March 2009
16 posts
Is it art →
There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience. Books, films, TV, dance, theatre, music, painting, photography, sculpture, all have publics which either are or aren’t interested in them, but at least know that these forms exist, that things happen in them in which people who are interested in...
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Jesus Is My Friend →
Sonseed was a Christian pop band formed at the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn, New York in the late 1970s.
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Ruby-throated Hummingbird Eating From My Hand →
In June of 2006 I was replacing empty feeders with clean ones and this hummingbird landed on the feeder as I was carrying it to the pole. I stopped instantly and stood perfectly still because motion will scare hummingbirds away. From this came the clips you will see in this video. It would eat from any feeder or cut flower that I would offer. Someone suggested I try to feed it directly from my...
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable →
Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
Suicide bomb blast in Sri Lanka caught on camera -... →
This remarkable sequence of images shows a bomb going off behind a group of people in Sri Lanka.
The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond... →
In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler...
The Browser →
Imagine a site of links chosen for you by very smart British people, including Bob Cottrell and Mary Ann Sieghart. They present some links from MR as well, plus by Jonathan Rauch, Oliver Morton, and other notables.
You are much more likely to find something good there than at www.digg.com.
When No News Is Bad News →
As an old saying used to go at the City News Bureau of Chicago, a now-defunct training ground for decades of reporters, “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
Credit : The Frontal Cortex →
I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s a reminder: one of the reasons credit cards are such a popular form of debt is that they take advantage of some innate flaws in the brain. When we buy something with cash, the purchase involves an actual loss - our wallet is literally lighter. Credit cards, however, make the transaction abstract, so that we don’t really feel the downside...
Last rites →
We’re uncovering more of the who’s, what’s, when’s, and where’s, but less of the how’s and why’s
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The Daily Show smackdown of CNBC →
Who would have believed that a half-hour comedy program that focuses completely on the mechanics of the mortgage crisis, stock market, bank failures, media economic coverage and government bailouts could be both more informative than most analysis on television and funny as hell, too?
Wall Street on the Tundra →
Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness.
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Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions on... →
If the Internet has taught us anything, it is that you can always get people to do what they already want to do
Also visit ted.com for a presentation by the professor.
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Great interviews →
Great interviews of the 20th century.