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October 2002 Archives
October 31
Ralph repents? Or something? The man many Democrats see as just a few steps short of an evil spawn of Satan for being a 2000 election spoiler has issued statements of support for 13 non-Green candidates in tight races. These are
all Democrats, including Jean Carnahan (Mo.), Tim Johnson (S.D.) and Tom Strickland (Co.). "I certainly don't want Republicans controlling Congress," Nader said. What happened to the "things have to get worse before they get better" theory? Or has the situation in D.C. indeed grown so bad that at least
some Dems. are turning far enough left for Nader? (Note: He'd thrown support behind Wellstone, even though there's a
Green candidate for Senate in Minn.)
posted by raysmj at 10:40 PM PST - 44 comments
Listen to a true ready made Halloween horror story about a David vs Goliath type struggle. On her October 24th show Caroline Casey creator of the VisionaryActivism Radio show interviewed Percy Schmeiser a canola farmer from Saskatchewan Canada whose organic Canola fields were genetically contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready Canola. Schmeiser a 40 year organic canola seed saver is in the fight of his life against the powerful Monsanto corporation. This powerful interview should make you cry and provoke you to clean your pantry and refrigerator and rethink food choices like I did.
posted by thedailygrowl at 10:33 PM PST - 17 comments
Friday Fun (posted early).
"Do It Yourself" virtual building blocks (similar to the virtual
Legos a while back). Addiction Rating: Mid-Range (no worries--it won't eat your life like
Bookworm did). Very simple blocks can make surprisingly beautiful, even complex creations (awfully tough to approximate a
Gothic groin vault with the available shapes, but trying's half the fun).
(Signup 'membership' is free.)posted by Shane at 7:39 PM PST - 7 comments
This isn't about agriculture. Today, twelve prairie farmers have surrendered themselves to RCMP, rather than pay a fine for their illegal activities. Their mutual crime was choosing to export their
wheat crop independently, rather than through the
Canadian Wheat Board. Are state-run agricultural monopolies appropriate, especially when their authority is exerted unevenly throughout the country? Do you think the action taken by these farmers is justified?
posted by vesper at 5:45 PM PST - 17 comments
Halloween isn't just for kids anymore. Even bigtime celebrities got all dressed up this Halloween. Well that's not exactly true - photoshoppers with too much time on their hands did the work for them. Vogue Magazine, take notes.
posted by hidely at 5:20 PM PST - 5 comments
andy goldsworthy's current project over the course of a month, artist andy goldsworthy will create works each day in the countryside surrounding his home in scotland,
photograph them, and email the photographs to a
gallery in san francisco where they will be printed out, and hung on a wall.
in a time when much conceptual art seems increasingly abstract and difficult, goldsworthy's work feels -- at least to me -- accessible, comforting, and wonderful.
what are some other artists that elicit that response in mefi readers? who's work do you like and want to share?
posted by dolface at 3:50 PM PST - 13 comments
Literary Gothic offers up a splendid smorgasboard of literary ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and, of course, gothic. As a Victorianist, I have a particular predilection for their
ghost stories. Many more Victorian tales of the terrifying--and just plain weird--can be found
at this site, which also features an ongoing reading group. [more inside]
posted by thomas j wise at 3:02 PM PST - 8 comments
Most people think of trick-or-treating, costumes, and
jack-o-lanterns, but for me, and a lot of other Southern
Californians, Halloween was always about
Oingo Boingo's Dia de
los Muertos concerts. With t-shirts inspired by
Jose Guadalupe
Posada, huge paper-mache skeletons jerkily moving to
"Dead Man's
Party", xylophone games and at least three hours of madcap
music, you could always be guaranteed an excellent time.
Unfortunately, the band broke up in 1995, so all we have now is
tr
ibute bands,
Danny Elfman's
filmmusic career, and a heck of a lot of really cool
t-shirts
.
posted by Katemonkey at 2:08 PM PST - 12 comments
Ewww... Even for Halloween this one's a bit creepy. I don't think I'd ever want a plasma screen above my casket providing "a lively counterpoint to the display of an open casket." And what
healthy person has time to record their life in such a fashion? They should be out living it.
posted by MediaMan at 1:16 PM PST - 7 comments
Popular Weed Killer Feminizes Native Leopard Frogs Are feminized frogs a canary in the cage? Loss of amphibians in its own right is unacceptable. But are there problems yet unknown higher up the cornbelt food chain?
"Native male leopard frogs throughout the nation's Corn Belt are being feminized by an herbicide, atrazine, used extensively to kill weeds on the country's leading export crops, corn and soybeans, according to a survey conducted by University of California, Berkeley, biologists and reported this week in Nature."
[...] "Atrazine has been used on crops since 1956 and currently is the most widely used herbicide in the nation".
[...] "Hayes suspects that atrazine boosts the activity of an enzyme, aromatase, that converts male sex hormones, or androgens, to female hormones, or estrogens. The lowered androgens and increased estrogens allow egg cells to grow within the testes, which is normally impossible.
Atrazine's effects on aromatase have been demonstrated in fish, reptiles and mammals, but not yet in amphibians. posted by fred1st at 8:52 AM PST - 9 comments
How gay panic gripped 1960s Royal Navy One sailor reportedly picked up a prostitute who he believed to be female. Realising he wasn't who she appeared to be, the sailor reportedly declared: "Blimey, you're all there!" Nevertheless, he apparently became "infatuated".
This kind of incident led admirals to argue that most of the men accused were only inadvertently homosexual, rather than dangerous "perverts".
Just-released documents from the UK
Public Records Office show some interesting attitudes among the Navy hierarchy at the time. The rationalising of the various activities uncovered is actually quite creative, and weirdly more tolerant than that in subsequent decades, when gay activity got people summarily thrown out of the forces. Even this particular 'crisis' eventually triggered a new 'education' programme on the evils of homosexuality though. In this instance, the pendulum seems not so much to have swung as to have careered wildly in all directions. A bit like the sailors.... (sorry).
posted by jonpollard at 8:41 AM PST - 11 comments
100 scariest movie moments Retrocrush is listing their top 100 scariest movie moments, and so far, the quality is pretty high -- well-chosen scenes, and interesting writeups. And one exploding head. You've been warned. Happy Halloween!
posted by GaelFC at 8:41 AM PST - 80 comments
"You will have heard, Dr Sir I doubt not long before this can have reached you that Sir W. Howe is gone from hence. The Rebels imagine that he is gone to the Eastward. By this time however he has filled Chesapeak bay with surprize and terror." - Sir Henry ClintonSpy Letters of the American Revolution is an excellent site offering such gems as a captured letter written from Rachel Revere to husband Paul, a message from a colonial scientist written in invisible ink, and Benedict Arnold's encrypted message to the British offering to surrender West Point for £20,000. The site includes photos of the documents, back-stories on each letter, profiles of the people involved, and descriptions of methodology, as well as a timeline and route map.
posted by taz at 7:02 AM PST - 8 comments
Reply To All button considered harmful An employee (called a manager in the headline but a millwright in the article) was fired from Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY when he replied to an email announcing "National Coming Out Day" (hint: he wasn't in favor). But in addition to the sender, his message went to about 1000 other employees. Kodak says he was terminated when he refused to admit that sending it to all those people was wrong, not for it's content. Is this Political Correctness run amok or justifiable?
posted by tommasz at 5:00 AM PST - 53 comments
80's ROCK IS DEAD (LONG LIVE 80'S ROCK) Holy crap, I saw an ad on the teevee for a new BOSTON album called
Corporate America.
A new Boston album! A self-described "in your face" indictment of big business and what it is doing to our world. You'll be comforted to know that the music is still way overproduced and the political content has all the impact of Mike + the Mechanics "Silent Running." In other words — don't change a thing! It turns out all the big 80's rockers have 2002 albums, even the little king himself:
Phil Collins. Testify. I'll be damned if one of his new songs doesn't sound like "Take Me Home (Redux)."
Def Leppard's "X"? Same.
Poison's "Hollyweird"? Same! Poison even does a party rock version of The Who's "Squeeze Box." Wonderful.
Bon Jovi,
Rush,
Robert Plant — what year is this again? Who cares. Let's rock. As soon as this
Family Ties is over.
posted by Dok Millennium at 1:54 AM PST - 36 comments
Googie? Does your bowling alley have an inexplicable Tiki motif? Does your neighbor's house vaguely resemble a flying saucer? Does your coffee shop suggest, architecturally, that the secrets of the atom are being exploited within? Well now, you can call it by name. Googie. Who knew?
posted by condour75 at 12:44 AM PST - 39 comments
October 30
Light, Secret Places And Books: Photographer
Sean Kernan's startling and beautifully literary interpretation of Jorge Luís Borges is based on his
The Secret Books album and was
reviewed on
The Garden of Forking Paths, that definitive, ever-fascinating Borges website. It's a small consolation for those, like me, who would have have liked to be in Barcelona today for the opening of the
Cosmopolis exhibition, which celebrates the stormy, but enduring identification of Borges with Buenos Aires. The relationship between writers and places is always interesting whenever they grow into each other to the point of almost
becoming each other. Joyce is Dublin; Kafka is Prague; Pessoa is Lisbon. What other, less obvious identifications are there? Is the relationship more like mutual cannibalism, mythical reinforcement, a touristy marketing scheme or the peaceful symbiosis it's generally made out to be?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:36 PM PST - 40 comments
Robert Flores' 22 page farewell. The man who shot and killed three people at the College of Nursing. Makes for interesting reading and should inspire some discussion as to the stereotyping of whites among whites. Please do read the whole thing, although I doubt you would be able to put down after having started.
posted by ( .)(. ) at 5:18 PM PST - 110 comments
More guerilla corporate advertising. So another
major technology company vandalizes a city (a la the peace-love-penguin thing) and gets a slap on the hand. Obviously, this company can afford any punishment that could come their way for mere vandalism, and the publicity about the punishment process itself just leads to even more free advertising for them. (Not to mention, the free advertising they're getting from people like me commenting on the publicity ;) ) Can anything be done to keep the judicial system from becoming a new advertising medium?
posted by badstone at 3:06 PM PST - 16 comments
Apocalypse Cow! In the most bizarre collaboration between the American Christian Right and ultraorthodox Jewish Zionists in Israel, Pentecostal minister and Georgia cattle farmer
Clyde Lott has collaborated with the
Temple Mount Institute of Jerusalem to breed a
red heifer suitable for purifying the foundation of
a rebuilt version of Solomon's Temple, which ultraorthodox Jews hope will lead to the coming of the Messiah. The problem is that the proposed site for the rebuilt temple is on the same site as the
al-Aqsa mosque, the holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina. Some Zionist extremists in Israel have attempted to
"solve" this problem by plotting to blow up the mosque, which doesn't exactly promote peace in the Middle East. And to think all of this could have been started by a cow that looks like it should have belonged in "the Horse of a Different Color" sequence in the Wizard of Oz!
posted by jonp72 at 2:35 PM PST - 45 comments
This story has been feature in the media a bit lately, but something on the
second page caught my attention, it was mention of a '4G' wireless technology that was also a weapon of mass-desctruction. The article mentions a
press release which revels the company is called
Gaiacomm and a quick
search reveals quite a few more 'press releases' (
1,
2,
3,
4).
So, is this for real or what? Can my 802.11b card be used as a weapon?
posted by sycophant at 2:31 PM PST - 9 comments
Are you "e-fluential"? It's possible you are without even knowing it--you never know who might be
listening in. While I don't find all gadget/soft drink/product discussions insidious, it does seem like they pop up pretty regularly. Has anyone here been
contacted? Or are these companies (and others like them) just targeting product-oriented boards?
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 2:08 PM PST - 35 comments
CIA funds "alternative" media through nonprofit foundations? "The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" -- heavy claims. A several part report, in considerable detail. My note - the Mexican PRI, when it ran Mexico, used to fund a whole constellation of Mexican Leftist groups - the threat of withdrawing funding $ proved a very effective way of keeping dissent within "safe" limits.
posted by troutfishing at 12:48 PM PST - 27 comments
Oregon Measure 23 Oregon's single-payer-health-care referendum:
Sanity in the face of returning double-digit annual cost increases (after an HMO-induced respite), or a tax-and-spend, job-destroying
nightmare which even the public-employee unions (not well-known supporters of any for-profit system)
oppose?
posted by MattD at 12:32 PM PST - 38 comments
"
Kmart Forever is a community gathering place for employees, retirees, friends, family and supporters of Kmart. Kmart started this site after receiving
thousands of emails, calls and letters from people like you asking how they can help support the company. We all want to do what we can to make sure Kmart is with us well into the future."
Of course, such blatant PR cheerleading is bound to be parodied by those of the opposing view -- witness
Kmartsucks.net's innovative design.
posted by me3dia at 12:24 PM PST - 10 comments
Obsolecence and adolescence I came of musical age during the beginning of the tectonic shift between cassette/vinyl/CD (vinyl on the way out, cassette taking precedence and CD waiting in the wings).
Crushes, science and lots of bad music I still love (yeah, too much
Anglophilian pop) was spooled on those tapes. This
story about the demise of the cassette has it all! And it's a great bit of writing, too...
posted by chandy72 at 11:20 AM PST - 26 comments
Dave Winer's not happy about the fact that people are
tweaking the orange XML icon used to link RSS/RDF feeds. You've seen that orange button saying XML at various sites, including MeFi.
Milo just put up one saying RSS instead of XML, which was based on a point brought up by
xiffix, "In hindsight, appropriating the global acronym XML for this narrow use was a mistake. The button should say RSS. Hopefully, people will take Dave’s suggestion to do something completely different to heart and abandon the Userland attempt at a standard icon"
posted by riffola at 10:10 AM PST - 28 comments
Russian gas clues point to cocktail. Events show that the Russians were organized to respond to various terrorist eventualities, but not prepared well enough to take into consideration the lateral side effects. I wonder how this scenerio would have played in the US?
posted by semmi at 9:35 AM PST - 23 comments
Got Milk? High? Do we really need a town called Got Milk?, Calif.? One town is thinking about changing its name to get money. Is this a cool idea, or are marketing people going nuts?
posted by scudder at 9:18 AM PST - 21 comments
President To Author: Your Book Is Unpatriotic " "The letter began by thanking me for sending the book," Hudson said. 'Also, I'm from Austin, Texas, and the president touched on the fact that I was a fellow Texan, congratulating me on my book. But he was setting me up for the one-two punch. Because he called the book unpatriotic and ridiculous and just plain bad writing. Beyond that, I've been instructed not to talk about the contents of the letter for the time being.'"
posted by owillis at 8:43 AM PST - 31 comments
Between
Wellstone and
Veblen, I got to thinking about my
alma mater.
There are a
few others, off the top of my head, that this tiny,
out-of-the way school can lay claim to. How many other prodigal children come from small colleges?
Kofi is one, from another small Minnesota college. Who else? Schools with more than 2,500 students need not apply.
posted by RKB at 8:23 AM PST - 18 comments
Criminal profilers are racist for not thinking a black man could fire a rifle well enough to be the sniper.
They didn't think a black person could be smart enough" to pull off three weeks of terror, driving into very public places, hitting his mark, then eluding all the local, state and federal officers. Wow.
posted by BirdD0g at 8:19 AM PST - 26 comments
"The Blog Twinning Project asks people to tell it which blogs they consider to be similar, and tallies results. Pairs of blogs with lots of mutual votes are declared 'twinned'."
Not a bad way to discover new reading material.
posted by Scottk at 7:39 AM PST - 5 comments
Boy Scouts
tell Atheist Eagle Scout he has one week to declare his belief or get out.
On membership applications,
Boy Scouts and adult leaders must say they recognize some higher power, not necessarily religious. "Mother Nature would be acceptable," said Brad Farmer, the Scout executive of the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts. Hmmmm...
posted by quirked at 7:32 AM PST - 45 comments
Cigarettes are good for you, say "scientists." Yes, that's right. According to the Times of India the
National Institute on Drug Abuse did a study in Bethesda, MD that reports that nicotine aids in concentration. The "Times" also says that this means new things for sufferers of
ADD. Unfortunately, NIDA doesn't seem to want to say much about this new study on their own website.
I wonder why the "Times of India" is all in English. Well, if you need a new reason to justify smoking, you can take this at face value, but something tells me there's more to this story than is instantly obvious.
posted by magikeye at 7:29 AM PST - 26 comments
City of London Churches 'The ‘Square Mile’ that constitutes The City of London is a world financial centre where 300,000 people work and nearly 500 foreign banks have an office. Less well known is that amongst the largely uninspired office blocks are hidden around 50 current or former churches and other places of worship, either complete, converted into offices, or in ruins. Once there were nearly 100 parish churches within the City boundaries but the Great Fire of London, the migration of residents to the suburbs, and Hitler’s bombs have done most to reduce that figure. Many of the surviving churches are, famously, Wren churches. After the Great Fire he had the unique opportunity of designing over 50 churches, and he gave full rein to his imagination ... '
A guide to 55 churches in London's financial district; best seen on a weekend, when the City is virtually deserted. Whilst the majority are Wren churches, there are some exceptions -
St Bartholomew the Great, which dates back to Norman times;
the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue in Great Britain; and
the Dutch Church, which was drawn by
van Gogh and important to the Huguenot community. Particularly worth a visit is
St. Bride's, the journalists' church; the design of the wedding cake is based on the shape of its spire.
posted by plep at 4:49 AM PST - 28 comments
The Iraq Research and Documentation Project (IRDP) website is a collection of resources documenting the government, politics, and society of modern Iraq. IRDP is engaged in the gathering of information of diverse content and format (official government documents, maps, citizen testimonies, reference sources, chronologies, bibliographies, notable articles, human rights reports, photographic and other images, audio and video materials). This online collection is made available to the public to provide a window into the inner workings of the repressive state system evolved under the aegis of the Iraqi Ba'th Socialist Party in Iraq since 1968.
[More Inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:53 AM PST - 23 comments
October 29
Thorstein Veblen , Economist and Social Commentator, who contributed to the common tongue the phrase
conspicuous consumption.
Who was Thorstein Veblen--and why should anyone care?
I should like him for his writing style alone:
The appreciation of those evidences of honorific crudeness to which hand-wrought goods owe their superior worth and charm in the eyes of well-bred people is a matter of nice discrimination. It requires training and the formation of right habits of thought with respect to what may be called the physiognomy of goods. Machine-made goods of daily use are often admired and preferred precisely on account of their excessive perfection by the vulgar and the underbred who have not given due thought to the punctilios of elegant consumption. The ceremonial inferiority of machine products goes to show that the perfection of skill and workmanship embodied in any costly innovations in the finish of goods is not sufficient of itself to secure them acceptance and permanent favor. The innovation must have the support of the canon of conspicuous waste. Any feature in the physiognomy of goods, however pleasing in itself, and however well it may approve itself to the taste for effective work, will not be tolerated if it proves obnoxious to this norm of pecuniary reputability.
From
Chapter Six - Pecuniary Canons of Taste of the work entire,
The Theory of The Leisure Class. Feel free to consume conspicuously.
posted by y2karl at 11:27 PM PST - 7 comments
Stop making excuses for Muslim Extremists Still licking my mefi wounds that I received last week when I posted a NY Times article discussing the recent rise of crime in France, in which the author states that a recent immigrant was murdered solely for his North African heritage, and also reports that the mayor of Paris was also attacked in the same week - yet the author does not bother to mention that the attacker was a Muslim who 'didn't like homosexuals'. Has anyone else noticed how the media is downplaying the role of Muslim extremism since 911 ?
posted by Kaslo at 10:52 PM PST - 68 comments
The Vatican vs. the laity - NPR's
All Things Considered had a report today about Catholic laity groups
pushing for more say in how the Church is run, especially in light of the scandals of the past year. The Vatican claims that giving too much power to laypersons, which make up 99% of the body of the Church, is in violation of Canon law. Laity groups claim that when there are laypersons serving in administrative bodies, they are mere rubberstamps appointed by the bishops. Can the church be more responsive to the its membership without unmaking its fundamentally hierarchical character?
(The audio stream may not be available yet, but when it is you'll need RealAudio, Windows Media, or Quicktime to hear it.)posted by RylandDotNet at 5:02 PM PST - 17 comments
Recently, the armed forces
announced that it would seek the approval of congress to begin recruiting non-citizens, specifically arabs, into the special forces. Seems reasonable enough, we all know the army is lacking native Arab speakers. Meanwhile, the Federal government is
firing every non-citizen from their job as airport bag checkers (
1200 in San Francisco alone - mostly Filipino). An interesting paradox in our war against terrorism? An unfortunate cost to enure security? A cruel injustice to working men and women? Who could do more damage, a Delta Force member, armed to the teeth and trained to kill acting as forward observer for air and artillery strikes? Or the guy checking your shaving kit?
posted by pejamo at 2:29 PM PST - 20 comments
The scariest costumes this year represent those that crushed the dreams of many, bilked millions from strangers, and got away. Psycho Killers? Crazed Snipers? No, Forbes gives you:
CEO Halloween masks. I know the kids will love going as
Martha. It's a good thing.
posted by mathowie at 2:07 PM PST - 14 comments
ATTENTION: brothers and sisters. Does the thought of your siblings naked send a shiver up your spine? Well, according to psychologists and people who study adoption, siblings and other close kin who reunite after being separated at birth often experience 'Genetic Sexual Attraction', a potent and embarrassing lust for the estranged relative. You may have heard that 'opposites attract', but scientists have long known that people are, as a basic rule, attracted to physically similar people. Now let the chorus of 'ewww' commence...
posted by dgaicun at 2:03 PM PST - 42 comments
Each year in the US, nearly two and a half million high school seniors enroll in college. Nearly one million do not. They are overwhelmingly poor, rural, and white. The Washington Post
has profiled one such young man.
posted by ewagoner at 1:37 PM PST - 28 comments
The Quest for the Three Year Sandwich "This bad boy will last a minimum of three years at 80 degrees, six months at 100 degrees. They will travel to the swampiest swamp, the highest mountain, the most arid desert." Great. So glad my tax dollars are getting put to good use. If they want prepackaged food that's been around for ages, there's a corner store near my house that can fix them right up. Is this sort of thing really needed?
posted by slackdog at 1:11 PM PST - 22 comments
Religion! What Is It Good For? Absolutely nothing? Perhaps not.
Michael Prowse, a lifelong atheist (and Financial Times columnist even!) had this to say in an article for
Prospect:
"Having accepted that meanings are always contestable, I have found myself more able to focus on what religious people do, and less on what they say. Are they "better" people than the irreligious? Of course not. Are they better people than they would be were they not religious? Probably, and this is what counts for me.".
Meanwhile, another atheist,
Jared Diamond, writing (brilliantly, as the author of
Guns, Germs and Steel always does) in the current
New York Review of Books, addresses religion in a (let us say) more
scientific way and, though more sceptical, leaves a similar question mark hanging. So, in a nutshell: can there be something in (or about) religion for atheists too?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:32 PM PST - 142 comments
RealNetworks opens up. RealNetworks today launched
the Helix Community which provides the source code to its RealPlayer client (the server and encoding components are coming later). This will present the first end-to-end open source media delivery system- Apple has open sourced its
streaming server, but not its clients or codecs; Microsoft's
Windows Media platform is totally closed. Marketing ploy or real step forward for the software industry?
posted by mkultra at 10:36 AM PST - 22 comments
With all due respect to the Classic Scary Movies discussed
below, nothing says "Halloween" like
Cheese! From the
marketing schtick of William Castle to the liberal use of gore by
George Romero, horror movie directors have done their best to give us their worst. As a child I was scarred for life so that to this day I cannot look at mist-covered snow-capped mountains without thinking of
The Crawling Eye. Anybody else want to confess to having the poop scared out of them by movie crap?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:08 AM PST - 84 comments
What is Bagotronics? "At Bagotronics we are IN business FOR business. Our scientists, engineers and designers work to develop the innovations that fuel the e-business engine that drives America's economy."
Entertained by an (unfortunately not reproduced on the website) full page ad in the SJ Mercury News, promising a time machine and including an apology to
old H.G., I wondered what was up. The ads, the website, all say to stay tuned until Thursday for details, but I'm not really that patient. But quick searches of MeFi, /., and Google turned up nothing, so I swerved over to my favorite lookup service and found that this is
simply an advertising comeon, with the site owned by humongous advertising agency Ogilvy & Mathers.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:06 AM PST - 9 comments
War of the Worlds (this is not about Bush) Don't own a television? Want an alternative? Live performance, live orchestra, no net. October 30, 2002 8-9 PM Eastern. Glenn Beck recreates Orson Welles chilling performance that captivated a nation along with full orchestrations and foley effects.
this is a radio broadcastposted by RunsWithBandageScissors at 7:39 AM PST - 6 comments
Are Ernie and Bert gay? What is Gonzo? Find out the answers (question 19 and 10, respectively) and more at the
Muppet FAQ.
Read the profiles of your favorite Muppets like
Zoot or
Animal.
Or maybe you'd be interested in one of the Henson
feature creatures and its
background.
Read about it. Explore the fascinating world of Jim Henson and muppets in general.
posted by ashbury at 7:28 AM PST - 14 comments
Rumplestiltskin gets torn in half, Cinderella's stepsisters get their eyes pecked out, and Snow White's stepmother dances in red hot iron shoes until she dies from exhaustion. These are the original endings to the non-sweetened, and sometimes unsavory,
fairy tales collected or written by
by reclusive librarians Jacob and Wilhelm, better know as
The Brothers Grimm. Their first book,
Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Childrens' and Household Tales) was published in 1812. Several more books, mostly of folk tales collected from willing relatives and friends, followed, some containing
bizarre and
disturbing stories with less than
happy endings. As the
National Geographic Grimm site puts it, "
Looking for a sweet, soothing tale to waft you toward dreamland? Look somewhere else. The stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 1800s serve up life as generations of central Europeans knew it—capricious and often cruel." Check out the strange 1960
Mp3s and
RealAudio files of some Grimm tales.
posted by iconomy at 6:42 AM PST - 26 comments
"Sometimes I question the wisdom of continuing on in a profession that is under siege and under valued. I am aging, I am tired and some days I don’t know how I can continue to teach the newest and brightest of our profession." Part of an
essay written last year by
Cheryl McGaffic, one of the nursing professors
killed by a disgruntled student at the University of Arizona yesterday.
posted by rcade at 6:02 AM PST - 13 comments
"Cops of the World": remembering Phil Ochs --------------------------------------------
Ochs lyrics: “We're hairy and horny and ready to shack. We don't care if you're yellow or black. Just take off your clothes and lie down on your back.'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys. We're the Cops of the World.”------------
LISTEN to his songs (realplayer/quicktime)
Amidst the
unilateralist talk of invading Iraq, and the (mostly media ignored)
“biggest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War” [quote-Wash.Post,Oct. 27] last saturday, I thought of
Phil Ochs......some of his songs [see Ochs
lyrics index] haven't
aged well, but some are still as
searingly acidic as the day he wrote them, as above or in
”Love me, I’m a liberal”:“Once I was young and impulsive, I wore every conceivable pin...But I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.” ------- Phil Ochs ------- (born 1940, suicide 1976)
posted by troutfishing at 5:42 AM PST - 22 comments
The Owl House. The Owl House and the Camel Yard were home to the reclusive South African artist Helen Martins.
A place of archetypal, almost mythic outsider art,
Miss Helen transformed her home with the help
of her collaborator
Koos Malgas.
'
That simple decision, to embellish her environment, was to grow into an obsessive urge to express her
deepest feelings, her dreams and her desires. '
Here are some
pictures.posted by plep at 1:10 AM PST - 5 comments
October 28
"I was driving a Lexus through a rustling wind." Did anyone recognize the opening sentence of Don DeLillo's
Underworld? First lines often set the tone for a whole novel but they're fun on their own too. So, after reading
this article by John Mullan, I found this interesting quiz to test my identification skills. Well! The warm-up exercises are recommended for giving you a false sense of security, btw... And here's a
bonus quiz for Faulkner fans. Just one example: "
The jury said "Guilty" and the Judge said "Life" but he didn't hear them." They don't get much better than that, do they?
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 10:40 PM PST - 36 comments
U.S. Vows to Disarm Iraq with or Without U.N. We lead. You follow. Or get out of the way. How this will play out in terms of the very existence of the UN in the near future, the EU, and our attempt to maintain good relationship with Arab countries is anyone's guess. What is yours?
posted by Postroad at 6:09 PM PST - 84 comments
Buy Bush a Playstation 2. If the fundraising goal is met, the President will be given a PS2 with a copy of
SOCOM and
Conflict: Desert Storm, hopefully distracting him long enough to forget about the real war. Send your donation and you'll save a lot more people than just Karyn.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 4:29 PM PST - 11 comments
The man who wrote 10,000 Grooks (
grooks,
grooks,
grooks), Piet Hein, was also the inventor of
Hex and the creator of the
Soma Cube. In the design world, he is most famous for the
SuperEllipse, a figure that rivals Buckminster Fuller's geodesics in ingenuity, an aesthetic balance between a circle and a square, and a
mathematical figure which has been used to design a
square in Stockholm. From the SuperEllipse, you can get the SuperEgg, a strange solid which will unexpectedly balance on one end and has been
mistaken for an alien artifact.
posted by Winterfell at 2:16 PM PST - 11 comments
Here is an excellent article on
Rationality versus Values. Personally though, I'd rather be free of more mundane risks such as traffic accidents than say, extraordinary risks such as being held hostage in a theatre... but that's just my opinion.
posted by titboy at 12:40 PM PST - 10 comments
Does this seem incongruous to anyone else? (-cnn) Two professors were shot and killed Monday at the University of Arizona's College of Nursing
A student was "disgruntled" at the professors and shot at them. I am (sadly) not too surprised that something like this would happen on a college campus, but it does seem strange that it would happen at the College of Nursing.
posted by valval22 at 10:50 AM PST - 48 comments
Formula One tweaked! The Formula One Commission met earlier today at what was touted as the
most important meeting (PDF) in the last 20 years to discuss ways to rescue Formula One. The biggest outcome was to have single qualifying laps on Fridays and Saturdays, the historic Spa circuit was dropped from the calendar due to tobacco advertising restrictions. [More inside]
posted by riffola at 10:10 AM PST - 17 comments
America Still Unprepared - America Still in Danger, a new report sponsored by the
Council on Foreign Relations, claims that "a year after September 11, 2001, America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil. In all likelihood, the next attack will result in even greater casualties and widespread disruption to American lives and the economy. The need for immediate action is made more urgent by the prospect of the United States going to war with Iraq and the possibility that Saddam Hussein might threaten the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in America." While of al Qaeda,
George Tenet says that "the threat environment we face is as bad as it was before Sept. 11. It is serious—they have reconstituted, they are coming after us." This is not comforting (more inside.)
posted by homunculus at 10:03 AM PST - 4 comments
Your special day. Afterwards, you curl up in a corner with your new better half, gorging yourselves on leftover wedding cake and laughing over the pictures. You sift through the thoughtful presents your guests have selected, piles of dishware and linens, decorations and photo albums that will fill your home for years to come. Soon, you come to the most special present of all ... a coffee table book entitled
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America??!!
scroll down to #389posted by grrarrgh00 at 9:26 AM PST - 19 comments
Lingerie Barbies. From FAO Schwarz. This is not a spoof.
(Personally, I'll pick black over white any day of the week, but that's another story)posted by magullo at 7:18 AM PST - 33 comments
If sex is a pain in the a$$ (so goes the joke) then you are doing it wrong. But what if it's a
pain in the head? 1 in 100 people will suffer from
Orgasmic Cephalgia, causing blinding headaches when approaching orgasm. It's nothing more than a blood vessel dilating and causing pain that can only be stopped by coitus interruptus. Then again, it could always be a sexually induced
brain hemorrhage...
posted by twine42 at 6:40 AM PST - 9 comments
The Guardian isn't so good at letting you link to their articles anymore. But if you use this link then click on "printable version" you might get to the site I want you to link to. My title being: If you're Jewish and American its hard to know whose side your on these days.
posted by donfactor at 4:52 AM PST - 20 comments
Sky Witness - New Site from Sky News Yet another another example of "big media" embracing audience involvement. Sky is asking people to "tell us in no more than 300 words how a particular news event touched your life," including eye witness accounts, and photos. The "most compelling" entries will be published on a special site at the end of the year. Anyone who has read the
9/11 Metafilter thread will know how extraordinary such commentary can be. Anyhow for the wordsmiths here, this could be a great opportunity to show just how clever you are ;-) My question to MF - how far can this go - should, or will big/national/local media open up far more to audience involvement?
posted by RobertLoch at 4:24 AM PST - 5 comments
The Postage Stamps of Donald Evans (scroll down a paragraph or two) A rich and complex internal world expressed through postage stamp art.
'When Donald Evans (born Morristown, New Jersey USA in 1945) was a boy, he drifted from his hobby of collecting postage stamps to creating his own postage stamps of countries he made up in his imagination ... He left behind an astonishing planet seen through its nations' postage stamps, thousands of them, all drawn to postage-stamp size, with all the familiar periphery of postage stamps hand-done ... '
posted by plep at 1:04 AM PST - 18 comments
October 27
American brands PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and Western Union are advertising on Hezbollah television. The Iranian-backed and funded group has been implicated in the attacks against the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans in 1982.
posted by semmi at 8:13 PM PST - 29 comments
Motorbikes the new craze for Iranian Women. More taboos crumble in Iran, as women sign-up in their thousands for motorbike riding classes. Women have been allowed to drive cars, but not ride bicycles or motorbikes since the Islamic Revoluion. The problem now is to find women motorcyclists able to train those who have shown interest.
posted by Jimbob at 8:10 PM PST - 4 comments
It's the eve of the election, and control of the Senate is up for grabs... but Senator Wellstone dies tragically in a plane crash.
Who you gonna call?!
MONDALE!!!
He's an alright guy and everything, but I just can't hear his name without thinking of "Names for Bands" from Jello Biafra's
"No More Cocoons"...posted by insomnia_lj at 2:30 PM PST - 28 comments
Afghanistan leads in poppy production Now that we have rid the country of the nasty controlling party, it is good to return to normal business so that exports can help make this a better world. Is this a part of our re-construction plan?
posted by Postroad at 2:11 PM PST - 19 comments
Feet first? You're sick! What's this all about? Fetishism on its own is impotence. It should surely be an apéritif, an accompaniment, a starter - not the main dish. Men seem to use it as an excuse not to engage. For women it's just an item on the menu of love; not the make-or-break thing men seem to make it. What was that Adam Sandler film where he gets foot-whacked by brilliant, dreamy John Turturro? [
Via very manly, ever-so-sensitive Bifurcated Rivets - I hate the way men post things and then cover themselves by saying "may offend"!]
posted by Schweppes Girl at 2:09 PM PST - 25 comments
Banning hip-hop. Police in San Francisco control the kinds of music clubs may play and promote. In key parts of the city, rap music has basically been outlawed.
posted by xowie at 10:49 AM PST - 58 comments
October 26
Want to listen to the World Series on the Web?
Pay $9.95. I know, it's a sports post, so (most) everyone will hate it, but I see a disturbing trend of no more free media lunches on the Web. CNN
went subscription months ago, and most other places I've gone for free video/audio are drying up. All I wanted was to listen to the game. But I can't find it anywhere. All the regular stations I listen to that carry the game are silent. And how will the Angels make a valiant comeback if I can't cheer them on? (sigh)
posted by TheManWhoKnowsMostThings at 7:36 PM PST - 25 comments
Fight the Power! "Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance." It's own medicine time!
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 7:19 PM PST - 73 comments
Bush as a Dry Drunk Dry drunk is a slang term used by members and supporters of Alcoholics Anonymous and substance abuse counselors to describe the recovering alcoholic who is no longer drinking, one who is dry, but whose thinking is clouded.
posted by adamms222 at 3:05 PM PST - 66 comments
You know that horrible Lee Performance Khakis commercial where the woman spills red wine on her pants? Well
this article from Slate.com critiques it and then tests it...to surprising results.
posted by adrober at 10:33 AM PST - 58 comments
Russian Forces Set Hostages Free. Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev said about three dozen of the estimated 50 hostage-takers had been killed and Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev said, contrary to earlier reports, that none of the gunmen had escaped. Terrorism loses again.
posted by David Dark at 1:45 AM PST - 93 comments
Trebuchets ,
Trebuchets,
Trebuchets: where
geeks get
medieval on thine ass.
Some people have a love of history, spare time and an excuse to buy more tools.
(His Earth Viewer is cute, too) Also needed are open expanses--like in
Australia. Note:
Punkin' Chunkin' (©donkeymon 11/03/01) 2002 is coming up in a week. Will Team Banka's
Pumpkin Slayer return? Also, there's
Gulf Wars XII for y'all next March. And, courtesy
Nova, for the shockwave addicted, Play
Destroy The Castle!
Manual here. Also, here's the
Virtual Trebuchet java applet. And last,
massive trebuchet linkage.
posted by y2karl at 1:40 AM PST - 16 comments
CNN ordered to shut down in Iraq. Reporters Without Borders has issued a strong condemnation of the Iraqi government's decision ordering the shut down of CNN office in Baghdad, where CNN has had an office for the past 12 years. All 6 journalists, including the bureau chief Jane Arraf are given up to next Monday to leave the country. I am unable to find the news on CNN website.
posted by taratan at 12:10 AM PST - 24 comments
October 25
Down the memory hole! An eye-opening comparison of how the various media outlets reported the removal of U.N. inspectors from Iraq back in the day
(1998) with today
(2002, and itchin' to fight).
posted by Dirjy at 9:59 PM PST - 16 comments
Zen Stories to Tell Your Neighbors. "Pick out the stories that sound interesting. Read this hypertext book from 'cover' to 'cover,' or at random, or use the links at the bottom of each story to connect to other stories with similar themes. There's no right or wrong way to do this."
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:36 PM PST - 13 comments
Take off every 'zig'... for great justice!
ZigBee is a promising entry into the field of personal area networks (PAN) -- the technology that will soon enable low data rate two-way wireless connectivity for everything in your house (e.g. keyboard, thermostat). For those keeping score, it's exactly '4.4' sweeter than
Wi-Fi (ZigBee is aligning with the
IEEE802.15.4 standard) and is designed to live up to two years on battery power (unlike
Bluetooth, it's 802.15 brother currently fighting with
deployment issues). The protocol supports authentication and public-key encryption, so no "All your toaster are belong to us" or (gasp!)
wartoasting.
posted by eddydamascene at 5:13 PM PST - 11 comments
Actor Richard Harris dies "Don't let it be forgot - that once there was a spot - for one brief, shining moment - that was known as Camelot..." Such a sad day all around. R.I.P., Richard.
posted by dnash at 2:26 PM PST - 21 comments
Is this a Virus or just really sleazy advertising? www.friendgreetings.com is a free greeting card company. However, the e-card email that is received contains a link where you can view the e-card. Once you click that link, and accept the Security Warning and License Agreement, then the FriendGreetings application will be installed on your computer.
Once it is installed, it will email all the addresses listed in your MS Outlook contact (or Exchange's GAL) list to invite them to download FriendGreetings products as mentioned in the License Agreement.
Trend, McAfee, and others are treating this as a virus. Is it a virus or just another new and nasty way of advertising that preys on the fact that no one really reads EULAs anyway?
posted by aacheson at 2:26 PM PST - 25 comments
Slavercise - If you're like me (who am I kidding; you're not) then you have trouble motivating yourself to work out, get to the gym, or ask for low fat milk in your latte. Aside from prizing sleep over mindless physical exertion, the idea of staring at a blank wall while stepping to the oldies drives me to depression. If only I could combine the burn of calories with the burn of a six foot rawhide leather whip cracking against my corpulent behind. < via
Salon subscription>
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 1:15 PM PST - 8 comments
Blogger Hacked A slashdot reader reported (on slashdot) that "Blogger has been severely hacked into, with users' passwords and e-mail addresses being replaced with 'hacx0redbyme' or 'hax0redbyme.' " Perhaps
the most amusing comment in the ensuing discussion says "I'm glad I don't use a blog... I wouldn't want some l337 hax0r coming in and reading everything about my personal life!" But levity aside, is there some serious implication that a widely used web service is hacked? Is Pyra safe to use?
posted by namespan at 10:57 AM PST - 27 comments
Pee-Mail More Friday Fun. Now anyone can write a message in the snow. Finally, true pee-quality for all sexes.
posted by VelvetHellvis at 10:40 AM PST - 15 comments
The Game of 1000 Blank White Cards. Yesterday's talk about
Game Neverending and Nomic reminded me of this outside-the-box game that was first brought to my attention by an article in GAMES Magazine earlier this year. The game is quite simple: Before you play, you have to think up and create the cards. Create them how? What goes on them? How do you play? Anything goes. [more inside, including excerpts and more links]
posted by blueshammer at 9:54 AM PST - 32 comments
Vatican to test if trainee priests are gay. As if the Catholic Church doesn't have bigger concerns. They seem to be trying to throw dirt onto their own graves. Organized religion is SO last millennium. If a gay person really wanted to be a priest, wouldn't it be simple to "pass" a psychological screening? And what self-respecting gay person would want to be a part of something that seeks to exclude him?
posted by archimago at 5:56 AM PST - 77 comments
Pearl Jam Roach Motels. In response to an
article last month revealing that Epic Records Group had glued CD players shut to prevent piracy of promotional albums (namely
Riot Act by Pearl Jam and
Scarlet's Walk by Tori Amos), music critics at
PopMatters ask the following: "Who needs whom more? Do the media outlets need the record labels, since they release the albums that help them sell magazines along with the label's CDs? Or do the labels need the media outlets, without which the newest release by the latest youth-oriented pop contrivance would fall with a deafening thud?"
posted by jacknose at 5:50 AM PST - 27 comments
Making Rehnquist Proud Just like Rehnquist and his earlier political service, Jim Crow is still hard at work.
"Tim Hutchinson and the Republican Party have claimed that they want to reach out to African-American voters, but when election time comes they have nothing to offer but intimidation and harassment," Cook said. "We ask Tim Hutchinson and his party to stop disenfranchising African-American voters and obstructing the democratic process."
posted by nofundy at 5:23 AM PST - 15 comments
F--- OFF! This seemingly serious Tourettes information site uses an 'interesting' way to get attention. [link not too safe for work - no depraved images, just a large, prominent yell]
posted by humuhumu at 3:56 AM PST - 8 comments
Almost sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the battlefields of
Western Europe,
Scandanavia,
Russia and the
Pacific continue to reveal poignant relics of the men who fought and died. These links may be of interest to anyone with even a passing interest in military history.
posted by Doozer at 3:35 AM PST - 7 comments
Some Friday Fun "Banja is destined for everyone. Here, it is not a question of conquering, but of evolving within a whole way of life and of discovering its mysteries." Not a game for the bandwidth-challenged, unless you're REALLY patient.
posted by TheFarSeid at 1:20 AM PST - 13 comments
October 24
Why has the attack of Parisian Mayor Bertrand Delanoe been ignored ? You'd need a neutron microscope to find news stories or analysis regarding the attack of Parisian mayor Bertrand Delanoe by a Muslim who stated that he 'didn't like politicians and didn't like homosexuals'. What would have happened had the attacker been a white Christian or a skinhead ? A sad example of political correctness stifling any debate, a la Pim Fortuyn.
posted by Kaslo at 9:30 PM PST - 41 comments
One Dollar Cuts So many times so many of us have said we would buy music online if the price were right. It looks like that opportunity is now here. Are we going to put up or shut up? Is this article going to end up as a piece of PR or as an online social shift? (via /.)
posted by Tystnaden at 5:50 PM PST - 49 comments
Making huge leaps between memepool and Stanislaw Lem (all in one day), I stumbled upon an interesting connection.
This link describes an extremely interesting phenomenon that I find tangentally represented in
Solaris. Simulacra of all kinds in literature and film has always interested me, from
Blade Runner, to
A.I. As Halloween approaches, I'd like to know what other MeFiers have seen or read that has hit them in the deepest part of their 'uncanny valley'.
posted by oflinkey at 12:38 PM PST - 66 comments
"That's not funny, that's sick!" goes the old National Lampoon comic caption. Well, maybe this
link's both... Again,
not for the faint of heart.
posted by BentPenguin at 10:52 AM PST - 32 comments
Referer Log Spam. Seen this url in your logs yet? They're actually trying to get people to pay them to put bogus urls in your referer log. As if we weren't swimming in spam already.
posted by fraying at 9:14 AM PST - 43 comments
Game Neverending. There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. The game is in alpha right now, but it has managed to take over my free time. There is not a clear goal or purpose in the game, other than to keep experiencing and making. I can't figure out what has hooked me in.
posted by jonah at 8:33 AM PST - 35 comments
In the Papers, New York 1's, pre-blog video blog, the best thing on television, is now available on-line. I am going to cancel my cable this weekend!
posted by djacobs at 7:24 AM PST - 11 comments
This is the funniest
MasterCard "Priceless"
parody ever. My friend sent me this link, and I didn't think much of it on a glance of the URL, since MasterCard parodies are
a dime a dozen. But
this particular one is professionally filmed, original, and utterly hiliarious. (Windows Media ASF Stream)
posted by aznblader at 3:53 AM PST - 16 comments
The 1880 census went
online yesterday. I found my Great Grandfather John S Roberds. Born in 1847(100 years before me) he was farming in Missouri when his household was documented. My Grandfather Oscar was 6 in 1880. From my Great Grandfathers household I only know what happened to Oscar. He died crossing Woodward ave. going to work at Ford Motor Co.
posted by JohnR at 1:26 AM PST - 24 comments
October 23
Let's learn about wavelets! OK, let's not. Notice, however, how
differently wavelets are
introduced across the web, and how widely authors construe terms like "gentle", "beginner", and "approachable." Do you know a website that clearly and creatively describes some complex topic? How do you teach well with the Internet?
posted by tss at 10:14 PM PST - 14 comments
Claude Dallas: the last outlaw? In 1981, Claude shot two Fish and Game officers who had come to take him to town for being in violation of wildlife laws. Apparently he "lived by the laws of nature; not the laws of man." It took 15 months to finally bring him in and his run from the law inspired
a movie. After being sentenced to 30 years in prison, Claude escaped from the Idaho State Penitentiary and inspired
a song of his exploits. Was Claude "the last outlaw" or just a murderer? What place do outlaws and renegades have in today's society?
posted by Hall at 6:55 PM PST - 16 comments
Why 'sustainable development' is neither. Globe & Mail Columnist Doug Sanders takes a shot at "Sustainable Developemnt." He says the Left likes it because it doesn't involve big corporations, and the right likes it because it reduces government spending, but the phrase now has as many as
57 competing definitions.
He asks
"Should we rush to make the world wealthier first, so that cleanliness will then take care of itself?", since the countries that are the cleanest and have the most protected land are those that are the richest. After all, he says, "
we all want to be rich, and we all want to be clean -- but not necessarily at the same time".
India Is Interested,
China Has A Plan, and I think we've
discussed The Big Summit.
posted by Blake at 5:28 PM PST - 26 comments
Track down who gave you flu. Phylogenetic analysis will give you the power to point an accusing and probably infectious finger at your cold passing associate with scientific rigor. I look forward to the legal circus that will ensue as everyone on the planet sues everyone else for passing on a cold.
posted by srboisvert at 4:37 PM PST - 8 comments
The strange range of human behavior continues to draw us like moths to a flame. Consider
Amanda Fielding who continually performed self-surgery on her braincase,
Catharina Geisslerin,
the woman who vomited frogs, and the
Collyer brothers,
who collected so much junk that it crushed them in their own home.
Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first dictionary of the English language, was compelled to whirl, twist, and make highly ritualized hand motions when going through doors. When he went for a walk, he touched every post he passed. If he missed one, he went back to touch it.
Recent research suggests that
obsessive-compulsive child behaviors can be caused by strep infection.
Who do you think are the most interesting, eccentric, and
compulsive personalities?
posted by Morphic at 3:43 PM PST - 31 comments
The First Measured Century contains quite a bit of information about American society; population, work, education, religion, health, money, politics, crime and more. Everything from the median marriage age to the percentage of Americans who believe it is wrong to go to the movies on Sundays (13%).
posted by edlundart at 2:17 PM PST - 5 comments
Carthalia. Andreas Praefcke's postcard collection of theatres and concert halls worldwide. I wish I had a passion for something.
posted by Catch at 1:52 PM PST - 7 comments
There are 202 initiatives on the ballot in 40 states this election cycle. "53 of the measures represent direct democracy at work:
ideas placed on the ballot by citizen initiative, often
designed specifically to reverse legislative action."
Some of the initiatives make sense, some of them do not. I've
got a list of awards for various categories of initiatives. Some
of these awards are given with tongue planted firmly in cheek.
- Most Wasteful: This award goes to the initiative that
will waste the most tax-payer dollars. And the winner is
North Dakota's Youth Investment Initiative.
- Do-it-for-the-kids Award: Arnold Schwarzenegger may be
rehearsing for a political role as he leads the campaign for
Proposition 49, which would require state funding for
after-school programs. Shouldn't parents be taking care of
their kids after school? Why is the state of California
becoming a nanny?
- Highest Ballot Measure: Nevada's initiative to legalize
marijuana. 'Nuff said.
- Up-in-smoke Award: It's a tie between the Missouri
and Arizona initiatives increasing the tax on a pack of
cigarettes.
- Dumbest Initiative: Animal rights activists have
place an initiative on the ballot in Florida to
protect pregnant pigs. This initiative is dumb because it
takes the extreme measure of making an amendment to the
Florida constitution.
- Smartest Initiative: "Politicians are like diapers,
they both must be changed frequently—and for the same
reason." Idaho's term-limits proposal takes this award. Runner
up goes to Oregon voters who will decide whether to list a
choice of "none of the above" on all state ballots.
Anybody else have any more nominations?
posted by jasontromm at 12:39 PM PST - 56 comments
Iraqis linked to Oklahoma atrocity This rumor has been arond for some time now, and the Bush group certainly might like to see a connection to Iraq, though the official version seems to deny such a connection. Is this a political move to make legitimate a war against Iraq or an attempt to re-open what might have been a botched detective job originally, or just plain utter nonsense?
posted by Postroad at 11:41 AM PST - 16 comments
KozmoPr0n! Problem: You're ready to rub one out, but the adult video store is a lengthy 2 blocks away! For those of us living in Manhattan or Brooklyn, quality DVD porn is now just a phone call away, a la
Kozmo or
UrbanFetch. (something tells me this place will stay in business a bit longer...)
posted by adamms222 at 10:21 AM PST - 26 comments
I must keep on the move. I must not allow them to stop me or trace my whereabouts. I must keep on the move. I must not allow them to stop me or trace my whereabouts. I have set the date for the release in the future to allow time to build publicity. With the worlds full attention, these secret agencies or privately run factions cannot deny or lie to the public about what I will reveal.
This smacks of hoax, but I'm leaving the final decision on that up to you.
posted by bryanzera at 9:46 AM PST - 85 comments
"Religions potentially offer practical, social, and motivational benefits to their adherents. But religions differ among themselves in the degree to which they motivate their adherents to have children, to rear those children to become productive members of society, and to convert or kill believers in competing religions. Those religions that are more successful in these respects will tend to spread, and gain and retain adherents, at the expense of other religions." So says
Jared Diamond in his review of David Sloan Wilson's book,
Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, which views religion from an evolutionary perspective. Another writer interested in the evolution of religions is Toby Lester, who examines how present-day religious movements are
"mutating with Darwinian restlessness."posted by homunculus at 9:45 AM PST - 5 comments
What's wrong with this teacher's comments? A Pasadena HS teacher circulated a letter with his complaint that African American students at the school are the reason for bad behavior and low test scores. He's now suspended...rightly? More inside...hoping to keep this civil, too...(thanks to Jim Romenesko)
posted by serafinapekkala at 9:28 AM PST - 67 comments
The international Press Freedom Index (Sept 2001-Oct 2002), published by
Reporters Without Borders contains some surprises. Based on questionnaires sent to "
...journalists or foreign correspondents living in the country, researchers, [and] legal experts...", RWB ranked the United States 17
th, below Slovenia and Costa Rica. Why?
"The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings. "posted by astirling at 8:47 AM PST - 9 comments
Bin Laden Unmasked? Robert Fisk
[ducks] reviews a '215 page treasure trove' written by an Al Jazeera journalist and published in Beirut. It contains a 'wealth of information' about the elusive billionaire and his followers. He communicates over the Internet - no surprise there - but the book gives some clues as to the site used:
al-Nidaa, 'The Calling'. Can you find it? The words of Mullah Omar are apparently distributed on site called the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan',
wild goose chase? You decide.
posted by grahamwell at 7:39 AM PST - 5 comments
Who owns the moon? Apparently
these people do, and they’re selling it off acre by acre. They are “The founders and leaders of the extraterrestrial real estate market.” Do we really need a Galactic Government with an embassy on the moon? I guess
The Federation had to start somewhere. This just begs the question, “Does Venus have its own laws?”
posted by archimago at 6:03 AM PST - 17 comments
President Bush is in fact doing just about everything his critics demand: If the administration really had contempt for the UN, it could withdraw its support and let that organization complete its collapse into a Third World debating society. If Bush wanted to lash out at every threat in the world, America's near-$400 billion defense budget could provide the soldiers, tanks, airplanes, and missiles to wage several small wars at a time, from Libya to North Korea (and most places in between). If America were trying to seize the world's oil reserves, we could have swept aside the Saudi sheiks long ago. If we were indifferent to the casualties of enemy civilians—and the only alternative is to be indifferent to the deaths of our own soldiers and civilians—then anti-war academics would have to give up tallying those casualties one-by-one. But none of this is actually happening.
posted by dagny at 3:47 AM PST - 100 comments
I generally give little thought to how the Internet works, as long as it does work. Well, on Monday, 9 of the
13 "root servers" that manage traffic on the Internet were
hit with a denial of service attack for about an hour. You can see the spike in traffic on one of the servers in
this graph. All this made me think about the fragility of the Internet and what I would do with myself if the Internet got knocked out, say, for a matter of days. Maybe I would finally learn to cook something besides pasta... What would you do?
posted by epimorph at 1:26 AM PST - 37 comments
October 22
It's nearly time for National Novel Writing Month 2002 This was discussed in detail on mefi
last year, and plenty of interest was shown. Now you should take it to the natural conclusion: a collaborative novel attempt. It might be bending the rules a little, but surely Metafilter users could come up with 50,000 words between them in a month. Maybe this is short notice, but I'd like to see an attempt...
posted by tapeguy at 8:34 PM PST - 45 comments
Virginia is for Snipers. The owner of a Richmond, Virginia vintage clothing store has created T-Shirts with large red targets on the back and a play on the "Virginia is for Lovers" tourism slogan on the front. The clothing store owner has displayed a track record of being a little
off kilter...posted by machaus at 4:08 PM PST - 37 comments
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle may be
hindering DC sniper investigation. An interesting, albeit unanswerable, question: Is the sniper responding specifically to feedback from the media -- or are the examples in the linked article "cherry-picking" to make the point? Also, apparently the art of "profiling" as practiced by TV expert commentators can very effectively destroy any profile investigators may have constructed on the guy. Think before you post to this thread: the sniper could be a Metafilter reader.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 1:47 PM PST - 53 comments
DVDs are bad for business? They are, according to the producer of "Attack of the Clones." Although it seems to me that every week I hear about a new box-office record being shattered, Rick McCallum says such things as:
"I don't think there's a single movie that can survive on box office gross alone; it just doesn't exist anymore" and my favorite:
"Literally, our very lives are at stake now. George and I are just praying that we can finish 'Episode III' in time, before it's all over."
What do you think? Legitimate concern, or more ridiculous whining by millionaires lobbying to place restrictions on technogy?
posted by eas98 at 1:08 PM PST - 56 comments
Nokia Game is back with a vengence (certainly here in the UK anyway), and claiming to be "an experience you will never forget". Will it be? Will it surpass the last two Nokia Games, which became clouded in game-playing techies' catty derision of the technology used? Will the huge band of followers at the cunningly titled fan site
Nokia-Game return again? And, more pressingly, will they still create stunningly TV, radio and newspaper adverts, so we can all boast again that we're part of it?
posted by wibbler at 12:15 PM PST - 12 comments
Le Voyage dans la Lune/A Trip to the Moon A tree grows in Houston. Apparently a cache of tree seeds were carried into space by an American astronaut in the early 1970s. They were carried home, planted, grown into seedlings, and distributed around the country, mostly in honor of the 1976 bicentennial. Anyway, no one took note of where the moon trees went. A curious NASA scientist is on the hunt for the locations of the moon trees. Do you have a
moon tree in your town? Do you have a documented
historic tree in your area? Are your local trees protected? Does this make local residents
irate?
posted by jengod at 11:51 AM PST - 13 comments
Keys of Nutrition You may not be familiar with Ancel Keys, but his discoveries about nutrition and health are behind much of the dietary advice people now receive. Have you ever wondered who proved that the amount of cholesterol in food did not influence the amount of cholesterol in the blood? Do you know what causes high cholesterol? Do you like olive oil but need a good rationalization to keep using it? (hint: there is one) What dietary advice has most fascinated you, or helped you the most?
posted by Tystnaden at 10:55 AM PST - 17 comments
Sex Therapy or Chemotherapy? If you suddenly start collecting pornography, soliciting prostitutes, making sexual advances toward young children and lusting for your 90 year old landlady don't worry, you may not be developing socially and legally deviant behaviour but you actually may just have a brain tumour. I thought brain tumours just gave you headaches and blurred vision but apparently they can cause all kinds of symptoms and uncontrollable urges.
posted by henriettachicken at 10:53 AM PST - 4 comments
NJ Guido! A site for guidos, by guidos... hilariously enough! The pics are great (actually, many hotties), but the clincher has got to be the proud testimonials (under "writings"). Can anybody say B&T?
posted by adamms222 at 9:42 AM PST - 52 comments
Toxic House "This is a site about the hazards of indoor pollution, largely created by the synthetic and organic chemicals that are a part of our daily lives. It might sound like a place you want to stay away from, but really it’s a place intended to help you make informed decisions about the places and spaces in which you live."
posted by theRegent at 8:04 AM PST - 13 comments
Have you grown weary of the tiny, grayscale maps of Iraq and the Middle East accompanying most newspaper stories on the region?
TomPaine.com went in search of better geographic tools, and found them at the University of Texas' Online Library, with links to
dozens of maps—political, topographical, historical—of a region many Americans have never scrutinized geographically. More inside...
[via TomPaine.com]posted by silusGROK at 7:39 AM PST - 7 comments
One of the better
online dictionaries for technology-related material that I've seen. And it's free! What's better than free? Nuthin. The title is a bit misleading as it's not as comprehensive as a traditional encyclopedia, but it's helped me every time I've needed it.
posted by archimago at 5:59 AM PST - 12 comments
October 21
The Long March - A Walking Visual Display. "Its aim is to take both contemporary Chinese and international art to a sector of the Chinese public that is rarely, perhaps never, exposed to such work. Specifically, we will bring art to those people who live in communities along the route of Mao Zedong's historic Long March. Mao's 'March' symbolized the deliverance of the Communist ideal to the Chinese proletariat. It is with this symbolism in mind that we now choose to march contemporary art out to China's peripheral population."
via ArtKrushposted by Stan Chin at 11:39 PM PST - 5 comments
Conservatives rare species on campus "A poll by the Enterprise Institute showed that professors registered as Democrats outnumbered Republicans at Stanford, 151 to 17. At Berkeley, the lopsided score was 59-7. At Cornell, 166-6. And so on." When I was in college, I guess I was too busy trying to earn my degree to notice if conservatives were allowed to exist or not. I don't remember much political indoctrination in my physics or differential equations classes. Are the campuses really like what this columnist suggests?
posted by munger at 10:43 PM PST - 148 comments
Media Democracy Day promotes a mass media system that informs and empowers all members of society. Media Democracy Day connects existing critical and creative media with active social movements, creating a coherent message for public attention and local and global action. It was October 18.
posted by botono9 at 6:16 PM PST - 9 comments
Parallel universes Alternate universes may exist besides our own in some ghostly manner. Various science-fiction series explore
parallel universes, but what do serious physicists think? Hugh Everett III's doctoral thesis outlines a controversial theory in which the universe at every instant branches into
countless parallel worlds. Physicist Andrei Linde's theory of
self-reproducing universes implies that new universes are being created all the time through a budding process. Stephen Hawking's
quantum cosmology also suggests the possibility of other universes connected by wormholes. Some scientists feel that the famous photon
double slit experiments proves the existence of parallel universes in which a photon from one universe interacts with a photon from another. Black hole theory suggests that black holes may be portals to
parallel universes.
Science-fiction stories about parallel universes always delight the mind. Two of my favorite SF novels on parallel universes are Heinlein's
Job and
Number of the Beast. Several others intrigue me, such as
The Neoreality Series,
Diaspora, and
Parallelities. Science books on the subject include a
famous book by David Deutsch.
Do you have any favorite books on parallel universes or parallel realities, fiction or nonfiction?
What do you think? No doubt, scientists and
science-fiction authors will continue to explore the concept in the decades to come.
posted by Morphic at 2:31 PM PST - 64 comments
Jorlon khaan bain ve? The first stop in Oissubke's trip around the online world is the
beautiful land of
Mongolia. Take a moment to leave the America-centric (not that there's anything wrong with that!) Web and see what the internet looks like from someone else's eyes...
I've tried to pick sites that provide unique and interesting insights into the Mongolian internet, not just whatever Google coughed up for "Mongolia". Unless this post particularly annoys people, I'll plan to continue my journey with Liechtenstein in a few days.
posted by oissubke at 1:36 PM PST - 28 comments
Worthless Word for the Day. Ever feel as if an "obscure, abstruse and/or recondite word" was forced into a newspaper/magazine/quote? Now there's a site that finally finds and provides wwftd! Impress your friends.
posted by geoff. at 1:13 PM PST - 13 comments
We like the cars, the cars that go "Vroom" All that quiet too much for you to take when you're tooling around town?
These inventors have reverse engineered the noise reduction technology to make a
product that can reproduce "the endearing and unique audible sound signatures of 1950s, 1960s and 1970s classic cars and motorbikes."
Hot Wheels will probably want a piece of the action to help save wear and tear on kids' vocal chords as they play
Fast And the Furious.
Would anyone pay for this hi-fi feature? Or is this a non-starter only good for a few cheap laffs and links?
posted by chandy72 at 9:54 AM PST - 18 comments
Tumor-induced Pedophilia - the BBC reports on an american man who, at the age of 40, developed completely uncontrollable and ammoral sexual impulses after developing a tumor in the right lobe of the orbifrontal cortex. After the tumor was removed, he returned to normal. More inside...
posted by Irontom at 8:42 AM PST - 28 comments
Yesterday I saw a wonderful movie -
Spellbound - a documentary about the annual
Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee - which won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at
SXSW.
It explores the dynamics surrounding kids and parents desire for success in the
competition, reconciliation with failure and differing models of education, competition and success.
When I was a kid I was on the TV show
It's Academic - along with lots of other famous faces. While you
may want to
make fun of the show - I still remember it fondly. My parents were happy to see me compete but generally
unconcerned about the outcome in any way. Now we've got
Math Olympics, the
Academic Decathlon and a host of other competitive ventures. Any other MeFites remember school days competitions and the drive to succeed?
posted by dhacker at 7:07 AM PST - 29 comments
Does this story about the US govt making someone disappear for no admitted reason scare you as much as it scares me?
posted by lerrup at 6:28 AM PST - 32 comments
Centre of Great Britain The BBC (God bless 'em) are running a series of "Centre of ..." stories. No-one in the UK seems to care, do other nationalities care more about their country's centre of gravity?
posted by daveg at 6:22 AM PST - 12 comments
October 20
For Richer: the first in a
New York Times series on class in the United States. Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman declares the death of the middle class, pointing out disparities between the rich and the poor, examining efforts to cover up class makeup with quantile data, and probing the transformation of corporate executive ethics and influence. Even
Glenn Reynolds is taken to task for his Sweden-Mississippi per capita GDP comparison.
Krugman's sources are on the slim side, but the question must be asked: Are we living in a new Gilded Age? And, if so, how can citizens and government work to change things?
posted by ed at 1:28 PM PST - 53 comments
"Through your vision, creativity and dedication, you'll be able to reach for the stars and help your customers reach for the stars," she
encouraged them. "You are at the forefront of a revolution in understanding the way people use their imagination and creativity to
interact with information and interact with each other."
Source of this quote:
(a) CEO Carly Fiorina giving a pep talk to HP employees.
(b) Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao addressing striking west coast dockworkers.
(c) Former gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno speaking to Florida election workers.
(d) Hillary Clinton channelling Mother Teresa at a bible sales meeting.
(e) Astronaut Sally Ride providing encouragement to a convention of telemarketers.
(via Washington Post)
posted by Wet Spot at 10:14 AM PST - 57 comments
OK, so not only is this a link for guitar bores, its also a link for Europe-based guitar bores. For shame! However,
Stringsdirect are more or less the living embodiment of everything that makes buying on the internet great. Really cheap, really simple, really quick. (Well, they were for me yesterday...) And they sell
Line 6 PODs as well. You really have no excuse not to buy one now. Awww hell, let's start a Shred-Thread...
widdly..widdly..widdly...weeeeeposted by Jofus at 9:16 AM PST - 20 comments
Photos taken from the space shuttle have revealed what is believed to be a 1.75 million b.p.
human-made bridge from
India to Sri Lanka. Incredibly, legend
says the army of Vanaras (monkeys) built a
bridge across the ocean to enable
Rama (a Hindu Moses) to conquer Sri Lanka, possibly makeing it a 1.75 million year oral tradition. It is
proposed to be a land bridge again.
posted by stbalbach at 7:22 AM PST - 57 comments
The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores and
Morrissey is the most enchanting of them all. After years of dithering, mitigating, litigating and downright procrastination, it seems another comeback is in the works. Of the
five new songs recently performed in Arizona, at least two of them (
The Last Of The Gang To Die and I Like You) are as good as anything he's ever done. I'd say he's all keyed up for a cracking, newly miserable, yet peppy and poetic middle age. Perhaps every day is not like Sunday, after all... [
Quicktime for the main link; MP3 for the songs. For the lastest information on The Moz, check out the Mrs Shankly website; Morrissey Solo; Morrissey Tour and Ambitious Outsiders.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:07 AM PST - 35 comments
They want to kill us all Forget the ‘root causes’, says Mark Steyn. The massacre in Bali was part of the continuing Islamofascist war against the West, and those who ignore it are sleepwalking to national suicide
I wait now--loaded with my meds--for the Left to call for more understanding, help for the poverty stricken, and understanding. Incidentally, if you turn to http://www.debka.com/ today, you will see that they claim Bin Laden alive and well in Saudi Arabia!
posted by Postroad at 5:33 AM PST - 108 comments
A million Japanese boys, hiding in their rooms. I didn't know about this - but then again, by definition, maybe I wouldn't. Domestic hermits aside, I frequently see behavior I'd identify as "borderline mentally ill" slide right under people's radar here in Tokyo, and I'm certain a
nihonjin might think the same thing after a year in my hometowns, New York and San Francisco.
What culturally-specific form does neurosis take in your neck of the woods?
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:35 AM PST - 51 comments
Will this comedy ever cross the atlantic? The Office, now half way through its second series, must be the sharpest, funniest and most tragic t.v. comedy the BBC have made in a long time. A spoof documentary set in the office of a paper wholesaler whose manager, David Brent, is obsessed with his motivational bon homie and oblivious to the fact the rest of the world thinks he is a bumptious idiot.
The clips give some idea of the style but maybe the humour is too British to travel far.
posted by rolo at 1:44 AM PST - 22 comments
October 19
One Left wing site's idea of tolerance and respect for divergent opinions. Truly hysterical (in all meanings of the word) post from the administrator of the Democratic Underground's message board announcing that from now you're only allowed to post messages that they agree with. No pro-Green Party points of view allowed, and certainly no Republicans. After all, they're evil. Not mistaken, mind you, nor misguided. Nope, anyone who's to the right of the Democratic party is evil. This sort of moral absolutism reminds me of, well, the Taliban.
posted by mojohand at 8:12 PM PST - 44 comments
A look into peacekeeping training being conducting in Chile with the U.S. and most South American countries participating. A rare view of the interaction between national militaries to improve good relationships. The pics are great, too.
posted by mcchesnj at 6:09 PM PST - 1 comments
Sean Penn totally disses President Bush in the Washington Post but because he did it in a full page ad and not an op/ed column it is totally unlinkable to those of use on the web, and therefore dies on the vine.
Two questions: How can one find the full transcript to Penn's advertisment, and why is it that only Republican movie stars are allowed have their voices heard in political discussions?
posted by tsarfan at 3:30 PM PST - 64 comments
"Clean" Elections Fiasco I have the misfortune to be a voter in Arizona, a state which has instituted a so-called "
Clean Elections" system, in which candidates who campaign a certain way qualify to be eligible for funding matching that of other candidates. The goals are to "eliminate special-interests" and "level the playing field", but it has backfired badly. How can I retain my political voice when contributions to
my preferred candidate wind up being matched (with taxpayer money) for the other candidates? We're in the middle of a fiscal crisis in this state, and candidates are being funded with millions of dollars of campaign welfare taken from public funds, which (as always) is being used for mudslinging. What part of "Clean" is so confusing? I can only hope that my boy Jeff can
work some miracles.
posted by oissubke at 3:10 PM PST - 10 comments
This news item turned out to be a hoax. Has Reuters been
fooled again? I certainly smell a rat...
(I know the original mefi link pointed to the BBC, but the BBC picked it up from Reuters)
posted by titboy at 12:48 PM PST - 10 comments
October 18
The male species has it easy. Feminist magazine Amp meditates on whether women should hover or plonk when they go to the bathroom.
"It's like learning how to whistle. You have to learn how to position your lips for the best results." This article isn't work safe. In fact I'm not sure if it's safe at all.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:22 PM PST - 30 comments
Why Do Marriages Last? Amidst all the
psychobabble and
religious dogmatics you find on this subject, I found
Robyn Parker's review of the relevant literature to be useful, wise and true. After all, aren't the rules of a lasting relationship, whatever your gender or sexuality, the same that govern friendship, loyalty, companionship and
fun? Is marriage the
secretive exception it's made out to be? Are there really any
rules we don't instinctively, from about the age of seven, already know? As some Rabbi once said, the three words that most often save a marriage are not
I love you. They are, in fact:
I was wrong. Not that easy; but not that difficult either...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:05 PM PST - 36 comments
Smart artists benefit from "piracy". Jane Magazine recently completed their "Reader-Produced CD". The songs were chosen from reader submissions and final selections were made by
Jill Cunniff (of
Luscious Jackson) and
Kendall Jane Meade (of
Mascott). All of the songs can be downloaded, which will most likely lead these bands to greater commercial [and financial] success than they would have had without the Jane CD. These artists are smart, and the music is
good.
Jane shares music all the time, and it's usually good. Kind of an example of the ideas presented in
this post in action. Apologies in advance to all the manly men who look at a girly magazine.
posted by valval22 at 1:33 PM PST - 8 comments
The Pocket President. Want an enormous tax cut for the wealthy? Need a pesky environmental regulation indefinitely "reviewed"? With the Pocket President, all this and much more is within your grasp. 7 inches tall, printed on sturdy cardboard, and free shipping! You can even download a sample.
posted by josephtate at 12:36 PM PST - 21 comments
Terrorist Financing is a new report by the
Council on Foreign Relations on al Qaeda's financial network. It claims that the Bush administration "appears to have made a policy decision not to use the full power of U.S. influence and legal authorities to pressure or compel other governments to combat terrorist financing more effectively." The most important source of al Qaeda's funds are charities and wealthy individuals from
Saudi Arabia. But while the Bush administration may be unwilling to confront the Saudis directly, they are seeking to have their
financial assets in Europe frozen.
posted by homunculus at 12:21 PM PST - 2 comments
The New Transatlantic Project "Ultimately, Europeans, precisely because they share our values, are likely to be the most dependable allies we have..." An attempt at exploring (no, overcoming) the US-Europe divide by
Ronald Asmus (Council of Foreign Relations) and
Kenneth Pollack (Brookings Institution) in the Hoover Institution's latest Policy Review. Anyone taken by
prior discussion re Robert Kagan's "Power and Weakness" in prior Policy Review should find this worth a read.
posted by Voyageman at 12:04 PM PST - 2 comments
The West Wing debunker. I have grown to hate this show even though I agree with its politics. The show occasionally brings up interesting topics but it is so goddamned sanctimonious. I worry that people think this is how our executive branch works. I hope this isn't a double post.
posted by McBain at 11:20 AM PST - 46 comments
kiddie art If you work in an office with lots of people, chances are that you work with a person who
hangs pictures up that their kids have drawn. The pictures are always of some stupid flower or a tree with wheels. These pictures suck; I could draw pictures much better. In fact, I can spell, do math and run faster than your kids.
posted by batboy at 9:18 AM PST - 39 comments
The Cacophony Society "In a sense, we never create anything new at all. We never claim to come into a town and teach people how to be amusingly subversive. They're already doing it! We just raise the bogus flag, and see who will gather under the flagpole for further mischief."
posted by bunktone at 8:14 AM PST - 8 comments
Wall hangings for your peace loving sims. I've only logged about three sim hours, but this inspires me to boot up my little sim family. When the Sims online comes out, can we have sim protests at the sim white house, or sim mefi protests at mathowie's sim house?
posted by djacobs at 8:11 AM PST - 13 comments
The Melting Snows of Kilimanjaro. Lonnie Thompson, a professor of
geology at
Ohio State University, writes in the latest issue of Science magazine that the icepack on Mt. Kilimanjaro may disappear within 20 years. Aside from the fact that most of the recent activity could be pegged to global warming, ice cores indicate that a deep drought 4,000 years ago halted the original growth of the icepack. Interesting info on this also available via OSU's research news area
here.
posted by PeteyStock at 7:53 AM PST - 13 comments
Braingirl - she's brainy, she's bizarre, she's curiously compelling and she has a sidekick named Bag Boy. See all 8 episodes. Flash & sound effects alert, and not safe for work unless you work at a pretty funkified place.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:48 AM PST - 13 comments
French Spiderman does it again! Alain Robert has just sucessfully made it two-thirds of the way up the 50 storey 1 Canada Sq in London's Canary Wharf before being arrested by police in a window-cleaning cart. It's like a war zone down there. As soon as any news links appear i'll post them here.
posted by andyHollister at 2:12 AM PST - 39 comments
October 17
MAME Rock: Thankfully,
Grand Master Peter is back to his old tricks! [
Requires Shockwave and speakers, not to mention a good memory and a high Rawk tolerance threshold.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:19 PM PST - 10 comments
"Verbal" Amon Tobin throws down some old skool TRON visuals. (Quicktime Required) Amon Tobin not only has come out with a dastardly new album but he's also on tour in the US this next few months; the guy is a master of the sampler and should not be missed. The video rocks hard as well, I'd like to see this one on the big screen.
I sound like a frickin' marketing weasel (which I'm not), but this guy deserves all the publicity he can get. posted by jeremias at 12:19 PM PST - 22 comments
Pacronyms An "alphabetical list of acronyms, abbreviations, initials, and common names of federal political action committees (PACs)." And if you ask me, there's TDMOT.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:15 PM PST - 3 comments
The end of free online news is in sight according to Reuters.
I think they are premature, but assuming for a moment that this is in fact the trend, what will this do to Metafilter?
{More inside}
posted by BentPenguin at 10:34 AM PST - 45 comments
Hydrogen Cars. I had been expecting something akin to
the Sinclair C5, but these are full production models within the Ford Focus range. The article predicts that although they'll initially appear in niche markets such as public transport, in a few years we'll all be able to drive about in them, creating a cleaner, happier world.
posted by feelinglistless at 10:31 AM PST - 23 comments
"I'm not sure which planet they live on" While Wesley Clark
stumps for War on Public Radio’s darling station WBUR, “Hawks in the Bush administration may be making
deadly miscalculations on Iraq, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's Middle East envoy.” To answer Zinni’s question: they’re certainly NOT living on planet
“accidental armageddon”, or planet
“C.I.A. Warns That a U.S. Attack May Ignite Terror” or planet
"Butler Fears Israel could Use Nukes". I’d say they’re on planet
Shifting rationals for war, planet
Pax Americana, planet
“Bullish on War”, planet
“G.I.Joe’s Forward Command Post”, planet
“Universal US Draft”, planet
“Blanket immunity for US” and when they’re not thinking about war, they go to planet
“upward wealth transfer” and also hang out sometimes at planet
“genetically targeted weapons as politically usefull tools and perception reengineering via nanobots, psychedelic drugs and valium” But they stay far away from planet
“Origins of Fascism in the US”. And they hang garlic on their beds to ward off planet
"Is Bush a commie mole trying to destroy capitalism?" from the
Krugman nebula.
posted by troutfishing at 10:29 AM PST - 34 comments
HTML Gone Bad: We know that laughter is the best medicine, so our group of scientists work nonstop collecting and categorizing lousy web pages. We spend weeks exposing each page to constant ridicule and heavy sarcasm. After they are tested, we pass the links along to you.posted by Fabulon7 at 9:51 AM PST - 14 comments
Space Needle Missing from the Seattle Skyline? (subscription) The rumor is someone bought the Space Needle in Seattle and moved it to their house. No! It was an ad for the lottery. Do TV channels need to make it clearer that something is an ad, or do people need to be more careful watching TV?
posted by scudder at 8:21 AM PST - 28 comments
An example of innovative web design This was a site made for last tuesday's Buffy episode. I thought it was a really good example of what could be done with design...and there's not even any flash. Just the poems and pictures of a fictional girl who knows she's about to die.
posted by nyxxxx at 6:21 AM PST - 60 comments
The US government recently released a draft of the
National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, essentially it advocates ensuring security through consensus, with vendors, government agencies and consumers taking responsibility for the tools they use. That's not enough for Marcus Ranman who in the
TISC newsletter advocates passing legislation
mandating consumers and ISPs to install firewalls and anti-viral software. At what point does an individuals (corporate or consumer) chosen level of computer security become a concern for the federal government?
posted by cedar at 6:20 AM PST - 7 comments
Surviving a Sniper A great article about saving one of the D.C. sniper victims:
The doors to the Bowie Health Center had just been unlocked, and Tom Lyons was catching up on paperwork before the usual parade of cut fingers, sore throats and headaches began. [...] He was savoring one last cup of coffee when he heard someone shout for him in the hallway. We've got a gunshot wound!posted by tommyspoon at 4:02 AM PST - 27 comments
My name's not Brian! Ryan Adams gives a fan a refund and asks him to leave a concert when said fan asks him to play
"Summer of '69". Have you ever been to a concert where the performer lost it at the audience? I guess even folk rockers can be divas...
posted by PenDevil at 2:02 AM PST - 119 comments
Imagine my glee in finding
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable online and searchable.
Then, imagine my glee in finding out that
Tom and Jerry have a non-animated
past.
AND they're a
drink.
AND they're a
play!
They (the originals, that is) used to be wildly popular. Now they're all but forgotten, except in cat / mouse form. What wildly popular
"works" will our great grandchildren forget completely? (I had to wash my cache out with soap after that last one)
posted by condour75 at 12:09 AM PST - 11 comments
Arsonists try to burn down a mosque in Melbourne, Australia I was going to title this link 'Another terrorist attack', but I was concerned that would unduly alarm people:
Deputy Victorian Police Commissioner Bill Kelly said police had no evidence to suggest the Doncaster attack was a response to the Bali bombing.
"It's not being looked at as a retaliation attack, it's just being looked at as an arson attack on a building," he said.
"But obviously given what has happened last Saturday that puts another dimension into the investigation to follow-up on to make sure it either is or isn't politically or religiously motivated."
Terrorists or arsonists? I suppose it depends upon whether you're Muslim or not. Sounds like terrorism to me.
But like us easy-going Aussies like to say: 'No worries. She'll be right, mate.'
Damn them all.
posted by chrisgregory at 12:06 AM PST - 27 comments
October 16
Hundreds of people with criminal records in Maryland may have been allowed to purchase guns illegally this year because the state temporarily stopped conducting background checks for the FBI.[More Inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 6:23 PM PST - 18 comments
Infant's nose and lips bitten off by a wild raccoon that was illegally kept as a family pet. Luckily, surgeons were able to re-attach them.
"Doctors at the Iowa Clinic say wild animal bites are 100% preventable if parents don't allow the animals to rome freely in a home." Duh. Who's fault is this, if anybody's?
posted by Kevin Sanders at 6:17 PM PST - 26 comments
Japanese
abducted by North Korea in Japan for brief visit.
After many years of denying accusations, North Korea finally came clean last month and admitted to
having kidnapped a number of Japanese civilians. Of the thirteen they admit to abducting, they say
only five are still alive, and these five have been allowed a visit to Japan this week. On a less
encouraging note, however, the five survivors were not allowed to bring their children or spouses and
arrived donning pins bearing an image of the Great Leader.
Is Kim Jong Il genuinely
turning over a new leaf, is this just another part of a heartless
cash grab scheme, or did the "axis of
evil" speech
intimidate
them into softening up for a moment?
posted by shoos at 3:42 PM PST - 22 comments
Platforms A summary of Democratic, Republican, and other party platforms over the last 150 years. Prettied up, current versions can be found for
Republican,
Democrat,
Green, and
Libertarian parties (and probably others!). Do you read such things? Do you find that when you read them, your perception of the party matches with the text of the platform? Do you find yourself persuaded by the text of any platform? Provoked to thoughts on policy?
posted by namespan at 2:51 PM PST - 8 comments
Legato and
Avant La Nuit are two exquisite interactive pieces by
Nicolas Clauss, a "painter who stopped 'traditional painting' to use multimedia and the internet as a canvas", working from his
Flying Puppet studio in Paris. [
Requires Shockwave. Use your mouse.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:46 PM PST - 10 comments
An Awkward Situation Flirting strangers suddenly find themselves a little closer than they wanted to be. Have you ever been in an awkward situation with a not-quite-stranger?
posted by oissubke at 9:52 AM PST - 39 comments
Timehunt. Time, philosophy, alchemy, tons of interactive puzzles and great flash. I can't tell you more, I'm still figuring it out.
posted by talos at 8:11 AM PST - 9 comments
Bush skeptical of ballistic fingerprinting. This article talks about Bush's (and the NRA's) reluctance to set up a national ballistic fingerprinting system to trace bullets back to the guns which fired them. Some feel this technology could be helpful in finding the DC sniper. Apparently, legislation to set up this system has been in the works for about 2 years, but this is the first I've heard of it. Any MeFi people know more about this?
posted by botono9 at 8:02 AM PST - 92 comments
Maybe they should have let Lance Bass on this one. A Soyuz rocket explodes 29 seconds after takeoff, killing one and injuring eight from the blast. Although it was not carrying any material destined for the International Space Station, launch delays caused by the investigation into the explosion might hurt the IIS project in the long run.
posted by LuxFX at 7:38 AM PST - 18 comments
The Free World is a resource for hosting all kinds of useful information: security information, cryptographic research, programs for the manipulation of patented or reverse engineered data formats (never mind that only processes can be patented and data format patents aren't legal in the first place) and possibly reverse engineering tools. One problem though. If you are a citizen of the USA, or under the jurisdiction of the USA, the license forbids you access. Why? The DCMA.
posted by salmacis at 7:32 AM PST - 3 comments
The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S. to secure there a free society. We will accomplish this by first reforming state law, opting out of federal mandates, and finally negotiating directly with the federal government for appropriate political autonomy. We will be a community of freedom-loving individuals and families, and create a shining example of liberty for the rest of the nation and the world.
posted by BirdD0g at 6:31 AM PST - 68 comments
Is it all about oil? Iraq war protesters insist a war wil be about oil. Others say no. Here the writer argues that it is both--it is not all about oil but we will control the oil should we take control.
posted by Postroad at 4:49 AM PST - 51 comments
October 15
Newzoid: wacky headline generator. I've been checking this site daily for at least a week now. It polls for online news headlines and does a simple "cut-up" which usually cracks me up like, "Tireless British Rocker, 50, To Be Auctioned," "Iraqis Fighting Back In Playground," "VH1 Vogue Is Dense, Demanding," "Listeria Outbreak Probably Enjoyed Off-Duty Time," "US Man Linked To Breast Cancer: Study"
posted by skallas at 9:54 PM PST - 21 comments
Nuke Not Nuke Not News? *
I do not endorse the source* However, one should consider the implications if
this time it's
not a fantasy. Are nuclear weapons now a poor-man's weapon? Is it time to call James Bond?
posted by kablam at 5:10 PM PST - 42 comments
Military may take part in DC Sniper Hunt The Pentagon is making some noise about possibly using military personnel and equipment in the hunt for the DC area sniper. I am normally not a paranoid conspiracy type but...
Would it be unthinkable that the government could be behind the whole thing. First they put out trained snipers to kill random victims and scare the hell out of the public. Then the military come in and save the day. At the same time they set a precedent for using the military to "fight crime" in the country. While I don't think this is the case, would you put it past the current administration?
posted by Blubble at 3:51 PM PST - 76 comments
AOL kills the pop-up? "By ending third-party pop-ups and merchandise sales we are giving our members what they want," says Chief Executive Jon Miller. Clever strategy. Since there's now hardly any new users to attract to their service, they're trying to appeal to slightly more experienced net users. Are you annoyed by pop-ups? Would you sign up to AOL?
posted by tapeguy at 2:40 PM PST - 48 comments
Dear Friends: American Photgraphs of Men Together Partially inspired by the male imagery I found when reading
this MeTa thread, I went looking for imagery of men expressing affection in non-pornographic photography, and was extremely affected by this particular exhibition. We would classify these images
today as homoerotic. But are they truly such, or merely our interpretation of how men "should" behave toward one another in the 21st century projected onto 19th and early 20th century imagery? And why aren't men allowed to be as touchingly affectionate toward one another today as they were more than 100 years ago?
posted by WolfDaddy at 1:32 PM PST - 63 comments
Elephant in the living room: A radical Islamic Nuclear Pakistan (NYT reg. : name-metafilter password-metafilter) "Hard-line Islamic parties did unexpectedly well in Pakistan's election last week, and Pervez Musharraf's hold on power may be slipping. Do I need to point out that Pakistan is a lot bigger than Iraq, and already has nuclear weapons?...These guys [Bush Adm]want to fight a conventional war; since Al Qaeda won't oblige, they'll attack someone else who will [Iraq]. And watching from the alley, the terrorists are pleased. " -Paul Krugman, once again forced to state the obvious; the US is, effectively, helping with Al Qaeda's goal of radicalizing Islamic populations. In parts of Pakistan, they call Musharaff "Busharaff", and Nick Kristoff
notes "Even in Kuwait, where Yankees have the best possible claim on Arab gratitude, a significant minority of men and women regard us as worms" and that "The most common name given to Pakistani boys born after 9/11 in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province reportedly was Osama." What does this have to do with a war in Iraq? Well.........
posted by troutfishing at 9:19 AM PST - 36 comments
Mother Teresa fingered This is actually a rather shocking story because the criteria for a miracle at Lourdes, for example, are very strict. That's why there are so few of them.
posted by alloneword at 7:54 AM PST - 48 comments
Wallace and Gromit fans can now download one of ten short films from the
BBC website. There are
low (1.38 meg),
medium (2.59 meg) and
high (4.3 meg) quality versions available. To save, right click on the links and select "save as".
posted by ralawrence at 3:39 AM PST - 17 comments
In 1924
George Antheil caused a riot with his
ballet score for 'percussion orchestra, two pianists, seven electric bells, 3 airplane propellors, a siren, and 16 synchronized player pianos'. In 1933,
Hedy Lamarr caused a sensation by appearing
nude on film. In 1942, Antheil and Lamarr jointly filed a patent for a
secret communications system, having thought up 'an interesting scheme to control armed torpedoes over long distances without the enemy detecting them or jamming their transmissions' over dinner.
posted by misteraitch at 3:31 AM PST - 12 comments
Bush Doubted on 9/11 Panel Angry lawmakers accused the White House yesterday of secretly trying to derail creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while professing to support the idea. The White House responded by renewing its pledge of support for the proposal and suggesting an agreement was near.posted by tranceformer at 3:15 AM PST - 38 comments
October 14
Strike at Government Lab Enters Third Month. This is happening at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which studies highly contagious viruses. Maintenance workers are on strike and the replacement workers have been involved with missing equipment and an accident. The
official site boldly declares that "Not once in our more than 40 years of operation has an animal pathogen escaped from Plum Island." Somehow I am not filled with confidence. And, while they say they only deal with animal pathogens, there is a lot of crossover with Foot and Mouth and West Nile. Should we be worried about this?
posted by sciatica at 11:13 PM PST - 3 comments
A New Milestone for Video Games? "Three of the nation's top retailers, including Wal Mart, on Monday said they had refused to carry a new video game billed as the first major release to feature full-action nudity and with prostitutes and pimps as major characters." I enjoyed their
"banned ads" myself.
posted by owillis at 5:00 PM PST - 36 comments
Philosophy or religion?
Some people like it,
some hate it,
some have even annotated it. But however you choose to define it,
The Book of Heresies is an interesting approach to the idea of disorganized religion in the modern world.
posted by nick.a at 3:04 PM PST - 19 comments
Those of you old enough to remember watching sporting events in the late 70's and early 80's may remeber a gentleman with a rainbow colored wig who enjoyed holding up a sign reading JOHN 3:16. That gentleman was named
Rollen Stewart and while he was ubiquitous for a time, he came to sad and bizarre end. His rise and fall detailed in
this article and a
short movie is an interesting cautionary tale about the nature of celebrity in a media saturated world.
posted by jonmc at 1:49 PM PST - 12 comments
Hail Mary, full of.... um.... what was that, again? The only Pope many of us have known, John Paul II, has decided that a millenium is long enough to change a prayer. Odd that two millenia are not enough to revisit female and married priests.
posted by dwivian at 1:32 PM PST - 39 comments
Just Duct-y..... Hmmm. Duct tape seems to be a fix for everything, even curing warts. Err...don't try this on the genital kind, I guess.
posted by bivouac at 1:18 PM PST - 16 comments
Brawny Man Finalists In the most tremendously important link of the day, the time has come for the public to select who will be the one and only Brawny man. The field has been narrowed down to several finalists. Which one will it be? Whose pecs will reign supreme?
posted by oissubke at 1:10 PM PST - 23 comments
History of Breakdancing Casual fans of hip hop,
breakdancing was a fad whose moment passed before the end of the '80s, tossed into the decade's time capsule along with acid wash and decent John Hughes movies.
Breakdancing may have died, but the b-boy, one of four original elements of hip hop (also included: the MC, the DJ, and the graffiti artist) lives on. To those who knew it before it was tagged with the name breakdancing, to those still involved in the scene that they will always know as b-boying, the tradition is alive and, well, spinning.
posted by DailyBread at 1:00 PM PST - 17 comments
The fate of Israel’s 10 lost tribes, which, after being driven from ancient Palestine in the eighth century B.C. by Assyrian conquerors, disappeared into ethnic oblivion, ranks among history’s biggest mysteries. Some Israeli rabbis believe descendants of the lost tribes number more than 35 million around the world and could help offset the sharply increasing Palestinian population. The
Bnei Menashe of India are part of the solution to Israel’s demographic problems.
posted by stbalbach at 11:48 AM PST - 77 comments
"No sir, that's not my fido." Iranian cleric denounces the "moral depravity" of owning dogs, and calls for their arrest. (Both dogs and owners.) "In our country there is freedom of speech, but not freedom for corruption," he said. Why do we pretend to understand the culture of the middle east?
posted by woil at 10:26 AM PST - 59 comments
Facing Time: A family's yearly
self-portrait from 1976 to 2002 is both uplifting and unsettling; a bit like human life itself. How does one separate the morbid fascination with aging from the spiritual joy of growth? Not to mention the element of voyeurism... [
From ZoneZero, via Eclectica.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:19 AM PST - 30 comments
Wisconsin "loses" 2,900 sex offenders. It seems that the state of Wisconsin has "misplaced" approximately 2,900 of it's 9,000+ population of registered sex offenders. Apparently, they've moved within or out of the state without letting the state know. Jim Stingl of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel thinks we should all
pitch in and help find those missing offenders, and offers some ways he's helping out already
posted by djspicerack at 9:19 AM PST - 17 comments
Adipose Nation: It's Time To Tax The Fat A Swiftian proposition to create a "glutton tax" for the ever-growing numbers of obese Americans. This topic is being thrown around a lot these days. Yesterday's
New York Times (nyt registration req'd) presented a more factual, sober accounting of it stating yet again, that nearly two-thirds of Americans adults 20 to 74 years old are classified as overweight.
posted by ubueditor at 9:15 AM PST - 52 comments
Cruelty. (.swf file) Via the NYT Review of Books. Felix Jung hijacks your cursor (briefly) for a poetry break.
posted by Skot at 9:03 AM PST - 6 comments
Politics are allowed in politics, but there are limits, and there is a pale, and Metafilter has managed to deceive those limits, and sensationalize beyond that pale. What makes this quote funny? It's automatically generated by
this site, which can add your name or website to any accusation of liberal bias you'd ever want. This will save so many people so much time.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:38 AM PST - 37 comments
They don't mean it Maureen Dowd suggests an Orwellian vision in Washington, wherein the Democrats and their Republican opponents say what they don't mean and mean what they don't say.
posted by Postroad at 3:44 AM PST - 29 comments
October 13
30 years ago, a group of Uruguayan rugby players
traveled to Chile to play a game against a local team. Their plane crashed in the Andes Mountains. The 27 who survived the crash were forced to eat their teammates in order to survive. After 72 days in the mountains,
16 were rescued. Their story was told in the
book Alive and later a
movie by the same name. Today those survivors reunited in Chile and finally played the rugby game. The Uruguayans
won.
posted by einarorn at 1:03 PM PST - 10 comments
Mike Males, Ph.D., professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, author and pro-youth advocate, thinks kids are getting a bad rap these days. He is very fond of
pointing out that poverty and grown-ups are the biggest threats to teens today. His latest book, "Kids and Guns", is available for free online (
HTML version on his homepage,
PDF version at Common Courage Press). He even
knocks the drug policy reform movement for making the same "save the children" diatribes as their opponents. His site isn't exactly the prettiest thing I've ever seen, but I haven't been so engrossed by something on the web in a long, long time.
posted by botono9 at 11:57 AM PST - 10 comments
Nature versus Nurture. A London teenager who had a bit of history and had been excluded from school was placed in public school by a television programme. He appears to have excelled, though how he is top of a class of 15 year olds at Latin is beyond me, unless he was a surreptitious Latin reader throughout his early childhood. I think there may be some ethical issues around this, but it does suggest that thousands of children are being systematically failed by the education system. Long live
Rousseau. As it were.
posted by Fat Buddha at 10:15 AM PST - 41 comments
October 12
“President Bush’s case against Saddam Hussein ... relied on a
slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the available US intelligence, government officials and analysts claimed yesterday.” Another article on the same subject says, “Rumsfeld’s recent remark that the United States has ‘bulletproof’ evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Hussein struck many in the intelligence community as an
exaggerated assessment of the available evidence.” One paper explains the differences this way, “The C.I.A. has to maintain its
credibility for objective estimates. The White House is mobilizing the public and preparing foreign nations for a potential American invasion of Iraq.”
posted by raaka at 7:00 PM PST - 44 comments
Lost in Translation translates any bit of text you submit back and forth between another language
(French, then German, Italian, Portuguese, and finally Spanish) and English ten times - the results are a cross between the results of a game of telephone and a Nostradamus prophecy. The best part (for me) is that it shows you the de-evolution of your phrase as it gets translated back and forth.
posted by anastasiav at 10:07 AM PST - 81 comments
An interesting
analysis of the DC shooter from the Washington Post film critic (who is a hunter, has written a few novels involving snipers, and has taken two tactical shooting courses with sniper experts).
I may look more closely at his review of Arnold Schwarzenegger's next flick.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 10:07 AM PST - 34 comments
6ixel BBC Online's attempt to attract vinyl, teletext and platform game lovers to the magic of digital radio stations. Actually I think that's going to require cheaper receivers not games, but this is still good fun.
posted by feelinglistless at 8:11 AM PST - 4 comments
October 11
Blawgs: Blogs from the legal world.
Lessig is not the only lawyer sharing his expertise in the blog format. Blawgs range from individual lawyers (
Ernie the Attorney) to entire firms using a collaborative format to focus on a single practice area (such as the
Supreme Court). "Almost every law firm is trying to build a
knowledge management system for itself to take advantage of the expertise within the firm," Svenson says. "But with blawgs, it happens organically. If you gave your lawyers their own blawgs, pretty soon everyone within the firm could see who knows the most about different topics." Are knowledge management systems feasible
or practical yet?
posted by ajr at 8:28 PM PST - 12 comments
Political crybaby? Helena, Mont. - Republican Mike Taylor dropped out of the Senate race against Democratic Sen. Max Baucus yesterday, complaining that a Democratic Party ad was calculated to make him look like a gay hairdresser.
I've seen a still from the TV ad. It used a video clip from the early 1980's that really does make him look awful. The thing is, most people looked awful during the early 80's, and the clip was from a TV bit Taylor used to host. Is this a cop out or does he have a legit gripe? Is it a low-blow to use an unflattering photo from someone's past? (Lock up those prom pics!)
posted by kayjay at 8:01 PM PST - 43 comments
How NOT to Start an Ancient Religion Not so much a DIY guide for time-travellers as "a list of 16 factors to be considered -- places where Christianity 'did the wrong thing' in order to be a successful religion." Hopefully thought provoking...
posted by agentfresh at 7:19 PM PST - 22 comments
Modest, Style-Conscious and Frustrated No More It's hard to be modest in contemporary America without coming off like a sack-wearing frump, so two moms and Nordstrom teamed up to offer some shockingly non-shocking alternative attire. "All are thrilled with the idea...It's snowballed almost out of control." Might dressing like a hooker go out of style someday?
posted by oissubke at 6:45 PM PST - 38 comments
What do you think when you hear the word "Skinhead"? Here's one that SURE to spark discussion if not an outright flame war! Do you hold the popular belief that "Skinheads" are nothing but low IQ neo- nazi sheep? How many Metafilter enthusiasts even know about the birth of the movement? It had nothing to do with race either!
posted by hoopyfrood at 5:31 PM PST - 54 comments
I'll take "Western Superiority Complexes" for $500, Alex... Let the wars begin: The ever controversial Ayn Rand Institute suggests that on the eve of Columbus Day we reject revisionist Politically Correct history that Columbus was a butcher. By what justification could we state that Western Civilization is superior to others? Is multiculturalism a bad idea? Does this suggest we have a 'right' to wipe out peoples inferior to us? Darwinism at its potential worst--or a scary reality to admit?
posted by tgrundke at 3:46 PM PST - 60 comments
While MS-bashing is often too easy, this statement about
recent security holes seemed especially astounding: "Outlook Express ships with every Windows system, or rather as part of IE, so it's on every system. But unless it is configured to receive mail, you are not at risk," said Scott Culp, manager for Microsoft security response. Interesting.
Unless it is configured to receive mail, like, you know, an email program.
posted by judith at 3:02 PM PST - 30 comments
HEY! That's illegal! Aw, yeah the motherlode of illegality. The organizers of this exhibit seem to get it all right. The website doesn't skimp on the source material either. Wanna see George Bush wreak havoc on the Teletubbies bunnies? It's
here . Wanna see Wally Wood's (Of
The Realist and
Mad ) version of a Disneyland orgy? It's
here . Public Enemy sampled the Beatles but pulled the song because the licence fees were insane, listen to it
here . Also, don't skip over the "contract" that pops up when you enter the site, it's classic.
posted by jeremias at 2:12 PM PST - 15 comments
Gene Prevents 'Brains Everywhere' The human version of the gene probably is not involved in keeping the human brain inside the skull, but likely plays some other role in nervous system development in human embryos, says Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, a developmental biologist at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Cool.
posted by Grod at 1:20 PM PST - 6 comments
Look at your hands. Is your index finger shorter or longer than your ring finger? Be careful because according to
John T. Manning, those two fingers reveal a variety of characteristics about yourself to the world including assertiveness, attractiveness, reproductive success, hand preference, verbal fluency, autism, depression, health and disease,
homosexuality tendancies, musical and sports aptitudes. [via
Tigerbunny]
And while you are at it don't forget what the
middle finger and
a long second toe might reveal.
posted by oh posey at 12:49 PM PST - 37 comments
How do you say "caramel?" Unlike most Internet quizzes and surveys, Dr. Vaux's Dialect Survey won't pigeon-hole you into one of a finite set of types ("Your speech is most similar to Generic West Coast Dot-Commer, but with a trace of Oklahoma Trailer Park.") Which is just as well since folks like
George Bernard Shaw,
HL Mencken, and
David Foster Wallace would tell us that pronunciation varies with the individual, and doesn't quite fall neatly into a standard type with odd variances. Rather, this survey is a purely academic method for collecting information on who says what where, and the maps at the end are interesting to look at. I know that the pop/soda/cola variance has been visited
before, but what's up with
people using "hosey" to refer to the "shotgun" seat of a car? (requires registration if only to track your answers)
posted by bl1nk at 9:06 AM PST - 75 comments
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart is the new Wilco documentary, directed by rock photographer Sam Jones. It's part fan letter, part sharp reality soap opera on the personality conflicts that drive and tear apart great musical collaborations. Whither the band movie? This one has drawn comparisons to
Hard Day's Night, Don't Look Back, and
Rattle + Hum. Are those puff pieces or portraits of the artists...and what about comedies like
Head and
Spinal Tap? What makes a music movie compelling for fans and non-fans? More on Wilco inside...
posted by serafinapekkala at 7:40 AM PST - 28 comments
Who is Delmart "Mike" Vreeland? The strange case of a man who made a handwritten note while in jail during summer 2001 predicting details of the Sept. 11 attacks. He claims to be an agent for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) with advance knowledge of the attacks. The ONI claims he is a conman and compulsive liar trying to save himself from extradition to the
US.
In the end, this six-month investigation for GNN confirmed what many already know: Delmart Vreeland is a liar and an accomplished conman, adept at spinning tales, and manipulating allegiances to further his own goals. In other words, he is the perfect candidate for work in U.S. intelligence.
Who is Delmart Vreeland? - Conman, Intelligence Agent, or both?
posted by tranceformer at 6:48 AM PST - 19 comments
"It's safe to bite when the temperature is right!" "Thermy (TM) is the messenger of a national consumer education campaign designed to promote the use of food thermometers, developed by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)." Have you
ever used a food thermometer when cooking at home?
posted by nickmark at 6:17 AM PST - 32 comments
Doomsayers refuted yet again, this time by the
United Nations and the Institute for International Studies, who independently released studies declaring that humanity is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever been. (Former MeFi-er DenBeste comments
here.) With more and more studies reaching similar conclusions as
Bjørn Lomborg's "Skeptical Environmentalist" and the CATO Institute's
"It's Getting Better All the Time", I'm on my way to buy myself a new pair of shades. The future does indeed look bright!
posted by dagny at 5:40 AM PST - 32 comments
As war looms, a Peace Prize is awarded. But not to Hamid Karzai, valiantly attempting to rebuild Afghanistan, or 154 other candidates, (a list which will be largely secret until 2052) individuals and groups which are working worldwide. Instead, the Nobel Institute has chosen former U.S. President
Jimmy Carter. The award is not just for his (largely unheralded) work in the last year, but for his "decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." Deserved? More so than others? Care to second guess the
Norwegians on this one?
posted by Dreama at 2:55 AM PST - 68 comments
October 10
vs. Spy is going to travel the world! He is planning on going on a round the world trip on little more than some (small amount of) money, some gumption and some luck. By hook or by crook, he's going to go to South America, and then hopefully to Africa and other places after that. I think it's incredibly gutsy to do that sort of thing, just pick up and walk around the world.
Anyone else done anything like that? Any advice or links?
posted by geekhorde at 11:31 PM PST - 5 comments
And so it is. At approximately 1:20 a.m., the Senate passed S.J. Res 45, a resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq. The vote: 77 yea, 23 nay. Some surprising yeas, including Clinton and Daschle. What happens next?
posted by damn yankee at 10:24 PM PST - 122 comments
"The Bookmobile [Internet Archive version] is a rolling digital library capable of downloading public domain books from the Internet via satellite and printing them anytime, anywhere, for anyone. Just as the bookmobiles of the past brought wonderful books to people in towns across America, this century's bookmobile will bring
an entire digital library to their grandchildren."
This, then, is the sharp end of the Copyright extension argument currently before your Supreme Court in
Eldred v. Ashcroft, [as blogged by all & sundry]
[More inside...]
posted by dash_slot- at 7:49 PM PST - 7 comments
Not standing up to Bush on Iraq is costing the Democrasts money. I work fund raising for the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC, and all three have seen a drop in fund raising dollars over the last two months. The Dems claim it's a good year no matter what the numbers say, but I beg to differ, as a person working the frontline of their telemarketing campaigns the callers are hearing serious complaints from the donors, and we in middle management are getting no response on what to tell the donors. With the House having voted for Bush's resolution, and the Senate set to pass it, is it too late to save face with their donors?
posted by jbou at 7:14 PM PST - 11 comments
DID YOU EVER WONDER HOW THE FBI KNEW ALL THESE NAMES FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE ATTACK ON AMERICA? I know its just another anonymous site about 9-11 but it does highlight some interesting facts and prompts some questions about what the US government knew prior to the attack.
posted by JonnyX at 5:28 PM PST - 26 comments
You Shall Know Our Velocity, but you shall not buy it from Amazon or other large booksellers. The new novel by Dave Eggers is out. The reviews have come in quite positively (
Time,
Newsweek,
NYT,
SF Chronicle, among others). The main topic of discussion, though, is not the
quality of the book, but the
ego/stance/plan of Dave Eggers to not publish and sell it more widely (only 10,000 copies on first run). Will Dave Eggers succeed at NOT being a major commercial success, or will it happen despite his best efforts?
posted by msacheson at 4:33 PM PST - 37 comments
Messenger Spam, for those of you on Windows 2000/XP, you might want to check this out. I don't think it's going to be an isolated phenomena, seeing as how other
bloggers (link has a link to a picture) are reporting it. Luckily, the first link has an easy solution to the problem, non-savvy users might be quite perplexed with the "important" looking dialogue box.
posted by geoff. at 3:49 PM PST - 13 comments
Bowling for Columbine is opening
tomorrow. I know muckraking
Michael Moore
is a
touchy subject
around here,
but I found his first feature since
Roger
& Me insightful in its stubborn search for an answer to the question:
"Why is America so violent?"
Other
reviewers
agree.
Subtle he isn't, but when the news is as
stark
as it is today, maybe subtlety is beside the point. I hope that even some of you
who aren't predisposed to agree with Moore will give this film a chance. Did I
mention it's also entertaining as hell?
posted by muckster at 1:52 PM PST - 48 comments
TiVo, we hardly knew ye. After burning through $200 million in capital since 1997, TiVo has yet to turn a profit. Despite a cult following and 500,000 subscribers, Brendan Koerner concludes that TiVo is destine for the ash heap of history. So what do you think? Will TiVo be the next Apple Newton or Commodore Amiga?
posted by ncurley at 12:31 PM PST - 79 comments
"Your car will be watching the road even if you're not" Or so says DaimlerChrysler in their new ad campaign. Electronic eyes, infrared systems, ways to keep your eyes on the road better.... All in good time, as we all expected - but wouldn't you be worried if your car could just stop itself if it saw a squirrel in the road? (via the Wall St. Journal ad 10/9/02)
posted by djspicerack at 11:15 AM PST - 23 comments
Digital Clendening The University of Kansas Medical Center has an interesting archive of images and text relating to the medical profession. I'm not sure how I happened on this (I was just cleaning out my bookmarks - some google search found this but I don't recall what I was searching for).
posted by substrate at 10:19 AM PST - 6 comments
When pigs fly - This journal by the artist Andy Feehan details his work with tattooed hairless animals. Regardless of your immediate reaction to the art, Feehan's compassion and love for the animals is sure to win you over. Normally, I disprove of weblog cross-posts, but I couldn't resist sharing after finding this via
memepool.
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 7:45 AM PST - 8 comments
Henrietta Lacks, a Baltimore housewife, died in 1951.
Some of her cells did not die. In fact, had they been allowed to grow unchecked, they
would have taken over the world by now. As it is, even as they proved invaluable to medical researchers, their baffling ability to regenerate resulted in contamination of three decades of cellular research, costing medical researchers millions of dollars. As far as science can tell, Henrietta's cells will never die.
Creepy!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:39 AM PST - 29 comments
High Art. Rick Griffin's famous flying eyeball poster is considered by many to be the single finest example of San Francisco psychedelic poster art. The image comes from this fabulous motherlode of eye candy that is Paul Olsen's
Fillmore and Avalon poster collection. It is the largest and most complete collection of its sort. He would like to sell it as a whole--The Whitney Museum wants to buy it but can't afford it. That should tell you something.
Come step behind the Indian bedspread curtain and smell the incense.posted by y2karl at 6:12 AM PST - 20 comments
That's "hearts and minds" to you, sunshine. As a former PSYOPer my ownself, I found this
Village Voice primer on the field reasonably accurate on the facts, if rather skewed as to their interpretation. But what's a nonviolently-inclined soldier to do? What other methods of "winning without fighting" might be acceptable to a leadership seemingly hell-bent on bloodshed?
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:29 AM PST - 11 comments
October 9
The Journey to the West is one of China's most popular literary classics. This site illustrates one section of this important story, the birth of the Monkey King, with 100 beautiful images. You can also take the time to read selections from several other Chinese classics, notably
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
The Tale of the Water Margin and one of my all time favorites,
The Romance of the Western Chamber. These works, and others on the site, are important in their own right, but are also significant because they are source material for Chinese film, TV and especially for
Jingju, which Westerners call
Beijing opera.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:31 PM PST - 16 comments
Army for sale! Russia will back the US in it's Iraq campaign only in exchange for money. Didn't they used to be a superpower? Now they are the A-Team?
posted by wolfgangnorton at 10:47 PM PST - 17 comments
Before we go to war based on whether or not Saddam (or the UN Security Council...) agrees to the Bush administration's proposed UN resolution, would anyone care to discuss what their proposed resolution actually says?
Apparently,
the text of the resolution isn't in the public domain... but things leak. According to
this article, the resolution allows the UN or its members (including the US) to station armed guards in Iraq, establish no-fly and no-drive zones, and create exclusive ground and air transit corridors. Robert Fisk, one of England's most respected reporters,
believes the resolution is a poison pill, designed to lead to "regime change", whether he accepts it or not. So, what else do we know about the proposed resolution, and
why isn't anyone talking about it?posted by insomnia_lj at 10:43 PM PST - 32 comments
Since Genetically Modified Organisms are a big no-no in Europe,
some scientists are now focusing their efforts on TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes), a novel technology for rapid selection of a mutation in any gene from mutant plant, through the use of a mutagen,
Ethyl Methanesulfonate (EMS).
Will this method be seen as less dangerous than Genetic Engineering à la Monsanto?
During my search on this topic, I stumbled on this entertaining story about
DIY genegeneering.
posted by titboy at 6:47 PM PST - 6 comments
It's not your imagination, Americans (and those of us who live in similar cultures) really are getting fatter. The latest Journal of the AMA has
the reports.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:06 PM PST - 23 comments
The 'Corporate Reform' President? Harken Energy, when run by George W. Bush used the practice of shifting troubled assets and large debts on a seperate set of books (like the much beloved Enron).
Harvardwatch has memos (
1,
2) right from where Bush personally took part in meetings authorizing the deal. Its good to see those Ivy League dollars at work.
posted by owillis at 5:17 PM PST - 22 comments
Remember
this thread regarding Planned Parenthood of Iowa, confidentiality and a murder investigation? The county attorney has now
dropped the case due to lack of resources. I was looking forward to the ruling on this one.
posted by justlisa at 4:14 PM PST - 4 comments
Swain, written and directed by
Dave Jones, is the latest Flash animation from
Transience's impressive body of work. Although all the pieces (and good games!) are subtly surprising, I particularly enjoyed
Teev.
In a time where the dominant credo is "messages are for Western Union", Transience seem to pushing an old-fashioned but timely agenda of poetry and peace, whilst using a refreshingly modern neo-expressionist aesthetic. [
The website, apart from requiring Flash, has, like MetaFilter, been a bit unstable all day - but is definitely worth bookmarking.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:27 PM PST - 12 comments
And the Winner Is ... Tomorrow the Nobel Foundation will announce its 2002 award for literature. Anyone have a particular author they'd like to see get the gold?
posted by risenc at 1:09 PM PST - 91 comments
"Dear policeman, I am God" found inscribed on a Tarot card. This latest clue in the Maryland sniper case will no doubt be tested and thoroughly investigated, although it was reported that it could be the work of prankster. If you have read the interesting post below by stevis ("I am who I am") of a Florida man who was legally denied the right to call himself "God", doesn't it make you wonder if the human desire to personify or impersonate God is a manifestation of the desperation for control over others, but not for the better? God, after all, wants you to surrender your life to the almighty. Or (mental illnesses aside) is it much more complex than that?
posted by taratan at 11:03 AM PST - 69 comments
There may be something in the human psyche that finds crumbling and abandoned structures somehow fascinating. In
Abandoned-Places.com, Henk van Rensbergen, a Belgian airline pilot, has compiled an archive of brilliantly atmospheric and evocative images from decaying and deserted industrial complexes, airports, hotels and other assorted structures from around the world.
Arguably superior in composition to those found on many comparable sites such as
zone-tour.com and
abandoned-buildings.com, his images can be haunting, intriguing or disturbing, but are always strangely compelling. Enjoy!
posted by Doozer at 10:39 AM PST - 22 comments
Professor Barnhardts Journal could become one of my favorite ezines. This week they have a short story from MST3000's Mike Nelson, and last week they had essays from Roger Ebert and T. Coraghasen Boyle. Bored with McSweeneys? Still bummed that Feed is gone? This zine looks like fun.
posted by braun_richard at 10:26 AM PST - 2 comments
The Art of Terror. Damien Hirst, one of Britain's most celebrated artists, told the BBC last month that the Sept. 11 attacks were "visually stunning" artworks and that the perpetrators "need congratulating."
A stomach-turning account of how the art-dingbat world views the September 11 attacks.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:00 AM PST - 61 comments
Zoë is Google for your inbox (and outbox, too). It's written in Java and actually works on a number of platforms, using a browser-based interface. Jon Udell describes the way he uses Zoë in
this O'reilly article.
But
be warned: navigating through archived email from five years ago is as humbling as it is addictive.
posted by gdog at 9:38 AM PST - 12 comments
Metafilter is a genetically-modified sheep that keeps your carpets clean! It communicates with wireless devices and makes reassuring noises.
posted by revbrian at 8:54 AM PST - 129 comments
The virtuous image of the Bertelsmann media empire has been destroyed by a devastating historical study into the company's Nazi links that exposes its post-war success as built on a lie. The report, published this week, not only details the company's role in the Nazi propaganda machinery, but provides evidence of the company's use of forced labour during the war.
posted by tpoh.org at 12:53 AM PST - 12 comments
October 8
Lawyers Gone Wild... Webpig, well known philistine webmaster of
Internet Gossip has announced that he has been threatened with a lawsuit against his OTHER site
camgirlsgonewild.com. Apparently he received a letter from the bloodsucking lawyers of girlsgonewild. They claim their company has a trademark on girlsgonewild, and only they are allowed to sell videos of drunk and stupid girls exploiting themselves unknowingly.
posted by rabbit at 7:42 PM PST - 14 comments
"The story stated that the 'Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza,' the galleon on which the first Filipinos landed at Morro Bay, Calif., loosely translates to 'The Big Ass
Spanish Boat.' It actually translates to 'Our Lady of Good Peace.'" A Washington State College newspaper
proves why one should alway, always fact-check a story.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:07 PM PST - 30 comments
The MBTA, Boston's transit system, launched a redesigned Web site today. Fairly unremarkable, if you ask me, except that every single page features a prominent "
Bobby Approved logo, which is supposed to mean the site is fully accessible to the visually impaired. In fact, it isn't, which you'll find out if you run a
Bobby report on the site.
posted by agaffin at 2:41 PM PST - 32 comments
The New Yorker wonders whether the new
Westin hotel at Times Square is the ugliest
building in NYC. What do New Yorkers think? Is ugly architecture anything more than just poor business? What is the state of architecture in this country? (more)
posted by pejamo at 1:45 PM PST - 45 comments
'I am who I am' A Florida man wanted to legally change his name to "God" but a judge denied his request. So he took a passage from the Bible where Moses asks God who he is and hears "I am who I am or I will be who I will be"
I'm suprised that a government official would be protecting a religion-based request. Is there anything you shouldn't be allowed to change your name to?
posted by stevis at 11:27 AM PST - 87 comments
The Russian Avant-Garde Book is an online version of the MoMA exhibit, featuring 112 books originally published in Russia during the intensely creative period between 1910 and 1934, before Stalin outlawed any style but social realism. The site is separated into three chronological themes and includes examples of futurist works, constructivist graphic design, children's books, propaganda, photography and photomontage, revolutionary imagery, architecture and industry, war themes, folk art and judaica...
posted by taz at 9:08 AM PST - 16 comments
The Appalachian Trail is a continuous marked footpath that goes from Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, a distance of about 2160 miles. It passes through 14 states and takes about 5 to 7 months to hike through. Hey, if a
blind man could do it, so can you. If you are not actually up for hiking right this moment, you could always...(more inside)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:15 AM PST - 22 comments
Enough Godwin: Saddam Hussein is not Hitler, George Bush is not Churchill, Kofi Annan is not Chamberlain, Israel is not Nazi Germany, neither are those who criticise it. Has Matthew Engel been reading Metafilter?
posted by niceness at 3:38 AM PST - 70 comments
Buzzcocks singer Pete Shelley shouted down for yelling "Fuck George Bush!" by an angry crowd at the Inland Punk Rock Festival in California (about halfway into the article.) At least according to a friend of some guy who writes for the Weekly Standard who took his teenage daughter to the concert and had no idea who the Buzzcocks were. Was anyone there? Did this really happen?
posted by transona5 at 12:07 AM PST - 76 comments
October 7
Bush's "war on terrorism" may be fine and all, but shouldn't he be attacking
something more pressing? In times of
elevated terrorism threat levels, your leader has yet to do much about the situation, except promising federal help and sending his "thoughts and prayers" to the families of the victims.
Isn't this domestic terrorism? When will we see similar pro-active measures taken against this terrorist just as Bush is taking against Saddam?
And where's that gosh-darned knee-jerk reaction from the media that we've come to expect?
posted by manero at 11:15 PM PST - 47 comments
'Mais Non, Mais Non?'... Well, there goes the neighbourhood. You go for nigh on a quarter of a century crediting
The Muppets with
an all time classic, when
you find out that it was
someone elses - Italian soundtrack composer Piero Umiliani. Not only that, but used as part of the score for an oh-so-dodgy
a Swedish porn film!?!?. But no, that's not the end of it, as
it transpires (see bottom of page) that '
Mahna Mahna' was originally performed by a Frenchman,
Henri Salvador, and was called '
Mais Non Mais Non'. Still, in any of these forms, it's one of the few songs that still makes me smile every time I hear it, especially so when accompanied by
the visuals.
posted by boneybaloney at 5:26 PM PST - 19 comments
Who is Sergei Konovalov? Healer or crook? This email came through a mailing list I subscribe to. I found it fascinating but was unable to dig up any more information about this guy. It sounds like what he is doing is similar to the faith healers in America, however there seems to be no reports of him online or in any newspapers that I can find. Perhaps the MeFi collective can debunk (or authenticate!) this guy.
posted by camworld at 5:10 PM PST - 5 comments
A Left-wing European human-rights activist's take on Iraq. No, not what you'd come to expect by now. Far from the pro-forma accepted perspective of the Left, Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, a German human rights activist makes a case
for the war in Iraq in this insightful interview. He mentions plenty of things I haven't read about before in regards to Kurds and has quite a few strong words to say about Germany and the recent fashions of the European Left.
posted by bokononito at 3:37 PM PST - 24 comments
pickupyourowndamnsocks.com. What would you do if you found out that your significant other was keeping an anonymous, but very public, journal of things about you that drive them crazy?
posted by jonah at 1:31 PM PST - 150 comments
Frank Keating , one of the UK's finest ever sports writers has retired from the Guardian. Mathew Engels appreciation concludes with links to ten of his finest pieces. This is brilliant writing which happens to concern itself with sport, so there is no need for any "doesn't this belong on Sportfilter" type snideness.
posted by Fat Buddha at 11:26 AM PST - 4 comments
Yemen, France Probe Tanker Blast Although Yemen claims the oil spill to be an accident, French autorities and others (DEBKA) believe this may be part of terror network acting up in oil route, driving up prices and fears.
posted by Postroad at 11:07 AM PST - 13 comments
The greatest bit of sports commentary ever, according to the Guardian, is Norwegian TV's Bjørge Lillelien's response to Norway beating England 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier in Sept 1981: "Lord Nelson! Lord Beaverbrook! Sir Winston Churchill! Sir Anthony Eden! Clement Attlee! Henry Cooper! Lady Diana! Maggie Thatcher - can you hear me, Maggie Thatcher! Your boys took one hell of a beating! Your boys took one hell of a beating!" (
Listen to it as Windows Media Audio) Is your favorite on the list, and if not, what is it?
posted by dagny at 10:56 AM PST - 37 comments
Scramble bands. The Ivy League (as well as other U.S. universities, typically with bad football teams) have a notorious tradition of marching bands that don't march.
Columbia's band recently
got in hot water (again) for a swipe at the Catholic church during a Fordham game. Did you play in the marching band at your college? More importantly, did you play a real instrument? Me, I blew bubbles and played the squeegee mop at Columbia.
posted by mkultra at 9:23 AM PST - 28 comments
One big happy family Ottawa granted permission for three wives of a polygamist to stay in Canada permanently and an immigration official has warned that several more applications from polygamists' wives are likely on the way, according to internal government documents obtained by
The Globe and Mail.
The report says the women filled in "housewife" as their occupation on their applications for immigration. They stated they would receive financial assistance from Mr. Blackmore. Under marriage information, they wrote "not available."
posted by orange swan at 7:24 AM PST - 39 comments
Memories of a dead friend, posted bit by bit: this
obituary for Milon Buneta (who died when he was 20, 20 years ago) is a weblog. His friend is writing it as a weblog because it's
not a story newspapers would carry, yet the posts seem so poignant, brief, concentrated that it seems the weblog form is perfect for gathering the fragments we remember about our dead. Do you know of any other weblog obituaries?
posted by jill at 6:35 AM PST - 8 comments
October 6
A Fruit Has Been Built. A
unique architectural piece that pokes your senses in creative ways, is also good-humouredly called the "
Durians" by local Singaporeans. Durians, or otherwise titled King of fruits, are beloved by millions of South East Asians. The spiky building, officially known as "
Esplanade-theatres on the bay", started construction in 1996 and will
open (flash) to the world on the 12th October 2002.
posted by taratan at 11:51 PM PST - 12 comments
Arts & Letters Daily closes the door. "Arts & Letters Daily has been kept afloat by the goodwill of its editors, Tran Huu Dung and Denis Dutton, and it is now time for them to move on. "
Lame! I don't read this site everyday but today it was live one minute and gone the next.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 11:12 PM PST - 47 comments
Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of the
Opus Dei movement, was
canonized today. Opus Dei is a conservative
movement within the catholic church, and counts many powerful people among its
adherents - the current pope among them. However, it is not
without its
detractors and
opponents. Some of
the most important people in the
Franco
dictatorship were part of the group, as were several of the participants in the
Venezuelan coup
earlier this year. Should
we keep an eye on
these guys? They are certainly
secretive and aggressive, but are they just a group of
concerned, pious Catholics, or a power-hungry fraternity? I'm half-catholic myself, and certainly curious to hear if any Catholic MeFiers have thoughts on this subject. Even better, an Opus Dei member to clarify some of these misunderstandings...
posted by charlesv at 12:39 PM PST - 24 comments
I'm currently doing a course in photography which, being an evening course, is going to require mastering the art of night time photography. I
found a few sites on the subject and seeing as there seems to be a fair photography contingent here, I thought I'd share them. Note that these sites all offer interesting tips for creating night time photos.
posted by chill at 10:43 AM PST - 27 comments
How would it be to be a bee? Einstein has been quoted as saying that if the bee were to suddenly disappear, mankind would survive only another four years. So, make a bow to your insect overlords, and visit this site by a neuroscientist researching bee vision to experience first-hand
how a bee sees. The B-EYE software allows you to set various parameters to see how a bee would view selected images, including
Einstein himself. Or test your bee communication skills at Nova's "
Dances with Bees" page, where you watch the dance of a hive mate and then try to locate the nectar source that he's mapping out. If you're still not impressed, consider that bees possess higher cognitive functions, including the ability for
abstract thought. Finally, find out why nice bees don't always finish last in a look at the
guerrilla tactics wielded against the dreaded "killer bee" by mild-mannered Cape honeybees.
