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Jazz & Jihad
"It took a while before I gathered that jazz was something else, that it was actually a form of resistance. Nowadays I realize that jazz is no different from Jihad. Accordingly, playing jazz is my personal Jihad. I do grasp that some people in this room may already find my ideas nostalgic, some may even be convinced that I am either totally deluded or just out of my mind. I can live with it..." Here for more of
2:22 AM 7/12/07 | UNBLOG


Live Earth: jumping on the greenwagon!
"I didn't feel particularly enlightened about ecological greenitude, Unless my town (and the state of Michigan) establishes efficient public transportation, my big Dodge sedan remains in the driveway. Turning off the inefficient 1980s TV set, I felt like we all had watched another advertising-punctuated musical awards show, a genre in a medium that manages to commodify every message. The only green was the folding kind..." Read the full text:
2:22 AM 7/12/07 | UNBLOG


10 politically incorrect truths about human nature
Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive. Check it out:
2:22 AM 7/12/07 | UNBLOG


The Trap
Are young Americans more interested in selling out than changing the world? Daniel Brook's new book argues that twentysomethings are forced to choose between living by their ideals or making a living. Read Salon's . Or buy the book:
2:22 AM 7/12/07 | UNBLOG


The cleanest place on earth– and the dirtiest
The air quality at Cape Grim in Tasmania is officially the best on the planet– a world away from the grime and filth of Linfen in China. Photographer Angela Palmer set out to capture the essence of both places. Here for
2:22 AM 7/12/07 | UNBLOG


Disguise yourself as a Googlebot
"Ever wondered why a google search returned search results that lead to sites that require a registration? How the hell did googlebot index the site without a registration ? Many sites want their site indexed in google to recieve more hits and thus, make more money with advertisment on their site. Even more interesting is the following question: How do we use this to our advantage?" Tread the thread:
2:22 AM 7/12/07 | UNBLOG


New 7 wonders of the world
The new seven wonders of the world were named Saturday following an online vote that generated server-crushing traffic in its final hours. The final tally produced this list of the world's top human-built wonders: The Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer, Peru's Machu Picchu, Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid, The Colosseum in Rome, India's Taj Mahal. Here for
2:22 AM 7/12/07 | UNBLOG


Mcdobesity
McDonald's has been taking a bit more heat in the past few years for their role in the obesity epidemic, but the clown's PR machine is still as strong as ever. We're working on an ad designed to make the consumption of obesity-inducing fastfood even more unpalatable than it already is. Also, check out the new sticker inspired by the ad campaign on the site. Download them both in the Meme Wars forums:
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Spamland
Spamland is the series of movies produced by the The Brothers McLeod using as scripts 'inauthentic text' used in spam messages. You know that semi-sensical text found in spam emails? They've made it into entertainment!" Here for the Brothers McLeod's
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Biopong
"Teckjunkie was inspired by Hack-A-Day to build a bio-interfaced game. He modified a thinkgeek pong kit with an Analog Devices instrumentation amplifier and differential electrodes to create biopong. Flexing either arm actuates the inputs on the pong game. (Now you can just grab some dumbells and get a pong workout.)" Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Amnesiac Novels
"Like the future, amnesia has become a crowded literary terrain. Rare in life, amnesia abounds in contemporary literature and in the most stylish contemporary movies" Read the nybooks review by Joyce Carol Oates
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


How many ways to spell V1@gra?
You know all about "V.i.a.g.r.a" and "V!A6RA" and "\/lagra," not to mention "C1aL|$" and "Rrol,x Rep,ica" and let's not be bashful about this-- "pen1s en1argement." Spam mutates, and the Internet community mounts an immune response This is not a about a pill, it is about the spam plague, and how to cure it... Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Gone: Mass Extinction & The Vanishing Biodiversity
"News: It is a fact widely accepted by biologists but little known by the population at large. By the end of the century, half of all species on Earth may be extinct due to global warming and other causes. Who will survive the world's dwindling biodiversity, and why?" Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Horvath's Boulevard
"In Boulevard we follow a striking woman, the passenger of a convertible car, driven by an unidentified driver through the city, passing its generic streets, billboards and motels, with an unknown destination. At once lyrical and intoxicatingly beautiful, we pass through discrete emotive atmospheres experiencing ambiguity, desire and longing." View this new net-based audio/video work by Peter Horvath courtesy 6168.org:
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Sun Storm Transmission Mystery
a small video created from a series of sun-flare data wave recorded images left by an old neighbor before before he died... Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


TAGallery: link.of.thought_thought.of.link
"TAGallery extends the idea of a tagged exhibition and transfers the main tasks of noncommercial exhibition spaces to the discourse of an electronic data-space. The method of tagging allows the attribution of artworks to different thematic fields. The technique takes inspiration from exquisite-corpse by the surrealists, but plays it by its own rules. Each collaborator adds sequentially a new choice of links. Our focus is to link thoughts, while thinking of a new link." Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


ephemera 7.1
ephemera "Immaterial and affective labor: explored" issue released. The new issue (7.1) of ephemera: theory & politics in organization, entitled "immaterial and affective labor: explored," has just been published at http://www.ephemeraweb.org. This latest special issue offers a critical engagement with the conceptual and political territory animated by the deployment of such ideas in the work of Hardt, Negri, Lazzarato, Virno and others, and follows previous explorations of class composition and politics in ephemera (for instance in the issues on 'the theory of the multitude' and 'writing: labour'). Download the issue in pdf:
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Cubists launch unnavigable website
"What the hell is this? I can't tell how to get anywhere," one of the site's first visitors told the Cubist Society's Webmaster-Curator, Paulo Cassat. "Is this art, or is this a Web site?" "Thank you," Cassat responded. "This site is going to turn people off," complained one young sculptor. "I mean, how do I get from the home page to, say, the fundraising form?" "You must be willing to abandon your pre-conceived notions of traditional Web design," replied Bernioz, "and disregard its nefarious standards of foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro (the distribution of light and shade)." The whole story
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Muon: Animated Speakers
"The concept was to create a liquid experience to engage all the senses. Fluid forms would emanate from the position of each speaker, playing with movement and intensity of light in response to audio triggers. A monocromatic and minimal aesthetic compliments the form of the speaker design. During moments of impact during a piece of music, bright light and accents of colour would appear between the fluid forms." Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Statue of Liberty Vandalized with Donut!
[from Adverblog] "Simpsons: the movie will hit theatres around the world, starting from July 27th 2007. The marketing machine around the movie is getting started and already brought some interesting stuff. Illegal Advertising points at the video below, in which the Statue of Liberty was 'vandalized' with a donut. Next up was AdAge pointing at the makeover of a dozen Canadian and US 7-Eleven supermarkets into Springfields Kwik-E-Mart. Ending up on the movie's website, you can make your own Simpsons avatar, which is quite fun..." Check out
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Sound Jewelry
The original idea is to create interactive musical objects which are worn like necklaces by people. Each of the "Sound Jewelry" then automatically generates "melody" and according to the distance between the persons wearing it the sounds of "melodies" may be changed or exchanged. Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Global warming carbon tax
Skeptics and alamists can't agree. So why not tie carbon taxes to actual levels of warming? Both skeptics and alarmists should expect their wishes to be answered. After much effort, G8 leaders last week agreed to "stabilize greenhouse-gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." This is the same wording as in Article Two of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in 1992. In other words, after months of negotiations, world leaders agreed on a text they had already ratified 15 years earlier. Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Missing Persons: an installation
"Since the mid 1990s, the CIA has spearheaded a covert program to kidnap suspected terrorists from all over the world. These people are then brought to a network of secret CIA-operated prisons, called 'black sites', where they are routinely tortured. The CIA calls this the 'extraordinary rendition' program. People taken to these secret prisons are effectively 'disappeared': there are no public records of their captivity, their identities are kept secret, and they are prohibited from communicating with the outside world. Among CIA operatives, they are called 'ghost detainees.' The locations of these black sites, known by code-names such as 'Salt Pit' and 'Bright Light,' are some of the CIA’s deepest secrets. To capture and subsequently transport these ghost detainees, the CIA uses a fleet of unmarked airplanes. These airplanes are owned by intricate networks of front companies whose boards of directors are non-existent people. Missing Persons (an installation by Trevor Paglen) is a collection of their signatures culled from business records, aircraft registrations, and corporate filings." Check out Trevor Paglen's installation
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Blogged, the bubble inflated by blog traffic
"Blogged" is an interactive installation artwork and one-day net event dealing with the concept of being 'blogged'. It attempts to pop 6 feet in diameter red balloon by using traffic from blogs linking to a specific page. Blogged works by counting unique visits and url referrals. The visits are logged and then used to determine how long to run the air compressor based on their total number. Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Twitterlit
"It's a site that serves up literary teasers twice daily. Twitterlit posts the first line of a book, without the author's name or book title, but with a link to Amazon so readers can see what book the line is from. Why? Because it's fun! Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG


Minister of Information
Graphic designer? Edward Tufte is that and more: art director, economist, historian, data-cruncher, and plain old expository writer. He is most likely the world’s only graphic designer with roadies. If this messy world is becoming easier to understand, thank Edward Tufte. Here for
2:04 AM 7/7/07 | UNBLOG





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