flickering pictures

This summer, the Iranian government brutally suppressed citizen unrest following an election that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad won in a landslide. The consensus — on the left, on the right, and everywhere in between — is that the election was rigged.
Five months later, the anti-Ahmedinejad protests have become more muted — probably due in […]

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I spent a bit of time in South Korea last year, and if you could sum the place up in one word — which you can’t — it would be “busy.” South Koreans work an average of 2,390 hours a year, compared to 1,777 in the U.S.A., 1,717 in Canada and 1,652 in the […]

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Sweden’s Flygbussarna bus company has built a 300-ton “bus” out of 50 crushed cars, to highlight the fact that each of its buses can potentially take 50 cars worth of emissions out of our air. They’re calling it a bus, but it’s really more a rectangular heap of twisted metal, with wheels tacked on […]

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The New Scientist has put together a neat-o graphic detailing how many years we can sustain our current consumption of lead, zinc, aluminum and other metals. If they’re right, we’ll run out of chromium, copper, antimony, zinc, uranium, tin, tantalum, silver, platinum, lead, indium and gold within the next 42 years, with huge implications […]

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According to these guys, at least.
I’d meant today’s post to be on FlowingData’s 16 excellent graphics explaining the financial crisis in über-simple terms for us regular folk, but their site seems to have imploded under the sheer weight of its own awesomeness and, I suspect, a lot of enthusiastic Diggers. So, here’s one that’s […]

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From the inspirational self-authored obituary of Lasantha Wickramatunge, editor-in-chief of Sri Lanka’s Sunday Leader newspaper, written shortly before he was shot and killed on his way to work:

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government’s sanctimonious assurances, there […]

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A quirky friend of mine with a vegetarian sweetheart recently launched Carrot Eat Cow, an online community and recipe clearing house “for us carnivores who either want to incorporate a vegetarian diet into our lives or have been forcibly asked to.” Check it out if your lover loves veggies, you’re sick of salad and […]

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Now there’s something you don’t read every day.

Ben Weider, the only person ever to be president of both the International Federation of Bodybuilders and the International Napoleonic Society, died yesterday in Montreal.
For his contributions to fitness, philanthropy and the study of history, Weider was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Knight of […]

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AnnieB — the runaway all-time points leader over at thesixtyone and as dedicated a musicophile as you’ll ever find — has set up her very own music blog: AudioRx. Based in sunny SoCal, Annie has a knack for finding obscure underappreciated tunes that demand to be heard. Give her a listen.

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Husain Amer, a photographer, filmmaker, modelling agent, erstwhile English teacher and good friend of mine has been tromping through China for the last year and is recording his exploits as he goes. Recently he documented a trip from Beijing to Xi’an via the ancient trading city of Pingyao, in China’s northeast.
And for all you […]

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