Ducks wear dog masks! (via Birdchick)
Every web meme animated gif ever compiled into one video.

Cache Rules Everything Around Me from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

World's scariest job? I couldn't even finish watching the video.
At the National Gallery’s “Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy” it’s easy enough to see why the Surrealists adopted this quirky artist (who had been more or less obscure since his death). Dalí and Magritte picked up on the uncanniness of his main conceit, building heads out of other body parts and bits of the landscape. Man Ray made a direct homage in paint to the gnarled-branch face of Arcimboldo’s “Winter.” Alfred Barr, the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, included Arcimboldo in a 1936 show called “Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism.”
So You Wanna Be a Chef
Regulators using egg recall to push support for tyrannical 'food safety' bill S.510
sounds like a fun band
Yard Dogs Road Show

Yard Dogs Road Show: In 2005 the Yard Dogs embarked on their first full fledged national tour (25 shows in 35 days). Seven shows sold out, including a magical homecoming show at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The Yard Dogs started out seven years earlier as a three piece jug band performing in road houses and dance halls. Most notably here in Oregon where they partook in modern day acid tests with the likes of Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters. After many sleepless nights they moved on. For the next year they traveled up and down the west coast, with a trunk full of instruments and props. A 1967 Ford Galaxy 500 was their tour vehicle. One cold night they pulled off Interstate 5 at a place called Dog Creek Road. After situating themselves - laying out sleeping bags, building a campfire - they fell into conversation. The possibilities were discussed. Spirits revealed themselves in the fire: dancing girls with feather fans, a man in silver sunglasses eating fire, a dreamy guitar boy with big hair, a bearded swami swallowing swords. And it was from this night of fantasy that the Yard Dogs Road Show was born. One by one these apparitions climbed aboard. Eventually the Ford was replaced with a fleet of vans. The original three were now thirteen. And the offspring of that night by the fire was a wicked and mobile cabaret. They told their stories minutes after they were lived. This was the new vaudeville, as portrayed by professional misfits and creative thrill seekers.
this years american beer winners
roky erickson in park slope 11/10
http://www.thebellhouseny.com/
the pumpkin eater on tcm now.
Meek's Cutoff
Local eatery gets favorable review.
Meet the Beatles
HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) allegedly broken. Someone has apparently released a method of generating the master key that is used to create the keys generated for manufacturers of such things as HDCP compliant Blu-Ray players and TVs. If true this would supposedly be impossible to fix ("they" can revoke regular keys but not the master key without breaking all existing equipment.) A slashdot commenter points to this cryptome message from 2001 outlining this crack in theory. Not sure why it took this long for someone to do it (well, it might be hard I guess, but it doesn't really sound like it.) Will be interesting to see if this is true. Sure sounds like it is.
morel majority
This morning, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer published an explosive investigative piece detailing the role of the Koch family in orchestrating not only the Tea Party movement, but much of the modern right-wing infrastructure. The brothers David and Charles Koch, heirs to the oil and chemical conglomerate Koch Industries, have founded or funded dozens of conservative or libertarian publications, think tanks, and attack groups. Their father, Fred Koch, similarly fueled the paranoid right-wing movements of the fifties and sixties through his financing of the John Birch Society.

Lopate interview w/ the author
fooking humanists
Join us on the lawn at Chapman School most evenings in September for a spectacular display of Vaux’s Swifts as they gather to roost in the school’s chimney. Volunteers from Portland Audubon will be present with information about the swifts, binoculars and a spotting scope for viewing.
Blue Hill’s Tomato Sliders
But there's no reference to the meeting Blair held with Bush in the Oval Office on January 31, 2003, less than two months before the war would be launched.

During that conversation, Blair told Bush that he needed a second UN resolution that explicitly authorized military action against Iraq, having promised his Labour Party that he would seek one. Blair explained that the resolution—or, at least, an attempt to obtain the resolution—was necessary political cover for him and, according to a memo written by a Blair aide documenting the meeting, "international cover, especially with the Arabs." Bush agreed to try to twist arms at the UN, but he informed Blair that he had already selected a tentative start date for the war: March 10. (Ultimately, there would be no such UN resolution.)

But more than politics was discussed. According to the memo, Bush and Blair each said they doubted any weapons of mass destruction would soon be discovered by the UN inspectors then searching for such arms in Iraq. With no WMDs, it could be harder to win support for the war. But Bush had an idea—or two.

The memo notes that Bush raised the notion of provoking a confrontation with Saddam Hussein. "The US was thinking," the memo said, "of flying US reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach" of UN resolutions. A retaliatory attack would then be fully justified; the war could begin. Bush also discussed producing some "defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD." At this meeting, the two men also agreed that it was unlikely that "internecine warfare" would break out between "different religious and ethnic groups" after an invasion of Iraq.

This memo was a startling revelation. Here was the US president hinting at mounting a giant con game to start a war: creating a phony incident to grease the path to an invasion. The memo—portions of which were published in the New York Times and in Philippe Sands' Lawless World—does not record Blair objecting to this potential subterfuge. (I have read the entire memo.)
tricorder
the portland food is great and well priced, i think the vietnamese foods the best deal so far....skinny
Long Island City diner M. Wells isn’t open for dinner yet (still no liquor license!), and the spot’s current schedule is about to change. Starting September 7, the restaurant will cut back its breakfast hours and open at 10 AM instead of 7 AM every day except Monday, when it’s closed. Service lasts until 4 PM. The owner’s reason? As per its newsletter – “We need to sleep.”

The spot is also dishing out some wild mushrooms from foragers Gérard Mathar and Catherine Jacob, who do their thing on the Gaspé Peninsula in Québec. Not only will these ’shrooms be worked into dishes like slow-cooked rabbit saddle with handmade pappardelle, you can also purchase them along with other unique ingredients such as balsam fir and labrador tea to use at home (718-425-6917). (zagat) http://www.mwellsdiner.com/