A loud "Hallelujah!" heard from Rome

They sure didn't teach this when I attended St. Dominic's school in 1968!


Link.

New Map?

but the climates probably wouldn't change much, aside from your basic trends in global warming.

via CivicSpace Labs.

20 Reasons

Why you shouldn't post your picture on the web!

America: First in technology

but thirteenth in broadband adoption.

via LessigBlog

Mark with an "X" ?

"It's not the voting that's democracy,
it's the counting."

-Tom Stoppard


A view shared by these folks.

Hunter S. Thompson on the 2004 Campaign

One of my favorite Hunter quotes (on describing Hollywood) is:
"a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side."

His current Roling Stone article is here.

Jon Stewart aims for a killshot on CNN Crossfire

Jon Stewart rips into Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. A must see.


From BoingBoing:

The iFilm version currently has 99,228 views. Sites don't make Blogdex without 250,000 views. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 350,000 is more viewers than the original Crossfire interview probably had. (I can only find that CNN averages 757,000 viewers during prime time).

Update: From the time I posted this until the time I finished an email with similar content, 40,000 people viewed the iFilm version of the Crossfire interview. Everytime I've checked BitTorrent, there have been more than 100 people sharing the file.

Another Update (10/16/04 7:56 PM): Leonard Lin is saying there are 4,000 BitTorrent seeds and his Apache server is now "handling 100+ simultaneous connections and avg'ing 7.0MB/s right now, 25GB/hr"

Yet Another Update (10/17/04 7:47PM): The Stewart/Crossfire torrents are now number 5 on Blogdex and has 291,863 on iFilm. The BitTorrent page lists 54,206 download, but I can't imaging how they're coming up with this number.

Download available here.

UPDATE: The NY Times comments on the incident here.

Way cool Sushi USB Flash Drives

Yakitori, sashimi, MP3's, digital photos, yum!

Link.

Finding Nemo

Very cool underwater digital camera housing.

Link via Gizmodo.

Mount St. Helen's web cam

Check out the US Geological Survey's live webcam.
Mmmmmm..... liquid hot magma!

WIPO... WIPO GOOD!

Good news from Geneva and recent developments at the World Intellectual Property Organization.

via BoingBoing.

Speed Blades

Best feature on this gadget:

no brakes.

Link.

Hand Shadows from 1859

Pretty cool.

Link via BoingBoing.

From LA to NY

Check out this French artist/musicians video of a trip from LA to NY.
Absolutely amazing. Link.
via MetaFliter

R.I.P. Twinkies

Oh, well... the existing inventory will still be around in a 1,000 years.

BusinessWeek story here.
Newsday story here.
via BoingBoing.

Fish sticks for life...

A beginers guide to whaling.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

A short but interesting article about how much an artist actually makes from a 99 cent iTunes download. Turns out to be around a dime.
Some things never change.

Link via Red Ferret.

Cat Stevens: RED ALERT!

A plane bound for Washington from London was diverted to Maine on Tuesday after passenger Yusuf Islam - formerly known as pop singer Cat Stevens - showed up on a U.S. watch list, federal officials said. One official said Islam, 56, was identified by the Advanced Passenger Information System, which requires airlines to send passenger information to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center. TSA was then contacted and requested that the plane land at the nearest airport, the official said.

Interesting that a peace activist would pose a threat to national security.
Link.

Cool Science Zoom-o-rama

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

WARNING! : DO NOT smoke a big fat doobie before viewing this page.


via MetaFilter

Ivan Buster

Hurrican Ivan busting beach house.
Pretty slick pad... and it only weights 850 Tons.

More links here via MetaFilter.

This Blows

An amazing NOAA satelitte photo from Sept 12 1:45PM EST.
Another one from the same time and date here.

9/11 Tribute

Jook Leung's brilliant 9/11 tribute. a full screen QuickTime VR (QTVR) Panorama of the "Tribute in Light" of March 2002.

Link via BoingBoing.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum:

it's a Pirates life for me :-)





I tell ya, for $24 million this thing better have an on board Shark tank I can drop my enemies into :-)

Welcome to "Wally" World.

Product page here.

To RIP or not to RIP?

That is the question.

A thought-provoking flowchart suggesting a moral process for deciding whether you should rip any given CD.
Via BoingBoing.

Go Ahead, Make Me Cluck...

NASA's "Chicken Gun"

Mild, Hot or Honey Garlic? Comin' at ya at 1,500 m.p.h.

My Home Town

A few snaps from yesterday afternoon, at the Harbour: Port Credit, Ontario, Canada (at the mouth of the Credit River on the shore of Lake Ontario).

Ferrari Phone

Here's an interesting Moto rig from the legendary Pininfirina Design Firm.

I know at least one chick who'd love one of these :-)

Pop Fly!

via MetaFilter

The movie "Armagedon" was a piece of cake compared to this:


On 08 August 2001, NASA launched Genesis. It was a spacecraft that would spend 1125 days in space, including 884 days collecting 0.4 milligrams of solar particles. At that point, it would launch a 500 lbs return vehicle that would travel 600 mph back to earth. When it enters the atmosphere, at approximately 11:55am EST on Wednesday of this week, it will be going close to twenty-five thousand mph. Oddly enough, this is the easy part of the mission.

Because then, two minutes later, NASA is going to catch it. In mid-air. With a helicopter. Really.

UPDATE:

Looks like the choppers missed the catch :-(



Bummer.

Going Up?

Step aside xprize, here comes the elevator 2010 challenge. Sponsored by the Spaceward Foundation this is a "public challenge centered around the Space Elevator concept, offering a substantial prize for the first laser-powered tether climbing demonstration that can meet specific criteria.

MSNBC story here.
MetaFilter posting here.

Sacred Cross Cell Phone Tower

Can you hear me now O, Lord?

A nice one from Xeni over at Boing Boing!

Special Effects: cocaine

"Remember Zardoz?

Here's a link to a fifteen-page essay on John Boorman's, um, rather unusual film. Imagine a science-fiction film where the entire special effects budget was spent on cocaine. Not just for the director and script-writer, but also enough cocaine to make the producer and studio heads COMPLETELY UNAWARE of the film's content. That's the only way this film could possibly have been made. (reviews contain major spoilers)"

via MetaFilter

Mr. Goodbar?

Looks like Japanese women may have just found him. Link.

Twinkle Twinkle

A Four inch backyard telescope finds a planet the size of Jupiter.

Link.

Jet Powered Wheel Chair

Something for my friend Kevin to look forward to in his retirement :-)

Link via Engaget.

Soul or No Soul?

The Vatican bans the Hammond Organ.

Mimi-Max

Mini XXL.

Geek Bling

Marché Noir’s Computer Key Rings. It’ll only set you back $38 to $50 (plus shipping and handling) to kick it QWERTY style.

Link.

Kubler-Ross rolls a seven

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler Ross passed away this week.

I think this passage might make an appropriate epitaph:

Dr. Hibbert:
Now, a little death anxiety is normal. You can expect to go through five stages. The first is denial.
Homer: No way! Because I'm not dying!
Dr. Hibbert: The second is anger.
Homer: Why you little!
Dr. Hibbert: After that comes fear.
Homer: What's after fear? What's after fear?
Dr. Hibbert: Bargaining.
Homer: Doc, you gotta get me out of this! I'll make it worth your while!
Dr. Hibbert: Finally, acceptance.
Homer: Well, we all gotta go sometime.
Dr. Hibbert: Mr. Simpson, your progress astounds me.


Thank you Doctor Elisabeth, for your amazing contribution to humality.

Ode to iPod

Steve Gilmour's Ode to iPod.

Pilots "Say Cheese" in Wisconsin

An amazing satellite photo of the annual air show at Oshkosh, WI. Huge numbers of private airplanes. (Via Kottke/MetaFilter)

Apple Handheld ?

Rumors are flying about an Apple tablet device.
The iWalk? :-)

Lickity Split WiFi ?

802.11n specification to be 10X faster than 802.11g?

Engadget story here.
Yahoo! News story here.
Corante pipes in here.

The Boss Takes a Stand

The Boss says (in the New York Times):

"Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out. ...

I don't think John Kerry and John Edwards have all the answers. I do believe they are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way toward honest solutions. They understand that we need an administration that places a priority on fairness, curiosity, openness, humility, concern for all America's citizens, courage and faith."

Link to J.D. Lasica's post.
Link to New York Times.