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January 31
Spider-man
, for many of us, has been a tried and true character which many of us have grown up with. For my fellow comic geeks, I'm sure many of you will agree at having enjoyed the stories for many years. However, the recent
"The Other" storyline has harped on a series of evolutions(literally, not figuratively) that our webslinger has undergone of late. Of which an upcoming
costume change is the least.
posted by Doorstop at 8:34 PM PST - 65 comments
Cindy Sheehan arrested for wearing anti-war T-shirt at State of the Union
Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush's State of the Union address.
"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman, adding that Sheehan was arrested for unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.
Remind me not to wear my "Impeach Bush" button on my next trip to D.C.
posted by frogan at 7:30 PM PST - 522 comments
One week after publicly declaring his
lack of support for our troops, LA Times columnist & professional nerd humorist Joel Stein comes
out in favor of Grand Theft Auto's
Hot Coffee mod, which has recently been the focus of a lawsuit brought by the city of Los Angeles against Rockstar Games, the makers of GTA.
"Because if these teen computer geniuses are given the opportunity to unlock a video-game sex scene, then they'll be just one step away from breaking the code that allows them to type dirty words into Google."
posted by jonson at 7:13 PM PST - 17 comments
Last winter, Sweden was blasted by the first storm in recorded history to ever deliver hurricane force winds, devastating the country's forests. Logging crews came from all over the world. This massive collection of wood is now stored at a former air strip.
via Inhabitat
posted by stbalbach at 3:44 PM PST - 42 comments
"The Virtual Hilltribe Museum
is a project of the
Mirror Art Group of Chiang Rai, Thailand to document the rapidly changing cultures of hilltribe people in northern Thailand. While countless volumes have been compiled about the touristically popular hilltribe cultures, almost all of these works have been written by Thais or Westerners and, therefore, carry the bias and mistakes of an outsider. The Virtual Hilltribe Museum is the work of the tribal people themselves."
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:48 PM PST - 7 comments
Have you ever had
one of those times where you lose your job, then your VA benefits are cut (even though you were wounded seven times in Vietnam), then your son dies in Iraq and homophobic protesters hold up a sign at his funeral that says
Thank God for Dead Soldiers
then just after Christmas the candle you light for your dead child burns your house down and your family (including your grandchildren) is homeless, and your wife needs surgery for gallstones?
Yeah, thats tough when that happens.
But sometimes
people come through for you.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:43 AM PST - 154 comments
Spiral Scouts
are the wiccan/pagan answer to Boy Scouts (and Girl Scouts, since they're not a gender specific organization). And since pagans are apparently the
new black, the scouts have been getting some
recent attention. Although the Spiral Scouts started through a wiccan church, they've made a point of including all religions and/or non-religions (as opposed to
the Boy Scouts). And while you can imagine what
the conservative response might be, the left has found enough
dirt on the Boy Scouts over the years that the Spiral alternative seems to be getting a fairly warm response so far.
posted by p3t3 at 10:01 AM PST - 47 comments
Macramé: the craft that spawned a million eyesores
As every family has its black sheep, so must the world of crafting have its irredeemable craft. Meet
macramé, the
ugly stepsister of crafting. In my recent search for a basic pattern I could use to redo a couple of old lawn chairs, every click revealed some
fresh new horror. I searched on, thinking surely there must be at least one or two examples of attractive macramé products somewhere on the world wide web, but
apparently not. There was nothing but
bad jewellery,
bad home décor items,
bad chairs and
really bloody awful owls. I tried approaching the technique with a designers mindset, seeing ugly things not as an end in themselves but as a design challenge. How could the patterns be improved? How could the technique and medium be used to produce something beautiful? Perhaps it was just the macramé cord and not the technique that doomed each project to aesthetic hell? But in the end, the craft defeated me. I declared it
hopeless, decided to do my two lawn chairs in a plain cream and then retreat from the field before some disaster (
possibly one involving a flaming owl) struck. However, that is just my opinion. Perhaps I just dont appreciate that some people really need that
homemade Christmas tree, or the perfect belt to wear
while impersonating Elvis.
posted by orange swan at 7:49 AM PST - 62 comments
Gone postal
Another US postal worker shoots and kills work mates (ex workmates in this case.) As ever Wiki tells
all. USPO works to
eradicate the usage, but no
chance. Now so much part of the culture you can
game it
posted by A189Nut at 7:27 AM PST - 34 comments
Engineering Perfect Americans
Were your immigrant ancestors considered genetically predisposed to become criminals? Were your mixed-ethnic ancestors thought to be polluting the nation's 'germ-plasm'? The Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement presents a well-put-together online exhibit/walkthrough of this disturbing vein in American history.
posted by Miko at 6:12 AM PST - 7 comments
January 30
Unclaimed Baggage Center
is where lost luggage goes to die...and then live again. This huge warehouse buys the stuff we leave behind by the truckload, unpacks it, and then sells it to the public in an ongoing junk sale. Items range from the
mundane to the merely
puzzling to the somewhat
disturbing (this was found ON AN AIRPLANE, for Chrissakes.) The online store cannot compare to shopping there in person. And yes, it is located in THAT Scottsboro.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:45 PM PST - 33 comments
CBS' 60 Minutes
asks: "Hundreds of thousand of people could die in a nuclear attack, but hundreds of thousands of others could be saved. Thats because the Pentagon after decades of searching believes it has found a drug to treat radiation exposure. Why isnt that drug available? "
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 6:34 PM PST - 41 comments
Google Images Censored in China
A picture says 1000 words, and Google.cn is censoring them all. Check out the side-by-side screens of a search for "tiananmen+square" in Google.com and Google.cn images. Looks like a nice place, with little historical significance. You can try the search
yourself. The text on the bottom left is the censorship disclaimer. Very different than our
results. A far cry from Google's
claim that they do not censor results. Nice to know that they stand up to the government here but not abroad.
A good
spoof of the whole thing.
posted by FeldBum at 5:11 PM PST - 57 comments
Nam June Paik
passed away on
Sunday. We'll read
educated commentaries in the next few days, but what I most affectionately remember about him is how his work made me laugh happily during the 70s and 80s. A precursor of video art, he was the first to use plugged tv sets as building blocks in the most
playful ways. His
TV Buddha is arguably an unsurpassed classic (a motionless moving image, an outside observation of an inner meditation, even -why not?- a premonition of a blogger) (this last one is a joke: I told you Paik made me laugh). R.I.P.
posted by bru at 3:36 PM PST - 34 comments
Army officials are investigating allegations that as many as seven members of the
82nd Airborne Division appeared
on a gay pornography web site. Authorities at Fort Bragg have begun an inquiry into whether the paratroopers' actions violated the military conduct code. Although the site in question has apparently now
been removed, the issue has once again highlighted the military's unofficial policy of "Don't ask, don't tell." Does this incident show that it is now finally time to drop this discriminatory policy, thus finally allowing
homesexual officers to serve their country without having to stay in the closet? Or is there a legitimate need for this policy to remain in use in the armed forces?
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:03 PM PST - 78 comments
Cody the Buffalo
has passed away at the age of 19. In addition to being in "Dances with Wolves" with Kevin Costner, Cody was also in the film Radio Flyer. He also appeared in several commercials, and even appeared with Jay Leno. Last spring, he traveled to the U.S. Mint in Washington, D.C., to participate in the unveiling of a new buffalo-head nickel.
posted by drstein at 1:31 PM PST - 11 comments
Need a patch of
skin for that burn or perhaps some new brain cells?
Print them. A team of British scientists have shown that cells could survive ink-jet printing. Ink-jet technology moves
beyond paper.
posted by Termite at 12:59 PM PST - 21 comments
Massive fraud, theft, corruption in Iraq rebuilding
...Iraqi money gambled away in the Philippines...spent on a swimming pool that was never used...US$700,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker...millions to companies that never submitted required competitive bids or that were paid for unfinished work...paid US$14,000 on four separate occasions for the same job...US$1.3 million wasted on overpriced or duplicate construction or equipment not delivered..."needlessly disbursed more than US$1.8 million" of the estimated US$2.3 million spent for renovating the library...from new auditor reports from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:32 AM PST - 48 comments
So, you're gonna talk about energy?
Wonder if the President will mention the
record profits his buddies in big oil have been earning. Exxon Mobil
who made a record $25.3bn (19.4bn) profit in 2004, earned a company record $9.9bn (8.2bn) in the fourth quarter of 2005. In the same quarter, Condoleeza Rice's former employer Chevron, who once named an oil tanker for their former vice president,
earned a record $4.14bn (4.43bn).
The third-largest US oil company, ConocoPhillips, has reported a fourth quarter profit of $3.68bn (3.05bn), a 50% leap from the same time a year ago.The
industry claims that oil companies earn 7.3 cents on a gallon, but "Exxon's profit for the year... a staggering $36.13 billion is bigger than the economies of 125 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank. Profit rose 42 percent from 2004."
You gonna talk about that, George?
posted by three blind mice at 10:48 AM PST - 80 comments
Media outraced by Bloggers, Kerry appeal to netroots galvanizes suprise drive against Alito
On
Google News, you'll read how US Democratic Senators Obama and Biden are against a filibuster. Old news. They've agreed to support it. Encouraged by direct appeals by Senators.
Kerry and
Kennedy to internet activists, a blizzard of calls, emails, and
faxes, organized via the
Daily Kos and other blogs - with
tactical direction from Kennedy - have helped flip the positions of several Democratic senators, and as of Saturday some claimed the push was already
within 2 votes of forcing continued Senate debate on the Alito nomination. In fact, the pro-filibuster bloc might have
started with
37 votes Meanwhile, today,
Morning Edition, which declined to run the filibuster push as a top story and failed to mention the internet effort, asked Senator Kennedy on Senator Hillary Clinton's opposition to the filibuster: actually, she joined the effort last Friday [ see main link ] : D'oh !
posted by troutfishing at 7:07 AM PST - 236 comments
January 29
It was an
instant icon, with Dan Rather calling it "the best war photograph in recent years." About 100 newspapers ran the photo, dubbing the
anonymous warrior the "Marlboro Man."
The photograph hit the world on Nov. 10, 2004: a close-cropped shot of a
U.S. Marine in Iraq, his face smeared with
blood and dirt, a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke curling across weary eyes. He's quieter now -- easier to anger. He turns to fight at the sound of a backfire, can't look at fireworks without thinking of fire raining down on a city. He has
trouble sleeping, and when he does, his fingers twitch on
invisible triggers.
The diagnosis:
post-traumatic stress disorder.
The man in the photograph is
James Blake Miller, now 21, and he is an icon, although in ways Rather probably never imagined.
Previously mentioned briefly here
posted by stenseng at 10:04 PM PST - 27 comments
A Case of the Crabs, and its sequel,
The Goat in the Grey Fedora, are a couple of point-and-click black-and-white Flash games that parody the old Sam Spade-type noir films. You are Nick Bounty, private detective, and it's up to you to solve the mysteries of the counterfeit crabs and the miniature goat statue, respectively. Very, very jokey; guaranteed to induce eyerolling.
Look at everything, talk to everyone, and pick up everything that's not nailed down. Hints are available, but they're crammed with jokes too.
posted by Gator at 7:12 PM PST - 5 comments
Sure, we're all aware that William Shatner is the man, but
this guy takes it to new heights (Google Video) in the mockumentary
Auto Destruct: One Man's Obsession With William Shatner. Our disturbing yet engaging subject engages in
rock and roll (Google Video, again,) shenanigans and goes into detail about a traumatic childhood experience involving a monkey.
Of course, for those who want their Shatner undiluted and pop-tastic, there's always
his version of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (again, Google video,) now featuring cameos from across the pop-culture spectrum.
Disclaimer: I'm used for a pull quote on the first two links, and they misspelled frisson.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 1:40 PM PST - 12 comments
With the growing trend (at least among the porn stars & strippers I sleep with) of complete genital hairlessness, it's refreshing to see that the centuries old tradition of the
Merkin has been
reborn for a new generation.
posted by jonson at 9:06 AM PST - 40 comments
Poor old Abe. He had an
impressive medical history,
as previously discussed. Will we ever figure out all his ailments? As an explanation for "his especially clumsy gait," one theory claims that he had
Marfan's Syndrome (with
good company). But now researchers are leaning more toward a new theory, that a gene-linked disorder called
ataxia. But Lincoln also suffered from depression which could have been
heriditary, for which he took
"little blue pills" that gave him mercury poisoning, which could explain his insomnia, tremors and rage attacks, gait,
and more. Of course,
we also suspect that he was
in the closet.
Lincoln's DNA will continue to be a growth industry, at least until somebody can get hold of a sample of the old guy and figure him out for sure.
posted by beagle at 8:55 AM PST - 34 comments
Spies, Lies and Wiretaps
Instead of the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the warrantless spying on Americans, we've received only the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation and a couple of big, dangerous lies...
this is an editorial pointing out the lies given the American public about spying. In addtion some 15 legal scholars here conclude that the Bush "initiative" is clearly illegal
and violates the American constitution. Declaring "war powers" simply will not do!
posted by Postroad at 6:46 AM PST - 47 comments
Grief, Gratitude and Baby Lee.
She wanted to honor her son, to celebrate his life, however short. That's why she had refused an abortion, even after doctors told her that her little boy would be born without a brain.
posted by matteo at 3:14 AM PST - 73 comments
January 28
The news you knew, yet didn't really know
Project Censored has become more and more relevant in our self-censored and compliant media. These are the top ten stories that received very little airplay or no air play at all.
It makes the Baby Jesus cry. . .
posted by mk1gti at 6:10 PM PST - 28 comments
Ask a Republican.
Hello! I often get asked questions about Republican policy by greasy-haired liberal hippies. Seattle was no exception in Sept of 2005. It was teeming with them. May God bless you and America. Quicktime videos [via the monkey]
posted by srboisvert at 12:48 PM PST - 27 comments
President Jonah
--an essay/history lesson/bible lesson/etc by Gore Vidal.
...We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define ...
posted by amberglow at 12:25 PM PST - 33 comments
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly, specialization is for insects."
Robert A. Heinlein, "
Time Enough For Love"
posted by sourbrew at 11:55 AM PST - 89 comments
Triglav.
It's fun, it's gorgeous, it's PC and Internet Explorer only.
It's also unstable as all hell, so play career mode unless you don't mind restarting your whole game frustratingly often.
DHTML gaming at its finest.
(from the always excellent
jayisgames, which is having a fantastic week).
Triglav was
previously mentioned but was as of then unfinished. If you're already hip to it, play
meteor busters instead.
posted by klangklangston at 12:06 AM PST - 16 comments
January 27
The Flowering Nose in Slugland adventure game. As a goblin with a flower for a nose, your ultimate goal is to find the lost sprout. Defeat enemies by throwing flowers at them; power up with hearts; teleport from level to level with such esoteric trinkets as donuts and cherries. (Java.)
posted by Gator at 8:46 PM PST - 15 comments
US plans to 'fight the net' revealed
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
posted by Postroad at 3:29 PM PST - 25 comments
Cellfilms.
Ithica College in New York is hosting the Cellflix Film Festival, and has asked students between 13 and 20 to submit 30-second movies shot entirely with their cell phones. They have narrowed down the nearly 200 entries they received to 10 finalists that can be found
here. (My votes to the shadow puppets and the progression of life.)
posted by onlyconnect at 2:58 PM PST - 11 comments
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win: SDS is reborn. Founded in 1959 and imploded ten tumultous years later, the Students for Democratic Society was one of the most
dynamic and controversial forces at work in organizing a mass movement against the Vietnam war, particularly among draft-age kids. The group's original manifesto, Tom Hayden's
Port Huron statement, still rings prophetic in
Bush's America.
Now SDS is relaunching and planning its first national convention since 1969, with a new crew of young radicals issuing
calls to action to their own supposedly apathetic generation: "We seek liberation from the dominant business interests that have degraded our cities, paved over our communities, drowned out small business, and commodified our culture... Cooperative self-reliance is the only moral and material salvation of our nation, and the only release from a system that demands each of us be an accomplice to its
heinous crimes."
posted by digaman at 12:42 PM PST - 45 comments
Five Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong.
From the magazine "Christianity Today", David P. Gushee, a professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, is against torture. Period. No exceptions. Complete with Bible verses to prove it.
posted by willmize at 12:02 PM PST - 42 comments
The Great American Health Check
Cancer.org has a great online resource to figure out what your individual health risks are, to help get into better shape or to help quit smoking. Its free and kicks out a personalized list of concerns to print out and bring to your doctor.
posted by fenriq at 11:07 AM PST - 21 comments
NPRs Live Concert Series
site offers recordings of recent live performances by
James Brown,
Sinead OConnor,
Iron & Wine and Calexico,
Son Volt,
My Morning Jacket,
The White Stripes, M. Ward,
Sigur Ros,
Bloc Party,
The Decemberists, and live tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. ET,
Colin Meloy.
posted by ND¢ at 8:05 AM PST - 46 comments
The Great Zucchini
Eric Knaus, aka "The Great Zucchini," is a 35-year-old community college dropout who works only two days a week. But he takes home over $100,000 a year because he knows how to make preschool children laugh. His "act" is largely improvised, his "props" are old, dirty, and in desperate need of repair. So how (and maybe more importantly,
why) does he do it? As Gene Weingarten, the author of this extremely funny, moving piece, says: "
if you want to know why
it's going to take some time." Hes not kidding the story runs almost 10,000 words. Do yourself a favor and read every one. (via
Lileks)
posted by pardonyou? at 8:00 AM PST - 45 comments
Good Dog AIBO.
Arf, Arf, he goes,
a merry sight
Our little hairy friend
Arf, Arf, upon the lampost bright
Arfing round the bend.
Nice dog! Goo boy,
Waggie tail and beg,
Clever
AIBO,
jump for joy,
Because we are putting you to sleep at three of the clock,
AIBO.
with apologies to john lennon (thanks
piratebowling )
posted by three blind mice at 4:17 AM PST - 24 comments
January 26
"Someone messed it up bad. The world went to pieces. It was dog eat dog and everyone for himself. Along came an unlikely hero. You....The future can be saved. The knowledge
