Never mind jumping the shark, has Tom Green lost it? As if Freddy Got Fingered wasn't sad enough, the former Mr. Drew Barrymore is picking blogfights with bloggers!? Isn't it embarrassing enough to be a quasi-celeb with a blog, let alone use it to rally your fans into send hate-mail and threats to a little-known blogger? Or is this just another childish attempt to embarrass his parents? posted by tsarfan at 10:23 PM PST - 53 comments
Free, good science fiction for download, some you might have seen, some new, all are worth the time. If you have only a few minutes, Michael Swanick's Science Fiction Table of the Elements features 108 short short stories. If you have a little more time, Kelly Link, called by Neil Gaiman "the best short story writer currently out there" has released her much-praised collection Stranger Things Happen. For longer reads, Charlie Stross has made available his cyberpunk novel Accelerando and his Lovecraftish Colder War. The creepier Peter Watts has posted the New York Times Notable Book Starfish, and its sequels as well [previously]. If you haven't had enough, you should check out the Baen Free Library, with books by everyone from Andre Norton to Larry Niven, as well as a large amount of right-of-center combat-oriented stuff by David Weber and friends. Also, the Science Fiction Channel has made available many well-known classic short stories as well as a lot of contemporary Hugo and World Fantasy Award winners [previously]. Finally, you probably already know that Cory Doctorow has four novels available under creative commons. Happy reading! posted by blahblahblah at 9:34 PM PST - 59 comments
A Healthy Heart [possibly slightly NSFW intro] A slick Flash interface with 3D navigation controls, zoomable graphics, video segments, interactive models. From Anatomical Travelogue. posted by tellurian at 9:27 PM PST - 8 comments
Trendwatching reports on "emerging consumer trends and related new business ideas." It is packed with ideas and links for new online business concepts that are currently emerging. The language is marketingpersonbuzzspeak, but the ideas (with supporting website examples) are fascinating. posted by stbalbach at 8:19 PM PST - 28 comments
Bring dead LCD pixels back to life! Did you know you can often fix dead LCD pixels by forcing them to rapidly cycle through red, green, and blue? Neither did I, but the video linked here worked on one of my older screens after a few hours of looped playback. YMMV, but what have you got to lose? posted by pmbuko at 4:06 PM PST - 32 comments
UK politician chooses his blog over his party: Paul Leake, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Durham, was asked by his local party to remove any "controversial" posts from his weblog and to give them the right to vet future posts. Denis Jackson, another Liberal Democrat on Durham City Council, said that the Labour councillors were using the blog to find "lurid headlines". Leake refused, and stepped down from the party. He'll now serve his constituents as an independent. [Via The Political Weblog Project] posted by tapeguy at 3:41 PM PST - 3 comments
UK soldiers 'storm' Basra prison: 2 british soldiers, presumably special forces shot at police, were arrested. then the brit army (this in basra) wanted them. police refused, a RIOT broke out, one brit tracked vehicle burned, 3 personnel injured. 100+ prisoners escaped when the British broke a wall down in the jail
Okay, I'm pretty sure this could have been handled differently... posted by Elim at 3:31 PM PST - 76 comments
speech bubbles - fun times with guerilla art, Ji Lee printed 50,000 speech bubbles and plastered movie posters, advertisements and whatever with them in NYC, then came back and photographed what people added (via) posted by sourbrew at 3:29 PM PST - 45 comments
Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid, by Jonathon Kozol, from the September issue of Harper's. Even if you're familiar with a big-city public-school system , it's an eye-opener. (Also, if (like I might be on a worse day) you're miffed by yet another Harper's cover story FPP, what do you think about the posting site's Fair Use application? I've never seen that before. No more inside.) posted by mrgrimm at 2:51 PM PST - 30 comments
Throughout his childhood, David Myers was told that his skin color was a disease called melanism. He was lucky, his mother said, because the skin discoloration was all over his body, instead of just splotches of brown like most people had.
So despite his dark skin, Myers grew up in white, middle-class neighborhoods in Ohio and New York believing he was white. posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:06 PM PST - 55 comments
NASA today announced their plans for a return moon trip by 2018. No doubt this thread could go a million different ways, but what interests me the most about the plan is its simplicity. NASA may have learned its lesson from the overly ambitious and complex Shuttle program and appears to be aiming for much greater simplicity this time around. Part of the beauty of this plan is utilizing those parts of the Shuttle system which have been proven to work well: SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) and SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters). Propulsion is often the thorniest part of any space launch, and it seems like combining the known variables of those systems with Apollo-era design may just work. If we are re-focusing NASA on exploration, the 21st Century Lewis & Clarke, and the agency can execute, I'll be pretty excited about moving on to Mars. posted by tgrundke at 11:54 AM PST - 161 comments
Foil the paparazzi Georgia Tech researchers come up with a system that senses nearby digital imaging devices, and fires a beam of light at 'em, foiling attempts to take pictures of 'ya. More high-tech (but less entertaining) than having Sean Penn smash the paparazzi cameras. posted by RonZ at 8:05 AM PST - 29 comments
Disaster relief? Call in the Marines President Bush suggested a larger disaster relief role for the armed forces in his national address last week, and Congress has indicated it will take up the issue this autumn. Though the topic has emerged at other troubled times - most recently 9/11 - Congress has always avoided amending Posse Comitatus, the law that has kept active-duty soldiers out of civilian law-enforcement affairs since Reconstruction. posted by Postroad at 7:48 AM PST - 43 comments
Petrol prices hurting your wallet? Try stealing it instead! A Sydney man has been accused of siphoning 1,000 litres (265 gallons) of fuel from a service station into a large home-made tank in his van. Police allege the 36-year-old man used a Toyota Town Ace van to take petrol from a service station's underground tanks. Another 44,000 litres of fuel (or there about) is yet to be accounted for though.
Police allegedly found fittings and equipment inside the van that could be used to steal petrol from service stations, including a home made tank.
Hard times huh? Sorry there's no photo to go with this. The guy's van is an awesome sight though. Best I've got is streaming video via ABC News (Windows HQ or LQ). posted by sjvilla79 at 7:15 AM PST - 25 comments
Today is "Talk Like a Pirate" Day. Yarr! Do yer part, landlubbers, by translating yer favorite webpage into pirate-speak. Yarr! posted by starkeffect at 3:07 AM PST - 96 comments
Won't somebody please think of the children? Oh, don't fool yourselves! Americans under the age of 12 now spend or influence the spending of $565 billion a year - up from $2.2 billion in 1968, and kid-spending has roughly doubled every ten years for the past three decades, tripling in the 1990s. Which means someone is always thinking of the children. The American Association of Pediatrics (pdf) cites this bludgeoning of kidvertising as creating in children "a fever for shopping and spending, swollen expectations about material needs, decreasing immunity to the assaults of advertisers, self-concepts defined by brands of clothing, and a rash of of debt by the time they leave college". [more...] posted by taz at 1:46 AM PST - 55 comments
¡°Why?¡± asked Larry, in his practical way. "Sergeant," admonished the Lieutenant, "you mustn't use such language to your men." "Yes," accorded Shorty; "we'll git some rations from camp by this evenin'. Cap will look out for that. Meanwhile, I'll take out two or three o' the boys on a scout into the country, to see if we can't pick up something to eat." Marvor, however, didn't seem satisfied. "The masters always speak truth," he said. "Is this what you tell me?" MRS. B.: Why are they let, then? My song is short. I am near the dead. So Albert's letter remained unanswered¡ªCaro felt that Reuben was unjust. She had grown very critical of him lately, and a smarting dislike coloured her [Pg 337]judgments. After all, it was he who had driven everybody to whatever it was that had disgraced him. He was to blame for Robert's theft, for Albert's treachery, for Richard's base dependence on the Bardons, for George's death, for Benjamin's disappearance, for Tilly's marriage, for Rose's elopement¡ªit was a heavy load, but Caro put the whole of it on Reuben's shoulders, and added, moreover, the tragedy of her own warped life. He was a tyrant, who sucked his children's blood, and cursed them when they succeeded in breaking free. "Tell my lord," said Calverley, "I will attend him instantly." HoME²Ô¾®¿Õ·¬ºÅѸÀ×Á´½Ó
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