.
Color your own Warhol Marilyn Monroe print

Sunday, March 07, 2004

Strawberry Bricks: the progressive rock timeline

Saturday, March 06, 2004

Controlling the press: the corrupt Republican party is telling TV stations not to run anti-Bush ads produced by MoveOn.org.
"Now that you have been apprised of the law, to prevent further violations of federal law, we urge you to remove these advertisements from your station's broadcast rotation."
"There's a cultural war going on. The religious right is winning. We're losing." Howard Stern on how the ultra right clampdown on free speech is effectively ending his show.

Friday, March 05, 2004

A nice directory of kinetic art/sculpture artists and galleries, many with movies and animations.
Calder's Circus: A 19-minute film (viewable entirely online)
A nicely designed site that shows Calder's work by period
Virtual Calder Mobile (fun java)

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Animated Knot-tying gallery. And another. And another (photographic)
Sidereal clock
Solid Smoke
Bias in a coin toss? (courtesy of Slashdot)
If you want to decide which football team takes the ball first or who gets the larger piece of cake, the fairest thing is to toss a coin, right? Not necessarily.
A new mathematical analysis suggests that coin tossing is inherently biased: A coin is more likely to land on the same face it started out on.

It doesn't have to do with toss height, which is why (in terms of table height) toast always lands butter side down.
The Junk Science of George W. Bush by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (The Nation)
Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration--aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends."

Monday, March 01, 2004

A nice little gallery of phrenology-related images from a phrenology page.
The History of Salt. Lousy with salty links, from the Salt Institute, of course
[The] [Evolution] [of] [Bookbinding]
Vintage Saxophone picture gallery
Hardline I.P. sought by entertainment industry is bad for business and economy, report says.
America has been measured and it is Plus-Sized (NYTimes)