03/19/08

A German fighter ace has just learned that one of his 28 wartime 'kills' was his favourite author. Messerschmidt pilot Horst Rippert, 88, said he would have held his fire if he had known the man flying the Lightning fighter was renowned French noveli ...

In the middle of this interview with rapper DMX, it becomes clear that he's never heard of Barack Obama before. Q: Barack Obama, yeah.A: Barack?!Q: Barack.A: What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?Q: Yeah, his dad is from Ke ...

Long long but good good roundbrowser** discussion about which is the best TV drama ever: The Wire, Deadwood, or The Sopranos. MZS: And I would be, frankly, stunned if, as great an actor as Ian McShane is, he ever did anything that was as demanding a ...

Here's a few hundred words on why that Stuff White People Like site is "weak satire". When black people dance, they dance like this. But when white people dance, they dance like this.You have now essentially experienced every episode of "The Arsenio ...

Andy Baio has digitized and put online a VHS tape from 1995 called "Internet Power!" Gape in wonder at its mid-90s-ness. (link)

joshua : Self-Experimenter Freed Himself from Insomnia, Acne and Love Handles: Scientific American - medical self-experimentation Tags : medicine

Linkorama : Google Maps Now Editable by Anyone - about time Tags : google maps wiki

Linkorama : Ride the Lobster - Ride the Lobster is an 800km, 5-day international unicycle race set for 16-20th June 2008. Nova Scotia, Canada. Tags : events nonprofit unicycle wiki

deusx : SitePen Blog » JSONPath Support - "We recently added JSONPath support to the Dojo Toolkit." Tags : dojo json jsonpath webdev

deusx : WebChicanery » Clipboard Copy Javascript - "I found myself looking for a way to copy text into a users clipboard via Javascript." Tags : clipboard javascript webdev

more is more!

"20+ years later the Unix shell is still the fastest way to get work done on a bunch of files." You learn a new trick every day, I tell ya...

"Yahoo has a rich history of supporting open standards, such as OpenID and Apache Hadoop" evasive...

yeah, this bugs the shit out of me too

"If you’re live blogging an event, you’re missing the event in favour of giving instant reaction."

The Sorting Algorithm Demo (495)

Easy Photo Wall on a Shoestringwire Budget » Curbly | DIY Design Community « Keywords: photos, home, decoration, wall (226)

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide (221)

Interview with George Clooney - On Career, Sex And Politics: Ever wonder what stars think about all the stuff written about them on the Internet? Well, this is one of the most simply inventive things I’ve seen in a while: Esquire sat George Cl ...

Dusting Off the Archive for the Web: Sports Illustrated is following the lead of the New York TImes and putting everything they ever wrote — all 53 year’s worth — on the Web for free. Their old content is a huge asset in terms of t ...

Forget best picture. How can any of us judge what should win the Academy Award for best editing? Hollywood editor Mark Helfrich walks us through well-edited scenes from this year's five Oscar-nominated films.

My Dad is now out of the hospital and everything's OK with him. Thank you Lord, and thanks to all of you who prayed for him and for our family.

Many readers are sending in word that Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka. He wrote over 100 books including 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous With Rama, and popularized the ideas of geosynchronous communications satellites and space elevators. ...

mutube writes "Open Source advocate Bruce Perens began petitioning for support in election to the OSI Executive Board. Because it's a self-electing board, demonstrable community support is needed to attain a seat. Perens is standing on a platform of ...

adamengst sends in an article from TidBITS in which Macintosh security expert Rich Mogull explains why he doesn't use antivirus software on the Mac, and why most Mac users shouldn't bother with it either. The article also touches on the question of w ...

Ian Lamont writes "Despite Microsoft's aim to take on Adobe Flash with Silverlight, the company has decided to support Flash on Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft has also licensed the Adobe Reader LE software, so owners of Windows Mobile devices will ...

enodo writes "Voting machine manufacturer Sequoia has sent well-known Princeton professor Ed Felten and his colleague Andrew Appel a letter threatening to sue if New Jersey sends them a machine to evaluate. It's not clear from the letter Sequoia sent ...

superglaze writes "What's to say? After much prevaricating and slipping out then pulling back, the first service pack for Windows Vista has actually been released. It's available for download now via Microsoft's sites, with an auto-update rollout sch ...

Barack Obama confronted the nation's racial divide head-on Tuesday, tackling both black grievance and white resentment in a bold effort to quiet a campaign uproar over race and his former pastor's incendiary statements.

The State Department says U.S. officials have concluded that the American Embassy in Yemen was targeted by three mortar rounds that crashed into a nearby high school, apparently killing a Yemeni security guard.

Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a ...

It was during the card approval process that more than 4 million customer accounts at grocery stores in the Northeast and Florida were exposed to fraud, even though the company meets the latest standards for data security, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. ...

Facebook Inc. is tweaking the privacy settings on its popular online hangout to let users exert greater control over which of their friends are allowed to see personal details they post.

Barack Obama confronted the nation's racial divide head-on Tuesday, tackling both black grievance and white resentment in a bold effort to quiet a campaign uproar over race and his former pastor's incendiary statements.

A long love story is over at a German zoo: Petra the swan and her swan-shaped paddleboat are parting ways. Petra, a black swan, became a minor celebrity in 2006 when she became so attached to the boat — which is shaped like an oversized white swan  ...

Two teenagers, one dangling from a rope tied to an interstate bridge and holding a can of spray paint, did not see Sheriff's Deputy Melissa Myers when she drove up. They never got a chance to express their love with graffiti.

A long love story is over at a German zoo: Petra the swan and her swan-shaped paddleboat are parting ways. Petra, a black swan, became a minor celebrity in 2006 when she became so attached to the boat — which is shaped like an oversized white swan  ...

WASHINGTON/ NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve slashed U.S. interest rates on Tuesday, boosting Wall Street, which was already higher on stronger-than-expected investment bank earnings.

Those of us unfortunate enough to both use the internet and retain some modicum of taste are no doubt familiar with the internet catchphrase: generally a moderately amusing (though not always) twist on normal English grammar that then gets repeated a ...

The US central bank announces another deep cut in interest rates to calm nervous markets.

I’m delighted to say that online bookstores are shipping copies of Here Comes Everybody today, and that it has gotten several terrific notices in the blogosphere: Cory Doctorow:Clay’s book makes sense of the way that groups are using the ...

Check it out, everyone! We have the exclusive video of "Sex And The City" star Kristin Davis having sex with her boyfriend. Except ... it's not really exclusive and it's not really her. Our friends at the Hot Wife Allie blog actually found this video ...

Fortune interviewed Bret Taylor on his present at Friendfeed and his past at Google [video]. Bret says (small edits for clarity): I had a number of accomplishments that I'm really proud of at Google. But I think for me I really wanted to sort of, ...

If you create a new document with Google Docs and edit it for a while, different snapshots of your document will be saved into the revision history for this document. Perhaps at some point you consider your document to be in a state where you want to ...

A German fighter ace has just learned that one of his 28 wartime 'kills' was his favourite author. Messerschmidt pilot Horst Rippert, 88, said he would have held his fire if he had known the man flying the Lightning fighter was renowned French noveli ...

Lately, I've started collecting old VHS tapes about the Internet from the early- to mid-1990s. While most of these are pretty corny -- think Gabe and Max's Internet Thing -- they also inadvertently captured pieces of the web that don't exist anywher ...

Most well known for his "Obey Giant" street posters, Shepard Fairey has carefully nurtured a reputation as a heroic guerilla street artist waging a one man campaign against the corporate powers-that-be. Infantile posturing aside, Fairey's ...

Oral arguments were heard today in District of Columbia v. Heller, the first occasion in almost 70 years for the Supreme Court to decide the question, "Just what does the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mean?"

The mysterious podcast

It's art; it's geometry; it's green tech. It's the oloid. The oloid (pronounced "oh-loh-weed") was discovered by Paul Schatz. Schatz discovered in 1929 that the Platonic solids could be inverted, and one of the products of the inversion of the c ...

Your candidate still sucks, but let's remember the Republicans have chosen a deranged fossil who wants everyone to die in eternal war, doesn't understand or care about the economy or healthcare, and can't tell his pruny old ass from Iran or Al Qaeda. ...

I suppose that not long ago most political junkies would have been excited by the possibility of an actual convention floor fight instead of the scripted fake convention we've had in recent years.But now I imagine most of those same junkies are rathe ...

Something Awful eschews humor in this week's Comedy Goldmine for gibbering madness. "I know you were coming here expecting to laugh at the Comedy Goldmine this week. Well, you're screwed....

"It's the Bizaro Ethel Merman." "She's like a garbage bag full of fighting Muppets back from the dentist." "It's like the little exorcist girl stung by bees." "The first time...

A short film in which a Paris Hilton-esque socialite is revealed to be the architect of her own loopy attempts at notoriety, and who will go as far as she...

Presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a speech today about race. Here's an MP3 of the speech. — — sundaygang.com/ obama/ 2008/ 03/ 18/ speech.mp3 — —

sundaygang.com/ obama/ 2008/ 03/ 17/ call1.mp3 — —

.... founding of the country itself?  Why?  If not, why is America so obsessed with race while other countries don't have a problem with it?  Your answer should be a minimum of 200 words.  Due by Wednesday, 3/ 19/ 08.  Authored by geoffwick ...

.... pastor Jeremiah Wright blamed the "arrogance" of the "United States of White America" for much of the world's suffering. As Marc Ambinder pointed out, this claim was false; Obama was on his way to campaign in Miami. Kristol has now pri ...

You're about to see the mother of all flamewars on internet groups where web developers hang out. It'll make the Battle of Stalingrad look like that time your sister-in-law stormed out of afternoon tea at your grandmother's and wrapped the Must ...

The summer internships at Fog Creek are already full, but Seth Godin, my marketing rebbe, has marketing internships. Paid! “The idea is to find a diverse group of motivated young people who want to join together to create a few really neat proj ...

and 40% comes from a single source; good luck shutting it down, though  

telenapping with your loved one  

like a drunken goat-bot funded by DARPA  

impressive shots taken at night; full set on Flickr  

from Dolores Labs, a Turk consultancy; also, their wonderful chart of race on Sports Illustrated covers  

from the Czech studio that made Samorost, a lovely game for kids commissioned by the BBC; walkthrough  

don't miss the rest of NPR's coverage, too  

Here's a quick how-to that shows you how to modify a single use camera so that it shocks the person when they press the shutter button. The video includes a bunch of clips of unwitting suckers using the camera. Link...

Pennsylvania-based artist Mark Dion is an artist whose installations explore ideas of scientific taxonomy, naturalist collection, curation, and exhibition, from museums to cabinets of curiosity. His most recent show, at New York City's Tanya Bonakdar ...

Note: From time to time we're going to be promoting especially wonderful comments (for all values of "wonderful") to the front page. This is Pipenta in "The science fiction book art of Richard Powers" thread, writing in response to someone who looked ...

From Larry This site hosts this video to explain the launch of two exploratory projects -- first, a Change Congress movement, and second, my own decision whether to run for Congress in the California 12th. I have decided I want to give as much ener ...

I just watched Obama's speech on race. Before the commentariat bashes the speech into a shape they can sell for the next few cycles (Wolf Blitzer: "It was a preemptive strike" - feh!), I want to say that I thought this was a fearless speech that show ...

We all know Diablo III is coming eventually. It's Blizzard, after all, and ignoring the Diablo fanbase is leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table. But Blizzard isn't making a peep. Typical! However, a recent job posting on Blizzard's emp ...

I love Street Fighter II Turbo... and sadly I sorta love beatboxing. Sure this SF2 Turbo beatbox isn't nearly as cool as the Super Mario one, but it's still worth a listen.

Red, yellow and blue cars are on their way in a hurry to the Brooklyn side of the bridge.

AFP

For Juice This! Hideous Beast aided fellow graduate student Kermit Gilbert in promoting his self-help DVD, Juicer. For this event, we set up a table for juicing various food products that were offered to the audience as samples. The juicer and blend ...

Wafaa Bilal grabbed the attention of the media last year with his performance Domestic Tension. Bilal, born in Iraq and currently teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, installed his living quarter at Chicago's Flatfile Gallery. View ...

Ed Magedson, founder of RipOffReport.com says he's been harassed by "internet terrorists" who are trying to get consumer complaints published on his website removed. Web marketers says Magedson is essentially extorting businesses by charging fees to ...