bill, did you catch sonic youth on gillmore girls last night? thurston and kim playing with their daughter in stars hollow. is it possible for a kid to have cooler parents? lucky girl.
sometimes people get exactly what they deserve. right, michael kelly? this is what he had to say about a speech al gore gave in the time leading up to the war in iraq. the speech is excerpt in the link, and was dead on. if you recall, kelly was an eager embed who died in an accident in the desert.
Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts--bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was
contemptible.
the new drum beat from the right is that the left is angry. it started with hil and now everyones getting called on it. its too easy. better angry than mad.
But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated. --r.cohenand so on.
The whole "angry left" myth is a copout, an escape-hatch for those who are confronted by fact and choose to respond by attacking the messenger rather than the message. It's a cowardly tactic that originated on the radical right (see Malkin and the "moonbats"); lately, we have seen its use on the rise in the traditional media. It is, indeed, a pathetic diversionary tactic. Instead of addressing the substance of the critique, those who use the easy-out "angry left" defense avoid addressing the true issue at hand.
the allergy alerts have been at "High - Very High" since mid april. anyone else getting hammered extra special this year? every one i talk to is. i hear its cause the decorative cherry, apple and pear trees are all male now. so instead of 50/50 m to f its almost all male pollen pumpers in urban settings.
Turn your bicycle into a moped with revopower
The good folks at RevoPower claim they’re re-inventing the wheel. And, let me tell you, I’m wanting to believe them. Here’s the deal. You take your current bicycle (be it a mountain bike, a cruiser or a commuter bike), you remove the front wheel, and replace it with RevoPower’s. A little wiring here and there, nothing too hard, and you’re set. Then, you go out biking, as usual. But, say you’re growing tired, or you hit a slope and you’re just lazy… well, press a button, and the integrated commercial grade, 23cc two-stroke engine will kick in. You get 1.1 HP or 0.8 KW power output with a maximum rpm 7500 to help you along the way. On a flat surface, the engine will even take you up to speeds of 20mph, with a merciful 200mpg.Nothing too amazing here, except click through and look at the picture. It's really slick how integrated it is with the wheel. Seems like it would be really easy to switch front wheels back and forth between this, and your traditional bike wheel.
Interactive map of NYC (made with google satellite maps) that allows you to see the flooding that would result from a sea level rise between 0 and 14 meters. The LES (and Manhattan in general as opposed to Brooklyn / Queens and the Jersey waterfront) is actually a little higher than I thought.
What's up with blogspot.com? Under attack or just straining under the load? Or maybe it's just me? I can occasionally load a page, but most of the time it times out.
I like the idea of a website that just does one thing, and does it well. This might be taking it too far though: islostarepeat.com.
"Our classical music critic reviews The Busby Berkeley Collection a set of six DVDs of films by choreographer Busby Berkeley from the 1930s."
good commentary citing man ray and duchamp influences.
good commentary citing man ray and duchamp influences.
I'm sure everyone has seen this, but just for my own memory, here's a transcript of the Hayden interview where he demonstrates his complete misunderstanding of the 4th amendment. But at least he sounds like a smug prick, so he's got that going for him.
This guy is scary.
This guy is scary.
Still, Mr. McElheny's fascination is more with stories than with science. A second sculpture in the Rosen show, for example, is part of a continuing series based on a conversation that supposedly took place in 1929 between the Modernist sculptor Isamu Noguchi and the utopian architect and visionary Buckminster Fuller. Their exchange is believed to have posited that the only way to create an object that wouldn't cast a shadow was to make it totally reflective and place it in a totally reflective environment.
So for two of the works, Mr. McElheny built a wall-mounted landscape model in which abstract reflective forms are arranged on a mirrored plane. "It's really a horrible proposal," he said. "You couldn't live in this world. You couldn't escape your own reflection."
Mr. McElheny, who was born in Boston, became involved with glass in 1984, as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. "I heard this story," he said, "that glass blowing came out of an oral tradition, and that this tradition was passed down from generation to generation. There was an aura of romance and secrecy about it. I wasn't interested in making glass so much as I was interested in this story."
In pursuit of what he felt was "exclusive knowledge, impossible to learn from a book," Mr. McElheny secured an apprenticeship with Ronald Wilkinson, then the head of the White Friars Factory in Britain. "It was a unique opportunity at a historical moment," he said, explaining that many of Europe's family-owned firms were soon to close.
penn & teller do ground zero
This won't last long. But while it does, peekvid provides a very simple interface to usenet videos hosted by guba. In other words, this is a bunch of illegally downloadable television shows being provided on someone else's dime. Enjoy.
Porter Goss resigned from the CIA! What are the odds he was at the one of the "hooker parties?" Great news!
I saw the "Rumsfeld getting some tough questions" story all over the place, but I didn't read the transcript until just now. Worth a look.
Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.
Three Simpsons writers have science PhDs. What's so funny about scientists?
Jean: It's an even higher percentage on Futurama.
Cohen: We had quite a batch of scientists, if I can use the term scientist loosely to include those who meet the criteria partway, such as myself. Out of 12 writers, I guess we scientists [on Futurama] were a plurality, you could say, which is an annoying use of that word.
Jean: There's a mathematical structure to comedy when you look for the perfect line or natural expression for a joke. It's not a one-to-one correspondence but there definitely exists a similarity. Of course, I don't want to give the impression that you need a Harvard or math degree to write good comedy, but it's helped.
Jean: It's an even higher percentage on Futurama.
Cohen: We had quite a batch of scientists, if I can use the term scientist loosely to include those who meet the criteria partway, such as myself. Out of 12 writers, I guess we scientists [on Futurama] were a plurality, you could say, which is an annoying use of that word.
Jean: There's a mathematical structure to comedy when you look for the perfect line or natural expression for a joke. It's not a one-to-one correspondence but there definitely exists a similarity. Of course, I don't want to give the impression that you need a Harvard or math degree to write good comedy, but it's helped.
Rush was quoting this WSJ op-ed at length this AM ... It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty
anybody notice some car ads on tv are suddenly touting gas mileage again?
Top 10 Gas Unguzzlers:
1. Honda Insight — 60/66
2. Toyota Prius — 60/51*
3. Honda Civic Hybrid — 49/51*
4. Volkswagen Golf TDI — 37/44
Volkswagen New Beetle TDI — 37/44
5. Volkswagen Jetta TDI — 36/41
6. Toyota Corolla — 32/41
7. Scion xA — 32/37
8. Hyundai Accent — 32/35
Kia Rio — 32/35
9. Honda Civic — 30/40*
10. Pontiac Vibe — 30/36
Toyota Matrix — 30/36
Kottke linked to the 2006 Bryant Park summer film calendar.
