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May 16, 2008

Apology Project

A friend wrote me today describing her plan to select a dozen names at random from the Paris phone book and send each of them a postcard:

"Greetings from the USA. You don't know me, but I selected your name and address at random from the internet white pages. I send you this note to apologize. The president of my country is an idiot. I did not vote for him. The majority of us are deeply ashamed of this man and his law-breaking regime. Let us hope for a return to sanity and intelligence in the upcoming year.

Best regards,"

She was inspired by this:

I, in turn, am inspired to commit similar acts. We are both curious to see if anyone responds, and how. Care to join us? If so, spread the word.

1:27 PM •

May 15, 2008

Earth to GWB:

The Lebanese Army isn't on your side any more!: "So there was George Bush, telling the BBC today that he is willing to send US aid to the Lebanese Army... Doesn't he realize that... the Lebanese Army isn't on his side any more?? Is it any wonder that the administration led by this man is losing so badly in the Middle East these days?" (Just World News)

7:11 PM •

Fanboy Supercuts

Obsessive Video Montages: "... [a] genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage." An extensive list from films and TV series, including every whacking from The Sopranos and every "dude" from The Big Lebowski. (waxy.org)

11:30 AM •

May 12, 2008

A New Approach to Treating Alzheimer's

'We've shown that the function of memory circuits can be modulated.' A neurosurgeon testing deep brain electrical stimulation with implanted electrodes for other purposes was surprised to find normalization of memory function in a man with Alzheimer's dementia. (Technology Review)

1:14 PM •

Shipwrecks & Sea Disasters

Some spectacular and haunting photos
(Dark Roasted Blend)

1:11 PM •

The World's Spookiest Weapons

"Whether these masterpieces of destruction come from miles above Earth or millimeters below the skin, they have one thing in common: they're spooky as hell.

Can turning animals into cyborgs ever end well? Should lasers really be strapped to planes? Is dispersing humans with the worst smell ever created a better alternative to doing it by burning their skin? You be the judge." (Popular Science)

12:35 PM •

The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep

(Literally): "'We went to the doctor after he was born, and I kept telling him something was wrong. He didn't sleep. They thought I was being kind of an anxious mom, and we went back and forth,' Rhett's mother, Shannon Lamb, said. 'Finally, they [were] starting to realize now that he really doesn't sleep at all. But we've had a lot of different diagnoses and nobody really knows.'" (ABC News)

12:33 PM •

‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma

"“Until now, the acceptance of mental illness has pretty much stopped at depression,” said Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. “But a newer generation, fueled by the Internet and other sophisticated delivery systems, is saying, ‘We deserve to be heard, too.’ ”" (New York Times)

12:30 PM •

May 11, 2008

Where can I get one of those?

Safety in numbers for speeding drivers: "Speeding drivers in south China are getting clear away thanks to machines which switch the numbers on their licence plates in seconds, state media said on Tuesday." (Reuters)

1:41 AM •

May 9, 2008

Higher Suicide Risk for Smart MDs

"There's a grim, rarely talked-about twist to all that medical know-how doctors learn to save lives: It makes them especially good at ending their own. An estimated 300 to 400 U.S. doctors kill themselves each year — a suicide rate thought to be higher than in the general population, although exact figures are hard to come by.

Some doctors believe the stigma of mental illness is magnified in a profession that prides itself on stoicism and bravado. Many fear admitting psychiatric problems could be fatal to their careers, so they suffer in silence." (Time)

5:49 PM •

Rafe Coburn: 'Why I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton'

"...A victory for Hillary Clinton would be a victory for shameless pandering and for all that is small within us. We can do better." (rc3)

12:22 AM •

Hauntology

"The shades of the past become more vivid than anything turned up by the present. The spirit of the times is itself spectral. Faced with the apparent triumph of global Capital and the collapse of cultural innovation, artists and critics impatient with postmodern culture’s ‘nostalgia mode’ are forced back to a time before the End of History. They engage in mourning and melancholia for what has disappeared and what never came to be. Everyday life becomes ghostly… a saturated culture is unable to forget that things were not always like this." (Strange Attractor)

12:18 AM •

May 8, 2008

Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder (b. 05/08/30)

this poem is for deer

I dance on all the mountains
On five mountains, I have a dancing place
When they shoot at me I run
To my five mountains"

Missed a last shot
At the Buck, in twilight
So we came back sliding
On dry needles through cold pines.
Scared out a cottontail
Whipped up the winchester
Shot off its head.
The white body rolls and twitches
In the dark ravine
As we run down the hill to the car.

deer foot down scree
Picasso's fawn, Issa's fawn,
Deer on the autumn mountain
Howling like a wise man
Stiff springy jumps down the snowfields
Head held back, forefeet out,
Balls tight in a tough hair sack
Keeping the human soul from care
on the autumn mountain
Standing in late sun, ear-flick
Tail-flick, gold mist of flies
Whirling from nostril to eyes.

Home by night
drunken eye
Still picks out Taurus
Low, and growing high:
four-point buck
Dancing in the headlights
on the lonely road
A mile past the mill-pond,
With the car stopped, shot
That wild silly blinded creature down.

Pull out the hot guts
with hard bare hands
While night-frost chills the tongue
and eye
The cold horn-bones.
The hunter's belt
just below the sky
Warm blood in the car trunk.
Deer-smell,
the limp tongue.

Deer don't want to die for me.
I'll drink sea-water
Sleep on beach pebbles in the rain
Until the deer come down to die
in pity for my pain.

Gary Snyder

this poem is for bear

"As for me I am a child of the god of the mountains."

A bear down under the cliff.
She is eating huckleberries.
They are ripe now
Soon it will snow, and she
Or maybe he, will crawl into a hole
And sleep. You can see
Huckleberries in bearshit if you
Look, this time of year
If I sneak up on the bear
It will grunt and run
The others had all gone down
From the blackberry brambles, but one girl
Spilled her basket, and was picking up her
Berries in the dark.
A tall man stood in the shadow, took her arm,
Led her to his home. He was a bear.
In a house under the mountain
She gave birth to slick dark children
With sharp teeth, and lived in the hollow
Mountain many years.

snare a bear: call him out:
honey-eater
forest apple
light-foot
Old man in the fur coat, Bear! come out!
Die of your own choice!
Grandfather black-food!
this girl married a bear
Who rules in the mountains, Bear!

you have eaten many berries
you have caught many fish
you have frightened many people

Twelve species north of Mexico
Sucking their paws in the long winter
Tearing the high-strung caches down
Whining, crying, jacking off
(Odysseus was a bear)

Bear-cubs gnawing the soft tits
Teeth gritted, eyes screwed tight
but she let them.

Til her brothers found the place
Chased her husband up the gorge
Cornered him in the rocks.
Song of the snared bear:
"Give me my belt.
"I am near death.
"I came from the mountain caves
"At the headwaters,
"The small streams there
"Are all dried up.

-- I think I'll go hunt bears.
"hunt bears?
Why shit Snyder.
You couldn't hit a bear in the ass
with a handful of rice!"

Gary Snyder

3:07 PM •

Census Atlas of the United States

"More often than not, trolling websites that end with “.gov” is about as much fun as renewing your driver's license. But if you check out the U.S. Census Bureau’s website, you can fully access a truly awesome book: the Census Atlas of the United States.

True to the federal government’s prominent place on the trailing edge of information technology, the 302-page report, containing 800 maps populated by data compiled through 2000, is available in 18 PDF files (very Web 1.0). Sure, it’s a bit of a slog — the largest PDF weighs in at 21 MB — but it’s fun to wander such diverse sections as college dormitory population, prevalent language spoken at home, and percentage of commuters who carpool." (Very Short List)

3:06 PM •

May 7, 2008

turtlewheels

"Little Bit, a young Eastern Box Turtle was hit by a car in September of 2000. Her shell was crushed and she was left partially paralyzed... After some weeks Little Bit seemed to have made a full recovery except for the use of her hind legs. So some wheels seemed to be the way to go. Some lightweight model airplane wheels on a wire frame did the trick... She was eating, drinking, and exploring all the rooms of my house. Eventually she was able to move around outside as well." (via kottke)

11:57 PM •

Is the personal Web site a thing of the past?

"It’s interesting that having your own domain and Web site once set you apart from the crowd because it meant you were an early adopter, perhaps soon it will mark you as unusually old fashioned." — Rafe Coburn (rc3)

11:54 PM •

How does an Etch-a-Sketch work?

I know you have all been dying to know for all these years. (Howstuffworks)

11:22 AM •

The best and worst of medicine

"spiked and Wellcome Collection have launched a website to debate and discuss the top-dog medical breakthroughs that transformed humanity’s fortunes, and the worst-ever harebrained medical schemes that should be stuffed in the sin bin of history." (sp!ked)

10:05 AM •

May 3, 2008

Why We Sleep

The Temporal Organization of Recovery — Emmanuel Mignot, Stanford University ('Unsolved Mysteries' discuss a topic of biological importance that is poorly understood and in need of research attention). (PLoS Biology)

8:49 AM •

I See Dead People['s Books]

at LibraryThing: "A group for those interested and involved in entering the library catalogs of famous readers."

8:45 AM •

visualcomplexity.com

A visual exploration on mapping complex networks: "VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.

Not all projects shown here are genuine complex networks, in the sense that they aren’t necessarily at the edge of chaos, or show an irregular and systematic degree of connectivity. However, the projects that apparently skip this class were chosen for two important reasons. They either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject. Nevertheless, all projects have one trait in common: the whole is always more than the sum of its parts." (thanks, abby)

8:43 AM •

May 1, 2008

"Your Eternal Webpage"

Kevin Kelly asks how much data a person generates during their lifetime, and what happens to it after the person dies? (Conceptual Trends and Current Topics)

12:08 AM •

Apr 30, 2008

Linking spiral arms...

"...two large colliding galaxies are featured in this Hubble Space Telescope view, part of a series of cosmic snapshots released to celebrate the Hubble's 18th anniversary. Recorded in astronomer Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 272, the pair is otherwise known as NGC 6050 and IC 1179. They lie some 450 million light-years away in the Hercules Galaxy Cluster. At that estimated distance, the picture spans over 150 thousand light-years. Although this scenario does look peculiar, galaxy collisions and their eventual mergers are now understood to be common, with Arp 272 representing a stage in this inevitable process." (APOD)

11:49 PM •

Dumb as We Wanna Be

Thomas Friedman: "It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks." (New York Times op-ed)

11:43 PM •

One of Denver's 'Most Wanted'

"Following Rush Limbaugh's broadcast calling for violent riots in Denver, city officials issue a warrant for his arrest. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper called Limbaugh a 'dangerous domestic terrorist' that should be locked up." (Unconfirmedsources.com)

11:40 PM •

Why Things Cost $19.95

"What are the psychological 'rules' of bartering?" (Scientific American)

11:37 PM •

Bush pokes fun at his successors

"US President George W Bush poked fun at his potential successors during his last White House Correspondents' Association dinner." (BBC) And the petty little man's jibes don't display an ounce of wit.

11:35 PM •

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Howard Dean: Obama Or Clinton Must Drop Out In June (Huffington Post)
(depictions by Julia Suits)

11:22 PM •

Scientists link 17 living people to an aboriginal man found in glacier

"direct link between the frozen remains of a man found in a glacier in northern B.C. and 17 people living in B.C., Yukon and Alaska..." (Globe and Mail)

11:20 PM •

PBS breaks ‘media blackout’ of NYT story on Pentagon propaganda

"On Sunday, The New York Times published an explosive report exposing the Pentagon’s secret campaign to use analysts in order to “generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.” Since that time, TV news organizations have largely been silent on their role in the propaganda. Ari Melber notes that last night, PBS’s Newshour finally broke this blackout, but couldn’t convince the other networks to participate." (Think Progress)

11:14 PM •

Does the Earth's magnetic field cause suicides?

Study shows geomagnetic activity correlates with self-destructive behavior in Kirovsk, Russia. Speculation that magnetic flux contributes to depression by desynchronizing human circadian rhythms. (New Scientist)

11:10 PM •

R.I.P. Albert Hofmann

'Father of LSD' Dies at 102: "Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life." (New York Times)

10:31 PM •

R.I.P. Jimmy Giuffre

Adventurous clarinetist, composer and arranger dead at 86. His "50-year journey through jazz led him from writing the Woody Herman anthem “Four Brothers” through minimalist, drummerless trios to striking experimental orchestral works...

Among the half-dozen instruments he played, from bass flute to soprano saxophone, it was the clarinet that gave him a signature sound; it was a dark, velvety tone, centering in the lower register, pure but rarely forceful. But among the iconoclastic heroes of the late ’50s in jazz, he was a serene oddity, changing his ideas as fast as he could record them." (New York Times)

10:26 PM •

Apr 11, 2008

Parts Unknown

As in, "I'm off to...". My family and I will be out of the country and I will not be posting or responding to comments for the next two weeks. See you at the end of April, and thank you for your continued visits here.

11:10 PM •

Apr 10, 2008

White House Torture Advisers

Dan Froomkin: "Top Bush aides, including Vice President Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement, according to an ABC News report aired last night.

Discussions were so detailed, ABC's sources said, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group. In addition to Cheney, the group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft." (Washington Post op-ed via dangerousmeta)

11:20 PM •

The Greenest Way to Die

"Cremation uses somewhere on the order of 250 kWh of power, and is anything but emission-free; most burials in the western world involve a big clunky coffin sporting plenty of metals that aren’t going to break down anytime soon; it’s essentially littering! But the awesomely-named Magnus Hølvold over at Ecogeek just turned me on to a new way to die: resomation." (Mental Floss)

10:35 PM •

Text Alerts to Cellphones in Emergency Are Approved

"Federal regulators approved a plan on Wednesday to create a nationwide emergency alert system using text messages delivered to cellphones." (New York Times )

10:33 PM •

The Great Outdoors

Is that a nude woman reflected in Cheney's mirror shades? (Official White House Vice-Presidential Site)

10:20 PM •

Apr 9, 2008

Su last year

"Sudoku has furrowed the brows of a generation of commuters, but will it be replaced by a new puzzle from Japan? ...Like sudoku, the smaller kenken consists of a numbers square where the figures cannot be duplicated within rows and columns.

But with the new puzzle, there's the added dimension of having to reach certain target numbers inside smaller blocks by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing the numerals in the cells within..." (BBC)

10:36 PM •

Whisky and Soda Man

Thomas Jones on JG Ballard: "When I was 12, I read a story by J.G. Ballard about a boy who has lived all his life in a vast city. One day, he decides to take a train out of the metropolis, to find a wide open space where he can fly a kite. But after many days on the train, he starts to recognise landmarks from the window that he has seen earlier in the journey: he has travelled all the way around the world without leaving the city. There are no wide open spaces left." (London Review of Books)

10:32 PM •

Calling Al Gore

"Any number of top Democrats have attempted to step in and bring some order to this process, but none possess the stature to help the candidates, the superdelegates and the rest of the party structure come together. Former President Bill Clinton is compromised, of course, former nominee John Kerry has been marginalized and most other high-level Democrats have already endorsed a candidate, undermining their credentials as impartial brokers." — Dan Schnur, who was the national communications director for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 (New York Times op-ed)

9:56 PM •

Clinton Praises Gordon Brown for Beijing Boycott

"Hillary Clinton just reacted to the announcement from London that British prime minister Gordon Brown will not attend the opening of the Beijing Olympics. She said she 'congratulated' Brown on what she termed 'an important decision' and called on Barack Obama and John McCain to join her in urging President Bush to also boycott the ceremony." (The New York Observer)
(Emphasis added.) 'Beijing boycott', I mouthed excitedly after reading the headline... Kudos to Clinton for getting out in front on this, but skipping the opening ceremony alone is an empty gesture. The call should be for an outright boycott of the entire Olympics. [The piece is accompanied by what has to be one of the most unflattering pictures of the unphotogenic Clinton I have seen in awhile. Zombified, no?]

9:55 PM •

Aryan ideals, not ancient Greece, were the inspiration behind flame tradition

"There is a two-word answer to those who think the Olympic torch is a symbol of harmony between nations that should be kept apart from politics – Adolf Hitler." (Independent.UK)

9:51 PM •

Olympic regret

"Why China is the only world government scared of Bjork: ...In the span of a few weeks, as international protest movements have grown louder and more pointed, the mood around the Olympics has notably changed. A source of undiluted pride has become a source of insecurity, even in the heart of the capital." (The Boston Globe)

9:50 PM •

MRI Magnet Madness

A discussion of how insanely powerful the magnets in MRI machines are, including discussion of the effects of either unwittingly or deliberately (!) introducing magnetic metals into their fields. Illustrated by video clips. (Mental Floss)

9:40 PM •

Cause for alarm

...[T]he most ingenious alarm clocks on the market - from the pleasantly surprising to the downright sadistic: "Finally, perhaps the ultimate in snooze-punishments, the SnuzNLuz is a ridiculously monikered but utterly dastardly way of stopping anyone from getting 'just ten minutes more'. Press snooze and the clock will connect to your bank account and start making donations to a pre-chosen charity or organisation. In order to spur you on all the more, it is suggested that you make the beneficiary of your generosity a cause - political, ethical, whatever - you do not support in the slightest. If you sleep in, they'll receive donations of your hard-earned cash. You want to hit them where it hurts? Get out of bed." (Guardian.UK)

9:38 PM •

Top 10 Evil Human Experiments

One person's "list of the 10 most evil and unethical experiments carried out on humans." (The List Universe via kottke)

9:15 PM •

The Federman Collection at Spineless Books

"Federman’s masterful and economical utilization of strange loops, mise-en-abime, and other metafictionalist maneuvers will be received by readers versed in writing of this type with a smile of familiarity and a nod of admiration. Like Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, Federman has internalized this type of writing to the point where the use of innovative and challenging narrative techniques such as metalepsis and hypodiegesis never seems contrived." –Jeffrey R. di Leo

9:09 PM •

Apr 7, 2008

US Army toyed with telepathic ray gun

Recently declassified DoD document details developments in maturing nonlethal technologies for warfare: "Some of the technologies are conceptual, such as an electromagnetic pulse that causes a seizure like those experienced by people with epilepsy. Other ideas, like a microwave gun to 'beam' words directly into people's ears, have been tested. It is claimed that the so-called 'Frey Effect' – using close-range microwaves to produce audible sounds in a person's ears – has been used to project the spoken numbers 1 to 10 across a lab to volunteers'." (New Scientist)
A number of the schizophrenic patients with whom I work, some of whom have similar explanations for the voices they hear in their heads, would be interested in the report, which is available here (pdf). 'Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you', the saying goes. Perhaps it should be 'Just because you are paranoid means they are out to get you'?

10:38 PM •

The Strangest Secrets

'Real Government Files on the Unknown': Nick Redfern's study of official documents on weird, X-Files-style phenomena, including Sea-Serpents, UFOs, ESP, Remote-Viewing, the Loch Ness Monster, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Crop Circles and much more."

10:29 PM •

Howard Dean: Obama Or Clinton Must Drop Out In June (Huffington Post)

(depictions by Julia Suits)