Archive for October, 2005
Presidential Seal
Bush v. The Onion:
You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the […]
Distractions
Words to live by:
I’m very paranoid about any metric of productivity. One person’s wasted time is another person’s productivity. For most of my life people saw me doing the things I liked to do and said, “you have too much free time on your hands.” I’ve decided that when you hear that, it means you’re […]
Digital Bollywood
For years there has been talk about how Hollywood would abandon celluloid once and for all, digitally transmitting films directly to movie theaters. While Hollywood shuffles its feet India, the country which showed the world how electronic voting should be done, is moving ahead.
In the United States, a digital roll-out has stalled while Hollywood studios […]
Body Count
A very well done and important story on This American Life:
About a year ago, a study estimated the number of civilian casualties in Iraq. It came up with a number – 100,000 dead – that was higher than any other estimate, and was mostly ignored. This week, Alex Blumberg revisits that study to look at […]
Nude Weather
My brother, upon reading about my idea for comparative weather reports, reminded me of another innovative weather reporting phenomenon: nude weather reports! This was a concept originally developed by Czech TV station TV Nova. Here is how Brad Freden described it to David Barry:
At 11 p.m. every night a buxom woman or (more recently) a […]
Thank You!
Amazing. Thank you everybody who has donated to the film! After just a few weeks, we have already raised $5,236, which is one third of our $15,000 budget!
Help us keep up the momentum so we can reach our goal before we leave for India in six weeks!
If you haven’t donated money yet, it is now […]
Turning Tide
Except for, perhaps, Davis-Bacon, you are probably well aware of all of these stories, but nothing makes me happy than a nice list:
Harriet Miers Withdraws Nomination
Davis-Bacon Wage Law to be Restored
DeLay Booked in Houston on Money-Laundering, Conspiracy Charges
Grand Jury Hears Summary of Case On CIA Leak Probe
And, further signs that the Democrats are marshaling their […]
JustGive.org
Thanks to a friend I discovered JustGive.org, which allows you to donate to charities and non-profits online. This is great for us, because we’ve been very frustrated that there is no way to have people donate money to the film online except via PayPal, and since PayPal payments go to us, not our fiscal sponsors, […]
Yesterday’s Weather
The way weather reports work is all wrong. They always tell you the next three-to-five days. What I want is just two days, and one of those days should be yesterday! That’s right, I don’t want to know the future, I want to know the past, or, more precisely, how the present compares with the […]
Legal Fiction
Jeffrey Rosen called Chicago law professor Richard Epstein the “intellectual guru” of a movement to “resurrect the Constitution in Exile,” meaning the effort to roll-back the New Deal. So I wasn’t surprised to see him arguing that corporations should be allowed to demand genetic tests of potential employees if they so please. He does so […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
