La vérité is out there
Posted: Friday, March 23, 2007 3:21 PM by Will Femia
**That's "vérité" in the headline but for some reason the characters with the accents aren't rendering.
UFOs flew over Phoenix in '97, Symington says - That's Symington the former Arizona governor who (according to a TV report I just saw) was dismissive of the sighting at the time to prevent public panic even though he was convinced that it was in fact aliens. A story like this is easy enough to ignore on its face, but didn't we just read about the former Canadian defense minister (second item) calling for UFO secrets to be revealed? And now I'm also reading about France opening its UFO files. (The link is slow to load but I did eventually get it open. But once there I wasn't sure what to do so I'll try again when I've got more time and hopefully by then someone will have highlighted some of the juicy parts.) And that weird string of UFO headlines from January is still fresh in my mind.
By the way, regarding the Arizona sighting, the article points out: "Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha said he investigated two separate sightings over Phoenix that March night and traced them both to A-10 aircraft flying in formation at high altitude." But Symington doesn't appear to care about that. Human hegemony is over (if you want it).
"Once a person commits an opinion to writing – even an opinion he does not hold – it soon becomes his actual opinion. Not every time, but MOST of the time." See how Scott Adams turns that into a strategy to get strange attractive people to want to have sex with you. (P.S. When you read the line about moist robots, did you automatically think of the "ugly bag of mostly water" line from Star Trek?
They're similar in spirit I think.
Speaking of rules that are as much about assessing others' work as guiding your own, I find myself mentally referring back to this guy's list of rules for taking pictures of strangers while doing street photography.
Obama's pastor speaks out - Apparently he's angry about what the New York Times did with an interview with him. The letter comes from the church bulletin, which you can see in pdf at the end of this blog entry.
Furniture origami
Disturbing World Trade Center ad from 1984 - Looking for the context I found it illustrating this excerpt of an L.A. Times editorial about the threat of rising water levels being higher than the threat of terror attack. I also found it in this collection of WTC photos (see that asbestos ad?).
As long as I'm talking about the context of 9/11, the sight of 9/11 t-shirts displayed next to "beer police" t-shirts at a St. Augustine, Florida tourist shop annoyed me enough to take a picture of it. I'm not saying everything about 9/11 has to be displayed in low light and ringed with candles, or even that people in Florida shouldn't be able to buy commemorative t-shirts, but on the same rack as beer police shirts? Ug.
This is a pretty amazing story of Marines accused of murdering an Iraqi. The amazing part is not so much the murder as the alleged cover up, which involves staging tableaus that were recorded by unmanned surveillance drones to give themselves an alibi for the killing. Fiction writers, add this one to your idea notebooks.
10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World - Gotta love those Banyan trees.
The peculiar pleasure of ear plugs - "There's the pleasure of calming the world around you to the point where you can hear your own thoughts. And then there is the real treat to wearing earplugs: The moment when you have arrived at your destination—a quiet desk, a park, or maybe home, where a loved one waits—and you take them out, and the whole world comes rushing delightfully in, bright and somehow new." (P.S. If you get a chance to ride a motorcycle while wearing ear plugs, do it.)
The Freakonomics of Boarding a Bus - Getting on a bus at a crowded stop is a terrible experience, so why doesn't everyone walk down the block to the stop that's less crowded? Lengthy discussion in the comments, but what made me laugh is the way people who are constantly looking for "better ways" never understand people who couldn't be bothered. I say this as someone who knows ten thousand ways to get to work by bus, train, cab, company shuttle and motorcycle and I can't understand why anyone would take the least comfortable way. (A bonus to reading this piece is that you end up listening to the music on Lily Allen's MySpace.)
Retro games in stop motion
Updated pie chart: Who Owns the National Debt, Jan. 2007
A comprehensive list of documentaries to be viewed online for free. Basically it's a navigation of documentaries in Google Video but as such it's more useful than the hodge podge that is Google's documentary category.
Rubber band guns
Five common exercises you should never do. I don't know about this one. Those are some pretty time honored exercises. I mean, I can see why they'd put stress on a joint or tendon, but "never do" seems a bit much.
"Intelligent teenagers often listen to heavy metal music to cope with the pressures associated with being talented, according to research."
Maps of science - It took me a minute to figure out that the way to play with it is through the navigation on the right.
It might be time to see a doctor when...
New site aims to be the YouTube of gaming - You can skip the article, the site is Kongregate.com and the relevant quote is "Not all of them are gems, but the top 100 are." Some you'll recognize, others not, but I can pretty much guarantee you'll loose a sizeable amount of your day here.
Yet another genius kitchen product. It's a brownie baking tray that ensures maximum edge pieces. This is second in necessity only to a top-only muffin tray.
10 Emerging Technologies 2007
Can podiobooks save my eyes and my sleep? I've been meaning to look into serialized audio books as an evening activity. I spend so much time staring at a screen and all of the sleep advice articles I've read mentions the importance of lower light as sleep time approaches. My current nightly habit involves sitting on the couch with a laptop in my lap and the TV on until I just pass out (waking a couple hours later to drag my weary butt to bed).
I don't know how you write a review of the Riches without mentioning the accents. Everyone is raving about the show, so I feel like I should give it another chance - particularly because I love Eddie Izzard - but British actors doing American southern accents is a real obstacle. I'm a born-and-raised northerner and even I can hear the accents slipping and sliding.
Exploring the physiological meaning of "having guts" and "gut feelings."
Commuter Click: "The formula for human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?" I'm not sure I agree with the premise, but I'll give the essay a shot.
When was the last time you gave any strategic thought to the game of Monopoly?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the entire Frank Miller 300 graphic novel series.
And about that link, Scribd is a document library. Some interesting stuff. I had never heard of it.
