randomWalks

NPR: Why does it matter how you raise these things that we're gonna kill almost immediately upon their maturity?
George Huff: I think the answer is the same as for those of us who are human -- we're born to die; what's done in between is what's called life. That's where this kind of treatment of animals is beneath what we're capable of as humans, and I'm hopeful people will understand that and abandon that practice.

• NPR satire: two 9-yr old girls review recent R movies
• Mark Jenkins Remembers the Titans differently
• Dems challenging residency of Repub-leaning RVers in Texas trailer park
• two approaches to biology's most complex problem: protein folding -- IBM is building Blue Gene and Stanford is hosting folding at home, a distributed computing project.
• nader addresses a crowd in Denver
• roundin' up tourists and putting them to work
• more to come...
• if you actually listen to any of the NPR stuff I link, let me know

Listen to the new Paul Simon album today in realaudio.

A bit of discussion about public radio over at Metafilter.

This article (complete with photos!) about hooking up a Samsung SCH-3500 mobile phone to a Palm device leaves me hot and bothered.

The wireless Web is like it was in the old days when we were tapping into bulletin boards with a 300- baud modem.

"If you look at this potato head, the only thing missing is a watermelon," Moniz-John said.
"If I saw it first, I would have said, 'We need to correct this,'" said Schumpert.
"He's a potato. That's why he's brown," Szarko said.

bonus links
The Story of Little Black Sambo
the story behind "The Story of Little Black Sambo"?
mammy: her life and times
the blackface stereotype
the liberation of aunt jemima
aunt jemima, rastus, and uncle ben: the advertiser's holy trinity
orientalism and asian americans
the minstrel show
the minstrel show's contribution to folk music
blackface minstrelsy and mark twain
talking to kids about racial stereotypes

Analyzing a Starbucks as a stage for this violating drama is interesting-- you are using the theatrical elements of their designers. They wanted the implication of theater, but no real play, no real action. Starbucks exist in a de-politicized and de-narrated hush. In creating these over-heard dramas you are standing in the way of the Starbucks-controlled Muzak which anthologizes music from around the world but deletes all the political songs. Somehow you hear Bob Marley in your local Starbucks, but not his political songs, of course. Amazing.

The Garden Report – beautifully designed weblog of sorts. thanks, thirteen.

Enlightening interactive exercise: Find out if you would survive as a poor, single mother.

For some context, check out this article about an American University professor who assigns this exercise to his students: “we can all agree that poverty is bad; that’s not controversial. I want them to think hard about what specific policies would end child poverty, how much they would cost, and how to get a bill to pass.”

She taught her students that it was all right to judge one another based on eye color. But she did not teach them how to oppress. "They already knew how to be racist because every one of them knew without my telling them how to treat those who were on the bottom."

I'm a minority myself: a Jew. If the mascot was a Jew, that would be great. A . . . little old man with a yarmulke -- great.

“Time to Vote! is a non-partisan organization with a simple mission: to persuade employers to give their employees either the morning or the afternoon off from work on election day, November 7th, 2000 so that they may participate in the electoral process.” Makes sense to me… I’ll certainly be out of the office for part of that Tuesday. If my employer gives me any trouble they’ll just have to find someone else to sling HTML for them.

sudama has posted 14 links and 157 comments to Metafilter.

Today’s bubble: Impress your co-workers with a fine desktop from chickenhead.com.

My essay wan't an essay at all. I took the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and replaced various Lifes, Liberties and Pursuits of Happinesses with Instant Replays, TrickPlays and Pursuits of TiVolution. And it still won.

Check out the photo gallery accompanying this article about the one-year anniversary of the Ikonos satellite. “These images show the Great Pyramids of Egypt; California’s Hollywood sign; the Olympic Park venue in Sydney, Australia; Hoover Dam; London’s Millennium Wheel; San Francisco Harbor; Hong Kong Harbor; Mecca, Saudi Arabia; and a before and after of the bombing of Grozny, Chechnya. "

Lisp for the Mac

truth in advertising @ nike.com – spread the URL fast, it’s not long for this world.

Astronomers are looking at the biggest sunspot in nine years, but what’s a lay-person to do? Slashdot posters recommend projecting the sun’s image onto cardboard through reversed binoculars, or just looking at the sun in the morning or evening when it doesn’t hurt so bad. By clicking anywhere on the screen you agree not to hold randomWalks responsible for stupid things you do that damage your eyes.

Whatever name it assumes, table tennis has come a long way since its introduction as a genteel, after-dinner alternative to lawn tennis in 1870s England. Today, players compete for big money, wield high-tech rackets and volley the ball at speeds up to 160 kilometres per hour. Table tennis has become the world's largest participation sport, with 40 million competitive players worldwide and countless millions playing recreationally.

The game, which debuted in the Olympic Games in 1988 at Seoul, began with cigar-box lids for rackets and a carved champagne cork for a ball. Today, players use specially developed rubber-coated wooden and carbon-fibre rackets and a lightweight, hollow celluloid ball. Various rubber compounds and glues are applied on the rackets to impart greater spin or speed.

Indeed, some glues are banned from Olympic competition — they make the ball travel up to 30kmh faster.

Do black residents of (wealthy) Scarsdale get abused by the police? No. When people have economic power in a community, they get their calls returned.

Adbusters: Is Democracy Working?

How to create Aquafied design elements – if you are looking for an easy “one button filter” or other quick methods to create this effect, this tutorial is not for you! also blogged to Xspot.

Reuters 09/22 6:34PM – NBC, which in August bid for the exclusive right to host a presidential debate, said on Friday it would broadcast a baseball game instead of the first showdown between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. “We have a contract with major-league baseball. You don’t seriously think we have any interest in democracy, do you?,'' said NBC spokeswoman Barbara Levin. “If we were offerred more than the value of the baseball contract, we would be televising it.''

In two apparently unrelated incidents, 100 monkeys stopped traffic in northern India after one was hurt in an accident, and 3 monkeys pelted cars with fruit on I-95 near the Virginia-North Carolina border. I don’t know about you, but I’m already scared. Now can you imagine living in a city that’s also home to thousands of wild monkeys?