June 2011
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May 2010
5 posts
Globalism's enfant terrible →
I guess I never really thought about MIA as a real person. I always envisioned her as more like a tornado of signifiers, clearly devoted to image above everything else. It wasn’t just that she was using terrorism as accoutrement, since Rage Against the Machine did that too; she was using 8-bit…
I guess!
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18-Year-Old Junior Alexander Manon Beaten to Death... →
robot-heart-politics:
criticalculture:
Running from the police is not a crime punishable by death in Canada. Yet this is the sentence 18-year-old Junior Alexander Manon received on the evening of May 5, 2010 when he ran from the police near York University in Toronto. And by looks of what became of the young Dominican teenager, it’s no surprise that youth like him run when confronted by...
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“Despite the rescue package that the European Union and International Monetary...”
– Markets Slump on Europe Debt Worry (NYT)
The prospect of this spreading - to the rest of Europe and then to us - is very worrying. I don’t think this next decade will be a good one.
April 2010
12 posts
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“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into...”
– Stephen Hawking, on why we should avoid aliens. [TimesOnline]
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Toronto's quest for glory
Toronto has the critical mass for a great city, but you can’t manufacture the spontaneity of self-confidence and the genius of originality from an aggregation of windfalls, no matter how graciously received and diligently tended. The greatness of Toronto has to happen; it can’t be staged. It can seek excellence in all fields and focus on the mundane but essential structure of a successful...
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Burning Memories, a documentary about the Jaffna...
One of the most traumatic events of the early stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka that has been raging for more than 25 years is the burning of Jaffna Public Library, which housed more than 97,000 books and irreplaceable palm leaf manuscripts, the wanton burning of the most important library of the Tamils was a major loss to the cultural heritage. This documentary attempts to document war scarred...
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The Drunk Jays Fans Guide to the 2010 Home Opener →
gojaysgo:
Unless you like warm beer, don’t buy beer from the Harry Potter-looking tallboy peddler. His arms are weak and so he only carries half the ice of the other vendors.
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Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's... →
A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.
[…]
Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was...
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“Most educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years...”
– Sir Martin Rees
(via aatombomb:sixtyforty:fagtasticvoyage)
(via cancerninja)
March 2010
12 posts
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“The experts’ collective messaging about the oncoming retirement revolution,...”
– (NatPo)
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A soft-power industrial complex?
From the WSJ:
Lockheed Martin Corp. became the nation’s No. 1 military contractor by selling cutting-edge weaponry like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Its latest contribution to the U.S. arsenal: training prosecutors in Liberia’s Justice Ministry.
[…]
The Pentagon and the State Department are now leaning on defense contractors to come up with ways to stave off crises before...
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“[W]e are deeply suspicious of any government effort to “ban the burka.” In the...”
– Editorial in today’s National Post.
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Extended trailer for Treme, David Simon's new show →
Via Gawker
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“If you got feelings and stuff like that, this isn’t the sport for you....”
– - Chris Bosh, angrily. (NatPo)
I would have loved to have seen Andrea Bargnani’s reaction to this. I’m sure it involved tears.
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February 2010
8 posts
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Railway Stations of Northern Sri Lanka →
A set of photos of railway stations in northern Sri Lanka in various states of disrepair. Via twitter.com/rkguruparan
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It's Spring in Northern Pluto
Spring doesn’t come often on Pluto, just once every 248 Earth-years. Says NASA:
Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter. These changes are most likely consequences of surface ices sublimating on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal...
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Supervised alienation
What I found striking in the testimonials on How J.D. Salinger Changed My Life is the fact that most witnesses read The Catcher in the Rye for high- school or university classes … It was those “phony” adults in authority … who glommed onto it and assigned it. What happens when the sense of alienation at the core of your authentic self results from being told to read a book that...
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Why the Wild Things Aren’t Nominated →
I don’t care about the Oscars and I don’t follow his conclusion but it still aggravates me how crap it was so I must excerpt the bitterness.
I mean, do you remember that first trailer, with the Arcade Fire’s specially re-recorded version of “Wake Up”? It’s impossible, having seen the movie, to re-capture the emotions this tour de force of nostalgic button-pushing evoked...
January 2010
7 posts
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Sri Lanka's election: Victory for the Tiger-slayer →
Mr Rajapaksa has long promised a political solution to Tamil grievances … Such steps could go a long way to satisfying Tamil aspirations. Yet there are reasons to doubt Mr Rajapaksa’s willingness. A regional assembly set up in the east in 2008, and headed by an LTTE turncoat, is toothless and unloved. Asked whether he considered devolution important to mending Sri Lanka’s division, Mr...
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“[T]o commemorate the death of its founder, Glenn Bell, Jr., Taco Bell displayed...”
– Harper’s Weekly Review
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Department of Elections, Sri Lanka →
Monitor the results of today’s presidential election in Sri Lanka as they’re released. This site was a reliable and timely source of info during the last two elections.
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WatchThis is fun. (via rappersiknow.com)
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The Rise of Dog Identity Politics →
It’s not them, it’s us.
If learned helplessness sounds like an urban condition, it may be because the dog is more and more an urban species. Even in the suburbs, the dog’s unleashed, unfenced, carefree outdoor life is largely at an end. The dogs are in the house, even in the bed. (The doghouse is now mostly for husbands.) There are no rules to this evolving, increasingly intimate...