Image by Za Rodinu via Flickr

Stuff I thought was interesting from April 14th through April 19th:

• Tea Party Financiers Owe Their Fortune to Josef Stalin – The Tea Party movement’s dirty little secret is that its chief financial backers owe their family fortune to the granddaddy of all their hatred: Stalin’s godless empire of the USSR.
• Cultivated Play: Farmville | MediaCommons – The most important thing to recognize here is that, whether we like it or not, seventy-three million people are playing Farmville: a boring, repetitive, and potentially dangerous activity that barely qualifies as a game. Seventy-three million people are obligated to a company that holds no reciprocal ethical obligation toward those people.
• Daily Kos: State of the Nation – When a President is all Heart – Yesterday, after ordering hospital visits rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians, president Obama called Janice Langbehn, a woman from Florida who in 2007 lost her partner for 18 years, Lisa Pond. Apparently, the president read the story last year. So last night he called Langbehn from Air Force One to tell her about the new policy.
• Internet Filter Not Needed, Says US Ambassador to Australia – The US ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich has criticised the Rudd government’s plan to filter the internet, saying the same goals can be achieved without censorship.
• House season finale shot with Canon 5D Mk II – For those doubters of having a “sub-standard” video mode in DSLRs, you might want to wait for the season finale of House (featuring the superbly sarcastic Hugh Laurie) to see what can be done with a video-capable DSLR

Cover via Amazon

Stuff I thought was interesting on April 13th:

• The 7 Most Horrifying Things Ever Discovered in a Human Body | Cracked.com – Most experienced surgeons and doctors will say they’ve seen it all. Most surgery is fairly routine, and it’s only occasionally that you slice somebody open and some really crazy shit pops out. Have we found you a list of some of the craziest shit? Why, yes.
• Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe? – According to a mind-bending new theory, a black hole is actually a tunnel between universes—a type of wormhole. The matter the black hole attracts doesn’t collapse into a single point, as has been predicted, but rather gushes out a “white hole” at the other end of the black one, the theory goes.
• How North Koreans See Themselves – And Why it Matters – Immersion in propoganda, race-based nationalism and the un-figure-outable vortex of Juche Thought: Colin Marshall talks to B. R. Myers, author of “The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans see Themselves and Why it Matters“