the paper he didn’t write twenty five years ago
The third sign of trouble was when one clicked on the link that Leeden provided as support and found the word “satire.”
Sheila, the other members of the ‘gang of six’
and I were in the early weeks of 9th grade when this was broadcast. (And Allen and I had spent a week with the Puritans not many weeks earlier.)
Dear clusterflock
Any of y’all ever shot a man in Reno?
150 mph in a Buick
There’s no word yet on what model of Buick Esparza was driving.
Against School
American public schools, according to John Taylor Gatto, do not have problems, they are the problem:
We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight – simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.
But we don’t do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the “problem” of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no “problem” with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would “leave no child behind”? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
I would also include most university education under this rubric. My experience has been that the more successful the academic, the more likely he/she will be an uncompelling thinker.
via Paideia
dear clusterflock
snuffleupagus.
Color Photography from Russia in the Early 1900’s
Not a single shot of the collection is uncompelling. (via)
It’s not a photoshop gag.
It’s a real book by the editors of The Nation.
Hulu will most likely not be free in 2010
You knew this was going to happen:
“I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value,” Carey said. “Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”
And back to torrents we go.
world’s like, really fucking big largest thesaurus
The project, which started in 1965, was the brainchild of Professor Michael Samuels, of Glasgow University.
The finished work is the result of thousands of hours of work by hundreds of research assistants, postgraduate students, university staff and volunteers.
The draft thesaurus was almost destroyed in a fire in 1978, but despite the building being gutted, a metal filing cabinet protected the files.
(via marginal revolution)
ambulances charge extra for obese
As the nation battles the obesity crisis, ambulance crews are trying to improve how they transport extremely heavy patients, who become significantly more difficult to move as they surpass 350 pounds. And caring for such patients is expensive, requiring costly equipment and extra workers, so some ambulance companies have started charging higher fees for especially overweight people.
Like many ambulance companies, Keller’s unit in Topeka recently spent about $10,000 to retrofit an ambulance with equipment that accommodates patients weighing up to 1,600 pounds
miracles and wonders
Just how did a treasure trove of rare medallions and coins collected by a former archbishop of Canterbury end up at the bottom of the River Wear?
1.
“It is not known how these particular artifacts came to be in the river,” the statement asserts. “There has been speculation for some time that the archbishop was victim of a burglary and this would seem to confirm it.”
2.
“He was linked to the city since the early 1940s, and it’s my belief that he did this as a votive offering to the river and to the people of Durham, who he loved,” said Bankhead.
3.
Bankhead said it also is possible that Ramsey threw the items into the waters because of his Christian belief that a person enters the world with nothing and leaves it with nothing.
No speak a English
from the spam
Knowing that these vowels are similar in articulation might help the teacher emphasize how the vowels feel in the mouth when they are spoken.
Texting and waiting
Trying out coloured pencils for a change
It Is What It Is
Robin Givhan comments on the national outrage over fashion, our national insecurities and pin points the origins.
By its very nature, fashion is a business of falsehoods and costumes, all in service to self-definition. The uncomfortable truth about the fashion industry is it has a knack for tapping into unspoken cultural obsessions and taboos. Fashion sets up a rarefied world of perfection that is, in many ways, defined by how much it differs from the mundane, from the norm. And all indicators suggest that as a culture, we hate what we are becoming: fat.
(via tavi 
levi’s gran fondo | miles 49 – 62
We picked up our discarded bikes and I heard the words, “steep, technical descent.” It reminded me of the crash I’d had back in May, a memory that had weighed heavy on me since I’d started studying the ride profile. We rolled down the hill my hands on the hoods, fingers on the brake levers.
Before the first sharp turn a volunteer stood in the middle of the road, warning us of an up coming hazard and as we got closer I could hear he was saying, “Slow down. Rider down. Slow down. Rider down.” The cyclist was on the road, on his back, sipping water and talking to his pals. I couldn’t help but think it was an odd place to crash.
I took the turn slowly and Sam and few other riders slipped away from me down the hill. Around the next series of turns I found myself behind a slow moving couple and I had to squeeze the brakes constantly as I looked for a space to go around.
When I crossed the metal deck of the bridge at the bottom of the hill and saw the sign advising of another “difficult climb” I was relieved; my cramping hands would get a break. Read more
You. Betcha.
His mother was an American, from New Wye in New England. She is said to have been the first woman in the world to shoot wolves, and, I believe, other animals, from an airplane.
Ward Six points out the similarities between a character in Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 novel Pale Fire, and our former Vice Presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin.
Accidental photography
Bouli Lanner – Sunny
A very strange cover of Sunny sung in what is apparently faux-English (via a mefi thread how English sounds for non-speakers (which was via India)).
Wes Anderson does an Amex Commercial
from the comments
In Texas, we only have to contend with people who will shoot you if they think you disrespected their truck.
The Paper Machine
From Derrida’s Paper Machine:
That the book as such has—or doesn’t have—a future, now that electronic and virtual incorporation, the screen and the keyboard, online transmission, and numerical composition seem to be dislodging or supplementing the codex (that gathering of a pile of pages bound together, the current form of what we generally call a book such that it can be opened, put on a table, or held in the hands). The codex had itself supplanted the volume, the volumen, the scroll. It had supplanted it without making it disappear, I should stress. For what we are dealing with is never replacements that put an end to what they replace but rather, if I might use this word today, restructurations in which the oldest form survives, and even survives endlessly, coexisting with the new form and even coming to terms with a new economy—which is also a calculation in terms of the market as well as in terms of storage, capital, and reserves.
Emphasis from Tim Carmody who, himself, understands the culture of reading and writing.
Spada Codatronca
Apparently, they are going to build this.
The 4WD with seats made of whale penis
Dartz’s armoured vehicles weigh roughly 4 tonnes, are powered by V8s putting out between 300kW and 400kW and are “rocket grenade-proof” according to the website.
&
The penis of the Blue Whale, for example, can grow up to 2.4 metres.
(via marginal revolution)
