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Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp Beyond those trillion pages lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.... Now a new breed of technologies is taking shape that will extend the reach of search engines into the Web’s hidden corners. When that happens, it will do more than just improve the quality of search results — it may ultimately reshape the way many companies do business online. (via) (prev)

Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci discovered in Basilicata What may be a hitherto unknown portrait of Leonardo da Vinci in middle age shows that the Renaissance genius had piercing blue eyes, a long nose and long greying hair with a droopy moustache.

A design for life (The history of the smiley face symbol) Feelgood corporate logo, acid house icon and txt msg emoticon: one chirpy yellow emblem has kept grinning since the first summer of love. Jon Savage celebrates the life of Smiley.

Q&A: Dennis Hopper I don't spend a lot. Most of my art collection I got by trading it or through knowing the artist. I got Andy Warhol's first soup can painting for $75. I lost it to my first wife.

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With the greatest possible respect to Joe Satriani, we have now unfortunately found it necessary to respond publicly to his allegations. If there are any similarities between our two pieces of music, they are entirely coincidental, and just as surprising to us as to him. Joe Satriani is a great musician, but he did not write or have any influence on the song Viva La Vida. We respectfully ask him to accept our assurances of this and wish him well with all future endeavours. Coldplay.

On “The Death of Blogging” A sensible and accurate analysis. (via)

Seth Godin: Warning: The internet is almost full (short and resonant)

Confessions of a Bootlegger “At one point, I was probably responsible for starting up more record labels than David Geffin, Berry Gordy and Suge Knight combined!” (excellent) (via)

Beethoven and the Illuminati How the secret order influenced the great composer.

Shipwreck clues could clear Blackbeard of sinking his ship to swindle his crew For almost 300 years, the British pirate captain has stood accused of deliberately sinking his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, so he could swindle his crew out of their share of loot they had plundered. But marine archaeologists, who are conducting a diving expedition on the vessel's presumed wreck, now believe it may have run aground by accident. They have even found evidence suggesting that Blackbeard made repeated attempts to rescue the stricken craft.

So you've been buried alive You may think you're exempt from this horror, but live burial doesn't discriminate. It happens to rich and poor, black and white, young and old. The more you prepare for this event, the greater your chances will be of surviving until that magical day when you're buried appropriately.

William Eggleston interview WE: There's plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film-I don't think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that's going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I'm color-blind. (via)

also:
George S. Morrison, Admiral and Singer’s Father, Dies at 89
Interesting list of tourist scams (good to know) (via)
Insane Home Office Set-ups (via)
History of Hookah Smoking
antipodr (Find the other side of the world!) (via)
blört's new 404 (creepy)

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. - Albert Einstein (via)

correspondence

The funny thing about technology (in this case blogging, web 2.0 etc.), is that the early adopters are always looking to bail and find something new when the everyone else starts to catch on. In reality, sometimes a technology or a process works so well that it doesn't need to go much further.

That's why we don't have jet-packs and rocket ships and flying cars. Modern automobiles, airplanes and ships serve transportation needs just fine. Sure, we can make them cleaner and more efficient with better design, but in the end, they will still be cars and boats and planes.

Blogging is like the automobile. You can only tweak it. It's here to stay and no amount of Facebooks or Twitters will change that.

- Johny Zhivago in an email to The Mad Hillbilly

Internet

Will Lion's photostream

I saw this on someone's blog before I went offline but I can't remember where. I thought about this quote a fair bit during the last ten days.

Meta YouTube

acetylsalicylic acid (Bufferin™)

more here

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Bringing a Trove of Medieval Manuscripts Online for the Ages One of the oldest and most valuable collections of handwritten medieval books in the world, housed in the magnificent baroque halls of the library in this town’s abbey, is going online... (roughly 7,000 handwritten manuscripts, many over a thousand years old)

Martin Scorsese and me - mentored by a master Celina Murga has experienced what all young film-makers must dream of – being mentored by Martin Scorsese. The master craftsman of American cinema explains why fostering talent is important to him, while Murga reveals what it’s like to be on set with a legend.

Black and white TV generation have monochrome dreams I'm not from that generation, but I watched a lot of B&W growing up. I have no recollection of any monochrome dreams. The white in B&W television always looked blue to me. I have an aunt that can tell what color something is in black and white. The family always razzed her for it, but I think maybe she could.

Obscure History: Let The Military Help In A Heist On October 17th, 1906, Wilhelm Voigt, a 57-year-old German shoemaker, impersonates an army officer and leads an entire squad of soldiers to help him steal 4,000 marks.

also:
Home Movie Day!!
The Invisible Library (list of fictional books from fiction) (via)
Giant Plush Microbes (all the favorites) (via)
FACT mix: Murcof
Black Swan Glossary (Taleb) (via)
Penguin Cover Notebooks (via)
Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter...

viddy:
The Power of Art: Caravaggio (via)
Jim Henson - Ripples (via)
Diego Stocco: DIY Musical Machines

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Lawrence Lessig - In Defense of Piracy Digital technology has made it easy to create new works from existing art, but copyright law has yet to catch up.... Copyright law must be changed. Here are just five changes that would make a world of difference... (via)

3-D Printing on Demand Shapeways.com is beta testing a new service allowing people to print three dimensional models. Customers can upload designs or use a creation tool hosted at the Shapeways website then order a printed model of their designs for less than $3 per square centimeter. The printed items are shipped to the customer in ten days or less, bringing 3-D printing to consumers and not just companies large enough to afford their own printers. It will be very interesting to see what happens when affordable 3-D printing becomes commonplace. (via)

also:
Extreme IT: Hurricanes, high winds and heavy seas in the Gulf of Mexico
Dalkey Archive Press Author Interviews (via)
Mia_Farrow's photostream (via)

viddy:
Banjo used in brain surgery (don't miss it) Bluegrass musician Eddie Adcock underwent brain surgery to treat a career-threatening hand tremor. He played his banjo throughout to help doctors determine the success of the procedure. The squeamish can make it through in good shape. (via)
Expedition 18 / Soyuz Rocket Launch - October 12th, 2008
National Geographic Music
Hunter, Ralph and 3 bottles of whiskey
Reductive Waves, a meditation on the visualization of sound, via contrasting natural and human-crafted environments.

David Perry: Will videogames become better than life?

This is a good one. It's especially worth watching for the short film in the last half.

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'Intelligent' computers put to the test No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - "artificial conversational entities" - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised "thinking" machine.

Blake Pontchartrain on Zulu coconuts Everybody wanted a Zulu coconut, but when you shouted 'Hey, Mister, throw me something," and what you got was a coconut thrown at you, you ducked or suffered the consequences. Believe it or not, lawsuits resulted; lots of them. When Mardi Gras of 1987 rolled around, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club was unable to get insurance, so it was a parade without coconuts. One year, back in the day, I had the honor of painting a dozen or so Zulu coconuts.

costume detail: Stripes "The Medieval eye found any surface in which a background could not be distinguished from the foreground disturbing. Thus striped clothing was relegated to those on the margins or outside the social order - jugglers and prostitutes for example - and in medieval paintings the devil himself is often seen wearing stripes." The Devil's Cloth by Michel Pastoreau (via)

The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. (via)

also:
How to Photograph the Stars (via)
Original Locations of 15 Mega-Chains (via)
Death becomes him: Kevorkian’s artwork on display at Armenian Library (via)
Another rare Serra interview (via)
Best of History Web Sites (via)
Dickens' London Map (via)
Fight Spam With A Direct Message To Twitter (via)

viddy:
Buckminster Fuller profiled on PBS's SundayArts
Ladislaw Starewicz - Cameraman's Revenge (proto-stop-animation)
Scratching With Tape Decks (cassette and reel-to-reel)
Vinyl Record Manufacturing Explained
Smashing Glass To The Anvil Chorus (via)

Vitajex (A Face in the Crowd)

(video link)

Elia Kazan's 1957 film, A Face in the Crowd explores the arc of media sensation; a trajectory which usually consists of a spike, a (brief) plateau, a descent and a dead drop-- a fall that can pass beyond the zero into the terrain of derision and antipathy. Some manage to jump off the track and find a way to sustain a career of some sort, most seem to burn out, walk away or get booed off the stage.

The cultural references in this film might be lost on some, but the presented themes are eternal and recognizable. One can easily see parallels with the emergence of the media darling, the one-hit wonder and the pop-culture amateurs of Reality Television and the Internet.

Fame, with a capital F, is one of the true enigmas of modern life. Along with the stable of entertainers, public figures and athletes that dominate the halls of Fame, there is an odd branch of the family that consists of a varying assortment of precocious kids, criminals, dead people, hayseed pundits, photogenic victims, average Joes and Joans and outright freaks. These people are the most vulnerable to public opinion. The masses can be merciless and often turn on them, if given proper opportunity. (Even though it's almost certain you will know exactly what I'm saying, this is nothing new, the exact nature of the public and why we act and react the way we do remains at the root of this enigma. Who could have predicted Star Wars Kid?)

Despite director Kazan's capable orchestration of a sprawling ensemble cast, Andy Griffith runs off and shreds his way through the story. He cuts quite a different cast than he did as the sedate and friendly Sheriff Andy Taylor. He almost overshadows the entire film. (I mean that in a good way.)

The production is beautifully supported by the set design, sound and cinematography. It's full of samples, sound-bites and imagery that borders on the surreal, in and out of context. This film is imminently mashable.

It's worth putting in the queue. (Or, you can watch it online via the video link.)

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Lift could take passengers straight into space Japanese scientists are attempting to build a lift (elevator for us Americans) that will take passengers 62,000 miles into space.

MI6 agent's cover slips during BBC interview In his dangerous job the MI6 spy's identity needs to remain a closely guarded secret. So you can imagine his surprise when, during an interview with the national broadcaster, his carefully chosen disguise of a fake moustache failed him spectacularly.

Blogging about blogging What do young people think about blogging? Let’s have a look; here’s what one 18 year old has to say. This one happens to be my son, but I don’t think that prevents him from representing his generation: ‘People no longer are just able to blog, but blogging is increasingly becoming accepted as a legitimate medium of information; albeit quite different to others. At the cost of the credibility associated with major news services and other more traditional ways of getting our information, a whole new world is opened up- of personal opinion, a perspective into the lives and experiences of others and original creativity. When subjective experience and opinion is sought over objective fact, blogging becomes a medium very difficult to beat.’ Blogging is passé? I suspect that many of the old-timers have become a bit tired and unimaginative-- it's just getting started. (Let's encourage young bloggers instead of greeting them with statements like "Blogging is dead")

Ike Really Tore Up Louisville You will find a collection of pictures I took after the storm here. Unfortunately, some streets still look like this a week later. Though we got electricity back about 12 hours after it went out, most houses and businesses around us are still dark. LG&E, our local utility, has been saying it may be another week before all power is restored.

Au revoir to cool hand Luc Besson Luc Besson is in denial. The 49-year-old French film potentate and master of pop cinema (see Nikita, Léon, The Big Blue) has made yet another peerless action classic in the Paris-set kidnap drama Taken. Written and produced by Besson, it stars Liam Neeson as a semi-retired CIA hatchet man who will stop at nothing to bring his missing daughter back home, and send her captors to hell. It is directed by Besson’s former Steadicam operator Pierre Morel, but with its luxurious mix of slick style, emotional melodrama and bone-crunching thrills, it’s got Besson’s fingerprints all over it.

Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses. Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set. But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.

TinEye is an image search engine. Search the web for images using an image. Finally! It's still getting its legs-- a lot of images are still not indexed and it's difficult to find an original source, but this is certainly a start. (via)

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Life in Somalia's pirate town This is a more elaborate and lucrative operation than you might imagine. Quite the cottage industry they have going on there, complete with a support system and an economy of its own.

Thanks for the advice on Josh I wanted to thank all of you who took the time to email me with your comments on how best to deal with Josh. They were so good, I thought I would share a few of them with everyone. Including the email addresses of those who were bold enough to use real email addresses. Josh realizes his comments were wrong, he understands why people are upset. He knows he has made a mistake, has apologized and will work with us. Beyond that, its a private issue. What about the people who gave me the following advice? Mark Cuban posts some of the emails he received in reference to the Josh Howard situation, complete with addies.

The future of online video The Official Google Blog weighs in. In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. Even more people will have the opportunity to record and share even more video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world. (via)

Journalist retraces the steps of the original 'Zen' author in an engrossing tale Re-enacting the journey from Minneapolis to San Francisco chronicled by Pirsig in his cult classic, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," Mark Richardson digs deep to unearth the motives behind his tormented mentor's search for quality while embarking on a search of his own. (via)

Deletionpedia is an archive of about 63,555 pages which have been deleted from the English-language Wikipedia. Deletionpedia is not a wiki: you cannot edit the pages uploaded here. An automated bot uploads pages as they are deleted from Wikipedia.

Frank Deford: Blemish, Anyone? Bets Show Dark Side Of Tennis (audio and text) In the many years I covered tennis, I heard it all: who was pulling the strings, who was double-dealing, who was taking drugs, who was sleeping with whom. But for all the genial corruption, never did I hear — or know anyone else who heard — that some player fixed a match for money, until Internet betting arrived a few years ago. And, I'll bet you didn't know that Humphrey Bogart was the first person to say "Tennis anyone?"

also:
Britain's luckiest man cheated death 14 times
What's new at the Internet Archive
Personality variation by region (USA) (maps) (via)

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India’s Novel Use of Brain Scans in Courts Is Debated The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete. Some scientists predict the end of lying as we know it. Now, well before any consensus on the technology’s readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question. (via)

The Internet -- A Private Eye's Best Friend For private investigator Steven Rambam, the Internet is his most valuable tool in helping to find missing persons, cheating husbands, and your competitor's dirty secrets.... "Anything you put on the Internet will be grabbed, indexed, cataloged, and out of your control before you know it," he told CNET News after the July 19 session. "The genie is out of the bottle. Data doesn't stay in one location. It migrates to hundreds of places."...."I used to pay the police $500 for a driver's license photo. Now I just have to go to MySpace," he said. "I can find your location without leaving my desk." (via)

also:
Dog dials 911 to save owner's life
Autonomic NanoTechnology Swarm (ANTS) (via)
The Savants of Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition

viddy:
Orson Welles on the Merv Griffin Show - 1985 (He died two hours after the taping of this interview.) (via)
18 covers of "Earache My Eye" (prev)
An Introduction to Early Musical Instruments (via)
People Who Do Noise - Trailer (via)
Ultravox - My Sex (1977) (classic)

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Baseball's UK heritage confirmed A diary that documents a game being played in Guildford in 1755 has been verified by Surrey History Centre. William Bray, a Surrey diarist and historian from Shere, wrote about the game when he was still a teenager. Major League Baseball, the governing body of the game in the US, has been informed of the discovery. (via)

Baang You're Dead Lee had recently quit his job in order to spend more time playing games, presumably so that he could eventually "go pro" and compete in South Korea's popular gaming competitions. It was a life choice that would ultimately prove fatal. Armed with cheap and fast connections and the latest gear, some South Koreans are gaming themselves to death. (thx Nick)

The last shot of the American Civil War was fired.... in the Arctic, off the coast of Alaska!

also:
100 Free Online Ivy League Courses You Should Take Just for Fun (via)
SnowCrystals.com Your online guide to snowflakes, snow crystals, and other ice phenomena (exhaustive)
Man Killed By Exploding Lava Lamp (via)

viddy:
Meatarians train plants to eat burgers
Rupert Sheldrake - The Extended Mind: Recent Experimental Evidence (via)
Brewster Kahle on the need for a digital library 'free for the world'
How to survive a nuclear attack (don't miss it)
Howard Rheingold on collaboration (I don't link frequently to Smart Mobs, but I keep and eye on it. Stick with this one, it's good.) (via)

Unnecessary Knowledge: Every year approximately 2,500 left-handed people are killed by using object or machinery designed for right-handed people. If you're left-handed and work with tools or machinery, you become aware of this possibility. In many cases, you become right-handed. (via)

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The Rise of the Numerati With the explosion of data from the Internet, cell phones, and credit cards, the people who can make sense of it all are changing our world... Sometimes Morgan's team spots groups of Web surfers who appear to move in sync. The challenge then is to figure out what triggers their movements. Once this is clear, the advertisers can anticipate people's online journeys—and sprinkle their paths with just the right ads. And who actually clicks on those ads? Fewer than you'd think, I'd wager. I always had the feeling that the true power of these people is in their ability to convince advertisers that they really know what the hell they're talking about. (via)

Life of the Party I ran into the Buzzkills at a party last weekend. This is not their real name, of course, and I wouldn’t dare call them that to their face, but Jim and Lori Buzzkill are a white, affluent, middle-aged couple whose mission in life is to suck all the joy out of every single party they attend. They bait every guest into an argument that highlights their moral superiority... The Buzzkills are extremely political and contentious. This is not to say that they just argue about politics - lots of people argue about politics, and I don’t have a problem with that. My annoyance lies in their abrasive stance as environmental anti-globalization vegan warrior activists. They somehow manage to politicize any topic of conversation, whether it be about a recipe for jerk chicken (”people who kill chickens are the real jerks”), or the cute new shoes you bought on sale this week (”too bad there’s no good deals for the starving babies who made those shoes”). (big ups, Radmila)

The Professional Panhandling Plague A big part of the cities’ woes is the professionalization of panhandling. The old type of panhandler—a mentally impaired or disabled homeless person trying to scrape together a few bucks for a meal—is giving way to the full-time spanger who supports himself through a combination of begging, working at odd jobs, and other sources, like government assistance from disability payments. I remember reading a story, back in the late 1970's, about a guy that lost his legs in WW2 and would panhandle the streets of New York. When he died, they found out that he would leave the city in the fall and head down to his home in Florida where he would hang out for the winter and run the bar that he owned. Come springtime, he would go back up to New York and get back to work. Apparently, he left behind a considerable chunk of change, hundreds of thousands.

also:
Future Doctors Could Sniff Out Cancer
Atlas of electromagnetic space (extremely cool visualization) (via)
Eno's Oblique Strategies (via)

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Click to translate It happens all the time: you're registering a free e-mail account or making a purchase online, when up pops a wavy, multicolored word. The system asks you to retype the word - and you roll your eyes, squint a little, and transcribe. This little test is one of the most successful techniques for making sure the person trying to log on is really a human, and not a digital "bot" prying into the site. But now, when you type that word, something else may be happening as well: You may be deciphering a word from a decaying old book, helping to transform a historic text into a new digital file.

also:
10 Plundering Politicians
WW I soldier found, still clutching his gun
How to Survive in the Jungle
Unwanted tattoos can be removed by cream injected into skin - without pain or scarring

viddy:
We Need Engineers (cute)
Hubble Operations Control Room (via)
An examination of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange A discussion with movie critic William Everson, writer Anthony Burgess and actor Malcolm McDowell... (via)
Marcel Duchamp and John Cage

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How impostors capture our trust instantly - and why we're so eager to give it to them The answer is that you probably would, too. Human beings are social animals, and our first instinct is to trust others. Con men, of course, have long known this - their craft consists largely of playing on this predilection, and turning it to their advantage. (via)

Eight crazy e-mail hoaxes millions have fallen for They're far-fetched, too good to be true, irrational, ridiculous or impossible, but people still keep clicking on these e-mail hoaxes.

Computer gamers hire hundreds of thousands of Chinese to earn virtual gold Nearly half a million people are employed in "virtual sweatshops" earning points and goods in online games to sell over the internet, a study has found.

How the Nose Sniffs Danger in the Air The next time someone says, “I smell danger in the air,” that might literally be true — and the odor might be coming from you.

also:
The brain from top to bottom: An interactive website on the human brain and behavior (via)
World's largest monastery library restored to its baroque splendour (via)
19 terrifying incidents involving fish (the Candiru scares the crap out of me) (via)
An Interview With Thievery Corporation
The Prisoner Production Diary Week 2 - Descent Into Swakopmund

viddy:
Ken Burns on the "Ken Burns Effect" (via)
David Lynch on product placement
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Helicopter String Quartet (don't miss it)
Live from Daryl's House (love him or hate him, Daryl Hall can sing his ass off-- really good)
Catfish vs. Bat Belize's fishing bats may catch and eat up to 30 fish in one night - but sometimes it may be a fish that catches a bat!

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We've got our wires crossed: The bizarre stories of people whose brains have rewired themselves (don't miss it) Meet the Englishman who emerged from a stroke speaking with a French Accent, (Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare but recognized medical condition) and the man who can taste words.

Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart For a long time, we were pretty dumb. Humans did little but make "the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years," he said. Then, only about 150,000 years ago, a different type of spurt happened — our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials, such as bone, and invented many new tools, including needles for beadwork. Responding to, presumably, our first abstract thoughts, we started creating art and maybe even religion.

Is Our Solar System a Rarity in Milky Way? Three Northwestern University researchers have learned that our solar system in which the Earth orbits our sun is the exception in the Milky Way rather than the rule.

A Bridge between Virtual Worlds The first steps to developing virtual-world interoperability are now being tested between Second Life and other independent virtual worlds... I remember hearing a radio interview with one of the founders of Second Life where he claimed that some characters from World of Warcraft found their way into Second Life and started hacking people up. I still can't figure out if he was just bullshitting or not. Maybe not. (via)

Mystery Surrounds Leavenworth's Underground City Some Leavenworth residents have been unknowingly walking around above an underground city, and no one seems to know who created it or why. I'm surprised we haven't heard more about this. (via)

The World’s Six Most Wanted War Criminals
How to Think Like a Genius Thomas Pynchon maintains that genius lives in work rather than talent. (couldn't find the quote, read it years ago) (via)
Jessica Duchen's top 10 literary Gypsies
Excellent post on John Cage (don't miss it if you're a music fan) John Cage died 16 years ago today.
Iain Banks links
Daily Writing Tips (via)
The Prisoner Production Hazard Checklist
Overheard Comments from United Airlines Employees (figures)
The Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites Not quite as "undiscovered" as I had hoped, but there are some interesting items in there. (via)

viddy:
A Day In The Life Of An MC Escher Drawing (silly) (via)
Creepy Mogwai video
The Yodeling Belgian Cowboy (awesome)

Sick Day

image

I'm a bit under the weather, so just this one post today. I'll be back with you tomorrow. In the meantime, it's lots of bed rest and Monty Python for me, the archives and my splendid blogroll for you, if you need some.

But before I leave you, a few notes and some videos.

First of all, I was shamelessly pleased to discover that Uncertain Times was kindly and thoughtfully introduced by the esteemed Jahsonic. His weblog and Art and Popular Culture Wiki are required reading and reference.

some news:
Sad to say, an American Tourist Is Killed in Beijing
Babies born 8/8/08 at 8:08; 8 pounds, 8 ounces (thx)
Update: Fake-CNN spam mutates as attacks continue

some nugs:
Literary Voyeurism (enough to choke on)
Roald Dahl's “Taste” - Read by John Lithgow for Selected Shorts series on public radio. (don't miss it) (via)
Roadside Architecture is back on the road. (prev)
Darren Aronofsky updated his blog.

some video:

The Chambers Brothers - People Get Ready (via)




From The Last Waltz, The Band performs It Makes No Difference. I forgot how good they were. (via)




August 9th is Frank Zappa Day in Baltimore. Enjoy an excellent live version of Inca Roads.

And finally, Procrastination. (not the one that made the rounds a few months back)



See you tomorrow!

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The Girl in the window Three years ago the Plant City police found a girl lying in her roach-infested room, naked except for an overflowing diaper. The child was pale and skeletal, communicated only through grunts. She was almost seven years old. The authorities had discovered the rarest of creatures: a feral child, deprived of her humanity by a lack of nurturing. Audio, video and slideshow tell the strange, sad and ultimately hopeful story of Danielle. (via)

Is that keyboard toxic? Warning: Your keyboard could be a danger to you and the environment. Sound preposterous? Then consider this: Some keyboards contain nanosilver, which, because of its antimicrobial properties, is increasingly incorporated into everyday items even though studies have questioned its health and environmental safety.

Superbugs In August, 2000, Dr. Roger Wetherbee, an infectious-disease expert at New York University’s Tisch Hospital, received a disturbing call from the hospital’s microbiology laboratory. At the time, Wetherbee was in charge of handling outbreaks of dangerous microbes in the hospital, and the laboratory had isolated a bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae from a patient in an intensive-care unit. “It was literally resistant to every meaningful antibiotic that we had,” Wetherbee recalled recently. The microbe was sensitive only to a drug called colistin, which had been developed decades earlier and largely abandoned as a systemic treatment, because it can severely damage the kidneys. “So we had this report, and I looked at it and said to myself, ‘My God, this is an organism that basically we can’t treat.’ ”

Microsoft 'degrees of separation' study interpretation challenged "Researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances," a Washington Post article stated. However, one publication, eFluxMedia, suggested the study was "heavily misinterpreted" by the media.

Mother Earth Naked: A Modern Masterpiece Have you ever wondered what our world would look like stripped bare of all plants, soils, water and man-made structures? Well wonder no longer; images of the Earth as never seen before have been unveiled in what is the world’s biggest geological mapping project ever.

An Anarchist in the Hudson Valley: In Conversation: Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) We have all these knee-jerk phrases that in the sixties sounded like communist revolution, and now are just corpses in the mouths of real estate developers. "Sustainable development"—that means very expensive houses for vaguely ecologically conscious idiots from New York. It has nothing to do with a sustainable economy or permaculture. They talk about agriculture, they get all weepy about it, but they won’t do anything for the family farms because family farms use pesticides and fertilizers, which is a terrible sin in the minds of these people. So they’re perfectly happy to see the old farms close down and build McMansions, as long as they’re green McMansions, of course, with maybe a little solar power so they can boast about how they are almost off the grid. This is just yuppie poseurism. It’s fashionable to be green, but it’s not at all fashionable to wonder about the actual working class and farming people and families that you’re dispossessing. This is a class war situation, and the artists are unfortunately not on the right side of the battle. If we would just honestly look at what function we’re serving in this economy, I’m afraid we would see that we’re basically shills for real estate developers. (via)

also:
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My buddy's art car Alan Evil makes the papers. (more art cars)

viddy:
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Life is a chair of bullies - Soupy Sales (prev)