2007 Bloggies: Best Community Weblog [view: normal]

Thanksgiving is a difficult time for some people to celebrate. The holiday that Lincoln gave us has been saddled with a wonderful mythology. The real story is a bit more problematic, and involves a vicious, genocidal war. Is it possible to reclaim the beauty of this holiday, or is it too tainted by its history?
It's difficult for me to know what versions of this history to trust, and how to ma...

The surprising motion of ski moguls: ski moguls migrate uphill, even though skiers and snow move downhill. Time lapse video (YouTube)
Supplemental material including several time lapse videos (scroll down) of moguls migrating uphill. My favourite mogul spot: Paradise Bowl at Lake Louise. ...

"Go up to him and start a conversation. Anything except feminism--which is like toxic waste to Good Men--is fair game." Spoiler: It's all about The Golden Rule.

Calcio Fiorentino was an early form of football (YT) that originated in 16th century Italy (YT). The modern version (Foto Gallery) allows tactics such as head-butting, punching, elbowing, and choking, but forbids sucker-punching and kicks to the head.
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The Quarter Shrinker as constructed by Rob Flickenger at Hackerbot Labs in conjunction with Intellectual Ventures Lab. flickr photo set of shrunken coins. The physics behind coin shrinking. Coin World May 2009 article (PDF). Another Shrunken Head Guy.
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An automobile dealership in Wheat Ridge, Colorado made the decision last Friday to post a billboard which asks if President Obama is a terrorist and if he's really an American citizen by birth. Part of the sign also references the recent tragedy at Fort Hood. The brainchild of Phil Wolf, owner of Wolf Interstate Leasing and Sales, the sign depicts a Bamboozled-esque rendition of the PUSA, with an...

Frank van der Salm Photography: Zone ll Cluster ll Control ll Sector ll Gate ll Descent
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The American Imperialists have sent potato beetle by clouds and air to our Republic. He May Be a Communist.
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Crafting can be great. But beware: crafting can also go spectacularly wrong. Fortunately for the benefit of those of us who might become so proud of having made something, anything, all by ourselves, that we are oblivious that the result is an aesthetic travesty, there are websites making a valiant attempt to document the legion of ways in which crafting can get totally out of hand. Before you pic...

Make your own solar cell out of powdered donuts, Everclear, Tazo Passion tea, and other common ingredients. (slyt)
Sure, it's not practical for anything, but hey, at least you get an idea of how solar panels are made and work. ...

The Senate votes to bring health care bill (text in an amendment) to floor, 60-39. Major concessions extracted by holdout senators. Other analysis here and here. Differences between this and the House bill.
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Doug Rushkoff throws down the gauntlet in his "Radical Abundance" speech at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 conference. Some highlights of the speech: "The only real possible competition to Google and their economy of faux openness would be peer-to-peer exchange." "As a result of all this freedom the abundance of genuine creative output is declining. We are actually getting the scarce market place demanded...

Jan Fabre put 1.6 million irridescent beetles on the ceiling [via]
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5bis rue du Verneuil is the home of Serge Gainsbourg in Paris. This short film peels off the layers of graffiti left on the wall there.

You think you have a problem with baldness? Check out the bears in the Leipzig Zoo.

The development blog for the original Prince of Persia from Jordan Mechner.

"Seed" - an anthology of short fiction published on a USB flash drive shaped like a penis. Sample story. More on the concept without pictures of plastic penises. (Safe for workness may vary)
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Soros lectures
You can slog through the video, but I preferred the transcripts 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
+ to me, it started off rather abstract* (admittedly on his part) and slow (covered ground; note soros tag) and doesn't really get interesting until 3 -- "The event that forced me to thoroughly reconsider the concept of open society was the re-election of President Bush..." [altho he can get a bit arrogant ("even I, who discovered—or invented—reflexivity, failed to recognize...")] -- and gets better from th...

Point:

At the end of October, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, members of the men's movement group RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting [2]) gathered on the steps of Congress to lobby against what they say are the suppressed truths about domestic violence: that false allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from chi...

sc140: 22 minimal electronica tracks composed in Super Collider using 140 characters or less. Twitter user, computer scientist, and compilation curator Dan Stowell started the trend by tweeting his encoded field recordings of waves crashing on the beach.
Artist bios
Further reading at New Scientist
Via textually.org ...

Bus SLYT There isn't really much else to say... a game, a city bus simulator game. Peaceful and scary...

The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board has paid Patrick Warburton (of Brock Samson and The Tick fame) to talk about cheeseburgers.
As well as the cheeses themselves, check the tabs on top to "meet the cheeses." ...

Stunning pictures by Michael Yon show what happens when helicopters land in dust storms: The Kopp-Etchells Effect is thought to be the result of static electricity created by friction as materials of dissimilar material strike against each other, in this case titanium/nickel blades moving through the air and dust, but a precise definition is as of now not known.
Von reports most pilots were unable to provide him with a satisfying explanation for why this occurred but within the comments at the end of the article some speculate this could be related to Triboelectric effect or the nature of the sand crystals in the dust. ...

Watergate thug Chuck Colson has issued a call to Christianist jihad called the Manhattan Declaration. Fortunately, tristero has fisked it so that you and I don't have to.
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen For one week only on Pitchfork TV, "this 45-minute film from 1965 offers a candid glimpse of Cohen's pre-singer-songwriter days." Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and let us never forget 7.
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