Nice article on the greatest taco stand ever. Absolutely, positively worth the drive up to Santa Barbara.
Author: Chris Barrus
No-Fly Blacklist Snares Political Activists
A federal “No Fly” list, ostensibly intended to keep terrorists from flying is snaring peace activists and dissenters. And while several federal agencies acknowledge that they contribute names to the congressionally mandated list, no one is apparently responsible for managing the list.
[via Red Rock Eater]
Thumbnail guide to 11 September conspiracy theories
Chip Berlet compiles all the 9/11 conspiracy theories – left, right, and off-the-map.
EeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEe
A DVD I’m encoding used a loop of Spiritualized’s “Pure Phase” tone so my entire day has been spent with “EeEeEeEeEeEeEeEe” as my background noise. Instant itchiness.
Gulf War II endgame: The 51st state?
The reportage on the Iraq invasion has finally reached the meta-report saturation stage, so until something actually happens there’s not much point to forward any more stories. However, this article in the Atlantic looks at the endgame of Gulf War II: Bush’s Revenge. Specifically, it’s pretty certain that the US will be going to war, and it’s also pretty certain that the US will win overwhelmingly.
So then what?
New York Songlines
New York Songlines is a way-cool, hand-compiled guide to all things Manhattan. I clicked on a street at random and found the location of Charles Ives’ house and a neo-Polynesian bar called the Tiki Room. Mega cool, but don’t link until you have a couple of hours to burn.
[via KALIBER10000]
OS X hint of the week/month: A Tale Of Two Get Info’s
Ken Bereskin points out a cool OS X feature that I didn’t know about:
There are two very strong views about how the Get Info… command should work. The first camp wants to be able to compare the info of different files at the same time, so every time you choose Get Info… a new window is displayed (just like Mac OS 9). The other camp wants the “Inspector” behavior where the info window is a single floating palette that always reflects the current selection.
What to do? Well, in Jaguar, the default is to spawn an info window for each Get Info command but hold down the Option key and the command morphs to “Show Info”, the floating palette version. The crowd cheers – everyone is happy!
Bored with the news headlines? Randomly roll your own…
NewZoid randomly generates news headlines.
- CBS Reaches Deal Over Weapons
- Explosion Campaigns Against EchoStar-Hughes Deal
- ‘Barbershop’ Denies Sale Of Technology to Infertility
- Miss America Braved Violence In West Hollywood
- British Firm Seeks Extradition Of ‘Superbugs’
- Gore Iraq Speech Says ‘Sopranos’ Question Was Inappropriate
Vote for your faves!
[via Boing Boing]
UPDATE 2013-05-11: NewZoid is now called the New Zoid Times
Groupthink Warning Signs
Jason Kottke points out:
An excellent page on groupthink and how it affects the decision-making process of groups. Irving Janis describes eight symptoms of groupthink:
- Illusion of invulnerability
- Stereotyping outsiders
- Bounded rationality and tethered assumptions
- Belief in inherent morality
- Self-censorship
- Direct pressure on dissenters
- Mindguards
- Unanimity
Useful data points for the coming weeks and months.
[via kottke.org]
And another quote of the week
From ProAudio RX:
Recently, a prominent individual in the recording industry was asked to serve on a panel that would judge the best engineered CD for the Grammy’s. After listening to over 200 CD’s, they couldn’t find a single CD worthy of a Grammy based on the criteria they were given. Everything they listened to was squashed to death with heavy amounts compression. What they wound up doing was selecting the CD that had the least amount of engineering. In reality, the winner didn’t win because of great engineering, he won simply because he had messed with the signal the least. What a way to win a Grammy.