arse poetica

Can Obama Repel 'Swift Boat'-Style Attacks?

I'm delighted (thrilled!) to hear that the Obama camp has a few rapid-response tactics up their sleeves, but I really wanted to post this, because this is such a cute picture of him. /shallowness

Can Obama Repel 'Swift Boat'-Style Attacks?

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, tells NEWSWEEK that the Illinois senator won't let himself be "Swift Boated" like John Kerry in 2004. "He's not going to sit there and sing 'Kumbaya' as the missiles are raining in," Axelrod said. "I don't think people should mistake civility for a willingness to deal with the challenges to come."

O frabjous day!

Well, that's it for today then. Now that I know, I'm sure to waste positively spend the rest of the day reading Stephen Fry's blog.

Buh-bye!

You Know You Want It

Those crazy Icelanders! I so want this.

The Bearded Cap by Vik Prjónsdóttir.

[via]

Reason #2987847756307181-b Why Gloria Steinem Should Run the World

Not my favorite interview ever with Gloria Steinem, who, regardless, deftly handles the sometimes silly questions.

Has Gloria Steinem mellowed? No way.

My favorite moment:

Q: Do you see the world through the prism of gender?

A: No, the world looks at me through the prism of gender.

Honestly, it's like a balm. If I could just apply a heaping handful of Gloria Steinem to my brain every day, I would be a much saner human being.

[via]

Want.Baby.Tigers.

It's probably a good thing I'm not a decadent rich person, because I could see that if I had ridiculous money (and the attendant entitlement) I might break all rules of common sense and what is right and just have to have a baby tiger. I'm 100% id right now.

Photo Gallery: Tiger Triplets Christened in Leipzig Zoo.

Goodbye, Maestro

How can the human heart not respond to this? Kills me every time.

Luciano Pavarotti, Italian Tenor, Is Dead at 71.

Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian singer whose ringing, pristine sound set a standard for operatic tenors of the postwar era, died early this morning at his home in Modena, in northern Italy. He was 71.

[snip]

Mr. Pavarotti remained a darling of Met audiences until his retirement from that company’s roster in 2004, an occasion celebrated with a string of “Tosca” performances. At the last of them, on March 13, 2004, he received a 15-minute standing ovation and 10 curtain calls. All told, he sang 379 performances at the Met, of which 357 were in fully staged opera productions. In the late 1960s and 70s, when Mr. Pavarotti was at his best, he possessed a sound remarkable for its ability to penetrate large spaces easily. Yet he was able to encase that powerful sound in elegant, brilliant colors. His recordings of the Donizetti repertory are still models of natural grace and pristine sound. The clear Italian diction and his understanding of the emotional power of words in music were exemplary.

And he had such a sweet face. If the Maestro felt one millionth of the happiness he gave to others, he'll have lived well.

Great Cosmic Nothingness!

I don't get it at all, but this sounds v. cool.

Great 'cosmic nothingness' found.

It is empty of both normal matter - such as galaxies and stars - and the mysterious "dark matter" that cannot be seen directly with telescopes.

The "hole" is located in the direction of the Eridanus constellation and has been identified in data from a survey of the sky made at radio wavelengths.

The discovery will be reported in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal.

Previous sky surveys that have traced the large-scale structure of the nearby Universe have long shown, for example, how the clustering of galaxies is strung into vast filaments and sheets that are separated by great gaps.

But the void discovered by a University of Minnesota team is about 1,000 times the volume of what would be expected in typical cosmic gaps.

"It's hard even for astronomers to picture how big these things are," conceded Minnesota's Professor Lawrence Rudnick.

"If you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you several years to get to the nearest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy; but if you were to go to this hole and enter one side, you'd have to travel for a billion years before you would get to the other side," he told BBC News.

Hunh?

Blogging Done Right

The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg is blogging the YearlyKos convention. Nice.

There's so much about this that I love -- Hertzberg's POV and writing style, the fact that he's blogging this (and avidly, it seems) for The New Yorker, that the old guard is mingling w/ the new, that YearlyKos is a bonafide important campaign stop worthy of serious coverage (i.e., right-wing nutjobs screeching "Witch! Witch!" doesn't hold as much sway as it once did), that the New Yorker finally has a site worthy of its stature.

UPDATED link 8.6.07.

Faster, Internet! Thrill! Thrill!

Suh-weet! Everything's better in my fantasy homeland!

Swedish Woman Gets Superfast Internet.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer -- many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit.

Jonsson and Lothberg's son, Peter, worked together to install the connection.

The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between, Jonsson said.

''We wanted to show that that there are no limitations to Internet speed,'' he said.

Oooooooh. I'm jealous, because apparently a T-1 connection is not fast enough for me. I hate waiting even 1 second (2 is unbearable) for a page to load. Dial up? Bah! Never again!

Believers

I've got some reading to do.

Bundles for sale at McSweeney's.