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September 30
Welcome to MeatShake!
Here at MeatShake Corporation, we have a simple vision: Meat. Lots of meat. We bring you our vision in the most amazing and scrumptious forms imaginable. Our dedication to meat is nothing short of mighty. That's our promise to you, the valued customer. See also:
Ugly Duckling [
.ram file]
posted by sciurus at 5:42 PM PST - 8 comments
FOX NEWS RUNNING THE CAMERA POOL at the DEBATES Tonight
The press pool rotates who runs the cameras at the various events. Tonight, Fox News just happened to win the spin. Gives new meaning to "TV networks are flexing their muscles, saying they won't be bound by rules set by the Bush and Kerry campaigns that would prevent split-screen and reaction shots and require cameras to stay fixed on the candidate speaking."
He who controls the perception of the populace, wins.
posted by jackspace at 3:50 PM PST - 272 comments
An excellent
WashPost primer on the lies each candidate is currently telling about the other, and how they hold up to reality. Also, enjoy the many euphemisms employed to avoid the "L" word: (Misleading. Inaccurate. Oversimplified. Exaggerated. Carefully selected. Unfair. etc etc) Who will be the first mainstream media outlet to state plainly that a politician has told a lie?
Login: shutyomouf@hotmail.com - pw:shaftbaby)
posted by luser at 1:43 PM PST - 6 comments
Is there a link between
today's headline:
Baghdad Car Bombs Kill 34 Children Receiving Sweets (from American troops) and this Wall Street Journal
front page article from September 22th?
"Capt. Ayers took lessons from his fellow captains. In April, Capt. Jesse Beaudin convinced a friend from the U.S. to send backpacks, notebooks and pencils for schoolchildren. Kids mobbed troops for the goods whenever they went out on patrol. "The kids provided security. No one attacked us when we were surrounded by children," Capt. Beaudin says. After hearing about this tactic at the dining hall, Capt. Ayers's men also wrote home requesting school supplies." Non-subscribers can read the WSJ article
here
posted by miguelbar at 1:17 PM PST - 15 comments
"Just for the record, do you believe the Sun goes around the Earth or the Earth goes around the sun?"
: Ages before
"Intelligent Design",
a bold PaleoCreationist pseudoscientific
gobbledygook - embodied by Tom Willis,
Creationism's man
in Kansas and head of the
Mid Atlantic Creation Research
Society - strode the Earth. The AAAS dissected the mess in
"Lions, Tigers and APES, Oh My! ; Creationism vs. Evolution in Kansas" (
Google cache) and one writer concluded :
"The War between the creationists and
the public schools is over. The creationists appear to have won" : now, in a Kansas that's scientifically proven
flatter than
a pancake,
Mona Lisa is as
happy as a clam, and
Kissing Frank's ass and appeals
to
mysterious watchmakers predominate, while on
the national stage,
God is a
real estate developer.
Meanwhile, a
new group
proposes better zoning bylaws :
Scientists and Engineers for Change
posted by troutfishing at 9:32 AM PST - 22 comments
While reading up on the Detroit City Council's latest brainstorm,
African Town, I stumbled upon this
blog that highlights many of the once great, now decaying buildings of my former hometown. If you've ever wondered what was inside some of those ancient, boarded up buildings, there are some great photos here.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:16 AM PST - 7 comments
Oh My Stars-N-Garters! In addition to the Aardman Animations
Wallace and Gromit films online
here (previously MeFi-ed
here), you can also view the Oscar and Academy Award winner
Creature Comforts online! One of my all-time fave films. Joy!
posted by Shane at 7:59 AM PST - 12 comments
DocuTicker :
A daily update of new reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups. A whole lot of grist for the mill.
posted by mfoight at 7:34 AM PST - 5 comments
Kerry Haters For Kerry
Are you going to vote for John Kerry even though you find him unpleasant, annoying, arrogant, waffling, misguided or just generally unappealing in some profound way? Then you've come to the right place! We're Kerry Haters for Kerry -- perhaps his largest constituency! No need to hide in the Kerry-hating closet anymore while you pretend to everyone that he'll be a great president. Here you are among friends. You can speak freely and honestly. You can admit: 'He's awful! And I'm for him!'
via Wonkette
posted by psmealey at 7:08 AM PST - 67 comments
The
BBC News website has introduced
links to other news sites' articles that relate to the stories they cover.
Google News is based around a similar premise, but as far as I know the BBC is the first major news organization to link to articles not written by themselves.
A good example of this in action is the current headline article about
today's bombings in Iraq (look in the right sidebar).
Only the top stories seem to have this feature activated, but hopefully (to me at least) it will spread through the site with time.
posted by lowlife at 6:41 AM PST - 9 comments
Bad Candy:
Despite the lack of new candy reviews Bad Candy remains one of those sites you can go back to time after time. Side-splitting hours within.
"None of this prepared us for the taste, of course.
My Love is a time-release candy; it doesn't taste unbearable until it has firmly entrenched itself in your mouth. Then, all at once, My Love issues forth its vinegary bitterness, wilting tongue and lips alike with its thick, saucy, Drano-like quality."
(this site was
mentioned once in passing on the blue, but deserves a post of it's own)
posted by soulhuntre at 5:01 AM PST - 14 comments
September 29
Judge Rules Against Patriot Act Provision
In what can only be described as "a good thing", a US District judge has found that "Surveillance powers granted to the FBI under the Patriot Act, a cornerstone of the Bush Administration's war on terror, were ruled unconstitutional".
posted by fenriq at 4:52 PM PST - 22 comments
Language started with emotional signaling.
That's the thesis of a new book,
The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, And Intelligence Evolved From Our Primate Ancestors To Modern Humans, by Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker.
Lived emotional experience is key to language learning, the authors suggest. "Mathematicians and physicists may manipulate abstruse symbols representing space, time, and quantity, but they first understood those entities as tiny children wanting a far-away toy, or waiting for juice, or counting cookies. The grown-up genius, like the adventurous child, forms ideas through playful explorations in the imagination, only later translated into the rigor of mathematics."
The book is very ambitious, and I don't think we'll ever
know where language came from, but this sounds like a more fruitful line of thinking than Chomsky's
deus ex machina "language gene" mutation.
posted by languagehat at 2:49 PM PST - 32 comments
The evidence is compelling:
John Kerry responds to George Bush's GOP acceptance speech with the following opening remarks: "I'll tell you what happened tonight that will be remembered. The Boston Red Sox moved to within 2.5 games of the New York Yankees."
At the time of Kerry's speech, however, the Red Sox had not moved up in the standings. While they won that night, so did the Yankees, and the Sox remained 3.5 games back.
And John Kerry accuses Bush of misleading the American people?
posted by loquax at 11:49 AM PST - 45 comments
Utopian Christians, despisers of all ornament, in some rough sense protomodernists, the eighteenth- and nineteeth-century millenarian cult known disparagingly as the
Shakers has had an impact on the history of design far in excess of its size. (At most, there were only ever a few thousand, and it's easy to understand why, given their emphasis on "perfection" to the point of celibacy.) Key to the Shaker world view was
the perfectability of the material world - its purgation of all decoration, artifice and frippery - as an act of worship. This ethos of design, summarized in these
theses toward the improvement of the domestic environment, has gifted us with a
legacy of highly esteemed craft objects. None has been more celebrated than that canny apotheosis of domestic utility,
the Shaker rail, which survives
here in a particularly nice contemporary interpretation. If only half the artifacts we're currently offered were as thoughtfully designed...
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:43 AM PST - 11 comments
Grind. Endless drudgery. Too much in your in-tray, not enough in your out-tray. You put your headphones on, but it doesn't really help. You want a distraction - just for a moment or two. "A happy employee is a productive employee" you justify to yourself, although you're not convinced. Then it happens. A 24 carat nugget of plain text escapism lands in your in-box. You're an alt-tab, double-click away from sheer bliss.
DNRC;
A.Word.A.Day;
FlipFlopFlyin Newsletter;
The Plain Text Gazette; and the previously mentioned
Snowmail and
Newsnight Newsletters, which take a less formal but equally sharp look at the day's news, with anecdotes and observations thrown in. What other quality plain text mail lists are around?
posted by nthdegx at 6:04 AM PST - 6 comments
Terrorising free speech.
Al Lorentz is a reserve Non-Commissioned Officer currently serving in Iraq. His blazingly clear, succinct article on Iraq, titled
"Why we cannot win", has raged over the wires (also at MeFi) since it was published on LewRockwell.com. Now, the military chain of command is considering charging Al with violation of Article 134 for making a statement with the intent to promote disloyalty or disaffection toward the U.S. by any member of the Armed forces. The military is also considering charging Al with violation of 1344.10, the conduct of partisan political activity, and violation of Standards of Conduct for unauthorized use of Government assets to create and email stories.
posted by acrobat at 5:29 AM PST - 30 comments
September 28
How To Cost Microsoft Money.
Microsoft has a form on their website that you can fill out to get a copy of Windows XP SP2 on CD at no charge (with free shipping by Purolator). I ordered one.
Then, at the Order Confirmation screen, I clicked Back, then Refresh, then Retry (since the form had to be posted again). I did this 149 times......
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 8:39 PM PST - 48 comments
Tattoo my head with anything anti-Bush!
An interesting interview with someone that put their skin on eBay for an anti-Bush tattoo, but instead of the $10,000-30,000 price tags, her no-reserve auction started at one cent and only ended at $103.50.
The final product kinda works no matter who wins, but still, a hundred bucks probably didn't cover the ink, let alone the commitment. Remember
the Howard Dean tattoo? How far would you go for your candidate?
posted by mathowie at 3:19 PM PST - 19 comments
The
Animaris Rhinoceros Transport: "Since about ten years
Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives." [
2MB Quicktime Video]
posted by muckster at 1:54 PM PST - 10 comments
The incredible
Michelle Yeoh. The irresistible
Maggie Cheung. And now
Zhang Ziyi? Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation...of asskicking Asian action heroines.
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:28 AM PST - 25 comments
The Pig Wings Project:
"Rhetoric surrounding the development of new biological technologies make us wonder if pigs could fly one day. If pigs could fly, what shape their wings will take? The Pig Wings Project presents the first use of living pig tissue to construct and grow winged shape Semi-Living Objects."
posted by taz at 3:43 AM PST - 2 comments
September 27
The Unfeeling President by E.L. Doctorow:
This president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
posted by Skygazer at 9:42 PM PST - 36 comments
Was your voter registration form thick enough?
Ohio's republican secretary of state has issued an order (three days before the registration deadline) to throw out all voter registration forms printed on paper less then 80lb. Coincidence that dem-leaning areas have seen a 250% rise in voter registration, with tens of thousands of new voters in a race expected to be closer then FL 2000?
Oh yeah, the state sent out 40lb forms to those requesting them. Cute, huh.
posted by delmoi at 7:23 PM PST - 82 comments
For Sale:
Slightly Used, Amazingly Versatile 7-Letter Kit. (Letters included: L-I-N-D-O-W-S) Warning: Improper placement of W may result in lawsuits.
posted by Mwongozi at 3:55 PM PST - 11 comments
Lost Boys of Sudan
is an amazing documentary about refugees from Sudan's
Darfur conflict finding haven in the US. It's premiering on PBS tomorrow. Their website has local PBS listings as well as locations and times of upcoming screenings in the US. From sleeping on the ground in a UN refugee camp to working at WalMart in Dallas, the men in the film undertake an enormously difficult, but ultimately life-saving journey.
posted by scarabic at 1:58 PM PST - 8 comments
The Tonight Show celebrates its 50th anniversary
of national broadcast, it was a local New York show staring in 1953 tonight.
Steve Allen was its first host, blazing the trail for all late nights to come (did you know his announcer was
Gene Rayburn?). Then came
Jack Parr. The world was a better place with
Johnny Carson making us laugh nearly every night for thirty years.
Jay Leno's rise to host was certainly not easy. And, it seems, on the show's 55th anniversary, it'll be
Conan inheriting the throne!
Happy anniversary to one of the most entertaining, groundbreaking American institutions ever.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:17 PM PST - 51 comments
Apple-1 CPU, VG-Mint.
"This computer, as is documented, was bought from Steve Job's parents garage. The checks for the purchase and the original manual are included." More photos
here.
[via coudal]
posted by me3dia at 11:50 AM PST - 16 comments
With the DVD of
Walking Tall hitting stores today, it might be nice to read the legend of the real
sheriff Buford Pusser, six-feet and six-inches of Alabaman, two-by-four wielding, vigilante justice. Actually, it's not the first time this story's been told. The 1973 version of
Walking Tall is now considered a classic (in some circles).
What's cool is that Alabama-bred country rockers
Drive By Truckers have devoted not
one, but
two songs on their new album
The Dirty South to debunking the myths surrounding this folk hero
posted by UncleDave at 10:38 AM PST - 8 comments
Memories of a Dog
.
Moriyama Daido's
pictures are
taken in the
streets of Japan's major
cities. Made with a small, hand-held camera, they reveal the speed with which they were
snapped. Often the frame is tilted vertiginously, the grain
pronounced, and the
contrast emphasized. Among his city images are those shot in underlit bars, strip clubs, on the streets or
in alleyways, with the movement of the subject creating
a blurred suggestion of a form (warning: NSFW images if you scroll down the page) rather than a distinct figure.
His best known picture,
Stray Dog, (1971) is taken on the run, in the midst of bustling street activity.
It is an essential reflection of
Moriyama's presence as an alert outsider in his own culture.
Moriyama is also a
toy-camera enthusiast (
his favorite is the
Polga)
. He has worked
in the US, too: "
N.Y. 71".
(more inside)
posted by matteo at 10:28 AM PST - 6 comments
The evocation of dystopian space with contemporary settings. One of the many challenges faced by directors of low- or no-budget SF films is the convincing depiction of futuristic space, especially where it needs to appear oppressive or totalising. What are you to do, when you lack
the wherewithal to create
elaborate sets, and even the
cheesiest CGI is well out of reach?
You use extant buildings and artifacts, and you crop carefully. But which ones? Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin County Civic Center appears particularly popular in this context:
here it is in
THX1138, and
here in
Gattaca - the latter a film which also featured the
Citroen DS and
Studi Avanti to precisely evocative effect. (What's so sinister about this poor building?
In real life it's stunningly pretty.)
Jean-Luc Godard had a
field day in
Alphaville, with the anomic architecture of mid-60s, high modernist Paris, and again with the
same sorts of mainframe installations Lucas relied so heavily upon in
THX. Even (cough)
Logan's Run found low-rent dystopia in various Dallas and Fort Worth settings, here Fort Worth's
Water Gardens.
Maybe the poor Marin Center's a bit played out, huh? As an aid to future directors, then, let me ask you: What are some dystopic settings near you?
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:11 AM PST - 48 comments
Being threatened with litigation by the RIAA? There's always
this solution.
posted by anathema at 8:39 AM PST - 5 comments
This video costs $150,000
Whats wrong with this video?
Well, it only cost $15
$150,000 could make a difference to over 1,000,000 people
In this age of media companies and the RIAA suing everyone and their computer illiterate grandmothers, its nice to see an musician take a critical look at what it is that they do, if its really necessary, and ask if there was a better way to spend their money. And, quite frankly, it doesnt surprise me in the least that it was
Sarah McLachlan. (QT video)
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:32 AM PST - 97 comments
If America were Iraq, what would it be like?
Private armies totaling 275,000 men; platoons of Christian Soldiers Militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery; the grounds of the White House constantly under mortar fire; the Secretary of State, President, and Attorney General all assassinated in the past year; and the Air Force routinely bombing Billings, Flint, Philadelphia, and parts of LA and DC to destroy "safe houses" of "criminal gangs."
posted by johnnydark at 5:05 AM PST - 34 comments
It was bound to happen eventually - Richard Branson
announced the launch of
Virgin Galactic, a joint venture between Virgin and Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company responsible for
SpaceShipOne. They expect to send up to 3000 people into suborbital space over five years for £115k each (around $200k)and the first ship will be named the
Virgin SpaceShip VSS Enterprise (well, I guess he can name it what he wants...). It's all immensely exciting, but personally I think Virgin Spacelines sounds classier.
posted by adrianhon at 2:55 AM PST - 14 comments
September 26
Staying the Course Isnt an Option
"
If Bush is re-elected, there are only two possible outcomes in Iraq:
Four years from now, America will have 5,000 dead servicemen and women and an untold number of dead Iraqis at a cost of about $1 trillion, yet still be no closer to success than we are right now, or
The U.S. will be gone, and we will witness the birth of a violent breeding ground for Shiite terrorists posing a far greater threat to Americans than a contained Saddam."
posted by specialk420 at 6:34 PM PST - 50 comments
And we thought it was just a load of Soviet propaganda: Buran was pretty sweet
Well, no doubt a little bit of industrial espionage helped them in its design, but the Soviet Buran really was an impressive technological achievement and in many ways superior to the United States space shuttle. Of particular interest is the impressive technology the Soviet's developed for heavy-lift boosters. Does anyone know what's become of any of this, or know of any other interesting bits of Soviet -v- American space race trivia? This stuff always fascinates me. (Great website for geeky-cool aerospace information as well)
posted by tgrundke at 8:21 AM PST - 11 comments
"It was surprising how thick the smoke had become.
It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat --someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire. But America wasn't the Roman Empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer. I really was never any more than what I was -- a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me." -- from
Bob Dylan's new autobiography,
Chronicles, with a brief
interview, via
Newsweek
posted by digaman at 6:12 AM PST - 14 comments
September 25
Front Design
has some pretty bizarre art/products. Check the projects section to see tables, chairs, and lamp shades, among other things, made from the interaction of animals/insects/reptiles with the environment. {flash}
posted by dobbs at 11:33 PM PST - 5 comments
Why straights shouldn't marry.
"Phil and Pam both loved to eat Twinkies and Cup Cakes as children. On their first date, Phil ended a day of golf with a bottle of champagne and Cup Cakes to munch on as they watched the sun set over the Hudson." (via
Holy Shitake.)
posted by adrober at 3:03 PM PST - 44 comments
Welcome to the INFORMATION-CYBER-WAR.
Tired of the same old "song & dance" from the "Democrats" & "Republicans"? Glen Glidden knows how you feel. That's why he started "the most dangerous show on public access cable television." He takes on
City Hall, revealing that most elected officials in Minnesota suburbs are
usurpers, illegally occupying their position. He exposes the
truth about November's election: it's Clown vs. Clown. And he's a
Rammstein fan (why not?). Take a look, but remember: the truth may hurt.
posted by punishinglemur at 12:32 PM PST - 9 comments
Tom Ridge's war profiteering.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has been reported to hold investments in at least seven different companies directly benefiting from new Homeland Security projects. "In response to a late afternoon telephone inquiry, DHS spokesman Brian Roehrkasse first said the department did not have enough time to answer questions ... Pressed further, he shouted an expletive to a reporter and hung up. "
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:16 AM PST - 26 comments
25 years old and I pretty much had made it. The critics darling was now a success. So what happened? Why is it that many of you here today arent quite sure who the hell I actually am, aside from Rufus Wainwrights father? Why is finding a CD of mine akin to archeology? Where were the follow up hits to "Dead Skunk," funny animal songs like "I Met Her at the Pet Store" and "Stay Away From My Aardvark?"
My Cool Life by Loudon Wainwright III
posted by dodgygeezer at 8:55 AM PST - 20 comments
For Westerners, the index case of subculture has to be the
1960s UK conflict between the razor-sharp, tailored
mods and their mortal enemies, the greasy
rockers.
Difference was critical to these first self-identified youth subcultures: difference in dress, in music, in drug of choice, in the favored
mode of
transport...everything. This obsessive focus on not just standing out, but standing out
just so - on showing the world precisely the right angle of a hat, length of a coat, shortness of hair - has defined many a subculture since. We recognize
b-boys,
ganguro girls, and
straightedge punks by such deployments, among many, many other identifiable groups. (It's not just a youth thing, either:
leathermen and the
delightfully recrudescent roller derby culture are largely adult phenomena.)
To a devotee of a given subculture, such matters, far from being a "narcissism of small differences," are a matter of pivotal import in framing how one presents oneself to the world:
how we want to be seen, how we want others to understand us. But I'm getting older now, and further out of the loop, and I realize that just maybe I'm losing the ability to discern these differences in the people I pass walking down the street. I find myself asking, who and where are the new subcultures? And how do they choose to present themselves to us?
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:30 AM PST - 17 comments
September 24
Who Was Abused ? There are several ways to view the small white house on Center Street in Bakersfield, Calif. From one perspective it's just another low-slung home in a working-class neighborhood, with a front yard, brown carpeting, a TV in the living room. Now consider it from the standpoint of the Kern County district attorney's office: 20 years ago, this was a crime scene of depraved proportions... [and] this time, through Ed Sampley's eyes. Twenty years ago he was one of the boys molested in the house where sex abuse was part of the weekend fabric. That's what he told Kern County investigators. That's what he told a judge, a jury and a courtroom of lawyers... Now for the first time in 20 years, Sampley is back in the driveway of that small white house. ''It never happened,'' he tells me. He lied about Stoll, an easygoing divorced father who always insisted the neighborhood kids call him John rather than Mr. Stoll and let them run in and out of his house in their bathing suits, eat popcorn on the living-room floor and watch ''fright night'' videos. More Inside
posted by y2karl at 6:24 PM PST - 46 comments
Andrea Armstrong
wants to play basketball. She is also a muslim, and wishes to observe traditional muslim attire for a woman of the faith. Intolerance ensues.
(A link from my local paper to an Orlando Sentinel story, in that this woman is from Oregon.)
posted by Danf at 3:53 PM PST - 69 comments
When I first saw it I thought, it was fad-freaky Toyko or perhaps fashionably trendy LA, but it's NYC.Let's see... Walk several blocks possibly through a mucking huge park, or park in a expensive pay lot, or take a bus/train/taxi take an elevator to the umpteenth floor of the Empire State Building to take a 25 minute
MetroNap in a overgrown egg chair during your lunch hour. Not to mention paying what ever it took to get you there you'll shell out $13 more to take a nap. And no, that's NOT with the optional lunch, or even in a private cubicle. City folk, more money than sense. What ever happend to sleeping under your desk? If it's good enough for George Castanaza, it's good enough for me!
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 2:34 PM PST - 9 comments
The full wealth of the world's religious knowledge has been collated into the quite extraordinary
"God FAQ". A valuable resource indeed.
[via b3ta]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:21 PM PST - 95 comments
Black widow pop.
"With tATu, Ivan Shapovalov took the media's
obsession with paedophilia, and spun it into a
chart-topping lesbo-schoolgirl pop act. Now
he's trying to do the same with Islamic
terrorism. On Sept 11 in Moscow, he launched
nATo, a 16-year-old girl who dresses in a
Burqua, much like the Black Widow suicide bombers
who are currently terrorising Russia. With
the Beslan massacre only a week old, Nato's
launch - complete with invitations designed
like plane tickets - was not a huge success...
Mindful of the dire consequences of being a
dissenting voice in Putin's Russia these days,
Shapovalov is planning to launch nATo properly
in London later this year, and get a
recording contract here."
stolen from popbitch
posted by mr.marx at 1:58 PM PST - 19 comments
Love in a cage.
All Iranian filmmakers working in their homeland have to face the trials of the
censor, but if
the subject matter includes abortion, adultery and lesbianism, the chances of
gaining official approval in the
Islamic republic are all but zero. Actress
Mania Akbari, the lead of
Abbas Kiarostami's
"10", explores this territory in her first feature film as a director, "
20 Fingers", which
unspooled in the new "Digitale" section at the
Venice Film Festival (.pdf file) and
won the first prize as Best Movie Shot On Digital. The film's use of digital video was also invaluable in getting around censorship: the only way to shoot in Iran on 35mm is to hire equipment from the central authorities, which means script approval and a government minder attending the shoot. Shooting on digital video requires script approval, but no minder is sent along. So 29-year-old Akbari, in an amazing display of courage, gained approval for one script and then duly shot another (she could now be barred from working or from screening her films or from even leaving the country, but she insists on working in Iran, to challenge the system from there and not from abroad). The film is
coming soon at the
Vancouver Film Festival. More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:09 AM PST - 5 comments
A man and his rocket car.
As documentaries enjoy an unprecedented level of popularity and financial success, it's high time that an obscure Canadian National Film Board
doc from 1981 was (re)discovered. The story of Ken Carter, who spends several years and millions of dollars of other people's money in the single-minded pursuit of one goal: jumping a jet-powered car across the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States. What is it with Canadians and
insane dreams?
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:03 AM PST - 10 comments
(Danger! Danger! Silly .gif images ahead!) A little something to file under "wacky web":
ballOOns Museum German web site, featuring classic paintings and sculpture with a dollop of goofy animation thrown in for fun. After you enter, click "Gemälde" and "Skulpturen" in the new window to view the galleries.
posted by taz at 7:41 AM PST - 4 comments
Streamor.com: Streaming Surgical Education
'Featuring the World's First SurgeonCam and The Digital Endoscopy Fellowship. A Digital Window to the OR for Physicians, Trainees, and Patients.' Clips are free, and are available in Real Video & Windows Media formats. "Surgery is an inherently visual art. It must be seen to be understood."
(via The Eyes Have It).
posted by misteraitch at 4:40 AM PST - 2 comments
Pressure Groups and Censorship in Israel/Palestine.
"I suspect that the causes are complicated and multi-factorial. I suspect that I and others like me who remained ignorant and negligent on this issue for so long bear much of the guilt. I suspect that others whose emotional ties to Israel served as blinders on this subject share in our culpability. I suspect that still others who knew the truth and refused to speak of it, or who participated in its cover-up, bear a significant portion of this awful responsibility. I suspect that the career damage and death threats that often result when one begins to speak out on this issue played a part."
posted by acrobat at 3:20 AM PST - 33 comments
September 23
Our Eyes photography. Interesting photographs submitted from around the world using a left-right scroll layout of 10-15 shots with various themes. The scrolling is an interactive part of the piece. Caution: Your workplace may be dangerous to these artists.
Some (SFW)
favorites.
posted by stbalbach at 10:14 PM PST - 6 comments
What a coincidence, huh?
(wapo, reg reqd) For the third time, environmental advocates have discovered passages in the Bush administration's proposal for regulating mercury pollution from power plants that mirror almost word for word portions of memos written by a law firm representing coal-fired power plants.
The passages state that the Environmental Protection Agency is not required to regulate other hazardous toxins emitted by power plants, such as lead and arsenic. The actual proposals and study are
here.
