Cory Doctorow at 10:34 PM Tuesday
Leslie Howle sez, "NW MediaArts is a non-profit organization inviting award-winning speculative fiction writers to Seattle to teach a one-day writers workshop, read at the University Book Store, and speak at schools and libraries. Workshops take place at Richard Hugo House. March 12 - Christopher Barazak, author of 'The Love We Share Without Knowing,' which was shortlisted for the Tiptree Award last year, reads at University Book Store on 3/12 and teaches a workshop on 3/14. Workshop space is still open if you register by 3/10/2010."
Bill Barol at 4:22 PM Tuesday
Bill Barol (email, Twitter) is the author of Mr. Irresponsible's Bad Advice: How to Rip the Lid Off Your Id and Live Happily Ever After (Volt Press). He’s a former senior writer at Newsweek and his journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Slate, and elsewhere.
If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes.
Adam Savage at 4:00 PM Tuesday
Adam Savage is the co-host of Mythbusters.
I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible:
(Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer)
I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference, it was 20% too small. Fuck!
David Pescovitz at 3:27 PM Tuesday
Sex.com will be sold at auction next week. Current owner Escom LLC reportedly paid $14 million for it a few years ago, but has since defaulted on loans. According to CNN, "The auction is set for March 18 in New York, and bidders are required to appear with a certified check for $1 million to participate."
Xeni Jardin at 3:05 PM Tuesday
Xeni Jardin at 2:46 PM Tuesday
Xeni Jardin at 1:14 PM Tuesday
Xeni Jardin at 1:07 PM Tuesday
Richard Metzger writes: "It was the blog post heard 'round the world. When Charles Johnson wrote "Why I Parted Ways With The Right" in the space of a few minutes and posted it on his popular Little Green Footballs blog, he had no idea the firestorm it would set off. Nasty denunciations, death threats and a New York Times magazine feature article later, Charles Johnson joined me for a lively discussion about what happened to him, the Darwin-hating, know-nothing Creationists and the frenzied insanity (and racism) of the anti-Obama right." Watch the interview at Dangerous Minds.
peterbruells
Looking back at the dotcom boom, ten years later
I have no mouth and I must scream
Cast-art depicting broken-bone X-rays
deckard68
Fake electronic gear props
jackie31337
Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes
Earthship Biotecture
A home in Haiti
deckard68
Wired Reread: AT&T's "strap-on telephone"
Antinous / Moderator
CNN visits dog and cat meat market in China
Avram / Moderator
Glenn Beck advertiser sells "survival seeds" for apocalyptic
Avram / Moderator
Looking back at the dotcom boom, ten years later
Anonymous
Best jobs in America infographic