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| There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs. |
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Bicycles and Tricycles: An Elementary Treatise on Their Design and Construction |
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| Topic: Technology |
4:21 pm EDT, Jul 17, 2004 |
Published in 1896, Bicycles and Tricycles was the first serious, scientifically based study of the bicycle. It begins with a general exposition of mechanical principles: dynamic, static, and straining forces. It then covers successive experiments at bicycle and tricycle design, including several "mechanical monstrosities." With the aid of elegant, sometimes humorous drawings, the book examines various designs for their relative stability, steering advantages, gearing and resistance properties. The final selection discusses the design of individual components in detail, including the frame (from the point of view of stress analysis); wheels; bearings; chains and chain gearing; toothed-wheel gearing; the lever-and-crank gear; tires; pedals, cranks and bottom brackets; springs and saddles; and brakes. A definitive work in its own time, Bicycles and Tricycles is a collector's item for history-lovers as well as bicycle-enthusiasts -- a treat for tinkerers and all those interested in the history of invention. Yeah, it's like that. Bicycles and Tricycles: An Elementary Treatise on Their Design and Construction |
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| Topic: Music |
1:38 pm EDT, Jul 17, 2004 |
Why bother to read the review? If it's #1 in Nashville, you know it must be good! During the "folk music-scare" of the early 1960s, a bunch of white middle-class youths with names like the Greenbriar Boys and the Even Dozen Jug Band discovered the mountain music of the Stanley Brothers, Skillet Lickers, and Uncle Dave Macon and set about introducing it to the country's college kids. Four decades later, the members of OCMS fit the profile of those early revivalists, yet if anything they have tapped deeper into the primal elements of an American art form. As demonstrated on their debut, they have assimilated not just the sound -- banjos, harmonicas, acoustic guitar and bass -- but more importantly the haunting spirit of music that was made to keep hard times at bay. How else to explain their ability to take a well-worn chestnut like "CC Rider" and infuse it with an energy that reveals once again why it is a classic? All Music Guide says: There is so much enthusiasm here, so much willingness and fire, that it would be hard to do anything but want to sing along. Thoroughly enjoyable, wonderfully raw and sinewy, Old Crow Medicine Show may be evoking the sounds of the old string bands, but they do it with a crackling rock & roll energy. Old Crow Medicine Show |
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A Mule's Long Trek in Search of the North American Dream |
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| Topic: Movies |
1:25 pm EDT, Jul 17, 2004 |
This gripping Colombian film, written and directed by Joshua Marston, follows the desperate plunge of Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) from a dead-end job as an assembly-line worker in a Colombian flower factory into the drug-smuggling underworld. Maria's journey from Bogotá to New York in a plane with three other smugglers is one of the tensest flights ever filmed. "Maria Full of Grace" sustains a documentary authenticity that is as astonishing as it is offhand. Even when you're on the edge of your seat, it never sacrifices a calm, clear-sighted humanity for the sake of melodrama or cheap moralizing. Even the airport interrogators aren't monsters, just everyday officials efficiently carrying out their duties. A Mule's Long Trek in Search of the North American Dream |
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Bicycles and Tricycles | The Orb |
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| Topic: Music |
1:21 pm EDT, Jul 17, 2004 |
Slabs of dub, slices of surrealism, and disembodied "found" voices make their appearance on the latest offering by ambient dub commandos The Orb. Bicycles & Tricycles returns to the original Orb concept which isn't about songs, but lysergic landscapes. Industrial grinds propel you through one moment, only to be untethered into infinite space the next, before being snagged into synchronicity by a dub groove. Bicycles and Tricycles | The Orb |
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LA Requires Safety Measures at Cyber Cafes |
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| Topic: Games |
10:26 am EDT, Jul 8, 2004 |
Worried that cyber cafes are turning into dens of truancy and breeding gang violence, Los Angeles City Council members Wednesday unanimously voted to regulate about 30 businesses where teens and others congregate to use computers. Councilman Dennis Zine, who pushed the proposal, said he acted after a string of shootings at cyber cafes in the San Fernando Valley. "We need to make sure people are safe." Sir, the guns are real, not "cyber." Why don't you start by dealing with the kids-with-guns problem? LA Requires Safety Measures at Cyber Cafes |
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Get America Out of the Tribunal |
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| Topic: Politics and Law |
9:28 am EDT, Jul 7, 2004 |
Rightly or wrongly, the commission of Iraqi war crimes raises the question of American support for the Hussein regime. Indeed, Jacques Vergès, a French lawyer who says he has been asked to help represent Mr. Hussein, has already promised that the issue will take center stage before the special tribunal. Mr. Vergès has stated that he hopes to nullify Mr. Hussein's crimes by demonstrating that the United States was complicit in their commission. Oh, the "ties" that put us in a bind ... Get America Out of the Tribunal |
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| Topic: Health and Wellness |
9:40 am EDT, Jul 6, 2004 |
Children's menus in American restaurants seem to be made up of fried foods, hamburgers, chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese. Restaurants will say that it is because that's what youngsters like. The truth is that it is what parents are teaching their children to eat. Once at a Japanese restaurant a family sitting at the table next to ours looked in amazement as our 5-year-old daughter was thoroughly enjoying her eel sushi. You Are How You Eat |
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Wrongly Held: It Can Happen Here |
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| Topic: Civil Liberties |
9:25 am EDT, Jul 6, 2004 |
When I lived in Pakistan, if someone had told me that the United States would arrest and secretly hold a person in solitary confinement for three months, I would not have believed it. I thought that such things happen only in places characterized by this administration as "rogue states." Where is this country headed? The strength of a nation is not characterized by what it holds dear in times of peace, but what it holds dear in times of war. Unfortunately, this administration has been all too willing to bend the rules and reinterpret the law. Wrongly Held: It Can Happen Here |
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| Topic: War on Terrorism |
5:48 pm EDT, Jul 5, 2004 |
"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists. "Nooooo!" the audience roared. Bush in West Virginia |
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PulpFiction - Advanced News Reader/Aggregator for Mac OS X |
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| Topic: Blogging |
4:19 pm EDT, Jul 5, 2004 |
PulpFiction is a next-generation, easy-to-use, powerful RSS/Atom feed reader. Featuring a familiar Mail-like interface, PulpFiction will fetch, organize, and display news and articles from thousands of weblogs and websites. PulpFiction throws some serious muscle behind your news reading. Powerful, flexible filters move, mark, and process articles. Flags, sounds, and dock icons alert you to new or important posts. AppleScript support allows you to extend PulpFiction to work with your entire digital hub. PulpFiction - Advanced News Reader/Aggregator for Mac OS X |
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