Sunday, March 30 gave rise to...

The customer is often an asshole

The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

1. Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
2. Convince employees to give customers good service

Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim - ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Full post

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Friday, March 28 gave rise to...

The Hold Steady - Your Little Hoodrat Friend

Early 2000s MTV style music video for a song with lyrics that matter. The Hold Steady is a band that constantly produces songs that are catchy, but the lyrics are far more serious than those of similar/contemporary rock bands. A lot of their songs are timeless yarns regarding youth scenes, parties, and the things that happen around those environments when youthful exuberance is taken to the extreme. In addition, these lyrics don't seem to be at all related to the video. Strange but interesting juxtaposition. It's as if the director didn't care at all about the song's story, but instead just wanted to make a video that would catch MTV's eye. And apparently the video was banned?

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Thursday, March 27 gave rise to...

Taking A Break

Back in 3 ksoons

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Wednesday, March 26 gave rise to...

1968 Conception of 2008 Future Living

It's not all terribly far-fetched, though is it very idealistic. The stuff about computers in particular is pretty on point. The part about transportation, though? Totally fucking out there.

IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.

The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated. Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off.


What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? (Nov, 1968)

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Bill Gates inside DooM explaining the future of gaming as it relates to Windows 95 and DirectX

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Tuesday, March 25 gave rise to...

"There are only three rules to life: Eat when you can, sleep when you can, and don't fuck with the pancreas."

Her doctors smiled with pride. The surgery lasted 15 hours and was one of the first to involve taking so many organs out of the body: the stomach, liver, pancreas, spleen, small intestine and two-thirds of the large intestine.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, a transplant specialist who led the team of at least nine doctors, said he hoped the procedure would be duplicated for other cancer patients and those with aneurysms or other problems associated with the abdominal aorta.

It remains unclear how often it would be needed; tumors like Ms. Zepp’s are rare, and in most abdominal surgeries, organs can be lifted or held aside.

But in the case of Ms. Zepp, 63, there was no other way to reach the tumor. After she received a diagnosis in May, doctors discovered that the cancerous tissue was entwined with several blood vessels and buried deep within.

“It wasn’t so big, but it was in a very strategic location,” said Dr. Andreas Tzakis, director of the hospital’s Transplant Institute and a member of the operation team.

Dr. Tzakis said doctors essentially had to empty Ms. Zepp’s abdomen. Then they cut out the tumor and its attached blood vessels in a matter of minutes.
Full story

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30-Year-Old Frenchman Is the First Person to Receive a Full Face Transplant


The condition began to take its toll on Coler when he was a little boy. As it progressed, he says, people would faint when they saw him. After 24 years of suffering, Coler was given a new face.

"At first we were quite frightened to do the transplant," said Lantieri. "We didn't know how the patient would tolerate the fact to have a new face."

Doctors cut his skin away and replaced it with the face of an unnamed donor, painstakingly connecting arteries, veins and nerves.

When his mother and sister saw his new face, Coler said, "both burst into tears of absolute happiness. It was one of the happiest days of their lives."

But Coler does not look like the anonymous donor.

"It is not like the movie 'Face Off,'" said Lantieri.

World's First Full Face Transplant Hailed

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Monday, March 24 gave rise to...

"You mean there really is a Peterman?"


2008 Derby Day Hat
Price: $698

The first thing that strikes you about John Peterman in the flesh is that he really talks like that. Like the writer of the now collectible "Owner's Manual," this spring in its 23rd edition. Like the character on "Seinfeld'' (that would be Mr. Peterman), played by John O'Hurley.

There he was recently, at the Traditions furniture store in Walnut Creek, nodding toward a piece he calls the Pulpit Bar. "I'll tell you how that came about. This will reveal what I do in church. I was in Westminster Abbey, sitting in a pew, looking up at the pulpit, with the spiral staircase up to it, and I'm thinking that would make a great bar. And that's the Pulpit Bar. ... Well, what do you do once you start drinking and standing around the bar? You're in control of the bar, you're in control of the conversation. The Pulpit Bar."

"Price, $4,458," you want to add for him. "Delivered in fewer months than it takes to age your home brew."

Many people are surprised to learn that there exists a real J. Peterman, one who isn't Elaine's boss; others remember his heyday, when he built a $75 million business on a whimsical catalog and a cowboy duster, and they wonder whatever happened to him.


Full story

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Be Trendy; Dress Like It's Halloween Every Day

This one’s for all the wolves out there. Stay scheming on those piglets with the Huff and Puff Zip Up Hoody. This piece features an 80% cotton 20% polyester composition, and wolf detailing throughout. Stay scheming!
One positive thing I can say is that I guess it's good that they targeted the copy toward their audience. Where is the J. Peterman of streetwear?

This is currently a top seller at Karmaloop.

I predict a marsupial hoodie with single pouch-pocket comes next.


Hoodie spotted in the wild here. Is this cool to anyone over the age of 15?

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Le Cochon Danseur

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The Honest RIAA


Despite collecting an estimated several hundred million dollars in P2P related settlements from the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, prominent artists’ managers are complaining that so far, they haven’t received any compensation from the labels. According to a lawyer, some are considering legal action.
Full article at TorrentFreak

Record label sources said corporate bosses are still deciding on how best to split the money. In determining the payout, they said not every artist is owed money and it must be calculated with regard to the level of copyright infringement for each artist.

What's more, these sources said that after the labels recouped their legal expenses, there wasn't much left to pass along to the artists.
Full article at NY Post

More info on 1980s era logo + slogan

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80 Million Tiny Images: A Visual Dictionary

Each of the tiles in the mosaic is an arithmetic average of images relating to one of 53,464 nouns. The images for each word were obtained using Google's Image Search and other engines. A total of 7,527,697 images were used, each tile being the average of 140 images. The average reveals the dominant visual characteristics of each word. For some, the average turns out to be a recognizable image; for others the average is a colored blob. The list of nouns was obtained from Wordnet, a database compiled by lexicographers which records the semantic relationship between words. Using this database, we extract a tree-structured semantic hierarchy which we use to arrange tiles within the poster. We tessellate the poster using the hierarchy so that the proximity of two tiles is given by their semantic distance. Thus the poster explores the relationship between visual and semantic similarity. For a large part of our language the two are closely correlated as shown by the extent of visual clustering within the poster. The large-scale groupings correspond to broad categories such as plants or people. Within the plant cluster, for example, tighter semantic groupings are visible such as flowers or trees. In turn each of these clusters contains further groupings all the way down to individual, highly specific nouns.

Link

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Klaus Nomi

At Christmas time in 1979, I spotted a strange looking guy on a Fiorucci postcard, which read, “Klaus Nomi." I thought it meant ‘Merry Christmas’ in German, and bought the card. In December of 1979, I was in the studio for Bowie’s Saturday Night Live rehearsal. My dad (a VP at WNBC television) apologized for not getting me a seat inside the studio, but in the control room instead. This was even better, since it was right outside the dressing rooms!
The studio was buzzing with excitement. Jane Curtin and Larraine Newman were jumping around yelling, “Bowie is in the building!!!” I suddenly recognized Joey from Fiorucci in the hallway. He excitedly explained that Bowie had asked him to sing back-up on the show! Bowie stood with a weird little guy dressed in black, and introduced him to me as ‘Klaus Nomi’ (Joey Arias turned out to be a member of Klaus Nomi’s band). I was actually more excited to see my postcard photo come to life than to actually meet the legendary Bowie! I was enraptured by this elfin creature in exquisite makeup, pointed hair style and costume with a German accent. Klaus smiled sweetly and kissed my hand. He wore the softest black leather elbow-length gloves - quite glamorous! I asked who did their fabulous makeup (the meticulous details were not visible on TV). They boasted that they’d done each other’s makeup, “Joey did mine and I did his, and we did David’s!” Boys will be girls!
First they performed “The Man Who Sold The World." Joey and Klaus carried Bowie on stage because his bizarre Dadaist costume encased his legs.
Read more

Klaus Nomi was a German minimalist with the most amazing voice and stage aptitude. He could not only block a scene as a director but inject himself as the star without forcing stardom on his subordinate players. The following video, The Cold Song, shows Klaus at his diva best for not only does he know, but the orchestra knows as well, they're bit players in this performance.

Step outside the performance and watch him. In other words, turn off your sound and look at how he carries himself. His outward caricature of robotic stiffness is in complete contrast to his vocal range of pure emotion. Watch it with the sound off, then watch it again with the sound on, then play it again with your eyes closed. The man has a sense of presence in complete opposition to the populist Three Tenors.
Quoted. Referent video:


Bonus fun video:

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"It's like mohair but more lightweight and more soft, and the more you wash it, the more soft and fluffy it gets."

After seeing a picture of Princess Diana wearing a dog fur stole at Crufts, they collected thousands of dog hairs from brushes and carpets.

The pair said the his and hers dog memorials were "warm and waterproof".

Mr Willis, who worked for Pickfords Removals for 27 years, wears his doggy jumper into town every Saturday to do the weekly shop.

The 73-year-old said: "They are extremely warm and pretty much waterproof. I've always got a sweat on by the time I get from the bus to the shops."

Mother-of-three Mrs Willis first used the fur of Kara, to knit her husband's sweater in 1990.


Some think it's disgusting and ask how we can do it, but it seems very normal to us
Beth Willis

Mrs Willis, 71, said she had the idea after seeing a picture of Princess Diana wearing a dog fur stole at Crufts.

She said: "Kara was a pedigree Samoyed. She was so posh, if she could have talked she'd not have spoken to the likes of us.

Original article

Found here

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Saturday, March 22 gave rise to...

The Internet is the new Xerox

This is kind of old now (in Internet time -- it is less than two months old in actual time) but some of the concepts it introduced me to popped into my head today. I think the author discusses some powerful concepts in it; concepts that, should the Internet retain its current level of popularity or see continued growth, will be important for anyone who honestly wants to share things of value using it.

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

Read more here: Better Than Free, by Kevin Kelly
(Great summary and synthesis of the 8 main points by Seth Godin here)

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Friday, March 21 gave rise to...

Chopra, Byrne, Edwards, Van Praagh, Hubbard, and other assorted "mystics": I'm Calling You Out





Yes, this is a horse fight. Whichever horse wins is the one you should imagine me as in this fight.
We as a species know a relatively small amount about our environment, and it is possible that there won't be words or symbols to explain much of it for a very very long time. In fact, humanity might never be able to understand absolutely everything. In addition, at the rate we're going we might not last long enough to figure it all out.

That being said, I wish people would stop taking advantage of others who buy...heavily, into certain constructions of the unknown.

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What Frusciante Was

...now he's a star again.



After the album was released, Frusciante played three small performances, and participated in a few magazine interviews to promote the album; explaining in one interview that people would only be able to understand his work if "their heads are capable of tripping out". At one point shortly after release, Frusciante began searching for a string quartet to play the album with him on tour. The idea was eventually discarded when he could not find a band that "understands why Ringo Starr is such a great drummer, can play Stravinsky, and also smokes pot."

Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt:
@ Wikipedia @ SendSpace

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He say what I wrote, feel how I feel, we see the same picture

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Thursday, March 20 gave rise to...

My heart is only big enough for one Half-Blood Prince



Related search

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Discount Prescription Meds, Perfectly Crafted Luxury Timepieces, Massive Penis Enhancement, Cheap Software,

from: Giovanni Payton
subject: Don't believe me?

I'm not writing to brag about how much money i'm making or to give you
an indian rug burn. In fact, I just don't have the time for that nonscense.

Ok, here is the thing... I have a SYSTEM in place that is currently
putting thousand dollar commissions into my pocket each and
every week! Again and again and again...

So Once Again......

SYSTEMS work, PEOPLE fail... It's that simple!!

Here is what I am going to do for you today:

I'm going to show you exactly how we are making all this money on line right now.

Don't believe me?

Listen to more
888.8O4.O635




Please REM0VE my address
W.-3 l-l-C P.o 1.-1.-5.-2
PI-ace_viII-e, C-A 9.-5.-6.-3-.9

SYSTEMS work, PEOPLE fail... It's that simple!!

Link

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Tweaking Icons in Ubuntu Linux, Especially for use with Compiz and Avant Window Navigator

This is the sort of thing where the actual information is spread out across all four corners of the Internet and can rarely be found in one place cohesively. I aim to change that.


Insert some sort of meta-commentary about desktop aesthetics here
Gnome's Appearance Panel does a pretty good job of standardizing icons for a theme you select, but it doesn't get absolutely everything. Those little icons in the top left corner of the window, for instance. Or if you use Compiz or Avant Window Navigator (AWN), many of the icons pulled from the system for usage within those programs. AWN allows you to select custom icons, but those don't always "take" properly. Compiz does not give you this option at all. The result is the ruination of an otherwise seamless experience when you hit alt+tab by way of the wrong icons appearing in the application switcher. Maybe some will be small, and others will be twice as big. Some will be pixelated because they're stretched out; others are crystal clear. The purpose of this guide is to give you a little extra knowledge so that you might create for yourself a more seamless desktop experience. Eye candy certainly isn't everything, but it can make long sessions in front of the computer a lot more pleasant.

This guide should apply to Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) and 8.04 (Hardy). It may work for other distros and other versions of Ubuntu. Alternatively, it may not work for any computer except my own. If that is the case, sorry!

Things you'll want:

  • nautilus-image-converter (apt-get this) -- this is great for resizing images straight from Nautilus without having to open up The GIMP.
  • a dash of paranoia + pack rat mentality so that you'll back up all icons you change -- who knows when you'll need those ugly backups, or what you might need them for...
  • the hard headedness to simply rename a .png file to .xpm and replace lots of xpm files this way -- because I don't know any better and couldn't tell you the difference between png and xpm. My desktop doesn't seem to notice the difference either.

The first step is relatively obvious: go to System > Preferences > Appearance, install your icon package by clicking the install button and locating the package, then select it by customizing the theme and selecting the icon package.

Now that this is taken care of, notice that some icons did not get customized. You'll have to do these yourself.

Common places to find icon files that are used by AWN/Compiz include:

  • Note that the following directories do not allow regular users to modify their contents by default. An easy way to change the file permissions here is to go to a parent directory such as /usr/share/icons (for the next bulleted item below) and running the command 'sudo chmod -R o+w /usr/share/icons/'. This command allows users other than the owner (root) to write to /usr/share/icons/ and all files and folders within that folder because of the recursive flag (-R).
  • Most programs can be found in '/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48'. Icons within the other size-based folders in 'hicolor' may also be of interest to achieve best effects.
  • Firefox icons are different. Perhaps due to it being such a cross platform program, it places them in a different location. You can find them in and around /usr/lib/firefox/icons and /usr/lib/firefox/chrome/default/icons.
The method you want to follow to replace these icons is to back up the icons that look like the ones you want to replace, then copy/resize/rename the icon you want as the icon you're replacing. It's hacky but you should be able to get it to work.
Note: I have not yet found the location of the OpenOffice pixmap files that would need to be modified to make this seamless for those icons as well.

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Wednesday, March 19 gave rise to...

Hardy Heron



So far, so good.

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The Sassy Fellow that is Joel Schumacher

I thought 8MM was so edgy when I was 14...

  • In "Legends of the Dark Knight", an episode of The New Batman Adventures, three teenagers discuss their ideas about what Batman is really like. They briefly meet an effeminate youth called Joel (in front of a shoemaker's shop, no less) whose idea of Batman consists mainly of a fascination with the tight rubber suits and a Batmobile that can drive up walls (as seen in Batman Forever). The other three kids treat Joel's ideas with utter disdain. The piece received mixed reviews from Bat-fans; some love what was done, while others consider it a "low blow" from the producers of the animated series. Schumacher has since reaffirmed that he wanted to produce an adaptation of Batman: Year One. The animated series' creator Bruce Timm stated in the DVD commentary for the episode that Batman Forever is one of his favorite Batman films, however this is said as a joke, as he has stated elsewhere that he dislikes the film.

  • In another episode of Robot Chicken, Joel Schumacher pitches his idea for a Batman Begins parody, Heimlich Begins (based on the Heimlich maneuver) in which Heimlich battles a villain called "The Choker" (a parody of Batman villain Joker), who attacks with animated sausage links. At the end, the entire sketch is revealed to have been described by Joel Schumacher. The skit ends with a reference to Schumacher's sexuality: "It's always sausage with you, isn't it?"

  • In Episode 4 of Clerks: The Animated Series, Randal demands his money back from Joel Schumacher after seeing Batman and Robin, saying, "Man, Batman and Robin was so gay!", with Schumacher wearing the nipple batsuit.

Joel Schumacher trivia @ Wikipedia
Joel Schumacher's IMDB page w/ filmography

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New York Times, 1987: Robot Chef Cooks Hamburgers


Image by Dean Hollingsworth/DMN

The hamburger robot here hits peak speed at three burgers a minute; a busy restaurant needs to produce 20 to 30 burgers a minute, Mr. Schowalter said. In addition, he said: "Fast-food operations are fighting each other with diversity of product. Sure, you can make a hamburger" using a robot, he said, but he added: "What can you do it if suddenly it's the croissant that is moving this year?"

David L. Brenholt, the president of Translab in Menomonie, which designed and built the hamburger-flipping robot at a cost of $20,000, said that although the machine can make only hamburgers, it can be reprogrammed to make various kinds, like ones with multiple patties.

The robot looks like a flat oven with conveyor belts running through and an arm attached at the end. A red light indicates when a worker should slide in a patty and bun, which bob along in the heat for 1 minute 52 seconds. When they reach the other side of the machine, photo-optic sensors indicate when they can be assembled.

Full Story

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Deadly Robot News

A grandfather who wanted to end his life built himself a gun-toting robot with plans downloaded from the Internet and used it to kill himself.

The bizarre suicide machine was set up to remotely fire a .22 semi- automatic pistol - and when the 81-year-old man activated it he was hit several times in the head.

Police refused to name the man, who lived on Queensland's Gold Coast, but last night confirmed the death and that an 'unusual device' had been used.

It is believed that based on internet plans he devised a method of setting up the gun on a platform and then used a remote control which activated the trigger on the gun.

He had positioned himself in front of the weapon in his driveway so that when it fired he knew he would be struck in the head.

Full story

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"Get Me Spiderlegs"


BostonDynamics' BigDog quadruped robot is an advanced prototype under development for DARPA. The robot walks, runs and climbs on rough terrain (including mud and snow). Once BigDog is ready for field duty, it will help soldiers carry the many pounds of equipment needed in modern warfare. A typical load for a field solder is 65+ pounds; BigDog has so far carried 120 pounds. The robot itself is the size of a large dog, and weighs 75 kg.
Read more + Official Site

Related link

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Tuesday, March 18 gave rise to...

Re-Up Gang (The Clipse): Interview + We Got It For Cheap Vol. 3 download

AllHipHop.com: When y'all look out into the crowd who are your fans?

Malice: College kids, hipsters....

Ab-Liva: It depends on where you at. Depends on where you're performing at, we done been to the mountains and scene, where was we at?

Malice: Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Ab-Liva: Jackson Hole, Wyoming 'cuz. Nothing but ski slopes and deer, that kind of s**t. When it was time to perform that thing was poppin'. I mean this was an all white crowd who looked like they definitely didn't rock to what I felt I wrote, but the fans range crazy. I can't put a particular face or region on a fan. Wherever we go, it's love. If we're in the hood, you'll see hood. When it's mountains, it's mountains.

Sandman: You'll see a thug next to an Internet junkie. It runs the gamut, our fans. We appreciate that because we know they listening to our music and loving it overall.

AllHipHop.com: Seems like groups always have turmoil, just sittin' here looking at y'all there is no hint of that.

Malice: Harmonious!

AllHipHop.com: Right, right, so what do y'all attribute that to?

Malice: I attribute it to just a mutual respect. Everybody is their own boss. Everybody is their own man. These dudes been rhymin’ forever, they come light the fire to us sometime because they definitely in the trenches and rhymin even’ when....you know I'll do a mixtape or I'll do an album but these guys like, rhyme. That's what they do and it puts that fire back in you because I was definitely getting very uninterested in what was going on in Hip-Hop and being around the family, the Re-Up Gang, it takes you back to '88 or when you was younger and it was all about coming up with them hot verses and in this atmosphere this is how I feel. And we all want to see each other do well, so...and we're brothers [points to Pusha-T] so that's half the battle right there, but we all brothers.

Pusha-T: Not even that but this whole Re-Up Gang s**t was started off just straight love for everybody's talent. We were the Clipse but we was putting Lord Willin' together and met Liva and I'm talking about Arista's budget's open, [we] could have picked anybody in the world and paid 'em to get on that s**t, but went and found Liva. This guy was busting.


Full Interview $ Download Record Here $ Re-Up Gang Records Blog

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Arthur C. Clarke, Author of "2001: A Space Odyssey", is dead

Hoping his casket is shaped like a monolith.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.

He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.

Clarke's non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.

"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer."


Full story

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Nice Birthday, Dude

Uribe says that after losing weight on a high-protein diet he started two years ago, he's down to about 800 pounds.

Last year, Uribe left his house for the first time in five years. Six people pushed his iron bed on wheels out to the street as a mariachi band played and a crowd gathered to see the man who once weighed 1,235 pounds.

At the time, the 42-year-old mechanic rode through the streets of his native San Nicolas de los Garza to enjoy the sun and wave to neighbors.

Uribe weighed more than 250 pounds as an adolescent, and he just kept growing.

Since the summer of 2002, Uribe has been bedridden, relying on his mother and friends to feed and clean him. He drew worldwide attention when he pleaded for help on national television in January 2006.

Uribe says despite the setback, he still hopes to go out with his girlfriend on June 11, when he will turn 43.

"We'll just have to plan it better," he said.


Full story

Related link

Related link

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Fabulous Four



The most fabulous four

The fabbest four

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Rojops (In Progress)

Desktops (800x600 -- center on Desktop for larger resolutions):
1
106 143 28 in RGB.

2

On my desktop:
3

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Monday, March 17 gave rise to...

A Bootsy Collins Service Announcement


Funkadelic - I Got A Thing:

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Sunday, March 16 gave rise to...

"Can't believe I got so far with a head so empty"

The Thermals - Returning To The Fold:



I feel lucky.

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Desktop Background: Immutable

Full Size:
1

Center-able:
2

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Interesting Newspaper Clipping

Click image for larger version.

I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir 'em up, but you can't do that on television. It's just not on.
--Rupert Murdoch

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will in time produce a people as base as itself.
An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.
--Joseph Pulitzer

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
--Thomas Jefferson

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
-- Aleister Crowley

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
--Ben Hecht


Story verified true here

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Saturday, March 15 gave rise to...

Find out: Which of your favorite {'health'|vegetarian|organic} food brands are owned by the world's largest corporations?

"Wherever we go, Coca-cola's already been."

I wrote about the involvement of the Kellogg company in organic brands back in May of 2007 (elsewhere).

GOOD Magazine has a chart in its March/April 2008 issue that talks about all that and more in a very well laid out chart. You can see it in its original habitat (here), but since this is the Internet and you are lazy, you can also see it here (click for full size DUH):



Consider that the competition you imagine when you go to the grocery store is an illusion. Large corporations might give you a choice from amongst their own product lines but why would they want to see actual competition from another company? They would not; Kellogg company makes a lot more money when your choices are Kashi, Morningstar Farms, Gardenburger, (if you've eaten foods from Morningstar Farms or Gardenburger you know that they sell foods that compete with each other) and Bear Naked. The illusion of competition. A brand is not a company; brands are owned by companies. I'll stop boring you.

See the rest of (GOOD Magazine) too -- there are other cool articles there. It's good enough to bookmark.

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Friday, March 14 gave rise to...

Might This Be The Future of the Music Industry? This Might Be The Future of the Music Industry.

Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

Griffin's idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers -- something like $5 per user per month -- and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists' popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.

Full Story

Perhaps the internet isn't the perpetually wild frontier I like to think of it as.

We're all pretty well yoked to our internet service providers, and we're all pretty well used to downloading music -- many of us for free (this isn't just me talking, it's in the linked article). As much as I hate to admit it, I think something like this could work: a passive system of payment that is routed through the internet service provider.

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Charles Bukowski, "Style" -- Screwed and Chopped

Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style.
To do a dangerous thing with style, is what I call art.
Bullfighting can be an art.
Boxing can be an art.
Loving can be an art.
Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style.
Not many can keep style.
I have seen dogs with more style than men.
Although not many dogs have style.

Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.
For sometimes people give you style.
Joan of Arc had style.
John the Baptist.
Jesus.
Socrates.
Caesar.
GarcĂ­a Lorca.
I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is a difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, walking
out of the bathroom without seeing me.

--Charles Bukowski



Image Source

Original Post w/ Full Poem + Reading by Author

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Wednesday, March 12 gave rise to...

I don't have the wit necessary to make a joke out of this

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body. It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself," Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said in a telephone interview, adding that it appeared her body fat had grown attached to the seat.

Authorities planned to present their report to the county attorney later Wednesday to see if any charges should be filed against her 36-year-old boyfriend, Whipple said.

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding he never explained why it took him two years to call.

He said the boyfriend had brought the woman food and water during the two years and told investigators he asked her daily to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, 'Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

The house had another bathroom he could use.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh as if she was using the toilet. Her legs looked like they had atrophied, he said.

Related Link

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Observation


We're all patrons of the arts these days, but most don't seem to realize it. In this era, art patronage is very important; however, to recognize anything MTV popularizes as art, or to recognize resultant record sales as art patronage seems almost absolutely meaningless when you compare it to famous works of art from other generations. Art, though it might be more now, is far less enduring. Our economy benefits from artistic work more than ever, but the actual works themselves are less meaningful. It used to be that only the wealthy patronized artists. Now even the poor working class does it. There's an artist for everyone out there. We're all represented, every single demographic slice of the American pie.

You'll know you've made it in the music world when you cease to be relevant to any major media outlet, but you can still sell tickets to your shows for $60 to original fans who are now established members of society or people who missed out on your music when it mattered.

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Busy

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Monday, March 10 gave rise to...

DEVO - Jocko Homo



DE-EVOLUTION

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Friday, March 7 gave rise to...

Hey Look! Someone Uploaded A Record!

Download the record from the original post here:
burning down the dreams of forever: The Nation of Ulysses - Plays Pretty For Baby







From the post:

I took the tape home and put it on, blasting it, much to the chagrin of my mother. I studied the liner notes, absorbing the music and message like a sponge. Since that day, I cannot fathom the idea of a world without it. The music is revolutionary, not so much in a political sense, but in the aspects of art and youth culture. Their goal was to infiltrate the minds of the young and spread their message of youth empowerment, drawing a line in the sand, forever eighteen!

Their plan did work, albeit posthumously. The sketch comedy troupe The State with the assistance of DC luminary Eli Janney, remixed "The Kingdom Of Heaven Must Be Taken By Storm" and "The Hickey Underworld" into a new creation that would be their show's theme song. Multiple times a week the sound of The Nation could be heard emanating from the bastard glow of the television, "Boys and Girls...Action! Action!"

MTV never knew what hit them.

Over the years I have owned this album on every format, tape twice, cd three times, and finally on vinyl. I invite you to let your guard down and be overcome by "the sound of jazz to come."

Pay particular attention to track 14. It contains a monologue by Ian Svenonius that I like very much.

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Thursday, March 6 gave rise to...

Small Explosion Rocks "New York Times" Square

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Small Explosion Rocks New York's Times Square

Sources tell ABC News that the device was made from a green ammunition can filled with explosive powder. It blew out the lower part of the glass -- it's being described as a "low explosive."

Witnesses staying at a Marriott hotel four blocks away told The Associated Press they heard, and felt the blast.

"I was up on the 44th floor and I could feel it. It was a big bang," Darla Peck, 25, of Portland, Ore., told the AP.

"It shook the building. I thought it could have been thunder, but I looked down and there was a massive plume of smoke so I knew it was an explosion," said Terry Leighton, 48, of London, who was staying on the 21st floor of the Marriot.

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Wednesday, March 5 gave rise to...

White Gold (March 2007)

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Young Squire (July 2007)



If your browser doesn't support transparencies in PNG files...try another browser?

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Hide Your Face (March 2007)

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Ubundork (March 2007)

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A Tribute To Zardoz (July 2007)



Accompanying movie trailer:

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Push Things Forward (March 2007)


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Death March (July 2007)


Invert in your favorite image manipulator for black on white (:

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Posting older stuff soon: exercises from Spring-Summer of 2007

Going to post everything I've been able to find from that time period. I posted them elsewhere in a sort of personal repository in the past.

Most are simple arrangements of existing public domain works + text.

Otherwise, they are usually very primitive vector graphics.

All were probably made in Inkscape.

The other blog's backend is broken and I do not know why. Blogger is much better.

Some of the following images would make good desktop backgrounds or prints.

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Tuesday, March 4 gave rise to...

If You Love|Hate: America|Video Games|Freedom|Callous Stereotyping of Minority Groups, You'll Watch This Video.

Please throw away two minutes of your life on this official teaser for the Homie Rollerz video game:

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James Brown, Little Richard, and "Weird Al" Yankovic on Wheel of Fortune (1994)

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Monday, March 3 gave rise to...

Charles Bukowski, "Style"

Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style.
To do a dangerous thing with style, is what I call art.
Bullfighting can be an art.
Boxing can be an art.
Loving can be an art.
Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style.
Not many can keep style.
I have seen dogs with more style than men.
Although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.
For sometimes people give you style.
Joan of Arc had style.
John the Baptist.
Jesus.
Socrates.
Caesar.
GarcĂ­a Lorca.
I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is a difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, walking
out of the bathroom without seeing me.

--Charles Bukowski

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Sunday, March 2 gave rise to...

New Desktop Background: Facilus

Center-able Logo:

If your OS allows it, center this background, then change the background color to #222339 in hex values or 34 35 57 in RGB.

Full-size 1600x1200 Background:


Made in Inkscape.

How this looks on my desktop:

I got more RAM and so I'm using Compiz again. It's far better with 2GB of RAM than with 1.

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Sleeper (1973 / Woody Allen)

The silliest Woody Allen film I've ever seen -- also one of my absolute favorites.







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