BB reader Hagrid says, "I just blogged this stunning 1943 colour photo, released by the Library of Congress on Flickr. It turns that WWII icon, 'Rosie the Riveter,' on her head, by presenting her as she really was: African-American. Love the nails and ring, incidentally."
(Editor's note: there were surely many shades of "Rosie," but that diversity is often overlooked.)
Google invited me to create an example theme for its new iGoogle Themes API. The theme changes throughout the day to tell a little story.
I also worked on a gadget with RSS feeds for the different blogs, videos, and podcasts I contribute to. You can add the theme and gadget to your iGoogle page here.
The iGoogle Themes API allows you to personalize iGoogle by modifying the page's design. Your theme can modify the header and footer images, text colors, link colors, gadget frames, and more. Your theme can also update the page's design based on time of day. This makes it easy to create a story that unfolds throughout the day, landscapes that change as the sun rises and sets, and abstract images that become more complex. Creating a dynamic theme is as simple as specifying a time with a theme's visual attributes.
You can see other example themes by Yves Behar/fuseproject, John Maeda, and Troy Lee here.
This is beyond ridiculous. The federal government is now going to track every farm animal across the country, from birth to death, because it wants to watch out for the extremely faint possibility of a bioterrorist attacking the food chain.
A Bush administration initiative, the National Animal Identification System is meant to provide a modern tool for tracking disease outbreaks within 48 hours, whether natural or the work of a bioterrorist. Most farm animals, even exotic ones such as llamas, will eventually be registered. Information will be kept on every farm, ranch or stable. And databases will record every animal movement from birth to slaughterhouse, including trips to the vet and county fairs. But the system is spawning a grass-roots revolt.
Sean T. Collins of Attention Deficit Disorder has created a presidential milkshake list that tells you all you need to know about the candidates. Here are a few:
I drink your milkshake, even though I opposed drinking your milkshake four years ago. -- Mitt Romney
I drink your milkshake, but only if the Bible says it's allowed. -- Mike Huckabee
I may drink your milkshake for another 100 years, if that's what it takes. -- John McCain
I drank a milkshake on 9/11. -- Rudy Giuliani
I drink your milkshake, but I'm paying for it with gold. -- Ron Paul
I will fight the corporations so that you can drink your own milkshake. -- John Edwards
I have 35 years of milkshake-drinking experience. *sob* -- Hillary Clinton
I peacefully drink your milkshake. -- Dennis Kucinich
Brian Hughes of "Again With the Comics" has an advice column called "Ask Golden Age Wonder Woman," in which questions from the lovelorn are answered using actual panels from old issues of Wonder Woman, surely one of the most crypto-fetishistic comics of the Golden Age.
I hope Brian makes this a regular feature of his excellent blog. Here's one of four Q&A's on his blog:
Dear Golden Age Wonder Woman -
I’ve known my best friend since second grade, but things have been strained between us ever since I got married. Carol has remained single, and I can hardly speak to her anymore without hearing mean remarks about marriage or my husband! She seems jealous and resentful of my marriage, and angry that she’s still single. Recently, she told me that she saw my husband at a bar kissing another woman, and has demanded that I confront him about it. I don’t believe her, but she says that if I don’t talk to him about it, she’ll break off our friendship! What should I do?
Rebecca sez, "One lawyer is threatening another over the use of the term "cyberlaw," which he says he's trademarked. As the post (by EFF's Corynne McSherry) says, that's like a soda company trying to trademark the word soda."
Eric Menhart may call himself a cyberlawyer, but we think he has a lot of learn about cyberlaw -- and common sense. Menhart is the author of a blog about cyberlaw issues called, logically if not innovatively, "Cyberlawg." (As he says in the top right corner, "Cyberlawg = Cyberlaw + blog.") And he is "principal attorney" in a firm called "CyberLaw P.C." OK, OK, we get it, he practices technology law. Based on this, he's applied for a trademark on the use of the term "cyberlaw" in connection with the practice of, um, cyberlaw. That's like a soda company claiming a trademark in the use of the word soda in connection with the sale of soda. Or an apple farmer claiming a trademark in the use of the term apple in connection with the sale of apples. Or ... well, you get the picture.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Life After People is a new TV documentary airing on the History Channel that attempts to forecast what our planet would be like if we were gone. It premieres this coming Monday, January 21. Looks like a lot of post-apocapalyptic fun! From the show's mini site:
Abandoned skyscrapers would, after hundreds of years, become "vertical ecosystems" complete with birds, rodents and even plant life. One small animal might be responsible for bringing down the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant. Swelled rivers, crumbling bridges and buildings, grizzly bears in California and herds of buffalo returning to the Great Western Plains: In a world without humans, these would be the visual hallmarks. Our cars would shrivel to piles of dust, our house pets would be overtaken by flourishing wildlife and most of the records of our human story -- books, photos, records -- would fade quickly, leaving little evidence that we ever existed.
Using feature film quality visual effects and top experts in the fields of engineering, botany, ecology, biology, geology, climatology and archeology, Life After People provides an amazing visual journey through the ultimately hypothetical.
The 1986 nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl and its aftermath provides a riveting and emotional case study of what can happen after humans have moved on. Life After People goes to remote islands off the coast of Maine to search for traces of abandoned towns, beneath the streets of New York to see how subway tunnels may become watery canals, to the Montana wilderness to divine the destiny of the bears and wolves.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Here's a 1994 video from Charile Rose of famed animator Chuck Jones drawing Wile E. Coyote. Link to Coyote sketch video, Link to full interview (via Drawn!)
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Researchers at Stemagen claim that they used skin cells from two men to create human embryos. The embryos did not develop past around 100 cells, the blastocyst stage, but that wasn't the point, said Stemagen CEO Samuel H. Wood. The aim, he said, is to derive stem cell lines from cloned embryos. From the new York Times:
It is not clear whether the embryos would have been viable if implanted into a womb. Stemagen did not test whether the embryos had the correct number of chromosomes. But Dr. Wood, who also is a fertility doctor, said, “We’ve seen reproductive blastocysts that look like this or worse and they implant.”
He said Stemagen, which he started with a wealthy friend in 2005, was not interested in creating cloned babies, something that is illegal in places and morally repugnant to many people. Rather it wants to make stem cell lines for research and medical treatments.
Why are these men smiling? Because they are about to launch a bunch of Bert dolls into the sky. Enjoy this short video. 
Abandoned skyscrapers would, after hundreds of years, become "vertical ecosystems" complete with birds, rodents and even plant life. One small animal might be responsible for bringing down the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant. Swelled rivers, crumbling bridges and buildings, grizzly bears in California and herds of buffalo returning to the Great Western Plains: In a world without humans, these would be the visual hallmarks. Our cars would shrivel to piles of dust, our house pets would be overtaken by flourishing wildlife and most of the records of our human story -- books, photos, records -- would fade quickly, leaving little evidence that we ever existed.
Here's a 1994 video from Charile Rose of famed animator