VOTE!

The Dancing Suit

www.pjotro.com

I actually found this guy on a Neave context-less clip. Some Russian TV show was being shown and this guy started dancing and the end of his performance, he quickly flashed a web site address before the content shifted.

I got to this guy's site...pretty fascinating.

Television Without Context

The way the internet was meant to be viewed:

http://www.neave.com/television/

Blind Justice

The first blind lawyer in Korea.

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=366237

HENCHMEN NEEDED

20-30 henchmen needed for moderately-sized supervillain organisation with large expansion potential (fortresses built into geological structures, corruption of government officials, possible genesis of 'nemesis' vigilante). Electrical theme.... 

Lots more in this ad on Craigslist.

New Football Offense

Piedmont High School, in California, has a smaller student body than its competitors in athletics.  This has made it difficult to recruit and train a competitive football team.  The coaches looked to the rules for new ways to approach the game and they developed an offense they call the A11, for all eleven players on the field can become eligible to receive a pass.  This introduces a huge amount of randomness to the offense and makes it much more difficult to identify and cover for the defense compared to a traditional offense.   Apparently, there are 36 scenarios that can happen in a traditional football offensive alignment.  Under the A11, there are a possible 16,632 scenarios.

The rules in the NFL and college will not allow this strategy, and a number of detractors want the rules amended in the national high school game to prevent it as well.  I applaud the advancement; I have never understood why there are rules like "ineligible receiver downfield" in football.  If the offense wants to send its offensive linemen down the field to catch a pass, they will have less protection for their quarterback or ball carrier.  It's their own risk if they cannot protect.  

Link.  

The Final Countdown

Bravo!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAg5KjnAhuU

(For some reason, I had trouble embedding this video. So here's the link.....)

Edit by Ed: Let's see if I can fix it...

New Old Shul

A new synagogue has opened 100 meters from the Temple Mount. It reminds me of a mixture of that game where someone draws a line in the sand and says, "I dare you to cross this line" and when a boy sticks a finger in his little sister's face and says, "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017521458&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

End the Fed

A grassroots organization to ending the Federal Reserve:

http://www.endthefed.us/index.html

Orwell's Doublethink

Well, I think this statement by President Bush today wins the award for the Most Orwellian Doublethink:  

Bush: Bank Buyout to Preserve Free Market

The War on Drugs

A poll was released on October 2 that indicated 3 out of 4 Americans belive the War on Drugs is failing.

Three in four likely voters (76%) believe the U.S. war on drugs is failing, a sentiment that cuts across the political spectrum – including the vast majority of Democrats (86%), political independents (81%), and most Republicans (61%). There is also a strong belief that the anti-drug effort is failing among those who intend to vote for Barack Obama (89%) for president, as well as most supporters of John McCain (61%).

When asked what they believe is the single best way to combat international drug trafficking and illicit use, 27% of likely voters said legalizing some drugs would be the best approach -- 34% of Obama supporters and 20% of McCain backers agreed.

This "war" has been a way for politicans to fearmonger their way through elections and to funnel money through the industrial criminal system we now have in this nation once founded upon principals of freedom. 

Compare this snippet from the Orlando Sentinel just a few days ago:

In Orlando, officers seized seven AK-47s and similarly high-powered AR-15s in 2003. Orange County deputies seized eight that year. Four years later, those numbers jumped more than 400 percent -- 31 in Orlando, 48 in the county. Total for the five years: 321.

321 assault rifles seized in Orange County, Florida.  I remember while living in New Orleans seeing news footage of a man with an AK-47 attacking a carwash for unknown reasons.  It is frightening to think there are people running around with that kind of firepower and a likely compulsion to use it.  The police in the article say that 9 times out of 10, a gun is involved in a drug arrest.  As we continue to fail in the War on Drugs, it seems our criminals are becoming better armed.  

Much like the War on Terror, this is something that I think we're just going to continue bumbling our way through, unable to really address the root of the problem or treat the symptoms.  

Lazy Sukkot

I'm sitting in the West Bank. That awful place the media screams about when the word Israel is mentioned.

It's a lazy holiday afternoon. I've tried reading academic articles about washback - the academic term applied for the affects testing has on the education system. I've failed reading two pages due to the laziness that sits on top of this arid air. I've made Hebrew flashcards to try and get my Hebrew up to par. I've not been able to get myself motivated there either.

Last night, after dinner, a group of children came and performed a Biblical story inside of my girlfriend's family's Sukkah. We constructed it yesterday afternoon. We had dinner outside. Her family was nice enough to prepare some dishes for me without meat. Prayers were recited. Wine passed around. Bread torn and dipped into salt. Even then, the anticipation and sitting around was heavy and dry. Today it has grown more comfortable, and yet, I still find myself feeling oppressed by the lazy heat that hangs in everything.

I hear the call to prayer from the mosques in the nieghboring Arab villages from time to time. The full moon was bright and radiant last night. We're wedged in between the oppressive heat of summer and the wet, windy winter that awaits us. I, too, feel wedged between critical observer and active participant in the events unfolding around me. To grow up feeling so disconnected from the word Jew, and now to be totally acepted and embraced because of this word. The contrast is unsettling for me....even after more than a year of being here.

Things with my girlfriend are amazing. The only thing we can't discuss is politics. And really....why would we want to? Our love is joyous and grows with every day. Why let the games of man interfere with our feelings for one another? However, it's moments like these, as I lay around in the desert air, I do realize there is a certain level of reality that surrounds our fantasy love. It doesn't bother tossing it around, but I do see how it could. I enjoy it here, and also see the delicate, fragile case it is surrounded in.

These are the thoughts of this lazy, arid ramble between lunch and dinner on the Sukkot holiday. Hag Samayach (Happy Holidays) everyone.

Columbus Day

In celebration of Columbus Day, here is an excerpt about the man from the online dictionary Dickipedia.  

Christopher Columbus (1451 – May 20, 1506) was an Italian navigator, explorer, accidental “discoverer” of America, and a dick.

Columbus’s special brand of dickishness is three-fold. First off, his greatest achievement was “discovering” land that was not only already inhabited by millions of people but was also previously “discovered” by Europeans 500 years earlier. Second, his great discovery of the New World happened completely by accident and Columbus went to his grave still believing he had been sailing back and forth to Asia all those years. Third, his voyages initiated widespread European contact with Native Americans, eventually leading to the near wipeout of the entire indigenous American population, forcing all survivors into the casino gaming and faux Indian knick-knack industries.

Christopher Columbus’s greatest achievement in dickery, however, is his legacy. Despite leading a life of racism, slavery, and barbaric acts against natives so heinous that he was arrested and jailed, the only thing American children are really taught about the man is that “in fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” With similar historical airbrushing, schools could also accurately teach that “in nineteen hundred and forty two, Hitler gave free showers to lots of Jews.” He did. Look it up.

Link.  

Rumors

This is an interesting article on recent scientific studies about rumors, where people won't shut the heck up about stuff that's not their business.  The best way to fight a rumor?  Don't ignore, don't deny, rather correct.

Rumors, it turns out, are driven by real curiosity and the desire to know more information. Even negative rumors aren't just scurrilous or prurient - they often serve as glue for people's social networks. And although it seems counterintuitive, these facts about rumor suggest that, often, the best way to help stem a rumor is to spread it. The idea of "not dignifying a rumor with a response" reflects a deep misunderstanding of what rumors are, how they are fueled, and what purposes they serve in society.

Link.

Anthropological YouTube

Google Goggles

Is it brilliant or taking the fun away from the morning after? Sometimes it's humorous (usually weeks...maybe months later) to think about that late-night, drunken email.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html

Richard Pryor HIGH on a little sumfin sumfin

Who does our government represent? You? Me?

Andrew Bacevich is an interesting guy. A BU prof and self-described "Catholic conservative," he frequently writes about his dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and foreign policy. Here are some startlingly true comments from a talk he gave the other night.

Just Because

The US is a pile of shit. So, let's think about something else for a short while.

The Candidates

And there are many more good ones here: http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3920656&tt=voteresults&togglehtml=1&ok=1228507263

Kunga!

Here's a video I should have uploaded a long time ago, but I forgot it was on an external drive backup that sat in a closet for storage.   Finally uploaded to youtube three years later!  Got more videos on the way, too.

Large Hadron Collider

Here is a live feed for the Large Hadron Collider, the particle smasher that is supposed to reveal the secrets of the universe. Perhaps a little boring, as they are just stationary cameras.

http://www.lhc-live.com/