January 2010
425. A man gets only a couple chances a year to...
December 2009
Letters to Christopher Walken
From Brandon Bird: “While Artist-in-Residence at Cornell’s arts dorm, I was expected to come up with stimulating art-related programs for the students to participate in. “Letters to Walken” allowed them the chance to write their yearly Christmas letter to Christopher Walken”
[via The World’s Best Ever]
'Kamikaze' New Year's cards (1937)
This high-spirited set of vintage New Year’s cards celebrates the historic flight of the Kamikaze, a Mitsubishi Ki-15 aircraft that became the first Japanese-built plane to fly from Japan to Europe. Sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and piloted by Masaaki Iinuma (who came to be known as “the Japanese Lindbergh”), the Kamikaze made its momentous 51-hour flight from Tokyo...
Cost of Healthcare
This clever graph by National Geographic shows the cost of healthcare compared to life expectancy in a number of countries. The way that the US healthcare expenditure is pictured entirely outside the confines of the graph’s scale and legend is a particularly effective design decision.
[via kottke]
Adam Platt's Where to Eat 2010 - New York | New... →
Apple's Alien Minions
By Matthew Battles
ith speculation on the appearance of Apple’s tablet computer rampant, a minor detail, which has entirely escaped the notice of breathless commentators, may prove the most important of all. Among Apple’s patent filings pursuant to the forthcoming device is clear evidence that the engineering effort is staffed by aliens. This specification drawing, culled from an...
Why we can never rest: a year in the life of...
n June 15, our technicians told me to add a note to our website, writes Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter. The note warned users of a planned maintenance session that meant our service would be inaccessible while we carried out an overdue system upgrade. Immediately, we began to see a reaction in the form of tweets. Then came the emails. Then came the phone calls. Even the US State Department...
“It is not just the billions of dollars, but the billions of hours people have...”
– Andrew R. Thomas, editor of the Journal of Transportation Security
Picture of the Day
Who cares that this photo is a fake? It still represents a lifestyle to work hard for.
Dave Barry's year in review: 2009 →
WatchNever a Year Like ‘09 | JibJab
Trippy →
2009: The Year in Pictures - The New York Times →
What happens when we can't trust the verifiers?
by David Sirota
Are we making the same mistakes with the banks that we did leading up to war in Iraq?
A British government report admitted this month that one of the major rationales for invading Iraq — the claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes — probably came from a cab driver. Had the public originally been told about this sketchy...
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Listen: 3 hrs of Christmas music that does not suck
[Thanks Peteski].
PRODUCTION RIDER FOR KATE KERSHNER'S HOLIDAY VISIT...
From the Archives
BY KATE KERSHNER
Please note the following points that shall be adhered to on Kate Kershner’s Holiday Visit Home Tour. It is in the best interest of the VENUE (i.e.: JIM and CAROL KERSHNER’S rancher on 34th St. and the inhabitants therein) that these demands be strictly followed, if the VENUE ever wishes to see the TALENT (i.e.: KATE KERSHNER) come back after the...
Original plans for the Eiffel Tower | kottke →
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Watch“Ding Dong, it’s a Christmas Song” - Günther
The End of the 00s: The Guantanamo Gift Shop, by...
I always found it strange when polemicists denounced George W. Bush for saying, after 9/11, that Americans should go shopping. Andrew Bacevich, who’s emerged as possibly the premiere root-and-branch critic of American militarism, wrote an impassioned op-ed explaining the reasoning behind that critique. “From the very outset, the president described the ‘war on terror’ as...
One Possible Class-Action Defense Strategy:...
In class-action cases we generally recommend removing to federal court if possible, moving to dismiss, and then swiftly taking class representatives’ depositions if the motion is not successful. There are other strategies, however. Here’s one that we could not officially recommend, but which has been at least temporarily successful. Let’s say, just speaking hypothetically, that...
