Totally Spent. Metallica Guitarist and Vocalist James Hetfield. Not Everything Has Changed. The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America in America by Kathleen Gerson, Oxford University Press, 297 pages, $24.95 When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins, Little, Brown and Co., 480 pages, $27.99 My upbringing was something of an anachronism. My dad went to work every morning at the family business (where his father and grandfather had both worked), and my mom spent her days at home with me and my brother and sister. She made us breakfast, drove us to school, did all of the housework, picked us up, shuttled us to piano lessons or basketball practice, and when my dad came through the door again at 6 P.M., she had a solid, Midwestern dinner (meat, potatoes, vegetables, bread -- sometimes all combined conveniently in casserole form) ready and waiting. Advertisement This is why I found myself wishing Gerson had interviewed a slightly older cohort.
See the complete issue. Matt Groening. Traditionally, you have either the overly optimistic world's fair/chamber of commerce/"The Jetsons" point of view or you have dark, drippy, cyberpunk, creepy future á la Blade Runner or Brazil or The Fifth Element. I'm trying to offer an alternative that's more like the way things are right now, which is a mix of the wonderful and horrible. Basically, everything I try to do is to present an alternative to what somebody else is doing. If some of the other stuff didn't exist, I'd do stuff more like what they are doing. I'm reacting in part to the liberal optimism of "Star Trek" and Star Wars, which seem to be the dominant science-fiction fantasies of our time In what ways does "Futurama" work against that vision? Let me think... I don't know if we have room for any more hideous mutants.
Oh yeah. How long have you been working on the idea for "Futurama"? Fifties science fiction especially, in magazines like Galaxy and the writings of Fred Pohl and C.M. Yes. They tried to. Yes. Yeah. No. White America Has Lost Its Mind. About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel. It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).
But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip. Todd Harrison (iStockphoto) Rush Limbaugh Glenn Beck Tom DeLay Laura Schlessinger Related Stories More About. Godless in Tumourville: Christopher Hitchens interview. Fordlandia: The Failure Of Ford's Jungle Utopia. Chess Boxing: You Throw A Punch, I Take Your Queen : Krulwich Wonders… Hide captionThe "graphic novel" that started it all. Enki Bilal A/Casterman S.A It's called chess boxing and it's like it sounds. We start in a ring. There are screaming fans. The first round is 4 minutes of chess, followed by 3 minutes of boxing, then chess, then boxing, for 11 rounds. These are video highlights from 2003's first world Chess Boxing Championship in Amsterdam, featuring "lepe the Joker" versus "luis the Lawyer," with "lepe" pulling off a thrilling down-to-the-wire victory, which is nice because "lepe" is Lepe Rubingh, the guy who invented the game — or maybe reinvented it.
Yves Sucksdorff/WCBO It's fast. Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images I've never seen this live, but hunting around the web, it seems there are now chess boxing clubs in Germany, Russia, England, Bulgaria and the US. Lepe says he got the idea for chess boxing from a 1992 comic book called Froid Equateur, drawn by French-Yugoslavian artist and film maker Enki Bilal. Miguel Villagran/AP. Natural7 on NPR. Islamic terrorism in Europe: After Van Gogh. Crumbling dollar resonates through economy - Stocks & economy. WASHINGTON — Things in the U.S. sure are tough. Brother, can you spare a euro? Signs saying "We accept euros" are cropping up in the windows of some Manhattan retailers. A Belgium company is trying to gobble up St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, the nation's largest brewer and iconic Super Bowl advertiser. The almighty dollar is mighty no more. It has been declining steadily for six years against other major currencies, undercutting its role as the leading international banking currency.
Vacationing Europeans are finding bargains in the U.S., while Americans in Paris and other world capitals are being clobbered by sky-high tabs for hotels, travel and even sidewalk cafes. Everything made in America — from goods to entire companies — is near dirt cheap to many foreigners. Since oil is bought and sold in dollars worldwide, the devalued dollar has made the recent surge in energy prices even worse for Americans, leading to $4 gasoline in the United States. MIT's EurekaFest showcases high school students' problem-solving prototypes.
EurekaFest is a yearly event held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that showcases the prototype inventions of high school students from around the country. The inventions consist of various gadgets and devices aimed at helping solve real-world problems. One of the more impressive ideas I saw during the two days I spent covering the event was a prototype “sensing” cane for blind people.
The cane features sensors that can detect objects up to eight feet away, at which point the cane’s handle begins buzzing once per second and increases in intensity as objects get closer. There were actually two separate teams working on sensing canes – one from Harvard, MA and one from Norfolk, VA. Other interesting concepts included the following: Pressure-sensitive illuminated computer cable: USB cable that lights up when you squeeze it, allowing you to easily identify a particular cable among other cables plugged into your computer.
Lemelson-MIT Program’s EurekaFest [MIT.edu] Like this video? CNN.com - E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot' - Apr 22, 2005. Friday, April 22, 2005 Posted: 8:08 AM EDT (1208 GMT) LONDON, England -- Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows. The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard. The survey of 1,100 Britons showed: Almost two out three people check their electronic messages out of office hours and when on holidayHalf of all workers respond to an e-mail within 60 minutes of receiving oneOne in five will break off from a business or social engagement to respond to a message.Nine out of 10 people thought colleagues who answered messages during face-to-face meetings were rude, while three out of 10 believed it was not only acceptable, but a sign of diligence and efficiency.
In 80 clinical trials, Dr. "This is a very real and widespread phenomenon," Wilson said. 'I'm a victim of child abuse,' reveals Tim Roth. Bullied at school, abused as a child and memorably murdered in Reservoir Dogs - it hasn't been easy for the versatile actor By Lina Das UPDATED: 20:58 GMT, 11 April 2009 Enlarge 'It (child abuse) happened during my childhood up to my early teens and although I'm not going to say who it was, he's long gone now,' says Tim Roth (above at the Burbank Warner Ranch studios in California) After roles ranging from the foppish prince in Rob Roy to the wounded undercover cop who gushed seemingly endless torrents of blood in Reservoir Dogs, no one could accuse Tim Roth of a lack of diversity.
On screen, his characters have tended to be on the unhinged side and although in person he exudes a similar kind of wiry, kinetic energy, he is as amiable and good-natured as they come. In 1999, Roth directed The War Zone, starring Ray Winstone, which was praised for tackling incest and child abuse. Watching reality TV is like watching an accident from the top of a bus. I'm a victim of child abuse. The Polaroid Lives! | Newsweek Trends | Newsweek.com. Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible - Times Online. 10 Extraordinary Burial Ceremonies From Around The World. Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter? | Salon News. Mr. Anderson, let’s talk about the future of journalism. This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don’t use the word “journalism.” OK , how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.
Sorry, I don’t use the word “media.” There are no other words. Hang on a minute. No. Your local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is fighting for survival. . … I wouldn’t notice. It comes to me in many ways: via Twitter, it shows up in my in box, it shows up in my RSS base, through conversations. You just don’t care. No, I do care. As millions upon millions trusted the classic media previously. If something has happened in the world that’s important, I’ll hear about it. The New York Times, CNN, Reuters and others can publish their best reporting on the Web and you’d never read it? I read lots of articles from mainstream media but I don’t go to mainstream media directly to read it. True. Exactly. Newspapers are not important. We’re still figuring that out.
Yes. Next Age of Discovery. Mayor Palin: A Rough Record. John McCain was clear about why he picked half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. "I found someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies," he said in introducing her in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday. Palin was someone, he noted, "who reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and independents to serve in government. " It is a powerful reinforcement of McCain's own political brand: tough, reform-minded, willing to break with his own party for the right cause. And it's true that her high-profile crusade against corruption and complacency in her own state party over the past few years has made Palin the Frank Serpico of Alaska politics: she publicly ratted out her state party chairman; whupped the good old boys' network, as she likes to put it, in a gubernatorial primary; and fought a general election in which the scandal-stained state GOP didn't lift a finger on her behalf.
St. St. At the 11:15 a.m. Top 25 blogs. BBC article. A rare 1937 Bugatti sells at auction for £3m A classic Bugatti car, which gathered dust in a Tyneside garage for half a century, has been sold for 3.4m euros (£3m) at an auction in Paris. Bonhams had listed lot 17403 as a "motoring icon" with an engine that has not been fired up for 50 years. Relatives of reclusive Newcastle doctor Harold Carr found the 1937 Type 57S Atalante in a garage after he died. It was originally owned by Earl Howe - first president of the British Racing Drivers' Club. Just 17 were built. 'True supercar' Bonhams tempted bidders by writing in its sales description: "The new owner will have the pleasure of firing up [engine] 26S and hearing that turbine-like sound that so excited Earl Howe when he collected this car from Sorel in 1937.
"Once again [chassis] 57502, a true supercar with impeccable credentials, emerges to take its place on the world stage. " Dr Carr drove it until 1960 when he parked it in his garage - to be discovered after he died in 2007. Asia-Pacific | Winning hearts and minds in Vietnam. In my 46 years of experience in journalism, I have often found that the most remarkable material surfaces by accident. So it is with the Saigon Songs, recordings made in the Vietnam War, which have never been broadcast before. They are among the most moving mementoes of war I have ever heard. Their edge is sharpened, it seems to me, by a special relevance to the wars of today. The Saigon Songs date from the Americans' hearts and minds campaign, between 1965 and 1967, as they poured their ground troops into Vietnam in support of the South Vietnamese government. Hearts and minds The campaign was run by Maj Gen Ed Lansdale of the US Army, who by all accounts was a most remarkable man.
His weapons were not guns but words and music, through which he hoped to persuade the people in the villages to resist the North Vietnamese communists and the home-grown insurgents, the Viet Cong. Lt Gober was devoted to the cause and to the soldiers alongside him. He certainly did not back in 1966. 'Heart songs' 'I'm a victim of child abuse,' reveals Tim Roth. Kindle vs author's guild. Organic products, when buying organic pays (and doesn't) Measuring your Google search's carbon footprint. Updated at 12:20 a.m PST January 12 to include Google comment. Worried about the carbon footprint of your Google searches? A Harvard University physicist says a typical search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide. Thus, performing two searches is comparable to bringing a kettle to boil, according to a report Sunday in The Times of London.
While that may not sound like a lot, the report notes that Google handles about 200 million searches daily. "Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power," Alex Wissner-Gross told the newspaper. "A Google search has a definite environmental impact. " The global IT industry generates about 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, or about as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines, according to a recent Gartner study cited by the newspaper.
Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. The 10 Most Popular Stories of 2008. December 26, 2008 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. 2008 was a banner year for progressive media: we helped to boot conservatives from power and elect a President running on a promise of change. AlterNet played its part, with groundbreaking political and cultural stories -- some culled from the best progressive sources on the web and many more produced in-house. Below, we've assembled the 10 most popular stories of the year; the articles you read, emailed, and sent flying around the Internet.
Here are AlterNet's 10 most popular stories of the year. 10. Amy Goodman, Democracy Now Consumers are getting duped by the food industry, paying the price with their health. 9. By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet It's not hard to stir up negative publicity when you advocate gunning down wolves from airplanes and deny the human causes of climate change. 8.
By Naomi Wolf, AlterNet 7. By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com 6. By Nicole McClelland, Mother Jones 5. 4. Totally Spent.