Maplight.org is a really interesting (and useful!) venture that allows anyone to easily view the relationships between money received by congresspersons and the votes they place on bills. For great examples, check out the intro video they offer.
Archive for October, 2007
Viewing the links between money and politics
Sunday, October 21st, 2007Dancing bird
Friday, October 19th, 2007
Heck, while I’m posting animal things here’s a video of a bird with only one real move, but it’s a totally awesome one.
When taking a picture with your pets goes wrong
Friday, October 19th, 2007I’m normally pretty jaded to (and even against) wacky photographs of people with their pets, but this sequence of photos is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.
Guys and Dolls
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
Documentary called “Guys and Dolls” on realdolls, the anatomically correct, life-sized artificial female facsimiles that often serve as a replacement for human companionship. Ultra-weird. Weird beyond weird. Typically I consider a documentary to be good if it totally surprises me at least one or two times. Even knowing of realdolls’ existence for a few years, the documentary still managed to surprise me every one to two minutes. It just screams surreal, and is stranger than any possible fictional attempt at covering the subject. See also: Uncanny Valley.
Frontline’s new season
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007The best investigative reporting (and documentaries) being produced today started a new season yesterday when Frontline aired “Cheney’s Law,” covering Dick Cheney’s continuing campaign to use the office of the Vice President to radically expand the conception of executive authority (see the extensive Washington Post series on the same subject). Along with the new season is a new website, and they stream their videos using flash (like YouTube) now, instead of the old system of Windows Media Player and Real Player.
Ptolemy’s Guitar
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007Free music: the album Ptolemy’s Guitar by Roland Satterwhite. It’s a stripped-down, multi-instrumentalist sound like Andrew Bird’s Weather Systems.
Khoi Vinh on control
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Khoi Vinh, design director for NYTimes.com and author of the excellent blog Subtraction, talks about how control is one of the centrally distinguishing issues between print design and web/interactive design.
It only tuesday
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007The Internet breaks things
Monday, October 15th, 2007Late last night, the New York Times published an article on how Al-Qaeda sympathizers use the internet to spread propaganda supporting their ideological causes. I was able to track the site down shortly after the article was published, but it was quickly forced offline (maybe by the traffic of bloggers independently finding the site and pointing to it?) with only Google’s cache remaining. But luckily for our little academic investigation here, the author of that site previously maintained a mirror on Wordpress.com that allows you to look through the archives for interest’s sake.
Hanger guilt
Monday, October 15th, 2007
I do this too!