flickering pictures

Just as the world is starting to look for alternatives to “blood” diamonds, which are mined from African war zones and help fund violence, there’s also a movement to seek rubies outside of the “Valley of Rubies” in Myanmar, which provides 90 per cent of the world’s supply and has a dismal human rights record. […]

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While watching the two-hour Mythbusters “Supersize Special” yesterday, I saw the Discovery Channel’s “The World is Just Awesome” commercial for the very first time. It’s the most adorable thing I’ve seen on TV in a while, featuring the all the regular Discovery Channel personalities and all the quirkiness, silliness and little-boy wonder that a […]

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I adore this song — don’t know why I didn’t post it earlier. The Mae Shi is a six-man band out of Los Angeles that creates its distinctive sound with a Buchla synthesizer. “Run to the Grave” was selected as NPR’s “Song of the Day” on August 26.
Check out their website (though it […]

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Google In Quotes is still in beta, but it’s an excellent tool for finding out where the candidates stand on specific issues like abortion, oil, Iraq, human rights, etc. The app also compares quotes from Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, and the usual cast of six-o’clock-news types in the American […]

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Nina Katchadourian creates very strange art. She does everything from mending tattered spiderwebs to projecting films onto her teeth, and though I don’t always get it, I almost always love it. Have a look at her book spine storytelling series, and then check out the rest of her site for a peek at […]

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Could the most dangerous weapon in the world be charisma?
From the Los Angeles Times:

Next week the academic journal Language & Communication will publish the poetry of Osama bin Laden, as part of an article by UC Davis Professor Flagg Miller. “Bin Laden is a skilled poet with clever rhymes and meters,” Miller told the Times […]

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If you didn’t know who he was, you’d swear he looked more like a merchant of used cars. Or plaid suits. Or kielbasa maybe. Anything but semi-automatic rifles, grenade launchers, helicopters, surface-to-air missiles, armour-piercing rockets, “ultra light” airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles, anti-aircraft guns and armoured vehicles, with a client list that includes […]

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A comment on America’s financial woes, as reported in the latest edition of Harper’s Weekly:

“The private market has screwed itself up,” said Representative Barney Frank (D., Mass.), “and they need the government to come help them unscrew it.”

A close second, also from Harper’s Weekly:

“My first instinct,” said President George W. Bush, “was to let the […]

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Maïra Christine is the sixth photographer to add her work to our fast-growing galleries so far. I really like her work, and it’s good to see someone reviving what sometimes seems like the lost art of the B&W photo.
Check out some of the others if you haven’t already.
From Maïra’s bio:

Ever since she can remember, Maïra […]

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Space elevator: a proposed megastructure designed to transport material from a celestial body’s surface into space as a way of non-rocket spacelaunch.
Picture a super-strong ribbon thinner than a sheet of paper, one metre wide and long enough to wrap two and a half times around the world. Now picture it extending into space, the […]

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