That's what I've been saying!

A couple of months ago, the Guardian ran an article about Timothy Leary that used a "factoid" from gullible.info, a site trafficking in fake facts. The editor of gullible.info alerted the Guardian to the error, but they still haven't corrected the article claiming that Leary discovered a new primary color called gendale.

No seriously. I (alias "snarfer") deleted this "fact" from wikipedia's Leary profile and asked for it to be sourced on May 19th after reading Leary's killer autobiography "Flashbacks" and then looking at the Wikipedia bio. Somebody reverted and cited a source... that week's Guardian article, which no doubt had picked up this fact on Wikipedia. Eventhough the eroor happened via Wikipedia, the wiki is correct today while Guardian readers remain misinformed, leaving our score: Wikipedia 1, Gaurdian 0!

Next year, we should really go to Comic-Con

The next image on the screen had the audience in question. All it said was "A great comic book… Or the greatest comic book?"

Jones then introduced a video clip that would make it all clear. A November clip from the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, featuring the faux-news pundit talking about his fiction novel Stephen Colbert’s Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure. A re-occurring staple of Colbert's daily television show, its first appearance on the show in November set the Oni offices abuzz, and they set out to bring it to comics.

Details on the book itself remain under wraps due to the paperwork being signed just this week, Oni is said to have plans for a Spring 2007 launch.

Although this may in fact be the best story out of Comic-Con.

Jørn Utzon has a posse

(A protege) says that (Sydney Opera House architect) Utzon’s perfectionism and his refusal to be rushed into anything were summed up in an anecdote—“I must have heard him tell it fifteen times”—about the Danish furniture designer Kaare Klint. “Someone comes to Klint’s studio and asks him, ‘What are you working on?’ Klint replies, ‘I’m working on a chair.’ Eighteen months later, the same man visits and again asks Klint what he is working on. ‘I told you,’ Klint says, ‘I’m working on a chair.’ ’’ (link)

49 years after begining work on the Opera House, Utzon has been put in charge of the preservation and remodeling of the building, and has undertaken significant revisions to bring it more in line with his original plans which were not followed after he was forced off the project in 1966.

Markets

In

Everything.

It might seem stupid to spend money on this, but you only need to sell 2 of them and the remaining 198 are pure profit!

In excellent unstained condition!

"Kako Moriguchi was relatively young - fifty-eight - when he was elevated to the rank of ningee kokuho, an honorific meaning "holder of an intangible cultural property." This makes him one of Japan's hundred and seventeen Living National Treasures."

quote from New Yorker Magazine, Oct 17 2005

Rich New York man builds porch and yard on roof of six story apartment building. Bloggers jealous.

Let's play telephone!

A guy with a friend at Comic-Con reports to me who reports to you that at the Snakes On A Plane panel, a question was posed to Samuel L. Jackson:

Q: (in comic book guy voice)"Were any snake experts involved in the
production of this film in order to ensure accurate representation of
snakes?

A: Listen man! Ask the god damn snakes and they will tell you they are mutha-fucking authenitic! We don't need no fucking experts! Just ask the mutha-fucking snakes!

"What sort of people will vote if they get a lottery ticket, and why do we want these people to vote?"

Eat Shit, Damien Hirst



Boingboing links to the Biomedical Image Awards and you really ought to click through. Many of these images would cost millions of dollars if they had been painted onto a canvas by a weird Russian imigrant. Instead they cost millions of dollars in research grants. With pictures like these, it was worth it even if we don't find the cure!

(shown, Light Micrograph of Peziza Fungus by Spike Walker. Causes dermatitus!)

2 years ago, this guy tracked down a copy of 1972's Betty and Me #40 which he claims contains the greatest Archie story ever told.



He may be onto something there.

Dorf emailed me this Carl Lewis music video... what is with that old woman at the end?



youtubers comment:
"And people thought Carl Lewis was gay..."

"Is it just me, or does Carl look like Grace Jones in this video?"

larry's my name, insurance is my game!



(w/ bob and david)

Oh, Internet!

Kottke points to this vandalized Count Chocula Wikipedia article, and also this flickr photo of the vandals vandalizing.

List of potentially mispronounced domain names.

The Audition

(w/ bob and david)

Limoncello in the news.

Wedding Crasher

Mother Father Chinese Dentist!

(w/ Bob and David)

Scarcity is a Myth

Does anyone want to go to the Really Really Free Market?

Tonight I Ate a Salami Sandwich

So I was looking through some trash cans for some plastic-wrap and I found some foil and was like "hey, there's a sandwich in here!" I used the foil. The sandwich was a carefully triple wraped Mustard-Salami-Swiss and seemed fresh enough. It smelled fine and the bread wasn't stale. I offered the trash sandwich to some classmates, but they were full. So today I ate a salami sandwich. It's the first time I've knowingly eaten meat in probably six years, and it followed an extened disertation on the economics of moral freeganism

My teacher said that if you care about where your jewelry comes from you shouldn't wear jewelry. Now I think jewelry is stupid, but if you really need a diamond ring, why not use grandma's, or buy one from an antique store? She said, less crudely, that those 100 year old rings fucked the Congo and if you wear it now, you are wearing something that fucked the Congo. But isn't it better to buy something that fucked the Congo 100 years ago if it replaces a purchase that would fuck someone now?

"Since captalism is fueled by the exchange of capital, using wasted goods creates no further demand for production!" I exclaimed. (well, not really)

So if the sandwich was going to be thrown out, and no meat-eater would take it as a replacement for a freshly bought animal meal, then why not eat it? There was no additional harm to animals between me eating it and putting it back in the trashcan, and I used to eat Salami and Swiss when I was little. So I ate it. I thought it might be gross, but it was okay and I ate the whole thing. (So far, I haven't even been food poisoned.) I don't think it makes me a bad vegan. Mostly, it makes me feel like an economist.

I was reminded of my friend and fellow econ student Curtis, who became vegan and was into freegansim in college. I guess he went dumpster diving with his housemates from the Cesar Chavez House and got day-old bread and so forth. I was never really convinced by the idea of eating meat if it was "free," like if someone served it at a potluck... but when push comes to shove, if it does no harm then I say eat it.

On Sunday I was going to point to the Wikipedia gif of Zidane's hypnotic leveling and releveling of Materazzi, but I was busy, and since then, the internet has exploded All Your Base style... Anil Dash made a video of all the versions people edited of the clip. I love the internet.

Syd Barrett Dead at 60

There are many stories about Barrett's bizarre and intermittently psychotic behavior - many of which are undoubtedly apocryphal, although some are known to be true. According to Roger Waters, Barrett came into what was to be their last practice session with a new song he had dubbed "Have You Got It, Yet?" The song seemed simple enough when he first presented it to his bandmates, but it soon became impossibly difficult to learn: as they were practicing it, Barrett kept changing the arrangement. He would then play it again, with the arbitrary changes, and sing "Have you got it yet?" After more than an hour of trying to "get it," they realized they never would.

An obese, eyebrowless Barrett "held a toothbrush and attempted to brush his teeth by holding the brush still and jumping up and down." Shine on You Crazy Diamond

I'm not a Pink Floyd fan, but the one Syd Barrett written LP by The Pink Floyd is one of those rare albums I have to dig around for and listen to every couple months.

Borat Video Roundup

On Conan not once, but twice!

In 2005 Kazakhstan threatens to sue Sacha Baron Cohen (as reported in this error filled ABC article), the Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman says "We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone's political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way," and Borat responds first at borat.kz, but when the Kazakh government shuts down that site, he moves it to Borat.TV

This is a 25 minute pre-HBO highlight show from the BBC, "The Best of Borat":


The mockumentary "Borat: Cultural Learnings from America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" will be released in November of this year, and is directed by Larry Charles, Seinfeld writer of "The Limo" and "The Library" episodes.

Flaming lips cover War Pigs on Austin City Limits

Old Japanese prank show wakes people up in exciting ways. Possibly staged?

Do soldiers have to obey, when ordered to commit crimes?

"This is book had a life changing effect on me."

Download the song that was sampled for Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy"

Happy 4th of July!

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

Howard Zinn

Wikipedia entry for Clarence 13X

A favorite Spike Jones / Bjork video:

Ken Jennings is blogging

If you write a trivia book about Seinfeld, a show about trivia, you've
stolen the Secret Sauce, the whole essence of the show. But let's take
a show possessing great dramatic sweep and prone to broad social
statement, like Knight Rider. If you just ask trivia questions about
niggly little Knight Rider plot points, and ignore the show's more
important themes (its brilliant examination of the perks and perils of
advancing technology as well as the questionable morality of the
military-industrial complex, as represented by Knight Industries),
maybe you'd be okay.

He's a master of trivia and blogging!

A short clip of Jennings on Youtube: