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Saturday, June 25, 2005 Neat 'physical' drum machine. Kinda like a high-tech washboard and jug band. So far it just seems to tap objects. w/ video. Play that funky pizza box, white boy. See also: Drum machine using eggs. @ 03:00 PM CST [Link] Thursday, June 23, 2005 Great "out of bounds" pshops at worth1000 today. 3D glasses not required. Also: This Bouguereau is pretty nice, if not a little too cute. @ 03:27 PM CST [Link] Today is officially bad government day. Maybe this should be a yearly holiday. First off, the U.S. Code : Title 18 : Section 2257 goes into effect today essentially killing off many adult sites. It specifies that all pornographic content must have some serious record-keeping info attached to it to obstensibly make sure no underage persons were involved in its creation. Webmasters are now supposed to have all sorts of details for every photo like full name, driver's license number, social security number, etc. Its just a right-wing attack on the adult industry. Wired article here. Boingboing has some decent information on the subject too. Today's SCOTUS ruling means that private enterprise can use eminent domain to take your home to build a mall or some business. Previously, eminent domain was understood to be only used for government projects like roads and parks. Tax revenue now falls under the "greater good" category. From a CNN article: The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas. As a result, cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue. Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said. "The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. Also, the Pentagon is creating a database of high school students for recruitment purposes. Normally there would be laws protecting the privacy of minors, but outsourcing to private organizations kinda circumvent these protections. So, why not have June 23rd be bad government day? It would be a great holiday. Politicians and judges who supported clearly wrong or just poorly thought-out laws could give big apology speeches. It would be a day to vent complaints about whatever you think is wrong in your town, state, or country. Think of it as their April 15th. @ 03:12 PM CST [Link] Tuesday, June 21, 2005 Holy crap the onion has gone all sci-fi on us. Wow, some of these are really clever. Worth checking out asap. Don't miss A Female Dolphin President? @ 04:21 PM CST [Link] Stanley Kubrick's Chicago. Previous to his film career, Stanley Kubrick was a semi-famous celebrity photographer for Look magazine. The Chicago tribune is hosting eight of his unpublished eye-candy photos of Chicago and an article here. via the excellent grow a brain blog See also: Short entry on Kubrick's Look career. Its the old-timey Blue Line! All aboard, check your coat, and so forth. @ 12:39 AM CST [Link] Excellent new Mr Wiggles and Cat and Girl this week. The cat and girl comic is really about whether personality is a falsehood, something we project on each other to create meaning or something real and truly innate. There was a good essay about this a while back but I can't find it, so here's the wikipedia entry on personality instead. @ 12:31 AM CST [Link] Sunday, June 19, 2005 Great VW commercial remix of Singing in the Rain. Kottke has more info, another video, and an interview. Is the human body supposed to move like that? @ 06:12 PM CST [Link] Margaret Atwood on the role of science fiction. A short but worthwhile read. I've read both her sci-fi books and they're both amazing. Also: Wikipedia entry on Atwood. Also: New free short stories over at futurismic. Check out Real Death or Consensus Building. @ 05:51 PM CST [Link] Adblocker updated today! Get it while its hot. As usual donations are appreciated. @ 05:41 PM CST [Link] Real life Tylder Durden sells soap made from prime minister. Supposedly. A bar of soap reportedly made from fat pumped from Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has gone on display. Artist Gianni Motti claims he made the soap made from fat from Berlusconi's liposuction operation. It is part of an art exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, where anyone wishing to wash their hands with Berlusconi can buy it for £10,000. The artist who put the soap on display, Gianni Motti, 47, claims to have acquired the fat from an employee of an elite plastic surgery clinic in Lugano in Switzerland. Soap made from humans is an old idea, and something of an urban legend. Did the Nazi's make soap from their victims? Probably not. See also: For your DIY types, here's a howto on making soap from animal fat. @ 05:40 PM CST [Link] [Archives] Search entries: