Stimulus Bill Requires RSS Feeds of How the Money Is Spent

Re-blogged from boingboing.

As one commenter not entirely unknown to you observes,

Any step toward transparency is helpful -- if info given turns out to be false, at least someone can be embarrassed by it, if not prosecuted. The next challenge is to get someone who knows what they're doing to actually read it.
I think we can count on the Republicans to scrutinize Dem expenditures; not so sure that'll be reciprocated.
Note: The same IT our fearless leaders are using to mine all our e-mails, etc. for items of interest [terrorism/peace activism] can theoretically be used by us plebes to monitor our gummint (would someone pls DO this; otherwise, impt. info could easily be buried in mountains of less useful data).

I also liked Comment #13: "US$1,200,000,000.00 . . . Poof!" [most of you should probably skip to 1.52 min., although the video starts with a more successful take-off, which I enjoyed, since to me Stealth bombers are the best thing next to Batman]:

Who Says Guys Can't Dance.

(Via boingboing.) Can't wait to hear him 10 yrs. from now. (Thanks, Ben!)

Juan Enriquez on Homo Evolutis

I liked this talk. As I wrote in 2000, "We may already have commenced our greatest creation, the species that will succeed us and carry on." I wish we could hurry up and engineer better bankers and Congresscritters.

Symposium at CentralTrak: Revisiting the Cyborg Manifesto

Organizer Charissa Terranova explains,

In 1985, Donna J. Haraway published "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the late Twentieth Century." Haraway distilled a new paradigm pf subjectivity that moved beyond traditional paradigms of gender duality and classical humanism. The Manifesto called for an honest embracement of the psycho-corporeal transformations that ensue from technology, the way in which those technologies emancipate us from old mythologies of "human nature" and interpolate into patterns of ecological destruction and the violent matrix of the military industrial complex." [The symposium,] Woman Body Image: Half-lives of the Cyborg Manifesto 25 Year After . . . will revisit the Manifesto as we approach its 25th anniversary.

A main draw for me is Kristin Lucas (see prior post here re- her show at and/or gallery; her work was also included in The Program); the other participants sound interesting, too.

More on CentralTrak's calendar.

World Toilet Info

One project I've had in mind for years would involve a series of vaguely-toilet-like ceramic vessels that look like they should have to do with whisking away bodily debris but that don't look like they'd actually work (e.g., after scrutinizing a piece, you'd remain unsure: in which part of it were you actually supposed to go? or if you did, how would said debris actually be evacuated?)

So, I really like this compilation of info re- toilets around the world.










(Thanks, Ben!)

V-Day Pillow Fight

I want one near me:



Via Eyebeam reBlog.

"The Man from U.N.C.L.E."

At least the first 2 or 3 shows rec'd: hilarious; and the outfits/hair alone are worth it.

"T.H.R.U.S.H. is an orgnization that believes the world should have a two-party system: the masters and the slaves." Need I say, this perfectly describes our current skull+bones regime.

Plus, Solo + Kuryatkin are hot.

The opening of this video is cringe-ful; but it gives an idea.

Note it resembled Star Trek in positing that an agent from a putatively enemy nation (Kuryatkin, from the U.S.S.R.) could collaborate for good. Unfortunately it also resembled Star Trek in imagining women as little more than objects to be rescued for subsequent plunder.



And note how totally the Mission Impossible theme ripped them off.

Happy V-Day!