August 2011
65 posts
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A story missing from our media: Iceland's on-going... →
Deena Stryker for Newsnet Scotland:
Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatised, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called...
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The Man, The Can: Recipes Of The Real Chef... →
Did you know that Chef Boyardee was a real person? Yeah, totally a real guy. Here’s All Things Considered:
Unlike the friendly but fictional food faces of Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, Chef Boyardee — that jovial, mustachioed Italian chef — is real. Ettore “Hector” Boiardi (that’s how the family really spells it) founded the company with his brothers in 1928,...
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Irene 'Wounding' Weekend Box Office →
I believe I may have found the worst news story in the history of news reporting. My life’s mission is now to destroy Jeff Daniels of CNBC, completely and utterly. From every point in the timestream, in this and all other universes.
From the title, you can guess the subject: CNBC has done some crack reporting on the apparently counterintuitive result that a natural disaster may cause a dip...
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Rubbish →
Albin J. Kowalewski contributed a piece to The New York Times’s Civil War liveblog, Disunion, on the 1861 search for a national anthem by the self-named “National Hymn Committee” of New York:
The committee wrote off the three existing contenders immediately: “Yankee Doodle” was “childish,” they said. “Hail, Columbia” was “pretentious.” The “Star-Spangled Banner” was just too...
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In the ruins of Gadhafi's lair, rebels find album... →
MSNBC.com and the Associated Press reporting on something you would probably be better off not ever knowing:
Rebel fighters who ransacked [Moammar] Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound have been turning up some bizarre loot, including the Libyan leader’s eccentric fashion accessories and his daughter’s golden mermaid couch. The latest discovery is a photo album filled with page...
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Vaccines largely safe, U.S. expert panel finds →
Julie Steenhuysen for Reuters:
The panel looked at eight common vaccines: the combination measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), the diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), varicella for chickenpox, influenza, hepatitis B, meningococcal, tetanus-containing vaccines, and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
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Once again, the [Institute of Medicine] found that the MMR vaccine does not cause...
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The Secret History of Donkey Kong →
Travis Fahs of The Next Level put together a nice piece for Gamasutra on Nintendo’s subcontracting of the development of Donkey Kong to Ikegami Tsushinki and their subsequent copyright infringement battle.
What, you hadn’t heard about any of this before? Don’t blame you, I hadn’t either. This doesn’t appear to have been particularly known at all in countries outside...
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Untris →
Spend a few minutes of your day playing Untris by increpare (Stephen Lavelle).
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Airlines protest U.S. rules designed to protect... →
Linda Loyd for the McClatchy-Tribune News Service:
Sweeping pro-consumer passenger rights rules go into effect in the U.S. on August 23 that require airlines to refund baggage fees for lost checked luggage and to pay more for involuntarily bumping passengers on over-booked flights.
The rules, designed to protect airline consumers from unfair and deceptive practices, extend fines to foreign...
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Manic Pixie Dream Girl →
Chandler Levack, on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl — think Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Natalie Portman in Garden State, Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer:
All vaguely artistic, politically sensitive over-sharers, they lure in lost boys like the humane society for doomed relationships. But it’s their very irrationality that makes them irresistible. For the...
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What they're "protecting" us from →
I was reading this excellent piece by Anil Dash on how Apple shows that liberal values aren’t antithetical to business success. I don’t really have anything to add other than full-throated agreement, but this caught my eye. On Jobs’s early life:
So, who is this man? He’s the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child...
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Pony Up Haters: How 4chan Gave Birth to the... →
Una LaMarche, writing for Beta Beat:
Brony, short for “bro pony,” refers to an unusual audience demographic of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a cartoon that began airing on the new cable network the Hub in October of last year. The show, based on the seminal 1980s toy franchise, was created for Hasbro by Lauren Faust, a former writer and director on The Powerpuff Girls. While it is...
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More than 100 birds found poisoned with illegal... →
Here’s some local news for me, but when you read this, I think you’ll agree with me that what the fuck is this. Jaclyn O’Malley reporting for the Reno Gazette-Journal:
Someone has caused the death of more than 100 birds — some protected species — by intentionally leaving out poisoned birdseed in the gated community of Arrowcreek that was soaked or dusted with an...
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Human precursors went to sea →
Helen Chappell, McClatchy Newspapers:
A team of researchers that included an North Carolina State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That’s more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.
Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any...
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Wikipedia and the death of the expert →
Most of what’s written about how the internet is changing society is purely alarmist — Is Google Making Us Stupid?, The Great Failure of Wikipedia, and such. Not so in this fantastic article by Maria Bustillos. She presents a much more realistic take on how the notion of expertise has changed over time.
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Gaddafi's former No. 2 defects: Libya rebels →
Ulf Laessing and Richard Valdmanis, Reuters:
Muammar Gaddafi’s former right-hand man, Abdel Salam Jalloud, has defected to rebel-held territory in Libya’s Western Mountains, a rebel spokesman said on Friday.
Jalloud was a member of the junta that staged a 1969 coup bringing Gaddafi to power, and was seen as the North African oil producer state’s second in command before...
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New book claims Coco Chanel was Nazi spy →
In the first and perhaps only time I’ll be quoting an AP fashion writer, here’s Jenny Barchfield:
A new book by [Hal Vaughan,] a Paris-based American historian[,] suggests Chanel not only had a wartime affair with a German aristocrat and spy, but that she herself was also an agent of Germany’s Abwehr military intelligence organization and a rabid anti-Semite.
Doubts about...
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German right-wing extremists tricked by 'Trojan'... →
Sarah Harman, writing for Deutsche Welle:
German skinheads who took home free T-shirts after a music festival on Saturday were in for a big surprise.
The shirts, which bore a skull and crossbones symbol and the word ‘Hardcore Rebels,’ faded upon washing to reveal a hidden message: “What happened to your shirt can happen to you. We can help you break with right-wing...
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Crashing the Tea Party →
David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam wrote an interesting op-ed for The New York Times that looks into the Tea Party from an angle not often covered: the people who would go on to form it. The Tea Party’s origin is often glossed over or assumed in media coverage as people new to politics who were mad about taxes or something or other. Campbell and Putnam actually interviewed people before...
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Ridley Scott to direct and produce new Blade... →
Back in March, Alcon Entertainment announced they’d acquired the rights to make more Blade Runner movies. There was a bunch of speculation about who would direct, but what pretty much everyone agreed on then is still true now: with Scott at the helm, the chances of this not being a stinker go way, way up.
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"And they banged their shoes mightily in... →
Great list of untranslatable words from Jason Wire:
Ilunga Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) – A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional translators pinpoint it as the stature of a person “who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense.”
‘Ili: Where by “untranslatable” they mean “translatable, but...
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Wanted: A Good Job and Some Understanding →
Afghanistan veteran Jonathan Rabb, writing on the NYT’s At War blog:
Both of my parents stared hard into their dinner plates. “Everybody wants to support the troops until they have to share in the hardship and sacrifice,” I said. “Then all of a sudden that bumper sticker or that flag pin doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
The rest of the piece quite excellent as well; it’s about...
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Phone hacking: News of the World reporter's letter... →
Been a few days since we linked something about Rupes McGupes and the whole News of the World thing, so let’s let Nick Davies of The Guardian make you angry all over again:
Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World’s...
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The Daily Show (2011-08-15) - Ali Velshi →
I believe I’ve mentioned this here once or twice in passing, but about a year ago I stopped watching CNN for any reason. I just could not stand the tripe they called “news,” calling a Democrat and a Republican yelling talking points at one another “analysis,” crowdsourcing journalism, and basically everything else that anyone on that network ever did. And I’ve...
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Victory for Science in Texas Public Schools →
Texas Freedom Network:
As we told you late last month, the State Board of Education approved instructional materials in science that could be used in Texas public schools for the better part of the next decade. In all, the board approved materials from nine publishers. But in the case of one of those publishers, Holt McDougal, it did so on the condition that it make changes of so-called...
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Brewers turn sixth triple play in franchise... →
In their game yesterday against the Dodgers, the Brewers turned a beautiful triple play. Adam McCalvy for MLB.com:
With Dodgers at first and second base and nobody out in a scoreless game, James Loney hit a grounder up the middle. [Second baseman Josh] Wilson ranged to his right, gobbled up the baseball and flipped it with his glove to shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt for the first out. Betancourt...
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Local ice cream makers face shutdown by state →
Monica Eng and Chris Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune:
Today [Kris] Swanberg’s Nice Cream — on offer at local Whole Foods and farmers markets — is considered a star of Chicago’s rich and beloved artisanal ice cream scene, one that could be shut down entirely by state rules, she recently learned.
She says that a couple of weeks ago a representative from the Illinois Department of Public Health...
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Prison for Ex-Judge in Corruption Case →
I hope you’re paid up on your rage bill, because you’re about to use a good portion of your monthly allotment after reading this article by Ashby Jones for The Wall Street Journal:
A former Pennsylvania county judge was sentenced to 28 years in prison Thursday following a corruption scandal in which he was convicted of illegally taking nearly $1 million from a builder of...
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Manipulating Invasive Sea Lampreys with Odor →
Rachel Nuwer for the The Perch, Audubon Magazine’s blog:
Sea lamprey’s parasitic propensity spelled bad news for the Great Lakes when the nasty critters first invaded the area over 100 years ago. Man-made canals allowed sea lampreys to bypass Niagara Falls, and the creatures spread from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie in 1919. The slippery invaders soon made their way to Lake Michigan, Lake...
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Moving Pictures Suggested To End The Tramp Evil →
James Forbes, Hobo Expert, Proposes Also the Equipment of Every Village Police Department and Railroad Station with a Mendicant “Rogues’ Gallery” to Help Stamp Out the Nuisance
Sunday Magazine posted this article from the August 13, 1911, edition of The New York Times’s Sunday Magazine. It is horrifyingly offensive.
Mr. Forbes declares that there are certainly 250,000...
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In Wisconsin, a Big Recall Push Comes Up Short →
Monica Davey for The New York Times:
In the end, it fell short of the outcome protesters who had marched in Wisconsin’s state capital for weeks and weeks had hoped for: Democrats managed to seize two Republican State Senate seats in recall elections on Tuesday, but fell short of the three (or more) they needed to take control of that legislative chamber.
By Wednesday, everyone was declaring...
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French baker builds vending machine for baguettes →
Jamey Keaten for the AP:
[Jean-Louis Hecht] from northeast France has rolled out a 24-hour automated baguette dispenser, promising warm bread for hungry night owls, shift workers or anyone else who didn’t have time to pick one up during their bakery’s opening hours.
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He’s only operating two machines— one in Paris, another in the town of Hombourg-Haut in northeastern France —...
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FBI maybe taking on News Corp with RICO Act →
In a great piece for Adweek which draws parallels between News Corp. and the Mob, Michael Wolff reports that the idea of prosecuting News Corp. with the RICO Act is being taken at least somewhat seriously at the FBI:
Well-sourced information coming out of the Department of Justice and the FBI suggests a debate is going on that could result in the recently launched investigations of News Corp....
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The most unethical psychiatry study ever →
Bradley Voytek:
This is the most boggling, unethical, and offensive piece of “research” I’ve ever come across. I can’t imagine what the rest of the papers by this guy are like.
Reads like something a comic book villain would do. Insane. Can’t believe they accepted it for peer review; I would have called the cops.
(I won’t spoil it all for you, but...
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Given a chance to play games, Nevada prison... →
Associated Press:
Corrections officials at Nevada State Prison have pulled the plug on a pilot program allowing inmates to use PlayStations at Nevada State Prison after inmates were caught using them to watch pornographic movies.
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Prison spokesman Steve Suwe said inmates were allowed to buy the PlayStation II units along with games rated “E” for everybody. No violent games or those with...
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Rebekah Brooks still on News International payroll →
Tim Walker, writing in The Telegraph:
A big song and dance was made of Rebekah Brooks’s belated decision to resign as the chief executive of News International as the phone-hacking scandal engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s empire, but it has not had any great effect upon her standard of living. I am reliably informed that she remains on the company payroll.
“My understanding is that Rupert has...
