bklee's posterous - semper ubi sub ubi

In Stockholm and loving it! It's hard to describe immersion in a foreign country with a dinky camera that can only capture so little of what the eye sees. Granted, at any given time the eye can only focus on only a small fraction of visible pixels - but there are so many unimportant foci in the mundane. Stitched together into a panorama, these foci become more than just a sum of their parts..

Click here to download:

Snapshots_of_Sweden.zip (21740 KB)

Comments [3]

July 3, 2009

eating placenta

Afterbirth for Dinner - TIME
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1908194,00.html?artId=1908194?contType=article?chn=sciHealth

happy fourth of july! the video in this article almost made me throw up. gotta say, i love joel stein's writing:

"Most mammals, Cassandra explained, eat their placentas, to which I countered that most dogs eat their poop. I stopped arguing there, figuring that like many of Cassandra's hippie ideas — the compost bin, rubbing lemon on her underarms instead of deodorant — she'd give up on this in a few weeks. Even as the due date approached and she was still set on eating her placenta, I couldn't imagine that she'd remember to request it from the doctor after the most physically draining experience of her life. This is a woman who, 9 times out of 10, forgets the bag of leftovers at the restaurant."

Comments [1]

June 5, 2009

i hate spammers

i was looking for an apartment in philadelphia and came across an impossibly cheap listing at http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/apa/1202493909.html . basically, they were advertising a property that supposedly came with free parking in downtown, free utilities, and at less than half the going rate at the given address.

out of curiosity, i wrote the person and they replied with the following. the link to the "free" credit report was a tipoff that this was spam. googling the text of the email, i found that another person had the exact same experience http://www.threadless.com/profile/267478/jpiatt/blog/456420/My_War_on_SPAMers?=

anyways, sometimes i hate craigslist. gah.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: anna wade <anna.wade06@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 11:51 PM
Subject: Re: 1 BR at 1600 Arch St
To: Me

Thank you for your interest in my condo for rent. I am booking appointments to view the condo and would be interested in having you take a look at the property, if you can suggest a date and time that works well for you this would be helpful.

Due to my previous renting experience I am requiring that you verify you have an acceptable credit score and would like to know more about your employment situation to avoid dealing with unqualified renters.

I would recommend getting a FREE credit report from http://www.creditgradegroup.com which takes less than 5 minutes and has no cost to you. This is required before I will consider you as a serious applicant. This will also be useful for any other properties you are looking at and is a standard in pre-rent screening procedures.

I am asking that you complete the report and provide me with the numerical score, please DO NOT send the report as it contains sensitive information, you can print it for your records and bring it with you to the viewing.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Comments [1]

April 22, 2009

a history of waterboarding from NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834

waterboarding was a war crime...in world war II! it's absurd that cheney and company will likely get off scot-free in this day and age.

A Punishable Offense

In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

"All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.

Comments [2]

April 9, 2009

the best youtube clip that doesn't look like a commercial but is actually a commercial... ever....

...and i don't use that designation lightly.

Comments [2]

April 4, 2009

back from sweden

was in stockholm for a couple days to check out a potential postdoc. it was a lot of fun! to generalize: swedish people say it like it is, like to drive priuses, recycle, eat bacon cheese, and create funny-sounding candies. also, you can blithely stroll across the crosswalk if there is one or walk when there is a walk signal without fearing for your life: cars actually STOP for you! this is, of course, unheard of in baltimore.

Click here to download:

back_from_sweden.zip (3934 KB)

Comments [1]

March 22, 2009

baltimore represent!

you don't mess with baltimore, off the court or on it...(fyi, morgan state university is local bmore!). i have to say, this is CRAZY.

Comments [2]

March 4, 2009

missing money

You may have unclaimed money around waiting for you. Search missingmoney.com or state-specific databases below. Supposedly I have over $100 waiting for me from a job I worked at in 2004 in Boston!

(from http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&t=414429)
Alabama http://www.treasury.state.al.us/w...meset.html

Alaska http://www.tax.state.ak.us/progra...cpsrch.asp

Arizona http://www.azunclaimed.gov/Owners/index.asp

Arkansas http://www.arkansas.gov/auditor/u...fo_p1.html

California http://scoweb.sco.ca.gov/UCP/Default.aspx (thanks kuripot)

Colorado https://www.colorado.gov/apps/tre.../index.jsp

Connecticut http://www.ctbiglist.com/

Delaware http://www.state.de.us/revenue/in...heat.shtml

Florida http://www.fltreasurehunt.org/Con...blicSearch

Georgia http://services.dor.ga.gov/unclai.../main.aspx

Hawaii http://pahoehoe.ehawaii.gov/lilo/app

Idaho http://tax.idaho.gov/ucp_search_idaho.htm