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October 2004 Archives
October 31
How to think about prescription drugs. Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece in
The New Yorker
The emphasis of the prescription-drug debate is all wrong. We've been focussed on the drug manufacturers. But decisions about prevalence, therapeutic mix, and intensity aren't made by the producers of drugs. They’re made by the consumers of drugs.posted by trharlan at 9:03 PM PST - 20 comments
"Sam Loyd's 'Trick Donkeys' is one of the most elegant puzzles ever invented... print out the page and cut the figure into three parts along the solid lines. Now, position the strip onto the other two pieces so that it looks like each jockey is riding a donkey. Folding is not allowed.
Don't give up -- the solution is really quite simple!"
posted by limitedpie at 12:13 PM PST - 47 comments
Get Ready For WW4 : FOIA document details SSS preparations for a widespread draft to start with a callup of 36,000 doctors and nurses : an in depth analysis with a detailed
timeline :
"...the SSS is in fact preparing for the real possibility of a Skills, Medical and Combat Draft for 2005. Congress of course must still pass a 1-page trigger resolution reauthorizing current conscription law, but the Selective Service will by early 2005 have geared up the entire draft system and be prepared to register more than 40 million Americans for a new Skills Draft and the Medical Draft....The NY Times on Oct. 19 published a long article on a subcontractor, Widemeyer Communications, that over the summer consulted the SSS on how a Medical Draft could be started up with minimal attention. The SSS said 36,000 doctors and nurses would be taken in the first batch of draftees. Why would Bush need so many? 36,000 is a huge number....Wesley Clark charges in his book Winning Modern Wars, that a senior Pentagon official told him in 2001 that there was a 5-year plan to topple 7 countries" Here's the Seattle PI's take :
"Administration's own actions fuel rumors of draft" Here's a
Feb. 2003 document (~500k pdf) obtained under the FOIA, on the SSS plans for a widespread draft. (more inside)
posted by troutfishing at 11:20 AM PST - 63 comments
The United States has lost Iraq. "Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged [the insurgents winning] privately to friends in recent weeks. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out."
posted by four panels at 10:44 AM PST - 29 comments
Viewropa - OK, maybe there's some agreement not to post this here, but I wasn't part of the development, and it's already got some good links (especially the evolution of writing one). So here's
Viewropa -
a community site started by members of MetaFilter who are attempting an experiment in multi-lingual, collaborative and Euro-focussed blogging. All are welcome here, no matter where you're from [...] (beware the impossible Portuguese kill-the-snowman game) (and I get the impression a non-English link would be more than welcome).
posted by andrew cooke at 10:18 AM PST - 17 comments
So the banner ad turned 10 a few days ago, according to
dabitch, but what I find more fascinating is that its first use was in connection with all those AT&T "
You Will" television commercials from the early '90s. Here, collected on one page, for your consideration, are those ads. As
Frau Farbissina would screech: "Lies.
ALL LIES!" Well, perhaps AT&T didn't lie to us about
all their predictions, but I'm still waiting for my "intelligent assistant" who'll work on those playoff tickets for me. How many predictions did they make that came true can
you find here?
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:20 AM PST - 21 comments
More on arithmetic in the Amazon The 10/15 issue of Science has the official publication of Peter Gordon's work on numerical cognition among the Pirahã, and a companion article by Pierre Pica et al. on similar research among another Amazonian tribe, the Mundurukú. What with the U.S. election and the discovery of H. Floresiensis, this is not getting nearly as a much play as the pre-publication back in August of Peter Gordon's work.
Brian Butterworth has an
piece in the Guardian about both articles, and I've put some links, quotes and diagrams
here.
Compared to the reports on the Pirahã, the Mundurukú people, language, and experiments are all somewhat different, although the conclusions are broadly similar.
posted by myl at 3:37 AM PST - 19 comments
October 30
We've all recieved one of those Nigerian Email Scams, but now we have it in a
video format (qt format) I almost wanted to help him out, but then he never did leave any contact info.
posted by thebwit at 2:11 PM PST - 6 comments
My countrymen called me a prostitute Fourteen months ago, Hamida Ghafour went to Afghanistan to cover her native country's postwar reconstruction for this newspaper. But, as a westernised Afghan, her homecoming wasn't as welcoming as she had hoped
posted by Postroad at 1:16 PM PST - 5 comments
NYC Critical Mass ride dampened by heavy police presence Critical Mass, A peaceful demonstration that takes place on the last friday of the month at hundreds of cities around the world. The gathering of hundreds to thousands of cyclists to stress the importance of nonpolluting transportation alternatives and promote the cycling community.
Last night's
critical mass was faced with a very heavy police presence (including 3 helicopters that followed the cyclists on the route). I was there and the police were peaceful, but perhaps necessary and the helicopters were just intimidating. The whole aura assumed there was going to be some type of crime. There type of people that take part in Critical Mass are generally the opposite of violent. It felt violating to be followed around, by not one, but three helicopters and hundreds of officers on scooters. The Critical Mass was being treated as if we just shot up a building or robbed a bank. The whole thing was stupid, and people got arrested for stupid reasons.
Thanks NYPD the Judge said we could be there.
33, 47, whatever, it was too many.posted by Glibaudio at 11:15 AM PST - 108 comments
"There there, little voters, Papa Ashcroft and Daddy Bush will sort out those nasty little vote fraud disputes." - Bush Adm. sues to give Ashcroft authority over voting disputes under the HAVA Act.
"...Bush administration lawyers argued....that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act.....would reverse decades of precedent..... Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote.....in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers argue that the new law gives Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions." I'm reminded of Andrew Card's September 1, 2004 comment
"that President Bush views America as a ''10-year-old child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a parent."
posted by troutfishing at 10:30 AM PST - 29 comments
All watched over by machines of loving grace is Adam Greenfield's take on the consequences for designers of ubicomp. Setting moral guidelines seems critical in these early days of technological encroachment-- but how long can decency hold out against the promise of profit? I was forwarded a recent email from the CEO a major bookseller that made it clear that it's possible for them to track everything I do in their stores and online, and thank goodness they choose not to take advantage. But how long will that last? And with homeland security crumbling our civil liberties, article's like Adam's that remind us about our responsibility are even more important than ever.
posted by christina at 10:06 AM PST - 7 comments
The Dionaea House. Just in time for Halloween, a pleasingly creepy piece of fiction. (
Or is it??) An epistolary horror story, for the e-mail/phone text messaging/LiveJournal age. (Be sure to check out the Update section; the LJ is linked from there.) And I'm assuming further updates will continue to appear ...
posted by Kat Allison at 8:40 AM PST - 7 comments
Revolutionary Minds. "A selection of icons and iconoclasts whose radical ideas are inspiring a vivid dialogue that is deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Meet the 2004 Third Culture."
[Via WorldChanging.]posted by homunculus at 12:18 AM PST - 2 comments
October 29
The British Library has an unmatched collection of fine and historic bookbindings. Hundreds of western European bindings have been digitized and made available to the public.
The Database of Bookbindings is a searchable, high resolution collection. Search by binder, ownership mark, country,
material, and more. If you have the whole weekend free, you may find this
glossary of binding terms a useful resource on your journey of discovery. If your interest is seriously peaked check out these
bookbinding models used to exemplify and demonstrate the various mechanisms of books. For a more American experience of bookbindings, the Redwood Library has created this
exhibit.
Tomorrow our journey continues inside the booksposted by Grod at 11:49 PM PST - 4 comments
GMail not-so-safe Mail. So apparentley GMail has a major exploit that's been discovered by an Israeli hacker.
"Using a hex-encoded XSS link, the victim's cookie file can be stolen by a hacker, who can later use it to identify himself to Gmail as the original owner of an email account, regardless of whether or not the password is subsequently changed." And so the fun with GMail begins..
posted by mrplab at 4:37 PM PST - 9 comments
"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite
"the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."
Sooooo...Can I invoke Godwin's Law on reality?
posted by solistrato at 2:09 PM PST - 40 comments
He's back: Bin Laden has released a new tape, where he attacks Bush, claims responsibility for 9/11, backhandledly backs Kerry and warns Americans to take responsibility for safety to themselves. But is it all an elaborate double bluff to make sure Bush gets in (and OBL stays as safe as he is now)?
posted by bonaldi at 1:44 PM PST - 123 comments
What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.via
Three Toed Sloth..
posted by y2karl at 12:36 PM PST - 29 comments
Going for broke. With four days to go before the election, Bush-Cheney '04 finally pulled the last stop and started sending out anti-Kerry mailings using images of the burning World Trade Center. The ads are paid for and officially endorsed by Bush's campaign.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:00 AM PST - 87 comments
Download Fahrenheit 9/11 Here This guy wants you to see the Moore film and is willing to suffer a possible lawsuit in order to get it to you. Free.
"I'll see how my bandwidth holds up. Here is the initial release of my posting of Fahrenheit 9/11. It's big. Its 650 megs. So - if you are on a slow connection - don't even bother. Go rent the DVD. But if you have DSL or better - here it is."
posted by Postroad at 6:33 AM PST - 24 comments
A series of books published in the early 1900s in the United States dictated several topics that children should be able to recognize and provide discourse. Among those available for reading online are
Birds Every Child Should Know (
"Two close relatives there are which, like the poor, are always with us-the crow and the blue jay."),
Heroes Every Child Should Know (
"To be some kind
of a hero has been the ambition of spirited boys from the beginning
of history; and if you want to know what the men and women of a
country care for most, you must study their heroes."), and
Pictures Every Child Should Know (
"The true art-lover has a catholic taste, is interested in all forms of art; but he finds beauty where it truly exists and does not allow the nightmare of imagination to mislead him.").
posted by keli at 6:15 AM PST - 16 comments
An highly quantitative approach to state by state poll analysis. This is a meta-analysis directed at the question of who would win the Electoral College if the election were held today. Meta-analysis provides more objectivity and precision than looking at one or a few polls, and in the case of election prediction gives a more accurate current snapshot. Backup site
here.
These calculations are based on all available state polls, with an emphasis on likely voter data that include Nader where he is on the ballot. Three or more recent polls (up to seven days old) for each state are averaged and the standard error of the mean is used to calculate the probability of every combination of possible state results. The map is not identical to the median. Results are defined as not statistically significant (n.s.) if the probability is less than between 5% and 95%. The effects of turnout are not included, but can be calculated using the bias analysis.
posted by psmealey at 3:49 AM PST - 28 comments
October 28
The Rumors On the Internets Are True! "Our goal is to present you with these clips to help you make an informed choice next Tuesday." Your one-stop-shop for documentary clips related to Kerry and Bush, presented by the Internets Vets for Truth.
posted by mathowie at 11:13 PM PST - 13 comments
My son, Peter has always loved to play hide and seek. In fact, he loves it so much that he will wake me up in the middle of the night to play. The only problem is that Peter has been dead for eight years. This website documents the hell I've lived and continue to live every night.
posted by FunkyHelix at 6:59 PM PST - 29 comments
Highway Route Markers collects highway signs from around the world.
The Upstate New York Roads Site lists (and reproduces) every exit sign for many of the state's freeways. Let me reiterate: Every. Exit. Sign. The net has something for everyone, even those of us with an unhealthy obsession with road signs.
posted by mcwetboy at 1:34 PM PST - 7 comments
Meet the WallBuilders --
an organization that promotes the return of American public life to its religious-based heritage, according to USA Today. And the
Congressional Pastor's Briefings may be of interest too:
WallBuilders has been privileged to bring ministers from across the nation to Washington, DC, for an intimate briefing session with some of the top Christian Senators and Representatives now serving in Congress. The Members brief pastors on a variety of issues related to Biblical values as well as share their hearts regarding their own faith and its application to public office. ...
Wallbuilders or Mythbuilders provides a debunking of 8 historical fallacies of the group, concluding that:
...In that sense, then, the name “Wallbuilders” is correct: the organization is building unnecessary walls of prejudice in an onlooking world, a word desperately needing to hear about the One who has “broken down the middle wall of division”...posted by amberglow at 12:40 PM PST - 24 comments
2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes. A do-it-yourself guide to this season's quickest, least expensive, and spooky-ookiest halloween costumes. My personal favorites are: Florida's Electronic Touch-Screen Voting Machines, The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib and Jenna Bush's Liver.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 12:28 PM PST - 24 comments
Princess Maker 2 - Stressed out from current events? I doubt the game is as much fun to play as it is to be bewildered by, but either might help.
"...is basically a perverse sports management simulation where your entire team consists of a single ten year old girl that you have to raise to adulthood. Much like any decent sports manager game you have to keep track of a nearly overwhelming number of statistics that fluctuate based on training. In Princess Maker 2 these run the gamut from the mundane like "strength" and "charisma", to the droll like "cooking" and "conversation", to the bizarre like "sin" and "temper". "posted by soulhuntre at 10:12 AM PST - 13 comments
The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas,
edited by Philip P. Wiener, was published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, in 1973-74. The Dictionary of the History of Ideas also appeared in Chinese- and Japanese-language editions. However, the DHI has been out of print for many years. Aware of the new potential offered by electronic access to texts, the Directors and Board of Editors of the Journal of the History of Ideas authorized a grant to support digitization of the DHI. Substantial support has also been provided by the University of Virginia Library through its Electronic Text Center. Came across this at
Three Toed Sloth, the weblog of the inestimable Cosma Shalizi, subject of a
previous post by yours truly, which I found at this
Social History of Friday Cat Blogging in the New York Times, which also mentions a
Carnival of the Cats, which is evidently a weekly omnibus of Friday cat blogging posted on the following Sunday. Well, there's a bookmark in here for almost everyone, or so I aim to please.
posted by y2karl at 10:11 AM PST - 12 comments
"I have become more and more aware of the Stalinist tactics and mentality of much of the American Right..... Relentless insistence on unity, on the existence of an unprecedented and overwhelming external threat, and on the total moral depravity of political opposition were all integral to Stalinist propaganda, and they are a growing part of conservative rhetoric in the United States today.....[Hateful] rhetoric was the prelude to a terrific acceleration of state murder in the Soviet Union....when I read posts on right-wing websites and blogs such as Free Republic or Little Green Footballs, I am reminded strongly of the rage and rhetoric of the young Communist Party activists in the late 1920s....The drive to sustain the administration's alternative world, and the blind hatred and rage of many of President Bush's supporters, may well have disastrous consequences for America." [ Matthew Lenoe, author of
Closer To The Masses. Stalinist Culture,Social Revolution, And Soviet Newpapers. Harvard University Press, 2004 ] An op-ed, by someone who knows a bit about totalitarianism, it reminds me of Metafilters
36201,
32747 24363....
posted by troutfishing at 8:48 AM PST - 9 comments
"The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?" Rudy Giuliani
blames the troops for the current missing explosives scandal. (
340K wmv file). Can we finally stop talking about this hack as a viable candidate for national office?
posted by jpoulos at 8:44 AM PST - 31 comments
Who is Laszlo Pastor ? An in-depth and on-going study into just one of the players in the political underpinnings of America today. You may be shocked how much influence this person has and the history and background that inform his positions. Worth the time it takes to read and extensively sourced.
posted by nofundy at 7:44 AM PST - 7 comments
Former Bush ghostwriter confirms Bush had plans for Iraq in 1999. Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”
posted by RavinDave at 4:26 AM PST - 37 comments
1837! Victorian England is being terrorised by a bouncing marauder! Who could this
masked pervert be? Was he a Lord? Was he a
striped stuffed animal? Was he the 19th Century Batman?
A Ska band? Why no! It's
Spring Heeled Jack, scourge of the rooftops of London, Engerland...(A little pre-Halloween scare for you and a break from Election tedium for those of you requiring one)
posted by longbaugh at 3:21 AM PST - 12 comments
Postal Ballots go missing in Florida. "Some 60,000 absentee ballots were despatched by authorities in Broward County, north of Miami, this month. However, only 2,000 of them have been delivered. "
posted by viama at 12:42 AM PST - 24 comments
October 27
Meet
Connor Kirby-Long, the 17 year old wonder
kid of indie electronica. From his home in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, Connor has gained attention releasing a string of internet-only EPs under the names
Grandma (
1,
2,
3),
I, Cactus, (
1) and his current moniker
Khonnor (
1,
2). This month Khonnor released his first full length cd,
Handwriting, a stunningly beautiful album made with inspiration from artists such as Jim O'Rourke, Fennesz, Sonic Youth, The Smiths and David Sylvian.
Khonnor's official website has a cute flash game. Bonus: He used to blog. Is he hot or not?posted by mr.marx at 8:07 PM PST - 11 comments
Goths for Bush: We began with a short reading from Poe and discussed the true horrors of life under George Bush. It was agreed that there is no hope, only pain and sadness and that he would continue to provide us with the same. (via
WOW)
posted by pandaharma at 3:31 PM PST - 9 comments
Hey, no crying in baseball! Who would you like the Red Sox to win it for?
A Sox fanboard thread dedicates the hoped-for, possibly imminent World Series championship to loved ones living and dead. NSFW, if your employer frowns on tears streaming down your cheeks.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:16 PM PST - 28 comments
Find out about political donors in your neighborhood Fundrace Block Party searches political donor databases and, with the input of your address and zip code, will give you a map (and spreadsheet if you like) which tells you the names and addresses of your neighbors who have supported national political candidates, and how much they contributed. You can use this information to have a block party!
Although I think this is way cool (I'm surrounded by 51 contributors to
democrats and only 11 to republicans), this also struck me as a bit scary from the privacy perspective (I now know who is giving money to the whom, and where they live). Who's in *your* neighborhood? (via
kottke)
posted by jasper411 at 11:34 AM PST - 28 comments
Girl Power or:
Partnership status and the human sex ratio at birth: a paper by Karen Norberg
Could the sex of a child be influenced by the status of the parents' relationship at the time of conception? In a sample of 86,436 births in the United States, we find a small excess of sons among births to parents who were married or living with an opposite sex partner before the child's conception, compared to births to parents who were not. This is the first evidence that household arrangements can affect the human sex ratio at birth, and could explain the fall in the proportion of male births in some developed countries over the past thirty years. (Data published on
FirstCite registration required)
via
The Economist
(special note for mathowie: No word yet as to whether or not those single moms can also reliably produce offspring with an astigmatism.)
posted by lilboo at 9:34 AM PST - 12 comments
The Road To Abu Ghraib A generation from now, historians may look back to April 28, 2004, as the day the United States lost the war in Iraq... It was a direct—and predictable—consequence of a policy, hatched at the highest levels of the administration, by senior White House officials and lawyers, in the weeks and months after 9/11. Yet the administration has largely managed to escape responsibility for those decisions; a month from election day, almost no one in the press or the political class is talking about what is, without question, the worst scandal to emerge from President Bush's nearly four years in office... Given the particular conditions faced by the president and his deputies after 9/11—a war against terrorists, in which the need to extract intelligence via interrogations was intensely pressing, but the limits placed by international law on interrogation techniques were very constricting—did those leaders have better alternatives than the one they chose? The answer is that they did. And we will be living with the consequences of the choices they made for years to come.posted by y2karl at 9:03 AM PST - 33 comments
In search of lost time It was
Jack Kerouac who first defined
Robert Frank's
genius, who found in it some echo of
his own vision of a vast,
broken-down, but
still epic,
America,
peopled with
restless and lonely dreamers. 'Robert Frank, Swiss,
unobtrusive, nice,' wrote Kerouac in his now famous introduction to Frank's collection
The Americans , 'with that
little camera that
he raises and snaps
with one hand he sucked
a sad poem right
out of America on to
film, taking rank among the
tragic poets of the
world'.
Frank's exhibition,
Storylines, opens this week at the
Tate Modern in London.
posted by matteo at 6:44 AM PST - 6 comments
The Law of Jante (
Janteloven) was codified by the Danish-born novelist
Aksel Sandemose while he was living in Norway. The
Law comprises ten 'commandments', and describes an unspoken
code of conformity that Sandemose felt as a stifling inhibitive influence in the town where he grew up. Later commentators have used the term more generally to refer to the anti-individualist tendencies that have traditionally pervaded Scandinavian culture, and to denote 'the dark side of egalitarianism'. Of course, the Law needn't be
interpreted in such a negative light, and egalitarianism has its good side too, the difficult question being: do the benefits of equality make it worthwhile
suffering the strictures of
Janteloven?posted by misteraitch at 3:59 AM PST - 31 comments
October 26
The Unsettling Origins of the "Curse of the Bambino." As of this writing, the Boston Red Sox seem to have a good chance of breaking their 86-year championship drought, popularly attributed to a
curse brought upon the Sox in 1920 when then-owner
Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. But
as Glenn Stout writes, popular wisdom (as usual) has it wrong. A fascinating article on how misplaced anti-Semitism, Henry Ford, and an influential sportswriter in thrall to baseball's controlling interests gave birth to one of the best-known pieces of baseball mythology.
[via the SDMB]posted by Johnny Assay at 8:13 PM PST - 45 comments
I was wandering around the internets looking for early twentieth century ephemera and look what I found.
Digital Dada Library
“This page provides links to some of the major Dada-era publications in the International Dada Archive. These books, pamphlets, and periodicals are housed in the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries. …Each document has been scanned in its entirety.”
EphemeraNow “is a family-friendly Web site dedicated to the commercial art of mid-century America.”
The Ephemera Society “is a non-profit body concerned with the collection, preservation, study and educational uses of printed and handwritten ephemera.”
and more!
For those of you who have complained that this place is getting too “US politics-filter” I give you
Glasgow Digital Library Collections which has all sorts of stuff including a great
history of the labour movement in Glasgow 1910-1932posted by Grod at 6:58 PM PST - 10 comments
Howard Stern faces off against Michael Powell. Earlier today, Howard Stern finally got to confront his nemesis, FCC chair Michael Powell. This occurred, naturally, on the radio, when Howard called in to another talk show. Powell was a guest of KGO's Ronn Owens and Howard called in, asking Powell, "Does it make you nervous to talk to me?" He accuses Powell of getting his position due to nepotism; Stern also asks about
Oprah's indecency, and Powell says Stern "personalizes" the debate and says "I don't think we have made any particular crusade of the Howard Stern Show or you." Howard disagrees, saying, "I hope there's no sort of retribution as a result of my phone call which I believe Michael's capable of." After Howard hangs up, Michael admits, sort of, that "Howard has an argument." KGO has audio of the show for
Windows Media or
RealPlayer (skip ahead to 32:05 to hear Howard's call).
posted by realityblurred at 5:24 PM PST - 21 comments
French TV Gets Gay Channel (Guardian link, reg. req.) From the story, "Pink TV, which launched last night, promises viewers a mixture of Wonder Woman repeats, prime-time opera and gay and lesbian porn. A daily cultural review will look at issues like tourism, health, poetry and clubbing from a gay perspective, in a style which aims to be 'more cosy than cheeky'."
So does it mean I'm gay if I watch Wonder Woman repeats?
posted by fenriq at 2:52 PM PST - 21 comments
Democracy Republican style.
Greg Palast's film will be broadcast by Newsnight on Tuesday, 26 October, 2004 by the BBC. You can also watch the show from the BBC website, either live or on demand for 24 hours after originally broadcast, by clicking on the latest programme button.posted by DrDoberman at 12:01 PM PST - 8 comments
Your Check Won't Float As of Thursday, October 28, "floating" checks will become a thing of the past. Be forewarned or stand by for major insufficient funds fees on your accounts. More info inside.
posted by Pressed Rat at 8:27 AM PST - 71 comments
BitTorrent of Excel Saga episode 1.
It is funny. I urge you to watch it.
Preferably drunk.
There is a
DVD you can buy.
The guy with the afro is the animator.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:09 AM PST - 29 comments
October 25
Wikinews: "Wikinews is a proposed project with the goal to collaboratively report and summarize news on all subjects from a neutral point of view." It looks like
MoJo lives, kind of, but we weren't the ones who ended up building it. Bummer.
[via]posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:47 PM PST - 4 comments
"Al Pieda" Targets Ann Coulter
Members of the notorious culinary terrorist group "Al Pieda" launched an attack on Ann Coulter while she was speaking at the University of Arizona. The report says some pie got on her face but attendants were able to wipe it off before she received any nutrional value from the pie.
Not to be confused with the notorious math group
"Al Gebra", who would have probably thrown a slide rule at her.
posted by fenriq at 12:06 PM PST - 26 comments
October 24
PIPA : who's your daddy ? "
"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information....very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters"posted by troutfishing at 8:58 PM PST - 6 comments
Endorsement: Kerry for President Ok. The NY Times endorsed Kerry. And now the Washington Post. But now the Orlando-Sentinel, a paper that has not endorsed a Demcorat in the past 40 years!
"Four years ago, the Orlando Sentinel endorsed Republican George W. Bush for president based on our trust in him to unite America. We expected him to forge bipartisan solutions to problems while keeping this nation secure and fiscally sound.
This president has utterly failed to fulfill our expectations. We turn now to his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, with the belief that he is more likely to meet the hopes we once held for Mr. Bush.
Our choice was not dictated by partisanship. Already this election season, the Sentinel has endorsed Republican Mel Martinez for the U.S. Senate and four U.S. House Republicans. In 2002, we backed Republican Gov. Jeb Bush for re-election, repeating our endorsement of four years earlier. Indeed, it has been 40 years since the Sentinel endorsed a Democrat -- Lyndon Johnson -- for president...."
posted by Postroad at 12:23 PM PST - 35 comments
Masamania. Not safe for work! 'Hi, this is masamania who create this page, MasaManiA.com. This page is made up of photos I actually take in twon. .I hope I can show and tell you the real, true Japan that cannot be seen in other mas media. I am living in Tokyo, Japan. I was born in Japan, grown up in Japan, study English in Japan. This is the reason I can speak Engrish. Some people complain that my updating and email response is slow. And other people conplain that my englsih is poor. '
posted by plep at 2:56 AM PST - 13 comments
October 23
O'Reilly Competitor Offers to Buy O'Reilly/Mackris Tapes to Prevent Them From Being Destroyed! An vital action to save history from a permanent cover-up? An abdication of journalistic integrity? A publicity stunt for a show with one-eighth the audience of Bill O's? A major act of snarkiness from a newbie journo-blogger? Or just another reason Olbermann never should've quit doing sports?
This post: CableNewsFilter? PepsiBlueState? SchadenfreudianSlip? JournalisticSharkJump? Or the most important story you'll see on MeFi this weekend?posted by wendell at 8:07 PM PST - 10 comments
A Blivet. More nuclear waste than the planned repository at Yucca Mountain can hold will pile up at reactor sites as the government continues to approve license extensions for power plants, an environmental research organization claimed in a study to be released today.
If a repository is built by 2010 in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, its 77,000-ton capacity will be filled by existing spent fuel awaiting shipment. That's not counting another 9,900 tons that will have accumulated in the meantime from license extensions, according to the study by the Environmental Working Group.
posted by kablam at 7:10 PM PST - 10 comments
At what point does it become a little counter productive? While it's no secret that The Guardian is hoping for Kerry to win isn't there a level of rhetoric that hurts their cause? As their
recent forays into influenceing the US vote might have shown them. Is a columnist hoping for assasination over the line?
"... John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?"posted by soulhuntre at 12:16 PM PST - 66 comments
Not porn, just gay PayPal suddenly delists queer sites: “
[H]e raised objections to PalPal’s action, saying his organization’s aim is to educate the public on ways to avoid AIDS. He said PayPal never responded to his concerns.... PayPal sent
[another site owner] a reply saying the company would consider reinstating his account if he submits a statement promising to ‘remove the book covers wherein individuals are touching each other’ ”
posted by joeclark at 11:09 AM PST - 25 comments
SEIU union and other Democratic groups have been holding rallies at early voting locations in Palm Beach County, where they have a captive audience of voters standing in line. Normally campaign workers can not come with in 50 feet of polling places, but apparently that rule does not apply to this year's new Early Voting in Florida.
One woman who voted early in Boca Raton, at the Southwest County Regional Library, complained that as she stood in line, two men behind her were "trashing our president," Fletcher said, declining to identify the woman. She tried to ignore them. Then the man touched her arm and said, "Who are you voting for?"
"I said, `I don't think that's an appropriate question,'" the woman said she responded.
"Uh oh! We have a Bush supporter here," screamed the man behind her.
For the 2 1/2 hours she had to wait in line, she was heckled by the man. As they neared the voting room, someone in the rear of the line yelled, "I sure hope everyone here is voting for Kerry!" she reported.
That's when the man behind her held his hand over her head and screamed, "We have a Republican right here!" There were "boos and jeers" from the crowd.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 10:13 AM PST - 105 comments
October 22
"The sissy institution of marriage must not be perverted by
sinners who are capable of abstaining! The
sacred union of church and state must prohibit the immoral union of men and women capable of the discipline of sexual abstinence." This message, among others, was placed in the
Oregon voters' guide by the
Special Righteousness Committee. (A little more explanation
here.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:12 PM PST - 8 comments
As
matteo's thread noted earlier this week, the Godzilla PR Monster is rampaging over the
University of Kansas, but that's just a stop on the way to his ultimate destination:
The Hollywood Walk of Fame, where the Big Green Guy will get his own star just in time for the premeire of
his latest flick, joining previous
ficticious recipients Big Bird, Bugs Bunny, Kermit the Frog, Pee-Wee Herman, Mickey Mouse, The Rugrats and Woody Woodpecker (and maybe Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger), and ahead of
Donald Duck.
In other news,
The Democratic Republic of Congo is comparing Belgium's foreign minister to Tintin (and not in a nice way).
And
Daffy Duck is running for president. (Throwing his beak into the ring?) The state of American politics must be pretty pathetic if Daffy gets the nod over Bugs Bunny...
posted by wendell at 1:35 PM PST - 3 comments
Netscape DevEdge sidebar replacement. for those of you (like me) who used the old DevEdge sidebar as an essential tool in web development, the quick and easy CSS/HTML/DOM reference sidebar for mozilla has been rescued, thanks to the power of the internet wayback machine. this made my day - hope it helps some of you.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:57 AM PST - 3 comments
A Walk in the Woods. Farewell to the original
Cold War warrior:
Paul Nitze, the college professor's son who went to Hotchkiss and Harvard and worked as investment banker before going to Washington in 1940, where he quickly became one of the
chief architects of American policy towards the Soviet Union. His doctrine of "
strategic stability" became its cornerstone for half a century (Nitze held key government posts in Washington, from the era of Franklin Roosevelt
to Ronald Reagan's, when he was the
White House's
guru on
arms control).
By the end of 1949, Nitze had become director of the State Department's policy planning staff, helping to devise the role of Nato, deciding to press ahead with the manufacture of the H-bomb, and producing
National Security Council document 68, the document
at the heart of the Cold War: in it, Nitze called for a drastic expansion of the U.S. military budget. The paper also expanded containment’s scope beyond the defense of major centers of industrial power to encompass the entire world.
(NSC-68 was a top secret paper, written in April 1950 and declassified in the 70's, called "United States Objectives and Programs for National Security"). More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:23 AM PST - 7 comments
Mercedes Benz site
Mix Tape. Free downloadable MP3 mix. Features mostly downtempo, wallpapery tracks.
posted by anathema at 9:19 AM PST - 11 comments
MP3 4U.com is like a Metafilter for free, legal MP3s. Looks like it's been around a while, but never caught on.
posted by fungible at 9:03 AM PST - 12 comments
The Spectator, a family newspaper conceived and edited by 16-year-old Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the portal to this Flash exhibit commemorating the bicentennial of the author's birth.
posted by steef at 7:18 AM PST - 2 comments
Fellowship 9/11 is Michael Moore's latest damning documentary looking at how the Aragorn administration has twisted the hearts and minds of Middle Earth, ranging from interviews with Rep. Grima Wormtongue (D) to the folks at Minas Flint, a obscure, small town in Mordor used for recruiting.
Online at iFilm.
posted by adrianhon at 2:23 AM PST - 10 comments
October 21
"I do know how to mess it up -- and cops -- well, I have a sweet ride: I have an IROC Camaro which I keep waxed and shined so radar won't pick it up -- like the stealth bomber.... plus, my girl was knob nibbling." {3.5mb
mp3}
posted by dobbs at 10:58 PM PST - 13 comments
Go Eliot, Go! The real Ralph Nader has now targeted the record companies and radio networks. Payola is back and wrecking radio.
Salon has been
hammering on this, Tom Petty wrote a
song about it, we all have been feeling its effects, and finally maybe something will be done. At the very least, a serious attack dog is on the issue.
posted by caddis at 10:32 PM PST - 14 comments
Help is needed to save the Imprimerie Nationale, one of the greatest repositories of typographic material in the world. (If you have ever used a Garamond revival, or a Didot or a Fournier, you are indebted to the Imprimerie.) Their collection, which spans four centuries, is scheduled to be dissolved in the next twelve months.
quoted from Jonathan Hoefler's email that posted by benson
to the typophile forumsposted by sixtwenty3dc at 8:33 PM PST - 5 comments
American teens have spoken, and they want George W. Bush for president. Nearly 1.4 million teens voted in the
nation's largest mock election, and the Republican incumbent wound up with 393 electoral votes and 55 percent of the total votes cast.
posted by Mick at 3:35 PM PST - 49 comments
I hate mondays. I love lasagna. I like naps. I hate Odie. I bet anyone of you people is funnier than Jim Davis' Garfield. Here's your
chance.posted by elwoodwiles at 1:22 PM PST - 20 comments
The Voterizer
Are you unsure of who to vote for amid all of the rhetoric and misdirection in this election season? Perhaps you'd like to get to the meat of each candidate's stance on the issues with the bias of knowing who said what? (don't worry, you'll get the full scoop later)
The Voterizer (my name for it since they have no name attached) can help you determine which of the two candidates most closely aligns with your beliefs.
via Captain Normalposted by fenriq at 10:35 AM PST - 18 comments
Don't they teach these kids anything in school ? History ? Punctuation ? And what's that smell ? - Conservative Adam Yoshida steps in it, inadvertently calls for reversal of
1965 Civil Rights bill, arguing for the disenfranchisement of
20% of the voting public through the reinstitution of poll tests (outlawed in 1965). Plus, his punctuation is awful ! :
" we should consider maintaining (or even increasing) their benefits while, at the exact same time, making it harder for them to vote (I recommend modern and simple literacy tests for this purpose.
From my extensive time spent examining present and future members of our underclass, I'mquite convinced that a series of simple language and math questions would be enough to discourage them from voting).
"posted by troutfishing at 10:33 AM PST - 23 comments
Porn and politics bump and grind synergistically in an erotic flick benefiting the Kerry campaign. With the hotly contested election looming, nothing brings our country together like pornography. At least that's the theory behind Fahrenheit 69: The Porn for Kerry DVD.
A group of Ivy League grads, appalled by the prospect of four more years of Bush, seized the opportunity to meld their passions for business, politics and porn into Porn for Progress. The crew, led by Executive Director "Dick Tater," a 23-year-old Wharton biz-school alum, spent two months creating this full-length film, which retails for $19.99 (more info at
www.pornforprogress.com [WARNING: some content VERY NSFW]).[mi]
posted by psmealey at 9:26 AM PST - 10 comments
Bush Relatives for Kerry grew out of a series of conversations that took place between a group of people that have two things in common: they are all related to George Walker Bush, and they are all voting for John Kerry. As the election approaches, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out about why we are voting for John Kerry, and to do our small part to help America heal from the sickness it has suffered since George Bush was appointed President in 2000. We invite you to read our stories, and
please, don't vote for our cousin!posted by jackspace at 1:19 AM PST - 10 comments
October 20
Sinclair Broadcast Group drops full airing of "Stolen Honor Wounds That Never Heal" but will only show excerpts concurrent with discussion of its claims. "Sinclair announced on Tuesday that it would not broadcast the entire film and that it planned to use segments in a special news program on 40 of its 62 stations tomorrow night. According to a press release, that program, "A P.O.W. Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media," will examine how politically charged films like "Stolen Honor" are being used in the campaign and how the news media treat their content." (NY Times, reg. req'd.)
posted by sierray at 8:04 PM PST - 24 comments
US military accuses Reuters of lying. Reuters had a camera crew on hand to see people digging a man, a woman, and four children out of a house in Falluja, and have
video footage of this up on their site. The US military denies this ever happened, and have released a statement saying that "intelligence sources indicate a known Zarqawi propagandist is passing false reports to the media."
Incredible...
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:51 PM PST - 34 comments
The power of nightmares. I just saw the first episode of this, the BBC's midweek / BBC2 / largely unadvertised television series. This first episode dealt with the rise of
neoconservatism from it's roots as a political "solution" to the perceived failure of Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society (a) (b) (c) and the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism from
Sayyid Qutb through and past the assasination of
Anwar Sadat. More biased liberal information on the show
here and
here. I urge you to beg, borrow, steal or download this series / Commie propaganda.
posted by seanyboy at 2:40 PM PST - 21 comments
MonsterSlash Posting this because I thought it was a well done bit of "creative re-use" (Bobby Pickett, the original creator of "The MonsterMash" agreed to playfully re-record his 1962 hit tune), but also because I often wonder why it is that the powers of clever marketing aren't put to better use by non-profit organizations with axes to grind. What do you do if your group advocates for an issue that is not exactly at the top of the list of concerns this election season? Do you think this is an effectively delivered message?
posted by piedrasyluz at 2:35 PM PST - 6 comments
You know those fake but real-looking checks for absurd amounts of money that sometimes show up in your mailbox? Go ahead, deposit it.
This guy did.
posted by emelenjr at 1:02 PM PST - 49 comments
Chapter 1. Excerpt from Bob Dylan's autobiographical book, Chronicles, Volume One.
posted by semmi at 11:27 AM PST - 4 comments
Mindball is a game where two players control a ball with their brain waves. The player being most relaxed wins the game. (Vids in the promotional material section.) Via the supercool
Sensory Impact: The Culture of Objects blog.
posted by dobbs at 9:28 AM PST - 5 comments
"We're not going to have any casualties." This is the response that George W Bush gave to Pat Robertson, during a meeting in which Robertson expressed deep misgivings about the impending war in Iraq. There's been a lot of discussion about just how self-assured the President is on his positions (and how he won't admit any mistakes), but where does assurance end and delusion begin?
posted by almostcool at 9:21 AM PST - 48 comments
October 19
Vietnam Veterans for George W. Bush? "This web site was created and personally paid for by a Vietnam combat veteran as a service to his country and has no financial connection with any political party or campaign organization."
...and he does not pussy foot around!
posted by Postroad at 3:12 PM PST - 14 comments
Dreams of Empire, by Tony Judt. Via the indispensable
Arts and Letters Daily, an excellent liberal-left critique of current American thought on foreign policy. In the past I've not been a huge fan of Judt, but events have proven him right more often than not, and these days I take him very seriously indeed. And he's an excellent writer.
posted by mojohand at 2:08 PM PST - 6 comments
Dunegon Majesty! In what must be an accomplishment worthy of The Gygax himself, this guy found four girls willing to not only play D&D, but brave enough to be filmed while doing so. The fact that they're also willing to dress up as their characters is just icing on the cake. Be sure to check out the
teaser video and learn a little something about courage!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:51 PM PST - 27 comments
Zed: Open Source Television. From the CBC. Though this site has been referenced on Mefi a couple of times through links to individual short films or pieces (
1,
2,
3,
4), I have yet to find an FPP about the site as a whole; and I think it deserves one. Every weeknight at 11:30 p.m. the CBC broadcasts a half hour of experimental short films, video, animation, or band performances; these are then posted as streaming video on the website. You can submit films to them through the site, and participation is international. From the site:
On the Web, ZeD is where over 18,000 global members meet, collaborate and upload their creative work-currently, over 16,000 genre-expanding pieces. A lot of what you see on TV five nights a week is drawn from the best content on the Web site, while most of what's original to TV (like our live performances) can be seen afterward on the Web site.
Wonderful archives to explore; and tonight the Raveonettes perform.
posted by jokeefe at 10:34 AM PST - 6 comments
Two weeks from today, John Kerry will win the popular vote by "23% or more" over George W. Bush, according to
5 Star Psychic Advice. See if you can do better than the spirit world by predicting the electoral and popular vote totals in the
second quadrennial MetaFilter Presidential Contest ...
posted by rcade at 9:56 AM PST - 127 comments
Pork Farmers in Hog Heaven! Atkins and skyrocketing beef prices result in pork producers "experiencing demand far in excess of anything [they]'ve seen historically." Pork prices are very high on the spot and futures market but still a value relative to meat. Perhaps this will increase the demand for tasty
Berkshire hog pork, the kind that pre-dates the breeding which produced the "other white meat."
posted by MattD at 5:21 AM PST - 9 comments
Çatalhöyük , a site for kids devoted to the archeological excavations of the remains of a Neolithic town in central Turkey.
A great introduction for all ages to this important city, with
activities, quicktime
tours and
links to more in depth resources.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 2:46 AM PST - 4 comments
Art rock/metal band
A Perfect Circle are releasing a
new album consisting of mostly politically orientated covers, including John Lennon's
Imagine. With
so many bands pumping out the politics recently why is this strange? Because for so many years the band, and frontman Maynard James Keenan (also the lead singer for Tool) have usually kept right out of politics, opting for a more mysterious and individualistic approach to their music.
Interesting to read what some of their
fans think?
posted by Jase_B at 2:43 AM PST - 16 comments
October 18
Now that Michael Moore's chosen to
look at the American healthcare industry for his next film, Big Pharma is apparently on red alert for any of his trademark guerilla tactics. On his pre-election tour, Moore
has been
reading out a
company-wide memo that he attributes to Viagra- and Vioxx-pushers Pfizer, warning employees to be prepared (and keep their gobs shut) in case of an inpromptu visit.
Pfizer
denies the memo exists, but in response, Moore says that the 'non-existent' memo also includes a Pfizer office number to report sightings. Perhaps we should call +1 212 733 2323 during New York office hours tomorrow and find out for certain? Or, alternatively, just mention that a large, unshaven man in a baseball cap has been lurking around
any of
these locations?
(This one was too good to keep quiet about.)posted by holgate at 10:48 PM PST - 56 comments
American Savagery. "Our role was to try to keep people motivated about [the] election and then to undermine the other side's support by casting them as liars, cheaters, stealers, immoral—all of that." The brutal chicanery of
Karl Rove.
posted by four panels at 8:45 PM PST - 25 comments
51 Thoughts on the Apparent Sexiness of John Edwards from nerve.com - hilarious & (generally) SFW,
my favorite:
5. Bill Clinton, of course, was sexy in the former sense. He was sexy in the dangerous, you'd-like-to-sleep-with-him sense. Actually, Bill Clinton was sexy in the dangerous, you'd-like-to-sleep-with-him, and-after-you-slept-with-him, he-slept-with-your-roommate sense.
6. But we miss that playa, don't we?posted by lilboo at 7:37 PM PST - 24 comments
Child's Play Returns: Last year, Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins got sick of gamers being portrayed as violence-drenched dweebs and asked their readers to pitch in for a toy drive for Seattle's childrens' hospital. They ended up raising over a quarter of a million dollars in toys and cash in the space of just a few weeks. This year, they've added four more childrens' hospitals to their list for their readers to support during the holiday season.
Mike and Jerry originally did this as a way to rebut the perception of gamers, but it also shows the power of personal credibility with regards to Web sites -- the people who contributed didn't just do it to redeem the image of gamers, they did it because Mike and Jerry asked them to. This political season we've seen how bloggers can add to the coffers of candidates by endorsing them to their readers, but I think this is an even stronger case of online personal credibility translating into action (a similar case, on a slightly smaller scale: Pamie Ribon of Pamie.com and her readers
contributing nearly 500 new books to San Diego County Libraries). Would that more of the "big" bloggers and popular sites did more of this sort of thing.
posted by jscalzi at 6:44 PM PST - 12 comments
Tracking African locust swarms - a rainy winter and spring in northwestern Africa promised a rich harvest for area farmers, but instead has brought
plagues of ravaging locusts...
"Swarms of locusts can contain as many as 80 million locusts per square kilometer...a small part of a typical swarm can eat as much food as 2,500 people in a single day."posted by tpl1212 at 6:01 PM PST - 3 comments
Pasties are delicious! Smother them in ketchup, but be sure to use Heinz. Help the old folks in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and sample a complete meal in a tidy compact envelope of flaky pastry goodness. Don't forget to check out the beautiful pasty cam pictures.
posted by Shike at 5:33 PM PST - 30 comments
Peak Oil? Include Me Out, is one of the best reads about the whole issue of peak oil. Its author, Mick Winter "is a former Y2K community activist who currently suffers from chronic déjà vu and still hasn't figured out what to do about Peak Oil." I am a
peaknik and I can tell you this is a good read, no matter your stance on peak oil! (
psssst, if you are already a peaknik, or just curious, Winter maintains a good a peak oil metadirectory. )
posted by samelborp at 12:13 PM PST - 41 comments
Anti-Kerry Film Producer Accused of Libel A Vietnam veteran shown in a documentary criticizing Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites)'s anti-war activities filed a libel lawsuit against the movie's producer Monday, saying the film falsely calls the veteran a fraud and a liar.
Kenneth J. Campbell, now a professor at the University of Delaware, said in the suit that "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" combines footage of him appearing at a 1971 war protest with narration that claims that many of the supposed veterans who took part in the event were later "discovered as frauds" who "never set foot on the battlefield, or left the comfort of the States, or even served in uniform."
posted by Postroad at 10:57 AM PST - 18 comments
My Heart vs the Real World "He's a normal kid. He's a good kid. He's a real normal kid. And we get him to do the drums and we take him for tryouts and we do everything we can to keep his life as normal as we can make it. We've never lollypopped him. You know, mollycoddled or – we let him try everything. 'Cause if we didn't it would be a big crutch for him. We don't want that to happen.
Like I said, we waited – we wanted to have another child right away. We wanted three, we always did. We were scared to death after him. To have another one, to have another baby. What if the third one, you know – what if it were Cheryl and I? Our genes?
-- The father of Grant Skowkron, Fifteen years old, Single Ventricle, Transposition of the Major Vessels, M.V. Prolapse, Implanted Pacemaker.
Photo
grapher
Max S. Gerber has had
a pacemaker implanted because of his bradycardia. In his website, he tells the story of
ten other heart patients --
all of them kids -- with his images, and with their parents' words.
posted by matteo at 8:27 AM PST - 6 comments
Lie Down for America, by Thomas Frank. "'How can anyone who has ever worked for someone else vote Republican?' she asked. How could so many people get it so wrong?"
posted by semmi at 8:10 AM PST - 67 comments
October 17
Barbie Pr0n. On this fine Sunday evening, I present to the fine folks of Metafilter the utter tastelessness, but strangely amusing images of Barbies doing the nasty. (NSFW)
posted by amandaudoff at 8:13 PM PST - 26 comments
Killing children is no longer a big deal More than 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's no wonder that many people term such wholesale killing of children "terror." Whereas in the overall count of all the victims of the intifada the ratio is three Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed, when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1. According to B'Tselem, the human rights organization, even before the current operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors (below the age of 18) were killed, compared to 110 Israeli minors... Who would have believed that Israeli soldiers would kill hundreds of children and that the majority of Israelis would remain silent? Even the Palestinian children have become part of the dehumanization campaign: killing hundreds of them is no longer a big deal.posted by y2karl at 4:06 PM PST - 46 comments
VotePair.org allows third party voters in swing states to trade their vote with Kerry supporters in uncontested states. The result is that Kerry is more likely to win the swing states and third party candidates still get the same number of votes when tallied nationwide.
posted by freshgroundpepper at 12:20 PM PST - 39 comments
Why this election is so disappointing... Opposite today's New York Times' 30-column-inch endorsement of John Kerry, Thomas Friedman makes a good case that several of the most important issues are not being talked about by either candidate in any serious way.
posted by MattD at 11:05 AM PST - 27 comments
Greenham Common History. 'Greenham Common - a name linked world-wide with the awesome potential of nuclear deterrence and the protest movement it gave rise to. But there is a bigger story; here we explore the history of one thousand acres of open land near Newbury in Berkshire. ' (
via)
posted by plep at 5:25 AM PST - 3 comments
October 16
Confirming the Obvious: "A Knight Ridder review of the administration's Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country... The Bush administration's failure to plan to win the peace in Iraq was the product of many of the same problems that plagued the administration's case for war, including wishful thinking, bad information from Iraqi exiles who said Iraqis would welcome American troops as liberators and contempt for dissenting opinions." Just in case anyone you know is still pretending this administration had the slightest idea what it was doing after "Mission Accomplished."
posted by jscalzi at 9:11 PM PST - 11 comments
Withoug a Doubt (NYT, reg. req'd). My overwhelming reaction to this lengthy but startling Ron Suskind piece was just a tremendous sadness. A sadness that the greatest nation in the history of the world could be governed on the basis of faith rather than fact. How can dismissing the "reality-based" and relying instead on instinct result in anything but disaster?
posted by kgasmart at 2:40 PM PST - 131 comments
Bin Laden is in China -- During the home stretch of the Northamerican elections, Osama bin Laden could prove to be the ace in the sleeve of president Bush. As we speak, Washington is negotiating a highly secretive agreement with Beijing, the Chinese capital, for the eviction of bin Laden from his sanctuary in the turbulent Muslim provinces of China, in the Northwest of the Great Wall nation.
posted by Postroad at 10:12 AM PST - 70 comments
Get sexually harassed, get fired. Fox News is pushing to fire Andrea Mackris. The firing will not be "in retaliation for her accusations about the show's host." Now that's Fair and Balanced! How is this even legal?
posted by skallas at 3:45 AM PST - 111 comments
The Choice: 2004. Frontline documentary. First aired on PBS earlier this week, the full two-hours is now available online. Examines the lives of Sen. John Kerry and President Bush -- from their days at Yale through their military experience and the political world.
NPR interview about the show.
posted by stbalbach at 12:33 AM PST - 15 comments
October 15
Greenspan on oil (speaking to the the National Italian American Foundation, which
De Niro would never do :) "We will begin the transition to the next major sources of energy perhaps before midcentury as production from conventional oil reservoirs, according to central tendency scenarios of the Energy Information Administration, is projected to peak." And just to make it political, here's
a chart relating presidential approval ratings to gas prices!
posted by kliuless at 7:21 PM PST - 9 comments
It has been four years since the dot-coms crashed, sweeping ideas like mylacky.com, pets.com and kozmo.com into the circular file. The remaining survivors have been remarkably successful.
Google owns the search space and has redefined web mail.
Orbitz and
Expedia take most of the pain out of travel planning and reservations.
Tenzing has spent close to half a decade pushing for
IFE certification for
Linux. Once properly certified, they built a system light enough, cheap enough, and reliable enough for installation aboard
aircraft. All this effort just so you can
read email the next time you travel by air. Aerospace giant
Boeing is hard at work on a
similar product but their demonstration is far more
limited than start-up Tenzing's. (no, not
that Tenzing)
posted by b1tr0t at 4:33 PM PST - 12 comments
Lego® — The Type Designer's Friend
Renowned typographer Mark Simonson, in a quiet post to his lovely website, displays genius in a solution to a problem created by a need to capture thirty-five year-old fonts stored on spools of negative film so they can be revived in digitized form.
posted by tenseone at 1:58 PM PST - 12 comments
Nick Nolte's (baffling) blog. Then I saw a middle-aged woman wearing a black t-shirt that had the word "Ferrari" printed on it. Maybe it was Ron's influence, but I found the woman mesmerizing and depressing but otherwise encouraging about the direction of human events. What a strange shirt, diary. Worn without irony or malice. Anyway, Manolo won't go clean out the bird cage, so later days.
Nolte's blog is not as cute as
Melanie Griffith's, though.
(via laobserved)posted by matteo at 12:48 PM PST - 31 comments
“Ten Years, Ten Trends” Highlights of the major findings in Year Four of the Digital Future Project’s study of the impact of the Internet on Americans.
posted by gwint at 9:58 AM PST - 4 comments
De Wolfe Music has a vast and fascinating CD catalogue of commercial music: classics, genre, sound effects, mood music, and soundalikes.
Search or
browse to find online full-length demos in RealPlayer format. Alternatively, the
UK site provides demos via a Flash playbar. Check out, for instance,
Chinese epic, clones of
Kurt Weil or
Scott Joplin, an
Egyptian/Roman blockbuster, the
Final Frontier - or maybe be
Tense, a
gladiator,
laidback and Scottish, or
very English.
posted by raygirvan at 7:57 AM PST - 5 comments
Bush Like Me: Ten weeks undercover in the grass roots of the Republican Party: As a professional misanthrope, I believe that if you are going to hate a person, you ought to do it properly. You should go and live in his shoes for a while and see at the end of it how much you hate yourself.
This was what I was doing down in Florida. The real challenge wasn't just trying to understand these Republicans. It was to become the best Republican I could be.posted by GriffX at 7:46 AM PST - 44 comments
SWIFT BOAT LIES send this to 5 people! "Like most bloggers, I have my beefs with the mainstream media. But you know what? They produce an awful lot of damn fine original reporting.
Case in point. In August the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth charged that John Kerry had lied about the events that led to his Silver Star. In order to figure out if the SBVT account was true, Nightline sent a crew to Vietnam, where they visited the hamlets of Tran Thoi and Nha Vi and interviewed the local villagers to get their recollections of what really happened 35 years ago. You can read the resulting story yourself, but it's summarized pretty easily: Kerry was right and SBVT honcho John O'Neill wasn't.
But there was also this:..."
posted by Postroad at 6:18 AM PST - 34 comments
Pirates and Emperors is the story of America's funding of terrorists (freedom fighters) put to music and animation, ala Schoolhouse Rock. It's a simple civics lesson that even elementary school kids, and our nation's highest leader, can understand. (link via
BoingBoing)
posted by fleener at 5:40 AM PST - 34 comments
Dear Comrades After the recent spate of biased and mischievous reporting by the colonialist foreign press, I have ultimately decided to reveal to you, the honest and hard-working citizens of Zimbabwe, a little more of Mugabe -
The Man.
posted by four panels at 12:31 AM PST - 1 comments
October 14
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. "Combining science and stewardship, we seek to ensure that the world-renowned wilderness, wildlife, native plants, and natural processes of the Yellowstone to Yukon region continue to function as an interconnected web of life, capable of supporting all of the natural and human communities that reside within it, for now and for future generations."
posted by homunculus at 10:17 PM PST - 2 comments
U.S. refuses to join U.N. plan for women From AP via Yahoo:
UNITED NATIONS - The United States has refused to join 85 other heads of state and government in signing a statement that endorsed a 10-year-old U.N. plan to ensure every woman's right to education, health care, and choice about having children.
and
President Bush's administration withheld its signature because the statement included a reference to "sexual rights." posted by Skygazer at 6:39 PM PST - 48 comments
Did you know? Each year, more people are killed by teddy bears than by grizzly bears; an average of 100 people choke to death on ball point pens each year; and, there is an ATM at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, which has a winter population of 200.
posted by shepd at 6:35 PM PST - 38 comments
Paralysed man sends e-mail by thought
A pill-sized brain chip has allowed a quadriplegic man to check e-mail and play computer games using his thoughts. The device can tap into a hundred neurons at a time, and is the most sophisticated such implant tested in humans so far.posted by moonbird at 5:43 PM PST - 35 comments
You will be conquered by Stealth and Deception : in the swift advance of a long-planned coup against secular society, to launch an American theocracy, "
the Dominionists are succeeding in their quest for national control and world power" - Kathleen Yurica, founder of the
Yurica Report which, like
Theocracy Watch, monitors the American religious right writes
"Since the writing and posting of my essay, The Despoiling of America in February 2004, there is more and more evidence that not only has a cultural war been launched, but that the plotters are winning it....First the hard right dominionists took over the Southern Baptist Convention with its 16 million members and a fortune in corporate businesses. Then they took over the Republican Party...they are moving to limit the power of the Supreme Court. Now there is evidence dominionists are trying to take over the U. S. military
....Americans and the mainstream media have been very slow in catching on to the fact that we are in a war — a war that is cultural, religious and political, a war that uses stealth and deception and the rules of engagement written by the enemies to representative democracy. Unless Americans wake up, we could lose that war."posted by troutfishing at 4:00 PM PST - 75 comments
World Legal Information Institute WorldLII has over
270 free databases covering multiple countries and international law. The LIIs were created under a declaration that: (1) Public legal information from all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of humanity. Maximising access to this information promotes justice and the rule of law; (2) Public legal information is digital common property and should be accessible to all on a non-profit basis and free of charge; and (3) Independent non-profit organisations have the right to publish public legal information and the government bodies that create or control that information should provide access to it so that it can be published.
For comprehensive French databases, try
Droit Francophonie.
posted by livii at 3:33 PM PST - 1 comments
Are you filthy rich? Do you like going places? "Consider a
lifetime AAirpass membership – for you or as a holiday gift for someone special." It's only - place pinky to pursed lips -
three million dollars. Quantities are limited, so act now. Buy two and get a million off.
posted by PrinceValium at 3:27 PM PST - 22 comments
America at 10 MPH: Josh Caldwell is riding a Segway from Seattle to Boston. He's already gone over 2800 miles.
[This project is independent of Segway.]posted by kirkaracha at 12:55 PM PST - 30 comments
Turd Birds - Art from Horse Turds Nothing political about this post and it is SFW.
Someone actually thought that it would be a good idea to use horse poop as an art medium to make weird looking bird sculptures.
But at least there's the tale of the
Turd Nazi to enjoy.
posted by fenriq at 10:54 AM PST - 6 comments
Campaign Contributions and U.S. Ambassadors In 1972 President Nixon appointed thirteen noncareer ambassadors to Western European countries; eight of them had contributed at least $50,000 to his reelection campaign...(-Source, scroll to item 2.) In 1980 a federal law was created to combat this, stating that ambassadors must
"possess clearly demonstrated competence, including, to the maximum extent practicable, a useful knowledge of the principal language or dialect of the country in which the individual is to serve, and knowledge and understanding of the history, the culture, the economic and political institutions and the interest of that country and its people. … Contributions to political campaigns should not be a factor in the appointment."Currently 1/4 to 1/3 of U.S. Ambassadors are noncareer appointees, not experienced diplomats, causing criticism
since the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Critics point out that neither the Pentagon, the CIA nor any other U.S. government agency must shoulder the burden of a significant cadre of "nonprofessionals" encumbering senior field positions. (-Source.)HERE is the current tally of Embassy Row and their campaign contributions, including
Clark Randt, Jr, former Geo W Yale fraternity brother who defended Bush against drug allegations during Bush's last campaign. "Rangers" and "Pioneers" abound.
Mauritius is sunny, tropical, and
expensive.
(Inspired by this AskMe question.) posted by Shane at 10:07 AM PST - 14 comments
The alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand, in friendship that serves to forge connections among individuals across their differences - we see deconstruction in action.
posted by semmi at 9:55 AM PST - 19 comments
There really IS more than one internet? First off - I'm no Bush fan, but I'm wondering if his use of the word 'internets' (although probably unintentional) isn't so wrong after all. It's no secret (pardon the pun) to those in the military and government work that there are other 'internets', such as the
SIPRNET. I'm no expert on the technicalities, but I think a user could take a leap and say that the
NIPRNET and the
SIPRNET are two totally different entities. Just pointing out a technicality, spreading a little knowledge, and adding the disclaimer that this post has no bearing on Bush's mishandled use of the term to begin with!
posted by matty at 7:35 AM PST - 33 comments
Google Desktop Search Beta Released. A tiny download and the interface we all recognise. As soon as it's finished indexing my email and hard disk I can finally search my desktop hard disk as easily as the internet.
posted by LMG at 7:31 AM PST - 83 comments
/.com gets a single from Fat Boy Slim. In his recently released new album Palookaville, FatBoy Slim [better known to the general public for hit parade tracks like
Weapon of Choice (video, multiple formats)(featuring some impressive dancing skill by
Christopher Walken), Praise You, Bird of Pray et al] dedicates the 2nd track to /.com. Question is...how long till some artists evokes the MetaFilter from the prestigeous internets ?
posted by elpapacito at 6:34 AM PST - 29 comments
During the Wednesday night debate, Senator Kerry questioned why the President said that he "was not concerned" with Osama Bin Laden. In response, Bush said,
“Gosh, I don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama Bin Laden. That’s kinda one of those exaggerations." The video proof
is here showing that he indeed say exactly that.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 4:58 AM PST - 26 comments
October 13
Location Free Media. Hot on the heels of the wireless city post, I ran across this still in development site for an upcoming product ("boo! product post!! boooooo!"). Whether this specific bit of hardware makes it or falls on the Betamax heap of history is inconsequential; what matters is that someday, we will all think nothing of being able to access our music, movies, DVR'd content, etc worldwide, which is a pretty cool idea.
posted by jonson at 10:03 PM PST - 7 comments
Cultivating the navel:
The first thing I wanted to do was to change clothes and take a shower. But when I took off my sweater, to my amazement, I could see something sticking out of my belly button! I couldn’t believe it: something was growing in there! [truly, the best of the web, via J-Walk]posted by moonbird at 5:00 PM PST - 15 comments
Don't Honk and Wave, just Honk Hey so I had this idea--what if people in
swing states drove around on election day through certain neighborhoods to honk out the vote. This would be driving and honking in a certain pattern. Now you might risk getting arrested for doing so, but if enough people did it, you wouldn't have to honk constantly to make people take notice. A bit like the ride of
Paul Revere.
Seems like depending on the areas you could drive out voters of different types.
The key is making people make the connection and say "why are people honking--it's election day."
Dunno, does anyone think this is a good idea? The
Domain is available.
posted by mikojava at 4:19 PM PST - 9 comments
Operation Clark County "Remember that it's unusual to receive a lobbying letter from someone in another country." The Guardian takes an initative for those of us overseas wondering if there's anything helpful we can do about you-know-what. Write to a swing voter, explain how you feel. Some
samples are on offer, their hectoring tone could have quite the wrong effect. If you were a computer selected Clark County voter, what, from a foreigner, would change your mind?
posted by grahamwell at 3:55 PM PST - 17 comments
One of the truly indigenous American artforms is
scrimshaw. The
Inuits made some fascinating pieces, as did
whalers more than 200 years ago.
Today's scrimshanders are more sensitive to the materials used (either from extinct species--such as the mastodon!--or synthetic materials), and the artform is still going strong, perhaps even gaining in popularity in these modern times. I find it fascinating, intricate artwork, and history.
posted by WolfDaddy at 3:01 PM PST - 3 comments
Biker angst on Ebay It's been poltergeisted and cootie-scanned -- man sells ex-wife's helmet. Description reads like drunken letter to Penthouse.
posted by joaquim at 11:06 AM PST - 30 comments
In terms of our genes, we humans are all the same -- except
for the ways in which we're different. Pharmacogenomics has for years been touted as the ultimate benefit of the genomics revolution. But to many, this revolution has a troubling side.
posted by semmi at 8:55 AM PST - 6 comments
Kartenfalthelme. Work getting you down? Feel assaulted by schedules, bosses, unreasonable demands? In an imperialist mood? Order your
KuK Atelier cardmodel helmets today!
Für Vergrößerung klicken!
[All content in German, but don't let that stop you!]
posted by mwhybark at 8:19 AM PST - 4 comments
October 12
New and
When I Grow Up. Two MOVs about the advertising industry.
{Note that the second link is actually an ad for Monster. Apologies in advance.}posted by dobbs at 9:54 PM PST - 20 comments
Hans Blix speaks. (RealPlayer) Hans Blix gave a recent interview with BBC Radio 4 in which he indicates that UN weapons inspectors were on the verge of private interviews with witnesses to the destruction of Iraq's WMD stockpiles shortly before the Bush administration forced inspectors to leave.
"I think that it would have been desireable for us to have more time. . . I think that the Iraqis were actually beginning to try to do cooperation of substance, and they were almost frantic to do so. . ."
In
his report to the UN on March 7th, 2003 Blix said UN inspectors were on the verge of inspecting a site where much of Iraq's WMDs were disposed and that
"The investigation of the destruction site could, in the best case, allow the determination of the number of bombs destroyed at that site."
Did the Bush administration "rush to war" in order to prevent the fatal undermining of their justification for war?
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:33 PM PST - 48 comments
Illegal RNC trashing Democratic registrations in Vegas -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.
...
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.
...
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate. posted by amberglow at 7:20 PM PST - 165 comments
"I have a hard time controlling my urges. Heck, I go home with just about any guy I meet. But then I discovered new
Vagiseal." (WMV - NSFW)
posted by Mwongozi at 2:44 PM PST - 12 comments
Since 1994 Claymovie has been producing clay animation movies with kids, adults, teachers, and professionals.
Here are some random clips of some of the funnier, unpredictable, unexpected and outrageous moments.
Watch the videos and see...you have to click [download movies], then go nuts. The really outrageous ones are at the bottom...try
Something in the Taters.
posted by chinese_fashion at 1:35 PM PST - 4 comments
Aliens Loves Predator — It's kinda like Seinfeld meets Evan Mather Star Wars videos meets online comic strip. Hey, "In New York, no one can hear you scream."
posted by teradome at 1:24 PM PST - 13 comments
Has your local supplier of ninja stars dried up? Want to set your truck up with armor plating, oil slick, and caltrops but not sure where to go? Been wondering where to go to get something to eat the paint off your boss' Benz?
Well then!
Brandon Enterprises has
got you covered!posted by kavasa at 12:48 PM PST - 4 comments
Jesus Videos (Scroll All the way down). Vintage 21, a "community of God seekers, God followers, and God doubters" has made a series of excellent videos which take a satirical look of what Jesus is NOT like.
posted by superbird at 11:19 AM PST - 12 comments
Motherload is a Flash game about mining Mars. It just devoured my morning. Be careful.
posted by picea at 10:15 AM PST - 16 comments
October 11
The Hell House Outreach Kit Behold : "in-your-face, high-flyin', no denyin', death-defyin', Satan-be-cryin', keep-ya-from-fryin', theatrical stylin', no holds barred, cutting-edge” evangelism tool of the new millennium!....Outreaches average a 33% salvation and rededication decision rate!...Churches are using this resource as a dynamic evangelism tool!.....
Churches use realistic depictions of sin's consequences to send message of hope to the nation's youth"....Domestic Abuse, Rave Scene (" hell's demons rejoice "), Teen Suicide, "Mother's Womb Abortion", Drunk Driving, Gay Wedding ( "Satan wouldn't have it any other way" ), and "Hell — The eternal fury and fire of hell is portrayed as the hell-dwellers, gate keeper and Satan declare that every person there is destined to burn forever in constant pain and agony."Bonus - 2.5mb flash cartoon :
Elisha the Cruel's curse brings she-bears to eat the 42 little children ! (2Kings:24) Disturbed ? Behold
Saint Clinton :
"His timeless sympathetic words, "I feel your pain", echo in his reassuring expression!"posted by troutfishing at 9:23 PM PST - 20 comments
Clientcopia - Stupid things clients say. ex: Please also put a landlord hat on the landlord.
posted by Mick at 6:30 PM PST - 25 comments
Speaking in TonguesCode --Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court and a President who signals his base in terms that fly over the heads of most of the country.
posted by amberglow at 5:51 PM PST - 73 comments
A.1.Mail Art Archive. This is the first entry for my new blog about my favourite mail art that I have saved over the years ( since 1980 ) but some is even older - I exchanged mail that could be called art even though we knew nothing about the international mail art network at the time. [via PCL LinkDump]posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:51 PM PST - 4 comments
Arsenic Lullaby is probably one of the most dementedly funny comic books. It features zombie fetuses, census worker hitmen, and the tooth fairy moonlighting as death. Luckily the internets feature
Samples!posted by drezdn at 3:12 PM PST - 9 comments
The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science. Scientific fraud is everywhere. It is in the government, the courts, the corporations, the universities and other schools, and in public forums, and is often widely publicized as fact. Often, the public embraces it as "better" than the truth, believing what they want to believe rather than what can be proven. So here are
seven warning signs that what is advanced as scientific fact may instead be bogus. But can you apply them to the huge number of "facts" you're bombarded with each day?
posted by kablam at 2:23 PM PST - 23 comments
Today is National Coming Out Day which aims to raise awareness of the kinda screwed up laws we have about having The Gay™ in America. Did you know that in 36 out of our 50 states, if you tell your boss you're gay and you get fired over it,
it's totally legal? One person has proposed that this day also be
Gay for Pay Day, to protest the payment of income taxes to a government that doesn't protect their right to be and is actively trying to forbid their own marriages.
posted by mathowie at 2:02 PM PST - 24 comments
'Joseph DeLappe continues his series of online gaming performances to re-create each of the three 2004 Presidential Debates. The second debate, the "Town Hall Meeting" held in Missouri on Friday, October 3rd (8th?), is being re-enacted, in it's (sic) entirety during multiple visits to game servers hosting the online game, "Starwars: Jedi Knight II, Jedi Outcast". (sic)'
I dunno what's up with his calendar, but somebody who's playing Jedi Knight II should try to find this guy.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:51 AM PST - 7 comments
Scientists bewildered by sharp rise of CO2 in atmosphere for second year running. "The fear held by some scientists is that the greater than normal rises in C02 emissions mean that instead of decades to bring global warming under control we may have
only a few years. At worst, the figures could be the first sign of the breakdown in the Earth's natural systems for absorbing the gas.
That would herald the so-called "runaway greenhouse effect", where the planet's soaring temperature becomes impossible to contain. As the icecaps melt, less sunlight is refected back into space from ice and snow, and bare rocks begin to absorb more heat. This is already happening."
posted by acrobat at 9:27 AM PST - 47 comments
Bush Junta: A Field Guide to Corruption in Government - A substantial visual document (200 pages of comics from Fantagraphics, fact-checked with an extensive bibliography; the link goes to a number of sample pages) on the Bush Dynasty, from its beginnings benefitting off of Hitler and WW2 (that entire piece, which is printed in english, is posted in its original dutch online
here), to the Bush's connection to Reagan's assassination, CIA and Iran-Contra, ending with the unsettling origins and profiles of the current administration. A great election primer, featuring comics and art by Steve Brodner, Ralph Steadman, Spain Rodriguez and many others. (
Amazon link provided for a better description)
posted by Peter H at 9:06 AM PST - 11 comments
Lonely Socks. Have you ever rifled through your socks drawer to find only three socks. One green, one blue and the other yellow? Where did the other one go? Post your single socks here and help them find their partners.
posted by fvw at 6:20 AM PST - 20 comments
20 years ago (the year I moved to Detroit), the
Tigers won the World Series. What should have been a proud moment for a city such as Motown quickly deteriorated, culminating in
this photograph of fan
Bubba Helms, which came to symbolize the riots that ensued (he later died of an overdose, following a failed suicide, broken marriage, mental illness, and addiction). Having a tradition of arson (
Devil's Night), (
1), (
2), during which some residents have
burned houses while others
protected,
bustin' caps to celebrate the New Year, and uneasy
race relations may have contributed, though sports psychologists point to
deindividuation (and
booze) when seeking to explain
hooliganism over the home team's victory.
posted by adampsyche at 5:21 AM PST - 12 comments
October 10
"Audikt is a collaborative, issue-based project between designers, artists and musicians, showcasing creative and musical talent beyond the mainstream."
Two issues posted so far (27 tracks each). Site contains some Flash but all tracks can be downloaded as MP3s. There's also a cool
video and a free font.
posted by dobbs at 9:25 PM PST - 4 comments
Ron's first Goatse (SFW, honest). Porn star Ron Jeremy is handed a Sidekick presumably displaying a certain infamous image during a meet-n-greet by persons unknown with the foresight to bring a camera.
MeFi Jr. Detective League bonus! Who is responsible for this belly-laugh inducing document? [via and linked to
themaxx.com, which may indeed contain NSFW material].
posted by mwhybark at 7:26 PM PST - 84 comments
The Larkin Administration Building. "It's not too much to say that this was the most significant demolition of an architectural landmark in the United States." A good read on one of Frank Lloyd Wright early masterpieces, and the history of Buffalo, NY architecture.
posted by punkrockrat at 7:21 PM PST - 6 comments
U.S.Businesses File Four Times More Lawsuits Than Private Citizens [...]The report also found that businesses and their attorneys were 69 percent more likely than individual tort plaintiffs and their attorneys to be sanctioned by federal judges for filing frivolous claims or defenses. The report, Frequent Filers: Corporate Hypocrisy in Accessing the Courts, is available by clicking here.
“Corporations think America is too litigious only when they are on the receiving end of a lawsuit,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “But when they feel aggrieved, businesses are far more likely to take their beef to court than are consumers.”[...] more
posted by Postroad at 7:07 PM PST - 19 comments
Redefining Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration, 2001–2004 --
This very thorough report (PDF)
finds that President Bush has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words. The US Commission on Civil Rights presents something for everyone, from Gay and Lesbian Rights on page 129 to Voting Rights and the 2000 Election on page 40, to Faith-Based Funding on page 157...
from page 9: In fact, the faith-based initiative’s only civil rights significance may be that it actually allows employment discrimination. ... this initiative reflects the President’s desire to recast civil rights in a manner that suits his narrow agenda and, as such, has been highly controversial. posted by amberglow at 9:19 AM PST - 20 comments
October 9
Matrix Evolutions: "A Unified Mathematical Science of Human Experience which explains electronic circuits, our personal experience in life and everything in between in terms of The Evolution of Information." Once you get bored, scroll down to the bottom for the horrifying conclusion!
(via WizBang)posted by Krrrlson at 11:10 PM PST - 10 comments
Word of God Chicago man finds a series of bizarre notes from God threatening very specific sinners taped up in the windows of random businesses.posted by squirrel at 7:33 PM PST - 17 comments
Ministry of Propaganda. Sinclair Broadcast Group, who
last made headlines by refusing to air
Nightline's reading of Americans killed in the Iraqi war because it was "contrary to public interest", have decided that
Washington Times reporter Carlton Sherwood's anti-Kerry documentary
"Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" is so vital to public interest that they are forcing every single one of their 62 station affiliates, 14 of which are in swing states, to preempt their primetime programming and air it less than two weeks before the election. Network sources claimed that following the airing, a "panel discussion" will be held, to which Kerry is invited, thus fulfilling SBG's commitment to fairness.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 4:03 PM PST - 36 comments
The Golden Age of Iron Men - Online Physical Culture Musem
Complete scans of an odd and very large collection of muscle/fitness publications and profiles of the authors, all from the early part of the century.
posted by dobbs at 2:22 PM PST - 6 comments
The Afghans vote for Karzai. All 15 of President Hamid Karzai's rivals said they were withdrawing from the election because systems to prevent illegal multiple voting had gone awry. The move effectively left Karzai as the only candidate in the fray.posted by mr.marx at 6:16 AM PST - 61 comments
First-class ticket and private jet not good enough for "regular guy" Sean Hannity Less than a week before he was scheduled to speak to students at Washington University in St. Louis, ABC Radio Networks host and FOX News Channel host Sean Hannity -- who regularly casts himself as an "average American" while attacking Senator John Kerry's "elitist lifestyle" -- reportedly canceled the appearance because flight arrangements were not made to his liking.
posted by Postroad at 3:57 AM PST - 33 comments
October 8
A mixed message gives you the quote and counterquotes from politicians. A good way to see politicians sitting on both sides of an issue, even if it's often the same politician sitting on two sides of the same issue.
posted by TNLNYC at 12:11 PM PST - 2 comments
On eve of tonight's debate, more bad news for Bush. The economy stumbled last month, with only 96,000 new jobs -- far short of the 138,000 jobs the Bush Administration predicted, or the 150,000 new jobs needed every month just to keep up with population growth. Another interesting tidbit is that 37,000 of the 96,000 new jobs are government employees, up from
24,000 in August and 11,000 in July. Is the timing coincidental? Meanwhile,
electoral-vote.com changed their methodology -- again -- so that it more accurately reflects recent poll results.
The difference is striking.
posted by insomnia_lj at 11:52 AM PST - 36 comments
Book publisher soliciting proposals on a high school marching band memoir. It could have an “American High” structure, in which a reporter follows a number of members of a band for a year, but the tone should be “Freaks & Geeks.” It could be something along the lines of “Drumline.” Or, and this is preferable, it could be a person’s wry memoir of his or her life as a band geek: weirdness on the bus, band sluts, the freshmen who steal your place, rivalries, loathing, the football team, what personality type goes with each instrument, etc. Knowledge of band camp and competitions would be a plus. BONUS:
Maud's post includes the email address of a senior editor at
Wiley to whom you may send your book proposals.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:49 AM PST - 9 comments
In 1889,
George Bush shoots and kills an innocent bystander then shoots and kills the D.C. police officer pursuing him. "Although mortally wounded, Officer Crippen found Bush hiding in a room and shot him twice."
And that's how the Bush family had bad blood with D.C.
posted by omidius at 10:35 AM PST - 15 comments
Ceci Nes't Pas Une Satanic Message • "Years ago someone told me that if you played Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven song backwards that you could make out 'satanic messages'. It is not my opinion that Led Zeppelin and the other artists here were given some kind of evil power to make these backwards sounds have a satanic message. And, no, I did not create this to show the evils of Rock and Roll. Instead I made this flash piece for two reasons: 1. I was new to Flash and wanted to be better at it and 2. The reverse files sound cool. "
posted by dhoyt at 9:40 AM PST - 15 comments
Going Upriver : The Long War of John Kerry, is the new documentary in theatres about Kerry's service in the Vietnam War and his subsequent protests against it. Somehow, I'd never even heard about this film until this morning.
Reviews of the film seem to be mostly positive. Have any MeFi members seen it? Do you think this will have any affect on election day?
posted by Stuart_R at 9:25 AM PST - 9 comments
GlobalVote2004 what would the rest of the world vote for if they could? GlobalVote2004 aims to find out, all non US citizens can pick their choice for President of the USA.
posted by dabitch at 8:16 AM PST - 10 comments
October 7
Terror warnings boost Bush's approval ratings. Cornell sociologist Robb Willard has used a time-series regression analysis to show that a terror alert by the US government predicts an increase in Bush's approval ratings, even on topics unrelated to security.
It's often been
claimed that the Bush administration manipulates terror alerts for political gain — does this finding make those claims more plausible?
posted by myeviltwin at 10:19 PM PST - 9 comments
Fahrenhype 911. We're going to destroy ourselves aren't we? A movie with appearances by Ann Coulter and Zell Miller takes aim at Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It's slick, it's punchy and techno-contemporary. Is this a harbinger of not only the loss of America's middle class, but also our common ground?
posted by crasspastor at 9:45 PM PST - 62 comments
Focus Concern on Schools in Six States I had recenbtly read that when alerts are issued, Bush support moves up. Now we have this alert based on info from a captured terrorist in Iraq. Our govt, we are told, downloaded building plans for a number of public schools. Alas: the material according to the article was found in the Summer--School begins around Labor Day...and now the alert is made?
posted by Postroad at 6:37 PM PST - 19 comments
Terrorists strike tourists in Egypt...again. At least 30 people have been
killed, 114 injured today when a truck bomb blew up the Hilton hotel in Taba, Egypt, a resort town in the Sinai. A concurrent
explosion occurred nearby in Nuweiba, Egypt, and early casualty reports there are 4 dead, 40 wounded. The apparent target? The many Israeli families who were vacationing in the area, celebrating Simchas Torah. The less-apparent target? The $4 billion/year 7 million people/year
Egyptian tourism industry, a
crucial part of that country's economy. While this is
not the first time that tourists from Israel have been singled out worldwide, it's also part of a decade-long pattern of
mass-casualty terrorist attacks against tourists from multiple countries within Egypt. Keeping in mind that one of the most devastating economic after-effects of 9/11 was the blow it dealt to
air travel and
tourism worldwide, not to mention
close calls and
tragic events at famed tourist
destinations, is
tourism-terrorism going to become the wave of the future?
posted by Asparagirl at 5:58 PM PST - 27 comments
FBI Seizes IMC Servers in the UK. Thursday morning, US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace ordering them to hand over Indymedia web servers to the requesting agency. Rackspace, which provides hosting services for more that 20 Indymedia sites at its London facility, complied and turned over the requested servers, effectively removing those sites from the internet...The list of affected local media collectives includes Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille (all France), Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen (all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, UK, part of the Germany site, and the global Indymedia Radio site.
posted by kablam at 4:51 PM PST - 44 comments
Debating for Ratings [yet another flash movie] Do-good media reform group answers the questions no one asked: What if the media set the rules of the debates? What if campaign coverage took the same form as Big Media's favorite low-cost, high-profit programming — reality TV?
posted by drywall at 2:53 PM PST - 1 comments
Is John Kerry Mentally ILL? "To put our concerns to rest, we send an anonymous profile of John Kerry to a panel of leading Psychologists and Psychiatrists, both Democrat and Republican, Left and Right, without letting them know they were evaluating a Presidential candidate. The results will SHOCK YOU, regardless of your political beliefs, just like it shocked us."posted by quonsar at 10:56 AM PST - 61 comments
Vice President Cheney declares the no-wmd report
justifies war. So what exactly were they going to do to us that was dangerous, think about the act? In related news, widespread genocide is a potential thought of an
african government, let's get em?
posted by omidius at 10:08 AM PST - 98 comments
Join Uncle Ben and the Rice family as they come to terms with the True Meaning of Christmas in
Christmas Lights in Pilaf. [.mp4 video] Warning: This trailer makes little to no sense.
posted by sciurus at 4:40 AM PST - 8 comments
October 6
What Barry Says. (
mirror of the quicktime video) Though it may stray towards the tinfoil hat in places, you can't dispute that a small group of neocons
really is actually trying to reform the world in their vision. But are they doing it merely for profit on the part of their closely related weapons companies? Even if you don't agree with its provacative message, it's a damn fine looking piece of type, design, and film all rolled into one 2 minute short [via
randomfoo].
posted by mathowie at 11:25 PM PST - 18 comments
RSS Mailer emails the contents of RSS feeds to mailing list users. You can manage your users and RSS feeds through a web interface and send a selected number of items from your RSS feeds (individually or all together) to the email addresses on your mail list. Users can subscribe/unsubscribe themselves through forms, or the administrator can subscribe/unsubscribe them through the web interface. You probably won't need
Bloglet anymore.
posted by hoder at 9:48 PM PST - 5 comments
This is the first presidential election where the power of personal computers have been put to use by large numbers of amateurs to create their own
ads,
cartoons, and multimedia
political statements.
Some are
ridiculous,
some are inventive, and
some are well, amateurish, but they are all done by people trying to express their political views in a way that may seem to make more of a difference then by casting a ballot.
I know that the links I've posted are anti-bush slanted, but to be honest they are easier to find...
posted by copacetix at 8:09 PM PST - 7 comments
Tainted Love: afraid you may have given someone an STD? Not sure how to let them know? No problem! With inSPOT you can send signed or anonymous e-cards to up to six [!] people who may now be infected. But don't virus spam, please.
posted by falconred at 7:07 PM PST - 5 comments
"We have
[a substance] that extends the life of every species it's given to. We're 50 years ahead of where I thought we would be 10 years ago." While Harvard Medical School rules prevent
David Sinclair from recommending
product, "I know a number of scientists who think
[it] is their best shot. Others satisfy themselves with a glass of
red wine," which contains the compound.
Too good to be true?posted by stbalbach at 6:02 PM PST - 20 comments
Iraqi Indicted for Proposal to Open Talks With Israel Bringing democracy to the Middle East--let freedom ring. "A court of Iraq's interim government has brought criminal charges against a prominent politician for attending an antiterrorism conference in Israel and publicly suggesting that Iraq should open talks with Israel.
The indictment and arrest warrant, based on a 1969 law promulgated by the Baath Party that bars Iraqis from having contacts with enemy states, are likely to anger the United States government, which has sponsored Iraq's new courts and is a close ally of Israel." So it goes...
posted by Postroad at 5:24 PM PST - 10 comments
netLibrary. "We offer the only comprehensive approach to eBooks that integrates with the time-honored missions and methods of libraries and librarians."
Want an account? If your library system is a participant, go to the site from on a library computer, create an account, and you can then log in remotely too. Interesting! [via
soup du jour of the day.]
posted by mwhybark at 3:40 PM PST - 12 comments
Flashmob - The Opera. There will be something like 200 people on site, including a 62-piece orchestra, a choir of singing policemen and a chorus of football fans... and all while it's 'business as usual' at the station. It's not the first place you'd think of doing a live opera!
Despite some
alleged security worries it went ahead at Paddington Station and has been broadcast complete with the flashmob singing
Nessun Dorma. Gloriate!posted by i_cola at 3:00 PM PST - 7 comments
The architect as total designer. In 1959, Danish architect
Arne Jacobsen shattered paradigms aplenty with his
SAS Hotel (represented now by its last remaining original room, the legendary
606). The hotel was intended as a single field of experience; from
seating and lighting (more
here and
here) to
table service, Jacobsen was intimately involved in almost every aspect of the hotel's physical interface with its guests. The result is a work of deeply pleasing harmony that
still looks fresh some four and a half decades later. MeFites in Copenhagen: how's it holding up?
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:24 AM PST - 11 comments
FILE -
A Collection of Unexpected Photography - "FILE Magazine publishes images that treat subjects in unexpected ways."
posted by dobbs at 11:22 AM PST - 8 comments
October 5
Wimblehack! Matt Taibbi of the NY Press hosts a four-week tournament to crown the worst political journalist in America. Check the
bracket, and place your bets. Bob Woodward looks tough to beat (he
"says, with pride, [that] . . . Bush in Plan of Attack either comes across as a 'forceful, decisive leader' or 'shows he does not know what he is doing,' depending on your point of view"), Brian Mooney of the Boston Globe has a winning strategy (
"Any reporter who files a 'nation bitterly divided' or a 'most fiercely contested election in history' piece is going to advance automatically. When 100 million people don't vote, the nation is not bitterly divided. The nation mostly doesn't give a shit.") but my money says there's no way anyone's stopping Elizabeth Bumiller.
(Via Atrios, but should be safe for Republicans, too.)posted by Zonker at 4:50 PM PST - 10 comments
Dear Mike, Iraq sucks. Michael Moore received a flood of letters and emails from disillusioned and angry American soldiers serving in Iraq. From today's Guardian.
posted by knutmo at 2:08 PM PST - 39 comments
Coward-in-Chief. George Bush has announced that he will give a major national speech on Wednesday, in which he will respond to John Kerry's criticisms of the president. This appears to be the first time any president has tried to hold a major televised speech during the election season for such a purpose. During his term in office, Mr. Bush has given
the fewest press conferences of any president in the televised era. John Kerry had previously offered Bush
weekly debates... and George Bush refused. Is it fair to say that he'd rather use his power of office to dictate to us instead?
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:59 PM PST - 183 comments
Meet a federal marriage expert. According to cult leader Reverend Moon, democracy must crumble in the face of
"Godism," with him in charge. Having
endorsed Godism as central to any sensible curriculum, and Moon as
central to any married person's sex life, one Josephine Hauer is now receiving federal funds to train marriage experts. It's part of a $1.5 billion marriage program that
excludes gay-friendly organizations, but has funded this
admirer of Soviet character education. The government
argues that most Americans already share the values of the Healthy Marriage Initiative.
posted by inksyndicate at 11:28 AM PST - 14 comments
The Scissor Sisters (album art NSFW) seem to be getting the attention of the two primary community-owned radio stations I have bookmarked, to the point of becoming a guilty pleasure. The band is
unapologetically camp riffing or perhaps just
plundering the more popular
glam rock lexicon and of course the music that
we love to hate, disco. Of course, it may be all over. With the recent revelation that the Scissor Sister are favored by
U.K. Tory co-chair Liam Fox they might suffer what the Guardian calls, the Curse of the Thrashing Doves. The wisdom being that while it is kosher for
bands to endorse politicians, it is the kiss of death for politicians to endorse bands. Still, it is interesting to me how things have changed in that the Scissor Sisters are capitalizing on the gay card early in their careers. Melissa Etheridge took
two albums before coping to what had been an open secret.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:14 AM PST - 14 comments
Carl Lewis' present to pop culture. (Quicktime Video) Ladies and Gentlemen, all you kids out there who want to know what the 1980's were like: I present you the ultimate document. Just in case you were wondering, ( It has been twenty years after all) the star of this video is considered one of the
best track & field athletes of all time. (
Via jasonzada.com)
posted by jeremias at 10:15 AM PST - 32 comments
1968: The Year That Changed The Future. The roots of the VoIP insurrection trace back to four synchronistic events in 1968. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled MCI could compete with AT&T using microwave transport on the Chicago to St. Louis route. The same year, the FCC's Carterfone decision forced AT&T to allow customers to attach non-Western Electric equipment, such as new telephones, and modems, to the telephone network. The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Project Agency issued a contract to Bolt Beranek and Newman for a precursor to the Internet. And in July 1968, Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore founded Intel. Innovation in the communication sector remained the proprietary right of AT&T for most the 20th century, but events in 1968 breached the barriers that kept the telecom and information technology industries apart. For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, AT&T had manned Berlin Wall separating telecommunications and computing, but eventually, these two enormous technology tracks would be unified.
Absolutely fascinating - and admittedly long! - article, by Daniel Berninger on VoIP, on Om Malik's blog.
Read the whole thing, as they say.
posted by dash_slot- at 10:09 AM PST - 6 comments
Pederasts of the
mind: Of
kids, lies and Oil. The American Petroleum Institute
partners (in 2004)
with The
National Science Teacher's
Association (NSTA) and
Scholastic
(see: Scholastic's
creedo) to
provide K-12 lesson plans, on energy and oil, which resemble the
API's own "Teacher Lesson
Plans" and snappy
flash presentations such as
Progress
Through Petroleum! which are bundled with
fun stuff and
cool facts. The NSTA/API lessons teach all about energy and oil except the
global environmental impacts. Didactic bonus from
NSTA's oil-friendly curriculum :
a surrealistic gallery of oil industry
imagery for kids to download.
Recent glacial melt speedup in
Greenland and
Antarctica shocks researchers, while the Pentagon games
scenarios of
Abrupt
Climate Change : Don't worry, says the DOE's
Energy Ant - oil's
good, like cows,
m'kay
? . Extra credit : Play the
Oil and natural Gas
Crossword Puzzle, or the "Industry Lesson Plan Game" (that, and more, inside)
posted by troutfishing at 8:04 AM PST - 21 comments
October 4
J.M. Nasim's Psychedelic Jew's Harp. Such a simple and ancient instrument, the
Jew's Harp, or
maultrommel, or
Koukin, or
Khomus, or
guimbarde, or
genggong, or
numerous other names, has never sounded quite like
this (streaming mp3 link).
I create this music live. No multi-tracking, no playback of pre-recorded material, no sampling. The raw signal of voice and Jew’s Harp feeds into a portable bank of automated processors. Here, various programmatic, architectonic sound spaces frame rhythmic zones within which certain acoustic potentialities reside. These sonic holograms manifest my musical explorations as shape-shifted sound. Seminal acoustics are gestated into new aural forms to birth multi- dimensional soundscapes of interpenetrating pulses and harmonics.
posted by garethspor at 10:39 PM PST - 3 comments
DeMint: Gays should not teach US Congressional candidate opposes gays teaching in schools. He's dancing with them whut brung him, as they say in certain circles. Yet another reason I'm proud of my home state of South Carolina. (Not.)
posted by alumshubby at 9:16 PM PST - 28 comments
best of luck, ev. after over five years of sweat and tears, founder evan williams decides to hang up the reigns on his position at
blogger.
undoubtedly, he's done a lot for the blogging community and the internet in general.. we wish him well.
posted by mrplab at 8:19 PM PST - 18 comments
The 885 All Time Greatest Songs as chosen by listeners to
WXPN, the listener-supported station at 88.5 on the Philadelphia-area FM dial. WXPN ran an on-line vote, asking listeners for their top 10 all time favorites in celebration of a move to a new studio. They are playing all 885 back, in order, all this week (on air and on-line). We're up to Bobby Darin and
Beyond the Sea (number 750, sandwiched between Husker Du and Jimi Hendrix) as I post this. My all time favorite, the Dead's Wharf Rat, was at 782. The site also presents the top ten lists of some of their staff and some favorite artists.
posted by mmahaffie at 4:03 PM PST - 32 comments
F*ck Big Media, Rolling Your Own Network If a well-informed public is the necessary prerequisite to the democratic process, then we must frankly admit that any private ownership of public airwaves represents a potential threat to the free exchange of ideas. Now that private property has mostly collectivized the electromagnetic spectrum, and with little hope that this will soon change, we must look elsewhere to find a common ground for the public discourse.
We are fortunate that such ground already exists.
posted by tranceformer at 3:21 PM PST - 19 comments
Dodging the draft call up? Fewer than two-thirds of the former soldiers being reactivated for duty in Iraq and elsewhere have reported on time, prompting the Army to threaten some with punishment for desertion.
The former soldiers, part of what is known as the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), are being recalled to fill shortages in skills needed for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.posted by amberglow at 1:46 PM PST - 11 comments
Don Luskin dismisses high school economics as Democrat propaganda in the
National Review:
Be that as it may, there is no unique virtue to inflation-adjusting — except that it makes all changes in income look worse, which well serves the liberal agenda of the Times’s economic reporting during an election year.
The
National Review has always been conservative, but I'm unaware of when a writer for a mainstream publication has so explicitly dismissed something as common-sensical as
real dollars. What's next? Gravity? Heliocentrism?
Via Brad DeLong.
posted by goethean at 1:05 PM PST - 16 comments
Dissent is patriotic. "I'm a pro-choice, antiwar, antideficit Republican," says
Senator Linc Chafee (R-RI). But his party affiliation is not stronger than the deep ideological gulf between the conservative and moderate wings of the GOP. Today, Sen. Chafee
announced that he will not support George Bush's bid for re-election nor vote for him in November. Already there are rumbles of a party defection that might quash hopes for a GOP hold on the
U.S. Senate. Remember
this guy? "I understand the feelings that he has," Mr. Jeffords said. "I'm going to be talking to him, so I'm not going to say any more. I probably shouldn't have even told you that."
posted by PrinceValium at 12:48 PM PST - 21 comments
Chemical heads Your hair is drab. Dull. Needs more volume. Needs less frizz. It needs something. Maybe it needs
cetyl alcohol. Mixed with a dash of
propylene glycol, and how about a little
butane, or
acrylamide?
Once upon a time, people lathered, rinsed, never repeated, and went on their merry bad-hair days. Then, science and chemistry specialized the way folks condition and shine.
Companies began creating new compounds so they could design products for specific hair types. Now,
some consumer groups worry about the mix of chemicals: they point to incomplete labeling and little government oversight of the cosmetics and hair industry, accusations the
Food and Drug Administration does not deny.
"The FDA needs to define what is safe to put in these products, and come up with standards," says Tim Kropp, a senior scientist with the
Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit consumer organization in Washington that helped produce a study on problem ingredients in everyday products. "
There are no safety standards in place."
(to access main link, a little help from BugMeNot).
More inside.
posted by matteo at 9:40 AM PST - 18 comments
October 3
Condi Rice and pre-war intel hype
The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets.
Are
these women right to be angry with the Bush administration?
posted by specialk420 at 7:45 PM PST - 23 comments
Turkey Rhubarb in the Low Countries. Since there's nothing interesting going on here in the US right now, let's enjoy a moment of EU fun. (y2-length post inside).
posted by jfuller at 8:08 AM PST - 27 comments
Forever Greene. One hundred years after
Graham Greene’s birth, the literary mosaic of books like
Our Man in Havana and
Brighton Rock is still riveting. But the author "carried anguish” with him: a moralist and, therefore, controversial, Greene’s clearly-worded works of suspenseful, or ethical ambivalence, border on a delicate balance — of both gloom and salvation. His novels are
replete with a sense of foreboding, and scrutinise self-deception, sin, failure. George Orwell sneered that Greene thinks "there is something rather distingué in being damned;
Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only".
And what remains is also, of course, the --
de riguer --
problem of the
biographies:
caring father,
fervent brothelgoer,
helluva guy?
Anyway, among the institutions celebrating Greene's centenary: the
British Library, the
Barbican Centre (scroll down the page).
And the Guardian just re-printed "
The funeral of Graham Greene", reported in the Guardian, April 9 1991.
(more inside, with Shirley Temple)
posted by matteo at 7:45 AM PST - 15 comments
Topobo -
Topobo is a 3D constructive assembly system embedded with kinetic memory, the ability to record and playback physical motion (
movies).
From
Eyebeam.
posted by andrew cooke at 4:59 AM PST - 8 comments
Urballoon: "a balloon equipped with a projector and wireless connection to the web that enables people to submit content online and broadcast it in public spaces." Today's the last day to submit for projection in NY.
posted by dobbs at 12:57 AM PST - 4 comments
October 2
Are you not amazed at how she evokes soul, body, hearing, tongue, sight, skin, as though they were external and belonged to someone else? And how at one and the same moment she both freezes and burns, is irrational and sane, is terrified and nearly dead, so that we observe in her not a single emotion but a whole concourse of emotions? Such things do, of course, commonly happen to people in love. Sappho’s supreme excellence lies in the skill with which she selects the most striking and vehement circumstances of the passions and forges them into a coherent whole. Longinus, On the Sublime Sappho’s poem of jealousy survives only because the ancient critic Longinus quoted it as a supreme example of poetic intensity--now Ken Knabb has put up 26 translations of it in the English at the
Gateway to the Vast Realms , the literature and texts section of his
Bureau of Public Secrets. And wait! There's more!
posted by y2karl at 10:04 PM PST - 10 comments
How Bush Did. Later for the polls, pundits, and analysis. The five minute .wmv found
here sums up the President's performance. Partisan, sliced, edited, and damned
scary funny.
posted by adampsyche at 12:30 PM PST - 55 comments
The European Dream Sure. They are doing better than the U.S. in so many aspects of living but we are number one with our military! Or perhaps that is why they do so well? Note: their view of religion does not come anywhere near the crazed attention religion plays in American life, in our politics, tax relief, social legislation etc....
posted by Postroad at 7:17 AM PST - 48 comments
October 1
"Flavorpill Productions is a publishing and creative services company which develops filtered cultural content, and distributes it through permission-based emails":
earplug (electronic music);
boldtype (books);
JC Report (fashion). Don't like mailing lists? There are archives:
e b jc.
posted by dobbs at 9:54 PM PST - 3 comments
The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent
askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)
posted by andrew cooke at 5:29 PM PST - 17 comments
The Price of/for Attention "While it's interesting (and soul-crushingly depressing) to discover bidding wars over keywords associated with human suffering, I'm focused on the idea that I can pull data about web users' interest in different subjects out of this data."
The fight to get attention on humanitarian crises, the dynamics of web browsing, and something like statistical game theory meet for a greased wrestling match in GoogleAds.
posted by freebird at 2:48 PM PST - 6 comments
The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet. In the spring or summer of 1596,
William Shakespeare received word that
his only son Hamnet, 11, was ill. In the summer he learned that Hamnet's condition had worsened and that it was necessary to drop everything and hurry home. By the time the father reached Stratford the boy—whom, apart from brief visits, Shakespeare had in effect abandoned in his infancy—
may already have died. On August 11, 1596, Hamnet was buried at Holy Trinity Church: the clerk duly noted in the burial register, "
Hamnet filius William Shakspere."
It might have been possible that Shakespeare's Catholic father urged his son to have prayers said to speed the child's release from purgatory. The problem was that
purgatory had been abolished by the ruling Protestants, and saying prayers for the dead declared illegal. Hence, the possible dilemma for Shakespeare was whether to risk punishment by praying for their deceased loved ones or
obey the law and allow those souls to languish in flames.
This anxiety regarding one's obligations to the dead,
Stephen Greenblatt suggests,
lies behind Hamlet's indecision about whether to obey his father's ghost and take revenge on his uncle Claudius.
posted by matteo at 1:00 PM PST - 21 comments
Stovokor! Captain pInluH and Commander Khrell are stuck in
Portland, the sneaky Ferengi having sold
them a 'faulty temporal device.'
Life is hard on Earth, it seems. Did anyone get a
set list? No matter. It's my beleif that we will not see these warriors astride
golf carts. Look out, number 1: perhaps they are looking to pull a Titor on your burgeoning data empire!
posted by mwhybark at 11:27 AM PST - 13 comments
How Berkeley Can You Be Parade? NSFW (unless your work doesn't mind naked men strutting their stuff).
Found during my surf after the debate last night and well worth a peek, the outraged commentary is pretty funny but it might be lost on the intolerant or those who've never been out to visit Berkeley. Among the pics is this true, true
gem (Klingons do NOT ride in golf carts, not even fat Klingons!)
posted by fenriq at 7:34 AM PST - 20 comments
