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November 30, 2006
Back in Iraq 3.0, one
Back in Iraq 3.0, one of the best middle-east affairs blogs, has a terrific op piece this morning on the coming showdown in Lebanon. Tomorrow (Friday) at 3pm is the 'zero hour' when Hezbollah has called for a masse demonstration to force the resignation of the Lebanese government. It might very well work, too. Read on.
As a fan of Homestar Runner and everything he/it represents, I was thrilled to discover the Homestar Runner Wiki, a user-collaborative guide to the 'show'.
Posted by Hamish at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2006
Entertainer Lindsay Lohan and socialite
Entertainer Lindsay Lohan and socialite Paris Hilton have both been 'in the news' for making social faux-pas when exiting cars, allowing paparazzi to shoot up-skirt photos of their uncovered privates. Lohan and Hilton were out partying with recent divorcee and second-time mom Britney Spears, who was wearing a VERY short mini-dress, and as it turned out, no underwear... Paris drove her to the party in her McLaren SLR coupe, a Mercedes sportscar with gull-wing doors - which of course provide no protection against suitably positioned photographers. Sure enough, Brit stepped out of the car with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, and the shooters got their shot.
How They Make LEGO Bricks. Cool. Oh, and check this out!
People are decrying this as some kind of bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping attention-grab. I see it as a trio of young female entertainers who are having some fun with the media - all three of them are wealthy enough to not have to care about their public images, and these days, what image does anyone in their position have? There's almost no point trying to be 'above it all' when the media will happily make up stories and misrepresent everything you say and do for their benefit. So in that sense all these three are doing is controlling the imagery. Honestly, how is flashing one's privates any worse than the drunken womanizing of the Rat Pack in the 1950's-1960's? It astonishes me how violence is continually put above sexuality in the public's acceptability matrix.
Casino Royale 2006: Kuro5hin's take on the new Bond film. Some good, some bad, but the verdict is in: if Daniel Craig can keep it up and the producers done let him down with a bad script in future installments, he might end up just behind Sean Connery in the rankings...
CityTV online has an amusing story on the excuses employees use to take sick days.
Posted by Hamish at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2006
It's not official but it
It's not official but it might as well be: Iraq Conflict is "Civil War"
"Binge Watching" examined. The practice of watching entire seasons of a television show over successive nights, to catch up on missed episodes or just go back for reference purposes... My wife and I have done this with the series "Lost" and it is quite an immersive experience.
A chilling video on how cocaine is made. Yuck!
Posted by Hamish at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2006
Pretty/Ugly at Le Petit Dejeuner Tomorrow Night!
Pretty/Ugly: My friends Jerrold and Carrie have a photo show opening tomorrow night at Le Petit Dejeuner restaurant on King St.. Check it out! 7-9pm. Torontoist's Tall Poppy has an interview with Andrew Potter, author of one of my favourite counter-counter culture books, The Rebel Sell, on the subject of Buy Nothing Day/Black Friday - today, the day after American Thanksgiving, which is the traditional "start your engines" shopping day for the Xmas season. My friend Rick Opiola has debuted his new photography site: Photographed By Photographer "Kim" does some really great work - her current series is a photoessay on cockfighting. National Geographic - Images of Animals in the Womb. The Last Days of the Decrepit Underwear Perverts. A unique art installation.Posted by Hamish at 09:47 AM
November 22, 2006
A really cool Rube Goldberg-style
A really cool Rube Goldberg-style contraption!
A Fallout Shelter Handbook from 1962. Handy!
Today's photo of the TD bank branch at King & Bay Sts., at Sam's Daily Dose of Imagery is simply incredible. I've ordered a print!
Posted by Hamish at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2006
WorldChanging
I attended the book launch last night for WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century, at the Berkeley Church on Queen St. The evening was MC'd by superstar photographer Ed Burtynsky, and featured presentations by Ron Dembo, CEO of ZeroFootPrint and Alex Steffen, editor of WorldChanging. A portrait I took of Ron Dembo at the event is today's photo over at ONE, my daily photoblog. You can see some other shots of the evening in my flickrset.
My friend Viktor gives us a guided tour of the sex hotel district in Toyohashi, Japan.
Here's a girl who hypnotizes lizards and then dresses them up.
This is a wicked fun visual puzzle.
Posted by Hamish at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2006
15 minutes tick tick tick
Yesterday, a photoset of mine was featured on blogTO - which is terrific! But then it was picked up by BoingBoing and Metafilter too! Since that time the set has had over 19,000 hits. ** Fair warning - the photos are a bit grisly.
On that note, someone linked me to "A Dissertation on Roast Pig" by Chris Lamb.
Google Earth is now offering Historical Map overlays dating back to 1790. Waaaay cool.
A massive collection of old gadgets and dohickeys captured in a sumptuous photoset.
A Guide to Women in Ads for Guns. Yuck.
Posted by Hamish at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2006
8 Important Lessons Learned from
8 Important Lessons Learned from '80's Cartoons. The Smurfs: Communism Works!
Strange Maps - including Mongo!
Historical Anatomies on the Web - a collection of scanned anatomy texts from the past... Tres Cool.
Posted by Hamish at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2006
Handfeeding Hummingbirds. Incredible. Polanoid: A
Handfeeding Hummingbirds. Incredible.
Polanoid: A massive collection of instant photography.
ABC News discovers Army Recruiters Accused of Misleading Students to Get Them to Enlist. This is news? I thought that was the recruiters' job - to round up (sometimes inebriated) youths and get the on the bus to basic by any means necessary.
Posted by Hamish at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2006
A truly fascinating analysis of
A truly fascinating analysis of key words used in Presidential Speeches through history. Of note is GWB's use of the word 'terrorist'. Roosevelt liked "labor", Ulysses S. Grant favoured "freedmen"...
Graphs. Ha! And double-ha!
My friend Viktor has posted a series of photographs of the 7-5-3 celebration in Japan.
Tolerance.org has a chilling map of functioning Hate Groups in the U.S.
Posted by Hamish at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)