Along with other things tucked into the nooks and crannies around here, there are new photos up in the Make It Snappy 2 photo gallery. And, by the way, there is now a second Make It Snappy gallery. Which you might have picked up on.

I'm still working on correcting any errors in old posts, tweaking the template, and adding new pages. There is some more artwork on the way, a few chucks of concrete poetry, and some "new" "art"work....

US bans timed-honoured typeface.

US bans timed-honoured typeface
30/01/2004. ABC News Online

In a sign that no matter is too small to affect international diplomacy, the US State Department has issued an edict banning its longtime standard typeface from all official correspondence and replacing it with a 'more modern' font.

In an internal memorandum distributed on Wednesday, the department declared 'Courier New 12' - the font and size decreed for US diplomatic documents for years - to be obsolete and unacceptable after February 1.

'In response to many requests and with a view to making our written work easier to read, we are moving to a new standard font: 'Times New Roman 14',' said the memorandum.

The new font 'takes up almost exactly the same area on the page as Courier New 12, while offering a crisper, cleaner, more modern look,' it said, adding that after February 1 'only Times New Roman 14 will be accepted.'

'This applies to diplomatic notes,' the memorandum said tersely.

There are only three exceptions to the draconian new typographical rules: telegrams, treaty materials prepared by the State Department's legal affairs office and documents drawn up for the president's signature, it said.

The memorandum offered no explanation for the exceptions, leaving foreign service officers to speculate as to whether the White House, US treaty partners and telegram readers are not yet able to handle the change.

Pickled dragon mystery

January 29, 2004

A pickled "dragon" that looks as if it might once have flown around Harry Potter's Hogwarts has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire, England.

The baby dragon, in a sealed jar, was discovered with a metal tin containing paperwork in old-fashioned German of the 1890s.

Allistair Mitchell, who was asked to investigate the dragon by a friend, David Hart, who discovered it in his garage, speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts at the end of the 19th century, when rivalry between the countries was intense.

"At the time, scientists were the equivalent of today's pop stars. It would have been a great propaganda coup for the Germans if it had come off," Mr Mitchell said.

"I've shown the photos to someone from Oxford University and he thought it was amazing. Obviously he could not say if it was real and wanted to do a biopsy."

The documents suggest that the Natural History Museum turned the dragon away, possibly because they suspected it was a trick, and sent it to be destroyed. But it appears a porter intercepted the jar and took it home. The papers suggest the porter may have been Frederick Hart - David Hart's grandfather.

Mr Mitchell said: "The dragon is flawless, from the tiny teeth to the umbilical cord. It could be made from indiarubber, because Germany was the world's leading manufacturer of it at the time, or it could be made of wax. It has to be fake. No one has ever proved scientifically that dragons exist. But everyone who sees it immediately asks, 'Is it real?"'

Some scientists believe that dragons, though the product of imagination, were inspired by the extraordinary creatures that once roamed the Earth.

As J.K.Rowling's alter ego Hermione Granger once suggested, legends have a basis in fact.

The Telegraph, London

via BoingBoing

In Brunei, we have Officials dismantling the logs resembling a dragon at the site allegedly used to summon spirits and ghosts to obtain 4-D lottery numbers in Jalan Rasau.
And Music from DragonQuest videogame moving from games to orchestras.

Whale explodes in Taiwanese city

A dead sperm whale has exploded while being delivered to a research centre near the southwestern city of Tainan.

Passers-by and cars were soaked in blood and body parts were sprayed over a road after the bursting of the whale, which was being carried on a trailer.

The whale had died earlier on a beach and had been collected so its remains could be used for educational purposes.

A marine biologist blamed the explosion on pressure from gases building up in the mammal as it began to decompose.

The whale attracted a lot of onlookers both before and after it exploded.

Several parked cars and pedestrians got covered in blood when it exploded.

Residents and shop owners wore masks while trying to clean up the spilt blood and entrails.

"What a stinking mess. This blood and other stuff that blew out on the road is disgusting, and the smell is really awful," said one resident.

Professor Wang Chien-ping, of the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, had ordered the whale to be moved to the Shi-Tsao Natural Preserve after his own institution refused to allow a post-mortem examination on its own premises.

Record find

He said that the animal had been close to death when it was found on a beach and had died by the time help arrived.

"Because of the natural decomposing process, a lot of gases accumulated, and when the pressure build-up was too great, the whale's belly exploded."

However he said despite the explosion, enough of the whale remained to allow for an examination by marine biologists.

Professor Wang said initial observation showed the whale to be an older bull and that its weight of 50 tonnes and 17 metre-length made it the largest whale ever recorded in Taiwan.

Reports say because of the whale's size, it took 13 hours, three large lifting cranes and 50 workers to get the whale loaded on the trailer truck for its final trip.

Surely, I'm not the only one thinking of Douglas Adams, right now....
Don't forget The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: the adventure game.

v.e.r.b.a.t.i.m. home
hasn't been updated in a few years. Oulipo-like group, with branches across America....

FONOLOGIA
er, what?

monochrom Brandmarker

An attempt to evaluate the actual power of brands by making Austrian people draw a total of twelve logos (nine international, three typically European) from memory, 25 people per brand.

X-RAY SPECS
If you're not Superman, you need a pair of these.
Tim has some memories and copies of the comic-book ads for xray specs.
And XrayDeb provides us with some Xray Humor and Information. Just what we all need!!!

Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 19:01:44 -0700 (MST)
From: new
Subject: stop sending me stupid junk mail
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Sender: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net
Status:


stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail stop sending me stupid junk mail


# distributed via : no commercial use without permission
# is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net

An Interview With Mr. DiscoVision
covering technology, copyright law, and some off-kilter looks into the future in 1979.
Some more on the early laser-beams of DiscoVision.

Secret of historic code: it's gibberish
The Voynich Manuscript decoded.

Where was Bush???
Well don't ask me. I wasn't there.

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
Belated update from my sister (belated on my part, not hers):

We're going to adopt a 2-year old girl! Her name is Anna (pronounced the European way, ah-nah); we're going to name her Margaret Anna, and call her Maggie. Her nickname at the orphanage is Anya. She relatively healthy, although just had the chicken pox and seemed to be getting a cold as we left. She's little, about the size of an average American 12-month old. She walks, runs, and climbs. She doesn't talk yet, just babbles. The pediatrician said she needs a yard to run around and a family to talk to her and she'll do wonderfully!!! She's blonde (a few shades lighter than mine, but not white-blonde), blue eyed (the Russian blue, a steel or grey blue), and fair skinned.

She's being named after her parents' maternal grandmothers. In Russia, Rita is a nickname for their version of Margaret. Rita is my grandma's name. Eric's grandmother is named Margaret (she goes by Marty, however).

Ann Marie asked me to be Godfather! [puffs up with pride!] What the heck does Godfather do, anyway? I hope it doesn't involve choking to death on orange slices.

UPDATE 01.27.04
Seems I jumped the gun and misinterpreted my sister; she informed me that She & Eric had not yet picked godparents and were still thinking about it.

<petulant>Well, I'm still thinking about being an uncle. I'll let you know....</petulant>

Bruce Mau Design: Incomplete Manifesto
via Die Puny Humans

The Enterprise Mission

]....]
Space imaging data, made available to the Mars Mission (13-year independent space research group) investigation of these possibilities, from a variety of official sources (including increasing "inside leaks"), now strongly suggests the presence (on at least two worlds -- Mars and the Moon) of extensive ancient artificial structures in the solar system. The most celebrated of these potential "ancient artificial structures" is known to millions as the "Face on Mars" -- a mile long, 1500-foot high Martian landform that eerily resembles a humanoid face, lying in a Martian desert called "Cydonia"... where no "face" belongs.
[....]
The Enterprise Mission -- and this corresponding Web Site -- thus represent a deliberate transfer of the previous "one planet" Mars Mission "artifact" investigation to a greater venue: an expanding research program seeking the facts behind the discovery in the last 4 years of "intelligently-designed, ancient artificial structures" on additional NASA and Soviet photos, not only of Mars... but of the Moon... Including -- surface photographs of "artifacts" taken by the American astronauts themselves. Enterprise thus will be the "flagship" of an expanded solar-system-wide research effort, designed to carry out the widest possible investigation of these photographs, and to discern the truth...

Man Fakes de Minimax

The Eater of Meaning is a tool for extracting the message from the medium. Format and presentation are unaffected, but words and letters are subjected to an elaborate nonsensification progress that eliminates semantics root and branch.

This is bizarrely compelling. The title of "Egyptian Fax Chamber" turns into "egyptianize kef chanted: on thermometers prowling of usefulness documentation & otherworldly ephesian."

Margaret Cho responds to Michael
No, not me. thank god.
a follow-up to this post.

noted via follow me here.

Van Helsing!
actually, the moral of these three panels is: pre-Crisis Superman ROCKS!!!


okay. so maybe it's not the moral of those three panels. But it's my moral.

Ancient Egypt Unit Study
just what you need for your home-schooler, Mummy!

Help Me, Bubby!
Good grandmotherly advice, without letting her pull on your ears.

the State of the Union
via Britain and Japan.

Don't remember much of anything from last night.
Except Bongo Drums:
Electric bongo drums.
Normal bongo drums.
Bongo drum lessons.

Man, I gotta get more sleep....

Treatment of Compulsive Hoarding

Compulsive hoarding, considered a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), includes symptoms of excessive acquisition (buying, acquiring free things), difficulty discarding, and excessive clutter. It is resistant to both pharmacological (serotonergic medications) and psychotherapeutic interventions (exposure and response prevention) that have been demonstrated effective for other symptoms of OCD.

from a NIMH abstract. I also offer the following:
an ABC-news story on Hoarding Therapy
SF Apartment magazine has an article on Confronting Compulsive Hoarding
there was a story on NPR's Morning Edition, today, but I can't find it online. Instead,
Aha! doesn't show up in search, and not much text affiliated with it, but here is the audio for Task Force Targets Compulsive Hoarders
I offer this Dec. 2003 story, about a man who hoarded more than 1 million pennies.
LOOKING FOR:
articles on the Collyer Brothers. Roz Chast's recent cartoon referencing same. more photos. somebody to make me get rid of more stuff.

Al's Oasis: The One Stop Family Shop on I-90

Al’s Oasis began in 1919 as a local grocery store located in Oacoma, South Dakota [....] In the early 1950’s, when new South Dakota Highway 16 was proposed, Alfred and Veda Mueller followed the path of progress and made plans to build their business that now includes a campground, hotels, convenience store, tourism shops and an excellent restaurant, along the new highway. After months of planning, Al and Veda opened their new business - a small grocery store with a ten stool lunch counter. There, Veda baked apple pies and fried hamburgers that shoppers and the traveling public enjoyed with their 5 cent coffee. South Dakota Highway 16 gave way to I-90 and vacation travelers have continued to stop at Al's Oasis for that same 5 cent cup of coffee in the restaurant and the friendliness that has been a tradition of Al's Oasis since its beginning in Oacoma, South Dakota.

The lunch counter grew from ten stools into a full scale restaurant where vacation travelers enjoyed not only sandwiches and pie but also steaks and prime rib. This Oacoma, South Dakota restaurant serves approximately 350,000 orders per year, 50,000 pieces of pie and beef from over 1,000 cattle born and raised right here in the midwest.

foundlings gallery 2

a note I found (back).
From Ken (to me and my old roommate).
Who the heck is Ken??!??

Time Cube

My wisdom so antiquates known knowledge, that a psychiatrist examining my behavior, eccentric by his academic single corner knowledge, knows no course other than to judge me schizoprenic. In today's society of greed, men of word illusion are elected to lead and wise men are condemned. You must establish a Chair of Wisdom to empower Wise Men over the stupid intelligentsia, or perish.

This sounds so much like me, it's uncanny....

well, it's in the new location. but not exactly working quite right....where have all the files gone, long time passing?
it may take a couple of days.... plus, there are some template changes to be worked out.....
comments are more than welcome (if the new address is working right!).
appears comments are not working here, either....
11:30am
Okay. had to set domain at root level. now there's an ugly redirect page, but then all links work. comments still down. well, it's a work-in-progress....
9:45pm
www.xradiograph.com was working during the day; but now is not. becuase of my home webhost???
I've fixed more pages and the template, but the archive-links are flush left. why is that? they're enclosed with the same stuff that makes the red-links offset. but, nooooo.....

Don't date that BPO babe
Thanks, Shiv.

Racist, Homophbic, Misogynistic Right Attacks Margaret Cho
If you think that's incinderary, wait'll you read the hate-mail....
via News of the Dead.

About.com's Paranormal News
Just the thing for when you're looking for more info on x-ray vision. Except they don't have any more than anybody else. In fact, they have less than the similarly-named Paranormal News.com (referenced below).

Ananova - Teenage girl's x-ray vision baffles scientists

Russian scientists have been unable to disprove a teenage girl who claims she has x-ray vision and can see inside human bodies.

Doctors at Saransk's children hospital carried out exhaustive tests on 16-year-old Natalia Demkina whose claims she has x-ray vision has gripped the Russian public.

But so far they have been unable to come up with a logical explanation for the vivid and detailed accounts she gives of what she sees when she looks inside the human body.

But according to Russian daily newspaper Izvestia, the scientists have so far failed to explain the vivid and detailed accounts she gives of the inside of bodies.

The teenager, from Saransk in Mordovia, said she had been upset that the doctors had not believed her but was pleased they had not claimed she was lying.

She added: "I am worried now that they might be hiding something from me about why I can see through objects. I don't know how it works, but I can see through things."

Her mother Tatiana Vladimirovna added: "I knew she was talented girl as she started to talk when she was only six months old and she learned to read when she was three years old.

"When she started to claim she sees through things that worried me. That's why I wanted her to undertake tests in the local hospital."

Story filed: 10:46 Thursday 15th January 2004
via Follow Me Here

!! A LONGER article from Paranormal News with this interesting snippet:

"I would like to get into Moscow's medical academy of Sechenov. However, I do not think that I will be able to pay for my studies- 70,000 rubles annually. Not even my gift can help me in these matters," says Natasha.

Natasha is right. Despite a number of experiments and thorough medical examinations, the girl’s gift still needs to be backed up by scientific evidences and facts. Today, the girl hopes that scientists will notice her and conduct all the necessary experiments. "I have nothing to hide," says Natasha. "Let them experiment with me. Perhaps, they will be able to explain the nature of my secondary vision. Then I guess I will have a chance to study at the most prestigious medical school."

more X-Ray Madness!!!
Neutrino and X-ray Vision from the Physical Review
X-ray vision for Doctors. Too bad!
National Geographic online on the Orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
ASM Video Reveals the Violent X-ray Sky.
a "Conservative News Forum" takes us Beyond X-Ray Vision.

there may be some web trouble coming in the next few days as I attempt to transfer over to a new domain. Or there may not be. Or I may not transfer over yet. Who knows.

Welcome to Gobler Toys
An article and another one.

The Rusty Goffe Page
4'2" Actor/Television Presenter THE UNITED KINGDOM'S No.1 DWARF
As seen in Willie Wonka, Harry Potter, and others. This is a great, unassuming page from somebody who seems to be pretty happy. I may have posted it here before, but I keep losing it. And it certainly deserves to be seen again!

The Lost Pueblo of Doctor Green
dig around for some more free games, and some that cost only slightly more.

$22. BILLS
(MR. "LOVE 22:") the comic performer, presidential candidate, purveyor of fake money and man who abuses punctuation and capital letters. (75 $22 bills for $10! what a deal!)

The Deleuze & Guattari page

I promise you an awesome percent increase in radness!

First lion mummy found in tomb near King Tut Wednesday, January 14, 2004

(AP) -- For the first time, archaeologists have discovered a preserved lion skeleton in an ancient Egyptian tomb, demonstrating the exalted reputation enjoyed by the king of beasts more than 3,000 years ago.

A research team led by French archaeologist Alain Zivie found the lion's remains in 2001 as they excavated the tomb of Maia, wet nurse to Tutankhamun, the "boy king" popular with museum visitors today for his opulent gold funeral relics. He ruled for 10 years and died around 1323 B.C.

"It confirms the status of the lion as a sacred animal," Zivie reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Inscriptions in ancient Egypt mention the breeding and burial of lions, but no lion remains previously had been found, said Zivie, who is with the French Archaeological Mission of the Bubasteion.

The tombs associated with King Tut are situated in a burial ground south of Cairo, across the Nile River from Memphis, ancient Egypt's first capital. Zivie found Maia's elaborate tomb in 1996.

The complete and undisturbed lion skeleton was found in an area of the tomb dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet. The section also contained vast quantities of bones of humans and animals, including many cats.

The lion's bones were not wrapped in linen bandages familiar to human mummies. But the bones' position, along with their coloration and mineral deposits on their surface, are similar to those of other mummified cats discovered elsewhere at the burial ground.

Zivie said the worn condition of the bones and teeth suggest it lived to an old age and was kept in captivity. The lion is not believed to have belonged to Maia.

The lion may have been considered an incarnation of the god Mahes, the son of Bastet, Zivie said.

Hunters nearly exterminated regional lion populations by 1100 B.C. Commemorative artwork has been found telling of how the pharaoh Amenhotep III killed more than 100 lions during a single hunt. Ramses the Great had a pet lion named Slayer of his Foes.

An Egyptologist who did not work on the specimen said the discovery is an important addition to knowledge of ancient ritual.

Archaeologists previously have found vast cemeteries for baboons, ibis, fish, smaller cats, dogs and crocodiles. Mummifying a large animal like a lion would have been an expensive and elaborate task.

"This is not any old lion. It's an important lion," said Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago.

Other researchers said Zivie's report leaves several questions unanswered.

Robert Pickering, a forensic anthropologist with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, said the bones' discoloration is irrelevant because they would have been affected by the tomb's environment over thousands of years. The lack of linen wrapping and soft tissue preservation also does not support mummification, he said.

"It seems to be treated different from other animals that were entombed as part of ritual," Pickering said. "Maybe this lion's importance is as a family pet rather than as a representative of a god. The context doesn't seem to fit."

Right Turn Clyde
Robots + Monkeys equal Great Movies

Google Search: Eduardo Paolozzi
so I remember what these things look like. these things are a lot of little things. little colored things.

"Mirth of a Nation" by Mark Katz
Joke-writer to the Presidents offeres interesting advice.

HEY!
your tax dollars at work.

The Art of Andy Maluche, The Giant Sizzling Sisig and an Al-Qaeda Chicken Attack
In which my acquantaince, Andy, attempts to be first at something. Well illustrated. Well, illustrated, anyway. Also contains interesting tips for the traveller to the Phillipines.

Doughy the Pancake Man
Mike B. just gave me a tape of a 1999 New Jersey AM broadcast of "Doughy the Pancake Man," a half-hour kids show by Macheis Wind. I can find very little information about him, but the show blows my mind.

xstasis

[....]
I can see clearly now the brain is gone
I'm a hungry baby in a topless bar
I program the black feathers
I gave Willy Wonka his recipes
I took Liker for a walk
I left Escher in the maze
I put number 6 on the island
I stopped the bus
[....]

Deep Sites:
Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design.

FurIsDead.com

"People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's easier to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs."

thanks to the comments on Making Light.

insert silence

from Ed*, my uncle:

I've been working at tearing out old barbed wire fence over the past couple of weeks, and that is getting old. I think everyone who owned this property over the past century or so put up fences, but no one ever took any down. Some of the wire is so brittle it breaks apart when I try to roll it up for the garbage. I've not even made a dent in the job, but if I chip away at it over the coming years I suppose I will eventually get rid of it.

Yesterday I spent time pulling trash off a steep slope along the driveway, and survived it. Mountain people, in years past, thought that the way to get rid of trash was just to throw it off the side of the mountain onto someone else's property, or throw it in the creek. That is no lie. A neighbor tells me that a local farmer told him fifteen years ago that you just throw the trash in the creek and it just seems to disappear. Anyway, much of what I got rid of yesterday was half overgrown with roots and such, but an eyesore nevertheless. Four bed springs, if anyone wants them. The small stuff went out to the road to be picked up by the garbage men, the rest is stockpiled until I get a dumpster out here later this winter, or early spring.

A small white cat showed up out back of the house yesterday--dead. We'd never seen this cat before, and don't know how it died. It had no visible trauma that I could detect, and appeared to be adequately fed. He goes out to the curb, too.

*or rather, one of my uncles--but the only one named Ed. There was an "Uncle Ed", but he was my great-Uncle, and thus called by my mother & all of her many siblings.

Story Book Island - Rapid City, SD
I was attacked by geese.
Visit more "themed lands" at Imaginary World.

I am told (by my mother) that I was actually attacked by geese in Seattle World's Fair pavilion. My sister preferred the flying ladybugs, while I liked to drive the cars. And then my father cruelly abandoned me*. Fortunately, the kind security guards adopted me for an hour and gave me a doughnut. It had sprinkles on it!

The details on whom left whom are in dispute to this day. I insist, however, that the entire rest of my family is dead wrong and prejudiced to side with my father. Meanies.

::: Takeshi's Castle :::
Takeshi's Castle on-line