July 2010
via the Kennedy School of Government:
From the early 1930’s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002-2008, the studied newspapers almost never...
This is pretty cool. Turn your twitter stream into a newspaper. As an example, here’s mine. (h/t @writersdigest.)
Photo via Hamed Saber.
On an unrelated note — the picture would work great with Sharon Jones’ cover of This Land is Your Land in some sort of drive-by opening credit montage, wouldn’t it?
June 2010
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Gawker is hoping that Kagan put the ball/strike metaphor to bed earlier today. But this also means that this allows me to link to this note from the Yale Law Journal —
The judge-umpire analogy has become “accepted as a kind of shorthand for judicial ‘best practices’” in describing the role of a Supreme Court Justice. However, the analogy suffers from three fundamental flaws. First, courts...
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Mid-year review: Unposted Links:
We’ve done a round-up of all the music we’ve posted during the past six months. Here’s a collection of links we’ve collected but haven’t yet posted ‘til now — February: U.S. Intelligence Warns of Genocide in South Sudan — McConnell Fighting Effort to Block Spending by Foreign Corporations — Amazon Rain Forest Near Tipping Point —...
The 35 Best Dance Sequences in Film.
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The line-up for this year’s Boston Book Festival.
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Secret stand-up comedy shows in Saudi Arabia. Previous: Global Comedy Chapbook 2010.
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Museum of Animal Perspectives — a collection of over-the-shoulder videos.
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Crowd sourcing every single tree in San Francisco and determining its ecological and economic impact. (The link takes you to the trees around the BoA tower.)
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WatchRivers under the city of Montreal. (h/t Geoff Managh.)
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More on Rudd —
Australia has its own version of the American red and blue state dichotomy. But with a much smaller, highly urbanised population, and only six states, the social fault line runs through major metropolitan regions rather than state boundaries. Left with a fractured support base, federal Labor often struggles to hold onto majority support. Rudd clearly underestimated the...
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@nihilification Per annum.
For fans of Sgt. Stubby, here’s 7 more famous historical dogs.
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via the NYT — WASHINGTON (AP) —
The Supreme Court held Monday that the Constitution’s Second Amendment restrains government’s ability to significantly limit “the right to keep and bear arms,” advancing a recent trend by the John Roberts-led bench to embrace gun rights. … Still, Alito noted that the declaration that the Second Amendment is fully binding on...
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The Living Handbook of Narratology. (h/t de Souza.)
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Late update: a few hours later, his office sent out an e-mail which read, ‘the Rudd/Gillard’ government. Good on them for putting up with the likes of me. Apologies for the teasing. More soon.
I e-mailed Tony Abbott’s office to try and get his sense of where things stood now that Gillard was Prime Minister. Check out part of the response:
Sadly, the Rudd Government has broken...
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Kagan’s nomination hearings begin tomorrow. We posted a link to three crucial pieces of writing and the RNC mailer that garnered an immediate reaction. Here’s two quick things to add to your ‘knowledge queue’ as tomorrow’s events enter the ‘narrative stream’ — 1. Media Matters picks apart the worst anti-Kagan piece.
2. via SCOTUSBlog —...
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WatchThe only excerpt from “Karma Police” at Glastonbury 2010 I can find right now.
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I found a video of the air base where my Grandfather used to fly missions from in WWII —
Previously: one/two/three/four/five.
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Leno is getting lower ratings than Conan ever did: http://bit.ly/cHdWLW
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The study for a high-speed rail system between Birmingham and Atlanta moves forward.
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Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are to reunite for a... →
(via fuckyeahstephenfry)
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The blindingly important civic aspect of libraries is almost beyond reproach (there’s a lot in this report; it’s worth reading in full) —
“More than 217 million Americans agree … that the public library improves the quality of life in their community.” “More than 222 million Americans agree … that because it provide access to free materials and...
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Comedy 4 Kids:
Without over-using comedy voices, groans and shouts the stubbly, shaggy-haired comedian leads kids down Izzardesque avenues; a routine about milk, cream and cheese coming from evermore unfeasibly-sized cows and the idea that your middle name is there for when your first one breaks goes off in all sorts of directions. Naturally long journeys are tiring but luckily the routine only occasionally...
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Interviews:
Eugene Mirman. (February 21, 2009)
Wesley Ray Thomas — the Opera Busker. (November 5, 2008)
Jonathan Walls — Co-Director, Editor of Playing for Change. (September 24, 2009.)
The City Manager of Chelsea Endorses the Re-election of Menino. (June 10, 2009.)
Very Short Interviews with Jonah Lehrer, Tao Lin, Dave Eggers, John Hodgman, Wil Wheaton, and Ed Champion. (Really.)
Photo via...
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Portugal v. Brazil:
Seo Brasil ganha, eles vão devolver Pedro Álvares Cabral; se Portugal ganha, Lula tem que dirigir um filme sobre sua vida como um menino em Lisboa. #péssimaidéia
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