"Drop and give me 20 Soldier!"

Check out this amazing video the first man in space, Joe Kittenger, who rose in a balloon to a height of 30 kilometers and then jumped out. He max'd out a 990Km/hour and was the first person to break the sound barrier -- without an aircraft.

via Nabeel's Cosmos blog.

Punk Photos

The photo above? The Clash playing to 50 people at a Christmas party in 1979.

Andy Rosen: "I was a rock photographer working in London 1976-1984. This is my private collection. These pics have been stored since the Punk Days. This is the first time they can be seen in 25 years."

Links to his Clash and London Punk sets.

For you geeks out there -- try cranking some Clash in iTunes while running the flickr slide show.

Awesome.

Senate Rejects Patriot Act

This news reminds me of a post I made back in May 2005.

UPDATE: Well, OK, they extended it for another six months.
June will be interesting.


"Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security."
-- Ben Franklin

Merry Christmas America!

A Deepka Chopra / Barry White mashup?

According to Publishers weekly, Deepka just got a six figure advance to update the Kama Sutra. Ohhhhh yaaaaaa...

Link to BoingBoing.

"We're so sorry, Uncle Albert"

For anyone running iTunes on the Mac, pearlyrics is an absolute must have application. It's a simple, small and easy to use companion app that automatically looks up and retrieves the lyrics of the song that's playing in iTunes. I used it a few months ago to grab text for the all songs contained in my favorite playlists (since then I've stopped singing: "I believe in Bilko's, you sexy thang" everytime Hot Chocolate plays :-)

A few weeks ago pearlyrics faced serious legal threats by Warner/Chappell Music that would have shut them down. This apology for bullying a small Austrian software developer comes as very welcome news for music fans everywhere...

Link via BoingBoing

Also, take a minute to check out: " 'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy "

Toronto Star / Google Map Mashup

The Toronto Star has just released their latest Google Maps mashup featuring traffic cams and GTA traffic info. A very useful resource!

Link via Google Map Mania (Waterloo)

Google Music

It was just a matter of time before Google entered the music market. Rumors (via Dave Winer) are that it's an "iTunes-clone, based on RSS 2.0, and fully podcast-capable".

Google is positioning this as a search partnership with the Big Music services but in my view this is just Step One: on their plan to Pump Up The Jam & Drop the Funk Bomb on the entire music business.

Link to C/Net News (via Om Malik)

Every Esquire Cover

Link via BoingBoing.

Let's play: "Spot The Hot Tub"!

Can you find the Hot Tub at Bill Gates' house?
(using Microsoft's new technology).

Check it out here (via digg).

King Kong

A review by John Shirley, via BoingBoing:

"Symbolism enwraps interlocked themes; male sexuality, female desire, hidden agendas, friendly faces hiding monsters, human indifference to suffering, the mindless savagery that is civilization—crueler than any giant ape could be, calling us to a need to redefine our relationship with wildness, with the animal world itself. At one point Jackson rather heavy handedly quotes Heart of Darkness to explain his subtext, telling us we all have to explore our own Skull Islands, come face to face with inner beast, see it as it is, and if not tame it, come to terms with it."

I'm going to need extra "Milk Duds" for this one...

Link.

Imagine -- the size of the file.

"UC Irvine historian Jon Wiener has been suing the government under the Freedom of Information Act since 1983 for complete access to the voluminous John Lennon FBI files. J. Edgar Hoover began surveillance of the ex-Beatle in 1971 when Lennon's protests of the Vietnam War made him a deportation target of President Nixon."

Link to LAObserved.

iPod does"hubba hubba" and "va-va-va-voom"?

Maybe Cardinal Keene of Baltimore was right after all because Playboy is now offering Bodcasts for the iPod (Link via Gizmodo).

Yeah Baby! ;-)

Learning the iPod

Apple has create a site here for first time buyers of the iPod and for those who are thinking about it. It's a pretty good primer for those who are interested.

I have many friends who've bought iPod's and subsequently asked me for advice (being the early adopter that I am :-) this is where I'm sending them now :-)

Bad Karma - over free WiFi

"Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth's Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force."

Link via Xeni and Clay.

Now, if Bell South is having a hissy fit over a New Orleans Muni WiFi deal wait till the get a load of this. (via Om Malik)

TV becoming video

No shit Sherlock... Have you watched TV lately? I haven't. For the past year I've been using a PVR to record my desired programs (mostly CBC and PBS) and then watch them when I have time.

As Max Von Sydow's character says in Woody Allen's classic film "Hanah and Her Sisters":

"If Jesus ever came back, and saw what was on the TV, he'd never stop throwing up".

Link via Lost Remote.

Tim Horton's S-1 Breakaway!

Fun facts from the S-1 filing to take the company public
(quick calculation by PaulK):

"the company serves up around 563,396,800 doughnuts per year in Canada, which is roughly 35,000 tons, or around one 1970s vintage supertanker worth of glazed Timbits."

"Toujour Frais" indeed!

Link to Paul Kerodsky.

Killer Squirrels

"A pack of squirrels at a park in the Lazo village of Russia's Maritime Territory reportedly ganged up on a stray dog that was barking up at them in the trees. Witnesses say the squirrels jumped down, attacked the dog, and killed it."

I wonder if Rocky finally defected to the dark side and created an army of his own. Scary!

"Slurp, slurp, slurp.... nothin'"

Find out why Yukon Cornelius licks his axe! Via BoingBoing... and on a totally unrelated note, is Hermy gay? plus 15 other questions, Via MeFi.

Where Jesus shops?

"This is the day that the Lord has made! We shall rejoice and be glad in the new Wal-Mart that the Lord has made."
-Lester Packingham
Wal-Mart General Manager


Walmart is fighting back hard on all the truth and bad vibes being generated by Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices. The tactic of promoting a spiritual tie to shopping at Walmart has Michael Deaver's name written all over it. He was Ronald Regan's press advisor and is now working for Walmart, as noted in a NY Times article about Walmart's "war room" -- reprinted here.

Hallelujah for Low Prices!

UPDATE: Link to a PBS Newshour piece.

Rubber-necking

Slowing traffic by setting up living rooms in the street...

Link via BoingBoing.