pod heads
Many references to the iPod in this week’s SF Bay Guardian.
originally posted by xowie
Many references to the iPod in this week’s SF Bay Guardian.
originally posted by xowie
Oh, there were plenty of times where at 2am I'd be sweeping a floor on a Friday night and wonder, "What the hell did I do?! Dear God!" 'Cause I was an old guy! I was 34 when I went to culinary school and it nearly broke me. The internships that I did -- going from being a commercial director where, you know, you were The Guy, to being nobody -- "Here's the broom; sweep the walk-in" -- was extremely humbling. It was a very humbling experience. But I'm sure glad I did it. Learned a lot about myself.
"I think we have somebody who's fainted there," Mr. Kerry said, hopping off the stage to check on the man as the murmuring crowd made way for him. Moments later, he reclaimed the stage and said calmly: "Ladies and gentleman, he's all right. He's all right. He's a World War II vet, and he's been standing for a while on his legs and he needs a little air and a little water."NYT: A Winning Kerry Loosens Up, and Crowds React."You should be president!" a woman in the crowd called out.
originally posted by xowie
I don't think about race that much. I forget that I'm Asian. I don't know why. Maybe it's because my eyes are in my head. (laughter) But when I'm reminded that I'm 'different' it shocks me. I was on a plane and the steward was coming down the aisle, serving lunch to everyone, and he's coming down the aisle: "Asian Chicken Salad…Asian Chicken Salad…Asian Chicken Salad…" and he gets to me and he's like, "…Chicken Salad?" What does he think I'm gonna do?..... "This is not…the salad of my people!"
originally posted by xowie
Looking for the roots of bluegrass? Think Floyd, says The Washington Post.
At one point during my visit with the Badirs, I pull out my cell phone and make a call. Before it even connects, Shadde, who is sitting across the room, recites all 12 digits perfectly. Ramy smiles at the parlor trick. "It used to be disgusting to be blind," he says. "Today, you scare people. You possess skills that those with sight cannot possibly understand."
originally posted by xowie
Rocky Mountain News: Books: Raucous times with beat poets.
Kashner arrives in Boulder ready to "eat death and live poetry" at the feet of the these Wild Men of the Fifties, who experimented with drugs, sex, sanity, and words with mad, reckless abandon. What he found were old men: in 1976, William Burroughs was 62; Ginsberg was 50; Jack Kerouac had been dead seven years. As Kashner points out, this was "the Beat Generation in a weird retirement phase."
Not that they had lost all their moxie. No sooner has Kashner settled into his student apartment, than he is enlisted in a midnight drive into the mountains with Burroughs and a few others to harvest a marijuana field the old renegades have been tending.
‘Gone Postal,’ as the Jeep is known, has 40 batteries, each weighing 40 pounds, with a peak draw of 4,000 amps at 240 volts. It is the pride of the EV racing crowd, who consider its shape ideal. People who don’t like the look of it ‘don’t understand the concept of the sleeper,’ says its creator, Roderick Wilde. ‘It’s the little-old-lady-from-Pasadena theory — you get something that doesn’t look like it goes very fast, and then it blows everyone away.’
originally posted by xowie
When, in a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt, they broke the salt tax laws. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire. It was real. While our movement has won some important victories, we must not allow nonviolent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual, feel-good, political theater. It is a very precious weapon that must be constantly honed and reimagined. It cannot be allowed to become a mere spectacle, a photo opportunity for the media.
originally posted by xowie
The Blogging of the President: 2004 details are as follows: “The time of the show is Sunday, Jan 25, from 9pm-11pm EST (check your local listings to be sure). Guests include Atrios, Andrew Sullivan, Gary Hart, The list of the stations is here. If you don’t live in one of these areas (final list will be posted tomorrow), you can stream from a lot of these over the web:” It’s a call-in show so give the country your what-for. I’ll be recording the show with Audio Hijack Pro.
Ms. Farley, now 79, is a proponent of natural childbirth and chairwoman of the board of the Maternity Center Association in Manhattan. Being around hospitals a lot, she was disturbed to see how many people died alone, with no one to nurture them through their final days. In 1998, while at a conference dealing with end-of-life issues, Ms. Farley listened to a talk by Dr. Sherwin Nuland, a professor of surgery and an author. He stressed how important it was for sick people to have companionship to help them accept death, and he used the Yiddish word for funeral, "levaya," which means "to accompany."
The New York Times: Final Days: In Death Watch for Stranger, Becoming a Friend to the End.
So Dick's little hunt was not all that rare. Which of course makes it no less stupid, no less of a brutal blood rush. It was a taxpayer-supported trip taken solely for the sake of ... what? Not sport. Not gamesmanship. Not food. Just the little thrill that comes from killing something that never had a prayer? Is that it, Dick? Kick up the defibrillator a notch? Must be.
originally posted by xowie
Well, the thing that kind of bothers me is that all the girls are white.
This is a rare case where the veil of secrecy has been lifted. We don't know all the details or explanations, but we know that something terrible happened. Our government took a man from an airport in New York City and handed him over to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months. I think I've made a decent case that he was probably innocent; that this was done with the knowledge and approval of fairly important government officials; and that this was not some freak accident or isolated occurrence. This happened, and there is no reason to believe it will not happen again.
To the Moon: Our Journeys to Luna (and Back) - A Timeline of Lunar Exploration
Wayback: http://web.archive.org/web/20040215002154/http://www.kokogiak.com/luna/default.asp
When the researchers looked at how people returned to sites they had visited before, they discovered that context made all the difference. When subjects in their study had the chance to describe a site in their own words and were given the description six months later, they had little trouble finding the site again. Yet in today's typical bookmark applications, users cannot annotate sites they save.
The New York Times: What's Next: Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites in which we learn of a three-year $378,000 grant from the National Science Foundation which, if wildly successful, can simply rediscover the efficacy of weblog as bookmark replacement.
New York officials unveiled plans for the Freedom Tower — the centerpiece of new construction at the World Trade Center site — on December 19th, including plans to incorporate wind turbines that will generate 20 percent of the building's electrical power needs. If built as planned, the Freedom Tower's use of wind turbines would be the world's first large-scale integration of wind turbines into a building. Wind turbines are generally not suited for urban environments because of the turbulence created by nearby buildings, but the height of the Freedom Tower may overcome that difficulty.
EERE: News - World Trade Center's Freedom Tower to Feature Wind Turbines
New York Times: From Simmer to Boil for Alternative Rock Survivors — the Flaming Lips that is.
Seattle Weekly: Shameless Shaman featuring a couple of big jpgs from late Kesey's new jail journal.
Lowell Sun: 'On the Road' but not to Lowell.
Liverpool Echo: Magic mushrooms sold in city shop — "We handed the mushrooms to police." ....
Washington Post Book Report: American Nomads: Travels With Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders.
The Ghetto Blue is also a moving swap meet, where passengers hustle to sell watches, pairs of white cotton socks, incense, Kool cigarettes, lotions, batteries, tapes, CDs and chocolates. ‘What you want? What you need?’ Bus tokens, which come in bags of 10 for $11, become a form of currency here, like food stamps. People peddle them for a small cash profit. ‘Tokens?’ one woman asks anyone on the train within earshot. A couple of Mexican youths rush over and pull out bags of them. The transaction goes down like a drug deal, both participants looking over their shoulders for authorities as they quickly exchange the goods.
originally posted by xowie
Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own.
[Terence] McKenna believed that organic hallucinogens provided a window into an experience that was both spiritually significant and literally real. So when the hyperdimensional machine elves talked, he listened. And listened. And listened.
Pit bulls are not mean dogs, at least not where humans are concerned, but when they decide to rebel against this selfish appropriation of their souls, they can kill. This, to me, is comforting: The ultimate decision about animal happiness lies with the animals themselves.
Also in the Weekly, goodbye to local wild man, and my hero, Zorthian.
originally posted by daiichi
In some parts of the world it is considered dangerous to awaken someone quickly as they may not be able to return to their body safely.
Thanks, but would you try telling that to my three-year-old?
"We need to use the quilt to fight AIDS, and you do that by displaying the quilt in as many venues as possible," Jones said in an interview. "I want the quilt to be used to fight AIDS, and if this board doesn't know how to do that, I'm quite capable of doing that myself."
originally posted by xowie
The highest grade (an "A+") went to U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who said last May that he supports medical marijuana "without reservation." Following close behind in the grading were former Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) -- receiving an "A" -- and U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) -- with an "A-" -- both of whom indicated support for federal medical marijuana legislation. On the next tier were retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark (D-AR) -- earning a "B+" -- and the Rev. Al Sharpton (D-NY) -- earning a "B" -- who also pledged to stop the raids.
Front-runner and former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT) received a "D-."
originally posted by xowie