The other thread started doing the post-eating, so here's a new thread. The idea is interesting blog posts and newspaper/magazine articles. Feel free to post your own.
Thought I might start off with an article about the effect of blogs on newspapers:
The News About The Internet by Michael Massing
The two bloggers most commonly recognized as the medium's pioneers, Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan, are, remarkably, still at it. Kaus, who started the blog kausfiles in 1999, is now at Slate, and Sullivan, who began The Daily Dish in 2000, now posts at The Atlantic. Both still use the style they helped popularize—short, sharp, conversational bursts of commentary and opinion built around links to articles, columns, documents, and other blogs. At first glance, this approach might seem to bear out the charge of parasitism. In early July, for instance, Sullivan, under the headline ''Where the Far Right Now Is,'' wrote:
I watched this in Aspen [where he was attending a conference]. Michael Scheuer is actually saying that the only ''hope'' for the US is a major attack from Osama bin Laden. This is where they are, getting nuttier by the day.
Below was a link to a clip from Fox News on which Scheuer, a former CIA analyst, indeed expressed the hope that bin Laden would attack the US so that its government would finally take the measures needed to protect the American people.
Sullivan is here riffing on the journalism of others while doing no conventional reporting of his own. But, as a regular reading of his posts shows, his multiple links to a wide array of sources, processed through his idiosyncratic gay-Catholic-Thatcherite- turned-libertarian-radical mind, produces an engaging and original take on the world. A dramatic demonstration of this occurred just after the Iranian elections, when his site became an up-to-the-minute clearinghouse for e-mails, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, photos, and e-mails from Tehran, many posted before mainstream news outlets could get hold of them. Sullivan made no pretense of being balanced— he devoutly desired the overthrow of the hard-line establishment supporting Ahmadinejad and tilted his site to that end—but at a time when Western journalists were largely muzzled, The Daily Dish served as a nerve center for news from the Iranian street. While reading his site, I was also watching CNN, and it seemed clear that Sullivan, sitting at his computer, outperformed CNN's entire global network.
Mr. Tambourine Man by Dan Friedman
Until the Van Gogh of finger-painting comes along, your best chance of seeing a kindergarten toy played with virtuoso skill is to catch David Buchbut, from the group Layali El Andalus, playing the tambourine. I first saw him in New York during a short concert he gave accompanying Iraqi-Israeli oud player Yair Dalal. The audience — who had come to see Dalal, a world-famous composer and virtuoso of the Arab lute — sat mesmerized by Dalal’s Israeli accompanist.
For a Western audience accustomed to big men with sticks hitting a battery of large barrels, the delicate play of sensitive fingers over a tiny expanse of taut skin is a surprise and a delight not just to the ear, but also to the eye. When Buchbut began to play, his fingers began to dance: cupping and tapping and caressing the tambourine at the rim, at the center, behind the mini-cymbals. Of course there are different ways of playing, depending on the context, but with a relaxed and calm Dalal by his side, Buchbut played with a still, straight back and visibly soft hands, gently griping onto the side of the skin every few measures just to tighten the note and to address his upper, holding hand.
Gaia In The Light Of Modern Science by Michael Ruse
Today it's hard to imagine that in the early Middle Ages, until Thomas Aquinas and others discovered the attractions of Aristotle, Timaeus was the only known work of Plato. And very influential it was, too, as almost everyone in the early centuries of the last millennium agreed that the world was an organism of a kind. Hence, as with all organisms, it was appropriate to think of the world as having sensations and feelings, and also to ask questions about ends and purposes.
The coming of Aristotle did not stop that mode of thought—indeed, he emphasized that such end-directed thinking (what he spoke of as final-cause thinking) is an absolutely vital tool for understanding the world around us. As Carolyn Merchant, a professor of environmental history at the University of California at Berkeley, showed in The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (Harper & Row, 1980), even at the beginning of the 16th century, on the verge of great changes in our understanding of the world, it was considered appropriate to give thanks when, in order to extract minerals, miners cut into the earth—cut quite literally into our mother. It was thought necessary to respect the earth for what she was and what she gave. Crass misuse of her bounties was sinful.
At the same time, one could ask questions about the world that were (as with organisms) couched in terms of ends. Just as we might ask about the purpose or function or end of the eye, so we might ask about the purpose or function or end of (let us say) rain. And answers were forthcoming: The eye exists for sight. Rain exists for the growth of crops.
It is not silly to think of the world as an organism. After all, every year it goes through phases of growth, flourishing, yielding its fruits, and then withering and dying. In their fascinating new biography, James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia (Princeton University Press), the science writers John and Mary Gribbin introduce us to a man who endorses this metaphor with much enthusiasm.
Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution? by Jessica Bennett
Terisa Greenan and her boyfriend, Matt, are enjoying a rare day of Seattle sun, sharing a beet carpaccio on the patio of a local restaurant. Matt holds Terisa's hand, as his 6-year-old son squeezes in between the couple to give Terisa a kiss. His mother, Vera, looks over and smiles; she's there with her boyfriend, Larry. Suddenly it starts to rain, and the group must move inside. In the process, they rearrange themselves: Matt's hand touches Vera's leg. Terisa gives Larry a kiss. The child, seemingly unconcerned, puts his arms around his mother and digs into his meal.
Terisa and Matt and Vera and Larry—along with Scott, who's also at this dinner—are not swingers, per se; they aren't pursuing casual sex. Nor are they polygamists of the sort portrayed on HBO's Big Love; they aren't religious, and they don't have multiple wives. But they do believe in ''ethical nonmonogamy,'' or engaging in loving, intimate relationships with more than one person—based upon the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. They are polyamorous, to use the term of art applied to multiple-partner families like theirs, and they wouldn't want to live any other way.
When Mother wanted to achieve an authentic 60s look for its recent poster campaign for Stella Artois 4%, the agency turned to illustrator Robert McGinnis, who created classic posters for films including Breakfast At Tiffany's and Barbarella, as well as Bond movies Live And Let Die and Thunderball.
Hot Waitress Economic Index: Who Needs The GDP? by Hugo Lindgren
The hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy. In flush times, there is a robust market for hotness. Selling everything from condos to premium vodka is enhanced by proximity to pretty young people (of both sexes) who get paid for providing this service. That leaves more-punishing work, like waiting tables, to those with less striking genetic gifts. But not anymore.
A waitress at one Lower East Side club described to me what happened there: “They slowly let the boys go, then the less attractive girls, and then these hot girls appeared out of nowhere. All in the hope of bringing in more business. The managers even admitted it. These hot girls that once thrived on the generosity of their friends in the scene for hookups—hosting events, marketing brands, modeling—are now hunting for work.” A Soho restaurateur I know recently received applications from “a couple of classic Eastern European fembots. Once upon a time, these ladies must’ve made $1,500 a night lap dancing. At my place, they’re not going to make that in a week.”
Florida Highrise Has 32 Stories But Just One Tenant by Christine Armario
FORT MYERS, Fla. – The Vangelakos' southwest Florida condominium has marble floors, a large pool overlooking a river and modern furnishings that speak of affluence and luxury. What they don't have in the 32-story building is a single neighbor.
The New Jersey family of five purchased their unit four years ago, when Fort Myers was in the midst of a housing boom and any hints of an impending financial crisis were buried in lofty dreams of expansion and development. They made a $10,000 down payment and eagerly watched as builders transformed an empty lot into an opulent high rise, one that now symbolizes the foreclosure crisis.
''The future was going to be southwest Florida,'' said Victor Vangelakos, 45, a fire captain who planned to eventually retire and live permanently in the condo.
Most of the other tenants in the 200-unit condo didn't close on their contracts, and the few that did have transferred to an adjacent building owned by the same company because more people live there.
That would be fantastic.
bookmark
Ships set sail to examine the vast patch of plastic in the Pacific Ocean by Allison Bond
Scientists will venture this summer to the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch–a blob of discarded plastic twice the size of Texas that’s floating in the Pacific Ocean–in an extensive effort to assess just how detrimental the patch is to the marine ecosystem.
The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch is more than just a cloak of plastic floating on the surface of the ocean. Instead, scientists believe 70 percent of the patch’s plastic is beneath the water, disintegrating into minute pieces. The plastic and toxins it attracts have become a part of the Pacific Ocean’s ecosystem, killing everything from fish to birds to sea turtles [San Diego Union-Tribune]. The floating dump was created when ocean currents swept millions of tons of plastic to a section of the ocean located between Hawaii and California. As much as 10 percent of the 260 million tons of plastic produced annually ends up in the oceans, much of it in trash vortices like the Pacific garbage patch [National Geographic News]. Most of this plastic–80 percent of it, in fact–comes from beaches, streams and other land-based sources, not illegal ocean dumping.
Interesting to see the behind the scenes machinations out in the open...
The scope - and dangers - of GE's control of NBC and MSNBC by Glenn Greenwald
I want to return to the subject of GE's silencing of Keith Olbermann both because there are new facts I've obtained that shed light on what happened here and because this is one of the most blatant examples yet of pernicious corporate control over America's journalism. The most striking aspect of this episode is that GE isn't even bothering any longer to deny the fact that they exert control over MSNBC's journalism. They've brazenly dispensed with the long-held fiction of the sanctity of journalistic independence from interference by the corporate parents that own America's largest news organizations.
Instead, GE is now openly and proudly boasting of their editorial control over the news organizations they own, and publicly rubbing it in the faces of NBC News journalists that they're subservient to GE's corporate agenda. Look at this smug, creepy quote from GE executive spokesman Gary Sheffer explaining in The New York Times why GE issued its gag order preventing Olbermann from criticizing Fox and O'Reilly, all but mocking NBC and MSNBC journalists as nothing more than GE's office of corporate spokespeople:
Why is GE even speaking for MSNBC's editorial decisions at all? Needless to say, GE doesn't care in the slightest about ''civility'' in general. Mika Brzezinski can spout that people who dislike Sarah Palin aren't ''real Americans'' and Chris Matthews can say about George Bush that ''everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs,'' and GE executives won't (and didn't) bat an eye. What they mean by ''civility'' is: ''thou shalt not criticize anyone who can harm GE's business interests or who will report on our actions.'' Thus: GE's journalists will stop reporting critically on Fox and its top assets because Fox can expose actions of GE that we want to keep concealed.
Is Google killing general knowledge? by Brian Cathcart
One day last year a daughter of Earl Spencer (who is therefore a niece of Princess Diana) called a taxi to take her and a friend from her family home at Althorp in Northamptonshire to see Chelsea play Arsenal at football. She told the driver “Stamford Bridge”, the name of Chelsea’s stadium, but he delivered them instead to the village of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, nearly 150 miles in the opposite direction. They missed the game.
Such stories are becoming commonplace. A coachload of English schoolchildren bound for the historic royal palace at Hampton Court wasted an entire day battling through congested central London as their sat-nav led them stubbornly to a narrow back street of the same name in Islington. A Syrian lorry driver aiming for Gibraltar, at the southern tip of Spain, turned up 1,600 miles away in the English east-coast town of Skegness, which has a Gibraltar Point nearby.
Two complementary things are happening in these stories. One is that these people are displaying a woeful ignorance of geography. In the case of Stamford Bridge, one driver and two passengers spent well over two hours in a car without noticing that instead of passing Northampton and swiftly entering the built-up sprawl of London, their view continued to be largely of fields and forests, and they were seeing signs for Nottingham, Doncaster and the North. They should have known.
The other is more subtle. Everybody involved in these stories has consciously handed over responsibility for knowing geography to a machine. With the sat-nav on board, they believed that they did not need to know about north or south, Spain or England, leafy Surrey or gridlocked Islington. That was the machine’s job. Like an insurance company with its call centre or a local council with its bin collections, they confidently outsourced the job of knowing this stuff, or of finding it out, to that little computer on the dashboard.
The Best Place To Hide Money: Conversation With A Burglar from pfadvice
I had quite the interesting conversation this weekend with a person who happened to be a former burglar. It was great timing because I was wondering if something like the skid mark underwear for hiding money would really work. I also figured that if you wanted to know the best place to hide your money from a burglar, a former burglar was the person to ask.
I started off simply and was not surprised by the answer to the question “where is the best place to hide your money?”
“At the bank,” he said with a sly grin.
When I rephrased and asked where the best place to hide money and valuables in the house would be if you had such items there, I was taken a bit by surprise by his answer:
“It doesn’t matter how clever you think you are or where you hide it in your house, if I have enough time, I would be able to find where you stash your valuables,” he said bluntly. He then explained that what was much more important than the actual place where you hide your valuables is that you understand a burglar’s motivations.
The Truth About Grit by Jonah Lehrer
Although biographers have long celebrated Newton’s intellect - [apart from the whole apple thing] he also pioneered calculus - it’s clear that his achievements aren’t solely a byproduct of his piercing intelligence. Newton also had an astonishing ability to persist in the face of obstacles, to stick with the same stubborn mystery - why did the apple fall, but the moon remain in the sky? - until he found the answer.
In recent years, psychologists have come up with a term to describe this mental trait: grit. Although the idea itself isn’t new - “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” Thomas Edison famously remarked - the researchers are quick to point out that grit isn’t simply about the willingness to work hard. Instead, it’s about setting a specific long-term goal and doing whatever it takes until the goal has been reached. It’s always much easier to give up, but people with grit can keep going.
My beloved Michael Pollan again
It's a little old, so perhaps people have seen it before, but it's new to me.
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration--the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact--so easy to overlook these past few years--that the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.
more timewasting pleasure!
Van Halen had good reason to ban brown M&Ms in their concert rider.
louis - yup, I posted that one in the old thread. Obama said in an interview that he was reading it and found it very interesting.
Check the creepy photos...
Dr Who-like monster stuns sunbathers after it washes up on a Welsh beach by a Daily Mail reporter
A mysterious 'alien like' creature horrified holidaymakers after it washed up on a beach on the Gower Peninsula in Wales. The writhing mass of tentacles, which measured at least 6ft from end to end, was described by a zoology expert today as 'like something out of Doctor Who'. Hundreds of people flocked to Oxwich Beach near Swansea to catch a glimpse of the monster.
But fears of a UFO invasion were put to rest as scientists revealed it was a seething mass of goose barnacles that was swept up from the depths of the ocean by bad weather.The barnacles - long writhing stalks or pendulates, tipped with shells - are normally found deep below the waves, but were washed up clinging to a log.
Seven Lies About Lying by Errol Morris
First comes global warming, then an evolutionary explosion by Carl Zimmer
In 1997, Arthur Weis found himself with an extra bucket of seeds. Weis, who was teaching at the University of California at Irvine at the time, had dispatched a student, Sheina Sim, to gather some field mustard seeds for a study. When Sim was done with her research, Weis was left with a lot of leftover seeds. For no particular reason, he decided not to throw the bucket out. “We just tossed it in a cold, dry incubator,” said Weis.
Weis is glad they did. When a severe drought struck southern California, Weis realized that he could use the extra bucket of seeds for an experiment. In 2004 he and his colleagues collected more field mustard seeds from the same sites that Sim had visited seven years earlier. They thawed out some of the 1997 seeds and then reared both sets of plants under identical conditions. The newer plants grew to smaller sizes, produced fewer flowers, and, most dramatically, produced those flowers eight days earlier in the spring. The changing climate had, in other words, driven the field mustard plants to evolve over just a few years. “It was serendipity that we had the seeds lying around,” says Weis.
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dirty dangerous and destitute - ny in the 70s
The history of Pink Floyd's pig(s).
the real lives of highly sexual women
Disaster map. this awesome website shows a real time display of all the disasters happening in the world at any one time, including earthquakes, volcanos and biological hazards. although most things are minor, it is amazing to see just how much of the world is experiencing some disaster right now.
Beating obesity; how not to choke at that vital moment; amnesiacs are still sad after they've forgotten what they're sad about - but then, so are you; was there a historical Robin Hood?; the problem of drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau; and The Big Picture in space.
Is marriage good for your healh?; pigeons criticising your kids' art; is all this stuff about China's rise overrated?; want to be happy and have better friends? if so, do things rather than buy stuff; Twitter in the 18th century; why does no-one believe in werewolves anymore?
this
Why top athletes are geniuses; the effect of exercise on weight loss; Williams Syndrome and xenophobia; should we bribe kids to try harder at school?; what alcohol does to your mind (and probably not quite what you expect); the T. Rex leech that gets up people's noses.
That interview with the mayor of Jo'berg is fantastic, and a bit daunting for the world cup contingent.
Imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery, but also in a lot of ways a foundation of the economy; media executive's tale of going through a major depression; Japanese businessmen getting made up as a woman for an afternoon; why Eyjafjallajökull is the way it is; the most expensive coffee in the world is found in the dung of the civet; staircase placement influences behaviour.
Inside the bizarre world of reality TV nightclub appearances; teaching philosophy to 8 year olds; how to not raise a bully; Christopher Hitchens re-reads Animal Farm, says plenty of interesting things about it; a superb article on trying to disappear in surveillance Britain, which I suspect will make a great movie; and a mat of microbes on the sea floor is the size of Greece.
music clusters. i'm not a florida fan and haven't read it yet though, but it might be worth a quick look
scanned the above article - it uses pre-internet data so i think it can be disregarded
Botox injections in your face make you less able to experience emotion; the professor's wife and the savage Amazon reviews; the bizarre suicides of artificial intelligence pioneers; evolution in the laboratory; 7 mind hacks to help you ace your next exam; and the 2 brothers who have earned US$168m from the NBA for sitting on their arses.
Anton-Babinski syndrome
Also known as:
Anton's syndrome
Associated persons:
Gabriel Anton
Joseph Jules François Félix Babinski
Description:
A condition characterised by a peculiar delusion of reality in which the blind person denies or lacks conscience of his own condition. Despite the presence of complete blindness, there is persistent confabulation and denial by the patient that there is any loss of visual perception. Seen in patients with cortical blindness caused by damage to the occipital lobe. Occurs mostly after apoplexy. Some patients have a general dementia.
Hot volcano porn from The Big Picture; instead of doing those brain-training games, you should be reading this blog!; don't stop thinking about tomorrow, if you want to make decisions; you can do scientific research watching YouTube; wasp zombifies cockroaches; obesity may cause brain damage.
A look at some of the most epic feuds in NBA history
Bah to posts being eaten. Fix this shit already, jeez!
New thread is here.
Why do people talk at gigs?