Children's Guide To the Police
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May 30, 2008
Dying As Art
From The Art Newspaper:
"The German artist Gregor Schneider is planning the ultimate performance piece: showing a person dying as part of an exhibition. “I want to display a person dying naturally in the piece or somebody who has just died,” he told The Art Newspaper. “My aim is to show the beauty of death.”The artist says that Dr Roswitha Franziska Vandieken, who runs her own private clinic in Düsseldorf, has agreed to help find volunteers who are willing to die in public in the name of art. Dr Vandieken was unavailable for comment. “I am confident that we’ll find people to take part,” says Schneider."
Vigor's Horse Action Saddle
May 29, 2008
Courage After The Fact
I love how everybody in this country is suddenly courageous after the fact.
Whether you're a PR tool for the President who spent years spewing lies, or a journalist for MSNBC who spent years repeating them, I love these people who courageously come forward only once progressive and critical thought is once again possible (and their 401k is no longer threatened).
A million bodies later and now you're willing to stand up for what's right. What a bunch of heroes.
May 21, 2008
Eye
If anyone knows the photographer, let me know.
Electric Suicide Bath Duck
That's sweet how the packaging suggests: "Make sure you have made the right decision."
May 20, 2008
Woman Rocks Her Rights On Lebanon TV
"Under no circumstances am I prepared to allow my identity to be obliterated."
Doctor Octopus
I now live with a Doctor. A dangerous, rootin' tootin', tequila sippin', poetry writin' doctor o' skulduggery.
The Bubble Project
Scientology At Work
From the Guardian:
"A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word "cult" to describe the Church of Scientology.I'd correct the lad and point out that technically, they're a tax-exempt corporate cult pyramid scam, but I don't want to get tasered in my bed tonight while I sleep by Scientology security goons.The unnamed youth was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion.
Officers confiscated a placard with the word "cult" on it from the youth, who is under 18, and a case file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.
A date has not yet been set for him to appear in court."
May 19, 2008
Thank You For Saying Yes
We're kind of cute before we become monsters.
May 16, 2008
Designer Weapons
Designer weapons. Who doesn't need a bazooka by Chanel?
Bill O'Reilly Meets The Interwebs
The original, dug up this week:
The remix:
The funny ha ha:
Appeasement
All four watts of this country's intellectual firepower was consumed yesterday in a fight about whether actually talking to other countries (aka diplomacy) was akin to killing puppies.
Someone please make it stop.
May 15, 2008
MUTO By BLU
Video Games, Murder and Mayhem
"Writing today in the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry, Patrick Kierkegaard of the University of Essex, England, suggests that there is scant scientific evidence that video games are anything but harmless and do not lead to real world aggression. Moreover, his research shows that previous work is biased towards the opposite conclusion."and
"However, Kierkegaard explains, there is no obvious link between real-world violence statistics and the advent of video games. If anything, the effect seems to be the exact opposite and one might argue that video game usage has reduced real violence. Despite several high profile incidents in US academic institutions, "Violent crime, particularly among the young, has decreased dramatically since the early 1990s," says Kierkegaard, "while video games have steadily increased in popularity and use."Also just in: the White Album did not cause Charles Manson to kill people. Some people are just batshit fucking insane, and can be made psychotically violent by things like sea shells and walnuts.
That said, I would like to see more scientific data on why images of heads being blown off are perfectly acceptable, but the sight of a naked body turns people into simpering culture nannies.
May 14, 2008
The Future Of Journalism Is Marketing
This is what I learned today reading blogs:
1. It's ok if you obliterate the line between objective journalist and conflicted story participant as long as you admit you're conflicted while entertainingly and very publicly attacking anyone who points out you're more walking billboard than journalist.
2. Standards and ethics are for pussies.
3. You can make more money being the Ann Coulter of technology blogging than Walter Cronkite. You'll also always be in the right, even when you're wrong because the employees of companies who need your adver-journalizing will always kiss your ass. So will investors and the marketing folks who'd love to see a future where the the only news consumers get IS marketing. That leaves only consumer advocates and people with ethics left to criticize you, and they're irrelevant.
4. A journalist and/or blogger's job is no longer to get at the unpleasant truth, but to make money for oneself as part of a multi-million dollar self-promotion empire.
5. It isn't a story unless it involves a corporation either selling something or re-arranging its deck chairs in order to sell something. If you can be the FIRST to state that something is being sold, you're a Pulitzer shoe-in. Look at Techmeme. See anyone talking about how technology actually impacts humans in any substantive way? Blogging from a humanistic, consumer-focused perspective is for hippies and communists.
6. Readers in this country are smart enough to understand the multitude of financial connections and biases for everything they read, so the dividing line between PR and journalism isn't necessary.
7. Adver-marketing-journalism. It's the future. Get on board or be irrelevant.
Marital Rating Chart From 1939
Boing Boing highlights a 1939 test system devised by George W. Crane, MD, a nationally syndicated marriage counselor from the time.
"The test was designed to give couples feedback on their marriages. Either husbands or wives could take the test, which rated wives in a variety of areas. For instance, if your wife "uses slang or profanity," she would get a score of five demerits. On the other hand, if she "reacts with pleasure and delight to marital congress," she would receive 10 merits. The test taker would add up the total number of merits and demerits to receive a raw score, which would categorize the wife on a scale from "very poor" to "very superior."The full chart has been posted to Flickr. I'm not sure a super-computer could even calculate the number of negative points my girlfriend has accumulated from "demerit" number nine.
Jacek Yurka
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May 13, 2008
Man Babies
Sure, why not have an entire website dedicated to switching the heads of parents and their kids? (via)
May 09, 2008
Oil Is a Zero Profit Business
A Sign Of The Looming Apocalypse
I'm fairly sure that talking Aztec Chihuahuas are a sign of the end times.
May 08, 2008
Using A Human Head As a Bong Seems Uncivilized To Me
Headline of the day:
"3 accused of using corpse head to smoke pot"I had (maybe we all did) that college housemate who incessantly tried to make a bong out of EVERYTHING. His room was consistently littered with any number of vegetables, car parts and plane fuselages, stuck perpetually in never-quite-completed stages of being converted into the ultimate THC delivery system. He was an insomniac, so time was on his side.
I think even he would think using a human head was a little overkill.
Sand
A fantastic gallery of sand photography.
The Pinnacle of Nerd
Thanks to Chad for the find.
I've seen some geeky shit in my day, but using a Millennium Falcon remote on my R2D2 HDTV projection system might be the pinnacle of nerd. Even I would feel like a dork using that, and I still play with LEGOs for christ's sake.
May 07, 2008
Kutcher, the Anti-Übermensch
Ok I need to talk this out. I understand that Hollywood must appeal to the median human consciousness in order to maintain maximum profitability, but doesn't having "Cameron & Ashton" in the same film violate some law of intellectual physics? Something about both of those actors independently makes me want to shoot a puppy to bring balance to the universe, but together they create some kind of sneering, drooling, anti-Übermensch.
This is the film's description from Rotten Tomatoes:
"Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher star as strangers who unwittingly end up as bride and groom in this comedy. When one of them strikes it rich after playing the other person's coin, the pair gets married. But all's fair in love and war--and Las Vegas--as each of them tries to get the money."I don't know, but something about the poster, Kutcher's grin and that description makes me think the universe just stopped trying and that I should stock up on purified water and canned goods. Maybe I'm reading too deeply into it. Still, I feel like the Department of Homeland Security should track films like this and disallow anyone who attends the right to vote.
Bill Henson
From Bill Henson's collection of low-light photographs taken during a Paris opera in 1990. More information here.
Politics
Yeah bummer, your lobbyist-compromised talking head was bested in political combat even after playing the race card for months. While I can see how it's really sad to miss out on the opportunity of having the same two ethically-lobotomized families in power for more than two decades straight, I suggest you get over it. Guess you have to support a young, anti-war candidate whose soul hasn't been sucked out by K-Street yet and who excites the nation's disenfranchised. Rough.
The Tech News Game
NIce to see I got a lead item on Techmeme thanks to this story, and I didn't even have to prattle aimlessly about a wholly irrelevant startup I secretly have financial ties to in order to do it. With any luck, I'll be able to reclaim my rightful spot as the 85th most important technology blogger, according to the Silicon Valley nerd-o-verse.
May 06, 2008
Nicholas Ainley
Reader James Gyre gives a great recommendation: the work of Nicholas Ainley. Thanks James. He's no Thomas Kinkade, the painter of LIGHT....but I like 'em. :)
American David
May 02, 2008
Robin, You Dick
Quality American Media
From Media Matters:
"Since The New York Times reported on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon on April 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC have still not mentioned the report. By contrast, during their April 28 evening news broadcasts, all three networks reported on the Vanity Fair photo of Miley Cyrus."The original NY Times story is here, and technically they were a little late to the story. Naomi Klein referenced the program in her book, the Shock Doctrine.
The Pentagon has since claimed they've "suspended" the project long after it was used to blow pro-war smoke up our collective arse. I hate to harp, but it speaks again to the obliteration of the dividing line between marketing (be it for wars or cola) and journalism, and the massive systems of propaganda used to sell your mommy wars and assorted other murderous idiocy.
I used to blame the media until I technically became a part of it, and saw the utter schlock you people click on (or don't) from their side of the statistical aisle.
It's a chicken or the egg phenomenon -- with advertising driven media, outlets are forced to offer shit people want to see in order to thrive (or even survive). Of the dozens of blog entries I wrote in the last week for employers, an entry about a Belgian girl promising to screw people who support network neutrality drew the most hits. What the median viewer wants to see is inane prattle, so they get it. It's all just numbers. Luckily those of you with IQs over the median can seek higher quality meat where and when it exists online -- if you're willing to dig through 8,000 skateboarding faceplant videos to find it.
Unless you've got one, I can see NO SOLUTION for the broader media other than somehow separating advertising and news, and that's not happening anytime soon in this country.
Now where's my copy of Tiger Beat.....
Paris Je T'aime
The sexy poetry starlet and I finally sat down last night to watch paris je t'aime —a collection of shorts from various directors, set in Paris. That's some French city where she lived for six months once upon a time. She gave me a thorough tour about a year ago (though I thought Lyon was cooler). Anyhoo, this one, directed by Oliver Schmitz, was probably our favorite:
I can't find an American subtitled version on the Interneterwebs, so just rent the whole film.
May 01, 2008
Absinthe
The obnoxious music and accent make this video one of my favorites of the week.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting read on new scientific findings regarding Absinthe (aka ye olde "green fairy"):
" An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe - the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity - may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur's supposed mind-altering effects .You weren't high or crazy. You were shitfaced.The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof.
In recent years, the psychedelic nature of absinthe has been hotly debated. Absinthe was notorious among 19th-century and early 20th-century bohemian artists as "the Green Fairy" that expanded the mind. After it became infamous for madness and toxic side effects among drinkers, it was widely banned."