flickering pictures

[Edit: as of 14h15 EST, the site seems to be up and running again -- nice and speedy, too. I'm impressed.] As of 13h00 EST (10h00 PST), or right about the time this post is published, Firefox 3 will be unleashed upon the masses, and it’s apparently good. Really good. As if you needed another [...]

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Sorry for the spotty posing lately — it’s been a crazy busy time work-wise, but for some reason I just can’t stop grinning. I must like my job or something. Now that you’re paying $60 to gas up your Civic, I thought you might like to know where a good chunk of your gas money [...]

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Human Rights Watch has just released its report on the ongoing violence in Zimbabwe, entitled “Bullets for Each of You.” The title is taken from a Zimbabwean army address to villagers in Karoi, a small city in the province of Mashonaland West: “If you vote for MDC in the presidential runoff election, you have seen [...]

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Steven Jay Russell escaped from prison an astounding four times, each time on Friday the 13th. Apparently, most of his escapes were motivated by a desire to be with Philip Morris, a cellmate he fell in love with during his second stint in jail. Here’s a sample of his exploits, from Wikipedia: Russell got out [...]

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The New Scientist reports that over 20 years and 44,000 generations in the lab, a particular population of Escherichia coli (or E. coli for short) bacteria have evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, a nutrient that the bacteria normally can’t use. This is a big deal — something akin to humans developing the ability to [...]

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How’s that for a headline? Florence and the Machine are a good old-fashioned British ass-kickin’ band. Here’s the video for their song “Kiss with a Fist”: According to her BBC bio, she “makes the kind of music Lily or Kate would make if they’d grown up locked in a cage full of snakes in the [...]

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You know the old joke: “What do you get when you cross Vincent Price, Michael Jackson, 1,500 Filipino inmates and a transvestite?” I think I missed the boat on this one, and some of you have probably already seen this. But sweet mercy it’s fantastic. If you ever go to jail in the Philippines, pray [...]

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About 25 young ne’erdowells are being forced to take court-ordered poetry classes after they threw a party in Robert Frost’s summer Vermont home, smashing windows and furniture and littering the property with plastic beer cups. And yes, I came up with that headline all by myself. From AP/AOL News: “Two roads diverged in a yellow [...]

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Ever been in the awkward situation of bumping into an old acquaintance, only to realize that you’ve completely forgotten his or her name? Their name is on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t produce it for the life of you. The Boston Globe explains why: [...] For the last several decades, scientists have [...]

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Woo hoo! Here’s a timeline for historically minded folk. February 5: After years of putting it off, flickeringpictures.com finally launches, and a brave new world of news, views and oddity exploration is born. And for some crazy reason I decide to add at least an extra half hour of work to my day, nearly every [...]

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