Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.
Corrective: Paris Hilton Story:
In a Nov. 13 story, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that Paris Hilton was praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India. Lori Berk, a publicist for Hilton, said she never made any comments about helping drunken elephants in India.
(via Swirlee)
Competing with last May’s “Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo” for best headline of 2007: “Hamlet Shaken by Murder Then Suicide“.
Reprinted in full from the Slog because it freaked me out: You think the Minnesota bridge was bad?
So you know how all those news stories about the Minneapolis bridge collapse have highlighted the fact that the bridge received a ranking of just 50 percent on a federal scale of 1 to 100, making it “structurally deficient”?
The central portion of the Alaskan Way Viaduct was ranked on the same scale. Its score: Nine percent. And if that doesn’t make you want to stay away from the viaduct until they tear the damn thing down, perhaps knowing that the National Bridge Inventory (which provided the Minnesota number) considers it “basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action,” will. (Fun bonus fact: The 520 bridge across Lake Washington received a rating of 44.8 percent, just meeting the “minimum tolerable limit to be left in place as is.”)
Gah. Freaky. I didn’t like the viaduct before all this stuff. I’m even less fond of it now. Just tear the fool thing down (and don’t rebuild it, and don’t dig some stupid tunnel…as long as we’re going to have to move to surface streets eventually no matter what happens to the viaduct, we might as well just stick with that option and do it right).
Quite possibly my all-time favorite tabloid, the Weekly World News, is shutting down.
American Media has decided to suspend publication of Weekly World News, both the print publication and the web site. No reason was given at press time, although reliable sources do tell us that management turned down at least one offer to buy the publication.
The weekly supermarket tabloid—known as the home of “Bat Boy” and other less-than-probable stories—has long had staffing connections with the science fiction, fantasy, and horror fields.
Apparently, this came as a surprise to the employees.
Bob Greenberger, an editor with Weekly World News, reports on his blog that he and the rest of the staff were called into a meeting about noon on Friday where they were “told the Board of Directors has chosen to close Weekly World News. The reasons given make no sense. We’re stunned and shell-shocked. We’re to stay on through August 3, finishing the reprint issues and then we’re done. A glorious, funny, odd publication, born in 1979, will go out with a whimper and all I can think is that something’s going on that they’re not telling us because it just doesn’t make sense.”
Last year, entirely on a whim, Prairie and I went to Dance Off 2006 and had an absolute blast. During the show, I took a few photos, and sent the link off to the Dance Off crew. Turns out they liked them…in fact, they liked them so much that this year, I’m one of two official photographers for the event!
This year’s Dance Off is coming soon — just two weeks away! This year it’ll be held at the Crocodile on August 2nd at 8pm, and it’d be a good idea to buy your tickets now, as last year’s show sold out.
Dance Off is an annual dance battle for those who have the heart and soul of a dancer, but lack the training and talent of a dancer.
Each summer, teams of dancers band together and choreograph awesomely bad routines with which to enter the battle realm. They perform these routines for a drunken audience who determine the best of the worst for that year.
After the votes are tallied, a winner is crowned and an insane dance party rages into the night.
Does this sound like fun to you? Then be prepared each August for Dance Off to rock your face!
I’m in the process of going through my photos from this year’s Solstice Parade — everything’s imported, named, and tagged, but I still need to decide which ones get fine-tuned and uploaded.
In the meantime, while there’s a few thousand photos up already (and it’s increasing by the hour) either floating around loose or in the group pool, this set from ChrisB really deserves to be seen. A high vantage point and a tilt-shift lens make for a look at the parade that’s very different from everyone else’s shots!
I love the internet.
I’ve been working my way through reading the archives of xkcd (“Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language [which may be unsuitable for children], unusual humor [which may be unsuitable for adults], and advanced mathematics [which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors].”), which just catapulted into the ranks of ‘favorite web comic’ after I stumbled across the Map of Online Communities yesterday. I just came across this strip…
Embedded as a tooltip (the little pop-up text that shows when you hover over an image) was the text, “The younger folk in the audience think this is a joke.”
Curious, a quick Google search led me to this story:
On a fishing trip in Plains, Georgia, President Carter had an encounter with a “swamp rabbit”. This seemingly trivial event was seized upon by the press and became a sort of Rorschach test of the Carter presidency: reporters and commentators saw in this story whatever they wanted to see in Carter’s administration. Jody Powell, Carter’s press secretary, described the affair in his 1986 book The Other Side of the Story:
It began late one afternoon in the spring of 1979. The President was sitting with a few of us on the Truman Balcony. He had recently returned from a visit to Plains, and we were talking about homefolks and how the quail were nesting and similar matters of international import.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason — he was drinking lemonade, as I recall — the President volunteered the information that while fishing in a pond on his farm he had sighted a large animal swimming toward him. Upon closer inspection, the animal turned out to be a rabbit. Not one of your cutesy, Easter Bunny-type rabbits, but one of those big splay-footed things that we called swamp rabbits when I was growing up.
The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.
The President then evidently shooed the critter away from his boat with a paddle.
(Photo in the public domain, courtesy the Jimmy Carter Library.)
Anyone want a deal on tickets to the touring production of Edward Scissorhands, the “magical new stage adaption of the classic Tim Burton film” presented as a “musical ‘play without words'” (which I must admit, sounds a lot like something called ‘ballet’ to me, but who am I to question these things)?
Edward Scissorhands broke all Box Office records when it premiered at Sadler’s Wells in November 2005. The musical “play without words” enjoyed a tour of the UK followed by visits to Tokyo, Seoul and Paris prior to coming to North America where it opened for a 23-week run in November 2006. The North American tour will visit 12 cities, including Washington DC, St. Louis, Brooklyn, Toronto, St. Paul, Denver and Seattle.
Audiences of all ages have been captivated by this unique production, as well as by the humor and charm of the leading character, Edward, an innocent soul forced to find his way in a world that doesn’t accept him.
Thanks to a very kind offer from the touring company, I’m able to pass on word of a special ‘Young Professional’s Night’ discount for one show only, next Friday, April 27th…
Attend Young Professionals’ Night at the 5th Avenue Theatre on Friday, April 27 at 8 PM and see the new stage adaptation of “Edward Scissorhands”
Buy your advance tickets for this special event using promotional code: TOPIARY. This code will get you the best seats available (a regular $68 value) for only $40. You must be 39 or under to take advantage of the offer. Please have your ID ready as you enter the theater.
To buy your tickets, simply go to http://www.5thavenue.org, call 206-625-1900, or stop by the 5th Avenue Theatre Box Office in-person. Don’t forget to use the promotional code TOPIARY when ordering your tickets.
For more information, visit the 5th Avenue Theatre Website.
Nice rant on Metroblogging Seattle yesterday regarding the ongoing, neverending mess of a fight between Greg “Big Dig Seattle” Nickels, Christine “Viaduct? Vhy not a duck?” Gregoire, and the people of Seattle who just want this all over with…
But let me tell you anyway what I think, because damn it, I’m a Seattleite and I’m going to give you my opinion because I demand to be heard.
- Tear the goddamned viaduct down.
- Do all the multimodal work you should have done decades ago to hook the working port and industrial areas into rail and road.
- Make Alaskan Way into something like the Embarcadeo — with the Benson streetcar running down the middle of the boulevard, parking lots replaced with public parks, and a no-new-construction zone on the waterfront keeping Martin Selig and those other condo-building town destroyers from ripping down all that historic architecture.
- Lean on the state to fix traffic flow on southbound I-5 so I can get to the airport. You know, like MOVE THE DAMN 520 ONRAMP TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD SO WE CAN STOP THIS DAMN MERCER WEAVE CRAP. Or fixing it so there’s MORE THAN ONE TRAVEL LANE THROUGH DOWNTOWN. The state can do this, and it will be CHEAPER than the $15 billion the tunnel’s now going to cost because Tim “when I was a third-grader I never learned how to carry a one” Ceis didn’t know that CONCRETE ISN’T BROUGHT TO CONTRACTORS BY THE MAGIC BUILDING MATERIALS FAIRY WHEN THEY LEAVE A PIECE OF BRICK UNDER THEIR PILLOWS AT NIGHT.
Looks like Dan Savage agrees.
Given that I think the Viaduct is ugly and intrusive enough as it is, and don’t really want to see a bigger one (good summary here, and that it seems like Seattle getting its own version of the Big Dig (and, apparently, a more dangerous version) seems pretty stupid, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for just getting rid of the Viaduct and moving everything onto the street. Sure, not easy, and will take some serious rearranging. But from what I’ve been reading, it sure seems to be cheaper, safer, and a lot more visually attractive once all’s said and done. Besides, as many have pointed out, that’s the option we’re going to have no matter what during Viaduct removal, rebuilding, or tunnel digging — so why not just commit to it as a permanent measure and do it right?
A couple of disclaimers to start with:
The analogy is probably quite strained, and I keep bouncing between two ways of expressing it, neither of which I think are quite right:
That said…
Wil went on a rant today about diggers dragging the ‘net down to somewhere below the least common denominator.
I’ve been a Digger for a long time, and always felt like I could rely on Digg’s homepage to reliably and consistently direct me to interesting and useful content, accompanied by insightful, funny, and interesting commentary.
My, how things have changed in just a few months. The links (that make it past the bury brigade) are still pretty good, but for whatever reason, the maturity and behavior of the average Digger has evolved into, well, something resembling a middle school lunch room. While Digg has always been a great way to share your creation with a large audience on the Internet, the associated grief that frequently comes with being exposed to Digg’s userbase has lead to several sites blocking Digg, shutting off comments because of abusive Diggers, and using complicated .htaccess rewrites to send Digg’s traffic away.
This struck me as being the same basic premise of part of what Mike was talking about here (some of which I mentioned yesterday) only applied to neocons and the internet in relation to politics, rather than to diggers.
I think this is a specific result of the rise of neoconservatives to cultural and political power. Note that I don’t attribute this to conservatives or conservatism, but specifically to _neo_conservatives. I don’t believe that the neoconservative political or social culture is interested in conducting their affairs with civility or with any degree of compromise — and therein lies the problem, as it creates a culture of war. I may not have written about politics in quite a long time…but during that interim, I’ve constantly linklogged to neoconservatives’ actions throughout the American political and social culture, and they are always extremist and seemingly operating under the slogan of “no quarter given.” And although I had hoped this extremism might die with the end of Bush’s Presidency, it seems as if moderates are willing to metamorphose into extremists if it gets them the power they seek (McCain) or that other extremists are ready to jump into the situation the moment a void forms (Romney).
It’s that same all-or-nothing, no-quarter-given, us-or-them, black-and-white viewpoint that our culture is rapidly sinking into. No matter whether the arena is politics or the net, online or off, there seems to be no room left for people who actually want to talk to each other, even if they don’t agree. Respectful discourse, on the whole, doesn’t exist anymore — and how can it, when we’re too busy shouting down the opposition to actually listen to what they have to say?
