They Rule is an interactive Flash website that lets you graphically navigate the directors and links between the top corporations in the US, playing a kind of six-degrees with companies and company directors.
I think we need one of these for Australia. Would be interesting to see the concentration at the top of our biggest companies. And let’s map in political donations and ex-directorships as well. It might not be a pretty picture.
(via Boing Boing)
The BBC Reith lectures are on again, as they are every year. This year poet and playwright Wole Soyinka takes on big issues in humanity. He starts with a lecture titled The Changing Mask of Fear, in which he comments:
Terror against Terror may be emotionally satisfying in the immediate, but who really wants to live under the permanent shadow of a new variant of the world’s – Mutual Assured Destruction?
Transcripts, real audio streaming and MP3 downloads are available. Good on the BBC! The MP3 downloads are new and are DRM-free. Pop em on you iPod.
thanks Cory at boingboing
I just put a little note in my (rather neglected) freo.com blog about an exhibition at the Moores building in Fremantle. It is called SKLAB – Out of Orbit, and it is a series of 2D and 3D artworks referring to the crash of Skylab near Esperence in July 1979. The exhibition also includes newspaper cuttings including a front page of the now-defunct Daily News showing a photograph of the re-entering Sklab taken by “amateur photographer Jeremy Ardley”.
I remember the day well. My brother Phil headed off to UWA that day wearing a crash helmet with a target painted onto it. There was something of a carnival atmosphere around, for some reason.
Anyway, for those who like science and space, this exhibition is a must. Also, the 3D multimedia stuff is quite marvellous.
The Word Spy is a site dedicated to tracking down newly coined words and phrases. Funny and insightful stuff. See definitions for mucus trooper, truckonaut, and wardrobe malfunction.
This assessment from the What Kind of Social Software are You? Fun Quiz.
Thoughful reflection conserves human energy and time.
I thought this one up after reading the Edge’s World Question Center 2004 “What’s your Law?”, where a whole lot of thinkers propose a law of their own. A few moments thought and it popped out.
It is not quite worded right yet. I’ll keep thinking and see if I can find the right pithy expression of what I am trying to say. I’m really on about how important it is to think before acting. Failure to think before acting wastes your time and energy and does the same to the people around you. This can be as simple as the old chestnut of locking the keys in the car. It goes a lot deeper as well.
Note: I’m making this law because I need to be reminded this, not because I have all seeing wisdom and immense reflective powers :-P
Cory Doctorow’s second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, is now available for free download, just like the first was. Download it free here or buy a paper copy here.
And I hope it is as good as his first, which was wonderful.
I’ve got a few ‘plane flight coming up next week. I read his last novel on the laptop, flying, and enjoyed the experience. So, I get to do it again next week. Goody.
Congratulations to ABC Reporter Leigh Sales for putting her finger on the big issue re: Janet Jackson’s alleged “wardrobe malfunction” in the US Superbowl Half-time show:
While the nation’s in uproar over the appearance of Janet Jackson’s breast on TV for two seconds, a study by the National Coalition on Television Violence shows that American children witness 8,000 murders on TV by the time they finish primary school.
Full transcript from the ABC World Today website.
The other side of the Australia Day downer, I think it is time for something light links:
Tom Kertes writes about Love as a guiding force in childcare and early childhood education.
The Corporation is a documentary asking the question:
In law, the corporation is a “person”.
But what kind of person is it?
This is a detail from a knob on a St George Constellation electric stove that is in the kitchen where we are staying for a few days over Christmas. Each knob has a position for OFF, numbers 1 through 10, and then the awe-inspiring FULL ON position, which I guess equates to the mythical number 11 on the volume knob of a rock guitar amplifier.
Sometimes it is really nice to follow the stream through vision and music, and discover some new stuff.
Xeni at Boing Boing noticed LynnFox’s video for FC/Kahuna’s song Hayling. Now, Hayling is a hauntingly beautiful track, and LynnFox’s ethereal underwater digital animated sea creatures are spellbinding. But the streaming music quality just wasn’t there, so popped down to the local record shop: Mills Records.
There I found the FC/Kahuna album Machine Says Yes. I like. I like a lot.
And best of all, chatting to Tim down there at Mills, I rediscovered old favourites Lake Of Bass (which he is a part of), and their recent album Wildlife Researcher. I love their earlier EP Deep Dark Jazz, and this new one is deeper, darker, smoother and lovelier all around. Go buy this one, ok.
Here’s another beautiful piece of flash for you. It is called The End of the World.
I’m not going to ruin it with a description. It is worth the loading time.
thanks Libby
Google keep adding new features.
It seems like they are heading towards being some sort of typed-in command universal tool. Almost like the ultimate command line.
Now, prepare to toss away the silly GUI calculator on your computer. Google has a handy calculator built in. All you have to do is type you calculation into the Google search box, or search bar.
For example, try this 1+1 and see the result. Or have a look at calculator help.
Update: I just got lost in calculator help and tried a few things: try this out: 1000 litres in imperial teaspoons or 1024 ^ 3 in hex.
grouphug.us is devoted to recording anonymous confessions. It feels icky and uplifting all at once. Uplifting in that people can let it out. But icky too.
Anonymous confessions are entered via a form on the site. There are rules and the confessions are moderated before being posted on the site. To quote from the rules:
the type of confession that will nearly always be included is the type where you simply place your cursor in the little box and type a note about a fault of your own, something you did or thought about and are not proud of.
Via iamcal.com.
Enjoy this comic strip by Al Franken/Don Simpson.
This is funny. Worth a look.
Here is a really cute little flash game you can play in your browser. It will take you about 1/2 hour to finish it. Turn your sound on, has a nice little soundtrack that goes with it.
Now, I can’t remember how I found out about it. I just re-found it in my bookmarks.
Somebody over at Lockheed Martin dropped a $239Million satellite under construction.
Have a look at the photos. Ouch.
It seems that somebody borrowed the 24 bolts that were holding the satellite to the cradle. And then somebody tried to move the satellite without checking it was still bolted down.
Whoops.
Thanks to comp.risks
Louisa Young writes beautifully in Guardian Unlimited:
I went to do an interview with Johnny Cash – he so moved me that I gave up my job and became a novelist
Harvard is doing some research into the nature of our “Moral Intuition”. They have an intriguing and slightly scary online test you can take.
I encourage you to take the survey. You’ll be giving them more test data and, if you are like me, will enjoy thinking over the moral dilemmas presented in the test.