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Anti-Defamation League joins bigots in opposing Manhattan mosque
Largest hail stone in the US?
Stating the Obvious : If you don't have a house you don't need no sofa
Kenneth Anger for Missoni
San Francisco: Diana Gameros at this weekend's Bicycle Music Festival
The Wunderkammer that is Webb Gallery
Sea No Evil: Sea Shepherd benefit art show in CA
Experiencing the re-invention of flight in St. Paul
Elephants in Scotland and other odd animal translocations
Wii, wii, wii—all the way back to the gym
Tron Legacy score contributions by Daft Punk leaked?

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 07:50 PM PDT

We're thrilled that everyone seems to be digging our new Submitterator! (More about the launch here.) Every day, folks are submitting a slew of wonderful links. Thank you! In fact, I browse it as if it's a group blog edited by a bunch of my most interesting friends that I haven't yet met. For those of you who missed the announcement earlier this week, the Submitterator is essentially a public submissions form. Every link you submit is shared with everyone else visiting the page. Vote 'em up or vote 'em down. We're keeping a keen eye on the Submitterator for front door posts and also getting a kick out of the stuff that doesn't end up here on the blog. We hope you are too! Got a link to share? Please submit to the Submitterator!

Anti-Defamation League joins bigots in opposing Manhattan mosque

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 04:09 PM PDT

The Anti-Defamation League has announced its opposition to the building of an Islamic community center (or mosque, as CNN and others put it) in Manhattan, near ground zero. It accepts that the builders have every right to do so, but believes that they should not because its presence there will cause offense and pain.

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain --unnecessarily -- and that is not right.

Perhaps the Anti-Defamation League could produce some helpful maps to delineate the areas in our cities where Muslims may live, work and pray without causing more pain. The original statement was linked to here by others, but it's not currently available. Via CNN. Discussion: Tablet, Wonkette, and TPM.

Largest hail stone in the US?

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 11:46 PM PDT

According to the Weather Channel, this is the country's largest hail stone. It's 8 inches in diameter and weights approximately 2 pounds. It fell in Vivian, South Dakota, during a hailstorm that apparently left damage like that seen in the image above right. "Record breaking hail"

Stating the Obvious : If you don't have a house you don't need no sofa

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 11:56 AM PDT

"empty home on Bloomington Ave S, Minneapolis" by Andrew Ciscel via CC

OK, so I'm not an economist. But as a venture investor in early-stage medical and technology companies I read the usual financial articles that come across my screen and I see the same statistics everybody is seeing. I listen to Obama and I watch the TV shows where pundits argue with Congressmen about the wisdom of this or that particular tax or stimulus measure to restart our sick economy. I have nothing to say about this, no statistics of my own and no fancy theory, so instead of taking sides in this particular debate I keep looking for the things that are missing.

What is missing is this: Over two million American families have now lost their homes; foreclosure figures are at an all-time high. Several million new families will be thrown into the street over the next year, no matter what happens to taxes or the stimulus. This is a given. Yet, among Washington and Wall Street experts this disaster is only reflected in the form of statistical figures they mix up and datamine alongside many other figures, where the numbers lose their special, tragic character.

It's not a very newsworthy disaster, either, so after a while it even fades from TV news: no dramatic shots of oil gushing up from a broken well or birds coated with black tar. No sense of urgency here, just a big spreading tragedy. The experts only know that the banks are off the hook: they have been given tons of new money to help with mortgages. The fact that this money sits unused and that many banks have not even appointed managers to deal with desperate homeowners does not come to their attention. My Bank of America branch won't even talk to you about mortgages - they send you to a faceless office downtown where nobody knows you.

In such complex situations, it is healthy for somebody to just state the obvious before trying to develop cute, complicated theories. You don't look smart by stating the obvious: Duh! Everybody knows that. You won't get invited on the CNBC morning show. You knew what I'm going to say all along but perhaps you hadn't thought it through.

So here is an obvious statement: if you have just lost your house you are not likely to go buy a new TV set for a while. If you just moved your family into a cheap motel, you probably don't think about ordering new drapes for the living room; and if you also lost your job (as thousands of people continue to do every day) and now live in your car in some urban park, you won't be shopping for refrigerators, sofas and camcorders for a long, long time to come.

Since nobody can find you because you don't have an address any more, the statisticians won't be asking for your opinion about the economy, which may explain the puzzling discrepancies in the mysterious tables called "consumer sentiment," a figure that is now at a five-month low. This "obvious" fact may also account for the lack of any serious recovery; or the probability that the economy will not be very robust for a while, no matter how "stimulating" the climate gets in Washington around election time; it may explain the chill over the Chinese industry, which makes all the refrigerators, the sofas, the TVs, the drapes and the camcorders you used to buy when you had a house to put them in; and the uncertainty in Europe, which makes the machines China needs to make TVs, camcorders, drapes and sofas. So that uncertainty travels around the planet in opposite direction to the Earth's rotation and comes back to hit us from the east, because we used to supply lots of goods and services to Europe to make the machines, etc.

No wonder Mr. Bernanke finds that things are "unusually uncertain." At least he still has his sofa.

Kenneth Anger for Missoni

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 07:33 AM PDT

Richard Metzger: "Rather astonishing news from the fashion and film world. Dangerous Minds’ fave filmmaker Kenneth Anger has released a two-and-a-half-minute film dealing with the fall/winter collection of the Varese-based house of Missoni, produced by filmmaker/Anger manager/Dangerous Minds pal Brian Butler and scored by French composer Koudlam." Watch the video here.

San Francisco: Diana Gameros at this weekend's Bicycle Music Festival

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 10:42 AM PDT

This Saturday in San Francisco, the largest bicycle-powered music festival in the world takes place in Golden Gate Park's Speedway Meadow and throughout the city. Bike powered? Think Gilligan's Island. In Golden Gate Park, more than a dozen bands will play through a 2000 watt pedal-powered audio system and a variety of crazy party caravans will travel through the streets during the day and night. All of the infrastructure for the event is haulable via bicycle and no cars or trucks will be involved in staging the festival. My family will be attending, and we're especially excited to see our favorite San Francisco singer/songwriter Diana Gameros. We first heard Diana perform solo at Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, a very old and excellent tiny restaurant in San Francisco's Mission District. At Roosevelt's, Diana mostly performs traditional Latin music but in her own modern, soulful, and passionate style. Diana's original music is enchanting indie pop infused with her strong Latin heritage. Check out Diana and her band at noon on Saturday or on her MySpace page. Diana's tune "Para Papa," listenable in her MySpace player, is one of my favorites.

Diana Gameros (MySpace)

Bicycle Music Festival

The Wunderkammer that is Webb Gallery

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 10:11 AM PDT

I've posted previously about the Webb Gallery, an immensely interesting gallery in Waxahachie, Texas that specializes in outsider art and the artifacts of secret societies, and overflows with an incredible (dis)array of curiosities, from tramp art to circus sideshow banners. I discovered Webb Gallery and met the delightful proprietor, Bruce Webb, last year when he sold me an artwork by William S. Burroughs who had exhibited at the gallery right before his death. The Texas art site Glasstire has published Christina Patoski's photo tour of the Webb Gallery and Bruce and Julie Webb's equally odd living space above. Glass Houses 21: Julie and Bruce Webb

Sea No Evil: Sea Shepherd benefit art show in CA

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 10:15 AM PDT

Opening Saturday July 31 (tomorrow night): The Sea No Evil art show benefitting the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Above, a piece by Gary Baseman from the show. The donating artist list is pretty incredible.

The opening night event features Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and focus of Animal Planet TV series "Whale Wars," who will give an update on the state of affairs in the world's oceans.

The Crystal Method and artist-DJ Shepard Fairey will both perform sets.

(thanks, Gary Baseman)

Experiencing the re-invention of flight in St. Paul

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 09:43 AM PDT

Last weekend*, I joined around 90,000 of my closest friends at the Twin Cities Flugtag in St. Paul. If you aren't familiar, Flugtag is an event that tests out the skyworthiness of home-built flying contraptions. For the most part, there's more of an emphasis on art and comedy than on effective engineering. Teams design their flying machines (and costumed skits) around a theme, they perform for the audience, and then push their craft off an elevated runway and (usually) directly into a major body of water below.

It's entertaining. I had a good time watching giant purple narwhals (narwhals!) and open caskets piloted by zombies crash into the Mississippi River. But what really made Flugtag post-worthy is the moment captured in the video above.

My husband called this before the flying even started. Walking around the "hangar" area, looking at the crafts before the show, he spotted what looked like an anorexic WW2 bomber on stilts. It wasn't the most elaborate craft. Or the most hilarious. But it was going to fly further than anything else, Baker predicted. Unlike some home-built aircraft, this thing actually had an airfoil.

Later, we found out that it also had controllable flaps. And a for-real-real pilot&mdashMajor Trouble, her band of Dirty Dixie drag queens took care of the entertainment portion—at the controls.

We'd already watched six or seven contraptions utterly fail to fly. We'd gotten used to a routine. The team pushes off. The team goes straight down. It is hard to describe the utter elation that swept the crowd when Major Trouble's plane came back up**. And flew. Really, truly flew. For a second, we all forgot that jet planes existed. For a second, we were all back at Kitty Hawk, in 1903, witnessing a previously unimagined miracle.

Major Trouble and the Dirty Dixies flew 207 feet before ditching in the Mississippi. They broke—by 12 feet—a Flugtag flying record that had stood for 10 years. Everything happens in the Midwest. You are missing out.

*I meant to post this Monday. Somehow, I forgot. Whoops.

**Another thing it is hard to describe: The frustration that rippled through the crowd every time the RedBull announcers referred to the Mississippi River as "the ocean". This happened repeatedly. Guys, we get it, you're used to staging these things on the coast. But there's a freaking opposite bank, right over there. And the people on that side are rolling their eyes at you, too.

Elephants in Scotland and other odd animal translocations

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 09:44 AM PDT

Blogs Intelligenttravel Translocation Elephant-Crossing[3]

Via Submitterator, BB pal Marilyn Terrell shares with us the above photo of a magnificent elephant crossing a road between stone cottages in Scotland. Huh? This image is from Translocation, a new book by photographer George Logan, depicting African animals shooped into Logan's home of Scotland: a cheetah running beside a loch, water buffalo and celtic cross tombstones, and the like. National Geographic has a gallery of the photos. From NatGeo:

Logan, a gold medal winner at the Association of Photographers Awards, traveled to such locations as South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, and Botswana to photograph his subjects in their natural habitats before combining them with shots of his native Scotland, including the Isle of Skye. The idea for the book was inspired by Logan's own childhood fantasies of exotic animals being part of his familiar surroundings.

The Elephants of Scotland

Wii, wii, wii—all the way back to the gym

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 08:42 AM PDT

The good news: You're less likely to injure yourself while working out with Wii Fit than while working out at the gym. The bad news: The Wii is safer because you are doing less. "People tend to burn twice as many calories per minute doing an actual activity than when doing the same activity on the Wii."