March 31, 2010 All the President's Pens White House Staff Secretary Lisa Brown explains why presidents use so many pens to sign bills. Barack Obama used 22 different pens when he signed the health reform bill.
March 24, 2010 Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden In the past few years weve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid. Sadly, the great Dock Ellis died in 2008 at 63. A year before, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres. Subsequently, Blagden and Isenberg were inspired to create a short animated film around the original audio.
March 23, 2010 Plastic Bag / Ramin Bahrani Struggling with its immortality, a discarded plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) ventures through the environmentally barren remains of America as it searches for its maker.
March 22, 2010 The LSD Baguette Experiment A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. A confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency addresses a recently-published account of U.S. government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France. The strange outbreak severely affected nearly five hundred people, causing the deaths of at least five, two by suicide. For nearly 60 years the Pont-St.-Esprit incident has been attributed either to ergot poisoning, meaning that villagers consumed bread infected with a psychedelic mold or to organic mercury poisoning. Now the outbreak seems to have been caused by CIA LSD laced baguettes. "Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead. Pont-Saint-Esprit's hospital reported four attempts at suicide."
March 19, 2010 Greetings from Paradise Beach Fantasy and hyper-reality are blended in the wandering gaze of a young boy on vacation. The beach is both a place of lust and boyhood obsessions and, a horror show of strange mishaps. Madcap fun and light satire reign in this delightful short film by Louis Netter.
March 12, 2010 Cornel West: The State of Democracy for African-Americans in the US Cornel West Avi Lewis talks to Cornel West, professor of African American Studies at Princeton, hip hop artist, and one of the most controversial academics in the US about the state of democracy for African-Americans in the US today, US foreign policy, global recession, and his dispute with Lawrence Summers.
March 11, 2010 Biking Directions on Google Maps In the US, Google Maps now offers step-by-step biking directions; bike trails outlined directly on the map; and a new Bicycling layer that indicates bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly roads.
March 9, 2010 Judge Jim Gray on The Six Groups Who Benefit From Drug Prohibition In 1992, Jim Gray, a conservative judge in conservative Orange County, California, held a press conference during which he recommended that we rethink our drug laws. Today, more and more Americans are coming to the realization that prohibition's costs — whether measured in lives and liberties lost or dollars wasted — far exceed any possigoogle analyticsble or claimed benefits.
March 8, 2010 Toxic Testosterone Culture — Why Women Leave Business Dr. Patrick Dixon, Futurist and author of 12 books on global trends including Futurewise and Building a Better Business discusses why women the best talent in junior management, but poorly represented in senior management.
March 5, 2010 Haiti Prisoners on the Run After Quake Several prisons in Haiti were destroyed when the devastating eartquake hit the country in January, and about 3,000 inmates fled. About 300 have been recaptured, but police say many of the others have armed themselves and are again robbing, raping and terrorising the public. Al Jazeera's Steve Chao, reporting from the capital, Port au Prince, meets one notorious gang member now living in hiding.
March 4, 2010 American Family Association Wants Killer Whale Stoned The American Family Association, a religious right group, is urging that Tillikum, the whale that killed a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando, be stoned to death. Citing Tilly's history of violent crime, the group slammed SeaWorld for not heeding Scripture: According to the ancient civil code of Israel, "When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable." (Exodus 21:28)
March 2, 2010 Obama Caught Lip-Syncing Speech After Obama slips up during an address on health care, White House officials are forced to admit the president occasionally uses a backing track for important speeches.
March 1, 2009 Symphony of Science - The Poetry of Reality The Poetry of Reality is the fifth installment in the Symphony of Science music video series. It features 12 scientists and science enthusiasts, including Michael Shermer, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Carolyn Porco, and PZ Myers, promoting science through words of wisdom.
