The Daily Irrelevant:Every year, the premature baby unit at Edith Cavell hospital sends cards to the other departments as well as to some ex-patients. This year, they sent this card in Mid-October. When you open it you see the message:
It’s a little premature, but Happy Christmas.
"The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote."
US politicians on both sides of the aisle have spoken out about the civil war in Sudan that has killed some 400,000 people and displaced two million more--including a unanimous House vote that defined the violence as "genocide." But in the two years since Congress spoke in that unified voice, there's been no major change in Darfur. This week the UN's departing humanitarian chief said Darfur is in "free fall" and outgoing UN head Kofi Annan decried the "shameful passivity" of world governments who have all but ignored this "new Rwanda."
Eight of 10 members who received F scores were Republican, and congressional members receiving grades D through F outnumbered Democrats by 164 to 14. On the other hand, politicians with scores of A and A+ were also mostly Democrats: 120 Democrats versus 19 Republicans (independents Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders are also in this group).
Partisanship, of course, isn't the issue: change for the civilians suffering in Darfur is. It's been more than two years since George W. Bush announced that "The world cannot ignore the suffering of more than one million people" in Darfur. As more than 1000 faith communities across the country are now observing a prayer weekend for Darfur, plan to check back here for Darfur news and analysis on whether the 110th Congress and its majority Democrats can do what the Republican House and Senate didn't--bring relief to civilians in Darfur."It doesn't make me very happy that they [the film-makers] are making money out of this," said Reynolds, a 10-year resident of Krabi whose five businesses were "all but wiped out" in the tsunami.
He said the mini-series' focus on Western tourists distorted the reality of what happened. "It's tragic that so many tourists died and that so many lost family members, but Thais lost everything. They had no homes to go back to," he said.
At last, a non-deplorable Hummer! Unveiled at the L.A. Auto Show's Design Challenge, this prizewinning Hummer has "algae-filled body panels that would convert carbon dioxide exhaust gases produced by the vehicle's engine into pure oxygen." Available at a dealer, well, nowhere, the concept, by GM’s West Coast Advanced Design Studio, is now just a series of 2D renderings.
Minneapolis' Van Dusen Mansion, a castle-like complex built in 1892 in an eccentric Richardsonian Romanesque-meets-French Renaissance architectural style, is being auctioned at eBay. With annual taxes of around $75k and a current bid of $3,550,100 (that's $100 more than the previous bidder), the 23,000 s.f. residence has no buy-it-now price.
The Guardian's Jonathan Jones asked blog readers to help him compile the top 50 artworks worth a once-in-a-lifetime viewing. The final list runs the gamut from Antony Gormley's Angel of the North (above) to Constable's The Hay Wain, The Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston to Smithson's Spiral Jetty. But it's not all western art: The Alhambra, San Rock Art in South Africa, Iran's Masjid I-Shah Mosque, and the Terracotta Warriors in Shaanxi Province, China, also get mentioned. One I'd add, but haven't yet seen: Nek Chand's Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India:In 1951, Nek Chand was hired as a roads inspector to help construct LeCorbusier’s master plan for the new capital city of Chandigarh in northern India. When not laboring in service of the great architect’s vision, Chand quietly carved out a secret legacy of his own in the jungle outside town—one that eventually trumped the great Corbu’s city of Chandigarh.
To give LeCorbusier a blank slate to design an entire 240-acre city, the shining symbol of a modernizing India, twenty villages had to be razed. Chand worked in a secluded clearing under cover of darkness for 18 years transforming scavenged materials from that rubble into mosaic-tile trees, monkeys, bears, men, women, walls, and waterfalls--all using the newest construction techniques he picked up during his day job. He created some 2,000 sculptures by the time his illegal Rock Garden--created without permission on government land--was discovered in 1972. Despite countless threats to destroy the garden--one in which a human wall prevented bulldozers from plowing a roadway through the park—Chand’s work still stands, a symbol of his autonomous spirit.
(Nek Chand photos courtesty the Nek Chand Foundation, except for the last one, by Carl Lindquist.)
Via Unbeige, an excuse to show more images by Barry McGee, the exhibition Do Not Stack at LA's Robers & Tilton.
Earnest, sometimes funny, occasionally profane, and once-in-a-while surprising: text-based graffiti compiled at written on the city. Especially bizarre is this series of flyers in San Francisco expressing CIA paranoia.
For a year and a half, Eliot and his friends at Visual Resistance have been making "ghost bikes" throughout New York, but today he posts that he had to make one of these white-painted bikes--memorials to cyclists killed by cars--for a friend, 22-year-old NYU grad Eric Ng, who was run down on a bike path by a drunk driver. Through his eulogy for Eric—he remembers the math and history major as a "body full of honest energy and a face like contagious hope"--he potently conveys the message of the white bikes, to remember those who've died and remind the rest of us to slow the hell down and respect the safety of those on two wheels.
Jesus Camp, the film about a now-closed "Kids on Fire" bible camp by documentarians Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, keeps racking up awards like the Special Documentary Jury Prize at Tribeca and the Sterling Award at SilverDocs. Now you can watch the entire film at GoogleVideo.Via Digg.
World Resources Institute illustrates America's disproportionate emission of greenhouse gases compared to other countries:When it comes to climate change, states make a difference -- even when compared internationally. If states were ranked individually, six states -- Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Florida -- would rank among the top 30 emitters internationally.This map, featured in Science magazine, shows how regions within the U.S. compare to major emitters. The lower 48 states are approximately equivalent to China, Brazil and the United Kingdom combined: or the United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, India, South Korea and Canada.
Sinosplice's John, a grad student in linguistics in China, found this military themed coloring book published by the Beijing Children and Juvenile Publishing House. The book's cover features a cartoony image of two helmeted kids and a gun-wielding dog riding a tank.
