?? November 2002 | Main | January 2003 ??
Pyramon, meet NORA
Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness is a technology which underlies Information Awareness. Basically, to nail bad guys (for fraud, embezzlement, terrorism, whatever), you need to locate the unseen networks between people. Kind of interesting, from a technical standpoint. And a little creepy, too.
And here is when old Al came in.
The Theory of Relativity, explained in words of four letters or less.
ghastly business, that
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Here's where they come for revenge.
International color swatches
Stephanie Brooks is the sort of conceptual artist you can get behind. Check out her whole site, there's some pretty funny stuff in it.
I must be starstruck today
But definitely visit Jeff Bridges' site. Not only is it a very unique design, but the dude wants peace and love.
A real wacky neighbor
I figured it's about time I linked to one of the guys on top. Larry teaches!
But does it have feats of strength?
The official Kwaanza website. Lots of interesting tidbits about its invention. Also includes the Kwaanza US postal stamp. Habari gani? Kujichagulia!
for the musical mcguyver:
A plethora of homebrew instrumentation. By far the coolest is the Synthstick, but then I like anything that uses the word "oscillator." The tupperware uke is also cool. As is the $5.00 clarinet.
Also check out these bamboo saxomophones, linked therein.
he knows when you've been good or bad
Apparently someone takes their Church Lady very seriously.
Hans Blix: International Man of Mystery
The Ultimate Hans Blix Fan Page. Via Laughing Boy.
How to choose advisers
"My psychiatrist said I should stop seeing her. I got a new psychiatrist." That's a quip from a Woody Allen movie (I forget which one, probably Annie Hall or Manhattan). It also seems to be Bush's screening process for scientific advisers. Via Fark.
What color is your parachute? Red, Blue, Yellow, or Green?
The Political Compass gives you a short quiz and maps your political outlook onto a grid. Not the most precise of instruments, but good for a larf.
Yet another reason to switch:
experimental animation by Vancouverino Stephen X Arthur.
A little bedtime reading for the winter solstice
Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Star
why pay 9 dollars for TTT
when you can read the whole saga for free online? Presenting Lord of the Rings: the ebook. (caution: slight changes from the original text are inevitable.)
We came, weblogged, we conquered
Webloggers played a part in ousting Lott. Now that it's Time, not just the oily Post reporting this, I can end the post without a question mark. Neat! Your blog has power. Use it wisely.
Obscene Latin
The Charles Bukowski Memorial Center for Classical Latin Studies compares the recently deceased poet with a brother in filthiness, Catallus. Good stuff. Also includes a guide to swearing in Latin.
Cartoons on everything.
The Rudiments of Wisdom. From the guy who made the British show "The Secret Life of Machines."
From the Mefi thread:
For all of you blowhards talking about "legal is legal" you have obviously never come within 100 feet of an INS office. Imagine the DMV, except 10,000 times more complicated and nasty. Being caught in legal limbo because of INS screw-ups, incompetency, or just confusing paperwork or being told 10 different things by 10 different people is probably more common than going through the procedure smoothly. Ask any immigration lawyer for a horror story and you'll be hard-pressed to get them to shut up.
-cell divide
Back away from the harpsicord, Betty...
More plasty fantasty. You know at the end of South Parks it says "Braniff" and shows a plane passing by? This is the airline to which that refers.
Attribution guilt compels me to note that I got this from newthings, which in turn I got from No Sense of Place, which in turn I got from Good ol' Scrubbles.
And people complain about the begats in Genesis. Puhleeze.
What the hell?
Thousands of Muslim immigrants rounded up in California? More as facts come in.
Introducing Pyramon
I put a movielet in the Bag O' Fun at right. It's only about 3 seconds long, and no sound, so it won't take up your whole day. Here it is!
Lest we forget what Redhat 5 looked like.
PunkGirl, in a blog entry about Microsoft Bob, links to this gallery of GUIs. Inludes a timeline with pics. Enjoy!
No, a Bosch Light
This flash film brilliantly answers a question no one asked. Namely, what would happen if you could drink art?
Uzbekistan: In COLOR
Marika's pictures are in! Pretty nifty. Looks like a rather cold place. But nice.
Prostitutes, 1951
This gallery is a gritty look at prostitutes around the world, half a century ago. Photos by Piet den Blanken. Via the clunky but nonetheless venerable linkfilter.
as much as I hate linking to the Post...
This piece makes the suggestion that the Trent Lott affair was kept in play by bloggers. It's an interesting theory. Are blogs the thinking man's talk radio?
Funky Cops
Funky Cops is a new cartoon in France. I really really want to see it. So it's definitely on the p2p short list for the week. Check it out! Brought to my attention through PRI's The World. Merci!
Camp (or kitsch) in your own Homeland
Attention designers: Uncle Sam (well, really someone else, but whatever) wants you to design a logo for the new Dept of Homeland Security. Which raises the question, how well can Republicans sniff out sarcasm? Via Metafilter.
Haven't switched yet, but...
More switch spoofs via Freakgirl. I especially love Milton.
Going to the moon for the right reasons
Nice to see the Guardian printing a a pro-space story / essay, marking 30 years since the last Apollo mission.
Pointy side down?
Sciam reverses the food pyramid in this month's issue... kind of. Still on the pointy end are red meats and butter, but most vegetable oils have found their way to the bottom, where the whole grians live. And stay off the taters, kids. My favorite tidbit here is:
Eating a boiled potato raises blood sugar levels higher than eating the same amount of calories from table sugar. Because potatoes are mostly starch, they can be rapidly metabolized to glucose. In contrast, table sugar (sucrose) is a disaccharide consisting of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose. Fructose takes longer to convert to glucose, hence the slower rise in blood glucose levels.
Take that, Mr. Potato Head!
no two are alike
An incredible series of snowflake photos. Found this via Neofilter, a German linklog which showed up in my refers list. Danke!
Better than "Cats"
The strange flash stylings of eyeEnvision.com ask the important question, what would a cat punk band sound like?
Google versus evil
January 2003's Wired carries this article on Google, its founder, and the choices he's had to make along the way.
Who says advertising isn't art?
Stickers from the California Homegrowers' Association's golden age. NSFW. Via Everlasting Blort.
more photographiolas
I found that last photographer through this Guggenheim exhibit btw. Lots more photographers, conceptual artists, and allied tradespeople there.
Stanley Kubrick with an instamatic.
It's a cakewalk to take abstract photos by zooming in. Andreas Gursky does it by zooming out.
Max Dugan can't return. Last link is the good one.
Anyone remember Max Dugan Returns? It wasn't anything great, but I remember distinctly that Max leaves at the end to drive to Brazil. That left a mark on young me, and so the other day, while listening to some wonderful Samba, I thought it would be interesting to look into such a drive.
Turns out you pretty much can't do it. Or, you can but you have to go armed and with a 4x4. The reason is The Darien Gap, about 56 miles of jungle where the Pan-American highway isn't. There have been plans to build across it for quite some time, but political unrest and threat of environmental have stymied its completion. Now, drug cartels and frequent kidnappings make travel through the gap a ridiculous gamble.
In the past, however, it was possible to trek the jungle and make it across. This pre-blog from 1973-1975 tells one such story. I will post more later today.
Is that the Dude?
On a lighter note, Viceland presents the top 10 outsider videos, Features Orson Welles screwing up a Wine commercial and a hippie pitching a movie plot (hence this entry's title). Hilarious.
The Unseen Gulf War
A photo essay from the first bout with Saddam. Warning: some of these images are very disturbing. Others are only slightly disturbing.
we can play forever and ever and ever
Photos of that spooky building in Asbury Park. What is it about antique children's entertainment that's so goddamned freaky? Will we ever get the heebie jeebies from the Teletubbies? Did I just answer my own question?
The rest of this site is pretty nifty too, although there's a lot of dead ends, ie photo links that have no photos in them. Be sure to check out Weird NJ if you're a local and you haven't already seen been there.
Invasion of The Yurt People
While we're waiting for Marika's pics, enjoy some homespun Yurts. I still like Earthships a little better, but that's the Uncle Owen in me.
And I thought Swiss Family Robinson was bullshitting me
A fun little piece about an ancient landbridge from india to Africa, via the NYT, via Laputan Logic. Oh and as for the Swiss Family Robinson thing, the Disney movie used an Asia-Africa landbridge to justify having lots of zoo-type animals on the island, when in fact most islands have very few large mammals. But now i'm rambling because it's awfully late.
I guess she's not Jimmy's sister.
Can someone who uses blogspot help Marika Olsen post pictures? I really want to see what Uzbekistan looks like. The text is good though.
Tim O'Reilly on Piracy
Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly fame compares net "piracy" to a progressive tax. I like this O'Reilly. So much nicer than that toolbag O'Reilly on Fox. Seriously though: good article.
Yall should go visit Freakgirl
Not because she was nice enough to link to us (she was though!) but because her blog is outstanding. Also, how many blogs have a theme song?
Betty, be a doll and warm up the harpsichord
The Stewardess Uniform Collection. Via Scrubbles, via Quiddity, via Freakgirl. Ok i'm not doing that again.
'Tis the Season for Santos
An interview [warning: instant seizure banner on top] with Moacir Santos, who was mentioned on Lenny yesterday as an underappreciated jazz great. And you know how I love Brazillian music. Excerpts and a bioblurb can be found at AllBrazilian Music, whose banner is a little less asinine.
The Illustrated Rub??iy??t
Breathtaking pre-art-nouveau art nouveau. Elihu Vedder proves that the graven image can be a natural, zesty enterprise.
The other boys from Brazil. The good ones.
oodles of Kraftwerk multimedia can be found south of the equator. Also be sure to check out the Kraftwerk official home page.
A Day in the Life of my Mouth
Amazing Pinhole camera photos, taken from the point of view of the uvula. Via MeFi.
for the supervillain on a budget
This Brooklynite has mastered the art of a maximalist desktop scheme. Uses the dastardly windows web desktop feature.
mini-itx makes it fun
When you have a mini-itx footprint to start with, the sky's the limit.
How the Bourgeoisie Stole Christmas
In Soviet Russia, children's books read you. Via Scrubbles.
speaking of paranoid totalitarian fruitcakery...
A little bedtime story about stupidity and the Nazis: In 1942 Hitler, having been spun quite the yarn about the "Hollow Earth", actually sent a bunch of scientists into the baltic with a big telescope to spy on the British Fleet by looking up. This page details the whole bevy of theories, including that of Cyrus Teed, an alchemist from Utica who renamed himself Koresh. Apparently another nutbar in the seventies decided that Hitler and his crew escaped through a hole in the south pole, perhaps aided by UFOs.
Total Information Awareness 101
Eyeball everyone's favorite scumbag. Via cryptome, via boing-boing, via everybody.
know your trance from your trip-hop
Ishkur's guide to electronic music. Opinionated and informative. I'm sure Edina Monsoon is studying this somewhere in London.
source code
Here's a prog that ( Iguess) is used to create some of these.
http://www.calodox.scene.org:8080/demoniac/
some more
This is very cool. I found a couple of other sites that have demos on them as well. I gotta figure out how they did these!!
little gorgeous programs
Scene.org is a website devoted to demos. Little programs that show off your computer's capability, however meager or grand. Unzip some of their top items and check it out.
