Cyrus Farivar

Slate: On a certain level, it’s hard to blame Anglophone critics. Your junior-high être et avoir won’t get you very far with the torrents of slang that fill French rap. Even most French-speakers find it hard to follow along. Many MCs deliver whole songs in Verlan, the ingenious, dizzying slang in which words are reversed or recombined, turning arabe (arab) into rabza, bourré (drunk) into rébou, bête (stupid) into teubé, and so on. (Verlan is itself an example of the…

1) From the WTF!?!? Department: NYT: WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 – The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts. 2) From the Good Explainer Department: NYT: PARIS, Nov. 10 – Semou Diouf, holding a pipe in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood amid the noisy games of…

See Jack Shafer’s slaughtering of Judy Miller for why. NYT: The New York Times and Judith Miller, a veteran reporter for the paper, reached an agreement today that ends her 28-year career at the newspaper and caps more than two weeks of negotiations. Ms. Miller went to jail this summer rather than reveal a confidential source in the C.I.A. leak case. But her release from jail 85 days later after she agreed to testify before a grand jury and persistent…

Wired: By Joshua Quittner October 1994 I’m waiting for a call back from McDonald’s, the hamburger people. They’re trying to find me someone – anyone – within corporate headquarters who knows what the Internet is and can tell me why there are no Golden Arches on the information highway. It’s true: there is no mcdonalds.com on the Internet. No burger_king.com either. Yet. “Are you finding that the Internet is a big thing?” asked Jane Hulbert, a helpful McDonald’s media-relations person,…

E&P, via MeFi: Q I’d like you to clear up, once and for all, the ambiguity about torture. Can we get a straight answer? The President says we don’t do torture, but Cheney — MR. McCLELLAN: That’s about as straight as it can be. Q Yes, but Cheney has gone to the Senate and asked for an exemption on — MR. McCLELLAN: No, he has not. Are you claiming he’s asked for an exemption on torture? No, that’s — Q…

Marjane Satrapi (of Persepolis fame), has joined the NYT as an online cartoonist/columnist, drawing mini vertical comics for the web. They’re pretty damned sweet. Unfortunately, you have to be part of the TimesSelect thing to see them.

Big ups to Clive Thompson, of Slate fame. For the unitiated: WALTER : Way to go, Dude. If you will it, it is no dream. DUDE: You’re fucking twenty minutes late. What the fuck is that? WALTER: Theodore Herzel. DUDE: Huh? WALTER: State of Israel. If you will it, Dude, it is no– DUDE: What the fuck’re you talking about? The carrier. What’s in the fucking carrier? WALTER: Huh? Oh–Cynthia’s Pomeranian. Can’t leave him home alone or he eats the…

Wired News by Cyrus Farivar 02:00 AM Nov. 09, 2005 PT SAN FRANCISCO — Normally, automobiles in the parking lot of SBC Park remain more or less stationary. But this week, cars are communicating with each other, parallel parking themselves and employing automatic, radar-based braking. The 12th Annual World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, being held through Thursday, is showcasing some of the newest advances in automotive technology and offering glimpses at what the future might hold. Toyota displayed some…

Wikipedia on The Republic of Texas: The annexation resolution has been the topic of some incorrect historical beliefs—chiefly, that the resolution was a treaty between sovereign states, and granted Texas the explicit right to secede from the Union. This was a right argued by some to be implicitly held by all states at the time, and until the conclusion of the Civil War. However, no such right was explicitly enumerated in the resolution. The resolution did include two unique provisions:…

Second (and final) half of photos from Turkey. These include the 1,000 year old church-in-a-cave paintings, such as this one. Incredible.