Puna
Login
Home
Archives
Bookmarks
Entertainment
Hoyts, Riccarton
Hoyts, Regent
Reading, Palms
Snackfood Marauders
Sky TV
Friends
No Right turn
Jon Taplin
Utilities
Email anonymizer
Free software
Goods
Laptops
Reference
New Zealand
Christchurch
White pages
Christchurch Street Maps
Night sky
Logical fallacies
Weather
Contact
Contents
Photos
Travels
Comics
Google World
Colombian Officials Recount Rescue Plan - Washington Post
SAfrica's Mbeki meets Zimbabwe's Mugabe - Reuters
Obama: Media response to Iraq remarks overblown - The Associated Press
Mongolia lifts state of emergency in capital - China Daily
Student's family appeal to killer - BBC News
2500 rally in Sapporo to protest G-8 summit - The Daily Yomiuri
A Side Competition in Beijing: Island vs. Mainland - New York Times
Sarkozy turns screw on Irish over EU treaty - Times Online
US response to Iran pending consultation - PRESS TV
On Film, a Monk’s Passion and Protest - New York Times
'Gaza truce in danger without progress on Schalit' - Jerusalem Post
A nuclear Iran does not compare to Cold War - guardian.co.uk
Malaysian fuel price hike protesters undeterred by police warning - International Herald Tribune
Pakistan's Military Denies it Sent Nuclear Centrifuges to North Korea - Voice of America
Q&A: Turkey's ruling party on trial - BBC News
Pakistani agents arrest 5, say foil suicide attacks - Reuters India
India's Singh Gains Support On Nuclear Pact With US - Wall Street Journal
When the bus 'gets a boo-boo' - Jerusalem Post
Zambian President Remains in Stable Condition at Paris Hospital - Bloomberg
Russia says Georgia could spark new war in Abkhazia: agency - AFP
Stuff International
Mbeki meets with Mugabe
Anti-gay violence mars Hungarian parade
Obama 'puzzled' by Iraq comment frenzy
California's priority wildfire in check
Obama 'puzzled' by Iraq comment frenzy
Last drinks for pub dwellers
Stuff
Trio injured in jetboat crash
Mbeki meets with Mugabe
All Blacks back on top of world
TradeMe in court for "black market"
TV duo display 'open affection'
Man banned from Belhaven
Alleged burglars still on the loose
Cold front hits hard
Anti-gay violence mars Hungarian parade
Obama 'puzzled' by Iraq comment frenzy
California's priority wildfire in check
NZ Cricket to tour Zimbabwe unless stopped
Netball great calls for Kiwi teams to harden up
Dixon on second row
It makes more cents to rent than own
DIY house sales hit the floor
Cold shower for fibre fever
From biker gang to opera stardom
Conchords' Murray shares stage with Federer
Will Smith a superhero in bedroom
Boing Boing
Wil Wheaton (and his GTA obsession) profiled in GEEK.
Laptop theft at Clarion West sf workshop -- donations needed
The Phoenix TV series
As price of fuel soars, so does a dirigible renaissance?
Body armor developer shoots himself (video)
EUROPEANS! You have until MONDAY to contact your MEP and save the EU from a three-strikes copyright rule!
Anatomic model puzzles of surpassing loveliness
Stross's new novel: Saturn's Children, a late Heinlein homage
Barlow's Forth of July message
Where the Linear Crosses the Exponential: Kevin Kelly
Jesse Helms leaves the planet.
Iran: death penalty for “corrupt weblogs”
Some douche steals Ian Curtis' (of Joy Division) headstone
Captain America, Fuck Yeah!
New eBoy Peecol figures
Tattooed living zombie
Lost scenes from Metropolis found
Bugs have creepy faces
America loves drugs
Serialization of The Deal, Chapter 5
Video: documentary on Showbiz animatronic band
Interview with Charlie Angus, Canadian MP who's fighting the Canadian DMCA
NYC cops harass club owner whose CCTV footage overturned drug conviction
XKCD's "Choices" -- now an audio drama
Grimly hilarious cartoon about telecom immunity and warrantless wiretapping with Snuggly the Safety Bear
Government nosy parkers use passport database to spy on celebs
Recently on Boing Boing Gadgets
Distressed steampunk keyboard
Ninja scare results in school lockdowns
Terrible new Brazilian Internet law proposal will criminalize brazillions of people
Fark
Snowmobiler arrested for speeding on Lake Winnipesaukee amid "heavy boat traffic." With a video camera on his helmet
Skilled thespian Moe the chimp has disappeared: "He's on his way home. He's probably looking for a car to drive"
For sale: one lighthouse on the Connecticut shoreline. Asking price: $1
FedEx: When your 200 pounds of pot absolutely, positively has to be sent to the wrong address
China's thirst for oil will save the planet
France's bid to have its cuisine added to UNESCO's list of world cultural treasures has failed
Photoshop this storage ring thing
Break out the world's smallest violins for all the deadbeats complaining about not getting their stimulus check
The fashion world, in addition to being behind every political assassination of the last 300 years, is also racist
Relax. Nobody gives a darn what you watch on YouTube
Could World Trade Center 7 have been knowingly demolished? "In a screenplay, in a movie, something with Bruce Willis in it, maybe. In reality, no"
The national park service is considering re-opening Liberty's crown, one compromise being that her eyes be modified to fire missile destroying lasers
"[Y]ou know you're unattractive when people see you in a Speedo and call 911"
The priest who flew through the air via 1000 party balloons for charity last April and got lost, has been found dead in the middle of the ocean. Darwin does a facepalm
Vegetarians have higher risk of going brain dead. You want steak
Rising cost of fuel has governments and private compaines consdering using dirigbles instead of airplanes. What could possibly go OH THE HUMANITY
New Jersey town lets kegs flow, middle fingers fly. We're sure this is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they started the Revolution
The vegetable kingdom's attack on human beings continues unabated. PETA protesters looking somewhat worried
10 things you might not know about robots. Sarah Connor, Old Glory Robot Insurance suspiciously absent from article
Woman visits the drive-thru window at Einstein Bagels store, is surprised to discover they don't have a drive-thru window
If you abandoned your half-million dollar Lamborghini on the highway, the Ontario Provincial Police would like a word with you. And bring a dustpan, too
"That's when Trooper John Hennessey noticed a large bulge in Belmont's pants"
The most patriotic moran you will ever meet. Evar
Wal-Mart is coming up with a new logo. Give them a hand
Drunk, stupid, and weaving all over a bike path on a riding mower is no way to go through life, sons
Fight against knife crime overtakes terrorism as London's number one police priority. If only there was something Britons could bring to a knife fight to have an advantage
Snail prices expected to go up amid poor harvest. TOUT LE MONDE PANIQUE
Former downtown Orlando nightclub owner ditches that lifestyle for more profitable one: Towing cars that are illegally parked near downtown Orlando nightclubs
What's the easiest way to keep your downspout from flooding the neighbor's yard? No, I said EASIEST
If you had "one day" in the "how long will it take someone to attack wax Hitler at the new Berlin Madame Tussauds" pool, please step forward to claim your prize
Tank the runaway tortoise returned home... eventually
No kitty, no die: Marley the cat survives 14-story plunge to celebrate another Caturday
Rotting cheese placed alongside fresh products and resold. That's not gouda
Family Guy's Peter Griffin arrested for dealing drugs (with mugshot goodness)
Those "faceless people" spotted around the UK? You guessed it. Marketing stunt. Followup trumps Obvious tag
RSPCA officers seize owls from a falconry center that supplied them for a Harry Potter movie. YA RLY
A five-year battle ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with a chicken in a soundproof box
Photoshop these boaters and their dog
The coolest thing you'll see all day: 45 Navy SEAL Tridents laid out on the casket of a fallen SEAL. Godspeed
Italy declares a state of emergency in Pompeii. Well, better late than never
Woman attempts to recreate "Thelma & Louise" ending, fails
If you have found the Edgewood City Hall Building, please contact Babbit Neuman Construction. Thank you, that is all
If you have a fear of heights, you do not want to live here (pics)
Thief pays no attention to that silly 10,000 volts warning sign. Darwin is a cruel mistress
Saskatoon zoo welcomes ugly-ass baby Bengal tiger
Daily Mail: "The government is criminally careless in losing discs containing the public's personal details. They should keep it all safe, just like we store our sensitive staff data on the laptop in this briefca- Ohhh"
UK court rules that Pringles are only 42 percent potato, still 100 percent awesome
America retains title in Nathan's hot dog eating contest. 64 dogs, 19,000 calories. USA USA USA
"She wore her first set of false eyelashes at eight, and her beauty treatments cost £300 a month. A sick abuse of an 11-year-old? 'No', insists Sasha's mother, 'I just want her to be famous'."
College professor teaches the science and psychology behind getting the most mileage out of being drunk
Latest media-manufactured social crisis is "green rage", where you or a mythical neighbor fly into anger over the poor recycling habits of those around you
Indiana man gave beer to his 1-year-old nephew, "he's a champ, he can handle it," then punched his girlfriend in the face when she objected and sped away in her SUV, threatening to kill her and her daughter when he returned
Photoshop this 1963 vintage Vine
Men with hot girlfriends have more sex, according to researchers at the Ric Romero Institute for Studying Things
Protip: It's always best to wait until AFTER you get home to light off the fireworks
Operation Falcon, founded by U.S. Marines, provides a life in America to Iraqi translators marked for death
Woman shocked, SHOCKED to be sexually assaulted after agreeing to be tied to a bed in a complete strangers box truck. Fark: You would be too, the accused is a paramedic
This. Is. AMERICAAA
Sometimes you just want to ride without standing in line. This guy took it to the next level, though
Robbing a Subway at 11pm, check. One employee and a 71 year old customer, check. 71 year old is a retired Marine? Oh oh. With concealed carry permit? Why me?
Man arrested for walking dog, by automobile, at 45 mph
Man takes girlfriend for a spin in new car, only to be confronted with the inferno of wife's disapproval. Will stand up for himself when he comes out of hiding
If you're going to carjack a car, perhaps you should pick an easier target. For instance, don't pick the car with two uniformed police officers inside it
Sasquatch sexually assaults man in Canadian park
Russians suspect Welsh arsonist stripper could be British spy
Researchers warn that fireworks can cause seizures, brain freeze, natural selection
Police respond to call from man reporting "bright stationary object" in the sky. M-O-O-N spells "Dumbass"
Susan Olsen has radio interview that ends badly after she shows up hung over. You might remember her from the Brady Bunch, she was the one that played Cindy BraAAAAAAAAUUUUGHHRRRRGGGHHH
The most baffling explosions in movie history
A tip for parolees: Don't conduct drug deals when the cops are right across the street and parole agents are in town. It's not Fark, it's the San Francisco Chronicle
Dude never played a piano before in his life, hits head on bottom of pool and suddenly becomes a master pianist. Submitter tempted to hit head to see if he becomes fluent in Spanish
The best how to tie a double windsor knot instructional you'll see all day
German Shepherd survives being thrown off an overpass with only a fat lip. Your dog wants a parachute (dog headline trifecta now complete)
Miniature dachshund gnaws off diabetic owner's toe, confused it for steak
"I've never seen a blood feud like this before," says lawyer. "A cautionary tale of parental hopes dashed, sibling rivalry triumphant and love for a place embittered," says judge who is writing a novel on the side
Photoshop Challenge: Create a new national monument
Professional soccer player attacks nightclub bouncer with handbag, perpetuates every soccer player stereotype there is
Your all-purpose July 4th special: Ugly-ass bald eagle baby rescued from clutches of evil Canadians (w/pic)
Boston can't even build a sidewalk without three government agencies suing and fining each other
Instant Photoshop Contest: Uncle Sam
Your flat screen TV contains a gas that is 17000 times more potent than CO2 and hangs around for 550 years. And you thought having your in-laws over for the holidays was bad
Ruthlessly efficient German hailstorm wrecks 30,000 Volkswagens
Sci-tech Daily
Nerve-zapper looks like a
promising way to beat obesity
Why not
spin up a tornado
and then extract energy from its tethered tail?
Rapid changes in the churning of Earth's liquid outer core are
weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface
The
book of birds
is being rewritten by genetic discoveries
Facial recognition technology in a remote control
means looking puzzled will prompt a rewind
Athletes are putting their
performance hopes in Viagra
A
solar sail
may finally get a chance to unfurl
Volcanic nanoparticles of
mercury end up in polar ice
The skull of the
most primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history
could help us understand how fish came to walk on land
His master's voice
puts a strain on teacher vocal cords
Scratching is one of the sweetest gratifications of nature, but
where does the itch come from
?
Tunguska
-- still a mystery a century after the big badda boom
Take your apartment for a spin
Medieval monks fell prey to mercury
Telling
one penguin from another
has just gotten easier
Girls are no less competitive than boys
, they simply employ more subtle tactics
Why have a building named after yourself when
you could be immortalised by a sea slug
instead?
Plants are heading for the hills
First your home computer could help find alien life, now it could
help find out more about cancer
No bees to rent -- no food to eat
While we many not be rational,
we all make the same irrational choices
, so they are predictable
There is
more to time
than just clocks and circadian rhythms
The
basis for humour
is pattern recognition
The Wisdom of Whores
is a rollicking, eye-opening, hilarious account of the
underbelly of international AIDS research
The
factions and follies of psychiatry
in five books
Why are both sides wrong in the race debate?
The
sense of smell is underappreciated
, even when special smells threaten to become extinct
Imagine being able to project images into someone else's photographs [
more
]
So what does
objectivity
actually entail?
Every culture and subculture gets the drugs that it deserves
, so what did we do to deserve methylenedioxymethamphetamine?
Expert policy advisers would do best to
function as honest brokers of scientific alternatives
, recognising limits and uncertainties
So how does the mind work?
Medieval masons used geometry to
unfold an entire cathedral
, such as Chatres, from inside a square
Hard core video-gaming
has risen from the basement to the Big Time
Here's someone who
captures the ethereal beauty of wading birds
with the flair of a painter and the passion of an activist
Science is
one of the most dramatic narratives
our species can tell
Now you can see the world through
x-ray eyes
Forget predicting what's going to happen next year or even next century --
what will the world be like a million years from now
?
Could video games replace the textbook?
The
Hubble Space Telescope
and its stunning images have captured the hearts of the public, even if they do not grasp the astronomical significance
You should appreciate the
complexity, chaos and wonder
of what's going on in your gut
Books dealing with individual naturalists rarely give a sense of the entangled webs that have always made the
world of natural history
work
When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions
will make you not want to leave the TV, let alone the planet
Trust your instincts
in calculating the odds and youre likely to get it wrong.
Whether reckless, megalomaniac or elitist in construction, the
mysteries behind Stonehenge
remain
As they visited more and more nuclear establishments, the authors of
A Nuclear Family Vacation
lost their confidence
in nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence [
more
]
Half the battle of
getting through a disaster
is just cognitively knowing you can survive; the other half is making it happen
The
lauding of lone geniuses making breakthroughs
perpetuates a misleading image of science that may alienate as many as it fascinates
The Victorian stage was set for
every fraud and phoney and quisling quack
to make with the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo
The survey of a life of no ordinary surveyor
Add
unsustainable farming methods to a spiralling demand for food
and you have a society heading for catastrophe
For many kids, computers are more of a
distraction than a learning opportunity
We know that
whale songs
are complex messages, but we still don't know what they mean or what we could learn from them, and now they may be under threat
When and how did the
behaviours that we associate with modern humankind
emerge?
Mirrors in the Brain: How our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience
Our little
bubble of thought-filled space
grows year by year
Paper tiger fraud
exposes questions of corruption and accountability
Homosexuality
may persist because the associated genes convey surprising advantages on family members
In his studies of entropy and the
irreversibility of time
, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll is exploring the idea that our universe is part of a larger structure
Celebrating 150 years
of the survival of the wisest
Should the
Buddhas blasted by the Taliban
be rebuilt?
Spain may be better known for bull-fighting than animal rights but it's to be the
first national legislature to support rights for non-human great apes
Suicides linked to phone masts
, but check out the rest of the story before you start protesting
How do
creative partnerships
work?
Reading should not be believing
, especially when it comes to health coverage in the media
Science is losing significant numbers of women in their 30s due to the
extreme work pressures
Instead of
using arable farmland
or
coastal wetlands
for
biofuels
, why not use abandoned land?
Relying on unverifiable casual wildlife observations, such as those of the
ivory-billed woodpecker,
can
hinder successful conservation efforts
My research progress report has been tied up in bureaucracy and
it's all the Pope's fault
Mathematical formulas
create reality
What do you do when coastal erosion means
your property ends up part of a public beach
?
The
quality of rice
is more important that the quantity
Is
thanking God for evolution
a sign of a sensible compromise or an attack on science?
When we look to the ancient past for clues about
whether global warming will cause mass extinctions
, what we learn is not encouraging
It's time to get more
aggressive with brain cancer
One of Britain's leading brain scientists has profound fears about the way
new technology is changing our thought patterns and behaviour
Leo Szilard had a Eureka moment in a London Square
The cost of care for premature babies is some 15 times the expense of full-term infants and rising -- so
is there such a thing as too young
?
So you've had a
genetic test
-- now what?
Inadequate funding and lack of political commitment pose
significant challenges to meeting the worlds sanitation goals
In science, as in life, some stories are too good to be true, such as the
crater of dooom
idea
As we face the possibility of a significant increase in lifespan, we have to ask
does death give meaning to our lives?
Maybe were now spending so much more time with consumer objects than with our natural environments that we have forgotten how to think about the latter
Computer game addicts
suffer from more shame and are harder to treat than their computer porn confreres
When forming attitudes about embryonic stem cell research,
people are influenced by a number of things, but scientific information isn't one of them
Pop culture references to the butterfly effect may be bad physics
, but they're a good barometer of how the public thinks about science
"Lost" Amazon tribes
know where they are and what they are doing there
Medical science has progressed fairly steadily, but
health policy has thrashed about
like a flatworm swimming through a solution of LSD
Ars Technica
Five ways to keep your PC cool on a hot summer day
Bandwidth caps could lead to ISPs benefiting from piracy
Yankee Hotel Net Neutrality? Indie rockers back an open 'Net
Judge: FISA trumps state secrets, binds executive branch
No Google source code for Viacom, just 12TB of YouTube data
Report: US broadband market edging towards saturation
Virgin, BPI at odds as first infringement letters go out
EMI joins Viacom in trying to drain the UGC safe harbor
OpenMoko FreeRunner Linux phone to launch on July 4
Civil liberties groups sue for info on cell phone lojacking
Groups: FCC indecency process stifles creative expression
Hands on: Filtrbox tries to filter out information overload
First look: Mozilla Weave 0.2 puts Firefox in the cloud
Poll: US taxpayers want more funding for scientific research
AMD narrows market share gap with Intel, revenue gap grows
Mobile group to establish security standards for mobile web
Mozilla sets Guinness World Record with Firefox 3 launch
Senators to FCC: Sirius/XM's proposal still needs work
Australia shows US how a real broadband strategy works
Microhoo redux? Something's up, but no one quite knows what
The Register
Indies celebrate Independence Day
2010: the 5TB 3.5in HDD cometh
PC World pips Asus to UK Atom sub-laptop premier
DARPA calls for 'DUDE' combo infra-nightscope
Welcome back, WiReD!
Apple drags its heels on iPhone security patches
Serco sharpens the IT guillotine
Ofcom flashes cash guarantees at BT for fibre investment
Consider yourself Moderatrixed
IPS finds no nuggets in ID checking goldmine
MoD mega gov-IT project only mildly catastrophic - NAO
Mystery over Verisign boss' shock exit
TVonics MFR-300 micro digital TV set-top box
David Davis tells <em>El Reg</em> that Labour is 'mesmerised' by tech
eBay Australia ditches PayPal scheme
'Anaconda' 200m rubber snake generator scheme gets funding
Geldof backs Davis 'For Freedom' by-election
Opera update fixes stability bugs
Google deigns to comply with a privacy law
Palm, BlackBerry-beating demand for 3G iPhone claims researcher
Microsoft gets hip with da yoof to flog email
BSA slams EC's 'narrow-minded' interoperability vision
MS readies Vista code injection risk fix
Government waves cutlass at IT budget
Oracle risks loss of influential BEA users
Solar-curtain "soft house" plan proposed by MIT prof
Apple takes axe to MacBook Air SSD price
Would a data notification law improve UK data security?
Judge grants Viacom 12TB of YouTube user records
Nut launches death threats at Debian women
EU still greasing IBM antitrust probe despite PSI withdrawal
Strange cults, vocal surgery and the quiet man: Inside Microsoft
Microsoft flogs subscriptions to the unwary and confused
'HD TV gas' 17,000 times worse for planet than CO<sub><small>2</small></sub>, claims boffin
Are the ice caps melting?
Microsoft touts trustworthy browsing with IE8
Wife-slaying Linux guru may have 'developmental disability'
UK and US agree biometric <strike>heavily vetted</strike> trusted traveller deal
The Moderatrix will see you now
Transatlantic data sharing talks stumble over access to justice
Linspire CEO defends Xandros buy-out
Scareware runs amok on PlayStation site
What powers a solar-powered snail, kids?
ISO certifies Adobe's PDF
Firefox 3 makes up world record to set world record
Brit carrier deals inked at last
Pay-by-phone commerce coming closer
America wakes up to the surveillance society
Built-in browser expiry proposed to fight botnet menace
Research: Wind power pricier, emits more CO<sub><small>2</small></sub> than thought
Techdirt
Everyone Be Afraid! Predators Move To Game Consoles
Can A Company Ban Retailers From Selling Its Products On eBay?
Do J.R.R. Tolkien's Kids Deserve Money For The Lord Of The Rings Movies?
Virgin: We Won't Cut Off File Sharers; Sends Envelope Saying 'We May Cut You Off'
Mark Cuban's Wrong: Porn Filtering On YouTube Doesn't Mean It Loses Safe Harbors
Lawyer Seriously Slapped Down For SLAPP Attempt Against Librarian Blogger
Theaters Working To Make Even The Pre-Show Ads More Entertaining
Has Broadband Growth Stalled In The US?
Viacom Gets To Find Out What YouTube Videos You Watched
US Gov't: Do Not Carry Your Social Security Number; US Gov't: You Must Carry Your Social Security Number
EFF, ACLU Sue To Find Out Details Of Gov't Use Of Mobile Phone Data To Track People
Kia Decides That It No Longer Wants Its TV Commercials To Be Entertaining
Social Engineering 101: Focus On Informal Conversations
If You Must Make A Hidden Camera, Don't Make It Look Like Garbage
UK Gov't Throws Open Data For Mashups; Offers Prize Money For Best Results
Congress Close To Fixing Constitutional Loophole Over Patent Judge Appointments
Blockbuster Looks At Circuit City's Books; Ditches Acquisition Offer
Missouri Makes Online Harassment A Felony
Court Says CD-ROMs Of Magazine Archives Don't Violate Copyrights Of Article Authors
Why Zittrain's Techno-Pessimism Is Unwarranted
Techmeme
Think Before You Voicemail
On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble
Kinderplex crisis reveals Google founder's fumbling and fibbing
Google, the press, and tearing down your heroes
Who would wait a week in line for an iPhone 3G?
The Law and Your Privacy
Kid-Proof Your PC with SteadyState
Ipoque Study: Middle East Doesn't Watch YouTube
TinyURL Adds Custom URLs; Is This Exciting or What?
Can You Build A Business On Browser Extensions?
As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll
Google Sold Us Out: The Viacom Decision
Facebook App for Windows Mobile (Finally!)
Ethan Malasky on Developing Secure AIR Applications
This Week on C9: Fireworks, Powerset, Equipt, Pex, and cool downloads
It ain't easy being agile
AskTheSpeaker.org Launched - Powered By IdeaScale
Freedom to move your data whenever and wherever you need to - Support for Import and Export in Zoho Invoice
Timothy Ferriss and The 4-Hour Workweek
Kid-Proof Your PC with SteadyState
Facebook App for Windows Mobile (Finally!)
Who would wait a week in line for an iPhone 3G?
Ipoque Study: Middle East Doesn't Watch YouTube
Kinderplex crisis reveals Google founder's fumbling and fibbing
As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll
TinyURL Adds Custom URLs; Is This Exciting or What?
Can You Build A Business On Browser Extensions?
Think Before You Voicemail
Google, the press, and tearing down your heroes
What could Open Office do with a business model?
Google Sold Us Out: The Viacom Decision
Waiting in line for iPhones is glorious
Iran Parliament to Debate Death Penalty for Bloggers
Tap Tap Revolution coming to the iPhone App Store as “Tap Tap Revenge”
Top Torrent Sites Ranked by Google
The Law and Your Privacy
Digital download model puts song exposure above sales
Cringely
Independence Day
Go Home, Bill
What a Difference a Day Makes
MeMobile, You Kaput
It's the Platform, Stupid
Nolo Contendere
IT Wars
Reality Check
Wimpy
Iron Man
Apple to the Core
The Truth About IT Consultants
You Never Write, You Never Call
Ozzy Knows Best
Amish Paradise
Arts and Letters Daily
Biofuels
have forced global food prices up by 75%, far more than previous estimates, says a secret World Bank report...
As everyone knows,
Socrates spoke for all skeptics
when he said, All I know is that I know nothing. But is that what he really said?...
The Architect of Braslia
? Yes, it was urban planning gone badly wrong, but the city still contains some graceful modernist government buildings...
Woodrow Wilson
talked of a common order, a common justice and a common peace for America and the world. His is an idea ripe for revival...
Is the
golden age of biography
now past? What future for a genre where the best subjects have been written about over and over and over again?...
Gene Weingarten
got his Pulitzer Prize, and even got on
Arts & Letters Daily
, by being so original. So should he now turn his prize back in?...
Tim Berners-Lee made the web because he had a poor memory for some things.
John Naughton
wonders if it wont give us all a poor memory...
You say you know what youre doing. But what if
your brain has made up its mind
ten seconds before it tells you?...
Unequal America
The gap between rich and poor is growing: that much is certain. But of the consequences of the gap...
To get parents to pick up their kids on time, a preschool started
fining late parents
. So did average tardiness decrease? Quite the reverse...
Shed gone to hell and back and rebuilt her life. But then there was that episode with shingles. And then the itch.
The Itch
...
Heres a test. Play
Grand Theft Auto IV
for a few hours, then go outside and find a locked car. Are you tempted to steal it?...
Add more signs, directions, and limits on the road, and
drivers will be safer
, right? Wrong. Drivers tend to compensate...
Multitasking costs the economy
. One study found workers took 25 minutes to recover from phone calls or emails and return to their original task...
Lower men
wallow in pity
as swine do in mud, their pity for others being the same as their pity for themselves. Thus spake Nietzsche...
Why do government
efforts to correct problems
so often seem to make things worse? Because
people
are the problems...
Young radicals
of the 1960s and today have mixed motives and impulses: at once craving autonomy and validation, guidance and self-definition...
Its not just NASA pilots who
need to nap
.
Arts & Letters Daily
readers need naps, too. Herewith, a complete guide...
Imagine building a 1500 ft tunnel under the center of a Soviet-controlled city. The CIA did it,
in secret
,
under Berlin
...
The $100 Distraction Device
. Why giving poor kids laptops is about as good for schools as giving them their own private PlayStations...
How to save money, as a woman. How to be a creative spirit, or find balance, as a woman. How to buy a house, as a woman.
Why all these books
?...
James Watson does not have a high IQ
. Thats what he told Henry Louis Gates as proof that IQ is not all that important. Maybe...
Sex and the City
s women are defined not by their talent and the swordplay of their wit, but by their ability to snare a man...
Georges Simenon
s crime novels are superb and polished works of art that masquerade as pulp fiction...
The Hindu-supremacist right in India is back, with a mass murderer leading Gujarat. Now consider the
Communists in West Bengal
...
Win the
New Yorker
s cartoon caption
contest. Patrick House did it, and he can show you how to do it too...
The fundamental differences between man and animal are overrated, Charles Darwin felt.
Alex the parrot
helps prove his case...
Top ten solutions
to the worlds biggest problems. The Copenhagen Consensus says micronutrients must take the highest priority...
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
is Brazils answer to John Stuart Mill a century and a half later and a lot nattier...
The cubicle revolution in office plans was above all ideological. Cubicles were to create a
utopia for Dilbert
...
Charles Darwin
s language sings in
The Voyage of the Beagle
. It is the work of a young man intoxicated by the tropics...
Christianity
s collapse
has wrecked U.K. society and family life, leaving the country defenseless against radical Islam, says Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali...
more
»
...
The charges against
video games
that they stunt minds and spark addiction are based on ignorance of what gamers do when they sit down to play...
The chasm between
the humanities and the sciences
can be bridged with a new kind of thinking that uses the strengths of both disciplines...
Its in opera as in life,
Ian McEwan
says: Conversations are a kind of duet. That is why he has now written an opera libretto...
Seated in the Memorial, he looks so big. But his hair is uncombed, his tie askew, his fingers fidgety.
Abe Lincoln is still only a man
...
The Betrayal of Judas
. Did a dream team of biblical experts assembled by
National Geographic
mislead millions?...
The future looks different from the past, but on a grand cosmological scale, maybe its all the same. Somewhere,
maybe time runs backwards
...
At the end,
Susan Sontag
s son colluded with his mothers fantasy that she wasnt dying. Doing this was not without cost...
Using an odorless dye to color white wine red induces wine tasters to use red-wine descriptors for it.
As for martinis
...
The real test of character, George Orwell noted, is how you treat someone who has no possibility of doing you any good.
It
s a matter of honor
...
Just say
no
. Why dont more women go into science and engineering? Shocking new research suggests they actually arent interested...
Can you engineer the kind of insight that leads to invention?
Nathan Myhrvold
left Microsoft and struck out on his own in order to find out...
You got a problem with that
? Why do New Yorkers seem so rude? Joan Acocella wonders...
Does she insist on dragging you to
Sex and the City
? The agony. No man should have to sit through this movie. Now, a solution...
Britains nearest neighbor and oldest enemy: No nation stirs such conflicting emotions in the British breast as
France
...
Does China operate
sweatshops
? How could you know? One way to find out is to send over some inspectors. Easy...
Richard Rorty
was lovable as a person, and as a philosopher both perceptive and, at times, intensely irritating...
Gleaming pneumatic women
: the female ideal pushed by laddie magazines is as smooth and lifeless as an iPhone...
With Russia flexing its military muscle, are the chances of an
accidental nuclear war
back again on the increase?...
Frida Kahlo
knew a way to show a certain emotion, at once accusatory, nervy, furious, a little adolescent, and sometimes even funny...
Jesse Jackson is relieved
when he hears footsteps behind him, turns around, sees its a white man and figures he wont be mugged. Is this acceptable?...
Suppose we found remnants of algae or a trilobite on another planet? It might be a
bad omen for the human race
...
Human beings are impulsive, lazy, busy, inert, irrational creatures prone to all kinds of biases and errors: thats why they need
libertarian paternalism
...
Alice Walker
cared so much about other peoples kids, she forgot her own. Her daughter says the writer resigned from being my mother...
If
Frederick Douglass
were alive today, he would be dismayed by the reluctance of liberals to connect programs with the spirit that animates their politics...
The book is not for burning. Contra its authors dying wishes, son Dmitri will publish
Vladimir Nabokov
s last novel
,
Laura
...
If in the end
Niels Bohr
was not able to explain it all to Margrethe, well, that was nature’s doing, not Bohr’s fault...
The penalties for
prostitution in Iran
are severe whipping and even execution. So how does the oldest profession fare in that land?...
Saint Walter Cronkite intones in grainy footage or black and white stills thats the way it is, at the
Newseum
. Whatever...
William Jefferson
was inspired by love of his kinfolk to do great things. Thats why he had $90,000 cash in his freezer...
Augusten Burroughs
s memory: what sort of freakishly bloated cortex retains after eighteen years the color of some random person’s belt?...
Percival Lowell, a brilliant, rich, charming Boston Brahmin, thought a century ago he could see a network of
canals on Mars
. He got other people thinking...
If you think you know who the winners are going to be, come November, its time to put your money where your mouth is. Enter the
political betting markets
...
The British love their trees, but across the land
beautiful old trees
are being chopped down in their thousands. The reason? Safety rules and hungry lawyers...
A child
s body
had been found on the island of Jersey, in the grounds of a childrens home, said the BBC, and the media frenzy began...
An atheist church
? “The last thing atheists want to see is their rational set of ideas yoked up with the trappings of a religion,” says Daniel Dennett...
Diana was a simpering Bambi narcissist, Mother Theresa a thieving fanatical Albanian dwarf.
Christopher Hitchens
does have opinions...
Crazy English
. Li Yang’s cosmology ties the ability to speak English to personal strength and national power...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that available, sociable, and
attractive men
are hard to find for dinner parties...
Trace the city walls of Elea today. Maybe
Zeno formulated his paradoxes
pacing these same stones 900,000 days ago...
The
dirty secret of travel guides
: update your edition by plagiarizing another guide, or just Google that town you might have explored on foot...
Plants are green because the sun that keeps them alive is a type G star. If theyd evolved for a red dwarf,
plants would be black
...
Now 35 years on, how does Erica Jongs
Fear of Flying
stand up as literature? In Elaine Showalters view, very well...
India is about to create what may be the biggest
mass eviction of indigenous people
ever. All in the name of conservation...
You can
walk into an elevator
one night, with your life in one kind of shape, and emerge from it with your life in quite another. Ask Nicholas White...
Deconstruction was for
M
.
H
.
Abrams
a problem from the start. He had doubts about the idea that for hundreds of years people have missed the real point...
A bad night at the opera
. But at the Met, the talent pool is formidable, and even
Tristan und Isolde
can end happily. Sort of...
The pop music industry has sadly come to depend on heritage acts
wrinkled
,
dyed-hair
,
aging stars
to pack houses and make money...
We need a deadly sins update. Anyway, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony are now self-esteem, relaxation, and having gourmet tastes.
P
.
J
.
O
Rourke offers new sins
...
No wonder
Hugo Chavez
was upset when Colombia struck at the FARC terrorists in their home camp. Hes been giving them money and arms...
Paul Theroux depicted
V
.
S
.
Naipaul
ten years ago as a stingy, tantrum-prone, racist snob badly in need of driving lessons. He was far too kind...
Walt Whitman
had imagined his poetry would be read by American workers. But his most receptive audience was the British intelligentsia...
More than half the worlds building cranes are at present in
China
. Robert Macfarlane can count 34 of them from his apartment windows...
Lets face it:
Batman and Robin
, as many gay writers have so fondly noted, are a tad campy. They both love flowers...
With his legit literary career in decline, Rupert Smith took on a
nom de porn
and entered the
parallel universe of erotica
...
Peanut Lolita
, a liqueur with a grainy texture and an overwhelming taste of whiskey and peanuts. But what a name...
The poor suffer
, of course. But why do some poor people act to ensure their continued indigence? Charles Karelis wonders...
How long you live
, whether you win or lose cancer lotto or Parkinson’s bingo, have little to do, says Michael Kinsley, with lifes other successes...
As a
waitress in a posh restaurant
, she was ally, authority, and confidante for her customers all within 30 seconds...
Just before it was to open with an exhibit of Titian, Botticelli, and Caravaggio, a
major New York gallery
has been shut by a judge...
more
»
...
Switzerland
: a small country with a skilled workforce, booming exports, and enormous prosperity has become the envy of Europe...
That “lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose,” the
newspaper
, will land for the last time on a doorstep one day in 2043...
Does it not
demean a woman
, every bit as much as it demeans a man, to make of her either a victim of mens appetites or a fantasist of them?...
Did
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
compose a blank-verse translation of Goethes
Faust
and publish it anonymously in London in 1821?...
Cities declined as they emptied while the suburbs swelled. History moves on, and now it is the
suburbs that are poised for decline
...
He sat alone in a room for 24 hours with 6 TVs, a laptop, and 2 radios watching and reading only
political pundits and blogs
. Yes, it can be done...
China
s new intelligentsia
. Despite the global interest in the rise of China, no one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them...
Like the United States, Ireland is at the tail end of a housing- and consumer-fueled boom and
its luck is running out
...
Religion may have evolved
as an adaptive benefit for human beings. But once you know that, youll derive no such benefits from religion...
Suppose you had a nose job, but then decided you liked your old nose better. Maybe with the help of science,
you could regrow it
...
By turns adulatory and neglectful, the English did not know what to make of
Edward Elgar
in his life, and have felt ambivalent about him ever since...
Yes, the
conservative revolution
did get its start in the 1970s, and yes, it did succeed. But not quite as completely as its champions would suggest...
The
dictatorial capitalism
of China carries the seeds of its own demise. In the short term, such countries are forces to be reckoned with, but...
Its always a shock when firebrands of the left
abandon their old politics
and turn right. But this sort of thing has a history...
Encyclopedia Britannica
’s sales for its 32 volume set peaked in 1990. Today, paper encyclopedias are in deep trouble...
Catholicism was an immigrant church
in the 19th century. As the Pew study shows, its on its way to becoming one again...
Though the rational mind knows what a picture is, its hard to hit a babys photo on a dartboard:
our aim falls prey to deep intuitions
...
Figure skating
: fiercely individualistic and starkly conformist, with a fair modicum of corruption. Its popularity is in freefall...
Gustave Courbet
’s
Femme nue couchée
, an erotic masterpiece of 1862, was lost for 50 years after the end of WWII...
The next bubble
must be large enough to recover the losses from the housing bubble collapse. How bad will it be? Some rough calculations...
Kinship and reciprocity are the “twin pillars of altruism in a Darwinian world.” So
altruism is an urge wired into us
by selfish genes?...
Despite paranoia about biotech and routine panics over it, Americas gee-whiz attitude toward machines may yet make the country a
haven for nanotech
...
Fashion
provides a way to now and again liquidate the accumulated dross of consumer lifestyles. The cleansing effect is good for us all...
In 1908 astronomers thought the Milky Way galaxy made up
the entire universe
it was an “island universe” in an infinite void. Ideas keep changing...
Yet another faked memoir
: this one from a mixed-race former child drug-runner from South-Central L.A....
Who was it who said
women aren
’
t funny
? Chances are it was a man and these days the joke is on him...
The
New York Times
Most Stolen Book List
: Philip K. Dick, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, and Jim Thompson. Or any graphic novel...
Ethnonationalism
is not just a detour in European history: its an enduring propensity of the human spirit that must be faced...
When Gen. Raymond Odierno took over the Multi-National Corps-Iraq in 2006, Iraq was in flames. He has become the
Patton of Counterinsurgency
...
Dmitri Nabokov has turned to his dead father for advice on whether to burn the secret manuscript of
Vladimir Nabokov
s last novel
...
More expensive wines taste better
than cheaper wines, a new study shows. Even when they are exactly the same wine...
Were made for math, but only up to a point. Our sense of
what a number is
stands independent of language, memory, and even reason...
Assassination works
, when youre trying to get rid of a tyrant. It is a less successful as a way to influence democracies...
Alain Robbe-Grillet
’s 1962
Last Year at Marienbad
made little sense to its viewers, but it was perfect for its moment in the history of taste...
Peter Gelb wanted theatrical values for the
Metropolitan Opera
, and live movie house screenings were his gimmick. Hey, they work...
Golf in decline
: the number of people who play the game 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000...
Americans are deeply divided over the wisdom of making
space warfare
a part of the national military strategy. Risks are manifold...
The freaks and geeks of the
9
/
11 Truth movement
are on to something. They just haven’t yet figured out what...
Do professors indoctrinate students
by expressing a political ideology in the classroom? Good question. Watch this space...
Libertarians see profit as the basis of stability and opportunity, others see only greed. But a new study shows
business creates peace
...
Beware a slightly too-slick essay as part of your
college entrance application
. It may raise a DDI alert: Daddy did it...
Is the
incidence of autism
rising? No. Its a matter of what we now call autism. As for MMR vaccines, or mercury...
more
»
...
With Christianitys hold over people in decline and Islam on the rise,
Europeans are more defensive
of their cultural heritage...
Because we must decide if some means can be justified by their ends, moralists will always be in work. Consider the
history of the CIA
...
Sex is interesting, even when its bad, says Jessa Crispin.
Sex memoirs
, on the other hand, can be boring beyond belief...
Artist of wondrous Vermeers
? Except that they were not so wondrous, and they were most certainly not Vermeers...
China
:
both proud and resentful
, open and closed, like us yet not at all like us. Still, the onetime sick man of Asia is in exuberant health...
Readers are incurable fabulists. Take that ordinary chap,
Franz Kafka
. We prefer him as a man of metaphysical mystery...
Richard Gatling
invented a mechanized seed planter: seeds dropped from a hopper one by one into the furrow. Why not use the same idea for a gun?...
Man goes to the doctor and says, Doctor, my penis is burning. Doctor explains, That means somebody is talking about your penis.
What is it about jokes
? ...
more
»
...
more
»
...
No one will doubt the intense emotions that drive
David Rieff
s memoir
of his mothers death. But books are not made out of emotions...
Jump-cut, whip-pan, purposeless camera move:
Jean-Luc Godard
remakes narrative form with his every movie...
The
Black Plague
killed millions and at the same time opened up history for survivors, changing the whole future of Europe...
Will unplugging our cellphone chargers or turning TVs off standby reduce energy use and
help fight global warming
? How do the numbers stack up?...
Sure, the
Lolita Effect
may be real. But little girls do also spend time reading books, jumping rope, and playing ball...
Casanova
: priest, con-man, writer, soldier, violinist, alchemist, prisoner, fugitive, gambler, intellectual, and great lover...
The British invented curry
? Not quite. But the Madras curry (Tamil:
kari
) was born with the East India Company...
Work and sex have always been prime movers of
Lord Snowdon
. Even confined to a wheelchair the old goat cant be stopped...
For all of Churchills faults, we may still be grateful for a 1930s politician who found it
intolerable even to breathe the same air
as the Nazis...
Mrs. Thatcher viewed
Ferdinand Mount
as an idle and effete youth. But she came to admire his powers as a wordsmith. Right she was...
Stuck in a Washington traffic jam, you may curse the name of
Pierre L
’
Enfant
. But its not really all his fault...
Q: So is Marxism-Leninism scientific? A: Surely not. If it were, they would have tested it on animals first.
Old Soviet jokes
...
In America, where God and Devil live with science in the age of 9/11,
John Milton
seems right at home — his Satan a model terrorist...
Heinrich Heine
, both playful and serious, called himself the last of the romantics and the first of the moderns...
Country music
knows what it means to be trapped by poverty, a lousy job, lust, and booze. To grasp the USA, just listen...
Pakistan tribal frontier
: a nightmare landscape of unknowable mountains swarming with enemies? This is not the entire story...
Pat Buchanan
s Spenglerian rhetoric about the decline of the West lays bare the racist and reactionary premises of his thought...
Richard Wright
knew what once faced a little black boy in a big white world. “This was the culture from which I sprang. This was the terror from which I fled”...
Hugh Trevor-Roper
was repelled by myths of Scottish nationalism and its tribal loyalties: concocted history had fired the minds of the Nazis...
Humans evolved to live in small isolated groups and are finely tuned to seek people of common values.
Hence we care about race
...
The
Comanche empire
once dominated New Mexico and much of Texas, its power a melange of kinship, trade, diplomacy, extortion, and violence...
Germaine de Staël
may not have been good-looking, but she had real charisma, brains, money and Benjamin Constant...
Awe-inspiring acts of imagination, impish acrobatics of diction, high-jinks of imagery, and dollops of wordplay.
But is it good poetry
?...
Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn
are both Russian prophets, holy fools, and dissidents. Not Anton Chekhov, for which we may be thankful...
How could such a masterly writer as
V
.
S
.
Naipaul
turn out to be such a monster in his personal life? Perhaps by a conscious decision...
The conceit that we can have any useful idea of what the world will be like in a hundred years is,
Nigel Lawson
says, inherently absurd...
Those who worship at
Ronald Reagan
s altar
no longer hope to make the world over again, the line their icon used to borrow from Tom Paine...
Churchill regarded Gandhi
as “a fanatic and an ascetic of the fakir type well known in the East. Well, yes. And no...
Population anxieties
used to be about starvation. Now they are about saving the planet from our rapidly breeding species...
Pythagoras was right
: his universe may not be as simple as he imagined, but it proves ever more comprehensible by the day...
Scientists may be biased
, but science itself, for all its flaws, is still the best system ever devised for grasping how the world works...
Sean Wilentz
rescues the real Ronald Reagan from the mythological president offered by fans on the right and critics on the left...
Henry Kissinger
’s Jewish origins are the real key to understanding both the man and the world’s reaction to him...
Was WWII worth fighting
? Get the facts and make up your own mind! No need for experts! This book tells all you need to know!...
Shakespeare vs
.
Milton
. Prithee, who is the greater figure in literary history? Nigel Smith thinks he knows the answer...
Seven years’ distance from 9/11 reveals a brutal reality. For both his family and his country,
Osama bin Laden
’s attacks have turned a tidy profit...
Like Edmund Wilson,
Alfred Kazin
laughed off John Kennedys attempt to wine, dine, and co-opt him...
Religion is beliefs, ideas, rituals, customs.
Conscience is deeper
. It searches for the beliefs and ideas that make up religion...
Wernher von Braun
: a 20th-century Faust, a man willing to work with an evil regime in return for the resources to carry out his cherished research...
So
this Aristotle guy
hops a boat from Athens, goes into the library at Alexandria, grabs some books, returns home and puts his name on them...
V
.
S
.
Naipaul
is a prospector digging along a vein he has worked before, says Joseph Lelyveld. Much of it still sparkles...
Monolithic politico-corporate elites have a big place in
Naomi Klein
s world. But they dont quite fit every political situation...
Postwar Britain
: shabby frocks, sallow faces, and dreary meals of ground meat stretched with grated potato and oatmeal...
The recrudescence of
robust atheism
means non-belivers need no longer need suffer lonely isolation...
Nina Khruscheva is Russian to the core, but also as New York as they come. She says its
time for Russians to reread Vladimir Nabokov
...
James Frey
s latest
depends not on plots or characters but “high concepts,” the bright, shiny clichés that Hollywood screenwriters use for their pitches...
The
Dalai Lama
s frequent meetings with Western leaders are now seen by China as provocations and used as an excuse not to meet with him...
The past, historians like to say, is another country.
Israeli history
is another galaxy, writes Carlin Romano...
Is licking an ice cream cone on the street beneath your dignity?
What then is human dignity
? Steven Pinker wonders...
Our eyes are amazing, a genuine credit to evolution. So are our hands, not to mention our kidneys.
But our brains
?...
How many writers got the Nobel Prize for Literature for a book that was largely ghostwritten?
Winston Churchill
, for one...
You can argue with some credibility that
John Stuart Mill
was the greatest public intellectual in the history of Britain, maybe even the world...
Shopping
gives our choices tangible effect. The enthusiasm with which people shop contrasts with their view of work...
Nikola Tesla feared earrings, peaches, and touching people’s hair. Sure,
another nutty inventor
. But men like him changed our world...
Philosophers often cannot resist
writing about Shakespeare
, with his depth and complexity. Alas, they are mostly ill-equipped to do so...
Prokofiev
s dry wit
resulted in some fine, bitchy one-liners. Mahlers 7th Symphony was like kissing a stillborn child...
Today we have nannies, but in the 19th century they had
governesses
. That plain Jane Eyre, for example...
Classical music
: abandoned, left behind sulking in its tent as culture moves on, with the action happening somewhere else...
The house embodies our ideas of intimate family life and serves as our haven in a cold world. It’s also the site of
Sisyphean labor
,
mostly female
...
The
RAND Corporation
remains one of the most potent and complex purveyors of U.S. imperialism. Its influence, positive and sinister, continues to be felt...
In
Peter Gay
s reading, modernist thinking is reduced to a psychological impulse: the lure of heresy. Yes, but...
Antiquity cannot be owned
by any culture or any nation state. It is the inheritance of all humanity and ought to be open to all, preserved in museums...
Women: enslaved by patriarchal views of proper domestic toil, or expected to get a high-paying job.
Susan Pinker
explains...
As a student,
Tony Judt
was an arden