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July 25, 2006

Strange statues; Tax map; Nader scolds Bush; Rick Danko unplugged

Hard art: Strange statues around the world. Public art that would stop you in your tracks. It seems these photos were first published without captions, and some were added as readers supplied identifications in comments.

$$$,$$$: Zillow.com says it hasn't gotten around to mapping Providence real estate yet, but if you point it to an address and zoom all the way in you'll see that it has mapped the tax assessor's valuations for each house.

Ralph...: Nader: Here's How to Halt This Horror. Ralph Nader lectures George Bush, starting with,

You have been a weak president, despite your strutting and barking, when it comes to doing the right things for the American people within the Constitution and its rule of law...

This is the same Ralph Nader, you may recall, who in 2000 called Bush and Gore "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" and took 97,000 votes in Florida, leading Queen's College/CUNY sociologist Harry G. Levine to write in the Village Voice (Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber) that

Ralph Nader had strapped political dynamite onto himself and walked into one of the closest elections in American history hoping to blow it up.

In this rant -- which oddly appears in Counterpunch, where the link is broken at the moment, and in The Palestine Chronicle --- Nader makes no mention of his part in bringing about this era.

Vaguely related: Molly Ivins wants Democrats to run Bill Moyers for president.

Water writer: Device uses waves to “print” on water surface:

The device consists of 50 water wave generators encircling a cylindrical tank 1.6 meters in diameter and 30 cm deep (about the size of a backyard kiddie pool). The wave generators move up and down in controlled motions to simultaneously produce a number of cylindrical waves that act as pixels. The pixels, which measure 10 cm in diameter and 4 cm in height, are combined to form lines and shapes. The device is capable of spelling out the entire roman alphabet, as well as some simple kanji characters. Each letter or picture remains on the water surface only for a moment, but they can be produced in succession on the surface every 3 seconds.

Missed: (The late) Rick Danko of The Band plays When You Awake on acoustic guitar. (via Robot Wisdom)

People's canon:
"Please tell me a book you think everyone should read and why." At Ask Metafilter, aptly subtitled, "Querying the hive mind." The hive complies, and the result may expand your reading list. This being the male tech Web, nobody names Emily Dickinson, of course. (via Hanan Levin's Grow-A-Brain. Hanan's plan to move to New Zealand looks more appealing every day.)

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 7:00 AM | Permalink