UPDATE: "Chicago Public Schools does not have a policy that prohibits bag lunches and our school does not have a policy against bringing lunch from home." — Elsa Carmona Principal of Little Village Academy
— Read the restThis month's slate of busybodies includes the FDA who embarked on a year-long sting operation to bust an Amish company for selling raw milk.
Reuters examines the "eerie links" between Harry Potter, boy wizard, and Osama bin Laden, dead international terrorist.
The first movie, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," was released in November 2001, just months after 9/11.
Yeah, it's like that all the way through. — Read the rest
TuneUp's Gabe Adiv pointed me to this Kids Incorporated segment from 1986. It stars Stacey Ferguson (Fergie!) and a clown. Gabe said, "I don't get it." Y'know, I don't either. But wow is it weird.
UPDATE: Spoiler, from KidsIncorporated.us — Read the rest
From the White House photo description on Flickr: "President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. — Read the rest
In the Summer of 2008, Brooklyn writer Andrew Kessler lived a space dream. He spent 90 days embedded in mission control on a NASA mission to Mars. His offbeat and often humous book, Martian Summer, captures the real-life drama of the mission and its passionate crew as they attempt to dig up permafrost on the North Pole of Mars. — Read the rest
This drug and drug paraphernalia "shadow box" seems like it might have hung on a police station wall for at-a-glance identification purposes. Of course, as the text says, "Positive identification of any drug requires laboratory analysis." Drugs shadow box
I spotted this wonderful display of eggshell planters at the mighty Dynamo Donuts in San Francisco's Mission District. (Note the fresh-from-the-fryer bacon maple apple donuts in the upper left.) Instructables has a how-to on making your own "eggshell seed starters."
Even before President Obama went on live TV last night to officially announce that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a US military operation, animated gifs and jpeg shoops commemorating the death of the world's most wanted bad guy were already proliferating. — Read the rest
"Abbottabad is some distance away from the Afghanistan border where presumably the helicopter would have flown in from. And then to have a whole city without electricity before the operation and foreign helicopters to enter the airspace and to come all the way inside the country and then to leave as well, the Pakistani military operation would have known and were probably part of this operation." — Read the rest
On Google Earth, you can view the Abottabad "mansion" where Osama Bin Laden lived and died. Ogle Earth has more. And map link here. Oddly, Casa Abbottabad isn't getting very positive reviews.
Tyler Bartlett says: "I know this looks like we turned this jam jar upside-down and popped in in the fridge. But we didn't. My roommate brought this to my attention yesterday, and we have no idea how or why the jam is doing this. — Read the rest
New Toys for Melancholics is a solo show by "Pop Surrealist sculptor and philosopher" Gabriels. The toys are made from "polished hand-crafted bronze, life-like glass eyes, and scores of tiny internal intricate elements and organs." It's opening May 6 at the Toy Art Gallery in Los Angeles. — Read the rest
Here's an odd twist in the Osama kill story: According to various reports, when bin Laden was shot dead by Navy SEALs, US operatives had DNA samples from his family members ready with which to ID the corpse. ABC News reported that the DNA came from the brain of bin Laden's sister, who was said to have died of cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. — Read the rest
Link, from one of the hundreds of Guantánamo detainee files released last week by Wikileaks.
Abe Vigoda Status, worth checking in light of recent events.
German artist Simon Schubert creates incredibly intricate illustrations of residential interiors and exteriors just by folding and creasing the paper. Above, "o.T. Spiegelraum," 2006, 75 cm x 100 cm. Simon Schubert's Papier Arbeiten (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)
I like the brutalist bunker feel of KWK Promes' Safe House, a residence outside of Warsaw, Poland. Apparently, the only entrance is the retractrable footbridge. All That Is Interesting called it "The First Zombie-Proof House." From World Architecture News:
— Read the restThe body of the building is a cuboid in which parts of the walls are movable.
[WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES IN THIS POST]
Pakistani policemen walk past a compound, surrounded in red fabric, identified as the location where Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed on May 1 by U.S. forces in Abbotabad. The location is some 35 miles north of Islamabad in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. — Read the rest
Christoper Hitchens, in Slate:
The martyr of Abbottabad is no more, and the competing Führer-complexes of his surviving underlings will perhaps now enjoy an exciting free rein. Yet the uniformed and anonymous patrons of that sheltered Abbottabad compound are still very much with us, and Obama's speech will be entirely worthless if he expects us to go on arming and financing the very people who made this trackdown into such a needlessly long, arduous and costly one.
Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, invested early in commercial spaceflight, owns two major league sports teams, and jams to Hendrix. His latest venture is mapping the human brain, and his autobiography, Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft, is out now.
