Much like The Last Supper by Michaelangelo, Stonehenge has become a subject for the postmodern meme. Some of you may be familiar with this variation and some of you may be familiar with this.

Reason #3,546,012 why the world needs English majors

it's the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine..

Just a thought, but will America ever really embrace sustainable environmentally-conscious technology when recent polls have shown that 44 percent of Americans think Jesus will likely return to Earth within the next 50 years? After all, why worry about global warming when the the end of civilization seems like such a cool idea? (Although some would disagree.) Could this be why Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was so relieved to announce in September 2006 that "Fortunately, the media's addiction to so-called 'climate porn' [i.e. Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth] has failed to seduce many Americans"?

Google directions from California to Sweden

be sure and don't miss step #33.

of course

Cormac McCarthy's amazing novel "The Road" is among the five finalists for the 2007 National Book Critics' Circle Award. The nominees are:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf)
• Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Grove/Atlantic)
• Dave Eggers, What is the What (McSweeney's)
• Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land (Knopf)
• Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf)

You can view a list of past winners here.

displacing negativity, anyone?

I'd like to go here, mainly because I could REALLY increase my cosmic awareness.

biased in favor of those with toes

Not sure how well these'll go over.

fiction, fact

If you saw The Da Vinci code and got into it, you might find interesting this editorial by a modern member of Opus Dei. I dn't read the book or see the movie, so I'll just assume this guy's point is relevant.

google maps for heaven

I must say I'm impressed with Wikisky. For all of your stargazing-with-a-laptop needs.

frightening

The BBC has an animated interactive map of Baghdad showing the key areas of violence and the city's major ethnic divisions.

gravity is still just a THEORY

Here are some suggested stickers to put on high school science textbooks in lieu of the ones currently placed there.

a history of violence: Jerusalem & Baghdad

This is a fascinating 90-second visualization of the conflicts and empires that have dominated Middle Eastern Europe for the past 5000 years.

haha

The Wisdom of Children, by Simon Rich.

poem of the day

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one--
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table--
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

-- Billy Collins

wear your padded shorts

Would anyone like to go cycling with me on Saturday? Yes? Wonderful, we'll be riding for 62 miles near Panama City, Florida.

handy

The Sidewinder is a nifty little human-powered cell phone charger.

Life v2.0

old & busted: The Ten Commandments

new hotness: Ten Commandments for Living a Bold Life

recursive

This guy takes the most interesting photographs.

Rube Goldberg would be proud

Landmark 1st Amendent case before U.S. Supreme Court

He may be a pothead, but I like this guy.

"The most important student free-speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War hinges on a somewhat absurd, vaguely offensive, mostly nonsensical message of protest.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus.

That is the slogan that a defiant high school student named Joseph Frederick fashioned with a 14-foot piece of paper and a $3 roll of duct tape. His goal was partly to get on TV as the Olympic torch passed through his town of Juneau, Alaska, and mostly to get under the skin of his disciplinarian principal, Deborah Morse, with whom he had a running feud.

"To me, it's absurdly funny," Frederick, now 23, said in a recent conference call with reporters organized by the ACLU. "The phrase was not important. I wasn't trying to say anything about religion. I wasn't trying to say anything about drugs. I was just trying to say something. I wanted to use my right to free speech, and I did it."

Thanks Alice!

latest natural disaster

The bees are dying.

people are so weird

A few tidbits from Overheard in New York:

Hipster chick: ... And I'm like, 'I love you.' And he's like, 'Get away from me.' I think he's just afraid of commitment.

--7th Ave
Overheard by: Regina Deorum

Woman to friends: Who needs a boyfriend when you've got a dog who farts?

--Max Brenner, Broadway, between 13th & 14th

Suit on cell: You shouldn't feel bad for the boy who cried uterine trouble.

--A train
Overheard by: Sue

Hobo sitting on ground cleaning a trumpet, to hot lady passerby: Hey, don't fucking look at me -- I'm too old for you!

--51st & 2nd
Overheard by: Outlaw

revolt

Let the corporations know you mean business by sending them back this pamphlet in their own envelope.

slightly useful

Tired of having your coworkers mysteriously using your coffee cup? Who knows where their mouths have been? The Anti-Theft Cup solution is delightfully useless and utter genius as the same time. The cup comes with a hole in the side that strategically makes whatever liquid your coworker deems worthy of slurping down undrinkable. The only way to make the cup drinking friendly is to insert the specially sized key lock which plugs up the security hole.

flash

This is exceedingly odd.

This is exceedingly diverting.

who wants to go?

histrionic ahistory

Has anyone else seen 300 yet? I found it visually stunning but... flawed. Yes, flawed. I kept getting the feeling that something just wasn't right. Maybe it had something to do with this.

UPDATE: It appears that just about everyone in Iran has a problem with the film as well.

quote of the day

"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them."

-- Galileo Galilei

Can't happen here

No man is an island, but...

Great commercial

This really has nothing to do with Snickers at all, but there you go.

hallucinate

Stare at the middle of the strobing lines and then look away.

Daft Punk's Harder Better Faster Stronger....acapella

Thanks Jim

stills

For those who are looking forward to seeing Frank Miller's new movie 300, be sure and check out the actual artwork that inspired the film. Here are all five parts of the graphic novel in a compressed zip file: Enjoy.

you could say that

Gingrich: "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards"

surprise

Now this is a sinkhole.

rad

Check out the skateboard my friend Dave made:

vote now

Is she HOT OR NOT?

d over sub-E? as if

Oh I do love watching Conan and Jim Carrey discuss quantum physics.

Alabama's legislative session started yesterday

Dan at Between the Links has a good post on legislation he'd like to see pass this year in Alabama.

• Legislation to call a constitutional convention
  
• Legislation to make Alabama the 25th state to have I&R
• A resolution to oppose the federal REAL ID Act
• Legislation to further increase the tax threshold
• Overall tax reform to bring a more equitable system of taxation to Alabama
• Legislation to overturn the Prohibition-era beer laws in Alabama so that consumers can have a choice in what they can purchase with the money they earned.
• A ban on PAC-to-PAC transfers
• Legislation requiring financial disclosure from organizations who advocate for political objectives
• Legislation to require lobbyists to report all money they spend on legislators.
• Legislation to place a moratorium on the death penalty while it's fairness is studied.

Any thoughts on these? I agree with all of them except the second and the last, the second because I don't know what "I&R" is and the last because the fairness of the death penalty has already been studied and it really depends on personal opinion anyway. There are lots and lots of other bills I'd like to see passed but these seem like a good place to start. Kathy weighs in over at Birmingham Blues.

Selma

This past Sunday I accompanied Joe Hubbard, Jarred Kaplan, Miah Rosenberg, Lance Hunter and Mike Hill to go hear Barak Obama speak at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma. Hoo boy. Although the event was officially a celebration of the 42nd anniversary of the civil rights marches to Montgomery in 1965, it was actually a pretty good stump call. We got down to Martin Luther King, Jr. Street at 6:00am to register voters and hand out flyers, but it was frigid and we had few supplies. So we ended up hanging out on the front steps of the church for several hours, talking with folks about Obama and helping Joe out with many many chants with which he was trying to get the crowd inspired. For some reason "Bama for Barak!" kept fizzling, while "Let us in! Let us in!" was a crowd pleaser. Did I mention it was bone-chilling cold? Joe eventually went hoarse, but was saved from losing his voice completely by the leader of the New Black Panthers who told him to quit chanting because "he was white" and "this is a black man's struggle." He and Joe debated the issue for a bit before Joe decided it was better to back off--after all the guy had about 12 guys in black fatigues near him raising the Black Power fist in the air. I had no idea the Black Panthers still existed. Although they're the "New" Panthers, their platform is pretty much the same, just less violent. Hopefully.

The fun part was when we handed out the signs we had made the night before to people in the crowd. They loved the silly signs. "Al-Obama '08" was almost as good as "Sweet Home Obama" and "Barak the Vote!" We even handed out some magic markers and blank posters, which resulted in "Barak My World" and "Can You Smell What Obama's Cooking?" The signs were so good that they even made it into the news. (That's Joe at right in the glasses.)

Anyway, we finally were allowed into the church at 10:00am, where a proper service preceded Barak's keynote speech, of which the entire text can be found here. And it was good. Not real heavy on substance at this point in the campaign, but graceful. John Lewis, democratic congressman from Georgia who was at the marches in 1965 and was actually beaten by the cops on Bloody Sunday, gave a rousing introduction, which I filmed and you can watch here. But despite the excellent speakers that preceded him (all experienced preachers, no less), Barak held his own, showing once again that at the least his oratorical powers are up to scratch. I really liked what he had to say too, not because he laid out any brilliant policy but because he spoke to the occasion well. He wove King's idea of Moses and the promised land into the modern context, calling this generation of African-Americans (and presumably all Americans) the "Joshua Generation," meaning that while Moses (i.e. King) couldn't enter the land of milk and honey, Joshua did and reaped all the benefits. It was an apt metaphor, was well-delivered and lent creedence to the campaign of the first really electable African American to run for President.

So afterwards we filed out and listened to the speakers at the rally, which included Hillary Clinton and Al Sharpton among many others. I shook Sharpton's hand! Then we moseyed on over the Edmund Pettus Bridge back to our car because it had been a long day. Mission accomplished. You can see all the pictures I took here.

UPDATE: Lance also took a lot of good pictures of the event which you can view here.

quote of the day

". . . this rule is now primarily important as a preamble to the catalog of its exceptions."

iraq

I posted this back in 2003, and it rings true even more today:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Goering at Nuremberg

someone really needs these

Get them here.

the new Prius??

I never get to write letters like this

I like this letter George Lucas's lawyers sent just for the phrase "they will have to invent new words to describe the unrelenting white-hot horror we will rain down upon your pathetic heads."

royalty

Surely this is a typo.

folks

In the interest of pure nostalgia and silliness, I present the following moments:
This is Robert.
This is Musgrove.
This is Mary Pat.
These are the gals.
This is Jim. And Katie.
This is Kathy.
This is the crew.
This is Wilbur.
This is Dave.

lunar transit

I find myself watching this over and over.

A million miles from planet Earth, last weekend the STEREO B spacecraft found itself in the shadow of the Moon. So, looking toward the Sun, extreme ultraviolet cameras onboard STEREO B were able to record a stunning movie of a lunar transit (aka solar eclipse), as the Moon tracked across the solar disk.

fascinating photos

Manufactured Landscapes. “Nickel Tailings #34” is so depressing.

the future is now

I hope these catch on:

and I hope these do not: