In honor of the Fourth, I give you the 50 States and their Capitals, the U.S. Presidents, and in hopes for a better future, what the hell, all the Nations of the World. Yes, the list of the Presidents is only current through Clinton. Yes, I'm absolutely fine with that. Happy Fourth, everybody.
Montreal Graffiti/Street artist Roadsworth, who was arrested in 2005 and faced up to 250 000$ in fines, is back on the streets, this time with a permit and a commission. Interestingly, the title of the new piece (which stretches across multiple intersections on downtown Sainte-Catherine street) is "Défense d'Afficher", which means "No Postering". It seems as though he's commenting on the role of art and advertisement in public space, but maybe that's just my take. Thoughts? For a more in-depth discussion, read the Torontoist's article on graffiti), and for more examples, check out Vandalist, the same blog's photostream of T.O. street art, Streetsy, a great photoblog showing off various street art from around the world, and, of course, Flickr's STREETART pool.
Internet in Africa is more than just Nigerian spam. There are honest African bloggers who fight corrupt government and police to go where mainstream journalists dare not. Compare their blogging experience with your own. Imagine the government calling you over the phone at night and questioning about a particular post you just wrote.
The rest of the top 10? The microfinancier Muhammad Yunus, the cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the writer Orhan Pamuk, the politician Aitzaz Ahsan, the evangelist Amr Khaled, the philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, the philosopher Tariq Ramadan, the cultural theorist Mahmood Mamdani and activist Shirin Ebadi. Sense a theme? Yes, all Muslims. This is a striking turnabout from the 2005 poll topped by Chomsky, Eco and Dawkins. What happened? Prospect Magazine explains. The Turkish newspaper Zaman weighs in. The UK's Independent is outraged. Fethulah Gulen defends himself.
This is utterly delightful: Tara Busch sings the first line from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" backwards. Of course, you'll wanna check out how well she did it by watching it, um, forwards. Yep, she nailed it. I think I'm in love. Of course, you'll want to see the version with the jet passing over her head, as well. Here she is explaining and demonstrating the process.
And gearheads, take note: she's (along with partner Maf Lewis) a gearhead.
'Bad is good as a mating strategy' (NewScientistPDF | plain text). "Nice guys knew it, now two studies have confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls." Being slightly evil ensures a prolific sex life according to a survey of more than 35,000 people in 57 countries. (ABC News: Why Nice Guys Finish Last).
Google has been ordered to turn over all of its electronic records of the videos watched by users on YouTube to Viacom. The 12 terabytes of data include records of every video watched by every user, including the user's login name (if any) and IP address. Google had complained that the disclosure would invade user's privacy, but this argument was blunted somewhat by Google's earlier statement that IP Addresses are not, in and of themselves, personally identifying information. Google was also ordered to turn over certain other information, including its video classification database schema, but was not ordered to turn over information regarding videos marked as private, its source code, or its advertising database schema.
People have made some awesome animated videos for Ramones songs, and have uploaded them to Youtube for our viewing pleasure. I Don't Wanna Go To The Basement is probably my favorite. Commando comes in close second. Ramones as legos playing Spiderman wins on sheer novelty. The papercut animation in this video for Blitzkreig Bop is definitely worth a look. Finally, this snippet of the claymation Ramones playing Judy is a Punk is awesome, if painfully short. See the rest here.
Phyta. Downloadable (windows, linux) interactive thing. (via PlayThisThing) I hesitate to call it a game because you can't really lose and it just loops on the last level forever as far as I can tell. But boy is it pretty.
‘Even to this day the diary has a slight aroma of cocoa,’ says Steve Dickinson about a diary kept by his uncle Robert Dickinson while a prisoner at Servigliano, an Italian war camp, in the 1940s. The diary has a cover made of old cocoa tins (hence the smell) with a broadcast aerial design incorporating the title 'Servigliano Calling.' It begins with his capture by the Germans in November 1941, and finishes, about six months before his death, in September 1944. Via The Diary Junction blog.
"He grew up in a ruthlessly discriminatory world -- a world in which segregation of the races was pervasive and taken for granted, where lynching was common, where the black man's inherent inferiority was proclaimed widely and wantonly. Thurgood Marshall had the capacity to imagine a radically different world, the imaginative capacity to believe that such a world was possible, the strength to sustain that image in the mind's eye and the heart's longing, and the courage and ability to make that imagined world real." Born July 2, 1908, died January 25, 1993. Had he lived, he would have been 100 years old today.