April 2009
Death on the Home Front →
The boys are coming home, and they’re not the boys who went away. … This shouldn’t be a surprise. Men sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for two, three, or four tours of duty return to wives who find them “changed” and children they barely know. Tens of thousands return to inadequate, underfunded veterans’ services with appalling physical injuries, crippling...
Obama Administration Chooses Side in File Sharing... →
Team Obama looks a lot like the Bush Administration, at least in its position on fines imposed under the federal Copyright Act. David Kravets reports for Wired that the Justice Department has weighed in on the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) file sharing lawsuits, and the news isn’t good for music-downloading college students and other defendants. The government supports damages...
Social Networking Booms in India →
What are they using? Since coming online in India in 2006, Orkut has become the flavor of choice in India for social networking, thanks in part to being a Google service and connecting to popular Gmail in India. According to comScore Inc. data for January 2009, Orkut garners more than 13 million unique visitors in the country monthly. Facebook , despite decent penetration in India with over 4...
NEWSPAPERS AND THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE [3.17.08] →
When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries...
Expanded Americorps has an authoritarian feel →
With almost no public attention, both chambers of Congress in the past week advanced an alarming expansion of the Americorps national service plan, with the number of federally funded community service job increasing from 75,000 to 250,000 at a cost of $5.7 billion. Lurking behind the feel-good rhetoric spouted by the measure’s advocates is a bill that on closer inspection reveals multiple...
Newspapers last bastion against political... →
“Oh, to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 years, before somebody figures out the business model,” says Simon, a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. “To gambol freely across the wastelands of an American city, as a local politician! It’s got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption.”
March 2009
WatchParks & Recreation - During lifetime of working for small cities I repeatedly bored co-workers by remarking: This should be a TV sitcom! Finally, somebody listened to me.
Storytron - Interactive storytelling →
Think of your favorite story, whether it be from a book or comic, a movie or TV show. And now imagine that you are the protagonist. You get to choose what happens next. Whether you prefer to be a sweetheart or a jerk, to gossip or to be discreet, to have your way through force, subtlety, or compromise, to seek romance or concentrate on other goals, to be generous or miserly, to avenge wrongs or...
BitTorrent Site Mininova Makes It Easier To Sell... →
“It’s only fair not to pay for something you haven’t heard yet. In our opinion torrents are an excellent way to present you with our music. That’s why Beep! Beep! and Mininova have teamed up. We like the fact that you’re taking the effort to get to know new music. In fact, we’d like to thank you for downloading and seeding our music by giving you a discount on...
How-To Tuesday: Mini bike light →
Here’s a neat beginner’s project that combines DIY with bike gear. If I could mix in drugs, sex & rock ‘n roll, I’d be transported to heaven.
A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection... →
ledgergermane:
…At the present time, in what is often thought of as an age of the mass, we tend to fall into the habit of regarding history and evolution as something which goes relentlessly on, quite without our control. The individual has a profound sense of his own impotence as he realizes the immensity of the forces involved. We, the creative ones...
Hacker Spaces →
Hackerspaces are community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects.
WatchMoment of Zen - The car of the future. How weird it that?
The Planet's First-ever Mass-Extinction... →
“There’s no question that we are in a mass extinction spasm right now,” said David Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. “Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn’t. The fact that they’re cutting out now should be a lesson for us.”
What if nobody could have seconds until everyone had gotten firsts?
“Americans think that it’s healthcare that produces health, when there really is...”
– Dr. Stephen Bezruchka (via azspot)
Kucinich to probe $3.6 billion in Merrill Lynch... →
Following the federal government’s promise of $10 billion in TARP funds to buoy the ailing firm through it’s roll-up, Merrill paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses: a package 22 times larger than compensation given by AIG, said Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s offices in a Monday release.
Scavenger's Manifesto: HOWTO be an urban scavenger →
“We’re not saying we’re better than regular consumers. We’re simply trying to remove the stigma from being scavengers. If you want to be wasteful, be wasteful, and I’ll scavenge.”
Watchvruz:
Stan finally figures out just how the treasury system works
—via paulsingh
“It is not terribly surprising that Zach Synder’s film adaptation of Alan Moore’s...”
– Kevin Boyd (via azspot)
WatchA Farm for the Future
The Incredible Courage Of Jim Webb's Prison Bill →
vruz:
Jim Webb’s courage v. the “pragmatism” excuse for politicians
by Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com
There are few things rarer than a major politician doing something that is genuinely courageous and principled, but Jim Webb’s impassioned commitment to fundamental prison reform is exactly that.
Webb’s interest in the issue was prompted by his work as a journalist in 1984, when he wrote about...
“Many Americans want to believe because they think that returning to “normal”...”
– William Greider (via azspot)
Pirate Bay to launch VPN service for improved... →
IPREDator, which is currently in beta, will cost around €5 per month and unlike similar VPN solutions it will not store any traffic data belonging to users.
Galloping With Blinkers On →
Note the contrast in these two news items. One details a simple, efficient, and readily available energy source, using proven technology, with wide applicability – every spot that used to run a water wheel in the 19th century, if it hasn’t been flooded by a dam since then, is a micro-hydro site, and there are plenty of surplus electric motors around – to provide renewable energy for the difficult...
tinydoctor:
I miss hallucinogens, tho. The effect, unlike most, grows more intense w/age. A 50yo brain is like an overstuffed attic—more to work with.
Song For El Cerrito by Tess Taylor
ambivalence:
[via swinkmag]
I used to hate its working-class bungalows, grid planning, power-lines sawing hillsides. It shamed me
the way my parents did for not making more money. Now it looks like a Diebenkorn.
Now I want even the bad wood siding in our living room, my mother’s aging
books on modern Indian thought. Her tanpura in sunlight. I want fox-weed in railroad trestles,
the...
“Women who always speak truthfully and are proud of their strength; women who’s...”
– - Cakrasamvaratantra In Passionate Enlightenment Miranda Shaw writes women played the dominate role in early Tantric Buddhism, as expressed in quite a few tantras and is illustrated in the lives of these early Tantrikas, most often it was men being thrust into enlightenment by the strong teachings...