this feels more Texas to me
A driver whose SUV plunged into a Northern California creek after he was startled by his hands-free cell phone device escaped the sinking vehicle by blasting out the window with a handgun.
Scott Brown’s… gravitas
It’s not in any way new news, but I was trying to envision this picture on a US Senator’s home page:
Other than being glad Ted Kennedy didn’t do one of these, I really have no strong opinions about it.
In case you missed it
After passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights” — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.
Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.
“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
By 1967, King had also become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” King questioned “our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America,” and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.
Hoarders
Have you seen this show? Holy crap!
We Make Prints
We Make Prints From Your Digitalsmmnhrhuf is how it looked to me.
I spend too much time blissing out in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Good Thing it Wasn’t Bobby Goldsboro
A man has been ticketed for rocking out to John Denver.
FastPencil
A brilliantly simple way to collaborate and publish books in various formats:
You shouldn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to write and publish your own book! We have removed the hurdles inherent in traditional book publishing by combining amazing advances in print on demand technology with a sophisticated online workflow system.
While powerful technology makes it possible for anyone to publish a high-quality book, our collaboration capabilities make FastPencil the easiest, fastest, and most exciting way to write and publish. Regardless of the type of book they’re writing, most writers need feedback as they create. When authors have ready access to friends and collaborators, the writing and editing process is faster and easier.
At any point in the writing process you can connect with like-minded people, share knowledge, chat, gather feedback from reviewers and editors, and collaborate with other authors, all without leaving FastPencil.
While companies like FastPencil need to exist, particularly for the less tech/design savvy, I would also love to see a WordPress/Drupal version: self-hosted, open source, and modular that pipes into a Lulu API (which they don’t have, what’s the deal with that?). Until we start to move towards more open source publishing, real innovation will lag.
y’all
Football
It’s only eleven minutes of action. No wonder it bores me to tears. (via)
Arthur Russell – A Little Lost
dear clusterflock
How was your weekend?
Owl Flying
Since birds have been a bit of a theme lately.
“the world’s least-known bird”
Timmins heard a distinctive song coming from a small, olive-brown bird with a long bill which he taped and later discovered to be a large-billed reed warbler.
Spanish Osama
A Spanish lawmaker was horrified to learn that the FBI used an online photograph of him to create an image showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today.
Typeface as Program
In the workshop, besides using traditional tools, students were encouraged to create their own (programable) tools. Several programming scripts were developed and tested by the students, one of them, created by David Keshavjee and Julien Tavelli resulted in a text typeface that is featured in this book and displays the characteristics of the tool that generated it. The books presents some basic idea of automated type design, breaking down the design of letters to series of parameters.
Jacques Brel – Ne Me Quitte Pas
I found this the other day on Youtube. It really cut through me. Unfortunately they have the embedding switched off so I had to find it elsewhere. I hope it hits the same nerve as it did with me.
Imperial Cycles
pleased to meet you
Although we don’t like to talk about it, it’s hard not to speculate, when purchasing the work of a living artist, if the work will be worth more once the artist shuffles off the mortal coil. Tasmanian millionaire David Walsh takes that speculation to a new level by buying the life of an artist. He has entered a unique arrangement to film an artist’s entire life until he dies. The French artist Christian Boltanski will be filmed 24 hours a day in his Paris studio. The Herald Sun reports that the video will be streamed live to Walsh’s $70 million Museum of Old and New Art once it opens in 2011. Boltanski will be paid a fee until he dies so the longer he lives, the better a deal it is for him. Boltanski is currently 65. Boltanski has called the deal a game, to win he must stay alive at least eight years. Walsh is essentially gambling that he won’t. Filming began yesterday.
(via marginal revolution)
environmental therapy
Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.
David Simon on Bill Moyers Journal
Not Nearly Perishable
I’m not one of those boutique survivalists. You know the type: the ones who buy up every case of expensive thirty-year shelf life turkey chili they can find, and then gorge on it secretly, pre-Armageddon, while they’re alone watching Seinfeld reruns. They don their radiation suits and prance around in front of full-length mirrors. Drop water-purification tablets into bottles of Perrier. Fucking posers.
Quote Out of Context
I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.
I assume this isn’t what was said
As the Cowboys returned home Sunday night it was hard to miss their long faces. “It was quite – very quite didn’t hear a pin drop,” says Mike Jenkins.
Essential Components of a Home Defense System
Your air rifle. Your crank phone. Your guard cat.
Monica’s Letters
“I feel disposable, used and insignificant.”
Letters of Note posted a link to the many documents involved in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The “Handsome,” to whom Miss Lewinsky writes, is none other than Slick Willy himself. Reading them, I think, lends the situation a certain humanity.
