garykoelling

The Supreme Court of the United States has held only one criminal trial in its history: United States v. Shipp.

The Famous Trials project has an excellent page on United States v. Shipp, including primary sources, trial transcript excerpts, and contemporary newspaper accounts.

The case produced two opinions: United States v. Shipp, 203 U.S. 563 (1906) (addressing preliminary matters and holding that the trial could proceed) and United States v. Shipp, 214 U.S. 386 (1909) (delivering the result in the trial).

It's not addressed clearly in the case, so in case you're wondering: the reason that the Supreme Court had original jurisdiction in the case despite the limits of Article Three, Section 2 is that the Court had appellate jurisdiction over Ed Johnson's habeas corpus case, and thus had the power to issue necessary orders in aid of its jurisdiction, including holding state officials—such as Shipp—in contempt. Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908); Act of Sept. 24, 1789, ch. 20, § 14 (the Judiciary Act of 1789).

THE HISTORY (AND MYSTERY!) behind Action 52 and Cheetahmen, FINALLY REVEALED! And, if you have five hundred bucks to spare, NES cartridges of the newly unearthed(?) CHEETAHMEN: THE CREATION is available for sale! VINCE PERRI AT HIS DESIGN BEST, the web site proclaims, though it's unclear what this is expected to mean to us!

Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil

Justice Sonia Sotomayor stops by Sesame Street for a cup of coffee...

Rick Santorum predicted winner in Minnesota & Missouri. Mr. Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator best known for his feud (and subsequent google-bombing) with Dan Savage over his comparison of homosexuality with bestiality, is the predicted winner of Republican primaries in Minnesota and Missouri, and is currently leading in the third, Colorado.

Argentina will take Falklands claim to the UN Cristina Kirchner warns of 'grave risks to international security' and states intention to prevent war over natural resources. (Argentina) has mobilised much of South America and the Caribbean in a diplomatic and commercial squeeze. Ships flying the Falklands flag are barred from the region's ports, depriving the islands of bananas and other fresh fruit.

Two weeks ago, Argentina's official news agency, Telam, started a Malvinas page with banner pictures of Argentinian jet fighters, helicopters, tanks and soldiers.

A correspondent for the newspaper Clarin reported harsh sentiments from Stanley on Tuesday. The article quoted islanders referring to "fucking Argies" and was illustrated with a photograph of a gift shop mug with an altered map of South America that replaced Argentina with blue emptiness named "Mierda Sea". Mierda means "shit" in Spanish.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The people of the Falkland Islands are British out of choice. They are free to determine their own future and there will be no negotiations with Argentina over sovereignty unless the islanders wish it."

Background on the 1982 Falklands War:

Wikipedia
Falklands War part 1 of 15
BATTLE ATLAS of the FALKLANDS WAR 1982 by Land, Sea and Air
Falklands War (podcast)

Florence Green, the last know WWI veteran, passed away today. She was two weeks away from her 111th birthday.

The last known WWI combat veteran, Claude Choules, passed last May. (previously)

With Sonic Youth on indefinite hiatus, the band members are keeping themselves busy with other projects. Thurston Moore is playing solo shows centered around his latest solo album, the Beck-produced Demolished Thoughts, with a band he jokingly(?) referred to this past Friday night as "Dush Krew" in honor of his crush on actress Eliza Dushku. Kim Gordon recently designed clothes for French brand Surface to Air, is currently playing shows with Bill Nace as part of the noise improvisation duo Body/Head, and was kind enough recently to share her favorite taco recipe. Lee Ranaldo is poised to release his first song-oriented solo album on Matador Records; he debuted the music video for the first single ("Off the Wall") today on his website. Steve Shelley played drums on Lee's new album, recently collaborated with Pete Nolan of Magik Markers (Sonic Youth's most interesting protégés) on Nolan's side-project Spectre Folk, and is currently drumming for Chicago's Disappears whose new album is out via Kranky records in March. Meanwhile, Jim O'Rourke is preparing to curate the All Tomorrow's Parties I'll Be Your Mirror Festival in Tokyo this April, where he will also perform his 1999 album Eureka in full with a 12-piece band.

How do robots see the world? This is an experiment in found machine-vision footage, exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye. [SLVimeo]

Did you find Heidi Klum's Halloween costume hot? Then these muscle leggings are right up your alley.

Woman, 83, Has World's First Lower Jaw Replacement – In 3D [abc.com] In what has been called the first operation of its kind, an 83-year-old woman in the Netherlands has been fitted with a custom-made artificial jaw that was created by a 3D printer. The titanium implant, which weighs less than 4 ounces, was created by taking a CT scan of the woman's lower jaw and duplicating it with a 3D printer that lays down titanium powder instead of ink. The printer followed the pattern of the woman's jaw bone layer by layer, fusing the titanium powder in place with heat. In just a couple hours, the 3D replica was ready.

How Marvel Comics screwed Jack Kirby out of millions

Chill to the re-created chirrups of Jurassic crickets.

How to go from fit to fat in 5 hours. Yes, that's from fit to fat.

The Winter's Tale [SLYT] A splendid one-person (+dog+sockpuppet) rendition of Shakespeare's play.

"Do I have any other hidden family!?"

A documentary by Ariel Nasr, "The Boxing Girls of Kabul" (National Film Board of Canada trailer), profiles a group of young Afghan women training to compete in women's boxing in the 2012 Olympics (which will feature boxing for the first time as a women's event). Radio Netherlands interviews 18 year old Shabnam Rahimi, and the Toronto Star has a photo album on the athletes. If all that inspires you, petition President Hamid Karzai's government to support the team, via this petition page. (Nasr is also known for his documentary, "Good Morning Kandahar".)

Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young is a long and link-heavy examination of the relationship between Neil Young's "Southern Man" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama." If you'd prefer a briefer, much more rocking version of the story, try the song "Ronnie and Neil" by the Drive-By Truckers.

If Nicholas Carr is right, and consuming words on a screen is a "more primitive way of reading," then the iPad is a little bit Neanderthal and a little bit Prometheus. Its potential for creative ways to interact with literature makes it more than just an e-reader. And while it took more than a year and a half since the iPad's launch, some publishers are beginning to experiment with that potential. Last year saw several forays into innovative literature apps, most notably T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land; Atlas Shrugged and On The Road also received the "enhanced" app treatment.
Laura Miller (Salon.com co-founder, NY Times Book Review columnist, author) and Maud Newton (writer and critic for The NY Times Book Review, Granta, The Awl) have both written extensively about digital reading and publishing and they've launched The Chimerist, tagline: Two iPad lovers at the intersection of art, stories, and technology. Newton writes: The Chimera of Greek myth was a fire-breathing abomination, part lion, part goat, and part snake or dragon, that "devastated the country and harried the cattle; for it was a single creature with the power of three beasts." A lot of readers I know and respect look at the ebook and other art that makes use of technology as just this kind of dreadful mutant, threatening not just to storytelling and intellectual discourse, but to civilization itself.

Although I'm not by nature an optimist, I have more faith than that in our ability to adapt, to use our new tools to create art and stories that are profound and beautiful. And I know Laura does too, which is the reason we decided, after more than a year and a half of talking about it, to start The Chimerist.
So far they've covered Maurizio Cattelan For Ipad, the Strange Rain app, and lockscreens. They're also looking for screenshots of your iPad.

(Laura Miller previously on The Blue.)

Google's answer to TED talks has gone live. Solve For X, a "forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork," currently contains links to YouTube videos from the likes of Neal Stephenson, Rob McGinnis, and Privahini Bradoo. Videos range from 10 to 20 minutes in length.

From the site:

"There are three important questions that distinguish a Solve for X talk. [from a TED talk, presumably... s.]
- Does it highlight a huge problem?
- Is there a concrete solution that could make a radical impact?
- Does it explain breakthrough science and technology that could enable this solution?"

Shortly after a small Iranian toy company "returned" (a pink plastic replica of) the captured RQ-170 unmanned drone, Mohammad H. Farjoo, Iran's Secretary for Policy-making at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in Tehran (IIDCYA) has decreed an import ban on all toy Simpsons figurines.

From the Reuters article: "...[w]hile Farjoo said that all-American super-heroes like Superman and Spiderman were still welcome in Iran - because they do battle for the oppressed (emphasis mine) - the values of the Simpsons, a famously self-centred and irreligious bunch, were not."

A historical sampling of the IIDCYA's sanctioned films and animations:

The psychedelic hero quest Malek Khorshid "King of the Sun" (15:56) [featured on McSweeney's Wholphin DVD Volume #1 (previously)]
The Mad Mad Mad World [ (:45) A MUST WATCH]
Children of Heaven (trailer)
Bahador (part 1, 2, 3)
Shangoul and Mangoul (1,2)