Friday, March 31, 2006

Making Music Out of Menace
Turning Guns into Guitars

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

More EOTW signs: The 'No Evil' company hires lobbyists. (NYTimes)
Pigs at the dinner table?

They'll be swallowing plenty of cringe-inducing robopolicy-speak like this: "We have a team of Republicans and Democrats who are helping them sort out these issues," Ms. Maddox said, an effort that recognizes that the "policy process is an extension of the market battlefield."
Ugh.
More Billions, Less Secure (mojones)
The newly proposed defense budget has money for everything except the one actual threat to the United States.
The Oil We Eat (Harpers) A great article on energy concentration and consumption from an agricultural perspective.
Corn, rice, and wheat are especially adapted to catastrophe. It is their niche. In the natural scheme of things, a catastrophe would create a blank slate, bare soil, that was good for them. Then, under normal circumstances, succession would quickly close that niche. The annuals would colonize. Their roots would stabilize the soil, accumulate organic matter, provide cover. Eventually the catastrophic niche would close. Farming is the process of ripping that niche open again and again. It is an annual artificial catastrophe, and it requires the equivalent of three or four tons of TNT per acre for a modern American farm. Iowa’s fields require the energy of 4,000 Nagasaki bombs every year.
(thx: metafilter)

Monday, March 27, 2006

Oh shit. The infamous Alabama Leprachaun Incident has spawned MC Da Lep Ra Con

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Great pop paintings at SmallandRound

Farewell Buck Owens. One of the best.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

With Isaac Hayes quitting South Park over their cartoon portrayal of his Church of Scientology (he was just fine with all other religions getting satirized), the Jive wanted to know what other celebs might be hanging out in other strange churches. Here's the master list of Famous Adherents.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Patriot Act: The Home Version
Go to GitMo. Do not pass Go.

"I've had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins.
They say `We're all in Guantanamo and nobody has any civil liberties
left,'" he said. "I'm like `Yeah, that's the point.'"
Oh BAbEEE YouUUu YouUU GoT WHAT I NEEeeEEeeEEEeeD!
Biz Markie has a doll. With nose picking finger action.

While I agree that it's not necessarily a terrible idea, calling it 'long awaited', as the ad does, is somewhat of a stretch. Not once in the past 15 years has someone answered 'What's going on with you?' with 'Waiting for that damn Biz Markie doll to come out, just like everybody else!'

Monday, March 20, 2006

$125 PC coming in June: the Chinese "Godson II" (from Hard to Do Any Worse, who has all kinds of interesting posts in the tech/society space)

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Get Your War On still has better war coverage than anyone else.
Eephing (npr)
The eccentric Southern tradition of "eephing" is best described as the hillbilly equivalent of the hip-hop human "beat box" vocal style -- a kind of hiccupping, rhythmic wheeze that started in rural Tennessee more than 100 years ago.

This piece is written by Jennifer Sharpe of Sharpeworld, which, if there's ever a history of blogging written should be praise-piled pretty early in the first chapter. It's been up'n'down, and there's 404s galore, but when the girl is on, nobody can touch her.

Saturday, March 18, 2006


Mmmmm. I'm glad to see they went back to their original flavor.
Kousin Kleetis's business is what the Harvard Business Journal would call vertically diversified.
Prints and paintings of artist Eric Drooker
Computer Networking: The Herald of Resource Sharing (google Video)
"A 1972 documentary on ARPAnet, the early internet. A very interesting look at the beginnings of what is now a huge part of most of our lives."
A nice gallery of 3d art from Andre Surya. My fave.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Some nice film footage of Pentangle performing "Light Flight" (.avi) which was the theme to the late-60's UK show 'Take Three Girls'. Great multicamera edited footage, perfect sound. (Thx . Jhonny Xero)


"Encyclopedia of my Death"
Dutch artist Marcel van Eeden (marcelvaneeden.nl) was born in 1965 in The Hague. His magnum opus is to make a drawing a day based on any source that precedes the year he was born. Using imagery culled from an array of historical material—illustrations from old books, topographical atlases, newspapers, photo archives, magazines like Life or Paris Match—van Eeden draws a world he never knew.

Contains interview and gallery
Audio recording from ancient Pompei
created when a piece of pottery was scraped, the voices from the shop were transmitted to the cutting stylus and saved on the pottery itself. The recording, included in the video includes audible conversation and laughter. Astounding.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Another great in the annals of utterly descriptive site names: Chocolateskulls.com.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

... and with the fuzzy dice, that comes to $18.99. Are you sure you don't want some exhaust flame-throwers with that?
Lists from McSweeneys

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Tinfoil hats: More options available for today's paranoid than just the 'dome'. For the minimalist, there's the 'transparent'. Then again, you could be making it worse on yourself.
A longish Rolling Stone piece on Scientology, America's most mysterious religion.
Some of their beliefs sound almost Kim Jung Il-ish in their propagandist absurdity (the "Bridge to Total Freedom"), and their combination of new-agey holistic doctrine and celebrity endorsement make it somewhat of a magnet for those who don't fit the mold for traditional religion. Then there's the alien fetishism.
Genius lessons: Couple'a random ones with the dumbest guy ever busted for weed, and a deranged cheerleader. (both vid)
New, hairy lobster discovered. Looks like a cross between a parakeet and a scorpion.
The "Long War" is breaking down into tedium (Suntimes)
String Spin!

Monday, March 06, 2006

[Your blog needs Hannitizing!]
The Pentagon targets Bloggers .
The Jive says "Bring it." Perhaps when they do, they can explain why I get harrassed every time I board a plane for being on their absurd 'no-fly' list and there's NOBODY I can call to get taken off of it. One ticketing agent told me I was suspected of being in the IRA. I've never been to Ireland.

From page 3 of the article:
A new U.S. Central Command team, according to a news release, "contacts bloggers to inform the writers about any given topic that may have been posted on their site. . . . The team engages bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information."

Saturday, March 04, 2006

An auto-mechanical performance of umbrellas opening and closing to the tune of 'Singing in the Rain' (from BoingBoing)

Friday, March 03, 2006

The Face Transformer does what it says.
When the Bush admin lawyers fight for more torture at Gitmo.

Vile.
[Miniumum payment: bad; maximum payment: worse]
Pay off some credit card debt, get yourself on a terrorist watchlist.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Because, you know, terrorists just love to pay off complete strangers' credit card balances.
The Osmonds. Hard Rocking. (youtube vid)
The Defense Department is looking for ways to control sharks' brains to do undersea recon.

More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Vote for America's Best Public Restroom
5th Annual?! What the?!.. The Jive has been asleep on the public urination watch.