randomWalks

A visit to the Brautigan Library by Jessamyn West.

A recent GeekLog post leads to some informative comparisons of slash-style website systems.

On the public radio tip, two from The New York Times: NPR’s Story Project Proves Truth Is Stranger, Public Radio’s Private Guru.

Tom leaves three days later, drained from lack of sleep and fried from staring at his monitor. With his jacket empty of weed, another workday stares him in the face. It's been a weekend muffled in sensory white noise, a visit to a cocoon of headphones, pixels and dope, and he'll do it again next Friday.

“This weekend I had a hole drilled through my skull."

Move over nedlog – German schoolgirl Annika Irmler has the world’s longest tongue, as verified by the Guinness Book people. Anagrams are left as an exercise for the reader.

Adding and Subtracting – this has got to be a hoax.

A plane has crashed in Queens, NY. From what I can gather, it crashed shortly after taking off from JFK. No one knows why it happened so don’t freak out too badly. CNN.com is crushed but you can read the news at robots.cnn.com. The relevant story is here, and (as usual) Metafilter has scooped the media and you can best follow the developing story in this thread. Also if you’re stuck in an office and away from a TV like myself, you might want to download Apple’s Quicktime 5 and watch the BBC World News Quicktime stream.
Yahoo full coverage

I worked last night, all night. The immense devastation, smoking and steaming in the cool air, illuminated by artificial light against the black sky appeared more eerie than it had been the in the light of day. From most vantage points, beams of light shining up into the sky, from huge self contained light plants, illuminated the rubble piles from behind making the already surreal mountains of destruction appear more imposing while at the same time strangely beautiful. The beauty that quickly vanishes as you get closer and watch the awesome and dangerous work going on.

French Reporter Tells of Days Held in Jail by the Taliban (nytimes)

Mr. Peyrard, who speaks some Pashto but was detained with two Pakistani journalists who translated for him, said that the younger guards liked to practice their English with him, repeating: “This is a jail. This is a cell. This is a mouse.” When the American planes came over, they would shout: “This is Mister Bush.” At one point, when the bombardments slowed they shouted “This is Mister Bush droopy."

DC’s own Politics and Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse presents an annotated reading list titled Books For Understanding Old and New Worlds.

Ken Kesey is in critical condition recovering from surgery for a tumor on his liver. (Who’s Ken Kesey?) U: He has passed away.

In honor of the heroes at “ground zero," let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!

"Parties in Brooklyn are a bit more chill and laid-back, less thumb-up-their-ass than Manhattan," says Ingram, whose Sessions party is only two months old. "People are less concerned about what you're wearing and more concerned about having a good time. And people dance in Brooklyn!"

originally posted by xowie

Another great hotlist from silver surfer Judith Lewis.

originally posted by xowie

DC’s own Politics and Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse presents an annotated reading list titled Books For Understanding Old and New Worlds.

Daypop: body bags

The new L.A. novel is supposed to be rough, tough and gritty. Rachel Resnick’s Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick is all of that, and I enjoyed it immensely, although maybe that’s because half the book is about one of my favorite ex-girlfriends.

Anastasia curls her rubber-flex vavoom body up on a restaurant booth seat, her black bra poking through a stained and tattered black vest that’s missing a button, babbling lovely as a backwoods brook released from the fetters of a makeshift dam, boldly racing from Kant to cryogenics to Lorena Bobbit’s trial, all the images sparkling like skybound drops of water shining with exuberant randomness and rapture, and as she rambles she doodles on a tablecloth, a balloon-bursting head, tiny dot eyes and mouth. She then fills in the frame of the skull with a million stars. “This is my head,” she says.

originally posted by xowie

There are major disputes - about agricultural subsidies and dumping, about tariffs and the patenting of life forms. The most contentious issue is drug patents. India, Brazil, Thailand and a coalition of African countries want clear language stating that patents can be overridden to protect public health. The US and Canada are not just resisting - they are resisting even as their own delegates head for Qatar popping discount Cipros, muscled out of Bayer using exactly the kind of pressure tactics they are calling unfair trade practices.

originally posted by xowie

I was googling “emergence” (see the first chapter of Emergence by Steven Johnson) but before I could get anywhere I got stuck watching the glider gun. I love the glider gun!

From wood s lot:
Waking Up In Time by Peter Russell
A Speech Without the Speaker by Jaggi Singh
Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement by Barbara Epstein

From Follow Me Here:
Torture Seeps Into Discussion by News Media (The New York Times)
A peek at Al-Qaeda’s Encyclopedia of Jihad from The Sunday Times
FDA approves Ecstasy therapy tests

While firemen and police were racing into the fires of hell in downtown New York, and now, while our soldiers and airmen and Marines are putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan, the Administration and its Congressional allies are allowing multinational companies to make their most concerted effort in twenty years to roll back clean-air measures, exploit public lands and stuff the pockets of their executives and shareholders with undeserved cash. Against such crass exploitation, unequaled since the Teapot Dome scandal, it is every patriot's duty to join the loyal opposition. Even in war, politics is about who gets what and who doesn't. If the mercenaries and the politicians-for-rent in Washington try to exploit the emergency and America's good faith to grab what they wouldn't get through open debate in peacetime, the disloyalty will not be in our dissent but in our subservience. The greatest sedition would be our silence.

Islam — The Power of Women (The Globalist)

One key cause for the inability of Islamic countries to compete economically is that from Morocco to Iran, women do not go to work. The most extreme case is of course Afghanistan. There, we see the tragedy of highly trained women — if they haven’t already fled the Taliban’s harsh regime — being forced to sit at home, even when the country desperately needs their skills.

Women doctors cannot heal sick patients, women engineers cannot design repairs on buildings or roads, and women managers cannot help bring order from the country’s chaos — all because of their gender.

I'm the boss?

New Observations Online issue 125: Comics via Media Backlog.